Real-Life Rambo: Medal of Honor Winner Fought Off Countless Enemies Using His Pinkie Finger During 20-Hour Fight

The time: June 20, 1965. The place: Bình Định province in the meatgrinder known as South Vietnam. The stakes: Life or death.

For what took place that day, retired Army Col. Paris Davis, 83, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor on Friday during a White House ceremony.

“Just to be able to be considered for the Medal of Honor is one thing,” Davis said, according to CNN. “To receive it is all the things I’ve never dreamed.”

The Army’s website summarizes what took place as Davis, a Special Forces captain at the time, led his patrol.

“Over the course of two days, Davis selflessly led a charge to neutralize enemy emplacements, called for precision artillery fire, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy, and prevented the capture of three American soldiers (Robert Brown, John Reinberg, and Billy Waugh) while saving their lives with a medical extraction. Davis sustained multiple gunshot and grenade fragment wounds during the 19-hour battle and refused to leave the battlefield until his men were safely removed.”

The website Military.com. filled in some of the blanks of what happened when his patrol ran into hundreds of Viet Cong.

“I ran down to where the firing was and found five Viet Cong coming over the trench line. I killed all five, and then I heard firing from the left flank,” Davis wrote in his report.