President Donald Trump awarded the Medal of Honor to three soldiers Monday, recognizing a service member from World War II, Vietnam and Afghanistan, respectively.
On Thursday, the White House announced that Master Sgt. Roderick “Roddie” Edmonds, retired Command Sgt. Maj. Terry Richardson and Staff Sgt. Michael Ollis would receive the award for the nation’s highest military award for valor.
White House officials previously confirmed to Military Times that Edmonds and Ollis would both posthumously be awarded the Medal of Honor.
Edmonds died in 1985 in his hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee, while Ollis was killed in 2013 in Afghanistan while shielding a Polish officer from a suicide bomber.
‘We are all Jews’
A master sergeant serving in the 106th Infantry Division, 422 Regiment Headquarters Company, Roddie Edmonds had been serving along the Siegfried Line in Bastogne, Belgium, for a mere six days in December 1944 when the Germans began their fanatical final offensive of World War II.
He, alongside thousands of other Americans, were captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge — the largest capture of GI forces during the entirety of the war.
Eventually transported to German POW camp Stalag IX-A, the Americans subsisted on one loaf of bread per 10 men.
It was within these conditions that the POWs subsisted until roughly one month after their capture, on Jan. 27, 1945, when Roddie Edmonds, the highest-ranking American noncommissioned officer at Ziegenhain stalag that day, was told to order his nearly 200 Jewish American soldiers out of the morning roll call.
Instead, the master sergeant ordered more than 1,000 of his fellow prisoners to stand together in front of their barracks.
The commandant scoffed, noting that they couldn’t all be Jewish.
Roddie Edmonds was defiant, telling the Nazi: “We are all Jews.”
It would not be the first time, however, that Roddie Edmonds’ defiance and quick thinking would spare his men.
In March 1945, as the last gasps of the bloody war were drawing to a close, the Nazis of Stalag IX-A ordered the forced march of the entire camp.
Weakened by months of captivity, Roddie Edmonds knew the march would be a death sentence for many.
While the British, French and Russians began to evacuate the camp, the Americans stayed put.
On the day of the evacuation, the master sergeant ordered his men break ranks and run back into the barracks. Back and forth they went. Ordered out. Running back in.
After several hours of this the Nazis miraculously relented, leaving the Americans as the sole inhabitants of Stalag IX-A.
Days later, on March 30, 1945, the men were liberated by the advancing 6th Armored Division. They would never meet one another ever again, yet Roddie Edmonds’ acts of courage stayed with the men.
His son, Pastor Christopher Edmonds, told Military Times on Sunday that his father never told a soul about what he had done . It was only after Christopher Edmonds started digging around in 2010 that the full weight of his father’s deeds came to light. Together, with the aid of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, Christopher Edmonds has worked tirelessly to bring his father’s heroism to light.
Once, while speaking to Lester Tanner, one of the Jewish American POWs who witnessed Roddie Edmonds’ act of bravery, the soldier-turned-lawyer leaned in and said, “Do you realize how many lives were saved when your father did what he did? It’s not just us Jewish guys lives that were saved. Everybody was saved. I think I’ve kind of calculated more than 20,000 people are alive well today because of what your father did.”
Surrounded in Loc Ninh
During a reconnaissance mission near Loc Ninh on Sept. 14, 1968, Richardson waged a one-man attack against enemy forces on Hill 222, saving the lives of 85 soldiers.
Assigned to the 28th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, Richardson was serving as the platoon leader when he and his men came under heavy fire from a “well-entrenched North Vietnamese Army battalion,” according to the White House.
Completely surrounded, Richardson realized that the only way the Americans would avoid being overrun was to call in tactical air strikes — on himself.
From a shallow irrigation ditch with only rubber trees for cover, Richardson realized that he had unknowingly snuck into a large regimental base complex of the 7th North Vietnamese Army Division.
Undeterred, he continued to guide the pilots in for seven hours, calling in approximately 32 airstrikes.
Richardson survived a series of napalm blasts — which sucks out the surrounding air — by pouring water on a towel, burying his face in it and then tucking his face under his armpit in order to not suffocate.
After that, “they broke contact with us,” Dave Himmer, one of the soldiers that was saved by Richardson that day, told Military Times. “There were six of us that [decided] to go up and find his body because we just knew that, how do you survive that?”
Himmer and five others found Richardson sitting on the hill, dried blood coming out of both eardrums — perforated from the hours of concussive blasts. One of the men snapped a photo of how they found Richardson.
“To me, [that] is one of the greatest pictures. That’s exactly how I found him. … We did not expect to find him alive,” Himmer recalled.
“There’s just no words to me personally in the English language that describe this man’s bravery,” Peter Sasko, another soldier from Richardson’s unit, said. “There’s just 85 of us were able to survive.”
As for Richardson himself, the ceremony “brings back things that you tried to get rid of.”
“It’s embarrassing. I mean, I had a real hard time this morning in my first interview. You just feel terrible. It’s humbling. … Hopefully, I will never do anything to devalue or embarrass our country. I’ll do whatever it takes and do it proudly.”
One soldier’s sacrifice
According to previous Military Times reporting, Ollis, assigned to the 10th Mountain Division’s 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, had been posted at Forward Operating Base Ghazni in Afghanistan’s Ghazni province on Aug. 28, 2013, when the base was breached by a car bomb.
The breach allowed for 10 enemy fighters wearing suicide vests to make their way inside the outer wall. More insurgents pelted the base with mortars and grenades from outside.
According to Ollis’ Distinguished Service Cross citation, he accounted for his soldiers and checked for casualties before running toward the enemy assault. He linked up with Polish soldier Karol Cierpica and they moved toward the attackers and began to engage them “without their personal protection equipment and armed only with their rifles.”
“While fighting along the perimeter of the forward operating base, an insurgent came around a corner and immediately engaged them with small arms fire,” Ollis’ citation reads. “With complete disregard for his own safety, Staff Sergeant Ollis positioned himself between the insurgent and [Cierpica] who had been wounded in both legs and was unable to walk. Staff Sergeant Ollis fired on the insurgent and incapacitated him, but as he approached the insurgent, the insurgent’s suicide vest detonated, mortally wounding him.”
His father, Robert Ollis, a Vietnam veteran himself who served with the 1st Cavalry Division, 5th Battalion, 7th Cavalry, told Military Times that he is feeling “up and down” regarding the ceremony. He felt great “pride” and joy” but noted there was sadness as well.
“Of course, I’d rather have Michael back,” he concluded.
Hope Hodge Seck contributed to this story.
Claire Barrett is an editor and military history correspondent for Military Times. She is also a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.
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