This story will be told by a good friend and fellow airmen of Henry "Red" Erwin, years later after Erwin was awarded the prestigious Medal of Honor for his heroic actions that saved the storytellers life.
    

 

 

    Stealing the prestigious Medal of Honor from its case is something I never saw myself doing. It is something I had never thought about, and if somebody asked me to steal the Medal of Honor, I would have never agreed to it. However, a young man named Henry "Red" Erwin would change all of this. For him, I not only agreed to steal the Medal of Honor, but I knew I needed to. He had maybe only a few more hours to live, and the man who saved my life was going to receive the honor he deserved, and nobody could stop me.

    Here is the story of a good friend who saved my life. My name is Sergeant Joseph Darienzo, and the date is April 12th, 1945. My boys and I were doing what we were sent to do, fighting the war against the Japanese. We were on board the City of Los Angeles, the bomber that had carried us into enemy territory where we would drop our bombs on Koriyama, Japan. Our pilot, Captain Anthony Simeral, was flyin' us through all this crazy flak gunfire, with a little bit of enemy machine gun on top of that. It wasn't your ordinary walk-in-the-park bombing to say the least. This one was becoming a bit more complicated. With our plane dodging left to right, up and down, we could only hope to God that we wasn't gonna' get hit bad. As we would soon find out, dodging enemy fire would be the least of our worries.

    Henry "Red" Erwin is a good friend of mine, actually a real good friend. We both came up together, learned to trust each other, and above all, counted on each other. He's always been one of those guys you can count on to always help you out when you need it, no matter the situation. One time actually back in the day, I overslept for our morning PT. Henry noticed, ran back to the barracks to pull me out of bed, and we both showed up late together. Granted, we both got punished for this, but since then I always knew I could trust the guy.

    Anyways, Henry was in the back of the plane waiting for the call from Captain Simeral to let them bombs fall right onto our enemy targets. There was a little "chute" I guess you could call it, where Henry was supposed to drop the flare that would ignite the three tons of bombs below. Now let me tell you somethin' about this fuse first. This thing is about twenty pounds, and it's made of phosphorous, which if you don't know, is some pretty dangerous stuff. When the phosphorous lights on fire, it sends this thick white smoke all about, and reaches temperatures of a couple thousand degrees Fahrenheit. And this time, when Henry went to drop the fuse down the chute, it never actually dropped down. Nobody is really sure why, but instead of falling from the plane as it was supposed to, the canister of phosphorous shot right back out into the plane. Poor Henry, his face was scorched by the canister as it came back up the chute, burning him so bad any man would have given up right then and there.

But not Henry, not Henry "Red" Erwin.

    Fueled inside by a level of courageousness I never knew could exist in a man, Henry did not know what it meant to give up. He scurried to the belly of the plane, blinded by both the phosphorous burns and also the heavy white smoke that had engulfed us all, searching frantically for the canister with his hands. It was something so incredible I almost had to shake my head to make sure I wasn't dreaming. It was reality though, and soon Henry had found the blazing hot canister, hoisted it up and under his arm, and began searching for an opening where he could drop it from the plane. It was an incredible sight that still amazes me every single time I think of it. 

    With his upper body now completely engulfed by the flames from the canister, my crew and I could vaguely see Henry making his way through the thick white smoke to the only available opening on the plane, which was in the captain's cockpit. Only a bit more than half-way to the cockpit, Henry was blocked by a navigation table which, despite the incredible pain he was in, he moved it out of the way. Moving quickly into the cockpit, Henry shouted to Captain Simeral to unlock the window, which the captain did quickly. Here's what gets me though: What Henry did next is something that you can not make up in a story. Covered in flames burning at thousand of degrees, Henry "Red" was still the gentleman he had always been. Through pain and agony, Henry mustered the words "Excuse me, Sir," to the captain as he hurled the canister out of the plane, saving the lives of all men on board.

    Immediately Henry dropped to the ground, as we hurried to extinguish the flames that engulfed his body. By some miracle and through his incredible strength, Henry continued the fight to live through his many surgeries and medical procedures which he endured after being flown back to Guam.

    Unsure of how long he would live, a fellow airman and myself made the journey to Honolulu, Hawaii where the only available Medal of Honor in the Pacific Theater of Operations was kept in a glass case at the U.S. Army Headquarters. Smashing the glass, we took the award and headed for Guam.

    Lying in his bed still completely bandaged one week after his heroic actions, Henry "Red" Erwin managed to quietly project the words "Thank you, Sir" to General Curtis LeMay as he pinned the Medal of Honor to Henry's chest. General LeMay spoke to Henry, clearly emotional, saying to him,

"Your effort to save the lives of your fellow airmen is the most extraordinary kind of heroism I know."

Author's Note: The story of Henry "Red" Erwin is truly an incredible one. I had a great time telling his story, as it made me really appreciate what he did, with each word I wrote. I chose to tell the story of Henry Erwin from the perspective of a fellow airmen, one who is good friends with Henry and also one who is unwilling to let Henry pass before receiving the Medal of Honor in which he earned. The name of the character telling the story is made up, but all other characters names are real and historically accurate. I kept all of the important details of the story, as it is true history, and I do not plan to tamper with the events that took place. What Henry "Red" Erwin did was absolutely incredible, and does not in any way need to be added to in my opinion, so for that reason I did not. I felt the perspective of a fellow airmen would be a good one to tell the story from for a few reasons. It would take the reader "inside the event" with the narrator being there, and also I felt it would allow for more appreciation to be shown, since the narrator is somebody who's life was saved by Erwin.