By Honor Bound Read online

  “The next day we showed up at the White House for the ceremony,” Mike recalled. “And we were made to wait like a group of tourists. I was getting a little upset with the process, but Daddy told me to settle down and wait things out. Then we were all taken into the Oval Office and I was presented with the Medal. I’ll never forget President Nixon saying, ‘Mike, what can I do for you?’ And I said, ‘Well, Mr. President, you could break this Medal in half and give the other half to the young man [Tom Norris] standing behind me because he saved my life too.’”

  After three days of unauthorized leave, Mike returned Tom to the Bethesda Naval Hospital. Of the ceremony, Tom said, “I was truly very, very honored to be there. It was quite a privilege to witness a Medal of Honor presentation. I was happy for Mike and happy that I could be there with him. His family was proud of him, and I was proud of him. The event was simply overwhelming. I think Mike was overwhelmed by it all as well, but he handled it like it was just another gathering of his friends. Yet there he was with that blue ribbon around his neck and that coveted Medal hanging at his throat. It was really something.”

  At the time, Tom Norris hadn’t a clue that two and a half years later, he would be standing before the president of the United States to receive his own Medal. And that a smiling and proud Mike Thornton would be standing close by.

  TOM NORRIS AND THE MEDAL OF HONOR

  It was sometime in early 1974 that Tom and your narrator were sitting around my kitchen table in Alexandria, Virginia, on a Saturday morning. We were having a cup of coffee and getting ready to hang some drywall, and we got to talking about our time in Vietnam—our platoon tours and Tom’s advisory tour. Mike had received his Medal, and Tom was recounting some other anecdotes about Mike’s preceremony exploits on the town. As they came to him, he shared some recollections about their stand among the dunes that last day in October of 1972, just south of the mouth of the Ben Hai River. At the time, there were two SEAL recipients of the Medal—Bob Kerrey and Mike Thornton. And it seemed that there would be no more. The war was over, at least for us in America, and the nation was anxious to move on. Richard Nixon was still president, but the Watergate scandal that was to force him from office was in full swing. All the SEALs were home, and no one was sure what might come next. Since their inception in 1962, the Navy SEALs had done little but fight in Vietnam.

  As for his part in going behind enemy lines in the spring of 1972 to recover the two airmen, Tom treated it like it was just another operation. It was well known among all of us in the SEAL teams, and to those in the Air Force who were involved in the recovery, but to few others. Darrel Whitcomb had yet to publish The Rescue of Bat 21, and the movie, Bat 21, would not be out until 1988. I asked Tom if he ever heard from the two aviators he brought out, and he said he hadn’t. I think he still felt a little guilty that he hadn’t been able to save Bruce Walker, Covey 282 Alpha, the pilot who had perished at the hands of the Viet Cong.

  “But, you know,” he recalled, “those nights we spent moving along the Cam Lo River were kind of surreal. We saw columns of NVA soldiers four abreast marching south. Tanks rolled by us not fifteen feet away. That last night, when it was just Kiet and me, was special. He was so loyal and such a good man. I knew what he was thinking, and he knew what I was thinking. We moved well together. He had my back and I had his. I keep thinking that if Bruce Walker was just a little farther south, we might have had a chance to get him. It would have been wonderful if we could have brought back all three.”

  This was how Tom Norris thought—and still thinks. What could I have done better? Was there something more I could have done to accomplish my mission? Tom had already been decorated for his recovery of First Lieutenant Mark Clark and Lieutenant Colonel Iceal Hambleton. Captain Robert F. Stanton, then Commander, Naval Special Warfare Group One, in Coronado, had presented Tom with the Silver Star Medal on one of his trips to Vietnam. Although he never said as much, I think Tom felt he had been duly recognized for his rescue of the two airmen. More than once I’ve heard Tommy say, “I simply did my job; any other SEAL assigned to the mission would have done the same thing.” In my opinion, there were two things that delayed Tom’s consideration for the Medal of Honor.

