Welcome to Beyond the Call, where history, leadership, and heroism come alive. Today’s story explores Staff Sergeant Curtis F Shoup at Tillet in nineteen forty five, a powerful account of courage and responsibility in combat. If you enjoy learning more about military history and extraordinary individuals, you can find more articles, podcasts, and resources at Trackpads dot com.
In January of 1945, a Belgian hillside near the village of Tillet was locked under hard, frozen snow. Men of the United States Army’s 87th Infantry Division lay scattered across that slope, pinned down in the open as German machine guns swept the ground in front of them. Mortars and artillery exploded around them, turning the white hillside into a churning field of smoke, ice, and shattered earth. There was almost no cover and no way to dig in because the ground was solid rock beneath a thin crust of snow. The cold was its own enemy.
Among those men was Staff Sergeant Curtis F Shoup of Company I, 346th Infantry Regiment. From his vantage point on the slope, he could see how completely the enemy machine gun dominated the approach to the crest. Any movement drew fire, and every minute spent pinned down meant more time for enemy mortars and artillery to find their mark. He understood that his company was trapped in the worst possible place, stalled short of the objective with casualties rising. Beyond the Call is the Monday feature of Dispatch: U.S. Military History Magazine.
Curtis Shoup had not been born to drama or spectacle. He entered the world on January 11, 1921, in Napanoch, a small community in New York State, and grew up in the hard years of the Great Depression. People who knew men like him from towns like that remembered steady habits, simple responsibilities, and an expectation that work came before comfort. When war called, he joined the United States Army from Buffalo, trading civilian routines for the life of an infantryman. Training grounds at home taught him to march under a heavy pack, handle weapons, and lead small groups of soldiers. Quiet reliability was his trademark.
War carried him across the Atlantic to Europe, where the 87th Division fought through forests, fields, and towns under harsh conditions. As a staff sergeant in an infantry company, Shoup’s daily responsibilities were direct and heavy. He made sure his men had what they needed, read the ground ahead, and helped keep fear from turning into paralysis when shells began to fall. His rank placed him in that crucial middle ground between officers and enlisted soldiers, close enough to share every danger, but responsible for making on-the-spot decisions that could save or cost lives. Leadership at that level is personal.
By early January 1945, his regiment was part of the effort to break the German winter offensive that history remembers as the Battle of the Bulge. Snow lay deep in the Ardennes countryside, and the cold bit through wool uniforms and thin gloves. Near Tillet, German forces held high ground that overlooked important approaches and roads. That rising terrain gave them clear fields of fire and strong defensive positions. To secure the area, American units had to climb into those fields of fire and push dug-in defenders off the ridges. Somebody had to go up the hill.
When Shoup’s company stepped off on its attack, the slope ahead looked deceptively plain, just another snow-covered rise. As they advanced, the reality became obvious. German machine guns near the crest opened up in long, controlled bursts that swept the hillside. Men dropped wherever a shallow fold in the ground gave them a few inches of protection. Mortar rounds began to fall, followed by heavier artillery, pounding the exposed attackers who could not dig foxholes in the frozen earth. The attack stalled, leaving soldiers scattered and pressed flat into the snow, unable to move forward or back without drawing lethal fire. The company was stuck between the gun and the bombardment.
Staff Sergeant Shoup recognized that the enemy machine gun was the keystone of the entire position. As long as it remained active, the company could not maneuver, and any attempt to retreat would turn into a slaughter on the open slope. He chose to act. Cradling his automatic weapon, he began to crawl forward alone, inching his way up the hillside through churned, icy snow. Bullets snapped overhead and chewed into the ground nearby as he closed the distance, yard by dangerous yard, toward the flashes at the crest. It was a lonely advance.
From a shallow depression about seventy five yards from the enemy position, Shoup opened fire, trying to suppress the machine gun crew. His rounds forced the gunners to duck and disrupted their fire, but the position was too strong and too well placed to be silenced from that angle and range. He could see that staying in that scrape would not free his company from the deadly grip of the enemy weapon. The tactical problem had only one real solution. Someone had to stand up and close the remaining ground in the open.
So he made a final decision that went far beyond normal duty. Completely disregarding his own safety, Shoup rose from cover and advanced upright toward the machine gun, firing his weapon from the hip. The enemy focused on him at once, and bullets struck his body, knocking him down. He forced himself back up and continued forward, staggering but still moving, still firing, still drawing the full fury of the position onto himself. Near the crest, close enough for one last act to matter, he used the last of his strength to throw a grenade into the machine gun nest. The blast destroyed the weapon and killed or scattered its crew.
The language of his Medal of Honor citation condenses all of this into a few formal lines. It speaks of a company pinned down in an exposed position, of intense machine gun fire, and of added mortar and artillery barrages creating a storm of destruction. It notes that Shoup realized the machine gun had to be eliminated at all costs. Phrases such as “heroism,” “fearless determination,” and “supreme sacrifice” appear, as they do in many citations, but here they point to a specific reality. A single man, already wounded, kept getting up and moving forward until he could destroy the weapon that threatened his comrades. The words stand on that image.
His sacrifice had immediate and concrete effects. With the machine gun neutralized, the company could lift their heads, reorganize, and resume movement up the hill. The worst choke point on the slope had been cleared by his action, and the men who had been helpless in the snow now had a path to advance and complete their mission. On a larger scale, actions like this one around Tillet helped wear down German forces during the closing phases of the Battle of the Bulge, securing ground and routes that shaped the rest of the campaign. One destroyed gun mattered.
Curtis Shoup did not live to see the full results of that day’s fighting. He was killed in action on January 7, 1945, on that frozen hillside in Belgium. After the war, his body was brought home and buried in North Scriba Union Cemetery in Scriba, New York. Visitors who see his headstone find familiar facts: his name, his dates, and the words that mark him as a Medal of Honor recipient. Those few lines cannot show the snow, the fear, and the resolve of his last advance, but they point toward it for those willing to look deeper. Memory begins with a name.
Over time, his community and his country found ways to carry that name forward. In his home region, local memorials honor him as a representative of all who served from that area. Far beyond his hometown, a ship bore his name: a coastal vessel that served in various roles under the designation Sergeant Curtis F Shoup. Every time that name appeared on orders, logs, or hull markings, it carried a reminder of the young staff sergeant who had walked into gunfire for his men. The sea carried his memory to distant ports.
His physical Medal of Honor has also been preserved, displayed so that visitors can see the decoration and learn the story attached to it. Together with his grave, his hometown memorials, and the ship that bore his name, that medal forms part of a chain of remembrance stretching from the battlefield at Tillet to the present day. For students of military history, veterans, and citizens, his story offers a clear picture of what it means when one person decides that the safety of others outweighs their own survival. Staff Sergeant Curtis F Shoup’s final advance turned a desperate situation into a chance for victory. His legacy is the lives saved and the standard of courage he left behind.