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The Dentists Who Would Not Retreat

So, I’m just going to assume that- any sane person who is reading this… hates going to the dentist. I mean, I’m literally getting a spinal shiver just imagining the sound of the drill.

And then they complain about your poor flossing habits while poking your gums with a freakin scalpel.

Well guess what we’re talking about today? We’re about to learn about 3 military dentists who were not your average guys in the office. Nah, these guys volunteered for combat roles and would receive the medal of honor for their actions during 3 of the most brutal fighting America has ever seen.

You see, They were trained to both save teeth, and to take ground. Their hands were suited best for forceps and sutures, but rifles and machine guns? Turns out, they worked well all the same.

Yet on three separate battlefields— 2 in France in 1918 and 1 in Saipan in 1944— todays story highlights three dentists who chose to stand fast when chaos surged forward. Under artillery, shellfire, and bayonets, they proved that courage is not defined by one’s specialty, but by one’s resolve.

Belleau Wood, France — June 6, 1918

Lieutenant (j.g.) Weedon E. Osborne, U.S. Navy

The forest at Belleau Wood was alive with death.

Shells screamed overhead and detonated among shattered trees as the U.S. Marines surged forward toward the village of Bouresches. German machine guns ripped through the morning air. Men fell in the wheat fields and at the forest’s edge, their cries swallowed by the thunder of artillery.

Among them moved a Navy dentist.

Lieutenant junior grade Weedon E. Osborne, attached to the 6th Regiment of U.S. Marines, did not carry a rifle. Instead, he carried the tools of a combat medic and the will of a warrior. As the Marines launched their now-legendary advance, Osborne threw himself into the maelstrom without hesitation. He ran toward the wounded, not away from the fire.

Again and again, he crossed ground swept by bullets and shell fragments, dragging wounded Marines from where they had fallen. The fighting was at its fiercest—this was the heart of the advance, where the line wavered and death seemed unavoidable. Yet Osborne worked tirelessly, lifting, carrying, refusing to abandon any man who still breathed.

Then he saw a wounded officer stranded in the open.

Ignoring the barrage, Osborne bent over, lifted the officer onto his shoulders, and began moving toward safety. The shells fell closer now. The air cracked with violence. Just steps from cover, an explosion tore through the space around them. When the smoke cleared, both men lay still.

Weedon E. Osborne became the first officer of the Navy Dental Corps killed in action. He died as he had lived that day—rescuing others in the very hottest of the fight. For his extraordinary heroism, he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Belleau Wood would go on to be remembered as a Marine legend, but among its heroes that day, was a dentist who never fired a shot, but still saved several lives.

The French Front — April 23, 1918

Lieutenant Commander Alexander G. Lyle, U.S. Navy

Weeks earlier, on another stretch of the French front, artillery fire pounded Marine positions without mercy. Explosions churned the earth, collapsing trenches and tearing through exposed men. Amid the bombardment, Corporal Thomas Regan was struck—badly wounded, bleeding out under continuing shellfire.

Few would have blamed anyone for staying down.

Lieutenant Commander Alexander G. Lyle, a Navy Dental Surgeon serving with the 5th Regiment of Marines, did the opposite. As shells burst around him, Lyle rose and ran toward Regan’s position. He crossed open ground under fire, fully exposed, knowing every step could be his last.

He reached the corporal and immediately went to work.

With explosions still rocking the battlefield, Lyle administered emergency surgical aid on the spot. There was no shelter, no pause in the enemy’s bombardment—only urgency. His hands moved with precision despite the chaos, stopping the bleeding, stabilizing the wound, refusing to yield to fear or distraction.

Because of Lyle’s actions, Corporal Regan lived.

That day, Lyle demonstrated that heroism does not always come with a charge or a weapon. Sometimes it comes with steady hands under fire and the refusal to abandon a wounded man.

For his extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty, Lyle received the Medal of Honor. Unlike Osborne, his war did not end there—he would go on to become the first dental officer to achieve the rank of Vice Admiral—but his defining moment came in the mud and smoke of the French front, when he ran toward danger with nothing but his medical skill and his courage.

Saipan, Marianas Islands — July 7, 1944

Captain Benjamin L. Salomon, U.S. Army

If Belleau Wood was a fight to the death, then Saipan was sh!t sandwich without bread.

