00:00:17 Speaker 1: Pushkin. It was Sassur Day in Brazoria County, Texas. A young man with dark skin and dark hair stood in front of a cheering crowd. He wore sunglasses in a perfectly pressed uniform. A metal gleamed around his neck. The date was March twenty seventh, nineteen sixty nine, and he was back from the war in Vietnam. His name was Clarence Sassar. He was just twenty one, and this day, Sassur Day, was all about celebrating him. Clarence waved and smiled as news photographers took his picture. He shook hands with county officials, and four jets from the Texas National Guard flew overhead in a salute. Clarence had served as a medic with the ninth Division of the Army. He left his tiny farming community as a part time college student, and he returned a celebrity. Reporters followed him as he greeted local dignitaries and fans. He was given an oil portrait of himself, plaques and citations, government bonds, and honorary citizenship to the nearby city of Houston, and then the crowd crammed into a high school gymnasium. They wanted to hear their hometown heroes speak, but it didn't seem like he wanted to. Newspapers noted it later, how uncomfortable Clarence Sassar felt, how quiet he was that day. He didn't say anything about his action in Vietnam, the one that decorated him with the Medal of Honor, and he wouldn't for years. I'm j R. Martinez and this is Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. It's awarded for gallantree and bravery and combat at the risk of life, above and beyond the call of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the way up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House. This show is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Now, the Medal of Honor is all about heroism on the battlefield, but that's not where heroism ends, because the medal also requires a different kind of bravery from its recipients. It asked them to talk about the hardest day of their lives over and over and over again. It took a long time for Clarence Sasser to be willing to revisit that day in Vietnam. When you hear his story, I think you'll understand why. He finally shared all the details on tape in two thousand and three, when he was in his late fifties, Even though more than thirty years had passed, he was still uncomfortable. 00:03:18 Speaker 2: Well, let's just get it over with. Let's just get it over with. Applying for it pains, let's just get it over with. 00:03:25 Speaker 1: As a combat medic, Clarence Sassar risked his life to try to save others. He healed them the best he could in the worst possible circumstances, and what he did was incredibly courageous. And then decades later, he looked around him, he saw a need, and he forced himself to be brave again. On the morning of January tenth, nineteen sixty eight, Clarence Sassar was in the Mekong River Delta of South Vietnam. He'd been in the country for about four months, and he had seen plenty of combat already. Almost every time his unit left base camp, there were firefights or ambushes, but on that particular day his company was planning to just relax. 00:04:23 Speaker 3: We were scheduled as a backup for us, which meant we have an easy mission this trip. All you have to do is put out your perimeter and your guards run a few patrols at night. We were two days into that and joining the two men. 00:04:43 Speaker 1: Then they got the news they were going out into the field. 00:04:48 Speaker 3: The battalion commander gave orders for us to go to this area and check out some movement he had seen from his helicopter. So we were loaded up on the helicopters and taken to this area. The movement had been seen in the tree line surrounding this rice. 00:05:07 Speaker 1: Patty Clarence and the rest of the Ninth Division were part of what they called the Riverine Forces. It was a combination of army and navy that patrolled that watery region of Vietnam. This news report from the Army explains their role. 00:05:23 Speaker 4: The Ninth Division's main responsibility, however, was to help secure the Mekong Delta. This vast fertile area is virtually one gigantic rice paddy, broken up by rivers, canals, and earthen dikes. The Republic of Vietnam Armed forces have been fighting a long struggle against the Viet Kong in the Delta. Our job was to help them. 00:05:47 Speaker 1: So on January tenth, at about ten in the morning, Clarence and the rest of his company got ready to load into the choppers. They would be dropped in the rice paddy where the commander had seen suspicious movement. Clarence said something was wrong before they even took off. The men were told to eat up, and he knew that meant they'd be out for a while. For about twenty minutes, the choppers flew over little rivers and marshes, farmland and jungle. Then they got to the rice paddy. As soon as the first helicopter touched down, wave after wave of shots started coming from the enemy. 00:06:24 Speaker 2: I was on probably the third fourth helicopter. 