Angelo Liteky
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Angelo J. Liteky (born February 14, 1931) is a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor from the Vietnam War. A chaplain (at the time, he was a Roman Catholic priest) and captain in the United States Army, he earned the award for his actions near the village of Phuoc-Lac, in Bien Hoa province, Vietnam, on December 6, 1967.
[edit] Medal of Honor action
Liteky was on patrol with Company A of the 4th Battalion, 12th Infantry, 199th Light Infantry Brigade when the company came under intense enemy fire. Liteky, often walking upright despite the hostile fire, administered last rites to the dying and singlehandedly dragged over twenty wounded soldiers to a nearby landing zone to be evacuated. He was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Lyndon Johnson in November 1968. He left the Army in 1971 after five years of service. Liteky and Major Charles J. Watters were the only two Army chaplains awarded Medals of Honor during the Vietnam War; Watters’ was awarded posthumously. He is also one of only four Catholic chaplains to receive the decoration in United States history.
[edit] After the Vietnam War
In 1975, he left the Catholic priesthood, and, eight years later, married a former nun, who encouraged his involvement in social justice activities, particularly protesting the School of the Americas (now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) at Fort Benning, Georgia. On July 29, 1986, he renounced his Medal of Honor by placing it in an envelope addressed to then-President Ronald Reagan near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The decoration is now on display at the National Museum of American History. In doing this, Liteky (who is now known as Charles Liteky) became one of the few men (if not the only one) to renounce the Medal of Honor (John J. McGinty is sometimes named as another, though most sources do not list him as having done so). He has been arrested and imprisoned several times for trespassing in attempts to disrupt activities at Fort Benning. In recent years, he has also opposed the United States’ invasion of Iraq.
