May 29, 2023 - Bannon's War Room
48:50
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
♪♪ | |
| It's Memorial Day, 29 May in the year of our Lord 2023. | ||
| I want to thank you for our Memorial Day special for the audience who's been with us. | ||
| I think it's our fourth Memorial Day here in War Room. | ||
| And of course, we've been doing it many years. | ||
| Before that, at Breitbart, Breitbart News Radio, we used to do over at Sirius XM. And then earlier than that, when I had the show in L.A. at WABC, the Victory Session. | ||
| So I've been doing this. Since 2011, I guess it's 12 years now? | ||
| 13 years? No, 12 years. | ||
| I don't know. I want to bring in Patrick K. O'Donnell. | ||
| For 10 years, I've been doing it with Patrick K. O'Donnell, the finest combat historian of his day. | ||
| We're going to get into later in the C Block about Memorial Day. | ||
| We're in Washington, D.C. The nation's capital, and we're going to take a while and break down exactly about memorials, about tombs of the unknown, how France and other nations that have been our allies have commemorated that and how we picked up on it. | ||
| But the reason today, and we appreciate you for your time on the Saturday show, but I want to get back into it. | ||
| I want to talk about it because I think You know, the nation's kind of gotten off what Memorial Day is about. | ||
| And we try to reemphasize it here. | ||
| Memorial Day is not Veterans Day. | ||
| I'm a veteran. Veterans Day is for thank you for your service. | ||
| And, you know, the veterans, it's on the, you know, the 11th hour, the 11th day of the what the 11th day of the 11th month of the 11th hour. | ||
| With the armistice in France, in Veterans Day we commemorate that. | ||
| Memorial Day is not that. Memorial Day is about the honored dead. | ||
| It's about those that were not wounded in combat, as bad as that is. | ||
| This is for really those who died and gave the ultimate sacrifice. | ||
| One of the reasons Patrick O'Donnell, look, he's a dear friend and a colleague, and we got to know each other great over the last ten years and done a lot together. | ||
| But the reason you've always resonated with our audience is that you are a combat historian and you don't write these kind of mega thematic books about combat. | ||
| You always take it through the first person. | ||
| You either do it through interviews you did with the Battle of Fallujah or with World War II or Korea. | ||
| In fact, you started your whole thing of being a historian that would go back and actually do interviews with people as archives. | ||
| But then even when you went back in those things in the First World War or in the Civil War or in the Revolution where you can't do, you would spend years in archives to get the diaries, to get that. | ||
| So when you read your books, you're really getting the soldier's view of what went on, and it's so powerful. | ||
| Have we gotten away, you think, as a country? | ||
| Because you're still a bestselling author. | ||
| Every book you put out, our audience loves. | ||
| They're huge bestsellers. | ||
| Do you think the country is losing the understanding of early Memorial Day and that it is set up in remembrance of the honored dead? | ||
| I think to some degree that's true. | ||
| I mean, this Memorial Day is about honoring those that have fallen in all of our wars. | ||
| It's about Sean Stokes, who was in the Battle of Fallujah, or Michael Hanks, who lost his life there, who was only 22 years old in a firefight with Chechens in a house that I remember specifically that day like it was yesterday. | ||
| It was November 17th, 2004. | ||
| And I dragged him out of the firefight. | ||
| You were embedded. | ||
| I was. I was a civilian combat historian. | ||
| I was in uniform though. And fought house to house with the Marine Corps and 3-1 Lima Company. | ||
| And that was a very powerful experience. | ||
| Yeah, that's touched me. | ||
| Those experiences, I've been touched by that fire and by those men that have died. | ||
| Did you get that same when you go through the archives and see the first person accounts from the Revolutionary War? | ||
| There is a sameness to the periods of time. | ||
| What do you mean by that? In terms of what combat soldiers have gone through and the intensity of the combat. | ||
| And what you do see is a difference in sometimes the period, but there is a sameness of that combat, that closeness and close quarter battle. | ||
| The books that I've written have all been about individuals and people that have, in many cases, changed the course of history through their actions. | ||
| Small groups of people. | ||
| Small unit combat. Yeah, that had been there at the right place at the right time, an inflection point that changed history through their actions. | ||
| Was it inflection points that they created by their agency and their actions, and that's why when you look at it in the grand scope of things, you can see that it was an inflection point, but the reason it was is because of what they did at that moment, that defining moment for them? | ||
| Yes, exactly. | ||
| In a classic example, is my book, Dog Company, which is on the 2nd Ranger Battalion. | ||
| This is a small group of men, Dog Company, which is roughly a little more than 100 men in a company of rangers. | ||