00:06:28 Speaker 3: We go in and the helicopter start taking five rockets. A thoroughly bad situation. When the helicopters got hid and plumping down in the water. 00:06:41 Speaker 1: The rice paddy was framed on three sides by woods, and enemy soldiers were entrenched in those woods with perfect sight lines on the paddy. It was mayhem. The noise and wind of the helicopter blades, shots coming from the woodline, the door gunners shooting back trying to provide cover, and GI's jumping from the choppers into the wet muck of the patty. 00:07:05 Speaker 3: The water was probably died deep with maybe needy mud. 00:07:12 Speaker 1: Clarence looked out of the chopper and he hoisted his medic bag onto his shoulder. Clarence Assar had never planned to go to war. 00:07:24 Speaker 3: I was born in a small train stop down in southeast Texas, south of Houston. We were a farm family, and as consistent with the early fifties, long through there, ye know, things were tough. 00:07:41 Speaker 2: Things were hard. 00:07:42 Speaker 1: He lived with his mom and stepdad and siblings and a little farmhouse surrounded by marshy prairies. They were pig farmers. They were poor, but they were close knit and happy. He was close to his father too. His dad had fought in World War Two, and little Clarence had seen his army uniform hanging in the closet, but his father never spoke a word about his time in the war. Clarence was a boy scout. He played football and he was one of the best live backers in the history of his high school. And he was smart. When he left high school in nineteen sixty five, he had big plans. 00:08:20 Speaker 3: I graduated high school number four out of sixty eight. 00:08:24 Speaker 2: Which I thought I was a pretty fair student. 00:08:27 Speaker 3: I left high school and moved into the city of Houston and started attending the University of Houston. I was a chemistry major and did pretty well, but again, no money. 00:08:42 Speaker 2: The money wasn't there. 00:08:46 Speaker 1: This was just around the time when the military started drafting young men to go to Vietnam. There were ways to avoid being drafted. You could be disqualified for medical reasons, or you could be a full time college student, which would defer your drafting. But Clarence, he couldn't afford to be a college full time. 00:09:04 Speaker 2: Of course, I have a part time job. 00:09:06 Speaker 3: But the mistake I made was in the age of student deferment, of dropping to halftime to work a little bit more, and from that point I was drafted, drafted into the army. 00:09:21 Speaker 1: He wasn't alone. Men from disadvantaged backgrounds were about twice as likely to get drafted, to go to Vietnam and to see combat. Poor and working classmen made up roughly eighty percent of American troops during the war. Most of Clarence's friends were sent to. 00:09:39 Speaker 3: Back during this time. They cleaned out the small towns for whatever reason, good, bad, and different, but they cleaned them out. 00:09:48 Speaker 2: Most of us served. 00:09:51 Speaker 1: When he got to the army in nineteen sixty seven, Clarence went through a battery of tests. He was tapped to train as a medic. 00:09:59 Speaker 3: It was the fore runner to paramedics type training that you see people go through now. We like to call ourselves combat medics. Oh, a lot of medics weren't sent into combat. I always knew I would. It's one of those things. 00:10:18 Speaker 2: She just you just know. 00:10:21 Speaker 1: Clarence was right. He got to Vietnam and he was sent straight into combat. He treated gunshot and shopped no wounds, and thanks to the hot and damp weather, a lot of jungle rot and jackets too. But the work was satisfying. He liked the challenge, but more than that, he liked the feeling of brotherhood. 00:10:41 Speaker 3: You have to understand the cam rodery that go on between troops in Harm's way. The doc is the closest thing to him. He's the one that just may save your life. 00:10:55 Speaker 1: And they treated you as such. And I loved it. I loved it. Man speaking from experience. That's so true. Anybody in the medical field. Man, those are our people. Clarence learned to keep his head and remember his training. He got to know the men so well they spent all of their time together. He realized they relied on him no matter the situation. 00:11:23 Speaker 3: The thing with the guys was that if they were hurt, they wanted treatment as any of us would. 00:11:33 Speaker 2: I mean, don't care how heavy a fire was. 00:11:37 Speaker 3: If he was laying out in the danger and he's hurt, he expected the medic to come and see what he could do about it. He didn't care about the medic maybe getting killed coming. 00:11:50 Speaker 2: He expected you to come. 00:11:54 Speaker 1: Then came January tenth. That day in the Rice patty. Clarence knew in his bones what was waiting. He saw it as soon as he looked out of the chopper. The helicopters down. 00:12:07 Speaker 3: We have probably I don't remember fourteen more coming with the rest of the company. It wasn't any choice. We had to go in. So we were dumped in the Rice patty. 