Eyes on Target: Inside Stories From the Brotherhood of the U.S. Navy SEALs

by Scott McEwen

  Five months before the Japanese attacks, the Navy tasked 2nd Lt. Lloyd E. Peddicord to research the need for Navy swimmers to assess the reefs, fortifications, and other obstacles to landing sailors and Marines. These reconnaissance teams needed to move undetected in enemy waters and collect the kind of intelligence that could be gathered only by skilled observers at sea level. Aerial surveillance provides only a top-down view, not a beach-level view, of enemy entrenchments, Peddicord warned. (Later, in 1943, he would prove tragically correct. Marines were sent to seize the Japanese-held island of Tarawa. Photographs from spotter planes indicated that the reefs were deep enough to pass easily under the Marine landing craft. But those photographs were taken near high-tide. At low-tide, the reefs became speed bumps, trapping the craft hundreds of yards offshore under murderous machine-gun fire. The Marines who managed to escape the trapped crafts plunged into waist-deep water and waded without cover over hundreds of yards as defenseless targets of Japanese gunners. The death toll was high.)

  Peddicord’s report was already working its way upstream when the Japanese surprise attack on December 7, 1941, quickened the Navy’s interest in new capabilities. By August 1942, Peddicord was operating a training facility at Little Creek, Virginia. Peddicord called the new unit the Navy Scouts and Raiders. Decades later, Little Creek would be one of the homes of the U.S. Navy SEALs.

  At the same time, the U.S. Army and Navy opened a joint Amphibious Scout and Raider School at Fort Pierce, Florida. From the start, those extraordinary men were hard to handle. Some narrowly escaped court-martial when they kidnapped an admiral in Miami as a Christmas party prank.

  One of Peddicord’s first recruits was a professional football player with the Cleveland Rams, named Phil H. Bucklew. He joined the navy the day after the Pearl Harbor attacks. In the years ahead, he would be hailed as “the father of Naval Special Warfare” and, therefore, the “godfather of the SEALs.”

  Tall and dark-haired, he also had the habits of a scholar (and would earn his PhD at Columbia University after the war).

  Bucklew’s career traced the origins of naval special warfare. He swam into an enemy harbor in North Africa in November 1942 to cut the antisubmarine nets and surveil the airfield for an Allied assault as part of Operation Torch. The summer of 1943 found Bucklew in a small boat off of Sicily, the large Italian island then held by the Nazis. Through binoculars, he gathered vital intelligence on Nazi beach defenses, which proved essential for Allied landings in July 1943. His reports saved lives and surged the chances of victory.

  It was Bucklew’s role in the D-Day invasions of Normandy, France, that made him a legend in the history of naval special warfare. Six months before the largest amphibious landing in human history, Bucklew and another Navy scout dived off a small boat a half mile off the coast of France and swam through the cold and treacherous waters of the Atlantic. It was a January night in 1944. The Nazi pillboxes and fortifications loomed over him as he dug sand from the beach on that moonless night. He packed the sand into a small kit bag and swam back out toward a darkened boat.

  The wet sand was precious cargo.

  Back in England, allied planners tested the sand to see if it would bear the weight of tanks and other allied tracked vehicles. It could. That same beach was soon code-named Omaha, and it was the scene of some of the bloodiest fighting of the Normandy invasion.

  On another dark night, Bucklew and his swim buddy again left the comfort of a small boat to swim to the rocky French coast. Nazi patrols were a constant danger. They hid for hours on the exposed beach to collect sand samples and study the Nazi troop movements. They learned the patrol schedules and noted the numbers of soldiers and the type of guns that they carried. This, too, provided vital intelligence for the D-Day landings.

  On D-Day itself, Bucklew and his small boat were back supporting the first wave of tank assaults on Omaha Beach, the very shore he had reconnoitered less than six months before. His boat was probed by Nazi machine-gun fire and raked by waves of stormy seas. Landing craft exploded around him, under seemingly endless artillery fire. As the enemy shells made geysers of water all around him, he reached into the bloody seas to haul soldiers aboard, saving many from drowning.

