Pushkin the mariachi band played as John F.

Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline made their way through the cheering crowd.

It was early on a warm fall evening in nineteen sixty three, and the ballroom at the Rice Hotel in Houston, Texas was packed with people.

They were all there to cheer their president.

He was handsome as usual in a dark blue suit, his eyes sparkling, shaking hands as he moved towards the stage.

Jackie followed close behind, elegant in a black velvet jacket and her signature triple strand of pearls.

If there was anything more glamorous than this couple, the people of Houston hadn't seen it.

It was November twenty one, nineteen sixty three.

The next day Kennedy would be shot and killed in that faithful motorcade in Dallas.

But on this evening, one moment out of the last few he had alive on Earth, he was making his way forward through the room, following an honor guard of men, snaking through the adoring throng of women with big hairdoes and men with skinny ties.

There was one man in the honor guard that everyone in that room knew Sergeant Marcario Garcia, a hero of World War II, the first Mexican citizen to be awarded the Medal of Honor.

Sergeant Garcia and the rest of the group reached the dais at the back of the room.

The mariachi bandle shook the first lady's hand, and then the crowd and the musicians got quiet.

Sergeant Garcia took his seat behind the President and JFK stepped to the microphone.

Ladies and gentlemen, and my wife and I am very proud to come to this meeting court Haul.

He said out the world would change the very next day.

But Macadio Garcia was with JFK on stage that night because he had changed the world as well.

I'm JR.

Martinez and this is Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage.

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery and combat at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty.

Each candidate must be approved all the way up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House.

This show is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.

This episode is about Macgadio Garcia, the man sitting behind JFK that night in Houston.

He came from enormous poverty, migrating to Texas with his family as a toddler, working in the cotton fields as a child, he stepped up when his country asked him to go to war.

He was a hero of remarkable grit.

But what happened to him between the day President Truman hung the Medal of Honor around his neck and the moment he stepped onto that day as behind JFK was a struggle equal to anything he met on the battlefield.

On a core level, Macgadio's story is about what it means to make a country your home, what we owe our country, and what our country owes us.

It's also the story of progress, the kind of progress that outlasts any one person, whether they're a Medal of Honor recipient or a president.

Because if there's one thing Makadio gotta see I did, it was to keep pushing into battle into the hopes of a better future, with relentless heroic determination to never ever go back.

The Hurricane Forest sits at the far western border of Germany.

Straight from the German folk tales of the brothers Grim.

It was November of nineteen forty four.

The fairytale Forest was now a battlefield, a name.

That would come to symbolize the long drawn, heartbreak and despair of war as surely as its fairy tale counterparts had enshrined the nightmares of childhood.

The men of the twenty second Infantry Regiment of the US Army had one mission at the Hurtgen Forest, to fight their way through it, pushing deeper into Nazi territory.

It would be some of the most difficult terrain of the entire European theater of the war, and some of the hardest fighting in that forest would fall to a young soldier in Company B of that regiment, Macadio.

Gotta see You.

Margadio had been born in Via de Castaignos, Mexico, in the state of Coruila, just a handful of hours from the Texas border, but he spent almost all his life until now, of course, in Sugarland, Texas, a ranching and farming community outside of Houston.

He had never seen anything like the Hurkuen Forest.

For one thing.

The conifer trees were so tall and tightly clustered that it felt like twilight even during the middle of the day.

The very few roads that existed in the forest were laden with mines, so tanks and other vehicles couldn't use them.

That meant that the American Gis had to travel mostly by foot, carrying whatever they needed.

And the weather was just awful, soaking the soldiers in a near constant mix of snow, sleet, and rain.

The winter became as vicious an enemy as any.

Lurking behind the trees in the Hurricane Forest, it was more where battle tactics lost their meeting, where gains were still measured in yards and feet in them.

The Germans had plotted every acre of the forest, so they knew exactly where to fire their artillery, and when a shell hit it wasn't just the steel shrapnel that rained down on the Gis.

The trees themselves exploded, creating lethal burst of splinters and wood, along with falling trunks that were big enough to crush a man.

Macadio was in one of the bleakest scenarios imaginable, and he was fighting on behalf of a country where he wasn't actually a citizen.

He was still a Mexican citizen, but in the eyes of the US Army he was American, and I think in his own eyes too.

Magadio was twenty four, just about five foot four, with thick, dark hair and high cheekbones.

