Franklin d miller served six tours over six years as a green beret in vietnam for his first two he was an infantryman mainly conducting long-range reconnaissance patrols the next four years were with military assistance command vietnam study and observations group otherwise known as mac v sag the legendary top secret military unit with a 100 percent casualty rate the green beret led sog teams that operated deep in the mountains and jungles of vietnam cambodia and laos on the most dangerous search and destroy missions of the war
By the end of those six tours miller had been awarded six purple hearts two bronze stars with valor an air metal a silver star and the medal of honor but the story we’re going to be focusing on today is about the operation that earned him the medal of honor what’s going on guys welcome back to another video thank you so much for checking it out today we are talking about the legendary war hero franklin d miller the story we’re talking about today is absolutely breathtaking and if you’ve not heard it before you are in for a wild ride so
Thank you guys so much for checking it out i hope you enjoy it if you do make sure you hit that like button and subscribe the channel for more content just like this but if for any reason at all you guys don’t enjoy this video please feel free to hit that dislike button and make sure you leave me a comment down below letting me know what i can do to improve my future videos also guys just want to let you know franklin d miller did write a book and i will have the link to that book that this story and many others can be found
In down in the description below so you guys can check that out and make sure you buy his book i highly recommend it miller routinely writes about just how lucky he was to risk death in the nva badlands but it was on the gray morning of january 5th 1970 that miller finally thought he might not make it out alive he was in charge of a Seven-man joint american south vietnamese team of green berets and montagnard tribesmen the team inserted on two uh-1d hueys while six cobra gunships and an additional huey carrying a special forces medic and
Medical equipment followed in support the mission was to patrol on foot in laos searching for an intelligence aircraft that had been shot down in the area then gather information on a north vietnamese army base from which american surveillance teams had previously intercepted dozens of radio transmissions the team inserted seamlessly with no issues at all but while on route miller was running point doing some recon a bit ahead of the team when he spotted about 40 enemy nva soldiers sitting in the tan thigh deep
Grass near the downed american aircraft so miller slowly melted back down into the thigh high grass returning to his team to inform them of the enemy soldiers ahead so the team decided to slowly work their way around the enemy soldiers using the thick tall grass as cover which they were able to pull off successfully but hours later as miller was once again taking a point he suddenly heard one shot about 500 to 600 yards in the distance so he stayed low got out his notebook and he scribbled the shot’s timing location and
Direction down in his notebook while miller was writing in his notebook he had no idea that the mother of all firefights was about to take place miller writes suddenly strong shock waves assaulted my body and my vision blurred like a camera being jarred my initial reaction was to hit the ground because the first thing you learned about combat is that anything standing gets hit down the hill where the rest of the team was located miller suddenly saw a grey cloud from an explosive that had just detonated one of his fellow sog
Teammates had triggered a booby trap dirt stones leaves and branches fell through the jungle landing all around him one of miller’s men staggered toward him missing his lower jaw weapon and rucksack his clothes ripped all over his body the explosion had wounded five of the seven member squad miller was thankfully unharmed by the initial explosion due to taking point and being a little ways ahead of his team miller quickly entered the kill zone and worked to bring his wounded teammates across a nearby stream to put some distance
Between them and the enemy so he could call in some reinforcements in the sag teams there were three levels of emergencies the first was team when someone was sick or wounded the least intense of the emergencies the second was tak-e or tactical emergency when a team was engaging a superior enemy force and the final was prairie fire when a team was at risk of being annihilated miller called in a tactical emergency and hid awaiting the nva’s next assault unfortunately even though miller was able to get his wounded teammates across
the stream and hidden in thick bushes it was not difficult for the nva forces to track the team due to the large blood trail they left behind so the enemy quickly set up a heavy machine gun to cover both ends of the stream and the area miller’s team was hiding out in an nva scout they had sent across the stream crept to within 10 yards of miller’s crippled team and discovered them miller slowly leaned back raised his body slightly and cracked off a single round dumping the nva soldier to the ground miller quickly dug deeper
into the bushes and tall grass he was hiding in as the enemy machine gun opened up with concentrated fire raining down on his position miller quickly pulled the pin on a cs gas grenade and hurled it as far as he could he then grabbed a white phosphorus grenade and repeated the effort to create an even heavier denser fog that would linger and irritate the enemy troops who miller hoped would disengage miller then worked with his wounded teammates to help conceal them as good as they possibly could covering them with mud grass
bushes anything he could find to hide them from the enemy forces once his teammates were well hidden miller then moved on foot alone through the thick jungle and hid behind a section of rocks and fallen timber where he ambushed a seven-man nva element and focused his controlled bursts of fire on the machine gunner first for more than two and a half hours miller waged a one-man fight against an estimated 100 nva troops dodging hand grenades bullets and shrapnel miller writes the saddest of all was the sight of my team my friends
the scene was basically composed of just two colors green and red blood drenched bandages attempted to stop the outpouring of life from the four who were scattered in the grass before me amazingly enough all were in various stages of consciousness though i could tell that at least one of them wouldn’t survive a c-130 orbiting about 25 000 feet overhead radioed miller with instructions to locate a nearby bomb crater to arrange a medevac miller managed to reach the site but then the lights went out he was shot in the chest
he collapsed and faded in and out of shock miller completely dazed by his wound cut off a piece of poncho liner with his pocket knife and stuffed it into the hole in his chest he then swung his m16 rifle around his waist and let loose two or three bursts of fire at the four nva soldiers who were now shocked miller was somehow still alive two were killed instantly a third was caught in the back while attempting to flee miller and the fourth managed to escape into the woods miller then somehow rose to his feet crashed through bushes and
vegetations and crawled 50 yards to regroup with his team once he reached them he pushed and dragged every member back to the crater his teammates youb and hobart assisted with security though they were seriously wounded themselves just as they felt they were going to be overrun by the enemy a huey swooped in and hovered within 5 yards of the large crater in the jungle the chopper though raced back into the air when more than 50 nba soldiers attacked with small arms mortars and rockets in the chaos miller was struck in the left arm the wound was
so severe he thought his hand had been blown off entirely rendering his arm completely useless this was it miller thought his final stand down to one magazine and an additional frag grenade through a daze in and out of consciousness miller saw a figure holding an m60 machine gun and issuing hand signals in his direction it was a hatchet force an entire platoon of montaigne yards supported by american advisors soon more helicopters arrived and miller refused to leave until everyone else was on board recon team
vermont and the hatchet force flew out to safety four of miller’s seven man team had been killed while miller yube and hobart survived miller was first recommended to receive the distinguished service cross but it was ultimately upgraded to the medal of honor miller retired from the army in 1992 as a command sergeant major he often told news special forces trainees to share your fears with yourself and your courage with others because you will inspire people to do things that are incredible 2000 miller died at the age
of 55 years old it had not been for miller’s unbelievable heroic actions this would have been a whole lot worse the entire team would have been completely annihilated you and hobart might have been killed by the enemy but most likely they would have been captured and i don’t think i have to explain what would have happened to them if they had been captured by the enemy i share these stories with you to make sure that men like franklin d miller are never forgotten and that their names live on in our memories franklin d miller thank
you for your service it has been an honor sharing your story like i said guys you can find a link to franklin d miller’s book down in the description below and i cannot recommend it enough thank you guys so much for checking this video out i hope you enjoyed it we’ll definitely be making a whole lot more videos on franklin d miller and mac v sog if you guys are interested in hearing more of these stories make sure you hit that subscribe button for more stuff just like this but anyway guys i hope you have a fantastic
day and i’ll talk to you all later
