‘We are all Jews’: Soldier who defied his German captors to be awarded Medal of Honor
By Claire Barrett
Thursday, Feb 19, 2026
Army Master Sgt. Roddie Edmonds will posthumously receive the Medal of Honor for his actions during World War II. (DVIDS)
After more than 80 years — and a decade after he was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations” — Roddie Edmonds will posthumously receive the Medal of Honor, a White House official confirmed to Military Times on Thursday.
A master sergeant serving in the 106th Infantry Division, 422 Regiment Headquarters Company, Roddie Edmonds had been serving along the Siegfried Line in Bastogne, Belgium, for a mere six days in December 1944 when the Germans began their fanatical final offensive of World War II.
He, alongside thousands of other Americans, were captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge — the largest capture of GI forces during the entirety of the war.
The master sergeant kept a diary of his time in captivity, but his story may have stopped there, alongside its writer who died in 1985, if one simple sentence in a 2008 New York Times article hadn’t set his son, Christopher Edmonds, on a mission to discover what his father had done during the Second World War.
https://www.navytimes.com/veterans/military-history/2026/02/19/we-are-all-jews-soldier-who-defied-his-german-captors-to-be-awarded-medal-of-honor/
