At 5:00 a.m. on July 7, 1944, the man in charge of the 2nd Battalion aid station on Saipan was not a career surgeon, or a longtime battlefield veteran.

He was a 29-year-old dentist.

Captain Benjamin Lewis Solomon had graduated from USC’s dental school, run a successful practice in Los Angeles, and been repeatedly pulled away from the frontline roles he asked for because the Army decided his hands were too valuable to risk.

On that morning, with 4,000 Japanese soldiers rushing toward a collapsing American line, those same hands shifted from saving lives with scalpels and sutures to protecting them with a Browning machine gun.

It took 58 years for his country to finally admit what he’d done.

A Dentist in Uniform Who Wouldn’t Stay in the Rear

Benjamin Solomon was born in 1914, raised in Milwaukee in a Jewish family, and came of age in a world that didn’t always welcome him. Quotas at universities limited Jewish enrollment. He earned his way in anyway, graduating from USC’s School of Dentistry in 1937.

By 1940, he had a comfortable civilian life: a dental practice, professional colleagues, paying patients. Then the Selective Service Act passed. His draft notice arrived weeks later.

The Army looked at his records and immediately slotted him as medical personnel. He’d be going to the Dental Corps, they told him, not the infantry. Solomon didn’t argue out of fear. He argued because he wanted to fight.

He started as an infantry private, training with a rifle company while the bureaucracy slowly processed his transfer orders. At the range, he proved to be an excellent shot with both rifle and pistol. His instructors soon had him teaching new recruits.

He rose to sergeant and took charge of a machine-gun section. The Browning M1917 water-cooled machine gun became his focus. He learned it inside out—how to strip it blindfolded, how to clear malfunctions under stress, how to coordinate fire across multiple guns so they could dominate a battlefield without overheating or jamming. Under his supervision, his section recorded fewer stoppages than any other in the regiment.

Then the orders came down. The Army was pulling him out of the line. His application to remain with the infantry didn’t matter. He had a dental degree, and the Army needed dentists.

In late 1942, he found himself wearing Dental Corps insignia, extracting wisdom teeth and filling cavities in Hawaii. On paper, it made sense. In reality, his temperament never left the front.

He kept training with the infantry units. He went on the long marches. He ran the physical fitness tests. He shot in marksmanship competitions and routinely outperformed many combat soldiers. He wasn’t trying to prove something to impress anyone. He was simply refusing to separate his medical role from his sense of shared risk.

In January 1944, he became a captain and the regimental dental officer for the 105th Infantry Regiment of the 27th Infantry Division.

In June, the division moved to Saipan.

Saipan: A Dentist Becomes a Battlefield Surgeon

The 27th Infantry Division landed on Saipan on June 15, 1944. What they found was a heavily fortified island defended by tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers in caves, bunkers, and interlocking positions.

The 105th Infantry was thrown into some of the hardest fighting, advancing through cane fields, steep hills, and rocky terrain under constant fire. Caves hid defenders who could pop up unexpectedly behind advancing troops. Mortars and machine guns shredded exposed infantry. Casualties mounted.

On June 22, a Japanese round struck the 2nd Battalion command post. Among the wounded was the battalion surgeon. His leg injuries were bad enough that he had to be evacuated.

The battalion’s medical leadership was suddenly down a key figure.

Solomon stepped forward.

He wasn’t a trained surgeon, but he had studied anatomy, had spent years working inside people’s mouths with precision instruments, and had a calm temperament under pressure. In Hawaii, he had taken additional medical training beyond dentistry. He knew what a hemorrhage looked like and how to stop it. He volunteered to take over as battalion surgeon.

He set up a small tent aid station just behind the front lines near Tanapag Village. There he treated the wounded under fire. Torn limbs, severe chest wounds, abdominal injuries—he dealt with it all, stabilizing whoever he could, making rapid judgment calls about who needed to be moved back to the regimental aid station and who could be managed in place.

By all accounts, he adapted quickly. The enlisted medics trusted him. The infantry officers respected him. The wounded called him “Doc.” For ten days, he worked the line as the battle ground on.

Then came the day that would define his life.

The Last Charge of Saipan

By early July, the Japanese 43rd Division on Saipan was shattered. Out of an original 30,000 or so defending soldiers, perhaps 5,000 remained. They were short on food, short on ammunition, and encircled near the northern tip of the island.

