Paul J. Wiedorfer, Medal of Honor recipient
By Frederick N. Rasmussen, The Baltimore Sun
6:56 p.m. EDT, May 26, 2011
On Christmas Day during the Battle of the Bulge, Paul J. Wiedorfer charged 150 yards across a snow- and ice-covered field under intense
enemy fire, single-handedly knocked out two German machine gun nests and took 24 prisoners. His spectacular feat earned him the Medal of
Honor, the nation's highest military honor.
"Suddenly something popped into my mind. Something had to be done, and someone had to do it. And I just did it. I can't tell you why,"
Mr. Wiedorfer recalled in a 2008 interview with The Baltimore Sun.
Mr. Wiedorfer died Wednesday of heart failure at Loch Raven Community Living and Rehabilitation Center. The former longtime Parkville
resident was 90.
Victoria Kueck, director of operations for the Congressional Medal of Honor Society in Mount Pleasant, S.C., said Thursday that Mr. Wiedorfer
was the last surviving World War II Medal of Honor recipient from Maryland.
Mr. Wiedorfer learned of the honor from a fellow patient after he was wounded in 1945.
Three days before V-E Day on May 8, 1945, Mr. Wiedorfer, who was 24, was recuperating at the 137th U.S. Army General Hospital in England
from severe wounds he suffered in a mortar attack while crossing the Saar River earlier that year.
In the attack, a fellow infantryman near Mr. Wiedorfer, who was a staff sergeant, was killed instantly by an exploding mortar shell. Shrapnel
ripped into Mr. Wiedorfer's stomach, broke his left leg and riddled his right. Two fingers on his right hand were seriously injured.
"That was Feb. 10, 1945. The sergeant's back was blown wide open, and he was dead when he hit the ground. I was just lucky, I guess,"
he said in the 2008 interview. "I spent more than three years in hospitals recovering from those wounds."
Another patient was reading Stars and Stripes when an item caught his eye, and he asked Mr. Wiedorfer, "How do you spell your name?"
"It really was funny," he said in the 2008 interview. "I said, 'W-i-e-d-o-r-f-e-r,' and he said, 'You just got a medal.' I said was it the Bronze
Star, and he said no, 'Congressional Medal of Honor.'
"To be perfectly honest with you, I wasn't really sure what the hell it was, because all I was was some dogface guy in the infantry," he
told the newspaper.
"All the officers and nurses were wearing their Class A uniforms and there was a band. Gen. E.F. Koening came into the ward and presented
the medal," he recalled. "I really was embarrassed by all the fuss."
