The Still-Living Janitor Who Received a 'Posthumous' Medal of Honor

It's September 1943, and American and Allied forces are advancing up the Italian Peninsula. Army Pvt. William Crawford is the squad scout for I company, 142nd Infantry Regiment, near Altavilla, Italy. As he approached the crest of Hill 424, he ran into a wall of machine gun and small arms fire. Crawford, armed with just his rifle and some grenades, destroyed the enemy dugouts and scattered the defenders.

Crawford was declared killed in action that day and was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor, which was presented to his father. The only problem was that Bill Crawford wasn't dead. He had been captured by the Germans when he stopped to help a wounded fellow soldier and spent almost the rest of World War II in a Nazi prisoner of war camp.

After a brief try at post-war civilian life, he reenlisted and would end up making a career out of the Army, retiring as a master sergeant in 1967. After leaving the U.S. military, he went back to his native Colorado and took a job at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. There, he lived a quiet and unassuming life as a janitor. Cadets described the man cleaning up after them as "unimpressive" and someone "you could easily overlook during a hectic day."

Then one day, a cadet stumbled upon the story of a Pvt. Crawford in Italy during World War II.

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When Crawford came up over the ridgeline of Hill 424, he was alone and unable to alert his comrades that they were walking into an ambush. There were three dug-in enemy positions that he needed to take out, and the first was a machine gun right in front of him. Taking the initiative to the enemy, he advanced and tossed a grenade into the nest, killing the crew and destroying the weapon.

Crawford continued straight on, between two enemy machine gun nests, both of which were pouring bullets at his position. He then tossed a grenade into the machine gun on his left, which destroyed the weapon and killed the crew. With another grenade, he killed one of the men manning the machine gun on his right and scattered the rest of them. He then turned the gun around and mowed down the retreating Germans. His platoon was thus free to advance.

In 1976, a cadet named James Moschgat, now retired from the Air Force, was reading a book on World War II. He read about Crawford's Medal of Honor action and told his roommate, "Holy cow, you're not going to believe this, but I think our janitor is a Medal of Honor recipient." They all knew their custodian was in the Army during World War II, but they didn't know he'd received the nation's highest award for valor.

When they asked him whether he was the same William Crawford, he said: "Yep, that's me." They also asked why he never told anyone about it, and he simply replied, "That was one day in my life, and it happened a long time ago." After they realized who their janitor was, no cadet ever walked by him without paying their respects ever again -- they even started cleaning up after themselves.

After his Medal of Honor became widely recognized around the campus, Crawford mentioned to friends that he had never actually been presented the medal. His father received his Medal of Honor citation, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt on May 11, 1944, at a time when Crawford was still in a POW camp. At the 1984 Air Force Academy commencement ceremony, President Ronald Reagan presented Crawford his Medal of Honor, 40 years after his first, "posthumous" presentation.

"I was just glad that I was doing my part," he said in an interview later in life. "I figured it was just a normal call of duty. I happened to be at the right place at the right time."

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