Speaker 1: Bushkin this season on Medal of Honor Stories of Courage.
Speaker 1: We brought you incredible stories from Medal of Honor recipients
Speaker 1: who fought in conflicts from the Civil War to the
Speaker 1: Iraq War. And I always said John Chapman was the
Speaker 1: last episode of our season, but I lied. We're back
Speaker 1: with a bonus. To wrap up our season, I invited
Speaker 1: Meredith Rollins, the writer behind the series, to come in
Speaker 1: for a little chat. Meredith is an old friend of mine.
Speaker 1: Her dad was a second lieutenant in the United States
Speaker 1: Marine Corps, and I wanted to talk with her about
Speaker 1: what we both learned from all the stories we've told
Speaker 1: this season about contagious courage, self sacrifice, and a secret
Speaker 1: theme in nearly all these stories, the importance of strong moms.
Speaker 1: We talked a little about moments that didn't make the cut,
Speaker 1: what surprised us and what made us cry. If you've
Speaker 1: got moments of your own to share, we want to
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can find us on most social
Speaker 1: media at Pushkin pods. All right, onto my conversation with Meredith. Hello, everyone,
Speaker 1: this is Malcolm Glowell. I am here with Meredith Rollins.
Speaker 1: Who is the power behind the Throne in the Medal
Speaker 1: of Honor series. She's the one who wrote all the episodes,
Speaker 1: did all the research. She's the genius who brought it
Speaker 1: all together. Meredith, thank you for joining.
Speaker 2: Me, Thanks for having me. It's fun to be on
Speaker 2: the microphone.
Speaker 1: It is. Yes, we thought we would be remiss in
Speaker 1: our Medal of Honor series if we didn't talk to
Speaker 1: the person who found all these incredible stories. You tell
Speaker 1: me first, how much did you enjoy this?
Speaker 2: I have really loved it, and not for a few
Speaker 2: to reasons. The first is when you and I first
Speaker 2: started talking about this project. I remember I said to you,
Speaker 2: I don't think that I am the right person for
Speaker 2: this project because I don't know anything about military history
Speaker 2: or the military or history. I mean, whatever I knew,
Speaker 2: i'd sort of forgotten. And you, I think, very rightly
Speaker 2: pointed out that this was going to make the whole
Speaker 2: exploration and investigation of these stories more fun for me
Speaker 2: and potentially more inclusive for an audience that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 2: have a background where they know a ton about you know,
Speaker 2: the Battle of Guadalcanal, for example. And my dad was
Speaker 2: a marine.
Speaker 1: I know that, yeah, in what War Korea?
Speaker 2: No, he was actually in between Korea and Vietnam, so
Speaker 2: he was deployed to Okinawa. He went through the Marine
Speaker 2: Officer Training program. He went to Purdue on a scholarship
Speaker 2: and spent four years in the service, and it was
Speaker 2: a really defining thing for him. He absolutely loved it.
Speaker 2: Being having been a marine was the first thing he
Speaker 2: would really impressing. He would say, Yeah, I did not
Speaker 2: know that.
Speaker 1: I knew you did just business should know. I've known
Speaker 1: Meredith for many, many years, and I knew your dad.
Speaker 1: I did not know that that was such a crucial
Speaker 1: part of his life story. Yeah, And you know, it's
Speaker 1: interesting my father in law also serve in the Marine Corps,
Speaker 1: so I have this kind of military influence. But this.
Speaker 2: Project has been a really interesting way to dive into
Speaker 2: what being in the service is all about. To learn
Speaker 2: the stories of these people who have done these extraordinary things,
Speaker 2: and also to really reintroduce myself to those different periods
Speaker 2: of American history that are so compelling and really inform
Speaker 2: where we are as a country today. And also just
Speaker 2: looking into all these stories because you know, threey five
Speaker 2: hundred and nineteen people have won the Medal of Honor,
Speaker 2: so it's a vast resource of people to look through,
Speaker 2: but kind of doing the detective work to find out
Speaker 2: which stories are most compelling, to find a diverse and
Speaker 2: interesting group who are all a little bit different, and
Speaker 2: then just some of the battlefield drama has been really,
Speaker 2: really exciting.
Speaker 1: I was surprised. I've been continually surprised through this series
Speaker 1: at how how little I knew about these battles you're describing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm actually, when I say that, as someone
Speaker 1: who I probably have I have hundreds of books on
Speaker 1: wars and military things in my library. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: someone who considers themselves well above average in their obsession
Speaker 1: with the world, wars and other things. I didn't know
Speaker 1: half the stuff, the Okinawa stuff from Bob Bush Bobus.
Speaker 1: I mean, I knew the Pacific Theater was a nasty place.
Speaker 1: I just had no idea the scale of the casualties there.
Speaker 1: It's mind boggling, it is.
