Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
5:06 | Sammy Davis had made a big impression in boot camp, so big that the drill instructor pulled him aside and told him he had a lot of potential. After artillery training, he was off to Vietnam, where he experienced a memorable first night.
Keywords : Sammy Davis Medal Of Honor (MOH) Vietnam Fort Jackson Francisco Quinones Drill Instructor (DI) whiskey Fort Sill artillery Long Binh Mekong Delta North Vietnamese Army (NVA)
There was a long line of military service in his family. Sammy Davis remembers sitting around the dinner table talking about Vietnam when his father turned to him and made a very serious declaration.
Artilleryman Sammy Davis was assigned down in the Mekong Delta, where it was just a lot of rain and water. This had spurred the innovation of a battery on pontoons that could be deployed on water. The locals were friendly and he considered them his friends. After all, they were the reason he was there.
When you're in danger of being overrun, you fire flechette rounds. Artilleryman Sammy Davis learned early in his Vietnam tour how effective they could be. They were rounds packed with small, sharp darts which could cut through the enemy or through the brush if you needed to clear out a little jungle.
The sergeant was only 27 years old, but he was a mean, old sergeant to Sammy Davis and the crew in the artillery battery. His mom had sent some fishing gear and he and his buddies caught fish in the Mekong and traded them in town for whatever young men go looking for in town.
Sammy Davis received a harmonica from his mom, which meant he had to learn how to play it. Since his guard duty was on an artillery battery, he could play it while keeping watch. This became an indispensable part of life in the unit.
It wasn't any ragtag Viet Cong, it was a battalion of NVA that was assaulting the artillery battery where Sammy Davis was stationed in the Mekong Delta. After an RPG hit his gun, he regained consciousness and found his position nearly overrun. After firing every round he had, he saw a wounded American on the other side of the river. He knew what he had to do and his actions brought him consideration for the nation's highest military honor, the Medal of Honor.
Doc Edwards was the unit's medic and whenever there was a spare moment, he was training the men in the artillery battery on life saving techniques. This paid off when the position was nearly overrun and everyone in the unit was injured. Sammy Davis woke up in a hospital in Japan after saving three wounded comrades despite being seriously wounded himself.
Sammy Davis was recovering from serious wounds when a visiting General Westmoreland told him he had been put in for the Medal of Honor. He had rescued three wounded comrades during a furious NVA assault, but to him, he was just doing his job.
When the producers of the movie Forrest Gump decided to use film footage of Sammy Davis receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor, he became known as the real Forrest Gump. This was a great way to introduce himself to students as he traveled the country speaking at schools.
