Roy P. Benavidez was a member of the United States Army Special Forces. He received the Medal of Honor for his valorous actions in combat near Lộc Ninh, South Vietnam on May 2, 1968. He is a descendant of the founders of Benavides, Texas.
About Roy Benavidez in brief
Roy P. Benavidez was a member of the United States Army Special Forces. He received the Medal of Honor for his valorous actions in combat near Lộc Ninh, South Vietnam on May 2, 1968. He was born in Lindenau near Cuero, Texas in DeWitt County. He is a descendant of the founders of Benavides, Texas and was the son of a Mexican farmer and a Yaqui Indian mother. He enlisted in the Texas Army National Guard in 1952 during the Korean War. In 1965 he was sent to South Vietnam as an advisor to an Army of the Republic of Vietnam infantry regiment. He stepped on a land mine during a patrol and was evacuated to the U.S. Doctors at Fort Sam Houston concluded he would never walk again and began preparing his medical discharge papers. After over a year of hospitalization, he walked out of the hospital in July 1966, with his wife at his side, determined to return to combat in Vietnam. Despite continuing pain from his wounds, he returned to South Vietnamese in January 1968. Armed only with a knife, he jumped from the helicopter carrying his medical bag and ran to help the trapped patrol. In 1969, he was assigned to Fort Riley, Kansas, where he remained until 1972. He eventually recovered and retired from the Army Medical Center where he eventually recovered from his injuries and died in 2003.
He had a total of 37 bullet, bayonet, and shrapnel wounds from the six-hour fight with the enemy battalion with the NVA. He also received the Distinguished Service Cross for extraordinary heroism and received the Bronze Star for valor. He died in 2005 at the age of 80. He has a daughter and a son, both of whom are still living in Texas. His wife, Hilaria, is a former First Lady of the State of Texas and served in the Army Air National Guard during the 1960s and 1970s as an Airborne Division officer. She is a retired Army colonel and served as the Chief of Staff of the Air Force Reserve at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, until her retirement in 1998. He served in Vietnam from 1967 to 1969. He retired in 2000 and is survived by his wife, two children and a step-grandson. He currently lives in El Campo, Texas with his family. He used to work at a tire shop to help support the family, and at age 15 he dropped out to work full-time to support theFamily. He attended school sporadically and dropped out of school at age 16 to support his family and work at the local bus station. At age 15, he dropped. out of high school to support them. He worked at the bus station, labored on farms in California and Washington, and worked at a Tire shop in ElCampo.
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This page is based on the article Roy Benavidez published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 09, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
