“Roger. Roger. Move forward, Nam Dong,” got here the answer.

“Request flare send and an airstrike. … We’re beneath heavy mortar hearth.”

The bottom used to be surrounded. North Vietnamese squaddies and allied guerrillas, identified to U.S. forces as Viet Cong or V.C., pressed nearer in the course of the jungle.

“The burning mess corridor forged an eerie, dancing gentle over the camp, impressive now with swirling smoke and the flashes of exploding shells. The V.C. mortars had been zeroed in on us,” recalled Capt. Donlon, who used to be wounded 4 instances all through the combat and turned into the primary Medal of Honor recipient from the Vietnam Battle for his protection of Nam Dong. He died Jan. 25 in Leavenworth, Kan., at 89, greater than 35 years after retiring from the army with the rank of colonel.

For days ahead of the assault on July 6, 1964, expectancies grew that the North Vietnamese would try to overrun the camp — defended via greater than 300 South Vietnamese squaddies and native militiamen, the American unit and an Australian army adviser. Vietnamese villagers within reach had change into worried, most likely choosing up clues of the North Vietnamese plans, Capt. Donlon recalled.

The camp used to be no longer a significant army website online however its location, in a valley close to Laos, introduced a vital vantage level to watch and disrupt actions of North Vietnamese guerrillas.

Capt. Donlon used to be checking the guard roster when the primary assault wave hit. A shell slammed right into a wall. Quickly, the command put up used to be on hearth. Capt. Donlon and Grasp Sgt. Gabriel Ralph Alamo raced inside of to save lots of as a lot ammunition and guns as they might haul out.

A couple of yards away, a Vietnamese interpreter used to be hit via a blast. Each his legs had been blown off slightly under the knees. “In 30 seconds he used to be useless,” wrote Capt. Donlon in his 1965 e book, “Outpost of Freedom,” co-authored with journalist Warren Rogers.

Two Viet Cong battalions — totaling a minimum of 800 opponents — moved ahead. They reached the camp’s ultimate defensive line. U.S. helicopters attempted to usher in reinforcements however grew to become again to Danang on account of heavy hearth.

“Remove darkness from the primary gate,” Capt. Donlon yelled for a flare, he recounted. Within the blaze of sunshine, he fired at 3 North Vietnamese opponents, killing two and hitting the 3rd with a grenade blast as he attempted to succeed in the duvet of prime grass. Capt. Donlon spotted he, too, have been hit. His left forearm used to be bleeding. A work of shrapnel had ripped open a coin-sized wound in his abdomen.

“However not anything harm an excessive amount of,” he recalled, “and my legs had been k.”

Capt. Donlon started crawling between defensive pits dug into the camp to test on his workforce and others. The Australian adviser, Warrant Officer Kevin Conway, used to be fatally wounded. Capt. Donlon used to be hit once more. Shrapnel tore into his left leg. “For the primary time,” he recounted, “I felt actual ache … The bedlam of bursting grenades used to be an excessive amount of.”

A couple of mins later, a mortar exploded simply yards from Capt. Donlon and a gaggle of others. “I’m going to die, I believed,” he wrote. He used to be knocked subconscious, laying midway into the ammunition bunker with wounds to his left shoulder and some other in his abdomen. Alamo used to be useless. So used to be some other member of Capt. Donlon’s workforce, Sgt. John L. Houston.

Capt. Donlon used strips of his T-shirt and one in all his socks as bandages and tourniquets. The North Vietnamese, on loudspeakers, instructed the bottom to give up or face being overrun. The mortar barrages stored hammering the camp.

After all, at crack of dawn, got here the sound of coming near airplane. Airstrikes blasted the North Vietnam positions. “Aside from for sporadic small-arms hearth,” he recalled, “the combat for Nam Dong used to be over.”

The useless integrated a minimum of 57 South Vietnamese opponents, the 2 American citizens, Conway and greater than 60 North Vietnamese attackers. Capt. Donlon used to be introduced with the Medal of Honor, the army’s perfect award for valor, via President Lyndon B. Johnson in December 1964. (There are lately 64 Medal of Honor recipients alive.)

Roger Hugh Charles Donlon used to be born in Saugerties, N.Y., on Jan. 30, 1934. His father labored at a coal and lumber backyard; his mom used to be a homemaker.

He left Air Drive pilot coaching in 1955 after failing eye assessments. He then stayed two years on the U.S. Army Academy at West Level, N.Y., chickening out on account of non-public causes that integrated his age distinction with different cadets.

He enlisted within the Military in 1958 and earned the fairway beret of the Particular Forces on the U.S. Military Particular War College at Citadel Bragg, N.C. (now Citadel Liberty).

Throughout a 2d excursion in Vietnam, he seriously injured his retina in 1972 whilst diving to the bottom whilst beneath hearth. He returned to the USA as antiwar marches and protests had been close to their top. “No one likes being at the workforce no longer supported via the fanatics,” he instructed the Related Press.

However he remained within the Military and served in command and coaching roles all over the world together with U.S. army adviser to the Royal Thai Military and battalion commander with U.S. Particular Forces in Panama.

He gained a bachelor’s stage on the College of Nebraska at Omaha in 1967 and a grasp’s stage in executive in 1983 from Campbell College in Buies Creek, N.C. He retired from army carrier in 1988.

Col. Dolon’s first marriage to Carol Chadwick resulted in divorce. In 1965, he met a widow whose husband have been killed within the Vietnam Battle. 3 years later, he married the previous Norma Shinno Irving, who showed the dying. Col. Donlon had Parkinson’s illness connected to publicity to the army defoliant Agent Orange, she stated.

Different survivors come with a daughter from his first marriage; 3 sons from his 2d marriage; six grandchildren; one great-granddaughter, and two brothers. His son from his 2d marriage, Justin, died in 2022.

In 1998, Col. Dolon revealed a memoir, “Past Nam Dong.” He and his spouse additionally labored with veterans’ teams together with Wreaths Throughout The united states.

“The casualties of warfare,” he stated in an interview in 2022, “aren’t restricted to the battlefield.”