Humbled and embarrassed that while I was bitching about running "man-makers" at football practice, this warrior was over in Vietnam putting his life on the line for his men and country ... this guy was a true stud! RMB
12/23/2009 - After escaping death too many times to keep count of in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, one of the greatest soldiers in American history (over 54 months of combat duty in Southeast Asia that puts a medal salad on his uniform that will feature a Congressional Medal of Honor, eight Purple Hearts, a Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star, and four Bronze Stars), United States Army Special Forces Green Beret, Colonel Robert "Bob" Lewis Howard, passes away at a hospital in Waco, Texas at the age of 70 as a result of pancreatic cancer. His exploits in the service of his country is a tale every American should know ... and give thanks for.
Howard
Bob Howard is born in the small rural town of Opelika, Alabama (chartered in February of 1854, the town has a 1939 population of 6,196 individuals in the year of Howard's birth and is the Lee County seat, a hundred miles southwest of Atlanta, Georgia and about twenty minutes from the state border) on Tuesday, July 11, 1939, the first of eight siblings born into the family of Charles and Martha Nichols Howard (Martha is only fourteen when she gives birth to her first son). It is a dirt poor family (a cousin will describe Howard's family as being "poor-poor" and "white trash") just trying to survive the American Depression with Howard's father toiling in the fields, joining the paratroops of the United States Army with his three brothers (Barney, Palmer, and Homer ... all will survive WWII, with Palmer being wounded in action during fighting in the Mediterranean Theater during the spring of 1944) after the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor (meanwhile, to put food on the table with her husband overseas in Europe, Martha works at a local textile mill), working for a taxi cab company in the city of Montgomery after the war, and drinking copious amounts of liquor. Bob is mostly raised in a small wooden frame home on a hill at the end of a dirt road by his grandmother, Callie Elizabeth Bowen Nichols, a no-nonsense lady who instills perseverance, patriotism, and a desire to better himself in the youth ... later, the only story of his childhood that he relates to his daughter is how he use to hide from bullies that lived at the bottom of the hill until his grandmother discovers him running for home after school one day to protect himself from having his "new" used tennis shoes stolen, an action she negates by telling the lad "... don't ever run away from anything again." It is a lesson Howard takes to heart and the next day he returns home beaten up, but still in possession of his footwear. His grandmother also reads the Bible to Bob and his sister everyday, teaching the pair to never carry any hate in the hearts (time is also spent during the war helping his grandmother bake cookies to send to his father and other servicemen fighting the war and like many boys of the time, there are many long hunts through the Opelika area looking for tin cans to turn in to support the country's war efforts). The only hate Howard has in his heart is for Opelika itself (once gone, he will return only for his mother's and his father's funerals) and his circumstances there (the sun up to sun down work, the constant reality of being without lots and lots of life's essentials, and the inability to even have any hobbies, date, or play football for the local school) ... a direction of escape though identifies itself when Bob finds himself impressed by the young men that drive by on the highway near town, on their way to and from nearby Fort Benning, Georgia (28 miles away) wearing "Screaming Eagle" paratrooper patches on their shoulders, and his father tells his war stories about jumping out of transports during WWII as a member of the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army (the unit made famous by Stephen Ambrose in the book, "Band of Brothers").
Opelika
Screaming Eagle Patch
Operation Market-Garden WWII - A Bridge Too Far
Howard successfully completes the division's three-week parachute course, then masters the unit's three-week Rigger Course (another way of making a little more money to send home to his bride as the talent of correctly repacking used parachutes earns a soldier an extra $30.00 a month of pay). Bob is then sent to Europe from 1961 to 1963 (on September 21, 1961, Tina will give birth to Howard's first daughter, Denica, his second daughter, Melissa, is born on April 2, 1964), before returning to the 101st at Fort Campbell. After ten years in the Army, Howard receives his first combat assignment in 1965, arriving (after an over a three-week sardine sail across the Pacific Ocean aboard the rusting 510-foot WWII troop transport vessel "Eltinge" with 3,700 other members of the 101st's 1st Brigade) at Cam Ranh Bay, South Vietnam on July 29, 1965. Five weeks later, the still young soldier re-enlists for another six years. The major crossroad for the professional soldier (how he calls himself and describes his job from 1959 until his death in 2009) comes when his unit is attacked by VC soldiers and he is struck in the face by a bullet that pierces his right cheek beside his nose, smashes through his upper and lower teeth and then exits out his lower-right jaw (and worsening his situation, Howard has taken cover in Vietnamese cemetery and spends much of his night before rescue covered in maggots and embracing a corpse that has been blown out of its grave). Taken to the division hospital at Qui Nhon, he is fixed up and while recuperating, meets a 29-year-old New Yorker he'd attended Airborne school with, John Curtin. Now a member of a group of Special Forces soldiers from MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam - Studies and Observations Group), Curtin tells Howard what he can about his duties and adventures as a "Green Beret" and introduces Howard to his commander, Colonel William McKean Deciding the secret work that his new friends are involved in sounds like a new step forward in his military service and will be a quicker pathway to promotion, he puts in for a transfer to the U.S. Army Special Forces, and when accepted, returns to the States for eleven months to learn what it takes to be a Green Beret (Howard will also make cameo appearances in John Wayne films ... in 1962 he will be filmed jumping out a plane recreating the parachute drops over Normandy on D-Day for the film, "The Longest Day," and in 1967 he appears briefly in "The Green Berets" as a jump trainer). Successfully graduating from the Special Forces' demanding 45-week qualification course in the spring of 1967 ("Q Course"), he then volunteers to return to Vietnam for a combat assignment with the 5th Special Forces Group, and requests it come with a SOG posting. On April 24, 1967, now a sergeant, Howard is back in Vietnam for his second tour of duty. He is 27-years-old.
Special Forces Training For Hand-to-Hand Combat
In 1967, SOG, with headquarters in Saigon, South Vietnam has roughly 2,000 U.S. servicemen and 8,000 indigenous mercenary personnel running covert operations in North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Broken into three combat arms, Howard becomes a member of a 60-man reconnaissance and hunter company based at the Kontum forward operating base in the Vietnam Central Highlands (CCC ... Command and Control Central) responsible for supporting cross-border covert operations (known as "across the fence" operations) along the hundreds miles long Ho Chi Minh jungle supply trail that includes conducting platoon and company-sized raids on key enemy facilities, rescue operations for downed American pilots, assessing bomber results and running reconnaissance patrols. It is deadly dangerous work that takes place behind enemy lines and requires a special breed of warrior (twelve Congressional Medals of Honor, including Howard's, will come out of the duty, nine awarded to members of the Army, one to an Air Force flier, and two to members of the United States Navy). Members of the reconnaissance teams ("RTs," also known as 'Spike Teams," a "typical" team being named after a state, consisted of two to three Special Forces soldiers, either commissioned or non-commissioned officers, accompanied by five to eight Vietnamese or Montnayard soldiers ... the men also stop showering two days before missions least their "clean" smell gets noticed out in the field, another reason why the men are allowed to grow their hair long and have mustaches and beards ... team leadership is based on skill and experience, not rank, with American operatives designated as 1-0 for the group leader, 1-2 for the assistant team leader, and 1-3 for the communications officer)
and slightly larger (platoon size, between 20 to 50 men) Hatchet teams (for quickly assisting RT units in trouble or with their missions with four Americans in charge) wear uniforms bearing no insignia or identification linking them to the American military, and for further coverup as to their identity, often clad themselves in NVA army uniforms and carry enemy weapons and equipment, actions which could identify the men as spies and get them instantly shot if captured if it was not for the fact that if captured, the NVA is shooting all SOG personnel anyway. Additionally, once engaged with the enemy, conventional American forces are prohibited from coming to the aid of Howard and his confederates, and any aerial support is subject to the whims of the weather in the Central Highlands and is available only during daylight hours. And if that is not enough to make the work "suicidal," the enemy will hunt RTs with bloodhounds, learns the parameters of some operations from spies operating from South Vietnamese and MACV Headquarters, puts dedicated watchers and anti-aircraft batteries at likely helicopter landing zones, and beefs up personnel in the region to over 50,000 soldiers.
