1st Lieutenant Jack Jacobs – Citizenship
Organization: U.S. Army
Company: Army Element,
Division: U.S. Military Assistance Command (MAC-V)
Conflict: Vietnam
Date of Action: 03/9/1968
Date of Issue: 10/9/1969

Jacobs was born in Brooklyn, New York, into a Jewish family, with origins in Greece, Poland, and Romania.[3] As a child, he moved with his family to New Jersey. He attended Rutgers University, where he earned both Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees. A member of the school’s Army Reserve Officer Training Corps program, he entered military service as a first lieutenant in 1966.

In the course of his military career, Jacobs served as a platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne Division, a battalion executive officer in the 7th Infantry Division, and a battalion commander with the 10th Infantry Regiment in Panama. He spent two tours of duty in Vietnam, both times as an advisor to infantry units in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN).

In his first deployment to Vietnam, Jacobs served as a first lieutenant with Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, in Kien Phong Province, part of the Mekong Delta region. By March 9, 1968, he was working as the assistant battalion advisor for the ARVN’s 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division. During a mission on that day, the 2nd Battalion came under intense fire from an entrenched Viet Cong force. As Jacobs called in air support from his position with the leading company, the company commander was disabled and the unit became disorganized due to heavy casualties.

Although wounded himself by mortar fragments to the head and arms, Jacobs took command of the company and ordered a withdrawal and the establishment of a defense line at a more secure position. Despite impaired vision caused by his injuries, he repeatedly ran across open rice paddies through heavy fire to evacuate the wounded, personally saving a fellow advisor, the wounded company commander, and twelve other allied soldiers. Three times during these trips he encountered Viet Cong squads, which he single-handedly dispersed. He was subsequently promoted to captain and awarded the Medal of Honor. The medal was formally presented to him by President Richard Nixon.

In his memoir, Jacobs recounts that he had to use subterfuge to return to a combat role in Vietnam after being awarded the Medal of Honor, as the military was unwilling to assign Medal of Honor recipients to combat roles.

Jacobs was a faculty member at the United States Military Academy in West Point, teaching international relations and comparative politics for three years, from 1973 to 1976, and at the National War College in Washington, D.C. He retired from the army in 1987 as a colonel.

After his military retirement, Jacobs began a career in investment banking becoming the founder and chief operating officer of AutoFinance Group, Inc., which was later sold to KeyBank. He then worked as a managing director of Bankers Trust, before becoming a principal in The Fitzroy Group, an investment and residential real estate development organization which operates in London. He is also on the board of directors for several smaller corporations.

Jacobs maintains involvement in several military-related organizations. He is vice chairman of the Medal of Honor Foundation, a member of the board of trustees for the National World War II Museum, and holds the McDermott Chair of Politics at the U.S. Military Academy.

In October 2008, the Penguin Group published his memoir, If Not Now, When?: Duty and Sacrifice In America’s Time of Need. The book won the 2010 Colby Award, recognizing a “first work of fiction or nonfiction that has made a significant contribution to the public’s understanding of intelligence operations, military history, or international affairs.”

In May 2012, Jacobs’ Basic: Surviving Boot Camp and Basic Training was published. The book is a history of the American military’s basic training told mainly through oral histories of those who have gone through Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force initial training.

Jacobs is also a military analyst for NBC/MSNBC. In 2009, he appeared on The Colbert Report as part of the Doom Bunker segment. He currently serves on the board of advisors of the Code of Support Foundation, a nonprofit military service organization. Jacobs is married with three grown children, and lives in New Jersey.

source