The Most Emotional Medal of Honor Vietnam War Story Ever Sammy L. Davis Combat Veteran Interview

helped me and I got to go back to Vietnam and I spent the remainder of my tour in Vietnam and then they were gonna retire me I can you know what's more than that wooly if I can spend four months in Vietnam surely I can I had 18 months left on my original tour of duty surely I can do 18 months stateside and he said well okay but in letting instead of letting me be a regular soldier he put me on the speaking circuit now this was 1968 69 timeframe and my job was to go talk to the colleges and universities and he gave me intense orders that I was not to respond to the audience that I was to stand up in my best military fashion and read the speech that had been prepared for me by general Westmoreland well actually wasn't him I'm sure but it was just a one-page speech and basically it was telling the kids just about everything they didn't want to hear but that was my job and 18 months yes sir 18 months trying to convince myself not to just jump on them and do what I wanted when I hit the ground my foot hit the ground the one young lady came up to me and she goes sergeant Davis and I said yes ma'am she said we're here to let you know that we understand the difference between the war and the warrior and we're here protesting the war and then the turn around walked away well it took me a minute for it to fully absorb you know the impact what that had but that made the rest of my speaking tour somewhat easier because then I realized that perhaps all of them were not there protesting the warrior which was me that they were there protesting a war and that's their right I would hope that they would be educated in doing that but that is their right that's the right that the Warriors fought for to give them that right right the protest well it sounds sansa badass and intense without hearing the story of actual combat it seems I learned a lot of lessons in that 18 months of speaking tour all across America because up until that point I had everything that I wanted to happen all I had to do is to run faster jump farther endure more pain or whatever you know just don't quit as long as you don't quit you don't lose and that didn't apply in speaking to the college kids so I had to learn a whole new set of rules and I think in general Westmoreland's wisdom he understood what I had been through and knew that I need to needed to grasp a whole new set of rules patience understanding you know kindness by the time I completed they me in September of 69 I was a better person for having talked to millions of young hippies protesting war we might come back to it but I'd like storage keeping this thing from moving and now ready okay now Sam if you could tell me just to start off for the editor your name and rank and at the time that I earned the medal or time you rank my name is Sammy L Davis I was a private first class in the artillery 2nd battalion 4th artillery ninth after division Vietnam can you tell me a little bit about your personal background your family I was born in Dayton Ohio November the 1st 1946 my mother and father had met at Fort no not Fort Bliss Texas Air Force Base in northern Texas in 1945 right near the end of the war dad was they had made him a truck driver and they stopped it at this fort and my mama just so happened was going to California with her mother they were going out to visit relation and mom and dad run into one another and they said this is it and they got married and I was born in Dayton Ohio well my dad worked in the oil field until 1957 in 1957 the oil field collapsed in Illinois which was where we were living so as a driller dad said well I don't know what else I can do but he went to work for Brown & Root that's when the new cracking units in petroleum refinery which now it's old knowledge but at that time it was that's when they were just coming up with the new catalytic cracking units that they were adding to the existing refineries and dad's not lage of crude and what you're supposed to do with it got him a job so we traveled all over the United States we're basically wherever there's a refinery we live for about four months so we got to seal out of the country now the downside of that was I would go to school and be there three months or four months depended on how big that particular job was and then would move I went to as many as three schools in one year so I'd make new friends and then I'd leave and you know go to a whole new state and at the time I thought well this is really terrible you know I just I'm never going to have any friends but now wherever I go I'm going home and I've got schoolmates so it's pretty awesome I definitely had siblings had three older brothers and one younger brother and two younger sisters all my brothers have passed away the older one the older brothers were all veterans and I won't say they died of wounds that received in their particular combat oldest brother was in Korea next oldest brother was in the Berlin crisis in 1961 so did you grow up thinking of the military as a career for you and that I always wanted to join the Navy because my oldest brother was in the Navy and at this time period we were living in California Stockton just south of Stockton California and I joined the Sea Scouts when I was about 12 or 13 years old and was in the ski ski scouts up until the time when we moved to Indiana which was between my junior and senior years of high school dad got a job in Indiana so we moved Ann Deanna I graduated in 1966 in Mooresville we lived in Waverly which is a real small town two younger sisters and my young youngest brother was still at home we were all kids together I joined the service right out of high school in fact just within days after I graduated I went down and joined up and they said well you can't come in until September 28th so I went to work in an oil field and I worked in the oil field all summer in Illinois and then went back in and they took me away yeah you were good did you enlist in the army or the Navy I enlisted in the army of in Indianapolis on September or excuse me it was about June the first week of June went in to go into the Navy and the line was shorter in the army so I joined the army that's how good army next oldest brother he was in the Air Force neither one of them all three of my older brothers just spent their three they all joined I mean they were volunteer they spent three years my youngest brother which was 10 years younger than I never had the opportunity to go into the any of the military but he was killed in a car accident when he was 21 and it always seemed rather ironic that I earned my medal on September excuse me November the 18th 1967 I turned 21 on November of the 1st and my little brother turned 21 his birthday was September 26th and he was killed on September 29th just a couple days after he turned 21 and I always thought it was kind of strange that now here I was the one that probably was supposed to you know die and it was a little my little brother so I didn't think that was quite fair left he left two boys and wife that's right and well clearly when you were signing up for the military Vietnam was very much a factor you know yes sir in 1966 we couldn't find it in her schoolbooks because in 1966 it was still called Indochina French Indochina so when Vietnam was in the news naturally we were concerned about it so we went to the history books and encyclopedias or wherever we could find maps of Asia there was no Vietnam so we didn't know where it was for sure one of the things that motivated me to join right out of high school was Roger Donnellan Medal of Honor snippet Roger Donnellan he had just received his medal and Roger Donnellan I thought was probably