Transcripts For CSPAN3 Book Discussion On They Were Heroes 2

Sharing that with us today. David devaney joined the marine corps as an infantry regiment in 1983. I went to college that year instead. [laughter] two the womens overseas, mploments two de overseas, he was selected for duty as a scout sniper. You may have noticed the ribbon with all of the stars on it. That represents a few deployments that he has made. Maj. Devaney only 16. Oh wow, i have the wrong number here. Excellent. Maj. Devaney thats my mistake. He was never good at math. [laughter] as commanded in 2014 Sergeant Major for weapons training in quantico, virginia. Hes at the Naval Institute in annapolis, where i am sure they get the story right about our marines in iraq and afghanistan. Thank you for joining us. [applause] its good to that we have navy and coast guard in here. This book started because of, no kidding, navy and coast guard officers. They convinced me to write this. I was selected for the editorial board. They say editorial board, but i was not editing anything, i was getting my opinion. I would read the story and say, that put me to sleep, whatever. But i enjoyed it. Why dont you, write the book . I spent 5 months researching. I spent a football season basically writing it. I finished the book exactly, when i hit save, the final time was 11 seconds after the 11th. Inute of the 11th day i made sure i did all of the elevens. I wrote the book and originally called it heroes youve never heard of. Maybe one or two, but you should have heard of them. You can take away the names and ransk, they can be sailors or soldiers or airman, there are a lot of names that we dont hear about. This is to honor them. It started out with me in 2005. My but he wanted me to go up and see the wounded in bethesda. We headed up there in the afternoon during the week when we got off work. We got stuck in traffic. We tried it again the next day, still do not work. The third day, we brought another officer in civilian clothes. We took off for bethesda and we finally got there and it was absolutely incredible to go in there. Not one wounded ever complained. Not one Family Member ever complained. I saw 22 reserve marines in there. Their job was to take care of those families. Even when they were off, they would jump and take the family in a van to get food. They were the greatest. I wrote about them. I started going to college and i started enjoying writing. I took greater writing and kept writing. I still do to this day. The Naval Institute allowed me to dedicate this book to my dad. He was in the sorted six in the 36th infantry in world war ii. He was one of my heroes. He died before it came out, unfortunately. When the war was over, this crowd of french were beating a man to death, this german here. My dad said, not going to stand here and watch a man clubbed to death, i dont care if he is the enemy or not. He got hit also, but he saved his life. He worked in a Movie Theater and jumped into the middle of the fight. That is how he was. That is what he believed in and taught me to do too. This is an absolutely incredible story. One of the greatest. Its about 6 seconds. You have 2 marines. This kid here is from virginia, corporal yale. A mixed race kid from the ghetto. This kid is some rich kid from up north. They never met each other. Seats. 1 9 are switching left seat and right seat. They get put any vehicle control point and are told by the sergeant, dont let anything come down this road. Next thing you know, a large truck shows up and comes down the road. We use what we call serpentine. Trucks barriers so that have to turn. This thing is flying towards them. These two, never met each other before, they squared off, one has an automatic weapon. His buddy withd the m16 does too. This first two seconds, almost a lightbulb goes off, there is something wrong here. No american saw what happened. Luckily there was a video camera , and that was what they were able to get the awardf f from. It was a 2000 pound bomb that killed them, but saved everyone else. Shot untilines the moment they died. They knew they were going to die, and they shot to save their friends. And they never knew each other before. Yearold marine and an 18yearold marine, put them together, and they will be brothers. I have a lot of stories about needy corpsman. Navy corpsman. The corpsman is a protected species. This man exposed himself multiple times to enemy fire. He was severely wounded, but refused to get assistance. He continued treating marines. Heal me had one working arm and he only had one working arm and kept going until everyone was treated and they had a medivac. This is Ricky Elliott, who was my corpsman during the invasion during my time in iraq. He rode with me all the time. He never started trouble. But we were in trouble all the time. [laughter] while hes treating wounded marines, hes telling them how to save each other too. Just incredible. This guy here. Imagine this, this guy is in afghanistan as a Lance Corporal. The junior guy in his patrol. They have