A career Army noncommissioned officer, Edward Carter Jr. was born May 26, 1916, in Los Angeles, California. He was the son of missionary parents who went to the Far East and finally settled in Shanghai, China. Edward ran away from this home when he was a young teen to begin a military exodus. However, it was not to be an ordinary journey as his material and spiritual paths intertwined.
His first tour was short-lived, yet not too short to prevent the 15-year-old Carter from rising to the rank of Lieutenant in the Chinese Army. When he was discovered to still be a child, Edward was promptly discharged and returned to his parents. It was also long enough for Carter to believe he was visited by a spirit in the Chinese Army and informed him would be a great warrior but would not die in war. 
Now having a spiritual military destiny, as soon as he was old enough, Edward enrolled in a Shanghai military school. There he received extensive combat training and learned at least four languages, including Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, and German.
Next, he fought in the Spanish Civil War as a corporal in the socialist Abraham Lincoln Brigade. It was an American volunteer unit opposing General Franco's fascist troops. In 1938, they were forced to flee into France. This led to his return to the United States.
Here he met and married his wife Mildred in Los Angeles in 1940. It wasn't long though before destiny called again. He enlisted in the U.S. Army September 6, 1941, shortly before World War II and quickly rose to Staff Sergeant. In 1942, just months after he enlisted, however, the Army opened a counterintelligence file with his name on it. On May 18, 1943, an unidentified intelligence officer at Fort Benning, Georgia "deemed it advisable" to put Sergeant Carter under surveillance and start an investigation. The officer did so because Carter had been a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Allegedly, "while not necessarily communist," he had been "exposed to communism."
The report further alleged, "Subject... capable of having connections with subversive activities due to... early years (until 1938) in the Orient" and had a speaking knowledge of Chinese. Every commander Carter had thereafter secretly reported what he read, where he went and what clubs he joined.
In 1944 he was shipped to Europe and ended up assigned to supply duties. When Gen. Dwight Eisenhower ran short of combat-arms replacements in December 1944, he instituted the volunteer Ground Force Replacement Command for rear-echelon Soldiers of all races. By February 1945, a total of 4,562 black Soldiers were serving in units up to company size attached to previously all-white infantry and armored divisions.
At the height of his career he was even close to Gen. George S. Patton, serving as one of the general's guards. Patton had no room for prejudice in the ranks. They had a strong bond with the fact they both believed they had been visited by a spirit who foretold accomplishments on the battlefield.
After months of volunteering, Carter's platoon made it into combat, yet he had to accept a demotion to Private. This was because his superiors would not allow a black to command white troops. He eventually served in the "Mystery Division" of blacks in Patton's Third Army. (The Mystery Division performed missions requiring uniforms without identifying unit insignia.)
In March 1945, the tank on which Carter, then 28, and other infantrymen were riding came under heavy small arms and anti-armor fire. Unit members thought the fire had come from a large warehouse on the outskirts of town. This resulted in him volunteering to lead three other Soldiers on a patrol against the German position. They advanced toward the structure and took cover where they located and assessed the approximate enemy strength. They left this cover to cross 150 yards or so of open fields to the warehouse.
One American Soldier was soon killed and Carter sent the two survivors back to hold the position covering his advance. There, another comrade was killed and the other seriously wounded by the German defenders. Carter inched his way to a place of safety behind a ridge 30 yards away and endured an exchange of gunfire with the warehouse. Along the way, his deadly fire knocked out two enemy machine gun nests and a mortar crew.
He paid a price though, as a machine gun burst put three bullets through his left arm. Continuing, he was knocked to the ground by another wound to his left leg. Then, after taking "wound tablets" a drink from his canteen was interrupted with another wound through his left hand. Three shrapnel wounds followed and were credited for the pain he endured the rest of his life.
After enduring Carter's close proximity and periodic fire, German officers in the warehouse finally sent eight Soldiers to flush him out and finish him off. He lay still for two hours until the patrol approached him, thinking the blood-soaked American Soldier was dead.
Suddenly, Carter, seriously wounded, opened fire with his .45-caliber submachine gun. He shot six of the enemy dead and took the other two prisoners. Using them as a human shield, the Sergeant made his way back to the American tanks. As another act of courage, Carter refused to be evacuated until he could report all he had observed and extract needed information about the enemy's emplacement from his German-speaking prisoners.
After recovering from his wounds in less than a month, he was restored to his staff Sergeant rank and finished the war training troops.
At this point, October 1945, he had been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, American Defense Service Medal, Combat Infantry Badge and numerous other citations and honors. Shortly thereafter in 1946, Secretary of War Robert Patterson noted an irregularity in the lack of black recognition and promised to investigate. At the conclusion of the war, Carter found himself stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, and politely known as a Negro or colored. A lot of the battlefield camaraderie had faded, however, black Soldiers were becoming increasing common and were blending more into the ranks.
When Carter attempted to reenlist, the Army barred his enlistment and drummed him out of uniform without explanation on September 30, 1949. He received an Honorable Discharge dated October 1949, probably the darkest "honor" of his life.
