by Jon Erwin
The general continued, “Up to now, in the Third Army, God has been very good to us. We have never retreated; we have suffered no defeats, no famine, no epidemics. This is because a lot of people back home are praying for us. We were lucky in Africa, in Sicily, and in Italy. Simply because people prayed. But we have to pray for ourselves, too.” If all his soldiers prayed, Patton suggested, “It will be like plugging in on a current whose source is in Heaven.”
To reinforce the power of the 250,000 prayer cards, Patton ordered the chaplain to issue 3,200 copies of a training letter to be sent out to chaplains and officers in every unit of the Third Army, directing them to exhort their men to “Pray alone. Pray with others. Pray by night and pray by day. Pray for the cessation of immoderate rains, for good weather for Battle. Pray for the defeat of our wicked enemy whose banner is injustice and whose good is oppression. Pray for victory. Pray for our Army, and Pray for Peace.” The letter concluded, “With prayer, we cannot fail.”
Mass distribution of both the prayer cards and the letter was completed by December 12. Patton and his men, tens of thousands of them, began to pray.
Four days later, on December 16, Adolf Hitler launched what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, a massive counteroffensive that buzz-sawed through the Allied lines and threw Patton’s troops into disarray. “The Germans crept out of the Schnee Eifel Forest in the midst of heavy rains, thick fogs, and swirling ground mists that muffled sound, blotted out the sun, and reduced visibility to a few yards,” wrote Chaplain O’Neill. A ferocious battle ensued, and American troops in some areas had to pull back. The Germans were on the verge of gaining the strategic initiative and stopping the Allied liberation of Europe for an unknown period of time.
The rains continued, and Patton’s men kept fighting—and praying. Then, on December 20, the rains stopped and a bright sun appeared.
A full week of clear skies and ideal flying weather opened up, enabling Allied planes to bomb and strafe the German positions with impunity and throw Hitler’s army back on its heels. “Our planes came over by tens, hundreds, and thousands,” remembered O’Neill. “They knocked out hundreds of tanks, killed thousands of enemy troops in the Bastogne salient, and harried the enemy as he valiantly tried to bring up reinforcements. The 101st Airborne, with the Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Armored Divisions, which saved Bastogne, and other divisions which assisted so valiantly in driving the Germans home, will testify to the great support rendered by our air forces. General Patton prayed for fair weather for battle. He got it.”
The Allies regained momentum on the western front and resumed their grinding and ultimately victorious march into Germany.
“That man did some potent praying,” Patton marveled about Chaplain O’Neill.
He awarded the priest a Bronze Star.
At 9:30 a.m. on April 12, 1945, at a point 225 miles south of Tokyo and 1,500 feet over the Pacific Ocean, Sgt. Henry “Red” Erwin had held the lives of twelve Americans in his hands, including his own. He also held in his hands the existence and potential of the hundreds of descendants those airmen were destined to have if God were to bless them with children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. The officers and crew were like brothers to him, and now their lives depended on what he did. In those few seconds, Red Erwin prayed to God for a miracle—and it happened. That night, as Red lay in a hospital bed with severe, life-threatening burn wounds, another series of miracles would be needed if he were to survive.
While Red lay on the edge of survival, his superiors, stunned by the magnitude of what he had done and endured, hastily typed up a Medal of Honor recommendation. Early the next morning they relayed it to General LeMay on Guam, who signed it immediately and relayed it to his superior, Brig. Gen. Lauris Norstad, chief of staff of the Twentieth Air Force in Washington, DC, stressing that time was of the essence to get final approval before Erwin died of his wounds.
At the Pentagon, General Norstad rushed through approvals by General Arnold, the chief of US Army Air Forces, and Gen. George C. Marshall, chief of staff of the US Army, in record time—six and a half hours. It is believed to be the fastest approval in modern history for the Medal of Honor. The paperwork was then rushed to the White House for final approval and signature by President Harry S. Truman.
