March 28, 2022 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Lowell Lytle, who witnessed the Titanic in person, tells his story and the story of The Titanic’s Last Hero. Karl Marlantes tells the story of how he left Vietnam and received a Bronze Star and a Navy Cross, our nation's second-highest award for valor.
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Time Codes:
00:00 - The Titanic’s Last Hero
23:00 - How I Came to Terms With My Navy Cross
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. More people have
ventured into outer space that have been to where the
Titanic rests two and a half miles down on the
ocean floor. Lowell Lttle has been one of the privileged
few who has seeing the Titanic firsthand. Lowell has played
the part of Captain Smith at Titanic events all over
(00:30):
the globe and has been entertaining guests at the Titanic
Museum for more than fifteen years. Here's Lowell Lttle to
tell his story and the story of the Titanic's last hero.
How do you do this? Is Lowell Lightle. I have
(00:55):
an unusual story to tell you. I was home minding
my own business way back in nineteen eighty seven. I
heard about the Titanic. They've discovered it. And when you
know that, I got a phone call from the designer
(01:16):
that was building an exhibit Orlando on the Titanic. He
called me, he said, Lowell, we've gone through three hundred
and fifty actors here in Orlando. Can't find a captain.
He said. I told these men I know someone that
can play that part. He's my next door neighbor. I
(01:38):
used to be a lead singer one of my rock
and roll bands. I had eight bands for twenty two
years tour in the United States and Canada. And I
went over there on a hoop just to see what
was all about. And he opened the door and there
were six men sitting around the table and he said, gentlemen,
(01:59):
here's Captain Smith. They took one look at me and
they said, yep, you're it. I didn't know what the
Captain looked like. But an hour later I went through
that Sioux and Air shop and I saw the front
page of the New York Times nineteen twelve picture of
Captain Smith looking right at me. And my first thought was,
(02:21):
my neighbor has taken my picture and pasted it on
the front page of the New York Times. He shouldn't
do that. That's wrong. Well, I was there for about
two years and then I heard they were going to
dive to the Tina, and I the old that would
be nice if I could do that. So I called
(02:42):
them and they said no. I waited two weeks and
I call them again and I said I'd like to
go down to the Titan again. They said no, no,
that's for archaeologists and important people, wealthy people, people have
climbed Mount Everest millionaires. I waited two him more weeks,
(03:04):
and you know, I remember Winston Churchill made a famous
speech during World War Two. He said, we won't fight
him in the air, we won't fight him on lad
we will fight him at sea, but we will never surrender.
I remember that he was invited to speak at Harvard
(03:26):
University after the war, and the professor said that the
students get your pads and pen's ready, because when this
man speaks, it's wisdom. They flew him over from England.
The old man hobble up the microphone and he said,
never give up, never never, never, never give up. And
(03:51):
he turnaround is sat down. I never forgot that it
was the best speech I ever heard. I call him
again and I said, I'm the captain of the tight Tannic.
I'm in front of the camera, I'm in everyone's home.
I'm the one that's talking about your exhibit. I believe
(04:14):
if the meeting could say this man's been down to
see this ship, more people would be interested what I
have to say about it, and you'll get more people
there and you make more money. It got quiet on
the other end the phone. Then the man said, I
think you're right to come along. So I actually packed
up and I went to Saint John's, Newfoundland, that's where
(04:37):
you leave from. And I got there and they looked
at me and they said, you're too tall. You won't
fit in there. I said, I'll fit in there, and
I'm six foot four. I'm the tallest and the oldest
has ever been down to the tight tanning. I was
sixty eight at the time. I said, I'll fit in there. Well,
(05:00):
we don't have a fire, so bigg enough for you
fire suit. What's this about a fire? Well, you'll be
breathing one oxygen. It could flash to a fire like
Apolla one did. Well, if that's the case, I'll be
burnt to a crisp in ten seconds. What good is
a suitabill Your name will be written on it. It's
(05:24):
for identification, identification. I'm that tall guy down there. Well, anyway,
I got into suit. Let's suit with a little too small,
but I did get in one now and I got
on the acadiamy kells that Russian died vessel. I noticed
(05:46):
on the back end of one of those subs, the
protective shield that went around the propeller was held together
with duct tape. Now that doesn't breed a lot of confidence.
And I'm thinking to myself, I've really wanted to do this.
All I could think of as well, I've lived alone life.
(06:09):
I'm sixty eight. If I die, I know where I'm going.
That's the important thing. And if I come back, I'll
have a story to tell. And I came back, and
I've been telling that story for twenty one years all
around the world. I told it in Shanghai, China for
(06:30):
two weeks. I told it in Singapore for two weeks.
I've been every state in the United States, every providence
in Canada where they've had these tight ten exhibits, sometimes
two or three times different cities. One day, I was
eating dinner. Now there's twice as many people out there
(06:54):
that would like to go down, that would get a chance.
Who I knew I didn't have any chance. But while
I was eating, that fellow that I talked to on
the phone came over to me, bent over and said
to me, Lowell, you're going down me in the morning.
And what a unique and original voice we're listening too.
And that is, of course the voice of Lowell Lightle,
(07:17):
who plays the part and has been playing the part
of Captain Smith. When we come back. More of Lowe
Lightle story here on our American Stories. Folks, if you
love the great American stories we tell and love America
like we do, we're asking you to become a part
(07:37):
of the our American Stories family. If you agree that
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donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with
(08:10):
our American Stories and with Lowal Lightle's story about being
one of the privileged few who've seen the Titanic firsthand,
and it also happens to play the part of Captain
Smith at Titanic events all over the globe. Let's return
the lower Lightle and his story. Oh my goodness, my
(08:31):
heart began to pound. I couldn't believe it. They're gonna
let me go down to the Titanny Well, Fox Television
follow me all around like it was an astronaut. Now
you First of all, you gotta take your shoes off
in the event. Did you pick up any oil from
that mother ship walking on the deck and breathing one
(08:55):
hundred percent oxygen? It could If there's a spark, that
would be it. So I took my shoes off, I
got inside and in my long legs. Wouldn't you know,
I kicked over They obt he didn't take. Boy, it
didn't take long before that rushing pilot came alive and
straightened that thing up. Now I got no place to sit.
(09:19):
I'm in a ball and six and a half eat
in diameter, nineteen inches thick, and there's three grown men
in there, and it takes two and a half hours
to get down two and a half miles to the
wreck side. They turn off all the lights to conserve
(09:41):
the batteries. Now they turned that hatch down tight, and
I knew then I couldn't change my mind. I can't
see anything. All I can do is think about what
I'm about to see. I'm not going to see a movie.
