Word Celebrity Blog

Patrick Henry Brady

Patrick Henry Brady was born on October 1, 1936 in Philip, South Dakota. He attended O'Dea High School in Seattle, Washington, a strict, all boys school run by the Congregation of Christian Brothers, where he was active in sports.

Brady is a former president of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and holds a Bachelors degree in Psychology from Seattle University and an MBA from Notre Dame.

While in college at Seattle University, he initially hated the compulsory ROTC program and was kicked out. Brady realized he would probably be drafted after graduation reentered the ROTC to enter the service as an officer. After graduation he was commissioned a 2d Lieutenant in the Army Medical Service Corps in 1959.

During his first tour in Vietnam, then Captain Brady served with the 57th Medical Detachment, where his commanding officer was the legendary Major Charles Kelly. After Kelly's death on July 1, 1964, Brady took command of the 57th Medical's Detachment A in Soc Trang. On his second tour, Brady, now a major, commanded the 54th Medical Detachment. It was during this tour that Brady earned his Medal of Honor.

Gen. Brady spent over 34 years in the service of his country, with duty stations all over the world. He was a pioneer in battlefield patient evacuation developing rescue techniques that allowed the evacuation of the wounded in all weather conditions and resulted in him being identified in The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War and other books as the top helicopter pilot in Vietnam. 

Using these techniques, Gen. Brady earned the Medal of Honor for a series of missions that began before sunrise and ended after dark in which he utilized three helicopters which were hit more than 400 times by enemy fire and mines to rescue some 60 patients.



















During his two tours in Vietnam Brady evacuated 5000 wounded. After Vietnam Brady continued in the army, retiring as a Major General in 1993 after 34 years of service.

In two tours in Vietnam, Patrick Brady flew over 2500 combat missions and evacuated over 5000 friendly, as well as enemy, wounded. Gen. Brady is one of two Army veterans of Vietnam to hold both the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross. His awards include two Distinguished Service Medals; the Defense Superior Service Medal; the Legion of Merit; six Distinguished Flying Crosses; two Bronze Stars, one for valor; the Purple Heart and 53 Air Medals, one for valor. He has also been awarded the Distinguished Service Medal of The American Legion, its highest award; and the DAR Medal of Honor from the Daughters of the American Revolution.



























Patrick Brady never saw combat after Vietnam. He stayed in the service and rose to the rank of major general. His six children (three sons, three daughters) all served in uniform as well, including two sons who were graduates of West Point, although none of the Brady offspring pursued the military as a career.

Veterans Day has always had meaning for Brady, but never more so than this year. His youngest child, 23-year-old daughter Meghan, another Seattle University graduate, is serving as an Army medical service corps officer in Baghdad. Suddenly, the Medal of Honor recipient's perspective has been turned upside down, from combat warrior to combat waiter at home.

"I can tell you I've gained a new appreciation for the families of veterans," Brady says. "I have never gone through anything like having my last daughter over there in the Iraq War. It's far, far more difficult than being there yourself.... No doubt she'll turn out just fine. I'm confident she's going to make it and they'll start rotating out of the war zone in a year, like we did in Vietnam.

"But everything about Veterans Day has changed since the terrorists. Why they hate us as they do is something I don't understand. We have to find a way to fight these people. To fight these folks will require a lot of ingenuity. But we'll get it done, as America always does. And I'm so glad my daughter is contributing."

Brady returned to the place he grew up after he retired from active duty, buying a house with some acreage outside Sumner where he lives with his wife, Nancy. He devotes himself to continuing his decades of research for a memoir of his service in Vietnam, the kind of story that he believes just has not been told about the war, especially all the humanitarian efforts of soldiers there.

He also has served for seven years as the chairman of the board of the Citizens Flag Alliance, the broad-based initiative to pass a constitutional amendment that will allow Congress to pass laws to prohibit desecration of the flag.


























"Gen. Brady is one of the most persistent humans on the planet", said a boyhood friend from Seattle, Terry Marcell, the director of the First Avenue Service Center, a Seattle homeless shelter. "He can certainly get people's attention, both by the heroism of his own life story and just his sheer force of will," Marcell said.

