This presentation of the Big Picture brings you part two of a special issue commemorating
the Medal of Honor Centennial.
This is a hall of glory where paintings and displays commemorate American military achievements.
Ghosts walk here, their muffled tread keeping step to the drum roll of history.
Ghosts walk these halls whose bodies sleep at Shiloh and by vineyards at Chateau Thierry
and beneath coral beaches on islands burning in the sun.
And in their company, the spirits of men still living, their manhood reached in flame and
smoke somewhere in a German forest, a choked Pacific jungle, in the skies over Korea or
on a carrier in the Pacific.
They all assemble here, the spirits of men still living and men long dead for an eternal
roll call.
You seem to hear it as you stand here, the long sweet voice of bugles whose echoes reach
that part of men where pride stirs.
And through those haunting echoes, you hear the call that never ceases.
Bravery, bravery, bravery.
And the answers return, here sir, here sir, here sir.
Seven medals, symbols lusted with a gleam of gallantry form a pyramid of honor in the
military service.
The purple heart is for wounds received in action against an enemy.
For heroic or meritorious achievement or service against an enemy not involving aerial flight,
the bronze star.
For heroism not involving actual conflict with an enemy, the soldier's medal.
For heroism and extraordinary achievement while participating in actual flight, the
distinguished flying cross.
For gallantry in action, the silver star.
For extraordinary heroism in military operations against an armed enemy, the distinguished
service cross.
And at the pinnacle of the pyramid, for gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above
and beyond the call of duty, the Medal of Honor.
Gallantry in tripidity beyond the call.
What is courage?
Men in many times and many circumstances have sought to define it as if by doing so they
could crystallize its hard and special beauty.
America's revered man of letters, Mark Twain, once called courage resistance to fear.
A man somewhat closer to our own time and a warrior refined it a little further.
Courage he said is fear, holding on a minute longer.
His name was General George S. Patton.
Certainly courage is not exclusively a military quality, but its military associations go
deep for the battlefield intensifies and strips to their fundamentals the toughest challenges
that life can impose.
For a man just to live in its environment and do his job well demands a measure of this
royal virtue, which few men are called upon to display in their lives.
Medals which stand out then in this atmosphere of constant bravery glow with a special quality.
The medals with which the nation honors its military brave are each in its own way tributes
to this virtue.
And at the summit of the pyramid which these medals form, the highest award the nation
can give, the Medal of Honor.
The war America entered in 1917 was a new kind of war.
The truck and the tank and the machine gun had come and combat was never to be the same
again.
The war that lay waiting for the doughboy was one of massed firepower, long trench lines
facing each other across the graveyard of a no man's land.
Americans fought beside their European allies in the Great War, but they fought as integral
American units.
And they fought a vigorous offensive, an offensive of small units sweeping through heavily fortified
German defenses in almost a suicidal way.
What kind of face does courage wear in such a war?
The one it has always worn.
But the face of courage does not change, however much the weapons change with which the courageous
man fights or the tactics and techniques of the battle he waged.
In World War I, that special courage, the kind summoned by the man who takes his life
in his hands to do what must be done above and beyond the call of duty, wore the faces
of 95 brave men.
Among them, the private who silenced four machine gun positions and was killed while
storming the fifth alone.
The captain who was cut down by machine gun fire while leading his company in an assault
on a heavily defended position and continued forward on a stretcher.
The corporal who made it possible for his unit to press its attack despite hostile fire
by rushing a machine gun nest alone and beating off the enemy with his bayonet.
And the legendary sergeant from Tennessee whose daring assault on an enemy position brought
in 132 prisoners.
The change in battle did find a new proving ground in World War I, the air.
The airplane had barely emerged from its status as an interesting experiment and now it was
a formidable weapon of war.
And the ranks of Medal of Honor winners, men who had fought on land and sea, were increased
by men who wrote their records of bravery in the sky.
By men such as the flying lieutenant from Ohio who attacked seven enemy planes, shot
down two of them and scattered the rest on the eve of the Argonne offensive.
World War I, with its particular call on bravery and a kind of war new to the world at that
time, saw the introduction of the airplane in combat.
Scarcely a generation later, a second World War which would make demands on more men than
ever in the nation's history, came to America on the wings of the same machine.
Now a highly developed weapon of destruction.
The war began in explosions, in chaos, in devastation, in defeat.
Fourteen million Americans responded by training for the greatest and most destructive war
in history.
Four hundred thirty of them would earn the right to wear the Medal of Honor.
Americans earned their Medals of Honor in virtually every spot on the globe where Americans
fought.
And how would each man win it?
Bravely.
By standing for a moment in time alone.
Lighted by a fire which rages in all men, but lights in a special few in special times,
the will to break the prison locks of fear and concern for self, and do at whatever cost
the job at hand.
Who was he?
The man who served above and beyond the call of duty in World War II.
He was a Marine from Ohio, private first class serving on Guadalcanal.
His machine gun emplacement took the full brunt of an all-out assault.
His orders were, hold the position.
All through the night he held off the Japanese.
Weary and exhausted, toward morning he did not see an enemy soldier approach until too
late.
He leaped up, absorbed the violence in his own body, and yielded up his life.
He was an Army Lieutenant from Rhode Island who led his men toward a bunker on an enemy-held
hill in Italy.
His men covered him as he advanced alone and threw phosphorus grenades into the enemy's
position.
As the defenders emerged, he shot them.
He led his men forward to break through the enemy line.
He was a platoon leader whose platoon was pinned down by Germans blocking an American
advance.
Considering his men to cover him, he went forward alone and destroyed the enemy's stronghold.
When his job was done, he brought his men forward and in the process memorialized the
heroic stance of leadership wherever men fight.
