Category: Real Soldiers

ROS sent us a link to the Southern Oregon Mail Tribune article about one veteran who returned a stolen M1911 to it’s owner, a Medal of Honor recipient who had used the handgun during the deed which earned him the medal;

“His medal citation actually mentions the pistol,” Berry observed, referring to the fact the wounded McGinty used it to kill five enemy soldiers attacking his position.

However, Berry did not yet know whether it was the same McGinty associated with his newly acquired pistol. He used the Internet to track down McGinty, 71, in Beaufort, S.C. McGinty had retired from the corps as a captain in October 1976.

The retired Navy warrant officer called the retired Marine Corps officer and asked him if it was his pistol.

“He said, ‘Do you mean 0103889?’ ” [George Berry] recalled, noting [John J. McGinty USMC] had just recited the gun’s serial number.

That’s when McGinty informed him the pistol had been stolen in 1978 when it was on display along with his uniform and sword. It was the very same pistol McGinty had used in Vietnam to repulse that final assault.

Berry sent the pistol to Beaufort. After receiving it, McGinty called and wanted to pay Berry for all his expenses.

“I told him I didn’t want any money, that I had just wanted a Model 1911,” Berry said.

Turns out that McGinty had a completely original Colt 1911 manufactured in 1918 that had been owned by John Finn, a longtime friend. Out of gratitude for having received his pistol back, he sent the Finn pistol to Medford for Berry to pick up last week.

Albert Brown died at 105 years old, according to the ABC News link sent to us by ROS. he was captured by the Japanese in 1942 and survived for three years in their custody despite the odd that he wouldn’t. Of the 78,000 prisoners captured with him, 11,000 died along the 65-mile march from Baatan to their Japanese POW camp;

By the time the war ended in 1945, the 40-year-old Brown was nearly blind, had weathered a broken back and neck and suffered through more than a dozen diseases including malaria, dysentery and dengue fever.

He took two years to mend, and a doctor told him to enjoy the next few years because he had been so decimated he would be dead by 50.

The article mentions a newly released book about mr. brown’s experiences in the war “Forsaken Heroes of the Pacific War: One Man’s True Story” writen with kevin Moore, but I don’t see it on Amazon.

“The underlying message for today’s returning veterans is that there’s hope, not to give in no matter how bleak the moment may seem,” added Moore, whose nephew just returned from military duty in Afghanistan. “You will persevere and can find the promise of a new tomorrow, much like Doc had found.”

World War II Medal of Honor recipient Colonel Charles P. Murray died of heart failure last week according to Stars & Stripes. The 23-year-old lieutenant was in the 3rd Infantry Division in December, 1944 as he led his platoon through France;

On Dec. 16, he was leading a platoon of about 35 down a mountain path near the town of Kaysersberg, in northeastern France, when he eyed about 200 Germans attacking another battalion of U.S. troops. Rather than take his men into a position where they would be devastatingly outnumbered, he moved forward alone and radioed for an artillery attack. It missed, and before he could correct the coordinates, he lost the radio signal.

He then began launching grenades, revealing his own position and opening himself to a counterattack. Under heavy fire, he exhausted all the available grenades, according to a 2009 Army news release. He returned to his patrol, grabbed a rifle and returned to his position. He fired with such intensity — taking down 20 enemy soldiers and wounding numerous others — that the Germans began to withdraw, according to the Medal of Honor citation.

Murrayy was later wounded when a German pretending to surrender tossed a grenade and injured Murray’s legs, but he refused to be evacuated until he insured that his platoon would be able to finish their mission.

After the war, he continued his education on the GI Bill, then reenlisted and went on to serve in the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

From the Navy Times comes the story a Navy Corpsman, Jake Emmott, who despite withering gun fire continued to treat “his” Marines, until he was knocked unconscious by a gunshot wound to the head. When he regained consciousness, Emmott refused treatment and continued to treat the wounded Marines and staggered to the helicopter on his own two legs;

A year later, Emmott, now an HM2, was presented with the Silver Star. Emmott was honored, along with fellow service members and caregivers, at the annual Navy Safe Harbor awards ceremony July 14 outside Washington. The Safe Harbor program provides nonmedical support for 688 wounded or ill sailors and Coast Guardsmen.

The award caps a remarkable turnaround for the 22-year-old from Wakefield, R.I. After a year of surgeries and rehab, Emmott is on track to recover.

The injuries were severe. The bullet pierced Emmott’s sinus cavity and exited behind his left ear, narrowly missing the vital carotid artery. Surgeons removed a third of his skull to relieve pressure on his swelling brain.

Sgt. Alan McAlister, then Emmott’s squad leader, saw him get shot.

“Initially, it was like, ‘OK, he’s dead,’ ” McAlister recalled thinking. “Focus on the firefight, getting everybody out of here. When he came back to life, it’s like, ‘Oh, here we go. This just got interesting.’ ”

Emmott plans on returning to his unit and to his job as a corpsman.

Dressed in his trim Air Force blue uniform, 86-year-old Provo, Utah resident Myron Brown was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star and Purple Heart for his actions as a B-26 pilot during the Korean War over Pyongyang.

April 20, 1951, during a night bombing attack against a heavily defended railroad yard in Pyongyang, Korea, anti-aircraft fire took out one of his B-26’s engines. Instead of prematurely dropping his bomb load and aborting his mission, Brown managed to extinguish the flames, set up single-engine operations, and still hit the “critically important target,” the Distinguished Service Cross citation reads.

Then, despite a leg wound, Brown finished the second part of the mission by firing rockets, and strafing railroad cars and ammunition stores with machine gun fire.

One of the cars Brown and his crew destroyed was the site of a meeting of high-ranking North Korean generals, who had met to plan an important counter attack that would never come, thanks to Brown’s actions, the citation says.

“Brown’s commitment to his assigned mission … created a sequence of events that ultimately led to a most important ground victory.”

For that, he got the Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart.

Now you have to go read how he earned his Silver Star.