Soldier's heroic action helped save another

This tale is about Duane Edgar Dewy, a corporal in the United States Marine Corps who shipped out to the Korean War in the fall of 1961. 

Dewy was the leader of a machine gun squad in Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division. He was stationed near Panmunjom on the border between North Korea and South Korea. 

On April 15 in the spring of 1952, his platoon was attacked by a battalion-size Chinese force of between 500 and 700 soldiers. "They were throwing grenades at us and we then threw grenades at them," he later recalled.

Then all heck broke loose, he opened up firing at the enemy with his machine gun. They were surrounded, with no place to go. Then there was a little lull in the fighting, he then went back a way for more ammo and a case of grenades. His gunnery sergeant ordered them to pull back from their foxhole as casualties were heavy. Now they had no foxhole. He got behind a big rock then a grenade goes off and he gets shrapnel in his leg and left buttocks and he goes down. He tells his assistant gunner, take over the squad, telling him that he had been hit. 

A medic came to him — and at that time another grenade comes rolling in, He grabs it, but wounded and on his back, he can't throw it, so he puts it under his right hip and pulls the medic down on top of him to protect the medic. The grenade goes off, blowing them both off the ground, but they were both still alive. "Get me out of here," he tells the medic. "I can't take much more of this."

Dewy was pulled to a bunker with other wounded men and given morphine.  He had also taken a bullet in his stomach. He lives, the Chinese pull out  After months in the hospital, he is discharged and goes to work for a piano company, although because of his wounds, the work is tough for him.  

It is during one shift at the piano company that he receives a notice, telling him that he is being summoned to the White House to be awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic action of taking the blast of the grenade to save another man's life. On March 12, 1953, he is awarded the Medal of Honor by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who said during the ceremony, "you must have a body of steel."

Roger Gregory served as captain in the 1st Infantry Division and served in Vietnam. He is a Priest River businessman.