By Honor Bound Read online

  “The only sticking point was that I’d just gotten married, and she was not too happy about my heading back overseas. But just like today, if a gal’s married to a Navy SEAL, she’s going to find that he’s gone a lot. This was not the last time, I’m sorry to say, that I put my job and being a Navy SEAL ahead of my family. That first deployment as a married guy was a relationship-tester. At least it was for me.”

  During the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese made liberal use of Laos and Cambodia as sanctuaries for moving troops and supplies south to the fighting in South Vietnam. Both Cambodia and Laos were nations of tribes with weak central governments. The prevailing Domino Theory at the time had one Southeast Asian nation after another falling to the communists. The next domino was Thailand. The Thais were our only Asian allies at the time and provided bases for the staging of U.S. air assets inside Thailand. In turn, we sent training cadres to Thailand to help them resist incursions from North Vietnam along the northern and eastern borders. And Thailand, being a Buddhist nation and loyal to the monarchy, proved to be a good ally and a difficult domino. The communists were never able to gain traction with the Thai people as they were in other parts of Southeast Asia.

  “That trip to Thailand toward the end of the war was a good one for Team One and a break for some of the enlisted guys who were making combat rotation after combat rotation,” said Dick Flanagan. Lieutenant Flanagan was the platoon officer-in-charge or OIC of the Thai training platoon. “In addition to our assignment as trainers, we thought we might be able to conduct some joint combat operations with the Thais up along their northern border. But that never came about. As it turned out, we were strictly trainers. Mike worked out very well with the Thai SEALs. He’s such an upbeat guy and big guy, so the Thais really took to him. And for his part, I think Mike genuinely liked them. Being a good advisor and a trainer means that you have to be a people person and you have to really embrace their culture. Mike did both. It was a good deployment all around, and since it was a nonoperational deployment, I was able to cut Mike loose early so he could get back for the birth of his son.”

  “This may sound a little strange,” Mike recalled, “but I met my wife during basic SEAL training—during Hell Week. We were married right after I got back from my first deployment, and she was pregnant with our son when I went to Thailand. She was having some problems with the pregnancy, and Lieutenant Flanagan was able to let me come back a month early from the deployment so I could be with her when Mikey was born. Lieutenant Flanagan was a great officer, and I really appreciated his letting me come back early. That’s why I volunteered to go back as an advisor to the LDNNs. I didn’t think I’d put in a full tour with the Thais and hey, it was a chance to get back to where the action was. So I took it. I knew the job was to be an advisor, but I’d talked with some of the guys coming back from working with the LDNNs. They said they were still able to go into the field with them on combat operations. It was a chance to see at least some action. And again, I put being a SEAL ahead of my responsibilities at home.

  “So when I got to Vietnam this time, I spent close to a week at Nha Trang working with the LDNNs there and getting the feel for what they were doing in the field. I’d worked with the Vietnamese SEALs on my first tour back in 1969, and I saw a few familiar faces. You have to hand it to those guys; for them, there were no combat rotations. Life was combat, twenty-four seven, year in and year out. They fought until they were killed or, as it worked out in the end, we lost the war. While I was in Nha Trang, I also saw the two senior officers who were responsible for those of us who were LDNN advisors. The first of these was Commander Dave Schaible—Uncle Dave. Of course, we never called him that to his face, but he was probably one of the best liked and most respected officers in the teams. He had been my CO [commanding officer] at SEAL Team One when I made my first two deployments. It was good to see him there at Nha Trang.”

