At 0930 hours on October 28th, 1944, Staff Sergeant Lucien Adams stood 10 yards into the Mortana forest near Sand Die, France, holding a Browning automatic rifle that was not his. 22 years old, born in Port Arthur, Texas on October 26th, 1922. 18 months welding landing craft at Consolidated Iron Works before the war.
The BAR weighed 19 lb loaded, the M1918 A2 variant chambered in 306 Springfield. Behind him, 150 men from Company K, 30th Infantry Regiment, Third Infantry Division lay pinned in the mud. Three dead, six wounded in the first two minutes of German fire. Three MG42 machine guns, 1,200 rounds per minute each, locking the entire company to a 9 m advance.
The Germans had isolated the entire third battalion somewhere ahead, cutting supply lines, leaving 200 men without ammunition or medical resupply for days. Captain Morris had sent Adams forward with the borrowed bar because riflemen with M1 Garands were dying before they could acquire targets. Adams had proven himself in January at Anzio neutralized a German machine gun nest in individual combat, earned the Distinguished Service Cross and a Purple Heart for the wound that followed.
But Anzio had been open beach. This was forest. Dense canopy of beach and oak undergrowth choking visibility to 30 m on a clear day. Today was not clear. Morning fog mixed with cordite smoke. The MG42s had created interlocking fields of fire across the single trail Company K needed to advance. Rifle grenades from German positions were exploding in the treetops.
raining branches and bark fragments onto American helmets. Adams held the bar at his hip, 20 rounds in the box magazine, three spare magazines in his museette bag. 60 rounds total. No radio, no spotter, no backup plan. Morris had been direct. Make a breakthrough to get those GIS. The contradiction was simple. 150 men with standard infantry weapons could not move 9 m in 45 minutes.
Adams alone with a weapon designed for suppressive fire, not precision shooting, was expected to break three prepared defensive positions. Adams moved forward tree to tree. The bar felt wrong in his hands. He was a rifleman trained on the Garand eight rounds semi-automatic fire. The BAR was a squad automatic weapon 20 rounds select fire capability between 300 to 450 rounds per minute slow fire and 500 to 650 rounds per minute fast fire.
The weapon was designed to be fired from the shoulder or bipod in a static position. Adams was moving, dodging the bar carried at hip level because there was no time in this vegetation to properly shoulder mount and acquire sight picture. He could hear the MG42s ahead. The sound was distinctive, different from American weapons.
Not the measured crack of the Garand or the heavy thump of the BAR, but a high-pitched mechanical scream like a circular saw cutting steel. 1,200 rounds per minute produced a sound German troops called Hitler’s zipper and American infantry called the buzzsaw. Traces cut through the fog in flat trajectories.
Green phosphorescent streaks marking the beaten zone. A rifle grenade detonated 8 ft above Adams’s head. The explosion was sharp, not the heavy thump of artillery, but a crack that made his ears ring. Tree branches fell. One struck his helmet, knocked him forward a step. He kept moving. The first MG42 position was 10 yards ahead, maybe 9 m, partially concealed behind a burm of logs and earth.
Adams could see the muzzle flash, could see the barrel oscillating left to right as the gunner traversed fire across company K’s position. He did not use the bar. Too close. Full automatic fire at this range would waste ammunition and the sound would draw fire from the other two positions. Adams pulled a M2 fragmentation grenade from his harness.
The M2 was the standard American hand grenade, pineapple shape, cast iron body, fragmented into serrated squares, 6 and 12 oz total weight, filled with 2 oz of EC blank fire powder, and the bushon 4 to 5second delay fuse. Adams pulled the pin, released the spoon, counted two seconds in his head to let the fuse burn down, then threw.
The grenade traveled in a low arc, dropped into the German position. The explosion was muffled by the earthworks. The MG42 stopped firing. Adams did not wait to confirm. A German soldier appeared 10 yards to his left emerging from behind a tree. The soldier was young, maybe 18, wearing a feld bluer tunic and carrying steelhand cranata stick grenades. He threw one.
