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Office of the 11th Congressional District of Virginia
Formerly the Office of Representative Gerry Connolly
The Washington, D.C., office and the district office of former Representative Connolly will continue to serve the people of the 11th Congressional District of Virginia under the supervision of the Clerk of the House of Representatives. Representative Connolly passed away on May 21, 2025. See Press Release
InsideNova: After 68 years, Haymarket area resident given a Bronze Star for efforts
Washington, DC,
December 10, 2012
Private John R. "Jack" Faulconer Jr. saw action in WWII that earned him a Bronze Star but he didn't get the medal until Fri day. Read more.
Inside Nova: After 68 years, Haymarket area resident given a Bronze Star for effortsPrivate John R. “Jack” Faulconer Jr. saw action in WWII that earned him a Bronze Star but he didn’t get the medal until Fri day. On Nov. 30, 1944, Faulconer was with the 95th Infantry Division, fighting in Saarlautern, Germany, toward the end of the 3-month-long Battle of Metz along the border between France and Ger many. Faulconer, who was 19 at the time, was shot in his left arm as he led his machine gun squad through heavy fire in an at tempt to take a piece of high ground near German lines about 3:30 p.m. that day. “I was three quarters of the way up the hill. Two members of my squad were killed right next to me,” Faulconer said Friday moring in Rep. Gerry Connolly’s Annandale office where he received the medal after a wait of 68 years. Faulconer, who now lives in Heritage Hunt near Haymarket with his wife, Joyce, said he decided to continue for ward after he was wounded. “I got up off the ground and found this German trench on top of the hill,” he said. Faulconer said that unlike American soldiers, German soldiers built their trenches in a series of dugouts. “They were like little rooms. I crawled into one of those rooms and waited,” said the now 88-year-old Faulconer. “I wrapped up my arm the best I could. It was a very serious wound. It splintered both of the bones and shattered one of the nerves.” Faulconer said he decided to hunker down and wait until nightfall before he tried to make it back to his unit. “I could hear the Germans talking, but luckily they didn’t look in this little room I was in,” he said. “I was a little afraid I was going to get caught by the Germans. I was behind the German lines, hiding in a trench. I waited ’til dark and got out of there.” Faulconer said he kept low to the ground after leaving the trench and headed back toward his unit, found a sentry and gave the password. “I said, ‘Able, Baker, Charlie coming through,’ and they had a guard there at the division perimeter and one of them found me and of course, he called the medic right away. My arm was just hang ing off of me,” Faulconer said. “Thank goodness they found me.” Faulconer said his first stop was at a tent that served as a hospital in the middle of a field. “They put me on a litter and strapped me on a jeep and drove me back to the field hospital,” said Faulconer, a graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School in Portsmouth. Soon after that, the Army sent him to a hospital in Paris where he received a Purple Heart. He was later sent to Walter Reed Hospital in Maryland where he was awarded the Combat Infantryman’s Badge at about the same time he met Joyce, a U.S. Navy WAVE crytographer specialist. “They asked us to go out and dance with the wounded soldiers and I thought it would be nice and I met him,” said Joyce Faulconer, who’s been married to Jack for 65 years. Faulconer said he learned he might be eligible for a Bronze Star, which is awarded for heroic or meritorious achievement, after talking to a retired Army colonel on the driving range at Heritage Hunt Golf and Country Club. Faulconer said he didn’t really know him, but he said the colonel told him that he might be eligible for the medal and gave him the number of U.S. Army National Guard 1st Lt. Joe Weeren, who is also an aide in Connolly’s office. “It’s just one of these things. We were hitting them off the tee and telling war stories,” Faulconer said. Weeren dug into the records and found that Faulconer met the criteria to receive the medal. Before he peresented Faulconer with his Bronze Star, Connolly said Jack and Joyce Faulconer “so represented” the “Greatest Generation.” “It is an humble and prideful moment for me to be able to present the Bronze medal to jack Faulconer,” Connolly said. Faulconer said receiving the medal brought back memories. “The memories are very strong. You’ll never forget you were on the battlefield. It’s something you can’t forget and it’s something you can’t describe to anybody what it’s like,” he said. “I was terrible, all those young men in the prime of life losing their lives. It was very, very bad.” Joyce said she hadn’t heard much over the years about her husband’s combat experience. “He was only 19 years old. Can you imagine a 19-year-old, how scared he would be?” she said of her husband’s wounding, hiding and evading Germans to make it back to safety. She said her husband was haunted after the war. “He had bad nightmares for a long time after we were married,” she said. “He would scream. I’d have to wake him up to keep him from waking up people in the apartment.” The Faulconers’ son John joined his parents for the ceremony and said he was glad his father finally got the medal, though he wasn’t really seeking it. “I think it’s great for him. It’s not that he was really worried about having it. He’s proud of what he did. I think it’s a really good thing,” the son said.“He’s always had good stories. He’s talked to my children a lot about what went on during that time. War is bad. It always is, but you’ve got to rise to the occasion.” |