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Medal of Honor recipient who fought off waves of Germans in WWII dies at 94

P

Piecake

Member
Retired Master Sgt. Wilburn K. Ross, an Army machine-gunner who received the Medal of Honor for single-handedly fighting back eight German counterattacks during a World War II battle in France, died May 9 in Washington state. He was 94.

Sgt. Ross — then a private — served in the Army’s storied 3rd Infantry Division during World War II and saw combat in Morocco and Italy, where he was wounded by shrapnel in 1943. A year later, his unit had pushed on to eastern France, where it encountered elite German alpine troops in the Vosges Mountains.

On Oct. 30, 1944, Sgt. Ross’s company took heavy casualties from German forces, losing 55 of its 88 men. About 11:30 a.m., Sgt. Ross moved to a forward position, 10 yards beyond his company’s riflemen, and set up his light machine gun.

He was an open target for German marksmen and artillery fire, yet he held steady for five hours, carrying on what was virtually a one-man battle.

“His position seemed to be on fire,” a U.S. officer who witnessed the battle said afterward, “because of the explosions all around him.”

Wave after wave of German soldiers attacked Sgt. Ross’s position, yet he managed to repel successive counterattacks with well-aimed machine-gun fire.

At one point, he grabbed a rifle from a wounded soldier nearby and aimed it toward approaching enemy troops. The rifle was struck by a German bullet, rendering the gun useless, but Sgt. Ross was not hurt.

“I throwed that thing down,” Sgt. Ross told the website Militaryvaloan.com in 2013, “and I had that machine gun pouring.”

When his machine gun temporarily ran out of ammunition, Sgt. Ross refused to abandon his post.

“He merely shook his head,” William T. Wardell, a lieutenant in the unit, said in 1945.

With the few surviving U.S. riflemen reduced to fixing their bayonets for hand-to-hand combat, German troops crawled as close as four yards to Sgt. Ross’s machine-gun nest.

They were to toss grenades into his emplacement when he received a fresh supply of ammunition.

“He opened up as they swarmed him, firing short bursts,” Wardell said. “In less than a minute I saw 50 Germans fall dead or wounded around his machine gun. When the enemy turned and ran, corpses were piled high around the gun.”

Sgt. Ross “broke the assault single-handedly, and forced the Germans to withdraw,” according to his citation for the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest award for valor.

He killed or wounded at least 58 German soldiers and “saved the remnants of his company from destruction.”

He stayed by his gun through the night and next day, prepared for a possible return by enemy forces. After 36 hours, it was clear that the Germans had abandoned the field.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...s-810pm:homepage/story&utm_term=.c82b399a1507

Damn, what a boss
 
oxrock

oxrock

Gravity is a myth, the Earth SUCKS!
RossWilburn1494526681.jpg
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The man sounds like a real bad ass, much respect.
 
T

TangoAlphaLima

Member
It's worthwhile to note that the vast majority of Medals of Honor are given out posthumously (after the soldier died in combat). So for this guy to have received one for his actions while still living really says a lot.
 
Goro Majima

Goro Majima

Kitty Genovese Member
RIP

Not many veterans from that war left. My dad lied about his age at 15 and joined up in 1945. He was 85 when he passed away and was theoretically about as young as you could get during the war.
 
poodaddy

poodaddy

Member
Can't believe he's gone but I'm proud to have met him. I had no idea about his past though, he must not have been much of a braggart. He was often at the same VA hospital that I go to; the American Lake VA in Lakewood, WA. He was a wonderfully kind man who never failed to have a crayon for my daughter when he saw her lol.

It's a small world. I wish I would have known who he was so I could have saluted his accomplishments, but I'm proud to have made his acquaintance and shaken his hand.
 
J

jfkgoblue

Member
Fun fact about Medal of Honor recipients. No matter their rank, or the rank you are. It is required that you salute them. So a 4 star general running into this guy (a sgt or e-5), would be required to salute him, not the other way around which is customary.
 
