Speaker 1: Pushkin. Two days ago, we celebrated Memorial Day to honor
Speaker 1: and remember the US military personnel who died in service
Speaker 1: to the country. It's time to reflect on their courage
Speaker 1: and sacrifices, which is something we've been doing in this
Speaker 1: new season of Medal of Honor. The reason we make
Speaker 1: the show of Pushkin is simple, courage is contagious. These
Speaker 1: are stories we think everyone benefits from hearing, and we've
Speaker 1: got new stories for you coming up in the next
Speaker 1: few weeks, from Robert Blake, the first black sailor to
Speaker 1: be awarded the Medal, to Daniel Daily, one of only
Speaker 1: nineteen people to have received the Medal of Honor twice.
Speaker 1: These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by
Speaker 1: acts of valor above and beyond the call of duty.
Speaker 1: You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and
Speaker 1: what their stories tell us about the nature of courage
Speaker 1: and sacrifice. But before we get to our new stories,
Speaker 1: I wanted to kick off season two by introducing you
Speaker 1: to our new host, JR. Martinez Jr. Is a US
Speaker 1: Army veteran whose life changed forever when a roadside bomb
Speaker 1: exploded under his vehicle in Iraq in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: after over thirty four surgeries for his severe burns, Jr.
Speaker 1: Discovered a profound purpose helping others by sharing his own story.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine anyone better suited to guide us through
Speaker 1: these powerful stories of valor and sacrifice. Hi Jr. Nice
Speaker 1: to meet you.
Speaker 2: Hello Malcolm, nice to meet you as well.
Speaker 1: Welcome. We are so happy to have you taking over
Speaker 1: as host of Medal of Honor, and you are such
Speaker 1: a step up for me. It's unbelievable you're actually a
Speaker 1: veteran as opposed to just someone who was pretending to
Speaker 1: know about the army.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, Malcolm. But you know when you mentioned like,
Speaker 2: well you're actual veteran versus someone who's pretend, I think
Speaker 2: that's the beauty of what you've created and the team
Speaker 2: has put together in season one and now leading into
Speaker 2: season two. I think if we can have more people
Speaker 2: that have never worn the uniform, that have maybe no
Speaker 2: real connection to the military to come and learn, and
Speaker 2: then hopefully at the accumulation of each episode in the season,
Speaker 2: people are feeling that much more connected and attached to
Speaker 2: the stories. I think it goes both ways. I think
Speaker 2: it's nice to have yes somebody that has served in
Speaker 2: the military, and it maybe feels like there's some credibility,
Speaker 2: but man, as someone who's served and as someone who's
Speaker 2: been around the military for a long time. Season one,
Speaker 2: when I listened to it, I learned so much, so
Speaker 2: many things that I had no clue about. So I
Speaker 2: think we're all in this boat together, quite frankly, just
Speaker 2: going on this journey of really discovering what the human
Speaker 2: spirit is truly capable of.
Speaker 1: You know. The moment that Season one hit home for
Speaker 1: me was I was giving a talk in Orlando and
Speaker 1: somebody it was the Q and A, and someone asked
Speaker 1: me about Medal of Honor, and I was young, saying,
Speaker 1: I wo I wanted to do the show because I
Speaker 1: felt there were all these incredible stories that needed to
Speaker 1: be told, and that this was something going into twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six, which is the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary
Speaker 1: of this country's founding. I thought it was really important
Speaker 1: to tell stories that united us all. And then one
Speaker 1: by one throughout the audience, people started standing up and saying,
Speaker 1: I served in you know, Marine Corps for some I
Speaker 1: was in the Navy. And I listened to that show
Speaker 1: and I felt like I was finally being heard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but what we did, what I was a part of,
Speaker 1: was fine. I just it was incredibly moving. It really
Speaker 1: made me think that there's something really important and lovely
Speaker 1: about Medal of Honor, this storytelling journey that we're on.
Speaker 2: I have always felt this level of uncomfort with imposter syndrome. Right.
Speaker 2: I was nineteen when I was injured, and I found
Speaker 2: myself sort of thrust into these different circles, and there's
Speaker 2: a lot of these conversations that are happening that I
Speaker 2: have no idea what people are talking about or truly
Speaker 2: understand them. But the more that I've traveled all over
Speaker 2: the world and have met such incredible people who have
Speaker 2: served in the military or have not, I guess it
Speaker 2: made me a little uncomfortable. When people would say, Jr.
Speaker 2: Look at what you've done. They would elevate me, and
Speaker 2: I just felt uncomfortable with that because I'm like, you
Speaker 2: have no idea. There are so many people out there
Speaker 2: that are walking amongst you in your community. When I
Speaker 2: get introduced, and I always asked for those that have
Speaker 2: served in the military or family members to please remain standing,
Speaker 2: and I challenge the audience. I say, look around at
Speaker 2: the people standing amongst you. Look at them. Do they
Speaker 2: look like me? Do they look like what most of
Speaker 2: us think of when we think of veterans, my scars
Speaker 2: and what my body's been through. And a lot of
Speaker 2: my friends who are missing limbs or have traumatic brain injuries,
Speaker 2: or just have something physically that you can immediately identify
Speaker 2: and say that person's been through something. But I can't
Speaker 2: tell you the amount of times, Malcolm, I've stood next
Speaker 2: to my friends who have served just as long as me,
Speaker 2: that have done a hell of a lot more than
Speaker 2: I did, have done multiple tours and people come right
Speaker 2: up to me and they say thank you, and they
Speaker 2: do it in the most sincere place from their heart,
Speaker 2: and I appreciate that. But it's about reframing that. And
Speaker 2: I think when you talk about how many people stand
Speaker 2: up and say, we feel seen and we feel heart
Speaker 2: and I think that's part of what this series has
Speaker 2: done and is hopefully going to continue to do, is
Speaker 2: allow people to tell these stories that need to be told.
