"He led a squad in the night attack on Oberhoffen,
France, where fierce house-to-house fighting took place. After clearing
1 building of opposition, he moved his men toward a second house from
which heavy machine gun fire came. He courageously exposed himself to
hostile bullets and firing his sub-machine gun as he went, advanced
steadily toward the enemy position until close enough to hurl grenades
through a window, killing 3 Germans and wrecking their gun. His progress
was stopped by heavy rifle and machine gun fire from another house. Sgt.
Deleau dashed through the door with his gun blazing. Within, he
captured 10 Germans. The squad then took up a position for the night and
awaited daylight to resume the attack. At dawn of 2 February Sgt.
Deleau pressed forward with his unit, killing 2 snipers as he advanced
to a point where machine gun fire from a house barred the way. Despite
vicious small-arms fire, Sgt. Deleau ran across an open area to reach
the rear of the building, where he destroyed 1 machine gun and killed its
2 operators with a grenade. He worked to the front of the structure and
located a second machine gun. Finding it impossible to toss a grenade
into the house from his protected position, he fearlessly moved away
from the building and was about to hurl his explosive when he was
instantly killed by a burst from the gun he sought to knock out. With
magnificent courage and daring aggressiveness, Sgt. Deleau cleared 4
well-defended houses of Germans, inflicted severe losses on the enemy
and at the sacrifice of his own life aided his battalion to reach its
objective with a minimum of casualties."
From Sgt. Deleau's Medal of Honor citation, awarded on July 25, 1945.
Thank you for your service and may you be at peace,
Brian
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