The Medal of Honor is the highest award the United States can bestow on a member of the military services. It is a distinction reserved for only the most extraordinary displays of “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity13 at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty,” and it is approved and awarded by the president on behalf of the US Congress.
Since the Civil War, more than forty million men and women have served in the US Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard. Thus far, only 3,505 of them have been awarded the Medal of Honor.
The origins of the medal trace back to 1782, when Gen. George Washington began the tradition of recognizing acts of courage on the battlefield with a purple heart made of cloth for those soldiers who had been wounded. During the war with Mexico, in 1847, a certificate of merit was instituted to recognize soldiers who showed distinction in action.
The system of military awards as a formal process began during the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln approved a navy medal of valor “to be bestowed upon such petty officers, seamen, landsmen, and Marines14 as shall most distinguish themselves by their gallantry and other seaman-like qualities during the present war,” and an army medal of honor “to such noncommissioned officers and privates as shall most distinguish themselves by their gallantry in action, and other soldier-like qualities, during the present insurrection.” In 1863, Congress made the Medal of Honor a permanent decoration.
The first action to be recognized with a Medal of Honor was performed on February 13–14, 1861, just before the beginning of the Civil War, when Irish-born US Army assistant surgeon Bernard J. D. Irwin rescued sixty soldiers of the Seventh Infantry from Apache warriors in Arizona by bluffing them into believing he had an arriving rescue force much larger than the mere fourteen troops he commanded. But the Medal of Honor had not yet been created by Congress and wouldn’t be presented in Irwin’s honor until 1894.
The first Medals of Honor ever presented were given on March 25, 1863, to six soldiers known as Andrew’s Raiders by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in his office in the War Department. The six men had volunteered for a raiding-and-sabotage operation later dubbed the Great Locomotive Chase and led by spymaster James J. Andrews. They stole a train 200 miles behind Confederate lines at Big Shanty (now known as Kennesaw), Georgia, on April 12, 1862, in an attempt to knock out a vital railroad running from Atlanta to Chattanooga, Tennessee. After the award ceremony, the first Medal of Honor recipients had a private audience with President Lincoln at the White House.
Four days of combat at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1863 resulted in fifty-eight Medals of Honor being awarded, including the first Hispanic awardee, Corp. Joseph De Castro.
During the climactic Pickett’s Charge on the third day at Gettysburg, Lt. Alonzo H. Cushing was killed as he stood and fought while ten thousand Confederate troops rushed his artillery battery. His Medal of Honor story wasn’t fully appreciated until 150 years later, when President Barack Obama finalized the honor and presented the medal to a distant relative.
The first black awardee was former slave William Harvey Carney for his actions on July 18, 1863, at Fort Wagner, South Carolina, with the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry.
One epic story is that of Union flag–bearer Pvt. Thomas J. Higgins at the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, in May 1863. Prior to an assault on the Confederate position around the besieged city, Higgins was told not to stop until he planted the regimental colors inside the Confederate lines. Most of his company of the Ninety-Ninth Illinois was wiped out in the attack, but Higgins continued to run forward, tripping over bodies and holding his banner high. Amazed Texas troops decided to hold their fire and cheered him on. They waved their hats at him and pulled him over as he
tumbled into their fieldworks. He planted his flag—and was taken prisoner. In the 1890s, those same Confederate troops testified on his behalf before Congress and helped Higgins receive the Medal of Honor.
To date, there have been eighty-eight African American recipients, fifty-nine Hispanic American recipients, thirty-three Asian American recipients, and thirty-two Native American recipients. Many of these recipients received the award decades after the action for which they were honored, when it was evident that racist sentiments prevented or delayed their awards. Today there are only seventy-one living recipients of the Medal of Honor.
In 1917, a Medal of Honor review board struck the names of 911 medal recipients from the honor roll, ruling that during and after the Civil War, the medal was distributed too liberally and even frivolously. In one case, 864 members of the Twenty-Seventh Maine were awarded the nation’s highest honor just for reenlisting.
