All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
This is Veterans Radio.
And now, your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
And good afternoon and welcome to Veterans Radio.
My name is Dale Throneberry.
I'm a United States Army Aviator veteran from Vietnam era, 1969.
I want to welcome you to Veterans Radio this weekend. Memorial Day weekend.
And just a quick disclaimer here.
Remember that Veterans Day is to honor Veterans Memorial Day is to honor those that did not come home.
So we're going to be talking about that a little bit later on.
We've got a great program here.
And I wanted to make sure that people are aware that here on Veterans Radio that we want to thank our sponsors so much for helping us stay on the air for 17 years now.
And number one, we've got legal help for veterans and they specialize in veterans disability claims.
So for more information, go to their website at legalhelpforveterans.com, where you can give them a call at 800-69-34800.
And I should remind you that U.S. wings right now is offering specially designed coronavirus masks.
So go to their website at U.S.Wings.org.
And you can also find the link to the website at U.S.Wings.org.
And if you're interested in getting to know more about the U.S.Wings, go to the website at U.S.Wings.org.
And we're offering specially designed coronavirus masks.
So go to their website at U.S.Wings.org.
And check those out.
It's rather interesting.
And of course, we want to thank our local service organizations here in the Ann Arbor, Michigan area.
And that is the American Legion Post Number 46, VFW Post 423, and the Charles S. Kettles Vietnam Veterans of America Post 310, all of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
And while I'm talking about Ann Arbor, Michigan real quick, just a quick aside, as I was driving out earlier this morning, I went past Veterans Park.
So, hey Ann Arbor, how about cutting the grass at Veterans Park?
You just spent through the donations of everybody in the community, put up a nice brand new flagpole, and you can hardly see it due to the grass.
So if it was my yard, you'd come out here and ticket me.
So come on Ann Arbor, cut the grass.
Speaking of Veterans in Veterans Park and Veterans Monuments, various places around the world, tomorrow is Memorial Day.
And we want to make sure that you check out your local area for ceremonies that will be going on.
Because of the virus right now, many of them are going to be virtuals, going to be recorded, they're going to be streamed.
They're not allowing crowds.
Some of you in some states that have opened up, you may have your normal Memorial Day parades and so forth.
But here in Michigan, we will not be having those.
And I believe most of the states are surrounding area are the same way.
So I encourage you to check with your local service organizations, whether it be the American Legion, the VFW, the Vietnam Veterans of America,
the Disabled American Veterans, the Paralyzed Veterans of America, AMVETS, all the other different organizations to see what the local ceremonies are going to be.
I know that the VVA Chapter 310 is having one at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial here in Washtenaw County tomorrow at 1 o'clock.
If you go to their website, vva310.org, you're going to be able to watch it.
And I believe they're recording it so that you can play it back. And what they're going to be doing, I know out there, as I mentioned just a little bit earlier,
is they're going to be honoring the KIA's killed inactions and missing inactions from Washtenaw County during the Vietnam War.
This is always a very, very emotional time for veterans out there.
And so I'm encouraging those of you that are living with veterans, give them a little break today.
And tomorrow because they are thinking of their friends and their colleagues that they lost so many years ago,
whether it was through combat or it was through the diseases that they picked up around the world.
I'm sitting in our Veterans Radio Bunker Studio here and I'm looking around at a bunch of pictures.
And I can see at least 10 or 12 young men who are no longer here.
And it's just sad. It's just sad. You know, I figure that I'm approaching 74 years old.
And those men, the ones that I knew, their lives ended when they were 19 and 20.
So give a pause and think about them.
That's what Memorial Day is about. It's not about the sales. It's not about the picnics.
It's about these men and women who paid that ultimate price so that you could go out and celebrate.
All right. Enough of that for now. We'll come back to that at the end of the program.
One again, to remind you that Veterans Radio is a production of Veterans Radio America.
And that Veterans Radio America is a 501C3 nonprofit.
So if you'd like to support Veterans Radio, we would love for you to do that.