I'm going to see the real thing. And when they
(10:02):
turned on the lights, the rush and pilot says were
almost there, and I didn't like what I saw. We
were going too fast and we bounce off the ocean floor.
Oh my goodness, Oh my goodness. Of course, it took
five minutes for all that dust to settle down. And
(10:26):
the first thing that I noticed was the sea life.
It was so strange. There's no light that far down
on the ocean floor, no sun. So the crabs they're white.
The starfish that the thirteen inches in diameter five points,
but none of them any larger than their the little finger. Now,
(10:49):
when they had turned on the lights moments later, I
was right over the bow, the same spot where Jack
and the movie helld up his arms that I'm the
king of the world. I went right over that spot.
I said, take me to the captain's cabin. James Cameron said,
the side was already gone. They took me there. I
(11:10):
was five feet from the captain's bath for ten minutes.
While they were changing film. I found a wretch down there.
The mouth on it was thirteen inches across, sticking straight
up in the ocean floor, like somebody thrown a javelin.
And I noticed, while I was picking items up off
(11:32):
the ocean floor, there was a hat. It looked like
a Derby hat, and it was in mint condition. There's
no current that far down. And I told the Russian
pilot to go get that and he did. There's two
mechanical arms on the outside of that sub and he
picked it up and they pushed a button and a
basket went out from underneath, and he'd let go of
(11:55):
it to fall into the basket and it disappeared like
a cloud. The micro organisms they're eating up that ship
at such a tremendous rate, it's gonna be an orange
spot on the ocean floor within a hundred years now.
I think that hat was probably be made out of felt.
(12:15):
Had it been made out of leather, it probably could
make it because those microorganisms that do not light the
tanning process of leather, it repels them their shoes and
hats and bags. That's why you see those things found
enough items. And I thought to myself, I'm just going
(12:38):
to stay focused on this and not get involved emotionally.
But after an hour and a half, all I could
think of was what really took place at night? Fifteen
hundred souls slipped into eternity. All of them had plans
(12:59):
to get to New York, can start a new life.
It never happened. Life can be short, folks, make sure
you tell your loved one every day how much you
love them. And you better know where you're going, because
it's going to happen to every one of us. We're
all going to die at one time or another. When
it happens, it'll be too soon. Just remember this eternity
(13:23):
is a long time to be wrong. Get it right.
In fact, there's a story about a second class Passenger's
name is Reverend John Harper. There's a book entitled The
Titanic's Last Hero. It's about Reverend Harper, and he was
(13:45):
on his way to Chicago to preach. He had a
revival service before he left, and he told the people
in that service he said he was going to go
to New York on that new ship called the tight Tanning.
The next week, after the service, one of them, one
(14:07):
of his parishioners, came up to him and said, Reverend,
I have a bad feeling about that ship. I am
an ominous feeling that something bad's going to take place.
I feel so strongly about it. I want you. I
want you to go to New York, but I don't
want you to get on the ship. Please take the Lucitania.
(14:33):
I'll even pay for your ticket. Reverend Harper thought about.
He says, no, the Apostle Paul wouldn't run away from danger.
If anything happens, I'm ready. And it happened. And when
the Titanic started to go down, that Baptist minister ran
around the deck shouting women and children and unsaved people
(14:58):
get aboard the lifeboats. You just can't keep these Baptists quiet.
He even gave his life est to a man that
was not a Christian. His daughter Anna was standing right
next to him, and his sister in law was standing
(15:19):
next to him. They both survived. The sister law overheard
the reverend when he gave that life est to that man.
He said, here, take this, I don't need it. I'm
not going down. I'm going up. He's in the water
now twenty eight degrees. It feels like a thousand knives
(15:40):
stabbing him. And a man drifted buying a piece of wood,
and Rever Harper shouted to the man, how are you saved?
The man said no. Rever Harper shouted, believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. The man
drifted off into the dark, and late of the current
(16:02):
drew him back, and Reverend Harper again shouted to the man,
how are you saved? Yet? The man said, I can
honestly say that I am. Reverend Harper's last words were
believe on the Lord of Jesus Christ, and thou shall
be saved. And with that the Reverend slipped under the
(16:24):
water and went to that frozen watery grave. There were
twelve people pulled from the water that night. Six of
them lived. That man was one of them. And that
story was told a few weeks later in Hamilton, Ontario
by that same man who said, I listened to Reverend
(16:47):
Harper's last message and became a believer in Jesus Christ.
With two miles of water beneath me, Titanic's last hero,
Reverend John Harper. God bless you, folks, And what a
piece is storytelling by Lowell Lightle, not only his story,
(17:10):
not only his passion for the Titanic, but telling the
story of the Titanic's last hero as well as perhaps
only he can do. We haven't had many better storytellers
on this show and many better stories. A special thanks
the Lowell Lightle for sharing his story. He is an
(17:30):
entertaining guests at the Titanic Museum for more than fifteen years.
He is also the author of the inspiring read Diving
into the Deep Lowell Lightle Story, The Story of the Titanic.
Here on our American Stories, and we returned to our
(18:09):
American Stories and up next to story from Carl Merlantis.
Karl is the author of the award winning books Matterhorn
and what It's Like to Go To War, books that
took him thirty years of reckoning and soul searching to
write after his service in Vietnam. While in Vietnam, Karl
and his Marines were engaged against the North Vietnamese Army
(18:30):
often called the NVA, and in so doing Carl earned
many medals, including the second highest award for valor our
country bestows that would be the Navy Cross. But Karl
often asked himself a question, why did he receive the
awards when others who hadn't been awarded had done so
much more. Here's Karl with the story. The NBA had
(18:56):
dug in on a couple of hills on Mutter's Ridge,
and at that time I had been promoted to the
company executive officer. We were on on the assault and
I couldn't stand to not be with my platoon because
I just just giving him up to take the new job,
and a new, brand new platoon commander only been in
(19:17):
one firefight, so I just I joined the platoon just
to help out. And there was a kid that was clearly,
you know, panicked, and if you don't seat the magazine
of your of your M sixteen correctly, it won't work.
(19:39):
And he was his hands were trembling, and he was
on the ground and there was a machine gun nest
above us, and you know, and I hit the ground
next to him, and he was just shaking with fear.
I knew him a good kid, and uh and I
could see right away that he hadn't seated his magazine.
