Speaker 1: Bushkin.
Speaker 2: It was a late fall day and four men walked
Speaker 2: through a field rifles in hand. The tall, dry grass
Speaker 2: rustled as they moved. They were alert, listening for the
Speaker 2: sounds of other bodies moving through it too, watching for
Speaker 2: a shadow or a bend in the grass. They went
Speaker 2: as silently as they could, ready to shoot as soon
Speaker 2: as they locked in a target. The four men with
Speaker 2: the Vargas brothers from Winslow, Arizona, all the Marines, and
Speaker 2: they were out hunting. The first brother caught a deer
Speaker 2: in his sights and shot it. He'd bagged a buck. Eventually,
Speaker 2: the second and third brothers did too, but the fourth brother, Jay,
Speaker 2: the youngest, couldn't seem to get one. He kept retreating
Speaker 2: to their campsite, putting his gun down. His brother's cheer
Speaker 2: him on, tried to keep his spirits up. This was
Speaker 2: their yearly trip, a family tradition did, all grown up
Speaker 2: hunting together. Now they vowed to stay out until the
Speaker 2: last brother got his buck. They didn't want him to
Speaker 2: miss out, but he just couldn't seem to shoot his rifle.
Speaker 2: I can picture it, the coolness of the day, the
Speaker 2: warmth between the brothers, the bright blue western sky and
Speaker 2: the call of birds overhead, and like an electric current
Speaker 2: underneath it all panic from Jay who couldn't pull the trigger,
Speaker 2: who in fact, would never pull a trigger again. He
Speaker 2: couldn't shoot a gun without remembering all the times he'd
Speaker 2: done the same thing in Vietnam, and he had something
Speaker 2: else to remember Vietnam by a Medal of Honor. I'm
Speaker 2: Malcolm Glavell, and this is Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage.
Speaker 2: The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in
Speaker 2: the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery in combat
Speaker 2: at the risk of life, above and beyond the call
Speaker 2: of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the way
Speaker 2: up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in
Speaker 2: the field to the White House. This show is about
Speaker 2: those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what
Speaker 2: their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.
Speaker 2: The story I'm going to tell you today is brutally violent,
Speaker 2: and there's a reason those graphic details matter. It has
Speaker 2: to do with the aftermath of that violence. We'll look
Speaker 2: at why it's so important to talk honestly about what
Speaker 2: happens on the battlefield and how veterans tell their stories,
Speaker 2: if they can even bring themselves to tell them at all.
Speaker 2: This episode is about Jay Vargas and a story that
Speaker 2: took him more than thirty years to tell, but once
Speaker 2: he did, the change things not just for him, but
Speaker 2: for hundreds of other men and women just like him.
Speaker 2: By nineteen sixty eight, US combat forces had been fighting
Speaker 2: the war in Vietnam for three years. That January, the
Speaker 2: North Vietnamese military had launched a series of surprise attacks
Speaker 2: throughout South Vietnam, a campaign known as a Tet Offensive.
Speaker 2: It was a norse attempt to bring about a decisive
Speaker 2: end to the war. A young Marine captain named Jay
Speaker 2: Vargas was there. He was twenty nine, on his second
Speaker 2: tour of Vietnam. From the outset, he could tell it
Speaker 2: was going to be even tougher this time around here,
Speaker 2: he is remembering back on that tour.
Speaker 3: I got in it in late sixty seven and through
Speaker 3: sixty eight, which was the worst time to be in Vietnam.
Speaker 3: We knew that the North Vietnamese were coming and it
Speaker 3: was starting to turn up ugly throughout the South Vietnam everywhere.
Speaker 2: The Tet Offensive didn't end the war, but it changed
Speaker 2: the way people in the US saw Vietnam. Watching the
Speaker 2: carnage unfold on the nightly news, the American public realized
Speaker 2: that despite what they had been told, the conflict wasn't
Speaker 2: coming to an end. The government had lied this could
Speaker 2: keep going for years. The North Vietnamese leadership knew that
Speaker 2: popular opinion was souring on the war. They saw an
Speaker 2: opportunity strike again hard, and maybe then the US would
Speaker 2: lose heart for the war altogether. So in the early
Speaker 2: spring of sixty eight, they planned another campaign. This one
Speaker 2: centered on the U. S supply base of Dong Ha.
Speaker 2: The base was set about twelve miles south of the
Speaker 2: demilitarized zone on the Beau du Quaviete rivers, and it
Speaker 2: supplied all the friendly forces in the northern part of
Speaker 2: South Vietnam with ammunition, supplies and medical support. It was
Speaker 2: strategically very important. A series of abandoned villages sat across
Speaker 2: the river from the base, The largest one was Dido There,
Speaker 2: the North Vietnamese military secretly built a sprawling maze of
Speaker 2: bunkers and armed positions pointed directly at the Dongha base.
