‘You’re gonna receive the Medal of Honor’

From an interview with Robert Martin Patterson

“Well I was - at that time I was an E5. I was assigned to A trip, 1st of 17th cav in the 82nd. My platoon sergeant was George Wesley Simmons. And he came to me one day and told me, says, says Sergeant Patterson, you have to go to corps headquarters. And see a major at protocol. And I'm saying okay. So I get in my car and I drive over to corps headquarters. And I go into headquarters and say - get the directions to protocol and walked down there and meet this major and he says Sergeant Patterson, you're going to Washington DC. And I looked at him and I says, I ain't going to Washington DC. I ain't got no damn reason to go up there. He says oh, yeah you do. You're gonna receive the medal of honor. And I looked just - huh? Just total - bewilderment. Because I had never heard anything about it or anything else.”

“I think that a person who wears the medal of honor is not wearing it for themselves. They're wearing it for everyone who was there. Particularly for those who didn't come back. And one of the - Gary Herring who was one of the World War II recipients who lives - - or lived in Roseboro, North Carolina which is just north of where I was raised at. When I met him in Houston that October, he took me off to the side and says, ‘Young man, let me tell you something right now.’ Says ‘You are fixing to find out it is much harder to wear that ribbon than to earn it.” And he was absolutely correct. It's - it totally changes your life. And everything you do - everything I do before I do it, I will stop and think is it going to embarrass that medal. Is it going to bring any kind of disgrace on it at all. If it is, then I won't do it. And so it - it kind of controls you in what you do. And that's probably - it's a good thing. Because I would have probably gotten into some scrapes or things and done some things that I shouldn't have done had I not had it.”

https://memory.loc.gov/diglib/vhp-stories/loc.natlib.afc2001001.89765/transcript?ID=mv0001

Patterson retired as Sergeant Major of the Army.