Honoring Sergeant Carter Read Free

award the Medal of Honor to seven black veterans of World War II. The article was written by Joe Galloway and included brief descriptions of each of the seven candidates, only one of whom, First Lieutenant Vernon J. Baker, was still living. The others were Sergeant Edward Carter Jr., First Lieutenant John R. Fox, Private First Class Willy F. James Jr., Staff Sergeant Ruben Rivers, First Lieutenant Charles L. Thomas, and Private George Watson. The article included accounts of what each man had done to deserve the medal. Although brief, the description of Sergeant Carter’s bravery was more than I knew before. I felt a surge of excitement as I finished the article. The reality of it all was beginning to sink in.
    Over the next month William’s condition improved and he was released from the hospital. Feeling that my efforts to get information from Buddha and Mildred were getting nowhere, I proposed that we all go to Washington state to have a family discussion. William (known as “Redd” in the family) was now able to speak and was being cared for by his wife, Karen. I thought that byassembling everybody in the same room with a tape recorder I could get the background information the Veterans Affairs office needed. We made the trip in July, but it was not much help after all. Redd and Buddha had been too young to remember anything about Eddie’s military service. Neither did an old family friend, Gloria Arno, who was then living in Washington. She used to work with Mildred in Los Angeles but she didn’t meet the family until after Eddie was out of the military. Each of them had fragments of memories, but they argued and contradicted each other and I couldn’t be sure what to believe. Mil’s memory was fading; she couldn’t give me much. I began to feel that Mildred had somehow shielded the boys from something. It was when we returned to Los Angeles from this fruitless journey that I remembered Mildred’s trunk.
    In 1992, as Mildred’s health started to deteriorate, Buddha and I decided to move her into our house. She had so much stuff—furniture, clothes, personal belongings—that we had to rent two storage spaces to contain it all. I remembered that there was one trunk in particular that she always wanted to keep track of. Although her memory was fading, she frequently asked me if I had the key to her trunk. Maybe there was something in the trunk that would help me with the information needed by the White House, I thought. Of course, Mildred no longer knew where the key was and she couldn’t or wouldn’t say what was in the trunk. This presented a dilemma. ShouldI force it open? Neither Buddha nor I wanted to violate Mildred’s privacy, but we were in a quandary. Everyone agreed that Eddie deserved the Medal of Honor, and we wanted to do what we could to ensure that he got full credit for his heroism.
    When I pried the trunk open it was filled with dozens and dozens of letters—mostly letters from Eddie to Mildred. They included love letters, letters about plans they were making, letters about his experiences at various military bases and in the war. It was hard to put the letters down; they told a beautiful story of the love between Eddie and Mildred. Here were things I had never heard talked about in the family. There were also many photographs of Eddie in uniform, sometimes singly, sometimes with other soldiers. The pictures showed him in various locales, most of which I couldn’t identify. I found photos of Eddie and Mildred together and pictures of them with Buddha and Redd as children. There was also a collection of old newspaper clippings and articles. I was thoroughly entranced. That trunk was a treasure chest.
    So much material was crammed in the trunk that I decided to organize it chronologically so that I could identify and follow the sequence of Eddie’s own account of his military experiences. I also wanted to reconstruct the rest of his