Green Beret Medal of Honor recipient Bennie Adkins dies of coronavirus

Green Beret Medal of Honor recipient Command Sergeant Major (retired) Bennie Adkins, died April 17 from complications caused by the coronavirus. Killed by an invisible enemy after scores of communists with rifles could not get the job done.

Adkins, was 86, and was hospitalized March 26 at the East Alabama Medical Center in Opelika, Alabama. He was placed into ICU and put on a ventilator after experiencing respiratory failure. He is one of thousands of Americans to die from the virus since late February.

Born in Waurika, Oklahoma, was drafted into the military when he was 22 years old in 1956, during the very early years of the conflict in Indo China. He volunteered for Special Forces and completed three times to Vietnam between 1963 and 1971.

He was awarded the Medal of Honor for acts of valor during his second tour in Vietnam in 1966. At the time, he was a Sergeant First Class serving with detachment A-102, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) as an intelligence sergeant. He and his unit were responsible for tracking enemy troop movements. Providing exceptional intelligence on enemy movements, dispositions and strengths always made their A camp a target.

March 9th, 1966, in the early morning hours, hundreds of North Vietnamese attacked A-102's base camp, Camp A Shau, preceded by indirect fire from enemy mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Adkins rushed through the extensive enemy fire to man a mortar pit, firing mortar rounds against the enemy onslaught, he was wounded with shrapnel but still left his relative protected position exposing himself to enemy direct fire in order to drag wounded soldiers to safety.

Enemy forces launched their main attack the following day. Within hours of the main attack SFC Adkins was the only soldier left firing mortars. When he was out of rounds, he used a recoilless rifles, small arms and hand grenades to fight off intense waves of attacking Viet Cong. He ran back and forth from a mortar pit to a bunker through enemy fire through the battle, gathering ammunition and killing NVA soldiers who had penetrated that far into the camp.

Adkins is credited with killing 135 to 175 Vietnamese in a nearly four-day battle while being wounded 18 times and helping fellow soldiers to safety. For those acts, former President Barack Obama presented Adkins with the Medal of Honor in 2014.

He and a small group of other soldiers destroyed their sensitive communications equipment and classified documents, then escaped by digging through the back of the bunker and fighting their way out of camp. Adkins led the men through the jungle until they were rescued by helicopter on March 12. “We were not going to be prisoners of war, whatever we had to do,” Adkins said in a 2015 interview with Stars and Stripes.

Adkins and Katie Jackson, an instructor at Auburn University, co-authored a book in 2018 titled, “A Tiger Among Us: A Story of Valor in Vietnam’s A Shau Valley.” The book details Adkins’ military experiences and his life after the Army. Jackson said she sat for multiple interviews with Adkins, collecting about 20 hours of tape to use for the book. “I think what probably struck me is that he wasn’t interested in bragging — it wasn’t about him,” Jackson said. “It was almost a challenge to get him to talk about himself. To talk about his own accomplishments was really hard for him to do.

Also apparent was his resilience, she said. “He not only survived the battle and a number of other close calls in his years of service, but he came back to a time when Vietnam veterans were discriminated against,” Jackson said. “That’s when he began to realize he wasn’t going to have opportunities, job wise, when he retired. His further education became important to him.”

Following his tours in Vietnam, Adkins held other jobs with the Army, including as a trainer at the jungle warfare school at Fort Sherman, located at the northern end of the Panama Canal. He retired from the Army as a command sergeant major in 1978.

Adkins obtained a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees after his military service. Later in life, he was inspired to help other retired service members with college. He created the Bennie Adkins Foundation to provide educational scholarships to Special Forces soldiers to aid their transition from military to civilian life.

He and Mary, who were married more than 60 years, had four sons, a daughter and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Mary Adkins died in February 2019.

Article mainly taken from Stars and Stripes