STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

404 Not Found

Did the website of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) remove an article about Army Major General Charles Calvin Rogers who received the Medal of Honor for his actions in Vietnam? Here's what we know: The 2021 article now appears on the DOD website again, but for a while the link did redirect to a 404 page hosted at the exact same URL but with "dei" added to it. At least seven other links on the site still exhibit the same behaviour. This story will be updated as we learn more.

The original article about Rogers was hosted here under the title "Medal of Honor Monday: Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers" with a publication date of November 1, 2021. It opened:

From the 1950's to the 1980's, a lot changed in America and abroad, and Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers served through all of it. As a Black man, he worked for gender and race equality while in the service. But he's perhaps most well-known for his leadership during an intense battle in Vietnam, which earned him the Medal of Honor.

Archived copy

The article was archived by the Internet Archive's Wayback machine here. As of this writing, the Internet Archive says it saved the page "23 times between November 1, 2021 and March 17, 2025."

The last successful capture of the article appears to have happened on March 5, 2025, a subsequent capture on March 15 appears to have resulted in a redirect.

At the time of writing, website visitors attempting to reach:

https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2824721/medal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/

were automatically redirected to

https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2824721/deimedal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/

which shows an error page (archived here) that says:

404 - Page Not Found
The page you are looking for might have been moved, renamed, or may be temporarily unavailable. Use our help center, browse our sitemap, or return to the homepage.

Addition of "dei" to the URL

The only difference between the original URL and the one visitors are redirected to seems to be the addition of "dei" in front of "medal-of-honor-monday".

Lead Stories used the built-in developer tools of Google's Chrome internet browser to analyze what happens when a user attempts to visit the original URL of the article.

Users attempting to visit the original link:

(highlights by Lead Stories)

before being redirected with another 302 header to the exact same URL:

• http://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/story/Article/2824721/deimedal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers

from where users are redirected via a 301 header to an https version of the link with the slash at the end added in again:

• https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2824721/deimedal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/

(highlights by Lead Stories)

before finally being sent a 404 Not Found header.

(Image: collage of Chrome developer tools output created by Lead Stories on March 17, 2025 at 10:35:51 UTC)

Medal of Honor Monday

The original article had a footer that said it was part of a series:

This article is part of a weekly series called "Medal of Honor Monday," in which we highlight one of the more than 3,500 Medal of Honor recipients who have earned the U.S. military's highest medal for valor.

The footer also linked to a search results page listing dozens and dozens of articles (archived here) in the series. A random sampling taken by Lead Stories did not immediately bring up any that weren't online anymore.

The publication dates of the articles followed a weekly schedule. On page 17 of the current listing (this link will become inaccurate in the future as new articles are added to page 1, archived copy of the listing at the time of writing here) there is a gap between the October 25, 2021 and November 8, 2021 where one would expect the November 1 Calvin Rogers article to be.

Charles Calvin Rogers on the DoD website

As of this writing, a search for "Charles Calvin Rogers" using the DoD website's own search function (archived here) still shows a result linking to the removed article.

Roger's photo (which was also used in the article) is still online (archived here):

(Image credit: Army)

His name also still appears in this table listing Medal of Honor recipients (archived here).

Other links

Reader Warren Throckmorton sent us a link to an article titled "DEI Madness at the Department of Defense" he published on Substack (archived here) in which he identified four more links that have been removed and which now point to 404 error pages with "dei" in the URL.

• https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2915157/face-of-defense-serving-excellence/ (archived here), now redirecting to https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2915157/deiface-of-defense-serving-excellence/
• https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3455113/brown-would-accelerate-change-in-us-military-to-maintain-deterrence/ (archived here) now redirecting to https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3455113/deibrown-would-accelerate-change-in-us-military-to-maintain-deterrence/
• https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/3675201/highlighting-history-wwi-doc-blazes-trail-for-black-hospital-ems-community/ (archived here) now redirecting to https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/3675201/deihighlighting-history-wwi-doc-blazes-trail-for-black-hospital-ems-community/
• https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3326203/military-celebrates-womens-history-month/ (archived here) now redirecting to https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3326203/deimilitary-celebrates-womens-history-month/

By using the search link in the header of the DoD website, Lead Stories was able to independently find three more links:

• https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/3718960/civil-war-pioneers-meet-some-of-americas-first-female-nurses/ (archived here) now redirecting to https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/3718960/deicivil-war-pioneers-meet-some-of-americas-first-female-nurses/
• https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/1083461/intrepid-african-american-soldiers-broke-barriers-paved-the-way/ (archived here) now redirecting to https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/1083461/deiintrepid-african-american-soldiers-broke-barriers-paved-the-way/
• https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3425621/in-75-years-since-womens-armed-services-integration-act-female-service-members/ (archived here) now redirecting to https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3425621/deiin-75-years-since-womens-armed-services-integration-act-female-service-members/

Dod reaction

Shortly after publication of this article the Charles Calvin Rogers article appears to have come back online. The links identifed by Throckmorton are still down.

Lead Stories reached out to the Department of Defense for comment via email. A Defense official replied:

The Department has restored the Medal of Honor story about Army Maj. Gen. Charles Calvin Rogers at https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/2824721/medal-of-honor-monday-army-maj-gen-charles-calvin-rogers/. The story was removed during auto removal process.

Updates:

• 2025-03-17T18:01:43Z 2025-03-17T18:01:43Z
  Adds DoD statement.
• 2025-03-17T15:13:21Z 2025-03-17T15:13:21Z
  Added more links that were taken down.
• 2025-03-17T14:38:00Z 2025-03-17T14:38:00Z
  Article appears to have been restored. Added section about four more links that were taken down.
• 2025-03-17T11:15:44Z 2025-03-17T11:15:44Z
  Added Medal of Honor Monday info
• 2025-03-17T11:01:16Z 2025-03-17T11:01:16Z
  Adds photo, info about other mentions on DoD site.
• 2025-03-17T10:19:26Z 2025-03-17T10:19:26Z
  Adds Google Chrome header trace.