A surviving member of the Alaska National Guard’s First Scout Battalion received the Alaska Heroism Medal, the state’s highest award for valor during peacetime, on March 28, 2023, at John Apangalook Memorial High School in Gambell.
Photo: Robert DeBerry
67 years ago, on June 22, 1955, two Russian MiG-15s shot down a US Navy P2V-5 Neptune plane flying a routine maritime patrol from Kodiak out over the Bering Sea. After it crashed in flames on St. Lawrence Island, 16 Alaska National Guardsmen from the First Scout Battalion mounted an immediate rescue mission, ultimately saving everyone on board.
Cpl. Bruce Boolowon, the only surviving member of the rescue team, and 15 family representatives of the Alaska Army National Guard’s First Scouts received their medals from Maj. Gen. Torrence Saxe, adjutant general of the Alaska National Guard and commissioner of the DMVA. During the ceremony, Saxe recounted how the Alaska Scouts heard the crash, witnessed the Russian planes in the air and responded in their umiaks, open boats with wooden frames and covered by bearded seal or walrus hides. Saxe approved the awards after the director of the Office of Veterans Affairs, Verdie Bowen, realized the Alaska Scouts had never been fully recognized for their heroic actions. Bowen ultimately submitted the 16 Alaska Scouts for the Alaska Heroism Medal, which didn’t exist at the time of the rescue.
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