Uncommon Valor- Untold Vietnam Stories of America's Forgotten Heroes

During World War II, fighter pilots became legends. They were heralded as the best and brightest their respective nations had to offer, and the American fighter pilots were immediate national heroes. Their exploits became tabloid gold, and those who became aces with five or more aerial victories became public idols. Some were very colorful, almost legendary in their swashbuckling lifestyles and demeanor. And one, Robin Olds, was perhaps the best example of the cowboy in the sky, a man determined to be successful despite the odds. Who was Robin Olds? What was it about him that made him so different from most other fighter pilots? How did he handle what he perceived to be the political problems that impeded military effectiveness? And how effective was he as a Hello, I'm Colin Heaton, a veteran of the United States Army and Marine Corps, former history professor, book author, and welcome to this episode of Forgotten History. Robin Olds was born July 22, 1922 in Honolulu, Hawaii, the son of Major General Robert Olds, a World War I-era instructor pilot and later an aide to General Billy Mitchell, and he was a developer of the long-range bomber program bringing the B-17 Flying Fortress to life. Olds' mother died when he was four years old, and he grew up in the Hampton and Langley Airfield region of Virginia, where his father was assigned. He knew all of the future luminaries of American aviation, men who would be in high command positions in World War II. These familiarities would serve him well later. At the age of eight, he flew with his father in an open cockpit biplane trainer and was transfixed on aviation. After World War II began, with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, Olds attempted to join the Royal Canadian Air Force, but his father would not allow him to. Instead, of entering college right after high school in 1939, Olds enrolled at Millard Preparatory School for West Point in Washington, D.C. This was a school established to prepare men for the entrance examinations to the military academies. He was accepted on June 1, 1940, and attended West Point, where he became an All-American football player. During this period, his father, Major General Robert Olds, died in 1943. Despite a rough patch with his superiors, Olds graduated and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps. Olds completed the primary flight program at the Spartan School of Aviation in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and later completed basic and advanced training at Stewart Field, New York. He completed fighter pilot training with the 329th Fighter Group, based at Grand Central Air Terminal in Glendale, California. Olds was promoted to first lieutenant on December 1, 1943, and joined the cadre assigned to build up the newly activated 434th Fighter Squadron, part of the 479th Fighter Group, based at Lomita, California. Olds logged 650 hours of flying time during training, including 250 hours in the P-38 Lightning. After relocating to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, his unit embarked upon the USS Argentina in May, landing in Scotland and then going to their base at RAF Waddesham, England. His unit began bomber escort missions, and he was now Captain Olds and a squadron leader. Olds had many memorable combat events over Europe, such as, on August 23, 1944, he and his wingmen jettisoned their external drop tanks to engage around fifty Messerschmitt 109s. Olds had forgotten to switch his fuel over to the internal tanks, and his engines died. He was still in deadstick glide mode when he scored the first of three kills on that mission. He went into a dive to help a P-51 Mustang with two 109s on his tail, when the G-forces and pressure, despite his best efforts to recover, blew out the left window of his canopy. He experienced compressibility due to the high-speed dive. His controls were frozen. He managed to recover control just before he would have impacted just a few feet above a wheat field, with a 109 on his tail. He stalled at a 90-degree angle, and the enemy passed by and Olds shot him down. He had just become the group's first fighter ace. The 479th Fighter Group transitioned into the P-51D Mustang in mid-September 1944. Olds completed his first combat tour on November 9, 1944, logging 270 hours of combat time and six confirmed kills. After a two-month leave, he returned to Wadisham on January 15, 1945, and he scored steadily, and his final victory was on April 7, 1945. On this date, he shot down a 109 and reported a damaged Me-262 jet. In reality, post-war German records show that his damaged jet was, in fact, a kill. The aircraft was flown by a Captain Tronecke, who landed wheels up on the two engine nacelles on a grass field, but he had been mortally wounded and was found dead in the cockpit. This was a victory that Olds never received credit for, but is chronicled in my book, The Me-262 Stormbird. Olds finished WWII officially credited with 13 German planes shot down and 11.5 other aircraft destroyed on the ground. His score should be 14 aerial victories in WWII. Olds was also the only pilot to make ace in both the P-38 with five victories and the P-51 scoring eight victories. He was promoted to major at the age of 22, an unheard of accomplishment, being that he was only two years out of West Point. Later, Olds, like all the other pilots who remained on active duty, transitioned into the new jets, flying the P-80. He was also instrumental in helping form the first air demonstration team for the newly created and separate US Air Force. Olds competed in air races and was returned to England on an exchange program with the RAF flying the Gloucester Meteor Jet Fighter. In fact, he commanded No. 1 Squadron at Royal Air Force Station Tangmir between October 20, 1948 and September 25, 1949 and was the first foreigner to ever command an RAF unit in peacetime. Upon his return to the United