It is the beginning of what came to be known as “Six Hours in Hell” during the Vietnam
War.
Soldiers battle for their lives as the Viet Cong closes in on all sides.
The situation seems dyer as the three evac helicopters are forced to return to base without
extracting the pinned down U.S. soldiers.
The battle rages on bullets fly through the air, grenades explode left and right.
Suddenly a man runs through the enemy lines and joins the squad.
His name is Roy Benavidez, he has been shot and wounded, but he immediately starts repositioning
the squad and preparing everyone for extraction.
Benavidez redistributes ammo, tends to the wounded, and battles alongside the battered
soldiers as they fight for their lives during the Six Hours in Hell.
At the end of the day he is the only reason that most of the squad leaves the battlefield
alive.
Roy Benavidez grew up in Texas.
His parents were of Mexican and Yaqui Indian ancestry, sadly they both died when he was
a child.
Roy and his siblings were adopted by his grandfather, uncle, and aunt.
He tried hard in school, but eventually dropped out at the age of fifteen so that he could
work and help provide for the family.
He shined shoes, sold papers, and picked cotton, all to make ends meet and put food on the
table.
Benavidez tried going back to school after working for some time, but he had been out
of the game for so long that it didn’t work out.
He decided the next best thing was to join the military.
It was 1952 during the Korean War when he enlisted in the Texas Army National Guard.
He found comradority and brotherhood in the military and joined the United States Army
in 1955.
Later he’d say that he earned his Airborne wings because of the nice pay upgrade, but
that’s what you get when your specialty is jumping out of planes.
Then Benavidez made a decision that would change the trajectory of his life.
Some of his friends were discussing joining the Army special forces.
Benavidez knew he had what it would take to join the elite ranks of the Green Berets and
pushed himself to complete the training.
He was put through physical and mentally strenuous tests that only the strongest willed soldiers
could complete.
He pushed himself and fought hard until he was part of the select few who could call
themselves snake eaters.
Benavidez had gone through a lot during his training and completed a number of missions
for the army, but nothing could prepare him for what would happen next.
While deployed in South Vietnam as an advisor to an infantry regiment, he stepped on a land
mine during a patrol and was medevaced back to the United States.
The doctors at Brooke Army Medical Center told Benavidez he would never walk again.
Roy Benavidez had never taken anything lying down and he wasn’t about to let the doctors
decide his fate.
He was discharged from active duty, but nothing would stop him from doing his duty.
Benavidez later recounted the events of how he would wait until all of the medical personnel
would leave for the night and he would sneak out of his bed.
He crawled to the wall on the far end of his room and gritted his teeth to keep from screaming
due to the agonizing pain from his spinal injury.
Once he reached the wall he would push himself against it into a standing position.
At first he willed his brain just to wiggle his toes.
Once that mission was accomplished he started to move his foot, ankle, then leg until Roy
Benavidez, against all odds walked out of the hospital.
Yes you heard correctly, Roy Benavidez forced himself to learn to walk again after taking
a direct hit from a landmine.
No one could argue that Roy Benavidez was a man who would not give up.
He had proved the doctors wrong and he knew he was needed back in Vietnam.
He had a calling and that calling was to be a soldier.
Nothing was going to stop him, not even a landmine.
He decided to go back to Vietnam in 1968.
It was during this tour Benavidez would save the lives of several men and come within inches
of death himself.
The day was May 2, 1968 and Roy Benavidez a.k.a Tango Mike Mike was assigned to the
B56 Special Forces Group in the Republic of Vietnam.
That morning a twelve man Special Forces team was sent to the jungle of Loc Ninh to confirm
intelligence that an attack by an enemy force was imminent.
After their boots hit the ground it was not long before they encountered enemy resistance.
It would seem that the intel had been correct and a massive Vietnamese force was in the
area.
The squad radioed for immediate extraction.
A three helicopter extraction flight reached the area where the men were pinned down.
But enemy fire prevented them from landing or extracting any of the soldiers.
The helicopters returned to the base where Roy Benavidez was monitoring the radios, and
offload their wounded.
