A stalled armored column faced mines, bridges rigged to blow, and enemy fire from every direction. One squad leader went forward alone and cleared the road with his life.
Shot again and again, he kept moving toward the cries for help. For hours on a shattered hillside, he refused to stop saving Marines.
Six assaults had already failed against the enemy-held hill. When a wounded Marine lay exposed beneath machine-gun fire, one squad leader attacked the gun alone.
He charged enemy strongpoints again and again with his rifle firing from the hip. When the fight reached the gates of a German castle, he led from the front one final time.
For four brutal hours, he treated the wounded while shells and enemy troops closed in around him. Even after being critically wounded, he stayed behind so others could live.
He crossed a battlefield again and again to save the wounded under relentless fire. When a grenade landed beside a Marine he was treating, he used his own body as the shield.
In the middle of a close jungle firefight, a grenade landed among wounded Marines. One Marine moved without hesitation and chose to take the blast himself.
