August 21, 2024 • 36 mins
During the worst days of the Vietnam war, Marine captain Jay Vargas led a group of young fighters called the Magnificent Bastards into the Battle of Dai Do. His actions during that three-day period are some of the most heroic – and horrific – we’ll hear about this season. What Jay lived through during those bloody, sleepless days would stay with him forever…but would take decades for him to talk about. On this episode, we confront the grip of PTSD, the power of veterans’ stories, and the way one man’s journey saved lives both on and off the battlefield.
Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Bushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
It was a late fall day and four men walked
through a field rifles in hand. The tall, dry grass
rustled as they moved. They were alert, listening for the
sounds of other bodies moving through it too, watching for
a shadow or a bend in the grass. They went
as silently as they could, ready to shoot as soon
as they locked in a target. The four men with
(00:45):
the Vargas brothers from Winslow, Arizona, all the Marines, and
they were out hunting. The first brother caught a deer
in his sights and shot it. He'd bagged a buck. Eventually,
the second and third brothers did too, but the fourth brother, Jay,
the youngest, couldn't seem to get one. He kept retreating
to their campsite, putting his gun down. His brother's cheer
(01:09):
him on, tried to keep his spirits up. This was
their yearly trip, a family tradition did, all grown up
hunting together. Now they vowed to stay out until the
last brother got his buck. They didn't want him to
miss out, but he just couldn't seem to shoot his rifle.
I can picture it, the coolness of the day, the
(01:29):
warmth between the brothers, the bright blue western sky and
the call of birds overhead, and like an electric current
underneath it all panic from Jay who couldn't pull the trigger,
who in fact, would never pull a trigger again. He
couldn't shoot a gun without remembering all the times he'd
done the same thing in Vietnam, and he had something
(01:52):
else to remember Vietnam by a Medal of Honor. I'm
Malcolm Glavell, and this is Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage.
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in
the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery in combat
at the risk of life, above and beyond the call
of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the way
(02:15):
up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in
the field to the White House. This show is about
those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what
their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.
The story I'm going to tell you today is brutally violent,
and there's a reason those graphic details matter. It has
(02:37):
to do with the aftermath of that violence. We'll look
at why it's so important to talk honestly about what
happens on the battlefield and how veterans tell their stories,
if they can even bring themselves to tell them at all.
This episode is about Jay Vargas and a story that
took him more than thirty years to tell, but once
(02:59):
he did, the change things not just for him, but
for hundreds of other men and women just like him.
(03:20):
By nineteen sixty eight, US combat forces had been fighting
the war in Vietnam for three years. That January, the
North Vietnamese military had launched a series of surprise attacks
throughout South Vietnam, a campaign known as a Tet Offensive.
It was a norse attempt to bring about a decisive
end to the war. A young Marine captain named Jay
(03:43):
Vargas was there. He was twenty nine, on his second
tour of Vietnam. From the outset, he could tell it
was going to be even tougher this time around here,
he is remembering back on that tour.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I got in it in late sixty seven and through
sixty eight, which was the worst time to be in Vietnam.
We knew that the North Vietnamese were coming and it
was starting to turn up ugly throughout the South Vietnam everywhere.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
The Tet Offensive didn't end the war, but it changed
the way people in the US saw Vietnam. Watching the
carnage unfold on the nightly news, the American public realized
that despite what they had been told, the conflict wasn't
coming to an end. The government had lied this could
keep going for years. The North Vietnamese leadership knew that
(04:34):
popular opinion was souring on the war. They saw an
opportunity strike again hard, and maybe then the US would
lose heart for the war altogether. So in the early
spring of sixty eight, they planned another campaign. This one
centered on the U. S supply base of Dong Ha.
The base was set about twelve miles south of the
(04:56):
demilitarized zone on the Beau du Quaviete rivers, and it
supplied all the friendly forces in the northern part of
South Vietnam with ammunition, supplies and medical support. It was
strategically very important. A series of abandoned villages sat across
the river from the base, The largest one was Dido There,
(05:17):
the North Vietnamese military secretly built a sprawling maze of
bunkers and armed positions pointed directly at the Dongha base.
Then they quietly filled Dideaux with thousands and thousands of
North Vietnamese Army troops, all of them setting their sights
on Dongh. Their plan take the base by surprise, overwhelmed
(05:39):
the roughly seven hundred Marines that were stationed there and
essentially shut down US operations in that part of Vietnam.
The entire area was covered in lush vegetation, which made
it easy to hide what they were doing. The American
command had no idea what was coming. On the last
day of April nineteen sixty eight, the North Vietnamese Army
(06:02):
NVA for short, struck the U. S forces at Dongha.
They opened fire on a U. S. Navy river boat,
killing a sailor and wounding several others. The Lieutenant colonel
in command of the Marines, William Weiss, sent a company
around two hundred men to investigate the abandoned village of Dideaux.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Then, when we found out how extensive and the enemy
positions were, they were very well constructed bunkers, They were
very well camouflaged, mutually supporting in order to take one
bunker who had came under the fire of two or
three others, and it had obviously taken them a long
time to build them. They had been in that area
(06:44):
for quite a while to construct those positions.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
The marines that we sent were immediately drawn into battle.
By the afternoon, a third of them had been killed
or metavacked out. Remember, there weren't that many US troops
had DONGHA to begin with, fewer than seven hundred. They
would end up facing down more than ten thousand NVA.
One of those marines stationed nearby was jav Argus. Jay
(07:10):
was charismatic and soft spoken, with regulation and short, dark
hair and olive skin, quick to grin. He was the
company commander of roughly one hundred and seventy men. Jay
believed that his guys, the Marines of Golf Company or
Company G, were some of the best in the service
or anywhere.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Hard tough seventeen eighteen nineteen year old marines.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
I'm not ken ye I have. They were the toughest,
meanest little bastards I've ever seen.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
In fact, they called the whole second Battalion of the
fourth Marines the magnificent Bastards. They were tough and they
would have to be. Lieutenant Colonel Weiss needed all of
those magnificent bastards to drive the NVA away from the base.
Jay and his marines were stationed several miles from did
Because of NVA fire, it was too dangerous to fly
(08:02):
the man in, so Jay's company was going to have
to get there on foot. By the time they started march,
it was dark and it took them more than five
hours to get down to the battle. They were dogged
the entire way by an onslaught of artillery and rockets.
Motor shells fell all around them, exploding into the soft soil,
(08:22):
sending shrapnel everywhere.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Quantafeo has took some hits, and I didn't lose anyone,
but we were all you know. I had one leg
messed up and everyone had shrappl on them.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
In fact, Jay's leg was really messed up, but he
knew that if anyone realized it, he would be taken
out of the action. So he had his leg bandaged
and he changed into a clean pair of pants and
swore the medical who helped him to secrecy he wouldn't
leave his company. By the time the men made it
to base, they were exhausted, but there was no time
to sleep. They were told to continue on to the fighting.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
That was the orders of the menetu land at Dideaux.
