Medal of Honor recipient visits ROTC
Medal of Honor recipient George Wahlen said he risked his life to save U.S. service men in Iwo Jima during World War II during a speech given to the Air Force ROTC Thursday afternoon.
Wahlen, who grew up in West Ogden, was a medic in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps during the war. Wahlen said after being sent to Iwo Jima, he was wounded three times, and even after being told to evacuate, he remained to take care of the men in the armed forces. President Harry Truman gave him the Medal of Honor on Oct. 5, 1945, he said.
The Medal of Honor is the nation’s highest military honor and is awarded by Congress to a member of the armed forces who went above and beyond the call of duty. Wahlen said he received this award, along with 13 other men that day, in front of his parents and two aunts and uncles in Washington, D.C.
Wahlen said he was a student at Weber High School when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred. He said he was taking air craft mechanic courses in Brigham City, and his six-month course was cut to three months after the attack. Wahlen said as soon as he turned 18, he talked the military into drafting him.
Instead of being sent to the Air Force like he wanted, Wahlen was sent into the Navy, he said. Wahlen said when he first became a medic, he wasn’t too excited, so he asked to go with the Marine Corps as their medic. “Those marines were more like brothers than like marines after all of the training and hardships we went through,” Wahlen said.
His company was sent to Iwo Jima, in February 1945, he said. Wahlen said up until that point in his life, he hadn’t been a very religious man, but he started praying for all the help he could get.
Wahlen said, “That’s one of the things I was really worried about. As a corps man, am I really going to be able to do this?”
Wahlen said the first of his injuries in Iwo Jima happened when a grenade went off too close to him and a piece of scrap metal hit him in the face. He said after seeing his swollen, black and blue eye, he was ordered to retreat back to the aid station, but Wahlen decided he better stay and help. “I never really hesitated about going out and doing that. I just hope I would never let one of these guys down,” Wahlen said.
Wahlen was later hit by scrap metal in the back and right arm, he said, but he didn’t evacuate until the end of his company’s 26-day campaign. Wahlen said only five of the original men in the company survived.
Wahlen said he always feels better knowing that he stayed to help. After the war, he said he enlisted in the Army, went to both Korea and Vietnam, and retired after 23 years of service.
In 2003, the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salt Lake City was renamed the George E. Wahlen Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in honor of Wahlen’s lifelong service and commitment.
-amanda.pie@aggiemail.usu.edu