Task And Purpose brings us the heroic and historic story of an Army officer who is to receive the Medal of Honor, 58 years after the incident in which he earned it.
Early next month a decorated Special Forces colonel who disobeyed orders to save the lives of his men during a fierce battle in Vietnam in 1965 will receive the Medal of Honor at a ceremony in the White House. The award recognizes Col. Paris Davis’ courage under fire that day 58 years ago, but it is also a testament to the dedication of a team of veterans who took on the Pentagon bureaucracy to get Davis’ nomination package approved more than half a century after it was inexplicably lost in the system.
“We got pushback every single step of the way,” said Neil Thorne, an Army veteran and one of the key volunteers who helped resurrect the push for Davis’ Medal of Honor over the past nine years.
“We could have given up at any time in that nine years and it would have gone nowhere,” he said. “So part of it was persistence and part of it was just getting people to understand what happened here.”
What happened was a larger-than-life story of unbelievable heroism, inconceivable negligence, and dogged determination — and that’s just the beginning.
There's much more at the link.
Click over there and read the whole thing. It's heroism at its finest. I don't know whether I'm more pleased that Col. Davis is to be honored at last, or furious that there were so many delays, obfuscations and just plain negligence in getting to this point.
Col. Davis can take a salute from me anytime.
Peter
3 comments:
Finally!!!
My father-in-law passed away 6 years ago. My mother-in-law told this story at his funeral:
He was a tanker pilot in Vietnam, and their standing orders were to always orbit out over the ocean in order to be in a safe zone from the NVA anti-air forces. One day a pilot had taken some damage to his fuel tanks and due to the leakage didn't have enough fuel to make it out over the water to get tanked up and then return to base, so my F-I-L disobeyed orders and flew to meet the fighter over land to tank him up and save him.
After returning to base, the flight leader very publicly chewed him out for his blatant disregard of the orders to protect strategic assets. Then took him into his office, closed the door, and quietly gave him an "attaboy," though cautioned him to not do it again.
that was it. No medal, no recognition, but I think he wouldn't have been able to live with himself had he not done it. He stayed true to himself, and i think that's greater than any medal.
That said, I am *extremely* pleased to read this article and that Col. Davis is being recognized in such a way.
I would simply like to read the article as a write-up. Take the rest and pretend that a citizen warrior first class was there.
WTF did he do?
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