re: 'It's a Lifelong Burden': The Mixed Blessing of the Medal of Honor

If you made a movie about the battle that won Roy Benavidez his MOH, Hollywood would reject the script for being too unbelievable.

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If you made a movie about the battle that won Roy Benavidez his MOH, Hollywood would reject the script for being too unbelievable.

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I read that they actually toned down some of the Desmond Doss story in Hacksaw Ridge to make it more believable.

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Here is one from Vietnam:

Roy Benavidez

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When he was two years old, his father died of tuberculosis, and his mother remarried. Five years later, his mother also died from tuberculosis. Benavidez and his younger brother Roger moved to El Campo, where their grandfather, uncle, and aunt raised them along with eight cousins. Benavidez shined shoes at the local bus station, labored on farms in California and Washington, and worked at a tire shop in El Campo. He attended school sporadically and, at age 15, dropped out to work full-time to help support the family.

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In 1965 he was sent to South Vietnam as an advisor to an Army of the Republic of Vietnam infantry regiment. He stepped on a land mine[1] during a patrol and was evacuated to the United States, where doctors at Fort Sam Houston concluded he would never walk again and began preparing his medical discharge papers. As Benavidez noted in his 1981 Medal of Honor acceptance speech, stung by the diagnosis, as well as flag burnings and media criticisms of the U.S. military presence in Vietnam he saw on TV, he began an unsanctioned nightly training ritual in an attempt to redevelop his ability to walk. 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.[2] 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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That's some hardship. And that was BEFORE the amazing heroism that earned him the MOH. I don't know how this guy felt about the suffering behind all his medals, but he stayed with the Army for another 8 years after the "six hours in hell".