Staff Sgt. Daniel Swensen, a Fordham College at Rose Hill alumnus and U.S. Air Force pararescueman, received the medal in a Dec. 13 ceremony at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

He accepted it with honor but also a hint of surprise, according to an Air Force statement.

“It’s weird to receive so much attention for something that I feel anyone else would’ve done on the battlefield that night,” said Swensen. “I’m honored my peers think I deserve this medal.”

He was embedded with an Army Special Forces detachment on Sept. 13 and 14 in Farah Province, Afghanistan, as it fought to reclaim the Anar Darah District Center and police headquarters from the Taliban. He was leading a ground assault team through a compound when Taliban fighters ambushed them from less than 100 meters away with heavy machine gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades. A grenade struck the wall behind Swensen, wounding him and five of his teammates.

Trapped and separated from the support fire team, Swensen returned fire and directed his teammates to safety and also ran through heavy fire to rescue a soldier incapacitated by his injuries. “As gunfire sprayed overhead, Swensen treated the life-threatening wounds before moving him out of danger,” the Air Force said in its statement. “Swensen, continuing to ignore his injuries, grouped the casualties and prepared for extraction.”

He carried an injured soldier on his shoulders and directed the team to the helicopter landing zone 800 meters away. After they arrived, the Taliban ambushed them again, and Swensen remained exposed to enemy fire as he directed others behind cover and continued to treat the critically injured.

After a helicopter evacuated the injured, he led the remaining team members to retrieve four additional casualties.

Only then did he take treatment for his own wounds.

At Fordham, Swensen was a captain on the swim and dive team, “a great leader and a great example for everybody to follow,” said Steve Potsklan, head coach for men’s and women’s swimming and diving.

“It is truly an honor and a privilege to have Dan represent our program and our university,” he said. “He was a tireless worker and a team leader here at Fordham, and it doesn’t surprise me that the total commitment and effort he brought to the pool every day has carried over into his career in the U.S. Air Force and has now been rewarded with this incredible honor.”

Also awarded the Silver Star on Dec. 13 was Tech. Sgt. Gavin Fisher, honored for his own gallantry in August in Afghanistan’s Ghazni Province.

“You may ask yourself how these two individuals in the face of such adversity performed so admirably,” said Lt. Col. Douglas Holliday, commander of 58th Rescue Squadron. “Airmen like Dan and Gavin are part of a profession that dedicates their lives to a motto ‘That Others May Live.’”

Now, finally, he has received that medal—eight children, 22 grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren later. At age 97.

His extended family members came together on Nov. 1 to see Schneider receive the Silver Star, the U.S. military’s third-highest combat award, for the courage he displayed during the engagement over Dogna, Italy, in 1945, when he was a major in the U.S. Army Air Corps’ 310 Bombardment Group.

At a ceremony, Air Force Maj. Gen. Christopher Bence praised Schneider as “a man who not only answered his nation’s call, but whose actions directly saved the lives of fellow Americans and helped defeat the Axis powers.”

“It’s not often you get to stand in the presence of a true hero,” he said.

The ceremony, held at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in southern New Jersey, culminated four and a half years of tracking down the necessary proof that her father was supposed to receive the award, said his daughter, Heidi McKay.

“Five years ago he said something about it, and I said, ‘Well, you know, I can probably see if we can still get it,’” she said.

But it proved to be no easy task, given the dearth of records about her father’s actions. On Feb. 23, 1945, he was serving as flight commander aboard a B-25 bomber, directing an 18-plane formation sent to disrupt German supply lines by destroying a heavily defended rail link. Anti-aircraft fire damaged many of the other bombers and crippled Schneider’s plane, knocking out the right engine, propeller control mechanism, and airspeed indicator, and smashing an elevator trim tab, but he still directed the B-25s to complete a highly accurate bombardment of their target.

“During the arduous return flight over enemy territory, Schneider skillfully assisted the pilot in the landing procedure and was greatly responsible for the successful emergency crash landing that followed, and for the safe return of all members of the crew,” the Air Force said in an Oct. 25 statement.

After the battle in Italy, Schneider  received a letter from his commanding officer recommending him for the Silver Star, but he never followed up on it, McKay said. With the war’s end, Schneider was busy with other things, McKay said, like returning to earn his business degree at Fordham—he graduated in 1946—and starting a family with his wife, Lucille, whom he met at the University. (She passed away in 2014.) They settled in Hillsdale, N.J., and he spent his career working in sales for National Cash Register and in sales and management for Volckening, a manufacturer in Brooklyn, McKay said.

Staffers for two New Jersey legislators, the late U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg and U.S. Rep. Scott Garrett, helped with tracking down records for Schneider’s award, McKay said. She learned that the needed records may have been among the World War II-era files destroyed in a building fire in the 1970s. “Finally, this one Air Force historian was able to piece together enough to say, ‘Yes, he really was supposed to receive it,’” she said.

Schneider had a modest reaction to the award, according to an Air Force statement.

“I don’t think I deserve what they’re proposing for me to get, but I think it’s good for generations to come to be able to understand what happened,” he said.