A wounded soldier, overrun by the enemy, outgunned by tanks, and down to his last 19 bullets said he was minutes from certain death when he spotted a rescue helicopter plunging from the sky.
“We knew that was the end if we didn’t fight our way out of there,” recalled veteran Special Forces soldier Paul Longgrear.
A 2014 documentary about his life titled "The Man Left Behind" chronicles the return of that decorated soldier to Vietnam after surviving that pitched battle in a jungle outpost during the Tet Offensive in 1968.
“Thank the Lord we got in there and got you guys out of there,” fellow Vietnam veteran Ray Cyrus said.
He was a door gunner on the helicopter that swooped from the sky in a hail of gunfire to pull Longgrear and a handful of other soldiers from the battlefield.
The two soldiers reconnected for the first time earlier this month in East Tennessee to shake hands and trade stories about that fateful day 50 years ago.
“There’s a comradery amongst guys who served in Vietnam,” Longgrear said. “We are all brothers.”
“Amen,” Cyrus agreed.