This man died 37 times | Historical Legends Part 2

if you google the craziest war story of all time the story i'm gonna tell today always pops up as the number one but before we get into today's story if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format then you come to the right channel because that's all we do and we upload three or four times every week so if that's of interest to you please remove all of the trash bags from inside all of the like buttons trash cans and then proceed to throw away various perishable saucy food items also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads alright let's get into today's story born in south texas in 1935 roy benavidez was orphaned as a young child and sent to live with his uncle as a young teen he had to drop out of school to work in the beet and cotton fields just to help support his family when he turned 18 he decided he wanted to get away from his hometown and do something bigger with his life and so he enlisted in the army and shortly after that he went to airborne school and then was assigned to the very famous 82nd airborne division in october of 1964 roy was a part of the first 125 000 americans sent to vietnam while on a classified operation that required roy to dress up as an enemy combatant he stepped on a land mine in the middle of the jungle and nobody else was with him so he's totally stranded but fortunately a squad of u.s marines came upon him but from what he was wearing they assumed he was an enemy soldier and so they almost walked past him but someone thought to just flip him over and see who he was and they discovered he was american and he had american dog tags on and so he was evacuated from vietnam and sent to an american hospital and there a doctor would tell him that he had a serious spinal injury and that it was unlikely he would ever walk again and roy's first reaction was please don't discharge me from the army because for roy the army was his life it was all he had he was incredibly proud of it and he desperately wanted to go back to vietnam and so he pleaded with the doctors and the nurses please let me have some time to try to regain my strength in my legs so that i don't get medically discharged and so they said look you're gonna get medically retired if you aren't walking within the year and so every night when his doctors and nurses would leave he would fall out of his bed and then drag himself across the ground to the wall and then he'd pull himself up and try to put weight on his legs and attempt to build strength back up and retrain himself how to walk and after six months of doing this every night he did literally re-teach himself how to walk he built up strength in his legs and his doctors and nurses they're watching this transformation during the day but they're not seeing him at night and they're telling him this is a miracle we've never seen this before we've never seen someone recover so quickly and roy just stayed quiet because he wanted to make sure he was allowed to keep doing that every night and so finally after those six months his doctors and nurses agreed that yup he's good he can stay in the army but the army said they wanted him to take a desk job because he had already been so badly wounded in combat and roy didn't want that he pleaded with them to let him go back to the 82nd but they said no we're not going to risk you getting hurt again and so he was sent to north carolina for his desk job and as soon as he got there he began training like a maniac every minute of every day trying to get in the best shape of his life because his plan in his head was once he got there he would try out four special forces he would try to become an army green beret which is the premier combat unit in the army it's one of the hardest ones to get into and their training program is in north carolina and so after a few months he was in amazing shape and he asked his superiors can i go try out to be a green beret and they're like i can't believe you're even walking but you know what you've come this far you can go try out and just a couple of months later roy benavidez was a green beret a year later in 1968 so four years after roy was nearly killed by that land mine he was sent back to vietnam for his second combat tour and as soon as he got there the fighting was very intense on may 2nd of that year roy had a day off and he was spending his day off at a church service inside of their wooden shack they had built on their base and while he was in there listening to the chaplain he heard a radio call come out from the communications table that was just outside of the shack he was in and it sounded like someone was in trouble and so he ran outside to listen to the radio and what he heard was this very desperate call from someone yelling into the radio get us out of here and in the background of this radio call is just a constant barrage of gunfire the call for help came from a 12-man army special forces team that had been ambushed by an entire north vietnamese army infantry battalion to put that in perspective that is 12 special forces members of which many of them roy knew personally in the middle of the jungle where on all four sides there are over 1 000 enemy combatants as roy is hearing this distressing transmission come across the radio he hears overhead the sound of incoming helicopters and he looks and he sees there's three birds that are coming towards their base and so he runs over to the landing zone to greet the helicopters as they come in and you can see as they're landing they are all completely covered in bullet holes and as soon as they touch down roy runs up to one of the door gunners which is this 19 year old kid and he looks kind of dazed and roy asked him you know what's going on where'd you guys just come from were you out there at that ambush site do you know what's going on with that 12-man team and the door gunner just collapses into roy's arms and dies he had been shot up these three helicopters had attempted previously to fly into the jungle and save that 12-man team but they had been shot off and had been unsuccessful roy helped get the dead door gunner out of the helo and then he turned to the pilot of this helo where the door gunner was and he asked him you know are you gonna go back out there and try to save those guys and the pilot was obviously so distraught about the death of his door gunner and also the fact that there are 12 men out there that they could not rescue that he's chomping at the bit he wants to go back out there and roy immediately volunteers hops in the helo and they head out to go rescue this 12-man team so not only are there only two of them but roy was so eager to volunteer himself he forgot his gun so all he had on him was his knife and some medical supplies but nonetheless the pilot just keeps flying towards the ambush site which was in cambodia there was this really dense stretch of jungle and as they got closer and closer gunfire started coming out of the jungle towards the helicopter and so the pilot had to do this kind of constant zigzagging just to avoid getting shot down and so as they're zigzagging they noticed there's some smoke coming out of the jungle and it was very clear that this 12-man team is trying to signal to the helo here we are come get us because they can hear the helicopters coming in and so the pilot tried to fly down and get as close as he could but any time he got even marginally close to this team the rate of fire would pick up so dramatically that the gila was just about to get shot down and so the pilot began to turn away and he told roy we can't get any closer we're gonna have to get more people in here and roy just tells him no get as low as you can and i will jump out into the jungle and the pilot turns to him and he's like you can't do that you're gonna get killed and roy somehow convinces this pilot that he alone without a gun is totally competent just put me down in that jungle and everything's gonna be just fine and so the pilot said okay and he lowered right over the canopy of this jungle about a hundred yards away from where this 12-man team is trapped and without any hesitation roy just leaps off the helicopter into the jungle now you gotta understand that where he was jumping was where the enemy was he was literally jumping no parachute no gun no anything just crashing through the canopy onto the jungle floor where he'll definitely be surrounded by enemy combatants and so he plummets through the canopy smashes onto the ground he pops up and just starts running through the jungle with enemies on either side of him towards the 12-man down team and the enemy was so surprised to just see this american running through the middle of the jungle by himself with no weapon that they hesitated for a minute and they didn't open fire on him but when they did open fire roy got shot in the face in the back of the head in the leg they threw a grenade that detonated at his back and sent shrapnel into him but none of it stopped roy he just kept on running until he made it to this downed 12-man team and when he got to them they were in terrible shape they were doing their best to stay behind some trees but rounds were coming in from all directions and four of them were already dead and the others that were still alive were critically wounded in fact one of the most able-bodied of the surviving 12 had been shot in the head and was missing an eye and could barely see out of the other one and so he's fighting to stay conscious and he's generally trying to shoot in one direction but i mean that's their best guy at this point to give you a state of how they were doing but roy ran up to the sky he pulled him down he gave him a shot of morphine in the arm and he repositioned him because he couldn't really see and told him where to shoot his gun and then under a constant hail of bullets roy low crawled to each of the other living team members and gave them morphine shots and then began dragging each and every one of them away from the ambush site to this other area where there was better cover and there was a nearby clearing that he believed a helicopter could land in if the pilot was really daring on one of roy's last trips back to the ambush site to get the last few surviving members he saw two other men that were part of this team that had been totally cut off from the main group and when roy had jumped into the jungle and ran in all his adrenaline had kicked up and he just hadn't done a head count and so he didn't realize there were two other people over there and so without any hesitation he grabbed a gun off of one of the dead enemy soldiers and just began running towards this down two-man team and as he's running he's shooting wildly in every direction trying his best to suppress enemy fire but it's really doing nothing he's just dodging bullets as he's running and right as he got close to the two-man team a bullet went flying through his thigh just clean through his thigh and it didn't slow him down he got to the two-man team totally unphased and he says okay get ready to move he stands back up and he starts shooting again in both directions and tells them to crawl back to the main unit and so he stands up and continues to shoot in both directions until these