15

METTLE FOR MEDAL

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MASTER SERGEANT ROY Benavidez officially retired on September 10, 1976. He’d served three years in the Texas National Guard, and twenty-one years and four months in the regular Army.

His daughter Denise was ten years old, Yvette six, and Noel four when Roy and Lala returned to El Campo for good. A lot had changed in Roy’s hometown since his childhood. For one thing, the segregated neighborhoods were the exception, not the rule. Their plan had been to build a home on the lot next to Lala’s parents’, but they decided to look around, and Lala fell in love with a house in a neighborhood that wasn’t Mexican, or white, or black, or Asian. It was diverse, or as Roy described it, “American”—exactly the type of street he wanted his kids to grow up on.

Just as Roy and Lala had dreamed, their three children each had their own room with a desk and a bed. Lala began planting bulbs and flowers in the ground outside the house instead of the pots they’d carted from base to base, and Roy enrolled himself in Wharton County Junior College, determined to get a degree. He would sit on the left-hand stool at their kitchen counter studying, and—a few months after their return—jotting down notes for a speech he had been invited to give at a Rotary Club luncheon being hosted by Jaro Netardus.

Netardus, who worked with the Wharton County Savings and Loan, where Roy did his banking, had been a local high school football star who went on to play for Texas A&M in college, and then served in the U.S. Air Force Reserve for twenty years. He was a big supporter of the military, and when he came across Roy’s name, he remembered reading an article about him when he’d been presented with the Distinguished Service Cross.

In the easy, conversational tone he’d learned from years of Benavidez storytelling, Roy stood at the podium and talked about being taken in by his uncle, Nicholas Benavidez, picking sugar beets and cotton, growing up in El Campo, joining the Army, marrying his wife, and traveling around the world on deployments, ultimately ending up in Vietnam. He explained how, wherever he was in the world, his wife had sent him copies of the El Campo Leader-News. “I left copies of the Leader-News all over the world, and all over Vietnam,” Roy said. “So the Vietcong, the ARVN, I bet even General Westmoreland, know who Ricky Ricebird is.”

Ricky Ricebird was the El Campo High School mascot, and as the attendees of the luncheon chuckled, Fred Barbee—the publisher and editorial director of the Leader-News—leaned over to his son, Chris, and said, “We gotta meet this guy.”

A short while later the Barbees were interviewing Roy, with plans to run an article about him in the paper. They learned that Roy’s former commander had been attempting to upgrade his Distinguished Service Cross to the Medal of Honor, but Roy said he was happy enough to have the DSC. “I feel bad sometimes,” he told the Barbees, “even wearing this. But I do it because it reminds me of the guys who didn’t come home. They are the real heroes. If you write any stories, you need to be sure you make that real clear.”

Fred Barbee was able to obtain a copy of Roy’s DSC citation and was floored by Roy’s actions and the events of May 2, 1968. At the luncheon, says Chris, “Roy had made it sound like he flew in and did what any other soldier would do, helped the wounded on board the helicopter, and they flew away. He said something along the lines of, ‘If somebody needs help, it’s your duty to help them.’ I think that was when my dad made it his mission to help Roy—to see that Roy was properly recognized, or at least given a fair shot.”

Most of the information available to the public about the mission had been compiled by Lieutenant Colonel Charles Kettles, who learned about Roy in April 1974 through Dandridge and Drake. Kettles had assigned Captain James Mason to locate witnesses and was able to obtain statements from Roger Waggie, Jerry Ewing, William Darling, Jesse Naul, James Fussell, Gary Land, Michael Grant, and Ron Radke of the 240th. None of it was deemed “sufficient evidence.”

Fred Barbee passed the files along to an acquaintance, Texas congressman Joe Wyatt, who assigned one of his staff to work on it, according to Chris Barbee. “He started putting information together, and every time they felt they had enough to go to the Army Decorations Board, it kicked back, saying there was not enough new corroborative evidence or testimony.”

