{"id":25224,"date":"2012-01-04T05:12:30","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T11:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=25224"},"modified":"2012-01-03T16:20:42","modified_gmt":"2012-01-03T22:20:42","slug":"rip-mike-colalillo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=25224","title":{"rendered":"RIP Mike Colalillo"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Minnesota&#8217;s last living Medal Of Honor recipient, Mike Colalillo, has passed away.<\/p>\n<p>He was awarded the Medal for an action near Untergriesheim, Germany on April 7, 1945 &#8211; 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 <em>Hitlerj\u00fcgend <\/em>holdouts who fought ferociously.<\/p>\n<p>Colalillo encountered the latter, <a href=\"http:\/\/winonadailynews.com\/news\/article_d44c64d0-35af-11e1-925f-0019bb2963f4.html\">according to this story in the <em>Winona Daily News<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cInspired by his example, his comrades advanced in the face of savage enemy fire,\u201d the citation read.<\/p>\n<p>When his pistol was disabled by shrapnel, Colalillo climbed onto a friendly tank and manned its machine gun. And, as \u201cbullets 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201cseveral hundred yards of open terrain rocked by an intense enemy artillery and mortar barrage,\u201d the citation said.<\/p>\n<p>Colalillo was later sent to Washington, where President Harry S. Truman presented him with the medal on Dec. 18, 1945.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>A few years back, at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=906\">dedication of the Minnesota World War II memorial<\/a>, Ed and I were slated to interview Colalillo. \u00a0The interview fell through &#8211; the dedication ceremony ran too long. \u00a0As 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Minnesota&#8217;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 &#8211; 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-and-its-making","category-memoriam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25225,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25224\/revisions\/25225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}