The "FNG" or "F__king New Guy" on the base, Howard becomes Kontum's supply officer, a job in which he runs the group's supply room, takes care of basic paperwork, and manages the base's kitchen. Issuing weapons, ammunition, and gear for missions, Howard is one of the first soldiers on the base to hear of unit plans (the location of the supply room is near the tactical operations center and the base helipad) and though impatient to get into the field, he carries out his supply duties impeccably and never complains about his lack of action. Fitting in as the FNG, Howard gets his first chance to be a member of ST Wyoming on May 15, 1967 when while withdrawing equipment for a mission, the 1-0, 25-year-old Sergeant First Class "Dirty" Joe Messer tells Howard his team is lacking a 1-3 to carry the unit's radio and Howard instantly volunteers to be a "straphanger" (the name the soldiers use for volunteers that fill in with teams) the communications gear into the jungle (23-pounds of radio and 5-pounds of spare radio batteries). Armed with a Swedish K submachine gun, extra 9mm ammunition that can be used both in his automatic machine gun and Browning Hi-Power semiauto pistol, a Bowie knife, a smoke grenade, fragmentation grenades, while also carrying food rations, survival gear, plastic water bottles, a small URC-10 survival radio, a signaling mirror, a fluorescent red-and-orange reversible signal panel, a pen flare, and a strobe light, and dressed in regular green military fatigues missing any kind of identification, Howard accompanies the team to the American base at Dak To in Sikorsky Choctaw H3 "Kingbee" helicopter, and then moves with the group across the border and into Laos (activities that the United States has been stating have not been taking place) to investigate enemy usage of a river area. After four days in the field, information about enemy activities in hand, and successful in avoiding contact with the VC, Messer, 1-2 Sergeant First Class Gaetano "Guy" Albregio, Howard, and the Montagnards are safely extracted from their original landing zone (LZ). Back at base, the men celebrate their return with ice-cold welcome home beers, Coca-Colas, showers, and for Howard, smoking a trademark Lucky Strike cigarette that hides his disappointment in not getting into a gun battle ... a lacking that will quickly be resolved.
Messer
Sikorsky
For his second mission over the fence, Howard is paired with 1-0 Sergeant First Class Robert Sprouse, straphanging for ST Kentucky (by this time, there are now also Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Texas, and Wyoming teams at Kontum). And volunteering for more and more missions, Howard begins devising "surprises" for the enemy ... like leaving behind a old foot locker filled with eighty pounds of dynamite and nitro that is made to look like it was dropped in haste by a freshly inserted, rushed, SOG team. The detonation that takes place when North Vietnamese soldiers investigate the box wipes out an entire squad of enemies and everything else within a quarter of a mile. Also while out on another 1967 mission monitoring truck traffic, Howard will jump up from a darkened jungle road and toss a Claymore mine into the back of a NVA troop transport truck. It too goes up in smoke seconds after encountering Howard, killing everybody on board. On two other missions, Howard will back off enemy soldiers following his team by placing M-14 "toe popper" anti-personnel mines in front of a bush Howard places one of his shirts on. After two explosions, the pursuit of the team Howard is on comes to an abrupt end. And on another mission, with 1-0 Arkansas Staff Sergeant Larry Melton White, Howard and the team leader use claymore mines and delayed fuses to blow up a vital NVA fuel pipeline.
M-14 Toe Popper
In September of 1967, change comes to FB2 when 32-year-old Captain Eugene Crouch McCarley Jr. from North Carolina arrives to become the new commander of the site's S-4 division and becomes Kontum's new logistics boss (on the dumb side at roughly the same time, the base's Hatchet Teams are renamed "Exploitation Forces" because politicians back home think "hatchet" is too sinister a word). McCarley and Howard soon bond when the two men come under fire from a pair of Viet Cong soldiers while the Americans are trying to move a supply truck out of a stream near Kontum City. Weapons up in response, in less than a minute both Green Berets down their opponents. After, Howard will become a regular choice to join McCarley ST-Florida unit whenever the Captain needs a reliable extra man (always ready to assist the SOG teams, Howard has a rucksack and weapon at the ready next to his supply desk that allows him to be aboard a departing helicopter in seconds). But constantly juggling his supply duties, he also goes "over the fence" with other teams when they need a little help, and as a part of 24-year-old Sergeant First Class Johnnie Gilreath's ST-Colorado (with Sergeant Larry David Williams as his #2), in November of 1967 he endures his most trying mission to date in a region of southeast Laos known as Hotel 9. Volunteering to lead a hatchet team to where ST-Colorado has discovered an overflowing NVA supply dump, Howard is part of a huge firefight only moments after leaving the helicopter he rode in on. In those first moments, he empties his M16 into four NVA soldiers and then goes looking for other opponens as the hatchet force destroys enough food and ammunition to feed and arm two battalions of enemy soldiers. Under fire as he crawls forward, Howard takes out a sniper that is firing on him, then mows down the men manning a machine gun bunker and orders an air strike on the position. Creeping forward to assess the bomb damage though, Howard discovers that the bunker has been restocked with men that are firing on him once more ... with extreme accuracy. Cheating death again, for the second time in three years, Howard is hit in the face by an enemy ricochet that careens into his head just above his left eye and briefly knocks him unconscious as he is also hit by a round that breaks his right clavicle, and a bullet fragment that cuts open his right cheek. With rounds going off six inches above his head, Howard comes to and tosses a grenade into the bunker and kills another batch of enemy soldiers occupying the position. He then sprints across a clearing and rejoins his comrades as once again the dead bunker comes to life with fresh troops. Bullets and a grenade having proved faulty in silencing the deadly structure, Howard on his third assault on the bunker takes up an anti-tank rocket launcher. With Williams (for his heroism in supporting Howard's assault on the NVA platoon, he will be pinned with a Silver Star), Gilreath, and the other members of the unit providing covering fire, Howard rises from his position with the launcher against his left shoulder, takes careful aim and fires a rocket into the bunker despite the pain the weapon's recoil brings to his damaged clavicle. Spot on, the position explodes in a fiery eruption that sends shrapnel, jungle foliage, equipment, and body parts into the air. The response of the NVA growing as the minutes tick by, with the ammunition and food mostly destroyed, Gilreath radios for hs team to be extracted and the force returns to Kontum, with the group's only casualty being Howard. Patched up, later in the month Gilreath and Howard are flown to Saigon to brief General Westmoreland on the mission. Asked by their duly impressed commander what he can do for the two men, Gilreath tells the four-star general he would like to enter flight training (he will survive the war and after 28-years in the service, retire from the military as a lieutenant colonel), while Howard will simply ask to return to combat out of Kontum.
Requests granted, Howard's base commander Major Hart puts the Green Beret up for the Congressional Medal of Honor for his "above and beyond" attacks on November 21, 1967, but because of the fight taking place in Laos, the paperwork for America's highest valor award stalls out and instead morphs into Howard receiving a Distinguished Service Star on May 2, 1968.
Gilreath
Howard & Poole - Over The Fence
Distinguished Service Cross
Returning to his supply duties, Howard allows his injuries to heal and is ready for another batch of "over the fence" adventuring by the second week in December with Spike Team Colorado again, this time led by it's former #2, Larry Williams (Gilbreath is off running a special mission out of Da Nang), and in his spot as #2 is a 25-year-old Green Beret from Horatio, Arkansas, Staff Sergeant Paul Poole ... and they are headed for the familiar and deadly grounds of Hotel 9. On the morning of December 7, 1967, the team (three Green Berets and seven Montagnards) sets down and begins quietly marching through the mountainous terrain. The following day, they engage a dozen NVA fighters and as an air strike hits their opponents, Howard is hit again, with bullets this time hitting his right shoulder and his left forearm being torn open. Deeming the wounds painful but not substantial enough to warrant his removal from the team by medivac, the patrol and Howard carry on and the next day they discover another NVA staging area in a battalion-size camp of twenty-one bamboo structures, an estimated twenty tons of rice, and enough ordinance to keep two enemy battalions in bullets for several major firefights. Vastly outnumbered by their foes, Williams calls down an air strike on the location that toasts the area but doesn't destroy all the available targets, so Howard goes in with the Montagnards and in thirty minutes, destroys a ton of medical supplies, more sacks of rice, burns down the remaining bamboo structures, and using Claymore mins, explodes thousands of pounds of weaponry and ammunition. The thirty minutes though also allows the NVA to regroup and respond again, launching mortar and machine gun attacks on the group that cause Williams to make a "Prairie Fire" emergency call for immediate extraction. As the team moves to an extraction point, Howard stays behind to provide defensive fire for the group's retreat. Two helicopters pick up the team, with Howard and Williams the last men out. Along with another Purple Heart, Howard will receive a Bronze Star for his bravery during the encounter.