Speaker 2: And this is a perfect opportunity where you and the
Speaker 2: team have created something that it just allows me to
Speaker 2: completely geek out on these badass human beings.
Speaker 1: And they are bad as bad.
Speaker 2: They are bad ass, man. And let me tell you
Speaker 2: something like, if we all just cared a little bit more,
Speaker 2: if you all just eliminated all the other things and
Speaker 2: just operated from this place of just pure humanity, what
Speaker 2: are the possibilities man? They're endless.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what did your family think about it when you
Speaker 1: signing up?
Speaker 2: My mother's from Central America as south of the Otto.
Speaker 2: My father's from Mexico. My mother came here as an
Speaker 2: undocumented immigrant and met my father here and about a
Speaker 2: year and a half later. I was born in Louisiana,
Speaker 2: and so I'm a Southern boy, and I grew up
Speaker 2: in Louisiana. I lived there for the first nine years,
Speaker 2: then moved to Arkansas, and then right before my senior
Speaker 2: year of high school, moved to Georgia. And listen, man,
Speaker 2: I was a kid that was I was struggling. There
Speaker 2: was a lot of things that I was having to navigate.
Speaker 2: Nine years old, I'm getting myself up for school by myself,
Speaker 2: getting myself to school. My mom worked at graveyard shift,
Speaker 2: so it was a lot of responsibility, and my father
Speaker 2: wasn't in my life. My mother was involved in some
Speaker 2: pretty abusive relationships when I was younger. Demographically, I was
Speaker 2: one of the first Hispanic kids in Arkansas, and I
Speaker 2: struggled with that, and I would get into trouble a lot,
Speaker 2: and academically like I didn't really excel because I would
Speaker 2: be suspended from school three five, seven days at a time.
Speaker 2: My defense mechanism was always to be like, well, this
Speaker 2: is dumb anyways, just be the funny guy. You don't
Speaker 2: really quite understand how those things are going to play
Speaker 2: into your life until later. And so I moved to
Speaker 2: Georgia my senior high school, and things got better because
Speaker 2: I felt like the community was different, and I started
Speaker 2: thinking about when I'm listening to Molly as a counselor
Speaker 2: to talk about the way she leans into her students.
Speaker 2: The counselor calls me to his office and he says, hey,
Speaker 2: you're a senior. I'm looking at your transcript. You're not
Speaker 2: going to graduate on time. You don't have enough credits,
Speaker 2: you don't have the grades. What's going on? Vividly remember
Speaker 2: that interaction with him, and I was taken back by
Speaker 2: that question, because if that's a simple question, but no
Speaker 2: one had ever asked me that question. And he says,
Speaker 2: do you want to graduate on time. I said I do,
Speaker 2: and he says, okay, well, let's put a plan together.
Speaker 2: And I started on this journey to graduate from high school.
Speaker 2: I had this vision, man, this really naive perspective, that
Speaker 2: I was going to go to college and play football
Speaker 2: because that's what I see on Sundays on ESPN. I
Speaker 2: went to the school and they told me that I
Speaker 2: could come to school there, but I would not be
Speaker 2: able to play sports at the college level for two
Speaker 2: years because of academics. So I was like, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to college then if I can't go to play football,
Speaker 2: because that's how we are. And as cliche as it
Speaker 2: may sound, I mean there's a reason they have them
Speaker 2: because to some degree it works. I was home one
Speaker 2: day watching TV and a commercial popped up about the
Speaker 2: military and it wasn't a brand new concept. Listen to
Speaker 2: the town that I graduated from high school. I mean,
Speaker 2: at recruiters had a presence at the school, as they
Speaker 2: do in most right, but this was probably an area
Speaker 2: you're really going to try to get some kids. They
Speaker 2: have no alternatives. And then one of my football coaches
Speaker 2: sad sir, so I was like, you know what, let
Speaker 2: me go down and talk to this recruiter and see
Speaker 2: what this is about. But I didn't tell my mother.
Speaker 2: So I go down to this recruiter. I go to
Speaker 2: all the branches, kind of skipped over the Navy. I
Speaker 2: was like, I don't think I see myself being on
Speaker 2: the ship. And then I went to the Marine Corps
Speaker 2: and they said four years, we watch you. Four years
Speaker 2: the minimum. And I was like trying to negotiate with
Speaker 2: the recruiter and I was like, what about three? No,
Speaker 2: four years?
Speaker 1: I don't think you negotiate with the marine corks.
Speaker 2: And so then I was like, let me go next
Speaker 2: door and I went to the arm In the arm
Speaker 2: I was like, we'll take it. Whatever you want to
Speaker 2: commit to, we'll take it. And he gave me all
Speaker 2: this information. He put it in the folder and I
Speaker 2: rushed home and I felt elated. I felt like I
Speaker 2: had found a solution for my life at this point.
Speaker 2: And I remember going into the house and saying to
Speaker 2: my mom, I figured it out. I know exactly what
Speaker 2: I'm going to do. I'm going to joined the Army.
