June 26, 2024 • 31 mins
In the waning days of the Vietnam War, two Navy SEALs were dropped into enemy territory for a routine scouting mission. But within hours, Michael Thornton and Thomas Norris would be battling to save their team – and each other – against terrible odds. What Michael Thornton did that day would become SEAL legend…and a lesson in the true nature of courage.
Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and the Pritzker Military Museum & Library.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin Hello. Hello. Before we get on with our show,
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(00:37):
for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts or by visiting Pushkin,
dot Fm, slash Plus. Now onto the episode. It was
the fall of nineteen seventy two, the waning days of
the Vietnam War. American troops have been sent home, leaving
the South Vietnamese to keep fighting on their own. President
(01:00):
Richard Nixon called this policy Vietnamization.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
We can continue our program of withdrawing American forces without
detriment to our overall goal of ensuring South Vietnam's survival
as an independent country.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
There were fewer than twenty Navy Seals left in the
country by that point. They were there to quote unquote
advise the South Vietnamese military. In reality, the seals were
running missions at the front lines and sometimes dangerously behind them.
On October thirtieth, Petty Officer Michael Thornton was about to
set out on one of those missions. Thornton's hometown was Spartanburg,
(01:37):
South Carolina. He was six foot two, thickly muscled, with
a reputation for carrying twice the loads of ammunition as
other guys alongside Burns, a cleft chin, and an elvis pout.
His fellow seals called him the Mighty Thar. At seventeen,
he had been given the choice between reform school and
the military. He chose the military. With him that night
(02:00):
in October was Lieutenant Thomas Norris. Tommy Norris was twenty eight,
a seasoned officer. He cast a completely different shadow than
Mike lah He was fine boned and wiry, five foot six,
one hundred and twenty pounds, soaking wet. A high school
wrestling champion back home in Maryland, his nickname was Nasty Norris.
There was nobody tougher. The two seals knew each other,
(02:24):
even though they'd never been on a mission together before.
There were so few seals left that they all knew
each other. When Tommy was asked to choose one other
seal to accompany him on a scouting mission, he chose
Mike the Mighty thor and Nasty Norris They were meant
to investigate a naval base that had been taken just
a few months earlier by the North Vietnamese Army during
(02:45):
its relentless southward march. The Seals knew they were entering
dangerous territory, so they planned to do their reconnaissance under
cover of darkness. A Navy ship got them close than
a dinghy closer, and finally, Tommy, Mike and three South
Vietnamese Navy men dropped over the sides into the South
China Sea and swam silently to shore. Everything that could go.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Wrong was about to go wrong.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
I'm Malcolm Glawell and this is Medal of Honor Stories
of Courage. The Medal of Honor is the highest military
decoration in the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery
in combat at the risk of life, above and beyond
the call of duty. The Medal of Honor was established
in eighteen sixty one at the outset of the Civil War.
(03:35):
There have been three thousand, five hundred and seventeen people
awarded the medal. Since each candidate must be approved all
the way up the chain of command, from the supervisory
officer on the field to the highest office in our nation.
It's not just approved by the Secretary of Defense, it
has to be agreed to by the President. This show
(03:57):
is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant,
and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage.
And this episode is about what happened on Halloween nineteen
seventy two. It was one am the five soldiers reached
(04:29):
the shore. They were looking for an enemy occupied naval
base on the southernmost outskirts of North Vietnamese Territory, a
place in the North Vietnamese Army they referred to them
as the NVA would have just started to settle down
in but something seemed off. From what they could tell
in the moonlight, this was not some newly settled encampment. Later,
(04:53):
Mike Thoughton would remember how he felt in that moment
when he realized they'd been dropped off miles north of
their intended target.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
We're walking through areas.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
It's been no way in hell they could have built
all the stuff up in two months, so right then
we knew we're way north.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Listen to his tone, by the way, he sounds like
he's describing how he went to the grocery store and
realized he forgot his shopping list at home. Mike saw
bunkers the size of hotel buildings, weapons, soldiers sleeping on
mats on the ground. They'd been dropped on top of
a major North Vietnamese Army installation. The seals crept along
in a line, hunched over so as not to be spotted.
(05:32):
Tommy was at the front, Mike was at the rear.
Between them were the three South Vietnamese Navy men. Mike
had gone on previous missions with two of them, Deng
and Kwan, and hand picked them for that night. Both
of them were confident, seasoned in combat, and unflappable in
the face of danger. Mike liked and trusted them both.
(05:53):
Third was a young and inexperienced officer, Lieutenant Tie. Mike
kept creeping up to Tommy to check if Tommy was
seeing what he was seeing.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
They had tanks and gun and placements. They had guys
with big bonfire, so we.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Knew they were afraid, you know, letting them know who
they were. And I'm biting down as falls. I say, Tommy,
you see this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
By the time they confirmed their suspicions, they were five
miles from where they dropped in. It would be light
soon there was no chance they could get back to
see before daylight came, so Tommy decided that their best
hope for survival would be to return to the beach,
hide out between the dunes, radio for help, and wait
for night to fall again. Once it was dark, they'd
swim back out to sea and be extracted. Silently, stealthily,
(06:40):
they worked their way back to the beach. They waded
through a stream and waste high water all the way.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
We could move much faster than the water, and we
wouldn't have to worry about stumbling over somebody's sleeping because
we could hear a guy snore, and it was unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Once they made it to the beach, the five men
split up and hid behind two large dunes. There was
a lagoon to one side, a wide swath of open
sand to the other. The sun was rising and they
settled into the long wait for darkness. But then they
saw two North Vietnamese on patrol.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Kwan come flying around and tapped me and tapped him
on his shoulder and gave him the sun for two
enemies back there. So I went back around and saw
these guys coming. I could just see their silho whips.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
They knew they needed to capture or kill them. Discovery
would be catastrophic. Mike crept up behind one and cold
cocked him. Kwan, tied him up, gagged him, and dragged
him out of sight. Mike silently signaled to Lieutenant Tie
to eliminate the other one, but instead Ty called out
to the soldier and ordered him to stop.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
He didn't stop, and that guy had an AK forty seven.
