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Announcer: This is the story of our nation's

greatest military honor.

Man: And it takes an action

that is above and beyond the call of duty.

Different man: I made up my mind I wasn't gonna run

and I wasn't gonna surrender.

The fight don't get going good until you're surrounded.

Man: I thought, "they can't do this to me.

They can't get me."

I am going to survive this thing.

Announcer: It is not an award a soldier seeks.

I don't want to be a hero.

A lot of them died to be a hero.

Announcer: Today, it is the highest medal given

for exceptional bravery and courage.

Man: You're not doing it for the country.

You're doing it for the one on your left and on your right.

Announcer: The medal of honor.

On September 15, 1942, I was awarded this medal.

It's a bronze piece of brass, costs about 85 cents,

and it hangs from a pale blue ribbon,

and it's got the goddess Minerva repulsing discord.

Discord is this little dude down here in the corner

with snakes in his hands.

This is the highest military decoration

that the United States can give to its soldiers,

sailors, marines, coast guard or airmen,

the medal of honor.

Captioning made possible by friends of nci

alfre woodard: From the jungles of Vietnam.

To the Iraqi desert,

from gettysburg to normandy,

the medal of honor has defined American heroism.

4-star generals stand and salute

the lowliest private who wears one.

They reflect the qualities we value and honor--

initiative and self-sacrifice.

Only 3,400 have been awarded

since its creation during the civil war,

and increasingly you may have to die to receive one.

Williams: I think back the day on October 5, 1945,

when president Truman placed that medal around my neck,

and I have never, I don't believe,

been more frightened in my life than I was at that moment.

My body was shaking, and it would not remain still,

and he put his left hand on my shoulder and said to me,

"I would rather have this medal than to be

president of the United States."

Woodard: Before the invasion of iwo jima,

American battleships pounded the island for 3 days

in the greatest naval bombardment of world war ii.

But the 21,000 Japanese were dug into impenetrable caves

and concrete bunkers called pillboxes.

As the marines struggled up mount suribachi,

the Japanese mowed them down with their machineguns.

At just 5'6", corporal hershel Williams

had been turned down twice by the marines.

After two days of fighting, he was the only flamethrower

left in his company.

Williams: We had tried to break through a line of pillboxes,

and we were constantly being beat back.

My company commander was extremely frustrated

because he had lost so many of his men,

and he asked me if I thought I could do anything

about some of those pillboxes with the flamethrower.

I don't remember what I said.

Others said I said, "I'll try."

That sounds like me, like I might say that.

Woodard: The volcanic landscape gave Williams little cover.

4 riflemen were his only protection as he crawled

toward the bunkers.

Williams: I was approaching a pillbox,

and I saw smoke come out of the top of the pillbox.

I thought, "there's got to be an opening up there."

So I crawled around on the blind side

to the top of the pillbox, and here was a vent.

So I stuck my flamethrower down there and let it go.

Woodard: In the scorching heat, Williams crawled

through the dirt towards the next pillbox.

As he did, he realized the Japanese gunner

could not angle his gun barrel low enough to hit him.

Williams: The bullets were hitting those tanks

on my back, and as they were,

of course it was shaking my body just like a jackhammer,

and I had enough sense to keep crawling forward

rather than crawl backwards.

If I had gone backwards,

I wouldn't be talking to you today.

Woodard: For 4 hours, Williams battled the Japanese,

silencing 7 pillboxes,

finally clearing a path for the marines to advance.

Williams: And I had to use 6 flamethrowers

during that 4-hour period.

My mind will not bring back to me,

how did I get those flamethrowers?

I apparently went back and got them myself,

and although I was scared out of my wits,

my training kept telling me, "this is what you do.

This is your obligation, so go do it."

I didn't even know what the medal of honor was.

Shedaisy: ♪ mine eyes have seen the glory ♪

♪ of the coming of the lord,

♪ he is trampling out the vintage ♪

♪ where the grapes of wrath are stored ♪

♪ he hath loosed the fateful lightning ♪

♪ of his terrible, swift sword ♪

♪ his truth is marching on

♪ glory, glory, hallelujah

woodard: The founding fathers resisted the idea

of military medals, perhaps because they seemed

too much like the decorations of the European aristocracy.

All of that changed with the civil war.

Vast new armies had to be raised,

volunteers had to be motivated to enlist

and not desert,

and morale kept up on the home front.

Man: The Navy was the first medal of honor,

and then they came out with the army medal.

Of course, back then, there was only two medals,

the purple heart, which they used to call

the George Washington medal, and also the medal of honor.

Woodard: The first medals of honor were given out

for a raid to destroy a key confederate rail line.

Man: It was a pretty harebrained, cockamamie scheme.

21 fellows infiltrated enemy lines and went down below vicksburg.

They wore confederate uniforms, which they then removed,

and they hijacked a locomotive called the general.

They began running up the line, tearing up track.

The confederates got on to them pretty quick.

Rosser: They finally run out of steam.

They had to abandon the train and make a run for it,

and they were all captured.

Some of them were hung,

and some of them were taken prisoner,

and when they had an exchange of prisoners,

secretary of war Stanton was congratulating them

for what they did, and as kind of a second thought,

he said, "well we just passed an award for a medal,

and I would like to give you the first ones."

So he gave Jacob parrott and some of the other boys

from Ohio that were exchanged

the first medal of honors that were ever received.

The rest of them got it posthumously.

Woodard: If one single action can be said to have

saved the union, it might well be

the defense of little round top at the battle of gettysburg

by colonel Joshua Chamberlain.

Lang: He protected the left flank of the union

in a most unconventional way.

He had his men hinge like a door and charge downhill

with bayonets when they were out of ammunition

and won the day against hood's texans.

Woodard: Many of the civil war recipients were flag bearers,

unarmed soldiers sent out in front of the charge,

carrying the regimental colors.

The flag provided a visual marker

for an officer to follow the position

of his men on the battlefield.

Man: Capturing a confederate flag

would throw them into a state of confusion

because now they don't know exactly where

they're supposed to be,

whether they're charging or retreating,

but then the other purpose, too, was that it stirred

patriotism, that--that people really would have

these, you know, these heightened emotions

about seeing their flag touch the ground

or seeing their flag carried off by the enemy,

which is I think why you see so many medal of honor actions

involving the flag.

William Harvey carney was standing next

to a flag bearer when the flag bearer was shot,

and the flag was going to fall.

So he dropped his firearm, picked up the flag,

and assumed the role of the flag bearer

and in the course of doing that was shot several times.

That action was the first by an African-American

that would earn the medal of honor.

Woodard: During the civil war, and for a half century after,

the medal of honor was handed out freely.

864 men of the 27th Maine infantry were offered

the medal to reenlist.

