Speaker 1: Bushkin. It was March fourth, two thousand and two, fewer
Speaker 1: than six months after the World Trade Centers fell. The
Speaker 1: sun was rising on a bleak and snowy mountaintop in
Speaker 1: eastern Afghanistan. It was a little after six in the morning,
Speaker 1: and Air Force technical Sergeant John Chapman was alone in
Speaker 1: enemy territory, bleeding to death. He had been shot, he
Speaker 1: was losing strength, he was low in ammunition, and it
Speaker 1: was bitterly brutally cold. For hours in the dark, it
Speaker 1: faced off against Taliban and al Qaeda militants. He was outnumbered, outgunned,
Speaker 1: but he fought on it killed at least five men,
Speaker 1: one in hand to hand combat, and he was fending
Speaker 1: off the rest from the relative safety of a makeshift
Speaker 1: bunker basically just a shallow trench dug at the base
Speaker 1: of a tree, keeping his head down, trying to survive
Speaker 1: until reinforcements would arrive, he hoped. Suddenly, the unmistakable sound
Speaker 1: of a helicopter filled the air. A black Chinook appeared
Speaker 1: on the horizon. Back up was finally here, but Chapman
Speaker 1: had seen what happened to helicopters had tried to land
Speaker 1: on this mountain. The two previous ones, including the one
Speaker 1: that brought him here, had been hit hard by enemy fire.
Speaker 1: He knew the men on that helicopter might die unless
Speaker 1: he could do something. He had two options, stay where
Speaker 1: he was not exactly safe but safer, or he could
Speaker 1: venture out into the open to try and provide covering
Speaker 1: fire for the helicopter to try and save those men.
Speaker 1: The snow around him was drenched in blood, his and
Speaker 1: the man he'd killed. He shouldered his assault rifle, and then,
Speaker 1: looking out into the thin light of the morning sun,
Speaker 1: he stood up. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and this is Medal
Speaker 1: of Honor Stories of Courage. The Medal of Honor is
Speaker 1: the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded for
Speaker 1: gallantry and bravery in combat at the risk of life,
Speaker 1: above and beyond the call of duty. Each candidate must
Speaker 1: be approved all the way up the chain of command,
Speaker 1: from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House.
Speaker 1: This show is about those heroes, what they did, what
Speaker 1: it meant, and what their stories tell us about the
Speaker 1: nature of courage and sacrifice. John Chapman's story is the
Speaker 1: last one we will tell this season, and more than
Speaker 1: any other, it tells us why the Medal of Honor
Speaker 1: is so important. It's the story that reveals an essential truth.
Speaker 1: The medal isn't really for the recipients themselves. Those heroes
Speaker 1: would insist that their acts of bravery don't need an
Speaker 1: audience or accolades. They would say, as doctor Mary Walker famous,
Speaker 1: he did, I could not do otherwise. It's not for them.
Speaker 1: The medal of Honor is for the rest of us,
Speaker 1: to remind us of our human capacity for bravery and
Speaker 1: self sacrifice, and to show us that even if those
Speaker 1: acts of courage are unseen, invisible to others, they still matter.
Speaker 1: They maybe even matter more. When John Chapman was growing
Speaker 1: up in the little town of Windsorlocks, Connecticut, his mom, Terry,
Speaker 1: noticed something different about him. He was, even as a kid,
Speaker 1: strangely attuned to other people.
Speaker 2: He was born with this ability to sense people's feelings
Speaker 2: or sense when people were in need of help. He
Speaker 2: always put others before himself. He felt that that's that's
Speaker 2: the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: John was a standout athlete, a soccer star, and a
Speaker 1: state champion diver. A well loved kid with an easy laugh,
Speaker 1: square jawed and handsome, he could have been the worst
Speaker 1: kind of popular high school boy, but John had a
Speaker 1: distaste for social clicks and bullies. He had a way
Speaker 1: of making other people feel comfortable and to drive to
Speaker 1: push himself hard to do good in the world.
Speaker 2: His senior year book quote was give up yourself before
Speaker 2: taking of others.
Speaker 1: He went to college for a semester, but it was
Speaker 1: clear he wanted a different kind of challenge. He dropped
Speaker 1: out and repaired cars while he fixated on his next step,
Speaker 1: joining the Air Force. Within a few years of enlisting,
Speaker 1: he had another higher goal. He wanted to become a
Speaker 1: combat controller. Combat controllers, or CCTs are battlefield experts who
Speaker 1: in bed with the lead forces, the Navy Seals or
Speaker 1: the Army rangers and call in air strikes from the field.
