The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pride in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross (Posthumously) to First Lieutenant (Medical Corps) Ralph Edgar Powers, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism while serving with 337th Ambulance Company, 310th Sanitary Train, 339th Infantry (Attached), 85th Division (Detachment in North Russia), in action, at Ust Padenga, Russia, January 20 – 23, 1919. While his dressing station was burning as a result of having been struck by a shell, Lieutenant Powers successfully evacuated all his patients numbering forty. He then moved to a new location and continued to work for two days under shell fire, until this dressing station too was struck and he himself mortally wounded, whereupon he gave orders that the other wounded should be removed first, and that he be left until the last.