Speaker 2: And also, I mean for me that that piece of
Speaker 2: the research really getting deep into the weeds of thesearious battlefields.
Speaker 2: I mean, what it means is that I have now
Speaker 2: become sort of boring when you have a conversation with
Speaker 2: me about what I'm doing, because I'm like, oh, let
Speaker 2: me tell can I tell you something about Okinawa's it.
Speaker 2: Here's a hot tip Buguada canal. This is my cocktail
Speaker 2: party conversation.
Speaker 1: Now you know you are that. Yes, you're the person
Speaker 1: we all avoided, although I've been the person you should
Speaker 1: avoided a party for most of my life. So I'm
Speaker 1: Missy Love's company. I really the next time we'll hang
Speaker 1: out together and we can trade. No, it's but that's
Speaker 1: the kind of lovely thing about doing getting immersed in
Speaker 1: a subject like this and the other thing I was
Speaker 1: thinking about that. You know, every time you plunge into
Speaker 1: one of these stories, you have a certainty that some
Speaker 1: transcendent thing is at the end.
Speaker 2: Well, I feel as though the story is going well
Speaker 2: if I am crying by the end, And of course
Speaker 2: I'm just I'll put it out there. I'm the kind
Speaker 2: of person who cries at lots of things.
Speaker 1: I'm you know, the person who cries. Give me some crime,
Speaker 1: give me your top crying moments in the series.
Speaker 2: Well, but the Bob Bush story when he talks about
Speaker 2: he's been through this terrible battle in Okinawa, and what's
Speaker 2: his big takeaway? Not that he survived, not that he's
Speaker 2: saved someone's life. It's that he was then able to
Speaker 2: have children, and he talks about what a wonderful thing
Speaker 2: that is, or hearing Jay Vargas choke up about when
Speaker 2: he talks about his mom, and I don't know, hopefully
Speaker 2: listeners will be able to tell this when he tells
Speaker 2: the story about having his mother's name on the back
Speaker 2: of his medal and he calls and he gets Richard
Speaker 2: Nixon on the phone, which of course is hilarious, but
Speaker 2: he's he kind of is is hesitant and coughing a
Speaker 2: little bit in that original tape because he was trying
Speaker 2: not to cry. And there's something about that that these
Speaker 2: guys are incredibly tough. Obviously, they're battle hardened, They've been
Speaker 2: in the worst possible scenarios, and yet you know, he
Speaker 2: talks about his mom with a tear in his eye.
Speaker 2: It's just the best.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah to me. When I think back on what
Speaker 1: the most moving moment I it's the guy who goes
Speaker 1: to the grave.
Speaker 2: Of his Oh yeah, Doug Monroe.
Speaker 1: Doug Monroe, his.
Speaker 2: Best friend from childhood, who goes and raises and lowers
Speaker 2: the flag at his grave for forty years or forty years,
Speaker 2: it's wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The thing about that's part of that story is you
Speaker 1: know that it really was every day. Oh yeah, like
Speaker 1: it's not he wasn't speaking metaphorically. There's nothing metaphorical about
Speaker 1: the devotion of these men to these memories. It's real.
Speaker 1: It's like he went every day. It was like part
Speaker 1: of like that. For some reason when I I had
Speaker 1: a really really hard time keeping it together when I
Speaker 1: got to that part of that story.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's so it's just so amazing. And then the
Speaker 2: Tybar Rubens story, there are a million moments in that
Speaker 2: when he learned that his mom has followed his little
Speaker 2: sister into the gas chamber. That's a heartbreaking thing. When
Speaker 2: the people that he saved to talk about how he
Speaker 2: picked lice off of them, like all of that stuff
Speaker 2: is just you cannot believe the devotion and the time
Speaker 2: that he spent, which is just a different way of
Speaker 2: looking at heroism, the fact that he and so many
Speaker 2: of these guys just again and again and again we're
Speaker 2: helping the people around them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Well, one of the interesting kind of psychological
Speaker 1: insights I got from these stories is how much of
Speaker 1: courage is just a or heroism is an offshoot simply
Speaker 1: of devotion. Yeah, it's the same impulse. It just that thought,
Speaker 1: as obvious as it seems, is not something that ever
Speaker 1: occurred to me. I assumed that they were, you know,
Speaker 1: opposite ends of some beneficial continuum. They're not. It's the
Speaker 1: same impulse, just expressed in a different way. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of these guys. It's a it's the high testostero
Speaker 1: and twenty two year old man's way of saying I
Speaker 1: love you, I mean glad. These guys are their high
Speaker 1: disoster two year old guys.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, for sure. But at the same time, there
Speaker 2: is that there's this devotion to the people that they
Speaker 2: are serving with and to the cause that they're serving
Speaker 2: to the of course deeply patriotic. But one of the
Speaker 2: things that we don't really include so much in this
Speaker 2: series is that almost all of them say at some
Speaker 2: point in an interview that they were just doing their job,
Speaker 2: that what they were doing on that day was no
Speaker 2: different from what they were doing the thirty days before that.
