WASHINGTON (AP) — The remains of a U.S. Army corporal killed during the Korean War and posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor have been identified 73 years after he was declared missing, President Joe Biden said Wednesday during a welcome ceremony at the White House for South Korea’s president.
Luther H. Story of Buena Vista, Georgia, was last seen on Sept. 1, 1950 – wounded and fighting off North Korean attacks so his fellow soldiers could get to safety. U.S. officials said that Story “fearlessly stood in the middle of the road, throwing grenades” into a truck as his squad escaped.
“When last seen, he was firing every weapon available and fighting off another hostile assault,” U.S. officials said.
He wasn’t seen alive again, though his remains weren’t found, and he wasn’t taken as a prisoner. In 1951, Gen. Omar Bradley presented Story’s father the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor, at a Pentagon ceremony in 1951. On Jan. 16, 1954, the corporal was declared unrecoverable — his remains still missing.