Medal of Honor-Winner Woodrow Keeble and the Problem with Posthumous Awards

Sergeant First Class Woodrow Wilson Keeble was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by President George W. Bush at a ceremony at the White House on March 3, 2008. The President formally presented the Medal of Honor to the Keeble family almost 57 years after the actions for which he was honored. "Woody" Keeble earned his award for valorous conduct during the Korean War, when in 1951, he single-handedly wiped out three machine-gun nests.

With the presentation of the award, Woodrow "Woody" Keeble became the first full-blooded Sioux Indian to receive the Medal of Honor.

The awarding of the Medal of Honor more than half-a-century after the act elucidates the problems with posthumous medals. So much time has elapsed, that it is difficult to ascertain the validity of the award. Many of the witnesses, often including the honoree themselves, often have been lost to time. There is also the political problem of whether it is proper to use the standards of the present to call into question the conduct of the military in the past, when racism was rampant. The U.S. Army, for instance, was not integrated until 1948. Before President Harry S Truman issued an executive order effecting the desegregation of the Army, African American soldiers were segregated into their own units, and commanded by white officers.

Woodrow Wilson Keeble, who was born in 1917, served in a segregated Army during World War II, although Native Americans were allowed to serve with white troops in combat, whereas black soldiers were not. He was well-liked and highly regarded by his fellow soldiers, who lauded his bravery for half-a-century after the fact.

While racism might have been a precipitating factor in Keeble's failure to be awarded the Medal of Honor during the Korean War, as was alluded to by President Bush in his presentation speech, it was time that had defeated his earlier efforts to gain recognition. The U.S. Department of Defense ruled that too much time had elapsed between the event and the recommendation for the Medal of Honor. It took an act of Congress to suspend the statute of limitations in order for Keeble to get the award.

During the Korean War, Woody Keeble twice was recommended for the Medal of Honor, but both recommendations were lost. A third recommendation was turned down on the time technicality, as were further appeals. The Department of Defense argued that too much time had intervened between his valorous action and the recommendation. Instead of the Medal of Honor, Woody Keeble contemporaneously received the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest decoration for bravery in combat.

Defying time, Woody Keeble's widow Blossom waged a long, determined and ultimately successful campaign for her husband. She lived long enough to realize that her efforts would be successful, but died before her late husband actually was awarded the Medal of Honor. The Medal was presented to Russell Hawkins, Woodrow Keeble's step-son, by President Bush in the White House ceremony. Two empty chairs were present at the ceremony, one representing Woody Keeble, and one his wife, Blossom.

Posthumous awards of medals often are controversial. During the Bill Clinton Administration, there were a number of posthumous awards made to African Americans. Although multiple African Americans were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and the Navy and Marines Corps equivalent, the Navy Cross, none were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. After Clinton was inaugurated as President, the Department of Defense commissioned Shaw University, an historically African American college located in Raleigh, North Carolina, to research whether racism was the reason that no black man won the Medal of Honor during the Second World War. (Only one African American received the Medal of Honor in World War I, posthumously awarded to Corporal Freddie Stowers in 1991; there were two African American recipients of the Medal of Honor during the Korean War.)

The report recommended that the Army reconsider 10 soldiers for the Medal of Honor, and seven of those eventually were chosen to receive the award. Congress passed legislation lifting the statute of limitations in October of 1996, which enabled President Clinton to make the Medal of Honor awards.

The seven Congressional Medals of Honor were presented by President Clinton in a ceremony at the White House on January 13, 1997. Of the seven, only Vernon Baker was still alive, and was there to receive his award; the other six were posthumous awards.

In 1985, during the Ronald Reagan Administration, the Department of Defense created the Prisoner of War Medal, which was highly controversial at the time. POW status was considered shameful until the latter part of the Vietnam War, a war which created no heroes. In response to this lack of heroes, which helped fuel the anti-war movement, President Richard Nixon -- who would pardon My Lai massacre mastermind William Calley, who had become the face of the Vietnam War much as Medal of Honor winner Audie Murphy was the face of World War II -- championed POWs as "heroes." It was a way of generating support for his war policies, which he was committed to end but did so very slowly, and always with political considerations paramount in his mind.

The POW Medal can be awarded to any person who, while serving with the Armed Forces in any capacity, was taken prisoner captive after April 5, 1917, the day the U.S. declared war on Germany and became a party to the "War to End All Wars," World War I.

The POW medal was galling to many veterans who had served honorably in combat. There was a paucity of medals given out in both World Wars, particularly the first; the idea that someone who surrendered to the enemy was to be honored with a medal was considered shameful.

