Books: "Every Weapon I Had" By Paris Davis

 

Every Weapon I Had: A Vietnam Vet's Long Road to the Medal of Honor

By Paris Davis

St. Martin's Press; 320 pages; hardcover, $30.00; EBook, $14.99; available today, Tuesday, June 17th

Paris Davis is a former Green Beret and highly-decorated veteran of the United States Special Forces. His story is one of incredible heroism, as he served the nation in combat during the 1960s, one of the most polarizing times in the nation's history. He felt the effects of the two most pivotal events of that time as a young African-American, the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement.

Davis is a Cleveland, Ohio, native who studied political science at Southern University in Baton Rouge, LA. Following graduation, he joined the Army and met his Airborne and Ranger qualifications. Davis then was selected for the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, and served in Korea and Vietnam. 

In 1965, Davis earned a promotion to captain as a detachment commander with the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) at Bong Son, South Vietnam. This was one of the secretive Green Beret A-teams, and they set out to organize indigenous resistance to the Communist Viet Cong incursions into South Vietnam. When Davis was selected to lead it, his commanding officer at the time warned him that some of the soldiers under his command would "resent" his authority. 

Davis was one of the first Black officers in Special Forces history, and by this point the Civil Rights movement was exploding back in the United States after the merciless attacks on activists who marched in Selma, Alabama.

In April 1965, Davis' detachment landed in Binh Dinh Provence, and he quickly earned the respect of his soldiers who would soon fight alongside him in a grueling firefight. On June 18th, he led his Special Forces soldiers, along with inexperienced local villagers, in an attack on a Viet Cong base in Bong Son. 

The Viet Cong was ready with overwhelming numbers, and at one point, Davis' rifle jammed, and he was forced to engage in hand-to-hand combat. Even though he suffered a serious injury, Davis disobeyed a direct order to retreat until he had dragged three injured Green Berets off the battlefield to safety.

Davis' bravery earned him the Silver Star and a Purple Heart, and a nomination for the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1965. This was ignored or misplaced at least three times for unknown reasons, and his supporters believe racial prejudice played a part.

The journey came to an end nearly six decades later, on March 3, 2023, when President Joe Biden awarded Davis the Congressional Medal of Honor, the long-awaited and much-deserved recognition of his heroism.

In this excerpt, Davis writes of his destiny being on the battlefield that fateful day: I had asked for this. Back at First Special Forces HQ in Okinawa, my commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Elmer E. Monger, had asked me to lead Detachment A-321, one of four detachments chosen to set up camps in Binh Dinh Province, where the North Vietnamese were flooding across the border and disembarking from the sea to wage guerrilla war on South Vietnam. I jumped at the chance, even after I was warned that I might have trouble. There might be soldiers on this team who would resent a Black commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Monger had warned me. They might be hostile. I volunteered anyway. I did it because I wanted to. I also did it because I had to. A Black soldier had to be as good as the white soldiers around him. On the battlefield, no one cared what color you were. Back home in the States, sit-ins and protests and marches over segregation and civil rights were tearing the country apart. Out here in this rice paddy, under the scorching sun of Vietnam, the only colors that mattered were the colors of your flag.

By midmorning, we had been out here for about four hours, trying to avoid being overrun. I had fought in every way possible that morning, with my rifle and my fists, with grenades and the butt of my rifle. I used every weapon I had. I wasn't sure how many Cong I had killed that morning, but I was certain there would be more.

I don't remember exactly when the voice crackled over the PRC-10 demanding an update on the battle. It came from an aircraft somewhere overhead. I didn't recognize the voice. It wasn't either of my commos back at camp, Kenny Bates or Ron Wingo. It wasn't a forward air control pilot overhead, and it wasn't my B-team commanders, Captain Claire "Tiny" Aldrich or Major Billy Cole. It wasn't anyone in Fifth Special Forces that I knew of. I didn't know who he was. But I knew what he was: an officer who had no business being there trying to get in on the action.

"Sir, we have two Americans who are critically wounded and the other I didn't really know. I understand he might be dead," I said over the PRC-10.

"Captain, I want you go move out of the area right now," the officer said. 

This has happened to me before. Colonels and even generals who craved promotions would scramble a helo when they caught wind of combat. Then they'd buzz overhead and barge into the action to try to gather extra medals and commendations. If a bullet was fired anywhere nearby, the officer was eligible for a combat infantry badge. The joke was that even if there was no incoming fire, an officer just had to say, Did you hear that bullet? That was good enough to qualify for combat medal.

"Sir, I'm just not going to leave," I said. "I still have Americans out there."

Pulling out would have alerted the North Vietnamese to where all our troops were, and we would have been vulnerable. But that wasn't the most important reason for me to stay. As the commander of this operation, there was no way that I could walk away and leave injured men on the battlefield. It would have been a far more serious dereliction of duty to leave my men to die at the hands of an enemy than to cross an officer I didn't know or report to who was trying to direct a battle from the safety of the sky. There was another part of this situation specific to me. As one of the few Black Special Forces officers anywhere in Vietnam, I found it unthinkable to walk away from soldiers of any race or color. Not to mention that as a Black man, it would be a stain that would never wash away.

The officer wasn't listening. "I'm ordering you to move out," he said again. I refused again. This time I used some choice words that I'd never used with a superior officer, or any officer for that matter. I never knew who that officer was, and I never will.

To me, I wasn't disobeying an order or defying a superior officer. I was just observing a basic principle of leadership, which was that it was both impossible for me to leave and wrong to abandon my men on the battlefield. A leader would never do that. Not only would my men never forget it, I would never forgive myself. Especially knowing that one of those men had just had a baby. If I did find Brown and get him out, at least there was a chance he might see his boy. There was zero chance of that if I didn't. When the officer gave up, I went back to what I had been doing: figuring out how to save my men."