He took more bullets in his side, then his hand, but kept shooting until he shoved an American cartridge clip into his French rifle and it jammed.“Each slash meant something, believe me,” Johnson later said.
By daylight, the carnage was evident: Johnson had killed four Germans and wounded an estimated 10 to 20 more. Johnson had him lie in the trench and hand him grenades, which the Albany native threw at the Germans.
We also want to thank John Ridge for providing additional research. Even after suffering 21 wounds in hand-to-hand combat, Henry Johnson had prevented the Germans from busting through the French line.He made it back home to Albany, New York, and resumed his job as a Red Cap porter at the train station, but he never could overcome his injuries—his left foot had been shattered, and a metal plate held it together. “I wasn’t doing exercises, let me tell you.” He stabbed one German in the stomach, felled a lieutenant, and took a pistol shot to his arm before driving his knife between the ribs of a soldier who had climbed on his back. But there were too many enemy soldiers, and they advanced from every direction; Johnson ran out of grenades.
Wielding only a knife and gravely wounded himself, Private Johnson continued fighting and took his Bolo knife and stabbed it through an enemy soldier's head. For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty:Private Johnson distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a member of Company C, 369th Infantry Regiment, 93rd Division, American Expeditionary Forces, during combat operations against the enemy on the front lines of the Western Front in France on May 15, 1918. He worked as a redcap porter at the Albany Union Station on Broadway. As far as anyone knew, he was buried in a pauper’s field in Albany. Once they examined Johnson’s records and read press accounts of his return to the United States, historians from the New York Division of Military and Naval Affairs suspected that Johnson might have been buried at Arlington, but microfilm records indicated only that a William Henry Johnson was buried there. But by the mid-1920s, Johnson’s difficulties were catching up with him, and he declined until his death in 1929.
Like hundreds of thousands of young American men, Henry Johnson returned from World War I and tried to make a life for himself in spite of what he had experienced in a … Johnson, born in 1897 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, moved to Albany, New York with his family when he was still a child. Johnson said that he was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on July 15, 1892, when he registered for the World War I draft, but he used other dates on other documents, so he might not have known the exact date of his birth. Just after 2 a.m., Johnson heard the “snippin’ and clippin’ ” of wirecutters on the perimeter fence and told Roberts to run back to camp to let the French troops know there was trouble. While under intense enemy fire and despite receiving significant wounds, Private Johnson mounted a brave retaliation, resulting in several enemy casualties. He took German bullets in the head and lip but fired his rifle into the darkness. When reinforcements arrived, Johnson passed out and was taken to a field hospital. Private Johnson and another soldier were on sentry duty at a forward outpost when they received a surprise attack from a German raiding party consisting of at least 12 soldiers.
John Henry Johnson (November 24, 1929 – June 3, 2011) was a gridiron football running back known for his excellence at the fullback position as both a runner and a blocker. When his fellow soldier was badly wounded, Private Johnson prevented him from being taken prisoner by German forces.
Henry Johnson in 1919, after receiving the French Croix de Guerre. “Just fought for my life. At the age of 20, he worked as … Read MoreHenry Johnson (1897-1929) Johnson then hurled a grenade toward the fence, which brought a volley of return gunfire from the Germans, as well as enemy grenades. Born William Henry Johnson in Winston Salem, North Carolina, Johnson moved to New York as a teenager.