Medal of Honor Recipient Melvin Morris, Hero of the Vietnam War (Full Interview)

accomplish the mission i wasn't thinking about nothing i wasn't thinking about family friends money fortune or nothing i'm thinking about accomplishing mission you have to do this i was uh born in oak muggy oklahoma raised there until i joined the military okay at 17 you joined the oklahoma army national guard you have said being in the military was better than being in trouble tell us what you mean by that i joined that era very hard to get employment and we would come back in and out of school and to me personally i can almost see that i was headed down the wrong path and i knew that the military was a way out and we had heard that the national guard was recruiting minorities so we volunteered my brother and i you know because we didn't have any work yeah so that was something to get us started okay then you joined the active duty u.s army where did you go then for training well calallen back up a little bit was in national guard i kind of enjoyed it and i asked could i join the regular military and they say of course uh i had attained a rank of private first class but they say you go back to privacy too i said okay fine i'll take that and so i joined the active army and was sent to fort jackson south carolina for basic training okay when did you go into the airborne when did you go into the airborne i went into airborne after i finished my training for the national guard came back to oklahoma then volunteered to go to the regular army and then they sent me to our children training in fort seal oklahoma and while there i heard that they were taking volunteers for airborne school and i had an uncle that was a paratrooper so i knew about it and i always wanted to emulate him in some kind of sense so i volunteered and i passed the physical and went to fort bragg north carolina for airborne training and that was in january 1961. tell us how you became one of the very first famed green berets yep i'm going to correct that a little bit the green beret is always there but we never had a green beret and then in october 12 1961 john f kennedy awarded us the green beret officially and i was in that group yes i always consider myself as being one of the ones who actually received the green beret legally october 12 1961. what did it mean to you to be among some of the first of the green berets you know i i wanted to be what i call the best and in the beginning he told me i could never make it but i that only motivated me more when i volunteered to go to the green brewery and actually i i did better than i thought i would i i passed everything and became a green beret and these guys are so tremendous so proud so dedicated that it was always so hard to be with them and when you leave them you want to come right back for the first few years of the vietnam war you remained stateside what assignments did you have then okay first years of vietnam war i didn't remain stateside i went to dominican republic to quell an uprising with the 82nd airborne division my brother went to vietnam at 65 and i went to dominican republic in 65 when they uh we took care of a little uprising in dominican republic i still wasn't picked to go to vietnam a lot of volunteers ago and eventually i got there and that was 1969. what unit were you with i was with the field special forces group in vietnam okay what was where was your unit assigned my unit was signed in in the delta what we called it in vietnam that's in the fourth core zone and i was a member of the mobile strike force okay let's talk about september 17 1969 where were you and what was your mission put a little meat on it i was in the mike force the mic force is a unit that was designed to either go out and help other units once when things went south either then when they owned operational missions they were to search and destroy these young men were strictly fighters and that's what we did and i had been on numerous operations prior to september 69 but i was still in the four core and we had a assignment to go near the cambodian border because we had a lot of problems with the north vietnamese company in south vietnam from cambodia and it was sort of like a blocking mission okay after you split up your men and you with two others how would you describe the enemy fire you were under very intense i had never been under that much fire when when i took my company i moved forward we didn't expect that much farm and it was very heavy very okay so how were the two how were the gentlemen wounded that you brought with you up front um well let me put a little meat on the bone again okay once uh moving into the area where my team saw it well the other company was at i had my own company and once we moved forward and i got a call that said my team's heart had been killed and my team captain said he had been shot several times i think it was four and he was shot in the mouth and the chest and the arm quite a bit and i tell him i will get to them but he's got to get metal back out and i moved my company out and i've got to the exact spot to where he had been killed at and when i got to that that point i mean the fire was so heavy i don't even understand why we didn't lose a lot of men at that point so we started to counterattack and we fought back hard uh i had to go in there and get my team starting body out i went in the first time with two men found out where the body was at got to the body roll him oval