Written by Caroline Colvin

Editor’s Note: We would like to honor Mike Holden for his consideration, time, and help with this story. Mr. Holden passed away on Oct. 10, 2023, a few days after the initial publishing of this story.

Clinging on a helicopter’s rocket pod, unsure of the outcome of the ongoing maneuver, Sergeant Dave Hill trusted Captain Larry Taylor with his life on June 18, 1968. Hill put years of work into telling the story of that day, eventually leading him to the White House to witness Larry Taylor’s Medal of Honor ceremony on Sept. 5, 2023. 

Hill served as the assistant team leader for Wildcat 2, the name of his long range patrol team. Long-range reconnaissance patrol(LRRP) teams searched 15-25 square kilometer “re-con zones” according to Hill.

By the night of June 18, 1968, Hill and his 3 LRRP teammates carried a lot of equipment– prepared to make contact with enemy soldiers. 

“Basically our mission is go looking for trouble,” Hill said. “Well that night, trouble found us first.”

With Hill and his team inbound to their position, they ran into a North Vietnamese encirclement. The enemy surrounded them in a dark, muddy rice paddy. 

“They didn’t know we were there yet, we even saw flares, matches flaring up, people smoking cigarettes not knowing we were even in the vicinity. That’s how quiet we were.” 

Fortunately for them, Captain Taylor responded to their call for helicopters and ammunition to help them. He got in his Cobra helicopter with his co-pilot, J.O. Ratliff, and prepared to provide support to the men on the ground. 

When Taylor reached the vicinity of Wildcat 2, he told them to “light themselves up” using the star clusters they had, which are a type of pyrotechnic device the men used to illuminate their location. 

“He said, ‘Go!’ and we hit the flares, and all Hell broke loose,” Hill said. “Now they knew where we were, they directed fire at us.” 

The ensuing firefight became an intense exchange of ammunition, as the LRRP now found themselves in the middle of battle. 

Taylor’s relief team, who would customarily let him leave to refuel and re-up on ammunition, could not aid him this particular night. Additionally, the helicopter that would have come to extract the LRRP team suffered communication issues this night as well. 

Taylor ultimately made the decision to rescue the men himself. He instructed them to use their land mines to clear a path through the rice paddy and run southeast, where he would meet them in his Cobra. Hill threw grenades behind the team as they made their way out.

“All of a sudden we feel a downdraft, and Taylor landed within 10 feet of us,” Hill said. The team of four men had 10 seconds to attach themselves to the outside of the helicopter before Taylor would be making his way out. With two men on the rocket pods and two on the landing skids, Taylor took the Cobra 1500 feet straight up, managing his speed and elevation so the men, who were soaking wet from the rice paddy, wouldn’t freeze and lose their grip. 

Taylor dropped the LRRP team to safety at the Tan Son Nhut Airport Water Treatment Plant, where there were friendly forces. 

“We jumped off, ran around to the front of the ship…and we all just saluted him, gave him a thumbs up, and that was the last time any of us saw Larry until 1999 at our first reunion in Branson, Missouri.” 

55 years and countless letters, e-mails, and conversations sit between June 1968 and September 2023. But why did it take so long for Larry Taylor to receive the Medal of Honor?

After being reunited with Taylor in 1999, Hill said he was shocked to find out that Taylor had not received the Medal of Honor. 

“Every once in a while you’d see a headline that somebody had just gotten the Medal of Honor 40 or 50 years after their fight, so we figured, there’s got to be a process for getting this done,” Hill said. 

Their first step included acquiring a Congressional sponsorship. 

“We’re talking 48 years later we started this process, and anything after three years, you got to have a senator or congressman intercede and waive the time restraints.”

Hill and those who helped recommend Taylor put together extensive reports and witness statements about the night that Taylor rescued the four men. They tracked down Taylor’s co-pilot, J.O. Ratliff, to provide the second witness statement along with Hill’s. 

Even after this, Hill was hit with another requirement. He needed to provide new information that was not known to the chain of command at the time of the rescue in 1968. 

A meeting between Dave Hill and General BB Bell, a Chattanooga native and graduate of UTC, at the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center revealed the missing piece of evidence–what let Captain Larry Taylor earn the Medal of Honor.

When Bell asked Hill where the information in the narrative about the rescue had come from, Hill revealed that he had not been interviewed about the events by anyone before Taylor was recommended for the Silver Star rather than the Medal of Honor. Hill said Bell’s response was: “We got an epiphany here. What does that sound like to you Dave? New and substantive information not known? Bingo, we got it.”

“Dave’s outfit was located 40 kilometers away from Larry’s outfit, and so the next morning, when it was time to do the post-combat interviews, would you have gotten in your handy-dandy jeep and driven 40 miles to the enemy territory to talk to Dave?,” Bell said after the Larry Taylor Welcome Home parade on Sept. 11, 2023. 

“Not on your life, because you would have been killed going up there. So no one ever interviewed Dave, they interviewed Larry quickly.”

In the final letter Dave Hill sent to the Army Board for Correction of Military Records (ABCMR) in 2021, he revealed to them the “new, substantive, and material information not known to the applicant’s commanders at the time” which would eventually secure the Medal of Honor for Captain Taylor. 

There is no evidence – zero – that has ever surfaced that our strong verbal recommendation for the Medal of Honor was ever conveyed in any manner by our chain of command to Larry Taylor’s chain of command. Only years later did our patrol members conclude this and thus I embarked on my continuing quest to make this wrong a right and ensure Larry Taylor receives the award he so justly deserves from the United States.