Speaker 2: It just happened that they were doing their job in
Speaker 2: this extraordinary circumstance. And I don't think I've listened to
Speaker 2: an interview with any one of these people where they've
Speaker 2: said I deserve this metal, I did this thing that
Speaker 2: was above and beyond. That's how the military defines it.
Speaker 2: But that's not how they define it. They define it
Speaker 2: as I was doing something that anybody else would have
Speaker 2: done in the same circumstance.
Speaker 1: Now, but of course that isn't true, right right, So
Speaker 1: it's this really interesting. This is another interesting fact about
Speaker 1: these that there is a kind of culture that says
Speaker 1: this was an act that you know, anyone would be
Speaker 1: capable of. I just did. At the same time, the
Speaker 1: act itself is completely out of the ordinary, and when
Speaker 1: we read about it, we're like, how on earth could
Speaker 1: anyone do that? Now, I just want to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more. That's a really interesting tension or contradiction
Speaker 1: or something in these stories which I never managed to resolve.
Speaker 1: Are they Is it just that that's the way you're
Speaker 1: expected to talk about it, or is it that they
Speaker 1: truly do feel that this is something anyone could have done.
Speaker 2: If I were to venture a guess, I would say
Speaker 2: that they sincerely feel that anybody in the same situation
Speaker 2: would have And maybe the subtext is should have done
Speaker 2: exactly what I chose to do. I mean there are
Speaker 2: obvious things that are you know, people that don't fall
Speaker 2: into that rule, like tib War. Part of what was
Speaker 2: interesting about tiber Ruben was that he had this whole
Speaker 2: set of experiences that nobody else in the camp had,
Speaker 2: so they wouldn't necessarily have known to do the things
Speaker 2: that he did. At the same time, he talks endlessly
Speaker 2: about their shared humanity and how anybody he believed he
Speaker 2: was taught by his parents that anybody should do these
Speaker 2: wonderful things for other people. It's just what you are.
Speaker 1: But someone like all Win with Cash, all in Cash, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it goes back into the burning vehicle. We don't need
Speaker 1: seven times seven times to pull people out. So there's
Speaker 1: our good case study. Now suppose Allwin Cash said, well,
Speaker 1: anyone would have done that? Well, no, I can tell
Speaker 1: you right now I'm not. I would never go back
Speaker 1: seven times into a burning vehicle.
Speaker 2: Actually I think it was maybe it was five times anyway,
Speaker 2: but yeah, Alan Cash goes back over and over again
Speaker 2: because he's devoted. To go back to your idea of devotion,
Speaker 2: he's devoted to his what he called his boys, He's
Speaker 2: devoted to them. He's not going to leave any of
Speaker 2: them behind. And as long as he can keep going
Speaker 2: back for them, he's going to keep doing it. And
Speaker 2: it's true because some of the eyewitnesses say, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: we got there and we wanted to help as well,
Speaker 2: but he was doing it. He'd pulled everybody out. So
Speaker 2: I do think maybe it's a mix between that mindset
Speaker 2: that you can do it, and well, nobody else is
Speaker 2: doing it, so I guess I have to do it,
Speaker 2: and also this feeling of well, why wouldn't I do it.
Speaker 2: I don't know that I'm being particular.
Speaker 1: I think what they're doing is they are almost unconsciously
Speaker 1: confusing would and should. What they say anyone would do this,
Speaker 1: What they really mean is anyone everyone should do this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what they're saying. They're saying, I did what I
Speaker 1: would expect a human being to do in that situation,
Speaker 1: and they're absolutely but that's not the same. Sadly though,
Speaker 1: most human beings would not do what they should do
Speaker 1: correct rights. That's what they're and what they're trying to
Speaker 1: explain to us. I think again, maybe it is just
Speaker 1: unconscious they're trying to explain to us that they think
Speaker 1: the gap between wood and should is too is too.
Speaker 2: Great, Yes, And I think that part of it, of course,
Speaker 2: is training, part of it is passion, part of it
Speaker 2: is patriotism. Part of it is the heat and the
Speaker 2: heat of the battle. There were certainly stories that we
Speaker 2: didn't tell where these guys look back on the action
Speaker 2: and say, I don't remember having done it. Yes, I
Speaker 2: know that I threw myself on a grenade, but I
Speaker 2: don't remember that moment. So I do think that part
Speaker 2: of it is just this instant gut reaction that you
Speaker 2: see something that needs to be done and you just
Speaker 2: do it because you aren't even thinking about what the
Speaker 2: content sequences are for yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, we'll be back in a minute. Let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about First of all, did you have
Speaker 1: a favorite story, one that you loved doing more than
Speaker 1: any other.
