WWII Hero Finally Receives Silver Star

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Pittsburgh Tribune-Review | May 22, 2007

For 62 years, Wayne T. Alderson, of Pleasant Hills, has felt that the bullet scar on his head makes him accountable for doing something worthwhile with his life.

The World War II veteran said it also reminds him how a friend gave his life to save him.

"God also had his hand in it. I don't understand others dying and my living. I'm still confused by it," the Canonsburg native said.

Alderson, 80, will receive the Silver Star at 10:30 a.m. Sunday in the Hall of Valor at the Soldiers and Sailors Military Museum, 4141 Fifth Ave., North Oakland. It is the fourth-highest honor bestowed by the country.

Matt Dinkel, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Swissvale, said the award has taken six decades because every officer who witnessed Alderson's heroics was subsequently killed in battle.

Alderson said another factor is that the officers' recommendation letters were destroyed either when German artillery sank a cargo boat crossing the Rhine or in a 1973 fire in St. Louis that destroyed more than 16 million files stored at a military records center.

Mainly through the efforts of former Pfc. Daniel Parisi, of Bayside, N.Y., the Pentagon has decided to award Alderson the Silver Star.

U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair, and retired Air Force Maj. Al Smith, representing Doyle, will present the award to Alderson, a labor consultant with a business in Mt. Lebanon.

A letter from Parisi tells how the officers of Company B, 1st Battalion, 7th Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, credited Alderson with leading the company's assault into Germany on March 15, 1945.

Over the next three days, Alderson single-handedly destroyed two machine gun emplacements, attacked pockets of German snipers and fought house-to-house at night before capturing and taking three prisoners to headquarters.

Ordered to report to the rear for media interviews, the 18-year-old private instead led a new assault on March 18. Company B penetrated the German defenses, but was then cut off by enemy forces.

Fearing the Germans were about to launch a counterattack that would wipe out his men, Capt. James B. Rich asked for volunteers to launch a surprise assault. Alderson, Pfc. Charles "Red" Preston and 2nd Lt. Will Barbour volunteered.

The three men disappeared down a zigzag trench. What followed was a cacophony of automatic gunfire, exploding grenades and screams. Some time after the shooting stopped, Alderson crawled out of the trench alone with blood gushing from a head wound.

"It seemed to me that Captain Rich was reliving a nightmare," Parisi says in his letter.

Rich later surveyed the battle scene and determined the three men had killed at least 35 enemy soldiers.

Alderson said the letter doesn't mention that he fell face first into the mud after he was hit. Preston turned him over to keep him from suffocating and was pulling him to safety when a sniper killed him.

"It haunts me. He gave his life for me, and here I'm getting the Silver Star and possibly the Medal of Honor," Alderson said.

If he ever receives the Medal of Honor, Alderson plans to donate it to the World War II memorial.

"It will probably be the last one awarded out of World War II. That medal is for all of the ones who were killed and deserved the medal and never got it," he said.

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