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Nat'l Medal of Honor Heritage Center fundraiser

Right here. I was privileged, at an NRA convention, to shake hands with two of them, Joe Foss and another Marine who earned it on Guadalcanal.

One of the other lawyers at Interior had a father who was going to the NRA convention to shake hands with Foss, whom he'd not seen since that battle. I asked what a man could have done to where his courage stood out on Guadalcanal. He said his father had told him of one incident. The airfield was under artillery fire, and he saw Foss using a hand pump to drain gas from the other planes and put it in his. He'd calculated that if he consolidated all their gas in his plane, he'd have enough take off and fight, single-handedly, whatever the Japanese were sending that day. So he was handling gasoline under artillery fire for the purpose of going up single-handed to attack an unknown number of enemies. My friend's father said the Marine grunts worshipped Foss, he was their god of war.

UPDATE: yep, the same Joe Foss. I got off the plane in DC and ran into him (I hadn't seen him on the plane, it connected thru Phoenix). He told me the story and also that he'd been made to take his boots off, was it seven times? I assume they had steel shanks. I called the late Mike McNulty, Waco documentarian, and asked if he knew any media people in DC. He said yes, and I said give them this story and send them to the Key Bridge Marriott. They came over and caught Joe during lunch and he told the story and they ran with it.

Joe added that the TSA people had wondered whether they had to take away the Medal of Honor because it had (rounded) points on it, so he called over some National Guardsmen and told the lieutenant to tell TSA what it was. The LT couldn't, and Joe gave him a first-class chewing out. He took it, which was fortunate for him, since after the NRA meeting, Joe was flying to West Point to give an address to the cadets. if the LT had done anything, he'd have been left wondering why his commander was getting calls from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of the Army demanding his head on a platter.