Milton Lee Olive III gave his life to save four comrades
Although President Harry S. Truman’s Executive Order 9981 ended segregation in the military in July 1948, Vietnam was the nation’s first fully integrated war. Texan Jimmy Stanford, a lieutenant in the 173rd Airborne Brigade, which in May 1965 became the first major Army unit in Vietnam, felt uncomfortable with the desegregation. He had grown up in a segregated town and said the “N-word” occasionally. But he didn’t consider himself prejudiced and was thankful for every man in his 3rd Platoon of B Company, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment.
Stanford’s senior platoon sergeant, Vince Yrineo, a 35-year-old Hispanic who had endured racial prejudice, was quick to call his platoon leader out. “I simply wasn’t going to take that from some redneck shavetail [second lieutenant], and I wanted him to know right away where I stood,” Yrineo recalled years later.
