Do an internet search for Bougainville Island and up pops a picture of beautiful blue waters lapping against white-sand beaches. However, 81 years ago, it was the site of vicious and bloody battles during the crucial middle years of World War II. And it was there on Nov.
9, 1943, that young Pvt. First Class Henry Gurke, a North Dakotan who had only recently marked his 21st birthday, earned the Medal of Honor for saving a fellow Marine’s life at the expense of his own. According to a biography found online, Gurke was born and raised in Neche, a small town just south of the U.
S.-Canada border in extreme northeast North Dakota. He enlisted in the Marines on April 15, 1942.
Nineteen months later, he was in the thick of fighting in the Solomon Islands, north and east of Australia. The following is from his Medal of Honor citation: “While his platoon was engaged in the defense of a vital road block near Empress Augusta Bay on Bougainville Island, Private First Class Gurke, in company with another Marine, was delivering a fierce stream of fire against the main vanguard of the Japanese. Concluding from the increasing ferocity of grenade barrages that the enemy was determined to annihilate their shallow, two-man foxhole, he resorted to a bold and desperate measure for holding out despite the torrential hail of shells.
When a Japanese grenade dropped squarely into the foxhole, Private First Class Gurke, mindful that his companion manned an automatic weapon of superior fire power an.