I want you to continue and push on through.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Early in the morning of May first, Jay's company got
on boats and were ferried across the river to Dideaux.
Once on land, they were seven hundred meters away from
the village. First they had to cross a rice patty,
and that patty turned out to have ENVA gunners on
three sides. Jaye and his men crept forward through thigh
(09:24):
high grass, rustled as they moved. The men were exhausted
but alert, their ears hyper tuned to every noise, watching
for a shadow or bend in the grass, guns in
their hands, ready to shoot. As soon as they locked
in on a target. Shots seemed to be coming at
them from every corner of the patty, And then they
(09:44):
came to a horrifying realization the shots were coming from
inside the patty too.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
We had spider holes popping up all over the place.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
You know, guys that were in the ground with bamboo
on top of them. They would jump up and just
start shooting us. And you know, I started losing guys,
but we were killing some too.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
It's like a horror movie. The ground would shift and
a marine would fall dead or wounded. Jay realized they
had to knock out the machine gun nests on the
perimeter if they were going to survive. So he took
four of his men and made a run for them,
but they were fish in a barrel. One after another,
those marines were wounded until Jay was.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Alone, weighted up all by myself over there.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
But I knocked out three machine heavy machine guns and
kills fourteen in the trenches that I got hold of,
and that opened us up and we came through and
continued the attack.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Let's take a second to think about Jay's tone here.
He's chuckling as he talks about this insanely stressful moment
facing down three machine gun nests on his own. It
may seem odd, but it's a pretty common reaction to
traumatic experiences. Laughter keeps the pain at arm's length, and
in that moment, at that rice patty in Vietnam, Jay
(11:05):
didn't allow himself to feel any fear at all.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I had two what's to do?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
And I didn't have time, and for some reason, I
was pretty dog on calm.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Finally, Jaye and his men got through the rice patty
and arrived at the village of Didau. They had been
fighting for almost twenty four hours straight and it just
kept going. They began to fight through the village bunker
a bunker. For a moment, it seemed to them that
the enemy was pulling back. They might be able to
secure Dideau, maybe even get some rest at last. But
(11:38):
the North Vietnamese knew they had way more soldiers than
the Americans, and they began a ferocious counter attack. The
Marines were exhausted, short on ammunition, they were down a
fewer than eighty men. Lieutenant Colonel Weiss told Jay to
try and find somewhere stable and stay put. Knight was
(11:58):
approaching the second night in a row without sleep, and
by then Jay and his remaining men had been pushed
into a cemetery. As Jay looked around, he realized it
was full of freshly dug graves, graves of MVA men
who had been killed and buried during the previous days
of fighting. If his men were going to make it
(12:19):
through the night, they needed foxholes to hide in for shelter.
So Jay made a grim decision.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
The only way that we could survive. And I know
this sounds cruel, but I told Everyboddy, dig up the
fresh graves, put the body on the side that becomes
your foxhul.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
The young Marines climbed into the graves. They were running
dangerously low on ammunition, and soon enough the cemetery was
totally surrounded by NVA. He ordered his marines to fix
their bayonets. Once the last of the AMMA was gone.
Jay knew they would be fighting hand to hand in
the cemetery through the long night. Stories about war heroes
(13:12):
often start in a kind of quiet way. The young
person who wants to give back, who finds himself in
the military Sumont by surprise, and then comes into his
own That's not really the Jay Vargas story. If you
can be destined to be anything, he was destined to
be a marine. He was born in nineteen thirty eight
in Winslow, the youngest of four sons.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
I am the product of an Italian mother and a
Hispanic father, immigrants of this country.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Family life revolved around his indomitable mom, Teresa, who was
something of a local institution. She owned a Western goods
store and she spoke five languages fluently, including Navajo. His
father was a newspaperman who worked for the Winslow Mail.
Jay was close to his brothers, although they were much older.
The two eldest had joined the Marines when Jay was
(14:02):
just a little kid, and the third brother, Joseph, followed suit.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Two of us.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Angelo and Frank served in World War Two on Ewa GiMA, Okinawa.
Joseph was just ahead of me, and he served in
Korea in the Chosan Reservoir, which is an ugly battle
in what Korea was an ugly war.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
When his brothers came home to Winslow, they never spoke
about what they saw in combat. There was nothing out
of the ordinary about that. People of that era rarely
spoke about their war experiences. It was too hard, if
not impossible, to reflect back. It was as if by
not talking about it they could strip away some of
(14:41):
the terror. Jay flirted with the idea of becoming a
professional baseball player. In fact, he was recruited into the
miners and played Triple A after high school, but in
the back of his mind he had always imagined a
future in the service.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
I knew where I was going, you know, and I
used to play marine out there with a broomstick by
the backyard.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Teresa, on the other hand, had a different idea. She
was fine with him joining the military. Both Vargas's parents
were deeply patriotic and proud of their son's decisions to serve,
but she did not want him to become a marine.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
She was afraid that I was going to go into
the Marine Corps. And she says, what's the matter with
you? You know, stupid though you go into the Navy. They
sleep in white sheets, big pillows, you know, the smoke,
big cigars, and you know they sometimes stand on the
ship and it's just a great life.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
And you still, please, don't go on the Marine Corps.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
She made his brother's promise to dissuade Jay from the corps.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
She told him he will not go on the Marine Corps.
You will talk to him and he will not go
on to the rincoaps. You understand, of course, angel and Frank, yes, Mama.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
One Sunday, when the family had gathered for their big
family meal, the brothers agreed to sit down with Jay
and talk him out of the Marines, and then their
mother left the room.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
The meeting lasted about thirty seconds because Angela leaned over says, Jay,
if you don't go in the Marine Corps, going to
break your frigging legs.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
So Jay set off for the Marines, but only after
he had promised his mom that he would make it home.
On the night of May one, nineteen sixty eight, that
promise was seeming more and more difficult to keep.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
The NVA knew that we were surrounded. They had us good,
and nobody could help me. You know, everybody was said,
they're not going to make it.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Jay and the Marines of Golf Company, hiding in those
fresh graves, knew they had to protect their hard won
perimeter at the cemetery in Dido.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
We fought all night.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Jay got a call on the radio from the admiral
in charge of the flotilla of gunships on the Quavillette River.
He said he was calling in fire to back Jay up.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
It was scary just listening to the rounds come in,
but it blew half the country side away. You know,
you could hear the enemy's screaming and yelling because Tho's
guns were just wiping them out.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
The hours wore on, night turned to the haze of dawn,
another morning without waking up, another night without sleep, and
the Marines kept fighting, killing and killing and killing to
keep from being killed.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
We still had guys penetrate our positions.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
I know one guy, he must have been on some
kind of drugs, because I know I hit him at
least four times, but he just kept coming, throwing great
age around like he was delivered in the La Times.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Again, Jay sounds so casual as he's talking about this
delivering in the La Times. But the situation could not
have been more dire. Just as Jay had feared, his
men ran out of ammunition.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
They were hitting these dark Hutton MBA with intrenching tools
and helmets and rocks.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Whatever we would kill them with, we did.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Finally it was daylight, and for some reason that felt
inexplicable to Jay, the enemy pulled back. The Marines climbed
out of the graves. In the quiet. Jay could finally
see exactly what they had been up against.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And I'll get the look in all of our faces.