That was what he was because he thought his weapon
had failed him. And I took the rifle from them,
(20:03):
and I seated the magazine correctly, and I handed it
back to them, and I said, don't go up there,
don't go up above. We were in a little sort
of definitely a little sort of very shallow dip in
the ground, so the bullets were flying over our head
and so we were safe where we were. I said,
don't go up there, because they had cut the jungle
(20:23):
away from the ground up about to knee height. Everything
else was hidden by all the foliage, but if you
put your eye on the ground, it was absolutely clear
all the way up to the machine guns. And it
was it's a classic tactic. They'll shoot your legs and
then when your legs go, your body goes down into
(20:44):
that same kill zone, and then they take you out
at your body. And he nodded his head and said yeah,
I say so. I said okay, and I took off
because I had other things that I had to do.
I was trying to keep this assault organized. And he
took off, running straight up the hill toward the machine gun.
And to this day, I don't know why he did that,
(21:07):
and my guess is that he felt I'm guessing that
he felt embarrassed or something because he had sort of
gotten down on the ground and gotten scared and he
was gonna, you know, not be scared anymore. And I
get tearful because he charged that machine gun. Well he
went down. I heard him say I'm hit and I
(21:29):
couldn't see him. I could hear him up there and
the boeths going over and I came running back and
the platoon sergeant heard him cry out too, and he
came out the other way and I said, you know,
it's use his name. And it was like, now, what
are we gonna do it? Because he's up there. He's
alive because I heard him cry out his hit, and
(21:52):
so I remember thinking, I mean, this is really weird.
I wanted to meddle and I remember going like, you know,
if you you're not, I'm not in charge of the platoon.
I was sort of just super numerary because I just
left the company headquarters. I mean headquarters. I mean, it's stupid.
It's they were just, you know, one hundred yards away
(22:13):
from me. But but I remember thinking I made a
joke with Gunny Ring. He was in a staff sergeant,
and I said, if I go up and get him,
I said, you write me up for a medal, and
it all hawk and he looked at me and he said, yeah,
I'll write you up for a medal. It will be posthumous. Uh.
You know that banter went right back and forth. But
(22:36):
I wanted to go get the kid because you know,
he was in my platoon. I knew he was in trouble.
And at the same time, it was like, you know,
grab a little glory here. It's hard to imagine, but
you know, you're twenty two, twenty three years old, and
that's that's in your that's in your psyche, I think.
(22:57):
So I went up there with mixed motives, and in
order to reach him, I had to keep the heads
of the machine gunners down so they couldn't they couldn't
be firing at me and actually aiming, and so I
was firing my M sixteen at the machine guns. There
was one machine gun in a bunker up above us,
(23:18):
and crawling up this really steep hill, I mean very steep,
and shooting up at the machine gun. And I found
the kid and I remember trying to drag him down
the hill, but I couldn't move him. He was a
big kid, and so I wrapped myself around him and
(23:38):
turned ourselves sideways and so I could roll with him.
And so with the rival between us and me grabbing
him and rolling, I roll all the way back down.
Got him down there, and Doc Yankee was there. He
was a Navy corman, and started working on him right away,
and then he stopped. I never forget this because it's
(24:03):
so These Navy corman are just incredible people. He was
sucking vomit out of this kid's mouth and blood and
spinning it to try him and keep him alive. And
I was just sitting there watching this, I mean, and
all this is happening in maybe a few minutes. And
(24:24):
he stopped and he looked up at me, and he
held his head and pointed to his head and there
was a bullet hole in it, and he said, I
can't save him, and he dropped him and took off
because he had other wounded people screaming for help. And
I started thinking if he was alive and talking and
(24:44):
there was a bullet in his head, how could he
be alive and talking? And it suddenly hit me, It's like,
my god, maybe I put the bullet in his head.
That's a horrible feeling. And it wouldn't have felt so
bad if my motives had been pure. But my motives
weren't pure. And so although I was brave, I was
(25:07):
brave for mixed motives. I wanted to go save him,
but at the same time, I did kind of want
to get a metal. I wanted it. You know, well,
be careful what you wish for. And to this day,
I don't know if if I killed him or the
NBA killed him because the bodies got stacked up in
(25:27):
stacks on the hill and unfortunately a mortar around hit
all the bodies and it was just carnage. All these guys,
you know, just hours before and been alive and friends
of yours, and you don't you haven't seen anything. You
don't know what carnage means. You see a word around
and hit a bunch of bodies. Um boy, Uh, how
(25:53):
did I get okay? So anyway, we went through several
days of being assaulted. By this day a unit that
we had just managed to insert ourselves into a regiment
that had been on the move down Mutters Ridge. So
they sort of sealed us off because we were right
back in their path all their resupply and everything, and
that's why we got surrounded. And I can remember we
(26:17):
counted out the bullets because it was monsoon, we couldn't
get resupplied, and we had seven bullets left each. We
had redistributed all of our ammunitions so that everybody had
seven bullets, and we knew that the next assaulid would
be all over. It was really as close as I've
come to, you know, mortality, And we managed to get
(26:39):
out of it because the clouds cleared just enough to
bring in ammunition and reinforcements. After several several days of
really hard fighting, we had been kicked off of one
hill and we had a colonel that it was, you know,
and he said, we got to take back that hill.
You were kicked off of the guy it's your pride back.
(27:00):
And I was like, I don't want to get my
pride back. I mean, we're exhausted and we've lost a
whole bunch of our friends, and you know, anim an
order as an order, and so we had to go
into the assault the next morning. And you've been listening
to calm Merlentis tell the story of what happened on
a hill decades ago. More of Carl's story here on
(27:22):
our American Stories, And we're back with our American stories
and call Merlentis's story. When we last left off, Carl
had just rushed into enemy fire to try to save
(27:46):
a fallen marine. He received a medal for that, but
he didn't feel good about it. It felt as if
he'd planned to receive the medal he had In the end,
as he said, mixed motives. The fighting was over, though,
and Carl and his marines were about to go into
an assault against the Vietnamese bunker complex. Let's continue with
(28:07):
the story. We'd been mortared for days, so this, this
larger NBA unit had mortar positions, and you can't keep
mortars supplied with ammunition unless there's a lot of people
packing mortars, so it was pretty big unit. We went
through the jungle, got on the edge of the jungle, withers.
(28:28):
We're being cleared away by napalm, and we're all lined
up ready to go, and the word comes to kick off,
and you don't. You don't charge, you don't run. You're full,
you're laden with ammunition, and if you try to run
up a hill, you're exhausted and you won't make it.
