This Date in Military History:

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1943 – The advance of the British 10th Corps (part of US 5th Army) advances without resistance. The German rearguard has withdrawn, because all German forces inland have successfully been pulled back.

1944 – Operation Market-Garden, a plan to seize bridges in the Dutch town of Arnhem, fails, as thousands of British and Polish troops are killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. British Gen. Bernard Montgomery conceived an operation to take control of bridges that crossed the Rhine River, from the Netherlands into Germany, as a strategy to make “a powerful full-blooded thrust to the heart of Germany.” The plan seemed cursed from the beginning. It was launched on September 17, with parachute troops and gliders landing in Arnhem. Holding out as long as they could, waiting for reinforcements, they were compelled to surrender. Unfortunately, a similar drop of equipment was delayed, and there were errors in locating the proper drop location and bad intelligence on German troop strength. Added to this, bad weather and communication confused the coordination of the Allied troops on the ground.

The Germans quickly destroyed the railroad bridge and took control of the southern end of the road bridge. The Allies struggled to control the northern end of the road bridge, but soon lost it to the superior German forces. The only thing left was retreat-back behind Allied lines. But few made it: Of more than 10,000 British and Polish troops engaged at Arnhem, only 2,900 escaped. Claims were made after the fact that a Dutch Resistance fighter, Christiaan Lindemans, betrayed the Allies, which would explain why the Germans were arrayed in such numbers at such strategic points. A conservative member of the British Parliament, Rupert Allason, writing under the named Nigel West, dismissed this conclusion in his A Thread of Deceit, arguing that Lindemans, while a double agent, “was never in a position to betray Arnhem.” Winston Churchill would lionize the courage of the fallen Allied soldiers with the epitaph “Not in vain.” Arnhem was finally liberated on April 15, 1945.

1945 – President Truman announces that, under a decision at the recent Potsdam Conference, the surviving German naval vessels will be divided equally between the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. He notes also that no decision has been made on the disposal of the Imperial Japanese Fleet.

1945 – Lt. Col. Peter Dewey, a U.S. Army officer with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Vietnam, is shot and killed in Saigon. Dewey was the head of a seven-man team sent to Vietnam to search for missing American pilots and to gather information on the situation in the country after the surrender of the Japanese. According to the provisions of the Potsdam Conference, the British were assigned the responsibility of disarming Japanese soldiers south of the 16th parallel. However, with the surrender of the Japanese, Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh declared themselves the rightful government of Vietnam. This angered the French colonial officials and the remaining French soldiers who had been disarmed and imprisoned by the Japanese. They urged British Maj. Gen. Douglas D. Gracey to help them regain control.

Gracey, not fond of the Viet Minh or their cause, rearmed 1,400 French soldiers to help his troops maintain order. The next day these forces ousted the Viet Minh from the offices that they had only recently occupied. Dewey’s sympathies lay with the Viet Minh, many of whom were nationalists who did not want a return to French colonial rule. The American officer was an outspoken man who soon angered Gracey, eventually resulting in the British general ordering him to leave Indochina. On the way to the airport, accompanied by another OSS officer, Capt. Henry Bluechel, Dewey refused to stop at a roadblock manned by three Viet Minh soldiers. He yelled back at them in French and they opened fire, killing Dewey instantly. Bluechel was unhurt and escaped on foot. It was later determined that the Viet Minh had fired on Dewey thinking he was French. He would prove to be the first of nearly 59,000 Americans killed in Vietnam.

1950 – Elements of the 1st Cavalry Division’s 7th Cavalry Regiment, driving north from the Pusan Perimeter, linked up with elements of the 7th Infantry Division’s 31st Infantry Regiment near Suwon.

1950 – The USS Brush struck a free-floating mine and 13 sailors were killed and 34 others seriously wounded. This was the first incident of a U.S. Navy ship hitting a mine during the war.

1952 – U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Cecil Foster, 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, flying an F-80 Shooting Star jet fighter, shot down a pair of MiG-15s for his second and third aerial kills.

1953 – US and Spain signed a defense treaty with 4 US bases to be set in Spain.

1960 – Fidel Castro announces Cuba’s support for the U.S.S.R.

1963 – First steam-eject launch of Polaris missile at sea off Cape Canaveral, FL (now Cape Kennedy) from USS Observation Island (EAG-154).

1967 – Hanoi rejected a U.S. peace proposal.

1969 – President Nixon, speaking at a news conference, cites “some progress” in the effort to end the Vietnam War and says, “We’re on the right course in Vietnam.” Urging the American people to give him the support and time he needed to end the war honorably, Nixon said, “If we have a united front, the enemy will begin to talk [at the negotiating table in Paris].” Nixon branded the attitude of Senator Charles Goodell (R-NY), and others like him in Congress as “defeatist.” Goodell had only days before proposed legislation which failed to pass, but would have required the withdrawal of U.S. troops by the end of 1970, and barred the use of congressionally appropriated funds after December 1, 1970, for maintaining U.S. military personnel in Vietnam. In response to Nixon’s remarks, 24 liberal Democratic congressmen held a private caucus. The group decided to endorse the nationwide protest scheduled for October 15 and agreed to press in Congress for resolutions calling for an end to the war and a withdrawal of U.S. troops; over the next three weeks, there would be 10 such proposals. None of these passed, but they indicated the mounting opposition to “Nixon’s war.”

1972 – Richard M. Nixon met with Emperor Hirohito in Anchorage, Alaska, the first-ever meeting of a U.S. President and a Japanese Monarch.

1983 – Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov averts a likely worldwide nuclear war by correctly identifying a report of an incoming nuclear missile as a computer error and not an American first strike. The nuclear early warning system of the Soviet Union twice reported the launch of American Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles from bases in the United States. These missile attack warnings were correctly identified as a false alarm by Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, an officer of the Soviet Air Defense Forces. This decision is seen as having prevented an erroneous data for decision about retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies, which would have likely resulted in nuclear war and the potential deaths of millions of people. Investigation of the satellite warning system later confirmed that the system had malfunctioned.

1988 – In a farewell speech to the U.N. General Assembly, President Reagan saw “a moment for hope” for peace in the world, citing a new U.S.-Soviet treaty to sharply reduce nuclear arms due during the following year.

1989 – In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze accepted President Bush’s call for deep cuts in U.S. and Soviet chemical weapon stockpiles. Shevardnadze called for the total destruction of Soviet and US chemical weapons.

1994 – Coast Guard forces departed for Haiti in support of Operation Restore Democracy.

1996 – U.S. astronaut Shannon Lucid returns to Earth in the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis following six months in orbit aboard the Russian space station Mir. On March 23, 1996, Lucid transferred to Mir from the same space shuttle for a planned five-month stay. A biochemist, Lucid shared Mir with Russian cosmonauts Yuri Onufriyenko and Yuri Usachev and conducted scientific experiments during her stay. She was the first American woman to live in a space station. Beginning in August, her scheduled return to Earth was delayed by more than six weeks because of last-minute repairs to the booster rockets of Atlantis and then by a hurricane. Finally, on September 26, 1996, she returned to Earth aboard Atlantis, touching down at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Her 188-day sojourn aboard Mir set a new space endurance record for an American and a world endurance record for a woman.

1997 – US and Russia signed a package of arms control agreements that extended parts of START II to 2007. Systems were still required to be disabled by 2003. Other accords modified the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 with Belarus, Kazakstan, the Ukraine and Russia to allow flexibility for the development of short range systems.

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2002 – Britain and the United States reach agreement on a tough United Nations Security Council resolution which threatens Saddam Hussein with severe consequences if he fails to grant weapons inspectors unfettered access to Iraq. Russia, China and France express grave reservations about the Anglo-American text.

2004 – Suicide attackers detonated a pair of car bombs outside an Iraqi National Guard compound west of the capital, wounding American and Iraqi forces. An insurgent rocket hit a busy Baghdad neighborhood, killing at least one person and wounding eight.

2004 – In Pakistan Amjad Hussain Farooqi, accused in two attempts on the life of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf in December 2003, died in a four-hour shootout at a house in the southern town of Nawabshah. He was also wanted for his alleged role in the 2002 kidnapping and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

2005 – U.S. Army PFC Lynndie England is found guilty of six of seven charges by a military court in connection with the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. A sentencing hearing is scheduled to begin September 27. U.S. Army PFC Lynndie England is found guilty of six of seven charges by a military court in connection with the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. A sentencing hearing is scheduled to begin September 27th.

2006 – Operation Mountain Thrust, a follow-up operation to Operation Medusa, to clear Taliban rebels from the eastern provinces of Afghanistan began. Another focus of the operation was to enable reconstruction projects such as schools, health-care facilities, and courthouses to take place in the targeted provinces. During the operation, the Taliban suffered large losses during direct battle with NATO coalition forces; as a result, they are expected to focus more on tactics such as the use of Improvised Explosive Devices.

2006 – 10th Mountain Division began their combat operations against the Taliban forces that were entrenched in the mountains on the border with Pakistan in the east in the provinces of Paktika, Khost, Ghazni, Paktia, Logar and Nuristan, establishing many remote outposts in regions that were previously Taliban dominated. These outposts came almost under continued attacks as well as did the American combat patrols.

2009 – Three detainees held by the United States at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, are sent abroad to two countries. Ireland accepts two detainees of Uzbeki origin in a humanitarian gesture, with Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform Dermot Ahern saying Ireland was one of the first countries in Europe to call for the closure of Guantánamo Bay and that the two men would now be given time to rebuild their lives.

2013 – The United States and Russia agree on a draft United Nations Security Council resolution aiming to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken this Day

CALL, DONALD M.
Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Army, 344th Battalion, Tank Corps. Place and date: Near Varennes, France, 26 September 1918. Entered service at: France. Born: 29 November 1892, New York, N.Y. G.O. No.: 13, W.D., 1919. Citation: During an operation against enemy machinegun nests west of Varennes, Cpl. Call was in a tank with an officer when half of the turret was knocked off by a direct artillery hit. Choked by gas from the high-explosive shell, he left the tank and took cover in a shellhole 30 yards away. Seeing that the officer did not follow, and thinking that he might be alive, Cpl. Call returned to the tank under intense machinegun and shell fire and carried the officer over a mile under machinegun and sniper fire to safety.

MALLON, GEORGE H.
Rank and organization: Captain, U.S. Army, 132d Infantry, 33d Division. Place and date: In the Bois-de-Forges, France, 26 September 1918. Entered service at: Minneapolis, Minn. Born: 15 June 1877 Ogden, Kans. G.O. No.: 16, W.D., 1919. Citation: Becoming separated from the balance of his company because of a fog, Capt. Mallon, with 9 soldiers, pushed forward and attacked 9 active hostile machineguns, capturing all of them without the loss of a man. Continuing on through the woods, he led his men in attacking a battery of four 155-millimeter howitzers, which were in action, rushing the position and capturing the battery and its crew. In this encounter Capt. Mallon personally attacked 1 of the enemy with his fists. Later, when the party came upon 2 more machineguns, this officer sent men to the flanks while he rushed forward directly in the face of the fire and silenced the guns, being the first one of the party to reach the nest. The exceptional gallantry and determination displayed by Capt. Mallon resulted in the capture of 100 prisoners, 11 machineguns, four 155-millimeter howitzers and 1 antiaircraft gun.

SEIBERT, LLOYD M.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company F, 364th Infantry, 91st Division. Place and date: Near Epinonville, France, 26 September 1918. Entered service at: Salinas, Calif. Birth: Caledonia, Mich. G.O. No.: 445, W.D., 1919. Citation. Suffering from illness, Sgt. Seibert remained with his platoon and led his men with the highest courage and leadership under heavy shell and machinegun fire. With 2 other soldiers he charged a machinegun emplacement in advance of their company, he himself killing one of the enemy with a shotgun and capturing 2 others. In this encounter he was wounded, but he nevertheless continued in action, and when a withdrawal was ordered he returned with the last unit, assisting a wounded comrade. Later in the evening he volunteered and carried in wounded until he fainted from exhaustion.

*SKINKER, ALEXANDER R.
Rank and organization: Captain, U.S. Army, 138th Infantry, 35th Division. Place and date: At Cheppy, France, 26 September 1918. Entered service at: St. Louis, Mo. Birth: St. Louis, Mo. G.O. No.: 13, W.D., 1919. Citation: Unwilling to sacrifice his men when his company was held up by terrific machinegun fire from iron pill boxes in the Hindenburg Line, Capt. Skinker personally led an automatic rifleman and a carrier in an attack on the machineguns. The carrier was killed instantly, but Capt. Skinker seized the ammunition and continued through an opening in the barbed wire, feeding the automatic rifle until he, too, was killed.

WEST, CHESTER H.
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company D, 363d Infantry, 91st Division. Place and date: Near Bois-de-Cheppy, France, 26 September 1918. Entered service at: Los Banos, Calif. Birth: Fort Collins, Colo. G.O. No.: 34, W.D., 1919. Citation: While making his way through a thick fog with his automatic rifle section, his advance was halted by direct and unusual machinegun fire from 2 guns. Without aid, he at once dashed through the fire and, attacking the nest, killed 2 of the gunners, 1 of whom was an officer. This prompt and decisive hand-to-hand encounter on his part enabled his company to advance farther without the loss of a man.

*OBREGON, EUGENE ARNOLD
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps, Company G, 3d Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division (Rein.). Place and date: Seoul, Korea, 26 September 1950. Entered service at: Los Angeles, Calif. Born: 12 November 1930, Los Angeles, Calif. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with Company G, in action against enemy aggressor forces. While serving as an ammunition carrier of a machine gun squad in a marine rifle company which was temporarily pinned down by hostile fire, Pfc. Obregon observed a fellow marine fall wounded in the line of fire. Armed only with a pistol, he unhesitating dashed from his covered position to the side of the casualty. Firing his pistol with 1 hand as he ran, he grasped his comrade by the arm with his other hand and, despite the great peril to himself dragged him to the side of the road. Still under enemy fire, he was bandaging the man’s wounds when hostile troops of approximately platoon strength began advancing toward his position. Quickly seizing the wounded marine’s carbine, he placed his own body as a shield in front of him and lay there firing accurately and effectively into the hostile group until he himself was fatally wounded by enemy machine gun fire. By his courageous fighting spirit, fortitude, and loyal devotion to duty, Pfc. Obregon enabled his fellow marines to rescue the wounded man and aided essentially in repelling the attack, thereby sustaining and enhancing the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.


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27 September

1777 – At the Battle of Germantown the British defeated Washington’s army. English General William Howe occupied Philadelphia.

1777 – Lancaster, Pennsylvania is the capital of the United States, for one day as Congress pauses there following its evacuation of Philadelphia.

1779 – John Adams was named to negotiate the Revolutionary War’s peace terms with Britain.

1787 – The US Constitution was submitted to states for ratification.

1809 – Raphael Semmes (d.1877), Rear Admiral (Confederate Navy), was born.

1813 – Marines served aboard ships in battle against the British on Lake Ontario.

1840 – Alfred T. Mahan, navy admiral, was born. He wrote “The Influence of Seapower on History” and other books that encouraged world leaders to build larger navies. Although a brilliant naval historian and noted theorist on the importance of sea power to national defense, Alfred Thayer Mahan hated the sea and dreaded his duties as a ship’s captain.

1863 – Jo Shelby’s cavalry in action at Moffat’s Station, Arkansas.

1864 – A guerilla band led by William “Bloody Bill” Anderson sacks the town of Centralia, Missouri, killing 22 unarmed Union soldiers before massacring 120 pursuing Yankees. The Civil War in Missouri and Kansas was rarely fought between regular armies in the field. It was carried out primarily by partisan bands of guerilla fighters, and the atrocities were nearly unmatched. In 1863, Confederate marauders sacked Lawrence, Kansas, and killed 250 residents. In 1864, partisan activity increased in anticipation of Confederate General Sterling Price’s invasion of the state. On the evening of September 26, a band of 200 Confederate marauders gathered near the town of Centralia, Missouri. The next morning, Anderson led 30 guerillas into Centralia and began looting the tiny community and terrorizing the residents. Unionist congressmen William Rollins escaped execution only by giving a false name and hiding in a nearby hotel. Meanwhile, a train from St. Louis was just pulling into the station. The engineer, who spotted Anderson’s men destroying the town, tried to apply steam to keep the train moving. However, the brakeman, unaware of the raid, applied the brakes and brought the train to a halt. The guerillas took 150 prisoners from the train, which included 23 Union soldiers, and then set it on fire and opened its throttle; the flaming train sped away from the town. The soldiers were stripped and Anderson’s men began firing on them, killing all but one within a few minutes. The surviving Yankee soldier was spared in exchange for a member of Anderson’s company who had recently been captured.

That afternoon, a Union detachment commanded by Major A. V. E. Johnston arrived in Centralia to find the bushwhackers had already vacated the town. Johnston left some troops to hold the tiny burgh, and then headed in the direction of Anderson’s band. Little did he know he was riding right into a perfect trap: Johnston’s men followed Rebel pickets into an open field, and the Southern partisans attacked from three sides. Johnston and his entire command were quickly annihilated. Anderson’s men scalped and mutilated many of the bodies before moving back into Centralia and killing the remaining Federal soldiers. In all, the bushwhackers killed some 140 Yankee troops. A month later, Anderson was killed attempting a similar attack near Albany, Missouri.

1875 – The merchant sailing ship Ellen Southard is wrecked in a storm at Liverpool; the United States Congress subsequently awards 27 gold Lifesaving Medals to the lifeboat men who went to rescue her crew.

1918 – President Woodrow Wilson opened his fourth Liberty Loan campaign to support men and machines for World War I.

1922 – Report on observations of experiments with short wave radio at Anacostia, DC, starts Navy development of radar.

1928 – The United States said it was recognizing the Nationalist Chinese government.

1938 – League of Nations declared Japan the aggressor against China.

1939 – 140,000 Polish troops are taken prisoner by the German invaders as Warsaw surrenders to the superior mechanized forces of Hitler’s army. The Poles fought bravely, but were able to hold on for only 26 days. On the heels of its victory, the Germans began a systematic program of terror, murder, and cruelty, executing members of Poland’s middle and upper classes: Doctors, teachers, priests, landowners, and businessmen were rounded up and killed. The Nazis had given this operation the benign-sounding name “Extraordinary Pacification Action.” The Roman Catholic Church, too, was targeted, because it was a possible source of dissent and counterinsurgency. In one west Poland church diocese alone, 214 priests were shot. And hundreds of thousands more Poles were driven from their homes and relocated east, as Germans settled in the vacated areas. This was all part of a Hitler master plan. Back in August, Hitler warned his own officers that he was preparing Poland for that “which would not be to the taste of German generals”–including the rounding up of Polish Jews into ghettos, a prelude to their liquidation. All roads were pointing to Auschwitz.

1940 – Black leaders protested discrimination in US armed forces.

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1940 – The Axis powers are formed as Germany, Italy, and Japan become allies with the signing of the Tripartite Pact in Berlin. The Pact provided for mutual assistance should any of the signatories suffer attack by any nation not already involved in the war. This formalizing of the alliance was aimed directly at “neutral” America–designed to force the United States to think twice before venturing in on the side of the Allies. The Pact also recognized the two spheres of influence. Japan acknowledged “the leadership of Germany and Italy in the establishment of a new order in Europe,” while Japan was granted lordship over “Greater East Asia.” A footnote: There was a fourth signatory to the Pact-Hungary, which was dragged into the Axis alliance by Germany in November 1940.

1941 – Launch of first Liberty ship, SS Patrick Henry, in Baltimore, MD. 13 sister ships are launched the same day.

1942 – Glenn Miller and his Orchestra performed together for the last time, at the Central Theater in Passaic, N.J., prior to Miller’s entry into the Army.

1942 – The S.S. Stephen Hopkins, a Liberty Ship with an all-San Francisco crew, engaged the German raider Stier and her tender, Tannenfels. It shelled and brought down the Stier and hit the Tannenfels before it was sunk. Of a crew of 58, only 15 survived. They reached the shore of Brazil after a 31-day voyage in an open lifeboat.

