All hell had broken loose. A 12-man US Special Forces patrol had been ambushed by a battalion
of North Vietnamese enemies in the jungle and over 1,000 enemies were now encircling the Americans.
There was no way out. A Mexican-American
operator from MACV-SOG heard the distress call through the radio while he was attending Mass
and immediately raced for the helicopter that was going to aid his comrades.
With nothing more than a bowie knife and a First Aid kit,
the Green Beret went ahead of the others and jumped out of the chopper to help his brethren.
His name was Staff Sergeant Roy Benavidez, the Medal of Honor
recipient who single-handedly stopped 1,000 enemies from whipping out his colleagues...
A Resilient Soul
Raúl Perez “Roy” Benavidez was born on August 5, 1935, in Lindenau near Cuero, Texas. He was the
son of Salvador Benavidez Junior, a hard-working Mexican farmer, and Teresa Perez, an Indian Yaqui.
Roy’s unique family background made it seem like it came from classic Old West stories.
He was a descendant of the founders of Benavides, Texas, a town named after Plácido Benavides, one
of the thousands of Mexicans that remained in the state after it was annexed to the United States.
From his mother's side, Roy was a Yaqui, a brave and resilient indigenous tribe from Northern
Mexico that was never totally pacified by the Spanish, Mexicans, or Americans.
When Roy was just 2 years old, his father lost his life to tuberculosis, and his mother had
to remarry. However, she succumbed to the same illness merely 5 years later.
Roy and his brother Roger then moved to El Campo, where they were educated by their grandfather,
uncles, and aunts alongside eight of their cousins.
Although Roy was proud of his heritage, he was bullied at school because of his
background as a poor Mexican-American with Yaqui blood. Still, that did not keep him
from continuing his studies and making the most out of them while he had the chance.
While Roy went to school, he used to shine shoes at a bus station and helped in a local
tire shop to help with the family’s income. However, he had to drop out of school to
work full time by the time he was 15. Roy worked at several farms in Texas,
Washington, and California before deciding to join the military, and he enlisted in
the Texas National Guard at age 19 while the Korean War was at its height. Then, in 1955,
the soldier switched to Army Active Duty after committing to a military career.
Roy slowly climbed through the ranks after completing Airborne Training a few years later,
earning a place amongst the elite of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
He then married Hilaria Coy Benavidez before returning to Fort Bragg for additional training.
Despite the humiliations he suffered throughout his life,
Roy quickly gained the respect and admiration of his superiors because of his resilience,
commitment, and discipline, eventually joining the Army Special Forces.
By then, the American presence in Vietnam was escalating,
and the Army required every Green Beret it could muster to train the Vietnamese allies in Asia.
As was expected, the young Mexican-American soldier was qualified and soon joined the
5th Special Forces Group. He then became part of the elite MACV-SOG unit with the toughest special
operations soldiers in all of Vietnam. Tough as Nails
Not every man was qualified for the Military Assistance Command,
Vietnam Studies and Observations Group, or MACV-SOG, the highly classified
multi-service US special operations unit that was tasked with conducting covert operations.
Only the best troops from the Army Special Forces, Marines Force Recon, Navy Seals,
Air Force, and CIA were selected. Sergeant Roy Benavidez was one of them, and in early 1965,
he was sent to South Vietnam as an advisor. During a lone wolf classified operation,
Roy dressed as a Vietnamese local and stepped on a landmine while on patrol.
He was found hours later by a squad of Marines, who were puzzled that the man looked Hispanic
and was wearing US dog tags but was dressed as a Vietnamese. Still, they took him to the nearest
US base, and Roy was immediately sent to Fort Sam Houston in the US to attend to his wounds.
Roy surprisingly survived, but there were serious repercussions. The doctors concluded that Roy
would never walk again due to his spine wounds and began preparing his medical discharge papers.
The officer begged the doctors not to discharge him, as he was not ready to give up just yet.
Thus began an exceptional tale of commitment in which Roy slowly returned to fighting form.
During the nights, Roy would get out of bed and crawl with his elbows and chin towards a wall
where he would attempt to lift himself up without help. He started by wiggling his toes,
then his feet, and then using his ankles and legs.
