Charles Calvin Rogers

Charles Calvin Rogers (September 6, 1929 – September 21, 1990) was a recipient of the highest military decoration in the United States, the Medal of Honor, for his actions during the Vietnam War. A lieutenant colonel at the time, he became the highest-ranking Black soldier in the U.S. military to receive this honor. A career officer who entered the service as a second lieutenant commissioned by ROTC when the military was still racially segregated, he retired after 32 years in the United States Army with the rank of major general.

Biography Charles Rogers was born in West Virginia to Clyde L. Rogers, a native of Fire Creek, West Virginia, and his wife, Helen Ford. Rogers' mother had an eighth-grade education; Rogers' father had a ninth-grade education, and had served as an Army enlisted mail clerk during World War I. The Rogers family lived in the coal-camp town of Claremont, along the New River in Fayette County, West Virginia. Rogers was the youngest of at least five siblings, three girls and two boys. At DuBois he was elected student body president and captain of the football team. Rogers became a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity in 1948.

In 1951, he joined the US Army as a second lieutenant through the Army ROTC program at West Virginia State College. On November 1, 1968, during Operation Toan Thang II, 1/5th Artillery was manning Fire Support Base Rita near the Fishhook region of the Cambodian border when it came under heavy attack. Rogers rallied his men in the defense of the base and, despite being several times wounded, continued to lead the battalion until the attack was repulsed. One of the M109 Howitzers used at Fire Base Rita has been preserved at the Field Artillery Museum at Fort Sill. During a 2018 dedication ceremony for a plaque honoring Sgt. Major Ira Whitaker that was placed alongside the gun, an old comrade recalled, "When [Whitaker] got there, there was a [North Vietnamese] sapper trying to climb up onto the front of it, and he annihilated him. And there were two people with RPGs off to his front, and he annihilated them with the help of...Rogers, who received a Medal of Honor. As [lieutenant] colonel at the time, [Rogers] was reloading the ammunition for Sgt. Whitaker as he was firing upon them." Back in Vietnam after he was awarded, a colleague later recalled that Rogers sought to return to combat duty, "He wanted to return to action even after he had been decorated. That's the kind of special person he was."

He was commander of the 42nd Field Artillery Group in Germany. He was also a deputy chief of staff for military operations with the U.S. Army at Washington.

He retired from the army as a major general in January 1984. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, United States. He was survived by his wife Margarete and three daughters.

Legacy Rogers is remembered as part of a group of HBCU graduates, including Major General Frederic Davison, and Lieutenant General Julius Becton Jr., who had achieved high command in the U.S. military by the 1970s.

He has been inducted into the West Virginia State University's ROTC Hall of Fame. In October 2023, then-Governor Jim Justice joined other local and state officials and the West Virginia Department of Veterans Assistance to break ground on the Charles C. Rogers State Veterans Nursing Facility in Beckley, West Virginia.

On November 1, 2021, Rogers' service was recognized on the U.S. Department of Defense website as part of their Medal of Honor Monday program. In March 2025, the profile of Rogers was removed from the U.S. Department of Defense website, yielding a 404 not found error, with the letters DEI added to the page's updated URL, thus changing the word medal to deimedal. This was apparently in compliance with Donald Trump's executive orders to terminate acknowledgements of achievements made by historically underrepresented groups. After the removal was publicly reported, on March 17, the page was restored, with the "deimedal" URL redirecting back to the original link. A spokesperson for the Department of Defense stated that the "story was removed during auto removal process."