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Unsung Hero: Surprising Facts About a Medal of Honor Recipient Who Fought Franco, Hirohito, and Hitler

Khalid Elhassan March 17, 2025 13 min

Black - Edward Allen Carter Jr., and the Medal of Honor he earned but did not receive during his lifetime — Edward Allen Carter Jr., and the Medal of Honor he earned but did not receive during his lifetime. Pinterest

3. Raring to Go at the Nazis

Black - Staff Sergeant Edward Allen Carter Jr. — Staff Sergeant Edward Allen Carter Jr. Wikimedia

Staff Sergeant Carter jumped at the chance to have a go at the Nazis, and immediately volunteered for combat duty. However, while the ad hoc units cobbled up by the Ground Force Replacement Command were racially integrated, they were integrated on the basis that no black soldiers were to command white ones. To join, Carter had to accept a demotion from staff sergeant to private. Carter figured that taking a whack at the Nazis in person was worth giving up his stripes, so he accepted the demotion. On March 23^rd, 1945, near Speyer, Germany, he was riding on a tank when it was hit. What Carter did next was worthy of a Medal of Honor – which he was eventually awarded in recognition of his heroics that day, but posthumously, decades after his demise.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.