a bunch of mrap, mine resistant antiambush personnel. A huge vehicle. He is a terrific honor. Gunner, may beet 50 feet up off the ground. They get into the kill zone. When they get there, an rpg rocket comes through and takes off his leg. It is not educated, but will have it is not amputated, but will have to be. He refuses to get off the gun. He was also directing other people where to shoot. And he took leadership, got on mraps pushinghad each other out of the kill zone to save each other. When the fight was over with, he passed out from blood l oss. Im getting chills talking about this kid. Imagine that he did that because he did not want his friends to die. Did,u did nohe had not done whe a lot of people would have died that day. This is casualty assistance calls officers. Did two do eight, but i for combat marines. One i had to do three notifications, the other i had to do two notifications. My very First Casualty assistance call. Sister gets out of the vehicle. She walks away, doesnt talk to me. I walk in. There is the speech im supposed to give that i do not give. Finally i sat her down on the couch and i got down on my knee and held her hand. I said maam, i dont know much. I just know he was killed this morning. She looked at me and she goes, he was a sniper. It just hit me, im a sniper two. Know, when you graduate you get a pull you get a bullet. We hunt what is called aches. We hunt other people. She asked for the hog suit. A hawks tooth. She asked for it. Is she doesntow know how valuable that hogs tooth is . I dont know this. The next day i didnt think it would come back. I took off my hogs tooth and gave it to her. It made her very happy. In the bag was only one thing. The hawks tooth. Not his id card, not the dog tag. Just the hawks tooth. They asked me to give a eulogy. Toave a lot of speeches thousands of people that i have never given a eulogy. I got up to the podium and stood in. In my mind im saying talk. People say it was a dramatic positive i was in shock. I looked out there and there were all these people. I didnt want to mess it up. I went to a catholic school, but im a recovering catholic. On that day i prayed for 45 minutes. I prayed just dont let me messed this up. There was a state trooper from florida. We had a police escort. The stage for was sitting there and this was crazy. We got delayed and delayed and delayed. I went over to the store and bought a bunch of cold sodas. I gave him a pepsi and said, sir, im so sorry this is taking so long. He looked at me and said, i spent 24 years in the army, we are going nowhere. He was off the clock. He had been off the clock for hours. He refused to leave that airport until that corporal came home. If it wasnt peopleu would think hated the military. Where we went we were supported by everybody. Civilians putting their hands over their heart. Incredible people. I hate the news. , im literally with that family all day long every day, i go to work early in the morning, get stuff done. A couple of weeks i get another caco. I got home and i sweat like crazy. Anothersaid, you got one. One night we were bought for hours, all night long they were raining rockets on us. That is nothing compared to these things. On this one im telling a mother, a wife, who is seven and , and imnths pregnant standing there 1 17 in the morning telling her that her husband is dead. Break down these stories and explain how great the americans were. I talk about breaking contact there. Of the hardest things was being with that family every day. The first time you talk to them first time we talk to them they are in shock. They have to blame somebody and you are the only one there. Everyone on the third day treat me like i was part of their family. Maybe corpsman. He is a filipino immigrant. Volunteers to be in the u. S. Military. Volunteers to be with marines. Volunteers to go to scout sniper school. Only seals can generally go to snout go to scout sniper school. There are only a few nuncio scout snipers there. Then he went back to the navy side. To the blue side and he wasnt happy with that and there was a war going on. He volunteered to get back. Missions they were blown up. Thats how he was all the time. Some of you may have seen this photo before. On the front of leatherneck magazine. This is afghanistan, charlie 16. 16 . Ere see 16, charlie company. C16, charlie company. Thing, that mountain is so steep you cant land a helicopter. They throw him on a stretcher and tried to carry him down and they cant. Coop says to heck with this. He throws his rifle down and gives it to another marine and throws this kid on his back and brought him down the mountain for over two hours. He carried another human being down a mountain where you have trouble walking all by yourself, just to save his life. All of a sudden here is this quotes, you have to do what you have to do to take care of your boys. So here we go, another corpsman. First marines in afghanistan. He is out there with a small element squad. 