Soldier again recommended for Medal of Honor - Military News | News From Afghanistan, Iraq And Around The World - Military Times

Soldier again recommended for Medal of Honor

PITTSBURGH — A western Pennsylvania soldier who died trying to save his buddies from an ambush during the Vietnam War four decades ago is again being recommended for the nation’s highest award, the Medal of Honor.

Leslie Sabo, 22, of Ellwood City, about 35 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, died in Cambodia on May 10, 1970, during an ambush that killed seven of his comrades in the 101st Airborne Division.

Sabo was recommended posthumously for the award but never received it, and the issue was forgotten until 1999, when a writer for the division association magazine came across Sabo’s records at the National Archives. Now, the Army has again recommended that the medal be awarded to him.

“This brave soldier clearly distinguished himself through his courageous actions,” Army Secretary John McHugh wrote in a March letter to Rep. Jason Altmire, D-Pa. “The Army and our nation are forever grateful for his heroic service.”

President Barack Obama will now decide whether to sign the nomination, and the White House will not comment on the issue. But Sabo’s widow, Rose Mary Sabo Brown, says she has no doubt about the outcome.

“Two soldiers came to my house 40 years ago to tell me my husband was killed,” she said. “And now two soldiers are going to come to my house again and tell me that he has received the Medal of Honor.”

Of the 2.1 million men who served in Vietnam, only 246 have been awarded the Medal of Honor, 154 of them posthumously.

Although Sabo Brown has in the years since remarried, had children and divorced, she jokingly calls the living room of her Hickory, Pa., home a “museum” devoted to the skinny, kindhearted hometown boy she married in 1969.

The walls bear Leslie Sabo’s decorations and image along with a metal shield made by the brother of one of his Bravo Company comrades who died with him in the “Mother’s Day ambush.” The shield lists all those killed along with the inscription “Currahee” — Cherokee for “We Stand Alone Together.”

Sabo said she would welcome the honor not only for her late husband but for the other unit members, who have for years been the only ones who knew how he kept his comrades from being surrounded, threw himself on top of a wounded soldier to protect him from a grenade and died providing covering fire for a medical helicopter to airlift wounded soldiers.

“I remember we talked about what Les did the next morning,” said Rick Brown, 58, of suburban Cleveland, who was fighting nearby and recovered Sabo’s body the next day. “A couple of guys, they were already talking about what a hero he had been.”

Alton “Tony” Mabb, a 101st Airborne veteran and columnist for “Screaming Eagle,” the division association magazine, was researching in the archives in Washington when he found a thick file on Sabo, which included the proposed Medal of Honor citation.

“I think the guy didn’t get his due,” said Mabb, 60, who lives in Jacksonville, Fla. “I just think America shouldn’t forget.”