Technical Sergeant Russell Dunham crouched in knee-deep snow at the base of Hill 616 near Kaisersburg, France, on the afternoon of January 8, 1945. German machine gun fire swept the slope above him, and his platoon lay pinned flat in the snow, unable to move forward or back. The Germans had three MG42 machine guns dug into timber-reinforced positions on the hill, each capable of firing 1,200 rounds per minute. Artillery shells were already falling behind the American lines.
The only direction left was straight up a forty-degree slope into converging fields of fire. Eleven men from Second Platoon had been killed that week. The snow around the position was churned red. Company I had been fighting through the Alsace-Lorraine region as part of the Third Infantry Division, which had lost more men per day in the Vosges Mountains than any other American division in Europe.
The Germans held the high ground, had clear sight lines, and had ammunition. If Dunham’s platoon stayed where it was, the artillery would eventually bracket them and kill everyone. If they retreated, they would be cut down in the open. Dunham crawled back to the company position and found a white mattress cover.
He tore it open and pulled it over his uniform. Then he loaded twelve thirty-round carbine magazines into every pocket and loop on his uniform, hooked a dozen Mk 2 fragmentation grenades onto his belt and suspenders, and jammed more grenades into the buttonholes of his field jacket. When he stood up, he was carrying seventy-two pounds of ammunition and explosives in addition to his rifle. He began crawling up the hill.
The first seventy-five yards took eighteen minutes, moving in the gaps when the German fire shifted to other sectors. At seventy-five yards, he was ten yards from the first machine gun position. He rose to his feet and charged. The Germans spotted him.
The machine gunner swung the barrel toward him and opened fire at six yards. A rifle bullet caught Dunham across the back, carving a ten-inch gash from his left shoulder blade toward his spine. The impact spun him around and threw him fifteen yards down the hill. A German egg grenade landed two feet from his head.
Dunham kicked it away, and it exploded five yards down the slope. He got back on his feet and came up the hill firing. His carbine still carried twenty-eight rounds. At four yards he fired a three-round burst into the gunner’s chest and shot the assistant gunner twice.
The third crew member threw his hands up and began shouting in German. Dunham grabbed him by his collar and shoved him down the hill toward the American lines for interrogation. The second machine gun position was fifty yards uphill and to the right. The Germans there had watched the first nest fall and adjusted their fire to cover the approach.
Dunham reloaded and crawled forward, stopping every few yards to keep from blacking out from the pain in his back. At twenty-five yards he rose to one knee and hurled two grenades into the position. Both detonated inside, killing the three-man crew. He then fired into the supporting riflemen scrambling from their foxholes, hitting three and driving the others off.
The third machine gun was sixty-five yards further up the slope, the highest position with the best field of fire over the entire American advance. The Germans there knew he was coming and had him in their sights. Rifle grenades exploded in the snow around him as he crawled through the gaps between machine gun bursts. His blood trail pointed directly to his position.
At fifteen yards, he timed the pause between bursts, lunged to his feet, and threw two grenades. One bounced off the sandbags and landed inside the position. The second went through the firing slit. The blast destroyed the bunker.
When he moved forward, all three crew members were down. He shot one who was still reaching for a rifle. A German rifleman came up from a support foxhole twenty feet away and fired at point-blank range, missing Dunham’s head by three inches. Dunham shot him twice.
The hilltop was now silent. Dunham had fired 175 rounds and thrown eleven grenades. Three machine gun positions were destroyed. Nine Germans were dead, seven wounded, two captured.
The Germans were falling back up the ridge. Company I was advancing up the slope below him. Hill 616 would be in American hands by nightfall. Dunham sat down in the snow and waited for the medics.
Eight minutes later they cut away the blood-soaked mattress cover. The bullet wound was ten inches long and two inches deep, running from his left shoulder blade toward his spine. They packed it with sulfa powder, bandaged it, and tagged him for evacuation. Dunham refused to leave.
He walked back down the hill with Company I carrying his empty carbine. By the time they reached the battalion aid station, he had lost so much blood that he collapsed at the entrance. Surgeons closed the wound with forty-three stitches. The bullet had missed his spinal cord by less than two inches.
On January 13, five days after the assault, Dunham was released to a rest area twenty miles behind the lines. The Third Infantry Division had been fighting continuously since landing in southern France in August 1944 and had suffered catastrophic casualties. In December alone it had lost 863 men killed and 3,200 wounded. Every rifle company was operating at sixty percent strength.
