“Roger. Roger. Go forward, Nam Dong,” got here the reply.
“Request flare ship and an airstrike. … We’re below heavy mortar hearth.”
The bottom was surrounded. North Vietnamese troopers and allied guerrillas, recognized to U.S. forces as Viet Cong or V.C., pressed nearer by way of the jungle.
“The burning mess corridor forged an eerie, dancing mild over the camp, spectacular now with swirling smoke and the flashes of exploding shells. The V.C. mortars have been zeroed in on us,” recalled Capt. Donlon, who was wounded 4 occasions throughout the battle and have become the primary Medal of Honor recipient from the Vietnam Battle for his protection of Nam Dong. He died Jan. 25 in Leavenworth, Kan., at 89, greater than 35 years after retiring from the army with the rank of colonel.
For days earlier than the assault on July 6, 1964, expectations grew that the North Vietnamese would try to overrun the camp — defended by greater than 300 South Vietnamese troopers and native militiamen, the American unit and an Australian army adviser. Vietnamese villagers close by had change into nervous, doubtless selecting up clues of the North Vietnamese plans, Capt. Donlon recalled.
The camp was not a significant army web site however its location, in a valley close to Laos, provided a vital vantage level to watch and disrupt actions of North Vietnamese guerrillas.
Capt. Donlon was checking the guard roster when the primary assault wave hit. A shell slammed right into a wall. Quickly, the command submit was on hearth. Capt. Donlon and Grasp Sgt. Gabriel Ralph Alamo raced inside to save lots of as a lot ammunition and weapons as they might haul out.
Just a few yards away, a Vietnamese interpreter was hit by a blast. Each his legs have been blown off just under the knees. “In 30 seconds he was lifeless,” wrote Capt. Donlon in his 1965 guide, “Outpost of Freedom,” co-authored with journalist Warren Rogers.
Two Viet Cong battalions — totaling no less than 800 fighters — moved ahead. They reached the camp’s final line of protection. U.S. helicopters tried to herald reinforcements however turned again to Danang due to heavy hearth.
“Illuminate the principle gate,” Capt. Donlon yelled for a flare, he recounted. Within the blaze of sunshine, he fired at three North Vietnamese fighters, killing two and hitting the third with a grenade blast as he tried to succeed in the quilt of excessive grass. Capt. Donlon seen he, too, had been hit. His left forearm was bleeding. A bit of shrapnel had ripped open a coin-sized wound in his abdomen.
“However nothing harm an excessive amount of,” he recalled, “and my legs have been okay.”
Capt. Donlon started crawling between defensive pits dug into the camp to verify on his crew and others. The Australian adviser, Warrant Officer Kevin Conway, was fatally wounded. Capt. Donlon was hit once more. Shrapnel tore into his left leg. “For the primary time,” he recounted, “I felt actual ache … The bedlam of bursting grenades was an excessive amount of.”
A couple of minutes later, a mortar exploded simply yards from Capt. Donlon and a gaggle of others. “I’m going to die, I assumed,” he wrote. He was knocked unconscious, laying midway into the ammunition bunker with wounds to his left shoulder and one other in his abdomen. Alamo was lifeless. So was one other member of Capt. Donlon’s crew, Sgt. John L. Houston.
Capt. Donlon used strips of his T-shirt and one in all his socks as bandages and tourniquets. The North Vietnamese, on loudspeakers, informed the bottom to give up or face being overrun. The mortar barrages saved hammering the camp.
Lastly, at dawn, got here the sound of approaching plane. Airstrikes blasted the North Vietnam positions. “Aside from sporadic small-arms hearth,” he recalled, “the battle for Nam Dong was over.”
The lifeless included no less than 57 South Vietnamese fighters, the 2 Individuals, Conway and greater than 60 North Vietnamese attackers. Capt. Donlon was offered with the Medal of Honor, the army’s highest award for valor, by President Lyndon B. Johnson in December 1964. (There are at present 64 Medal of Honor recipients alive.)
Roger Hugh Charles Donlon was born in Saugerties, N.Y., on Jan. 30, 1934. His father labored at a coal and lumber yard; his mom was a homemaker.
He left Air Power pilot coaching in 1955 after failing eye exams. He then stayed two years on the U.S. Army Academy at West Level, N.Y., withdrawing due to private causes that included his age distinction with different cadets.
He enlisted within the Military in 1958 and earned the inexperienced beret of the Particular Forces on the U.S. Military Particular Warfare College at Fort Bragg, N.C. (now Fort Liberty).
Throughout a second tour in Vietnam, he severely injured his retina in 1972 whereas diving to the bottom whereas below hearth. He returned to the US as antiwar marches and protests have been close to their peak. “No one likes being on the crew not supported by the followers,” he informed the Related Press.
However he remained within the Military and served in command and coaching roles world wide together with U.S. army adviser to the Royal Thai Military and battalion commander with U.S. Particular Forces in Panama.
He acquired a bachelor’s diploma on the College of Nebraska at Omaha in 1967 and a grasp’s diploma in authorities in 1983 from Campbell College in Buies Creek, N.C. He retired from army service in 1988.
Col. Dolon’s first marriage to Carol Chadwick led to divorce. In 1965, he met a widow whose husband had been killed within the Vietnam Battle. Three years later, he married the previous Norma Shinno Irving, who confirmed the dying. Col. Donlon had Parkinson’s illness linked to publicity to the army defoliant Agent Orange, she stated.
Different survivors embrace a daughter from his first marriage; three sons from his second marriage; six grandchildren; one great-granddaughter, and two brothers. His son from his second marriage, Justin, died in 2022.
In 1998, Col. Dolon printed a memoir, “Past Nam Dong.” He and his spouse additionally labored with veterans’ teams together with Wreaths Throughout America.
“The casualties of struggle,” he stated in an interview in 2022, “will not be restricted to the battlefield.”