As many have learned, Larry Taylor is a tell-it-like-it-is man, and when it comes to himself, he is extremely humble. According to Bell, when Taylor was interviewed by the army after the incident, he said nothing more than “I had a little fight last night, we took out the enemy the best we could, and when we couldn’t get it all done, we picked them up and carried them out, that’s it.”

So, the army decided to award Taylor the Silver Star based on his recount of the events of June 19. 

My original 13 June 2017 written account (TabA, Encl 2andTab B, Encl 3) fully establishes that without Lieutenant Taylor’s stunning conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his own life, my entire patrol would have perished in close combat at the hands of a vastly superior enemy force on the night of 18 June 1968. Again, it must be fully understood that the degree of peril my patrol faced on the ground was only known to the four of us who were there facing imminent death, and to Lieutenant Taylor who, under intense fire and risking almost certain death himself, joined us on the ground, then saved us.

“Once we got it straight, and proved to the army that it was impossible for the chain of command in 1968 to know what that ranger [Dave Hill] knew and what his three buddies knew, then the army quickly said, ‘There’s been a mistake here. This man deserves the Medal of Honor,’” Bell said. 

53 years ago had Lieutenant Taylor’s chain of command received the complete picture of combat actions on the ground, I and many others are certain they would have recognized Lieutenant Taylor’s actions as fully meeting the highest of combat valor award standards — those for the Medal of Honor.

Three weeks after the final letter was sent to the ABCMR, the board confirmed that Larry Taylor would be a Medal of Honor recipient. On Sept. 5, 2023 at the White House, Taylor received the medal from President Joe Biden. And on Sept. 11, Chattanooga gathered on Market Street to celebrate and honor Taylor 55 years later.

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Welcome Home

Written by David Harman

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2023, Vietnam veteran Larry Taylor sits on the back of a red American muscle car with his wife. He’s waving, saluting, and smiling at the people lining Chattanooga’s downtown streets.

Taylor served as the guest of honor in a parade assembled for him, recognizing his achievement of being awarded the Medal of Honor for his services in the Vietnam War.

Mike Holden, the liaison and close friend of Medal of Honor recipient Larry Taylor, recounted the story of Taylor’s heroic acts that led to him receiving the declaration of valor.

On June 18, 1968, four young American Soldiers conducted reconnaissance in a village northwest of Saigon, deep within Vietnam. North Vietnamese soldiers attempted to attack an American port in the area.

The four men trekked through by the light of a waning gibbous moon through a rice paddy approaching the village. Suddenly, the men noticed movement in the distance. They snaked through the field, up to their chins in muddy water, hiding their location. Eighty to one-hundred North Vietnamese soldiers surrounded the young American soldiers—they quickly fired all their ammo, leaving them stranded.

Back on base, a young Larry Taylor’s alarm starts ringing. He’s a helicopter pilot, on call 24 hours a day. After getting the coordinates, Taylor jumps into his Cobra helicopter and flies off into the darkness, bringing backup to the men.

As Taylor’s chopper approaches, one of the four men turns on his radio.

 “We’re here! We’re here!” he exclaimed. 

1st Lieutenant Taylor surveys his surroundings, realizing these men are far outnumbered.

“Tell them to escape and evade. They’re taught how to escape and evade,” Taylor’s Battalion Commander barks over the radio.

“There is no escape and evade, they’re surrounded… These men are going to die,” Taylor replied.

“Bring that chopper back,” the Battalion Commander ordered.

Taylor had made up his mind. He refused his commander’s order and clicked off his radio. He was going to save these men.

The four men could see the water shift around them as Taylor’s chopper blades made a whirlwind on the ground below, all the while, North Vietnamese rounds fired at them from every direction. 

The young soldiers grabbed onto wherever they could on the tiny combat helicopter. After they had a hold, Taylor performed a full-pitch maneuver, forcing the helicopter straight up to about 1500 feet. 

Taylor’s copilot informed him that the men would freeze at this height and speed; they were wet, and high-speed chills might loosen their grip. The minimum speed of his Cobra helicopter is 55mph. 

“We have to get them to safety,” Taylor said to his co-pilot. 

As slow and as low as possible, Taylor flew the men to an airport about three minutes away with only 5 minutes of fuel. After safely landing, the men saluted Taylor before he returned back to his base. 

As Taylor lowered onto the airstrip he reached to shut off the engine, but it was already off. The aircraft bounced once or twice as it hit the ground–he had run out of fuel.

“Talk about a close call… you put all this stuff together and it’s like a puzzle, it’s unbelievable,” Mike Holden remarked after telling Taylor’s story. 

On Sept. 5, 2023, Taylor received the Medal of Honor– 55 years after his heroic act. One of the highest declarations of valor, President Joe Biden awarded Taylor the Medal of Honor during a ceremony in Washington, D.C. 

“I feel like he knows what the Medal of Honor means but he didn’t know what it means to be awarded one and what comes with that… a Boy Scout troop in New Hampshire wants us to come to talk to them… he’s got letters from school children from all over coming into the Mayor of Chattanooga wanting to get to Mr. Taylor,” Holden remarks on Taylor’s experience after receiving the award.

Shortly after Taylor’s ceremony in DC, Chattanooga showed its respect and support for Taylor by honoring him with a parade through downtown. The parade ended at the Medal of Honor Heritage Center, which will soon have a statue depicting his heroic acts in his Cobra Helicopter. 

Dave Hill, one of the soldiers whom Taylor saved, Mike Holden, and the group who put Taylor forward as a Medal of Honor recipient have finally seen their efforts pay off after 55 years.

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