Woodrow Wilson Keeble

It didn't make any of the local papers yesterday, including our own, but President Bush's posthumous presentation of the Medal of Honor on Monday to Master Sergeant Woodrow Wilson Keeble of the United States Army was a moment too moving to let pass by without comment. "Woody," as Mr. Bush called him, was a full-blooded Sioux Indian, the first ever to receive the Medal of Honor.

Keeble was honored for his actions in the fall of 1951, during the Korean War. As Mr. Bush recounted the story yesterday, "After days of fighting, the officers in Woody's company had fallen. Woody assumed command of one platoon, then a second, and then a third, until one of the hills was taken, and the enemy fled in wild retreat. That first advance nearly killed him. By the end of the day, Woody had more than 83 grenade fragments in his body. He had bleeding wounds in his arms, chest, and thighs. And yet he still wanted to fight. So after a day with the medics, he defied the doctor's orders and returned to the battlefield. And that is where, on October 20, 1951, Master Sergeant Woodrow Wilson Keeble made history."

RELATED: Transcript of the Keeble Award Ceremony

The Communists still held a crucial hill and had pinned down U.S. forces with a furious assault. One soldier, Mr. Bush recounted, "said the enemy lobbed so many grenades on American troops that they looked like a flock of blackbirds in the sky." Allied forces tried heavy artillery but it did not work. But, Mr. Bush said, "Woody was back, and Woody was some kind of mad. He grabbed grenades and his weapon and climbed that crucial hill alone. Woody climbed hundreds of yards through dirt and rock, with his wounds aching, bullets flying, and grenades falling all around him. As Woody first started off, someone saw him and remarked: 'Either he's the bravest soldier I have ever met, or he's crazy.' Soldiers watched in awe as Woody single-handedly took out one machine gun nest, and then another. When Woody was through, all 16 enemy soldiers were dead, the hill was taken, and the Allies won the day."

The story of America's treatment of the Indians is not a happy one. But they, too, have served with bravery and honor in the American military that was once arrayed against them, to defend the country that is now theirs, too. By marking that point at the White House on Monday, Mr. Bush took a step toward reconciliation, a smaller one than Keeble's leap of bravery, but a step nonetheless noteworthy in its own way.