States in November 1949, he checked out in the North American F-86 Sabre, the new Air Force frontline fighter, while stationed at March Air Force Base with the 94th Fighter Squadron of the 1st Fighter Group. When the Korean War erupted, Olds wanted to go and fight. That was just his nature, but his repeated requests were all declined. What Olds did not know was that his wife at the time, actress Ella Raines, had a lot of political pull due to her status and she did not want him going overseas. He had to read about the other World War II aces, such as Walker Bud Mahurin and Francis Gabreski, now flying against the Communists, scoring kills, while he remained stateside. Olds was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on February 20, 1951 and Full Colonel on April 15, 1953 and then assigned to Landstuhl, Germany, commanding the F-86s of the 86th Fighter Interceptor Wing. Later, he became Chief of the Weapons Proficiency Center at Willis Air Force Base in Libya, in charge of all fighter weapons training for the United States Air Force's Europe until July 1958. Not to be deterred, Robin Olds saw an opportunity as Vietnam was getting into high gear. Using his great personal relations skills and tactical wisdom, he managed to anger his superior, a Brigadier General, just enough to punish him by sending him to the war. Olds arrived in Thailand and took command of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, based at Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base. Joining Olds were Colonel Vermund Garrison, an ace in both World War II and Korea, and in December, Olds brought in Daniel Chappie James Jr., one of the original Tuskegee Airmen from World War II. Olds and James became known as Black Man and Robin, and the team was effective. Following up on a suggestion to the 7th Air Force Commander, Major General William Maumier, Olds developed his plan, called Operation Bolo. This plan was to draw North Vietnamese MiG-21 fighters into a fight and destroy them, as they had been hitting the F-105 Thunderchief tactical bombers very hard. Olds' plan was to simulate an F-105 bombing formation, following the same attack routes using their radio channels and jamming pods. The ruse worked. Seven of the 16 MiG-21s in service with North Vietnam were shot down. Other missions followed, and Olds again scored three more victories. On May 4th, Olds destroyed another MiG-21 over Phuc Yen. Two weeks later, on May 20th, he destroyed two MiG-17s in a massive dogfight. Olds had four confirmed MiG kills, but declined to shoot down his fifth, because he found out that as soon as he made ace in that war, he would be relieved of command. He was awarded his fourth Silver Star for leading a three-aircraft low-level bombing strike on March 30, 1967, and the Air Force Cross for an attack on the Paul Doomer Bridge in Hanoi on August 11, 1967. As a result of his success, Ho Chi Minh placed a $100,000 bounty on his head. Robin, in his own words, said that he felt insulted. He felt that he was worth a lot more, because he had cost Ho Chi Minh ten times that amount in the losses that he had inflicted upon him. Olds flew 259 total combat missions, which included 107 in World War II and 152 in Southeast Asia, or 105 of those over North Vietnam. He bitterly complained about the early Phantoms not having internally mounted guns and being solely reliant upon missiles in air-to-air combat. Many possible victories were lost as a result of this oversight. In an act of defiance, he started growing his non-regulation handlebar mustache in his own version of giving the middle finger to the establishment that he believed had cost American lives and reduced their effectiveness. Upon returning to Washington, D.C., he reported to his first interview with Air Force Chief of Staff General John P. McConnell, and McConnell walked up to him, stuck a finger under his nose, and said, take it off. Olds replied, yes sir, and shaved off the mustache. Olds reported for duty to the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado in December 1967. He served as Commandant of Cadets for three years, an assault to restore morale following the well-publicized cheating scandal. Olds was later promoted to Brigadier General on In February 1971, Olds assumed his last duty assignment as Director of Aerospace Safety in the Office of the Inspector General, Headquarters, USAF, and after December 1971 as part of the Air Force Inspection and Safety Center at Norton Air Force Base, California. Later that year, he toured the Air Force bases in Southeast Asia on an inspection mission to assess fighter readiness for air-to-air combat, and what he reported was not what his superiors, especially the Air Force Chief of Staff General John D. Ryan, wanted to hear. Olds was proven correct following the launching of Operation Linebacker. Navy and Marine pilots who had attended the Top Gun Fighter School proved the value of Olds' previous warnings. The USN and USMC pilots flying gun-equipped F-4s scored aerial kills at an average ratio of 3 to 1, while the Air Force suffered at a 1-for-1 ratio, proving Olds was right. Brigadier General Robin Olds retired on June 1, 1973. His personal awards include the U.S. Air Force Cross, U.S. Air Force Command Pilot Badge, two Air Force Distinguished Service Medals, four Silver Stars, Legion of Merit, six Distinguished Flying Crosses, 40 Air Medals, the Distinguished Flying Cross from the United Kingdom, and the His final score is 17 victories, including four in Vietnam, yet he still needs to be credited with the Me-262 jet confirmed shot down by him in World War II from the German records. His official records should reflect 18 victories, with 14 in World War II. Robin Olds was a true maverick, but he was a man who got things done, and did so with flair. Those men under his command loved him, and that is about as good as it gets for a combat leader. I had the privilege of knowing and interviewing Robin Olds, and that