SC Marine’s posthumous Medal of Honor is missing

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — A South Carolina native whose last act of heroism during the Vietnam War led to receiving the Medal of Honor is having a new Navy destroyer named for him, but the medal is missing.

The Post and Courier of Charleston reports (http://bit.ly/Lq4s2x ) that the family of Marine Pfc. Ralph Johnson hasn’t seen the medal for years.

Helen Richards of Summerville is Johnson’s sister. She says her mother died in 1991 and none of Johnson’s 13 siblings have found the medal marking the nation’s highest military honor.

Johnson received the Medal of Honor two years after his death in 1968, when he threw himself on a grenade after shouting a warning to his fellow Marines during a firefight in Vietnam.

The VA medical center in Charleston bears his name.