It is unclear when it became known they had banished the decorated warrior as a suspected communist. It was very clear the Army denied him the life of soldiering he dearly loved.
He moved into a life as a family man and steadily worked in the vehicle tire business the rest of his life. In 1962, although he smoked, he and his doctors attributed the discovery of lung cancer to shrapnel still in his neck. He died peacefully of lung cancer in the UCLA Medical Center, a Los Angeles hospital, on January 30, 1963, at 47 years of age.
Sergeant Carter was laid to rest at the National Cemetery within the Veterans Hospital grounds in West Los Angeles near where he died.
In 1992 Secretary of the Army John Shannon commissioned an independent study to identify unrecognized African American heroes from World War II. In May 1996 the study was completed under the title, The Exclusion of Black Soldiers from the Medal of Honor in World War II. Staff Sergeant Edward Allen Carter Jr. of Los Angeles, California was identified and recommended for honors. January 10, 1997, Sergeant Carter was exhumed from the national cemetery and honored the next day in Los Angeles. On January 13, President Clinton presented Carter's posthumous Medal of Honor to his son, Edward Allen Carter III in Washington, D.C.
A horse-drawn caisson and full military honors on January 14, 1997, ended his physical destiny following his birth in 1916 and passing away in 1963. Edward Carter, the consummate Soldier, was now finally at rest in the Arlington National Cemetery as befitted his material exodus. His spiritual exodus was also about to end.
In 1998 Allene Carter, his daughter-in-law, received 57 pages of declassified Army documents in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. The documents showed the Army could not find a shred of disloyalty by Carter.
In an emotional ceremony in the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes, the day before Veterans Day 1999, the Carter family again met with President Clinton. Assisting the Commander-in-Chief was Gen. John Keane, Army Vice Chief of Staff. Gen. Keane presented the Carter family with a set of corrected military records and belated posthumous awards for Staff Sergeant Edward A. Carter Jr. of the Army Good Conduct Medal, Army of Occupation Medal and American Campaign Medal. The Army admitted declassified Army intelligence records showed that any suspicions against the hero had no basis in fact.
capture the service story
of every veteran'
Join Now Watch Video
"A few minutes after 1 AM, a thunderous roar of the incoming mortar, rocket and small arms fire blows me out of my slumber as Charlie hits us with everything he has. From the opening salvo, it's obvious we are vastly outnumbered."
--Spencer Matteson
The following is an account of the battle at LZ Bird. It happened in the early morning hours of December 27, 1966, Near Thon Xuan Son, Vietnam. Though it was a relatively short battle, it was by far the most intense fighting I saw during my tour. Some analysts have speculated it may have been one of the most intense battles of the war, if not the most.
I was a member of the weapons platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Bn. 12th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division. This is how I remember the battle that changed me forever.
There's a sandbag pit about 20 feet in diameter and three feet high. My head is near the outer face of it and I'm doing what passes for sleep in Vietnam. The pit I'm sleeping next to holds a 155 MM Howitzer that's out of service because it needs a new barrel, so it sits idle. The gun pits of 105 MM and 155 MM howitzers are spaced irregularly on a low-lying, oval hilltop about a hundred meters from a bend in the meandering Kim Son River. My bunker is very close to the landing zone for the supply choppers and there's a 500-gallon bladder of jet fuel out in front of us. It occurred to me later that if rocket or mortar fire had hit that bladder, things could have gone very badly for us.
It's after midnight and pitch black. A dense, tropical cloud cover is blotting out the moon and stars. Unknown to us, out in the darkness, just beyond our perimeter, hundreds of small, wiry, underfed bodies are slithering through elephant grass, closing in on us with uncanny stealth. They are two battalions of the NVA's 22nd Regiment - well trained, well-disciplined and motivated, reinforced by local VC insurgents. The total attack force is estimated at 1,000 men. Our combined field strength of infantry and artillery on LZ Bird that night is 170 men.
The hilltop position is about the size of a football field and relatively level - like a small plateau. The higher ridges nearby are used by the enemy to great effect by raining rocket and mortar rounds down on us once the battle begins. Strategically the position is questionable and many of us feel we are being used as bait.
A few minutes after 1 AM, a thunderous roar of incoming mortar, rocket and small arms fire blows me out of my slumber as Charlie hits us with everything he has. From the opening salvo, it's obvious we are vastly outnumbered. In the few seconds it takes me to reach my bunker, the two men on watch have already been wounded. One is hit in the arm, the other in the back of the head. Both are bleeding and calling out for help. I check them out in the glow of the incoming fire; the injuries appear to be superficial shrapnel wounds. I assure them they will be okay.
The deafening roar continues for what seems an eternity. Individual blasts meld into one continuous maelstrom, sounding bizarrely like a monstrous engine revving up. Charlie means to kill us all tonight and he's off to a great start.