Speaker 2: Oh that's really hard. I you know now, I feel
Speaker 2: like I love all of my children equally, Malcolm, So no,
Speaker 2: I don't really have a favorite. I think the fun
Speaker 2: thing for me has been finding the interesting angle to
Speaker 2: sort of take a different look at a story that
Speaker 2: perhaps you've heard before. Working on Mary Walker, the only
Speaker 2: woman to win the Medal of Honor, was incredibly fun
Speaker 2: and I think at a certain point I realized I
Speaker 2: was having too much fun with it. I kept on
Speaker 2: making pants jokes, which I eventually took out because I
Speaker 2: was being too lighthearted about something that actually what she
Speaker 2: did was was incredibly serious and extraordinary, but kind of
Speaker 2: getting to know her as a person, and I think
Speaker 2: that she probably was really tough to be around and
Speaker 2: kind of ye I was going to say, kind of
Speaker 2: intense and sort of a little nuts, but in the
Speaker 2: best possible way. She was just a woman like way
Speaker 2: beyond her time. That just she wasn't going to take
Speaker 2: no for an answer, and it was delightful every time
Speaker 2: I found out something new about her, you know, the
Speaker 2: fact that she kind of moved into the home of
Speaker 2: Ulysses Grant and stayed there until she got a job.
Speaker 2: And then you know, because you and I have talked
Speaker 2: about this a bit, and the other people who are
Speaker 2: working on this podcast with me have heard me say
Speaker 2: it now way too many times. My favorite thing about
Speaker 2: all of these is when the mom shows up, Because
Speaker 2: the moms show up over and over again. Yeah, well
Speaker 2: I will say that. So I work on this podcast
Speaker 2: with Constanza Gardo, Benette f. Haffrey, and Izzy Carter, who
Speaker 2: are the three most brilliant people I've ever worked with,
Speaker 2: other than you, of course, Malcolm, which but maybe even
Speaker 2: a little bit more. And the joke that we have
Speaker 2: constantly because I'm the only middle aged mom in the group,
Speaker 2: is that I keep on picking these stories with big
Speaker 2: mom energy.
Speaker 1: Only you would do would be drawn to a series
Speaker 1: on war heroes because you were interested in the whole
Speaker 1: mom side of the.
Speaker 2: Story, right, exactly, big mom energy. But I do think
Speaker 2: it is part of it is that you listen to
Speaker 2: these stories and you realize that they are so personal
Speaker 2: and they are so emotional. And of course, obviously some
Speaker 2: of our episodes focus on people who died in battle,
Speaker 2: and some of them, like Henry Johnson, were never recorded
Speaker 2: that we know of, but the ones who were always
Speaker 2: have at a certain point that catch in their voice.
Speaker 2: They all have a real emotional reaction to telling their
Speaker 2: stories or something about their stories, and it just happens
Speaker 2: to be that a lot. For a lot of them,
Speaker 2: it's their moms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is mom's on parade. But who's the best
Speaker 1: of all moms? Is it Jave Argus's mom.
Speaker 2: Jave Argus's mom was fantastic and my but my favorite
Speaker 2: mom has to be Doug mon Ro's mom, who then
Speaker 2: went on to join Right the Coast Guard at the
Speaker 2: age of forty eight, and then they proceeded to refer
Speaker 2: to her as the old Lady, which I thought was
Speaker 2: hilarious and also depressing. But nevertheless, but.
Speaker 1: You wait, you're not forty eight yet, are you, merediths I.
Speaker 2: Don't feel like we need to have this discussion in
Speaker 2: this particular book at this time, but anyway, I feel
Speaker 2: like there was this kind of you know, Bob Bush's
Speaker 2: mom is like, me, you should go to You're seventeen,
Speaker 2: but maybe you should go ahead and join up. Jay Vargas'
Speaker 2: mom is like, please, don't join the Marines, and then
Speaker 2: he does.
Speaker 1: We're the dads.
Speaker 2: I don't, don't we don't. For whatever reason, I just
Speaker 2: didn't stumble across a great dad story. But no, no, no, yes,
Speaker 2: this is season two.
Speaker 1: This is no no, this is my theory of parental asymmetry.
Speaker 1: I've ever heard this theory. No, it is at any
Speaker 1: given time, it changes about our life. But at any
Speaker 1: given time in our lives, we are only really able
Speaker 1: to construct narratives about one of our parents. So there's
Speaker 1: a moment when you can't it's for some reason that
Speaker 1: I don't particularly understand. We cannot integrate the contributions of
Speaker 1: our parents to who we are. So what we do
Speaker 1: is we toggle. So there's a you know, you talk
Speaker 1: to someone at fourteen and they just talk about how
Speaker 1: my mom drives me crazier. You talk to them at
Speaker 1: you know, thirty, and it's like, my dad played Little
Speaker 1: League with me, and then at sixty it's like, my
Speaker 1: mom is my ma, Ma, Ma Mom. And I just
Speaker 1: think that's the pattern in it just goes back and
Speaker 1: I look at my own life. I'm like, totally what
Speaker 1: I did. Yeah, it just catch me. On a given day,
Speaker 1: it's mom and then it's dad, And I think there's
Speaker 1: something about And this goes to what we were saying
Speaker 1: earlier about how what courage really is is devotion. Is
Speaker 1: that they grasp that and they think of the person
Speaker 1: in their life who embodied devotion, who embodied love, right,
Speaker 1: and it's their mom. So their heroism, that's the mistake.