Barbee requested copies of the paperwork Drake had submitted for Roy’s Distinguished Service Cross, but “they could not find the file,” says Chris. “So Dad really thought we were getting the runaround, and that just made him more determined. We received testimony from the pilots and crew who took part in the rescue; one fellow [William Darling] said in his statement that Roy’s guts were hanging out, and [Roy] still refused to get back on the helicopter before all the survivors were on board. We started reading other Medal of Honor citations for comparison, and nobody could understand why Roy had not received the award the first time around. Even after his commander [Drake] wrote an official request to upgrade the award because he had learned new information about Roy’s action that he did not know back in 1968, it was denied. Each time. Denied. Denied. Denied. It was as if they had the rubber stamp out before they even opened the envelope. None of it made sense; it was a terrible injustice.”

BUT AFTER a while it did start to make a certain type of sense to Fred Barbee, who had a theory. “Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the facts,” Barbee said to Roy one day in his office. “I think we’re dealing with a matter of politics here.”

When Roy told Barbee he didn’t understand, Barbee—who knew the proximity of Loc Ninh to the Cambodian border—said, “Cambodia, Roy. You were in Cambodia that day. You know it, I know it, and the Army knows it. The trouble is, while you and your buddies were getting chopped to pieces, the government back here was saying that no American servicemen were in that country. They still say there were none of our soldiers there. If they recognize you any more than they already have, they just might have to tell the American people where you were.”

Barbee’s theory was not far-fetched. On February 19, 1968, a sergeant named Fred Zabitosky was on a Studies and Observation Group recon mission in Laos when his team had been attacked by the NVA. After fighting off the enemy, and in the process of being extracted, Zabitosky was thrown from a helicopter as it went down. Seriously wounded with crushed ribs and severe burns, he pulled the unconscious pilot from the flames and carried him through enemy fire to another helicopter before being extracted. President Nixon presented the Congressional Medal of Honor to him a year later, on March 7, 1969.

Soldier of Fortune magazine would run one of the first “illegal” articles about SOG thirteen years later in its June 1981 issue. “Zabitosky’s superiors were uncertain whether he could be awarded the Medal of Honor,” wrote Jim Graves. “Medals were hard to come by for SOG soldiers because it was assumed that it would be difficult to control the media: Dead heroes tell no tales. The only SOG recipient of the Medal of Honor before Zabitosky was 1st Lt. George K. Sisler, and his award was posthumous.” The article went on to explain how, just a few days before the public ceremony in March of 1969, Zabitosky was invited to the White House for a private meeting with Nixon and Army chief of staff William Westmoreland, who told Zabitosky, “We never thought this would be approved.” And, said Nixon, “In your citation we can’t put Laos. I appreciate the project. I know what happened. I know where you were when you got it, but unfortunately we have to write your citation as being in Vietnam.”

In the summer of 1978, SOG had, to the best of Roy’s knowledge, never been exposed, nor had anybody exposed the missions conducted secretly in Laos and Cambodia in the 1960s. Roy was still under an oath of silence, and for that reason, Barbee’s comment about telling the American people where the fight took place made Roy “very uncomfortable.”

ROY CONTINUED to attend college classes, doing his studying in what everyone in the house knew was “his” seat: the stool at the end of the kitchen counter—everybody except the new family cat, Ozzy.

Roy would get down at eye level and berate the cat, nose to nose, what Roy and the Benavidez kids called “Mexican standoffs.” After his years in the Army, Roy could speak basic Korean, German, Vietnamese, and Japanese, and he’d try them all out—including Spanish—in his attempt to talk the disrespectful “furball” out of his seat, all while entertaining the kids.

Then he would get in a martial arts stance and feign karate moves, the kids would laugh, and Ozzy would not budge. Eventually Roy would pick the cat up and move him.

One day Roy faced Ozzy and said, “You know, kitty cat tastes good with Tabasco.” Ozzy jumped down, and Roy said to his children, “Figures that he speaks English.”

“We knew he was in pain, though,” says Denise. “He always had a limp when it was cold, or in the morning, and he’d walk it off, like he’d done in the Army for so many years.”

“Mind over matter is what Dad would say,” says Noel. “If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

Every morning except Sunday, when the family went to church, Roy would walk “at Friendship Park,” says Yvette. “Five or six laps around the park—he’d do about five miles every day. It was therapy.”

