Hey, Everyone! Thanks for checking out History X!
My name is Ken Stano and tonight I wanted to honor
a World War II Medal of Honor recipient that passed away on Tuesday, April 6th.
I somehow missed it and discovered it in the news yesterday.
His name is Staff Sergeant Charles Coolidge and we're gonna spend a few minutes digging
into his history, his background, how he earned the Medal of Honor, and what his life was like.
But if we're just meeting for the first time,
my name is Ken Stano and I am a WW2 historian, mechanical engineer, and pilot.
I love digging into these stories, especially about our veterans from World War Two
and when I read about Charles Coolidge passing away,
there're a couple of things about his story that makes it special.
Any Medal of Honor recipient has a special story,
but the thing about Charles Coolidge is that he was,
let's put it this way, there were only two World War Two
Medal of Honor recipients left alive, surviving,
until Charles passed away on Tuesday. Now there's one left. Just one.
And then there's going to be none.
So any opportunity I get to honor these these guys, I'm going to take.
So the thing about Charles, he was the second-to-last living recipient of the Medal of Honor.
Like I said, mentioned a few moments ago, from World War II
He, however, was the last surviving Medal of Honor recipient from the European theater of WW2
so there are no surviving Medal of Honor recipients from the European theater left alive.
He was born in 1921, in Tennessee, and he was drafted into the Army
when he was just 20 years old. So I'm gonna pull up a picture here.
This is Charles. This is Charles Gooding. I'm sorry, Charles Coolidge.
And like I said, he was just 20 years old when he was drafted in the Army.
And he first served in north Africa before he worked his way into France
which is where he earned the Medal of Honor.
So let's see, I've got a map here. So he started off in Africa
and worked his way through Italy. As a matter of fact, I think I read something
last night that he actually took part in the battle of Monte Casino, passed through Rome,
and worked his way up through Italy with the Army, and then he ended up in France.
And you can see that highlighted region in the northeastern corner of France,
very close to the German border. So in 1944, when Charles was just 23 years old,
he had reached the rank of Staff Sergeant, and let's see, so I'm gonna go back here.
That's his picture. And here's a picture of him actually when they gave him the Medal of Honor.
So that gives you an idea as to what he looked like.
So when he was just 23 years old, think about what you were doing when you were 23 years old,
like I said he had reached the rank of Staff Sergeant, and he was assigned to take a hill
with just two squads of machine gunners. Each squad I think had six men each, totaling 12.
If any of you know any additional details that I'm either getting wrong or that I'm missing,
please let me know in the comments because I want to make sure I get his story right.
But if I understand it correctly, it was just basically a group of 12 men,
two squads of six, and they were machine gunners,
and it sounds like it was almost like a maintenance kind-of a mission.
"Hey, we want you to take this hill and secure it."
So the hill was near the town of Belmont sur Buttant. Belmont sur Buttant. And that is on
this map I showed you in the northeastern corner of France, close to the German border.
And the hill was in some pretty dense forest. It was pretty rough going.
So when they are trying to secure this position, set up their machine guns,
they run into a widely superior German force. A group of soldiers, at the time
Charles thought that it might have been around 50. 50 German soldiers. Keep in mind they only had 12.
So this is what makes this story so amazing. The first thing this 23-year-old does is
he identifies one of the guys in his group that can speak German, passable German, and he tells
them "Hey go and demand their surrender." So this 23-year-old Charles Coolidge,
he's got, he's got balls. And he decides to demand the Germans surrender .
Well they refuse and actually Coolidge spots one of the
Germans actually aiming at his fellow soldier that can speak German.
And so a firefight ensues and after that are two days of solid fighting.
It's cold, it's raining, this is in October, I believe.
Let me make sure. Yeah, October of 1944. It's cold, it's raining, it's miserable.
He's only got 12 men, and the men that he has, it's a group of replacement soldiers.
That's what makes me think that this is just a maintenance, routine mission.
They're replacement soldiers. They've never seen battle before
and there're no officers there at all. So Coolidge basically took command.
The, as I said, the Germans, they they did not surrender.
You know, they didn't agree to his demand to surrender, and they basically
counter-attacked against Coolidge's group. And Coolidge, the 23-year-old Staff Sergeant,
he walked up and down the ranks and kept encouraging his men to stay calm and return fire.
And it worked. The Germans were turned back. They were forced back, but that wasn't the end of it.
Like I said, for two days the Germans just continued to attack. And Coolidge though,
in-spite of all this, continued to lead a small group of men to fight back.
