Speaker 1: This is our American stories, and we tell stories about
Speaker 1: everything here on this show and our favorite types of
Speaker 1: stories in the end, well they come from our listeners,
Speaker 1: and this next story comes from one of our listeners,
Speaker 1: Richard Munions. Today he tells us two stories on living
Speaker 1: in history from the perspective of those who experienced it
Speaker 1: and didn't even know it at the time. He has
Speaker 1: our own Monty Montgomery with the story.
Speaker 2: Punctuality is an important virtue to a lot of people,
Speaker 2: but for Richard Muniez, it was his senior year history
Speaker 2: teacher that changed his outlook on life by skipping out
Speaker 2: on the dates and class.
Speaker 3: When I was in the twelfth grade, I had a
Speaker 3: history teacher with my name of Bill Mayhem. Now Bill
Speaker 3: was a heck of a lot older than I was
Speaker 3: at the time, and he had kind of a unique
Speaker 3: approach to history. He felt that dates weren't important. In fact,
Speaker 3: he also felt that dates is what turned people off
Speaker 3: about history. You know, you had well Columbus came here
Speaker 3: in fourteen ninety two and stuff like that, But what
Speaker 3: was learned of history to him, most of it was boredom.
Speaker 3: They couldn't see the relation that what happened yesterday, how
Speaker 3: it impacts us today. If certain things happened happened, we
Speaker 3: probably wouldn't be here today. But history is also a
Speaker 3: lot more than about dates and about great people. It's
Speaker 3: about little people. It's about the stories that are told,
Speaker 3: stories that are usually forgotten within the generation or two.
Speaker 3: For example, about Columbus coming to the America's important event. Yeah,
Speaker 3: without it, like I said, most of us probably wouldn't
Speaker 3: be here. However, what story you're told by the sailors
Speaker 3: who went with Columbus, What stories we're told by the
Speaker 3: Native Americans that meant them, what actually happened? We have
Speaker 3: those events in our head. We have these events that
Speaker 3: history gave us, but in most cases they're kind of
Speaker 3: bare bone. Well, I've been lucky enough to have met
Speaker 3: a lot of people who were at pivotal moments in history,
Speaker 3: or they are events that history has kind of glossed over.
Speaker 3: I've been in a few of those myself, and it's
Speaker 3: very rare that you ever see the big picture. You're
Speaker 3: part of it, and all of a sudden there are
Speaker 3: you know, you've gone through it and stuff like that,
Speaker 3: and afterwards you're telling the story about what happened, and
Speaker 3: a lot of times you have no real understanding of
Speaker 3: what you went through. For instance, I was in the
Speaker 3: Gulf War. I was in two of the biggest battles
Speaker 3: of the Gulf War. And it wasn't until years later
Speaker 3: I even learned that they had names, and I wound
Speaker 3: up talking of people, and I've discovered that their stories
Speaker 3: were at pivotal moments. For instance, there's a man by
Speaker 3: name of Levi Martinez. He was the Battle of the Bulge.
Speaker 3: I remember when he told me this story. I was
Speaker 3: getting ready to leave for basic training. Levi was my
Speaker 3: father in law at the time, and I'd asked him
Speaker 3: if he would give me something that belonged to him
Speaker 3: that I could take with me kind of, I say,
Speaker 3: I guess you might say it's a good luck charm,
Speaker 3: whatever the case may be. Well, he gave me his
Speaker 3: army ribbons and sitting right smack in the middle of
Speaker 3: this is a bronze star. And I asked him, I said,
Speaker 3: why did you receive this was? What was the story
Speaker 3: behind receiving your bronze star? And he showed me the citation.
Speaker 3: The citation it was usual military stuff. You're using fire
Speaker 3: and maneuver. Private Levi Martinez was able to close upon
Speaker 3: and capture a German machine gun. Nest Okay, that's pretty
Speaker 3: cool stuff. Then he told me his version of the story.
Speaker 3: This story happened like this. He was in Germany fighting
Speaker 3: with Patton's army, and they had been advancing and whatnot,
Speaker 3: and it was getting cold, Christmas was coming in. Winter
Speaker 3: was here, and they were kind of slowing things down
Speaker 3: a little bit. However, he also got worded at this
Speaker 3: time that his mother had passed away, and that it
Speaker 3: was he wanted desperately to go home and at least
Speaker 3: see the family. Well that wasn't about to happen, after all,
Speaker 3: you know, here they are in the middle of a war.
Speaker 3: He was seriously needed right where he was. So what
Speaker 3: wound up happening was this. They received orders to turn
Speaker 3: nine degrees and start walking. He called this the long Walk.
Speaker 3: And they walked and they walked and they walked, and
Speaker 3: they was storming on him. It was cold, and they
Speaker 3: just kept going. They knew that the Germans had attacked,
Speaker 3: and that this was a desperate situation, that they had
Speaker 3: the hundred first Airborne and several other units just you know,
Speaker 3: literally pinned down. It wasn't good for us. They they
Speaker 3: had to get up there and take care of things.