DURING THE summer of 1977, Fred Barbee assigned reporter Steve Sucher to keep track of Roy’s case—to compile evidence and conduct interviews—but as happened with anybody who spent time with Roy, Sucher quickly became a friend. He and Roy would have a beer or two, and, says Sucher, “I’d hear some of the details about that day that gave me a deep appreciation for what he went through—what all of those men went through.”

Roy’s story ultimately appeared in the February 22, 1978, issue of the El Campo Leader-News as a cover story with a photo of Roy in uniform, an op-ed written by Fred Barbee under the title “Has Washington Forgotten?” Taking up several full pages, the article both honored Roy by telling his story and questioned the motives and competency of the Senior Army Decorations Board.

“This board,” wrote Barbee, “whose members are anonymous and whose actions are not subjected to any sort of public scrutiny, supposedly has reviewed a request submitted first in 1974 by Sgt. Benavidez’s former commanding officer, Lt. Colonel Ralph Drake, to upgrade the Distinguished Service Cross to the Congressional Medal of Honor. The request was based on new and substantive evidence not available when the sergeant was first put up for the DSC.

“This faceless Senior Army Decorations Board reportedly (but, in the aura of official secrecy, who knows for sure) reviewed [the case] in June 1976 and again in April 1977. In both instances the board disapproved upgrading the DSC to the Medal of Honor with the same obtuse reason given, that ‘no new substantive information’ had been presented.

“One wonders what the distinguished Senior Army Decorations Board used for comparison, since by the Army’s own admission, the original recommendation for the award for the DSC and accompanying supportive statements had been lost…. Nevertheless, a third attempt was made through Congressman John Young’s office in October 1977.”

Barbee reported how, two months later, Secretary of the Army Clifford Alexander sent Congressman Young a letter informing him that the request had been denied, and in response to Young’s request for the reason why, Alexander wrote the congressman, “It is neither fair nor equitable to subject the members of the ‘Board’ to microscopic inquiry with respect to their votes of conscience. Therefore it is Department of the Army policy not to reveal exact reasons for or against any specific commendation.”

“What, then, happened on that awful day in May ten years ago in the Republic of Vietnam?” continued Barbee in his article. “Or, perhaps this particular action on May 2, 1968, actually took place outside the boundaries of Vietnam, perhaps in an area where U.S. forces were not supposed to be…. Perhaps that is a contributing factor to the continuing ‘runaround.’ ”

The Victoria Advocate, a daily newspaper in nearby Victoria, Texas, carried Barbee’s story the following week. From there it was picked up by the Associated Press, which ran various edited versions across the country, and in some of the American news sections of international papers.

It was July of 1980 (more than two years after the original article had been published), and in Fiji, Brian O’Connor was reading the paper when he came across the all-too-familiar date of May 2, 1968. He was shocked and got “a little wet in the eyes” once he realized that Roy Benavidez—who he had assumed died in the hospital in Vietnam—was alive. As he read further and learned that Roy had not received the Medal of Honor because of insufficient eyewitness testimony, O’Connor was determined to do the right thing. But first he had a call to make.

ROY WAS watching television in his garage den when the Benavidez phone was answered by seven-year-old Noel. When he announced who was on the phone and handed it to Roy, tears began to roll down his father’s face.

“I was speechless,” remembered Roy, who couldn’t say more than a word or two without getting choked up.

“I was convinced he was dead,” says O’Connor. “He knew I was dead.”

In fact, O’Connor had been moved from the 93rd Evac Hospital at Long Binh in the middle of the night and transported to Japan, where a team of doctors began a very long process of rebuilding him head to toe. O’Connor told Roy that he was still around because of the talents of the doctors who, over the course of two years of surgery and hospitalization, removed bullets and shrapnel, repaired him with bone grafts, and rearranged his insides and got them working about as good as new.

