For three harrowing days, Charles H. Coolidge walked up and down the front line, leading a meager group of recruits in battle against German infantry. Time and time again, the Americans, outnumbered and untested, mounted their machine guns and somehow repelled the enemy.
But then, as the continuous fighting carried into a fourth day, two tanks advanced on their hilltop position east of Belmont-sur-Buttant, France, and a German commander — in near-perfect English — demanded surrender.
There, Coolidge — a 23-year-old technical sergeant who unexpectedly found himself as the senior enlisted man on that October day in 1944 — faced a choice.
"I'm sorry, Mac," Coolidge shouted, "you've got to come and get me."
What followed holds a place in War War II history.
link