Speaker 1: It's a key role in any dangerous mission, going into
Speaker 1: a combat zone and working as an on the ground
Speaker 1: air traffic controller triangulating bombers and drones under the most
Speaker 1: intense pressure. CCTs go through grueling months of training, not
Speaker 1: just for the technical skills they need, but also to
Speaker 1: prepare for every kind of hostile environment. They learned combat diving,
Speaker 1: wilderness survival, any special tactic you can imagine only a
Speaker 1: small percentage make it through. The few who succeed are
Speaker 1: ready to deploy undetected to establish assault zones behind enemy lines.
Speaker 1: Their motto is first there. Of the one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty men who signed up for training when John did,
Speaker 1: only two became CCTs. John, of course, was one of
Speaker 1: those two, and soon thereafter he qualified for the twenty
Speaker 1: fourth Special Tactic Squadron, the most elite of the elite
Speaker 1: of the Air Force. At the same time as John
Speaker 1: was honing his lethal skills at work, he was creating
Speaker 1: a safe haven of a home life in a small
Speaker 1: house in North Carolina with his wife, Valerie, and two
Speaker 1: little girls, Madison and Brianna. Valerie remembers how all in
Speaker 1: he was as a father.
Speaker 3: You didn't know if he just came off a training mission,
Speaker 3: and you know, he'd walks the door and he was daddy.
Speaker 3: He was bathing the girls, playing barbie dolls with them,
Speaker 3: reading them bedtime stories he used to love.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: After the bath, he'd wrap them up in a towel
Speaker 3: and swing them and throw them onto the couch. And
Speaker 3: he was just fully present hundred percent of the time.
Speaker 3: I mean, you never would know what he was trained to.
Speaker 1: Do what he was trained to do, of course, was
Speaker 1: annihilate the enemy. But for a while in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, it looked like he might not put those
Speaker 1: skills to the test in an American war. By the
Speaker 1: age of thirty six, John and realized he might never
Speaker 1: go to battle. Then came nine to eleven. We all
Speaker 1: remember watching it on the news that day.
Speaker 4: And you can see the two towers, a huge explosion
Speaker 4: now raiding to pray on all of us, we never get.
Speaker 3: Out of the bank.
Speaker 5: The unthinkable happened today the World Trade Center, both towers gone,
Speaker 5: and we are all witnesses to it, and to some
Speaker 5: degree we are all victims.
Speaker 6: This conflict was begun on the timing in terms of others.
Speaker 7: It will end in a way, and at an hour
Speaker 7: of our choosing.
Speaker 1: The first major American military operation in Afghanistan took place
Speaker 1: in March of two thousand and two in the Shycote Valley,
Speaker 1: a roughly sixty square mile area ringed with rocky, snowcapped mountains.
Speaker 1: The US forces called it Operation Anaconda because the idea
Speaker 1: was to squeeze the joint Taliban and Al Kaeda forces
Speaker 1: in the valley, but the situation was more treacherous than anticipated.
Speaker 1: The terrain was difficult, the snow waist deep, the weather
Speaker 1: unimaginably cold, and the enemy almost tripled the size expected.
Speaker 1: Well armed, well trained, and dug into the higher elevations.
Speaker 1: Even history was on Afghanistan's side. Afghan fighters in this
Speaker 1: valley had battled back invading forces for two thousand years,
Speaker 1: from Alexander the Great to the Soviet Army. On the
Speaker 1: night of March fourth, a group of Navy seals sealed
Speaker 1: to him six which would famously go on to kill
Speaker 1: Osama bin Lauden. Ready to enter the fight, they were
Speaker 1: led by a quiet and wiry senior chief named Britt Slabinsky.
Speaker 1: Their combat controller was John Chapman. The two men had
Speaker 1: worked together since the previous October, and John and the
Speaker 1: seals were a well integrated team, all more than ready
Speaker 1: to get into the action. They'd been waiting in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: for over a month by now. Their mission was to
Speaker 1: go to a mountain called Takergar on the southern side
Speaker 1: of the shy Coote Valley and secure an area of
Speaker 1: operations from which they could call in air strikes on
Speaker 1: enemy forces. They would do this under the cover of darkness,
Speaker 1: fly by helicopter to the base of the mountain in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night, then stealthily ascend to the
Speaker 1: ten thousand foot summit, giving them a chance to see
Speaker 1: exactly what they were up against before anyone noticed them.
