THE SOFT MUD OF FRANCE By Gregory Holland Vail. The Soft Mud of France is the story of First Lieutenant William H. Vail, an aviator with the United States Air Service 95th Aero Squadron in World War I — the Great War. On November 6, 1918, Bill Vail met his rendezvous with destiny in the skies of France.
Yet, it’s more than a military history. It covers the ensuing 64 years of Bill Vail’s life and those around him, reverberating today. Soft Mud is a tale which contains cautionary geopolitical and personal lessons on how pivotal moments create permanent effects.
We recently connected with Greg Vail, the author of this book, who is rightfully proud of his father’s heroism in World War I. Among the many brave and self-sacrificing Army aviators who flew daring missions over Europe back then, Greg’s father’s story stands out as one that has yet to get its full recognition.
SOLDIERS STEADFAST AND LOYAL: Medal of Honor and Distinguished Service Cross Recipients of the 4th Division in World War One By Michael D. Belis (Deeds Publishing, 2022). As the back cover promo states, this book tells the story of the 186 soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division who were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for their valorous actions in World War One.
One of those awards was later upgraded to the Medal of Honor. That particular upgrade for that particular 4th Division soldier was for Sergeant William Shemin. SOLDIERS STEADFAST AND LOYAL, which opens with Sgt. Shemin, puts Bill Shemin’s Medal of Honor story in the context of the many other 4th Division soldiers who fought on other fronts and other battlefields of World War One. Belis’s book is more than 600 pages, with heroic stories on every page.
IMMORTAL VALOR: The Black Medal of Honor Winners of World War II By Robert Child (Osprey Publishing. 2022) From the Publisher’s Listing on Amazon: The remarkable story of the seven African American soldiers ultimately awarded the World War II Medal of Honor, and the 50-year campaign to deny them their recognition. In 1945, when Congress began reviewing the record of the most conspicuous acts of courage by American soldiers during World War II, they recommended awarding the Medal of Honor to 432 recipients. Despite the fact that more than one million African-Americans served, not a single Black soldier received the Medal of Honor. The omission remained on the record for over four decades.
But recent historical investigations have brought to light some of the extraordinary acts of valor performed by black soldiers during the war. Men like Vernon Baker, who single-handedly eliminated three enemy machineguns, an observation post, and a German dugout. Or Sergeant Reuben Rivers, who spearhead his tank unit's advance against fierce German resistance for three days despite being grievously wounded. Meanwhile Lieutenant Charles Thomas led his platoon to capture a strategically vital village on the Siegfried Line in 1944 despite losing half his men and suffering a number of wounds himself.
Ultimately, in 1993 a US Army commission determined that seven men, including Baker, Rivers and Thomas, had been denied the Army's highest award simply due to racial discrimination. In 1997, more than 50 years after the war, President Clinton finally awarded the Medal of Honor to these seven heroes, sadly all but one of them posthumously. These are their stories.
OBAMA: The Historic Presidency of Barack Obama By Mark Greenberg and David Tait with a Foreword by Ken Burns (Union Square & Co., 2020) Veteran photojournalist Mark Greenberg documents the Obama presidency in a series of historic pictures, including a spectacular image of President Obama presenting the Medal of Honor for Sgt. William Shemin posthumously to his daughters Ina Bass and Elsie Shemin Roth on June 2, 2015, in a White House ceremony.