  * * *

  After the war, Bucklew left the Navy, married his sweetheart, and adopted the quiet life of a graduate student at Columbia University in New York. Like many veterans, he longed for a semblance of prewar normalcy. Too old and too worn out to play professional football, he learned that many of the prewar teams had vanished.

  Soon, the call of the sea roared in his ears. When he returned to the Navy in 1948, he saw action in Korea and other parts of Asia.

  Later, as mandatory retirement neared in 1962, the phone rang. He was asked to command a new unit that was just being approved by President John F. Kennedy, called Naval Special Warfare Group One. In addition to two Underwater Demolition Teams and a Boat Support Unit, which were each familiar to him, the command included something entirely new—SEAL Team One.

  * * *

  John F. Kennedy’s shortened presidency set in motion a lot in a few years: the challenge to land the first men on the moon, the tax cuts that triggered the enormous 1960s economic boom, and the creation of the U.S. Navy SEALs.

  The SEAL name stood for Sea, Air, Land. The young president imagined a mobile commando force that could stalk, hunt, and kill in any terrain on Earth, operating from the ships, submarines, and aircraft of the U.S. Navy.

  Kennedy had been a naval officer during World War II, commanding a small, fast PT boat in the Pacific. He had seen combat against the brutal Japanese Navy and nearly died when his PT 109 had been sunk in a firefight. He and his crew survived through escape and evasion in the jungles of enemy-held Asia. And, like many Democrats and Republicans of his era, he understood the threat of Soviet Communism and the dire stakes in the escalating Vietnam War.

  So he signed off on the creation of a new type of frogman, the SEALs, in 1962. It would not be long before the SEALs were deployed as Bucklew once was: at night, on enemy shores.

  * * *

  Captain Bucklew didn’t like what he saw in South Vietnam in 1964. The North Vietnamese Army and its irregular guerilla arm, the Vietcong, were freely landing on beaches in the South, moving ashore men and materiel. The South Vietnamese army would arrive too late, or not at all, and the allied navy was ill equipped and poorly led. America’s ally couldn’t stop the movement of North Vietnamese fighters on land or sea.

  If America didn’t act quickly, its ally would succumb to Communist invasion. Its democratically elected leaders, village elders, and schoolteachers would be killed or sent to political “reeducation” camps, Hmong and Chinese minorities would be persecuted or killed, and its entire population enslaved. Food and schooling, when it was provided at all, would be doled out on a political basis. And America’s pledge to her ally would be shown to be worthless—frightening other allies from relying on the United States. (Indeed, all of these things would come to pass in 1975.) None of these things had to be explicitly said by Bucklew; the risks were well known.

  Bucklew recommended a complete blockade of the coastline by the U.S. Navy, a suggestion that his superiors had expected.

  The rest of the now-famous “Bucklew report” was more controversial. He recommended that special operations teams—including his SEAL team—be used to patrol and ambush the Communist invaders along the Mekong and Bassac rivers that flowed into the western interior of South Vietnam from Cambodia. These winding rivers were packed with shallow-draft boats, sampans, and junks, which carried fish and rice to the markets on its muddy banks. They were also ideal for smuggling insurgents and automatic weapons. From the air, enemy movements would be hidden among the native boats. Only on the ground or in the shallow water could the invaders be stopped.

  The Navy was comfortable with its traditional blue-water role, patrolling and fighting in deep ocean waters. Sending naval forces far from the sight of its oceangoing vessels struck many as
novel and strange. Wasn’t that what Marines were for?

  The U.S. Navy quickly chased the North Vietnamese from the South China Sea, and the enemy moved to the unguarded rivers, exactly as Bucklew had predicted.

  So the SEALs would follow them into the small, jungle-shaded rivers. No longer seen as a force to clear beach obstacles for large-scale naval invasions, the SEALs went far beyond the blue waters of the traditional Navy to the brown and muddy waters of counterinsurgency in the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia. There, in the mosquito-infested jungles where Vietcong hid behind rain-dripping fronds, the SEALs came into their own.

  * * *

  One of them was Michael Thornton.

