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Two local Civil War soldiers earned the award on the same day in 1863 — July 1, the opening day of the bloody Battle of Gettysburg.
Both were members of the Union's famed Iron Brigade, which consisted of many rural Wisconsin farm boys. The brigade was decimated at Gettysburg but afforded the rest of the Army precious time to arrive and set up defenses against Gen. Robert E. Lee's Confederate forces already in Pennsylvania.
Francis Wallar of De Soto, Wis., wrested a regimental battle flag away from a Mississippi unit amid a horrific battle, and Jefferson Coates of Boscobel, Wis., was credited with "unsurpassed courage in battle."
Both men lived to see the end of the war, but Coates spent the rest of his life in darkness — a single bullet blinded him in both eyes.
Eighty-seven years later, in 1950, two more local men were awarded the nation's highest military medal, both posthumously.
Marine Private First Class Stanley Christianson of Mindoro, Wis., and Army Cpl. Mitchell Red Cloud Jr. of Merrillan in Jackson County, both died in one-man stands against overwhelming odds while delaying the enemy and allowing their comrades to regroup and fight off attacks during the brutal fighting of the first year of the Korean War.
In between those events, Beauford Anderson of Soldiers Grove, Wis., was seriously wounded in a heroic encounter against Japanese defenders on the island of
Okinawa, the last major battle of World War II.
Wallar (whose name is misspelled Waller in Army records and some history books) was fighting with his 6th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment near a railroad cut at Gettysburg when he found himself in a position to grab the enemy's heavily-defended battle flag.
Capturing an enemy flag in the heat of battle was considered a major accomplishment. The flag was almost always near the center of the enemy's lines and grimly defended.
Christianson and Red Cloud were both Marine combat veterans of World War II before their entry into the Korean War, which started in the summer of 1950 when Communist North Korea invaded South Korea.
Early the morning of Sept. 29, 1950, the 25-year-old Christianson and another man were in an advanced listening post when they detected the oncoming enemy. Christianson sent the other man back to warn the remainder of the platoon while he stayed in his vulnerable position and held off a large enemy force single-handedly until he was killed.
His selfless action gave his platoon valuable time to organize a defense, according to the citation accompanying his award .
"He was a hell of a guy, a crazy sucker," said former Marine Jerry Graf, of La Crosse, in Tribune interview in 1991. He and several other La Crosse area men served in the 1st Marine Division at that time and knew Christianson.
"He was a real hero and deserved it (Medal of Honor), too bad he wasn't alive to get it," Graf said.
In an eerily similar situation barely a month later, Red Cloud, also 25, also detected enemy movement in his unit's front and yelled a warning to his 19th Infantry comrades and opened fire.
Wounded, he supported himself against a tree and stood his ground and fought until he died amid a hail of enemy fire.
The Army Medal of Honor citation said Red Cloud showed "dauntless courage and gallant self-sacrifice."
Red Cloud joined the Marines in 1941 and participated in several battles. He was discharged from the Marines in 1945 and joined the Army in 1948. He was in the Army's 24th Division at the time of his death.
Anderson was also credited with saving the lives of many as he sheltered his wounded comrades while holding off a fanatical Japanese attack on April 13, 1945, while a member of the Army's 96th Infantry Division.
Severely wounded, Anderson survived the war. He later moved to California where he lived until his death a few years ago.
Anderson's hometown, Soldiers Grove, is now home of the Region Five Medal of Honor Society. The village park there contains a memorial to the Medal of Honor recipients from several area states.
Just a few miles from the village park is a roadside historical marker honoring Anderson. It is in a wayside rest area along Hwy. 61, about four miles south of Soldiers Grove.
Also easily available to motorists are state markers for Christianson and Red Cloud.
The Christianson marker is in Veterans Memorial Park, West Salem, and the Red Cloud marker is near the Ho-Chunk powwow grounds along Hwy. 54, about four miles east of Black River Falls.
A granite marker honoring Wallar and other veterans is located in the rural cemetery near Retreat, Wis., on Vernon Co. Hwy. N, just off Hwy. 82, about five miles east of De Soto.