Speaker 1: But that tightly formulated plan was about to hit some
Speaker 1: insurmountable obstacles. First, the helicopter they were supposed to use
Speaker 1: that night had a faulty engine. The team had to
Speaker 1: call in a replacement, costing precious time. It became clear
Speaker 1: to his Slebinski that if they hiked to the top
Speaker 1: of the mountainous planned, they would arrive after the sun
Speaker 1: of prison too exposed, too dangerous, so he asked command
Speaker 1: if he could delay the mission for twenty four Their
Speaker 1: quest was denied. Instead, it was decided that their helicopter
Speaker 1: would land at the top of Takogar rather than the base,
Speaker 1: announcing themselves instantly to anyone who happened to be on
Speaker 1: the mountain. They didn't know exactly what was up there,
Speaker 1: but they knew they were enemy soldiers on many of
Speaker 1: those mountains, and those soldiers were ready to fight. But
Speaker 1: an order was an order, So at two fifty five am,
Speaker 1: the team loaded into a Chinook helicopter and headed for
Speaker 1: the peak. Here's Slabinsky remembering.
Speaker 7: Soon as we landed, our helicopter came under rocket RPG,
Speaker 7: rocket prolgrenade fire, and heavy machine got fire.
Speaker 1: Another combat controller, Jay Hill, was on a different mountain,
Speaker 1: just a few kilometers away, with a view of Takagar.
Speaker 1: He watched as a Chinook carrying the Seals and John
Speaker 1: was hit with a rocket propelled grenade, then another and another,
Speaker 1: screaming through the night sky.
Speaker 7: And as soon as it sat down on top of
Speaker 7: the mountain top, we saw the RPG strike the aircraft.
Speaker 6: In the aircraft move towards the valley.
Speaker 1: Slabinsky realized they were in deep trouble and ordered the
Speaker 1: helicopter to retreat. But as the damage Chinnook lifted off again,
Speaker 1: it started shaking and rolling, and a member of his
Speaker 1: seal team, Petty Officer Neil Roberts, lost his footing and
Speaker 1: slid down the open ramp into the darkness and onto
Speaker 1: the snowy peak of Takragar.
Speaker 7: I knew Neil was in trouble. I knew he was
Speaker 7: in the midst of the enemy and numerically superior force
Speaker 7: they had me out gunned. They were at extreme altitudes,
Speaker 7: we were in extreme temperatures and pretty much opering at
Speaker 7: the extreme end of all aircraft capabilities.
Speaker 1: But the Seals, of course have a motto leave no
Speaker 1: man behind. So as soon as the mangled Chinnook save
Speaker 1: crash landed, Slabinsky and the team started making plans to
Speaker 1: go back and get Roberts. Knowing what awaited them at.
Speaker 7: The top of Takagar, I made the decision that we're
Speaker 7: going to make an immediate rescue attempt to go back
Speaker 7: and get Neil.
Speaker 1: John Chapman was all in. He didn't have to go back,
Speaker 1: but he was part of the team. He wouldn't think
Speaker 1: of staying behind. Chief Master Sergeant Rob Harrison was there
Speaker 1: as part of a gunship crew providing reconnaissance and air strikes.
Speaker 1: Like all the men, he knew how dangerous this mission
Speaker 1: would be.
Speaker 4: These guys knew that they were going right back into
Speaker 4: the same spot that their original aircraft was shot up
Speaker 4: and they lost a teammate out of the back end
Speaker 4: of the helicopter. So these guys, they knew what risk
Speaker 4: they were facing, and they charged right back in there
Speaker 4: to save one of their very own.
Speaker 1: By now it was four thirty five am, still dark,
Speaker 1: but not for long. The seals in John were outfitted
Speaker 1: with night vision goggles for red strobe lights and laser
Speaker 1: sights on their rifles, Otherwise they would be completing this
Speaker 1: mission in total darkness, another dangerous layer to an already
Speaker 1: lethal errand. As the new helicopter rose into the frigid
Speaker 1: night sky, Slabinsky felt the enormity of what was ahead
Speaker 1: of them.
Speaker 7: I remember got my night vision goggles on and everything's
Speaker 7: green looking through my goggles to stick my head, but
Speaker 7: have outside the aircraft to look at my mouth coming
Speaker 7: up that I'm getting ready to go fight on. And
Speaker 7: I'm looking at it and I'm like, Wow, what a
Speaker 7: majestic mountain. This thing looks like. Ah, And now what
Speaker 7: a crazy thought about what we're a ready getting to
Speaker 7: go do looking at this thing.
