Looking for a Hero: Staff Sergeant Joe Ronnie Hooper and the Vietnam War

641 Pages·2005·3.34 MB·English

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Looking for a Hero
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LOOKING
FOR
A HERO
Staff Sergeant Joe Ronnie Hooper
and the Vietnam War
Peter Maslowski and Don Winslow
University of Nebraska Press • Lincoln and London
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© 2004
by the
Board of Regents
of the
University of Nebraska
All rights reserved
Manufactured
in the
United States of America
(cid:2)(cid:2)∞
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Maslowski, Peter.
Looking for a hero : Staff
Sergeant Joe Ronnie Hooper
and the Vietnam War / Peter
Maslowski and Don Winslow.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical
references and index.
isbn0-8032-3244-6 (cloth : alk.
paper)
1. Hooper, Joe Ronnie, 1938–
2. United States. Army—
Non-commissioned officers—
Biography. 3. Medal of
Honor—Biography.
4. Vietnamese Conflict,
1961–1975—Veterans—
United States—Biography.
I. Winslow, Don, 1953–
II. Title.
u53.h67m37 2004
959.704(cid:3)3373(cid:3)092—dc22
2004013678
Set in Minion and
Gill Sans by G&S Typsetters, Inc.
Designed by Ray Boeche.
Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc.
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Contents
Prologue 1
Chapter 1 7
Chapter 2 31
Chapter 3 54
Chapter 4 85
Chapter 5 118
Chapter 6 160
Chapter 7 192
Chapter 8 220
Chapter 9 265
Chapter 10 306
Chapter 11 345
Chapter 12 386
Chapter 13 420
Chapter 14 460
Epilogue 495
Appendix. Joe Ronnie Hooper’s Medals 499
Acknowledgments 501
A Few Words Concerning the Text 505
Abbreviations and Acronyms 507
Notes 509
Bibliographic Essay 591
Index 599
Illustrations follow page 276
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Looking for a Hero
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Prologue
With utter disregard for his own safety...
Joe Hooper’s Medal of Honor citation,
regarding his conduct during a battle in February 1968
Hero.
After reading Staff Sergeant Joe Ronnie Hooper’s Medal of Honor file,
you know the man was a hero. Before the war was over, he would be widely
acclaimed as the war’s most highly decorated soldier, the Audie Murphy of
Vietnam.
Joe was a squad leader in a unit officially designated Company D, 2nd
Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, but informally
known as the “Delta Raiders.” The Raiders were an unusual front-line rifle
company. Hastily formed during the massive manpower buildup for Viet-
nam, many of its men were originally trained not as infantrymen but as
cooks, clerks, mechanics, cryptographers, military policemen, and in other
noncombat specialties. Some of the men, including Joe Hooper, had less-
than-stellar disciplinary records. A few even came to the unit directly from
the stockade.
Now, in the early afternoon of February 21, 1968, under cloudy, misty
skies that made visibility extremely poor, the Raiders were a few miles north
of Hue, attacking across a broad rice paddy toward a well-entrenched enemy
position dug into a small village.
The village was embedded in a dense tangle of trees, thorny vines, and
bamboo, some of the latter shooting forty feet skyward. Advancing through
such foliage under normal conditions was difficult, but doing it in combat
against strongly held enemy positions verged on the impossible.
According to Joe’s detailed Medal of Honor file, as the company moved
toward a river running parallel to the enemy’s first line of fortified bunkers,
the enemy met the Raiders with intense fire from machine guns, rockets, and
automatic weapons. The stream was about thirty feet wide and up to five feet
deep in some places but easily fordable in others. Beyond the stream was an