The Man Who Never Quit

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Bank right round for bankruptcy.

We are taking hits.

Avoid extraction avoiding.

Get that shopper back in the air.

Get them out of there.

That is us.

That is Chuckley.

That is Charlie.

On May 2nd, 1968, two six-man U.S.

Special Forces teams found their covert reconnaissance operation severely compromised.

Miles behind enemy lines, they were pinned down under the relentless fire from hundreds of advancing North Vietnamese soldiers.

Like the mutilated crew members of the three helicopters that had attempted to land and extract them, four of the Special Forces men were now dead.

The remaining eight men all severely wounded, running running low on both ammunition and their own blood.

Back at the team's forward operations base, a young Army Green Beret named Roy had awoken to witness the crippled helicopters crash landing on the tarmac outside, an exciting first day for him as he had just arrived the day prior.

Skipping his breakfast to instead walk over to the damaged helicopters, also known as Slicks, He began asking if anyone knew the names of the men on the recon teams under fire.

When they told him, his heart froze.

His friends were out there.

There was a hum of turbines.

Roy spun around.

One of the slicks was starting its takeoff procedures to go back.

Without hesitation, Roy grabbed a medical bag laying on the ground, then jumped inside the departing helicopter beside the two crew members.

Their plan was to deliver an ammunition resupply to the teams and to extract them if they could.

Now speeding through the air towards the firefight, Roy suddenly realized he didn't have his rifle, his pistol, or any of his protective combat gear.

Carrying only his recon buoy knife and a med bag,

Roy would be the only hope for those surviving eight men.

This is part one of the story of Roy Benavites:

Six Hours in Hell.

I'm Luke Lamana,

and this is Wartime Stories.

While his heroic actions on May 2, 1968 are incredible to recount on their own, the many struggles of Roy Benavitas' life before that fateful day are no less a remarkable testament to the inspiring man that he was to become.

Born August 5th, 1935 in Texas, Raul Roy Perez-Benavides lost both of his parents before he was seven years old.

His father dying of tuberculosis when he was only three, and then his mother when he was six.

Rejected by his stepfather, he was adopted by his paternal uncle, Nicholas.

Nicholas and his family, including Roy's grandfather, Salvador, loved Roy and his younger brother as much as their own children.

Their family was proud of both their Mexican and Yaque Indian heritage and shared this pride with young Roy and the other children.

With racial tensions still dividing America during the 1940s and 50s, Roy's family nonetheless demonstrated pride for their country.

And then Merahuiras is Mexican, his grandfather Salvador said.

But we are Americans.

As with the various morals depicted in his other stories, Salvador would end one particular story where he rescued a fellow vaquero who had fallen over a cliff by telling the children, if someone needs help, you helped him.

These words would define Roy's actions on May 2, 1968.

From a young age, Roy dreamt of being a paratrooper, inspired by the many newsreels of American paratroopers overseas, dropping into combat zones across Europe during World War II.

While he and the rest of America celebrated celebrated the end of the war in Europe in May of 1945,

it would be years before most Americans would recognize the name of the small Southeast Asian country called Vietnam.

As the war against the Japanese in the Pacific dragged on through the summer of 1945, unbeknownst to Young Roy and certainly most of the world, American forces had already begun conducting top-secret covert operations in Vietnam.

The U.S.

hoped to aid the Vietnamese in defeating the Japanese forces, still occupying much of Indochina.

They were providing weaponry and military training to local Viet Minh guerrilla forces, including those led by the communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh.

Crowds before the White House await the announcement from the President that the Japs have surrendered unconditionally.

With the Japanese Empire surrendering in early September of that same year, the Benavidez family once again joined in the celebrations.

The World War was finally over.

The troops came home, and life moved on.

Although Roy's family was rich in their love for one another, life for the Benavitez family was not easy.

The parents and the children worked side by side to provide for their large family, toiling away in the sugar beet and cotton fields under a hot summer sun.

His tough childhood made him a tough kid, and by age seven, Roy was used to settling arguments with his fists.

Like many American boys, he revered those men in the armed forces fighting in World War II, especially his hero, Audi Murphy, the most decorated soldier of the war.

Roy discovered Murphy was like himself in many ways.

He had been raised in Texas and picked cotton, the same as the Benavitas family.

