Search for Richard Bong's Plane-- Part 3

Richard Bong's Medal of Honor reads: "For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty in action in the Southwest Pacific area from October 10 to November 15, 1944.

"Though assigned to duty as gunnery instructor and neither required nor expected to perform combat duty, Major Bong voluntarily and at his own urgent request engaged in repeated combat missions, including unusually hazardous sorties over Balikpapan, Borneo, and the Leyte area of the Philippines.

"His aggressiveness and daring resulted in his shooting down enemy airplanes totaling eight during this period."

Bong also earned the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars, seven Distinguished Flying Crosses and 15 Air Medals.

--GreGen

Medal of Honor Recipient John Basilone

Back on October 11, 2022, I wrote about the christening of a new U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer, the USS Basilone (DDG-122).  It was named after World War II Marine Medal of Honor recipient John Basilone.

From the Arlington National Cemetery site.

JOHN BASILONE

Section 12, Grave 384

Gunnery Sergeant John Basolone (1916-1945) was awarded the Medal of Honor for extraodinary heroism in combat at Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands,  in October 1942.  During the brutal fighting with heavy casualties on both sides, he killed at least 38 Japanese soldiers.

He returned home to a hero's welcome, including a parade featured in "Life" magazine.

But, he requested to return to combat, stating that he was "just a plain soldier" who belonged with his unit.

On February 19, 1945,  Basilone was killed in action leading an assault on the beaches of Iwo Jima.  He was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross, the only enlisted Marine to be honored with both the Navy cross and the Medal of Honor..

--GreGen

Five Blacks Who Served in WW II That You Should Know: Edward A. Carter (1916-1963)

From the Ocober 18, 2022, Time Magazine, "5 black World War II veterans to know" by Olivia  B. Waxman.

EDWARD A. CARTER

Carter was raised in India and China and was fluent in Hindi, Mandarin and German.  He was one of about eighty Blacks who volunteered  for the Spanish Civil War against fascist General Franco, serving in an integrated unit at a time when U.S. Army units were segregated.  

Despite his language skills and combat experience overseas, the U.S. Army made him a cook in a quartermaster truck company, becoming one of many black Americans who were assigned to roles that really weren't suited to their skills set.

Black Americans were barred from combat roles, but near the end of the war,  the U.S. needed more troops for combat and asked black Americans to volunteer.  Carter did and served in the 12th Armored Division, earning a Medal of Honor, posthumously for fighting in Germany -- one of only seven black Americans to receive the award during World War II.

Of course, you might think he should have received that Medal of Honor back then and not after he died.

But, that was the way it was back then.

--GreGen

USS Basilone (DDG-122) Christened-- Part 1: Named After John Basilone, USMC

From the June 19, 2022, Chicago Tribune "Destroyer christened."

The christening of a Navy destroyer on Saturday at Navy Shipbuilder Bath Iron Works in Maine highlighted the sacrifices of two generations:  the ship's namesake killed in World War II and another Marine who died more than 60 years later.

The future USS Basilone, a 509 foot guided missile destroyer bears the name of  Marine Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone.

Basilone was awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism while defending Henderson Field against a fierce assault by a 3,000-strong Japanese force during the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942.

--GreGen

Remembering Herschel 'Woody' Williams, Last WW II Medal of Honor Recipient

The Veterans Site Greater Good by Dan Doyle.

Died Wednesday, June 29, 2022.  Known as a Marine's Marine.  Sadly, also, he was the last surviving recipient of the Medal of Honor during World War II.

He was born in 1923 on a dairy farm in Weirton, West Virginia, the youngest of 11 children.  When the war started, he tried to join the military, but  was first denied because he was too short.  That didn't stop him and finally joined the Marine Corps in 1943.

Two years later, he landed in Iwo Jima on February 25, 1945, as a demolitions man with the 1st Battalion, 21st Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division.  Two days later he would be in the fight of his life against entrenched Japanese machine gun emplacements that were devastating his unit.

He would go forward to those emplacements armed with a flame thrower and supported by four Marine riflemen, two of whom would be killed in action protecting Woody.  Over the next four hours he would attack the machine gun nests, taking them out one by one.

He would go back to the rear several times to get more demolitions and refill the flame thrower.  On one occasion, he charged a machine gun bunker, got on top of it, stuck the nozzle of the flame thrower through the portal, and silenced the gun.

For his actions that day, he was awarded the nation's highest military honor, the Medal of Honor.

--GreGen

Fifty Facts About D-Day-- Part 5: Medals of Honor

41.  The U.S. Army attacked with six divisions.

42.  500 gliders took to the air.