He was about three hundred yards away, and he opened
fired up on Tie. Tied to jumped down and started
running back towards me. So he's running back towards me,
and I'm running past him because I'm trying to get
this guy, because we could see that he was heading
for the village.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
The North Vietnamese soldier was running back to where he
came from, firing off shots to alert everyone to the
situation that the dunes. Mike was in pursuit.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
So I'm hauling can and I stopped on one knee,
took two breasts and cranked off two rounds to hit
him in the back and the guy fell. But when
I looked up, there is a quick reaction for us
coming with the village with about fifty guys.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
You can picture it, right, a huge group of men
descending on Mike. Mike knew he had only one option run.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
So I turned around, started running back, and Tommy sees
me running back, and here's all these bullets going off,
and he doesn't see me shooting, So he knew like
hell that we were in a world of trouble.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
A world of trouble. That's where Medal of Honor stories
are made, in the places where the odds are so
long and the risk is so great that it will
take an act of extreme bravery for anyone to survive.
But where does that bravery come from? That's one of
the questions that got me so obsessed with Medal of
Honor stories, because I think sometimes we just assumed that
(09:08):
curry is a trait, something you're born with, and that
what happens in moments like on that Vietnam beach is
that we suddenly learn who has it and who doesn't.
One of the things that happens when you listen to
enough Medal of Honor stories is that you begin to
realize that courage is not a birthright, it's a choice.
(09:28):
Mike was being chased by a mass of North Vietnamese soldiers.
Tommy saw him hauling can back towards the group and
fired a rocket at a tree, exploding it and creating
enough of a diversion so Mike could dive back into
the dunes. It was total chaos because now they were
being straighted with bullets. Tommy was desperately radioing for help.
(09:49):
He needed a ship to send cover fire and drive
the NVA back. Two Navy warships wanted to come to
their aid, but they didn't know where the seals were.
Any help was hours away. It was a series of
problems that would seem overwhelming to anyone, but Mike broke
down the big problem into components. They were five against
(10:13):
an entire encampment of NVA, but the NVA didn't know
how many of them there were, right, So solution number
one make it look like they were ten or twenty
of them. So Mike started impersonating an entire seal platoon.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
And as soon as I saw the top of their
head coming up, I'd take about an inch shot and
saying I'd get a headshot. Every time i'd take a
couple of shots like that, I'd roll over and come
out in another position. They didn't know if we had
fifteen people in there or five.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Mike keeps shooting, ducking and rolling for hours, and then
someone threw a grenade over the top of the dune.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
And I just screamed out and I got hit six
times when my back was wrapping them, and you could
hear Tommy yelling, Mike, Buddy, Mike. But he just saw
me laying on my back and I said. I didn't
say a word, and about four guys came over and
I was laying on my back and I eliminated all
four of those guys. Two fell on my side, the
two fell back, and Tommy was watching what was going on.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Mike was on his back, expecting a surge of more
North Vietnamese any moment now they knew he was hit,
but instead the action just stopped.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Tommy yelled down at me, said, they're falling back. We
couldn't understand whether they were falling back. And they had
had lost a great number of their of their unit,
and to do this, and I still don't think they
ever knew exactly how many people we had.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
A silence descended on the beach. Everything went eerily still.
The five men began to regroup, got cautiously hopeful. Had
their strategy actually worked.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
No, it hadn't, Tommy, he said, while they're falling back,
and I said, pointed across the lagoon, and we started kunting.
A great number of NVA troops coming from both sides
around the lagoon.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
They were close to one hundred North Vietnamese troops. They
were now outnumbered twenty to one. Tommy realized they needed
a better position. He spied a dune in the distance
that would give them a potential defense. The NBA would
have to cross nearly a quarter of a mile of
open sand to reach them.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
There.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
In theory, they could pick them off one by one
if they could hold onto the high ground for that long.
Tommy decided that Mike Kwan and Lieutenant Tye would run
for the dune first. He and Dang would come after.
The three started sprinting, crossing the five hundred yards of
sand to the new dune.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
So we fell back.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
And while I was yelling Tommy, fall back, fall back,
and I could see Dang, and this was like one o'clock,
one thirty in the afternoon, because the far fight had
gone on for over five hours, was running down the
dune by himself, and he was running by himself and
I said, my grab and I said where Tommy. He said, Mike, aw,
he's dead and I saw he sure, said he said
he was shot in the head.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
He's dead.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Tommy, the leader of the team, was shot in the
head and dead. Mike trusted Dang. They'd been on missions
together before, his hand picked him for this one. Dan
knew what he'd seen, and Mike had no reason not
to believe him. The situation for the rest of them
was getting more dangerous by the minute. The team was
about to be surrounded by North Vietnamese soldiers, but seals
(13:22):
have a core value leave no man behind, So Mike
decided he would go and get Tommy, putting principal above
self preservation.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I said, stay here, I'll go back and get tom
and Kwan and Dane both grabbed me and held me.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Said no, Mike, you stay, and I said, no, I'm
going back. Y'all stay hear you cover me.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Mike ran back across the beach, back almost a quarter
of a mile, directly into the gunfire. He reached Tommy
just as five North Vietnamese soldiers did, and he shot
them all.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
I picked Tommy up.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
He was shot through the left temple, and the bullet
had exited through his forehead and the whole front level
part of his front brain was gone. His cheekbone was gone,
his eye sucket was completely gone, and I thought he
was dead.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
On some level, it didn't matter if Tommy was alive
or dead. Mike knew he wasn't leaving that beach without him.
We'll be right back. Here's where the story of that
(14:37):
night on the beach is so interesting to me. At
this critical point, Mike Thornton, a supremely rational guy who
talks about the most dramatic night of his life as
if it's a trip to the grocery store, is making
what seems like an unbelievably irrational decision as he runs
across the sand to Tommy Norris. He's being driven by something.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
You've probably heard the saying courage is contagious. It's one
of those bits of folk wisdom that turns out to
be true. Research has shown that seeing or even just
hearing about an act of courage makes it more likely
that you will be courageous yourself. The scientific term for
that idea is pro social contagion. When you witness kindness
(15:24):
or heroism. Two separate areas in your nervous system are activated.
Your awareness is heightened, your desire to protect others grows.
