Richard Swank

For years, cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy walked past the quiet old janitor who mopped their floors and cleaned their showers. Most of them gave him little more than a passing nod. In the fall of 1976, a cadet named James Moschgat was reading a book about the fighting in Italy in World War II. On one page he found the story of Hill 424, and a Private William Crawford from Colorado. He turned to his roommate. "Holy cow... I think our janitor is a Medal of Honor winner." On September 13, 1943, near Altavilla, Italy, Private Bill Crawford's company was pinned down by German machine guns. He went forward alone and destroyed the first gun with a grenade. Then he went after the second and destroyed it too. At the third, he killed one gunner, the rest ran, and he turned their own machine gun on them. Soon after, he disappeared. The Army believed he had been killed. In 1944, his father accepted the Medal of Honor in his place. He was alive. He spent about 19 months as a prisoner of the Germans and survived a forced march in the winter of 1945. After the war he went back into uniform. He retired in 1967 as a master sergeant and took a job as a janitor at the Air Force Academy in Colorado. He never told the cadets. The following Monday, Moschgat brought the book to him and asked. "Yep, that's me." "That was one day in my life and it happened a long time ago." Word spread. The man with the mop had never had the medal placed around his neck by a president. On May 30, 1984, at the Academy's graduation, President Ronald Reagan told the stadium about a private on Hill 424 whose father had accepted his medal for him. "Nearly 40 years have gone by, and it's time to do it right." Then the President of the United States hung the Medal of Honor around the neck of the old man who used to clean the cadets' bathrooms. Moschgat went on to fly fighters for 30 years and retired as a colonel. On his graduation day, the janitor had told him, "Good luck, young man." Bill Crawford died in 2000. He is buried at the Academy where he once mopped the floors. Tomorrow is Veterans Day. Look twice at the quiet old man with the broom. Some of them already gave this country a day it can never repay.