Speaker 2: Then they quietly filled Dideaux with thousands and thousands of
Speaker 2: North Vietnamese Army troops, all of them setting their sights
Speaker 2: on Dongh. Their plan take the base by surprise, overwhelmed
Speaker 2: the roughly seven hundred Marines that were stationed there and
Speaker 2: essentially shut down US operations in that part of Vietnam.
Speaker 2: The entire area was covered in lush vegetation, which made
Speaker 2: it easy to hide what they were doing. The American
Speaker 2: command had no idea what was coming. On the last
Speaker 2: day of April nineteen sixty eight, the North Vietnamese Army
Speaker 2: NVA for short, struck the U. S forces at Dongha.
Speaker 2: They opened fire on a U. S. Navy river boat,
Speaker 2: killing a sailor and wounding several others. The Lieutenant colonel
Speaker 2: in command of the Marines, William Weiss, sent a company
Speaker 2: around two hundred men to investigate the abandoned village of Dideaux.
Speaker 4: Then, when we found out how extensive and the enemy
Speaker 4: positions were, they were very well constructed bunkers, They were
Speaker 4: very well camouflaged, mutually supporting in order to take one
Speaker 4: bunker who had came under the fire of two or
Speaker 4: three others, and it had obviously taken them a long
Speaker 4: time to build them. They had been in that area
Speaker 4: for quite a while to construct those positions.
Speaker 2: The marines that we sent were immediately drawn into battle.
Speaker 2: By the afternoon, a third of them had been killed
Speaker 2: or metavacked out. Remember, there weren't that many US troops
Speaker 2: had DONGHA to begin with, fewer than seven hundred. They
Speaker 2: would end up facing down more than ten thousand NVA.
Speaker 2: One of those marines stationed nearby was jav Argus. Jay
Speaker 2: was charismatic and soft spoken, with regulation and short, dark
Speaker 2: hair and olive skin, quick to grin. He was the
Speaker 2: company commander of roughly one hundred and seventy men. Jay
Speaker 2: believed that his guys, the Marines of Golf Company or
Speaker 2: Company G, were some of the best in the service
Speaker 2: or anywhere.
Speaker 3: Hard tough seventeen eighteen nineteen year old marines.
Speaker 1: I'm not ken ye I have. They were the toughest,
Speaker 1: meanest little bastards I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: In fact, they called the whole second Battalion of the
Speaker 2: fourth Marines the magnificent Bastards. They were tough and they
Speaker 2: would have to be. Lieutenant Colonel Weiss needed all of
Speaker 2: those magnificent bastards to drive the NVA away from the base.
Speaker 2: Jay and his marines were stationed several miles from did
Speaker 2: Because of NVA fire, it was too dangerous to fly
Speaker 2: the man in, so Jay's company was going to have
Speaker 2: to get there on foot. By the time they started march,
Speaker 2: it was dark and it took them more than five
Speaker 2: hours to get down to the battle. They were dogged
Speaker 2: the entire way by an onslaught of artillery and rockets.
Speaker 2: Motor shells fell all around them, exploding into the soft soil,
Speaker 2: sending shrapnel everywhere.
Speaker 3: Quantafeo has took some hits, and I didn't lose anyone,
Speaker 3: but we were all you know. I had one leg
Speaker 3: messed up and everyone had shrappl on them.
Speaker 2: In fact, Jay's leg was really messed up, but he
Speaker 2: knew that if anyone realized it, he would be taken
Speaker 2: out of the action. So he had his leg bandaged
Speaker 2: and he changed into a clean pair of pants and
Speaker 2: swore the medical who helped him to secrecy he wouldn't
Speaker 2: leave his company. By the time the men made it
Speaker 2: to base, they were exhausted, but there was no time
Speaker 2: to sleep. They were told to continue on to the fighting.
Speaker 3: That was the orders of the menetu land at Dideaux.
Speaker 3: I want you to continue and push on through.
Speaker 2: Early in the morning of May first, Jay's company got
Speaker 2: on boats and were ferried across the river to Dideaux.
Speaker 2: Once on land, they were seven hundred meters away from
Speaker 2: the village. First they had to cross a rice patty,
Speaker 2: and that patty turned out to have ENVA gunners on
Speaker 2: three sides. Jaye and his men crept forward through thigh
Speaker 2: high grass, rustled as they moved. The men were exhausted
Speaker 2: but alert, their ears hyper tuned to every noise, watching
Speaker 2: for a shadow or bend in the grass, guns in
Speaker 2: their hands, ready to shoot. As soon as they locked
Speaker 2: in on a target. Shots seemed to be coming at
Speaker 2: them from every corner of the patty, And then they
Speaker 2: came to a horrifying realization the shots were coming from
Speaker 2: inside the patty too.
