Hey, Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Boland podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music.
Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast is a very special episode in honor of Veterans Day.
It features two stories about wartime legends.
The audio from both of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.
The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description.
The first story you'll hear is called A Very Brave Kid, and it's about a very brave kid who did something so epic that the leader of his country personally congratulated him.
The second story you'll hear is called Just a Knife, and if you Google craziest war story of all time, this story often pops up.
But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday.
So if that's of interest to you, please maneuver your vehicle in front of the Amazon Music Follow Buttons car while on the highway and then turn on your turning blinker, but don't shift lanes.
Okay, let's get into our first story called A Very Brave Kid.
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The phenomenally talented Philippa Soo returns to narrate her fifth Lily Chu title.
This time, Philippa is joined by her real-life husband, Steven Pasquale.
Set in Toronto's wealthy cottage country, aka the Hamptons of Canada, Rich Girl Summer follows the story of Valerie, a down-on-her-luck event planner posing as a socialite's long-lost daughter while piecing together the secrets surrounding a mysterious family. and falling deeper and deeper in love with the impossibly hard-to-read and infuriatingly handsome family assistant, Nico.
Caught between pretending to belong and unexpectedly finding where she truly fits in, Valerie learns her summer is about to get far more complicated than she ever planned.
She's in over her head and head over heels.
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Go to audible.com slash richgirlsummer. In 1937, the Japanese declared war on China and invaded their country.
The United States, who was friends with China, initially did not intervene in fear of provoking Japan.
But after the Japanese murdered hundreds of thousands of unarmed Chinese civilians and the Japanese attacked an American warship, the United States was forced to step in.
American officials responded to the Japanese aggression by placing serious economic sanctions and trade embargoes on Japan, believing this would cripple their war efforts in China causing them to have to retreat.
However, these sanctions and embargoes did not have this effect.
Instead, they just angered Japan and made them even more determined to hold their ground in China.
Over the next few years, the United States and Japan attempted to negotiate some sort of settlement, but neither side would make any concessions and so neither side would budge.
A few years later, on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched a surprise aerial attack on the American military base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
After the two-hour attack was done, over 2,400 Americans were killed with another 1,000 wounded, and 300 airplanes and 20 ships were either destroyed or significantly crippled.
The Japanese had hoped this attack would goad the United States into lifting the sanctions and embargoes they had placed on them from back in 1937.
But instead, all the Japanese did was goad the United States into all-out war with them.
One day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States officially declared war on Japan, thus entering World War II.
On the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Jack Lucas, like every other American in the country, was glued to his radio listening to the news.
He was devastated and shocked at this carnage he was hearing about in Hawaii.
And so by the time the president of the United States was declaring war on Japan, Jack had already made up his mind that he was going to join up and he was going to fight for his country.
However, there was an issue. Jack wasn't old enough to join the military.
You needed to be 17 years old and Jack was only 14.
But this was not going to stop Jack. So he created this fake document that said he was 17 years old and he forged his mother's signature on it.
And then after bribing him, he got a notary to sign off on this document as well.
And so Jack took his forged documentation, he gave it to the recruiter, and before long, Jack was accepted into the armed services and was on his way to Marine Corps boot camp.
After completing initial training and becoming a Marine, the Marines found out Jack's paperwork was actually faked.
But instead of kicking him out of the military, they said, Jack, you can stay in, but under one condition.
You can't go overseas to combat. You have to stay in the United States.
You can drive a truck and help out around here, but you can't deploy and go to war until you're of age.
Jack was not happy about this, but initially he did as he was told, and he did just drive a truck around and supported as best as he could.
But after about a year and a half, two years of this, Jack just couldn't do it anymore.
That was not why he had forged this document to get into the military.
He had done that so he could actually go fight in the war.
And so finally, when he was just 16 years old, he abandoned his post and stuck onto the back car of a troop transport train that was going to another military base.
