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Medal of Honor Recipient

Herschel Floyd "Pete" Briles

U.S. Army · World War II

MOH-RC-001911Source-based record

The award

Representative medal image: Army design with a neck ribbon. Not a portrait or a photograph of this recipient’s own medal.
Army Medal of HonorRecorded presentation: 1945

Portrait not yet available. Representative medal shown.

About this image

Representative form selected from the recorded presentation year (1945), not authenticated medal-object provenance.

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Medal of Honor

November 20, 1944

Scherpenseel, Germany

Rank at action
Staff Sergeant
Service
U.S. Army
Conflict
World War II
Unit or command
Company C, 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion, 9th Infantry Division (attached to)
Presentation date
September 10, 1945

The Citation

Sources ↓
He was leading a platoon of destroyers across an exposed slope near Scherpenseel, Germany, on 20 November 1944, when they came under heavy enemy artillery fire. A direct hit was scored on 1 of the vehicles, killing 1 man, seriously wounding 2 others, and setting the destroyer afire. With a comrade, S/Sgt. Briles left the cover of his own armor and raced across ground raked by artillery and small-arms fire to the rescue of the men in the shattered destroyer. Without hesitation, he lowered himself into the burning turret, removed the wounded and then extinguished the fire. From a position he assumed the next morning, he observed hostile infantrymen advancing. With his machinegun, he poured such deadly fire into the enemy ranks that an entire pocket of 55 Germans surrendered, clearing the way for a junction between American units which had been held up for 2 days. Later that day, when another of his destroyers was hit by a concealed enemy tank, he again left protection to give assistance. With the help of another soldier, he evacuated two wounded under heavy fire and, returning to the burning vehicle, braved death from exploding ammunition to put out the flames. By his heroic initiative and complete disregard for personal safety, S/Sgt. Briles was largely responsible for causing heavy enemy casualties, forcing the surrender of 55 Germans, making possible the salvage of our vehicles, and saving the lives of wounded comrades.

Sources & record notes

General Order comparison: pending. Current-profile review does not mean that the underlying original order has been examined.

  1. Herschel Floyd "Pete" Briles — current Society profile ↗Congressional Medal of Honor Society · Checked 2026-08-30

    current identity, service, action metadata, and citation comparison

Transcription, metadata & provenance notes
Award ID
MOH-AW-001919
Transcription status
Legacy full text · current reference profile matched
Last source check
2026-08-30
Recorded order reference (not verified against the original)
77
Later or highest recorded rank
First Sergeant
Entered service at
Fort Des Moines, Iowa
Archive transcription SHA-256
898b6dd63919d45a430cdb78fb5e03bfee560a446f2522c1996ce66fee0ca1a7

Legacy transcription retained without substantive editing; rendered current reference profile variants documented in the Phase 10 evidence snapshot.

The canonical current reference profile was resolved through a controlled archival reference search outside the inherited candidate set. Every inherited candidate remains preserved in the audit trail; candidate rank and URL availability were not treated as verification. The current authoritative source expands or normalizes the inherited name from Herschel F. Briles to Herschel Floyd "Pete" Briles; both renderings remain preserved. The current profile supplies rank at time of action as Staff Sergeant; the inherited rank field remains preserved as None. The current profile records later or highest rank First Sergeant; it is stored separately from rank at time of action. The current source records Company C, 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion, 9th Infantry Division (attached to); the inherited unit field Company C, 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion remains preserved as a source variant. The current historical action-place wording replaces only the controlled canonical geocoder field; the complete inherited place remains preserved. The current authoritative profile classifies the action under World War II; the inherited unclassified value remains preserved in the audit record.

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