Retired Croatian Army Brigadier Srecko Herceg will receive the Congress' Medal of Honour on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise in the southern seaport of Split.
This is the only Medal of Honour from the 20th century that has not yet been presented to a dead war hero's relatives.
Tomich, born in Prolog in 1893, emigrated to the Unites States and joined its army in 1917. After serving in the First World War, he joined the U.S. Navy on 23 January 1919, where he acquired a rank equivalent to today's chief noncommissioned officer.
He was bestowed the medal posthumously for heroic conduct on USS Utah in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, on 7 December 1941, when a Japanese torpedo damaged the war ship. Knowing that the ship would go down, Tomich returned to his post in the engine room, thus making it possible for the crew to evacuate. He saved many lives but was killed in the process.
A destroyer escort, USS Tomich (DE-242), 1943-74, was named after him.