WWII – Page 18 – Historical Easter Eggs

January 27, 1945 Cabanatuan

The Japanese atrocity at Palawan sparked a series of raids at Santo Tomas Internment Camp, Bilibid Prison, Los Baños and others. The first such behind-enemy-lines rescue, was Cabanatuan.

Today, Cabanatuan calls itself the “Tricycle Capital of the Philippines”, with about 30,000 motorized “auto rickshaws”. Seventy-three years ago, the place was home to one of the worst POW camps of WWII.

1942 was a dreadful year for the allied war effort in the Pacific. The Battle of Bataan alone resulted in 72,000 prisoners being taken by the Japanese, marched off to POW camps designed for ten to twenty-five thousand.

20,000 died from sickness or hunger, or were murdered by Japanese guards on the 60 mile “death march” from Bataan, into captivity at Cabanatuan prison and others.

Cabanatuan held 8,000 prisoners at its peak, though the number dropped considerably as the able-bodied were shipped out to work in Japanese slave labor camps.

Two rice rations per day, fewer than 800 calories, were supplemented by the occasional animal or insect caught and killed inside camp walls, or by the rare food items smuggled in by civilian visitors.

2,400 died in the first eight months at Cabanatuan, animated skeletons brought to “hospital wards”, nothing more than 2’x6′ patches of floor, where prisoners waited to die.

A Master Sergeant Gaston saw one of these wards in July 1942, saying: “The men in the ward were practically nothing but skin and bones and they had open ulcers on their hips, on their knees and on their shoulders…maggots were eating on the open wounds. There were blow flies…by the millions…men were unable to get off the floor to go to the latrine and their bowels moved as they lay there”.

The war was going badly for the Japanese by October 1944, as Imperial Japanese High Command ordered able bodied POWs removed to Japan. 1,600 were taken from Cabanatuan, leaving 500 weak and disabled prisoners. The guards abandoned camp shortly after, though Japanese soldiers continued to pass through. POWs were able to steal food from abandoned Japanese quarters; some even captured two water buffalo called “Carabao”, which were killed and eaten. Many feared a trick and never dared to leave the camp. Most were too sick and weak to leave in any case, though the extra rations would help them through what was to come.

On December 14, some fifty to sixty soldiers of the Japanese 14th Area Army in Palawan doused 150 prisoners with gasoline and set them on fire, machine gunning or clubbing any who tried to escape the flames. Some thirty to forty managed to escape the killing zone, only to be hunted down and murdered, one by one. Eleven managed to escape the slaughter, and lived to tell the tale. 139 were burned, clubbed or machine gunned to death.

The atrocity at Palawan sparked a series of raids at Santo Tomas Internment Camp, Bilibid Prison, Los Baños and others. The first such behind-enemy-lines rescue, was Cabanatuan.

Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci of the United States Army’s elite 6th Ranger Battalion selected Captain Robert Prince to plan the rescue. “We couldn’t rehearse this”, Prince said. “Anything of this nature, you’d ordinarily want to practice it over and over for weeks in advance. Get more information, build models, and discuss all of the contingencies. Work out all of the kinks. We didn’t have time for any of that. It was now, or not”.

220px-Robert_Prince — 6th Ranger Battalion Capt. Robert Prince

On the evening of January 27, 1945, a 14-man advance team formed from the 6th Ranger Battalion and a special reconnaissance group called the “Alamo Scouts”, separated into two groups and began the 30-mile march behind enemy lines to liberate Cabanatuan.

The main force of 121 Rangers moved out the following day, meeting up with 200 Filipino guerrillas, serving as guides and helping in the rescue.

Other guerrillas assisted along the way, muzzling dogs and corralling chickens so that Japanese occupiers would hear nothing of their approach. Japanese soldiers once again occupied the camp, with 1,000 more camped across the Cabo River outside the prison. As many as 7,000 more were deployed, just a few miles away.

On the night of the 30th, a P-61 Black Widow piloted by Captain Kenneth Schrieber and 1st Lt. Bonnie Rucks staged a ruse. For 45 minutes, the pair conducted a series of aerial acrobatics, cutting and restarting engines with loud backfires while seeming to struggle to maintain altitude. Thousands of Japanese soldiers watched the show, as Rangers belly crawled into positions around the camp.

Pajota's_Guerrillas — Filipino Guerilla fighters of Captain Juan Pajota

Guard towers and pillboxes were wiped out in the first fifteen seconds of the assault. Filipino guerrillas blew the bridge and ambushed the large force across the river while one, trained to use a bazooka only hours earlier, took out four Japanese tanks.

In the camp, all was pandemonium as some prisoners came out and others hid, suspecting some trick to bring them out in the open. They were so emaciated that Rangers carried them out two at a time.

The raid was over in 35 minutes, POWs brought to pre-arranged meet-up places with dozens of carabao carts. A long trek yet remained, one POW said “I made the Death March from Bataan, so I can certainly make this one!” Over three days, up to 106 carts joined the procession, their plodding 2 MPH progress covered by strafing American aircraft.

Two American Rangers were killed in the raid, another 4 Americans and 21 Filipinos wounded, compared with 500-1,000 Japanese killed and four tanks put out of action. One prisoner died in the arms of a Ranger, before leaving the gate. Another died of illness on the long trip back. 464 American soldiers were liberated, along with 22 British and 3 Dutch soldiers, 28 American civilians, 2 Norwegians and one civilian each of British, Canadian and Filipino nationalities.

800px-Carabao_Cart — Carabao cart, similar to the ones used after the raid on Cabanatuan

Edwin Rose was a civilian, a purser on a ship plying the Singapore – Hong Kong run, when the war broke out. He was caught in Manila and spent 929 days in captivity. One of the longest-held POWs of the war in the Pacific. Rose awoke the night of the raid, and “heard all the shooting”. He “knew the Americans had arrived” but he rolled over and went back to sleep, thinking they were there to stay. On awakening the following morning, Rose found he had “Cabanatuan all my own.”

He dressed and shaved, put on his best clothes, and walked out of camp. Passing guerrillas found him and passed him to a tank destroyer. Give the man points for style. A few days later, Edwin Rose strolled into 6th army headquarters, a cane tucked under his arm.

The Cabanatuan raid of January 30, 1945 liberated over 500 allied prisoners, the Americans among them representing virtually every state in the Union. Begging pardon for any mistakes in rank and/or spelling, the following represents those from my home state of Massachusetts:

Lieutenant Commander Robert Strong, Jr., Arlington
Captain John Dugan, Milton
2nd Lieutenant John Temple, Pittsfield
Sergeant Richard Neault, Adams
Sergeant Stanislaus Malor, Salem
Private, 1st Class Joseph Thibeault, Lawrence
Private Edward Searkey, Lynn
USN C/QM Martin Seliga, Fitchburg
USN 1/C PO J.E.A. Morin, Danvers
USN AC MM Carl Silverman, Wareham

I hope I didn’t leave anyone out. These guys have earned the right to be remembered.