Now he was doing what he’d wanted before the war interrupted, and then nearly took, his life, and that was art. He had a well-stocked bookshelf and a little studio in back with a kiln where he made and fired pottery. In fact, he’d been a professional production potter since 1970. He had also become a member of the Special Forces Association, hidden in plain sight; if Roy had ever questioned whether O’Connor had died, one call to the association would have provided him with a phone number and address.

Now that O’Connor had been “found,” he was awash in emotions and memories. “I’m writing a statement on what happened that day,” he said to Roy. “When they read what I’m going to write…you’re going to get the Medal of Honor, Roy. I’m going to see to that.”

HE BEGAN with: “This statement, on the events that happened on 2 May 1968, is given as evidence to assist the decision made on awarding the Congressional Medal of Honor to Master Sergeant Roy Benavidez. Because of the classified nature of the mission, some important details will be left out which should not in any way affect the outcome of the award.”

Like Roy, O’Connor was bound by the thirty-year oath of silence he had signed in 1967. He couldn’t disclose, even a decade after the war, any information on SOG or the classified locations of its operations, so he simply put that his team had been inserted “west of Loc Ninh.”

Then, for ten pages, O’Connor recounted a condensed and appropriately militaristic play-by-play. While he had witnessed numerous heroic acts that day, he focused solely on Roy, who he believed was the only person whose voluntary actions that day warranted the Congressional Medal of Honor.

He concluded with, “The above statement is to the best of my recollection,…but be advised that I was critically wounded myself and because of my condition I didn’t see or can’t recall other acts of heroism that Benavidez or other team members may have done. Please feel free to call me if you have any questions about the above statement.”

In an additional statement, O’Connor added his own op-ed of sorts:

It is my sincere belief that MSG Benavidez deserved the CMH back in 1968 and still does this very day. I know that all battles are hell, but he on his own voluntarily came into a situation probably knowing the odds were vastly stacked against him. From the moment he jumped out of the chopper until his last recovery run to get my interpreter he was in complete control of us, the survivors, the support, as well as himself.

He organized the remnants of a recon team and chopper crew into a force to be reckoned with. Although wounded, he saw to it that we positioned ourselves in a way that would increase our chances of survival, inflict maximum casualties on the enemy, and secure the PZ against almost impossible odds. When seriously wounded he crawled around, constantly under fire, and gave tactical orders, took charge of air support, medical aid, ammunition and retrieved sensitive classified documents and equipment and boosted our morale, giving us the will to fight and live.

Whatever mechanism it is that clicks in certain people under special circumstances clicked in Benavidez that day…. [H]is defiant attitude and sense of duty to get us out of there alive surpassed above and beyond the call of duty [and] borders on the realm of the humanly impossible.

Writing very personally, I was ready to die, and I’m sure the other team members realized the futility of continuing on against such odds. It was Benavidez’s indomitable spirit and courage that made us hold on for an extra five or ten minutes that then dragged into hours, and it paid for eight or nine of us because he knew exactly what he was doing. The problem is he never received just recognition for his actions. Perhaps this was because of the times and the classified status of the mission and the difficulty in locating me. I hope your review board can make use of the statement I provided and feel free to use this additional statement if necessary.

This new statement was submitted in summer of 1980 along with all the preceding documentation and statements that had been submitted yearly since Drake first resubmitted for the award upgrade on April 9, 1974. The package was also sent to then President Jimmy Carter for a second time, just as it had been sent to President Gerald Ford before him.

O’CONNOR HAD been awarded the Bronze Star with Valor for his actions on May 2, 1968. Those few who were privy to the details of the mission—especially O’Connor’s steadfast devotion to the CIDG, and his calm resolve even as his body failed him due to massive wounds—believed that he, too, deserved at least the Silver Star or perhaps the Distinguished Service Cross (which had been awarded to Wright and Mousseau). They felt that O’Connor should have pursued the upgrade of his own medal; his actions certainly warranted it. But O’Connor’s mission was to see Roy’s award, not his own, upgraded. He was proud of his Bronze Star with V.

O’Connor was soon contacted by a member of the Decorations Board, the first of several interviews held to confirm and further question the validity of his statement.

