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VETERAN'S DAY
November 11th






BENAVIDEZ, Roy P.



Master Sergeant, then Staff Sergeant, United States Army. Who distinguished himself by a series of daring and extremely glorious actions on 2 May 1968 while assigned to Detachment B-56, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne). 1st Special Forces, Republic of Vietnam.


To view his citation and see "Tango-Mike-Mike" please click on his Medal...



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Men began to scream as bullets flew, and I fired at nothing to make certain it was dead.
Smoke drifted into my nostrils and eyes, I saw his jacket suddenly rip and then it turned to red.
His life drained away and flowed into the dirt, I wept for him and held him without shame.
A lifetime passed between each beat of my heart, and with his final breath he quietly spoke my name.
Today I have a ghost walking in my memories, I knew the man before he was that ghost.
After trying almost every day to forget, after all these years that man is the one I miss the most.

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                         Where is the king?


            The king himself is rode to view their battle.


         Of fighting men they have full three score thousand.


          There's five to one; besides, they all are fresh.


                 God's arm strike with us! 'tis a fearful odds.
           God be wi' you, princes all; I'll to my charge:
              If we no more meet till we meet in heaven,
              Then, joyfully, my noble Lord of Bedford,
          My dear Lord Gloucester, and my good Lord Exeter,
              And my kind kinsman, warriors all, adieu!


        Farewell, good Salisbury; and good luck go with thee!


            Farewell, kind lord; fight valiantly to-day:
             And yet I do thee wrong to mind thee of it,
           For thou art framed of the firm truth of valour.


                 He is full of valour as of kindness;
                          Princely in both.



                        O that we now had here
             But one ten thousand of those men in England
                       That do no work to-day!



                      What's he that wishes so?
             My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
                 If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
               To do our country loss; and if to live,
             The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
           God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
                 By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
                Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
              It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
             Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
                 But if it be a sin to covet honour,
                 I am the most offending soul alive.
           No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
           God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
            As one man more, methinks, would share from me
          For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!

          Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
             That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
              Let him depart; his passport shall be made
              And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
                We would not die in that man's company
              That fears his fellowship to die with us.

              This day is called the feast of Crispian:
           He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
             Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
                And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
            He that shall live this day, and see old age,
            Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
                And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
          Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
            And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
               Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
                  But he'll remember with advantages
          What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
               Familiar in his mouth as household words
                 Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
            Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
             Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.

             This story shall the good man teach his son;
               And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
              From this day to the ending of the world,
                  But we in it shall be remember'd;
              We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

              For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
              Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
                 This day shall gentle his condition:
                  And gentlemen in England now a-bed
         Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
           And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
            That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.


Shakespeare's Henry V, circa 1599



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Some veterans bear visible signs of their service: a missing limb, a jagged scar, a certain look in the eye. Others may carry the evidence inside them: a pin holding a bone together, a piece of shrapnel in the leg - or perhaps another sort of inner steel, the soul's alloy forged in the refinery of adversity.

Except in parades, however, the men and women who have kept America safe wear no badge or emblem. You can't tell a vet just by looking. He is the cop on the beat who spent six months in Saudi Arabia sweating two gallons a day making sure the armoured personnel carriers didn't run out of fuel. He is the barroom loudmouth, dumber than five wooden planks, whose overgrown frat-boy behaviour is outweighed a hundred times on the cosmic scales by four hours of exquisite bravery near the 38th parallel.

She, or he, is the nurse who fought against futility and went to sleep sobbing every night for two solid years in Da Nang. He is the POW who went away one person and came back another - or didn't come back AT ALL. He is the Quantico drill instructor who has never seen combat - but has saved countless lives by turning slouchy, no-account rednecks and gang members into Marines, and teaching them to watch each other's backs. He is the parade-riding Legionnaire who pins on his ribbons and medals with a prosthetic hand. He is the career quartermaster who watches the ribbons and medals pass him by.


He is the three anonymous heroes in The Tomb Of The Unknowns, whose presence at the Arlington National Cemetery must forever preserve the memory of all the anonymous heroes whose valour dies unrecognized with them on the battlefield or in the ocean's sunless deep.

He is the old guy bagging groceries at the supermarket - palsied now and aggravatingly slow - who helped liberate a Nazi death camp and who wishes all day long that his wife were still alive to hold him when the nightmares come.


He is an ordinary and yet an extraordinary human being - a person who offered some of his life's most vital years in the service of his country, and who sacrificed his ambitions so others would not have to sacrifice theirs. He is a soldier and a saviour and a sword against the darkness, and he is nothing more than the finest, greatest testimony on behalf of the finest, greatest nation ever known.

For me?...


Vietnam veterans are men and women. We are dead or alive, whole or maimed, sane or haunted. We grew from our experiences or we were destroyed by them or we struggle to find some place in between. We lived through hell or we had a pleasant, if scary, adventure. We were Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Red Cross, and civilians of all sorts. Some of us enlisted to fight for God and Country, and some were drafted. Some were gung-ho, and some went kicking and screaming.

