WWI Purple Heart - 3rd Division - MOH connection

[Orion27]

Recently purchased this Purple Heart. It has a correct wrap brooch and is properly numbered. It is named to "Norton H. Richey".

 

Norton Richey served as a Sgt. in Company K, 4th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Division. He was wounded October 6, 1918.

 

Company K, 4th Inf produced one of the more remarkable MOHs in the First World War. On October 7 (the day after Richey was wounded), PFC John L. Barkley, near Cunel, earned his MOH for mounting a captured German machine-gun in a broken down French tank and single handedly repelled two German attacks and was in the tank when it took a direct hit at point blank range from a German 77mm gun. His citation reads:

 

Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company K, 4th Infantry, 3rd Division. Place and date: At Cunel, France; October 7, 1918. Entered service at: Blairstown, Missouri. Birth: August 28, 1895; Blairstown, Missouri. General Orders: War Department, General Orders No. 44 (April 2, 1919).

Citation:

Private First Class Barkley, who was stationed in an observation post half a kilometer from the German line, on his own initiative repaired a captured enemy machinegun and mounted it in a disabled French tank near his post. Shortly afterward, when the enemy launched a counterattack against our forces, Private First Class Barkley got into the tank, waited under the hostile barrage until the enemy line was abreast of him and then opened fire, completely breaking up the counterattack and killing and wounding a large number of the enemy. Five minutes later an enemy 77-millimeter gun opened fire on the tank pointblank. One shell struck the drive wheel of the tank, but this soldier nevertheless remained in the tank and after the barrage ceased broke up a second enemy counterattack, thereby enabling our forces to gain and hold Hill 25.^[3]

Richey recovered and returned home. His son Norton Richey, Jr. was killed in action in the Pacific in 1945. (13 March 1945 Lt.(jg) Martin was co-pilot in Lt. Julius Boyd’s crew on a PV-1 Ventura for a patrol flight that left Tacloban airfield, Leyte, for a search in a sector northeast of Borneo. The plane was never heard from again.

[Orion27]

Richey's PH and index card list his middle initial as H. All other information has it as "J" for John. He is listed in ships records as sailing for France with Company K, 4th Inf, 3rd Division with the middle initial J. His tombstone has J as well. Clearly the PH is in error.

[Orion27]

Richey was originally from Central, South Carolina. He eventually moved to Jacksonville, Florida. He is buried there. His son was from Jacksonsville too.

[Orion27]

Obviously I am on the look out for his son's Purple Heart. Would be named "Norton J. Richey". He was USN.

[huntssurplus]

Great medal connected to a cool story! Thanks for sharing!

Hunt

[Orion27]

Barkley wrote about his experience in Scarlet Fields. It is still in publication through University of Kansas Press.

[BigJohn#3RD]

Thank you for posting a story of the lineage of duty and real sacrifice in the Richey family. Both father and son were serving for the freedom of others and spilling their blood for this nation. Each of them serving in the most destructive wars known to modern man. The original title that John Lewis Barkley's combat memoir was "No Hard Feelings" published in 1930 a year after "All Quiet On The Western Front," because Barkley was proud of his service as a scout and sniper. He did not express any remorse about having to kill hundreds of Germans trying to overrun him and his unit. His story was not well accepted because as it ran contrary to the Anti-War trend of the "Lost Generation" and the depression. If he had published it earlier, say 1920 as the German veteran story "Storm of Steel" by Ernest Junger did it may have had better acceptance. Junger like Barkley his countries highest award Imperial Germany's Pour le mérite in 1918, or Blue Max, Junger also received a received a battlefield promotion and stayed in the military.

 

I will be interested to see how Barkley's story fares under the new title of "Scarlet Fields" does in today's market.

I hope you can reunite the father and sons Purple Hearts.

https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/barkley_john_lewis

https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/junger_ernst

[Orion27]

In case your interested I have (reluctantly) decided to sell this. It's on ebay. Wish I could keep it but need to move it to fund a purchase in my core theme... 27th Division.

[Mch75]

Did you eventually sell the Purple Heart? I'm Norton Richey's Great Grandson.

[Fromthepastcollections]

On 4/16/2019 at 10:05 AM, Mch75 said:

Did you eventually sell the Purple Heart? I'm Norton Richey's Great Grandson.

Feel free to PM me, but i'm curious to know if we are somehow related. Most of the Richeys on my side of the family are in Kansas with a small pocket in south-west louisiana.