1942 – 1st Class Signalman Douglas A. Munro, U.S. Coast Guard, rescued Marines of 1/7 during Operation Pestilence on Guadalcanal. He is the only Medal of Honor recipient for the U.S. Coast Guard.

1944 – Thousands of British troops were killed as German forces rebuffed their massive effort to capture the Arnhem Bridge across the Rhine River in Holland.

1944 – Special Air Task Force (STAG-1) commences operations with drones, controlled by TBM aircraft, against Japanese in Southwestern Pacific.

1944 – The US 20th Corps (part of US 3rd Army) begins attacks on the outer defenses of the fortress town of Metz. Meanwhile, the British 2nd Army achieves limited advances south of Arnhem in the Netherlands.

1944 – The Kassel Mission results in the largest loss by a USAAF group on any mission in World War II.

1949 – HUAC held hearings on alleged communist infiltration of the Radiation Laboratory at UC Berkeley.

1950 – While considerable mopping up remained, Seoul fell to the 1st Marine Division augmented by ROK Marines and troops of the 7th Infantry Division with the 17th ROK Regiment attached. Marine Private First Class Luther Leguire of Tampa, Fl, raised the Stars and Stripes above the looted residence of American Ambassador John J. Muccio.

1950 – President Truman authorized military operations north of the 38th parallel.

1950 – The Secretary of Defense authorized the Army to plan for 17 Army divisions and a strength of 1,263,000 for fiscal year 1951 and 18 divisions and a strength of 1,353,000 for fiscal year 1952.

1950 – For the purpose of alleviating attrition during the Korean War, Executive Order 10164 authorized the Coast Guard, in cases where enlisted personnel did not immediately reenlist in the Coast Guard, to extend enlistments for one year, if the date of expiration of enlistment occurred prior to 9 July 1951. The Coast Guard, however, adopted a policy of permitting the discharge of men upon expiration of enlistment, provided they immediately enlisted in the Coast Guard Reserve.

1956 – USAF Captain Milburn G. Apt becomes the first man to exceed Mach 3 while flying the Bell X-2. Shortly thereafter, the craft goes out of control and Captain Apt is killed.

1959 – Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev concluded his visit to the United States. During the visit he debated with Richard Nixon. He also saw the filming of Can Can and found the dance immoral. Bassetts produced 50 tubs of borscht sorbet in honor of Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to Philadelphia.

1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Cuban consulate in Mexico.

1964 – The Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is released after a 10-month investigation, concluding that there was no conspiracy in the assassination, either domestic or international, and that Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin, acted alone. The presidential commission, headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, also found that Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner who murdered Oswald on live national television, had no prior contact with Oswald. According to the report, the bullets that killed President Kennedy and injured Texas Governor John Connally were fired by Oswald in three shots from a rifle pointed out of a sixth floor window in the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald’s life, including his visit to the Soviet Union, was described in detail, but the report made no attempt to analyze his motives. Despite its seemingly firm conclusions, the report failed to silence conspiracy theories surrounding the event, and in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in a preliminary report that Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy” that may have involved multiple shooters and organized crime. The committee’s findings, as with the findings of the Warren Commission, continue to be widely disputed.

1969 – President Nguyen Van Thieu says his government entertains no “ambition or pretense” to take over all fighting by the end of 1970, but given proper support South Vietnamese troops could replace the “bulk” of U.S. troops that year. Thieu said his agreement on any further U.S. troops withdrawals would hinge on whether his requests for equipment and funds for ARVN forces were granted. These comments were in response to President Nixon’s continued emphasis on “Vietnamizing” the war so that U.S. forces could be withdrawn.

1977 – A U.S. Navy McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II crashes into a residential neighborhood in Yokohama, Japan, killing two children on the ground and injuring seven other people.

1979 – Congress gave final approval to forming the Department of Education, the 13th Cabinet agency in U.S. history.

1983 – Richard Stallman announces the GNU project to develop a free Unix-like operating system.

1990 – The deposed emir of Kuwait delivered an emotional address to the UN General Assembly in which he denounced the “rape, destruction and terror” inflicted upon his country by Iraq.

1991 – President Bush announced in a nationally broadcast address that he was eliminating all U.S. battlefield nuclear weapons, and called on the Soviet Union to match the gesture.

1996 – US Defense Sec. William Perry said the 3 Baltic nations would not be among the first new NATO members drawn from Eastern Europe.

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1996 – The Taliban, with military support by Pakistan and financial support from Saudi Arabia, seized Kabul and founded the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. They imposed their fundamentalist interpretation of Islam in areas under their control, issuing edicts forbidding women to work outside the home, attend school, or to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative.

1997 – The space shuttle Atlantis blasted off, docking hours later with the problem-plagued Russian Mir station to drop off American David Wolf and pick up Michael Foale.

1997 – Communications are suddenly lost with the Mars Pathfinder space probe.

2001 – Pres. Bush announced enhanced airport security measures that included national guard soldiers at checkpoints and armed air marshals on planes as a first step toward federal control of airline security.

2001 – US and British warplanes struck 2 artillery sites in Iraq’s southern no-fly zone.

2001 – Def. Sec. Donald Rumsfeld displayed the new Medal for the Defense of Freedom to be awarded to all Defense Dept. civilian employees killed or wounded in the sep 11 terrorist attacks.

2001 – In Afghanistan the Taliban said it had delivered an official request for Osama bin Laden to leave the country.

2001 – In Jakarta, Indonesia, protesters burned US flags outside the US Embassy and threatened to kill Americans.

2002 – President Bush said the UN should have a chance to force Saddam Hussein to give up his weapons of mass destruction before the US acted on its own against Iraq, but told a Republican fund-raising event in Denver that action had to come quickly.

2002 – U.S. and British jets bomb two Iraqi surface-to-air missile sites south of Baghdad after Iraqi forces fire on allied aircraft. The US Defense Department said the planes hit targets near Qalat Sikur, about 200km south-east of Baghdad.

2003 – President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin urged Iran and North Korea to abandon suspected nuclear weapons programs, but disagreed over how to deal with both countries; Putin also declined at the end of a two-day summit at Camp David to pledge any postwar help for Iraq.

2004 – U.S. jets pounded suspected Shiite militant positions in the Baghdad slum of Sadr City.

2004 – Lebanon said Ismail Katib, a local al Qaeda operative captured a week earlier, died “of a heart attack” while in police custody.

2006 – Legislation passes in the U.S. House and Senate giving President Bush authority to detain, interrogate and try terrorism detainees before military commissions.

2007 – NASA launches the Dawn probe. Dawn is a space probe to study two of the most massive objects of the asteroid belt – the protoplanet Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. Currently en route to Ceres, it is expected to arrive in April 2015. Dawn was the first spacecraft to visit Vesta, entering orbit on July 16, 2011, and successfully completing its fourteen month survey mission of Vesta in late 2012. Should its entire mission succeed, it will also be the first spacecraft to visit Ceres and to orbit two separate extraterrestrial bodies.

2009 – General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force, formally requests more troops for the War in Afghanistan.

2011 – Fugitive hijacker George Wright is caught in Portugal, thirty-nine years after he and members of the Black Liberation Army took control of Delta Air Lines Flight 841 and flew it to Algeria.

2013 – Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif meets with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry during P5+1 and Iran talks, the highest-level direct contact between the United States and Iran in six years.

2013 – President Barack Obama reveals he talked with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, marking the first time leaders from the U.S. and Iran have directly communicated since the Iranian revolution.


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken this Day

BOYNE, THOMAS
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company C, 9th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Mimbres Mountains, N. Mex., 29 May 1879; at Cuchillo Negro River near Ojo Caliente, N. Mex., 27 September 1879. Entered service at:——. Birth: Prince Georges County, Md. Date of issue: 6 January 1882. Citation: Bravery in action.

PAINE, ADAM
Rank and organization: Private, Indian Scouts. Place and date: Canyon Blanco tributary of the Red River, Tex., 26-27 September 1874. Entered service at: Fort Duncan, Texas. Birth: Florida. Date of issue: 13 October 1875. Citation: Rendered invaluable service to Col. R. S. Mackenzie, 4th U.S. Cavalry, during this engagement.

*BAESEL, ALBERT E.
Rank and organization: Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army, 148th Infantry, 37th Division. Place and date: Near Ivoiry, France, 27 September 1918. Entered service at: Berea, Ohio. Born: 1892, Berea, Ohio. G.O. No.: 43, W.D., 1922. Citation: Upon hearing that a squad leader of his platoon had been severely wounded while attempting to capture an enemy machinegun nest about 200 yards in advance of the assault line and somewhat to the right, 2d Lt. Baesel requested permission to go to the rescue of the wounded corporal. After thrice repeating his request and permission having been reluctantly given, due to the heavy artillery, rifle, and machinegun fire, and heavy deluge of gas in which the company was at the time, accompanied by a volunteer, he worked his way forward, and reaching the wounded man, placed him upon his shoulders and was instantly killed by enemy fire.

BRONSON, DEMING
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, Company H, 364th Infantry, 91st Division. Place and date: Near Eclisfontaine, France, 26-27 September 1918. Entered service at: Seattle, Wash. Born: 8 July 1894, Rhinelander, Wis. G.O. No.: 12 W.D., 1929. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy. On the morning of 26 September, during the advance of the 364th Infantry, 1st Lt. Bronson was struck by an exploding enemy handgrenade, receiving deep cuts on his face and the back of his head. He nevertheless participated in the action which resulted in the capture of an enemy dugout from which a great number of prisoners were taken. This was effected with difficulty and under extremely hazardous conditions because it was necessary to advance without the advantage of cover and, from an exposed position, throw handgrenades and phosphorous bombs to compel the enemy to surrender. On the afternoon of the same day he was painfully wounded in the left arm by an enemy rifle bullet, and after receiving first aid treatment he was directed to the rear. Disregarding these instructions, 1st Lt. Bronson remained on duty with his company through the night although suffering from severe pain and shock. On the morning of 27 September, his regiment resumed its attack, the object being the village of Eclisfontaine. Company H, to which 1st Lt. Bronson was assigned, was left in support of the attacking line, Company E being in the line. He gallantly joined that company in spite of his wounds and engaged with it in the capture of the village. After the capture he remained with Company E and participated with it in the capture of an enemy machinegun, he himself killing the enemy gunner. Shortly after this encounter the company was compelled to retire due to the heavy enemy artillery barrage. During this retirement 1st Lt. Bronson, who was the last man to leave the advanced position, was again wounded in both arms by an enemy high-explosive shell. He was then assisted to cover by another officer who applied first aid. Although bleeding profusely and faint from the loss of blood, 1st Lt. Bronson remained with the survivors of the company throughout the night of the second day, refusing to go to the rear for treatment. His conspicuous gallantry and spirit of self-sacrifice were a source of great inspiration to the members of the entire command.

*TURNER, WILLIAM B.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army 105th Infantry, 27th Division. Place and date: Near Ronssoy, France, 27 September 1918. Entered service at: Garden City, N.Y. Birth: Boston, Mass. G.O. No.: 81, W.D., 1919. Citation: He led a small group of men to the attack, under terrific artillery and machinegun fire, after they had become separated from the rest of the company in the darkness. Single-handed he rushed an enemy machinegun which had suddenly opened fire on his group and killed the crew with his pistol. He then pressed forward to another machinegun post 25 yards away and had killed 1 gunner himself by the time the remainder of his detachment arrived and put the gun out of action. With the utmost bravery he continued to lead his men over 3 lines of hostile trenches, cleaning up each one as they advanced, regardless of the fact that he had been wounded 3 times, and killed several of the enemy in hand-to-hand encounters. After his pistol ammunition was exhausted, this gallant officer seized the rifle of a dead soldier, bayoneted several members of a machinegun crew, and shot the other. Upon reaching the fourth-line trench, which was his objective, 1st Lt. Turner captured it with the 9 men remaining in his group and resisted a hostile counterattack until he was finally surrounded and killed.


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WAALER, REIDAR
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company A, 105th Machine-Gun Battalion, 27th Division. Place and date: Near Ronssoy, France, 27 September 1918. Entered service at: New York, N.Y. Birth: Norway. G.O. No.. 5, W.D., 1920. Citation: In the face of heavy artillery and machinegun fire, he crawled forward to a burning British tank, in which some of the crew were imprisoned, and succeeded in rescuing 2 men. Although the tank was then burning fiercely and contained ammunition which was likely to explode at any time, this soldier immediately returned to the tank and, entering it, made a search for the other occupants, remaining until he satisfied himself that there were no more living men in the tank.

FIELDS, JAMES H.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, 10th Armored Infantry, 4th Armored Division. Place and date: Rechicourt, France, 27 September 1944. Entered service at: Houston, Tex. Birth: Caddo, Tex. G.O. No.: 13, 27 February 1945. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty, at Rechicourt, France. On 27 September 1944, during a sharp action with the enemy infantry and tank forces, 1st Lt. Fields personally led his platoon in a counterattack on the enemy position. Although his platoon had been seriously depleted, the zeal and fervor of his leadership was such as to inspire his small force to accomplish their mission in the face of overwhelming enemy opposition. Seeing that 1 of the men had been wounded, he left his slit trench and with complete disregard for his personal safety attended the wounded man and administered first aid. While returning to his slit trench he was seriously wounded by a shell burst, the fragments of which cut through his face and head, tearing his teeth, gums, and nasal passage. Although rendered speechless by his wounds, 1st Lt. Fields refused to be evacuated and continued to lead his platoon by the use of hand signals. On 1 occasion, when 2 enemy machineguns had a portion of his unit under deadly crossfire, he left his hole, wounded as he was, ran to a light machinegun, whose crew had been knocked out, picked up the gun, and fired it from his hip with such deadly accuracy that both the enemy gun positions were silenced.

His action so impressed his men that they found new courage to take up the fire fight, increasing their firepower, and exposing themselves more than ever to harass the enemy with additional bazooka and machinegun fire. Only when his objective had been taken and the enemy scattered did 1st Lt. Fields consent to be evacuated to the battalion command post. At this point he refused to move further back until he had explained to his battalion commander by drawing on paper the position of his men and the disposition of the enemy forces. The dauntless and gallant heroism displayed by 1st Lt. Fields were largely responsible for the repulse of the enemy forces and contributed in a large measure to the successful capture of his battalion objective during this action. His eagerness and determination to close with the enemy and to destroy him was an inspiration to the entire command, and are in the highest traditions of the U.S. Armed Forces.

*MUNRO, DOUGLAS ALBERT
Rank and organization: Signalman First Class, U.S. Coast Guard Born: 11 October 1919, Vancouver, British Columbia. Accredited to Washington. Citation: For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry m action above and beyond the call of duty as Petty Officer in Charge of a group of 24 Higgins boats, engaged in the evacuation of a battalion of marines trapped by enemy Japanese forces at Point Cruz Guadalcanal, on 27 September 1942. After making preliminary plans for the evacuation of nearly 500 beleaguered marines, Munro, under constant strafing by enemy machineguns on the island, and at great risk of his life, daringly led 5 of his small craft toward the shore. As he closed the beach, he signaled the others to land, and then in order to draw the enemy’s fire and protect the heavily loaded boats, he valiantly placed his craft with its 2 small guns as a shield between the beachhead and the Japanese. When the perilous task of evacuation was nearly completed, Munro was instantly killed by enemy fire, but his crew, 2 of whom were wounded, carried on until the last boat had loaded and cleared the beach. By his outstanding leadership, expert planning, and dauntless devotion to duty, he and his courageous comrades undoubtedly saved the lives of many who otherwise would have perished. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

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28 September

1542 – Portuguese explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sails into present-day San Diego Bay during the course of his explorations of the northwest shores of Mexico on behalf of Spain. It was the first known European encounter with California. At San Diego, Cabrillo landed at Point Loma Head, now part of the Cabrillo National Monument. He then sailed on to explore much of the rest of the California coast. During one landing, he broke his leg and apparently fell sick with complications from the injury. He died in January 1543, probably on San Miguel Island off the Santa Barbara coast. Despite his reports of the appealing California coastline, the first Spanish settlement was not established in California until 1769, when Father Junípero Serra founded his mission at San Diego.

1781 – American forces in the Revolutionary War, backed by a French fleet, began their siege of Yorktown Heights, Va.

1787 – Congress voted to send the just-completed Constitution of the United States to state legislatures for their approval.

1781 – American forces in the Revolutionary War, backed by a French fleet, began their siege of Yorktown Heights, Va. 9,000 American forces and 7,000 French troops began the siege of Yorktown.

1779 – Samuel Huntington is elected President of the Continental Congress, succeeding John Jay.

1822 – Sloop-of-war Peacock captures 5 pirate vessels.

1850 – Flogging was abolished as a form of punishment in the U.S. Navy.

1863 – Union Generals Alexander M. McCook and Thomas Crittenden lose their commands and are ordered to Indianapolis, Indiana, to face a court of inquiry following the Federal defeat at Chickamauga, Tennessee. Eight days before, the Union Army of the Cumberland, commanded by General William Rosecrans, had retreated from the Chickamauga battlefield in disarray. On the battle’s second day, Rosecrans mistakenly ordered a division to move into a gap in the Federal line that did not exist, creating a real gap through which the Confederates charged, thus splitting the Union army. One wing collapsed, and a frantic retreat back to Chattanooga ensued. The other wing, led by General George Thomas, remained on the battlefield and held its position until it was nearly overrun by Confederates. The search for scapegoats began immediately, and fingers soon pointed to McCook and Crittenden. Their corps had been part of the collapsed flank, so Rosecrans removed them from command. Crittenden’s removal stirred anger in his native Kentucky, and the state legislature sent a letter to President Lincoln demanding a reexamination of the firing. In February 1864, a military court cleared McCook and Crittenden, but their careers as field commanders were over. By quickly removing McCook and Crittenden, Rosecrans had been trying to save his own job. Three weeks after firing the generals, Rosecrans was himself replaced by Thomas.

1868 – In the Opelousas Massacre at St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, 200 blacks were killed.

1874 – Colonel Ranald Mackenzie (d.1889) raided a war camp of Comanche and Kiowa at the Battle of Palo Duro Canyon, Texas, slaughtering 2,000 of their horses.

1900 – Marines withdrew from Peking after the Boxer Rebellion.

1901 – The Balangiga Massacre on Samar Island, Philippine villagers surprised Company C, 9th Infantry Regiment. Twenty-two were wounded in action and four were missing in action. Eight died later of wounds received in combat; only four escaped unscathed. The villagers captured about 100 rifles and 25,000 rounds of ammunition and suffered 28 dead and 22 wounded.

1906 – US troops reoccupied Cuba. They stayed until 1909.

1912 – Corporal Frank S. Scott of the United States Army becomes the first enlisted man to die in an airplane crash. He and pilot Lt. Lewis C. Rockwell are killed in the crash of an Army Wright Model B at College Park, Maryland.

1913 – Race riots in Harriston, Mississippi, killed 10 people.

1922 – Mussolini marched on Rome.

1924 – Two U.S. Army planes landed in Seattle, Wash., having completed the first round-the-world flight in 175 days.

1939 – The Boundary and Friendship Treaty between the USSR and Germany was supplemented by secret protocols to amend the secret protocols of Aug 23. Among other things Lithuania was reassigned to the Soviet sphere of influence. Poland’s partition line was moved eastwards from the Vistula line to the line of the Bug. Germany kept a small part of south-west Lithuania, the Uznemune region. A separate Soviet mutual defense pact was signed with Estonia that allowed 25,000 Soviet troops to be stationed there.

1940 – The first of the 50 old American destroyers given to Britain arrives in the UK.

1941 – An Allied planning conference begins. Harriman attends from the US, Beaverbrook, from Britain and Molotov heads the Soviet delegation.

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1942 – Gen. Henry “Hap” Arnold gives highest priority to the development of two exceptional aircraft–the B-35 Flying Wing and the B-36 Peacemaker–intended for bombing runs from bases in the United States to targets in Europe. General Arnold was a man of distinction from the beginning of his career: Not only was he one of the first pilots in the U.S. Signal Corps, he was taught to fly by none other than one of the Wright brothers. During World War I, Arnold was director of aviation training for the Army. Between the wars, he embraced a controversial military philosophy that emphasized strategic bombing, eliminating the need for the use of ground forces altogether. At the time of the United States’ entry into the Second World War, the Army Air Forces had become an increasingly distinct military service. Arnold was made its first chief. Along with this honor came the opportunity of a seat with the Joint Chiefs of Staff; initially intended to boost his status to that of his counterpart in Britain, it also increased the stature and independence of the Army Air Forces.

