INTRODUCTION
MY ROLE
On the cover of this book it says “with Dick Couch,” and this is an apt description of my relationship with Tommy Norris and Mike Thornton. I was with them as SEAL teammates going back to the late 1960s—back when few people had even heard of Navy SEALs. I have been with them over the intervening years and as aging warriors we have periodically met to relive the battles of our youth in that long-forgotten war. But what these two American heroes did should never be forgotten. Their individual acts of courage are timeless, and they continue to serve as role models for today’s operational SEALs. Therefore it is with no small sense of purpose that I am privileged to serve as narrator and help them tell their story. It’s the story of two selfless American warriors who went back.
GOING BACK
It is deeply ingrained in our military culture that we leave no one behind. At great risk and against all odds, we will do anything and everything to save a fallen buddy or a captured comrade. Within the Navy SEAL teams, it is a sacred covenant. From day one in Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, those aspiring to join this elite band of warriors are taught that you never, but never, leave a man behind. In a training regime that is demanding in the extreme, SEAL cadre instructors reserve their harshest punishments for a man who becomes separated from his swim buddy. In the SEAL teams, and indeed all special-operations components, it is axiomatic that a brother warrior is never abandoned.
The Congressional Medal of Honor is our nation’s highest military decoration—reserved for those who at great personal risk go above and beyond the call of duty. It is no wonder that a great many of those who receive the Medal of Honor have earned this distinction because they went to the aid of another in peril. They went back.
This is the incredible story of two Navy SEALs who went back. One for a buddy, the other for a brother warrior he had never met. The actions of both represent the pinnacle of courage and selfless service.
THE MEN
In 1974 I was living in Northern Virginia just south of Old Town Alexandria. At the time I was a young case officer at the Central Intelligence Agency, risking my life daily—not spying for my country but commuting up the George Washington Parkway to CIA headquarters in Langley on my motorcycle. My wife and I had just bought an old home that needed a lot of work. For most of that first year I had a boarder who lived in the spare bedroom and helped me with the renovations in exchange for a place to live. He was only with us periodically, as he was in and out of Bethesda Naval Hospital for cranial reconstructive surgery. His name was Tom Norris.
Tom and I first met in the fall of 1968 when we were two officer trainees enrolled in Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training. He had come from naval flight training, and I had come from duty aboard a Navy destroyer. We were both junior grade lieutenants, or “JGs.” Following training, he went to SEAL Team Two, and I, after a short tour at Underwater Demolition Team 22, joined SEAL Team One. I got through Vietnam without a scratch. Tom was not so lucky. In the course of a running firefight along the so-called Demilitarized Zone that at the time separated North and South Vietnam, Tom was shot in the head. The round went through the orbit of his left eye and took out a good chunk of the left side of his skull. A mortal wound for sure, had it not been for a SEAL petty officer named Mike Thornton, who fought his way back to Tom’s side and spirited him to safety. Mike and I were teammates at SEAL Team One.
One evening I asked Tom about the events of that day. We were both combat SEALs and for us, this was shop talk. Still, the details of a running firefight are difficult to recall, even without a serious head wound.
“We were being hard pressed by a large North Vietnamese Army force—probably a battalion. We’d been fighting for an hour or more among a series of sand dunes along the coast. I’d been on the radio trying to get some naval gunfire support, but I wasn’t having much luck. I had one LAAW [light antiarmor weapon] rocket left and was getting ready to fire it. Then things went dark. The next thing I knew, Mike was by my side, kneeling over me.
“‘Can you run?’ he said to me.
“‘I can run,’ I told him, ‘but I can’t see.’
“‘Then let’s go. We can’t stay here.’”
Through a hail of enemy fire, Mike managed to get Tom off that beach, into the relative safety of the South China Sea, and into history.
While Tom was in and out of the hospital, and helping me to rebuild my house, Mike was awarded the Medal of Honor for his rescue of Tom. When Tom was later awarded the Medal of Honor for his previous rescue of two American airmen shot down behind enemy lines, these two gallant but separate combat actions became unprecedented. Never in the modern history of American combat arms and the storied lore of the Medal of Honor had a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine received the Medal for saving the life of another recipient.
Tom and I were classmates and suffered through the rite of passage that is Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training. Mike was a teammate. I remember Mike as a second class petty officer who worked in the team parachute loft and had a solid reputation as a SEAL operator. He also had a reputation as a guy who liked to raise hell and have a good time. So I knew these men before they entered the elite status that our nation reserves for its most distinguished warriors. Navy SEALs come in all shapes, sizes, and temperaments. Regarding those characteristics, I don’t know of two more physically dissimilar “team guys” than Tom Norris and Mike Thornton. Yet there is something special, a no-quit grit, that makes them brothers—as young Navy SEALs during the close fight and to this day as aging brothers-in-arms. And the Medal of Honor has joined them at the hip. By Honor Bound is the story, in their own words, of these two unusual and remarkable American heroes. I was privileged to call them teammates back in the day. Today, they are friends. Now I’m honored to help them tell their story.
