He Has Been Called the Baddest Badass that Ever Lived
Robert L. Howard served five tours in Vietnam and is the only soldier in our nation’s history to be nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor three times for three separate actions within a thirteen month period. The first nomination was downgraded to the Distinguished Service Cross. The second nomination was downgraded to the Silver Star. The third nomination was downgraded to a 2nd Distinguished Service Cross but later upgraded to the Medal of Honor which was given to him by President Richard M Nixon in 1971.
He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1956 at age seventeen. He retired as a full Colonel in 1992 after 36 years service. During Vietnam, he served in the U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets) and spent most of his five tours in the super-secret MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group) also known as Special Operations Group, which ran classified cross-border operations into Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam. These men carried out some of the most daring and dangerous missions ever conducted by the U.S. military. The understrength sixty-man recon company at Kontum in which he served was the Vietnam War’s most highly decorated unit of its size with five Medals of Honor. It was for his actions while serving on a mission to rescue a fellow soldier in Cambodia, that he was submitted for the Medal of Honor the third time for his extraordinary heroism.
The site dedicated to him sited a recent book by John Plaster SECRET COMMANDOS Behind Enemy Lines with the Elite Warriors of SOG – pg. 303:
“The day that President Nixon draped the Medal of Honor’s pale blue ribbon around Howard’s neck, I sat before the TV in my parents’ living room watching the evening news. Coming on top of his previous decorations – the Distinguished Service Cross and multiple Silver and Bronze Stars, plus eight Purple Hearts – Howard’s combat awards exceeded those of Audie Murphy, America’s legendary World War II hero, until then our most highly decorated serviceman. At last, Howard would get his due. I flipped station to station, but not one of the networks – not CBS or NBC or ABC – could find ten seconds to mention Captain Robert Howard or his indomitable courage. I found nothing about him in the newspapers. Twisted by the antiwar politics of that era, many in the media believed that to recognize a heroic act was to glorify war. They simply chose not to cover the ceremony. It might as well not have happened.” For More go to the site http://rlhtribute.com
VIDEO DOD NEWS U.S. Army Colonel Robert Howard, recipient of the Medal of Honor, reflects on key moments in his 36-year military career.