Brig. Gen. Jack Nicholson awarded Silver Star for action in Vietnam

(Photos courtesy Michael Connor / The Washington Times) General John Cushman (U.S. Army Retired), left, salutes Brigadier Gen. Jack Nicholson (U.S. Army Retired), right, after pinning on the Silver Star that Nicholson earned for his service over 40 years ago in Vietnam during a ceremony at Ft. Myer, Va. General Cushman was Nicholson's commanding officer and originaly submitted the paperwork for his Silver Star in December of 1963. [Click to enlarge]

Dec. 27, 1963 had already been a devastating day.

Of the 240 men then-Capt. John "Jack" Nicholson was with, only 39 were able to walk away from an eight-hour battle with the Viet Cong.

But for Nicholson, the night wasn't over.

He would lead his men to save the lives of nine people.

The Struble native's actions that evening were honored this week at Fort Myer, Washington D.C. -- more than 45 years later -- where he was awarded the Silver Star, the third-highest U.S. military honor.

That night in 1963, Nicholson was in Vietnam, serving as advisor to a South Vietnamese civil guard of about 4,000.

The men he was with were locked in a bloody battle near a canal.

When he saw his allied troops start to retreat, leaving casualties abandoned in the battlefield, he quickly caught up to the South Vietnamese group's leader Captain Phat.

Through a translator, Nicholson told him they had to go back for the injured men.

"They said they didn't want to do that," Nicholson, now a retired Army brigadier general said in a phone interview. "I said, 'You've got to do that,' then they threatened to shoot me."

Nicholson refused to back down. He pressured the translator to be more convincing in his translation.

Finally, the captain agreed.

Nicholson radioed Major Tran Ba Di, commander of the troops he was with, for supporting fire. Then he and Capt. Phat led the surviving South Vietnamese troops about one-half mile down the canal to retrieve 13 injured fellow soldiers.

They carried the wounded on their backs for four hours.

"They couldn't be abandoned to be murdered by the communists. You just don't leave a comrade on the battlefield," Nicholson said. "That's part of the U.S. Army code of honor. You don't abandon your friends."

When Nicholson and the others finally made it to command post, it was 2 a.m. and four of the wounded had died.

But nine survived, and Nicholson called in helicopters to take them to medical help.

The men he was serving with were a Vietnamese paramilitary force called the self-defense corps, Nicholson said.

"They were local troops. Under trained, underaged, underfed, underpaid," he said. "But they wanted to do something for their country. It was my job to make better soldiers out of them."

Nicholson's actions that night made him famous among the South Vietnamese for his loyalty and honor, according to Di, who later became a South Vietnamese major general.

The troops named him Dai Uy Nick, which translates as "Captain Nick."

"They said with Dai Uy Nick along they knew they would never be abandoned," Di said.

Later, Nicholson saved Di's life.

In a fierce firefight in 1964, Di was injured and Nicholson applied a tourniquet to his leg, helped direct friendly fire toward the enemy and called in a med-evac helicopter for Di.

"By this time, the Vietnamese forces regarded Capt. Nicholson so highly that he became a legend in the Mekong Delta," Di wrote in a statement recommending Nicholson for the Silver Star.

Nicholson served in three assignments in Vietnam, spending more than 2 1/2 years there. All were infantry assignments in the field with more than a few deadly situations.

Nicholson said during these years he was fueled by a deep affection for the Vietnamese. He grew to respect their sense of humor, their perseverance, and their character and their plight.

"They were being bullied by unscrupulous communists," Nicholson said. "They were being murdered, intimidated, tortured just because they wanted peace and they believed in God."

The communists, he said, taught there was no god and the government was the be-all and end-all.

"The Vietnamese wanted their liberty. They wanted to farm. They wanted to teach. They wanted their children to have opportunity," Nicholson said. "The government wanted to control everything."

Nicholson attributes his sense of duty and fighting for freedom to the way his parents raised him.

Once, during an assignment in Vietnam, Nicholson received word his father had suffered a severe stroke. He phoned his mother to tell her he could come home the next day.

"My mother said, 'Jack, you stay there and do your duty to our country. We'll take care of your father,'" he said.

Today, the values instilled in him as a boy in Struble still burn strong.

He returned to Vietnam in 2001 to visit.

During the trip, he met with Vietnamese government officials and U.S. businessmen.

While with them, Nicholson accused the Vietnamese of changing the rules on U.S. investors, raising taxes and export tariffs.

He further argued that the government bars South Vietnamese people from positions higher than traffic officers and refuses to let them visit cemeteries and pay respect to the dead.

"These," Nicholson told the Vietnamese officials, "are examples of human rights violations of which you're guilty."

In Di's statement, he called Nicholson a "gallant soldier and true friend of his Vietnamese Allies."

After serving alongside the American, Di later served 17 years in a North Vietnamese hard labor camp.

Today, Di is a U.S. citizen and lives in Florida.

He attended Nicholson's Silver Star ceremony, along with retired Gen. John Cushman, who recommended Nicholson for the honor.

"He (Cushman) was a lieutenant colonel in 1963, my boss," Nicholson said. "When he heard about what had happened that night he flew into the south post the next morning and shook my hand."

But Nicholson didn't know Cushman nominated him for the Silver Star in 1963 until years later.

They were talking at a patriotic function last year when Cushman introduced Nicholson to his wife and told her about the nomination.

Nicholson gave him a puzzled look.

"He said, 'You got it, didn't you?' And I said, 'No sir,'" Nicholson remembered. "When he found that out, decades later, he did something about it."

This week, Cushman, 88, pinned the Silver Star on Nicholson.

Nicholson now travels the nation as a motivational speaker.

He'll be in Le Mars July 4 -- he accepted a request to speak at the Fourth of July Ceremony.

And on his uniform, a new medal will be sparkling in the July sun.