It was in France where Urban would distinguish himself and earn his nickname. His division landed at Normandy on D-Day. Later at the French town of Renouf, he spearheaded another gallant series of events.
On June 14, 1944, two tanks and German infantry began raking Urban’s men in the hedgerows, causing heavy casualties. He picked up a bazooka and led an ammo carrier closer to the tanks.
Urban then exposed himself to the heavy enemy fire as he took out both tanks. His leadership inspired his men who easily best the rest of the German infantry.
Later that same day, Urban took a direct shot in the leg from a 37mm tank gun. He continued to direct his men to assume defensive positions. The next day, still wounded, Urban led his troops on another attack. He was wounded again and flown back to England.
In July 1944, he learned how much the fighting in the French hedgerows had devastated his unit. Urban, still in the hospital in England, ditched his bed and hitchhiked back to France. He met up with his men near St. Lo on the eve of Operation Cobra, a breakout effort to hit the German flanks and advance into Brittany.
He found his unit held down by a German strongpoint; two of his units’ tanks had been destroyed and a third missing its commander and gunner. Urban hatched a plan to remount the tank and breakthrough. His lieutenant and sergeant were killed in attempting to do so — so he mounted the tank himself.
“The Ghost” manned the machine gun, as bullets whizzed, by and devastated the enemy.
He was wounded twice more in August, refusing to be evacuated even after taking artillery shell fragments to the chest. At that time, he was promoted to battalion commander.
In September 1944, Urban’s path of destruction across Europe was almost at an end. His men were pinned down by enemy artillery while trying to cross the Meuse River in Belgium. Urban left the command post and went to the front, where he reorganized the men and personally led an assault on a Nazi strongpoint. Urban was shot in the neck by a machine gun during the charge across open ground. He stayed on site until the Nazis were completely routed and the Allies could cross the Meuse.
And that’s just his Medal of Honor citation.
In a 1974 interview with his hometown newspaper, the Buffalo News, he credits his survival to accepting the idea of dying in combat.
“If I had to get it,” Urban said, “it was going to be while I was doing something. I didn’t want to die in my sleep.”
The reason he never received a recommendation for the Medal of Honor was that the recommendation had been lost in the paperwork shuffle. His commander, Maj. Max Wolf had filed the recommendation, but it was lost when Wolf was killed in action.
“When I came home, I never thought about war,” he said in a 1988 press report. “That’s why the medal was 35 years late… I just never pursued it.”
It was the enlisted men who fought with Urban who started asking about “The Ghost’s” Medal of Honor.
“The sight of him limping up the road, all smiles, raring to lead the attack once more, brought the morale of the battleweary men to its highest peak,” Staff Sgt. Earl G. Evans wrote in a 1945 letter to the War Department that had also been initially lost.
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