And so when he arrived at this base, which was in California, he hopped off and then ran to the docks where there were these big warships and he saw one of them there was a whole bunch of troops loading onto it and he figured that's where i need to go and so he snuck onto the ship and he hid down below and then after the ship took off and was out to sea he revealed himself and he walked up to a marine officer and he kind of played off the oh i must have got on the wrong ship but you know now that i'm here can i join your unit And this officer, who had no idea how young Jack was, eventually said, OK, but prepare yourself because we're going to invade Iwo Jima.
Now, Jack had never heard of Iwo Jima and did not know its significance.
But frankly, Jack didn't really care. He was just glad that he was actually going to see combat.
What Jack couldn't have known, and what the other Marines on this ship couldn't have known either, is that the battle for Iwo Jima would become one of the bloodiest and deadliest battles of the entire war.
The Japanese that were on this island defending it were absolutely fearless and would not surrender despite being outnumbered, and they were heavily entrenched in these caves and tunnels built in all over the island, and they rarely left these caves and tunnels. which meant Jack and the other Marines, when they landed on this island, the only way they could fight the Japanese was by literally crawling down into these tunnels, which were usually booby-trapped, and fighting up close and personal with the enemy.
Jack's ship arrived off the coast of Iwo Jima in February of 1945 when Jack was still 16 years old.
On February 19th, the first wave of Marines climbed down the side of this big ship, down onto these smaller amphibious landing crafts, and then one by one, they began making their way towards Iwo Jima to begin the invasion.
Jack was not part of this initial invasion.
He would be going out on day two with the second wave of Marines.
And so Jack and all the other second wave Marines just stood at the front of the ship and watched as these amphibious crafts made it up to the beach and then just got completely gunned down by Japanese machine gunners that were lining the beach.
And so by the second day, when Jack and the rest of the Marines are getting ready to launch their assault, there are literally thousands of dead Americans just lining the beach.
But Jack and the other second wave Marines, they knew this was their job, this was their duty.
And so they were undeterred. They climbed down the side of the ship.
They boarded their amphibious landing craft and began the journey towards the island.
As they got closer, the Japanese machine gunners opened fire, not only on Jack and the boat he was in, but all of the crews that were coming towards the beach.
And so hundreds of Americans were just getting gunned down before they even reached the sand.
Jack and his crew manage to get to the beach, and so as the gate dropped on their boat, and as Jack is running onto the beach, the men around him are just getting cut to pieces by these machine guns.
Jack manages not to get shot, and he, along with three other Marines, run up the beach and they lay down in front of the sand dune that protected them from these machine gunners.
Jack knew he couldn't stay there for very long because the Japanese were also firing artillery shells onto the beach.
And so it would just be a matter of time before he was blown up.
And so Jack and these other three Marines that had arrived at the same time, they began moving north, doing their best not to get shot or blown up, stopping behind rocks and trees and jumping behind sand dunes.
And after a couple hours of doing this, the four of them reached the airfield at the northern end of the island.
And when they get there, a machine gunner inside of a pillbox, a pillbox is like a small concrete fort that only has openings on three or four of its sides that are just big enough for a machine gun to poke through.
A machine gunner inside one of these pillboxes notices Jack and the other three Marines and they open fire on them.
And somehow Jack and these other three Marines managed to not get shot and were able to maneuver and then fire through one of those openings and take out the machine gunner inside.
And so now that this gunner is down, Jack and the others see the opportunity to run forward and take more ground of this airfield.
And as they're running, other Japanese soldiers in the general vicinity, they see them, they start opening up on them from other pillboxes and other locations, and it forces Jack and these Marines to just jump into the nearest trench to avoid getting shot.
And so they're jumping into a Japanese trench, which is a deep hole dug in the ground to protect yourself from getting shot.
And as they jump in there, they're expecting to see Japanese soldiers coming towards them, but there weren't any soldiers.
