Medal of Honor

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton authorized the Medal of Honor.

Sergeant Alvin C. York of the U.S. 82nd Division is probably the most famous Medal of Honor recipient and his combat experience is detailed here. As is the epic story of Corporal Freddie Stowers who was posthumously awarded the medal seventy-three years after his 1918 action. Marine John Henry Pruitt was a rare awardee who received both the Army and Navy Medals of Honor for his action.

Medal of Honor awardee First Lieutenant Robert Waugh is one anchor story for Episode Three, along with African-Americans and Lieutenants Vernon Baker and John R. Fox fighting the German Army in the Italian Campaign. In addition, the Medals of Honor awarded for actions on D-Day, June 6, 1944 are documented in great detail.

Cliff Robertson profiles four Medal of Honor recipients.

Episode Six lands in the jungles and the rocky grasslands of Vietnam, telling the stories of several men whose actions at the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in 1965 earned them the Medal of Honor - most notably Second Lieutenant Walter Joseph Marm and helicopter pilots Captains Ed Freeman and Bruce Crandall who received their awards almost 40 years later. As well, African-Americans Milton Olive and Captain Riley Pitts, the first African-American officer to be awarded the medal. This episode also carries us forward to the current War of Terror and the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.