Posthumous Recognitions
General Alexander A. Vandegrift, then Commandant of the Marine Corps, and Maj Gen Turnage so strongly recommended the Medal of Honor for Sgt Owens, who had already received the Navy Cross posthumously, that the case was reviewed and the generals' recommendations were adopted. The medal was presented to the hero's father at his home in Drayton, South Carolina, on August 12, 1945, by Maj Gen Clayton B. Vogel, then Commanding General at Parris Island.
Initially buried in the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps Cemetery on Bougainville, Sgt Owens' remains were later reinterred in the Fort McKinley U.S. Military Cemetery.
Read more about this topic: Robert A. Owens
Famous quotes containing the word posthumous:
“Fashion, though in a strange way, represents all manly virtue. It is virtue gone to seed: it is a kind of posthumous honor. It does not often caress the great, but the children of the great: it is a hall of the Past.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)