39 years after jungle battle, unit awarded

UPDATE
Looks like this news site is a bit late on reporting on this. This came out a day after Army Times had announced it was already approved.

Veterans who saved 100 soldiers ask Obama to present citation
Sunday, August 30, 2009
By Torsten Ove, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


Ray Tarr, 59, has a fake eye, a dent in his head, a withered arm and wince-inducing scars on his back, all courtesy of a rocket-propelled grenade that slammed into his tank in Cambodia in 1970.

"We had a saying in Vietnam," he shrugged last week in recollection. "When someone died or something bad happened, we just said, 'It don't mean nothing.' "

But the actions of his unit on March 26, 1970, a few months before he was wounded, did mean something -- resulting in a Presidential Unit Citation issued in March, 39 years after the fact.

Now the veterans of that battle are asking President Obama to present the citation to them personally in the East Room of the White House this fall. It could happen as early as October.

With a First Cavalry infantry company pinned down, outnumbered and out of ammunition, Mr. Tarr's Alpha Troop of the 11th Armored Cavalry rushed to save 100 men.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09242/994034-455.stm

39 years after jungle battle, unit awarded

By Michelle Tan - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Aug 29, 2009 8:17:21 EDT

The news filtered down to Capt. John Poindexter and his troops around noon.

Four kilometers away from their position, an infantry company was surrounded by a battalion’s worth of North Vietnamese fighters. The Americans were running low on ammunition, and casualties were mounting.

Poindexter reached a decision — a decision he and his soldiers knew they had to make.

“The choice, to me, was one of [the] certainty of suffering versus a lifetime of guilt,” he said. “It was a collective realization of what we were getting ourselves into, but the consequence was to see a hundred men killed.”

For the next eight hours, Poindexter and his soldiers would battle the jungle and a determined, dug-in enemy force as they fought their way to their fellow soldiers.

The battle that day, March 26, 1970, was fierce and bloody.

But almost 40 years would pass before Poindexter and his men would be recognized for their courage and valor.
read more here
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/08/army_citation_082909w/