This Day in History: Forest Sayers's Medal of Honor

On this day in 1924, a future Medal of Honor recipient is born in Centre County, Pennsylvania. Perhaps no one expected Foster J. Sayers to achieve all that he did?  His childhood had been a rough one, bouncing from foster home to foster home.

“[H]e got shipped from one farm to another in the Blanchard area,” his son Foster Jr. later told the Centre Daily Times. “He got treated poorly. He would have to do the milking while the family’s sons were having breakfast. . . . Finally, a Mrs. Campbell in Blanchard took him in, and he started to have a decent life.”

His classmates remembered him as a “good guy,” but also someone who seemed generally unafraid—and someone you didn’t want to mess with in a fight.

“[W]hen you saw my dad start to shake, someone was going down,” Foster Jr. chuckled.

Pfc. Sayers’s bravery came during the fall of 1944 as the 3rd Army drove its way across France. His company was near Thionville on November 12 when it found itself trapped in an exposed position with the enemy raining down fire on them.

“We were within rifle range of the Germans, maybe 200 or 300 yards,” soldier George Zonge remembered. “We had just crossed over (the water) and they were up on the high ground.”

Was this a moment that Sayers “started to shake,” as Foster Jr. had related to the Centre Daily Times journalist? Determined to save his company, he turned himself into a distraction and a target, going after the enemy single-handedly.

“[H]e picked up his gun,” his Medal citation says, “charged through withering machine-gun and rifle fire to the very edge of the emplacement, and there killed 12 German soldiers with devastating close-range fire. He took up a position behind a log and engaged the hostile infantry from the flank in a heroic attempt to distract their attention . . . .”

It worked! The enemy was distracted. Sayers’s company not only escaped their exposed position, but then also managed to capture or kill every German on that hill.

“Everyone talked about what he did. He saved most of our lives,” Zonge marveled.

Unfortunately, Sayers was unable to save himself, instead suffering a mortal wound. His wife Ellen was comforted to learn that he hadn’t suffered much: “He was just blown to pieces. He just set himself up for bait. He was just sick of the war.”

She’d just given birth to a son. Sayers had known that he was about to become a dad, but he thought the baby was a girl. He’d found and shipped a baby doll back home. Ellen kept the doll that he sent, which became a treasured keepsake for Foster Jr. He ultimately gave the doll to his own daughter—Sayers’s granddaughter.

In the meantime, Sayers’s friend, Charles Bathurst, had been writing Ellen sympathy letters from the front lines. After the war, he returned home and extended his condolences in person. The two ultimately got married, but Centre County has not forgotten about its hometown hero, establishing a memorial and naming a local dam for him.

He was “an ordinary GI who did an extraordinary thing,” the Centre Daily Times concludes.

Just another member of the Greatest Generation giving his all.

Constitution4Kid.com

Primary Sources:

• Chris Rosenblum, Tribute Honors WWII Hero (Centre Daily Times; May 25, 2012) (p. A1)

• Dam Name to Cite Sayers Proposed: Medal of Honor Winner Lived in Blanchard Region (Centre Daily Times; Jan. 28, 1963) (p. 11)

• Foster Sayers (Centre Furnace Mansion: Centre County Historical Society)

• Katie Lange, Medal of Honor Monday: Army Pfc. Foster J. Sayers (Department of Defense; Nov. 11, 2024)

• Medal of Honor citation (Foster Joseph Sayers; WWII)

• Ron Bracken, The Story of a Hero (Centre Daily Times; May 28, 1995) (p. 1)

• Sayers Citation Read by Judge Campbell at Dam (The Express; July 17, 1969) (p. 2)

• Scott Ott, Ceremony Will Honor Fallen Son (Centre Daily Times; May 26, 1984) (p. A1)

• Tammy Coakley, Foster Joseph Sayers to be remembered on the 80th anniversary of his death (The Express; Nov. 9, 2024)