34 Years Later, War Hero Is Awarded Highest Honor

The nation Tuesday bestowed its highest military honor on a Mexican American veteran who was not yet a citizen when he used his body to shield fellow U.S. Army soldiers from deadly enemy fire in the jungles of Vietnam.

In a White House ceremony 34 years after the fact, former medic Alfred V. Rascon was awarded the Medal of Honor and saluted by President Clinton for “a rare quality of heroism” displayed in deeds that kept North Vietnamese regulars from wiping out his reconnaissance platoon.

The nomination of Rascon, who was raised in Oxnard, was held up for years by mishandled paperwork, then high-level Pentagon resistance. It was approved only last May, after a seven-year crusade by platoon members and other advocates.

“This man gave everything he had, utterly and selflessly,” Clinton said in an East Room ceremony attended by top military officials, other veterans of the 173rd Airborne Brigade and Rascon’s family.

He cited Rascon’s comment that he had enlisted because he had “wanted to give back something” to his new country. Clinton said this was just one example of the military contributions of immigrants, who now number 60,000 in the armed forces.

Yet Rascon, 54, now a Maryland resident and inspector general of the U.S. Selective Service System, played down his achievement.

“The honor is not really mine,” said Rascon, wiping away a tear. “It ends up being [the honor of] those who were with me that day.”

Rascon moved with his family at the age of 1 from Chihuahua, Mexico, to Ventura County. When he enlisted at 17, he joined one of the first U.S. units to fight in Vietnam.

His greatest test came on March 16, 1966, when his unit was sent to reinforce a sister battalion locked in battle north of Bien Hoa, South Vietnam. His platoon was ordered forward, then suddenly came under attack as it moved along a narrow path through thick underbrush.

Though Spec. 4 Rascon was ordered to stay back, he raced to the front to try to shield a machine- gunner who had been hit. A bullet pierced Rascon’s hip as he pulled the heavy machine-gunner, now dying, to cover.

To help another machine-gunner mount a counterattack, Rascon retrieved two belts of ammunition, a machine gun and a spare machine-gun barrel that had been left, dangerously exposed, in the middle of the trail. Minutes later, when another soldier was threatened by an incoming grenade, Rascon tackled him and lay across him as the explosive went off.

Bleeding from shrapnel wounds, Rascon sought out another machine-gunner, who lay wounded. He began treating him, but when another grenade landed, he again shielded the gunner. The explosion knocked off Rascon’s helmet, shredded his rucksack and punctured his face, head and neck.

But because of Rascon’s help, the gunner was able to lay down machine gunfire that forced the enemy troops to retreat into the jungle.

The fight left Rascon so gravely wounded that he was given last rites as he was evacuated to safety. Later, because of his injuries, he was discharged from the Army. But after becoming a citizen in 1967, he rejoined the Army as an officer, and in 1972 signed up for a second Vietnam tour.

Members of Rascon’s platoon, thinking his actions at Bien Hoa should have earned him the Medal of Honor, believed that the lieutenant who commanded the unit during the firefight was going to nominate him for that decoration. But the lieutenant apparently did not use all the testimony available from soldiers and nominated Rascon for a Silver Star.

In 1993, at a veterans reunion, platoon members learned, to their chagrin, that Rascon never got the medal they thought he deserved. They gathered testimony from six platoon members and began to push for the Medal of Honor.

The Silver Star recommendation “wasn’t what we had written up,” one of the platoon members, Ray Compton, said Tuesday. “Maybe not in his own eyes, but in our eyes, he’s a hero. No doubt about it.”

But the platoon’s petitions were denied by the deputy Army chief of staff and the assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and reserve affairs. Under Army policy, they said, officials could not second-guess the recommending officer, except in cases where there was clear error.

But the efforts of the platoon members, the Vietnam Veterans of America and Rep. Lane Evans (D-Ill.) reached the desk of Clinton. Evans, a veteran’s advocate, slipped Clinton a file on Rascon in 1997.

Last May, the Senate approved a Pentagon recommendation that Rascon be awarded the medal. Of the 3,428 medals of honor that have been given, immigrants have received one in five of them.