On an Italian battlefield in World War II, artillery officer L. Harold Larsen viewed an act of self-sacrifice that he felt merited a medal. More than five decades later, the Army recognized it too.
Larsen was a battalion commander when Lt. John Robert Fox, whose job was to venture out in front of his own lines and serve as the eyes of those aiming American artillery, called for shells to be fired on his own position so the explosions would halt a German attack. Fox, a husband and father, was killed by the violent rain of metal, which wiped out 100 enemy soldiers."He really went beyond it all to slow down that attack. He sacrificed his life," said Larsen, a retired accountant living in Mt. Lebanon, Pa. "I probably might not have done what he did."
Larsen, who is white, dutifully wrote up the paperwork, sent it up the chain of command and moved on to more fighting.
But instead of getting a medal, Fox, who was black, became little more than a footnote in history. A 1950 article in Time magazine described black units - all Army units were segregated until the Korean War - as undependable and quick to flee. A footnote described Fox's heroism as the exception.
One explanation was that Larsen's original commendation got lost in the mountain of Army paperwork or that it was misplaced in a buried file.
Only when Larsen read recent news reports did he learn that Fox finally got the Medal of Honor, the country's highest military award, on Jan. 13, 1997, in a White House ceremony.
And the real reason for the delay was race. Until a 1992 investigative panel reviewed cases of heroism with all references to race deleted, not one of the 1.2 million black serviceman of World War II had received America's highest military award (433 Medals of Honor were awarded).
The team of military historians concluded that the "failure of African-American soldiers to win a Medal of Honor definitely lay in the racial climate and practice within the Army in World War II," the White House said.
Larsen, then a major with the 598th Field Artillery Battalion, did not know Fox personally. But he knew the young officer served in the 366th Infantry Regiment of the 92nd Infantry Division, the Army's largest division and all black.
The two men had come to that battlefield in Italy along two diverse paths. Larsen was from Rockwell City, Iowa - where the chamber of commerce boasts that it is the "golden buckle on the corn belt." He had joined the Army in 1939.
Fox was from the Cincinnati area, a football and track star at Wyoming High School. Denied admission to the ROTC program at the University of Cincinnati because of his race, Fox transferred to Wilberforce University, a black school near Xenia, Ohio. After graduation, he was commissioned in 1940.
On the day after Christmas in 1944, in the town of Sommo- co-lo-nia, Italy, Fox, a forward observer, was perched on the second floor of a house with a handful of men. When the Germans began overrunning the town, he radioed in a fire mission to fall right on top of him, his men and the enemy.
Headquarters balked. "Fox, that'll be on you," it protested.
"Fire it! There's more of them than there are of us. Give them hell!" Fox, 26, said in his last transmission.
Larsen figures that about 30 big guns boomed to life.
Fox's body was recovered the next day among those of about 100 Germans.
"I was crying. So was the entire battery. Everyone knew what we had done - we had killed our own man," said Otis Zachary, 79, of Carson, Calif., a former bunkmate of Fox's who relayed the fire order. "He was asked five or six times. He just said, `Put it on me."'
Larsen wrote up the commendation. Then his artillery unit was attached to a British force and the war went on.
For Fox's family and admirers, the presentation of the Medal of Honor was an admission that blacks had battled racism in their own ranks as well as the enemy. It was also a signal that duty, honor and gallantry are qualities that have nothing to do with skin color.
"He was always a hero to us. We never needed a medal to know what he had done and what kind of person he was," said Arlene Fox, 77, the soldier's widow, who never remarried. "If he knew he didn't have a way out, he was going to make it count. He was that kind of guy."
Arlene Fox lives in Houston, near her daughter, Sandra, who was 2 years old when her father died on the battlefield.
The story is also a familiar one at American Legion Post No. 631 in the Cincinnati suburb of Lockland, Ohio, which was chartered 50 years ago and named in honor of John R. Fox.
In the cozy cinder block building where the Legionnaires congregate to spin their war stories, a portrait of Fox adorns a memorial wall that faces a banner reading "For God And Country." The post's 50th anniversary celebration will include a monthlong tribute to Fox in July.
"White society may not have known about John Fox. But we always knew. He's been our hero for 50 years. He's a hero just like Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson," said George Allen, 73, a World War II vet who endured the sting of racism during his own service.
Still, the remembrances of Fox are devoid of bitterness and anger that it took so long for their native son to get his medal.
"I'm not bitter, because that's the way the system worked back then, that's the way society was. It shouldn't have taken that long. But he got it - finally," said Allen, wearing a Legion cap embroidered with gold braid.
Joel Willis, 62, a Korean War vet and the post commander, said white schools, hotels, restaurants and shops were off-limits to blacks, just like service in white military units.
"Maybe the Army waited that long, but we recognized John Fox when it first happened," he said.
"It takes a hell of a man to do what he did," Willis added. "You know, when you're in combat and that stuff's coming down, you don't think about race. You got one enemy - the one you're fighting."