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He Was Awarded the Medal of Honor, but He Gave It Back

CBN

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Former Army Chaplain Charlie Liteky passed away Friday night at the Veterans Administration Hospital in San Francisco at 85 years old. 

He was awarded the Medal of Honor for rescuing more than 20 wounded men during the Vietnam War but later gave it back in protest and became a peace activist. 

His actions on December 6, 1967 earned him the highest military decoration. 

His company came under intense fire from an enemy battalion in Bien Hoa province. And despite his painful injuries in the neck and foot, Liteky carried more than 20 men to the landing zone in order to be evacuated during the fight. 

"Noticing another trapped and seriously wounded man, Chaplain Liteky crawled to his aid," the Army's official citation stated. 

"Realizing that the wounded man was too heavy to carry, he rolled on his back, placed the man on his chest and through sheer determination and fortitude crawled back to the landing zone using his elbows and heels to push himself along." 

Later on Liteky left the priesthood and in 1983 married a former Catholic nun and peace activist, Judy Balch, in San Francisco. 

She introduced him to refugees from El Salvador. 

"Teenagers, whose fathers had been killed and tortured. I didn't believe it, but I kept going to more and more of these meetings and it became clear these people weren't blowing in the wind," Liteky told The San Francisco Chronicle in a March, 2000 interview.

Twenty years after his heroic actions in Vietnam, Liteky left his Medal of Honor and a letter to President Ronald Reagan at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington in protest of the country's foreign policy in Central America. 

Liteky also spent years protesting against the U.S. Army School of the Americas, an academy at Fort Benning, Georgia. He was sentenced to one year in federal prison in 2000 for going into the school without permission and splashing blood on the rotunda. 

Later in 2003 he went to Baghdad with other peace protesters to bear witness to the war and work with children in an orphanage and at hospitals. 

There are currently no plans for a funeral. 

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