I was born on Signal Mountain on August the 4th, 1921.
And I've lived there all my life, except when I was in the Army.
We weren't rich. We weren't poor.
My dad owned a printing company
and the family still owns the printing company.
During the Depression my dad never laid off any of the employees.
One of the few companies in America that never laid off an employee.
He paid everybody. He cut everybody to four hours
so that at least they could have food on the table.
But we made it through the Depression.
And then things began to pick up.
NARRATOR: Drafted into the Army in 1942,
Charles Coolidge was part of the infantry push
from North Africa through the Mediterranean.
And, in the thick of fighting in Italy.
On October 24th, 1944,
after fighting successfully northward through France,
the 23 year old tech sergeant and his men,
wet and chilled from winter rains,
were assigned to take a hill outside Belmont-Sur Buttant
near the German border.
We got up there. We met no resistance.
We took Hill 623.
And so I called back to the battalion and I said,
"What do you want us to do? We've got the objective hill 623."
And they said, "Secure the hill and dig in."
And here comes a German platoon, a squad or whatever,
going through the woods like they were looking for the enemy.
George Ferguson spoke pretty good German. I knew that, and I said,
"George, ask them if they want to give up."
So... he started talking to them.
And all at once I saw one of the Germans
behind a tree getting ready to shoot George.
And I took my carbine and shot him.
And then shot another one.
And, at that time,
the Germans with their burp guns opened up on us in the open.
And we had a little fire fight.
We had to attack then. And for the next four days, they attacked.
Well, I kept calling back to battalion
that we needed some help up there.
I had two squads, twelve men.
It was the next morning the Germans came in with tanks.
The lead tank pulled up right beside my gunner.
And the tanker raised the turret of that tank, I can still see him doing it.
I stood up and looked him right in the face.
And I'm only 25 yards from him, or 35 at the most.
And he said, in perfect English, he said,
"You guys want to give up?"
Same thing I asked George Ferguson to ask them four days earlier.
I looked him right square in the face,
and I said, "I'm sorry Mack, you got to come and get me."
And he put the turret of that tank down.
He turned that 88 right to where I'd been standing
and he fired point blank at me.
Well I was well trained. And I watched the barrel of that tank.
And if he went that way I'd go this way.
And so he fired five times point blank at me.
After he'd fired the fifth time I knew he wasn't gonna
use all his ammunition trying to hit somebody.
And so I saw a bazooka laying over there.
So I went over and picked up the bazooka.
And I got maybe ten yards closer.
And I tried to fire the bazooka, but the bazooka wouldn't work.
So I just tossed it aside
and started throwing grenades...
and throwing grenades. And I kept throwing those grenades.
And I was still hollering at my men what to do.
Going from man to man and telling them,
"If you got grenades, throw them out there. They can't come through that."
At the end, the Associated Press claimed
that I, or we, had killed 26 Germans and wounded 60 in that battle.
NARRATOR: Honored for his leadership and fearlessness
in four days of continuous fighting,
Coolidge remembers the motivation was his men.
It is a thing of accomplishment.
And not that I did anything...
--I was really saving my own life as well as others.
But my first concern, when I was a platoon sergeant, was my men.
I didn't care what happened to me, but I wanted to protect my men
under any circumstances. And I always referred to them as my men.
Not anybody, and not the company, no.
They were strictly my men.
And I'd do anything for them.