I'm sure I was the same way. Our eyes were
as big as owls.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
And he could see exactly what they had done.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
There was blood smell all over the place. We had
three hundred and eighty four dead MVA around us that
we had killed. That all night, And I keep in mind,
my marines haven't slept yet, none of us have, so
this is probably forty eight hours that no one had
even closed their eyes.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
It was just continual fire.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
All wore as hell. That's a cliche and it's a fact.
And Vietnam was particularly brutal. We've all heard about the
atrocities there, the cruelty, but Jay Vargas always speaks of
his adversaries with deep humanity. These weren't nameless, faceless soldiers
he was fighting. He knew they were people.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
They were well trained, they were smart.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
You know. The troops had to search pockets every once
in a while when you knocked one down, and you'd
find a laundry ticket from Hanoi, you know, And I'm
going this guy came allway from the knowing he's got
a laundry ticket here, and he's thousands of miles from
his dog gone home. You find pictures of their wives
and children, and that gets to you.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
So that morning, in that moment of quiet, when it
felt like there was a reprieve, Jay and his men
reburied the soldiers they had disinterred the night before.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
I honored those warriors.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
We made damn sure that we put the bodies back
in the grave and covered them.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Jay's company had started that march two days earlier with
more than one hundred and fifty men, Only around forty
were left. They had been fighting for two straight days.
They needed rest, but the enemy hadn't actually retreated. A
decisive victory was too important to the North Vietnamese cause
(19:59):
they were determined to take back Dideau. Jay and a
golf company met up with the remnants of three other
marine companies. They'd been resupplied with AMMA well, but it
hardly mattered at that point. The entire group of fighting
marines was around three hundred against an enemy that's still
numbered in the thousands.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
We're killing every step of the way, but the NBA
are holding tight and they're making us pay for every
footed ground we took.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
This is another marine who was there at Didea, Vic Taylor.
It's like a tone poem of the horrors of war.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
Small arms fires are shredding everything above. Brown leaves and
twigs and branches are coming down, Banana trees getting knocked over,
Bullets snapping cracking by now they make that spat sound
of the hit meat and somebody'd yelped. Rockets and RPGs flying,
Wi Bang flash bang grenades going in and out fast
(20:53):
as people control them.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Twenty six and Ji cooms passing each other in the air.
There was a fight.
Speaker 5 (21:00):
It was a fight, and the enemy they weren't down
and defending any more man. They were up and coming
on threes and fours and sixes and eight popping out
of the brush. All cameed up, leaves in the helmets,
weapon held out in front, a little spiked bayonet shining
coming to the trot. Give him credit. They were soldiers,
(21:23):
that's sure. But also at that time these beat up, bloodied,
bone tired, raggedy ass teenagers turned marine.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Beat up, bloody, bone tired, Good god. Lieutenant Colonel Bill
Weese was sitting at a command post near the fighting,
cigar grip between his teeth. He knew how fruitless their
prospects looked. But then he got the order keep pushing forward.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
We didn't have anything left in us. What meager troops
we had were tired, very little sleep, they were hungry,
they were low on ammunition. When I was ordered to
continue to attack forward and retake then tell I told
him hell, no, we can't do it. We're just out
of stain.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
The command had realized that if the NVA were flushed
out of the villages and into the rice paddies to
the north, they would be totally open to the US
fighter planes overhead. The more that the Marines could push
the enemy into the open, the more the planes could
mow them down. They had to keep going finish the job.
(22:36):
But the Marines themselves were being mowed down, and Jay's
company was right in the middle of it.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
A lot of us were alavamo. The NVA was out
of ammo. You know.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
We were killing each other with knives and bayonets and
everything we could possibly survive.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Jay called an airstrikes and mortar fire from the Navy
gunships to help drive the enemy back, and just at
that moment his commander found him.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Carl Weese came up and kind of fell in the
trench with me. He says, what the hell's going on? And
I said, you better get out here, because I called
artillery on myself and my marines.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
And they know it.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
And I told my marines, I said, hey, grab your
butts because I'm bringing it in. And the colonel turned around,
and just as he turned around, he took three shots
in the spine. My two radio operators took shots in
their head immediately. And so I was bringing an artillery
and naval gone far. So I had three radios in
my hand, and my radio operators were already dead.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
It was clear that they had to get out of
there if anyone was going to survive.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
So I told everyone, let's start going back, and we
went back into a defensive position. But what happened, and
some of them rings didn't make it all the way back,
and the NBA were still amongst us, just running around
because they had no AMMO. They were trying to figure
out what the hell to do, and so there were
jumping on each other. I'm dragging the colonel back an
(24:02):
almost I think it was seventy five yards.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
I kept dragging him back, and he was bleeding like
a pig.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Remember what I said before about laughter and trauma. Here
it is again, as Jay looks death in the face.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
And this is a funny part, and he loves to
tell his story. I was great with a rifle because
I grew up shooting rifles all my life, but I
couldn't handle that forty five pistol. So at that stage
I had my pistol out when I was dragging you,
and this NBA soldier came up of the river bank
and lifted his weapon to dingis and he could have
(24:36):
wiped us out. I fired his pistol and it hit
the ground first, bounced up and hit him in his stomach.
And I'll never forget the expression on his face like
he said. I'm sure he said in his language, how
in the shit did you do that? And he fell
back into the river. And I'm laughing now because Gerowas
still tells that story. He says, God, don't give Jay
(24:57):
a pistol. Give him a grenade, give a rifle, but
don't give a pistol.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
He's laughing at a situation that's not just serious, but
deathly serious. But what the hell else are you.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
Going to do?
Speaker 2 (25:09):
How does a person make sense of an experience like this?
It's insane, it's tragic, But laughing at the absurdity is
part of how Jay makes sense of his own story.
Here's a thing. When you listen to as many veterans
telling their war stories as I have, you start to
see patterns, a casualness, a detachment, sometimes when talking about
(25:30):
an incredibly stressful situation, as though to spare the listener
the details, because how could we really understand? And something else.
In descriptions of battle, the enemy is often described as
a wave or a wall or a cascade a force.
There's rarely an acknowledgment of the underlying humanity there. You
(25:51):
almost never hear the story about the enemy soldier who's like,
how on the shit did you do that? But Jay
saw the men, the men fighting next to him, those
fearless young bastards who wouldn't give up, but also the
well trained soldiers that he was killing. I saw it all,
and it was more than anyone should have to take.
(26:18):
That final afternoon on the battle filled in Dideaux, Jay
ordered the surviving marines to fall back. The remaining men
had to get to safety, but he quickly realized that
seven of his marines couldn't move on their own.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
I had some marines that were wounded, and I went back,
and I said, I'm going to go back from a morane.