interview in its entirety can be found in my book, Above the Reich. During the Vietnam War, 236 Medals of Honor were awarded, with 156 presented posthumously, and since 1970-80 further 33 awards have been presented. Of the 269 medals in total, 180 were awarded to the U.S. Army, 15 to the U.S. Navy, 58 to the United States Marine Corps, and 14 to the United States Air Force. War has a way of creating legends, but a few stories of heroism rival the greatest fiction. In the heart of the Vietnam War, wounded, outnumbered, and facing impossible odds, one man defied death itself again and again to save his fellow soldiers. His actions would earn him the Medal of Honor and a place in military history. But his path to valor wasn't just forged on the battlefield, it was built upon a lifetime of grit, sacrifice, and an unbreakable will. Those who earned that distinction of receiving the Medal of Honor spanned every presidency from Lyndon B. Johnson forward, as 33 Medals of Honor were retroactively awarded to various men due to lost recommendation paperwork, oversight, or a re-evaluation of their actions. One of these was U.S. Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Roy P. Benavidez, a soldier, hero, and a symbol of what the human spirit can endure. Who was Roy Benavidez? What actions earned him the Medal of Honor? Why was his award delayed? What is his legacy? Hello, I'm Colin Heaton, former history professor, Army and Marine Corps veteran, and welcome to this episode of Forgotten History. Roy Perez Benavidez was born August 5, 1935, in Linden Isle, Texas, and he was the descendant of the founders of Benavidez, Texas. He grew up in abject poverty. His father, Salvador Benavidez, Jr., was a Mexican farmer who died of tuberculosis when he was two years old. His mother, Teresa Perez, was a Yaqui Indian who remarried, but she also died from tuberculosis only five years later, and Roy and his younger brother, Roger, moved to El Campo, where their grandfather, uncle, and aunt raised them, along with eight cousins. Roy Benavidez shined shoes at the local bus station and worked on farms in Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, and also worked at a tire shop in El Campo, but he had to drop out of school at age 15 to work supporting the family. Then, Benavidez enlisted in the Texas Army National Guard in 1952 during the Korean War. In June 1955, he joined the Army active duty, completed airborne training, and was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He married Hilaria Lala Coy in 1959. Then, Benavidez returned to Fort Bragg and became a member of the 5th Special Forces Group as a weapons specialist and cross-trained as a medic. In 1965, he went to South Vietnam, where he went on a solar reconnaissance mission to gather intelligence on enemy troops, and he stepped on a landmine during a patrol and was evacuated to Fort Sam Houston's Brook Army Medical Center. He was told that he would never walk again. I woke up at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. I was declared never to walk again. And they began preparing his medical discharge papers, but he was determined to recover, and at night, against medical orders, he walked doing his own physical therapy. After more than a year of hospitalization, Benavidez walked out of the hospital in July 1966 with his wife at his side, but the chronic pain endured, and he returned to South Vietnam in January 1968. On May 2, 1968, west of Loch Ninh, a 12-man Special Forces patrol with 9 Montagnards was surrounded by 1,000 NVA. Benavidez heard the call on the radio and boarded a helicopter to respond. He arrived by jumping from the helicopter from a height of 30 to 40 feet off the ground, carrying only his medical bag and a knife as he ran to help the patrol. As he approached the patrol, he was attacked and bayoneted by an enemy soldier. He pulled out the bayonet and, using his own knife, killed the NVA soldier, leaving his own knife in the man's abdomen and taking the dead man's AK-47, with which he killed two more enemy soldiers while providing cover fire for the people boarding the helicopter. The battle to secure the landing zone and evacuate the wounded, as well as the dead, lasted six hours, during which time Benavidez was eventually shot a total of 37 times and had multiple shrapnel wounds. During all of this, he had managed to carry at least 10 soldiers to the various helicopters landing on the LZ, and he was wounded each time, but he fought back, securing the extraction point, which he kept from being overrun. The numbers of the enemy he killed is still unknown. After the last medevac bird landed, Benavidez needed help and was lifted into the chopper, where he passed out from blood loss. Believed to be dead upon landing, he was placed in a body bag at the base camp until a friend checked on him, and a doctor responded. Unbelievably, he was still alive. This detailed report pieced together all of the other fragmented accounts given by the eight men that Benavidez had saved, as well as the accounts from the medevac pilots picking up the wounded and the dead, who did not know who Benavidez was. Your humble narrator had the great fortune to know Roy and spoke with him on a few occasions, as we had mutual friends. Despite his unbelievable exploits and his fierce courage as a warrior, he was actually one of the nicest and most humorous men I ever met, as well as quite humble. When I asked him what was going through his mind during that six-hour firefight against hundreds of enemies determined to kill all of them, he said this, You can't think about what if, only what you can do. I knew that some of those men were dead, and all were wounded, including me, but I'll be damned if I will ever let a dead soldier fall into enemy hands. If they wanted our bodies, then they were going to climb over their own mountain of their own dead to get us. Benavidez once again arrived at Fort Sam Houston, and after another year, he eventually