  First of all, there were issues of classification. Some of the tactics, techniques, and procedures that relate to the recovery of downed airmen in Vietnam were not declassified until 1975. These issues could be glossed over with an award like the Silver Star, but not with the investigation and close scrutiny that accompanies the awarding of the Medal of Honor. Second, this was an Air Force operation that revolved around recovery of downed airmen. Five aircraft were shot down, numerous other aircraft rendered unflyable, and eleven airmen perished in the recovery effort. Courage and self-sacrifice by a great many brave flyers accompanied these efforts. In Tom’s own words, “The real heroes in the rescue of Clark and Hambleton were those air crews who died trying to recover their brothers on the ground.” In my research of the events of April 1972, I found a great deal of information about Air Force operations and sorties flown in support of the recovery operations, but not a great deal about the Navy SEAL lieutenant and his Sea Commandos who went in on the ground to make the recovery. Much has been written about the shoot-downs, the activity of the forward air controllers and support aircraft, and the movement of the airmen on the ground. But not so much about Tom, Kiet, and the others who worked their way along the Cam Lo River to find the airmen and bring them out.

  When I attended SEAL cadre training at SEAL Team Two in 1969, a SEAL chief petty officer took me aside and said, “Sir, see all these guys around here with all those ribbons on their chests? You know how most of them got them? They got them because someone screwed up and they got in trouble, and someone else had to go and get them out of trouble.” I never forgot that. In the reading of many citations for the Medal of Honor in Vietnam for ground combat, a great many of those awards were made, per the criteria for the Medal, when one warrior acted to save another—at “risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty.” They went back. That’s certainly what Mike Thornton did. He decided to go back, above and beyond, at the risk of his own life. And he made that decision in a split second and in the heat of combat.

  The courage of Tom Norris was of a different sort, but no less worthy. He made no quick decision in the heat of battle; he had time to think about it. Yet he went back again and again, at great risk and knowing full well he might not return. He did this to save the life of another—not once, but repeatedly. Tom’s courage is very much like the bravery of helicopter pilots like Major Pat Brady, Major Bruce Crandall, and Captain Ed “Too Tall” Freeman—all Medal of Honor recipients. These airmen flew into danger multiple times to bring in supplies to beleaguered men on the ground and to evacuate wounded. The danger was so great that they did not have to do this. Again, their risk was above and beyond the call of duty. But they did it. So on reflection and in light of declassification, Navy officials began to review Tom’s role in the rescue of the two flyers. And they rightly concluded that what Tom Norris did between 10 and 13 April 1972 was conduct well in keeping with the criteria for the Medal.

  After a quiet dinner with his parents and two brothers in the nation’s capital prior to the event, Tom’s family joined him at the White House on 6 March 1976 and watched President Gerald Ford award Tom the Medal of Honor. The citation reads:

  For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a SEAL Advisor with the Strategic Technical Directorate Assistance Team, Headquarters, U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. During the period 10 to 13 April 1972, Lieutenant Norris completed an unprecedented ground rescue of two downed pilots deep within heavily controlled enemy territory in Quang Tri Province. Lieutenant Norris, on the night of 10 April, led a five-man patrol through 2,000 meters of heavily controlled enemy territory, located one of the downed pilots at daybreak, and returned to the Forward Operating Base (FOB). On 11 Apri
l, after a devastating mortar and rocket attack on the small FOB, Lieutenant Norris led a three-man team on two unsuccessful rescue attempts for the second pilot. On the afternoon of the 12th, a Forward Air Controller located the pilot and notified Lieutenant Norris. Dressed in fishermen disguises and using a sampan, Lieutenant Norris and one Vietnamese traveled throughout that night and found the injured pilot at dawn. Covering the pilot with bamboo and vegetation, they began the return journey, successfully evading a North Vietnamese patrol. Approaching the FOB, they came under heavy machine gun fire. Lieutenant Norris called in an air strike which provided suppression fire and a smoke screen, allowing the rescue party to reach the FOB. By his outstanding display of decisive leadership, undaunted courage, and selfless dedication in the face of extreme danger, Lieutenant Norris enhanced the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

  Standing nearby, wearing his own Medal and an ear-to-ear grin, was Petty Officer First Class Mike Thornton.