You catch your heroism from others. We see this all
the time. One person holds a door open for the
person behind them, and then suddenly a whole string of
people are holding open the door as well. That's a
(15:45):
small example, but think about the passengers on flight ninety
three on nine to eleven, A group of terrified average
people who made a collective decision to fight back against
terrible odds. They inspired heroism in one another. So what's
driving Mike Thornton to make his totally bonker's decision to
race across the beach? Something he knew about that happened
(16:08):
in Vietnam. Six months before that spring, an Air Force
flight was shot down over North Vietnam, with one survivor
left behind the front lines. He had top secret intel,
so the Air Force sent mission after mission to rescue him.
Each one a catastrophic failure, men dying aircraft destroyed, Then
(16:29):
a second pilot, one of the rescuers, got stranded behind
enemy lines. Finally, the Air Force called in the Navy Seals.
The Seals sent in one of their best. He snuck
into heavily patrolled enemy territory and found one of the pilots.
They got out alive, but barely. Then he went back
for the second one. This time it was even more
(16:51):
of a suicide mission, but the seal did it anyway,
disguised as a fisherman paddling a canoe, and he succeeded.
Everyone in the seals knew that story, especially Mike Thornton,
because the seal who rescued those two pilots was Tommy Norris.
So when Mike raced across the beach to get his friend,
(17:13):
his commanding officer, he was doing what he already knew
Tommy had done himself and would do for anyone. Tommy's
courage was contagious. Back to the firefight, a naval destroyer
has finally arrived to give them cover. Mike was running
as fast as he could with Tommy on his shoulders,
(17:35):
as the ship started shelling the beach.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
I heard the first eight inch round coming in and
the concussion blew me almost twenty feet in the air,
and I looked at Tommy and he's flying off my shoulders.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Mike got blown sideways. He was dazed stumbling. Tommy, of course,
had already been shot in the head. Now he'd been
tossed through the air by a shell from a Navy destroyer.
If he wasn't dead before, he was certainly dead now
once again, Mike chose to go back for him.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
I looked down, I saw my weapon, I saw Tommy's weapon.
I saw Tommy over here, and I ran over and
he's laying on his back. And I looked down at
him to grab him, to pick him start running with
him again. And he had to ride eye open like that,
he says, Mike, Buddy, I said, the son of a
bitch is still alive.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Tommy was alive, and Mike had to keep him alive.
Mike looked to the far away dune where Dang and
Kwan were still waiting, then back to Tommy.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Half his head's hanging out, you know, and about picking
him up. And I put him back on my shoulders
and I started running.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Dang and Kwan started shooting, giving them cover. Ty was gone.
As he had watched Mike run to Tommy. The young
lieutenant had given up. Hope, jumped into water and swam away,
deserting the firefight as a lost cause they're radio was
shot to bits, useless, no more calling for help. The
only option was to get off the beach and swim
(18:57):
to safety. The navy warships were far offshore, but maybe
they could reach them. Anything was better than remaining on
the beach. Mike, Kwan and Dang leaped frog towards the surf,
each one taking turns spreading to the water as the
other two covered him. They had almost no AMMO left.
The North Vietnamese surrounded them on three sides. The team
(19:19):
had nowhere to go with the ocean. By now, Mike
had a bullet through his calf and he was still
carrying Tommy.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
We got to the beach and I stumbled and fell
and Tommy rolled over like that, and I said, gush,
if they ain't killed, I'm gonna kill and dropping him.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
All this time.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
There were swells four feet high. Mike tucked Tommy under
his arm and dove in, pushing him underneath the waves
to get him through the surf zone.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
And without me knowing about, I was basically drowning Tommy.
I felt him because he has been pretty quiet there
period of time, and he actually started hitting his hands
and hit me in the back. And I looked down
and I had his head stuffed in the water.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
The shots kept coming from shore. The soldiers on the
beach never stopped firing.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
As we swam through the surf song, you could see
the bullets just going through the water, just like you
did in the movie, you know.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
And I was saying, good Lord, don't let hit me. Now. God.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Out past the breaking waves, the water was calm except
for the sound of bullets splashing around them. Now Mike
had to figure out just how he was going to
stabilize Tommy. He took his life jacket and put it
over Tommy's head as carefully as he possibly could so
he wouldn't make the wound any worse. He tied a
line around him, securing Tommy to his back. He saw
(20:34):
Dang out front of him swimming another of his men
accounted for. He was hopeful to tie the young lieutenant
was out there swimming too. He was worried about him,
even though Ty had left them for dead. Then he
spot a quan floundering in the water. He was wounded
and drowning.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
He was shot through his right hip and off his
whole cheek of his butt, and he couldn't swim. So
I grabbed him put in front of me, and I
had had him wrap his arms ar me like this.
I had arms underneath his arms, and he held on
Tommy and I swam for appartiately three three and a
half hours.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
So now Mike was holding two men after a five
hour of firefight. Shrapnel in his back, bullet in his leg.
He can't even see the boat he's meant to swim to,
but he starts to swim.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
You stay focused on the motion, You keep swimming, You
never stop, you keep swimming.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
You can just keep focused a lot. Let this go,
keep us alive.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Tommy, tied to Mike's back, drifted in and out of consciousness,
waking up only to ask if all the men were safe.
Mike lied and said he hid all of them, didn't
mention the missing tie. Tommy got quieter and quieter, and
Mike kept swimming. He had been keeping his eyes on
the horizon, where he'd seen glimpses of the USS Newport News,
(21:51):
the largest cruiser in that part of the South China Sea.
He knew it had a medical team on board, which
was a rarity since most of the American military had
gone home at the top of a swell. He saw
the ship again, but it seemed to be sailing away.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Wow, so the worst lighter saw my wife. I saw
a big boat turn arounding, started going seaward.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
It was enough to make the mighty thorer give up hope.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Almost later on we found out a ford a server
plane had said there's nothing but a bunch of bodies
on the beach, and they thought we were dead.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Mike watched the big ship retreat into the distance. Tommy
was slipping away, but Mike just kept swimming.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
He's going in really deep shock. He could fill him.
Just shaken on your back, and there's not a damn
thing you can do.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Another hour passed. Mike and Tommy, Kwan and Dang had
been in the water for more than three hours. Then
they saw a boat, a traditional sailing vessel called a junk,
a type of boat that had been used by both
sides in the war. Friends and foe.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
I saw the junk out there, and I wasn't sure.