Speaker 1: We had spider holes popping up all over the place.
Speaker 3: You know, guys that were in the ground with bamboo
Speaker 3: on top of them. They would jump up and just
Speaker 3: start shooting us. And you know, I started losing guys,
Speaker 3: but we were killing some too.
Speaker 2: It's like a horror movie. The ground would shift and
Speaker 2: a marine would fall dead or wounded. Jay realized they
Speaker 2: had to knock out the machine gun nests on the
Speaker 2: perimeter if they were going to survive. So he took
Speaker 2: four of his men and made a run for them,
Speaker 2: but they were fish in a barrel. One after another,
Speaker 2: those marines were wounded until Jay was.
Speaker 1: Alone, weighted up all by myself over there.
Speaker 3: But I knocked out three machine heavy machine guns and
Speaker 3: kills fourteen in the trenches that I got hold of,
Speaker 3: and that opened us up and we came through and
Speaker 3: continued the attack.
Speaker 2: Let's take a second to think about Jay's tone here.
Speaker 2: He's chuckling as he talks about this insanely stressful moment
Speaker 2: facing down three machine gun nests on his own. It
Speaker 2: may seem odd, but it's a pretty common reaction to
Speaker 2: traumatic experiences. Laughter keeps the pain at arm's length, and
Speaker 2: in that moment, at that rice patty in Vietnam, Jay
Speaker 2: didn't allow himself to feel any fear at all.
Speaker 1: I had two what's to do?
Speaker 3: And I didn't have time, and for some reason, I
Speaker 3: was pretty dog on calm.
Speaker 2: Finally, Jaye and his men got through the rice patty
Speaker 2: and arrived at the village of Didau. They had been
Speaker 2: fighting for almost twenty four hours straight and it just
Speaker 2: kept going. They began to fight through the village bunker
Speaker 2: a bunker. For a moment, it seemed to them that
Speaker 2: the enemy was pulling back. They might be able to
Speaker 2: secure Dideau, maybe even get some rest at last. But
Speaker 2: the North Vietnamese knew they had way more soldiers than
Speaker 2: the Americans, and they began a ferocious counter attack. The
Speaker 2: Marines were exhausted, short on ammunition, they were down a
Speaker 2: fewer than eighty men. Lieutenant Colonel Weiss told Jay to
Speaker 2: try and find somewhere stable and stay put. Knight was
Speaker 2: approaching the second night in a row without sleep, and
Speaker 2: by then Jay and his remaining men had been pushed
Speaker 2: into a cemetery. As Jay looked around, he realized it
Speaker 2: was full of freshly dug graves, graves of MVA men
Speaker 2: who had been killed and buried during the previous days
Speaker 2: of fighting. If his men were going to make it
Speaker 2: through the night, they needed foxholes to hide in for shelter.
Speaker 2: So Jay made a grim decision.
Speaker 3: The only way that we could survive. And I know
Speaker 3: this sounds cruel, but I told Everyboddy, dig up the
Speaker 3: fresh graves, put the body on the side that becomes
Speaker 3: your foxhul.
Speaker 2: The young Marines climbed into the graves. They were running
Speaker 2: dangerously low on ammunition, and soon enough the cemetery was
Speaker 2: totally surrounded by NVA. He ordered his marines to fix
Speaker 2: their bayonets. Once the last of the AMMA was gone.
Speaker 2: Jay knew they would be fighting hand to hand in
Speaker 2: the cemetery through the long night. Stories about war heroes
Speaker 2: often start in a kind of quiet way. The young
Speaker 2: person who wants to give back, who finds himself in
Speaker 2: the military Sumont by surprise, and then comes into his
Speaker 2: own That's not really the Jay Vargas story. If you
Speaker 2: can be destined to be anything, he was destined to
Speaker 2: be a marine. He was born in nineteen thirty eight
Speaker 2: in Winslow, the youngest of four sons.
Speaker 3: I am the product of an Italian mother and a
Speaker 3: Hispanic father, immigrants of this country.
Speaker 2: Family life revolved around his indomitable mom, Teresa, who was
Speaker 2: something of a local institution. She owned a Western goods
Speaker 2: store and she spoke five languages fluently, including Navajo. His
Speaker 2: father was a newspaperman who worked for the Winslow Mail.
Speaker 2: Jay was close to his brothers, although they were much older.
Speaker 2: The two eldest had joined the Marines when Jay was
Speaker 2: just a little kid, and the third brother, Joseph, followed suit.
Speaker 1: Two of us.
Speaker 3: Angelo and Frank served in World War Two on Ewa GiMA, Okinawa.