During the first minutes of the battle, I try to get my bearings and figure out what to do. The main attack is not coming directly at us so I have time to think. The two guys on my position are down in the bunker, and there is no room for me. The M-60 machine gun which is assigned to me earlier that day sits on top of the bunker, resting on the overhead cover; I grab it and fire in the direction of the assault. After a few short bursts, the M-60 jams, it's rendered useless and leaves me in the battle of my life with an Army issue Colt .45 automatic and a few clips of ammo.
To the right of our bunker is my Squad Leader's position and midway between a stack of hand grenades still in the cartons brought out by chopper too late to distribute. My squad leader, Sgt. Delbert Jennings and two other men in the bunker to our right (the direction of the attack) are under such heavy fire they have to pull back - they come running toward our position. Jennings yells frantically for us to open the grenade boxes. We quickly set up an assembly line of sorts and three of us start doing this as fast as we can. The cases are about the size and shape of a case of 12 oz. beer cans and each grenade is wrapped in its own cardboard tube with tape around it. 
Thanks to Jennings's quick thinking, within seconds we are flipping the unwrapped grenades to him, with pins straightened, so he just pulls the pins and lets them fly. The steady stream of grenades we put out are highly effective. In the morning at first light, we find a dozen enemy dead and it's anyone's guess how many we wounded.
As the mortar and rocket fire subsides, the small arms fire grows heavier. The enemy is breaching our perimeter. They are coming in waves, and it isn't long before we see them behind us inside the perimeter. Sappers run in alongside the riflemen with satchel charges of TNT in small rucksacks strapped to their backs. They are attempting to blow up the artillery guns. Some blow, some don't. It's likely their detonators and fuses are wet and therefore not working. We find many of their crude-looking hand grenades unexploded the next day, looking like World War I-era potato mashers, with long wooden handles.
Eventually, the onslaught is too much - it's down to hand-to-hand combat now inside the perimeter near the artillery pits and we start pulling back. On Jennings's order, we retreat toward our left flank, away from the brunt of the attack, skirt around the far side of the hill from where the attack is coming and along the way come across several of our wounded. One of them lies in the bottom of a bunker, unable to get up. He screams for help out of the pitch-black darkness - there is nothing we can do for him. We tell him he will be OK, and we'll be back for him as soon as possible. We try to calm him, but he's insane with fear and crying out in pain, pleading mournfully for help, but any attempt to get him up out of the bunker in the heat of battle will most likely mean death for us all. I feel sick having to leave him there.
We make our way to the farthest point from where the attack originated and are not alone. It seems everyone not dead, wounded or playing dead, has instinctively made their way to the same spot. We form a tight perimeter around the one gun emplacement still in our possession, 
one of the smaller, 105 MM Howitzers. The firebase has been overrun except for this small foothold. We are terrified and expect to momentarily be annihilated.
We do, however, have a plan for this type of situation. It calls for a green signal flare to be sent up. Any of our men still alive out front, upon seeing the flare, are to get their heads down and stay down. Then we level one of the Howitzer barrels and let fly with a canister or "beehive" round (a shell about two feet long and about 4.5 inches in diameter that blasts out 8,000 red hot "flechettes" of metal). The plan works. The bee-hive rounds have blunted the onslaught and Charlie begins to retreat. After the canister rounds are fired, the small arms fire diminishes and there is only sporadic firing, which continues through the night. This will turn out to be the first actual combat use of canister rounds.
As the mortar and rocket fire subsides, the small arms fire grows heavier. The enemy is breaching our perimeter. They are coming in waves, and it isn't long before we see them behind us inside the perimeter. Sappers run in alongside the riflemen with satchel charges of TNT in small rucksacks strapped to their backs. They are attempting to blow up the artillery guns with them. Some blow, some don't. It's likely their detonators and fuses are wet and therefore not working. We find many of their crude-looking hand grenades unexploded the next day, looking like World War I-era potato mashers, with long wooden handles.
At some point during Charlie's retreat, Chinook gunships show up and begin strafing the area where the attack originated. As the first chopper makes its pass the sky lights up like the Fourth of July with tracers. For every round going from the chopper to the ground, some thousand rounds seem to be going from the ground up. It's an awesome and frightful sight. Against all odds, the chopper makes it through.
Dawn is a long time coming. Sometime during the night, elements from the 1st Bn., 5th Cav. show up to reinforce us. We've taken a terrible beating-especially my company and especially my platoon. Out of 26 men in my platoon, only six emerge without a scratch. I am one of them. We count about 15 dead and five wounded. The hilltop smolders and dead bodies sprawl everywhere. A strange silence envelopes the hill (though I'm half deaf from the battle) and the scene is surreally like living in a Bosch painting. Demolition experts arrive to disarm the satchel charges that failed to explode. We carefully reconnoiter our old positions, wary of booby traps, searching for wounded and assessing the damage in human terms.
Once back in our platoon area the enormity of what happened hits us. We find Gary Peasley, a tall lanky kid from Detroit, has taken a direct hit from a 57 MM rocket, there isn't much left of him. Peasley and I were ordered to switch positions late the previous afternoon. He was due to rotate in a few months and I recall just the day before, as we ended a poker game, he stood up, stretched and with a boastful air said, "Yeah, I always said if Charlie didn't get me by Christmas, I'd be home free." No such luck.