The entire honor guard at Lincoln's funeral

was given the medal of honor.

24 were awarded for the battle of little bighorn,

56 for the invasion of Vera Cruz, Mexico.

Rosser: At Vera Cruz, every officer

that went ashore got the medal of honor.

Back then, they had different standards.

Newsreel narrator: 1917-- America's hope for peace sank with the lusitania.

Woodard: As America's entry into world war I loomed,

congress realized the criteria for receiving

a medal of honor needed tightening.

Now it required "actual conflict with the enemy,

"distinguished by gallantry or intrepidity

at the risk of life."

The classic example is falling on a grenade

to save fellow soldiers.

Later, additional medals were created to form the pyramid of honor.

Lang: At the very tip of the pyramid of course

is the medal of honor, followed by the service crosses,

the silver star, then the bronze star.

By creating these other awards,

it enhanced the value of the medal of honor.

It made it that much more difficult to achieve.

Dix: They don't award the medal of honor for being

successful on the battlefield just killing the enemy.

You have to risk your life for your fellow soldiers.

Ehlers: And it takes an action that is

above and beyond the call of duty.

Woodard: A witness to the action writes a recommendation.

It makes its way up the chain of command

to the top uniformed officer of the service branch,

then to the secretary of the army, Navy, or air force,

the secretary of defense, and finally the president.

Every detail of the action is scrutinized.

The process can take years.

Man: And you know that certain political

decisions get made along the way.

It disappears into the fog, into the bureaucracy,

and somebody gets selected for a Navy star,

somebody gets selected for a medal of honor.

Woodard: When top officers voted on a medal of honor

for Navy seal Mike Thornton, there was one hold-out.

Thornton: The chief of naval operation,

who was admiral zumwalt, said, "why are you voting no, Lou?"

He basically said, "how does a guy do that

and still be alive?"

Woodard: Heroes do not win wars by themselves,

but in every conflict there are men like Mike Thornton,

who in the heat of battle do things that defy belief.

The medal of honor is awarded for those actions.

In October, 1972, Mike Thornton was 23 years old,

on his fourth tour of duty in Vietnam.

He had always wanted to be a Navy frogman.

American troops had already begun their withdrawal

when he joined a reconnaissance mission

led by lieutenant Thomas r. Norris.

With 3 south Vietnamese soldiers,

they traveled north to scout the qua viet river.

Thornton: I crawled up, looked around and checked

to make sure there was no enemy in sight.

Then we called them up one at a time.

I said, "I don't see the qua viet,"

and Tom said, "I don't see it, either."

So I went south for a while, came back, no river.

We didn't know where we were,

and they didn't know where we were.

Woodard: Patrolling inland, the team passed

a fortified enemy base.

That's when Thornton realized they had been mistakenly

put ashore inside north Vietnam.

Thornton: You hear something, you'd stop, listen, move.

Stop and listen...Move.

There was a creek to the north of us,

and I said, "let's get in that creek,

and let's follow it back out to the ocean."

We passed the enemy from 10 ten feet away in some areas.

You could see them in the bonfire

actually silhouetting themselves,

while we are out on the outside.

Woodard: As they neared the ocean,

Thornton spotted two enemy soldiers on patrol

outside a village.

He knocked one unconscious and signaled for tai,

a young Vietnamese officer on his first mission

with Thornton, to take out the other.

Thornton: And I'm going like this to him to move out,

to sneak up behind this guy,

knock him out, eliminate him,

or whatever needed to be done.

And he stands up, and this is guy's

100-and-something yards away from him.

He yells, "lai de mao lin."

He's up there yelling, "lai de mao lin."

Woodard: Yelling, "get over here!"

Almost cost them their lives.

The startled north Vietnamese soldier

turned and opened fire.

Thornton: And I just start running

because I knew he was going to head for that village.

And then I look up, and there was about

50 to 75 of the militia coming--

flying at me, and then I opened fire on them.

Tommy came down off the sand dune,

had a law rocket.

He was shooting into the trees, so I could break contact.

Woodard: The firefight that began at sunrise

lasted 7 hours, pinning the men down in the sand dunes.

Thornton: They took this chicom grenade,

and they threw it over to my side,

and an American grenade is 4 seconds, instantaneous.

You go, "1,000, 2,000."

So I'm going, "1,000, 2,000."

I grabbed this grenade, and I threw it back,

and I'm going, "6,000, 7,000."

No grenade.

They throw it back.

I'm going, "8,000, 9,000."

I throw it back, I'm going, "11,000, 12,000."

And they throw it back, and I said,

"this grenade has got to go off."

Well, it did, and I rolled over.

I turned over and rolled away from the grenade,

and it went off, and I got hit 6 times in my back

with shrapnel wounds.

Woodard: Finally, the squad made it back to the beach.

Thornton: I'm yelling, "Tom, fall back, fall back!"

And I couldn't see Tommy, and I saw Dane come running,

and I said, "where's Tommy, where's Tommy?"

And he said, "Tommy's dead, Tommy's dead."

I said, "what do you mean?"

He said, "he was shot in the head, Mike. He's dead."

I said, "y'all stay here."

Tommy was laying on the side of the sand dune,

and the bullet had entered in his left temple,

and he'd lost his whole forehead,

his frontal lobe part of his brain,

his eye was gone, and his--

the structure of his eye socket was gone.

And I eliminated these guys that were coming

over the top of Tom, and I eliminated them,

and I grabbed Tommy, and I put him on.

And I hear this noise, and I knew exactly what it was,

it was from the Newport news,

and Tommy had called in to fire for effect.

That first round hit, blew me, like, 20 feet in the air.

Then Tommy left my shoulders and flew off.

Then I moved over to grab Tommy,

and he said, "Mike, buddy."

And I said, "the s.O.B.'S still alive."

We got to the water's edge and I said, "we swim."

And I grabbed Tommy,

and when I was swimming, you could see the surf line,

they were just shooting at us.

You could see the bullets going through the water.

Well, I look off to my right,

and there's my buddy little kwan over there.

He had been shot through his right hip,

and his buttock was completely gone.

So I grabbed him, and I put his arms over my neck,

and he grabbed Tommy, and I put my arms underneath him,

and I started breast-stroking.

And I looked across,

and the Newport news turned around and left.

It was the worst feeling I've ever had in my life,

seeing that big ship turn around.

I said, "god, where are they going,

where are they going?"

If I was going to die, where a better place to die

than in the arms of your fellow comrade?

Woodard: Wounded, towing two men,

Thornton swam for more than two hours

before they were rescued by a search party.

Norris and kwan both survived.

Drill instructor: Go!

Move out!

Two, go! Come across,

you're coming through the door,

and you're up, got it.

Fuller, keep your weapon up.

