Roy Benavidez Nearly Died Saving Eight Men. Why Did the Army Refuse to Properly Honor Him?

As a high school student in the mid-1980s, I became fascinated with the Vietnam War. Perhaps this was because at the time I was not much younger than many of the troops had been when they were drafted. Or maybe I was beguiled by movies like Apocalypse Now, the Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, and Platoon, which had kept the war roiling in the public consciousness. I read books by Michael Herr, Tim O’Brien, and Neil Sheehan, and even had a map of Southeast Asia taped to my closet door.But until picking up William Sturkey’s The Ballad of Roy Benavidez: The Life and Times of America’s Most Famous Hispanic War Hero (Basic Books), I had never heard of the book’s subject, which I found surprising…

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