by Eric Blehm
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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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’Conno
r 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.”
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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.
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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.”
