A Berks County airman killed in Laos in 1968 will be honored Tuesday with the nation's highest military award for valor.
President Barack Obama was to award the Medal of Honor to Chief Master Sgt. Richard Etchberger, whose sons planned to attend the White House ceremony.
Etchberger, a native of Hamburg, Pa., was an electronics expert with no formal combat training when he single-handedly held off an enemy force while evacuating wounded comrades. He had gotten three of the wounded into rescue slings and his helicopter had taken off when ground fire came through the floor and mortally wounded him.
The Military Times reports:
In March 1968, more than 1,000 North Vietnamese soldiers surrounded the station, named Lima Site 85. Etchberger was the last to board the rescue helicopter dispatched to save the U.S. troops fighting off waves of mortars and artillery. An armor piercing round ripped through the bottom of the helicopter, hitting Etchberger.
He bled to death, but not before he was credited with saving the lives of three men he worked with.
The story was kept under wraps for decades because the Laos mission was secret.
The citation calls his action one of "immeasurable courage.''
