At long last, the actions of the heroic PJ are fully

AIR FORCE Magazine / February 200126

By John T. Correll, Editor in Chief

At long last, the actions of the heroic PJare fully recognized.

I T was Easter Monday, 1966, inVietnam. The US 1st Infantry

Division was pushing through thedense jungle east of Saigon in searchof the Viet Cong battalion known asD-800.

Three rifle companies—Alpha,Bravo, and Charlie—of the 2nd Bat-talion of the 16th Infantry Regimentwere conducting the search near thevillage of Cam My. As the day woreon, the unevenness of the terrain ledCharlie Company away from theother two.

Early that afternoon, Charlie Com-pany flushed a Viet Cong platoon,killed several VC, and pursued theothers deeper into the jungle.

The Americans knew from intelli-gence reports that D-800 was a first-line battalion with 400 troops and abackup force of women and chil-dren. Charlie Company had 134troops.

The mismatch was of little con-cern, since the soldiers expected tobe reinforced if they encounteredthe enemy in strength.

“What we didn’t know on Mon-day, April 11, was that we were walk-ing straight into D-800’s base camp,and that the undergrowth was so ut-

Pitsenbarger,Medal of Honor

terly dense in this part of the junglethat we couldn’t be reinforced eas-ily,” said John W. Libs, who in 1966was a first lieutenant leading CCompany’s 2nd Platoon.

By mid-afternoon, D-800 hadCharlie Company isolated and en-circled. The VC sprang the trap, andthe fighting grew desperate. Of the134 men who went into the junglethat day, all except 28 would be ei-ther wounded or killed before thebattle was over.

The nearest clearing where theArmy could land a Huey medevachelicopter was four miles away, soas the casualties began to mount, acall went to Det. 6, 38th AerospaceRescue and Recovery Squadron, atBien Hoa, 20 miles northeast ofSaigon. The Air Force’s HH-43 heli-copters could lower a hoist to thejungle floor.

Two Helicopters RespondAt 3:07 p.m., Bien Hoa got the

call to go from the search-and-res-cue control center in Saigon. TheArmy was reporting at least six ca-sualties. With that many wounded tobring out, two helicopters would go.

A1C William H. Pitsenbarger was

William H. Pitsenbarger standsoutside an HH-43 “Pedro” in thisphoto, taken about 1965. As a highlytrained Pararescue Jumper, he wasboth a medic and survival specialist.

AIR FORCE Magazine / February 2001 27


in the alert trailer when the call camein. He would be the PJ—the Para-rescue Jumper—on the second crew.

He spoke briefly with A2C RoyBoudreaux, one of the three airmenwith whom he shared a cubicle in aQuonset hut. Pitsenbarger told himthey were going to help an Armycompany in trouble. “There’s abouta million VC in the area,” he said. “Idon’t have a good feeling about thisone.”

Pitsenbarger was 21 years old. Hehad been in Vietnam for eight months.

He had not yet completed his firstenlistment in the Air Force. As a PJ,he was both a medic and a survivalspecialist. He had been throughArmy jump school at Ft. Benning,Ga., and qualified by the Navy as ascuba diver. He had also been to AirForce “tree jump” school, trainingthat included three parachute jumpsinto a forest, wearing tree jumpingsuits.

He planned to leave the Air Forcewhen his hitch was up. He had ap-plied to Arizona State, where hehoped to study to become a nurse.

Search-and-rescue missions didnot happen every day, but when theydid, the choppers often flew mul-tiple sorties, searching the junglesor shuttling between battle zones,

bases, and field hospitals. Pitsen-barger had five oak leaf clusters tohis Air Medal, each representing 25flights over hostile territory, andmore clusters were pending.

In March 1966, Pitsenbarger haddescended from a helicopter into aburning minefield to rescue a Viet-namese solider who had stepped on aland mine. For that action, he had

been recommended for the Airman’sMedal. It would be awarded posthu-mously.

When he was growing up in Piqua,Ohio, he had been called “Bill,” butto his colleagues at Bien Hoa, he wasmore often “Pits.”

