Father’s WWII heroism still inspires his daughter

President Truman awards the Medal of Honor to U.S. Army 1st Lt. Edward Silk on Nov. 1, 1945, in Washington, D.C.

Pennsylvania bridge named for Medal of Honor winner

By the time Edward Silk first saw his infant daughter, he had fought valiantly in France. He had received the Medal of Honor from President Truman for extraordinary courage in World War II.

Judy Silk, who served as an Army nurse in Vietnam, has always known that her late father was a war hero. But she remembers best the love and kindness of a father who died in 1955 when she was only 10 years old.

“He was the kind of dad we’d just run to the door when he got home,” said Silk, a public health nurse with the Snohomish Health District. “He was a strict disciplinarian, but very kind. He had a great sense of humor.”

Once, she recalled, a little girl at her birthday party started crying after spilling grape juice on the Silks’ fancy tablecloth. “My dad just picked up his juice and spilled some more,” she said.

Judy Silk has photographs of the Medal of Honor ceremony on Nov. 1, 1945, in Washington, D.C. In one picture, Truman is presenting her soldier father with the decoration, given to only about 3,400 members of the armed forces since its creation in 1861.

Nearly 60 years later, Edward Silk’s daughter was on hand when his heroism was again recognized. She traveled to her father’s hometown of Johnstown, Pa., in October to speak at a ceremony making his name a permanent part of the landscape.

The former Napoleon Street Bridge in Johnstown was renamed the Edward A. Silk Memorial Bridge. Earlier this year, state Rep. Edward Wojnaroski introduced a bill in the Pennsylvania state house to honor Johnstown’s native son.

At the Oct. 21 ceremony, Wojnaroski said the landmark “is a permanent reminder of the individual sacrifices he made to preserve our freedom.”

“Future generations will know of his bravery and patriotism,” the lawmaker said.

Judy Silk has always known.

Her father’s Medal of Honor citation tells the harrowing tale from Nov. 23, 1944, when 1st Lt. Silk was near St. Pravel, France, as part of the Army’s 398th Infantry, 100th Infantry Division.

He commanded a weapons platoon. His company was on the edge of some woods near St. Pravel, where scouts saw an enemy sentry guarding a farmhouse. One squad was pinned down by machine gun and automatic weapons fire from the house. Silk’s machine gunners answered enemy fire. After 15 minutes with no letup, he decided on a one-man attack.

He ran 100 yards across an open field to a low stone wall in front of the farm house, then fired into the door and windows. In view of the enemy, he vaulted the wall and dashed 50 yards through a hail of bullets to a side of the house. He hurled a grenade through a window, killing two gunners. But he drew fire from a machine gun in a woodshed.

“With magnificent courage,” the citation says, he rushed the shed in the face of direct fire, killing two gunners by throwing grenades.

With his grenades gone, he dashed back to the farmhouse and began throwing rocks through a window, demanding surrender.

“Twelve Germans, overcome by his relentless assault and confused by his unorthodox methods, gave up to the lone American,” the citation says.

Edward Silk was the youngest of 11 children born to Irish immigrants. When he was 2 years old, his father died in an accident at the Bethlehem Steel mill in Johnstown. His impoverished mother moved with her youngest children to Mooseheart Child City, a home run by the Moose organization.

“One thing I said in my little speech in Johnstown was that when he was there, boys weren’t allowed to have guns,” Judy Silk said. “Instead, they’d chase rabbits and throw stones at them.”

In France, his rock-throwing prowess became legendary.

Judy Silk was featured in The Herald on Nov. 11, 1993, when the Vietnam Women’s Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C. With the Johnstown ceremony for her father, it’s as if she has come full circle.

She worked at the 36th Evacuation Hospital in South Vietnam from February 1968 until May 1969. She cared for soldiers, many of them amputees, until they were stabilized enough to be sent to Japan or the United States.

“It’s certainly with me all the time,” she said. “It’s just sad, you’re over there, you’re all part of a team.”

She thinks often of the soldiers in Iraq, and the nurses, too. “There are plenty of them,” she said.

We have yet to hear many stories of heroism from the war in Iraq. Without a doubt, they will be told someday.

Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.