FREE GRAPHIC NOVEL: LEGEND: Green Beret Roy Benavidez Wounded 30 times, Saved 8 Troops

NEW GRAPHIC NOVEL FEATURES VIETNAM SPECIAL FORCES HERO

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Photo prints and story permission granted by the Benavidez family.
RAUL (ROY) PEREZ BENAVIDEZ
An American hero

Raul “Roy” Benavidez was born in 1935 near Cuero, TX to impoverished sharecroppers of Mexican and Yaqui Indian ancestry. Both parents died of tuberculosis before his eighth birthday. He and his younger brother, Roger, along with 8 cousins, were raised by their grandfather, an aunt and uncle, in El Campo.

As a young man growing up in humble surroundings, Benavidez shined shoes at the local bus station, labored on farms in Texas and Colorado, and worked in a tire shop. Regularly insulted as ‘a dumb Mexican’, he dropped out of school in the seventh grade.

Benavidez enlisted in the Texas Army National Guard in 1952 before entering the regular Army in 1955. Hilaria “Lala” Coy became his wife in 1959, the same year he completed airborne training and joined the 82nd Airborne Division. Benavidez stepped on a land mine while serving his first tour in Vietnam as an advisor in 1965 and was evacuated to the United States. The doctors at Brooke Army Medical Center claimed he would never walk again. Despite spinal injuries, Benavidez walked out of the hospital in July, 1966. His courage and faith served him well. It would not be the last time.

He returned to active service and trained at Fort Bragg, NC for the elite Studies and Observations Group. Still suffering from unrelenting back pain, Benavidez returned for a second tour in Vietnam in January, 1968. He was assigned to Detachment B56, 5th Special Forces Group Airborne, First Special Forces at Loc Ninh.

A devout Catholic, Benavidez was attending prayer services on May 22, 1968 when he heard a desperate radio plea, “Get us out of here! For God’s sake, get us out!” The cry for assistance came from a twelve-man Special Forces Recon Team that was pinned down in thick jungle and surrounded by a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regiment west of Loc Ninh. Three choppers had already attempted a rescue but were driven back by small arms and anti-aircraft fire. Benavidez did not have orders to go, but with a medical bag in one hand and a knife in the other, he jumped into the bay of a Huey revving up for another rescue attempt.

THE MAKING OF A LEGEND
Intense enemy fire in the area kept the chopper from landing. Hovering 10 feet off the ground, Benavidez made the sign of the cross across his chest and leaped off the chopper. The long-suffering recon unit was 75 yards away. Benavidez began the deadly gauntlet, fell when an AK-47 round pierced his right leg, sprang back to his feet but was immediately knocked off his feet again by a hand grenade that ripped his back and neck. Those initial wounds were the first of thirty seven separate bullet, shrapnel, and bayonet injures he would receive during the next 6 hours of violent combat.

Praying aloud to his Creator, Benavidez mustered the valor to rise again and run under fire to the crippled 12-man squad. He found 4 dead and 8 others badly wounded. He began passing out ammo to the soldiers still able to fight; he injected morphine into the wounded; he called in air strikes, then was hit again. Bleeding and in pain, Benavidez dragged dead and injured men to the hovering chopper while providing cover fire with an assault rifle he found on the ground. The chopper moved to recover even more bodies. The enemy fire increased.

Benavidez made another mad dash to retrieve classified documents of radio codes and call signals still secreted on the body of the dead team leader. As he seized the documents, Benavidez took another round in the stomach and additional shrapnel fragments in his back. Coughing up blood, he attempted to return to the chopper only to see the pilot receive a mortal wound. The Huey crashed to the ground.

Undaunted, Benavidez pulled wounded from the overturned chopper, called in more airstrikes, and directed the fire from helicopter gunships. Blood trickled into his eyes, temporarily blinding his vision. In the midst of deadly fire, Benavidez sat up a defensive perimeter and continued to rally injured soldiers to fight on. He later recollected, “I made the sign of the cross across my chest so often my arms looked like an airplane propeller.”

Before the second chopper came in Benavidez was wounded several more times. Urging the injured to fight on and keep praying, he slung a wounded soldier over his shoulder and scurried for the chopper. En route to the Huey, an enemy soldier jumped up and clubbed Benavidez from behind with the butt of a rifle; Benavidez and the wounded soldier fell to the earth. Bayoneted in both arms, Benavidez managed to grasp the bayonet which gouged his hand but gave him enough time to pull out a knife and kill the enemy soldier. Now with a shattered jaw, both arms lacerated, a slashed hand, bullet holes and shrapnel in his body, Benavidez assisted the last remaining injured man onto the Huey – their Vietnamese interpreter.

The rescued soldiers inside the Huey pulled Benavidez’s battered body aboard the chopper. Blood pooled, then flowed out the bay door. The flight back to Loc Ninh was a 20 minute ordeal with Benavidez holding his intestines in his hands during the entire trip. At Loc Ninh, Benavidez was triaged and pronounced dead. As the doctor attempted to zip up the body bag, Benavidez could only marshal enough strength to do one thing to prove he was still alive: he spit in the doctor’s face.
The 6 hour heroic achievement of 32 year old Roy Benavidez was one of the most astonishing feats of the Vietnam War. He was hospitalized for over a year yet refused to accept any praise, proclaiming, “No, that was my duty.” Benavidez’s commander thought this courageous wounded warrior would not live long enough to accept the Medal of Honor due to an extensive processing procedure, thus he only recommended the Distinguished Service Cross. It would take years for the wrong to be corrected.

