Three soldiers from three wars received the nation’s highest military honor at the White House on Monday, recognized for split-second decisions under fire that saved lives in World War II, Vietnam and Afghanistan.
President Donald Trump awarded the Medal of Honor to Master Sgt. Roderick W. Edmonds, Staff Sgt. Michael H. Ollis and retired Command Sgt. Maj. Terry P. Richardson, then a staff sergeant.
Edmonds defied a Nazi execution order in a German prisoner of war camp in 1945, Richardson directed airstrikes while wounded in Vietnam in 1968 and Ollis shielded a coalition officer from a suicide blast in Afghanistan in 2013. Two of the awards were posthumous, with family members accepting the medals during the ceremony.
Military.com reached out for comment to the White House and the U.S. Army.
Gun To His Forehead
Edmonds was captured during the Battle of the Bulge after his 422nd Infantry Regiment was overrun in late 1944. After a four-day forced march through bitter winter conditions, he and 1,200 American soldiers were sent to Stalag IXA in Germany.
As the senior noncommissioned officer in the camp, Edmonds was responsible for every enlisted soldier held there.
On Jan. 27, 1945, a Nazi officer ordered Jewish American prisoners to identify themselves or be executed. More than 200 Jewish soldiers stood among the 1,200 prisoners.
The next morning, all 1,200 American prisoners stepped forward.
“We are all Jews here,” Edmonds told the commandant, according to the official citation read during the ceremony.
The officer pressed a pistol to Edmonds’ forehead. Edmonds did not move. He warned that killing prisoners would be a war crime, causing the officer to lower his weapon.
Edmonds’ family spent more than a decade pushing for the award, describing a long campaign that only gained traction after relatives learned what happened in the camp years after he died in 1985.
Weeks later, as allied forces advanced, guards prepared to evacuate the camp. Edmonds directed resistance, helping keep the 1,200 prisoners in place until liberation in March 1945.
His son, Chris Edmonds, accepted the medal.
Surrounded on Hill 222
On Sept. 14, 1968, 102 American soldiers moved toward Hill 222 near Loc Ninh in Vietnam and encountered a fortified North Vietnamese Army position with nearly 300 bunkers.
Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Terry P. Richardson, then a staff sergeant and platoon leader, saw three of his men fall—wounded and pinned between enemy machine gun positions.
He advanced through heavy fire to recover them. Enemy forces encircled the company.
Richardson climbed to higher ground to establish radio contact and direct airstrikes. Wounded by a sniper round, he remained exposed for seven hours and directed 32 airstrikes, guiding more than 75,000 pounds of ordnance onto enemy positions.
According to the official citation read during the ceremony, 85 soldiers survived because of his actions that day.
Shielding A Wounded Ally
Staff Sgt. Michael H. Ollis grew up on Staten Island and enlisted after the Sept. 11 attacks.
By Aug. 28, 2013, he was serving as a squad leader with the 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan.
Insurgents launched a coordinated assault on Forward Operating Base Ghazni that morning. A 400-pound vehicle-borne improvised explosive device detonated along the perimeter, opening a 60-foot breach as attackers wearing suicide vests moved through the compound.
Ollis ordered his soldiers into bunkers. He then moved toward the breach armed only with his rifle.
He encountered a wounded Polish officer who could not walk. An insurgent wearing a suicide vest rounded the corner.
Ollis stepped between the attacker and the officer. He fired. The vest detonated seconds later, mortally wounding him just weeks before his 25th birthday.
The push to upgrade Ollis’ valor award stretched across years of advocacy in Staten Island and Washington, with his family saying the case ultimately reached the president’s desk after the Army completed its review and forwarded the recommendation to the White House.
Second Lt. Karol Cierpica, the officer Ollis shielded, addressed attendees during the ceremony.
“A soldier is not something you are from time to time. It is who you are forever,” he said.
Ollis’ parents, Robert and Linda Ollis, accepted the medal and embraced Cierpica.
Six Medal of Honor recipients attended the ceremony in the White House East Room: William Swenson, Jim McCloughan, Walter Marm, Thomas Payne, Sammy Davis and Edward Byers.
