Medal of Honor recipients gather in Chicago
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  1. #1

    Exclamation Medal of Honor recipients gather in Chicago

    Medal of Honor recipients gather in Chicago
    By Caryn Rousseau - The Associated Press
    Posted : Wednesday Sep 16, 2009 7:35:10 EDT

    CHICAGO — Dozens of recipients of the Medal of Honor, the nation’s most prestigious award for combat veterans, were honored Tuesday during the opening ceremony of their annual convention, but offered praise themselves to members of the U.S. military serving abroad.

    “They’re the best soldiers in the world today,” said John Baker, 64, of Columbia, S.C., who received his Medal of Honor for evacuating eight wounded soldiers in 1966 during the Vietnam War.

    According to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, 3,447 individuals have received the medal with 95 living recipients. Six U.S. service members have been chosen for the Medal of Honor during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    “They have a special place in their heart for those young Americans who wear the uniform today, who have taken the banner from them and moved it yet further forward,” Gen. James Conway, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, said of the recipients.

    During the ceremony at Soldier Field, public and military officials spoke, calling the medal recipients heroes.

    “They’re very special human beings,” Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn said. “They’re the best of the best. The pride of our nation.”

    Retired Col. Robert Howard told the crowd that he and his fellow recipients don’t wear their awards for themselves.

    “It is for all those who have and do wear the uniform of this great country of ours,” Howard said, “for those who stood beside us and for those who did not come home.”

    Sammy Davis, 63, of Flat Rock, who received his medal for rescuing three fellow soldiers in Vietnam, said he has one piece of advice for today’s military personnel: “You don’t lose until you quit trying.”

    Conway said the medal recipients would inspire, inform and educate future generations of Americans.

    “They didn’t go home at night and prepare themselves to win the Medal of Honor,” Conway said. “You don’t practice your courage. It’s just that one day in the crucible of battle at the right time, in the right place, you do the right thing.”

    Learn more about MoH recipients:

    http://militarytimes.com/citations-medals-awards/

    Ellie


  2. #2
    Medal of Honor recipients say you can be hero too
    Recipients gather in Chicago for first time

    By Howard Reich

    Tribune reporter

    September 13, 2009


    They were all dead men who refused to die.

    Outnumbered by the enemy, they risked everything to save the soldiers around them -- and they succeeded.

    They are heroes, and they have the hardware to prove it. When more than 50 of the 95 living recipients of the Medal of Honor meet in Chicago this week for their annual convention, they'll form one of the nobler gatherings this city has seen. Never before have the Medal of Honor recipients convened here.

    But most of these men -- tested so severely in combat -- were simply ordinary Americans before their wars, and after. And they can tell us a great deal about what makes a hero.

    The views of four of the Midwestern honorees will surprise you, for they see heroism in everyday acts, in everyday people. They make scant distinction between grand feats of valor on the battlefield and small gestures of heroism on the street, in the store, on the playground.

    "Everybody's got the ability to be a hero ... whether it's a young child that saves a family from a fire or whether it's a gentleman that sees a motorist in distress and stops to assist," says Harold Fritz, who earned his Medal of Honor in Vietnam on Jan. 11, 1969.

    "It's a spark, and everybody has got that spark ready to ignite within them, the ability to be a hero."

    Fritz discovered this under fire. Though "seriously wounded" in battle, according to his Medal of Honor citation, he "leaped to the top of his burning vehicle and directed the positioning of his remaining vehicles and men ... and refused medical attention until all of his wounded comrades had been treated and evacuated."

    But even under less dramatic circumstances, says Fritz, a crisis can force a choice upon any one of us: Will we act as hero or coward? Will we do right or wrong?

    "The difference between somebody that does what needs to be done at the risk of their own life, and somebody that looks at it and turns the other way and runs -- the difference is a split second," says Fritz, 65, who lives in Peoria.

    "I could have just turned at that point, saved my own skin and said, 'To hell with it, I'm going to get out of this kill zone and let the rest of these people just fry. Save my own bacon.'

    "But I couldn't do that. It didn't register. ... I think what happens is you just rapidly do an evaluation of good versus evil, what's right and what's wrong."

    Such a choice bypasses rational decision-making, the medal recipients say. The decision, they believe, already lurks deep in your core, woven into what you believe, what your parents have (or haven't) taught you, what you've witnessed in life.

    On the night of Nov. 18, 1967, Sammy Davis and his fellow soldiers were in Vietnam under overwhelming attack; he was suffering a broken back. Yet he "picked up an air mattress and struck out across the deep river to rescue three wounded comrades on the far side," according to his citation.

    All the while, he says, memories of his childhood -- and lessons learned from his parents -- inspired him.

