Louis J. Hauge Jr.

He destroyed two machine guns despite wounds from the first.

Louis James Hauge Jr. was born in Ada, Minnesota, on 12 December 1924. After leaving high school, he worked in a canning factory and later as a shipyard painter in Tacoma, Washington.

Inducted into the Marine Corps Reserve on 23 April 1943, he trained as a machine gunner at Camp Elliott. He served with the 1st Marine Division in New Caledonia and New Guinea before fighting at Peleliu as a message runner with Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. His performance under fire brought promotion to corporal.

On 14 May 1945, during the Battle of Okinawa, near Wana Draw, he led a machine-gun squad in Company C. Two Japanese machine guns were sweeping his company's exposed left flank, causing casualties and preventing it from advancing.

Hauge ordered covering fire and rushed the positions with grenades. Although wounded on the way to the first, he destroyed it and continued towards the second. He demolished that gun as well before being killed. His attack allowed the Marines to move forward from the position where they had been pinned down.

Hauge was twenty when he died. Colonel Norman E. True presented his posthumous Medal of Honor to his father on 14 June 1946. Hauge is commemorated on the Tablets of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu.

Official Medal of Honor citation

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as leader of a machinegun squad serving with Company C, First Battalion, First Marines, First Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Okinawa Shima in the Ryukyu Chain on 14 May 1945. Alert and aggressive during a determined assault against a strongly fortified Japanese hill position, Corporal Hauge boldly took the initiative when his company's left flank was pinned down under a heavy machine-gun and mortar barrage with resultant severe casualties and, quickly locating the two machineguns which were delivering the uninterrupted stream of enfilade fire, ordered his squad to maintain a covering barrage as he rushed across an exposed area toward the furiously blazing enemy weapons. Although painfully wounded as he charged the first machinegun, he launched a vigorous single-handed grenade attack, destroyed the entire hostile gun position, and moved relentlessly forward toward the other emplacement despite his wounds and the increasingly heavy Japanese fire. Undaunted by the savage opposition, he again hurled his deadly grenades with unerring aim and succeeded in demolishing the second enemy gun before he fell under the slashing fury of Japanese sniper fire. By his ready grasp of the critical situation and his heroic one-man assault tactics, Corporal Hauge had eliminated two strategically placed enemy weapons, thereby releasing the besieged troops from an overwhelming volume of hostile fire and enabling his company to advance. His indomitable fighting spirit and decisive valor in the face of almost certain death reflect the highest credit upon Corporal Hauge and the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life in the service of his country.