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January 26, 1945 Underage, and Under Weight

After the war, Audi Murphy was asked how he could have grabbed that machine gun, and taken on an entire company of German infantry. “They were killing my friends”, he replied.

In the days following the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, hundreds of thousands of Americans rushed to enlist in the United States’ armed services. One of these was the son of a Hunt County Texas sharecropper family, Audie Leon Murphy.

He went to the Marine Corps, Navy and the Army, and all turned him down, for being underweight and under age. Murphy changed his diet to “fatten” up, and appeared at a Dallas recruiting station six months later, armed with a sworn affidavit from his sister, inflating his age by a year. It was 10 days past his 17th birthday when Audi Murphy, all 5’5½” and 112 lbs of him, enlisted in the United States Army.

Murphy’s company commander thought he wasn’t big enough for infantry service, and attempted to transfer him to cook and bakers’ school. Murphy refused. He wanted to be a combat soldier.

Joining the 3rd Infantry Division of George S. Patton’s 7th Army, Murphy participated in amphibious landings in Sicily in July, fighting in nearly every aspect of the Italian campaign.

From Palermo to Messina and on to Naples, Anzio and Rome, the Germans were driven out of the Italian peninsula in savage and near continuous fighting that killed a member of my own family.

By mid-December, the 3rd ID suffered 683 dead, 170 missing, and 2,412 wounded. Now Sergeant Murphy was there for most of it, excepting two periods when he was down with malaria.

Two months after the “Overlord” landings in Normandy, elements of the 7th Army landed in southern France in an operation called “Dragoon”. By mid-September, only three of Company B’s original roster remained, the rest either killed or removed due to wounds or illness. It was around this time when Audi Murphy received his first Purple Heart. A mortar blast resulted in a heel wound that wasn’t very serious, but a far more dangerous hip wound followed from a sniper, that December. Murphy repaid the sniper, with a bullet between the German’s eyes.

He was still in the hospital when his unit moved into the Vosges Mountains, in Eastern France.

The “Colmar Pocket” was an 850 square mile area held by German troops: Murphy described it as “a huge and dangerous bridgehead thrusting west of the Rhine like an iron fist. Fed with men and materiel from across the river, it is a constant threat to our right flank; and potentially it is a perfect springboard from which the enemy could start a powerful counterattack.”

Rejoining his unit in January, now Lieutenant Murphy became Company Commander, being the only officer remaining in the Company. Disease, wounds and casualties had reduced company B’s fighting strength by this time from an original 235, to 18.

What remained of the unit was awaiting reinforcements on January 26, 1945, as a combined force of German infantry and armor assembled itself outside of town. “I see the Germans lining up for an attack”, said Murphy. “Six tanks rumble to the outskirts of Holtzwihr, split into groups of threes, and fan out toward either side of the clearing. Then wave after wave of white dots, barely discernible against the background of snow, start across the field. They are enemy infantrymen”.

Let Lt. Murphy’s Medal of Honor Citation describe what happened next:

“Second Lieutenant Audie L. Murphy, 01692509, 15th Infantry, Army of the United States, on 26 January 1945, near Holtzwihr, France, commanded Company B, which was attacked by six tanks and waves of infantry. Lieutenant Murphy ordered his men to withdraw to a prepared position in a woods while he remained forward at his command post and continued to give fire directions to the artillery by telephone. Behind him to his right one of our tank destroyers received a direct hit and began to burn. Its crew withdrew to the woods. Lieutenant Murphy continued to direct artillery fire which killed large numbers of the advancing enemy infantry. With the enemy tanks abreast of his position, Lieutenant Murphy climbed on the burning tank destroyer which was in danger of blowing up any instant and employed its .50 caliber machine gun against the enemy. He was alone and exposed to the German fire from three sides, but his deadly fire killed dozens of Germans and caused their infantry attack to waver. The enemy tanks, losing infantry support, began to fall back. For an hour the Germans tried every available weapon to eliminate Lieutenant Murphy, but he continued to hold his position and wiped out a squad which was trying to creep up unnoticed on his right flank. Germans reached as close as 10 yards only to be mowed down by his fire. He received a leg wound but ignored it and continued the single-handed fight until his ammunition was exhausted. He then made his way to his company, refused medical attention, and organized the company in a counterattack which forced the Germans to withdraw. His directing of artillery fire wiped out many of the enemy; he personally killed or wounded about 50. Lieutenant Murphy’s indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground saved his company from possible encirclement and destruction and enabled it to hold the woods which had been the enemy’s objective”.

After the war, Audi Murphy was asked how he could have grabbed that machine gun, and taken on an entire company of German infantry. “They were killing my friends”, he replied.

The man who had once been judged too small to fight was one of the most decorated American combat soldiers of WW2, having received every military combat award for valor the United States Army has to give, plus additional awards for heroism, from France and from Belgium.

Audi Murphy returned to civil life and a 21-year career in Hollywood, starring in 40 feature films and a television series. The transition was difficult There were frequent bouts of depression and insomnia, and an addiction to sedatives. He turned to poetry and songwriting for a creative outlet, but images of German war orphans could bring him to tears of guilt. He slept with a loaded gun under his pillow, and there were episodes which professional colleagues and family members, found alarming.

In Murphy’s Day it was called “Battle Fatigue”, or “Shell Shock”. He was candid about his own difficulties, and called on government to give increased consideration to the emotional toll inflicted on those whom it sent into combat.

Audi Murphy was killed in a plane crash near Catawba, Virginia, and buried with full military honors, in Arlington National Cemetery. He was 45.

Nine years later, the American Psychiatric Association recognized Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the 3rd edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Data from the National Vital Statistics System, a collaboration of the National Center for Health Statistics of the Department of Health and Human Services, reveals a suicide rate among veteran populations approximately twice that of comparable civilian populations.

I wonder about that term. “Disorder”. The word makes it sound like there’s something wrong with these guys.

When a soldier experiences an event, so traumatic that the very memory of it causes pain, I don’t understand how that can be characterized as a “disorder”. To me it seems like the properly functioning conscience of a good man, recoiling in horror at what he’s seen in service to his country.

January 20, 1940 A People, an Empire, a Drink

In 1865, Confederate Cavalry officer John Stith Pemberton was wounded by a saber slash. Like many wounded veterans, Pemberton became addicted to the morphine given him to help ease the pain. Unlike most, “Dr.” Pemberton possessed the wherewithal to do something about it.

In civil life, Pemberton was a chemist. After the war, the former cavalry officer experimented with non-opiate pain-killers, landing on a combination of the coca leaf and kola nut. By 1886, he was bottling his concoction and selling it for 5¢ a bottle out of an Atlanta pharmacy. Ten years later, Coca-Cola was available in every American state and territory.