(28:50):
You walk up. When you're in an assault, you walk,
which is really hard when you're being shot at. And
the whole line of bunkers up of us, the NBA
were in him, opened up with machine guns. Well, the
whole line of marines went down to the ground, took
cover behind logs, fallen logs, and hit the ground and
(29:11):
the assault stopped. Now what, I'm the guy in charge,
and if we stayed where we were, the mortars would
start hitting us because I knew that, you know, I mean,
they've been shooting us for days, and so they'd be
zeroed in on us. Marines don't retreat. It's just not
something we do. So there's only one thing to do.
(29:32):
It is I have to get all these guys up
off the ground and take out those machine guns. And
there was a guy at the Basic school, a redheaded
major named Miller, And remember him telling us. He says,
you lieutenants, think about this. He says, the corporals and
sergeants can do everything you do. Technically, they can do everything.
(29:56):
But someday you're gonna know w you're going to earn
your pay. There's going to be a day the time
is going to come when you are going to earn
your pay, and you'll know it when it happens. I
can remember him saying that I was on that hill
with a whole line of Marines down on the ground
about to get hit by mortars, and oh, this is
(30:21):
what Major Miller was talking about. And here's the difference
is that my motives then were I gotta get these
guys out of this pickle. I was just purely trying
to think about how to stop the slaughter that was
going to come if we didn't move, and all this
is going on in seconds. I mean, you know, it
(30:43):
takes me a long time to tell it, but it
really goes by. It was really a short period of time,
and I had an out of body experience. And to
this day, I can't tell you if that was a
spiritual experience or a psychotic experience, but I believe me
this is what I did. I left my body and
I looked at the whole situation from some vantage point
(31:06):
way up in the sky. I saw everybody laid out
on the line. I saw where all the machine guns
were up above us. I saw the bunker complex. I
figured it all out by looking at it from up
in the sky. And I came back down into my
body and I started to shout at people to get
you know, like I said, get the M seventy nine man.
(31:28):
I want you to take that bunker out. I want
you to keep firing at it because we've got to
keep that machine gun quiet, because I got to get
this other machine gun quiet. And if we can get
between these two machine guns, then we can start to
open up by going down the line, and they won't
be able to shoot us because they got us in
the Crossford. I mean, I was thinking all these things,
and there was a brand new kid. I don't even
know his name he was. He came in with the
(31:49):
replacements the day before, skinny African American kid. You know,
he should have been playing basketball for his high school.
And he was a machine gunner. And I said, you
got to take machine got under fire. You got to
take it under fire now and keep it. Keep their
heads down so that we can get up in between
these two bunkers, and then we can take him out.
(32:11):
And he laid down and started firing very control, three shots,
four shots, perfect fire control. I just and I can
remember thinking, thank God, somebody trained this kid, because if
you go too fast, you burn your barrels up and
you're out of Hamel. And as I ran down the
line to keep organizing people, I remember seeing his blood
(32:35):
pumping out of his leg. It was an arterial wound,
because when it pumps like that, it's arterial. I don't
know if he lived or not, because we lost a
lot of guys and I don't I didn't even know
his name, so I don't know if he's the one
who lived or died. He might have been wounded in
advent of act or he might have died, but he
kept that bunker down and there's no mettle for him.
(32:59):
So anyway, now, now what, I still got to get
everybody up off the ground, and so I thought the
only thing I could do was stand up and charge
those bunkers. That's what I did. I said, you know,
Major Milner, this is you know, I remember his voice saying,
this is when you earn earned your pay. And so
(33:20):
so I stood up and I started up the hill
all by myself and what it seemed like an eternity,
but it probably was about four or five seconds literally,
and I noticed slight movement out of the corner of
my eye and I hit the ground and whirled to
shoot at because I thought it was NBA. And it
(33:42):
was Harding, who was a really young squad leader but
really bright kid. And behind Harding came the entire platoon,
all of them. All of them came up the hill,
swarming up the hill behind me. I mean, I get
(34:03):
emotional just thinking about it to this day. You know,
that's why you want to be a marine. By God,
that's right there, That's why you want to be a
marine because of that Heart. They all came up the
hill and took out the bunkers, a lot of them.
You know, we lost a lot of wounded. Somebody said
(34:25):
that we're about one hundred and eighty in the company,
one hundred and twenty purple Hearts during that one week
long or eight day long fight. So I got the
Navy Cross for that, and I feel good about that one. Well,
(34:46):
Like I say that the Navy Cross is like, you
can't go to a Navy base or a Marine base
in the world and buy a drink. I mean, if
you're a Navy crossholder, you're you're put into a special category.
How do you live with that? The kid that was
holding that machine gun under his machine gun fire pumping blood.
No medal for that kid, and yet I got I
(35:09):
got a medal. I thought about it a lot because
I remember that, you know, the war, that there are
a lot of the Vietnam veterans against the war who
you know, I mean, I was. I thought the war
was stupid too and wrong. So I was on their
side politically. But they started throwing their medals away. I
couldn't do that. I couldn't throw that Navy Cross away
(35:31):
or any of my medals, And I said, why is that?
And it's because the analogy is the newspapers report who
made the touchdown. It's the half back or fullback that
makes the touchdown. They never report on the fact that
the entire line was blocking and that that touchdown was
(35:54):
impossible without everybody on the team doing their part. And
so I hold that Navy Cross the same way that
I think that somebody who was an adult holds how
he got his name in the paper for making a touchdown.
He knows full well the paper gave him the credit
for the touchdown, but it was it would not have
(36:17):
happened without the whole team. So that isn't my medal,
that's my unit's medal. That's the symbol in something you
can grab of that heart those kids, And like I said,
they're kids taking on those bunkers, and I could never
(36:38):
throw that away because it's theirs, it's not mine. Yeah,
I'm part of it. I mean I have my share.
I'm part of that team. So I feel very proud
of it. And I also think about the kids and
the bunkers that were shooting at us. They were drafted,
I mean, none of them wanted to be there either. Yeah,
it was their country, and people talk about how oh,
(36:59):
you know, they were defending their country and so they
were more motivated, and yeah, I don't know, maybe they
were more motivated, who knows, but I think if you
had asked any of them, could would you like to leave? Now?
They had gone home just like the rest of us.
So they were there too, you know. And so that
metal is part of that. In other words, it's not
(37:20):
just not just the team the Marines, but it was
just everybody on that hill. And so I've come to
terms with that metal because I've sort of seen it
as a is it just a concrete physical object that
represents incredible heart and a special thanks to Monty Montgomery
(37:42):
the production on that piece, and special thanks to call
him Orlantis and my goodness, what Major Miller said to
him one day, you're going to earn your pay. You'll
know when it happens, and my goodness, Paul knew it
when it happened. And of course at the end him saying,
that's not my metal, it's my unit's metal. And that's
how we came to terms with it. Ultimately, the story
(38:03):
of carmil entis the story of so many soldiers who
fought for our country. Here on our American story.