Speaker 1: The helicopter didn't have enough fuel for a reconnaissance pass
Speaker 1: over the mountain, and they couldn't drop mortars on the
Speaker 1: waiting enemy for fear of harming Roberts. They would just
Speaker 1: have to go in themselves. Six men on the mountain
Speaker 1: and above them an air Force gunship ready a fire
Speaker 1: on the enemy. Once John gave the call, plus a
Speaker 1: US Predator drone silently recording the action. As the Chinook landed,
Speaker 1: it was immediately slammed by enemy fire, just as the
Speaker 1: first helicopter had been, but this time the seals in
Speaker 1: John dove off the chopper into the knee deep snow.
Speaker 1: Over the roar of the helicopter's rotors, they could hear
Speaker 1: the sound of enemy machine guns.
Speaker 7: I asked John, say, John, what do you have? He said,
Speaker 7: you know, I don't know. And then right away we
Speaker 7: started taking heavy fire from a bunker that was right
Speaker 7: in front of us.
Speaker 1: John could see that the enemy had the advantage of
Speaker 1: the high ground and positions that were dug into the rocky,
Speaker 1: snowy terrain. Even without night vision goggles, enemy soldiers would
Speaker 1: be able to pick off the members of his team.
Speaker 1: John needed a protected spot to set up his gear
Speaker 1: and call in airstrikes. He decided that he had to
Speaker 1: get to the bunker and clear it, whatever the cost.
Speaker 1: So John didn't hesitate. He ran uphill towards the bunker,
Speaker 1: which was dug underneath a solitary tree. His heart was
Speaker 1: pounding in the thin atmosphere. He held his MFOL rifle
Speaker 1: against his shoulder, firing and firing again. He was first
Speaker 1: up the mountain through the blackness into the fire, breaking
Speaker 1: a trail to the heavy inches of snow, never looking back.
Speaker 1: Slabinski followed behind.
Speaker 7: As I look around, there's all these all these mozo
Speaker 7: flashes from everywhere, and I'm thinking there's a lot of
Speaker 7: people up here. There's well, it's snapping by our heads,
Speaker 7: like little snapping, and you can see puffs of snow
Speaker 7: coming up all around us.
Speaker 1: Inside the makeshift bunker, two fighters sat in the dark.
Speaker 1: John materialized out of the night and shot them both.
Speaker 1: Slabinski joined him in the bunker. It provided some shelter,
Speaker 1: but shots were still blazing in from a second bunker
Speaker 1: twenty five feet away, strafing the two men and the
Speaker 1: four other seals on the mountain. Both John and Slabinsky
Speaker 1: fired back, centering the laser points of their rifles on
Speaker 1: the muzzle flashes they saw in the darkness. Moving out
Speaker 1: of the bunker to expose themselves to danger again and again.
Speaker 1: Above them, that predator drone hovered invisible. Its pilot was
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred miles away. His role was to watch what
Speaker 1: was happening on the mountain and report what he saw
Speaker 1: to the gunship crew. The footage was grainy, just the
Speaker 1: heat signatures of bodies moving through space. The pilot couldn't
Speaker 1: tell who was who, but the drone had captured the
Speaker 1: shapes of the men as they had exited the helicopter
Speaker 1: as they engaged the enemy. A silent witness to what
Speaker 1: was happening on Taka Gar Now just outside the bunker,
Speaker 1: an al Qaeda fighter charged to John from the right, firing.
Speaker 1: John went towards him out of the bunker. He shot
Speaker 1: his rifle and the fighter fell. But before John could
Speaker 1: sight another target, the sound of machine gun fire caught
Speaker 1: the darkness. John was thrown backwards into the snow, shot
Speaker 1: twice in the torso. For Britz Slabinski, it was becoming
Speaker 1: clear that the mission's goal had to change. He had
Speaker 1: come to save one man, and now it seemed like
Speaker 1: he had lost another. He knew John was down. He
Speaker 1: was lying ten feet away outside of the bunker, but
Speaker 1: Slebinsky could see the laser of John's rifle pointing against
Speaker 1: the tree, rising and falling with his breath, and then
Speaker 1: John's laser stopped moving. Slobinsky concluded he must be dead.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, the other seals were getting picked off
Speaker 1: in the dark, two of them seriously wounded. They had
Speaker 1: to retreat or Slobinsky was sure they would all end
Speaker 1: up like John.
Speaker 7: I look around at all my guys again and I
Speaker 7: see there still heavy amounts of fire come in. I
Speaker 7: look over at John. I'm seeing no movement from John.
Speaker 7: And I realized that because we're out in the open
Speaker 7: life expectancy now, it's going to be measured, probably in second.
Speaker 7: So I make the command that we're going to reposition
Speaker 7: my force just over the side of the cliff.