recovered. Due to the various after-action reports when the team was debriefed, he received the Distinguished Service Cross, while in the hospital for Extraordinary Heroism, and four Purple Hearts, in addition to the first one that he had received from stepping on the landmine. Upon recovering in 1969, he was assigned to Fort Riley, Kansas, until 1972, when he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where he remained until retirement. But some of the men Benavidez had helped save had given their after-action reports, which were fragmented and hazy, as all had been wounded, many were on morphine, but they stated his heroism. However, in 1973, Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel Ralph R. Drake had studied the combat action. He read the statements from the Special Forces soldiers and the helicopter pilots who witnessed his courage, and insisted that Benavidez receive the Medal of Honor. By then, however, the time limit on the Medal of Honor recommendation had long expired, and a successful appeal to Congress did result in an exemption for Benavidez's case, but the Army Decorations Board denied him an upgrade of his Distinguished Service Cross to the Medal of Honor. That was because the Army required an eyewitness account from someone present during the action, and Benavidez believed that there were no living witnesses of the events of that day who could provide a full report. This was due to so many men being dead and wounded who were thrown onto helicopters by Benavidez, and they did not all know him or remembered what had happened clearly. It seemed that the matter was finally put to rest, but there was in fact a living witness who could detail everything that Benavidez did during those six hours. His name was Brian O'Connor, and he was living in the Fiji Islands. He was the radio man on their Special Forces team in Vietnam, and he had been severely wounded, and Benavidez thought he was dead when you throw him on one of the helicopters under intense fire, which also saw Benavidez shot a times, but O'Connor did survive and was evacuated to the United States before he could be fully debriefed by the S-2. In 1980, while on a holiday trip in Australia, O'Connor read a newspaper account of Benavidez, originally published in an El Campo newspaper, which had been picked up by the United Press International and reprinted in Australia. O'Connor immediately contacted Benavidez and submitted a 10-page report of the encounter. O'Connor's report made its way up the chain of command and landed on the desk of the Secretary of the Army. After reading O'Connor's report, confirming the accounts provided by others, Benavidez's Distinguished Service Cross was upgraded to the Medal of Honor. Roy Benavidez is an Army Special Forces legend, and he was a good man. On February 24, 1981, President Ronald Reagan presented Roy Benavidez with the Medal of Honor in the Pentagon. Reagan turned to the press and said, if the story of his heroism were a movie script, you would not believe it. Reagan then read the official award citation stating that Benavidez has 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, and saved the lives of at least eight men. Roy Benavidez himself wrote three autobiographical books about his life and military experiences, and he has many schools, parks, and other locations named after him. The portion of Texas State Highway 71 in Wharton County, Texas, where Benavidez grew up, located between Colorado County Line and FM-2765, is designated the Roy Benavidez Memorial Highway. The USNS Benavidez, a U.S. Navy Bob Hope-class roll-on roll-off cargo vessel, is named in his honor. There is also the Roy P. Benavidez American Legion Post No. 400 in San Antonio, Texas, and Roy P. Benavidez Armor Reserve Center and Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas. There were discussions in Congress about renaming Fort Hood as Fort Benavidez as a part of an ongoing movement to rename installations and institutions, originally carrying the names of Confederate generals by the Biden administration, which did rename some bases. Roy Perez Benavidez died on November 29, 1998, at the age of 63 at Brooke Army Medical Center, having suffered respiratory failure and complications of diabetes. He laid in state at St. Robert Bellarmine Catholic Church, where he and his three children were married, and all attended Mass every Sunday. His body was returned to Fort Sam Houston's Main Chapel for public viewing. Family friend Archbishop Patrick Flores of the Archdiocese of San Antonio presided over a funeral mass at San Fernando Cathedral, located in San Antonio. Master Sergeant Roy Benavidez was buried with full military honors at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. Roy Benavidez's Medal of Honor is on display at the Ronald Reagan Library, along with a video of him receiving the from President Reagan. Men like Roy Benavidez do not come any tougher. The most iconic image of the Vietnam War was the helicopter, whether used as an observation, medical evacuation, troop transport, or gunship. Their primary aircraft was the Bell Air Corps UH-1 Huey, of which 3,254 were lost due to combat. Helicopter crews also had high casualties, both killed and wounded, and the men who flew these missions were made of steel. They had to be, and as a result, a few became some of the most highly decorated airmen in our nation's history. Who was Bruce P. Crandall? What actions did he perform to receive the Medal of Honor? Why did it take so many years for his bravery to be recognized with the Medal of Honor? Hello, I'm Colin Heaton, former soldier, Marine Corps scout, sniper, history professor, historian, and book author, and we will answer these questions and other issues on this segment of Forgotten History. In the film, We Were Soldiers, adapted from the book written by Lieutenant General Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, Bruce P. Crandall was depicted by actor Greg Kinnear, who