Purple Heart
Bronze Star
As January of 1968 becomes February, Howard is back out in the bush of Hotel 9 with Williams and Poole, again on a long range reconnaissance, this time to determine if the North Vietnamese are grouping for a strike into the Central Highlands or at the American base at Dak To. On their final day in Hotel 9, the group is discovered by a large force of NVA soldiers. Pinned down in the firefight that ensues, another "Prairie Fire" alert is sent out as Williams, Poole, and Howard form a defensive perimeter with their team in an old bomb crater and hold off their attackers until the team can be successfully extracted. For the heroism Poole and Howard display in warding off the NVA soldiers, the two men's names are submitted for awarding of the Army Commendation Medal for Valor. And Howard's missions continue with one in which he brings a large brass bell out of a Cambodian cemetery to prove the team he is on actually penetrated Cambodia and another on which he blows up a large artillery piece that the enemy hides after use by moving it about on a railroad system. In March, the supply sergeant joins RT Colorado again as the unit's #2 (Paul Poole has now moved into the #1 position). On March 30, 1968, after four days in the jungle the team comes upon a trail that shows signs of heavy usage by the enemy. Setting up an ambush, the group wipes out a unit of NVA soldiers, but draws the attention of even a larger group of enemy gunners. Immediate extraction once more called for, while the team waits to be lifted out of the area, Howard directs the defensive actions of the team's Montagnards and puts fire down on an enemy coming too close to the unit's line, actions which see the warrior hit by RPG shrapnel in one ear and in the back of his neck. Lifted out on the second chopper that is able to enter the area after the NVA retreat under the fire that comes from a twice-wounded Poole (working with Claymore mines and a grenade launcher), the new #3, Specialist Fifth Class Charles Dunlop, Howard, protected by aerial fighters and gunships, the group is safely brought back to base, where afterwards for the work completed, Poole will be written up for his first Silver Star, Dunlop for the Army Commendation Medal for Heroism, while Howard is awarded another Oak Leaf Cluster to his original Purple Heart. Wounds healed up to be bearable once more, in April, Howard joins Captain McCarley as his second on a hatchet team sent over the fence to attack any NVA force they find moving through one of the group's hot target areas.
Setting Up A Claymore
Closing in on where they expect to find the enemy, the team is ambushed from behind by a large force of NVA ... an attack that panics the unit's indigenous fighters up a hill, where McCarley pursues them while Howard sets up a defensive perimeter and then, exposing himself to enemy bullets by standing to aim and fire, he supports the captain on his climb with gunfire and a grenade launcher which he uses to silence an NVA mortar position. Surrounded, throughout the night Howard is at whatever hotspot on the line that is being attacked. The next morning, after air support knocks out a platoon of NVA opponents, the unit is successfully lifted out of the area and returned to Kontum where Captain McCarley will receive a Silver Star for the mission, while Howard is put in for an Army Commendation Medal for Heroism taking out the enemy mortar position. On May 14, Howard goes out again, but for the last time as a straphanger when he participates in a mission in which a large enemy force assaults the recon team he is working with and as usual, the sergeant volunteers to hold off the NVA attackers as the SOG unit sets up a defensive position in a bomb crater. The team makes it to the relative safety of the crater, as does Howard after being hit multiple times by shrapnel that wounds his right leg (he is also hit in the left shoulder and suffers multiple small fragment wounds) and causes him to crawl to the crater, where the tough Green Beret then continues firing on anyone foolish enough to close on his position. Air strikes and extraction, Howard makes it back to base but his wounds are deemed to be too serious to treat there, so after being stabilized at the base hospital, Howard is sent to the U.S. Army 106th General Hospital at the Kishine Barracks in Yokohama, Japan for further treatment, before he is posted to Fort Bragg, North Carolina for further rehabilitation and some R&R with his wife and two young daughters (Denica is now seven and Melissa is four). In October, after three months at Fort Bragg, he is promoted to sergeant first class, receives a passel of medals, awards, and commendations (three Purple Hearts, citations for three Army Commendation Medals, a Bronze Star with a "V" device for valor, and the U.S. Army's highest award and the nation's second highest, the Distinguished Service Cross), and is medically cleared to return to full active duty before returning to South Vietnam and FOB-2 for his third tour of duty in the country's Central Highlands.
The Hospital Grounds
Less than a month after returning to Kontum (on his return, Howard will do something he rarely does and get drunk ... so drunk that when Captain McCarley and Sergeant Bob Barnes, both men weigh in excess of 250-pounds, attempt to take him back to his bunk, Howard instead grabs each man under an arm and carries them to his room), Howard goes out with a SLAM Team (Search, Locate, Annihilate, Monitor) as the unit's ranking noncommissioned officer on a mission into a deadly region of the Ho Chi Minh Trail designated Juliett 9 to support two SOG Teams being attacked by counter-recon NVA units. About to be inserted on to a twenty-yard-wide sandbar in the middle of a river where they can then lend support to the put upon units of Sergeant Joe Johnnie Walker (code named "Gladiator," the man keeps a pet python named "Georgia" in a pit near his quarters at FOB-2) and First Lt. Lee Swain, the two choppers carrying Howard's unit are struck by 37mm antiaircraft fire and .50-caliber machine gun fire ... Howard responds by jumping fifteen feet to the ground before his helicopter has landed and opening up on the NVA until everyone is out of the landing zone, then leads the platoon into the nearby woods, killing two enemy soldiers that try to block his way. Linked up with RT California and a wounded Sergeant Walker, Howard begins herding the wounded Walker's damaged Montagnards into a helicopter, but the men jump out when they see their #1 (Walker), refusing to leave until all his men are accounted for ... so Howard joins his friend Walker (limping from a bullet in his leg and squinting out of a stitched up eye), First Class Sergeant Lloyd O'Daniel, Sergeant Alan Farrell, medic Joe Parnar, and several indigenous soldiers in heading back to where Walker's team had been and as always when in combat, Howard makes his presence known by holding the heads of several smaller Montagnards above water as the team crosses a river that is roughly six feet deep in places. Moving up a hill, the group finds where five Montagnards and Sergeant Floyd Bryant have made a last stand and then been shot in the heads. Checking the bodies, Howard is happy and horrified to discover that Bryant is still barely clinging to life (Parnar will be dismayed to discover that Bryant has been hit more than nineteen times). Bodies and Bryant carried back to the sandbar with Parnar running alongside the makeshift stretcher the wounded sergeant is on holding the man's IV bottle, the group makes it back to the river for what should be an extraction and the end of the mission, but with more than a hundred Special Forces troops still on the ground, MACV-SOG senior leadership in Saigon decides to send the men out under the direction of 31-year-old Captain Lolly Sciriav to locate and destroy the 37mm guns that have been peppering the group's aerial assets as they provided rescue support, even though the man has no experience with cross-border missions.
