The Endless Fight of Macario Garcia

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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 1963, 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 21st, 1963.

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 hairdos,

and men with skinny ties.

There was one man in the Honor Guard that everyone in that room knew.

Sergeant Macario 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 band leader 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 the microphone.

Ladies and gentlemen, my wife and I are very proud to come to this meeting.

Coinball, you sit down.

The world would change the very next day.

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

I'm J.R.

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 in 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 Macario 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 dais behind JFK was a struggle equal to anything he met on the battlefield.

On a core level, Macario'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 Macario Garcia 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 folktales of the Brothers Grimm.

It was November of 1944.

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 fairytale counterparts had enshrined the nightmares of childhood.

The men of the 22nd Infantry Regiment of the U.S.

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, Macario Garcia.

Macario had been born in Villa de Castaños, Mexico, in the state of Coahuila, 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 Hurtgen 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 Hurtgen forest, it was war where battle tactics lost their meaning, where gains were still measured in yards, in feet, in depth.

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 bursts of splinters and wood, along with falling trunks that were big enough to crush a man.

Macario 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.

Macario was 24, just about 5'4, 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 19th 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.

Macadio 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 and march.

Grab a nap when you could.

Eat while you hiked.

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

The Nazis were in retreat, and winning the war felt like it was within the Allies' grasp.

But Hitler had ordered his army to hold the line at the Hurtgen forest.

So now, Macario and the rest of the 22nd 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 22nd Infantry would ultimately suffer more than 2,700 casualties, 85% of its normal complement of soldiers.

All that loss to take 6,000 yards of forest and a single village.

That village was called Grosshau.

But village doesn't do it justice.

It was a heavily defended strongpoint filled with waiting enemy soldiers.

By November 27th, the infantry had been trying to take the village for days, getting beaten back mercilessly each time.

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

He and the other hundred some odd men in 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 17 of the 18 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 Macario's platoon to enter the battle, he volunteered to go first.

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

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

They had gotten within 20 yards when all of a sudden, a machine gun on a hill in front of them started firing.

They were pinned down.

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

He died instantly.

And then Macadio was shot as well, right in the shoulder.

The pain must have been excruciating.

But Macadio 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.

Macario opened fire.

The German did too.

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

Macario 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.

Macario 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.

Macario aimed his rifle and killed those men as well.

One enemy position taken out.

Then Macario 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, Macario 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 in the blast.

And he captured four Germans too.

As Macario 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 Macario had cleared those machine gun nests, two more companies from the 22nd were able to charge up the hill and take it.

The cost had been high, but the men of the 22nd had finally made progress.

Macario had held the line.

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With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients.

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Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.

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Best network based on analysis by UCLA of Speed Test Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

American Military University, where service members like you can access high-quality, affordable education built for your lifestyle.

With online programs that fit around deployments, training, and unpredictable schedules, AMU makes it possible to earn your degree no matter where duty takes you.

Their preferred military rate keeps tuition at just $250 per credit hour for undergraduate and master's tuition.

And with 24-7 mental health support plus career coaching and other services, AMU is committed to your success during and after your service.

Learn more at amu.apus.edu slash military.

That's amu.apus.edu slash military.

Macario 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, Macario was rotated back to the U.S.

in March of 1945.

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

Macario couldn't wait to get home to Sugarland, Texas.

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

He knew how much they needed it.

He was one of 10 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 reached school age.

So a Medal of Honor ceremony, something that placed them and their son in the national spotlight, spotlight was never something they'd expected.

His friend, Jose Hernandez, remembers it well.

They didn't know it word in English, and there was some question in their minds whether they could even dress before the White House.

So Carlo Garcia, the older brother, 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 6, Macario 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 stark treatment had to have been overwhelming.

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

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

He'd lived in Texas since he was three.

And in the war, in the Army, Mexican-born soldiers like Macario 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, 15,000, including Macario, were actually 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 1940, 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 U.S.

residence and ensure them U.S.

citizenship after they completed their military service.

Putting themselves in harm's 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 15,000 Mexican nationals who joined the armed forces in the war, 1,492 died or were injured, taken prisoner, or disappeared.

After that kind of sacrifice, Mexican veterans like Macario 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 Aguilla, 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 in the armies fighting for the people back home.

Macario's little brother, Lupe Garcia, was only two when Macario 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.

Macario 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 10th, 1945, just four days after that event with the Houston dignitaries, Macario 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, dinners, were spelled out in big block letters along the building side.

It was called the Oasis Cafe.

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

There weren't many places open that late on a Monday night.

