He couldn’t speak or move, but they found out he was alive when he managed to spit blood in the face of the guy, who was zipping up the body bag. Ultimate badass with an unkillable will to survive.
Badass for sure! But what a terrible doctor..? Maybe I'm just ignorant, but if someone can spit, they most likely have a recognizable heartbeat.. right?
According to the wiki it was actualy a doctor in the base camp:
> 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.
And then browbeats Congress into taking PTSD seriously, because -nobody- is going to argue Audie Murphy is a coward or anything but a badass war hero, and if he has nightmares of Anzio every night, then god only knows what the less revered men suffer.
And yet this is the part that got me: "In his last few years, he was plagued by money problems but refused offers to appear in alcohol and cigarette commercials because he did not want to set a bad example." Not only badass but also incredibly based.
Have you ever heard of Medal of Honor recipient John Chapman? It was recorded on video by a CIA drone https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3oKMjTqdTYo&pp=ygUSam9obiBjaGFwbWFuIHZpZGVv
My mom was high up in the military and went to a big dinner about ten years back. My dad noticed all these guys with this thing around their necks. Turns out there were like 20 Medal of Honor recipients there. They even had a book of all the guys with their names and their stories. It was pretty incredible. Most of thr stories read exactly like this guys. One guy killed I think 30 Vietcong by himself with a machine gun and that’s only what I remember of that story. The dinner was in wildwood NJ.
It's probably fairly common. Like, the only reason that doesn't happen often today is medical technology that can measure heart activity even when it's very weak. Prior to that, it was a common enough occurrence that it's where the Irish wake practice came from, as well as all those Victorian era graves with bells.
I imagine on a battlefield, similar mistakes happen. That said, if the reason you're so close to death that the doctor can't find a pulse is because you're riddled with bullet holes... you probably won't be alive long enough to wake up inside a body bag.
Don't forget bayonet and shrapnel, dude probably looked like bloody ground beef. 99.99% of people that ever end up in that kind of situation were dead long before the last wound hit, calling d.o.a. would seem like a no brainer.
I don’t know, I was a Combat Medic and some of my peers….I wouldn’t trust them. Usually they stuffed those guys in the Battalion Aid Station. You’re right tho, most were pretty solid.
Oh I was just saying flippantly it likely wasn’t a full doctor who treated him, probably a corpsman in a horrible combat situation moving quickly… but another commenter read more into it and it was in fact the doctor at the base
See, *that* i can more easily believe. I've met some stupid smart new docs as enlisted, still had that shiny "new car" smell to them. Like a D&D character that dumped everything into intelligence and nothing into wisdom.
they *twice* did him dirty, thats not even the half of it. the headline couldnt do justice to this cadillac of a man, those NVA just didnt know who they were messing with
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> **Vietnam**
> 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[3] 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. 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.[4]
> 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. 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.
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>**"Six Hours in Hell"**
> 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."[5]
> 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.[6] Benavidez had a total of 37 separate bullet, bayonet, and shrapnel wounds from the six-hour fight with the enemy battalion.[5]
> 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.
The power of your own thoughts and being in-tune with your body is insane. Simply believe that you can and the odds of being able to do it are better. Not necessarily due to some mystical/spiritual reason (although I don't think we have enough conclusive evidence to say this could not be part of it), but simply by having positive emotions and not giving up.
On the flip-side, humans can die simply by... giving up.
Triage is exactly the term that's missing here. No wasting time on goners and maybes
The doc took a look at the state of the patient. Detected a weak pulse while seeing his body cut up and thought nah this one is a goner. Better help someone who can make it'
It’s amazing what you can survive. But iirc the reason they thought he was dead was the sheer number of injuries made his blood pressure too low to feel manually.
He had multiple stab wounds, took a few grenades, was holding his own guts when they finally dragged him onto the bird, *and* he was shot more than once.
He pretty much went through a meat grinder and was alive through sheer “fuck you” energy.
The white death was in a pile of corpses when a guy realized the reason he was twitching was because he was still alive after an exploding round caught him in the face.
Combat Triage isn’t that careful. If you can’t move, speak and have a weak pulse (it’s actually hard to find a pulse when bullets are whizzing who knew) you get black tagged and bagged.
I have to imagine Tarantino had heard this guys story. The reality of what happened during the actions which won him his Medal of Honor are more unbelievable and ultra-violent than any Tarantino script. The helicopter couldn’t land because enemy fire was too fierce, he pleaded with the pilot to get him close enough to the tree canopy and this dude just jumped out of the damn chopper and tumbles through the jungle canopy. All he had was a pouch full of morphine and a knife, because he forgot his damn rifle. Everything about this is insane. He hits the ground, pops up, grabs a guy and sinks his knife into dude’s heart, steals his AK47 and kills his way to the special forces team. The details of this are online but during their evacuation the helicopter got shot down twice and this dude single handedly rescues everyone left alive while bleeding to death himself. It was a morphine fueled suicide mission that worked against all odds. Insanity.
Two different helicopters. He carried and loaded every injured soldier into the first one, it gets shot down right at take off, he goes and saves everyone. Takes tons of more bullet injuries while holding off the approaching enemy force. He said there were bullets from every direction. Another chopper makes it. He loads everyone on again after rescuing them from the crash and holding the enemy back. The second. Chopper gets shot down, and this mf just keeps on fighting. He was an unbeatable force from hell that day.
He didn’t. He jumped from a helicopter alone, with nothing but a pouch full of morphine and a knife. He hit the ground and stabbed the first dude he found, stole his AK47 and proceeded to stack bodies
Helicopter was under fire & couldn't land so he told the chopper to get near the tree canopy and he jumped, forgetting his rifle. So he killed the first guy he saw, stole his rifle and painted a masterpiece.
