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Medal of Honor recipient Army COL Jack Jacobs
Episode 2797 of the Vietnam Veteran News Podcast will feature a story about Army COL Jack Jacobs and his Congressional Medal of Honor award. The featured story comes from The Medal of Honor Museum website and was titled: Valor and Sacrifice Under Enemy Fire: The Story of Captain Jack Jacobs. It was submitted by an anonymous writer at the Museum.
It was reported in the story that Jack Howard Jacobs was born on August 2, 1945, in Brooklyn, New York. The son of second-generation Eastern European immigrants, he grew up with a full appreciation of their Jewish culture and the importance of education. As a child, he moved with his family to Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, a nearby suburb, where he finished high school and enrolled in Rutgers University under the ROTC program.
Jacobs proved to be a dedicated and ambitious student, earning both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts degree before graduating in 1966. He was initially commissioned to join the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant and wanted to deploy to Vietnam with his unit, the 82nd Airborne. Instead, he was assigned only as an advisor. When Jacobs protested, insisting he wanted to be an infantry soldier, he was told that his education made him “uniquely qualified” to advise infantry units in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.
It was in this position that he would risk life and limb during an enemy ambush in Kieng Phong Province on March 9, 1968.
Jacobs was promoted to captain and was awarded his Medal of Honor by President Nixon during a grand ceremony on the White House lawn, after which he returned for a second tour in Vietnam. Jacobs taught as a faculty member at both The U.S. Military Academy at West Point and The National War College in Washington, D.C. before retiring from the Army as a colonel in 1987.
Listen to episode 2797 and discover more about Army COL Jack Jacobs and his Congressional Medal of Honor award.
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