{"id":103563,"date":"2020-08-10T10:33:27","date_gmt":"2020-08-10T14:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=103563"},"modified":"2020-08-10T10:33:27","modified_gmt":"2020-08-10T14:33:27","slug":"wwii-hero-being-considered-for-the-medal-of-honor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=103563","title":{"rendered":"WWII hero being considered for the Medal of Honor"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 250px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.honorstates.org\/images\/profiles\/329000\/328763.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"350\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Eric Wood Jr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Military.com is reporting that U.S. Rep. John Joyce (R-PA) has introduced legislation to upgrade First Lieutenant Eric Wood Jr&#8217;s Distinguished Service Cross, awarded posthumously, to the Medal of Honor.<\/p>\n<p>The story of Eric Wood (senior\u00a0<em>and\u00a0<\/em>junior) are worthy of Valor Friday posts. I&#8217;ll go into more detail in a future article, but the story of Eric Wood Jr. is absolutely incredible.<\/p>\n<p>Executive officer of Battery A, 589th Field Artillery Battalion, 106th Infantry Division in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. During the battle in December, 1944 he ended up separated from his unit and alone in the woods. Finding another straggling American, they were then rescued by a friendly Belgian.<\/p>\n<p>Unwilling to lay low, Lt Wood told the Belgians that he was going to get to friendly lines or start a guerrilla war. It was then that the townspeople of Meyerode, Belgium began hearing irregular gun fire against small formations of Germans, never large formations. German officers were overheard in town complaining about &#8220;scoundrels and bandits&#8221; operating in the woods around town.<\/p>\n<p>Until the town was liberated (again) in January, 1945, Germans going into the woods in small groups disappeared. US Army Graves Registration personnel eventually took 200 dead Germans out of those woods.<\/p>\n<p>The body of Lt Wood was also found, surrounded by seven dead German soldiers. He&#8217;d led a group of stranded American GIs in a guerrilla campaign against the Germans in the woods surrounding Meyerode for more than a month before he was killed.<\/p>\n<p>He was awarded the DSC posthumously. I can&#8217;t find record of why he wasn&#8217;t originally awarded the MoH, since he certainly is deserving of the award. He might not have been recommended for it, but it is more likely from my research experience that a lack of eyewitnesses are the problem.<\/p>\n<p>Source; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.military.com\/daily-news\/2020\/08\/07\/wwii-hero-who-led-ragtag-group-killed-over-200-nazis-considered-medal-of-honor.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Military.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Read more about Lt Wood here; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.freewebs.com\/106thinfantry-part2\/ericfwoodjr.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">160th Infantry History<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Military.com is reporting that U.S. Rep. John Joyce (R-PA) has introduced legislation to upgrade First Lieutenant &hellip; <a title=\"WWII hero being considered for the Medal of Honor\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=103563\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">WWII hero being considered for the Medal of Honor<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[359,593,389],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-army","category-medal-of-honor","category-valor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=103563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103564,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103563\/revisions\/103564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}