If you have any comments about our programs or things that you would like to add to our programs, please, please go to the website, veteransradio.net, click on Contact Us and let us know what you like and what you don't like.
And especially if you like the programs at the end of each program on the website, there's space there for you to make a comment.
And I was told by our social media expert that I should ask you to do that. So please do.
I want to get right down into the program itself. And we're going to have our local, it's not local in this case.
It's War Horses for Veterans. And I just think this is a great organization.
And I got an email last week reminding me about this organization. It is a premier horsemanship networking personal growth program in the U.S.
And they are a Kansas-based nonprofit that brings combat veterans from across the country together in a safe and peaceful environment.
Well, that's good. And joining me on the line right now is one of the founders, and that is Patrick Benson. And Patrick, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thank you very much. Appreciate it. It's an honor to be on.
Thank you. It's an honor to talk to you. I'm always so excited to talk to veterans that have, you know, started some sort of organization that helps veterans.
So please tell us about the War Horses for Veterans.
Yeah, War Horses for Veterans. That was a constant idea I had. And, you know, in a short cell thing, so we know I was in the infantry of the Army.
We operated mostly in O3 and with Fallujah and Ramayim of the year.
And then, you know, running around, running the squad side of the element.
And my buddy Gary and I are, you know, all over the place. And then, you know, your engagement.
And I say, you know, I'm leaving my family over there and starting to come in two weeks later. I'm starting to come.
And that was my transition. And luckily enough, I found horses a little bit.
We used to go out and work out on some ranch that's occasionally in Colorado Springs.
And I wrote a letter to a name John Lyons. He was a world renowned horseman after a engaged field that we had in Fallujah.
And my mom got it to him and John lost his brother in Vietnam. His brother was a 4-3 con guy.
And John was 16 when he got the news. And so he's always had a heart for veterans.
And so when we keep my head down, I'll have a spot for me when I get back.
And I jumped in the horse industry right away.
And, you know, it was years later what I was doing for a living was really having the impact on me.
You know, I didn't know what BTS really was. I just worked. I just worked and built my brand, built my business,
perfected my skill set, my craft and did well, you know. And then out of nowhere, stuff started kind of rootin' up.
And Buddy's the man we talk and tell him, you guys, you know, people have a real hard time transitioning.
And we're losing guys over. And then we're losing guys when we get back.
And I met some amazing people along the way in my journey and individuals and mentors and owners of horses that worked very, very hard
and have very, very nice networks and wonderful people. And, you know, and that's where I was like, you know,
I'd be really cool if veterans had the same opportunity on my head right now and life, personal professional,
just life in general, having those mentors. There's things you won't learn in college or learn anywhere else.
And, you know, the horses that we work, I wanted everyone, I wanted the veterans to be able to work really nice performance horses.
The reason why for that is because I don't want you to be limited. I want you to see something you're like,
man, I wish someday I could ever ride a horse like that. Well, you can. And we do. And we pull it off and we make it happen.
And the primpsoils behind that is, you know, push yourself out of your comfort zone.
Don't forget that you can do a lot of things. And if it's a physical ailment or whatever, there's always a way around it.
Mentally, you're always challenging yourself to be better. You should always push that.
And you have to have a lot of discipline in the horse industry and horses teach you humility.
They teach you to feel again. There's so many wonderful tools that a horse can teach you.
And I had to design something too on top of it. I'm not going to use the word therapy.
And how do I get my knuckle, you know, knuckle dragon door kick in, you know, bar fighting, you know, buddies and people I know to get and do something like this.
And we teach the trade. That's why it's a horsemanship base.
Lessons from horsemanship transitioned into likes in general very well, very, very well.
So it's sound like a great organization. And how do if I wanted to do this, how would I go about doing it?
You can go online at warhorsesforveterans.org or whfb.org and you can apply.
As of right now, we're, you know, in the pandemic, we're booked the whole year already.
And we opened up a first responder division as well. And so we're all on social media.
We're all over the place, but we are in the process of developing other opportunities here in the near future for the expansion of it.
Things are, things are very going very well. Outcomes are very, very good, positive.