Speaker 3: But again, he wasn't really concentrating on the war at
Speaker 3: the time. He wanted to go home and be with
Speaker 3: his with his people. That for all you know, his
Speaker 3: heart was breaking over there, and here he is unable
Speaker 3: to even express his grief. I remember him telling me
Speaker 3: that as they were walking one day, all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: a guy shoves him out, shoves him and throws him
Speaker 3: into a snowdrift. And he gets up and asks what
Speaker 3: the heck that was about, And the guy said, you
Speaker 3: almost walked into the walk into the path of the
Speaker 3: tank there. He already fallen asleep while he was walking,
Speaker 3: and if this guy hadn't shoved him, they'd probably fallen
Speaker 3: under the treads of the tank and then ran over.
Speaker 3: Then they started getting up into the area around baths
Speaker 3: Stone and whatnot. The Germans had seized this one small
Speaker 3: town that established a machine gun nest outside of the community,
Speaker 3: and this machine gun nests opened up on him and
Speaker 3: his people and just firing away from having Pitten down
Speaker 3: pretty good. Well in the middle of all this, he's
Speaker 3: thinking about his mother and all he wants to do
Speaker 3: is stand up and go home. Well, finally he said,
Speaker 3: heck with this, I'm going to go and I'm going
Speaker 3: home one way or the other. So he stands up
Speaker 3: and he starts approaching the machine gun nest. There's no
Speaker 3: fire maneuver to this, there's no running over from one
Speaker 3: point of cover to another. And while firing at firing
Speaker 3: at the enemy, he had just a nice little casual
Speaker 3: stroll right up to the machine gun nest and they're
Speaker 3: shooting at him. His people are yelling at him to
Speaker 3: get down. He just walking. He wants to go home,
Speaker 3: and he's going to go home one way or the other.
Speaker 3: Eventually he winds up on the crest the machine gun nests,
Speaker 3: looking down the seriously astonished Germans. And while he's up there,
Speaker 3: he decides, well, well i'm here, I might as well
Speaker 3: do something about it, points his rifle at him, and
Speaker 3: they surrendered. And that's the story how he got his
Speaker 3: bronze star. That's what history is about. It's about people
Speaker 3: involved in extraordinary things, extraordinary events, and not realizing it.
Speaker 3: An example from my own personal history happened during the
Speaker 3: Gulf War. Now, this is doesn't involve a battle, doesn't
Speaker 3: involve lighting up an enemy tank and fired on it
Speaker 3: or anything like that. No, this involves almost the aftermath.
Speaker 3: I mean the war was over to extends of purposes
Speaker 3: with beaten the iraqis Now, what we were doing is
Speaker 3: we were getting ready to go home. I was a
Speaker 3: military policeman at the time, and what a military police
Speaker 3: do is they are responsible for movement. We move the
Speaker 3: division and part of our job was to perform the
Speaker 3: route recon from Iraq through Kuwait and back to Saudi
Speaker 3: Arabia's And we were excited about this. I mean we've
Speaker 3: been over there for about six months and this meant
Speaker 3: we were one step closer to going back home. I
Speaker 3: mean it was great, we've made it through the war.
Speaker 3: Now here's the problem. The war might be over, the
Speaker 3: weapons of war are still out there and they're still
Speaker 3: very much alive. Despite the ceasefire. You could still get
Speaker 3: yourself hurt or killed out there. So what we did
Speaker 3: was my platoon we were told to go back and
Speaker 3: perform as route recon. So we're going down high highways
Speaker 3: seventy and ahead of us we saw a bus and
Speaker 3: on the back window was a placard that had a
Speaker 3: British flight printed on it with the Brits. Now it
Speaker 3: pulled over and a bunch of guys started getting out.
Speaker 3: It's obviously, you know, on the road bathroom break. We're
Speaker 3: about fifty yards away from when all of a sudden
Speaker 3: we heard cow boom and there's this burst of dust
Speaker 3: up and several of the British guys wanted to falling over,
Speaker 3: fallen back. Oh, we knew what had happened right away.
Speaker 3: What had happened. We had pulled over and walked right
Speaker 3: into a minefield that was on the side of the road. Now,
Speaker 3: our first instincts is human beings, says, oh my god,
Speaker 3: we see people in trouble. We're police officers. We have
Speaker 3: three people with us who are trained as medics. Why
Speaker 3: not pull over and help them? Our allies, fellow human
Speaker 3: beings on top of that, were hurt. We were in
Speaker 3: a position to help them. That's what we're going to do. Well,
Speaker 3: as we're starting to pull over, all of a sudden,
Speaker 3: this one British guy comes around to think. He's waving
Speaker 3: ass and yelling ass not to stop, to keep going,
Speaker 3: and that's why lieutenant yelled, we have medics with us,
Speaker 3: and he said, so do we. It's too dangerous here.
Speaker 3: We'll tree our own wounded, keep moving. So we wound
Speaker 3: up going past to this day. I don't know what
Speaker 3: happened he's been. I don't know if they any of
Speaker 3: them were killed. I don't know if any of them
Speaker 3: were just injured and have recovered from their injuries. Again,
Speaker 3: it's history. You get your little teeny tiny segment of it,
Speaker 3: and you don't know what happened next.
Speaker 1: Richard mune As his story two of them, two soldiers'
Speaker 1: stories here on our American Stories