Clearing Up a Question of Valor

It has been with much sadness, anger and frustration that I have been reading about the movie “Courage Under Fire,” in which Meg Ryan plays the role of purportedly the first woman in U.S. history to be nominated for a Medal of Honor (“Taut ‘Courage Under Fire’ Chases Elusive War Truths,” July 12).

This blatant error is just another example of how women’s history has been insidiously and pervasively suppressed.

The truth is that, in 1865, the Medal of Honor was awarded to a woman, Dr. Mary Walker, for heroism during the Civil War. Her citation read in part: “She often went where shot and shell were flying, to save the wounded, when no male surgeon was willing to go for fear of being captured.”

Walker was a medical officer in the Union Army, serving as a kind of “roving MASH doctor” in tent hospitals throughout the Virginia and Tennessee battle zones. In addition, she often passed through the lines to care for sick and wounded civilians. While on one such foray in 1864, she was captured and imprisoned in Richmond for several months. Then, in 1865, she received the Medal of Honor for meritorious service. Her medal was reconfirmed in 1907, but in 1917 a new, cowardly Congress rescinded her award and struck her name from the rolls of heroes, declaring that only fighting men could receive the medal; in spite of the fact that many noncombatant medalists--male doctors and chaplains of the Civil, Spanish-American and Mexican wars--were allowed to retain theirs.

When this discrepancy was pointed out to Congress, they explained that Walker had been a contract surgeon, and they were not eligible. Yet, in 1915, Congress had conferred the medal on John O. Skinner, a contract surgeon, and had not recalled it.

The true reason for this discrimination was, of course, sexism, plus the fact that Walker had always been a crusader for women’s suffrage. Always a controversial figure, she was known as “the little lady in pants.” She was actually stoned one day on the streets of Washington, her hometown, for continuing to wear her medal after it had been rescinded. She continued to protest by wearing it for the remaining two years of her life. She died in 1919, a victim of the myth of women’s inferiority.

In 1977, at the urging of many people, Congress restored Walker’s medal. But, to this date, no other woman has received it, although male doctors, medics and chaplains continue to be honored with it.

It is incredible that in 1996, a movie studio as large and prestigious as Twentieth Century Fox could not research this history properly. Walker’s story would make a magnificent movie on its own merits.