two men get back over to the main group once they were safely with the group roy again ran the gauntlet with this huge gaping hole in his thigh all the way back to the main group and so now that roy had a full head count of all of the living members of the downed 12-man team and he had moved them all to the slightly safer area relatively with better cover and concealment he threw a smoke grenade into the nearby clearing he had found in hopes that the helo pilot overhead would see the smoke and be willing to come down and land the pilot that had dropped off roy had not actually left the area he had moved away from all the fighting but he was loitering in case something like this happened and so he saw the smoke and without any hesitation he flew right over taking rounds the whole time pinging off the side of his helicopter and he touched down right in this tiny little clearing and so as the semi-able semi-able-bodied surviving members of this unit begin making their way over to the helicopter roy began running around a little ways off from the helicopter picking up rifles off of the dead enemy and shooting back at the enemy dropping that gun running over picking up another one engaging the enemy over and over again doing everything he can to try to protect the extract of his men behind him and once roy turned around and saw most of the men had made it onto the helicopter roy believed it was his chance now to run out and try to collect some of their dead teammates and so roy just takes off into the jungle right into enemy fire he's got two guns in his hands and he's running he's trying to engage the enemy as he's going and then he comes across the first of his dead teammates and it happens to be one of his very best friends a man named leroy wright and so he grabs leroy and begins trying to haul him back towards the chopper and as he's moving roy gets shot again this time through his stomach so he tries to keep himself on his feet and as he's doing that a grenade detonates behind him sending more shrapnel into his body knocking him unconscious when he came to he started looking around and he could see in the tree line dozens of enemy soldiers running towards him and so he knew if he tried to bring leroy back to the chopper that was a suicide mission and so he had to leave his friend behind he jumped up and with all of these enemy combatants just constantly engaging him he ran all the way back zigging and zagging back to the main group and when he got there expecting to see the helicopter he found the helicopter had actually crashed onto the ground and was on fire it had been shot down while he was unconscious and so he ran over to the flaming shell of this helicopter and he saw the pilot had been killed but some of the men that had climbed on the men that he had just rescued they had survived the crash and subsequent explosion and so roy just leaps into the burning vehicle and starts throwing these survivors out then he let back out he picked up a gun continued to engage the enemy and then began picking up these wounded men and dragging them even farther away to another area that was safely away from this crash site because he knew if he didn't get all these people away from the crash site pretty soon mortars are going to come raining down on this area because their enemy is going to want to kill any of the people that are going to try to rescue the people that were on the helicopter and so roy finally gets all of the survivors over to this new area and he's looking around and he can see there are still hundreds of enemy fighters that are not that far away from them just constantly engaging them and roy is doing his best to grab guns off the ground and shoot the enemy but there's just too many of them and he's looking around at his team and everybody's on the brink of death and so is roy he's just functioning on adrenaline at this point and he thinks to himself the only way we can get out of this is if we call in what's called a danger close air strike so what you need to understand about how air strikes work in a combat zone is there's someone called a controller that is on the ground directing the aircraft overhead they're the ones effectively telling the plane where to shoot and so a danger close airstrike is when the controller tells the aircraft overhead i want you to drop a bomb right here giving them the grid coordinates but where they're telling them to drop is basically in the same position where the controller is and you'd only do it if you're being overrun it's a way to ensure your enemy gets taken out even if that means taking yourself out now the goal of the controller is not to drop the bomb on themselves or their team the goal of the controller is to get that airstrike as close as you can to your position without killing you and so roy who's physically wrecked he's getting shot at he's got bullet holes all over him it's totally chaotic he pulls out his map he calmly finds his grid coordinates he calls it into the aircraft overhead and he calls in a beautiful precision napalm strike it does not affect his team at all he calls in multiple gun runs none of them affect his team despite them all being considered danger close airstrikes and so roy just continuously called in attack run after attack run taking out enemy combatants all around them completely suppressing the fire but at some point the aircraft overhead ran out of fuel and had to leave and at that point the surviving enemy combatants which still numbered in the hundreds they popped their heads up and they unleashed a hellacious volley of fire in which roy again got shot clean through the leg