Benjamin F. Wilson
There aren't many men in military history who have been nominated for their country's highest award for combat bravery twice in the same calendar week, like U.S. Army Master Sergeant Benjamin F. Wilson was almost exactly sixty-nine years ago next week.
Then again, there also aren't a lot of dudes who can kill five guys with a fucking shovel after having his rifle ripped from their kung fu grip by a swarming horde of combat-hardened enemy soldiers. While wearing glasses, no less.
Ben Wilson was born on Vashon Island in June of 1921, and enlisted in the Army as soon as he was old enough. His first posting was to Oahu, Hawaii, just in time to be on the ground for the Pearl Harbor attacks that began World War II. Wilson wasn't over at Pearl, though – he was at Schofield Barracks, a big U.S. Army institution across the street from Wheeler Air Force Base. Schofield was strafed a few times by Zeroes, and there are stories of American soldiers responding to the air raid sirens by running up to the roof with their M1s and taking potshots at enemy aircraft, and, knowing what you're about to learn about Ben Wilson, it would be really fucking surprising if he wasn't one of those men standing on the roof defiantly hurling thirty-aught-sixes at a fleet of fighter-bombers whizzing overhead at three hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately for Ben Wilson – and perhaps luckily for the Wehrmacht and the IJA – that was the extent of the combat he would see in World War II.
A bright kid and a determined soldier who was eager to get out there and kick ass, Wilson was selected to attend Officer Candidate School early in 1942, emerged a few weeks later as an infantry Second Lieutenant , and immediately requested a combat assignment. He didn't get it. He spent the entire war working stateside as a training officer while the guys he was prepping for war went off to see real combat. The Second World War ended in '45, and Wilson resigned his commission having only ever fired his weapon in anger at passing aircraft. He returned home to Washington, got a job at a lumber mill, and spent his days slicing trees apart with a bandsaw in the rain and gray of the Pacific Northwest.
Then Korea happened.
In June of 1950, Kim Il-Sung's North Korea invaded the South with 100,000 men, capturing Seoul in three days and rampaging across the Korean peninsula. In less than three months, half of the South Korean military had been overrun, and the entire SK defensive perimeter was reduced to a chunk of land less than 5,000 miles across. The United Nations passed a Resolution allowing the Member States to send troops to assist, and UN forces made a daring landing at Inchon that started to push Korea back. The North Korean army was defeated, the UN liberated Seoul, and the victorious allies pushed the enemy all the way back to the Chinese border.
Then the Chinese got pissed. And, suddenly, millions of Chinese troops were surging across the Yalu River chucking hand grenades at anything that moved, the UN found themselves completely and massively outnumbered, and the allies were on the retreat.
By June of 1951 the U.S. 31st Infantry Regiment was deployed outside the village of Nodong-ri, along the 38th parallel, part of the last line of defense that was desperately trying to slow the Chinese onslaught and prevent the re-capture of the South Korean capital. Desperate fighting was raging all throughout the sector, as American, Commonwealth, and other UN forces clung tenaciously, forcing the enemy to buy every inch of land in blood, but things were looking increasingly grim as more and more enemy troops were brought forward into combat.
Ben Wilson was Master Sergeant of Third Battalion, Company I. In his short time since re-upping, he'd already worked his way through the ranks from Private to E-8, and, on a warm evening in June 1951, he was ordered to re-take a large commanding hill that overlooked the Hwachon Reservoir outside of Nodong-ri. The terrain feature was affectionately knowns as "Hell Hill", and, as you can tell by the fact that it's name sounds like one of the later levels in Doom Eternal, it wasn't going to be an easy objective to capture. It was steep, the approach was dangerous, and it was heavily fortified by hundreds of NK and Chinese troops dug in to formidable defensive entrenchments.
Master Sergeant Wilson had waited his whole life to see combat, and now he was going to get as much of it as he could handle.
The North Koreans never knew what hit them.
Under covering fire from artillery, machine guns, mortars, and rifles, Master Sergeant Benjamin F. Wilson gripped his weapon, let out a primal battle-cry, and ordered the men of I Company to follow him. Charging forward up a steep, muddy incline in the dead heat of the Korean summer, Wilson was met immediately by an unrelenting barrage of machine gun and mortar fire that ripped up the scenery around him in every direction. Fearlessly ignoring the imminent death whizzing around him in every direction, Wilson led his men up the hill, and chucking grenades, firing his rifle, and then diving headlong into the first enemy entrenchment. He came face-to-face with four guys carrying full-auto SMGs, wasted them, then waved for the rest of his team to come up and reinforce the position.
Then, once everyone was consolidated, he ordered them to fix bayonets.
They were going further up the hill.
Charging forward with a big-ass Bowie knife strapped to the end of his rifle, Master Sergeant Ben Wilson and the men of I Company stormed up Hell Hill with the explicit intention of fucking some people up when they arrived at their objective. Heavy enemy fire came in from all directions, but Wilson and his crew stormed ahead, hurled themselves at the enemy, and overran them, leaving nearly thirty Chinese and NK troops dead on the field. When the Chinese tried to counter-attack, Wilson single-handedly charged them, rushing head with rifle and grenades, killing seven more guys, wounding three, and driving off the attack by himself.
