Tennessee’s bravest man refused to surrender in WWII
"I'm sorry, Mac, you've got to come and get me." With those words, Charles H. Coolidge brazenly defied a German commander's order to surrender, going from small-town bookbinder to national hero. More than 70 years later, he is Tennessee's only living Medal of Honor recipient.
Chattanooga — The fight seemed futile.
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 World War II history.
Today, Coolidge is the only living Medal of Honor recipient in Tennessee.
A Chattanooga park is named after him. He is one of a dozen soldiers whose youthful photos are featured on the cover of the Forever stamp sheet issued by the U.S. Postal Service.
And while, just shy of his 94th birthday, his body needs an electric wheelchair and nurse, his mind remains on point. He recalls, in great detail, the four cold, rainy days that changed his life.
“It’s interesting how the world changes complexion,” he says, resting a head of white-gray hair against a pillow on his wheelchair’s headrest. “And what you do to survive.”
The bazooka Coolidge carried on that October day more than 70 years ago failed to fire, and the German commander stared him down from the turret of a tank so close Coolidge could nearly touch it.
In that moment, all that had come before — hundreds upon hundreds of days of survival in a brutal world war — could have come to a deadly end for him. But Coolidge, a brown-haired, brown-eyed son of a printer from Signal Mountain, was, by now, seasoned in combat.
For more than a year, he had chased the retreating Germans through Europe.
He remembers descending the rope ladder into the ocean swells in the summer of 1943, after months of training and a 13-day voyage to Oran, Algeria, a city on the coast of North Africa. He recalls riding small boats ashore with 40-pound machine guns, men drowning in the water before they even became part of the infantry push through the Mediterranean and the thick of fighting in Italy.
Once on the ground, there were moments both surreal and brutal. A day when soldiers paid farmers for watermelon and cantaloupe crops crushed by their marching boots, and others when they captured sheep from the countryside, forcing them by bayonet across enemy minefields.
As Coolidge’s unit went up the boot of Italy and crossed the Rapido River to engage the Germans at Monte Cassino, the fighting was vicious and the American losses heavy — more than 2,300 casualties. All the while, the communication home was fleeting.
The still youthful-faced civilians who left ordinary day jobs to save the world went for months with no knowledge, no letters or no input from their families. And the information they shared, too, was sparse. “I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t know that I was fighting at the Rapido and Cassino,” Coolidge wrote to his mother in July 1944. “That would have only made you worry all the more.”
“I am well,” he added, “and feeling fine.”
But, for him, the most significant fight was yet to come.
On Oct. 24, 1944, after battling northward through France, Coolidge led a group of fewer than 30 machine gunners and riflemen through cold rain and dense woods to a hilltop where they were to hold a vital position near the German border.
As he and another sergeant went forward to coordinate gunfire, they unexpectedly met an enemy force.
Coolidge — attempting to bluff — asked them to surrender, but the brash move didn’t work. Instead, they set their sights on Coolidge’s fellow sergeant and Coolidge responded, wounding two Germans with his short-barreled firearm before retreating with his injured friend from a blast of automatic weapons.
It was the first of several valiant acts that would earn Coolidge recognition.
For the next two days, Coolidge assumed command. Undeterred by close-range enemy fire, he encouraged his inexperienced men. “I just took over,” Coolidge says. “It was self-preservation.”
Then, on Oct. 27, two tanks burst from the wooded hillside, sweeping the area with small-arms, machine gun and tank fire.
That is how Coolidge came to face the beastly armored vehicles and defy the orders of a German commander with the words “come and get me.”
Coolidge armed himself with a bazooka and advanced to within 25 yards of the tanks. When the bazooka failed, he threw it aside. Then, defying the German commander’s request for surrender, he dodged five point-blank shots from an 85 mm tank gun, slipping behind tree trunks a step ahead of the slow-moving machine.
“I guess he thought it would do the job,” Coolidge says, his aged eyes glimmering with a smile at the memory, “but it didn’t.”
Coolidge, yet undeterred, again advanced. He launched all the hand grenades he could carry, inflicting stunning casualties — but not enough of them.
It would later be reported that Coolidge and his men killed 26 Germans and wounded 60 others in that battle that day, but because of the enemy’s superior armor, eventually Coolidge was forced to direct a withdrawal — making sure to be the last to leave the position.
As a result of his heroic and superior leadership, Coolidge received a Medal of Honor.
From his neck they suspended a gold five-pointed star surrounded by a green laurel wreath. Above it was a bar inscribed with the word that would forever validate Coolidge’s actions: VALOR.
It was June 18, 1945. Franklin D. Roosevelt died two months before. So instead of returning home, like most medal recipients did, to receive the honor directly from the president, Coolidge became one of only a handful of men to ever receive the medal overseas.
He doesn’t get too sentimental remembering the day at the bombed-out airfield near Dornstadt, Germany, where the eagle-adorned medal was placed in his possession by Gen. Frederick Haislip.
Instead, Coolidge describes it simply: “It was quite a day.”
Life changed significantly after that.
The war had ended and, as he wrote home to the woman who would eventually become his wife, he described a changed atmosphere: “Things from this side of the ocean are steadily improving, perhaps in the next couple of years we will all be able to start home.”
When he arrived home, it was to great fanfare. “Everything was different,” he says.
The city of Chattanooga declared Aug. 8, 1945, Coolidge Day, taking out a full-page advertisement in the local paper to make people aware of the festivities. Story after story now secured in a scrapbook of tattered newspaper clippings chronicle the actions of a hometown boy who left for the war a bookbinder and returned home a hero.
