It's September 1943, and American and Allied forces are advancing up the Italian Peninsula. Army Pvt. William Crawford is the squad scout for I company, 142nd Infantry Regiment, near Altavilla, Italy. As he approached the crest of Hill 424, he ran into a wall of machine gun and small arms fire. Crawford, armed with just his rifle and some grenades, destroyed the enemy dugouts and scattered the defenders.

Crawford was declared killed in action that day and was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor, which was presented to his father. The only problem was that Bill Crawford wasn't dead. He had been captured by the Germans when he stopped to help a wounded fellow soldier and spent almost the rest of World War II in a Nazi prisoner of war camp.

After a brief try at post-war civilian life, he reenlisted and would end up making a career out of the Army, retiring as a master sergeant in 1967. After leaving the U.S. military, he went back to his native Colorado and took a job at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. There, he lived a quiet and unassuming life as a janitor. Cadets described the man cleaning up after them as "unimpressive" and someone "you could easily overlook during a hectic day."

Then one day, a cadet stumbled upon the story of a Pvt. Crawford in Italy during World War II.