The doctors told Dunham he needed three more weeks of recovery. On January 18, ten days after Hill 616, he walked into the Company I command post and reported for duty. His stitches were still in, but Second Platoon was down to eighteen men. The company commander assigned him back to his squad.
On January 22, German tanks appeared on three sides of Company I’s position at Holtzwihr. Dunham counted seven Panthers and three Tigers advancing through the morning fog. The Third Infantry Division had no armor support, no tank destroyers, and no artillery within range. Second Platoon had two bazooka teams and exactly fourteen rockets.
The bazooka teams fired at maximum range. Two rockets hit and bounced off the Panthers’ frontal armor without penetrating. At 0630 the company commander gave the order to surrender. White flags went up from three buildings.
One hundred forty-seven men from Company I walked out with their hands raised. Dunham did not surrender. He slipped out the back of the farmhouse and reached a cluster of outbuildings two hundred yards away. Searching for cover, he found six wooden barrels in a stone storage building.
One held potatoes. One held sauerkraut. He climbed into the sauerkraut barrel, sank down into the fermented cabbage, and pulled the lid over his head. The brine soaked through his uniform and into the open wound on his back.
He could hear German soldiers entering the building, kicking barrels and lifting lids. The lid above him stayed closed. They left. Dunham stayed in the barrel for thirteen hours through the night.
The temperature dropped to eight degrees below zero. The brine froze into slush around his body. His fingers turned white with frostbite. At 0700 the next morning he pushed the lid off and climbed out, soaked and frozen.
He was alive and free, but his feet were destroyed and his bandages had dissolved. As he stepped out to relieve himself against the barn wall, two German soldiers appeared and captured him. They found his pack of Lucky Strikes and began arguing over who would keep them. Neither searched his right side.
Neither noticed the Colt M1911 pistol under his field jacket. They marched him to a Kübelwagen and drove him toward a German command post in a stone château. When the driver went inside and the guards relaxed, Dunham pulled the Colt from its holster. He shot the guard on his right at point-blank range, then shot the guard on his left twice.
He kicked open the door and ran for a tree line three hundred yards away while German bullets snapped past him. They stopped firing after thirty seconds. They did not pursue. Dunham was alone behind enemy lines with no map, no compass, no food, and a pistol with four rounds remaining.
He moved west, toward the sound of American artillery. For three days he walked and hid, sleeping in a barn, crossing frozen fields, avoiding roads and villages. His feet went numb and then burned with pain. When he pulled off his boots on the second night, his toes had turned black from frostbite.
On January 25 he heard American howitzers and followed the sound. He emerged from a stand of trees at the Rhine and crossed a steel bridge guarded by American engineers. He collapsed at the far end. A medic from the battalion aid station recognized him.
Surgeons worked for six hours to save his feet from amputation, cleaned the infected wound on his back, and started him on sulfa drugs. Three days later a lieutenant from division headquarters told him that the recommendation for the Distinguished Service Cross had been upgraded to the Medal of Honor. On April 23, 1945, Dunham stood at attention in Zeppelin Stadium in Nuremberg, Germany, the site of the Nazi party rallies before the war. Lieutenant General Alexander Patch, commander of the Seventh Army, read the citation aloud: the crawl up Hill 616, the three machine gun nests, the ten-inch wound, the grenade kicked aside, nine enemies killed, seven wounded, two captured, 175 rounds fired, eleven grenades expended, and 120 American soldiers saved from certain death.
Patch placed the medal around Dunham’s neck and told him he had never seen a single soldier turn the tide of an entire engagement through sheer courage. Dunham’s brother Ralph sat in the audience along with forty men from Company I. After the war Dunham went home to Illinois, married a woman named Mary, and worked for thirty-two years as a benefits counselor for the Veterans Administration in St. Louis, helping returning veterans navigate the system and file claims.
He rarely talked about the war unless asked directly, and when he did he said he was just doing his job. He said any man in Company I would have done the same. Russell Dunham died in his sleep on April 6, 2009 at his home in Godfrey, Illinois. He was eighty-nine years old.
His brother Ralph had died ten years earlier. Most of the men from Company I were gone. But the Medal of Honor citation remained, and so did the official record: 120 men who should have died on Hill 616 had lived instead.