Valor Friday

Lieutenant Mike Thornton (an ensign at the time)

Last week, as we wrapped up the dramatic rescue of Bat 21, I discussed the Medal of Honor earning heroics of Navy SEAL Lieutenant Thomas Norris. Norris received the Medal of Honor from President Ford in 1976, after having initially refused the award. He was presented with the medal at a White House ceremony where the other two honorees were Vice Admiral James Stockdale (USN) and Colonel Bud Day (USAF). Posthumously awarded that day was Air Force Captain Lance Sijan, whose father received the award on his behalf. Read about Captain Sijan here.

Before Norris was awarded the MoH, he had continued with his special operations service in Southeast Asia. Just a few months after he’d rescued Gene Hambleton, Norris was nearly killed in action, and rescued by fellow SEAL Michael Thornton. Here’s that story.

Where Norris was slight of build, his teammate then-Engineman First Class Thornton was a large, hulk of a man. Growing up in South Carolina farm country, he and his brother and sister entertained themselves with games and adventures outside. His father instilled a strong work ethic in him, with the elder Thornton having gone to work in a cotton mill at the age of 11.

Through school Mike was a good athlete and a great swimmer. He suffered from dyslexia, which wasn’t as well known back then, and so his grades struggled. Turning 18, he was classified A-1 by the local draft board, meaning he was fit for service, and his grades meant he was unlikely to get any educational deferments for college. Well one day he says, he found himself in a bit of trouble, and the “the judge had kind of introduced me to my recruiters.” Remembering the WWII war film “The Fighting Sullivans” about the five Sullivan brothers who went down aboard USS Juneau (CL-52) early in WWII, Thornton was inspired to join the Navy. He’d also seen the 1951 film “The Frogmen”, which was about the WWII exploits of the early Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT), forerunners of the Navy’s SEALs, and thought maybe that looked like fun.

So he enlisted into the Navy shortly after graduating High School in 1967. During boot camp he volunteered to try the UDT entry exam. Passing that test, he went to the Navy’s grueling BUD/S program to become a Navy SEAL. He graduated as one of just 12 left from a class of 129 at the start.

He went straight to a SEAL team instead of first cutting his teeth in a UDT unit (they wouldn’t be merged until the 80s). He first deployed to Vietnam as a SEAL in December 1969. During Vietnam, SEALs were sent to Vietnam on a temporary duty basis, so they served shorter periods in-country than most other men. Thornton would make multiple such trips to Vietnam, culminating in his late 1972 deployment, his fourth tour.

On 31 October 1972, Thornton was under the command of Norris as the two men were serving as naval advisors to a three-man patrol of South Vietnamese (RVN) Navy SEALs (LDNN). The covert mission of the day was to gather intelligence, and prisoners if possible, of an enemy naval base just south of the DMZ.

The team was transported initially by boat until sunset, then they mounted a rubber raft and paddled to about a mile from shore, and swam from there. They moved inland, past numerous enemy patrols, and surveilled through the night. They soon realized that they had gone too far north. They were actually in North Vietnam, and completely surrounded by enemy.

They moved through heavy enemy positions, they gathered valuable intelligence as they made their way back to the beach. On the beach, they came across two NVA soldiers patrolling the beach. They knocked out the first guy, capturing him. One of the RVN SEALs attempted to capture the second guy, but the NVA man fired off a burst from his AK in the air (without radios, the NVA used gunshots for communication) and ran for the jungle. Thornton chased him down.

As the enemy troop neared a village in the jungle, Thornton stopped and took a knee. With a couple of calming breaths, he shot the man in the back. Thornton shot the man to prevent him from alerting his comrades. Unfortunately, the enemy was a bit too on the ball that night, and responded quickly to the report of the shot. About 50 North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops came running out of the jungle in pursuit of Thornton.

Norris, who spoke some Vietnamese, and the RVN SEALs had been able to interrogate the enemy they’d captured. One valuable bit of intel they got out of him was just exactly where they were on the map. Then Norris hears the enemy gunfire, and sees Thornton come running out of the jungle at top speed. Since Thornton wasn’t taking the time to turn and shoot, Norris immediately knew they were in some deep shit.

Making their stand on the beach, the SEALs moved across a large area as they returned fire, disguising just how small their force was. The enemy was close enough that when they’d through grenades at Thornton, he had enough time to throw them back. This little game of baseball wasn’t always successful, as he was wounded in the back by a grenade. Raked by shrapnel he screamed out, and fell on his back. He could hear Norris yelling, “Mike! Mike!”