Adams saw the long wooden handle rotating through the air. Saw the cylindrical head packed with 170 g of TNT. He brought the bar up from the hip and fired a single burst. Five rounds, maybe six. The recoil pushed the muzzle up and right, but at 10 yards with a cone of fire, it did not matter. The German dropped.
The stick grenade detonated behind Adams 15 ft away. The blast wave hit him in the back, pushed him forward two steps, but the trees absorbed most of the fragmentation. Adams kept moving. The smell of cordite was thick now, mixing with the wet earthsmell of the forest and something else, something metallic and sharp. Blood from the German position ahead, or from his own men behind, he could not tell.
The second MG42 position was 15 yd forward, 14 m, slightly elevated on a natural rise in the terrain. Adams saw the muzzle flash first, then the shape of the gunner’s helmet, the distinctive coal scuttle shape of the German stalhelm. The gunner was repositioning, swinging the barrel toward Adam’s approach vector. Adams had maybe 3 seconds before the MG42 locked onto him.
He pulled his second grenade. This time, he did not cook it off. He threw immediately. The grenade sailed high, dropped behind the earthworks. Adams threw himself flat. The explosion came. He rose, brought the bar up, scanned for movement. Nothing. Two German soldiers, infantry, not machine gunners, stood up 20 ft from the destroyed position with their hands raised.
They were wearing the standard Vermach field gray, no insignia visible at this distance, both unarmed. Adams gestured with the bar muzzle pointed back toward American lines. The Germans moved. Adams did not have time or personnel to escort prisoners. Company K would collect them or they would escape. Not his problem. He checked the bar magazine.
14 rounds remaining. He ejected it. loaded a fresh 20 round magazine. His hands were shaking slightly. Adrenaline. He had felt this before at Anzio. The body’s chemical response to imminent death. Pupils dilating, heart rate increasing, time perception altering. He forced three deep breaths, a technique taught at Camp Butner during basic training.
Breathe deep. Exhale slow. Reset the nervous system. It helped marginally. The third MG42 opened fire 20 yd ahead, 18 m. This gunner had watched the first two positions fall. He was not waiting for Adams to close distance. The MG42 fire was concentrated, disciplined, not the wild traversing spray of suppressive fire, but aimed bursts, three to five round bursts walking toward Adam’s position.
The gunner could not see Adams clearly through the undergrowth, but he knew the approximate location. Adams pressed himself behind a beach tree, trunk diameter maybe 2 ft. MG42 rounds struck the tree, punched through bark embedded in wood. One round passed through completely, exited 6 in from Adam’s head.
He could feel the shock wave, could smell the burned wood and copper jacket. He needed a different approach. The first two positions had been close enough for grenades. 20 yards was beyond reliable throwing range, especially uphill through dense vegetation. He needed the BAR. Adams moved to the left side of the tree, found a narrow gap between two trunks, and brought the BAR to his shoulder.
Proper shooting position this time. stock firmly seated in the shoulder pocket. Left hand on the fortock supporting the weight. Right hand on the pistol grip, trigger finger indexed along the receiver. He thumbmed the fire selector to slow fire 300 to 450 rounds per minute. The bar iron sights were simple. A front post and rear aperture, no magnification.
Effective range may be 300 yd under ideal conditions. This was not ideal. 20 yards through fog and vegetation was borderline maximum visibility. Adams controlled his breathing. Inhale. Exhale halfway. Pause. The MG42 fired again. Adams saw the muzzle flash. A bright yellow bloom in the gray fog. He put the front sight post center mass on the flash. Squeezed the trigger.
The bar fired. eight rounds, maybe 10. The recoil was manageable in slow fire, but the muzzle still climbed. Adams kept pressure on the trigger, let the weapon cycle, kept the sight picture. The MG42 stopped firing. Adams stopped firing. Silence, then voices, German voices shouting somewhere deeper in the forest. Movement.
Adam swung the bar right, scanned through the iron sights. Five men, German infantry, moving through the trees 40 yards out, withdrawing. They had not expected Adams to break through three MG42 positions. They were retreating to reform defenses or to report. Adams fired the remainder of his magazine, 15 rounds, full automatic, spraying the area where the Germans had been. He saw two men fall.