But they knew they couldn't stay there for very long because eventually Japanese soldiers would come through here and then they'd get killed.
And so they quickly decided their best bet was to basically get out of this trench and run towards the pillbox where they knew they had taken out the machine gunner inside so they could actually take that pillbox for themselves.
And so their plan was they would run towards it and stop inside of each of the trenches along the way to protect themselves because they know there are other Japanese that know where they are.
And then once they get to the pillbox, they can regroup and call in reinforcements.
And so one of the men Jack was with said, OK, I'll go first.
And so he climbs out of his trench as the Japanese are shooting at him.
And he sprints about 10 or 15 feet until he gets to the next trench on the way to this pillbox.
And so Jack is watching as this guy jumps into this trench.
And as soon as he disappears out of view, this Marine is immediately turning around and scrambling to get back out of the trench.
And he's trying to run back towards Jack and the other two Marines he was with.
It would turn out this guy had jumped into another Japanese trench that was full of Japanese soldiers.
He'd actually landed on top of an actual soldier.
But these Japanese soldiers were so caught off guard by this, they didn't have time to react and shoot this Marine before the Marine was able to scramble out and get back to Jack and the others.
And then for the next several minutes, Jack and these other three Marines opened fire on these Japanese soldiers in this trench like 10 or 15 feet away.
And these Japanese soldiers, they too opened fire on Jack and the other three.
Jack was able to take out two of the Japanese soldiers before his gun jammed.
And so he ducked down into the trench to work on his gun.
And as he's down there, he notices there are two grenades on the ground right next to him.
And so without any hesitation, he yells grenade to the other Marines.
And then he jumps on top of them, smothering the grenades with his body.
One of the grenades was a dud. And so it didn't explode.
The other was not a dud and it went off.
The way a grenade works is there is a small piece of explosive that is inside of metal housing that's usually spherical, and this metal housing is the thing you actually hold onto and throw when you throw a grenade.
And so when this small explosive is triggered by pulling the pin and releasing the spoon, it detonates and it causes the metal housing itself to be ripped apart and sent flying.
Basically, when a grenade goes off, it's like having hundreds of pieces of jagged metal shot off in every direction that are all traveling roughly at the speed of a bullet or faster.
And so naturally, a grenade up close is incredibly lethal.
In fact, the kill radius of a typical fragmentation grenade is about 5 meters.
When the grenade under Jack that was not a dud exploded, it sent Jack flying into the air.
And then when he came back down again, his comrades saw him and they could see he was clearly devastated from all the fragmentation that had been pumped into his body.
And so they assumed he was dead. But even if they thought he was alive for some reason, there was nothing they could have done to have helped him because they were actively being engaged by dozens of Japanese soldiers that were only about 10 or 15 feet away.
And so eventually, these three other Marines that Jack had just saved were forced to leave Jack where he was and retreat back to the beach and they would all live.
The Japanese soldiers in the trench that they were fighting against would eventually come into Jack's trench, but most likely when they saw Jack laying there just completely ruined from this grenade, they assumed he was dead and so they just kind of left him there.
But Jack wasn't dead. He just couldn't speak, and he couldn't see anything, and he really couldn't move, although he could wiggle a few fingers on his left hand.
And so for hours, as he lay there in agonizing pain, in and out of consciousness, he just wiggled the fingers on his left hand, hoping an American would see him and know he was still alive.
And you gotta figure, this whole time, it is just constant chaos all around him.
His chances of survival are incredibly slim.
The idea that an American is going to find him and be able to evacuate him is almost zero, and he must have known that.
But, by some miracle, eventually another American unit did find their way into Jack's trench, and they did notice him wiggling the fingers on his left hand.
And so they were able to evacuate him from the trench down to the beach.
And from there, under the cover of darkness, they were able to bring him out to a hospital boat offshore.
And there he would begin the first of 26 major surgeries to remove the grenade shrapnel from his torso, his arm, and his face.
