Edward Grady Halcomb; a Distinguished Service Cross sixty years later

AverageNCO sends us the link to a story about 84-year-old Edward Grady Halcomb who received the award of the Distinguished Service Cross that 19-year-old Private First Class Edward Grady Halcomb earned on the battlefields of Korea more than 60 years ago;

Halcomb was captured in July 1950 along with more than 370 soldiers. He became the senior medic for the POWs at age 19. Volunteering to stay with the most severely wounded, giving them his food, Halcomb helped his fellow prisoners as they were forced to march north. He and four others managed to escape in October.

But Halcomb’s nomination for the Distinguished Service Cross was lost or overlooked. By the time it was discovered, it took an Act of Congress to lift the time limitation on the award. Ross helped usher that measure through Congress.

[…]

“When the enemy retreated from Seoul, he (Halcomb) alone volunteered to stay with the weakest prisoners who were forced to walk with the main column on a grueling 120-mile march to Pyongyang,” McDaniel read from the award citation. “By placing himself with the most disabled, Pfc. Halcomb increased the probability of his own execution as the enemy guards executed soldiers, whose physical condition became a burden or slowed the pace.”

According to the report of his POW Medal in the Hall of Valor, PFC Halcomb escaped from captivity three months after he was captured. According to the article, Halcomb retired from the Army in 1968 as a Sergeant First Class. If you go looking for him at DPAA, you won’t find him, but the Korean War accounting for POWs is sketchy at best, illustrating the complexity of that war and the shifting front of the battle.

Category: Real Soldiers