Black guy...fucking hero. Oh and Samson as much as it may kill u...I'm more this guys' "brother" regardless of color, then u are. Get over urself.
In the early morning darkness of Dec. 26, 1944, a large force of German soldiers attacked a small garrison of American troops holding the tiny mountain village of Sommocolonia, Italy, high in the Upper Apennines in the north central part of the country.
The fighting was fierce, and by daylight the 400 Germans, outnumbering the Americans 6 to 1, had the village surrounded and were moving in fast.
First Lt. John R. Fox, 26, of Cincinnatti, Ohio, and a handful of his men watched in alarm from their post on the second floor of an old house as the Germans swarmed up the streets, lobbing grenades everywhere.
Fox, a forward observer with the 366th Infantry Regiment, an all-black unit out of Fort Devens reactivated for World War II, was directing American artillery fire into the area to slow the enemy advance, and he knew the village was all but lost.
As the Germans closed in, Fox spoke calmly by telephone to the Fire Direction Center, ordering up artillery missions from the distant guns.
‘That last round was just where I wanted it,, the young lieutenant reported. “Bring it in 60 yards more.”
The receiving operator thought Fox was mistaken - the order would train the full fire of up to 75 heavy caliber artillery guns directly on Fox’s position.
Fox confirmed the order: “There’s more of them than there is of us.”
Seconds later the bombardment began. And within minutes, hundreds of shells had hit the target. each one powerful enough to blast the house and its occupants into oblivion.
There was no chance that Fox and his men would survive.
The fighting continued from door to door for the next several hours as the few Americans left tried valiantly to stop the onslaught, but by mid-afternoon the village had fallen.
That night the Americans counted their casualties: Forty-three of 60 men in the garrison were dead. The other 17 had managed a miraculous escape, slipping out of the village from undetected hiding places in the darkness.
Sommocolonia was retaken four days later, and in the rubble the bodies of Fox and his men were found among the bodies of the enemy. The dead had been killed in the shelling that Fox had brought down.
For that act of heroism, Fox was certain to be awarded a medal for valor, a Silver Star at least.
But it didn’t happen. Not for almost 38 years.