He had a contagious grin, but while small in size, he had quickly proved himself to be an intrepid soldier with amazing grit and determination.

He'd been wounded on June nineteenth in France and refused to be evacuated to the hospital, insisting on staying with his unit.

For that, he was awarded his first Purple Heart.

Then in September he was awarded a Bronze Star after he snuck into German territory on a scouting mission, staying for three hours, risking discovery and death every minute he was there.

Then he received another Bronze Star after he crept up to an enemy machine gun nest, cut the phone line and took the German gunner prisoner.

Macgadiol had the reputation of being completely fearless, always pushing the boundaries as close to the enemy as he could get.

He and the army were fighting their way east through France to Belgium, through Belgium to Germany.

This newsreel from the time sums it up.

It was slugging and slogging.

Shoot much arrive en when you could each y hips.

It was a hell of a way to see France, but we sure covered ground.

The Nazis were in retreat and winning the war felt like it was within the Alli's grasp, But Hitler had ordered his army to hold the line at the Hurtkin Forest.

So now Macadio and the rest of the twenty second were facing a situation where the enemy was dug in, hiding behind trees, and where every foot of ground came at a high cost.

In fact, the twenty second Infantry would ultimately suffer more than twenty seven hundred casualties, eighty five percent of its normal complement of soldiers.

All that loss to take six thousand yards of forest and a single villa.

That village was called Grosshouse, but village doesn't do it justice.

It was a heavily defended strong point filled with waiting enemy soldiers.

By November twenty seventh, the infantry had been trying to take the village four days, getting beaten back mercilessly each time.

Now it was makadio's company's turn to try to move forward and retake that ground.

He and the other hundred sam odd men and Company B knew what they were facing, artillery, machine guns on the high ground and an enemy that had been ordered to not give an inch.

Actually, the situation was even worse than it had been in the days before, because the Germans knew exactly what was coming.

Company B could barely make any headway.

One platoon went forward and seventeen of the eighteen men were killed or wounded.

The next platoon suffered a similar fate.

By now, Company B was reduced to only thirty five men.

Yet when it was time for mccadio's platoon to enter the battle, he volunteered to go first.

As he later said, quote I was acting squad leader and I just as soon do it as asked somebody else to.

He and another soldier, Charles Edwards, headed towards the woods around the village.

They had gotten within twenty yards when all of a sudden, a machine gun on a hill in front of them started firing.

They were pinned down.

Mcgadiol looked to his side and saw Edwards get hit by a bullet in the head.

He died instantly, and then mccadio was shot as well, right in the shoulder.

The pain must have been cruciating, but mcgadio refused to go back to safety to be evacuated for medical help.

Instead, he crawled forward alone up the hill and through the brush.

Inch by painful inch, he reached a spot near the enemy's machine gun nest and surprised a German soldier.

Macgadio opened fire.

The German did two.

A bullet hit macgadio in the foot, but he shot the German dead.

Macgadio had taken two bullets.

Now it didn't stop him.

He kept moving forward toward the machine gun nest that had shot down Edwards.

As he later said, quote, I did not know the wound was that serious.

I was numb, I think, And besides, we were moving forward and it was not the time to stop.

Mcgatiol got close to the machine gun nest and then he took out a grenade, pulled the pin and hurled it at the gunners.

It exploded, destroying the gun.

Three Germans came running out.

Mcgadio aimed his rifle and killed those men as well.

One enemy position taken out.

Then mcgaudio started back down the hill towards his company.

He reached safety, but right as he began to report to his company commander, a second machine gun opened fire.

Without a moment of hesitation, mcgadio turned around and raced towards the shots back up the hill, not thinking about his own safety.

Just about holding the line, he stormed the enemy position, grenade in hand.

He had bullets in his foot and shoulder.

He was exhausted, he was also enraged.

He threw the grenade and it hit its mark.

He killed three more enemy soldiers and destroyed the gun and the blast, and he captured four Germans too.

As mcgadil came back down the hill toward Company B, the other gis cheered and screamed.

His boot was filled with blood.

His shoulder must have been searing with pain.

He was a mess, but he still refused medical help.

He wanted to stay with his men to fight by their side.

Because mcgadio had cleared those machine gun nests, two more companies from the twenty second were able to charge up the hill and take it.

The cost had been high, but the men of the twenty second had finally made progress.

Macgadio had held the line.

