Wednesday, February 3, 2016

"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 Adkins killed between 135 and 175 of the enemy while sustaining eighteen different wounds to his body."

Bennie Adkins turns 82 today. Exactly 50 years ago, Mr. Adkins was in the jungles of Vietnam. He returned to the United States a legend among Army Rangers, and almost a half-century later was awarded the Medal of Honor for personal acts of valor above and beyond the call of duty during the Vietnam War.

10 comments:

Uncle Elmo said...

What an incredible story about an amazing man. Happy Birthday Sergeant Major Adkins.
And thank you Rep. Rogers, for making this recognition possible. It literally took an act of Congress.

Anonymous said...

Here is an inverted pentagram for killing people on the other side of the planet who couldn't harm a single American.

60,000 US dead including MIAs, 1.3 million dead Vietnamese. Meanwhile while AmeriKa is distracted as the domestic enemies in DC tore this nation down to new levels from 63-73.

Wake up Americans, the worst enemy of this nation is our Government and the Corporations/Banks that control it.

Santos Design Solutions said...

What a BAMF. Amen to that.

Anonymous said...

Without commenting on the rights or wrongs of the Vietnam War, i just have to comment on the sheer balls of this soldier..If and when the Lord ever decides to test what i'm made of, may I have just a portion of what he's made of..

Anonymous said...

And the Vietcong general chastised his commanders...probably saying, in exasperation, "One guy? One American, did all this...and you let him escape?

Such is the tenacity, the fighting spirit of the American soldier. Either your best friend, or your worst enemy imaginable.

Keep that in mind, Democ Rats! Soon we will be inflicting a 1 to 165 kill ratio on American Communists!

Anonymous said...

If only patriots in America were made of this kind of character.....

Sign Me, Neal Jensen

G3Ken said...

I know I'm going to p**** a lot of guys off, but it's my opinion and I'll stand by it. For the record, I am a veteran, as was my late father, and my son is an active-duty USMC commissioned officer and aviator, so I don't take my comments lightly,, nor without thought.

I know that he fought bravely and I am sure that he felt he was doing what was honorable, but while he was surely brave, his actions weren't honorable.

We were not in Vietnam legitimately, as they did not attack us. We had absolutely zero business being in Vietnam, just as we have no business being in most of the places we are today. Well, ALL of them actually. If we are fighting a war in which we aren't actively defending ourselves, it is immoral and wrong. We cannot abdicate our responsibility as human beings by stating that we are following the orders of our leaders. We all know how that played out for the Nazis after WWII at the Nuremburg trials.

Nobody likes to hear it, but if you sign up and go to war against someone who isn't actively engaged in trying to attack you, you are committing nothing more than state-sanctioned murder. That's a harsh statement, but it doesn't make it untrue. We excuse our young folk because we know they are being used as pawns of the government, but it doesn't make them any less culpable.

We like to think of ourselves as being noble people and defenders of freedom, but if you look at our actions from the rest of the world's viewpoint, we are nothing more than empire builders and agents of oppression.

Americans are good and kind people, but we've bought into the evils of patriotism. Are we really the beacon of freedom to the world? Hell, we aren't even free in our own country any longer. We need to realize that government is the problem. We think that "smaller" government is the solution, but that's impossible. Government, by its nature, is power and it will do nothing but continue to grow. We need to wake up and realize that we alone are responsible for our own morality and our own choices in life.

Chiu ChunLing said...

There is such a thing as defending your allies.

In Vietnam, we were defending an ally. And abandoning that alliance was a stain on America's honor that will not soon be expunged.

Washington warned against 'entangling alliances' precisely because defending allies against aggression is a moral obligation justifying war. America should avoid making mutual defense commitments that it will be too costly to keep. To what extent was alliance with South Vietnam necessary to the defense of our regional interests and existing allies?

The judgment of history would seem to be that it was not-essential. We should never have entered the alliance in the first place. It only escalated regional conflict to the point where our politicians bowed to 'realpolitik' by betraying a sacred trust.

But having done so, it was not fighting the war but abandoning our ally which dishonored us.

This is why it is so important that we consider are very real limitations before making promises we cannot actually keep. America is not what it once was, and will soon be less than it has been in living memory. We need to take a good look at the size of our stick before opening our mouths.

Or become known as a nation which makes promises with no means, let alone serious intention, of keeping them. Perhaps I should put that differently...because rather than becoming known as what we are, it is time to think about how America is going to be remembered by history.

Anonymous said...

Well said G3Ken, I too come from a long family history of military service, myself included. It was during my enlistment that I discovered for myself all the lies and propaganda that forms our thoughts and the ugly truths revealed by actually experiencing the military in person, so I also know of the institutional brainwashing as well. Thankfully I have never taken a life in the service of corrupt masters, but no doubt I will be taking many soon in defense of my survival. It is inevitable. Likewise I have tried to educate my kids as well to the truths that are hidden from their view by the "education"(brainwashing) establishment, but you can only teach so much, some of their lesson must come from experience or else the wisdom will have no meaning to them. In some cases they already learned the hard way that I was right in most of my advice.

Sign Me, Neal Jensen

G3Ken said...

Chiu ChunLing.......no disrespect, but if by NOT getting into a war with people who didn't attack us it's a stain on our honor, I will wear that stain with pride.

We went to war and as a result over a million people died, a good number of them women and children. There is no honor in that.

If defending these so-called allies was such a noble endeavor, why did our own government have to lie about it in order to get us involved in the war? Shouldn't we know why we are sending our kids (involuntarily, as that) as meat for the meat grinder?

The whole concept of "allies" and going to war for them is nonsense. We are obliged to defend ourselves, nothing more. We have allies and enemies because we are far too busy meddling in other people's business. We need to look inward at the plethora of problems we have here. Aren't they obvious enough?