Thanks

Norm:

You're very welcome.

Today on Varney and Co. we found that the Obama budget will give California $1 billion to help defray the cost of keeping illegal aliens in jail. How much you wanna bet about $999 million of that ends up somewhere else?

Man, I had tears forming by the end of that video. The phrase "above and beyond" doesn't even describe that.

"Tango Mike Mike" - and the at the beginning the video maker said it meant "Mexican" - and that made no sense to me - it is the phonetic alphabet used by the military and aviation - "TMM" - by the end of the 6 minutes I knew what it had meant. Not so much "Mexican" but "hero".

I have met a few genuine military heroes in my life and they all have had one thing in common.

It's rare that they talk about their actions. I suspect Sgt. Benevidez was the same way.

I was in the Army a short time in the early 1970s - with Vietnam winding down.

Through a bureaucratic quirk of fate, I was sent to a NATO radar bunker in Germany.

One of my friends was my CO, a Captain named Charles Daly. Since we were on duty 24/7, during the weird hours sometimes we'd talk - and Captain Daly just a few years earlier was a Special Forces Sgt. in Vietnam.

They were on a recon mission, and a battalion of North Vietnamese discovered them.

This small squad literally ran for their lives for 24 hours with the NVA - 100s of them - in hot pursuit.

CPT Daly said that the Army would give them a pill - "speed" - that allowed them to keep going - a picture of him of that time showed him to be very skinny with almost bug eyes.

Imagine running for 24 hours - straight.

There's an equally remarkable man who has the humble job today of being a cashier in a local hardware store by my house.

In talking a bit with Ray turns out he was in a similar unit in Vietnam - a Marine recon unit.

He is mentioned in a book or 2 but to meet this quiet guy - most people would never know of his background.

One similar hero recently died - and I think he was a MOH winner. The battle of Ia Drang - portrayed in the movie We Were Soldiers - this helicopter pilot flew repeatedly into this battle - where the American forces were vastly outnumbered - ferrying supplies and wounded - and dead - out. His actions saved the unit and turned the battle.

One scene I will always remember from this movie - a solder taking buckets of water and washing the blood out off the helicopter floor.

I can't imagine how these heroes summon the inner strength to do these things.

Wow, that puts a lot into perspective. If anyone thinks they are having a bad day, just watch this. This man was superhuman. It's a shanda (shame) that the Social Security Administration wanted to stop his payments. How that was even a consideration should be a criminal offense.

Robert - yet another true hero I forgot to mention in my last post - was LT Lewis Puller, USMC.

He was the son of the legendary Marine, Lewis "Chesty" Puller, one of the most decorated Marines in the Corps' history.

LT Puller stepped on a land mine in Vietnam - in earlier wars he would have died from mortal wounds - but thanks to a quick helicopter evacuation - and to the surprise of the MASH surgeons, he lived, but without his legs and one arm.

His Pulitzer-prize winning autobiography,written 20 years later, Fortunate Son, detailed his struggle in the subsequent years.

It was a story of the triumph of the spirit against a body that was so broken.

But a few years after the book was published, his divorce, addiction to pain pills and alcoholism was too much for him, and he ended his life.

RIP, LT Puller.

Hi Robert,

Tangentially related to this, I am posting this comment from a beer hall in Hanoi, about a quarter of a mile in one direction from Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum (a pickled communist dictator is the best kind) and about a quarter of a mile in another direction from the lake into which John McCain once parachuted. The obvious point here is that however the war ended, capitalism has won the peace. Hanoi is a bustling Asian city, poor but clearly getting richer with considerable speed. It doesn't feel as repressive or polluted as (say) China. The largest foreign investor by far seems to be South Korea. Except of course that the poshest stores I have seen in the city seem to be devoted to selling the products of a certain company from Cupertino in the northern part of your failed state of California....

There is no word in English that I am aware of that describes that level of Heroism. None.

I am utterly speechless.

Military Sealift Command, where I work in Washington, operates a ship named after Roy Benevidez. See this link http://www.msc.navy.mil/inventory/ships.asp?ship=12

I remember reading about him when he was given the Medal; just friggin' amazing.