November is Native American Heritage Month. The VA has three medical facilities named after Native American Veterans and the Charles George Veterans Affairs Medical Center is one of the three. Charles George, a member of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation, was a born in the Birdtown community of Cherokee, N.C. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on Nov. 30, 1952. He jumped on a grenade to save the lives of two of his fellow soldiers. The Charles George VA Medical Center Internet site has a wealth of information about George on its Internet site at asheville.va.gov/about/Who_Was_Charles_George.asp. The granddaughter of one of the soldiers George saved posted comments and a video on the CGVAMC Facebook page on Nov. 14 and 18 in response to a photo album about our November 11 Veterans Day program. The other two facilities are in Muskogee and Tulsa, Okla. The Muskogee facility is the Jack C. Montgomery VA Medical Center, which is named for 1st Lt. Jack C. Montgomery. Montgomery, a Cherokee from Oklahoma, was awarded the Medal of Honor for a single-handed attack on three strongly defended German positions during the Battle of Anzio that accounted for 11 dead enemy soliders and 32 prisoners. He died on July 2, 2002. The Montgomery medical center was the first VA facility to be named in honor of a native American. The second facility to be named in honor of a native American is the Ernest Childers VA Outpatient Clinic in Tulsa, Okla. Childers was a Creek Indian who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on Sept. 22, 1943. Second Lieutenant Childers was with the 45th Infantry Division, 180th Infantry Regiment, in Italy. On that day, at Oliveto, he single-handedly killed two enemy snipers, attacked two machine gun nests, and captured an artillery observer. For these actions, he was awarded the Medal of Honor. He was the first Native American to earn the medal since the Indian Wars of the 19th century. Childers reached the rank of lieutenant colonel before retiring from the Army. He was 84 when he died.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 15:06:04 +0000
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