12 and 15 marines, and they get ambushed by a superior force. Are two to three times as big as this force. Think maybe corpsman cant that is not true. They can fight to save themselves, and they can fight to save others. All of a sudden they get a casualty. He runs out there to get a casualty and a couple of marines go with him and throw this casualty on to a letter. Has they are medevac inc. This kid they step on another ied and blow all of them up. Casualty is now reinjured and everybody is injured and dock is severely wounded with fragmentations to his face and his neck. He is very badly wounded. He also knows if he doesnt do so he is going to die. He is telling the marine how to fix them and save them while he is doing cpr. Where do we get these kind of people . Where do we get human beings that would do that . Then he allowed himself to be medevac. Stories about killing people, because obviously it is combat. It wasnt intentional. If you look at most of the stories, it is about somebody risking their life to save their friends. This is will hiatt. He works for a three Letter Agency in the area right now. Corporal on ett. So he is attached to an army that is attached to an Afghani National army. Shower andg from the and littleipflops pt shorts. Hithere combat outpost gets he doesnt run over to put on body armor. He grabs a squad automatic weapon and attacks into the enemy. Na, thatirecting the am is not enough. So he runs down the mountain and. Icks up a mark 19 almost 80 pounds. He throws this thing on his back and runs up the mountain. I didnt know it when i wrote the story. Go to my flipflops and i try to get the flipflops on, because it hurts not to have the flipflop on. He did all this fighting in a. Air of shorts you have a Navy Marine Corps commendation. In my opinion, they were way beyond it. They deserved it. I personally think they should have gotten the medal of honor. They didnt back up, they didnt step back. They did what they were told to do. Cant get much more better than that. This guy is a Marine Corps Special operations battalion each company. Battalion letter h company. H company. N corpsman, every one of them were shot. Zone. S into the kill now everybody has been shot. His to 40 gulf into the beginning. He went into the kill zone, he does refuse treatment at first and realizes hes bleeding to death puts a turn a tourniquet on him, continues going and everybody is medevac until they kill the enemy. Area herecurring theme is my Third Company commander there. Reconnaissance, enlisted marine, got out, came back in and became an officer with a reconnaissance community. Came at first with the marines. How i got to know him as i was Training Task force i was in charge of the task force that went there to kill or capture him. This guy came to me and he says, trade him for a raid. I like that he said he came out and he enjoyed it. Here we never got to go in there. Led to the killing of thousands of americans. He is the proxy for iran there. I wrote this at the end there. Peopleto make all these in this book famous. Has ever forgotten until we forget them. So we must honor them. Day to beably a good honoring those who serve. Some people talk about one is more important than the other. I think the military is what is called the band of the hand. You have to take air force, armys, navy, marine corps. This is Sergeant Major james e booker. He is the battalion sergeant blt 24. R he has an important job. He goes out there and they need more information. He got an Undercover Police officer and they go to do the they try to ambush him. Who triesit is to murder them. It didnt work out. There was a funeral soon after that. Rpg gunner came out in a gauge their command element. Sergeant booker runs through, chases them down and kills all the rpg gunners with accurate fire. Then they needed more intel. There are not enough counter intel guys. What does he do react to he creates a six man team of kids, has them grow their beers out their beards out, and then they start doing wisconsins doing reconnaissance missions. He brought in dark skinned people, which is actually really smart. They did incredible missions, they saved a lot of lives by killing a lot of bad guys. I didnt want to put a Sergeant Major in my book. What he did was absolutely incredible. Anyway, there is this little dude here. 53, 120 pounds. Let me tell you what that kid could do. Our unit comes under attack back in 06. It is a terrible attack. Explosive device blows up their front gate. They have an armored vehicle, you have a dump truck that blew up. A mortar comes through the roof the hallway and critically wounds one of his marines. The core man says lets go home. By the way, he is right here. That is why he is here. They throw him in a humvee. He says im going to go. He drives across the compound. He slams into this vehicle. The wall of fire. Slams in and pushes the ied out of the way. Im not going to do this. Understand how much a long time is, i will punch in the face for 20 seconds and you can imagine 20 minutes. A very long time. So he busted out of the gate. Here