Valor Friday

During the Vietnam War, 235 men earned Medals of Honor. Since the end of that conflict, a further 33 have been awarded. In any such list, there’s always got to be a “first.” Roger Donlon was the first man to receive the Medal of Honor during Vietnam. Though Army Captain Humbert “Rocky” Versace, in 2008, had his posthumous Silver Star upgraded to the Medal of Honor for a period of time that pre-dates Donlon’s actions.

Not only was Donlon’s the first Medal of Honor awarded during Vietnam, but he was also the first living recipient, and thus the first to receive the medal from President Johnson. A member of the Army Special Forces, Donlon was the first Green Beret to be awarded a MoH.

Unfortunately, Donlon passed away last week, on 25 January 2024 at the age of 89. How he survived to live that long is to tell the story of his amazing heroism in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

Donlon arrived in Vietnam by a circuitous route. Hailing from New York, the son of a World War I veteran, he was the eighth of ten children. At 19 years old, in 1953, he enlisted in the Air Force. From there, he secured an appointment to the US Military Academy at West Point in 1955. He soon dropped out for personal reasons, but reenlisted into the Army in 1958. His prior training must have shone through, because he was soon sent to Officer Candidate School, and after commissioning became a general’s aide.

In August 1963, Donlon joined the Special Forces. This early in American involvement in Vietnam, the Green Berets were some of the only US troops in the country. Rocky Versace was also a Green Beret. They were advisors to the South Vietnamese, and it was in this role that Donlon would find himself less than a year later. He and his team arrived in May 1964.

Donlon’s team set up a camp near Nam Dong, about 15 miles from the Laos border. Donlon, then a captain, was commanding officer of Special Forces Operational Detachment A-726. As advisors to allied forces, Donlon’s men were working with a few dozen indigenous Nùng mercenaries, a team of South Vietnamese (RVN) Special Forces, an Australian military advisor, and a civilian anthropologist (who was an expert on the indigenous mountain peoples of Vietnam).

At this time, with the role of the American and Australians to be purely advisory, the Americans were under strict rules of engagement. They were not to lead offensive military operations. The situation on the ground though necessitated it. Even many of the RVN Army’s “elite” units were staffed with undisciplined troops. North Vietnamese and their Viet Cong allies were everywhere.

For the first month or so, the camp was used to protect the locals and train the indigenous troops. Operating right along the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail, the presence of the camp was a thorn in the side of the Viet Cong (VC). Tensions started to rise. The VC assassinated two tribal chieftains that had been working with the Green Berets.

While out on patrol in the villages on the night of 4 July, Sergeant Michael Disser radioed back to Nam Dong, “The villagers are scared, but they won’t tell me or my interpreters why.” On the night of 5 July, the Americans and their comrades could sense things weren’t right. They were about to find out why everything was tickling their senses. The hard way.

The total number of allied troops was about 400. Several were Viet Cong sympathizers. In early July, there had been what Donlon described as a “shootout” inside the camp. It had been instigated by one of the men the Green Berets were training. The man was a VC accomplice, one of about 16 it turns out they had invited into their camps as friends. Tensions within the camp, agitated by communist infiltrators, had flared to the point of fighting.

The RVN and Americans suspected (and later confirmed) that many of the locals in the area were also VC supporters. One of the Americans, Staff Sgt. Merwin “Woody” Woods, wrote to his wife that “All hell is going to break loose here before the night is over.”

Donlon told his senior NCO, Master Sergeant Gabriel “Pop” Alamo, “Get everyone buttoned up tight tonight, Pop. The VC are coming. I can feel it. I want everyone ready.”

They weren’t wrong, unfortunately. The VC attacked the camp in force. Two reinforced battalions, estimated at 900 men, amassed outside the wire for a pre-dawn attack on the morning of the 6th.

Cutting through the wire, they had already overwhelmed the perimeter defenders when they started the main attack. The enemy had significant intel on the locations of buildings from those collaborators working within the camp. Within seconds of their assault, accurate mortar fire started hitting with devastating effect.

Donlon himself was nearly wiped out. He was finishing up his patrol rounds, and was walking into the mess hall when the building exploded in front of him. He ran to the command post next door. Looking at his watch, it was 0226 hours.

Soon the command post (CP) too was taking accurate indirect fire from the enemy. With the CP in an untenable position, Donlon and his radio operator Staff Sergeant Keith Daniels took their equipment and ran, but not before the radio operator could get word of the attack out.

