Many folks here have heard me mention my father served at high levels within the DoD. Now retired, there are only like a handful of people that did what my dad did. A close knit group of folks and they keep in contact almost daily via email.
They often forward links. Videos. Rude jokes about Obama. They then get forwarded to me. I honestly don't watch a lot of them, cause they make me sick to my stomach. I don't know where they get them, but often they make the Apache video released via Wikilinks look "tame." I mean I get no joy in watching somebody get targeted by a A-130 gun ship and their bodies torn apart my 50MM bullets. I just don't.
So below the fold the video, plus I have transcribed the text in the video if you just want to read it, and I really hope you do, cause even if you are a peace loving hippie like me, it will still bring you to tears.
Below is the transcript for the video (emphasis added by me).
Roy P. Benavidez
Son of a Texas sharecropper, orphaned at 10 years old.
A seventh grade dropout who suffered the humiliation of being constantly taunted as a "dumb Mexican."
Only to become that rare class of warrior, awarded the Medal of Honor.
If the story of his heroism were a movie script you would not believe it.
President Ronald Reagan
May 2, 1968 13:30
Loc Ninh, a Green Beret outpost, screams for help from a nearyby shortwave radio.
Get us out of here, for God's sake get us out!
A 12-man patrol that had been completely surrounded by a North Vietnamese battalion. Armed with only a knife and a medic bag, Benavidez immediately jumped into a helicopter with a three man crew to rescue his trapped comrades.
The enemy was too numerious for the helicopter to evacuate the soliders. Hovering at ten feet and seventy-five yards from the battle, Roy jumps. He was shot almost immediately, got up and kept moving. Then a grenade knocked him down, shrapnel tearing into this face and neck.
Racing towards the Americans position, he found four men dead and all the other badly wounded. He began to treat the wounded, distribute ammunition and call in air strikes.
He was shot again.
Ordering in the helicopter closer, he dragged the dead and wounded aboard, than ran back to retrieve classified documents.
He was shot in the stomach, grenade fragments cut into his back. He got up and kept moving, making it back to the helicopter. Upon take-off, the pilot was shot and the helicopter crashed. Benavidez pulled the wounded from the wreckage.
Creating a defensive perimter Benavidez radioed for air strikes and another helicopter. He kept fighting until air support arrived.
As enemy fire raked the perimter, Benavidez repeatedly exposed himself to withering small arms fire to instruct the wounded to fight on.
He was shot several more times.
A second helicopter land and as Benavidez loaded the wounded, he is then charged by a North Vietnamese solider.
The Vietnamese solider clubbed him with his file and stabbed him with his bayonet.
With a broken jaw and bayonet wounds in both arms, Benavidez pulls his knife and kills his attacker.
As Benavidez dragged the last American to the chopper, he saw two enemy soldiers charge out of the jungle.
He grabbed a rifle and shot both.
Only after all the wounded were loaded did Benavidez let others pull him aboard the helicopter.
Blood poured from the door as the chopper lumbered into the air. Benavidez was holding in his intestines with his hands during the 20 minute ride back to the base.
At Loc Ninh, he was triaged and placed with the dead.
A doctor tired to zip up the body bag, Benavidez spit in his face, it was all he could do and he had done all that he could.
This 32-year old son of a Texas sharecropper had just performed for six hours one of the most remarkable feats of the Vietnam War.
Roy spent a year in hospital recovering from seven serious gunshot wounds, twenty-eight shrapnel wounds, a broken jaw and bayonet wounds in both arms.
All eight men rescued that day lived.
I took thirteen years for Roy P. Benavidez to recieve The Medal of Honor.
Two years later the Social Security Administration tried to stop disability payments he'd been recieving since he retired from the Army as a Master Sergeant.
He still had two pieces of shrapnel in his heart and puncturned lungs and was in constant pain from his wounds. A White House spokesman said that President Reagan was "personally concerned" about Benavidez's situation. A few days later the cutback were reinstated.
In an unprecedentaed act of military honor, the US Navy names one of its ships after an Army Sergeant.
To this day US Special Forces have a phrase that's spoken over the radio when a firefight is going badly or courage needs to be summoned. They call out:
Tango Mike Mike
Tango Mike Mike
Roy's radio call sign ....