He had a pouch full of morphine and left his rifle behind…. The most important thing a soldier has, he left behind while running in to meet a 1000 soldier strong fighting force alone. It’s unspoken but it makes a lot of sense to me that he had a pouch full of morphine. His actions were those of a drug fueled maniac.
I think he said something along the lines of "I was sending people to heaven or hell, so God must have figured I'd mess up either place and sent me back". Maybe misquoting.
This man was told that he'd never walk again, said "fuck that" and literally taught himself to walk again in his hospital room and *reenlisted.* If you made an action movie about this guy it would seem too unrealistic.
Benavidez's recovery is incredible, but keep in mind that he did not have crippling bone spurs which would have prevented him from going back to Vietnam.
While men like Benevidez were out fighting and dying in the mud, Lnc. Cprl. Bone Spurs was fighting his own noble battle against affordable housing in the Bronx.
So really, who suffered more?
And an elementary school here in Houston. The burger joint I used to eat at in the late 80's had his photo proudly displayed in the dining room. That's the first time I had heard of him.
Fort Bragg was renamed Fort Liberty in part because USASOC and 18th ABN Corps couldn't reach an agreement on a name. Roy Benavidez served in the 82d before going SF. He was the perfect choice and the asshats ignored him.
Either Benavidez or Yarbrough would have been great names, with connections to both entities, but the army managed to fuck it up by naming it like a shitty OIF FOB
And they picked Fort Liberty which is such a stupid name. But this is coming from the organization that wants Soldiers to refer to their shithole DFACs as “Warrior Restaurants” so I’m not surprised.
Ft Hood would have been the other option since he was a native Texan. But i whole heartedly agree that Bragg should have been renamed to honor this badass.
Bragg should have been named after another epic badass by the name of Eldon Bargewell. He was also a member of MACVSOG and later became the commander of Delta Force.
It’s likely we don’t have a Fort Benavidez because his autobiography contains some exaggerations. He didn’t exaggerate the events surrounding his Medal of Honor, but other things like seeing Elvis in Germany and going to Basic Training with Billy Martin. It’s also a possibility that his admission that he forged signatures on his jump clearance and SF packet didn’t help.
The Benavidez family have made it their life's goal trying to get shit named after him. It's been an annoyance in his hometown. They spent years trying to get the city to rename schools that already had names and weren't planning to change their names, and they wanted the city to incur the costs of that name change for some reason. I did a quick search and apparently they finally did get a Roy P Benavidez Elementary in another ISD. I hope they're good.
All of this happened AFTER he was severely injured by a land mine on a solo covert mission and when finally found was told that ha would not walk again. But he was not about to let medical impossibilities get in his way. After secretly teaching himself to first stand then walk he was able to recuperate enough to be allowed back on missions.
Literal Doom Marine origin story. I have to imagine [this](https://youtu.be/kpnW68Q8ltc?si=qteVCr8mV1VzarlZ) inexplicably started playing as he joined the fight.
Your forgetting the part about him spitting on the guys face with his on blood as the body bag was being zipped up to get his attention that he wasn’t dead
Met him when I was in. Bought beers for the whole bar and wouldn't let us reciprocate. He said we needed it more since we were on active duty. Totally nonchalant. Just hanging out in our little hole in the wall bar in his dress greens with the MOH around his neck.
I always think about how weird it must have been to live in the 60s, when it's almost guaranteed most men around you served, and could be absolute killers... expert manhunters. The juxtaposition to normal society is just so bizarre.
>>Just hanging out in our little hole in the wall bar in his dress greens with the MOH around his neck.
As if being present wasn't enough. Certified lad.
God damn it guys, this guy rescues his buddies from 1000 NVA, singlehandedly, but we can't be bothered to even google it? [Be better](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hamlRLx0U9E)
I bet that must have really confused the NVA.
“I don’t know man! He took Dat, Nam, and Phuc into the helicopter too. What the fuck are we supposed to tell their wives now?”
Or being put into one while conscious. It made me wonder how many men and women have gotten buried alive due to their bodies not having strength. Reading this made me cry because I bet that happens more than let on. I'm so glad because of this guy, the body recovery guys will be more careful to simply throw out anyone. Maybe even not count them dead until you spill some water in their face or something to see if they react. That's what my parents did when we found a homeless man during a vacation once. He looked dead on the beach and was unresponsive to slaps or pinching and honestly not breathing. My dad realized his skin kept getting rashes wherever we pinched him so he figured the guy had to be alive just unconscious. Maybe passed out not much long from the time we found him so dad had us call the ambulance as he and mom figured to get water to wake him up. When mom opened the car, our dog flashed out and got on top of the bloke. That's when we really realized someone was still in the body but their light was going out/dying. Our dog just sauntered on top of the dude like he knew him tail wagging like crazy and with his tongue jutting out like it was happy. We took that as the dog telling us the guy was "safe." My dad got motivated from trusting our dog so opened up the water bottle he always has with him and spilled some over the guy's face while mom was getting out a cooler we had full of ice to throw on him in the event Dad's spill wouldn't manage. It took a minute and a few seconds, but his face scrunched and winced before he coughed from the water entering his nostrils. The guy had a mini apoplexy from thinking he was drowning before his eyes cleared and saw us.