Four enemy troops came over the dune above Thornton. He shot two, one of them falling on top of him, the other two went back over to the relative safety on the side of the dune not facing the SEALs. About this time the enemy stopped trying to advance. Thornton got back to Norris’s position, and the lieutenant asked, “You alright?” Thornton shrugged it off, “Yeah. There’s just shrapnel.”

Norris was able to call a nearby destroyer. Unknown to the men on shore, the ship was attacked by NVA shore batteries and was unable to fire. The enemy fortifications along the north side of the DMV was flush with enemy guns that had four times the range of the American destroyer. A second destroyer also attempted to move into position, but was also turned back by the shore batteries.

For the next few hours the enemy continued to push on the SEALs’ position, building in strength as they did so. The five men would be up against a force estimated at 150. Thirty-to-one odds faced them as dawn closed in. Thornton attempted to contact the RVN Navy junk that had brought them in, and one of the junks was equipped with a mortar, but the two destroyers off coast forbid anything entering the line of fire.

The SEALs were nearly surrounded, heavily out numbered, and with no hope of friendly exfiltration, Norris ordered the team to make for the refuge of the water. The team set up to leapfrog to cover each other’s retreat. Norris was able to contact the American cruiser USS Newport News. With the greater reach of their larger guns, he requested they fire for effect to cover the withdrawal. Among this, Norris moved to fire an M72 LAW (for those not in the know, think of a bigger bazooka) against a mass of 70-75 enemy when he was shot through the head.

Thornton and two of the RVNs moved down the beach a couple hundred yards, to give the naval guns some room to fire. When Thornton saw only the Vietnamese SEAL come back he frantically asked “Where’s Tommy?” The man had seen Norris get shot and knew he was dead. Reporting this to Thornton, Thornton asked if he was sure. He could see the enemy rapidly approaching Norris’s position, so the Carolina farm boy ran forward 400 yards, into the enemy fire, to retrieve the body of his comrade. He went to the place he’d last seen Norris, and found him, half his head blown off. Five enemy troops were around him, so Thornton shot them. The indefatigable SEAL picked up Norris, and carried him off. The enemy now was among them. Swarming them, Thornton stopped to shoot some of them and made for the water.

As he was moving across the beach, the first salvo from Newport News’s three triple 8″ guns struck and all hell broke loose. The first shell struck close enough to Thornton that he and Norris were blown back 20 feet. He took another look at Norris, lying there dead and broken. Thornton told himself that he wasn’t going to leave a man, his close friend, behind. He also told himself that he wasn’t going to die there with him.

The gun salvo from Newport News slowed the advance of the encroaching enemies. Thornton picked up Norris’s body again and ran back to his comrades. Two of the RVN SEALs were there, the ones that Thornton earlier had hand-picked for mission (having worked with them before), but the third was gone. The RVNs reported the third man, a young new officer, had just left. Facing what must have looked like certain death, he hit the water and swam, leaving the rest to fend for themselves.

With Thornton and Norris, the remaining SEALs hit the water, and the SEALs began to swim. Obviously Norris was in no condition to return to the native environ of the frogman, so Thornton had to swim and carry his dead weight as well. With enemy bullets striking everywhere around them, Thornton pressed on.

Thornton had put his own emergency life vest on Norris, after they got through the surf zone, he inflated it. He swam with Norris strapped to his back. Thornton looked over and noticed one of the LDNN SEALs was floundering. He’d been shot in the hip, and it blew most of his buttock off and he couldn’t swim. Thornton had the RVN sailor wrap his arms him from the front, and told him to hold onto Norris. Thornton then swam with one man on his back and one on his front.

Thornton headed in the direction of the big cruiser USS Newport News, but their observation aircraft had reported seeing the SEALs enter the water, a mass of enemy gunfire, and then NVA troops on the beach jumping up and down in celebration. The conclusion was that they’d all perished. Thornton recalls, “The Newport News turned around and that was the worst sight I ever saw in my life.” They were leaving them. The observation plane did report seeing 69 bodies on the beach, so our frogmen gave far better than they got.

