Ralph E. Powers

The Distinguished Service Cross is presented to Ralph E. Powers, First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, for extraordinary heroism in action, at Ust Padenga, Russia, January 20 – 23, 1919. While his dressing station was burning as a result of having been struck by a shell, Lieutenant Powers successfully evacuated all his patients numbering forty. He then moved to a new location and continued to work for two days under shell fire, until this dressing station too was struck and he himself mortally wounded, whereupon he gave orders that the other wounded should be removed first, and that he be left until the last.