Before dawn on July 7, 1944, Japanese forces launched one of the largest bonzai attacks of the Pacific Theater—between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers crashing into the lines of the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the 105th Infantry Regiment.

The perimeter shattered. The enemy poured through gaps, overrunning positions and cutting down defenders.

Captain Benjamin L. Salomon, the battalion surgeon, was working inside a small aid station tent on the front line when the first wounded arrived. Then more. And more. And Within minutes, roughly 30 injured soldiers filled the space—some walking, others crawling, many carried in as the fighting surged closer.

The perimeter collapsed.

As Salomon worked desperately to treat the wounded, Japanese soldiers broke through. One entered the tent and bayoneted a helpless man lying near the floor. Salomon reacted instantly—dropping his medical role, grabbing an m1 and firing from a squatting position, killing the attacker. More enemy soldiers followed. They came through the entrance. They crawled under the tent walls.

The aid station became a battlefield.

Salomon fought at point-blank range—shooting, bayoneting, kicking weapons from enemy hands, engaging in brutal hand-to-hand combat as wounded Americans lay around him. One attacker was shot. Another bayoneted. Another was killed by a wounded soldier after Salomon disabled him.

Realizing the position could not be held, Salomon made a decision that sealed his fate.

He ordered the wounded to evacuate to the regimental aid station—now. He would stay behind.

Grabbing a rifle, Salomon rushed outside into the chaos. Nearby, a machine gun crew had been wiped out. He took the gun and turned it on the advancing enemy. Alone, he held the line, pouring fire into wave after wave of attackers.

Days later, when American forces retook the area, they found Salomon’s body at the gun. In front of his position lay 98 dead enemy soldiers, piled where they had fallen.

Captain Benjamin L. Salomon had not survived—but dozens of wounded Americans had, because he chose to fight instead of flee.

His Medal of Honor would come decades later, delayed by debate and bureaucracy, but history would not forget what happened on Saipan: a dentist stood alone against an army and refused to surrender his patients.

The Snow drifted across the cracked sidewalks of Buffalo, New York on the day David G Bellavia entered the world. It was November 10^th, of 1975, Marine Corps birthday- and a date that would echo with eerie symmetry for bellavia twenty-nine years later.

To most, he was simply the youngest of five brothers, and the son of a dentist who believed in hard work, discipline, and keeping one’s word. To David, childhood was a series of tests you see, between wrestling his older brothers twice his size, learning to bounce back from the bruises, and discovering early that grit was its own kind of armor.

He moved through school like a restless storm—smart and gifted in ways he didn’t always know how to use. After graduating high school in 1994, he studied biology and theatre at the University at Buffalo. But something else simmered inside him, something that textbooks couldn’t reach. The world was changing, and deep in his chest was a feeling that he was meant to serve, not simply observe.

So in 1999, he walked into an army recruiting office and enlisted as an 11B infantryman. He didn’t know it then, but fate had already chosen the battleground where his name would be carved into American military history.

AN ENTIRE CITY UNDER SEIGE

By 2004, the war in iraq was no longer the quick, decisive campaign many hoped it would be. The insurgency had grown teeth—sharp, jagged, and merciless. And nowhere were those teeth more visible than in the city of Fallujah, a city transformed into a fortress of concrete, tunnels, IEDs, and foreign fighters desperate for martyrdom.

When Operation Phantom Fury began, the air throbbed with the thunder of tanks and the pulse of helicopter rotors. Over 13,000 coalition troops tightened around the city like a closing fist.

Inside that fist was Staff Sergeant David G. Bellavia, squad leader, A Company, 2/2 Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division.

For days, Bellavia and his men fought block to block, room to room, house to house—moving through darkness, dust, and the metallic tang of war. Fatigue gnawed at every muscle, but there was no stopping, no slowing. Not here. Not now.

THE TRAP

On the night of 10 November 2004, a house loomed ahead—one of a thousand just like it: battered concrete, blown-out windows, a silent promise of violence inside. Intelligence warned the structure was fortified, but Bellavia’s platoon had cleared dozens like it already.

His squad breached the entrance.

For a second, only silence answered.

Then the house erupted.

