On April 17, 2020 – five years ago this week – Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Bennie Adkins passed away in East Alabama Medical Center at age 86 after being hospitalized for several weeks with COVID-19.

During the Battle of A Shau in Vietnam in 1966, Adkins, a member of the Special Forces, single-handedly killed 175 Viet Cong and suffered 18 different mortar, shrapnel, and machine gun wounds to his body while successfully leading his men to extraction.

Adkins received the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions, and in 2014, a Pentagon review of his actions led to his medal being upgraded to the Congressional Medal of Honor.

In addition to being pursued by the North Vietnamese during their ordeal, Adkins and his men were also relentlessly tracked through the jungle by a hungry tiger looking to eat them for a meal, which led to his autobiography being titled, “A Tiger Among Us: A Story of Valor in Vietnam’s A Shau Valley.”

Though born in Oklahoma, Adkins and his family lived in Opelika during the post-military portion of his life, and he considered himself every bit an Alabamian.

We had the honor of meeting CSM Adkins and hearing him share his first-hand account of the Battle of A Shau a few years before his passing, and it remains among our life’s most memorable experiences.

Courtesy of The Art of Alabama Politics.