Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, everyone is Jared Martinez.
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Speaker 1: Okay, now to the episode.
Speaker 2: The passenger train chugged into Germany's Black Forest. It was
Speaker 2: July sixth, nineteen eighteen. The fourth class carriage was packed
Speaker 2: with German soldiers. They were back from the front lines
Speaker 2: of World War One, dressed in their uniforms, smoking and talking,
Speaker 2: happy to be out of the trenches. An American prisoner
Speaker 2: sat on a simple wooden bench. One German guard was
Speaker 2: on his left, another faced him, but both had their
Speaker 2: guns trained on him. The prisoner looked out the window,
Speaker 2: and he watched as the light shifted through the trees.
Speaker 1: For hours, the.
Speaker 2: Train went slowly, pushing its way uphill deeper into the forest.
Speaker 2: The prisoner ran his hands through his dark brown hair.
Speaker 2: He hadn't had much to eat for weeks. He was
Speaker 2: dressed in rags, but he was hyper focused. He was
Speaker 2: determined to find the right moment to escape, to jump
Speaker 2: off of this train. It was a totally insane idea,
Speaker 2: but that wasn't going to stop him. Then he felt
Speaker 2: the train going faster. They were heading down hill, which
Speaker 2: meant they were almost at their desk the nation.
Speaker 1: His heart was pounding.
Speaker 2: The window next to him was shut tight, but the
Speaker 2: one across the aisle was wide open. He saw farms
Speaker 2: flash by people working in the fields. The train was
Speaker 2: going around forty miles an hour, maybe more. And then
Speaker 2: the prisoner noticed that the guard across from him was
Speaker 2: falling asleep. He watched as his eyes closed as his
Speaker 2: head dropped right then the guard beside him turned to
Speaker 2: talk to another soldier.
Speaker 1: The prisoner realized it was now or never.
Speaker 2: He stood up and he ran across the aisle and
Speaker 2: went headfirst through the open window.
Speaker 1: I'm JR.
Speaker 2: Martinez and this is Medal of Honor Stories of Courage.
Speaker 2: The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in
Speaker 2: the United States. It's awarded for gallantry and bravery and
Speaker 2: combat at the risk of life, above and beyond the
Speaker 2: call of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the
Speaker 2: way up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer
Speaker 2: in the field to the White House.
Speaker 1: This show is about those heroes.
Speaker 2: What they did, what it meant, and what their stories
Speaker 2: tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. In
Speaker 2: this episode, we're going to meet Edward Isaac. He was
Speaker 2: a naval officer who was captured by the Germans in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighteen. And from the moment he was captured, he
Speaker 2: was trying to escape. He plotted, he planned, He hid
Speaker 2: maps and money and yeat. He jumped out of a
Speaker 2: moving train. He tried to escape not once, not twice,
Speaker 2: but seven times, and each attempt was dangerous and honestly
Speaker 2: borderline crazy. The man just refused to give up. That's
Speaker 2: not what makes Edward's story so different from the ones
Speaker 2: I've told you before. His story is unique because he
Speaker 2: didn't risk his life to say one man, or even
Speaker 2: a group of them. He ran and ran and ran
Speaker 2: because he wanted to stop the whole damn war. Explosions
Speaker 2: were rocking the USS President Lincoln. Torpedoes skimmed across the ocean.
Speaker 2: One hit then two, then three men were shouting, racing
Speaker 2: to their post, and cascades of water and debris were
Speaker 2: raining down on the decks. It was May thirty first,
Speaker 2: nineteen eighteen, and the Lincoln was on its way back
Speaker 2: to the United States. It was a naval transport ship
Speaker 2: and it had just taken thousands of American troops to France.
Speaker 2: This was way before the time when troops could be
Speaker 2: flown overseas. They had to go by boat.
Speaker 3: Theirs is the gigantic task of delivering men, munitions, and
Speaker 3: food to Europe, battle the deadly submarines and blockade Germany.
Speaker 2: The Atlantic Ocean was full of German submarines. They'd been
Speaker 2: hunting Allied ships for months. The US Navy was desperately
Speaker 2: trying to stop them. Those subs were sinking thousands of ships,
Speaker 2: not just warships but commercial boats too, causing more than
Speaker 2: ten thousand deaths. And so here was the US S
Speaker 2: Lincoln in the crosshairs of a German submarine, the U ninety.