He married his war-time sweetheart, Frances, 86 days after he returned home. He delivered speech upon speech, often twice a day at a lunch and dinner, to business and social organizations across the state. And, for a short time, he worked for the Veterans Administration, signing recruits up for college.
Minus his years in the Army, Coolidge has lived all his life in Signal Mountain, where he was born on Aug. 4, 1921. And he has spent most of his life at the Chattanooga Printing and Engraving company founded by his own father and currently run by two of his three sons.
It is there, inside an office in the old brick building, that a veritable treasure chest of historic memorabilia resides.
On the wall behind his desk hangs a map illustrating his combat route, a path he cut over two years of near continuous fighting. In a frame nearby is the official declaration of Coolidge’s heroic achievement from the U.S. government. There is a portrait of Coolidge painted in Germany over six months of morning sittings after he received the honor. And a photograph of Coolidge in a car driven by Alvin York, one of the most decorated American soldiers in the first World War.
And, of course, there hangs the very medal that was first suspended around his neck six decades ago.
His children and grandchildren have consumed his tales of war since they were young. These days, they know them almost better than Coolidge, who sometimes stops mid-story to begin a new one, his mind finally succumbing to the many years that he has lived.
“Today, we can’t really fathom what they went through,” says Coolidge’s oldest son, retired Lt. Gen. Charles H. Coolidge Jr., who himself has a distinguished service medal from the U.S. Air Force. “It’s just amazing what they did — and it’s amazing their resilience and their attitudes.
“It was not about what’s in it for me. It was always about us. About the United States of America.”
In 2006, Coolidge was belatedly awarded the Legion d’Honneur by the French Consulate, in a ceremony at the Chattanooga riverfront park named for him. Opened in 1999, Coolidge Park is a 13-acre public park on the north shore of the Tennessee River. It boasts a restored historic carousel, a water feature and pavilion, a floating restaurant, and curving walkways, green meadows and river overlooks.
Some say that Coolidge saw more front-line fighting than any other soldier in the war, escaping with nothing more than a shrapnel mark on his boot after the tank encounter that changed his life.
Even after all these years, Coolidge can sum up the experience in one remarkable sentence.
“I am lucky to be alive.”
Reach Jessica Bliss at 615-259-8253 and on Twitter @jlbliss.
About the Medal of Honor
The Medal of Honor was designed in the early days of the Civil War to represent the valiant efforts of the Union Army, Navy and Marines. On Dec. 21, 1861, a bill was passed authorizing 200 such medals be produced. President Abraham Lincoln signed the bill and the (Navy) Medal of Honor became an official recognition of heroic action. Over the years, the medal has become a symbol of the bravest of the brave.
The first award of the Medal of Honor was made March 25, 1863, to Pvt. Jacob Parrott, who was one of six honored Union Army soldiers who participated in the Great Locomotive Chase in 1862 during the Civil War.
The last award of the Medal of Honor was made June 2, 2015, to Sgt. William Shemin and Pvt. Henry Johnson, who was posthumously honored for his heroic actions during World War I.
This week, 28 of the living Medal of Honor recipients from across the country will come to Nashville for a three-day event that will help launch the Medal of Honor Character Development Program in Middle Tennessee.
The men will take part in three, free public forums on Aug. 7, visit local middle and high schools, take part in a parade and will culminate the visit with a tribute held at the new Music City Center. For more information visit www.cmohfoundation.org.
• Aug. 7
Nashville Salutes has organized three free, public forums on Aug. 7, each featuring three Medal of Honor recipients sharing their life experiences.
Lipscomb University: 9 a.m., Stowe Hall, Swang Business Center (One University Park Drive, Nashville)
Featuring Lt. Cmdr. Tom Kelley, Sp4c. Gary Wetzel and 1st Lt. Brian Thacker.
Rudy Kalis, WSMV anchor and a veteran of the United States Air Force, will lead the question-and-answer session and will open the floor for community members to ask questions of the veterans. Special guest Many-Bears Grinder, Tennessee Department of Veterans Services commissioner, also will participate.
To register: lipscomb.edu/nashvillesalutes
Volunteer State Community College: 9 a.m., Wemyss Auditorium at Caudill Hall (1480 Nashville Pike, Gallatin)
Featuring Staff Sgt. Clinton L. Romesha, Maj. Jay Vargas and Cpl. Hiroshi Miyamura.
No registration required.
First Baptist Church: 10 a.m., main sanctuary (108 Seventh Ave. S., Nashville)
Featuring Cpl. Hershel Woodrow Williams, Lt. Thomas Norris and SFC Bennie Adkins.
No registration is required.
• Aug. 8
Heroes honoring heroes parade: 8:30 a.m., Lower Broadway in Nashville’s downtown
Service and sacrifice street fair: 8 a.m.-4 p.m., Lower Broadway
This will profile each branch of military service, including performances from the Army Fife & Drum and USMC Silent Drill Team. There also will be a varied display of military equipment, including the Army X-Treme Truck and Air Force Vapor Super Car, and a Vietnam War 50th anniversary display.
Vietnam War 50th anniversary commemoration: 11:30 a.m., Lower Broadway
Medal of Honor red carpet: 5-6 p.m., Music City Center (Fifth Ave. S., Nashville)
Nashville Salutes Gala: 7-9:15 p.m., hosted by Mike Keith, voice of the Tennessee Titans. Individual tickets are $500 and can be purchased at MOHNashville.com.