This is an IHeart podcast.

And we continue with Our American Stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show,

including your stories, send them to

our American Stories.com.

There are some of our favorites.

Our next story comes to us from a man who's simply known as the History Guy.

His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages on YouTube.

The History Guy is also heard here on our American stories. You've heard

the history guy tell the story of the only woman to be awarded the Medal of Honor. Today,

the History Guy remembers a desperate attempt to rescue soldiers besieged by Apache Indians,

which resulted in the first Medal of Honor by date of action and starts the Apache

War. Here's the history guy. The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor to be

offered to members of the United States Armed Forces. It is so prestigious that

President Harry Truman was famously quoted as saying that he would rather have won the

Medal of Honor than been President of the United States.

The Medal was created in 1862, but it was possible to nominate people for actions that occurred in the past,

and that meant that were actually Medals of Honor awarded for events that occurred before the Medal of Honor was created.

And so it is that the earliest event for which a Medal of Honor was awarded occurred before the

medal was created and actually even before the Civil War for which the Medal of Honor

was created. And it all has to do with an event that is almost forgotten and yet still

extremely important to American history and still controversial today. The Medal of Honor

that was awarded to Assistant Surgeon Bernard Irwin, the first chronologically

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