Arnold was able to form alliances with British RAF allies who also favored the use of strategic bombing in lieu of ground-force operations. In 1942, Arnold gave the highest priority to the development of two extra long-distance transatlantic planes that would prove most useful to his strategic bombing game plan: the B-35 and the B-36 transatlantic bombers. The B-35 had been first proposed in early 1941, intended for use in defending an invaded Britain. But the design was so radical (it was tailless), the plane was put on the back burner. It was finally revived because of advantages the plane afforded over the B-36–bombing range in relation to gross weight, for example. Fifteen B-35 planes were ordered for construction–but the first did not take flight until 1946. Designs for the B-36 were also developed early in 1941, on the assumption that the United States would inevitably be drawn into the war and it would need a bomber that could reach Europe from bases in America. It was to be a massive plane–162 feet long with a 230-foot wingspan. But its construction lagged, and it was not completed until after the war. Although Hap’s “high priority” could not cut through the military bureaucracy, 1947 would see the Nation Defense Act establish an autonomous Air Force–a dream for which he had worked. The B-35 would become the prototype for the B-2 Stealth bomber built in 1989. And the B-36 was used extensively by U.S. Strategic Air Command until 1959, but never dropped a bomb.

1943 – The British 10th Corps (part of the US 5th Army) breaks into the plain of Naples at Nocera and advances. The US 6th Corps (also part of 5th Army) advances toward Avellino and has captured Teora.

1944 – Elements of the US forces deployed on Peleliu land on the small islands Negesbus and Kongauru. There is little resistance. On Peleliu, fighting is localized around Mount Umurbrogol where US forces attempt to eliminate individual Japanese strong points.

1950 – Task Force Matthews, consisting of the 25th Reconnaissance Company and A Company, 79th Tank Battalion, liberated 86 half-starved American POWs in Namwon.

1952 – At Panmunjom, the U.N. proposed three alternatives for a solution to the POW issue. The communists categorically reject voluntary repatriation.

1959 – Explorer VI, the U.S. satellite, took the first video pictures of earth.

1964 – First deployment of Polaris A-3 missile on USS Daniel Webster (SSBN 626) from Charleston, SC.

1968 – A battle begins for the Special Forces camp at Thuong Duc, situated between Da Nang and the Laotian border. The communists briefly captured the base before being driven out by air and artillery strikes. They then besieged the base, which was only lifted after a relief column, led by the U.S. 7th Marines, reached the base and drove the enemy forces out of the area.

1972 – Weekly casualty figures are released that contain no U.S. fatalities for the first time since March 1965. There were several reasons for this. President Nixon’s troop withdrawal program, first initiated in the fall of 1969, had continued unabated even through the height of the fighting during the 1972 North Vietnamese “Easter Offensive.” By this time in the war, there were less than 40,000 U.S. troops left in South Vietnam. Of this total, only a small number, mostly advisors, were involved in ground combat. In addition, it appeared that the North Vietnamese offensive, which had been blunted by the South Vietnamese with the aid of massive U.S. airpower, was finally winding down; there had been a general lull in ground fighting for the sixth straight day. South Vietnamese losses continued to be high since they had assumed the responsibility for fighting the ground battle in the absence of U.S. combat troops.

1973 – The ITT Building in New York City is bombed in protest at ITT’s alleged involvement, it is thought that the CIA used ITT resources to move money to parties in Chile, to in the September 11, 1973 coup d’état in Chile.

1975 – A US bill authorized the admission of women to military academies.

1990 – The exiled emir of Kuwait visited the White House, where he told President Bush the Iraqis were destroying and looting his country.

1991 – U.N. weapons inspectors ended a five-day standoff with Iraq over documents relating to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.

2000 – The United Nations Compensation Commission, which handles claims for reparations arising from Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, approves by consensus a $15.9 billion claim by Kuwait for compensation for lost oil production and damage to oil reserves and equipment. The proportion of revenues from Iraqi oil sales under the “oil for food” program which are used for payment of claims is reduced from 30 per cent to 25 per cent. Iraq condemns the decision, but states that it will not call a halt to oil exports, as had earlier been feared.

2001 – President George W. Bush told reporters the United States was in “hot pursuit” of terrorists behind the September 11th attacks.

2001 – A Bush administration official said that small groups of US and British special forces had entered Afghanistan.

2001 – The FBI released a 4-page document, handwritten in Arabic, that served as a set of final instructions for the September 11th hijackers. Copies were found in a rental car, in the suitcase of Mohamed Atta and the wreckage of the UA plane that crashed in Pa.

2001 – Dr. Kenneth M. Berry of Pittsburgh filed a patent application for a system responsive to bioterrorism attacks. In 2004 the FBI probed him in relation to investigations on letters containing anthrax.

2001 – The UN Security Council unanimously adopted a US sponsored resolution to oblige all 189 member states to crack down on the financing, training and movement of terrorists.

2001 – In Afghanistan Taliban leader Mohammed Omar told a 9-member Pakistani delegation that the Taliban would be willing to fight to the death to protect Osama bin Laden from US military forces.

2001 – In China Wu Jianmin, a Chinese-born American writer, was released from jail and expelled. The state media said he had confessed to his crimes of spying for Taiwan.

2002 – U.S. jets raided the Basra civilian airport for the second time inside a week, targeting its radar systems and the passenger terminals.

2002 – Iraq rejected a U.S.-British plan for the United Nations to force President Saddam Hussein to disarm and open his palaces for weapons searches.

2004 – The Pentagon notified Congress of plans to build five bases in Afghanistan for the Afghan National Army at a cost of up to one billion dollars.

2008 – SpaceX launches the first private spacecraft, the Falcon 1 into orbit.

2012 – The spokesperson for the United States Director of National Intelligence claims there was a pre-organised plot in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11th.

2013 – U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Tim Giardina is suspended from his duties as #2 of the U.S. Strategic Command due to an investigation into gambling-related issues.

2014 – The al-Nusra Front threatens retaliation against nations participating in air strikes against Islamic State.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken this Day

BLISS, GEORGE N.
Rank and organization: Captain, Company C, 1st Rhode Island Cavalry. Place and date: At Waynesboro, Va., 28 September 1864. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Tiverton, R.I. Date of issue: 3 August 1897. Citation: While in command of the provost guard in the village, he saw the Union lines returning before the attack of a greatly superior force of the enemy, mustered his guard, and, without orders, joined in the defense and charged the enemy without support. He received three saber wounds, his horse was shot, and he was taken prisoner.

MAHONEY, GREGORY
Rank and organization: Private, Company E, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: Near Red River, Tex., 26-28 September 1874. Entered service at: ——. Birth: South Wales. Date of issue: 13 October 1875, Citation: Gallantry in attack on a large party of Cheyennes.

McCABE, WILLIAM
Rank and organization: Private, Company E, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: Near Red River, Tex., 26-28 September 1874. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 13 October 1875. Citation: Gallantry in attack on a large party of Cheyennes.

PHOENIX, EDWIN
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company E, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: Near Red River, Tex., 26-28 September 1874. Entered service at: Kentucky. Birth: St. Louis, Mo. Date of issue: 13 October 1875. Citation: Gallantry in action.

FERGUSON, ARTHUR M.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, 36th Infantry, U.S. Volunteers. Place and date: Near Porac, Luzon, Philippine Islands, 28 September 1899. Entered service at: Burlington, Kans. Birth: Coffey County, Kans. Date of issue: 8 March 1902. Citation: Charged alone a body of the enemy and captured a captain.

*MILLER, OSCAR F.
Rank and organization: Major, U.S. Army, 361st Infantry, 91st Division. Place and date: Near Gesnes, France, 28 September 1918. Entered service at: Los Angeles, Calif. Birth: Franklin County, Ark. G.O. No.: 16, W.D. 1919. Citation: After 2 days of intense physical and mental strain, during which Maj. Miller had led his battalion in the front line of the advance through the forest of Argonne, the enemy was met in a prepared position south of Gesnes. Though almost exhausted, he energetically reorganized his battalion and ordered an attack. Upon reaching open ground the advancing line began to waver in the face of machinegun fire from the front and flanks and direct artillery fire. Personally leading his command group forward between his front-line companies, Maj. Miller inspired his men by his personal courage, and they again pressed on toward the hostile position. As this officer led the renewed attack he was shot in the right leg, but he nevertheless staggered forward at the head of his command. Soon afterwards he was again shot in the right arm, but he continued the charge, personally cheering his troops on through the heavy machinegun fire. Just before the objective was reached he received a wound in the abdomen, which forced him to the ground, but he continued to urge his men on, telling them to push on to the next ridge and leave him where he lay. He died from his wounds a few days later.

SCHAFFNER, DWITE H.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, 306th Infantry, 77th Division. Place and date: Near St. Hubert’s Pavillion, Boureuilles, France, 28 September 1918. Entered service at: Falls Creek, Pa. Birth: Arroya, Pa. G.O. No.: 15, W.D., 1923. Citation: He led his men in an attack on St. Hubert’s Pavillion through terrific enemy machinegun, rifle, and artillery fire and drove the enemy from a strongly held entrenched position after hand-to-hand fighting. His bravery and contempt for danger inspired his men, enabling them to hold fast in the face of 3 determined enemy counterattacks. His company’s position being exposed to enemy fire from both flanks, he made 3 efforts to locate an enemy machinegun which had caused heavy casualties. On his third reconnaissance he discovered the gun position and personally silenced the gun, killing or wounding the crew. The third counterattack made by the enemy was initiated by the appearance of a small detachment in advance of the enemy attacking wave. When almost within reach of the American front line the enemy appeared behind them, attacking vigorously with pistols, rifles, and handgrenades, causing heavy casualties in the American platoon. 1st Lt. Schaffner mounted the parapet of the trench and used his pistol and grenades killing a number of enemy soldiers, finally reaching the enemy officer leading the attacking forces, a captain, shooting and mortally wounding the latter with his pistol, and dragging the captured officer back to the company’s trench, securing from him valuable information as to the enemy’s strength and position. The information enabled 1st Lt. Schaffner to maintain for S hours the advanced position of his company despite the fact that it was surrounded on 3 sides by strong enemy forces. The undaunted bravery, gallant soldierly conduct, and leadership displayed by 1st Lt. Schaffner undoubtedly saved the survivors of the company from death or capture.

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*STOWERS, FREDDIE
Corporal Stowers, a native of Anderson County, South Carolina, distinguished himself by exceptional heroism on 28 September 1918, while serving as a squad leader in Company C, 371st Infantry Regiment, 93rd Infantry Division. His company was the lead company during the attack on Hill 188, Champagne Marne Sector, France, during World War I. A few minutes after the attack began, the enemy ceased firing and began climbing up onto the parapets of the trenches, holding up their arms as if wishing to surrender. The enemy’s actions caused the American forces to cease fire and to come out into the open. As the company started forward and when within about 100 meters of the trench line, the enemy jumped back into their trenches and greeted Corporal Stowers’ company with interlocking bands of machine gun fire and mortar fire causing well over fifty percent casualties. Faced with incredible enemy resistance, Corporal Stowers took charge, setting such a courageous example of personal bravery and leadership that he inspired his men to follow him in the attack. With extraordinary heroism and complete disregard of personal danger under devastating fire, he crawled forward leading his squad toward an enemy machine gun nest, which was causing heavy casualties to his company. After fierce fighting, the machine gun position was destroyed and the enemy soldiers were killed. Displaying great courage and intrepidity, Corporal Stowers continued to press the attack against a determined enemy. While crawling forward and urging his men to continue the attack on a second trench line, he was gravely wounded by machine gun fire. Although, Corporal Stowers was mortally wounded, he pressed forward, urging on the members of his squad, until he died. Inspired by the heroism and display of bravery of Corporal Stowers, his company continued the attack against incredible odds, contributing to the capture of Hill 188 and causing heavy enemy casualties. Corporal Stowers’ conspicuous gallantry, extraordinary heroism and supreme devotion to his men were well above and beyond the call of duty, follow the finest traditions of military service and reflect the utmost credit on him and the United States Army.

*BAUER, HAROLD WILLIAM
Rank and organization: Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps. Born: 20 November 1908. Woodruff, Kans. Appointed from: Nebraska. Citation: For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous courage as Squadron Commander of Marine Fighting Squadron 212 in the South Pacific Area during the period 10 May to 14 November 1942. Volunteering to pilot a fighter plane in defense of our positions on Guadalcanal, Lt. Col. Bauer participated in 2 air battles against enemy bombers and fighters outnumbering our force more than 2 to 1, boldly engaged the enemy and destroyed 1 Japanese bomber in the engagement of 28 September and shot down 4 enemy fighter planes in flames on 3 October, leaving a fifth smoking badly. After successfully leading 26 planes on an over-water ferry flight of more than 600 miles on 16 October, Lt. Col. Bauer, while circling to land, sighted a squadron of enemy planes attacking the U.S.S. McFarland. Undaunted by the formidable opposition and with valor above and beyond the call of duty, he engaged the entire squadron and, although alone and his fuel supply nearly exhausted, fought his plane so brilliantly that 4 of the Japanese planes were destroyed before he was forced down by lack of fuel. His intrepid fighting spirit and distinctive ability as a leader and an airman, exemplified in his splendid record of combat achievement, were vital factors in the successful operations in the South Pacific Area.

*ROEDER, ROBERT E.
Rank and organization: Captain, U.S. Army, Company G, 350th Infantry, 88th Infantry Division. Place and date: Mt. Battaglia, Italy, 27-28 September 1944. Entered service at: Summit Station, Pa. Birth: Summit Station, Pa. G.O. No.: 31, 17 April 1945. Citation: for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. Capt. Roeder commanded his company in defense of the strategic Mount Battaglia. Shortly after the company had occupied the hill, the Germans launched the first of a series of determined counterattacks to regain this dominating height. Completely exposed to ceaseless enemy artillery and small-arms fire, Capt. Roeder constantly circulated among his men, encouraging them and directing their defense against the persistent enemy. During the sixth counterattack, the enemy, by using flamethrowers and taking advantage of the fog, succeeded in overrunning the position Capt. Roeder led his men in a fierce battle at close quarters, to repulse the attack with heavy losses to the Germans. The following morning, while the company was engaged in repulsing an enemy counterattack in force, Capt. Roeder was seriously wounded and rendered unconscious by shell fragments. He was carried to the company command post, where he regained consciousness. Refusing medical treatment, he insisted on rejoining his men although in a weakened condition, Capt. Roeder dragged himself to the door of the command post and, picking up a rifle, braced himself in a sitting position. He began firing his weapon, shouted words of encouragement, and issued orders to his men. He personally killed 2 Germans before he himself was killed instantly by an exploding shell. Through Capt. Roeder’s able and intrepid leadership his men held Mount Battaglia against the aggressive and fanatical enemy attempts to retake this important and strategic height. His valorous performance is exemplary of the fighting spirit of the U.S. Army.

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29 September

Feast Day of St. Michael the Archangel, Patron Saint of Soldiers, marines, Military Police, Aviation, and Airborne: The name Michael signifies “Who is like to God?” and was the war cry of the good angels in the battle fought in heaven against Satan and his followers. Holy Scripture describes St. Michael as “one of the chief princes,” and leader of the forces of heaven in their triumph over the powers of hell. He has been especially honored and invoked as patron and protector by the Church from the time of the Apostles. Although he is always called “the Archangel,” the Greek Fathers and many others place him over all the angels – as Prince of the Seraphim.

1789 – The U.S. War Department established a regular U.S. army with a strength of several hundred men.

1789 – The 1st United States Congress adjourns.

1812 – Seminole Indians ambushed Marines at Twelve Mile Swamp, Florida.

1850 – Pres. Millard Fillmore named Mormon leader Brigham Young as the first governor of the Utah Territory.

1862 – Union General Jefferson C. Davis mortally wounds his commanding officer, General William Nelson, in Louisville, Kentucky. Davis had been upset by a reprimand handed down by Nelson. After quarreling in a hotel lobby, Nelson slapped Davis. Davis then chased him upstairs and shot him. Davis was never court-martialed, and it is thought that the influence of Indiana Governor Oliver Morton, who was with Davis at the time of the shooting, was instrumental in preventing a trial. Davis went on to serve with distinction at the Battles of Stones River, Chickamauga, and Chattanooga.

1863 – U.S.S. Lafayette, Lieutenant Commander J.P. Foster, and U.S.S. Kenwood, Acting Master John Swaney, arrived at Morganza, Louisiana, on Bayou Fordoche to support troops under Major General Napoleon J. T. Dana. More than 400 Union troops had been captured in an engagement with Confederates under Brigadier General Thomas Green. Foster noted, “the arrival of the gunboats was hailed . . . with perfect delight.” Next day, the presence of the ships, he added, “no doubt deterred [the Confederates] from attacking General Dana in his position at Morganza as they had about four brigades to do it with, while our forces did not amount to more than 1,500.” Foster ordered gunboats to cover the Army and prevent a renewal of the action.

1864 – Union General Ulysses S. Grant tries to break the stalemate around Richmond and Petersburg—25 miles south of Richmond—by attacking two points along the defenses of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The assault against Richmond, called the Battle of New Market Heights, and the assault against Petersburg, known as the Battle of Poplar Springs Church (Peeble’s Farm), both failed. But they kept the pressure on Lee and prevented him from sending reinforcements to the beleaguered General Jubal Early, who was fighting against General Philip Sheridan in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Grant gave the attack on New Market Heights to General Benjamin Butler’s Army of the James. Butler had carefully scouted the network of Confederate fortifications and determined that there were weaknesses. He instructed General Edward Ord to strike at Fort Harrison, a stronghold in the network, and General David Birney to attack New Market Heights. The assault began with Birney, who sent a division of African American soldiers against New Market Heights. Butler was correct about the weakness of the Richmond defenses, which were significantly undermanned since most of Lee’s force was protecting Petersburg. The 1,800 Confederate defenders of New Market Heights soon realized that the Yankee attack threatened to overrun their position.

After a half-hour battle, they retreated closer to Richmond. At nearby Fort Harrison, Ord’s troops swarmed over the walls of the fort and scattered the 800 inexperienced defenders. Despite the initial success, the Union attack became bogged down. The leading units of the attack suffered significant casualties, including many officers. The Confederate defenses were deep, and the Yankees faced another set of fortifications. Butler instructed his men to secure the captured territory before renewing the attack. That night, Lee moved several brigades from Petersburg for an unsuccessful counterattack on September 30. In the end, Union soldiers bent the Richmond defenses but did not break them. Yankee casualties totaled 3,300 of the 20,000 troops engaged, while the Confederates lost 2,000 of 11,000 engaged. The stalemate continued until the following spring.

1864 – Ships of the Confederate James River Squadron, Flag Officer Mitchell, supported Southern troops in attacks against Fort Harrison, Chaffin’s Farm, James River, Virginia. Though the Confederates failed to retake Fort Harrison, with the aid of heavy fire from Mitchell’s ships, they prevented Union soldiers from capturing Chaffin’s Bluff.

1879 – Dissatisfied Ute Indians killed Agent Nathan Meeker and nine others in the “Meeker Massacre.”

1899 – VFW established.

1918 – At the Battle of St. Quentin Canal, Allied forces scored a decisive breakthrough of the Hindenburg Line during World War I. The Allied assualt involved British, Australian and American forces in the spearhead attack and as a single combined force against the German Siegfried Stellung of the Hindenburg Line. Under the command of Australian general Sir John Monash, the assault achieved all its objectives, resulting in the first full breach of the Hindenburg Line, in the face of heavy German resistance and, in concert with other attacks of the Great Offensive along the length of the line convinced the German high command that the writing was on the wall regarding any hope of German victory.

1918 – Lt. Frank Luke Jr. against orders destroyed 3 German balloons and downed 2 pursuing fighters in a final flight of vengeance for the loss of his wingman Lt. Joseph Wehner. Luke received a posthumous Medal Of Honor.