| They threw pretty much everything they could against these large guns. | ||
| There were six main guns at Pointe du Hoc. | ||
| They were pointed at the invasion force. | ||
| And they could reach either beach or the ships outside in the channel. | ||
| And they had to be taken out at all costs. | ||
| They threw massive amounts of naval artillery at the guns. | ||
| Naval bombardment. And it was plastered with hundreds of sorties of bombers. | ||
| The place looked like the crater of the moon, but they did not take out these guns. | ||
| And they relied upon... | ||
| The 2nd Ranger Battalion, roughly a little more than 200 men, to scale 90-foot cliffs under direct machine gun fire. | ||
| There were IEDs that were suspended from old artillery shells. | ||
| Hand grenades were being thrown down upon these guys. | ||
| They threw everything at them. | ||
| And it was one... And the Second Rangers had to scale. | ||
| They had to scale. These are the boys in Pointe-to-Hock. | ||
| They had to scale a 100-foot cliff? | ||
| They had to scale a 100-foot cliff under direct fire. | ||
| This is a suicide mission if there ever was one. | ||
| Did they know they're going to die? | ||
| This is the last day of their life. | ||
| They understand that. They actually, about 10 or 12 days before the invasion, they brought out body bags. | ||
| And they told the men there that they were probably not going to survive. | ||
| That they were going to have about 80 % casualties in the unit. | ||
| How do men, when they're told that... | ||
| In your research, how do they react? | ||
| Because this is what Memorial Day is about. | ||
| Remember, you're going to have the president and other people go, and they'll give these speeches this afternoon, and they'll be at Arlington. | ||
| But when you look at the peace that's there, you look at the calm that's there, it's magnificent in its simple beauty. | ||
| Just like at Normandy, you go to that cemetery at Normandy above Omaha Beach. | ||
| It is so magnificent in its simplicity and its power of this grace. | ||
| But You have to put your mind to the thing that this came at a carnage that's almost unbelievable in that most of the men that are dead there knew they were going to die. | ||
| They knew that this was their last day on earth. | ||
| And some even had premonitions to that effect. | ||
| And they still win anyways. | ||
| And that's what's sort of, that's what's so extraordinary about it. | ||
| And several of the men even in Dog Company even had competitions on who would be the first up the cliff. | ||
| They could not, they were determined to fulfill their mission. | ||
| And they scaled that cliff against all odds. | ||
| And they got up there, and the guns were removed from the casements. | ||
| But this is where the... | ||
| The Germans knew... | ||
| Why did the Germans remove the guns? | ||
| Because if they were in the casements, they were completely an easy target, because they could be seen and spotted by aerial observation. | ||
| So what they did is they moved the guns about 800 yards inland into an apple orchard and put nets over them, and they were ready to go. | ||
| To be moved back up. | ||
| Yeah, they were known to stay where they were at. | ||
| They could be fired from in place. | ||
| Oh, from the Appalachian. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. And what happened is Len Lamel, this is what is so amazing about the American combat soldier. | ||
| He wasn't, he didn't wait for orders to be told what to do. | ||
| On his own initiative, initiative, on his own initiative, Fulfills the mission. | ||
| He finds tire tracks and follows those tracks, and he has to go through a labyrinth on top, which is a series of bunkers that are heavily defended by the Germans with machine guns and hand grenades and everything else. | ||
| They fight their way through there, they follow the tire tracks, and they find the apple orchard. | ||
| And these men are equipped with what's known as a thermite grenade. | ||
| And the thermite grenade creates a molten metal at a very high temperature. | ||
| And they put the grenades on the gears of the guns and Len disabled five of them alone. | ||
| But he changed the course of history through his actions. | ||
| That's his agency. | ||
| That's the key right there. | ||
| And wasn't told to do it. Nobody was told to do it, and he was wounded at the same time. | ||
| He was shot on the way up on the top of the cliff by a machine gun bullet in his side. | ||
| And he fought through all that without hesitating. | ||
| Point to Hawk is a point at the very south of the beaches. | ||
| And you look up, you've got Omaha, you've got Utah. | ||
| But it's so strategic and so high. | ||
| How did, and having been up there, I actually filmed up there, the craters are still there. | ||
| They are. You feel like you're on the moon. | ||
| I mean, being a naval officer and knowing what a naval bombardment, at least the sending side, it's almost incomprehensible of the intensity of what caused that, that in the aerial bombing. | ||
| How did they train, how did they train to scale in all that, with everything going on, to keep your concentration to get up a hundred foot high cliff, under fire? | ||
| What they did. What they did is, for six months, they trained in England on the biggest cliffs that they could find. | ||
