Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower (left) met with Richmonder Ernest H. Dervishian during a visit to Richmond in the 1940s. (Photo courtesy Armenian General Benevolent Union)
Richmond produced three Medal of Honor winners during the Second World War, and as we near the 75th anniversary of that conflict’s end, we make note of them.
On May 23, 1943, Tech Sgt. Ernest H. Dervishian, a Richmond lawyer, found himself in an Italian vineyard holding off Germans while hunkered in a machine-gun nest he’d taken.
First Lt. Jimmie W. Monteith Jr., a former Thomas Jefferson High School varsity football player, secured higher ground that opened a breach in the German defenses of Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, D-Day, but he lost his life.
Lt. Cmdr. George Levick Street III, the aggressive submarine commander of the Tirante, while on the hunt for an important Japanese freighter during the pre-dawn hours of April 14, 1945, entered a dangerous fortified harbor. The Tirante sank not only an ammunition transport but the two vessels sent after it.
First Lt. Jimmie W. Monteith Jr. (Photo courtesy United States Army)
Monteith and Lt. Cmdr. George Levick Street III were awarded the Medal of Honor for their acts of valor in World War II. (Photo courtesy U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command)
The actions in combat of these three men earned them all the Medal of Honor during the Second World War. The decoration, which originated during the Civil War, is the highest form of recognition for an individual in military service, and it’s bestowed by the president of the United States on behalf of Congress.
The city’s first honoree, Dervishian, was the son of Armenian immigrants Mary and Hagop Dervishian, and he came into the world at Seventh and E. Clay streets, but the family soon moved to 2602 W. Grace St.
He studied at Richmond College and was headed for a career as a doctor, but a tour of the Medical College of Virginia dissuaded him. He told his school’s newspaper, The Collegian, “They showed us the most gruesome things to see if we could take it, and I just couldn’t.” This included an entire “bin of cadavers. I had never seen a dead man before.”
He transferred to law school at T.C. Williams, and in December 1937, he passed the bar and entered practice with his older brother, Harold.
Dervishian enlisted in the Army on Sept. 12, 1941 — before a state of war existed between the U.S. and the Axis powers.
After training he was assigned to the 135th Infantry Regiment, part of the 34th “Red Bull” Infantry Division. The unit took part in the North African Tunisia Campaign through May 1943. In June, Dervishian received a promotion to technical sergeant. The division landed at Salerno, Italy, in September 1943, and its troops were ultimately sent to the coastal city of Anzio, where Allied forces became mired following a January 1944 amphibious landing.
The U.S. 5th Army needed a way out.
Near the village of Cisterna, Dervishian was sent to probe for an opening and to take a German-held railroad trestle and platform. Along with four others, he got ahead of the patrol and came upon a cluster of Germans dug into the side of the rail embankment.
Dervishian directed his group’s fire and, carbine blazing, charged ahead. They quickly took 25 German prisoners, who were passed back to advancing units, then they interrupted the departure of nine more. Now four additional company members joined the group, but when Dervishian’s detachment entered dense vineyards, German machine guns halted them. Dervishian, ahead of everyone, came directly under the German guns.
“I lay still for about 10 minutes,” he recalled later for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “I was shaking so hard I thought it would give me away. Bullets sprayed alongside my arm so close that they made my sleeve flutter.” That the Germans may have thought they’d killed him is what Dervishian believed saved him.
He regained his senses and sprung on the machine gun nest wielding a hand grenade and his carbine. The Germans surrendered, but others a few yards away opened up.
Second Lt. Dervishian and five fellow servicemen gather for Thanksgiving dinner on Nov. 27, 1944, while serving in Italy. (Photo courtesy the Collection of The National WWII Museum)
Dervishian turned the gun “to spray lead all over the place. … I was in a hot spot,” he said. Using his right hand, he fired the machine gun toward another emplacement while with his left he fired a German pistol toward still another enemy group. Dervishian yelled for his men, scattered and distant, until a tank spotted him. The machine almost ran over five well-camouflaged Germans. Dervishian pointed them out, and the operator tossed a grenade — but missed.
In the confusion, the Germans opened fire on one of their own nearby nests. Dervishian advanced alone, picked up a dropped German machine pistol, and used it to bring in six more German prisoners.
Besides some brief automatic bursts, he also employed what he remembered of the polite High German he had learned back at John Marshall High School to coax the soldiers into captivity.
The engagement took about 25 minutes.
Dervishian ultimately captured 40 Germans.
He’d later note, “Countless others performed acts equal to mine. They were not so lucky.”
He went on to the liberation of Rome and in July received a battlefield promotion to second lieutenant. He received the Medal of Honor at a front-line ceremony on Jan. 12, 1945. When he returned to Richmond, the mayor declared Feb. 1 “Dervishian Day,” and some 30,000 people turned out to cheer him.
Dervishian returned to practicing law with his brother in November 1945. Following the war, he remained active in the Army Reserve, acting as a staff advocate general, and he retired as a colonel in 1968.
He often spoke to civic groups about his experiences but consistently downplayed the Medal of Honor. He became an assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Richmond from July 1947 to December 1959, after which he resumed private practice.
He married Anne Garoogian of Brooklyn, New York, on Dec. 10, 1950. They had three daughters. He died at age 67 after a brief illness and was buried with honors at Westhampton Memorial Park.
Dervishian never pretended that a brave person couldn’t know fear. He once said, “Any man who tells you he’s not scared when fighting is either a fool or a liar.”
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