Gunfire shrieked from a hidden fighting position under the stairwell—a perfect kill-zone. The squad was pinned instantly, trapped in a small room as enemy rounds punched through walls, doors, and air with murderous precision.

“WE’RE STUCK!” someone shouted.
“WE CAN’T MOVE!”

Bellavia didn’t think. He didn’t hesitate. He acted.

He ripped an M249 SAW from a teammate—heavy, deafening, the kind of weapon you only fire when you want the world to know you’re coming—and sprinted straight into the doorway, exposing himself fully to the insurgents.

Bullets snapped past him like angry hornets. Dust exploded from the walls. Wooden splinters slashed his face.

And Bellavia unleashed hell.

The machine gun roared, its cyclic thunder drowning out everything else. The muzzle flash lit the cramped entrance like lightning as he poured round after round toward the stairwell.

“MOVE! GO! GO!”

His men broke contact and spilled out of the house.

He had bought them life with raw firepower.

THE RETURN TO THE ABYSS

A Bradley Fighting Vehicle rumbled forward, turret sweeping, its cannon ready to vaporize anything inside the structure. But the walls were too high. The angles were wrong. The gunner couldn’t get a shot.

The enemy inside the house was still alive—and ready.

Bellavia’s jaw tightened.

We can’t leave them behind us, he thought. This ends now.

He reloaded, steadied his breathing, and charged back inside.

The darkness felt thicker this time, almost alive. He moved carefully, rifle raised, senses sharpened to a razor’s edge.

Then he saw him—an insurgent emerging from the shadows, a rocket-propelled grenade aimed at Bellavia’s platoon outside.

One shot. One explosion. One heartbeat could end them all.

Bellavia didn’t give him that heartbeat.

He fired first.

The insurgent crumpled, and another bolted deeper into the house, wounded and desperate. Bellavia followed, feeling the hair on the back of his neck rise. There was another room behind him—uncleared, silent, dangerous.

He pivoted toward it.

But the house struck first.

THE DARK ROOM

An insurgent barreled down the staircase, weapon blazing. Simultaneously, the previously wounded fighter reappeared, firing wildly. Rounds tore through the darkness. Drywall disintegrated. The air filled with choking dust and the stink of burning powder.

Bellavia dove deeper into the pitch-black room, firing controlled bursts as the attackers closed in.

Two enemies fell.

Then—silence.

A shape moved in the corner.

A closet door burst open.

Another insurgent.

Another gun.

Another flash.

Bellavia fired back, both men illuminated by brief, violent sparks. The insurgent fled up the stairs, wounded.

Bellavia followed, boots pounding the steps, heart slamming against his ribs. He kicked open the door at the top of the landing and caught the fighter in his sights.

One more threat—neutralized.

THE ROOFTOP

The second floor was cramped and suffocating, but Bellavia pushed forward, finding a door that led to the top floor. He reached for it—

—and a dark figure leapt from the third-floor roof, landing with a thud on the second-floor ledge just beyond the window.

The insurgent rose, howling a battle cry, weapon in hand.

Bellavia threw a grenade toward the window and fired, bullets ripping through glass and concrete. The fighter staggered, hit in the back and legs, and toppled towards bellavia, were he finished him hand to hand, disappearing into the night below.

Then…
nothing.
Silence.
Only Bellavia’s ragged breathing and the distant rumble of tanks echoed across the shattered city.

In just minutes—a blur of gunfire, grit, and instinct—he had single-handedly cleared an entire enemy-occupied house, killing four insurgents and wounding a fifth.

---

THE AFTERMATH

Bellavia stepped back into the moonlit street. Dust clung to his uniform. Smoke curled from the barrel of his weapon. His men stared at him—some wide-eyed, some shaking their heads in disbelief.

“You good, Sarge?” one asked.

Bellavia nodded, though his heart still hammered like it wanted out of his chest.

“It’s clear,” he said simply.

Behind him, the house stood silent, stripped of the killers who had made it a tomb.

He didn’t brag. He didn’t boast. He didn’t need to.

The men who witnessed his courage would tell the story.
The Army would record it.
The nation would one day honor it.

But in that moment, under the harsh glow of Fallujah’s burning skyline, David Bellavia was just a soldier—tired, dirty, and alive—who had done what needed to be done to save his brothers.

And that was enough.

