Vietnam veteran to be awarded his long-awaited
Bronze Star
Fox 41 News, WDRB, Louisville
July 11, 2006
A group of veterans is meeting for its annual reunion this week in Louisville. This reunion is made up of soldiers and former soldiers in the 1st Cavalry Division. For some of them, it's special because it will honor someone many thought had died in Vietnam.
It has been more than thirty years since
members of the 2nd Battalion, 12th Cavalry Recon team returned from Vietnam.
But the men won't forget what happened there in their lifetime. One vet, Leo
Lipsie, tells Fox 41's Stephan Johnson, "I don't know that you ever get over
screams of the wounded, if you will, and the eyes of the dying."
That's part of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that Lipsie and many of his
fellow soldiers suffer from. But along with treatment, these reunions help ease
the pain. Lipsie continues, "The reunions are very meaningful to meet to sit
with other people who have been the same place you have been."
And this years reunion is even more
meaningful. Michael Mitchell ("Mick" to his fellow vets) tells Fox 41's Stephan
Johnson, "I took a piece of shrapnel, it went in below my right ear and into my
skull." Mitchell was wounded during an enemy attack in 1968. "The next thing I
remember was Tex picking me up, setting me in front of a tree, and getting my
M-16 back." Tex told Mick to "keep shooting." And that's just what he did --
holding off the enemy and allowing all of the injured to be evacuated.
Mitchell says, "I didn't see anything else moving, and I assumed everybody was
dead." He was medevaced to a hospital with serious injuries. For thirty years
his fellow soldiers also thought he was dead -- until recently. As Lipsie
explains, "It was a shocker. I received an e-mail from one of Mick's relatives
saying basically that he needed some support."
After the two men talked, they tracked down
other members of their unit and started attending reunions. This year they
submitted Mick's name to the military so he could receive a Bronze Star medal
for his actions in Vietnam. Mitchell says, "It was something that I tried to
forget about all these years...and then here it comes back. But it's great to
be with the guys again."
He will receive the Bronze Star Wednesday night