Their commanding officers decided on one last massive attack—a banzai charge designed to break through the American lines, inflict as much damage as possible, and die in the process.

On the night of 6–7 July, roughly 3,000–4,000 soldiers formed up in the dark.

The American 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 105th Infantry Regiment held the line directly in their path. At about 4:45 a.m., the Japanese attackers surged forward, shouting and firing, crashing into positions manned by exhausted American troops who had no idea just how large the coming wave was.

Solomon’s aid station sat about 50 yards behind the thin front line. The first wounded men began arriving almost immediately. Some walked in holding compresses over their own injuries. Others were carried or dragged by comrades who then turned around and ran back into the fight.

Solomon and his team went to work. Chest wounds. Abdominal wounds. Shrapnel in limbs. Traumatic amputations. He and his medics triaged, treated, and moved as many as they could.

Outside, the line increasingly buckled.

Japanese soldiers began to penetrate American foxholes. Positions that had seemed solid an hour before were overrun or bypassed. The safe distance that separated the fronline from the aid station shrank.

Then the tent itself was breached.

When the Enemy Comes Through the Tent Flap

The first enemy soldier stepped into the aid station and bayoneted a wounded man lying near the wall before anyone could react. Solomon, mid-procedure on another patient, grabbed a rifle and fired, dropping the attacker.

It was no longer a rear area. It was part of the battlefield.

Several more attackers appeared. American soldiers nearby managed to shoot some of them, but the chaotic nature of the fight meant there was no longer a secure perimeter. Enemy soldiers crawled under the canvas, knife and bayonet in hand.

Medics were moving casualties. Able-bodied troops were already outside, trying to hold the line. Inside the tent, Solomon found himself almost alone in a space full of vulnerable men, with opponents physically inside his supposedly protected area.

He reacted not like a non-combatant, but like the machine-gun section sergeant he had once been.

He knocked a knife from one attacker’s hand, shot another, drove a bayonet into a third. When a fourth came at him and his rifle was empty, he used his head—literally—smashing his forehead into the enemy’s face. A wounded American on a stretcher drew his sidearm and finished the attacker.

Solomon could see that staying meant the wounded would die. The tent was about to become the center of the fight as Japanese troops poured deeper into the American rear.

He ordered an evacuation.

Medics and walking wounded grabbed those who couldn’t move themselves and began hauling them toward the rear. Bullets sliced the air as they ran. Solomon stayed behind, checking that as many as possible had been moved.

Once the last man was out, he picked up a rifle and ran toward the source of the noise.

The Dentist and the Browning

Thirty feet from the tent, four American soldiers had been manning a Browning M1917 water-cooled machine gun behind sandbags.

All four were dead.

Japanese troops were streaming past, intent on exploiting the breach. The Browning sat loaded, water jacket steaming, its tripod anchored in the sand.

Solomon crawled behind the weapon, checked the belt, and started firing.

Two years earlier, the Army had forcibly transferred him out of the infantry because he had a dental degree. Before that, he had spent months mastering this exact weapon, teaching others how to use it. The muscle memory came back immediately.

He fired in controlled bursts, sweeping the killing zone in front of him. Japanese soldiers fell in clusters. Those behind them kept coming, climbing over bodies, pressed forward by those behind.

The machine gun heated. The water in the cooling jacket boiled. Spent casings piled up. Solomon was hit—once in the arm, once in the shoulder—but kept firing. He understood something few outside his position could see: every second that he held, every person he stopped, bought the medics a little more time to get the wounded farther back.

As the bodies piled up in front of the gun, they began to block his line of sight. So he did something few men with multiple serious wounds could have managed: he dragged the gun.

The entire system—the gun, the water, the tripod—weighed over 140 pounds. Solomon pulled it by the barrel jacket, burning his hands on the hot metal, and repositioned his fire so he could engage attackers again.

He did this not once, but four times, leaving blood trails in the dirt each time he moved.

Witnesses who later examined the scene traced those trails from position to position. Each line was marked by shell casings and more bodies.

At some point, bullets tore into his thigh, into his torso, into his chest. Clearly fatal wounds, but adrenaline and willpower kept him in the fight. He continued firing until the ammunition belt finally ran dry.

Then he picked up his pistol.

