Memorial Day - Get us out of here! - A True Hero
Source for picture http://www.medalofhonor.com/RoyBenavidez.htm
.....“Get us out of here! For God’s sake, get us out!” The voice coming over the radio was frantic. A twelve-man Special Forces reconnaissance team had been inserted forty-eight kilometers inside Cambodia on a top-secret intelligence-gathering mission but had come under fire from a much larger North Vietnamese force. Now the team leader was calling the base at Loc Ninh urgently to request helicopter extraction.
.....Special Forces Staff Sergeant Roy P. Benavides, standing inside the radio shack at Loc Ninh that day, May 2, 1968 was amazed at the sound coming over the radio. “There was so much shooting,” he remembered, “it sounded like a popcorn machine.” Benavidez rushed to the helicopter pad as the first chopper returned from Cambodia. The wounded door gunner spilled out of the aircraft and died in Benavidez’s arms. A few minutes later Benavidez jumped into a UH-1 “Huey” helicopter as it readied for takeoff. “Where are you going?” asked the surprised pilot. “I’m going with you,” Benavidez said.
.....Over the border, enemy fire around the men on the ground was too heavy to allow the Huey to land near them. The pilot reached another clearing seventy-five yards away, where Benavidez crossed himself, jumped ten feet to the ground, and started running toward the American position.
.....Enemy fire poured at him from trees and bushes all around. Benavidez felt the bullets cut into his legs and face. The fire knocked him down several times, but he kept on going. “When you’re shot, you feel a burning pain, like you’ve been touched with hot metal,” Benavidez explained later. “But the fear that you experience is worse-and that’s what keeps you going.”
.....Reaching the team, Benavidez found four men already dead, and the other eight lying wounded in the grass. He set off a smoke grenade to mark the spot for the helicopter and ordered the men to provide covering fire for the landing. When the helicopter touched down, a few Americans climbed aboard while Benavidez ran to the body of the team leader to retrieve classified documents and a camera. While retuning, Benavidez was shot in the back and knocked down; looking up, he saw the helicopter crash and burn after being hit by sniper fire. He ran to the aircraft and pulled out two crewmen, then led them and the remaining six men to the edge of the pickup zone, where they drew a small defensive perimeter.
.....Benavidez called for additional air support on the radio and distributed water and ammunition to the men. He gave the wounded shots of morphine, injecting two doses into his own veins. Then he was hit in the thigh by another bullet. By now he was bleeding heavily from bullet wounds all over his body, and the blood from his head wounds made it practically impossible for him to see. He could hear the moans of the men above the gunfire. One man whose leg had been blown off begged Benavidez to kill him. “Shut up!” he said. “We don’t have permission to die!”
.....Benavidez and the others were on the ground almost eight hours. Several helicopters were shot down trying to evacuate the men, but finally one got close enough to land. After taking some men to the aircraft, Benavidez was about to pick up another when he was struck on the back of his head by a rifle butt. Wheeling around he saw a North Vietnamese soldier thrusting a bayonet toward his midsection. Benavidez grabbed the blade, cutting open his own hand, pulled the man to him, and stabbed him with his knife.
.....Stumbling back to the helicopter, Benavidez helped load the wounded onto the aircraft, pulling in anyone he could make out through the blood dripping into his eyes. He picked up a rifle and killed two enemy soldiers as they charged the ship. Finally he was pulled aboard and collapsed near the pile of bodies in the back, holding his intestines in with his hands. As the Huey rose, blood trickled out its side doors.
.....The helicopter made it back to Loc Ninh with seventeen men, both dead and alive. As the bodies were unloaded, a doctor thought Benavidez was dead, and a body bag was prepared for him. Unable to move or speak, Benavidez spit into the startled doctor’s face. The doctor ordered him flown to Saigon for treatment.
.....The men at Loc Ninh assumed that Roy Benavidez would die. His commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Drake, awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross so that he would receive some recognition before he died. But Benavidez slowly recovered from his wounds and was discharged from the Army in 1976 with 80 percent medical disability classification. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel Drake learned that his former sergeant was alive and petitioned the army to elevate his award to the Medal of Honor.
.....The web of regulations that govern Medal of Honor reviews slowed Drake’s recommendation. In order for Benavidez’s case to be reopened, at least two eyewitness statements were needed: one to verify that he jumped on the helicopter at Loc Ninh and another to account for his actions on the ground. There was verification of the former action, but as far as Benavidez knew, all of the eight men whose lives he had been credited with saving had since died.
.....But one had survived. In 1980, after publication of a national newspaper story concerning Benavidez’s campaign for the medal, the sole surviving member of the team that he had saved was located on the Fiji Islands. Like the others, he had thought Benavidez had died from his wounds. Finally, on February 24, 1981, almost thirteen years after the episode in the Cambodian jungle, President Ronald Reagan awarded Roy Benavidez the Medal of Honor. Benavidez was the last living man to receive the medal for the Vietnam War.
