At 08 on January 24th, 1945, near the town of Husen, France, all hell broke loose. The ground shook. 600 German infantry from an elite SS Mountain division burst from the frozen fog. They were backed by six Mark 6 Tiger tanks, behemoths of steel. Their 88 mm cannons were already firing, turning the American front line into a landscape of ice, fire, and red snow.
The American unit in their path, the third battalion, 7th infantry, was about to be erased. In a shallow ditch, a 25-year-old lieutenant watched the chaos. He was small, barely 5’3. He was suffering from severe dysentery. He was wounded and he wasn’t even supposed to be there. He looked at the Tiger tanks advancing.
He looked at his men outnumbered 10 to one, starting to panic. And he looked at the field telephone in his hand. He had a choice. He could follow orders, save himself, and retreat to the command post. Or he could do something else. something so reckless, so suicidal, it defied every rule of warfare. He grabbed the spool of telephone wire and ran.
He didn’t run away from the attack. He ran towards it alone, straight into the blizzard of machine gun fire. What this one unassuming farmer from Kentucky did over the next 3 hours was not just bravery. It was a calculated one-man slaughter and it’s the story the US Army would try to bury for the next 50 years. This is the story of Garland Merl Connor and the unbelievable almost criminal reason.
He became World War II’s most decorated soldier and also its most forgotten. To understand what happened in that three-hour suicide mission, you first have to understand the man. And to understand the man, you have to understand the war he was fighting. It was January 1945. The Battle of the Bulge had been a disaster.
Hitler’s last great gamble in the West. But it wasn’t his only gamble. Further south in the Voge Mountains of France, Hitler launched a second lesserk known offensive, Operation Nordwind, the North Wind. It was a nightmare. The winter was the coldest in 30 years. Temperatures hit minus 20. American GIS were fighting in frozen forests against SS fanatics who knew the terrain.
It was a meat grinder, a battle of attrition. And in the middle of this frozen hell was the US Third Infantry Division, the Rock of the M. And in that division was a quiet, unassuming farm boy from Kentucky. Garland Merl Connor was not a career soldier. He wasn’t a giant. He was from a poor farming family in Clinton County.
He spent his life working the land. When he enlisted in 1941, he was 21 years old, 5’3, and weighed 112 lb, 50 kilo. He was invisible. He was the kind of man the experts and the officers overlooked. But this invisible farmer had a secret. He had pure cold Kentucky grit and he had been proving it for two straight years in some of the bloodiest battles of the war.
When the third division landed at Anzio, Italy in 1944, the situation was a disaster. The Americans were trapped on a tiny beach head surrounded by German artillery. It was a slaughterhouse. Connor was a technical sergeant then. On January 30th, 1944, his platoon was pinned down. A German machine gun nest had them zeroed in. Men were dying.
Connor didn’t wait for orders. He didn’t ask for permission. He grabbed his rifle and crawled. Alone for 75 yards across open ground with bullets snapping over his head. He got within 15 yards of the nest, raised up, and with perfect calm farmer’s aim, he killed the entire crew. His platoon advanced.
They were immediately pinned down again. By another machine gun, Connor did it again. He crawled another 60 yards under a hail of grenades and took out the second nest. His platoon advanced and was pinned down a third time. This time, Connor didn’t crawl. He got to his feet and charged straight into the enemy position, firing from the hip.
He killed the crew, captured their gun, and turned it on the retreating Germans. For this, he received his first Silver Star, the Army’s third highest medal for valor. But this was just a warm-up. Connor wasn’t a specialist. He wasn’t a sniper. He was an all-purpose killing machine. In Italy, a few weeks later, his unit was advancing and walked straight into a German minefield. Men were blown apart.
The platoon panicked. They were trapped. They couldn’t go forward. They couldn’t go back. Connor, under intense machine gun and mortar fire, got on his hands and knees and began crawling into the minefield. He probed the ground with his bayonet, finding the trip wires, finding the pressure plates.
He calmly, methodically, cleared a path, one inch at a time while explosions walked in around him. He then stood up in the minefield and guided his men one by one through the path he had cleared. He saved his entire platoon. For this he received his second silver star. Do you see the pattern? This 5’3 farmer was not human. He was an elemental force.