Despite his grievous injuries, Jack would surprisingly make a full recovery, and eight months after his injury, the President of the United States would award him the highest decoration for bravery, the Medal of Honor.
He would be the youngest recipient of this award since the 1800s, and to this day, he is one of only a handful of minors to have won this award.
Following his departure from the military, Jack would survive a near-death experience while skydiving when both of his parachutes, his main and his reserve, failed, and he just smashed into the ground, but somehow lived.
He would also survive a very bad house fire, and he would survive an assassination attempt on his life by his ex-wife.
And so naturally, he titled his memoir, Indestructible.
Jack would eventually die of natural causes on June 5th, 2008.
He was 80 years old. No more waiting through cliffhangers or dealing with ads, because let's be honest, Ads shouldn't be the most nerve-wracking part of true crime.
To start your ad-free listening journey, download the Amazon Music app for free or head to amazon.com slash ballin.
That's amazon.com slash b-a-l-l-e-n. Dive into uninterrupted true crime stories today.
Hey listeners, Mr. Ballin here. What if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories happening right now are all connected to what might be the biggest crime of our generation?
You know I'm always on the hunt for the most chilling and perplexing tales out there.
Well, I've discovered a new podcast that uncovers real-world mysteries unfolding right now. much like how another Ballin' Studios podcast, redacted Declassified Mysteries, brings hidden government secrets to light.
And it's called Lawless Planet. Host Zach Goldbaum reveals how shocking tales of murder, cover-ups, and mysterious deaths are all part of something bigger. the systematic destruction of our planet.
From activists who vanish in the Amazon to whistleblowers uncovering billion-dollar environmental crimes, these aren't just stories about the environment.
They're real-life thrillers about people caught between powerful forces willing to kill to keep their secrets buried.
Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.
Hey, it's Mr. Ballin. For the first time, my show, Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted for a special episode.
A Redacted Medical Mystery uncovers how routine surgery leads to classified government operations.
Listen now on the Medical Mysteries or Redacted feeds, or search A Redacted Medical Mystery wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, it's Mr. Balan. I'm excited to tell you about something special.
For the first time, my show, Mr. Balan's Medical Mysteries, has joined forces with Redacted, Declassified Mysteries with Luke LaManna, to tell a story so complex it required our combined storytelling styles.
This special episode is called A Redacted Medical Mystery.
In it, unexplained symptoms after a routine surgery quickly unravel into something much darker, leading straight to classified government operations hidden for decades.
To listen and uncover the truth alongside us, head to either the Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries or Redacted show pages right now.
Or search for A Redacted Medical Mystery in the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you're fascinated by unexplained medical stories, well, stick around on Medical Mysteries.
Every week, we dive deep into cases that will leave you questioning everything you know about the human body.
And if government conspiracies are more your style, Redacted is your go-to for stories that unravel secrets never meant to see the light of day.
Remember, you can listen to both shows early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus.
Born in South Texas in 1935, Roy Benavidez was orphaned as a young child and sent to live with his uncle.
As a young teen, he had to drop out of school to work in the beet and cotton fields just to help support his family.
When he turned 18, he decided he wanted to get away from his hometown and do something bigger with his life.
And so he enlisted in the army. And shortly after that, he went to airborne school and then was assigned to the very famous 82nd Airborne Division.
In October of 1964, Roy was a part of the first 125,000 Americans sent to Vietnam.
While on a classified operation that required Roy to dress up as an enemy combatant, he stepped on a landmine in the middle of the jungle and nobody else was with him, so he's totally stranded But fortunately, a squad of U.S.
Marines came upon him. But from what he was wearing, they assumed he was an enemy soldier.
And so they almost walked past him. But someone thought to just flip him over and see who he was.
And they discovered he was American and he had American dog tags on.
And so he was evacuated from Vietnam and sent to an American hospital.
And there, a doctor would tell him that he had a serious spinal injury and that it was unlikely he would ever walk again.