Macgadio spent almost six weeks recovering from his wounds in England, but the moment he was well enough to go, he asked to be returned to the front line.

But by that point it was clear that the Allies would defeat the Nazis soon enough.

Macgadio was rotated back to the US in March of nineteen forty five.

That April, General George Patten signed off on his recommendation for the Medal of Honor, noting Macgadio's quote courageous leadership and supreme devotion to duty.

Macgadio couldn't wait to get home to sugar Land, Texas.

He had sent every penny of his pay back to his family.

He knew how much they needed it.

He was one of ten children.

The entire family were farm laborers.

As was true for most rural households like theirs, the kids were expected to start working in the cotton fields as soon as they reach school age, so a medal of honor ceremony, something that placed them and their son in the national spotlight, was never something they'd expected.

His friend Jose Hernandez remembers it, well.

They didn't go worrying English, and they were some question in.

Their minds where they would even dress about.

The White House.

So canro Gattia the older brothers went in their place.

He took his brother Carlos to the White House as his date.

Then it was back to Texas and more events.

On September sixth, Macgatio greeted reporters and various Houston dignitaries at a reception in his honor, but he was more than an hour late, racing into the festivities, breathless and soaking wet, he had to hitchhike all the way from Sugarland.

He apologized and said, quote, I'm a country boy, you know.

The star treatment had to have been overwhelming.

Mccadil was now the first Mexican citizen to be held up as a perfect example of American courage.

But I think mcgadil must have already considered himself fully American.

He lived in Texas since he was three, and in the war in the army, Mexican born soldiers like Macatio were treated as equal to white ones.

They weren't segregated.

More than half a million men of Mexican ancestry had joined the ranks of the services during World War II, and of those, fifteen thousand, including Makatio, were acts Mexican citizens.

At the start of the war, Mexico had agreed that the United States military was allowed to draft Mexican nationals to serve in the armed forces.

In nineteen forty, Congress required that foreign born people who declared their intention to become citizens would be subject to military service.

Mexicans could file a form of exemption, but if they did register for the draft, it would secure them US residents and ensure them US citizenship after they completed their military service.

Putting themselves in harms way for America was a risk that many were willing to take in exchange for full acceptance as citizens in the United States, and the risks were high.

Of the fifteen thousand Mexican nationals who joined the armed forces in the war, one thousand, four hundred and ninety two died or were injured, taken prisoner, or disappeared.

After that kind of sacrifice, Mexican veterans like Magadio returned home, assuming that the United States would see them the way they felt inside, as full fledged Americans, but Texas wasn't the Army.

Ernest Idea, a fellow Mexican American Army vet, remembers going from the service back to South Texas.

When I came back, we were considered second class citizens, even though we had spent not only our lives, but four years of our lives and in the Armies fighting for the people back home.

Mccadil's little brother, Lupe Garcia, was only two when mcgadio returned from the war, but he remembers how segregated it was in Texas, not only then, but for years, and discrimination wasn't illegal either.

It was common to see signs saying no dogs, no Negroes, no Mexicans.

In that era, Hispanics and blacks were not allowed eating here.

In restaurants, the whites always had priority.

It was not easy.

That always went on for a long time.

Mcgaudio had just come off of one of the most exhilarating moments of his life, meeting the President of the United States being honored for his bravery, but he was about to collide headlong with one of the realities of the country he'd returned to.

Late on the night of September tenth, nineteen forty five, Just four days after that event with the Houston dignitaries, macgaudio and a friend got off the bus from Fort Hood in Richmond, Texas.

There was a low slung restaurant there on the side of the highway.

The words chicken Dinners were spelled out in big block letters along the building side.

It was called the Oasis Cafe.

Mcgaudil wanted a cup of coffee, maybe something to eat.

There weren't many places opened that late on a Monday night, but the Oasis Cafe was still serving.

My Gaudio's friend told him, Hey, let's not go in there.

The friend knew the Oasis didn't welcome Mexican Americans, but according to his brother, macgadio thought, how can they turn me down.

I'm wearing my uniform and the medal of honor.

He pushed opened the door and walked in.

Says he had the nation's highest award in the Congression of Malajuana.

He figured that a cup of coffee wouldn't be that much trouble, but they refused to serve him regardless of his decorations.

Here's Ernest again.

The restaurant has said, I don't give a dan what he's wearing.

He's a Mexican and I will not serve him.