Speaker 3: Joseph was just ahead of me, and he served in
Speaker 3: Korea in the Chosan Reservoir, which is an ugly battle
Speaker 3: in what Korea was an ugly war.
Speaker 2: When his brothers came home to Winslow, they never spoke
Speaker 2: about what they saw in combat. There was nothing out
Speaker 2: of the ordinary about that. People of that era rarely
Speaker 2: spoke about their war experiences. It was too hard, if
Speaker 2: not impossible, to reflect back. It was as if by
Speaker 2: not talking about it they could strip away some of
Speaker 2: the terror. Jay flirted with the idea of becoming a
Speaker 2: professional baseball player. In fact, he was recruited into the
Speaker 2: miners and played Triple A after high school, but in
Speaker 2: the back of his mind he had always imagined a
Speaker 2: future in the service.
Speaker 3: I knew where I was going, you know, and I
Speaker 3: used to play marine out there with a broomstick by
Speaker 3: the backyard.
Speaker 2: Teresa, on the other hand, had a different idea. She
Speaker 2: was fine with him joining the military. Both Vargas's parents
Speaker 2: were deeply patriotic and proud of their son's decisions to serve,
Speaker 2: but she did not want him to become a marine.
Speaker 3: She was afraid that I was going to go into
Speaker 3: the Marine Corps. And she says, what's the matter with
Speaker 3: you? You know, stupid though you go into the Navy. They
Speaker 3: sleep in white sheets, big pillows, you know, the smoke,
Speaker 3: big cigars, and you know they sometimes stand on the
Speaker 3: ship and it's just a great life.
Speaker 1: And you still, please, don't go on the Marine Corps.
Speaker 2: She made his brother's promise to dissuade Jay from the corps.
Speaker 3: She told him he will not go on the Marine Corps.
Speaker 3: You will talk to him and he will not go
Speaker 3: on to the rincoaps. You understand, of course, angel and Frank, yes, Mama.
Speaker 2: One Sunday, when the family had gathered for their big
Speaker 2: family meal, the brothers agreed to sit down with Jay
Speaker 2: and talk him out of the Marines, and then their
Speaker 2: mother left the room.
Speaker 1: The meeting lasted about thirty seconds because Angela leaned over says, Jay,
Speaker 1: if you don't go in the Marine Corps, going to
Speaker 1: break your frigging legs.
Speaker 2: So Jay set off for the Marines, but only after
Speaker 2: he had promised his mom that he would make it home.
Speaker 2: On the night of May one, nineteen sixty eight, that
Speaker 2: promise was seeming more and more difficult to keep.
Speaker 3: The NVA knew that we were surrounded. They had us good,
Speaker 3: and nobody could help me. You know, everybody was said,
Speaker 3: they're not going to make it.
Speaker 2: Jay and the Marines of Golf Company, hiding in those
Speaker 2: fresh graves, knew they had to protect their hard won
Speaker 2: perimeter at the cemetery in Dido.
Speaker 1: We fought all night.
Speaker 2: Jay got a call on the radio from the admiral
Speaker 2: in charge of the flotilla of gunships on the Quavillette River.
Speaker 2: He said he was calling in fire to back Jay up.
Speaker 3: It was scary just listening to the rounds come in,
Speaker 3: but it blew half the country side away. You know,
Speaker 3: you could hear the enemy's screaming and yelling because Tho's
Speaker 3: guns were just wiping them out.
Speaker 2: The hours wore on, night turned to the haze of dawn,
Speaker 2: another morning without waking up, another night without sleep, and
Speaker 2: the Marines kept fighting, killing and killing and killing to
Speaker 2: keep from being killed.
Speaker 1: We still had guys penetrate our positions.
Speaker 3: I know one guy, he must have been on some
Speaker 3: kind of drugs, because I know I hit him at
Speaker 3: least four times, but he just kept coming, throwing great
Speaker 3: age around like he was delivered in the La Times.
Speaker 2: Again, Jay sounds so casual as he's talking about this
Speaker 2: delivering in the La Times. But the situation could not
Speaker 2: have been more dire. Just as Jay had feared, his
Speaker 2: men ran out of ammunition.
Speaker 3: They were hitting these dark Hutton MBA with intrenching tools
Speaker 3: and helmets and rocks.
Speaker 1: Whatever we would kill them with, we did.
Speaker 2: Finally it was daylight, and for some reason that felt
Speaker 2: inexplicable to Jay, the enemy pulled back. The Marines climbed
Speaker 2: out of the graves. In the quiet. Jay could finally
Speaker 2: see exactly what they had been up against.
Speaker 1: And I'll get the look in all of our faces.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I was the same way. Our eyes were
Speaker 1: as big as owls.
Speaker 2: And he could see exactly what they had done.
