Gino Joseph Merli

The Medal of Honor Hero Who Refused to Surrender

The Germans thought Gino Joseph Merli was dead. They were wrong. Before the night was over, they would make that mistake again.

Sergeant Gino Joseph Merli was one of the most remarkable American soldiers of World War II, a Medal of Honor recipient whose courage in Belgium became one of the extraordinary individual stands of the European campaign. Born on May 13, 1924, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Merli entered the U.S. Army from Peckville and served with the Weapons Platoon, Company H, 2d Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, the famous "Big Red One." He held the rank of Private First Class during the action that made his name part of American military history, and he later attained the rank of Sergeant.

But Merli's story did not begin with the Medal of Honor. Before Belgium, he had already followed the 1st Infantry Division into the brutal campaign across Western Europe. The 18th Infantry fought from the Normandy landings through Northern France, the Rhineland, the Ardennes and Central Europe. Its official U.S. Army lineage records the regiment's Normandy campaign participation with an assault arrowhead, followed by Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace and Central Europe campaign credit. Merli's battalion shared in that hard-fought path across Europe.

The defining moment came on the night of September 4 to 5, 1944, near Sars-la-Bruyère, Belgium. Merli was manning a machine gun when a numerically superior German force struck his company. American positions were overwhelmed and riflemen were forced back, but Merli stayed behind at his gun, firing into the attackers and covering the withdrawal of his comrades. His assistant gunner was killed, eight other members of the section were forced to surrender, and the machine-gun position itself was overrun.

What happened next turned a desperate defense into an extraordinary act of battlefield deception and courage. Surrounded by German troops, Merli collapsed beside his dead assistant gunner and pretended to be dead. When the enemy moved away, he rose and opened fire again. His position was captured once more, and once more the Germans believed the bodies beside the gun posed no further threat. Merli remained at his weapon through the night. Each time the opportunity returned, so did his machine gun.

By daylight, the battlefield told the story. Merli was still there. When American troops counterattacked, the Germans sought a truce. The official U.S. Army Medal of Honor citation records 52 enemy dead on the battlefield, with 19 lying directly in front of Merli's machine gun. The citation concluded that his courage, the losses he inflicted and the confusion he created among the enemy contributed materially to the American victory. His Medal of Honor was officially recorded in War Department General Orders No. 64, dated August 4, 1945.

The nation had already honored Merli in person. On June 15, 1945, President Harry S. Truman presented him with the Medal of Honor at the White House. The Congressional Medal of Honor Society confirms the presentation date and identifies Merli's Medal of Honor action as taking place near Sars-la-Bruyère on September 4 and 5, 1944. Photographic records preserved by the Harry S. Truman Library also place Private First Class Gino J. Merli among the Medal of Honor recipients gathered with President Truman and senior American military leaders following the ceremony.

The Medal of Honor was not the only evidence of the cost of Merli's combat service. The official Department of Veterans Affairs Veterans Legacy Memorial records his Bronze Star Medal and Purple Heart with an oak leaf cluster, confirming that he received the Purple Heart twice. His unit also carried distinguished battle honors. U.S. Army lineage records confirm that the 18th Infantry received an Army Presidential Unit Citation for Normandy, as well as another for Aachen, Germany. These decorations and unit honors form part of the larger military record behind the ribbon rack associated with Merli's wartime service.

Yet perhaps the most revealing chapter of Gino Merli's life began after the machine guns fell silent. He returned to Pennsylvania and spent 34 years as an adjudication officer at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Plains Township, helping other veterans receive the assistance they had earned. According to a tribute entered into the Congressional Record after his death, veterans could speak to Merli about their own wartime experiences without realizing that the quiet man listening to them wore the United States' highest military decoration. He rarely placed his own experience above theirs.

That humility followed him throughout his life. In 1984, Merli returned to the Normandy beaches with journalist Tom Brokaw, and the two developed a lasting friendship. Brokaw later described Merli as a modest and reluctant warrior and identified him as an inspiration while writing The Greatest Generation. Merli's response to the violence he had experienced was equally striking. The Congressional Record recalls that after the war he prayed for the men he had killed, a reminder that his battlefield courage did not make him indifferent to the human cost of combat.

Gino Merli survived a night when surrender or death seemed almost unavoidable, but he never built his life around being called a hero. He built it around service. He served his comrades under fire, served veterans for decades after coming home, and carried the Medal of Honor with a humility that became as important to his legacy as the desperate stand for which he received it.

Merli died in Peckville, Pennsylvania, on June 11, 2002, at the age of 78. His memory remains deeply rooted in northeastern Pennsylvania. The Commonwealth's Gino J. Merli Veterans' Center in Scranton bears the name of the World War II Medal of Honor recipient and continues a mission closely connected to the work Merli chose after the war: caring for America's veterans.

For students of World War II history, Medal of Honor recipients, the 1st Infantry Division, the 18th Infantry Regiment and American gallantry awards, Sergeant Gino Joseph Merli's story is more than an account of one extraordinary night in Belgium. It is the story of a young Pennsylvania soldier who held his ground when almost everyone around him had been killed, captured or forced back, and then spent the rest of his life quietly standing beside other veterans who needed someone in their corner.