Benavidez knew what he had to do to save the men.
Over the radio he had heard their cries for help and that the enemy force might be up
to one thousand men strong.
Benavidez did not hesitate.
Roy Benavidez grabbed a medical bag and slung it over his shoulder.
He knew every second counted and so he sprinted to the next helicopter preparing for departure.
He had left his gun behind and was armed only with his knife.
The helicopter lifted into the air and flew to the aid of the men who were under attack.
While hovering over the battlefield Benavidez spotted the pinned down squad.
The men were in a circle fighting for their lives and defending themselves from the Viet
Cong who surrounded them on all sides.
Master Sergeant Benavidez saw from the helicopter that his brothers in arms below were wounded
and outnumbered.
He directed the helicopter pilot to descend into a nearby clearing where he jumped from
the hovering aircraft and ran towards the fire fight.
While running to support the U.S. soldiers Benavidez was wounded by small arms fire in
his leg, face, and head.
He ignored the pain and dove into the area where the platoon were holding out from.
Despite his injuries Benavidez took control and began giving repositioning orders to the
men.
They got into formation to allow for the landing of an evac helicopter that would extract them.
Benavidez grabbed an AK-47 off one of the dead soldiers on the ground and started to
redistribute ammo and direct the fire of the squad.
Once the remaining men in the platoon had their orders Benavidez began administering
morphine to the men who had been wounded.
He picked up his radio, and with his call sign of Tango Mike Mike, directed another
chopper towards their location.
Benavidez had just called in airsupport when a bullet entered his thigh.
Benavidez had no time to be wounded or to think about his own needs.
He was focused on one thing and one thing only.
He needed to save his men.
The evac helicopter had just landed and it was time to get out of dodge.
Benavidez provided covering fire as the men ran to the helicopter.
The sound of enemy fire ramped up as they tried to prevent the squad from boarding the
chopper.
Realizing that the success of the mission and the safety of the base was at stake due
to classified documents on the platoon leader, Benavidez ran back into the jungle to recover
the body and documents.
When he reached the body a bullet entered his abdomen and shrapnel from a grenade pierced
his back.
As he lay on the ground for a moment recovering from the impact of his wounds Benavidez looked
up just in time to see the pilot of the helicopter mortally wounded by enemy fire.
The helicopter spun out of control and crashed in an explosion of metal and flames.
Benavidez took a deep breath and continued his mission to recover the classified documents.
He grabbed the papers and made his way back to the wreckage of the aircraft where he aided
the wounded men and dragged the disoriented survivors back into a defensive location.
Once the squad was redeployed and engaged in combat again Benavidez took a moment to
survey the area.
He crammed the classified documents into his uniform right as an enemy bullet entered his
stomach.
Roy Benavidez was now bleeding from wounds all over his body.
He was going in and out of consciousness, but his training and dedication to his men
carried him on.
He moved around the perimeter of the defensive lines distributing water and ammunition to
the men.
He checked in with each soldier making sure to inspire and remind them what they were
fighting for.
Then like angels sent from heaven the air strikes began.
Benavidez got on the radio and directed fire from supporting gun ships to suppress the
enemy.
This allowed for another helicopter to land for extraction.
Benavidez began to carry wounded men to the new extraction helicopter.
He made several runs and helped several battered men onto the chopper.
As he carried and loaded the final men onto the aircraft a Vietnamise soldier clubbed
him from behind with the butt of his gun.
Benavidez fell face first onto the damp mossy ground of the jungle floor.
He rolled onto his back just in time to see the light glare off the steel of a bayonet
being thrust at him.
He grabbed the bayonet with his hand, slicing his skin wide open.
This deflected the bayonet away from his body, but straight into his left arm.
Benavidez quickly pulled out his knife and plunged it into his assailants side, killing
him.
Benavidez rose from the ground, bleeding from over thirty wounds he received during the
battle.
Running purely on his will to do right and adrenaline he destroyed the remaining classified
documents, grabbed the last man, and boarded the helicopter.