flew multiple missions into landing zone X-ray during the Battle of the Aydring Valley, which commenced on November 14, 1965. Crandall would play a major role. Bruce Perry Crandall was born on February 17, 1933, and raised in Olympia, Washington State. He attended public schools and became an All-American baseball player in high school. Later, he attended the University of Washington in Seattle and was hoping to get drafted by the New York Yankees, but he was drafted instead into the U.S. Army in 1953 during the Korean War but did not deploy there. Crandall graduated from the Engineer Officer Candidate School, Fort Belvoir in Virginia, in 1954 and assigned to the Fixed-Wing and Helicopter Training Program conducted by the Army and the Air Force. He started flying the Cessna L-19 Bird Dog and de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beavers after being transferred to Alaska performing military topographical studies. His first overseas flying assignment was to Wheatless Air Base in Tripoli, Libya, where he spent two years mapping the Sahara Desert. He then became an instructor pilot and unit test pilot. Crandall then transferred to Howard Air Force Base, Panama, also flying out of Costa Rica. He flew over thousands of square miles of previously unmapped mountains and jungles in Central and South America. He then helped to develop air assault tactics as a platoon leader while assigned to the 11th Air Assault Division. His next assignment was a major to South Vietnam, where he commanded the 1st Cavalry Division's Company A 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion at Camp Radcliffe, An Khe, Vietnam. He led a flying unit supporting eight battalions on the ground, using the callsign Ancient Serpent Six. This was where he earned his nickname, Snake. The Vietnam War was not yet a major conflict. Most of the engagements had been between U.S. Army Special Forces advisors and contacts with the Viet Cong, and a few NVA units, but on a very small level, rarely exceeding platoon-sized engagements. This was the first major engagement of the war between regular U.S. and North Vietnamese forces, when elements of the 3rd Brigade 1st Cavalry Division Air Mobile positioned themselves as an interdiction force. The Army soldiers fought a four-day paged battle against the Communist North Vietnamese 33rd Regiment in the Ai Drang Valley of the Central Highlands. This first contact between large forces in Vietnam would set the pace for the rest of the war. The battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Harold G. Moore, known as Hal Moore, and his 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment of 450 soldiers, along with men from the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, would make history, being inserted by helicopters into Landing Zone X-Ray. Crandall's flight of 16 helicopters inserted Moore's troops on a search-and-destroy mission from an area called Plai Mê to Landing Zone X-Ray, a remote spot in the Ai Drang Valley near the Chu Pong Hills. On his fifth trip into the valley, the enemy had targeted the landing zone. As the nine unarmed helicopters dropped off troops, they came under such intense enemy fire that Lieutenant Colonel Moore ordered the other helicopters to abort the mission. At midday, the North Vietnamese 33rd Regiment attacked. The battle commenced with the NVA attack and the Americans received support from nearby on-call artillery batteries and fixed-wing tactical airstrikes. The next morning, the North Vietnamese 66th Regiment joined the attack against the U.S. unit. The fighting was bitter, but the tactical airstrikes and artillery support took their toll on the enemy and enabled the 1st Cavalry Troopers to hold on against repeated assaults. Two more companies arrived to reinforce the position, and Lieutenant Colonel Moore put them to good use, securing the flanks and rotating the wounded with fresh men. By the third day of the battle, the Americans had gained the upper hand. One of the primary overlooked factors was the use of an on-call medevac helicopter support unit flying in under fire to extract the wounded. The dead would have to wait. However, due to the intense enemy fire, the on-call medevac unit would not fly in under orders not to risk their aircraft until the perimeter was secured. There was one man and his unit who basically said, to hell with that. One of these was UH-1 pilot Bruce P. Crandall, along with his wingman, Major Ed Freeman. They heard the battle on the radio, and they heard the requests, and then denial of medevacs. There was no hesitation in Crandall's unit among his men, despite not being a medevac unit. Their brothers were getting shot and dying, and they were going in come hell or high water. Crandall was listening on the communications net, and he heard almost everything going on. Crandall was not assigned medevac duties, but he took it upon himself to jump in and ask for volunteers. Crandall took off without orders, and twelve of these flights were made after the assigned medevac unit again refused to land in LZ X-ray, which was still under intense and continuous fire. Crandall's Hueys were unarmed. They were not gunships, and his was not a gunship. Only two door gunners. Nor was it equipped as a medevac helicopter, and the thin aluminum gave little protection from even small arms fire, let alone heavy machine guns. As he and Freeman weaved in through the valley, they had to not only dodge bullets and rockets, they also had to time their arrivals when friendly artillery would be lifted, and then avoid enemy indirect fire targeting the landing zone. During the battle, he went through a few helicopters, but one Huey was so shot up, he lost the engine, and had to autorotate into a controlled crash landing with several wounded men on board. His continued actions saved even more lives, and proved the value of the helicopter as an air ambulance. After almost every flight, he had to have the blood washed off