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00:17This presentation of a big picture brings you part two of a special issue commemorating the Medal of Honor Centennial.
00:37The Medal of Honor Centennial
01:08The Medal of Honor Centennial
01:37The Medal of Honor Centennial
02:10This is a hall of glory, where paintings and displays commemorate American military achievements.
02:19Ghosts walk here, their muffled tread-keeping step to the drumroll of history.
02:26Ghosts walk these halls whose bodies sleep at Shiloh and by vineyards at Chateau Thierry and beneath coral beaches on
02:38islands burning in the sun.
02:41And in their company, the spirits of men still living, their manhood reached in flame and smoke somewhere in a
02:49German forest, a choked Pacific jungle, in the skies over Korea or on a carrier in the Pacific.
02:58They all assemble here, the spirits of men still living and men long dead, for an eternal roll call.
03:07You seem to hear it as you stand here, the long, sweet voice of bugles whose echoes reach that part
03:14of men where pride stirs.
03:16And through those haunting echoes, you hear the call that never ceases, bravery, bravery, bravery, bravery.
03:27And the answers return, here sir, here sir, here sir.
03:36Seven medals, symbols lusted with the gleam of gallantry, form a pyramid of honor in the military service.
03:42The purple heart is for wounds received in action against an enemy.
03:48For heroic or meritorious achievement or service against an enemy not involving aerial flight, the bronze star.
03:57For heroism not involving actual conflict with an enemy, the soldier's medal.
04:02For heroism and extraordinary achievement while participating in actual flight, the distinguished flying cross.
04:10For gallantry in action, the silver star.
04:16For extraordinary heroism in military operations against an armed enemy, the distinguished service cross.
04:24And at the pinnacle of the pyramid, for gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life, above and beyond the
04:31call of duty, the medal of honor.
04:37Gallantry, intrepidity, beyond the call.
04:51What is courage?
04:54Men in many times and many circumstances have sought to define it, as if by doing so, they could crystallize
05:01its hard and special beauty.
05:04America's revered man of letters, Mark Twain, once called courage, resistance to fear.
05:11A man somewhat closer to our own time and a warrior refined it a little further.
05:16Courage, he said, is fear holding on a minute longer.
05:22His name was General George S. Patton.
05:25Now, certainly, courage is not exclusively a military quality, but its military associations go deep.
05:33For the battlefield intensifies and strips to their fundamentals the toughest challenges that life can impose.
05:41For a man just to live in its environment and do his job well demands a measure of this royal
05:48virtue,
05:48which few men are called upon to display in their lives,
05:53acts which stand out, then, in this atmosphere of constant bravery, glow with a special quality.
06:02The medals with which the nation honors its military brave are each in its own way tributes to this virtue.
06:10And at the summit of the pyramid, which these medals form, the highest award the nation can give, the Medal
06:17of Honor.
06:18The war America entered in 1917 was a new kind of war.
06:23The truck and the tank and the machine gun had come, and combat was never to be the same again.
06:31The war that lay waiting for the Doughboy was one of massed firepower,
06:36long trench lines facing each other across the graveyard of a no-man's land.
06:42Americans fought beside their European allies in the Great War,
06:45but they fought as integral American units.
06:49And they fought a vigorous offensive,
06:51an offensive of small units sweeping through heavily fortified German defenses
06:57in almost a suicidal way.
07:01What kind of face does courage wear in such a war?
07:05The one it has always worn.
07:07For the face of courage does not change.
07:10However much the weapons change with which the courageous man fights,
07:14or the tactics and techniques of the battle he wages.
07:17In World War I, that special courage,
07:22the kind summoned by the man who takes his life in his hands
07:25to do what must be done above and beyond the call of beauty,
07:29wore the faces of 95 brave men.
07:33Among them, the private who silenced four machine gun positions
07:36and was killed while storming the fifth alone.
07:39The captain, who was cut down by machine gun fire
07:43while leading his company in an assault on a heavily defended position
07:46and continued forward on a stretcher.
07:49The corporal, who made it possible for his unit to press its attack
07:52despite hostile fire
07:54by rushing a machine gun nest alone
07:56and beating off the enemy with his bayonet.
07:59And the legendary sergeant from Tennessee,
08:02whose daring assault on an enemy position
08:05brought in 132 prisons.
