Valor Tales

Today's valor tale is another two for one. This time, the two men being honored were a team of air aces from the First World War. Frank Luke and Joseph Wehner were aviation pioneers that together logged 24 kills in the air over Europe. There were four men awarded Medals of Honor for their exploits in the air during World War I. Two were posthumous for men trying to resupply the Lost Battalion. The other two were given to air aces. An ace is a fighter pilot who has downed five or more enemy airplanes. One of those was to a very famous aviator you're sure to have heard of, the celebrated top American ace of the war, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker. The last recipient is one of the subjects of today's story, Lieutenant Frank Luke. Frank Luke was born in Phoenix, in the Arizona Territory, and grew up in a family with eight brothers and sisters. A skilled athlete, he enlisted into the Aviation Section of the US Army Signal Corps shortly after America's entry to the War...

Francis (Frank) Junior Pierce was born December 7, 1924 in Earlville, Iowa. On his 17th birthday the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. A week later, Frank had enlisted in the US Navy. After boot camp he was trained as a Hospital Corpsman in Portsmouth, Virginia. He was then assigned to the naval hospital at Parris Island, South Carolina, where he remained until August 1942. Sent to join the Fleet Marine Force, Pierce received training at Camp Lejeune. By January 1944 he sailed from Camp Pendleton with the 4th Marine Division for the Marshall Islands, still enemy held. As a corpsman with the 2nd Battalion, 24th Marines, he served through several major battles in the Pacific Theater. At Kwajalein Atoll the 2nd Battalion suffered heavy casualties after an enemy ammo dump exploded. The regiment then joined the attack on the Marianas. Initially held in reserve on the day of the invasion of Saipan (June 15th, 1944), the 24th Marines were called up after heavy fighting was encountere...

As I recently wrote, unwitnessed valor on the battlefield can go unrewarded. Sometimes, this recognition is merely delayed. This month, former Lance Corporal James Stogner of the United States Marine Corps was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions 52 years ago in Vietnam. As you'll read below, his actions are well deserving of the Medal of Honor, but sadly there were too few witnesses to justify that award. Stogner was an 18 year old Marine assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines in April, 1967. Military history buffs will know this battalion by its macabre nickname "The Walking Dead". They earned this nickname after being engaged in combat operations for 47 months and 7 days from June, 1965 to July, 1969, with only a brief respite in late 1966. During this time the battalion, with a nominal end strength of 800 men, had 2,892 Marines and corpsmen come through. They suffered an extremely high casualty rate, seeing more than 25% killed in action. Fif...

I am always awestruck by the stories of bravery of our fighting men and women. However, to be awarded a medal for any bravery, said bravery must be witnessed. I suppose this is a reasonable caveat as otherwise a lone survivor would be able to write his own story of derring do. It is therefore interesting for me to think of all the people who did obscenely brave things that were never witnessed and thus never rewarded. One example I'll give of this is Private Adolph Metzger, Company C, 2nd US Cavalry. From Württemberg, Germany, he first enlisted in 1855 in Philadelphia, listing his vocation as "laborer". Enlisting the in the Army was somewhat common for German immigrants in this time period so they could better learn English. Germany still operated under a guild system for tradesmen, so once immigrants learned English they could use those learned skills in the open marketplace here. His enlistment noted that he was 21 years old, 5'5" tall, and describ...

On January 12, 2019 we lost a true American hero. A mustang officer and survivor of three wars, Colonel Joe Jackson was one of only two living Air Force Medal of Honor recipients at the time of his death. Born in 1923 in Newnan, Georgia, Jackson was fascinated by airplanes as a youth. Days after his 18th birthday, he enlisted into the Army Air Corps in March 1941 hoping to become an airplane mechanic. As the US entered the Second World War, Jackson received training as a crew chief and served aboard a B-25 Mitchell bomber. During a training flight on which the flight engineer was out sick, Jackson filled in for the missing man. During the flight an engine caught fire. The pilot didn't know how to put it out and asked for Jackson's help. Back then the pilot relied on the flight engineer to do most of the engine-related work. The pilot would typically only have throttle control, and on some airframes the engineer even ran those. Jackson's quick thinking and know...