Speaker 3: There was blood smell all over the place. We had
Speaker 3: three hundred and eighty four dead MVA around us that
Speaker 3: we had killed. That all night, And I keep in mind,
Speaker 3: my marines haven't slept yet, none of us have, so
Speaker 3: this is probably forty eight hours that no one had
Speaker 3: even closed their eyes.
Speaker 1: It was just continual fire.
Speaker 2: All wore as hell. That's a cliche and it's a fact.
Speaker 2: And Vietnam was particularly brutal. We've all heard about the
Speaker 2: atrocities there, the cruelty, but Jay Vargas always speaks of
Speaker 2: his adversaries with deep humanity. These weren't nameless, faceless soldiers
Speaker 2: he was fighting. He knew they were people.
Speaker 1: They were well trained, they were smart.
Speaker 3: You know. The troops had to search pockets every once
Speaker 3: in a while when you knocked one down, and you'd
Speaker 3: find a laundry ticket from Hanoi, you know, And I'm
Speaker 3: going this guy came allway from the knowing he's got
Speaker 3: a laundry ticket here, and he's thousands of miles from
Speaker 3: his dog gone home. You find pictures of their wives
Speaker 3: and children, and that gets to you.
Speaker 2: So that morning, in that moment of quiet, when it
Speaker 2: felt like there was a reprieve, Jay and his men
Speaker 2: reburied the soldiers they had disinterred the night before.
Speaker 1: I honored those warriors.
Speaker 3: We made damn sure that we put the bodies back
Speaker 3: in the grave and covered them.
Speaker 2: Jay's company had started that march two days earlier with
Speaker 2: more than one hundred and fifty men, Only around forty
Speaker 2: were left. They had been fighting for two straight days.
Speaker 2: They needed rest, but the enemy hadn't actually retreated. A
Speaker 2: decisive victory was too important to the North Vietnamese cause
Speaker 2: they were determined to take back Dideau. Jay and a
Speaker 2: golf company met up with the remnants of three other
Speaker 2: marine companies. They'd been resupplied with AMMA well, but it
Speaker 2: hardly mattered at that point. The entire group of fighting
Speaker 2: marines was around three hundred against an enemy that's still
Speaker 2: numbered in the thousands.
Speaker 5: We're killing every step of the way, but the NBA
Speaker 5: are holding tight and they're making us pay for every
Speaker 5: footed ground we took.
Speaker 2: This is another marine who was there at Didea, Vic Taylor.
Speaker 2: It's like a tone poem of the horrors of war.
Speaker 5: Small arms fires are shredding everything above. Brown leaves and
Speaker 5: twigs and branches are coming down, Banana trees getting knocked over,
Speaker 5: Bullets snapping cracking by now they make that spat sound
Speaker 5: of the hit meat and somebody'd yelped. Rockets and RPGs flying,
Speaker 5: Wi Bang flash bang grenades going in and out fast
Speaker 5: as people control them.
Speaker 1: Twenty six and Ji cooms passing each other in the air.
Speaker 1: There was a fight.
Speaker 5: It was a fight, and the enemy they weren't down
Speaker 5: and defending any more man. They were up and coming
Speaker 5: on threes and fours and sixes and eight popping out
Speaker 5: of the brush. All cameed up, leaves in the helmets,
Speaker 5: weapon held out in front, a little spiked bayonet shining
Speaker 5: coming to the trot. Give him credit. They were soldiers,
Speaker 5: that's sure. But also at that time these beat up, bloodied,
Speaker 5: bone tired, raggedy ass teenagers turned marine.
Speaker 2: Beat up, bloody, bone tired, Good god. Lieutenant Colonel Bill
Speaker 2: Weese was sitting at a command post near the fighting,
Speaker 2: cigar grip between his teeth. He knew how fruitless their
Speaker 2: prospects looked. But then he got the order keep pushing forward.
Speaker 4: We didn't have anything left in us. What meager troops
Speaker 4: we had were tired, very little sleep, they were hungry,
Speaker 4: they were low on ammunition. When I was ordered to
Speaker 4: continue to attack forward and retake then tell I told
Speaker 4: him hell, no, we can't do it. We're just out
Speaker 4: of stain.
Speaker 2: The command had realized that if the NVA were flushed
Speaker 2: out of the villages and into the rice paddies to
Speaker 2: the north, they would be totally open to the US
Speaker 2: fighter planes overhead. The more that the Marines could push
Speaker 2: the enemy into the open, the more the planes could
Speaker 2: mow them down. They had to keep going finish the job.
Speaker 2: But the Marines themselves were being mowed down, and Jay's
Speaker 2: company was right in the middle of it.
Speaker 1: A lot of us were alavamo. The NVA was out
Speaker 1: of ammo. You know.