And we continue with our American stories. More people have
ventured into outer space that have been to where the
Titanic rests two and a half miles down on the
ocean floor. Lowell Lttle has been one of the privileged
few who has seeing the Titanic firsthand. Lowell has played
the part of Captain Smith at Titanic events all over
(00:30):
the globe and has been entertaining guests at the Titanic
Museum for more than fifteen years. Here's Lowell Lttle to
tell his story and the story of the Titanic's last hero.
How do you do this? Is Lowell Lightle. I have
(00:55):
an unusual story to tell you. I was home minding
my own business way back in nineteen eighty seven. I
heard about the Titanic. They've discovered it. And when you
know that, I got a phone call from the designer
(01:16):
that was building an exhibit Orlando on the Titanic. He
called me, he said, Lowell, we've gone through three hundred
and fifty actors here in Orlando. Can't find a captain.
He said. I told these men I know someone that
can play that part. He's my next door neighbor. I
(01:38):
used to be a lead singer one of my rock
and roll bands. I had eight bands for twenty two
years tour in the United States and Canada. And I
went over there on a hoop just to see what
was all about. And he opened the door and there
were six men sitting around the table and he said, gentlemen,
(01:59):
here's Captain Smith. They took one look at me and
they said, yep, you're it. I didn't know what the
Captain looked like. But an hour later I went through
that Sioux and Air shop and I saw the front
page of the New York Times nineteen twelve picture of
Captain Smith looking right at me. And my first thought was,
(02:21):
my neighbor has taken my picture and pasted it on
the front page of the New York Times. He shouldn't
do that. That's wrong. Well, I was there for about
two years and then I heard they were going to
dive to the Tina, and I the old that would
be nice if I could do that. So I called
(02:42):
them and they said no. I waited two weeks and
I call them again and I said I'd like to
go down to the Titan again. They said no, no,
that's for archaeologists and important people, wealthy people, people have
climbed Mount Everest millionaires. I waited two him more weeks,
(03:04):
and you know, I remember Winston Churchill made a famous
speech during World War Two. He said, we won't fight
him in the air, we won't fight him on lad
we will fight him at sea, but we will never surrender.
I remember that he was invited to speak at Harvard
(03:26):
University after the war, and the professor said that the
students get your pads and pen's ready, because when this
man speaks, it's wisdom. They flew him over from England.
The old man hobble up the microphone and he said,
never give up, never never, never, never give up. And
(03:51):
he turnaround is sat down. I never forgot that it
was the best speech I ever heard. I call him
again and I said, I'm the captain of the tight Tannic.
I'm in front of the camera, I'm in everyone's home.
I'm the one that's talking about your exhibit. I believe
(04:14):
if the meeting could say this man's been down to
see this ship, more people would be interested what I
have to say about it, and you'll get more people
there and you make more money. It got quiet on
the other end the phone. Then the man said, I
think you're right to come along. So I actually packed
up and I went to Saint John's, Newfoundland, that's where
(04:37):
you leave from. And I got there and they looked
at me and they said, you're too tall. You won't
fit in there. I said, I'll fit in there, and
I'm six foot four. I'm the tallest and the oldest
has ever been down to the tight tanning. I was
sixty eight at the time. I said, I'll fit in there. Well,
(05:00):
we don't have a fire, so bigg enough for you
fire suit. What's this about a fire? Well, you'll be
breathing one oxygen. It could flash to a fire like
Apolla one did. Well, if that's the case, I'll be
burnt to a crisp in ten seconds. What good is
a suitabill Your name will be written on it. It's
(05:24):
for identification, identification. I'm that tall guy down there. Well, anyway,
I got into suit. Let's suit with a little too small,
but I did get in one now and I got
on the acadiamy kells that Russian died vessel. I noticed
(05:46):
on the back end of one of those subs, the
protective shield that went around the propeller was held together
with duct tape. Now that doesn't breed a lot of confidence.
And I'm thinking to myself, I've really wanted to do this.
All I could think of as well, I've lived alone life.
(06:09):
I'm sixty eight. If I die, I know where I'm going.
That's the important thing. And if I come back, I'll
have a story to tell. And I came back, and
I've been telling that story for twenty one years all
around the world. I told it in Shanghai, China for
(06:30):
two weeks. I told it in Singapore for two weeks.
I've been every state in the United States, every providence
in Canada where they've had these tight ten exhibits, sometimes
two or three times different cities. One day, I was
eating dinner. Now there's twice as many people out there
(06:54):
that would like to go down, that would get a chance.
Who I knew I didn't have any chance. But while
I was eating, that fellow that I talked to on
the phone came over to me, bent over and said
to me, Lowell, you're going down me in the morning.
And what a unique and original voice we're listening too.
And that is, of course the voice of Lowell Lightle,
(07:17):
who plays the part and has been playing the part
of Captain Smith. When we come back. More of Lowe
Lightle story here on our American Stories. Folks, if you
love the great American stories we tell and love America
like we do, we're asking you to become a part
(07:37):
of the our American Stories family. If you agree that
America is a good and great country, please make a donation.
A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents
is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to
our American Stories dot com now and go to the
donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we continue with
(08:10):
our American Stories and with Lowal Lightle's story about being
one of the privileged few who've seen the Titanic firsthand,
and it also happens to play the part of Captain
Smith at Titanic events all over the globe. Let's return
the lower Lightle and his story. Oh my goodness, my
(08:31):
heart began to pound. I couldn't believe it. They're gonna
let me go down to the Titanny Well, Fox Television
follow me all around like it was an astronaut. Now
you First of all, you gotta take your shoes off
in the event. Did you pick up any oil from
that mother ship walking on the deck and breathing one
(08:55):
hundred percent oxygen? It could If there's a spark, that
would be it. So I took my shoes off, I
got inside and in my long legs. Wouldn't you know,
I kicked over They obt he didn't take. Boy, it
didn't take long before that rushing pilot came alive and
straightened that thing up. Now I got no place to sit.
(09:19):
I'm in a ball and six and a half eat
in diameter, nineteen inches thick, and there's three grown men
in there, and it takes two and a half hours
to get down two and a half miles to the
wreck side. They turn off all the lights to conserve
(09:41):
the batteries. Now they turned that hatch down tight, and
I knew then I couldn't change my mind. I can't
see anything. All I can do is think about what
I'm about to see. I'm not going to see a movie.