I was so tired. That was a Vietnamese drunk or what.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Mike used the last of his strength to signal the boat,
and as it got closer, he discovered that not only
was it safe. It had been looking for him. It
was one of two jars, thanks led by another Navy seal,
Woody Woodruff, who, because he was a seal, of course,
had steadfastly refused to leave without finding the missing team,
even as the bigger ships departed for safety. The crew
(23:22):
pulled Quan and Dang aboard, and then Mike carefully passed
Tommy up. Mike was the last one out of the water.
Lieutenant Tie had been found by the junks an hour.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Before I called the Newport News. The Newport News turned around.
We started steaming towards the Newport News and the joant
you know, Woody met us, met us there, and we
rafted up to the Newport News, got Tommy up on
the fantail. I picked Tommy up and took him down
and put him on the guarney.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Mike stay with Tommy as long as he could until
the doctors took over. The prognosis looked grim, in fact,
it looked impossible, but the doctors were another kind of hero.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
And there's a Lieutenant commander doctor. And later on we
met the doctor again several years later. That was on
the Newport News, and he said, I swore to God
that he would never lived.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Anyone would have given up Tommy Norris for dead when
he had been shot through the head, or if somehow
you missed that after he'd been blown sideways by a
shell from a naval destroyer, or when he'd soaked in
the sea for hours, after both those wounds. But somehow
he made it through.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
He survived, the grace of our God, My God, he's
still with us.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
He wasn't just the heroics of Mike Thornton that save
Tommy Norris. It was Kwan and Dang staying on the
beach to give them cover. It was the persistence of
Woody Woodruff refusing to call off his search. It was
the surgeons on the Newport News and then the doctors
who took over when Tommy was shipped home. And what
started this chain reaction Tommy's own courage the previous April,
(25:02):
that social contagion of a willingness to try improbable things.
You can still hear that courage, Tommy's voice as he
remembers the early days of surgery that turned into years
in the hospital.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
The doctors even came in and said, we didn't think
we were ever gonna save you, and so I don't
know how you know you stayed alive and made it through.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
But he said you just.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Wouldn't give up, And I get I think that's part
of what it was.
Speaker 5 (25:31):
You just have a determination not to give up. And
my injury.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
When you see the death and destruction to other people
that you see in war, I mean, what I have
is nothing. So I lost an eye, part of my
head and brain, and had some other bodily injuries.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
But what is that? I mean, I have another eye.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
He has another eye. When you hear stories of courage,
your valor, it forces you to ask the question of yourself,
what do I have within me? That's what Tommy's story
did for Mike. It lifted him up and then in turn,
Mike carried him home. One day. A year later, in
(26:25):
October of nineteen seventy three, Mike Thornton decided to bust
Tommy Norris out of the hospital against doctor's orders. He
was an absurd thing to do. He had surgery the
next day, but they were going to the White House
because Mike had been awarded the Medal of Honor.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
I'll never forget that day.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
My mom and dad was there, my brother was there,
Tommy was there, and the President asked me and said, Mike,
you know what does this mean to you? Is President
Nixon and we're in the East room, and I said, sir,
if you could take something, cut this in half. I
about to give the other half this medal to the
gentleman standing behind me, and that was tom.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Mike kept his medal intact, which was fine because three
years later he was back at the White House watching
Tommy get his own medal of honor for his rescue
of the two pilots. It goes on from there. They
are more than former conrads and arms. They're best friends.
They finish each other's sentences. They laugh about everything, even
(27:23):
the worst night of their lives. When they were wandering
through that North Vietnamese encampment, he.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Kind of looked at me like, yeah, you're we're not
where we're supposed to be.
Speaker 5 (27:34):
And he go back to the back of the line
and off we go.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
We patrol some more, and now every time we'd stop,
he'd let me know that, you know, hey, dumb, dumb,
we're not what we're supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Mike and Tommy helped to bring Lieutenant Tie and Kwon
to the US. Dang didn't make it out before the
fall of South Vietnam, he was captured and executed. Despite
the loss of his eye, Tommy became an FBI agent,
acing the entrance exam and the training. Unsurprisingly, eventually he
was one of the founders of the Hostage Rescue Team,
(28:07):
which feels fitting for someone who is so doggedly obsessed
with getting people to safety. Mike went on to be
a founding member of Seal Team six, working in counter terrorism.
He's considered to be the ultimate Seal, a giant of
a man acres of ribbons across his dress Whites.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I love my brother to death, but I'm closer to
Tommy and I am my own brother. I mean to
live through what we've lived through together and continue our
friendship for all those years. It's it's just a magnificent thing.
And it's not just about our friendship, you know. I've
known people's been wounded together, and I've been wounded with
other guys in Silching, but never the camorader and the
friendship with Tommy and I holding now together today.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Tommy, for his part, believes his courage isn't extraordinary. He
thinks it's waiting to be sparked to life within all
of us.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
I don't feel that I was anybody special. It was
a time and a place in a mission that needed
to be accomplished, and I was fortunate to be the
one that was successful in that. But I don't feel
that I this was something that at least I would
like to think that somebody else in my position would
(29:19):
have attempted to do the same thing if they could have.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
They're both retired now. Mike lives in Houston, Texas, Tommy
lives on a little ranch in northern Idaho, but they
still see each other at least ten times a year.
After all, it's only a four hour flight. Even if
they had to swim it, they'd still find a way
back to each other. Medal of Honor. Stories of Courage
(29:57):
is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins,
Constanza Gallardo, ben Adaph Haffrey, and Izzy Carter. This episode
was edited by Peter Clowney, Design and additional music by
Jake Krski, Recording engineering by Nita Lawrence, fact checking by
Arthur Gombert's original music by Eric Phillips. The rest of
(30:20):
our team includes Carl Catele, Ashley Weaver, Greta Cone, Christina Sullivan,
Sarah Nix, Nicole Optenbosch, Eric Sandler, Kerry Brody, Taly Emlin,
and Jake Flanagan. Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of
Honor Society, the Pritzkert Military Museum in Library and Adam Plumpton,
(30:40):
and extra special thanks to Dan McGinn. If you want
to learn more about our Medal of Honor recipients, follow
us on Instagram and Twitter. We'll be sharing photos and
videos of the heroes featured on the show. We'd also
love to hear from you dm us with a story
about a courageous veteran in your life. If you don't
know a veteran, we would love to hear a story
(31:02):
of how courage was contagious in your own life. I'm
your host, Malcolm Glabba.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Have sp
Pushkin Hello. Hello. Before we get on with our show,
I want you to know that your Pushkin Plus subscription
grants you early access to Medal of Honor episodes one
week before they were released to the public. That's one
week of exclusive access. If you want to listen to
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(00:37):
for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts or by visiting Pushkin,
dot Fm, slash Plus. Now onto the episode. It was
the fall of nineteen seventy two, the waning days of
the Vietnam War. American troops have been sent home, leaving
the South Vietnamese to keep fighting on their own. President
(01:00):
Richard Nixon called this policy Vietnamization.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
We can continue our program of withdrawing American forces without
detriment to our overall goal of ensuring South Vietnam's survival
as an independent country.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
There were fewer than twenty Navy Seals left in the
country by that point. They were there to quote unquote
advise the South Vietnamese military. In reality, the seals were
running missions at the front lines and sometimes dangerously behind them.
