Navy Upgrades Silver Star to Navy Cross for Vietnam Veteran

Navy awards Vietnam veteran with highest honor thanks to secret recording
WADB 9 News
By Rick Portier
Updated: Oct 12, 2015

"Ken picked those two Marines up," said Donovan. "One by the web belt in his left hand, and he had the other Marine over his shoulder. And he was struggling to get back."

That's the way it was recorded by both the U.S. Navy and the Marine Corps for nearly 50 years. For his bravery, Altazan was awarded the Silver Star in 1970.

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB)
The Silver Star is the third-highest honor the Pentagon can bestow on a Marine, just below the Navy Cross and the Medal of Honor. A mysterious letter and a secret recording of a medical evacuation mission in A Shau Valley, Vietnam almost 50 years ago has the Navy reconsidering a local veteran's medal.

The recording, which was made by a fighter pilot circling high above the firefight outside the village of Me Hiep, tracks the radio conversations between medevac helicopters, fire support aircraft, and ground troops calling for evacuation from the area on May 9, 1969. Marines on the battlefield were severely outnumbered by the Viet Cong. The job of getting them out fell to helicopter pilot Major Pat Donovan and his crew chief Sgt. Ken Altazan in a mission that became 5-Mike.

"The Marines were mixed up with the enemy. They're all in the same area. We can't come in and the Hueys cannot provide air cover. What are we gonna do, and we decided to go we're going in," said Donovan.

"When we landed, we took no fire. It seemed like everything was gonna go," remembered Altazan, who was halfway through his second tour. It was his job as crew chief to help co-ordinate the rescue, which was no easy feat with a dozen injured Marines scattered across nearly three acres of rice paddys.

"The bad guys knew they were there, and they were being shot at," Altazan said. "Quite a few were hit coming to the aircraft."

A couple of weeks ago, 48 years after he completed Mission 5-Mike, Altazan received a phone call from a major at the Pentagon. "He said 'I assume you got our letter by now.' I said, 'No sir, I hadn't gotten a letter.'" That's when Altazan learned his Silver Star would be upgraded to the Navy Cross.
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