21. A Belated Medal of Honor
Edward Allen Carter spent a month in a hospital, recovering from his wounds. He was then restored to his rank of staff sergeant, and spent the rest of the war training troops. He tried to reenlist in 1949, but by then the Red Scare was on and America was in the grip of anticommunist hysteria. Carter’s background in China, which had recently fallen to the communists, and in the Spanish Civil War, where he had fought with the leftists of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, made him suspect. His bid for reenlistment was denied, and he was discharged from the Army.
He resumed civilian life, worked in the tire business, and became a dedicated family man. In 1962, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which doctors attributed to wartime shrapnel still embedded in his neck. It killed him the following year. His wartime heroics had earned him a recommendation for a Medal of Honor, but due to racism, it was downgraded to a Distinguished Service. It was not until 1997 that the injustice was corrected, and Carter was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor his heroics had earned him in 1945.