Could not confirm if they were hits or men diving for cover. The bar bolt locked back empty. Adams ejected the magazine, loaded his last 20 round magazine, worked the charging handle to chamber around. 40 rounds expended, 20 remaining. Nine Germans dead or wounded. Three MG42 positions destroyed. The trail was open.
Adams walked back toward company K’s position. The shooting had stopped. The forest was quiet except for the distant rumble of artillery and the closer sound of men groaning. Wounded men, German and American, scattered across the 9 m Company K had gained. Captain Morris was moving forward with the lead platoon when Adams reached him.
Morris asked for a status report. Adams reported three machine gun positions neutralized, nine enemy killed, two captured, zero American casualties from his action.Morris asked about ammunition. Adams reported 20 rounds remaining. Morris told him to keep the bar until they secured the supply line. Company K advanced.
The trail was littered with German equipment, empty ammunition cans, discarded gas mask canisters, a helmet with a bullet hole through the crown. The first MG42 position was exactly where Adams had thrown the grenade. The gunner was dead, body torn by fragmentation. The MG42 was intact, barrel still hot, a 50 round belt still feeding into the receiver.
Standard German doctrine, use the ammunition until the enemy overruns your position or you die. The gunner had followed doctrine. Adams kept walking. The second position, the third position, same result. Dead gunners, functional weapons. The Germans had not abandoned their posts. They had fought until Adams killed them.
Company K reached the isolated battalion at 1300 hours. The supply line reopened. Ammunition and medical supplies moved forward. Wounded men moved back. The third battalion had been isolated for 3 days, existing on emergency rations, and whatever ammunition remained from the initial advance.
Some men had been down to five rounds per rifle. The battalion commander, a major whose name Adams never learned, personally thanked him. Adams did not remember what he said in response. He returned the bar to its designated gunner, picked up his M1 Garand, and found a place to sit. His hands had stopped shaking, but his ears were still ringing from the close-range explosions.
He ate a Kration mechanically, not tasting the food, just consuming calories because his body needed fuel. Nightfell. Adams cleaned his garand, checked the action, loaded a fresh eight round clip. The routine was automatic, muscle memory from months of repetition. Oil the boat, clean the gas system, inspect the chamber for fouling.
The weapon maintenance was meditative, a way to occupy the hands and quiet the mind after combat. Other men in the company talked, shared cigarettes, speculated about the next objective. Adams did not participate. He had learned at Anzio that combat was isolating. You could fight beside men for months and never truly know them.
The only relationship that mattered was between the soldier and his weapon. Everything else was temporary. 6 months later, April 22nd, 1945, Zeppelin Stadium in Nuremberg, Germany. The stadium had been the site of Nazi party rallies, the massive grandstand where Hitler had addressed hundreds of thousands.
Now it was occupied by the American 7th Army. Lieutenant General Alexander Patch stood on a temporary platform erected on the Zeppelin Tribune, the formal tribune where the Nazi leadership had once sat. Patch was 55 years old, commander of 7th Army since March 1944, responsible for the invasion of southern France and the subsequent drive through Alzas into Germany.
He held a sheet of paper, the official citation text approved by the War Department. Staff Sergeant Lucien Adams stood at attention 10 ft away, wearing his dress uniform, 22 years old, now 23, having passed his birthday 2 days ago on October 26th. Behind Patch, a formation of infantry officers and enlisted men from the third infantry division stood in ranks.
Behind Adams, the ruins of Nuremberg stretched into the distance, buildings shattered by Allied bombing, streets filled with rubble, the physical manifestation of the Reich’s collapse. Patch began reading the citation. For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty on 28th of October 1944 near Sandier, France when his company was stopped in its effort to drive through the Mortan forest to reopen the supply line to the isolated third battalion.
Sach Sergeant Adams braved a concentrated fire of machine guns in a lone assault on a force of German troops. Patch continued. Adams stood motionless. He had heard these words before, read them in the official notification sent 3 weeks ago, informing him he would receive the Medal of Honor. The language was formal, bureaucratic, designed to transform 10 minutes of violence into something comprehensible for official records.