THE MEDAL
Before Tom and Mike begin to share their journey with you, it might help to learn something of this singular award, a medallion suspended by a star-spangled sky blue ribbon that these two men now wear only on formal occasions. It not only binds them to each other, but to the historical procession of our nation’s greatest heroes.
The Medal of Honor has a curious history. The fledgling military of our new nation wanted to not be like its European counterparts, turned out in epaulettes, sashes, and decorations. For almost a century there were no decorations or medals awarded American soldiers, sailors, or marines. In the throes of the Civil War, Congress authorized a single medal to be struck, a medal for conspicuous gallantry—a medal to be awarded (to Union soldiers) for the highest order of courage and heroism. There were no other awards at that time, just this single award then called the Congressional Medal of Honor. Brevet General George Custer, perhaps the most heroic Union figure of the Civil War, never received this decoration. His brother, Tom, received the Medal of Honor—twice. It has been awarded to whole combat units. Over the years, other medals and decorations have become commonplace and worn in order of precedence on the left breasts of our warriors. Yet all are subordinate to the Medal of Honor. Since the First World War, the constraints and conditions for the Medal have become more formatted and elevated. Senator John McCain from Arizona had numerous political differences with Senator Bob Kerrey from Nebraska, but when Senator Kerrey enters a room, Senator McCain always rises to his feet. Bob Kerrey is a Medal of Honor recipient.
Nearly all recipients have been men. Only one woman has received the Medal: Nurse Mary Walker, for her courageous service during the Battle of Bull Run. Four hundred and seventy-one members of the greatest generation were awarded the Medal in World War II; 146 in Korea and 258 in Vietnam. Of those in Vietnam, fifteen were Navymen and three of those were Navy SEALs. As this book goes into print, there are seventy-nine living recipients of the Medal of Honor, with about two-thirds of those from the Vietnam era. Each year this select group becomes smaller. In twenty years, there may be but a handful.
Since the close of the Vietnam War, there have been nineteen recipients—two from the Battle of Mogadishu, four in Iraq, and thirteen in Afghanistan. Nine of the nineteen were posthumous awards. Five of the nineteen were special operators. Master Sergeant Gary Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randall Shughart, both Green Berets, died in Mogadishu in 1993 in a heroic stand of a downed Black Hawk helicopter—the Black Hawk Down. They fought to the death defending wounded crewmen trapped inside the crashed helo. SEAL Lieutenant Mike Murphy was leading a small patrol in the mountains of Afghanistan in June 2005 (the Lone Survivor incident) when they engaged an overwhelming Taliban force. He died while repeatedly exposing himself to enemy fire to call for help. In September 2006, SEAL Petty Officer Mike Monsoor perished during the Battle of Ramadi in Iraq. He died smothering an enemy hand grenade to save the lives of those SEALs fighting on either side of him (as portrayed in the film and book Act of Valor, and first detailed in the book The Sheriff of Ramadi). In a vicious firefight in Afghanistan in May 2008, Ranger Sergeant Leroy Petry had been shot multiple times through both legs. Yet he was able to grasp an incoming enemy grenade and toss it from the midst of his team. Though the exploding grenade cost him his hand and multiple shrapnel wounds, he saved the lives of his Ranger team fighting close by. Of these five special operators, only Leroy Petry survived to receive his Medal of Honor in person. It was awarded to him by President Obama on 12 July 2011.
On 12 November 2015, President Obama presented Army Captain Florent A. “Flo” Groberg with the Medal of Honor for gallantry during a combat action in Afghanistan in August of 2012. Captain Groberg, a French American, is the most recent living Medal of Honor recipient.
THE STORY
Over the last four decades, Tom and Mike have been approached numerous times to have their story told in print and on film. Each of these opportunities was met with obstacles. There have been issues of timing, authenticity, and personal commitments. In May 2014, Tom, Mike, and I found ourselves in Coronado, California, working on a PBS special on the history of the SEAL Teams—Navy SEALs: Their Untold Story, which first aired on Veterans Day, 11 November 2014. We talked about the business of getting their story into print—and that none of us was getting any younger. Warming to the subject, we agreed that now was the time. We also agreed that it would be Tom and Mike telling their own story and that I would serve as their narrator. So it is with no small amount of pride that I am honored to help these two authentic American heroes to make public their incredible story.
—Dick Couch
Ketchum, Idaho
March 2016
Copyright © 2016 by Tom Norris, Mike Thornton, and Dick Couch