As the other Green Berets jumped from their bunks and grabbed their weapons, the enemy fire from small arms, grenades, and automatic weapons came at them from all sides. They were already surrounded and massively outnumbered.

The Nùng barracks were hit by the indirect fire, but luckily the mercenaries, sensing the coming battle, had stayed at their posts instead of retiring for the night.

Donlon, as commanding officer of the camp, leapt into action. He saw the building with their ammunition supply was on fire, so he ordered the ammo to be moved. He then directed his men in their defensive positions. When the defenders launched white phosphorus illumination rounds, they saw the hundreds of enemy around them. “[It was] the most frightening sight in my life,” Donlon later said.

After setting things up, Donlon saw a major breach in the main gate. He ran through a withering onslaught of hand grenades, mortars, and small arms fire to reinforce the position. Before he got there, he saw an enemy three-man demolition team setting up charges near that gate. He quickly annihilated the threat.

Donlon saw a 60mm mortar on the friendly side. He darted to the position, sustaining a grievous stomach wound just five yards from the weapon’s dugout. Arriving in the gun pit, he saw that most of the men there were also already wounded. He ordered the men to retreat, and ignored his own wounds to remain in the pit to cover their withdrawal.

The mortar team’s sergeant was wounded badly enough, he couldn’t evacuate with the rest of his men. Donlon grabbed a hold of the man and started dragging him, when a mortar round exploded, tearing into his left shoulder. Now twice wounded, Donlon still wasn’t out of the fight.

Donlon next carried that 60mm mortar setup to another pit 30 meters away. Here he found three wounded men. Administering first aid, he encouraged their dogged defense, left the mortar with them, and then ran back out to collect more weapons. He then retrieved a 57mm recoilless rifle.

As if this wasn’t enough, Donlon ran back to the abandoned mortar pit to get ammunition for both the mortar and the recoilless rifle. While crawling back to where he’d emplaced the mortar, dragging the much needed ammunition with him, he was hit yet a third time by the heavy enemy fire. This time in his leg from a hand grenade.

Bloodied and battered, Donlon crawled another 175 yards, under constant enemy fire, to yet another defensive fighting position. From here he directed the fire of an 81mm mortar team, providing relief to the eastern sector of the base.

Donlon then moved to the east side of the camp, to a 60mm mortar position. Moving forward to reconnoiter the area, he saw that the enemy attack here had weakened. He went back to the 60mm mortar, and found four men (all of them wounded, including one missing a large chunk of scalp) and ensured they were set up to continue pushing the enemy back.

Donlon ran to Woody’s pit. When asked for his status, Woody said he was alright but thought his eardrum was ruptured. Woody asked about the other men. Donlon says that in training they debated the merits of telling your men the truth when taking heavy casualties. Would it make them give up hope or fight harder?

Donlon went with the truth. He told him, “Alamo’s dead, Houston’s dead, Conway’s dead. Lieutenant ‘O’ and Disser are wounded. Brown’s wounded. Terry’s wounded. I don’t know about Beeson. I can’t get to him.”
Taking the information without comment, Woody kept firing at the enemy. Donlon, checking another position, ran into one of the team medics. “You’re all shot up,” the medic said. “Hold still and I’ll fix you up.”

Donlon refused. “No,” he told his medic. “There are a lot of them worse off than me. Take care of them and catch me later.” He wasn’t done. Donlon left this position of relative safety, like he had several times before, and moved from position to position around the camp to buoy his men’s spirits and direct the defense. Thrice wounded, he kept moving with “superhuman effort.” He kept jumping into the enemy fire to ensure his men had what they needed. The voluminous enemy fire hit Donlon once again. A mortar exploded near him, raking him with shrapnel in the face and body.

The battle had now waged for hours. At 0400, Donlon was able to restore some communication with the outside world. Calling for reinforcements, Special Forces and Nùng troops mounted in helicopters at nearby Da Nang, and flew to relieve Donlon and his men. They didn’t arrive on station for another two hours. It was all for naught. The enemy fire was so heavy that the helicopters were unable to even attempt to land, forcing them to turn back.

In the midst of the battle an amplified voice speaking Vietnamese stunned both sides into silence. They grabbed the interpreter and asked what he was saying. “He say lay down weapons. V.C. going take camp and we all be killed.”

“Over my dead body,” One of the Green Berets said. Another retorted, “We’ll lay down our weapons when we’re too dead to pick ’em up.”

