William H. Pitsenbarger: Bravest Among the Brave Vietnam War Veteran

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Although it happened more than 35 years ago, a group of Army veterans of the Vietnam War still consider a young Air Force enlistee, a recipient of the Medal of Honor who gave his life to save theirs, the most courageous person they have ever known.

‘He was the bravest man I’ve ever seen, and I saw it all,’ said Martin L. Kroah, Jr., who served two tours in Vietnam, one as a Special Forces officer. He was talking about Airman 1st Class William H. Pitsenbarger, an Air Force pararescue and medical specialist from Piqua, Ohio, who had voluntarily left the relative safety of a helicopter to descend into a brutal jungle battle to treat and evacuate wounded soldiers in 1966. Pitsenbarger was credited with saving nine lives, after several times refusing to be evacuated himself, during a fight in which 106 of the 134 troopers were killed or badly wounded. Soon after the battle, his Air Force commanders nominated him for the Medal of Honor, but he did not receive it. An Army general recommended that the award be downgraded to the Air Force Cross, apparently because at the time there was not enough documentation of Pitsenbarger’s heroic actions.

Pitsenbarger, on April 11, 1966, at his own request, descended 100 feet on a winch line from a Kaman HH-43 Huskie helicopter into a dense jungle valley and alighted in the middle of an encircled company of U.S. Army soldiers. The besieged troops were members of Company C, 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry of the 1st Infantry Division and were under attack by VC about 35 miles east of Saigon. Regarding Pitsenbarger’s actions, Daniel Kirby of Louisville, Ky., who had been a Company C rifleman, commented: ‘I was stunned that somebody was coming down to put themselves in that situation. It’s hard to believe that someone would voluntarily come into that battle and stay with it. He had to be the bravest person I’ve ever known.’

After landing, Pitsenbarger gave first aid to the wounded, decided which men needed to be evacuated first and strapped them into a wire basket called a Stokes litter. He helped get nine GIs lifted out of the battle and flown to a nearby field hospital. He refused evacuation himself several times in order to try to save more wounded men. Then his helicopter was hit by enemy fire and nearly disabled. Before leaving the area, his pilot, Harold D. Salem of Mesa, Ariz., signaled for Pitsenbarger to ride the litter up to safety. Again, he refused and waved the chopper off.

Kroah, of Houston, said he remembered Pitsenbarger being lowered through the trees at a time when’small-arms fire would be so intense that it was deafening, and all a person could do was get as close to the ground as possible and pray.’ Before long Kroah had been wounded five times and was flat on the ground. ‘On three different occasions I glimpsed movement, and it was Pits dragging somebody behind a tree trunk or a fallen tree, trying to give them first aid,’ he recalled. ‘It just seemed like he was everywhere. Everybody else was ducking, and he was crouched and crawling and dragging people by the collar and pack straps out of danger….I’m not certain of the number of dead and wounded exactly, but I’m certain that the death count would have been much higher had it not been for the heroic efforts of Airman Pitsenbarger.’ Kroah added that the battle was so fierce that his own Army medic was frozen with fear and unable to move and that one of his fire-team leaders, a combat veteran of World War II and the Korean War, curled into a fetal position and wept.

‘For Airman Pitsenbarger to expose himself on three separate occasions to this enemy fire was certainly above and beyond the call of duty of any man,’ said Kroah. ‘It took tremendous courage to expose himself to the possibility of almost certain death in order to save the life of someone he didn’t even know….He had a total disregard for his own safety and tremendous courage.’

For the next couple of hours Pitsenbarger crawled through the thick jungle looking for wounded soldiers. He would drag them to the middle of the company’s small perimeter, putting them behind trees and logs for shelter. At one point, said Charles Epperson, of Paris, Mo., Pitsenbarger saw two wounded soldiers outside the perimeter. ‘He said, ‘We’ve got to go get those people,’ and I said, ‘No way. I’m staying behind my tree.’ It was just unbelievable fire coming at us from all sides. But he took off to get those guys, and I could see him trying to get both of them and having a hard time, so I ran out there and helped him drag them inside our lines. He was an inspiration to me,’ said Epperson.

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, People, Vietnam War

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