Speaker 1: The five remaining seals huddled together then retreated as quickly
Speaker 1: as they could, sliding down the snow and over the
Speaker 1: side of the ridge. They would group further down the
Speaker 1: mountain and call for reinforcements. It was five ten am,
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes into the mission. As soon as the sun rose,
Speaker 1: they would be in even more trouble, no longer able
Speaker 1: to hide in the dark. The Predator drone still harbored above.
Speaker 1: On his screen, its pilot could see the shape of
Speaker 1: a still warm body under a tree. He watched as
Speaker 1: another group of figures came together below the bunker and
Speaker 1: then dropped one by one down the snowy ledge pick
Speaker 1: slated shapes moving in the pre dawn night. John Chapman
Speaker 1: had rushed to the bunker to save the seals on
Speaker 1: his team. Now he lay motionless and alone in the snow.
Speaker 1: For a moment, everything was quiet at the peak of
Speaker 1: Taco Gar, a freezing wind, a silent predator drone overhead.
Speaker 1: But just five minutes later something changed. Back at the
Speaker 1: peak where those two bunkers were, the drone picked up movement.
Speaker 4: The main element had withdrawn a couple hundred meters, but
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, at the original point there was
Speaker 4: an iron strobe active again.
Speaker 1: At the top of Taco Gar, an infrared strobe worn
Speaker 1: by an American came alive. We'll be right back. John
Speaker 1: Chapman was lying in the snow, his legs crumpled beneath him,
Speaker 1: alone at the peak of Takregar. His team was certain
Speaker 1: he was dead. He had taken two gunshot wounds to
Speaker 1: his torso, but he was alive. Because John was alone,
Speaker 1: it's impossible to know what he was thinking, how he
Speaker 1: felt in those moments when he regained consciousness. Pain, certainly,
Speaker 1: but also a jolt back to where he was. His
Speaker 1: purpose there to protect what remained of his team to
Speaker 1: move back into the safety of the bunker and to
Speaker 1: call for air support, as he had been trained to do.
Speaker 1: His frozen fingers must have fumbled with the radio he
Speaker 1: had strapped to his chest. He switched it to a
Speaker 1: battlefield common frequency, and then he spoke using his call sign,
Speaker 1: any station, any station, this is MAKO three zero Charlie
Speaker 1: three kilometers away. His fellow combat controller, j Hill heard
Speaker 1: it and responded, but only static came back over the radio.
Speaker 1: John called again and again, but he never heard Jay's responses.
Speaker 1: It's not clear if they ever reached him. Anyway, he
Speaker 1: had bigger issues for one thing, the enemy now knew
Speaker 1: he was there for another. Once Slebinsky had left the peak,
Speaker 1: he had been able to call the air strikes to
Speaker 1: the top of Takergar, not realizing that John was alive
Speaker 1: up there. John crouched in the bunker as the American
Speaker 1: gunship fired rounds down on the mountain. Undeterred, the enemy
Speaker 1: fighters stalked closer to John's position. The Predator drone hovered overhead,
Speaker 1: but to anyone watching it wasn't clear what it showed.
Speaker 1: It was just anonymous shapes moving on a screen. Two
Speaker 1: al Qaeda fighters rushed the bunker and John shot them.
Speaker 1: He engaged another in hand to hand combat. Now, in
Speaker 1: addition to the two gunshot wounds, his face was battered,
Speaker 1: he had shrapnel in his arms, but still he fought
Speaker 1: on the sun slowly crept up above the horizon. His
Speaker 1: ammunition dwindled, and then just after six a m. John
Speaker 1: heard the rotors of a helicopter beating against the sky.
Speaker 1: Slabinsky had called in a Quick Reaction Force or QRF
Speaker 1: to come to the aid of his remaining group of seals,
Speaker 1: But now this helicopter full of eighteen men was going
Speaker 1: to land right in the middle of the hornet's nest,
Speaker 1: just as the tube before it had. Major G. Brown
Speaker 1: was the combat controller on that Shinnuk. He remembers it clearly.
Speaker 4: Sun was coming up.
Speaker 2: It was just about dawn.
Speaker 8: We did one pass over the mountain top, and on
Speaker 8: that second pass we began to flare to land.
Speaker 1: John knew what would happen to that helicopter as soon
Speaker 1: as it got close, and he knew that he had
Speaker 1: to draw fire away from it. He was taking cover
Speaker 1: in that bunker, likely shaking from blood loss and exhaustion
Speaker 1: and exposure to the freezing temperatures, but he was still alive,
Speaker 1: and as long as he was alive, he was going
Speaker 1: to protect those men.
Speaker 8: He knew the very immediate danger he was in.
