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They easily could have been forgotten, a handful of stealthy warriors on a secret mission gone bad.</p>
<p>And for more than three decades, the men of Operation Thunderhead, a daring plan to rescue American prisoners of war in North Vietnam, essentially were lost to history. Their bravery and devotion to duty were recorded as a mere "training operation," the truth hidden from all but a handful of shipmates and relatives. </p>
<p>In a solemn ceremony at the Naval Academy in Annapolis yesterday, the Navy and nation tried to make amends, posthumously presenting the Bronze Star with valor to the operation's leader, Lt. Spence Dry, a SEAL commando who leaped out of a helicopter to his death in the Gulf of Tonkin on June 5, 1972....
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