For the record, the woman who owned the restaurant insisted that mcgatiel was drunk and belligerent and that's why he was denied service.

Her son, Lou Payton, was there that night.

He was only seventeen at the time.

He missed the initial exchange between his mother and macgadio, but he doesn't deny that the Oasis Cafe wasn't quote for Mexican Americans.

We had very few blacks or Mexican Americans come in and ask for service because we didn't cater to their needs.

We didn't have their kind of music, we didn't have their kind of food.

Which, let's be honest, doesn't sound particularly welcoming.

Whatever the truth that mcgadil was told to leave because of his ethnicity, or because he was drunk, or both, the Oasis exploded in violence.

Punches were thrown, glasses, broken, salt pepper shakers, ketchup bottles.

Everything suddenly seemed to be flying through the air.

From outside, mcgaudiol's friend could hear the shattering and the yelling.

He caught glimpses of the commotion through the long line of windows that stretched across the front of the cafe, pouring their light onto the darkened parking lot where he stood.

These guys tore up the restroom.

Mcgadiol had walked through bullets in the hurricane forest, only now to be held down on the counter of the oasis and hit by a baseball bat.

And then he was dragged outside into the night and the police were called to arrest him.

He was taken into the canadale and hell there until some high army authorities came and had him released.

Again, denying Mexican American service wasn't illegal.

In fact, it was so common that the newspapers didn't even pick up the story.

Initially, the editors of one local paper said they didn't want to cover the story because they didn't want to embarrass a war hero.

But possibly this kind of thing was just so unremarkable that it didn't merit the paper and ink.

But mcgadio was not just another person.

He was a Medal of honor recipient, a person to whom extraordinary things had happened and were about to happen again.

A local lawyer and activist named John J.

Herrera found out about mcgadio's situation, he surely recognized a perfect test case to fight back against anti Mexican discrimination, so he took on mcgaudio's cause.

The first thing Hanada did was call the press.

Pretty soon the national columnist Walter Winchell picked up the story.

If you never heard of Walter Winchell, he was the voice of the country.

Everyone listened to Winchel and now you're about to heads up.

He gets some of the details wrong, but he gets the feeling exactly right.

Attention, Miss premisus the United States.

An American soldier recently decorated with the Congressional Medal of Honor by the President of the United States, was terribly beaten with a baseball bat in Sugarland, Texas.

This hero, who fought for our country and won the highest award our people can get to any man, is named Sergeant Marcio Gotia, a Mexican.

The elected attack took place at a soft drink parla where Sargeant Gosha tried to buy a soft drink.

He was refused service although he was wearing the United States uniform at the time.

When Sergeant Gosha protested the beating, with the baseball bat followed.

And now here is the part that made the local politicians of Fort Ben County, Texas and the rest of America perk up their ears.

The persons responsible for this disgraceful assault could hardly be Texillan, and Texas has too many sun Us wearing the Congressional Medal of Honors to primit any homegrown fascist dispetterate with any hero's blood.

But things only got worse for Markadio because the ensuing press was absolutely terrible for Fort Ben, and suddenly those local politicians needed to put the heat on someone other than themselves, and that is why in October of nineteen forty five, after returning home from Washington where he received his honorable discharge from the Army, Magadio was formerly charged with criminal assault and battery.

Almost instantly, the case became a rallying point for Mexican Americans in Texas and beyond.

Herea was involved with the League of the United Latinum American Citizens or LULAC, at that point, the largest Latino civil rights organization in the country.

He started raising money for Macgadio's defense and using what happened at the Oasis to bring attention to the discrimination against Latinos and Texas.

People all over the country sent money to support the defense.

The prosecutors of Fort ben County refused to back down.

The trial went forward, but it had to be postponed again and again because the venues weren't big enough to accommodate all the media who wanted to attend.

In the midst of this legal wrangling, Margadio flew to Mexico City to receive the Medito Militare, the top honor from military service in Mexico.

At the ceremony, Manuel Avila Camacho, the President of Mexico, proudly announced that quote of Mexican origin are the best fighters in the world.

The addition of one more medal to mcgadill's chest brought the case another round of publicity, and then in June, supposedly because Harry Truman himself stepped in on mcgadio's behalf, his case got a new lead defense attorney, James Alred, the former governor of Texas, and soon enough the charges against mcgadio were finally dropped.

Once again, mcgadio had held the line and prevailed.

