When Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the cancellation of any official observance of “cultural awareness” months in the military service, I immediately wondered what it would mean for the legacy of Milton Olive.

In case you didn’t know, Milton Lee Olive III was the first Black American soldier to receive the Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War.

Sadly, he did not live long enough to receive it in person.

He was 18 years old on Oct. 22, 1965, when he and four others, including his platoon commander, were pursuing a band of Viet Cong through thick, tangled growth near Saigon, running into varying degrees of enemy fire.

“As the platoon pursued the insurgents” through the jungle together, according to Olive’s citation, “an enemy grenade was thrown into their midst. Pfc. Olive saw the

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