Monday, May 29th, 2006...7:00 am
Memorial Day
In honor of Memorial Day, instead of the usual snarky siliness of this blog, I invite you to read the stories of three Congressional Medal of Honor winners. Most of us, being Arizonans, know the tragic story of Corporal Ira Hayes, but it is always worth another look.
One you may not know is the story of Sgt. William Carney, the first African-American recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor. For some reason, his compelling story was ignored by the writers of the otherwise excellent movie Glory.
The third one is the story of Staff Sergeant Maynard “Snuffy” Smith. He was the first enlisted man in what was then known as the Army Air Force to be awarded the Medal of Honor. His story was first told by a young Stars and Stripes reporter by the name of Andy Rooney. Most of the time, we read about these heroes and its easy to forget that they are just normal folks called on to do remarkable things, Smith’s often amusing story shows this. For those who don’t know, Smith had to put out a fire on his bomber while it was in flight with, well, lets just say the only liquid available.
3 Comments
May 30th, 2006 at 11:28 am
I admire Ira Hayes. His story is tragic and sobering. But I don’t think he won the Medal of Honor. Sorry to quibble. And when, oh when, are we going to see a post about your own run for the legislature?
May 30th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
You’re right. I must be one of many confused, since the webmasters that run the Medal of Honor site have a special page about him and begin it with the words, “Ira Hayes was an Iwo Jima Hero though not a recipient of the Medal of Honor”
Oh well. The Medal of Honor page about Hayes is here:
http://www.medalofhonor.com/IraHayesMarine.htm
May 30th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
Isn’t Glory the movie that claims that the 54th was destroyed at Fort Wagoner, totally missing the heroic action of Captain Luis Emilio in rallying the survivors?
Oh well, the Latino man don’t get credit por nada.
Leave a Reply