Problems With the PickupThe first rescue helicopter, Pedro

97, flown by Capt. Ronald Bachman,was airborne at 3:12 p.m. Pitsen-barger was on Pedro 73, which wasclose behind.

The first of the formidable HH-3Jolly Green Giant rescue helicoptershad recently arrived in SoutheastAsia, but Bien Hoa did not have anyof those. What the detachment thereflew was the HH-43F Huskie—known everywhere as “Pedro”—thesmall utility helicopter that hoveredover the runway, prepared for firesuppression, when an airplane landedwith a gear malfunction, a warninglight, or some other problem or emer-gency.

It performed that role at Bien Hoa,but it had also been adapted for junglerescue. In that configuration, it car-ried two pilots, a crew chief, and aPJ, plus the forest penetrator, a lit-ter, a stretcher, and medical kits.

The pilot of Pedro 73 was Capt.Hal Salem. The detachment com-mander, Maj. Maurice Kessler, wasflying as copilot. Capt. Dale Potter,regularly the other pilot on the crew,had gone to Saigon to pick up somelitters. Beside Pitsenbarger in the

In this April 1963 photo,Pitsenbarger wearsscuba gear. Scuba

diving was just one ofthe special skillsrequired of PJs.

Pitsenbarger sits in an HH-43 in flight in this October 1965 photo. The smallutility helicopter was adapted for jungle rescue and along with a stretcher,litter, and medical kits, carried a forest penetrator as part of its equipment.


Bachman maneuvered the firsthelicopter, Pedro 97, into place. Hehovered below treetop level. Theopening was so tight that the whirl-ing helicopter blades passed withinfive feet of the trees.

Pedro 97 lowered its litter, pickedup the first casualty, then pulled backto transfer him from the Stokes litterto a folding litter. Pedro 73 movedinto the hole and made the nextpickup, but it did not go smoothly.The wounded soldier was in a make-shift stretcher, crafted from tree limbsand a poncho, and the ground partyhad put him, stretcher and all, into

the litter. The extraction was pre-carious because the soldiers had notstrapped the wounded man in.

The litter snagged repeatedly onthe way up, and the stretcher couldnot be brought all the way into thehelicopter. It was a struggle to getthe soldier aboard. The pickup tookfar too long to complete, with thehelicopter hovering there as a pro-vocative target for ground fire.

“We had no direct communica-tions with the people below, exceptthrough hand signals,” Salem said.“We really couldn’t advise them onhow to speed up the process or tohelp them evaluate the extent of theinjuries. Hopefully, some of thewounded could be sent up on theforest penetrator, which was muchfaster but certainly couldn’t be usedfor hoisting the critically wounded.”

rear seats was A1C Gerald Hammond,the crew chief.

It took the two helicopters abouthalf an hour to reach the battle.Charlie Company had marked itslocation with colored smoke.

All around them was triple-canopyjungle, the tallest trees reaching up150 feet. However, there was a placewhere the trees topped out at 100feet. Beneath that, thick brush grewfrom the ground to about 30 feet up,but there was a hole in the canopyjust large enough for a Stokes lit-ter—essentially a wire basket—toget through.

Bachman’s crew took another sol-dier aboard, and the two helicopterstook the wounded to an Army hospi-tal at Binh Ba, eight miles to thesouth.

Pits to the GroundWhen the choppers returned to the

jungle site, Pitsenbarger asked thepilot to put him on the ground.

“Once I’m down there I can reallyhelp out,” he told Salem. “I can showthose guys how to rig the Stokeslitter and load it right. It will bemuch faster, and you can put morepeople in the bird.”

Saigon ●

Bien Hoa ●

Tan Son Nhut●

● Loc Ninh

● An Loc

Base camps of VietCong battalion D-800

Fire base

Fire base

Charlie Company’s route

Area enlargedbelow

South Vietnam

Cambodia

Binh Ba ●

Binh Ba ●

Site of battle


Salem thought about it, discussedit with the crew, and decided thatPitsenbarger was right.