I'm going to see the real thing. And when they
(10:02):
turned on the lights, the rush and pilot says were
almost there, and I didn't like what I saw. We
were going too fast and we bounce off the ocean floor.
Oh my goodness, Oh my goodness. Of course, it took
five minutes for all that dust to settle down. And
(10:26):
the first thing that I noticed was the sea life.
It was so strange. There's no light that far down
on the ocean floor, no sun. So the crabs they're white.
The starfish that the thirteen inches in diameter five points,
but none of them any larger than their the little finger. Now,
(10:49):
when they had turned on the lights moments later, I
was right over the bow, the same spot where Jack
and the movie helld up his arms that I'm the
king of the world. I went right over that spot.
I said, take me to the captain's cabin. James Cameron said,
the side was already gone. They took me there. I
(11:10):
was five feet from the captain's bath for ten minutes.
While they were changing film. I found a wretch down there.
The mouth on it was thirteen inches across, sticking straight
up in the ocean floor, like somebody thrown a javelin.
And I noticed, while I was picking items up off
(11:32):
the ocean floor, there was a hat. It looked like
a Derby hat, and it was in mint condition. There's
no current that far down. And I told the Russian
pilot to go get that and he did. There's two
mechanical arms on the outside of that sub and he
picked it up and they pushed a button and a
basket went out from underneath, and he'd let go of
(11:55):
it to fall into the basket and it disappeared like
a cloud. The micro organisms they're eating up that ship
at such a tremendous rate, it's gonna be an orange
spot on the ocean floor within a hundred years now.
I think that hat was probably be made out of felt.
(12:15):
Had it been made out of leather, it probably could
make it because those microorganisms that do not light the
tanning process of leather, it repels them their shoes and
hats and bags. That's why you see those things found
enough items. And I thought to myself, I'm just going
(12:38):
to stay focused on this and not get involved emotionally.
But after an hour and a half, all I could
think of was what really took place at night? Fifteen
hundred souls slipped into eternity. All of them had plans
(12:59):
to get to New York, can start a new life.
It never happened. Life can be short, folks, make sure
you tell your loved one every day how much you
love them. And you better know where you're going, because
it's going to happen to every one of us. We're
all going to die at one time or another. When
it happens, it'll be too soon. Just remember this eternity
(13:23):
is a long time to be wrong. Get it right.
In fact, there's a story about a second class Passenger's
name is Reverend John Harper. There's a book entitled The
Titanic's Last Hero. It's about Reverend Harper, and he was
(13:45):
on his way to Chicago to preach. He had a
revival service before he left, and he told the people
in that service he said he was going to go
to New York on that new ship called the tight Tanning.
The next week, after the service, one of them, one
(14:07):
of his parishioners, came up to him and said, Reverend,
I have a bad feeling about that ship. I am
an ominous feeling that something bad's going to take place.
I feel so strongly about it. I want you. I
want you to go to New York, but I don't
want you to get on the ship. Please take the Lucitania.
(14:33):
I'll even pay for your ticket. Reverend Harper thought about.
He says, no, the Apostle Paul wouldn't run away from danger.
If anything happens, I'm ready. And it happened. And when
the Titanic started to go down, that Baptist minister ran
around the deck shouting women and children and unsaved people
(14:58):
get aboard the lifeboats. You just can't keep these Baptists quiet.
He even gave his life est to a man that
was not a Christian. His daughter Anna was standing right
next to him, and his sister in law was standing
(15:19):
next to him. They both survived. The sister law overheard
the reverend when he gave that life est to that man.
He said, here, take this, I don't need it. I'm
not going down. I'm going up. He's in the water
now twenty eight degrees. It feels like a thousand knives
(15:40):
stabbing him. And a man drifted buying a piece of wood,
and Rever Harper shouted to the man, how are you saved?
The man said no. Rever Harper shouted, believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. The man
drifted off into the dark, and late of the current
(16:02):
drew him back, and Reverend Harper again shouted to the man,
how are you saved? Yet? The man said, I can
honestly say that I am. Reverend Harper's last words were
believe on the Lord of Jesus Christ, and thou shall
be saved. And with that the Reverend slipped under the
(16:24):
water and went to that frozen watery grave. There were
twelve people pulled from the water that night. Six of
them lived. That man was one of them. And that
story was told a few weeks later in Hamilton, Ontario
by that same man who said, I listened to Reverend
(16:47):
Harper's last message and became a believer in Jesus Christ.
With two miles of water beneath me, Titanic's last hero,
Reverend John Harper. God bless you, folks, And what a
piece is storytelling by Lowell Lightle, not only his story,
(17:10):
not only his passion for the Titanic, but telling the
story of the Titanic's last hero as well as perhaps
only he can do. We haven't had many better storytellers
on this show and many better stories. A special thanks
the Lowell Lightle for sharing his story. He is an
(17:30):
entertaining guests at the Titanic Museum for more than fifteen years.
He is also the author of the inspiring read Diving
into the Deep Lowell Lightle Story, The Story of the Titanic.
Here on our American Stories, and we returned to our
(18:09):
American Stories and up next to story from Carl Merlantis.
Karl is the author of the award winning books Matterhorn
and what It's Like to Go To War, books that
took him thirty years of reckoning and soul searching to
write after his service in Vietnam. While in Vietnam, Karl
and his Marines were engaged against the North Vietnamese Army
(18:30):
often called the NVA, and in so doing Carl earned
many medals, including the second highest award for valor our
country bestows that would be the Navy Cross. But Karl
often asked himself a question, why did he receive the
awards when others who hadn't been awarded had done so
much more. Here's Karl with the story. The NBA had
(18:56):
dug in on a couple of hills on Mutter's Ridge,
and at that time I had been promoted to the
company executive officer. We were on on the assault and
I couldn't stand to not be with my platoon because
I just just giving him up to take the new job,
and a new, brand new platoon commander only been in
(19:17):
one firefight, so I just I joined the platoon just
to help out. And there was a kid that was clearly,
you know, panicked, and if you don't seat the magazine
of your of your M sixteen correctly, it won't work.
(19:39):
And he was his hands were trembling, and he was
on the ground and there was a machine gun nest
above us, and you know, and I hit the ground
next to him, and he was just shaking with fear.
I knew him a good kid, and uh and I
could see right away that he hadn't seated his magazine.