Parnar
Moving out, Howard once again helps the smaller men cross the river again and after a few hundred yards of following the wet, now combined with the men being led by First Lt. Thomas Wayne Jaeger, the group sets up a sleeping area for the evening. The next morning and through the day the unit follows the river but is unsuccessful locating the artillery they've been ordered to destroy. Light waning, Sciriaev orders the men to set up a defensive position on a small hill overlooking the river (a choice that some of the men disagree with. Sure enough, at 4:00 in the morning, the position is assaulted by the mortar shells and rifle grenades of North Vietnamese troopers. Waking with a start, Howard and Parnar are hit in their backs by searing shrapnel as they take cover behind a nearby fallen log and a rotten tree stump. Howard is there for only seconds though, and is soon crawling from position to position to maintain the group's defensive perimeter, stopping the Montagnards from firing their weapons on full automatic into the darkness, and has them instead fire M79 grenade launchers at the invisible enemy. Air support requested by Jaeger (along with medevac for the badly wounded), for the next hour the unit beats off NVA attacks as the platoon leaders continue to adjust the unit's defensive efforts. With dawn, U.S. assets are overhead and provide a brief respite for the encircled men with gunfire, rockets, and cluster bombs, respite that allows the men in command to discuss what their next move should be. When told that SOG headquarters has ordered the team to break out of its encirclement and continue its mission, Sciriaev has Jaeger call command back and request the mission be aborted and the group withdrawn ... a request that does not go over well back at the Kontum Operations Center where an order is soon relayed for the Captain to return on the next helicopter back to base and for Lt. Jaeger to take command, with Howard as first sergeant (though his back is throbbing with pain, Howard does not mention his most recent wounding and stays off the evacuation choppers) and Lt. Swain as the group's new XO. In seven days of action in Juliett 9, the Kontum recon force suffers eighteen American casualties and has three dozen indigenous personnel wounded ... and there will be more to come.
With its new leadership in place and the NVA blasted away for the time being, the team spends another day following the river near Laos Highway 96. After spending a restless night on extremely rocky terrain, the next morning supply requests for ammunition and food are sent to Kontum, and when resupply planes make their drops, Howard assists with security for the area and in helping a wounded Montagnard back to camp before the team moves out again. The next morning, after a medevac chopper airlifts the wounded man back to base, Jaeger splits his force into two columns about sixteen yards apart and the advance continues with Howard and Swain leading the way. Moving slowly and looking for an ambush, Howard spots movement in a treeline about a hundred yards away and with guns blazing, the two men attack the soldiers waiting to attack them, preventing the team from being surprised and slaughtered, but in the process, an RPG round peppers Howard with little slivers of shrapnel and Swain almost has his right foot blown off (the only thing still connecting the limb to Swain's body is his Achilles tendon), while his left leg is torn up so badly it requires a tourniquet be applied. Moving up to where the wounded lieutenant is laying, Jaeger and then Parnar provide medical assistance to Swain while Howard keeps enemy soldiers away from the lifesaving work with his rifle. Then, seeing enemy troops massing for an attack, Jaeger and Howard call in and coordinate air strikes along the team's eastern, western, and southern perimeter. Their focus shifts however when the medevac copter requested is shot down by a .51-caliber heavy antiaircraft machine gun and the two men find themselves in 150-yard race to reach the burning helicopter before the NVA can get there. During the race, Jaeger takes out two enemy soldiers (while holding his pants up with one hand because he has left his belt behind as a tourniquet on one of Swain's damaged legs) and Howard gets two more, and the men will be joined by 1st Lt. Bob Price. Door to the helicopter pried open by Howard, the pilot, copilot, and crew chief all manage to scramble away, but the door gunner is still pinned inside until Howard works him free of the wreckage despite pausing briefly to gun down an NVA soldier attempting to enter the chopper (Jaeger also kills a second soldier trying to get into the downed aircraft). Everyone out, the pilot of the downed Gladiator 167, Warrant Officer Carl Hoeck, and Jaeger drag the gunner back to the team's perimeter while Howard covers the retreat with his bullets. Moving from position to position along the perimeter to insure the group's defensive integrity remains sound as the group is pummeled by enemy ordinance, Howard has an RPG rocket explode so close by that he sustains shrapnel wounds to his hip, back, and buttocks, but none are life threatening (when a Huey makes it into the perimeter, Howard will assist Parnar in getting Swain and critically wounded Sergeant Dickerson into Gladiator 26 ... both men survive their ordeals), so after the metal cools and he picks what he can from his wounds, Howard makes a rain poncho into a "field diaper" and wraps the makeshift Band-Aid about rear and upper legs before continuing his duties. Headed for the wipeout end of a last stand with only one magazine of ammo available per man, Jaeger and Howard coordinate with headquarters to keep the aerial support overhead despite night returning as jets, A-4 Skyhawks, and a Douglas AC-47 Spooky gunship (known as "Puff, the Magic Dragon" for its three 7.62mm miniguns that can be set to fire fifty or a hundred rounds a second into a target) put bullets and ordnance on the unit's defensive perimeter, and in a stroke of luck, around midnight, a bomb explodes in a major NVA ammunition dump that destroys the field gun the team had been after.
Puff's Miniguns
Unit still intact when light finally returns to the area the next morning, after a sleepless night, Howard captures an NVA soldier before the man can be shot by itchy-fingered Montagnards that have already killed two soldiers trying to surrender earlier. Lacking restraints, Howard slings the man over his shoulder and using a fireman's carry, hauls the captive back to the team's perimeter before slinging him to the ground like a sack of potatoes (an officer, back at base the captive will provide valuable intelligence about coming NVA plans). Gun and ammo dump destroyed, with the NVA having temporarily withdrawn from the area, the team is finally allowed extraction on November 19th, with Howard being the second to the last to leave the area (in charge since relieving Sciriaev, Lt. Jaeger is the final man out). A record mission for MACV-SOG, SLAM VII as it will be known involved thirteen different recon teams, plus four platoons and four companies operating in conjunction over a multiweek period. The operation also featured forty-two helicopter gunship sorties and 112 tactical air strikes against NVA personnel. In the various jungle battles that take place, SOG forces will have five Montagnards killed and forty-five men wounded. Impressed by the blasting the NVA takes and the valor shown by its personnel, the command will be very generous in giving out action commendations ... Recon Team California's #1, Joe Walker, will be written up for a Silver Star (the award will be downgraded to an Army Commendation Medal), there are numerous Purple Hearts given out, mission commander Jaeger is written up for a Silver Star and has his award upgraded to a Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Stars go to Lee Swain, Bob Price, and Lloyd O'Daniel, Bronze Stars are pinned on Joe Parnar, Steve Roche, and Terry Brents, Bill Kendall and Bill De Lima get Air Medals, and Army Commendation Medals are bestowed on Mike Machata, Walt Huczko, and Tony Dorff. Howard, upon returning to FOB-2, still wearing his poncho diaper, downs a cold beer, then carries his prisoner on his shoulder and deposits the captive at the base's tactical operations center. For his part in the mission, Howard is written up by Jaeger for a Silver Star, but when base commander Lt. Colonel Donald "Whiskey" Smith and Recon Company Commander Edward Lesesne hear details of the sergeant's work and learn his prisoner has supplied valuable information to Special Forces intelligence personnel (information that will lead to nine successful Arc Light bombing missions in the Juliett 9 region of Laos), Howard is nominated for a second time to receive a Congressional Medal of Honor (months later, it will be downgraded back to a Silver Star).
