Courtesy Photo | Cmd. Sgt. Maj. Bennie Adkins receives his Medal of Honor from President Barak Obama,...... read more read more
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by Fiona G. Holter, USAICoE Staff Historian
On March 9, 1966, Sfc. Bennie G. Adkins, an intelligence sergeant serving with Detachment A-102, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, in the Republic of Vietnam earned a Distinguished Service Cross for intrepidity in action during a thirty-eight hour battle at Camp A Shau. In 2014, his Distinguished Service Cross was upgraded to a Medal of Honor.
On March 9, 1966, enemy forces launched an attack on Camp A Shau. Sergeant Adkins explained, “At about 2 a.m. … they laid down some mortar, 82 and 120 mortars on us ...” After the attack began, Sergeant Adkins ran through intense fire to man the camp’s mortar. He incurred several wounds but refused to give up his position. Later in the day, Sergeant Adkins learned several of his comrades had been wounded. He temporarily gave his position to another soldier and rushed through mortar fire to drag the wounded to safety, then returned to his position. As the enemy mortar attack subsided, he exposed himself to sniper fire as he returned to the wounded men and carried them to the camp dispensary.
As the battle raged, Sergeant Adkins left the camp perimeter two times, directly exposing himself to enemy insurgents. The first time he facilitated the safe evacuation of a wounded comrade to the airstrip and then helped draw fire away from the helicopter as it left. The second time, he returned to the airstrip to collect supplies from a resupply airdrop.
The next day, the enemy launched its main assault on the camp. Adkins once again manned the mortar and, within two hours, was the only remaining mortar operator in defense of the camp. After running out of rounds, he picked up a rifle and fired on insurgents as they breeched the perimeter of the compound. After being wounded, Adkins withdrew with other soldiers to a communications bunker where they received evacuation orders. The group successfully destroyed all signal equipment and classified documents before digging their way out of the back of the bunker and fighting their way out of the camp.
Adkins led the team to the extraction point, then returned to the camp to evacuate one of the wounded. As he returned to the extraction point, he and the small group of soldiers learned they had missed the last helicopter. Adkins recalled “when we came back out, we didn’t have a ride, so we had to hit the jungle.” He led the group into the jungle and, for the next forty-eight hours, evaded the enemy. He explained, “This was the night the North Vietnamese had us surrounded. We were in triple canopy…then we started hearing a noise and then we could see the eyes—about a 400-pound Indonesian tiger was stalking us that night.” Ironically, the tiger aided in the group’s escape as it scared the North Vietnamese soldiers enough for them to retreat and allowed Adkins’ group to get away.
Sergeant Adkins earned the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions during the battle. On September 15, 2014, his award was upgraded to the Medal of Honor. His citation reads, “during the thirty-eight-hour battle and forty-eight hours of escape and evasion, fighting with mortars, machine guns, recoilless rifles, small arms, and hand grenades, it was estimated that Sergeant First Class Adkins killed between 135 and 175 of the enemy while sustaining eighteen different wounds to his body.”
Following his tour in 1966, Sergeant Adkins returned for his third and final tour to Vietnam with the Studies and Observation Group (SOG) in 1971. He retired from the military in 1978 as a Command Sergeant Major.
| Date Taken: | 03.07.2022 |
| Date Posted: | 03.07.2022 10:25 |
| Story ID: | 415919 |
| Location: | FORT HUACHUCA, ARIZONA, US |
| Web Views: | 35 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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