43.  A separate battle was waged high above the beach at Pointe du Hoc, 100-foot cliffs.

44.  Germany's mighty Atlantic Wall fell in a day.

45. There were  12 Medals of Honor.

46.  Heavy packs encumbered troops.

47.  Boat ramps on the Higgins Boats served as shield.

48.  One black unit participated.  The Army was segregated and black troops not allowed to fight.     The 330th  Barrage Balloon Battalion was there.

49.  That unit's medic is an unsung hero  Waverly B. Woodson.  Despite being injured himself, he saved hundreds of lives and kept four from drowning.  In recent years there is a movement to get him  a Medal of Honor.

50.  Germany surrendered less than a year later on May 7, 1945.

--GreGen

Medal of Honor Recipient Desmond Doss Buried at Chattanooga National Cemetery-- Part 2

While serving with his platoon in 1944 in Guam and the Philippines, he was awarded two Bronze Star Medals with a "V" Device for exceptional valor while aiding wounded soldiers under fire.

But it was his action at Okinawa that earned him his highest praise.  Again, while under fire, he saved the lives of 50-100 wounded Americans atop an area known as the Maeda Escarpment, but called Hacksaw Ridge by Americans.  (Hence the movie title.)

Doss suffered a left arm fracture from a sniper's bullet while being carried back to Allied lines, one of four wounds he suffered in this action.  At one point he had seventeen pieces of shrapnel embedded in his body from stepping on a grenade.

For his actions there, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Quite the Hero.  --GreGen

Medal of Honor Recipient Desmond Doss Buried at Chattanooga National Cemetery (from Movie 'Hacksaw Ridge')-- Part 1

From Wikipedia.

Desmond Thomas Doss (February 7, 1919-March 23, 2006)

United States Army corporal who served as a combat medic with the infantry.  he was twice awarded the Bronze Star Medal  for actions in Guam and the Philippines.

Doss further distinguished himself by saving the lives of 75 men at the Battle of Okinawa.  He is the only conscientious objector in history to receive the medal of Honor.  His life has been the subject of books, a documentary and the 2016 Oscar-winning film "Hacksaw Ridge."

He was from Lynchburg, Virginia, and was a devout Seventh-day Adventist who are firm believers in  nonviolence.

Before the outbreak of the war, he was employed as a joiner at a shipyard in Newport News, Virginia,.  he chose military service, despite being offered a deferment because of his shipyard service.  

He was sent to Fort Jackson in South Carolina for training with the reactivated 77th Infantry Division.  Meanwhile, his brother served aboard the USS Lindsey.

Doss refused to kill an enemy soldier or carry a gun dur to his Seventh-day Adventist beliefs.  He consequently became a medic to the 2nd Platoon, Co. B, 1st Battalion, 307th Infantry, 77th Infantry Division.

--GreGen

Chattanooga National Cemetery-- Part 2: Notable Internments

Notable Internments:

8 bodies of the Famed Andrews' Raiders from the Civil War, including James J. Andrews, the leader of the raid.

********************************

3, now 4, Medal of Honor recipients:

Master Sgt.  Ray E. Duke from the Korean War

Corporal Desmond Doss, World War II.  The first conscientious objector.  The 2016 movie "Hacksaw Ridge" was about his life.

Private  William F. Zion, Boxer Rebellion

********************************

Two Union generals from the Civil War:

William P. Sanders

Timothy Robbins Stanley

*********************************

186  foreign prisoners from World War I and World War II

One Canadian soldier from World War I

--GreGen

Chattanooga National Cemetery

From Wikipedia.

Charles H. Coolidge, one of the country's remaining two World War II Medal of Honor recipients died recently and was buried at the Chattanooga National Cemetery in Tennessee.  I'd never heard of it and wondered if their were any famous people buried there.

As of 2014, it had over 50,000 internments.

It was established in 1863 by the order of General George Henry Thomas after the Civil ar battles of Chattanooga as a place to bury dead Union soldiers.  It became Chattanooga National Cemetery in 1867 and by 1870, had more than 12,000 internments, most of them unknown.  Many were reinterred from other Civil War battlefields, including 1,500 from he Battle of Chickamauga.

During World War I, 78 German prisoners and World War II, 108 German prisoners  who died in captivity were buried there.

--  GreGen

Charles H. Coolidge, Medal of Honor Recipient, Die-- Part 2: For Action in France

After North Africa, his unit was sent to Italy where he was a sergeant and machine gun section leader.  He was awarded a Silver Star for action there on May 31, 1944.

On October  24, 1944, Coolidge was a technical sergeant in charge of a group of machine gunners and riflemen  of M Company and were ordered to hold a vital hilltop position in France near the German border.

During four days of attacks at Hill 623, east of Belmont-sur-Buttant in France, Coolidge and his group held off numerous enemy infantrymen, plus two tanks on October 27 using grenades.  One tank unsuccessfully fired five separate rounds directly at Coolidge.

