GREAT NEWS! William Pitsenbarger was born on July 8, 1944 in Piqua, Ohio.
This allowed the rescue team to recover 4-5 wounded men with each in and out trip of the helicopters. Of the December Medal of Honor ceremony, Bob Ford said, ‘It was a very sad thing, but a happy sad.’. In the quiet dignity of the halls of the Pentagon, the senior Pitsenbarger remembered how proud he had been of his son. You didn’t dare walk into the back room because he’d hide behind boxes and jump out and scare you to death. An Air Force rescue helicopter came over and lowered a ladder. We knew [Pitsenbarger%E2%80%99s] father was hurt that he didn’t get the medal,’ said Cheryl Buecker. An Army general recommended that the award be downgraded to the Air Force Cross, apparently because at the time there was not enough documentation of Pitsenbarger's actions. ‘There were lots of war movies then, and we played soldier in the streets and alleys all the time.
But he wasn’t big-headed about it. Instead of climbing into the litter basket so he could leave with the helicopter, Pitsenbarger elected to remain with the Army troops under enemy attack and he gave a "wave-off" to the helicopter which flew away to safety. He was one of the few calm visions of hope that moved among the damned. On April 11, 1966, the 21-year-old, known as "Pits" to his friends, was killed while defending some of his wounded comrades. He was the first enlisted recipient of the Air Force Cross medal, receiving the award in 1966.
", Martin asked, "If you could meet him today, what would you say to him? At long last, after 34 years, the young PJ would indeed receive the Medal of Honor. Meanwhile, Alpha and Bravo Companies poised themselves for a rescue attempt at daylight. While patching up his broken body he noticed the location of an enemy machinegun that had been inflicting heavy casualties on his unit. He was talking about Airman 1st Class William H. Pitsenbarger, an Air Force pararescue and medical specialist from Piqua, Ohio, who had voluntarily left the relative safety of a helicopter to descend into a brutal jungle battle to treat and evacuate wounded soldiers in 1966. When a wounded man had been properly strapped inside the litter, he could then be winched up into the Huskie where Pararescue medics like William Pitsenbarger waited to administer lifesaving first aid during the flight to a field hospital. Alpha, Bravo and Charlie Companies of the First Infantry's 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry (2/16th) were seeking elements of a 400-man Viet Cong battalion. Please enter your email address and we will send you an email with a reset password code.
Quickly see who the memorial is for and when they lived and died and where they are buried. Airman Pitsenbarger arrived in Vietnam on August 8th and was assigned to Detachment 6, 38th Air Rescue and Recovery Squadron at Bien Hoa Air Base. As the survivors hacked through the jungle vegetation, they did not realize they were only yards from their primary objective...the command post of the Viet Cong Battalion Operation Abilene sought to find and destroy.
The article was written by Lacy Dean McCrary and originally published in the June 2002 issue of Vietnam Magazine. But I never heard anything bad about him. Previously sponsored memorials or famous memorials will not have this option. As the fighting continued to escalate, more wounded fell. After six wounded men had been flown to an aid station, the two Air Force helicopters returned for their second load. All had wondered for years why the Medal of Honor had not been awarded to Pitsenbarger. When the others began running low on ammunition, he gathered ammunition from the dead and distributed them to those still alive. Flowers added to the memorial appear on the bottom of the memorial or here on the Flowers tab. "So, the hope was if we were gonna do this, we would get it done while his father was still alive.". Buecker and classmate Bob Ford said they had begun talking about the issue 20 years earlier at a class reunion planning meeting. While there, it was the Air Force recruiter who captured the young man's attention. Hall said that Pitsenbarger’s descent into the firefight ‘was the most unselfish and courageous act I ever witnessed. They talked to aides of their congressmen and wrote letters, but did not get very far until 1996. Jim Locker of Sidney, Ohio; Master Sgt.