Vietnam Vet Who Received Medal of Honor Today Was a Total BADASS

in News, Opinion / by Sean Brown / on September 15, 2014 at 4:34 pm /

One of today’s recipients of the Medal of Honor turns out to be a complete badass, and the story of how he killed 175 enemies, plus had a run-in with a tiger, is well worth the read.


Bennie G. Adkins is promoted to the rank of command sergeant major, with the help of his wife, Mary.

According to CNN, Sgt. Maj. Bennie Adkins endured a four-day struggle that’s one for the history books, suffering 18 wounds from enemy fire, 38 hours of battle and evading North Vietnamese troops for 48 hours. The epic chain of events took place in Vietnam’s A Shau Valley over 48 years ago, and today Adkins was finally honored for his extremely brave and heroic acts.

On March 9, 1966, a 32-year-old Adkins was a sergeant first class among a handful of Americans working with South Vietnamese troops at camp A Shau when their camp was attacked by a large group of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers, according to an Army report.

“Adkins rushed through intense enemy fire and manned a mortar position defending the camp. He continued to mount a defense even while incurring wounds from several direct hits from enemy mortars. Upon learning that several soldiers were wounded near the center of camp, he temporarily turned the mortar over to another soldier, ran through exploding mortar rounds and dragged several comrades to safety. As the hostile fire subsided, Adkins exposed himself to sporadic sniper fire and carried his wounded comrades to a more secure position.”

Later, while taking heavy enemy fire, Adkins took wounded soldiers to an airstrip outside the camp for extraction then drew fire away from the evacuation aircraft so it could escape. Then he went outside the safety of the camp again to retrieve supplies from an airdrop that had fallen into a minefield, and as CNN noted, it was only the first day.

Read more: Mad World News