Legend

by Eric Blehm

  Thank you, Terry Perkins, Curtis Thiele, and all at H.I.S. Tapes, Duplicating and Recording in Houston, Texas, for taking such care in transferring Larry McKibben’s reel-to-reel tapes onto a CD for the family.

  Thank you to Roy’s Special Forces buddies from the Alamo Silver Wings Airborne Association, who put aside an afternoon to meet with me at the Drop Zone Café in San Antonio, Texas, including Fred Balderrama, Ed Fernandez, Val Martinez, Joe Rodriguez, and Rudy Villarreal.

  While I received much of my information regarding the operations and history of MACV-SOG from personal interviews conducted during the Special Operations Association Reunion in the summer of 2014, virtually everything I learned there and from subsequent interviews was cross-checked with the work of former recon men and SOG historians John Plaster and Steve Sherman, whose electronic databases, CD-ROM compilations, and published books can be located online by searching their names. Thank you, John and Steve. Thanks also to Lieutenant Colonel Fred Lindsey, whose book Secret Green Beret Commandos in Cambodia provided great context and insights into the Project Sigma and B-56 missions. I also recommend Across the Fence: The Secret War in Vietnam, written by former recon man John Stryker Meyer.

  All quotations and actions depicted in this book were drawn from eyewitness interviews; however, I also used quotations and paraphrased information from official operational orders, after-action reports, officer evaluation reports, and other documents. These historical papers were provided to me directly by the men involved.

  Between these personal eyewitness interviews and documents, I was able to get a feel for what went on in each and every Greyhound slick and Mad Dog gunship involved in the mission on May 2, 1968. Over the passage of time, memories vary and I did my absolute best to put the events in the right chronological order so that those remembered from the air coincided with those occurring on the ground. All events that are depicted, and the locations where they occurred, are accurate to the best of the memories recounted and supporting documentation; recollections of the timing sometimes varied, however, and in the end I used the democratic approach, choosing the majority opinion where there was a discrepancy. I also weighed heavily the testimony written by eyewitnesses in the seventies and eighties—since it was closer to the time being depicted.

  The Vietnam War was called “the living room war” because the media brought the war, for the first time, into the living rooms of America via newspapers, magazines, radio, and especially television. I have included quotations from the media that I hope will give readers a sense of what the American public and world were receiving at the time.

  I was given permission from the Benavidez family to excerpt Roy’s two memoirs, Medal of Honor and The Three Wars of Roy Benavidez. All of his descriptions, inner thoughts, quotations, and recounted dialogue are from these two books, the personal letters Roy wrote to family and friends throughout his lifetime, radio and television interviews, as well as his speeches. I was also provided with a copy of Roy’s personal military personnel file, which includes the full and detailed history of the process to upgrade Roy’s Distinguished Service Cross to the Congressional Medal of Honor. This included the written testimonies of military personnel who either witnessed the action or were directly involved in it, or were present and listened to events on the radio: William Darling, Ralph Drake, Michael Grant, Jesse Naul, Ronald Radke, Robin Tornow, and Roger Waggie. Thank you to Chris Barbee and Steve Sucher for your candid interviews, as well as Leonel Garza for insights into Roy’s quest for the Medal of Honor.

  Thank you also to Doreen Agard, Troy Anderson, Michael Hennessy, Maxine Keene, and Dean Shumate for your contextual research and help organizing the mountains of information. Thank you, Herbert Friedman, for your help and your archives in psywarrior.com regarding the psychological operations during the Vietnam War. Thank you, Joe “Ragman” Tarnovsky, for sharing with me your time with the 240th and for always making it clear that though you weren’t there on the May 2 mission, you wanted to be sure those who were there were honored. Thank you, Mark Byrd, for recounting your conversations with Robin Tornow, and Molly Young for the transcripts and DVDs of Roy’s television appearances.

  Thank you, Chris Adams, for your detailed maps of the LZ, and Joe LeMonnier for the map of Vietnam and surrounding countries.

  Thank you, David Adams, Jason Amerine, Matt Baglio, Don Bendell, Brian Berry, Linda Bubela, Carol Cepregi, Shannon Crabtree, Jackie Erickson, Chuck Fisher, Matt Golsteyn, Don Kirk, Chris Kyle, Melanie Luttrel, Pete and Marcelle McAfee, Diana Moreno, Michael Palgon, Jay Redman, George Schlatter, Bob Schoultz, Scott Schwarte, Joy Sheppard, Tommy Spaulding, Rick Stewart, Janet Wendle, and Seymour Topping.

  Thank you to the hardworking, flexible team at Penguin Random House, including my editor, Roger Scholl, deputy publisher David Drake, Crown publisher Molly Stern, art director Chris Brand, production editor Robert Siek, interior designer Barbara Sturman, head of Design Elizabeth Rendfleisch, marketing director Jessica Miele, and senior publicist Penny Simon. Thank you to my talented longtime personal researcher and editor Rita Samols, who stays on call around the clock.

  To my family and friends: Thank you as always for your help, incredible patience, and understanding.

  To my children: Stories like this make me appreciate what a gift it is to be a father. Thank you for being you.

  Only the spouse of a writer with young children could possibly understand how much I owe to my wife, Lorien, who isn’t just a casual reader, but a down-in-the trenches editor of all my books. She is the secret to my success in so many aspects of my life.

  The idea for this book came from an e-mail sent to me by Anita Fussell, the mother of my incredible, insightful agent, Christy Fletcher, of Fletcher and Co. I consider myself well read in the genre of Special Forces history, but somehow I had missed the story of Roy Benavidez and the May 2 mission. Anita suggested I make it my next book, bringing the story to light for the current generation of military readers.

  On September 11, 2012, not long after I began my research for this book, I did a live video chat with Chris Kyle. Chris told me that he didn’t feel comfortable with the nickname “The Legend,” which had been bestowed upon him as the most lethal American sniper in history. I asked him if he’d heard of Roy Benavidez, and Chris said, “Now, that guy is a legend.”

  I had originally considered titling this book Hero, but Roy’s children discouraged me; their father always said the real heroes didn’t come home. Chris Kyle’s words kept coming back to me, and I asked others in the Special Operations community, including Jay Redman, retired Navy SEAL and author, and Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel Jason Amerine, if they recognized the name Roy Benavidez. Every one of them did—and they universally described him with the same word:

  “Legend.”

  ALSO BY ERIC BLEHM

  FEARLESS

  THE ONLY THING WORTH DYING FOR

  THE LAST SEASON

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