00:00:17 Speaker 1: Pushkin. This year, America turns two hundred and fifty, two hundred and fifty years of strength and heroism. 00:00:32 Speaker 2: You love the man to your right, to you left, to your front of your ear. You're willing to die for him, and you will to die for your country. 00:00:40 Speaker 1: Two hundred and fifty years of struggle and survival. They hit the first gunship and he yells, I'm hit, I'm hit, I'm going down. 00:00:49 Speaker 3: It shocked me. The first casualties we took. It was like the hammer dropping, you know, and the people were dying. 00:00:57 Speaker 1: Two hundred and fifty years of sacrifice and bravery. 00:01:01 Speaker 2: I realized this is a suicide vest I didn't care about my well being. I wanted to make sure he was as far away as possible, as quickly as possible for everybody else. 00:01:11 Speaker 1: A lot of times over the past two hundred and fifty years, our American experiment seemed like it would fall apart. At the scenes, our. 00:01:18 Speaker 2: Great specific outpost in the Hawaiian Islands is ruthlessly bombed. 00:01:23 Speaker 3: Pearl Harvill was being bombed. I wanted to show that I'm an American, so I volunteered for the army. 00:01:29 Speaker 1: When you look closely at those moments. What held us together was ordinary people rising to the occasion and extraordinary circumstances. 00:01:38 Speaker 3: That's the nature of courage, not being unafraid, but confronting fear and danger in a selfless fashion. 00:01:46 Speaker 1: I'm JR. Martinez and on this season of Medal of Honor Stories of Courage, we're celebrating two hundred and fifty years of America's highest award because bravery is in all of us. 00:01:58 Speaker 3: I'm not going to sit here and say I was afraid, but these were my guys. Your job was to look out for them. 00:02:06 Speaker 2: If you have to come home, I'll bring home. 00:02:08 Speaker 1: That's my duty, it's my honor because the same qualities that carried us through the first two hundred and fifty years will help us in the next two hundred and fifty. 00:02:18 Speaker 3: We are country of heroes. We believe in heroes. 00:02:24 Speaker 1: From Pushkin Industries, this is season three of Metal of Honor, Stories of Courage, out on May twentieth. Wherever you get your podcasts, subscribe to Pushkin Plus to get episodes of Metal of Honor early and ad free. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and early ad free listening from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors. Your subscription helps our independent team continue to make the shows you enjoy. Find Pushkin Plus on the Medal of Honor show page on Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm slash plus. Use the code mooh two five for twenty five percent off an annual subscription, and thank you for your support.