A patriotic tale of sacrifice and heroism

With candor, humor, and quiet modesty, Medal of Honor recipient Col. Jack Jacobs tells his stirring story of heroism, honor, and the personal code by which he has lived his life. He looks back at his service and ahead to America’s future, and shares insight on his views on our contemporary world, and the nature and necessity of sacrifice. Read the foreword below, from NBC’s Brian Williams; and Jack Jacobs’ prologue.

The Man in Seat 2B
Foreword by Brian Williams
Anchor and Managing Editor, NBC Nightly News

My favorite Jack Jacobs story takes place not on the field of battle, but in the office of the chief investment officer of an insurance company in Germany. Jack flew there on business a few years back, hoping to free the executive of twenty million dollars toward a hedge fund Jack was developing back in New York, where he enjoyed a successful career on Wall Street while working for Bankers Trust.

Jack being Jack, he remembers wondering how many of his fellow Jews, perhaps even members of the Jacobs family, had gone to their reward at the hands of the banker’s relatives during World War II. At that instant, however, Jack wasn’t about moral judgments. His mission was to leave the meeting with a pile of money neatly but figuratively stacked in his briefcase. That was the mission.

So the meeting starts, and during the conversation, Jack was, as he later put it, “absently scratching at a tiny bump” near his nose. As quickly as you can say hemorrhage, Jack breaks something loose that causes “a torrent of venous blood that splattered everywhere,” down the front of his clothing, the coffee table and ending up on the hand-knotted Heriz rug beneath their feet.

Jack remembers it looking like a crime scene. In an attempt to regain control of a business meeting that had taken a sudden and bloody turn south, Jack mumbled an explanation about residual injuries from his time fighting in Vietnam. It was apparently enough for the stunned German: Jack left the room with the twenty million dollars he’d come there asking for. It would more than pay for a new rug. Hand-knotted, no less.

What happened that day isn’t at all uncommon for combat veterans: a piece of shrapnel had taken thirty years to come to the surface. The same can be said of the story contained in this book.

Countless business travelers have sat next to my friend Jack for long flights across the Atlantic. If asked, they’d later describe the man in seat 2B as diminutive, smart, a cheerful guy and a wonderful storyteller. They would be stunned to learn he also happens to be a recipient of the Medal of Honor.

That’s the thing about Jack. That’s also the thing about all the other guys just like him—all of the men alive today who have been awarded the nation’s highest decoration for bravery and valor in battle. I have come to know them by serving on the board of directors of the Medal of Honor Foundation. At the time of this writing, there are just over one hundred men alive who are members of this exclusive group. Our board is charged with raising money to promote awareness of the Medal of Honor and what it represents. The truth is: I would pay them to be on their board. Being around these men, getting to know them has been among the great ongoing experiences of my adult life.

I’ve known Jack the longest of any of the recipients, because of our time together at NBC News, where Jack has come to on-air prominence as a military analyst. Like most of the tasks he has tackled in life, it comes to him seemingly effortlessly, and he’s awfully good at it. Far from being a pushover for the Pentagon, and despite his retirement rank of Colonel following his years of proud service and multiple combat tours, Jack calls them as he sees them, and is an unsparing critic of U.S. policy when circumstances require it.

I also thought I knew him. Because I have read his medal citation many times over, I rather proudly assumed I knew the details of his Vietnam experience, and of the military engagement that led to the medal being placed around his neck by President Richard Nixon. While I’ve flown all over the country with Jack, and spent countless hours happily engaged in conversation with him, it turns out I knew but a fraction of his story.

The living recipients of the Medal of Honor are walking monuments to modesty, Jack chief among them. Most of the warriors I know hate war. Jack’s humility and complete lack of swagger are striking. Jack Jacobs is a complete American. He has lived the American experience, while rising out of bed to greet each new day as the sole occupant of a badly broken vessel—his body, like an old house, is full of combat scars and residual shrapnel, and requires constant upkeep: frequent operations to improve plumbing and ventilation. This man who carries around tiny pieces of steel still believes he has grabbed life’s brass ring, won the lottery, beaten the odds. He is a patriot of the highest order, in the truest sense of the word, in the tradition of those who have fought hard enough for this place to come down hard on us when they fear we’re heading off in the wrong direction.

When I speak to audiences about the lessons I’ve learned from my recipient friends, I always say the same thing: before I met them I used to think I had an occasional bad day. Never again. Not as long as there are men like Jack Jacobs to remind us all how much a human can endure, and how much this nation means to the people who’ve fought for it.

One warning: the book you are about to read, at its core, is a story about selflessness, sacrifice, and service, and it collides loudly and rather violently with much of our current culture. We are presently a nation of 120 million blogs and bloggers. Put differently, 120 million of us are enthused enough with our own stories—convinced enough in our own wisdom and wonderfulness of self—to believe there is great utility in posting our every thought, desire, and daily movement on the internet, presumably for the common good, the benefit of all. Jack was handed a weapon and told to use it on foreign soil to defend his brothers and his country. As you read this, ask yourself which of the two actions you find more heroic.

I’m convinced you’ll come away staggered by the diminutive man in seat 2B. I will never view my friend Jack in the same way again. I just didn’t think it was possible to admire him any more than I already did.

Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you’re scared to death. — Harold Wilson

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