Roy Benavidez, The Fearless Vietnam War Veteran Who Survived ‘Six Hours In Hell’
Green Beret Roy Benavidez earned the Medal of Honor when he ran into enemy fire armed with only a knife to save his fellow soldiers, sustaining such severe injuries that medics placed him into a body bag.
When Roy Benavidez landed in Vietnam for his second tour of duty in 1968, he’d already proven his fortitude. Just three years earlier, Benavidez had stepped on a land mine during his first deployment in Vietnam, and doctors said he would never walk again. He defied their expectations — but his greatest test was yet to come.
On a sizzling day in May 1968, Benavidez heard the crackle of a radio and a desperate plea for help. A Special Forces team was trapped near the border of Cambodia, and Benavidez leaped into action. Without orders and armed with only a knife, he climbed aboard a helicopter.
Over the next “six hours in hell,” Benavidez would defy death again and again. Plunging into the jungle to rescue his fallen comrades and the classified information they carried, Benavidez battled the enemy, saved his fellow soldiers, and nearly lost his life.
Born on August 5, 1935, in Cuero, Texas, to a Mexican-American father and a Yaqui mother, Raul Perez “Roy” Benavidez had to get tough from the beginning. According to the National Museum of the United States Army, he lost both parents by the age of seven and was raised by relatives.
By his own account, Benavidez became a “tough, mean little kid” around the time his mother died. Taunted at school for being Hispanic, he often fought with other children who called him names like “dumb Mexican,” according to Legend: The Incredible Story of Green Beret Sergeant Roy Benavidez’s Heroic Mission to Rescue a Special Forces Team Caught Behind Enemy Lines.
Despite the taunts — or perhaps because of them — Benavidez was determined to make something out of himself. After dropping out of school at 15 to help support his family, he enlisted in the Texas National Guard. Then, in 1955, he transferred to the U.S. Army.
But after Benavidez served in the Korean War, spent time in Germany, and deployed to Vietnam, his military career seemed to come to a shocking, abrupt halt. In 1965, while in Vietnam with the 82nd Airborne Division, Benavidez stepped on a land mine. He woke up paralyzed from the waist down.
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