Fireman's Carry
Silver Star
After his latest shrapnel wounds heal, Howard and Parnar visit Swain and Dickerson at the 7th Evacuation Hospital at Pleiku (after two years of operations, Swain will eventually lose his right leg, but ever the fighter, he will eventually learn how to ski on special crutches and he will earn a commercial pilot's license back in the States). Afterwards, as a bonus reward for how he performed during SLAM VII, Howard will be flown to Taiwan's Chongqing Air Base for a few days of R&R. In December of 1968, Howard is set to go out on another jungle mission with his friend, Staff Sergeant Larry "Six Pack" White as 1-0, Howard as second in command, and Sergeant Robert E. "Buckwheat" Clough holding down the third spot on the team as 1-2 "comm man" carrying the group's radio ... the mission however does not go as planned. Trying to put down to start the mission (the team of three Americans, an ARVN officer, and six Montagnards are aboard two Huey helicopters), enemy gunfire aborts insertion at the first two landing zones scouted. Moving a mile or so away to the last LZ, the group is hit by small-arms fire and machine gun bullets that kill the ARVN officer, wound White in the leg, wound the pilot and co-pilot of the chopper Howard is flying in, knocks out the aircraft's door gunner, and wounds Clough in the arm and side. The NVA now attacking from all directions, the firing of White (who will be bloodied and briefly knocked unconscious by four more bullet wounds to his arm, his hand, his chest, and the back of his right leg), Clough (using the wounded helicopter gunner's M60 machine gun), Howard (now hit in the right shoulder pulling White back into the chopper), and the Montagnards manage to stop the enemy attack 15-yards away from the damaged Huey, and manage to get safely back to base when the wounded pilot manages to get his shot-up helicopter back in the air. Mission a complete failure except for the verification that the enemy has two choppers of its own operating in the area, White will receive a Bronze Star and Purple Heart for the action (he will spend months recovering at hospitals in Vietnam, Japan, and North Carolina and returns to the field in 1970 as the 1-0 leader of RT Hawaii), while Clough and Howard each get an Air Medal for heroism and a Purple Heart. While at Pleiku having his shoulder treated, Howard displays his Spartan personality for all to see when in his hospital pajamas he goes AWOL from his ward and slips out to get some better grub than the food the hospital is serving. He is standing in line with other soldiers waiting for his grub to be served, when a motorcycle bearing two Vietnamese men pulls up and the man riding in back throws a grenade at the line. Aware of the danger, everyone ducks but Howard, instead, the sergeant grabs the rifle of a startled MP standing next to him, kneels in a firing position, and shots the passenger off the bike and causes the driver to crash. Up in a flash and running down the road, Howard takes off in pursuit and half-a-mile down the road, stops and shoots the fleeing driver dead, he then returns the rifle to the MP, gets back in line, gets his grub, and then returns to his bed in the hospital (and he never says a word about any of it).
Howard Back At Base
By now the recon company's training NCO, Howard volunteers to get out in the jungle again when a rescue mission is put together (34 men in all, Green Berets 1st Lt. James Ray Jerson in command, Spec-4 Bob Gron, Sergeant Jerome Griffin, and second-in-command Howard, along with an ARVN officer and twenty-nine Montagnards) to find 21-year-old PFC Robert Francis Scherdin of Somerville, New Jersey when RT Vermont returns to base, after a firefight in Cambodia with NVA forces, missing the team's radioman. The group of 34 is inserted four miles into Laos on December 30, 1968 at 3:15 in the afternoon, and is almost immediately engaged with the enemy. Sent out to assess the situation, Howard, along with three Montagnards spends ten minutes fighting about the perimeter and discovers the group is surrounded and will have to fight its way free of the LZ. Moving up a nearby hill to establish a defendable camp, Howard is recommending to Jerson that the group set up where they are to avoid walking into an ambush when the ambush takes place anyway. More than 200 enemy soldiers attacking, Howard and the Montagnards at the front of the line of march respond with their automatic weapons and M79 grenade launchers but suffer five casualties in the process. Looking for a better position to fight from, the lieutenant and Howard spring to their feet to move to a large tree when a grenade explodes between the two men, sending them violently through the air in opposite directions, with the sergeant coming to rest ten feet down the hill, upside down and unconscious. Slowly returning to sentience as bullets fly about, Howard wakes unable to see until he rubs the blood out of his eyes from a head wound and then realizes he has also taken damage to both of his legs, his crotch, his right foot, and his hand, and that his CAR-15 rifle has been destroyed in the blast. In dire straights, Howard then discovers a North Vietnamese soldier is finishing off wounded men in the area with a flamethrower and his next target is the sergeant. Although two of his fingers are no longer functioning, Howard manages to free an M33 grenade from his utility belt and pull the pin on the weapon and save his life by getting into a Mexican standoff with the soldier as the man caresses the trigger of the flamethrower before vanishing back into the jungle. Unable to walk, Howard then crawls back up the hill to where a crippled Jerson is screaming in pain from numerous shrapnel and bullet wounds.
Scherdin
Jerson
Reaching Jerson, the wounded Howard pulls the six-foot-four officer down the hill, protected by the supporting fire of Gron who kills three NVA soldiers that attempt to capture the two mission leaders. Stopping finally in a small depression, Howard is assessing the lieutenant's wounds when an enemy bullet hits Jerson's utility belt and sets off the ammunition clips being stored there, and in the resulting explosion, blowing the sergeant in the air again and depositing him several yards down the hill, unconscious again (taking cover in an instant, Gron is uninjured by the eruption). Waking up a few moments later, Howard crawls over to where Jerson has come to rest and begins another hauling ordeal, though this time the hauling is helped along by Gron tugging too (the men alternate pulling Jerson until they have the lieutenant back in a position of relative safety with the rest of the team, and Howard keeps the enemy at bay with Gron's rifle as the Spec-4 uses the radio the wounded man was carrying to call for immediate air support). Taking command from Jerson, Gron and Howard are joined by Sergeant Griffin, and the sergeant orders the two men to get the lieutenant the rest of the way down the hill. He also orders Griffin to give him his weapon, but when the sergeant refuses saying he needs it himself, instead, accepts the man's M1911-A1 .45-caliber pistol. Looking for help from the Montagnard's that have panicked and fled into the jungle, an angry Howard kills three North Vietnamese that rush forward to capture the small group. Ordering Gron and Griffin to stay put, Howard then continues crawling down the hill in search of an acceptable LZ for extraction. In the course of his move down the hill, he stops twice to provide medical assistance to an ARVN officer that has come along on the mission and a Montagnard wounded in the leg, and four unwounded Montagnards. Deciding they will have a better chance of surviving if they keep moving, Gron and Griffin continue carrying Jerson down the hill and eventually are reunited with Howard and his people, that now includes the rest of the indigenous team members. Calling the team together, Howard bluntly states, "We're going to establish a perimeter right here, and you're going to fight or die! Or I'm gonna shoot you myself," before once again demanding a weapon.
Colt CAR-15 Rifle
M1911-A1 .45
Three hours into the battle that began on the hill, as night arrives in the area, help finally arrives overhead in the form of a Cessna O-1 observation plane piloted by Captain Lyle Hill carrying four 2.75-inch-diameter rockets, a C-47 flare ship, two helicopter gunships, and a Fairchild AC-119C "Moonbeam" Shadow gunship armed with four six-barrel 7.62mm NATO miniguns. Continuing to crawl about his perimeter, Howard makes sure his position is marked by emergency strobe lights and then begins calling down fire from the sky. In the initial drop, the NVA advance is blunted, but two of the team's Montagnards are injured by the phosphorous fragments that pepper the perimeter (Griffin and Gron carve the fragments off the two injured men as quick as they can with their combat knives). Howard, always cognizant of his situation and looking for ways to improve it, radios 1st Lt. Terry Manric "Peacemaker" Hamric aboard the Cessna, asking, "Do you have an M16 in that damned plane?" Receiving an affirmative answer, Howard tells the plane, "Throw it out the window. I need one!" Instead of throwing the requested weapon out the window, Hamric fires twenty-eight magazines of bullets out the rifle at the enemy below, along with using up the plane's grenades, blunting the advance of two full companies of NVA soldiers. Encouraged by the results, Howard is even happier when the flare ship lights up the creek bed outside his perimeter and the two chopper gunships pour murderous fire down on the advancing NVA. Then as a secondary punch at the enemy, Howard's men begin setting off Claymore mines (capable of sending out seven hundred steel balls in a sixty-degree arc to a distance of about 110 yards at a velocity of 3,937 feet per second) around the perimeter, stopping yet another enemy advance. Minutes later the "Moonbeam" gunship arrives and begins contributing to the team's defense, all of the chaos coordinated with the planes by Howard on the ground. Soon though, the "Moonbeam" is out of ammo and must leave the area. Told the group will be on its own for 15 minutes, knowing he might not be able to hold for that long, Howard requests a McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom drop its 250-pound ordinance on two new strobes Howard sets up. Bombs dropped, the NVA are stopped again, but in the explosion, Howard once more has his body peppered by red-hot shrapnel. Moments later a new fully armed "Moonbeam" arrives overhead to make its contribution to the battle as at about 10:30, Lieutenant Jerson, after minutes of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and external heart massage from Griffin, succumbs to his wounds. Shortly afterwards, the first Sikorsky CH-34 helicopter arrives and Howard begins coordinating the team's extraction. On the first chopper down, Jerson and the most severely wounded Montagnards are sent out, and on the second, most of the rest of the Montagnards go. Finally down to Howard, Griffin, Gron and two indigenous soldiers, a Huey next arrives and the last of the hatchet team gets aboard as the choppers two door gunners blaze away at the still belligerent NVA soldiers trying to approach. At least that is the plan, instead, at the door Griffin and Howard get in an argument about something Howard sees in the grass ... the body of Jerson, pushed out of the first chopper by the aircraft's all-Vietnamese crew to lighten the Sikorsky's load. Instantly Griffin, Gron, and Howard are off the chopper and grab Jerson's body and lift him into the Huey, then following Special Forces protocol, Gron gets back aboard, helps Griffin in, and then Howard is helped in ... the last man to exit the battlezone. Totally spent after over four hours of battle and wounds that would stop a lesser man, Howard will hold on tightly to Jerson's body while crying before finally collapsing on the floor of the chopper once they are out of Laotian airspace. Afterwards, Army officials will estimate that the Howard's team and their air support have killed over fifty NVA soldiers, while wounding another sixty-five ... and Hameric, Gron, and Griffin are all in agreement that in saving his team, Howard has gone way "above and beyond the call of duty."
