This Memorial Day, feeling proud of our Latino soldiers

By Grace Flores-Hughes, Voxxi

There were, and continue to be, two separate cemeteries in my hometown of Taft, Texas—one for the Anglos and one for the Mexican-Americans.

It has been that way since I can remember. At some point I became aware that during a certain time of the year, miniature American flags graced all military gravesides  regardless of the separate entombments. My grandmother took me on several occasions to visit the graveside of her youngest son, who had been killed in 1948 while stationed in Japan. She didn’t make a fuss about the separate resting places for our town’s dead but others did in their quiet respectful way. I wondered why it was necessary to bury the dead separately, especially when our soldiers had fought and died for all Americans—they didn’t take a bullet for their particular race or ethnicity, but for their country. Yet their service, in the end, was terribly disrespected, at least in a large part of my home state of Texas.

Americans of Hispanic heritage have fought in all of America’s major military operations. In particular, they have been the “boots on the ground” in every conflict, from the Civil War to today’s war in Afghanistan. Many have served as officers, while a handful reached the rank of general. For the most part, Hispanics are the ones that fought the good fight as enlisted personnel on the beaches of Normandy, the jungles of East Asia, the snow packed mountains of Korea, the fields of Vietnam and the rugged terrain of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Memorial Day: A day to honor our heroes

Their service to this country was and continues to be unwavering. Their bravery is well known, based on the 44 Medals of Honor presented to Hispanics, the most earned by any minority group in the country.

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government to members of the armed forces that distinguished themselves conspicuously by risking their lives to help their fellow men while engaged in military action against the enemy. One of those Medal of Honor recipients was a fellow Texan from Cuero, Texas. Master Sgt. Roy P. Benavidez deserved the Medal of Honor and then some. Being hit several times, Sgt. Benavidez kept firing back to help rescue 11 men trapped by enemy fire. Apart from the bullet wounds, he was attacked by an enemy soldier with a knife, which caused a large gash on his stomach area. Holding back his entrails from spilling out, he kept fighting and rescued eight of the 11.

It would be several years later before Benavidez was presented the Medal of Honor, because it got tangled up in bureaucracy. I was honored to have met the brave Benavidez but I am proud to say that my husband was one of the key players in the Pentagon that helped untangle the bureaucratic hold up. When President Ronald Reagan presented Master Sgt. Benavidez the Medal of Honor on February 24, 1981, he said: “If the story of his heroism were a movie script, you would not believe it.”

The service of Master Sgt. Benavidez and other Hispanic war veterans is displayed throughout the country in places such as the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., where Spanish surnames are found throughout the long list of casualties.

Among those listed in the Vietnam Memorial is a childhood friend. A person can’t help but tear up upon a visit to the memorial, but for me, reading the name of Paul Sanchez has an especially chilling but proud effect. His graveside back home lies apart from the remains of other non-Hispanic soldiers that fought the same war. Yet Paul, like so many soldiers of Spanish heritage, died fighting for this country, regardless of the discrimination they suffered. Certainly, the societal stigmas of years past have changed in America since I moved from my hometown in 1965, but what hasn’t changed is the devotion and commitment of soldiers of Hispanic heritage in America’s wars.

This Memorial Day will be no different than other past commemorative days. The flags will be displayed on the graves of all veterans regardless of where they fought or their racial/ethnic background. But it’s particularly important to note that in these times of a rapidly-growing Hispanic population and our place in today’s American society, young Hispanic men and women continue to volunteer in our country’s military and serve their country honorably—we should be so proud.

This article was first published in Voxxi.

Over 3 decades, Grace has served in the administration of three presidents, including that of President George W. Bush who appointed her to the Federal Service Impasses Panel. In 2011 she published her memoir, A Tale of Survival.