The Faces Are Familiar

A large, buckram-bound volume was published last month by the Department of the Army. The book has illustrations--photographs of 281 men. Most of the faces are young, most of them look as familiar as the boy up the street. Their names read like the telephone directory in any U.S. town--Adams, Anderson . . . Hall-,man, Hamilton . . . Kisters, Knappen-berger . . . Soderman, Specker . . . Zeam-er, Zussman. Photographs of eleven were "not available." Few of these men are famous; all of them are heroes. The 292 men memorialized in the book are the Army's Medal of Honor winners in World War II.-Only 135 of them lived to receive their awards.

In terse military prose, the Army describes the almost unbelievable bravery and unselfishness of these men. Corporal Harry R. Harr, of Pennsylvania, blanketed a Japanese hand grenade to save four others in a gun emplacement in the Philippines. First Lieutenant Bernard J. Ray, of New York, blew himself up with an explosive to brea'k a German barbed-wire barricade near Schevenhutte, Germany,,

In a Superfort over Japan, Staff Sergeant Henry E. Erwin, of Alabama, picked up a burning phosphorus bomb with his bare hands, tossed it out a copilot's open window. Despite his searing burns, Erwin lived to have the Medal of Honor pinned on his bandages. Sergeant Thomas A. Baker, of New York, severely wounded on Saipan, refused to retreat, was left propped against a tree, with a pistol containing eight rounds. Later, when his body and empty pistol were found, eight Japanese lay dead around him.

Last week the Army made its last Medal of Honor awards for World War II. The recipients were Staff Sergeant John W. Minick, of Carnegie, Pa., who crawled through a Hurtgen Forest minefield', tackled an entire German company and killed 20 before he fell; and Staff Sergeant Gus Kefurt, of Greenville, Pa., who led his platoon in a hand-to-hand encounter in France, killed 25 Germans before he was cut down by enemy fire. Minick's and Kefurt's Medals of Honor were presented to their widows.

-The Navy, which is preparing a book similar to the Army's, awarded 58 Medals of Honor, the Marine Corps 79, the Coast Guard one.

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