And Roy's first reaction was, please don't discharge me from the army.
Because for Roy, the army was his life. It was all he had.
He was incredibly proud of it. And he desperately wanted to go back to Vietnam.
And so he pleaded with the doctors and the nurses, please let me have some time to try to regain my strength in my legs so that I don't get medically discharged.
And so they said, look, you're going to get medically retired if you aren't walking within the year.
And so every night when his doctors and nurses would leave, he would fall out of his bed and then drag himself across the ground to the wall.
And then he'd pull himself up and try to put weight on his legs and attempt to build strength back up and retrain himself how to walk.
And after six months of doing this every night, he did literally reteach himself how to walk.
He built up strength in his legs. And his doctors and nurses, they're watching this transformation during the day, but they're not seeing him at night.
And they're telling him, this is a miracle.
We've never seen this before. We've never seen someone recover so quickly.
And Reuter stayed quiet because he wanted to make sure he was allowed to keep doing that every night.
And so finally, after those six months, his doctors and nurses agreed that, yep, he's good.
He can stay in the army. But the army said they wanted him to take a desk job because he had already been so badly wounded in combat.
And Roy didn't want that. He pleaded with them to let him go back to the 82nd, but they said, no, we're not going to risk you getting hurt again.
And so he was sent to North Carolina for his desk job.
And as soon as he got there, he began training like a maniac every minute of every day, trying to get in the best shape of his life because his plan in his head was once he got there, he would try out for special forces.
He would try to become an Army Green Beret, which is the premier combat unit in the Army.
It's one of the hardest ones to get into.
And their training program is in North Carolina.
And so after a few months, he was in amazing shape and he asked his superiors, can I go try out to be a Green Beret?
And they're like, I can't believe you're even walking, but you know what?
You've come this far, you can go try out.
And just a couple of months later, Roy Benavidez was a Green Beret.
A year later in 1968, so four years after Roy was nearly killed by that landmine, he was sent back to Vietnam for his second combat tour.
And as soon as he got there, the fighting was very intense.
On May 2nd of that year, Roy had a day off, and he was spending his day off at a church service inside of their wooden shack they had built on their base.
And while he was in there listening to the chaplain, he heard a radio call come out from the communications table that was just outside of the shack he was in, and it sounded like someone was in trouble.
And so he ran outside to listen to the radio and what he heard was this very desperate call from someone yelling into the radio, get us out of here.
And in the background of this radio call is just a constant barrage of gunfire.
The call for help came from a 12-man Army Special Forces team that had been ambushed by an entire North Vietnamese Army Infantry Battalion.
To put that in perspective, that is 12 Special Forces members, of which many of them Roy knew personally, in the middle of the jungle, where on all four sides there are over 1,000 enemy combatants.
As Roy is hearing this distressing transmission come across the radio, he hears overhead the sound of incoming helicopters.
And he looks and he sees there's three birds that are coming towards their base.
And so he runs over to the landing zone to greet the helicopters as they come in.
And he can see as they're landing, they are all completely covered in bullet holes.
And as soon as they touch down, Roy runs up to one of the door gunners, which is this 19-year-old kid, and he looks kind of dazed.
And Roy asked him, you know, what's going on?
Where'd you guys just come from? Were you out there at that ambush site?
Do you know what's going on with that 12-man team?
And the door gunner just collapses into Roy's arms and dies.
He had been shot up. These three helicopters had attempted previously to fly into the jungle and save that 12-man team, but they had been shot off and had been unsuccessful.
Roy helped get the dead door gunner out of the helo, and then he turned to the pilot of this helo where the door gunner was, and he asked him, you know, are you gonna go back out there and try to save those guys?
And the pilot was obviously so distraught about the death of his door gunner, and also the fact that there are 12 men out there that they could not rescue, that he's chomping at the bit.
He wants to go back out there. And Roy immediately volunteers, hops in the helo, and they head out to go rescue this 12-man team.