and so now roy's looking around and he's realizing they're pretty much out of options they don't have aircraft overhead roy's basically out of ammunition and there's no dead guys guns around for him to grab all of his team members are basically on the brink of death and so roy's thinking to himself any minute now we're gonna get overrun and so he crawls to each of his surviving teammates and he gives them one last shot of morphine to at least make their death painless and then at the 11th hour another helo comes blazing into the jungle and opens fire on the enemy pushing them back roy is immediately invigorated and motivated because now he sees an opportunity to potentially survive this and so once again he grabs his teammates and begins schlepping them over to the helicopter and after he believed he got the last of them on board he turned and saw two of his teammates had fallen down farther back in the jungle and the enemy was closing in on them and so roy like always without any hesitation just starts running towards them and as he's just about to reach them an enemy soldier that had apparently run out of ammunition leapt out of the jungle and smashed roy on the side of the head with their rifle butt fracturing his skull and so roy falls to the ground and the soldier jumps on top of him and smashes his face breaking his jaw and then the soldier turns his rifle around there's a bayonet on the front side and he begins impaling roy over and over again and roy like out of a movie grabbed the rifle pulled it out of himself threw the soldier on the ground jumped up got on top of him drew his bowie knife and proceeded to kill this soldier and after he was done with that he ran over to the two down men he grabbed one of them with his left hand he picked up a rifle with the other and as he's dragging this guy back to the chopper he shoots and kills two more enemy combatants so he finally gets this guy back to the chopper he runs back gets the last guy throws him back in the helicopter and then finally roy is the very last living american to hop in the helicopter and the helicopter takes off on the helo ride back roy was in very rough shape and had to literally hold his insides inside of his stomach and so when they finally landed back at base and roy was hauled off of this helicopter he wasn't moving and the doctors and nurses didn't really even know where to start with him he had so many injuries he had 37 significant holes in his body from gunshot wounds from bayonet wounds from shrapnel and so they started trying to treat him but there was no heartbeat no pulse and so they declared him dead roy's body was moved into a body bag and as the doctor was zipping it up again roy spit in his face because roy had no other way to communicate his jaw was so badly broken from that rifle butt he couldn't move his jaw and his eyes were sealed shut from all the blood on his face that had dried and so his only way to communicate was to spit and so unbelievably roy was still alive and so they took him out of the body bag and they shipped him to japan for intensive surgery and then he was transferred to texas where he spent a year rehabbing from his severe injuries roy was immediately given the distinguished service cross and was put in for the congressional medal of honor which is the us military's highest award for valor but the paperwork took a really long time and so roy was not actually given the congressional medal of honor until 1981. of the 12 men that were trapped in that jungle eight would survive all thanks to roy benavidez thank you thank you [Music] a lot of people call me a hero i appreciate the title but the real heroes are the ones that gave the life of this country [Applause] roy passed away in 1998 as a result of complications from diabetes he was 63 years old so that's going to do it guys if you found the secret in today's episode let us know in the comments what it is and where you found it so give us the time stamp and if you're the first to do that we'll pin you at the top of the comment section if you enjoyed today's video and you haven't done this already please take out all of the like buttons trash bags from their trash cans and then proceed to throw various perishable saucy foods inside also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly 3 or 4 video uploads if you want to get in touch with me you can direct message me on instagram or on twitter my username for both platforms is the same it's johnballen416 i also have a ton of content over on tick tock where my username is mr ballen i also have a second youtube channel called mr ballin shorts where i post short videos if you have a story suggestion please submit it to our subreddit just called mr ballin it's linked in the description below so whether i see you on instagram twitter tick tock reddit youtube or some combination just know that i really appreciate your support and until next time that's gonna do it see ya

Channel: MrBallen

Views: 2,224,742

Rating: 4.947505 out of 5

Keywords: strange, dark, mysterious, true, story, scary, scary story, horror story, disturbing, narration, narrator, storyteller, storytime, storytelling, unsolved mystery, solved mystery, true crime, oof, nope, military, war, combat, marine, infantry, soldier, Medal of Honor, moh, wounded, Purple Heart, roy benavidez, battle, grenade, explosion, shot, true story, legend, historical legend, history, ambush, helicopter, air strike, napalm, 1960s, rescue, near death, brave, bravery, unbelievable, crazy war story, war story, wow

Id: 1Z7b1l5YQ-Q

Length: 19min 12sec (1152 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021