The army command was starting to notice. The experts were baffled. How was this one man who looked like a boy doing this?They didn’t understand. Connor wasn’t fighting for doctrine. He wasn’t fighting for regulations. He was fighting for the men beside him. He was fighting to get home to his farm. And he had a simple brutal logic.
The only way home is through them. Then came southern France. August 1944, Operation Dragoon. The third division was pushing inland. The Germans were retreating, but they were fighting for every inch. Near the town of Viron, Connor<unk>s company was ambushed. A German machine gun hidden in a house tore into them. The company commander was killed.
The unit was leaderless, shattered, bleeding in the street. Connor, now a first sergeant, became the command. He grabbed a man. Cover me. He sprinted 100 yards across a completely open street in broad daylight. Bullets tore up the pavement around his feet. He reached the house. He kicked in the door.
He cleared the entire house. Room by room by himself. He killed the fiveman machine gun crew and three riflemen who were supporting them. He then ran back across the street under the same fire, reorganized his company and led them in a successful attack. For this he received his third silver star.
Are you counting? That’s three silver stars. Most career soldiers, most generals don’t see one. Connor got three in less than nine months. But he was also collecting other medals. A bronze star for crawling 150 yards to rescue a wounded officer, dragging him back while under artillery fire. A second bronze star for single-handedly destroying another machine gun nest.
A third bronze star. four. We don’t even know. The records are so dense with bravery it’s hard to tell. And Purple Hearts, he was wounded at Anzio Shrapnel. He was wounded again in France, a bullet. He was wounded a third time. By December 1944, Garland Merl Connor was broken. He had been in combat for 28 months. He had seen more fighting, more death than any 10 men. He had severe dysentery.
His wounds were infected. He had lost 30 lb from his already small frame. He was done. The army for once did the right thing. They pulled him off the line. They gave him a battlefield commission, made him a lieutenant, and they reassigned him as the intelligence officer of the third battalion. This was the doctrine. His new job was safe.
He was supposed to sit in a command post 2,000 yd behind the front line. He was supposed to read maps, write reports, and survive. His commanders, his friends, his own men. They all told him, “Mer, you’ve done enough. Go to the rear. Go home.” Connor looked at them. He looked at the maps and he looked at the green replacement troops, kids being sent to the front line to face the SS.
And he said, “No.” This was his illegal modification. This was his refusal of the scope. He would not sit in a bunker while other men died. He would not follow regulations when he knew with his farmers logic that the experts were wrong. He knew the war wasn’t over. He knew the Germans had one more push.
And he knew he knew that his men would need him. So for the next month, Lieutenant Garland Merl Connor, the wounded, sick 5 foot3 intelligence officer, broke every rule in the book. He didn’t stay at the command post every day. He’d leave his safe bunker and sneak up to the absolute front line. Sometimes he’d sneak past it. He’d crawl out into no man’s land alone just like he did at Anio and he would watch.
He’d lie in the frozen snow for hours just watching, listening. He saw things the experts in the rear couldn’t. He saw the pattern of the German patrols. He saw where the SS were massing for an attack. He saw where the Tiger tanks were hiding. He was a ghost. He would crawl back to his lines and tell his commanders exactly where the Germans would attack and when they didn’t believe him.
Lieutenant, you’re an S2. Your job is reports. Stay off the line. Connor, you’re sick. You’re seeing things. Go to the aid station. He was the E2. He he mechanic telling the engineers the plane was broken. and [clears throat] they ignored him. This disobedience earned him his fourth Silver Star on one of his illegal scouting missions.
He saw a fellow officer, a friend, get hit by a mortar. The man was lying in the open, bleeding out. Connor again ran into the open. He picked the man up, threw him over his shoulder, and carried him back. while artillery shells, German 88s, exploded around them. The man survived. Let’s be clear. By January 1945, Garland Merl Connor was already a legend.
Four silver stars, three bronze stars, three purple hearts. He had nothing left to prove. He had done more. He had killed more. and he had saved more than an entire company of men. His war was over until January 24th, 1945 at 07 turned a.m. Connor was where he wasn’t supposed to be again. He was at a forward observation post, a shallow ditch, 300 yd in front of his own front line.
He was cold. He was sick. And he was watching the fog. He had his field telephone. The line ran 300 yards back to the artillery command. He had afeeling. The same farmer’s instinct that told him when a storm was coming. The air was too quiet. He told the command post, “They’re coming. It’s today. Get ready. The experts in the rear laughed.