i gave him last rites because i was born a catholic and when i did that they opened up and two men with me got wounded i took them out we couldn't get the body out so i had to go back again i got more volunteers and i went in with hand grenades and i took two bags to hang an eights and i threw them in every bunker so how exactly did you get the two wounded gentlemen back to safety the two men that were with me they wanted serious enough where they were incapacitated so all i had to do was just make sure i pulled them both forward to get them out of the line of fire and then i got more volunteers to go back in you know what's amazing that day i didn't have any trouble getting volunteers these guys were ready okay so you still had to get the fallen comrade but it was just you and some and a few of your volunteers did you have a strategy in mind as you headed for the enemy bunkers no i had no strategy i just i'm running on automatic get to the body get the body out you know the mission will be accomplished and that was it we got to his body uh once with me got his body dragged him out and when he dragged him out he dropped his his pad come out of his pants pocket which is a sensitive material was in his in his pack i had to go back and get it and at that point i went back to get it and i was shot three times but when i went before i went in to get that map case i got two bags of hand grenades i went in i tossed them in every bunker that i could find at close range i didn't worry about getting hit by my own hand grenades i just had to take care of the problem i don't know the count of how many bunkers i threw grenades in but i was able my interpreter was able to get the map case once my interpreter got the map case when he picked it up nba standing in front of me in front of me between him and me shot me in the chest and i went down with the interpreter left with the map case now i'm in there by myself so i got um the the nba was taken out of course but i had to get through some cover so i got behind a tree and they were literally trying to shoot the tree down and i'm by myself and i don't don't really know what to do but i say either fight or you die i didn't realize i had been shot in the arm when he was trying to shoot the tree down i had already fixed my chest so i was shot in my chest i was shot in the arm and i had one other hair grenade i threw it and i got shot in the hand so now i'm shot in my left hand i'm shot my right arm i'm shot in the chest and i said i got to fight my way out of here i didn't have my weapon so if i could get to my because i had dropped it when i got shot if i get my weapon i got a chance i got to my weapon i started fighting and fighting i called in the air force to drop a mom but they said it was too close they couldn't do it it would take me out and a light helicopter came in they said we don't have any heavy weapons but we can drop explosives that'll give you a chance to get out i say drop them yeah they dropped explosive i fired up all the ammunition i had and i said you got to run but what happened reason i had to run i had told my company to leave me if i go down so they were gone and i'm there by myself so what i had to do was to run to catch up with them and i'm shot three times and i don't know how far i ran maybe a quarter mile maybe half a mile with three bullet holes maybe longer than that i don't know can't remember that well but i got to them and got metal back how close did you get before throwing the grenades into those bunkers a couple of broncos i was right on top of them uh you know when you are under that kind of intense heat i would say you you really you're running on automatic muscle memory you're not worried about your safety i guess i would say because they worry about your safety you wouldn't do it you know i know a few of the bunkers i was right on top of and then the last grenade i threw it was in a trench and i saw him you know that i got him was a grenade so i was with the danger close to the grenades what was going through your mind throughout all of this accomplish the mission i wasn't thinking about nothing i wasn't thinking about family friends money fortune or nothing i was thinking about accomplishing mission you have to do this that's all i thought about once the grenades started going off what did the enemy and the other bunkers do the bullets never stopped coming they really started to fern uh far as i can tell i must have been pretty accurate because uh when i got my weapon back i only had enemy on my right side which i fired up all my ammunition so i think i hurt them pretty bad uh that's the best i can describe it describe the effort to carry out your fallen comrade under fire yeah it really it wasn't you know effort the effort was trying to do it on the fire and he was a big my teamster was a big man big much bigger than i was i didn't have to carry him out they grabbed him and they started out you know after they got him to safety but it took lack for them to take him out i could never done it on my own you were wounded three times during all of that how did you keep going adrenaline rush i wasn't feeling no pain no nothing i was working on automatic uh you know we train we train and you your mind just kicks in and the bring on the stars to flow and that's what you do you get that extra strength to keep going what was your reaction when you finally realized you were safe when i got out it's kind of comical when i got out and