.
(Source: Above and Beyond – A History of the Medal of Honor from the Civil War to Vietnam, Boston Publishing Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 1985, pages 290 - 91 – ISBN: 0-939526-19-0)
.....Special Forces Staff Sergeant Roy P. Benavides, standing inside the radio shack at Loc Ninh that day, May 2, 1968 was amazed at the sound coming over the radio. “There was so much shooting,” he remembered, “it sounded like a popcorn machine.” Benavidez rushed to the helicopter pad as the first chopper returned from Cambodia. The wounded door gunner spilled out of the aircraft and died in Benavidez’s arms. A few minutes later Benavidez jumped into a UH-1 “Huey” helicopter as it readied for takeoff. “Where are you going?” asked the surprised pilot. “I’m going with you,” Benavidez said.
.....Over the border, enemy fire around the men on the ground was too heavy to allow the Huey to land near them. The pilot reached another clearing seventy-five yards away, where Benavidez crossed himself, jumped ten feet to the ground, and started running toward the American position.
.....Enemy fire poured at him from trees and bushes all around. Benavidez felt the bullets cut into his legs and face. The fire knocked him down several times, but he kept on going. “When you’re shot, you feel a burning pain, like you’ve been touched with hot metal,” Benavidez explained later. “But the fear that you experience is worse-and that’s what keeps you going.”
.....Reaching the team, Benavidez found four men already dead, and the other eight lying wounded in the grass. He set off a smoke grenade to mark the spot for the helicopter and ordered the men to provide covering fire for the landing. When the helicopter touched down, a few Americans climbed aboard while Benavidez ran to the body of the team leader to retrieve classified documents and a camera. While retuning, Benavidez was shot in the back and knocked down; looking up, he saw the helicopter crash and burn after being hit by sniper fire. He ran to the aircraft and pulled out two crewmen, then led them and the remaining six men to the edge of the pickup zone, where they drew a small defensive perimeter.
.....Benavidez called for additional air support on the radio and distributed water and ammunition to the men. He gave the wounded shots of morphine, injecting two doses into his own veins. Then he was hit in the thigh by another bullet. By now he was bleeding heavily from bullet wounds all over his body, and the blood from his head wounds made it practically impossible for him to see. He could hear the moans of the men above the gunfire. One man whose leg had been blown off begged Benavidez to kill him. “Shut up!” he said. “We don’t have permission to die!”
.....Benavidez and the others were on the ground almost eight hours. Several helicopters were shot down trying to evacuate the men, but finally one got close enough to land. After taking some men to the aircraft, Benavidez was about to pick up another when he was struck on the back of his head by a rifle butt. Wheeling around he saw a North Vietnamese soldier thrusting a bayonet toward his midsection. Benavidez grabbed the blade, cutting open his own hand, pulled the man to him, and stabbed him with his knife.
.....Stumbling back to the helicopter, Benavidez helped load the wounded onto the aircraft, pulling in anyone he could make out through the blood dripping into his eyes. He picked up a rifle and killed two enemy soldiers as they charged the ship. Finally he was pulled aboard and collapsed near the pile of bodies in the back, holding his intestines in with his hands. As the Huey rose, blood trickled out its side doors.
.....The helicopter made it back to Loc Ninh with seventeen men, both dead and alive. As the bodies were unloaded, a doctor thought Benavidez was dead, and a body bag was prepared for him. Unable to move or speak, Benavidez spit into the startled doctor’s face. The doctor ordered him flown to Saigon for treatment.
.....The men at Loc Ninh assumed that Roy Benavidez would die. His commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Drake, awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross so that he would receive some recognition before he died. But Benavidez slowly recovered from his wounds and was discharged from the Army in 1976 with 80 percent medical disability classification. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel Drake learned that his former sergeant was alive and petitioned the army to elevate his award to the Medal of Honor.
.....The web of regulations that govern Medal of Honor reviews slowed Drake’s recommendation. In order for Benavidez’s case to be reopened, at least two eyewitness statements were needed: one to verify that he jumped on the helicopter at Loc Ninh and another to account for his actions on the ground. There was verification of the former action, but as far as Benavidez knew, all of the eight men whose lives he had been credited with saving had since died.
.....But one had survived. In 1980, after publication of a national newspaper story concerning Benavidez’s campaign for the medal, the sole surviving member of the team that he had saved was located on the Fiji Islands. Like the others, he had thought Benavidez had died from his wounds. Finally, on February 24, 1981, almost thirteen years after the episode in the Cambodian jungle, President Ronald Reagan awarded Roy Benavidez the Medal of Honor. Benavidez was the last living man to receive the medal for the Vietnam War.
.
(Source: Above and Beyond – A History of the Medal of Honor from the Civil War to Vietnam, Boston Publishing Company, Boston, Massachusetts, 1985, pages 290 - 91 – ISBN: 0-939526-19-0)
