Dwight S. Mears stopped by the campfire to weigh in on the review of Medals of Honor awarded in the aftermath of the Wounded Knee Fight/Massacre of 1890.
“Former Army historian here. Rewriting history is also performed in all democracies- it’s an essential part of historiography. Army historians recently revised their account of Wounded Knee to acknowledge that soldiers killed noncombatants indiscriminately, even using artillery at close range. The Army’s original narrative was simply wrong, and I fully support the change.”
I am publishing the link to his in-depth paper on the subject to make sure FP readers get a chance to see it.
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The Second Anglo-Boer War occurred in a time of rapid technological change. The combatants deployed weapons that would be standard up through the Second World War — but also some that leaned back into the 19th Century. Below is a video analysis of the variety of firearms used in the watershed conflict.
This photo has nothing to do with firearms per se, but it pleases me…
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While we’re in southern Africa… This is a very solid analysis of the military history of the Rhodesian Bush War.
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I have watched several military videos from Preston Stewart, starting with this one on the deadly ambush in Mali that killed a whole bunch of Russian Wagner Group fighters.
I find the analysis very cogent and disciplined. No hype. Here’s his brief backgrounder:
I studied International Relations and Terrorism at West Point and from there entered the Army as a Field Artillery officer. I’m no longer active duty but am fortunate to be able to continue serving as a Reservist. I live in middle Tennessee where my wife and I run a small business. I’m a beginner beekeeper, a bad CrossFitter and an aspiring hunter.
Worth your time.
Quixotic Mainer says
Prof. Mears makes some excellent points. I haven’t had a chance to read the full paper, but referring to the original post incident investigation and it’s findings, which were not the touted narrative, carries a lot of weight for me.
That fella fishing in his slouch hat looks like a kindred spirit! My youngest boy got to reel in his first couple fish this past weekend, and rode triumphantly home in his toddler rucksack. To me, the duality of peace and challenge, adrenaline and zen, make fishing and horsemanship the best medicines for the soul.
JimC says
X-ring on all of it.
Clyde says
If this is going to be acceptable procedure now, can we force Liz Warren to repay any monies and revoke any academic degrees she may have received due to her falsely claiming Native American ancestry? What about the atrocities committed by Native Americans on women and children in frontier America? Not just on non-Indians but on other tribal adversaries. Where will this all end? First it was changing the names of team mascots, then remove Confederate battle flags, then monuments. We’re now into changing the names of streets, schools and military installations so removing medals and citations seems on par. Maybe we should rethink “The United States of America” as we sure as hell aren’t united anymore. Sarcasm for the last sentence in case of someone’s heightened sensitivity. OK I’m done.
D Mears says
What this really boils down to is men who received medals despite killing women and children despite no underlying military necessity, which is something the US government has never condoned in regulation or law, and in fact expressly forbade (this was equally a crime at that time as it is now). Do you think we should have awarded MoHs to murderers? All that you just mentioned isn’t very relevant to this question. I think the only tangential link is the appropriation of Native iconography in exploitative fashion, which is peripherally related to WK, because the US government absolutely spun a false narrative that blamed what happened at WK on Native treachery. The only reason this stuck for half a century is that Natives had little voice in creating a counternarrative, at least until the mid twentieth century, by which time they had citizenship and could formally petition the government for redress. That’s why the medals are so offensive to the Lakota, because they have become symbolic of the false narrative of what happened there. Instead of acknowledging clear criminal misconduct (including documenting murder in their own official investigation), the government spun WK as a triumph of civilization over savages, and the medals were the icing on that cake.
Craig Rullman says
It happened. It was a terrible shame that should not have happened. We all regret it, or at least we should. It was My Lai before My Lai and nobody celebrates that or thinks medals should have been bandied about for murder. It cannot be condoned by civilized people. But it is also a different thing to layer modern sensibility on history. It is probably a fool’s errand. Tearing down a statue of Robert E Lee may satisfy modern lusts, but it does nothing to clarify the complicated history of a very complicated nation. Sometimes things are better left alone. That seems especially true in our era, which is informed by heated passions over reason—which often results in regrettable stupidity—of the kind that thinking minds are always trying to avoid.
D Mears says
If I understand correctly, you’re in favor of “clarify[ing] the complicated history of a very complicated nation.” Revoking these medals changes little except clarifying the history endorsed by the government (which I agree is important). This sort of history, when wrong, can be very damaging. For example, when I visited WK last month, I was struck by the juxtaposition of many modern VA cemetery administration headstones that are placed around the mass grave. I walked over to one and saw it was a Latoka who served in the Army during Vietnam. Ironic that he chose to be buried there. I assume that he was proud of his service, having opted for a military headstone, and yet he chose to be buried next to an atrocity committed by other soldiers in his own branch of service. Native Americans have some of the highest per capita service of any ethnicity tracked by DoD. And yet, many Natives rightly hold great resentment for what the military did to their ancestors, particularly when these narratives remain uncorrected. It made me wonder how many might still spurn military service because of these negative perceptions.
On the impact of medal revocation, due to property interests, the government will not repossess the medals, and due to the passage of time, it’s unlikely any tangible benefits are impacted at all. There are many ancillary benefits that flow from MoHs in both state and federal law, but most of them end after one generation. The last WK MoH recipient died in 1950. Most likely the only physical consequence of revocation would be removal from the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes and the DoD valor database. Private organizations, like the National Medal of Honor Museum and the Congressional MoH Society, would either remove or modify their bricks/websites for these recipients, and perhaps would use it as a teaching moment to explain that these medals were tainted by impropriety. So that seems relatively uncontroversial to me–it just expands the discussion of what happened.
In re: removing statues, I don’t think that’s a direct analog to the medals, but perhaps the largest crossover is when a statue represents a false narrative perpetrated and maintained by the government. That’s very relevant to WK, even if the WK medals are not quite the same in public memory as a statue. The medals were used to create an image of heroism, sometimes falsely, but they principally resonated in the press of that time. While that memory survives in old press clippings, I think it has far less impact than a physical statue or monument. If you read my article, you’ll note that the 7th Cavalry used the memorial they erected at Ft. Riley not only to memorialize their fallen comrades, but also to legitimize their actions at WK, which clearly included criminal misconduct. Incidentally, my old boss at the Department of History at West Point, Ty Seidule, was one of the architects of removing Confederate iconography from DoD installations. If you haven’t read his book, I highly recommend it. There’s an interesting story within about President Nixon’s attempted memorialization of Confederate soldiers at West Point in the 1970s, which was only halted after all African American cadets at West Point petitioned the White House threatening to resign, among them Cadet Lloyd Austin. For them, the issue was not best left alone, ostensibly because it celebrated those who committed treason, and would have kept them enslaved.
Clyde says
I think we should remove Lincoln and Buchanan, sounds fair, right?
https://www.thoughtco.com/corwin-amendment-slavery-and-lincoln-4160928