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Paul Huff:
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The exhibit is garnering attention from people as far away as Houston, Texas. Cleveland native Donald Clark, who remembers the parade that welcomed Sgt. Huff back to Cleveland in August 23, 1944, stated in an email message after reading about the exhibit on the Museum’s website, www.museumcenter.org, "I want to pay my respects and to honor one of America’s heroes, Paul Huff. I was about six (6) years of age and this was the biggest thing I had ever seen. The flags and riders on unicycles as tall as the buildings was something for a small town boy". Mr. Clark also remembers the tragic side of World War II for local citizens. "My mother received a telegram delivered by a yellow cab driver that her brother Lt. Col. Eulis Duggan had been killed in the Solomon Islands……Cleveland has always answered the call to protect this country."
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This
information is from the U.S. Army Center of
Military History, The president, in the name of Congress, has awarded more than 3,400 Medals of Honor to our nation's bravest soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen since the decoration's creation in 1861. For years, the citations highlighting these acts of bravery and heroism resided in dusty archives and only sporadically were printed. In 1973, the U.S. Senate ordered the citations compiled and printed as Committee on Veterans' Affairs, U.S. Senate, Medal of Honor Recipients: 1963-1973 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1973). This book was later updated and reprinted in 1979. Here is the citation for Paul B. Huff: Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Army, 509th Parachute Infantry
Battalion. Cpl. Huff volunteered to lead a six-man patrol with the mission of determining the location and strength of an enemy unit which was delivering fire on the exposed right flank of his company. The terrain over which he had to travel consisted of exposed, rolling ground, affording the enemy excellent visibility. As the patrol advanced, its members were subjected to small arms and machinegun fire and a concentration of mortar fire, shells bursting within 5 to 10 yards of them and bullets striking the ground at their feet. Moving ahead of his patrol, Cpl. Huff drew fire from three enemy machineguns and a 20-mm. weapon. Realizing the danger confronting his patrol, he advanced alone under deadly fire through a minefield and arrived at a point within 75 yards of the nearest machinegun position. Under direct fire from the rear machinegun, he crawled the remaining 75 yards to the closest emplacement, killed the crew with his submachine gun and destroyed the gun. During this act he fired from a kneeling position, which drew fire from other positions, enabling him to estimate correctly the strength and location of the enemy. Still under concentrated fire, he returned to his patrol and led his men to safety. As a result of the information he gained, a patrol in strength sent out that afternoon, one group under the leadership of Cpl. Huff, succeeded in routing an enemy company of 125 men, killing 27 Germans and capturing 21 others, with a loss of only three patrol members. Cpl. Huff's intrepid leadership and daring combat skill reflect the finest traditions of the American infantryman.
Paul B. Huff retired from the United States Army as a Command Sergeant Major, the service's highest non-commissioned rank. The City of Cleveland designated Paul B. Huff Parkway, a major thoroughfare linking Interstate 75 and U.S. Highway 11 (the old Lee Highway) in his honor on Veterans Day, 1988.
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