Speaker 1: Their heroism does not remind them of the strong male
Speaker 1: figure they had growing up. No, no, no, Their heroism reminds
Speaker 1: them of the mom who nurtured them and who you know,
Speaker 1: birthed them and who wipe their noses. I think that's
Speaker 1: that's one of those things that is incredibly beautiful about.
Speaker 2: This It is and of course I feel like I
Speaker 2: gravitate towards those stories naturally, as I am a mom
Speaker 2: and I have to, you know what, I've got two boys,
Speaker 2: and for me thinking about them, think about the Bob
Speaker 2: Busch story. For example, he's seventeen when he enlists. I
Speaker 2: have a seventeen year old.
Speaker 1: You was a seventeen year old. I was good, you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny at that moment in that story, I thought
Speaker 1: immediately view about how you have a seventeen year old,
Speaker 1: and I thought, can you imagine if you had to
Speaker 1: send your eldest off to war right now? Like right now?
Speaker 2: No, it's it's it's just it's really it's really unthinkable
Speaker 2: thinkable it is. And then at the same time, and
Speaker 2: this is World War two and he was watching every
Speaker 2: other teenager go to war as quickly as they could.
Speaker 2: They wanted to get out there, they wanted to serve.
Speaker 2: I think it's a different mindset than it is than
Speaker 2: how we think about combat now. Not everyone, obviously, but
Speaker 2: I do think that there was just this feeling of
Speaker 2: as soon as I get as soon as I can
Speaker 2: get out there. I want to get out there, and
Speaker 2: I want to do my part. And I don't want
Speaker 2: to be I don't want to be trapped. I don't
Speaker 2: want to be trapped at home with my mom not
Speaker 2: being able to serve. So on the one hand, I
Speaker 2: can understand his teenage hormonal get me out there. I
Speaker 2: have no idea what I'm getting into. But the fact
Speaker 2: that the mom was like, I think maybe this is
Speaker 2: a good idea for you, that piece of it just
Speaker 2: feels incredibly, incredibly foreign to me. Real. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also it was going on the Bob Busch story
Speaker 1: when he says it sixty seven people from his high
Speaker 1: school died in the war in a town of ten
Speaker 1: thousand people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were only twenty five kids per grade
Speaker 2: in high school.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just bananas. It is bananas, totally bananas,
Speaker 1: It really is. The Henry Johnson story was another complete
Speaker 1: surprise to me. But it's funny because it's something that
Speaker 1: I have been thinking about and writing about a little bit,
Speaker 1: which is this question of what do you do with
Speaker 1: your anger? So he's of all the stories you tell,
Speaker 1: he's the one who comes home angry. Yeah, it's such
Speaker 1: a weird. First of all, that ideal is part of
Speaker 1: the reason why this series is so fascinating is that
Speaker 1: there are so many emotional dimensions to it. And here
Speaker 1: we have this guy who comes home angry, and the
Speaker 1: great question he faces is what he does with his anger?
Speaker 2: Right, and the fact that he I mean, of course,
Speaker 2: he was coming home and he's lauded as this war hero,
Speaker 2: and I think he, like the other men in the
Speaker 2: Harlem Hell Fighters, thought we're being treated as war heroes.
Speaker 2: The world has changed, America's changed. Here we are things
Speaker 2: are going to be different now. And then, of course
Speaker 2: Henry realizes very quickly that he's back in exactly the
Speaker 2: same society that he left, and that question of what
Speaker 2: to do with your anger? Do you retreat, do you
Speaker 2: keep to yourself, or do you go out there and
Speaker 2: give voice to it? The fact that he did give
Speaker 2: voice to it then leads to him being essentially banished, well,
Speaker 2: banished from the speaking circuit, but also he eventually dies
Speaker 2: alone and penniless and generally forgotten. And I think that
Speaker 2: feeling of I've done I've done this thing, and you
Speaker 2: can actually see that in the Mary Walker episode as well.
Speaker 2: You know, she has served her country and now she
Speaker 2: wants to be allowed to wear pants and vote and
Speaker 2: fight for all of these other things that are that
Speaker 2: are important to her. And this idea that if you've served,
Speaker 2: and if you've if you've put yourself in harm's way
Speaker 2: for your country, then you should expect something in return.