That was what he was because he thought his weapon
had failed him. And I took the rifle from them,
(20:03):
and I seated the magazine correctly, and I handed it
back to them, and I said, don't go up there,
don't go up above. We were in a little sort
of definitely a little sort of very shallow dip in
the ground, so the bullets were flying over our head
and so we were safe where we were. I said,
don't go up there, because they had cut the jungle
(20:23):
away from the ground up about to knee height. Everything
else was hidden by all the foliage, but if you
put your eye on the ground, it was absolutely clear
all the way up to the machine guns. And it
was it's a classic tactic. They'll shoot your legs and
then when your legs go, your body goes down into
(20:44):
that same kill zone, and then they take you out
at your body. And he nodded his head and said yeah,
I say so. I said okay, and I took off
because I had other things that I had to do.
I was trying to keep this assault organized. And he
took off, running straight up the hill toward the machine gun.
And to this day, I don't know why he did that,
(21:07):
and my guess is that he felt I'm guessing that
he felt embarrassed or something because he had sort of
gotten down on the ground and gotten scared and he
was gonna, you know, not be scared anymore. And I
get tearful because he charged that machine gun. Well he
went down. I heard him say I'm hit and I
(21:29):
couldn't see him. I could hear him up there and
the boeths going over and I came running back and
the platoon sergeant heard him cry out too, and he
came out the other way and I said, you know,
it's use his name. And it was like, now, what
are we gonna do it? Because he's up there. He's
alive because I heard him cry out his hit, and
(21:52):
so I remember thinking, I mean, this is really weird.
I wanted to meddle and I remember going like, you know,
if you you're not, I'm not in charge of the platoon.
I was sort of just super numerary because I just
left the company headquarters. I mean headquarters. I mean, it's stupid.
It's they were just, you know, one hundred yards away
(22:13):
from me. But but I remember thinking I made a
joke with Gunny Ring. He was in a staff sergeant,
and I said, if I go up and get him,
I said, you write me up for a medal, and
it all hawk and he looked at me and he said, yeah,
I'll write you up for a medal. It will be posthumous. Uh.
You know that banter went right back and forth. But
(22:36):
I wanted to go get the kid because you know,
he was in my platoon. I knew he was in trouble.
And at the same time, it was like, you know,
grab a little glory here. It's hard to imagine, but
you know, you're twenty two, twenty three years old, and
that's that's in your that's in your psyche, I think.
(22:57):
So I went up there with mixed motives, and in
order to reach him, I had to keep the heads
of the machine gunners down so they couldn't they couldn't
be firing at me and actually aiming, and so I
was firing my M sixteen at the machine guns. There
was one machine gun in a bunker up above us,
(23:18):
and crawling up this really steep hill, I mean very steep,
and shooting up at the machine gun. And I found
the kid and I remember trying to drag him down
the hill, but I couldn't move him. He was a
big kid, and so I wrapped myself around him and
(23:38):
turned ourselves sideways and so I could roll with him.
And so with the rival between us and me grabbing
him and rolling, I roll all the way back down.
Got him down there, and Doc Yankee was there. He
was a Navy corman, and started working on him right away,
and then he stopped. I never forget this because it's
(24:03):
so These Navy corman are just incredible people. He was
sucking vomit out of this kid's mouth and blood and
spinning it to try him and keep him alive. And
I was just sitting there watching this, I mean, and
all this is happening in maybe a few minutes. And
(24:24):
he stopped and he looked up at me, and he
held his head and pointed to his head and there
was a bullet hole in it, and he said, I
can't save him, and he dropped him and took off
because he had other wounded people screaming for help. And
I started thinking if he was alive and talking and
(24:44):
there was a bullet in his head, how could he
be alive and talking? And it suddenly hit me, It's like,
my god, maybe I put the bullet in his head.
That's a horrible feeling. And it wouldn't have felt so
bad if my motives had been pure. But my motives
weren't pure. And so although I was brave, I was
(25:07):
brave for mixed motives. I wanted to go save him,
but at the same time, I did kind of want
to get a metal. I wanted it. You know, well,
be careful what you wish for. And to this day,
I don't know if if I killed him or the
NBA killed him because the bodies got stacked up in
(25:27):
stacks on the hill and unfortunately a mortar around hit
all the bodies and it was just carnage. All these guys,
you know, just hours before and been alive and friends
of yours, and you don't you haven't seen anything. You
don't know what carnage means. You see a word around
and hit a bunch of bodies. Um boy, Uh, how
(25:53):
did I get okay? So anyway, we went through several
days of being assaulted. By this day a unit that
we had just managed to insert ourselves into a regiment
that had been on the move down Mutters Ridge. So
they sort of sealed us off because we were right
back in their path all their resupply and everything, and
that's why we got surrounded. And I can remember we
(26:17):
counted out the bullets because it was monsoon, we couldn't
get resupplied, and we had seven bullets left each. We
had redistributed all of our ammunitions so that everybody had
seven bullets, and we knew that the next assaulid would
be all over. It was really as close as I've
come to, you know, mortality, And we managed to get
(26:39):
out of it because the clouds cleared just enough to
bring in ammunition and reinforcements. After several several days of
really hard fighting, we had been kicked off of one
hill and we had a colonel that it was, you know,
and he said, we got to take back that hill.
You were kicked off of the guy it's your pride back.
(27:00):
And I was like, I don't want to get my
pride back. I mean, we're exhausted and we've lost a
whole bunch of our friends, and you know, anim an
order as an order, and so we had to go
into the assault the next morning. And you've been listening
to calm Merlentis tell the story of what happened on
a hill decades ago. More of Carl's story here on
(27:22):
our American Stories, And we're back with our American stories
and call Merlentis's story. When we last left off, Carl
had just rushed into enemy fire to try to save
(27:46):
a fallen marine. He received a medal for that, but
he didn't feel good about it. It felt as if
he'd planned to receive the medal he had In the end,
as he said, mixed motives. The fighting was over, though,
and Carl and his marines were about to go into
an assault against the Vietnamese bunker complex. Let's continue with
(28:07):
the story. We'd been mortared for days, so this, this
larger NBA unit had mortar positions, and you can't keep
mortars supplied with ammunition unless there's a lot of people
packing mortars, so it was pretty big unit. We went
through the jungle, got on the edge of the jungle, withers.
(28:28):
We're being cleared away by napalm, and we're all lined
up ready to go, and the word comes to kick off,
and you don't. You don't charge, you don't run. You're full,
you're laden with ammunition, and if you try to run
up a hill, you're exhausted and you won't make it.
(28:50):
You walk up. When you're in an assault, you walk,
which is really hard when you're being shot at. And
the whole line of bunkers up of us, the NBA
were in him, opened up with machine guns. Well, the
whole line of marines went down to the ground, took
cover behind logs, fallen logs, and hit the ground and
(29:11):
the assault stopped. Now what, I'm the guy in charge,
and if we stayed where we were, the mortars would
start hitting us because I knew that, you know, I mean,
they've been shooting us for days, and so they'd be
zeroed in on us. Marines don't retreat. It's just not
something we do. So there's only one thing to do.
