This Day in History: Charles Mower's Medal of Honor

On this day in 1944, a hero engages in an action that would earn him the Medal of Honor.  Charles E. Mower was a Wisconsin native and the son of a World War I veteran.

He’d been a football coach before joining the Army and could have gone back to such a life, but “since God has seen fit to change those plans,” Mower’s high school classmate James Theirl concluded, “we know that what Chuck did on that final day was his greatest work.”

That “final day” was November 3, 1944, and Chuck was then serving as an assistant squad leader on the Pacific Island of Leyte. His company was to take a position flanking the enemy, thus clearing the way for the rest of his battalion to advance.

“The enemy was entrenched along a small stream bed in a rather deep gulch,” Major Jack Mathews later explained to Chuck’s parents. “Because of the nature of the terrain, it was impossible for us to employ our artillery. It was necessary, therefore, for us to move in and engage the enemy at close quarters.”

Chuck’s squad went forward, despite heavy enemy fire. Unfortunately, the squad leader was hit, which left Chuck in command. By then, they had reached a stream. The crossing was open and exposed, but the mission could not be accomplished without it.

Naturally, Chuck led the way, making himself a target while his men found cover.

He was soon hit, and wounded, but he wouldn’t let anyone come to his aid. “Sgt. Mower shouted to us, ‘I’m all right, don’t come down here,’” Sgt. Herman A. Brown later remembered.

He might have been wounded, but he was working to save his squad—and to pave a path for the battalion. He’d realized that he was in the best position to direct fire at the enemy. He was thus shouting and signaling, doing exactly that from his position in the middle of the stream.

Because of him, two enemy machine guns were silenced. Other enemy were also hit, finally opening the way for others to cross.

Opening that critical path came at a cost: The Japanese had realized that the “intrepid man in the stream,” as Chuck’s Medal citation explains, “was largely responsible for the successful action being taken against them, [so] the remaining Japanese concentrated the full force of their firepower upon him, and he was killed while still urging his men on.”

“[I]t is impossible for me to put into words the full significance of [your son’s] actions,” Mathews concluded in his letter to Chuck’s parents. “He was directly responsible for saving the lives of several men. . . . His heroic deed is one that will never receive publicity or fame, but it is deeds performed by men such as your son which makes our army a victorious one.”

Isn’t that exactly right? So many in the Greatest Generation gave so much, with or without regard to whether they would be remembered for it later.

Love of country, self-sacrifice, perseverance and determination. How AMERICAN.

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Primary Sources:

• Award Medal of Honor to Sgt. Charles Mower (Chippewa Herald-Telegram; Feb. 13, 1946) (p. 1)

• Charles E. Mower: Who Was He, What Deeds Has He Done? (Chippewa Herald-Telegram; Jan. 5, 1972) (p. 1)

• Honoring Veterans and Medal of Honor Recipients (Chippewa Herald-Telegram; Nov. 13, 2017) (p. B6)

• Medal of Honor citation (Charles E. Mower; WWII)

• Present Medal of Honor Here (Chippewa Herald-Telegram; March 6, 1946) (p. 1)

• Sgt. Charles E. Mower (Naval History and Heritage Command)

• Waldo H. Heinrichs & Marc Gallicchio, Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific, 1944-1945 (2017)