By Zippy Duvall
American Farm Bureau Federation
On a cold winter morning in 1945, a young Army lieutenant, Garlin Conner, sprinted ahead of American lines near the French and German border with a telephone, radio, and wire reel, ignoring warnings of danger from his fellow soldiers. Allied forces were trying to repel a German surge, and Lt. Conner’s unit needed to knock out enemy tanks, or they would be overrun. Lt. Conner found a shallow ditch where he laid for three hours, calling in artillery strikes. German soldiers made it within 20 feet of his position when Lt. Conner called in an artillery strike near where he was laying. He put himself in peril to save his unit.