Connor, go get some sleep. Our reports show no activity. Then he heard it. A low rumble. A clank. The sound of steel. It wasn’t one tank. It was many. The fog in front of him started to get darker. And at 08, the fog dissolved. It was a nightmare. Six Tiger tanks. Not panzers, not Stugs. Tigers.
The most feared weapon on Earth. And behind them, an entire battalion, 600 SS Mountain troops, shock troops, the best of the best. They were not probing. They were not scouting. They were attacking. And they were aimed directly at the weakest point in the American line. the point Connor had warned them about. The Tigers opened fire.
The 88 mm shells ripped the American line apart. Trees exploded. Men disintegrated. The American machine guns tink off the Tiger’s armor. Useless. The 600 SS infantry screaming charged forward. Connor in his ditch 300 yd in front of his friends watched his company, his men begin to break. He saw them start to run. He saw the panic. He knew.
He knew that in 60 seconds they would all be dead. The line would be broken. The Germans would be through. The experts were wrong. The regulations were wrong. Everything was wrong. He looked at his field telephone. He had a direct line to hell. He was connected to the entire American artillery command. Dozens of 105 mm and 155 mimi howitzers just waiting for a target.
He was an S2, an intelligence officer. His doctrine, his orders were to observe, report, and retreat. He was supposed to save himself. He saw the lead Tiger 500 yd away from him. He saw the SS infantry 400 yd away. He saw his friends 300 yd behind him dying. Garland Merl Connor, the 5’3 farmer, the man who was already a hero, the man who was sick, wounded, and broken, made his choice.
He was not going to retreat. He was not going to run. [clears throat] He was going to hunt. He unspooled his telephone wire. He checked his connection. He picked up the receiver. And he did not stay in the ditch. This is the moment. The story becomes unbelievable. He left the safety of his forward ditch and began to crawl towards the 600 SS towards the six Tiger tanks.
He moved 40 yards further into no man’s land. He found a small crater barely 3 ft deep. He unspooled his wire. He laid down in the snow. He was now 250 yards in front of the American lines. He was in the middle of the German attack. The 600 SS were advancing past him. On his left and on his right, he could hear them shouting in German.
He could smell the diesel fumes from the Tigers. He was surrounded. He picked up the phone. He got the artillery commander on the line. The commander in the rear was in a panic. Connor, what is your position? We have to pull back. Connor<unk>’s voice was calm, cold, the voice of a farmer, looking at a storm.
He said, “I am 200 yd from the enemy. They are all around me.” The commander was confused. “What? What are you doing? Get out of there.” And this is what Garland Merl Connor said next. A line that should be in every history book. He said, “Sir, I want you to bring the artillery directly on me.” The artillery commander on the other end of the line was silent.
What Connor had just requested wasn’t bravery. It was suicide. Artillery doctrine had one unbreakable rule. You never fire on your own positions. It was called danger close. Firing within 600 yd of your own men was a risk. Firing within 200 yd was unthinkable. Firing directly on an officer was murder.
The commander’s voice came back strained. Negative, Lieutenant. Negative. What’s your position? We’re pulling back. Connor, lying in the snow with 600 SS troops screaming and Tiger tanks clanking, had no time for confusion. He could see his battalion’s line wavering. He could see men starting to run. He screamed into the phone. No, I am not pulling back.
I am at coordinate grid. He read the map coordinates. The enemy is with me. They are all around me. You will fire on my position or we will all be dead. In 5 minutes, the line will break. This was the moment. The expert in the rear versus the farmer in the field, the artilleryman hesitated.
He knew that firing on that coordinate would not just kill Connor. It would kill dozens of American GIs who were still trying to hold the line 300 yd behind him. But Connor knew his math. He knew the blast radius. He knew that 300 yd was the safety line, just barely. He was ordering fire in the gap. The 250yard no man’s land he had crawled into.
The artillery commander made his choice. He trusted the man in the snow. His voice came back grim. Range confirmed. Firing solution. On your coordinate. Shells on the way. And then Garland Merl Connor began the hunt. He wasn’t a soldier anymore. He was a conductor. And he was about to orchestrate a symphony of total destruction. The first shells wereranging shots.
They landed 100 yd behind him, dangerously close to his own men. Connor grabbed the phone. Too far. Bring it 100 yd closer on me. The artillery man adjusted. The next shells were closer. The sound was different. It wasn’t a distant boom. It was a whistling scream. The 105 mm shells. His own shells landed 50 yards away. The explosions were deafening.
