by Eric Blehm
First published 2015
Eric Blehm chronicles the extraordinary true story of Staff Sergeant Roy Benavidez and the harrowing rescue mission that made him a legend. The author focuses on a single day, May 2, 1968, when a twelve-man Special Forces team found themselves surrounded by hundreds of North Vietnamese Army soldiers in the Cambodian jungle. Their covert mission to gather intelligence on the Ho Chi Minh Trail had gone catastrophically wrong. When Benavidez heard their distress call, he boarded a helicopter without hesitation and jumped into the firefight. Despite being wounded over thirty times by bullets, bayonets, and grenade shrapnel, he refused to leave until every survivor was evacuated. Blehm draws on family interviews, eyewitness accounts, declassified military records, and testimonies from the 240th Assault Helicopter Company pilots who flew the mission. The book reveals how Benavidez's heroic actions were scrutinized for over a decade before he finally received the Medal of Honor in 1980, thanks to testimony from a Green Beret presumed dead who came forward thirteen years later.
Genres: 20th-century, military-fiction, adventure, action, non-fiction, biography-memoir, military-history, american-history
Vibes: emotional, fast-paced, thought-provoking
Tropes: heroic-sacrifice, redemption
Setting: Cambodia, Ho Chi Minh Trail
Period: 1968, 1980
Audio CD · Random House Audio
Content warnings: graphic-violence, war