So not only are there only two of them, but Roy was so eager to volunteer himself, he forgot his gun.
So all he had on him was his knife and some medical supplies.
But nonetheless, the pilot just keeps flying towards the ambush site, which was in Cambodia.
It was this really dense stretch of jungle.
And as they got closer and closer, gunfire started coming out of the jungle towards the helicopter.
And so the pilot had to do this kind of constant zigzagging just to avoid getting shot down.
And so as they're zigzagging, they notice there's some smoke coming out of the jungle, and it was very clear that this 12-man team is trying to signal to the Hilo, here we are, come get us, because they can hear the helicopters coming in.
And so the pilot tried to fly down and get as close as he could, but any time he got even marginally close to this team, the rate of fire would pick up so dramatically that the Hilo was just about to get shot down.
And so the pilot began to turn away, and he told Roy, we can't get any closer, we're going to have to get more people in here.
And Roy just tells him, no. Get as low as you can and I will jump out into the jungle."
And the pilot turns to him and he's like, you can't do that.
You're going to get killed. And Roy somehow convinces this pilot that he alone without a gun is totally competent.
Just put me down in that jungle and everything's going to be just fine.
And so the pilot said, okay. And he lowered right over the canopy of this jungle, about a hundred yards away from where this 12 man team is trapped.
And without any hesitation, Roy just leaps off the helicopter into the jungle.
Now, you got to understand that where he was jumping was where the enemy was.
He was literally jumping, no parachute, no gun, no anything, just crashing through the canopy onto the jungle floor where he'll definitely be surrounded by enemy combatants.
And so he plummets through the canopy, smashes onto the ground.
He pops up and just starts running through the jungle with enemies on either side of him towards the 12 man down team.
And the enemy was so surprised to just see this American running through the middle of the jungle by himself with no weapon that they hesitated for a minute and they didn't open fire on him.
But when they did open fire, Roy got shot in the face, in the back of the head, in the leg.
They threw a grenade that detonated at his back and sent shrapnel into him.
But none of it stopped Roy. He just kept on running until he made it to this downed 12-man team.
And when he got to them, they were in terrible shape.
They were doing their best to stay behind some trees, but rounds were coming in from all directions and four of them were already dead and the others that were still alive were critically wounded.
In fact, one of the most able-bodied of these surviving 12 had been shot in the head and was missing an eye and could barely see out of the other one.
And so he's fighting to stay conscious and he's generally trying to shoot in one direction.
But I mean, that's their best guy at this point to give you a state of how they were doing.
But Roy ran up to this guy, he pulled him down, he gave him a shot of morphine in the arm and he repositioned him because he couldn't really see and told him where to shoot his gun.
And then under a constant hail of bullets, Roy low crawled to each of the other living team members and gave them morphine shots and then began dragging each and every one of them away from the ambush site to this other area where there was better cover and there was a nearby clearing that he believed a helicopter could land in if the pilot was really daring.
On one of Roy's last trips back to the ambush site to get the last few surviving members, he saw two other men that were part of this team that had been totally cut off from the main group.
And when Roy had jumped into the jungle and ran in, all his adrenaline had kicked up and he just hadn't done a head count.
And so he didn't realize there were two other people over there. so without any hesitation he grabbed a gun off of one of the dead enemy soldiers and just began running towards this down two-man team and as he's running he's shooting wildly in every direction trying his best to suppress enemy fire but it's really doing nothing he's just dodging bullets as he's running and right as he got close to the two-man team a bullet went flying through his thigh just clean through his thigh and it didn't slow him down he got to the two-man team totally unfazed and he says okay get ready to move he stands back up and he starts shooting again in both directions and tells them to crawl back to the main unit and so he stands up and continues to shoot in both directions until these two men get back over to the main group Once they were safely with the group, Roy again ran the gauntlet with this huge gaping hole in his thigh all the way back to the main group.