The ground jumped. Hot razor sharp shrapnel. His own shrapnel hissed over his head. It sliced. The frozen air thudding into the snow banks around his crater. He was inside his own kill zone. And now he went to work. He looked up. The lead Tiger tank, the one that had started the attack, was 200 yd away. It had stopped.
It was a mobile fortress firing its ADB 80 meter cannon. Thump, thump, thump. Ripping his battalion’s command post to shreds. Connor put the phone to his mouth. He was calm. Target Tiger 200 yd north of my position. Fire for effect. The commander in the rear relayed the order. Fire for effect.
Dozens of guns all at once fired. Connor did not flinch. He watched the sky tore open. A wave of high explosive shells walked across the snow directly towards the Tiger tank. The shells blanketed the area. The SS infantry around the tank vanished. They didn’t fall. They disintegrated. One 2 3 5 direct hits on the Tiger.
The 80ton ton behemoth shuddered. Its 80D mimes gun went silent. The tank was dead. The experts in the rear were cheering. They had stopped a tiger. Connor didn’t pause. He was already scanning for his next target. He was the simple trick. He was the one man who understood that the experts were wrong. Now, let’s pause.
Let’s look at this from the German perspective. The German attack was being led by an experienced SStorban furer, major, a veteran of the Eastern Front. He had seen everything. He looked at the American GIS as soft farmers, shopkeepers, not real soldiers. His plan was perfect. His intelligence was perfect.
The Americans were not expecting an attack. His six Tiger tanks were invincible. This was not a battle. This was a cleanup. The attack began at 08 Tour. By 0805, everything was going to plan. The American line was breaking. He could see them running. He smiled. He gave the order for his lead Tiger. Tank 101 to advance and destroy the command post. Victory was minutes away.
And then it happened. The sky exploded. But this was not the random panicked artillery he expected. This was different. It was accurate. He watched in horror as his lead tiger, his invincible machine, was blasted into scrap metal. His cleanup had just stopped. The major was confused. How? How did they do that? His men reported. No. American spotters.
The Americans were retreating. It must be a lucky guess. A one ina million shot. He was furious. He screamed into his radio. Advance all units do not stop. Vorartz. He ordered his second Tiger tank to move up and he ordered his elite SS infantry to charge. Now back to Connor. He saw the second tiger moving up.
He saw the wave of 600 SS stand up and begin to charge. They were screaming. They were 400 yardds away. Connor was calm. He was a farmer planning his harvest. He knew he could not stop them all. At once he had to break their will. How do you do that? You don’t kill the men. You kill their leaders.
He scanned the charging wave, ignoring the bullets that were snapping past his head. He was looking for the officers, the men with the maps. He was looking for the radio men, the men with the antennas. He was looking for the machine guns, the MG42s. That gave them courage. He saw them. A cluster of SS running together. An MG42 team setting up.
Connor put the phone to his mouth. Target MG42 300 yd center. Fire. The sky screamed. The MG42 and its fiveman crew vanished. He saw another group, an officer, waving his arm, pointing, “Target officer, 250 yds, left flank, fire.” The sky screamed. The officer disappeared. This was the psychological terror.
Let’s go back to the German side. The SS infantry were not farmers. They were fanatics. They were not afraid of dying, but they were now terrified. This was not war. This was magic. This was a ghost. Every time an officer gave an order, he exploded. Every time a machine gun tried [clears throat] to fire, it exploded.
The artillery was not random. It was thinking. It was watching them. It knew who they were. A young SS soldier, Hans, 18 years old, watched his sergeant point. And then his sergeant was gone. He watched his friend Carl set up their MG42. And then Carl was gone. Hans stopped charging. He dropped into the snow.
He was not fighting the Americans. He was fighting an invisible god all across the 400yard front. The invincible SS charge faltered. The men stopped running. They dove for cover. They were paralyzed. The entire German attack was stuck. The experts were wrong. The doctrine was wrong. One 5’3 farmer had broken an entire SS battalion in less than 10 minutes.
But the battle was not over. It was just beginning.This was not a 10-minute fight. This was a threehour war. The German commander was panicked. But he was not stupid. He realized what was happening. It is not a ghost, he screamed into his radio. It is a baobob, an observer. He is close. He is in the field.