“We wished Pits good luck,” Sa-lem said. “I maneuvered the helicop-ter into the pickup hole as Hammondstrapped Pits onto the penetrator anddisconnected his mike cord. I tookmy last glimpse of Pits as Hammondswung him out of the cabin.

“Pits had a big grin on his face.He was holding his medical kit, hisM-16 rifle, and an armful of splints.I said a silent prayer for him. I havea feeling the rest of the crew said aprayer for him, too. We just nevertalked about it.

“Down he went as Hammondsnaked him down through the treesto the wounded and survivors wait-ing below. I’m sure they were sur-prised to see someone come downinto their hellhole. Hammond hoistedthe penetrator back up and sent aStokes litter down to Pits.”

With Pits on the ground, the heli-copters took turns extracting woundedsoldiers from the jungle. Pitsenbargerwas sending them up both in thelitter and on the forest penetrator.

The situation on the ground wasdescribed by 1st Lt. Martin Kroah,leader of Charlie Company’s 3rdPlatoon.

“I first saw Airman Pitsenbargerwhen he was being lowered from anAir Force helicopter sent to medevacour wounded,” Kroah said. “I ob-served him several more times dur-ing the course of the day. To put

down on paper what that battle waslike is an impossible task.

“At times the small-arms firewould be so intense it was deafeningand all a person could do was get asclose to the ground as possible andpray. It was on these occasions thatI saw Airman Pitsenbarger movingaround and pulling wounded menout of the line of fire and then ban-daging their wounds. My own pla-toon medic, who was later killed,was totally ineffective. He was fro-zen with fear, unable to move.

“The firing was so intense that afire team leader in my platoon curledup in a fetal position and sobbeduncontrollably. He had seen combatin both World War II and Korea. Thepsychological pressure was beyondcomprehension.

“For Airman Pitsenbarger to ex-pose himself, on three separate oc-casions, to this enemy fire was cer-tainly above and beyond the call ofduty of any man. It took tremendouscourage to expose himself to thepossibility of an almost certain deathin order to save the life of someonehe didn’t even know.”

Pedro 73 HitBetween them, the two helicop-

ters had made a total of five flightsinto and out of the battle area andhad flown nine wounded soldiers toBinh Ba. Pedro 73 moved into thehole in the jungle canopy for thenext pickup.

“Hammond spotted Pits,” Salem

said. “He was signaling for a Stokeslitter. Hammond hooked it up andbegan lowering to Pits. We couldhear enemy fire down below, butPits was ignoring it and kept mo-tioning for us to continue loweringthe Stokes litter.”

The litter had almost reached Pit-senbarger when the helicopter wasraked by automatic weapons fire. Itlurched as it was hit and yawed se-verely to the left. As engine RPMdropped, the helicopter began sink-ing slowly. The rotor blades wereout of track, and badly so. Salemapplied full right rudder to correctthe yaw, but he had no control overthe engine.

“My immediate concern was tokeep the chopper flying and not hitany trees that were just a few feetaway from the tips of the rotorblades,” Salem said. “Hammond keptthe Stokes litter going down whilesignaling for Pits to grab hold of theStokes litter when it came withinreach so we could pull him out. I wasable to keep the helicopter fairlysteady now, using full right rudder.Finally, the rotor RPM began to in-crease and stopped our descent.Again, our main concern was to trysome way to get Pits on board. Hemust have known that we were tak-ing heavy ground fire.

“Hammond was now franticallymotioning to Pits to get him to tryand grab onto the Stokes litter, butPits continued to give Hammond thewave-off and appeared to be holleringfor us to get the hell out of there.This was his second wave-off. With-out any hesitation, Pits elected tostay on the ground with the wounded.”

As Pedro 73 maneuvered up andout of the pickup hole, the litter gothopelessly snagged in the trees andhad to be cut loose.

The helicopter limped to a landingat Binh Ba, but the engine could notbe shut down by either normal oremergency procedures. Hammondremoved some panels in the roof ofthe cabin and used a hammer to beatthe fuel controls closed. The heli-copter had taken nine hits and bothsets of rotor blades were ruined.

