Fifty-one years ago last month, my Clinton County High School classmate Paul Conner and I got on a bus in Lexington for a 4-H trip to Washington, D.C., our first visit there. We rode up with his parents, Murl and Pauline Conner, whom I knew mainly as mainstays of the local Farm Bureau.
I also knew Murl from my work at WANY in Albany, where we would often read a notice that he would be at the courthouse “to assist veterans and their dependents with claims for benefits due them as a result of their military service.” We knew Murl was a veteran, but that was about it.
Murl Conner
What we didn’t know that he was one of the most decorated American soldiers of World War II. And now he may be THE most decorated, thanks to 22 years of work to get him the Medal of Honor, which he received posthumously two years ago next month.
The story of that effort, and of Murl Conner’s life, is the subject of a documentary that will air at 8 p.m. ET Monday on KET: “From Honor to Medal: The Story of Garlin M. Conner.” I’m the executive producer, in my role as director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky. The producer and director is Jeff Hoagland, a Lexington filmmaker who has done a wonderful job of telling both stories and weaving them together.
Monday is Memorial Day, so KET couldn’t have picked a better time to tell Murl Conner’s story.
Yes, it is a day for honoring Americans who died in military service, and Murl survived the war, beating the odds after 28 months with the Third Infantry Division. But that’s one reason he rarely talked about his experiences, perhaps the main reason. He had seen many others make greater sacrifices than he had, and to talk about his own service could be seen as diminishing theirs.
When he was asked, he usually said, “I done what I had to do, and that’s all there is to it.”
No, Murl, you did much more than you had to do.
You didn’t have to run through 400 yards of German artillery fire, 30 yards beyond the American line, with a field telephone and a spool of wire, to be a forward observer to direct American artillery, which was essential to save your battalion because it had no armored support at the time. At the time, you were still recovering from a serious wound.
You didn’t have to lie in a shallow ditch, barely wide enough to hold your 5-foot-6 frame, for three hours as the battle ebbed and flowed. And as the elite Nazi infantry and tanks made a last-ditch assault, you didn’t have to call in artillery on your own position, “resolved to die if necessary to halt the enemy,” according to the citation for your Distinguished Service Cross.
Al Cross (Twitter @ruralj) is a professor in the University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media and director of its Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues. His opinions are his own, not UK’s. He was the longest-serving political writer for the Louisville Courier Journal (1989-2004) and national president of the Society of Professional Journalists in 2001-02. He joined the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 2010.
NKyTribune and KyForward are the anchor home for Al Cross’ column. We offer it to other publications throughout the Commonwealth, with appropriate attribution.
Murl got the DSC in the field and went on to earn a Silver Star, his fourth, as the Third Division moved into Germany. But though his commanding officer had asked his staff to get him the highest award possible, the paperwork for the Medal of Honor never got done, and this was in late January 1945; the war in Europe ended just over three months later.
Clinton County folks held a ceremony at the courthouse to honor Murl when he came home, but in his speech he didn’t talk about himself, and that was about the last anyone heard of his heroism – until Richard Chilton, a retired Green Beret soldier from Wisconsin, met him and started a campaign to get the DSC upgraded to the Medal of Honor.
Chilton didn’t seem to get much traction until his effort got the attention of Byron Crawford, then the Kentucky columnist for The Courier-Journal. When Byron wrote a column about Chilton’s efforts and Murl’s heroism, it was news to most people in Clinton County, including Walton “Chip” Haddix, a former teacher who researched local veterans.
Haddix became the point man and “the man who wouldn’t take no for an answer,” said more than one of those who helped him and Pauline along the way with lobbying, letter-writing and finally a lawsuit. They had many helpers, but in the documentary Pauline gives prime credit to Chilton and Haddix.
The film’s opening includes these lines: “Garlin Murl Conner is a hero. That much is without debate. . . . But time and memory get tricky in the fog of war; and as it is true that every veteran is a hero, it is also true that every war forgets, to some extent, which heroes waged it, and how.”
Let us not forget those heroes on this Memorial Day, or any other – or on any other day.
