The Ballad of Roy Benavidez

April 1, 2024
Historian Sturkey (Hattiesburg) offers up an overstuffed cradle to grave account of Vietnam war hero Roy Benavidez (1935–1998), a Mexican American sergeant in the U.S. Army who in 1968 displayed extraordinary courage under fire in Cambodia, saving the lives of eight men and getting severely wounded. He never fully recovered and was medically retired in 1976, but in the 1980s, as the nation’s most recent living Medal of Honor recipient, he was feted as a paragon of military pride. His life became “an endless stream of parades, media appearances, groundbreakings” and in his home state of Texas he was “practically royalty.” Sturkey argues that President Ronald Reagan turned Benavidez into a “political prop,” holding a grand ceremony to award the medal in 1981, even as his administration slashed programs that helped veterans, including stripping Benavidez of his Social Security disability benefits in 1983. Sturkey aims to dig into Benavidez’s position as a bridge between Reagan’s “unapologetic military boosterism” and dismantling of the welfare state, a through line which gets lost in a flow of minutiae that doesn’t bring much biographical clarity (not until late in the book does Sturkey explain that “one could argue that had always been self-promoting.... He doggedly pursued the medal for years, aligning dozens of influential allies”). It’s a murky story of the intersection between politics and heroism.

April 15, 2024
The life and times of a Mexican American Special Forces soldier from the 1950s to the end of the Vietnam War. On the surface, this book appears to be a straightforward biography of Master Sgt. Roy Benavidez (1935-1998), who served in the Army from 1952 to 1968. However, Sturkey, a history professor and author of Hattiesburg, also provides a broader cultural narrative about the Hispanic and Latino experience ("those are the terms Roy himself used most often to describe his racial and ethnic identity") in the war era. Before enlisting in the military, Benavidez physically and figuratively fought his way through school, and he shined shoes and worked in cotton and beet fields to make money. With few options for employment, he signed up for the Army and was eventually sent to South Vietnam. In 1968, three years after he stepped on a landmine and recovered, Benavidez jumped again into the line of fire, saving multiple lives and bringing home the dead. He suffered 37 puncture wounds, lacerated arms, a broken jaw, and exposed intestines, and shrapnel littered his body. For his sacrifices, he received the Distinguished Service Cross, "the second-highest medal for combat valor available." When further information became available about Benavidez's extraordinary sacrifice and remarkable survival story, he was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1981. In the second half of the book, the author writes powerfully about the ardent racism in the military, as well as the problematic bureaucracy that held back Benavidez's honors. Later in his life, Benavidez became a writer (The Three Wars of Roy Benavidez, etc.) and a public speaker and was an advocate for the American military until his death. Sturkey delivers a solid true story about a man who loved his country and all those he protected. A robust account of a true American hero and his ability to overcome many different obstacles.

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