Johnson and 17-year-old Needham Roberts were on night watch duty while stationed in France. A German sniper fired off a round at Johnson\u2019s post, and the soldier wisely prepared by grabbing a box of grenades. After the enemy cut wire surrounding his post, Johnson tossed grenades toward the Germans and surprised them. Numbering about 20 deep, the enemy troops returned fire and grenades. Roberts was injured by a German grenade, but he was able to toss Johnson weapons during his defense.<\/p>\n
According to Johnson\u2019s personal account, the Germans attempted to take Roberts prisoner, but he was able to fend them off. Surrounded and stuck with a jammed rifle, Johnson took a bolo knife and began slashing at the Germans. They stabbed and beat him, but he did enough damage to save him and his comrade\u2019s life and was assisted by fellow soldiers who came to their aid an hour after the melee began.<\/p>\n
Johnson and Roberts suffered several wounds; Johnson had 21 wounds and fainted from his injuries en route to a French hospital. Army officials inspected the site of the clash the next morning and found four German soldiers dead and a large cache of weapons. It was said that there may have been more dead soldiers there, and it appeared that many as 32 Germans stormed the post\u2019s fences.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Johnson’s son was awarded his father’s Purple Heart in 1996 and his Distinguished Service Cross in 2003. The french nicknamed him “The Black Death” and his unit was henceforth known as \u201cthe Harlem Hell-Fighters\u201d. He died in 1929 and currently resides at Section 25 Site 64
\nin Arlington National Cemetery. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Preston sends a link to the story of Henry Johnson who fought off a horde of … Henry Johnson fights off German horde in 1918<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-real-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35691","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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