(Citation Needed) – SYNOPSIS: Specialist Second Class Robert Havard Williams, United States Coast Guard, was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroic conduct while serving as Fire Fighting Officer-in-Charge of a fire boat during a major conflagration at Los Angeles harbor on 21 October 1944. Quickly going to the rescue of a group of workers lying huddled near the bow of a burning LSM [Landing Ship, Medium] in an attempt to escape the flames he directed his boat alongside to allow thirteen men to come aboard. Later when a lifeline burned through and dropped two men into the water, he unhesitatingly went over the side between two burning LSM’s less than fifteen feet apart and in imminent danger of exploding, and swam to their assistance. After these two had been placed aboard the fire boat he went to the rescue of still another holding him up until a line could be thrown from the boat.