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