TRUE HERO: You’re never a hero in your own hometown. That saying
is literally true in Buffalo, N.Y., the home of the most-decorated
soldier in U.S. history.

Let’s admit it. We all thought Audie Murphy had that
“most-decorated” distinction but a column in the Buffalo News sets
the record straight, in time for today’s observance of Veterans
Day.

Donn Esmond’s column related the story of a soldier, Matt Urban,
which reads like a Hollywood script.

Urban left Buffalo after high school graduation, and went to
Europe in 1942 with the Army’s 9th Infantry Division. He fought his
way from North Africa through Sicily, Belgium, France and into
Germany.

He was awarded the Medal of Honor, America’s highest battle
award, and 28 other medals including the Silver Star, the Bronze
Star, seven Purple Hearts and the French Croix de Guerre.

Esmond describes Urban’s heroism this way:

• Enemy tanks were raking his unit’s positions. Realizing his
company was in danger of being decimated, Urban armed himself with
a bazooka and worked his way through the hedgerows under a barrage
of fire. Firing the bazooka, he destroyed both tanks.

• While recovering in England from a leg wound, he learned of
his unit’s severe losses in France. He left the hospital, boarded a
boat across the English Channel and hitchhiked back to his unit.
Carrying a cane in one hand and a gun in the other, he dashed
through scathing fire and mounted a tank. With enemy bullets
ricocheting off the tank, Urban manned the machine gun, placed
devastating fire on the enemy and galvanized the battalion, which
destroyed the enemy position.

After the war, Urban moved to Michigan. The paperwork nominating
him for the Medal of Honor was misplaced for decades and he only
received it in 1980 from then -President Jimmy Carter. He died in
1995.

Esmond writes of a decade of effort to get a statue erected to
this hero: “A concrete slab was poured two years ago as the base
for a statue outside the downtown Rath Building. The slab is partly
overgrown with vines and hidden between two benches.”

Esmond writes, “It is time to take a wrong and make it right. A
statue would be a start.”