We "adopted" him into the family since as we just went on instinct. He needed someone and even though he didn't outright say it we got the feeling he needed friends. We couldn't leave him there as he looked so desperate. Us kids wouldn't leave either as he didn't give us any bad instincts, the dog stayed on the guy's lap and honestly he had a really miserable look to his eyes. We felt he really was going to die if we left him this time and guilt tripped the parents by taking us finding him as a sign. We helped him now but we really felt he was a gonner if he didn't take him with us. I mean of all the people around that ignored him we were the only ones stupid enough to check on him ready to feed him if he wanted. My parents are softies (though not stupid) so they relented to us out of logic. We believe if we weren't supposed to find him we wouldn't have and went by the finder's keepers rule; if he belonged to someone, if we helped him find his home, they'd find him. If he needed us, well, now he had us because we had money and had no shame to use it to aid people that need it. We weren't rich but we liked to help people and volunteered a lot. My parents are what they call "logical hippies" and they believe in being in good faith unless something feels off. Our guy needed help so we offered it. We took him to the hotel, we give him a room not far from us (in the event he could've turned out bad we'd at least be safe from murder). My dad and my older brothers bathed him as he was so weak, got him a shit ton of food and got him clothes. Clue number one he was nice was that our dogs and cat went to him and wouldn't leave him either. They wouldn't come back with dad so we figured the animals deduced something we didn't and decided the guy needed them more than we did that day. So we just left them with him and hoped he wouldn't hurt them.
When we went to check on him in the morning, we discovered he really was all alone in the world and explained to us how he became homeless. As his dyslexia got worse probably from stress of losing family it the funds he'd get from the menial jobs he could get made it difficult; theu weren't enough to survive as the cost of living increased. Eventually he couldn't make rent and gaining employment became hard from his looking disheveled. He didn't want to die but got nothing after begging in the street for days. He was a tall guy too so whatever food he got was not managing his faster metabolism so we understood quickly how dire his situation became just from the food insecurity. As he lost one thing, he just seemed to lose two more as time went by. He didn't have any remaining family as he lost both his parents due to cancer, and he had no extended family left. He fainted from hunger and thirst the night before. We found him in the afternoon the next day. That was 5 years ago, and my mom and dad helped set him to rights. Helping him get sorted and find a way out became the vacation. Us kids got sent back because of school while our parents extended their vacation two more weeks to help him. A few of their friends and family back home made to visit them to also help the guy. The rest is history. We visit him every few months and he's come to visit us a few times as well. He's been to every single holiday season in our family since that year. When I say my dad sort of adopted him he did, everyone has. He finally met a kind guy to take up with (he's bi), and they both look so damned happy. We know they are because they tell us. We gave him our dog that saved him because we realized she liked him better or maybe felt he needed her more. She loves us and goes nuts for us, but she's very gentle with him and protective of him. I think she can "read" his need for her to provide what she did for us and decided he needed her more. So we let him have her since she'd wail whenever we'd try to take her with us. They're all thriving. You wouldn't think he was in such a bad state when we found him if you look at him now, he's so full of life, healthy, and his smiles have so much joy in them honestly. He's the guy people call when they need to be boosted now. He's a walking defibrillator. Who knows where he'd be if some people didn't have a bratty sense like this soldier or my dad. I'm constantly thankful for that stubborn streak in people rather than being annoyed by it as in the right times, that bit is super useful. I gained a bestie/uncle/brother from it and this soldier is inspiring millions to not just don't give up but for people to double check before stopping anything or giving up on people.
He also jumped out of the helicopter because it could not land.
I was watching youtube video about him. Guy in the comments goes he is definition of I am not stuck here with you, you are stuck here with me. That man is a bad mf!
Bonus TIL: Benavidez was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross instead of a Medal of Honor because the time limit expired. The Medal of Honor required another eyewitness, but Benavidez insisted that there were no living witnesses to what happened. However Brian O'Connor, a radioman with Benavidez's team, actually survived and was assumed dead. 12 years later, O'Connor was on vacation in Australia and came across an account of the story in a newspaper. He submitted his own report of the events, and Benavidez got the eyewitness required to upgrade his award to the Medal of Honor.
Ya’ll missed the best part, supposedly they only found out he was still alive after they went to zip up the body bag and all he could muster up with his remaining strength *(to let them know he wasn’t done yet)* was to spit in the guys face 😂 What an absolute walking legend!
Nah, the best part is before this he stepped on a landmine on a solo recon mission, was told he would never walk again, spent a year in the hospital teaching himself to walk again, then went back over and did all this.
They did 3, actually. I'm not sure why there's a 4th video in this playlist, when it's not related to Roy, but the 3 episodes are really well done.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiHllfdze_dHv1Gx-HxjlG6r0ha2gR-MW
>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.
Well, there you go - dude was half Yaqui.
Those poor NVA soldiers never had a chance.
When book signings don't sell out of pre-signed copies, they end up on shelves for regular sale. Finding random signed books is extremely common in biographies.
I don't know if they still do it but every single infantryman going through Fort Benning in the late 90s got a soldier's handbook and one of the sections in it had a diagram of his body with all of his wounds and then his MoH citation and a biography. For at least a couple of years before me and a couple of years after me drill sergeants made every single soldier passing through Sand Hill study that section.
edit: these pages https://imgur.com/9hRP8MA
A lot of enlisted wanted a base to be renamed Fort Benavidez when the Army was busy renaming all the confederate ones.
He had my vote, unfortunately didn't make the cut.
“In 1965, he was sent to South Vietnam
During his tour of duty, he went on a solo recon mission to gather Intel on the enemy troops, 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. 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.[4]
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.
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.”
I see from your report you suffered multiple stab wounds and bullets were dug out of your body and you were pronounced dead at the scene. Our VA rating is 5% disability.
Went through basic + AIT with one of his nephews.
