Lani Kane

h Follow He disguised himself as a fisherman, slipped deep into North Vietnam, and rescued two American pilots who had almost been given up for dead. Six months later he was shot in the head, and a fellow Navy SEAL refused to leave him behind. Both men eventually received the Medal of Honor. Thomas Norris was a SEAL in Vietnam. In April 1972 two pilots were shot down near the Cua Viet River. Helicopter rescues failed under heavy fire. Commanders concluded the men were lost. Norris volunteered anyway. He darkened his skin, wore local clothes, and moved by sampan and on foot with a small team of South Vietnamese commandos. He found Lieutenant Colonel Iceal Hambleton and brought him out. Days later he went back for Lieutenant Mark Clark, working with Nguyen Van Kiet. They reached him and guided him to a waiting ship. All three made it out. For the rescues Norris received the Medal of Honor. On October 31, 1972, Norris was leading a five-man reconnaissance team when they were ambushed by 50 to 100 enemy soldiers. He was shot in the head above the left eye. The bullet fractured his skull and destroyed the eye. He collapsed and lost a great deal of blood. One of the Vietnamese commandos thought he was dead. Mike Thornton refused to leave him. Thornton lifted Norris onto his shoulders and moved toward the ocean while firing with one hand. At the water he dragged him into the surf, inflated his life vest, and swam for two hours in the South China Sea, keeping Norris’s head above water. A Navy ship eventually spotted them. Norris survived surgery and infection. He lost the eye and later had part of his skull replaced with a metal plate. Thornton received the Medal of Honor for saving him. One Medal of Honor recipient had saved another. They became lifelong friends. Norris later joined the FBI and served 20 years as a special agent, working with one eye and a metal plate in his head. Thornton stayed in the Navy another 30 years. Both kept a low profile. Norris is now 80 and Thornton is 76. They remain friends.