"Moonbeam" Gunship
Arriving at Dak To, Howard is taken off the Huey and hustled over to an emergency triage area where his bloody fatigues are cut off and he is given medical treatment for his head, fingers, thighs, groin, right foot, and torso. Back at FOB-2, Captain Lesesne writes up the paperwork to submit Howard's name for a Congressional Medal of Honor, the third time in thirteen months he has been nominated for America's #1 award for valor and bravery, something no other United States warrior has ever achieved. As with his first two nominations for his nation's highest award for military valor, the paperwork for the medal moves through channels at a snail's pace, but it does move ... by the spring of 1969, MACV-SOG headquarters in Saigon concurs with the recommendation of Lesesne and Bahr, then a few months later, the award is endorsed by Lt. General Michael S. Davison and Admiral John S. McCain Jr. (meanwhile, to acknowledge Howard's valor while the Medal of Honor process runs its course, the Army, in the form of Major General Leo B. Jones approves the sergeant for a second Distinguished Service Cross). Meanwhile Howard continues to be Howard and only a handful of days after the ordeal in Laos, sent to the 71st Evacuation Hospital in Pleiku for medical treatment, the stitched up sergeant checks himself out of the hospital, hitches a ride aboard a Huey going to Kontum and returns to FOB-2 to take up his training duties once more out of fear that he will be sent to Japan and then back to the States for more rehabilitation. Easing back into his duties, Howard is forbidden by base commander Colonel Bahr form going over the fence until his MOH nomination has run its course ... and this time he doesn't have to to find combat, it comes to him at the base. At around 4:00 in the morning of March 2, 1969, the NVA launches a sapper attack on Kontum that features B-40 rocket-propelled grenades, one of which rips through the Green Berets team room, peppering two young sergeants with shrapnel). Out of his bunk in an instant, Howard helps put down the attack but does nothing that finds its way into his official military record and he fails to add any new scars to the mission souvenirs that cover his body. In April of 1969, when the base's Master Sergeant, forty-five year old WWII veteran Lionel "Choo-Choo" Pinn (so nicknamed for smoking while he runs during workouts) is sent back to the States to recover from a mission in which all fifteen men on the unit are wounded, Howard takes over the job as the recon company's first sergeant, working his charges hard on immediate action drills to get out of life-and-death combat situations, and lots and lots and lots of physical conditioning in the form of running about the base and the village of Kontum (when NVA snipers start taking potshots at American vehicles moving along nearby Highway 14, Howard starts taking his men jogging while carrying a loaded rifle). The job also gives Howard the authority to reorganize recon teams and promote men into leadership positions for missions, a talent that the sergeant is unsurprisingly quite adept at (greeting RT Texas when the team returns back to base after a successful mission, it will be Howard that grabs up the wounded and frightened North Vietnamese soldier the team has caught, and carrying him in his arms, takes the prisoner to the base hospital for medical treatment before questioning by intelligence officers). Third tour in Vietnam coming to an end, Howard is selected by his superiors for promotion to officer. On August 23, 1969, by way of Japan, Howard returns to the States and is about to head for Texas and his family when he discovers one of his men, 22-year-old Staff Sergeant Kenneth Wayne Worthley of RT Florida, has been killed on a mission and is also headed home ... news that Howard responds to by changing his travel plans and instead, accompanying Worthley home to Sherburn, Minnesota where the Green Beret is buried with full military honors as Howard presents the flag from Worthley's coffin to his heart broken parents.
Pinn
Walking The Prisoner To Medical
All in as always, after spending leave with his family, the sergeant packs up the Howard clan and moves everyone to Fort Bragg, North Carolina where on December 6, 1969, three months after returning from Vietnam (in 1969, he will twice be featured in the authorized monthly magazine of the 5th Special Forces Group, "The Green Beret"), he receives a commission as a first lieutenant and begins applying himself to officers' courses every new infantry lieutenant must master ... he graduates on February 23, 1970, and less than a month later he begins the extremely difficult Army Ranger Course that teaches combat tactics, physical fitness, and leadership skills ... seven daunting weeks that humble many of the veterans that try to pass it. For Howard though, although he takes everything deadly seriously, the training is a lark and on May 16, 1970, he graduates as the #1 member of his class. Then, Howard spends five weeks in a Platoon Leader course, which he follows-up with a three-and-a-half Jungle Operations Course which he takes at Fort Sherman in the Panama Canal Zone. He aces these courses too and in October of 1970, the newly minted lieutenant is ordered back to Vietnam for his fourth tour of duty in the war, and once again, he will be with MACV-SOG, operating out of Kontum, in command of the entire recon company. Continuing his upward officer movement, in December of 1970, Howard moves from first lieutenant to captain. He is itching to go back out on missions, but is still kept on ice due to his MOH paperwork. Continuing to ready his men for whatever comes their way, along with himself, Howard now goes jogging with a modified bolt-action, lightweight 12-gauge shotgun fitted with a three-round magazine, helps handle all post-mission debriefings, fires salt filled shotgun shells at his training men (until he is told to stop by headquarters), and puts short fuses on grenades to give the men practice in dealing with premature explosions (he also told to desist in this too). In 1970 when Howard hears the Green Berets will soon be standing down and are done running missions in Cambodia and Laos, he empties the magazine of his CAR-15 automatic rifle into a Stars and Stripes newspaper article about the cutback.
