Valor Friday

A special Christmas story of valor for today. To all who shall read these presents, Merry Christmas!

Christmas Day, 1944. Bastogne, Belgium. Nine days have passed since the Germans counter attacked Allied forces in what would come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge, the deadliest battle of World War Two for the Americans.

The surprise attack saw the German forces outnumbering the Allied forces in Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany nearly two to one. It would be the Nazi regime’s last best hope to push back the Allies and sue for peace.

The Army’s 101st Airborne Infantry Division, in Bastogne, were unable to retreat. They were left stranded in the village for more than a week, surrounded by the enemy. After days of constant shelling from enemy positions, the 101st Airborne held steady. Tenaciously they clung to their bit of Earth in one of the most determined efforts in American history. They couldn’t last forever.

When the German commander asked for the surrender of American forces on 22 December, the reply from Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe was;

To the German Commander.

NUTS!

The American Commander

Thirty years before, on Christmas 1914, in these very same forests, the Germans and Allies would have an unofficial truce. Germans crawled out of their trenches to share tobacco, food, drink, and gifts with their enemy the French, British, and Belgian soldiers in the opposing trenches. Today in 1944, Christmas would see no pause in the hostilities for the holiday.

Rushing to fight back against the Germans and relieve the beleaguered 101st Airborne were many units, including Patton’s Third Army. A part of that formation was the US Army 80th Infantry Division (80th ID).

The 80th ID had come ashore relatively recently. Landing at Utah Beach at Normandy at the tail end of the Normandy Campaign in August. Pressed into service almost immediately, they had great success in combat at Argentan, Saint-Mihiel, Châlons, and Commercy before they started to push past their supply lines and were halted on the west side of the River Seille.

From late September to early November, the division held at Seille. They were then pushed against the retreating Germans, stopping five miles short of Saarbrücken before they were relieved for some rest.

After 10 days rest, the 80th ID was supposed to be attacking the Siegfried Line on 17 December when the German counteroffensive began. The 80th ID was then moved to Luxembourg where their path would eventually cross with the 101st Airborne in nearby Belgium.

The Germans were determined to halt the Americans, forcing them to fight for every foot of ground as they tried to help the Screaming Eagles of the 101st. The weather was cold, the men were fighting in about eight inches of snow, and it had been overcast for days, precluding any air support.

On Christmas Day, the 80th ID was just 12 miles south of Bastogne in Chaumont. Private Paul Wiedorfer was among the men of Company G, 318th Infantry Regiment, 80th Infantry Division.

Wiedorfer was 22 and a newlywed of six months when he enlisted in the Army from his native Baltimore in July 1943. After basic training he passed the testing to qualify for pilot training. He was undergoing that pipeline when three months in the needs of the Army forced his reassignment to the noble infantry.

Now an infantryman, Wiedorfer embarked to Europe on the RMS Queen Mary (a spectacular ship if you’re ever in Long Beach, CA). He joined the 80th ID in December.

So it was about noon on Christmas when Wiedorfer’s platoon was crossing an open field. His company had just cleared a wooden area of German snipers and Wiedorfer’s element was continuing the push forward. Today was Wiedorfer’s first taste of combat.

Shots rang out as they approached the next tree line. The steady staccato of camouflaged machine guns roared into the startled men. With the enemy supported by small arms fire along their flanks, the Americans dove behind a small ridge about 40 yards away from the enemy, the only cover available.

It had snowed the previous night. Three inches of fresh snow atop ice made the men’s movements slow and perilous. The entire platoon pinned down, there was nowhere to go. They would be equally visible to the German gunners if they tried to retreat through the open as they would if they attempted an advance.

“Suddenly something popped into my mind,” Mr. Wiedorfer recalled in a 2008 interview with The Baltimore Sun. “Something had to be done, and someone had to do it. And I just did it. I can’t tell you why.” What he “just did” is the stuff of legend.

The private stood up in full view of the enemy, now the only target for their wrath, and started charging one of the two machine gun nests. Grabbing a grenade in one hand, he ran forward, but his feet got tripped up in the fresh snow.

