Pentagon website removes, then restores, page honoring Black Medal of Honor recipient

Army Maj. Gen. Charles C. Rogers is the highest-ranking Black servicemember to receive the Medal of Honor. His actions during the Vietnam War, when he was wounded and came under repeated attack by the North Vietnamese Army, were later hailed by then-President Richard Nixon.

But a Department of Defense profile of Rogers, who died in 1990, was taken down on Friday. It comes as the Trump administration has pushed to remove references to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) across the federal government. The removal prompted outrage over what many saw as a disrespectful erasing of history. As of Monday afternoon, the page had returned to the website.

The Defense Department “has restored the Medal of Honor story about Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers,” a spokesperson told NPR in an email, adding, “The story was removed during auto removal process.”

The agency did not provide details about the removal process, or why the page’s URL was briefly altered to add the letters “dei.”

The page is part of a series honoring Medal of Honor recipients

The page at the center of the controversy is the Nov. 1, 2021, installment of the long-running Medal of Honor Monday series by the DOD’s news service. It states that Rogers, the son of a West Virginia coal miner who attended a segregated high school and whose Army career extended to the 1980s, “worked for sex and race equality while in the service.”

The page’s main focus is the courage and leadership Rogers showed as a lieutenant colonel when his artillery base came under intense attack near the Cambodian border. But it seems to have gotten caught up in the Trump administration’s drive to rid the government of DEI.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a January memo that DEI policies “are incompatible with the values” of the DOD, which he said will strive to provide equal opportunities but would not “guarantee or strive for equal outcomes.”

Last week, Arlington National Cemetery’s website was found to have removed histories that highlighted Black, Hispanic and/or female veterans from its website.

After the DOD profile on Rogers was taken down, its URL returned a “404 – Page Not Found” message — and as noted by social media users like Brandon Friedman, an Army veteran and former Obama administration official, the page’s URL in the Medal of Honor Monday series was modified to add “dei” to part of its URL: “deimedal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers.” Attempts to load the original page redirected to that “dei” link instead, with the 404 message.

The situation changed Monday morning: the page was restored, then seemingly taken down and restored again. Along the way, the “dei” URL was removed; it now redirects to the original page. The “dei” error page can be seen on a version preserved by the Internet Archive.

Rogers was cited for “dauntless courage and heroism” in Vietnam

It’s normal for a Medal of Honor citation, the military’s highest honor, to note “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.” In Rogers’ case, it describes his actions to defeat a larger force that mounted a prolonged assault.

Hours before dawn on Nov. 1, 1968, a heavy bombardment of mortars, rockets and rocket-propelled grenades hit the 1st Battalion forward fire support base positioned near a North Vietnamese supply route in South Vietnam, the citation states.

Rogers braved North Vietnamese Army fire to direct his men’s howitzers to target the enemy — and despite being knocked off his feet and wounded by an exploding round, he led a counterattack to repel attackers who breached the defensive perimeter, according to his medal citation. Rogers was wounded again, but as more attacks followed, he reinforced defensive positions. He was later seriously wounded after joining a howitzer crew whose members had been hit by mortar fire.

“Lt. Col. Rogers’ dauntless courage and heroism inspired the defenders of the fire support base to the heights of valor to defeat a determined and numerically superior enemy force,” the citation states.

Rogers received the Medal of Honor in 1970 and rose to the rank of major general; he retired from the Army in 1984.

“Ordained a Baptist minister, he spent his final years ministering to American soldiers in Germany,” according to the West Virginia Military Hall of Fame. Rogers’ remains are in Arlington National Cemetery, and a bridge near the Cotton Hill community in Fayette County, W.V., is named for him.