00:12:21 Speaker 1: Shots were coming from three directions, and the patty was turning into a killing floor. Men screaming, already hit mortar shells exploding. The noise was deafening. As Clarence jumped out of the helicopter, he was shot through the leg. It was only a superficial wound, but it pitched him into the mud. 00:12:41 Speaker 3: There was no going back. Wasn't no such thing as too hot out there. 00:12:46 Speaker 2: I'm not going. You made yourself go. 00:12:51 Speaker 1: And so he went. Clarence wasn't a rice patty in the Meacong delta, wet and covered in mud, listening as the bullets zip by him and his men cried out for help. The first thing he figured out was he had to stay down. 00:13:25 Speaker 3: I had learned early on that the best way to get around that day was just simply grabbing the rice sprouts and sliding yourself alone. You could move better like that than to try to, of course, stand up. 00:13:39 Speaker 2: If he stood up, you were dead. 00:13:43 Speaker 1: Clarence was overwhelmed by the sight of so much death, and he realized that the enemy snipers were specifically targeting medics. 00:13:53 Speaker 2: They would get you, especially they see you bagged. 00:13:56 Speaker 3: They know you're a medic. You know you kill a medic. A lot of people probably would die. It was it was the rational. 00:14:03 Speaker 1: Now his leg was wounded, but that wasn't his main problem. The bigger issue. Clarence was suppose to be one of four company medics on the scene. Where were the other three? 00:14:15 Speaker 3: I guess, to make a long story short, I was the only medic that lived. The mortals were coming in, Snipers were around, guys were yelling dop top. 00:14:29 Speaker 1: The lower half of each man was underwater or mud. This left their upper bodies exposed to the snipers. So Clarence was tending to chest wounds and had in face injuries plus injuries from shrapnel. Those were particularly nasty and almost impossible for him to treat, but he kept moving forward, pulling himself through the rice patty to each wounded man. 00:14:53 Speaker 2: I'm not going to sit here. 00:14:54 Speaker 3: And say I wasn't afraid. You know, of course you were afraid. You were afraid of getting killed. But these were my guys. Your job was to look out for them when they called, when they hollered, medic or do. The job was to go nothing more without fear of your life. It was your job. 00:15:22 Speaker 1: At one point, Clarence hurt a soldier from his platoon, screaming bloody murder, so he dragged himself towards him. This guy was big five eleven two and ten pounds and freaking out. But when Clarence got there, he realized that a piece of shrapnel had just nicked the skin off of this guy's finger. He was paralyzed by the sight of blood. Clarence put a band aid on his finger and gave him. 00:15:47 Speaker 3: A pep talk after I had finished putting the band intomn, man, take your weapon, take your weapon. 00:15:54 Speaker 2: Let's try to get out of here. 00:15:57 Speaker 1: As the day dragged on, the shots kept coming, and there was a new problem. Because Clarence was in the backup company, they weren't really supposed to be engaged in battle, so he just had his basic medic bag, not a combat pack with extra supplies. After a few hours, that bag was empty, and Clarence, the only surviving medic, could give his men almost nothing but emotional support. 00:16:25 Speaker 3: So anyway, here, I'm just pulling myself around and everything. Yeah, going to guys and doing the best I could. Anyway, doing the best I could. That's how anyone could ask. 00:16:42 Speaker 1: Clarence and the others kept trying to get to the tree line, where they would have a little shelter. They stopped along the dikes of the Rice patty, since those also gave some cover from the mortar shells. 00:16:54 Speaker 3: Man, you could hear them all day bore. They'd come in boom, and then you hear it. Well, it's just shooting into the water. When it hit the water, you hear it just sile. 00:17:03 Speaker 5: Man. 00:17:05 Speaker 1: Then three mortar rounds landed no more than six feet eight at the most from Clarence. They sprayed his back and left side with shrapnel. 00:17:14 Speaker 3: Shell fragments are something I'll never forget how they feel. 00:17:19 Speaker 2: It's almost no pain. The pain sets in later. 