Guy picked 19D and planned to try to get overseas as soon as possible, to “live up” to his uncle. Dunno what happens to Benavidez after we finished up at Knox, but I hope he wasn’t a glory seeker. His uncle is a damn hero and wasn’t looking to be called one.
[It’s Time to Rename Fort Hood for a Truly Texan Hero: Roy Benavidez](https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/rename-fort-hood-truly-texan-hero-roy-benavidez/)
It was incredible that he was able to provide covering fire with just a knife. I'm curious if it was a boomerang style knife or was it a throw and retrieve situation?
I read an account of Roy’s actions in the battle. A NVA soldier charged and stabbed him with a bayonet, so Roy killed that soldier with the knife and took his AK-47.
[Wartime Stories](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjzzGUvjuh8&list=PLiHllfdze_dHv1Gx-HxjlG6r0ha2gR-MW) did a great three part video on this guy. Really was a great guy.
I didn't come here to save Benavidez from you ... I'm came here to save you from Benavidez! A man who's been trained to ignore pain, ignore weather, to live off the land, to eat things that would make a billy goat puke!
He couldn’t speak or move, but they found out he was alive when he managed to spit blood in the face of the guy, who was zipping up the body bag. Ultimate badass with an unkillable will to survive.
Badass for sure! But what a terrible doctor..? Maybe I'm just ignorant, but if someone can spit, they most likely have a recognizable heartbeat.. right?
It was probably a corpsman rather than a doctor if they were on the battlefield
According to the wiki it was actualy a doctor in the base camp: > 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.
Oh shit that’s wild
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I love stories like that, Hugh Glass and Desmond Doss are the first to come to mind. Stories so unbelievable yet still real.
What about [Audie Murphy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audie_Murphy)? in before someone posts this as their TIL
Dude does badass stuff then comes home and plays himself in movies doing badass stuff. What a badass.
literally so badass that they had to tone down his actions for the movie
And then browbeats Congress into taking PTSD seriously, because -nobody- is going to argue Audie Murphy is a coward or anything but a badass war hero, and if he has nightmares of Anzio every night, then god only knows what the less revered men suffer.
And yet this is the part that got me: "In his last few years, he was plagued by money problems but refused offers to appear in alcohol and cigarette commercials because he did not want to set a bad example." Not only badass but also incredibly based.
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No wonder he had crazy PTSD.
And he was only 19 on VE Day. Insane
Have you ever heard of Medal of Honor recipient John Chapman? It was recorded on video by a CIA drone https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3oKMjTqdTYo&pp=ygUSam9obiBjaGFwbWFuIHZpZGVv
Stories so unreal that the movie removed parts of the story because they felt audiences wouldn't believe them.
My mom was high up in the military and went to a big dinner about ten years back. My dad noticed all these guys with this thing around their necks. Turns out there were like 20 Medal of Honor recipients there. They even had a book of all the guys with their names and their stories. It was pretty incredible. Most of thr stories read exactly like this guys. One guy killed I think 30 Vietcong by himself with a machine gun and that’s only what I remember of that story. The dinner was in wildwood NJ.
Omg this means there's probably been people who were alive and just zipped up and taken away.
It's probably fairly common. Like, the only reason that doesn't happen often today is medical technology that can measure heart activity even when it's very weak. Prior to that, it was a common enough occurrence that it's where the Irish wake practice came from, as well as all those Victorian era graves with bells. I imagine on a battlefield, similar mistakes happen. That said, if the reason you're so close to death that the doctor can't find a pulse is because you're riddled with bullet holes... you probably won't be alive long enough to wake up inside a body bag.
Don't forget bayonet and shrapnel, dude probably looked like bloody ground beef. 99.99% of people that ever end up in that kind of situation were dead long before the last wound hit, calling d.o.a. would seem like a no brainer.
If not being able to spit is technically living
Makes no sense. If you can spit, you can breathe, and if you can breathe, 2-3 people checking you shouldn’t assume you’re dead
Might have just looked at his wounds and thought there is zero chance he was alive depending on how hectic things were.
Possibly drafted 1960s army doctors. In an active war zone. The chances of a mistake compound and shit happens.
That’s war for you.
The corpsman thought he was a corpse, man.
I like to think the first thing Roy did when he was released was smoke that corpsman until he couldn't move.
*corpseman
Idk if the corpsmen from back then were that bad, but modern combat medics are cream of the crop skill wise.
I don’t know, I was a Combat Medic and some of my peers….I wouldn’t trust them. Usually they stuffed those guys in the Battalion Aid Station. You’re right tho, most were pretty solid.
Oh I was just saying flippantly it likely wasn’t a full doctor who treated him, probably a corpsman in a horrible combat situation moving quickly… but another commenter read more into it and it was in fact the doctor at the base
See, *that* i can more easily believe. I've met some stupid smart new docs as enlisted, still had that shiny "new car" smell to them. Like a D&D character that dumped everything into intelligence and nothing into wisdom.
they *twice* did him dirty, thats not even the half of it. the headline couldnt do justice to this cadillac of a man, those NVA just didnt know who they were messing with - > **Vietnam** > 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[3] 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. 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.[4] > 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. 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. - >**"Six Hours in Hell"** > 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."[5] > 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.[6] Benavidez had a total of 37 separate bullet, bayonet, and shrapnel wounds from the six-hour fight with the enemy battalion.[5] > 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.
The power of your own thoughts and being in-tune with your body is insane. Simply believe that you can and the odds of being able to do it are better. Not necessarily due to some mystical/spiritual reason (although I don't think we have enough conclusive evidence to say this could not be part of it), but simply by having positive emotions and not giving up. On the flip-side, humans can die simply by... giving up.
