Simon Suhler was born in Bavaria in 1844 and immigrated to the United States, where he enlisted in the Union Army at the outbreak of the Civil War. After being wounded and captured at Shiloh, he later re-enlisted, this time under the name Simon Neustadle, and served out the war honorably. In 1866, still contending with the prejudice he'd faced as a young Jewish soldier, he joined the 8th US. Cavalry under yet another name, Charles Gardner. It was under that alias that he distinguished himself fighting the Apache in the Arizona Territory in 1868, earning the Medal of Honor for bravery in scouts and combat. Suhler was the only Jewish Medal of Honor recipient from the entire span of the Indian Wars.

Suhler's story illustrates a pattern repeated throughout American Jewish military history: soldiers changing or anglicizing their names to serve without their faith becoming an obstacle or a target. It's a practice that has had lasting consequences even after death. A nonprofit called Operation Benjamin, founded in 2014, has spent the past decade identifying Jewish American servicemen from the World Wars who were mistakenly buried under Latin crosses rather than the Star of David, correcting the record for men whose true identities had been lost to time. Suhler's own family beat Operation Benjamin to it: Descendant genealogist William Suhler spent years tracing his ancestor's aliases, and in 1988 a corrected headstone bearing his real name, his Medal of Honor citation, and a Star of David was unveiled at San Antonio National Cemetery, where Suhler had been buried since his death in 1895.

That a Jewish soldier's valor shows up as far back as the Indian Wars, a chapter of American history few would think to associate with Jewish participation at all, speaks to how deep and how early that record runs.It's fitting, too, that Suhler's resting place is here in Texas—a reminder that this isn't a distant or foreign story, but one buried, quite literally, close to home.

(Image courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish Military History)