  Thornton was a new member of SEAL Team One when he arrived in Southeast Asia on January 1, 1970. As he stepped off the plane, the heat rushed on him like the opening of an oven door.

  Within days, he was deployed up-country, moving in small inflatable boats and lying in wait, among tall weeds, for enemy troop movements to cross his gun barrel. For the next two years, as the American public thought the war in Vietnam was winding down, he and his teammates were ambushing North Vietnamese Army regulars. (The infamous Vietcong guerilla fighters had ceased to exist as a separate fighting unit following their utter defeat during the 1968 Tet Offensive.) The enemy was highly trained (often by Soviet advisors), disciplined, and bold. And the Communists could stage ambushes of their own—providing Thornton with his share of close calls.

  Thornton, under the command of Lt. Thomas R. Norris, along with three men from the South Vietnamese Special Forces (known as the LDNN), was given a mission that would define his career and illustrate the bold new role of the SEALs.

  Norris was already a legend among the SEALs. From a forward operating base (FOB) in northern South Vietnam, he led a five-man team to locate a downed pilot on April 10, 1972. Throughout the night, his team carefully moved through terrain crowded with North Vietnamese forces. At dawn, he found the pilot hiding in the jungle and led him safely back to the base. The Communists announced their displeasure with massive mortar and rocket attacks on the small, sandbagged base. Only round-the-clock air support kept the remote outpost from being overrun by the determined enemy.

  Norris knew that the North Vietnamese were searching for the copilot. The next day, he led two more patrols into the wilderness owned by the enemy. No joy. The copilot remained missing, and Norris and his men were lucky to escape with their lives.

  On April 12, he decided to try again. He disguised himself as a Vietnamese fisherman and, along with a brave South Vietnamese soldier, pushed out on an old sampan, a native wooden boat. Maneuvering the boat throughout the night, he finally found the wounded pilot. But the North Vietnamese had moved in along the riverbank. He covered the pilot in bamboo and weeds and moved the boat back into the muddy creek. With sheer bravado, he eased the boat past North Vietnamese patrols. As the trio climbed out of the sampan, less than two thousand yards from the FOB, Norris heard the telltale bark of a Soviet-made machine gun. He hit the deck as bullets savaged the foliage above. They were trapped. Concealed in vegetation, he gamely called in an air strike near his own position. Seconds after the explosions rocked the jungle, Norris, the pilot, and the South Vietnamese soldier scrambled to reach the FOB. The smoke and debris gave them some momentary cover. But it wouldn’t last. They had to run for their lives and cross nearly a half mile of jungle before Charlie raised his head and resumed firing.

  With the crack of enemy rifle fire overhead, they made it. Norris would later be awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery that day.

  Five months later, Norris was outlining a mission that would take him back to the same territory where he nearly lost his life. This time, he wanted to take Thornton with him.

  Norris traced his finger on a map showing the North Vietnamese’s Cua Viet River Base, on the jagged coastline of South Vietnam’s Qung Tr Province. It was October 31, 1972, and, Thornton knew, this Halloween mission was likely to be one of the last SEAL operations in Southeast Asia. The numbers of SEALs left in country had dwindled from hundreds in 1966 to roughly a dozen in 1972.

  The mission was simple and dangerous: capture North Vietnamese prisoners and gather intelligence from a spot of jungly marsh only a few miles from the border of North Vietnam. Though they would be landing in South Vietnam, the area was entirely in Communist hands. The North Vietnamese were numerous, their patrols were constant, and they were well armed with machine guns and Soviet-made rocket launchers. Artillery and tanks could be nearby.

  They would have to move without sign or scent. If they were discovered, the lucky ones would die quickly. Capture by the North Vietnamese meant torture and disappearance into nightmarish prison camps. At this stage of the war, no prisoners had ever been released from North Vietnam, and very few had escaped. The risks were sky-high, and the SEALs were told that they could bow out. None did.

  * * *

  A weather-beaten Chinese-style junk took them up the hostile coast. The men stayed out of sight of Communist patrol planes. The thud of the diesel outboard and the whine of flimsy sails carried them ever northward as the sun crawled across the hot sky.