Looking back on it, Wiedorfer thinks maybe that saved him, because when he looked up, the machine gun was firing at him. He said, “So I got up again, and I knew I had to still go about 15, 20, 30 more yards before I could lob the grenade—because I had a grenade out already.”

By some Christmas miracle, the private got to within 10 yards of the enemy nest. Tossing his grenade in, he dove for cover. Hearing the boom of the blast, he popped up and continued his assault on the enemy position. While the enemy within was still dazed and battered from his grenade, he rushed in and shot all who remained alive, three men.

One down, one to go.

Wiedorfer immediately turned to his right and the second machine gun nest. He charged them to take that one too! Arriving at the gun emplacement, he fired his rifle into the Germans there. Killing one, the other six Germans immediately surrendered to the dauntless private.

Wiedorfer’s comrades couldn’t believe what they’d just seen. He single-handedly charged across the open, subject to intense enemy fire from multiple prepared positions with no protection of any kind, to take out not one, but two machine gun nests. Killing several of the enemy and taking six prisoners. Even more incredibly, he didn’t even have a scratch on him.

The platoon was now free to move and reached their objective. A short time later that day, when the platoon leader and platoon sergeant were both wounded, Private Wiedorfer assumed command of the platoon. His award citation reads that he led “it forward with inspired energy until the mission was accomplished.” I have to think that after seeing Wiedorfer’s actions that afternoon, all of his platoon would follow him to the gates of hell and back.

Wiedorfer received a battlefield promotion to sergeant that afternoon.

The 3rd Army succeeded in breaking the Siege of Bastogne and liberating the 101st Airborne two days later, on 27 December.

As a sign of how many men were lost in the Bulge, Wiedorfer was a staff sergeant by 10 February 1945, just a few weeks after his incredible actions in that field in Belgium.

As his company was attempting to cross the Saar River, Wiedorfer was next to another man when an enemy mortar struck between them. The other soldier was dead before he hit the ground. Wiedorfer only fared a little bit better. The shrapnel broke his left leg, ripped into his torso, and mangled two fingers on his right hand.

Wiedorfer was immediately evacuated. He’d ultimately spend three years in Army hospitals recovering from his vicious wounds. A few weeks after his injury though, he was in the 137th United States Army General Hospital in England. A fellow soldier in the ward was reading Stars and Stripes and asked him how he spelled his name.

“I said, ‘W-i-e-d-o-r-f-e-r,’ and he said, ‘You just got a medal.’ I said was it the Bronze Star, and he said no, ‘Congressional Medal of Honor.’ To be perfectly honest with you, I wasn’t really sure what the hell it was, because all I was was some dogface guy in the infantry,” he told the Baltimore Sun in 2008.

A few weeks after that, in May 1945, just days before VE Day, an Army general and a full band came into the hospital ward. The general pinned the Medal of Honor onto the still bedridden Wiedorfer.

Wiedorfer was one of only four men of the 80th Infantry Division to receive the Medal of Honor during the war. The other three men all received posthumous awards. Wiedorfer was also a recipient of the Bronze Star Medal, two Purple Hearts, and a Presidential Unit Citation for his service.

Flown home, Wiedorfer received a ticker tape parade in his hometown of Baltimore on 11 June 1945. He was presented to a crowd of 35,000 at City Hall Plaza by George C Marshall, the Army’s highest ranking general.

Wiedorfer would leave the Army in 1948 as a master sergeant. Before the war he’d been an apprentice power station operator for Baltimore Gas and Electric. He returned to BG&E after leaving the Army. He’d ultimately retire from the power company in 1981.

Wiedorfer and his wife had two sons and two daughters. When he died in 2011 he had been preceded in death by his wife and one daughter. He had six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

If you’re inclined to hear about the events from Master Sergeant Wiedorfer himself, the Medal of Honor Society interviewed him for their series on valor.

Category: Army, Historical, Medal of Honor, Valor, We Remember