This is the third in a series of articles honoring our Veterans on the occasion of the upcoming Veterans Day celebration.
I have frequently written about the Medal of Honor, our nation’s highest military award for valor in combat, and about its recipients.
This Veterans Day gives Americans another opportunity to remember and thank all those heroes who have received that hallowed award for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty.” We should especially honor those hero veterans who are still with us. According to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, there are 94 living recipients of the Medal of Honor.
One would naturally expect that many of the Medal of Honor recipients would be graduates of our service academies. And indeed, 82 West Point graduates and 74 Annapolis graduates have gone on to earn that high honor.
But how about graduates from other colleges and universities?
Many Americans will be surprised to learn that a university often referred to as a “bastion of liberalism” not only has the honor of having produced more presidents than any other university, but also has the distinction of having graduated the “highest number of Medal of Honor recipients outside the service academies.” This, according to a source many Americans might call a “bastion of conservatism,” The Wall Street Journal.
Harvard University has 10 Medal of Honor recipients among its alumni. Three of these heroes are Hazard Stevens, class of 1865, Leonard Wood, M.D., class of 1884, and Sherrod Skinner, class of 1951. According to Harvard Magazine, Stevens “ led the assault that captured a Confederate fort. Wood volunteered to carry dispatches through Apache territory, traveling 70 miles in one night and walking 30 more the next day. Skinner threw himself on a North Korean grenade to save wounded marines under his command.”
These three Harvard graduates are among the 10 heroes who will be honored at a Veterans Day service at the Harvard Memorial Church. A plaque commemorating these men will be unveiled, dedicated, and presented to the University for Installation in the sanctuary.
The plaque, says Harvard Veterans Alumni Organization president Thomas P. Reardon ’68, is part of a Harvard Veterans History Project documenting “the 12 generations of Harvard men and women—the ‘Long Crimson Line’—who have served in the military of our country from Colonial times through every war and peace since.”
The other seven heroes being honored are:
Theodore Roosevelt, A.B. 1880, and Theodore Roosevelt Jr., A.B. 1909, for leadership at San Juan Hill in 1898 and on D-Day in 1944; Manning F. Force, A.B. 1845, LL.B. ’48, and Henry W. Lawton, L ’66, who served with Sherman’s Georgia campaign in 1864; Walter N. Hill, class of 1904, who led marines at the battle of Veracruz in 1914; and George G. McMurtry, class of 1899, and Charles W. Whittlesey, LL.B. 1908, commanders of the “lost battalions” that held out in the Argonne against German forces for a week in 1918 before rescue.
Thought you would like to know…
Coda:
Harvard University threw the Reserve Officer Training Corps off campus at the height of the Vietnam War. The ROTC remains officially unrecognized today.
The Wall Street Journal notes:
For more than 12 generations, Harvard has been well represented in the uniform of our nation. Let us commend the school for the decision to recognize those members of its family who have earned our nation’s highest honor in this service. And let us hope for the day the university finds it within itself to recognize those Harvard men and women who, inspired by this example, now step forward to follow these heroes into that long Crimson line.
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.