For his actions above and beyond the call of duty during the battle, Coolidge was presented  the Medal of Honor by Lieutenant General  Wade H. Haislip during a ceremony at an airfield near Domstadt, Germany, on June 18, 1945.

He is interred at the Chattanooga National Cemetery beside his wife.

--GreGen

Charles Henry Coolidge, Medal of Honor Recipient-- Part 1: From Tennessee

The article I used about this man's death didn't have much about his military career or the action that got him his Medal of Honor, so I had to go elsewhere.

From Wikipedia.

(August 4, 1921-April 6, 2021)

United States Army technical sergeant and recipient  on the military's highest decoration of valor, the Medal of Honor, for his actions in France during World War II.

At the time of his death, he was the only surviving Medal of Honor recipient from the European Theater of the war.

Born in South Mountain, Tennessee, and graduated from Chattanooga High School.  Received basic training at Fort McClellan in Alabama  and then sent to Camp Butner in North Carolina and Camp Edwards in Massachusetts, where he was assigned to M Company, 3rd Battalion, 141st Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division.

In April 1943, he unit was shipped overseas to Oran, Algeria, to participate in the North Africa Campaign.

--GreGen

Who Is the Only Living World War II Medal of Honor Recipient?

In the last post, I wrote that Charles Coolidge had died and that he was one of the two remaining World War II medal of Honor winners.

So, who is the only one left?

His name is Herschel W. Williams, 97, who was recognized for his bravery on Iwo Jima.

--GreGen

One of Last Two WW II Medal of Honor Recipients Dies, Charles Coolidge, 99

From April 7, 2021, 6 WBRC "Tennessee World War II hero passes away at 99" by Peter Zampa/Gray DC.

Charles Coolidge, 99, died in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  He was one of the last two living WW II Medal of Honor recipients.  His death Tuesday April 6 serves as a stark reminder  that the Greatest Generation is getting smaller every day.

The Charles Coolidge Medal of Honor  Heritage Center in Chattanooga confirmed the sad news.

Coolidge was one of 472 Medal of Honor winners during the war.  He received it for fighting off dozens of German soldiers to save his own men.

--GreGen

MOH Recipient Robert Maxwell Dies in 2019-- Part 4: Recovery, Honors and Postwar Life

"I draped an arm over his shoulder, bled all over him, and we left," Maxwell said.  A jeep picked them up and ferried them to an aid station, where Maxwell received medical treatments as artillery obliterated the farmhouse and courtyard.

The grenade had wounded his right foot, torn his left bicep and struck his temple near his left eye.  But although Maxwell was "permanently maimed" according to his Medal of Honor citation, his actions "saved the lives of his comrades in arms and facilitated maintenance of vital military communications during the temporary withdrawal of the battalion's forward headquarters.

Maxwell was presented with the Medal of Honor in May 1945, while convalescing at Camp Carson in Colorado.  Days earlier his former commander, Ramsey, had helped lead the 3rd Infantry into Austria, where members of the division liberated Salzburg and Berchtesgaden and pressed on toward Hitler's Eagle's Nest, his mountaintop retreat.

Robert Dale Maxwell was born in Boise, Idaho, on October 26, 1920 and raised by his grandparents in western Kansas.  He left school to work on their farm and received his high school diploma in 2011 at age 90.

Although he had a Quaker upbringing, Maxwell decided against being a conscientious objector and enlisted in the Army in 1942.  He received two Silver Stars, a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts during the war.

After the war, he taught auto mechanics at high schools and county colleges in central Oregon.

Quite the Hero.  --GreGen

Medal of Honor Recipient Robert Maxwell Dies in 2019-- Part 3: The Fight at the Farmhouse

As a hail of bullets sheared tiles from the roof, Maxwell leaped to the ground, taking shelter behind a short rock wall topped with a mesh wire fence.  The German forces had evidently outmaneuvered the American rifle companies nearby, coming within ten yards of the wall and nearly as close to Maxwell's battalion commander, Lt. Col.  Lloyd B. Ramsey, who was inside the post with other officers.

Maxwell and his three comrades marshaled a defense, armed only with their .45s.

"Maxwell's courage was what held us together, " Cyril McColl, a technician fourth grade later told Collier's Magazine.  "The machine-gun fie was just clearing his head, but he sat there taking pot shots at everything that moved.  Our wall was beginning to crumble, and I was thinking how nice it would be to get out of there, when a grenade came over the chicken wire, and hit the cement floor right at our feet."

It was about 2 a.m. when Maxwell fell on the grenade and lost consciousness.  By most accounts, when he came to, the post was deserted, his fellow soldiers apparently believing he had died, had been ordered to evacuate.

Maxwell stumbled into the house, where he found the last American left in it, a lieutenant gathering phone wire.

