Q: Sometime last spring you wrote about Georgians who had been awarded the Medal of Honor in various wars. I was recently on the John R. McKinney Highway and would like to know more about him. Do you have any details on him and his actions that resulted in the Medal of Honor?
A: McKinney didn't say much while he was in the Army during World War II or afterward.
He loved the outdoors and spent a large part of his life hunting and fishing in the woods of Screven County, which borders South Carolina about halfway between Augusta and Savannah. He never married and his old Army buddies from the 33rd Division had a tough time finding him when it was time for a reunion in 1995.
They eventually tracked him down because they wanted to honor the man who was awarded the Medal of Honor for the bravery he displayed in the Philippines on May 11, 1945. That’s the day when he single-handedly held off an attack from hundreds of Japanese soldiers.
McKinney and two other soldiers were manning a machine gun nest that morning, when the Japanese rushed the position. One of McKinney’s buddies was wounded and the other left to care for him, leaving McKinney alone. He took on waves of charging Japanese, breaking the attack.
When questioned immediately after the battle, McKinney said he thought he killed more than 100 of the enemy, according to author Forrest Bryant Johnson’s “Phantom Warrior: The Heroic True Story of Private John McKinney’s One-Man Stand Against the Japanese in World War II.”
The official count was 40, including 38 surrounding McKinney’s immediate position.
President Harry S. Truman presented him with the Medal of Honor in 1946 and the part of S.R. 21 that runs through Screven County was named the John R. McKinney Medal of Honor Highway in 1995, two years before he died.
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