1919 – The Secretary of War deploys federal troops to Omaha after the preceding day’s rioting. The race riot resulted in the brutal lynching of Will Brown, a black worker; the death of two white men; the attempted hanging of Mayor Edward Parsons Smith; and a public rampage by thousands of whites who set fire to the Douglas County Courthouse in downtown Omaha. The riot lasted until 3 a.m., at that hour, federal troops, under command of Colonel John E. Morris of the Twentieth Infantry, arrived from Fort Omaha and Fort Crook. Troops manning machine guns were placed in the heart of Omaha’s business district; in North Omaha, the center of the black community, to protect citizens there; and in South Omaha, to prevent more mobs from forming. Major General Leonard Wood, commander of the Central Department, came the next day to Omaha by order of Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. Peace was enforced by 1,600 soldiers. Martial law was not formally proclaimed in Omaha, but it was effectively enacted throughout the city. By the request of City Commissioner W.G. Ure, who was acting mayor, Wood took over control over the police department, too.

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1938 – Munich Agreement: Germany is given permission from France, Italy, and Great Britain to seize the territory of Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia. The meeting takes place in Munich, and leaders from neither the Soviet Union nor Czechoslovakia attend.

1939 – In New York city, Fritz Kuhn, the leader of the pro-Nazi German-American Bund, is imprisoned.

1939 – Germany and the Soviet Union agree to divide control of occupied Poland roughly along the Bug River–the Germans taking everything west, the Soviets taking everything east. As a follow-up to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, (also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact), that created a non-aggression treaty between the two behemoth military powers of Germany and the U.S.S.R., Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, met with his Soviet counterpart, V.M. Molotov, to sign the German-Soviet Boundary and Friendship Treaty. The fine print of the original non-aggression pact had promised the Soviets a slice of eastern Poland; now it was merely a matter of agreeing where to draw the lines. Joseph Stalin, Soviet premier and dictator, personally drew the line that partitioned Poland. Originally drawn at the River Vistula, just west of Warsaw, he agreed to pull it back east of the capital and Lublin, giving Germany control of most of Poland’s most heavily populated and industrialized regions. In return, Stalin wanted Lvov, and its rich oil wells, as well as Lithuania, which sits atop East Prussia. Germany now had 22 million Poles, “slaves of the Greater German Empire,” at its disposal; Russia had a western buffer zone.

1943 – Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf was published in the United States.

1943 – General Eisenhower and Marshal Badoglio sign the armistice agreement aboard the HMS Nelson in Malta harbor.

1943 – Elements the US 5th Army continue to advance. Elements of the US 6th Corps attack Avellino. The British 10th Corps reaches Pompeii.

1944 – USS Narwhal (SS-167) evacuates 81 Allied prisoners of war that survived sinking of Japanese Shinyo Maru from Sindangan Bay, Mindanao.

1944 – On Angaur, American forces confine Japanese resistance to a small area in the northwest of the island.

1946 – Lockheed P2V Neptune, Truculent Turtle, leaves Perth, Australia on long distance non-stop, non-refueling flight that ends October 1st.

1950 – In a ceremony in the National Assembly Hall while fighting still raged in the outskirts, Seoul was officially restored as the capital of the Republic of Korea. An emotional President Rhee called General MacArthur “the savior of our race.”

1965 – Hanoi publishes the text of a letter it has written to the Red Cross claiming that since there is no formal state of war, U.S. pilots shot down over the North will not receive the rights of prisoners of war (POWs) and will be treated as war criminals. The U.S. State Department protested, but this had no impact on the way the American POWs were treated and most suffered extreme torture and other maltreatment while in captivity. The first pilot captured by the North Vietnamese was Navy Lieutenant Everett Alvarez, who was shot down on August 5, 1964. The American POW held longest was Army Special Forces Captain Floyd James Thompson, who had been captured in the South on March 26, 1964. American POWs were held in 11 different prisons in North Vietnam and their treatment by the North Vietnamese was characterized by isolation, torture, and psychological abuse. The exact number of POWs held by the North Vietnamese during the war remains a debatable issue, but the POWs themselves have accounted for at least 766 verified captives at one point. Under the provisions of the Paris Peace Accords, the North Vietnamese released 565 American military and 26 civilian POWs in February and March 1973, but there were still more than 2,500 men listed as Missing in Action (MIA).

1966 – Operation “Monterey” commences in Vietnam.

1969 – Secretary of the Army Stanley Resor announces that the U.S. Army, conceding that it is helpless to enlist the cooperation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is dropping the murder charges (of August 6) against eight Special Forces accused of killing a Vietnamese national. Col. Robert B. Rheault, Commander of the 5th Special Forces Group in Vietnam, and seven other Green Berets had been charged with premeditated murder and conspiracy to commit murder in the summary execution of Thai Khac Chuyen, who had served as an agent for Detachment B-57. Chuyen was reportedly summarily executed for being a double agent who had compromised a secret mission. The case against the Green Berets was ultimately dismissed for reasons of national security when the CIA refused to release highly classified information about the operations in which Detachment B-57 had been involved. Colonel Rheault subsequently retired from the Army.

1986 – Coast Guard officials signed the contract papers to acquire the H-60 series helicopter to replace the venerable Sikorsky HH-3F Pelicans.

1988 – The space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., marking America’s return to manned space flight following the Challenger disaster.

1994 – Gunmen in Italy fired at the rental car of the Green family of Bodega Bay, Ca., and killed their young boy, Nicholas Green. The parents donated his organs and saved 7 lives in Italy. An appeals court in 1998 found 2 men guilty of the botched highway robbery. Michelle Ianello was sentenced to life in prison and Francesco Mesiano was sentenced to 20 years.

1994 – The YF-22, which would later become the F-22 Raptor, flies for the first time. The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor is a single-seat, twin-engine, all weather stealth tactical fighter aircraft developed for the United States Air Force (USAF). The result of the USAF’s Advanced Tactical Fighter program, the aircraft was designed primarily as an air superiority fighter, but has additional capabilities including ground attack, electronic warfare, and signals intelligence roles. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor and is responsible for the majority of the airframe, weapon systems, and final assembly of the F-22, while program partner Boeing provides the wings, aft fuselage, avionics integration, and training systems.

1994 – The crew of Coast Guard LORAN Station Iwo Jima decommissioned their station and turned it over to a crew from the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency. The turnover of all of the Northwest Pacific LORAN chain stations was arranged under a 1992 agreement between the U.S. and Japan.

1995 – Three U-S servicemen were indicted in the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl and handed over to Japanese authorities. They were later convicted.

1995 – The United States Navy disbands Fighter Squadron 84 (VF-84), nicknamed the “Jolly Rogers”. VF-84, Fighter Squadron 84 was an aviation unit of the United States Navy active from 1955 to 1995. The squadron was nicknamed the Jolly Rogers and was based at NAS Oceana. It took the number but not the lineage of a World War II squadron active in 1944–45, the “Wolf Gang”, which was a new squadron formed around a nucleus of veterans of VF-17, the original “Jolly Rogers”.

1999 – The Associated Press reported on the alleged mass killing of civilians by US soldiers in the early days of the Korean War, beneath a bridge at a hamlet called No Gun Ri.

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2000 – A US AMRAAM missile sale to Taiwan was designed so that delivery would not occur unless China threatened an attack.

2000 – US navy pilot, Lt. Bruce Joseph Donald, was killed when his F/A-18C Hornet fighter crashed into the Persian Gulf.

2001 – Pres. Bush in his weekly radio address condemned the Taliban for sheltering terrorists and said: “We did not seek this conflict, but we will win it.”

2003 – US The Justice Department launched a full-blown criminal investigation into who leaked the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame, the wife of ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson, and President Bush the next day directed his White House staff to cooperate fully. The White House denied that President Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, had leaked a CIA agent’s identity to retaliate against an opponent of the administration’s Iraq policy.

2004 – The Burt Rutan Ansari X Prize entry SpaceShipOne performs a successful spaceflight, the first of two required to win the prize.

2004 – A US federal judge ruled that a section of the Patriot Act, that allowed the search of phone and Internet records, was unconstitutional.

2004 – Kyrgyzstan police arrested a man for attempting the black market sale of 60 small containers of what was confirmed as plutonium.

2004 – A Yemeni judge sentenced two men to death and four others to prison terms ranging from five to 10 years for orchestrating the 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole.

2005 – The New York Times reporter Judith Miller is released from federal jail after receiving a waiver from her news source, allowing her to testify in the investigation of the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

2006 – The HiRISE camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter takes its first low-orbit, high-resolution pictures of Mars.

2008 – Following the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual, The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 777.68 points, the largest single-day point loss in its history.

2010 – Germany makes the final payment of its World War I reparations.

2012 – One of the Guantanamo detainees, Omar Khadr, is transferred to Canada to serve the remainder of his sentence.

2014 – Ashraf Ghani is sworn in as new president of Afghanistan.


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken this Day

APPLETON, WILLIAM H.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, Company H, 4th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Petersburg, Va., 15 June 1864; At New Market Heights, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Portsmouth, N.H. Born: 24 March 1843, Chichester, N.H. Date of issue: 18 February 1891. Citation: The first man of the Eighteenth Corps to enter the enemy’s works at Petersburg, Va., 15 June 1864. Valiant service in a desperate assault at New Market Heights, Va., inspiring the Union troops by his example of steady courage.

ARCHER, LESTER
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company E, 96th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Fort Harrison, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at:——. Birth: Fort Ann, N.Y. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Gallantry in placing the colors of his regiment on the fort.

BARNES, WILLIAM H.
Rank and organization: Private, Company C, 38th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at:——. Birth: St. Marys County, Md. Date of issue 6 April 1865. Citation: Among the first to enter the enemy’s works; although wounded.

BEATY, POWHATAN
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, Company G, 5th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Delaware County, Ohio. Birth: Richmond, Va. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Took command of his company, all the officers having been killed or wounded, and gallantly led it.

BELCHER, THOMAS
Rank and organization: Private, Company I, 9th Maine Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Bangor, Maine. Birth: Bangor, Maine. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Took a guidon from the hands of the bearer, mortally wounded, and advanced with it nearer to the battery than any other man.

BLUCHER, CHARLES
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company H, 188th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Fort Harrison, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Harrisburgh, Pa. Birth: Germany. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Planted first national colors on the fortifications.

BRADY, JAMES
Rank and organization: Private, Company F, 10th New Hampshire Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Kingston, N.H. Birth: Boston, Mass. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Capture of flag.

BRONSON, JAMES H.
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, Company D, 5th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Delaware County, Ohio. Birth: Indiana County, Pa. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Took command of his company, all the officers having been killed or wounded, and gallantly led it.

*BUCHANAN, GEORGE A.
Rank and organization: Private, Company G, 148th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Ontario County, N.Y. Birth: New York. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Took position in advance of the skirmish line and drove the enemy’s cannoneers from their guns; was mortally wounded.

BUCK, F. CLARENCE
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company A, 21st Connecticut Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Windsor Conn. Birth: Hartford, Conn. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Although wounded, refused to leave the field until the fight closed.

CLAY, CECIL
Rank and organization: Captain, Company K, 58th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Fort Harrison, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at:——. Birth: Philadelphia, Pa. Date of issue: 19 April 1892. Citation: Led his regiment in the charge, carrying the colors of another regiment, and when severely wounded in the right arm, incurring loss of same, he shifted the colors to the left hand, which also became disabled by a gunshot wound.

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EDGERTON, NATHAN H.
Rank and organization: Lieutenant and Adjutant, 6th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Philadelphia, Pa. Birth: ——. Date of issue: 30 March 1898. Citation: Took up the flag after 3 color bearers had been shot down and bore it forward, though himself wounded.

FLANAGAN, AUGUSTIN
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company A, 55th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Chest Springs, Pa. Birth: Cambria County, Pa. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Gallantry in the charge on the enemy’s works: rushing forward with the colors and calling upon the men to follow him; was severely wounded.

FLEETWOOD, CHRISTIAN A.
Rank and organization: Sergeant Major, 4th U.S. Colored Troops, Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Baltimore, Md. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Seized the colors, after 2 color bearers had been shot down, and bore them nobly through the fight.

GARDINER, JAMES
Rank and organization: Private, Company I, 36th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at:——. Birth: Gloucester, Va. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Rushed in advance of his brigade, shot a rebel officer who was on the parapet rallying his men, and then ran him through with his bayonet.

*GASSON, RICHARD
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company K, 47th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Fell dead while planting the colors of his regiment on the enemy’s works.

GRAUL, WILLIAM
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company I, 188th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Fort Harrison, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Reading, Pa. Birth: Reading, Pa. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: First to plant the colors of his State on the fortifications.

GRUEB, GEORGE
Rank and organization: Private, Company E, 158th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: New York, N.Y. Birth: Germany. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Gallantry in advancing to the ditch of the enemy’s works.

HARRIS, JAMES H.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company B, 38th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At New Market Heights, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at:——. Birth: St. Marys County, Md. Date of issue: 18 February 1874. Citation: Gallantry in the assault.

HAWKINS, THOMAS R.
Rank and organization: Sergeant Major, 6th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Philadelphia, Pa. Birth: Cincinnati, Ohio. Date of issue: 8 February 1870. Citation: Rescue of regimental colors.

HICKOK, NATHAN E.
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company A, 8th Connecticut Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Danbury, Conn. Birth: Danbury, Conn. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Capture of flag.

HILTON, ALFRED B.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company H, 4th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date. At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at:——. Birth: Harford County, Md. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: When the regimental color bearer fell, this soldier seized the color and carried it forward, together with the national standard, until disabled at the enemy’s inner line.

HOLLAND, MILTON M.
Rank and organization: Sergeant Major, 5th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Athens, Ohio. Born: 1844, Austin, Tex. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Took command of Company C, after all the officers had been killed or wounded, and gallantly led it.

HORNE, SAMUEL B.
Rank and organization: Captain, Company H, 11th Connecticut Infantry. Place and date: At Fort Harrison, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Winsted, Conn. Born: 3 March 1843, Ireland Date of issue: 19 November 1897. Citation: While acting as an aide and carrying an important message, was severely wounded and his horse killed but delivered the order and rejoined his general.

JAMIESON, WALTER
Rank and organization: 1st Sergeant, Company B, 139th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Petersburg, Va., 30 July 1864; At Fort Harrison, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: New York, N.Y. Birth: France. Date of issue: 5 April 1898. Citation: Voluntarily went between the lines under a heavy fire at Petersburg, Va., to the assistance of a wounded and helpless officer, whom he carried within the Union lines. At Fort Harrison, Va., seized the regimental color, the color bearer and guard having been shot down, and, rushing forward, planted it upon the fort in full view of the entire brigade.

JOHNSON, JOSEPH E.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, Company A, 58th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Fort Harrison, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: ——. Born: 5 February 1843, Lower Merion, Montgomery County, Pa. Date of issue: 1 April 1898. Citation: Though twice severely wounded while advancing in the assault, he disregarded his injuries and was among the first to enter the fort, where he was wounded for the third time.

KELLY, ALEXANDER
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, Company F, 6th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: ——. Birth. Pennsylvania. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Gallantly seized the colors, which had fallen near the enemy’s lines of abatis, raised them and rallied the men at a time of confusion and in a place of the greatest danger.

KRAMER, THEODORE L.
Rank and organization: Private, Company G, 188th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Danville, Pa. Birth: Luzerne County, Pa. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Took one of the first prisoners, a captain.

LAING, WILLIAM
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company F, 158th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: New York, N.Y. Birth: Hempstead, N.Y. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Was among the first to scale the parapet.

McKOWN, NATHANIEL A.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company B, 58th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at:——. Birth: Susquehanna County, Pa. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Capture of flag.

MEAGHER, THOMAS
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, Company G, 158th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Brooklyn N.Y. Birth: Scotland. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Led a section of his men on the enemy’s works, receiving a wound while scaling a parapet.

PINN, ROBERT
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, Company I, 5th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Massillon, Ohio. Born: 1 March 1843, Stark County, Ohio. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Took command of his company after all the officers had been killed or wounded and gallantly led it in battle.

RATCLIFF, EDWARD
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, Company C, 38th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: ——. Birth: James County, Va. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation. Commanded and gallantly led his company after the commanding officer had been killed; was the first enlisted man to enter the enemy’s works.

SCHILLER, JOHN
Rank and organization: Private, Company E, 158th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: New York, N.Y. Birth: Germany. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Advanced to the ditch of the enemy’s works.

SHEA, JOSEPH H.
Rank and organization: Private, Company K, 92d New York Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Baltimore, Md. Date of issue: March 1866. Citation: Gallantry in bringing wounded from the field under heavy fire.

SKELLIE, EBENEZER
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company D, 112th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Mina, N.Y. Birth: Mina, N.Y. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Took the colors of his regiment, the color bearer having fallen, and carried them through the first charge; also, in the second charge, after all the color guards had been killed or wounded he carried the colors up to the enemy’s works, where he fell wounded.

VAN WINKLE, EDWARD (EDWIN)
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company C, 148th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Phelps, N.Y. Birth: Phelps, N.Y. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Took position in advance of the skirmish line and drove the enemy’s cannoneers from their guns.

VEAL, CHARLES
Rank and organization: Private, Company D, 4th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Portsmouth, Va. Birth: Portsmouth Va. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Seized the national colors after 2 color bearers had been shot down close to the enemy’s works, and bore them through the remainder of the battle.

*WELLS, HENRY S.
Rank and organization: Private, Company C, 148th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 29 September 1864. Entered service at: Phelps, N.Y. Birth: ——. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: With 2 comrades, took position in advance of the skirmish line, within short distance of the enemy’s gunners, and drove them from their guns.

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[SHOOTER13]

BRANAGAN, EDWARD
Rank and organization: Private, Company F, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Red River, Tex., 29 September 1872. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 19 November 1872. Citation. Gallantry in action.

DODGE, FRANCIS S.
Rank and organization: Captain, Troop D, 9th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: Near White River Agency, Colo., 29 September 1879. Entered service at: Danvers, Mass. Born: 11 September 1842, Danvers, Mass. Date of issue: 2 April 1898. Citation: With a force of 40 men rode all night to the relief of a command that had been defeated and was besieged by an overwhelming force of Indians, reached the field at daylight, joined in the action and fought for 3 days.

FOSTER, WILLIAM
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company F, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Red River, Tex., 29 September 1872. Entered service at: ——. Birth: England, Date of issue: 19 November 1872. Citation: Gallantry in action.

GRIMES, EDWARD P.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company F, 5th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Milk River, Colo., 29 September to 5 October 1879. Entered service at:——. Birth: Dover, N.H. Date of issue: 27 January 1880. Citation: The command being almost out of ammunition and surrounded on 3 sides by the enemy, he voluntarily brought up a supply under heavy flre at almost point blank range.

LARKIN, DAVID
Rank and organization: Farrier, Company F, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Red River, Tex., 29 September 1872. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 19 November 1872. Citation: Gallantry in action.

LAWTON, JOHN S.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company D, 5th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Milk River, Colo., 29 September 1879. Entered service at:——. Birth: Bristol, R.l. Date of issue: 7 June 1880. Citation: Coolness and steadiness under fire; volunteered to accompany a small detachment on a very dangerous mission.

McMASTERS, HENRY A.
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company A, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Red River, Tex., 29 September 1872. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Augusta, Maine. Date of issue: 19 November 1872. Citation: Gallantry in action.

McNAMARA, WILLIAM
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, Company F, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Red River, Tex., 29 September 1872. Entered service at:——. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 19 November 1872. Citation: Gallantry in action.

MERRILL, JOHN
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company F, 5th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Milk River, Colo., 29 September 187’J. Entered service at: ——. Birth: New York, N.Y. Date of issue: 7 June 1880. Citation: Though painfully wounded, he remained on duty and rendered gallant and valuable service.

MOQUIN, GEORGE
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company F, 5th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Milk River, Colo., 29 September to 5 October 1879. Entered Service at: ———. Birth: New York, N.Y. Date of issue: 27 January 1880. Citation: Gallantry in action.

MURPHY, EDWARD F.
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company D, 5th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Milk River, Colo., 29 September 1879. Entered service at:——. Birth: Wayne County, Pa. [)ate of issue: 23 April 1880. Citation: Gallantry in action.