Satisfied with O’Connor’s statement and interviews, the Decorations Board bumped Roy’s request for upgrade to the next tier in the process. They then presented yet another hoop for Roy to jump through before he could receive the Medal of Honor: the statute of limitations had expired and an Act of Congress would be required to allow an official decision. Still, O’Connor’s statement had clearly made an impact, as Major Robert Roush, a former officer with the Army’s Military Awards Branch, agreed to testify, along with Texas congressman Joe Wyatt, before the House Military Personnel Subcommittee on November 1, 1980, requesting that Congress consider a bill to exempt Roy Benavidez from the time limit on awarding medals for heroism. “I must stress,” testified Roush, “that Sergeant Benavidez voluntarily joined his comrades, who were in critical straits. He constantly exposed himself to withering fire, and his refusal to be stopped, despite numerous severe wounds, saved the lives of at least eight men.”

The extension was granted, and a month and a half later, President Carter signed the bill. He was, however, unable to schedule the required presidential ceremony to award the medal before he left office, probably due to the Iran hostage crisis.

The new president, Ronald Reagan, made the ceremony a priority, arranging for Roy and thirty-nine members of his family to be transported to and hosted in Washington, DC, and on February 24, 1981, Noel, Yvette, and Denise helped themselves to the president’s signature jelly beans, which he kept on his desk in the Oval Office. In fact, Reagan allowed Noel to take the entire jar, with a promise to share with his sisters.

Roy, Lala, and their children stood before a cadre of press for photos with Reagan, First Lady Nancy Reagan, and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. The ceremony would take place at the Pentagon, but the president gave the assembled press corps a preview when he said, “You are going to hear something you would not believe if it were a movie script. Wait until you hear the citation.”

Later that afternoon, Roy and his family assembled in the inner courtyard at the Pentagon, and Reagan addressed the crowd of thousands that included Colonel Ralph Drake, Sergeant Jerry Cottingham (who had interceded when Roy was being zipped into the body bag), and Brian O’Connor, who had met with Roy the night before for a private, tear-filled reunion.

Men and women of the Armed Forces, ladies and gentlemen:

Several years ago, we brought home a group of American fighting men who had obeyed their country’s call and who had fought as bravely and as well as any Americans in our history. They came home without a victory not because they’d been defeated, but because they’d been denied permission to win.

They were greeted by no parades, no bands, no waving of the flag they had so nobly served. There’s been no “thank you” for their sacrifice. There’s been no effort to honor and, thus, give pride to the families of more than 57,000 young men who gave their lives in that faraway war…. There’s been little or no recognition of the gratitude we owe to the more than 300,000 men who suffered wounds in that war. John Stuart Mill said, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. A man who has nothing which he cares about more than his personal safety is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

Back in 1970 Kenneth Y. Tomlinson wrote of what he had seen our young men do beyond and above the call of military duty in Vietnam—a marine from Texas on his way in at dawn from an all-night patrol stopping to treat huge sores on the back of an old Vietnamese man, an artilleryman from New Jersey spending his free time stacking sandbags at an orphanage to protect the children from mortar attacks, an Army engineer from California distributing toys he’d bought in Hong Kong to the orphans his unit had adopted…. None of the recent movies about that war have found time to show those examples of humanitarianism.

The stories go on and on. Bob Hope, who visited our men there as he had in two previous wars, said of them, “The number of our GIs who devote their free time, energy, and money to aid the Vietnamese would surprise you.” And then he added, “But maybe it wouldn’t. I guess you know what kind of guys your sons and brothers and the kids next door are.”

Well, yes, we do know. I think we just let it slip our minds for a time. It’s time to show our pride in them and to thank them….

I have one more Vietnam story, and the individual in this story was brought up on a farm outside of Cuero in De Witt County, Texas, and he is here today…. [His] story, which had been overlooked or buried for several years…has to do with the highest award our nation can give, the Congressional Medal of Honor, given only for service above and beyond the call of duty.