Europeans had long believed that natural mineral waters held medicinal qualities, and favored such beverages over often-polluted common drinking water. In 1920, the company opened its first European bottling plant, in France. By the time of Hitler’s annexation of Austria, the “Anschluss” of 1938, Coca-Cola had been in Germany for ten years.

Around the time that Hitler and the Nazi party were coming to power in 1933, German-born Max Keith (pronounced “Kite”) took over Coca-Cola’s German subsidiary, Coca-Cola Deutschland, GmbH. Mark Pendergrast, author of For God, Country, and Coca-Cola, writes that Keith “valued his allegiance to the drink and to the company more than his allegiance to his own country”. He had no qualms about doing business with every aspect of German society, including Nazi party members.

Bizarre though it may sound to the modern ear, a number of famous Americans and companies were involved with the European fascist regimes of the 1930s, including William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Kennedy (JFK’s father), Charles Lindbergh, John Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon (banker, head of Alcoa, and Secretary of the Treasury), DuPont, General Motors, Standard Oil (now Exxon), Ford, ITT, Allen Dulles (later head of the CIA), Prescott Bush, National City Bank, General Electric, and many in Hollywood.

In Atlanta, Coca-Cola President Robert Woodruff was no exception. Woodruff himself attended the 1936 Berlin Olympics, alongside banners depicting the company logo, with the slogan “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Getrank – A People, an Empire, a Drink”.

Woodruff used a 10th anniversary party for Coca-Cola GmbH to organize a mass Nazi salute in honor of Hitler’s 50th birthday, declaring that it was “to commemorate our deepest admiration for our Fuhrer.”

On January 20, 1940, Winston Churchill urged neutral nations to oppose the Nazi war machine, warning that, “Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last.” Meanwhile in Germany, Coca Cola was the undisputed king of the domestic soft drink market.

That changed a year later, with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the German declaration of war on the United States.

American entry into WW2 meant that American companies ceased business with axis powers, while the German government threatened to seize “enemy owned” businesses. Max Keith was cut off from all communications with Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, and in danger of the Nazi party nationalizing his beloved company. As shipments of Coca-Cola’s mythical “7X’ syrup, dried up, Keith had to come up with a substitute for the domestic soft drink market. Schnell.

Soldiers Gulp Down Coca Cola — Coca-Cola worked with the U.S. government to ensure troops, including these men in Italy, had access to Coke throughout WW2. Bettmann/Getty Images

With wartime rationing already in effect, Keith and his chemists worked with what was available. Leftovers from other food industries, apple fibers, fruit peelings, beet sugar and whey, the liquid left over when milk was curdled and strained off to make cheese.

The result was “Fantasievoll”, “Fantastiche” (“Imaginative”, “Fantastic”). So it is that the soft drink “Fanta”, was borne of the wartime necessities of Nazi Germany.

Coca-Cola GmbH had concocted a sweet, slightly cheesy tasting soft drink, and the German market responded. Sales rose steadily throughout the war, particularly as alternatives became increasingly scarce. People didn’t just drink the stuff, either. With sweeteners of all kinds strictly rationed, Fanta made its way into baked goods, soups and a variety of foodstuffs. By 1943, Fanta sales reached almost three million cases.

Tristan Donovan, author of the book Fizz: How Soda Shook Up the World, writes “It was Fanta or nothing”. Pendergrast writes that there’s little doubt that Keith did business with Nazis, but he was more company guy than idealogue. “You could not do business inside of Nazi Germany unless you collaborated with them,” wrote Pendergrast. “There’s no question he was a Nazi collaborator. [But] he was not a member of the Nazi party. His allegiance was to Coca-Cola, not to Hitler.”

When American troops liberated Germany in the summer of 1945, legend has it that they found Keith in a half-bombed out factory, still bottling the stuff.

Fun fact: Hitler and his henchmen didn’t call themselves “Nazis”, in fact the term was frowned upon. They were the “NSDAP”, the Nazionale Socialistiche Deutsche Arbaits Partai, (National Socialist German Workers Party), the original abbreviation forwhich, was “Nasos”. The word “Nazi” derives from a Bavarian term meaning “simple minded” and was first used as a term of derision by journalist Konrad Heiden. The term was adopted by Anti-NSDAP’ers and Allied troops after war broke out, and the name stuck.

Despite being on the losing side, Keith was hailed as a hero back in Atlanta. The man who kept the company alive, in Germany. Vice President of Sales Harrison Jones called Keith a “great man”. He was given control of Coca-Cola, in all of Europe.

In April 1955, Coca-Cola reintroduced Fanta as an orange drink. Starting in Italy, the product made its way to the United States, in 1958. The name stuck, and why not. The company already owned the copyright.

In 2012, Fanta saw the strongest sales growth of the top 10 brands, the third Coke branded product to surpass 2 billion in case sales. Today, more than 100 flavors of Fanta are sold around the world, where customers from Latin America to Africa, to Europe, Brazil and China can say, “Es ist die Reale Sache”. It’s the Real Thing.

January 19, 1977 Tokyo Rose

FBI.gov states on its “Famous Cases” website that, “As far as its propaganda value, Army analysis suggested that the program had no negative effect on troop morale and that it might even have raised it a bit. The Army’s sole concern about the broadcasts was that “Annie” appeared to have good intelligence on U.S. ship and troop movements”.

There’s an old cliché that, if you speak with those who are convicted of a crime, all of them will say they are innocent. It’s an untrue statement on its face, but only two possible conclusions are possible, in the alternative. Either all convicts are guilty as charged, or someone, at some time, has been wrongly convicted.

To agree with the former is to accept the premise that what government does is 100% right, 100% of the time.

Iva Ikuko Toguri was born in Los Angeles on July 4, 1916, the daughter of Japanese immigrants. She attended schools in Calexico and San Diego, returning to Los Angeles where she enrolled at UCLA, graduating in January, 1940 with a degree in zoology.

In July of the following year, Iva sailed to Japan without an American passport. She variously described the purpose of the trip as the study of medicine, and going to see a sick aunt.

In September, Toguri appeared before the US Vice Consul in Japan to obtain a passport, explaining that she wished to return to permanent residence in the United States. Because she had left without a passport, her application was forwarded to the State Department for consideration. It was still on someone’s desk when Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, fewer than three months later.

Iva later withdrew the application, saying that she’d remain in Japan voluntarily for the duration of the war. She enrolled in a Japanese language and culture school to improve her language skills, taking a typist job for the Domei News Agency. In August 1943, she began a second job as a typist for Radio Tokyo.

In November of that year, Toguri was asked to become a broadcaster for Radio Tokyo on the “Zero Hour” program, part of a Japanese psychological warfare campaign designed to lower the morale of US Armed Forces. The name “Tokyo Rose” was in common use by this time, applied to as many as 12 different women broadcasting Japanese propaganda in English.