Platoon mate Joe Willis, a farm boy from central Illinois and a guy everyone liked, is lying face up, eyes wide open staring at the sky in a shallow garbage pit - his M16 still cradled in his arms. Six enemy bodies surround him. Willis was a soft-spoken, self-effacing type - never said a bad word about anyone. He was one hell of a soldier too.
Our Platoon Leader, Lt. Jerry Wallace, whom we nicknamed John Wayne, because of his gung-ho attitude, is found out in front of his bunker, face down, with his cherished pearl-handled revolver in his hand. Apparently, he ran straight out to meet the attack head-on. The man had guts.
One of the long-timers, Donald Woods and one of the new recruits, who was spending his first night in the field are dug out after having spent the night in the bottom of their foxhole, buried alive by the overhead cover which had collapsed on them. After they are fished out, they tell us they heard Vietnamese voices all around them for hours and felt bayonets probing at the sandbags on top of them. They also report hearing women's voices and babies crying during the height of the battle. The long-timer Woods is half-crazed and still shaking hours after the ordeal. He has shrapnel in his back and knows he will be flown out soon. He says his goodbyes to those of us left and vows he won't be back. He'd rather spend the rest of his life in Leavenworth at hard labor than go through another night like this. We never see him again.
Our XO has a sucking chest wound and is medevac'd out. I'll never know if he makes it. Our Company has been cut to ribbons and the artillerymen also have taken heavy losses. I've heard varying numbers on dead and wounded, but having been there I tend to agree with S.L.A. Marshall who states in his book "Bird," we took 58 KIA and 71 wounded. I'm not sure how many died later of their wounds.
My buddy Andy had been out on a long-range patrol that night and from where they were, could hear the fierce fighting and monitored radio transmissions until they stopped abruptly. Communications are out for several hours during the attack. He's been worried sick for my safety and we have an awkward reunion in the morning when he's choppered in. It's hard to look at each other. We make feeble attempts to talk about what happened, who was killed, who was wounded. We're both glad to be alive, glad each other is alive, but we are torn up. We hem and haw, look at our boots, or up at the sky. We are ashamed to be alive.
I spend the morning dragging the lifeless bodies of our comrades to a makeshift morgue and cleaning them up for transport to graves registration in Saigon. We pull cigarette filters out of artillerymen's ears (improvised earplugs). We close eyes and do what we can to wipe the mud and blood off their faces and clothing. We put them on ponchos and lay them in rows where they wait for the choppers to spirit them away.
After our dead are gone, we drag the enemy dead to a mass grave dug by a bulldozer flown in that morning. None of us wants to touch them, especially the NVA dead. Rigor mortis has set in and it's spooky. Death feels contagious; we don't want to catch it. We use rope or wire, whatever we can find, looping it around a wrist or an ankle, and drag the ridged bodies along in the muddy, red clay.
I think the day after is worse than the battle itself. In the heat of battle, there's no time to think. But when you're exposed to the aftermath of a fierce firefight like this the experience becomes nightmarish. Still reeling from it all, we struggle to make sense of the horrific carnage, little knowing what we are experiencing will affect us for the remainder of our days. The battle was only an hour or two, but the cleanup and body count goes on for a few days.
Patrols follow the cleanup. Patrols count the enemy dead and examine Charlies' escape routes. Bodies and parts of bodies are found-bodies blown apart by direct artillery hits. Twisted, grotesquely mangled limbs, body parts of all kinds hanging from bushes and trees - everywhere the smell of blood and death and rotting flesh. I am so immersed in horror and death that I become psychically numb, going about my business with a vacuous, zombie-like feeling. I shut it out and feel nothing, which is all I can do to keep from going mad.
Not many people outside the military know what happened that night, although it did make the headlines of the major papers the next day. It was just another battle, fairly early in the war and soon forgotten by all but those who were there. Personally, it has never been far from my consciousness. When I got back from Vietnam and left the army, I found people didn't want to be reminded of the war, so I clammed up. I went for many years without talking about it. It wasn't until the 1990s that I started to talk openly about it, and have since tried to put some of my experiences in writing. I've also been in touch with other veterans and shared my experiences with them.
They say time heals all wounds and in my case, I think it has, or at least it has scabbed over nicely and doesn't hurt so much anymore. I have been back to Vietnam twice since the war and instead of it being the cathartic, emotional experience I thought it might be, I found I could look back at my war experience with objectivity and equanimity and without a flood of anger or sorrow. I still, on occasion, do get choked up though, when I think about the terrible waste of life and the brothers I lost that night. I made a trip back in 2014 and visited the location where this battle took place, Xuan An Hill and in the process of finding it, ran across a little old man ambling down the road. Through my interpreter/guide, we questioned him and asked him if he remembered the battle. He answered: "Yes, I remember it, I was there." He was one of the many local VC insurgents who had helped the NVA that night. We shook hands and buried the hatchet so to speak.