You're at the high ready. You're ready to shoot.

Woodard: Since the Vietnam war,

the medal of honor has rarely been awarded.

American troops are no less brave,

but combat has changed.

In a war of ambushes and ieds,

there are fewer opportunities for heroism.

The military awarded two medals

for the conflict in Somalia, posthumous.

One for the war in Afghanistan, posthumous.

And 4 for the first 5 years of the war in Iraq.

All posthumous, all but one

for covering grenades with their bodies.

Sergeant Paul Smith was the first soldier awarded

the medal of honor for action in Iraq.

In the early days of the invasion in 2003,

American troops met little resistance.

One place where the enemy took a stand was

at the Baghdad airport,

where sergeant first class Paul Smith

was leading his platoon.

Smith was a lifer, a 33-year-old

with a wife and two children back home in Florida,

the kind of soldier that's the backbone of the army.

Man: We started working under sergeant Smith

back in--before 2001.

He was our platoon sergeant when we went to Kosovo.

He's a very--was a very demanding perfectionist.

He wanted everybody to succeed,

and he pushed you to do the best you could.

And not only you, but everybody around you.

Man: You'd do something perfect as a squad,

run through it perfect, flawless.

He'd be like, "all right, good job.

Now, go do it again."

He'd keep you out till, you know,

late hours of the night

training on something you've already perfected

because he knew we were getting deployed.

Woodard: On that hot morning in a walled courtyard

at the Baghdad airport,

all of sergeant Smith's training and preparation

were put to the test.

The squad was setting up a holding area for prisoners

when they came under attack by about 100 Iraqi soldiers.

For many of the men, it was their

first experience in combat.

Delauter: When we started receiving small-arms fire,

we had guys running around that have weapons that--

you know, the enemy starts shooting at you,

you're supposed to return fire,

and they're running around going,

"what do I do, what do I do, what do I do?"

Woodard: Iraqis were advancing from two sides

and firing from a tower overlooking the Americans

in the courtyard.

They're moving. They're moving.

Seaman: Sergeant Smith started coming down

telling us, "place this vehicle here.

"We need this weapon here.

Get your men up here."

Everything was reaction for him.

He knew exactly what to do and when to do it.

Woodard: Smith called for support

from a Bradley fighting vehicle.

Delauter: The Bradley was the first vehicle

through the gap, but it quickly ran out

of ammunition, and it moved back.

Woodard: After the Bradley pulled back,

the Americans' only heavy weapon was the .50-caliber machinegun

mounted on an m113 armored personnel carrier,

but the Iraqis landed a mortar round on it.

Medrano: There were at least 4 injured personnels

in the vehicle.

So we got a vehicle there with a big weapon system,

but nobody was Manning it.

Woodard: Smith jumped into the m113

and took over the machinegun, firing at the Iraqis

attacking through the gate and from the tower.

Seaman: Sergeant Smith was sitting there yelling,

"I need a driver", so I jumped up in there.

He's telling me exactly where to drive

as he's shooting on the .50-Cal.

He kept telling me, "all you got to do

is keep me loaded and duck down."

So I was just constantly going up,

linking a couple rounds, and he kept yelling at me

the entire time, "get back down in the hatch,"

because he didn't want me to get shot.

Woodard: The m113's machinegun is mounted on top,

leaving the upper half

of the gunner's body unprotected.

Delauter: He had no protection up there

behind that weapon system at all.

Medrano: For a long period of time,

it was just him holding the enemy back.

Woodard: As soon as the battle started,

another sergeant began recording the sounds of the firefight

on a tape recorder.

Delauter: You can actually hear on that tape

when the .50-Cal.'S shooting,

the pauses when he was reloading

and then returning fire again.

It was as really rapid, loud sound.

And then at the end, you hear it go silent,

and you're expecting it to come back again

and listen to it, and it never came back.

Seaman: I thought, "man, I'm going to be in trouble.

He is gonna yell at me because he's out of bullets."

A that's when I seen him slumped down into the seat,

blood running down his face and down his chest.

Woodard: Paul Smith died a short while later.

By holding off the Iraqis for almost an hour,

he had kept the American position from being overrun.

Delauter: We were getting ready to mount back up

and leave when sergeant medrano ran up and told me

that sergeant Smith had been wounded,

and then when the news came down

that he was actually dead, it was even a bigger shock.

It hit the platoon pretty hard because, you know,

your platoon sergeant's the person who

takes care of you.

And he's like your dad.

Man: Got it?

Soldiers: Yes, sir, yes.

Woodard: As many as 50 Iraqi soldiers were killed

in the fight at the courtyard,

but Smith was the only American who died there.

Medrano: It's pretty hard when you're in combat

and you lose somebody that you work with,

but we're soldiers.

I mean, we understand the risk.

It's something that you as a soldier you have to know,

and you have to know it, and you have to push it

to your family.

Woodard: Two years after his death,

Paul Smith's family accepted his medal of honor

at the white house.

Ehlers: You don't go out and try to win the medal of honor.

If you do, you're in deep trouble--ha ha!

Because a whole bunch of them are posthumous, you know.

They weren't trying to win it either.

They just got killed doing it.

Dix: When we wear the medal of honor,

we wear it for all of those that fought.

There were just witnesses that saw what we did.

Kerrey: The action has to be observed,

and most often, it isn't observed.

There's nobody there to see what you've done.

Everybody dies.

Woodard: In the first 6 days of the invasion of normandy

in world war ii, 9 soldiers were awarded the medal of honor.

Only two survived.

On June 6, 1944, d-day, sergeant Walter ehlers

landed on Omaha beach in France.

A few hours later, his brother Roland was killed

on the same stretch of sand.

On June 9, fighting amid the notorious hedgerows

of normandy, ehlers came face to face

with a 4-man German patrol.

Ehlers: I couldn't capture them

because they'd have probably shot me,

so I just automatically shot all 4 of them real quick there.

Woodard: The following day, ehlers' unit came

under fire from two sides.

The company commander ordered the men to pull back,

but he held his position.

Ehlers: I thought, if we turn around

and start withdrawing, we're gonna get killed.

And as I was firing on them, I got a hit in the back,

and it spun me around, but I saw a guy in the hedgerow,

and, I just shot him on the the way down.

I looked up, then there's my automatic rifleman

laying on the field, and I had to go get him because he was wounded,

and then when I got back there

and turned him over to the medics,

I went back and got the rifle back.

That's the only automatic rifle we have in the squad,

and I knew we weren't going to get another one

from anybody else.

Woodard: Walter ehlers was not the first or last man

to earn the medal of honor for not following orders.

Ehlers: Somebody asked me, "what you were thinking when you did it?"

And I said, "well, I wasn't thinking.