The only way the artillery could be this accurate is if the observer was with them. The major gave the same order as any desperate commander. Grid square removal. He ordered his own mortars, his own artillery to erase the entire field. “Fo, Alf, Zector, C4,” he screamed. “Fire on sector C4.” The exact grid Connor was in now.
Garlin Merl Connor was not just in his own kill zone. He was in theirs. For the next two hours, Connor lay in that crater. He was in hell. His own 105 mm shells were exploding 50 yards in front of him. German 81 mm mortars were exploding 100 yards behind him. Shrapnel from both armies filled the air. The noise was not sound. It was a physical force.
The ground never stopped shaking and Garland Merl Connor never stopped hunting. He saw the second Tiger Tank trying to sneak to the flank of his battalion. He screamed into the phone. Over the explosions, “Tiger, moving east, 400 yd. Stop it!” the sky screamed. The shells walked up to the tank. A direct hit broke its tread. The tank was crippled.
It spun in a [clears throat] circle. It became a steel coffin. Two Tigers down. The German commander was losing his mind. His tanks were dying. His men were hiding. He had to find the observer. He ordered his third and fourth tiger not to attack the Americans, but to hunt the observer.
He told them to fire their 80D bent bacon a mate me cannons at every ditch, every crater, every possible hiding place in the field. And then it happened. A German mortar fired by a terrified crew flew over the field. It landed 10 yards, 10 from Connor<unk>’s crater. The concussion was unimaginable. It lifted his 112lb body out of the ditch.
It slammed him back onto the frozen ground. His teeth rattled. His wounds from France tore open. A new piece of shrapnel buried itself in his hip. He was bleeding heavily. He ignored it. He crawled back into the crater. He felt the hot blood soaking his pants. He picked up the phone. His voice was still calm.
Target mortar position 600 yd northwest. Silence them. The sky screamed. The mortars went silent. This was grit. This was the farmer’s logic. The only way to stop the pain was to win. He kept fighting for another hour. He broke every new German attack. He crippled a third tiger. He was winning. He was winning and then disaster. The fatal flaw, the broken machine.
A German 88 mm shell fired from one of the hunting tigers screamed over his head. It was not aimed at him. It was aimed at the American line 300 yd behind him. But that is exactly where his wire was. The shell exploded. It cut the line. The phone in Connor<unk>’s hand went dead. Silence.
The artillery commander in the rear panicked. Connor. Connor, report. Merl, report. Nothing. The ghost was gone. The commander stopped firing. The German major on the German side heard the silence. The American artillery stopped. He smiled. The ghost was dead. The observer was dead. His mortars, his tanks had found him. He screamed into his radio.
The last order. Vorartz. Alismaner. Fuvance. Forward. All men. Forward. The ghost is dead. Attack the remains of the SS battalion. The last three Tiger tanks rose from the snow. They began to charge. [clears throat] This time, nothing could stop them. Connor in his crater was now truly alone. He was trapped.
He was 250 yards inside the German lines and he was bleeding out. He was a dead man. He looked at the dead phone in his hand. He looked at the broken wire leading back 300 yd across a field that was now swarming with charging SS. He looked at the advancing Tiger tanks. He had another choice. He could stay in the crater and die.
He could surrender and die. Or he could do what Garland Merl Connor always does. He could fix the broken machine. He [clears throat] left his crater. He got on his stomach and he began to crawl back towards his own lines, dragging the broken wire in his hand. This was not a crawl. This was an agony. He was not crawling to safety.
He was crawling across the battlefield. The charging SS were behind him. They were shooting at the American lines. Bullets cracked over his head. He crawled over the bodies of the men he had killed. He could hear the Tigers getting closer. And then the Americans saw him. A machine gunner in the American line 300 yd away saw a figure moving in the snow.
He couldn’t tell who it was. It was in front of the German attack. It had to be a German scout. The American machine gun opened fire on him. Tracers ripped the snow around his head. He was being shot at by both sides. He kept crawling. He was losing so much blood his hip was shattered. But he saw it.
The other end of the wire lying in a crater 100 yards from the American line. He dove into the crater. His hands werefrozen, numb. He could not feel his fingers. He pulled out his knife. He stripped the two ends of the wire. He had to twist them together. But his hands would not work. He dropped his knife. He dropped the wires. The SS were 150 yards away.