(29:32):
It is I have to get all these guys up
off the ground and take out those machine guns. And
there was a guy at the Basic school, a redheaded
major named Miller, And remember him telling us. He says,
you lieutenants, think about this. He says, the corporals and
sergeants can do everything you do. Technically, they can do everything.
(29:56):
But someday you're gonna know w you're going to earn
your pay. There's going to be a day the time
is going to come when you are going to earn
your pay, and you'll know it when it happens. I
can remember him saying that I was on that hill
with a whole line of Marines down on the ground
about to get hit by mortars, and oh, this is
(30:21):
what Major Miller was talking about. And here's the difference
is that my motives then were I gotta get these
guys out of this pickle. I was just purely trying
to think about how to stop the slaughter that was
going to come if we didn't move, and all this
is going on in seconds. I mean, you know, it
(30:43):
takes me a long time to tell it, but it
really goes by. It was really a short period of time,
and I had an out of body experience. And to
this day, I can't tell you if that was a
spiritual experience or a psychotic experience, but I believe me
this is what I did. I left my body and
I looked at the whole situation from some vantage point
(31:06):
way up in the sky. I saw everybody laid out
on the line. I saw where all the machine guns
were up above us. I saw the bunker complex. I
figured it all out by looking at it from up
in the sky. And I came back down into my
body and I started to shout at people to get
you know, like I said, get the M seventy nine man.
(31:28):
I want you to take that bunker out. I want
you to keep firing at it because we've got to
keep that machine gun quiet, because I got to get
this other machine gun quiet. And if we can get
between these two machine guns, then we can start to
open up by going down the line, and they won't
be able to shoot us because they got us in
the Crossford. I mean, I was thinking all these things,
and there was a brand new kid. I don't even
know his name he was. He came in with the
(31:49):
replacements the day before, skinny African American kid. You know,
he should have been playing basketball for his high school.
And he was a machine gunner. And I said, you
got to take machine got under fire. You got to
take it under fire now and keep it. Keep their
heads down so that we can get up in between
these two bunkers, and then we can take him out.
(32:11):
And he laid down and started firing very control, three shots,
four shots, perfect fire control. I just and I can
remember thinking, thank God, somebody trained this kid, because if
you go too fast, you burn your barrels up and
you're out of Hamel. And as I ran down the
line to keep organizing people, I remember seeing his blood
(32:35):
pumping out of his leg. It was an arterial wound,
because when it pumps like that, it's arterial. I don't
know if he lived or not, because we lost a
lot of guys and I don't I didn't even know
his name, so I don't know if he's the one
who lived or died. He might have been wounded in
advent of act or he might have died, but he
kept that bunker down and there's no mettle for him.
(32:59):
So anyway, now, now what, I still got to get
everybody up off the ground, and so I thought the
only thing I could do was stand up and charge
those bunkers. That's what I did. I said, you know,
Major Milner, this is you know, I remember his voice saying,
this is when you earn earned your pay. And so
(33:20):
so I stood up and I started up the hill
all by myself and what it seemed like an eternity,
but it probably was about four or five seconds literally,
and I noticed slight movement out of the corner of
my eye and I hit the ground and whirled to
shoot at because I thought it was NBA. And it
(33:42):
was Harding, who was a really young squad leader but
really bright kid. And behind Harding came the entire platoon,
all of them. All of them came up the hill,
swarming up the hill behind me. I mean, I get
(34:03):
emotional just thinking about it to this day. You know,
that's why you want to be a marine. By God,
that's right there, That's why you want to be a
marine because of that Heart. They all came up the
hill and took out the bunkers, a lot of them.
You know, we lost a lot of wounded. Somebody said
(34:25):
that we're about one hundred and eighty in the company,
one hundred and twenty purple Hearts during that one week
long or eight day long fight. So I got the
Navy Cross for that, and I feel good about that one. Well,
(34:46):
Like I say that the Navy Cross is like, you
can't go to a Navy base or a Marine base
in the world and buy a drink. I mean, if
you're a Navy crossholder, you're you're put into a special category.
How do you live with that? The kid that was
holding that machine gun under his machine gun fire pumping blood.
No medal for that kid, and yet I got I
(35:09):
got a medal. I thought about it a lot because
I remember that, you know, the war, that there are
a lot of the Vietnam veterans against the war who
you know, I mean, I was. I thought the war
was stupid too and wrong. So I was on their
side politically. But they started throwing their medals away. I
couldn't do that. I couldn't throw that Navy Cross away
(35:31):
or any of my medals, And I said, why is that?
And it's because the analogy is the newspapers report who
made the touchdown. It's the half back or fullback that
makes the touchdown. They never report on the fact that
the entire line was blocking and that that touchdown was
(35:54):
impossible without everybody on the team doing their part. And
so I hold that Navy Cross the same way that
I think that somebody who was an adult holds how
he got his name in the paper for making a touchdown.
He knows full well the paper gave him the credit
for the touchdown, but it was it would not have
(36:17):
happened without the whole team. So that isn't my medal,
that's my unit's medal. That's the symbol in something you
can grab of that heart those kids, And like I said,
they're kids taking on those bunkers, and I could never
(36:38):
throw that away because it's theirs, it's not mine. Yeah,
I'm part of it. I mean I have my share.
I'm part of that team. So I feel very proud
of it. And I also think about the kids and
the bunkers that were shooting at us. They were drafted,
I mean, none of them wanted to be there either. Yeah,
it was their country, and people talk about how oh,
(36:59):
you know, they were defending their country and so they
were more motivated, and yeah, I don't know, maybe they
were more motivated, who knows, but I think if you
had asked any of them, could would you like to leave? Now?
They had gone home just like the rest of us.
So they were there too, you know. And so that
metal is part of that. In other words, it's not
(37:20):
just not just the team the Marines, but it was
just everybody on that hill. And so I've come to
terms with that metal because I've sort of seen it
as a is it just a concrete physical object that
represents incredible heart and a special thanks to Monty Montgomery
(37:42):
the production on that piece, and special thanks to call
him Orlantis and my goodness, what Major Miller said to
him one day, you're going to earn your pay. You'll
know when it happens, and my goodness, Paul knew it
when it happened. And of course at the end him saying,
that's not my metal, it's my unit's metal. And that's
how we came to terms with it. Ultimately, the story
(38:03):
of carmil entis the story of so many soldiers who
fought for our country. Here on our American story.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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