With his uncle's blessing and with Audi Murphy on the recruiting posters, Roy enlisted in the Texas National Guard at age 17.

After finishing his basic training, his uncle asked him if it was difficult for him.

Better than changing tires, he responded, referring to his former job at an automechanic shop.

Two years into his part-time military career in the reserves, the now Corporal Benavides found himself eager to pursue his dream of joining the Army full-time, becoming a paratrooper, and bringing honor to his family name.

Following his graduation from boot camp, he attended the follow-on eight-week course, AIT, or Advanced Infantry Training, which he had hoped would fast-track his acceptance into Airborne, the legendary fighting force of World War II.

However, he would soon realize his army recruiter hadn't been entirely honest with him.

Instead of going to airborne, his first orders sent him overseas to Korea.

The Korean War had since reached its armistice agreement, and Roy thus worked with the assigned security detail along the demilitarized zone between the divided communist north and anti-communist south.

In 1956, his next duty assignment was Berlin in West Germany, where the Berlin Wall now stood, dividing Germany in two.

Roy was witnessing even more of the impacts of post-World War II communism firsthand.

He returned home for a short leave, visiting his loving family and courting his sweetheart, Hilaria Lala Koy.

They were engaged at the end of 1958, right before Roy shipped out to military police school.

With his first enlistment ending, Roy still had not lost sight of his dream to go airborne.

The MP school happened to be located at Fort Benning, Georgia, the home of the Army's airborne jump school.

Roy was that much closer to seeing his dreams come true.

Despite having his previous two applications to jump school denied, Possibly due to his punching an officer and the subsequent loss of rank he suffered when he was in Germany, Roy was offered an assignment to serve as a security escort for the visiting commander of the 101st Airborne Division, General William C.

Westmoreland.

Roy jumped at the opportunity.

Getting close to the airborne commanding officer couldn't hurt his chances.

Sure enough, the general soon took a friendly liking to the young Benavides and asked him,

Tell me, Sergeant, have you ever thought about going airborne?

Yes, sir, ever since I was a kid.

Even before I joined the army, I've applied, but I haven't got accepted.

I just want a chance, sir.

Hmm.

You must want to go pretty bad.

Yes, sir.

Two months later, when Roy's enlistment paperwork was up for review, he discovered an authorized invitation to attend jump school.

He was in.

Several weeks later, with his silver airborne jump wings now shining proudly on the breast of his uniform, a newlywed Roy and his wife Lala relocated to his new duty station at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division.

While the regional instability and subsequent violence in Indochina had carried on since the end of World War II, the month of November of 1963, almost 20 years later, would be remembered for two significant events in world history.

Following an effort to establish diplomacy in Vietnam between the warring parties of the North and South, on November 2, 1963, the tyrannical French colonial-minded president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, was assassinated during a military coup.

The coup, led by a general of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, or Arvin, was evidently encouraged, if not orchestrated, by agents of the U.S.

Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, formerly known as the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS.

Like his South Vietnamese counterpart, U.S.

President John F.

Kennedy was assassinated only 20 days later, on November 22, under circumstances which remain controversial even today.

Vice President Lyndon B.

Johnson immediately assumed the presidency.

Under President Johnson's leadership, American efforts to halt the spread of communism in Asia were escalated as South Vietnam fell once again into a string of military coups, with communist-backed fighters continuously advancing into South Vietnam.

While the North Vietnamese Army, or NVA, advanced across the demarcation line from North Vietnam, by 1965, the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, known as the Viet Cong, or VC, had become firmly entrenched, recruiting new members into their ranks in the southern region.

Tunnels had been dug for years, concealing much of their growing strength under the very soil of South Vietnam.

These tunnel systems assisted VC fighters in their covert operations, conducting acts of terrorism on locals, as well as South Vietnamese Army forces and American advisers.

Their growing strength was no less due to these acts of terrorism.

Recruitment by coercion was effective.

If a young man refused to join the Viet Cong, he would be made an example of.

At best, he might lose a finger.

At At worst, his head would soon be displayed on a bamboo stake.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., Roy Benavite had spent the recent years after jump school attending a heavy load of career development courses for his new Military Occupational Specialty, or MOS, as an airborne infantryman.

