Photo By Chief Petty Officer Lisa Ferdinando | Dr. William Sloat, center, the brother of Medal of Honor recipient Army Spc. 4 Donald...... read more read more
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WASHINGTON - The family of Medal of Honor recipient Spc. 4 Donald P. Sloat made a solemn visit today to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to honor the man who was killed in action saving the lives of other service members.
One by one, family members made their way past the columns of names permanently etched in the black granite wall, until they reached Sloat's name at Panel 14W.
Accompanied by a Soldier from the 3rd Infantry Regiment, or The Old Guard, Donald's brother, Dr. William Sloat, placed a wreath in front of the panel.
Soldiers saluted as a lone bugler played Taps. Onlookers, including visiting school children, stood nearby, quietly observing the somber ceremony on a sunny, late summer morning.
The family members, which included Sloat's sister, Karen McCaslin, and her daughter and her granddaughter, stood in silent remembrance as they honored the man who chose to absorb the blast of a grenade to shield fellow service members with him that day on patrol.
After the honors were rendered, a National Park Service volunteer made rubbings on paper of Donald's name, and helped McCaslin make one.
Donald was killed in action Jan. 17, 1970, after grabbing an enemy grenade that rolled to his feet after a Soldier tripped a booby trap wire during a patrol in the Que Son valley.
"Don did something truly extraordinary - he reached down and he picked that grenade up," President Barack Obama said at the Medal of Honor ceremony Monday.
"He turned to throw it, but there were Americans in front of him and behind him inside the kill zone," Obama said. "Don held on to that grenade, and he pulled it close to his body, and he bent over it, and then, as one of the men said, 'all of a sudden there was a boom.'"
Dr. Sloat, who received the Medal of Honor on his brother's behalf, did not make public comments at the Wall, but did say on Tuesday at Sloat's induction into the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes that going to the Wall for the first time is a somber occasion.
"When I visited the Vietnam Memorial in Enid, Oklahoma, I was overwhelmingly reminded of the thousands who died during the conflict," he said at the Pentagon, noting that at the visit to the Wall he will "once again reflect on the nearly 60,000 Americans who died."
There are nearly 1,000 people from the Sloat's home state of Oklahoma who were killed in the Vietnam War, he said.
"My brother of course is one of them," Dr. Sloat said.
Donald, who enlisted in the Army in March 1969, was assigned as an M60 machine gunner with 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment, 196th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division, in the Republic of Vietnam.
He was killed a month shy of his 21st birthday.
(For more ARNEWS stories, visit www.army.mil/ARNEWS, or Facebook at www.facebook.com/ArmyNewsService, or Twitter @ArmyNewsService)
| Date Taken: | 09.17.2014 |
| Date Posted: | 09.17.2014 18:18 |
| Story ID: | 142466 |
| Location: | WASHINGTON, DC, US |
| Web Views: | 138 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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