Speaker 2: It was nine am when the torpedoes hit, and Edward
Speaker 2: Isaac was eating his breakfast. He was twenty six lieutenant.
Speaker 2: He had thick, dark hair and a dimple in his chin.
Speaker 2: He had a wife and a baby girl who were
Speaker 2: waiting for him back home. He had grown up in
Speaker 2: a hard working family on the Iowa Frontier. His dad
Speaker 2: was a French immigrant who built wagons for a living.
Speaker 2: Edward was the youngest of nine kids, and he was
Speaker 2: always kind of stubborn, obsessed with doing.
Speaker 1: The right thing.
Speaker 2: His willpower was well, you'll find out soon the torpedoes
Speaker 2: ripped through the Lincoln. Edward put down his breakfast and
Speaker 2: raced through the wreckage.
Speaker 1: Soon the captain.
Speaker 2: Ordered abandoned ship men ran to the lifeboats, loading up
Speaker 2: and pushing off as far from the sinking ship as
Speaker 2: they could. Then they tied their boats together so that
Speaker 2: nobody would drift off and be lost. And at nine
Speaker 2: point thirty the USS President Lincoln put her nose in
Speaker 2: the air and sank to the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 2: Almost everyone had made it off alive. A feeling of
Speaker 2: relief swept over the lifeboats. They sent up distressed flares
Speaker 2: and waited to be rescued and checked this out. As
Speaker 2: the flares went up, they sang this song. He hal
Speaker 2: his hail, Hell were full of cheer. Their ship just
Speaker 2: went down. Suddenly, the U ninety surfaced again. The Americans
Speaker 2: weren't sure what the Germans wanted, but they knew it
Speaker 2: wasn't good. Edward was in his officer's uniform and was
Speaker 2: noticed by the subs captain Walter Remy.
Speaker 4: When the submarine came to the surface. After the ship
Speaker 4: went down, Raymie spotted me and put a megaphone to
Speaker 4: his mouth and said, come alongside.
Speaker 2: Edward was in a you in nineteen eighty one, when
Speaker 2: he was ninety. He still remembered that moment like it
Speaker 2: was yesterday.
Speaker 4: Two sailors from the submarine reached down and pulled me up.
Speaker 4: So I went up to the skipper, who was in
Speaker 4: the Connie tower. He said, are you the captain of
Speaker 4: the President Lincoln. I said no, I'm only the first lieutenant. Well,
Speaker 4: he said, you point out the captain. I have orders
Speaker 4: whenever I sink a man of war to take the
Speaker 4: captain prisoner.
Speaker 2: Now, Edward wasn't about to let his captain be captured,
Speaker 2: so he lied to Remy.
Speaker 4: I turned to him and I said, I think he
Speaker 4: went down with a ship. Oh, he said, he had
Speaker 4: plenty of time to get out.
Speaker 2: Remy had to have a prisoner, so he kept Edward.
Speaker 2: He offered him a glass of sherry and gave him
Speaker 2: some nice dry clothes. It was a preview of what
Speaker 2: life would be like on board the unit. It was
Speaker 2: all weirdly civilized. Edward dined with the officers. They played bridge.
Speaker 2: The Germans spoke English. It was taught at their naval academy.
Speaker 1: And get this.
Speaker 2: One day they stopped at a remote Scottish island that
Speaker 2: had tons of wild sheep. The Germans went hunting for food,
Speaker 2: and they even brought Edward back a little lamb to
Speaker 2: keep as a ped As he later said, quote we
Speaker 2: named it Rona, and we were the best of friends.
Speaker 2: But Edward wasn't just playing cards and hanging out with Rona.
Speaker 2: He was furious about being captured and not being able
Speaker 2: to help with the war, so he decided to make
Speaker 2: up for it. He was going to spend his captivity
Speaker 2: studying the U boat. After all, this was the weapon
Speaker 2: that was winning the war for Germany. Now he had
Speaker 2: a front row seat to how this killing machine actually worked.
Speaker 2: He would learn what he could, and then he would escape.