00:17:24 Speaker 3: The initial shock is what you experience, and the searing because of course the shell fragments are hot. 00:17:33 Speaker 1: He lay there a while, finally coming back to consciousness, feeling the incredible pain and becoming alert again to the struggle around him. The day shifted from bright sunlight to late afternoon. Clarence was on his side, lying against the dike next to a buddy. Suddenly he realized that the sound of shooting and mortar shells had gone quiet, so he raised up his head to peek out. The moment he did, he heard the report of a rifle and he felt the impact of a bullet to his skull. Clarence grabbed his head and fell to the ground. He wasn't wearing his helmet because he had lost it at some point during the battle. Unbelievably, the bullet hadn't killed him somehow, it had only given him a serious concussion. As night fell, American gunships darted overhead, dropping explosives on the enemy. They flew so close to the ground that Clarence was worried they'd be hit by the explosions from their own bombs, but they kept the enemy occupied and the men on the ground safe. By then, Clarence and the rest of the survivors had managed to reach the woodline. Wounded troops were everywhere. For Clarence, the darkness brought the worst moments of awe. 00:18:57 Speaker 3: It wasn't so much the enemy activity men. It was laying that listening to you. Guys called for their marble. You can't do anything. It was tough. 00:19:12 Speaker 2: It wasn't so much. 00:19:14 Speaker 3: Enemy activity or shots or things of that nature. 00:19:18 Speaker 2: It was. 00:19:20 Speaker 3: I was just listening to him big all night, and then you wouldn't hear him anymore. 00:19:25 Speaker 1: You know, he died. 00:19:31 Speaker 2: It's tough. It's toughest think. 00:19:37 Speaker 1: The Metavac helicopters began arriving at about four point thirty that morning. They got the most seriously injured out first. Even with all of his wounds, Clarence was one of the last to leave. 00:19:49 Speaker 3: It was a relief, of course, a relief when we were out of there and I was still alive. I was hurt, but I wasn't I wasn't immortal danger. 00:19:59 Speaker 2: I was hurt. I knew me. I knew I would heal, and I would heal fairly quickly. 00:20:06 Speaker 3: I had made it, man, I had made it. 00:20:11 Speaker 1: But what he had seen would haunt him, and he would spend decades trying to bury it. After the battle in the Rice Patty, Clarence was flown to a hospital in Japan. From there he went to a medical holding company for rehab. 00:20:31 Speaker 3: So, being a medic, I started hanging out at the dispensary during my off time. So and understanding doctor needed another medic, and he got me real signed there. So I didn't go back, or I would have gone back to my unit in Vietnam, which I to this day, I thank you. 00:20:51 Speaker 1: Clarence would never go back to Vietnam. Instead, he got different news. 00:20:57 Speaker 3: The command in general wants to see me. What what did I do. I haven't done any day, Doc. He said, oh, you'll like it. It's all right, it's all right. 00:21:09 Speaker 1: All right, And that's an understatement. It was great. He was informed that he had been awarded the Medal of Honor. That was in the early fall of nineteen sixty eight, an election year, so the award would have to wait for the new president. After Richard Nixon took office in January of nineteen sixty nine, planning for the ceremony began. It was set for March seven. 00:21:36 Speaker 3: It was really experience from background, of course, you know, poor farm family, and every day my mother and sisters were flown up to DC. Of course, this was the best, the best thing that ever happened to him. 00:21:52 Speaker 1: Clarence was awarded the medal along with two other army men. Nixon gave the speech. 00:21:58 Speaker 5: They are magnificent men, magnificent in their idealism. Idealism is often shown by words, but they have demonstrated their idealism by their deeds. They have made us proud of being Americans and also reminded us that we should be proud of our younger generation, the youth of America. 00:22:21 Speaker 1: And Clarence was still so young. He was just twenty one. When he came back home to Texas and to a grateful community, there was sassurday. Of course, articles were written celebrating his bravery, with headlines like steel a valor forged and shabby home. He was given a scholarship to continue his college studies, this time at Texas A and M. But it wasn't that simple. You see this with so many events after a traumatic experience, I've lived it, Clarence couldn't just return to the future he had planned. He thought about death all the time. He dropped out of Texas A and M after a year. He just wasn't ready for it. He still felt like he was fighting for his life. And while he was proud of his medal, like the attention, I don't. 00:23:13 Speaker 3: Think what idea was above and beyond. I never have and for a long time I had a problem with that. I have a problem with why. 00:23:22 Speaker 1: All of this. 00:23:22 Speaker 2: I just did my job. My job was to take care of my guys. That's it. 00:23:29 Speaker 1: We've heard that so many times in this series, guys who say I was just doing my job. But Clarence was honest about a different aspect of the medal of honor, one that fewer recipients talk about. 00:23:44 Speaker 3: It's easy to strap it on, but it's a heavy something to wear. It requires certain things of you. It forces you to go to straight and narrow. I mean, you know, I'm gonna be in the newspaper Malevanna recipient robs a bank. It sort of makes you live up to it. And that's not a bad thing. 