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The remarkable story of the seven African American soldiers ultimately awarded the World War II Medal of Honor, and the 50-year campaign to deny them their recognition. In 1945, when Congress began reviewing the record of the most conspicuous acts of courage by American soldiers during World War II, they recommended awarding the Medal of Honor to 432 recipients. Despite the fact that more than one million African-Americans served, not a single black soldier received the Medal of Honor. The omission remained on the record for over four decades. But recent historical investigations have brought to light some of the extraordinary acts of valor performed by black soldiers during the war. Men like Vernon Baker, who single-handedly eliminated three enemy machineguns, an observation post, and a German dugout. Or Sergeant Reuben Rivers, who spearhead his tank unit's advance against fierce German resistance for three days despite being grievously wounded. Meanwhile Lieutenant Charles Thomas led his platoon to capture a strategically vital village on the Siegfried Line in 1944 despite losing half his men and suffering a number of wounds himself. Ultimately, in 1993 a US Army commission determined that seven men, including Baker, Rivers and Thomas, had been denied the Army's highest award simply due to racial discrimination. In 1997, more than 50 years after the war, President Clinton finally awarded the Medal of Honor to these seven heroes, sadly all but one of them posthumously. These are their stories.
The Medal of Honor is the highest military award that can be bestowed on personnel in the United States' Armed Forces. This book is the first of two titles looking at the recipients of the Medal of Honor during World War II. It covers Navy and Marine Corps awardees in all theaters of war, from the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 to the brutal fighting on Iwo Jima in 1945. Among the inspiring stories told are those of Signalman 1st Class Douglas Munro, the only Coast Guardsman to ever receive the Medal of Honor, and Commander Antrim, who faced almost certain death to save fellow prisoners in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.
*The instant New York Times bestseller* The untold story of four of the most decorated soldiers of World War II—all Medal of Honor recipients—from the beaches of French Morocco to Hitler’s own mountaintop fortress, by the national bestselling author of The First Wave “Pitch-perfect.”—The Wall Street Journal • “Riveting.”—World War II magazine • “Alex Kershaw is the master of putting the reader in the heat of the action.”—Martin Dugard As the Allies raced to defeat Hitler, four men, all in the same unit, earned medal after medal for battlefield heroism. Maurice “Footsie” Britt, a former professional football player, became the very first American to receive every award for valor in a single war. Michael Daly was a West Point dropout who risked his neck over and over to keep his men alive. Keith Ware would one day become the first and only draftee in history to attain the rank of general before serving in Vietnam. In WWII, Ware owed his life to the finest soldier he ever commanded, a baby-faced Texan named Audie Murphy. In the campaign to liberate Europe, each would gain the ultimate accolade, the Congressional Medal of Honor. Tapping into personal interviews and a wealth of primary source material, Alex Kershaw has delivered his most gripping account yet of American courage, spanning more than six hundred days of increasingly merciless combat, from the deserts of North Africa to the dark heart of Nazi Germany. Once the guns fell silent, these four exceptional warriors would discover just how heavy the Medal of Honor could be—and how great the expectations associated with it. Having survived against all odds, who among them would finally find peace?
The epic Battle of Iwo Jima is recounted through the stories of twenty-eight American soldiers who showed uncommon valor during one of WWII’s most bitter conflicts. When the smoke cleared on Iwo Jima in March of 1945, nineteen-thousand American Marines had been wounded and seven-thousand were dead, a casualty rate of nearly thirty-nine percent. Lasting over a month, Iwo was the Marines’ bloodiest battle of the Second World War and the only Pacific battle in which a U.S. landing force suffered more casualties than it inflicted. It was also the most highly decorated single engagement in Marine Corps history. This volume captures the bravery of those who fought in that epic battle through the stories of twenty-two Marines and five Navy personnel who received the Medal of Honor in recognition of their gallantry under fire.
A comprehensive history of America's highest award for military valor. The Medal of Honor chronicles the creation, evolution, and awarding of the Medal, from the battlefields of the Civil War to the jungles of Vietnam, through a wealth of illustrations and hundreds of authoritative, action-filled accounts of heroism in America's conflicts. This wonderfully detailed and beautifully designed history book puts the Medal and its recipients into the context of their times, with brief and accessible introductions explaining each war and conflict for which the Medal was awarded. It also includes photo essays, intriguing stories of the Medal's sometimes quirky personalities, effects on surviving recipients, and the Medal's preeminent place in the American story. Whether you're an avid reader on the history of the Medal of Honor or simply intrigued by its place in our history, you're certain to want to flip through the pages of The Medal of Honor again and again.
