Muhammad Ali

The death of Muhammad Ali takes from us one of the greatest figures in the history of sport. There is no doubt about it. He deserves his honors. The Times calls him the “most charismatic and controversial sports figure of the 20th century.” His fights, the Washington Post reckons, “were among the most memorable and spectacular in history.” Headlines Le Monde: “‘The Greatest’ Est Mort.”Yet at the passing of this greatest of boxers, we find ourselves thinking of others who were greater fighters still. At the height of his influence on young Americans, after all, he proclaimed “I ain’t got nothing against them Vietcong” and declared himself a conscientious objector and, in the middle of a desperate war against a communist foe in Vietnam, refused to answer an American draft call.It took a certain courage to do that. He put his fortune at risk, and he was, in Clay v. U.S., vindicated by the Supreme Court in a decision that was, it should be marked, unanimous. Forgive us, though, for noting that there were millions who did step forward when called for Vietnam; they swore to preserve, protect, and defend the very Constitution that sheltered Ali in his conscientious objection.Such Americans nursed no more – or less — personal a quarrel with the Vietcong than Muhammad Ali did, and many of them fought doubts and fears. All the more do we think of them when we think of what it means to be the greatest. We think of, say, Leonardo Alvarado of Bakersfield, California. He enlisted in the Army in July 1968 and soon found himself at Phuoc Long Province, Vietnam.Alvarado was moving through dense jungle with what the Army later called a small reaction force when he was pinned down by an enemy unit that blocked the path to some trapped GIs. Alvarado advanced through machine gun fire, only to be wounded by an enemy grenade. He slew the grenadier and was wounded again. Yet he crawled forward to pull back several of his comrades.Then he started maneuvering alone, the Army said, “advancing and firing, silencing several emplacements, including one enemy machinegun position.” It was only after the enemy had broken away that Alvarado’s comrades discovered that he himself had perished. Alvarado was but one of those “greatest” recognized only after Congress ordered a review of GIs whose intrepidity might have been slighted owing to prejudice.The Vietnam portion of that review found eight who ended up being awarded the Medal of Honor, bringing to 256 the total of those on whom was bestowed for deeds in Indochina the nation’s highest award for valor: Specialists Four Jesus S. Duran, Santiago J. Erevia, and Ardie R. Copas; Staff Sergeant Felix M. Conde-Falcon; Sergeant Candelario Garcia; Sergeant First Class Jose Rodela; and Staff Sergeant Melvin Morris. Alvarado’s daughter, Leonora, accepted his medal from President Obama.Not all conscientious objectors refused to answer the draft. One of them, a Baptist named Thomas Bennett of Morgantown, West Virginia, was trained as a medic. In February 1969, about the time one can imagine Muhammad Ali might have landed in Vietnam had he stepped forward, Bennett plunged through heavy fire to save members of a platoon under attack, then made repeated trips to carry them to safety.Through a day and a half of combat, Bennett, armed only with bandages, raced from position to position to treat wounded personnel. He defied a warning that one wounded man was impossible to reach, but, his Medal of Honor citation later said, “he leaped forward with complete disregard for his safety to save his comrade’s life,” only to be mortally wounded himself.Our guess is that most GIs who served in Vietnam would have admired Muhammad Ali, even though he spurned their cause. That says something about America and Ali himself, who, the Times obituary notes, late in life “became something of a secular saint, a legend in soft focus. … respected for having sacrificed more than three years of his boxing prime and untold millions of dollars for his antiwar principles after being banished from the ring.”We’d like to think that Ali himself would have understood our instinct to write as well about the other greatest. Like, to pick another of the 256 decorated with the Medal of Honor for Vietnam, Oscar P. Austin, of Nacogdoches, Texas. He was a private first class with the First Marine Division, when his observation post came under heavy fire from North Vietnamese Army forces using grenades, satchel charges, and small arms.Austin suddenly saw that a member of his unit had fallen unconscious while still exposed to enemy fire. Austin leapt out of his foxhole and, his citation noted, “with complete disregard for his safety, raced across the fire-swept terrain to assist the Marine to a covered location.” As he neared his wounded comrade, he saw an enemy grenade hit the ground. “Instantly,” Austin leaped to absorb the grenade’s explosion.Then, if it is possible to imagine, Austin ignored his searing injuries and turned to examine the Marine he’d sought to help. An enemy soldier aimed a weapon at the wounded man. Austin then threw himself between the two and, “in doing so,” his Medal of Honor Citation records, “was mortally wounded.” It gives its own perspective on Muhammad Ali’s famous words, “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, rumble, young man, rumble.”

Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali

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