Roy Hagerty '66
Captain USMC
Roy was engaged continuously in combat operations for thirteen months as a helicopter pilot (CH-46) and as a ground FAC (Forward Air Controller) with the Second Battalion Third Marines in Northern I Corps. He was forced down five times as a result of enemy action. Although he was wounded, he did not seek the Purple Heart.

Here's a published account of the reasons Roy was awarded the Silver Star:

Flying lead on a nighttime medevac mission northwest of Da Nang, Roy Hagerty's chopper came out of the thick, low-lying clouds into a hailstorm of bullets from North Vietnamese troops. He set his CH-46 down in a controlled crash not far from the wounded leathernecks he'd been sent to evacuate. While small-arms fire riddled the helicopter, he stripped the .50-caliber machine gun and ammunition and crawled to the sound of curses and moans.

"The Marines were all in a large [bomb] crater, and ... there were a lot of bodies in the bottom of the crater and people shot and wounded," Hagerty recalls. "And it was pretty much bedlam. Morale had gone to hell, and they were all crying and had their heads down."

A second lieutenant ran around, screaming and waving his .45 at the young Marines. 1st Lt. Roy Hagerty pulled rank. Immediately, he ordered the men to throw their dead down the hill.

"Can you imagine being in a fighting position and standing on your own men?" he asks. "I stood up and got on top of the ridge looking at them - and I was taking fire and I tried to inspire them and said, 'OK, let's go, get your heads up - field of fire!"

When another medevac finally arrived, Hagerty stayed behind to coordinate the gun ships hovering overhead, leaving only after reinforcements moved in the next morning. "I was flying again that afternoon," he says. You just do what you have to do."

For what Hagerty did that March night in 1969 President Nixon awarded him the Silver Star.

 
Here's a note from Roy clarifying what he said to inspire the men (the original article misquoted him):

...I think the quote is [now] generally correct. However, as I recall,  I was trying to keep us from getting over-run by putting these demoralized Marines into a fighting mode; hence, I had a lot more to say, as you can imagine. Whatever effect it had seemed to have worked. Later that night, as an example, when I asked for volunteers to accompany me to recover my "chase" crew who had been shot down trying to get us and the wounded out, they all wanted go. It was quite a turn-around. It became a valuable lesson to me that if you don't know what you're doing act like you do, because perceptions can be powerful.

I notice the extract from the article says I was back flying the next afternoon which is true. But more importantly, this reinforces the fact that the event was pretty routine and the experience to us wasn't anything new. There are plenty of similar "routine" events that happened that I could tell in a series of vignettes. Perhaps, I will some day soon...