First authorized in 1861 for sailors and Marines and the following year for soldiers, more than 3,400 Medals of Honor have been bestowed for conspicuous and well-documented acts of gallantry in war. The Medal of Honor is America's highest award for valor in combat. This will be the first time the camera and Medal of Honor are displayed together. Perkins' award, his Purple Heart, and photography will be exhibited along with his Bell and Howell camera, which shows damage from the grenade attack and is on loan from National Museum of the Marine Corps. 'I figured they should go to the Smithsonian.' 'I didn't want his possessions to end up in somebody's brown box in a basement,' Jacobson said. Museum Advisory Board member Jeff Garrett, also of Lexington, assisted with the acquisition. His mother, Marilane Perkins Jacobson of Lexington, Ky., donated the medal, her son's letters and other personal effects to the museum's permanent Armed Forces Collections in 2015. The Marine Corps posthumously awarded him the Medal of Honor for 'his gallant actions.' died at the age of 20 when he flung himself on a grenade to preserve the lives of three other Marines during Operation Medina, a Marine search and destroy operation in Quang Tri Province, Vietnam, Oct. The Smithsonian's National Museum of American History will display the only Medal of Honor to be awarded to a combat photographer in the Medal of Honor Gallery of the 'Price of Freedom' exhibition beginning Nov.

Combat cameraman