Speaker 2: And my mom said absolutely not. Now, to give people
Speaker 2: context why she said no so quickly was in the
Speaker 2: early eighties, and I my lord, there was a civil
Speaker 2: war that was happening. So my mother understands what war
Speaker 2: does to people. My mother has experienced that. When I
Speaker 2: was three years old, one of my sisters passed away
Speaker 2: from an illness. She was born Wes, so my mother
Speaker 2: has lost a child. I graduated high school in two
Speaker 2: thousand and two, and we already had troops in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: We as a country were at war already. So my mother,
Speaker 2: understanding that, understood that if I joined the military during
Speaker 2: this time of war, there's a good chance of her
Speaker 2: losing another child, her only son. Listen, as a parent,
Speaker 2: you know that fear kicks in and you're like, absolutely not.
Speaker 2: And here's one of the most incredible gifts my mother
Speaker 2: gave me that I don't think she intended. I think
Speaker 2: it was just how she was trying to show up
Speaker 2: for me. My mother, in the midst of her listening
Speaker 2: to her son talk about joining the military during a
Speaker 2: time of war, she pulled up a chair and sat
Speaker 2: down right in front of me and said, Okay, tell
Speaker 2: me why you believe this is the best thing for you.
Speaker 2: At the end of this two hour conversation, my mother said,
Speaker 2: if you want to join the military. If you believe
Speaker 2: that's what's best for you, I'll support you. And I
Speaker 2: just think about the courage. We talked about courage a
Speaker 2: lot right with Metal of Honor recipients, and you think
Speaker 2: about the courage it takes as a parent who has
Speaker 2: already experienced the worst thing that a parent can experience
Speaker 2: and yet to put that aside and say I'm there
Speaker 2: for you. Yeah, And so off I go. Man. Off,
Speaker 2: I go to the Army. I joined in the love
Speaker 2: and Bravo. So I'm an Infantryman. I go to Basy
Speaker 2: training for penning Georgia. I get a sign to my
Speaker 2: unit four months later, which was one hundred and first
Speaker 2: out of four Cambal Kentucky, which is just outside of Nashville.
Speaker 2: Nineteen years old. You know, young kid in this unit.
Speaker 2: I was one of the youngest. There was me and
Speaker 2: two other people that were the youngest. I was definitely
Speaker 2: treated lest here's this young guy. A lot of these
Speaker 2: guys had a lot of training and experience, and nineteen
Speaker 2: years old. You put him in a unit during a
Speaker 2: time of conflict, and for the most part, he's going
Speaker 2: to feel like incredibly naive, like nothing's gonna happen. And
Speaker 2: even though I raised my right hand and knew that
Speaker 2: war was a possibility, I never thought it would be
Speaker 2: my reality. And sure enough, one of my sergeants one
Speaker 2: day came and pulled me aside and said that I
Speaker 2: needed to be prepared because we would be deploying sometime soon.
Speaker 2: And my response to this man, my patuna sergeant who
Speaker 2: clearly outranks me by a decade and a half. My
Speaker 2: response to this man at the time was, Sergeant, I
Speaker 2: just got out of basic. I just got here relaxed.
Speaker 2: Imagine telling you're superior, it's just chill, bro, That's essentially
Speaker 2: what I did.
Speaker 1: Having met you now for half an hour, I can
Speaker 1: imagine you saying that.
Speaker 2: Thank you, that's a comple of it, and so and so.
Speaker 2: Of course, after I was doing to do a push
Speaker 2: ups and said I was for telling my superior to
Speaker 2: just relax, you know, it really set in that hey,
Speaker 2: he was trying to tell me that physically I was fine,
Speaker 2: Mentally I was not ready. And sure enough, a few
Speaker 2: weeks later I found myself on a plane heading over
Speaker 2: to war at the age of nineteen, going to Iraq. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it all happened fast. Will were you stationed in Iraq
Speaker 2: in Kuwait, like there was these little bases set up
Speaker 2: and there were Camp New York and Camp Pennsylvania, and
Speaker 2: I think it was Camp something else. And then once
Speaker 2: the conflict started, which was in March of two thousand
Speaker 2: and three, we crossed over into Iraq. But we were
Speaker 2: one of those units, at least my company was. We
Speaker 2: were just in this holding pattern. Just a lot of
Speaker 2: our gear was not even there because they were on
Speaker 2: ships still coming over. And our job early on was
Speaker 2: to escort different jobs in the military from point A
Speaker 2: to point B. So we were part of these big
Speaker 2: convoys of helping people in the medical field or supplies
Speaker 2: or you name it, just get from here to there.
Speaker 2: And I'm just kind of going through the motions, not
Speaker 2: quite sure I understood my purpose, my role, the agenda,
Speaker 2: just going through it, to be honest, and until one
Speaker 2: of my commanders one day introduced this concept of service.
Speaker 2: And after that I started to buy in and look
Speaker 2: around and say, I have a role. I might not
Speaker 2: be the biggest member of this team and the most experienced,
Speaker 2: but I'm part of this team. I started to then plot, man,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do this for three years. That
Speaker 2: I originally thought I'm going to do this for twenty years.
Speaker 2: I could vividly remember nights where I'm sitting in a
Speaker 2: humvee in the middle of the desert and looking up
Speaker 2: at this big, beautiful, bright sky and I'm sitting there
Speaker 2: just thinking about when I come back to the States,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go to Pathrond, I'm going to go
Speaker 2: to Ranger. I'm going to like I'm nineteen. And then
Speaker 2: of course life decides we're going to kind of take
Speaker 2: you on a little bit of a journey here, my friend,
Speaker 2: and we're going to change all that. And it did.