So I went in seven times and brought back seven marines.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Out seven times. Through the men killing each other with
bayonets and knives and rocks, they were battered, bruised, and worse,
particularly a young marine named Sammy.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Well.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
I was taking a colonel back. Sammy was sitting on
the tree there and his body. They had blown off
his left arm and the steel had burned him so
bad it wasn't even bleeding, but his arm was laying
over him. And I said, Sammy, I'll come back to
get you. So once I got the colonel back, I
went back for Sandy and put him on my back.
(27:16):
Thank god he was small. We got to moving backwards
and he turned around. He said, Skipper, I want my
friggin arm, And I said, you gotta be shitting. So
I had to turn around and go back and the NBA's.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
And I got this guy.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
So I bet now like I said, okay, I can't
reach your arm, and he said I can get it,
so he he reached out.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
I got his arm and I got I got him back, and.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
The last time I saw him the carmen we're taking
into the choppers yard, and he had his arm and
his chest right here. He just he for some reason
he thought he could put it back up.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
They were all in shock. You can tell that right
the way Sammy thinks they can reattach his arm, the
way Jay is laughing even as he's horrified. Jay made
it home. Colonel Weiss made it home. Those seven men
Jay saved made it home too, but none of them
(28:14):
made it home the same Jay returned from the battle
at Dido with multiple wounds. A bullet had gone through
(28:36):
his side, and he had been hit by shrapnel, not
just that initial wound in the leg, but shell fragments
in his right arm and through his mouth. The physical
damage was serious, but it would heal. The mental toll
was something different. He didn't talk about what had happened
to him on the battlefield. He wouldn't, not even to
his brothers, even though he knew they had been through
(28:59):
terrible combat experiences of their own. What kind of words
could possibly sum up those three sleepless, bloody days. There
are no words. That kind of experience lives inside you
and surfaces even in the smallest moments, like a hunting
trip with your brothers, when suddenly you find you can't
shoot a deer.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
My oldest brother Angelo sense that there was I couldn't
pulletrate it.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
More than thirty percent of Vietnam veterans suffered from PTSD,
and recent studies have shown that for veterans, talking about
traumatic experiences, in other words, telling their war stories, is
the first line of defense against PTSD. But Jay just wouldn't.
(29:46):
He assumed that once you came home, you didn't talk
about it like that's the way it was supposed to be,
not even when he found out in May of nineteen
seventy that he was going to receive a medal of honor.
Jay's mom, Teresa, had passed away just a few months earlier,
and in her honor, Jay decided that he wanted to
have her name, not his name, inscribed on the back.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Mom died about I think of this about four months
before five, almost six months before the presentation.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Would have been the highlight of her life.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
So I called the White House one night asking for
the Marie Liaison officer, whom I knew. I forgot that
it was like four o'clock in San Diego, but it
was seven o'clock seven pm in DC, and the phone
was ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing, and so
all of a sudden, about the fifteenth ring, so he
(30:44):
picks up the phone and he says, how can I
help you? And I said, my name's Jay Vargus. He says,
I know who you are. Jay, How I spent I
have a favor to ask of Carl Calfield And he says,
he said, well, what's the favorite?
Speaker 1 (30:59):
I said, I like.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
To have my mother's name put on the back of
my metal and he says, that's easy.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
I'll take care of that.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Don't worry about Jay, He says, as your family, and
I said, yeah, my brothers are coming.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Mom's naw.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
He says, oh, I'm sorry that you lost. So that's
why you want to put the name in the back
of the middle. I said, yes, sir, and he says,
I can take care of that. And I said, sir,
who the hell am I talking to? He says, this
is the President Nixon. Think Nixon.
Speaker 6 (31:28):
His exercise route in the evenings was to go round
all the corridors. And later on he told me he
was on his evening walk and he says that damn
phone kept ringing and ringing. I just opened the door
and I picked it up.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
There's not a lot to love about President Nixon, but
this is one of the only stories that makes him
sound kind of awesome. Anyway, Jay saw his medal as
a way to acknowledge the magnificent bastards who served alongside him.
You can still hear the catch in his voice when
he talks about them.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
You know, well, I wear my medal.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
I'm putting it on for everyone that served with me
in that particular battle, and especially for those that sacrificed
their lives. But if I could pound this dan thane
into powder, I would give a little bit.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
To each one of my rates.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
He was now famous for his actions in combat, and
if you win a medal of honor, people expect you
to talk about what happened, but they couldn't. Jay went
on to serve in the Marine Corps for almost thirty years,
never speaking about what he had seen during that three
day battle.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
After it was over, I think I just wanted to
continue on with my career. Post traumatic stress kind of
leaked into my brain like it has too many of
the warriors.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Finally, Jay's brother told him that he needed to go
get help, and he did, and he took on a
new challenge helping other veterans with their trauma. He became
the secretary of the California Department of Veterans Affairs and
moved up from there to the US Department. He traveled
to hospitals speaking to veterans. He learned more and more
(33:12):
about what those wounded warriors were going through and what
they were lacking. He advocated for a program to support
their mental health after they had left the hospital. He
did incredible work in suicide prevention for veterans.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
This post traumatic stress is a toughie. It's a silent killer.
So I'm traveling countryside and visiting commands wounded warriors, women
veterans about PTSD of suicide.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
As he did on the battlefield. He fought tirelessly to
save their lives. Jay Vargus was in his mid sixties
before he could finally tell his own story.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
I'm gonna be honest with you. It took me thirty
six years before I could sit here and talk about this.
I tried to do it with the mail of Honor Society.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
You know.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
We couldn't get through the first taping, couldn't get through
the second tape.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
It took j three trial to get it down. That's
a lot of what you've been listening to today. When
he decided to tell it, he told the whole thing,
not just the glory, but the trauma too, Not about
killing some anonymous enemy, but about honorable men who carried
pictures of their mothers in their pockets and laundry slips
(34:29):
for shirts they'd never wear. By telling his story this way,
Jay Argus shows what soldiers give up during war, what
they have to sacrifice of themselves to get through a battle.
Like Dido, they go to fight and they see terrible things.
Those things stay with them. Nobody should have to live
(34:51):
with those kinds of horrors, but they do. Jay dedicated
himself to helping veterans negotiate their stories to live past them.