Thornton swam with these two men on him for at least three hours. His only hope was the two Vietnamese junks that had initially brought them in. Standard procedure was to put an American SEAL on those boats, since sometimes when things got rough, the RVN troops couldn’t be motivated to exfiltrate their American allies. Thornton had to believe that his fellow SEAL advisors would continue coming to retrieve them, even if the Newport News (flagship for the USN admiral in Vietnam) didn’t. “Leave no man behind” was a mantra Thornton was practicing, and he felt confident the rest of his team would think the same.

The RVN SEAL that disappeared into the water was finally picked up by one of the RVN junks. He reported the two Americans had been killed, and that he didn’t know the disposition of the other RVNs.

Thornton had been swimming for hours, with two men strapped to him. He’d swam south after getting away from the shore. Then he saw a junk. At this point, he didn’t know if it was South or North Vietnamese. Then he recognizes the American SEALs on each boat. Bobbing along in the waves, the sailors on the junks couldn’t see them.

Trying to get the junk’s attention, Thornton finally fired Norris’s AK-47 into the air. That’s right. He’d been swimming with the complete weight two men for more than three hours and had kept his weapons! I guess you really never do know when an AK is going to come in handy, even if you are swimming for hours with no rest. Thornton was so exhausted, after helping get the other guys into the junk, he couldn’t lift himself aboard.

Rescued by the junk, the Americans radioed Newport News to return. Thornton carried Norris to a gurney. The ship’s doctor told Thornton that there was no hope of Norris surviving his grievous wounds. “There’s no way he’s going to make it,” the doctor said. A helicopter came out immediately and evacuated Norris to Da Nang. Thornton remained aboard Newport News to help care for his LDNN teammates, who didn’t speak much English. Thornton also had been wounded a second time, by a grazing shot along his calf.

Norris did survive. Evacuated the Da Nang, he had to wait eight hours for medical resources. All the American ground units had been removed from the country, so a C-141 with two medical teams came from Clark AB in the Philippines and took Norris back with them. His first surgery alone was more than 19 hours long. He had a long road ahead, but he did recover (though losing an eye). Norris would be medically retired from the Navy, but would have a successful career as an FBI agent.

In the after actions reports, it was clear that Thornton had done something extraordinary, even for a Navy SEAL. He was recommended for the Medal of Honor. The awards package, as these things do, went through the chain of command. Thornton was told that at the award review at the Joint Chiefs of Staff a Marine general asked how one man could do all that and still be alive. The Chief of Naval Operations is alleged to have replied, “you tell me how a dead man does it and I’ll answer your question, General.”

Thornton received the Medal of Honor on 15 October 1973, just a couple weeks shy of the one year anniversary of the mission. He received in it a White House ceremony from President Nixon. Eight other men received the Medal of Honor that day, including Army Sergeant Gary Beikirch, discussed here.

Thornton receives the MoH from President Nixon

Norris and Thornton had remained in contact. Norris was still convalescing at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Thornton went to visit him a couple days before his ceremony. Norris was still heavily disfigured, and was being prepared for yet another operation. Thornton told the doctor that he wanted Norris to be with him at the White House. “I’m sorry, Mike, can’t do that,” The doctor told him. So he came back about 11 O’clock that night and kidnapped Norris from the clutches of the Navy’s Medical Corps. Norris was there to watch Thornton get the medal from the President.

Nixon asked Thornton, “Mike, what does this mean to you?” Thornton said, “If I could break this medal half in two I’d like to give it to that guy behind me over there. Cause I know he’d have done the same for me.” Almost three years later, Norris would be in the same building, but now the home of President Ford, when he would get the medal pinned around his neck for his earlier rescue of Bat 21. Watching the event was his brother-in-arms, Mike Thornton.

Thornton remained in the Navy. He was selected by Dick Marcinko to be a founding member of SEAL Team Six in 1980. In 1982 Thornton received a commission and would eventually retire from the Navy in 1992 as a lieutenant. He had a career that took him to 69 countries by his count. His other awards include the Silver Star, three Bronze Star Medals w/ “V”, three Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medals with at least one “V”, three Presidential Unit Citations, and from South Vietnam, the Gallantry Cross with silver citation star (indicating a citation in orders at the divisional-level), and the Armed Forces Honor Medal (first class).

Thornton’s rescue of a fellow Medal of Honor recipient is variously described as the only time that’s occurred or the only time that’s occurred in more than a century. It’s an event that’s essentially without precedent. It is now immortalized in statue form outside the National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce, Fla. At the base of the statue are the names of the seven (two posthumous) SEALs that have received the Medal of Honor.