If I had been thinking, I wouldn't have done it."

Lang: I think it's kind of wonderful

that the highest award that the military can bestow

has to do with Maverick behavior

because military basically is a prescribed way

of going about things.

The chain of command,

we do what we're told to do when we're told to do it.

Well, nobody ever told a medal of honor recipient

to go and take that hill and to take out, you know,

4 machinegun nests.

Woodard: Hiroshi miyamura, had joined the army

at the end of world war ii but never saw combat.

In April 1951, the corporal's machinegun squad

was defending a position on a korean mountainside

when the Chinese attacked.

Miyamura: The firing was getting very heavy,

and I could see that eventually we were gonna

be overrun because the Chinese were close by.

I had to fire at them behind me.

So I gave the orders for my men to withdraw.

Why get them all killed?

Woodard: Instead of leaving the besieged hill

with his men, miyamura stayed behind

to cover their withdrawal.

When his machinegun finally ran out of ammunition,

he descended the mountain through the enemy lines

armed with only a rifle.

Miyamura: I ran into an enemy soldier.

I bayoneted him and shot him at the same time.

This soldier had a grenade in his hand.

I could feel it drop on my leg, and I just kicked back at it,

and it went off.

Woodard: Wounded, miyamura crawled towards the road.

Miyamura: I was focused on a tank of ours,

and I tried to get his attention,

and I started running, but by that time,

the tank just took off.

I guess I ran about 50 yards or so,

and then I passed out.

And then that voice in English told me,

"get up. You're my prisoner".

Woodard: Miyamura's squad made it back to safety.

He would be recommended for the medal of honor

and called a hero by his country.

Rosser: I think they use the word hero

a little carelessly.

I've known every man through my time

to receive the medal of honor, the Spanish American war,

the boxer rebellion, the philippine insurrection,

the banana wars,

and I haven't ever heard one man

use that term about himself.

Sometimes, respect the adulation

that is given to you as a recipient

of the medal of honor,

people kind of look at you as if you were something special.

I said to one person in particular,

"I just want to be your friend. I don't want to be your hero."

Man: I would say that the average American

could easily be a hero if he's in the right place

at the right time and it happens.

Woodard: Chief petty officer John Finn was in charge

of armaments at the naval air squadron

on kaneohe bay, Hawaii,

across the island from Pearl harbor.

On the morning of December 7, 1941,

the United States was not yet at war.

Finn and his new wife Alice were in their bungalow.

Finn: All of a sudden I heard, "bup bup bup bup!"

I wondered, "who the hell's firing machineguns?

Hey, it's sunday!"

Now I was in bed.

Didn't have a stitch of clothes on.

I pulled on my dungaree pants and got decent

and got right out into my car,

and I heard an airplane approaching me

from the stern,

and here were these two big old red meatballs

on the bottom of this wings, glaring right at me.

I said, "boy this is the real McCoy.

It's the japs."

Woodard: The Japanese dive bombers caught

the American planes on the ground.

The airfield had no anti-aircraft guns,

just .30- and .50-caliber machineguns the planes carried.

Finn's request to build gun mounts

on the ground had been ignored.

He grabbed a gun and got it working.

Finn: I had to change parts, cartridge stops.

They got mixed up. One front was in the rear.

I took that .30-caliber gun

and put it up on a pile of lumber.

I shot at every one that I could bear on.

And all of a sudden, this guy started yelling to me.

I said, "get the hell back on your gun,"

and I pointed, "planes coming."

They were on their way down to make another strafing attack,

and he took 2 or 3 steps forward and yelled again, 3 times.

And finally he got close enough to me to say,

"my gun is jammed."

Well, I said, "why the hell didn't you tell me?"

I run up there, cleared the stoppage,

got right on those planes, and fired at them.

I remember one time thinking,

"well, Jesus . Why stand here and get killed?"

But I didn't think about it very long.

Woodard: 15 miles away at Pearl harbor,

the battleship u.S.S. Arizona was ablaze,

and the u.S.S. Oklahoma was upside down.

For more than two hours, John Finn fired

at the Japanese zeroes as bombs were falling

all around him.

Finn took more than 20 shrapnel wounds

but kept shooting.

Finn: And I don't want for anybody to think

I was fearless, but there's fear and anger,

and I was so damn mad that we didn't have any gun mounts.

I think that the anger chases fear away.

Man: Well, anyone who's not afraid in combat isn't

wired up completely because it's a very scary thing.

Man: You had landed that helicopter

in that rice Patty or that field,

and immediately, you started going into that jungle.

Quiet, and all of a sudden, all hell would break loose.

Miyamura: You have people shooting at you,

and you don't know where it's coming from.

You're afraid to move because you didn't want

to attract attention to yourself.

Dix: Fear is an amazing tool.

I don't see it as a weakness at all.

Fear can save your life,

but you have to not let it control you.

Woodard: In 1950, tibor rubin was

a Hungarian immigrant who was turned down twice

by the army because his English was so poor.

Rubin: So I told them "I am volunteer to go to Korea."

So he would tell me, "you out of your rock?"

He said, "Korea war broke out."

Well I said, "I have to go because I promised I will go

to pay back United States for what they did for me."

Woodard: Rubin was the son of a shoemaker,

born in the small town of pashtau, Hungary.

Rubin: I was 13 years old.

They round up all the Jews.

I was sent to mauthausen concentration camp.

My mother and two sisters went to Auschwitz.

I had a beautiful little sister, 10 years old,

going to the gas chamber.

My mother, you know, she knew where she gonna go,

so she went with the little girl.

14 months I was in the camp.

I was liberated by the 11th armored division,

and then when I made the promise if the lord help me,

I go to the United States, I going to become a g.I. Joe.

You see, that's the way we call the American soldiers.

So I ended up in Korea.

Woodard: That July, tibor rubin got the chance

to become a hero, thanks to his sergeant.

Rubin: That guy tried to kill me.

He was a big anti-semite.

He used to say, "get me that

funny-talking son-of-a-bitch Jew."

That was me.

I was his volunteer.

One day, he put me on a hill, there he told me that,

"rubin, you gonna guard the hill."

I said, "where are the other ones?"

"We have to withdraw because such-and-such."

So what can I say? I guard the hill.

Woodard: Left with only a pile of ammunition,

rubin spent the night preparing for the inevitable

North Korean assault.

Rubin: So I figure, somehow I have to show them

that there is more than one person.

Every foxhole, I put a bunch of hand grenades.

Then I load up my m1-- m1 is our rifle.

Then a carbine.

I was pretty scared, so I prayed.

I made the shema yisrael.

♪ Shema yisrael adonoi eloheinu ♪

♪ adonoi echad

I prayed to Jesus, I prayed to Buddha,

I prayed to Moses, everybody.