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Colonel Ken Rodriguez wasn't on tacker Gar, but he
Speaker 1: knew John who he was as a man and as
Speaker 1: an airman. He was John's commander in the Elite twenty
Speaker 1: fourth Special Tech Squadron.
Speaker 8: He's already been wounded multiple times, and now he sees
Speaker 8: the helicopter, the quick reaction helicopter coming in, and he
Speaker 8: came out from cover and exposed himself to very accurate
Speaker 8: enemy fire. Now John's would never say I know for
Speaker 8: a fact I won't get through this. John was a
Speaker 8: very much I'll do whatever I can to get through this.
Speaker 8: But he knew in his hardest hearts. I'm convinced he
Speaker 8: knew what kind of danger he was exposing himself to.
Speaker 8: The enormous risk that he placed himself in when he
Speaker 8: stepped out to defend that quick reaction for his helicopter
Speaker 8: and the lives of the men on board.
Speaker 1: Roughly an hour after he had woken up alone on
Speaker 1: the peak of Takagar, John Chapman stood in the early
Speaker 1: morning light. He shouldered his rifle. Then he slid down
Speaker 1: the slope, legs in front of him, firing rounds in
Speaker 1: a desperate attempt to protect the helicopter. He watched as
Speaker 1: the Chinook was hit by an RPG. He fired the
Speaker 1: last of his ammunition, and then he was shot through
Speaker 1: the heart. He fell back onto the snow for the
Speaker 1: second time that morning. He was dead. Nobody on the
Speaker 1: helicopter saw John fall. They weren't looking for him, after all,
Speaker 1: they believed he had died long before John did what
Speaker 1: he did invisibly. No one knew then what sacrifice he
Speaker 1: had made. It wasn't until later that they found out
Speaker 1: and realized what it meant.
Speaker 4: He sacrificed himself for the for the q R AFT
Speaker 4: that came in.
Speaker 1: It was almost the case that no one ever knew
Speaker 1: about John Chapman's one man's stand, We'll be right back. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: seven lives would be lost on tackle. Gar Neil Roberts,
Speaker 1: the first seal to follow that day, died before they
Speaker 1: reached him John Chapman and five men from the QRF.
Speaker 1: But the mountaintop would eventually be secured an operation and
Speaker 1: a conda would be considered a success. It fell to
Speaker 1: Canrodriguez to tell John's family, Valerie, Madison and Brianna, what
Speaker 1: had happened. He went to that little house in North
Speaker 1: Carolina where John and his girls felt so safe.
Speaker 5: When I went to Valerie's doorstep to tell her that
Speaker 5: John wasn't coming home, and I saw those two, those
Speaker 5: beautiful little girls, there were five and three times, I thought, yeah,
Speaker 5: they're good, you grow up without their daddy. I just
Speaker 5: I think that every time I might thank him John.
Speaker 1: Both John Chapman and Britt Slabinski were awarded for their
Speaker 1: bravery on Taka Gar. Slabinsky was decorated with the Navy Cross,
Speaker 1: John with the Air Force Cross. He was honored for
Speaker 1: his fearless race across the snow to that first bunker,
Speaker 1: for eliminating the enemy there and protecting the seals of
Speaker 1: his team, all actions from before they were treated down
Speaker 1: the mountain. But after hearing about his incredible one man stand,
Speaker 1: you've got to be wondering, why not the medal of honor.
Speaker 1: Here's why nobody knew that John Chapman had survived past
Speaker 1: that first time he was shot. There had been no
Speaker 1: eye witnesses to his final power long battle. So the
Speaker 1: Air Force Cross might have been the end of the story.
Speaker 1: Except in May of twenty fifteen, thirteen years after John's death,
Speaker 1: Deborhly James, then Secretary of the Air Force, read an.
Speaker 6: Article The Air Force Times had a headline what's to
Speaker 6: take for an airman to be awarded the Medal of Honor?
Speaker 6: And they had various accounts of airmen who had distinguished
Speaker 6: themselves above and beyond the call of duty in combat,
Speaker 6: who had been awarded the second highest award, but not
Speaker 6: the Medal of Honor. And when I read about John
Speaker 6: Chapman and his exploits in March of two thousand and
Speaker 6: two in Afghanistan, I could not understand why this case,
Speaker 6: for example, didn't merit a higher level award.
Speaker 1: So James ordered a review. She is, by her own admission,
Speaker 1: obsessed with fairness, and there were parts of the story
Speaker 1: it didn't make sense if John had been killed the
Speaker 1: first time he was shot. She wondered, did his heroism
Speaker 1: deserve something more? And she discovered the answer it did.
Speaker 1: The Air Force Cross had only honored half of John's story.
