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Army Spec 5th Class Clarence Sasser, Medal of Honor recipient.
Episode 2713 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story about Vietnam Vet Army Spec 5 Clarence Sasser and his Congressional Medal of Honor award. The featured story comes from The U.S. Department of Defense website and was titled: Medal of Honor Monday: Army Spec 5 Clarence Sasser. It was submitted by Katie Lange, a writer for DOD News.
Lange, in her story, reported that Sasser was born Sept. 12, 1947, and grew up in the small town of Rosharon, Texas, near Houston. He had a brother, a sister and four step-siblings that all lived on a farm with Sasser’s mother and his stepfather, a church deacon who helped raise him.
Sasser went to Marshall High School and was in one of the school’s last segregated classes. He played football and did well academically, graduating in 1965 near the top of his class.
Sasser enrolled at the University of Houston to study chemistry. He eventually switched to part-time so he could work to pay for classes, causing him to become eligible for the draft. So, when his number came up, instead of trying to gain college deferment, he joined the Army in June 1967.
Sasser trained as a medical aid man and knew pretty quickly that he would be going to Vietnam. He arrived in the country in late September 1967 when he was barely 20 years old.
Sasser hadn’t been in Vietnam for more than four months when he was put to the ultimate test as a medic with the 3rd Battalion, 60th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division.
Sasser was awarded the Medal of Honor for his service with the 9th Division. He said this about the award, “I don’t think what I did was above and beyond. I never have, and for a long time I had a problem with that,” Sasser said. “But finally … a friend helped me reconcile it to the point that it meant, ‘Hey, you did your job.'”
Listen to episode 2713 and discover more about Vietnam Army Spec 5 Clarence Sasser and his Congressional Medal of Honor award.
