20 Soldiers Who Disobeyed Orders And Became Heroes In The Process

We’re going back to 1962 for this tale — the terrifying time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet Union had deployed three of its nuclear-armed submarines in the waters off Castro’s Caribbean island. They had orders to attack in the event of U.S. aggression — without referring back to Moscow. One of the subs, B-59, was under the command of Valentin Savitsky. Ominously, his nerves were apparently shredded.

When U.S. Navy ships began to drop depth charges in the sea near his sub, this Savitsky decided it was time for action. He was on the point of unleashing a nuclear weapon, an action that would surely have triggered armageddon. Luckily, one of the other senior officers on board B-59, a flotilla commander called Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov, took a different view. He vetoed Savitsky’s interpretation of Moscow’s orders, so it’s scarcely an exaggeration to say that Arkhipov saved the world. Now, that’s heroic!

In 2009 Marine Sergeant Dakota Meyer was caught up in a ferocious six-hour firefight in Afghanistan, an engagement that would come to be known as the Battle of Ganjigal. About 100 American and Afghani Government troops were pinned down by enemy fire after an ambush in a village. Meyer was positioned nearby when his commander ordered him to ignore a call for help from the beleaguered soldiers. But the sergeant had other ideas.

Jumping into a Humvee, Meyer and a buddy drove straight into the eye of the storm under heavy fire from about 50 insurgents. On his first sortie he evacuated some Afghani personnel at massive personal risk. Although wounded, he drove back into the village another four times, picking off a number of the enemy, rescuing wounded Afghanis and, sadly, retrieving the remains of Americans killed in the fighting. Despite having disregarded a direct order, Sergeant Meyer was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Private Guy Gabaldon, A Mexican-American Marine, was under strict orders to remain at his post on the Pacific island of Saipan during WWII. And most soldiers would have been content to do just that, given that the area was crawling with hostile Japanese soldiers. But staying put was not for the maverick Gabaldon, who was only 18 and stood just 5 foot 3 inches tall. He had a different plan in mind.

Private Gabaldon decided to do a little freelance and entirely unauthorized patrolling, and the results were startling. After his first sortie, he returned to base with six Japanese prisoners in tow. He released three, telling them to spread the word that Americans would treat captured soldiers fairly. For this escapade, he was severely rebuked and told he risked court martial. But he went out again, repeatedly. Astonishingly, in a single day he took some 800 prisoners and in total more than 1,500 Japanese surrendered to the young private.

The outstanding bravery of Desmond Doss was immortalized on the silver screen in the 2016 movie Hacksaw Ridge. Doss didn’t exactly disobey orders, but he sure had his own way of doing things. He refused point blank to go into combat with any weapons because his religious beliefs — he was a Seventh-day Adventist — forbade the taking of human life. But he wanted to serve his country and so enrolled as a conscientious objector. Doss served as a combat medic with the 77th Infantry Division in WWII.

In April 1945 Doss was with his unit as it joined battle with the enemy on the island of Okinawa. A strong Japanese force was well dug in on a cliff face — the aforementioned Hacksaw Ridge. The Americans mounted a major attack that left many wounded. Most of the U.S. soldiers were driven back, but Doss stayed with the casualties and succeeded in rescuing 75 men. A few days later, although hit by a grenade and a sniper’s bullet, he continued to treat the wounded. Men who had scorned him because of his pacifism now recognized his extraordinary bravery.

Daniel Hellings was just 19 years old in 2010 when he defied an order from a superior officer while serving with the British Army in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province. Hellings had just seen three of his comrades badly injured by enemy explosive devices right in front of him. The bombs went off in a narrow alleyway and Hellings, miraculously unscathed, was ordered to retreat because of the clear and present danger of another blast.

But Hellings refused the order. He was equipped with a metal detector, yet it was of little use because the alley was littered with metallic debris. Still, he was determined to reach the three injured men. So he undertook a highly perilous fingertip search of the 10-foot wide alley. His painstaking efforts, lasting an hour, unearthed a further four explosive devices. Private Hellings’ bravery helped save the three casualties and his disobedience was rewarded with a Queen’s Gallantry Medal. 

Later promoted to major, Teich was a mere U.S. Army lieutenant when he chose to defy a direct order in 1951 during his service in the Korean War. One April day, the lieutenant picked up an SOS radio message from the Eighth Ranger Company. They were near Teich’s position and were in imminent danger of being overwhelmed by a large Chinese force. 

Teich was a tank man and he asked his commanding officer if he could take a detachment to rescue those Rangers. But the officer was adamant; it was time for Teich and his buddies to retreat. That was too much for the lieutenant. Disobeying the order, he broke off with four tanks and made his way to the besieged G.I.s. When he arrived, some 65 Rangers clambered onto the tanks and made good their escape. But for Teich’s bravery and defiance, they would certainly have been captured or killed.

