Wesley Phelps

He shielded his fellow Marine from a live grenade at Peleliu

Wesley Phelps was born at Neafus, Kentucky, on 12 June 1923. He attended schools in Ohio County and graduated from Horse Branch High School in 1942. Before military service he had developed an interest in radio, building simple receivers and studying electricity and radio repair. That practical training suggested a possible technical career, but wartime service took him into the infantry instead.

Phelps helped support his parents on their farm before he was drafted. Inducted into the Marine Corps on 9 April 1943 at Indianapolis, he completed recruit training at San Diego. A brief assignment with a signal battalion was followed by infantry training at Camp Elliott. He qualified on the Browning heavy machine gun and went overseas with a replacement battalion in October 1943.

He joined Company M, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division, shortly before the landings at Cape Gloucester on New Britain. After Cape Gloucester, the machine gun companies were disbanded and he transferred to Company K in the same battalion. That campaign gave him combat experience before the division moved on to Peleliu in the Palau Islands. By the autumn of 1944, the Marines had endured weeks of bitter fighting on an island whose defended terrain made even small advances dangerous.

On the night of 4 October 1944, Phelps and another Marine occupied an advanced position during a Japanese counterattack. An enemy grenade landed in their foxhole. Phelps immediately warned his companion and rolled onto the grenade. He took the explosion with his body, sacrificing his life to protect the man beside him.

The official Medal of Honor citation records that he "instantly shouted a warning to his comrade and rolled over on the deadly bomb". The description is direct: there was no time for a prolonged exchange or an organized rescue. His decision was made in the seconds between the grenade's arrival and its explosion. He was twenty-one.

His posthumous Medal of Honor and Purple Heart recognized that final action. His remains were initially buried on Peleliu and later returned to Kentucky for burial in Rosine Cemetery. The Navy's historical photographic collection preserves his portrait, while his earlier radio studies and farm work show the ordinary civilian ambitions interrupted by his brief wartime service.

Medal of Honor citation

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the Third Battalion, Seventh Marines, First Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Peleliu Island, Palau Group, during a savage hostile counterattack on the night of October 4, 1944. Stationed with another Marine in an advanced position when a Japanese hand grenade landed in his foxhole, Private First Class Phelps instantly shouted a warning to his comrade and rolled over on the deadly bomb, absorbing with his own body the full, shattering impact of the exploding charge. Courageous and indomitable, Private First Class Phelps fearlessly gave his life that another might be spared serious injury and his great valor and heroic devotion to duty in the face of certain death reflected the highest credit upon himself and the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.