We broke camp and moved out about 7-7:30 and fifteen minutes later, we were engaged and all hell broke loose.” You didn’t hear the jungle noises as you did before. “ morning we started to break camp,” Sauer said, his cigar going cold. On March 22, 1967, Company A slept in the jungles near Polei Doc, later named “The Valley of Tears.” In October 1966, after almost a year of training together, the Soldiers of Company A deployed to Vietnam.Īfter a few months in country, Sauer said Company A moved to the central highlands during the Tet holidays, the Vietnamese lunar New Year’s festival. I never want to see a man in A Company alone.’ And if it ever happens again, every one of you better be out of that barracks and be out there defending him. “He said, ‘Nobody, nobody ever attacks anybody in A Company. “The first sergeant called a formation and he just chewed everybody out,” Sauer said. Sauer recalled a time when a Soldier was beaten outside the barracks and McNerney found out no Company A Soldiers came to help. It wasn’t until Vietnam that they really understood.” “He was hard, but he was fair,” Sauer said. Sauer said McNerney was strict and demanded the best of the Soldiers of Company A, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. But he looked professional.”Ī first lieutenant in March of 1966, Sauer was impressed with McNerney who was 15 years older than the new officer and had already served two combat tours in Korea with the Navy before joining the Army. Throughout his 20-year career, Sauer said he remained close friends with the man he credits with making him a better leader and soldier. “(He said) ‘Just tell them I was just doing my job.’” “He told me to keep it short and simple,” Sauer said. Before he died, he asked Sauer to deliver his eulogy. McNerney died in October 2010 after a nine-month battle with lung cancer. We were Soldiers together until the end.” Sauer, and that’s the way we were,” Sauer said. He called me by my rank - if it was lieutenant, captain, major, colonel. McNerney till the day he died,” Sauer said.ĭespite their 45-year friendship, the two always referred to each other by their formal titles. By the door, a portrait of another Soldier hung - 1st Sgt.
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On the walls, certificates of achievement and pictures from his military days surrounded the retired lieutenant colonel with memories. Inside his home, models of airplanes lined the bookshelves of Sauer’s impeccably clean office.
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“That’s an F-16,” Sauer said, cupping his hand over his eyes to shield the sun as he gazed at the fighter jet, his words drowned by the roar of the plane. The grizzled Army pilot, more gray and wrinkled in his retired years, looked out at his manicured lawn, pausing between puffs to watch the sky when a plane flew overhead. Rick Sauer sat on the porch of his home in Lone Tree, Colo., smoking a Don Pablo cigar. His lifelong friend and brother in arms, Rick Sauer, recalls how he met McNerney and the March 22, 1967, battle that earned him the medal.įORT CARSON, Colo. McNerney, the last living “Ivy” Division recipient, died of lung cancer in 2010. McNerney’s heroic actions during the Vietnam War earned him the Medal of Honor, which will be given to the 4th Infantry Division in a ceremony Oct.