A Vietnam War veteran who now lives in Fairfax County was awarded the Medal of Honor at the White House today (Friday) — a recognition that supporters believe is nearly six decades overdue.
Retired Army Col. Paris Davis learned last month that he would receive the U.S. military’s highest honor for his actions in a battle against North Vietnamese forces on June 17-18, 1965, when he led an assault and saved multiple fellow soldiers despite being wounded.
The call from President Joe Biden on Feb. 13 “prompted a wave of memories of the men and women I served with in Vietnam,” Davis said in a statement.
“I am so very grateful for my family and friends within the military and elsewhere who kept alive the story of A-team, A-321 at Camp Bong Son,” he said. “I think often of those fateful 19 hours on June 18, 1965 and what our team did to make sure we left no man behind on that battlefield.”
Recounting Davis’s heroic acts, the U.S. Army says his tactical leadership of American Special Forces and an inexperienced South Vietnamese company allowed them to surprise a large North Vietnamese force near Bong Son.
At the time, Davis was a detachment commander in the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces — one of the first Black officers to lead a Special Forces team in combat.
In Bình Định province, Davis and his men were tasked with training a force of local volunteers. On June 18, 1965, he commanded a team of inexperienced South Vietnamese, along with Special Forces Soldiers, against a superior enemy force.
Over the course of two days, Davis selflessly led a charge to neutralize enemy emplacements, called for precision artillery fire, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy, and prevented the capture of three American soldiers (Robert Brown, John Reinberg, and Billy Waugh) while saving their lives with a medical extraction.
Davis sustained multiple gunshot and grenade fragment wounds during the 19-hour battle and refused to leave the battlefield until his men were safely removed.
For that battle and other actions during his two tours in Vietnam, including one incident where he rescued a soldier stuck in an overturned, burning fuel truck, Davis has also received the Silver Star, the Soldier’s Medal for heroism, a Purple Heart and other military honors.
The Medal of Honor, however, took longer to arrive. Though Davis’s commanding officer nominated him for the award immediately after the battle of Bong Son, the paperwork allegedly got lost not once, but twice.
After a one-week drop back into “substantial” territory, Fairfax County is once again seeing high levels of COVID-19 transmission.
For the week of Sept. 5-11, the county saw 111 new cases per 100,000 residents, and 4.1% of tests came back positive for COVID-19 — the two metrics used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Virginia Department of Health to measure the level of community spread.
While the testing positivity rate remains low, the number of cases per 100,000 people has climbed over the 100-case threshold for high transmission.
The rise stems in part from the addition of 286 cases on Friday (Sept. 10), the most new infections that the county has seen in one day since 397 new cases were reported on Feb. 13, according to VDH data. Feb. 21 came close with 283 cases.
As a result, Fairfax County is now averaging 184.4 new cases per day for the past week, surpassing the summer high of 182.6 cases on Aug. 30. The seven-day average is still below the spring peak of 194.4 cases recorded on April 13.
With 130 more cases coming in today (Monday), 86,347 residents of the Fairfax Health District — which includes the cities of Fairfax and Falls Church — have contracted the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. 4,250 people have been hospitalized, and 1,170 people have died, according to the Fairfax County Health Department’s dashboard.
As the particularly contagious Delta variant keeps driving up COVID-19 cases statewide, the VDH announced last Tuesday (Sept. 7) that it has added more than 170 community testing events across the Commonwealth in response to an increase in people seeking to get tested.
That increase extends to the Fairfax Health District, which received more test results in the week of Aug. 29 than any other week since Jan. 24. Testing declined the following week of Sept. 5 leading into Labor Day weekend. Read More
