Word: medals
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...world found out last week who led the daring, destructive noonday air raid on Japan last month. To the White House, to receive a Congressional Medal of Honor, went pugnacious Brigadier General James Harold Doolittle, 45, speed flyer, engineer, scholar and man of action...
Standing at attention while Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall intoned the formal citation, lean-faced, balding Jimmy Doolittle bent forward while President Roosevelt pinned the gold, blue-ribboned medal above his left shirt pocket. Not even a columnist, chortled the President, had known the identity of the raid's leader...
Soldier. In 1912, at 19, Mihailovich left the Serbian Military Academy to fight the Turks. Wounded the next year, he returned to school as a sublieutenant wearing the Obihch medal for "personal courage." In 1914 the Austrian attack again broke up school and Mihailovich was again wounded, received the Order of the White Eagle. On the eve of the Salonika offensive he rejoined his company and finally returned to Serbia wearing its highest decoration, the Kara George Star with crossed swords...
Alvin York, a conscientious objector ("War's ag'in the Book"), changed his mind after a heart-to-heart talk with his superior officer and a plodding, nightlong bout with U.S. history. His feat in France that brought him a Congressional Medal of Honor is still a nonpareil: singlehanded he killed 20 German soldiers, captured 132 more with a squad of seven...
...Woodfill, the order to return to active duty was belated recognition for another World War I feat: he knocked out a series of German machine-gun nests alone, incidentally killing two Germans with a trench pick. He too received a Congressional Medal of Honor, and decorations from six nations. From General Pershing he drew a simple tribute: "Here is America's greatest doughboy." During the war he held a "Jawbone" (temporary) commission as first lieutenant and was temporary captain for a brief period in 1919, but was eventually returned to his permanent rank of sergeant. Uncomplaining, he re-enlisted...