is an all white team. as a black man, do you think you could handle it? i said, no problem right here, sir. there s a couple of guys from alabama, one from mississippi. is that going to be a problem? i said, i don t think so, sir. reporter: he and three other special forces soldiers were tasked with training south vietnamese troops, then one june night he led them into a ferocious battle. specialist robert brown was wounded and pinned down. davis crawled out to get him, suffering a shrapnel wound from a grenade. i got some of my team. trigger finger. and my trigger finger was shot off. yeah. it hurt but it didn t hurt that much that i was stopped, and once i got out there, brown said to me, sir, am i going to die, and i remember saying to him, not before me. reporter: after rescuing brown, davis crawled back onto the battlefield to help
davis crawled through blood, mud, pain and withering enemy fire carrying his wounded comrades on his back to reach this moment at the white house, that it took a battle against bureaucracy for him to receive the medal of honor leaves many who have heard his story dumbfounded. it s been a long time coming. what s the moment feel like? everything is good. i feel very comfortable, and it took a while. it took a long while, but it s here, and i m really proud to be an american. reporter: it was early summer 1965, just months after bloody sunday in selma, alabama, then captain davis, a green beret on his second tour in vietnam at war for his country while back at home in some ways his country was fighting him. when one day his commanding officer asked him to be in charge. he made a point of saying, you know, this
Green Beret Paris Davis, now 83, led a company tearing through a larger enemy force, pushing the attack despite being shot, absorbing shrapnel and another bullet to get wounded comrades to safety.
WASHINGTON - Today, U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine (both D-VA) issued the following statement after President Biden awarded a medal of honor to retired U.S. Army Col.
captain paris davis and his men were leading a team of inexperienced south vietnamese when they came under waves of attack. there was a place on that battlefield, it was so many bodies, you couldn t see the grass. what kept you going in that fight? others. i ll tell you, i don t even remember the first couple of times i got shot that day. davis was in that fight for 19 hours. the viet-cong had good terrain like we, did we were right across from them. he later recounted that battle on the phil donahue show, rescued three fellow soldiers. i went and pulled him out and in muck and tied up in vines and got shot again and i got hit around the arm. while the time ron dice arrived overnight in a small airplane he says it looked like all hell had broken loose. dice was shot down, then picked up the story, in bits and