Minnesota’s last living Medal Of Honor recipient, Mike Colalillo, has passed away.
He was awarded the Medal for an action near Untergriesheim, Germany on April 7, 1945 – bare weeks before the end of the war, at a time when the battle in the West alternated unpredictably between Germans eager to surrender to any Western army, and fanatical SS or Hitlerjügend holdouts who fought ferociously.
Colalillo encountered the latter, according to this story in the Winona Daily News:
“Inspired by his example, his comrades advanced in the face of savage enemy fire,” the citation read.
When his pistol was disabled by shrapnel, Colalillo climbed onto a friendly tank and manned its machine gun. And, as “bullets rattled about him, fired at an enemy emplacement with such devastating accuracy that he killed or wounded at least 10 hostile soldiers and destroyed their machine gun.”
After that gun jammed, he borrowed a submachine gun from the tank crew and continued the attack on foot. When his company was ordered to withdraw, Colalillo remained behind to help a wounded soldier cross “several hundred yards of open terrain rocked by an intense enemy artillery and mortar barrage,” the citation said.
Colalillo was later sent to Washington, where President Harry S. Truman presented him with the medal on Dec. 18, 1945.
A few years back, at the dedication of the Minnesota World War II memorial, Ed and I were slated to interview Colalillo. The interview fell through – the dedication ceremony ran too long. As much fun as I had talking with the mass of World War II veterans that day, missing out on talking with Colalillo was a major loss.
You served your time in hell, Mike. Rest in honored glory among your brothers and sisters in arms. Thank God that a man like you lived.
I wonder if German bloggers do things like this.
“Yesterday, Hans Kloster, 87, passed away in his Berlin apartment. He received multiple Iron Crosses for his heroism in the Battle of the Bulge, where he and his gun crew pinned down a battalion of Americans, killing dozens, until a crazy American manned the machine gun in a tank and killed or wounded most of Hans’ crew.”
Terry: I almost blew coffee out my nose.
If you ever talk to people from Germany of that age……well, after 1945, suddenly no one was a Nazi. They were all just innocent civilians who were drafted into the German army.
I know one German who would never have claimed he only joined the army because he was drafted. Ernst Junger. The Nazis banned him from publishing because he was too militaristic.
Terry, unlike Mitch, I had to clean off my monitor! Too funny!