Speaker 2: It didn't matter how it was going to be. He
Speaker 2: would risk everything to bring his intelligence to the Allies
Speaker 2: and help finally destroy the enemy fleet. On June ninth,
Speaker 2: the U ninety surfaced a cruise slowly through a channel.
Speaker 2: Sweden was on one side, Denmark was on the other.
Speaker 2: Two more German submarines appeared, then a destroyer. It was
Speaker 2: a secret rendezvous point. Now Edward had even better intel
Speaker 2: and he could see land. It was just a few
Speaker 2: miles away, so he decided to jump right there and
Speaker 2: swim for freedom. He moved towards the guard rail, trying
Speaker 2: to seem casual, and then someone shouted behind him. It
Speaker 2: was Captain Remy. He ordered Edward below deck. Escape Attempt
Speaker 2: number one was over, But the two men were gentlemen,
Speaker 2: so they never spoke of it again.
Speaker 4: Not a bad guy, as a matter fact, he treated
Speaker 4: me very well. That took us twelve days on that submarine.
Speaker 4: Eventually we got to the base of the High Seas
Speaker 4: Fleet and we went down the Kiel Canal. From that
Speaker 4: time on the course, I was at the mercy of
Speaker 4: these prisons.
Speaker 2: And Captain Remy must have known how bad things were
Speaker 2: gonna get. He secretly brought Edward some German money, a
Speaker 2: toothbrush and soap. After Remy left, Edward was moved to
Speaker 2: a place nicknamed the Listening Hotel. The Germans would put
Speaker 2: prisoners who spoke the same language together, hoping they would
Speaker 2: share secrets with each other because each room had hidden
Speaker 2: listening devices. But previous prisoners had scratched beware the dictaphones
Speaker 2: on various surfaces, so instead the men just loudly insulted
Speaker 2: the Germans. Next, Edward was sent to a prison camp.
Speaker 2: It was grim, food was scarce.
Speaker 4: After about a week starvation diet as usual, they transferred
Speaker 4: me down to carlsdru It's a distribution camp for Allied prisoners.
Speaker 2: That's where the hunger really began. All they got was
Speaker 2: thin broth and black bread, and it wasn't even bread
Speaker 2: at all. It was a mix of water, potatoes, sawdust,
Speaker 2: and sand. Edward was already determined to escape. He was
Speaker 2: dying to share his intel. Being hungry just made him
Speaker 2: want to leave sooner. Edward got along with the other
Speaker 2: Allied prisoners, particularly the ones from France. After all, he'd
Speaker 2: grown up speaking French at home, and those guys had
Speaker 2: learned a thing or two about German prisons.
Speaker 4: They had been at war two or three years before
Speaker 4: we got into it. He had quite a school there
Speaker 4: learning how to get loose finally.
Speaker 2: First, he and a few other men bribed a guard
Speaker 2: to help them get out, but the guard was caught.
Speaker 2: Escape plan number two failed. Then came attempt number three.
Speaker 2: Edward climbed a tree next to the fence in the
Speaker 2: middle of the night, planning to drop to the other
Speaker 2: side when the guards wandered away, but somehow the guards
Speaker 2: never moved. He didn't have a chance to try that again.
Speaker 4: Early one morning, after several attempts to escape, they came
Speaker 4: for me, and I had just time enough to grab
Speaker 4: a little knapsack that I had made out of an
Speaker 4: old shirt.
Speaker 2: He didn't know where they were taking him, but wherever
Speaker 2: he was going, yeah, that's right, he was going to
Speaker 2: try to escape. So with the knapsack there was money
Speaker 2: hidden in a can of shaving cream, a tiny compass,
Speaker 2: and a jar of lard, and a map and a
Speaker 2: tin of cocoa powder. The guards poked into the jar
Speaker 2: of lard and into the coco but they didn't find
Speaker 2: a single thing.
Speaker 4: Then they put a chargean and a corporal as my guards.
Speaker 5: With loaded rifles to escort me to the train.
Speaker 4: I finally got from them that we were going to
Speaker 4: the Russian and the American prison camp for officers in
Speaker 4: the Black Forest.
Speaker 2: They found spots in that crowded train car. Other men
Speaker 2: would have settled in for that ride, but not Edward.