O’NEILL, WILLIAM
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company I, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Red River, Tex., 29 September 1872. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Tariffville, Conn. Date of issue: 19 November 1872. Citation: Bravery in action.

PHILIPSEN, WILHELM O.
Rank and organization: Blacksmith, Troop D, 5th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Milk River, Colo., 29 September 1879. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Germany. Date of issue: 12 December 1894. Citation: With 9 others voluntarily attacked and captured a strong position held by Indians.

POPPE, JOHN A.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company F, 5th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Milk River, Colo., 29 September to S October 1879. Entered service at:——. Birth: Cincinnati, Ohio. Date of issue: 27 lanuary 1880. Citation: Gallantry in action.

PRATT, JAMES
Rank and organization: Blacksmith, Company I, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Red River, Tex., 29 September 1872. Entered service at: Bellefontaine, Ohio. Birth: Bellefontaine, Ohio. Date of issue: 19 November 1872. Citation: Gallantry in action.

RANKIN, WILLIAM
Rank and organization: Private, Company F, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Red River, Tex., 29 September 1872. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Lewistown, Pa. Date of issue: 19 November 1872. Citation: Gallantry in action with Indians.

ROACH, HAMPTON M.
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company F, 5th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Milk River, Colo., 29 September to 5 Qctober 1879. Entered service at:——. Birth: Concord, La. Date of issue: 27 January 1880. Citation: Erected breastworks under fire; also kept the command supplied with water 3 consecutive nights while exposed to fire from ambushed Indians at close range.

WIDMER, JACOB
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, Company D, 5th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Milk River, Colo., 29 September 1879. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Germany. Date of issue: 4 May 1880. Citation: Volunteered to accompany a small detachment on a very dangerous mission.

WILSON, WILLIAM
SECOND AWARD
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company I, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Red River, Tex., 29 September 1872. Citation: Distinguished conduct in action with Indians, Red River, Texas.

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[SHOOTER13]

ADKINSON, JOSEPH B.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company C, 119th Infantry, 30th Division. Place and date: Near Bellicourt, France, 29 September 1918. Entered service at: Memphis, Tenn. Born: 4 January 1892, Egypt, Tenn. G.O. No.: 59, W.D., 1919. Citation: When murderous machinegun fire at a range of 50 yards had made it impossible for his platoon to advance, and had caused the platoon to take cover Sgt. Adkinson alone, with the greatest intrepidity, rushed across the 50 yards of open ground directly into the face of the hostile machinegun kicked the gun from the parapet into the enemy trench, and at the point of the bayonet captured the 3 men manning the gun. The gallantry and quick decision of this soldier enabled the platoon to resume its advance.

EGGERS, ALAN LOUIS
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Army, Machine Gun Company, 107th Infantry, 27th Division. Place and date: Near Le Catelet, France, 29 September 1918. Entered service at: Summit, N.J. Birth: Saranac Lake, N.Y. G.O. No.: 20, W.D., 1919. Citation: Becoming separated from their platoon by a smoke barrage, Sgt. Eggers, Sgt. John C. Latham and Cpl. Thomas E. O’Shea took cover in a shell hole well within the enemy’s lines. Upon hearing a call for help from an American tank, which had become disabled 30 yards from them, the 3 soldiers left their shelter and started toward the tank, under heavy fire from German machineguns and trench mortars. In crossing the fire-swept area Cpl. O’Shea was mortally wounded, but his companions, undeterred, proceeded to the tank, rescued a wounded officer, and assisted 2 wounded soldiers to cover in a sap of a nearby trench. Sgt. Eggers and Sgt. Latham then returned to the tank in the face of the violent fire, dismounted a Hotchkiss gun, and took it back to where the wounded men were, keeping off the enemy all day by effective use of the gun and later bringing it, with the wounded men, back to our lines under cover of darkness.

GAFFNEY, FRANK
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company G, 108th Infantry, 27th Division. Place and date: Near Ronssoy, France, 29 September 1918. Entered service at: Niagara Falls, N.Y. Birth: Buffalo, N.Y. G.O. No.: 20, W.D., 1919. Citation: Pfc. Gaffney, an automatic rifleman, pushing forward alone, after all the other members of his squad had been killed, discovered several Germans placing a heavy machinegun in position. He killed the crew, captured the gun, bombed several dugouts, and, after killing 4 more of the enemy with his pistol, held the position until reinforcements came up, when 80 prisoners were captured.

GUMPERTZ, SYDNEY G.
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company E, 132d Infantry, 33d Division. Place and date: In the Bois-de-Forges, France, 29 September 1918. Entered service at: Chicago, Ill. Born: 24 October 1879, San Raphael, Calif. G.O. No.: 16, W.D., 1919. Citation: When the advancing line was held up by machinegun fire, 1st Sgt. Gumpertz left the platoon of which he was in command and started with 2 other soldiers through a heavy barrage toward the machinegun nest. His 2 companions soon became casualties from bursting shells, but 1st Sgt. Gumpertz continued on alone in the face of direct fire from the machinegun, jumped into the nest and silenced the gun, capturing 9 of the crew.

LATHAM, JOHN CRIDLAND
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Army, Machine Gun Company, 107th Infantry, 27th Division. Place and date: Near Le Catelet, France, 29 September 1918. Entered .service at: Rutherford, N.J. Born: 3 March 1888, Windemere, England. G.O. No.: 20, W.D., 1919. Citation: Becoming separated from their platoon by a smoke barrage, Sgt. Latham, Sgt. Alan L. Eggers, and Cpl. Thomas E. O’Shea took cover in a shellhole well within the enemy’s lines. Upon hearing a call for help from an American tank which had become disabled 30 yards from them, the 3 soldiers left their shelter and started toward the tank under heavy fire from German machineguns and trench mortars. In crossing the fire-swept area, Cpl. O’Shea was mortally wounded, but his companions, undeterred, proceeded to the tank, rescued a wounded officer, and assisted 2 wounded soldiers to cover in the sap of a nearby trench. Sgts. Latham and Eggers then returned to the tank in the face of the violent fire, dismounted a Hotchkiss gun, and took it back to where the wounded men were keeping off the enemy all day by effective use of the gun and later bringing it with the wounded men back to our lines under cover of darkness.

*LEMERT, MILO
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company G, 119th Infantry, 30th Division. Place and date: Near Bellicourt, France, 29 September 1918. Entered service at: Crossville, Tenn. Birth: Marshalltown, lowa. G.O. No.: 59, W.D., 1919. Citation: Seeing that the left flank of his company was held up, he located the enemy machinegun emplacement, which had been causing heavy casualties. In the face of heavy fire he rushed it single-handed, killing the entire crew with grenades. Continuing along the enemy trench in advance of the company, he reached another emplacement, which he also charged, silencing the gun with grenades. A third machinegun emplacement opened up on him from the left and with similar skill and bravery he destroyed this also. Later, in company with another sergeant, he attacked a fourth machinegun nest, being killed as he reached the parapet of the emplacement. His courageous action in destroying in turn 4 enemy machinegun nests prevented many casualties among his company and very materially aided in achieving the objective.

*LUKE, FRANK, JR. (Air Mission)
Rank and organization: Second Lieutenant, U.S. Army Air Corps, 27th Aero Squadron, 1st Pursuit Group, Air Service. Place and date: Near Murvaux, France, 29 September 1918. Entered service at: Phoenix, Ariz. Born: 19 May 1897, Phoenix, Ariz. G.O. No.: 59, W.D., 1919. Citation: After having previously destroyed a number of enemy aircraft within 17 days he voluntarily started on a patrol after German observation balloons. Though pursued by 8 German planes which were protecting the enemy balloon line, he unhesitatingly attacked and shot down in flames 3 German balloons, being himself under heavy fire from ground batteries and the hostile planes. Severely wounded, he descended to within 50 meters of the ground, and flying at this low altitude near the town of Murvaux opened fire upon enemy troops, killing 6 and wounding as many more. Forced to make a landing and surrounded on all sides by the enemy, who called upon him to surrender, he drew his automatic pistol and defended himself gallantly until he fell dead from a wound in the chest.

*O’SHEA, THOMAS E.
Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Army, Machine Gun Company, 107th Infantry, 27th Division. Place and date: Near Le Catelet, France, 29 September 1918. Entered service at: Summit, N.J. Birth: New York, N.Y. G.O. No.: 20, W.D., 1919. Citation: Becoming separated from their platoon by a smoke barrage, Cpl. O’Shea, with 2 other soldiers, took cover in a shell hole well within the enemy’s lines. Upon hearing a call for help from an American tank, which had become disabled 30 yards from them, the 3 soldiers left their shelter and started toward the tank under heavy fire from German machineguns and trench mortars. In crossing the fire-swept area Cpl. O’Shea was mortally wounded and died of his wounds shortly afterwards.

*SMITH, FRED E.
Rank and organization: Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army, 308th Infantry, 77th Division. Place and date: Near Binarville, France, 29 September 1918. Entered service at: Bartlett, N. Dak. Birth: Rockford, Ill. G.O. NO.: 49, W.D., 1922. Citation: When communication from the forward regimental post of command to the battalion leading the advance had been interrupted temporarily by the infiltration of small parties of the enemy armed with machineguns, Lt. Col. Smith personally led a party of 2 other officers and 10 soldiers, and went forward to reestablish runner posts and carry ammunition to the front line. The guide became confused and the party strayed to the left flank beyond the outposts of supporting troops, suddenly coming under fire from a group of enemy machineguns only 50 yards away. Shouting to the other members of his party to take cover this officer, in disregard of his danger, drew his pistol and opened fire on the German guncrew. About this time he fell, severely wounded in the side, but regaining his footing, he continued to fire on the enemy until most of the men in his party were out of danger. Refusing first-aid treatment he then made his way in plain view of the enemy to a handgrenade dump and returned under continued heavy machinegun fire for the purpose of making another attack on the enemy emplacements. As he was attempting to ascertain the exact location of the nearest nest, he again fell, mortally wounded .

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[SHOOTER13]

*CHRISTIANSON, STANLEY R.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps, Company E, 2d Battalion, 1st Marines, 1st Marine Division (Rein.). Place and date: Seoul, Korea, 29 September 1950. Entered service at: Mindoro, Wis. Born: 24 January 1925, Mindoro, Wis. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with Company E, in action against enemy aggressor forces at Hill 132, in the early morning hours. Manning 1 of the several listening posts covering approaches to the platoon area when the enemy commenced the attack, Pfc. Christianson quickly sent another marine to alert the rest of the platoon. Without orders, he remained in his position and, with full knowledge that he would have slight chance of escape, fired relentlessly at oncoming hostile troops attacking furiously with rifles, automatic weapons, and incendiary grenades. Accounting for 7 enemy dead in the immediate vicinity before his position was overrun and he himself fatally struck down, Pfc. Christianson, by his superb courage, valiant fighting spirit, and devotion to duty, was responsible for allowing the rest of the platoon time to man positions, build up a stronger defense on that flank, and repel the attack with 41 of the enemy destroyed, many more wounded, and 3 taken prisoner. His self-sacrificing actions in the face of overwhelming odds sustain and enhance the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. Pfc. Christianson gallantly gave his life for his country.

*MONSOOR, MICHAEL A.
Rank and organization: Master-At-Arms Second Class, SEAL Team 3, Naval Special Warfare Task Group Arabian Peninsula,U.S. Navy. Place and Date: Ar Ramadi, Iraq, 29 September 2006. Entered Service at: Garden Grove, CA. Born: 5 April 1981, Long Beach, California. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as Automatic Weapons Gunner in SEAL Team 3, Naval Special Warfare Task Group Arabian Peninsula, in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM on 29 September 2006. As a member of a combined SEAL and Iraqi Army sniper overwatch element, tasked with providing early warning and stand-off protection from a rooftop in an insurgent-held sector of Ar Ramadi, Iraq, Petty Officer Monsoor distinguished himself by his exceptional bravery in the face of grave danger. In the early morning, insurgents prepared to execute a coordinated attack by reconnoitering the area around the element’s position. Element snipers thwarted the enemy’s initial attempt by eliminating two insurgents. The enemy continued to assault the element, engaging them with a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire. As enemy activity increased, Petty Officer Monsoor took position with his machine gun between two teammates on an outcropping of the roof. While the SEALs vigilantly watched for enemy activity, an insurgent threw a hand grenade from an unseen location, which bounced off Petty Officer Monsoor’s chest and landed in front of him. Although only he could have escaped the blast, Petty Officer Monsoor chose instead to protect his teammates. Instantly and without regard for his own safety, he threw himself onto the grenade to absorb the force of the explosion with his body, saving the lives of his two teammates. By his undaunted courage, fighting spirit, and unwavering devotion to duty in the face of certain death, Petty Officer Monsoor gallantly gave his life for his country, thereby reflecting great credit upon himself and upholding the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.


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[SHOOTER13]

30 September

1541 – Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto and his forces enter Tula territory in present-day western Arkansas, encountering fierce resistance. The Tula were possibly a Caddoan people, but this is not certain. Based on the descriptions of the various chroniclers, “Tula Province”, or their homeland, may have been at the headwaters of the Ouachita, Caddo, Little Missouri, Saline, and Cossatot Rivers in Arkansas. They are also thought to have lived in the northern Ouachita Mountains in the Petit Jean and Fourche valleys.

1777 – The Congress of the United States, forced to flee in the face of advancing British forces, moved to York, Pennsylvania.

1800 – U.S. concludes treaty of peace with France, ending Quasi War with France.

1857 – Unable to obtain trading privileges in Vietnam through diplomacy, the French begin their campaign to take Vietnam. They attack Danang and take the city in early 1958. This fails to foment the uprising of oppressed Christians that they had expected. Decimated by disease, they push south to take Saigon by 1861. Vietnam is divided by a strong popular rebellion in the north, and under the weak Emperor Tu Duc, regional risings against the French are never coordinated successfully. Hanoi falls in 1883.

1864 – Confederate troops failed to retake Fort Harrison from the Union forces during the siege of Petersburg.

1864 – In an attempt to cut the last rail line into Petersburg, Virginia, Union troops attack the Confederate defense around the besieged city. Although initially successful, the attack ground to a halt when Confederate reinforcements were rushed into place from other sections of the Petersburg line. This battle came after more than three months of trench warfare. Union commander General Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate commander General Robert E. Lee had fought a costly and fast-moving campaign in the spring, but by June they had settled into trenches around Petersburg. The lines extended all the way to Richmond, 25 miles north of Petersburg. Grant had made sporadic attacks to break the stalemate, and this battle was yet another attempt to drive Lee’s men from the trenches. The attack coincided with a Federal assault at New Market Heights, near Richmond. The day before, Union forces had captured two strongholds in the Richmond defense system, but were unable to penetrate any further.

A Confederate counterattack on September 30 failed to recapture the positions. Grant hoped that launching a strike around the same time at the other end of the line would keep Lee from sending reinforcements to both locations. On September 30, four divisions from Generals Gouvernor K. Warren’s and John G. Parke’s corps struck a Rebel redoubt (an earthen fortress) at Poplar Springs Church that was easily captured along with a section of trenches. But Confederate General Ambrose P. Hill, in charge of the Petersburg defenses, was able to bring two divisions from other parts of his line to stop the Yankees, and a counterattack prevented the loss of any more territory. The Yankees would try again on October 1, but would be unsuccessful. The Union lost 2,800 troops, including nearly 1,300 captured during the Confederate counterattack. Lee’s army suffered only 1,300 casualties, but they were much harder for him to replace. The Southside Railroad, the object of the attack, was still in Confederate hands, and the armies settled back into their trenches.

1899 – First Navy wireless message sent via Lighthouse Service Station at Highlands of Navesink, New Jersey.

1924 – Allies stopped checking on the German navy.

1932 – Marine “Chesty” Puller won his second Navy Cross.

1938 – Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sign the Munich Pact, which seals the fate of Czechoslovakia, virtually handing it over to Germany in the name of peace. Upon return to Britain, Chamberlain would declare that the meeting had achieved “peace in our time.” Although the agreement was to give into Hitler’s hands only the Sudentenland, that part of Czechoslovakia where 3 million ethnic Germans lived, it also handed over to the Nazi war machine 66 percent of Czechoslovakia’s coal, 70 percent of its iron and steel, and 70 percent of its electrical power. It also left the Czech nation open to complete domination by Germany. In short, the Munich Pact sacrificed the autonomy of Czechoslovakia on the altar of short-term peace-very short term. The terrorized Czech government was eventually forced to surrender the western provinces of Bohemia and Moravia (which became a protectorate of Germany) and finally Slovakia and the Carpathian Ukraine. In each of these partitioned regions, Germany set up puppet, pro-Nazi regimes that served the military and political ends of Adolf Hitler.

By the time of the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the nation called “Czechoslovakia” no longer existed. It was Neville Chamberlain who would be best remembered as the champion of the Munich Pact, having met privately with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, the dictator’s mountaintop retreat, before the Munich conference. Chamberlain, convinced that Hitler’s territorial demands were not unreasonable (and that Hitler was a “gentleman”), persuaded the French to join him in pressuring Czechoslovakia to submit to the Fuhrer’s demands. Upon Hitler’s invasion of Poland a year later, Chamberlain was put in the embarrassing situation of announcing that a “state of war” existed between Germany and Britain. By the time Hitler occupied Norway and Denmark, Chamberlain was finished as a credible leader. “Depart, I say, and let us have done with you!” one member of Parliament said to him, quoting Oliver Cromwell. Winston Churchill would succeed him as prime minister soon afterwards.

1939 – Germany and Russia agreed to partition Poland.

1943 – The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps became the Women’s Army Corps, a regular contingent of the U.S. Army with the same status as other army service corps.

1943 – The US 5th Army continues to advance. Elements of the British 10th Corps reach the outskirts of Naples as elements of US 6th Corps capture Avellino.

1944 – Admiral Fort takes command of US operations in this island group. He announces that Peleliu, Angaur, Ngesebus and Kongauru have been completely occupied. Japanese resistance continues, however.

1944 – Calais, France was reoccupied by Allies.

1944 – USS Nautilus (SS-168) lands supplies and evacuates some people from Panay, Philipppine Islands.

1945 – American Marines of the US 3rd Amphibious Corps start landing at Tientsin, in the north, to disarm 630,000 Japanese.

1946 – U.S. Government announces that U.S. Navy units would be permanently stationed in the Mediterranean to carry out American policy and diplomacy.

1946 – An international military tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, found 22 top Nazi leaders guilty of war crimes. Ribbentrop and Goering were sentenced to death. American psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn interviewed many of the participants and in 2004 the interviews were published as “The Nuremberg Interviews: An American Psychiatrist’s Conversations with the Defendants and Witnesses.”

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[SHOOTER13]

1949 – After 15 months and more than 250,000 flights, the Berlin Airlift officially comes to an end. The airlift was one of the greatest logistical feats in modern history and was one of the crucial events of the early Cold War. In June 1948, the Soviet Union suddenly blocked all ground traffic into West Berlin, which was located entirely within the Russian zone of occupation in Germany. It was an obvious effort to force the United States, Great Britain, and France (the other occupying powers in Germany) to accept Soviet demands concerning the postwar fate of Germany. As a result of the Soviet blockade, the people of West Berlin were left without food, clothing, or medical supplies. Some U.S. officials pushed for an aggressive response to the Soviet provocation, but cooler heads prevailed and a plan for an airlift of supplies to West Berlin was developed. It was a daunting task: supplying the daily wants and needs of so many civilians would require tons of food and other goods each and every day. On June 26, 1948, the Berlin Airlift began with U.S. pilots and planes carrying the lion’s share of the burden. During the next 15 months, 277,264 aircraft landed in West Berlin bringing over 2 million tons of supplies. On September 30, 1949, the last plane–an American C-54–landed in Berlin and unloaded over two tons of coal. Even though the Soviet blockade officially ended in May 1949, it took several more months for the West Berlin economy to recover and the necessary stockpiles of food, medicine, and fuel to be replenished. The Berlin Airlift was a tremendous Cold War victory for the United States. Without firing a shot, the Americans foiled the Soviet plan to hold West Berlin hostage, while simultaneously demonstrating to the world the “Yankee ingenuity” for which their nation was famous. For the Soviets, the Berlin crisis was an unmitigated disaster. The United States, France, and Great Britain merely hardened their resolve on issues related to Germany, and the world came to see the Russians as international bullies, trying to starve innocent citizens.

