Major General (Retired) Charles Calvin Rogers was the highest-ranking African-American to receive the Medal of Honor. If you were to Google him right now, one of the results would be for his “Medal of Honor Monday” feature article on the U.S. Department of Defense’s site.
The result looks like this:
If you hover the cursor of the link (the underlined text that reads “Medal of Honor Monday: Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin …”), your browser will display the URL (a.k.a. “web address”) for that page, which reads as follows:
https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2824721/medal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/
Notice the last part of the URL. It reads medal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/. Note those first words. Medal. Of. Honor.
Now click on that link. Instead of his Medal of Honor feature story, you get this “page not found” page instead:
Look at the URL in the address bar in the screenshot above. It reads as follows:
https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2824721/deimedal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/
Notice the last part of the URL. It reads deimedal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/. Note that it now has four words instead of the original three: DEI. Medal. Of. Honor.
What happened is called a URL redirect or URL forwarding, and it’s something you can do if you’ve moved a web page to a different location and you want people going to the old URL to be able to find the page. It’s one of those things that’s intended to keep a web site’s pages reachable as it grows and some of its pages get rearranged.
But this URL redirect has been used to redirect visitors to Major General Rogers’ article to a URL with “dei” added to it, which is a URL for a page that doesn’t exist. The web site then does what web sites are supposed to do when you try to visit a non-existent page: it serves up the “page not found” page.
This change has two effects:
- Any attempt to access Major General Rogers’ article will fail. His article has effectively been erased from the web.
- His earning of the Medal of Honor is being downplayed, and he has been marked as a “DEI hire,” where “DEI” is the new shorthand for “Not white, therefore not really qualified.”
In case you’re wondering how he earned the Medal of Honor, it’s explained in the article, which was thankfully archived at archive.org:
On Oct. 31, 1968, then-Lt. Col. Rogers’ artillery unit was positioned at Fire Support Base Rita in southern Vietnam. It was close to the Cambodian border and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, a supply route that the North Vietnamese Army used to shuttle supplies and troops into South Vietnam.
That evening, Rogers noticed a lot of activity across the border, but the rules of engagement said he couldn’t fire into Cambodia, so he waited. The NVA didn’t follow such rules, though. Around 3:30 a.m. on Nov. 1, they bombarded FSB Rita with heavy mortars, rockets and rocket-propelled grenade fire. Soon enough, their soldiers breached the defensive perimeter of the base. Finally, Rogers’ battalion could attack, and he made sure he was right at the forefront of the action.
Rogers ran through a hail of exploding shells to rally his dazed crewmen into firing their howitzers back at the much larger enemy. Despite being hit by an exploding round, he led some of those men in a ground battle against enemy soldiers who’d breached the howitzer’s position. Rogers was again wounded during that foray, but he continued fighting, killing several enemy soldiers and driving the rest back.
Rogers refused medical attention and instead worked to get the defensive perimeter set back up.
When more enemy troops poured through a different section of the defensive line, Rogers directed that artillery fire, too, and led another successful counterattack on the charging forces, encouraging his men throughout the difficult endeavor.
At dawn, the enemy tried to overrun the base a third time, so Rogers continued directing his unit’s fire. He even joined a struggling howitzer crew after several men were hit by enemy fire and the gun had been rendered inoperable. Rogers helped the crew get the massive gun operating again, but in doing so, he was hit a third time. He could no longer physically help his men, but he continued to direct and encourage them.
Rogers’ valor helped push back the enemy that day, which finally retreated for good. Twelve U.S. soldiers died and dozens more were wounded; however, Army records show that the casualties on the enemy’s side were much higher.
Rogers’ wounds were eventually treated, and he returned to the U.S in August 1969. On May 14, 1970, he received the Medal of Honor from President Richard M. Nixon during a White House ceremony.
You can read the entire archived article here. You should be able to read it on the Department of Defense’s website. Why isn’t that so?
