On May 21, 1966, then-SPC4 David C. Dolby was on a mission near An Khe when the men walked into an ambush. Six soldiers were immediately killed by machine-gun fire.
Several others were wounded, including the platoon's officer and within an hour of the ambush's first shots, the lieutenant, drenched in blood from bullet wounds, sat against a tree and relinquished command of his men to Dolby.
While fully exposed to enemy fire, Dolby launched his own assault on the enemy machine gun bunkers with his M60 until he'd expended all of his ammunition, single-handedly killing 3 enemy machine gunners.
Spotting a wounded comrade, Dolby picked the man up and carried him over his shoulder to safety for medical treatment. He then crawled through gunfire to within 50 meters of the enemy positions and lobbed several smoke grenades at the face of the bunkers to mark them for air strikes.
After a four-hour battle, SPC Dolby organized the withdrawal of his troops while artillery fire and air strikes obliterated the Vietcong redoubt. The platoon lost 8 men, and 14 were wounded vs 55 dead enemies on the ridge.
He received the Medal of Honor and served 4 more combat tours in Vietnam after receiving it.
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"I prayed in the beginning and then I didn't have time to pray. bullets were going by -- under my arms, between my legs, past my head. Look, we're all equal, we all did things that, if we had chosen not to do, nobody would have said we should have done. We all had that one moment in our lives. Other than that, we're just normal people." #stayzero
#zerofoxtrot #vietnamwar #badass