The war stories told by the two Medal of Honor recipients Thursday at Mililani Middle School were strictly G-rated.

That was probably best, given that their audience was mostly 11- and 12-year-old sixth-graders.

Robert Ingram and Jack Jacobs each received the Medal of Honor for their courage in separate incidents that saved lives in Vietnam.

It was a message of service, camaraderie and selflessness that they conveyed to students during two talks in the Mililani Middle School cafeteria.

"I think that everyone who’s lucky enough to live in a country that’s free owes it something in the form of service — and you don’t have to fix bayonets and charge after bad guys or any of that stuff. We can all do things within our community," Jacobs, 67, told the students.

War heroes who are in Hono­lulu for the 2012 Medal of Honor Convention spoke Thursday at six schools around Oahu.

Convention organizers try to balance the desire for Medal of Honor recipients to spend time having fun with a mission of educating the public about what’s behind the blue ribbon and five-point star worn by just 81 living Americans.

"Wearing this medal is not an easy thing. It’s heavy," Ingram, 67, said after one of the school presentations. "If there’s any purpose, it’s to carry on the legend but also the information that we know, the knowledge that we’ve gained. The emotional knowledge is far greater than the other knowledge we got out of this. We’ve learned things that a lot of people will never learn, and we need to share that with them because this gives them courage."

Their Medals of Honor were the only outward signs of their bravery. The veterans did not tell the students how they received them.

Ingram was a Navy corpsman assigned to a Marine platoon that came under fire from 100 North Vietnamese soldiers in Vietnam in 1966. He crawled over to one wounded Marine, and as he rendered aid, a bullet went through his hand.

Ingram was wounded twice more as he helped others and fired on the enemy. As he looked for a way off the ridge, he heard more calls for help and received a fourth bullet wound as he continued to aid others. Ingram "saved many lives that day," his citation states.

A battalion of soldiers Jacobs was with came under "intense heavy machine gun and mortar fire" from a Viet Cong battalion that was dug into bunkers in 1968, according to his citation. Although wounded and able see out of only one eye, Jacobs, a first lieutenant, organized his men under intense fire and moved a seriously wounded man to safety. He also rescued the wounded company commander and made repeated trips across fire-swept rice paddies, evacuating wounded while fending off Viet Cong squads, killing three enemy fighters and wounding others.

Jacobs, a military analyst for NBC/MSNBC, told the students he received his Medal of Honor from President Richard Nixon.

"I remember (Nixon) asking me whether or not I was scared, and I said, ‘No, sir, I’m not,’" Jacobs said. "He said, ‘Well, I am.’ He had a bead of sweat on his upper lip, and he had makeup on because he was going before the cameras not only to do this ceremony, but was making a major policy statement right after this ceremony."

Ingram recounted how he received his Medal of Honor 32 years after the fact.

Paperwork had been lost, and a three-year window to obtain the medal had long been closed, but fellow Marines made it happen for their corpsman.

"All of the guys that were with me in Vietnam decided that I was going to be getting my due, and so they called," Ingram said. "They rallied Congress."

Jacobs tried to keep the presentation light, making fun of his own short stature.

"I can tell you, having spent time in combat, that it’s really, really good being really, really short," Jacobs said. "I wished at times that I was shorter yet. Bob (Ingram), who’s very much bigger, is a much bigger target."

Students asked how the pair felt after receiving the Medal of Honor, how they thought their lives would be different if they hadn’t joined the military, and about their biggest challenge after being in the military.

The two veterans were given star treatment with a short tour of the campus by a small group of student escorts, student photographers and videographers and school officials.

Greg Nakasone, a vice principal at Mililani Middle, said the school is trying to convey character-building and heroism to students, and the Medal of Honor recipients seemed a good fit.

"We thought it was very important for our children to hear what they had to say," Naka­sone said.

Allora Taylor, an 11-year-old sixth-grader whose father is in the Army at Schofield Barracks, said the message of personal sacrifice for the good of others came through.

They "put everything on the line for the other guys," she said.