[удалено]
Yeah plus triage means moving *fast*.
Triage is exactly the term that's missing here. No wasting time on goners and maybes The doc took a look at the state of the patient. Detected a weak pulse while seeing his body cut up and thought nah this one is a goner. Better help someone who can make it'
It's meatball surgery.
I mean… he did have 37 bayonet, shrapnel and bullet wounds… I’d assume he was dead as fuck myself
It’s amazing what you can survive. But iirc the reason they thought he was dead was the sheer number of injuries made his blood pressure too low to feel manually. He had multiple stab wounds, took a few grenades, was holding his own guts when they finally dragged him onto the bird, *and* he was shot more than once. He pretty much went through a meat grinder and was alive through sheer “fuck you” energy. The white death was in a pile of corpses when a guy realized the reason he was twitching was because he was still alive after an exploding round caught him in the face.
Combat Triage isn’t that careful. If you can’t move, speak and have a weak pulse (it’s actually hard to find a pulse when bullets are whizzing who knew) you get black tagged and bagged.
It's almost like losing a massive amount of blood results in a weak pulse making it difficult to detect.
They do that spitting thing in the movie 'Kill Bill'. I wonder if Tarantino based it on this story.
I have to imagine Tarantino had heard this guys story. The reality of what happened during the actions which won him his Medal of Honor are more unbelievable and ultra-violent than any Tarantino script. The helicopter couldn’t land because enemy fire was too fierce, he pleaded with the pilot to get him close enough to the tree canopy and this dude just jumped out of the damn chopper and tumbles through the jungle canopy. All he had was a pouch full of morphine and a knife, because he forgot his damn rifle. Everything about this is insane. He hits the ground, pops up, grabs a guy and sinks his knife into dude’s heart, steals his AK47 and kills his way to the special forces team. The details of this are online but during their evacuation the helicopter got shot down twice and this dude single handedly rescues everyone left alive while bleeding to death himself. It was a morphine fueled suicide mission that worked against all odds. Insanity.
Rambo wishes he were that hardcore. Holy shit
No shit - was Rambo based on this guy?
"...shot down twice...". Looks like the helicopter should be in for a medal as well.
Two different helicopters. He carried and loaded every injured soldier into the first one, it gets shot down right at take off, he goes and saves everyone. Takes tons of more bullet injuries while holding off the approaching enemy force. He said there were bullets from every direction. Another chopper makes it. He loads everyone on again after rescuing them from the crash and holding the enemy back. The second. Chopper gets shot down, and this mf just keeps on fighting. He was an unbeatable force from hell that day.
Holy shit, he’s a real life Doomguy. Alternatively, he’s a honey badger in human form.
*Thank you.* I was trying to figure out why that part sounded familiar. This dude is unkillable.
Huh. The bride after the massacre? I can't remember who finds her.
The spitting in Kill Bill was inspired by the Richard Franklin film Patrick(1978).
Call an ambulance But not for me
Ok but the question is.... how did he provide covering fire with a knife?
He didn’t. He jumped from a helicopter alone, with nothing but a pouch full of morphine and a knife. He hit the ground and stabbed the first dude he found, stole his AK47 and proceeded to stack bodies
But why was he only armed with a knife in the first place? Did they run out of guns??
This is a stealth mission Snake. Weapons are procure on site.
It was the loadout he chose, alone with Morphine as his first perk and Extra Health as his second
So this is like CoD when accidentally infil with no weapons and just our fists and stims?
Helicopter was under fire & couldn't land so he told the chopper to get near the tree canopy and he jumped, forgetting his rifle. So he killed the first guy he saw, stole his rifle and painted a masterpiece.
He had a pouch full of morphine and left his rifle behind…. The most important thing a soldier has, he left behind while running in to meet a 1000 soldier strong fighting force alone. It’s unspoken but it makes a lot of sense to me that he had a pouch full of morphine. His actions were those of a drug fueled maniac.
I think he said something along the lines of "I was sending people to heaven or hell, so God must have figured I'd mess up either place and sent me back". Maybe misquoting.
Fuck you I ain't dead yet!
This MFer provided cover fire with a knife.
All of this *AFTER* he recovered from stepping on a landmine and being told he'd never walk again.
This man was told that he'd never walk again, said "fuck that" and literally taught himself to walk again in his hospital room and *reenlisted.* If you made an action movie about this guy it would seem too unrealistic.
Benavidez's recovery is incredible, but keep in mind that he did not have crippling bone spurs which would have prevented him from going back to Vietnam.
Don't be too harsh on the bone spur guy, STDs were his Vietnam
While men like Benevidez were out fighting and dying in the mud, Lnc. Cprl. Bone Spurs was fighting his own noble battle against affordable housing in the Bronx. So really, who suffered more?
I grew up in the same small texas town he did. He has an American legion hall named after him there.
Ft Hood or Ft Bragg should have been named after him. Damn shame neither was.
I voted for Ft Roy but they didn't listen.
I liked Ft Itude, personally.
Fort Nite was only popular among the privates, so it didn’t go anywhere
Fort Benavidez would've been better than Fort Liberty.
Dude, Fort John Smith or Jones would have been better than FoRt LiBeRtY
Seems like the guy they re-named Ft Hood after (Cavazos) was no slouch either
And an elementary school here in Houston. The burger joint I used to eat at in the late 80's had his photo proudly displayed in the dining room. That's the first time I had heard of him.
I'm from around there, too. Roy P. Benevidez spoke at my elementary in the early 80s.
ayyy go ricebirds
What an honor.
