Raul ¨Roy¨ Perez Benavidez was born in Cuero, Texas August 5, 1935. When he was a young boy, he was orphaned. His father, Salvador Benavidez, Jr, died of Tuberculosis when he was two years old, and his mother, Teresa Perez, died five years later.
Benavidez and his younger brother Roger then moved to El Campo, Texas, to be raised by their family. Roy dropped out of school at 15 to work to help support his family, and at age 17, he enlisted in the Texas Army National Guard in 1952 during the Korean War.
Two years later, in June 1955, he transferred to active duty and completed assignments in South Korea and Germany before attending Military Police training in 1959. After he completed MP training, he was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for Special Forces training.
1965 he was sent to Vietnam as an advisor to a Vietnamese infantry unit. At this point, he was Staff Sergeant with the Fifth Special Forces Group, Airborne, Detachment B-56, and First Special Forces.
While there, he stepped on a land mine:
¨I stepped on a mine. I woke up in the Philippine Islands at Clark Air Force Base. I was paralyzed from the waist down. I was declared never to walk again.¨
He was transferred to Fort Sam, Houston, Texas, and the medical team wanted to medically discharge him from the army, declaring that he would never walk again. However, he would slip out of his bed at night, set himself against a wall, and stand there.
He was determined to walk again and go back to Vietnam. He recalls remembering what his Master Sergeant told him in jump school:
"Benavidez, quitters never win, and winners never quit. What are you?" [I said], "I'm a winner."
He never gave up even though the nurses told him to stay in bed; after being in the hospital for 9 months as the Doctor was issuing his medical discharge papers, he said to the Doctor, "Doctor, look what I can do."
Benavidez stood up and moved a little bit; the Doctor said:
"Benavidez, if you walked out of this room, I'll tear these papers up."
And he did, he walked out of the hospital in July 1966, with a limp, and back to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to start therapy, and in no time, he was running 10 miles and physically and mentally fit to return to active duty.
He went back to Vietnam in 1968.
On May 2, 1968, a 12-man special forces reconnaissance team was placed into the jungle near Loc Ninh, Vietnam, an area controlled by the Northern Vietnamese army. The objective was to gather information on enemy activity.
The team was not on the ground for long when they met enemy resistance and requested emergency evacuation, except there was a problem: the helicopter could not land due to heavy enemy fire. Benavidez was at the Operating Base, and when the helicopter returned to drop off wounded soldiers, he boarded the aircraft to assist in the rescue mission.
Once he realized his team was either dead or wounded, he requested to be dropped off at a clearing, where he jumped from the helicopter and ran 75 meters while under fire to his team. While Benevidez was running to them, he was wounded in his right leg, face, and head, even with these injuries, Benevidez still managed to reposition the team, so they could make it to the pickup zone to be removed from the area.
Once everyone was in position, he signaled for the helicopter and loaded the injured and dead into the aircraft. Including the team leader who had classified documents on him, Benevidez was able to retrieve the body and documents. Benevidez was wounded even worse, including abdominal injury and grenade fragments in his back.
Not only was everyone hurt, but the helicopter pilot was also injured and crashed. He then had to extract all the men he had just placed into the helicopter and signal for a new helicopter in a more secure location. While he was repositioning the men, they remained under attack, injured again in his thigh.
During this time, he encouraged his men to survive while delivering first aid to the soldiers, while Benevidez himself was more wounded than he realized. On his next trip to help the wounded, he was attacked and hit in the head and body.
Even with these injuries, he continued rescuing the injured, loading them into the new helicopter he had signaled, and killing two enemy soldiers encircling the aircraft. After this, he made one final trip to ensure he extracted all his troops and any possible classified information there.
Once Benavidez was inside the helicopter with his teammates, he almost bled to death, and his pulse was so weak that when the Doctor felt for one, it was too weak to be felt, and the Doctor declared him dead. As Benavidez was being placed into a body bag, he spat at the Doctor, letting him know he was alive, unable to speak because of a broken jaw. It would become known as 6 hours in hell.
He was taken to the hospital, and most thought he would not survive. He had seven gunshot wounds, one through his back, which destroyed his right lung, and exited beneath his heart—28 shrapnel wounds in his back, neck, head, legs, feet, and buttocks. In addition, his jaw was broken, the back of his head smashed, and a bayonet injured his arms and hands.
Benavidez spent 25 years in the military; he was the Green Beret who would not die. He received the Distinguished Service Cross and, in 1980, the Medal of Honor. He did not receive this medal sooner because many did not believe what he did; he needed a witness.
Finally, in 1980 a fellow Green Beret confirmed and corroborated the actions of Benavidez, and President Reagan presented him with the Medal of Honor on February 24, 1981.
Benavidez died in Texas in 1998; he was 63 years old. So many of us can learn from his bravery and dedication to his country.
I'm asked hundreds of times: Would you do it over again? In my 25 years in the military, I feel like I've been overpaid for the service to my country. There will never be enough paper to print the money nor enough gold in Fort Knox for me to have to keep from doing what I did. I'm proud to be an American; and even prouder -- and I'm even prouder that I've earned the privilege to wear the Green Beret. I live by the motto of "Duty, Honor, Country."
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