The biggest thing we want to walk away with is you can do it. You're capable of many, many things, you know, and take the good, you know, and leave the path, the path to the past, but it doesn't define what you can do amazing things moving forward.
I couldn't agree with you with the Amor Patrick. We're talking with Patrick Benson here, who is one of the founders of warhorsesforveterans.
I just think it's cool because during this whole pandemic, I've been watching a lot of Westerns, which is something I've always really enjoyed a lot of hop along Cassidy and John Wayne and so on and so forth.
I'm going, boy, I wish I could ride a horse like that and also could treat, you know, some of the things that have been bothering me over the many years.
And so I found this website and I thought it was just really great opportunity for men and women to work through some of their issues.
And I know that you have a whole screening process that is set up so that, you know, you could get people into the program.
And I want to congratulate you on this. It's another example of veterans taking care of veterans.
And that's what I think that's what veterans are all about. We all want to make sure that our buddies are safe and that we can help them do whatever it is that they want to do.
Absolutely. You know, I would say horses are the bridge and veterans are their own best therapy.
We, you know, you trust your own, you know, your own, and you know, the idea is you never leave them behind, you know, so this is a different battle, but at the same time, you know, you want to decompress.
The wonderful thing about horses too is I've got exposed into a lot of different, I've really pushed a lot of the breeding tactics techniques and heart rate variability training and things to help me perform higher at physical activities and methyl capacity.
And I realized when you ride horses or you focus, you know, a horse when you focus, working on a horse, you don't think about anything else.
This one thing, the first time in many, many years, a lot of times, that's the first time you're able to be in your head and nothing else is scattering and driving you insane and you're thinking about all these other issues.
You're focused on one element and you are present. You're finally present. And that is it. That's huge.
That's huge.
I think that's great. So if we wanted to support War Horse for Veterans, how would we do that, Patrick?
You go to WHFB or warhorsesforveterans.org. You can click on donate and we do, you know, we offer donations and we've, you know, we've been very fortunate, very wonderful country we live in, very supportive of what we're able to do so we can be as effective as we are.
And then we're all over social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all that. We're over there. So if you go to our website, you can click on that and see all our handles.
And yeah, it's an awesome, it's an honor to keep serving and it's an honor to remember our brothers. This is a, you know, giving all the sacrifice over this weekend and to move forward in life and do great things and honor them by doing and being the best person you can.
Absolutely. So I want to thank you very much, Patrick, for being on Veterans Radio and please, I guess we'll start following you if you can follow us. It'll be great and we'll see if we can benefit each other.
That sounds good. Appreciate the time, appreciate the opportunity and you have a good one.
I will, you two. Stay safe.
You too.
All right. All right. War horses for veterans. A great organization out in Kansas.
Go out and learn how to ride a horse. And it takes your mind off of a lot of things for me. I was thinking about when he was talking about learning how to ride a horse is how do you stay on a horse?
That was always a challenge for me. But anyhow, all right, so we're going to take a real quick break. And when we come back, we have our guests for the day and it's Joe Galloway and everybody, all you Vietnam veterans out there and many of you from this current generation of veterans,
Joe Galloway, a journalist, war journalist started a, I'll give you a whole intro to him when we come back and we're really excited. Joe's been on the program numerous times that we're going to be talking about his new book, which is entitled, They Were Soldiers.
This is about a number of Vietnam veterans and how they made the transition and how they continued to be successful. So stay tuned. We'll be right back after these messages.
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Sometimes it's a little difficult to do to get him to fade out when we do these programs.
But anyway, we are back here on Veterans Radio today.
It is Memorial Day weekend and I can't think of a better guest to have on our program than Joe Galloway.
And Joe real quickly is one of America's premier war and foreign correspondents for half a century.
He recently retired as a senior military correspondent with Knight Ritter Newspapers.
I'm just going to kind of go through this briefly.
He served for a while.
He serves as a special consultant to General Colin Powell.
He has worked with Norman Swartzkoff.
He obviously wrote along with Hal Moore that we were soldiers once in young, which was made into a critically claimed movie with Mel Gibson.
