CORRECTION: Fort Bragg is located in North Carolina.

Be your own person.

That’s the advice that Drew Dix, a Vietnam-era Medal of Honor recipient raised in Pueblo, will pass on to new Medal of Honor recipient Clinton Romesha when he gets the chance.

“Please make decisions based on who you are, not on who somebody thinks you should be now,” said Dix, who received his medal for actions in 1968 in Vietnam’s Chau Phu province.

According to his citation, he was responsible for saving the lives of 14 people, capturing 20 prisoners and killing 14 enemy fighters.

After receiving the medal, Dix said life never returned to normal.

He said his high school buddies in Pueblo didn’t understand what he’d been through or what the medal meant.

A larger issue was dealing with brass at Fort Bragg, N.C., where he and four other medal recipients were stationed.

“You don’t know how many times a high-ranking officer said, ‘You need to be this kind of way for us,’” Dix said. “I couldn’t just be myself. People had expectations of what I should have been like, and it certainly didn’t mesh with what mine were.”

He and the other recipients were asked to attend events and speak on leadership and similar topics.

Dix would have preferred to lay low.

“It was a struggle to keep notoriety out of the picture,” he said. “It was tough at first. People expect you to have an opinion about something, and what do you know? You’re not all of the sudden an authority about something because you received a Medal of Honor.”

After 20 years in the Army, Dix retired and moved to Alaska, where he lived “in the bush” for 13 years and ran an air service.

He finally felt like he’d dropped off the public’s radar.

“I really, really liked that,” he said.

Dix said the medal can take an emotional toll.

“We know there are others who probably did more than we did who should have been awarded it,” he said. “But you can’t let it eat on you. That wouldn’t help.”

Then there’s dealing with people who have no idea what the Medal of Honor is or think it’s the title of a video game.

“A lot of people think the Medal of Honor is awarded for killing a bunch of enemies,” he said. “It’s about saving lives at the risk of your life.

“And there’s people I talk to all the time who say, ‘My dad has a Medal of Honor.’ You know they don’t because you know who does.

“In their mind it’s a medal and it’s an honor. They don’t mean anything by it.”

After receiving the medal, some recipients attempt to resume a normal life and even isolate themselves, Dix said. Others use the exposure to pursue a passion.

“It’s a symbol. That’s all it is,” he said. “We can’t forget that. If we do and we figure we’re on a pedestal because we earned it, it would probably destroy us.”

More Advice

David Hughes — a local retired Army colonel and the recipient of several medals of valor, including the Distinguished Service Cross and Silver Star — has this advice for Romesha, which he shared with The Gazette on Monday after watching the White House ceremony on TV.

Romesha’s leaving the military to spend more time with his family shows that he has “his head screwed on well enough,” Hughes said. “He doesn’t need any advice on that.”Romesha will likely be invited to many speaking engagements in the months and years to come, Hughes said.

“If he wants to balance his work and his family, he’s got to be pretty judicious on how many weekends he flies out of town — even if it’s on somebody else’s nickel — to be a speaker to some Kiwanis Club or Veterans Administration group,” Hughes said.

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Contact Erin Prater:

erin.prater@gazettedev.gazette.com