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Army Special Forces Medal of Honor Recipient Army SGT Brian L. Buker
Congressional Medal of Honor
Episode 2817 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story about Army SGT Brian L. Buker and his Congressional Medal of Honor award. The featured story appeared on the Greater Good News website and was submitted by Dan Doyle.
Dan Doyle is a husband, father, grandfather, Vietnam veteran, and retired professor of Humanities at Seattle University. He taught 13 years at the high school level and 22 years at the university level. He spends his time now babysitting his granddaughter. He is a poet and a blogger as well. Dan holds an AA degree in English Literature, a BA in Comparative Literature, and an MA in Theology, and writes regularly for The Veterans Site Blog.
In his story about Brian L. Buker, he reported that The Vietnam War had been going on for close to 10 years when Brian L. Buker graduated from Lawrence H.S. in Fairfield, Maine, in 1968. His three older brothers had already served in Vietnam, so it was not unusual that he would want to go into the military himself. He entered the U.S. Army just after his 17th birthday and requested to enter the Army’s Special Forces Training.
By April 5, 1970, Buker was serving as a sergeant in Detachment B-55, 5th Special Forces Group, 1st Special Forces. On that day, he was acting as a platoon advisor for a Vietnamese mobile strike force company on a mission in Chau Doc Province, Republic of Vietnam. When his platoon came under intense fire, he single-handedly destroyed one enemy bunker, was seriously wounded, and then destroyed another bunker despite these wounds. He was killed later in the battle as he reorganized his soldiers.
In 2010, Buker’s family donated his Medal of Honor to his alma mater, Lawrence High School in Fairfield, Maine, “so future generations will know who he was and what he did for his country.”
Listen to episode 2817 and discover more about Army SGT Brian L. Buker and his Congressional Medal of Honor award.
