In honor of Memorial Day coming up, lets talk about a dentist who received the Medal of Honor.
Benjamin L. Salomon was a Jewish-American dentist in the Pacific theater of World War II. Like many dentists, he graduated dental school and opened up his own practice in 1937. He was then drafted into the U.S. Army. He started out as a rifleman, but was eventually commissioned into the Dental Corps. In 1944, he was sent to the Marianas Islands, where he participated in the battle of Saipan.
Captain Salomon wasn’t supposed to be in the fighting since he was a doctor, but the frontline was a mere 50 yards from his tent. That 50 yards soon became zero when the Japanese charged the medical tent. Salomon was operating on a patient at the time. He picked up a gun and fired on the Japanese who were killing the injured soldiers in the medical tent. He then fought off four more soldiers who were sneaking into the tent. Upon realizing the situation couldn’t be won, he ordered his men to evacuate the patients. Salomon then ran to operate a machine gun to cover the evacuation. After the fighting was over, American soldiers found Salomon’s body surrounded by 98 Japanese soldiers. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in 2002.
If any dentist can claim to be patient centric, it’s Salomon. He sacrificed his life to save his patients in one of the most brutal battles of the Pacific Theater. You can read more detail on Captain Salomon, and his Medal of Honor citation, copy/paste the link below:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ben-l-salomon