And so now that Roy had a full headcount of all of the living members of the downed 12-man team, and he had moved them all to the slightly safer area relatively with better cover and concealment, he threw a smoke grenade into the nearby clearing he had found in hopes that the helo pilot overhead would see the smoke and be willing to come down and land.
The pilot that had dropped off Roy had not actually left the area.
He had moved away from all the fighting, but he was loitering in case something like this happened.
And so he saw the smoke, and without any hesitation, he flew right over, taking rounds the whole time, pinging off the side of his helicopter, and he touched down right in this tiny little clearing.
And so as the semi-able-bodied surviving members of this unit begin making their way over to the helicopter, Roy began running around a little ways off from the helicopter, picking up rifles off of the dead enemy and shooting back at the enemy, dropping that gun, running over, picking up another one, engaging the enemy over and over again, doing everything he can to try to protect the extract of his men behind him.
And once Roy turned around and saw most of the men had made it onto the helicopter, Roy believed it was his chance now to run out and try to collect some of their dead teammates.
And so Roy just takes off into the jungle, right into enemy fire.
He's got two guns in his hands and he's running.
He's trying to engage the enemy as he's going.
And then he comes across the first of his dead teammates.
And it happens to be one of his very best friends, a man named Leroy Wright.
And so he grabs Leroy and begins trying to haul him back towards the chopper.
And as he's moving, Roy gets shot again, this time through his stomach.
So he tries to keep himself on his feet.
And as he's doing that, a grenade detonates behind him, sending more shrapnel into his body, knocking him unconscious.
When he came to, he started looking around and he could see in the tree line, dozens of enemy soldiers running towards him.
And so he knew if he tried to bring Leroy back to the chopper, that was a suicide mission.
And so he had to leave his friend behind.
He jumped up and with all of these enemy combatants just constantly engaging him, he ran all the way back, zigging and zagging back to the main group.
And when he got there, expecting to see the helicopter, he found the helicopter had actually crashed onto the ground and was on fire.
It had been shot down while he was unconscious.
And so he ran over to the flaming shell of this helicopter and he saw the pilot had been killed, but some of the men that had climbed on, the men that he had just rescued, they had survived the crash and subsequent explosion.
And so Roy just leaps into the burning vehicle and starts throwing these survivors out.
Then he leapt back out, he picked up a gun, continued to engage the enemy, and then began picking up these wounded men and dragging them even farther away to another area that was safely away from this crash site because he knew if he didn't get all these people away from the crash site, pretty soon mortars are going to come raining down on this area because their enemy is going to want to kill any of the people that are going to try to rescue the people that were on the helicopter.
And so Roy finally gets all of the survivors over to this new area and he's looking around and he can see there are still hundreds of enemy fighters that are not that far away from them, just constantly engaging them.
And Roy's doing his best to grab guns off the ground and shoot the enemy, but there's just too many of them.
And he's looking around at his team and everybody's on the brink of death.
And so is Roy. He's just functioning on adrenaline at this point.
And he thinks to himself, the only way we can get out of this is if we call in what's called a danger close airstrike.
So what you need to understand about how airstrikes work in a combat zone is there's someone called a controller that is on the ground directing the aircraft overhead.
They're the ones effectively telling the plane where to shoot.
And so a danger close airstrike is when the controller tells the aircraft overhead, I want you to drop a bomb right here, giving them the grid coordinates, but where they're telling them to drop is basically in the same position where the controller is.
You'd only do it if you're being overrun.
It's a way to ensure your enemy gets taken out, even if that means taking yourself out.
Now, the goal of the controller is not to drop the bomb on themselves or their team.
The goal of the controller is to get that airstrike as close as you can to your position without killing you.
And so Roy, who's physically wrecked, he's getting shot at, he's got bullet holes all over him.
It's totally chaotic. He pulls out his map, he calmly finds his grid coordinates, he calls it into the aircraft overhead, and he calls in a beautiful precision napalm strike that does not affect his team at all.
