PEOPLE & COMMANDERS

A Medal of Honor story of audacious leadership under fire in the Pacific war of World War II.

Night still clung to the sea when the submarine slid in among the enemy ships. On the open bridge, spray cold against his face, Commander Lawson “Red” Ramage watched the black shapes of freighters and tankers loom out of the darkness. Their wakes glowed faintly, white scars across a heaving Pacific, while bursts of star shell and tracer fire clawed at the sky. Somewhere off Taiwan, a Japanese convoy was trying to slip through before dawn. Ramage intended to stop it.

Medal of Honor, U.S. Army, World War II

On May 14th, 1804, a small flotilla of boats pulls away from Camp Dubois, near Saint Louis, and starts upriver into largely unmapped country. The party, known as the Corps of Discovery, is built around soldiers and noncommissioned officers of the United States Army under Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark. Their mission is to explore the recent Louisiana Purchase, seek a practical route toward the Pacific, and make contact with Native nations along the way.

Two days after the United States garrison at Fort Sumter surrendered, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand state militia volunteers to put down the rebellion. The call, issued on April 15th, 1861, transformed a constitutional crisis into a full-scale civil war by forcing citizens, states, and officers to choose sides.

Just days after Monocacy, on July 12th, 1864, Confederate forces under Jubal Early probed the northern defenses of Washington near Fort Stevens. As skirmishers traded fire and Union troops manned the earthworks, President Abraham Lincoln came to the front lines to see the situation for himself, standing on the parapet within range of enemy rifles.

On January 9th, 1945, American forces surged ashore along the beaches of Lingayen Gulf on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Supported by a powerful naval and air armada, soldiers of the United States Sixth Army waded through surf under the threat of mines, artillery, and kamikaze attacks that had already cost the fleet dearly during the approach.

When war came to the Pacific, American and Filipino troops on Bataan and Corregidor fought a desperate delaying action against advancing Japanese forces. By March 1942, the situation had grown dire, and the president ordered General Douglas MacArthur to leave the islands and avoid capture. On the night of March 11th, MacArthur and his party boarded small patrol torpedo boats for a dangerous run through hostile waters to Mindanao, later continuing by aircraft to Australia.

Less than three weeks after North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel, President Harry Truman moved to unify the international response under a single commander. On July 8th, 1950, General Douglas MacArthur, already commanding United States forces in the Far East, was designated to lead United Nations military operations in Korea.

A Medal of Honor story of courage under fire in the Battle of the Bulge.

Snow hangs heavy in the Ardennes forest, muting sound until a rifle cracks and splinters bark from a nearby tree. Private First Class Melvin Earl Biddle lies pressed into the freezing ground, the lead scout for an American parachute infantry company feeling every heartbeat echo in the stock of his rifle. Somewhere ahead, beyond the dark trunks and tangled undergrowth, German snipers have halted his company’s advance on the road between the villages of Soy and Hotton.

Two pinned-down Filipino companies, a barren ridge in the Philippine highlands, and one American corporal who decided to move forward when everyone else was stuck.

One year later to the day, another daring mission unfolded in the skies over the Pacific. On April 18th, 1943, United States forces executed a carefully planned interception of the aircraft carrying Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack. Guided by intelligence that revealed his inspection tour schedule, a handpicked group of long-range P-38 Lightning fighters flew at low altitude across open ocean to reach the rendezvous point in time.

In the bitter winter of the Revolutionary War, soldiers of the New Jersey Line encamped near Pompton reached the breaking point over unpaid wages, expiring enlistments, and miserable living conditions. Inspired in part by the recent and much larger mutiny in the Pennsylvania Line, the New Jersey troops turned on their officers and marched to demand redress.

Two years later to the day, President Harry S. Truman signed legislation that fundamentally reshaped how the United States organizes for war and peace. The National Security Act merged the Department of War and Department of the Navy into a unified National Military Establishment under a Secretary of Defense, later renamed the Department of Defense.

During a period of renewed Cold War tension, the United States sought ways to counter the enormous arsenals of intercontinental ballistic missiles held by both superpowers. On March 23rd, 1983, President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation and called for a long-term research effort into defensive systems that could intercept and destroy incoming nuclear weapons.

Two years later to the day, early June marked a turning point in another long and bitter conflict. On June 8th, 1969, President Richard Nixon met South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu on Midway Island in the Pacific to discuss the future of the Vietnam War. There he announced that the United States would begin withdrawing combat troops from South Vietnam, starting with a contingent of thousands of soldiers, as part of a broader effort later known as “Vietnamization.” The decision…

A story of stealth jets, precision strikes, and a regime suddenly in the dark, and how it changed the wider war.

By 1969, the Vietnam War had become a grinding conflict, with North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces using sanctuaries in nearby Cambodia and Laos to rest, resupply, and move along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Seeking to disrupt those bases, President Richard Nixon authorized a series of secret bombing raids by B-52 bombers against selected locations inside Cambodia.

Nearly a decade after the attacks of September 11th, American intelligence and special operations forces converged on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, believed to shelter al-Qaeda’s leader. In a carefully rehearsed nighttime raid, United States Navy special operators flew in by helicopter, breached the walls, and fought their way through the building, killing Osama bin Laden and collecting valuable documents and electronic media.

After months of retreat and uncertainty in the Korean War, the Eighth Army under Lieutenant General Matthew Ridgway prepared to strike back. On January 25th, 1951, United Nations forces launched Operation Thunderbolt, an offensive aimed at pushing north from positions south of Seoul and testing the strength of Chinese and North Korean units.

In the second year of the Korean War, United Nations forces under Lieutenant General Matthew Ridgway were pushing north in a series of offensives to reclaim ground lost during earlier Communist advances. As part of this effort, planners designed an airborne operation to cut off retreating North Korean and Chinese units and support the drive across the Han River.

Before dawn on Leyte, the world was reduced to shadows, muzzle flashes, and the flat crack of Japanese rifles. Company A of the 382nd Infantry had clawed its way to the edge of the enemy‑held Buri airstrip, then stalled. Out in front, less than a hundred yards away, Japanese soldiers were dug into bomb craters and a drainage ditch, their machine guns perfectly sighted on every patch of open ground. Anyone who tried to move was met with bursts of fire that snapped past at chest height.

Beyond the Call: Medal of Honor Stories — Dispatch: U.S.