everybody met her backed out and included me uh was on the helicopter and the pilot say well he's got to stop at another hill to pick up some more wounded and killed in action right and i said what and i looked down and i saw them fighting you know when we getting ready to land and i see i just got out of a mess and you landed to pick up some people i was a little upset got a little upset but you know you gotta do what you gotta do but he picked up the wounded and then a couple k.i.a and we took off what makes this story even more powerful is that it was done to fulfill the promise that no soldier would be left on the battlefield what does it mean to you that you helped keep that promise to the family of that fallen commander you know i've i've saw it before before that action and that we had a motto uh now it's really written in a stone that we don't leave a brother behind and green berets are very close and one of the reasons being says the enemy will use a dead body for his own uh purposes uh if you're not there to mutilate mutilate you until you're dead we've had that happen so it's best to recover your your wanted brother or your your brother has been killed in action we just don't believe in leaving no one die no matter what it takes we don't give up the next year you received the distinguished service cross you also returned to vietnam for a second tour what unit were you with then and what can you tell us about that tour i went back to the same unit uh went back to my same company and went back to the same area fighting again but i was told i had to go to command and control north which was a magby side that was uh classified unit and uh scary to go there but i said you gotta man up do what you gotta do so i spent nine months in that unit uh i was decorated in that unit i can't tell you much more about it because it was classified unit but i saw action in that unit tell us about life after returning from vietnam what was it like to adapt and what was the public's attitude towards vietnam veterans i only had a couple of incidents with bad attitude and i think everybody landed in chicago at that time ran for the same thing but far as me being i didn't really respect uh civilians then really you didn't know who to respect and you didn't want to really be in uniform because you're asking for trouble but after all this i really had a emotional trip i had problems for years after vietnam then you know in years slowly i could start to come back to being a human being i would say that's how bad it was but i thank god i was able to overcome the post-traumatic stress to a certain degree you don't get rid of it but i had a difficult difficult time what was life like after leaving the service very difficult i didn't have the umbrella you know you can have ptsd in the military but you got an umbrella over you that's the military after the military you don't have the same friends hard to make new friends and severe life at the same level that you used to they were very difficult i work from job to job job the job because attitude temperament anger you know it was just hard to manage until you know i got a lot of help from the veterans administration doctors and whatever but you know i told myself you got to get this in check you know i didn't want to be in that denial i was in the mouth a long time just had to come out of it and once i came out of it aaron was able to talk about some of the things that i did in combat really helped because you got that in your gut and you need to get it out and i had to get it out the nightmares the sweats the anger trips emotions all they come with ptsd and it's it's tough for more than 40 years your commendation for your actions that day in 1969 had not changed but then a review is ordered to find service members from that era who ought to be considered for the medal of honor did you know you were under consideration or did you only find out when you were chosen to receive the medal of honor i had had no clue no information from anyone or nothing and really what happened is that she got a phone call from washington d.c and she said is colonel davis want to speak to you at the pentagon and he wants you standing by her phone and the next day at 12 o'clock and i said okay if i wonder what he wants everything i'm i'm in trouble it's the man in black looking for me i don't see something or done something she said no that's the she couldn't convince me of what so i'm standing by the phone the next day and my mind went crazy that night because i said did she talk too much or did you do something you shouldn't have done what what they want me for you know you're on your way to jail that's what i'll tell myself it's all about opponent next day and colonel david say um what is the uh very important uh person need to speak to you and i couldn't think about who that was at all very important dignitary and got on the phone and said this is president obama and i want to inform you that you're going to be awarded the memo of honor i almost fell out because i didn't have no clue of this was happening this has come out of out of nowhere and i still couldn't believe it and so i told i told my wife i don't believe that people pulling cranks so i'm i'm gonna find a number and i found a number and i was able to get the call through and call colonel davis and say i was just checking cause i thought it was a prank he chewed me out said don't you ever question nobody when you get a call from the