1949 – The rank of commodore, established in 1943 as a wartime measure, was terminated by the President under the provisions of an Act of Congress approved 24 July 1941.

1950 – U.N. forces crossed the 38th parallel separating North and South Korea as they pursued the retreating North Korean Army.

1953 – Eisenhower approves $385,000,000 over he $400,000,000 already budgeted for military aid for Vietnam. by April 1954 aid to Indochina reaches $1,133,000,000 out of a total foreign aid budget of $3,497,000,000.

1954 – The USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear submarine, is commissioned by the U.S. Navy. The Nautilus was constructed under the direction of U.S. Navy Captain Hyman G. Rickover, a brilliant Russian-born engineer who joined the U.S. atomic program in 1946. In 1947, he was put in charge of the navy’s nuclear-propulsion program and began work on an atomic submarine. Regarded as a fanatic by his detractors, Rickover succeeded in developing and delivering the world’s first nuclear submarine years ahead of schedule. In 1952, the Nautilus’ keel was laid by President Harry S. Truman, and on January 21, 1954, first lady Mamie Eisenhower broke a bottle of champagne across its bow as it was launched into the Thames River at Groton, Connecticut.

Commissioned on September 30, 1954, it first ran under nuclear power on the morning of January 17, 1955. Much larger than the diesel-electric submarines that preceded it, the Nautilus stretched 319 feet and displaced 3,180 tons. It could remain submerged for almost unlimited periods because its atomic engine needed no air and only a very small quantity of nuclear fuel. The uranium-powered nuclear reactor produced steam that drove propulsion turbines, allowing the Nautilus to travel underwater at speeds in excess of 20 knots. In its early years of service, the USS Nautilus broke numerous submarine travel records and in August 1958 accomplished the first voyage under the geographic North Pole. After a career spanning 25 years and almost 500,000 miles steamed, the Nautilus was decommissioned on March 3, 1980. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1982, the world’s first nuclear submarine went on exhibit in 1986 as the Historic Ship Nautilus at the Submarine Force Museum in Groton, Connecticut.

1954 – NATO nations agreed to arm and admit West Germany.

1958 – Marines leave Lebanon.

1959 – Last flight of Hydrogen filled air ships assigned to the Naval Air Reserve at Lakehurst, NJ takes place.

1961 – A bill for the 1773 Boston Tea Party was paid by Mayor Snyder of Oregon. He wrote a check for $196, the total cost of all tea lost.

1962 – In Oxford, Mississippi, James H. Meredith, an African American, is escorted onto the University of Mississippi campus by U.S. Marshals, setting off a deadly riot. Two men were killed before the racial violence was quelled by more than 3,000 federal soldiers. The next day, Meredith successfully enrolled and began to attend classes amid continuing disruption. A former serviceman in the U.S. Air Force, Meredith applied and was accepted to the University of Mississippi in 1962, but his admission was revoked when the registrar learned of his race. A federal court ordered “Ole Miss” to admit him, but when he tried to register on September 20, 1962, he found the entrance to the office blocked by Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett. On September 28, the governor was found guilty of civil contempt and was ordered to cease his interference with desegregation at the university or face arrest and a fine of $10,000 a day. Two days later, Meredith was escorted onto the Ole Miss campus by U.S. Marshals.

Turned back by violence, he returned the next day and began classes. Meredith, who was a transfer student from all-black Jackson State College, graduated with a degree in political science in 1963. In 1966, Meredith returned to the public eye when he began a lone civil rights march in an attempt to encourage voter registration by African Americans in the South. During this March Against Fear, Meredith intended to walk from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi. However, on June 6, just two days into the march, he was sent to a hospital by a sniper’s bullet. Other civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King, Jr., and Stokely Carmichael, arrived to continue the march on his behalf. It was during the March Against Fear that Carmichael, who was leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, first spoke publicly of “Black Power”–his concept of militant African American nationalism. James Meredith later recovered and rejoined the march he had originated, and on June 26 the marchers successfully reached Jackson, Mississippi.

1965 – The Lockheed L-100, the civilian version of the C-130 Hercules, is introduced.

1968 – USS New Jersey, the world’s only active battleship, arrives in Vietnamese waters and begins bombarding the Demilitarized Zone from her station off the Vietnamese coast.

1969 – Nazi war criminals Albert Speer, the German minister of armaments, and Baldur von Schirach, the founder of the Hitler Youth, were freed at midnight from Spandau prison after serving twenty-year prison sentences.


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[SHOOTER13]

1975 – The Hughes (later McDonnell Douglas, now Boeing) AH-64 Apache makes its first flight. The Boeing AH-64 Apache is a four-blade, twin-engine attack helicopter with a tailwheel-type landing gear arrangement, and a tandem cockpit for a two-man crew. It features a nose-mounted sensor suite for target acquisition and night vision systems. It is armed with a 30 mm (1.18 in) M230 Chain Gun carried between the main landing gear, under the aircraft’s forward fuselage. It has four hardpoints mounted on stub-wing pylons, typically carrying a mixture of AGM-114 Hellfire missiles and Hydra 70 rocket pods. The AH-64 has a large amount of systems redundancy to improve combat survivability. The Apache originally started as the Model 77 developed by Hughes Helicopters for the United States Army’s Advanced Attack Helicopter program to replace the AH-1 Cobra. The prototype was designated YAH-64. The U.S. Army selected the YAH-64 over the Bell YAH-63 in 1976, and later approved full production in 1982. After purchasing Hughes Helicopters in 1984, McDonnell Douglas continued AH-64 production and development. The helicopter was introduced to U.S. Army service in April 1986. The first production AH-64D Apache Longbow, an upgraded Apache variant, was delivered to the Army in March 1997. Production has been continued by Boeing Defense, Space & Security; over 2,000 AH-64s have been produced to date. The U.S. Army is the primary operator of the AH-64; it has also become the primary attack helicopter of multiple nations, including Greece, Japan, Israel, the Netherlands and Singapore; as well as being produced under license in the United Kingdom as the AgustaWestland Apache. U.S. AH-64s have served in conflicts in Panama, the Persian Gulf, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Israel used the Apache in its military conflicts in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip; British and Dutch Apaches have seen deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

1977 – Because of US budget cuts and dwindling power reserves, the Apollo program’s ALSEP experiment packages left on the Moon are shut down. The Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) comprised a set of scientific instruments placed by the astronauts at the landing site of each of the five Apollo missions to land on the Moon following Apollo 11 (Apollos 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17). Apollo 11 left a smaller package called the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package, or EASEP.

1980 – Ethernet specifications are published by Xerox working with Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation. Ethernet /ˈiːθərnɛt/ is a family of computer networking technologies for local area (LAN) and larger networks. It was first standardized in 1983 as IEEE 802.3, and has since been refined to support higher bit rates and longer link distances. Over time, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies such as token ring, FDDI, and ARCNET. The primary alternative for contemporary LANs is not a wired standard, but instead a variety of IEEE 802.11 standards also known as Wi-Fi.

1989 – Thousands of East Germans who had sought refuge in West German embassies in Czechoslovakia and Poland began emigrating under an accord between Soviet bloc and NATO nations.

1992 – Congress approved a bill requiring the release of nearly all government files concerning the assassination of President Kennedy.

1992 – Marine Barracks, Subic Bay, Philippines, was disestablished. The Naval Base had been used by Americans for many years.

1993 – MS Dos 6.2 was released.

1994 – The space shuttle Endeavour and its six astronauts roared into orbit on an 11-day mission.

1994 – The crew of Coast Guard LORAN Station Marcus Island decommissioned their station and turned it over to the Japanese Maritime Safety Agency. This was the last station in the Northwest Pacific LORAN chain to be decommissioned and turned over to the Japanese under a 1992 agreement between the U.S. and Japan.

1995 – US envoy Richard Holbrooke, trying to negotiate a Bosnian cease-fire, ended inconclusive talks with the Sarajevo government and headed for Belgrade to try his luck with the Serbs.

1996 – The United States Congress passes the Lautenburg Amendment that bars the possession of firearms for people who were convicted of domestic violence, even misdemeanor level.

1999 – Defense Secretary William Cohen ordered a top-level investigation of accounts of mass killings of Korean civilians by US soldiers at No Gun Ri in 1950.

2001 – Leaders of the Taliban said they had Osama bin Laden “under our control,” but would release him to the US only if shown proof that he plotted the Sep 11 attacks. Pres. Bush said he would not negotiate.

2004 – Three bombs exploded at a neighborhood celebration in western Baghdad, killing 35 children and seven adults. Across Iraq insurgent attacks left 51 dead.

2004 – The Arab news network Al-Jazeera showed video of 10 new hostages seized in Iraq by militants.

2004 – The AIM-54 Phoenix, the primary missile for the F-14 Tomcat, is retired from service. Almost two years later, the Tomcat is retired.

2005 – New York Times journalist Judith Miller testifies before a federal grand jury and identifies Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, as her confidential source for a non-published story about the unmasking of a CIA agent in 2003.

2010 – A convoy of at least 27 fuel tankers headed for NATO forces in Afghanistan is attacked in Pakistan’s Sindh province.

2010 – China and the United States officially resume military ties after a 10-month break following US arms sales to Taiwan, with the two countries emphasizing the importance of a close military dialogue.

2011 – In a US drone strike, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader and U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki is reported killed in Yemen.

2014 – A case of Ebola Virus is being treated in the American city of Dallas, Texas.


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken this Day

BLODGETT, WELIS H.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, Company D, 37th Illinois Infantry. Place and date: At Newtonia, Mo., 30 September 1862. Entered service at: Chicago, Ill. Born: 29 January 1839, Downers Grove, Ill. Date of issue: 15 February 1894. Citation: With a single orderly, captured an armed picket of 8 men and marched them in prisoners.

HADLEY, OSGOOD T.
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company E, 6th New Hampshire Veteran Infantry. Place and date: Near Pegram House, Va., 30 September 1864. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Nashua, N.H. Date of issue: 27 July 1896. Citation: As color bearer of his regiment he defended his colors with great personal gallantry and brought them safely out of the action.

HUBBELL, WILLIAM S.
Rank and organization: Captain, Company A, 21st Connecticut Infantry. Place and date: At Fort Harrison, Va., 30 September 1864. Entered service at: North Stonington, Conn. Born: 19 April 1837, Wolcottville, Conn. Date of issue: 13 June 1894. Citation: Led out a small flanking party and by a clash and at great risk captured a large number of prisoners.

JAMES, MILES
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company B, 36th U.S. Colored Troops. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 30 September 1864. Entered service at: Norfolk, Va. Birth: Princess Anne County, Va. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Having had his arm mutilated, making immediate amputation necessary, he loaded and discharged his piece with one hand and urged his men forward; this within 30 yards of the enemy’s works.

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JOHNDRO, FRANKLIN
Rank and organization: Private, Company A, 118th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 30 September 1864. Entered service at:——. Birth: Highgate Falls, Vt. Date of issue: 6 April 1865. Citation: Capture of 40 prisoners.

MURPHY, THOMAS
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company K, 158th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Chapins Farm, Va., 30 September 1864. Entered service at: New York, N.Y. Birth: New York, N.Y. Date of issue: 15 October 1864. Citation: Capture of flag.

BAIRD, GEORGE W.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant and Adjutant, 5th U.S. Infantry. Place and date: At Bear Paw Mountain, Mont., 30 September 1877. Entered service at: Milford, Conn. Birth: Connecticut. Date of issue: 27 November 1894. Citation: Most distinguished gallantry in action with the Nez Perce Indians.

CARTER, MASON
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, 5th U.S. Infantry. Place and date: At Bear Paw Mountain, Mont., 30 September 1877. Entered service at: Augusta, Ga. Birth: Augusta, Ga. Date of issue: 27 November 1894. Citation: Led a charge under a galling fire, in which he inflicted great loss upon the enemy.

GODFREY, EDWARD S.
Rank and organization: Captain, 7th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Bear Paw Mountain, Mont., 30 September 1877. Entered service at: Ottawa, Putnam County, Ohio. Born: 9 October 1843, Ottawa, Ohio. Date of issue: 27 November 1894. Citation: Led his command into action when he was severely wounded.

HOGAN, HENRY
SECOND AWARD
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, Company G, 5th U.S. Infantry. Place and date: At Bear Paw Mountain, Mont., 30 September 1877. Citation: Carried Lt. Romeyn, who was severely wounded, off the field of battle under heavy fire.

LONG, OSCAR F.
Rank and organization: Second Lieutenant, 5th U.S. Infantry. Place and date: At Bear Paw Mountain, Mont., 30 September 1877. Entered service at: Utica, N.Y. Born: 16 June 1852, Utica, N.Y. Date of issue: 22 March 1895. Citation: Having been directed to order a troop of cavalry to advance, and finding both its officers killed, he voluntarily assumed command, and under a heavy fire from the Indians advanced the troop to its proper position.

McCLERNAND, EDWARD J.
Rank and organization: Second Lieutenant, 2d U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Bear Paw Mountain, Mont., 30 September 1877. Entered service at: Springfield, 111. Birth: Jacksonville, 111. Date of issue: 27 November 1894. Citation: Gallantly attacked a band of hostiles and conducted the combat with excellent skill and boldness.

MOYLAN, MYLES
Rank and organization: Captain, 7th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Bear Paw Mountain, Mont., 30 September 1877. Entered service at: Essex, Mass. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 27 November 1894. Citation: Gallantly led his command in action against Nez Perce Indians until he was severely wounded.

ROMEYN, HENRY
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, 5th U.S. Infantry. Place and date: At Bear Paw Mountain, Mont., 30 September 1877. Entered service at: Michigan. Birth: Galen, N.Y. Date of issue: 27 November 1894. Citation: Led his command into close range of the enemy, there maintained his position, and vigorously prosecuted the fight until he was severely wounded.

TILTON, HENRY R.
Rank and organization: Major and Surgeon, U.S. Army. Place and date: At Bear Paw Mountain, Mont., 30 September 1877. Entered service at: Jersey City, N.J. Birth: Barnegat, N.J. Date of issue: 22 March 1895. Citation: Fearlessly risked his life and displayed great gallantry in rescuing and protecting the wounded men.

ROBB, GEORGE S.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, 369th Infantry, 93d Division. Place and date: Near Sechault, France, 29-30 September 1918. Entered service at: Salina, Kans. Born: 18 May 1887, Assaria, Kans. G.O. No.: 16, W.D., 1919. Citation: While leading his platoon in the assault 1st Lt. Robb was severely wounded by machinegun fire, but rather than go to the rear for proper treatment he remained with his platoon until ordered to the dressing station by his commanding officer. Returning within 45 minutes, he remained on duty throughout the entire night, inspecting his lines and establishing outposts. Early the next morning he was again wounded, once again displaying his remarkable devotion to duty by remaining in command of his platoon. Later the same day a bursting shell added 2 more wounds, the same shell killing his commanding officer and 2 officers of his company. He then assumed command of the company and organized its position in the trenches. Displaying wonderful courage and tenacity at the critical times, he was the only officer of his battalion who advanced beyond the town, and by clearing machinegun and sniping posts contributed largely to the aid of his battalion in holding their objective. His example of bravery and fortitude and his eagerness to continue with his mission despite severe wounds set before the enlisted men of his command a most wonderful standard of morale and self-sacrifice.

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1 October

1768 – English troops under General Gage landed in Boston. Soldiers drawn chiefly from the 14th and 29th Infantry Regiments, and numbering about 700 men, landed at Boston without opposition.

1781 – The youngest of eleven children, James Lawrence was born in Burlington, NJ. His parents were Tories who had entertained the Hessian commander as a dinner guest at their home during the Revolution, but when the war ended, they remained in America. James was sent to study law at the age of 13, but proved an uncooperative student. Eventually, he was permitted to join the Navy as a midshipman in 1798, and gained experience in action against the Barbary pirates. Commissioned a Lieutenant in 1802, he was a member of Stephen Decatur’s raiding party which destroyed the U.S.S. Philadelphia in Tripoli harbor after it was captured by the Tripolitans in 1804.

During the War of 1812, Lawrence commanded the U.S.S. Hornet, which captured the H.M.S. Peacock, and was promoted to Captain as a result. On June 1, 1813, commanding a new and untrained crew on the 49-gun frigate U.S.S. Chesapeake off Boston, Lawrence accepted a challenge from Philip Bowes Vere Broke, captain of the 38-gun H.M.S. Shannon. Four years Lawrence’s senior, Broke had commanded the Shannon for six years, and had the best trained crew in the Royal Navy. In less than 15 minutes, Lawrence’s crew was overwhelmed. Mortally wounded, Lawrence shouted, “Tell the men to fire faster and not to give up the ship; fight her till she sinks!” True to his words, every officer in the Chesapeake’s chain of command fought until he was either killed or wounded. Even so, the battle was lost in under an hour, the Chesapeake was captured, and Lawrence died four days later, leaving his wife and a daughter.

In honor of Captain Lawrence, a group of women stitched the words “Don’t Give Up The Ship” into a flag. The flag was presented to Oliver Hazard Perry, commander of the U.S.S. Lawrence – named for Captain Lawrence – in the summer of 1813. Perry went on to capture an entire squadron of British ships in the battle of Lake Erie, on September 13, though not before every officer on the Lawrence – except for Perry and his 13-year-old brother – was either killed or wounded. Lawrence’s words became the motto of the U.S. Navy, which has named numerous ships in his honor, and Perry’s flag now hangs in a place of honor at the United States Naval Academy. Copies may be seen at other Navy installations and, of course, in Burlington. Far less well known is Lawrence’s last command to his crew – “Burn her!”

1800 – Spain cedes Louisiana to France via the Treaty of San Ildefonso.

1800 – U.S. Schooner Experiment captures French Schooner Diana.

1832 – Texian political delegates convened at San Felipe de Austin to petition for changes in the governance of Mexican Texas.

1837 – A treaty was made with the Winnebago Indians. The Winnebago people call themselves Ho-Chunk, “People of the First Voice.” They trace their origins to modern-day Kentucky, where groups speaking a common Siouan tongue emerged in about a.d. 200, ancestors of the Winnebagos, Otos, Iowas, and Missouris began to move northward. The Winnebagos’ forerunners arrived in Wisconsin about a.d. 700. When the Black Hawk War broke out in 1832, most Winnebagos remained neutral. However, because some members of the tribe aided Blackhawk, the tribe had to sign a cession treaty in 1832, ceding land between the Wisconsin and Rock Rivers to Lake Winnebago. In 1837, through government trickery, the tribe signed its last cession treaty and lost all its homeland east of the Mississippi.

1844 – Naval Observatory headed by LT Matthew Fontaine Maury occupies first permanent quarters. Founded in 1830 as the Depot of Charts and Instruments, the Naval Observatory is one of the oldest scientific agencies in the country. As a service organization, one of its first tasks was the calibration of ship’s chronometers, which was accomplished by timing the transit of stars across the meridian. In 1855 the astronomical and nautical almanacs were started. From these service-oriented beginnings, USNO continues to be responsive to the fleet, DoD, and national needs through provision of applied astrometry and timing products and services.

1864 – The Condor ran aground at the mouth of the Cape Fear River near Wilmington, North Carolina. A Union gunboat had been pursuing the ship.

1874 – Supply Corps purser, LT J. Q. Barton, given leave to enter service of new Japanese Navy to organize a Pay Department and instruct Japanese about accounts. He served until 1 October 1877 when he again became a purser in the U.S. Navy. In 1878, the Emperor of Japan conferred on him the Fourth Class of Rising Sun for his service.

1878 – General Lew Wallace was sworn in as governor of New Mexico Territory. He went on to deal with the Lincoln County War, Billy the Kid and wrote Ben-Hur.

1880 – John Philip Sousa started his 12-year tour as director of the US Marine Band. He premiered many of his marches and produced the first commercial phonograph recordings.

