An inscription on a monument to British soldiers killed in a World War II battle with Japanese troops in India strikes a chord with Americans as we pause on this Memorial Day weekend to honor our military dead:

“When you go home

Tell them of us, and say:

For your tomorrow,

We gave our today.”

On this day of remembrance we are mindful, as well, of the war heroes still living – the brave, aging warriors among us who courageously threw themselves into the fray so that liberty’s torch might continue to light the way for generations yet unborn. Men such as Ed Dahlgren of Blaine, World War II winner of the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award for bravery, given for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty.”

Dahlgren – who also won a Silver Star for gallantry, three Bronze Stars for heroic achievement, the French Croix de Guerre for bravery in action, and the Purple Heart for wounds received at Cassino, Italy – was a sergeant and platoon leader when he won his Medal of Honor on Feb. 11, 1945, in the small French crossroads village of Oberhoffen. A subsequent battlefield commission promoted him to lieutenant for his demonstrated leadership and bravery under fire.

The Medal of Honor citation states that Dahlgren’s “bold leadership and magnificent courage displayed in his heroic attacks were in a large measure responsible for repulsing an enemy counterattack and saving an American platoon from great danger.” According to the citation, here’s how Dahlgren’s day went:

“As he advanced along a street, he observed several Germans crossing a field about 100 yards away. Running into a barn, he took up a position in a window and swept the hostile troops with submachinegun fire, killing six, wounding others, and completely disorganizing the group. His platoon then moved forward through intermittent sniper fire and made contact with the beseiged Americans. When the two platoons had been reorganized, Sgt. Dahlgren continued to advance along the street until he drew fire from an enemy-held house. In the face of machine-pistol and rifle fire, he ran toward the building, hurled a grenade through the door, and blasted his way inside with his gun.

“This aggressive attack so rattled the Germans that all eight men who held the strongpoint immediately surrendered. As Sgt. Dahlgren started toward the next house, hostile machinegun fire drove him to cover. He secured the rifle grenades, stepped to an exposed position, and calmly launched his missiles from a difficult angle until he had destroyed the machinegun and killed its two operators.

“He moved to the rear of the house and suddenly came under the fire of a machinegun emplaced in a barn. Throwing a grenade into the structure, he rushed the position, firing his weapon as he ran; within, he overwhelmed five Germans. After reorganizing his unit he advanced to clear hostile riflemen from the building where he had destroyed the machinegun. He entered the house by a window and trapped the Germans in the cellar, where he tossed grenades into their midst, wounding several and forcing 10 more to surrender.

“While reconnoitering another street with a comrade, he heard German voices in a house. An attack with rifle grenades drove the hostile troops to the cellar. Sgt. Dahlgren entered the building, kicked open the cellar door, and, firing several bursts down the stairway, called for the trapped enemy to surrender. Sixteen soldiers filed out with their hands in the air.”

Eight enemy killed, 39 captured. But Feb. 11, 1945 “was not the only tough day” in his 600 days of combat, Dahlgren assured me Tuesday at the office of Mars Hill trucking executive and potato shipper Bob Tweedie, who had arranged the interview. Accompanied by his wife, Pauline, this robust 85-year-old son of Aroostook, the very image of Everyone’s Favorite Grandfather, explained, “There were times when I had boys killed right alongside me…”

For many years plagued by ugly memories and unwilling to discuss his life-altering wartime experiences, Dahlgren is less reluctant today. Still, he remains a humble man not easily given to talking about himself. Ask him how he won the Silver Star and he will modestly reply,”Oh, I rescued one of the men from a minefield, and so forth…” In such situations, one does what one has to do.

A man never knows how he will react when his moment of truth arrives in combat, Dahlgren acknowledged. “When you enter a major campaign you think, ‘probably this is the day that we will get it.’ But you get through it somehow.”

Dahlgren “got it” on a godforsakenly steep mountain at Cassino in February 1944 – a year before he would win the Medal of Honor – as he and his 36th Infantry Division comrades unsuccessfully attempted a ground assault to wrest from the Germans control of a mountaintop monastery-turned-fortress. A German sniper’s 30-caliber bullet tore through his shoulder “and it hurt to beat hell, you know.” Incapacitated, he lay on the hillside for hours, “scared as hell” and feigning death as German soldiers passed nearby. Eventually, he hiked down a mule trail to an aid station.

Hospitalized in Naples, he met a wounded English-speaking German lieutenant who had been taken prisoner. “His big fear until then had been being sent to the Russian Front,” which he wanted no part of, Dahlgren recalled. Allied bombers later blasted to bits the great abbey on Monte Cassino – reluctantly, because it was a religious site – and rousted the German defenders. That led to a linkup with Allied troops trapped at Anzio, to the north, and to the subsequent liberation of Rome on June 4, l944, two days before the Normandy invasion.

Amazingly, the shoulder wound was the only one Dahlgren suffered in the war. He was not so much as nicked in his heroics at Oberhoffen. Pressed for more detail of that Battle of the Bulge experience, he replied simply, “The Germans had the town and we wanted it. They stopped us for a while, and then I stopped them with a tommy-gun and rifle grenades. I was a good shot…”

Any veteran who says he was never scared in combat is probably being less than truthful, Dahlgren said. The trick is to make that fear work for you. As a platoon leader he was so busy looking out for his men that he didn’t have much time to dwell on the danger. Some men were rendered useless by fear, he said, “but they were there.” He had to give them that.

Dahlgren and his men were on the Austrian border when the war in Europe ended. “When word came, I was pretty happy,” he said.

In an August 1945 ceremony honoring 26 Medal of Honor recipients, President Harry S. Truman, a World War I veteran, draped the prized decoration around Dahlgren’s neck and shook his hand. “He told us that he’d rather win the Medal of Honor than be President of the United States,” Dahlgren said of the first of a half-dozen presidents he has met over the years. “I thought that was really something.”

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.