Estimated studying time: 12 minutes
I as soon as went eleven years between dental visits throughout one season in my life. I claimed it was as a result of I used to be broke and couldn’t afford it. Whereas that was certainly true, it was additionally as a result of I so loathed the expertise.
I’ll admit to a pure aversion to visiting the dentist. I’m not alone in harboring these sentiments. Most of us have had a foul expertise or three with our pleasant neighborhood dental practitioner. It’s powerful to get enthusiastic about any individual prodding round inside your delicate mouth with an enormous, sharp metal choose.
These days, my dentist and hygienist are each nice associates. I truly sit up for catching up with Earl and Kelly whereas they train their artwork. They’re each sensible, personable, and competent. Nonetheless, again in 1944, one specific dentist was all that and fairly a bit extra. Ben Salomon, DDS, was additionally one steely-eyed warrior.
Benjamin Salomon Origin Story
Benjamin Lewis Salomon was a thin Jewish child born in Milwaukee in 1914. He was an Eagle Scout who went on to attend the College of Southern California, the place he earned his diploma in dentistry. He started his civilian follow in 1937.
Three years later, at age 26 with all the world at conflict, Dr. Salomon was drafted as an infantry personal. He readily took to soldiering, qualifying as an skilled with each the rifle and pistol in primary coaching. Two years later, in 1942, Uncle Sam immediately realized PVT Salomon was truly a dentist and commissioned him a primary lieutenant within the Military Dental Corps. He was subsequently assigned because the regimental dental officer to the 102d Infantry Regiment.
Obtainable on GunsAmerica Now
Tactical Dentistry
We all the time bought alongside swimmingly with our medical help guys again after I wore the uniform. In a fight aviation unit, this was a synergistic relationship. We allow them to experience the leap seat each time that they had a free afternoon, and so they made positive our chiseled our bodies remained in tip-top situation. Nonetheless, there was nonetheless a broad gulf between our two worlds.
It was usually understood that the docs and dentists didn’t need to do PT day by day or dwell like animals within the woods like the remainder of us. That might characterize a fairly severe waste of expertise once they could possibly be again of their clinics, saving the world. Nonetheless, Ben Salomon was not a typical dentist. His commander declared him the regiment’s “finest all-around soldier.” That’s fairly excessive reward for a humble grill physician.
Salomon was promoted to captain and assigned because the regimental dental officer for the a hundred and fifth Infantry Regiment headed for the Pacific. It was on this capability in the summertime of 1944 that CPT Salomon discovered himself hitting the seashores of Saipan. That’s when issues bought actual.
Salomon Went From Drill and Fill to Correct Battle
With the chaos of an amphibious invasion exploding throughout him, CPT Benjamin Salomon was at free ends. Within the midst of one of the extremely contested battles of the Pacific Battle, not plenty of troopers have been acutely involved with oral hygiene. So when the second battalion surgeon was wounded, CPT Salomon volunteered to maneuver ahead and take his place.
Again then, you made do with what you had. A dentist was clearly not skilled to carry out meatball surgical procedure, however the fundamentals of suturing and hemorrhage management would translate to different physique techniques past simply the mouth. CPT Salomon established his battalion assist station a mere fifty yards behind the ahead line of foxholes. He was arrange and operational simply in time for a Japanese power of between 3,000 and 5,000 troops to assault his battalion entrance. This was one of many largest coordinated floor assaults the Japanese launched through the conflict, and it was pointed straight at Ben Salomon.
The orders from Japanese Common Saito Yoshitsugu, commander of the attacking forty third Division, have been easy: “We are going to advance to assault the American forces and can all die an honorable dying. Every man will kill ten Individuals.”
The determined Japanese thrust breached the battalion defenses in a number of locations. CPT Salomon’s small tent was quickly filled with some 30 wounded males who had walked or crawled to his place. Together with his assist station packed past capability, the defenses crumbled and the Japanese rushed in.
CPT Salomon Goes Full Chuck Norris
Whereas CPT Salomon was working to stabilize a affected person, he appeared up and noticed a Japanese soldier slip into his tent and bayonet a wounded American. Salomon snatched up a useful M1 rifle, dropped right into a squatting place, and shot the enemy soldier useless. He then returned to engaged on his sufferers.
Two extra Japanese soldiers then pushed into the tent, solely to be killed by close by American troops. They have been adopted by 4 extra who crawled beneath the tent partitions. CPT Salomon was the one able-bodied American left standing. That’s when Benjamin Salomon went form of nuts.
Salomon Turns Rambo
Survivors later reported that the enraged dentist kicked a knife out of 1 man’s hand and used it to kill him. He then grabbed a rifle, shot one other, and skewered a 3rd along with his bayonet. He took the fourth Japanese soldier down with a butt-stroke so one of many wounded troops might end him off with a .45. Realizing that issues in his assist station have been now not tenable, CPT Salomon directed anybody who might transfer to flee to the rear and snatched up a contemporary rifle. He then ran outdoors to carry off the advancing enemy troops and purchase his males time to get to security.
Exterior, he discovered unfiltered bedlam. The help station was established alongside a Browning M1917 water-cooled machine gun arrange in a sandbagged preventing place. The four-man crew assigned to the weapon had all been killed by the swarming Japanese. Alone and lower off, CPT Salomon dropped in behind the massive .30-caliber machine gun and went to work.