Speaker 1: Nobody had seen the rest of it, except for that drone.
Speaker 6: The most important thing for me was there was drone footage, which,
Speaker 6: for whatever reason, was not reviewed at the time.
Speaker 1: The drone footage was hazy. The person who had been
Speaker 1: monitoring at that day was thousands of miles from the action.
Speaker 1: At the time, it wasn't clear exactly what it showed,
Speaker 1: but James and the review board ran the footage through
Speaker 1: newly available software which could isolate pixel representations of people
Speaker 1: and track their movements.
Speaker 6: We could see the moment that Chapman went down. We
Speaker 6: could see when the rest of the team withdrew from
Speaker 6: the mountain. The rest of the team we know, believed
Speaker 6: Chapman to be dead at that time, and certainly he
Speaker 6: was down, but we also know from that footage that
Speaker 6: Chapman got back up again and continued fighting while he
Speaker 6: was alone. So that drone footage just as well could
Speaker 6: have been DNA in a crime scene to me, But.
Speaker 1: By now you know this isn't how Medal of Honors
Speaker 1: submissions usually work. Remember Alwen Cash. The Medal of Honor
Speaker 1: relies on eyewitness testimony, but in this case, John was alone.
Speaker 1: The only humans on tackle Guard to witness his one
Speaker 1: man's stand were enemy fighters, and Britt Slabinski was certain
Speaker 1: John was dead or he never would have left him.
Speaker 6: I believe this was the first case ever in history
Speaker 6: that relied to a degree on forensic type evidence technical evidence.
Speaker 6: Every other Medal of Honor case heretofore was solely on
Speaker 6: Eyewitnes accounts.
Speaker 1: Alongside the Joan footage, they scrutinized John's autopsy, which showed
Speaker 1: injuries that could only have been received after the rest
Speaker 1: of the sealed team departed. Jay Hill, the other combat controller,
Speaker 1: told them about hearing John's call sign again and again
Speaker 1: the stress in John's voice. Plus there was the fact
Speaker 1: that John had used up almost all of his ammunition,
Speaker 1: proof of a prolonged fight. James saw an obvious conclusion.
Speaker 1: What she didn't foresee was pushback.
Speaker 6: The Special Operations community, much to my surprise, questioned that
Speaker 6: the technical evidence that we thought was the slam dunk
Speaker 6: proof that Chapman had survived the initial wounding, got back
Speaker 6: up and continued fighting. This went on and on and
Speaker 6: on for months. I came to believe over time that
Speaker 6: it was simply too hard for these other human beings
Speaker 6: who were representing people who had done the very best
Speaker 6: that they could do on the worst day of their life.
Speaker 6: That they had left someone behind alive. I think they
Speaker 6: could not come to grips with that, and so they
Speaker 6: rejected that piece of the argument they believed and continued
Speaker 6: to say, we believe that Chapman was dead at the
Speaker 6: time we withdrew, and so without that new evidence, the
Speaker 6: package was stalling. Without their coordination, it was taking more time.
Speaker 1: You can only imagine how hard it must have been
Speaker 1: for the Seals to think that they had left John
Speaker 1: there alone. Leave no man behind is an article of
Speaker 1: faith for the Seals. This new information changed the narrative
Speaker 1: in a way that was heroic for John but horrifying
Speaker 1: for the others who'd been there. And just to be clear,
Speaker 1: nobody second guest bittz Slobinski's decision to retreat from the
Speaker 1: top of Takergar.
Speaker 8: I believe firmly that every single man on that hill
Speaker 8: made the very best decisions they possibly could while bullets
Speaker 8: are flying, while people are getting wounded, and to say
Speaker 8: anything other than that would be a miscarriage of what
Speaker 8: really went on.
Speaker 2: Even John's mom agrees Johnny would have wanted them to
Speaker 2: do just that, to take their wounded off the mountain.
Speaker 1: Deborly, James, who saw John's medal as her fight, who
Speaker 1: believed it was her duty as Secretary of the Air
Speaker 1: Force to honor all aspects of his bravery, couldn't believe
Speaker 1: the package was getting slowed down.
Speaker 6: I thought that the desire to honor a fallen brother
Speaker 6: would overcome any other possible feelings that might be out there.
Speaker 6: I think the truth of the matter is they wanted
Speaker 6: to do both. They wanted to honor him, but they
Speaker 6: could not take that additional step of admitting a mistake.
Speaker 6: A mistake, as I said earlier, was honest, and it
Speaker 6: wasn't the fog of war. It was the whipping wind
Speaker 6: and snow of war and the uncertainty that comes in
Speaker 6: these situations. I don't fall to anybody for what they
Speaker 6: did that day. I just wish they had been more
Speaker 6: supportive of getting this package through without controversy.