00:24:13 Speaker 1: Yeah, not a bad thing. But there was something hard about all the attention. It dredges up memories, and these are memories that are that you deal with belly if they're not on the forefront of the old mind. Clarence had always wondered why his father would never talk about his war. Now he understood. Two years after he returned from Vietnam, Clarence Sasser married Ethel Morrin, a brown eyed beauty with an incredible smile. They raised three sons, Ross, Benjamin, and Billy. The family lived close to where Clarence had grown up. He found work at chemical plants. He was patriotic and proud of his service. He kept a flag in front of his house that he raised and lowered every day, but he avoided actually talking about what had happened in Vietnam. Even after he took a job with the Veterans Administration, and then in nineteen ninety six, a though was killed by a drunk driver. By that point, the couple had been married twenty five years. Clarence was just forty nine. His world was shattered. In the aftermath, something changed. He finally began to really talk about what had happened to him in Vietnam. It was a way to distract himself from his grief, and he knew it was important for another reason. It was a way to represent black resilience and bravery. In two thousand and three, when he did the interview we've been listening to, there was only one other Black Medal of Honor recipient still living. 00:26:06 Speaker 3: Being one of the only two black guys alive now is indeed a burden. A lot of places we go, you look around the crowd and there are a few black people out there and everything, and I know, were I'm not there, they would wonder where are the black Aren't any black guys in this group? So by virtue of that, I feel like I have to go and I do, although considerably less than probably what I should. 00:26:37 Speaker 2: But I try to balance it with. 00:26:40 Speaker 3: My knees, specifically not to be reminded of this stuff all the time. 00:26:48 Speaker 1: By twenty ten, Clarence would be the only living Black recipient. It would stay that way for years. So we went to ceremonies and speaking engagements and panels. Even though he didn't want to, even if it made him relive that terrible day in the Rice Patty, the longest day of his life, he did it because he felt it was his duty because he had received the Medal of Honor. 00:27:14 Speaker 3: It's a heavy burden to wear it and to wear it well, which I like to think I do. 00:27:24 Speaker 1: But the medal wasn't the thing he was proudest of. 00:27:27 Speaker 3: I have sons, man, I have three sons, and I'm intensely proud of them to be young black kids. And nowadays it's not easy. I tell them every time I see him. Now, I'm proud of them. To me, that is my crowning achievement. Beyond the metal is to raise three young black boys. 00:27:54 Speaker 2: To me, that I feel is my crowning achievement. 00:28:02 Speaker 1: Clarence Sasser died in twenty twenty four. At the time of this recording, there are sixty four Medal of Honor recipients still alive. Only two of them are black. One is eighty four years old, the other is eighty seven. It took enormous bravery for Clarence to tell his story. It never got easier for him. What you've been listening to is one of the very few times he was willing to share all of the details, to be that vulnerable, to break down in tears remembering those men calling out for their mothers. 00:28:38 Speaker 2: Man. 00:28:39 Speaker 1: That's hard, but to me it shows that heroism isn't justified by what you face in combat, even for a Medal of Honor recipient. True heroism is being willing to keep showing up, to keep putting other people first, no matter the pain, no matter the cost. Medal of Honor Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins and Ryan Schweiker. Our editor is Lydia Jean Kott. Sound designed by Jake Gorski. Our executive producer is Constanze gyardro Fact checking by Arthur Gomperts. Original music by Eric Phillips. Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. If you want to learn more about this story, take a look at our show notes, where we list some of the resources we use to put this episode together. We also want to hear from you. Your participation helps us make great episodes, so please follow the show, share it with a friend, or leave a review. These are all zero costs ways to support us. Email us at Medal of Honor at pushkin dot fm, or find us on social media at pushkin pods or find me at I am JR. Martinez. Thank you for listening. I'm your host JR. Martinez. We hear you. You want to listen to the episode, not the ads. If you're ready to lose the interruptions and hear the full season of Medal of Honor right now, join Pushkin Plus. You'll get our entire network, including Medal of Honor, Revisionist History, and Heavyweight, completely ad free. You'll be supporting our small, independent team. 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