CSM Bennie Adkins – RIP

[rangerrebew]

CSM Bennie Adkins – RIP

April 17, 2020 SOF News Vietnam 0
 

Command Sergeant Major (Ret.) Bennie Adkins died on Friday, April 17, 2020 after being hospitalized with coronavirus. He was a career Special Forces NCO who served in the Vietnam conflict. He was also a Medal of Honor recipient.

Adkins passed away after a weeks-long hospitalization with COVID-19. He was 86 years old at the time of his death. He died in the intensive care unit at the East Alabama Medical Center.

He had received the Medal of Honor in a ceremony at the White House in 2014. The award was for his actions in Vietnam in March 1966. His Medal of Honor citation says that he sustained 18 different wounds in the four-day battle and had killed an estimated 100 plus of the enemy.

https://sof.news/vietnam/bennie-adkins/

[sneakypete]

I recognize the face and smile in that photo,but had no clue about his Ashau Valley fight,and I am fairly certain I met and knew him after it,unless he was on one of the TDY teams from the 1st on Okinawa.

I had no idea he had a DSC,either. Everybody talks about the  MoH,but the DSC is an industrial-strength hero award,also. Seems to me everybody that gets one gets it because they were put in for a MoH,and the MoH citation was denied.

What little memory I have of him was that he was a happy,smiling guy that loved what he was doing,and was good at it.