Australian Thomas Derrick joined the Australian Imperial Force in 1940 and saw action in north Africa, winning a Distinguished Conduct Medal. But it was in a different theater that his rebellious nature came to the fore. In 1943 Derrick was posted to Papua New Guinea to fight the occupying Japanese forces. November found him in the far east of Papua New Guinea engaged in jungle combat.

Derrick was fighting in the Battle of Sattelberg. The Australian advance on Japanese positions had been halted by fierce resistance and the order to retreat came. But it seems that Derrick just wasn’t the retreating type. Instead of withdrawing he attacked, with his buddies providing covering fire. It was an extraordinary one-man assault. Derrick took ten Japanese strongholds and turned the course of the battle. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery — in spite of his blatant insubordination.

It might seem strange to see a German WWII general on a list of heroes who disobeyed orders. But if it weren’t for the defiance that Von Choltitz showed in 1944 much of the French capital featured in shows such as Emily in Paris would have been obliterated. For Hitler ordered Von Choltitz to destroy Paris rather than let it fall into the hands of the Allies. 

But Von Choltitz believed that the wanton destruction of the great city offered no military advantage. What’s more, he felt that the order was the product of a diseased mind. So he completely disobeyed the German leader’s command, allowing a largely intact Paris to fall into the hands of the Allies. He even made a truce with the French Resistance. And for those defiant actions, we can be eternally grateful.

French artillery man Colonel Raoul Berube fought for his country during World War I. His act of disobedience came in March 1915 when the French Army’s 336th Infantry Regiment attacked a collection of well-defended German machine-gun positions. For two days the soldiers attempted without success to dislodge the Germans, all the while sustaining heavy casualties. To add insult to injury, misdirected French artillery fire had landed on the men’s trenches.

Ordered to attack yet again, the French troops mutinied and refused point blank. Astonishingly, the reaction of their commander, General Geraud Reveilhac, was to order Colonel Berube to target his artillery on the French trenches, believing this would force the soldiers to attack as ordered. Berube defied this extraordinary command — a courageous stand which undoubtedly saved the lives of many. 

When it came to disobeying orders, Special Operations Executive soldier Captain Michael Lees had form. In 1943 he’d infiltrated Yugoslavia to fight alongside partisans as they attacked German occupiers. He’d been told to break off his activities but he’d ignored the command, continuing a single-handed and highly destructive guerrilla campaign. But it was in the following year that his most spectacular defiance of orders came.

By 1944 with the Germans still holding out in the Apennine Mountains, the soldier was fighting in northern Italy alongside local partisans. Lees obtained intelligence about the location of the German headquarters and formulated a plan to attack it directly. Mustering an ad hoc force of about 100 men, Lees prepared for the operation, only to be ordered to abandon it. But he went ahead anyway, destroying the base and leaving the German command in chaos.

Frank Luke was an air ace of WWI who by 1918 had scored 15 combat victories. His specialty was bringing down German air balloons. Now, destroying an inflatable might sound like something of a turkey-shoot for a fighter plane. But that was far from the reality, since the balloons — used to spot targets and direct artillery fire — were robustly defended by anti-aircraft guns.

In September 1918 Luke got into hot water with his commanding officer for spending an unauthorized night away from his base. The lieutenant had been grounded. But in defiance of that order, he jumped into his biplane and flew off to down another German dirigible. And the brave pilot did indeed destroy more German spotter balloons, bringing his personal tally to 18. But then he was shot down, losing his life. In death, Lieutenant Frank Luke received the Medal of Honor for his bravery, the first flier ever to do so.

African-American Ruben Rivers served with the 761st Tank Battalion during WWII — and saw plenty of action. He’s best remembered for a ferocious engagement against defending Germans as a tank platoon under his command pushed through France towards Germany in November 1944. After days of intense fighting, a land mine exploded under Ruben’s tank, disabling it and badly wounding him in the leg.

At that point, the staff sergeant could have retreated. Indeed, his commanding officer issued an order specifically instructing him to do just that. But Rivers ignored the command, abandoned his stricken tank and took control of another one, continuing to attack his German counterparts. His forces succeeded in capturing their target, a French village. But Rivers’ second tank was destroyed by enemy fire, and he was killed. Rivers was recommended for a Medal of Honor; this long-overdue recognition finally came courtesy of President Bill Clinton in 1997.

Lawrence Joel was a medic with the 173rd Airborne Brigade during the Vietnam War, one of the many African-Americans who saw action in that conflict. One day in November 1965 Joel boarded a chopper with his unit and they flew out for what was planned as a routine patrol. But what happened after they’d landed at a place called Bien Hoa was far from routine.

Out of nowhere, volleys of machine-gun fire cut a swathe through the American troops in a devastating and well-planned Viet Cong ambush. Joel was hit twice, in the thigh and the calf. Yet although his commanding officer ordered him to take cover, Joel ignored him and continued to treat his buddies under heavy fire in what would turn into a 12-hour gun battle. Even although he ignored orders, Sergeant Joel was awarded the Medal of Honor for this outstanding display of bravery.