    "My mom and dad were sitting on my shoulder," he says. Under duress he remembered what his parents had told him when he was a child: Never abandon your siblings.

    "We would go play in the woods all day," remembers Davis, who's 62 and lives in Flat Rock, Ill., in the southeastern part of the state. "Mom would ring the bell, and we'd all come back from the woods to eat, and then when I became the big brother, I can remember mama telling me, 'Don't leave your little brother.' "

    In Vietnam, says Davis, "I swam across the river and brought back three of my brothers."

    Still, the question lingers: Why did Davis and the others risk so much, so selflessly, under so much pain, and in the face of such terrible odds? Surely not even the best parental upbringing could prepare you to do that.

    "Maybe because everybody is yelling for help or [for] their mom or whatever, and I more or less go for the underdog," says Gary Wetzel, who earned his medal in Vietnam on Jan. 8, 1968. "And I got a little **** and vinegar left, so give it my best shot, you know?"

    His citation describes what he did that day, costing him his left arm. "Although bleeding profusely due to the loss of his left arm and severely wounded in his right arm, chest and left leg," it says, Wetzel "remained at his position until he had eliminated the automatic weapons emplacement that had been inflicting heavy casualties on the American troops ... [and] persisted in his efforts to drag himself to the aid of his fellow crewman."

    Says Wetzel, who is 61 and lives in South Milwaukee, "Maybe I had an inner strength, or whatever, but I just didn't want to die in the slop. ...

    "Then you hear all this yelling and screaming -- there's got to be a stop. Somebody's got to stop it."

    During their extraordinary acts, some of the Medal of Honor heroes experienced a kind of transcendence they cannot explain and have never forgotten.

    In the thick of his agony, Davis thought, "I must be in a dream or something. ... I must be in soldier hell. I must have died, and this is the way it's going to be. Because I kept firing at them, and it seemed like they kept coming back up out of the river."

    In Fritz's case, he saw portions of his life speed past him precisely as a bullet did.

    "You talk about people having a near-death experience -- at one time, just for a second or two, I was looking at things, and I saw this bullet, with a tracer round, and it floated past me, just like that," says Fritz. "And at the same time I had a flashback to when I was a child and when I was growing up."

    Something inexplicable happened to these heroes in their critical moments, in other words, but they insist you don't need to reach such exalted heights to partake in the nobility of a great act. Nor need heroism hinge on a single incident.

    "True heroism is something that is a lifelong thing that you don't get written up about, and that's probably going to make some people angry, but I'm sorry," says Allen Lynch, who earned his Medal of Honor in Vietnam on Dec. 15, 1967.

    "I've seen too many people that, for five hours, or whatever, on a battlefield were heroes, and then they spent the rest of their life patting themselves on the back and ignoring their family, ignoring their wife, ignoring their children," adds Lynch, 63, who lives in Gurnee.

    In Vietnam, "disregarding his safety in the face of withering hostile fire," Lynch's citation reads, "he crossed 70 meters of exposed terrain five times to carry his wounded comrades to a more secure area."

    Nevertheless, he sees heroism in ordinary lives.

    "The heroes are the fathers and the mothers that endure the mundane, daily grind of just getting up and going to work and being a father to their children and a mother to their children," Lynch says. "It's someone that goes to work every single day, and when he's unemployed ... doesn't just give up but tries desperately to make a living for their family. That's real heroism, that's sustained heroism."

    For those who became heroes under fire, scars often remain. Many of the Medal of Honor recipients are haunted by their experiences.

    "I never ever have a day where I don't think about the war. ... When I go to bed at night, I take the war off," says Wetzel, referring to his prosthetic limb. "And when I get up the next day, I put the war back on."

    Davis, though gratified that he was able to save his buddies, grapples with the lives he had to take to do it. "The eyes of those men that were coming across the creek that night is something that you never forget, and my soul and their souls have come together," he says. "I work on their forgiveness, and I'm not done yet, because there were a lot of people."

    All the medal recipients returned to relatively conventional lives after their battlefield heroism. Wetzel is a heavy equipment operator; Davis has been retired since 1984, due to his injuries; Lynch retired in 2005 after working as a veterans' advocate; Fritz retired after 27 years in the service and works on veterans' affairs.

    Each believes his experiences can have value for the rest of us.

    "No matter what you're faced with, you don't lose until you quit," says Davis. "And that's the message that I try to take to our schoolchildren, to our military today.

    "That no matter what you're faced with, whether it's dealing with your classmates, dealing with your mom and dad at home, your teachers, whatever you're faced with that you think is a real problem, you don't lose until you get to that point where you go: 'I quit.' "

    hreich@tribune.com

    Ellie

    Video

    http://www.chicagotribune.com/entert...9.story?page=2


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