  Captain David Schaible had been an enlisted EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) technician as well as an enlisted Navy SEAL. Then he became a thirty-two-year-old ensign. During his forty-plus years in the Navy, Uncle Dave commanded EOD and SEAL units at every operational level. In the spring of 1972, then Commander Schaible was the commander of CTF (Combined Task Force) 214 and, as a task force commander, he was addressed as “Commodore.” CTF 214 was responsible for the American advisory effort for the LDNNs and for the South Vietnamese frogmen, the Vietnamese EOD technicians, and Vietnamese boat support teams. Schaible had just relieved the commander of CTF 214 late that February, but he was a quick study. And while he had to oversee all the units attached to his combined task force, his primary concern was for the eighteen or so American SEAL advisors who supervised the training and operational deployment of the two hundred–some LDNN SEALs. While there was an American exodus from Vietnam in the spring and summer of 1972, it was still dangerous business for those “advising” the Vietnamese. In the early spring of 1971, this narrator was deployed with my SEAL platoon in An Xuyen Province in the lower Mekong Delta. An LDNN detachment was assigned to our firebase to replace a sister platoon from SEAL Team One when they rotated back stateside. The senior advisor, Lieutenant Jim Thames, and three of his senior LDNNs were killed in a Viet Cong ambush shortly after they arrived. A second LDNN advisor was also seriously wounded.

  Working with Schaible at CTF 214 was his able assistant, Lieutenant Commander Tommy Nelson, a veteran UDT/SEAL operator who had worked with the PRUs (provincial reconnaissance units). Nelson served as Schaible’s executive officer as well as the primary supervisor for all of the LDNN advisors. Both Schaible and Nelson were based out of Vung Tau on the southeastern coast of Vietnam, where the South Vietnamese Navy was located, but they often got up to Nha Trang. In the spring of 1972, both Schaible and Nelson were pushing for their Vietnamese counterparts to move more LDNN and boat support assets north to help counter the North Vietnamese Easter Offensive. This led to a concentration of American advisors and LDNNs at Thuan-An. There were some thirty LDNN SEALs there along with five American advisors—three enlisted SEALs and two SEAL officers. Tom Norris would be the third officer and Mike Thornton would be the fourth enlisted SEAL on the Thuan-An advisory staff.

  “The week I spent at Nha Trang gave me a chance to see the training there,” Mike said of his return to Vietnam, “and I had a chance to spend some time with Commodore Schaible and Tommy Nelson. Of course,” Mike added with a grin, “Commodore Schaible and I had some history. He was the commanding officer at SEAL Team One, and I was—well, you might say that I was not always the model sailor. There’d be the occasional bar fight or a speeding ticket that came to his attention—nothing major, just us SEALs letting off a little steam. So once or twice I found myself in his office explaining, or trying to explain, what had taken place. He was generally pretty understanding, but when he said, ‘This time I’ll overlook it, but not the next time,’ you knew the next time he would hammer you. He was one of the finest commanding officers I’ve ever served under, and most of the Team One SEALs of my era will tell you the same thing. It was Tommy Nelson who managed the SEAL LDNN advisors, and he was the one that sent me up to Thuan-An. Tommy Nelson is another story for another time, but he was a great operator and respected up and down the chain of command.”

  Dave Schaible was this narrator’s commanding officer at Underwater Demolition Team 22 and again at SEAL Team One. After Vietnam, while I was at the CIA, I had a close working relationship with him when he was then commanding officer of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal School at Indian Head, Maryland. He was one of the finest officers I knew during my time in naval service.

  ON TO THUAN-AN

  “I caught a hop on a C-130 from Saigon up to Da Nang and a CH-47 Chinook out of Camp Fay on up to Hue. One of the other SEAL advisors met me at Hue and we drove east to the base at Thuan-An. It wasn’t much of a base, and both we and the LDNNs lived in corrugated metal Quonset huts—semiround huts that we referred to as hootches. The village of Thuan-An itself straddles the Perfume River that o
pens onto a long shallow bay that ran north and south with a barrier of dunes between the bay and the South China Sea. Our base was on the western side of the lagoon not far from the town. This allowed our boats access to the South China Sea through a cut in the dunes on the east side of the bay. The only other American presence was an Air Force LORAN station across the bay from us to the southeast.”