With America beginning to send tens of thousands of more troops overseas to Vietnam, towards the end of 1965, Roy moved with his now pregnant wife back to her parents' home in El Campo, Texas.

Roy had been given orders to Vietnam.

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As a military advisor assigned to the South Vietnamese Army unit, the 25th Infantry Tigers, Roy had a target on his back the moment he stepped foot into the country.

country, much like the other American advisors the communist forces had killed prior to his arrival.

Death and dismay were a routine part of his experiences in Vietnam.

With a widely accepted political justification for U.S.

involvement in Vietnam being to halt the spread of communism before it could reach American shores, Roy's view of the Viet Cong was no different from his view of the Nazis and Japanese in World War II.

While he knew he had to remain wary of the Vietnamese locals, his opinion towards them was a different story.

Though some among his fellow soldiers viewed these villagers as backward savages compared to their own American lifestyle, these mothers, fathers, and their children working diligently, tending their crops in the sweltering heat, reminded Roy affectionately of his own family, his own childhood.

During this first deployment to Vietnam, he spent much of his time coordinating the building of shelters and camps camps for those refugees fleeing Viet Cong aggression in the mountain highlands.

Roy often returned to these encampments to provide security for these defenseless families.

However, these patrols were not sufficient to prevent the continued aggression and terrorist acts of VC fighters against anyone perceived to be American sympathizers.

One day, Roy accompanied a security patrol back to a refugee camp, an experience that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

As he drew closer to the encampment, he immediately knew something was wrong.

He could hear screaming.

Let's go.

Moving quickly around a barrack that he had helped build as a shelter for the refugees, Roy found himself facing three young children, two boys and a girl.

They had been crucified.

Their small hands and feet nailed to the outer wall.

Their once unblemished and innocent bodies were now ravaged by bullets.

The VC had used them for target practice.

Roy's future nightmares were accompanied by the screams of the two women, what must have been the children's mothers, who knelt before the children in agony.

A man, likely the children's father or grandfather, knelt beside them.

He mourned quietly, his hand outstretched, catching the blood that dripped from the little girl's toe.

Roy set out on yet another jungle patrol in late January of 1966.

The retellings of this event are not always consistent, but by some accounts, this was a solo patrol where Benavides had worn a stolen Viet Cong uniform.

possibly attempting to prevent VC snipers from killing him on site.

During his previous reconnaissance missions, as he hunted down Viet Cong fighters in the surrounding regions, Roy had learned quickly to blend in.

He learned how to move quietly in the dense jungle, to avoid booby traps, and to avoid giving himself away to VC snipers with even the smallest of thoughtless gestures, such as avoiding the instinct to slap away the swarming mosquitoes.

Only around always do that.

His Australian counterpart, Dickie, had once told him.

Unfortunately, the Viet Cong laid their traps well.

Roy's heightened senses and training would not protect him from everything.

Moving his way through the dense brush on that patrol in late January, Roy would not remember what happened next.

His world suddenly went dark.

Whatever it was that hit Roy, possibly a landmine that failed to fully detonate, something heavy suddenly rammed hard into his back, exerting hundreds if not thousands of pounds of force.

It is speculated that he tripped a booby trap, although the exact nature of the trap is unknown.

The impact severely damaged his spine, now a mess of fractured bone and cartilage.

The concussive force likewise jolted his brain hard against the inside of his skull.

Considering he was apparently alone on this patrol, he was lucky to have been found, with some accounts indicating a group of Marines had stumbled across him, first mistaking him for a dead VC fighter before seeing that he was a Hispanic man wearing American dog tags.

When Roy finally awoke, several days later, he found himself in a bright room that he didn't recognize, thousands of miles away from Vietnam.

He was back in Texas.

When he could finally open his eyes, he awoke one day to find a green-eyed woman with dark hair sitting next to his hospital bed.

It's Lala, she told him.

He looked at her, and then the bump on her belly.

He had last seen his pregnant wife only three months ago.

Now,

he had no idea who she was.

Roy had lost his memory.

Lala never stopped visiting and praying for her husband to recover.

Despite suffering complete amnesia for several weeks, Roy would eventually regain much of his memory and cognitive functions, but the temporary fog that clouded his mind was a blessing in disguise.

Roy was found screaming and crying in his hospital bed one morning.

