RODOLFO HERNÁNDEZ

“FEARLESSLY ENGAGING THE FOE, HE KILLED 6 OF THE ENEMY BEFORE FALLING UNCONSCIOUS FROM GRENADE, BAYONET, AND BULLET WOUNDS BUT HIS ACTION MOMENTARILY HALTED THE ENEMY ADVANCE…”
Medal of Honor Citation

It was another miserable night on a hillside in Korea. Rain was pelting down on the men of the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team entrenched about 15 miles south of the village of Wontong-ni.

Corporal Rodolfo P. “Rudy” Hernández and other men of Company G, 2nd Battalion, hunkered low in their foxholes, waiting. At approximately 2.00am the shrill whine of North Korean bugles pierced the uneasy calm as the enemy marshalled its strength for an all-out assault on the American positions along the barren slope of Hill 420. The precious high ground was an otherwise innocuous promontory in the rugged terrain of northern Korea, but in the predawn darkness of 31 May 1951, it became a killing field, the focal