Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Leslie Sabo
Leslie Sabo should have been awarded the military’s highest honor 40 years ago, after he was killed in action during the Vietnam War. But the Department of Defense’s bureaucracy lost sight of the paperwork, causing the matter to be forgotten until 1999 when a writer, Vietnam veteran Tony Mabb, stumbled across Sabo’s military records at the National Archives.
Thanks to the discovery, the U.S. Army is once again preparing to award the Medal of Honor posthumously to Sabo. The 22-year-old from Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, was killed on May 10, 1970, while saving several members of his 3rd Battalion 506th Infantry Regiment unit of the 101st Airborne Division following an ambush by North Vietnamese forces. Sabo’s company had been sent into Cambodia as part of the United States’ escalation of the Vietnam conflict into the neighboring country to disrupt North Vietnamese operations. Among his actions, Sabo jumped on top of a wounded soldier to protect him from a grenade. Sabo was shot to death while providing cover to allow the helicopter evacuation of two injured U.S. troops.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
Vietnam War Hero May Finally Get His Due (by Torsten Ove, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Leslie Halasz Sabo, Jr (Virtual Wall)
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