First Medal Of Honor For Iraq GI

(CBS/AP)  Outnumbered and exposed, Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith stayed at his gun, beating back an advancing Iraqi force until a bullet took his life.

Smith is credited with protecting the lives of scores of lightly armed American soldiers who were beyond his position in the battle, on April 4, 2003, near the gates of Baghdad International Airport.

On Monday, exactly two years after Smith's death, President Bush awarded him the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest honor for valor. Smith's 11-year-old son, David, accepted the medal on his father's behalf.

"We are here to pay tribute to a soldier whose service illustrates the highest ideals of leadership and love of our country," Mr. Bush said in a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. Mr. Bush said Smith "gave his life for these ideals in a deadly battle outside Baghdad. It is my great privilege to recognize his great sacrifice by awarding Sgt. Smith the Medal of Honor."

It is only the third Medal of Honor given for actions since the Vietnam War, and the first from the Iraq war.

"Paul was very shy person," his widow, Birgit, told co-anchor Julie Chen on Monday. "He would be embarrassed right now. He never wanted to stand in the spotlight and get anything. It was just Paul. ...He would say we're overdoing it; he just did what he had to do that day."

Smith, 33, was the senior sergeant in a platoon of engineers during the 3rd Infantry Division's northward sprint toward Baghdad.

By the morning of April 4, elements of the division had reached Baghdad and captured Baghdad International Airport, a key objective. Encircled Iraqi militiamen and Special Republican Guard forces inside launched counterattacks.

Near the eastern edge of the airport, Smith, a veteran of the first Gulf War, had been put in charge of his unit — 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company, 11th Engineer Battalion — while his lieutenant went on a scouting mission.

Smith's mission was mundane enough — turn a courtyard into a holding pen for Iraqi prisoners of war. The courtyard, just north of the main road between Baghdad and the airport, was near an Iraqi military compound.

Soon after Smith and some of his platoon began work, records show, one trooper spotted dozens of armed Iraqis approaching from beyond the gated walls of the courtyard. Another group of Iraqis occupied a nearby tower.

Smith summoned a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and he and his troops gathered near the courtyard gate to fight the counterattack. An M113 armored personnel carrier joined the fray.

The Iraqis, perhaps as many as 100, attacked with rifles, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs. Smith threw a grenade over a wall to drive back some of the Iraqis, then fired a rocket.

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