Speaker 2: It changed a lot.
Speaker 1: When did you have your accident? You were how long
Speaker 1: into the army?
Speaker 2: It was seven months? Seven months and seven months. I
Speaker 2: want to make sure that they're listening. Is going to have
Speaker 2: to hit like the back button fifteen seconds to thirty
Speaker 2: seconds to be like, wait, did he say seven months
Speaker 2: he was in country? No. I enlisted in September. September
Speaker 2: December two thousand and two, was a basic and then
Speaker 2: January of three I arrived. March of three, I deployed
Speaker 2: April of three. I was injured, so just a few
Speaker 2: days shy of me being in country, a full month.
Speaker 2: I sustained my injury which I was driving a humby
Speaker 2: through the city called Carbala when the front left tire
Speaker 2: of the humby that I was driving run over a
Speaker 2: roadside bomb and I was chopped inside. And there were
Speaker 2: three other guys in a humvy with me, but they
Speaker 2: were thrown out of the vehicle and they all walked
Speaker 2: away with minor physical injuries. And it's important for me
Speaker 2: to emphasize that because although physically they were okay, emotionally
Speaker 2: and mentally they were not. I was trapped aside and
Speaker 2: this humvee caught on fire, and five minutes trapped aside
Speaker 2: of this UMV man fighting for your life, and you
Speaker 2: realize everything that you had been exposed to for nineteen
Speaker 2: years of your life has prepared you for that very
Speaker 2: moment to survive and to fight. And I kept telling
Speaker 2: myself while I was in that hum vy, there was
Speaker 2: no reason to believe that someone's going to come and
Speaker 2: pull you out. Because you talk to any individual military
Speaker 2: or not that has had a near death experience will
Speaker 2: tell you that whatever timeframe it was that there were
Speaker 2: experience in it, it feels like it's amplified by ten. Right,
Speaker 2: So even though it was five minutes, it felt like
Speaker 2: fifty minutes, right. It just feels like no one's coming
Speaker 2: to your aid until they finally two. But throughout that
Speaker 2: five minutes, I would almost trick my brain. I would
Speaker 2: talk to myself and trick my brain to believing that
Speaker 2: someone was coming. They were coming. Eventually two of my
Speaker 2: sergeants pulled me out, started the medevac process, and I
Speaker 2: ended up in San Antonio, Texas, and I was in
Speaker 2: the medical induced coma for three weeks. Oh wow. And
Speaker 2: woke up in Texas and the doctor's like, do you
Speaker 2: know where you are? I was like, this doesn't look
Speaker 2: like the last place I was in. Yeah, he says,
Speaker 2: you're in Texas and that's the burn center for the military.
Speaker 2: How much of your body was burned about thirty four percent. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's almost if you look at my body or any
Speaker 2: burn survivors someone like looking at a map, like, it's
Speaker 2: just kind of the path and the structure and the patches.
Speaker 2: But the biggest thing at the time that was threatening
Speaker 2: whether I was going to survive or not, was not
Speaker 2: so much the burns to my body was the inhalation damage.
Speaker 2: Was smoke that I inhaled.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for.
Speaker 2: The five minutes I was trapped inside, I was inhaling
Speaker 2: all this smoke from the fire. So they weren't sure
Speaker 2: if I was gonna make it. This is two thousand
Speaker 2: and three. They were like, we don't know if he's
Speaker 2: gonna make it. And they told my mother, if he
Speaker 2: makes it, that was a lot of the language that
Speaker 2: we're using with her.
Speaker 1: Your mother's worth the nightmare, the very thing she feared.
Speaker 2: The very thing she feared. You know what's interesting, Malcolm,
Speaker 2: is I lived my life and some people, my wife
Speaker 2: would tell you you're probably one of the most fearless
Speaker 2: people that I know, and she's used the words at
Speaker 2: times maybe reckless. You just think nothing's going to happen.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, that's debatable and subjective about reckless,
Speaker 2: you know, but the reason why, to some degree, I'm
Speaker 2: operate from this place of like just fearlessness, if you will.
Speaker 2: I'm deathly terrified of snakes. I'm scared of snakes. I
Speaker 2: don't like snakes. I don't know what it is. Never
Speaker 2: had a bad encounter with one, no one close to
Speaker 2: me has ever had one. But I just deathly terrified
Speaker 2: of snakes, and I remember when I came out of
Speaker 2: my medical induce coma and talking to my mother about
Speaker 2: a lot of these dreams, and a lot of it
Speaker 2: was the drugs as well, right, and a lot of
Speaker 2: these dreams that I had, hallucinations, whatever. And I remember
Speaker 2: vividly telling her I remember this dream that her and
Speaker 2: I were at some party. There were a lot of
Speaker 2: people there, and I'm sitting on the couch and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, there's this snake that slithering through the room,
Speaker 2: coming right at me. And the snake just lunges and
Speaker 2: right at me and goes right into my mouth, and
Speaker 2: I fall on the ground and I'm trying to pull
Speaker 2: this snake out, and everyone that was in the room
Speaker 2: rushes over, and instead of trying to pull the snake out,
Speaker 2: they're pushing the snake in. And I'm looking at my mom,
Speaker 2: and my mom's standing over these people looking down on me,
Speaker 2: and she's just terrified and I'm terrified. And I was like,
Speaker 2: that makes absolutely no sense. And then the more I
Speaker 2: started talking about my experiences and things, then I started
Speaker 2: remembering throughout my entire training. When I found out that
Speaker 2: I was going to deploy, the one thing I was
Speaker 2: terrified of I wasn't terrified, believe it or not, that
Speaker 2: I would I could get shot, that I could get stabbed,
Speaker 2: that I could that I would die like that. The
Speaker 2: thing that I was terrified the most was a landmine.
