OP-ED/ ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

Opinion: Marine hero's story shows hollowness of anti-'woke' campaign

• Gary Harlan

• Mar 27, 2025

• 2

Sergeant Rodney M. Davis, USMC, Medal of Honor recipient. U.S. Marine Corps

Gary Harlan

“Woke” is dead in the military, proclaims Fox News host-turned-Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. So is rationality. How else would you explain the removal of the Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen and Jackie Robinson from the Department of Defense database?

Thanks to the public outcry, those pages were reinstated. “Everyone at the Defense Department loves Jackie Robinson, the Navajo Code Talkers, and the Marines at Iwo Jima,” said Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot. “[But] we do not view them through the prism of immutable characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, or sex.”

What about less famous individuals such as James Anderson, Oscar P. Austin, Rodney M. Davis, Robert H. Jenkins, Jr., and Ralph H. Johnson? Suppose there is a story about these Vietnam veterans under the heading, “Black Heroes in the Combat Zone,” describing how each of them was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously and how all five of them were killed shielding other Marines from exploding enemy grenades?

According to President Donald Trump and Secretary Hegseth, the fact that they were Black is irrelevant. But is it?

Consider the story of Sergeant Rodney M. Davis. To his younger brother Robert, “Rodney was someone to look up to and to fear because he didn’t take anything off of anybody, and he didn’t let anybody mess with his family.”

Rodney was born and raised in Macon, Georgia, and enlisted in the Corps right out of high school. After a brief stint as a rifleman at Camp Lejeune, he was sent to London, England, where he served three years as a Marine Security Guard at the American embassy. While in London, he married Judy Humphrey, and they had two daughters. As his enlistment neared its conclusion, he had the option to transition back to civilian life.

But Rodney had friends serving in Vietnam and felt compelled to join the fight. He volunteered for combat duty and was assigned to Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines. He had only been with the unit for a couple of weeks when they commenced a search-and-destroy mission known as Operation Swift.

Just after dawn on 6 Sept. 6, 1967, Bravo Company was pinned down and surrounded. The NVA (North Vietnamese Army) was close enough to the Marines to launch a grenade attack. One of the grenades landed at the feet of Lance Corporal Randy Leedom. Sergeant Rodney Davis immediately bumped him aside and jumped on the grenade.

Leedom recalled the incident: “There were five of us in that muddy trench line, and the NVA were right next to us. I didn’t even really know Sgt. Davis and I don’t know why he did what he did, but I do know if it wasn’t for him, I would not be here today. He jumped on that enemy grenade, and when it exploded it drove his body straight up in the air. He was killed instantly.”

The men Rodney saved were all white, a fact not lost on his younger brother: “If he hadn’t gave his life for ‘em and come back to the United States alive, he would’ve gone through the same racial stuff-people talking about him, calling him names.”

Timothy Hawkins, a Black man whose friendship with Rodney inspired him to enlist in the Marines, understands why there was nothing paradoxical about Rodney Davis, a product of the segregated South, sacrificing his life for four white men. It had nothing to do with race relations in America: “The Marine Corps conditioned us that we are all brothers. He [Rodney] looked beyond color to protect his family. That had to have been what he was thinking at the time.”

It’s one thing for the Trump administration to end formal DEI (“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”) training in the military. It’s quite another to assert digital control over an entire database, banning all conversations about race and gender as they relate to the military. In doing so, Trump is asserting the power to decide which histories should be remembered and which should be forgotten.

Harlan served two tours of duty with the Marines in Vietnam. He is the author of “Always Faithful: Returning to Vietnam.” He lives in Marshfield, Missouri.