BENTONVILLE (KFSM) - There are 79 living recipients of the Medal of Honor, the military's highest award, and six of them were in Bentonville visiting with Walmart employees on Thursday (May 14).
One of them was retired Lt. Col. Bruce Crandall. Crandall served as an Army helicopter pilot in Vietnam, and was famously depicted by Greg Kinnear in the Mel Gibson movie "We Were Soldiers."
"The fifth lift in I had six people shot off my aircraft, I had three killed and three wounded, my crew chief was hit in the throat, and all I could think of was 'what the hell is going on and how do I solve the problem'," Crandall said.
He said, against orders to abort the mission, he and his co-pilot kept going back for the wounded. He said they flew more than 14 hours that day in November of 1965. He and his co-pilot are credited with saving 71 lives.
"I couldn't leave those people on the ground, you wouldn't, you'd have done exactly what I did," Crandall said.
Retired Army specialist Ty Carter was also awarded the Medal of Honor, and spoke at the Q & A session Thursday.
In 2009 in Afghanistan, he and his men were surrounded by 300 enemy soldiers. Armed with only an M-4, he went out ahead of his comrades and defended their position from getting overrun.
Carter described to 5NEWS how it felt when President Barack Obama put the medal around his neck.
"Nervous, concerned, kind of proud but mainly I was worried that I wouldn't be able to give it the respect that it deserves, I was worried I wouldn't be able to represent the eight families that lost soldiers that day," Carter said.
Brian Thacker, Bennie Adkins, Robert Patterson, and William Swenson are also Medal of Honor recipients and spoke at the event. All are retired from the Army except Swenson, who is still active-duty.
The Medal of Honor recipients will be visiting several local schools on Friday (May 15) to speak with students:
- Bennie Adkins and William Swenson will be at Bentonville High School from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m.
- Hiroshi Miyamura and Bruce Crandall will be at Lincoln Junior High in Bentonville from 1 to 2 p.m.
- Ty Carter will be at Washington Junior High in Bentonville from 1 to 2 p.m.
- Robert Patterson will be at Fulbright Junior High in Bentonville from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m.
- Brian Thacker will be at Oakdale Middle School in Rogers from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m.