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