By Lasca Randels
InkFreeNews

WARSAW— Indiana’s only living Medal of Honor recipient, Ret. Sgt. 1st Class Sammy Davis, shared his story with students and staff at Warsaw Community High School Thursday, Oct 8.

Davis was born in Ohio in 1946. His family moved to Indiana following Davis’ junior year of high school.

In 1965, Davis and four friends enlisted in the Army together. The five young men intended to enlist in the Marines, Davis said; however, the line for the Marines was long and moving slowly, and Davis and his friends needed to get back home to report to their jobs. Eventually, they made the decision to move over to the Army line, which was shorter. 

Davis’ father had been an artilleryman in World War II, and Davis volunteered to do the same. Upon completion of training, Davis requested to be sent to Vietnam.

“Our job was to provide close and continuous support to the infantry — that’s the artilleryman’s job,” Davis said. “So we would sometimes have to fire almost continuously for eight or 10 hours. As long as the enemy was attacking our infantrymen, you had to do your job.”

Davis described his sergeant, James Gant from Lansing, Mich., as “the meanest sergeant I ever seen in my life and he would make us take each bullet out of our clip every night before it got dark and polish it.”

In March 1967, Davis was sent to South Vietnam and assigned to Battery C, 2nd Battalion, 4th Artillery Regiment, 9th Infantry Division. 

On Nov. 18, 1967, Davis’ unit was airlifted to an area west of Cai Lay, Republic of Vietnam. American infantrymen were already heavily engaged in the area when Davis and his fellow gunners arrived.

“One of our helicopters came in and set down and one of our majors got out and said, ‘Your probability of getting hit tonight is 100 percent so prepare yourselves,’” Davis said.

“At 2 a.m. exactly, we heard mortars sliding down the tube, which is a very distinctive sound — and to hear them sliding down the tube, you’ve got to be pretty close,” he said. 

Davis turned to one of his comrades and asked, “When did we move in mortars?” to which the comrade replied, “We didn’t.”

“The mortars were just raining down and at 2:30 a.m. exactly, the mortars quit. It was this eerie, eerie quiet,” Davis recalled. “We looked at each other and we heard whistles being blown, like a coach has, and orders being shouted in English. And basically what they were saying was ‘Go kill the GI.’”

Davis’ unit fell under heavy machine-gun fire and mortar attack by Viet Cong battalions, which swarmed the area.

Davis and Sergeant Gant were both injured by the same blast from enemy fire. Although Davis was wounded, he manned a machine gun. 

“There was 150-200 enemies right there. I picked up my M16. I had 12 clips – that’s roughly 180 rounds and I started doing my job as a soldier,” Davis said. “It was like living in a dream. No matter what I did, it’s like I wasn’t doing nothing to them. They just kept coming. I fired the last rounds and I didn’t think I was probably gonna see daylight, but I wasn’t gonna quit cause I thought if I don’t do my job, those guys behind me ain’t got a chance, so I thought well, I’ll see if I can get off one round from the howitzer.”

Once he found all the components and loaded the piece, he fired. Davis said he figured since he was still alive, maybe he could get off one more round. 

“I ‘one more rounded it’ until I heard someone across the river shouting ‘Don’t shoot, I’m a GI!’” Davis said. It was one of his comrades.

“By this time my body was in real feeble condition and I knew I couldn’t just run down there and swim across the river,” Davis said. 

He found an air mattress, crawled down to the river and paddled across. Once he got to the foxhole in the area where his colleague had been standing, he found not one but three American soldiers.

“Well, I knew I didn’t have the strength to make three trips. It had taken me about 45 minutes to make that trip over to that point,” Davis said. “I was just getting so tired. So I asked the man above to give me the strength to carry all three of my brothers.”

Davis made two agonizing trips across the river, bringing his companions to safety. 

During this time, Davis came across his wounded sergeant. 

“About half his body was in the water and he had a big hole in his chest and he couldn’t talk, but he picked his hand up and I thought ‘My sergeant wants me to hold his hand’ so I kind of crawled up and I grabbed ahold — and I still was hoping he was gonna tell me what to do next,” Davis said. “And I grabbed ahold of his hand and I looked down in his eyes — the lightbulb that comes on in your head that your daddy always told you about? The lightbulb came on.”

Davis said at that moment he understood the reasoning for the sergeant’s orders, like polishing bullets each night.

“Sergeant Gant shared with us the things that he knew was gonna help us survive, and when I looked down in his eyes, I knew that he didn’t hate me – that he loved me,” Davis said. 

There were 12 members of the unit remaining out of 42. 

“I didn’t do anything heroic. I did my job. That’s what soldiers do,” Davis insisted. “If anyone of us had not done their job, there would be none of us alive.”

When asked to identify one trait that most successful leaders share, Davis replied, “The knowledge that you don’t lose until you quit trying. No matter what you’re faced with in life, you do not lose until you quit trying. I carried that with me.”

“I couldn’t leave my brothers there because I knew what the enemy was going to do to them, so I had to carry them all,” Davis said. “I asked the one above to give me the strength.”

Davis was promoted to sergeant and presented with the Medal of Honor by President Lyndon B. Johnson. 

Footage of Davis’ Medal of Honor award ceremony was used in the 1994 Tom Hanks movie, “Forrest Gump.” Hanks’ head was superimposed over Davis’. 

In 1984, Davis retired due to injuries sustained in war. 

Davis was accompanied to the Warsaw High School presentation by his wife, Dixie. Both Davis and his wife are published authors. 

Warsaw Community Schools Superintendent Dr. David Hoffert, who described Davis as “a true American hero,” said the WCHS JROTC program was responsible for bringing Davis to the school.

“They had made connections with Mr. Davis and they saw it as something they wanted to be able to provide their students. Mr. Akers started working with them and we saw what an excellent opportunity it was for all our students,” Dr. Hoffert said. “We pride ourselves here at Warsaw Community Schools on bringing in some big-name speakers over the years, especially ones that have historical content, life lessons for our students.”

“We knew that because of social distancing we wouldn’t be able to have all of our students here live, so instead we had our junior ROTC students and we also invited a number of students from the ROTC program at Notre Dame,” Dr. Hoffert said. “We were able to have them here, but we were also able to livestream this into all the classrooms so that all of our students here at Warsaw High School were able to experience and learn from Mr. Davis’ story.”

Dr. Hoffert expressed gratitude to the local VFW post for helping to fund the presentation.