pentagon right that uh i knew right then it was true because he was he was highly upset at me yeah what was it like to hear that news uh you know you you're in awe for a while you know disbelief and then the next thing you become very proud but the point is he's told me to say well you can't tell anybody about this you got to keep this confidential and so i couldn't express my feelings for 10 months i couldn't tell anyone and so but if i would have told someone they would say i'm crazy anyhow so but you know it's a problem when you are recognized did so you didn't know at all about the review when it was going on not at all hadn't even heard of it tell us what it was like to be at the white house in 2014 and received the medal of honor from president obama kind of talk us through that day and what you were feeling well well you know going to the white house i had never really been and yes everything is scary and i'm always scared of men in black right and then all the security checks you got to go through this and that and i'm not going to make it through and this and that and and actually they did have a problem with my id card right so i couldn't go in to receive a medal of honor i think what but they finally correct that and uh just to be in the building is something else but to be with the president is awesome and i was able to go to his office and talk to him and uh what a person what does the medal of honor mean to you you know that's a question that i've always have trouble with if what it means that i'm getting recognized for something i did but i called it just doing my duty but then again it gives me a tool to go out and lecture people and talk to people about the sacrifices that the men and women had made for this country and try to educate the younger children about what the military really is about is keeping our freedoms so it means a lot to me and so i stay busy because education is the key what are you most proud of in your service to this country uh i'm proud of mostly being become airborne a green beret yeah combat so you have to survive this and so it's something i hold my head up high with because i know the sacrifices man made because i've seen it and so what it means to me i can go out and honor them when i talk to people because the male honor it represents all those before me and they're probably many that should have the marijuana but just never looked at just just like in my case sergeant first class morris we have three questions remaining which will adapt to appear in the upcoming american valor television show number one thinking back to the actions for which you received the medal of honor what motivated you that day and why did you do it well my motivation that they like we said we work as a team we're brotherhood we train together we live together uh you know respect each other and so it's always that we're going to cover each other's back we're going to take care of each other and when you know the firefights start they don't understand the green beret they're not the younger soldier they are the mature soldier a lot of them have been through combat uh a lot of them have a level head and and so you know you count on the only counting on you at the same time and you know and so along with that uh we don't leave uh a brother behind that's their motto and we live up to that number two what do you want americans to remember about your fellow americans who served in vietnam um you know i want people to remember that these sacrifices are part of freedoms men and women that serve overseas in combat they have families but they'll put their life at risk so that you'll have a good life to protect your family and you know it's as when we lose the soldier we lose a lot especially on the battlefield and so we have to honor those that's given their lives and so every chance i get i reflect back on the ones i knew they lost their life but they lost it given not taken and number three 6 500 awards for heroism in vietnam were reviewed were excuse me were reviewed to upgrade to the medal of honor as part of your upgrade 24 men received the medal with you the only living african-american of the valor 24. what does that mean to you it it it meant a lot and you know along with that it meant that i really got to stand up and do right because i'm out of one to 24. uh we hadn't had a living african-american since 1968. and so i was the second one to be alive that was with at that point so i had a lot to do a lot to uphold but you know what uh the latin american guys that uh were there was seasonal obama they were brothers too and so we treat each other accordingly but it is in the beginning i will say to myself the melon is a lot of weight to carry so you prepare yourself yes you got to do well and i try my best you

Channel: American Veterans Center

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Keywords: AVC, American Veterans Center, veteran, veterans, history, army, navy, military, vietnam war, congressional medal of honor, army medal of honor, medal of honor airborne, living medal of honor recipients, medal of honor vietnam, medal of honor stories, green beret medal of honor, african american military history, black american history, african american military heroes, highest military honor, military honors, american war heroes, american hero story, black medal of honor winners

Id: 2NNB4jNWoyg

Length: 30min 43sec (1843 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 09 2021