Medal of Honor Recipients
Every weekday for 110 straight days we will feature a different living recipient of the Medal of Honor. These are the men who have received their nation's highest military honor. Brian is a board member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. The words and photos are courtesy of Artisan Books, publishers of Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier with photographs by Nick Del Calzo.
James A. Taylor
First Lieutenant, U.S. Army Troop B, 1st Cavalry, Americal Division
James Taylor served in the Army as an enlisted man for ten years before being selected for Officer Candidate School and becoming an officer. After graduating as a lieutenant, he was assigned to the
1st Squadron, 1st Cavalry. In 1967 he was the executive officer of B Troop in Vietnam.
On November 8, 1967, Taylor was at his base camp when he was notified that his commander had been wounded in action and was being evacuated from the battle area. Taylor was ordered to fly out to the combat zone by helicopter to assume command of B Troop. At that time, B Troop was under the operational control of the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Cavalry Division. After arriving in the combat area, a decision was made to consolidate the troop, evaluate the situation, and attack the enemy at first light the next day.
Prior to launching the attack, Taylor was replaced as troop commander and resumed his duties as executive officer. As the battle began the next morning, Taylor’s priorities were to coordinate the evacuation of the wounded, to call in air and ground support, and to arrange for additional supplies, including ammunition and fuel.
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Every weekday for 110 straight days we will feature a different living recipient of the Medal of Honor. These are the men who have received their nation's highest military honor. Brian is a board member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. The words and photos are courtesy of Artisan Books, publishers of Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier with photographs by Nick Del Calzo.
Over Guadalcanal, western pacific, 1943
Wildcat Defense
James E. Swett
First Lieutenant, U.S. Marine Corps Marine Fighting Squadron 221,
Marine Aircraft Group 12, 1st Marine Aircraft Wing
James Swett learned to fly in junior college in San Mateo, California, and graduated from the Civilian Pilot Training Program just before Pearl Harbor with 450 hours in the air. He enlisted in the Navy and became an aviation cadet, but halfway through the program, one of his officers persuaded him to become a Marine Corps pilot.
Lieutenant Swett landed on Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands, in the spring of 1943 as part of Marine Fighting Squadron 221. He had not yet been in combat on the morning of April 7 when he led a squadron of Grumman Wildcats on routine dawn patrol. Upon landing to refuel, he learned that Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto had ordered a major strike against Guadalcanal. In all, 76 American planes would have to defend against a wave of 150 Japanese bombers and fighter escorts.
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Every weekday for 110 straight days we will feature a different living recipient of the Medal of Honor. These are the men who have received their nation's highest military honor. Brian is a board member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. The words and photos are courtesy of Artisan Books, publishers of Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier with photographs by Nick Del Calzo.
Ken E. Stumpf
Specialist First Class, U.S. Army Company C, 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry, 25th Infantry Division
Early in 1967, the Communists’ control of Vietnam’s Quang Ngai Province was so complete that many villagers had never seen any troops other than those of the Vietcong. The U.S. command decided to try to break this stranglehold on the area through a series of company-size search-and-destroy missions.
On April 25, Ken Stumpf was on one of these missions. A U.S. helicopter gunship orbiting the area had killed one Vietcong fighter in one of the small villages and wounded another. Around noon, Specialist Fourth Class Stumpf was ordered to investigate with his six-man squad while another squad, including the platoon’s radio operator, followed behind. CONTINUED >>
Every weekday for 110 straight days we will feature a different living recipient of the Medal of Honor. These are the men who have received their nation's highest military honor. Brian is a board member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. The words and photos are courtesy of Artisan Books, publishers of Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier with photographs by Nick Del Calzo.
James L. Stone
First Lieutenant, U.S. Army Company E, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division
On November 21, 1951, Lieutenant James Stone, a month away from his twenty-ninth birthday, was trying to keep warm in a desolate hilltop outpost above the Imjin River near Sokkogae. That morning his platoon, part of the 1st Cavalry, had relieved another American unit at an outpost facing the Chinese Communist forces on an opposing hill. During the day, the enemy fired white phosphorus shells at the Americans. Stone knew that this meant they were marking his position for an artillery barrage and probable assault later on.
