Roger H.C. Donlon, an Army Green Beret who in 1964 was the primary Medal of Honor recipient within the Vietnam War, for main the protection of a jungle outpost in a ferocious nighttime assault regardless of being wounded by shrapnel from mortars and a grenade, died on Jan. 25 in Leavenworth, Kan. He was 89.
The trigger was Parkinson’s illness, his household stated in an announcement. The assertion stated the illness was the results of publicity to Agent Orange, the poisonous chemical sprayed by American plane as a defoliant in Vietnam.
Mr. Donlon was a profession soldier who spent 33 years within the Army, rising to colonel. Before that he attended the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., although he dropped out after two years, and have become a Green Beret in 1963 after coaching at Fort Bragg, N.C., now Fort Liberty.
The battle during which he earned the Medal of Honor loosely impressed the climactic scene within the 1968 John Wayne film “The Green Berets,”
Mr. Donlon was a 30-year-old Special Forces captain when he arrived in South Vietnam to command an outpost at Nam Dong, north of Da Nang not removed from the Laotian border. The mountainous area within the Central Highlands was populated by Montagnard villagers, whom Army advisers — and, earlier than them, C.I.A. officers — tried to form right into a bulwark in opposition to the Vietcong, the Communist insurgency aligned with North Vietnam.
Ringed in barbed wire, Camp Nam Dong was defended by a dozen U.S. Special Forces and about 300 Vietnamese. In the early hours of July 6, 1964, a pressure of 800 to 900 Vietcong and North Vietnamese regulars launched a shock assault, in search of to overrun the camp.
Years later, Mr. Donlon stated that among the many fighters the Green Berets had been coaching had been many Vietcong sympathizers. When the capturing started, he instructed the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, the attackers made an announcement over a public handle system in English and Vietnamese telling the sympathizers: “Lay down your weapons. We just want the Americans.” He estimated that there have been solely 75 reliable fighters to defend the camp.
Running by means of “a hail of small arms and exploding hand grenades,” in line with the Medal of Honor quotation, Captain Donlon “annihilated” enemy fighters who had been trying to breach the primary gate.
During 5 hours of preventing, he was continuously in movement: laying down protecting hearth as his troopers retreated, crawling with a 60-millimeter mortar to a brand new location and dragging a wounded soldier out of a gun pit. On separate events, he was wounded within the abdomen, left shoulder, leg and face.
Captain Donlon radioed for reinforcements. But when helicopters arrived from Da Nang Air Base, they had been unable to land due to the extreme firefight and returned to base.
“Without hesitation,” Captain Donlon’s quotation reads, “he left this sheltered position, and moved from position to position around the beleaguered perimeter while hurling hand grenades at the enemy and inspiring his men to superhuman effort.”
At daybreak, when the enemy retreated, two Green Berets, one Australian soldier and 55 South Vietnamese defenders had been lifeless, whereas the Vietcong had misplaced 64 males, in line with an official navy historical past.
Captain Donlon was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Lyndon B. Johnson on the White House on Dec. 5, 1964.
That yr, with 23,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam, the administration was nonetheless dissembling in regards to the American function within the battle. “This is the first Medal of Honor awarded to an individual who distinguished himself while serving with a friendly force engaged in an armed conflict in which the United States is not a belligerent party,” a White House assertion learn.
Mr. Donlon’s navy profession started when he enlisted within the Air Force in 1953. He was admitted to West Point in 1955 however dropped out after two years, taking a job with IBM. After 10 months, he determined {that a} company job was not for him, and in 1958 he joined the Army, graduating from Officer Candidate School as a second lieutenant at Fort Benning, Ga., now Fort Moore.
After Vietnam, he earned a Bachelor of General Studies diploma from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a Master of Science in authorities from Campbell University, in line with the navy publication Stars and Stripes. He turned an teacher on the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in Leavenworth, Kan, the place he continued residing together with his household after retiring in 1988.
He wrote two books: “Outpost of Freedom” (1965), in regards to the battle for Nam Dong, and “Beyond Nam Dong” (1998), an autobiography that features an account of returning to Nam Dong lengthy after the battle to advertise reconciliation.
In retirement, he raised cash for a scholarship fund for Vietnamese American and Vietnamese college students, and for constructing a kids’s library and studying middle within the village of Nam Dong. He led a delegation to Vietnam in 1993 for the nonprofit group People to People International, the place he served on the board.
Roger Hugh Charles Donlon was born on Jan. 30, 1934, in Saugerties, N.Y. He was the eighth of 10 kids of Paul A. Donlon, who ran a lumber firm, and Marion (Howard) Donlon. His father died when he was 13.
When Mr. Donlon returned to Saugerties in 2016 after its city corridor was named in his honor, a former classmate of his, Jack Bartells, instructed a neighborhood newspaper that he “always wanted to be a soldier.”
“He came from a military family,” Mr. Bartells stated, “and he and four brothers served in the military.”
In 1968, he married Norma Shinno Irving, whose first husband was killed in Vietnam, after sitting subsequent to her on a flight. She survives him, as do two of his brothers, Paul A. Donlon Jr. and Jack Donlon; a daughter, Linda Danniger; three sons, Damian, Jason and Derek; six grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.
In a 1995 return journey to Nam Dong, Mr. Donlon visited the overgrown graves of the South Vietnamese troopers beneath his command who died within the battle. Beside him was Nguyen Can Thu, a former Vietcong political officer who had helped plan the assault. It was Mr. Thu, Mr. Donlon later stated, who instructed him that 100 of the 300 Vietnamese he was coaching within the camp had been Vietcong infiltrators.
Together, the 2 males cleared brush and righted a few of the unmarked headstones. They had been helped by Vietcong veterans of the battle.
“There I was, kneeling to cut the grass over the graves of my men, and all around me my former enemies were helping me do it,” Mr. Donlon instructed The Kansas City Star in 1999. “That really solidified my feelings of reconciliation.”
Source: www.nytimes.com