Speaker 2: And neither one of them necessarily expected the medal or
Speaker 2: the honor. What they expected was to be treated like
Speaker 2: a full citizen of the country they had served. And
Speaker 2: that element is really interesting to me.
Speaker 1: From the idea that the rest of so they had
Speaker 1: this notion that it's not that they are none of
Speaker 1: them say that they're owed this. No, they just they
Speaker 1: expect part of their definition of a kind of just
Speaker 1: outcome to their service. You know that it is the
Speaker 1: inability of the rest of society to make that same
Speaker 1: leap that's so kind of fascinating, Like so that everyone
Speaker 1: else looks at Henry Johnson and says, the implications of
Speaker 1: your contribution, your bravery do not extend beyond the battlefield.
Speaker 1: It's basically what they're saying to him is, sure, you
Speaker 1: did this incredible thing. You said all these lives and
Speaker 1: you've thought so bravely, and you surrendered your own health
Speaker 1: and blah blah blah, you came home. That's it. The
Speaker 1: story ends there. Right, you don't have a right. The
Speaker 1: fight is not you get to keep fighting. You don't
Speaker 1: need to. You don't need you don't get to kind
Speaker 1: of perpetuate some chain of consequences from your actions over
Speaker 1: in Europe. And that's his anguish is he doesn't understand
Speaker 1: that right.
Speaker 2: Right, you know, they'll say, Okay, we're going to throw
Speaker 2: you a bone, we're going to put some money together
Speaker 2: to buy you a house, and we're going to name
Speaker 2: a road after you. All of that's going to happen.
Speaker 2: And then the moment that he tells the truth, and
Speaker 2: he really did not do much more than just tell
Speaker 2: the truth of what had happened in Europe to him,
Speaker 2: all of that stuff goes away and he sees it.
Speaker 2: He must have seen it for the sort of fiction
Speaker 2: that it was. That he was only allowed to be
Speaker 2: one thing. He was defined in one very specific way,
Speaker 2: and that was all he was allowed to be.
Speaker 1: It's funny the Henry Johnson story is of all of
Speaker 1: the stories, it is the most contemporary because the whole
Speaker 1: time I was listening to. That was what I was
Speaker 1: thinking about, was the fact that of some portion, a
Speaker 1: significant portion of the homelessness problem in his country is veterans,
Speaker 1: right right, often with some form of PTSD or who
Speaker 1: come home unable to function and have effectively in many
Speaker 1: communities been cast aside. Yes, And I didn't realize this
Speaker 1: until I did a story of Revision's History episode once
Speaker 1: and I went to Jacksonville, Florida, which is one of
Speaker 1: these quite a progressive place when it comes to dealing
Speaker 1: with homelessness. And like many towns, they do a census
Speaker 1: of their homeless and they can tell you exactly who
Speaker 1: they're homeless, are, where they come from, and and there
Speaker 1: are certain they said, there was certain communities in the
Speaker 1: country where the homelessness problem is a veteran problem, like
Speaker 1: depending on your proximity to you know, military bases or
Speaker 1: parts of the country where veterans and like that's this,
Speaker 1: it's the Henry Johnson story. Yeah right. They came home
Speaker 1: in pieces having done something on behalf of their country,
Speaker 1: and the country said it's over right, right, we no
Speaker 1: longer Yeah you did this great thing. We don't have
Speaker 1: any ongoing obligation towards you. That's Henry Johnson. Is this weird.
Speaker 1: It's a powerful story because it's we didn't learn from
Speaker 1: it at all. What he was saying was, you still
Speaker 1: have an obligation to me after I come home. We
Speaker 1: still don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I mean that there's a difference, of course,
Speaker 2: between the veteran services that you had after World War One,
Speaker 2: which were incredibly minimal, and PTSD wasn't really recognized as
Speaker 2: a thing and not dealt with. I mean even through
Speaker 2: World War Two where we talk about, you know, tiber
Speaker 2: comes home, he doesn't really want to talk about what
Speaker 2: happened to him. You know, there's this feeling of like,
Speaker 2: you know, the man in the gray flannel suit, you
Speaker 2: come home, you just tamp it all down, you don't
Speaker 2: deal with it. And I think what's interesting to me
Speaker 2: about the Jay Vargas story in this regard is that
Speaker 2: he went on he had this incredibly traumatic experience in
Speaker 2: Vietnam where they were fighting, you know, hand to hand.
Speaker 2: I mean, the descriptions of it are mind blowing. And
Speaker 2: then he continues on as a marine for thirty years
Speaker 2: and never talks about it. And then it's finally after
Speaker 2: he retires from the core and he goes into Veterans
Speaker 2: Services that he really comes face to face with how
Speaker 2: important it is to deal with mental health of veterans.