the deck plates in his various aircraft. He learned on approach after dark that the pickup zone was surrounded by trees on three sides, and he was told that the medevac had previously refused to land there. To minimize the chance of hitting the trees, he decided to descend vertically. The night was pitch black, but instead of using search or landing lights, he flew blackout, and instructed Captain Tony Nadal on the ground to point a flash light straight up in the center of the touchdown area. He landed twice this way under intense enemy fire, and successfully evacuated all 12 wounded soldiers. Both helicopters were barely airworthy when he returned to base. Crandall and Freeman alone had evacuated more than 75 casualties in his helicopters, during a flight day that lasted from 6 a.m. ending at 10.30 p.m., more than 16 hours later. Quoting Crandall, It was the longest day I ever experienced in any aircraft. He had to use several helicopters throughout the day because each aircraft became badly damaged. Crandall himself flew 22 missions in his unarmed Hueys during the battle in total, each time into direct enemy fire to evacuate wounded and bring ammunition and supplies to the soldiers. He flew back to extract the dead and exfiltrate the remaining soldiers, but his Vietnam duty was not finished. During the same battle, the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry was ambushed by North Vietnamese forces as it moved on foot to landing zone Albany. Of the 500 men in the original column, 150 were killed, and only 84 were able to return to immediate duty. Company C suffered 93% casualties, half of them deaths. Crandall's pilots and crews responded to that location as well to try and save more American lives and deliver supplies and ammunition. The battle resulted in 834 North Vietnamese soldiers confirmed killed, and another 1,000 communist casualties were assumed. Crandall received the Distinguished Flying Cross and Distinguished Service Cross for his life-saving missions, but his career was far from over. Two months later, on January 31, 1966, Crandall had just finished a long day supporting the 1st Combined American and Army of the Republic of Vietnam Operation called Operation Masher. He returned to refuel and shut down for the night when he was informed that a company of soldiers was in heavy enemy contact and were pinned down and threatened with being overrun. The company had reported 12 wounded soldiers who needed immediate evacuation. Then, after lifting off, while enroute, Crandall learned that the unit was commanded by his friend from the Battle of I-Dreng, Captain Tonlin Nadal. Crandall and Nadal again worked together, air and ground, to execute a near-flawless rescue of the wounded men. Bruce Crandall was then home after an action-filled tour. After an assignment in Colorado, Crandall attended the Armed Forces Staff College, but not long afterwards he was back in South Vietnam, this time flying UH-1 Huey gunships and supporting the 1st Battalion, 9th Cavalry Squadron, 1st Cavalry Division. Crandall flew ground support and attack missions, but in January 1968, his helicopter was shot down four months into his second tour while performing another rescue due to Air Force bombs going off too close to where he was flying. Medivac'd himself, along with his co-pilot, he spent five months in the hospital recovering from a broken back and other shrapnel and impact injuries. His war was over, but he had flown over 900 combat missions, many of them as a volunteer impromptu Medivac pilot. After Crandall recovered, he enrolled as a student at the University of Nebraska, graduating in 1969, and he became a facility engineer in Bangkok, Thailand, managing 3,800 people. In his final Army assignment, he served as Senior Engineer Advisor to the California Army National Guard. In 1977, he retired from the Army as Lieutenant Colonel. Bruce Crandall was initially awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions at Ai Drang, as was Freeman, but these were later upgraded to the Medals of Honor for both men, which had been initially recommended by Moore. In 2004, Crandall was inducted into the Army Aviation Hall of Fame. Since the dawn of time, warriors have gone into battle blessed by their holy men. In the modern age, military forces have their own holy men, chaplains, who accompanied warriors onto the battlefield, held religious services, and gave last rites. This is the story of one of them. Who was Vincent Capodanno? What made him different from many other religious military men? What was it that made the Catholic Church recommend him for sainthood? Hello, I'm Colin Heaton, former soldier, Marine Corps Scout Sniper, history professor, historian, and book author, and we will answer these questions and other issues on this segment of Forgotten History. Vincent Robert Capodanno Jr. was born in Staten Island, New York, on February 13, 1929. He was the tenth and youngest child of an immigrant father from Gaeta, Italy, and an Italian mother. Through the example of his parents, Vincent Jr. experienced the dignity of hard work, pride of family, strength of ethnic solidarity, and most especially, love of their Catholic faith. These values sustained the family during the Great Depression, and following the sudden loss of their patriarch on young Vincent's tenth birthday, life was even harder. Capodanno graduated from Curtis High School on February 4, 1947, then took night classes at Fordham University for a year while working as an insurance clerk. Being a devout Catholic, he felt the calling to serve the Church, with an interest in missionary work. He entered the Maryknoll Missionary Seminary in Ossining, New York, in 1949, and continued his studies in Illinois and Massachusetts. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest by Cardinal Francis Spellman on June 14, 1958. Capodanno's first appointment was in 1959, ministering to the Hakka people in the mountains of Taiwan, where he served in a parish and later taught in a school. After six years of missionary work, he returned to the United States for leave and then was assigned to a Maryknoll school in Hong Kong. After his post in Hong Kong, Father Capodanno asked to be sent to the Navy Chaplain Corps so he could minister to the growing number of Marines in Vietnam. Capodanno received his commission as a lieutenant in the Navy Chaplain Corps on December 28, 1965. At his own request, he was assigned to the Fleet Marine Force FMF in South Vietnam. After a year of infantry training and additional courses, he was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division in South Vietnam in April 1966. In December, he was assigned to the 1st Medical Battalion, 1st Marine Division until he completed his year-long tour. Chaplains simply did not go out with troops on missions. They were told and most were content to stay in the rear and safety, but Capodanno was a different kind of chaplain. To quote, wherever the Marines were, Father Capodanno was there, in theater or in the said a Marine who knew him. Another Marine, Lt. R.J. Marnell remembers, quote, Father Capodanno was told several times it was not his job to go on patrols, fire sweeps, etc. You had to watch him like a hawk as it was not uncommon to see a group of Marines running to get on a helicopter to go into battle and all of a sudden this figure comes out of nowhere, no rifle, just his priest gear and jumping in the helicopter before anybody could catch him. He wanted to be with his Marines and didn't feel his job was simply to say mass on Sundays, end quote. Another Marine, Lance Corporal Steve Lovejoy recalls, over the years I always believed Father Capodanno had spent at least three months with my company, if not longer. In actuality, it was no more than four weeks. He had that kind of impact. He treated us as if he was one of us and that is how we related to him. Of course, we had respect and understood his position, but the men accepted him as one of their own, end quote. In June 1967, after taking a one-month leave, he voluntarily returned to Vietnam for six months and was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines that July, but was transferred to Headquarters and Service Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division in August. His best friend during this period was the future founder of Federal Express, Lieutenant Frederick W. Smith. According to Smith and the other Marines, Capodanno was highly respected for his willingness to share the hardships and suffering that most Marines experienced on the front lines. He did not stay in the rear during operations. He jumped on helicopters to be with his Marines and Corpsmen. He felt that was where he was needed most. This was where he earned the nickname, the Grunt Padre. As with his previous unit, Capodanno made an instant impact. Former Marine George Phillips says that he had an innate ability to know when Marines needed to talk about something, and he would sit and wait in silence until the Marine was ready to talk, and never move on until he saw the Marine had received some comfort. But when you were talking with him, it was like the two of you were in a cocoon, and nothing else was going on around you. You know, rockets, bullets, whatever, guys walking by. He kept his attention focused on one person at a time. Five or six guys sitting around talking, and he joins them. He'd listen intently to the guy who's talking, but ignore the other four. And when you were one-on-one with him, it was almost a mystical experience." End quote. Capodanno wrote back home to his family and friends, asking them to send cigarettes, St. Christopher medals, and various non-perishable food items. He would go into combat, all of these stuffed in his pockets, and give them to the Marines. Sometimes, he would sit in the open and start praying, even when there was gunfire around, and some of the men would join him. In battle, he was relentless in going to the wounded and helping extract them to safety, while giving them prayer. He was once sprayed by grenade fragments, while giving last rites to the dying. But despite a shredded flak jacket, he didn't have a scratch on him. During Operation Swift in the Cuson Valley on Labor Day, September 4th, 1967, eight miles southwest of Thang Ben along Route 534, the Marines were protecting a polling station where the locals were voting, and Capodanno rose to the occasion. At 0430 hours, Delta Company One-Five was attacked in its night defensive position by 2,500 North Vietnamese soldiers near the village of Dong Son, and were heavily outnumbered. Lieutenant Colonel C.B. Webster told the company commanders to prepare a helicopter lift to the area of Dong Son, fearing being encircled and taking heavy volumes of fire that cost the lives of 26 Marines by 0914 hours they desperately need to support, and Bravo Company went in to assist. At 0925, Webster requested additional reinforcements, and Kilo and Mike Companies from the 3rd Battalion were committed to the battle, although the Marines were still heavily outnumbered. When Capodanno heard that two platoons of Mike Company were taking casualties and about to be overrun, he helped offload the wounded, brought in on an H-34 that had just landed. He left the safety of the company command post and ran through an open area raked with fire. Capodanno went among the wounded and dying Marines of 2nd Platoon, helping and comforting them and giving last rites, and then boarded the helicopter again as it was going back into the battle with Mike Company's 3rd Platoon to reinforce and support their brother Marines, and the helicopters left around 1145 hours. After a 30-minute flight, the helicopter pilot told Mike Company Commander J.D. Murray that the original landing zone near Bravo and Delta Companies was too hot to risk a landing. The alternate landing zone was to have been the one used by Kilo Company, 1,000 meters away, but that too was