  MIKE THORNTON—AFTER VIETNAM

  Mike returned to Coronado and SEAL Team One in late November 1972, ahead of the other LDNN advisors. Like all returning SEALs, he was given end-of-tour leave and was able to spend Christmas with his wife and his young son, Mickey, who was now a year old and remembered nothing of his father. Not long after Mike’s departure, Ryan McCombie, Bill Woodruff, and the other SEAL LDNN advisors left Vietnam as well. The American mission to that nation was all but done. Unlike Tom, Mike had no lengthy medical treatment ahead of him. The medics on board the Newport News were able to dig the bullet from his calf and put him on a regime of antibiotics. With a little follow-up, he was fine. After the holiday, he checked back into Team One and was immediately assigned duties with the team training cell. The training now was no longer predeployment training to prepare SEALs for combat in Vietnam. In fact, there was a great deal of discussion of just what SEALs should be doing or if there was still a need for Navy SEALs. The war—or at least American involvement in the war—was over, and no one knew what was in store for these naval commandos and their brother frogmen. The Underwater Demolition and SEAL teams knew that they, along with the rest of the Navy and the military, were sure to experience some downsizing. At both SEAL Team One on Coronado and SEAL Team Two at Little Creek, Virginia, it was back to basics. A great many skills like diving, parachuting, underwater demolition, harbor penetration, and over-the-beach operations had been neglected, as the focus of the active deployments had been direct-action combat in the jungles, rice paddies, and mangrove swamps of Vietnam.

  “It was good to get back to the team routine, and go home to my family at night,” Mike said of the period after his return. “It was almost a surreal experience. All the guys felt this way about coming off deployment. In Vietnam, there was the close camaraderie of the team guys between combat missions and in the loose barracks routine. When not in the field, we lived in swim trunks, T-shirts, and shower shoes. We commuted to work in armed helicopters and boats. And our lives revolved around operations—training our LDNNs and going out on combat operations. Back-home life was clean sheets, hot showers, Bermuda shorts, paved roads, and non-rice dishes. And the variety of food—even fast food! You could eat what you wanted, when you wanted. There were things like indoor plumbing, television, pro sports, all if it. It was not like you missed those things overseas, but it was strange to have them back again. There was getting to know my kid, who thought I was some stranger, which I was, to getting reacquainted with my wife. I’d been gone more than I was at home since we were married. And there was the absence of combat—both the worry of having to go into the field and, in some ways, missing the anticipation of getting ready to go on an operation. And the rush that comes from combat. I looked at all this as normal for any SEAL coming home, but it was still an adjustment.

  “Coming back to the team this time was different from my first Vietnam tour, when you were labeled a one-tour wonder, or even from my Thailand tour. At SEAL Team One, you were not a made man until after your second combat rotation. It was not so much respect from the team veterans, as many of them had been on four or five combat rotations. It had more to do with acceptance. I was now one of them. When guys like Gary Gallagher and Walt Gustavel and Doc Sell came up to you and said, ‘Nice job over there,’ or ‘Good work in getting your lieutenant off that beach,’ it really meant something. And I even enjoyed the kidding. When one of the old hands came up and said, ‘Christ, Thornton, I always knew you’d be the one to get lost and not be able to find the right insertion point,’ well, you knew you were now one of them. But it was not all joy and congratulations at Team One. Up the chain of command, it was decided that the teams were overmanned, and thirty SEALs from Team One were sent back to the fleet. After making it through training and making a combat deployment or two, they were rewarded with shipboard duty. It wasn’t right, but that was the way it was. Some of them worked their way back to the teams and others finished their enlistments and got out.

