Roy P. Benavidez

Roy P. Benavidez went into a clearing west of Loc Ninh on May 2, 1968, because a Special Forces reconnaissance team was surrounded and dying. He was a staff sergeant then with Detachment B-56, 5th Special Forces Group. He jumped from a helicopter under fire, organized what was left of the team, treated wounded men, called fire, and got survivors onto aircraft while he was hit again and again.

He was presumed dead at a medical station until he was found to be alive. Years later the Medal of Honor citation filled in the hours the Army could prove. He lived until November 29, 1998, in San Antonio, and spent the rest of his public life telling the story without dressing it up as invulnerability. He came home. This register will not invent an MIA claim for a master sergeant who died in Texas three decades after the clearing.

He was born in Cuero, Texas, on August 5, 1935. The photograph is an official Army likeness. This page will not add wounds the citation does not list and will not borrow a private family's sentences. It will say a Texas NCO walked into a firefight to get other men out, that the Army wrote the medal down when it could prove the hours, and that the file is a citation — not a rumor, and not a missing-in-action claim.

A man presumed dead on a litter who later stood up is still not a missing-in-action case. He came off that ground. He grew old in San Antonio. This register will keep the clearing, the date, and the medal text, and will not invent a later mythology around a master sergeant who already told the story without asking to be made invulnerable.