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WASHINGTON -- Rose Mary Sabo-Brown vividly
remembers May 15, 1970, as the worst day of her life. It was the day
she learned that her new husband, Spc. 4 Leslie H. Sabo Jr. of the
101st Airborne Division, wasn't coming home from Vietnam.
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Photo Right - Army Spc. 4 Leslie H. Sabo Jr. and his new wife, Rose
Mary, pose for the camera before he deployed to Vietnam with Company
B, 3rd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division
in November 1969. He was killed in Cambodia while saving the lives
of his fellow Soldiers, May 10, 1970, actions for which he received
posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor on May 16, 2012. Photo on
right courtesy of Rose Mary Sabo-Brown |
He was missing in action, the Army told her, explaining
that they didn't know anything else yet. But Rose Mary knew.
She knew in her heart he was dead.
"I felt it," she
said, adding that she had already known something was wrong.
"I didn't get a letter that whole week. From May 10 on I
didn't get a letter. I said, 'Something happened. Something
happened. He's not writing.' He was already dead."
After an agonizing five days, the Army confirmed it: Leslie
had been killed by enemy fire, May 10.
The Army told
his parents and his brother George that Leslie had been shot
by a sniper while guarding an ammunition dump somewhere in
Vietnam.
Rose Mary and the Sabo family mourned. They
went to his funeral and tried to pick up the pieces of their
shattered lives, never knowing that there was more to the
story -- never knowing that Leslie had actually been killed
in Cambodia, or that he had died a hero, or that his
commanders had recommended him for the Medal of Honor.
Leslie wasn't even born a citizen of the country he died
for. At the end of World War II, fleeing the Soviet army and
communism, his parents and his brother had escaped from
their native Hungary to Austria, where Leslie was born in
1948.
"My dad kept waiting for the Russians to leave
Hungary and wound up understanding that they weren't
leaving," George remembered. When he and Leslie were 6 and
2, respectively, the family packed up and immigrated to the
United States, where their father, who had practiced law in
Hungary, went to night school at the age of 43 and became an
engineer.
The family patriarch upheld a strict moral
code and stressed discipline and patriotism. He was proud to
be a newly minted American citizen (although he insisted
they speak Hungarian at home), and he taught his sons that
they had a duty to their adopted country.
Leslie was
goofy, a jokester, and loved to bowl and shoot pool. He was
also a good kid, his brother remembered. "He just never gave
my parents any trouble. He always did the right thing. Not
that he was a saint, but he just never got into any kind of
real trouble. He always listened to my parents, even in his
teenage years, which is a tough time for boys. He never
really caused any problems, never had a car accident, never
got traffic tickets."
Rose Mary had fallen in love
with Leslie the day she met him at a high school football
game. She was a senior and he had just graduated. She knew
she was "going to be with him for the rest of ... my life as
soon as I met him. I don't know. Something clicked for both
of us."
Leslie showed up to meet her parents dressed
in a long black trench coat and tattered jeans, and her
father asked where she found him, but he soon won them over
as well.
After about a year and a half of college at
Youngstown State University in Ohio, Leslie left school,
uncertain what he wanted to do in life. Unfortunately, that
meant the university was required to send his name to the
selective service board. He was drafted less than six months
later, almost certainly headed for Vietnam.
Rose
Mary, then his fianc�e, begged him to ignore the draft
notice, but Leslie refused. He explained that his family had
fled communism and it was his duty to stand against it, to
fight for the country that had given them so much. He
understood, more than many Americans, the reasons behind the
war and had talked about it with his brother many times.
"I felt and understood the rationale at that time
portrayed by our politicians, that you have to stop the
communists somewhere in Asia," George recalled. "So I was
not anti-Vietnam in the intellectual sense, but when it came
down to my brother going to Vietnam, I wasn't good with it.
But ... at that time, in our minds, the right thing was to
serve your country, and if you have to go to Vietnam, you go
to Vietnam and God will take care of you. That's kind of the
way he and I both felt.
"We were all very, very
nervous about him going to Vietnam, but he seemed to accept
the fact that that's what he was supposed to do. ... We were
also very proud of him."
Besides, Leslie quickly
decided that he actually liked the Army, his brother said,
noting that "even as a (private first class), he liked the
discipline, he liked the camaraderie."
The only
problem was that Leslie was supposed to get married Sept.
13, 1969 -- right in the middle of his advanced individual
training. The Army let him go home for his wedding, but he
had to return the next day, and couldn't take his new bride
on a honeymoon until he received 30 days of leave in
October. They went to New York City, a trip Rose Mary said
is still her happiest memory, and they had a month to be
newlyweds, to live as husband and wife.
She missed
him terribly after he deployed, writing him two or three
letters a day about normal life. "I would write and tell him
'I did this today and I did that. I had to go to work.' I'd
hear a song that reminded me of him and I'd write some of
the words to the song in there."
