Some of the 'Services' and 'Programs we have available
Famous Veteran: Bob Ross
20 TEARS OF SERVICE IN THE U.S.AIR FORCE
By Blake Stilwell, Military.com
Bob Ross was probably the nicest person who ever lived, and it showed through in his work. Most of America knows him as the host of the long-running show, "The Joy of Painting," but a select few know him better as an Air Force military training instructor -- a drill sergeant, for you non-Air Force types.
Raised in Orlando, Florida, Robert Norman Ross was always a gentle person. As a kid, he nursed injured animals back to health, even going so far as to raise a baby alligator in the family bathtub. He never graduated from high school and went to work with his dad as a carpenter. Viewers may not have noticed part of his left index finger is missing on the show as a result of that work.
He enlisted in the Air Force in 1961 at age 18 and spent 20 years in the service, rising to the rank of master sergeant. He was even a first sergeant at the base clinic at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. That's where he saw snow and mountains -- frequent features of his painting work -- for the first time.
It's hard to believe that some former airmen out there first met Ross, of all people, while he was shouting at them in a Smokey Bear campaign hat. While it's true he taught basic training, that was not the career path he wanted for himself.
"I was the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work," Ross later said. "The job requires you to be a mean, tough person, and I was fed up with it. I promised myself that if I ever got away from it, it wasn't going to be that way anymore."
How Bob Ross Started Painting
The Air Force is also where he picked up his "happy accident" of a post-military career in art.
World War II Army veteran receives French Legion of Honor
“I’m not accepting it for myself, but for the men that didn’t make it."
BY NICHOLAS SLAYTON | PUBLISHED OCT 22, 2023 Task and Purpose
Nearly eight decades after fighting his way through North Africa, Italy, France and Germany, a retired Army soldier received one last award. Not an American military one, but a French one. This past week John Gojermac was given France’s highest award for his services during World War.
Gojmerac was honored at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Tonawanda, NY on Friday, Oct. 20. The ceremony included tributes to him from his family. Jérémie Robert, France’s consul general for New York, presented the 99-year-old veteran with the medal for the Knight of the Legion of Honor. The Legion of Honor, with five distinctions, is the highest award France can give to anyone, military or otherwise.
Gojmerac himself is not French, but he did fight to help liberate the country from Nazis. John Gojmerac was born in Slovenia and his family moved to the United States when he was 14. When he turned 18 he was drafted, although at the time he said he was not an American citizen. Gojmerac was assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division, 7th Infantry Regiment, and sent to North Africa as a replacement soldier.
Famous Female Veterans
BEA ARTHUR
By Military.com
Bea Arthur, Best known for her roles on the popular television shows "Maude" and "The Golden Girls," the late Bea Arthur was also once a truck driver in the Marine Corps. She was one of the first members of the Women's Reserve, and aside from driving military trucks, Arthur was also a typist.
She enlisted at the age of 21 in early 1943 under her original name, Bernice Frankel. Appraisals from her enlistment interviews described her conversation as “argumentative” and her attitude and manner as “over aggressive” -- fitting, given the cantankerous characters she would play later in life. In a handwritten note, the Marine interviewer remarked, “Officious -- but probably a good worker -- if she has her own way!”
Arthur was stationed at Marine Corps and Navy air stations in Virginia and North Carolina during her career, and she was promoted from corporal to sergeant to staff sergeant. She was honorably discharged in September 1945, married a fellow Marine (Private Robert Aurthur) shortly afterward, and changed her name to Bea Arthur before enrolling in the Dramatic Workshop of the New School in New York in 1947.
After a successful Broadway career that included a Tony award, Arthur made a splash as "Cousin Maude" in the classic TV series "All in the Family" in the early 1970s. She went on to star in her own sitcom and cement her celebrity fame and status as a gay icon in the long-running show "Golden Girls."
Famous Veteran: Mr. T
Army National Guard, Military Police Corps
By Blake Stilwell, Military.com
There are a lot of surprising facts about the life of pop-culture icon Mr. T, but for starters, pity the fool that doesn't know he was a soldier in the U.S. Army.
The man who would be Mr. T started life as part of a large family in a Chicago project with the name Laurence Tureaud. The young Tureaud was a physical beast from an early age, becoming the citywide high school wrestling champion -- three times. He also played football, studied martial arts and even earned a football scholarship to Texas' Prairie View A&M University.