Toguri DJ’d a program with American music punctuated by Japanese slanted news articles for 1¼ hours, six days a week, starting at 6:00pm Tokyo time. Altogether, her on-air speaking time averaged 15-20 minutes for most broadcasts.

She called herself “Orphan Annie,” earning 150 yen per month (about $7.00 US). She wasn’t a professional radio personality, but many of those who recalled hearing her enjoyed the program, especially the music.

Shortly before the end of the war, Toguri married Felipe d’Aquino, a Portuguese citizen of Japanese-Portuguese ancestry. The marriage was registered with the Portuguese Consulate, though she didn’t renounce her US citizenship, continuing her Zero Hour broadcast until after the war was over.

After the war, a number of reporters were looking for the mythical “Tokyo Rose”. Two of them found Iva d’Aquino.

Henry Brundidge, reporting for Cosmopolitan magazine and Clark Lee, reporter for the International News Service, must have thought they found themselves a real “dragon lady”. The pair hid d’Aquino and her husband away in the Imperial Hotel, offering $2,000 for exclusive rights to her story.

$2,000 was not an insignificant sum in 1945, equivalent to $23,000 today. Toguri lied, “confessing” that she was the “one and only” Tokyo Rose. The money never materialized, but she had signed a contract giving the two rights to her story, and identifying herself as Tokyo Rose.

RSJ42461_grande — Henry Brundidge, Clark Lee

US Army authorities arrested her in September, while the FBI and Army Counterintelligence investigated her case. By the following October, authorities decided that the evidence did not merit prosecution, and she was released.

Department of Justice likewise determined that prosecution was not warranted and matters may have ended there, except for the public outcry that accompanied d’Aquino’s return to the US. Several groups, along with the noted broadcaster Walter Winchell, were outraged that the woman they knew as “Tokyo Rose” wanted to return to this country, instead demanding her arrest on treason charges.

The US Attorney in San Francisco convened a grand jury, and d’Aquino was indicted in September, 1948. Once again quoting fbi.gov, “Problematically, Brundidge enticed a former contact of his to perjure himself in the matter”.

The trial began on July 5, 1949, lasting just short of three months. The jury found d’Aquino guilty on one of fifteen treason charges, ruling that “[O]n a day during October, 1944, the exact date being to the Grand Jurors unknown, said defendant, at Tokyo, Japan, in a broadcasting studio of the Broadcasting Corporation of Japan, did speak into a microphone concerning the loss of ships.”

d’Aquino was sentenced to ten years and fined $10,000 for the crime of treason, only the seventh person in US history to be so convicted. She was released from the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, West Virginia in 1956, having served six years and two months of her sentence.

President Gerald Ford pardoned her on January 19, 1977, 21 years almost to the day after her release from prison. Iva Toguri d’Aquino passed away in 2006, at the age of 90. Neither perjury nor suborning charges were ever brought against Brundidge, or his witness.

January 18, 1943 Greatest Thing since Sliced Bread

The United States had been in World War II for two years in 1943, when Claude Wickard, head of the War Foods Administration as well as Secretary of Agriculture, had the hare brained idea of banning sliced bread.

The first automatic bread slicer was invented by Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa, in 1912. The idea was not at all popular among bakers, who feared that pre-sliced bread would go stale faster, leading to spoiled inventory and customer complaints.

A fire almost ended the project in 1917, when the prototype was destroyed along with the blueprints. Rohwedder soldiered on. By 1927, he had scraped up enough financing to rebuild his bread slicer.

Frank Bench, a personal friend of the inventor, was the first to install the machine. The first pre-sliced loaf was sold in July of the following year. Customers loved the convenience and Bench’s bread sales shot through the roof.

Sliced bread became a national hit when the Continental Baking Company, then owner of the “Wonder Bread” brand, began using a modified version of Rowhedder’s machine in 1930. Sliced bread was here to stay. Sort of.

Mr. Wickard was no stranger to hare brained ideas; it is he who lends his name to the landmark Supreme Court case, Wickard v. Filburne.

Talk about hare brained ideas. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 limited the area that farmers could devote to wheat production, in an effort to stabilize the price of wheat on the national market.

An Ohio farmer named Roscoe Filburne was producing more than his allotment. The federal government ordered him to destroy the surplus and pay a fine, even though his “surplus” was being consumed on the farm by the Filburne family and their chickens.

Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution includes the “Commerce Clause”, permitting the Congress “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes”. That’s it and, not surprisingly, the Federal District Court sided with the farmer.

The Federal government appealed to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that, by withholding his surplus from the interstate wheat market, Filburne was effecting that market, thereby falling under federal government jurisdiction under the Commerce Clause.

The Supreme Court, apparently afraid of President Roosevelt and his aggressive and illegal “court packing” scheme, ruled against the farmer. Ever since, what you don’t do can be argued in a court of law to effect interstate conditions, putting what you didn’t do under the jurisdiction of the federal government.

Get it? Neither do I, but I digress.

Back to Mr. Wickard, who enacted his ban against sliced bread and put it into effect on January 18, 1943.

The push-back, as you might guess, was immediate and vehement. One woman wrote to the New York Times: “I should like to let you know how important sliced bread is to the morale and saneness of a household. My husband and four children are all in a rush during and after breakfast. Without ready-sliced bread I must do the slicing for toast—two pieces for each one—that’s ten. For their lunches I must cut by hand at least twenty slices, for two sandwiches apiece. Afterward I make my own toast. Twenty-two slices of bread to be cut in a hurry!”

The stated reasons for the ban never did make sense. At various times, Wickard claimed that it was to conserve wax paper, wheat and steel, but one reason was goofier than the one before.

According to the War Production Board, most bakeries had plenty of wax paper supplies on hand, even if they didn’t buy any. Furthermore, the federal government had a billion bushels of wheat stockpiled at the time, about two years’ supply, and the amount of steel saved by not making bread slicers has got to be marginal, at best.

The ban was rescinded on March 8, 1943. Pre-sliced bread was once again available to the federal government and its grateful subjects. There’s no telling who first used the expression, “The greatest thing since sliced bread”. A reasonable guess may be made, as to why.

January 17, 1994 Death of a Troop Ship

The National WWII Museum in New Orleans reports on its website that the men and women who fought and won the great conflict are now passing at a rate of 550 per day. How many, I wonder, might think back and remember passage on the most successful troop transport of their day.

The Federal Government passed the Merchant Marine Act in 1936, “to further the development and maintenance of an adequate and well-balanced American merchant marine”.

The act served multiple purposes, among them the modernization of what was then a largely WWI vintage merchant marine fleet, serving as the basis for a naval auxiliary that could be activated in time of war or national emergency.

Two years later, the first keel laid under the Merchant Marine act was the SS America, built by the United States Line and operated as a passenger liner until the United States entered WWII in 1941.