Truth is the first casualty of war. Humans are strange creatures and each has his own version of the truth based on their point of view. Governments have their versions of truth too - they're called lies. The number of dead and wounded at LZ Bird vary widely, depending upon whom you ask. I'm sure my experience was quite different from the experience of an artilleryman that night. 
The experience of an Officer was quite different from the experience of an enlisted man. What I'm getting at here, is that this story is my truth. I've been criticized in the past for things I've written about LZ Bird. Perhaps for not making my American comrades sound brave or courageous enough. I'm not writing history though, I'm just writing what happened to me as best I can remember it. The war still divides us vets. We bonded as brothers over there, but like brothers everywhere, we don't always agree.
The fight won headlines on the following day in the national press. The stories were based on what hard-pressed bureau chiefs in Saigon had to assume out of the scant information fed them by telephone from the field. As reported, the fight at Bird was a defeat for the United States, no simple reverse, and barely short of disaster. A solidly placed and defended landing zone had been overrun. The enemy had had his way.
Our losses, compared to theirs, were mournful. Within 24 hours thereafter the fight at LZ Bird had passed from the public consciousness as the press ran on to other sensations.
My Squad Leader, Sgt. Delbert Jennings was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions that night. You can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delbert_O._Jennings
Editor's Note: Several years after the Battle of LZ Bird, I took command of this same company in 1969. For six months we roamed the jungles of Vietnam engaging small units of Viet Cong and NVA. In May 1970, we helicoptered into Cambodia where we ran into the enemy every few days in small and big battles. Two months later, I was sent to Bien Hoa where I was Assistant Operation Officer for the 1st Brigade.
The company has reunions every two years and it was my pleasure to become friends with Spencer Matteson. He lived in Hollywood and I live in Studio City about two miles away. He is now roaming the world taking fabulous photos.
Less than an hour's drive away from the site of the largest seaborne invasion in history, two men made a stance to ensure that both ally and enemy alike wouldn't have to make that sacrifice.
In a small church in Angoville-Au-Plain, Kenneth Moore and Robert Wright, both medics with the 101st Airborne Division, set up a medical center where they provided medical care to their American comrades but also German soldiers and local French civilians and resistance fighters.This is their remarkable story.
Kenneth Jack Moore was born in 1924 in Los Angeles County to John and Blanche Moore. He was still in high school when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. So enraged by this despicable act, he volunteered for military service in the U.S. Army paratroopers.
Following jump school, Moore was chosen to be a medic, although he got only about two weeks of medical training.
In the summer of 1944, Moore was a member of the 2nd Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) attached to the 101st Airborne Division �?? the famous "Screaming Eagles." He didn't see any combat until D-Day, June 6, 1944, when he was one of the thousands of troops parachuted into France. As a Medic, he carried medical supplies, but no weapon.In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, he and fellow medic Robert Wright, along with other paratroopers, boarded a C-47 transport plane and flew out of Merryfield airfield, Somerset, England. As the plane gained altitude, the paratroopers were told that they would be one of the first allied Soldiers parachuting into German-occupied France, around the town of Carentan, not far inland from where D-Day allied soldiers would storm the beaches at dawn. "You guys will be there first, behind the front lines. How you perform will save the lives of hundreds, thousands, possibly millions, possibly the free world," Moore's commander, Col. Howard "Skeets" Johnson, told his men.
During the flight from the south coast of England, while his blackened-face comrades cradled their weapons and checked their ammo, Moore watched a young man clean his weapon, almost manically. He then checked his own backpack of medicaments, knowing it might save lives, possibly even that young paratrooper opposite him.As the C-47s came within sight of France and German anti-aircraft guns, a number of them were shot down and their airborne infantrymen never saw France. The plane Moore and Wright were on also received numerous flak hits, so much in fact that the pilot dove below the flak bursts. Others did the same.
Wright and Moore were dropped behind enemy lines in the early hours of June 6th before the landings on the beaches of Normandy began. The job of the 101st, along with the 82nd Airborne Division, was to cut off the main road connecting Cherbourg to Paris, which was critical to the German forces.
In the chaos of the first few hours of the liberation of France, thousands of allied paratroopers found themselves dispersed across the French countryside. The land here is filled with bogs and hedgerows, and the Germans had flooded the bogs making it especially difficult and dangerous for the allies. As soldiers of the 101st regrouped in the dark of the night the battle ensued and tiny Angoville-Au-Plain found itself smack-dab in the thick of the fight.
Looking for a suitable site to set up a first aid station, medics Wright and Moore, with the help of Lt. Ed Allworth, quickly decided on the best option available-the small Romanesque 12th-century church in the center of Angoville-Au-Plain. To ensure that their aid station was recognized as a place of healing, the two paratroopers hoisted a white sheet with a self-painted Red Cross beneath the old bell tower and tried to save the lives of anyone wounded during the landing on nearby Utah Beach.
The ancient basilica quickly developed into more than an aid station as Wright and Moore cared for a growing number of critically wounded men on the threshold of death. After stabilizing the soldiers, Wright or Moore left the church to scour the area for more injured men, including Germans.