Speaker 2: He was getting ready for escape number four. He eyed
Speaker 2: the open window across the aisle. It was tiny, only
Speaker 2: eighteen by twenty four inches, and he kept on waiting
Speaker 2: for the right chance to jump. Even when the train
Speaker 2: started going. He watched his guards until he saw his opening.
Speaker 4: One was sort of dozing, the other was looking up
Speaker 4: and talking with a soldier. And I jumped past the guards,
Speaker 4: off the train, through my head and shoulders through.
Speaker 5: I expected to.
Speaker 4: Land on that running board, you know, alongside those fourth
Speaker 4: class carriages. This didn't have.
Speaker 2: Any Edward had no foothold, so he fell straight onto
Speaker 2: the track that ran parallel to the train.
Speaker 5: Now, I kept rolling over and over.
Speaker 2: His face hid one still tie, and his knees hit another.
Speaker 2: He blacked out, and when he woke up a few
Speaker 2: seconds later, he could hear the train screeching to a stop.
Speaker 4: By that time, the guards had pulled a string and
Speaker 4: the train stopped about three hundred yards farther down. These
Speaker 4: guards came out were shooting at me. When I realized
Speaker 4: that I couldn't run.
Speaker 2: He couldn't bend his knees, so we started hobbling away
Speaker 2: as fast as he could. The guards were firing warning
Speaker 2: shots around his head, screaming at him to halt. Finally
Speaker 2: he stopped and put his hands in the air. Their
Speaker 2: response was to hit him with the rifle. He fell
Speaker 2: to the ground. They kicked him. He struggled to get
Speaker 2: to his feet, and they knocked him down again. Later
Speaker 2: one of those guards would actually be court martialed, not
Speaker 2: for beating an arm prisoner before destroying German Army property.
Speaker 2: He had Edward so hard that he broke his gun.
Speaker 2: But even after the gun broke, they kept going.
Speaker 4: They jerked me to my feet and didn't risk the
Speaker 4: other gun. They crowded me with a bayonet. We were
Speaker 4: five miles from the prison camp at the time.
Speaker 2: They made him hobble all the way to the prison.
Speaker 2: By the time he arrived, he was near death. The
Speaker 2: camp doctor tended to his injuries. He had more than
Speaker 2: a hundred separate wounds.
Speaker 4: They put me in solitary confinement in a cell, and
Speaker 4: I was there or oh, I suppose three months.
Speaker 2: It would be weeks before Edward could walk again, months
Speaker 2: before he could bend his knees, but the pain just
Speaker 2: made him more determined. He had to escape and share
Speaker 2: the intel he thought could end the war. The prison
Speaker 2: camp of Villaingen was deep in the black forest, but
Speaker 2: there was one good thing about it. It was close
Speaker 2: to Switzerland, which was neutral territory. Edward Isaac knew that
Speaker 2: if he could make it to the border, he would
Speaker 2: be as soon as he got out of solitary, he
Speaker 2: started sizing up the camp. To anyone else, the situation
Speaker 2: would have seemed impossible. The whole place was surrounded by
Speaker 2: multiple bar wire fences, plus guards with rifles, and the
Speaker 2: man could barely walk. But the prisoners got German news
Speaker 2: in the camp, and every day he heard that Allied
Speaker 2: ships were being blown up. Sure, some of this was
Speaker 2: wartime propaganda, but even if half of it was true,
Speaker 2: the situation was dire. Edward was certain his intel would
Speaker 2: save lives, maybe even stop the war, so he started
Speaker 2: getting up early, doing calisthenics and taking a cold shower.
Speaker 1: Pretty soon he was.
Speaker 2: Walking fifteen miles a day around the prison barracks. I
Speaker 2: told you he was stubborn, didn't I? Then he worked
Speaker 2: up a plan. He decided that multiple prisoners would have
Speaker 2: to escape at the same time would mean more chaos,
Speaker 2: so we recruited other prisoners, which wasn't hard since everyone
Speaker 2: wanted to get the heck out of there, even though
Speaker 2: they all knew that failure could mean death. For escape
Speaker 2: plan number wait where are we oh right? Five, Edward
Speaker 2: planned for the men to go over the roof of
Speaker 2: a workshed. It was next to a segment of fence
Speaker 2: that didn't have much barbed wire, but then overnight the
Speaker 2: Germans added more wire there, so it was on to
Speaker 2: the next idea. For escape plan number six, they would
Speaker 2: sneak out a garden door. It wasn't guarded all that well.
