The Medal of Honor means a lot to me, but every time I put it on, I think about other Marines who deserve the award and didn't get it. I didn't do an… - Duane E. Dewey

My next words are, "Get me the hell out of here, I can't take much more of this." The corpsmen and the gunnery sergeat drag me to a bunker full of wounded men. As I'm given a shot of morphine, I think, "Okay, this is it. We're going to bleed to death, or the Chinese troops are going to come in here and finish us off. I'm looking Old Man Death right in the face."
I don't pray for myself. I spend the rest of the night praying for my wife, Bertha, and my infant daughter, Arline. She was born right after I left for Korea. I pray that Bertha will find a good father for our daughter and a good husband for herself.
Near daybreak, someone pokes their head inside and tells us the Chinese have pulled out. I'm sent to a field hospital, where I'm told I've also taken a bullet to the stomach. The blast put a good-size hole in my hip, but it missed my spine. I know how lucky I am to be alive.

Once again, I take my gunner's .45 to see if I can scrounge up some more ammo. No luck. I get back to my position and I'm still upright when a grenade goes off behind my left heel. I get shrapnel in my leg and left buttocks. It puts me down. "Take over the squad," I holler to the gunner. "I've been hit." A hospital corpsman arrives and asks where I've been hit. I tell him, and as he's getting my britches undone to examine the injury, a second grenade rolls beside me. I grab it and I'm going to throw it. First impulse to get rid of it, right? But I'm lying flat on my back and I'm thinking I can't get this out of reach of my own men. So I scoop the grenade under my right hip and grab the corpsman. As I pull him down on top of me, I say, "Hit the dirt, doc. I've got it in my hip pocket." The grenade goes off. Takes us both off the ground. My body aborbs the full force of the explosion.