Felix Sparks, 89 and lying on his flannel-sheeted deathbed, doesn't care whether his Silver Star is upgraded to a Distinguished Service Cross.

"Medals, what are they?" he asked Rocky reporter Jim Sheeler. "I don't need any more." For decades he kept the medals he had won hidden away in drawers. Only recently did Mary, his wife of 65 years, dig them out and mount them.

Nevertheless, a few old friends are trying to convince the military awards board and other review panels that the DSC - the Army's second-highest award - is what he deserved.

That's what he had been originally recommended for after the little-known Battle of Reipertswiller, France, in January 1945. He had leaped from the turret of his tank to drag to safety three wounded soldiers who had been lying out in the open. He escaped injury not because German soldiers missed him, but because they had declined to fire.

The Germans, wrote one of them on the scene in his memoirs, "instinctively felt there was no honor to be won by firing on this death-defying act of comradeship."

Lt. Col. Sparks' award had been knocked down a peg apparently because he had crossed his commanding general. Before the rescue, he had requested permission to withdraw his few remaining troops because they had suffered heavy losses. The general denied permission, on grounds it would "demonstrate weakness in the face of the enemy."

Sparks later told the general that if he had to do it all over, he would have disobeyed the order and withdrawn, thereby saving some American lives.

Sparks should get the higher medal, although the review process is so drawn out he may not live to see it. Not just for his heroics, but for the willingness to tell a commanding officer he had been wrong.

Speaking of commendable behavior, what about the German's? He writes under the name Johann Voss and was a member of the vile Waffen-SS. But anyone who declines to participate in a turkey shoot can't be all bad.