I was drafted, but I wanted to go in before that because all my buddies had gone in.
All of them had gone, most of them had gone in the Navy.
But I'd been hunting jackrabbits out west of town here quite a bit
and I kind of liked the idea of a rifle.
NARRATOR: On September 13th, 1943, US Army Private William Crawford
was with the 36th Infantry on the assault of Hill 424 near Altavilla, Italy.
On the morning of the 13th, we attacked their main line of defense.
A major from battalion led I Company up to the mountains, made a flank attack.
All night long on the 12th, we walked and walked, climbed.
And he stopped us within 200 yards of the main German defense.
And we kept real quiet, and deployed out there.
And he said, "Now, you're going to attack at dawn."
We fixed bayonets, we had always kept our bayonets on our rifles.
And some of our artillery shelled the German line of defense
and then they sounded the attack.
Shooting was going on and whistles were blowing, and yelling and everything.
We normally tried to scare the Germans as much as we could,
make as much noise as we could.
The platoon sergeant and I, kind of were on the right flank.
We saw a little rock wall... He beat me to the wall.
And I laid there and I fired at what I thought was a German defense there.
I fired quick, and I started to reload and see what he was doing.
He wasn't doing anything, he was just laying there real quiet face down.
And I crawled over there and he had six or eight holes out his back.
He had been hit just before he got to that rock wall by the machine gun.
NARRATOR: Without orders and on his own initiative,
Crawford took off into the woods to stop the enemy snipers.
And I just followed a little narrow ditch.
Oh, it must have been 18, maybe 24 inches wide and almost four feet deep.
I stayed pretty close to it and sure enough, there's a brushy terrain,
well camouflaged area right ahead.
And out of that came a burst of machine gun fire.
As I was running for this little ditch he was shooting right under my feet.
Some of the rounds probably went between my legs and never touched me.
NARRATOR: Unknown to Crawford at the time,
a total of three German machine gun emplacements
were hidden in the immediate area.
Ever the cunning scout,
Crawford focused on getting to the gun that had just missed him.
I had a gas mask and some stuff on me that I had to get rid of to crawl up this ditch.
And I crawled back into that brush there, above these guns here.
I crawled by one of them, and there was one right ten feet below me
and he opened fire on me.
NARRATOR: An overwhelming amount of fire raged from the hidden nest,
pinning his company down.
Crawford knew he must do something quickly, the survival of his company
depended on the elimination of those enemy machine guns.
So I threw a hand grenade at that farthest one.
NARRATOR: Crawford's grenade was right on the mark,
the blast destroyed the enemy gun and the entire crew.
Amidst the chaos, Crawford made his next move taking aim with his M1 rifle
and in an instant, destroyed the second nest of machine guns.
And then I fired my rifle at the bottom one right by me
because I couldn't throw a hand grenade there.
NARRATOR: Fully exposed to the enemy,
and operating on sheer instinct and adrenaline,
Crawford targeted the third and final nest with a barrage of grenades.
Then I threw another hand grenade over there where I thought some Germans were,
and two or three more jumped up and ran into a nearby forest.
This allowed the company to move on.
NARRATOR: With nearly all of the hostile forces dead,
and the last of the Germans scurrying into the forest,
Crawford dove into one of the destroyed nests,
seized the enemy weapon and fired at the fleeing Germans.
In a truly heroic effort,
Private Crawford single-handedly destroyed all three German emplacements.
His actions facilitated the advance and ensured the safety of his company.
Even though he had neutralized the machine gun positions,
Crawford had more work to do. By this time, the enemy had reinforced
and launched a furious counterattack.
I saw one of my buddies and the squad leader laying behind a big pine tree,
pretty close to this little ditch that I'd occupied.
And a machine gun was peppering that tree real hard...
One of the guys had been shot right through the stomach
and it just missed his vertebrae.
I put a bandage on him and everything, trying to get him to stop bleeding.
And we heard a bunch of German talk coming from that area.
I crawled down the ditch and sure enough,
here come a whole company of Germans spread out coming up that area.
One with a machine gun, he was looking down at my gas mask
studying my equipment, and he was only 30 yards at the most.
And I thought, boy, here's another machine gunner-- I'm going to get him.
And I had his head in my sight, couldn't have missed.
But something just wouldn't let me pull the trigger.
Something just said, "Don't do it, don't do it." And I didn't pull the trigger.
All of them went by us but that guy with that machine gun.
He was just scanning the ditch real close and saw my tracks in there,
crawling around in there. So he looked and there he saw us.
And he said, "Hands up. Hands up."
And they call come storming around us with their rifles snorting and hollering.
I was listed missing,
but they finally got word that I was a prisoner after they had already awarded the medal
to my father at Camp Carson.
I was surprised, I didn't think anybody knew anything took place up there.
NARRATOR: Because Crawford was captured,
and became a POW immediately after his Medal of Honor action,
he was never officially presented the medal by the President of the United States.
It was not until 1984, over 40 years after the fact,
that Bill Crawford received his official recognition.
At the Air Force Academy graduation ceremonies,
President Ronald Reagan honored Crawford
by hanging the Medal of Honor around his neck,
a final tribute to an unassuming, all-American hero.