By Pete O’Cain And Reilly Kneedler: Army Ranger Killed in Afghanistan Remembered at Ceremony
By Katie Lange: Medal of Honor Monday: Army Lt. Col. John U.D. Page
John Upshur Dennis Page (February 8, 1904 – December 11, 1950) was a United States Army officer from Saint Paul, Minnesota. Lieutenant Colonel Page received the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War.
Bernard John Dowling Irwin (June 24, 1830 – December 15, 1917) was an assistant army surgeon during the Apache Wars and the first (chronologically by action) Medal of Honor recipient. His actions on February 13, 1861 are the earliest for which the Medal of Honor was awarded.
Irwin had an interest in natural history and while at Fort Buchanan, Arizona in 1858-1860 he collected reptile specimens for the Smithsonian Institution.[1] In 1857 Irwin donated a meteorite to the Smithsonian Institution that came to be known as the Irwin-Ainsa (Tucson) meteorite.[2]
A collection of his papers is held at the National Library of Medicine [3]
Mary Edwards Walker (November 26, 1832 – February 21, 1919), commonly referred to as Dr. Mary Walker, was an American abolitionist, prohibitionist, prisoner of war and surgeon. She is the only woman to ever receive the Medal of Honor.[1]
In 1855, she earned her medical degree at Syracuse Medical College in New York,[2] married and started a medical practice. She volunteered with the Union Army at the outbreak of the American Civil War and served as a surgeon at a temporary hospital in Washington, D.C., even though at the time women and sectarian physicians were considered unfit for the Union Army Examining Board.[3] She was captured by Confederate forces[2] after crossing enemy lines to treat wounded civilians and arrested as a spy. She was sent as a prisoner of war to Richmond, Virginia until released in a prisoner exchange.
After the war, she was approved for the Medal of Honor, for her efforts to treat the wounded during the Civil War. Notably, the award was not expressly given for gallantry in action at that time, and in fact was the only military decoration during the Civil War. Walker is the only woman to receive the medal and one of only eight civilians to receive it. Her name was deleted from the Army Medal of Honor Roll in 1917 (along with over 900 other male MOH recipients); however, it was restored in 1977.[2] After the war, she was a writer and lecturer supporting the women’s suffrage movement until her death in 1919.
