The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 52

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m.f. Tf.ssd front WA SMS r.M. te a r.M. far rraUaas Eaa Afternoon I IfN i ..1 iv flETES V'- GUSSEl IIIexawiied Sj, fitted III fmoto or SLUNK WEARING the Congressional Medal of Honor, the Purple Heart, and the North American Theater ribbon, Luther Skaggs, unit citation ribbon, Pacific ribbon with two battle stars talks with his mother, Mrs. Emil Stoermer, and her husband.

"THE TOUGH LITTLE GUY" ISN'T TOUGH AT ALL Medal of Honor winner is modest and friendly who had been leading his mortar section. Skaggs assumed command "because someone had to do it." He led survivors 200 yards to a position where their fire enabled his company to take its objective, strategic Chonito Cliff. After eight hours of nip-and-tuck battling, reinforcements reached Skaggs' beleaguered detachment. Meanwhile, nearby hits from Jap grenades had caked the stump of his leg with dirt and helped stop the bleeding. It was time for him to get medical aid.

"I crawled behind the others for about 200 yards," he related. "After about 50 yards I dropped my rifle, then my ammunition. I heard my lieutenant's voice and crawled to the edge of his foxhole. Somebody pulled me in and put a dressing on my leg. Then I passed out.

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Such a hero is Marine Pfc. Luther Skaggs, for whom his home town, Henderson, tore up the place recently when he arrived on leave, wearing the Congressional Medal of Honor which President Truman tied around his neck at a White House ceremony. "The President is a fine man," Skaggs opined naively. "He's just as democratic as he can be." Skaggs is proud of his medal, willing to talk about how he won it at the cost of his left leg and unduly modest about the whole thing. "Somebody had to do it," he said.

"It just happened to be me. Besides, I got mad." Skaggs got mad for two reasons. In the first place, seven of his buddies were killed when the mortar section of his company landed under fire on Guam. In the second place, a Jap missile landed in his foxhole and mangled his left leg below the knee. At that point, Skaggs should have called for first aid, but he didn't.

"If I had," he explained, "the aid men might have been killed getting to tne. Besides, I might have given away our position and got a lot of our fellows killed." got an inkling when he worked in Henderson for the Rural Electrification Administration climbing poles. That was the best job Skaggs ever had, but, after all, he was only 19 when he enlisted in the Marines. Previously he had worked as a drug store errand boy, a Western Union mesjenger and a laborer in a Detroit factory. When war broke out he chose the Marines.

He DOESN'T regret his decision. He wouldn't take anything for his experiences in the Pacific. Skaggs is a small young man 5 feet 9 and 145 pounds but he exudes personality. He never laughs, but he often grins, with a grin that splits his tropic-tanned countenance. The son of divorced parents, one of a family of seven children, he terminated his education of necessity at the eighth grade, but he isn't interested in going back to school.

He seems to think he has learned the hard way what less adventurous people have learned from books. Skaggs thinks civilians are "swell." "The way I see it," he said, "we all have had a job to do, some at the front, some at war plants, and some at home. We have had to work together. I did my work and I have a clear conscience." When Skaggs' fellow-townsmen honored him with a day-long program in Henderson, he said at the conclusion of a clever, appreciative little speech: "I have a lot of buddies over there who won't be back until the war's over. You can help get it over by buying war bonds." Skaggs has been publicized as a "tough little guy." Actually there's nothing tough about him.

He's just a determined little guy who always has known what he wanted to do, and has done it. He never has asked odds of anybody, and he never will. I T. EXT thing I knew, six men were If NEW and DISTINCTIVE An Exquisite Flower Brooch carrying me in a poncho. They had to drop me once when a shell hit close.

Then they rushed me to the beach and I got two quarts of blood. I felt pretty good then. I stayed on a transport overnight and then another ship took me to a hospital in the Marshalls. I stayed there for two weeks and then they flew me to Hawaii. After two weeks I came back to the United States aboard ship." From Mare Island, Skaggs went to the naval hospital at Philadelphia.

He expects to be there four to six months more. In the meantime, he's studying opportunities open to him under the G.I. Bill of Rights. "I'm not going to jump at anything," he emphasized. "I'll have plenty of time to think about my future while I'm in the hospital." Offhand, though, Skaggs thinks he might like being in business for himself the electrical business, of which he In three-toned 14-K Cold SKAGGS took off his belt, applied it $3750 20 Fed.

Tax Ineladed Quality Jeweler a for Over 66 Yeart. as a tourniquet on his leg, stopped the bleeding, sprayed the Japs with rifle bullets and grenades for eight hours, and finally crawled bak alone for medical treatment. He reasoned that the men who should have carried him back were needed to help stop the counterattacking Japs. One of the seven men killed when Skaggs landed on Guam was the sergeant Retail Jewelers American Gem Society 328 W. Market St.

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