Roger Donlon
Roger Hugh Charles Donlon (* thirtieth January 1934 in Saugerties , Ulster County , New York ) is a Colonel ret. the Special Forces and was the first US Army soldier to receive the Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War .
Life
Donlon was born the seventh of eight children and attended the New York State College of Forestry (German "New York State College for Forestry") at Syracuse University for one year . He then joined the US Air Force and was transferred to West Point in 1953 , where he dropped out after two years for personal reasons.
In 1958 he rejoined the US armed forces , this time in the US Army. After completing officer training at the Officer Candidate School , he initially served as an adjutant to a general staff officer . In August 1963 he was accepted into the Special Forces. In 1964 Donlon's unit was relocated to Vietnam . His first assignment as captain and commander was to set up an outpost in the central highlands near the town of Nam Dong .
On the night of July 6, 1964, two battalions of the Viet Cong attacked the outpost. In a battle that lasted all night, the defenders, consisting of the ODA-726 ( Operational Detachment , German platoon ), South Vietnamese armed forces and Australian soldiers, managed to hold the base against the numerically superior enemy.
Captain Roger Donlon was awarded the first Medal of Honor to be awarded in that war on December 17, 1964 for his outstanding leadership during the Battle of Nam Dong .
Donlon later retired from military service as a Colonel. On June 28, 1965, Mayor Fred Fugazzi awarded him the key to the city of Lexington , Kentucky , (equivalent to honorary citizenship ). Today he lives in Kansas with his wife Norma and their two children .
plant
Donlon wrote two books in which he tried to process his Vietnamese experience:
- Outpost of Freedom
- Beyond Nam Dong
literature
- Roger Donlon: Beyond Nam Dong . R and N Publishers, 1998, ISBN 0-9621374-8-0 .
- Interview at the Pritzker Military Library
Individual evidence
- ↑ One Who Was Belligerent , TIME Magazine. December 11, 1964. Retrieved April 22, 2007.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Donlon, Roger |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Donlon, Roger Hugh Charles (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American military, Colonel in the US Army |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 30, 1934 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Saugerties , New York |