Medal of Honor eludes WWII soldier
BY BILL WAGNER THE SUNDAY TIMES
Ask someone from the World War II generation about Audie Murphy. Chances are they’ll tell you he was only the most-decorated soldier of that war whose chestful of medals won him a career in the movies.
Then ask them to identify Harvey Possinger and you’ll get a blank stare.
But Mr. Possinger also came home with a chestful of medals. And how come nobody except his neighbors in Stroud Township knows about him?
Could it be because, unlike Audie Murphy, Mr. Possinger wasn’t awarded the Medal of Honor? After all, Mr. Possinger’s medals total 26, and Audie Murphy was discharged with a total of 28 — two more than Mr. Possinger.
And one of the those two was the Medal of Honor, the highest award the United States can bestow.
And it’s not that Mr. Possinger was any less a hero than Audie Murphy. As a member of the Army’s 25th Division, Mr. Possinger carried a rifle and fired a machine gun in some of the fiercest fighting of World War II — he received his baptism of fire on the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific.
When medics needed litter bearers to carry the horrendous amounts of GIs wounded in that battle, Mr. Possinger traded his weapon for a stretcher and embarked on what would become for him a mission of mercy during the rest of the war.
In the Philippines in 1945, he took a bullet in the chest. Remarkably, he dressed the wound himself and assisted his team of medics in removing six wounded soldiers from a mountain where they had been ambushed.
The bullet passed through his body, missing vital organs. It was a close call, but by then Mr. Possinger had suffered several wounds as a result of enemy action. He had been shot in the foot and the hip on the isle of Vella Lavella, and in the Philippines was hit by shrapnel in the right arm and wounded by a bullet in the left.
After his heroic feat helping rescue the wounded GIs from the mountain though wounded himself, Mr. Possinger was told he would be a candidate for the Medal of Honor. He never got it. Now that realization burns in his chest more than the Philippine bullet wound did.
For many years, Mr. Possinger forgot the war while building a home, marrying and raising a family. He forgot about the promised Medal of Honor. When he did think about it, evidence of his heroic action had been lost when his records were lost in a fire that destroyed a military storehouse in St. Louis.
For Mr. Possinger, the Medal of Honor means recognition and a small pension. That would help, since, at 81, he works as a guard to make ends meet.
His veteran friends and his congressman, Rep. Paul Kanjorski, have tried to help, but without evidence, Mr. Possinger’s claim to the Medal of Honor appears groundless. He needs someone to verify his statements — someone who was there. He found one survivor, but that man said his memory of the event was unclear.
Still, Mr. Possinger has not given up hope. He thinks that someone still lives who will recall that time on the Philippine hillside. He will have an opportunity to reach a wider audience this December when the Pennsylvania Cable Network televises a special presentation, “World War II: In Their Own Words.”
He is one of 80 World War II vets from Pennsylvania who will appear on the program. Mr. Possinger’s interview will be shown at 7:05 p.m. Dec. 27.
©The Times-Tribune 2005
It would be nice to see this local hero get what he deserves. [img]graemlins/moh.gif[/img]
|