On February 24, 1981, President Ronald Reagan presented Raul “Roy” Perez Benavidez the Medal of Honor. He accepted our nation’s highest military award with 2 pieces of shrapnel still logged in his heart and a punctured lung.

Benavidez’s suggestion to young people: “An education is the key to success. Bad habits and bad company will ruin you.”
His fatherly guidance to his son, Noel: “Never bring shame on our family name.” All 3 of his children are college graduates. In an unprecedented honor by the US Navy, the Bob Hope-class roll on roll off vehicle cargo ship the USNS Benavidez is named for an Army sergeant.
Scuttlebutt has it that when Special Forces men are in a tough scrap going badly or courage needs to be summoned, they use the radio call sign Tango Mike Mike; Roy Benavidez’s call sign.
Medal of Honor recipient Roy Benavidez died on November 29, 1998 at the age of 63 from respiratory failure and complications of diabetes. He was buried with full military honors at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. Sgt. Benavidezs’ Medal of Honor is on display at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, CA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LEGEND ANOTHER BOOK FEATURING BENAVIDEZ

LEGEND: Green Beret Roy Benavidez Was Wounded 30 times, Saved 8 Men and was brought home in a body bag. But they found he was still alive. His story is finally being told in the book Legend by Eric Blehm

The unforgettable account and courageous actions of the U.S. Army’s 240th Assault Helicopter Company and Green Beret Staff Sergeant Roy Benavidez, who risked everything to rescue a Special Forces team trapped behind enemy lines.

2 May, 1968. A twelve-man Special Forces team had been covertly inserted into a small clearing in the jungles of neutral Cambodia—where U.S. forces were forbidden to operate. Their objective, just miles over the Vietnam border, was to collect evidence that proved the North Vietnamese Army was using the Cambodian sanctuary as a major conduit for supplying troops and materiel to the south via the Ho Chi Minh Trail. What the team didn’t know was that they had infiltrated a section of jungle that concealed a major enemy base. Soon they found themselves surrounded by hundreds of NVA, under attack, low on ammunition, stacking the bodies of the dead as cover in a desperate attempt to survive the onslaught.

When Special Forces Staff Sergeant Roy Benavidez heard the distress call, he jumped aboard the next helicopter bound for the combat zone without hesitation. Orphaned at the age of seven, Benavidez had picked cotton alongside his family as a child and dropped out of school as a teen before joining the Army. Although he was grievously wounded during his first tour of duty in Vietnam and told he would never walk again, Benavidez fought his way back—ultimately earning his green beret.

What followed would become legend in the Special Operations community. Flown into the foray of battle by the courageous pilots and crew of the 240th Assault Helicopter Company, Benavidez jumped from the hovering aircraft, and ran nearly 100 yards through withering enemy fire. Despite being immediately and severely wounded, Benavidez reached the perimeter of the decimated team, provided medical care, and proceeded to organize an extraordinary defense and rescue. During the hours-long battle, he was bayoneted, shot, and hit by grenade shrapnel more than thirty times, yet he refused to abandon his efforts until every survivor was out of harm’s way.

Written with extensive access to family members, surviving members of the 240th Assault Helicopter Company, on-the-ground eye-witness accounts never before published, as well as recently discovered archival, and declassified military records, Blehm has created a riveting narrative both of Roy Benavidez’s life and career, and of the inspiring, almost unbelievable events that defined the brotherhood of the air and ground warriors in an unpopular war halfway around the world. Legend recounts the courage and commitment of those who fought in Vietnam in service of their country, and the story of one of the many unsung heroes of the war, whose actions would be scrutinized for more than a decade in a battle for a long overdue, and what many believe was an unjustly denied, Medal of Honor.

The case was reopened thirteen years later, in 1980, when a long lost—and believed dead—Green Beret eyewitness whom Benavidez had rescued that day, came forth and wrote a statement that revealed, once and for all, what happened on that fateful day in May of 1968.

“Roy Benavidez is a real badass, a modern day Spartan, the heart of what every warrior prays for when everything goes wrong.” ——MARCUS LUTTRELL, retired Navy SEAL and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Lone Survivor

“I fought beside and led U.S. Special Operations soldiers, sailors, and airmen during three wars— World War II, Korea, and Vietnam—including the men [of SOG] depicted in Legend. Never have I read a more powerfully honest, realistic, or moving account of the war in Southeast Asia. Eric Blehm masterfully encapsulates the hearts of the men, their impossible mission, and the quagmire of politics of the era and wraps it up in a single bloody battle that portrays the American fighting man at his best.” ——MAJOR GENERAL JOHN K. (JACK) SINGLAUB, U.S. Army (Ret.)
“Legend may be the most important book ever written about the men of Special Operations. It brings to life in touching and brutal detail one of Special Operations Force’s first true heroes as well as the other heroic men who fought and died with him in the jungles of Cambodia. Master Sergeant Roy Benavidez represented the best of the quiet professionals whose incredible actions were long overlooked and lost to history only to be rediscovered through Blehm’s painstaking research and magnificent writing.” ——LIEUTENANT COLONEL JASON AMERINE, U.S. Army Special Forces

http://www.amazon.com/Legend-Harrowing-Vietnam-Mission-Special/dp/0804139512/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1429113842&sr=1-1&keywords=legend%2C+eric+blehm

For the graphic novel go to AUSA

 

 

New graphic novel features Vietnam Special Forces hero https://www.ausa.org/articles/new-graphic-novel-features-vietnam-special-forces-hero#.XPcaWFRSLA0.twitter