October 5 in U.S. military history
1813: British troops and Native American warriors led by Maj. Gen. Henry Proctor and Shawnee chief Tecumseh are defeated by American Maj. Gen. Henry Harrison’s men in the Battle of the Thames (Ontario, Canada). The outnumbered British troops are routed Tecumseh’s tribal confederation collapses when he and his war chief Roundhead are killed. Soon, control of contested tribal-held lands in what was then-called Northwest Territory (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the eastern part of Minnesota) will be ceded to the U.S. government.
1918: Sgt. Michael B. Ellis (featured image) of the 28th Infantry Regiment single-handedly attacks a German machine gun nest near Exermount, France, killing two enemy soldiers and capturing 17. He then moves on to capture 27 more enemy troops and six machine guns. Two captured officers cough up the locations of four additional machine gun positions, and the “Sgt. York of St. Louis” takes them as well. In addition to numerous valor medals from foreign countries, Ellis is awarded the Medal of Honor.
1950: Just a few short weeks after the U.S. military had its back to the sea in the Pusan Perimeter, the tables have completely turned. Lt. Gen. Walton H. Walker’s Eighth U.S. Army issues orders to cross the 38th Parallel into North Korea. The communist capital of Pyongyang will soon be in allied hands, but China has threatened to join the war if the United States invades North Korea.
1969: Lt. Eduardo Jimenez of the Cuban Air Force manages to fly his Mig-17 fighter undetected through the U.S. military’s air defense network, landing at Homestead Air Force Base (near Miami, Fla.). Fortunately, Lt. Jimenez was defecting – especially since he was able to park his jet right next to Air Force One.
2013: Special operations forces conduct two simultaneous counterterrorism missions in Africa. In Baraawe, Somalia, SEAL Team Six/DEVGRU commandos swim ashore, hoping to snatch the Al Shabaab terrorist suspected in the deadly attack on a Nairobi, Kenya shopping mall the previous month, but are forced to abort the mission after an intense 20-minute firefight. Meanwhile in Libya, Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta soldiers grab a high-value Al Qaeda target involved in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings.
Today we honor Sgt. Fred A. Gassman, part of a joint American-Vietnamese patrol operating in Laos (codenamed Reconnaissance Team FER-DE-LANCE) and was killed by enemy fire on this date in 1970. The bodies of Gassman (23, of Fort Walton Beach, Fla.) and Staff Sgt. David A. Davidson (24, East Riverdale, Md.) were never recovered and the soldiers are presumed dead. Sgt. Gassman was posthumously awarded the Silver Star for his actions.