MASON – Fifty years ago, 1st Lt. Mike Bongart was left for dead in a South Vietnamese rice paddy with a piece of shrapnel lodged in his brain.

If not for the heroics of Army medic Duane Garver, he would have died at age 25.

Fifty years later, Garver, a longtime Mason resident, is being recognized for saving Bongart's life.

On Oct. 4, 1968, Garver, a 22-year-old Army combat medic, was aboard a helicopter shot down by the Viet Cong in a battle near Dong Tam.

“The enemy’s small arms fire was so intense and accurate that it knocked down three of the ten helicopters in our formation,” Bongart, the pilot, would later recall.

A halo of bullet holes ringed the windshield where Bongart sat. Somehow the bullets missed him, and he managed to land the damaged chopper upright. Garver was on board, but he and Bongart were strangers.

Garver and seven others from his unit exited along with the helicopter’s four-man crew and tried to move away from the Viet Cong fire.

“We were under heavy fire. We were withdrawing from that fire,” Garver recalled.

As they moved through waist-high water, Bongart remembers, he checked on his crew chief, who had been shot in the leg. It’s the last thing he recalls. He didn’t hear the Viet Cong mortar. A shard blew off his flight helmet and pierced the back of his skull.

Later, he would learn he fell in the water and his crew pulled him above the water. They saw him bleeding profusely from the head and not breathing. Believing him dead, they dropped him back in the water.

Garver was also hit by a small piece of shrapnel on the right side of his nose near his eye as well as another piece in his upper back. Though bloodied, he was able to keep moving.

That’s when he saw Bongart, floating face down in the rice paddy water, arms stretched out and motionless.

'Let him go, he's dead'

“What happened to this man?” Garver asked.

“Let him go, he’s dead,” he was told.

But Garver didn’t listen.

“It was my job to care for the wounded, to save lives if I could,” he said. “God wanted me on that day to save a life.”

As he pulled Bongart out of the water, he saw an “arterial spurt” of blood from the back of his head. He wasn’t breathing.

Garver applied pressure to the wound and bandaged his head. Then Garver pushed him against the wall of the dike and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. After a few breaths, Bongart started breathing on his own.

Later, Bongart was told that he was likely six to eight minutes from death when Garver intervened.

To get him to safety, Garver wrapped his arms around Bongart’s chest while cradling the back of the pilot’s head on his own chest. Garver walked backward, pulling the injured pilot along while struggling against reeds in the paddy. They were under constant fire.

Bongart drifted in and out of consciousness. They talked about the ongoing World Series, the Tigers vs. Cardinals. That year, of course, the Tigers went on to win the World Series, after being behind 3-1.

The pilot said he couldn’t see and was deeply confused, but he recalls a voice yelling at him: “Stay with me! Stay with me! I’ll get you out! I’ll get you out!”

Garver said he became tangled in reeds but managed to get the wounded man to a collection point for rescue after perhaps an hour.

Both of the men were airlifted to a Dong Tam hospital for their wounds, a scene captured by an ABC News camera crew that was on board the rescue helicopter. Four days later, Frank Reynolds on ABC Evening News told the story of the life-saving medevac unit, including a long shot of the wounded Bongart and a glimpse of Garver.

Garver quickly recovered in the field hospital. Doctors tried but were unable to remove the shrapnel near his eye. He later sneezed it out. Bongart was flown to another hospital for neurosurgery and eventually sent to recover at Army hospitals in Japan and the U.S. Both men had leech bites from their time in the water.

A thank-you letter

While recuperating, Bongart wanted to talk to the man who saved his life. He asked his platoon leader to get his address and also to put in for a medal for him.

He wrote to Garver thanking him.

Bongart eventually recovered well enough to return to Vietnam for another tour of duty. He still has residual damage, including a ringing in his ear.

In 1970, while stationed in Savannah, Georgia, he visited Garver and his parents in Mount Pleasant. Garver had been discharged at that point.

The two quickly bonded over their shared Vietnam experience, their Christian faith – and golf.

Garver moved to Lansing in 1970 where he studied x-ray technology. He worked for 37 years as an x-ray technologist at Sparrow.

He never lost track of Bongart. Since 1972, the pair get together each year on Oct. 4 for a golf game they’ve dubbed the Dong Tam Invitational, alternating between Toronto, Ohio and the Lansing area. This year it was at the El Dorado Golf Course in Mason.

Bongart, a Pennsylvania native, went on to earn a master of divinity from Princeton University. He worked as a Presbyterian minister for more than two decades before retiring.

The medal Bongart asked about in 1968 for Garver never came through.

“He never received the recognition he so rightly deserved,” Bongart said. “Through the years, I felt bad about it.”

Overdue tribute

Knowing it was likely too late to get an Army medal, Bongart last spring reached out to state Rep. Tom Cochran, D-Mason, and asked him to honor Garver.

That happened Thursday, with Cochran delivering remarks in a tribute as well as U.S. and Michigan flags to Garver. Garver's son and daughter and friends watched from the gallery. The House members gave a standing ovation.

“Their actions as young soldiers and their friendship today will forever remind us of what duty, patriotism and friendship truly mean,” Cochran said.

After the House tribute, they headed to the golf course, though they were tired and played just nine holes, calling it a draw.

“We’re not nearly as competitive as we used to be,” Garver said.

Garver does have a Bronze Star for an act of heroism in another battle as well as two Purple Hearts. Though he deeply appreciated the tribute, he said he never felt he needed a medal for saving Bongart.

“I’ve always told him, ‘I don’t need a medal. You are my medal with what you’ve done with your life,’” Garver said.

Judy Putnam is a columnist with the Lansing State Journal. Contact her at (517) 267-1304 or at jputnam@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @judyputnam.