Weber State honors Utah’s only living Medal of Honor recipient

Northridge High School senior Hannah Beachler takes a selfie with Vietnam veteran Brian Thacker, a Weber State University graduate who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, during a meeting with Utah high school ROTC cadets at Weber State University in Ogden on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019. Thacker returned to campus to be honored with a scholarship in his name. | Steve Griffin, Deseret News

OGDEN — Back in 1969, when he walked across the stage at Weber State College to accept his diploma in business management, if you had asked Brian Thacker who the school would one day name a scholarship after, the last person he’d have bet on was himself.

“My money would have been on Nolan Archibald,” he says, mentioning the Wildcats’ 1960s basketball star who would go on to become CEO of Black & Decker. “Me? I was just fortunate to have a place to go to school.”

But that was before Vietnam — and the Congressional Medal of Honor.

* * *

He did not want to go to Vietnam. It wasn’t that he was anti-establishment or anti-war. He was in fact military through and through. His father, Elmer, was a lieutenant colonel stationed at Hill Air Force Base, which explains how Brian, who was born in Ohio, and his three sisters qualified for in-state tuition at nearby Weber State. To avoid getting drafted before he graduated, Brian enrolled in ROTC at Weber, knowing as soon as he picked up that diploma a two-year active duty assignment awaited.

He hoped that would be anywhere but Vietnam. Vietnam was a quagmire. A defensive war. He knew it, military men like his father knew it, and all things being equal, he’d just as soon it ended before he could get there. In the 1968 election he voted for Richard Nixon expressly because Nixon promised to get the U.S. out of Vietnam.

Things looked good when Thacker’s first posting as a first lieutenant was to Germany. But then came the reassignment: in the fall of 1970, the Weber State grad was sent to Vietnam.

He remembers going with fear and trembling.

“If you thought going to first grade is scary, it’s all those feelings multiplied,” he says. “Because this is a different kind of first grade.”

A few months into his tour he was given command of a five-man American team that was sent to assist the South Vietnamese Army at a place called Firebase 6 atop a mountain in the central highlands.

They were there to hunker down and observe movements of the enemy. But in no time the enemy was observing them, and with far superior numbers. It soon became obvious the firebase could not last. They needed to retreat — break contact in military jargon — but they couldn’t let the enemy know they were breaking contact or they’d be quickly overrun.

For four long hours, Thacker stayed exposed on top of the ridge, providing cover as the rest of the unit evacuated. For help, he called in airstrikes from U.S. forces, and when two of the attacking helicopters were shot down he kept firing so survivors of the crash could also escape.

Finally, to further confuse and delay the enemy, he called for an airstrike on his own position, escaping the blast by mere seconds.

When the smoke cleared, everyone was gone, except him.

Surrounded by the enemy, he crawled into a bamboo thicket. He stayed there for eight days, not making a sound, without food or water, biding his time until he could finally crawl back to the firebase that by now had been retaken.

* * *

Back at headquarters, when they started the paperwork it was assumed Lt. Thacker was dead. Everyone who had witnessed his courage, heroism, selflessness and resourcefulness — everyone who was alive because of it — had also seen how improbable it was that he could survive. The very least they could do was nominate him for the military’s highest acknowledgment of valor, the Congressional Medal of Honor, even if he would receive it posthumously.

Then, a week later out of the blue, a helicopter deposited him back at their feet — severely parched (he was so dehydrated that at first he was allowed just half a canteen cap of water every 15 minutes), hobbled by shrapnel wounds and hungry as all get out — but still very much alive.

Good news traveled fast. The gods had given one back. That’s how Walter Cronkite characterized it when he led off the “CBS Evening News” with the story of the miraculous survival and incredible heroism of Lt. Brian Thacker.

Two years later in a ceremony at the White House, the paperwork finally finished and approved, President Nixon awarded Thacker the Congressional Medal of Honor.

* * *

After he recovered from his wounds, Thacker left the U.S. Army and went to work full time for the Veterans Administration.

“My professional career was taking care of other soldiers; it doesn’t get any better than that,” he says.

He retired from the VA at 59 and these days, at age 74, he is affiliated with the Medal of Honor Society, an organization of awardees who go around the country speaking to schools, civic groups and other organizations with a message of encouragement and inspiration.

“It gives us a platform to say what’s in us is in everybody,” he says. “When the time came we were able to step up. Everybody out there can step up when the time comes.”

His travels have rarely brought him back to Weber State. But this past weekend, 50 years since he graduated, he was again on campus. Utah’s only living Medal of Honor recipient (there have been just seven total), was the guest of honor at a number of Veterans Day-themed events, culminating with the Weber State-North Dakota football game on Saturday. At halftime, as he was introduced to the crowd, the school announced the creation of the Brian M. Thacker Military Science Scholarship, to be awarded annually.

“I owe a lot to Weber State and the state of Utah,” said Thacker. “They made quite an investment in me and I’ll always be grateful.”

As to the scholarship with his name on it, “I feel about it the same way I do about the medal. It’s an us scholarship, it’s not a me scholarship, it belongs to all the states and all their sons who are on the (Vietnam Veterans Memorial) wall.”

All these years later, still looking out for the rest of the platoon.

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