President Bush announced today that Cpl. Jason Dunham, who died more than two years ago after covering a grenade with his helmet to save his fellow Marines, will receive the Medal of Honor.

This will be the first Medal of Honor — the nation’s highest award for battlefield heroism — bestowed on a Marine in the Iraq war and the first earned by a Marine for combat action since 1970, during the Vietnam War.

Dunham, a 22-year-old machine gunner from Scio, N.Y., was manning a checkpoint near Karabilah, near the Syrian border in Iraq, on April 14, 2004.

“While leading a patrol of his Marines in Karabilah, Corporal Dunham received a report that a Marine convoy had been ambushed. He led his squad to the site of the attack — where he and his men stopped a convoy of cars trying to make an escape,” according to a Marine Corps press release. “As he moved to search one of the vehicles, an insurgent jumped out and grabbed him by the throat. The corporal engaged the insurgent in hand-to-hand combat.”

As the two scuffled, the Iraqi dropped a grenade with the pin removed, and Dunham quickly jumped on it, using his Kevlar helmet and body to smother the blast.

Shrapnel pierced his skull, and he died eight days later with his parents at his side at the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Md.

Speaking at a dedication ceremony today at Quantico, Va., where Marines and other top military and government leaders gathered for the grand opening of the National Museum of the Marine Corps, Bush recounted Dunham’s actions and “his willingness to put the needs of others before his own.”

“On this special birthday in the company of fellow Marines, I am proud to announce that we will recognize Corporal Dunham’s actions with our highest decoration for valor, the Medal of Honor,” Bush said. “As long as we have Marines like Corporal Dunham, America will never fear for her liberty.”

The Medal of Honor is typically presented by the president at an Oval Office ceremony at the White House. It was unclear when Dunham’s family will receive the award.

Three of Dunham’s platoon mates with Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines, suffered shrapnel wounds but survived. Two weeks later, Kilo Marines mourned Dunham at a memorial service held at their camp in Qaim, Iraq. “He knew what he was doing. He wanted to save Marines’ lives from that grenade,” said Lance Cpl. Jason Sanders, 21, a mortarman, according to a Marine Corps News article.

Dunham’s story was told in a book, “A Gift of Valor,” penned by a Wall Street Journal reporter embedded with 3/7 battalion in the spring 2004. In an article the reporter, Michael M. Phillips, wrote just weeks after Dunham’s death, unit leaders already had weighed the gravity of his final combat action and the potential recognition of that heroism.

The battalion commander at the time, Lt. Col. Matthew Lopez, submitted Dunham’s nomination for the Medal of Honor, noting “I deeply believe that given the facts and evidence presented, he clearly understood the situation and attempted to block the blast of the grenade from his squad members. His personal action was far beyond the call of duty and saved the lives of his fellow Marines,” Phillips recounted in his article.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., later issued a statement asking the president to award the Medal of Honor to Dunham, noting that his actions “embodied the courage and fortitude that have made the armed forces of the United States the most respected in the world. I can imagine no clearer case of an individual soldier exhibiting the ideals that the Congressional Medal was established to honor.”

Since his death, Dunham’s family and friends have maintained a web site, www.jasonsmemorial.org, and a memorial scholarship fund but largely have stayed on the sidelines as the nomination has run through the deliberate review process.

“Jason would have wanted to earn it on his own,” his mother, Deb Dunham, told Marine Corps Times in September. “We feel he’s earned it.”

Others honored

Dunham is the first Marine to receive the Medal of Honor since Vietnam, and the second to receive it for actions in the Iraq war.

On April 4, 2005, Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith’s family received the award in a White House ceremony, two years after Smith died in Iraq.

Smith was with 2nd Platoon, B Company, 11th Engineer Battalion when it was ordered to set up a temporary detainee facility at Saddam International Airport during the initial invasion. As the unit moved in, an enemy force of roughly 100 Iraqi soldiers attacked with mortars, automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.

Smith ordered a soldier to put an armored personnel carrier between members of his unit and the enemy. Smith then manned the carrier’s .50-caliber machine gun and told a soldier who accompanied him to “feed me ammunition whenever you hear the gun get quiet,” according to his Medal of Honor citation. He fired through at least three boxes of ammunition from the exposed position until he was mortally wounded by enemy fire.

The citation said Smith’s actions saved the lives of at least 100 soldiers, while killing 20 to 50 enemy soldiers.

As for Marine recipients, while some have received the award in recent years for decades-old actions, the last time a Marine earned the Medal of Honor was in 1970. Lance Cpl. Miguel Keith received the award posthumously based on his actions on May 8, 1970, in Quang Ngai province.

Four other Marines were awarded for actions that year: Pfc. Raymond “Mike” Clausen for actions on Jan. 31; Gunnery Sgt. Allan Kellogg for actions on March 11; Lance Cpl. Emilio de la Garza, April 11; and Lance Cpl. James Howe, May 6.

Two other Marines have reportedly been nominated for the Medal of Honor for heroism in Iraq. Sgt. Rafael Peralta, 25, with 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, died Nov. 15, 2004, during the second battle of Fallujah. His unit had been fighting insurgents in a house when he was mortally wounded. He then cradled a grenade to save other Marines in the room.

The other name mentioned has been Lance Cpl. Christopher Adlesperger, 20, with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, who died Dec. 9, 2004. One month earlier, Adlesperger, after taking fire from a house during the Fallujah battle, climbed to the top of the house, fired grenades through the roof, shot and killed insurgents as they ran out of the house and led the charge back into the house to make sure it was secure, according to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times.

— John Hoellwarth contributed to this report