is the key thing. If you minutes later he came out and said, if you had not gone him here when he when you did, he would be dead. And says, i never liked that dude. [laughter] but he needed to have his life saved. Im going to tell you right now, the only reason we fight, we may have joined for other reasons, but the only wheaties and only reason we fight is for the guy next to us. No because of their black, white, brown, protestant, catholic. We fight for each other. Marty here does all this stuff and that is pretty incredible. Look at this. They gave him the Navy Marine Corps achievement, the lowest medal possible. He drove through a wall of fire. I talked to a Company Commander that was there. He says, you are absolutely is a tragedy. It should have never happened. But that kind of stuff was happening all the time. They called it the wild wild west, things were out of control. This little guy, you probably have never heard of him, he was in the last story. Later, 120 pounds, foot foot five three five 53, he is on a raid. Development, vertical development. They start moving along with two squads, they are going to a weapons cachet. He leads a fire team on development, and he basically attacks the enemy with 200 other marines. Statements and say, we have to give credit. 203,gage them out of his engaged them with a 216. Then he engaged them with hand grenades. He had a couple of guys supporting them. That is why i brought them here. He lives in fredericksburg virginia, where i live. I want you to understand something, that is the same award they give out to somebody who spent the weekend doing a really good job working at toys for tots. I know the award system pretty well. First of will first of all, the first award, it was at least silver star print this year was probably more bronze star. He doesnt even know, he is just a young guy. I dont think he knew he got screwed until i told him. I brainwashed him. I love this. The book has 52 stories in it. There are only two individuals. He got another combat award. Now he is a marine corps infantry officer gunner. Great dude. I think you will find the stories in this book are absolutely incredible. If anybody does buy the book and want me to sign it, i would be glad to. He is the epitome of what these Young Marines are doing. When i say marines i mean soldiers. Anytime i say marine, corpsmen are in the equation. I will tell you a quick story about Ricky Elliotts here and the kind of trouble he starts. One day we are driving down the road and he yells a case yells ak. We get out of the vehicles and army. Rrounded by totally surrounded. Never trust Ricky Elliott to give you directions. Does anybody have any questions . Whom one of those people love to go back in military history. There are many complaints about how the award is being administered. Do you have Sergeant Majors perspective on how this can be fixed or where the problems lay . A great question. How do we fix this award thing . Officers can fix it. In the marine corps system, i cannot generate an award. The research and everything, but only a commissioned officer can start the award process. We have to decide what level that award was everything. They didnt want to just start throwing medals everywhere. Although everyone was impressed with it, it really wasnt a big deal with it. The fact is i have Great Respect for what officers do. If he had been a Sergeant Major<\/a> for weapons training in quantico, virginia. Hes at the Naval Institute<\/a> in annapolis, where i am sure they get the story right about our marines in iraq and afghanistan. Thank you for joining us. [applause] its good to that we have navy and coast guard in here. This book started because of, no kidding, navy and coast guard officers. They convinced me to write this. I was selected for the editorial board. They say editorial board, but i was not editing anything, i was getting my opinion. I would read the story and say, that put me to sleep, whatever. But i enjoyed it. Why dont you, write the book . I spent 5 months researching. I spent a football season basically writing it. I finished the book exactly, when i hit save, the final time was 11 seconds after the 11th. Inute of the 11th day i made sure i did all of the elevens. I wrote the book and originally called it heroes youve never heard of. Maybe one or two, but you should have heard of them. You can take away the names and ransk, they can be sailors or soldiers or airman, there are a lot of names that we dont hear about. This is to honor them. It started out with me in 2005. My but he wanted me to go up and see the wounded in bethesda. We headed up there in the afternoon during the week when we got off work. We got stuck in traffic. We tried it again the next day, still do not work. The third day, we brought another officer in civilian clothes. We took off for bethesda and we finally got there and it was absolutely incredible to go in there. Not one wounded ever complained. Not one Family Member<\/a> ever complained. I saw 22 reserve marines in there. Their job