“Paris Davis is carrying the wounded to helicopters under intense fire, and the guy he’s carrying says…‘Am I gonna die?’ And he replied…‘Not before me.’” James Patterson, one of the world’s leading fiction writers, is recounting a very real, recent conversation with U.S. Army Captain Paris D. Davis, who received the Medal of Honor for rescuing several of his wounded men despite being shot and severely injured in a battle with more than a hundred Viet Cong, nearly 60 years ago. Patterson reads from another chapter.
“Patrick Brady was contacted by President Nixon about receiving a Medal of Honor. He asked, ‘How do we get there?’ Nixon said to him: ‘You can take Air Force One.’” Brady’s true story, along with 30 others, make up Patterson’s latest nonfiction book, American Heroes, which recounts the war experiences of many who have received the nation’s highest military honors, including the Medal of Honor, Silver Star, and the Distinguished Service Medal.
It is co-authored by Matt Eversmann, an Army Ranger with 20 years of service, who received a Bronze Star with Valor device for his heroic actions in Somalia during the “Black Hawk Down” mission. Together, they have compiled searing recollections of heroic acts by women and men who served in battle in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, told in the soldiers’ own words.
“Our goal, If you were in combat and you read these stories, you say, Eversmann and Patterson got it right,” Patterson says. “For the rest of us, it’s, Holy shit, I can’t believe what these men and women went through.” American Heroes is the fifth nonfiction book that Patterson and Eversmann have written together. The two met in 2018, after Patterson watched a PBS documentary narrated by Eversmann from embattled Afghanistan.
[Author’s note: In 2016, I was embedded with the Air Force and the Army in Afghanistan to shoot a documentary about battlefield trauma. It was a short but eventful visit that took us to a forward operating base in the Taliban-threatened city of Jalalabad. Eversmann, my good friend, came along to narrate the film, in what was his first visit to a battle theater since the Iraq War. Our video, and Eversmann’s interaction with service members in a combat zone, struck Patterson. Eversmann was one of them. They trusted him.]
In 1993, Eversmann was stationed in Mogadishu when he lost 18 fellow soldiers during a 24-hour firefight on the streets of Somalia’s capital. This would come to be known as the “Black Hawk Down” mission. He also saw intense combat during the Iraq Surge in 2006. “In Mogadishu or in Iraq, I never saw a soldier shy away from the fight,” Eversmann says. “Running out in the streets to get to the wounded while bullets are kicking up dust. Anybody who can go into that arena, that’s pretty damn brave. We don’t need to be stingy about recognizing valor.”
Patterson recognized that this style of frank talk was the heartfelt reflection of a man who had survived the raw horror of eyeball-to-eyeball street battle and had come away with the utmost respect for the men who fought alongside him. Patterson reached out, and asked the soldier if he was interested in working on a book together. “This guy was great at getting people to talk about things they don’t want to talk about,” Patterson says, recalling his first impression of Eversmann. “I thought immediately of a title for a book: Walk In My Combat Boots. That nonfiction book, published in 2021, went to number one on the New York Times Bestseller List.
Their collaboration is unique. Eversmann recorded hours of long telephone interviews with service members, asking them to pull the curtain back on events both tragic and inspiring. Patterson then wrote a chapter dedicated to each hero. One recounts the service of Thomas Bennett, a medic and a conscientious objector who, while a pacifist, saw treating the wounded in the Vietnam War as a higher calling. He died carrying injured and mortally wounded soldiers from a firefight. Members of his platoon recall trying to stop him from running through a hail of bullets, but he kept going back. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, as was Sgt. First Class Alwyn Cashe. Despite being engulfed in flames, Cashe went back into a burning vehicle that had been crippled by a roadside bomb to rescue fellow soldiers trapped and burning to death in the wreckage.
The release of American Heroes, says Patterson, is coincidental to this election season. But he hopes the book will be “instructive.” “On some level, the country has to get back to the idea that there can be heroes and we can all be heroes on some level,” he says. “We want this country to work and we’re all in this thing together. Sacrifice seems to be in limited supply now. Even small duties. Stepping up to do impossible things, like they did. Or simply voting, getting other people out to vote. Whatever your political party is, somebody shows us the way.”
American Heroes is dedicated to U.S. Army Col. Ralph Puckett, Jr., the Korean War Veteran who defended a hilltop against an overwhelming Chinese force. Running across an open kill zone to draw fire away from his men, severely injured by mortar fire, ultimately battling with a fixed bayonet, he instructed his men to leave him behind. He received the Distinguished Service Cross twice. One was later upgraded to the Medal of Honor. Puckett passed away in April 2024.
Eversmann, a fellow Army Ranger, was deeply moved by Col. Puckett’s actions and suggests the book is a time capsule, a lesson in leadership and courage at a time when many are seeking it: “In Mogadishu, Gary Gordon and Randy Shugart [Delta Force snipers who received the Medal of Honor posthumously], being told twice that they can’t go into the battle to try and rescue a Black Hawk pilot, and finally, the third time, they still go in anyway. Nobody would have blamed them if they hadn’t. That’s doing more than your job.
“We fought two wars in two decades and we have short memories. People move on. I’ve heard people saying…They were just doing their jobs. Well, this job calls on you to perform in the most austere and dangerous situations. Anybody who says that it’s just a job…They need a tune up.”
This is an excerpt from PALMER Vol.6. To see the full story, including an excerpt from American Heroes, purchase your copy of the magazine here.