1890 – Congress created the Weather Bureau, moving the Weather Warning Service from the US Army Signal Corps to the Department of Agriculture.

1928 – First class at school for enlisted Navy and Marine Corps Radio intercept operators (The “On the roof gang”)

1934 – Adolph Hitler expanded the German army and navy and created an air force, violating Treaty of Versailles.

1936 – General Francisco Franco was proclaimed the head of an insurgent Spanish state.

1938 – Germany annexed Sudetenland (1/3 of Czech Republic) as a result of the Munich Conference between Germany, England and France.

1942 – Bell P-59 Airacomet fighter, 1st US jet, made its maiden flight. Development of the P-59, America’s first jet-propelled airplane, was ordered personally by General H. H. Arnold on September 4, 1941. The project was conducted under the utmost secrecy, with Bell building the airplane and General Electric the engine. The first P-59 was completed in mid-1942 and it made its initial flight at Muroc Dry Lake (now Edwards Air Force Base), California. One year later, the airplane was ordered into production, to be powered by I-14 and I-16 engines, improved versions of the original I-A. Bell produced 66 P-59s. Although the airplane’s performance was not spectacular and it never got into combat, the P-59 provided training for AAF personnel and invaluable data for subsequent development of higher performance jet airplanes.

1942 – In New Guinea, GEN MacArthur issues orders for the Allied advance on Gona and Buna. Australian forces have already begun to move forward along the Kokoda Trail. A US force is to move over the parallel Kapa Kapa Trail to join the Australians in cutting off the Japanese retreat at the Kumusi River. There are also to be landings along the north coast between Milne bay and Cape nelson, especially in Wanigela.


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1942 – USS Grouper torpedoes Lisbon Maru not knowing she is carrying British PoWs from Hong Kong.

1942 – Fuel oil is now rationed in most parts of the US.

1943 – Allied forces captured Naples during World War II. British troops in Italy entered Naples and occupied Foggia airfield. In response Hitler orders Kesselring to hold a line south of Rome during the coming months rather than retire farther north.

1943 – At 0836 on 30 September 1943, LST-203 beached at Nanomea Island and started to unload cargo. At 0115 having completed unloading she began maneuvering to get off the beach. With her ramp raised, her starboard door did not close fully, being slightly sprung, and the LST attempted to re tract without success. She was apparently held fast by a coral reef which caused her to pivot on the bow. 6 to 8 foot surf pounded her against the fingers of the reef. At 0600 water was entering the shaft alley and engine room which pumps ware unable to handle. The USS Manley (APD-1) assisted with boats and line but by 0725 the deck plates on the port side of the main engine room were reported breaking through. At 0815 Manley’s cable snapped and further unloading began, with lowered ramp, awaiting next high tide. At 1632 new attempts were made to pull the vessel off but at 1950 Manley’s cable parted a second time. Unloading continued and at 1900 on the 2nd new attempts to float her by both Manley and YMS-53 were unsuccessful. Other unsuccessful attempts on the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 13th were hampered by lack of power, heavy swells and water entering the engine room faster than pumps could handle it. Attempts to float her were thereupon abandoned as a stranded vessel and was stripped of all material and equipment.

1944 – The U.S. First Army began the siege Aachen, Germany.

1945 – The 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment landed and occupied Chinwangtao, China.

1946 – Twelve Nazi war criminals were sentenced to be hanged at Nuremberg trials– Karl Donitz, Hermann Goring, Alfred Jodl, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Wilhelm Keitel, Joachin von Ribbentrop, Fritz Saukel, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Julius Streicher, and Alfred Rosenberg. Karl Donitz was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

1946 – Daegu October Incident occurs in Allied occupied Korea. The Autumn Uprising of 1946 in Korea was a peasant uprising throughout the southern provinces of Korea against the policies of the United States Army Military Government in Korea and in favor of restoration of power to the people’s committees that made up the People’s Republic of Korea. The uprising also called as Daegu Riot or Daegu Resistance Movement. Thousands of workers gathered the Daegu Station in order to protest against the U.S. They stoned the police and yelled out “Kill the police!” In response to the raid, police shot and killed Hwang Mal-yong, a factory worker.

1947 – The North American F-86 Sabre flies for the first time. The North American F-86 Sabre — sometimes called the Sabrejet — was a transonic jet fighter aircraft. Produced by North American Aviation, the Sabre is best known as the United States’ first swept wing fighter which could counter the similarly-winged Soviet MiG-15 in high-speed dogfights over the skies of the Korean War (1950-53). Considered one of the best and most important fighter aircraft in that war, the F-86 is also rated highly in comparison with fighters of other eras. Although it was developed in the late 1940s and was outdated by the end of the ’50s, the Sabre proved versatile and adaptable, and continued as a front-line fighter in numerous air forces until the last active operational examples were retired by the Bolivian Air Force in 1994. Its success led to an extended production run of more than 7,800 aircraft between 1949 and 1956, in the U.S., Japan and Italy. Variants were built in Canada and Australia. The Sabre was by far the most-produced Western jet fighter, with total production of all variants at 9,860 units.

1949 – 5th Marines became part of 1stMarDiv under Col. Victor H. Krulak.

1950 – The ROK 3rd Infantry Division crossed the 38th parallel in pursuit of the retreating In Mun Gun, the North Korean Army. The U.S. Army’s Puerto Rican 65th Infantry Regiment arrived in Korea and was assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division. The USS Magpie struck a mine while sweeping a channel two miles off Chuksan, becoming the first U.S. Navy vessel to be sunk during the war. Twenty-one members of her 33-man-crew were lost.

1951 – The all-African-American 24th Infantry Regiment and 159th Field Artillery Battalion, 25th Infantry Division, were disbanded and the personnel reassigned to formerly all-white units. Other formerly all-African-American units were infused with white soldiers, thus beginning racial integration in the Army.

1955 – Commissioning of USS Forrestal (CVA-59), first of postwar supercarriers. Forrestal (CVA-59) was launched 11 December 1954 by Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Co. Newport News, Va.; sponsored by Mrs. James V Forrestal, widow of Secretary Forrestal; and commissioned 1 October 1955, Captain R. L. Johnson i n command. From her home port, Norfolk, Va., Forrestal spent the first year of her commissioned service in intensive training operations off the Virginia Capes and in the Caribbean. An important assignment was training aviators in the use of her advance d facilities, a duty on which she often operated out of Mayport, Fla. On 7 November 1956, she put to sea from Mayport to operate in the eastern Atlantic during the Suez Crisis ready to enter the Mediterranean should her great strength be necessary. She returned to Norfolk 12 December to prepare for her first deployment with the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean, for which she sailed 15 January 1957. On this, as on her succeeding tours of duty in the Mediterranean, Forrestal visited many ports to allow dignitaries and the general public to come aboard and view the tremendous power for peace she represented. For military observers, she staged underway demonstrations to illustrate her capacity to bring air power to and from the sea in military operations on any scale. She returned to Norfolk 22 July 1957 for exercises off the North Carolina coast in preparation for her first NATO Operation, “Strike Back,” in the North Sea.

This deployment, between 3 September and 22 October, found her visiting Southampton England, as well as drilling in the highly important task of coordinating United States naval power with that of other NATO nations. The next year found Forrestal participating in a series of major fleet exercises, as well as taking part in experimental flight operations. During the Lebanon Crisis of summer 1958, the great carrier was again called upon to operate in the ea stern Atlantic to back up naval operations in the Mediterranean. She sailed from Norfolk 11 July to embark an air group at Mayport 2 days later, then patrolled the Atlantic until returning to Norfolk 17 July. On her second tour of duty in the Mediterranean, from 2 September 1958 to 12 March 1959, Forrestal again combined a program of training, patrol, and participation in major exercises with ceremonial, hospitality and public visiting. Her guest list during this cruise was headed by Secretary of Defense N. H. McElroy. Returning to Norfolk, she continued the never ending task of training new aviators, constantly maintaining her readiness for instant reaction to any demand for her services brought on by international events. Visitors during the year included King Hussein of Jordan. Forrestal was decommissioned September 11, 1993.

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1958 – Inauguration of NASA. Formed as a result of the Sputnik crisis of confidence, NASA inherited the earlier National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), and other government organizations, and almost immediately began working on options for human space flight. NASA’s first high profile program was Project Mercury, an effort to learn if humans could survive in space, followed by Project Gemini, which built upon Mercury’s successes and used spacecraft built for two astronauts. NASA’s human space flight efforts then extended to the Moon with Project Apollo, culminating in 1969 when the Apollo 11 mission first put humans on the lunar surface. After the Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz Test Projects of the early and mid-1970s, NASA’s human space flight efforts again resumed in 1981, with the Space Shuttle program that continues today to help build the International Space Station. Building on its NACA roots, NASA has continued to conduct many types of cutting-edge aeronautics research on aerodynamics, wind shear, and other important topics using wind tunnels, flight testing, and computer simulations. NASA’s highly successful X-15 program involved a rocket-powered airplane that flew above the atmosphere and then glided back to Earth unpowered, providing Shuttle designers with much useful data.

The watershed F-8 digital-fly-by-wire program laid the groundwork for such electronic flight in many other aircraft including the Shuttle and high performance airplanes that would have been uncontrollable otherwise. NASA has also done important research on such topics as “lifting bodies” (wingless airplanes) and “supercritical wings” to dampen the effect of shock waves on transsonic aircraft. Additionally, NASA has launched a number of significant scientific probes such as the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft that have explored the Moon, the planets, and other areas of our solar system. NASA has sent several spacecraft to investigate Mars including the Viking and Mars Pathfinder spacecraft. The Hubble Space Telescope and other space science spacecraft have enabled scientists to make a number of significant astronomical discoveries about our universe. NASA also has done pioneering work in space applications satellites. NASA has helped bring about new generations of communications satellites such as the Echo, Telstar, and Syncom satellites. NASA’s Earth science efforts have also literally changed the way we view our home planet; the Landsat and Earth Observing System spacecraft have contributed many important scientific findings. NASA technology has also resulted in numerous “spin-offs” in wide-ranging scientific, technical, and commercial fields. Overall, while the tremendous technical and scientific accomplishments of NASA demonstrate vividly that humans can achieve previously inconceivable feats, we also are humbled by the realization that Earth is just a tiny “blue marble” in the cosmos.

1961 – The United States Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is formed, becoming the country’s first centralized military espionage organization. As one of the principal members of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), DIA informs national civilian and defense policymakers about the military intentions and capabilities of foreign governments and non-state actors, while also providing department-level intelligence assistance and coordination to individual military service intelligence components and the warfighter. The agency’s role encompasses collection and analysis of defense-related foreign political, economic, industrial, geographic, and medical and health intelligence. As part of its national IC responsibilities, DIA regularly provides input for the President’s Daily Brief. Though sometimes compared to foreign military intelligence services, like the Russian GRU or Israeli Aman, DIA is unique in that two-thirds of its 17,000 employees are civilians and the agency’s structure bears resemblance to that of its civilian counterpart.

DIA’s intelligence operations in support of U.S. national security extend far beyond the zones of combat – at hundreds of locations and U.S. Embassies in approximately 140 countries. The agency primarily specializes in collection and analysis of human-source intelligence (HUMINT), has its own Clandestine Service and is in charge of American military-diplomatic efforts overseas. DIA is also designated a national manager for the highly technical measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT). The agency has no law enforcement authority, although it is occasionally portrayed so in American popular culture. Established in 1961 under President John F. Kennedy by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, DIA has been at the forefront of U.S. intelligence efforts throughout the Cold War and rapidly expanded, both in size and scope, since the September 11 attacks. Due to the sensitive nature of its work, the spy organization has been embroiled in numerous controversies, including those related to its intelligence-gathering activities, its role in enhanced interrogations, as well as attempts to expand its activities on U.S. soil.

1979 – US returned the Canal Zone, but not the canal, to Panama after 75 years.

1979 – President Jimmy Carter awards the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to former naval aviators Neil Armstrong, CAPT Charles Conrad, Jr., USN (Ret.), COL John Glenn, USMC (Ret.), and RADM Alan Shepard, Jr., USN (Ret.)

1980 – USS Cochrane (DDG-21) rescues 104 Vietnamese refugees 620 miles east of Saigon. 1990 – President Bush, addressing the UN General Assembly, again condemned Iraq’s takeover of Kuwait, but also suggested an unconditional military withdrawal could help speed an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

1990 – Air Force General and VP candidate Curtis E. LeMay died at March Air Force Base, California, at age 83. General Curtis Emerson Lemay was the “Father of the Strategic Air Command.” When he took over as its commander in 1948, it consisted of little more than a few understaffed and untrained B-29 groups left over from World War II. Less than half its aircraft were operational and the crews were next to worthless. He ordered a mock bombing raid on Dayton, Ohio, and most of the bombers missed their targets by one to two miles. That was unacceptable. He subjected his men to vigorous training and long hours of hard work, but fought for additional pay and better housing to make their demanding lives more tolerable. He obtained vast fleets of new bombers, established a vast aerial refueling system, started many new units and bases, began missile development, and established a strict command and control system. When he left the command in 1957 to assume his new job as Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, SAC was the most powerful military force the world had ever seen. But that was only one of his many accomplishments.

He was the outstanding air combat leader of World War II. He developed the bombardment tactics and strategies that left Nazi Germany in rubble. He was transferred to the Pacific theater, where he took over command of the B-29’s and led the air war against Japan. He incinerated every major Japanese city and oversaw the dropping of the atomic bombs. After the war, he organized he famous Berlin Air Lift. It was this confrontation that began the Cold War and resulted in Lemay being given the job of whipping the fledging Strategic Air Command into shape. He was always the best pilot, best navigator and best bombardier in ever unit he ever served or commanded. He often demonstrated his courage by personally leading his bombers on the dangerous missions, including what many regard as the most dangerous mission ever flown – the attack on Regensberg, Germany. The Army Air Forces lost half of the 1,000 planes launched that day, which has gone down in Air Force history as “Black Thursday.”

1990 – USS Independence (CV-62) enters Persian Gulf (first carrier in Persian Gulf since 1974).

1991 – President Bush strongly condemned the military coup in Haiti, suspending U.S. economic and military aid and demanding the immediate return to power of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

1991 – The CGC Storis became the oldest commissioned cutter in the Coast Guard when the Fir was decommissioned. The cutter’s crew painted her hull number “38” in gold in recognition of her status.

1992 – The U.S. Senate voted 93-to-6 to approve the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

1993 – US troop strength in Somalia 5,675 (4,228 under UN command and 1,447 in the Quick Reaction Force).

1994 – Palau gains independence from the United Nations (trusteeship administered by the United States of America).

1995 – Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric accused of leading a “war of urban terrorism” against US cities, was convicted with nine other defendants of seditious conspiracy by a federal jury in New York.

1995 – France detonated another nuclear device, 5 times more powerful than the last one, on Fangatouga Atoll in the South Pacific.

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1996 – A federal grand jury indicted Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski in 1994 mail bomb slaying of an ad executive.

1996 – NASA began turning over day-to-day shuttle operations to private industry.

1996 – Operation Frontier Shield commences. It is the largest counter-narcotics operation in Coast Guard history. FRONTIER SHIELD was the cornerstone of a strategy and a genuine case study for the regional impact of interdiction. The Coast Guard, in conjunction with interagency partners, conducted a large surge operation in the maritime approaches to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Interagency interdiction forces reduced the flow of cocaine into Puerto Rico approximately 50 percent from the level in1996, and that reduced flow rate was sustained through 1998. Maritime smuggling events in Puerto Rico and the Eastern Caribbean declined from 33 percent to about 20 percent of total events in the Caribbean. As predicted, FRONTIER SHIELD forced drug traffic to shift to the west.

1996 – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat met at the White House.

1997 – US FBI Director Louis J. Freeh warned that Russian organized crime networks were growing and that they posed a menace to US national security. Russian crime syndicates were described to be forging ties with the Italian Mafia and the Columbian drug cartels.

1997 – From Angola it was reported that UNITA was demobilizing its soldiers and getting the UN to return them to UNITA-held territory, where they could again be mobilized.

1997 – In Bosnia NATO seized 4 key Bosnian Serb television transmitters.

1997 – Israel freed Sheik Ahmed Yassin (61), the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas. The ill Yassin was taken to Jordan and hospitalized. As part of the deal an antidote for the chemical used on last week’s Meshaal attack was demanded by Jordan and Israel requested the release of the Meshaal attackers. This secured the release of two Mossad agents arrested in Jordan following a botched assassination attempt against Hamas political leader Khalid Mashaal.

1997 – In Sri Lanka a government clash with Tamil Tigers left at least 70 combatants dead in Puliyankulam.

1997 – The first African-American female colonel in the Marine Corps was promoted to that rank during a ceremony at MCAS Cherry Point, North Carolina. Colonel Gilda A. Jackson, a native of Columbus, Ohio, made Marine Corps history when she achieved the rank of colonel. She was serving as Special Projects Officer, 2d Marine Aircraft Wing at the time of her promotion.

1998 – The US Dept. of Defense said that it would spend an estimated $50 million this year to provide Viagra to soldiers, sailors, fliers, retirees and their dependents.

1998 – Seeking to head off threatened NATO attacks, Yugoslavia’s Serb leadership invited foreign experts to investigate massacres in Kosovo.

1998 – The UN sent a new warning to Pres. Milosevic of Serbia over the atrocities in Kosovo.

1999 – South Korean activists thanked the US government for promising to investigate an Associated Press report that US forces allegedly killed several hundred refugees at the start of the Korean War. But the protesters also demanded the US punish some of the veterans involved and compensate the victims’ relatives.

1999 – In Thailand the Vigorous Burmese Student Warriors took 38 diplomats as hostages at the Burmese Embassy in Bangkok. Two Thai officials were exchanged for the hostages and 12 students were reported to have flown to the Thai-Burma border by helicopter, where they were released. The students demanded the release of political prisoners, dialogue between the military and Aung San Suu Kyi and an elected parliament.

1999 – Joao da Silva Tavares, a militia leader in West Timor, said he planned to lead 12,000 fighters back to 6 western districts of East Timor.

1999 – In Pakistan gunmen attacked Shiites in Karachi and killed 9 people in a mosque. A retaliatory attack on a Sunni Muslim school left 4 dead. Another 5 people were killed in eastern Punjab.

1999 – In Russia Prime Minister Putin cut ties with the elected government of Chechnya.

2000 – Israeli forces fought Palestinian rioters for a 3rd day and at least 12 Palestinians were killed. The fighting spread from the West Bank and Gaza to towns and cities inside Israel.

2001 – New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, in an impassioned speech to the United Nations, said there was no room for “neutrality” in the global fight against terrorism and no need for more studies or vague directives.

2001 – The US reported that some $6 million and 50 bank accounts were blocked as suspected terrorist assets.

2001 – The US gave NATO “clear and compelling” evidence that Osama bin Laden orchestrated the September 11th terrorist attacks.

2001 – Zayd Hassan Abd al-Latif Masud Al Safarini, jailed in Pakistan for 15 years, arrived in Alaska and was expected to face a 1991 indictment for the 1986 hijacking of a Pan Am jet in which 22 people were killed.

2001 – The opposition Northern Alliance of Afghanistan met in Rome with ex-king Zahir Shah and agreed to form a broad-based government open to cooperation with the West.

2001 – In Srinagar, capital of Jammu and Kashmir, a Pakistani-based suicide squad struck at the Legislative Assembly and 38-40 people were killed.

2001 – Russia claimed to have killed Abu Yakub, a top aide to an Arab commander allied with rebels in Chechnya.

2001 – In Spain suspected Basque militants exploded a car bomb in Vitoria that caused much damage to the city center.

2002 – U.N. inspectors reached agreement with Iraq about a new mission to reassess Saddam Hussein’s alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Iraq said it expected an advance party in Baghdad in two weeks.

2002 – Allied aircraft launched an airstrike in the southern no-fly zone over Iraq after Iraqi aircraft penetrated the restricted area.

2002 – In Indian Kashmir gunmen killed 9 people on a bus and attacked several polling stations as voters shunned the third round of elections in the troubled state’s separatist heartland. 6 paramilitary troopers were killed when their vehicle exploded south of Srinagar.