Speaker 3: We were killing each other with knives and bayonets and
Speaker 3: everything we could possibly survive.
Speaker 2: Jay called an airstrikes and mortar fire from the Navy
Speaker 2: gunships to help drive the enemy back, and just at
Speaker 2: that moment his commander found him.
Speaker 3: Carl Weese came up and kind of fell in the
Speaker 3: trench with me. He says, what the hell's going on? And
Speaker 3: I said, you better get out here, because I called
Speaker 3: artillery on myself and my marines.
Speaker 1: And they know it.
Speaker 3: And I told my marines, I said, hey, grab your
Speaker 3: butts because I'm bringing it in. And the colonel turned around,
Speaker 3: and just as he turned around, he took three shots
Speaker 3: in the spine. My two radio operators took shots in
Speaker 3: their head immediately. And so I was bringing an artillery
Speaker 3: and naval gone far. So I had three radios in
Speaker 3: my hand, and my radio operators were already dead.
Speaker 2: It was clear that they had to get out of
Speaker 2: there if anyone was going to survive.
Speaker 3: So I told everyone, let's start going back, and we
Speaker 3: went back into a defensive position. But what happened, and
Speaker 3: some of them rings didn't make it all the way back,
Speaker 3: and the NBA were still amongst us, just running around
Speaker 3: because they had no AMMO. They were trying to figure
Speaker 3: out what the hell to do, and so there were
Speaker 3: jumping on each other. I'm dragging the colonel back an
Speaker 3: almost I think it was seventy five yards.
Speaker 1: I kept dragging him back, and he was bleeding like
Speaker 1: a pig.
Speaker 2: Remember what I said before about laughter and trauma. Here
Speaker 2: it is again, as Jay looks death in the face.
Speaker 3: And this is a funny part, and he loves to
Speaker 3: tell his story. I was great with a rifle because
Speaker 3: I grew up shooting rifles all my life, but I
Speaker 3: couldn't handle that forty five pistol. So at that stage
Speaker 3: I had my pistol out when I was dragging you,
Speaker 3: and this NBA soldier came up of the river bank
Speaker 3: and lifted his weapon to dingis and he could have
Speaker 3: wiped us out. I fired his pistol and it hit
Speaker 3: the ground first, bounced up and hit him in his stomach.
Speaker 3: And I'll never forget the expression on his face like
Speaker 3: he said. I'm sure he said in his language, how
Speaker 3: in the shit did you do that? And he fell
Speaker 3: back into the river. And I'm laughing now because Gerowas
Speaker 3: still tells that story. He says, God, don't give Jay
Speaker 3: a pistol. Give him a grenade, give a rifle, but
Speaker 3: don't give a pistol.
Speaker 2: He's laughing at a situation that's not just serious, but
Speaker 2: deathly serious. But what the hell else are you.
Speaker 5: Going to do?
Speaker 2: How does a person make sense of an experience like this?
Speaker 2: It's insane, it's tragic, But laughing at the absurdity is
Speaker 2: part of how Jay makes sense of his own story.
Speaker 2: Here's a thing. When you listen to as many veterans
Speaker 2: telling their war stories as I have, you start to
Speaker 2: see patterns, a casualness, a detachment, sometimes when talking about
Speaker 2: an incredibly stressful situation, as though to spare the listener
Speaker 2: the details, because how could we really understand? And something else.
Speaker 2: In descriptions of battle, the enemy is often described as
Speaker 2: a wave or a wall or a cascade a force.
Speaker 2: There's rarely an acknowledgment of the underlying humanity there. You
Speaker 2: almost never hear the story about the enemy soldier who's like,
Speaker 2: how on the shit did you do that? But Jay
Speaker 2: saw the men, the men fighting next to him, those
Speaker 2: fearless young bastards who wouldn't give up, but also the
Speaker 2: well trained soldiers that he was killing. I saw it all,
Speaker 2: and it was more than anyone should have to take.
Speaker 2: That final afternoon on the battle filled in Dideaux, Jay
Speaker 2: ordered the surviving marines to fall back. The remaining men
Speaker 2: had to get to safety, but he quickly realized that
Speaker 2: seven of his marines couldn't move on their own.
Speaker 3: I had some marines that were wounded, and I went back,
Speaker 3: and I said, I'm going to go back from a morane.
Speaker 3: So I went in seven times and brought back seven marines.
Speaker 2: Out seven times. Through the men killing each other with
Speaker 2: bayonets and knives and rocks, they were battered, bruised, and worse,
Speaker 2: particularly a young marine named Sammy.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: I was taking a colonel back. Sammy was sitting on
Speaker 3: the tree there and his body. They had blown off
Speaker 3: his left arm and the steel had burned him so
Speaker 3: bad it wasn't even bleeding, but his arm was laying
Speaker 3: over him. And I said, Sammy, I'll come back to
Speaker 3: get you. So once I got the colonel back, I
Speaker 3: went back for Sandy and put him on my back.
