Real Heroes

My Friends,

I was a lucky child. My godfather was the headmaster of a primary school and instead of the usual toys and the occasional five dollars bill that most adults gave children I would often receive books and as I got older, printed stories about  influential black people and their achievements.

One story I remembered vividly was of a young soldier in Vietnam. That story more than anything else influenced my decision to become a soldier immediately after leaving school. Despite resistance from my parents and teachers I joined the Barbados Defence Force and have never regretted it.

Now, thanks to the power of the Internet every month I will use this space to share some of the stories that have helped to shape my life. Many of you may never have heard of these people. Few books were written and no movies made about their exploits but I hope you share their stories with your children as I have shared them with mine. 

Dwight Johnson

(He reminds me of a BDF soldier...but the name escapes me....)

You don't really think of Vietnam as being a tank warfare kind of affair. Sure, there were plenty of intense,  battles fought during the vicious multi-year conflict through the jungles of Southeast Asia, but most of these showdowns were the ambush / search-and-destroy sort of events, with infantrymen slogging through armpit-deep mud, fighting off ambushes and human wave attacks in miserable driving rainstorms, and crawling through carefully-dug tunnels laden with booby traps.  You don't exactly picture a Blitzkrieg of Panzers blasting through the hedgerows of Normandy or anything, mostly because trying to drive a tank through a jungle is a logistical undertaking that borders on being retarded.
Perhaps that's why Specialist Dwight Johnson of the 1st Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment holds the impressive distinction of being the only tank driver to receive the Medal of Honor for actions in combat during Vietnam.  Although, as you might expect, the actions that led to Spc. Johnson receiving America's highest award for bravery in combat actually had very little to do with him actually sitting at the controls of his M48A3 battle tank, and a lot more with taking on an entire North Vietnamese Army offensive by himself armed with nothing more than a .45-caliber handgun and a complete lack of anything resembling fear or restraint.

In mid-January 1968, just a few days before the infamous Tet Offensive seriously knocked the American forces on their collective asses, the 1/69th Armor received a frantic call from a front-line Infantry platoon that had just come under attack by a battalion-sized force of battle-hardened North Vietnamese regulars.  Eager to get into the action and save his buddies from what was quickly becoming a desperate situation, Dwight Johnson jumped behind the controls of his M48 and started careening through the jungle towards the sounds of distant gunfire.
 
Of course, as I indicated earlier, the terrain in rural Vietnam isn't incredibly responsive when you go around trying to plow several thousand tons of metal through it. So, of course, as luck would have it, the second that Johnson's tank approached the firefight, one of the treads blew out, rendering the vehicle immobile.  Thanks for stopping by, now please enjoy the show while you watch all your buddies get gunned down by a force that outnumbers them ten to one.
 
To Hell with That!  Dwight Johnson grew up on the mean streets of the Detroit housing projects, and he wasn't going to just sit around while American troops were out there getting shot in the head right in front of him.  Johnson grabbed the only personal weapon that had been issued to him by the United States Army:  A Colt M1911A1 .45-caliber pistol.

I shit you not, this tank pilot hopped out the hatch of this heavily-armored bulletproof vehicle and charged into battle against camouflaged, experienced, AK-47-toting enemy soldiers armed with nothing more than a handgun, a really bad attitude, and an uncontrollable urge to kill everything in sight.  He charged into the middle of the ambush, fighting alongside the men of the trapped platoon, taking out enemy soldiers with his pistol with incredible proficiency.  When Johnson burned through the last magazine of his weapon, he took up a weapon from one of his fallen comrades and continued fighting.  With the Americans desperately trying to fight off an increasingly-more-deadly human wave attack, the battle soon moved into close-quarters, hand-to-hand  combat.  Johnson blasted a few guys at extreme-close range, but eventually had to discard the weapon after he snapped the stock in half while smashing some dude's face in with it (seriously).
 
Now completely out of ammunition and/or anything he could use as a workable firearm, Johnson rushed back to the tanks.  Seeing that his vehicle was still hopelessly immobile, he rushed over to his platoon Sergeant's tank, opened the hatch, and peeked in.  The tank's gunner was badly wounded – slumped in his seat, but still breathing.  Johnson heroically pulled the chap out the hatch while bullets whizzed by his head, hoisted the wounded soldier on his back, and carried him to a nearby APC so he could receive medical attention. 

Then, of course, Johnson sprinted back to the tank, jumped in, and started firing the main gun at the NVA soldiers who were by now rapidly closing in on the tanks' position.  Within seconds he was spraying the battlefield with some large-caliber destruction, and holding the honor of being the guy in the battle who fired both the engagement's largest and smallest weaponry.  I say "of course" he did this, because at this point in the story nothing should really surprise you about this guy – he didn't pull any punches, didn't stop fighting for any damn reason ever, and definitely wasn't going to let anything short of death stand in the way of his super-intense, blood rage.

Eventually the main gun on the M48 jammed, presumably as a result of Johnson firing so many rounds out of it so rapidly that it melted the barrel.  Once again left without a viable means for killing people, Johnson quickly glanced around the interior of the tank, taking stock of what was available.  What he found were more magazines for the 1911. So, for the third time, Specialist Dwight H. Johnson rushed into the middle of a raging war zone firing his pistol at anything that moved.  After killing a few more NVA (the Medal of Honor citation eventually gave up trying to tally this guy's kill totals), and burning through the rest of his ammunition, Johnson hopped up onto the roof of his tank, exposing himself in full view to the enemy soldiers, and started mowing people down with the .50-caliber machine gun on the cupola.  By the time the smoke cleared, the American forces were standing alone on the battlefield.  Spc. Johnson's insane, utterly-ridiculous kill-frenzy of destruction had helped not only fight off a massive battalion of NVA soldiers, but also rescued the stranded U.S. platoon from a situation in which they would have otherwise been completely f***ed.  He received the Medal of Honor for his actions, battled with his regiment through the Tet Offensive, and survived the war.

Quote of the Day

"When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism." -  Robert Green Ingersoll