Macgadiol gotta see it became a US citizen on June twenty fifth, nineteen forty seven.

Mcgadiel went to work for the Veterans Administration.

He made up for the lack of education he had as a child.

He went back to school, He got married, he had three kids, and he kept fighting for others, pressing for progress and fairness and change, helping veterans in their families.

Not cashing in on his heroism, mcgadil always insisted that he hadn't done anything extraordinary on the battlefield.

He had just been in the right place, in the right time, with the right people watching.

As the years rolled on, the world became a bit more progressive.

John F.

Kennedy was elected on a wave of support for civil rights, including for Latinos.

In fact, it was LULAC, the same organization that had rallied behind mcgadiel's case, that helped get the Latino vote for Kennedy, which brings us, of course, to that night before Kennedy died.

The evening of November twenty first, nineteen sixty thirty, JFK was on a multi day tour of Texas, and the second it was clear that he would visit Houston.

John J.

Herrera started working to get the president to a Luluc event.

The effort paid off.

Although they were told not to advertise his appearance, lu Luk was informed that the President would drop by the event as a way to thank them for their past support and rally them for the upcoming election.

And when he showed up, there was Makkadio.

JFK came to the Lulai convention and he was greeted at the door by my brother, Sergeant Macgati.

Maccadio led the honor guard and sat on the stage behind the President as he spoke to the crowd.

The United States is not only good neighbors are in the thirties, but also friends and associates in a great effort to build in this hemisphere an alliance for progress, an effort.

To prove that in this.

Hemisphere, from top to bottom, in all of the countries, whether they be Latin or North.

American, that there is a common commitment.

To freedom, to equality of opportunity, to a transfer all.

Then his wife Jackie spoke in Spanish to the sound of cheers, expect the element the star.

When menopic, they are nobly.

Stud The whole presidential visit only lasted fifteen minutes, but to the people in that room it felt monumental, the start of something better.

And then the next day a Dallas, this official mount.

The president is dead.

Women here in shock, some sainted secret service men standing by the emergency room, piers stripping down their face.

There's only one word to describe the picture here, and that's breathed, and much of it.

Anyone alive that day felt the gravity of that moment, the sadness, the sense that a man who had done his level best to lead the country forward had been cut down in his prime.

But that's why I keep thinking about what it means that JFK was with Maccatio the night before.

It's a reminder that change and progress aren't the work of one man or one moment, but of a steady constant pushing, holding the line, edging it forward.

If you can accepting the sacrifice.

Maccadio gotta SEEA died in a car crash in night nineteen seventy two.

He was only fifty two years old.

The funeral went on for two days, thousands of people attended, and eventually Macgadio's name was enshrined in Texas a road was named after him in Houston, plus two schools and an army reserve center.

In the years before his death, Macgatio had continued his work supporting the military.

He traveled to Vietnam in nineteen sixty eight to talk to the troops.

He was interviewed in the paper saying quote, I was a Mexican citizen, but I lived in this country, and I said that if the country called me, I would not refuse.

I didn't want to go and fight and take a chance of getting killed.

Nobody does.

But a man has a more responsibility to fight for his country or a country that is good to him.

Of course, this country wasn't always good to him, but he saw it for what it could be, not just for what it was.

He fought the war in two fronts, in the battlefield against the Nazi Germans and here at home in the domestic front against the discrimination, where he was victorious in both.

If it not been were that medal that President Truman awarded him his role as a civil rights activist, would I had no merit at tall.

It's true the medal of honor gave Magadio the confidence to walk into the Oasis Cafe and asked to be served.

It gave him the platform for the public fight against discrimination.

It gave him his place in history.

But what made him a hero was his ability to make progress against the Germans, against segregation, or as he once put it, he was moving forward and it was not the time to stop.

Medal of Honor Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins, Jess Shane, and Suzanne Gabber.

Our editor as Ben Nadav Hoffrey, Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorsky.

Our executive producer is Constanza Gallardo.

Fact checking by Arthur Gomperts.

Original music by Eric Phillips.

Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, the John F.

Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, the Houston History Research Center, Houston Oral History Project, TCU, Mary Couch Burnett Library, and W E.

T A.

We also want to hear from you.

Send us your personal stories of courage or highlight someone else's bravery.

You might hear your stories on future episodes of Metal of Honor or see them on our social channels.

All you have to do is email us at Medal of Honor at Pushkin dot FM.

I'm your host, JR.

Martinez