Hello there! I hope you enjoyed this blog. If you did and, you happen to love history content- please check rolling through history out on youtube!!

So- I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that whenever you here of the European theatre of WW2, you know, nazi’s, D-day, battle of the bulge etc, you probably think of the US army and DEFINATLY NOT the U.S. Marine Corps.

Well guess what, until about a week ago, I would have agreed with you until I learned about a certain marine who did in fact, fight the nazi’s, and not only did he fight the nazi’s,

But he succeeded in doing what is arguably the most marine corps thing possible while doing so. Ladies and gentlemen, meet major Perter Ortiz, USMC attaché to the OSS during the pacific theatre of the 2^nd world war.

The guy who, according to legend, made 4 SS officers salute FDR while singing the marine corps hymn. So go ahead and take a wiz and grab a snack because this is going to be a ride.

PART 1

So our story begins in New York city, in 1913. Ultimately, Ortiz was a child of three different worlds — you see, Peter Ortiz was an American citizen by birth, a Frenchman by youth and education, and yet, a Spaniard by his father’s blood.

His father, you see, a famed art dealer and appraiser in 1920’s Europe, filled their home with paintings, conversation and other post World War 1 enlightenment ideals captivating Europe during the time. his Swiss born American mother on the other hand, with grace and discipline.

Well, that is until his father left them for a young aspiring Spanish painter he met on a trip when he was young.

So peter and his mother moved back to France where he grew up with her family. A family, who taught him 2 things above all. A never quit work ethic, and a passion for education and learning.

Finding his future in the hills above Grenoble, he learned the languages of Europe — ten in all — and the thrill of motion, of, the wind against his face.

PART 2

So, in 1931, At the age of nineteen, to the shock of his wealthy and pampered upbringing, Peter left privilege behind and enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. A historically known army of French conscripts from all of Frances protectorates and colonies.

Beginning his service at The Legion’s training camp at Sidi Bel-Abbès, training was designed to break boys and to forge them into fighting men. And this is where Ortiz’s legend began. Amid the burning Algerian sand, he became the youngest sergeant in Legion history.

In Morocco, he fought the Rif rebels, which- without going into detail, were essentially pro Moroccan freedom fighters, with ferocity, earning two Croix de Guerre and the respect of veterans twice his age.

Offered a commission and French citizenship, he refused both. He preferred freedom to rank — a free man who fought for something more than orders.

Serving until 1937, peter Ortiz moved to California, becoming a military advisor for Hollywood. Well, that is, until 1939.

PART 3

When war came to Europe again in 1939, he returned to the Legion. And when Germany invaded France a year later, Ortiz, now a lieutenant, led a resistance attack against a German fuel depot and was shot through the hip during his escape.

Captured, he spent fifteen months in German prison camps, escaping five times before making it to neutral Spain and then to Portugal. By the time he boarded a ship to New York, the world was at war again — and he was not done fighting.

So In June 1942, seeking a commission in the United states army, he enlisted instead in the United States Marine Corps as a private, due to the army air corps process being to long. Forty days later, he was commissioned as a lieutenant once the corps realized they had a fully tried combat vet who spoke 10 languages, and was already experienced fighting the Nazi regime.

Six months after that, he became a captain. His superiors wrote during his promotion, “This man is of exceptional value for any operations behind enemy lines.” They were right.

Operation Union: The Marine Behind Enemy Lines

On a frigid night in January 1944, under a moon dimmed by winter clouds, Peter Ortiz leapt from the belly of a British bomber into the mountains of Haute-Savoie, France, along with 6 other members of the OSS.

The snow swallowed him whole as he landed. His mission, code-named Operation Union, was simple in words and perilous in execution: unite the fractured Maquis resistance groups, arm them, train them, and prepare them for the day when the Allies would come.

With him were two men — Colonel Pierre Fourcaud of the French secret service and Captain Thackwaite of Britain’s SOE. Together, they descended into a land of fear and shadows, where the Gestapo’s reach was long and mercy was short, which typically resulted in swift execution of expected spies.

You see, Ortiz carried no false papers, no aliases. What he carried instead, out of pure love for the corps, was his U.S. Marine Corps uniform, complete with his full stack of medals. And… He wore it openly, on most missions.