But, amazingly, he STILL wasn't done.
Wilson once again gathered his men and made a third charge, but as he neared within twenty yards of his objective he took a couple hits – shrapnel and bullet fragments ripped into him, wounding him severely, and enemy fire focused down on him and his men. Wounded and unable to continue, Wilson's men grabbed him and started pulling him back from the fight, but, even though he was seriously wounded, Wilson still laid down covering fire for his troops as they pressed the attack.
And if you thought all of that was badass, wait until you hear this:
When Wilson – who was bleeding profusely and being carried down the hill on a fucking stretcher – heard that I Company's commander and the commander of First Platoon had been incapacitated and the attack was faltering, he fucking climbed out of the stretcher and ran back up the goddamn hill to lead the attack himself.
Ain’t got time to bleed.
Bleeding, wounded, and exhausted, Master Sergeant Ben Wilson grabbed his rifle and ran forward, finding new strength in a sudden surge of adrenaline and rage. He ran straight into the most ferocious fighting on the front, shooting at anything that moved, and then waded bayonet-first into enemy forces. Slashing, stabbing, and firing like something out of a John Wick outtake, Wilson killed three enemy troops in hand-to-hand combat before the NK troops swarmed him, grabbed the rifle, and wrenched it from his grip, stripping the wounded Master Sergeant of his only firearm.
So, naturally, he pulled out a fucking shovel and went to work.
Ben Wilson proceeded to kill four men with his entrenching tool.
The Medal of Honor Citation says that "His courageous delaying action enabled his comrades to reorganize and effect an orderly withdrawal," which sounds pretty tame considering what just happened, but I wasn't there so maybe that's how it went down. Wilson was wounded a second time during the withdrawal, but still continued to yell orders and provide covering fire while being hauled away on another stretcher.
His actions would earn him a Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's second-highest award for bravery, and a few years later he'd get that DSC upgraded to a Medal of Honor.
Four days later, he'd be nominated for a second one.
The fighting along the Hell Hill sector raged unrelentingly for the next several days and hours, as the 31st Infantry dug in their fingernails and threw everything they had at holding the line, each man performing heroic actions and clinging tenaciously to every millimeter of turf. Two days after Wilson's heroics, a machinegunner from Company F named Jack Hanson was manning his weapon during a rearguard action, desperately trying to slow the Chinese advance so the rest of Co. F could withdraw to new positions and regroup. Hanson and the other men from his Hanson's 4-man machine gun section were wounded in fierce nighttime fighting, but the three other guys managed to crawl to safety while Hanson covered them and mowed down fuckers with his Browning in what his Medal of Honor citation badassly calls "mounting a lone-man defense". When the 31st counter-attacked and retook their positions a couple hours later, they found Jack Hanson's body lying in front of his gun – he had an empty .45 in one hand and a blood-soaked machete in the other, and the 22 dead North Koreans surrounding his foxhole meant that he'd obviously used both of them quite effectively.
It's not a story that ties in particularly closely to that of Ben Wilson, but it's something worth thinking about on Memorial Day this Monday.
Two days after Jack Hanson's last stand – and four days after surviving two gunshot wounds and single-handedly killing at least eighteen guys with a grab-bag of explosives, bullets, and gardening implements – Master Sergeant Ben Wilson was already back on the firing line. This guy had all of World War II to make up for, and he clearly wasn't going to be content with just wiping out an entire platoon of NK troops by himself, so there he was, on the front lines, directing his men up and down the hill as they continued their desperate struggle against overwhelming odds.
He was once more ordered to lead and attack, which he did, but soon after approaching the enemy his unit came under intense gunfire from several enemy bunkers – machine guns, rifles, mortars, and SMGs were shredding everything before them, and I Company was pinned down by intense fire, with mortars zeroing in on them. Wilson, completely fearless and probably still grimacing a bit from his recent wounds, refused to give up. He got up, charged ahead alone directly into the enemy bunker, blew up the machine gun team with grenades, shot a couple other guys, then hurtled ahead and engaged the enemy at danger-close range, killing five more enemy troops, driving them from their positions, and inspiring his guys to rush forward and secure the objective. The ground was taken, the line held, and Wilson received a second Distinguished Service Cross for his heroics. Over the course of two ultra-intense battles, he was credited with personally killing at least 27 enemy soldiers, capturing a half-dozen entrenchments, surviving two serious wounds, and inspiring his troops with a kind of bravery and valor that you don't even see in superhero movies.
Benjamin F. Wilson survived the Korean War and retired as a Major in 1960. He moved to Hawaii, lived into his sixties, and passed away on March 1st, 1988.
The area he, Jack Hanson, and the men of the 31st Infantry fought so heroically to defend is now located in the Korean peninsula's Demilitarized Zone – the area that marks the border between North and South Korea.
Wilson with his family after receiving his MOH. Did he wear the glasses into battle? I hope so.
Links:
Books:
The 31st Infantry Regiment. United States: McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers, 2019.
