A Week After Memorial Day

As I have done most years, I volunteer to distribute flags onto the gravesites of veterans and then pick them up again after Memorial day has passed. On Memorial day, our church holds a mass among the graves in special tribute to those who gave all to preserve our country. On this particular day, I set up my lawn chair beside a gravestone that said the occupant was Johnny, killed in the Vietnam war. 

I have seen that particular stone many times before, and many times have thought I ought to look up Johnny and see who he was, but always my short memory and a busy life have gotten in the way and I have forgotten... until the next year. This year, I took a picture with my phone after mass, so that I would remember the next time I looked through it for a picture to post.

Later that day, I did just that, and immediately typed Johnny's name into a search engine and was surprised to find a two part post that somebody else had done specifically on Johnny and another person. It summed up his sacrifice quite well. 

Johnny became a member of the Green Berets and was part of an operation called Samurai IV which was created to prevent supplies from coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail to the NVA in Hue. A ferocious fire fight had broken out and several helicopters had been shot down in a clearing beside a steep hillside and Johnny and his buddy raced across 100 feet of open ground to reach the wounded and help them back to the cover of the trees. 

But the NVA had a machine gun set up on the far side of the clearing and was waiting to pick off anyone who made the dash back towards the trees from the downed helicopter. So another Green Beret started providing covering fire and Johnny and his buddy helped the groups across the clearing and to the steep hillside. The groups made it up and all that remained were Johnny and his buddy who kept sliding back down the hill. They shouted up to the machine gunner to give them a hand but the gunner knew full well that as soon as he stopped to provide a hand, the NVA gunner would resume shooting. But he had no other choice.

The Green Beret gunner stopped shooting and tried to pull up Johnny's buddy while Johnny pushed up from below and bullets started flying all around them. One hit the gunner's arm causing him to lose his grip and letting Johnny's friend slide back down the hill. The gunner knew his life was in danger now from bleeding out and that he was no longer able to help Johnny and his buddy so he made the terrible decision to leave them behind as he sought help and sent others back to help them out.

Later, by chance, the gunner overheard a medical doctor talking about Johnny and his buddy. They had played dead for 15 minutes until they were eventually rescued. Johnny's buddy had taken bullets to both legs but was going to live. Johnny had taken three bullets to his back, shielding his buddy after he had been dropped by the gunner. He lived through the night but died the next morning.

Johnny was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his heroism that day. I know that in the following years, as I attend Memorial Day mass at the cemetery, I will forever remember his story.