PO2, U.S. Navy — Vietnam War
Michael E. Thornton was born on March 23, 1949, in Greenville, South Carolina, and enlisted in the Navy in 1967. After completing Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, he joined the SEAL teams and deployed to Vietnam, serving as an adviser alongside South Vietnamese naval commandos.
On October 31, 1972, near the Cua Viet naval river base in Quang Tri Province, just south of the Demilitarized Zone, Thornton was part of a five-man intelligence-gathering patrol — alongside SEAL Lieutenant Thomas R. Norris and three Vietnamese SEALs — when it was ambushed by a numerically superior North Vietnamese force. A running battle of four to five hours followed. When Lieutenant Norris was shot through the head and believed dead, Thornton ran some 400 yards through heavy enemy fire, found Norris barely alive, carried him to the surf, inflated his life jacket, and towed him seaward for about two hours — also aiding a wounded Vietnamese teammate — until the support junk could recover them. His actions saved Norris’s life and made the patrol’s extraction possible. Norris himself would later receive the Medal of Honor.
President Richard Nixon presented Thornton’s Medal of Honor at the White House on October 15, 1973. Thornton went on to serve as a BUD/S instructor, completed an exchange with the British Special Boat Squadron, and in 1980 was chosen as a founding member of SEAL Team Six. Commissioned in 1982, he retired as a lieutenant in 1992. He co-authored By Honor Bound (2016) with Thomas Norris, recounting the mission that bound the two recipients together.
Sources: Wikipedia · Congressional Medal of Honor Society