Fayetteville VA unveils new Medal of Honor wall to honor state's Medal of Honor recipients

The wall at the front of the Fayetteville Veterans Affairs Health Care Center on Raeford Road is no longer blank.

During a ceremony Wednesday, officials with the Fayetteville VA Coast Health Care System unveiled a Medal of Honor display dedicated to 30 North Carolinians who have earned the nation’s highest military honor.

The wall bears the photos and citations of each recipient.

The idea for the wall started about a year ago with the Fayetteville VA Coastal Health Care System’s Diversity Leadership Council who wanted to honor veterans past the VA’s mission of caring for veterans, said Daniel Dücker, executive director of the Fayetteville VA.

“They have served in sweltering jungles, choppy seas and arctic cold in the defense of our freedom,” Dücker said of the state’s Medal of Honor recipients whose names are on the wall. “They are the embodiment of the oath of service that service members take.”

Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Robert M. Patterson is one of those honorees.

Born April 16, 1948, in Carpenter, North Carolina, Patterson grew up in Fayetteville and attended Massey Hill High School.

“When I was in high school all I was going to be was a dirt farmer because that’s where I came from,” Patterson said.

Patterson said he did not complete his senior year of high school and joined the Army on Sept. 21, 1966, not because of the Vietnam draft but because a girlfriend made him mad.

He completed basic training at Fort Bragg and decided to attend airborne school because of the extra $55 in pay he’d earn.

In 1968, at the age of 19, he deployed to Vietnam with the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Squadron, 17th Cavalry.

As soon as he stepped off the plane in Tan Son Nhut near the city of Saigon, a mortar had just hit the area.

On May 6, 1968, Patterson received a mission that his platoon would go into a village where the Viet Cong was suspected to be located.

The infantry squad that was next to his platoon was annihilated, Patterson said.

Cobra helicopters provided fire in front of the squad, but Patterson said there wasn’t a lot of cover to get behind.

“We got hit and the platoon was pinned down,” he said.

His platoon sergeant was injured.

Patterson said he doesn’t remember the details of what happened next.

According to his award citation, then-Spc. 4th Class Patterson ignored the warnings of comrades and moved into a bunker complex exposing himself to small-arms and grenade fire.

Armed with his M-16 rifle and grenades, he destroyed five enemy bunkers, killed eight enemy soldiers and capture seven weapons.

The next morning his division commander awarded him and others in his squadron the Silver Star.

“I’m thinking to myself, ‘Why am I getting this? I didn’t do anything,'” Patterson said. “And that’s when we found out we had actually gone up against a reinforcement regiment.”

After leaving Vietnam in December 1968, Patterson was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division for a few months.

In 1969, he was called to Corps headquarters to meet with a major and told he was going to Washington D.C. to receive the Medal of Honor.

Patterson said his reaction was “bewilderment.”

On Oct. 21, 1969, Patterson, Patrick Brady, Jack Jacobs and James Sprayberry each received the Medal of Honor.

“I was mad 'cause they made me take my jump boots off,” Patterson said. “They wanted everybody to be the exact same, and I was airborne and they weren’t.”

After receiving the Medal of Honor Patterson continued to serve for 26 years, deciding that he didn’t want to return to the tobacco fields to be stuck behind a mule, especially since he had a bride to take care of.

Patterson said he didn’t receive any special treatment because of having the medal and had to work “twice as hard to convince people” he didn’t get promotions because of it.

He said his platoon sergeant, George Wesley Simmons, was the only noncommissioned officer who took an interest in helping Patterson develop as a noncommissioned officer.

One of the lessons Patterson said Simmons taught him was related to correcting soldiers.

Patterson said there was an instance when he wanted to punish a soldier with a 10-mile ruck march on a Saturday.

“Geroge said, 'OK that’s fine I got no problem with that. How are you going to make sure he does that? … You're going have to walk with him to make sure he walks every inch of that 10 miles,'” Patterson said.

Patterson said taking care of soldiers was the best thing he ever accomplished in life, and the second-best thing was taking care of veterans.

After retiring from the Army, he joined the Department of Veterans Affairs and was a benefits counselor at the VA office in Winston Salem, until retiring from there in 2010.

Reflecting on earning the Medal of Honor decades later, Patterson, 73, said it’s harder to wear it than it is to earn it.

“A person who wears the Medal of Honor is not wearing it for themselves,” he said. “They’re wearing it for everyone who was there and particularly for those who didn’t come back.”

Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528.

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This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Fayetteville Veterans Affairs honors NC Medal of Honor recipients