| At Dover? Dover or everywhere else. | ||
| And they did this without safety harnesses or anything. | ||
| They just used ropes. And to make it added realism, the officers in the group would fire their M1 Garands directly at the men, so they would obviously miss, but they would feel that sensation of live bullets as they went up. | ||
| Incredible. Tell me about who had a premonition. | ||
| There was one man that was really a striking story. | ||
| There were a number of men that the medical officer knew he was going to die, for instance. | ||
| And he wrote about it, and the next day, he was dead. | ||
| And this was actually, that story was actually at a place called Hill 400. | ||
| And the rangers would always tell me, Pat, our toughest day was not point to hock. | ||
| It was at a place called Hill 400. | ||
| And Hill 400 was in the Hurricane Forest. | ||
| And it was the highest hill in the forest. | ||
| And this is an epic story. | ||
| It really should be a movie. They used a bayonet charge to go across an open field. | ||
| And they assaulted Hill 400 with several Ranger companies. | ||
| People don't know. Hercun Forrest, if you look at the statistics, we talked about this on the Saturday show, about the bloodiest engagements in American combat history. | ||
| Hercun Forrest always ranks like four or five. | ||
| I mean, it's kind of totally unknown. | ||
| Right? But it is one of the most intense forms of combat. | ||
| And that's what we honor today. | ||
| What you honor on Memorial Day is the intense combat of those who knew they were sacrificing everything, right? | ||
| That's why they're the honored dead. | ||
| Absolutely. They willingly did this in defense of their country. | ||
| Yeah, that's exactly right, Steve. | ||
| Hurricane Forest, Hill 400, Dog Company, the 2nd Ranger Battalion, this is a months-long, five-, six-month-long battle, even longer. | ||
| And the casualties there rivaled those of the Korean War. | ||
|
unidentified
|
In the total Korean War, all three years of it. | |
| Yes. It was a massive, massive slaughter fest. | ||
| The Germans had everything zeroed in for their artillery and their mortars. | ||
| There were bunkers that were hidden and camouflaged in pretty much every crossroads, every nook and cranny of the forest, heavily mined. | ||
| It was just practically impenetrable. | ||
| And instead of bypassing the force, they were concerned that the force would be used to sally out forces to attack the US forces as we went into Germany. | ||
| Instead of surrounding it and bypassing it, we decided to take it piece by piece. | ||
| And it was a disaster. | ||
| Okay, we're going to take a short commercial break. | ||
| Patrick O'Donnell is here. | ||
| We're going to get into this show. | ||
| We're going to break down the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. | ||
| We're going to break down Arlington National Cemetery, Memorial Day, all of it. | ||
| It's our Memorial Day special. | ||
| I want to thank Patrick for doing this. | ||
| It's an honor to be here. For being with us on Saturday. | ||
| We're in the, I don't know, ninth or tenth year of doing this together on both radio, podcast, television, streaming, all of it. | ||
| So a short commercial break. We're going to be back in the War Room in just a moment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
the the | |
| Okay, welcome back. | ||
| It's our Memorial Day special. | ||
| I'm here with Patrick O'Donnell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No one has... | |
| There's no combat historian that has covered from a first-person perspective of going through journals, diaries, interviews, oral histories, which you saw as a specialist, that has gone from the Revolutionary War, and your two books on the Revolution have been magnificent, all the way to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and your book on Fallujah is still the best first-person account of Fallujah. | ||
| What have you learned in that? | ||
| Tell me, what's the metanarrative of your dedication of your life? | ||
| Not to American soldiers or American sailors, but to really those at the tip. | ||
| Every one of your stories, you're at the tip of the tip of the spear. | ||
| In each situation, whether it's in the Revolution, whether it's in World War I, Korea, Chosin Reservoir. | ||
| I mean, you're at Pointe du Hoc, Hurricane Forest. | ||
| You always go in. | ||
| What is the big takeaway that you have taken from that? | ||
| The books that I've written are largely on specialized units, elite units, special operations forces. | ||
| But also average Americans that do extraordinary things. | ||
| Well, aren't they all average Americans when they're going to that? | ||
| Yeah, they're all volunteers at one point or another and just average Americans. | ||
| But I think that's the takeaway that a person through their agency can change the course of history. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| Ordinary men doing extraordinary things. | ||
| And women in some cases with the OSS too. | ||
| Yes. Ordinary men and women doing extraordinary things. | ||
| Absolutely. Now, is it something about America as a country? | ||
| Is it something about the values we've taught that from the revolution all the way to Fallujah, you see that time and time and time again on foreign battlefields? | ||
| I mean, right now in Ukraine, they're fighting over their own territory, right? | ||
| But you're doing it on foreign battlefields most of the time? | ||
| Yeah, for America, it's about an idea. | ||
| And the American idea is a powerful idea. | ||
| Ideas are more powerful than anything else in the world. | ||
| The American idea of liberty and freedom resonated so much with the American Revolution that it changed the world. | ||
| It changed the world many, many times over through revolutions and everything else. | ||
| And the first two books that I've written have been about that liberty and freedom and that idea that these men and women put down and then change the world through it. | ||
| It's the operating system that we have as Americans. | ||
| And right now it's under attack in so many ways. | ||
| What do you mean by that? For you to say that means something important. | ||
| It means that in so many places, the ideas of what we believe are freedom and liberty are being changed. | ||
| And it's happening in so many places and so many levels. | ||
| And that's why I believe that our founding will be our salvation. | ||
| What do you mean by that? It means that the way that we originated, our understanding of freedom and liberty Will be our salvation in the end. | ||
| Because there's so many, in many ways, it's also about power and control. | ||
| And the founders understood that and how to defuse it. | ||
| And with the Constitution and other things. | ||
| And that's why we have to constantly, I think, go back to that founding era, which I've interviewed over 4,000 Americans in World War II. In many of them- You've done oral histories- Oral histories. | ||
| They were my closest friends in the 82nd Airborne Division, the 517 Independent Parachute Regiment. | ||
| I mean, the 1st Special Service Force, the OSS, you name it, Merrill's Marauders. | ||
| But they would come back and say to me- I would sometimes say, are you the greatest generation? | ||
| No, Pat. The greatest generation was our founding generation because of what they faced. | ||
| They faced the greatest army in the world at the time. | ||
| And they also faced fellow Americans in our first Civil War. | ||
| That was, I think, the toughest test. | ||
| And they developed these ideas of freedom and liberty, which changed the world. | ||
| And they are just as important today as they were then. | ||
| Did that run through the bloodstream of the troops you fought with, you were assigned to in Fallujah? | ||
| Yes. In the 21st century? | ||
| I felt that that was, as I said, that was our next great generation. | ||
| I mean, they were, I think every generation in many ways, the World War I generation. | ||
| The Korean War generation, World War II, Spanish-American Civil War generation, the men and women that I met in Iraq, in Fallujah were exceptional. | ||
| And I saw Marines that were wounded and couldn't Would bail out of the aid station just to get back to fight with the platoon? | ||
| Because when you do these small units, and yes, they're trained as elite troops, so they all start as normal Americans. | ||
| Is it the camaraderie of the unit? | ||
| Is it the cohesion of the small unit? | ||
| Is that what drives people? | ||
| Yes, they were fighting for each other, the man on their left and right. | ||
| The men in 1st Platoon, for instance, were best friends. | ||
| And that was a most remarkable experience, to be there in combat with them. | ||
| And see it. And then I've also seen it from go full circle. | ||
| When I came home from Iraq, I'll never forget. | ||
| It was here in Washington, D.C. And the families of the fallen, we had five or six in the platoon, which is an enormous number. | ||
| And in the squad alone, there were four. | ||
| And in the squad, those four family members asked me to come to Washington, D.C. and meet them. | ||
| And they wanted to know what I was doing and how I was going to tell the story of 1st Platoon. | ||
| And it was a, at first, one of the individuals, father fought in Vietnam, and he accused another man of killing his son, and that wasn't the case. | ||
| Friendly fire? No, it wasn't the case at all. | ||
| It was just the case that, oh my God, we had so much, I mean, so much coming at us at Fallujah. | ||
| It was house to house. | ||
| Oh, some of that, it was some already bitterness? | ||
| Yeah, there was, because we had four killed in the squad. | ||
| And it was just a situation of how intense that fire was. | ||
| In the end of this, the whole thing, I'll never forget, I was in tears. | ||
| And they were too, and he came up and he said, tell my son's story. | ||
| And it was one of the most powerful moments I think I've ever had. | ||
| Because at first he did not want the story told, and he thought he'd been killed by friendly fire? | ||
| Yeah. Well, it wasn't a friendly fire thing, it was just a situation of just the intensity of it that didn't quite understand it. | ||
| Is it hard for the parents to understand? | ||
| I think it is, of course. | ||
| Nobody ever goes through that and ever gets over it. | ||
| When I was a combat historian, you had spent your life at that time writing books and doing oral interviews and reading archives and diaries. | ||
| Did it prepare you for actually being assigned to a squad? | ||
| Yeah, I was actually prepared by the World War II men that I... That I interviewed, I'll never forget. | ||
| One of them said to me, you know when a bullet whizzes and snaps and the difference? | ||
| I felt that firsthand. | ||
| I'll never forget. | ||
| I was in a ditch and direct sniper fire was right in my ear and one went right in front of my face. | ||
| It was intense. | ||
| I had this flashback of hitting my conversation with that World War II vet. | ||
| Patrick K. O'Donnell, I want to make sure everybody goes to your website to the degree they want to and enjoys your writings, because in the span of the books... | ||
| Yeah, the one they were talking about is We Were One. | ||
| It's also on the Commandant's reading list. | ||
| Of the Marine Corps. Of the Marine Corps. | ||
| It was required reading for NCOs of what life was like. | ||
| Non-commissioned officers, the backbone of the Marine Corps. | ||
| Exactly. It was required reading for non-commissioned officers. | ||
| For many, many years. | ||
| Okay. Many Commandants. | ||
| We're going to pivot here when we come back. | ||
| We can't do it any better than we did it. | ||
| As you're going to see, Patrick O'Donnell and myself, we go through really what Memorial Day is and not just what it means to America, but the structure of Memorial Day, the Tomb of the Unknown, the honored guard over at Arlington, the army that stays in eternal vigilance. | ||
| Arlington National Cemetery, I would say, is the most sacred ground in this country, you would say? | ||
| No doubt? There's no doubt about it. | ||
| Arlington National Cemetery, the former home of General Robert E. Lee. | ||
| Of course, that was changed during the Civil War. | ||
| We're going to walk you through all the way from the battlefields of France. | ||
| I don't think American people quite appreciate the carnage of the First World War and how the United States Army came in at the end and really tipped the scales and the reason the First World War ended. | ||
| Really, the bloodiest battle, I think, in American history is from August, the Battle of the Argonne, of Meuse-Argonne. | ||
| Meuse-Argonne is the largest battle in American history. | ||
| The largest battle in American history goes from basically the middle of August all the way to the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, right up to Armistice. | ||
| In fact, people were dying right up to that. | ||
| And from that, we got the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and really this very special observation over at Arlington National Cemetery. | ||
| So we're going to take a break. | ||
| We'll come back. We'll go through all of that. | ||
| I want to thank you. We're here at our Memorial Day special, May of 2023. | ||
| We'll be back in the warm in just a moment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So, we're going to be doing a little bit of a walkthrough of the new version of the new version of the New World Order. | |
| So, let's go. | ||
| So, let's go. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| Memorial Day special. | ||
| Patrick K. O'Donnell, the trauma of World War I, all these casualties in a manner with this highly mechanized warfare, gas, the perfection of the machine gun, really combined arms for the first time, heavily entrenched. Shocked America. | ||
| Let's talk about what happened afterwards in trying to even get the war dead back and this whole concept of the unknown soldier, even how it started, you know, in France and in the United Kingdom and, of course, General Pershing. | ||
| You know, you've had, what, Washington, Jackson, but that wasn't even a formal army, you know, Grant, And Pershing, I guess, General Marshall, that he wasn't a field commander. | ||
| Pershing considered probably in the top, General Lee, probably in the top two or three generals who's ever had, but a shadow, a guy that just really dominated the entire army when he was there. | ||
| Absolutely. He's an incredible commander, a dominant force. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And also somebody that could deal with an alliance, which is something up until that point we had not had until except for General Washington. | |
| It's an incredible skill to have to be able to work that and that finesse. | ||
| And also to follow Wilson's orders, which would be to keep the American Expeditionary Force separate and fighting on its own so that we would not lose our identity as Americans. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And also the role of America would not be downplayed in these negotiations. | |
| Had we just put our troops in with the French or the British, they would have been cannon fodder. | ||
| Instead, we had a separate army that would play a decisive role in World War I. But going back to the issue of all of these Americans that were buried there, initially, they did not want to bring back those American boys that we had lost. | ||
| And it was a cost issue to basically disintern all of the bodies and then carefully bring them back in an honorable manner. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was an enormous expense. | |
| Eventually, Congress authorized it, the removal of anybody that wanted their family members returned home. | ||
| And then there was the issue of the over 3,000 Americans that were still unknown and unaccounted for. | ||
| Initially, the War Department claimed that they could identify those Americans, and that was a pipe dream. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And there was also... | |
| This was at the very beginning of even DNA or any of that kind of testing. | ||
| Correct. But they felt that they had the scientific expertise and medical expertise to actually identify everybody. | ||
| That was their going-in bid, correct? | ||
| Correct. I think that was the surface argument. | ||
| But I think in reality, there was also cost that was associated with this that they didn't want to necessarily bear. | ||
| And what happens is an interesting movement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A grassroots movement springs up. | |
| And our boys are brought home. | ||
| That's the first step. And then a movement by a woman editor She's a paper in New York City. | ||
| She's very powerful. She started to write that we need a tomb of the unknown like France and Great Britain. | ||
| This caught a lot of attention around the country. | ||
| It was spearheaded in Congress by Congressman Hamilton Fish from New York. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And he had an extraordinary service record. | |
| He was with the Harlem Hellfighters as a white officer that fought with a black unit. | ||
| And they were one of the most, they had some of the longest service in France. | ||
| These men were in France for over 190 days in combat. | ||
| And, you know, highly distinguished in many cases. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But they had to fight against racism. | |
| And they fought a lot of times with the French army. | ||
| And there's some incredible stories of World War I heroes, Medal of Honor recipients that I document in the unknowns in that book. | ||
| But Fish sees this Tomb of the Unknown as an opportunity to recognize his men who had sort of the short end of the stick in many cases, but also to recognize all Americans that had fought in World War I. And it gains a tremendous amount of ground. | ||
| And there's bipartisan support. | ||
| And it moves forward in 1921. | ||
| Hang on a second. Who is the female editor became? | ||
| She was a firebrand. I mean, she really took this... | ||
| Her name is Marie Maloney. She sort of lost to history, but she's got an enormous story. | ||
| She runs a newspaper, a magazine called The Delineator. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And she is a New Yorker. | |
| Her husband is a publisher as well. | ||
| So she has quite a bit of clout. | ||
| And she uses it for good to really foster this grassroots movement for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. | ||
| And in 1921, what happens then? | ||
| Actually, they get legislation passed? | ||
| They get legislation passed to fund the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and then the process begins, and it's October 1921, and the Graves Registration Service with the U.S. Army goes to France, and they go to several of the major cemeteries in France, which also correspond with the great battles that the American Expedition Air Force fought in. | ||
| They go to the Meuse-Argonne, which I mentioned earlier is the largest battle in American history and also one of the bloodiest. | ||
| They go to Bella Wood, the cemetery outside of that. | ||
| They go to San Mahal and they take four individuals that they know are not They're not identifiable. | ||
| They have no dog tags. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They have no identity discs. | |
| They have no papers that identify them as soldiers. | ||
| They go through the bodies very carefully to make sure that there's no identifying features that can identify these individuals. | ||
| And then they bring these bodies back to France. | ||
| They drive to Chalon, France, and they place the bodies in state. | ||
| And kept flag-draped coffins in the City Hall at Shalom's. | ||
| And then that night before is when the Tomb of the Unknown is selected. | ||
| And this is the final portion of my book, The Unknowns. | ||
| It deals with not only the ceremony, but the man who selected it, but also the body bearers that actually brought him home. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Which are Pershing's most decorated heroes of the war. | |
| And each one of those individuals was assigned to come up with to tell the story of the American Expeditionary Force. | ||
| So walk us through the selection process when they got to the, I think it was in a town hall, and they kind of changed it up on what they thought they were going to do, how they selected it, and then how they passed that to actually this guard of honor, which the body bearers are really a guard of honor of the toughest of the tough, the bravest of the brave in Pershing's army. | ||
| Absolutely. And they were hand selected by General Pershing himself. | ||
| But the night that the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was selected for America is really an interesting story in and of itself. | ||
| There was a general officer that was selected to choose our unknown. | ||
| And it was the French that interceded and said that you need to use an enlisted man. | ||
| Because they had done the bulk of the fighting to select the unknown soldier. | ||
| And it was here that Edward Younger is selected. | ||
| He's one of the men that still remained in Europe at the time. | ||
| And he had some of the most distinguished combat experience of all the men that were there in Shalom at that time. | ||
| And he was just a doughboy, but it was perfect. | ||
| It was quintessential in the sense that he'd been through all the major battles with the second division, which saw the toughest of the tough, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They were near Bella Wood. | |
| They had fought at the great counteroffensive later. | ||
| They were at Musargon. | ||
| They were at some of the most difficult and bitter battles of the war. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And he was combat wounded multiple times. | |
| And really kind of a perfect choice in many ways. | ||
| And it was stunning for him to receive the honor. | ||
| He was very much taken back. | ||
| He didn't expect it. And I found his original handwritten notes at the National Archives. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And he takes us back in time. | |
| To that moment in France that morning where he's given a bouquet of white roses and told to select the unknown. | ||
| And he walks into the room and there's a dirge of music in the background. | ||
| And he carefully moves through the various flag draped coffins. | ||
| And he says in his handwritten notes that his hand literally moved as he placed the flowers on the casket. | ||
| After he had prayed, he had felt that that was a man that he had served in combat that had died, that he knew, and placed the flowers on that unknown. | ||
| And that is our unknown soldier. | ||
| And it's brought back, it's quite an extraordinary story that the caisson goes through the streets of Shalom, moves by rail to Lahar, where the casket is placed On the great cruiser, the Olympia. This is Admiral Dewey's flagship during the Spanish-American War. | ||
| And the cruiser, the casket itself is so large that they have a hard time bringing it below decks. | ||
| So isn't it an honor? | ||
| And also for the fact that they can't bring it below decks, they keep it up on deck, flag draped. | ||
| And the cruiser goes across, you know, makes it a voyage across the Atlantic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And it's not smooth sailing. | |
| They hit a massive storm. | ||
| And the Marine guards on board the Olympia literally lashed themselves with ropes to the casket to prevent it from going overboard during these massive storms and gales. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But the Olympia makes it too Washington Navy Yard. | |
| The remains of the dock are still there on the 9th of November, 1921. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And the casket is brought off the ship. | |
| And it's the body bearers that are the portion of the Unknowns, the book that I wrote, that is the heart of the story. | ||
| And these men are given the honor of bringing the casket and the remains First to the capital, where it lies, it lies in state, and then to Arlington. | ||
| But they're symbolic in the sense that these are all enlisted men that are chosen. | ||
| They're handpicked by General Pershing because they had seen the toughest of the tough. | ||
| Most many have the Medal of Honor or the Distinguished Service Cross, Navy Cross, and their stories are inner service. | ||
| It's not just the Army. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's the Marine Corps. | |
| And it's the U.S. Navy, and it's different specializations within each. | ||
| It's the heavy artillery, for instance, which is known as the coastal artillery, the big guns, the rail guns. | ||
| I tell you, hangover section, Patrick. | ||
| Captain Banger, Patrick K. O'Donnell is also going to join us on the other side of the break. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What defines the American spirit? | |
| Preserving life, liberty, and pursuing happiness. | ||
| Caring for the nation we call home and its people. | ||
| As patriots, it's our duty to drive the entrepreneurial spirit. | ||
| Pushing hard, reaching for success. | ||
| Sharing patriotism. | ||
| Because the American way of life is for all to live. | ||
| The flagship where freedom reigns. | ||
| Okay, welcome back. | ||
| We are talking about Arlington National Cemetery. | ||
| The service today will be around the Tomb of the Unknown, which very simply has known but to God. | ||
| Captain Bannon, give us the overview of the number of cemeteries here for our fallen and for veterans in the United States, and then how many of the American Battlefield Commission, how many throughout the rest of the world. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery administration maintains 155 national cemeteries in 42 states and Puerto Rico, as well as 34 soldiers' lots and monument sites. | |
| And then, as of today, there are 26 cemeteries and 32 memorials, monuments, and markers under the care of the American Battle Monument Commission, and there are more than 140,000 U.S. Service men and WOMEN ENTERED AT THE CEMETERIES AND MORE THAN 94,000 MIA OR LOST OR BURIED AT SEA. Well, | ||
| the 94,000 includes, I think it's 40,000 of the famous 8th Air Force over the Nazi Germany and Europe. | ||
| Never recovered the airmen. | ||
