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Dear Doug Collins

Paris D. Davis: The Captain Who Would Not Leave, and the Paperwork That Vanished Twice

Paris Davis did the one thing his profession asks above all others: he would not leave. Wounded, outnumbered, and twice ordered to get out, he stayed at Bong Son in 1965 until every American under his command was recovered — and every one of them lived. His reward, for fifty-eight years, was a file that could not be found. This page is the documented record of what he did, what his institution did with the paperwork afterward, and who carried his case when the Army could not find it.

The service and the promise

Paris D. Davis was born on May 13, 1939, in Cleveland, Ohio. He studied political science at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on an ROTC scholarship, and was commissioned as an Army Reserve armor officer in 1959. He graduated from Airborne and Ranger schools in 1960 and was selected for the 7th Special Forces Group (Airborne) — making him, as the Department of Veterans Affairs records, one of the first African American officers in the Special Forces, at the very moment the civil rights movement was gaining momentum at home. He served first in Korea, then deployed to Vietnam in 1962.

He returned to Vietnam in April 1965, a captain commanding Detachment A-321, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne), 1st Special Forces, at Bong Son in Binh Dinh Province — one of the first Black officers to lead a Special Forces team in combat. His charge was the 883rd Regional Force Company, an inexperienced South Vietnamese unit about to go on its first combat mission with four American advisors beside it.

The promise made to a man like Paris Davis runs in both directions: you do not leave a man behind, and your country does not leave you behind. On June 18, 1965, Davis kept his half in full view of everyone watching. What follows is how long his institution took to keep its half — and the fact that, on the central question of why, it never has.

What happened — June 17–18, 1965

What happened at Bong Son is established by Davis’s official Medal of Honor citation. On the night of June 17–18, 1965, Davis and three other U.S. Special Forces advisors accompanied the 883rd Regional Force Company on its first combat mission — a nighttime raid against a Viet Cong regional headquarters housing a superior enemy force. Davis’s leadership won the tactical advantage: the company surprised the enemy and killed approximately 100 enemy soldiers. Returning from the raid, it was ambushed and took several casualties. The citation records what Davis did next:

Davis himself, in the statement he issued when the medal was finally announced in February 2023, put the duration plainly: “I think often of those fateful 19 hours on June 18, 1965 and what our team did to make sure we left no man behind on that battlefield.” Every American there was wounded, according to the Associated Press’s account; thanks to Davis and the air support he directed, his entire team survived. Reporting by Army Times, carried in the AP’s coverage, adds the detail his men remembered: an enemy grenade shattered his hand, and he fired his rifle with his little finger. And in President Biden’s retelling at the 2023 ceremony — drawn from an account Davis gave in a 1969 television interview — when a superior ordered him to safety, Davis answered: “Sir, I’m just not going to leave. I still have an American out there.”

His commanding officer recommended him for the Medal of Honor. The man he had carried up the hill, his team sergeant Billy Waugh — later a storied Special Forces and CIA figure — told CBS News that, badly wounded himself and on his way to nine months of treatment at Walter Reed, he personally presented Davis’s case for the medal at 5th Special Forces headquarters in Nha Trang. The paperwork was, by every account, submitted. It was the last anyone could prove of it for more than fifty years.

What the institution did afterward

The file disappeared in Vietnam in 1965. That is not a characterization; it is the Defense Department’s own position as reported from its records. When a military review examined the case in 1969, it “did not reveal any file on Davis,” according to the Defense Department. The Army was ordered to submit a new packet as soon as possible. That second packet vanished too — CBS News, reviewing the record in 2021, found no evidence a second Medal of Honor file was ever created. President Biden, presenting the medal fifty-eight years later, stated the fact without ornament: “Somehow the paperwork was never processed. Not just once. But twice.”

What Davis received instead, in December 1965, was a Silver Star — the Army’s third-highest combat decoration. Waugh told CBS that he was the wounded sergeant described in that Silver Star citation, and that such an interim award is usually made while a Medal of Honor packet is being processed; CBS reported that the Silver Star document is the only surviving record of the original Medal of Honor package. Davis kept serving as if the file had never existed. He attended the Command and General Staff College and the Naval War College, commanded the 10th Special Forces Group, was promoted to colonel in 1981, and retired from the Army on July 30, 1985 — a colonel with a Silver Star for an action his own command had judged worthy of the nation’s highest honor. He was also, the VA records, one of only four service members in American history to hold both the Soldier’s Medal — his, for pulling a driver from a burning fuel truck — and, eventually, the Medal of Honor. After the Army he published the Metro Herald in Alexandria, Virginia, for some thirty years, and in 2019 entered the U.S. Army Ranger Hall of Fame.

