Nearly 60 years after he was first recommended for the nation’s highest military award for his bravery during the Vietnam War, retired Colonel Paris Davis, one of the first black officers to lead a special forces team in combat, was presented with the Medal of Honor on Friday. Got the honor. ,
The recommendation for a late recognition medal for the 83-year-old Virginia resident came after she was lost, resubmitted — and lost again.
It wasn’t until 2016 — half a century after Davis risked his life to save some of his men from the fire — that advocates painstakingly reconstructed and redacted the paperwork.
President Joe Biden on Friday described Davis as a “true hero”, describing her efforts to bring wounded soldiers to safety under heavy enemy fire. When one of his superiors told him to get to security, Davis said, according to Biden: “Sir, I’m just not going to leave. I still have an American,” and he went to carry a wounded medic. went back to the shelling.
Biden told Davis, “This medal means everything to you.” “You are everything our country is at our best. Brave and big-hearted, determined and dedicated, selfless and determined.”
Biden said Davis should have received the honor years ago, describing remaining isolated when he returned home and questioning why the honor took so long.
“Somehow the paperwork never got processed,” Biden said. “Not just once. But twice.”
Davis doesn’t dwell on it. He says he doesn’t know why it took decades.
“Right now I’m overwhelmed,” she told The Associated Press in an interview a day before attending a White House ceremony where Biden held the blue ribbon holding the Medal of Honor around his neck.
“When you’re fighting, you’re not thinking about the moment,” Davis said. “You’re just trying to get through the moment.”
“That moment” spanned approximately 19 hours and two days in mid-June 1965.
Davis, then a captain and commander with the 5th Special Forces Group, engaged in near-constant fighting during a pre-dawn raid on a North Vietnamese Army camp at Bảng Son village in Binh Dinh province.
He fought hand-to-hand combat with the North Vietnamese, calling down accurate artillery fire and thwarting the capture of three American soldiers—all the while suffering from gunfire and grenade fragments. According to reports, he used his pinky finger to fire the rifle after his hand was severed by an enemy grenade.
According to ArmyTimes, Davis repeatedly sprayed into an open rice paddy to save members of his team. His entire team narrowly escaped.
Biden said, ‘That word ‘bravery’ is not used much these days. “But I can’t think of any better words to describe Paris.”
Davis, from Cleveland, retired in 1985 with the rank of lieutenant colonel and now lives in Alexandria, Virginia, outside Washington. Biden called her several weeks ago to deliver the news.
He says that waiting does not diminish honor in any way.
“It magnifies the point if you have to wait that long,” he said. “It’s like someone promised you an ice cream cone. You know what it looks like, how it smells. You just haven’t licked it.
Davis’s commanding officer recommended him for the Army’s top honor, but the paperwork went missing. He was eventually awarded the Silver Star, the Army’s third-highest combat medal, but members of Davis’ team have argued that the color of his skin was a factor in missing his Medal of Honor recommendation.
“I believe someone intentionally lost the paperwork,” Ron Deas, a junior member of Davis’ team at Bong Son, told the AP in a separate interview.
Deas, now 79, helped compile the recommendation that was presented in 2016. He said he knew that Davis had been recommended for the Medal of Honor in 1965 shortly after the battle and that he had spent years wondering why Davis was not awarded the medal. Nine years ago he learned that a second nomination had been submitted “and that too had somehow, quote, been lost.”
“But I don’t believe they were lost,” Deis said. “I believe he was intentionally rejected. He was rejected because he was black, and that’s the only conclusion I can come to.
Army officials say there is no evidence of racism in Davis’s case.
“We’re here to celebrate the fact that he got the award,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Roberson, deputy commanding general of the US Army Special Operations Command, told the AP. “We, the military, you know, we haven’t been able to see anything that would say, ‘Hey, this is racism.'”
“We can’t know,” Roberson said.
In early 2021, then-Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller ordered an expedited review of Davis’ case. He argued in an opinion column later that year that awarding the Medal of Honor to Davis would be addressing an injustice.
Miller wrote, “Few issues in our country rise above partisanship.” “The Davis case meets that standard.”
Davis’ daughter, Regan Davis Hopper, a mother of two teenage sons, told the AP that she learned about her father’s heroism only in 2019. Like him, she said she tries not to dwell on her disappointment in her handling of the situation.
“I try not to think about it. I try not to let it get me down and not let me lose the thrill and excitement of the moment,” Hooper said. “I think the most important thing is, Just looking forward and thinking how exciting it is for America to meet my dad for the first time. I’m proud of that.