By Mike Weland

Nearly 10 months after Idaho Congressman Raul Labrador gave the thumbs-up and forwarded a nomination to finally recognize a local hero with this nation’s highest military honor, the U.S. Marine Corps did what the man who made the nomination expected … they punted.

Marine Lance Corporal Ric Binns (foreground)  and team members Tom Powles, Joseph Kosoglow and William Norman shortly before the Battle of Hill 488.

“I didn’t ask for this … why are they addressing this to me instead of to Bob Adelhelm?” Binns asked.

“ … Lieutenant Colonel Robert P. Adelhelm, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired,” Himler wrote, “who has submitted a letter outlining his reasons for the upgrade of your Navy Cross, was not in your former chain of command, and therefore is not eligible to submit a request …”

LtCol Adelhelm (Ret) was one of thousands of Marine Corps officers who served this nation in the years since Vietnam, nearly all of whom, as part of their training, study the Battle of Hill 488. It was an overnight battle for a non-descript hill, where 16 U.S. Marines and two Navy Corpsmen faced down a full assault by more than 250 Vietnamese regulars who were better armed, better equipped.

Six members of the platoon died, none of the survivors walked away unscathed. Those 18 men became the most highly decorated small unit in U.S. Military history; to include one Medal of Honor, four Navy Crosses, two posthumous; 13 Silver Stars, four posthumous … 18 Purple Hearts … six posthumous.

As a junior Marine Corps officer, Adelhelm studied that battle, and was proud of Jimmie Howard, the Marine Corps staff sergeant and leader of the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Marine Division, who was given this nation’s highest military honor for his actions on that hill.

After his retirement, he came to work with a man named Chuck Bosley, then a union painter, who had been a private first class on the hill that fateful night.

While Jimmie Howard stood his post and kept the platoon in radio contact, he said, the Marine who kept them fighting and kept them alive was Lance Corporal Ricardo C. Binns.

“If Jimmie Howard merited the Medal of Honor, and I have no doubt that he did,” Adelhelm said, “Binns’ actions that night merited it two-fold.”

In the culture of the day, however, only one Medal of Honor was given per engagement, and that to the most ranking member of the engagement.

“I didn’t expect much more from the Marine Corps,” Adelhelm said regarding his recommendation, “they didn’t bother to look into this and took the easy way out, falling back on rules and regulations and ignoring merit. I’d hoped for more from the politicians who said they supported this, but none of them did more than go through the motions; none gave an endorsement. They were there to take the credit, if it came, but not to take a stand to do what’s right.”

The chain of command, in the military, is sacrosanct. What goes up had better have a good written reason if the request is to be considered. Had Raul Labrador or any other member of the Idaho Congressional delegation, all of whom said they supported the recommendation, only added an endorsement; “this deserves a closer look … I am interested,” the Marine Corps awards branch might have take the request a bit more seriously.

They might have had a better reason to look at the merit of the recommendation, rather than Marine Corps regulations by which to deny a Marine Corps hero who didn’t always follow Marine Corps rules and regulations in garrison.

These are traits shared by nearly every Medal of Honor recipient.

Ricardo C. Binns didn’t ask to be a hero … he just happened to be there in the right time at the right place. Instead of giving up, he stood up and did the impossible, throwing rocks when the grenades were gone, laughing defiantly in the face of the enemy when that’s all that was left to repel the enemy, and to get his fellow Marines home.

His country never thanked him for that, but the men who survived, most of whom Adelhelm met and talked with before he submitted his recommendation, said they’d all have died if Binns hadn’t stood up and did what he did. Even the man who won the Medal of Honor for his action that night credits Rick Binns as a hero … his recommendation for Binns’ Navy Cross makes that clear.

A few days ago, Binns received a letter from Congressman Labrador’s office, saying they had done all they can … sorry, the Marine Corps has ruled.

The Marine Corps also sent Congressman Labrador's office information on how they could accommodate Marine Corps requirements by attaching a list of where they could write to find people who might consider “his” request, people who’d been in his chain of command during the battle … the problem is, it wasn’t Binns or the the Idaho Congressional delegation who asked. That credit goes to LtCol Adelhelm, who, though he submitted the recommendation, was left out of the process due to privacy act concerns.

“My Congressman didn’t help me because it involves a resident of Idaho, and the Idaho Congressmen didn’t communicate with me because I’m from Florida,” Adelhelm said. “This despite the fact that they accepted the package and submitted it to the Marine Corps.”

That lack of communication left Binns befuddled, he said.

Of all the people he’s been contacted by and talked to over the course of nearly a year, Senate and Congressional staffers, Congressional liaisons, only one, Vicki Fulton, Constituent Services Representative and Service Academy Coordinator for Senator Jim Risch, has contacted Binns to admit that his recommendation should have been handled better.

Ricardo C. Binns

“This is not the ‘Marine Corps’ Medal of Honor,” Adelhelm said. “This is the Congressional Medal of Honor … an award bestowed by a grateful nation for service rendered that goes above and beyond the call of duty. Had Rick not been there, someone else might have risen to the occasion … but likely not. The fact is, Rick was there, he was the right person in the right place at the right time and he had the skill, personality and temperament to do what very few people could have done, and what no one in his higher chain of command could have expected or accounted for. That’s the definition of ‘above and beyond the call of duty.’”

While he says he expected the outcome, Adelhelm said he’s not giving up, saying that this recommendation deserves further review at a higher echelon.

“There are obvious indications of impropriety in the awards process and decision making back in 1966,” he said. “Also, the way this Marine was treated after his return from Vietnam after months of hospitalization by awarding him an incomplete separation document DD-214, and giving him a General Discharge despite his Navy Cross and two Purple Hearts is mind boggling. As a result, it took him years to get his record corrected and resulted in years of lost benefits and assistance that would have normally been afforded a hero of his stature.

“I’m disappointed that the Marine Corps awards branch didn’t at least bump this up to the Secretary of the Navy for further consideration, but without endorsement from the elected officials, I’m not surprised …  it’s easier to defend a wrong decision made years ago than to admit fault, despite clear guidelines that apply in this case that would allow reconsideration.

“I know the men on that hill appreciate what Rick Binns did, and I think we all appreciate heroes, and Americans have the right to know who their real heroes are. I think it’s our job, as a nation and a people, to recognize them, and not let rules and regulations deny us the chance to give credit where it is due.”

In 1993, President Bill Clinton overrode the various branches of the military, forcing a review of award nominations from World War II, and North Idaho gained a hero, a man we’d been denied the chance to honor since April, 1945. He was one of seven soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen so honored, and the only one to stand in front of the President of the United States and bow his head to have that pale blue ribbon bestowed. He was the only one still alive to bear the burden the Medal of Honor brings. Vernon Baker came home to North Idaho, earned a hard living and became a neighbor. The Medal didn’t change him so much … but it did change us.

“By his actions on that hill, Rick Binns proved himself a national hero … a hero who has been denied due credit for far too long for reasons we, as a nation, can’t remember. It’s time this man be given the recognition he deserves, and that we, as a nation, be given the opportunity to express our gratitude.

“Rick Binns has never asked that he be recognized,” Adelhelm said. “True heroes never do. It’s the obligation of a nation grateful for their service to our country to recognize those who go above and beyond the call of duty on our behalf, to give them thanks … and to bestow honor.”