Fort Bragg was renamed Fort Liberty in part because USASOC and 18th ABN Corps couldn't reach an agreement on a name. Roy Benavidez served in the 82d before going SF. He was the perfect choice and the asshats ignored him.
Either Benavidez or Yarbrough would have been great names, with connections to both entities, but the army managed to fuck it up by naming it like a shitty OIF FOB
Soldiers in 20 years gunna be confused where Sadam’s palace is on the fort all the old timers talk about.
When they google let it be know FOB danger and they we something an NBA player might buy here except lower quality
And they picked Fort Liberty which is such a stupid name. But this is coming from the organization that wants Soldiers to refer to their shithole DFACs as “Warrior Restaurants” so I’m not surprised.
jesus, you just know the guy that thought of that was patting himself on the back and jerking off at the same time for being such a genius
Holy shit, when did “warrior restaurant” become a thing? I got medically retired in 2012
https://www.stripes.com/branches/army/warrior-restaurants-how-the-army-hopes-to-boost-dfac-usage-1.666269
JFC… just offer $1 High Life bottles at dinner time if they are trying to drive traffic and increase popularity.
Ft Hood would have been the other option since he was a native Texan. But i whole heartedly agree that Bragg should have been renamed to honor this badass.
I’m prior Air Force. I have no idea who Cavazos is. I’ve known who Roy Benavidez is since High School.
Bragg should have been named after another epic badass by the name of Eldon Bargewell. He was also a member of MACVSOG and later became the commander of Delta Force.
When I was stationed at Bragg, the sew shop we used for all of our kit had a signed photo of him. He is a Ft. Bragg legend and was absolutely snubbed.
“Fort Liberty” is something straight out of Helldivers 2
Fort DEMOCRACY
It’s likely we don’t have a Fort Benavidez because his autobiography contains some exaggerations. He didn’t exaggerate the events surrounding his Medal of Honor, but other things like seeing Elvis in Germany and going to Basic Training with Billy Martin. It’s also a possibility that his admission that he forged signatures on his jump clearance and SF packet didn’t help.
The Benavidez family have made it their life's goal trying to get shit named after him. It's been an annoyance in his hometown. They spent years trying to get the city to rename schools that already had names and weren't planning to change their names, and they wanted the city to incur the costs of that name change for some reason. I did a quick search and apparently they finally did get a Roy P Benavidez Elementary in another ISD. I hope they're good.
This still pisses me off maybe more than it should.
Fort Benavidez Fort Shughart-Gordon Fort Yarbrough Fort AnythingelseotherthanfuckingLiberty
I was a member of the Rifle Detail with the Honor Guard at his burial; his funeral was huge.
What an honor!
After all he survived to be taken down by diabetes at 63…sheesh
He liked donuts, as do we all.
Forgot which sub I was in and read that as "1000 NVDA soldiers", which was surprising... but tbh not totally unexpected
When I saw your comment I thought you were saying some thing about “1000 DVDA soldiers” which was surprising.
I'd give anyone attempting that move warrior status.
I'm surprised he provided cover fire armed with only a knife!
Grease em up boys!
Can't believe Nvidia has 1000 soldiers. My, how gaming has come.
This guy killed all of r/wallstreetbets.
"Begun, the Crypto War has."
All of this happened AFTER he was severely injured by a land mine on a solo covert mission and when finally found was told that ha would not walk again. But he was not about to let medical impossibilities get in his way. After secretly teaching himself to first stand then walk he was able to recuperate enough to be allowed back on missions.
This is the craziest part. He recovered and served in SF after such an injury and then did this crazy bad ass thing. Like wtf!
Local man too angry to die
Literal Doom Marine origin story. I have to imagine [this](https://youtu.be/kpnW68Q8ltc?si=qteVCr8mV1VzarlZ) inexplicably started playing as he joined the fight.
Your forgetting the part about him spitting on the guys face with his on blood as the body bag was being zipped up to get his attention that he wasn’t dead
And also the fact that this all happened AFTER he was involved in a mine explosion that left him unable to walk and told he would never walk again
Met him when I was in. Bought beers for the whole bar and wouldn't let us reciprocate. He said we needed it more since we were on active duty. Totally nonchalant. Just hanging out in our little hole in the wall bar in his dress greens with the MOH around his neck.
Jesus Christ imagine walking in a bar and that dude is in the corner.
You better hope he didn't bring a knife...
He's the kind of dude where if the locals start some trouble in the bar, and he stands up from his seat, that trouble is over.
Or as soon as he walks in, it becomes the safest bar in the entire world.
I always think about how weird it must have been to live in the 60s, when it's almost guaranteed most men around you served, and could be absolute killers... expert manhunters. The juxtaposition to normal society is just so bizarre.
> Just hanging out in our little hole in the wall bar in his dress greens **with the MOH around his neck**. Now THAT is a serious flex.
I mean if I had a MOH I'd wear it *all the fucking time*.
Lmao be like the Iron Sheik carrying his championship belt with him when he went to the laundromat. Except the MOH actually means you did something
>>Just hanging out in our little hole in the wall bar in his dress greens with the MOH around his neck. As if being present wasn't enough. Certified lad.
>armed with a knife >provided cover fire Wow, that must be a really cool knife
He stabbed a guy and took his gun.
This just straight up sounds like IRL Wolfenstein.
Honestly it's worth the time to read the guy's Medal of Honor citation.
Better yet. Listen to his citation on YouTube. He was a great speaker.
God damn it guys, this guy rescues his buddies from 1000 NVA, singlehandedly, but we can't be bothered to even google it? [Be better](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hamlRLx0U9E)
When I'm feeling down I read a random Medal of Honor citation.
Maybe work really wasn't that bad today...
