Medal of Honor Monday: Army Sgt. Nicky Bacon - A Squad Leader Takes Charge

Early days in the cotton fields

Nicky Daniel Bacon started life about as far from a White House medal ceremony as a kid can get. He was born on November 25, 1945, in Caraway, Arkansas, one of a big brood in a family of cotton sharecroppers trying to hang on in a bad farm economy.

When the money in those Arkansas fields ran thin, the Bacons packed up and moved to Glendale, Arizona, where his grandparents worked another cotton operation. Nicky grew up behind a tractor wheel and in the rows, learning early what it meant to work until you hurt.

Hard times got harder when his father came down with polio. Bacon left Peoria High School after his freshman year to bring in a paycheck and keep the family afloat. He later finished his education with a GED, but at that point, school took a back seat to survival. He would say later that he “hated picking cotton” and never went back to it once he could “hold a man’s job.”

A forged signature and a new life in uniform

Like a lot of young Americans of that era, Bacon listened to an uncle’s World War II stories and felt the pull toward something bigger than the farm. At seventeen, he went to enlist. The problem was that the law said he was still a kid. The solution, at least in his mind, was a ballpoint pen.

In 1963, he forged his mother’s signature so he could join the Arizona National Guard. A year later, he went on active duty in the Army, did basic training at Fort Ord in California, then headed to Worms, Germany, with the 8th Infantry Division.

Looking back, he said he had never been prouder or more sure he “stood for something” than when he wore the uniform. The cotton fields had given him a work ethic. The Army gave him a purpose and a direction.

Two tours and a month of hard jungle war

Vietnam showed up on his orders before it showed up on his mental map. Bacon admitted that when he first heard of the place, he could not find it on a globe.

His first tour, from 1966 to 1967, was rough even by Vietnam standards. On his very first mission, the helicopter he was riding in collided with another aircraft. Everyone aboard both birds died except Bacon and one other soldier. He was wounded three times on that tour alone.

Afterward, he went to Hawaii to train outgoing units. By then, he had picked up stripes and responsibility. He could have stayed there, safe and respected. Instead, he volunteered to go back and lead the same kind of men he had been preparing for war.

In 1968, Bacon returned to Vietnam as a staff sergeant, a squad leader in 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 4th Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 11th Infantry Brigade, Americal Division. For a month before his defining fight, his company had been grinding through intense jungle combat in the hills west of Tam Ky.

They thought they were going back to base for a breather. Instead, the helicopters turned toward another unit in trouble.

Two ways to continue to read this article.

Tam Ky: When the squad leader ran the fight On August 26, 1968, a North Vietnamese regiment had the First Cavalry Division pinned down near Tam Ky with well-sited bunkers and heavy machine guns. Bacon’s company was thrown into the fight as a relief force. As Bravo Company moved, an enemy bunker line opened up. Bacon pulled his squad together and led a direct assault, closing with the position and killing it with grenades. Then the leadership started to fall. The 1st Platoon leader and several others were cut down in the open by a machine gun nest. Bacon did not wait for orders. He stepped up, took command of the platoon, and attacked the gun that had shredded his officers, killing the crew in essentially a one-man rush. A second platoon leader from 3rd Platoon went down trying to move up. Bacon absorbed that unit, too. Now, a staff sergeant was running two battered platoons, directing fire and movement under heavy enemy fire. In the follow-on fight, he personally killed four enemy soldiers and destroyed an anti-tank weapon that threatened the supporting armor. He climbed onto the exposed deck of a tank to get a better view and directed fire while wounded men were evacuated. It was a magnet for incoming rounds. Afterward, he recalled his boot heel being shot off, holes in his canteens and helmet cover, and a bullet that creased the edge of his steel pot. Under his control, those ad hoc platoons punched through the bunker line, knocked out the positions holding up the advance, and freed the men who had been trapped up front. The company moved again because a sergeant filled the vacuum and ran the fight like a field grade officer no one had bothered to send. He was first awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, then later the Medal of Honor, which President Richard Nixon presented at the White House on November 24, 1969. Bacon later admitted that he even enjoyed combat, bluntly saying he was good at it. That kind of honesty comes from an NCO who has seen enough to speak plainly. Life after combat and service to veterans Bacon asked for a third tour in Vietnam and was turned down. The Army sent him to Fort Hood as a recruiter, then to Germany and to the training command at Fort McClellan. He retired as a first sergeant in 1984 after twenty-one years in uniform, when orders to Korea collided with the reality of a new marriage and a young son at home. Retirement did not mean rest. He went back to Arizona, worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs regional office in Phoenix, helped launch the Med Vet Healthcare program, and even took part in John McCain’s first Senate campaign. He served as town manager of Surprise, Arizona, in the late 1980s, pushing hard for growth that locals later credited with moving the town into the future. In 1990, he returned to Arkansas and, three years later, became director of the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs, a post he held for more than a decade. He helped create the Arkansas State Veterans Cemetery and the Arkansas Veterans Coalition and was a driving force behind a memorial honoring the state’s Medal of Honor recipients. On the national stage, he served as president of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society and sat on commissions that reviewed how the country cares for disabled veterans and how to get more of them hired. Bacon died on July 17, 2010, after a long fight with cancer. He was the last living Medal of Honor recipient from Arkansas and is buried at the Arkansas State Veterans Cemetery. At tonight’s Council Meeting, the Nicky D Bacon VFW Post presented state level VFW awards to Officer Philip Ortega of Surprise Police (Certificate of Special Recognition) & Captain Ronald Steinhilber of Surprise Fire-Medical (Firefighter of the Year). Congratulations to both! pic.twitter.com/tPpFBxu4j6 — City of Surprise (@AZSurprise) August 21, 2024 What Nicky Bacon still teaches the ranks You can look at Nicky Bacon’s story as a ladder. The rungs run from a cotton field in Arkansas to the deck of a tank in Vietnam and on to state and national roles shaping how veterans are treated. Every step is held together by the same thing: an enlisted soldier willing to assume responsibility when others fall away. On that August day near Tam Ky, no one planned for a staff sergeant to command two platoons in a fight that big. Yet it was the sergeant who took the initiative, rallied the men, and turned a stalled, bloody mess into a rescue and a victory. For today’s NCOs and young troops, the lesson is simple and hard. The moment may come when you are the one left standing in the open, with people looking at you because there is no one else. You will not get a warning. You will not get perfect comms or a clean brief. You will get chaos. Nicky Bacon showed what it looks like when a squad leader decides that is enough and carries the weight anyway, in combat and in the decades of service that followed. That is Medal of Honor leadership, and it does not belong only to history.