<v Speaker 1>I'm Jerry Broadway, and this is Anonymous America, where we

<v Speaker 1>dig deep into American history to find those unsung heroes

<v Speaker 1>who did incredible things and then slipped through the cracks

<v Speaker 1>of history. Today, we're going back to May second, nineteen

<v Speaker 1>sixty eight in Vietnam. Twelve Special Forces soldiers are surrounded

<v Speaker 1>in a jungle clearing about seventy miles inside Cambodia. They're

<v Speaker 1>totally cut off. They're taking fire from all sides. Three

<v Speaker 1>helicopters have already tried to get them out, and all

<v Speaker 1>three were driven back. A fourth chopper is hovering nearby waiting.

<v Speaker 1>The crew knows they can't land because anybody who goes

<v Speaker 1>into that clearing isn't coming back out. But there's a

<v Speaker 1>staff sergeant on board named Roy Benavidez who's been hearing

<v Speaker 1>the distress calls on the radio, and he'd heard enough.

<v Speaker 1>He grabbed a bag of medical supplies and a knife,

<v Speaker 1>not a rifle, a knife, and what happened over the

<v Speaker 1>next six hours is the most insane story that you've

<v Speaker 1>never heard productions. This is Anonymous America. Roy Benavidez was

<v Speaker 1>born in nineteen thirty five in Quero, Texas, which is

<v Speaker 1>a little town southwest of Houston. His parents were migrant

<v Speaker 1>farm workers, both of Mexican and Indian descent. His father

<v Speaker 1>died when he was two. His mother passed away when

<v Speaker 1>he was seven, so he was raised by his uncle.

<v Speaker 1>He dropped out of school in the seventh grade to

<v Speaker 1>pick crops and shine shoes to help the family, and

<v Speaker 1>he joined the army at seventeen because he saw it

<v Speaker 1>as a way out and a way forward. In nineteen

<v Speaker 1>fifty nine, Roy stepped on a land mine during a

<v Speaker 1>training exercise in Korea. The doctor said, you're never going

<v Speaker 1>to walk again. A little later on, he discharged himself

<v Speaker 1>from the hospital and walked right back into his commanding

<v Speaker 1>officer's office, and from that point Roy went on to

<v Speaker 1>become a Green Beret. In nineteen sixty five, during an

<v Speaker 1>earlier Vietnam tour, Roy stepped on another mine, and again

<v Speaker 1>the doctor said, we're not sure you're ever going to

<v Speaker 1>be able to return to duty, And again Roy proved

<v Speaker 1>him wrong, and by May of nineteen sixty eight, Roy

<v Speaker 1>found himself stationed in Lochnan, Vietnam, sitting in that shopper

<v Speaker 1>listening to a twelve man team call for help for

<v Speaker 1>hours and no one could get to them. When Roy

<v Speaker 1>jumped out of that helicopter, he was immediately shot in

<v Speaker 1>the leg, but he kept running toward the team. Then

<v Speaker 1>he was shot in the face, and he kept going.

<v Speaker 1>He reached the survivors, distributed some ammunition, called in airstrikes,

<v Speaker 1>and began dragging wounded men toward the landing zone. And

<v Speaker 1>while doing that, he was shot in the stomach, but

<v Speaker 1>he kept going. Over the course of the next six hours,

<v Speaker 1>he made six separate trips between the landing zone and

<v Speaker 1>the surrounded soldiers. Every trip across open ground under fire,

<v Speaker 1>he carried men on his back. He dragged men through

<v Speaker 1>the dirt. He picked up a dead soldier's radio and

<v Speaker 1>kept calling in coordinates because he was the only one

<v Speaker 1>who knew exactly where everyone was. At one point, an

<v Speaker 1>enemy soldier came at him with a bayonet. Roy grabbed

<v Speaker 1>the blade with his hand, killed the soldier with his knife,

<v Speaker 1>and kept right on working. He was shot two more times.

<v Speaker 1>He was hit by grenade shrapnel in the back, the head,

<v Speaker 1>and both legs, and at some point he was struck

<v Speaker 1>in the mouth with a rifle butt so hard it

<v Speaker 1>knocked out several of his teeth, but he loaded the

<v Speaker 1>last of the wounded into the final helicopter just before

<v Speaker 1>he collapsed. Now, the Army doctor back at the base

<v Speaker 1>examined Roy and couldn't find a heartbeat, so he was

<v Speaker 1>declared dead and placed in a body bag. As they

<v Speaker 1>were zipping up the body bag, Roy spit blood into

<v Speaker 1>the doctor's face, at which point the doctor thought maybe

<v Speaker 1>I should take another look, and lo and behold, Roy

<v Speaker 1>Benavidez was alive. He had thirty seven separate puncture wounds

<v Speaker 1>from bullets, bayonets, and shrapnel. He had been in sustained

<v Speaker 1>combat for six hours. He had saved eight men. Roy

<v Speaker 1>spent a little over a year recovering in military high hospitals.

<v Speaker 1>The Army submitted him for the Medal of Honor. That

<v Speaker 1>nomination was rejected because the military required at least one

<v Speaker 1>additional witness who hadn't been in the firefight, and the

<v Speaker 1>paperwork couldn't be completed to regulation, so instead he was

<v Speaker 1>given the Distinguished Service Cross. Years passed, and in nineteen

<v Speaker 1>eighty one of the soldiers who had been there that day,

<v Speaker 1>a man named Brian O'Connor, heard that Roy had been

<v Speaker 1>denied the Medal of Honor, and he wrote a first

<v Speaker 1>hand account of everything that happened to the Department of Defense,

<v Speaker 1>and President Ronald Reagan presented Roy Benavidez the Medal of

<v Speaker 1>Honor on February twenty fourth, nineteen eighty one, thirteen years

<v Speaker 1>after the battle. At the ceremony, Reagan reportedly turned to

<v Speaker 1>the reporters in the room and said, if the story

<v Speaker 1>of this guy's heroism were a movie script, no one

<v Speaker 1>would believe it. Roy Benavidez retired from the Army and

<v Speaker 1>spent his later years speaking to school children, especially kids

<v Speaker 1>in tough situations, kids who'd been told they weren't going anywhere.

<v Speaker 1>He passed away in nineteen ninety eight, at sixty three

<v Speaker 1>years old. He jumped out of a helicopter with a

<v Speaker 1>knife and a bag of bandages. They put him in

<v Speaker 1>a body bag. He spit his way out of it.

<v Speaker 1>That's Roy Benavidez, and that's anonymous America.