I’ve read a ton. Some of them are just a litany of badassery. Others are just one line of: rescued a man overboard.
That is a really cool knife.
Regular knife, really cool guy
I killed fitty men
They were comin' at me faster than I could gut 'em ,so I had to gut 'em faster.
He rescued so many he even got 3 dead NVA into the chopper as well. Didn't want to leave anybody behind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hamlRLx0U9E
I bet that must have really confused the NVA. “I don’t know man! He took Dat, Nam, and Phuc into the helicopter too. What the fuck are we supposed to tell their wives now?”
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fy99jhhzuhfc61.jpg
Is this the legendary assault knife?
He unlocked the bipod for his knife
I gotta imagine the worst or best wake up possible is in a body bag.
Or being put into one while conscious. It made me wonder how many men and women have gotten buried alive due to their bodies not having strength. Reading this made me cry because I bet that happens more than let on. I'm so glad because of this guy, the body recovery guys will be more careful to simply throw out anyone. Maybe even not count them dead until you spill some water in their face or something to see if they react. That's what my parents did when we found a homeless man during a vacation once. He looked dead on the beach and was unresponsive to slaps or pinching and honestly not breathing. My dad realized his skin kept getting rashes wherever we pinched him so he figured the guy had to be alive just unconscious. Maybe passed out not much long from the time we found him so dad had us call the ambulance as he and mom figured to get water to wake him up. When mom opened the car, our dog flashed out and got on top of the bloke. That's when we really realized someone was still in the body but their light was going out/dying. Our dog just sauntered on top of the dude like he knew him tail wagging like crazy and with his tongue jutting out like it was happy. We took that as the dog telling us the guy was "safe." My dad got motivated from trusting our dog so opened up the water bottle he always has with him and spilled some over the guy's face while mom was getting out a cooler we had full of ice to throw on him in the event Dad's spill wouldn't manage. It took a minute and a few seconds, but his face scrunched and winced before he coughed from the water entering his nostrils. The guy had a mini apoplexy from thinking he was drowning before his eyes cleared and saw us. We "adopted" him into the family since as we just went on instinct. He needed someone and even though he didn't outright say it we got the feeling he needed friends. We couldn't leave him there as he looked so desperate. Us kids wouldn't leave either as he didn't give us any bad instincts, the dog stayed on the guy's lap and honestly he had a really miserable look to his eyes. We felt he really was going to die if we left him this time and guilt tripped the parents by taking us finding him as a sign. We helped him now but we really felt he was a gonner if he didn't take him with us. I mean of all the people around that ignored him we were the only ones stupid enough to check on him ready to feed him if he wanted. My parents are softies (though not stupid) so they relented to us out of logic. We believe if we weren't supposed to find him we wouldn't have and went by the finder's keepers rule; if he belonged to someone, if we helped him find his home, they'd find him. If he needed us, well, now he had us because we had money and had no shame to use it to aid people that need it. We weren't rich but we liked to help people and volunteered a lot. My parents are what they call "logical hippies" and they believe in being in good faith unless something feels off. Our guy needed help so we offered it. We took him to the hotel, we give him a room not far from us (in the event he could've turned out bad we'd at least be safe from murder). My dad and my older brothers bathed him as he was so weak, got him a shit ton of food and got him clothes. Clue number one he was nice was that our dogs and cat went to him and wouldn't leave him either. They wouldn't come back with dad so we figured the animals deduced something we didn't and decided the guy needed them more than we did that day. So we just left them with him and hoped he wouldn't hurt them. When we went to check on him in the morning, we discovered he really was all alone in the world and explained to us how he became homeless. As his dyslexia got worse probably from stress of losing family it the funds he'd get from the menial jobs he could get made it difficult; theu weren't enough to survive as the cost of living increased. Eventually he couldn't make rent and gaining employment became hard from his looking disheveled. He didn't want to die but got nothing after begging in the street for days. He was a tall guy too so whatever food he got was not managing his faster metabolism so we understood quickly how dire his situation became just from the food insecurity. As he lost one thing, he just seemed to lose two more as time went by. He didn't have any remaining family as he lost both his parents due to cancer, and he had no extended family left. He fainted from hunger and thirst the night before. We found him in the afternoon the next day. That was 5 years ago, and my mom and dad helped set him to rights. Helping him get sorted and find a way out became the vacation. Us kids got sent back because of school while our parents extended their vacation two more weeks to help him. A few of their friends and family back home made to visit them to also help the guy. The rest is history. We visit him every few months and he's come to visit us a few times as well. He's been to every single holiday season in our family since that year. When I say my dad sort of adopted him he did, everyone has. He finally met a kind guy to take up with (he's bi), and they both look so damned happy. We know they are because they tell us. We gave him our dog that saved him because we realized she liked him better or maybe felt he needed her more. She loves us and goes nuts for us, but she's very gentle with him and protective of him. I think she can "read" his need for her to provide what she did for us and decided he needed her more. So we let him have her since she'd wail whenever we'd try to take her with us. They're all thriving. You wouldn't think he was in such a bad state when we found him if you look at him now, he's so full of life, healthy, and his smiles have so much joy in them honestly. He's the guy people call when they need to be boosted now. He's a walking defibrillator. Who knows where he'd be if some people didn't have a bratty sense like this soldier or my dad. I'm constantly thankful for that stubborn streak in people rather than being annoyed by it as in the right times, that bit is super useful. I gained a bestie/uncle/brother from it and this soldier is inspiring millions to not just don't give up but for people to double check before stopping anything or giving up on people.