Around 9:00 p.m., the Chinese unleashed a ferocious artillery and mortar attack. After the barrage ended, Stone radioed U.S. gunners to send up flares. When they burst high in the sky and illuminated the nightscape, he could see hundreds of enemy troops—roughly a battalion—scrambling up the hill to attack. Within minutes, the Chinese were nearly on top of Stone’s platoon. The Americans repelled this assault and five others over the next three hours.
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Every weekday for 110 straight days we will feature a different living recipient of the Medal of Honor. These are the men who have received their nation's highest military honor. Brian is a board member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. The words and photos are courtesy of Artisan Books, publishers of Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier with photographs by Nick Del Calzo.
James M. Sprayberry
First Lieutenant, U.S. Army Company D, 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile)
James Sprayberry was born in Georgia and grew up on a family farm in Alabama. He was attending college in 1966 when he decided that he needed more excitement in his life and enlisted in the Army. After basic training he went to Officer Candidate School, graduating early in 1967 as a second lieutenant. Assigned to an armor battalion at Fort Benning, Sprayberry wanted to be in action and volunteered for Vietnam.
In the spring of 1968, Lieutenant Sprayberry was in the A Shau Valley of Vietnam, serving as an executive officer with a company of the 7th Cavalry. Late in the afternoon of April 25, the day after his twenty-first birthday, his company was ambushed by a large North Vietnamese force. Within minutes, Sprayberry knew that this enemy force was more disciplined than any he had yet seen—fully controlling the forbidding terrain of mountains and heavy undergrowth, and carefully targeting the Americans with interlocking fields offire from well-protected bunkers. CONTINUED >>
Every weekday for 110 straight days we will feature a different living recipient of the Medal of Honor. These are the men who have received their nation's highest military honor. Brian is a board member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. The words and photos are courtesy of Artisan Books, publishers of Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier with photographs by Nick Del Calzo.
Robert E. Simanek
Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps Company F, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division
Like other young men who grew up in the Detroit area, Robert Simanek went to work in the auto industry after high school. He was employed by General Motors when war broke out in Korea. Having two uncles who had served in the Marines during World War II helped him decide to become a Marine himself.
Private First Class Simanek became a radio operator. He had been in Korea for about six months when his unit encountered Chinese troops in mid-August 1952, at a place called the Hook, near Panmunjom. The Marines had been occupying a forward observation post called Irene on high ground during the day, when they had air support, and relinquishing it to the enemy during the night. On the morning of August 17, a sixteen-man patrol was sent to reclaim the post for the daylight hours, with Simanek as their radioman. The platoon sergeant happened to take a new route to the position, and that kept them from walking right into the company of Chinese troops waiting in ambush. As they reached the post, however, the enemy opened fire with mortars and machine guns. CONTINUED >>
Every weekday for 110 straight days we will feature a different living recipient of the Medal of Honor. These are the men who have received their nation's highest military honor. Brian is a board member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. The words and photos are courtesy of Artisan Books, publishers of Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier with photographs by Nick Del Calzo.
Clarence E. Sasser
Private First Class, U.S. Army Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 60th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division
When Clarence Sasser was drafted in 1967, he assumed that he would be just another GI. After a battery of tests indicated he should be trained as a medical aidman, he was surprised that the Army thought he might have the ability to save lives.
By the fall of 1967, Sasser was in Vietnam with the Army’s 9th Infantry Division. He didn’t experience a heavy firefight until January 10, 1968. Early that morning, his company was flown out toward the Mekong Delta on a reconnaissance-in-force operation to check out reports of enemy forces in the area. At about 10:00 a.m., the dozen helicopters carrying the undermanned company of slightly more than one hundred soldiers swooped down onto a large rice paddy near where the Vietcong had already been sighted. As the formation descended, the U-shaped wooded area nearly enclosing the landing zone erupted with small arms, recoilless rifle, machine-gun, and rocket fire. The mission might have been aborted, but the lead helicopter was hit and crashed, so the others immediately followed to protect it. CONTINUED >>
Every weekday for 110 straight days we will feature a different living recipient of the Medal of Honor. These are the men who have received their nation's highest military honor. Brian is a board member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. The words and photos are courtesy of Artisan Books, publishers of Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier with photographs by Nick Del Calzo.