Academic life didn't suit him, however, and he went to work at a gym for a few years. During this time, before he was ever famous, he changed his name. The reason? Respect.
"I think about my father being called 'boy,' my uncle being called 'boy,' my brother, coming back from Vietnam and being called 'boy,'" he told the Huffington Post. "So I questioned myself: 'What does a Black man have to do before he's given respect as a man?' So when I was 18 years old, when I was old enough to fight and die for my country, old enough to drink, old enough to vote, I said I was old enough to be called a man. I self-ordained myself Mr. T, so the first word out of everybody's mouth is 'Mr.'"
Mr. T didn't join the military in time to serve in Vietnam, but he did join the Army National Guard. In 1975, he became Pvt. Mr. T. By all accounts, he was a good soldier, earning a letter of recommendation from his drill sergeant, joining the Military Police corps and earning the position of squad leader at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin.
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Veteran Stories
Civil War 1862 Diary Union
Civil War 1861 Diary Confederate
Civil War 1861 Diary Confederate
Sgt. Henry W. Tisdale enlisted in Company I, Thirty-Fifth Regiment,Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry on July 10, 1862 at the age of 25. Sgt. Tisdale kept a very detailed diary of his service from 1662 t0 1865. His son and his sons wife typed and bound the diary in 1926. Please click on the picture and you will see the diary.
Civil War 1861 Diary Confederate
Civil War 1861 Diary Confederate
Civil War 1861 Diary Confederate
Pvt. L. Leon of the Charlotte Grays, Company C, First North Carolina Regiment, recounted his service in the Confederacy from 1861, and titled it "Diary of a Tar Heel Confederate Soldier. Put. Leon copyright and published the diary in 1913. Please click on the picture and you can read his story.
Spanish-American War Diary 1898
Civil War 1861 Diary Confederate
Spanish-American War Diary 1898
Pvt. George Edgar Cripps of the 34th Michigan Volunteer Infantry left Michigan in June of 1898 bound for Cuba.This diary is re-typed from the handwritten diary he left. You will greatly enjoy his account of time spent from Michigan to Cuba and back. Please click on the picture to read his diary.
First World War 11/11/1918
Korean War Diary entries 1951
Spanish-American War Diary 1898
Charles Normington was in Paris France and recounted in a letter to his mother the jubilation of the war being declared ended. Just click on the above picture and under "First-Hand Accounts" click on the letter from Paris 11 Nov 1918, to view his letter.
WWII "Loose Lips Sink Ships"
Korean War Diary entries 1951
Korean War Diary entries 1951
Induction Center in Baltimore, Maryland 1942. And actually all inductees were told especially 'what not to do', because "loose lips could sink ships'. So click on the picture and choose 'World War II' at top of site and choose the heading "loose lips sink ships', and get the whole story of induction education.
Korean War Diary entries 1951
Korean War Diary entries 1951
Korean War Diary entries 1951
The Battle that started the Korean War and Trials and Tribulations are a few of the true events taken from many soldiers diaries during the Korean War years.
How two-wwII-veterans-built-waffle-house into an Empire
Feb. 2023 U.S.Veterans Magazine by Sarah Sicard
Nary a soul has been stationed at a military base or made it through four years of college without stumbling one drunk Saturday night into the 24-hour greasy spoon chain known lovingly as “Waffle House.”
With more than 2,000 locations across 25 states, it’s safe to say that the humble breakfast haunt is really more of an empire than a mom-and-pop shop. But it wasn’t always that way. The first Waffle House was actually opened by two veteran neighbors in the small town of Avondale Estates, Two World War II veterans opened the first Waffle House in 1955. (Sarah Sicard/Waffle House via Canva)
Georgia, in 1955. “Tom Forkner joined the military and served in military intelligence and security based out of Oak Ridge, TN,” according to Njeri Boss, Waffle House’s vice president of public relations.
Drafted into the Army in 1941, he covertly worked to transport valuable products from a “Tennessee facility to Los Alamos,” according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation. He eventually was sent to work on the infamous Manhattan Project, where he served until heading home and taking his place with his family’s real estate business.
His eventual partner, Joe Rogers Sr., enlisted with the Army Air Corps at age 16...