was to take care of those families. Even when they were off, they would jump and take the family in a van to get food. They were the greatest. I wrote about them. I started going to college and i started enjoying writing. I took greater writing and kept writing. I still do to this day. The Naval Institute<\/a> allowed me to dedicate this book to my dad. He was in the sorted six in the 36th infantry in world war ii. He was one of my heroes. He died before it came out, unfortunately. When the war was over, this crowd of french were beating a man to death, this german here. My dad said, not going to stand here and watch a man clubbed to death, i dont care if he is the enemy or not. He got hit also, but he saved his life. He worked in a Movie Theater<\/a> and jumped into the middle of the fight. That is how he was. That is what he believed in and taught me to do too. This is an absolutely incredible story. One of the greatest. Its about 6 seconds. You have 2 marines. This kid here is from virginia, corporal yale. A mixed race kid from the ghetto. This kid is some rich kid from up north. They never met each other. Seats. 1 9 are switching left seat and right seat. They get put any vehicle control point and are told by the sergeant, dont let anything come down this road. Next thing you know, a large truck shows up and comes down the road. We use what we call serpentine. Trucks barriers so that have to turn. This thing is flying towards them. These two, never met each other before, they squared off, one has an automatic weapon. His buddy withd the m16 does too. This first two seconds, almost a lightbulb goes off, there is something wrong here. No american saw what happened. Luckily there was a video camera , and that was what they were able to get the awardf f from. It was a 2000 pound bomb that killed them, but saved everyone else. Shot untilines the moment they died. They knew they were going to die, and they shot to save their friends. And they never knew each other before. Yearold marine and an 18yearold marine, put them together, and they will be brothers. I have a lot of stories about needy corpsman. Navy corpsman. The corpsman is a protected species. This man exposed himself multiple times to enemy fire. He was severely wounded, but refused to get assistance. He continued treating marines. Heal me had one working arm and he only had one working arm and kept going until everyone was treated and they had a medivac. This is Ricky Elliott<\/a>, who was my corpsman during the invasion during my time in iraq. He rode with me all the time. He never started trouble. But we were in trouble all the time. [laughter] while hes treating wounded marines, hes telling them how to save each other too. Just incredible. This guy here. Imagine this, this guy is in afghanistan as a Lance Corporal<\/a>. The junior guy in his patrol. They have a bunch of mrap, mine resistant antiambush personnel. A huge vehicle. He is a terrific honor. Gunner, may beet 50 feet up off the ground. They get into the kill zone. When they get there, an rpg rocket comes through and takes off his leg. It is not educated, but will have it is not amputated, but will have to be. He refuses to get off the gun. He was also directing other people where to shoot. And he took leadership, got on mraps pushinghad each other out of the kill zone to save each other. When the fight was over with, he passed out from blood l oss. Im getting chills talking about this kid. Imagine that he did that because he did not want his friends to die. Did,u did nohe had not done whe a lot of people would have died that day. This is casualty assistance calls officers. Did two do eight, but i for combat marines. One i had to do three notifications, the other i had to do two notifications. My very First Casualty<\/a> assistance call. Sister gets out of the vehicle. She walks away, doesnt talk to me. I walk in. There is the speech im supposed to give that i do not give. Finally i sat her down on the couch and i got down on my knee and held her hand. I said maam, i dont know much. I just know he was killed this morning. She looked at me and she goes, he was a sniper. It just hit me, im a sniper two. Know, when you graduate you get a pull you get a bullet. We hunt what is called aches. We hunt other people. She asked for the hog suit. A hawks tooth. She asked for it. Is she doesntow know how valuable that hogs tooth is . I dont know this. The next day i didnt think it would come back. I took off my hogs tooth and gave it to her. It made her very happy. In the bag was only one thing. The hawks tooth. Not his id card, not the dog tag. Just the hawks tooth. They asked me to give a eulogy. Toave a lot of speeches thousands of people that i have never given a eulogy. I got up to the podium and stood in. In my mind im saying talk. People say it was a dramatic positive i was in shock. I looked out there and there were all these people. I didnt want to mess it up. I went to a catholic school, but im a recovering catholic. On that day i prayed for 45 minutes. I prayed just