The fighting here was intense and by the first evening, they were treating dozens of wounded soldiers and a couple of local girls, Lucienne and her friend Jean-Vienne, who were both wounded by a mortar round. While one of the medics tended to the wounded, the other would periodically risk his life by going out into the fields to search for the injured, often bringing them back to the church in a wheelbarrow.
The battle raged on for three days with both sides occupying the village at various times. When the American troops were forced to withdraw, Wright and Moore were told that they were on their own and despite the grave news, they continued about their work of tending to the wounded in the church. Joining the withdrawing Americans was Lt. Allworth. He left the medics knowing that as a combat soldier he would endanger the medics and those in their care.
Warriors from both sides were treated with equal compassion. A few died, but as the unrelenting war continued around the church, Wright and Moore renewed their efforts to rescue and treat injured soldiers from both sides. Overwhelmed by the numerically superior German forces, the Americans were again forced to retreat from Angoville-Au-Plain. Like before, both Wright and Moore refused to leave to continue their care of the wounded and dying.As the Americans retreated, German soldiers stormed the church and kicked the doors open. In the eerie silence that followed, the Germans slowly lowered their weapons upon seeing German soldiers as well as American paratroopers under the medical care of Wright and Moore. A German officer arrived. Observing the compassion tendered, he asked if more of his wounded men could be brought in for treatment. Wright and Moore offered their assistance without hesitation or fear. Obliged, the German officer even called in his own doctor to assist the American medics.
During their three days holed up in the tiny church of Angoville-Au-Plain, Wright and Moore faced many challenges. Unable to get supplies, they had to make do with what they had and with just the two of them to treat so many wounded they hardly ever slept.
During the fighting that raged outside, a mortar shell hit the roof of the church causing further casualties and all of the church windows were shattered by gunfire, some of it from American troops thinking there were Germans in the church.
When another mortar round exploded in the church year, two German Fallschirmer (paratroopers) snipers dropped down from the church tower and surrendered to the unarmed medics. They had unknowingly been up in the tower the entire time. Both asked if they could stay to help with treating the wounded. Moore and Wright were more than happy for their support.At one point U.S. soldiers rushed into the church to say they couldn't hold the town and recommended at least one of the medics fall back with them. But by then, the church was so packed with wounded that blood was leaking onto the floors as well as the pews. The two medics looked at each other and told the soldiers that both must stay and continue to treat the wounded.
During their three days holed up in the tiny church of Angoville-Au-Plain, Wright and Moore faced many challenges. Unable to get supplies, they had to make do with what they had and with just the two of them to treat so many wounded they never slept.
At times, the battle raged so close that the church shook violently, blowing out the windows. When a mortar round came through the roof but didn't explode, it forced a chuck of the ceiling to come crashing down, smacking Moore in the head, causing him to bleed. That's when he got the Purple Heart.
Regardless whether the Germans and Americans variously controlled the church after D-Day, Moore and Wright both won the respect of all sided. On several occasions, they were in the German-controlled territory but when the Germans saw they were also treating German wounded, they left them alone.
By June 8th, 1944, the fighting around Angoville-Au-Plain finally came to an end. Allied forces had the area secured and the war would move on toward Paris and the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany.
In all, Moore and Wright treated more than 80 soldiers, including about a dozen Germans. They were awarded Silver Star medals for their actions, and both served in other battles, including the Battle of the Bulge.
But the scars of what took place in Angoville-Au-Plain have remained for the past seventy plus years. The cracked flagstone floor in the center of the church, shattered by the mortar round, and the bloodstained pews can still be seen in the church.
A memorial in the town square honors the two American medics. Inscribed on the memorial are carved these words: 'In honor and in recognition of Robert E. Wright, Kenneth J. Moore. Medics 2nd Battalion 501 PIR 101st Airborne Division. For humane and lifesaving care rendered to 80 combatants and this church in June 1944'Inside the church are two stained glass windows commemorate the 101st Airborne Division, the first one is dedicated to the two medics of the 2nd Battalion of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment (101st Airborne Division). The second one honored the American parachutists.
After the war, Moore returned to California and worked for the Chevron Oil Company as an area representative. He eventually owned several gas stations of his own until the mid-1980s when back problems forced him into retirement.
He and Wright occasionally returned to Angoville-Au-Plain for ceremonies commemorating their life-saving actions on D-Day.
"I think the reason it's gotten attention now is that we weren't involved in killing, we weren't trigger pullers," he said. "I tell my grandchildren that my role in the war was sort of as an observer. I wasn't a rifleman killing people, and I was there in one of the big historical events of our century."
Kenneth Moore died in Sonoma, Calf. December 7, 2014. His first marriage was to Genevieve Wells in 1959. She passed away in 2001. He married for a second time to Beverly Thomson. She also passed away. He is survived by his son Francis, who lives in San Francisco and five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Robert Wright was born in Ohio on February 9, 1924, the son of Bertha and Pearl Wright. He died Saturday, December 21, 2013, at the age of 89. At his request, his ashes were buried in the Angoville-Au-Plain cemetery.