unsafe. So the helicopters ultimately discharged the Marines and Father Capodanno at a landing zone in some dried-up rice paddies roughly 2,500 meters away from Bravo and Delta. After negotiating a bamboo forest and taking fire, the Marines encountered hidden enemies popping up and firing, as well as dropping mortar rounds on them. Disregarding the intense enemy small arms, automatic weapons, and mortar fire, Capodanno moved about the battlefield through the intense enemy fire, administering last rites to the dying and giving medical aid to the wounded. Radioman Lovejoy had a jammed M-16 and was pinned down with Lance Corporal Al Santos of Fall River, Massachusetts, whose weapon had also jammed. They were both wounded when out of nowhere appeared Father Capodanno. He dragged Lovejoy to safety in a bomb crater, then he braved enemy fire to save Sergeant Howard Manfra of Philadelphia. Tanki recalls being aware of Capodanno rushing around the battlefield, exposing himself to unrelenting enemy fire to bless and comfort the fallen. Capodanno immediately raced again through the open terrain and intense fire to help the corpsmen with the wounded, where he gave comfort and last rites to the Marines, who he had helped drag and carry out of the fields of fire. When an exploding mortar round inflicted painful multiple wounds to his arms and legs and severed a portion of his right hand, he steadfastly refused all medical aid. Instead, he directed the corpsmen to help their wounded comrades and, with calm vigor, continued to move about the battlefield, as he provided encouragement by voice and example to the ballet Marines. Navy Corpsman Armando Leal of San Antonio, Texas, had been heroically going around giving aid to the wounded when he reached Tanki, who was kneeling down and firing when a bullet went through Leal's leg, cutting his femoral artery. Tanki attempted to drag Leal up the knoll and into a crater, putting one finger in the wound to staunch the bleeding and trying to fire at the enemy with the other hand. Lance Corporal Steve Cornell arrived to help but was shot through the chest. Tanki's weapon jammed. As he looked up, only a few feet away from the NVA machine gunner now aiming at him, and due to his right hand being injured, he could not release his grenade. They had managed to attack and get to within about six yards of an enemy machine gun position that was causing so much destruction. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, again came Father Capitano. Bullets flying through his flak jacket and kicking up dirt all around him, he helped Tanki who had rolled into a bomb crater when a Huey gunship arrived and laid down a base of fire with rockets and machine guns, giving a pause in the chaos. That afternoon was total carnage. Capitano had again pulled wounded Marines to safety and returned to get more. He managed to get the dead and wounded to the landing zone, giving last rites and then returned, despite being wounded himself in the hand, arms, and legs by enemy grenades and rifle fire. Again refusing medical evacuation, despite being seriously wounded, he went to help a seriously wounded Navy Corpsman and two wounded Marines. He pulled the men to safety, then re-entered the kill zone, returning to the fight to recover more men. Upon encountering another wounded Corpsman in the direct line of fire of an enemy machine gunner positioned approximately 15 yards away, Lieutenant Capitano rushed forward in a daring attempt to aid and assist the mortally wounded Corpsman. Witnesses say that Capitano's body was hit over a dozen times by the enemy machine gun bullets, which were 12.7 millimeter rounds, approximately a .50 caliber round. Despite these hits, he still covered a lot of ground to get to the remaining wounded men. These rounds would have shredded a car's engine block, but Capitano's body was intact despite 27 holes, as it seemed that bullets just passed through him. He was found holding a rosary, apparently prepared to give last rites when he was killed. The remaining Marines laid down a base of fire so they they could recover Capitano's body. They were not going to leave their grunt padre. Including Capitano, 14 Marines and the two Corpsmen from the battalion were also killed and dozens more wounded. Lieutenant Father Vincent Capitano was 38 years old. Some of the wounded Marines who Capitano rescued and prayed over spoke of seeing him after they were medevaced, one Marine saying he was talking to him. Another Marine recalled seeing the priest going from man to man but could not hear what he was saying. The problem was that these supposed events occurred either while Capitano was still in the battle or after he died. One thing is certain, the grunt padre had left a long-lasting impression upon his flock. Father Vincent Capitano's body was returned home and buried in his family's plot in St. Peter's Cemetery on Staten Island. On December 27, 1968, Secretary of the Navy Paul Ignatius notified the Capitano family that Lieutenant Capitano would posthumously be awarded the Medal of Honor. On May 19, 2002, the cause for canonization regarding Capitano was inaugurated. In May 2004, the initial documentation was submitted to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, named Mission Capitano, acting as petitioner and with Capitano's biographer, Daniel Mode, named postulator. Now there are 15 memorials, buildings, streets, chapels, a high school in Southern Pines, North Carolina, and other locations around the nation, as well as in Vietnam, Taiwan, and Italy, bearing his name, including the frigate USS Capitano, now decommissioned, and it became the first ship in the history of the U.S. Navy to receive a papal blessing by Pope John Paul II. The legacy of the Marine Corps and the Naval Service often overlooks the contributions of the traditional non-combatants, such as chaplains. Father Capitano never carried a weapon. Armed only with his Bible and sacraments, he inspired his Marines.