Albert Battel fought with the German Army in WWII. What’s more he was actually a Nazi Party member. Even so, he displayed great courage and an unexpected level of human decency in 1942. At the time, the feared SS was rounding up Jews across Poland. One operation was to involve clearing the Jewish ghetto in the southern Polish city of Przemysl. The residents were to be transported to the Belzec death camp.

Battel, in charge of Jewish workers in the ghetto, decided he didn’t want that to happen. He ordered his men to block a bridge that led into the area and evacuated as many as 100 Jews to the safety of his army headquarters. As a result of his actions, in total defiance of the German authorities, the Jews he rescued were able to survive the Holocaust. His brave actions were later recognized and he was given the title of “Righteous among the Nations.”

A larger-than-life character, Colin “Mad Mitch” Mitchell was the commanding officer of the British Army’s Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders regiment. In 1967 the regiment was sent to Aden in Yemen to help quell an armed uprising against the government of the territory. Mitchell leapt to public fame after a battle at the city of Crater.

Rebel forces, strengthened by mutineering police, had seized and occupied the town. Earlier, in a pitched battle, those same police had killed 22 British soldiers. Mitchell decided a bold stroke was needed, even though he’d been ordered to stay out of Crater. At the head of his men, with bagpipes playing, the lieutenant colonel marched into Crater and took it with scarcely a shot fired. Later, Mitchell was reprimanded for this and other acts of insubordination. Although feted by the British press and public as a hero, he resigned his commission in 1968.

Patrick Dalzel-Job served with the British Royal Navy during WWII. In 1940 during the early days of the war, the British were anxious to secure neutral Norway from invasion by the Germans. But before the British could act, the Germans seized and occupied the Scandinavian nation. This brought the Royal Navy into action against the Germans.

Narvik is a city in the Norwegian Arctic, and the Germans were poised to take it. The British command decided to withdraw from the city and ordered that there should be no effort to evacuate its citizens. But Dalzel-Job believed that the Norwegians were at grave risk from a German bombing raid. So, entirely against orders, he organized an evacuation of some 4,500 aboard local fishing vessels. Narvik was indeed attacked from the air, but thanks to the evacuation there were only four deaths.

Benaya Rein was a member of the Israeli Defense Forces and he saw active service during the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006. Rein’s moment of disobeying an order came one day when a group of men were spotted in open countryside. Rein’s commander believed they were Hezbollah fighters and gave the order to open fire.

But Rein wasn’t so sure. How could they be certain that those men were from the enemy and not IDF soldiers who’d perhaps lost their way? So Rein refused the direct command to fire on the men. And, as it turned out, that act of defiance was entirely justified. The potential targets were indeed Israeli soldiers. 

In 1983 a Russian soldier called Stanislav Petrov was stationed in a bunker designated Serpukhov-15 and located not far from the Soviet capital, Moscow. His job was to monitor an early warning system that could detect signs of a nuclear attack, presumably by the USA. Back then, the Cold War was still very much a thing, so Petrov’s work was highly important. 

One September day the monitoring equipment appeared to show what everyone dreaded; the imminent arrival of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), presumably with a nuclear payload. But the shrewd Petrov had his doubts and disobeyed a standing order to report the information to his superiors. He was right: the systems had apparently detected a false positive from cloud-reflected sunlight. Nuclear war was thus averted, so we all owe Lieutenant Colonel Petrov a hearty vote of thanks.

William E. Miller had already enjoyed an illustrious career fighting with the Union Army during the Civil War when his time to disobey an order came along. Miller’s bravery at the Battle of Antietam had seen him promoted to captain in command of 80 cavalrymen. And in 1863 he was with his men at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Miller’s orders were to guard the right flank of the Union Army of the Potomac as the battle entered its third day. His regiment was to stand steady and remain hidden. But Miller spotted an opportunity to attack Confederate cavalry as they charged on the Union lines. It was too good a chance to miss. Miller’s men went on the attack and thwarted the Confederate charge, materially contributing to the ultimate Union victory at Gettysburg.

Zachary Taylor led a victorious American force at the Battle of Monterrey in 1846. Despite this success, he got on the wrong side of President James Polk, who felt that the general had been over-generous in the terms of surrender he’d allowed the Mexicans. As a result, Polk transferred some of Taylor’s men to the command of General Winfield Scott. He also ordered Taylor not to engage Mexican troops unless absolutely necessary.

Taylor disregarded Polk’s command. He still had some 5,000 troops under his command and saw an opportunity to attack the 14,000-strong force commanded by General Antonio López de Santa Anna. In the ensuing Battle of Buena Vista, Taylor’s force compelled the Mexicans to retreat, another victory, albeit one won in defiance of orders. And Taylor had the last laugh over Polk, since the general went on to win the presidential election of 1848.