VALOR, AWARDS & CITATIONS

A Jewish paratrooper from Berlin who met the Battle of the Bulge head-on to save his men

A Medal of Honor story of relentless courage under fire in the Italian campaign of World War II.

The draw is narrow and steep, its sides scoured by months of shellfire and rain. At the bottom, the earth is churned to powder. Above it, hidden in the scrub and broken stone near Cisterna di Littoria, German machine guns wait for anything that moves. Private James Henry Mills can hear them before he sees them—the clatter of automatic fire, the sharper crack of rifles, the dull thump of grenades exploding somewhere ahead.

A Medal of Honor story of stubborn courage and small-unit leadership in the Pacific war’s last great battle.

The ground in front of Sugar Loaf Hill is already chewed into mud and craters when Corporal James Lewis Day crawls forward to look for cover. It is May 1945 on Okinawa, and the Marines trying to cross this open killing ground are being shredded by Japanese mortar and artillery fire. The air is thick with pulverized coral dust. Fragments of shattered ammunition boxes and discarded packs lie where men dropped them running for their lives.

The ridge near San Jose Hacienda rose steep and stubborn out of the jungle, a wall of earth and rock that dominated the valley floor. Somewhere up there, hidden in spider holes—small, camouflaged fighting pits—and pillboxes, Japanese soldiers waited behind interlocking bands of machine-gun fire. To reach the crest, Company I of the 160th Infantry Regiment had only one narrow approach, a trail that funneled men into a killing zone. Staff Sergeant John C.

John D.

A Medal of Honor story of courage under fire in the Normandy campaign.

A Medal of Honor story of sacrifice and moral courage in the Pacific war.

A Medal of Honor story of relentless leadership and courage under fire in World War II.

A Medal of Honor story of one-man courage under fire in the Philippines campaign of World War II.

The B-24 shook as it skimmed over the Romanian countryside, treetops flashing beneath the wings and church steeples knifing up toward the formation. Ahead, the sky over Ploesti was already boiling with black bursts of antiaircraft fire and thick columns of oily smoke. Colonel John Riley Kane, commanding the third element of heavy bombers in a massive low-level strike, peered through the haze and realized something was wrong. The main force that should have been ahead of him was gone.

A Medal of Honor story of courage under fire and quiet sacrifice in the Pacific campaign of World War II.

A Medal of Honor story of courage under fire in the Philippines campaign of World War II.

The black volcanic sand of Iwo Jima offered no cover, only shallow shell holes and jagged rock. On the morning of March 9, 1945, Platoon Sergeant Joseph R. Julian lay there with the rest of his company, pressed into the ash while enemy fire tore long furrows across the slope. Ahead of them, a line of Japanese trenches and pillboxes guarded a critical rise. Machine guns hammered from narrow firing slits.

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

The October 1944 landings restored a major Allied foothold in the Philippines. Fleet battles protected that foothold, but Japanese reinforcement and the struggle for routes toward Ormoc made the ground campaign longer and more difficult than the beach assault alone suggests.

The return to Luzon combined amphibious landings, the destruction and liberation of Manila, the recovery of the bay approaches and months of fighting in mountain defenses. Capturing the capital did not end the island campaign.

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.

Another November 8th, separated by two decades, found American paratroopers pushing through thick jungle rather than surf.