Speaker 2: I was terrified of those. In our training, you have
Speaker 2: to learn how to spot them and then essentially diffuse them.
Speaker 2: And what was the thing that got me a landmine?
Speaker 2: The thing I feared the most. My mother had this fear.
Speaker 2: And what was the thing that happened?
Speaker 1: Snake?
Speaker 2: Right? What I later put together was that snake. What
Speaker 2: really was happening was that was when I was being
Speaker 2: intubated in country, because I met some people later that
Speaker 2: were part of a medical unit that treated me in country,
Speaker 2: and they said that I was fighting them off, that
Speaker 2: I was telling them I was okay, and clearly my
Speaker 2: body's going through shock, and they're said they were trying
Speaker 2: to intubate me, and I was fighting them, and so
Speaker 2: they had to get a team of people to come
Speaker 2: and help intubate me, to hold me down so they
Speaker 2: can intubate me. But my body presented that as the
Speaker 2: thing that I'm terrified the most, as a snake. And
Speaker 2: so when I think about those things, it starts to
Speaker 2: make me say, I can't operate from this place of
Speaker 2: fear because the thing that I fear the most ends
Speaker 2: up catching up to me and getting me at the end.
Speaker 2: So I have to find a way to lean into
Speaker 2: this somehow. And it's a lesson, a hard lesson I
Speaker 2: had to learn and what I had to go through,
Speaker 2: But I'm great full that I learned it at the
Speaker 2: age of nineteen, twenty years old. It's her in twenty
Speaker 2: in the hospital, twenty one in the hospital, twenty two
Speaker 2: in the hospital.
Speaker 1: You in the hospital for how long?
Speaker 2: Almost three years?
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. Yeah, while you were there, you met
Speaker 1: a nurse who made quite an impact on you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she is not the same one you talked about
Speaker 2: in season one. Her name is Mary Walker. Mary Walker
Speaker 2: from season one who wore pants right in, wanted to
Speaker 2: wear pants all the time. But her name was Mary Walker,
Speaker 2: and she's a nurse. Listen, when you're in a hospital
Speaker 2: setting for as long as I was, or even whatever
Speaker 2: the amount of time you're in that staff, they're not
Speaker 2: your doctors or nurses, your respiratory thera base. They kind
Speaker 2: of become your family. Especially the experience that I had. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there was such incredible human beings. I think as much
Speaker 2: as you could say it takes a special person to
Speaker 2: join the military, be a first responder, be a teacher,
Speaker 2: I think equally anybody to be in the medical field,
Speaker 2: it takes a special individual, especially in the burn ward.
Speaker 2: I'm not in the business of compare, but i will
Speaker 2: tell you that I've talked to a lot of my
Speaker 2: friends who sustained a variety of injuries, and it seems
Speaker 2: like burns. Recovering from that probably hands down takes it.
Speaker 2: Just the amount of pain and discomfort you're put through.
Speaker 2: And we take for granted what the skin does for
Speaker 2: us until we don't have it. And so six months
Speaker 2: after I was injured, I'm just killing time between appointments,
Speaker 2: hanging out at the nurse's desk, and Miss Walker says
Speaker 2: to me, JayR, I want you go and visit that
Speaker 2: patient who had just arrived and is struggling. And I said,
Speaker 2: and say what, And she's just come and talk to him,
Speaker 2: and I was like, absolutely not. She said why not?
Speaker 2: And I said, I'm twenty years old. What am I
Speaker 2: going to say. I'm not a therapist. I'm not like,
Speaker 2: I'm not a counselor. What am I going to say?
Speaker 2: I have nothing to say to this individual, and she
Speaker 2: just kept insisting. And so because we were on that
Speaker 2: dynamic of we were more like family, and she was older,
Speaker 2: so it was almost like my mom telling me to
Speaker 2: go clean your room. And I responded to her as
Speaker 2: any child would to a parent for the most part,
Speaker 2: where I was like, oh, fine, I'll do it. And
Speaker 2: I remember opening the door to this patient's room and
Speaker 2: every room in the hospital has these huge windows. It's Texas,
Speaker 2: so it's a lot of light, a lot of sunlight,
Speaker 2: so let's a lot of natural sunlight come in. But
Speaker 2: it was completely pitch black dark in the room in
Speaker 2: the middle of the day, and I'm standing in the
Speaker 2: doorway and I just feel something in my stomach. Man,
Speaker 2: and I just like, oh, I'm so uncomfortable. I don't
Speaker 2: want to walk into this room. And everything in me
Speaker 2: was telling me to just leave. And I had a
Speaker 2: moment where I had to pause and I had to
Speaker 2: say to myself, that's a human being, and what messages
Speaker 2: that sending to that individual if I just storm out
Speaker 2: of here. And so I just had to remind myself
Speaker 2: when I was in that position, and all I wanted
Speaker 2: was someone to come and visit me. And so I
Speaker 2: just approached his bed asked him a couple of questions,
Speaker 2: basic stuff, what's your name, where you're from, what you
Speaker 2: know you're in, what happened? And then it turned into
Speaker 2: a forty five minute conversation to the point when I said, hey, man,
Speaker 2: I'm going to come back tomorrow. And I said, hey,
Speaker 2: you want me to bring you anything tomorrow? He said, no, man,
Speaker 2: all I need is a visit. And I was like, okay.