For actions during the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, fifteen sailors were awarded the medal, but only five survived the battle. About half of all Medals of Honor have been awarded posthumously. Of the 238 men who earned Medals of Honor for actions during the Vietnam War, 63 gave up their own lives by falling on land mines or grenades to save their brothers in arms.
Several times Congress waived the combat requirement so peacetime achievements could be honored with the medal, including Col. Charles Lindbergh’s historic 1927 transatlantic flight, the 1933 daring and dangerous deep-sea rescue by an experimental diving bell of thirty-three men trapped aboard the sunken submarine USS Squalus off the coast of New Hampshire, Comdr. Richard E. Byrd’s polar explorations, and even the valiant rescue of a hotel guest during an earthquake in Japan.
Medals of Honor were posthumously awarded to twenty-four soldiers for their actions at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. The Indian Wars of the nineteenth century produced 423 Medals of Honor, just ten fewer than World War II. Almost sixty military personnel received the award for actions during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion in China, an episode long forgotten by many Americans.
Some Medal of Honor awardees died in combat and never knew their sacrifices would be recognized. Others lived long lives that were defined at least in part by the medal they wore on special occasions. The army, navy, and air force each has its own Medal of Honor design, and the marines and coast guard use the navy version. The army version is described by the Army’s Institute of Heraldry as:
A gold five-pointed star,15 each point tipped with trefoils, 1–1/2 inches [3.8 cm] wide, surrounded by a green laurel wreath and suspended from a gold bar inscribed VALOR, surmounted by an eagle. In the center of the star, Minerva’s head surrounded by the words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. On each ray of the star is a green oak leaf. On the reverse is a bar engraved THE CONGRESS TO with a space for engraving the name of the recipient. [The pendant and suspension bar are made of gilding metal, with the eye, jump rings, and suspension ring made of red brass.] The finish on the pendant and suspension bar is hard enameled, gold plated, and rose-gold plated, with polished highlights.
One awardee, World War II veteran Bob Maxwell, kept his Medal of Honor for nearly seventy-five years after the event that triggered it: grabbing a blanket and throwing himself on a German hand grenade in France to save his squad mates. Maxwell died on May 11, 2019, in Bend, Oregon, at the age of ninety-eight. At the time of his death, he was the nation’s oldest Medal of Honor recipient.
The Medal of Honor was issued to one president, Theodore Roosevelt, for his actions in the Spanish-American War. It was awarded to one woman, Civil War surgeon and POW Mary Edwards Walker, for her civilian service during the First Battle of Bull Run and other actions. And the highest military award was presented to one coast guardsman, Signalman First Class Douglas Munro, a Canadian-born serviceman who was killed while evacuating five hundred marines under fire on September 27, 1942, during the Battle of Guadalcanal.
Medal of Honor awardees have included teenagers and late-career soldiers. Recipients have hailed from every state and every branch of the service and have included pilots, seamen, chaplains, truck drivers, and medics.
Why did the Medal of Honor recipients risk their lives the way they did? “Some talked of entering a zone of slow-motion invulnerability,16 where they were spectators at their own heroism,” noted Nick Del Calzo, who has studied the accounts of scores of Medal of Honor recipients. “But for most, the answer was simpler and more straightforward: They couldn’t let their buddies down.”
According to Col. Jack Jacobs, who earned a Medal of Honor for rescuing thirteen Allied soldiers under fire while advising a South Vietnamese infantry battalion in 1968 and being severely wounded himself, “When you’re in a combat situation,17 you’re surrounded by your comrades and your buddies, many of whom were killed or wounded and you have an impulse to not abandon them and do what you can to make sure the mission gets completed and the rest of the force gets saved.”
Many recipients have explained their actions as reflex actions to save their brother warriors or said they were just doing their jobs. Many have said they do not consider themselves to be heroes, but they accepted and wear the Medal of Honor as a tribute to the real heroes: the men and women they served with and the many who did not return from combat. After battle, some Medal of Honor recipients sought out a church or a quiet spot to pray both for their comrades and for the enemy troops who fell in battle.
