Medal of Honor Winner Describes Founding of Special Forces

Heroes Behind Headlines

A living national treasure, Col. Paris Davis was one of the first sixteen U.S. Marine officers–and the only African-American–recruited to help form the Special Forces division–the inspired brainchild of JFK, who himself had seen the limits of military bureaucracy during WWII and wanted to add smaller, nimbler highly trained fighting squads to the US military’s toolkit.

A native of Cleveland, Paris describes what it took to create the SF cadre; meeting JFK; his combat experiences in VIetnam–and his role in the specific operation in 1968 that ultimately earned him a Medal of Honor, which he did not receive until over fifty years later during the Biden administration.

Heroes Behind Headlines
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