SMSgt. Richard L. Etchberger posthumously receives the Medal of Honor from President Barack Obama during a White House ceremony that recognized Etchberger’s heroism during combat March 11, 1968 at Lima Site 85, a top-secret Air Force radar facility in the mountains of Laos during the Vietnam War. At the time, the Air Force declined to award the MOH to preserve the secrecy of the operation in a supposedly neutral country, but it allowed posthumous presentation of an Air Force Cross in a non-public ceremony.
In the final few hours before the Senate adjourned for its Memorial Day recess on May 26, lawmakers approved a raft of some 3,400 pending military nominations, including a number of high-profile Air Force and Space Force generals to assignments that will significantly reshape some of the upper echelons of…