Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Santa Clarita, bestowed decades-overdue recognition Tuesday, describing himself as “a humble dude from Santa Clarita” as he pinned medal after medal on retired Army Chief Warrant Officer Robert L. Adams.
With help from Chris Ward, the congressman’s veteran services administrator based in Antelope Valley, Garcia was using space in The Centre to correct wrongs that can happen for many reasons, he said.
Sometimes, members of the armed forces just want to get back to civilian life and don’t have the time or inclination to follow up on their service records, Garcia said.
Adams was in the middle of his third year of college at Cal State University, Northridge — then known as San Fernando Valley State College — and a newlywed when he decided to enlist, confident that he would get drafted like everyone else.
And sure enough, his draft notice came, and he was already two weeks into basic training.
“I thought, ‘Well, what can I do to help?’” he recalled Tuesday. “I wanted to fly, and the Army said, ‘Well, we’ve got this really good deal …”
On his first flight out in Vietnam, the UH-1 “Huey” Allen was piloting got shot down in August 1970, during a “hot insertion” of troops near a U.S. base at Ahn Kae.
While the plane was going down, the 22-year-old was struck in his leg by gunfire, leading to him receiving a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.
Adams said he later found out the attack would wipe out many of his unit’s aircraft, which left them grounded for several months.
When he flew the next time out, in April 1971, the situation sounded just as perilous.
A six-man reconnaissance team was pinned down and surrounded by enemy fire, and Adams’ commander asked for volunteers for an extraction mission.
Lacking a safe place to put the helicopter down, Adams ultimately ended up puncturing the helicopter’s fuel tank on a tree trunk due to low visibility, but still managed to airlift all six men to safety with probably minutes of fuel to spare, he said.
Adams was awarded more than a dozen recognitions of his service, including the Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star and Purple Heart, with Garcia pinning enough medals on Allen’s dress jacket that Garcia and his family joked about his look resembling a third-world autocrat’s at the end of the ceremony.
The complete list for Adams included the Air Medal, Good Conduct Medal, Vietnam Service Medal and Bronze Star Attachment (Double), Humanitarian Service Medal, Armed Forces Reserve Medal, Army Service Ribbon, the Army Reserve Components Overseas Training Ribbon, the Republic of Vietnam Campaign Ribbon w/Device (1960), the Expert Badge & Rifle Bar, the Marksman Badge & Pistol Bar, the Army Aviation Badge Master and two National Defense Service medals.
But his haul might not be over, and Garcia mentioned putting him in for the United States’ highest military award for valor, the Medal of Honor.
Adams said Tuesday that on his last day of service his colonel told him he had requested the medal for the six-man rescue, but there wasn’t time to compile the necessary witness statements before Adams was to go home.
Adams said he was looking to finish his degree and get a job when he returned from Vietnam.
He stayed involved in service, giving more than two decades to the reserves, mentioning Tuesday he flew the Clintons and other VIP elected officials around in the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge Earthquake as part of the relief missions.
But he never thought much of the awards until he was at a ceremony with his fellow reserve officers, and his commanding officer for that unit, retired Col. Robert Pulley, heard about Adams’ bravery.
Pulley, a retired homicide detective, said he lives a few blocks from The Centre, and reached out to Garcia to get the ball rolling.
In some instances, poor record-keeping, particularly from the Vietnam War era and earlier, has made award tracking difficult.
Adams, now 76, knows chasing down people to collect witness statements for the Medal of Honor — while it might have been a challenge in the 1970s — would be even more difficult now, he said.
But a chest full of medals from his more than 1,000 combat missions — he would fly several in a day for more than a year, he said — provided memories and photos that will no doubt last a lifetime.
When asked what made him decide to look into the past after all these years, his answer was brief as he looked over at his loved ones speaking with Garcia.
“I thought it would be of good value to my wife and family to hear about what had happened.”
Records Tracking Corrected
The correct tracking of military records was also a problem facing Marcia Chopp and her family, she said Tuesday.
Her brother, who lives in Colorado, had sought the recognition on behalf of their father, John Allen Chopp, for years, she said, before she reached out to her congressman.
“I knew Mike would help,” said Chopp, a former police officer, after Garcia gave her the Navy Good Conduct and National Defense Service medals her father earned for his service in Vietnam.
Garcia’s office put her in touch with Ward, and about six months later, she said, the records were righted.