Although his company had progressed less than 10 yards and had lost three killed and six wounded, Sartin Adams charged forward, dodging from tree to tree, firing a borrowed bar from the hip. Despite intense machine gun fire which the enemy directed at him and rifle grenades which struck the trees over his head, showering him with broken twigs and branches, Sergeant Adams made his way to within 10 yards of the closest machine gun and killed the gunner with a hand grenade.
The citation detailed each position, each engagement, the precise distances and methods. Nine Germans killed, three machine guns eliminated, two prisoners captured, supply line reopened. The citation concluded with the standard phrase, above and beyond the call of duty. Patch stepped forward, held out the Medal of Honor.
The medal was suspended from a light blue silk ribbon with 13white stars. The bronze star pendant featured the head of Manurva surrounded by the inscription United States of America. Adams bent slightly forward. Patch placed the ribbon around Adam’s neck. The weight was negligible, less than 2 oz, but Adams felt it.
The medal rested against his chest below the ribbons for the distinguished service cross, the purple heart, the bronze star. Patch saluted. Adams returned the salute. The formation behind Patch erupted in applause. Adams stood still. He did not smile. He did not feel pride or accomplishment or relief. He felt tired. The war in Europe was ending.
Germany would surrender in 2 weeks. The men who had fought at Sand Die were scattered now, reassigned to occupation duties, or sent home or buried in military cemeteries. Adams would return to Texas eventually, use the GI Bill for education, find work, build a life separate from the war.
But standing in Nuremberg, wearing the Medal of Honor, he felt only distance from it all. The medal was real. The citation was accurate. But the experience it described belonged to a different person in a different time. October 28th, 1944 was 6 months and a lifetime ago. Adams returned to Port Arthur, Texas in June 1945. The war with Japan continued until August, but Adams was not deployed to the Pacific.
The army offered him a promotion to warrant officer and assignment to the infantry school at Fort Benning. Adams accepted. He spent 18 months at Benning teaching marksmanship and small unit tactics to newly commissioned second lieutenants. The work was repetitive but useful. The army was transitioning from wartime mobilization to peacetime structure, consolidating lessons learned, updating doctrine, preparing for whatever conflict would come next.
Adams contributed to revised field manuals on infantry weapons employment and close quarters battle tactics. His experience at Sanda was analyzed, incorporated into training scenarios, used as a case study in individual initiative under fire. The army was interested in what had worked and why.
Adams provided technical analysis. He described the MG42 positions, the terrain, the decision process that led him to use grenades at close range and the bar at distance. He did not describe fear or adrenaline or the smell of cordite and blood. The army did not ask about those details and Adams did not volunteer them. In January 1947, Adams left active duty.
He enrolled at San Antonio College on the GI Bill, studied mechanical engineering, married a woman named Helen he had known in high school. He worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs for 40 years, moving through various administrative positions in San Antonio and eventually Houston. He attended VFW meetings occasionally, maintained contact with a few men from the Third Infantry Division, but mostly he focused on the present.
Work, family, mortgage payments, car repairs, the ordinary demands of civilian life. Adams rarely spoke about the Medal of Honor. He kept the medal in a drawer in his bedroom, wrapped in the original presentation box. Helen knew he had received it, but did not know the specific details of the action at Sandier. Adam’s children learned about their father’s Medal of Honor only when they were adults, reading about it independently, or hearing about it from relatives.
Adams did not display the medal, did not wear it at ceremonies, did not seek recognition. When the third infantry division held reunions, Adams sometimes attended, but he remained on the periphery, uncomfortable with the attention the Medal of Honor generated. Other veterans wanted to hear the story, wanted to know what it was like, wanted to thank him.
Adams deflected these conversations. He had done his job on October 28th, 1944. He had followed orders, applied his training, survived. The outcome was favorable, but not miraculous. Other men had done similar things and died. The difference between a medal of honor and aostumous silver star was often a matter of luck and timing.
Adams did not feel he deserved more recognition than those other men simply because he had survived. This perspective isolated him. American culture in the postwar decades venerated military heroism, especially Medal of Honor recipients. Adams was expected to embody that veneration to represent courage and sacrifice and national pride.