Some Medal of Honor stories seem too incredible to be true. During the Battle of Okinawa in April and May 1945, PFC Desmond Doss, a religious conscientious objector who served as a medic and refused to carry a weapon, saved seventy-five wounded Americans on the battlefield by singlehandedly roping them one by one down a 400-foot-cliff. Like Red Erwin, he was sustained by prayer in his moment of destiny, repeatedly declaring, Dear God, please let me get just one more man.18
Many Medal of Honor recipients have gone on to live lives of great distinction and fulfillment, but others have been burdened by the recognition. “For those who earn it, the medal is a loaded gift,”19 wrote the Wall Street Journal’s Michael Phillips in 2019. “It’s a source of instant celebrity, and an entree into a world of opportunity and adulation. It’s also a reminder of what is often the worst day of their lives. And it is a summons to a lifetime of service from those who did something so courageous as young men—so at odds with their own chances of survival—that it was beyond what duty demands. Some embrace the role of Medal of Honor recipient, spending their lives speaking to civic groups, raising money for charities, and hobnobbing with movie stars, politicians and professional athletes. Others resent having their private grief turned into a public display.”
Some recipients have battled depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and periods of great despair and failure in civilian life. Pvt. Thomas C. Neibaur of Idaho was the first Mormon to receive the Medal of Honor, which recognized his actions in France on October 16, 1918. In 1939, discouraged by misfortune and unable to feed his family, Neibaur mailed his Medal of Honor and other decorations to Congress, stating, “I cannot eat them.”20 Within three years, both he and his wife died, and their four sons were sent to an orphanage in Michigan.
An equally tragic story was that of Vietnam-era Medal of Honor recipient Kenneth M. Kays, who originally fled to Canada to avoid the draft as a conscientious objector, and then joined the 101st Airborne as a medic. Despite having his leg blown off on May 7, 1970, during a firefight in Hue, he crawled around the battlefield to administer first aid to other soldiers. Back home in Illinois after receiving the Medal of Honor, Kays suffered from mental health and drug problems. He was committed to a hospital for the criminally insane, and he committed suicide at age forty-two.
For Sgt. Dakota Meyer, the recognition reminded him of the worst day of his life. As a twenty-one-year-old corporal, he saved several lives during a 2009 ambush in Afghanistan, but he was too late to save three other marines and a navy medical corpsman. The Medal of Honor enabled him to meet the president of the United Sta
tes, receive free tickets to NASCAR races and the Super Bowl, and collect a monthly stipend of $1,366. But Meyer said, “I look at that medal and I could throw up.21 I hate it and I resent it.”
For Red Erwin, the question wasn’t how the Medal of Honor would affect his life, but whether the army could get him the medal before he died.
Chapter Six
THE GATES OF ETERNITY
EARLY ON THE AFTERNOON OF APRIL 12, 1945, the same day a phosphorus bomb exploded on Red Erwin in the City of Los Angeles, the president of the United States announced, “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head.”1
Franklin D. Roosevelt was at his vacation retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia, sitting for a portrait. With him were two of his most beloved companions: his Yorkshire terrier, Fala, and former mistress, Lucy Mercer. His wife, Eleanor, was in Washington, DC, unaware of Mercer’s recent reappearance in the president’s life.
The pain the sixty-three-year-old president was feeling was a massive cerebral hemorrhage, and it knocked him unconscious.
He slumped forward and was carried to his bed, where cardiologist Howard Bruenn injected a shot of adrenaline into FDR’s heart to revive him. It didn’t work.
On the exact same day that Red Erwin fell toward the abyss of death, his commander in chief was struggling for life as well, the victim of wartime stress, exhaustion, timid and incompetent medical treatment, twelve years of notoriously inedible and undernutritious White House meals concocted by housekeeper-turned-chef Henrietta Nesbitt (a friend of Eleanor’s who the first lady insisted on keeping despite FDR’s protests), decades of chain-smoking, and a lack of exercise due to the polio that had paralyzed his legs since the age of thirty-nine.