rescued. returned to the fight. and went on to match the world war i ace eddie. 26 planes shot down. in the squadron that foss led, half were boys, right off the farm just like joe. they knew how to hunt and they knew never to give up. duke davis, the commander, he was wounded in the morning and flew afternoon. he got hit in the side of the head. the shell hit his radio compartment on the side of the wild cat. and the lead splattered up into his leg and his arm and his face. he had a heck of a time getting the oxygen mask on later in the day. one of my boys got a bullet by the knee and came up by his crotch. we cut the bullet out, sent him to the hospital and in three days, he was back out there flying. they were tougher than tougher.
half were boys off the warm like joe. they knew how to hundred dollar and they knew never to give up. he was wounded in the morning and threw that afternoon. he got hit in the head and he hit the compartment and that splattered from his arm and his leg. the same day he had a heck of a time getting the oxygen mask on. one of my boys, the bullet went in by the knee and came out by his crotch. we cut the bullet out and days he was back flying. they were tougher than tough. they were, but the thing behind it all was their dedication to our god and country.
recipient of the congressional medal of honor, he lives in arizona and met me and took me to the farm where he was born. we lived in that one room. no heat in the rest of the house. there was a table and four chairs and we had the little kegs we sit on and the guests get the chairs. around here was the first time you saw an airplane? yes. they came across here and the pilot would wave at me. i thought gosh, would i like to get in that thing. joe was a natural in the skies with the air to air combat with the planes trying to shoot him down. he was shot down and he was rescued and returned to the fight. he went on to match the record of world war ones a. 26 planes shot down.
colorado and oklahoma and mississippi move in. you had to make friends fast because they d move out, six months after their part of the job was over. you couldn t do that now. no. this would get tied up more than the keystone pipeline quite honestly. that is the other contrast is, it s not only the military mission and the sense of national purpose that we all felt back then or that our parents felt back then but the political system worked across party lines, especially on foreign policy and we don t see that at all anymore, the fwridlock is so profound. the atmosphere so toxic, that you have to wonder how we could ever get anything important accomplished. when i was in high school, the two most prominent political figures in south dakota were joe foss was the governor a marine who earned the medal of honor during world war ii big bowl of a guy, later president of the nra, a conservative man but beloved inned it south dakota for a good reason. the other prominent politician
america was prosperous and it was can do in the spirit of world war ii which was we ll take on and make sacrifices to export our values as a country, and it was that enormous feeling that you know america stands alone in terms of representing the values that hitler was utterly opposed to. and they paid with their lives, but the other part of it is that they came home and didn t talk about it. they wanted to get back to their life and they would always say to me when i would interview them, i wasn t hero. it was my buddy, he didn t come back. that s the guy you should talk to. there was humility, a sense of mission, a maturity well beyond their years and then a determination to have a life that had been taken from them for three or four years, and before that the depression which i always thought helped form who they were. it was about deprivation, sacrifice and working together. so there s a confluence of a lot of historic events here. there d never been anything like d