For those that haven’t seen Netfix Medal Of Honor series I would highly recommend it. Fantastic 8 stories about some of the brave soldiers who was awarded it. I didnt know about the stories of these particular men.
OT- Medal Of Honor Documentary
- Thread starter Soonerborn59
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Wow what a well made series.I really like these shows that depict American Heroes and are not ashamed of it.
Watched the whole thing yesterday, really well done series. The opening quote from Ronald Reagan gave me chills each time I heard it.
Its really great to hear these type of stories. From my understanding this will be an ongoing series yearly with Netflix and I hope we see more like these. Then again I love military history and enjoy reading or watching any movie about WW2, the Civil War and just about any other ones I come across. About to finish “ A Helmet for My Pillow” by Robert Leckie.
That’s a pretty good one. I think I’ve run out of first person WWII Marine accounts to read, I was addicted for a couple of years. There are quite a few of them.
The personal lives of so many of these men are what makes their stories so amazing.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was a college professor at Bowdoin College in Maine who volunteered in the Union army and led a counter attack (a bayonet charge) on Little Round Top at Gettysburg when his men ran low on ammunition. This saved the left flank of the Union army and perhaps saved it from total defeat at Gettysburg. Chamberlain died in 1914 at age 85 from complications from a wound he suffered at Petersburg in 1965. He went on to become the governor of Maine in 1867.
Audie Murphy was born in poverty, was the 7th of 12 children, dropped out of school in the 5th grade, picked cotton for a dollar a day, lost his mother at age 16....then, after the Army, Navy and Marines turned him away for being undersized at 5'5", 112 lbs, he had his sister falsify an affidavit to show he was a year older and enlisted in the Army. His deeds in the Mediterranean and European theaters were numerous, but his actions in January of 1945 when he repelled a German assault and directing artillery fire atop a burning tank while sustaining a leg wound.
So many of the Medal of Honor recipients had similar stories.
It amazes me that there are some...just everyday people......who, when faced with extreme peril in combat, rise to such levels of courage and self sacrifice.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was a college professor at Bowdoin College in Maine who volunteered in the Union army and led a counter attack (a bayonet charge) on Little Round Top at Gettysburg when his men ran low on ammunition. This saved the left flank of the Union army and perhaps saved it from total defeat at Gettysburg. Chamberlain died in 1914 at age 85 from complications from a wound he suffered at Petersburg in 1965. He went on to become the governor of Maine in 1867.
Audie Murphy was born in poverty, was the 7th of 12 children, dropped out of school in the 5th grade, picked cotton for a dollar a day, lost his mother at age 16....then, after the Army, Navy and Marines turned him away for being undersized at 5'5", 112 lbs, he had his sister falsify an affidavit to show he was a year older and enlisted in the Army. His deeds in the Mediterranean and European theaters were numerous, but his actions in January of 1945 when he repelled a German assault and directing artillery fire atop a burning tank while sustaining a leg wound.
So many of the Medal of Honor recipients had similar stories.
It amazes me that there are some...just everyday people......who, when faced with extreme peril in combat, rise to such levels of courage and self sacrifice.
One of my favorite writers dealing with the Civil War that are fictional but based off some history is Jeff Shaara. He has also written some WW2 stories.
Here are some I have read over the last year fictional and non fictional.
Act Of War - Jack Cheevers - about the hijacking of the USS Pueblo by the N Koreans.
Unbroken - Maybe the best book I have read to date but much more detailed than the movie . Lauren Hillenbrand
The Jersey Brothers - Sally Mott Freeman - an account of 2 brothers looking for their youngest half brother.
Matterhorn - Karl Malantis - Fiction but like most war vets of that time one would have to say the story is a little bit of both fiction and non fiction.
The Old Breed - Fantastic first hand account of the war in the Pacific by EB sledge
Fields of Fire - James Webb - fiction
Cherries- John Podlaski
Etc etc. BTW if anyone loves a great baseball story read “ When The Giants Were The Giants “ by Peter William. Its basically the Bill Terry story
CT
Thats what is great about the MOH series as it focuses on less known heroes. I think most folks know the stories of Chamberlain and Murphy but hearing these other stories and getting their name out there is just awesome.
Thanks 59 for such a quality post.
I just watched the first episode. It's been 70 years since the Sgt's actions occurred. Seventy. That doesn't seem like a long time to me but it is many years removed in reality. It makes me think back to perhaps what it might have been like in 1935, seventy years removed from the Civil War. Perhaps not.
Anyway thanks for posting.
I just watched the first episode. It's been 70 years since the Sgt's actions occurred. Seventy. That doesn't seem like a long time to me but it is many years removed in reality. It makes me think back to perhaps what it might have been like in 1935, seventy years removed from the Civil War. Perhaps not.
Anyway thanks for posting.
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Not really into the fiction ones that much. If you are interested in more first person accounts like With the Old Breed and Helmet for my Pillow, I’ve read all of these:
Pacific theater
Islands of the Damned— R.V. Burgin
Red Blood, Black Sand— Chuck Tatum
Goodbye, Darkness— William Manchester
You’ll be Sor-ree!— Sid Phillips
Battleground Pacific— Sterling Mace
Hell in the Pacific— Jim McEnery
Coral and Brass— Holland Smith (More of an autobiography of a Marine officer’s career. A higher level view of the war, but very interesting.)
