U.S. unit honored for heroism in Vietnam

Wednesday, October 21, 2009
By Lynsi Burton
HEARST NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON — For Houston businessman John Poindexter, Tuesday's solemn ceremony in the sunny White House Rose Garden was the culmination of a six-year bureaucratic battle on behalf of about 100 valiant Vietnam War comrades.

Poindexter's Alpha Troop of the 11th Armored Calvary was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation — the highest military honor a U.S. military unit can receive — by President Barack Obama for a March 1970 battle in which the unit saved another hundred American soldiers from certain death.

It was a battle ignored for nearly 40 years — dubbed "the anonymous battle" — that Poindexter, the Alpha Troop's former commander, said was a wrong that he was morally obligated to make right.

Poindexter's mission began in 2003, when he read the book "Into Cambodia" and realized that only 20 of his 150 men had received the medals for their valor that he had earlier requested.
"I knew instantaneously ... that chapter was not closed, and it was necessary for me to fulfill my obligation to those men," Poindexter said.

In addition to managing his manufacturing company and West Texas luxury resort, Poindexter tracked down as many of his troops as possible and gathered their recollections. His application for the unit citation, filed in 2004, was 6 inches thick.

But the military bureaucracy took five years to act. The citation was delivered in April to the 11th Armored Cavalry, based in Fort Irwin, Calif.

"You would think I would be jumping for joy, but I wasn't," Poindexter said. "I was relieved that our country was going to do the right and just thing."

Houston lawyer Will Dickey said he was marching in the streets against the Vietnam War when his stepbrother, Robert "Robin" Henderson, was fighting in the dense jungle with the Alpha Troop. But he was at the big reunion dinner Monday night in Alexandria, Va., in honor of the man he grew up with in Oklahoma City.

Henderson was wounded in the March 1970 battle and was killed the following June.
"This has been such a gift for the family, because Robin did not even tell us about the battle," Dickey said.

Some men caught up for the first time since the war, recounting their efforts to save the 100 infantrymen of Charlie Company who were surrounded and outnumbered by a deeply entrenched North Vietnamese force.

"All of us feel that we are participating in this award ceremony standing in stead of all Vietnam War veterans," Poindexter said.