A member of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, of the 25th Infantry Division, Thomas Serrano was a participant of the Battle of Dragon Crater, serving as a medic. During the battle, his commanding officer, Captain Audley Federline and the responding medic SP4 Herbert Shupe, were both mortally wounded. Ignoring the chaos around him, Thomas ran toward the wounded men in an attempt to render aid, where he was killed by enemy fire. Here is an excerpt from Robert Peterson’s book Rites of Passage, “My first job must be to destroy the enemy position, so someone else can help the wounded and we can get them to an LZ. To that end I squeezed off a few more rounds in the direction of the cursed tree line. After another thirty minutes of holding in position and avoiding the ubiquitous sniper fire, another medic appeared from the brush below us and began crawling toward the wounded moaning men. I yelled, “No! Don’t try to help them, they’re firing right through here, this is their kill zone! If you try, you’ll get killed! Don’t do it man!” The medic hesitated only a second, then reached for the other medic to roll him back off the captain’s legs. As if on cue, the deadly NVA weapons spoke again and the medic took rounds in the face, chest, and arm and was thrown backwards to the ground, where he moaned once, then died.” For his meritorious actions that day, he was awarded the Bronze Star with Valor Device. He is honored on panel 12E, Line 91, of the Vietnam Wall. Sources Rites of Passage, Robert Peterson https://1-14th.com/Vietnam/Timeline/tv_661119.html http://www.cacti35th.com/history/ivy_leaf/IvyLeaf_19670716.pdf