AUGUST 18, 2025 – Marine Corps Sgt. Robert Emmett O’Malley embodied the Marine ethos of honor, courage and commitment. During heavy fighting in the Vietnam War in 1965, he was more concerned about saving the lives of those around him than his own. His actions led him to become the service’s first Vietnam War Medal of Honor recipient.
O’Malley was born June 3, 1943, in Woodside, a neighborhood in Queens, New York, to parents who emigrated from Ireland about 15 years prior. He had a sister and three brothers who also served in the Marine Corps.
When he was about 13, O’Malley took a job as a paperboy for the Long Island Star Journal newspaper. He continued to work there until after he graduated high school in 1961. That fall, he joined the Marine Corps.
After boot camp, O’Malley was initially stationed at Camp Pendleton, California, with the 1st Marine Division. About two years later, he deployed to Okinawa, Japan, with the 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. By November 1963, he worked his way up to the rank of corporal.
O’Malley returned to Camp Pendleton and the 1st Marine Division in 1964. But by 1965, he deployed again, this time to Vietnam as the buildup of U.S. troops began. For this tour, he was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division.
On Aug. 18, 1965, O’Malley was a squad leader with Company I during Operation Starlite, which marked the first time U.S. troops fought Viet Cong insurgents in open battle in regimental-sized formations.
As O’Malley and his squad accompanied tanks past a hedgerow near the town of An Cu’ong, they came under intense small-arms fire. When they realized the fire was coming from a trench just past the hedgerow, O’Malley and another Marine quickly raced across an open rice paddy and jumped into the trench with the enemy soldiers.
O’Malley attacked the insurgents and single-handedly killed eight. He was, however, injured in the foot by a grenade during the melee.
After clearing that trench, O’Malley led his squad in helping an adjacent Marine unit that had suffered heavy casualties. He continued to press forward through enemy fire, reloading and firing upon the enemy “with telling effect,” his Medal of Honor citation reads.
O’Malley then helped evacuate several wounded Marines before regrouping his squad and returning to the fight.
When the units were ordered to evacuate, O’Malley gathered the badly wounded men in his unit and, despite heavy enemy fire, led them to a helicopter for withdrawal. O’Malley had been hit three times during the fight — in the leg, arm and chest — and was badly injured, but he refused to immediately get on the chopper.
Instead, he stood in the open and continued to provide cover fire for his squad until all of them boarded. Only then did he join them in the aircraft as it flew to safety.
O’Malley was eventually flown to Japan, where he received treatment for his many injuries, including surgery to remove shrapnel from his lungs.
A few months later, while he continued to recover, O’Malley was promoted to sergeant. He left active duty in April 1966 and joined the Marine Corps Reserve.
O’Malley married a woman named Barbara, and they moved to Goldthwaite, Texas.
On Dec. 6, 1966, O’Malley received the Medal of Honor from President Lyndon B. Johnson during a ceremony at a plaza outside the Federal Building in Austin, Texas. His family and seven Marines who witnessed his heroics in Vietnam attended.
As decades went by, family and friends said O’Malley was never one to talk much about the war or what he did there.
In April of this year, O’Malley, now 82, moved into the new Tuskegee Airmen Texas State Veterans Home in Fort Worth, Texas.
Coincidentally, another Marine who later posthumously received the Medal of Honor was a friend of O’Malley’s from childhood. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. Thomas Patrick Noonan attended the same grade school as O’Malley and was five months younger than him. Sadly, Noonan lost his life in Vietnam performing the actions that earned him the nation’s highest medal for valor.
By Katie Lange, DOD News