dont let me messed this up. There was a state trooper from florida. We had a police escort. The stage for was sitting there and this was crazy. We got delayed and delayed and delayed. I went over to the store and bought a bunch of cold sodas. I gave him a pepsi and said, sir, im so sorry this is taking so long. He looked at me and said, i spent 24 years in the army, we are going nowhere. He was off the clock. He had been off the clock for hours. He refused to leave that airport until that corporal came home. If it wasnt peopleu would think hated the military. Where we went we were supported by everybody. Civilians putting their hands over their heart. Incredible people. I hate the news. , im literally with that family all day long every day, i go to work early in the morning, get stuff done. A couple of weeks i get another caco. I got home and i sweat like crazy. Anothersaid, you got one. One night we were bought for hours, all night long they were raining rockets on us. That is nothing compared to these things. On this one im telling a mother, a wife, who is seven and , and imnths pregnant standing there 1 17 in the morning telling her that her husband is dead. Break down these stories and explain how great the americans were. I talk about breaking contact there. Of the hardest things was being with that family every day. The first time you talk to them first time we talk to them they are in shock. They have to blame somebody and you are the only one there. Everyone on the third day treat me like i was part of their family. Maybe corpsman. He is a filipino immigrant. Volunteers to be in the u. S. Military. Volunteers to be with marines. Volunteers to go to scout sniper school. Only seals can generally go to snout go to scout sniper school. There are only a few nuncio scout snipers there. Then he went back to the navy side. To the blue side and he wasnt happy with that and there was a war going on. He volunteered to get back. Missions they were blown up. Thats how he was all the time. Some of you may have seen this photo before. On the front of leatherneck magazine. This is afghanistan, charlie 16. 16 . Ere see 16, charlie company. C16, charlie company. Thing, that mountain is so steep you cant land a helicopter. They throw him on a stretcher and tried to carry him down and they cant. Coop says to heck with this. He throws his rifle down and gives it to another marine and throws this kid on his back and brought him down the mountain for over two hours. He carried another human being down a mountain where you have trouble walking all by yourself, just to save his life. All of a sudden here is this quotes, you have to do what you have to do to take care of your boys. So here we go, another corpsman. First marines in afghanistan. He is out there with a small element squad. 12 and 15 marines, and they get ambushed by a superior force. Are two to three times as big as this force. Think maybe corpsman cant that is not true. They can fight to save themselves, and they can fight to save others. All of a sudden they get a casualty. He runs out there to get a casualty and a couple of marines go with him and throw this casualty on to a letter. Has they are medevac inc. This kid they step on another ied and blow all of them up. Casualty is now reinjured and everybody is injured and dock is severely wounded with fragmentations to his face and his neck. He is very badly wounded. He also knows if he doesnt do so he is going to die. He is telling the marine how to fix them and save them while he is doing cpr. Where do we get these kind of people . Where do we get human beings that would do that . Then he allowed himself to be medevac. Stories about killing people, because obviously it is combat. It wasnt intentional. If you look at most of the stories, it is about somebody risking their life to save their friends. This is will hiatt. He works for a three Letter Agency<\/a> in the area right now. Corporal on ett. So he is attached to an army that is attached to an Afghani National<\/a> army. Shower andg from the and littleipflops pt shorts. Hithere combat outpost gets he doesnt run over to put on body armor. He grabs a squad automatic weapon and attacks into the enemy. Na, thatirecting the am is not enough. So he runs down the mountain and. Icks up a mark 19 almost 80 pounds. He throws this thing on his back and runs up the mountain. I didnt know it when i wrote the story. Go to my flipflops and i try to get the flipflops on, because it hurts not to have the flipflop on. He did all this fighting in a. Air of shorts you have a Navy Marine Corps<\/a> commendation. In my opinion, they were way beyond it. They deserved it. I personally think they should have gotten the medal of honor. They didnt back up, they didnt step back. They did what they were told to do. Cant get much more better than that. This guy is a Marine Corps Special<\/a> operations battalion each company. Battalion letter h company. H company. N corpsman, every one of them were shot. Zone. S into the kill now everybody has been shot. His to 40 