Robert H. Jenkins Jr. Vietnam Marine Who Shielded His Comrades

Dec 13 , 2025

Robert H. Jenkins Jr. Vietnam Marine Who Shielded His Comrades

He felt the grenade before it exploded. Time slowed, faces frozen in a heartbeat. Robert H. Jenkins Jr. didn’t hesitate. He dove into the blast, his body a shield—an iron wall between death and his brothers in arms. The shrapnel tore through flesh and bone. Jenkins knew the pain. He chose it. To save men younger than himself, in the mud of Vietnam, under the firestorms of war.

The Roots of a Warrior

Born in 1948, in New Bern, North Carolina, Jenkins grew up in a world that preached duty and faith in equal measure. Raised in a family steeped in Southern Baptism, his moral compass was carved by the Good Book and hard labor. He carried a code formed long before the rifle, forged in the fires of church pews and Sunday sermons: protect the weak, serve the righteous, stand without fear.

“Greater love hath no man than this...” echoed in Jenkins’s heart, scripture from John 15:13 that became more than words. It became a burden—and a promise.

When he stepped into the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, Third Marine Division, in 1967, he was more than a soldier—he was a man with purpose. The jungle’s chaos couldn’t shake that.

The Battle That Defined Him

On March 5, 1969, near the village of An Hoa, Quang Nam Province, Jenkins’s squad was suddenly ambushed. Enemy fire was vicious and pinpoint. The air was thick with smoke and the rattle of gunfire. Jenkins found himself at the center of a storm most would flee.

Out of nowhere, an enemy grenade landed amongst his squad. Without hesitation, Jenkins shouted a warning. Then, he threw himself onto that grenade, absorbing the deadly fragments with his own body. His actions saved at least three Marines standing just feet away.

His wounds were fatal. But his spirit was unbroken until the last breath. The men he saved carried his story back through the jungle—one of raw courage and selfless sacrifice.

Recognition Etched in Medal Bronze

For his actions, Jenkins was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor—the nation’s highest military decoration for valor. The citation details his “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty”[1].

Major General Raymond G. Davis, USMC, wrote of Jenkins:

“His sacrifice is a testament to the courage and brotherhood that defines every Marine. He lived the Corps’ values in the purest form.”

The Medal of Honor was presented to Jenkins’s family by President Richard Nixon on October 21, 1970. The nation stood witness to a man who gave all that was asked—and more.

Legacy Beyond the Battlefield

Jenkins’s sacrifice became a beacon in the shadowed jungle of Vietnam—a reminder that valor isn’t measured by years lived, but by moments chosen.

His story is one of ultimate surrender to a higher purpose, the kind of courage that teaches us all about the cost of freedom.

His legacy isn’t just carved in medals or stone monuments. It lives in every veteran who shields a comrade, in every soldier who chooses to stand fast under fire, and in every American who remembers the debt paid in blood.

“And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth...” — Revelation 14:13

Robert H. Jenkins Jr. died that day in ‘69, but his spirit still fights beside us—unbroken, unyielding, eternal.

Sources

1. U.S. Marine Corps History Division, Medal of Honor Citation: Robert H. Jenkins Jr. 2. Congressional Medal of Honor Society, Medal of Honor Recipients Vietnam Era 3. Lyons, Wayne. The Faces of Valor: Medal of Honor Stories from Vietnam, Naval Institute Press.