Roy Benavidez

Master Sergeant Raul Perez "Roy" Benavidez (August 5, 1935 – November 29, 1998) was a United States Army soldier who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his valorous actions in combat near Lộc Ninh, South Vietnam on May 2, 1968, while serving as a member of the United States Army Special Forces during the Vietnam War.

Roy P. Benavidez was born in Lindenau near Cuero, Texas, in DeWitt County.

He is a descendant of the founders of Benavides, Texas, and was the son of a Mexican farmer, Salvador Benavidez, Jr. and a Yaqui mother, Teresa Perez.

When he was two years old, his father died of tuberculosis and his mother remarried.

Five years later, his mother died from tuberculosis as well.

Benavidez and his younger Brother Roger moved to El Campo, where their grandfather, uncle and aunt raised them along with eight cousins.

Benavidez shined shoes at the local bus station, labored on farms in Texas, New Mexico and Colorado, and worked at a tire shop in El Campo.

He dropped out of school at age 15, in order to work full-time to help support the family.

Benavidez enlisted in the Texas Army National Guard in 1952 during the Korean War.

In June 1955, he switched from the Army National Guard to Army active duty.

In 1959, he married Hilaria "Lala" Coy, completed Airborne training, and was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

Benavidez returned to Fort Bragg and began training for the elite Army Special Forces.

Once qualified and accepted, he became a member of the 5th Special Forces Group; and the Studies and Observations Group (SOG).

In 1965, he was sent to South Vietnam as a Special Forces advisor to an Army of the Republic of Vietnam infantry regiment.

During his tour of duty, he went on a solo reconnaissance mission to gather Intel on the enemy troops.

It was at this moment that he stepped on a land mine during a patrol and was evacuated to the United States.

Doctors at Fort Sam Houston concluded he would never walk again and began preparing his medical discharge papers.

After over a year of hospitalization, Benavidez walked out of the hospital in July 1966, with his wife at his side, determined to return to combat in Vietnam.

Despite continuing pain from his wounds, he returned to South Vietnam in January 1968.

On May 2, 1968, a 12-man Special Forces patrol, which included nine Montagnard tribesmen, was surrounded by an NVA infantry battalion of about 1,000 men.

Benavidez heard the radio appeal for help and boarded a helicopter to respond.

Armed only with a knife, he jumped from the helicopter carrying his medical bag and ran to help the trapped patrol.

Benavidez "distinguished himself by a series of daring and extremely valorous actions... and because of his gallant choice to join voluntarily his comrades who were in critical straits, to expose himself constantly to withering enemy fire, and his refusal to be stopped despite numerous severe wounds, saved the lives of at least eight men."

At one point in the battle an NVA soldier accosted him and stabbed him with his bayonet.

Benavidez pulled it out, drew his own knife, killed him and kept going, leaving his knife in the NVA soldier's body.

He later killed two more NVA soldiers with an AK-47 while providing cover fire for the people boarding the helicopter.

After the battle, he was evacuated to the base camp, examined, and thought to be dead.

As he was placed in a body bag among the other dead in body bags, he was suddenly recognized by a friend who called for help.

A doctor came and examined him but believed Benavidez was dead.

The doctor was about to zip up the body bag when Benavidez managed to spit in his face to show that he was alive.

Benavidez had a total of 37 separate bullet, bayonet, and shrapnel wounds from the six-hour fight with the enemy battalion.

Benavidez was evacuated once again to Fort Sam Houston's Brooke Army Medical Center, where he eventually recovered.

He received the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism and four Purple Hearts.

In 1969, he was assigned to Fort Riley, Kansas.

In 1972, he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where he remained until retirement.

In 1973, after more detailed accounts became available, Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel Ralph R. Drake insisted that Benavidez receive the Medal of Honor.

By then, however, the time limit on the medal had expired.

An appeal to Congress resulted in an exemption for Benavidez, but the Army Decorations Board denied him an upgrade of his Distinguished Service Cross to the Medal of Honor.

As Benavidez noted in his MOH acceptance speech in 1981, stung by the diagnosis, as well as flag burnings and media criticism of the US military presence in Vietnam he saw on TV, he began an unsanctioned nightly training ritual in an attempt to redevelop his ability to walk.

Getting out of bed at night (against doctors' orders), Benavidez would crawl using his elbows and chin to a wall near his bedside and (with the encouragement of his fellow patients, many of whom were permanently paralyzed and/or missing limbs) he would prop himself against the wall and attempt to lift himself unaided, starting by wiggling his toes, then his feet, and then eventually (after several months of excruciating practice that, by his own admission, often left him in tears) pushing himself up the wall with his ankles and legs.