Thackwaite later said, “Ortiz, who knew not fear, wore his Marine uniform in town and country alike; this cheered the French but alerted the Germans.”
He became a legend to the resistance — l’Américain en uniforme, the American in uniform. To the Germans, he was a ghost who could not be caught.

He organized airdrops of weapons, taught ambush tactics, and negotiated peace among rival Maquis bands. And When four downed RAF pilots were stranded behind German lines, Ortiz stole a Gestapo car, forged papers, and drove them hundreds of miles to the Spanish border. Then, astonishingly, he returned to France — back to the fight, back to the snow, back to danger.

A TOAST TO FDR

And then there was the night of the toast. In a small French club one night, 4 German officers, all liquored up beyond understanding, while on R and R one weekend, were mocking the now infamous “tall American Marine” hurting their efforts and cursing President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Ortiz, sitting quietly in civilian clothes, listened, intrigued by their liquored-up blathering of American politics. He stood, left the room, and returned to his safe house across the street. When he came back, he wore his full Marine Corps uniform, medals gleaming in the lamplight, and 2 Colt .45, 1 in each hand.

He approached the German table and ordered drinks. “Gentlemen,” he said evenly in a perfect German accent, “a toast — to the President of the United States.” Mr. franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The Germans hesitated, then raised their glasses out of fear. “Another,” Ortiz said, a faint smile on his lips. “To the United States Marine Corps and proceeded to lead them in reciting the marine corps hymn.

The glasses clinked again. No shots fired. No blood spilled. Just the quiet humiliation of arrogance, and the legend of a man who could face the enemy not with rage, but with unflinching dignity.

By the way, its ultimately unclear whether or not that actually happened. However, it is documented by several superiors that he always traveled with his uniform and always wore it when facing the enemy. and would often drink in public bars since he understood both the languages and the cultural nuances associated with the area..

So.. id like to think its true.

By May 1944, his mission complete, Ortiz and his men were airlifted out of France. For his heroism, he received the Navy Cross and the Order of the British Empire. But the war was far from over.

Operation Union II: The Surrender That Saved a Village

Just two months later, Ortiz returned to the skies over France. On August 1, 1944, now a major, he parachuted once more into the mountains — this time leading Operation Union II, commanding a small team of five Marines, an Army Air Force captain, and a Free French officer.

Their mission: to disrupt retreating German forces and support the coming Allied advance.

For two weeks, they waged guerrilla war in the Savoie region — ambushing convoys, blowing up bridges, rallying French civilians. Once again, Ortiz wore his Marine uniform, even when German patrols prowled the woods. “To inspire the people,” he said. And inspire them he did.

Then came the ambush near the village of Centron.

The small American team was surrounded by an entire German battalion. Ortiz and his men fought fiercely, but the villagers begged them to surrender — the Gestapo had burned whole towns for less. Ortiz made his choice.

Walking calmly through the smoke, he approached the German lines under a white flag and demanded to speak to their commander, Major Kolb. In perfect German, he offered to surrender his “entire garrison” if the villagers were spared.

Kolb agreed.

When only three Marines — Ortiz, Sgt. Bodnar, and Sgt. Risler — emerged to surrender, Kolb was stunned. The “garrison” that had held up his battalion was a handful of men. Yet he kept his word. The village of Centron survived.

Ortiz spent the rest of the war in captivity, enduring interrogation and solitary confinement, never betraying a soul. When Allied forces liberated his camp in April 1945, he walked free again — gaunt, but unbroken.

CONCLUSION

After the war, Peter Ortiz returned to Hollywood. He acted in John Ford films alongside John Wayne, appearing in movies like She wore a yellow ribbon, Rio Grande and The Wings of Eagles. He served as technical adviser on 13 Rue Madeleine and Operation Secret — films based on men like him.

He joked about his acting, saying, “I was an awful actor, but I had great fun.” Yet no performance could match the life he had already lived — the Marine who wore his uniform behind enemy lines, who toasted Roosevelt at gunpoint, who surrendered not for defeat, but for compassion.

Colonel Peter Ortiz died in 1988 and was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. Representatives from the United States, Britain, and France stood in silence. In the French village of Centron, the townspeople later named their square Place Peter Ortiz.

A plaque there bears his name and a single phrase:
“He surrendered so that we might live.”