Edward A. Silk
United States Army Medal of Honor recipient
Edward A. Silk (June 8, 1916 – November 18, 1955) was a United States Army officer and a recipient of the United States military's highest decoration (the Medal of Honor) for his actions in World War II.
Silk joined the army from his birth city of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in April 1941, and by November 23, 1944, was serving as a first lieutenant in Company E, 398th Infantry Regiment, 100th Infantry Division. On that day, near St. Pravel, France, he single-handedly attacked a German-held farmhouse and captured the soldiers inside. He was awarded the Medal of Honor a year later, on November 1, 1945.
Silk reached the rank of lieutenant colonel before he died at age 39 from complications from a peptic ulcer and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington County, Virginia.
Medal of Honor citation
Silk's official Medal of Honor citation reads:
1st Lt. Edward A. Silk commanded the weapons platoon of Company E, 398th Infantry, on 23 November 1944, when the end battalion was assigned the mission of seizing high ground overlooking Moyenmoutier, France, prior to an attack on the city itself. His company jumped off in the lead at dawn and by noon had reached the edge of a woods in the vicinity of St. Pravel where scouts saw an enemy sentry standing guard before a farmhouse in a valley below. One squad, engaged in reconnoitering the area, was immediately pinned down by intense machinegun and automatic-weapons fire from within the house.
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This entry incorporates text from “Edward A. Silk” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.