The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Distinguished Service Medal to Commander Harold Medberry Bemis, United States Navy, for distinguished service in the line of his profession as Commander of Submarine Division FIVE, making a trip to British waters and operating in those waters against German submarines, and later making a voyage with one tug and three submarines from Bermuda to the Azores under very difficult conditions. Finding himself on board a British submarine when all her officers and two-thirds of her crew were down with influenza, he took command of the British submarine and conducted a successful patrol for five days off the German coast.