I said, "somehow, you guys have to

"get my ass out of here.

"You let me come home from the concentration camp.

"Couldn't you give me some guts to show

that guy we Jews can fight?"

Woodard: The north Koreans attacked at 4 A.M.

Rubin: Oh, my god. I got so scared.

Threw a bunch of grenades, and I pulled the pin--boom!

I made so much noise, but they still coming.

Then I shooting my rifle, then I come back

for a carbine, cross here and there.

I heard some screaming, but that's all I heard.

Woodard: Rubin held the hill for 24 hours,

single-handedly slowing the North Korean advance.

Lang: The events for which a man receives

the medal of honor are always extremely interesting.

In almost every case, they were faced

with a circumstance where the outcome

had been determined.

It was going one way, and what they did

was they pushed back the tide.

They changed history through sheer audacity,

through their own refusal to accept the circumstance

that was coming their way.

Williams: I wanted to live.

I thought, "they can't do this to me.

"They can't get me.

I am going to survive this thing,"

and I would never let myself think otherwise.

Rosser: I made up my mind.

I wasn't going to run, and I wasn't going to surrender.

My sergeants were men that indoctrinate you

into the fact that the fight don't get going good

until you're surrounded.

Woodard: Ronald rosser was the oldest

of 17 children, from a coal mining town in Ohio.

One frozen January morning in Korea,

his company battled an enemy battalion

dug into a mountainside.

Rosser: Out of the 170 of us that started off originally,

there were about 35 of us left.

And it was 20 below zero,

and our wounded was freezing to death.

All the officers were down,

including the company commander.

He was wounded, hit in the face.

The sergeants were gone.

Woodard: By radio, the regimental commander

ordered the captain to make one more assault.

Rosser: And he looked up the mountain,

he got this hopeless look on his face,

and I heard somebody saying,

"I'll take them up for you captain,"

and then I realized it was me talking,

and I thought, "my god. What have I done?"

When I gave the word, we all started running

straight into about a 200-man burp gun line

and 5 machineguns going point blank at us.

I got about two feet from the Chinese,

and I looked back, and I was by myself.

All the other men had been knocked down.

And I seen it was going to be a bad day.

I just had a second to think about everything.

My kid brother had been killed in action.

I wanted to get even with them, you know.

I can remember saying, "there's no use wasting a whole day.

Let's get it going,"

and I jumped into the trench with the Chinese.

I killed 8 real quick, and I shot my way up

to these two big bunkers.

I had one hand grenade left, and I pulled the pin

and kicked the spoon and reached down

and rolled it in the back door.

And I went around the corner of the trench,

and here come about 35 Chinese right straight at me.

I said, "well, here I go again."

So I let out another war whoop,

and down the trench I went after them,

and the ones in front couldn't even believe their eyes.

One crouched down and emptied a burp gun

right into me, and I could feel the bullets

tugging at my clothes, but nothing hit me.

And all at once I looked,

and they were all running from me.

Woodard: Out of ammunition,

rosser went back downhill to resupply.

With cover fire from his squad,

rosser returned to battle the Chinese.

Twice more, he ran out of ammunition

and descended to rearm himself,

stripping guns and ammunition

from dead g.I.S, helping the wounded to safety.

Both sides suffered heavy casualties.

Rosser: It gets kind of bad sometimes.

You know, the, uh--where-- it just--it just gets bad.

You got all these dead and wounded around you,

and they're screaming high-pitched screams.

The enemy, you got hundreds of them down.

The best way I can describe it is just a nightmare.

Woodard: For his actions on that day, January 12, 1952.

Rosser's commander recommended him for the medal of honor.

Rosser: My regimental commander called me up

and ordered me off the line.

And I told him, "I'm not coming off the line, colonel."

He said, "oh, you got to come off the line.

You're in for the medal of honor."

And I said, "colonel, I know you're not hard of hearing.

"You people can put me in for whatever you want to,

"but you can't make me take it.

"Now you leave me alone or take the medal

"and stick it where the sun don't shine

"because I'm not coming off the damn hill,

not until the regiment comes off."

That was in the middle of January,

and I came off the mountain the first of may.

Woodard: The military's worst public relations nightmare

is for a medal of honor recipient to be killed in another action.

Dix: It was hard to stay in the military

and be a holder of the medal of honor

because they're always looking out for you,

maybe little bit too much.

Kerrey: I was in the hospital when I was notified,

and I thought it was nonsense and wasn't going to take it.

Woodard: In 1969, Bob kerrey led his team

of Navy seals on a raid against a Vietcong-held island,

scaling a 350-foot cliff in the dead of night.

In the firefight, kerrey's leg was shattered

by a grenade.

Applying a tourniquet to his own knee,

he continued to direct his men until rescued.

His leg was later amputated.

Kerrey: I had a conversation with a number

of my former teammates in seal team.

I said, "this medal is crazy,"

and the guys said, "look, you've got to take it for all the rest of us.

"This is not you, this is us.

So you've got to accept this thing."

When Danny inouye,

who's a current senior senator from Hawaii,

received the medal of honor,

he said, "I'm listening to all these awards given

"to people who had killed other human beings,

"and I just wish that one of us had been the man

"that we all called upon when we were hurt,

which is our medic."

Rascon: I think the responsibility of a medic

in combat is something where you can be godlike

because you can take care of one.

You can't take care of 5 or 6 people at the same time.

At that, time you have to make a decision

that literally is going to come back and bear on your life

for a very long time

as to whether you made it right or wrong,

but you don't worry about it at that time.

Those that are going to survive, you try to take care of those.

Those that have no chance whatsoever,

you can go through the motions and get on to the next person

who's going to be able to survive.

Woodard: Alfred rascon's family made it

across the border from Mexico when he was 3 months old.

At 19, he was in Vietnam, an army medic.

On a typical hot and humid day north of Saigon,

rascon's reconnaissance platoon was ordered to back up

an American battalion caught in an ambush.

Rascon: And this hellacious firefight starts.

I'm talking about, literally, trees were falling down.

Machineguns, hand grenades going off.

The area where the north Vietnamese

were set up on an ambush was like a real thin trail.

One of our machinegunners was laying there.

I went up to the front, but the firefight was so intense

that I couldn't get to him.

2 or 3 times, I tried moving up to him,

and every time, I kept on getting shot at.

I could hear the guys yelling, "cover for doc! Cover doc!"

Eventually what I did, I just said, "screw this thing,"

and I got up, I made myself on my knees,

crawled up to him, never got touched.

And I could feel his body just literally pulsate

from being shot.

And I was hit.

They hit me in the hip.

It went up my spine and came out of my collarbone.

And I couldn't move. I couldn't move my legs.

