On this day in 1945, a soldier is presented with a Medal of Honor. Paul J. Wiedorfer had charged through snow and ice on Christmas Day during the Battle of the Bulge. It should have been a suicidal run, but he’d survived his fearless charge relatively unscathed. Unfortunately, serious wounds came several weeks later, during a different conflict. Wiedorfer learned that he was to receive the Medal of Honor as he recuperated in a hospital. “Hey, Paul,” a fellow patient asked as he browsed through

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On this day in 1941, a hero is born. Robert F. Foley originally thought he’d be a basketball star. After all, he had 15 offers to play college basketball by the time he was a high school senior. But a visit to West Point changed everything; it settled the future in his mind. “I wanted to be an airborne ranger infantryman,” he concluded. “I mean there was no question in my mind that’s exactly what I wanted to do.” Foley graduated from West Point in 1963. By early November 1966, he was in Vietnam,

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