Editors Note: This article has been updated
A Medal of Honor recipient has lost his fight against coronavirus.
According to a Twitter post, retired Army Command Sgt. Major Bennie Adkins died Friday.
His son Keith earlier said that his father, who is 86, traveled recently and was ill when he returned home. Adkins was hospitalized for the first time earlier this month.
"He recovered fairly quickly and was sent back home, but then he took a turn for the worse (Thursday) morning and was re-admitted," he said.
Adkins received the Medal of Honor for his actions during a battle in Vietnam in March of 1966. Adkins and his men were outnumbered and outgunned by the Viet Cong in that fight.
"During the thirty-eight-hour battle and forty-eight hours of escape and evasion, fighting with mortars, machine guns, recoilless rifles, small arms and hand grenades, it was estimated that Sergeant First Class Adkins killed between one hundred thirty-five and one hundred seventy-five of the enemy while sustaining eighteen different wounds to his body," his MoH citation reads.
Adkins would go on to serve 30 years in the Army, much of that time with the Green Berets.
Former President Barack Obama presented him with the Medal of Honor in 2014.
Julia LeDoux can be reached at Julia@connectingvets.com
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