European theater
Shifty’s War— Shifty Powers
Unless Victory Comes— George Garrison
Parachute Infantry— David Kenyon Webster
Beyond Band of Brothers— Dick Winters
Then for non-first person accounts, but still really interesting:
These two are different, kind of pieced together through interviews with veterans:
Voices of the Pacific— Adam Makos
The Things our Fathers Saw— Matthew Rozell
The Bedford Boys— Alex Kershaw
Here is a different one from an entirely opposite perspective that shows the hell the Americans were dishing out:
D Day Through German Eyes— Holger Eckhertz
Thanks Harry as I have heard of a few of those and actually have them on my list as “To read”. I will certainly be keeping your list.
History is a great learning tool and books like The Old Breed don’t sugar coat the terror that our soldiers had to live through. In my 8 years of service I was very fortunate that it was all in peace time but I have had friends who wasnt as fortunate during their career and I can see the scars that having to had live it placed on them.
There is a book out about Ulysses Grants life that I also plan to read in the very near future. Once again thank you for your list.
My fav Vietnam era one - Leo Thorsness, who had perhaps the bravest day in that war.
First of all you needed coconut-sized cojones to do his regular job - flying "Wild Weasels", a two-seater fighter-bomber with an electronic weapons officer (EWO) in the back: they would go in ahead of the main strike force, get the attention of the surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites and get them to turn on their radar at them, the EWO would then hone in on that and then they'd dive in with a missile or cluster bombs to take out the SAMs so the rest of the strike force could just deal with typical AAA and Migs (not that the Weasels weren't getting that as well). They were also the last out off target in case any SAMs were left and targeting egresing planes. That plane suffered so many combat losses that it was retired before the war was over.
His 1967 MOH mission: Took out two SAM sites near Hanoi with a missile and cluster bombs, then entered a dogfight, shooting down a Mig going after other pilots in chutes who had punched out from their shot down plane. He refueled over Laos, returned to target to provide rescue cover and re-entered yet another dogfight and shot down another Mig before outrunning other Migs in pursuit. Now out of ammo he returned over the target for yet a third time just to draw Migs off of the rescue aircraft and onto him. Now almost out of fuel he hears a different pilot on the radio pleading for a refuel - decides that other pilot is in more dire need so redirects his fuel tanker to that guy and diverts himself to the closest base where he touches down with his fuel tanks on "bingo" - empty.
If he felt like bragging about that day at the officer's club, he didn't have much time to do it: 11 days later and 7 missions shy of 100 (you could be rotated home after that number) he was shot down over Hanoi by a Mig-21's heat-seeking missile...on his second mission over Hanoi of the day (he volunteered to be on stand-by after his earlier morning mission). Unwilling to cooperate as a POW he was kept in solitary confinement for the first of his six years in captivity in the "Hanoi Hilton." He was forced to retire after he came out due to injuries from his ejection and from torture as a POW.
Its impossible not to feel pride in calling this man a fellow American.
You can read about his Medal of Honor mission in more detail here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_K._Thorsness#Medal_of_Honor_mission
You might even catch it on TV: The mission was recreated by The History Channel as part of Episode 12 ("Long Odds") of its series Dogfights, and first telecast on January 19, 2007.
First of all you needed coconut-sized cojones to do his regular job - flying "Wild Weasels", a two-seater fighter-bomber with an electronic weapons officer (EWO) in the back: they would go in ahead of the main strike force, get the attention of the surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites and get them to turn on their radar at them, the EWO would then hone in on that and then they'd dive in with a missile or cluster bombs to take out the SAMs so the rest of the strike force could just deal with typical AAA and Migs (not that the Weasels weren't getting that as well). They were also the last out off target in case any SAMs were left and targeting egresing planes. That plane suffered so many combat losses that it was retired before the war was over.
His 1967 MOH mission: Took out two SAM sites near Hanoi with a missile and cluster bombs, then entered a dogfight, shooting down a Mig going after other pilots in chutes who had punched out from their shot down plane. He refueled over Laos, returned to target to provide rescue cover and re-entered yet another dogfight and shot down another Mig before outrunning other Migs in pursuit. Now out of ammo he returned over the target for yet a third time just to draw Migs off of the rescue aircraft and onto him. Now almost out of fuel he hears a different pilot on the radio pleading for a refuel - decides that other pilot is in more dire need so redirects his fuel tanker to that guy and diverts himself to the closest base where he touches down with his fuel tanks on "bingo" - empty.
If he felt like bragging about that day at the officer's club, he didn't have much time to do it: 11 days later and 7 missions shy of 100 (you could be rotated home after that number) he was shot down over Hanoi by a Mig-21's heat-seeking missile...on his second mission over Hanoi of the day (he volunteered to be on stand-by after his earlier morning mission). Unwilling to cooperate as a POW he was kept in solitary confinement for the first of his six years in captivity in the "Hanoi Hilton." He was forced to retire after he came out due to injuries from his ejection and from torture as a POW.
Its impossible not to feel pride in calling this man a fellow American.
You can read about his Medal of Honor mission in more detail here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_K._Thorsness#Medal_of_Honor_mission
You might even catch it on TV: The mission was recreated by The History Channel as part of Episode 12 ("Long Odds") of its series Dogfights, and first telecast on January 19, 2007.
Wow thanks. I’m about to finish up the autobiography of Ben Franklin, (which I highly recommend). I’ll be reading some of those. Especially interested in the D Day Through German Eyes.
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