  After sunset, the team reached its objective. In the humid darkness, they inflated a small boat and put it over the side of the junk. The SEALs and the South Vietnamese commandos carefully transferred their guns and equipment into the bobbing boat and then lowered themselves aboard.

  The distant coastline was a dark tangle of trees. As they paddled toward it, they did not know if enemy lookouts had spotted them.

  Still more than a mile out, the men attached their gear to their web vests and climbed over the side. They swam with their full load out, through the waves and currents of the inky-dark sea.

  They crept ashore under the tropical stars, which, this far from electrical light, were numerous and bright—like sugar spilled on a black tablecloth. They would have to be careful to avoid detection. They communicated only in hand signals.

  They could hear North Vietnamese soldiers talking and see them moving around campfires, drinking tea, and making jokes. They crept slowly through the underbrush, pausing often to avoid creating a pattern of sound.

  First light found them deep in the jungle, with Norris poring over the map. The commander quickly realized that the ocean currents had taken them too far north. They were actually in North Vietnam. There was no hope of rescue there.

  Norris decided to creep back toward the coast. Once near the beach, they could use a compass to wend their way south. With luck, they would avoid Communist patrols and make it into the water.

  But their luck had run out.

  A North Vietnamese force of more than fifty soldiers soon spotted the commandos. They fired on them instantly, with AK-47s, their 7.62-millimeter rounds slicing through palm trunks.

  Thornton and the other men were outnumbered in hostile terrain. They returned fire, running and gunning, stopping only to reload. The moving battle raged for more than five hours as the SEALs fought to get to the coast.

  Soon, the enemy was close enough to hurl grenades. An explosion stunned Thornton, and shrapnel cut through his leg. His camo pants were soaked with his own blood. Still, he had to keep moving or he would die. He knelt down to take aim at his attackers.

  One of the South Vietnamese commandos crawled over to Thornton. The situation had gotten worse. Norris had been shot in the head, and Thornton was told, he was dead.

  Now Thornton had to make a decision. Norris was at least five football fields to his rear and most likely dead. Still, the SEAL mantra—“Leave no man behind”—echoed in Thornton’s head.

  Despite his wounds, he made his way over the rough ground, taking fire from enemy soldiers.

  He found Norris in a puddle of his own blood. As Thornton tried to move him, Norris moved. He was alive. Barely.

  Thornton picked him up and staggered toward the beach.

  Another explosion knocked the two men down. It was artillery fire, likely from an American
cruiser offshore.

  Thornton struggled to get up again and pulled Norris onto his back.

  Again, they made for the shore. Bullets screamed past the lumbering duo. The shots were getting closer.

  Thornton winced. A North Vietnamese bullet had smashed through his leg, pumping out more of his own blood. Now he was wounded in both legs.

  Yet Thornton kept going. Somehow.

  In the surf, he found a wounded South Vietnamese commando. Another teammate. Thornton dragged both men into the ocean. He fought against the rising tide as bullets splashed around him.

  With a burning sun overhead, Thornton would have to keep himself and two other men floating and breathing. It wasn’t easy. All three men had potentially mortal wounds, and their open, bleeding wounds sapped their energy to fight the merciless waves and the ruthless sun. Given the amount of blood in the tropical water, shark attack was a definite possibility.

  It would take two hours of paddling in the open ocean before help arrived. Sailors, aboard the same junk that had dropped them off the night before, helped haul them aboard. Remarkably, all three men lived.

  The story, like the best SEAL stories, has a coda.

  Almost exactly a year later, Thornton was ordered to report to Washington to receive the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest decoration. He had one request. He wanted Norris, who was in the midst of a three-year battery of operations to restore him from his head injury, to join him at the White House ceremony. Norris was a few miles north of the White House at Bethesda Naval Hospital, but the doctors firmly said no. It was too risky to move their patient.

  Thornton paid his old commander a visit in his hospital room. He sat by his bedside, swapping stories. When the night shift came on, Thornton calmly lowered Norris into a nearby wheelchair and wheeled him out of the hospital. No one stopped to question them. Thorton had just kidnapped the man he saved.