Eventually, I ended up getting enough strength

to where I was able to take Thompson off the trail,

and he just laid there.

And I realized that, you know, he was dead.

So I left him there, and immediately I heard

to my right the other machinegunner yelling,

"I'm out off ammo! I'm out of ammo!"

And I saw that he was wounded in the leg.

I'm trying to take care of his leg.

He's telling me, "get away from me.

I need ammo."

I said, "I just took Thompson off the trail.

"He's got two bandoliers across him

that are m60 rounds."

He said, "well, go get it."

And I said to myself, "hell, I'm not going back over there."

Woodard: With enemy fire ripping past him,

rascon recovered the ammunition.

Rascon: They were throwing hand grenades at us,

and it hit me in the face,

and it literally tore my face from here to here

and here and, I guess, in the back.

And I said, "oh, my god."

Said, "I'm going to die here, and my good looks are gone."

I don't know why I started to think about he fact

that I had good looks.

Woodard: Just then, the soldier Manning

the rocket-propelled grenade was hit.

Rascon saved his life, got peppered with shrapnel again,

and kept treating other injured men,

shielding them with his wounded body.

Rascon: All of a sudden, it was over with.

The firefight stopped just the way it had started, as quickly.

Somehow, somebody ended up literally picking me up

and took me to the landing zone

where the 2nd battalion was at.

I didn't realize that I was pretty well beat up,

and as I got there, there was a group of chaplains,

and they came up to me as I was getting ready to be put

on the helicopter, and I was given my last rites.

Woodard: The paperwork for Alfred rascon's

recommendation went missing for 34 years.

He finally received the medal in February, 2000,

and is one of only 75 medical personnel

ever awarded the medal of honor.

"To his excellency, Lincoln, president, U.S.A.:

"The undersigned asks to be assigned to duty

"at Douglas hospital, but she would much prefer

"to have a surgeon's commission with orders to go

"wherever and whenever there is a battle,

"where her energy, enthusiasm, professional abilities,

"and patriotism will be of the greatest service.

Mary e. Walker, m.D."

Lang: Mary Walker is distinguished by being

the only woman ever to have been awarded the medal of honor.

She had received a degree in medicine

when there were about 300 women doctors

in the entire country.

Woodard: Mary Edwards Walker had volunteered

in military hospitals and at the battle of fredericksburg

before requesting a commission in the army,

but President Lincoln refused to overrule

his officers, who thought no woman was suited

to the job of a military surgeon.

Mikaelian: Even though she kept running

into resistance, there was a real need for doctors,

and she just wouldn't go away.

So eventually she was made a contract surgeon

and received pay for her services,

but she was an eclectic practitioner.

She believed that you did what worked,

and she felt that amputation was strictly a last resort.

Woodard: Walker's reluctance to amputate limbs

made her popular with the troops,

but her insistence on wearing trousers under her skirt annoyed

general William tecumseh sherman.

"Put on decent clothes,

"go back to Nashville

"into the hospitals where our poor boys are dying

"of wounds and fevers and imitate

"the women in hoops and petticoats

who are devoting their time to the work of nursing."

Instead, Walker returned to the front lines

and by the winter of 1864 was making frequent trips

into confederate territory

to treat wounded and sick civilians.

Eventually, she was captured in Georgia

and imprisoned by the confederates as a spy.

Mikaelian: And of course, they were absolutely horrified

that a woman would dress like this and would talk like this.

They actually made a spectacle out of her,

just parading her through the streets of Richmond

so that people could see what kind of depravity

the yankee nation was promoting.

Woodard: Walker spent 4 months as a confederate prisoner.

Eventually, even general sherman overcame

his distaste for her dress and recommended her

for the medal of honor.

It was awarded by president Andrew Johnson

in late 1865 and made her for a time

one of the most famous women in the country.

Lang: She was viewed as eccentric, as nutty,

as contentious, you know, as ornery,

and I think she probably was all of those things.

Woodard: But Mary Edwards Walker was also a civilian.

When the medal of honor criteria were tightened

before world war I, a board was created

with the power to rescind awards

that did not meet the new standards of heroism in combat.

Medals of honor given out in the civil war

just for reenlisting were rescinded.

So were those given to civilians.

Lang: One of which famously was given

to buffalo bill Cody.

His medal was rescinded because Cody was

a scout for the army, he was a civilian employee.

Of course, that medal was later reinstated

because he was buffalo bill Cody,

and they rescinded Mary Walker's,

which was a stupid thing to do.

She absolutely refused to acknowledge that

the medal had been rescinded, and she refused to give it back

and wore it every day of her life.

Woodard: In 1977, 60 years after it was taken away,

Mary Edwards Walker's medal of honor was reinstated

by president Jimmy Carter.

Mikaelian: I think a lot of people should feel

uncomfortable about the whole idea

of taking medals away from anybody.

There were certain rules during the civil war,

certain people received the medal,

and we feel today that a lot of those awards were inappropriate,

but by the standards they had at the time,

it was perfectly appropriate.

Man: The president of the United States of America

has awarded, in the name of the congress,

the medal of honor

to staff sergeant drew d. Dix, United States army.

Through sergeant dix's personal heroic actions,

he saved the lives of 14 United States

and free world civilians.

Woodard: As a teenager, drew dix delivered newspapers

and rode motorcycles.

At 17, he enlisted in the army.

In January 1968, he was in Vietnam,

leading his special forces unit on a mission

when the tet offensive began.

The communists were attempting to score

a knockout blow against the Americans

and south Vietnamese.

Dix raced back to his base,

the riverside city chau phu,

which had been overrun by two Vietcong battalions.

An American nurse, Maggie o'brien, was missing.

Dix: My boss said, "it's bad.

"They're downtown, and we think that

"the nurse's quarters have been overrun,

and she's probably dead."

Woodard: Dix led his small band of commandos

back into the city under heavy fire.

Dix: There was a road right in front of the hospital

that led towards Maggie's house,

and the enemy were occupying that hospital,

but we went right by there, made it to Maggie's house,

and it didn't look good.

Maggie's international scout

was just riddled with bullet holes.

So I'm yelling, "Maggie, Maggie!"

And I heard kind of a low whimper,

"I'm here, I'm here."

And I said, "Maggie come out",

and she said, "no, the v.C. Are in there,"

and I said, "no, they just left."

Well, she opened the door and was standing in the door,

and just then, two more v.C. Ran right by her.

And I could see a large hole in the back wall,

and they left through that.

Woodard: After bringing Maggie to the safety

of headquarters,

dix set out to rescue two Filipino allies

trapped in the courthouse.

Dix: When we approached that building,

just all hell broke loose.

They were firing mortars and rockets,

and we're up against a very white, pure-looking wall.

I'll never forget it because it was pock-marked

with all the bullet holes and blood.

