RAUL PEREZ BENAVIDEZ

The gunfire crackled so heavily that it sounded like popcorn, startling Staff Sergeant Roy Benavidez, who heard the frantic calls for help over the radio at the US Special Forces forward operating base in Loc Ninh, South Vietnam, near the border with Cambodia.

“Get us out of here! For God’s sake, get us out!” came the cries for evacuation from a 12-man team of Fifth Special Forces Group Detachment B-56 inserted across the Cambodian frontier. Their mission had been to capture a North Vietnamese truck and drive it back to base as proof that Communist forces were using Cambodian territory as a covert means of supply and reinforcement to their troops in South Vietnam. Soon after deployment by helicopter, however, the team was in dire straits, surrounded by a North Vietnamese Army battalion, numbering perhaps 1,000 troops.

One rescue attempt had already failed, the helicopters driven away by intense enemy ground fire. Several members of the team were already dead and others were seriously wounded.