Speaker 2: He admits that he had PTSD, but he couldn't even
Speaker 2: talk about his story for thirty six years. And here's
Speaker 2: this is, of course, the other interesting thing about the
Speaker 2: Medal of Honors that it does become this platform. And
Speaker 2: jvarc is an example of somebody who took that platform
Speaker 2: and said, we need to do more for our veterans
Speaker 2: with PTSD. And one of the things that we need
Speaker 2: to do is be talking about these stories and giving
Speaker 2: them the mental health help that they need.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll be back.
Speaker 3: In a minute.
Speaker 1: Whether there's a what's the equivalent outside the world of
Speaker 1: is really equivalent in any other part of society to
Speaker 1: the Medal of Honor, to the implications of it, to
Speaker 1: the kind of platform it gives you. I mean, I
Speaker 1: suppose you could the Nobel Yeah, I was going to
Speaker 1: sort of the Nobel Prize for is that rarefied It
Speaker 1: is the Fields Medal, which is that's the one they
Speaker 1: give to brilliant mathematicians.
Speaker 2: Well, and it also is one of those things where
Speaker 2: I did not understand until I started working on this,
Speaker 2: how incredibly difficult it is, particularly these days, to get
Speaker 2: a Medal of Honor. I mean, obviously you have to
Speaker 2: have done something above and beyond. But that was what
Speaker 2: the Alwan Cash episode was all about, was how incredibly
Speaker 2: difficult it is to be approved for a Medal of Honor.
Speaker 2: And the John Chapman episode is the same idea that
Speaker 2: he's done this incredibly brave and courageous thing, and then
Speaker 2: years later there's fight to elevate his award to the
Speaker 2: Medal of Honor, and there was a huge fight to
Speaker 2: get Henry Johnson the medal too. So it just it's
Speaker 2: one of those things where you have to check all
Speaker 2: these boxes because they want it, I mean, the military
Speaker 2: wants and needs it to feel like it is only
Speaker 2: given to a very select few. And then, of course
Speaker 2: there are the people who get their medal taken away,
Speaker 2: like Mary Walker in the Great Purge of nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: Didn't you ever get it back?
Speaker 2: Yeah, she got it back in the nineteen seventies. Jimmy
Speaker 2: Carter gave it back to her in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: after sort of distant members of her family had pressed
Speaker 2: the military to look at her records again, and so
Speaker 2: the decision from nineteen seventeen was overturned, but they rescinded
Speaker 2: nine hundred medals.
Speaker 1: These are I know that in each of these cases
Speaker 1: the amount of material of in some cases it's hundreds
Speaker 1: of pages, right, that goes into your Medal of honor file.
Speaker 1: We tell stories at our thirty minutes. You must have
Speaker 1: left an extraordinary amount on the cutting room floor. Tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about what you had to leave out.
Speaker 2: Well, my favorite things that I had to leave out.
Speaker 2: There is a great Jay Vargus anecdote of running into
Speaker 2: then Texas Governor George Bush at some veterans golf event
Speaker 2: and George Bush says to Jave Vargas, I want you
Speaker 2: to come and work for me, and Jay Vargas says,
Speaker 2: I have no interest in going to Texas. Sorry, not
Speaker 2: going to happen. And George Bush, who's i think at
Speaker 2: this point not even really running for president yet, is like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: when I'm in the White House, you can come and
Speaker 2: work for me there, and Jay Vargas sort of laughs
Speaker 2: and he's like, just shows how he thought then and
Speaker 2: now and then lo and behold George Bush takes office
Speaker 2: and Jay Barcas gets a phone call and it's George
Speaker 2: Bush saying, all right, I told you, I want you.
Speaker 2: I want you to work with me in veterans affairs.
Speaker 2: And the fact that Jay Vargas was continually on the
Speaker 2: phone with some president or another was like my favorite
Speaker 2: thing about him, other than the thing about his mother,
Speaker 2: which of course I loved. And he's so sort of
Speaker 2: goofy and charming about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he did go oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I mean, he stayed on the West Coast,
Speaker 2: but he was kind of the West Coast veterans affairs person.
Speaker 1: So anything else that you loved that you.
Speaker 2: Couldn't choose, well, I mean, there was a whole story
Speaker 2: about the training of the Harlem Hell Fighters. They were
Speaker 2: initially sent to South Carolina to train, and the community
Speaker 2: at the time really didn't want black soldiers there, and
Speaker 2: so just from the moment that they got into uniform
Speaker 2: and started to train for war, they were treated totally
Speaker 2: differently than the white soldiers were. And there was a
Speaker 2: whole story about that that was incredibly moving and depressing,
Speaker 2: and it just kind of got in the way of
Speaker 2: the action moving the story forward, but very interesting and
Speaker 2: Mary Walker did a million different things in between her
Speaker 2: battlefield stints. She was like the busiest person on the planet.