one of the bravest men in the whole world and I'd like to go do my job like he did his job now Roger did you actually well he was on the knew seen him on the news when they were presenting the Medal of Honor King seen him on the news I know I did not know Roger then can you tell me the story of actually seeing that and what it meant to you at that moment I was working at a bowling alley I was i ran the restaurant at a bowling alley and we had a television and I worked from 4:00 in the evening till midnight six nights a week after right after school so I while the people were bowling will didn't have a lot to do you know you bake the pies and hamburgers and have everything all ready so I got to look at TV and there came Roger Donilon and he just you know standing so tall and so straight and showed the president it was a very short clip about a four second clip of the president putting the Medal of Honor on Roger Donald's neck now I because of the military people in my family I was very aware of what the mellah wanted Wow when I grow up I'd like to be a soldier like him you don't lose to you quit trying now can you tell me by the way is the door does the door need to be no sir my father's name is Robert Houston Davis my mama's daddy was Samuel Ballmer from Peoria Illinois and when I was born mama thought that I didn't look like a Samuel so she just named me Sammy excellent November 1st no that's his birthday also I got to meet this young man yeah - Sam's born on November the 1st ok so take me back to your enlisting and the early stages boot camp what to do what was your process after yessir husband after graduate from high school I went down and joined the army and they told me that well you will report for duty on September 28 here in Indianapolis then we will ship you to your basic training outfit I said ok so I got a job in the oil field in Illinois and work the whole summer wrench in rods and y'all probably don't know what that is but it's very physical when I went into basic training I was in better physical shape than when I came out that's how rough a job rod wrenching for your pull on the wells and undoing the the rods and the tubing that everything goes down in a hole so it's a lot of upper-body strength I was in better shape when I went into basic training in fact I gained 22 pounds in basic training so we went into I see where did I go in at little Korea fort lost in the woods in Missouri what's the name of that fort my mind's a blank at the moment there was such an influx of people coming into the military during that time period that they didn't have any room in their basic training unit so they put us on buses and took us to Fort Jackson South Carolina there was about 400 of us that they shipped down to Fort Jackson South Carolina and we were putting a b6 to best on Hill sir and that's where we did basic training had a drill my drill sergeant or a sense of Sergeant Francisco Quin onus and I just knew he hated me come to find out he didn't hate me but I thought he did because they picked on me all the time I want to graduated from basic training he said the reason why I have been more rough on you then some of the other young men is it because I saw more potential in you and I wanted you to know what you could do so I think sergeant Francisco Quinn illness he he was one of the first people in the military that made me realized that truly you don't lose until you quit trying all you gonna do just never quit trying after basic training we went to Fort Sill Oklahoma was in Foxtrot 3 f3 training battalion learned to be in artillery man got out of that in in February and had to leave and then I was reported to back to Indianapolis where they shittin they flew me out of Indianapolis in Davitt Nam and arrived in Vietnam on March 3rd 1967 that was real close to the time period when they blew up the long bin ammunition dump which was the largest ammunition dump in that part of the world maybe the whole world it was miles and miles circumference and they pulled a hundred of us my original orders was for the 23rd Field Artillery group which was right up on the DMZ the 23rd was primarily the big heavy artillery the 175 long comes which we had trained for but they pulled a hundred of us to be pad guards at the long bin ammunition dump and we thought well this is just terrible you know we're gonna be we're gonna guard ammunition well it turned out it was pretty fun you got to familiarize yourself with virtually every kind of munitions that any of the services had because one night or another you would have that pad well as young men you're not just gonna stand here look at it you won't pick it up look at it go whoa man this is cool in that so we got to familiarize herself with all these different kinda munitions we were there 63 days before they finally brought in permanent people that were to be pad guards and then they cut orders on us again and they sent all 100 of us to 2nd battalion 4th artillery 9th Infantry Division which was down in the Delta so instead of going way up north I was way down south yes sir blowing up oh yes sir the night that I arrived in country they had a terrible explosion their sappers sabotage people came in and started blowing pads of ammunition up and we had 8-inch artillery Pro Joe's landing in the ninetieth replacement compound which was several miles away now they were not armed they were just blown up but we thought this was the way it was I mean you know we're in Vietnam where the war was this was John Wayne movies was you know you see all these things happening so we're kind of standing in a little bunker and going wow this is about the way it is until the sergeant came by and kicked us where it would do the most good and said you boys get out drone or perimeter we're getting hit so we got her in fort teams and went out and and they weren't hitting us they were just hitting too long be an ammunition dump right so so then go back to your story 63 days we were there yes sir a couple of months and then you down south what's your sense of overall where we had in benoît is where the long been long Binh area is where we had been for the first 63 days the sergeant in charge of us there said I don't care what you do all day if you can go home and be back here by 4 o'clock get it but if you're not here at 4 o'clock you're young backside is mine so we got to travel you know get on motor scooters borrow more begum or whatever rhythm and we would got to do a lot of traveling now that was in the mid Highlands it's it's very little rice paddies up there it was in beautiful beautiful part of Vietnam got to me a lot of the people I've got to make friends with a lot of the people and then when we were sent down to tan true Vietnam that's way down on the Delta right just off the Mekong River and it's the area that I thought my Vietnam en was very much like the Everglades most people have a pretty good visual image of what the Everglades looks like well that's where my Vietnam happened which is a whole new whole new set of operating practices because we had been trained you know to move the artillery piece you hook it up to the truck and you drive down the road and when you get to the site where you're supposed to be you back up you know there were no roads we had to do everything by helicopter which we had never done anything by helicopter before and the big Chinooks would come in and pick our gun up and sling the ammunition underneath it and take us to a little island in the middle of the Everglades and drop us down usually there were four guns that would go out on operations but you'd be very very close together and our job was to provide clothes and continued support to the infantry that's their kill demons job so the ark turtle women would sometimes have to fire almost continuously for eight or ten hours as long as the enemy was attacking our infantryman you had to do your job and then you may lay around for a day or two days and not do much you didn't you cleaned everything and painted everything and polished your bullets sergeant James Gant from Lansing Michigan he was the meanest sergeant ever seen in my life and he would make us take each bullet out of our clip every night before it got dark and polished it and we just knew that he was just a bitter old man and that's the only reason why he was making us do this now it wasn't until later that we found out that because of Sergeant Gentz experience the m16 had a problem jamming in the early early years and his answer was to keep the bullets clean but he didn't tell us that he was he was old I would think sorry again it was 27 years old you know he was he was just a bitter old sergeant and that's why he was picking on us I wish that he would have taken the time to explain maybe just a little bit more why we had to have clean bullets but it worked out okay because we did we scared death of him he was a mean old sergeant next question right so you were you would be tan truth was our base camp that's where our battery base dad and then we would work out of that we always left at least two guns back to guard the home and then we would take guns out on different operations all over we even went up into the highlands you know depending if it was a really big operation and they were shy of artillery they had come down and borrowed two guns and the crew from us and then we would join the 173rd Airborne Brigade or the 25th or the 1st Cav and be with him for a week or ten days and then they'd send us back to tan true again we kept very busy so this is already the summer so 67 getcher and you were actually the the action for which you were honored was in November Kiesha can you tell me the lead-up to that what was what was your unit it was a continuing the same sort of state where should change tape before we get into so I you stand up yeah yes it's 5:20 it is 5:20 now yes sir that's wonderful okay so talk to me a little bit about the lead-up to the actual Act yes sir what you know did you seem a lot of well getting hit getting hit to us meant a few mortar rounds maybe some automatic weapons very seldom did we see the enemy or at least long enough to shoot at him because we were artillery now by this point we had learned the fact that if the enemy was going to seriously mess with the infantry they would take out the artillery first so the infantry could always judge how bad they were going to get hit by how bad we got hit on the night of November the 18th 1967 they had picked four guns up it actually picked us up about 6:30 in the morning and they dropped us off at almost 8 o'clock on a little island just off the mekong river down by Kyleigh vietnam there again the train was very much like the Everglades we immediately set up already before we even got the guns on the ground the infantry was getting hit so they needed our help the reason why you had to move often as artillerymen because the infantry moved and you had to stay with it we could we could shoot a certain distance and that's all father we could shoot which was 7 miles so you had to constantly be positioned and they would always try to position you where you could help the most units out so you know they had hopscotch around we'd moved three or four times a day sometimes so we landed at 8 o'clock in the morning as soon as we spread the trails on the 105 howitzer we started firing and we fired the weapon all day virtually as quickly as they could bring the ammunition in by helicopter and then they had set it down which breaking it out and load it in fireman I mean just it was a charge five remember it very well just as quickly as we could fire we fired all day just before dark the enemy broke contact so therefore we were able to quit firing the I can remember the Sun look and see just about half of the Sun brilliant gold with some big black the sunsets and sunrises over there were just awesome and I can remember looking up you know this you know you're just so exhausted so hot so tired but you look up and you see that sunset and it just kind of made you feel a little bit better we hadn't been doing nothing for more than just five minutes and a helicopter one of our helicopters came in and sat down and a major got out and he gathered us there were I believe 42 artilleryman on this little Atoll and he said your prop your probability of getting hit tonight is 100% so prepare yourselves he got back in his helicopter and away it went well as a private I was at the very end I said but that is the lowest rank you can be in combat sir private I have maybe the the higher ranking people were it had been explained to in more depth of what they thought getting hit was but me and the other privates we said well get in hit you know we're probably gonna get some mortar rounds gonna get some automatic weapons ya know bigger you know we've been shot at before it ain't that bad so sergeant Gant came by and inspected our Clips make sure that every bullet and every clip was polished and mine were so I was squared away we were still firing harassment and intra Dex interdiction rounds which is we called H knives and what you would do to let the enemy know that we were still awake you would fire H eyes just let him know that we're there known grid coordinates --is of where enemies were and we would fire rounds into that all night at no set time I mean it wasn't done on the hour on the half hour it was just you don't fire but we weren't really firing the weapon like we had all day we were working two hours on two hours off supposedly you could sleep the other two hours but it was hot and the skeeters were terrible you were so tired you couldn't sleep have you ever been that tired a lot of things going through your mind at about quarter till 2:00 in the morning Marvin Hart one of my there were four of us on the gun actually there were only three of us sergeant Gant was the fourth one and he was a mean old soldier there were three kids on his gun Marvin Hart came over and said Dave either relieved me or set up with me because I'm afraid I'm going to go to sleep well I couldn't sleep anyway so I got up and the first thing I did was I lit a sandbag that's back when the sandbags were cloth and put it in a cache one of the 105 canisters that had been fired and you put that sandbag down in it and what it does it doesn't burn it just smolders like a smudge pot and it chases the way that mosquitos and it creates enough heat sea rat can you never cut your lids all the way off your left no just enough to crimp it and you got rice paddy water and set down the edge of that canister and in about 20 minutes you'd have warm water for coffee delicious instant coffee so that's what I did you know then I kind of squatted on my haunches and talking to Marvin Hart from us go to Michigan and at 2:00 o'clock exactly and I remember because I looked at my watch we heard mortars sliding down the tube which is a very distinctive sound and to hear them sliding down the tube you got to be pretty close and I've said to me I said well when did we move in mortars and Hart said we didn't they had set up mortars we were set up right on a small River which was just off the Mekong River was about 300 yards from the Mekong River on this back canal I think that's the name of the canal was about 30 meters wide and they had set up the mortars on the it just immediately on the other side and the mortars started raining down on us now normally a mortar attack for us was three to five rounds they just wanted to keep you awake if they keep you awake long enough you get really tired when you get really tired you make poor decisions and that's what we thought that they had been trying to do well when the mortar attack continued on after the traditional three to five rounds you know we thought well it's gonna get serious well just the mortars were just raining down and at 2:30 exactly the mortars quit and from all the the din of them building going off when they quit in this silence now because of all the mortars blowing up when they hit that silent period none of the birds or frogs or things that make noise in the night they weren't doing nothing because they're scared too so that when I say it was quiet it was this eerie eerie quiet and heart and I am Delbert Cole from whatever Cole from he was in Texas we looked at each other and we heard whistles being blown like a coach has and then we heard bugles which their charge sounds very similar to our charge and orders being shouted in English and basically what they were saying was go kill the GI sergeant Gant said ok boys this is it so we grabbed a beehive round set it on muzzle action loaded it in the tube and we were standing there at our position ready for him well we could not fire the Beehive y'all don't know what a beehive rounded a beehive round effectively turns the 105 howitzer into a shotgun it fires 18,000 little darks beehive darts they're about the diameter of a pencil lead about an inch and a quarter inch and 1/8 long and got little fins they look like a little arrow made out of spring steal and that's called we called it beehive because of the sound that it makes for chef ground is what I think the military called it if you ever stood next to a beehive when the bees are buzzing and you can hear that well because you can't see the Beehive round when it's fired all you hear is this buzzing noise and that's what the soldiers that's why the soldiers named it behind it sound like you stand next to a behind so here we were standing on the peace the 105 howitzers which is usually what they got out in front of the VFW and American legions they're not a real big gun they got little shields on the side that if your average sized fellow you can kind of hide behind them when you're bigger than the average bear it's real hard to hide behind one of the shields but I was trying real hard you know kind of hunkered down the bullets were just flying and I was waiting for sergeant yeah to tell me to fire no I knew not to fire until he said fire no matter what was happening and I could see the enemy all around us they were doing mass assault waves 150 to 250 at a time would come running at us but we couldn't fire the Beehive because we did we were not assured that all of the people over there were enemy because we still had some infantry fifth to the sixtieth Infantry had been providing a portion of our security and we couldn't fire and at our boys so we were trying to coordinate everything you know in seconds trying to get to all the jobs done well I heard sergeant Gant had the headset on on one ear and I actually heard our fire Direction control safe fire before starting again said fire and I almost pulled the lanyard the trigger that pulled that first half but I knew that although I knew he was going to say fired you don't fire before sergeant said fire so well I'm then he said fire and I pull the lanyard well the weapon went off did its job but there the enemy had set up RPG a rocket across the right across the river from me and when I fired yet they fired at my muzzle blast but instead of hitting the muzzle they hit the shield that I was hiding behind round where I was had to hold the lanyard here which is what fires the piece and the round went right between me and my arm when it hit the shield it blew up and I got just thousands of little bitty pieces of steel all over my right side the guy said it looked like a I looked like hamburger which is they they left me for dead because they thought I was dead it blew me off the piece it also hit Sergeant Gant right in the chest so the I pulled the lanyard and I started again it was about four no three foot from me and the last thing I can remember was sergeant just disappearing into the darkness well that's reason why because that rocket hit him blew me into my foxhole was about which was I have about eight foot away from the howitzer and I originally blew me I was laying like half in and half out with my legs from my mid thigh down was down in a foxhole and the rest of me was up over the sandbags well the enemy started turning my howitzer around supposedly to fire current and fired of our guys if I'd been awake I would have known that our next gun back was going to fire a beehive around the standing rule as you never let the enemy take control of the weapon no common sense but I was not I was unconscious so when the enemy started picking my howitzer up to fire it bill few from Rising Sun Ohia fired the Beehive which saved my life but it hit me from mid from mid thigh up to an including my fourth lumbar vertebra I had about thirty beehive holes that just passed through me I had a flak jacket on which is the only thing that saved my back my life when I later when I took the flak jacket off I could hold it up to the light and see the Beehive were sticking through the only thing that was holding them in the flak jacket was the fins so that's why I'd been hurting sit down dead because all those beat I was in here working around on me when they fired the Beehive at me it woke me up and I rolled over and I rolled face-up in bottom of my foxhole and I'm looking up now the foxhole just was deep enough that with the sandbags it came if he does very much dug very deep he hit water so it all depended on how much water you wanted lay in how deep you dug your foxhole so I was laying flat the first thing I can remember was I thought wow it's just like Christmas now this was mid-november you know what a tracer round is well our tracers were red and their tracers were white me the question again and I'll try to start there so the first thing I can remember was I was laying face-up in my foxhole and I thought well it's just like Christmas not couldn't hear nothing you know it was it was I was stone quiet but I could see all these pretty lights going right over the top of my foxhole and I guess that's what reminded me of Christmas because our tracers are red and they're tracers were white blue or green depending on which communist nation was supporting that particular effort and because they were white blue and green that meant it was real well supported so I'm laying there watching all these tracers thinking wow this is really cool you know it's really pretty well my hearing went like turns stereo from 0 to 50 you know went from hearing nothing within just a very short period of time it got loud enough that I some of the smoke started clearing out in my head and I'm starting to realize what's happening and though who weren't just pretty lights they were tracers so I kind of raised up on one elbow now my foxhole was real close to the river you know three feet so when I raised up and I looked down and there was 150 to 200 enemy right there you know well I've picked up ma'am 16 I had 12 clips which is roughly about a hundred and 80 rounds and I started doing my job as a soldier it reminded me of when I was a kid and dad did take us to the fair and they would have those little ducks floating in the truck not real ducks you know they were little wooden ducks that you'd shoot with the flow bricks and uh what was that a little 1890 Winchester pump you know that shut down real low power low and you and I can remember dad you know when I was six eight years old all all the boys he had line up we'd take turns shooting those ducks then you got a stuffed duck for a prize or something but that's what it reminded me of you know that I was shooting those ducks again boom well after I had cleaned out one side of what was my ammunition pouch and I went to the other side and it's like I hadn't even been do nothing I mean there was still just you know just thousands of them so I when I loaded the light when I took the second-to-the-last cliff out and put a new clip in I started becoming concerned you know I thought well am I not doing my job am I not hitting my enemy you know I mean what's you know because they just kept coming I couldn't understand why they just kept coming that had never happened before I still had maybe six eight rounds left when they quit and they fell back so I'm got a few minutes to kind of look around and see what what's happening well I didn't have any more ammunition and I thought well I had a box of 60 m60 machine gun ammunition in my foxhole and that was 500 rounds our kill room and had the big bucks because we didn't have to carry it like the infantryman did had 500 rounds in it and I thought I remembered where another the other box was in where the 60 was which was the next foxhole down so I quickly crawled over there sure enough 260 was there now the so I grow get back to my foxhole and set it up and hadn't had it set up but a very short period of time when I could hear him screaming again and then sure enough he really came out of the darkness from there again they were 150 to 250 doing a massive salt wave at me but I felt pretty good cuz I had a thousand rounds of ammunition so I started doing my job as a soldier kept firing kept firing went through about three assault waves and when I could see the bottom of the box the middle box that their ammunition comes in of the last box I started getting worried you know because it was just like like living in a bad dream you know no matter what I did it's like I wouldn't do nothing to him because I I mean I didn't realize that it was a reinforced battalion it was fifteen hundred against forty two kids a thousand five hundred enemy against forty two kids and they just kept coming well I've fired the last rounds I had three rounds left in my 16 clip and I was saving them and I don't really know what for but I was saving them for an emergency I looked at my how it's ER and it was burning all blo virtually everything that had been on the howitzer and that's all the little cranks and the knobs and the recoil mechanism that's up on top of the barrel virtually everything that had been on the howitzer was blown off everything tires were burning furiously and I thought well maybe I can get off one round now by this point I'd been shot the right side with an ak-47 I had to be hiding in my back had the shrapnel from the rocket round and I didn't think that I was probably gonna see daylight but I wouldn't wanna quit you know because I thought well if if I don't do my job this guy's behind me ain't got a chance so I thought well oh I'll see if I can get off one round from the house or so I scrounged around found to be hi round set it on muscle action found the canister that had not been fired had to find the powder because we'd had everything set up nice and orderly and that's where the mortars had blown everything askew so I had it took about 20 minutes at least 20 minutes to find the components now the enemy's still doing their job I mean there ever were I didn't have any ammunition so I was having to hide and lay in the water and they'd run over me and finally when I've got found all the components and I loaded the piece well the tube was pointing like to the left of where that's where they originally started coming from well during the course of the battle they had moved more to the right was where I guess it was easy for them to run through and the river was not quite as deep there or there was only a part where they waited in they got almost three-quarters across the river and it was still like only this deep on him but next to my bank was deep and they had to swim the last 15 20 foot so I had to move the piece I'd moved the house er well stateside it takes at least 4 min to pick the house or up and rotate it on its wheels and that's when the tires are you know good nothing well I got underneath the trail put the trail across that's the big legs that stick out behind the house or got underneath it and put the trail on my shoulder and just kind of stood up and started turning it a little bit at a time a little bit at a time I know this big hunks of Steel were disappearing off the howitzer you know I could feel it kind of vibrate now there was bullets everywhere but it was my it was mystifying why there specifically there was a big hole appeared in the in the other trail right by where my hand was and I couldn't you know the guns fall apart right in front of a face well then I realized that what it was they had set up a 50 Cal across the river and he was firing he's seen me move in the house and he was trying to take me out he was trying to do his job and at the end of the trails are spades like big shovels that you that put and you put them in the ground and that's what keeps the howitzer from sliding backwards when you fire so I wanted to make sure that those spades had a big clump of grass or something to hold it because I didn't want it sliding over me so I was looking to see where the spades were and that's when I seen the big about a basketball-sized tracers what it looked like go and that's when I realized well that's why it's falling apart they got a 50 Cal on me so when I set the tube down I wanted to make sure that my circumference of fire would include where that 50 Cal was he was set up by a big old dead tree it was a forked big big old dead tree and he was set up right beside us so I dropped the trails and guesstimated yeah he's he's gonna get it crawled underneath it well at that point I had to wait a few minutes before they were doing another mass assault wave because I figured I was only going to get one round I won't do as much effect as I could heard the whistles again here they come and I waited until they got to the point right to where they had to start swimming again which meant from that point all the way back for as far as you could see there was just hundreds of them and I pulled the lanyard the gun didn't go off it went I want to pull the lanyard it went pop and my heart just sunk you know because this was my last effort and but I could feel the gun kind of going and then it went off and it went boom well I had overcharged it now the 105 howitzer has seven bags of powder in it and they're all sewed onto a string and it's called cutting a charge how many charges you leave in the canister determines how far you shoot so far Direction control would say okay you need to shoot a charge for or charge seven or and you would cut off the bags you didn't need well the battle had broken all the bags and there was just little piles of powder Sergeant Gant had convinced us that if you want the Beehive to be maximally effective you have to fire maximum charge I was only going to get one round I wanted to be maximally effective so I filled the canister full of loose powder charge seven is a maximum charge later I was told that what I fired that night was probably equivalent to a charge twenty on a gun that didn't work so when it finally went off it went up in the air stood up straight up and fell back down when it came back down at landed on me and that's broke my trust my ribs on the right side broke my back but it bounced and I rolled over now later I heard the guys hollering behind me that's how one of them I knew that some of our guys were still alive because I could hear him oh yeah yeah my name's Sam they called me the obvious reasons later