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The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States.

Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves.

This medal is for the men who went down that day.

On Medal of Honor, stories of courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what their

stories tell us about the nature of bravery.

Listen to Medal of Honor on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcast.

On this episode of News World, the lives of these men are essential to understand the

American form of government and our ideals of liberty. The founding fathers all played

key roles in securing American independence from Great Britain and in the creation of the government

of the United States of America. And now the life of Thomas Payne.

Although Thomas Payne is now considered an American hero, at the time of his death, only six people attended his funeral, and papers wrote negatively about him. He was not popular and his reputation had been destroyed. His obituary ended with, quote, he had lived long, did some good and much harm.

And yet, pain was extraordinarily important in the American Revolution and was really very

different from the founding fathers.

As you'll see, he's a man who had a very complicated life, very complicated

beliefs, was deeply opposed to the British government and was enormously helpful to George

Washington, but in the end, he was more of an opponent to order than he was an advocate of a new

order. Pain was born on January 29, 1737, in the small

village of Fetford and Norfolk, England, to Joseph Payne and Francis Cockpane. He was an only child.

His father was a staymaker, a maker of whalebone components for women's corsets.

Payne attended seven years of formal education at the Thetford Grammar School. He left school

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