By The Washington Post

Published: Tuesday, November 13, 2012, 6:10 p.m.
Updated: Monday, January 28, 2013

On the evening of Nov. 21, 1951, James L. Stone looked out from his hilltop outpost in Korea and sensed what was coming. He was an Army lieutenant whose eight months of combat experience were enough to alert him to the imminence of an enemy assault.

The attack began at 9 p.m. with artillery and mortar fire and raged through the night as hundreds of Chinese stormed the hill. By the next day, half the men in the platoon were dead and their 28-year-old lieutenant had been shot three times.

But the lieutenant survived to spend nearly 30 years in the Army, rising to the rank of colonel and receiving the nation's highest military decoration for valor.

“His voice could still be heard faintly urging his men to carry on, until he lost consciousness,” reads the citation for the Medal of Honor that Stone received for his actions that night near Sokkogae. “Only because of this officer's driving spirit and heroic action was the platoon emboldened to make its brave but hopeless last ditch stand.”

Stone died on Nov. 9 in Arlington, Texas, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society announced. The cause was not disclosed. He was 89.

After the battle, Stone was taken prisoner and held for 22 months, learning only after his release that he had been awarded the medal.

“I don't deserve the medal,” he said, near tears. “It should go to the men of my platoon. They were all so brave. Nothing I could say could tell you how proud I was to be with those men on that hill that night.”

They had arrived hours before the onslaught to relieve another American unit, according to an account by Peter Collier, author of the book “Medal Of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty.” Stone knew that he and his men were in trouble as soon as U.S. gunners sent up flares that bathed the hillside in light and revealed the advancing enemy. In short order, Stone's 48 men faced as many as 800 Chinese.

Stone “stood erect and exposed to the terrific enemy fire calmly directed his men in the defense,” according to the Medal of Honor citation.

James Lamar Stone was born Dec. 27, 1922, in Pine Bluff, Ark. He studied chemistry and zoology at the University of Arkansas, where he received a bachelor's degree, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

After the Korean War, Stone served in Germany, oversaw ROTC units and served a year in Vietnam.

“It was a long, hard night of combat,” he told the Star-Telegram in 2010, recalling the events of 1951. “My men did it . . . I was just there.”

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