http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/u...dy-battle-dies-at-89.html?ref=obituaries&_r=0
John Hawk, an Army sergeant in World War II who was awarded the Medal of Honor for a single-handed exploit that led to the capture of more than 500 German troops in northern France in 1944, died on Monday in Bremerton, Wash. He was 89.
He had been in failing health since a stroke more than a year ago, his daughter, Marilyn Harrelson, said in confirming his death.
Two months after the Allies landed in Normandy in the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944, they trapped thousands of retreating Germans near the town of Falaise, some 20 miles south of Caen, in what became known as the Falaise Pocket.
Sergeant Hawk, a 20-year-old squad leader in a 90th Infantry Division rifle company, was dug in with his men at the edge of an apple orchard outside Chambois, near Falaise, when German infantrymen, supported by tanks, staged a dawn attack on Aug. 20.
“My God, the sky was falling down, the earth was blowing up, and if ever there was a **** on earth, this was it,” he told The Boston Globe in 1995. “I thought, honest to God, I won’t survive. My philosophy was, they may get me, but I ain’t gonna make it easy. It was absolute carnage: animals, people, equipment, an incomprehensible slaughterhouse.”
Sergeant Hawk rallied his men to keep the Germans from escaping the Falaise Pocket. His squad’s machine-gun fire sent several German tanks retreating while two American tank destroyers — armored vehicles with big guns designed specifically to wipe out enemy tanks — were called in.
But the tank destroyers could not spot the German tanks, which were in a wooded area. So Sergeant Hawk, though wounded in the thigh, climbed alone to an elevated spot in the orchard where he could see them.
He pinpointed the German tank positions for the American tank destroyers, first shouting firing directions to their crews and then, when the roar of battle made it impossible for him to be heard, resorting to hand signals, becoming a “human aiming stake,” in the words of the Medal of Honor citation.
The tank destroyers, whistling gunfire over Sergeant Hawk’s head while the German armor fired from the opposite direction, wiped out two German tanks and sent others fleeing, leading to a mass surrender.
Sergeant Hawk, darting from one spot to another in that orchard, escaped being hit a second time that day, but he was wounded three more times during the war.
On June 21, 1945, he received the Medal of Honor from President Harry S. Truman for, as the citation put it, his role in “crushing two desperate attempts of the enemy to escape from the Falaise Pocket and for taking more than 500 prisoners.”
It was not until he returned to his home in Washington State that Sergeant Hawk was told he was being considered for receiving the medal at the White House. But he was emotionally and physically drained from six months in combat and did not want to make the train trip east. So he prevailed on Senator Warren G. Magnuson, a Democrat from Washington State whom he knew from his high school days, to ask Truman to present the medal during the president’s stopover while en route to the San Francisco conference that was drawing up the United Nations Charter. The White House agreed.
Still, the stress became overwhelming for Sergeant Hawk when it came time for the medal ceremony outside the state Capitol in Olympia. To his relief, though, the spotlight was taken off him momentarily when Truman began chatting with his father, Lewis, a fellow World War I combat veteran.
“I was really feeling very, very badly about me receiving a medal and with the serious memories of all the friends I’d lost,” he told the website tankbooks.com in 1996. “In six months, you lose so many machine gunners.”
John Druse Hawk was born on May 30, 1924, in San Francisco but grew up on Bainbridge Island, Wash. He was drafted in 1943 after graduating from high school.
After the war, he graduated from the University of Washington and settled in Bremerton, where he was an elementary school teacher and principal.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Hawk is survived by a son, Mark; a sister, Dolores Clayton; and a grandson. His wife, Natalene, died in 1985.
Mr. Hawk had been in so many firefights that when he was told he would receive the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest award for valor, he had no idea why.
“I am a common man who did the best I could in the time and place I found myself,” he told The Chicago Tribune at a gathering of Medal of Honor recipients in Chicago in 1990.
“I was home on R and R and had been wounded four different times when I got a phone call saying they were considering me for the Medal of Honor. I said, ‘Medal of Honor? For when? For what day? What place? What time? Are you sure you mean me?’ You see, none of us consider ourselves heroes.”
