From the Editor: Honoring our Medal of Honor winners

You may remember some recent stories involving Morgan City businessman Greg Hamer’s involvement in an organization that hopes to provide a state funeral for the last surviving Medal of Honor winner from World War II.
A state funeral is the nation’s highest show of respect. The funeral is conducted in the nation’s capital, often includes a period when the deceased lies in state in the Capitol, and will have all the pomp and protocol that the military can provide.
State funerals are usually reserved for former or sitting presidents and those whom the president designates.
The organization successfully gathered the support of Louisiana’s congressional delegation and state legislators, too.
As of August, the last three surviving Medal of Honor winners from World War II were Hershel “Woody” Williams of West Virginia, Francis (Frank) Currey of New York and Charles Coolidge of Tennessee. All are in their 90s.
It’s worth taking a minute to think about what exactly a Medal of Honor means. Here’s one story about a south Louisiana man who served in a different war.
It was 45 years ago that President Gerald Ford, on the same day Richard Nixon resigned, presented the Medal of Honor to the family of Capt. Stephen Bennett, a south Louisiana man.
You may have seen a monument to Bennett outside Lafayette’s Cajundome. He was from nearby Youngsville and lived later in Palestine, Texas.
Bennett entered the Air Force in 1968 and trained to be a B-52 pilot. But he wound up as a forward air controller by the time he went to Vietnam early in 1972.
By then, the American presence in Vietnam was, to put it nicely, disorganized. There was a lot of back and forth between going easy to avoid an incident that could derail peace talks and being tough to force the North Vietnamese to negotiate.
That was what was going on in Vietnam in late June 1972.
According to Bennett’s medal citation, a call came in to his base from a South Vietnamese unit that was under attack and needed some fire support.
Bennett learned that there would be no air support. And the Navy didn’t want to fire artillery because the targets were close to the friendlies.
So Bennett climbed into an OV-10, a prop-driven two-seater, with a Marine named Mike Brown as his spotter.
Brown, who now runs a gun store in the Dallas area, told me a few years ago that he and Bennett managed to do some good. They made pass after pass, holding off the enemy with fire from the plane’s 7.62mm machine guns.
But on one of those passes, as they pulled up to come in again, a rocket-propelled grenade hit the back of their plane.
The OV-10 was so badly damaged that it wouldn’t make it back to their base, so Bennett told Brown to bail out. Brown couldn’t.
Shrapnel from the RPG blast had wounded Brown and ripped up his parachute.
So, rather than bailing out himself, Bennett set a course for the Gulf of Tonkin and told Brown he’d ditch the OV-10 in the water.
Now, Brown said he’s read a lot about Medal of Honor winners over the years, and he thinks they fall into two categories.
There are soldiers who make instant decisions and act on them instantly, like the guys who save their buddies by smothering grenades with their bodies. And then there are the soldiers who make a decision and, over some length of time, stick to it, even though they might be killed.
Bennett belongs in the second category. As far as anyone knew then or now, no one could ditch an OV-10 and live.
But Bennett kept the OV-10 heading toward the water for 15 minutes or so.
Sure enough, when Bennett tried to ditch, the plane cartwheeled. Brown made it out of the plane, but the impact wrecked the canopy over the pilot seat. Brown did what he could to get Bennett out, then was forced to come to the surface.
Using a wet sidearm, he held off some enemy troops in a boat before he was rescued with no more than the wound from the RPG.
Bennett’s Medal of Honor was awarded posthumously.
Bennett’s wife Linda died a few years ago. His daughter Angela lives in the Dallas area. She’s the president of the OV-10 Association.
On June 29, 1972, the date of his final mission, Bennett was 26 years old.
Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review.