Woodard: To reach the Filipinos,

dix climbed on to the roof.

Dix: The roof had been loosened by the heavy bombardment,

and I fell through, and I was holding

on the rafters with my elbows,

and all of a sudden, rounds started coming up

through the bottom.

I looked down through my shoulder,

and I could see at least two enemies soldiers.

They could have hit my legs almost

with the rifle barrels, but they missed,

and that was lucky for me, not so lucky for them

that they emptied their magazines,

and at the time I fell through, and my weapon wasn't empty.

Woodard: Dix repeatedly made the choice

to go back into the fight to rescue trapped civilians.

Each foray into the city meant risking his life.

The medal of honor has even been awarded

to soldiers who do not fight.

Liteky: When I went to Vietnam,

I had never experienced war.

It was something totally new to me.

The training I got as a chaplain didn't

really prepare me for what would follow in combat.

It's a horrible experience.

One of our men was just talking to me,

and the point man got killed, and so they called him

to take over, and he looked over at me

and said, "well father, I guess I'm next."

And within 5 minutes, he was dead.

Woodard: Charles liteky is one of only 5 army chaplains

ever to be awarded a medal of honor.

Before enlisting, he was serving as a parish priest

in kilmarnock, Virginia.

On December 6, 1967, liteky's platoon was

on patrol in bien hoa province when two Vietcong

crossed the path ahead of them.

Liteky: The whole platoon just hustled up there

to where they went into the woods,

and I was traveling in the middle

with about 15 men in front of me and 15 behind me.

Woodard: Suddenly, the forest erupted

with machinegun and mortar fire.

The platoon had walked straight

into a north Vietnamese battalion of 400.

Liteky: We had several men wounded and several men killed.

A couple of men were just blown off the ground

right in front of me.

So I got hold of one of them, got down on my back,

and pushed with my feet, and he was still conscious.

So I told him to push, too, and we wiggled our way back.

Woodard: The Americans called in reinforcements,

and liteky stayed with his men in the firefight.

Liteky: I did go in and began to administer

last rites to the dead.

I just went from soldier to soldier.

You have this little circular vial,

which contains some cotton soaked in oil.

After a while, the cotton gets soaked with blood

because you are anointing their head

and their ears and eyes, and so that's what I did.

Woodard: Liteky plunged back into the battle

3 more times to rescue wounded men.

One was caught in a tangle of vines.

Liteky cut him free and dragged him to safety.

To protect another, the chaplain put himself

between the downed soldier and a machinegun.

Liteky: I didn't have time to think

about myself because people were in need,

and it was strictly an act of compassion on my part.

It wasn't an act of bravery.

I never in my wildest dreams expected to be recommended

for the medal of honor.

Man: ♪ good-bye New York town, good-bye miss Liberty ♪

♪ your light of freedom will guide us across the sea... ♪

Woodard: Of the 1.2 million Americans

sent to fight in world war I,

only 119 medals of honor were awarded.

Man: ♪ good-bye, Broadway, hello, France ♪

♪ we're going to square our debt to you ♪

Woodard: In 1917, Alvin York was

an unsung corporal from the backwoods of Tennessee

and a deeply religious pacifist, who struggled

with his conscience before achieving fame

as the immortal sergeant York.

Rosser: When I met him, he was in a hospital bed,

and he wasn't in very good shape,

and of course, I went up looking for Gary Cooper, you know.

I ain't a-goin' to register.

You got to register, Alvin.

I ain't a-goin' to.

I ain't a-goin' to war.

War is killin',

and the book's agin' killin'.

So war is agin' the book.

Woodard: York detailed his conflict in a wartime diary.

"My religion and my experience told me not to go to war,

"and the memory of my ancestors told me

"to get my gun and go fight.

"One moment, I would make up my mind to follow god,

"and the next, I would hesitate

and almost make up my mind to follow uncle Sam."

York's pastor filed conscientious objector papers

to keep him out of the army.

The war department agreed, but York did not take the offer.

"I didn't want to go and fight and kill,

but I had to answer the call of my country, and I did."

In October of 1918 at the start of the argonne offensive,

York's squad was attacking a line of German machineguns.

"In the middle of a fight, a German officer and 5 men

"done jumped up out of a trench

"and charged me with fixed bayonets.

"They had about 25 yards to come,

"and they were coming right smart.

"I only had about a half a clip left in my rifle.

"I touched off the sixth man first,

"then the fifth, then the fourth,

"then the third, and so on.

"That's the way we shoot wild turkeys at home.

"You see, we don't want the front ones to know

that we're getting the back ones."

Lang: He saved a lot of lives, silencing 35 machineguns,

killing 25 enemy soldiers, and taking 135 prisoners.

That's a hell of a day's work.

If that doesn't get you the medal of honor, what will?

I done thought it over, Mr. Hall.

I ain't proud of what happened over there.

What we done in France was somethin' we had to do.

Some fellas done it ain't a-comin' back.

Woodard: Alvin York was not the only medal of honor

recipient with qualms about his service.

Smedley d. Butler, a marine major known as the fighting quaker,

tried to return the medal of honor

he was awarded for his action at Vera Cruz.

Rosser: He went to the commandant of the marine corps,

and he said, "I have done nothing,

absolutely nothing to earn this medal."

Woodard: Butler was ordered to keep the medal of honor.

One year later, he received a second medal of honor

for leading the attack on fort riviere, Haiti,

one of only 17 to ever receive it twice.

Lang: Smedley Butler served everywhere.

He was in every conflict from 1898 through world war I.

He served in China numerous times,

south America, but he was always getting

in trouble with superiors.

Woodard: After his retirement in 1931,

Butler became a pacifist and a critic

of American imperialism.

"I spent 33 years in active military service.

"During that period, I spent most of my time as

"a high-class muscle man for big business.

"In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

"I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914.

"I helped in the raping of half a dozen

"central American republics

for the benefit of wall street."

Liteky: Smedley Butler was just

a sparkling military character for me.

I think it's a rare thing when a military man

is going to say, "this is wrong."

Woodard: In 1986 after years of soul-searching,

Charles liteky went to the Vietnam war memorial

in Washington, D.C., and left his medal there.

He is the only person ever to return

the medal of honor.

Liteky: I did it because I was ashamed

of what my government was doing to the poor people

in central America,

specifically El Salvador and Nicaragua.

I saw the results of what our military was a part of,

and that took me back to Vietnam.

And I said to myself, "it's not all that different."

I'm not a pacifist.

Nations have a right to defend themselves,

but the means which we use is another question.

Woodard: Heroism is not confined to combat.

The medal of honor has also been awarded

to prisoners of war for courage that must last

long after the battle ends, sometimes for years.

