By CHATTANOOGA TIMES FREE PRESS, TENN. | | Published: April 7, 2021 CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (Tribune News Service) Charles Henry Coolidge, Sr., the country s oldest Medal of Honor recipient, died peacefully on Tuesday at CHI Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, Tenn. He was 99. Coolidge received the nation s highest military honor for valor for his actions in the wooded mountains of France in October 1944, when he assumed command of an isolated group of 28 men, then defied the German army and two tanks for four days of continuous fighting. Coolidge was presented the Medal of Honor by Lt. Gen. Wade H. Haislip in a rare battlefield ceremony June 18, 1945, at a bombed-out airfield near Dornstadt, Germany.