Legend

by Eric Blehm

  Some of Roy’s superiors, concerned by the noticeable suffering he put himself through to push the troops in their training regimen, agreed to take steps that might speed up his honorable discharge without dishonoring the man, according to a fellow NCO. A major who worked closely with Roy wrote: “[It] became apparent to the members of the team that Benavidez would not admit that he was physically unable to climb, run, carry heavy loads, or keep up with the rifle platoons and squads during rigorous field training exercises…. Although [he] made every effort to hold up his end of the log, he could not, and the team made adjustments to place him in situations which would spare him from physical efforts which would aggravate his extensive injuries.”

  Another major said of Roy: “[Though] Benavidez never once complained, his physical condition did not permit him to function satisfactorily. Any lesser man would not have even attempted to accomplish the mission. Due to this man’s sincere devotion to his country and the U.S. Army, it is a disservice to have [him] on active duty and not be able to perform. He has all but paid the supreme price—life—through his heroism in Vietnam.”

  —

  IN MARCH 1969, after the NVA launched a series of rocket attacks against Saigon, President Nixon authorized Operation Menu, a covert, massive bombing campaign that targeted NVA base areas in Cambodia and Laos, most of which had been identified by SOG recon teams. The area in the Fishhook where the May 2, 1968, mission took place was bombed repeatedly after being designated one of the most likely locations of COSVN (NVA headquarters).

  Two years later, in 1971, the New York Times began publishing excerpts from the Pentagon Papers, making public the top-secret study compiled by the Department of Defense outlining U.S. military and political involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. Congress voted to withdraw troops by the end of the year, but the war raged into 1972, with the NVA launching the Easter Offensive against the South Vietnamese in March and President Nixon retaliating a few days later with a massive bombing in North Vietnam.

  The majority of American ground forces left Vietnam in August 1972, though thousands of airmen, support personnel, and Special Forces “advisers” remained in-country. In November Nixon was reelected president for a second term, and by January 1973 a cease-fire was signed by representatives of the United States and both North and South Vietnam, with the United States agreeing to withdraw remaining combat troops. North Vietnam released nearly six hundred American prisoners of war in March, and on the 29th, the U.S. involvement in Vietnam was officially declared over.

  South Vietnam would continue to fight for two more years, conceding defeat only after the capital of Saigon was captured on April 30, 1975. Le Duan, the current leader of the reorganized Vietnamese Communist Party, unified Vietnam under a communist government, whose repressive social policies included “reeducation camps,” hard labor, and executions.

  In December 1986 new leadership enacted economic and political reforms; though the Communist Party continued to hold all political power, private ownership of farms and factories was encouraged, along with economic deregulation and foreign investment: a communist government with a capitalist economy, like China.

  The impact of the Vietnam War was far-reaching. Total American deaths numbered 60,000; wounded, over 150,000; and more than 2,500 servicemen missing in action. At least 1,500 of them remain unaccounted for today. Though numbers vary greatly, casualties for South Vietnam are estimated to be at least 220,000 killed and over a million wounded, while NVA and VC forces purportedly suffered losses of over a million and an untold number of wounded. Hundreds of thousands of civilians also lost their lives across Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

  In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge under the leadership of Pol Pot continued to gain strength and support during the Vietnam War, especially after Prince Sihanouk was deposed in March 1970 in a coup d’état led by General Lon Nol. Sihanouk set up a government-in-exile in China, aligning himself with China, North Vietnam, and the Khmer Rouge to resist the Lon Nol government, which was backed by the United States.

  The resulting civil war lasted five years, until April 1975, when Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge overthrew the Lon Nol government and initiated social engineering with the goal of a classless peasant society. Over the next four years, under the totalitarian dictatorship of Pol Pot, executions, forced labor, malnutrition, and poor medical care resulted in the deaths of an estimated one to three million Cambodians—as much as 25 percent of the Cambodian population—whose bodies were buried in mass graves that became known as “killing fields.” The government of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge was overthrown by Vietnamese forces in April 1979 during the Cambodian–Vietnamese War.

  —

  FROM FORT Bragg to Fort Sam Houston, word about the events of May 2, 1968, had gotten around during the 1970s, and within the tight circles of the Special Forces community, Roy Benavidez was becoming a legend.

  He brushed it off as war buddies telling stories over a beer at the NCO club, but a single subject always came up: Why had Roy not received the Congressional Medal of Honor? “Some thought I had,” he said. “Others thought I should have, and a few had heard I had at least been recommended for it. But the discussions had almost always been over a drink, and I really never thought it was more than just talk.”

  Eventually Roy made an inquiry about the original documentation. The response he received from the Army Decorations Board was that they were unable to locate any documentation aside from the citation of the Distinguished Service Cross. Colonel Jim Dandridge, a former Special Forces intelligence officer who had been involved with the Daniel Boone mission with MACV-SOG and was based with Roy at Fort Sam Houston, told Roy he was certain that Lieutenant Colonel Drake had put him in for the Medal of Honor. Furthermore, he knew Drake was currently the director of plans, training, and security at the U.S. Army School/Training Center at Fort McClellan in Alabama.

  Dandridge invited Roy to his office, and he rang Drake on the spot and handed the phone to Roy.

  It was April 1, 1974. The last time Roy had seen Drake was at the 93rd Evac Hospital in Long Binh when he had visited with both O’Connor and Roy in the intensive care unit.

  “Benavidez?” he said now. “I thought you died.”

  “No, Sir,” Roy replied. “Not quite.”

  Drake clarified that he had put Roy in for the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) knowing that the Medal of Honor required massive documentation he didn’t have. Even the DSC had been no easy award to obtain. “All I was able to put together was some sketchy material from a few people,” Drake told Roy, “including a couple of chopper pilots. You and O’Connor were gone—I didn’t even know if you survived—and Mousseau and Wright were dead.”

