Korea, 1951. Hershey Miyamura, Army corporal, stayed behind to cover his squad's retreat.
He killed an estimated 50+ Chinese soldiers before he was taken.
POW for 28 months. His Medal of Honor was kept Top Secret so his captors wouldn't know.
#AboveAndBeyond #MedalOfHonor
ALT Staff Sgt. Hiroshi "Hershey" Miyamura, US Army, Medal of Honor recipient for the Korean War, in uniform. US Army photo, public domain.
WWII. Jack Lucas forged his mom's signature to join the Marines at 14.
Iwo Jima, age 17. Two grenades landed near him. He covered both.
One went off under him. He lived with about 200 bits of metal in him.
Youngest WWII Medal of Honor recipient.
#AboveAndBeyond #MedalOfHonor
ALT PFC Jacklyn H. Lucas, US Marine Corps, Medal of Honor recipient for Iwo Jima, in uniform. USMC photo, public domain.
America's top ace survived 40 kills over the Pacific.
Every one of them in a P-38 Lightning. He earned the Medal of Honor and was one of the most decorated fighter pilots of the war.
He died testing a jet in California on August 6, 1945. The day of Hiroshima.
ALT Maj. Richard Bong, America's top fighter ace of World War II, head-and-shoulders portrait from the 1940s. US Army Air Forces photo, public domain.
Dr. Mary Edwards Walker — Civil War
More than 3,500 Americans have received the Medal of Honor. Only one was a woman.
Mary Walker graduated from medical school in 1855, the only woman in her class. When the Civil War came, the Army wouldn't commission a female surgeon, so she volunteered anyway and treated soldiers on the front lines.
She crossed into enemy territory to care for civilians. The Confederates captured her and held her as a prisoner of war for four months.
In 1865 she was awarded the Medal of Honor. In 1917, the government changed the rules and took it back.
She refused to return it and wore it every day until she died two years later.
In 1977, the Army gave it back.
#AboveAndBeyond #MedalOfHonor
The '55 Task Force.
The Jeep is fun till it rains. The Chevy just needs a bed full of firewood and a dog.
Joe Medicine Crow earned Crow war chief in WWII.
One requirement: steal an enemy horse. He took 50 from the SS, singing as he rode off.
He finished all four war deeds and became the last Plains Indian war chief. In 2009 he got the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
ALT Joe Medicine Crow, last war chief of the Crow Tribe, speaking around 2009. US Department of the Interior photo, public domain.
Van Barfoot stopped three Tiger tanks with a bazooka in 1944.
That same day he knocked out three machine gun nests and took 17 prisoners. Medal of Honor.
At 90 his HOA told him to take down his flagpole. The HOA folded in a week.
ALT Van T. Barfoot in Army uniform wearing the Medal of Honor, circa 1965. US Army photo, public domain.
On his left arm was a tattoo: “Death Before Dishonor” — John Basilone USMC
October 1942, Guadalcanal: Thousands of Japanese troops advanced on Henderson Field. Sgt. Basilone commanded two machine gun sections. Ammunition gone and supply lines cut, Basilone ran across enemy lines twice to keep his men’s guns stocked. The line held. Upon receiving the Medal of Honor, he said, “Only part of this medal belongs to me. Pieces of it belong to the boys still on Guadalcanal.”
Iwo Jima, Feb. 19, 1945: John pushed his Marines off the beach, destroyed a Japanese blockhouse alone, then guided a trapped tank through a minefield under fire.
Sadly, during the battle, a mortar round killed him. He was 28 and had been married only seven months. His wife, Lena, was also a Marine.
John was the only enlisted Marine in World War II to receive both the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross.
Carlos Hathcock once crawled 1,500 yards over four days and three nights.
For one shot.
No sleep, inch by inch through an open field, to reach an enemy officer believed to be a general. The Silver Star for it came nearly 30 years later.
ALT Retired Gunnery Sgt. Carlos Hathcock II at the ceremony where he received the Silver Star. US Department of Defense photo, public domain.
Before Chris Evans played Steve Rogers, “Captain America,” Audie Murphy was the real thing: At 5'5" and 112 lbs., the Marines turned him down, as did the Navy and the Airborne Paratroopers. The Army did take him but without “super soldier serum.”
In January 1945, near Holtzwihr, France, six German tanks and 250 infantry attacked his company. 2nd Lt. Murphy ordered his men back to the woods and stayed behind alone, calling down artillery as the Germans closed in. Climbing on top of a burning U.S tank destroyer, which could have exploded at any second, Murphy turned its .50-cal on the Germans. For an hour, he fought from that burning vehicle, calling in artillery between bursts. He took a bullet in the leg and kept firing, killed or wounding about 50 Germans. Then he rallied his men and led the counterattack that drove the Germans out.
Along with the Medal of Honor, he received 33 other awards, making him the most decorated American soldier of WWII.
#AboveAndBeyond #MedalOfHonor
WWII Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector, enlisted as a medic because he wanted to serve. In training, his own men called him a coward.
On Okinawa, his battalion was driven off a 400-ft cliff. Never touching a weapon, Doss stayed up top alone under fire, lowering wounded men down one at a time.
Shot by a sniper, he even gave up his own stretcher to another man.
His commanders said 100 saved. Doss said 50. They settled on 75.
He was the first conscientious objector ever awarded the Medal of Honor.
#AboveAndBeyond #MedalOfHonor
Simo Häyhä took an explosive bullet to the face and got stacked with the dead.
He woke up a week later, on the day the war ended.
By then he was believed to have killed more than 500 Soviet soldiers in under 100 days, at temperatures down to -40.
ALT Finnish sniper Simo Häyhä in uniform. Finnish Defence Forces photo (SA-kuva 9479), public domain.
Doctors said Roy Benavidez would never walk again.
He taught himself to walk and went back to Vietnam. In 1968 he fought six hours, took 37 bullet, bayonet and shrapnel wounds, and saved at least eight men.
Then he had to spit in a doctor's face to prove he wasn't dead.
ALT President Ronald Reagan presents the Medal of Honor to Master Sgt. Roy Benavidez at a Pentagon ceremony, 1981. White House photo, public domain.
Road Runner.
Plymouth paid Warner Bros. $50,000 for the name, then gave it a horn that actually went beep-beep.
Echoes.
Twenty-three minutes, and that ping at the start is one piano note run through a Leslie speaker.
Grand National.
All black, a turbo V6 and a Buick badge, and it was still embarrassing Corvettes at every stoplight in 1987. Which one you taking?
