Retired Army colonel awarded Medal of Honor for heroism dies at age 97
Ralph Puckett Jr., a retired Army colonel awarded the Medal of Honor seven decades after he was wounded leading a company of outnumbered Army Rangers in battle during the Korean War, has died at age 97.
Puckett died peacefully Monday at his home in Columbus, Georgia, according to the StrifflerHamby Mortuary, which is handling funeral arrangements.
President Joe Biden lauded Puckett for his “extraordinary ... selflessness above and beyond the call of duty” while presenting the retired colonel with the nation’s highest military honor at the White House in 2021. Biden noted the award was “more than 70 years overdue.”
“(He) always believed ... all (you needed) to be a Ranger was (to have) guts and ... brains,” Biden said.
Puckett was a newly commissioned Army officer when he volunteered for the 8th Army Ranger Company that was formed soon after the Korean War began in 1950. Despite his inexperience, Puckett ended up being chosen as the unit’s commander. He had less than six weeks to train his soldiers before they joined the fight.
“I said to myself: ‘Dear God, please don’t let me get a bunch of good guys killed,’” Puckett told the Ledger-Enquirer of Columbus in a 2014 interview.
Over two days in November 1950, Puckett led his roughly 50 Rangers in securing a strategically important hill near Unsan. Puckett sprinted across the open area to draw fire so that Rangers could find and destroy enemy machine-gunners. Though badly outnumbered, Puckett’s troops repelled multiple counterattacks from a Chinese battalion of an estimated 500 soldiers before being overrun.
Puckett suffered serious wounds to his feet, backside and left arm after two mortar rounds landed in his foxhole. He ordered his men to leave him behind, but they refused.
Puckett was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest U.S. military honor, in 1951. It was upgraded to the Medal of Honor following a policy change that lifted a requirement that such awards be made within five years of valorous acts.
During the White House medal presentation, Biden said that Puckett’s first reaction to receiving the honor had been: “Why all the fuss? Can’t they just mail it to me?”
Despite his injuries in Korea, Puckett refused a discharge from the Army and spent another 20 years in uniform before retiring in 1971. He was awarded a second Distinguished Service Cross in 1967 for dashing through shrapnel to rescue two wounded soldiers in Vietnam, where Puckett led an airborne infantry battalion.
“He feared no man, ... no situation and ... no enemy,” retired Gen. Jay Hendrick, who served as the top general of U.S. Army Forces Command from 1999 to 2001, said in the Army’s online biography of Puckett.