Military - Leonidas I

In 480 BC, Leonidas went to Thermopylae with 300 of his personal guard, all men with male-born sons to carry on their names, with men from other Greek city-states, who put themselves under his command to form an army 7,000 strong. This force was mustered in an attempt to hold the pass of Thermopylae against the hundreds of thousands of Persians under Xerxes I. The reason Leonidas took only his personal guard, and not the whole Spartan army, was that Spartan religious customs forbade sending an army at that time of year. Also, the Oracle at Delphi had foretold that Sparta could be saved only by the death of one of its kings, one of the lineage of Herakles, so Leonidas undertook this task deliberately going to his doom. According to Plutarch, when Leonidas was leaving, his wife, Gorgo, asked him how she could aid his mission. He responded "Make sure you marry some man that will treat you well, bear children from him."

On the first day of the siege Xerxes demanded the Greeks surrender their arms. Leonidas replied Μολών Λαβέ ("Come and get them"). Leonidas and his men repulsed the frontal attacks of the Persians for the first two days, killing roughly 20,000 of the enemy troops and losing very few of their own. The Persian elite unit known to the Greeks as "the Immortals" were held back, and two of Xerxes' brothers died in battle. On the third day a traitor named Ephialtes led the Persians through a mountain track to the rear of the Greeks. When a scout was sent to check on the troops, he returned with the bad news.

At that point Leonidas sent away all Greek troops and remained in the pass with his 300 Spartans, 900 Helots and 700 Thespians who refused to leave. The small Greek force, attacked from both sides, was cut down to a man except for the Thebans, who surrendered. Leonidas fell in the thickest of the fight, but the Spartans retrieved his body and protected it until their final fall to enemy arrows.

"Great moments" may come with a certain frequency throughout history. However, there are very few of these "great moments" where you can take you finger, put it on that point in time, and say: "Here. Here is where the fate of the world was held in the balance." The Battle of Thermopylae was one of those moments. Of those handful of moments in all of history, rarer few are those moments which are caused by a single man. Leonidas was one of those men. Everything we are as Western culture we owe to him and his stand at the Hot Gates. Without King Leonidas I, this hall is nothing.

Military - George S. Patton

I am not going to spell out his esteemed military career here. There is simply not enough room. I simply give you this:

Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about America wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bullshit. Americans love to fight, traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle.

...Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.

...There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily. All because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did.

...My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one either. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have; or ever will have. We're not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we're going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.

...I believe in the old and sound rule that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder WE push, the more Germans we will kill. The more Germans we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed.

That is all.

Military - Sgt. York

From http://www.medalofhonor.com/Sgt.York.htm

Alvin York's appointment with destiny came on the morning of October 8, 1918 in the Argonne forest of France. It was the first offensive battle of the Argonne, and his battalion was one of the attacking battalions. Orders came down on the night of October 7th for them to take Hill 223 on the morning of the 8th, then drive across a narrow valley surrounded on three sides by hills fortified by German machine guns. Their mission was to destroy the machine gun nests and press on to the Decauville Railroad which was their objective.

The attack bogged down under the withering fire from their front and both flanks. A hurried conference decided the only way to continue the advance was to knock out the machine gun nests on the hill to their left. A detachment of one non-commissioned officer and sixteen men were detailed to circle around the end of the hill and attack the machine gun nests from the rear. Alvin York, then a corporal, was one of these seventeen men. Crawling through the undergrowth, they succeeded in passing around the German flank and getting behind their lines.

Now let Alvin tell the rest of the story in his own words. In his diary under the date of October 8, 1918:

"....there was 17 of us boys went around on the left flank to see if we couldn't put those guns out of action. So when we went around and fell in behind those guns, we first saw two Germans with Red Cross bands on their arms. So we asked them to stop and they did not. So one of the boys shot at them and they run back to our right. So we all run after them, and when we jumped across a little stream of water that was there, they was about 15 or 20 Germans jumped up and threw up their hands and said, 'Kame rad!' So the one in charge of us boys told us not to shoot; they was going to give up anyway. (These prisoners included a major and two other officers). By this time some of the Germans from on the hill was shooting at us. Well, I was giving them the best I had, and by this time the Germans had got their machine guns turned around and fired on us. So they killed six and wounded three of us. So that just left 8, and then we got into it right by this time. So we had a hard battle for a little while, and I got hold of the German major and he told me if I wouldn't kill any more of them he would make them quit firing. So I told him all right if he would do it now. So he blew a little whistle and they quit shooting and come down and gave up. I had killed over 20 before the German major said he would make them give up. I covered him with my automatic and told him if he didn't make them stop firing I would take his head off next. And he knew I meant it. After he blew his whistle, all but one of them came off the hill with their hands up, and just before that one got to me he threw a little hand grenade which burst in the air in front of me. I had to touch him off. The rest surrendered without any more trouble. There were nearly a 100 of them. We had about 80 or 90 Germans there disarmed, and had another line of Germans to go through to get out. So I called for my men, and one of them answered from behind a big oak tree, and the others were on my right in the brush. (All the non-commissioned officers had been killed or severely wounded except York. This left him in command). So I said, 'Let's get these Germans out of here.' One of my men said, 'It is impossible.' So I said, 'No; let's get them out of here.' So when my man said that, the German major said, 'How many have you got?' And I said that, 'I have got plenty,' and pointed my pistol at him all the time. In this battle I was using a rifle and a .45 Colt automatic. So I lined the Germans up in a line of two's, and I got between the ones in front, and I had the German major before me. So I marched them straight into those other machine guns and I got them. So when I got back to my major's P.C. (post of command) I had 132 prisoners."

Throughout the investigation that followed York's fight in the Argonne, he consistently played down the importance of the action. In his diary he sums up the fight in which he killed more than twenty men and captured 132 with this line : "So we had a hard battle for a little while." No boasting in that simple statement. When he marched his prisoners back to the battalion post of command, Brigadier General Lindsey said to him, "Well, York, I hear you have captured the whole German army," to which York replied modestly, "No, I only have 132." He seemed almost apologetic for bringing in a mere handful of prisoners.

The next morning twenty-eight dead Germans were found at the scene of the fight. York says that is the number of shots he fired. They also found thirty-five German machine guns and a lot of other small arms and ammunition.

The officers of the 82nd Division made this official report to General Headquarters: "The part which Corporal York individually played in the attack (the capture of the Decauville Railroad) is difficult to estimate. Practically unassisted he captured 132 Germans (three of whom were officers), took about thirty-five machine guns, and killed no less than twenty-five of the enemy, later found by others on the scene of York's extraordinary exploit. The story has been carefully checked in every possible detail from headquarters of this division and is entirely substantiated. Although York's statement tends to underestimate the desperate odds which he overcame, it has been decided to forward to higher authorities the account given in his own name. The success of this assault had a far-reaching effect in relieving the enemy pressure against American forces in the heart of the Argonne Forest."

I think he makes the cut.

Sports - Ted Williams

Putting aside the .341 career batting average and the 521 career homeruns (when that still meant something), Ted Williams is inducted into the Hall for the kind of man he was on and off the field. He took two prolonged breaks from his major league career to serve as a Marine Corps pilot in WWII and the Korean war, where he flew actual combat missions instead of tooling around in a tank in Germany like Elvis. He also had the guts to call out major league baseball for its years of segregation during his Hall of Fame (baseball) induction speech.

Hollywood - Lee Marvin

One of the greats from the dying, if not extinct, breed of tough guy actors that were, in reality, tough men. Marvin walked and talked as though he knew was the toughest man on the planet. He was a truly gifted actor as his numerous classic roles will attest. Some his notable films include: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Killers, The Dirty Dozen, Point Blank and The Big Red One. Before becoming an actor, he was a sniper in the Marine Corps during World War II until he was wounded during the Battle of Saipan. Can Colin Farrell say that?

On a side note, my father, also a former Marine, noted that Lee Marvin always kept his pack of cigarrettes in his sock, which is a common habit among Marines. My father knew this because whenever Lee Marvin appeared on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, he would take his cigarrettes out of his sock and smoke them on the air.