  When they got off the phone, Dandridge apologized to Roy. He really thought that Roy’s actions had warranted the Medal of Honor, and he was sorry for the misinformation. Once Roy had left, Dandridge called Drake back, and Drake put the wheels in motion by writing a recommendation to upgrade Roy’s DSC to the Medal of Honor, citing new evidence not known at the time. The Army Decorations Board declined, stating insufficient evidence.

  —

  ROY CONTINUED to struggle while performing his job. After his annual physical on October 16, 1975, an army doctor wrote: “In my judgment, Master Sergeant Benavidez is not capable of performing the duty of MOS 11B5SLA in combat because of his physical limitations.”

  But Roy still wasn’t ready to retire. Although his body was beaten down and he was in constant pain, walked with a limp, and dragged himself through exercises, he requested to be tested for the physical requirements of three military occupational specialties: military policeman, correctional specialist, and special services. The result: “There are no MOS’s for which MSG Benavidez is both physically qualified and technically qualified through experience and/or training.”

  Off the record, a doctor told Roy that he not only qualified for, he deserved, disability ben
efits. “I’m not disabled,” Roy replied. “I can walk. I can still get around.”

  “You’re forty years old,” the doctor said. “You’ve got a long life ahead of you, and like it or not, these injuries from your wounds are not going to go away. And it’s all service related.” Roy would likely have to stand before a board and answer questions about his service and medical situation, the doctor explained. “All you have to do is tell the truth. Let them decide.”

  And so Roy agreed to a formal hearing on August 4, 1976, relaying to the board his doctors’ reports and injuries, more than thirty in all, each incurred during combat. Bullet, shrapnel, and bayonet wounds, to the joints, organs, and his left eye. The most concerning, chronic “issue” was a shortness of breath that resulted from all the shrapnel remaining in his body.

  “I am an adviser,” Roy said. “And this takes a lot of exertion, being out in the field or falling in with the troops in combat situations, setting an example before the enlisted men. It’s embarrassing for a senior noncommissioned officer to fall out in front of his men.” Roy paused for a long moment before continuing. “It’s a bad example.”

  “At this time do you have any limited motion in your back?” the board asked him.

  “Yes,” Roy answered. “I can bend over with time, touch my toes. I’ve done it because I’m very active, I’ve been doing exercises or PT for twenty-some-odd years, as long as I’ve been in the Army. To me, it hurts my pride even to come before the board, a medical board…but I have to realize that I’m just incapable of doing it, and rather than letting my noncommissioned officers corps down, I might as well step down.”

  After an hour of questioning, the board closed for deliberation. Fourteen minutes later, they emerged and found Roy “unfit to perform his duties due to numerous injuries resulting from combat wounds.” The resulting physical disabilities, they recounted, “are permanent and are rated at 80 percent. The board recommends that Master Sergeant Roy P. Benavidez be permanently retired.”

  “I guess I won’t make thirty years,” Roy said to Lala after receiving the decision. To which she replied, “Benavidez, I can’t believe you made twenty. Let’s go home to El Campo.”

  Sergeant First Class Leroy Wright, team leader B-56 recon team. Wright Family Archives

  Staff Sergeant Lloyd Mousseau, assistant team leader. Benavidez Family Archives

  Brian O’Connor, team radioman, with CIDG, including point man Bao (top left); translator Tuan, wearing O’Connor’s Green Beret; and grenadier Chien (far right). O’Connor Family Archives

  Specialist 4 Bob Wessel, door gunner on Greyhound Four. Armstrong Family Archives

  Specialist 4 Gary Land (left), Greyhound Four crew chief. Armstrong Family Archives

  Warrant officers James Fussell, Roger Waggie, Larry McKibben, and Jesse Naul (left to right) standing behind Warrant Officer William Armstrong with captured NVA weapons (or gifts from Special Forces). Ewing Family Archives

  Specialist 5 Paul LaChance, Mad Dog Three crew chief, in front of his gunship. LaChance Family Archives

  First Lieutenant Robin Tornow, FAC for the mission (left) and Special Forces captain Jerry Ledzinski. Ledzinski Family Archives

  Chief Warrant Officer Louis Wilson, Mad Dog Three aircraft commander. Wilson Family Archives

  Specialist 5 Pete Gailis, Mad Dog Four crew chief, at Camp Bearcat. Gailis Family Archives

  Specialist 4 Nelson Fournier, Greyhound One door gunner. U.S. Army Photo

  Warrant Officer Jerry Ewing, Greyhound Two aircraft commander. Ewing Family Archives

  Specialist 4 Dan Christensen, Greyhound One crew chief. Christensen Family Archives

  Specialist 4 Danny Clark, seventeen-year-old door gunner of Mad Dog Four. Clark Family Archives

  Warrant Officer William Darling, who volunteered as door gunner on Greyhound Three. Armstrong Family Archives

  Cecil and Maxine McKibben, with their daughter, Debbie, looking on, receive the Distinguished Service Cross for their son, Larry. McKibben Family Archives

  Roy’s retirement photo, September 2, 1975. U.S. Army Photo

  The photo used in the El Campo Leader-News cover story that originally ran on February 22, 1978. Benavidez Family Archives

  Lala, Roy, and Roger Benavidez with General Westmoreland moments after Roy received the Distinguished Service Cross in 1968. U.S. Army Photo

  The Benavidez children, Noel, Yvette, and Denise, dig into President Reagan’s jelly beans, 1981. White House Photo

  Reunited, Brian O’Connor and Roy Benavidez, with President Reagan. White House Photo

  President Reagan drapes the long-awaited Medal of Honor on Roy Benavidez. White House Photo

  15

  METTLE FOR MEDAL

  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.”