Throughout the battle, at moments when it seemed like all would soon be lost, Donlon remembered the talks with his men. They’d all promised each other that they would go down fighting. They wouldn’t willingly surrender, and they each knew the others in their team wouldn’t either. Without even being near each other, no man would break that pledge. It’s that level of trust that enabled each man fighting in his section of the battle to know that if any other part of the line broke, it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Some of these men were going to die, but none of them were going to give up.

The unnerving silence continued. Neither side was firing or moving. After hours of the din of combat, it must have been a deafening silence. Now the loudspeaker voice spoke again, in English this time.

“We are going to annihilate your camp; you will all be killed!” The voice boomed. One of the Special Forces men readied a mortar and asked his fellows where they thought it was. They dropped 10 rounds of high explosive and white phosphorus onto the area where the voice came from. The battle resumed with the sounds of gunfire.

Daylight promised at least some relief. Donlon and what remained of his camp watched as the enemy scurried back into the jungles under the glare of the sun. Donlon wasted no time, continuing to position his men in defensive positions should the enemy redouble their efforts.

The battle raged for more than five hours. For the duration of the fighting, the enemy troops were consistently engaging the Americans and their allies from between 20-30 yards away. Those long hours of fighting saw them moments away from being overwhelmed and wiped out. Only the grit and determination of the Green Berets, fighting through numerous wounds, refusing to back down kept the camp in friendly hands.

With the collaborators, infiltrators, and cowards on the South Vietnamese side having surrendered, scattered, or otherwise no longer fighting, the Green Berets and their allies were down to a core group of reliable troops. Facing down that force of 800-900 VC were, by Donlon’s estimate, no more than 75 men in total inside the inner perimeter.

When the dust settled, the enemy left behind around 60 dead. Within the camp, two Americans and 57 Nùng lay dead. Warrant Officer Class II Kevin Conway, the Australian Army advisor at Nam Dong, was also killed in the action.

Conway was the first Australian to die in the war. He was recommended for the Victoria Cross, the Commonwealth equivalent of the Medal of Honor, but this was denied as Australia was not yet considered “at war.” The Americans posthumously awarded him a Silver Star and the South Vietnamese gave them their highest award, the National Order of Vietnam.

The two American Green Berets killed were Master Sergeant Gabriel Alamo and Sergeant John L. Houston. Houston spent two hours manning an exposed position, repelling more than one enemy frontal assault single-handedly despite being wounded, until he was mortally struck by enemy fire. Alamo was manning the 60mm mortar and 57mm recoilless rifle near the main gate, steadfastly holding that post until he was killed. Both men received posthumous Distinguished Service Crosses.

For his role in the Battle of Nam Dong, Donlon received the Medal of Honor. A scene in the 1968 John Wayne film The Green Berets was inspired by this battle. Donlon remained in the Army, retiring as a colonel in 1988, with 33 years of service. He wrote two books on his Vietnam experiences, Outpost of Freedom and Beyond Nam Dong. In retirement, Donlon lived with his wife in Leavenworth, Kansas, where he died after battling Parkinson’s Disease (long connected to Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam) for 12 years.

The other men of ODA-726 at the Battle of Nam Dong were;

• Thurman R. Brown (Silver Star, WIA)
• Michael Disser (Silver Star, WIA)
• Julian Olejniczak (Silver Star, WIA)
• Terrence D. Terrin (Silver Star, WIA)
• Vernon L. Beeson (Bronze Star Medal w/ “V”)
• Keith E. Daniels (BSM w/ “V”)
• Thomas L. Gregg (BSM w/ “V”)
• Raymond D. Whitsell (BSM w/ “V”, WIA)
• Merwin D. Woods (BSM w/ “V”, WIA)

All of the men of ODA-726, absent the two killed in the Battle of Nam Dong, were present to see Donlon get the Medal of Honor.

Donlon wrote, “The Medal of Honor which President Johnson awarded me belongs equally to all of us. I solemnly pledge that whatever good flows from it for me will be passed on, intact, to the valiant men of my team, Detachment A-726 of the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne).”

One of the perks of being a Medal of Honor recipient is a standing invitation to every presidential inauguration. Donlon partook of that opportunity and in 2017 attended his 14th, every one since LBJ.

In November 1965, Donlon was on a commercial airline flight. He was seated next to a lovely young lady whose husband had been killed in action in Vietnam. The two had a spark and three years later, Roger married Norma Shinno Irving. She survived him. They’d been married 55 years. They had four sons, six grandchildren, one great-grandchild, and dozens of nieces and nephews.

Category: Army, Historical, Medal of Honor, Valor, We Remember