A soldier’s refusal of honor

The sol­dier walked briskly into the major’s office, came to a halt in front of his desk and assumed a stance of attention.

“Corporal Harkness report­ing as ordered, sir.”

“At ease, cor­po­ral, have a seat,” respond­ed the major, admir­ing the stature and poise of the sol­dier before him.

A brief silence ensued between the two indi­vid­u­als before the major began, “Corporal, I imag­ine you under­stand how slow­ly things often move in the mil­i­tary. It seems they move even more slow­ly in the halls of Congress and in the gov­ern­ment generally.

“The rec­om­men­da­tion for a Medal of Honor takes even longer because of the very solemn nature of the hon­or. Some Medals of Honor have not been award­ed for decades after the action for which they have been recommended.

“However, I want­ed to be among the first to con­grat­u­late you on being approved for this hon­or and to assure you that an addi­tion­al hon­or is mine for hav­ing you in my out­fit. Harry Truman is reput­ed to have said that he would rather have this hon­or than be President. Since he served in World War I, I expect he was stat­ing the truth.”

The atti­tude and poise of the sol­dier seat­ed before the major did not notice­ably change, even after the con­fir­ma­tion of the award and the com­pli­ment of the officer.

The major con­tin­ued, “The President will present the medal and there will be a White House cer­e­mo­ny involved. Your fam­i­ly will obvi­ous­ly be invit­ed to attend. I assume your moth­er and father are still liv­ing and would be avail­able to attend. All their expens­es would be cov­ered for the trip.”

“Yes sir,” replied Corporal Harkness. “Both par­ents still liv­ing. I also have a broth­er and two sis­ters, all married.”

“I’ve no doubt they would be invit­ed as well,” the major con­tin­ued, “A time and date have not been set yet. Whenever it is sched­uled, there won’t be any prob­lem with get­ting you the nec­es­sary leave.”

Harkness, still sit­ting almost at atten­tion in the chair, began, “Sir, I am deeply hon­ored to have been rec­om­mend­ed for this award. I am even more hon­ored to think that the actions that pre­cip­i­tat­ed the rec­om­men­da­tion were deemed suf­fi­cient, but I must respect­ful­ly decline.”

The major looked up from the papers in front of him, star­tled, momen­tar­i­ly unable to respond. Gaining a bit of com­po­sure, he said, “I’m not sure I under­stand, cor­po­ral. This is the high­est hon­or that can be afford­ed to a sol­dier, one that you cer­tain­ly earned, and you don’t want it?”

“Sir, per­mis­sion to speak freely?”

“By all means, cor­po­ral. I def­i­nite­ly want to hear this.”

Corporal Harkness con­tin­ued, “Sir, as I said, I am deeply hon­ored to have been rec­om­mend­ed for this award and for it to have been grant­ed. The fact that nine fel­low sol­diers are per­haps alive today because of some action that I took at the time mat­ters more to me than the award­ing of the medal ever could. I also real­ize that the President is our com­man­der-in-chief and I am bound by the oath I took when join­ing the ser­vice to obey all legit­i­mate orders issued under his juris­dic­tion. I have always done so.

“But I am no admir­er of a man who has referred to mem­bers of the mil­i­tary as jerks and losers, one who pro­claimed that John McCain, who suf­fered as a pris­on­er of war for five years and was severe­ly hand­i­capped by tor­ture, was not a hero.  A President who avoid­ed the draft and ser­vice in Vietnam five times over ‘bone spurs’ which nev­er kept him from play­ing a round of golf. I can­not admire a per­son who throws a salute to ser­vice per­son­nel every time he leaves the Marine chop­per but con­sid­ers him­self too good to ren­der a salute while wear­ing the uni­form. I believe he does not val­ue the mil­i­tary but only uses it to his advan­tage and to make him­self feel impor­tant, while he threat­ens to use it against the states in vio­la­tion of the rule of law.

“I believe, sir, that the President will only use the place­ment of the Medal of Honor around my neck for his own per­son­al aggran­dize­ment, and, with all due respect sir, I don’t wish to be a par­ty to that.”

The major paused for what seemed an inter­minable moment before com­ment­ing. “Well, cor­po­ral, you’ve cer­tain­ly made your posi­tion very clear. I sup­pose that you have every right to decline the award. You may also have the right to decline to allow the pres­i­dent to present it. But I’m not so sure that you have a right, as a mem­ber of the mil­i­tary, to refuse an order from the President should he wish to issue that order for you to appear and accept it.”

“Sir, beg­ging your par­don, if that order were to be issued, I would refuse to obey it.”

“Then you might very well sub­ject your­self to court mar­tial were you to do so. Do you under­stand that?”

“I do, sir. If I may con­tin­ue to speak freely?”

“By all means, corporal.”

“Sir, I think it would reflect very bad­ly on both the President and the Army should the media ever become aware that the MOH had been refused because the recip­i­ent did not respect the President.”

“Are you mak­ing a threat, corporal?”

“Absolutely not, sir,” respond­ed Harkness, shocked that the major could even con­sid­er it such. “But the mil­i­tary is a large club, sir. And the num­ber of peo­ple sur­round­ing the President must num­ber in the hun­dreds, a group that seems total­ly unable to keep any­thing under wraps.”

“You’re prob­a­bly right about that, Harkness.

“Since you seem deter­mined on this route, I’ll see what I can do to make this go away. I’m tru­ly sor­ry because you def­i­nite­ly earned the award and should have it. Maybe I can con­vince the high­er-ups that you are on a spe­cial assign­ment from which you can­not be removed for the time being. And maybe the award can be post­poned until such a time as some­one in the office is more accept­able to you.”

The major exposed a slight grin, obvi­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing that a low­ly cor­po­ral was tak­ing a stand against the most pow­er­ful man in the country.

“Well, I guess there’s noth­ing else to dis­cuss, cor­po­ral. If you have noth­ing fur­ther, you can return to your duties.”

“Yes. sir. Thank you, sir.”

Corporal Harkness stood, did a brisk about face and head­ed for the office door.

“Oh, cor­po­ral,” said the major, caus­ing Harkness to pause and turn. “I guess you know, you’d be only the sec­ond female to be award­ed the Medal of Honor, the first one being in the Civil War?”

“I do, sir,” she respond­ed, with a slight note of sor­row in the reply.