ABC's Stephanie Ramos Builds Career while serving in US ARMY
9/11 drew her to the Army while doing undergrad studies in Journalism
March 2023 - U.S.Veterans Magazine
I've always known that I wanted to be a reporter. I started watching the news around 10th grade, and I was a big fan of WNBC. I learned that you could make so much of an impact on people’s lives as a reporter, and that really motivated me.
So, as soon as I got to college, I declared my major as broadcast journalism. While I was still in undergrad, 9/11 happened. As a native New Yorker, I wanted to do something for my country; I wanted to be a part of something bigger, and I was drawn to the military.
I initially planned to join the Marines, but I ran into an Army recruiter before my decision was final, and they were able to offer me a schedule that worked better for pursuing my education and military service at the same time. I started as an enlisted soldier; then, after completing basic training and receiving my master’s degree in mass communication and media studies, I was commissioned and became a public affairs officer. I started out as a private; now, I’m a major in the Army Reserve.
I moved my way up the ranks while moving around the country: in South Carolina, I worked as an assignment editor for WIS-TV; in Kansas, as a television news reporter for WIBW-TV; in Missouri, as an anchor for KMBC; in Washington, D.C., as a multi-platform reporter for ABC.
During that time, I remained in the Reserve, reporting to units that corresponded with each new location, participating in training exercises and taking military courses. In 2008, while I was in Kansas, I deployed to Baghdad for the first time for a year, serving as a historical ambassador at Camp Slayer in Victory Base Complex...
The first Taco Bell. YEP - Thank the Marines!!
A Marine Corps Cook Spread the Gospel of Tacos Throughout America
August 2023 by Blake Stilwell, Military.com
It all started with a World War II veteran's hamburger stand.
Glen Bell didn't invent the taco. He didn't even invent the hard-shell taco. What Bell did was recreate a taco recipe from a competing food stand and brought it to the rest of the United States. From that first taco recipe in 1951, Glen Bell started what would become Taco Bell in 1962.
When it first started, Taco Bell offered tacos, burritos, tostadas, refried beans and chili burgers. Today, Taco Bell pulls in nearly $9.2 billion in revenues annually, selling everything from Mexican pizzas to Cheetos burritos. Though the chili burger might be gone, you can still get the original hard-shell taco.
A child of the Great Depression, Bell picked up some culinary skills in a short business venture with his aunt while selling pies and other comfort foods to make extra cash. He joined the Marine Corps in 1943 and spent much of World War II cooking for high-ranking Army and Navy officers in the Solomon Islands. After the war, he went home to San Bernardino, California.
There, he saw two brothers named McDonald working a new kind of burger stand, one where customers came and went (and came back) all day. With years of food service under his belt, he figured he could do something similar. He bought a grill and opened Bell's Burgers in 1948.
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SOME STORIES YOU DON'T NORMALLY HEAR.........
Surprising Civil War Stories
Surprise Facts of the Spanish American War 1898
Surprise Facts of the Spanish American War 1898
1. One-third of the soldiers who fought for the Union Army were immigrants, and nearly one in 10 was African American.
The Union Army was a multicultural force—even a multinational one. We often hear about Irish soldiers (7.5 percent of the army), but the Union’s ranks included even more Germans (10 percent), who marched off in regiments such as the Steuben Volunteers. Other immigrant soldiers were French, Italian, Polish, English and Scottish. In fact, one in four regiments contained a majority of foreigners. Blacks were permitted to join the Union Army in 1863, and some scholars believe this infusion of soldiers may have turned the tide of the war.
Surprise Facts of the Spanish American War 1898
Surprise Facts of the Spanish American War 1898
Surprise Facts of the Spanish American War 1898
We remember the Maine, but we don’t understand it.
In January 1898, as tensions flared between Cuban revolutionaries and Spanish troops, the battleship USS Maine was sent to Havana to protect American interests and civilians there. On February 15 a massive explosion sank the vessel, killing 266 sailors. Sensationalist newspaper articles and advocates of war accused the Spanish of destroying the ship, and a naval inquiry soon concluded that a mine had caused the disaster. With the rallying cry “Remember the Maine!” galvanizing Americans, President William McKinley reluctantly signed a resolution supporting Cuban independence and threatening Spain with military action. Today, however, experts generally doubt the Spanish had a hand in Maine’s demise. Though we may never know for sure what unleashed the tragedy that helped spark a war, recent investigations have implicated the ship’s design, ammunition storage and coal bunker.
