Medal of Honor - In MEDAL OF HONOR, powerful stories of those who have received our nation's highest military honor beg fundamental questions about the nature of the human spirit and what it means to have the courage of a hero. What makes a person face almost certain death in order to save the lives of others? What gives a person the strength to endure unspeakable acts of torture under the hands of an enemy without losing the will to carry on? And is every person, if put into the same situation, capable of such virtues? Can we all be heroes? The 90-minute film traces the history of the Medal of Honor from a profile of Sgt. Paul Smith, the first soldier to receive a Medal of Honor in the Iraq war, back to its creation during the Civil War. Among those profiled in the film are a Holocaust survivor who single-handedly defended a hill from an advancing enemy force in the Korean War; an injured Navy SEAL who saved the lives of two comrades by swimming for two hours to bring them to safety; and a Marine at Iwo Jima who alone silenced seven Japanese bunkers with a flamethrower to clear a path for his demoralized company. MEDAL OF HONOR explores these extraordinary, almost inconceivable acts of heroism for which the medal has been awarded through intimate accounts of fear and the realities of surviving war, movingly told by the living recipients themselves. MEDAL OF HONOR reveals the story of how the medal was introduced during the Civil War to boost morale and to attract soldiers to re-enlist and not desert. It was frequently awarded to flag bearers. These unarmed soldiers "led the charge," historian Allen Mikaelian explains in the film. The flag indicated to officers where their troops were. In 1863, a soldier named William Harvey Carney dropped his rifle and picked up the stars and stripes when the flag bearer in his company was shot. He was wounded in the battle but never dropped the flag. For his valor, Carney became the first African American to receive the Medal of Honor.