A highly decorated Black American World War I soldier who fought off a German advance in brutal hand-to-hand combat on May 15, 1918, when he and his partner were outnumbered 10 to one. Privates Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts heard the distinct sound of wire cutters from No Man’s Land, shrouded by the early morning darkness and the relentless rain of 1918 France. It was 2 a.m., and someone was snipping through the tangled coils of concertina wire covering the muddy ground in front of their sentry post.
“I figured myself as good a man as any of (the advancing Germans), and I says to my partner, ‘We’re going to stick right here,’” Johnson told an Army journalist in August 1918. “He says, ‘I’m with you to the end.’ So instead of retreating to our lines, we cut loose grenades and fired away all our ammunition.”
What followed was a brief, brutal, life-or-death skirmish between the two Americans and a superior force of German soldiers. Johnson ran out of ammunition and used his rifle as a club to save Roberts from being taken prisoner. Both men received multiple critical injuries, with Roberts unable to stand or hold a gun, but he handed grenades to his comrade until they were gone. Johnson finally resorted to using his bolo knife.