The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Benjamin Franklin McAlwee, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism on 30 July 1864, while serving with Company D, 3d Maryland Infantry, in action at Petersburg, Virginia. Sergeant McAlwee picked up a shell with burning fuse and threw it over the parapet into the ditch, where it exploded; by this act he probably saved the lives of comrades at the great peril of his own.