they told us is we have man we thought that you'd rigged up some kind of big flamethrower or something because of all that wet powder that's why it didn't go off immediately said you know all the time that the gun was up in the air it was shooting flames out about 70 75 feet and even when it came back down it was still spewing these pellets of fire out you know awesome we thought you'd rigged up a big flamethrower somehow so I'm laying back on my belly again looking out to where the howitzer had just fired and I could see that the Beehive round had done its job well I was still alive I thought well maybe I can get off one more round well I won more rounded it until I had heard someone across the river shouting don't shoot I'm a GI I had learned we had learned earlier on in Vietnam that just because someone from obviously where the enemy is is shouting don't shoot I'm a GI not too overly heat it because a lot of the Vietnamese spoke better English than us kids from Waverly Indiana and they would teach their soldiers to say in perfect diction don't shoot I'm a GI and your natural response especially the first few times I hear just uh you know you stop what you're doing and you look so although I had heard someone shouting don't shoot on my GI die I knew with the direction that was coming from but I didn't stop and really look we had a low opening illumination round by this point we'd started getting illumination rounds from a 155 unit that was close enough or far enough away they could not fire a chi but they could fire illumination it was just enough lighter that they could get to us just barely could get to us and we had a low opening round about treetop high and when they pop open it's a real loud pop and then when the flare ignites it's like looking into the Sun and when that happens at 75 yards away it gets your attention and I naturally looked at it and I seen when Dale Holloway my brother standing up waving these Mooney had seen it don't shoot I'm a GI I said my god somebody's got to go get him I knew he was my brother glendale's a black man from stockton california you know somebody's got to go get him well ordinarily I'd have just run down to the river and jumped in and swim across and brought my brother back by this point my body was in real feeble condition and I knew I couldn't just run down there and swim across the river so I thought well I'll find a air mattress that's what the army had given us to sleep on and the rice paddies you know you always end up falling off love them and getting sleeping in the water anyway but it was a good thought but I found a air mattress that didn't have any bullets in the portion up where the valve was so I tied it off just about in the middle and blew it up and sure enough at Hell there so I crawled down to the river swim across the river stash the air mattress in the bushes and started making my back making back to where I'd last scene when Dale Stanton I was using a round Bush as a marker and I kept going towards you now the enemy's still doing their job massive salt waves running right over me but I just lay there like by this point many many many people land there and I would just lay amongst them when I finally got to the bush and I crawled around behind it there was a foxhole there and instead of just one man been in it there were three men in it so Wendell said well Jim doctor from Salina Kansas we think Jim's dead he had been shot right through the head had been shot in the chest so we can't get a respiration or heartbeat and I checked him real quick and I couldn't find nothing either Billy Ray Crawford from Alvin Texas Billy Ray's was a black man and Billy Ray had lost his left leg from just below his knee down but we had we tied it off when Dale had been shot in the back had a shrapnel wound and he said that I could lake two fingers in and but he was still functioning well I knew I didn't have the strength to make three trips it had taken me about 45 minutes to make that trip over to that to that point and I was just getting so tired so I asked the men above to give me the strength to carry all three of my brothers a long time picked up Jim dice turns led him across my shoulders his head hanging over here and his feet here Gwen Dale still had three clips of ammunition 316 so I'll put a clip in each pocket clip in the weapon enlarge the sling and hung it from my forehead picked up Billy Ray picked up wind ale now they could both help though I mean it wasn't like I was truly carrying all three at one time we were really kind of helping each other and the way we went back towards the riverbank we could hear when the enemy would break through the jungle and I'd lay the guys to figured I had about three seconds to cover him up with vegetation before they actually reached ran over us while I still had ammunition I used the ammunition to do my job and to keep the enemy from killing my brothers you I would watch their eyes as they would run over us and you could tell what they were thinking most of them were just scared kids doing their job like we were trying to do and I let him go yes sir okay your figured ahead like three seconds to lay the guys down before they actually reached us as long as I had ammunition left I would I use the m16 I would lay on top of the guys face up after I expended all the ammunition in covering us up with vegetation which by this point there was just all kinds of tree limbs and big tall Sawgrass laying on the floor I mean there was lots of vegetation to cover up with and I'd within the three seconds I cover up enough that we weren't extremely obvious and I'd grabbed ahold of a tree limb if it was pitch dark and I handed you a baseball bat would you know it's a baseball bat yeah you probably would because the baseball bat Scott just got that feel to it when I grabbed ahold of this limb it just felt like a baseball bat and something said better keep that with you so I did I had three more times that I still had ammunition but I was dragging this limb along with us too and after I ran out of ammunition I used the baseball bat like a club the tree limb like a club and it worked efficiently made it back to the riverbank found my little piece of bare mattress put dice turd on it he was the only one that couldn't hold on so I just laid Jim across it and prayed him back to the riverbank when I got back to our side two people jumped in a river and I I was trying to make up my mind what the correct what my correct job was going to be was I gonna hit him was I gonna choke him was I just gonna grab a hold of him and sink to the bottom now this is all seconds microseconds in your mind you know but I was trying to decide what to do because man I was just getting really tired face came up right in front of me and the first thing I seen was big blue eyes it was Bill Murray from the noir North Carolina and because they had blue eyes I knew he was one of my brothers the other guy was Frank gage from King depression of Frank's Italian and he's got big brown eyes the enemy had brown eyes too and I don't know what I would have done if Frank would have came up first I'd have probably hit him but bill came up first and I just kind of I passed Jim dice Terron to him they pulled Jim up on the bank and started doing what they could for him I immediately went back across Billy Ray and Glendale could both hang on so basically all I had to do is just swim made it back to our riverbank once again bill and Frank jumped in the water helped get them up we squared them away as much as with our limited resources medical resources that we had there with us I thought I'd better go back I could see the tubes fly o2 had two guns still functioning out of the four I could see the barrels the flash I thought well I'd better