Naval interiors of the age tended to be stodgy and overwrought. SS America has the almost unique distinction of having its interiors designed entirely by women, as naval architect William Francis Gibbs turned to the all-female team of Miriam Smyth, Ann Urquhart & Dorothy Marckwald. “It is not without reason”, according to team leader “Dot” Marckwald, “the majority of the passengers are women, and no man could ever know as much about their comfort problems and taste reactions as another woman”.

SS America was christened by Eleanor Roosevelt and launched on August 31, 1939. The next day, Adolf Hitler invaded Poland.

America would serve as a passenger liner for the two years remaining to American neutrality. American flags were painted on both sides of her hull, and at night she sailed while fully illuminated.

Where there are government subsidies, there are strings. For SS America, those strings were pulled on May 28, 1941, while the ship was at port in Saint Thomas, in the US Virgin Islands. The ship had been called into service by the United States Navy, and ordered to return to Newport News.

Re-christened the USS West Point, she served as a transport for the remainder of the war, carrying in excess of 350,000 troops and other passengers by 1946. It was the largest total of any Navy troop ship in service during WWII, and included USO entertainers, Red Cross workers, and prisoners of war. As SS America, she had even carried two Nazi spies as part of her crew, until their discharge on the vessel’s return to Virginia. The two spies, Franz Joseph Stigler and Erwin Wilheim Siegler, were members of the Duquesne spy ring, reporting allied movements in the Panama Canal Zone until they and 31 of their cohorts were found out late in 1941.

During her service to the United States Navy, West Point was awarded the American Defense Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, and World War II Victory Medal.

Returned to civilian service in 1946 and re-christened SS America, the ship remained a favorite for cruise ship vacationers through most of the fifties. By 1964, the competition from larger, faster ships and the airlines had put the best years behind the aging liner.

Sold and then sold again, she had come full circle by 1978, when new owners tried to capitalize on the old ship’s mystique. She was in terrible condition and her refit nowhere near complete when SS America set sail on her first cruise on June 30, 1978. There was rusted metal, oil soaked rags and backed up sewage. There were filthy mattresses and soiled linens, and so many complaints that the ship turned back after barely clearing the Statue of Liberty.

Impounded for non-payment of debts and receiving an inspection score of 6 out of a possible 100 points by the Public Health Service, the US District Court ordered SS America to be sold at auction.

She was sold to a Syrian shipowner in 1984, who renamed her “Alferdoss”, to be converted into a hotel ship, off the coast of Libya. The name means “paradise” in Arabic. At this point, she was anything but. There was one offer to use Alferdoss as an offshore prison ship in Texas which the owner rejected, asking “What kind of a fate for a once-proud ship would that be?”

The hulk of the SS America seemed destined for the scrap heap in 1992, when a surprising offer came in from the Chao Phraya Developement Transport Company of Thailand. This outfit valued the art deco style of the 1930s interior, so evocative of the Big band era. Sold in 1993 and renamed the American Star, the new owners planned to convert her to a five-star hotel ship off Phuket, in Thailand.

A planned 100-day tow began on New Year’s Eve 1993, but the lines broke. On January 17, 1994, the former SS America was adrift in foul seas, running aground in the Canary Islands the following day. Discussions of salvage operations were soon quashed, as the ship broke in two in the pounding surf.

By the spring of 2013, the only time you could tell there was a wreck on the beach, was at low tide.

January 13, 1997 Buffalo Soldier

After the war, the town of Sommocolonia erected a Memorial, to nine brave soldiers who gave their lives, that their brothers might live. Eight Italians, and one American.

In September 1867, Private John Randall of Troop G, United States 10th Cavalry Regiment, was assigned to escort two civilians on a hunting trip. The hunters became the hunted when a band of 70 Cheyenne warriors swept down on the trio. The two civilians were killed in the initial attack and Randall’s horse shot out from under him.

Cornered in a washout under some railroad tracks, Randall single handedly held off the attack with his revolver, despite a gunshot wound to his shoulder and no fewer than 11 lance wounds.

By the time help arrived, 13 Cheyenne warriors lay dead. Private Randall was still standing. Word spread among the Cheyenne about a new kind of soldier, “who had fought like a cornered buffalo; who like a buffalo had suffered wound after wound, yet had not died; and who like a buffalo had a thick and shaggy mane of hair.”

On July 28, 1866, the Army Reorganization Act authorized the formation of 30 new units, including two cavalry and four infantry regiments “which shall be composed of colored men.”

The 10th US Cavalry, formed on September 21, 1866 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, was the first unit of “Negro Cavalry”. The 10th would soon be joined by the 9th, 24th and 25th Cavalry, all-black units which would come to be known as “Buffalo Soldiers”.

While several all-black regiments were formed during the Civil War, including the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry depicted in the movie “Glory”, these were the first peacetime all-black regiments in the regular Army.

The original units fought in the American Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine-American War, the Border War and two World Wars, amassing 22 Medals of Honor by the end of WW1.

The old met the new during WWII, when 1^st Sergeant Mark Matthews, veteran of the Pancho Villa Expedition, WW1, WW2 and the Battle of Saipan, was sent to train with the Tuskeegee Airmen.

In the end, Matthews would prove too old to fly. A member of the Buffalo Soldiers Drum & Bugle Corps, Matthews would play taps at Arlington National Cemetery, always from the woods. Blacks of the era were not allowed at “white” funerals.

Matthews retired shortly before the Buffalo Soldiers were disbanded, part of President Truman’s effort to integrate United States’ armed forces.

In December 1944, the segregated 366th Regiment of the 92nd Infantry Division (colored), the Buffalo Soldiers, were fighting in the vicinity of Sommocolonia, in northern Italy.

On Christmas day, German soldiers began to infiltrate the town, disguised as civilians. A heavy artillery barrage began in the early morning hours of the 26th, followed by an overwhelming attack of enemy ground forces. Vastly outnumbered, American infantry were forced to conduct a fighting retreat.

1st Lieutenant John R. Fox, forward observer for the 598th Field Artillery Battalion, volunteered to stay behind with a small Italian force, to help slow the enemy advance.

From the second floor of a house, Lieutenant Fox directed American defensive fire by radio, adjusting each salvo closer to his own position. Warned that his final adjustment would bring artillery fire down on his head, the soldier who received the message was stunned at the response. 1st Lt. John Fox’ last known words, were “Fire it.”

John-Robert-Fox-1 — 1st Lieutenant John Robert Fox deliberately called down American artillery on his own position

When American forces retook the town, Lieutenant Fox’ body was found with those of about 100 German soldiers.

Sandra Fox of Boston, his only daughter, was two-years old when her father went to war.

The King James Bible translates John 15:13, as “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”. After the war, the town of Sommocolonia erected a Memorial, to nine brave soldiers who gave their lives, that their brothers might live. Eight Italians, and one American.

Sommocolonia_Memorial — Sommocolonia Memorial

In a January 13, 1997 ceremony at the White House, President Bill Clinton awarded the Medal of Honor, posthumously, to the family of 1st Lt. John Robert Fox.