CRAZY STORIES FROM WWII
Surprise Facts of the Spanish American War 1898
CRAZY STORIES FROM WWII
In 1943, British intelligence was asked to help conceal Allied intentions of invading Sicily that summer. Germany and the Allies were involved in a high stakes deception/ guessing game to determine just exactly where the first European attack would occur. British intelligence officers came up with the idea of Operation Mincemeat, a plan to disseminate false information by allowing the Germans to "accidentally" discover faked top secret documents.
To carry out Operation Mincemeat, the British acquired the cadaver of homeless man Glyndwr Michael, transforming him into "Major William Martin." By the time a submarine crew pushed Michael/Martin's body gently into the water off the coast of Spain, he was handcuffed to a briefcase stuffed with falsified military documents and mundane items.
Secret WWII Weapons
What we didn't know about the Vietnam War
CRAZY STORIES FROM WWII
If the Germans had finished building it, the 1,000-ton Ratte would have been the largest conventional tank ever built. The Nazis envisioned the Ratte as a kind of battleship for land, literally. Its massive 283 mm cannon was to be taken directly off the deck of a Scharnhorst-class battleship, and would have been capable of hammering hard targets up to 17 miles away.
With armor 14.2 inches thick in some places, the Ratte would have been almost invulnerable to all but the biggest bombs in the Allied arsenal.
Korean War Facts we may not have known
What we didn't know about the Vietnam War
What we didn't know about the Vietnam War
10 Facts About the Korean War
Over six decades later, we are no closer to a peaceful ending of the conflict.
1. The North Koreans captured an American general.
A month after the Korean War broke out, Major General William F. Dean, commander of 24th Infantry Division, was separated from his forces in Taejon while trying to help wounded soldiers. While out seeking water for a particularly injured G.I., he fell down a cliff and was knocked unconscious. He would be isolated in the mountains for the next 36 days, losing 80 pounds in addition to the broken shoulder and head wound he had sustained. When two South Koreans found him, they pretended to lead him to safety, but in fact brought him to a North Korean ambush site. Though Dean tried to fight his captors, he was down to 130 pounds and too weak to resist for long. He was taken prisoner on August 25, 1950, and remained prisoner until the end of the war.
What we didn't know about the Vietnam War
What we didn't know about the Vietnam War
What we didn't know about the Vietnam War
The Americans weren’t alone
Many people mistakenly believe — much like the comical ‘coalition of the willing’ in Iraq in 2003 — that the Americans acted unilaterally in Vietnam. In fact, New Zealand, Australia, Cambodia, Laos and South Korea all contributed significant numbers of troops to the war.
The Americans used people sniffers
Everyone knows about the defoliant, Agent Orange, because of the horrible birth defects it caused, but not many people know people sniffers — known as Operation Snoopy. Northern troops on the Ho Chi Minh Trail were notoriously difficult to find, so the Americans used sensors to detect effluents of human sweat and urine. While they frequently turned up false results, leading to attacks on civilians and cattle, they did prove to be somewhat effective. Though, the North Vietnamese Army eventually learned to hang buckets of mud mixed with urine from trees to throw off the sensors.
Remembering One Tough Veteran: Lieutenant Susan Ahn Cuddy
She was the first Asian American woman in the Navy
November 2021
By Flip Cuddy and Christine Cuddy
She was the first Asian American woman in the Navy and the first woman gunnery officer teaching air combat tactics. During World War II, Lieutenant Cuddy trained Navy pilots in dogfighting maneuvers and firing .50-caliber machine guns.
But her children, Flip and Christine Cuddy, didn’t know about her accomplishments until later in life. In 2018, they came to StoryCorps to remember her.
To read more about this story watch the video ... https://storycorps.org/stories/a-brother-and-sister-remember-their-trailblazing-mother-lieutenant-susan-ahn-cuddy/
The Original 'Airman Snuffy' Was Real and a Total Badass
You may be cool, but you'll never be "earning the Medal of Honor for peeing on a fire at 30,000 feet
July 2021, by Blake Stilwell, Military.com
For decades, Air Force military training instructors have been using the example of an "Airman Snuffy" in preparing new trainees for the active Air Force. He (or she) is your average, everyday airman, working in the Air Force.
