08/25/2025
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Matt Urban was a Polish American, U.S. Army light colonel, and twenty-nine war heroes rolled into one. So light on his feet that it took his Medal of Honor three and a half decades to catch up.
➡ For decades, Maj. Audie Murphy held the record of being the most decorated American WW2 veteran. From 1980, when Lt. Col. Urban got his long-overdue medals, including the Medal of Honor, these two are tied at 29 awards, according to the U.S. Army HRC. Still, some people disagree, giving the lead to Urban, while others favor Murphy.
➡ But, frankly, who cares? They are like two athletes finishing a 10-kilometer race within a tenth of a second of each other, with runners-up far behind. Both did outstandingly in the service, and both deserved every honor they got, and then some. The only thing Urban should get more is the thing Murphy’s already had in abundance: name recognition.
➡ Matt Urban, born in 1919 as Matthew Urbanowicz to a couple of Polish immigrants in Buffalo, NY, studied at Cornell, majoring in history and government. He was on university track and boxing teams, as well as in the Reserve Officers Training Corps, and after graduation, the army sent him to Fort Bragg for more training. After Pearl Harbor, they sent him into action.
➡ From Operation Torch in North Africa in November 1942, the first lieutenant proved to be second to no one in the field, though no kind of a gung-ho eyeing a medal at the expense of his men. He could get disheartened G.I.s on their feet and fill them with confidence, but wanted his troops to return home in one piece and didn’t risk their lives in vain.
➡ To that end, he risked his own life in six campaigns, especially the one in France and Belgium in mid-1944. When his Company F of 2nd Battalion, 60th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division, got pinned down at Renouf, Cpt. Urban blew two German tanks out of the way with a bazooka, then led a charge, got a leg wound from a 37mm tank gun, led another charge, and got another wound.
➡ They put him in hospital in England, but he checked out within a month: his unit needed him. Having hitchhiked to St. Lo, France, barely patched up Urban went into action, and limped through enemy fire to take command of a tank, whose firepower he used to crush German defence. A few days later, he suffered shrapnel wounds to the chest but refused evacuation.
➡ 3 September 1944 near Heer, Belgium, Cpt. Urban led the attack on German positions across the River Meuse, was shot in the throat and lost fragments of his vocal cords, but still wouldn’t let medics take him away. Only when his battalion secured the crossing point did he allow himself to collapse from the wound that would earn him his seventh Purple Heart.
➡ Matt Urban went through long recovery, and in 1946, was medically retired from the army. For years afterwards, he worked as director of recreation and community centers in Michigan, coached young athletes, got married and fathered a daughter. He moved too fast and did too much for the shell shock to catch up and didn’t pursue more medals. It was his medals that pursued him.
➡ Though it took the Congressional Medal of Honor thirty-five years to catch up.
➡ In 1979, a veteran sent a recommendation inquiry to the Pentagon; review of the lieutenant colonel’s file revealed a copy of a 1944 letter from his battalion CO, Maj. Wolf, who started the MoH procedure but was killed in action before he could complete it. The procedure was taken up and in mid-July 1980, Urban got the Medal of Honor, and a handful of other belated decorations.
➡ At the White House ceremony, attended by Urban’s wife and daughter, as well as fellow 60th Infantry Regiment veterans, President Jimmy Carter said that the lieutenant colonel was "the greatest soldier in American history." Along the MoH, Silver and Bronze Stars, French Croix de Guerre, seven Purple Hearts and other decorations say the same thing.
➡ Until retirement, Matt Urban worked as director of the civic and recreation department in Holland, Michigan, at the same time helping underprivileged kids, training Boy Scouts and volunteering at the Red Cross. In March 1995, complications from an old war wound collapsed his lung and killed him at 75. It took his wound fifty years to catch up, so fast he moved and so much he did.
➡ Lt. Col. Matt Urban, a war hero, and then some, deserves all the recognition he can get, and then some.