Due to his heroic actions Master Sergeant Raul Perez Benavidez saved eight lives that
day.
His men hauled Benavidez into the helicopter.
Once he was in, the chopper rose into the sky and flew away from the blood soaked earth
where the last six hours in hell had commenced.
The soldiers in the chopper looked at their savior with admiration, but when they looked
closer they realized that Benavidez was holding his own intestines in his hands.
He passed out from exhaustion.
Upon landing back at the base the wounded men and recovered bodies were unloaded from
the helicopter.
While in the heat of the moment Benavidez had loaded three dead Viet Cong soldiers onto
the aircraft.
He was later asked why he had put the enemy soldiers onto the transport, to which he responded,
“I didn't want to leave anybody behind!
My mission was to recover all classified documents and if they had any papers on them, they got
carried to the helicopter.”
As the bodies were being unloaded Benavidez was mistaken for a Viet Cong and thrown into
a pile of enemy bodies because of his darker skin tone.
With the numerous wounds and blood all over his body the medics mistook him for dead and
began to zip him up in a body bag.
Benavidez remembers thinking “oh God no!” as the zipper approached the top of his body.
He could not shout or even speak because when in battle with a Viet Cong soldier his jaw
had been dislocated.
The dried blood from his wounds covered his eyes so that he couldn’t even blink.
Then he heard a voice.
“No, No, that's Roy Benavidez!" one of the rescued soldiers said.
The doctor leaned in to check if Benavidez was still alive.
Later Roy recounted that once he felt the doctor’s hand on his chest, he made the
“best shot” of his life.
He spat in the doctors face to which the doctor replied, “I think he’ll make it.”
After the daring rescue mission and battle which came to be known as “Six Hours in
Hell,” Benavidez had a total of thirty-seven separate bayonet, bullet, and shrapnel wounds.
He had saved a number of soldier’s lives and was given the Distinguished Service Cross.
Yet, he was not to be given the Medal of Honor for several years due to bureaucratic red
tape.
The board in charge of choosing a soldier to receive the Medal of Honor required that
an eyewitness, other than the soldier being recommended, give a statement.
At the time it was thought that Master Sergeant Benavidez was the only surviving member who
was at the battle of “Six Hours in Hell.”
But in 1980 Brian O'Connor, a radioman who was a part of the Special Forces team that
Benavidez rescued, provided a ten-page report on the engagement.
Apparently O’Connor had been so severely wounded that he was evacuated back to the
United States before he had been fully debriefed.
He was in Australia when he read in a newspaper about Benavidez and the refusal of the U.S.
government to award him the Medal of Honor all because of a technicality.
O’Connor contacted the State Department and submitted a report confirming the accounts
that had been previously presented by others.
He then served as the eyewitness that the government required to award Benavidez the
Medal of Honor.
Unfortunately, by the time all the paperwork was in order the time limit for the medal
had expired.
But veterans, army officials, and politicians successfully appealed to Congress and Roy
Benavidez was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism.
On February 24, 1981 President Ronald Reagan presented Master Sergeant Raul Perez Benavidez
the Medal of Honor.
The president supposedly turned to the press and the people gathered and said: "If the
story of his heroism were a movie script, you would not believe it."
We would just like to add that we would definitely go see that movie.
Roy Benavidez was a war hero.
He saved the lives of men who would have been lost without his heroic actions.
He survived and eventually walked away from a landmine blast that doctors said had crippled
him forever.
Then he went back to Vietnam and rescued U.S. soldiers in the battle which came to be known
as “Six Hours in Hell.”
He put his own life on the line so that he could save his brothers who were pinned down
by the Viet Cong.
Roy Benavidez eventually was rightfully awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery and has
gone down in history as one of the bravest and most heroic soldiers of all times.
Let us know in the comments on a scale from one to ten how badass you think Roy Benavidez
aka 'Tango Mike Mike' was.
The right answer is eleven just in case you were unsure.
If you feel inspired by the heroics of Roy Benavidez why not check out another incredible
person in the video over here or maybe you’d be more interested in the video right next
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