Then he coauthored a number of other books.
He wrote another book with General Moore entitled We Are Soldiers Still, a journey back to the battlefield of Vietnam.
By the way, it says that Military History Magazine says that we were soldiers once in young as among their top 10 books about war.
Let's see.
What else have you done here, Joe?
So many little things here going on.
Remember the Board of Values, the first Calvary Division, a couple of honorary doctorates.
I want to talk about her a little bit later on, too.
But today we're going to be talking with Joe Galloway about his new book, They Were Soldiers That He Co-wrote With Marvin Wolfe.
So, Joe, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Nice to be back again.
It's nice to be anywhere, isn't it, sometimes?
It is that.
Is that?
Well, I wanted to have you on the program when I saw this book.
And I guess the idea is, where did you come up with the idea to talk about the sacrifices and contributions of Vietnam veterans?
Well, Marvin Wolfe and I have been friends for 55 years.
I first met him.
He was a spec-for photographer in the First Cav Division Public Affairs Office in Ankay in 1965.
And we've been friends ever since.
And he moved to North Carolina a couple of years ago.
He said, lives about two hours drive from me and we got our heads together.
And it's something both of us had been thinking about, and that is that so many Vietnam veterans came home to no welcome, no respect.
The media, the movies portrayed Vietnam veterans as losers and lieutenant-calleys.
And a lot of bulls like that.
And it's just wrong.
That's not who I saw in four tours in Vietnam from beginning of that war to the end of it.
And we wanted to focus on 48 Vietnam veterans who, and not so much about the war they fought, but about the lives that they have lived and the good that they have done for their communities and our country since that war.
They came home and did good stuff.
And there are some famous people and there are some people you never heard of, but should have.
But they are all successful and they're all giving individuals and there ain't a loser among them.
No, not at all.
I was very excited when I first got the book and mine is an advanced readers copy.
And so I was able to go through this and there are just amazing stories.
You do mention in most of them a little bit about their experiences in Vietnam and some of them about their trials and tribulations of when they got home, but then the last half of almost all of the stories is about their successes.
There are so many talented people in here and I know that you had a couple that you wanted to mention specifically and I've got a couple I'm going to throw at you as we go along here and of the 48.
So let's start off with one that you wanted to mention.
Let's see. Let's talk about the Army nurse Diane Carlson Evans. I thought hers was a great story.
It is a great story. She was a nice innocent young Midwestern farm girl.
Got her nursing degree and went immediately and then listed in the Army.
Took a commission and said goodbye to her four brothers and their mom and dad on the farm and headed off to Vietnam.
And they first assigned her to a Mesh hospital in Vung Tau over on the coast, really a resort town.
And she did that for a couple of months, but that wasn't what she was looking for.
And so she volunteered to go to the the evac hospital in Placo, Camp Halaway, and that was right smack in the middle of the 4th division.
The big meat grinder battles up in the Central Highlands and and.
She got all of the war she wanted and more hundreds of casualties pouring in and.
She pulled her tour and she went home and and she went home angry.
She got home and found that she couldn't talk to anybody about what she had experienced.
She tried to stay in the Army medical field and that didn't work.
She married an Army doctor, a surgeon, and they went home to Minnesota and started.
She started having kids, but behind it all was the PTSD of what she had been through.
And more to the point is 1982 comes along and they dedicate the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the wall in Washington.
And they they they put the three statues of the three GIs up at the end of it.
And Diane says, where's the where's where's the woman?
You know, we serve to and and we're we're we're ignored and left out of the whole deal and that ain't right.
So she thought she would start a campaign to create a women's memorial on the mall.
In DC and she thought it might take two years.
It took 10.
She had she had to fight her way through the Washington DC bureaucracy, the park service, the Congress.
There's art commissions and all kinds of people and nobody wanted to help her except all of our fellow nurses.
All of the women who served in Vietnam who understood what she was all about.
And eventually they got it done.
Like I said, it took 10 years and for the dedication of that women's memorial, they had a big veterans march down down Constitution Avenue.
