What if Houston war hero had been deported before he served?
Congressional Medal of Honor winner’s story reminds us of value of immigrants
On Nov. 27, 1944, squad leader Macario Garcia and his platoon were pinned down in Germany’s Hurtgen Forest, under intense mortar and machine-gun fire. In the unrelenting barrage of the Nazi attack, several of Garcia’s men were killed or wounded. Garcia himself was hit in the shoulder. He crawled toward nearby underbrush as a machine-gun and various riflemen attempted to finish him off.
Garcia was wearing the uniform of an American G.I. He was wearing the dog tags of an American GI. He was leading a squad of American G.I.s. He was not, however, an American citizen. Garcia was an undocumented immigrant.
Garcia had been working as a farmhand in the Houston suburb of Sugar Land since the age of 5. It was one of many areas of the country whose storefronts regularly posted signs warning away “Mexicans” and “Negroes.” But after America was attacked at Pearl Harbor, Garcia felt obligated to fight for his adopted country, which he would later in life refer to as “his beloved.”
The Army did not take issue with Garcia’s immigration status. They sent him to Arkansas for basic training. At 22, he qualified as a sharpshooter and was sent to Fort Benning, Ga. The immigrant who had the equivalent of a third-grade education was selected to be part of a team to demonstrate live-fire weapons operations to officer candidates in simulated combat conditions.
In 1944, Garcia received orders to report to the European theater, where he would face the real thing.
In their self-published 2014 biography of Garcia, “Seize, Occupy, and Defend: The Priceless Legacy of Staff Sergeant Macario Garcia,” authors Robert and Katherine Bailey muse about what must have gone through the littletraveled Garcia’s mind upon shipping out and seeing “the woman in the harbor.”
The quiet and modest Garcia was hardly an imposing figure at not quite five-and-ahalf feet tall and weighing only 120 pounds. But as his commander, Maj. Tony Bizzaro, said, “he had just plain guts.”
Garcia’s unit, Company B, 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division, was sent into Germany’s Hurtgen Forest. Guts would be needed of every soldier, for the battlefield was a nightmare of Nazi machine gun nests situated on dominating hilltops. The weather was sleet, snow and cold, uniform-soaking rain.
Now, in the midst of the Nazi attack, Garcia’s uniform was beginning to soak with his own blood.
By interminable inches, Garcia stealthily approached a machine gun nest until he was near enough to hurl a grenade. After, he used his rifle to kill three German soldiers.
As he returned to his platoon, a second machine gun opened fire on the Americans. By now Garcia had been shot through the leg and arm. He could feel his boot filling with blood and fatigue overtaking him.
He spent 15 minutes maneuvering within range of the machine gunners. As the Germans were changing out the smoking-hot barrel, Garcia stepped forward and killed three more Nazis. He took four prisoners.
For his actions, Garcia was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the first Mexican immigrant to be so honored. And yet, only one month after his return to the United States, dressed in full uniform with combat medals, he was refused service at a hometown diner.
He had fought and shed his blood for America. He’d seen friends killed fighting for America. But of course, then as now, there were two Americas. There was the country that strove to live up to the ideal that all people are created equal; and there was the other America, the one that believed, “some people are more equal than others.”
The scene at the diner ended with Garcia being attacked with a baseball bat — and then arrested.
Walter Winchell, newspaper and radio commentator, made sure the story was national news, and Garcia’s case was eventually dismissed. His biographers, devout Christians and patriotic Americans incensed at what they referred to as an “immigration debacle … exceedingly shameful in the light of the truths America lifts up as her standard,” asked a devastating question: “America, where have you gone?”
Other questions must be asked as well.
What if Garcia had been deported? How many more American lives would have been lost in the Hurtgen Forest? How many fewer American lives would have been changed in the years following the war, when Garcia obtained his high school diploma and worked as a counselor for the Veterans Administration, helping fellow veterans and becoming a lifelong advocate for civil rights?
Can we accept that Macario Garcia was an American patriot before he became an American citizen? Can we recognize that Macario Garcia conducted himself with honor before he was given a Medal of Honor?
We could ask the soldiers at Houston’s Macario Garcia Army Reserve Center what they think. We could ask the faculty and students at Macario Garcia Middle School in Sugar Land what they think. We could ask the teachers at Garcia Elementary School what they think.
If we are as courageous as Macario Garcia was, we could ask ourselves a few questions as well: Would we have been brave enough to take the stand that Garcia took in the Hurtgen Forest? Are we brave enough now to acknowledge, as Garcia did, the greatness of his adopted country but to fight to address its flaws?
If we are as brave as Macario Garcia was, we could even ask whether it is true that we are all, except for Native Americans, immigrants to this country.
But perhaps that is a question for the woman in the harbor. Thomas is a former military history researcher for the Kentucky Department of Military Affairs and a career editor and writer who lives in Monterey, Calif.