1^st Sergeant Mark Matthews died of pneumonia on September 6, 2005, at the age of 111. The last of the Buffalo Soldiers was buried with honors, at Arlington National Cemetery, section 69, grave #4215.

The rank of General of the Armies is equivalent to that of a six-star general, the highest possible operational rank in the United States Armed Forces. The rank has been held only twice in all American history, once awarded posthumously to George Washington, and once to an active-duty officer, John J. Pershing.

Memorial Day celebration in Washington, D.C. — 1st Sgt. Mark Matthews, the last of the Buffalo Soldiers

Then-1st Lieutenant Pershing served with the Buffalo Soldiers from October 1895 to May 1897 plus another six months in Cuba, and came to respect soldiers of African ancestry as “real soldiers” in every way.

As West Point instructor beginning in 1897, Pershing was looked down upon and insulted by white cadets and officers, aggrieved over Pershing’s strict and unyielding disciplinary policies. The press sanitized the favorite insult to “Black Jack”. The name they called the man, was uglier still.

During WW1, General Pershing bowed to the segregationist policies of President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of War Newton Baker.

It seems that John Joseph Pershing understood what the northeast academic and the Ohio politician had yet to learn, a principle that the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. would spell out, some fifty years later

“We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools”.

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January 8, 1945 The Sub that Bagged a Train

So ended the only ground combat operation of WW2, on the soil of the Japanese homeland. And so it is, that an American submarine came to count a Medal of Honor and a Japanese locomotive, among its battle honors.

In the early phase of WW2, the traditional role of the American submarine service was to search, identify and report enemy activity to surface ships. Customary tactics emphasized stealth over offense, preferring to submerge and lie in wait over the surface attack.

Small wonder. The Mark XIV torpedo, the primary anti-ship submarine-launched torpedo of WW2, was literally a scandal. Not only was torpedo production woefully inadequate to the needs of the war in the Pacific, but stingy pre-war budgets had precluded live-fire testing of the thing.

Among the Mark-XIV’s more pronounced deficiencies was a tendency to run about 10-ft. too deep, causing it to miss with depressing regularity. The magnetic exploder often caused premature firing of the warhead, and the contact exploder frequently failed altogether. There must be no worse sound to a submariner, than the metallic ‘clink’ of a dud torpedo bouncing off an enemy hull.

Worse still, these things tended to ‘run circular’, meaning that they’d return to strike the firing vessel.

USS_Barb_(SS-220)_underway_in_May_1945 — USS Barb (SS-220) underway in May, 1945

On July 24, 1943, Lawrence “Dan” Daspit commanding USS Tinosa (SS-283) attacked the 19,000-ton whale factory ship Tonan Maru III. Tinosa fired fifteen torpedoes with two stopping dead in the water and the other thirteen striking their target. Not one of them exploded. Thinking that he had a bad production run, Daspit kept his last torpedo for later inspection. Nothing out of the ordinary, was found.

Commander Eugene “Lucky” Fluckey didn’t subscribe to the conventional wisdom. WW2 vintage submarines were designed for speed on the surface, and USS Barb (SS-220) was capable of 21 knots. Equivalent to 24mph on land. Under Commander Fluckey, Barb was for all intents and purposes, a fast-attack surface craft.

Sam Moses, writing for historynet’s “Hell and High Water,” writes, “In five war patrols between May 1944 and August 1945, the 1,500-ton Barb sank twenty-nine ships and destroyed numerous factories using shore bombardment and rockets launched from the foredeck”.

In January 1945, the Barb, USS Picuda (SS-382), and the USS Queenfish (SS-393) were ordered to the China Sea, blocking the Formosa Strait to Japanese shipping.

On the 8th, the small “wolf pack” encountered eight large Japanese merchant ships, escorted by four patrol boats. In a two-hour running night battle, Barb sank merchant cargo ships Anyo Maru and Tatsuyo Maru in explosions so violent that Barb was forced to go deep, even then suffering light damage to her decks. She also sank merchant tanker Sanyo Maru and damaged the army cargo ship Meiho Maru.

The merchant tanker Hiroshima Maru ran aground in the confusion. SS-220 returned the following day, to finish the job.

Two weeks later, USS Barb spotted a 30-ship convoy, anchored in three parallel lines in Namkwan Harbor, on the China coast. Slipping past the Japanese escort guarding the harbor entrance under cover of darkness, the American submarine crept to within 3,000 yards.

Fluckey gave the order and Barb fired her six bow torpedoes at the tightly packed convoy. Swinging around, she fired her four stern torpedoes, just as the first salvo slammed home. Four ships were mortally wounded and another three heavily damaged, as a Japanese frigate opened fire.

It took a full hour to extract herself from the uncharted, heavily mined and rock-obstructed shallows of Namkwan Harbor. Torpedoes meant for the American sub struck Chinese junks instead. A Japanese aircraft appeared overhead, just as Barb slipped out into deeper water. No wonder they called him “Lucky Fluckey”.

The episode earned Commander Fluckey the Medal of Honor in March, 1945.

On completion of her 11th patrol, USS Barb underwent overhaul and alterations, including the installation of 5″ rocket launchers, setting out on her 12th and final patrol in early June.

For the first time in the history of submarine warfare, rocket attacks were successfully employed against shore targets, including facilities in Shari, Hokkaido; Shikuka, Kashiho; and Shiritoru. Barb also attacked Kaihyo To with her regular armaments, destroying 60% of the town.

By mid July 1945, USS Barb had racked up one of the most successful records in the submarine service, sinking the third-highest gross tonnage of enemy shipping of the entire war, and the highest in Japanese shipping, according to the Japanese’ own records..

In poring over a coastal map of Karafuto, the Japanese end of Sakhalin island, the answer as to what to do next, soon came clear. The American sub was going to take out the supply line to enemy merchant shipping, and use a Japanese train, to do it.

Steel plates were bent and welded into crude tools, and a team of eight volunteers was selected. There was so much excitement among the crew over the idea, that even the Japanese POW on board wanted to go ashore, promising he wouldn’t try to escape.

On the night of July 22-23, Fluckey maneuvered the sub into shallow water within 950 feet of land, and put two rubber rafts ashore.

Working so close to a Japanese guard tower that they could almost hear the snoring of the sentry, the eight-man team dug into the space between two ties and buried the 55-pound scuttling charge. They then dug into the space between the next two ties, and placed the battery.

At one point the team had to dive for the bushes, as a night train came through.

At last the work was done and, for the first time that night, the group disobeyed a direct order. The other seven had been ordered to back off as Electricians Mate 3rd Class Billy Hatfield wired the switch and activated the bomb. That way only one man would die if things went wrong, but these guys weren’t going anywhere. Seven men looked on as Hatfield made the final connections, each wanting to see that this last step was done right.