  “That summer of 1973,” Mike recalls, “I kind of knew a decoration was in the works, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. I knew a lot of guys who did a lot more and went unrecognized, so any medal was just a passing thought. Then that summer I bumped into Bill Woodruff in the SEAL Team One compound and he said, ‘Hey, Mike, word has it that you’re in for the Big Blue, and I think that’s great.’ My reaction was, ‘Yeah, right.’ ‘Well,’ Woody said, ‘they took a lengthy statement from me, and they don’t do that for some Bronze or Silver Star. I think you’re in for the big one.’

  “Well, as it turned out, he was right. I was notified in September that I would receive the Medal of Honor. A lot goes through your mind when you think something like that is going to happen to you. You try to play it down in your mind, that it’s is no big deal, but it really is a big deal. Everyone in uniform knows it’s a big deal. I felt humbled and undeserving. And I swore that it was not going to change things—to change me. But no one, including me, can know what a difference it can make on a lot of different levels. So I tried not to think about it. And I didn’t really believe it would happen until the next month when I was at the White House and President Nixon was behind me, snapping that blue ribbon around my neck. That’s when it really set in. Tommy had to wear his Medal as a civilian, which meant he didn’t wear it when he went to work. I planned to stay in the Navy. Every morning when I put on my uniform, at least my blues or a white dress uniform, sitting atop the ribbons on my left breast was this little baby-blue ribbon with the five stars on it. Every time I looked in the mirror I thought, wow!

  “I’d like to say it didn’t change things back at the team, but it did. I caught the new guys sneaking a sidelong look at me. And some of the officers treated me differently. Not all, but some, like they didn’t know how to address me. And I think they were thinking that I might do something to embarrass the team or the Medal. And they were probably right to think that way. I like a night out with the boys now and then, and we could certainly do a little drinking and hell-raising. And I had to think about that as well. I was now a recipient. As much as you’d like to think things don’t change—that I hadn’t changed—they do. But the old hands treated me no differently. I heard a lot of ‘Well done’ and ‘Congratulations,’ but they treated me the same, and I really appreciated that. For the remainder of my time at Team One, I worked at the team training cell, again teaching tactics and special demolitions up in our mountain training facility at Cuyamaca. I also got involved with the cold-weather training in Alaska. After all that time we’d spent in the jungle, this was a real change of pace for us at Team One.

  “I also got involved with the new men coming from BUD/S training to Team One. Back then, when they came to the team from the training unit, there was a six-month probationary period before they were awarded their SEAL pin—the Trident. During that time, they had a course of instruction to complete and practical factors that had to be signed off. And there was an oral board they had to pass. The board consisted of the team chief petty officer
s—‘the goat locker,’ we called it—and with the blessing of the team chiefs, they were awarded their Tridents. I’d made first class petty officer at the team, and as a cadre instructor it was a part of my job to help the new men with their coursework and to prepare for the chiefs’ board. This kind of set me up for my next tour of duty. In the fall of 1974, I got orders to report to the Naval Special Warfare Center. Even though the center was less than a hundred yards from the Team One compound, it was a whole different world.”

  The Naval Special Warfare Center on Coronado is the schoolhouse for Navy SEALs. The center conducts training in special demolitions, combat shooting, sniper training, advanced combat swimmer training, submarine lock-in/lock-out training, and outboard motor repair, to name just a few. Yet the center is best known for the basic SEAL qualification course, Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, or BUD/S. Currently the center has grown in size, complexity, and facility footprint, but it is still the place where young men are assessed, tested, and trained in the basics of what it is to be a Navy SEAL. The center trains men for both East and West Coast teams. And it is still a rendering place to see if young men have the talent, intelligence, spirit, and grit to be Navy SEALs. Back in Tommy’s, Mike’s, and my day, only about one in five survived BUD/S. It was the same during Mike’s tour as a BUD/S instructor, and it is much the same today. Today, perhaps more is required to get into SEAL training and there are elevated standards to graduate from the basic course, but the attrition still hovers around 80 percent—sometimes more.