LITEKY, ANGELO J. (CHARLES)
Rank and organization: Chaplain (Capt.), U.S. Army, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 199th Infantry Brigade
Place and date: Near Phuoc-Lac, Bien Hoa Province, Republic of Vietnam, 6 December 1967
Entered service at: Fort Hamilton, New York
Born: 14 February 1931, Washington, D.C
Citation
Chaplain Liteky distinguished himself by exceptional heroism while serving with Company A, 4th Battalion, 12th Infantry, 199th Light Infantry Brigade. He was participating in a search and destroy operation when Company A came under intense fire from a battalion size enemy force. Momentarily stunned from the immediate encounter that ensued, the men hugged the ground for cover. Observing 2 wounded men, Chaplain Liteky moved to within 15 meters of an enemy machine gun position to reach them, placing himself between the enemy and the wounded men. When there was a brief respite in the fighting, he managed to drag them to the relative safety of the landing zone. Inspired by his courageous actions, the company rallied and began placing a heavy volume of fire upon the enemy's positions. In a magnificent display of courage and leadership, Chaplain Liteky began moving upright through the enemy fire, administering last rites to the dying and evacuating the wounded. Noticing another trapped and seriously wounded man, Chaplain Liteky crawled to his aid. Realizing that the wounded man was too heavy to carry, he rolled on his back, placed the man on his chest and through sheer determination and fortitude crawled back to the landing zone using his elbows and heels to push himself along. Pausing for breath momentarily, he returned to the action and came upon a man entangled in the dense, thorny underbrush. Once more intense enemy fire was directed at him, but Chaplain Liteky stood his ground and calmly broke the vines and carried the man to the landing zone for evacuation. On several occasions when the landing zone was under small arms and rocket fire, Chaplain Liteky stood up in the face of hostile fire and personally directed the medivac helicopters into and out of the area. With the wounded safely evacuated, Chaplain Liteky returned to the perimeter, constantly encouraging and inspiring the men. Upon the unit's relief on the morning of 7 December 1967, it was discovered that despite painful wounds in the neck and foot, Chaplain Liteky had personally carried over 20 men to the landing zone for evacuation during the savage fighting. Through his indomitable inspiration and heroic actions, Chaplain Liteky saved the lives of a number of his comrades and enabled the company to repulse the enemy. Chaplain Liteky's actions reflect great credit upon himself and were in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Army.
Captain Angelo J. (Charles)
Liteky, Chaplain, 199th Light Infantry Brigade. Republic of Vietnam, 1969.
Chaplain Liteky Distributes Holy Communion to men of the 199th Light Infantry Brigade.
Republic of Vietnam, Date Unknown.
On 29 July 1986, Angelo J. (Charles) Liteky renounced his Medal of Honor in protest over U.S. policies in Central America. Liteky's is one of only two known cases in which a Medal of Honor has been renounced.
The following rememberence of Angelo J. (Charles) Liteky was written by Tom Kennedy on 21 October 1997.
"Angelo Liteky was our chaplain in the 199th. I was not in the firefight that he was awarded the CMH for, but I knew guys who were. They all swear that bullets and shrapnel were curving around Father Liteky as he pulled all of those wounded guys back. By all accounts, God was watching out for his own that day. Father Liteky came out on all of our major operations & would actually hump the boonies with us. He would walk along in the individual squads and spend some time with each of us. If there was contact, you could count that he would find his way there quickly. If we were running an operation where we knew there was going to be contact, he would be with the first company in the LZ. He did not hang out in the CP. He was out with the grunts, up to his waist in water & mud in Pineapple Junction & Run Sat Special Zone, or sweating with the rest of us in War Zone 'D'. Frequently, he would overnight in the field with us grunts and stay in the company perimeter. (This must have been a considerable sacrifice since he had one of the two private hooches back at BMB/Long Binh. The other was Gen. Davison's. They were rumored to be air conditioned). He walked with me several times when I was on point. At least two of these times were right in the middle of Indian Country/Free-fire zones when contact was imminent. Father Liteky could also pick out a booby trap, too, or at least spot a trip wire (and that was half the trick, wasn't it?). He was a good guy. He wasn't preachy. When he was around, he made everyone feel comfortable and at ease. If you wanted to talk to him about spiritual issues (or anything else), he was there for all of us. He heard my Confession once when I was on point. There was nothing special happening at that moment; no contact or booby traps or whatever. It just seemed to me that 'this' particular moment was the right moment for me to go to confession and Father Liteky was there. He was a real comfort. The last time I saw him was February of '69 (I think) and he was getting ready to rotate back to the world. I commented that he was "...so short he didn't have time for a long sermon!" He laughed." I've had no contact with him since returning home, but in 1986, he was working with the homeless in Washington, DC. He had left the priesthood (and I believe he has married). He now goes by his given name of Charles Liteky. He had also left his CMH in a brown paper bag at The Wall in protest of the treatment of the homeless. I stopped by to say hello several times but he was always out on the street. We never did connect.This is a man who has made a very positive difference in a lot of lives. I am blest to have know him".