Barb had worked her way to within 600′ of shore and the shore party was barely halfway back, when the second train came through. A thunderous explosion tore through the stillness, as night turned to day. Pieces of the locomotive were thrown 200 feet in the air as twelve freight cars, two passenger cars, and a mail car derailed and piled together.

There was no further need for stealth. With barely 6′ of water under her keel, Fluckey took up a megaphone, bellowing “Paddle like the devil!” Five minutes later the shore party was on board. As “The Galloping Ghost of the China Coast” slipped away, every crew member not absolutely necessary to the operation of the boat was on-deck, to witness the spectacle they had wrought.

So closes a little-known chapter of the war in the Pacific. The only ground combat of WW2, carried out on the Japanese home islands. So it is, that an American submarine came to count a Medal of Honor and a Japanese locomotive, among its battle honors.

USS_Barb_crew_1945_i03570 — Members of the USS Barb demolition squad pose with her battle flag at the conclusion of her 12th war patrol, Pearl Harbor, August 1945. Chief Gunners Mate Paul G. Saunders, USN, Electricians Mate 3rd Class Billy R. Hatfield, USNR, Signalman 2nd Class Francis N. Sevei, USNR, Ships Cook 1st Class Lawrence W. Newland, USN, Torpedomans Mate 3rd Class Edward W. Klingesmith, USNR, Motor Machinists Mate 2nd Class James E. Richard, USN, Motor Machinists Mate 1st Class John Markuson, USN; and Lieutenant William M. Walker, USNR.

In addition to Commander Fluckey’s Medal of Honor, the crew of USS Barb earned a Presidential Unit Citation, a Navy Unit Commendation, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with eight battle stars, the World War II Victory Medal, and the National Defense Service Medal. Of all those awards, the one of which later-Rear Admiral Fluckey was most proud, was the one he didn’t get. In five successful combat patrols under Commander Eugene Fluckey, not one crew member of the USS Barb ever received so much as a purple heart.

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December 22, 1944 The Battered Bastards of Bastogne

The seven roads leading to Antwerp converged in Bastogne, in what the Germans called “Straße Oktopus”, “Road Octopus”. The town was strategically indispensable to the German drive on Antwerp, and all or parts of 7 German armored divisions converged on the place. Over 54,000 men. The Allies understood the importance of the place as well. General Eisenhower dispatched the 101st Airborne Division, to hold the town, at all costs.

The largest German offensive of the western front burst out of the frozen Ardennes forest on December 16, 1944, aiming to drive a wedge between British and American forces and to capture the Belgian port of Antwerp, vital to the German need to re-supply. It was called “Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein”. “Operation Watch on the Rhine”.

The tactical surprise was complete, allied forces driven back through the densely forested regions of France, Belgium and Luxembourg. Wartime news maps showed a great inward “bulge” in the lines, and the name stuck. The Battle of the Bulge was the largest and bloodiest battle fought by the US in WWII, fought in the harshest winter conditions in recorded history and involving 610,000+ Americans.

For two days, a desperate defense of the nearby villages of Noville and Foy held back the 2nd Panzerdivision, as 11,000 men and 800 officers of the 101st joined a combined force of 11,000 converging on Bastogne. By the 21st, Bastogne’s field hospital was overrun, surrounded by forces outnumbering them 2½ to one. Poorly supplied for the cold winter conditions with air supply made all but impossible by weather conditions, the citizens of Bastogne gave their blankets to the Americans, along with white linens to be used for camouflage.

On the morning of December 22, 1944, two German officers appeared at the American perimeter along with two enlisted men, carrying a white flag. They were a Major Wagner of the 47th Panzer Corps, and Lt. Hellmuth Henke of the Panzer Lehr Operations Section.

The pair carried a note from German General Luttwitz, 165 words in all, and reading in part: “To the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne. There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the presentation of this note“.

The note worked its way up the chain of command to the acting Division Commander, General Tony McAuliffe. Told that there was a surrender ultimatum, McAuliffe first thought that it was the Germans who wanted to surrender. Soon disabused of that notion, he laughed and said: “Us surrender? Aw, nuts!”

Knowing that he had to reply, McAuliffe said “Well I don’t know what to tell them.” Lt. General Harry Kinnard spoke up, saying, “That first remark of yours would be hard to beat”. McAuliffe said, “What do you mean?” and Kinnard replied “Sir, you said ‘Nuts’.” They all agreed, and McAuliffe wrote his reply.

“To the German Commander, “Nuts!” The American Commander.”

Joseph H. “Bud” Harper was the American army officer who delivered the reply, with medic Ernie Premetz acting as translator.

Confused by the American slang, Henke asked “What does that mean?” Harper said to Premetz “You can tell them to take a flying shit.” The medic, knowing he had to convey the intent of the message, translated as “Du kannst zum Teufel gehen”. You can go to hell. Harper then said, “If you continue to attack, we will kill every goddamn German that tries to break into this city.” Henke replied, “We will kill many Americans. This is war.” Harper then said, “On your way Bud, and good luck to you.”

Years later, Harper would say that he always regretted wishing the Germans luck.

In his Christmas eve letter of 1944, General McAuliffe wrote “What’s merry about all this, you ask? We’re fighting – it’s cold we aren’t home. All true but what has the proud Eagle Division accomplished with its worthy comrades the 10th Armored Division, the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion and all the rest? Just this: We have stopped everything that has been thrown at us from the north, east, south and west”.

Elements of George Patton’s 3rd Army would break through from the southwest two days later, ending the German encirclement.

By the end of January, the last great effort of German armed forces had been spent and driven back beyond their original lines. An official report by the US Army on the Battle of the Bulge lists 108,347 casualties, including 19,246 killed, 62,489 wounded and 26,612 captured and missing.

Those numbers could have been far worse, if not for what newspapers would soon call the “Battered Bastards of Bastogne”.

Afterward

A Black nurse called “Anna” briefly appeared in Historian Stephen Ambrose’ ‘A Band of Brothers’, and on the HBO series based on the book. But who was Anna? Was she a myth? British military historian Martin King discovered her in a nursing home, 61 years after the encirclement at Bastogne.

Augusta Marie Chiwy (“Shee-wee”) was the bi-racial daughter of a Belgian veterinarian and a Congolese mother, she never knew.

Thinking it safe to visit her father in Bastogne that Christmas, Chiwy found herself, like everyone else in that place, surrounded. A trained nurse, Chiwy spent the entire siege tending to the wounded, along with Dr. Jack Prior. Once, she even ran through enemy fire to collect the wounded from the field.

On Christmas eve, the petite nurse was blown off her feet and through a wall. She got up and went back to it, despite the direct hit that killed 30 American wounded, along with the only other nurse at the Rue Neufchatel aid station, Renée Lemaire.