2003 – US officials identified Abu Hazim al-Sha’ir (29), a Yemeni ex-bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, as al Qaeda’s new terror chief.

2003 – In southern Chechnya gunmen opened fire on a car carrying the mayor of a town, killing the local leader and his son, who was a police officer.

2003 – Solomon Islands Foreign Minister Laurie Chan said an Australian-led force has broken the reign of gangsters and warlords terrorizing the Islands, paving the way for the small South Pacific nation to start battling corruption.

2004 – U.S. and Iraqi forces launched a major assault to regain control of the insurgent stronghold of Samarra, trading gunfire with rebel fighters as they pushed toward the city center. The US said over 100 insurgents were killed.

2008 – The United States Senate passes the civilian nuclear agreement with India by a vote of 86–13. India has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but may now undertake nuclear trade to the States.

2013 – The government of Venezuela expels three United States diplomats after accusing them of “economic sabotage”.

2014 – Julia Pierson resigns as the Director of the United States Secret Service following a series of security breaches at the White House.

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations For Actions Taken This Day

KEEN, JOSEPH S.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company D, 13th Michigan Infantry. Place and date: Near Chattahoochee River, Ga., 1 October 1864. Entered service at: Detroit, Mich. Born: 24 July 1843, England. Date of issue: 4 August 1899. Citation: While an escaped prisoner of war within the enemy’s lines witnessed an important movement of the enemy, and at great personal risk made his way through the enemy’s lines and brought news of the movement to Sherman’s army.

CLANCY, JAMES T.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company C, 1st New Jersey Cavalry. Place and date: At Vaughn Road, Va., 1 October 1864. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Albany, N.Y. Date of issue: 3 July 1865. Citation: Shot the Confederate Gen. Dunovant dead during a charge, thus confusing the enemy and greatly aiding in his repulse.

SCHWAN, THEODORE
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, 10th U.S. Infantry. Place and date: At Peebles Farm, Va., 1 October 1864. Entered service at: New York. Born: 9 July 1841, Germany. Date of issue: 12 December 1898. Citation: At the imminent risk of his own life, while his regiment was falling back before a superior force of the enemy, he dragged a wounded and helpless officer to the rear, thus saving him from death or capture.

WRIGHT, ROBERT
Rank and organization: Private, Company G, 14th U.S. Infantry. Place and date: At Chapel House, Farm, Va., 1 October 1864. Entered service at: Woodstock, Conn. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 25 November 1869. Citation: Gallantry in action.

THOMPSON, JOSEPH H.
Rank and organization: Major, U.S. Army, 110th Infantry, 28th Division. Place and date: Near Apremont, France, 1 October 1918. Entered service at: Beaver Falls, Pa. Born: 26 September 1871, Kilkeel, County Down, Ireland. G.O. No.: 21, W.D., 1925. Citation: Counterattacked by 2 regiments of the enemy, Maj. Thompson encouraged his battalion in the front line of constantly braving the hazardous fire of machineguns and artillery. His courage was mainly responsible for the heavy repulse of the enemy. Later in the action, when the advance of his assaulting companies was held up by fire from a hostile machinegun nest and all but 1 of the 6 assaulting tanks were disabled, Maj. Thompson, with great gallantry and coolness, rushed forward on foot 3 separate times in advance of the assaulting line, under heavy machinegun and antitank-gun fire, and led the 1 remaining tank to within a few yards of the enemy machinegun nest, which succeeded in reducing it, thereby making it possible for the infantry to advance.

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2 October

1780 – British spy John Andre was hanged in Tappan, N.Y., for conspiring with Benedict Arnold. The Andre Monument in Tappan commemorates the hanging of Maj. John Andre, the British spymaster who was captured shortly after he was given the plans to West Point by Benedict Arnold.

1789 – Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton asked collectors of customs to report on expediency of employing boats for the “security of the revenue against contraband.” Hamilton’s plan proposed customs duties and tonnage taxes that discriminated against foreign goods and ships. This Tariff would need to be enforced due to smuggling and to ensure proper duties and taxes were paid. (Alternately known as the system of cutters, Revenue Service, and Revenue-Marine this service would officially be named the Revenue Cutter Service and would eventually become the United States Coast Guard.

1799 – Establishment of Washington Navy Yard. The Washington Navy Yard is the U.S. Navy’s oldest shore establishment, in operation since the first decade of the 19th century. It evolved from a shipbuilding center to an ordnance plant and then to the ceremonial and administrative center for the Navy. The yard is home to the Chief of Naval Operations and is headquarters for the Naval Historical Center, the Marine Corps Historical Center, and numerous naval commands.

1835 – The first battle of the Texas Revolution took place as American settlers defeated a Mexican cavalry near the Guadalupe River. When Domingo de Ugartechea, military commander in Texas, received word that the American colonists of Gonzales refused to surrender a small cannon that had been given that settlement in 1831 as a defense against the Indians, he dispatched Francisco de Castañeda and 100 dragoons to retrieve it. Ugartechea realized that, given the tensions between the Texans and Antonio López de Santa Anna’s Centralist government, the slightest provocation might ignite hostilities. He therefore instructed Castañeda to use force if necessary but to avoid open conflict if possible. The company rode out of San Antonio de Béxar on September 27, 1835. When Castañeda’s troops reached the Guadalupe River opposite Gonzales on September 29 they found their path blocked by high water and eighteen militiamen (later called the Old Eighteen). Castañeda announced that he carried a dispatch for alcalde Andrew Ponton but was informed that he was out of town and that the Mexican dragoons would have to wait on the west side of the river until he returned.

Unable to proceed, Castañeda pitched camp 300 yards from the ford. As he awaited word from the absent alcalde, the men of Gonzales summoned reinforcements from several of the surrounding settlements. Later, a Coushatta Indian entered the Mexican camp and informed Castañeda that the number of Texan volunteers now numbered at least 140 and more were expected. Knowing he could not force the guarded crossing, Castañeda abandoned his campsite near the ford and marched his troops in search of another place not so well defended, where he could “cross without any embarrassment.” Around sundown on October 1 he ordered his dragoons to pitch camp seven miles upriver from the contested ford on land belonging to colonist Ezekiel Williams. The Texans were also on the move. On the night of October 1 their troops crossed to the west bank of the Guadalupe and marched upriver toward Castañeda’s new camp. On the morning of October 2 they attacked the Mexicans, and Castañeda ordered his men to fall back to a low rise behind their camp.

During a lull in the fighting Castañeda arranged a parley with Texan commander John Henry Moore. Castañeda inquired why he and his men had been attacked without provocation, and Moore replied that the Texans were fighting to keep their cannon and to uphold the Constitution of 1824. Castañeda then assured Moore that he was himself a Federalist and personally opposed to the policies of Santa Anna. He added that he had no wish to fight colonists; he only had orders to reclaim the cannon. Moore then invited Castañeda to join the Texans in their fight for the federal Constitution of 1824. Castañeda explained that as a soldier he was obliged to follow his orders, whether or not he agreed with the politics behind them. At that point negotiations broke down, and the two commanders returned to their respective units. When the fighting resumed, Castañeda, finding himself outnumbered and outgunned, ordered a withdrawal toward Bexar. He may also have been mindful of his orders not to participate in actions that were likely to bring about a conflict. In his report to Ugartechea, Castañeda stated that “since the orders from your Lordship were for me to withdraw without compromising the honor of Mexican arms, I did so.” Despite Castañeda’s efforts to avoid war, the so-called battle of Gonzales (which was really only a brief skirmish) marked a clear break between the American colonists and the Mexican government.

1862 – An Army under Union General Joseph Hooker arrived in Bridgeport, Alabama to support the Union forces at Chattanooga.

1864 – Union forces attack Saltville, Virginia, but are defeated by Confederate troops. The First Battle of Saltville was fought near the town of Saltville, Virginia, during the American Civil War. The battle was fought by both regular and Home Guard Confederate units against regular Union troops, including one of the few black cavalry units, over an important saltworks in the town. The Union troops were led by Brig. Gen. Stephen G. Burbridge. The battle was a Confederate victory, but it has become better known for a massacre that happened afterward. Irregular guerrilla forces under the notorious Champ Ferguson murdered white and black Union soldiers, who had been wounded and captured. Ferguson was tried after the war in Nashville, Tennessee, for these and other non-military killings. He was found guilty and executed. A second battle occurred two months later at Saltville. In that encounter, Union general George Stoneman defeated Confederate defenders and burned the salt works.

1865 – Former Confederate General Robert E. Lee became president of Washington and Lee University in Virginia.


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1889 – In Colorado, Nicholas Creede strikes it rich in silver during the last great silver boom of the American Old West.

1918 – Marines participated in the Battle of Blanc Mont in France.

1919 – President Wilson suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed and Vice-President Thomas R. Marshall was urged to assume the presidency but he refused. It was Marshall who had earlier said: “What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.”

1939 – Foreign ministers of countries of the Western Hemisphere agree to establish a neutrality zone around the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of North and South America to be enforced by the U. S. Navy. All belligerent actions by hostile powers are supposed to be forbidden in this zone.

1942 – Enrico Fermi and others demonstrated the 1st self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction under Stagg Field at the University of Chicago.

1942 – Major J. L. Smith shot down 18th Zero. He becomes the highest scoring ace to this date.

1942 – President Roosevelt is granted power to control wages, salaries and agricultural prices.

1942 – American forces begin to build a base on Funafuti Atoll in the Ellice Islands of the South Pacific.

1950 – The ROK Capital and 3rd Divisions seized Yangyang on the East Coast while in the southeast ROK Marines took the port of Mokpo. Chinese Foreign Minister Chou En-lai warned the Indian Ambassador in Beijing that if the Americans cross the 38th parallel China would enter the war.

1951 – Future jet ace Colonel Francis S. “Gabby” Gabreski, Vice Commander of the 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, downed his third MiG-15 of the war in an F-86 Sabre jet. Colonel Gabreski was a leading World War II ace with 28 German aircraft kills while flying a P-47 Thunderbolt.

1963 – Defense Sec. Robert McNamara told Pres. Kennedy in a cabinet meeting that: “We need a way to get out of Vietnam.” McNamara proposed to replace the 16,000 US advisers with Canadian personnel.

1963 – Kennedy cables Lodge, based on information from General Taylor that the dissident generals have called off their coup plans, that no encouragement of a coup should be made.

1978 – Syrians and Palestinians on a shooting spree in East Beirut kill 1,300.

1982 – A carbomb attack in Teheran killed 60 and injured 700.

1986 – Sikhs attempted to assassinate Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

1990 – Allies ceded any remaining rights as occupiers of Germany.

1991 – Ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide asked the Organization of American States in Washington to send a delegation to his homeland to demand that the newly installed military junta surrender power immediately.

1994 – U.S. soldiers in Haiti detained several leaders of the country’s pro-army militias as part of an effort to dismantle armed opposition to restoration of elected rule.

1996 – The US Army prepared to shift 5,000 troops to Bosnia from Germany for 6-months to protect troops slated to leave.

1996 – The US meeting between Benjamin Netanyahu, Yasser Arafat and King Hussein ended with no specific issues resolved in the recent Middle East flare-up between Palestinians and Jews.

1997 – A Navy F-14 Tomcat fighter jet crashed off the coast of N. Carolina. One crew member was rescued but the pilot was still missing.

1999 – Russian troops engaged Chechen guerrilla defenders as armored columns rolled into the villages of Alpatova and Chernokosova.

2000 – Israeli troops fired on protesting Arabs. 19 people were killed in the West Bank and Gaza and another 7 in Arab towns of northern Galilee. The 5 day toll passed 51 with over 1,300 wounded.

2000 – In the Philippines soldiers freed 12 Christian evangelists from Abu Sayyaf rebels after one escaped and alerted the military. The guerrillas escaped with 5 remaining hostages.

2000 – In Sri Lanka a suspected suicide bomber killed at least 19 people at a political rally.

2001 – NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said the United States had provided “clear and conclusive” evidence of Osama bin Laden’s involvement in the attacks on New York and Washington.

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2001 – Acting Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift unveiled security measures that included a new security chief at Logan International Airport, where hijackers boarded the two planes that smashed into the World Trade Center.

2001 – A US Treasury Dept official reported that over $100 million of suspected terrorist assets had been frozen in domestic and foreign banks since the Sep 11 attacks.

2001 – India demanded that Pakistan shut down the Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of the Prophet Mohammad) militant group responsible for the Oct 1 attack in Srinagar that killed 40 people. India also asked the US to outlaw the group and to freeze its assets.

2001 – Palestinian gunmen attacked an Israeli settlement in Gaza and killed a teenage couple. At least 15 others were wounded. 2 gunmen were killed by Israeli sharpshooters.

2002 – James Martin (55) was shot to death by a sniper in Wheaton, Md. He was the 1st to die at the hands of a local serial killer. The next day, five people in the Washington D.C. area were shot dead, setting off a frantic manhunt.

2002 – Iraq said it would not accept any new U.N. resolution to cover the operations of arms inspectors on its soil and vowed it would hit back hard against any U.S. attack on Baghdad.

2002 – In the Philippines a bomb killed an American soldier in Zamboanga and was detonated by a Filipino on a motorcycle who died in the blast that killed one other person.

2003 – In Bahrain assailants hurled gasoline bombs at a busload of police officers, wounding five of them.

2003 – North Korea said it is using plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel rods to make atomic weapons.

2003 – Pakistan’s army launched its largest offensive against al-Qaeda and other militants in a rugged tribal region bordering Afghanistan, killing at least 12 suspects.

2004 – Afghan intelligence agents backed by international peacekeepers arrested 25 people allegedly linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida in an early morning raid in eastern Kabul.

2004 – A militant group in Iraq claimed in an Internet statement that it abducted and beheaded an Iraqi construction contractor who worked on a U.S. military base.

2014 – The United States partially lifts a long-time ban on lethal weapon sales to Vietnam to help it improve maritime security, a historic move that comes nearly 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War.


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

*CORRY, WILLIAM MERRILL, JR.
Rank and organization: Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Navy. Place and date: Near Hartford, Conn., 2 October 1920. Born: 5 October 1889, Quincy, Fla. Accredited to: Florida. Other Navy award: Navy Cross. Citation: For heroic service in attempting to rescue a brother officer from a flame-enveloped airplane. On 2 October 1920, an airplane in which Lt. Comdr. Corry was a passenger crashed and burst into flames. He was thrown 30 feet clear of the plane and, though injured, rushed back to the burning machine and endeavored to release the pilot. In so doing he sustained serious burns, from which he died 4 days later.

CARR, CHRIS (name legally changed from CHRISTOS H. KARABERIS, under which name the medal was awarded)
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company L, 337th Infantry, 85th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Guignola, Italy, 1-2 October 1944. Entered service at: Manchester, N.H. Birth: Manchester, N.H. G.O. No.: 97, 1 November 1945. Citation Leading a squad of Company L, he gallantly cleared the way for his company’s approach along a ridge toward its objective, the Casoni di Remagna. When his platoon was pinned down by heavy fire from enemy mortars, machineguns, machine pistols, and rifles, he climbed in advance of his squad on a maneuver around the left flank to locate and eliminate the enemy gun positions. Undeterred by deadly fire that ricocheted off the barren rocky hillside, he crept to the rear of the first machinegun and charged, firing his sub-machine gun. In this surprise attack he captured 8 prisoners and turned them over to his squad before striking out alone for a second machinegun. Discovered in his advance and subjected to direct fire from the hostile weapon, he leaped to his feet and ran forward, weaving and crouching, pouring automatic fire into the emplacement that killed 4 of its defenders and forced the surrender of a lone survivor.

He again moved forward through heavy fire to attack a third machinegun. When close to the emplacement, he closed with a nerve-shattering shout and burst of fire. Paralyzed by his whirlwind attack, all 4 gunners immediately surrendered. Once more advancing aggressively in the face of a thoroughly alerted enemy, he approached a point of high ground occupied by 2 machineguns which were firing on his company on the slope below. Charging the first of these weapons, he killed 4 of the crew and captured 3 more. The 6 defenders of the adjacent position, cowed by the savagery of his assault, immediately gave up. By his l-man attack, heroically and voluntarily undertaken in the face of tremendous risks, Sgt. Karaberis captured 5 enemy machinegun positions, killed 8 Germans, took 22 prisoners, cleared the ridge leading to his company’s objective, and drove a deep wedge into the enemy line, making it possible for his battalion to occupy important, commanding ground.

*KINER, HAROLD G.
Rank and organization: Private, U.S. Army, Company F, 117th Infantry, 30th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Palenberg, Germany, 2 October 1944. Entered service at: Enid, Okla. Birth: Aline, Okla. G.O. No.: 48, 23 June 1945. With 4 other men, he was leading in a frontal assault 2 October 1944, on a Siegfried Line pillbox near Palenberg, Germany. Machinegun fire from the strongly defended enemy position 25 yards away pinned down the attackers. The Germans threw hand grenades, 1 of which dropped between Pvt. Kiner and 2 other men. With no hesitation, Private Kiner hurled himself upon the grenade, smothering the explosion. By his gallant action and voluntary sacrifice of his own life, he saved his 2 comrades from serious injury or death.

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*KELSO, JACK WILLIAM
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps, Company I, 3d Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division (Rein.). Place and date: Korea, 2 October 1952. Entered service at: Caruthers, Calif. Born: 23 January 1934, Madera, Calif. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a rifleman of Company I, in action against enemy aggressor forces. When both the platoon commander and the platoon sergeant became casualties during the defense of a vital outpost against a numerically superior enemy force attacking at night under cover of intense small-arms, grenade, and mortar fire, Pfc. Kelso bravely exposed himself to the hail of enemy fire in a determined effort to reorganize the unit and to repel the onrushing attackers. Forced to seek cover, along with 4 other marines, in a nearby bunker which immediately came under attack, he unhesitatingly picked up an enemy grenade which landed in the shelter, rushed out into the open and hurled it back at the enemy. Although painfully wounded when the grenade exploded as it left his hand, and again forced to seek the protection of the bunker when the hostile fire became more intensified Pfc. Kelso refused to remain in his position of comparative safety and moved out into the fire-swept area to return the enemy fire, thereby permitting the pinned-down marines in the bunker to escape. Mortally wounded while providing covering fire for his comrades, Pfc. Kelso, by his valiant fighting spirit, aggressive determination, and self-sacrificing efforts in behalf of others, served to inspire all who observed him. His heroic actions sustain and enhance the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

NOVOSEL, MICHAEL J.
Rank and organization: Chief Warrant Officer, U.S. Army, 82d Medical Detachment, 45th Medical Company, 68th Medical Group. Place and date: Kien Tuong Province, Republic of Vietnam, 2 October 1969. Entered service at: Kenner, La. Born: 3 September 1922, Etna, Pa. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. CWO Novosel, 82d Medical Detachment, distinguished himself while serving as commander of a medical evacuation helicopter. He unhesitatingly maneuvered his helicopter into a heavily fortified and defended enemy training area where a group of wounded Vietnamese soldiers were pinned down by a large enemy force. Flying without gunship or other cover and exposed to intense machinegun fire, CWO Novosel was able to locate and rescue a wounded soldier. Since all communications with the beleaguered troops had been lost, he repeatedly circled the battle area, flying at low level under continuous heavy fire, to attract the attention of the scattered friendly troops. This display of courage visibly raised their morale, as they recognized this as a signal to assemble for evacuation.

On 6 occasions he and his crew were forced out of the battle area by the intense enemy fire, only to circle and return from another direction to land and extract additional troops. Near the end of the mission, a wounded soldier was spotted close to an enemy bunker. Fully realizing that he would attract a hail of enemy fire, CWO Novosel nevertheless attempted the extraction by hovering the helicopter backward. As the man was pulled on aboard, enemy automatic weapons opened fire at close range, damaged the aircraft and wounded CWO Novosel. He momentarily lost control of the aircraft, but quickly recovered and departed under the withering enemy fire. In all, 15 extremely hazardous extractions were performed in order to remove wounded personnel. As a direct result of his selfless conduct, the lives of 29 soldiers were saved. The extraordinary heroism displayed by CWO Novosel was an inspiration to his comrades in arms and reflect great credit on him, his unit, and the U.S. Army.

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