page_title: Robert D. Reem
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Robert D. Reem / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Grave of Robert D. Reem at Arlington National Cemetery
context_page_description: Second Lieutenant Robert Dale Reem was a United States Marine Corps officer who posthumously received the United States' highest military decoration — the Medal of Honor — for his heroic actions during the advance to the Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War; he threw himself on an enemy grenade, sacrificing his life to save his men.
context_section_description: Robert Dale Reem was born on October 20, 1925 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  He graduated from Elizabethtown High School in June 1943. During his final year of high school, he was a page in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from January to May 1943.
  Robert Reem married Donna Z. Mayo
  He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in August 1943, completed his recruit training at Parris Island, South Carolina, in October and was selected for appointment to the Naval Academy at that time. He attended the Naval Academy Preparatory School at the Naval Training Center, Bainbridge, Maryland, before entering the Academy in June 1944.
  He was commissioned a Marine Corps second lieutenant on June 4, 1948, upon his graduation from Annapolis. In June 1949, he completed the Basic School at Quantico, Virginia, where he remained with the Special Training Regiment until that August. In December 1949, after several months at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, with the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines, 2nd Marine Division, he was assigned with that battalion to duty with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean.
  In August 1950, the battalion was ordered to Korea, where it joined the 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division. 2Lt Reem fought with his battalion in the Inchon landing, the capture of Seoul and the advance to the Chosin Reservoir.
  The 26-year-old Marine was commanding an infantry platoon near Chinhung-ni, North Korea, on November 6, 1950. He was preparing his men for an assault on an enemy position when the grenade landed among them. Without hesitation, he smothered the grenade's explosion with his own body to save the rest of the group from death or serious injury.  For this action, he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
  The Medal of Honor was presented to his widow by Secretary of the Navy Dan A. Kimball in ceremonies on February 8, 1952 in Washington, D.C.
  He initially was buried in the United Nations Cemetery near Hamhung, North Korea. His body was later returned to the United States for burial in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia. His grave can be found in section 6, Grave 9376-B, Map Grid X/18.
  As of 2010, he was the only NAPS graduate and, along with Baldomero Lopez, the latest graduates of the Naval Academy to receive a Medal of Honor. (Admiral Stockdale received one for Vietnam War service, but was a 1946 graduate.) Reem is memorialized at the US Naval Academy with a special dormitory room, the Reem room, with brass plaque.
caption: Grave at Arlington National Cemetery
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