The Tigers were firing. His own men were shooting at his crater. He grabbed the wires again. He put them in his mouth and he stripped the insulation with his teeth. He held the two live copper wires together in his bloody frozen hand. [clears throat] The line crackled. The artillery commander in the rear who was screaming into a dead phone heard it.
A crackle and then a voice, a whisper full of pain and ice. Fire. Connor still lying in the open 100 yards from his own line holding the wires together. Restarted the hunt, the charging SS were now 75 yd from the American line. They were in the final charge. This was the end. Connor screamed into the phone.
his last command. All guns, all guns, 75 yds in front of me. Fire, fire, fire. This was not precision. This was not hunting. This was annihilation. The entire American artillery battalion 18 guns unleashed everything. They stopped aiming. They just fired as fast as they could load. The sky disintegrated. The 75yard strip of land between Connor and his men ceased to exist.
It became a wall of fire and steel and death. The SS charge hit that wall and it vanished. Hundreds of men gone in seconds. The last Tiger tanks now with no infantry. Their crews broken and terrified. Stopped. They fired. One last blind shot. And they turned. They retreated. The battle was over. Silence fell on the field. The three-hour war was done.
Connor let go of the wires. The phone went dead this time for good. He pushed himself up. He stood covered in blood and dirt. His uniform in shreds, his hip shattered. He began to walk the last 100 yards back to his own line. The American GIS, the machine gunners who had been shooting at him, stopped firing.
They watched this ghost walk out of the smoke. They could not believe what they were seeing. He walked past the front line. He walked past his battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Smith, who had run up from the command post. Smith looked at this ghost, his face white. Merl, my god, I I thought you were dead. Connor limped past him.
He handed the commander the broken field telephone. His voice a rasp. I had to fix the wire. And then Garlin Merl Connor, the farmer from Kentucky, collapsed into the snow. Lieutenant Colonel Smith, Garland Merl Connor<unk>’s commanding officer, stared at the man who had just collapsed. He was the ghost from the smoke. He was the man who had just saved them all.
Smith knelt beside Connor. The medics were already there, frantically cutting away the shreds of his uniform. The sight was horrifying. The man was soaked in blood, not just his own. His hip was a mass of torn flesh and white bone. His hands were frozen into claws. His face was black from the cordite, the smoke, and the frostbite.
His lips were split open and bleeding from where he had chewed the telephone wire. He was not a man. He was a sacrifice. The American GIS, the men who had been shooting at him, just watched. They were silent. They had just witnessed a miracle. They had been running. They had been panicked. And this one man, this 5 foot3 farmer had refused to die.
The medics lifted him. He was so light, 112 lbs. As they carried him away, the entire battalion watched. They did not cheer. They were in awe. It was the silence of respect. The ghost had saved them. The battle was over. Now came the accounting. When the American patrols finally advanced into the field, the kill zone. They stopped.
They could not believe what they were seeing. It was not a battlefield. It was a graveyard. The snow was not white. It was black from the explosions and red from the blood. There were no wounded. The artillery Connor had called was so accurate, so brutal, it had left nothing whole.
They counted the bodies over 50 SS dead, hundreds more wounded, dragged away by their retreating comrades. They found the burning hulks of three Tiger tanks and three more crippled or abandoned. The entire German attack of 600 men and six Tiger tanks had been stopped, broken, and annihilated by one man. A man with a broken phone and unbreakable grit.
This should have been the end of the story. This should have been the moment Garland Merl Connor became the most famous soldier in the world. His commander, Lieutenant Colonel Smith, knew what he had seen. This was not a silver star. This was not a distinguished service cross. This was not bravery. This was beyond human. Smith ran to his command post.
He took a pen and he wrote the recommendation for the Medal of Honor, the highest award the nation can give. He didn’t just recommend. He begged. He wrote, “This is the single greatest act of heroism I have [snorts] ever witnessed.” He described everything. The SS, the Tiger tanks, the three-hour hunt, the call for fire on[clears throat] me.
The broken wire, the crawl under fire, the teeth, the final stand. He sent the report up the chain. And this is where the story truly breaks your heart. This is the injustice, the experts in the rear. The generals, the colonels, the paper pushers in the headquarters received the report. They read it and they did not believe it. Think about it.
