Retired Army Col. Paris Davis, a Vietnam veteran and one of the country’s first Black Special Forces officers, received the Medal of Honor from President Biden Friday, nearly 60 years after he was first nominated.

…The night before, Col. Davis captured two enemy personnel to question them and learned that a larger enemy force was in the area, according to the Army. He led his soldiers into battle, where he was wounded and separated from his troops. Col. Davis then led four others forward during intense gunfire, managing to destroy gun emplacements and capture enemy soldiers.

As he tried to regroup his troops, he was hit and wounded again. Col. Davis tackled an enemy soldier with a rifle and defeated him with hand-to-hand combat, the Army said. Then he saw the two American soldiers who needed to be rescued.

Col. Davis pulled both soldiers to safety even though he was shot in the leg and hit with fragments of a grenade. He dragged the second soldier to safety under a hail of gunfire. Col. Davis refused medical evacuation for himself and stayed on the battlefield to help remove his wounded troops, the White House said. He spent that time directing tactical air and artillery fire, according to the Army.

The Army said Col. Davis’s actions “were decisive in changing the tide of the battle, ensuring that American Soldiers were not killed or taken prisoner, preventing the South Vietnamese company from being overrun, and ensuring the defeat of a numerically superior enemy force.”

…The Army says Col. Davis is now one of four service members to receive both the Medal of Honor and the Soldier’s Medal, an award given for an act of heroism that doesn’t involve enemy conflict. He received the Soldier’s Medal after saving the life of a soldier in Vietnam who was stuck in an overturned fuel truck just before it exploded.

[Where do we find such men? God bless him. I am glad they did the right thing while this marvelous man was still with us. ~ Beege]