Here's a hero - Yeah....that's an E-4 ...wearing the Medal of Honor.
Do you know which military members have to salute a wearer of a Medal of Honor? Everybody that doesn't have one, that's who.
Including the President of the United States.
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John L. Levitow
In the fifth hour of the mission, a Vietcong mortar hit the plane's right wing and exploded, opening a hole two feet in diameter and sending shrapnel through the aircraft's skin.
Airman Levitow was hit by 40 pieces of shrapnel in his back and legs and was stunned from the blast's concussion. "It felt like a large piece of wood struck my side," he would recall.
The other four crewmen in the cargo compartment were also wounded as the pilot struggled to keep the plane under control.
The gunner, Airman Ellis Owen, was about to toss a flare out the cargo door when he was wounded. The flare, fully armed and capable of burning through the plane's metal skin if it ignited, fell from his grasp.
As Airman Levitow was moving another wounded crewman away from the open cargo door, he saw the smoking flare rolling wildly from side to side among thousands of rounds of ammunition. An explosion seemed imminent.
Airman Levitow reached three times for three-foot-long, 27-pound metal tube holding the flare, but it slipped from his grasp each time. Finally, he threw himself on it, hugged it to his body and dragged it to the open door, trailing blood from his wounds and having lost partial feeling in his right leg.
He heaved the flare outside the door. A second or so later it ignited, but it was clear of the aircraft.