Jay N. Russell

The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star Medal to Jay N. Russell (36703546), Private First Class, U.S. Army, for gallantry in action while serving with Headquarters Company, 2d Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3d Infantry Division. At 2130 hours, 24 December 1944, near Sigelsheim, France, when powerful enemy artillery and mortar concentrations severed wire communications between the rifle companies of the 2d Battalion and the Battalion Command Post, Private First Class Russell and another soldier inched their way over 600 yards of shell-battered terrain and repaired those lines. Despite artillery and mortar shells that burst within thirty yards of these men, they indomitably edged their way forward and mended innumerable other breaks. While returning to the Battalion Command Post, these soldiers were painfully wounded by shell fragments, but continued to crawl and drag themselves, checking the lines. Three hundred yards from the Command Post these two men serviced still another break, thus providing continued and uninterrupted wire communication in the 2d Battalion.