Pedro 73 was out of commission.Bachman in the lead helicopter wastold by ground control that the areawas under such intensive attack thatno more extractions could be at-tempted.

During the night, word came that

Pitsenbarger carries an M-16 at Bien Hoa AB. On his final rescue mission, hevolunteered to be lowered into the jungle—into fierce combat between the VCand a beseiged Army company—to evacuate the wounded.


Pitsenbarger and more Army casual-ties had been moved to an area wherea landing zone would be cleared thenext morning and that Army heli-copters would bring them out at firstlight.

The report was wrong in all re-spects.

The VC Attack PeaksIn the late afternoon of April 11,

the VC battalion intensified the at-tack with mortars and machine guns.Snipers in the trees shot soldiers inthe back as they lay prone in thefiring position.

There would be no reinforcementsany time soon. Bravo Company waswell off to the left flank, and thejungle was so thick that it took anhour to hack out 100 yards of single-file trail.

“I had been wounded before Pitsen-barger arrived on the scene,” saidArmy Sgt. Charles F. Navarro, a squadleader in Charlie Company’s 1st Pla-toon. “We were getting pounded sobad that I could only lie on the groundfor cover. Pitsenbarger concealed mybody with a dead soldier, probablyto protect me from getting hit againor even from being killed if we wereoverrun.

“Pitsenbarger continued cutting

pants legs, shirts, pulling off boots,and generally taking care of thewounded. At the same time, he amaz-ingly proceeded to return enemy firewhenever he could. During his move-ment around our perimeter, he wouldscramble past me and deliver a hand-ful of magazines.”

“After I was wounded, sometimearound 6 p.m., Pitsenbarger came by

the tree where I and several otherwounded and dead soldiers [were],”said Daniel Kirby, who was an in-fantryman in Company C. “He lookedat my wound, stated that it was notoverly serious, and said somethingto the effect of, ‘Don’t give up; wecan get out of this mess.’ He then leftand that was the last time I remem-ber seeing him.”

Navarro said that Pitsenbargergave his handgun to one of thewounded who could not hold a rifle.Running from place to place, Pitsen-barger gathered ammunition—at least20 magazines—from the dead anddistributed it to those still shooting.Several of them had been firing theirweapons on full automatic and wererunning short of ammunition.

“I observed Pitsenbarger commu-nicating with the helicopter usinghand signals, waving them off atleast twice,” Navarro said. “At somepoint, the helicopter began takingheavy enemy fire. Shortly after that,I observed Pitsenbarger reaching forthe Stokes litter to try and load upanother wounded man. Before hereached it, the helicopter’s hydrau-lics were hit, causing it to go out ofcontrol. The Stokes litter tore throughthe jungle and fell into some trees.Later, Pitsenbarger took up a posi-tion next to me. He was killed shortlythereafter.”

Pitsenbarger died about 7:30 p.m.,Navarro said.

The VC mounted three massiveassaults against the perimeter that

A1C Harry O’Beirne, who shared a cubicle with Pitsenbarger, was the PJ in therescue chopper that returned to the site of the battle the next day. He recov-ered Pitsenbarger’s body from the jungle and took it to the evacuation area.

An HH-43B crewdemonstrates a typical

rescue operation inSoutheast Asia.


evening and Charlie Company sur-vived the night only by calling inartillery almost on top of itself. Afterthe artillery barrage, about 9 p.m.,there was no further fire from theVC. Reinforcements, led by BravoCompany, arrived at dawn.

The PJ on the flight that went outfrom Bien Hoa the morning of April12 was A1C Harry O’Beirne, wholived in the same cubicle as Pits.

“We got an urgent message to getback out to Binh Ba,” O’Beirne said.“I was the pararescueman on the firstchopper. When I was put down in thejungle, I was told that there were 30-some dead and the rest were wounded.I set about helping the wounded andevacuating them on the chopper. Af-ter the chopper took off, I headedback into the jungle to help somemore wounded.