Editor's Note: The story of Moore and Wright was told in a documentary by war historian Tim Gray, "Eagles of Mercy," that aired on PBS and a 2013 book, "Angels of Mercy," by Paul Woodadge.
The backdrop for the hostilities was the American desire to establish trade relations with Korea. Like its neighbor Japan, Korea in the mid-nineteenth century was hostile to foreign influences, so much so that it earned the nickname of "the Hermit Kingdom." Japan agreed to sign a commercial treaty with the United States only at the point of a gun after a fleet headed by Commodore Matthew Perry appeared in Tokyo Bay in 1854.
American merchants hoped that a similar treaty could be struck with Korea. But the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 ended U.S. interest in Asia for a time. After Gen. Robert Lee's surrender at Appomattox in 1865, that American merchants again turned their eyes
to the region and began developing an expedition to Korea that was launched out of Nagasaki, Japan in May 1871 with an "armada" of five U.S. warships and 1,230 men under the command of Admiral John Rogers. Also aboard the ships were a group of diplomats who were there to create trade with the country, as well as establish good will. They also wanted to investigate what happened to the General Sherman (a merchant ship that mysteriously disappeared) and create some sort of treaty so the Koreans could help out with any shipwrecks that occurred.
The merchant ship General Sherman had arrived in Korea in 1866 to meet with Korean officials to initiate trade. Although the ship was armed, it was primarily a merchant ship and was carrying cotton, tin, and glass. There was no military presence onboard, and the crew was made up of Asian sailors, American traders, and a missionary.
On arrival, the Koreans refused to trade, but they would give the crew provisions before sending them on their way. They were also told to wait for further instructions.However, the ship left anyway and at their next stop, they were again told to stay put and wait. Shortly thereafter the ship was ordered to leave immediately, or the entire crew would be killed.
What happened next is debated. It is thought a scuffle occurred when some of the men tried to go ashore instead of leaving. Shots were fired on both sides.
The ship eventually left but ran aground later and was then set on fire by the Koreans. The crew, while attempting to escape, were beaten to death.
Possibly trying to avoid the blame, the Koreans would not speak of the General Sherman incident and the matter of what happened to the ship was dropped.
On June 1st, the American armada entered the Ganghwa Straits on the west coast of Korea. Their goal was to steam up the Han River, which led to the capital city of Hanyang (modern day Seoul). However, Gojon, the Korean king, had barred foreign ships from entering the Han. So when the American ships passed by, the Korean garrison onshore fired. Their outdated weapons did no damage, but that didn't matter to Admiral Rogers. He gave the Koreans ten days to apologize for what he regarded as an unprovoked assault.
The Koreans refused to comply. So Admiral Rogers made good on his threat. On June 10, the U.S. ships attacked the Choji Garrison located on the Salee River on the island of Ganghwa-do. It was a mismatch from the start. The garrison was lightly defended, poorly equipped, and badly outnumbered.
The U.S. soldiers bombarded the Citadel and then ground troops charged, quickly taking over. The Koreans, with a loss of proper firearms, ended up throwing rocks at their attackers. U.S. Marines and sailors then went on to overrun several other Korean posts on the island, including Deokjin Fort, which was abandoned.
When the smoke cleared at the end of the day, the Americans controlled Ganghwa-do at the cost of three dead. The Koreans weren't so fortunate. They lost more than two-hundred-and-forty men.The total fighting only lasted about 15 minutes. The wounded included 10 Americans. Twenty Koreans were captured. Five forts were impacted in total.
The American victory marked the first time that the stars and stripes were raised over Asian territory by force.
The U.S. again tried to work with the Koreans to make diplomatic progress by attempting to use their Korean prisoners as bargaining tools. However, the Korean leaders did not want the captured men. They believed any man who allowed himself to be captured was a coward, so they did not want such a man back.
Fifteen Americans - nine sailors and six marines - earned Medals of Honor for their bravery during the campaign, making them the first Medal of Honor recipients to be honored for fighting on foreign soil.
With no hope of forward diplomatic movement with the Koreans, the Americans remained stationed off-shore until July 3 and then left Korea for China.The Americans hoped that their victory would persuade the Koreans to negotiate. It did not. Instead, they sent reinforcements in large numbers and armed with modern weapons. Recognizing that the odds had shifted, the U.S. fleet pulled up anchor and set sail for China on July 3, 1871.
The United States would not get a treaty with Korea until 1882. That agreement came about in good part because the Korean king was hoping that U.S. support could help him preserve Korea's independence from China.
The 1882 treaty established "permanent relations of amity and friendship" between the peoples of Korea and the United States. That amity with South Korea continues to this day. But most Americans don't know that as the historian Robert Kagan put it, "the self-proclaimed disinterested and peace-loving Americans had introduced themselves to Korea by killing its people."
Naturally, the animosity between Korea and the U.S grew after this incident. The Koreans vehemently refused to work with the American diplomats.
There would be no negotiations on their part. They were even less welcoming to Western visitors and all foreigners, isolating the country from everything outside.