Speaker 2: I started the walk out of the room, but before
Speaker 2: I could exit, something caught my attention. He had turned
Speaker 2: the light above his bed on, but he was starting
Speaker 2: to get out of his bed as well, and he
Speaker 2: was opening the curtain to the window. That was one
Speaker 2: of the early moments that I started to really pay
Speaker 2: attention and what I paid attention to, and on that
Speaker 2: particular day was I shed some light. There was something
Speaker 2: that I was able to provide that I changed sort
Speaker 2: of the path to a degree. And I exited the
Speaker 2: room and approached the head doctor of the burn ward
Speaker 2: and said, can I visit patients every day? And he said,
Speaker 2: and I started visiting patients every single day.
Speaker 1: I love that Jr. We'll continue with Jr's story right
Speaker 1: after this quick break.
Speaker 2: When you talk about courage, this is probably of all
Speaker 2: the things that I'm most proud of that I've done.
Speaker 2: One thing that I was reminded of is I kept
Speaker 2: listening to, especially when you talk about like Henry Johnson's
Speaker 2: story of Season one from Albany, and you know, he's
Speaker 2: paraded in New York City and he's promised all these
Speaker 2: incredible things, and he's invited to Saint Louis to speak
Speaker 2: in front of five thousand people. And this man did
Speaker 2: this incredible heroic thing as a black man, and he
Speaker 2: gets on stage and he tells the truth about how
Speaker 2: he's treated, about how other black service members are treated.
Speaker 2: He talks about the challenges the experience, and people didn't
Speaker 2: like that, and it takes courage to do that, but
Speaker 2: to know that essentially everybody turned their back on him.
Speaker 2: Fast forward about a year after I'm injured. I'm now
Speaker 2: involved in a nonprofit and it's a nonprofit to help
Speaker 2: service members their families. And one of the biggest gaps
Speaker 2: that I kept witnessing was when I would go into
Speaker 2: these rooms and talk to these patients, all the care
Speaker 2: was taken care of their famili's lodging was taken care of,
Speaker 2: their meals were taken care of. But what was not
Speaker 2: taken care of if you came from a two income household,
Speaker 2: or even if your parents are the ones that are
Speaker 2: having to relocate to be by your side, well, guess
Speaker 2: what the bills are still accumulating at home. Who's paying
Speaker 2: those bills? So I would be in these rooms visiting
Speaker 2: these patients and their families were there, and I would
Speaker 2: be privy to these conversations of talking about how are
Speaker 2: we going to pay this? How are we going to
Speaker 2: pay that? And I just thought that was such an injustice,
Speaker 2: and I thought that was such a horrible thing that
Speaker 2: they have to navigate. They can't even heal because they're
Speaker 2: too busy trying to figure out finances. And so in
Speaker 2: this nonprofit, I started going on TV and talking about
Speaker 2: the nonprofit and what people could do and donate, and
Speaker 2: people started donating. The nonprofit would give me a check
Speaker 2: of twenty five hundred dollars five thousand dollars, and I
Speaker 2: would go into these patients room and I would say,
Speaker 2: here's a check to pay for whatever it is, so
Speaker 2: you don't have to worry about that at least. And
Speaker 2: then all of a sudden, I get a call from
Speaker 2: my commander in San Antonio. I'm part of the wounded Brigade, right,
Speaker 2: all the wounded troops are part of this battalion. So
Speaker 2: I go into his office and it's him and a
Speaker 2: couple of sergeant majors and the first sergeant standing there,
Speaker 2: and they're like, the general wants to speak to you.
Speaker 2: They drive me up to the general's office and they're
Speaker 2: marching me in, and the General's like, you can't do that,
Speaker 2: and I said, do what you can't as an actor
Speaker 2: duty service member. You can't endorse a private organization. And
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, I didn't know that. And I
Speaker 2: was like, well, sir, what about there's gaps and lack
Speaker 2: of better words, he just listen, that's not your problem.
Speaker 2: You can't do that. And I said, well, what happens
Speaker 2: if I continue to do it? He says, you can
Speaker 2: be Article fifteen. You could be kicked out. And I
Speaker 2: said to him, I said, if that's the consequence to
Speaker 2: do what I feel is right, then kicked me out.
Speaker 2: Kick me out, sir. He didn't like that. Of course,
Speaker 2: I was injured as a private, and I woke up
Speaker 2: as a specialist to corporal like I just instantly got promoted.
Speaker 2: But he didn't like that there was this younger ranking
Speaker 2: telling a one star general do it, then challenging him.
Speaker 2: But I felt it was right, man, And sure enough
Speaker 2: I got called into the office again and I pretty
Speaker 2: much stood my ground and felt like it was the
Speaker 2: right thing. And I said, n let's the military steps
Speaker 2: up and is able to meet those families' needs and
Speaker 2: that capacity. You know, that's what when I hear at
Speaker 2: least season one and you hear about these stories and
Speaker 2: read about them, you're like, man, the courage it took
Speaker 2: for a lot of these individuals, and just like them.
Speaker 2: You know, I've had people come up to me over
Speaker 2: the years that said, man, what you did, And I'm like,
Speaker 2: I don't feel any I don't feel any different. I
Speaker 2: don't feel I should be elevated any more than anybody else.