Like veterans of all wars, we lived a tad bit--or a great bit--closer to death than most people like to think about. If Vietnam vets differ from others, perhaps it is primarily in the fact that many of us never saw the enemy or recognized him or her. We heard gunfire and mortar fire but rarely looked into enemy eyes. Those of us who did, like folks who encounter close combat anywhere and anytime, are often haunted for life by those eyes, those sounds, those electric fears that ran between ourselves, our enemies, and the likelihood of death for one of us. Or we get hard, calloused, tough. All in a day's work. Life's a bitch then you die. But most of us remember and get twitchy, worried, sad.


We are crazies dressed in cammo, wide-eyed, wary, homeless, and drunk. We are Brooks Brothers suit wearers, doing deals downtown. We are housewives, grandmothers, and church deacons. We are college professors engaged in the rational pursuit of the truth about the history or politics or culture of the Vietnam experience. And we are sleepless. Often sleepless.

We pushed paper; we pushed shovels. We drove jeeps, operated bulldozers, built bridges; we toted machine guns through dense brush, deep paddy, and thorn scrub. We lived on buffalo milk, fish heads and rice. Or C-rations. Or steaks and Budweiser. We did our time in high mountains drenched by endless monsoon rains or on the dry plains or on muddy rivers or at the most beautiful beaches in the world.


We wore berets, bandanas, flop hats, and steel pots. Flak jackets, canvas, rash and rot. We ate cloroquine and got malaria anyway. We got shots constantly but have diseases nobody can diagnose. We spent our nights on cots or shivering in foxholes filled with waist-high water or lying still on cold wet ground, our eyes imagining Charlie behind every bamboo blade. Or we slept in hotel beds in Saigon or barracks in Thailand or in cramped ships' berths at sea.

We feared we would die or we feared we would kill. We simply feared, and often we still do. We hate the war or believe it was the best thing that ever happened to us. We blame Uncle Sam or Uncle Ho and their minions and secretaries and apologists for every wart or cough or tic of an eye. We wonder if Agent Orange got us.

Mostly--and this I believe with all my heart--mostly, we wish we had not been so alone. Some of us went with units; but many, probably most of us, were civilians one day, jerked up out of "the world," shaved, barked at, insulted, humiliated, de-egoized and taught to kill, to fix radios, to drive trucks. We went, put in our time, and were equally ungraciously plucked out of the morass and placed back in the real world. But now we smoked dope, shot skag, or drank heavily. Our wives or husbands seemed distant and strange. Our friends wanted to know if we shot anybody.

And life went on, had been going on, as if we hadn't been there, as if Vietnam was a topic of political conversation or college protest or news copy, not a matter of life and death for tens of thousands.

Vietnam vets are people just like you. We served our country, proudly or reluctantly or ambivalently. What makes us different--what makes us Vietnam vets--is something we understand, but we are afraid nobody else will. But we appreciate your asking.

Vietnam veterans are white, black, beige and shades of gray; but in comparison with our numbers in the "real world," we were more likely black. Our ancestors came from Africa, from Europe, and China. Or they crossed the Bering Sea Land Bridge in the last Ice Age and formed the nations of American Indians, built pyramids in Mexico, or farmed acres of corn on the banks of Chesapeake Bay. We had names like Rodriguez and Stein and Smith and Kowalski. We were Americans, Australians, Canadians, and Koreans; most Vietnam veterans are Vietnamese.


We were farmers, students, mechanics, steelworkers, nurses, and priests when the call came that changed us all forever. We had dreams and plans, and they all had to change...or wait. We were daughters and sons, lovers and poets, beatniks and philosophers, convicts and lawyers. We were rich and poor but mostly poor. We were educated or not, mostly not. We grew up in slums, in shacks, in duplexes, and bungalows and houseboats and hooches and ranchers. We were cowards and heroes. Sometimes we were cowards one moment and heroes the next.

Many of us have never seen Vietnam. We waited at home for those we loved. And for some of us, our worst fears were realized. For others, our loved ones came back but never would be the same.


We came home and marched in protest marches, sucked in tear gas, and shrieked our anger and horror for all to hear. Or we sat alone in small rooms, in VA hospital wards, in places where only the crazy ever go. We are Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, and Confucians and Buddhists and Atheists--though as usually is the case, even the atheists among us sometimes prayed to get out of there alive.

We are hungry, and we are sated, full of life or clinging to death. We are injured, and we are curers, despairing and hopeful, loved or lost. We got too old too quickly, but some of us have never grown up. We want, desperately, to go back, to heal wounds, revisit the sites of our horror. Or we want never to see that place again, to bury it, its memories, its meaning. We want to forget, and we wish we could remember.

Despite our differences, we have so much in common. There are few of us who don't know how to cry, though we often do it alone when nobody will ask "what's wrong?" We're afraid we might have to answer.

If you want to know what a Vietnam veteran is, go to the Wall. It's going to be Veterans Day weekend. There will be hundreds there...no, thousands. Watch them. Listen to them. Go touch the Wall. Rejoice a bit. Cry a bit. No, cry a lot. I will.

From "Rememberances" 1966

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