This is the incident where SGT Leonard Funk won his Medal of Honor.

How do I know? Because I was there.

When C Company hit Holzheim, Belgium, artillery was called for and the barrages filtered through the town and put the Germans in the cellars of the houses.

The Company moved into the town to clean up. We reached the edge of town when Sgt Traband came to us with about 80 German prisoners which he gave us to guard.

We proceeded to march the prisoners out of town when we came upon Sgt Funk with 3 or 4 men. Here we stopped and sat down.

After a while, all of a sudden the prisoners jumped up and threw their arms in the air and said, ":Heil Hitler.!"

I stepped around the column and looked down the row of prisoners to see what the commotion was. I saw men in snow capes and thought that they were Belgium resistance fighters. They were making our guards surrender.

That’s when Sgt Funk came over and said, "what’s going on?" That’s when the guy in the snow cape turned out to be an SS officer. He saw Sgt Funk’s stripes and came up to me and Sgt Funk to confront us.

My first thought was, "mess with Funk fellow and your dead," and how true it was.

The German officer was waving his Schmeisser at Sgt Funk and jabbering and wanted us to surrender.

Sgt Funk starts mumbling to himself and stood there with his Tommy gun. The German officer is standing there pointing his gun in Sgt Funk’s belly.

In a flash that gun is in the German officer’s belly and he let rip with a full clip.

The German officer went down, that’s when Sgt Funk said to me, "go get some help."

Because of Sgt Funk’s actions he saved a platoon from becoming prisoners of war or far worse.

Sgt Funk rounded up the German prisoners, which was about half of what it was before the encounter, the other half were dead, due to Sgt Funks actions.