On October thirtieth, Petty Officer Michael Thornton was about to
set out on one of those missions. Thornton's hometown was Spartanburg,
(01:37):
South Carolina. He was six foot two, thickly muscled, with
a reputation for carrying twice the loads of ammunition as
other guys alongside Burns, a cleft chin, and an elvis pout.
His fellow seals called him the Mighty Thar. At seventeen,
he had been given the choice between reform school and
the military. He chose the military. With him that night
(02:00):
in October was Lieutenant Thomas Norris. Tommy Norris was twenty eight,
a seasoned officer. He cast a completely different shadow than
Mike lah He was fine boned and wiry, five foot six,
one hundred and twenty pounds, soaking wet. A high school
wrestling champion back home in Maryland, his nickname was Nasty Norris.
There was nobody tougher. The two seals knew each other,
(02:24):
even though they'd never been on a mission together before.
There were so few seals left that they all knew
each other. When Tommy was asked to choose one other
seal to accompany him on a scouting mission, he chose
Mike the Mighty thor and Nasty Norris They were meant
to investigate a naval base that had been taken just
a few months earlier by the North Vietnamese Army during
(02:45):
its relentless southward march. The Seals knew they were entering
dangerous territory, so they planned to do their reconnaissance under
cover of darkness. A Navy ship got them close than
a dinghy closer, and finally, Tommy, Mike and three South
Vietnamese Navy men dropped over the sides into the South
China Sea and swam silently to shore. Everything that could go.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Wrong was about to go wrong.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
I'm Malcolm Glawell and this is Medal of Honor Stories
of Courage. The Medal of Honor is the highest military
decoration in the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery
in combat at the risk of life, above and beyond
the call of duty. The Medal of Honor was established
in eighteen sixty one at the outset of the Civil War.
(03:35):
There have been three thousand, five hundred and seventeen people
awarded the medal. Since each candidate must be approved all
the way up the chain of command, from the supervisory
officer on the field to the highest office in our nation.
It's not just approved by the Secretary of Defense, it
has to be agreed to by the President. This show
(03:57):
is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant,
and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage.
And this episode is about what happened on Halloween nineteen
seventy two. It was one am the five soldiers reached
(04:29):
the shore. They were looking for an enemy occupied naval
base on the southernmost outskirts of North Vietnamese Territory, a
place in the North Vietnamese Army they referred to them
as the NVA would have just started to settle down
in but something seemed off. From what they could tell
in the moonlight, this was not some newly settled encampment. Later,
(04:53):
Mike Thoughton would remember how he felt in that moment
when he realized they'd been dropped off miles north of
their intended target.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
We're walking through areas.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
It's been no way in hell they could have built
all the stuff up in two months, so right then
we knew we're way north.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
Listen to his tone, by the way, he sounds like
he's describing how he went to the grocery store and
realized he forgot his shopping list at home. Mike saw
bunkers the size of hotel buildings, weapons, soldiers sleeping on
mats on the ground. They'd been dropped on top of
a major North Vietnamese Army installation. The seals crept along
in a line, hunched over so as not to be spotted.
(05:32):
Tommy was at the front, Mike was at the rear.
Between them were the three South Vietnamese Navy men. Mike
had gone on previous missions with two of them, Deng
and Kwan, and hand picked them for that night. Both
of them were confident, seasoned in combat, and unflappable in
the face of danger. Mike liked and trusted them both.
(05:53):
Third was a young and inexperienced officer, Lieutenant Tie. Mike
kept creeping up to Tommy to check if Tommy was
seeing what he was seeing.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
They had tanks and gun and placements. They had guys
with big bonfire, so we.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Knew they were afraid, you know, letting them know who
they were. And I'm biting down as falls. I say, Tommy,
you see this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
By the time they confirmed their suspicions, they were five
miles from where they dropped in. It would be light
soon there was no chance they could get back to
see before daylight came, so Tommy decided that their best
hope for survival would be to return to the beach,
hide out between the dunes, radio for help, and wait
for night to fall again. Once it was dark, they'd
swim back out to sea and be extracted. Silently, stealthily,
(06:40):
they worked their way back to the beach. They waded
through a stream and waste high water all the way.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
We could move much faster than the water, and we
wouldn't have to worry about stumbling over somebody's sleeping because
we could hear a guy snore, and it was unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Once they made it to the beach, the five men
split up and hid behind two large dunes. There was
a lagoon to one side, a wide swath of open
sand to the other. The sun was rising and they
settled into the long wait for darkness. But then they
saw two North Vietnamese on patrol.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Kwan come flying around and tapped me and tapped him
on his shoulder and gave him the sun for two
enemies back there. So I went back around and saw
these guys coming. I could just see their silho whips.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
They knew they needed to capture or kill them. Discovery
would be catastrophic. Mike crept up behind one and cold
cocked him. Kwan, tied him up, gagged him, and dragged
him out of sight. Mike silently signaled to Lieutenant Tie
to eliminate the other one, but instead Ty called out
to the soldier and ordered him to stop.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
He didn't stop, and that guy had an AK forty seven.