Speaker 3: Thank god he was small. We got to moving backwards
Speaker 3: and he turned around. He said, Skipper, I want my
Speaker 3: friggin arm, And I said, you gotta be shitting. So
Speaker 3: I had to turn around and go back and the NBA's.
Speaker 1: And I got this guy.
Speaker 3: So I bet now like I said, okay, I can't
Speaker 3: reach your arm, and he said I can get it,
Speaker 3: so he he reached out.
Speaker 1: I got his arm and I got I got him back, and.
Speaker 3: The last time I saw him the carmen we're taking
Speaker 3: into the choppers yard, and he had his arm and
Speaker 3: his chest right here. He just he for some reason
Speaker 3: he thought he could put it back up.
Speaker 2: They were all in shock. You can tell that right
Speaker 2: the way Sammy thinks they can reattach his arm, the
Speaker 2: way Jay is laughing even as he's horrified. Jay made
Speaker 2: it home. Colonel Weiss made it home. Those seven men
Speaker 2: Jay saved made it home too, but none of them
Speaker 2: made it home the same Jay returned from the battle
Speaker 2: at Dido with multiple wounds. A bullet had gone through
Speaker 2: his side, and he had been hit by shrapnel, not
Speaker 2: just that initial wound in the leg, but shell fragments
Speaker 2: in his right arm and through his mouth. The physical
Speaker 2: damage was serious, but it would heal. The mental toll
Speaker 2: was something different. He didn't talk about what had happened
Speaker 2: to him on the battlefield. He wouldn't, not even to
Speaker 2: his brothers, even though he knew they had been through
Speaker 2: terrible combat experiences of their own. What kind of words
Speaker 2: could possibly sum up those three sleepless, bloody days. There
Speaker 2: are no words. That kind of experience lives inside you
Speaker 2: and surfaces even in the smallest moments, like a hunting
Speaker 2: trip with your brothers, when suddenly you find you can't
Speaker 2: shoot a deer.
Speaker 3: My oldest brother Angelo sense that there was I couldn't
Speaker 3: pulletrate it.
Speaker 2: More than thirty percent of Vietnam veterans suffered from PTSD,
Speaker 2: and recent studies have shown that for veterans, talking about
Speaker 2: traumatic experiences, in other words, telling their war stories, is
Speaker 2: the first line of defense against PTSD. But Jay just wouldn't.
Speaker 2: He assumed that once you came home, you didn't talk
Speaker 2: about it like that's the way it was supposed to be,
Speaker 2: not even when he found out in May of nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy that he was going to receive a medal of honor.
Speaker 2: Jay's mom, Teresa, had passed away just a few months earlier,
Speaker 2: and in her honor, Jay decided that he wanted to
Speaker 2: have her name, not his name, inscribed on the back.
Speaker 3: Mom died about I think of this about four months
Speaker 3: before five, almost six months before the presentation.
Speaker 1: Would have been the highlight of her life.
Speaker 3: So I called the White House one night asking for
Speaker 3: the Marie Liaison officer, whom I knew. I forgot that
Speaker 3: it was like four o'clock in San Diego, but it
Speaker 3: was seven o'clock seven pm in DC, and the phone
Speaker 3: was ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing, and so
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, about the fifteenth ring, so he
Speaker 3: picks up the phone and he says, how can I
Speaker 3: help you? And I said, my name's Jay Vargus. He says,
Speaker 3: I know who you are. Jay, How I spent I
Speaker 3: have a favor to ask of Carl Calfield And he says,
Speaker 3: he said, well, what's the favorite?
Speaker 1: I said, I like.
Speaker 3: To have my mother's name put on the back of
Speaker 3: my metal and he says, that's easy.
Speaker 1: I'll take care of that.
Speaker 3: Don't worry about Jay, He says, as your family, and
Speaker 3: I said, yeah, my brothers are coming.
Speaker 1: Mom's naw.
Speaker 3: He says, oh, I'm sorry that you lost. So that's
Speaker 3: why you want to put the name in the back
Speaker 3: of the middle. I said, yes, sir, and he says,
Speaker 3: I can take care of that. And I said, sir,
Speaker 3: who the hell am I talking to? He says, this
Speaker 3: is the President Nixon. Think Nixon.
Speaker 6: His exercise route in the evenings was to go round
Speaker 6: all the corridors. And later on he told me he
Speaker 6: was on his evening walk and he says that damn
Speaker 6: phone kept ringing and ringing. I just opened the door
Speaker 6: and I picked it up.
