Wikipedia is supposed to be a reliably sourced and verifiable encyclopedia, not a blog or advertisement, not full of random non-notable or unverifiable information. In other words, it is supposed to be useful.
Wikipedia mentions him in multiple other places. This article features both the information about his involvement and his posthumous awards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Red_Wings. The part about the commemorative statue that I mentioned comes with no fewer than six sources. Considering that it is a centerpiece of the park and any Memorial Day discussion here, any Wikipedia guidelines that are being interpreted as being unable to verify this are broken.
I am well aware of that. Deleting the entire article by removing everything but the introduction makes the article significantly less useful, especially if much of the information was properly sourced but you got rid of it because you didn’t like it, or got into a revert war with authors of the content to show that you controlled the article. The behavior of the Wikipedia involved is not in good faith.