Chiwy married after the war, and rarely talked about her experience in Bastogne. It took King a full 18 months to coax the story out of her. The result was the 2015 Emmy award winning historical documentary, “Searching for Augusta, The Forgotten Angel of Bastogne”.

In 2011, Augusta Chiwy was awarded a Knighthood in the Order of the Crown in the name of King Albert II, of Belgium. The United States Army awarded her the Civilian Award for Humanitarian Service, presented by the Ambassador to Belgium.

The Forgotten Angel of Bastogne died on August 23, 2015, at the age of 94.

December 21, 1861 Medal of Honor

Medals of Honor are not awarded casually, reserved only for the bravest of the brave, and for well-documented acts of valor. Permit me to share a few examples, each from his own moment in history.

As Revolution-era General, George Washington once wrote that the “road to glory in a patriot army and a free country is…open to all”. European armies of the time bestowed honors, only on high-ranking officers who had achieved victory in battle. There was no such honor for the common soldier.

There was precedent for such an award in the Colonial military, but only under limited circumstances. Congressional medals were awarded to Washington himself on March 25, 1776, following the British evacuation of Boston, to General Horatio Gates in November 1777, in recognition of his victory over British General John Burgoyne at Saratoga, and to Major-General “Light-Horse Harry” Lee, father of Civil War-era Confederate general Robert E. Lee, in recognition of his 1779 attack on the British position at Paulus Hook, New Jersey.

A “Fidelity Medallion” was awarded to three militia men in 1780, for the capture of John André, the British officer and spy whose capture uncovered the treachery of General Benedict Arnold.

The future 1^st President’s general orders of August 7, 1782 established a “Badge of Military Merit” to recognize those members of the Continental Army who performed “any singular meritorious action”.

In time, Washington’s Badge of Military Merit morphed into what we now know as the Purple Heart, but the precedent had been set. This was the first such honor available to any U.S. military service member, who had distinguished himself by act of valor.

Congress created the “Meritorious Service Citation Certificate” around the time of the Mexican-American war, a recognition of “any private soldier who had distinguished himself by gallantry performed in the presence of the enemy”. The award would come in and out of use in the decades that followed, later becoming the Distinguished Service Medal, an award available to United States and foreign military service personnel and, in limited circumstances, civilians.

In the early days of the Civil War, General-in-chief of the army Winfield Scott was against such an award. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles adopted the idea on behalf of the Navy, following Scott’s retirement in October 1861. President Abraham Lincoln signed “Public Resolution #82” on December 21, 1861, creating a Navy medal of honor.

An Army version of the medal was created the following July, first awarded to six Union soldiers for hijacking the Confederate locomotive, “The General”. Leader of the raid James Andrews was caught and hanged as a Union spy. He alone was judged ineligible for the medal of honor, as he was a civilian.

Medals of Honor are not awarded casually, reserved only for the bravest of the brave, and for well-documented acts of valor. Permit me to share a few examples, each from his own moment in history.

Few soldiers on the Civil War battlefield had a quicker route to death’s door, than the color bearer. National and regimental flags were all-important sources of inspiration and communication.

Reverend W. Jamison Thomson of Hartford, CT described the importance of the battle flag: “It represents the cause, is the rallying point, while it is aloft proclaims that victory is still intended, is the center of all eyes, is the means of communication between soldiers, officers, and nation,” he said, “and after the engagement, and after many of them, is their marked memento so long as its identity can be preserved.”

Pvt. Joseph E. Brandle served as regimental color bearer, with the 17th Michigan Infantry. Private Brandle earned the MOH for his actions of November 16, 1863, near Lenoire, Tennessee…”…[H]aving been twice wounded and the sight of one eye destroyed, [he] still held to the colors until ordered to the rear by his regimental commander.”

During the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, Chaplain’s assistant and regimental musician Calvin Pearl Titus of Vinton, Iowa, volunteered to scale the 30-ft walls of Peking, raising the American flag over the outer walls of the city. President Theodore Roosevelt awarded Titus the medal of Honor, for “Gallant and daring conduct in the presence of his colonel and other officers…” He was “the last color bearer”.

On October 8, 1918, Tennessee native Cpl. Alvin Cullum York of the 82nd Division lead a group of seventeen against a numerically superior German force, dug in at Chatel-Chehery, France.

Let his citation tell the story: “…After his platoon had suffered heavy casualties and three other non-commissioned officers had become casualties, Cpl. York assumed command. Fearlessly leading seven men, he charged with great daring toward a machine gun nest, which was pouring deadly and incessant fire upon his platoon. In this heroic feat the machine gun nest was taken, together with four officers and 128 men and several guns.”

Kingston Texas 2nd Lieutenant Audie Murphy found himself senior officer of a company of 18, whittled down from 235 by disease, wounds and casualties. On January 26, 1945, Murphy’s small force found itself under assault by six German tanks and a large infantry force.

A man the Marine Corps had once turned down for being too small, Murphy climbed aboard a burning tank destroyer. Out in the open and exposed to German fire from three sides, the 19-year old single-handedly fought off the entire assault, killing or wounding fifty and causing the German tanks to withdraw.

Father Emil Kapaun selflessly sacrificed himself on behalf of his fellow prisoners in 1951, in the frozen hell of a North Korean prison camp. President Barack Obama awarded Kapaun’s family the Medal of Honor during a ceremony in the east wing of the White House, on April 11, 2013.

Chaplain Kapaun’s body lies in an unmarked mass grave, somewhere in Pyoktong county.

PFC Sammy Lee Davis distinguished himself during the small hours of November 18, 1967, when the 4th Artillery of 9th Infantry Division came under heavy attack west of Cai Lay, Republic of Vietnam.

Repeatedly knocked to the ground by enemy mortar fire and suffering multiple injuries, the Cannoneer from Dayton, Ohio fought back first with a heavily damaged, burning howitzer, and then with recoilless rifle and machine gun.

Two Medals of honor were awarded posthumously, to Delta Force snipers Gary Gordon and Randy Shugart, for their hopeless defense of the crash site of a downed UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter, against hundreds of fighters loyal to the Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.

Corporal Jason Lee Dunham of Scio New York deliberately threw himself on an Iraqi grenade on April 14, 2004, saving the lives of fellow Marines at the sacrifice of his own life. He was twenty-two.

Sergeant 1st class Jared Monti of Abington Massachusetts was killed in the mountains of Nuristan Province in Afghanistan, while attempting to rescue a wounded soldier from a hail of small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire.

Monti was the sixth person from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to be awarded the Medal of Honor. The Lee Brice song “I Drive your Truck“, voted Song of the Year at the 49th annual Academy of Country Music Awards, is his story.

The nation’s highest medal for military valor has been awarded 3,517 times since its inception in 1861, to 3,498 distinct recipients. 621 were awarded posthumously. Possibly without exception, these are people who will tell you that they are not heroes. They were doing a job and those left behind, are the real heroes.

If that is not the very definition of true heroism, it should be.

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