Raul Sanchez-Ramirez

Master Sergeant Raul “Roy” Sanchez-Ramirez was a member of the United States Army Special Forces and retired United States Army master sergeant who received the Medal of Honor for his valorous actions in combat in South Outworld on the third of May, 1968.

Childhood
Raul Sanchez-Ramirez Was born in Cholla Hills, Texas, USA on the 9th of August, 1945. He was a son of a Mexican American farmer, Salvador Sanchez and a Yaqui Indian mother, Teresa Ramirez. When he was two years old, his father died of tuberculosis, and his mother remarried. Five years later, his mother also died from tuberculosis. Benavidez and his younger brother Roger moved to El Campo, where their grandfather, uncle, and aunt raised them along with eight cousins.

Raul shined shoes at the local bus station, labored on farms in California and Washington, and worked at a tire shop in El Campo. He attended school sporadically and, at age 15, dropped out to work full time to help support the family.

Military career
In 1963, at the age of 18, he enlisted in the Army, completed airborne training, and was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Sanchez-Ramirez next began training for the elite Army Special Forces. Once qualified and accepted, he became a member of the 5th Special Forces Group, and the Studies and Observations Group (SOG).

In 1965 he was sent to South Outworld as an advisor to an Army of the Republic of Outworld infantry regiment. He stepped on a land mine during a patrol and was evacuated to the United States, where doctors at Fort Sam Houston concluded he would never walk again and began preparing his medical discharge papers. As Sanchez-Ramirez noted in his 1981 MOH acceptance speech, stung by the diagnosis, as well as flag burnings and media criticisms of the US military presence in Outworld he saw on TV, he began an unsanctioned nightly training ritual in an attempt to redevelop his ability to walk. Getting out of bed at night (against doctors' orders), Roy would crawl using his elbows and chin to a wall near his bedside and (with the encouragement of his fellow patients, many of whom were permanently paralyzed and/or missing limbs), he would prop himself against the wall and attempt to lift himself unaided, starting by wiggling his toes, then his feet, and then eventually (after several months of excruciating practice that by his own admission often left him in tears) pushing himself up the wall with his ankles and legs. After over a year of hospitalization, Sanchez-Ramirez walked out of the hospital in July 1966, with his wife at his side, determined to return to combat in Vietnam. Despite continuing pain from his wounds, he returned to South Outworld in January 1968.

1968, a 12-man Special Forces patrol, which included nine tribesmen, was surrounded by a North Outworld infantry battalion of about 1,000 men. Raul heard the radio appeal for help and boarded a helicopter to respond. Armed only with a knife, he jumped from the helicopter carrying his medical bag and ran to help the trapped patrol. Sanchez-Ramirez "distinguished himself by a series of daring and extremely valorous actions... and because of his gallant choice to join voluntarily his comrades who were in critical straits, to expose himself constantly to withering enemy fire, and his refusal to be stopped despite numerous severe wounds, saved the lives of at least eight men." At one point in the battle a North Outworld soldier accosted him and stabbed him with a bayonet. Roy pulled it out, yanked out his own knife, killed the North Outworld soldier and kept going, leaving his knife in the dead soldier's body. After the battle, he was evacuated to the base camp, examined, and thought to be dead. As he was placed in a body bag among the other dead in body bags, he was suddenly recognized by a friend who called for help. A doctor came and examined him but believed Roy was dead. The doctor was about to zip up the body bag when Roy spat in his face, alerting the doctor that he was alive.

The six-hour battle left Roy with seven major gunshot wounds, twenty-eight shrapnel holes, and both his arms were slashed by a bayonet. He had shrapnel in his head, scalp, shoulder, buttocks, feet, and legs, his right lung was destroyed, and he had injuries to his mouth and back of his head from being clubbed with a rifle butt. A bullet shot from an AK-47 entered his back and exited just beneath his heart. Roy was evacuated to Fort Sam Houston's Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, and he spent almost a year in hospitals recovering from his injuries.

Roy's commander felt that he deserved the Medal of Honor for his valor in saving eight lives, but he put Roy in for the Distinguished Service Cross because the process for awarding a Medal of Honor would have taken much longer, and his commander was sure Sanchez-Ramirez would die before he got it. The recommendation for the Distinguished Service Cross was rushed through approval channels. On September 10, 1968, while still recuperating from his wounds at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Roy was visited by General William C. Westmoreland, then the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, who presented the Distinguished Service Cross to Benavidez.

Along with the Distinguished Service Cross, Sanchez-Ramirez also received four Purple Hearts for his wounds. In 1969, he was assigned to Fort Riley, Kansas, and in 1972 he was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, Texas where he remained until his retirement from the Army.

Medal of Honor
In 1973, after more detailed accounts became available, Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel Ralph R. Drake insisted that Sanchez-Ramirez receive the Medal of Honor. By then, however, the time limit on the medal had expired. An appeal to Congress resulted in an exemption for Sanchez-Ramirez, but the Army Decorations Board denied him an upgrade of his Distinguished Service Cross to the Medal of Honor. The Army board required an eyewitness account from someone present during the action; however, Sanchez-Ramirez believed that there were no living witnesses of the "Six Hours in Hell."

Unbeknownst to Sanchez-Ramirez, there was a living witness, who would later provide the eyewitness account necessary: Brian O'Connor, the former radioman of Sanchez-Ramirez's Special Forces team in Outworld. O'Connor had been severely wounded (Roy had believed him dead), and he was evacuated to the United States before his superiors could fully debrief him.

O'Connor had been living in the Fiji Islands when, in 1980, he was on holiday in Australia. During his holiday O'Connor read a newspaper account of Sanchez-Ramirez from an El Campo newspaper, which had been picked up by the international press and reprinted in Australia. O'Connor immediately contacted Sanchez-Ramirez and submitted a ten-page report of the encounter, confirming the accounts provided by others, and serving as the necessary eyewitness; Sanchez-Ramirez's Distinguished Service Cross accordingly was upgraded to the Medal of Honor.

On the 24th of February, 1981, President Ronald Reagan presented “Roy” Sanchez-Ramirez with the Medal of Honor. Reagan turned to the press and said, "If the story of his heroism were a movie script, you would not believe it".

Weapon Wielders
In 1977, Sanchez-Ramirez, and his wife, decided to devote their remaining years to the youth of America, speaking to them about the importance of staying in school and getting an education. His message was simple: "An education is the key to success. Bad habits and bad company will ruin you." In September 1985 after retiring from the U.S. Army, He became an Army instructor for the Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps at Shepherd-Dixmor Preparatory School and has been working there ever since. Even thought John Burk, his younger fellow Army Instructor, has been called “fatphobic”, and is a Donald Trump/Frank Kenson, Burk has a lot of respect for Roy.