Keep sight of the true meaning of Memorial Day…
Without the sacrifice of those who served our nation in wartime, our world today would look very different.
That sobering realization is the reason we celebrate Memorial Day. With that at the forefront of our minds, take a few minutes to honor these unbelievable acts of heroism from four largely forgotten soldiers.
These four men's commitment to service and willingness to sacrifice represents the best of America.
They unquestioningly gave what President Abraham Lincoln called the “last full measure of devotion.”
Freddie Stowers
At Congress‘ request in 1990, the Department of the Army investigated to determine if any service members or veterans were deserving of the Medal of Honor, posthumous or otherwise.
Freddie Stowers' battlefield heroics, forgotten for over 70 years, came to light shortly afterward.
While serving in a segregated American unit under French command, officers ordered Stowers, 22, and his company to seize a prominent, heavily fortified hill in the Ardennes.
The surviving German defenders feigned surrender after the initial attack, only to machine gun half of the company once U.S. soldiers let their guard down. As the highest-ranking survivor, Stowers took command and led his men in a counterattack to seize the first defensive line. During his company's successful advance on the second ring of German trenches, an enemy machine gunner mortally wounded Stowers. He continued urging his men forward, even as he lay dying. Despite their decimated ranks, the company took the hill that day.
Stowers and 133 of his comrades lie buried nearby at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery and Memorial.
Ben L. Salomon
Salomon joined the U.S. Army as a dentist before volunteering to replace his battalion's field surgeon, who had been wounded on Saipan. As the Battle of Saipan approached its finale on July 7, 1944, Salomon tended to wounded American soldiers 50 yards behind the foxhole line. No one realized the largest banzai charge of the war was about to collide with the 105th Infantry Regiment. Nearly 4,500 Japanese soldiers and civilians — many without firearms, some already grievously injured — overran the Americans' forward line. Amid the chaos, Salomon could see screaming enemy soldiers sprinting toward his aid station. The 29-year-old ordered its evacuation while providing covering fire.
The following day, GIs found his body slumped over a machine gun with 98 dead Japanese soldiers strewn in front of it. He had sustained nearly 200 gunshot and bayonet wounds.
Frank Luke
Luke, likely the second-place American fighter ace of World War I, became the first airman to receive the Medal of Honor. After downing 18 aircraft in the summer and early fall of 1918, he went on a final strafing run against enemy barrage balloons when a German machine gunner from the ground hit him with a single bullet. Despite the severity of his wound, Luke landed his plane and expired from blood loss while shooting his M1911 at nearby Germans.
Reflecting on Luke's prolific accomplishments, amassed during his brief few weeks at the front, Eddie Rickenbacker — the most decorated U.S. flying ace of the Great War — said:
He was the most daring aviator and greatest fighter pilot of the entire war. His life is one of the brightest glories of our Air Service. He went on a rampage and shot down fourteen enemy aircraft, including ten balloons, in eight days. No other ace, even the dreaded Richthofen, had ever come close to that.
William H. Pitsenbarger
Pitsenbarger flew in over 300 rescue missions in Vietnam before his death in 1966. On April 11 of that year, he helped rescue wounded GIs near the village of Cam My.
Almost immediately, things went wrong. Pitsenbarger had to waive off his air support after coming under withering small-arms fire. During what became known as the Battle of Xa Cam My, he made improvised splints and stretchers out of vines and saplings, gathered supplies from the dead and armed the wounded who could fight, leading them in a heroic resistance against the encroaching Viet Cong.
Sometime during the night, an enemy sniper fired the shot that claimed Pitsenbarger's life. He was found still clutching a medkit in one hand and his rifle in the other.
Although Pitsenbarger didn't escape Cam My alive, 60 of his fellow soldiers did.
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Brave men and real heroes. Liberals hate and despise real men and Patriots like these because they know deep down in their rotten souls that they don’t have the cojones to be a man like these people were.
Need to name Army bases, camps for these men alone
Or bldgs in camps, forts
Tell stories on AHC, PBS, History Channel
Fox News alone
There are a LOT of American heroes from all branches of the service that simply weren’t seen by others doing their beyond the call of duty deeds. They know what they did and in my opinion, that’s what really counts. In fact, those who gave all they had to give – their lives for our country are in my opinion heroes. Though I don’t recall the exact number we have nearly 4,000 good men still in the 52 submarines, lost to enemy action during WWII and still at the bottom of the Pacific. Everyone volunteered to serve in the boats that consisted of something like 1% of the Navy and had the highest mortality rate of any branch of the service. We never hear about them but some were old shipmates and they are definitely remembered.