Speaker 2: A guy named Harold Willis, another American prisoner and Edward's friend,
Speaker 2: was trying to make a key for the door, But
Speaker 2: then a Russian prisoner tried to escape at the same
Speaker 2: exact spot and he was caught, so.
Speaker 1: The guards were doubled.
Speaker 2: Edward was almost out of ideas, as he later wrote, quote,
Speaker 2: my fortunes reached their lowest EBB, but they were destined
Speaker 2: to brighten with the never dying hope of success. Never
Speaker 2: dying hope of success. Now that, my friends, is optimism,
Speaker 2: which brings us to escape. Plan number seven. Edward would
Speaker 2: secretly build the ladder to take them over the fences.
Speaker 4: There were two long pieces of pine that the Russians
Speaker 4: used to lay out sort of a volleyball set.
Speaker 2: Yeah you heard that right. The prisoners were allowed to
Speaker 2: play games in prison, and it sounds like the Russians
Speaker 2: really liked volleyball.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 2: The border of the court was made of long pieces
Speaker 2: of wood, and Edward stole them.
Speaker 4: I got those two flats into my barracks, where there
Speaker 4: were eight cots with eight prisoners. I seek created these
Speaker 4: two under those cots.
Speaker 2: Then he needed to make rungs for the ladder. He
Speaker 2: stole the tops of the wooden boxes their food came in.
Speaker 2: He had all the pieces. Now he just had to
Speaker 2: figure out how to put the ladder together.
Speaker 4: There were no nails, but I took the screws out
Speaker 4: of all the doors in all the barracks, enough to
Speaker 4: keep the door swinging. But I got enough so that
Speaker 4: I could have a regular ladder leading right straight out.
Speaker 2: I mean, who thinks of this. The last part of
Speaker 2: the plan was cutting the lights to the camp so
Speaker 2: the prisoners could get out in the darkness. The power
Speaker 2: came in from the neighboring town, but unlike modern power lines,
Speaker 2: these were made from raw, uncoated wire. Edward figured out
Speaker 2: that if you threw a metal chain of them, the
Speaker 2: wires would short circuit and the lights would go out.
Speaker 2: So he recruited some friends to throw the chain at
Speaker 2: the appointed hour, and then they waited for their moment.
Speaker 2: It came October sixth, nineteen eighteen. The camp announced that
Speaker 2: all the Russian prisoners would be moved. It meant two things,
Speaker 2: first that all the barracks would be searched, and second,
Speaker 2: there would be way more guards per prisoner. They had
Speaker 2: to get out now. As night fell on October sixth,
Speaker 2: Edward gave the sign. His friends threw a chain over
Speaker 2: the wire to short circuit the lights.
Speaker 1: Edward held his breath. It worked.
Speaker 4: The lights went out, and then they came on. Immediately
Speaker 4: Well I realized what was happening. The thing was swinging
Speaker 4: back and forth and releasing Finally it blew the fuse
Speaker 4: and the lights went out.
Speaker 2: Next, some Russian prisoners had volunteered to create a distraction,
Speaker 2: so as soon as the lights went out, they started
Speaker 2: a racket on the far side of the camp, and
Speaker 2: then thirteen Americans headed out into the darkness. But as
Speaker 2: soon as the guards figured out what was happening, it
Speaker 2: was mayhem.
Speaker 1: Shots everywhere.
Speaker 2: Edward was the second man off the ladder, and as
Speaker 2: he swung to the ground, the guards yelled halt and
Speaker 2: trained their rifles on him. The shots were so close
Speaker 2: that Edward's hair got burned by the muzzle flash. He
Speaker 2: ran as fast as he could, bent over and zig
Speaker 2: zagging through the night.
Speaker 5: That's how we got out of the camp.
Speaker 2: He had arranged to meet Harold Willis, that guy who
Speaker 2: made the key for escape Planned number six, but his
Speaker 2: friend was late. Edward could hear the hounds in the distance.