08:09Courage in battle did find a new proving ground in World War I.
08:14The air.
08:16The airplane had barely emerged from its status as an interesting experiment
08:20and now it was a formidable weapon of war.
08:24And the ranks of Medal of Honor winners,
08:27men who had fought on land and sea,
08:29were increased by men who wrote their records of bravery in the sky.
08:38By men such as the flying lieutenant from Ohio
08:41who attacked seven enemy planes,
08:43shot down two of them,
08:45and scattered the rest
08:46on the eve of the Argonne offensive.
08:53World War I,
08:55with its particular call on bravery
08:58in a kind of war new to the world at that time,
09:01saw the introduction of the airplane in combat.
09:04Scarcely a generation later,
09:06a second world war,
09:07which would make demands on more men than ever in the nation's history,
09:11came to America on the wings of the same machine.
09:14Now a highly developed weapon of destruction.
09:17The war began in explosions,
09:20in chaos,
09:22in devastation,
09:23in defeat.
09:4514 million Americans responded by training
09:48for the greatest and most destructive war in history.
09:52430 of them
09:53would earn the right to wear the Medal of Honor.
10:04Americans earned their Medals of Honor
10:06in virtually every spot on the globe
10:08where Americans fought.
10:17And how would each man win it?
10:21Bravely.
10:22Bravely.
10:24By standing for a moment in time alone,
10:28lighted by a fire which rages in all men,
10:31but lights in a special few,
10:33in special times,
10:35the will to break the prison locks of fear
10:37and concern for self,
10:39and do, at whatever cost,
10:42the job at hand.
10:53Who was he?
10:55The man who served above and beyond the call of duty in World War II?
11:03He was a Marine from Ohio,
11:05private first class serving on Guadalcanal.
11:09His machine gun emplacement took the full brunt of an all-out assault.
11:13His orders were,
11:15hold the position.
11:17All through the night,
11:19he held off the Japanese.
11:45All through the night, he held off the Japanese.
11:45Weary and exhausted,
11:47toward morning,
11:48he did not see an enemy soldier approach
11:50until too late.
11:56He leaped up,
11:58absorbed the violence in his own body,
12:01and yielded up his life.
12:08He was an army lieutenant from Rhode Island,
12:12who led his men toward a bunker on an enemy-held hill in Italy.
12:16His men covered him as he advanced alone,
12:18and threw phosphorus grenades into the enemy's position.
12:22As the defenders emerged,
12:24he shot them.
12:26He led his men forward to break through the enemy line.
12:44He was a platoon leader,
12:46whose platoon was pinned down by Germans,
12:48blocking an American advance.
12:50Ordering his men to cover him,
12:52he went forward alone,
12:53and destroyed the enemy's stronghold.
12:55When his job was done,
12:56he brought his men forward,
12:58and in the process,
13:00memorialized the heroic stance of leadership.
13:02wherever men fight.
13:12He was a naval officer,
13:14commander of a submarine-coordinated attack group
13:17off Truck Island.
13:19He alone, of the group,
13:20possessed secret intelligence information
13:22of our submarine strategy.
13:24He carried out his secret orders,
13:26and the enemy paid dearly.
13:35the enemy paid dearly.
13:47The enemy paid dearly.
14:19Then, all at once, his own flag submarine was rocked and battered by Japanese depth charges.
14:51The damage was soon beyond repair, the commander decided to surface the flagship and engage
14:57the enemy in a gunfight so the men might have a chance to abandon ship and live.
15:03But for himself, the decision he made was considerably different.
15:08Rather than risk capture and possibly reveal secret plans under enemy torture or use of
15:14drugs, he decided that he would remain aboard the vessel.
15:17He would stay with it in its final plunge to the bottom.
15:26He was an army lieutenant from Texas.
15:28When his company was attacked by tanks and enemy infantry, he ordered his men to withdraw
15:33to prepared positions.
15:34But he remained forward to direct artillery fire and to man a machine gun on a crippled
15:40tank destroyer.
16:02Later, he made his way to his company, refused medical attention for a leg wound and organized
16:08the company in a counterattack.
16:19His counterattack pressed forward in the face of withering enemy fire.
16:24His citation read, his indomitable courage and his refusal to give an inch of ground saved
16:31his company from possible encirclement and destruction.
16:37Indomitable courage.