He was about three hundred yards away, and he opened
fired up on Tie. Tied to jumped down and started
running back towards me. So he's running back towards me,
and I'm running past him because I'm trying to get
this guy, because we could see that he was heading
for the village.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
The North Vietnamese soldier was running back to where he
came from, firing off shots to alert everyone to the
situation that the dunes. Mike was in pursuit.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
So I'm hauling can and I stopped on one knee,
took two breasts and cranked off two rounds to hit
him in the back and the guy fell. But when
I looked up, there is a quick reaction for us
coming with the village with about fifty guys.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
You can picture it, right, a huge group of men
descending on Mike. Mike knew he had only one option run.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
So I turned around, started running back, and Tommy sees
me running back, and here's all these bullets going off,
and he doesn't see me shooting, So he knew like
hell that we were in a world of trouble.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
A world of trouble. That's where Medal of Honor stories
are made, in the places where the odds are so
long and the risk is so great that it will
take an act of extreme bravery for anyone to survive.
But where does that bravery come from? That's one of
the questions that got me so obsessed with Medal of
Honor stories, because I think sometimes we just assumed that
(09:08):
curry is a trait, something you're born with, and that
what happens in moments like on that Vietnam beach is
that we suddenly learn who has it and who doesn't.
One of the things that happens when you listen to
enough Medal of Honor stories is that you begin to
realize that courage is not a birthright, it's a choice.
(09:28):
Mike was being chased by a mass of North Vietnamese soldiers.
Tommy saw him hauling can back towards the group and
fired a rocket at a tree, exploding it and creating
enough of a diversion so Mike could dive back into
the dunes. It was total chaos because now they were
being straighted with bullets. Tommy was desperately radioing for help.
(09:49):
He needed a ship to send cover fire and drive
the NVA back. Two Navy warships wanted to come to
their aid, but they didn't know where the seals were.
Any help was hours away. It was a series of
problems that would seem overwhelming to anyone, but Mike broke
down the big problem into components. They were five against
(10:13):
an entire encampment of NVA, but the NVA didn't know
how many of them there were, right, So solution number
one make it look like they were ten or twenty
of them. So Mike started impersonating an entire seal platoon.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
And as soon as I saw the top of their
head coming up, I'd take about an inch shot and
saying I'd get a headshot. Every time i'd take a
couple of shots like that, I'd roll over and come
out in another position. They didn't know if we had
fifteen people in there or five.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Mike keeps shooting, ducking and rolling for hours, and then
someone threw a grenade over the top of the dune.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
And I just screamed out and I got hit six
times when my back was wrapping them, and you could
hear Tommy yelling, Mike, Buddy, Mike. But he just saw
me laying on my back and I said. I didn't
say a word, and about four guys came over and
I was laying on my back and I eliminated all
four of those guys. Two fell on my side, the
two fell back, and Tommy was watching what was going on.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Mike was on his back, expecting a surge of more
North Vietnamese any moment now they knew he was hit,
but instead the action just stopped.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Tommy yelled down at me, said, they're falling back. We
couldn't understand whether they were falling back. And they had
had lost a great number of their of their unit,
and to do this, and I still don't think they
ever knew exactly how many people we had.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
A silence descended on the beach. Everything went eerily still.
The five men began to regroup, got cautiously hopeful. Had
their strategy actually worked.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
No, it hadn't, Tommy, he said, while they're falling back,
and I said, pointed across the lagoon, and we started kunting.
A great number of NVA troops coming from both sides
around the lagoon.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
They were close to one hundred North Vietnamese troops. They
were now outnumbered twenty to one. Tommy realized they needed
a better position. He spied a dune in the distance
that would give them a potential defense. The NBA would
have to cross nearly a quarter of a mile of
open sand to reach them.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
There.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
In theory, they could pick them off one by one
if they could hold onto the high ground for that long.
Tommy decided that Mike Kwan and Lieutenant Tye would run
for the dune first. He and Dang would come after.
The three started sprinting, crossing the five hundred yards of
sand to the new dune.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
So we fell back.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
And while I was yelling Tommy, fall back, fall back,
and I could see Dang, and this was like one o'clock,
one thirty in the afternoon, because the far fight had
gone on for over five hours, was running down the
dune by himself, and he was running by himself and
I said, my grab and I said where Tommy. He said, Mike, aw,
he's dead and I saw he sure, said he said
he was shot in the head.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
He's dead.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Tommy, the leader of the team, was shot in the
head and dead. Mike trusted Dang. They'd been on missions
together before, his hand picked him for this one. Dan
knew what he'd seen, and Mike had no reason not
to believe him. The situation for the rest of them
was getting more dangerous by the minute. The team was
about to be surrounded by North Vietnamese soldiers, but seals
(13:22):
have a core value leave no man behind, So Mike
decided he would go and get Tommy, putting principal above
self preservation.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I said, stay here, I'll go back and get tom
and Kwan and Dane both grabbed me and held me.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Said no, Mike, you stay, and I said, no, I'm
going back. Y'all stay hear you cover me.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Mike ran back across the beach, back almost a quarter
of a mile, directly into the gunfire. He reached Tommy
just as five North Vietnamese soldiers did, and he shot
them all.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
I picked Tommy up.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
He was shot through the left temple, and the bullet
had exited through his forehead and the whole front level
part of his front brain was gone. His cheekbone was gone,
his eye sucket was completely gone, and I thought he
was dead.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
On some level, it didn't matter if Tommy was alive
or dead. Mike knew he wasn't leaving that beach without him.
We'll be right back. Here's where the story of that
(14:37):
night on the beach is so interesting to me. At
this critical point, Mike Thornton, a supremely rational guy who
talks about the most dramatic night of his life as
if it's a trip to the grocery store, is making
what seems like an unbelievably irrational decision as he runs
across the sand to Tommy Norris. He's being driven by something.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
You've probably heard the saying courage is contagious. It's one
of those bits of folk wisdom that turns out to
be true. Research has shown that seeing or even just
hearing about an act of courage makes it more likely
that you will be courageous yourself. The scientific term for
that idea is pro social contagion. When you witness kindness
(15:24):
or heroism. Two separate areas in your nervous system are activated.
Your awareness is heightened, your desire to protect others grows.
You catch your heroism from others. We see this all
the time. One person holds a door open for the
person behind them, and then suddenly a whole string of
people are holding open the door as well. That's a
(15:45):
small example, but think about the passengers on flight ninety
three on nine to eleven, A group of terrified average
people who made a collective decision to fight back against
terrible odds. They inspired heroism in one another. So what's
driving Mike Thornton to make his totally bonker's decision to
race across the beach? Something he knew about that happened
(16:08):
in Vietnam. Six months before that spring, an Air Force
flight was shot down over North Vietnam, with one survivor
left behind the front lines. He had top secret intel,
so the Air Force sent mission after mission to rescue him.
