![]() In the opening minutes, Davis briefly broke away from the other three Green Berets to chase down a South Vietnamese commander who had fled the site of the ambush. ![]() Soon after they returned from the mission, a force of 250 to 300 North Vietnamese attacked the camp from positions surrounding the team. The soldiers had surprised the Viet Cong on the raid, wiping out dozens of soldiers in their beds and as they fled, including a senior commander. The June 1965 battle at Camp Bong Son, Binh Dinh province, began in the early morning hours, just after Davis’ combined force of four Americans and roughly 70 Vietnamese returned from a raid on a Viet Cong camp. We’re kin by virtue of being American citizens.” In the dark, brown is just as black or white as anyone else. “I think one of the good things about a war or any type of crisis like Vietnam is the fact that people that are committed to it gel. And we got along just splendidly,” Davis said. “It’s the third team that I had and I never had any negroes on my team. ![]() In a 1969 television interview, Davis described being a Black officer in the then-mostly white world of Special Forces. He had played football at Southern University while attending on an ROTC scholarship and was one of the first Black members of the Special Forces. Defending his positions and rushing forward to reach his wounded comrades, Davis engaged Viet Cong soldiers with virtually every weapon and method a Green Beret might need in a full career: He fired his M16, his pistol, a heavy machine gun, and a heavy mortar, threw grenades and dropped them into hidden foxholes, helped pinpoint airstrikes, and killed at least one enemy soldier in a hand-to-hand fight.Īt least six times, Davis moved across open ground under fire to rescue four injured comrades, according to his own after-action report and the memories of his teammates.ĭavis was a captain in the predawn hours of June 18, 1965, in command of a Special Forces team and three platoons of Vietnamese soldiers. Over the course of the gunfight, Davis was shot or took shrapnel eight times, but personally shot or killed at least 20 Viet Cong. On June 18, 1965, Davis led his outnumbered force through a 14-hour battle and rescued four Green Beret teammates under direct fire. News that Pentagon officials had recommended him for the medal spread in November 2022, but a Medal of Honor is only official when approved by the president. 13, to officially tell him he had been awarded the nation’s highest award for valor. Now Davis, one of the first Black officers to lead elite Green Berets, will receive the Medal of Honor for his actions during the 1965 ambush, a gunfight so intense that he later described it as “like being in the Fourth of July.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |