Speaker 1: Pushkin. It was Sassur Day in Brazoria County, Texas. A
Speaker 1: young man with dark skin and dark hair stood in
Speaker 1: front of a cheering crowd. He wore sunglasses in a
Speaker 1: perfectly pressed uniform. A metal gleamed around his neck. The
Speaker 1: date was March twenty seventh, nineteen sixty nine, and he
Speaker 1: was back from the war in Vietnam. His name was
Speaker 1: Clarence Sassar. He was just twenty one, and this day,
Speaker 1: Sassur Day, was all about celebrating him. Clarence waved and
Speaker 1: smiled as news photographers took his picture. He shook hands
Speaker 1: with county officials, and four jets from the Texas National
Speaker 1: Guard flew overhead in a salute. Clarence had served as
Speaker 1: a medic with the ninth Division of the Army. He
Speaker 1: left his tiny farming community as a part time college student,
Speaker 1: and he returned a celebrity. Reporters followed him as he
Speaker 1: greeted local dignitaries and fans. He was given an oil
Speaker 1: portrait of himself, plaques and citations, government bonds, and honorary
Speaker 1: citizenship to the nearby city of Houston, and then the
Speaker 1: crowd crammed into a high school gymnasium. They wanted to
Speaker 1: hear their hometown heroes speak, but it didn't seem like
Speaker 1: he wanted to. Newspapers noted it later, how uncomfortable Clarence
Speaker 1: Sassar felt, how quiet he was that day. He didn't
Speaker 1: say anything about his action in Vietnam, the one that
Speaker 1: decorated him with the Medal of Honor, and he wouldn't
Speaker 1: for years. I'm j R. Martinez and this is Medal
Speaker 1: of Honor, Stories of Courage. The Medal of Honor is
Speaker 1: the highest military decoration in the United States. It's awarded
Speaker 1: for gallantree and bravery and combat at the risk of life,
Speaker 1: above and beyond the call of duty. Each candidate must
Speaker 1: be approved all the way up the chain of command,
Speaker 1: from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House.
Speaker 1: This show is about those heroes, what they did, what
Speaker 1: it meant, and what their stories tell us about the
Speaker 1: nature of courage and sacrifice. Now, the Medal of Honor
Speaker 1: is all about heroism on the battlefield, but that's not
Speaker 1: where heroism ends, because the medal also requires a different
Speaker 1: kind of bravery from its recipients. It asked them to
Speaker 1: talk about the hardest day of their lives over and
Speaker 1: over and over again. It took a long time for
Speaker 1: Clarence Sasser to be willing to revisit that day in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: When you hear his story, I think you'll understand why.
Speaker 1: He finally shared all the details on tape in two
Speaker 1: thousand and three, when he was in his late fifties,
Speaker 1: Even though more than thirty years had passed, he was
Speaker 1: still uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: Well, let's just get it over with. Let's just get
Speaker 2: it over with. Applying for it pains, let's just get
Speaker 2: it over with.
Speaker 1: As a combat medic, Clarence Sassar risked his life to
Speaker 1: try to save others. He healed them the best he
Speaker 1: could in the worst possible circumstances, and what he did
Speaker 1: was incredibly courageous. And then decades later, he looked around him,
Speaker 1: he saw a need, and he forced himself to be
Speaker 1: brave again. On the morning of January tenth, nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: Clarence Sassar was in the Mekong River Delta of South Vietnam.
Speaker 1: He'd been in the country for about four months, and
Speaker 1: he had seen plenty of combat already. Almost every time
Speaker 1: his unit left base camp, there were firefights or ambushes,
Speaker 1: but on that particular day his company was planning to
Speaker 1: just relax.
Speaker 3: We were scheduled as a backup for us, which meant
Speaker 3: we have an easy mission this trip. All you have
Speaker 3: to do is put out your perimeter and your guards
Speaker 3: run a few patrols at night. We were two days
Speaker 3: into that and joining the two men.
Speaker 1: Then they got the news they were going out into
Speaker 1: the field.
Speaker 3: The battalion commander gave orders for us to go to
Speaker 3: this area and check out some movement he had seen
Speaker 3: from his helicopter. So we were loaded up on the
Speaker 3: helicopters and taken to this area. The movement had been
Speaker 3: seen in the tree line surrounding this rice.
Speaker 1: Patty Clarence and the rest of the Ninth Division were
Speaker 1: part of what they called the Riverine Forces. It was
Speaker 1: a combination of army and navy that patrolled that watery
Speaker 1: region of Vietnam. This news report from the Army explains
Speaker 1: their role.
Speaker 4: The Ninth Division's main responsibility, however, was to help secure
Speaker 4: the Mekong Delta. This vast fertile area is virtually one
Speaker 4: gigantic rice paddy, broken up by rivers, canals, and earthen dikes.
Speaker 4: The Republic of Vietnam Armed forces have been fighting a
Speaker 4: long struggle against the Viet Kong in the Delta. Our
Speaker 4: job was to help them.
Speaker 1: So on January tenth, at about ten in the morning,
Speaker 1: Clarence and the rest of his company got ready to
Speaker 1: load into the choppers. They would be dropped in the
Speaker 1: rice paddy where the commander had seen suspicious movement. Clarence
Speaker 1: said something was wrong before they even took off. The
Speaker 1: men were told to eat up, and he knew that
Speaker 1: meant they'd be out for a while. For about twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: the choppers flew over little rivers and marshes, farmland and jungle.
Speaker 1: Then they got to the rice paddy. As soon as
Speaker 1: the first helicopter touched down, wave after wave of shots
Speaker 1: started coming from the enemy.
Speaker 2: I was on probably the third fourth helicopter.
Speaker 3: We go in and the helicopter start taking five rockets.
Speaker 3: A thoroughly bad situation. When the helicopters got hid and
Speaker 3: plumping down in the water.
Speaker 1: The rice paddy was framed on three sides by woods,
Speaker 1: and enemy soldiers were entrenched in those woods with perfect
Speaker 1: sight lines on the paddy. It was mayhem. The noise
Speaker 1: and wind of the helicopter blades, shots coming from the woodline,
Speaker 1: the door gunners shooting back trying to provide cover, and
Speaker 1: GI's jumping from the choppers into the wet muck of
Speaker 1: the patty.
Speaker 3: The water was probably died deep with maybe needy mud.
Speaker 1: Clarence looked out of the chopper and he hoisted his
Speaker 1: medic bag onto his shoulder. Clarence Assar had never planned
Speaker 1: to go to war.
Speaker 3: I was born in a small train stop down in
Speaker 3: southeast Texas, south of Houston. We were a farm family,
Speaker 3: and as consistent with the early fifties, long through there,
Speaker 3: ye know, things were tough.
Speaker 2: Things were hard.
Speaker 1: He lived with his mom and stepdad and siblings and
Speaker 1: a little farmhouse surrounded by marshy prairies. They were pig farmers.
Speaker 1: They were poor, but they were close knit and happy.
Speaker 1: He was close to his father too. His dad had
Speaker 1: fought in World War Two, and little Clarence had seen
Speaker 1: his army uniform hanging in the closet, but his father
Speaker 1: never spoke a word about his time in the war.
Speaker 1: Clarence was a boy scout. He played football and he
Speaker 1: was one of the best live backers in the history
Speaker 1: of his high school. And he was smart. When he
Speaker 1: left high school in nineteen sixty five, he had big plans.
Speaker 3: I graduated high school number four out of sixty eight.
Speaker 2: Which I thought I was a pretty fair student.
Speaker 3: I left high school and moved into the city of
Speaker 3: Houston and started attending the University of Houston. I was
Speaker 3: a chemistry major and did pretty well, but again, no money.
Speaker 2: The money wasn't there.
Speaker 1: This was just around the time when the military started
Speaker 1: drafting young men to go to Vietnam. There were ways
Speaker 1: to avoid being drafted. You could be disqualified for medical reasons,
Speaker 1: or you could be a full time college student, which
Speaker 1: would defer your drafting. But Clarence, he couldn't afford to
Speaker 1: be a college full time.
Speaker 2: Of course, I have a part time job.
Speaker 3: But the mistake I made was in the age of
Speaker 3: student deferment, of dropping to halftime to work a little
Speaker 3: bit more, and from that point I was drafted, drafted
Speaker 3: into the army.
Speaker 1: He wasn't alone. Men from disadvantaged backgrounds were about twice
Speaker 1: as likely to get drafted, to go to Vietnam and
Speaker 1: to see combat. Poor and working classmen made up roughly
Speaker 1: eighty percent of American troops during the war. Most of
Speaker 1: Clarence's friends were sent to.
Speaker 3: Back during this time. They cleaned out the small towns
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, good, bad, and different, but they cleaned
Speaker 3: them out.
Speaker 2: Most of us served.
Speaker 1: When he got to the army in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: Clarence went through a battery of tests. He was tapped
Speaker 1: to train as a medic.
Speaker 3: It was the fore runner to paramedics type training that
Speaker 3: you see people go through now. We like to call
Speaker 3: ourselves combat medics. Oh, a lot of medics weren't sent
Speaker 3: into combat. I always knew I would. It's one of
Speaker 3: those things.
Speaker 2: She just you just know.
Speaker 1: Clarence was right. He got to Vietnam and he was
Speaker 1: sent straight into combat. He treated gunshot and shopped no wounds,
Speaker 1: and thanks to the hot and damp weather, a lot
Speaker 1: of jungle rot and jackets too. But the work was satisfying.
Speaker 1: He liked the challenge, but more than that, he liked
Speaker 1: the feeling of brotherhood.
Speaker 3: You have to understand the cam rodery that go on
Speaker 3: between troops in Harm's way. The doc is the closest
Speaker 3: thing to him. He's the one that just may save
Speaker 3: your life.
Speaker 1: And they treated you as such. And I loved it.
Speaker 1: I loved it. Man speaking from experience. That's so true.
Speaker 1: Anybody in the medical field. Man, those are our people.
Speaker 1: Clarence learned to keep his head and remember his training.
Speaker 1: He got to know the men so well they spent
Speaker 1: all of their time together. He realized they relied on
Speaker 1: him no matter the situation.
Speaker 3: The thing with the guys was that if they were hurt,
Speaker 3: they wanted treatment as any of us would.
Speaker 2: I mean, don't care how heavy a fire was.
Speaker 3: If he was laying out in the danger and he's hurt,
Speaker 3: he expected the medic to come and see what he
Speaker 3: could do about it. He didn't care about the medic
Speaker 3: maybe getting killed coming.
Speaker 2: He expected you to come.
Speaker 1: Then came January tenth. That day in the Rice patty.
Speaker 1: Clarence knew in his bones what was waiting. He saw
Speaker 1: it as soon as he looked out of the chopper.
Speaker 1: The helicopters down.
Speaker 3: We have probably I don't remember fourteen more coming with
Speaker 3: the rest of the company. It wasn't any choice. We
Speaker 3: had to go in. So we were dumped in the
Speaker 3: Rice patty.
Speaker 1: Shots were coming from three directions, and the patty was
Speaker 1: turning into a killing floor. Men screaming, already hit mortar
Speaker 1: shells exploding. The noise was deafening. As Clarence jumped out
Speaker 1: of the helicopter, he was shot through the leg. It
Speaker 1: was only a superficial wound, but it pitched him into
Speaker 1: the mud.
Speaker 3: There was no going back. Wasn't no such thing as
Speaker 3: too hot out there.
Speaker 2: I'm not going. You made yourself go.
Speaker 1: And so he went. Clarence wasn't a rice patty in
Speaker 1: the Meacong delta, wet and covered in mud, listening as
Speaker 1: the bullets zip by him and his men cried out
Speaker 1: for help. The first thing he figured out was he
Speaker 1: had to stay down.
Speaker 3: I had learned early on that the best way to
Speaker 3: get around that day was just simply grabbing the rice
Speaker 3: sprouts and sliding yourself alone. You could move better like
Speaker 3: that than to try to, of course, stand up.
Speaker 2: If he stood up, you were dead.
Speaker 1: Clarence was overwhelmed by the sight of so much death,
Speaker 1: and he realized that the enemy snipers were specifically targeting medics.
Speaker 2: They would get you, especially they see you bagged.
Speaker 3: They know you're a medic. You know you kill a medic.
Speaker 3: A lot of people probably would die. It was it
Speaker 3: was the rational.
Speaker 1: Now his leg was wounded, but that wasn't his main problem.
Speaker 1: The bigger issue. Clarence was suppose to be one of
Speaker 1: four company medics on the scene. Where were the other three?
Speaker 3: I guess, to make a long story short, I was
Speaker 3: the only medic that lived. The mortals were coming in,
Speaker 3: Snipers were around, guys were yelling dop top.
Speaker 1: The lower half of each man was underwater or mud.
Speaker 1: This left their upper bodies exposed to the snipers. So
Speaker 1: Clarence was tending to chest wounds and had in face
Speaker 1: injuries plus injuries from shrapnel. Those were particularly nasty and
Speaker 1: almost impossible for him to treat, but he kept moving forward,
Speaker 1: pulling himself through the rice patty to each wounded man.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to sit here.
Speaker 3: And say I wasn't afraid. You know, of course you
Speaker 3: were afraid. You were afraid of getting killed. But these
Speaker 3: were my guys. Your job was to look out for
Speaker 3: them when they called, when they hollered, medic or do.
Speaker 3: The job was to go nothing more without fear of
Speaker 3: your life. It was your job.
Speaker 1: At one point, Clarence hurt a soldier from his platoon,
Speaker 1: screaming bloody murder, so he dragged himself towards him. This
Speaker 1: guy was big five eleven two and ten pounds and
Speaker 1: freaking out. But when Clarence got there, he realized that
Speaker 1: a piece of shrapnel had just nicked the skin off
Speaker 1: of this guy's finger. He was paralyzed by the sight
Speaker 1: of blood. Clarence put a band aid on his finger
Speaker 1: and gave him.
Speaker 3: A pep talk after I had finished putting the band intomn, man,
Speaker 3: take your weapon, take your weapon.
Speaker 2: Let's try to get out of here.
Speaker 1: As the day dragged on, the shots kept coming, and
Speaker 1: there was a new problem. Because Clarence was in the
Speaker 1: backup company, they weren't really supposed to be engaged in battle,
Speaker 1: so he just had his basic medic bag, not a
Speaker 1: combat pack with extra supplies. After a few hours, that
Speaker 1: bag was empty, and Clarence, the only surviving medic, could
Speaker 1: give his men almost nothing but emotional support.
Speaker 3: So anyway, here, I'm just pulling myself around and everything. Yeah,
Speaker 3: going to guys and doing the best I could. Anyway,
Speaker 3: doing the best I could. That's how anyone could ask.
Speaker 1: Clarence and the others kept trying to get to the
Speaker 1: tree line, where they would have a little shelter. They
Speaker 1: stopped along the dikes of the Rice patty, since those
Speaker 1: also gave some cover from the mortar shells.
Speaker 3: Man, you could hear them all day bore. They'd come
Speaker 3: in boom, and then you hear it. Well, it's just
Speaker 3: shooting into the water. When it hit the water, you
Speaker 3: hear it just sile.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 1: Then three mortar rounds landed no more than six feet
Speaker 1: eight at the most from Clarence. They sprayed his back
Speaker 1: and left side with shrapnel.
Speaker 3: Shell fragments are something I'll never forget how they feel.
Speaker 2: It's almost no pain. The pain sets in later.
Speaker 3: The initial shock is what you experience, and the searing
Speaker 3: because of course the shell fragments are hot.
Speaker 1: He lay there a while, finally coming back to consciousness,
Speaker 1: feeling the incredible pain and becoming alert again to the
Speaker 1: struggle around him. The day shifted from bright sunlight to
Speaker 1: late afternoon. Clarence was on his side, lying against the
Speaker 1: dike next to a buddy. Suddenly he realized that the
Speaker 1: sound of shooting and mortar shells had gone quiet, so
Speaker 1: he raised up his head to peek out. The moment
Speaker 1: he did, he heard the report of a rifle and
Speaker 1: he felt the impact of a bullet to his skull.
Speaker 1: Clarence grabbed his head and fell to the ground. He
Speaker 1: wasn't wearing his helmet because he had lost it at
Speaker 1: some point during the battle. Unbelievably, the bullet hadn't killed
Speaker 1: him somehow, it had only given him a serious concussion.
Speaker 1: As night fell, American gunships darted overhead, dropping explosives on
Speaker 1: the enemy. They flew so close to the ground that
Speaker 1: Clarence was worried they'd be hit by the explosions from
Speaker 1: their own bombs, but they kept the enemy occupied and
Speaker 1: the men on the ground safe. By then, Clarence and
Speaker 1: the rest of the survivors had managed to reach the woodline.
Speaker 1: Wounded troops were everywhere. For Clarence, the darkness brought the
Speaker 1: worst moments of awe.
Speaker 3: It wasn't so much the enemy activity men. It was
Speaker 3: laying that listening to you. Guys called for their marble.
Speaker 3: You can't do anything. It was tough.
Speaker 2: It wasn't so much.
Speaker 3: Enemy activity or shots or things of that nature.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 3: I was just listening to him big all night, and
Speaker 3: then you wouldn't hear him anymore.
Speaker 1: You know, he died.
Speaker 2: It's tough. It's toughest think.
Speaker 1: The Metavac helicopters began arriving at about four point thirty
Speaker 1: that morning. They got the most seriously injured out first.
Speaker 1: Even with all of his wounds, Clarence was one of
Speaker 1: the last to leave.
Speaker 3: It was a relief, of course, a relief when we
Speaker 3: were out of there and I was still alive. I
Speaker 3: was hurt, but I wasn't I wasn't immortal danger.
Speaker 2: I was hurt. I knew me. I knew I would heal,
Speaker 2: and I would heal fairly quickly.
Speaker 3: I had made it, man, I had made it.
Speaker 1: But what he had seen would haunt him, and he
Speaker 1: would spend decades trying to bury it. After the battle
Speaker 1: in the Rice Patty, Clarence was flown to a hospital
Speaker 1: in Japan. From there he went to a medical holding
Speaker 1: company for rehab.
Speaker 3: So, being a medic, I started hanging out at the
Speaker 3: dispensary during my off time. So and understanding doctor needed
Speaker 3: another medic, and he got me real signed there. So
Speaker 3: I didn't go back, or I would have gone back
Speaker 3: to my unit in Vietnam, which I to this day,
Speaker 3: I thank you.
Speaker 1: Clarence would never go back to Vietnam. Instead, he got
Speaker 1: different news.
Speaker 3: The command in general wants to see me. What what
Speaker 3: did I do. I haven't done any day, Doc. He said, oh,
Speaker 3: you'll like it. It's all right, it's all right.
Speaker 1: All right, And that's an understatement. It was great. He
Speaker 1: was informed that he had been awarded the Medal of Honor.
Speaker 1: That was in the early fall of nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: an election year, so the award would have to wait
Speaker 1: for the new president. After Richard Nixon took office in
Speaker 1: January of nineteen sixty nine, planning for the ceremony began.
Speaker 1: It was set for March seven.
Speaker 3: It was really experience from background, of course, you know,
Speaker 3: poor farm family, and every day my mother and sisters
Speaker 3: were flown up to DC. Of course, this was the best,
Speaker 3: the best thing that ever happened to him.
Speaker 1: Clarence was awarded the medal along with two other army men.
Speaker 1: Nixon gave the speech.
Speaker 5: They are magnificent men, magnificent in their idealism. Idealism is
Speaker 5: often shown by words, but they have demonstrated their idealism
Speaker 5: by their deeds. They have made us proud of being
Speaker 5: Americans and also reminded us that we should be proud
Speaker 5: of our younger generation, the youth of America.
Speaker 1: And Clarence was still so young. He was just twenty one.
Speaker 1: When he came back home to Texas and to a
Speaker 1: grateful community, there was sassurday. Of course, articles were written
Speaker 1: celebrating his bravery, with headlines like steel a valor forged
Speaker 1: and shabby home. He was given a scholarship to continue
Speaker 1: his college studies, this time at Texas A and M.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't that simple. You see this with so
Speaker 1: many events after a traumatic experience, I've lived it, Clarence
Speaker 1: couldn't just return to the future he had planned. He
Speaker 1: thought about death all the time. He dropped out of
Speaker 1: Texas A and M after a year. He just wasn't
Speaker 1: ready for it. He still felt like he was fighting
Speaker 1: for his life. And while he was proud of his medal,
Speaker 1: like the attention, I don't.
Speaker 3: Think what idea was above and beyond. I never have
Speaker 3: and for a long time I had a problem with that.
Speaker 3: I have a problem with why.
Speaker 1: All of this.
Speaker 2: I just did my job. My job was to take
Speaker 2: care of my guys. That's it.
Speaker 1: We've heard that so many times in this series, guys
Speaker 1: who say I was just doing my job. But Clarence
Speaker 1: was honest about a different aspect of the medal of honor,
Speaker 1: one that fewer recipients talk about.
Speaker 3: It's easy to strap it on, but it's a heavy
Speaker 3: something to wear. It requires certain things of you. It
Speaker 3: forces you to go to straight and narrow. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm gonna be in the newspaper Malevanna recipient
Speaker 3: robs a bank. It sort of makes you live up
Speaker 3: to it. And that's not a bad thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not a bad thing. But there was something hard
Speaker 1: about all the attention. It dredges up memories, and these
Speaker 1: are memories that are that you deal with belly if
Speaker 1: they're not on the forefront of the old mind. Clarence
Speaker 1: had always wondered why his father would never talk about
Speaker 1: his war. Now he understood. Two years after he returned
Speaker 1: from Vietnam, Clarence Sasser married Ethel Morrin, a brown eyed
Speaker 1: beauty with an incredible smile. They raised three sons, Ross, Benjamin,
Speaker 1: and Billy. The family lived close to where Clarence had
Speaker 1: grown up. He found work at chemical plants. He was
Speaker 1: patriotic and proud of his service. He kept a flag
Speaker 1: in front of his house that he raised and lowered
Speaker 1: every day, but he avoided actually talking about what had
Speaker 1: happened in Vietnam. Even after he took a job with
Speaker 1: the Veterans Administration, and then in nineteen ninety six, a
Speaker 1: though was killed by a drunk driver. By that point,
Speaker 1: the couple had been married twenty five years. Clarence was
Speaker 1: just forty nine. His world was shattered. In the aftermath,
Speaker 1: something changed. He finally began to really talk about what
Speaker 1: had happened to him in Vietnam. It was a way
Speaker 1: to distract himself from his grief, and he knew it
Speaker 1: was important for another reason. It was a way to
Speaker 1: represent black resilience and bravery. In two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: when he did the interview we've been listening to, there
Speaker 1: was only one other Black Medal of Honor recipient still living.
Speaker 3: Being one of the only two black guys alive now
Speaker 3: is indeed a burden. A lot of places we go,
Speaker 3: you look around the crowd and there are a few
Speaker 3: black people out there and everything, and I know, were
Speaker 3: I'm not there, they would wonder where are the black
Speaker 3: Aren't any black guys in this group? So by virtue
Speaker 3: of that, I feel like I have to go and
Speaker 3: I do, although considerably less than probably what I should.
Speaker 2: But I try to balance it with.
Speaker 3: My knees, specifically not to be reminded of this stuff
Speaker 3: all the time.
Speaker 1: By twenty ten, Clarence would be the only living Black recipient.
Speaker 1: It would stay that way for years. So we went
Speaker 1: to ceremonies and speaking engagements and panels. Even though he
Speaker 1: didn't want to, even if it made him relive that
Speaker 1: terrible day in the Rice Patty, the longest day of
Speaker 1: his life, he did it because he felt it was
Speaker 1: his duty because he had received the Medal of Honor.
Speaker 3: It's a heavy burden to wear it and to wear
Speaker 3: it well, which I like to think I do.
Speaker 1: But the medal wasn't the thing he was proudest of.
Speaker 3: I have sons, man, I have three sons, and I'm
Speaker 3: intensely proud of them to be young black kids. And
Speaker 3: nowadays it's not easy. I tell them every time I
Speaker 3: see him. Now, I'm proud of them. To me, that
Speaker 3: is my crowning achievement. Beyond the metal is to raise
Speaker 3: three young black boys.
Speaker 2: To me, that I feel is my crowning achievement.
Speaker 1: Clarence Sasser died in twenty twenty four. At the time
Speaker 1: of this recording, there are sixty four Medal of Honor
Speaker 1: recipients still alive. Only two of them are black. One
Speaker 1: is eighty four years old, the other is eighty seven.
Speaker 1: It took enormous bravery for Clarence to tell his story.
Speaker 1: It never got easier for him. What you've been listening
Speaker 1: to is one of the very few times he was
Speaker 1: willing to share all of the details, to be that vulnerable,
Speaker 1: to break down in tears remembering those men calling out
Speaker 1: for their mothers.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: That's hard, but to me it shows that heroism isn't
Speaker 1: justified by what you face in combat, even for a
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor recipient. True heroism is being willing to
Speaker 1: keep showing up, to keep putting other people first, no
Speaker 1: matter the pain, no matter the cost. Medal of Honor
Speaker 1: Stories of Courage is written by Meredith Rollins and produced
Speaker 1: by Meredith Rollins and Ryan Schweiker. Our editor is Lydia
Speaker 1: Jean Kott. Sound designed by Jake Gorski. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Constanze gyardro Fact checking by Arthur Gomperts. Original music
Speaker 1: by Eric Phillips. Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of
Speaker 1: Honor Society. If you want to learn more about this story,
Speaker 1: take a look at our show notes, where we list
Speaker 1: some of the resources we use to put this episode together.
Speaker 1: We also want to hear from you. Your participation helps
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Speaker 1: Medal of Honor at pushkin dot fm, or find us
Speaker 1: on social media at pushkin pods or find me at
Speaker 1: I am JR. Martinez. Thank you for listening. I'm your
Speaker 1: host JR. Martinez. We hear you. You want to listen
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