go help him so I'm calling back to help Bill fuse gun when I came across my mean old sergeant again sergeant Gant was laying he was about half his body depth in water had this big hole right here in his chest had a big pile of pink foam on it now sergeant Gant had taught us that that's a second chest wound and what you do for a second chest wound is is that you get a piece of your poncho you clean off the site lay the chest or lay the poncho over it to seal the chest wound and then put a compress over over it and that's all you can do that you get the medic well I went back to crawled back to my original position where my duffel bag was because he said you get a piece of your poncho now this is how tired you get you know whatever is there is what you do I can remember laying very calmly flat on my back holding the poncho up to the illumination that was coming down looking to see where there weren't no holes in it because it was in the duffel bag was all shot up and I found a section it didn't have any holes in it and I calmly tore it out crawled back up to sergeant Ganton took his shirt off and cleaned it off with the rice paddy water as much as I could and I laid it down on it and all I had was a big piece of his jacket to make a club de compras off of but I tied that down and almost immediately he started coughing large amounts of blood up and then and I what I wanted him to do was just to say okay now private now here's what you're gonna do next because this was my sergeant this was the me no charge again but he still couldn't talk but his eyes started clearing up and he held his he picked his hand up and I thought my sergeant wants me to hold his hand so I kind of crawled up and I grabbed a hold and I still was hoping that he was gonna tell me what to do next you know and I grabbed a hold of his hand and I looked down in his eyes the light bulb that comes on in your head that your dad he always told you about the light bulb came on sergeant Glenn Gannon is a black man and I was a white boy from Waverly Indiana and I didn't know exactly where it fit in the process of things but I figured that was one of the reasons why he hated me so bad it was because I was a white boy from southern Indiana and he was a black man from Lansing Michigan and that light bulb come on all these things that he had you know polished in the bullet the Beehive round setting the time fuse on it setting out 100 degree heat with a blindfold passing the Beehive around and around and around when we weren't firing I mean things that we thought was just picking on us cuz he was just a mean bitter old sergeant you know when I grabbed to hold his hand I look down these eyes I knew that he didn't hate me that he left me that instead of going and doing what the other gunnery sergeants did I mean they might have had dancing girls and cold beer on the other side of that uh palm trees over there I don't know I was just a private but sergeant didn't go do it he stayed with he stayed and picked on his kids he stayed and shared with him the things that he knew was gonna help us survive you know that was all in that light bulb and you know just and I loved him like my daddy because that's really what it was see you got to love somebody a whole lot too to pick on him and teach him things well I'll pull sergeant again up not totally out of water couldn't get him couldn't find a spot that didn't it wasn't didn't have a little bit but got him up a little bit better squirt him I gave him a shot of morphine you know put a mark on his forehead so when the medic did make it by you know that he had had already had one shot and made my way back to the other gun crew and helped them until they broke contact about 8:00 in the morning started getting dust offs in helicopters about nine o'clock Jim Dykstra was one of the last people that we loaded on the helicopters he was with our dead the medic and the helicopter seen a bubble come up through the chest wound that Jim had in his chest he'd been shot the chest also and took his stethoscope off and put it on his heart and had a heartbeat and Jim Dykstra is alive and well today living in Salina Kansas I got to hold Jim dusters grandbabies what an awesome feeling knowing that if I hadn't done my job when I was just a kid that's just precious little thing would not be here Billy Ray Crawford survived the war but didn't survive the peace he went home to Alvin Texas as a black man Alvin Texas is below Houston right on the Gulf I went down looking for Billy Ray and that's when they told me that he had not made it he tried to medicate himself with alcohol and and drugs and didn't make it Billy Ray excuse me when Dale Holloway lives in Stockton California when Dale was doing pretty good it's been a couple years now since I've talked to him but I spend a lot of time with Jim Dicer because he's close he lives in Salina grew up I know his kids as he knows my kids and it's good there were 11 of us left standing that morning out of the 42 that started 12 counting me the other 11 men are the men that put me in for this I didn't do anything heroic I did my job that's what the soldiers do and if there was one of these given that night there should be at least 42 of them because if any one of us had not done their job there would be none of us alive where did you dig my grandpa's my daddy my brothers me no sergeant yet you know just Sergeant Francisco Qin honest you know he was the one that I didn't know how far I could run and most people when you get tired you quit running and Francisco Qin Ellis was there kicking him up backside and kept me running and I was amazed I could run 20 mile in fact I got so good at it I could run it backwards just like he could you just you don't lose to you quit trying no matter what you're faced with whether it's war or school work or politics you don't lose to you quit trying it's it sounds silly perhaps to say that I went to war and found out about love what real love is you know I didn't go to war to kill people I went to war because I love my daddy I wanted him to be proud of me I went to war because I love my grandpa and I love him the country and when I got over there the reason why we fought so hard was because we discovered we loved each other that we were all we had and they became brothers we became brothers and that's lasted up you know it's been 36 years and those men that I fought with are still my brothers so I learned about what real love is what is the my names on the back of it but it doesn't mean it belongs to me I'm just a caretaker everyone that's ever served in our military as a part of this and I have the privilege of doing a great deal of speaking to our young men and women in the service today and I'll hand it to them and they'll say well sergeant we can't we can't hold that ice no you have to hold it because if you don't feel a part of it if you don't feel like that's part yours then it has less value so there's been over a million hands that's held yes it's the it's the symbol of love it's what the Medal of Honor is and I hope you understand that you see because that's what differentiates it between the other awards of Valor if I had done what I had done that night but I didn't do it to save lives then I would have received the Distinguished Service Cross or the Silver Star or the Bronze Star the criteria that makes this different when you awarded the Medal of Honor is that whatever you had to do you did it to save lives good mother Juana represents love can you tell me about the the process immediately afterwards and when you found out that you were spent some time in Japan in a hospital they told me they were gonna send me home I told him to get a hold of general westmoreland that he wouldn't send me home and sure enough