Why did the paperwork disappear — twice? Here this page has to be exact, because the record is exact about what it does not contain. Davis himself told CBS News: “I know race was a factor,” and recalled being called a racial slur during his career. His teammate Ron Deis told the Associated Press: “I believe that someone purposely lost the paperwork.” His daughter, Regan Davis Hopper, told CBS that the family believed discrimination was behind the loss, and that “discrimination hurts us all, not just the individual, but our entire country.” Military historian Doug Sterner told CBS the loss itself was extraordinary: the military is redundant in paperwork, and Medal of Honor files do not simply vanish. All of that is on the record — as attribution. What is not on the record is any official finding: no investigation has ever identified who lost either packet, established that either loss was deliberate, or found that race caused it. The institution that lost the file twice has never produced an explanation of either loss. That absence is part of the record too, and this page will not fill it in with a verdict the evidence has not produced.

The case survived because other people rebuilt it. Teammates kept the story alive for decades. A volunteer team — including Neil Thorne, who recovers medals for overlooked veterans — pieced the packet back together through archival searches and Freedom of Information Act requests. In 2016, advocates recreated and resubmitted the paperwork, a half-century after the battle. In 1981, Waugh had already written the personal statement the rebuilt case would draw on — “I only have to close my eyes to vividly recall the gallantry of this individual” — and NPR’s later reporting records that the citation relied in part on that rediscovered 1981 affidavit. In early 2021, Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller ordered an expedited review; when it stalled, Miller wrote publicly in June 2021 that the bureaucracy was delaying again and urged that Davis receive the medal. By November 2022, Army Times had confirmed the package was complete and moving through final approval. On February 13, 2023, President Biden called Davis to tell him the medal was his: the call, Davis said, “prompted a wave of memories of the men and women I served with in Vietnam.”

Where it stands now

On March 3, 2023, in the East Room of the White House, President Biden placed the Medal of Honor around the neck of retired Colonel Paris D. Davis. Davis was 83 years old. The action was 58 years in the past. Biden called Davis “an incredible man,” and closed the arithmetic this page exists to record: “You are everything this medal means. You’re everything our nation is at our best. Brave and big-hearted, determined and devoted, selfless and steadfast.” Davis, who had told the AP the day before that the wait did not lessen the honor — “It heightens the thing, if you’ve got to wait that long” — answered simply: “God bless you, God bless all, God bless America.” Three days later, on March 6, 2023, he was inducted into the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes, where Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said what the institution could finally say out loud: “I want to acknowledge that this honor is long overdue — appropriate recognition should have come much sooner.”

The medal account is closed. Davis received in his lifetime what Henry Johnson, elsewhere in this section, never did: he stood in the room, in uniform, and heard his own citation read. But notice what closed it. The fight took nineteen hours. The medal took fifty-eight years, a packet rebuilt by volunteers out of archives and FOIA requests, a teammate’s affidavit written in 1981 and rediscovered decades later, an acting secretary of defense’s public pressure, and a president’s signature. The other account — the explanation — remains open in full: no one in authority has ever said who lost Paris Davis’s file, either time, or why. The medal was finally delivered. The explanation never was.

The ledger

Davis is this section’s “finally accounted — in his lifetime” exhibit: the medal delivered, the explanation never produced. His fight for the medal is finished. The institution’s account for losing it is not.

What has been done

What has not been done

What is being sought

The record, on video

No camera was rolling at Bong Son in 1965 — the fight survives in a citation and the memories of the men he carried out. What the record has instead is the case reopened on television, Davis in his own words, and March 2023. Six films:

The ceremony. The U.S. Army's film of the March 3, 2023 East Room ceremony: President Biden presents the medal Davis was first nominated for in 1965. (U.S. Army video.)

The Army's portrait. The Army's own feature on Davis, released three weeks after the ceremony — the battle, the team, and the man. (U.S. Army video.)

The case, reopened. CBS Mornings, February 2021: Davis's only television interview at the time, and Billy Waugh — the sergeant Davis carried up the hill — on the paperwork that vanished. (CBS Mornings.)

In his own words. Davis's full Associated Press interview on the eve of the ceremony — the wait, the team, and what the medal meant. (AP interview, via WKYC Channel 3.)

The day it happened. CBS Mornings, March 3, 2023 — the story CBS had reopened two years earlier, closed at the White House. (CBS Mornings.)

Into the Hall of Heroes. The news film of March 6, 2023: Davis inducted into the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes, three days after the medal. (13News Now.)

Sources

Further record

Part of Betrayed, Not Forgotten — this site's accounting for the service members and veterans their own institutions failed. Videos are embedded from their publishers; nothing here is re-hosted.