Speaker 2: I'd like to believe that we would all do this right.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's my hope.
Speaker 1: At least tell me a little bit about clearly, spend
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of time talking to people who have
Speaker 1: been through something consequential for lack of a better word,
Speaker 1: and that's what this show is about is getting people
Speaker 1: to talk about something really, really, really big and important
Speaker 1: and hard. How do you get people to talk about
Speaker 1: something this hard?
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people just simply need to
Speaker 2: feel like you're listening. I always talk about this distinction
Speaker 2: between listening and hearing, like I'm actively listening to you, Malcolm,
Speaker 2: so I could actually repeat back to you the question
Speaker 2: you just asked me, almost verbatim. If I'm hearing, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: what'd you say? Right? He starts to get into that
Speaker 2: if I start looking at my watch, if I still
Speaker 2: looking at a clock, if I start there's all these
Speaker 2: other things, people start to lose this interest. And I
Speaker 2: think when you think of Molly's story from season one,
Speaker 2: and she talked about listening, she talked about the importance
Speaker 2: of being present and listening, but then equally not just
Speaker 2: listening in the traditional sense, but for her as a teacher,
Speaker 2: Ela teacher, she's like listening to the writings, paying attention
Speaker 2: to what kids are putting down on paper, right when
Speaker 2: they're allowed that freedom to go and express and write
Speaker 2: about whatever what I've discovered. When I find myself in
Speaker 2: the presence of an individual who may I feel a
Speaker 2: little bit more open to talking. I need to make
Speaker 2: sure that I'm equally open to listening. And in order
Speaker 2: for me to get to that point in my life,
Speaker 2: I had to do a tremendous amount of work on
Speaker 2: myself first and foremost, because earlier on, when people would
Speaker 2: share things, I would realize some things triggered me. Whether
Speaker 2: it was related to the injury, whether it was a
Speaker 2: military story or if it was just something they experienced
Speaker 2: outside of the military, things would trigger me, and I
Speaker 2: had to ensure that if I was going to be
Speaker 2: able to show up for people, I needed to do
Speaker 2: the work on myself so I could be fully present.
Speaker 2: But what did it for me? I could tell you
Speaker 2: that the physical recovery obviously was challenging, there's no secret there.
Speaker 2: But the emotional and mental recovery that came after I
Speaker 2: left the hospital when I was twenty two, twenty three,
Speaker 2: twenty four was really challenging. I was not a pleasant
Speaker 2: kid to be around for the most part. I was drinking,
Speaker 2: I was angry, I was resentful. I would take it
Speaker 2: out on people. Little things would trigger me, and my
Speaker 2: friend would say, man, you go in and you bite,
Speaker 2: and you latch on and you don't let go. And
Speaker 2: it's just because I was carrying so much, and not
Speaker 2: just from my military experience, but from prior. And this
Speaker 2: person that told me that was also a veteran, and
Speaker 2: we worked together at this nonprofit. We were around each
Speaker 2: other a lot, and one day we were on a
Speaker 2: trip with some other veterans at a fundraiser, and after dinner,
Speaker 2: we're driving back to the hotel and somebody says something
Speaker 2: and I just again, I'm in a bad place, and
Speaker 2: I make a snarky remark. And this individual's driving and
Speaker 2: he tells me to chill out. Simple, hey, man, chill out.
Speaker 2: But I didn't like that, so I snapped back at him,
Speaker 2: mouthing and I told him pull the car over. Let's fight,
Speaker 2: because that was the only tools I had. And he
Speaker 2: pulls over, and I'm getting out of the car and
Speaker 2: these other two vets are trying to hold me back
Speaker 2: from getting out of the backseat of the car. And
Speaker 2: you get some dark humor when you go through something
Speaker 2: like this. So one of the guys is a double
Speaker 2: amputee and you know, legs below the knee, and he's
Speaker 2: holding onto me around my waist and I'm just pulling
Speaker 2: the sled with weights, and all of a sudden, here
Speaker 2: and his prosthetics pop out, so I'm carrying half of
Speaker 2: a body like. He eventually lets go and then he
Speaker 2: low crawls back over to his legs pops it back in,
Speaker 2: and I'm coming around and trying to fight the driver,
Speaker 2: and the driver wants no part of it, so he
Speaker 2: tells me to get back in the car. I get
Speaker 2: back in the car and I'm just I'm just oh.
Speaker 2: And we get back to the hotel man, and we're
Speaker 2: all getting out, and the driver, his name is Dan,
Speaker 2: puts some window down and he says, yeah, get back
Speaker 2: in the car. And I sit in the passenger's seat
Speaker 2: and he tells me to cry, and I was like,
Speaker 2: what do you mean. He says, man, you need to cry,
Speaker 2: and I was like, no, I don't, and he said
Speaker 2: it again. Before you know it, I just started crying.
Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden, I just started like
Speaker 2: sharing a lot of things and the power of that.
Speaker 2: Ten minutes ago, I was trying to severely injure this man.
Speaker 2: I was just so angry and mad. The irony of
Speaker 2: that is I'm five nine, about two hundred pounds. He's
Speaker 2: six foot four, two hundred and eighty five pounds. So
Speaker 2: luckily he didn't engage, because had he done that, it
Speaker 2: would have worked out so well for me. But instead
Speaker 2: he chose love. He chose to show up as a
Speaker 2: human being. And every time we would end the conversation
Speaker 2: prior to this interaction over the phone or in person,
Speaker 2: he would always say I love you. He would always
Speaker 2: tell me that I thought that was weird, like I
Speaker 2: was just like okay, and I would always respond, all right, bro.