His memories were returning.

Despite laying in a hospital in Texas, he could see those three crucified children as clearly as if he was back in the refugee camp.

As his mind settled over the passing days and weeks, Roy's focus returned to his commitments, those of his family, his country, and his surviving brothers who needed him back in Vietnam.

Due to his paralyzed legs and traumatic brain injury, he knew the army would find him unfit for continued duty and would try to discharge him.

The doctors had already started the paperwork.

Staring at his withering legs, he cursed them, often wishing they had been blown off to justify their uselessness.

He asked God why he was being punished.

While other young men were doing everything they could to avoid military service, Roy was devastated by the thought.

His career in the army was everything.

As he waited impatiently to regain feeling in his legs, Roy began doing whatever he could think of to heal himself.

He counted the ceiling tiles over his bed, his own mental therapy, until the counting drove him insane.

With doctors pressuring him to accept the discharge from the army, for the first time in his life, Roy began to beg.

He pleaded with them to give him more time.

One evening in March of 1966, two months after arriving to the hospital, an infuriated Roy dragged himself off his bed, crashing to the hard floor.

From there, he began to crawl.

Every night, when the nurses wouldn't be there to stop him, he would begin to slowly pull himself up between the nearby nightstands, pressing his back to the wall and then feeling unbearable stabbing pains shoot through his back as he attempted to put weight on his legs.

As his nurses repeatedly found him after these attempts, sprawled on the floor with the wounded men around him cheering his efforts, they finally obliged to send him to therapy.

After only a week, Roy stood, exhausted and in tears, between the nightstands.

He could bear his own weight again.

By the early summer, Roy had staved off his medical discharge and was working as an administrative assistant back at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with the 82nd Airborne Division.

He was happy to still be in the Army, but Roy knew he wasn't cut out for desk work.

He needed to be back in the field.

Far from losing sight of his dreams, Roy had his heart set on becoming a Green Beret, ever since he had learned about this distinguished Army Special Forces group.

He had applied to be considered as a candidate before his deployment to Vietnam, before his injuries.

Like that of other Special Forces units at the time, Marine Corps Force Recon, the Navy SEALs, and Army Rangers, the training and qualification process was extremely demanding, both physically and mentally.

Few who applied ever saw it through to earning their Green Beret.

The Green Beret's motto, De opresseaux liber,

to free the oppressed, stuck in Roy's mind through his desk work.

He obsessed over the atrocities he he had witnessed, those crucified children in Vietnam.

He had to do something.

He had to go back.

Despite multiple denials of his requests to re-qualify for his active jump status due to his injuries possibly being worsened by the hard parachute landings, Roy's newly acquired administrative skills had nevertheless taught him how to forge an authorization slip.

In September of 1966, after some smooth talking, he boarded a crowded aircraft, a parachute on his back.

His wife was not impressed, but Roy persisted.

He began to jog, then to run.

Days became weeks, and less than a year from the day he entered the hospital in Texas, Roy Benavides was ready.

His remaining injuries notwithstanding, during the summer months of 1967, Roy pushed himself through the rigorous Special Forces Qualification Course, or Q course, in the North Carolina Heat.

He learned to operate as a part of the standard 12-man Special Forces A team.

Should any of them be killed in action, each man was cross-trained in their teammates' duties, navigation, weapons, demolitions, communications, intelligence collection, and combat medicine.

As with his previous setbacks and seemingly insurmountable struggles, Roy refused to quit.

or show any signs of weakness.

On the 29th of September, he and his teammates made the cut.

Roy was honorably presented with his green beret, a moment he would cherish for the rest of his life.

Roger that, Whiskey Tago, Sierra.

Target identified.

Coming in for a pass now.

Stand by for Willie B.

Go ahead,

Towards the end of 1967, piles of enemy corpses were taken as a sign of victory.

American and South Vietnamese forces were certain that the enemy couldn't withstand the onslaught forever.

The North Vietnamese communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, strongly disagreed.

In Vietnam, the Green Beret's mission was similar to Roy's previous deployment as an advisor.

Assigned to various outposts, each A-team would provide training to local counterinsurgency groups, teaching these civilian irregular defense group fighters, or Sijis, how to defend themselves against the pro-communist aggressions.

