Southern California Medic 1st to Receive Purple Heart

The first Purple Heart in the Gulf War will be awarded to a Southern California Navy medic wounded by shrapnel while his unit traded fire with Iraqi troops just across the Kuwaiti border, officials said Sunday.

Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Clerence D. Conner, 21, of the Riverside County community of Banning, was recovering Sunday after having a jagged piece of metal removed from his right shoulder.

“I’m damn proud of him,” said Marine Brig. Gen. Thomas V. Draude in Saudi Arabia. “We were standing by his bedside and he said, ‘Please, don’t send me home. I’ve got to get back to my unit. They’re depending on me.’ ”

Maj. Gen. Mike Myatt, commander of the 1st Marine Division, said he was so moved that he wanted to pin the medal on Conner’s chest while he was lying in his hospital bed. Myatt was unable to because the Pentagon has not sent to Saudi Arabia the heart-shaped medals that decorate soldiers wounded in action.

Conner, a Navy-trained medic assigned to the Marines to provide combat first-aid, was with a five-man team near the Kuwaiti border Friday when Iraqi artillery began raining down, said Capt. Owen Lovejoy, 26, of Brookesville, Va., a friend of Conner’s from their Marine training days at Camp Pendleton.

Although the team from the 1st Marine Division’s 1st Reconnaissance Battalion ran for cover, shrapnel struck Conner in the shoulder, and he was evacuated from the field by helicopter, officials said. Two Marines suffered minor injuries.

While several pilots who flew bombing missions over Iraq and Kuwait are missing, Conner was the first known casualty among U.S. ground troops.