He would often end up in tears, but motivated by other patients and his own rage,
he was able to walk again. After a year of training and sacrifice,
Roy walked out of the hospital in July of 1966. And despite the severity of his wounds,
he returned to Vietnam in January of 1968. It was time for payback.
Six Hours in Hell On May 2, 1968,
Staff Sergeant Roy Benavidez was finishing Catholic Mass when he heard desperate calls
for help over the radio. He then found out that a 12-man patrol composed of 9 allied Vietnamese
Mountain Men and 3 MACV-SOG personnel had been ambushed by a 1,000-strong enemy battalion.
The officer went pale after being told that one of his former comrades from Detachment B56,
Sergeant LeRoy Wright, was among them. A month before,
Wright had saved Roy’s life during a patrol. He owed him.
Without hesitation, Roy made the sign of the Cross, left Mass, grabbed an aid bag, clutched
to his combat knife, and climbed into a Huey helicopter that was heading to the rescue area.
Roy was then briefed about the situation and how the intelligence gathered about
enemy activity in the area had been totally misleading.
Some soldiers had already been lost, and three helicopters had already tried
to lift the survivors off, but the area was smoking hot. They are completely pinned down.
As the helicopter approached the dense jungle area west of Loc Ninh, Vietnam,
Roy realized what he had to do. He then told the pilot to drop him in
a jungle clearance near the evacuation zone, as he knew he would have to reach his comrades the
old-fashioned way: by walking through the jungle. Roy then jumped into the vegetation and began
running through the jungle. As he sprinted, he suddenly began to hear the firefight.
Shouts of agony and desperation became one with the explosions and bullets impacting trees,
rocks, and flesh. The Green Beret was then
shot in one leg while almost reaching the team's position. Grenade shrapnel also hit his face,
but he kept going. He then found cover near the tree line and rapidly took control of the
situation, reorganizing the surviving forces and establishing an effective defensive perimeter.
Roy then attended all the wounded as fast as he could, patching them up and giving them morphine,
and began to drag everyone to the defensive perimeter he had established.
While doing this, Benavidez was hit again by AK47 fire very close to his eye.
Still, he retaliated quickly by grabbing another enemy rifle and and
shooting at the enemy formation. Roy kept attending to the wounded,
as his adrenaline kept him going. One moment he was helping a comrade reach cover,
while the next he was firing from the opposite side of the perimeter.
While only equipped with a combat knife, the one-man Army was hit multiple times
by enemy fire as he popped grenades to signal the helicopter above them.
While the soldiers began to run towards the helicopter, Roy provided covering fire with M16s
and AK47s that he picked up from the battlefield. He then hopped into a second helicopter
and continued providing cover, but the pilot was shot, and the vehicle crashed.
Meanwhile, Roy was shot in the stomach and hit by shrapnel in his back from another grenade.
Still, he reorganized the team around the crash site while severely wounded.
The resilient officer then began to order airstrikes from friendlies to keep the enemy
at bay, but he was shot by rifle and grenade fire as he dragged the wounded to the helicopter.
By now, Roy was severely bleeding, but that didn’t stop him from attempting
to recover the body of his deceased friend, LeRoy.
However, he was forced to leave him behind after a grenade threw him to the ground.
The Green Beret was slowly losing his vision, but he was able to run towards the helicopter.
Still, he was suddenly struck in the back by a bayonet, and crying in pain,
he turned to his enemy and stabbed him multiple times with his combat knife.
Roy blacked out as soon as he reached the helicopter. He had
suffered 37 wounds and was barely able to move. His comrades believed he had perished after six
hours of combat and began to place him in a body bag. However, Roy noticed what they were doing and
mustered the little strength he had left to spit in the medic's face and signal that he was alive.
A year later, Roy was fully recovered and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions.
Then, in 1981, President Ronald Raegan awarded him the Medal of Honor
after other members of the Special Forces insisted that his award be upgraded.
The president was impressed by Roy’s story, expressing during the Pentagon ceremony that:
(QUOTE) "If the story of his heroism were a movie script, you would not believe it."
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