He talked about Strank and Sousley and Block — he named them, returned to them, insisted on their presence in the story.

He did not want credit for something he understood as a shared act, and he absolutely did not want credit at the expense of the men who had done the same thing and not survived.

His insistence on naming the dead was not false modesty.

It was a form of witness.

He was testifying to what he had seen.

He talked about not deserving the attention he was getting.

This is often framed, in later accounts, as evidence of his humility or his psychological fragility.