Each one a catastrophic failure, men dying aircraft destroyed, Then
(16:29):
a second pilot, one of the rescuers, got stranded behind
enemy lines. Finally, the Air Force called in the Navy Seals.
The Seals sent in one of their best. He snuck
into heavily patrolled enemy territory and found one of the pilots.
They got out alive, but barely. Then he went back
for the second one. This time it was even more
(16:51):
of a suicide mission, but the seal did it anyway,
disguised as a fisherman paddling a canoe, and he succeeded.
Everyone in the seals knew that story, especially Mike Thornton,
because the seal who rescued those two pilots was Tommy Norris.
So when Mike raced across the beach to get his friend,
(17:13):
his commanding officer, he was doing what he already knew
Tommy had done himself and would do for anyone. Tommy's
courage was contagious. Back to the firefight, a naval destroyer
has finally arrived to give them cover. Mike was running
as fast as he could with Tommy on his shoulders,
(17:35):
as the ship started shelling the beach.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
I heard the first eight inch round coming in and
the concussion blew me almost twenty feet in the air,
and I looked at Tommy and he's flying off my shoulders.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Mike got blown sideways. He was dazed stumbling. Tommy, of course,
had already been shot in the head. Now he'd been
tossed through the air by a shell from a Navy destroyer.
If he wasn't dead before, he was certainly dead now
once again, Mike chose to go back for him.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
I looked down, I saw my weapon, I saw Tommy's weapon.
I saw Tommy over here, and I ran over and
he's laying on his back. And I looked down at
him to grab him, to pick him start running with
him again. And he had to ride eye open like that,
he says, Mike, Buddy, I said, the son of a
bitch is still alive.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Tommy was alive, and Mike had to keep him alive.
Mike looked to the far away dune where Dang and
Kwan were still waiting, then back to Tommy.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Half his head's hanging out, you know, and about picking
him up. And I put him back on my shoulders
and I started running.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Dang and Kwan started shooting, giving them cover. Ty was gone.
As he had watched Mike run to Tommy. The young
lieutenant had given up. Hope, jumped into water and swam away,
deserting the firefight as a lost cause they're radio was
shot to bits, useless, no more calling for help. The
only option was to get off the beach and swim
(18:57):
to safety. The navy warships were far offshore, but maybe
they could reach them. Anything was better than remaining on
the beach. Mike, Kwan and Dang leaped frog towards the surf,
each one taking turns spreading to the water as the
other two covered him. They had almost no AMMO left.
The North Vietnamese surrounded them on three sides. The team
(19:19):
had nowhere to go with the ocean. By now, Mike
had a bullet through his calf and he was still
carrying Tommy.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
We got to the beach and I stumbled and fell
and Tommy rolled over like that, and I said, gush,
if they ain't killed, I'm gonna kill and dropping him.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
All this time.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
There were swells four feet high. Mike tucked Tommy under
his arm and dove in, pushing him underneath the waves
to get him through the surf zone.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
And without me knowing about, I was basically drowning Tommy.
I felt him because he has been pretty quiet there
period of time, and he actually started hitting his hands
and hit me in the back. And I looked down
and I had his head stuffed in the water.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
The shots kept coming from shore. The soldiers on the
beach never stopped firing.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
As we swam through the surf song, you could see
the bullets just going through the water, just like you
did in the movie, you know.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
And I was saying, good Lord, don't let hit me. Now. God.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
Out past the breaking waves, the water was calm except
for the sound of bullets splashing around them. Now Mike
had to figure out just how he was going to
stabilize Tommy. He took his life jacket and put it
over Tommy's head as carefully as he possibly could so
he wouldn't make the wound any worse. He tied a
line around him, securing Tommy to his back. He saw
(20:34):
Dang out front of him swimming another of his men
accounted for. He was hopeful to tie the young lieutenant
was out there swimming too. He was worried about him,
even though Ty had left them for dead. Then he
spot a quan floundering in the water. He was wounded
and drowning.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
He was shot through his right hip and off his
whole cheek of his butt, and he couldn't swim. So
I grabbed him put in front of me, and I
had had him wrap his arms ar me like this.
I had arms underneath his arms, and he held on
Tommy and I swam for appartiately three three and a
half hours.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
So now Mike was holding two men after a five
hour of firefight. Shrapnel in his back, bullet in his leg.
He can't even see the boat he's meant to swim to,
but he starts to swim.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
You stay focused on the motion, You keep swimming, You
never stop, you keep swimming.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
You can just keep focused a lot. Let this go,
keep us alive.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Tommy, tied to Mike's back, drifted in and out of consciousness,
waking up only to ask if all the men were safe.
Mike lied and said he hid all of them, didn't
mention the missing tie. Tommy got quieter and quieter, and
Mike kept swimming. He had been keeping his eyes on
the horizon, where he'd seen glimpses of the USS Newport News,
(21:51):
the largest cruiser in that part of the South China Sea.
He knew it had a medical team on board, which
was a rarity since most of the American military had
gone home at the top of a swell. He saw
the ship again, but it seemed to be sailing away.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Wow, so the worst lighter saw my wife. I saw
a big boat turn arounding, started going seaward.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
It was enough to make the mighty thorer give up hope.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Almost later on we found out a ford a server
plane had said there's nothing but a bunch of bodies
on the beach, and they thought we were dead.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Mike watched the big ship retreat into the distance. Tommy
was slipping away, but Mike just kept swimming.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
He's going in really deep shock. He could fill him.
Just shaken on your back, and there's not a damn
thing you can do.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Another hour passed. Mike and Tommy, Kwan and Dang had
been in the water for more than three hours. Then
they saw a boat, a traditional sailing vessel called a junk,
a type of boat that had been used by both
sides in the war. Friends and foe.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
I saw the junk out there, and I wasn't sure.
I was so tired. That was a Vietnamese drunk or what.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Mike used the last of his strength to signal the boat,
and as it got closer, he discovered that not only
was it safe. It had been looking for him. It
was one of two jars, thanks led by another Navy seal,
Woody Woodruff, who, because he was a seal, of course,
had steadfastly refused to leave without finding the missing team,
even as the bigger ships departed for safety. The crew
(23:22):
pulled Quan and Dang aboard, and then Mike carefully passed
Tommy up. Mike was the last one out of the water.
