CHARLES H COOLIDGE
In 1944 this sergeant led his men against terrible odds in the Vosges Mountains
The pair of Nazi tanks rumbled forward and lurched to a halt. Cautiously opening his hatch, the commander of the nearest armoured vehicle emerged and shouted in perfect English, “Do you guys want to give up?”
A scant 50 feet away, Technical Sergeant Charles H. Coolidge, a hardened combat veteran at the age of 23, replied without hesitation, “I’m sorry, Mac. You’ve got to come and get me.”
The response was borne much more of grim determination than bravado. This was the fourth day that a small, beleaguered contingent of American soldiers had held onto precious high ground in the Vosges Mountains of eastern France amid miserable rain and cold and repeated German attempts to dislodge them from the position that guarded the extreme right flank of the 3rd Battalion, 141st Infantry Regiment, 36th Division.
Coolidge had joined comrades of Company M, 3rd Battalion in April 1943, just before deployment to North Africa. The 36th ‘Texas’ Infantry Division, a pre-war component of the Texas National Guard, was populated primarily with soldiers from the Lone Star state. Coolidge was a Tennessean, but his leadership and personal heroism had already demonstrated without doubt that he was more than worthy of being counted among them. He had landed with them in Italy, endured the harrowing effort to cross the Rapido River in January 1944, and fought the tenacious German defenders in the vicinity of Monte Cassino and the bloody Anzio beachhead that spring.
On 31 May 1944, Coolidge earned a Silver Star as he led a machine-gun section in action while supporting a rifle company near the town of Velletri, Italy. Moving to within 25 yards of the enemy, the machine-gunners used free traverse to devastating effect, killing and wounding many while scooping up prisoners as well during the reduction of a German strong point.
By autumn, the soldiers of the 36th Division had participated in their third amphibious landing, Operation Dragoon, on the shores of southern France. They had fought their way into the rugged, heavily wooded Vosges, approaching the frontier with Germany and the fortifications of the Siegfried Line, or West Wall, that guarded the boundary. On 24 October, the 3rd Battalion had taken up positions near the tactically vital Hill 623. Coolidge was ordered to take a machine-gun section along with a platoon of infantrymen from Company L to occupy the hill, near the village of Belmont-sur-buttant, and hold against any German attempt to push them off. Altogether, he had fewer than 30 men, and most of them were ‘green’ replacements who had yet to fire a shot in anger.
While his men were setting up a pair of machine guns, the unmistakable sound of approaching enemy soldiers made Coolidge pause for a moment. He turned to his friend and fellow veteran Sergeant, George Ferguson, a native of the Bronx, New York, who was fluent in German. “George,” he whispered, “ask them if they want to give up.”
Peering through the mist, Coolidge watched as the Germans, probably in company strength,
“ALL FREE PEOPLE MOURN THE LOSS OF THIS GREAT MAN. HE, ALONG WITH HIS FELLOW SERVICE MEMBERS, SAVED OUR REPUBLIC DURING WORLD WAR II. MAY HE REST IN ETERNAL PEACE. HE EARNED IT” General B.B. Bell, Charles H. Coolidge National Medal of Honor Heritage Center national advisory board
approached to a mere 40 feet from his exposed position. He hoped that the bluff would work, but in seconds the answer came. “He [Ferguson] started talking to them, and all at once I saw one of the Germans behind a tree getting ready to shoot George. I took my carbine and shot him – and then shot another one.”
The pair began to slip away just as a German bullet slapped into Ferguson’s arm. Coolidge dragged his wounded friend to an aid station, and then rushed to his men, dug in on the slope of Hill 623. Without immediate support, Coolidge knew that his handful of defenders were in dire straights. Nevertheless, he steadied them as best he could, moving among the foxholes and pointing at clusters of enemy troops, encouraging and motivating his men to maintain their composure.
Coolidge never wavered, and earned the Medal of Honor during the desperate fight on Hill 623. His citation reads in part: “Many of the men were replacements recently arrived; this was their first experience under fire.
Tsgt. Coolidge, unmindful of the enemy fire delivered at close range, walked along the position calming and encouraging his men and directing their fire.”
