Retired Army Col. Paris Davis, 83, stood in the East Room of the White House last week as President Joe Biden draped the Medal of Honor around his neck, 58 years after he saved the lives of three fellow troops during the Vietnam War. The retired Green Beret, who was a trailblazer as one of the first Black officers to join the Special Forces that he wouldn’t have done anything differently even if he had to do it over again. During a 19-hour battle, Davis saved three Americans under his command and killed enemy fighters — all while suffering wounds to his legs and losing half a finger while under fire from hundreds of Viet Cong fighters.
Helicopters ordered him to abandon his Special Forces troops wounded in the rice paddies of Binh Dinh province. Davis, who disobeyed the order, said he would have “kicked [the colonel’s] ass if he’d come down there.” Davis refused the order. Twice.
The president’s words and the White House ceremony were not just recognition of Davis’ heroism in Vietnam but also the hard-fought battle to get the former Green Beret the medal.
In the decades that followed, there were two lost Medal of Honor recommendations, a grass-roots campaign headed by dozens of supporters, and several false starts to the path that finally ended with the nation’s highest military honor.
“The Green Berets, like our country then, weren’t free from discrimination either,” Biden said. “People pulled Paris aside to warn him. ‘Are you sure you want to join? There aren’t a lot of people who look like you in this outfit.’ That word gallantry is not much used these days,” Biden continued. “But I can think of no better word to describe Paris.”
Davis downplayed the significance of “all this stuff, medals and all that,” adding, “People need to keep on keepin’ on,” he said. “We’ve got to make this a better world. That’s how I feel.”
Thanks for writing about this. I was so pleased to see this finally happen.