San Antonio Man Glad to Receive Medal of Honor
SAN ANTONIO — Former Sgt. Santiago Erevia remembers the day in May 1969 when his Army unit came under heavy enemy fire in Vietnam. While crawling from one wounded solder to the next, the radio telephone operator used two M-16s and several grenades to single-handedly destroy four enemy bunkers and their occupants.
Decades later, the Texas man’s heroic feat earned him the Medal of Honor.
“I thought I was going to get killed when I started to advance because when you fight battles like that you don’t expect to live,” Erevia told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Erevia is one of 24 veterans who served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam to receive the U.S. military’s highest honor after a congressionally mandated review of minorities who may have been passed over because of long-held prejudices. The veterans — most of Hispanic or Jewish heritage — will be recognized in a March 18 ceremony that will try to correct the long-ignored ethnic and religious discrimination in the armed forces