Speaker 1: For John Chapman, James kept pushing for what she thought
Speaker 1: was fair and right, navigating the package to the hurdles
Speaker 1: of defensiveness and doubt, and finally, in August of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: President Donald Trump awarded John his Medal of Honor. But
Speaker 1: you can't imagine that the medal have mattered to John.
Speaker 6: I believe John will hear.
Speaker 3: He would say, every one that would have done the same
Speaker 3: thing as they're trained to do.
Speaker 1: One of the great gifts of working on this podcast
Speaker 1: series has been getting to explore the extreme reaches of
Speaker 1: the human spirit, the exceptional bravery, as the military says,
Speaker 1: above and beyond the call of duty, exemplified by the
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor. It's interesting to me that so many
Speaker 1: of these stories have happened in the dark. Henry Johnson
Speaker 1: battling at midnight against the German raiding party, Ted Rubin
Speaker 1: holding that North Korean ridge all night long, Jave Argus
Speaker 1: and his men in the Vietnamese cemetery, and now John
Speaker 1: Chapman alone in the dark attacker gar It didn't matter
Speaker 1: to John if his acts of bravery were seen, if
Speaker 1: anyone knew about them. That wasn't the point. It never
Speaker 1: is Deborly, James would tell you that the Medal of
Speaker 1: hon is important because it teaches those in the military
Speaker 1: what they can achieve.
Speaker 6: The stories of Medal of Honor recipients live on for
Speaker 6: decades and even centuries in the US military. Military students
Speaker 6: learn about these stories in school. These are stories that
Speaker 6: go down in the history of the services.
Speaker 1: But stories like John Chapman's should matter to the rest
Speaker 1: of us for a different reason. Most people would probably
Speaker 1: assume that anyone in their right mind would stay in
Speaker 1: that bunker if they were wounded and outnumbered like John was.
Speaker 1: His story is proof that not everybody would. That being
Speaker 1: human can mean sacrificing yourself alone in the dark, with
Speaker 1: no hope of being famous or richly rewarded. Medal of
Speaker 1: Honor recipients make exactly those kinds of choices. Only look
Speaker 1: at the official citations for each recipient, those short few
Speaker 1: paragraphs the President reads at the ceremony. You're left with
Speaker 1: a pretty unrelatable snapshot of an extraordinary moment in time.
Speaker 1: That's why I wanted to make this show. The Medal
Speaker 1: of Honor isn't meant to take these people and put
Speaker 1: them on an unreachable pedestal. It's meant as an inspiration challenge.
Speaker 1: And by learning who the recipients were as people, what
Speaker 1: they went through, what they were like, you understand these
Speaker 1: aren't comic book heroes. These are human beings. Through the medal,
Speaker 1: its recipients stay alive in our collective memory, encouraging us
Speaker 1: forward in the same way that Valley believes that John
Speaker 1: lives on to their daughters.
Speaker 3: His legacy will continues as long as you know they
Speaker 3: tell his story to their children and their children's children.
Speaker 4: I mean, he will live forever.
Speaker 1: Courage doesn't just happen on the battlefield. So many people
Speaker 1: all over the planet are bravely struggling alone, unseen, fighting
Speaker 1: their own battles in their own ways, overcoming incredible odds
Speaker 1: in circumstances that we can never fully appreciate or understand.
Speaker 1: That's why it matters that we bring these stories of
Speaker 1: heroism out of the dark and into the light. With
Speaker 1: each one, we acknowledge a hero's service and their sacrifice,
Speaker 1: but we also acknowledge the strength that's within all of us,
Speaker 1: the potential to do better, to be better, and to
Speaker 1: make a difference, even if nobody can see what a
Speaker 1: difference you've made. Medal of Honor. Stories of Courage is
Speaker 1: written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins, Costanza Gallardo,
Speaker 1: and Izzy Carter. Our editor is Ben the Dafaffrey. Sound
Speaker 1: design and additional music by Jake Gorsky, Recording engineering by
Speaker 1: Nina Lawrence, fact checking by Arthur Gombert's Original music by
Speaker 1: Eric Phillips. The rest of our team includes Carl Ketel,
Speaker 1: Grete Cone, Christina Slomon, Sarah Nix, Nicole upden Bosch, Eric Sandler,
Speaker 1: Kerry Brody, Taly Emlin, and Jake Flanagan. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: series creator Dan McGinn to the Congressional Medal of Honor
Speaker 1: Society and Adam Plumpton. I'm your Host Malcolin Babbo