In November 1861, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Townsend, adjutant general of the Army, sought to establish an award to motivate and inspire Northern soldiers in the aftermath of the early, morale-devastating defeats of the Civil War. The outcome of Townsend's brainstorm was the Medal of Honor. This reference book offers information about all recipients of the Civil War Medal of Honor, with details of their acts of heroism. The work then organizes recipients by a variety of criteria including branch of service; regiment or naval ship assignment; place of action; act of heroism; state or country of nativity; age of recipient; and date of issuance. Also included is information about the first winners of the medal, the first recipients of multiple medals, posthumously awarded medals and civilian recipients.
More than 100 compelling, true stories of personal heroism and valor– in a special expanded edition honoring courage in the face of war Here are dramatic accounts of the fearless actions that earned American soldiers in Vietnam our highest military distinction–the Medal of Honor. Edward F. Murphy, head of the Medal of Honor Historical Society, re-creates the heroic acts of individual soldiers from official documents, Medal of Honor citations, contemporary accounts, and, where possible, interviews with survivors. Complete with a list of all Vietnam Medal of Honor recipients, this book offers a unique perspective on the war–from the early days of U.S. involvement through the return home of the last soldiers. It pays a fitting tribute to these patriotic, selfless souls.
On 8 November 2004, the largest battle of the War on Terror began, with the US Army's assault on Fallujah and its network of tens of thousands of insurgents hiding in fortified bunkers, on rooftops, and inside booby-trapped houses. For Sgt. David Bellavia of 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, it quickly turned into a battle on foot, from street to street and house to house. On the second day, he and his men laid siege to a mosque, only to be driven to a rooftop and surrounded, before heavy artillery could smash through to rescue them. By the third day, Bellavia charges an insurgent-filled house and finds himself trapped with six enemy fighters. One by one, he shoots, wrestles, stabs, and kills five of them, until his men arrive to take care of the final target. It is one of the most hair-raising battle stories of any age -- yet it does not spell the end of Bellavia's service. It would take serveral more weeks before the Battle of Fallujah finally came to a close, with Bellavia, miraculously, alive. In the words of the author: "HOUSE TO HOUSE holds nothing back. It is a raw, gritty look at killing and combat and how men react to it. It is gut-wrenching, shocking and brutal. It is honest. It is not a glorification of war. Yet it will not shy from acknowledging this: sometimes it takes something as terrible as war for the full beauty of the human spirit to emerge."
The Medal of Honor may be America’s highest military decoration, but all Medals of Honor are not created equal. The medal has in fact consisted of several distinct decorations at various times and has involved a number of competing statutes and policies that rewarded different types of heroism. In this book, the first comprehensive look at the medal’s historical, legal, and policy underpinnings, Dwight S. Mears charts the complex evolution of these developments and differences over time. The Medal of Honor has had different qualification thresholds at different times, and indeed three separate versions—one for the army and two for the navy—existed contemporaneously between World Wars I and II. Mears traces these versions back to the medal’s inception during the Civil War and continues through the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—along the way describing representative medal actions for all major conflicts and services as well as legislative and policy changes contemporary to each period. He gives particular attention to retroactive army awards for the Civil War; World War I legislation that modernized and expanded the army’s statutory award authorization; the navy’s grappling with both a combat and noncombat Medal of Honor through much of the twentieth century; the Vietnam-era act that ended noncombat awards and largely standardized the Medal of Honor among all services; and the perceived decline of Medals of Honor awarded in the ongoing Global War on Terror. Mears also explores the tradition of awards via legislative bills of relief; extralegislative awards; administrative routes to awards through Boards of Correction of Military Records; restoration of awards previously revoked by the army in 1917; judicial review of military actions in federal court; and legislative actions intended to atone for historical discrimination against ethnic minorities. Unprecedented in scope and depth, his work is sure to be the definitive resource on America’s highest military honor.