Junior Howell gets his Purple Heart

Poetrooper sends us a link to the story of 91-year-old Junior Howell who was just awarded his Purple Heart 72 years after he was wounded on Peleliu in the Pacific as a 19-year-old Marine private;

“They were firing down — snipers,” Howell recalled during a recent interview. “I could see their faces as plain as I can see you. The drivers have both got their hatches closed. They didn’t know what was going on … I crawled up between — there’s a passageway next to the motor — I crawled past that, grabbed hold of them, and I said, ‘Back out, back out. They’re hitting us.’ ”

After the vehicle reversed and made a turn, it was struck by an armor-piercing shell. “It knocked the track off the drive sprocket,” Howell said. “We stopped just like that.”

The Marine Corps denied his request in 2003 for a Purple Heart award citing a lack of evidence – until medical records were uncovered;

[Nate Jones, veterans affairs service officer for Delaware County], who got to know Howell at weekly breakfast meetings at the Oasis Bar & Grill, discovered that Howell’s medical history had been overlooked during the previous Purple Heart application.

Dated Sept. 21, 1944, the history includes the following notes: “Howell, Junior Eugene,” DOB 6-18-25, “6th Amphib,” “Pacific,” “Diag: Wound Fragment Mortar Buttock,” “Not Misconduct,” “With Command,” “Work,” “Negligence not apparent,” “Wounded in action against organized enemy.”

Howell says that this award marks the end of World War II for him.

“I am happy to have served in the Marines, but it was a bad f—– time. The only good day I had was when I got out.”

Category: Marine Corps