The Michael Berry Show

Earlier this week it was Medal of Honor Day and been reading your emails about that those many of you have have sent those along and there were some stories by the men themselves and I wanted to share them and I decided as much as possible when I have stuff that we roll over from day to day, if we get to Friday and I haven't played it yet or use it yet, I'm going to do my best to squeeze those in because if it's something that I consider important and this was.

So on January 10th, 1968 Army medic Clarence Sasser, despite sustaining injuries himself,

courageously crossed the battlefield in the intense firefight of the Mekong Delta, South Vietnam,

tending to wounded soldiers.

For his selfless actions during this perilous encounter, President Nixon honored him with a Medal of Honor on March 7, 1969.

Here he is in his own words.

On the morning of January 10th, 1968, Clarence Asser would experience his first heavy combat.

The battalion commander sent his company on a reconnaissance mission toward the Mekon Delta to investigate reports of enemy activity.

I was on probably the third, fourth helicopter.

We go in and the helicopters start taking fire and rockets.

I'm a thoroughly bad situation.

One of the helicopters got hidden, plunked down in the water.

We got off the helicopter, I got grazed, getting off the helicopter in the lead,

fire all around us with the helicopter down. It wasn't any

choice we had to go in and so we would dump in the rice batter.

The mortars were coming in, snipers were around.

Guys were yelling, D dot, and of course at this point there's no semblance of platoon-like

unity.

During the first 30 minutes, over 30 casualties were sustained.

Without hesitation, Sasser ran across an open rice paddy through a hail of fire to assist the wounded.

After helping one man to safety, he was painfully struck by incoming fire.

...