On a wintry December day in 1944, German forces made a massive surprise attack on the Allied lines, which became known as the Battle of the Bulge. About 19,000 Americans were killed in the month-long battle. On Dec. 16, 1944, the Germans attacked with more than 200,000 troops and hundreds of tanks along a 75-mile front through the rugged Ardennes forest in Belgium and Luxembourg.

The area was patrolled by relatively weak U.S. forces—green troops who had just arrived and battle-weary soldiers who needed a rest. But as the German army started to overrun U.S. defenses, they also met pockets of fierce and courageous resistance. One of the unsung heroes of the battle was a 19-year-old color-blind draftee from Baltimore named Albert Darago. Darago had never fired a bazooka in his life, but on Dec. 19, 1944, his superiors were looking for volunteers to go after some German tanks, and Darago and another 19-year-old soldier named Roland Seamon said yes.

Years later Darago admitted, "I didn't know the first thing about bazookas." But other soldiers loaded the bazooka for him and told him to fire at the German tanks' rear engines. Darago headed down a hill under heavy German fire without any cover. Darago said, "I knew God was with me." Once he spotted four German tanks, he aimed, pulled the trigger and, surprisingly, had a direct hit. When he got back to the camp the officer asked him to go again. So with a reloaded weapon, he crept down the hill again, looked over the hedge, fired, and got another hit. Again, he escaped.

In December 2014, at the 70th anniversary of The Battle of the Bulge, Darago said, "Believe it or not, I didn't even think about [volunteering for the task]. It was something that had to be done and we did it … I never considered myself brave … Somebody had to do it, and I was there."