A military veteran senator and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee has sent a letter directly to President Donald Trump, seeking his review for a potential Medal of Honor upgrade for a Green Beret Vietnam War hero.
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, sent the letter Tuesday asking that Trump “personally intervene to upgrade” the Silver Star awarded to Capt. William Albracht and give him the nation’s highest honor for valor.
White House staff did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Albracht was a 21-year-old Special Forces captain in 1969 when he was sent to Firebase Kate, an isolated outpost near the South Vietnam border with Cambodia. Intelligence noted some enemy activity in the area but the 27 Army artillerymen and 156 Montagnard militia troops patrolling the area had seen little action in the preceding weeks.
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What they couldn’t know until attacked by barrages of mortar, artillery and small-arms fire shortly after Albracht arrived was that crack North Vietnamese Army troops filled the jungles, outnumbering them 40 to 1.
Albracht made soldiers fortify the base upon arrival and coordinated four long days and endless nights of supporting fire to keep the enemy at bay. Ultimately, after main guns were destroyed and they sustained casualties, the men had to abandon the firebase. And they had to do it on foot.
Even then, Albracht led the way. He managed to get all but one of the men out through a daring night foot march, snaking dense jungle paths and bypassing the enemy that soon overwhelmed the lonely hilltop they’d guarded.
Communications cut off, Albracht exposed himself in the open to link up with friendly Army units that escorted them to safety.
But, as Ernst noted in her Dec. 15 letter, “The Army did not recognize Captain Albracht’s actions until more than forty years later and awarded him the Silver Star in 2012.”
Ernst requested the Army review that decision in 2017, seeing that Albracht’s actions likely merited a higher honor. The Army Review Board Agency unanimously concluded that the Silver Star wasn’t sufficient, but senior leaders declined to upgrade the award.
In her letter, Ernst notes that in 2014, President Barack Obama granted the Medal of Honor to another Vietnam veteran, Sgt. 1st Class Bennie Adkins for similar actions — a multiday battle against numerically superior forces, led by a Special Forces soldier who saved soldiers by putting himself at risk to evacuate wounded and help survivors of the attack escape.
Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.
