Happy Memorial Day: Remember the Immigrants Who Gave their Lives for the US
David Von Drehle for the Washington Post reminds of us the immigrant Congressional Medal of Honor winners who gave their lives for their adopted country. Here is one of those stories:
“Macario Garcia was a boy of 3 when his parents moved their large family across the Rio Grande from Mexico to work in the fields of South Texas. That’s where the draft board found him, 19 years later, in 1942.
Wounded in the Normandy invasion, Garcia recovered in time to rejoin the 22nd Infantry Regiment for its advance through the Hürtgen Forest — some of the most ferocious fighting of the war in Europe. On Nov. 27, 1944, acting squad leader Garcia led his men up a hill toward entrenched German positions. When the first machine guns opened up amid a rain of mortar fire, Garcia ignored severe wounds to his shoulder and ankle to drag himself toward the nest. When he destroyed that position, a second German gunner began firing. Once again, Garcia attacked, silencing the gun and taking four enemy prisoners. Even then, he refused to be carried from the battlefield until he knew the hill had been taken.
At a White House ceremony in 1945, Staff Sgt. Garcia became the first Mexican-born soldier to receive the Medal of Honor. A month later, he was denied service at a segregated restaurant south of Houston, and when he refused to leave the premises, the owner beat him with a baseball bat.”
KJ