| Just incredible sacrifice. | ||
| I want to also say, because we're not going to get to all of the different books he writes, and every time we come on, we try to feature a couple of them. | ||
| We're really doing the unknowns today, and hopefully we'll get to maybe one or two others in the second hour. | ||
| But here's the reason Patrick K. O'Donnell, I think, separates himself out and the reason these books have gotten such a, I don't want to call it a cult following, but such a strong following. | ||
| It's the level of research you see here about the unknowns. | ||
| Patrick goes to the archives. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's all archival work or interviews. | |
| He's done thousands of interviews with with actual before like the greatest generation passed away and it takes Patrick what is an average of four you've got a couple books working every one time but is essentially four or five years from the idea the gestation of that your research and actual the writing it takes you at four or five years to complete a book that's right Steve all the books that I've written it found me in one way or another either walking down a road and I find an old rusted sign Or I'm talking to somebody and the idea comes to me and then it's from there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
These are all hand-done books. | |
| I do all the research, I do all the writing, everything. | ||
| I walk the battlefields. | ||
| I spend years in the archives to find the primary sources. | ||
| Or as you said, I've written seven books on World War II. I've interviewed over 4,000 World War II veterans from the elite units, the 82nd Airborne, 101st, Rangers, paramarines, OSS. This is my passion and specialty. | ||
| I've been trying to preserve and share American history since I graduated from college in 1992. | ||
| Hold it, so for oral histories, I just want people to understand this, so in 92, what, 30, 40 years you've been doing this, and you have 4,000 interviews, and you've got the notes and the recordings of those, you essentially have an oral history of some of these elite units, do you not? I do. | ||
| I probably have the largest archive in the world. | ||
| And it's not only, it's video, it's audio, and it's also electronic. | ||
| I kind of, at the beginning of the internet, I created the Drop Zone Virtual Museum, which was the first oral history project for World War II. This is back in mid to early 90s. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I created a community of World War II veterans. | |
| So I was gathering their e-histories, as I call them, their histories through email. | ||
| And I was capturing the elite airborne units, the 11th Airborne 503 Parachute Infantry Regiment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
These were my friends. | |
| My daughter grew up having all these uncles from World War II. And it's an amazing thing to have the legends of D-Day Go to your birthday parties and things and have, you know, people that were true American heroes that you can call friend and that really changed the world. | ||
| And, you know, at the same time, just regular people. | ||
| That's what I wanted to do. | ||
| These are just regular ordinary Americans in everyday life, correct? | ||
| They're the most extraordinary fighting men maybe in the world history as far as their sacrifice for others. | ||
| But if you met them, they were your next door neighbor, correct? | ||
| That's right. And that's one of the things that I've always wanted to do with the books that I've written is to sort of inspire Other people, to look into your own family, to capture the stories of the individuals in your family, to capture your personal history and record it. | ||
| It's an incredible piece of American history. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's often largely unknown or forgotten. | |
| Okay, I tell you what, we're going to take a break here to start the second hour. | ||
| We're going to continue with Patrick K. O'Donnell. | ||
| We're going to put up, Patrick, what's the site they go to, your personal site, to get to all your writings? | ||
| Patrick was embedded. | ||
| During the Iraq War, wrote an amazing book about Fallujah. | ||
| I think the best eyewitness account of the Battle of Fallujah, which is one of the toughest battles in Marine Corps history, as the Marines will tell you. | ||
| And it's extraordinary. | ||
| Patrick, there's not one book you can't pick up of his. | ||
| That you won't be mesmerized and you're going to want to read them all. | ||
| That's the thing. And now he's gone through all the way from the revolution all the way up to the Iraq conflict. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The book you mentioned about Fallujah is called We Were One. | |
| And that is a book that's on the Commandant's reading list. | ||
| It's required reading. And that is the platoon that I was in, embedded in Fallujah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I fought with those Marines house to house, pulled out a Marine. | |
| That was in a firefight with the Chechens. | ||
| They almost killed me. | ||
| It's one thing to write about military history. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's another to experience it. | |
| Patrick, hang on one second. |
Export Selection