CHARACTER STUDY

Heroes don’t always come in a perfect package, and sometimes even the most imperfect person can rise to the occasion when it matters most. Take Sergeant Maynard H. Smith, who risked his life to save six fellow crewmen from certain death in their stricken bomber. He was far from the “typical American hero folks picture,” said one who met him, but his courage was undeniable, and he endures as perhaps the most unlikely of the war’s 464 Medal of Honor recipients.

Smith’s early life gave no hint of the heroics that lay ahead. He was born in 1911 to an affluent family in Caro, Michigan. His father, Henry, was an attorney and later a judge. Young Smith was a handful, engaging in what the local press called “harum-scarum exploits” like riding a horse through a drugstore and wrecking his dad’s Buick by crashing it into a horse and buggy. To tame his son, Henry sent him to the Howe Military Academy in Indiana. After graduation, Smith married and worked for the U.S. Treasury Department and the Michigan Banking Commission.

In 1934 Smith’s father died unexpectedly, leaving his son a sizable inheritance. Smith quit his job and lived off his father’s money. The idle lifestyle didn’t shame him. If you can afford it, why not?, he reasoned.

When war came in 1941, Smith, now divorced and a father, was in no rush to serve. He had a pleasant life, spending winters in Florida and summers in Michigan, and he didn’t see himself as “particularly pugilistically inclined.” The draft forced his hand, however, and he enlisted in the army on August 31, 1942, one step ahead of his induction notice. (Some accounts, perhaps apocryphal, insist that an irate Michigan judge gave Smith the choice of jail or the army for