And when he told his story, he did it in
such a way that the rest of us could see
the trauma first hand, and from three nights of unbelievable
(35:12):
carnage and pain, he distills a very simple.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Lesson life is too damn precious just to throw away.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
That's the case on the battlefield and when you come
home from it too. Medal of Honor Stories of Courage
is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins,
(35:44):
Constanza Gallardo, and Izzy Carter. The show is edited by
Ben Daph Haffrey, Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski,
recording engineering by Nita Lawrence, fact checking by Arthur Gombert's
original music by Eric Phillips. Special thanks to the Congressional
Medal of Honor Society, the American Legion, US National Archives,
(36:08):
and the Reagan Felm. If you want to learn more
about our Medal of Honor recipients, follow us on Instagram
and Twitter. We'll be sharing photos and videos of the
heroes featured on the show. We'd also love to hear
from you dm us with a story about a courageous
veteran in your life. If you don't know a veteran,
we would love to hear a story of how courage
(36:29):
was contagious in your own life. You can find us
at Pushkinbods. I'm your host, Malcolm Gabo
Bushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
It was a late fall day and four men walked
through a field rifles in hand. The tall, dry grass
rustled as they moved. They were alert, listening for the
sounds of other bodies moving through it too, watching for
a shadow or a bend in the grass. They went
as silently as they could, ready to shoot as soon
as they locked in a target. The four men with
(00:45):
the Vargas brothers from Winslow, Arizona, all the Marines, and
they were out hunting. The first brother caught a deer
in his sights and shot it. He'd bagged a buck. Eventually,
the second and third brothers did too, but the fourth brother, Jay,
the youngest, couldn't seem to get one. He kept retreating
to their campsite, putting his gun down. His brother's cheer
(01:09):
him on, tried to keep his spirits up. This was
their yearly trip, a family tradition did, all grown up
hunting together. Now they vowed to stay out until the
last brother got his buck. They didn't want him to
miss out, but he just couldn't seem to shoot his rifle.
I can picture it, the coolness of the day, the
(01:29):
warmth between the brothers, the bright blue western sky and
the call of birds overhead, and like an electric current
underneath it all panic from Jay who couldn't pull the trigger,
who in fact, would never pull a trigger again. He
couldn't shoot a gun without remembering all the times he'd
done the same thing in Vietnam, and he had something
(01:52):
else to remember Vietnam by a Medal of Honor. I'm
Malcolm Glavell, and this is Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage.
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in
the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery in combat
at the risk of life, above and beyond the call
of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the way
(02:15):
up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in
the field to the White House. This show is about
those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what
their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.
The story I'm going to tell you today is brutally violent,
and there's a reason those graphic details matter. It has
(02:37):
to do with the aftermath of that violence. We'll look
at why it's so important to talk honestly about what
happens on the battlefield and how veterans tell their stories,
if they can even bring themselves to tell them at all.
This episode is about Jay Vargas and a story that
took him more than thirty years to tell, but once
(02:59):
he did, the change things not just for him, but
for hundreds of other men and women just like him.
(03:20):
By nineteen sixty eight, US combat forces had been fighting
the war in Vietnam for three years. That January, the
North Vietnamese military had launched a series of surprise attacks
throughout South Vietnam, a campaign known as a Tet Offensive.
It was a norse attempt to bring about a decisive
end to the war. A young Marine captain named Jay
(03:43):
Vargas was there. He was twenty nine, on his second
tour of Vietnam. From the outset, he could tell it
was going to be even tougher this time around here,
he is remembering back on that tour.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
I got in it in late sixty seven and through
sixty eight, which was the worst time to be in Vietnam.
We knew that the North Vietnamese were coming and it
was starting to turn up ugly throughout the South Vietnam everywhere.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
The Tet Offensive didn't end the war, but it changed
the way people in the US saw Vietnam. Watching the
carnage unfold on the nightly news, the American public realized
that despite what they had been told, the conflict wasn't
coming to an end. The government had lied this could
keep going for years. The North Vietnamese leadership knew that
(04:34):
popular opinion was souring on the war. They saw an
opportunity strike again hard, and maybe then the US would
lose heart for the war altogether. So in the early
spring of sixty eight, they planned another campaign. This one
centered on the U. S supply base of Dong Ha.
The base was set about twelve miles south of the
(04:56):
demilitarized zone on the Beau du Quaviete rivers, and it
supplied all the friendly forces in the northern part of
South Vietnam with ammunition, supplies and medical support. It was
strategically very important. A series of abandoned villages sat across
the river from the base, The largest one was Dido There,
(05:17):
the North Vietnamese military secretly built a sprawling maze of
bunkers and armed positions pointed directly at the Dongha base.
Then they quietly filled Dideaux with thousands and thousands of
North Vietnamese Army troops, all of them setting their sights
on Dongh. Their plan take the base by surprise, overwhelmed
(05:39):
the roughly seven hundred Marines that were stationed there and
essentially shut down US operations in that part of Vietnam.
The entire area was covered in lush vegetation, which made
it easy to hide what they were doing. The American
command had no idea what was coming. On the last
day of April nineteen sixty eight, the North Vietnamese Army
(06:02):
NVA for short, struck the U. S forces at Dongha.
They opened fire on a U. S. Navy river boat,
killing a sailor and wounding several others. The Lieutenant colonel
in command of the Marines, William Weiss, sent a company
around two hundred men to investigate the abandoned village of Dideaux.
Speaker 4 (06:22):
Then, when we found out how extensive and the enemy
positions were, they were very well constructed bunkers, They were
very well camouflaged, mutually supporting in order to take one
bunker who had came under the fire of two or
three others, and it had obviously taken them a long
time to build them. They had been in that area
(06:44):
for quite a while to construct those positions.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
The marines that we sent were immediately drawn into battle.
By the afternoon, a third of them had been killed
or metavacked out. Remember, there weren't that many US troops
had DONGHA to begin with, fewer than seven hundred. They
would end up facing down more than ten thousand NVA.
One of those marines stationed nearby was jav Argus. Jay
(07:10):
was charismatic and soft spoken, with regulation and short, dark
hair and olive skin, quick to grin. He was the
company commander of roughly one hundred and seventy men. Jay
believed that his guys, the Marines of Golf Company or
Company G, were some of the best in the service
or anywhere.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
Hard tough seventeen eighteen nineteen year old marines.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
I'm not ken ye I have. They were the toughest,
meanest little bastards I've ever seen.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
In fact, they called the whole second Battalion of the
fourth Marines the magnificent Bastards. They were tough and they
would have to be. Lieutenant Colonel Weiss needed all of
those magnificent bastards to drive the NVA away from the base.
Jay and his marines were stationed several miles from did
Because of NVA fire, it was too dangerous to fly
(08:02):
the man in, so Jay's company was going to have
to get there on foot. By the time they started march,
it was dark and it took them more than five
hours to get down to the battle. They were dogged
the entire way by an onslaught of artillery and rockets.
Motor shells fell all around them, exploding into the soft soil,
(08:22):
sending shrapnel everywhere.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Quantafeo has took some hits, and I didn't lose anyone,
but we were all you know. I had one leg
messed up and everyone had shrappl on them.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
In fact, Jay's leg was really messed up, but he
knew that if anyone realized it, he would be taken
out of the action. So he had his leg bandaged
and he changed into a clean pair of pants and
swore the medical who helped him to secrecy he wouldn't
leave his company. By the time the men made it
to base, they were exhausted, but there was no time
to sleep. They were told to continue on to the fighting.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
That was the orders of the menetu land at Dideaux.
I want you to continue and push on through.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Early in the morning of May first, Jay's company got
on boats and were ferried across the river to Dideaux.