gulf into the beginning. He went into the kill zone, he does refuse treatment at first and realizes hes bleeding to death puts a turn a tourniquet on him, continues going and everybody is medevac until they kill the enemy. Area herecurring theme is my Third Company<\/a> commander there. Reconnaissance, enlisted marine, got out, came back in and became an officer with a reconnaissance community. Came at first with the marines. How i got to know him as i was Training Task<\/a> force i was in charge of the task force that went there to kill or capture him. This guy came to me and he says, trade him for a raid. I like that he said he came out and he enjoyed it. Here we never got to go in there. Led to the killing of thousands of americans. He is the proxy for iran there. I wrote this at the end there. Peopleto make all these in this book famous. Has ever forgotten until we forget them. So we must honor them. Day to beably a good honoring those who serve. Some people talk about one is more important than the other. I think the military is what is called the band of the hand. You have to take air force, armys, navy, marine corps. This is Sergeant Major<\/a> james e booker. He is the battalion sergeant blt 24. R he has an important job. He goes out there and they need more information. He got an Undercover Police<\/a> officer and they go to do the they try to ambush him. Who triesit is to murder them. It didnt work out. There was a funeral soon after that. Rpg gunner came out in a gauge their command element. Sergeant booker runs through, chases them down and kills all the rpg gunners with accurate fire. Then they needed more intel. There are not enough counter intel guys. What does he do react to he creates a six man team of kids, has them grow their beers out their beards out, and then they start doing wisconsins doing reconnaissance missions. He brought in dark skinned people, which is actually really smart. They did incredible missions, they saved a lot of lives by killing a lot of bad guys. I didnt want to put a Sergeant Major<\/a> in my book. What he did was absolutely incredible. Anyway, there is this little dude here. 53, 120 pounds. Let me tell you what that kid could do. Our unit comes under attack back in 06. It is a terrible attack. Explosive device blows up their front gate. They have an armored vehicle, you have a dump truck that blew up. A mortar comes through the roof the hallway and critically wounds one of his marines. The core man says lets go home. By the way, he is right here. That is why he is here. They throw him in a humvee. He says im going to go. He drives across the compound. He slams into this vehicle. The wall of fire. Slams in and pushes the ied out of the way. Im not going to do this. Understand how much a long time is, i will punch in the face for 20 seconds and you can imagine 20 minutes. A very long time. So he busted out of the gate. Here is the key thing. If you minutes later he came out and said, if you had not gone him here when he when you did, he would be dead. And says, i never liked that dude. [laughter] but he needed to have his life saved. Im going to tell you right now, the only reason we fight, we may have joined for other reasons, but the only wheaties and only reason we fight is for the guy next to us. No because of their black, white, brown, protestant, catholic. We fight for each other. Marty here does all this stuff and that is pretty incredible. Look at this. They gave him the Navy Marine Corps<\/a> achievement, the lowest medal possible. He drove through a wall of fire. I talked to a Company Commander<\/a> that was there. He says, you are absolutely is a tragedy. It should have never happened. But that kind of stuff was happening all the time. They called it the wild wild west, things were out of control. This little guy, you probably have never heard of him, he was in the last story. Later, 120 pounds, foot foot five three five 53, he is on a raid. Development, vertical development. They start moving along with two squads, they are going to a weapons cachet. He leads a fire team on development, and he basically attacks the enemy with 200 other marines. Statements and say, we have to give credit. 203,gage them out of his engaged them with a 216. Then he engaged them with hand grenades. He had a couple of guys supporting them. That is why i brought them here. He lives in fredericksburg virginia, where i live. I want you to understand something, that is the same award they give out to somebody who spent the weekend doing a really good job working at toys for tots. I know the award system pretty well. First of will first of all, the first award, it was at least silver star print this year was probably more bronze star. He doesnt even know, he is just a young guy. I dont think he knew he got screwed until i told him. I brainwashed him. I love this. The book has 52 stories in it. There are only two individuals. He got another combat award. Now he is a marine corps infantry officer gunner. Great dude. I think you will find the stories in this book