Rudolph Davila: World War II Hero

By Dan Gilgoff

1 / “I yelled back again, ‘Bring the machine guns!’” recalls Rudolph Davila, sketching a steep hill on a sheet of paper. “But they still wouldn't move.” Atop that hill, outside Artena, Italy, Davila faced a squad of German gunmen—and almost certain death—on May 28, 1944. Down the hill, a rifle company of 130 U.S. soldiers who had marched into an ambush lay belly-down in tall grass, praying for their lives. On the ground several feet behind him were two dozen troops from his platoon, afraid to crest the hill. When they finally slid a gun to him, Davila emptied a stack of 250-round ammo chests into the bank of German gunners. Spying a house crammed with more gunmen, Davila lobbed a pair of grenades through the windows, then bolted upstairs and pointed a rifle at the remaining gunners through a hole in the wall. They retreated. Within 20 minutes, the 25-year-old had rescued the company from death.
2 / “It was all automatic,” says Davila, 85 and living in Vista, Calif. “I just thought, `This is what I have to do as a soldier, and I'm doing it.' “But what made Davila rise to his knees with a machine gun while his fellow soldiers hugged the ground? “I knew what I was fighting for, and most of the kids didn't,” he says, describing his self-assuredness to accounts he had read of Hitler. “I had this fervor about the defense of freedom, even though I couldn't define freedom. I just knew we were going to be enslaved to Hitler if we didn't defeat him.” So focused was Davila that he fell deaf to the bullets whizzing past his ears and to his platoon's appeals to get down.
3 / While he foiled the German gunners in less than half an hour, a Medal of Honor eluded Davila for more than half a century. The rifle team captain sent a citation off but nothing came of it. Then, in 1996, Hawaii Sen. Daniel Akaka secured a congressionally mandated review of records for Asian-Americans like Davila who had earned the Distinguished Service Cross in World War II (in his case, for the Artena actions). “I didn't want to think my country would deny me something because I'm not an Anglo,” said Davila, son of a Filipino mother and a Spanish father. But only two of the 40,000-plus Asian-Americans who served in WWII had collected Medals of Honor. “The conscience of America went to sleep, in my case, for 56 years,” he says. In June 2000, Davila was one of 23 Asian-Americans handed a WWII medal. Fifteen other recipients were already dead.
4 / Davila carried another badge from the war: a paralyzed right arm. Just as he ordered his men to storm a German tank in France's Vosges Mountains a few months after Artena, the tank fired a shell that ricocheted off a tree and ripped into his chest. “It felt as if someone had taken a baseball bat and hit me on the chest with all their might,” Davila remembers.
5 / Thirteen surgeries left his arm shriveled. But he put his good arm to use. Walking down a hall in a Southern California hospital, Davila grabbed a nurse's hand without saying a word. They wed three months later. For years, Harriet Davila petitioned the government for her husband's medal. No reply ever came. She died on Christmas Day 1999, six months before the blue ribbon was draped around his neck. Is Davila bitter? “That's a bullet that hit me,” he says. “But it didn't penetrate.”
6 / Born: April 27, 1916.
7 / Favorite movie: The Good Earth.
8 / Biggest regret: “That I didn't help my wife do more work inside the house. I didn't realize how much work there is in the house until now that I'm alone.”
9 / Greatest accomplishment: Earning a master's in sociology.
10 / My Hero: “I had an older brother Nicolas, about 10 years older than me. Since my father was gone [killed before Davila was born], he was a substitute. He taught me to be humble. He taught me that other people have things I should learn. He told me never to impose my will on anybody. He died in 1973. I often think about him.”

U.S. News & World Report, August 20, 2001 v131 i7 p38

5 Rudolph Davila. (World War II hero)(Brief Article) Dan Gilgoff.

How does the sniper change from the beginning to the end of “The Sniper”? Support your answer with evidence from the text.

What does the Medal of Honor symbolize for Davila in “Rudolph Davila: World War II Hero”? Support your answer with evidence from the text.

What is one similarity between the actions of the sniper in “The Sniper” and the actions of Rudolph Davila in “Rudolph Davila: World War II Hero”? Support your answer with evidence from the text.