 I was raised in an environment that if you, if you agreed to do something basically on a handshake, you have an obligation to do it because you said you would do it. Not only obligation to do it, but to do it the best that you know how, or can possibly do. I know in the prep I was only told what I needed to know to do whatever it is, and I was told maybe, you know, take a lot of extra medical stuff. And I could observe, and I knew talking to the guys, that they were carrying a lot more ammo than they ever, ever, ever do. And I knew as we were going deep into Laos, because Dr. Toa was five minutes from the border by air, and we flew about 45 minutes. From the get-go, after we crossed a certain line, we started taking ground fire. We hit the ground. We were skirmishing from the first day. We started taking injuries. We took a B40 round, and that's when I got a hole blown through my foot about the size of my thumb. Took a piece of my hand, and peppered with metal and bamboo. So we continued to fight. We weren't getting much sleep. We weren't eating. We were constantly getting hit and probed. It kept going on like that day in and day out until the fourth day when we were, we were running out of ammunition, we were out of food. We got to the LZ, the first chopper came in. We got wounded up on the first chopper, and the yards were itching to get out of there. So more got on the first helicopter than we thought should have. The second one came in, picked up some more, and that left about 35 of us on the ground. The third one came in to get us, and that helicopter was taking a pounding as it came in to get us. By the time we got to the tail end of the helicopter, we got up on the tailgate, and he lifted off, and we still kept taking rounds. You could hear the popping, and I remember sitting on the tailgate at that point with Bernie Bright, Sergeant First Class Bernie Bright, and all of a sudden the helicopter went quiet, and well that's because the engine quit. To this day I'm not sure which one of us said it, but Bernie and I were talking and one of us said, we're going to crash, and the other one said, yep, we're going down, and we just sat there, arm in arm, looking at the ground coming up. Next thing I know, a marine tapped me on the shoulder, he'd gotten hit in the throat. I can tell you this much, God decided that he was not going to die that day because his throat looked like somebody had taken a sharp egg beater and just chewed up the front of his neck. He was just bleeding like a stuck pig. At that time I was out of anything, so I think I stiffened his neck up by pulling some bandanas, and that's what I was using to help him with. And then the next thing I know, he and I were on a riverbank looking at this giant thing coming at us, which was the helicopter. And it stopped about maybe, it could be 10 feet, it could have been 5 feet, I don't know. But the next thought that I knew was I had to get back on that helicopter because there's probably people hurt. So I climbed back on and by then I noticed that all the equipment was on top of people, so I started throwing equipment out. And I remember as we were pulling people out, if we found a weapon we would sling it over their neck. A lot of good it did because probably, I don't think there were probably 20 rounds by then between the rest of us. The fourth ship pulled up, and the next thing I can consciously remember is standing at our launch point at Docto. And I know I didn't walk there, and I know I had to get on that fourth helicopter, but I honestly can look you in the eye and tell you I cannot remember, I can't even remember getting back off that helicopter, down that helicopter myself. I'm a religious individual, and I honestly believe that somebody up there decided that those of us who survived that crash and he decided that we weren't going to die that day. And I can tell you that our raids and our reconnaissance into that Laos tied up some 40,000 to 50,000 NBA troops that were originally sent going south to fight the American units. There's 58,000 names on that wall. And I don't know if without our unit doing what we did, would that wall have 100,000 names on it? On that operation, it just wasn't the army. It's a collective medal from my perspective. All the courage and honor and the dedication and duty that those men serve and went for 30 years, not even being acknowledged, let alone recognize. It points to the fact that the men and women that served in that time frame were honorable, and they deserve some type of recognition. And I think this medal somewhat points to the fact that you could say faithful servant, well done.