George T. Sakato
Private, U.S. Army Company E, 442nd Regimental Combat Team
In 1942, George Sakato’s family moved from California to Arizona, to avoid being sent to an internment camp for Japanese Americans. The twenty-one-year-old Sakato tried to enlist in the Army Air Corps but was rejected because of his draft status—4-C, undesirable alien. Then in 1943, because of the exploits of Japanese Americans in the Hawaiian National Guard’s 100th Infantry Battalion in battles at Salerno, Montecassino, and Anzio, the government allowed other Japanese Americans in the service. Sakato enlisted in the Army, joining his older brother, Henry, who had volunteered before Pearl Harbor. After finishing basic training in the summer of 1944, the brothers were sent to Naples as replacements for the “Go for Broke” Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which became the most decorated American unit in the war.
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Every weekday for 110 straight days we will feature a different living recipient of the Medal of Honor. These are the men who have received their nation's highest military honor. Brian is a board member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. The words and photos are courtesy of Artisan Books, publishers of Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier with photographs by Nick Del Calzo.
Alejandro R. Ruiz
Private First Class, U.S. Army 165th Infantry, 27th Infantry Division
Alejandro Renteria Ruiz was born and raised in New Mexico, the son of a Mexican immigrant who had been an officer in Pancho Villa’s army. In 1944, twenty-year-old Ruiz was driving to Texas to see his girlfriend when he got into a legal scrape. He went before a judge who gave him a choice between the Army and jail. Ruiz enlisted.
After training at Fort Bliss and Fort Ord, Private First Class Ruiz shipped out with the 165th Infantry. His unit landed on Okinawa in April 1945. On April 28, his company, exhausted from a series of engagements with Japanese troops in heavily fortified positions, was moving down into a deep ravine. The Japanese let his unit pass by a well-camouflaged pillbox before opening fire and lobbing grenades. As the Americans tried to find cover while Japanese grenades rained down on them, Ruiz saw his comrades falling all around him; after just a few minutes, only he and his squad leader had escaped injury.
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Every weekday for 110 straight days we will feature a different living recipient of the Medal of Honor. These are the men who have received their nation's highest military honor. Brian is a board member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. The words and photos are courtesy of Artisan Books, publishers of Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier with photographs by Nick Del Calzo.
Donald E. Rudolf
Technical Sergeant, U.S. Army Company E, 20th Infantry, 6th Infantry Division
In February 1941, Donald Rudolph volunteered with the 6th Infantry Division—known as “the Sight-Seeing Sixth” because it had marched to several battles in World War I only to find the fighting over before it arrived. Rudolph thought he had enlisted for a year, but Pearl Harbor made it indefinite. The 6th trained in Yuma, Arizona, for desert fighting in North Africa. Then orders changed, and the division began training for jungle fighting in the Pacific.
Rudolph’s unit saw action in New Guinea. Then came the Philippines. By this time a technical sergeant, Rudolph had seen so much combat on the island of Luzon in late 1944 that he was taken off the front lines. But while tending the wounded, he saw several GIs from his unit and returned to the front lines, without waiting for orders, to be with his men.
On February 3, 1945, he took over the unit after the platoon leader was evacuated. Two days later, the unit was raked by fire from enemy troops dug into well-fortified positions in an area that wasn’t thought to be strongly defended. Kneeling down to administer first aid to one of his men, Technical Sergeant Rudolph noticed that some of the heaviest enemy fire was coming from a nearby culvert. He crawled to it and with his rifle and grenades killed three Japanese soldiers hidden there.
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