Two heroes of past wars receive overdue honors
Published: March 28, 2006
George Franklin Shiels of San Francisco was known to fellow soldiers as “the fighting doctor” when he served as a surgeon in the U.S. Army Volunteer Medical Corps around the turn of the century.
But few people, even his surviving relatives, knew that Shiels’ brave service had earned him the Medal of Honor, the military’s highest award.
That changed on Saturday, when his grave at Cypress Lawn Cemetery was finally marked with a Medal of Honor headstone in a ceremony with full military burial rites.
Shiels earned the distinction during a battle at Tuliahan River in the Philippine Islands when he ignored his own safety and ran 150 feet under enemy fire to help rescue two wounded Filipinos.
He was honorably discharged in 1900, but his service didn’t end there. After the United States entered World War I, Shiels re-enlisted and was assigned to lead an all-black unit nicknamed the “Harlem Hellfighters” with the 369th Infantry.
As a white man in his 50s, Shiels led the highly decorated unit that served 191 days of combat, more than any other single unit in France.
A second San Francisco Medal of Honor winner also got his marker on Saturday, U.S. Army Sgt. Phillip Carl Katz, who was later elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He served in France during World War I. His company had withdrawn from fighting near Eclisfontaine, France, when he realized a wounded soldier had been left on the battlefield. Katz crossed an area swept by heavy machine-gun fire to rescue the soldier.
He was the oldest living Medal of Honor recipient at the time of his death in 1987.
“The community needs to have a knowledge of these heroes who are buried here,” said Debbie Peevyhouse of San Jose, who is on a mission to make sure that all 47 medal winners buried in private cemeteries in California are not forgotten.
Peevyhouse has done countless hours of volunteer research on the project, motivated by the need to preserve real heroes for the younger generation to emulate.
Born and reared in Mexico City, Peevyhouse married into a U.S. military family
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