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🇺🇸 Most Badass Americans You Don’t Know: #1 Roy Benavidez Roy Benavidez is the badass of American badasses. A doctor was zipping him into a body bag. He spit in his face to prove he was still very much alive. Born in 1935 in Cuero, Texas, to Mexican and Yaqui Indian parents. Orphaned young. Raised poor. Dropped out of school at 15 to shine shoes and pick crops. He enlisted anyway. Became a Green Beret with the 5th Special Forces Group. In 1965, on his first Vietnam tour, he stepped on a landmine during a reconnaissance patrol and was badly wounded. Paralyzed from the waist down. Doctors said he’d never walk again and started his medical discharge papers. He refused to accept it. Every night when the hospital was quiet he crawled out of bed and dragged himself across the floor to the wall to force his body to stand. Night after night he fought for every inch of strength until after more than a year in hospitals he walked out ready to return to combat.. May 2, 1968, west of Loc Ninh near the Cambodian border. A 12-man Special Forces recon team plus nine Montagnard allies was surrounded by over 1,000 NVA troops. Benavidez was back at the forward base listening to the desperate radio calls. He volunteered instantly. Armed with nothing but a knife and a medical bag, he jumped from a hovering helicopter straight into the kill zone. He sprinted 75 meters through withering fire to reach the pinned-down team. Wounded in the leg, face, and head before he even got there. Took command anyway. Repositioned the survivors. Directed their fire. Threw smoke to guide the birds in. Carried and dragged wounded men to the extraction helicopter while under constant fire. Went back for the team leader’s body and the classified documents on it. Hit again — small-arms fire ripped into his abdomen, grenade fragments shredded his back. His intestines were hanging out. The extraction helicopter’s pilot was mortally wounded at the exact same moment. The aircraft, riddled with bullets, crashed hard into the jungle. Benavidez pulled the stunned survivors from the overturned wreckage and formed a tiny defensive perimeter. He moved through heavy fire passing out ammo and water, encouraging the men, calling in air strikes and gunship runs. Wounded a third time — shot in the thigh while treating another soldier. In brutal hand-to-hand fighting an NVA soldier clubbed him from behind and bayoneted him. Benavidez yanked the bayonet out of his own body, drew his knife, and killed the man. Spotted two more enemies rushing the second extraction chopper. Grabbed an AK-47 and dropped them both. Made trip after trip carrying wounded men aboard while taking devastating fire. 37 separate wounds — gunshots, shrapnel, bayonets. Only after every surviving man and every classified document was safely loaded did he allow himself to be pulled aboard the last helicopter. He collapsed as it lifted off. Medics later thought he was dead and put him into a body bag. A friend recognized him and called a doctor over for help. The doctor, convinced he was gone, began to zip the bag shut. Benavidez spit in the doctor’s face to prove he was still alive. Roy Benavidez saved at least eight men that day. He was initially awarded only the Distinguished Service Cross. The Medal of Honor was denied multiple times — at the time no living eyewitnesses corroborated his actions, and Benavidez himself believed the entire team had been wiped out. Twelve years later the team’s radioman, Brian O’Connor, was on holiday in Australia when he read a newspaper story about Benavidez. He sat down and wrote a detailed 10-page eyewitness report that verified everything, then came forward and finally made the upgrade possible. President Ronald Reagan personally presented him the Medal of Honor in 1981 and said if the story were a movie script, no one would believe it. Roy Benavidez is an American Legend 🇺🇸

🇺🇸 Most Badass Americans You Don’t Know: #2 Peter Francisco (Thread 1/2) Peter Francisco is an American badass. He was a giant of his time — towering 6’6” and 260 pounds of muscle, and a living celebrity across the entire Continental Army. Legend says George Washington personally called him his “one-man army” and had a massive six-foot broadsword specially forged just for him. Peter’s story starts as a five year old when he was kidnapped from his home in the Portuguese Azores islands, sailed across the Atlantic, and abandoned on a Virginia dock. He was found dressed nicely with silver buckles marked “P.F.” on his shoes and was adopted by Patrick Henry’s uncle. He grew into a literal giant: 6 foot 6 inches tall and 260 pounds of pure muscle from blacksmith work and hard labor. At 16 he heard Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death” speech and begged to enlist in the 10th Virginia Regiment. He fought in nearly every major battle of the Revolutionary War. At Brandywine he took a musket ball to the leg while holding a narrow gap so Washington’s army could escape. He was wounded again at Monmouth when a ball tore through his right thigh. In 1779 Washington picked him for the “forlorn hope” assault on Stony Point. In the dead of night he scrambled up the cliff with 19 other men. He was the second to reach the top, took a 9-inch bayonet slash across his stomach, killed the man who stabbed him plus two more Redcoats, and was the first to seize the British flag. At the disastrous Battle of Camden, with the army collapsing, he single-handedly lifted a massive cannon barrel onto his shoulders and carried it to safety, then bayoneted a charging British dragoon. During the chaotic retreat a British grenadier raised his musket to bayonet Colonel Mayo. Francisco shot the grenadier dead. A cavalryman charged him with a saber. Francisco sidestepped two swings, lifted the man out of the saddle with his bayonet, took the horse, and rode through enemy lines yelling like a Loyalist. He caught up to Mayo, cut down the British officer holding him, and gave his colonel the horse so he could escape. After Camden he reenlisted in Colonel William Washington’s cavalry. He complained his sword felt like a toothpick, so Washington ordered a true giant’s broadsword forged for him — six feet long with a 5-foot blade — delivered just two days before Guilford Court House. At Guilford on March 15, 1781, Francisco led the cavalry charge. Swinging his great sword he personally felled 11 Redcoats in one furious assault. When a bayonet pinned his leg to his horse he calmly helped the soldier yank it free. Then, with one crushing swing, he brought down his giant broadsword and split the man’s head clean down to his shoulders. Moments later another bayonet impaled his right thigh completely through. He kept fighting until he tumbled unconscious from his horse. He was found beside four corpses and nursed back to health by a kindly Quaker. Francisco walked back to Virginia and was given a special scout assignment. One day at Ben Ward’s Tavern nine of Tarleton’s feared dragoons surrounded him. Eight went inside. The paymaster demanded his silver shoe buckles. When the man bent down Francisco grabbed the saber, slashed him across the head and neck, took a pistol ball to the side (his sixth wound), and fought off the rest — capturing all eight horses as seven dragoons fled for their lives. This legendary stand made him known far and wide as the “Giant of Virginia” and the “Hercules of the Revolution.” It marked the end of his fighting career. (Continued in 2/2)

After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like. yahoo.com/news/articles/…