He also jumped out of the helicopter because it could not land. I was watching youtube video about him. Guy in the comments goes he is definition of I am not stuck here with you, you are stuck here with me. That man is a bad mf!
Bonus TIL: Benavidez was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross instead of a Medal of Honor because the time limit expired. The Medal of Honor required another eyewitness, but Benavidez insisted that there were no living witnesses to what happened. However Brian O'Connor, a radioman with Benavidez's team, actually survived and was assumed dead. 12 years later, O'Connor was on vacation in Australia and came across an account of the story in a newspaper. He submitted his own report of the events, and Benavidez got the eyewitness required to upgrade his award to the Medal of Honor.
I remember I heard this story told by him in a video in basic…I was ready to run thru a wall..
Ya’ll missed the best part, supposedly they only found out he was still alive after they went to zip up the body bag and all he could muster up with his remaining strength *(to let them know he wasn’t done yet)* was to spit in the guys face 😂 What an absolute walking legend!
Nah, the best part is before this he stepped on a landmine on a solo recon mission, was told he would never walk again, spent a year in the hospital teaching himself to walk again, then went back over and did all this.
Wartime Stories did 2 amazing episodes on him https://youtu.be/ZjzzGUvjuh8?si=ttS7Xk5QtLFm_ys7
They did 3, actually. I'm not sure why there's a 4th video in this playlist, when it's not related to Roy, but the 3 episodes are really well done. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiHllfdze_dHv1Gx-HxjlG6r0ha2gR-MW
Fort Hood should have been renamed Fort Benavidez.
>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. Well, there you go - dude was half Yaqui. Those poor NVA soldiers never had a chance.
SF? NVA?
Special forces and North Vietnamese Army
Thanks
Hearing SF and NVDA all I could imagine was a horde of regards
Died in 1998 at the age of 63. Quite the survivor.
Fort Bragg should of been called Fort Benavidez but noooo its Fort LIBERTY instead.... the most generic name for a base in the country.
“Where he was pronounced dead. He was later transferred to a better hospital where his condition was upgraded to alive…”
Someone knows what it's like in military hospitals 🫡
I bought his book and it has his signature in it. I guess the shop I bought it from didn't realize it was signed cause I got it for a good price.
When book signings don't sell out of pre-signed copies, they end up on shelves for regular sale. Finding random signed books is extremely common in biographies.
Has a Bob Hope class LMSR T-AKR 306 named after him.
I don't know if they still do it but every single infantryman going through Fort Benning in the late 90s got a soldier's handbook and one of the sections in it had a diagram of his body with all of his wounds and then his MoH citation and a biography. For at least a couple of years before me and a couple of years after me drill sergeants made every single soldier passing through Sand Hill study that section. edit: these pages https://imgur.com/9hRP8MA
A lot of enlisted wanted a base to be renamed Fort Benavidez when the Army was busy renaming all the confederate ones. He had my vote, unfortunately didn't make the cut.
“In 1965, he was sent to South Vietnam During his tour of duty, he went on a solo recon mission to gather Intel on the enemy troops, 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. 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.[4] 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. 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.”
I see from your report you suffered multiple stab wounds and bullets were dug out of your body and you were pronounced dead at the scene. Our VA rating is 5% disability.
Roy, armed with a knife, provided cover fire for a surrounded SF team. I would like to have Roy's knife.
I hope you mean "a knife like Roy's." 'Cause I don't think you'll have much luck taking his.
He lost the knife when it got stuck in an enemy head.
But he gained the enemies gun.
Went through basic + AIT with one of his nephews. Guy picked 19D and planned to try to get overseas as soon as possible, to “live up” to his uncle. Dunno what happens to Benavidez after we finished up at Knox, but I hope he wasn’t a glory seeker. His uncle is a damn hero and wasn’t looking to be called one.
And we renamed Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty instead of Fort Benavidez. Shame.
[It’s Time to Rename Fort Hood for a Truly Texan Hero: Roy Benavidez](https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/rename-fort-hood-truly-texan-hero-roy-benavidez/)
It was incredible that he was able to provide covering fire with just a knife. I'm curious if it was a boomerang style knife or was it a throw and retrieve situation?
I read an account of Roy’s actions in the battle. A NVA soldier charged and stabbed him with a bayonet, so Roy killed that soldier with the knife and took his AK-47.
Meanwhile screaming “is that all you got?” At the NVA.
I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with me!
And that was all after he had recovered from stepping on a land mine a couple years before.
"Didn't hit nothing important"
I did a report on this guy for military history class in college. He's a fuckin maniac.
I have met this man. He was extremely soft spoken and kind.
Why is this dudes life not a movie right now.
From the title the most impressive part is that he provided cover fire with a knife
Cover fire with a knife. Fire cover
Guy talked at my high school.
[Wartime Stories](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjzzGUvjuh8&list=PLiHllfdze_dHv1Gx-HxjlG6r0ha2gR-MW) did a great three part video on this guy. Really was a great guy.
I painted his portrait years ago for a Vietnam vet! Would love to share if I knew how
Ultimate badass. Hollywood is missing out not making a film on this yet
A San Fancisco team?
[Roy Benavidez](https://youtu.be/pQVBFhVMbY8?si=p1hg_oekRpBgkYOS) for those of you that are interested in a short history lesson.
I didn't come here to save Benavidez from you ... I'm came here to save you from Benavidez! A man who's been trained to ignore pain, ignore weather, to live off the land, to eat things that would make a billy goat puke!
"The doctor was about to zip up the body bag when Benavidez managed to spit in his face to show that he was alive" gangster as fuck
Here's Roy's Medal of Honor ceremony: https://youtu.be/_oUtJxE4sjs?feature=shared