D

DeathoftheEndless

Crashing this plane... with no survivors!
poodaddy said:
Can't believe he's gone but I'm proud to have met him. I had no idea about his past though, he must not have been much of a braggart. He was often at the same VA hospital that I go to; the American Lake VA in Lakewood, WA. He was a wonderfully kind man who never failed to have a crayon for my daughter when he saw her lol.

It's a small world. I wish I would have known who he was so I could have saluted his accomplishments, but I'm proud to have made his acquaintance and shaken his hand.
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That's really cool.
 
V

Vibranium

Banned
Hero. Can't express how much respect I have for people of character who fight in such horrible wars. Less and less WWII veterans every day due to the passage of time, man...
 
L

Linkstrikesback

Member
Earthbound64 said:
It's a real shame that soon everyone who participated in that war will have passed on...
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Not really. It's only a shame if the world forgets the cost of lives, the damage to land, and the world from the war, and lets some similar atrocity happen again.

If anything, it's a blessing that we've not had a similar scale global war to replace it and we can be at the point in time where you can say that, and that the surviving veterans of those wars could live the rest of their life in (relatively) peaceful times.
 
F

FantasticMrFoxdie

Mumber
Oh man that story.

RIP Soldier

Earthbound64 said:
It's a real shame that soon everyone who participated in that war will have passed on...
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Its a scary thought to me.

We may think our youth are desensitized because of the internet, but its going to be a forgotten thought in humanity's mind. Global scale war is seemingly a history that can't stop repeating itself.
 
E

Earthbound64

Banned
Linkstrikesback said:
Not really. It's only a shame if the world forgets the cost of lives, the damage to land, and the world from the war, and lets some similar atrocity happen again.

If anything, it's a blessing that we've not had a similar scale global war to replace it and we can be at the point in time where you can say that, and that the surviving veterans of those wars could live the rest of their life in (relatively) peaceful times.
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They will.

fFwaI32.jpg


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xdRAMDV.jpg



FantasticMrFoxdie said:
Global scale war is seemingly a history that can't stop repeating itself.
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Indeed.
:(
 
Ray Wonder

Ray Wonder

Founder of the Wounded Tagless Children
Holy shit that story is amazing. A genuine hero soldier. Singlehandedly saving his whole company, wiping out over 50 German soldiers.

Rest in peace you magnificent man.
 
Patrick S.

Patrick S.

Banned
What a hero.

My grandpa was one of the bad guys during WW2, but he was in the Kriegsmarine serving on a Raubvogel-class torpedo boat, and somehow once saved the ship, and the crew from dying. He had both iron crosses, and other medals, but came into British captivity and they were taken from him. I'd have loved to have inherited some medal of valor from him :(
 
V

Violater

Member
Wow, how is it this is the first time I am hearing about Sgt. Ross.

This man's family should never want for anything.
Someone needs to make this movie like now.
 
L

Linkstrikesback

Member
Earthbound64 said:
They will.

Indeed.
:(
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You say it, but ignore what videogames have taught you. Despite everything that's happened since WW2, it's not repeated in over 70 years, while it only took about 21 years from the end of WW1 to the start of WW2.

Now obviously there are a lot of very complicated reasons for that (funnily enough), but we're doing alright. I don't say it often, but just assuming the worst isn't the smartest thing.

Earthbound64 said:
Considering that those people wanted to kill more, and were under orders from those who wanted to kill far more... I seriously doubt that.
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Ridiculous. The soldiers on the other side probably didn't want to kill anyone either, but people being able to semi rationalise things under following orders is such thing that it has it's own name in law - the Nuremberg defense - that got its name from the trails at the end of WW2. The vast majority of enemy soldiers wouldn't have wanted to be there either, and the ones that did would have been mostly because of heavy propaganda.

No sane person could possibly murder 50 people, soldiers or otherwise without serious mental tolls. At the time, he did what he had to, but that doesn't make it easy.
 
G

GeordieMark

Member
It's pretty much incomprehensible to me how these guys coped. I get stressed about inconsequential meetings at work sometimes. I don't think I would have lasted a couple of minutes in his position. Incredible bravery and resilience.
 
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