Speaker 2: There's not a lot to love about President Nixon, but
Speaker 2: this is one of the only stories that makes him
Speaker 2: sound kind of awesome. Anyway, Jay saw his medal as
Speaker 2: a way to acknowledge the magnificent bastards who served alongside him.
Speaker 2: You can still hear the catch in his voice when
Speaker 2: he talks about them.
Speaker 1: You know, well, I wear my medal.
Speaker 3: I'm putting it on for everyone that served with me
Speaker 3: in that particular battle, and especially for those that sacrificed
Speaker 3: their lives. But if I could pound this dan thane
Speaker 3: into powder, I would give a little bit.
Speaker 1: To each one of my rates.
Speaker 2: He was now famous for his actions in combat, and
Speaker 2: if you win a medal of honor, people expect you
Speaker 2: to talk about what happened, but they couldn't. Jay went
Speaker 2: on to serve in the Marine Corps for almost thirty years,
Speaker 2: never speaking about what he had seen during that three
Speaker 2: day battle.
Speaker 3: After it was over, I think I just wanted to
Speaker 3: continue on with my career. Post traumatic stress kind of
Speaker 3: leaked into my brain like it has too many of
Speaker 3: the warriors.
Speaker 2: Finally, Jay's brother told him that he needed to go
Speaker 2: get help, and he did, and he took on a
Speaker 2: new challenge helping other veterans with their trauma. He became
Speaker 2: the secretary of the California Department of Veterans Affairs and
Speaker 2: moved up from there to the US Department. He traveled
Speaker 2: to hospitals speaking to veterans. He learned more and more
Speaker 2: about what those wounded warriors were going through and what
Speaker 2: they were lacking. He advocated for a program to support
Speaker 2: their mental health after they had left the hospital. He
Speaker 2: did incredible work in suicide prevention for veterans.
Speaker 3: This post traumatic stress is a toughie. It's a silent killer.
Speaker 3: So I'm traveling countryside and visiting commands wounded warriors, women
Speaker 3: veterans about PTSD of suicide.
Speaker 2: As he did on the battlefield. He fought tirelessly to
Speaker 2: save their lives. Jay Vargus was in his mid sixties
Speaker 2: before he could finally tell his own story.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be honest with you. It took me thirty
Speaker 3: six years before I could sit here and talk about this.
Speaker 3: I tried to do it with the mail of Honor Society.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: We couldn't get through the first taping, couldn't get through
Speaker 3: the second tape.
Speaker 2: It took j three trial to get it down. That's
Speaker 2: a lot of what you've been listening to today. When
Speaker 2: he decided to tell it, he told the whole thing,
Speaker 2: not just the glory, but the trauma too, Not about
Speaker 2: killing some anonymous enemy, but about honorable men who carried
Speaker 2: pictures of their mothers in their pockets and laundry slips
Speaker 2: for shirts they'd never wear. By telling his story this way,
Speaker 2: Jay Argus shows what soldiers give up during war, what
Speaker 2: they have to sacrifice of themselves to get through a battle.
Speaker 2: Like Dido, they go to fight and they see terrible things.
Speaker 2: Those things stay with them. Nobody should have to live
Speaker 2: with those kinds of horrors, but they do. Jay dedicated
Speaker 2: himself to helping veterans negotiate their stories to live past them.
Speaker 2: And when he told his story, he did it in
Speaker 2: such a way that the rest of us could see
Speaker 2: the trauma first hand, and from three nights of unbelievable
Speaker 2: carnage and pain, he distills a very simple.
Speaker 1: Lesson life is too damn precious just to throw away.
Speaker 2: That's the case on the battlefield and when you come
Speaker 2: home from it too. Medal of Honor Stories of Courage
Speaker 2: is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins,
Speaker 2: Constanza Gallardo, and Izzy Carter. The show is edited by
Speaker 2: Ben Daph Haffrey, Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski,
Speaker 2: recording engineering by Nita Lawrence, fact checking by Arthur Gombert's
Speaker 2: original music by Eric Phillips. Special thanks to the Congressional
Speaker 2: Medal of Honor Society, the American Legion, US National Archives,
Speaker 2: and the Reagan Felm. If you want to learn more
Speaker 2: about our Medal of Honor recipients, follow us on Instagram
Speaker 2: and Twitter. We'll be sharing photos and videos of the
Speaker 2: heroes featured on the show. We'd also love to hear
Speaker 2: from you dm us with a story about a courageous
Speaker 2: veteran in your life. If you don't know a veteran,
Speaker 2: we would love to hear a story of how courage
Speaker 2: was contagious in your own life. You can find us
Speaker 2: at Pushkinbods. I'm your host, Malcolm Gabo