LITTLE ROCK — Nick Bacon knew he was dying late last summer as he walked around the state veterans cemetery he’d created years earlier while serving as director of the Arkansas Department of Veterans Affairs.
He sipped alkaline water as he walked, one of many alternative therapies Bacon used to battle the cancer doctors told him was unbeatable. They suggested hospital beds and hospice.
“I decided that I wasn’t going to go that way. I chose a different way,” he said in classic Nick Bacon style on that hot summer day. “What you have in you is more than people can see on the outside.”
And so he fought back, staying active in the community for months longer than any doctor expected. His death July 17 at age 64 came 16 months after the aggressive cancer was found deep in his lymphatic system.
On Saturday, Arkansas bid Bacon a final salute at the veterans cemetery near the patch of grass that will forever hold his memorial amid the flags that greet everyone who enters the cemetery in North Little Rock.
“All I can do is a token of self-help,” he once said of his cancer fight that included using alternative diets and therapies. “Miracles come from God.”
Giving up simply wasn’t in Bacon’s nature. He didn’t give up that hellish day near Tam Ky, Vietnam, when he led two platoons through a battle that ultimately resulted in his receiving the nation’s highest honor - the congressional Medal of Honor. He was believed to be the last surviving recipient of the 25 Medals of Honor presented to Arkansans, according to the state Department of Veterans Affairs.
On Aug. 26, 1968, 23-year old Staff Sgt. Nicky D. Bacon led a squad of soldiers from 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 4th Battalion, 11th Infantry Brigade of the 23rd Infantry Division in an offensive near Tam Ky, Vietnam.
The 1st Cavalry Division was under attack, and Bravo Company was ferried in on helicopters to help.
Machine-gun fire tore through the ranks, badly wounding his platoon leader and several other soldiers. At that point the Bravo Company commander was considering pulling out. Bacon said: “Not without my lieutenant.”
Bacon carried the platoon leader, Lt. Robert Griffin, to a personnel carrier, took command of the platoon and continued on.
“He thought he was recovering my body, but he was saving my life,” Griffin said Friday.
Bacon continued on, attacking the machine-gun nest and advancing his platoon beside 3rd Platoon.
Within minutes, 3rd Platoon’s leaders had also been mortally wounded, so Bacon took command of that platoon as well. He pushed the platoons forward and climbed, unprotected, onto the front of an armored vehicle to call in airstrikes to clear the way. His actions enabled the 1st Cavalry Division to move forward.
Bacon tried for a third tour in Vietnam after returning home, but his request was denied. He retired from the Army as a first sergeant and went on to work for the Veterans Administration in Arizona. In the years that followed, he worked on U.S. Sen. John McCain’s election campaign; was a city manager near Phoenix; and then returned home to Arkansas, where he served for 13 years as director of the state Department of Veterans Affairs.
“My passion always went back to veterans,” he said in an interview last year.
Much of that passion came from a youth spent at war, running through hell and finding glory. He transformed that passion into actions, establishing the Arkansas State Veterans Cemetery in North Little Rock.
It was almost a year ago when Bacon and his friend Tom Thomas strolled the cemetery’s quiet paths to discuss life lessons and a battle plan for his fight against cancer. The cemetery was a special place for Bacon.
“What really matters is that people don’t forget,” he said. “You can take kids to the movies and tell them stories, but if you take them to a cemetery, they can see. They can tell that this person did something amazing.”
He looked out at the field of white headstones neatly laid across the rolling, shaded hills of the parklike cemetery. He had friends buried out there, along with veterans from World War II and from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I’ll be memorialized here,” Bacon said. “My family may never go to Arlington. But they’ll come here.”
The state cemetery’s design specifically called for tree-lined walking paths and a parklike atmosphere. It’s a place where Bacon envisioned people would go to remember those who were lost.
He tried over his lifetime to help fellow veterans deal with the ghosts of war - something he wrestled with, as well.
“Every one I shot, I never felt bad about it. It was not about God and country. I killed him because he was going to kill me. No, I don’t have nightmares about who I shot,” he said. “It’s what I lost that lingers.”
For 35 years, Bacon thought his platoon leader was dead. The last time he saw him he’d been shot in the neck. What Bacon didn’t know was that someone at the hospital had noticed signs of life in the young lieutenant after he was moved to the makeshift morgue.
In 2003, a then-retired Brig. Gen. Robert Griffin called Bacon’s office at the state Veterans Department. Bacon’s secretary told him his old platoon leader was calling.
“I said, ‘This is bulls***. Let me talk to this guy,’” he said.
Tears filled Bacon’s eyes as he recounted the conversation. Griffin had become an Army doctor, trying to save lives like his had been saved in Vietnam. Bacon said Griffin told him he was trying to pay back the debt.
“It hit me,” Bacon said, thumping his fist on his chest.
“The hurting and pain will always be with you,” he said of losing friends in war. “But you can’t live in the past. You can never fix it. My advice to soldiers today is to just do something. Do something. And when you go to bed at night you will have a clear conscience.”
On Friday, Griffin said, “sometimes you have to go forward rather than continuing what you’re doing.”
Griffin is now senior vice president and chief medical officer of Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Arkansas, having taken the job one month ago.
“Every day of my life, since that day in Vietnam I owe to Nick Bacon,” he said.
Like many of today’s veterans, Bacon had a hard time letting the war go.
In his first tour, he narrowly escaped a helicopter crash that killed his platoon sergeant in the seat next to him. The second tour had many harrowing days, including the one that resulted in him receiving the Medal of Honor, and yet he tried to go on a third tour.
“It was boredom,” he said. “When you live on the edge every day, all wars are exciting. Unfortunately, you miss the adrenaline. I was completely dead with boredom when I returned to Fort Hood.”
His commander chewed on him for trying to go back and made him see the chaplain every day.
“He probably saved my life,” he said. “You always leave a part of yourself in a war zone. I don’t care if you come back, you leave a part of you there.”
Those days with the chaplain at Fort Hood changed his life. It was there that he found the strong faith in God that he carried with him the rest of his life.
“You can stand fast through anything,” he said before saying goodbye and heading to his friend’s car that day last August. His water bottle was empty, and fatigue was moving in.
“This cancer is proof of that. Death doesn’t scare me one iota. It’s those left behind who hurt the worst. You’re not hurting anymore. It’s how you live your life that matters. Yep, it’s how you live life that matters most of all.”
Arkansas, Pages 19 on 07/25/2010