WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
- Shipbuilders in Bath, Maine, laid down the keel for the future USS John E. Kilmer, an Arleigh Burke class destroyer.
- Kilmer received the Medal of Honor in 1953 after shielding a wounded Marine with his body during intense enemy fire.
- Former Marine Joseph Barna credited Kilmer with saving his life by stitching a deep wound during the Korean War.
- Navy medical students and instructors honor Kilmer each August at the San Antonio cemetery where he is buried.
The future USS John E. Kilmer crossed a major construction milestone last week when shipbuilders in Bath, Maine, laid down its keel.
The Arleigh Burke class destroyer bears the name of Navy corpsman John Kilmer, whose courage and sacrifice became part of Marine Corps and Navy history.
Former Marine Joseph Barna carried Kilmer’s memory long after the vicious Korean War fighting that brought the two men together.
Kilmer saved Barna’s life and the lives of many other Marines while serving alongside them.
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Through interviews and a book about Navy corpsmen who served in the war, Barna recounted suffering a deep stab wound and being pulled to safety by Kilmer.
The young corpsman took him into a bunker and stitched the wound closed under stark battlefield conditions.
“I was bleeding, ready to fall asleep, and I hear a voice say ‘Joe, Joe, if I don’t stop that bleeding, you’re gonna bleed to death,’” he recalled in a 2015 interview.
“So here was Doc Kilmer, this Navy corpsman, 21 years old. He said, ‘I’m going to stop that bleed.’ So he took the flamethrower off my back, carried me into a bunker, and there was one Marine there. He held a candle, and Doc Kilmer sewed me up with a needle and thread.”
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Barna died Aug. 19 at age 96. During his final years, he witnessed the beginning of construction on the Navy ship named for the corpsman who had refused to let him bleed to death.
Kilmer received the Medal of Honor in 1953 for covering a wounded Marine with his own body during a brutal firefight.
That action came only weeks after he treated Barna and less than a month after patching him up.
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The Medal of Honor action occurred during the Battle of Bunker Hill, an elevated position named for the Revolutionary War battle.
Kilmer was assigned to Company H, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division, which fought to defend the hill against a larger attacking force.
As artillery fire crashed around the Marines, Kilmer moved between their fighting positions and treated the wounded. According to his Medal of Honor citation, he suffered shrapnel wounds while continuing his work.
“Painfully wounded himself when struck by mortar fragments while moving to the aid of a casualty, he persisted in his efforts and inched his way to the side of the stricken Marine through a hail of enemy shells falling around him,” the citation reads.
“Undaunted by the devastating hostile fire, he skillfully administered first aid to his comrade and, as another mounting barrage of enemy fire shattered the immediate area, unhesitatingly shielded the wounded man with his body.”
Kilmer remains a central figure in Navy medical history. His example continues to be remembered by the students and instructors preparing to serve within the Navy hospital corps.
Every August, students and instructors from the service’s Hospital Corps A School at the Navy Medicine Training Support Center in San Antonio, Texas, gather for a ceremony. The observance is held at the local cemetery where Kilmer is buried.
Barna frequently spoke during recent decades about his service in Korea and Kilmer’s battlefield actions.
He dedicated his book, “God Makes Angels and Navy Corpsmen, A Korean War Veteran’s Memories of the War and Life,” to the corpsman who saved him.
“His face is forever cemented in my mind and my heart,” he told the Times-Leader in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
“Jackie was tall, maybe 6 feet 2 inches, and very thin. He had a high squeaky voice, like the Wally Cox TV character Mr. Peepers. In those few quiet times between battles, I shared a bunker with Jackie, and we became good friends.”
The keel laying in Bath moves Kilmer’s name from battlefield memory and annual ceremony into the steel of a Navy destroyer.
The future USS John E. Kilmer will carry forward the name of a corpsman remembered by the Marine whose life he saved.
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