But the Oasis Cafe was still serving.

Macario'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, Macario thought, how can they turn me down?

I'm wearing my uniform and the Medal of Honor.

He pushed open the door and walked in.

Since he had the nation's highest award, the Congressional Medal of Honor, 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 said, I don't give a damn 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 Macario was drunk and belligerent, and that's why he was denied service.

Her son, Lou Payton, was there that night.

He was only 17 at the time.

He missed the initial exchange between his mother and Macario.

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 Macadio was told to leave because of his ethnicity or because he was drunk or both, the Oasis oasis exploded in violence.

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

Everything suddenly seemed to be flying through the air.

From outside, Macario'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 restaurant.

Macario 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 county jail and held there.

until some higher 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 Macadio 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 Macario's situation.

He surely recognized a perfect test case to fight back against anti-Mexican discrimination.

So he took on Macario's cause.

The first thing Herrera 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 Winchell.

And now, you're about to.

Heads up.

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

Attention, Mr.

and Mrs.

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 give to any man is named Sergeant Martio Garcia, a Mexican.

The alleged attack took place at a soft drink parlor where Sergeant Garcia tried to buy a soft drink.

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

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

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

The persons responsible for this disgraceful assault could hardly be Texans.

And Texas has too many sons wearing the Congressional Medal of Honor to permit any homegrown fascist to spatter it with any hero's blood.

But things only got worse for Macario 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 1945, after returning home from Washington where he received his honorable discharge from the Army, Macario was formally charged with criminal assault and battery.

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

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

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

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

The prosecutors of Fort Bend 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, Macario flew to Mexico City to receive the Merito Militar, the top honor for military service in Mexico.

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

The addition of one more medal to Macario's chest brought the case another round of publicity.

And then, in June, Supposedly, because Harry Truman himself stepped in on Macario's behalf, his case got a new lead defense attorney, James Allred, the former governor of Texas.

And soon enough, the charges against Macario were finally dropped.

Once again, Macario had held the line and prevailed.

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Make your plan with Navy Federal and TrueCar today.

Navy Federal Credit Union.

To qualify for the $250 bonus, car purchase and financing must be completed by September 2nd, 2025.

Terms and conditions apply and are available at navyfederal.org slash true car.

Credit and collateral subject to approval.

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In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal.

T-Mobile knows all about that.

They're now the best network, according to the experts at OOCLA Speed Test, and they're using that network to launch SuperMobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

With Supermobile, your performance, security, and coverage are supercharged.

With a network that adapts in real time, your business stays operating at peak capacity even in times of high demand.

With built-in security on the first nationwide 5G advanced network, you keep private data private for you, your team, your clients.

And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite-to-mobile mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid.

That's your business, Supercharged.

Learn more at supermobile.com.

Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S.

where you can see the sky.

Best network based on analysis by OOCLA of Speed Test Intelligence Data 1H 2025.

American Military University is the number one provider of education to our military and veterans in this country.

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Macario Garcia became a US citizen on June 25th, 1947.

Macario 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 and their families, not cashing in on his heroism.

Macario 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 Lulak, the same organization that had rallied behind Macario'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 21st, 1963.

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 Lulac event.

The effort paid off.

Although they were told not to advertise his appearance, Lulak 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 Macario.

JFK came to the Lulac Convention and he was greeted at the door by my brother, Sergeant Macario Garcia.

Macario 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, which we were in the 30s, 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 chance for all.

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

The whole presidential visit only lasted 15 minutes.

But to the people in that room, it felt monumental.

The start of something better.

And then, the next day,

Dallas.

It's official now.

The President is dead.

Women here

in shock, some fainted.

Secret Service men standing by the emergency room, tears streaming down their face.

There's only one word to describe the picture here, and that's grief 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 Macario 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.

Macario Garcia died in a car crash in 1972.

He was only 52 years old.

The funeral went on for two days.

Thousands of people attended.

And eventually, Macadio'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, Macario had continued his work supporting the military.

He traveled to Vietnam in 1968 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 moral 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 discrimination where he was victorious in both.

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

It's true.

The Medal of Honor gave Macario the confidence to walk into the Oasis Cafe and ask 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 is Ben Nadav Hoffrey.

Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski.

Our executive producer is Constanza Gallardo.

Fact-checking by Arthur Gompertz, 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 Coutz Burnett Library, and WETA.

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 Medal of Honor or see them on our social channels.

All you have to do is email us at medalofhonor at pushkin.fm.

I'm your host, J.R.

Martinez.

This episode is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union.

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This is an iHeart podcast.