Once on land, they were seven hundred meters away from
the village. First they had to cross a rice patty,
and that patty turned out to have ENVA gunners on
three sides. Jaye and his men crept forward through thigh
(09:24):
high grass, rustled as they moved. The men were exhausted
but alert, their ears hyper tuned to every noise, watching
for a shadow or bend in the grass, guns in
their hands, ready to shoot. As soon as they locked
in on a target. Shots seemed to be coming at
them from every corner of the patty, And then they
(09:44):
came to a horrifying realization the shots were coming from
inside the patty too.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
We had spider holes popping up all over the place.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
You know, guys that were in the ground with bamboo
on top of them. They would jump up and just
start shooting us. And you know, I started losing guys,
but we were killing some too.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
It's like a horror movie. The ground would shift and
a marine would fall dead or wounded. Jay realized they
had to knock out the machine gun nests on the
perimeter if they were going to survive. So he took
four of his men and made a run for them,
but they were fish in a barrel. One after another,
those marines were wounded until Jay was.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
Alone, weighted up all by myself over there.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
But I knocked out three machine heavy machine guns and
kills fourteen in the trenches that I got hold of,
and that opened us up and we came through and
continued the attack.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Let's take a second to think about Jay's tone here.
He's chuckling as he talks about this insanely stressful moment
facing down three machine gun nests on his own. It
may seem odd, but it's a pretty common reaction to
traumatic experiences. Laughter keeps the pain at arm's length, and
in that moment, at that rice patty in Vietnam, Jay
(11:05):
didn't allow himself to feel any fear at all.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I had two what's to do?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
And I didn't have time, and for some reason, I
was pretty dog on calm.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Finally, Jaye and his men got through the rice patty
and arrived at the village of Didau. They had been
fighting for almost twenty four hours straight and it just
kept going. They began to fight through the village bunker
a bunker. For a moment, it seemed to them that
the enemy was pulling back. They might be able to
secure Dideau, maybe even get some rest at last. But
(11:38):
the North Vietnamese knew they had way more soldiers than
the Americans, and they began a ferocious counter attack. The
Marines were exhausted, short on ammunition, they were down a
fewer than eighty men. Lieutenant Colonel Weiss told Jay to
try and find somewhere stable and stay put. Knight was
(11:58):
approaching the second night in a row without sleep, and
by then Jay and his remaining men had been pushed
into a cemetery. As Jay looked around, he realized it
was full of freshly dug graves, graves of MVA men
who had been killed and buried during the previous days
of fighting. If his men were going to make it
(12:19):
through the night, they needed foxholes to hide in for shelter.
So Jay made a grim decision.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
The only way that we could survive. And I know
this sounds cruel, but I told Everyboddy, dig up the
fresh graves, put the body on the side that becomes
your foxhul.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
The young Marines climbed into the graves. They were running
dangerously low on ammunition, and soon enough the cemetery was
totally surrounded by NVA. He ordered his marines to fix
their bayonets. Once the last of the AMMA was gone.
Jay knew they would be fighting hand to hand in
the cemetery through the long night. Stories about war heroes
(13:12):
often start in a kind of quiet way. The young
person who wants to give back, who finds himself in
the military Sumont by surprise, and then comes into his
own That's not really the Jay Vargas story. If you
can be destined to be anything, he was destined to
be a marine. He was born in nineteen thirty eight
in Winslow, the youngest of four sons.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
I am the product of an Italian mother and a
Hispanic father, immigrants of this country.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Family life revolved around his indomitable mom, Teresa, who was
something of a local institution. She owned a Western goods
store and she spoke five languages fluently, including Navajo. His
father was a newspaperman who worked for the Winslow Mail.
Jay was close to his brothers, although they were much older.
The two eldest had joined the Marines when Jay was
(14:02):
just a little kid, and the third brother, Joseph, followed suit.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Two of us.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Angelo and Frank served in World War Two on Ewa GiMA, Okinawa.
Joseph was just ahead of me, and he served in
Korea in the Chosan Reservoir, which is an ugly battle
in what Korea was an ugly war.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
When his brothers came home to Winslow, they never spoke
about what they saw in combat. There was nothing out
of the ordinary about that. People of that era rarely
spoke about their war experiences. It was too hard, if
not impossible, to reflect back. It was as if by
not talking about it they could strip away some of
(14:41):
the terror. Jay flirted with the idea of becoming a
professional baseball player. In fact, he was recruited into the
miners and played Triple A after high school, but in
the back of his mind he had always imagined a
future in the service.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
I knew where I was going, you know, and I
used to play marine out there with a broomstick by
the backyard.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Teresa, on the other hand, had a different idea. She
was fine with him joining the military. Both Vargas's parents
were deeply patriotic and proud of their son's decisions to serve,
but she did not want him to become a marine.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
She was afraid that I was going to go into
the Marine Corps. And she says, what's the matter with
you? You know, stupid though you go into the Navy. They
sleep in white sheets, big pillows, you know, the smoke,
big cigars, and you know they sometimes stand on the
ship and it's just a great life.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
And you still, please, don't go on the Marine Corps.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
She made his brother's promise to dissuade Jay from the corps.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
She told him he will not go on the Marine Corps.
You will talk to him and he will not go
on to the rincoaps. You understand, of course, angel and Frank, yes, Mama.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
One Sunday, when the family had gathered for their big
family meal, the brothers agreed to sit down with Jay
and talk him out of the Marines, and then their
mother left the room.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
The meeting lasted about thirty seconds because Angela leaned over says, Jay,
if you don't go in the Marine Corps, going to
break your frigging legs.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
So Jay set off for the Marines, but only after
he had promised his mom that he would make it home.
On the night of May one, nineteen sixty eight, that
promise was seeming more and more difficult to keep.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
The NVA knew that we were surrounded. They had us good,
and nobody could help me. You know, everybody was said,
they're not going to make it.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Jay and the Marines of Golf Company, hiding in those
fresh graves, knew they had to protect their hard won
perimeter at the cemetery in Dido.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
We fought all night.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Jay got a call on the radio from the admiral
in charge of the flotilla of gunships on the Quavillette River.
He said he was calling in fire to back Jay up.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
It was scary just listening to the rounds come in,
but it blew half the country side away. You know,
you could hear the enemy's screaming and yelling because Tho's
guns were just wiping them out.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
The hours wore on, night turned to the haze of dawn,
another morning without waking up, another night without sleep, and
the Marines kept fighting, killing and killing and killing to
keep from being killed.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
We still had guys penetrate our positions.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
I know one guy, he must have been on some
kind of drugs, because I know I hit him at
least four times, but he just kept coming, throwing great
age around like he was delivered in the La Times.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Again, Jay sounds so casual as he's talking about this
delivering in the La Times. But the situation could not
have been more dire. Just as Jay had feared, his
men ran out of ammunition.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
They were hitting these dark Hutton MBA with intrenching tools
and helmets and rocks.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Whatever we would kill them with, we did.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Finally it was daylight, and for some reason that felt
inexplicable to Jay, the enemy pulled back. The Marines climbed
out of the graves. In the quiet. Jay could finally
see exactly what they had been up against.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And I'll get the look in all of our faces.
