DECORAH CEMETERY MEDAL OF HONOR MEMORIAL MARKER

Medal of Honor action:

On the night of 5 November, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 19th infantry was holding positions on Hill 123, near Chonghyon, just north of the river.

Red Cloud, then a corporal, was manning a forward listening post in front of his company’s command post position on the hill. In the middle of the night, he began hearing suspicious noises, before spotting a number of Chinese troops intent on surprising the Americans. Red Cloud raised an alarm and began firing on the advancing Chinese troops with an M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). The assistant BAR man with him in their foxhole was killed by the Chinese returning fire. Red Cloud was then shot twice in the chest. In spite of these wounds and after being attended to by a company platoon medic, he refused to withdraw from his post, and continued to fire accurately on the Chinese troops which caused significant casualties among their advancing force. Crucially, his actions alerted his company to the impending attack, preventing an ambush. After he was hit again and attended to by the same medic, Red Cloud propped himself against a tree and continued to fire, exposing himself to intense Chinese fire. He was shot at least eight times in the firefight. Suffering from severe injuries and too weak to support himself, he ordered a soldier near him, to tie him upright to the tree using the soldier’s web belt, and then ordered these men to withdraw with the other wounded men to the main positions. Eventually, the Chinese overran Red Cloud’s position and the hill.

Red Cloud’s actions gave E Company time and warning to blunt the Chinese offensive, eventually repelling the attack. His actions are also credited with allowing his company to evacuate several others wounded in the attack.[17] When members of the 2nd Battalion returned to the hill and arrived at Red Cloud’s position to recover his body the next morning, they found it was surrounded by a large number of dead Chinese troops.