--GreGen

Medal of Honor Recipient Robert Maxwell Dies in 2019-- Part 2: Strung Phone Wire

Maxwell had seen action a long time before the occasion he received the Medal of Honor for.  The onetime Colorado timber worker served as a "wire man," scaling roofs or trees to hang phone lines that enabled his battalion to communicate quickly on the battlefield.  

In North Africa, he had carried an M1 rifle before being classified as a noncombatant.  With his heavy wires and tools, his load was too heavy for a rifle.  Instead he was given a .45-caliber pistol for the invasions of Sicily and mainland Italy.

At Anzio, where Allies secured a beachhead for the liberation of Rome, Maxwell too shrapnel in both legs while repairing communications wires.  For several months afterwards, he was hospitalized in 1944 before rejoining his unit, the 7th Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division, for the invasion of Southern France dubbed Operation Dragoon.

By September, Maxwell's battalion had reached the city of Besancon, near the Swiss border.  He was stationed with a few GIs at an old pockmarked farmhouse on the outskirts of town, stringing wire on the observation post's when a German platoon suddenly opened fire with machine guns and 20mm antiaircraft weapons.

Next?  --GreGen

Medal of Honor Recipient Robert Maxwell Dies in 2019-- Part 1: Fell on a Grenade

From the May 16, 2019, Chicago Tribune "Medal of Honor recipient fell on grenade to save lives" by Harrison Smith, Washington Post.

He heard the hand grenade before he saw it,  And as the seconds ticked away and Robert Maxwell searched blindly through the darkness, he decided that the only thing worse than running away was picking it up and attempting to throw it back at the enemy -- an act that risked killing the three soldiers crouched alongside him.

When he finally found the grenade lying on the cement courtyard outside his battalion's embattled observation post in eastern France, he did the only thing that made sense.  Clutching a blanket to his chest, he dropped on top of the device, absorbing the full force of the explosion and saving the lives of his comrades.

"It's not the case that I was brave or a hero or anything like that," Maxwell, an Army Technician fifth grade during World War II, said years later.  "Because I just did what the only alternative was at the time.  There was nothing else to do."

For his actions early that morning on September 7, 1944, Maxwell was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration for valor.  He was 98, the oldest surviving Medal recipient when he died May 11, 2019, in Bend, Oregon, leaving only three surviving recipients from World War II.

--GreGen

Lt. John Fox, Black Medal of Honor Recipient

Last week I wrote in my Civil War II: The Continuing War on the Confederacy blog that one person thinks one of the Army bases named after a Confederate should be renamed for this man.  I'd never heard of him so looked him up in good ol' Wikipedia, and would have to say he would be a worthy person to name the base after in his honor.

From Wikipedia.

JOHN R. FOX  (May 18, 1915-December 26, 1944)

United States Army 1st lieutenant  who was killed in action after calling in artillery fire on the enemy during World War II.  In 1997, he was awarded the nation's  highest military decoration for valor, the Medal of Honor,, for his actions on December 26, 1944, in the vicinity of Sommocolonia, Italy.

Fox and six other Blacks who served during World War II were awarded the Medal of Honor by President Clinton on January 13, 1997,  in a ceremony at the White House.  The seven recipients were the first and only Black Americans  to be awarded the Medal of Honor  for World War II service.

This is considering that 25 Blacks received the Medal of Honor in the Civil War (including one at Fort Fisher).  Eighteen received the medal during the Indian Wars, six during the Spanish-American War and two during World War I.

Personally, i would like to see recommendations for the Medal of Honor opened again for deserving Blacks from World War II.

How So Few Blacks Were Awarded Medals of Honor Just Doesn't Sound Right.  --GreGen

Wilmington's WW II Role, By the Numbers-- Part 2:

During World War II, Wilmington was known as "The Defense Capital of the State."  Today, there is a movement to declare Wilmington as a "World War II Heritage City" largely led by Wilbur D. Jones.

The city also had a huge impact on shipbuilding for the war efforts.  It also hosted USOs, five military branches, a fighter plane training area and the headquarters of a railroad company.

Here are some NUMBERS to go with the city's contributions:

2--  Congressional Medal of Honor recipients from New Hanover County:  Charles Murray and William Halyburton.  A Wilmington middle school is named for Murray and the road to it is named for Halyburton. 

In addition, two pilots from Wilmington received the Navy Cross for helping sink a Japanese carrier at the Battle of Midway.

3-- Prisoner of War camps from February 1944 to April 1946.  They were located at Shipyard Boulevard and Carolina Beach Road, then moved to Robert Strange Park (at 8th and Anne streets) and a detachment at Bluethenthal Field (now Wilmington International Airport).

191--  New Hanover County men who died in service, plus 57 with an area connection.  Three were killed at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

242--  Vessels (mostly Liberty Ships) built by the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company (now the State Port).  At its height the company employed 23,000 people.

--GreGen