| Original caption: “Lieutenant Ernest Childers, a Creek, being congratulated by General Jacob L. Devers after receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor in Italy for wiping out two machine gun nests.” 2nd Lieutenant Ernest “Chief” Childers (February 1, 1918 – March 17, 2005), 45th Infantry Division, who has just been anointed the 1st Native American to win the Congressional Medal of Honor, shakes hands with Jacob L. Devers (September 8, 1887 – October 15, 1979) Deputy to the Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean Theater, who presented him with the Medal. 2nd Lieutenant Ernest Childers made excellent use of the hunting and stalking skills he learned near Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. After his father died, the young Creek provided the family’s only meat, learning the philosophy of “one shot, one kill.” Childers had joined the Oklahoma National Guard in 1937 and had graduated from the Chilocco Indian School, a government boarding school on the Oklahoma-Kansas border. Chilocco, which had students from all tribes, was the only Indian school in the country with a military cadet corps. Childers became a student officer of the corps, and after graduation went into the Oklahoma National Guard. Standing 6 feet 2 inches and weighing under a 150 pounds, the lanky Childers had been a 1st Sergeant with C Company and received a battlefield commission shortly before the Salerno landings in September 1943. The 180th Infantry was advancing through a valley on its way to Oliveto in the early morning darkness of September 22, 1943. It was still pitch black when Ernest Childers moved his platoon toward a dug-in enemy position near Oliveto, Italy. “We made contact with the enemy just before daylight,” he said, “and to say the least, it was confusing.” Moving silently to assault a German-held cemetery, Childers and a small patrol crossed a road that had been cratered by shellfire; he stumbled into a hole and broke his foot. “I couldn’t see the hole because it was dark. I guess the Germans heard me grunting when I fell in the hole and hit the ground, and they opened up on us with a machine gun.” As dawn broke, he could see his men being raked by heavy fire from machine guns entrenched behind the wall of an old cemetery up on a rise. “Good God, they re killing all those Indian boys!” he thought. Now these same soldiers, some of whom he had known since school days, were getting hit by enemy fire, and he felt he had to try to save them. Collecting 8 other unattached GIs, Childers moved toward the firing, looping around the hill so he could come up behind the German position. Despite a broken instep, Childers took 8 men from his 45th Division platoon up a hill, scouting for German emplacements at Olivetto. His group reached a rock wall, where he deployed his GIs to cover his lone approach across an open field. “The gunner fired several blasts across my back. It didn’t do my clothes any good, but I was lucky—he missed me. I began to roll until I rolled into the ditch on the far side of the road. I felt the pain severely in my foot, but I crawled up to where that machine gun was and, between me and the others, we eliminated that machine gun.” Childers rounded up his 8-man patrol, reversed direction, and crawled up a hill toward the entrance of the cemetery, which was surrounded by a stone wall. “After going up about half of this incline,” he said, “I encountered a group of Germans in a building. There were a couple of snipers in there, firing at me and other people, too. Back in my early days on the farm, as a means of survival, I learned to shoot rabbits – running, even — with a twenty-two. I’m not bragging, but I was a pretty good shot. Anyway, the two snipers were eliminated.” When 2 German riflemen fired on him, the experienced hunter dropped both with precision marksmanship. Childers spotted an enemy machine gun nest a short distance away. He then located the machine gun positions and circled behind them. Attacking alone, he killed the crew of the closest gun but could not draw a bead on the 2nd. Needing a target, he tossed some rocks at the position, prompting 2 curious Germans to peek over the berm. Still unable to walk on his painful broken foot, he continued crawling until he came to a small, ravinelike depression in the ground and continued on his hands and knees up this depression to a position behind the enemy gun. “First, a sniper started shooting at me from that machine gun nest and then he turned the machine gun around and opened up. Thank God he didn’t qualify on the range. We exchanged a few shots, but neither of us hit each other. I could see the tops of their helmets. I picked up a rock and threw it. I thought that if I hit ‘em on the head, at least I’d give ‘em a headache. So I threw the rock and it went between them.” Thinking the rock was a grenade, the 2 Germans bolted from their hole. As bullets sprayed dirt in his face, Childers put a .30-06 (7.62 millimeter) round through 1 man’s head while his squad dropped the other. At that point he might have called a halt, but he pressed ahead and, unaided, captured a German forward observer. Childers said, “As ‘Granny’ on the Beverly Hillbillies used to say, ‘They hadn’t oughtta done that. When the first one jumped out, I was ready for him. I think he was still airborne when I knocked him off. There were a few shots exchanged with the next one, but we got him, too. I continued on to the next gun, which was about thirty-five yards away, and the same thing practically repeated itself. We exchanged a few shots there for a bit and I got one of them.” The other 1 was eliminated by 1 of his 8 men. Childers continued up the hill to another house from which an enemy mortar observer was directing enemy fire. He got the gunner in his sights and pulled the trigger, only to find he was out of ammunition. He approached the house shouting “Surrender!” with such authority that the German came out and threw down his gun and helmet in a gesture of defeat. Thinking he could lead his patrol to safety, Childers continued moving forward, but only succeeded in traveling deeper into enemy territory. “I got up to the top of the hill and there was a mortar observer in a stone house. He decided he was going to surrender.” Out of ammunition, Childers directed 1 of the soldiers with him to take the man prisoner. “I continued to crawl over the top of the hill and back down. Later in the afternoon, I was picked up and taken to the hospital. The battle went on for quite a while. They say the Germans always counterattacked, but there was no counterattack there, because there were no Germans left to counter-attack.” After that, I was directed to go to the aid station that had been set up in a building a short distance away. I had to crawl up to the aid station and, about the time I got there, there was this large explosion, most likely from an artillery shell that hit the roof of that building. Of course, the blast came down through the building, where there were several wounded soldiers, and killed a doctor there. Childers’s foot was so badly broken that he was evacuated on a hospital ship bound for North Africa. After several weeks, he returned to his unit in Italy. He was wounded again, at Anzio, and sent to Naples to convalesce. While waiting for transportation in Naples, on April 22, 1944, he was given a fresh uniform and escorted outside to an impromptu parade at a replacement center. Surrounded by the colors, he was told to face a large group of men standing at attention. He was informed Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers, deputy commanding officer of the Mediterranean theater, wanted to speak with him. “My immediate thought was, ‘What the hell have I done now?’ Generals just don’t go around talking to second lieutenants on a friendly basis.” When he reported to Devers, a group of other recovering patients were lined up in formation and a military band was playing. “Somebody read the citation but I was so nervous, I didn’t really understand what they were talking about. They put a medal around my neck and people came up and congratulated me.” Lieutenant General Jacob Devers appeared, read some words Childers didn’t quite catch because of the poor acoustics, and put a medal around his neck. After the brief ceremony was over and everyone had started to disperse, Childers picked up the medal from his chest and tried to read the inscription upside down. “What is this?” he asked a sergeant who was watching him. “Why, that’s the Congressional Medal of Honor, sir!” the man replied in an awestruck voice. Childers was eventually ordered to be evacuated to a hospital in North Africa. After recuperating from his broken foot, he was ordered to rejoin his unit. Childers never returned to the 45th; he was flown back to the States where he met with United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945) and then went on a nationwide tour to promote the sale of war bonds. “Funny – one day I was a soldier and the next day I was a celebrity,” he said, with a self-effacing laugh. He shrugged off the label of “hero.” “Hero’ is just a term, a phrase. It’s equal to calling me ‘Colonel’ or ‘Mister.’ It’s just a title,” he said, with genuine modesty. Not only was Childers the 45th Infantry Division’s 1st Medal of Honor recipient, but he was also the 1st Native American to be awarded the nation’s highest military decoration in World War II. He was not the last. Technical Sergeant Van T. Barfoot (June 15, 1919 – March 2, 2012), Choctaw Nation, 3rd Platoon, L Company, 3rd Battalion, 157th Infantry, 45th Infantry Division, received the Medal of Honor on September 28, 1944, for combat actions in Carcano, Italy on May 23, 1944. He silenced 3 machine gun nests and captured 17 Nazi German soldaten. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0650.jpg |
| Image Size | 394.80 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2046 x 2784 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | Office of War Information |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 8, 1944 |
| Location | |
| City | Naples |
| State or Province | Campania |
| Country | Italy |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-208-N-24772 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
Author of the World War II Multimedia Database