Lieutenant Tie had been found by the junks an hour.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Before I called the Newport News. The Newport News turned around.
We started steaming towards the Newport News and the joant
you know, Woody met us, met us there, and we
rafted up to the Newport News, got Tommy up on
the fantail. I picked Tommy up and took him down
and put him on the guarney.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
Mike stay with Tommy as long as he could until
the doctors took over. The prognosis looked grim, in fact,
it looked impossible, but the doctors were another kind of hero.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
And there's a Lieutenant commander doctor. And later on we
met the doctor again several years later. That was on
the Newport News, and he said, I swore to God
that he would never lived.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Anyone would have given up Tommy Norris for dead when
he had been shot through the head, or if somehow
you missed that after he'd been blown sideways by a
shell from a naval destroyer, or when he'd soaked in
the sea for hours, after both those wounds. But somehow
he made it through.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
He survived, the grace of our God, My God, he's
still with us.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
He wasn't just the heroics of Mike Thornton that save
Tommy Norris. It was Kwan and Dang staying on the
beach to give them cover. It was the persistence of
Woody Woodruff refusing to call off his search. It was
the surgeons on the Newport News and then the doctors
who took over when Tommy was shipped home. And what
started this chain reaction Tommy's own courage the previous April,
(25:02):
that social contagion of a willingness to try improbable things.
You can still hear that courage, Tommy's voice as he
remembers the early days of surgery that turned into years
in the hospital.
Speaker 4 (25:15):
The doctors even came in and said, we didn't think
we were ever gonna save you, and so I don't
know how you know you stayed alive and made it through.
Speaker 5 (25:24):
But he said you just.
Speaker 4 (25:25):
Wouldn't give up, And I get I think that's part
of what it was.
Speaker 5 (25:31):
You just have a determination not to give up. And
my injury.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
When you see the death and destruction to other people
that you see in war, I mean, what I have
is nothing. So I lost an eye, part of my
head and brain, and had some other bodily injuries.
Speaker 5 (25:49):
But what is that? I mean, I have another eye.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
He has another eye. When you hear stories of courage,
your valor, it forces you to ask the question of yourself,
what do I have within me? That's what Tommy's story
did for Mike. It lifted him up and then in turn,
Mike carried him home. One day. A year later, in
(26:25):
October of nineteen seventy three, Mike Thornton decided to bust
Tommy Norris out of the hospital against doctor's orders. He
was an absurd thing to do. He had surgery the
next day, but they were going to the White House
because Mike had been awarded the Medal of Honor.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
I'll never forget that day.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
My mom and dad was there, my brother was there,
Tommy was there, and the President asked me and said, Mike,
you know what does this mean to you? Is President
Nixon and we're in the East room, and I said, sir,
if you could take something, cut this in half. I
about to give the other half this medal to the
gentleman standing behind me, and that was tom.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Mike kept his medal intact, which was fine because three
years later he was back at the White House watching
Tommy get his own medal of honor for his rescue
of the two pilots. It goes on from there. They
are more than former conrads and arms. They're best friends.
They finish each other's sentences. They laugh about everything, even
(27:23):
the worst night of their lives. When they were wandering
through that North Vietnamese encampment, he.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Kind of looked at me like, yeah, you're we're not
where we're supposed to be.
Speaker 5 (27:34):
And he go back to the back of the line
and off we go.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
We patrol some more, and now every time we'd stop,
he'd let me know that, you know, hey, dumb, dumb,
we're not what we're supposed to be.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
Mike and Tommy helped to bring Lieutenant Tie and Kwon
to the US. Dang didn't make it out before the
fall of South Vietnam, he was captured and executed. Despite
the loss of his eye, Tommy became an FBI agent,
acing the entrance exam and the training. Unsurprisingly, eventually he
was one of the founders of the Hostage Rescue Team,
(28:07):
which feels fitting for someone who is so doggedly obsessed
with getting people to safety. Mike went on to be
a founding member of Seal Team six, working in counter terrorism.
He's considered to be the ultimate Seal, a giant of
a man acres of ribbons across his dress Whites.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
I love my brother to death, but I'm closer to
Tommy and I am my own brother. I mean to
live through what we've lived through together and continue our
friendship for all those years. It's it's just a magnificent thing.
And it's not just about our friendship, you know. I've
known people's been wounded together, and I've been wounded with
other guys in Silching, but never the camorader and the
friendship with Tommy and I holding now together today.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Tommy, for his part, believes his courage isn't extraordinary. He
thinks it's waiting to be sparked to life within all
of us.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
I don't feel that I was anybody special. It was
a time and a place in a mission that needed
to be accomplished, and I was fortunate to be the
one that was successful in that. But I don't feel
that I this was something that at least I would
like to think that somebody else in my position would
(29:19):
have attempted to do the same thing if they could have.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
They're both retired now. Mike lives in Houston, Texas, Tommy
lives on a little ranch in northern Idaho, but they
still see each other at least ten times a year.
After all, it's only a four hour flight. Even if
they had to swim it, they'd still find a way
back to each other. Medal of Honor. Stories of Courage
(29:57):
is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins,
Constanza Gallardo, ben Adaph Haffrey, and Izzy Carter. This episode
was edited by Peter Clowney, Design and additional music by
Jake Krski, Recording engineering by Nita Lawrence, fact checking by
Arthur Gombert's original music by Eric Phillips. The rest of
(30:20):
our team includes Carl Catele, Ashley Weaver, Greta Cone, Christina Sullivan,
Sarah Nix, Nicole Optenbosch, Eric Sandler, Kerry Brody, Taly Emlin,
and Jake Flanagan. Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of
Honor Society, the Pritzkert Military Museum in Library and Adam Plumpton,
(30:40):
and extra special thanks to Dan McGinn. If you want
to learn more about our Medal of Honor recipients, follow
us on Instagram and Twitter. We'll be sharing photos and
videos of the heroes featured on the show. We'd also
love to hear from you dm us with a story
about a courageous veteran in your life. If you don't
know a veteran, we would love to hear a story
(31:02):
of how courage was contagious in your own life. I'm
your host, Malcolm Glabba.
Speaker 4 (31:10):
Have sp