Medal of Honor recipients reflect on receiving military’s highest honor

Two Army veterans who earned the Medal of Honor in Afghanistan used a Memorial Day weekend broadcast to put a human face on the military’s highest award for combat valor. Retired Lt. Col. William Swenson and retired Command Sgt. Maj. Matthew Williams appeared together on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan, giving the Sunday program one of its most consequential segments even as the hour also turned to Iran, White House economic policy, and Capitol Hill.

Their interview carried weight because it placed two separate battlefields, Kunar Province and Shok Valley, into the same national conversation. Swenson joined the U.S. Army in 2002 and was recognized for actions during combat operations in Kunar Province on September 8, 2009. President Barack Obama later presented his Medal of Honor at the White House on October 15, 2013, after the Army cited his role in the Battle of Ganjgal. Williams was still a sergeant when he performed the actions that led to his award in Shok Valley, Nuristan Province, Afghanistan, on April 6, 2008. He later rose to the rank of Command Sgt. Maj. and received his medal from President Donald Trump on October 30, 2019.

That pairing mattered beyond the ceremony itself. The Medal of Honor is the U.S. military’s highest medal for valor in combat, first authorized in 1861 for sailors and Marines and in 1862 for soldiers. Seeing Swenson and Williams together underscored how rarely this honor is awarded and how long the recognition process can stretch, from the fight itself to the White House presentation years later.

CBS placed the segment inside a broader Memorial Day weekend episode that also featured White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, former coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, and a political panel with Rep. Mike Lawler of New York and Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey. The broadcast also focused on President Trump’s claim that a peace deal with Iran had been largely negotiated, with correspondent Imtiaz Tyab reporting from Tel Aviv. That mix of wartime memory and current foreign policy gave the episode a sharper national edge than a routine weekend roundtable.

The episode aired at 10:30 a.m. ET and streamed at 12:30 p.m. ET, and its transcript now sits in CBS’s archive, which stretches back more than a decade to 2008. For a weekend built around remembrance, the message from Swenson and Williams was plain: the medal may mark individual heroism, but it also reflects the costs carried by soldiers, families, and the country that sends them into combat.