Delaware's Medal of Honor Recipients

Delaware's Medal of Honor Recipients. From the Twentieth Century. , Delaware Governor Walter W. Bacon speaks at ceremonies after a parade in Wilmington in 1945 honoring Medal of Honor recipient, Army Sergeant James P. Connor. Connor landed in North Africa in November, 1942, with the 9th Division and went on to fight in Sicily and ar Anzio. The actions for which he was awarded the medal took place during the invasion of Southern France in August, 1944. His portrait, shown being unveiled in this photograph below, was a gift from the parochial school children of Wilmington and now hangs in Legislative Hall. Soon after being discharged in 1945, Connor began a career with the Veterans Administration, from which he retired in 1974. He passed away in 1994. , Army Sergeant William Lloyd Nelson, who grew up on a farm near Middletown, earned the Medal of Honor at daybreak on April 24, 1943, at Djebel, Dardyss, northwest of Sedjenane, Tunisia, during the invasion of North Africa. A bright and engaging young man, who left behind a young wife in Wilmington, he is interred at Silverbrook Cemetery in Wilmington. This posthumous portrait of him as he might have appeared wearing his medal now hangs in Legislative Hall. , Ensign Henry Clay Drexler of Bethany Beach, whose Medal of Honor appears at left, was awarded the medal posthumously by a special act of the U.S. Congress after sacrificing his life on October 20, 1924, only a few months after his graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy, in an explosion on the cruiser, U.S.S. Trenton, then conducting maneuvers off the Virginia Coast. When gunpowder bags had spontaneously ignited, trapping 20 men, Drexler acted without thought of his own safety by trying to dump powder into a water immersion tank to prevent further deaths. Before he could do so, the charge exploded, killing him instantly. Awards for actions during peacetime were always rare. In the 1960s, Congress enacted legislation limiting the award of the medal only to combat situations.