Speaker 2: Then Willis came crashing through the trees. They ran together
Speaker 2: through the darkness. Willis had stolen pepper from the mill tent,
Speaker 2: and he sprinkled it behind them to keep the hounds
Speaker 2: off of their scent. They sloshed through swamps with water
Speaker 2: up to their shoulders, and finally, as the sun was rising,
Speaker 2: they hid themselves under a cliff. The hounds were still
Speaker 2: behind them. They could hear their barking, first so close,
Speaker 2: and then further and further away. The Swiss border was
Speaker 2: only eighteen miles from the camp, but any of the
Speaker 2: direct routes were blocked by German soldiers. Instead, their trip
Speaker 2: would cover one hundred and twenty miles. They stole vegetables
Speaker 2: from gardens. In the dark, they slept huddled under Willis's coat. Finally,
Speaker 2: six days later they reached the a Rhine River. Switzerland
Speaker 2: was just on the other side, but there were searchlights
Speaker 2: sweeping the river banks, so they painted themselves with mud,
Speaker 2: hoping to blend in with the rocks. They slowly moved
Speaker 2: into the water. The current was stronger than they expected.
Speaker 2: One minute, Willis was right in front of Edward. The
Speaker 2: next minute he was gone. As Edward said later quote,
Speaker 2: it was as if the earth had opened up and
Speaker 2: swallowed him. But he didn't have time to wonder what
Speaker 2: had happened, because the moment he inched forward, he was
Speaker 2: swept away by the current too. He was weak and freezing.
Speaker 2: There was just seven hundred feet of water separating him
Speaker 2: from freedom, so he swam as hard as he could,
Speaker 2: but the current was dragging him into a bend in
Speaker 2: the river. He knew it was about to push him
Speaker 2: back to the German side. He was exhausted, he had
Speaker 2: no fight left, so he turned over on his back, closed.
Speaker 1: His eyes and prayed.
Speaker 2: Edward Isaac was on his back, floating in the icy
Speaker 2: Rhine River. He'd been running for six days to escape
Speaker 2: the Germans. He was freezing, hungry, and tired.
Speaker 1: He was just done.
Speaker 2: And at that exact moment that Edward Isaac gave up
Speaker 2: his feet touched the rocks. He was in Switzerland. He
Speaker 2: had been a prisoner for one hundred and thirty six days,
Speaker 2: and now he was free. Attempt number seven was a success. Unbelievably,
Speaker 2: Willis had made it too. Of the thirteen men who
Speaker 2: tried to escape that night, only three actually did. Edward
Speaker 2: didn't spend any time pondering how crazy his escape had been.
Speaker 2: He just got to the Naval command center in London
Speaker 2: as fast as he could. He told him about all
Speaker 2: the inner workings of the German U boats, about that
Speaker 2: rendezvous point for the naval fleet, but his intel didn't
Speaker 2: quite make the impact he hoped for. Why because peace
Speaker 2: talks were already underway by the time Edward got to
Speaker 2: Washington on November eleventh, the war was over. He watched
Speaker 2: the celebrations with his new friend the Assistant Secretary of
Speaker 2: the Navy. The two had met while Edward was being debriefed.
Speaker 2: That friend's name was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and two years later,
Speaker 2: when Edward received his Medal of Honor, it was Fdr
Speaker 2: who presented it to him. Admiral William Simms, who commanded
Speaker 2: the Navy in Europe, didn't believe that Edward deserved the metal.
Speaker 2: He told reporters that quote, all he did was get
Speaker 2: captured by the enemy. But Josepha's Daniels, the Secretary of
Speaker 2: the Navy, deeply disagreed, and, as he put it, quote
Speaker 2: his rare experiences, his alertness to secure information that would
Speaker 2: aid his country, his resolve to find or make a
Speaker 2: way to escape, these make a story that would live
Speaker 2: in the animals of navel daring. Daniels asked Edward to
Speaker 2: write a book about his experiences, which he did, but
Speaker 2: Edward didn't see his story as heroic. In fact, his
Speaker 2: memoir ended on a wistful note. The very last line
Speaker 2: was I was too late. In nineteen thirty six, Edward
Speaker 2: was called back into the service of his country. He
Speaker 2: had retired from the Navy right after the war. His
Speaker 2: injuries had never quite healed, but now his old friend
Speaker 2: FDR was president, so he agreed to run for Congress
Speaker 2: in California.