John Hawk, an Army sergeant in World War II who was awarded the Medal of Honor for a single-handed exploit that led to the capture of more than 500 German troops in northern France in 1944, died on Monday in Bremerton, Wash. He was 89.
He had been in failing health since a stroke more than a year ago, his daughter, Marilyn Harrelson, said in confirming his death.
Two months after the Allies landed in Normandy in the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944, they trapped thousands of retreating Germans near the town of Falaise, some 20 miles south of Caen, in what became known as the Falaise Pocket.
Sergeant Hawk, a 20-year-old squad leader in a 90th Infantry Division rifle company, was dug in with his men at the edge of an apple orchard outside Chambois, near Falaise, when German infantrymen, supported by tanks, staged a dawn attack on Aug. 20.
“My God, the sky was falling down, the earth was blowing up, and if ever there was a **** on earth, this was it,” he told The Boston Globe in 1995. “I thought, honest to God, I won’t survive. My philosophy was, they may get me, but I ain’t gonna make it easy. It was absolute carnage: animals, people, equipment, an incomprehensible slaughterhouse.”
Sergeant Hawk rallied his men to keep the Germans from escaping the Falaise Pocket. His squad’s machine-gun fire sent several German tanks retreating while two American tank destroyers — armored vehicles with big guns designed specifically to wipe out enemy tanks — were called in.
But the tank destroyers could not spot the German tanks, which were in a wooded area. So Sergeant Hawk, though wounded in the thigh, climbed alone to an elevated spot in the orchard where he could see them.
He pinpointed the German tank positions for the American tank destroyers, first shouting firing directions to their crews and then, when the roar of battle made it impossible for him to be heard, resorting to hand signals, becoming a “human aiming stake,” in the words of the Medal of Honor citation.
The tank destroyers, whistling gunfire over Sergeant Hawk’s head while the German armor fired from the opposite direction, wiped out two German tanks and sent others fleeing, leading to a mass surrender.
Sergeant Hawk, darting from one spot to another in that orchard, escaped being hit a second time that day, but he was wounded three more times during the war.
On June 21, 1945, he received the Medal of Honor from President Harry S. Truman for, as the citation put it, his role in “crushing two desperate attempts of the enemy to escape from the Falaise Pocket and for taking more than 500 prisoners.”
It was not until he returned to his home in Washington State that Sergeant Hawk was told he was being considered for receiving the medal at the White House. But he was emotionally and physically drained from six months in combat and did not want to make the train trip east. So he prevailed on Senator Warren G. Magnuson, a Democrat from Washington State whom he knew from his high school days, to ask Truman to present the medal during the president’s stopover while en route to the San Francisco conference that was drawing up the United Nations Charter. The White House agreed.
Still, the stress became overwhelming for Sergeant Hawk when it came time for the medal ceremony outside the state Capitol in Olympia. To his relief, though, the spotlight was taken off him momentarily when Truman began chatting with his father, Lewis, a fellow World War I combat veteran.
“I was really feeling very, very badly about me receiving a medal and with the serious memories of all the friends I’d lost,” he told the website tankbooks.com in 1996. “In six months, you lose so many machine gunners.”
John Druse Hawk was born on May 30, 1924, in San Francisco but grew up on Bainbridge Island, Wash. He was drafted in 1943 after graduating from high school.
After the war, he graduated from the University of Washington and settled in Bremerton, where he was an elementary school teacher and principal.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Hawk is survived by a son, Mark; a sister, Dolores Clayton; and a grandson. His wife, Natalene, died in 1985.
Mr. Hawk had been in so many firefights that when he was told he would receive the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest award for valor, he had no idea why.
“I am a common man who did the best I could in the time and place I found myself,” he told The Chicago Tribune at a gathering of Medal of Honor recipients in Chicago in 1990.
“I was home on R and R and had been wounded four different times when I got a phone call saying they were considering me for the Medal of Honor. I said, ‘Medal of Honor? For when? For what day? What place? What time? Are you sure you mean me?’ You see, none of us consider ourselves heroes.”