On August 26, 1967,

air force major George "bud" day,

a veteran of both world war ii and Korea,

was on a bombing raid over north Vietnam.

Day: Just as we got over that target,

took a terrible hit in the aft end of the airplane,

and no alternate but just to eject.

So I hit the ground, busted my arm

in 3 places, and injured by knee

and lost the sight of one of my eyes.

A couple young kids burst through the forest

with rifles, and I was captured.

Woodard: Day was held in a bamboo-covered hole in the ground,

interrogated for days at a time, and beaten relentlessly.

They hung him upside down for hours and put a gun

to his head, a mock execution.

Day: The Vietnamese never recognized

the Geneva convention.

So their position was that you were a criminal,

they could do anything to you they wanted to do.

Woodard: By pretending he was unable to walk,

day tricked his captors into letting down their guard.

Day: The first time both of them were facing

a different direction, I slipped out of this hole

and over the rice paddy, slipped and fell

and crunched down on my arm, almost bit my tongue off

to keep from screaming.

I survived basically on water because there was no food.

The best I could do was capture a couple of these frogs.

I ate them, and that's not a good deal.

I lost track of time, I'd lost my ability

to sort things out.

On about the 15th, 16th, 17th day,

I was within about a mile of freedom

when I got shot and recaptured.

Woodard: This time, he was sent to the prison camp

nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton."

There, his interrogators whipped him with a fan belt.

Day: After they pounded me for 300 and some of those strokes,

I started lying,

so when we got to several days through that

and I got to the point

where I was feeling a little stronger,

I told them, "I told you if you tortured me I would lie,

so I take it all back."

They had some really grotesque tortures.

They would get your hands behind your back and elevate

your arms like a pump and drive your head down

between your knees, and, you know,

you're strangling, and you can't breathe.

I really can't tell you how many times I thought

I was going to die, but it was a lot of times.

Miyamura: You just cannot give up because if you do

then you've lost all hopes of surviving.

Woodard: After covering his retreating squad,

wounded p.O.W. Hiroshi miyamura was led on a forced march

by the north Koreans.

Miyamura: One of my closest friends

by the name of Joe agnello

was injured much worse than I was,

and I tried to help him along, and I was told to leave him.

You know, I said, "my god, this may be the last time

I see him alive."

Every night, we pulled into these villages,

nothing to eat.

The second week into our march,

they started--issued us a fine powder,

which consisted of ground-up barley, rice, millet.

The younger men would refuse to eat this.

Being one of the older guys, I said,

"you got to eat it if you want to live."

And on our march, they turned into skeletons.

It took us a little over 30 days to get there,

and I'm just sorry to say we lost...

We lost at least half.

Woodard: Two months after tibor rubin was ordered

to protect the hill by himself,

his position was attacked by a Chinese battalion.

Manning a machinegun to defend his retreating company,

rubin was seriously wounded and taken prisoner.

He, too, ended up in a North Korean p.O.W. Camp.

Rubin: Our biggest killer was just like

in the concentration camp, too, dysentery.

We don't have nowhere to wash up.

The lice was eating us, the bed bugs eating us.

The guys dying every day, 40 boys die.

So, you know, my mother used to say--

she was a religious Jewish lady, kosher home, everything,

and "have to do the mitzvahs," she always told us.

She said, "the mitzvah is more important

than you go to shul," the temple.

They say, "a mitzvah is a good deed."

Every night if I can go, I sneak out of the camp,

I steal food, and I bring it back,

and I share it with the guys.

And I wash them. They used to all over themselves.

Guys was getting sick, and I take care of them.

40 guys I saved. A lot of them I lost.

Woodard: Tibor rubin remained a prisoner

for 2 1/2 years before finally being released

in April, 1953.

Later that same year, hiroshi miyamura,

weighing just 98 pounds, was also freed.

He returned home to gallup, new Mexico,

and went to work in an auto parts store.

One day, a stranger walked in.

Miyamura: Up until that time, I had no idea whether

my friend Joe was alive, and here he comes

5 years later walking through that door.

I just could not believe what I was seeing.

We have kept in contact ever since we found out

that we were both alive.

Day: To be free again and away from all

of that awful stuff was just kind of unbelievable,

sort of like going from the 15th century

to the 21st century in the flick of an eye.

The picture just kind of says it all,

where we had the chance to embrace again

and see each other again was just marvelous beyond words.

Woodard: George "bud" day defied his captors

for more than 5 years.

By the 1990s, it was obvious that minorities

had been overlooked for the medal of honor.

Not a single African-American or Asian-American

had received one in either of the world wars.

The army ordered a review,

and 7 black veterans were awarded the medal of honor.

Only one of them, Vernon baker, was still alive to receive it.

Another review resulted in 22 medals for Asian-Americans.

In 2001, the files of Jewish veterans were searched.

Tibor rubin had been waiting 50 years.

Man: Corporal rubin's gallant actions

in close contact with the enemy and unyielding courage

and bravery while a prisoner of war

are in the highest traditions of military service

and reflect great credit upon himself

and the United States army.

Rubin, voice-over: To get a medal like that,

a guy who wasn't born here, a guy who wasn't a citizen,

this is a miracle.

My sergeant, he's the one who made a hero out of me.

I didn't even know what is a medal of honor.

I don't want to be a hero, especially, you know, maybe i--

a lot of them died to be a hero.

♪ Oh, oh, oh

♪ oh, oh, oh

♪ oh, oh, oh

♪ oh, oh, oh, oh

♪ oh, oh, oh, oh

♪ oh, oh, oh

♪ oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

♪ ah, ah, ah

♪ ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah

♪ ah, ah, ah

seaman: You never get over war. I mean, you never forget it.

You never really get over it, you learn to cope with it.

Kerrey: You don't get over the loss.

You bring it into your life.

There are times where you just get sad.

Thornton: We have to deal with those demons.

We have to face those demons ourselves.

I know what works for Tommy doesn't work for me.

I've never had but one bad dream in my life.

Tommy still has dreams.

Dix: I can remember a few battles

after we're kind of cleaning things up,

and there's one of our guys dead,

enemy in front of him,

and you know he didn't let us down.

You know, he was fighting for his country,

but when you get ready to make that complete sacrifice,

you're not doing it for the country.

You're doing it for the one on your left and on your right.

Woodard: Before his death, sergeant Paul Smith wrote

a letter to his parents.

"Dear mom and dad,

"as I sit here getting ready to head into war once again,

"I realize that I have left some things unsaid.

"I love you, and I don't want you to worry,

"even though I know you will until the day I get home.

"There are two ways to come home,

"stepping off the plane and being carried off the plane.

"It doesn't matter how I come home

because I am prepared to give all that I am

to ensure that all my boys make it home."