My own grandfather was a combat veteran of the First World War, who served honorably in France. Among the battles he participated in as part of the Yankee Division were Bellau Wood and St. Mehiel. He was badly gassed during the war, an incident that might have shortened his life. (He died at the age of 59; his father died at the age of 89, and two of his siblings made it into their late 90s. His brother who was a fellow WWI combat vet and who also was gassed, died in his 60s.) During one engagement, my grandfather got lost in No Man's Land, but eventually reoriented himself and got back to his lines. He made corporal and was later the Commander of the New Hampshire American Legion.

The irony is, my grandfather -- who like many troops, was a member of a National Guard unit that had been federalized -- never received any medals other than some totchkes given out, including an unofficial medal bearing a photo of General of the Armies John J. Pershing. Despite being gassed, he did not receive a Purple Heart. He didn't receive a Combat Infantryman's badge. He didn't receive anything. Many states whose Guard units had provided the backbone for the U.S. forces in France later struck their own medals honoring their veterans.

If my grandfather had wandered into enemy lines and been taken prisoner rather than having made it back to his own lines, we -- his family -- would have been able to apply for a POW Medal for him. A cousin of my father, who had served in the Army Air Force during World War II (my father could not follow him into the USAAF, as was his wish, as his eye sight wasn't good enough), was shot down in 1944 while serving with the Mighty Eighth Air Force, during the run-up to D-Day, and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp. He died in a hunting accident in the early 1950s, thirty years before the creation of the POW Medal by the Reagan Administration.

Ronald Reagan, who like my father, suffered from poor eyesight, spent the war in Culver City, California, overseeing a movie propaganda unit. He later told stories, while President, of liberating the Nazi death camps. They were confabulations.

During World War II, my late father -- who served in the Navy, but never left the U.S. as he was part of the cohort being prepared for the invasion of Japan -- received two medals: the WWII victory medal and an American Campaign ribbon (later upgraded to a medal in 1947). Stationed for most of the war in San Diego, he used to joke that he should have gotten a third award, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, as the tug he was on had slipped outside of the torpedo nets to dump garbage in the Pacific, and beyond the nets was considered the Asiatic-Pacific Theater of Operations.

He was bitter over two things concerning the war that transpired after Ronald Reagan became president, and confabulation became the order of the day: Reagan's reneging on the promise made to all World War II veterans that they would receive Social Security benefits when they came of age, and the extension of military status to the merchant seaman who had plied the seas during the war. My Old Man, still a sailor at heart 60-odd-years after the war (he always denigrated the Coast Guard as "The Hooligans"), felt that the Merchant Marine were little better than mercenaries. (Jack Kerouac, who washed out of a Navy officer training program and was a misfit, served in the Merchant Marine during the War.) After the World War II-era merchant marine sailors gained military status, he said that he should have joined it rather than the Navy, as the pay was so much better. But he was more bitter over the denial of Social Security benefits. That Reagan, himself a World War II vet, would betray veterans to him was unconscionable. That the merchant sailors would be given military benefits he thought of as a farce.

And so it goes.

A decade ago, a Memorial Day remembrance was held in the small New Hampshire town where my grandfather and father hailed from, and which our family historically had lived in for over 200 years, from the time of King George II until World War II. The town had decided to honor our family for its service to America from the French & Indian War, through the Revolution and the War of 1812, up through the present. (My niece was serving in the Army in Kosovo -- out family's first officer! -- plus I had a brother who was a lifer in the Air Force.) My father couldn't make it, but at the reunion, I met the relatives of his late cousin. He was the son of my father's father's brother, who had served in World War I.

We had a short discussion about how our grandfathers had been gassed during the First World War, but had never received Purple Hearts. I was of the mind of contacting the Department of Defense and requesting the award of a Purple Heart, or at least an explanation of why my grandfather, an enlisted man, had never received one. Of course, my grandfather's brother, who was also an enlisted man, never had received a Purple Heart either. I then asked his grandson whether he had applied for the POW medal for his father, who had been incarcerated in a German POW camp during World War II.

It was an awkward moment. The feeling was that being held a prisoner of war was not something that should be honored, and was not something that his father would have wanted. No, his family never applied for the medal.

There is no doubt that Woodrow Keeble deserved his Medal of Honor. That there was a bureaucratic snafu should not have robbed the man or his family of the honor that comes with such an award. However, the proliferation of awards that began during the Reagan Administration can be seen as having a cheapening effect on the award of military honors.

Napoleon Bonaparte said that, "For no amount of money will a soldier sell his life. Yet he will gladly give it up for a piece of ribbon."

With the all-volunteer military and the increasing privatization of the military for-profit through the use of private contractors, perhaps pieces of ribbon is what it takes to motivate soldiers. Since at least the time of the Vietnam War, there seems to be little true honor to be had on the battlefield, other than the esprit d'corps and camaraderie that helped transform men like Woody Keeble into legendary soldiers.

Sources:

Boston Globe, "Deceased Indian gets Medal of Honor; Sioux man served in Korean War"

CNN Politics, "First Sioux receives Medal of Honor"