Even so, the Koreans did not attack any other foreign ships. The period of isolation did not last very long. A few years later Korea began to trade with nearby neighbor Japan followed by Europe and finally the United States.
It wasn't until 1950 when the Americans and its allies returned to fight another war in Korea. This time the Korean people welcomed the United Nations forces with open arms.
He says "My naval career was short-lived. I served four years during the Vietnam War. Some of the people resent the military, others love it. Some only realize its importance when they need it. I find it to have been the most influential experience I have ever had in my career".
"I fell in love with the Sea after that experience and I can't say that about any company I have worked for in my career. Not that I was dissatisfied, but I always compared them to my TEAMS in the Navy. Men and women who came together to be part of something bigger than themselves."
"You can't understand something you know nothing about but I intend to try to convey the importance of our sea service in my work and the men and women who put their lives on the line even as we speak.""If I leave nothing else in my legacy, I hope that people will understand that I at least, tried to make a difference in my own small way with my service to my country."
This is the USS George Washington leaving the port of New York City with the light in the background depicting what was the World Trade Center. The signal flags spell out NEVER FORGET.
"If anyone would be interested in commissioning me for a specific ship or reunion piece please let me know. My number is on my profile."
You can contact John here or email him at jdfronza@gmail.com
This book is about dangerous Search and Rescue missions flown out of Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Base during the early years of the Vietnam War. For the men assigned there, they called it "Naked Fanny."
Initially, the mission of the unit was to rescue military pilots shot down over Laos or forced down to leave their aircraft in the jungle in Thailand. But as U.S. involvement in the war increased, their mission changed to fly into hostile situations, making numerous rescues in dangerous conditions - including North Vietnam.
The stories in this well-written and detailed book brings to life the valor and courage needed day to day out and enliven the cold facts of what it like for pilots and crews to fly dangerous missions in an older model helicopter, the HH-43, which has a range of only 75 miles, no armor, and no self-sealing fuel tanks. This would be repeated time after time over a number of years with the same exhibition of bravery, selflessness, and valor.
Harrington uses an interesting style in his writing. He introduces each chapter with specific details of its content and then allows detailed first-person accounts that bear witness to the enormous dangers and raw emotions displayed by these heroic crews. He then wraps up the chapter with summation details.
One really beneficial feature Harrington added are the appendices at the end of the book which allows readers to refer to names and missions they are reading about as they go along. There is also a detailed glossary of what the acronyms are all about. There is also a postscript written by retired Maj. Joe Ballinger the reader will find most interesting.
This highly detailed, well-researched, well-written book will enlighten and inform those of us who know so very little about this part of U.S. Air Force aviation history.
Reader Reviews
A good friend of mine served at NKP. He just recently passed away. Please read this book. There were a lot of missions that just never made it to the newspapers.
~Tuscan Tom
"Highly readable and informative. If you don't know what it's like to fly a 1950's vintage helicopter with wooden rotor blades and who or what Air America was, They Called It Naked Fanny will tell you. A great read and worth more than the price of admission; check it out."
~Rotor Review by LDCR Chip Lancaster, USN (Ret.)
A well-written and informative book. There was so much that I was not aware of regarding the Viet Nam War; I am glad to learn about this time and these events. The heroism of these helicopter pilots and crew is astounding. What courage and guts they had. Highly recommend!
~Kindle Customer
Interesting early rescues and missions of the early Vietnam era USAF helicopter written about. The HH-43 was a fun to fly, stable in a hover and excellent at higher altitudes. Good to see the early mission finally down in print. Now I can look back at some of the ones I was familiar with and some that happened both before and after I left NKP. Now my wife and son can read about some of the events without my foggy mind trying to relate them. Scott and Joe have done a great service for getting it in print.
I was at NKP in the early months of 1965. We had 3 helicopters and were the only permanent USAF aircraft on the base during the early part of the mission.
~NJM
About the Author
Scott Harrington is a graduate of Southern Illinois University, Class of 1962. He received his commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Air Force in December 1962. He spent nearly two years as a Weapons Controller in the SAGE System at Sioux City Air Base, Iowa, before being sent overseas to Clark Air Base in the Philippines. In 1965, after spending a brief tour at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in South Vietnam, he was assigned to Nakhon Phanom, Thailand (aka "Naked Fanny"), where he served four months as Senior Director/Weapons Controller of a radar operations crew in support of aircraft flying bombing missions over North Vietnam and helicopter rescue missions originating from Nakhon Phanom. He later assisted with the setup and initial operation of a radar site at Dong Ha, South Vietnam.
Upon his return to the United States, he was assigned to Indian Springs Air Force Station, Nevada (now Creech Air Force Base), in support of the Atomic Energy Commission's underground nuclear test facility at Mercury, Nevada. Harrington then spent eleven years in broadcasting, winning several awards for broadcast excellence as a radio news anchor.
He left the broadcast field in the late '70s and spent the next 26 years with Gulf Power Company in Pensacola, Florida in public relations. Now retired, Harrington and his wife, Jaci, live on 10 acres in Northwest Florida.