When that went empty, he used the heavy steel body of the machine gun itself as a blunt weapon, swinging it into faces and ribs until he no longer could.

When his body was found the next day, he was slumped over the gun. Around his position lay 98 Japanese soldiers.

The battalion held.

Recognition Denied and Delayed

The immediate aftermath of the battle brought a clear conclusion to those who walked the ground.

Captain Edmund Love, the division historian, joined the team that recovered bodies and assessed the battlefield on 8 July. He saw the blood trails, the shifted positions of the gun, the piles of enemy soldiers. He spoke with medics and wounded who had seen Solomon in action or been saved by his delaying stand.

He documented it all and recommended Captain Solomon for the Medal of Honor.

His commanding general read the report, considered the Geneva Conventions, and refused.

Solomon, the general argued, had been a medical officer wearing a red-cross brassard. Under international law, he wasn’t supposed to engage as a combatant. By manning a crew-served weapon and taking offensive action, he’d forfeited that status.

The reality—that he had removed his brassard, that he had acted in defense of his aid station and patients, and that nobody else remained to hold that ground—didn’t sway the decision. The recommendation was denied.

The war kept moving. Saipan, like so many Pacific battles, faded in public memory, overshadowed by later island campaigns and, eventually, by the atomic bombs.

Love did not forget. Nor, apparently, did several others. Over the next decades, multiple attempts were made to resubmit Solomon’s case. Each time, a new barrier appeared: expired time limits, insufficient living witnesses, procedural obstacles. Each time, the answer was effectively the same: no.

It wasn’t until the 1990s that the case was revived with new energy.

A young Army dentist, Colonel John King, came across Solomon’s file while researching his corps’ history. At USC, Dr. Robert West, an alumnus and professor, stumbled on the story while preparing materials for the dental school’s anniversary.

They connected, shared their findings, and realized they were staring at a clear injustice.

This time, they enlisted Congressional help. Representative Brad Sherman took up the cause. The Army reevaluated the legal issues, reconsidered the Geneva Convention argument, and acknowledged that the original interpretation had been too rigid. Solomon had acted within the spirit of the law: defending the wounded under his care when no one else could.

Congress passed a special bill waiving the time limit for his award. In May 2002, in the White House Rose Garden, President George W. Bush presented the Medal of Honor to Dr. West, accepting it on behalf of Captain Benjamin Solomon and USC’s School of Dentistry.

Fifty-eight years after he died, the young dentist from Milwaukee was finally recognized as one of the small number of Americans whose actions under fire met the highest standard of valor.

Why His Story Matters

It is easy to be overwhelmed by the raw numbers in Solomon’s story: dozens of wounded treated, four positions held in succession, 98 enemy dead, 24 wounds sustained while still alive.

But numbers alone don’t explain why his story continues to resonate.

It matters because of the choice he made.

He could have left with the wounded. He could have followed the letter of his protected status as a medical officer and withdrawn, leaving the gun silent and the path clear.

Instead, he removed the symbol of that protection and stepped into the role his battalion needed at that exact moment: a barrier no one else could provide.

He did not cease to be a healer when he picked up the gun. His purpose remained the same: protect the wounded, give them a chance to live. The means simply changed in response to an impossible situation.

For decades, the bureaucracy struggled to categorize him. Was he a doctor acting outside the rules? A gunner in violation of convention? A case that threatened neat boundaries between combatant and non-combatant?

In the end, it turned out he was something simpler: a man who put others’ survival ahead of his own.

Modern combat medic training now acknowledges that reality. Today, medics learn when they can and must use weapons to protect themselves and their patients. The black-and-white rules of 1944 have been shaded with the gray of real experience.

Solomon never knew any of that. He didn’t live to see the arguments, the denials, the eventual ceremony. His last conscious minutes were spent doing what he had done the previous ten days—buying enough time to turn dying men into survivors.

The men he saved went home and built lives. They raised families. They lived long enough to see his name finally honored. Some of them, in their final years, could point to their children and grandchildren and say, “I’m here because a dentist didn’t leave me behind.”

That is the measure of Captain Ben Solomon’s legacy. Not only in the medal on display at USC, or the clinic at Fort Benning that bears his name, but in the quiet lives that exist because of what he chose to do on a beach in the Pacific when everything around him was falling apart.