This Day in History: George Lang's Medal of Honor

On this day in 1947, a boy is born in Flushing, New York. George Lang would go on to become a soldier and a recipient of the Medal of Honor.  He didn’t think his bravery in Vietnam was anything out of the ordinary, though.

“Hey, you do what you have to do,” he shrugged. “You react automatically when the bad guys are firing at your buddies.”

SP4 Lang’s heroism came early in 1969 as he served with the 47th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division. By then, he’d been in Vietnam for several months and was scheduled to go on leave. In fact, he’d already traded his old, worn boots for new ones when the sergeant of his company informed him that he was needed for one last mission. 

“So I was going out into the field with spit-shined boots,” Lang chuckled.

The mission on February 22 was a reconnaissance one near Bến Tre.  Lang was serving as squad leader, but he’d chosen to walk point anyway. Some of the other men in his squad were close to their own leaves, and everyone was hoping to get safely through their final days and weeks.

“I spotted a hooch or a house,” he later described. “And in front of the house, there were five VC armed with weapons.” A nearby hole provided cover as he and another soldier “opened up,” causing the enemy to withdraw briefly.

Would you believe red ants attacked in the middle of all this? “The artillery had opened up a nest of red ants,” he explained. “And there was a canal nearby . . . . So we just jumped in there, got the shirts off, trying to get all these ants . . . .”

They got rid of the ants, but the respite from enemy fire was brief. As Lang’s men resumed their patrol, the enemy attacked again. Lang could see the source of the fire. He sprinted toward it, taking out an enemy bunker with hand grenades. When a second enemy position opened fire, he destroyed that one, too.

A huge cache of enemy weapons lay near the second bunker, and Lang moved his squad to secure it. Just then, a third enemy bunker opened fire.

“I saw where the smoke was coming to,” he said. “And I got, you know, pretty close. . . . popped the grenade and let the hammer go. [Waited] four seconds, because it, you know, takes like seven seconds for it to blow up. So you didn’t want it thrown back at you. So then I just rolled it along the ground and actually got it down the hole before it blew.”

He destroyed that bunker and returned to the weapons cache. Just then, he was hit by enemy fire. “It hit in my back,” he explained years later, “severed my spine below the rib cage, collapsed a lung, lacerated a kidney, and they took it out of my shoulder.”

In that moment, all he knew was that he couldn’t move. “Although immobilized and in great pain,” his Medal citation concludes, “he continued to direct his men until his evacuation was ordered over his protests.”

Lang passed out in the helicopter and didn’t wake up until he was in the hospital, with a priest hovering and giving him last rites. “I said, ‘wait a minute, what’s going on.’” When he learned that he’d been paralyzed from the waist down, he “just accepted it and moved on.”

He says he never dwelt on his injury. Decades later, he told a reporter that life “has turned out pretty great. I’m really lucky. I have a really great family. My four grandchildren live right upstairs. I’m happy.”

He’d received a Medal by then, of course, but he didn’t think he’d done anything remarkable.

“It’s just a matter of fate,” he concluded. “There were probably braver guys that should have received the medal but never had the chance because there were no survivors.”

Yet another humble hero.

Constitution4Kids.com

Primary Sources:

• Arnold Abrams, Remembering (Newsday; May 31, 2004) (p. A4)

• Bill Bleyer, George Lang, decorated Vietnam War vet, historian (Newsday; March 22, 2005) (p. A54)

• Faces of Heroism: George Lang (Newsday; May 27, 1993) (p. 77)

• H.D. Quigg, Medal of Honor Winners: From Gallantry to Frustration (Ventura County Star; June 18, 1972) (p. A8)

• Kristin Molinaro, Veterans of 47th Infantry return to Benning, dedicate regimental room (U.S. Army; April 30, 2015)

• Medal of Honor citation (George Lang; Vietnam)

• Medal of Honor oral history (George Lang; Vietnam)

• Owen Moritz, George Lang Dies; Won Medal of Honor (Daily News; March 18, 2005) (p. 39)