Speaker 1: He won.
Speaker 2: As a congressman, he fought for veterans' rights, He fought
Speaker 2: to establish a battalion of black soldiers in the California
Speaker 2: National Guard, and he worked to create the naval base
Speaker 2: of San Diego, which changed that city and is still
Speaker 2: in use today. He and his wife, Agnes, had six kids.
Speaker 2: World War One was supposed to be the war to
Speaker 2: end all wars, but in nineteen forty one, Edward watched
Speaker 2: horrified as his country declared war on Germany again. Two
Speaker 2: of his sons joined the Navy and were sent overseas
Speaker 2: to fight, and then in April of nineteen forty five,
Speaker 2: Edward was in Germany too, standing in the middle of.
Speaker 1: A prison yard.
Speaker 2: His posture was as straight as ever, but his hair
Speaker 2: was snow white. He looked around him. There were signs
Speaker 2: of death everywhere. He was at a concentration camp. Edward
Speaker 2: and a delegation of other congressmen were there to bear
Speaker 2: witness to the horrors of the Holocaust.
Speaker 6: They came as the elected representatives of the American people,
Speaker 6: to see for themselves to see for America the incontrovertible
Speaker 6: evidence of Nazi in humanity. They and the people of
Speaker 6: now freed Europe will not forget.
Speaker 2: What Edward saw in the concentration camps at the end
Speaker 2: of the war broke his heart.
Speaker 4: I have never forgotten my first impression of Dachau. Here
Speaker 4: was a shed next to the crematorium, and it was
Speaker 4: an open shed fifty sixty feet long, in which human
Speaker 4: carpses were stacked exactly like cardwould.
Speaker 5: I would say there were thousands.
Speaker 4: I will never know because they were so emaciated that
Speaker 4: they didn't take up much space. There was not a
Speaker 4: pound of flesh on any of them. They had been
Speaker 4: starved to death.
Speaker 2: In their later years, Edward and Agnes lived on a
Speaker 2: little farm in Virginia. He rarely talked about World War One.
Speaker 2: In fact, he wrote a family history in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2: It stretched all the way back to the eighteenth century,
Speaker 2: but in it he only mentioned that he joined the Navy.
Speaker 2: There is absolutely nothing about his great escape or his
Speaker 2: Medal of Honor. It's hard to know why. Maybe he
Speaker 2: felt like his actions didn't matter. He hadn't been able
Speaker 2: to stop his war or any of the wars he
Speaker 2: saw during his lifetime. Maybe that made him feel like
Speaker 2: he wasn't a hero. A lot of veterans feel that way.
Speaker 2: They ask what did I really do? But I think
Speaker 2: heroism isn't always about what you do. Sometimes it's about
Speaker 2: what you tried to do. Edward Isaac died in January
Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety. He was ninety eight years old. I
Speaker 2: think his story is about optimism more than anything. Even
Speaker 2: after the first escape attempt failed, he kept trying. He
Speaker 2: kept trying after the third attempt and the sixth. He
Speaker 2: saw the best of us and the worst.
Speaker 7: And yet he still had hope.
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor.
Speaker 2: Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced
Speaker 2: by Meredith Rollins and Ryan Schweiker. Our editor is Lydia
Speaker 2: gene Kott. Sound design by Jake Gorsky. Our executive producer
Speaker 2: is Constanza gayardro fact checking by Arthur Comperts. Original music
Speaker 2: by Eric Phillips. Additional editorial support from Karen Shakerji. Special
Speaker 2: thanks to Carl and Gwyneth Crawford. If you want to
Speaker 2: learn more about this story, take a look at our
Speaker 2: show notes, where we have some of the resources we
Speaker 2: used to put this episode together.
Speaker 1: We also want to hear from you.
Speaker 2: Send us your personal story of courage or highlight someone
Speaker 2: else's bravery. Email us at Medal of Honor at pushkin
Speaker 2: dot Fm. You might hear your stories on future episodes
Speaker 2: of Metal of Honor or see them on our social
Speaker 2: channels at Pushkin Pies.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, JR. Martinez