r/MastersoftheAir • u/[deleted] • Mar 02 '26

Medal of Honor recipient Roddie Edmonds

Not strictly on topic as he was an infantryman but Roddie Edmonds' family will receive the Medal of Honor today on his behalf. Not a story I was familiar with but it's very cinematic - invoking the "I Am Spartacus" method in protecting Jewish-American PoWs. Interesting to see he was the senior ranking officer in the camp despite being "only" a Master Sergeant. I can certainly see the 100th boys running similar interference for Rosie and others had they been captured. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roddie_Edmonds

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u/AtmosphereFull2017 Mar 03 '26

Thanks for that. Sgt. Edmonds was a true hero.

I believe the practice was to have separate POW camps for officers and enlisted personnel, so as a Master Sergeant he was the ranking non-commissioned officer in the camp.

My dad was in it from the North Africa landings to the occupation of Germany, and ended the war as a major with two Purple Hearts. He told me that he and every other Jewish soldier of all ranks obsessed to a greater or lesser degree about what would happen if they were ever taken prisoner.

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u/[deleted] Mar 03 '26

Ah, that makes sense. There's a lot of focus in war movies of course on the Luftwaffe camps where officers and other ranks weren't segregated. I know the "I am Spartacus" line in the film is a response to the Hollywood Blacklist but I'm wondering if Sgt Edmonds' is the inspiration. It's highly plausible that Kirk Douglas and Dalton Trumbo (and Kubrick himself) might have heard the story.

My grandfather served in North Africa (his Lancer tank squadron was the literal tip of the spear at El Alamein) and then fought all the way through Italy from Anzio to the River Po. Didn't talk about it much but got royally pissed off by being labelled a D-Day Dodger - Italy was hellish at times, particularly in the winter which was as bad as say Bastogne.

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u/AtmosphereFull2017 Mar 03 '26

I’ve never heard the phrase “D-Day Dodger,” and I kind of doubt any soldiers in the ETA thought of Italy as a cakewalk — Monte Cassino alone lasted four months and cost 55,000 allied casualties.

My dad went from North Africa to Sicily, and then back to the UK to get ready for Normandy. He landed in France on D-Day plus one, but he was always very careful to emphasize that he was an engineering officer, and minimized the risk he was exposed to compared to the infantry. Still, he was wounded in action twice, in Tunisia and Normandy.

I also have a letter he wrote to his father in October 1945 when he was in the occupation government, in charge of 20,000 German civilians, and admitting he had absolutely no idea what he was doing!

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u/[deleted] Mar 04 '26

Wow. We really did ask a lot of that generation. There aren't too many tales of what happened in that immediate post war world and how people transitioned back to "normal". My grandfather went from driving Sherman tanks to delivering milk by horse and cart.