He calls in multiple gun runs. None of them affect his team, despite them all being considered danger close airstrikes.
And so Roy just continuously called in attack run after attack run, taking out enemy combatants all around them, completely suppressing the fire.
But at some point, the aircraft overhead ran out of fuel and had to leave.
And at that point, the surviving enemy combatants, which still numbered in the hundreds, they popped their heads up and they unleashed a hellacious volley of fire in which Roy again got shot clean through the leg.
And so now Roy's looking around and he's realizing they're pretty much out of options.
They don't have aircraft overhead. Roy's basically out of ammunition and there's no dead guy's guns around for him to grab.
All of his team members are basically on the brink of death.
And so Roy's thinking to himself, any minute now we're going to get overrun.
And so he crawls to each of his surviving teammates and he gives them one last shot of morphine to at least make their death painless.
And then at the 11th hour, another helo comes blazing into the jungle and opens fire on the enemy, pushing them back.
Roy is immediately invigorated and motivated because now he sees an opportunity to potentially survive this, and so once again, he grabs his teammates and begins schlepping them over to the helicopter.
And after he believed he got the last of them on board, he turned and saw two of his teammates had fallen down farther back in the jungle, and the enemy was closing in on them.
And so Roy, like always, without any hesitation, just starts running towards them.
And as he's just about to reach them, an enemy soldier that had apparently run out of ammunition leapt out of the jungle and smashed Roy on the side of the head with their rifle butt, fracturing his skull.
And so Roy falls to the ground and the soldier jumps on top of him and smashes his face, breaking his jaw.
And then the soldier turns his rifle around, there's a bayonet on the front side, and he begins impaling Roy over and over again.
And Roy, like out of a movie, grabbed the rifle, pulled it out of himself, threw the soldier on the ground, jumped up, got on top of him, drew his Bowie knife, and proceeded to kill this soldier.
And after he was done with that, he ran over to the two downed men.
He grabbed one of them with his left hand.
He picked up a rifle with the other. And as he's dragging this guy back to the chopper, he shoots and kills two more enemy combatants.
So he finally gets this guy back to the chopper.
He runs back, gets the last guy, throws him back in the helicopter.
And then finally, Roy is the very last living American to hop in the helicopter and the helicopter takes off.
On the helo ride back, Roy was in very rough shape and had to literally hold his insides inside of his stomach.
And so when they finally landed back at base and Roy was hauled off of this helicopter, he wasn't moving.
And the doctors and nurses didn't really even know where to start with him.
He had so many injuries. He had 37 significant holes in his body from gunshot wounds, from bayonet wounds, from shrapnel.
And so they started trying to treat him, but there was no heartbeat, no pulse.
And so they declared him dead. Roy's body was moved into a body bag, and as the doctor was zipping it up again, Roy spit in his face.
Because Roy had no other way to communicate.
His jaw was so badly broken from that rifle butt, he couldn't move his jaw, and his eyes were sealed shut from all the blood on his face that had dried.
And so his only way to communicate was to spit.
And so unbelievably, Roy was still alive.
And so they took him out of the body bag and they shipped him to Japan for intensive surgery.
And then he was transferred to Texas where he spent a year rehabbing from his severe injuries.
Roy was immediately given the Distinguished Service Cross and was put in for the Congressional Medal of Honor, which is the US military's highest award for valor.
But the paperwork took a really long time, and so Roy was not actually given the Congressional Medal of Honor until 1981.
Of the 12 men that were trapped in that jungle, eight would survive, all thanks to Roy Benavidez.
Roy passed away in 1998 as a result of complications from diabetes.
He was 63 years old. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin podcast.
If you enjoyed today's stories, be sure to check out our YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin, where we have hundreds more stories just like this one, but many of them are not available on this podcast.
They're only on YouTube. Again, the YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballin.
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