Lowcountry Medal of Honor recipient recounts final battles of Vietnam War

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCBD) – Lowcountry Medal of Honor recipients were honored Friday during a ceremony at Patriots Point.

News 2 spoke to Medal of Honor recipient U.S. Marine Corps Major General James Livingston (ret.), who was in command during some of the final battles of the Vietnam War and oversaw the evacuation of Saigon.

Maj. Gen. Livingston received the Medal of Honor for his bravery in the battle of Dai Do, which began April 30, 1968.

He was the company commander of of echo company, 2nd Battalions, 4th Marines, a.k.a. the “Magnificent Bastards.”

His group was sent in on May 1, 1968 to relieve a battalion that was taking serious losses from enemy fire. At 5:00 a.m., the men set off through the rice paddy fields to the village of Dai Do. They were intensely outnumbered, but they took the village.

After success at Dai Do, only around 35 men were left in Maj. Gen. Livingston’s company. They heard that the Vietnamese were surrounding another nearby battalion and set off to help.

The battle was about two hours of mostly hand-to-hand combat, “mean stuff,” as Maj. Gen. Livingston described it.

“They were just fighting bastards. I mean the Magnificent Bastards performed superbly… 2nd Battalion 4th Marines Magnificent Bastards was the reason, I’m convinced… the war may have ended at that point.”

He was shot in the leg and hit with shrapnel, but continued directing the mission. When it came time to withdraw, he told his men to leave him to cover the pull out, but they refused to leave without him.

All told, there were 800 marines up against around 10,000 Vietnamese. 100 marines were killed and many more were wounded. Around 4,000 Vietnamese were killed.

Maj. Gen. Livingston said that he wears the Medal of Honor in memory of the marines that didn’t make it home from that battle.

He was also heavily involved in overseeing the evacuation of Saigon in Operation Frequent Wind.

According to Maj. Gen. Livingston, the helicopter pilots were the real heroes of the evacuation. They flew for 16 hours straight ferrying out U.S. personnel and refugees.

He was on one of the last three helicopters to leave Vietnam: two from the embassy, and the one he was aboard.

Maj. Gen. Livingston said that he wasn’t sure if his helicopter was going to make it out, not because of enemy fire, but because of the sheer number of people on board.

“It was a pretty interesting takeoff. We bounced off of one car then we bounced off of a tree, then finally got airborne.”

Despite the chaos, Maj. Gen. Livingston said that the operation was professional and successful. Drawing parallels to recent events, Maj. Gen. Livingston said that “anyone who wants to compare Saigon’s evacuation to Afghanistan’s doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”