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54 maconmagazine.com | October/November 2025 The courage and sacrifice made by Sgt. Rodney M. Davis has not gone unnoticed. A guided missile frigate ship, The USS Rodney. M. Davis was named for him in 1987 and served the Navy well until it was decommissioned in 2015. ABOVE The USS Rodney Davis Marine Division. Davis and a platoon of 48 men were sent into combat soon thereafter in the Que Son Valley, where fierce battles were ongoing. His platoon's mission was to chase down North Vietnamese forces and Viet Cong in the area. Soon after arriving, Davis and his troops were ambushed and outnumbered by the enemy, which included over 2,000 men. They fought vigorously for two days in terrain which was full of rice paddies and tall grass. Under heavy machine gun fire, they retreated to a long trench as bullets whizzed by them. The North Vietnamese advanced closer and began tossing hand grenades at the Marines, who frenetically tossed them back. Except for one. Davis saw a grenade land a few feet near himself and the others in the platoon. Without hesitation, he pounced on it and was killed immediately. Less than a month after arriving in Vietnam, Sgt. Rodney M. Davis, 25 years old, made the ultimate sacrifice on Sept. 6, 1967. His selflessness saved the other five men in the trench. Ironically, all the other Marines were white. Of the 48 men in Rodney's platoon, only 11 remained after that battle. The others were either wounded or, like Davis, killed. For his heroic act of courage, Rodney Maxwell Davis was posthumously a recipient of the Medal of Honor, the highest military honor bestowed. It was awarded to his wife Judy in Washington, D.C. by Vice President Spiro T. Agnew on March 26, 1969, with his parents, siblings, and young daughters in attendance. John Hollis, a seasoned journalist married to Rodney's niece, wrote the book "Rodney M. Davis: The Making of a Hero" which was published in 2018. The book has been well received, including by the military, where it landed on the Army Times summer reading list. Sgt. Davis was eligible to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, but his family opted to bring his remains home. He is interred at Linwood Cemetery in Macon. Decades after Davis passed, a number of Marines went to Linwood to pay their respects, including one of the men Davis saved. They were dismayed by weeds growing over gravesites and headstones knocked over, so they organized a cleanup and raised funds for a bigger memorial for Davis. Marines still come by regularly to assist in maintaining the cemetery. With the aid of military and civilian defense leadership he met due to the book, Hollis was able to enlist the help State Department employees and the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi. After negotiation, a trip was arranged for Davis family members to travel to Vietnam and visit the land where their loved one gave his life. The 14-person contingent made the trip in