Patrick Brady has led a fund-raising campaign for the homeless shelter, recently raising $230,000. He also is a regent for Seattle University and serves on the foundation for O'Dea High School.

He is a former president of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and now serves as Chairman of the Citizens Flag Alliance, an organization dedicated to protecting the American flag from desecration. Brady said, his movement is not about fabric, it's about fiber. The moral kind that he saw around him every day on the battlefields.

"What's gone wrong with this country is not tangible - it's spiritual," Brady said. "Stopping flag burning has a greater meaning. It will say something again about what is right and wrong. It will begin to return a moral basis to our laws."

Then he borrows from the language of the Vietnam era, when it was said to be important to stop communism there or risk the erosion of freedom everywhere.

"I see flag burning as just another visible domino in the devaluing of America."

The two-star Army general is on a crusade to save the American flag. He's supposed to be retired, but he often works seven days a week. He's racked up 400,000 frequent-flier miles since 1994, plugging the importance of the flag in nearly every state. He visits Congress constantly, urging politicians to back a 17-word constitutional amendment designed to protect the flag.

The group he heads, the Citizens Flag Alliance, has spent more than $17 million on a lobbying and advertising campaign dating to 1994. It is an alliance made up of 140 organizations with more than 20 million members. Its goal is to undo a U.S. Supreme Court decision that said those four Seattle protesters had a free-speech right to burn that flag.

This summer, Congress is expected to vote for the fourth time since 1990 on the proposed amendment.



























Medal of Honor citation

Rank and organization:
Major,
U.S. Army,
Medical Service Corps,
54th Medical Detachment,
67th Medical Group,
44th Medical Brigade.

Place and date:
Near Chu Lai,
Republic of Vietnam,
January 6, 1968.

Entered service at:
Seattle, Wash.

Born:
October 1, 1936,
Philip, S. Dakota.

Citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty, Maj. Brady distinguished himself while serving in the Republic of Vietnam commanding a UH-1H ambulance helicopter, volunteered to rescue wounded men from a site in enemy held territory which was reported to be heavily defended and to be blanketed by fog. To reach the site he descended through heavy fog and smoke and hovered slowly along a valley trail, turning his ship sideward to blow away the fog with the backwash from his rotor blades. Despite the unchallenged, close-range enemy fire, he found the dangerously small site, where he successfully landed and evacuated 2 badly wounded South Vietnamese soldiers. He was then called to another area completely covered by dense fog where American casualties

lay only 50 meters from the enemy. Two aircraft had previously been shot down and others had made unsuccessful attempts to reach this site earlier in the day. With unmatched skill and extraordinary courage, Maj. Brady made 4 flights to this embattled landing zone and successfully rescued all the wounded. On his third mission of the day Maj. Brady once again landed at a site surrounded by the enemy. The friendly ground force, pinned down by enemy fire, had been unable to reach and secure the landing zone. Although his aircraft had been badly damaged and his controls partially shot away during

his initial entry into this area, he returned minutes later and rescued the remaining injured. Shortly thereafter, obtaining a replacement aircraft, Maj. Brady was requested to land in an enemy minefield where a platoon of American soldiers was trapped. A mine detonated near his helicopter, wounding 2 crewmembers and damaging his ship. In spite of this, he managed to fly 6 severely injured patients to medical aid. Throughout that day Maj. Brady utilized 3 helicopters to evacuate a total of 51 seriously wounded men, many of whom would have perished without prompt medical treatment.

Maj. Brady's bravery was in the highest traditions of the military service and reflects great credit upon himself and the U.S. Army.


















Patrick H. Brady can remember that 1969 day as if were yesterday. He was awaiting the White House ceremony when President Richard M. Nixon would present him with the country's highest award for valor, the Medal of Honor, and a senior officer turned to him with unsolicited advice.

