Whipped Cream Difficulties

Specialist Fifth Class Clarence Sasser (United States Army – ret.) passed away on May 13th at the age of 76.

Sp5c. Sasser received the Medal of Honor for actions as a medic on January 10, 1968. From his citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Sp5c. Sasser distinguished himself while assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 3d Battalion. He was serving as a medical aidman with Company A, 3d Battalion, on a reconnaissance-in-force operation. His company was making an air assault when suddenly it was taken under heavy small-arms, recoilless-rifle, machine-gun, and rocket fire from well-fortified enemy positions on three sides of the landing zone. During the first few minutes, over 30 casualties were sustained. Without hesitation, Sp5c. Sasser ran across an open rice paddy through a hail of fire to assist the wounded. After helping one man to safety, he was painfully wounded in the left shoulder by fragments of an exploding rocket. Refusing medical attention, he ran through a barrage of rocket and automatic-weapons fire to aid casualties of the initial attack and, after giving them urgently needed treatment, continued to search for other wounded. Despite two additional wounds immobilizing his legs, he dragged himself through the mud toward another soldier 100 meters away. Although in agonizing pain and faint from loss of blood, Sp5c. Sasser reached the man, treated him, and proceeded on to encourage another group of soldiers to crawl 200 meters to relative safety. There he attended their wounds for five hours until they were evacuated. Sp5c. Sasser’s extraordinary heroism is in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the U.S. Army.

From the NYT:

As they arrived at a rice paddy, one helicopter was shot down. Mr. Sasser was “dumped,” he said, into the mud. Instantly he felt a bullet rip through his leg. Dozens of American soldiers were killed in minutes. As the injuries piled up, the company was left with only one of its four medics — Mr. Sasser.
A cry went out among his brothers in arms: “Doc! Doc!”
He heeded their calls.
He dashed through gunfire to one group of soldiers, and as he moved one to safety, a rocket explosion tore through his shoulder and back. But he kept running, through a barrage of rocket and automatic weapon fire, to help two more men. Injuries multiplied across his body: excruciating hot shell fragments embedding in his flesh, a ricocheting bullet slamming against his skull.
Mr. Sasser saw a safer way to move around the rice paddy. Rather than standing up and leaving himself open to attack, he lay down in the mud — which was two-and-a-half-feet deep, he estimated — and moved by grabbing one rice sprout after the next to pull himself along, almost like swimming.
He encouraged another group of soldiers to crawl to relative safety and spent hours continuing to attend to his comrades’ wounds until he ran out of medical supplies.
“The only thing I could offer was, shall we say, mental support, emotional support,” he recalled in the oral history. “Which I thought was part of medic’s job, too.”
About 4 or 5 a.m. the next day — nearly 20 hours after Mr. Sasser landed in the rice paddy — he and other survivors of the ambush were rescued.

He was also a Texas native. He studied chemistry at the University of Houston before he was drafted. After leaving the service, he attended Texas A&M: that university awarded him a honorary doctorate in 2014.

He often spoke about the privilege of being a medic. He got first choice of rations. Everyone called him Doc. He was an object of reverence. All of that, he said, explained, his battlefield bravery.
“There’s no way that I could have, in my mind, not went to see about someone when they hollered medic,” Mr. Sasser said in the 1987 oral history. “Repayment of the adulation these guys heaped on you demanded that you go.”

Congressional Medal of Honor Society webpage.

Fort Hood renamed one of their buildings (a medical training facility) after him in 2022.

According to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, there are 61 living recipients.

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