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Medal of honor: Edward C. Dahlgren

Every weekday for 110 straight days we will feature a different living recipient of the Medal of Honor. These are the men who have received their nation's highest military honor. Brian is a board member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation. The words and photos are courtesy of Artisan Books, publishers of "Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty by Peter Collier with photographs by Nick Del Calzo.

EDWARD C. DAHLGREN
SERGEANT, U.S. ARMY  3rd Platoon, Company E, 2nd Battalion, 142nd Infantry, 36th Infantry Division
Edward Dahlgren’s family emigrated from Sweden and became potato farmers in Maine. Dahlgren grew up speaking Swedish at home and attended a one-room schoolhouse. He left high school after his junior year to work on a potato farm near his home. Agriculture was always his first love, but because he wanted to help the war effort, in 1942 he took a job in a Massachusetts machine shop doing defense-related work. He was drafted into the Army early in 1943.

As part of the 36th Infantry Division, Dahlgren was shipped to North Africa that summer and trained for the upcoming invasion of Italy. In September, his unit hit the beach at Salerno and for months fought its way to Monte Cassino, where early in 1944 Dahlgren was shot in the shoulder. He returned from the hospital that summer just as his unit was being redeployed to France. The 36th Infantry Division landed near Marseilles on August 15, and then slowly fought its way north.
On February 11, 1945, Dahlgren, now a sergeant, was leading his men toward another American platoon pinned down near the town of Oberhoffen, in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France. They were proceeding down a narrow street when Dahlgren saw several German soldiers cross through some pastureland about a hundred yards away. From his cover in a nearby barn, he killed six and wounded several others with his Thompson submachine gun. Then, through heavy enemy fire, he led his men to the besieged American platoon. In the midst of the fighting, he noticed a familiar smell and realized that it came from potatoes planted in the field.
Putting the rescued unit under his command, Dahlgren advanced into Oberhoffen. When he came under fire from an enemy-held house, he ran to the building, tossed in a grenade, and entered firing. Eight enemy soldiers immediately surrendered. Coming under machine-gun fire as he approached the house next door, he used rifle grenades to take out the position, killing two more of the enemy.  When German soldiers began shooting at him from a barn across the street, he rushed their position, throwing grenades and firing his submachine gun. Five more Germans surrendered.
Sergeant Dahlgren then entered another house through a window, trapping several soldiers in the cellar. He opened a trapdoor and tossed a grenade down the stairs, wounding several and forcing ten more Germans to surrender.
At the end of the block, Dahlgren entered a fourth house, which seemed deserted, but then he heard German being spoken in hushed tones in the cellar. He kicked open the cellar door and fired several bursts down the stairway. Sixteen men hiding there filed out with their hands up.
After this engagement in which Dahlgren’s men asked their commanding officer to recommend him for
the Medal of Honor. The unit continued to fight its
way into Germany, where Dahlgren received a battlefield commission as a second lieutenant in March 1945. After the enemy surrendered, he realized that he had been in combat for 340 days.
Edward Dahlgren received the Medal of Honor from President Harry Truman on Aug. 23, 1945. Afterward, he went home to Maine, where he went to work for the Maine Department of Agriculture as a seed potato inspector for the next 37 years.

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