Profiles in Courage: Sgt. Danny Hernandez
In 2009, Gen. John Kelly drove from California's Camp Pendleton to Los Angeles to present Sgt. Danny Hernandez with a Silver Star. It wasn't for actions during the then-ongoing wars in Afghanistan or Iraq; it was for heroism on a battlefield in South Vietnam – 43 years earlier.
Hernandez was 20 years old when he hopped out of a helicopter during Operation Utah in South Vietnam's Quảng Ngãi province. He and the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines were reinforcing the 2/7 Marines and South Vietnam's 1st Airborne Battalion, who saw heavy resistance from the start.
It was supposed to be a simple operation to push the North Vietnamese out of the province, but the Americans quickly found they were outnumbered by thousands and were facing a complex tunnel system. The tunnels and spider holes surrounding the Marines' objective, Hill 50, would nearly spell disaster for the Americans if not for the valor of Danny Hernandez.
The Marines spent the night of March 4, 1966, under heavy fire from the NVA, but the next morning, they regrouped and were ready to attack. Hernandez was a machine gunner with Mike Company, who began moving through a rice paddy toward Hill 50 on March 5. Mike Company found itself in an ambush, and the Marines were disbursed as they took cover.
When he found a safe spot to get a picture of the battlefield, Hernandez immediately noticed an American machine gun dueling with an NVA machine gun. In the middle of an open field, in no man's land between the two guns, was a wounded Marine, with blood pooling around his body. He was bait for the enemy, and there was nothing the Marines on the machine gun could do for him.
But Danny Hernandez saw an opportunity from his vantage point. He had adequate cover to approach the wounded man, and when the Marine gunner saw Hernandez was moving to the rescue, he laid down a withering cover fire. Without thinking, Hernandez ran to the wounded. However, by the time he got there, the enemy opened up on the two in the open field. Hernandez shielded the wounded with his own body, taking a hit to the back that "felt like a sledgehammer."
When the NVA machine gun finally stopped, Hernandez dragged his fellow Marine to safety. He then followed his wounded comrade to a medevac zone. When he got there, Hernandez saw guys from his Company that were wounded and dying. Suddenly filled with anger, he refused to be evacuated, picked up a rifle, and went back to the fight.
The fighting was perilously close, and he found himself in a foxhole. By sheer luck, it was occupied by his "A" gunner and his machine gun. Hernandez took up his machine gun, replenished with ammo, as the Marines moved to assault a spider hole. As he moved, Hernandez noticed the NVA was moving too – toward the undefended medevac zone.
By the time he noticed the wounded were about to be slaughtered, the other Marines were too far away to hear his calls. Hernandez jumped out of a ditch, through a treeline, and placed himself between the wounded and incoming NVA soldiers. As the enemy opened up on him, one NVA soldier charged. Hernandez killed the charging soldier amid a hail of bullets, then turned on the main force.
The NVA retreated from Hernandez and his machine gun into a cave-like tunnel as Hernandez poured fire into the mouth of the tunnel and ran in after them. He made it ten feet before the tunnel collapsed in front of him. The enemy had escaped, but the wounded would survive. Danny Hernandez walked out of the tunnel and collapsed from his wound and exhaustion. He recovered in a hospital in Guam.
His Commander, Marine Corps Lt. Jim Lupori, put Hernandez in for a Silver Star but transferred to a new unit. It wasn't until the two men met up again in 2005 that Lupori learned Hernandez never received the medal. Lipori spent the next three years gathering evidence to get Hernandez his much-deserved medal that Gen. John Kelly would present to him in 2009.
The evidence Lupori collected led many to believe the Silver Star wasn't enough for Danny Hernandez's actions that day in South Vietnam. His supporters have started a movement to get his medal upgraded to the Medal of Honor. They formed the Committee to Upgrade Sgt. Danny Hernandez to continue the effort to get him an upgrade.
Read about Hernandez's Silver Star story and his experience in Operation Utah in his book, "Silver Star: An American Story."