Pentagon & Congress

Minot Air Force Base names dormitory after hero airman

February 20, 2015
FILE - In this 1968 black-and-white US Air Force photo, via the Reading Eagle, Sgt. Richard L. Etchberger, a native of Hamburg, Pa., is shown during the Vietnam war. President Barack Obama awarded the Medal of Honor to Etchberger, an airman killed during combat in Laos in 1968. (AP Photo/USAF, Reading Eagle)

MINOT, N.D. — Minot Air Force Base has named a dormitory in honor of an airman soldier who died while helping save the lives of three comrades during the Vietnam War.

The base's 5th Civil Engineer Squadron has renamed Dormitory 221 as Etchberger Hall in honor of Chief Master Sgt. Richard Etchberger.

The Minot Daily News reports that Etchberger was stationed at a secret radar site on a mountain in Laos near the Vietnam border when he died helping others during the Battle of Lima Site 85 on March 11, 1968.

In 2010, Etchberger was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award for valor.

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