He gave back his Medal of Honor to risk his freedom in protesting his country's policies
By Michael Taylor,
,
March 13, 2000
FT BENNING -- Standing outside the gates of Fort Benning, Ga., protesting a U.S. Army school that trains Latin American military officers, Charles Liteky is a paradox, a man equally respected by many in the Army he used to be part of and by the demonstrators who surround him.
Elite Army paratroopers and Navy commandos come out of the Fort Benning gates from time to time to shake Liteky's hand and talk to him, to ask him why he has spent years protesting the School of the Americas. Sometimes they simply want to talk to him about the war in Vietnam -- in truth, about his war in Vietnam.
Liteky, who is now 69, can lay claim to a situation that, as far as anyone can tell, applies to only one other person: As an Army chaplain, Liteky was awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest decoration for heroism in combat, and less than 20 years later, he gave it back and renounced all its privileges, including the lifetime, tax-free pension of $600 a month.
Today, this former Catholic priest who spends half his time in San Francisco with his wife, Judy, is scheduled to go on trial in federal court in Georgia for trespassing at Fort Benning, a charge that he knows he will be convicted of and for which he thinks he will be sent to federal prison for as much as a year.
If he does go to prison, he might well be the only inmate with the nation's highest military decoration.
In American culture, the Medal of Honor is sacrosanct. Only 3,410 men and women have received it and there are only 150 living recipients. In the armed services, generals, admirals and colonels are known to snap to attention when an enlisted man wearing the medal comes into the room.
When Lyndon Johnson draped the medal around Liteky's neck in November 1968, he said, "Son, I'd rather have one of these babies than be president."
Liteky's road from Army hero to lifelong protester is not as complicated as it might seem. Whatever drove him to drag 23 men to safety during a fierce firefight in Bien Hoa province, he says, is probably what makes him now crusade against the Army training school, whose graduates, critics say, are responsible for the massacre of peasants and human rights workers in Central America.
"The reason I do what I do now is basically the same," he said in an interview recently. "It's to save lives. In the case of the School of the Americas, it's to stop training the military from the Third World, who take the training back and employ it in the oppression of their people."
In Vietnam, he said, "the situation was more immediate. People were getting blown up, shot and killed all around me. I didn't get hit, and there was nothing for me to do but help them. Some were dead. One young man died in my arms, breathing his last breath and just gasping for air. I held him for a bit, then I gave him last rites. Then I moved on because there were other people crying for help."
The Army's official citation says that on Dec. 6, 1967, when Liteky's company came under intense fire from an enemy battalion, he crawled through machine-gun fire and dragged his wounded comrades to the safety of a Medivac helicopter landing zone. At one point, Liteky tried to lift a seriously wounded soldier. "Realizing that the wounded man was too heavy to carry,'' the citation read, ``(Liteky) rolled on his back, placed the man on his chest and through sheer determination and fortitude crawled back to the landing zone using his elbows and heels to push himself along, pausing for breath momentarily."
Liteky grew up the son of a career Navy noncommissioned officer and says, "I was always very comfortable around service people, and it was easy for me to go into the service."
In 1966, six years after being ordained as a priest, Liteky answered an Army call for chaplains and was soon on his way to Vietnam.
"I was 100 percent behind going over there and putting those Communists in their place," he says now. "I had no problems with that. I thought I was going there doing God's work." He left the Army in 1971.
In 1975, "mainly because of celibacy," he left the priesthood and in 1983, married former nun Judy Balch in San Francisco. She introduced him to refugees from El Salvador, "teenagers, whose fathers had been killed and tortured. I didn't believe it, but I kept going to more and more of these meetings and it became clear these people weren't blowing in the wind."
By 1986, Liteky was devoting as much time as possible to demonstrating against U.S. policy in Central America and the Reagan administration's support of the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. In July of that year, he removed his Medal of Honor -- awarded to him under the name of Angelo J. Liteky -- and placed it and a letter to President Ronald Reagan at the Vietnam Veterans' wall in Washington.
The medal was retrieved by the National Park Service and is now on display at the National Museum of American History in Washington. The only other person to return a Medal of Honor was John J. McGinty III, who renounced it for religious reasons.
Since then, Liteky has protested against the School of the Americas and has been banned from Fort Benning because of the many times he has invaded the post at the head of a column of protesters.
So how does Charlie Liteky's life sit with other Medal of Honor winners?
"When I look at Liteky, I have respect for the courage of his views," says Paul Bucha, past president of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and himself a recipient of the medal for his heroism as an Army captain in Vietnam. Bucha is now chairman of the board of Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Corp.
"It's difficult to be an iconoclast," Bucha says. "It's much easier to go along. Men like Liteky are people who should force us to pause and think, they should not be ostracized and criticized. They are entitled to their views, and perhaps if we listened we'd be better off."
As for Liteky, it appears he may be having some effect. In November, the Army said it would change its School of the Americas curriculum, making more room for courses on democracy and international law. And the other day, Major General John Le Moyne, the post commander at Fort Benning, called up Liteky and personally invited him to an annual symposium on human rights.
Does Liteky think Le Moyne would have called him if he didn't have the medal?
"No, I don't think he would have called," Liteky says. "And yes, I guess I did use the medal consciously. I didn't for a long time, but I see now that it provides me with a certain respectability even though I've renounced it."
Any regrets about giving it back in the first place?
"Not at all."