I'm sure I was the same way. Our eyes were
as big as owls.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
And he could see exactly what they had done.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
There was blood smell all over the place. We had
three hundred and eighty four dead MVA around us that
we had killed. That all night, And I keep in mind,
my marines haven't slept yet, none of us have, so
this is probably forty eight hours that no one had
even closed their eyes.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
It was just continual fire.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
All wore as hell. That's a cliche and it's a fact.
And Vietnam was particularly brutal. We've all heard about the
atrocities there, the cruelty, but Jay Vargas always speaks of
his adversaries with deep humanity. These weren't nameless, faceless soldiers
he was fighting. He knew they were people.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
They were well trained, they were smart.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
You know. The troops had to search pockets every once
in a while when you knocked one down, and you'd
find a laundry ticket from Hanoi, you know, And I'm
going this guy came allway from the knowing he's got
a laundry ticket here, and he's thousands of miles from
his dog gone home. You find pictures of their wives
and children, and that gets to you.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
So that morning, in that moment of quiet, when it
felt like there was a reprieve, Jay and his men
reburied the soldiers they had disinterred the night before.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
I honored those warriors.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
We made damn sure that we put the bodies back
in the grave and covered them.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Jay's company had started that march two days earlier with
more than one hundred and fifty men, Only around forty
were left. They had been fighting for two straight days.
They needed rest, but the enemy hadn't actually retreated. A
decisive victory was too important to the North Vietnamese cause
(19:59):
they were determined to take back Dideau. Jay and a
golf company met up with the remnants of three other
marine companies. They'd been resupplied with AMMA well, but it
hardly mattered at that point. The entire group of fighting
marines was around three hundred against an enemy that's still
numbered in the thousands.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
We're killing every step of the way, but the NBA
are holding tight and they're making us pay for every
footed ground we took.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
This is another marine who was there at Didea, Vic Taylor.
It's like a tone poem of the horrors of war.
Speaker 5 (20:33):
Small arms fires are shredding everything above. Brown leaves and
twigs and branches are coming down, Banana trees getting knocked over,
Bullets snapping cracking by now they make that spat sound
of the hit meat and somebody'd yelped. Rockets and RPGs flying,
Wi Bang flash bang grenades going in and out fast
(20:53):
as people control them.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
Twenty six and Ji cooms passing each other in the air.
There was a fight.
Speaker 5 (21:00):
It was a fight, and the enemy they weren't down
and defending any more man. They were up and coming
on threes and fours and sixes and eight popping out
of the brush. All cameed up, leaves in the helmets,
weapon held out in front, a little spiked bayonet shining
coming to the trot. Give him credit. They were soldiers,
(21:23):
that's sure. But also at that time these beat up, bloodied,
bone tired, raggedy ass teenagers turned marine.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Beat up, bloody, bone tired, Good god. Lieutenant Colonel Bill
Weese was sitting at a command post near the fighting,
cigar grip between his teeth. He knew how fruitless their
prospects looked. But then he got the order keep pushing forward.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
We didn't have anything left in us. What meager troops
we had were tired, very little sleep, they were hungry,
they were low on ammunition. When I was ordered to
continue to attack forward and retake then tell I told
him hell, no, we can't do it. We're just out
of stain.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
The command had realized that if the NVA were flushed
out of the villages and into the rice paddies to
the north, they would be totally open to the US
fighter planes overhead. The more that the Marines could push
the enemy into the open, the more the planes could
mow them down. They had to keep going finish the job.
(22:36):
But the Marines themselves were being mowed down, and Jay's
company was right in the middle of it.
Speaker 1 (22:42):
A lot of us were alavamo. The NVA was out
of ammo. You know.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
We were killing each other with knives and bayonets and
everything we could possibly survive.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Jay called an airstrikes and mortar fire from the Navy
gunships to help drive the enemy back, and just at
that moment his commander found him.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
Carl Weese came up and kind of fell in the
trench with me. He says, what the hell's going on? And
I said, you better get out here, because I called
artillery on myself and my marines.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
And they know it.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
And I told my marines, I said, hey, grab your
butts because I'm bringing it in. And the colonel turned around,
and just as he turned around, he took three shots
in the spine. My two radio operators took shots in
their head immediately. And so I was bringing an artillery
and naval gone far. So I had three radios in
my hand, and my radio operators were already dead.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
It was clear that they had to get out of
there if anyone was going to survive.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
So I told everyone, let's start going back, and we
went back into a defensive position. But what happened, and
some of them rings didn't make it all the way back,
and the NBA were still amongst us, just running around
because they had no AMMO. They were trying to figure
out what the hell to do, and so there were
jumping on each other. I'm dragging the colonel back an
(24:02):
almost I think it was seventy five yards.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
I kept dragging him back, and he was bleeding like
a pig.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Remember what I said before about laughter and trauma. Here
it is again, as Jay looks death in the face.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
And this is a funny part, and he loves to
tell his story. I was great with a rifle because
I grew up shooting rifles all my life, but I
couldn't handle that forty five pistol. So at that stage
I had my pistol out when I was dragging you,
and this NBA soldier came up of the river bank
and lifted his weapon to dingis and he could have
(24:36):
wiped us out. I fired his pistol and it hit
the ground first, bounced up and hit him in his stomach.
And I'll never forget the expression on his face like
he said. I'm sure he said in his language, how
in the shit did you do that? And he fell
back into the river. And I'm laughing now because Gerowas
still tells that story. He says, God, don't give Jay
(24:57):
a pistol. Give him a grenade, give a rifle, but
don't give a pistol.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
He's laughing at a situation that's not just serious, but
deathly serious. But what the hell else are you.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
Going to do?
Speaker 2 (25:09):
How does a person make sense of an experience like this?
It's insane, it's tragic, But laughing at the absurdity is
part of how Jay makes sense of his own story.
Here's a thing. When you listen to as many veterans
telling their war stories as I have, you start to
see patterns, a casualness, a detachment, sometimes when talking about
(25:30):
an incredibly stressful situation, as though to spare the listener
the details, because how could we really understand? And something else.
In descriptions of battle, the enemy is often described as
a wave or a wall or a cascade a force.
There's rarely an acknowledgment of the underlying humanity there. You
(25:51):
almost never hear the story about the enemy soldier who's like,
how on the shit did you do that? But Jay
saw the men, the men fighting next to him, those
fearless young bastards who wouldn't give up, but also the
well trained soldiers that he was killing. I saw it all,
and it was more than anyone should have to take.
(26:18):
That final afternoon on the battle filled in Dideaux, Jay
ordered the surviving marines to fall back. The remaining men
had to get to safety, but he quickly realized that
seven of his marines couldn't move on their own.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
I had some marines that were wounded, and I went back,
and I said, I'm going to go back from a morane.
So I went in seven times and brought back seven marines.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Out seven times. Through the men killing each other with
bayonets and knives and rocks, they were battered, bruised, and worse,
particularly a young marine named Sammy.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
Well.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
I was taking a colonel back. Sammy was sitting on
the tree there and his body. They had blown off
his left arm and the steel had burned him so
bad it wasn't even bleeding, but his arm was laying
over him. And I said, Sammy, I'll come back to
get you. So once I got the colonel back, I
went back for Sandy and put him on my back.
