The White House says President Joe Biden will award the Medal of Honor to a Vietnam War-era Army pilot who risked his life to rescue a reconnaissance team that was about to be overrun by the enemy
President Joe Biden speaks during a visit to FEMA headquarters, Thursday, Aug. 31, 2023, in Washington. Biden visited the headquarters to thank the team staffing the FEMA National Response Coordination Center throughout Hurricane Idalia and the ongoing federal response efforts to the fires on Maui, Hawaii. WASHINGTON — — As an Army first lieutenant and Cobra helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War, Larry Taylor flew hundreds of missions and saved countless lives.
Taylor flew off in his attack helicopter, arriving just minutes later at the site northeast of what at the time was Saigon, since renamed Ho Chi Minh City. He asked the patrol team to send up some flares to mark their location in the dark. Taylor and a pilot in an accompanying helicopter started firing their ships' Miniguns and aerial rockets at the enemy, making low-level attack runs and braving intense ground fire for about half an hour.
“I finally just flew up behind them and sat down on the ground,” Taylor said during a telephone interview this week. “They turned around and jumped on the aircraft. A couple were sitting on the skids. One was sitting on the rocket pods, and I don't know where the other one was, but they beat on the side of the ship twice, which meant haul a- -. And we did!"Hill put their odds of survival at “absolutely zero” without Taylor's outside-the-box thinking.
“You just do whatever is expedient and do whatever to save the lives of the people you're trying to rescue,” he said. Hill said he and supporters of Taylor were astonished to learn decades after that harrowing night that Taylor had not been awarded a Medal of Honor.
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