Dwight H. Johnson

"I dont know how many I killed. I wasnt thinking. I wasnt counting. I was just shooting."

"Six days after his first and last battle in Vietnam, he was back at his mothers home, in the last week of January 1968. Hed missed the Tet Offensive, the January 30 across-the-board attack on American installations, by a hairs breadth, and his buddies back in Detroit thought it was good sport to tease him about how hed gotten off easy. He never contradicted them. In fact, he agreed with them, insisting that nothing had happened during the war. He tried to appear unaffected and sociable. Those who didnt know him well couldnt tell that anything was wrong. He seemed to be filling up his days with as much activity as possible. No one knew he was having nightmares. One friend said, however, that he had color slides of dead Vietcong in his room. In the fall, Johnson started trying to get a job, and his cousin Thomas Tillman got to see a side of him he didnt know existed. Johnson was a friendly, gregarious, outgoing guy, a practical joker. But when he tried for a job, Tillman said, "Hed just sit and mumble a few words when theyd ask him questions. It was like he felt inferior." He only tried for the jobs that had minimal qualifications, even though hed qualified as a tank driver in the Army. And even then, he got nowhere. "For two months we went around to place after place and got doors slammed in our face... People gave him a lousy break. Nothing happened decent to him."

"Years later, the Veterans Administration ruled that Johnson was not able to "make a rational decision," opening the way for an increased pension for his wife. Theyd heard testimony from a representative of the Detroit Disabled American Veterans, whod been fighting Katrina for two and a half years. He said Johnson had been used "to motivate other blacks, not honoring [him] for what he did, saving lives by killing the enemy, but using him." Other testimony, from a Detroit psychiatrist, claimed that "Johnsons criminal behavior was an effort to get himself killed." Thats what Johnsons mother thought, and it was with a quote from her that Nordheimer chose to end his article. "Sometimes I wonder," she said, "if Skip tired of this life and needed someone else to pull the trigger."

"William Charette and countless others have spoken about survivor guilt. Johnson had the guilt of surviving coupled with the knowledge that he would have died along with his friends in his original tank, but for the Armys reassignment. He also had the experience of what officials in Vietnam called a "personal kill." Hardly any soldier, no matter how hardened, can walk away from a face-to-face killing like this without being affected. On top of that, he had the memory of the enemys rifle pointed at his chest and the sound of the click. Everyone at the scene of the battle could see he was highly disturbed by what hed just experienced. At home, however, no one knew what hed just been through and no one could even approach understanding what happened to him. According to Dwight Johnsons father-in-law, "He always said he should have died over there. He said he couldnt understand why he didnt."

"Johnson walked down the block to the Sip n Chat bar and sat down. He ordered a shot of Johnnie Waler and a Pabst. He drank slowly, paid, and left. Johnson then walked across the street to the Open Pantry Market, what they call a "party store" in Detroit. He asked for a pack of cigarettes. He offered a bill to pay. When the storeowner opened the register, Johnson pulled a .22 caliber pistol and told him to step aside. The owner lunged for the gun when Johnson reached for the money. The pistol went off, twice. One bullet grazed the owner; the other entered his left arm. The owner reached under the counter and produced his own gun. He started firing. "I hit him with two bullets, but he just stood there, with the gun in his hand, and said, Im going to kill you. I kept pulling the trigger until my gun was empty," the storeowner told police. Dwight Johnson was taken to the hospital with three bullet wounds in his chest and one to his face. He died on an operating table at 4:00 A.M. The police who went throigh his wallet for ID found a card that read "Congressional Medal of Honor Society, United States of America" and "This certifies that Dwight H. Johnson is a member of this society."

"President Johnson had used previous Medal of Honor ceremonies to vilify the war protestors. This time, however, with the peace talks in Paris between the United States and North Vietnam moving forward, and Johnsons administration about to leave the White House, he chose to focus on the distant possibilities of peace and national unity as he presented five medals to five Vietnam veterans. "In this company we hear again, in our minds, the sound of distant battles. This room echoes once more to those words that describe the heights of bravery in war- above and beyond the call of duty... These five soldiers, in their separate moments of supreme testing, summoned a degree of courage that stirs wonder and respect and an overwhelming pride in all of us."