Museum exhibit controversy reignites airman's Medal of Honor dispute
A first-of-its-kind museum honoring recipients of the nation's highest combat award is set to open later this month in Arlington, Texas — but the project is already dogged by controversy and outrage amid an apparent snub to one medal recipient.
A petition on behalf of the late Air Force Master Sgt. John Chapman, a combat controller whose fight to the death in thigh-deep snow during the March 4-5, 2002 Battle of Takur Ghar, Afghanistan, is among the first Medal of Honor actions caught on video, has so far gained nearly 25,000 verified signers and tens of thousands of dollars in donations to promote the cause.
The petition, which is hosted on Change.org, calls for the museum, a private enterprise, to create a dedicated exhibit honoring the airman.
Chapman's sister and other advocates for his family say he was initially promised such an exhibit — and the family was even brought in to discuss it — but that plans were changed amid what appears to be a revival of a dark and long-standing interservice dispute.
'The omission of this crucial element from the exhibits is an ill-conceived misstep and a disservice to Chapman's memory, to his bravery and to the sacrifice he made for the nation,' the Change.org petition states. 'Please revisit this decision and consider paying fitting tribute to John Chapman in one of the 200 exhibits.'
Dave Parke, a veteran of the Marines, Navy and Army who launched the petition after learning about the situation via Chapman's sister, Lori Chapman Longfritz, said he's been astounded by the still-growing response.
'There are a lot of people who are new to this topic and new to John in general, which I think is amazing,' said Parke, who has long been interested in Chapman's remarkable story. 'I think he should be a household name, so just getting people who had never heard of him before see this petition, and then, you know, start to do their own research and watch the video — that's the secondary benefit that I couldn't have imagined.'
Museum officials maintain that Chapman's story will be 'included from day one,' and emphasized that stories of the 3,526 medal recipients to date will be told in rotation and in forms ranging from a photograph to a full traditional exhibit.
Chapman's presence in the museum, they said, will include the drone footage that captured his last fight, and that the video will be part of the museum's permanent collection.
'We have been involved in an ongoing, iterative process of planning exhibits and building a collection of artifacts to support and enrich the museum storytelling experience,' museum CEO Chris Cassidy said in a lengthy statement provided to Military Times.
Longfritz said what is set to appear in the museum honoring her brother is a far cry from what she was initially promised. She said she and Chapman's mother, Terri, were hosted at the museum site in early 2024 and told a much more elaborate permanent exhibit, including artifacts from the family, was being planned.
It wasn't until last November, she said, that queries to the museum revealed the reality would be different.
'We left with high expectations, and so excited,' Longfritz told Military Times. 'And then when I was told, 'Yeah, you were misled,' I'm like, I can't, in good conscience, just let people go, spend money to go expecting to see John, and then there's nothing. So, I had to tell people.'
An email exchange reviewed by Military Times includes a Jan. 6 email from a museum staffer appearing to confirm that Chapman would not be one of the 200 medal recipients featured in a full exhibit at opening, but noting his photo and the footage would be on display.
Chapman's story, uniquely, is closely intertwined with that of another Medal of Honor recipient: Master Chief Special Warfare Operator Britt Slabinski.
Both men were on the same mountain, later dubbed Roberts Ridge, and both would initially receive service crosses, the second-highest combat award for valor, for heroism in the close-quarters firefight that would unfold.
Chapman, who was attached to the Navy SEAL team, and Slabinski were both inserted on the snowy ridge after another SEAL, Petty Officer First Class Neil Roberts, fell from the back of a team helicopter.
Together, according to medal citations, they advanced up the mountain and entered an enemy bunker, killing all the occupants. Roberts was dead on the mountain; and Chapman decided to charge a second bunker from which a machine gunner was firing on the SEALs. During this assault, he was shot and fell, seriously wounded.
What followed has been the source of great infighting and dispute.
Slabinski, believing Chapman to be dead, led his team to a position of safety further down the mountain, 'carrying a seriously wounded teammate through deep snow … while calling in fire on the enemy,' according to his medal citation.
But footage retrieved from a Predator drone and later analyzed showed that Chapman was not dead, and in fact became active again sometime later, mounting a fresh one-man offensive against the enemy, continuing to 'fight relentlessly' despite mortal wounds, according to his medal citation, until all his ammunition was expended and he could fight no more.
Some believe Chapman's actions after the SEAL team departed qualify him for a second Medal of Honor.
Yet in 2018, the White House announced that Slabinski would be the first to receive an upgrade to the Medal of Honor, despite allegations he'd left a living teammate behind on the mountain.
Chapman's Medal of Honor would be awarded posthumously several months later, the first presented to an airman since the Vietnam War.
Within the special operations community, the sequence of events spurred outrage and bitter infighting, with some even alleging that the close-knit and image-conscious SEAL community had advocated against Chapman's upgrade to prop up Slabinski.
Slabinski now serves on the board of the National Medal of Honor Museum. And while Cassidy's statement for the museum said no preference was given to board members, and they explicitly asked for no special treatment, the episode aggravates old wounds among advocates for Chapman. Efforts to reach Slabinski for comment through the museum and the C4 Foundation, where he is also a board member, were unsuccessful.
Matt Cubbler, a former Army intelligence specialist who has championed Chapman's case and investigated other instances of what he believes to be malfeasance within the SEAL community, has taken to podcasts and YouTube to make the case for a permanent exhibit for Chapman.
'It's not a matter of John getting an exhibit,' Cubbler said. 'It's a matter of the fact they continue to steal John's opportunities to be recognized for his actions by putting forward somebody who left him to die, you know? … And my goal since Lori called me about this is to get as many people angry as I possibly can.'
Museum staff have not directly responded to anyone associated with the petition, Parke, Cubbler and Longfritz said. A spokeswoman, Amber MacDowell, said anyone who reaches out to the museum about the Chapman exhibit receives the same statement from Cassidy.
For her part, Longfritz said she doesn't know what the museum could do at this point to make the situation right in her eyes.
'I feel really, really sad that all of this is going to overshadow those people who really, really deserve their exhibits, and they deserve to have a beautiful day of celebration,' she said.
'But this is going to be a cloud hanging over the museum, and it's of their own doing.'
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