The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pride in presenting the Medal of Honor (Posthumously) to Private First Class Herman C. Wallace, United States Army, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity on 27 February 1945, while serving with Company B, 301st Combat Engineer Battalion, 76th Infantry Division, in action at Prumzurley, Germany. While helping clear enemy mines from a road, Private First Class Wallace stepped on a well-concealed S-type antipersonnel mine. Hearing the characteristic noise indicating that the mine had been activated and, if he stepped aside, would be thrown upward to explode above ground and spray the area with fragments, surely killing two comrades directly behind him and endangering other members of his squad, he deliberately placed his other foot on the mine even though his best chance for survival was to fall prone. Private Wallace was killed when the charge detonated, but his supreme heroism at the cost of his life confined the blast to the ground and his own body and saved his fellow soldiers from death or injury.