After the Vietnam War, former tank gunner Donald Grayson’s life seemed to spiral out of control.
“There were about 25 or 30 jobs. I was not real good at holding a job or showing up on time,” he said. His first marriage failed and he drank heavily.
Part of the problem was the way the country treated returning Vietnam vets, with indifference mostly, but in some cases with outright hostility. And part of the problem may have been Grayson’s own experiences in the war.
But with the first Gulf War, when the United States liberated Kuwait and the United States celebrated its armed forces, Grayson — who had not talked about his wartime experiences — began to feel better about his past.
In a recent Rose Garden ceremony at the White House, President Barack Obama presented the Presidential Unit Citation to veterans of Alpha Troop, 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment for rescuing 100 soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division. They had been caught in an ambush near the Cambodian border nearly 40 years ago.
Grayson, a Bradenton resident for the past 18 years, was a member of Alpha Troop on that previously unheralded rescue mission. And he was among the veterans standing tall in the Rose Garden.
In presenting the Presidential Unit Citation, which recognizes extraordinary heroism, the country took a belated step in redressing an oversight.
“Now, these men might be a little bit older, a little bit grayer. But make no mistake — these soldiers define the meaning of bravery and heroism,” Obama said during the ceremony.
“It was March 1970, deep in the jungles of Vietnam. And through the static and crackle of their radios, Alpha Troop heard that another unit was in trouble. Charlie Company, from the 1st Calvary Division, had stumbled upon a massive underground bunker of North Vietnamese troops. A hundred Americans were facing some 400 enemy fighters. Outnumbered and outgunned, Charlie Company was at risk of being overrun,” Obama said.
Alpha Troop was ordered into battle and, at the time, it seemed like many other encounters with the North Vietnamese army.
“When you’re inside a tank, one battle is just as hot and sweaty and noisy as the next,” Grayson said.
Grayson recalled that the tank commander in the tank next to his was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade. Thinking the tank was on fire, the crew clambered out.
“When my tank commander mentioned it was empty, I offered to go move it out of the line. There was a lot of ammo sitting there that could go off,” Grayson said.
For braving enemy fire and moving the tank, Grayson was awarded the Army Commendation Medal with V Device, signifying valor in action.
“By the time the battle ended, it was getting on to dusk. We had to make a tactical retreat to the defensive position,” he recalled. “They had to put flares up so we could get back there in the dark.”
Obama said the battle was not one that changed the course of a war. “It never had a name, like Tet or Hue or Khe Sanh. It never made the papers back home. But like countless battles, known and unknown, it is a proud chapter in the story of the American soldier,” Obama said.
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