Something you may not Know about Walmart. John Walton (son of the founder or Walmart)
John Walton was a billionaire. But he also followed his passions of building things - motorcycles, airplanes, etc. He built schools and spent millions and millions on educating children. He volunteered for Viet Nam. He could have been an Officer and probably gotten his choice of assignments, but, instead, he served as a Special Forces Medic taking care of his men - putting their lives ahead of his own.
The plane he died flying was an experimental ultralight aircraft with a small, gasoline-powered engine and wings wrapped in fabric similar to heavy-duty sail cloth, officials said.
John was a Green Beret, part of a unit code-named the Studies and Observations Group, or SOG (cover for "special operations group"), a secret, elite military unit whose operatives would be disavowed by the U.S. government if captured. SOG often conducted actions behind enemy lines and in Laos and Cambodia. John joined the unit in 1968, right after the Tet offensive. On almost every mission there was a firefight. A particularly horrifying battle occurred in the A Shau Valley in Laos while he was assigned to a unit named ST (strike team) Louisiana. John was the commando team's No. 2 as well as its medic. One morning ST Louisiana was dropped from helicopters onto a ridge near the DMZ and was attacked by North Vietnamese army soldiers. In a memoir titled Across the Fence: The Secret War in Vietnam, fellow Green Beret John Stryker Meyer gives an account of that day: "Four of the NVAs rounds struck the tail gunner, wounding him severely. As Walton swung his CAR-15 toward the enemy soldier ... [his] rounds hit the NVA soldier and drove him back in the jungle."
The account goes on to say that Walton's commanding officer, Wilbur "Pete" Boggs, called in a napalm strike that landed yards away from John. Soon the six-man team was surrounded. One was dead and three were wounded. John tended to casualties, including Boggs, who was knocked semiconscious by shrapnel, and Tom Cunningham, who was badly hurt. "The knee got blown out and started hemorrhaging very, very severely. John Walton applied a tourniquet to my leg to stop the severe hemorrhaging," recalls Cunningham today. John called in two choppers for extraction. As the first Kingbee dropped in and lifted off with some of the men, the NVA intensified its assault. A second chopper was needed to get all the men out, but the landing zone was too hot to make it in. Walton and his team thought they were doomed, but suddenly the first chopper came back down, even though their added weight might make it too heavy to take off again. With the enemy advancing into the clearing, firing at the helicopter, and Walton trying to keep Cunningham alive, the Kingbee took off and barely made it over the treetops……..
Long story short, he was more than most would know. RIP sir!
