G. Edwin Richardson saved two U. S. Army infantrymen from being killed by a train, Hamlet, North Carolina, April 1, 1960. At a railroad crossing a small sedan containing the two infantrymen stalled on a track on which a freight train was approaching at a speed of 25 m.p.h. While the men were attempting to restart the sedan, the train rounded a curve, sounding its horn and bell. Edwin, 16, schoolboy, waiting in his automobile for the train to pass, was 12 feet behind the sedan and feared it would be struck. As the locomotive approached at undiminished speed, Edwin put his automobile into high gear and forcibly struck the rear of the stalled sedan. The impact drove the smaller vehicle out of the train’s path, but Edwin’s automobile stopped with its front wheels on the track. The locomotive then was 30 feet away. Edwin put the engine in reverse, leaped from the automobile, and ran from the crossing. As he did so, the automobile moved backward and just cleared the path of the passing train.
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