President Donald Trump will award the Medal of Honor to three soldiers on Monday, marking the second time this week that he has recognized service members with the U.S. military’s highest award for valor.
Master Sgt. Roderick “Roddie” W. Edmonds, Staff Sgt. Michael H. Ollis, and retired Command Sgt. Maj. Terry P. Richardson will receive the award, the White House announced on Thursday.
White House officials had previously confirmed that Ollis and Edmonds would be awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously. Ollis was killed in Afghanistan in 2013 while shielding a Polish officer from a suicide bomber, and Edmonds died in 1985 in his hometown of Knoxville, Tennessee.
Each of the three soldiers showed remarkable bravery in the face of grave danger — for Ollis, that involved giving his life to save an ally.
On Aug. 28, 2013, Ollis was deployed to Afghanistan with the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, when insurgents launched a complex attack against Forward Operating Base Ghazni.
In the ensuing battle, Ollis linked up with Polish Army Lt. Karol Cierpica. The two reached the base’s perimeter, where they were confronted by an insurgent wearing a suicide vest. By then, Cierpica was wounded in the legs and could not walk.
Ollis put himself between Cierpica and the insurgent. He shot the attacker, who was incapacitated but still able to detonate his suicide vest, fatally wounding Ollis.
‘We are all Jews.’
Edmonds is one of a handful of Americans to earn the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations from Israel’s World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem for risking his life to save Jews during the Holocaust.
Captured during the Battle of the Bulge, Edmonds was held in a prisoner of war camp in Ziegenhain, Germany, where the commandant announced on Jan. 26, 1945, that only Jewish-American prisoners would report for roll call the following morning.
In order to save the lives of the 200 Jewish-American soldiers under his command, Edmonds had all 1,200 of the U.S. troops attend the next morning’s formation. When the commandant ordered that he hand over the Jewish soldiers in the ranks, Edmonds responded, “We are all Jews.”
The German officer then pressed his Luger pistol against Edmonds’ forehead, threatening to shoot him unless he complied. But Edmonds refused, warning the commandant that if he shot American prisoners, he would be tried as a war criminal after the conflict ended. Ultimately, the commandant backed down.
Completely surrounded
Richardson saved the lives of 85 soldiers and waged a one-man attack against enemy forces near Loc Ninh, South Vietnam on Sept. 14, 1968. At the time, he was assigned to the 28th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division. While on a reconnaissance mission, he came under heavy fire from a “well-entrenched North Vietnamese Army battalion,” according to the White House.
A staff sergeant at the time, Richardson rescued severely wounded soldiers three times while under heavy machine gun fire. Later, when he realized his company had been completely surrounded, he advanced under fire to the top of a hill so he could call in airstrikes on the enemy.
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When he got there, he saw that an entire enemy regiment was using the hilltop as its base camp. Richardson called in airstrikes close to his position for several hours, even after being wounded by an enemy sniper.
The enemy troops eventually fled, and Richardson’s fellow soldiers found him alive. He refused to be medically evacuated so that he could remain with his men.
The three soldiers will be recognized for their bravery just six days after Trump awarded two other service members the Medal of Honor during Tuesday’s State of the Union address to Congress: Army Chief Warrant Officer 5 Eric Slover, who was wounded while flying a helicopter during January’s mission that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro; and retired Navy Capt. Royce Williams, who shot down four Soviet jet fighters during the Korean War in the longest dogfight in Navy history.