  LORAN (long-range navigation) A and LORAN C were at the time the primary military electronic navigation systems in place. Their precision could range from ten feet to several hundred yards. LORAN was replaced by more modern technologies in the 1980s. But the LORAN navigational sets were for installation aboard ships or aircraft. SEALs had no comparable equipment for precision navigation. They used map and compass, or a local guide, for most land navigation. Moving on the rivers or up and down the coast in a small craft was a piloting exercise. These were the days before GPS and the compact precision afforded today’s special operators. Signals from this particular LORAN station were used to guide aircraft on strikes into North Vietnam.

  “We Americans, officers and enlisted, all lived in the same hootch,” Mike said of his new quarters. “We had a Vietnamese cook who bought all our chow out in the village, which meant we ate a lot of fish and rice. On occasion we’d take one of our LCVP [landing craft, vehicle/personnel] boats across to the Air Force chow hall. The Air Force ate a lot better than we did, but they were always ready to share. I guess with the North Vietnamese Army activity in the area, there was something in it for those Air Force guys to be nice to some Navy SEALs camped across the way. If it came to a fight, they could count on us.

  “The conditions at Thuan-An were Spartan but we managed. We had an old pickup truck, and one of the guys got his hands on an Army jeep at the base at Hue. He managed to ‘liberate’ it before it was to be turned over to the Vietnamese, so we could get around. And someone came up with two window-type air conditioners that worked most of the time and we could sleep cool. With an outdoor shower and privy can that we burned off daily with diesel fuel, we lived as well as most SEALs did in Vietnam. There was a fridge in the hootch for leftovers, chow from care packages from home, and beer. With the heat and the chow the way it was, it was a formula for losing weight. I arrived weighing maybe two twenty and when I left six months later I was down to one ninety.

  “The daily routine revolved around getting our Vietnamese LDNN SEALs out for PT [physical training], then getting them to the shooting range or working with them on small-unit tactics. Their abilities were all over the place. Some of them knew how to shoot and move and were tactically sound. Others seemed to have had no training at all. And their officers were a mixed bag. Some of them were damn good, while others got their commission because of family connections. It could be a little frustrating. But we did the best we could with them. As I mentioned earlier, it had been a long war for the Vietnamese with no end in sight.

  “The detachment there at Thuan-An was not as busy as I thought it might be. How we and the LDNNs usually worked was that we became friends with the local village chiefs, and maybe even some of the province-level senior people, to develop intelligence. And two, maybe three times a week, we would take the jeep over to the Army base at Hue City to see if we could find some information about enemy movements along the coast. SEAL operations today are much different than in our day, but one thing has not changed: good intelligence leads to good operations. So we did what we could to work with the local leaders for actionable intelligence. The NVA had their own intel network with the Viet Cong, and that’s who we were primarily after—the senior Viet Cong leaders in the area. But in June and early July 1972, no one was sure just how far south the North Vietnamese might go. Quang Tri City had fallen to them around the first of May and by mid-May they were probing the defenses of Hue City. If Hue fell, we’d all have to pull out and head south, probably to Da Nang. But Hue held. The South Vietnamese stopped them and the B-52s came in and pounded them from the air. In August we were told that we were winning and the South Vietnamese would soon counterattack to win back Quang Tri City. But no one was sure. I do know that a great many South Vietnamese, including our LDNNs, were afraid that the North Vietnamese Army might just roll over us. The village chiefs were being none too cooperative; they knew we Americans were leaving and no one knew if or when the NVA might come. Even our LDNNs were hesitant about going out on operations. I guess all of us were just waiting to see if the ARVNs had really stopped the NVA and if so, could they push them back north. One of our priorities was to try to capture Viet Cong or perhaps even an NVA soldier to see what might be the status or intention of their forces. Past that, the detachment operationally was not all that busy. We went into the field on an operation maybe once or twice a week. We really had to get creative to find a good reason to operate.