Speaker 2: Because my dad wasn't in my life. I never had
Speaker 2: a male figure in my life, so I wasn't comfortable
Speaker 2: with that. I didn't know how to receive that. And
Speaker 2: that night, in that in that parking lot of the hotel,
Speaker 2: at two three o'clock in the morning, I looked at
Speaker 2: him and I said, thank you, I love you, and
Speaker 2: to tell you that my life instantly like that, It
Speaker 2: just changed my willingness to be vulnerable, but in the
Speaker 2: right space with the right person. Not everyone's ready, not
Speaker 2: everyone's equipped to be that listener right. But Dan had
Speaker 2: done so much work on himself because of the things
Speaker 2: he experienced in his life that he was able to
Speaker 2: show up for me in that way, in that moment.
Speaker 2: Now I've passed that on. I've come in contact with
Speaker 2: a few of my friends that I served with in
Speaker 2: the military that reached out years later, and we start
Speaker 2: talking every single day because they're not in the great place.
Speaker 2: And I end the conversation by telling them I love
Speaker 2: them and they don't say it back initially, and that's okay.
Speaker 2: I'm still going to say it because I do. And
Speaker 2: I talked to my friend the other day. We both met.
Speaker 2: We joined the military and basic training. Both young eighteen
Speaker 2: nineteen year old kids, naive no clue in the world
Speaker 2: the journey we were going to go on. Before I
Speaker 2: hang up, I said I love you, man, and he says,
Speaker 2: I love you too, and we hang up. And to
Speaker 2: normalize that, to normalize the ability to talk and to
Speaker 2: share without judgment, I think is what we need. We
Speaker 2: need more people to feel that it's okay to share
Speaker 2: those things, it's okay to talk about those things, that
Speaker 2: there's tremendous amount of power and strength that comes from
Speaker 2: sharing those things.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. Yeah, tell me what's coming up that's exciting.
Speaker 1: What are you excited about? What should the listeners out
Speaker 1: there expect?
Speaker 2: Just a continuation of season one in regards to learning
Speaker 2: about some incredible individuals and learning about their very simple
Speaker 2: lives prior to the military and the things that they
Speaker 2: were exposed to prepared them to be these incredible individuals
Speaker 2: that went on to do such incredible things. From learning
Speaker 2: about somebody that would go catch chickens in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night, who knew that was like actually a job,
Speaker 2: and to say that individual was like, I felt prepared
Speaker 2: for the military, not because I played sports, but because
Speaker 2: I would go catch chickens. Yeah, like your professional chicken chaser.
Speaker 2: From that to Alvin Yorke, who did some incredible things
Speaker 2: in the military, We're going to talk about an astronaut,
Speaker 2: and we're going to pivot a little bit and talk
Speaker 2: about something completely different that is not sort of the
Speaker 2: traditional I mean, you did that in season one with
Speaker 2: Molly right, and then we're bringing that in with a
Speaker 2: female astronaut. And I'm just excited as someone who's in
Speaker 2: awe of these individuals and what they'd done. And so
Speaker 2: I hope that people that had listened to season one
Speaker 2: continue to stay and not only that, but bring more
Speaker 2: of their friends and family along the journey. I actually
Speaker 2: have had from season one and the subjects that you
Speaker 2: guys covered. I brought a lot of those stories to
Speaker 2: our dinner table, to my wife, to my thirteen year
Speaker 2: old daughter. I can tell you that when I'm sitting
Speaker 2: there talking about these individuals, my daughter is sitting there,
Speaker 2: that's a critical age where they're like, Okay, can I
Speaker 2: go do something else? Okay, I don't want to hear that,
Speaker 2: And she's engage. And I think these are beautiful stories
Speaker 2: that I think the entire family needs to hear. Buddies
Speaker 2: sitting around together need to hear more of You created
Speaker 2: something great, Malcolm, and I just want to make sure
Speaker 2: that I'm doing not only you, but the team and
Speaker 2: these stories justice.
Speaker 1: You know, no question about that.
Speaker 2: It's incredible what this show is all about, man, And
Speaker 2: I hope that we can all see a little bit
Speaker 2: of ourselves and each one of these individuals, because there's
Speaker 2: a little bit of us and every single one of them,
Speaker 2: or a little bit of them and every single one
Speaker 2: of us. We just got to be willing to discover.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, JayR. This has been wonderful.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: This episode of Medal of Honor Stories of Courage was
Speaker 1: produced by Jess Shane Our editor is bend A Dafhaffrey.
Speaker 1: Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorsky. Our executive
Speaker 1: producer is Constanza Gaiardo. Fact checking by Arthur Gombert's original
Speaker 1: music by Eric Phillips. We also want to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Send us your personal story of courage or highlight someone
Speaker 1: else's bravery. Email us at Medal of Honor at Pushkin
Speaker 1: dot fm. You might hear your stories on future episodes
Speaker 1: of Medal of Honor or see them on our social
Speaker 1: channels at Pushkin pods. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus to get
Speaker 1: early episodes of Medal of Honor ad free starting May
Speaker 1: twenty eighth. Subscribers also get bonus episodes, full audiobooks, and
Speaker 1: early ad free listening from your favorite Pushkin hosts and authors.
Speaker 1: Find Pushkin Plus on the Medal of Honor show page
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, or at Pushkin dot fm slash plus.
Speaker 1: Listen to Medal of Honor wherever you get your podcasts