"Airman Snuffy is working the CQ desk one night when an MTI shows up without his CAC [ID card]," the Air Force training instructor would say. "What should Airman Snuffy do when the MTI demands to be let in?"
These are the questions that make trainee airmen sweat in their sleep.
Airman Snuffy is at times an instructional figure, showing young recruits how to do things. At other times, he's a cautionary tale, illustrating the potential dangers of making poor decisions while wearing the uniform.
The real Airman Snuffy, Maynard Smith, was both of those things and more; when Smith was notified that he was awarded the Medal of Honor, he was on KP duty as a punishment. Nothing could be more illustrative of his military career.
To read the full article click on the 'red-bar', find out more' on the right....
when Smith was notified that he was awarded the Medal of Honor, he was on KP duty as a punishment.
In 1942, he enlisted and volunteered to be an aerial gunner, because aerial gunners got an automatic promotion to a non-commissioned officer's rank and the pay that comes with it. Nobody wanted to fly with Smith, not because it was one of the most dangerous jobs of World War II, but because Smith was not a great airman -- yet.
He hated taking orders. He displayed a total disrespect for younger men of any rank. He was just as spoiled in the Army Air Forces as he ever was as a civilian. Now he was just getting paid for it. He was stubborn and belligerent. So it took a full six weeks before he ever flew a combat mission over occupied France.
Author retraces steps of World War II journalist Ernie Pyle
July 2023 By David Chrisinger, The War Horse
Editor’s note: This book excerpt was first published in The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. It was republished with permission. Subscribe to their newsletter.
Author David Chrisinger spent the past four years walking in war journalist Ernie Pyle’s footsteps for his new book. This excerpt first appeared in “The Soldier’s Truth: Ernie Pyle and the Story of World War II,” from Penguin Publishing Group.
Yomna Mansouri cinched the belt on her coat as a rundown pickup loaded down with sheep blew past us. A blazing sun high in the clear December sky warmed my face and the top of my head. Once she was ready, we darted across the two-lane highway, hopped a concrete water pipe that ran the highway’s length, and landed in a ditch. The ground beneath our feet was spongy and uneven where the earth had healed over discarded plastic shopping bags, crinkled water bottles, and paper espresso cups. A stiff wind kicked up sand from the west, stirring the smells of modern life in rural Tunisia into an odd bouquet of damp earth, truck exhaust, and the sweet smell of barbequed camel.
“We will not be eating that,” Yomna told me when I asked about the food served up by the roadside eatery we passed a few hundred yards down the highway from where we parked.
On the other side of the ditch, a small field with neatly cultivated rows sprawled out before us. In the far corner of that field, two farmers Yomna had spotted, a man and a woman, picked onions with their two mangy dogs.
We were there to climb Djebel Hamra, the Red Mountain—a jagged, steep-sloped escarpment that juts out of the desert valley a short distance from the farmers’ field. On Feb. 15, 1942, Ernie Pyle scaled Djebel Hamra after he and several other correspondents were assured its summit would provide an unobstructed view of the Americans’ planned counterattack on the ancient camel-trading city of Sidi Bou Zid, which had fallen easily to the two German Panzer tank divisions the day before.
Despite the devastating losses sustained at Sidi Bou Zid, an impenetrable sense of denial blanketed the Allied high command over the border in Algeria. Rather than withdraw and regroup, they issued an order to counterattack more than 200 German tanks, half-tracks, and big guns with what little was left of the American force: a tank battalion, a tank destroyer company, an infantry battalion, and some artillery pieces.
“We are going to kick the hell out of them today,” an army officer told Ernie, “and we’ve got the stuff to do it with.”
“Unfortunately,” Ernie would report, “we didn’t kick hell out of them. In fact, the boot was on the other foot.”
World War I Marine gave us the best weapon name ever
“The outfit consists of two violins, a banjo, piano, drum, and the bazooka.”
September 2021 by Todd South, Observation Post
Arkansas native Bob Burns enlisted in the Marine Corps during World War I and sailed to France in 1918 as part of the 11th Regiment.
The artillery detachment converted quickly to infantry for trench fighting but saw little action, allowing time for Sgt. Burns, the lead in the Marine Corps’ jazz band, to fashion a homemade instrument that would become a part of combat lore for decades to come.
