The first Marine to be awarded the Medal Of Honor since Vietnam will get it this Thursday from President Bush:

The president will present the Medal of Honor to the family of Cpl. Jason Dunham during a ceremony in the White House’s East Room on Thursday, according to White House officials.

Dunham was an infantryman assigned to 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, when he was severely wounded in Karabilah, Iraq, on April 14, 2004, after smothering an enemy grenade with his body and helmet to save fellow Marines. He succumbed to his wounds eight days later.

“By giving his own life, Corporal Dunham saved the lives of two of his men and showed the world what it means to be a Marine,” President Bush said during his Nov. 10 announcement that Dunham would posthumously receive the nation’s highest decoration for combat heroism.

Dunham becomes the first Marine to earn the Medal of Honor in more than 30 years and one of only two U.S. service members to be awarded the medal since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began.

Blackfive notes that Cpl Dunham was the genesis for this poem written by a Navy surgeon while in Iraq:

…Things That Were Not Good

…Ushering a sobbing Marine Colonel away from the trauma bay while several of his Marines bled and cried out in pain inside

Meeting that 21-year-old Marine with three Purple Hearts…and listening to him weep because he felt ashamed of being afraid to go back

Telling a room full of stunned Marines in blood-soaked uniforms that their comrade, that they had tried to save, had just died of his wounds

Trying, as if in total futility, to do anything I could, to ease the trauma of group after group…that suffered loss after loss, grief after inconsolable grief…

Washing blood off the boots of one of our young nurses while she told me about the one who bled out in the trauma bay…and then the one who she had to tell, when he pleaded for the truth, that his best friend didn’t make it…

Listening to another of our nurses tell of the Marine who came in talking, telling her his name…about how she pleaded with him not to give up, told him that she was there for him…about how she could see his eyes go dull when he couldn’t fight any longer…

And last, but not least…

Holding the hand of that dying Marine.

Euphoric Reality has the whole Wall Street Journal article which details the aftermath for those lives Cpl. Dunham save while I Love Jet Noise has the whole article from 2004 that detailed the incident in detail.

Semper Fi Cpl. Dunham….