And it was really impressive. On the third day, though, the Germans fought back. You know,
they had a counterattack yet again. Only this time they had two tanks with them.
And with the support of those two tanks they kind of came in and they one of the, if I understand it
correctly, one of the tank commanders popped open his hatch, and in pretty good English,
asked Charles Coolidge if he wanted to surrender.
And Coolidge basically said 'No, that's not gonna happen."
So the tank pretty much point blank fired five rounds at Coolidge.
Here's another picture of him. Obviously they didn't hit him,
but they got pretty pretty damn close because they were point blank range.
And Coolidge then ran back to his group, grabbed all the grenades that he could carry,
and basically ran up to....
Actually, I apologize. There was a part of the story that I missed.
Before after he told the Germans he wasn't going to surrender
he crawled up to one of the tanks with a bazooka, got to within about 25 feet
of one of the tanks, and he was going to fire the bazooka.
But the bazooka wouldn't fire. It malfunctioned.
And I don't know if you're familiar with the M1A1 bazooka, but it was actually battery-operated.
There were two batteries in the handle. And if you want to learn more about the bazooka,
I have a video on the channel about how the M1A1 operated.
But it had two batteries in the handle; one to ignite the rocket-propelled grenade
in the bazooka, the shape charge, and another one as a backup.
So I have a feeling when Coolidge went up to this tank,
aimed his bazooka and fired, the battery was dead.
So at that particular point he threw the bazooka aside, crawled back to his group of guys,
gathered up all the grenades that he could find,
Here's a picture of a tank that he most likely went up against.
He gathered all the grenades that he could find, and he started lobbing grenades at the Germans.
And he just threw as many as he could and he encouraged all of his other guys to do the same thing;
just throw as many grenades as you can.
And as it turns out, it appears, and the Associated Press reported
that Coolidge and his guys killed approximately 24 and wounded another 60.
Now keep in mind, he thought they were going up against the force of 50.
Twelve U.S. soldiers against 50. But it turns out the German group was probably twice that size; more like a hundred.
And if you happen to know precisely how many Germans they were up against, I'd love to hear about it.
But as I'm sure you can imagine, as I'm sure you can guess, their position was eventually overrun.
And here's another picture. I actually like this picture a lot.
This is a picture of a U.S. soldier lobbing a grenade. It's not a very clear picture,
but you can tell in dense forest, trying to throw a grenade.
So let me back-up to a picture of Charles.
There we go. This is him.
So their position was finally overrun, and it was clear.... When it was clear that they were going to be overrun,
Coolidge then did another level-headed, cool-headed thing.
He directed the withdrawal of all of his guys and he was the last one to leave the area.
So let's review.
They come across these German soldiers when they're trying to secure this hill.
No officers, so this 23-year-old takes command.
The first thing he does is demand the Germans surrender. Of course they don't do that,
and then for the next two to three days of heavy fighting, it's cold, it's raining,
they're clearly outnumbered. He crawls up to a tank to fire a bazooka. The bazooka malfunctions.
He then gathers up all the grenades he can and just launches
and throws as many grenades as he can to kill approximately 24 and wound another 60.
This is why he earned the Medal of Honor.
And the picture of that ceremony, it was in a field in Germany.
You know, you think of a Medal of Honor award ceremony being pretty significant.
This is just in a field. They're shaking his hand and he's got the medal there.
I think, I think Charles Coolidge. I think all Medal of Honor recipients are special,
but I think this man, his story, is amazing. I had never heard it before, until I found
out that this gentleman passed away. So I read everything that I could.
If you know additional details that we should know, I would love to hear about them.
If I got any of the details wrong, I would also like to hear about it.
But I think Staff Sergeant Charles H Coolidge, 23-year-old Staff Sergeant Charles H Coolidge,
deserves a toast. And I want to toast our heroes.
Here's to you Staff Sergeant Charles H Coolidge. We thank you.
So remember, there's one Medal of Honor, World War II Medal of Honor recipient surviving.
We should learn about him. If you know of any other veterans, or any other stories,
from World War Two, or any era that we should be talking about, that we should be toasting, we
should definitely be toasting our heroes, send me a note, leave a comment. I want to hear about it.
In the meantime, thank you for checking out History X. Thank you for listening to me
talk about Staff Sergeant Charles Coolidge. It means a lot to me.
And stay tuned, we're gonna be doing this more often.
In the meantime, I hope you guys have a great Friday night and thanks for listening.
Thanks for checking out History X. I'm going to back out of this
and log off.
I hope you guys have a wonderful evening and thanks for tuning in.