The Final Stand
The advancing Japanese swarmed by the battalion positions and pushed deep into American traces. It took a number of days for US forces to clear them out and regain the misplaced territory. When regimental forces lastly recaptured the defensive works, they discovered CPT Benjamin Salomon’s useless physique slumped over his gun. There have been 98 useless Japanese troopers stacked up in entrance of his firing place. Advancing US troops reported that CPT Salomon had moved the heavy water-cooled gun by himself no less than 4 occasions to retain a transparent subject of fireside across the rising mass of Japanese useless.
They discovered 76 bullet wounds along with quite a few bayonet accidents on Salomon’s corpse. A autopsy analysis decided that 24 of his wounds have been incurred whereas he was nonetheless alive. Regardless of being shot and stabbed actually to items, the indomitable dentist CPT Ben Salomon stored on killing the enemy till he simply bled out. There may be actually no telling what number of American troops have been saved by his sacrifice.
The Remainder of the Story
CPT Salomon’s fight exploits have been among the most audacious of the conflict. The twenty seventh Infantry Division historian, CPT Edmund Love, was a part of the group that discovered the useless dentist’s physique. He later stated, “One might simply visualize Ben Salomon, wounded and bleeding, making an attempt to pull that gun a number of extra ft in order that he would have a brand new subject of fireside. The blood was on the bottom, and the marks plainly indicatedhow exhausting it will need to have been for him.”
Love penned the Medal of Honor advice instantly. Nonetheless, the commanding normal of the twenty seventh ID returned the paperwork with out motion. CPT Salomon was a medical officer and technically a non-combatant. In keeping with the Geneva Conference, he shouldn’t have been engaged in direct armed fight with the enemy.
The US Legal guidelines of Land Warfare permit for medical personnel to make use of private weapons resembling rifles and handguns in defensive functions, presuming the soldier is just not sporting a Crimson Cross brassard, which CPT Salomon apparently was. Moreover, CPT Salomon was working a belt-fed machine gun all by his lonesome, killing 98 enemy troops within the course of. Even supposing his actions have been absolutely justified by any ethical metric, no quantity of literary creativity might synchronize his skillful operation of a crew-served weapon as being purely defensive in nature. Because of this, his Medal of Honor advice merely languished.
Persistence Rewarded
CPT Love was to not be dissuaded. He resubmitted the paperwork once more in 1951, solely to be informed that the time restrict for submission had expired. In 1969, LTG Hal Jennings, the Surgeon Common of the Military, tried once more. This software was forwarded to the Secretary of Protection but in addition returned with out motion.
In 1998, Dr. Robert West, a dentist at USC, resubmitted the advice with the help of his congressman and MG Patrick Sculley, the chief of the Military Dental Corps. In Could of 2002, President George W. Bush lastly introduced the Medal of Honor to Dr. West on CPT Salomon’s behalf. The medal is at the moment on everlasting show on the Military Medical Division Museum in San Antonio, Texas.
Benjamin Salomon – True Hero
True heroes are spawned from some fairly bizarre secret sauce. I’ve been doing these weekly columns for a number of years now. Alongside the best way I wish to assume I’ve developed a really feel for his or her curious supply code. CPT Ben Salomon was an archetype.
READ MORE HERE: Dr Dabbs – LT Stephen Peck: Nature versus Nurture
CPT Salomon – Distinguished Man
When his nation referred to as, Salomon deserted what was doubtless a profitable dental follow to slide into some dungarees and slog together with the infantry. Regardless of being a rear echelon help pogue, CPT Salomon stepped as much as out-soldier grunts who have been a decade youthful. Although not a surgeon, Benjamin Salomon volunteered to work on the entrance traces saving lives, as a result of that’s what wanted to be executed. His completely selfless dedication to his nation and his troops finally killed him.
16 million Individuals served throughout World Battle 2. A mere 473 of them earned the Medal of Honor. 266 of these died within the course of. And but, regardless of the unimaginably elite nature of this cohort, CPT Ben Salomon was nonetheless one thing much more.
Ben Salomon would have been absolutely inside his rights to take a seat out the foremost fight on Saipan, onboard ship, someplace pulling enamel and filling cavities. Most folk in his place did simply that and did so honorably. Nonetheless, Salomon went to date past what was anticipated of him, willingly giving his full measure of devotion to save lots of his buddies. Within the almost two and a half centuries that Individuals have been preventing and dying for our Nice Republic, CPT Ben Salomon distinguished himself as the easiest of all of us.
*** Purchase and Promote on GunsAmerica! ***
Will remains to be making an attempt to determine what he actually desires to be when he grows up. Nonetheless, taking pictures weapons and claiming it was work appeared like a fairly candy hustle. Because of this, Will serendipitously remodeled an avocation right into a vocation.
Raised within the Mississippi Delta, Will flew UH1H, OH58A/C, CH47D and AH1S helicopters operationally as an Military Aviator. He’s SCUBA-qualified and has parachuted out of completely good airplanes at 3 o’clock within the morning. Will has summited Mount McKinley, Alaska, six occasions…all the time on the controls of an Military helicopter, which is the one manner smart folks climb mountains.
Will has delivered sixty infants and sometimes wrung human blood out of his socks. He’s married to his highschool sweetheart and has three superior grownup kids. Flip-ons embrace classic German machineguns, flying his sexy-cool RV6A airplane, Rely Chocula cereal and the film “Aliens.”
-Skilled Author-thousands of publishing credit for dozens of titles
-Mechanical Engineer/Training Doctor
-Instrument-rated Industrial Pilot