(27:16):
Thank god he was small. We got to moving backwards
and he turned around. He said, Skipper, I want my
friggin arm, And I said, you gotta be shitting. So
I had to turn around and go back and the NBA's.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
And I got this guy.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
So I bet now like I said, okay, I can't
reach your arm, and he said I can get it,
so he he reached out.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
I got his arm and I got I got him back, and.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
The last time I saw him the carmen we're taking
into the choppers yard, and he had his arm and
his chest right here. He just he for some reason
he thought he could put it back up.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
They were all in shock. You can tell that right
the way Sammy thinks they can reattach his arm, the
way Jay is laughing even as he's horrified. Jay made
it home. Colonel Weiss made it home. Those seven men
Jay saved made it home too, but none of them
(28:14):
made it home the same Jay returned from the battle
at Dido with multiple wounds. A bullet had gone through
(28:36):
his side, and he had been hit by shrapnel, not
just that initial wound in the leg, but shell fragments
in his right arm and through his mouth. The physical
damage was serious, but it would heal. The mental toll
was something different. He didn't talk about what had happened
to him on the battlefield. He wouldn't, not even to
his brothers, even though he knew they had been through
(28:59):
terrible combat experiences of their own. What kind of words
could possibly sum up those three sleepless, bloody days. There
are no words. That kind of experience lives inside you
and surfaces even in the smallest moments, like a hunting
trip with your brothers, when suddenly you find you can't
shoot a deer.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
My oldest brother Angelo sense that there was I couldn't
pulletrate it.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
More than thirty percent of Vietnam veterans suffered from PTSD,
and recent studies have shown that for veterans, talking about
traumatic experiences, in other words, telling their war stories, is
the first line of defense against PTSD. But Jay just wouldn't.
(29:46):
He assumed that once you came home, you didn't talk
about it like that's the way it was supposed to be,
not even when he found out in May of nineteen
seventy that he was going to receive a medal of honor.
Jay's mom, Teresa, had passed away just a few months earlier,
and in her honor, Jay decided that he wanted to
have her name, not his name, inscribed on the back.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Mom died about I think of this about four months
before five, almost six months before the presentation.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Would have been the highlight of her life.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
So I called the White House one night asking for
the Marie Liaison officer, whom I knew. I forgot that
it was like four o'clock in San Diego, but it
was seven o'clock seven pm in DC, and the phone
was ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing, and so
all of a sudden, about the fifteenth ring, so he
(30:44):
picks up the phone and he says, how can I
help you? And I said, my name's Jay Vargus. He says,
I know who you are. Jay, How I spent I
have a favor to ask of Carl Calfield And he says,
he said, well, what's the favorite?
Speaker 1 (30:59):
I said, I like.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
To have my mother's name put on the back of
my metal and he says, that's easy.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
I'll take care of that.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Don't worry about Jay, He says, as your family, and
I said, yeah, my brothers are coming.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Mom's naw.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
He says, oh, I'm sorry that you lost. So that's
why you want to put the name in the back
of the middle. I said, yes, sir, and he says,
I can take care of that. And I said, sir,
who the hell am I talking to? He says, this
is the President Nixon. Think Nixon.
Speaker 6 (31:28):
His exercise route in the evenings was to go round
all the corridors. And later on he told me he
was on his evening walk and he says that damn
phone kept ringing and ringing. I just opened the door
and I picked it up.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
There's not a lot to love about President Nixon, but
this is one of the only stories that makes him
sound kind of awesome. Anyway, Jay saw his medal as
a way to acknowledge the magnificent bastards who served alongside him.
You can still hear the catch in his voice when
he talks about them.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
You know, well, I wear my medal.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
I'm putting it on for everyone that served with me
in that particular battle, and especially for those that sacrificed
their lives. But if I could pound this dan thane
into powder, I would give a little bit.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
To each one of my rates.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
He was now famous for his actions in combat, and
if you win a medal of honor, people expect you
to talk about what happened, but they couldn't. Jay went
on to serve in the Marine Corps for almost thirty years,
never speaking about what he had seen during that three
day battle.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
After it was over, I think I just wanted to
continue on with my career. Post traumatic stress kind of
leaked into my brain like it has too many of
the warriors.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Finally, Jay's brother told him that he needed to go
get help, and he did, and he took on a
new challenge helping other veterans with their trauma. He became
the secretary of the California Department of Veterans Affairs and
moved up from there to the US Department. He traveled
to hospitals speaking to veterans. He learned more and more
(33:12):
about what those wounded warriors were going through and what
they were lacking. He advocated for a program to support
their mental health after they had left the hospital. He
did incredible work in suicide prevention for veterans.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
This post traumatic stress is a toughie. It's a silent killer.
So I'm traveling countryside and visiting commands wounded warriors, women
veterans about PTSD of suicide.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
As he did on the battlefield. He fought tirelessly to
save their lives. Jay Vargus was in his mid sixties
before he could finally tell his own story.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
I'm gonna be honest with you. It took me thirty
six years before I could sit here and talk about this.
I tried to do it with the mail of Honor Society.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
You know.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
We couldn't get through the first taping, couldn't get through
the second tape.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
It took j three trial to get it down. That's
a lot of what you've been listening to today. When
he decided to tell it, he told the whole thing,
not just the glory, but the trauma too, Not about
killing some anonymous enemy, but about honorable men who carried
pictures of their mothers in their pockets and laundry slips
(34:29):
for shirts they'd never wear. By telling his story this way,
Jay Argus shows what soldiers give up during war, what
they have to sacrifice of themselves to get through a battle.
Like Dido, they go to fight and they see terrible things.
Those things stay with them. Nobody should have to live
(34:51):
with those kinds of horrors, but they do. Jay dedicated
himself to helping veterans negotiate their stories to live past them.
And when he told his story, he did it in
such a way that the rest of us could see
the trauma first hand, and from three nights of unbelievable
(35:12):
carnage and pain, he distills a very simple.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Lesson life is too damn precious just to throw away.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
That's the case on the battlefield and when you come
home from it too. Medal of Honor Stories of Courage
is written by Meredith Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins,
(35:44):
Constanza Gallardo, and Izzy Carter. The show is edited by
Ben Daph Haffrey, Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorski,
recording engineering by Nita Lawrence, fact checking by Arthur Gombert's
original music by Eric Phillips. Special thanks to the Congressional
Medal of Honor Society, the American Legion, US National Archives,
(36:08):
and the Reagan Felm. If you want to learn more
about our Medal of Honor recipients, follow us on Instagram
and Twitter. We'll be sharing photos and videos of the
heroes featured on the show. We'd also love to hear
from you dm us with a story about a courageous
veteran in your life. If you don't know a veteran,
we would love to hear a story of how courage
(36:29):
was contagious in your own life. You can find us
at Pushkinbods. I'm your host, Malcolm Gabo
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
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