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Dear Doug Collins

Freddie Stowers: The Corporal Who Took the Hill, and the Recommendation His Army Lost for 73 Years

Freddie Stowers did the thing the Medal of Honor exists to recognize, in front of his whole company, and died doing it. His commanders recommended him for the medal within days. Then the United States Army lost the paperwork — misplaced it, by its own eventual admission — and the recommendation sat unprocessed while the man it belonged to lay in a grave in France. Seventy-three years later, an Army investigation into a simple question — why did no Black soldier hold a World War I Medal of Honor? — found the lost file, and a president handed the medal to Stowers's two sisters. This page is the documented record of what he did, what his institution did with his name afterward, and how the account was finally settled.

The service, and the promise

He was born January 12, 1896, in Sandy Springs, South Carolina, and worked on the family farm. He was married — his wife was named Pearl — and they had a daughter, Minnie Lee. In 1917, at 21, he was drafted into the U.S. Army. The Army’s centennial profile records that he joined the First Provisional Infantry Regiment (Colored) at Fort Jackson on October 4, 1917; the National Park Service records his assignment to the all-Black Company C, 1st Battalion, 371st Infantry Regiment, organized at Camp Jackson, South Carolina.

The Army that drafted him was segregated, and it did not intend for men like Stowers to fight as American soldiers under American command. In March 1918, General John J. Pershing assigned the 371st — along with other all-Black regiments, including the 369th, the Harlem Hellfighters — to aid the French Army. The Park Service’s biography states the terms plainly: American military leaders warned the French not to treat the 371st and other African Americans as they treated white troops. The French ignored the advice and welcomed them. After training on French weapons, the 371st was attached to the French 157th Infantry Division, known as the “Red Hand Division.”

The promise made to Freddie Stowers was the oldest one an army makes: lead your men well, and if you fall leading them, your country will remember your name and say what you did. What follows is what that promise looked like when it was tested — first on a hill in the Champagne, and then in a filing system in Washington.

What happened — September 28, 1918

In the early morning hours of September 28, 1918, Stowers’s company was ordered to take Hill 188 — Côte 188 — a heavily defended German position overlooking Ardeuil-et-Montfauxelles in France. Company C was the lead company of the attack. What happened next is established by Stowers’s official Medal of Honor citation, which the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and the Park Service both carry in full:

Stowers was 22 years old. He was buried, the Park Service records, along with 133 of his comrades at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery east of Romagne-sous-Montfaucon, France — where he still lies, in Plot F, Row 36, Grave 40, under the care of the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Shortly after he was killed, Stowers was recommended for the Medal of Honor. That is not family legend or later reconstruction; it is the Army’s own finding, stated by the Park Service and repeated by the president who finally presented the medal: “Seventy-three years ago,” George H.W. Bush said in 1991, “the Corporal first was recommended for a Medal of Honor, but his award was not acted upon.” The recommendation was misplaced, and it was never processed. The man had done everything the citation describes, in front of witnesses, and his country’s part of the bargain vanished into a file somewhere between France and Washington.

What the institution did afterward

For seventy years, the institution did nothing — because, on its own account, it no longer knew there was anything to do. The file was lost, and a lost file generates no letters, no board reviews, no anniversaries. Stowers’s name survived where his family and his home county kept it, and almost nowhere else.

The recovery, when it came, came from outside the decorations system, and the president’s own remarks at the ceremony record the chain:

Bush named what the day was, in his own words: “Today, Corporal Freddie Stowers becomes the first black soldier honored with the Medal of Honor from World War I.” And he stated the measure of the man the file had mislaid: “It’s been said that the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge. On September 28th, 1918, Corporal Freddie Stowers stood poised on the edge of such a challenge and summoned his mettle and his courage.”

The Stowers award did not end the inquiry; it widened it. The Park Service records that his case prompted the Army to continue searching the records of both world wars for other African Americans the system had overlooked. That continued search produced the Army’s World War II review — and, in 1997, posthumous Medals of Honor for seven African American World War II veterans. One lost file, once found, reopened the question for an entire generation of soldiers.

Where it stands now

The account, as far as the medal goes, is closed — and Stowers’s place in the record is singular. He remains the first Black soldier honored with the Medal of Honor for World War I service, and for twenty-four years he was the only one: the Park Service notes that only one other African American soldier of that war, Henry Johnson, has ever received it — in 2015, ninety-seven years after his own fight, in a case this section documents on its own page. Two men, out of the hundreds of thousands of Black Americans who served in that war, hold its highest decoration. Both awards arrived generations late, and both arrived only after somebody outside the decorations system refused to let a file stay lost.

His name is kept now in the places that should have kept it all along. The Army tells his story in its own centennial profile. On November 10, 2015, a statue of Stowers was dedicated at Anderson University in his home county — South Carolina ETV filmed it, below. His grave at Meuse-Argonne is marked and visited; C-SPAN told his story at the cemetery for the war’s centennial.

But notice what it took, because that is the pattern this site exists to document. The fight on Hill 188 lasted one morning. The medal took seventy-three years, two congressmen stumbling onto the case in unrelated research, a formal Army investigation into its own racial record, a waiver of the time limit, and the secretaries of two departments signing their names. Stowers could not carry his own case; he had been dead since he was 22. His sisters carried what was left of it, and they were old women by the time the country was ready to hand them what it owed their brother. President Bush closed the 1991 ceremony with words that belong on this page: “Only the dead have seen the end of war. We owe it to Freddie Stowers and those who revere his legacy to defend the principles for which he died.”

The ledger

Stowers is this section’s second “finally accounted” exhibit — the case the Army lost, found, and settled itself. His fight is finished; his page stands next to Henry Johnson’s as the proof that even a misplaced file can be found — and as the record of how long “misplaced” can last.

What has been done

What has not been done

What is being sought

The record, on video

No camera was rolling on Hill 188 in 1918 — Stowers’s fight survives in his citation, not film. What the record has instead is the day his country finally said it, in the room where it happened, and the tellings that followed at his grave and in his home county. Five films: the ceremony itself, the national museum’s portrait, the story told where he lies, his statue’s dedication, and his county’s own account.

The ceremony. The April 24, 1991 East Room ceremony itself: President George H.W. Bush recounts the lost recommendation, the citation is read, and Stowers's sisters accept the medal — 73 years after Hill 188. (Posted by the Albanian American Civic League, the organization of former Congressman Joe DioGuardi, who discovered the Stowers case in 1987.)

The museum's portrait. The National Veterans Memorial and Museum's short feature on Stowers — the farm boy from Sandy Springs, the assault, and the medal that waited 73 years.

Where he lies. C-SPAN at Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery for the World War I centennial, telling Stowers's story at the ground where he is buried — the 93rd Division, the French command, and the long wait for the medal. (C-SPAN video.)

The statue. South Carolina ETV's film of the November 2015 dedication of Stowers's statue at Anderson University — his home county putting his name in bronze, 97 years after the fight. (South Carolina ETV video.)

His county's account. Anderson County, South Carolina's own short film on its native son — the record as the place he came from keeps it. (Anderson County, S.C. video.)

Sources

Further record

Part of Betrayed, Not Forgotten — this site's accounting for the service members and veterans their own institutions failed. Videos are embedded from their publishers; nothing here is re-hosted.