He refused, not through public statements or protest, but through quiet withdrawal. He attended when required, spoke when asked, but gave nothing beyond the minimum. The Medal of Honor was a fact of his biography, not a defining element of his identity. Lucien Adams died on March 31st, 2003 in San Antonio, Texas. He was 80 years old.
His death received brief mention in the San Antonio Express News, a short obituary noting his Medal of Honor and his 40 years of service at the VA. No extended profile, no retrospective on his military service, just the basic biographical facts. The Medal of Honor was donated to theThird Infantry Division Museum at Fort Stewart, Georgia.
It sits in a display case with other medals from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, labeled with Adam’s name and rank and the date of the action at Sand Die. Few visitors stopped to read the label. The medal is one of many. The story is one of many, and time has moved forward. The men who fought at Sand are dead now. The soldiers who witnessed Adam’s action, the Germans who defended the MG42 positions, Captain Morris who sent Adams forward, all dead.
The Mortana forest is still there, still dense with beach and oak, still difficult terrain for military operations. The German defensive positions have eroded, the foxholes and BMS collapsed and overgrown. No marker indicates where Adams killed nine men in 10 minutes and saved 200. The event exists only in official records and in the brief citation engraved on a bronze medal in a museum display case.
This is how most wartime actions end, not with monuments or memorials, but with silence and the gradual erosion of memory. Adams understood this. He had watched other men die on Guadal Canal and at Anzio and at Sand Die, men who fought with equivalent courage and skill, but whose names appeared only on casualty reports.
The Medal of Honor was arbitrary recognition for actions that thousands of men performed without recognition. Adams accepted the medal because it was awarded, wore it when required, but never believed it made him exceptional. He was a soldier who followed orders and happened to survive. That was the only truth that mattered.
Everything else was narrative constructed afterward to give meaning to violence. The bar Adams carried at Sand Die was returned to the armory after the action. Standard procedure. Personal weapons remained with the soldier, but crew served weapons and specialurpose weapons like the BAR [clears throat] were organizational property.
The specific BAR Adams used, serial number unknown, was likely destroyed after the war during demilitarization or sold as surplus. M1918 A2 BARS are common in collector’s markets now, valued for their historical significance and mechanical design. But the specific weapon Adams fired is gone. Identity lost in the mass of surplus military equipment.
The MG42s he destroyed are similarly lost. German weapons captured in France were either destroyed, sent to ordinance testing facilities or kept as war trophies by individual soldiers. The three MG42s from Sand likely ended as scrap metal, smelted down and repurposed. The men Adams killed were buried, probably in a German military cemetery, possibly in unmarked graves in the Mortia Forest.
German casualty records from October 1944 are incomplete. Many units destroyed or captured in the final months of the war. The identities of the German soldiers at Sand Die are unknown. They existed. They fought. They died and time erased them. This is the reality of war. Millions of individual actions, each involving life and death decisions, most unrecorded or recorded only in fragmentaryary form.
The official histories focus on divisions and cores, on strategic objectives and casualty statistics. Individual soldiers like Adams or the unnamed German machine gunners are footnotes mentioned in passing if at all. Adam’s action at Sand Die was exceptional only because it was documented and recognized. Thousands of similar actions occurred without documentation.
soldiers who broke enemy positions, who saved their units, who died before anyone could write a citation. Adams knew this. He carried that knowledge for 58 years after Sandier. The Medal of Honor around his neck was not proof of his exceptionalism, but evidence of chance. He had been in the right place to act, had the training and equipment to succeed, and survived to receive recognition.
Other men in identical circumstances died. The difference was luck, nothing more. If this story maintained your attention through these 4,000 words, understand that you participated in preventing Lucien Adams from disappearing into archival silence. Press the like button, subscribe to the channel, and activate notifications.
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Thank you for reading this account and thank you for ensuring that Staff Sergeant Lucien Adams, Company K, 30th Infantry Regiment, Third Infantry Division, Medal of Honor recipient for actions on October 28th, 1944 near Sand Die, France remains documented and accessible to future researchers and descendants who want to understand what their grandfathers did.
When industrial warfare demanded individual initiative,