He was a Naval officer, commander of a submarine coordinated attack group off Truck Island.
He alone of the group possessed secret intelligence information of our submarine strategy.
He carried out his secret orders and the enemy paid dearly.
I found my loved ones!
I found mine!
Then all at once his own flag submarine was rocked and battered by Japanese depth charges.
The damage was soon beyond repair. The commander decided to surface the flagship and engage the
enemy in a gunfight so the men might have a chance to abandon ship and live. But for himself,
the decision he made was considerably different. Rather than risk capture and possibly reveal
secret plans under enemy torture or use of drugs, he decided that he would remain aboard the vessel.
He would stay with it in its final plunge to the bottom. He was an army lieutenant from Texas. When
his company was attacked by tanks and enemy infantry, he ordered his men to withdraw to
prepared positions. But he remained forward to direct artillery fire and to man a machine gun
on a crippled tank destroyer. Later, he made his way to his company, refused medical attention for
leg wound and organized the company in a counterattack. His counterattack pressed
forward in the face of withering enemy fire. His citation read, his indomitable courage and
his refusal to give an inch of ground saved his company from possible encirclement and destruction.
Other brave men rallied to its core and the counterattack was successful. Germans were
forced to withdraw. He was a major in the Air Corps, lead pilot of a flight of two fighter
planes taking on the task of attacking 13 Japanese planes. Closing on the enemy formation in a
climbing turn, he scored hits on the lead plane. Then diving to 300 feet in pursuit of another
fighter, he caught it with his initial burst. Before the action was over, seven enemy aircraft
would go down under his smoking guns. He was a general of the army who sent a thrill through
the Allied world by returning victorious as he had promised to a land he had been forced to
withdraw from in the face of overwhelming forces. His Medal of Honor cited him for gallantry and
intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action against invading Japanese forces and
for conspicuous leadership in preparing the Philippine Islands to resist conquest. He was
a flying colonel who was promoted to brigadier general on the completion of his mission. That
mission for which he volunteered and which would bring him a Medal of Honor began as an experiment
which in 1942 seemed incredible to many. An effort to lift a heavy army bomber from the deck of a
Navy aircraft carrier. These planes were destined for Japan and the army then had no suitable air
fields close enough for them to leave. The test was successful. Soon thereafter, from a carrier
moving through the Pacific as close to Japan as possible, army bombers manned by volunteers
lurched forward. In those dark early months of the war, their mission when it became known would
electrify the country with a thrill of hope and pride. They were to carry the war to the enemy,
to a confident Tokyo which then believed itself invulnerable to attack. So audacious was the
mission, so daring in conception and performance, the Japanese defenders were caught by complete
surprise. The attackers came roaring in over the Japanese mainland and first blood, the first of
much to follow was drawn from the enemy.
Some of the volunteers on this mission fell into enemy hands, some perished in the sea,
some made it to safety. One who did was the colonel, now a general, who led the mission
and won the Medal of Honor. Not many general officers did win the coveted medal. The soldier
who faces the enemy daily has a greater opportunity to earn it, but the value placed on it by every
rank is that of the most prized of all awards. One general who did not receive it said years
after the war, I would rather have the right to wear this and be president of the United States.
His name was Dwight D. Eisenhower. It's meaningless to talk of the Medal of Honor in terms of rank.
Generals can win it and corporals can win it and cooks and marines and ordinary seamen and men who
fight their battles in the sky. Bravery knows no rank and it knows no station. The medal can be and
has been won by every kind of man our society has produced. It can be won in wars of all kinds, as it
has been in our time, from the mighty epic of a war that stretched across the world to one localized
on the narrow peninsula of Korea. In the hills of this divided and far-off land, Americans faced
communist guns for the first time. Korea was a war of symbols. It was freedom itself which was
attacked and it was in the cause of freedom that men stood and fought. But behind the symbols,
it was a war of flesh and steel. The fighting was bitter and intense. 131 Americans who fought here
joined the select ranks of the bravest of the brave. Some fell, some lived. Some understood
clearly the contribution to freedom's defense they made. Others perhaps saw the issue dim. But each
of them reached the summit of America's pyramid of honor by a supreme act of bravery above and beyond
the court.
With the Korean armistice, the guns of Americans in war were silenced.
The last brave deed in combat was recorded.
And thus, in a sense, the story of the Medal of Honor to this day is closed.
The heroic adventures of the 3,156 who have won it in a century of wars are preserved between the bindings of official history.
And all are woven into the living legend of a people and a people's spirit.
But for this very reason, the story of the Medal of Honor is not ended, and indeed cannot end.
For the particular essence of the Medal is not what it is, or even the epic tales of those who've earned it,
but more than anything else, what it represents.
That precious quality which Lincoln called devotion transformed in an atmosphere of danger into a courage whose presence ennobles man.
Such a quality does not die. It lives unflowered and unseen. But if it's needed, it's there.
Once more, America stands in crisis. And as in other days, searching for the promise of its future, it finds itself looking into the eyes of its sons.
Their defense of freedom is a silent one, but most solidly real.
Their mission, urgent in the eyes of mankind, demands more of patience and skill, of effort and adjustment and quiet determination, than it does of courage.
They train so that war, with its special call for bravery, will never come.
The seeds of bravery lie there, and they will blossom if they must, in fields where they have grown before, where they have always grown, in the stout hearts of men.
The links in the soldiers' tradition are strong ones, and the heritage of those who serve today reaches far.
And most prized of all in this heritage is the tradition of courage, refined into the special quality whose presence is felt here in this hall of glory,
where ghosts of heroes walk, keeping vigil on a nation's pride.
Hallelujah! Yes, good and marching on! Amen!
© BF-WATCH TV 2021