John McKinney never intended to become a soldier. The son of a poor Georgia sharecropper, he left school in the third grade and never returned. Instead, he found his place in the wilderness, using his expertise in hunting and fishing to feed his Depression-era family. Then he was drafted to serve his country in World War II.Assigned to a company bound for the Pacific, McKinney slogged through hard fighting in New Guinea and the Philippines, earning a reputation as an amiable country boy who knew how to survive. But in the predawn hours of May 11, 1945, just as Private McKinney retired from guarding his unit's encampment on Dingalan Bay on the Philippine island of Luzon, hell came calling. An elite strike force of Japanese Imperial troopers attacked, taking the camp by surprise.McKinney returned fire from his foxhole, standing alone against wave after wave of fanatical Japanese soldiers as grenades and mortars exploded around him. When he ran out of bullets, he swung his rifle as a club. When his rifle broke, he switched to his knife. When his knife dropped, he used his fists. At the end of the bloody, shocking battle, John McKinney stood - his uniform shredded to ribbons, but with only a small head wound. Before him were the bodies of more than one hundred Japanese he had killed singlehandedly.This is the story of an extraordinary man whose courage and fortitude in battle saved many American lives and earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor, and whose legacy has been sadly forgotten by all but a few. Read Less