On The Jungle Training Course
More Training
In February of 1971, the war comes to Howard again, and again it is in the form of an attack on Kontum. Sleep to wakefulness in an instant once again, the captain is moving about defensive positions being assaulted, when leaping into a mortar pit for cover, Howard is struck by an enemy bullet on the heel of his right foot. Angry that the Berets compound has been attacked and angry that he has been wounded again, Howard's ire increases even more when a operations staff member jumps into the mortar pit the captain is occupying and tells Howard there is an urgent phone call waiting for him at headquarters. Howard waves off the man telling him that as he can see for himself, he's a little too busy for a phone call at the moment, but relents when he is told the caller is General Westmoreland and that he has a special message the captain needs to hear. Grumbling the whole way back to the base's tactical command center grabs the handset of the Army TA-312 field telephone he is offered upon arriving and discovers Westmoreland is indeed on the phone with news that Howard is to immediately fly back to the States for his awarding of a Medal of Honor at a ceremony to take place at the White House on March 2, 1971. When Howard tells the general he can't possibly get away as the base is under attack, Westmoreland tells the captain he'll take care of the logistics, and sure enough he does. Howard has his foot treated, checks on the perimeter as he was ordered not to, and then flies off the base in the twin-prop Beechcraft aircraft of the current commander of all U.S. military forces in South Vietnam, legendary veteran Patton tank commander, General Creighton Williams Abrams, Jr. Kontum to Tan Son Nhut is followed by a commercial Continental Airlines flight to Oakland, California, then he flies to Washington D.C. where he is reunited with his family at the city's luxurious Madison Hotel (and he almost comes to fisticuffs with the officer supervising his moments when the man tells him to have his family lighten up on ordering food from room service). On the morning of March 2nd, the family is brought to the White House and in the Oval Office (also present to be honored are Captain Harold Fritz, Platoon Sergeant Finnis McCleery, Staff Sergeant Don Jenkins, Sergeant Gordon Roberts, Specialist Fourth Class George Lang, and Marine Corps Captain Wesley Fox ... Howard will be the second of the men to receive his medal), Howard has his long overdue Congressional Medal of Honor placed around his throat by the 37th President of the United States, Richard Milhous Nixon, who whispers in the Captain's ear, "This great country appreciates you, Bob." After the medal ceremony, Howard takes his family to Arlington National Cemetery and pays his respects to assassinated 35th United States President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and offers up a silent prayer to his brethren at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Abrams
Medal Of Honor Ceremony
Formal Medal Of Honor Photo
No more Vietnams, after being awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, Howard will spend another twenty-one years of his life honorably serving in the military. From 1971 to 1973 the captain is an Airborne instructor at Fort Benning, Georgia, before becoming an instructor of Army Ranger classes. In 1973, he earns a bachelor's degree from Texas Christian University in police administration. In 1974, he is given command of Company C, Airborne Rangers, 1st Battalion, 29th Infantry Division operating out of Fort Benning. Before the year is over, he is transferred to Fort Lewis, Washington where he commands Company A of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, 75 Infantry Regiment where he participates alongside his men during their training drills (a badass still, during one night jump, Howard's gear fouls and his parachute fails to open properly, sending him into the ground at a speed that knocks him unconscious ... when he comes to he finds two NCOs arguing over whether he is alive or dead and shocks the men by pulling his parachute off his face and stating, "Man, if it gets harder than this, I'm gonna quit," then he is up, and with his squad leaders watching in awe, he completes the26-mile road march back to base, and for the last two miles, puts himself and his command on a double-time pace). Promoted to major by the end of the 1970s, Howard is the combat arms instructor at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (where he and his men run at least seven miles each day), is the 1979-1980 Most Outstanding Infantry Officer of the Command and General Staff College, earns a master's degree in public administration from Central Michigan University in 1980, then completes a Special Forces Officers' Qualification Course at Fort Bragg the following year, a year that also sees him earn another master's from Central Michigan in management and continue serving as a Special Forces training instructor. From 1983 to 1990, Howard holds commands in Korea and West Germany, and from July of 1989 to June of 1990, he is in second command of the Special Operations Command Korea (SOCKOR) headquarters located at Camp Humphreys near Seoul, South Korea. As a full colonel, his last duty is as the special assistant to the commander of the 5th United States Army headquarters at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. Howard is honorably discharged from the United States Army after thirty-six of service on September 28, 1992
Howard
Sadly for Howard and his family, he is not as good at interpersonal relationships as he is with military matters, and in May of 1977, he and his wife Tina divorce. Four months later he gives matrimony a second try and marries Rona Rossyln Redfern of Houston (a woman he first meets in church). His second marriage (the union will produce two more children, Rossyln Ann Howard and Robert Lewis Howard Jr.) also ends in a divorce that becomes official in Harris County, Texas, on October 21, 1992. He tries marriage a third time six months later when in San Antonio, on March 1, 1993, he marries a woman he became friends with while serving in Korea, Sun Young In. His last marital bonding, they will be together until her death. Super protective of all his children (he beats to a pulp an Army officer that has the temerity to whip young Melissa with a belt for being loud and unrespectful, threatens to "disappear" his future son-in-law, Waco rookie police officer Frank Gentsch if he ever harms his daughter, and tries to talk Robert Howard Jr. out of following in his footsteps and going to war in Afghanistan with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat in 2006), in his later years he becomes best friends with Melissa as he consults his daughter often on how to raise his two youngest children. Escaping the alcoholism that plagued his father's life (and the demons of what he experienced in Vietnam), he totally gives up drinking in 1992, finding solace and comfort in the pleasurable solitude of tilling the earth as a simple gardener.
Rona & Howard Jr.
Aging
Retired from the service, Howard will spend the next fourteen years working for the government as a member of the Depart of Veterans Affairs in San Antonio. As such he is actively involved in a variety of military organizations, attending a myriad of commencement ceremonies, and annually participating on March 25th in the honoring of the MOH winners at Arlington National Cemetery on National Medal of Honor Day (Howard stands beside 44th United States President Barack Obama as the president lays a wreath at the Tomb of Unknown Soldiers at his last time at the event in 2009). As a member of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, he becomes a good friend of the organization's president, Vietnam MOH winner, Sergeant First Class Gary Lee Littrell (a winner for a four day action in April of 1970 near Dak Seang Special Forces Camp in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in which he takes over the camp's defense when the battalion command structure above him are all killed or wounded in the initial attack on the base) when Howard is the group's vice-president. Leading the way, together, the men and other MOH winners begin a yearly ritual of giving encouragement to troops stationed at U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the colonel ends his speeches by stating, "Never surrender your weapons, and face the enemy!" Already suffering the ravages of cancer, Howard tells no one until in 2009 he is too weak and in pain to continue going overseas or giving speeches, so he checks himself into a San Antonio hospital and lets his family know his end is drawing near. Living out his final weeks while staying at the St. Catherine Center, a hospice in Waco, Howard often pulls one of his trademark pranks and sometimes vanishes from the premises, slipping across the street to a local bar called the "Crying Shame" for a little light conversation and a cup of coffee. As word of Howard's condition spreads, veterans from the the Special Forces and MOH Society comrades start showing up to pay their last respects, so many so that his daughter Melissa takes on the duty of being the gatekeeper for access to the fading warrior who with each visitor, pulls himself upright in bed and looks his friends squarely in the eyes as they chat with him before collapsing again upon their departure, and from his death bed, Howard uses the strength he has left to model the fresh Class A uniform Fort Hood has provided him with that he will be buried in, along with decorating it with the medals he wishes to be buried with on his chest, and demands that he be in his freshly polished parachute jump boots (he also requests to be buried in the 7-Alpha Section of Arlington Cemetery where from his grave, the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldiers can be seen ... a portion of the park that is already full, but with the help of Texas congressman, Chet Edwards, a member of the Arlington National Cemetery's appropriation committee, room is found for the MOH winner ... resting in peace, Howard can be found at Section 7A, Site 138 of the cemetery). His body finally shuts down two days before Christmas due to pancreatic cancer and on December 23, 2009, at the age of 70, one of the greatest warriors in American military history passes, survived by his four children (Denicia, Melissa, Rosslyn, and Robert Jr.) and four grandchildren (Victoria, Holley, Isabella, and Robert III). On February 22, 2010, Colonel Howard's full military honors funeral finally takes place on a cold day with ten inches of snow on the ground ... the weather however does nothing to stop over 350 mourners (Lt. General John F. Mulholland, commander of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command will be daughter Melissa's escort during the occasion, and there will be a flag-draped coffin drawn by horses, a gun salute, and flags presented to the family from a Special Forces detail along with the presentation of specially painted portrait of Howard commissioned by the Airborne Association of San Antonio) ) from paying their respects to the colonel at a ceremony that moves from the Memorial Chapel at Fort Myer to Arlington, Virginia.
