July 6, 2008
Parkville man recalls winning Medal of Honor
There are 30 living Medal of Honor recipients from World War II, and Paul J. Wiedorfer from Parkville is one of them.
"In fact, I'm the only living Maryland Congressional Medal of Honor winner," Wiedorfer, 87, said in an interview from his home the other day.
Three days before V-E Day, May 8, 1945, Wiedorfer was recuperating at the 137th United States Army General Hospital in England, from wounds he received in a mortar attack while crossing the Saar River earlier that year.
A mortar shell had exploded nearby, instantly killing a fellow soldier. Shrapnel ripped into Wiedorfer's stomach, broke his left leg and riddled his right. Two fingers on his right hand were seriously injured.
"That was Feb. 10, 1945. The sergeant's back was blown open and he was dead when he hit the ground. I was just lucky, I guess," he said. "I spent more than three years in hospitals recovering from those wounds."
A fellow patient was busy reading the Stars and Stripes when he suddenly asked, "How do you spell your name?"
"It really was funny. I said, 'W-i-e-d-o-r-f-e-r,' and he said, 'You just got a medal.' I said was it the Bronze Star and he said no, the 'Congressional Medal of Honor.'"
"To be perfectly honest with you, I wasn't really sure what the hell it was, because all I was, was some dogface guy in the infantry," he said, laughing.
Wiedorfer, who was 24 at the time, recalled the day of the presentation at the hospital.
"All the officers and nurses were wearing their Class A uniforms and there was a band. Gen. E.F. Koenig came into the ward and presented the medal," he said. "I really was embarrassed by all the fuss."
Wiedorfer, who was born in Baltimore and raised in the 2400 block of McElderry St., attended St. Andrew's School and graduated in 1939 from Polytechnic Institute.
He went to work for Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. the next year as an apprentice power station operator, and continued working there until 1943, when he enlisted in the Army.
He was assigned to the Quartermaster Corps and then took and passed the examination for cadet air training. Three months into training, he was abruptly reassigned to the infantry.
"He was disgusted, fed up. His one ambition was to be a pilot and just when he was on his way he was shifted to the infantry," his wife, the former Alice Steinmetz, whom he had married in 1943, told The Sun in a 1945 interview.
Wiedorfer, who had joined Company G, 318th Infantry, 80th Division, entered combat for the first time during the Battle of the Bulge at Bastogne, Belgium, on Christmas Day 1944.
At the edge of a forest, Wiedorfer's company was pinned down by German fire.
"Suddenly something popped into my mind. Something had to be done and someone had to do it. And I just did it. I can't tell you why," he said.
Wiedorfer dashed some 150 yards across a snow and ice-covered field under a hail of enemy fire and single-handedly knocked out two German machine gun nests.
He came within 10 yards of the first machine gun nest and hurled a grenade that instantly killed several enemy soldiers. Then he opened up with rifle fire on the second nest, killing one soldier, and taking many prisoners.
"Twenty other Germans dug in around the two machine gun positions, stood up in their foxholes, their hands over their heads and shouted kamerad," wrote Lee McCardell, a Sun war correspondent, assigned to Gen. George S. Patton Jr.'s 3rd Army.
Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun
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