Fort Campbell Vietnam Veteran to Receive Medal of Honor

Former Fort Campbell Soldier, Vietnam hero to receive Congressional Medal of Honor
Clarksville Online
Elizabeth M. Collins Soldiers Live
March 4, 2014

Sgt. Santiago J. Erevia will be awarded the Medal of Honor for actions near Tam Ky in May 1969. (DOD)

Washington, DC – The year was 1968. It was a year of war, of protests, of death.

It was the year Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were both assassinated. It was also the year the Vietnam War exploded into new levels of violence. And as troops poured into ‘Nam and more and more young men died — 1968 was the deadliest year of the Vietnam War — Americans watched it all from their living rooms with anger and disgust. The protest movement gained traction.

Protesters spit on returning Soldiers, called them rapists and baby killers. In fact, the U.S. agreed to begin peace talks in Paris that year, due in part to the dwindling support at home.

It was also the year Santiago Erevia became a Soldier.

He had been scraping by, working in restaurants in San Antonio. The future stretched before him, an endless sea of dead-end job after dead-end job. So he volunteered. If you volunteered versus being drafted, it meant fewer years of service, he explained. He knew he would end up in Vietnam, but he figured the Army would give him a lot of opportunities he wouldn’t have if he stayed in Texas. Erevia knew what he was risking — a friend had just come home horribly wounded and disfigured after only a month in combat and many more months in the hospital.

“People take their chances,” Erevia said. It didn’t mean anything would happen to him.
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