DECEMBER 30, 2024 – Army Col. Robert Lewis Howard was a legend for his service in the Special Forces during the Vietnam War. Having deployed there five times, he’s the most decorated soldier to have served in the conflict and is the only soldier to have been nominated three times for the Medal of Honor.
Howard was born July 11, 1939, in Opelika, Alabama, to Charles and Martha Howard. His father was drafted into World War II when he was very young, and his mother worked in a textile mill to aid in the war effort, so he and his sister were largely raised by their grandmother for the first several years of his life.
Howard’s father and one of his uncles were paratroopers in the famed 101st Airborne Division, so he grew up hearing their stories, which inspired him to serve. On July 20, 1956, the 17-year-old enlisted in the Army a month after graduating high school.
For several years, Howard worked his way up the ranks and even earned an associate degree in business administration from the University of Maryland in 1962.
Howard was sent on his first deployment to Vietnam with the 101st, his father’s former unit, in 1965. After being injured in battle, he was recruited to the Special Forces, which he did missions for until his yearlong deployment was finished, and he returned home for Special Forces training. Howard earned the Ranger tab and eventually become a Green Beret.
Howard returned to Vietnam four more times, mostly doing Special Forces work with the top-secret Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, Studies and Observations Group, which ran cross-border operations in Laos, Cambodia and North Vietnam.
On Dec. 30, 1968, Howard, then a sergeant first class, was in charge of a platoon made up of Americans and Vietnamese soldiers who were on a mission to rescue another team of soldiers who were missing in enemy-controlled territory in Laos.
Once a helicopter inserted the platoon at its specified landing zone, the team moved out, only to quickly be attacked by a much larger enemy force. During the initial firefight, Howard was wounded and his weapon was destroyed.
“My hands were all blown up and burned,” Howard said in a 2003 Library of Congress Veterans History Project interview. “And I couldn’t stand up.”
Howard couldn’t walk, but when he saw his platoon leader, 1st Lt. James Jerson, lying seriously wounded in an exposed area, he didn’t hesitate to crawl through a hail of gunfire to get him. As he was trying to help Jerson, an enemy bullet hit one of Howard’s pouches, which detonated several magazines of ammunition and blew him several feet away.
After a few minutes, Howard realized he wasn’t too injured, so, with the help of a fellow sergeant, he continued his mission to drag Jerson back toward the platoon, which was in disarray because of the attack. Howard then rallied the remaining men into a more organized defense.
“I said, ‘We’re going to establish a perimeter right here, and we’re going to fight or die,'” Howard said of what he told the men who remained.
He said he had the platoon put out strobe lights to identify where they were and call in air support, which arrived to help suppress the enemy around them so the team could make it through the night.
“There was a tributary running off a creek …. and so [the enemy] had to come across that little tributary to get to our position and fight,” Howard said, explaining that the waterway helped them to better defend their hastily made position.
For the next few hours, Howard ignored his own wounds and crawled from position to position, helping the wounded and encouraging the other members of the platoon to keep fighting. With the help of air support, they successfully repulsed several enemy attacks and were finally in sufficient control enough to allow a quick landing of rescue helicopters before sunrise.
Howard personally made sure all the men, dead and alive, were loaded onto the helicopters before he got into one himself to leave the bullet-swept landing zone. Sadly, Jerson, who Howard fought hard to save, died on the ride to safety.
“That hurt me worse than being shot up, seeing that lieutenant die,” Howard told the Veterans History Project.
According to Army Special Operations Command, only six of the 37 platoon members survived the battle. If it weren’t for Howard’s bravery, it’s likely no one would have come home.
Howard was evacuated to a field hospital for recovery. He said that’s where he learned that he’d been recommended for the Medal of Honor.
“In a way, I felt bad because I didn’t feel that I was worthy of the Medal of Honor for that action because I was not successful in doing what the colonel had directed me to do, and that was to find the team that had been surrounded and captured or killed by the enemy,” Howard told the Veterans History Project. He said he later learned some of those men survived and were taken as prisoners of war.
Howard remained in Vietnam and, in December 1969, commissioned as an officer after receiving a direct appointment from the rank of master sergeant to first lieutenant. He’d reached the rank of captain by February 1971 when he learned he was finally being sent home from Vietnam to receive the Medal of Honor.
In late February 1971, Howard was flown to Washington, D.C., where his wife, Tina, and two daughters, Melissa and Denicia, joined him. On March 2, President Richard M. Nixon presented him with the nation’s highest honor for valor during a White House ceremony.
“When I received that honor, I felt that I was sharing it with members of my family that had sacrificed their lives in the Second World War,” Howard said, referring to three of his uncles who died in the conflict. “I try to always maintain the dignity and the honor of having it bestowed upon me.”
Howard’s five tours in Vietnam totaled 55 months in combat, which led to him being wounded 14 times. Between 1968 and 1969, during a 13-month period, Howard was recommended for the Medal of Honor two other times. Those recommendations, however, were downgraded. Instead, he received the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star — the second- and third-highest military awards, respectively. Howard earned eight Purple Hearts during his career, along with numerous other honors. According to Army Special Operations Command, he is the most decorated soldier to have served in Vietnam.
Over the next two decades, Howard continued with his impressive career. He received a bachelor’s degree from Texas Christian University in 1973 before earning two master’s degrees from Central Michigan University in the early 1980s.
His years of airborne expertise were also put to good use when he took part in two John Wayne movies, making a parachute jump in the 1962 film “The Longest Day,” and as an airborne instructor in 1968’s “The Green Berets,” according to his Alabama Department of Veterans Affairs biography.
Howard eventually divorced, got remarried and had two more children, Roslyn and Robert Jr., the latter of whom went on to serve in the Army.
Howard retired on Sept. 30, 1992, after 36 years of service. For 14 years after that, he worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs. He also often spoke with students and troops about the importance of service and the fight for freedom. In the 2000s, he was inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame and the Army Aviation Association of America Hall of Fame.
Howard spent his last few years living in San Antonio. He died on Dec. 23, 2009, at a hospice in Waco, Texas, after suffering from pancreatic cancer. Howard is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Howard’s name is remembered in various ways throughout the Special Forces community. In 2013, the 5th Special Forces Group headquarters building at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, was named Howard Hall in his honor, and a plaque dedicating the Special Operations Command Korea campus to him was unveiled at Camp Humphreys, South Korea, in 2021.
An overpass along I-85 near Auburn University in Alabama was also named for Howard. In December 2024, a book about his life, “Beyond the Call of Duty: The Life of Colonel Robert Howard,” was published.
By Katie Lange, DOD News