The forgotten medals of 2LT Hyman Markel, US Army

[Story]

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hyla Merin grew up without a father and for a long time never knew why.

Her mother never spoke about the Army officer who died before Hyla was born. The scraps of information she gathered from other relatives were hazy: 2nd Lt. Hyman Markel was a rabbi's son, brilliant at mathematics, the brave winner of a Purple Heart who died sometime in 1945.

Aside from wedding photos of Markel in uniform, Merin never glimpsed him.

But on Sunday, decades after he won it, Merin will receive her father's Purple Heart, along with a Silver Star she never knew he'd won and a half-dozen other medals.

Markel was killed in the last days of World War II on May 3, 1945, in Italy's Po Valley while fighting German troops as an officer with the 88th Division of the 351st Infantry Regiment, said Zachariah Fike, the Vermont Army National Guard captain who founded Purple Hearts Reunited.

"The accounts suggest that he was out on patrol and he got ambushed and he charged ahead and basically took out a machine gun position to save the rest of his guys," said Fike, whose organization has returned some two dozen medals. "For that, he paid the ultimate sacrifice."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap...rMeHFA?docId=31ca0abf1c0843e98ccc30daabfd0084

 

[Peacoat]

A good story about a time so long ago. I hope the daughter now has the Slver Star as well as the Purple Heart.