[URL="http://www.npr.org/2014/01/29/268404336/a-medal-of-valor-thirty-years-in-coming"]NPR Link[/URL]
[quote=NPR]Mark Deville was just 19 on that November day in 1984, part of an American Army unit patrolling the tense border between North Korea and South Korea.
Deville didn't know what he was facing. The only message was: Shots fired. Deville and his squad spilled out of their truck, formed a line and started moving through some scrub trees.
"Then I started hearing the cracking, the sonic booms of the rounds coming by us," he recalls. "At first, I'm like, 'What the ...."
His squad leader, Sgt. Rick Lamb, found the defector cowering in a bush. North Korean soldiers were after him, the rounds from their assault rifles ripping through the leaves.
He remembers a message squawked over the radio: Two soldiers, an American and a South Korean, were wounded.
Deville was born and raised a Catholic. But at that point, "Thou shalt not kill," he says, "went out the window."
The squad dashed forward, flanking the enemy force. They could see shadows of the North Korean troops in the trees. The two sides were just 15 feet apart when the North Koreans surrendered and started recovering their dead.
Lamb, the squad leader, and Deville recall the moment.
"We saw at least five to six bodies," Lamb says.
How long did it last? "It felt like four hours, but it was 45 minutes," Deville says.
That 45-minute firefight was front-page news. President Ronald Reagan wrote about it in his diary and was surprised that the Soviet Union didn't react.[/quote]
honestly didn't even know this happened
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