The 97-year gap is the measure of how long it took to correct it.
## Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and the Early Recognition
One of the sources of the continuing awareness of Johnson’s story between his death in 1929 and the beginning of the formal awards campaign in the 1990s was the written record from people who had been in France and had observed or documented his service.
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. — the eldest son of President Theodore Roosevelt, who served as a military officer in the First World War and later in the Second — included Johnson in his book *Rank and File*, describing him as “one of the five bravest American soldiers in the war.” Roosevelt had served in France, understood what combat performance looked like, and was applying a specific judgment to a specific soldier.
Roosevelt’s characterization was not an official recognition, and it did not translate into an official decoration. But it was a documented acknowledgment from a person with the specific credibility of someone who had observed American soldiers in the First World War at first hand, and it remained in the written record as a marker of what people who had been present understood about Johnson’s performance.
The William Irwin article in the New York Evening Sun, published in 1918 during the war itself, was the first wide circulation account of the action at Outpost 20. Irwin was an experienced journalist and his account was detailed enough to establish the basic facts of the action in the public record. The article was reprinted in multiple publications and contributed to the brief period of public recognition that Johnson experienced on his return in 1919.