Biden Criticized for Lack of Decorum

Joe Biden was criticized for abruptly departing a Medal of Honor ceremony, leaving a celebrated, 81-year-old Vietnam War hero standing awkwardly alone on a White House stage.

Biden hastened from the East Room after awarding the U.S.’s highest military honor to retired U.S. Army Captain and UH-1/AH-1 pilot Larry Taylor, who flew over two-thousand combat missions in both the iconic Huey utility and Cobra attack helicopter platforms.

Captain Taylor shed a well-earned tear as the medal was affixed to his lapel, then looked on stoically as Biden made for the door before the reading of a closing benediction.

Biden’s absentia notwithstanding, Captain Taylor was awarded the Medal of Honor in recognition of the remarkable bravery and composure he demonstrated on the night of 18 June 1968, during which then First Lieutenant Larry L. Taylor led a helicopter rescue mission to extract a four-man U.S. Army long-range reconnaissance team pinned down in a rice field by enemy forces.

Among the men rescued that June night was David Hill, who characterized Taylor’s actions as “what we now call thinking outside the box.”

Hill and his three teammates were tracking the movements of enemy troops in a village on the banks of the Saigon River when they were discovered by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong combatants.

An intense firefight ensued, and the U.S. soldiers quickly depleted their limited ammunition stores. Acutely aware of their disadvantage, the team radioed for help.

Taylor and a wingman were promptly dispatched to the scene. Firing up their AH-1 Cobras—machines eminently emblematic of the  Vietnam War—the pair flew at maximum speed, arriving in short-order at the imperiled team’s coordinates northeast of Ho Chi Minh City (née Saigon).

Immediately, Taylor perceived the rescue effort would be hampered by restricted visibility.

“It's difficult to support you because I can't see you and I can't see the bad guys” the Medal of Honor recipient recalled transmitting over his ship’s radio. “I'm afraid if I start throwing some rockets out here, I'm going to kill one of you all.”

Taylor directed the trapped patrol team to send up flares to designate their exact whereabouts.

Sighting the flares, Taylor and his wingman commenced firing their miniguns and aerial rockets into the surrounding jungle, hoping to eliminate or dissuade as many enemy troops as possible. For nearly thirty-minutes, the two helicopters made multiple low-level attack runs, all the while braving concentrated ground fire. Nearly 16,000 minigun rounds were expended, as was the entirety of the two Cobras’ stores of rockets.

At once low on fuel and ammunition and contending with an as-of-yet undeterred enemy, Taylor surveyed the patrol team’s intended escape route to the river and concluded the men would be overrun.

Mustering his gift for improvisation, Taylor directed his wingman to fire what rounds remained in his minigun’s magazine along the escapee’s eastern flank, then head back to base while Taylor fired his remaining rounds along the team’s western flank.

Moreover, Taylor—attempting to buy time for the patrol team to divert to an alternate extraction point—used his helicopter’s landing lights to blind and disorient the enemy.

As the team arrived at the extraction point, Taylor landed under heavy enemy fire and at great personal risk. Motivated by war’s exigencies, the four team-members rushed to the helicopter and clung resolutely to its exterior as Taylor rolled on the collective and whisked them beyond the range of chattering communist SKS, Type 56 and MAT-49s small arms.  

All told, Taylor estimates he was on the ground for ten-seconds. “I finally just flew up behind them and sat down on the ground,” he set forth in an interview. “They turned around and jumped on the aircraft. A couple were sitting on the skids. One was sitting on the rocket pods, and I don't know where the other one was, but they beat on the side of the ship twice, which meant haul ass. And we did!'

Taylor’s feat of airmanship and bravery had not previously been attempted; so stated the U.S. Army.

Downplaying the service’s assertions of his heroism, Taylor contended: “I was doing my job. I knew that if I did not go down and get them, they would not make it.”

The aforementioned Mr. David Hill put his and his team’s odds of having survived the June 1968 engagement without Taylor’s intervention as “absolutely zero.”

Hill said of his rescuer: “His innovation was well beyond the call, as was his courage. And that's the short of it, folks.

“Hell, we were dead,” Hill continued. “The fortunes of war had turned against us that night. … We were in a Custer-like situation. We were finally able to make a breakout because he [Taylor] directed us to the very weakest portion of the enemy envelopment.”

Of Vietnam-Era helicopter combat, Taylor reflected: “There's nothing in the book that says how to do that and I think about ninety-percent of flying a helicopter in Vietnam was making it up as you go along. Nobody could criticize you cause they couldn't do any better than you did and they didn't know what you were doing anyway.”

During a year-long deployment, Taylor flew hundreds of combat missions in both the UH-1 and AH-1 helicopter models. He came under enemy fire at least 340 times—five of which saw him and his machine forced down. Taylor received scores of combat decorations, including a Silver Star, which recognizes valor in combat; a Bronze Star, which recognizes heroic or meritorious achievement or service in a combat zone; and two Distinguished Flying Crosses, which are awarded to individuals who distinguish themselves by single in-flight acts of heroism or extraordinary achievement.

“We never lost a man,” Taylor remarked. “You just do whatever is expedient and do whatever to save the lives of the people you're trying to rescue.”

Taylor left Vietnam in August 1968, two months after the described rescue effort. In August 1970, having attained the rank of captain, he was released from active duty service; an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army Reserve followed in October 1973. In civilian life, Taylor ran a Chattanooga, Tennessee-based roofing and sheet-metal company. A native of the Volunteer State’s St. Elmo community, Taylor and his wife, Toni, currently reside in the southeastern Tennessee town of Signal Mountain.

FMI: www.vietnam.ttu.edu/exhibits/helicopter