19-Year-Old Staff Sergeant Awarded Nation’s Top Honor

By Bob Moors Stars and Stripes Staff Writer

LANDSHUT, Germany, July 4—S/Sgt James R. Hendrix, a red-haired, freckle-faced 19-year-old farmboy from Arkansas, was summoned from guard duty into the awesome sanctum of Fourth Armored Division Headquarters here yesterday and informed that he had been awarded the nation’s highest decoration—the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Hendrix had won the medal as a private by single-handedly silencing two German 88 mm. guns, capturing their crews, wiping out two machine-gun nests, saving three comrades from death and attempting to save a fourth trapped in a burning halftrack.

The action took place in the Battle of the Bulge last December as his outfit, Company C, of the 53rd Armored Infantry Battalion, was fighting its way into Bastogne to relieve the 101st Airborne Division.

Thirty-nine-pointer Hendrix could request discharge as a CMH winner but says he will not. “I want to come back with the Fourth Armored after a furlough in the States and maybe stay in the Army for good,” he said.

Hendrix is a quiet, modest kid who shuns attention of any kind; typically, he was wounded three times in eight months of fighting, but never bothered to go to the medics.

When the major who broke the news asked him where he wanted to receive the decoration, here or in Washington, he replied promptly: “Washington, sir.”

Red probably would have decided otherwise if he had known President Truman is expected to pin on his award at a ceremony and review. All Red had in mind was that he had been stationed near Washington before coming over and knew the city well. Also he would be able to visit his parents, Pearl and James Hendrix Sr., on their farm in Lepanto, Ark., where Red had helped raise corn and cotton until he joined the Army Nov. 9, 1943.

When the major asked whether he wanted to go home via ship or plane, he said quickly: “Please, sir, I have never been in one before.”

Just what happened that confused night on the approaches to Bastogne is hard to piece together from what Red tells. “It’s all right there in the citation,” he says. “For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life and above and beyond the call of duty,” was the way the War Department worded it in its prosaic style.

“On the night of December 26, 1944, a task force was engaged in a final thrust to break through to the besieged garrison at Bastogne. When leading elements were halted by a fierce combination of anti-tank, artillery and small-arms fire in the town of Assenois, Pvt Hendrix dismounted and advanced upon two 88 mm. gun crews, and by the ferocity of his actions compelled the German gun crews first to take cover and then surrender.

Hendrix says merely: “We ran up on ’em yelling ‘come out,’ but they wouldn’t. One poked his head out of a foxhole and I shot him through the neck. I got closer and hit another on the head with the butt of my M1. He had American matches on him. Others came out then with their hands up.”

“Later in the attack this fearless soldier again left his vehicle voluntarily to aid two wounded soldiers threatened by enemy machine-gun fire. Effectively silencing two enemy machine-guns, he held off the enemy by his own fire until the wounded men were evacuated.”

“I just shot at the machine-guns like all the 50s on half-tracks were doing,” is Hendrix’s persistent version. “A half-track had been hit pretty bad and these fellows were wounded and lying in a ditch. Machine-gun fire was mostly toward them, but some bullets were coming my way.”

Continuing the attack, Hendrix again distinguished himself when he hastened to aid still another soldier who was trapped in a burning halftrack. Braving enemy sniper fire and exploding mines and ammunition in the vehicle he extricated the wounded man from the conflagration and extinguished his flaming clothing with own body thereby saving the life of his fellow soldier.

“A grenade exploded between his legs and everybody else got out. But he was hollering for help.” Hendrix said. “I tugged at him and got him out on the road, but he was badly burned. I tried to find water to put out the flames but the water cans were full of bullet holes, so I beat out the flames as best I could. He died later.”

All company commanders who were with Red then either have been killed or wounded, but the present CO, 1st Lt Melvin L. Schuweiler, of Charlottesville, Va., was high in praise of the boyish soldier.

“He hasn’t got much formal education, only went to the fourth grade, but I’ve never seen a guy with more common sense. He’s got guts, but sense enough to go with them.”

Hendrix, who is the third Fourth Armored man to win the CMH, also wears the Combat Infrantryman’s Badge and the Presidential Citation ribbon, which was awarded the division.