World War II hero finally gets medal

Morton Smit remembers Col. Mike Michaelis' words of September 1944.

An Army lieutenant, Smit lay in a Belgian hospital with a gaping wound in his side, missing a huge chunk of his hip bone -- wounds suffered during World War II's Operation Market Garden a few weeks earlier in neighboring Holland.

He had deflected a German grenade, saving the lives of six of his men, and somehow he had been only wounded, not killed.

Smit, the colonel told him, deserved a Medal of Honor for what he had done, but Michaelis would recommend him for a Silver Star, the third highest medal for valor, in addition to a Purple Heart for being injured in combat.

Smit got his Purple Heart, and Michaelis went on to become a four-star general. But the paperwork for the Silver Star got lost.

It would take 55 years, including 15 years of dedicated work by Smit's son Louis, to cut through miles of government red tape and get Mort his Silver Star.

On Dec. 18, Smit, now 80 and retired in Las Vegas, was presented the coveted medal at a ceremony at Fort Campbell, Ky., as his wife and family watched.

"I was overwhelmed by the experience," said Smit, who was promoted to captain shortly before his release from the Army in 1946 following two years in a military hospital.

Smit served with the famed 101st Airborne Screaming Eagle paratroopers at Normandy on D-Day. He performed his heroic and career-ending act as Allied forces pushed toward Berlin.

"We landed Sept. 18 and our goal was to secure the St. Oeden Road," said Smit, then platoon leader of Bravo Company of the 101st Airborne's 502nd Infantry Regiment.

"If you remember the movie 'A Bridge Too Far,' that was Market Garden."

The 101st and the 82nd Airborne made it through, but the British tank forces that followed were defeated by German Panzer Corps armored divisions.

That left the two Airborne units dangerously exposed and unable to complete their mission.

Market Garden was considered one of the boldest Allied failures of the war. If it had been successful, experts say, it would have shortened the war by months.

Smit recalled his fateful day:

"On the road ahead of us there were two Germans, an enlisted man and an officer on a walkie-talkie. I yelled at them in broken German to surrender. The sergeant dropped his weapon and walked toward us, but the officer dropped his walkie-talkie and fired at us."

Smit returned fire with his M-3 machine gun and hit the officer, knocking him to the ground.

"I thought he was done, so we turned our attention to other German soldiers who tried to come around on our flank," Smit said. "For some reason, I turned back toward the German officer, and he was throwing a stick grenade as he was about to die."

Thinking quickly, and without regard for his own life, Smit leaped at the grenade, knocking it into a ditch. He saved the lives of his men, but when the German grenade exploded, the shrapnel hit a grenade on Smit's belt and it exploded under him.

Smit's men rushed to their leader's side.

He was taken to a Belgian hospital, where he healed, but also wrestled with depression.

"I was feeling pretty sorry for myself at that time thinking that my leg was ruined," Smit said. "I had been an athlete all my life with football, track and swimming. All I could think about was that all of that was gone forever."

Then Smit looked at the soldier in the bed next to him who was burned over 90 percent of his body. Then he saw another soldier who suffered a bullet wound through the temple that shot out both of his eyes -- and that man was whistling a happy tune.

"I then realized that I was not that bad off," Smit said. "In fact, I knew I was the luckiest man in the world."

After the war, Smit became a sales manager and vice president for the Bulova Watch Co., in New York, where he long worked with retired Gen. Omar Bradley, the commander of the D-Day landing.

Smit lived for 40 years without a large portion of his hip before doctors inserted a plastic device that was secured with titanium pins. He had long forgotten about the Silver Star that he was promised.

However, in the mid-1980s, Smit's son Louis, then a Henderson Police officer, asked to see his father's Silver Star. Mort told him he never got it. That began a 15-year effort to correct what Louis Smit felt was a terrible oversight.

"It was frustrating, because everywhere I went military officials said they could not find the paperwork," said Louis Smit, who was a member of the 82nd Airborne during Vietnam and now is an investigator in the Seattle medical examiner's office.

Gen. Michaelis, the one man who could verify that the Silver Star was intended for his father, died about the time Louis began his efforts to obtain the medal.

After years of being shuffled around, Louis met Capt. Dale Bledsole at a 101st Airborne reunion. Bledsole had compiled Mort's videotaped oral history, and videotaped accounts of other veterans for a book he was writing on the Screaming Eagles. They all told the same story about Smit's heroic deed.

"It was the documentation we needed to prove to the Army that my father deserved the Silver Star," Louis said.

The medal was approved early in December. Smit's family told him that he was going to Fort Campbell to get an unspecified award.

"I thought I was going to get the Secretary of the Army's Distinguished Member of the 502nd Infantry Regiment award," Mort Smit said. "As it turned out, I got that and the Silver Star."

It was the crowning achievement to Smit's military career, during which he also earned a Bronze Star, the American Defense Medal, two Distinguished Unit Citations, the Belgian Croix de Guerre and Holland's Orange Lanyard.

Standing among the troops who gathered to watch the ceremony was Mort Smit's granddaughter, PFC Jennifer Smit, a member of the 101st Airborne Division.

Col. Robert Caslen, commander of the Second Brigade of the 101st, pinned the Silver Star on Smit's chest.

But, said Mort modestly afterward, "I'm not anything special."

That's not how Louis Smit sees it.

"Given the current state of hostilities with Iraq and our current domestic difficulties, this country sorely needs heroes. My father is a real-life American hero."

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