At this point, Weinberger escorted Roy to the podium to stand beside Reagan.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are honored to have with us today Master Sergeant Roy P. Benavidez, U.S. Army, Retired.” Almost without exception, citations for valor were read by an aide or member of a president’s cabinet, but Reagan himself read the citation—the contents of which he said had been “lost for too long a time”:

On May 2, 1968, Master Sergeant (then Staff Sergeant) Roy P. Benavidez distinguished himself by a series of daring and extremely valorous actions while assigned to Detachment B-56, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, Republic of Vietnam.

On the morning of May 2, 1968, a 12-man Special Forces Reconnaissance Team was inserted by helicopters in a dense jungle area west of Loc Ninh, Vietnam, to gather intelligence information about confirmed large-scale enemy activity. This area was controlled and routinely patrolled by the North Vietnamese Army. After a short period of time on the ground, the team met heavy enemy resistance, and requested emergency extraction. Three helicopters attempted extraction, but were unable to land due to intense enemy small arms and anti-aircraft fire.

Sergeant Benavidez was at the Forward Operating Base in Loc Ninh monitoring the operation by radio when these helicopters returned to off-load wounded crew members and to assess aircraft damage. Sergeant Benavidez voluntarily boarded a returning aircraft to assist in another extraction attempt. Realizing that all the team members were either dead or wounded and unable to move to the pickup zone, he directed the aircraft to a nearby clearing where he jumped from the hovering helicopter, and ran approximately 75 meters under withering small arms fire to the crippled team. Prior to reaching the team’s position, he was wounded in his right leg, face, and head.

Despite these painful injuries, he took charge, repositioning the team members and directing their fire to facilitate the landing of an extraction aircraft, and the loading of wounded and dead team members. He then threw smoke canisters to direct the aircraft to the team’s position. Despite his severe wounds and under intense enemy fire, he carried and dragged half of the wounded team members to the awaiting aircraft. He then provided protective fire by running alongside the aircraft as it moved to pick up the remaining team members. As the enemy’s fire intensified, he hurried to recover the body and the classified documents on the dead team leader. When he reached the team leader’s body, Sergeant Benavidez was severely wounded by small arms fire in the abdomen and grenade fragments in his back. At nearly the same moment, the aircraft pilot was mortally wounded, and his helicopter crashed.

Although in extremely critical condition due to his multiple wounds, Sergeant Benavidez secured the classified documents and made his way back to the wreckage, where he aided the wounded out of the overturned aircraft, and gathered the stunned survivors into a defensive perimeter. Under increasing enemy automatic-weapons and grenade fire, he moved around the perimeter distributing water and ammunition to his weary men, re-instilling in them a will to live and fight. Facing a build-up of enemy opposition with a beleaguered team, Sergeant Benavidez mustered his strength, and began calling in tactical air strikes and directing the fire from supporting gunships, to suppress the enemy’s fire and so permit another extraction attempt. He was wounded again in his thigh by small arms fire while administering first aid to a wounded team member just before another extraction helicopter was able to land.

His indomitable spirit kept him going as he began to ferry his comrades to the craft. On his second trip with the wounded, he was clubbed from behind by an enemy soldier. In the ensuing hand-to-hand combat, he sustained additional wounds to his head and arms before killing his adversary. He then continued under devastating fire to carry the wounded to the helicopter. Upon reaching the aircraft, he spotted and killed two enemy soldiers who were rushing the craft from an angle that prevented the aircraft door gunner from firing upon them. With little strength remaining, he made one last trip to the perimeter to ensure that all classified material had been collected or destroyed, and to bring in the remaining wounded.

Only then, in extremely serious condition from numerous wounds and loss of blood, did he allow himself to be pulled into the extraction aircraft. Sergeant Benavidez’ gallant choice to join voluntarily his comrades who were in critical straits, to expose himself constantly to withering enemy fire, and his refusal to be stopped despite numerous severe wounds, saved the lives of at least eight men. His fearless personal leadership, tenacious devotion to duty, and extremely valorous actions in the face of overwhelming odds were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service, and reflect the utmost credit on him and the United States Army.

“Sergeant Benavidez,” said President Reagan, turning to Roy, “a nation grateful to you, and to all your comrades living and dead, awards you its highest symbol of gratitude for service above and beyond the call of duty, the Congressional Medal of Honor.”