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LAKELAND, Fla. (WFLA) — Terry Richardson, originally from Michigan, found himself facing the prospect of being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War—a common reality for many young men of his era. Anticipating the draft, Richardson took matters into his own hands by enlisting in the Army.
“I graduated high school in 1966, and I was pretty certain I would be drafted since I couldn’t afford college,” Richardson explained.
His military journey began in May 1967 with basic training at Fort Knox, followed by infantry training in Alabama and NCO school in Georgia, before he was deployed to Vietnam.
“The first thing that hit me was the smell. It’s indescribable—like a musty jungle,” Richardson recalled. “Watching the tracer rounds from gunships at night, I thought, ‘What have I gotten myself into?'”
Richardson was thrust into eleven months of intense combat, starting from his very first day on the battlefield.
“I’ve been in a field, probably 20 minutes, and the largest explosion that I’ve ever heard in my lifetime then. It actually rolled me. I mean, when I was rolloing I seen something in the air and what it was, was a part of a person’s body,” said Richardson.
However, it was a day in September of 1968 that would be more intense than any other when his unit was ordered to take a hill.
Members of his unit came under intense enemy fire, and Richardson saw men around him being hit, including one man with severe injuries.
“I helped drag him off the hill, and you could actually see his organs in his body,” said Richardson.
He didn’t find out until the 25-year reunion of his unit that the man had survived.
Richardson ran to the top of a hill with a radio and hid behind a tree in a small trench. He would call in close air support for more than seven hours.
As the bombs dropped on and around the top of the hill, Richardson’s unit thought he’d been killed.
“The guys in my platoon, because I wasn’t answering anything on the radio, they all assumed that I was gone,” said Richardson.
He had been severely wounded by a sniper, and blood was coming out of his head because of the bombs being dropped around him.
“The tree that I was behind the rubber tree, and this is why I know God was with me that day, the tree that was in front of me was smoldering,” said Richardson.
This year, he learned he was being considered for the Medal of Honor for his actions. He then received a call from the White House, which he didn’t believe at first.
“She says we have somebody here who wants to talk to you, and I said OK, and she said I’ll be switching you over, and I could hear her make the switch. She said you’ll be speaking with the president of the states and I almost fell out of my chair. I said I don’t believe this,” said Richardson.
The man on the other end of the line was President Trump who did present him with the Medal of Honor.
The citation for the honor is listed on the Medal of Honor Website and can be read here.