The fifth of eight children, he was baptized in the Lutheran Church, and attended the local schools around Neche, a small town in the northeast corner of North Dakota, one mile from the Canadian bordertown of Gretna, Manitoba.

Private First Class Gurke was in a shallow two–man foxhole with a fellow Marine, a Browning Automatic Rifle–man (BAR–man), around dawn of November 9, 1943, delivering a fierce stream of fire against the advancing Japanese in defense of a vital road block in the area near Empress Augusta Bay.

The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the MEDAL OF HONOR posthumously to for service as set forth in the following CITATION: For extraordinary heroism and courage above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the Third Marine Raider Battalion during action against the enemy Japanese Forces in the Solomon Islands area on November 9, 1943.

While his platoon was engaged in the defense of a vital road block near Empress Augusta Bay on Bougainville Island, Private First Class Gurke, in company with another Marine, was delivering a fierce stream of fire against the main vanguard of the Japanese.

Concluding from the increasing ferocity of grenade barrages that the enemy was determined to annihilate their shallow, two–man foxhole, he resorted to a bold and desperate measure for holding out despite the torrential hail of shells.

When a Japanese grenade dropped squarely into the foxhole, Private First Class Gurke, mindful that his companion manned an automatic weapon of superior fire power and therefore could provide more effective resistance, thrust him roughly aside and flushing his own body over the missile to smother the explosion.