Prior to reaching the team’s position he was wounded in his right leg, face, and head. Realizing that all the team members were either dead or wounded and unable to move to the pickup zone, he directed the aircraft to a nearby clearing where he jumped from the hovering helicopter, and ran approximately 75 meters under withering small arms fire to the crippled team. Sergeant BENAVIDEZ voluntarily boarded a returning aircraft to assist in another extraction attempt. Sergeant BENAVIDEZ was at the Forward Operating Base in Loc Ninh monitoring the operation by radio when these helicopters, of the 240th Assault Helicopter Company, returned to off-load wounded crew members and to assess aircraft damage. Three helicopters attempted extraction, but were unable to land due to intense enemy small arms and anti-aircraft fire. After a short period of time on the ground, the team met heavy enemy resistance, and requested emergency extraction. This area was controlled and routinely patrolled by the North Vietnamese Army. On the morning of, a 12-man Special Forces Reconnaissance Team was inserted by helicopters of the 240th Assault Helicopter Company in a dense jungle area west of Loc Ninh, Vietnam to gather intelligence information about confirmed large-scale enemy activity. Benavidez (who had to wait until he received his award from President Ronald Reagan) Army medic, and nine Green Berets earned the nation’s highest award on SOG operations: One early source of information (if one read between the lines) were the citations issued for the award of the Medal of Honor to MACV-SOG personnel (although they were never recognized as such). Historians interested in the unit’s activities had to wait until the early 1990s, when MACV-SOG’s Annexes to the annual MACV Command Histories and a Pentagon documentation study of the organization were declassified for the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs’ hearings on the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue. More specific was the release of documents dealing with the early days of the operation in the Pentagon Papers and by the testimony of ex-SOG personnel during congressional investigations into the bombing campaigns in Laos and Cambodia in the early 1970s. Although there had been some small leaks by the media during the conflict, they were usually erroneous and easily dismissed.
military (and MACV-SOG personnel) kept tight security over knowledge of the unit’s operations and existence until the early 1980s.
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