(Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday recognized seven veterans of the Korean and Vietnam wars with the Medal of Honor and awarded eight law enforcement officers the Medal of Valor for acts of extreme courage that went “beyond the call of duty.”
The Medal of Valor is the country’s highest award for public safety officers. Among the recipients were five members of the Nashville, Tennessee, police department who responded to a shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville in March 2023, where a former student shot and killed six people.
Biden presented the officers with their Medals of Valor in the Oval Office on Friday afternoon in what was initially planned as a private ceremony, and then made remarks to the press.
“What they did is amazing. They literally put their lives at risk,” Biden said.
“You’re the best that America has to offer,” he added, acknowledging the group of eight men.
Biden awarded the Medals of Honor, which are esteemed military awards, at an evening ceremony in the White House’s East Room. He acknowledged that it was one of his final acts as commander-in-chief.
“It’s been the greatest honor of my life to be entrusted with the greatest fighting force in the history of the world, and the finest military in the history of the world,” he said.
Kenneth J. David, who served as a radio-telephone operator during the Vietnam War, was the only living recipient of the Medal of Honor on Friday. The six others received the honor posthumously, with their relatives accepting it on their behalves.
David, whom Biden called a “flat-out straight-up American hero,” distracted enemy forces that were attacking his company in Vietnam in May 1970, saving wounded fellow soldiers at his own expense.
David, who was wounded in saving his fellow soldiers, received a standing ovation after Biden placed the medal around his neck.
(Reporting by Gabriella Borter in Washington; Editing by Heather Timmons, Tomasz Janowski, Nia Williams and Leslie Adler)
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