are absolutely incredible. If anybody does buy the book and want me to sign it, i would be glad to. He is the epitome of what these Young Marines<\/a> are doing. When i say marines i mean soldiers. Anytime i say marine, corpsmen are in the equation. I will tell you a quick story about Ricky Elliott<\/a>s here and the kind of trouble he starts. One day we are driving down the road and he yells a case yells ak. We get out of the vehicles and army. Rrounded by totally surrounded. Never trust Ricky Elliott<\/a> to give you directions. Does anybody have any questions . Whom one of those people love to go back in military history. There are many complaints about how the award is being administered. Do you have Sergeant Major<\/a>s perspective on how this can be fixed or where the problems lay . A great question. How do we fix this award thing . Officers can fix it. In the marine corps system, i cannot generate an award. The research and everything, but only a commissioned officer can start the award process. We have to decide what level that award was everything. They didnt want to just start throwing medals everywhere. Although everyone was impressed with it, it really wasnt a big deal with it. The fact is i have Great Respect<\/a> for what officers do. If he had been a Second Lieutenant<\/a> and done that same thing, i guarantee you he would have gotten a silver star or navy cross. There is no doubt about it. I dont know how you fix that. The problem with infantry is they think you are just doing your job. When you are infantrymen, you are just killing bad guys, that is your job. Take tea of guys and enveloped the enemy, and that is probably more than is normal. I dont know how to fix it, all i know is i complain about it and hopefully some people will get it. There are only two officers in my book. It is not because im against officers getting awards. The only other officer in there is a name is a guy named brian stand. He is a ufc fighter. In there is put him not only his heroics in iraq, but also when he got out he becamea ufc fighter, he a spokesman for the marine corps as a civilian and has done an incredible job. He is an outstanding human being. He says in an interview i have some artillery for you here boy. Lance Corporal Jones<\/a> and Lance Corporal<\/a> whatever, he went in and eat the living craft out of him. Accuse aant to not marine of not having artillery. I know it is controversy of, but what is your what is with the marine corps study about females in combat units. That is a great question. I am 100 against women in infantry. Childrencan bring up and to teach them that women dont matter, there is no difference women do matter, there is no difference. You cant change me, i will protect women. Woman, every guy here is going to help her. That is how we are programmed. Until you cant the program that it is a problem, because if you have female in the infantry and all of a sudden she gets shot, we stopped to help her. The best way to save a casualty is to kill the enemy and then save them. Diehat person is going to and i cant wait two minutes to save them, they are probably not going to live anyway. Women just get in the way. It islling you right now, in stinks. Men see women, it is distracting. In some ways it is good because they are more studley. In other ways it is a bad distraction. Im against it. Let me go back. There are women who are lionesses, who are women who work in small teams. They arenot a problem, a distraction but they are not a problem because they are needed. No one wants men searching their women. Does that answer your question . You thankquestions you for your time, have a wonderful veterans day. [applause] shop,have the book in the you can pick it up and he will sign it. Have a great day, everybody. You are watching American History<\/a> tv, 40 eight hours of programming on American History<\/a> every weekend on cspan3. Follow us on twitter for information on our schedule, and to keep up with the latest history news. Next historians and legal scholars discuss the original intent and scope of the 13th and 14th amendments. These were ratified during the construction era. The Panel Debates<\/a> whether these amendments were designed to protect just civil rights such as owning property and making contracts, or whether they protected rights such as voting. Wouldth amendment solidify that the right to vote cannot be denied by race. The National Constitution<\/a> Center Hosted<\/a> this 45 minute event. I am president of this wonderful institution, which is the only institution chartered by congress to disseminate information about the u. S. Constitution on a nonpartisan basis. Cannot imagine a more inspiring. Of o","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia601203.us.archive.org\/31\/items\/CSPAN3_20160109_222000_Book_Discussion_on_They_Were_Heroes\/CSPAN3_20160109_222000_Book_Discussion_on_They_Were_Heroes.thumbs\/CSPAN3_20160109_222000_Book_Discussion_on_They_Were_Heroes_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240623T12:35:10+00:00"}