“An Army captain passing, stoppedme and told me that he was sorry butmy buddy had been killed. He pointedin the direction of Bill’s body. Isearched and found it covered with aponcho. Bill had been shot four times.I removed Bill’s gear and took thebody back to the evacuating area.”

Pitsenbarger had been hit in theback, shoulder, and thigh but hadkept working and fighting until thefatal round struck him in the head.

“Bill Pitsenbarger was an ordi-nary man,” O’Beirne said later. “Hejust did extraordinary things whencalled upon to do so. He liked coun-try music, loved to hear Roy Acuffsing ‘The Wabash Cannonball,’ liked

a beer, had a healthy interest ingirls. Being brave is not the ab-sence of fear but being able to workand do the needed thing in spite ofit.”

The Medal of HonorOn Salem’s recommendation, Col.

Arthur Beall, commander of the 3rdAerospace Rescue and RecoveryGroup, nominated Pitsenbarger forthe Medal of Honor. However, Mili-tary Assistance Command, Vietnam,proposed the award of the Air ForceCross instead. The Pentagon wentalong with MACV.

In September 1966, Pitsenbarger’sAir Force Cross, awarded posthu-mously, was presented to his par-ents by Gen. John P. McConnell,Air Force Chief of Staff. He was thefirst Air Force enlisted man to bepresented the second highest mili-tary award.

For more than 30 years, hismemory has remained vibrantlyalive. The Airmen Memorial Mu-seum in Suitland, Md., has cata-logued almost two dozen memori-als, buildings, streets, and awardsnamed for him.

His fellow PJs and others nevergave up on their appeal to have hisaward upgraded to the Medal ofHonor. The issue arose again in theearly 1990s, when Piqua, Ohio,named a sports complex in Pitsen-barger’s honor.

In 1998, the Air Force SergeantsAssociation took up the cause. Three

Pitsenbarger plays with a spider monkey at Bien Hoa in 1966. For his heroicsacrifice, he has been honored in many ways throughout USAF over the yearsand in December posthumously received the nation’s highest military honor.

requirements had to be met for up-grade: (1) new information, (2) rec-ommendation from someone in thechain of command, (3) submissionby a member of Congress.

A concerted effort by the Air-men Memorial Museum, an arm ofAFSA, documented the events ofApril 11, 1966, in great detail andgathered statements from eyewit-nesses. Among those providing let-ters of support were seven of thesurviving members of Charlie Com-pany, including two of the four pla-toon leaders.

“I felt at the time, and still do, thatBill Pitsenbarger is one of the brav-est men I have ever known,” wroteformer lieutenant Johnny Libs.

Hal Salem, the helicopter pilot,and retired Maj. Gen. Allison C.Brooks, former commander of theAerospace Rescue and RecoveryService, made a new nomination ofPitsenbarger for the Medal of Honor,satisfying the second requirement.

Armed with the AFSA packageand the new nomination, Rep. JohnA. Boehner (R–Ohio) asked the AirForce, in early 1999, to upgrade theaward.

In the Pentagon, the proposal hadto be reviewed by various officesand organizations and might wellhave mired down in bureaucraticmuck had it not been for a specialchampion. Secretary of the Air ForceF. Whitten Peters, who had heardabout the case from Pitsenbargersupporters, took a personal inter-est. He and Joe Lineberger, directorof the Air Force Review BoardsAgency, put their full weight be-hind the effort.

With the concurrence of the JointChiefs of Staff, the recommendationbecame part of this year’s NationalDefense Authorization Act as ap-proved by Congress and signed intolaw by the President on Oct. 30.

After 34 years, Pitsenbarger’s he-roic actions had finally received fullrecognition.

On Dec. 8, 2000, the Medal ofHonor was presented posthumouslyto A1C William H. Pitsenbarger in aceremony at the Air Force Museumin Dayton, Ohio, not far from hishometown of Piqua. Secretary of theAir Force F. Whitten Peters pre-sented the award, which was acceptedby William F. Pitsenbarger on hisson’s behalf. ■

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At long last, the actions of the heroic PJ are fully