For more than 72 hours, the German attacks ebbed and flowed, and Coolidge was a constant presence among the young defenders. He expected that the Germans might bring tanks forward, possibly a heavy Tiger with its dreaded 88mm cannon, to assault Hill 623, and he knew that there were few weapons available to counter enemy armour. Nevertheless, the determined Americans held their position against at least half a dozen assaults, and ammunition ran low.
On 27 October, Coolidge heard the ominous rumble of enemy tanks. Staff Sergeant Clarence B. Hawkins, leading a rifle squad, could not believe his eyes. “The situation was desperate. Sergeant Coolidge saw there was at least a company of Germans and something had to be done. He stepped in front of us and walked right at the Germans, yelling to them to surrender. You’d think he had an army behind him.”
Years later, Coolidge remembered, “I can still see him doing it” as the German tanker “unbuttoned” his hatch to deliver the cold ultimatum. After declining the German’s overture, Coolidge scrambled for cover. “He put the turret of that tank down. He turned that 88 right where I’d been standing, and he fired point blank.”
The German tank fired four more times as Coolidge evaded shrapnel and splinters from the smashed trees. A shard of hot steel cut through the leather top of his GI boot, but he remained unhurt. “When a shot went one way, I went the other,” he recalled.
Coolidge found a shoulder-fired bazooka, the heaviest available anti-tank weapon, but it was inoperable, since the batteries had been removed from the firing mechanism. Tossing the bazooka aside, he gathered as many hand grenades as he could carry. While his men fell back grudgingly, Coolidge crawled toward the oncoming Germans, hoping to buy time.
Back home in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, near the city of Chattanooga, Technical Sergeant
“TSGT. COOLIDGE, DISPLAYING GREAT COOLNESS AND COURAGE, DIRECTED AND CONDUCTED AN ORDERLY WITHDRAWAL, BEING HIMSELF THE LAST TO LEAVE THE POSITION” Medal of Honor citation
Coolidge was known as an accomplished softball pitcher. That day in the Vosges, he put the skill to work with lethal results. Tossing as many as 70 grenades, he killed at least 20 German soldiers, and was the last defender to withdraw from the position. Incredibly, no American life was lost during the ordeal, and the integrity of the 3rd Battalion line was maintained. Coolidge, already in combat areas for 14 months, stayed with his soldiers through the end of the war in May 1945.
In one of the few such ceremonies conducted in Europe, Coolidge received his country’s highest decoration for bravery under fire at a bombed-out airfield near Dornstadt, Germany, on 18 June 1945. Lieutenant General Wade H. Haislip, commander of the US Seventh Army, presented the Medal of Honor.
After the war, Coolidge returned home and worked briefly for the Veterans Administration, before rejoining the family business, Chattanooga Printing & Engraving, where he had been a bookbinder prior to entering the service. He married Frances Seepe in 1945 and raised three children. Their son, Charles Coolidge Jr, rose to the rank of lieutenant general in the US Air Force. Although he suffered from multiple sclerosis for the last 50 years of his life, Sergeant Coolidge was a vibrant presence in the Chattanooga area throughout. Always humble and soft spoken, he addressed many school and civic groups, telling them that in combat, “…there are a lot of people scared to death, especially if you’re a replacement…” and frankly asserting, “There’s no glory in the infantry.”
A Chattanooga area highway and park have been named for the hero, as well as the Charles H. Coolidge National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, which opened its doors in
February 2020. When the US Postal Service unveiled its ‘World War II Medal of Honor Forever Stamp’ packet in November 2013, Coolidge was the first of 12 recipients whose portraits appeared on the cover sheet.
Prior to his death on 6 April 2021 at the age of 99, Coolidge was the oldest living recipient of the Medal of Honor, the last remaining recipient from the European Theater of Operations, and the last to have received his medal prior to the end of World War II. Hundreds of citizens lined the streets of Chattanooga as his funeral procession made its way to the city’s national cemetery, where he was buried with full military honours.
A short distance from Coolidge’s final resting place lie the first recipients of the Medal of Honor, participants in the 1862
Great Locomotive Chase during the American Civil War.