Speaker 2: She would go back to Washington, d C. When she
Speaker 2: wasn't tending to soldiers on the battlefield and start little
Speaker 2: charities and help people. And she set up a home
Speaker 2: for wives and mothers who were in the capitol looking
Speaker 2: for their wounded you know, brothers, sons, fathers, husbands. She
Speaker 2: was just incredibly active. She had like the energy of
Speaker 2: fifteen people. Yeah, if you could meet one of these people,
Speaker 2: who would it be? Well, I would love to meet
Speaker 2: Mary Walker. I wouldn't really want to be stuck in
Speaker 2: an elevator with her because I think it would be
Speaker 2: like a little bit too much. I would like to
Speaker 2: meet her for a short period of time if I
Speaker 2: had an exit at the end of it, because I
Speaker 2: sort of feel like she was just and she was
Speaker 2: a lot. There was a lot there.
Speaker 1: I know the answer you I know what name You're
Speaker 1: going to say.
Speaker 2: What are you think I'm going to say, Oh, my god, yes,
Speaker 2: Tedru one cutest man on the planet, which, of course,
Speaker 2: you know. Here's the other thing is that these guys
Speaker 2: and I can just gay guys because there are so
Speaker 2: many of them are so adorable. You see their pictures
Speaker 2: when they first join up in the service, and it's
Speaker 2: just a parade of good looking guys. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: somewhat ridiculous, but Tybar Ruben seems like the most charming
Speaker 2: of gentlemen and hilarious, and I hope when you listen
Speaker 2: to it you can sort of get past is incredibly
Speaker 2: thick Hungarian accent, which of course he never lost, because
Speaker 2: he's really funny and just as cute as he could
Speaker 2: possibly be, which you know, for me is high praise.
Speaker 1: He's the one. I feel like, if if you had
Speaker 1: to write a book about one of these stories, it
Speaker 1: would be Tiba Rubin, wouldn't it.
Speaker 2: It would be or a movie. I think that, you know,
Speaker 2: the Tybar Ruben story. Why Steven Spielberg has not made
Speaker 2: this movie is completely bizarre to me, because it really is.
Speaker 2: There is NonStop action, there's a real kind of molden
Speaker 2: heart at the center of it. He was devastatingly good looking, so,
Speaker 2: you know, fun to cast that role.
Speaker 1: Jake Jillenhall. I was watching Jake Jillenhall and presumed innocent.
Speaker 1: My whole thing was like, he's he's too handsome, much
Speaker 1: too much. Wait, what's he doing is working as a prosecutor.
Speaker 1: He should be like a male model.
Speaker 2: Yeah there you go. Yeah, No, Tyvor or Tyler Rubin
Speaker 2: was just he was. He was the whole package. But
Speaker 2: then you know, got back from got back from Korea,
Speaker 2: and Hollywood also saw how good looking he was, because
Speaker 2: you know, there are these pictures of him on a
Speaker 2: stretcher coming off the you know whatever, the ship that
Speaker 2: brought him back from North Korea. I mean, he's just,
Speaker 2: you know, looks like Marlon Brando, and so Hollywood, you know,
Speaker 2: he lived in California, So Hollywood sees his picture and
Speaker 2: he's starts swaning around while with these starlits and taking
Speaker 2: them to premieres and stuff. And there's talk that they're
Speaker 2: going to make a movie of his life. And he's like, nah,
Speaker 2: I don't really want to talk about it. I'm fine, thanks,
Speaker 2: and he goes he had this beloved brother, Emory, who
Speaker 2: opened a liquor store, and he went worked for him
Speaker 2: and had a family and got married and the whole thing.
Speaker 2: But you know, he would have told you like, oh,
Speaker 2: there's nothing that interesting about my life, which he says
Speaker 2: in the tape.
Speaker 1: You know, he says, when did he died? You know,
Speaker 1: it breaks my heart that we're doing this twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: He dies in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he died in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: We're looking him up right now. In case you're wondering
Speaker 1: what's happening here, he is. In fact, I can confirm
Speaker 1: incredibly handsome. Yeah, Meret. On that note, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for this series, which has been amazing,
Speaker 1: and please, please please let's do season two and continue
Speaker 1: the big mom energy for as long as we can.
Speaker 2: Wow, you know, big dad energy for even two.
Speaker 1: Big d Okay, thank you, Meredith.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor. Stories of Courage is written by Meredith
Speaker 1: Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins, Costanza Gallardo, and Izzy Carter.
Speaker 1: Our editor is ben A d Alfh Haffrey. Sound design
Speaker 1: and additional music by Jake Gorsky, Recording engineering by Nina Lawrence,
Speaker 1: fact checking by Arthur Gombert's Original music by Eric Phillips.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to series creator Dan McGinn to the Congressional
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor Society and Adam Plumpton. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Malcolm Bappa