Services Friday for Medal of Honor recipient

ALTON -- Family and friends are saying their final goodbyes to a southwestern Illinois man who received a Medal of Honor for his heroics during World War II.

Russell Dunham was 89 when he died Monday of heart failure at his home in Godfrey, near Alton. He'd moved there just weeks earlier from Jerseyville.

His stepdaughter says Dunham never considered himself a hero that snowy day he charged a French hill in January 1945, killing nine German soldiers and taking two others captive despite being wounded in the back.

After the war, Dunham spent more than three decades working for the then-Veterans Administration before retiring in 1975.

Services were scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday at the Gent Funeral Home in Alton, with burial in Godfrey's Valhalla Memorial Park.