While Leslie was
almost as faithful a letter writer, writing letters to Rose
Mary every other day and his family about once a week, he
didn't want to worry them. So he was upbeat, never talking
about combat or missions, never mentioning the primitive
conditions he was enduring out in the field. Instead, Rose
Mary remembered, "He talked about his buddies and how close
they all became."
Her father wouldn't let her watch
most of the stories about Vietnam on the evening news, but a
close family friend had been killed in action, so she knew
how bad it was -- Leslie's letters were her lifeline. She
would actually sit outside and wait for the mailman.
The letters stopped when he left for Cambodia with the rest
of Company B, 3rd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st
Airborne Division. The "Currahees" were attached to the 4th
Infantry Division for a secret mission: Stop North
Vietnamese units from using Cambodia as a staging point to
attack American and South Vietnamese troops. But on May 10,
1970, the unit walked into a devastating ambush near the Se
San River in eastern Cambodia.
Army Spc. 4 Leslie H. Sabo Jr. is shown
with an M-60 machine gun and ruck during his service with Company B,
3rd Battalion, 506th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division. Photo
courtesy of George Sabo |
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In the ensuing
bloodbath, Leslie shielded a comrade from a grenade and
continued fighting despite his injuries, helping cover his
fellow Soldiers' evacuation before he was killed.
The
news of his death was devastating.
"We took it
badly," George remembered. Leslie's death was especially
hard on their mother, who had already lost a 1-year-old son
to World War II bombings. "Now she loses another son in
another war 35 years later. So it was really hard on her. My
father ... took it extremely hard. ... Because the war was all
around Hungary in the 40s, he understood the horror of war,
and then to lose a son ... it (shook) my dad pretty hard."
Rose Mary admitted that although she remarried (and
eventually divorced), she was never truly happy again. "I
never stopped loving him. Sometimes it feels like yesterday
I lost him, but I'll never forget him and I'm very proud of
him," she said, as her emotions overcame her.
Her
brother, who was already in the Army and was close friends
with Leslie, made things worse when he volunteered for duty
in Vietnam, in part to avenge his friend's death, so Rose
Mary worried she would lose her brother, too. |
Leslie's funeral, which Rose Mary barely remembers, was the
day before her birthday, and that morning she had a special
delivery: a dozen red roses from her husband. For a brief,
heart-pounding moment, she thought there had been a horrible
mistake. If he was sending her flowers, he must be alive.
"I looked at my escort," Rose Mary remembered, "and
threw the flowers at him. I felt bad after I did that, and I
said, 'You've got a lot of explaining to do.'" Leslie,
however, had ordered the flowers (and Mother's Day corsages
for both of their mothers) months earlier, before he
deployed. "That's the way he was. He was very thoughtful,
very kind, very loving."
She never forgot her true
love, and 32 years later, armed with a new computer, Rose
Mary went looking for more information. She posted a message
on VirtualWall.org, and got a reply from one of Leslie's
battle buddies three months later. He put her in touch with
others from their unit, and little by little, she learned
the truth about her husband's death.
"I said, 'My
Leslie?' Because if you knew my husband, he was a clown,"
she explained, "always joking around and as skinny as can
be, and he was even skinnier in Vietnam. I'm going 'My
Leslie? Are you sure you've got the right person?' Because
the Leslie I knew would give his life to anybody. He would.
He would give you the shirt off his back ... but the Leslie I
knew was (also) a clown, always joking around. I never
pictured him to be like that. I was overwhelmed with pride.
I said, 'Wow. That's awesome.'"
"Understanding my
brother, I'm not surprised," George said, explaining that
Sabo's discipline, love for his country and for his fellow
Soldiers meant that when he had to choose between running
and staying safe and standing and fighting, he fought. "He
was the least selfish, (least) self-centered person I've
ever known. He was always thinking about other people. ... So
his ability to overcome fear ... (and) stand (his) ground and
try to fight to keep the rest of the guys safe doesn't
surprise me."
They were at once proud and
overwhelmed, sad and angry. They should have known of
Leslie's sacrifice long ago, Rose Mary said, and the Army
should never have lost his Medal of Honor recommendation. "I
didn't know who to be upset with. ... I was mad, but I'm glad
it's happening now. The (anger) is gone."
Learning
that Leslie would finally
receive the Medal
of Honor in a May 16 White House ceremony was thrilling.
"It was a very emotional day," Rose Mary said of the day
President Barack Obama called her and told her the good
news. "A very, very emotional day. I couldn't even sleep
that night. And when I woke up the next morning ... I went,
'Now wait a minute, did I dream this? Is it really real?' I
just couldn't believe it happened. I'm very, very happy
about it. It's sad and happy. It feels wonderful.
"I
couldn't be more proud of him," she continued. "As the days
go on, I keep thinking, 'It's coming, it's coming.' I can't
wait. I cry myself to sleep at night. Every day I look at
his picture and I go, 'You're finally getting what's due
you.'"
By Elizabeth M. Collins, Soldiers Magazine
Army News Service
Copyright 2012
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Leslie H. Sabo,
Jr. - Medal of Honor Presentation |