  “The LDNN detachment at Thuan-An was organized roughly into two elements or squads. The U.S. advisors would help the LDNNs plan operations and then go into the field with them, so they were really U.S./LDNN joint operations. One of our officers and one or two of our enlisted SEALs would help an LDNN squad work up a mission, then go with them on the operation. And to be honest, it seemed as if it was us Americans who were always pushing for operations. There was an odd mix of Navy SEALs there at Thuan-An. The enlisted guys were all SEAL Team One veterans. The two officers were from SEAL Team Two and while they were both lieutenants, this was their first combat tour. I guess they had us West Coast vets there to keep them out of trouble. But then Tom Norris came to MACV and the LDNN program from MACVSOG.

  “When Nasty—that was our name for Tommy—came to Thuan-An, he was put in charge of the SEAL advisory group there. The other two officers and the five enlisted SEALs reported to him, and he in turn reported to Lieutenant Commander Nelson down in Vung Tau. We all worked together pretty well, but having an experienced officer in the mix was definitely a good thing. The two new SEAL officers listened to us veterans; they just about had no choice, as they were totally inexperienced. So after Tommy arrived in Thuan-An, everything went through him before anyone did anything. But Tom Norris was not one to sit back and let others go into the field. He put together his own share of operations and was always looking for ways to get in the action.

  “I got to Thuan-An a few weeks ahead of Tommy. Yet we all knew who he was, that’s for sure. Everyone knew about the pilot-recovery operation, so he was something of a minor SEAL celebrity. But none of us had ever worked with him. We knew him only by reputation—and in the SEAL teams, reputation is everything. I knew two guys from SEAL Team Two who were in his first platoon—Al Ashton and Chuck Fellers. They said he was a good officer and a steady one, which for us enlisted SEALs meant that he was an officer who would listen to his platoon veterans. That’s how it worked between the officers and enlisted men. A good officer was one who would listen and learn, and who could make good decisions in the field. Tom Norris had that reputation. He also had a reputation of being fearless, which is not always a good thing. A little fear going into combat can be a healthy thing. So all us West Coast enlisted SEALs from Team One were glad to see Lieutenant Tom Norris show up at Thuan-An. But man, was he small. He couldn’t have been more than a hundred forty pounds soaking wet.”

  Today’s SEALs are bigger than those from the Vietnam era, averaging close to six feet and weighing about one seventy-five or more. But by the standards back then, Mike at six feet two inches and a solid 218 pounds was a big guy. It might be said that Mike was ahead of his time—both because of his size and because he was predisposed for military distinction. He was raised in Spartanburg, South Carolina (population 37,000), which has something of a reputation for heroes. Mike is the fifth Spartanburg resident to receive the Medal of Honor. Yet his name is not on the memorial honoring the town’s recipients, as he was not born there. Mike was born in Greenville, South Carolina, on 23 March 1949. Before he was a year old, his parents moved thirty miles west to the town of Spartanburg.

  GROWING UP IN CAROLINA

  “Spa
rtanburg was my home; it’s where I grew up. We lived in town for a short while before Daddy moved us outside of town and into the country. Our closest neighbor was a quarter mile away, so my younger brother and I grew up fishing and playing cowboys and Indians in the woods around the house—chasing cows, building forts, and getting into mischief. My brother was a year younger than me, so we were together most of the time. We fought a lot, but were the best of friends. And I had a younger sister as well, but she was six years younger, so we boys didn’t have too much to do with her when we were growing up. She was just our kid sister. My dad was in the construction business and an insulation contractor. He was also the guy who not only took care of our family but our extended family as well. Anytime someone in the family had a problem, it seemed like they would come to my dad, and he would help them. Daddy always said that blood and family came first, something he passed along to the rest of us. He was ten years older than my mom and a World War II vet. He was in the infantry, and served with a coastal artillery unit in the Philippines. I know he worked with boats as well, but he never talked too much about the war.