They likewise conducted patrols and reconnaissance, assessing enemy movements and strengths, sending intel back to headquarters in Saigon.

For the Green Berets, it was highly dangerous work.

In addition to the many other frustrations that these special forces operators encountered was the fact that their hands were tied.

Although they often knew where the enemies were, they could do nothing about it.

At least, nothing that would be obvious to the rest of the world.

Following President Johnson's approval, U.S.

Special Forces units had been conducting top-secret reconnaissance missions over Vietnam's western border.

They quickly discovered that large numbers of NVA and VC soldiers had also been violating international neutrality laws by hiding out in Cambodia.

Declared as a neutral country, Cambodia was nonetheless being used by communist fighters to harbor their troops, supplies, weapons cachets, and prisoners of war.

They would use their Cambodian installations to launch attacks against South Vietnamese forces, then flee back across the border, believing that Americans would not openly attack them on neutral soil.

They weren't entirely correct in that assumption.

After these hit-and-run attacks by the Viet Cong, the American Special Operations troops still risked an international scandal by occasionally following the retreating enemy back over the border, or otherwise by conducting tactical operations against them inside of Cambodia.

However, since they were unable to simply level the enemy's illegal installations with artillery fire, they could only observe and report their findings back to their intelligence headquarters.

China was putting increasing pressure on the leader of Cambodia, Prince Sihanouk, threatening severe consequences if Cambodia was found to be helping the Americans.

The result of this restricted American involvement in Cambodia unfortunately allowed the North Vietnamese forces to prepare for something much larger than the typical small-scale attacks.

In late January of 1968, the NBA in Viet Cong launched a massive attack against South Vietnamese forces, hoping to overwhelm the unsuspecting American and Arvin troops.

Launched on the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, Tet, this became known as the Tet Offensive.

The North Vietnamese forces hoped that this surprisingly large attack would encourage their South Vietnamese allies to rise up and overthrow their American puppet government.

The Tet Offensive lasted for nearly eight months.

Americans and South Vietnamese forces suffered heavy casualties, a collective 4,000 troops, but pushed back hard against the enemy offensive, killing more than 32,000 NVA and VC troops and capturing another 6,000.

Even with their comparatively minimal losses, the U.S.

media reporting of the Tet Offensive was damaging to the American psyche.

Despite the obvious military victory, American media labeled the Tet Offensive as a political defeat.

In 1965, the majority of Americans had fully supported their troops in answering the call of duty.

Media reporting of the Tet Offensive exponentially increased a growing discontent across the American home front.

Anti-war demonstrations suddenly increased in their intensity.

The North Vietnamese, meanwhile, returned to their safe havens in Cambodia to regroup and begin new preparations.

The urgent need to expose their illegal sanctuary became even more prevalent in the minds of American strategists.

With these classified operations needing to remain hidden from both the enemy and public eye, the Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group, or MAC V SOG, a covert unit of predominantly green berets, along with Navy SEALs, Force Recon Marines, and Army Rangers, was best suited for the job.

The mission, codenamed Daniel Boone, had begun in April of 1967, operating out of clandestine bases near the Cambodian border.

northwest of the South Vietnamese capital city of Saigon.

A year later, back at Fort Bragg in April of 1968, Roy Benavides began hearing word of the covert operation from his Green Beret friends, who were just returning from their deployment, having been assigned to one of the undisclosed forward bases.

Roy was then informed of the death of his friend, a fellow Green Beret and Q course graduate, Stefan Mazak, who was also assigned to the mission.

He was killed in a firefight along the Cambodian border, reportedly in the Long Con province.

Having received orders back to Vietnam a month prior, Roy immediately told his sergeant major to change them.

He wanted in on the Daniel Boone mission.

Some of his brothers were still there.

Only a few days later, two six-man reconnaissance teams would find themselves deep in Cambodian territory, their clandestine mission severely compromised.

the men pinned down under the relentless firepower of an overwhelming force of hundreds of enemy fighters.

Those men's lives would soon depend entirely on one man.

On Roy Benavides.

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive produced by Mr.

Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

Written by Jake Howard and myself.

Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Acasio, and Whitlacascio.

Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stidham.

Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone.

Production coordination by Avery Siegel.

Additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden.

Artwork by Jessica Klogston Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picada.

If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartime stories.com.

Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.