16:40Other brave men rallied to its core and the counterattack was successful.
17:08He was a major in the air corps, lead pilot of a flight of two fighter planes taking on
17:14the task of attacking 13 Japanese planes.
17:18Closing on the enemy formation in a climbing turn, he scored hits on the lead plane, then
17:24diving to 300 feet in pursuit of another fighter, he caught it with his initial burst.
17:29Before the action was over, seven enemy aircraft would go down under his smoking guns.
17:42He was a general of the army who sent a thrill through the allied world by returning victorious
17:49as he had promised to a land he had been forced to withdraw from in the face of overwhelming
17:54forces.
17:54His medal of honor cited him for gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call
18:01of duty in action against invading Japanese forces and for conspicuous leadership in preparing
18:09the Philippine islands to resist conquest.
18:13He was a flying colonel who was promoted to brigadier general on the completion of his
18:18mission.
18:19That mission for which he volunteered and which would bring him a medal of honor began
18:24as an experiment which in 1942 seemed incredible to many.
18:29An effort to lift a heavy army bomber from the deck of a navy aircraft carrier.
18:35These planes were destined for Japan and the army then had no suitable airfields close enough
18:41for them to leave from.
18:43The test was successful.
18:46Soon thereafter, from a carrier moving through the Pacific as close to Japan as possible,
18:51army bombers manned by volunteers lurched forward.
19:15In those dark early months of the war, their mission, when it became known, would elect
19:21a country with a thrill of hope and pride.
19:24They were to carry the war to the enemy, to a confident Tokyo which then believed itself
19:30invulnerable to attack.
19:32So audacious was the mission, so daring in conception and performance, the Japanese defenders
19:38were caught by complete surprise.
19:54The attackers came roaring in over the Japanese mainland.
19:58And first blood, the first of much to follow, was drawn from the enemy.
20:06The enemy and the angels were all over the moon.
20:18The enemy was taken off to the enemy, to the enemy's army.
20:18The enemy was taken off to the party.
20:19It was drawn from the enemy to the enemy.
20:24It was a bit of a day to make a celebration.
20:25The enemy's army was headed for killing, so it was to make a story.
20:25It was all of a few years ago, but I started to have a story.
20:25But I slowly just pulled a story.
20:25The enemy took over the past 8 years ago.
20:26It was all over the past 10 years ago.
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24:13With the Korean armistice, the guns of Americans in war were silenced.
24:21The last brave deed in combat was recorded.
24:26And thus, in a sense, the story of the Medal of Honor to this day is closed.
24:31The heroic adventures of the 3,156 who have won it in a century of wars
24:38are preserved between the bindings of official histories.
24:41And all are woven into the living legend of a people and a people's spirit.
24:48But for this very reason, the story of the Medal of Honor is not ended, and indeed cannot end.
24:57But the particular essence of the medal is not what it is,
25:01or even the epic tales of those who've earned it.
25:04But more than anything else, what it represents.
25:09That precious quality which Lincoln called devotion,
25:14transformed in an atmosphere of danger,
25:17into a courage whose presence ennobles man.
25:23Such a quality does not die.
25:26It lives, unflowered, and unseen.
25:31But if it's needed, it's there.
25:37Once more, America stands in crisis.
25:40And, as in other days, searching for the promise of its future,
25:45it finds itself looking into the eyes of its sons.
25:50Their defense of freedom is a silent one, but most solidly real.
25:55Their mission, urgent in the eyes of mankind,
25:59demands more of patience and skill,
26:02of effort and adjustment and quiet determination,
26:05than it does of courage.
26:07They train so that war, with its special call for bravery,
26:11will never come.
26:17But the seeds of bravery lie there,
26:21and they will blossom, if they must,
26:23in fields where they have grown before,
26:26where they have always grown,
26:28in the stout hearts of men.
26:36The links in the soldiers' tradition are strong ones,
26:40and the heritage of those who serve today reaches far.
26:44And most prized of all in this heritage
26:47is the tradition of courage,
26:50refined into the special quality
26:53whose presence is felt here,
26:56in this hall of glory,
26:57where ghosts of heroes walk,
27:01keeping vigil on a nation's pride.
27:04Glorys hallelujah,
27:11Philippians!
27:14구독
27:23Timothy
27:27THE END
27:54THE END
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