You are a general. You are safe 20 m behind the war. You are reading hundreds of reports every day. heroism, bravery, distinguished action, and you get this report. a 5’3″ lieutenant who already has four silver stars ran into six Tiger tanks called artillery on himself for three hours, crawled under fire from both sides, fixed a wire with his teeth, and walked home. It sounds impossible.
It sounds insane. It sounds like an exaggeration. It sounds like a mistake. The experts looked at the doctrine. They looked at the regulations. No soldier is trained to do this. No soldier could do this. No soldier would do this. It was the same logic that told officers that doctrine is [clears throat] everything.
The experts knew better. This must be an error. The commander Smith must have been emotional. It’s impossible. So they lost the paperwork. It vanished. It disappeared into the bureaucracy of the US Army. The war was ending. Millions of men were going home. Who cares about one more report about one more farmer from Kentucky? Garland Merl Connor was sent to a hospital. His war was over.
He was given his fourth purple heart. He was given the distinguished service cross. The second highest medal a thank you for his service but not the medal of honor, not the recognition for Jan 24th. The one day he saved them all. The army had buried it. And what happens to a man who was the deadliest soldier in the world when the war is over? What happens to the ghost? When the snow melts, Connor didn’t complain. He didn’t ask for fame.
He didn’t write a book. He never spoke about that day. He was a quiet man, a humble man. He went home back to Kentucky. He married his sweetheart Pauline. He was given a small farm by the government a reward for his service and for the next 50 years. Garlin Merl Connor, the most decorated soldier of World War II, the man who hunted Tiger tanks alone, did exactly what he did before the war. He farmed.
He raised his family. He worked his land. He battled his wounds. every single day. The shrapnel in his hip, the memories in his head. His neighbors knew he was a hero. They saw the DSC. They saw the four silver stars, but they did not know the full story because he never told them. He was a quiet hero. When reporters found him and asked him, “How did you do it?” He gave the same farmer’s logic. He shrugged.
I just did what I had to do. The story should end there. A quiet hero, forgotten by the experts, remembered by his family. But it doesn’t because there was one other man, a [clears throat] man who knew the truth. His name was Richard LM Lynch. He was another Kuckian. He had served in the third division.
He knew the legend of Garland Merl Connor. and he knew that a DSC was not enough. He knew about January 24th in 1995, 50 years after the battle, Richard Lynch started a new war. A war against the Pentagon, a war against bureaucracy. He refused to let the experts win. He knew the broken phone mattered. He spent years digging through archives.
He found it. The original lost report written by Colonel Smith. buried in a file, ignored for 50 years. He found the artillery commander log the proof of the coordinates. He found the German afteraction reports that proved the SS battalion had collapsed. for no explainable reason. He found the witnesses, the men who were there, the men who saw the ghost walk out of the smoke, and he presented all of it to the US Army. The army read it.
The new experts looked at the evidence and this time 50 years late they believed it. The injustice was too big to ignore the bureaucracy. Admitted it was wrong. Garland Merl Connor was 79 years old. He was dying, his body broken from a lifetime of wounds and farming. He was in a hospital bed in Kentucky and the phone rang.
It was not a field telephone. It was the president of the United States telling a quiet farmer that after 53 years, his nation was finally ready to say thank you. He was too sick to travel. He died just two months later in March 1998. But before he died, he knew he knew the experts hadn’t won. He knew his story would be told.
The medal was presented to his widow, Pauline, in a ceremony at the White House. Garland Merl Connor, four silver stars, three bronze stars, yours four purple hearts, one distinguished service cross, and now one medal of honor. He is officially thitis most decorated soldier of the second world war.
More than Audi Murphy, more than General Patton, more than anyone. That is how wars are truly fought. And that is how history is truly made. It isn’t always the experts with their doctrine. It isn’t always the generalswith their grand plans. Sometimes it’s a 5 foot3 farm boy from Kentucky bleeding in a crater fixing a broken wire with his teeth. That is grit.
And that is a story that deserves to never be forgotten. If you found this story as compelling as we did, please take a moment to like this video. It helps us share more forgotten stories from the Second World War. Subscribe to stay connected with these untold histories. Each one matters. Each one deserves to be remembered.
And we’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment below telling us where you’re watching from. Our community spans from Texas to Tasmania. From veterans to history enthusiasts, you’re part of something special here. Thank you for watching and thank you for keeping these stories alive.