general Westmoreland interceded on my behalf allowed me to go back to Vietnam when I got back to Vietnam now I was in the hospital for a month or so when I got back to Vietnam there there was talk you know that Sammy Davis been put in for the Medal of Honor but it was you know there's no I didn't do anything heroic I just done my job so I didn't think there was any even a remote possibility that I would ever be awarded the Medal of Honor when I left Vietnam they held a formation which is I think the only formation I would that we had in Vietnam and our battery commander called me out front and said told everybody that why they not made corporal I said corporal Davis has been put in for the Medal of Honor and it has cleared the military it is now in front of Congress and the way the middle of honor works is that in the entire military process and the Congressional process the same thing that changes a bill into a law is how the Medal of Honor is created that very same process and if any one person reads the citation and doesn't believe that you earned the Medal of Honor it's killed not you know and you're awarded the next higher Distinguished Service Cross or the Silver Star and at that point it had cleared the military that all the military had read it and said that yes they thought that I had earned the Medal of Honor so I came back to Fort Hood Texas and general Westmoreland put me on the speaking tour speaking to colleges and universities all over America and my James O'Day Kentucky Colonel Colonel O'Day kept me posted on where the metal was and what House the Senate pretty awesome and when you finally word of the ceremony have you seen the movie Forrest Gump in the movie Forrest Gump and the president is putting the Medal of Honor around Forrest neck that's really mean they used my footage in the movie Forrest Gump they just took my face off and put Tom's face there they based Forrest the citation on my actual citation I had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the movie only the Medal of Honor portion of the most frightening thing I'd been subjected to up till that point in my life I mean I'd had good training on how to earn the Medal of Honor I'd had no training on how to receive it and I was so frightened standing in for the president that I thought I was going to fall down and that's I was standing up there thinking to myself please God don't let me fall down you know please don't let me fall down and I didn't it worked awesome in itself can sometimes be an equally awesome kind of it's how would you I wouldn't describe it as a burden to where the middle of honor is an obligation for all the men that earned it that didn't receive it it's an obligation so I've tried to live my life since I since this was hung around my neck as I would have believed that you would have if you'd earned the Medal of Honor you know like I say my name's on the back of it but I'm just the caretaker it doesn't mean that's mine I'm just the caretaker you know to hear you describe how you didn't do anything that heroic I mean it's I mean from my perspective it's perilous I'm just completely beyond I did my job that's what soldiers knew right I mean if I had not done my job bata court-martialed me I did my job that's all I did was a what's my child everybody's got to work a little overtime tell me about the decision why it's my brother what immediately came to mind my little brother we've always lived in the country when my little brother was big enough to follow me around follow us around my older brothers my dad would he enforced us on us the fact that you don't leave your brother so when I looked up and seen my brother standing on the other side of the riverbank it was just instinct it's what I'd been taught you don't leave your brother and I went and got him I didn't know there was three at that point I thought there was just wind l was standing there but if if there have been 20 there I don't reckon had made much difference I'd have still done my job I think there's been more it seems like accomplished in terms of brotherhood between the races in the military well that's where you find out that the color your skin or where you're from or you know doesn't mean any different it doesn't it's not important what's important what's in your heart and if you're my brother there's nothing I won't do for you and that's what you find out because when I went into the military I had my doubts about the normal things that you know young kids do well because he's a different color or a different religion or whatever but you find out that y'all brothers y'all brothers that's great Wow let's say this for a second how is the Medal of Honor changed my life I would like to think that I am the man I am today whether this was hung around my neck or not but I truly understand that the man I am today is partly because of this hanging around my neck because I know there's been a lot of times that I had been tempted to do some things that might have brought discredit on someone else that had maybe earned this but not received it so it's made me be a better person because I've tried to uphold the integrity that's an obligation I feel to hold the integrity of the medal and that when I'm all done with it the next person that wears it will do the same thing that's how I received it with the integrity intact and I want it to be intact when I pass it on do you this the the world the spiritual enter into this or their belief in God I mean in your experience out there was that there are no atheists in a foxhole it's true I believe in God I also believe in Buddha and everything else if there's a possibility that one God lives then there's a possibility that all of them can and when I was in Vietnam I didn't want to offend any of them so I just the man above no sure and I would certainly love to go back but I will not give the Communists my money I went over there to help the people be free and they're not free so I will not go back and give the Communists my money well thank you very much this is a very tiring yeah do that for a second and then I'll get a couple of shots everything on the Medal of Honor is extremely symbolic of our nation the 13 white stars are representative of the 13 original colonies the army medal of honor is suspended by the Eagle which is the symbol of the army the Eagle stands on a bar of valor the five pointed star has always had religious symbol it's not only in America but all over the world the lady in the in the middle of the army medal of honor is a lady Minerva the Greek goddess of wisdom and war the green around the outside there are several several theories about the green jon-fen related to me what I would like to believe jon-fen told me that the green represents the laurel wreath that christ wore when he gave his life for those he loved you know that we need to see where your name is written on the back pull it in that close just a little bit there yeah and then just turn it a little bit oh yeah that's a good okay that turns back okay screw it away how long did it take to recover from all this so far it's been 37 years our PFC smart hello sheriff you sir I'll take care no YouTube thank you restaurant food we'll turn on the lights

Channel: History Is Back

Views: 636,985

Keywords: Interview, Sammy, Davis, Jr, Vietnam, Medal, Honor, MOH, Medal of Honor, Full, Emotional, Hero, Sammy L Davis, Love, Courage, Brotherhood, Badass, War, Oral, History, Veteran, Vet, Soldier, conservative, war stories

Id: mn7vnlZcAv4

Length: 78min 32sec (4712 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 10 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/kvlrr_asft]

Wow. This man and the men he served with are heroes and my condolences to the ones who didn’t make it.