Back in the States the following year, a newspaper article noted that Burns’ deft jazz playing was drawing in young men to a Marine Corps recruiting office in New York City, according to Sept 1919 edition of the New York Evening Telegram.
“We play everything from Berlin (Irving) to Mr. Beethoven and will tackle anything except a funeral march,” said Robbie (Bob) Burns. “The outfit consists of two violins, a banjo, piano, drum, and the bazooka.”
Bazooka. The word traces its origins back to “bazoo,” a slang term for mouth that, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, may have come from the Dutch term for trumpet, “bazuin.”
“According to tales told by the Marines, the Melody Six are the snappiest, zippiest, jazziest aggregation of tune artists in any branch of Uncle Sam’s service,” the newspaper article noted in a section adjacent to Burns’ own instructions to building that very item: “Two pieces of gas pipe, one tin funnel, a little axle grease and a lot of perseverance.”..
First and only woman to ever receive the Medal of Honor
The newest issue of “Medal of Honor,”
August 2021, by J.D. Simkins, Observarion Post
The seventh installment in an illustrated series dedicated to soldiers whose actions earned them the nation’s highest award for military valor is now available online.
The newest issue of “Medal of Honor,” a graphic series produced by the Association of the U.S. Army, spotlights the Civil War heroics of Mary Walker, the first woman in the U.S. to earn a medical degree and the only woman to ever receive the Medal of Honor.
Born in Oswego, New York, to abolitionist parents, Walker attended Syracuse Medical College prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, when she saw an opportunity to serve as a surgeon in the U.S. Army.
But the arrangement wasn’t a seamless one. In 1861, Walker attempted to join the ranks of U.S. Army surgeons but was denied for being a woman. Like many obstacles she encountered prior to 1861, Walker refused to allow the hiccup to derail her.
Years as an unpaid surgeon’s assistant finally paid off when, at the height of the war, Walker was issued a contract as a credentialed War Department surgeon at the recommendation of Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman and Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas.
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Military police from Vietnam War receive long-awaited awards
‘Out of the shadows’ By SVETLANA SHKOLNIKOVA STARS AND STRIPES • July 25, 2023
WASHINGTON — Members of the 720th Military Police Battalion’s B Company had been sent to Vietnam to provide security for fighting troops.
But for three years, they joined soldiers on the front lines, conducting patrols and ambushes, participating in search-and-destroy missions and defending local villages.
Their unique service from 1967 to 1970 marked the first time a U.S. military police battalion took part in infantry duties, according to unit accounts. Officially, however, it went unacknowledged by the Army.
That changed Monday in a long-awaited ceremony in the U.S. Capitol, where 35 former “Bushwhackers,” as the military police members called themselves, were awarded Bronze Stars for their service. The medals also honored the scout dog handlers of the 212th Military Police Company.
“Today marks a milestone when our history at last meets official recognition of who we were and what we did, to officially set the record straight for our posterity and how we should be remembered,” said Steven Aurilio, a former specialist in B Company. “This will help bring our members and families a sense of identity and closure and out of the shadows of obscurity.”
The 55-year oversight ended due to a mailing blitz several years ago by a group of former military policemen from the unit, who sent out 55 letters to congressional representatives in 25 states asking for assistance in obtaining recognition. Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio, answered the call.
In 2021, he contacted the Defense Department and the Army, which began extensive searches at multiple personnel records facilities to find documentation of the military police's infantry actions. The former Bushwhackers wanted to receive the Army’s Combat Action Badge or Combat Infantry Badge but both requests were denied.
Unit members instead were offered Bronze Stars, a decoration for meritorious service in a combat zone that Aurilio said the military police “never considered or thought we earned.”
Today's Veterans of the Day are the Buffalo Soldiers of WWI
Buffalo Soldiers Receive New VA Headstones Following Army Decision to Overturn Convictions
February 2024
Military.com | By Patricia KimePublished February 22, 2024 at 5:50pm ET
More than 100 years after they were convicted of mutiny and murder and hanged for the 1917 Houston Riot, 17 Black soldiers have finally received military burial honors along with new headstones reflecting the honorable discharges the Army awarded them last year.
In a solemn ceremony Thursday at the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, Department of Veterans Affairs and Army officials gathered with relatives of the soldiers, members of the 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, to honor their service and replace gravestones that had marked the men as unworthy of being in a veterans' cemetery.