Thornton and Norris remain friends. In fact, Thornton describes Norris as his best friend. There’s a bond that forms between those who go through harrowing circumstances. There’s no more harrowing circumstance than finding your friend dead and, despite the hail of enemy fire, bringing him back home. In researching this piece, I came across this photo that captures their friendship in a way no words can describe.

In an interview for the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation and shared with the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project, Thornton says what the medal means to him;

“It’s a great thing. I mean, I don’t think I deserve it, though. [The Medal] belongs to every man and woman who’s ever served our country or is serving or is going to serve our country. I’m a custodian of the Medal…I think it belongs to everybody who’s ever served our country. I was doing what I was trained to do. I was doing what I was asked to do. I was doing what I knew would, and I still know that Tommy would have done for me, too, if he had been in the opposite position.”

He continues, “The Medal has given me the honor to meet some of the greatest heroes. And I sat down and talked to [General of the Army] Omar Bradley about, you know, asking him questions about [General] George Patton or [USMC Colonel] Pappy Boyington. [General Jimmy] Doolittle talked about their fights and the raid over Tokyo. And have these guys hug you and embrace you and just, you know, it’s unbelievable.”

Writing for the Houston Chronicle in May 1998, Thornton (with Capt. Eric H. May as ghost writer) gave his “32 Specific Reasons for Memorial Day Remembrance.” It’s a short read;

Here are 32 specific reasons that Memorial Day makes me remember the patriots who fell in our nation’s wars. You can find all of them and 60,000 others on the Wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. They are the names of the 32 comrades I lost in my four tours of duty as a SEAL in Vietnam. Many Americans have similar reasons for remembrance, having known someone who died so that our freedoms could live.

In many Houston homes a cherished photograph sits in a place of honor, showing the ever-young image of a uniformed soldier, sailor or Marine, standing with an American flag in the background. Their proud, ambitious expressions show that every one of them hoped to live but was willing to die.

In every Houston community neighbors remember a local young man or woman who made the ultimate sacrifice. Just the other night, a friend confided to me that he still remembered seeing the Medal of Honor, our nations highest military decoration, encased in his high school library. It had been received posthumously by a classmate who had leapt on a grenade in Vietnam, absorbing the shrapnel with his body to save his buddies.

Knowing a person who has died in service reminds us that they were human. They were heroes, but they weren’t made of marble, didn’t eat nails and didn’t breathe fire. They laughed at jokes, dreamed of the future and enjoyed the pleasures of life, just as we do. They were a part of us.

In 1986 I was a pallbearer for the earthly remains of ths Vietnam-era soldier, known but to God, whom we interred at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. It seemed to me then that the young man we buried had suffered a fate as hard as death itself: anonymity. The belief that we will be remembered after death is one of the thoughts that brings us happiness in life.

The disinterment just days ago of that unknown soldier was an occasion of happiness for me, because it holds forth the possibility of his identification. If that happens, people will engrave his name on the Wall, and the press will show his photograph and report the details of his life. He will be remembered.

Perhaps the soon-to-be-known soldier is doing one last service for his nation by reminding us of something: the better part of our national character. We Americans don’t leave our dead on the battlefield. We don’t shut out the memory of their lives or sacrifice. We don’t forget.

These are the thoughts I’ll be thinking this Memorial Day as I enjoy family and friends, food, drinks, music and the freedom that makes the United States worth dying for. And all 32 of my friends on the Wall would approve heartily. They hated a bad time, and they loved a good one. They can’t make it to my Memorial Day party but I’ll be sure to remember that they’re the ones who paid for it.

The remains Thornton was referring to were of an unknown American killed in action during the Vietnam War. As was tradition dating back to the First World War, a Medal of Honor recipient selected from several unknown remains to choose the man to be interred at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington. The pall bearers at the interment are, again by tradition, Medal of Honor recipients from the conflict who are still on active duty.

In 1998, the Vietnam Unknown’s remains were disinterred for DNA testing. They were subsequently positively identified as USAF First Lieutenant Michael Blassie of St Louis, Missouri. He’d been shot down in 1972. To this day, another Vietnam Unknown has not been selected, and it’s the hope of the DPAA (who identify remains returned to American control) that they will never again have an unknown American die in action. In succeeding conflicts there have been no unidentified remains.

Category: Historical, Medal of Honor, Navy, SEALs, Valor, Vietnam, We Remember