Salomon was originally denied the Medal of Honor, the highest award for military
bravery in the United States, because his commanding general believed,
incorrectly, that he was ineligible.
The general agreed that Salomon deserved the honor but thought the Geneva
Convention barred medical officers from bearing arms against the enemy under any
circumstances.
West, who graduated from USC dental school in 1952, discovered Salomon's story
in 1997 when he and other alumni were working on the "Tommy Trojan Goes to War"
chapter of a book for the dental school's 100th anniversary. After West, who
served in the Navy during World War II, started writing to Army brass and
others, urging that Salomon be given the medal, he learned that Salomon was
eligible.
According to the Geneva Convention, medical personnel could not take up arms for
offensive purposes. But they could fight in self-defense or to defend others, as
Salomon had done, West said.
"I was just possessed when I found out it was an error, an innocent error, on
the part of the commanding general," West recalled. With the help of Rep. Brad
Sherman (D-Woodland Hills), West pleaded Salomon's case with military officials.
"It was a labor of love," West said.
"We have been working toward his recognition for years and years," said Maj.
Gen. Patrick D. Sculley, chief of the U.S. Army Dental Corps. "We were very
close in the late 1960s. For whatever reason, it didn't get approved at that
time. We in the Army Dental Corps have always had two professions--being a
soldier and being a dentist, and Ben Salomon epitomized that."
Harold Slavkin, dean of the USC School of Dentistry, was a new faculty member in
1968 when he learned about Salomon from then-Dean John Ingle.
Slavkin said he was moved by how long, hard and selflessly Ingle, West and
fellow USC alumni William Ridgeway and William Dahlberg had fought for Salomon's
recognition.
"It was a kind of moral imperative," Slavkin said. "They were compelled to do it
because they wanted the right thing to be done."
The people who were closest to Salomon are all gone. His yearbook photo captures
a young man with a shy smile, dark, curly hair and wire-rimmed glasses. His
admittance into dental school was itself a triumph at a time when American
universities limited the number of Jews they accepted.
Slavkin had dinner with several elderly alumni who had known Salomon as a young
man, in hopes of learning more about him. He was tall, single and good-looking,
they told Slavkin, and he had several aspiring movie stars as patients in the
Beverly Hills dental practice he started before entering the Army.
Fresh out of USC in 1937, Salomon tried unsuccessfully to enlist as a dentist in
both the American and Canadian armies. In 1940, he was drafted as a private in
the infantry.
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