"He told me that what was about to happen was the most significant thing that would happen to me or anyone in my family for generations," Brady recalls. "I thought what was that guy talking about. I didn't believe it then. I don't believe it now."

The passing years have convinced Brady that having all six of his children finish their college educations was far more significant than his receiving the Medal of Honor for combat actions as a helicopter pilot flying medical evacuations in Vietnam. Education, now that was something lasting, something truly affecting generations.

"I don't think combat," he says, "is one of the great challenges in life."

Scratch below the surface of a true hero and this is what one encounters more often than not: a matter-of-factness about what was accomplished. I was just doing my duty. Others were doing similar things. They could just as easily have received the honor.

Brady has seen that attitude time and again when Medal of Honor recipients have gathered for their annual reunions, most recently a month ago in Branson, Mo. The recipients seldom swap tales of their combat exploits. Braggadocio is definitely not a welcome trait. Humility is the imperative when Medal of Honor recipients meet, as is humor, as is love of country.

"This is just a great bunch of guys, but incredible patriots," Brady says. "I was president of the Medal of Honor Society and we may not agree on a lot of things, but we all share a great love of country. We would do anything for our country. We've got Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, every mix of that you can imagine, but what we Medal of Honor recipients have in common is an intense love of our country. We would die for it."



























Heroes simply refuse to quit, no matter what. Maj. Brady demonstrated that repeatedly in the actions during one hectic day in 1968 that led to the Medal of Honor. He volunteered to rescue two badly wounded South Vietnamese soldiers in fog-bound enemy territory after other rescue attempts had failed. He succeeded, then soon departed on another foul-weather mission that required five flights over an hour to rescue 39 GIs.

Other rescue missions followed, including one that was almost aborted when a mine explosion ripped a hole in his chopper and caused every warning light on the control panel to flash. Brady still managed to coax the chopper into the air, returned to base with a half-dozen gravely wounded soldiers, picked up another chopper and continued his work. By the end of the day, he had rescued 51 warriors from the battlefield, helping save many of their lives, and all this was accomplished in medevac choppers that were riddled with an astounding 400 bullet holes.

Recounting what resulted in the Medal of Honor is a mandatory part of life as a recipient, whether in school assemblies, Rotary gatherings, media interviews. Brady has done that more times than he can count, sometimes twice in a single day, but the story seldom varies, nor his response to the inevitable questions of how he could have done what he did in the intense heat of battle.

Patrick Brady's plain-spoken yet eloquent responses provide a mix of context and insight. He emphasizes that what he did as a major on that Medal of Honor day was "not remarkable in any way" from what he did in the 2,000 to 3,000 medevac missions that he flew during two tours of duty in Vietnam. Oh, there was "a little weather" that day, plus someone also happened to write down what he had done, but otherwise it was just another day of trying to save as many lives as he possibly could, which was always his motivation.

"We were saving lives and nothing is more exhilarating; you couldn't not do it," he says. "If someone was hurt somewhere, you had to find a way to get into there. It was as if it was a friend of yours, or a loved one, or you out there yourself. That made the missions easy. And my faith was the substitute for fear. I never experienced fear, I always focused on the mission. I figured that if I got killed, there was not a better way to die. But my focus was on the mission."

Everything did not always go according to plan. Terrain played tricks, weather intruded, enemy fire proved impossible to evade. Brady readily admits there were times when he "messed up," times when he had 30 to 40 of his choppers shot up, had some of his crew members wounded, or was wounded himself, although not seriously.

"God blessed me," Brady stresses. "I was very, very lucky. But I just think that I was hard to kill, since I was so careful to plan and execute approaches into an area."

Brady remembers being at the White House Medal of Honor ceremony and being "embarrassed, knowing what I did and knowing what so many other guys did." He had other obstacles to surmount in passing years. The medal definitely opened doors, provided opportunities, yet also created huge expectations, particularly among civilians.

"One of the negatives of being a Medal of Honor recipient is that people attribute something to you that's simply not there," Brady explains. "People think you're a Superman. They have expectations of you that you can only fulfill if you went back into combat."