At Camp Taqaddum, Iraq - November 2006 - L To R -
MOH Winner Captain John J. McGinty III, Colonel Robert L. Howard,
And Command Sergeant Major Gary L. Littrell
Parade Rest
Howard's Resting Place
Mostly invisible as he fights in an unpopular war and at locales where Americans are not suppose to be, Howard's accomplishments are too grand to keep totally repressed. In four tours of duty in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Howard will receive eight Purple Hearts (though he is wounded fourteen times, the difference in the two totals is because Howard does not deem some of his hurts to be worth mentioning officially), the Congressional Medal of Honor (he is nominated for the award three different times), two Distinguished Service Crosses, a Silver Star, four Legion of Merit awards, two Bronze Stars, four Army Commendation Medals for Heroism, three Air Medals, a Combat Infantryman Badge, a Joint Service Commendation Medal, three Meritorious Service Medals, a Joint Service Achievement Medal, an Army Achievement Medal, four Good Conduct Medals, the National Defense Service Medal, three Army Forces Expeditionary Medals, a Vietnam Service Medal (with three stars for three campaigns), the Armed Forces Reserve Medal, the NCO Professional Development Ribbon (with two devices), an Army Service Ribbon, an Army Overseas Service Ribbon, five different unit citations, and a number of foreign awards that include the Republic of Vietnam Wound Medal, the Vietnam Cross of Gallantry with Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stars, and with Palm, and fourteen badges. It is the highest amount of military honors to go to a single serviceman since WWII (and is actually more than were awarded to the legendary Alvin York or Audie Murphy), are the most to be won by a Green Beret, and perhaps, are the most to ever come to any American soldier. And it all comes on combat missions in which Howard is operating behind enemy lines, is greatly outnumbered, and will be shot as spy if he is captured. And there will be other honors too ... in 2013, Fort Campbell, Kentucky honors him by naming its 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) headquarters after the soldier, there is a plaque honoring Howard outside the entrance to Howard Hall (also named after the man), at Camp Mackall's Rowe Training Facility in North Carolina there is now classroom designated as Howard Hall, posthumously, in 2010, he will be inducted into the U.S. Army Aviation Hall of Fame in 2014, the colonel is chosen to receive that year's Bull Simons Award (named for Colonel Arthur "Bull" Simons, leader of the raid on the North Vietnamese prison camp, Son Tay) for an annual winner that embodies the skills, values, and true spirit of a Special Operations warrior, and also in 2014, Howard is honored in his home state of Alabama when it dedicates the Colonel Robert L. Howard state Veterans Home in Pell City in his name, in 2019, he is posthumously inducted into the USSOCOM Commando Hall of Fame, and in 2021, Howard's name is placed on the Special Operations Camp in Korea, along with having a plaque put on the outside of the headquarters building at Camp Humphreys, and in 2016, he will have his story told by Thomas Dale Smith in the book "The Greatest Hero America Never Knew: The Extraordinary Life of Robert Lewis Howard, Professional Soldier, along with having the tale told again with more detail in author Stephen L. Moore's 2024 book, "Beyond The Call Of Duty: The Life Of Colonel Robert Howard, America's Most Decorated Green Beret," and in May of 2023, Howard will be featured on the podcast, "Badass of the Week" in a tale called "One Man Army."
2024 Non-Fiction
More important (to Howard certainly) though then all the medals, is what the men who fought alongside of him thought about the man (and what his daughter thought too):
*A SOG veteran will write ... "Bob Howard just plain refused to be afraid. He commanded such respect due to his abilities, his courage, and he was always ready to go. You could not hold him back. For those of us running on the ground, just the knowledge that if you got into trouble, if you were wounded, left somewhere in the jungle, that Bob Howard would climb on a helicopter and do whatever it took, no matter the risk to himself, and come to get you was reassuring. That was the kind of guy Bob Howard was. You could count on him 100 percent no matter what."
*SOG medic Joe Parnar ... "Bob Howard had an impeccable combat record. I figured if anyone would know what to do if we got hit, it was Howard. I felt more secure being near his area."
*Sergeant Billy Greenwood ... "Everybody in the outfit, above and below, had the utmost respect for him."
*Sergeant First Class Joe Messer ... "He seemed to always be looking for a fight. It was just his nature."
*Staff Sergeant Larry Melton White ... "I never saw him show any fear whatsoever. He would do anything you wanted him to do. You couldn't ask for a better guy on a team. He was the only man I'd ever seen whose pulse rate never got up. He was just cool, calm, and collected."
*Sergeant First Class Johnnie Gilreath Jr. ... "He ran toward the enemy at all times."
*Captain Gene McCarley ... "He was all man!"
*Sergeant Major Joe J. Walker ... "Bob Howard was a shining example of what every Special Operations operator should be."
*Green Beret Steve Roche ... "SFC Howard was like a one-man Army, and his actions were of the highest caliber of bravery."
*Lt. Colonel Thomas W. Jaeger ... "Bob Howard was a guy that I would want on any mission, whether it was a recon team, a platoon, or a company-sized mission. He felt at home there. Regardless of what the mission was, there was no fear. He was always the first to volunteer. Whenever we were attacked, he was always in the thick of it. He was a phenomenal guy, because his lack of fear kept him in control."
*Spec-4 John Plaster ... "He looked much like Clint Eastwood playing Dirty Harry. But Howard wasn't playing. Never once did I ever know him to do anything that solely benefited himself. He wouldn't try to promote himself.He never put himself in positions where he'd get admiration. The man was always supportive of the troops and primarily supportive of the mission. "
*First Lieutenant Terry Hameric ... "At all times, Sergeant Howard was extremely calm in the face of the enemy. He kept us constantly informed of the enemy and friendly situation. It was only through his courageous and determined efforts that the air strikes were successful and the majority of the platoon was saved."
*Recon Green Beret Louis J. Deseta ... Bob Howard and his deeds were what helped a lot of new guys not to be scared when they joined the company. We trusted that if we got in trouble across the fence, Howard would come after us.
*Specialist Fourth Class Bob Gron ... "He limped among us, issuing orders and directing our fire with determination.
*Sergeant Jerome Griffin ... "Through leadership, determination, and devotion to duty, Sergeant Howard saved the platoon. Even though wounded himself and in great pain, he didn't stop to administer first aid to himself nor would allow any of us to help him. He told us there were others we could help."
*Sergeant John St. Martin ... "One of Bob's last acts on his tour of duty was to come visit me while I was fighting to survive. I was pretty bad off, and I struggled to understand his words, but Bob had tears in his eyes as he grabbed my hand and squeezed it. Bob was the epitome of a professional soldier warrior. His mission was priority. He led from the front, and he cared about his men. He expressed confidence as he taught us younger people things to keep us alive."
*RT Nevada 1-0, Dan Ster ... "When there was a dangerous mission to go on, he would want to go on it because he was someone who had been through it and done it. It was in his DNA. This was what he was supposed to do. He was a man of action. He didn't like to sit around. When it came time to do something, he always stepped up to the plate. By force of personality, he dragged a lot of people with him, and he made a lot of people better people."
*First Lieutenant Steve Hatch ... "Howard was a soldier's soldier. If you weren't a hundred percent on everything you did, he had no use for you. He could be very demanding. But if you were gung ho and did your job, he was very easy to get along with."
*MOH winner Gary Littrell ... "When he was talking to the troops, it was leadership. It was positive motivation. It was as if he was their colonel. They really appreciated him being there. Toughest man I ever met in my life. He was a soldier's soldier."
*Daughter Melissa Howard Gentsch ... "He lived through things he should not have survived. One of his favorite little phrases seems to fit with that: 'I ran with the devil, but God always had my back."
Memorial In Washington D.C.
A modern-day Spartan if there ever was one, Howard will sum himself up when a visitor to his office noticed there was only one thing there, a picture of Texas WWII Army hero and MOH winner, Audie Leon Murphy with a set of Murphy's dog tags attached to the picture's frame (given to Howard by Murphy's family). Pointing to the picture, Howard states, "You know, I'm just a soldier. That man right there was a hero." A special, special individual, it seems like this country has always been blessed to have folks like the colonel around when they have been most needed ... thank you for your service, Sir. Well done, and rest in peace!
Murphy & Howard
Robert Lewis Howard - July 11, 1939 to December 23, 2009 -
PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER
Howard Special Operations Badge
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