Benjamin F. Wilson

Benjamin Franklin Wilson (June 2, 1921 – March 1, 1988) was a soldier in the United States Army during World War II and the Korean War. He received the Medal of Honor for his actions on June 5, 1951, during the UN May–June 1951 counteroffensive.

Biography Born at Vashon, Washington on June 2, 1921, he enlisted in the Army in the summer of 1940 and was stationed at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He went to Officer Candidate School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in 1943 and was commissioned in the Field Artillery, but when the war was over, he resigned his commission and went home. His departure was only temporary. The Army suited him much better than Washington's lumber mills, and he was back in uniform nine months later. Because the Army was thinning its officer ranks and had no room for an inexperienced lieutenant, he enlisted as a private. He rose quickly through the ranks to become I Company's first sergeant by the summer of 1951.

First Sergeant Wilson's company was ordered to take the largest hill (later dubbed "Hell Hill") overlooking the Hwachon Reservoir on June 4, 1951. Wounded in action, Wilson was being carried down the hill on a stretcher as the battle neared its climax. When his stretcher-bearers set him down to rest, Wilson, in obvious pain, arose from the stretcher and trudged back up the hill without a word. The very next day, he distinguished himself in an I Company attack on a well-fortified position, earning himself the Medal of Honor. On June 6, just one day after that exploit, First Sergeant Ben Wilson killed 33 more Chinese soldiers with his rifle, bayonet, and hand grenades in another one-man assault. In the process, he reopened the wounds he suffered the day before and was finally evacuated to a hospital. He was again recommended for the Medal of Honor, but Army policy prohibited any man from being awarded more than one. Wilson received the Distinguished Service Cross instead and was commissioned when he returned to the States. He retired from the Army as a major in 1960 and died in Hawaii in 1988.