And I remember that well because General Moore and I picked up the first cab guys and put them at the front of the parade where we thought they belonged.
And we were leading them.
And suddenly a little short red headed lady came running out, got between us, grabbed each of us by a hand.
And she said, I'm from the 82nd evac hospital in Yachtron.
We treated all of your wounded that came out of the cab in the Iodrang Valley.
And I want to march with you guys.
And we were as proud of her as she was of the cab.
And we all marched down.
And then we could be proud of what Diane Carlson Evans had achieved with that magnificent statue of the two nurses and the wounded GI.
And she's just a remarkable woman and achieved so much when there were times she thought about suicide.
The PTSD was eaten away at her, but this campaign gave her what she needed to get over that and get past that and do something good for America.
And for all of those military nurses who took such good care of all of our wounded, you know, and in four tours in Vietnam and half a dozen.
Other wars, I've seen it all.
I've seen the body stacked high as the roof in places like Bangladesh and the India pack war and other wars.
But I could not do the job the military nurses do.
I could not see that 12 hours a day every day, month after month, the destroyed body, the young men dying. How do you do that?
I don't know. We've had privilege here on Veterans Radio talking with a number of nurses from the Vietnam era.
And each one of them talks about at some point in their tours, their emotion.
They just shut down emotionally because they couldn't deal with it any longer.
And all of us that were there.
It's amazing. And last year I spent a week doing video interviews of the veterans, the doctors, nurses and techs from the 85th evac hospital in Yachtarong.
Who treated our wounded from the Iodrang battles in 1965.
And those stories are just etched in their minds and their hearts.
One of them told me, you know, on one single day in that terrible November of 1965,
we had 225 first-cav troopers wounded land on our doorstep in one day.
Yeah, people today, nurses and doctors and so forth can understand that with the coronavirus going around where people are coming into their hospitals by the 10s and 100s.
And you can see when you look at Diane and the other nurses, that of course is going to take its toll on you.
And I wanted to start off with her because I thought that was so important that we realize what these nurses go through on a daily basis when they hold the hands of the, in this case of the young boys that were dying in Vietnam.
And, you know, unfortunately today they're holding the hands of the people that are passing away from this virus.
Absolutely.
Let's move on to, let's do Max Cleveland.
I had the honor of talking with Max a number of years ago and this guy is, this guy's tough.
He is a remarkable human being, one of my heroes, and I must tell you that, you know, my co-author, the late Lieutenant General Hal Moore, is a very non-political guy all of his career.
But there's only one exception to that.
He stood on the steps of the Georgia State Capitol and endorsed Max Cleveland for reelection to the U.S. Senate.
And I cheered him on.
Max is just a remarkable human being, you know, he lost both legs and one arm in a grenade explosion.
He was a cab officer.
He was arriving at Quezon when the cab went up to lend the Marines a hand with all of that stuff up there.
And he was dismounting the helicopter and somebody dropped a live grenade.
And it got him, it got him bad.
And, you know, you lose three limbs and you don't have much left.
But what do you do then?
You know, if you're Max Cleveland, you go home and you get to work and you go into politics and you become the Secretary of State of Georgia.
And then you achieve the highest goal of your lifetime, which is to sit in the U.S. Senate.
And he did that.
And, you know, he got done in by some dirty politics on his attempt to get a second term.
And since then has worked as the Executive Director of the American Battlefield Commission, which takes care of our military cemeteries all around the world.
Yeah, he's an incredible, incredible guy.
I mean, you know, and the idea that people attacked him because he wasn't wounded enough was just disgusting.
And it's always so upsetting to people who are about to...
Yeah, it was draft Audrey Gaspers who were attacking him for not being wounded enough.
Yeah, I know. I know what you mean.
Well, you know, that happens.
So let's move on. How about...
I want to talk about your wife.
Tell me a little bit about her.
Always happy to do that.
I figured you would be.
Well, Doc Gracie is a truly remarkable human being.
And the best thing that ever happened to me, they say third time's charm and she's wife number three.
And we've been together.
Well, I met her 50 years ago in Indonesia.
I should have married her then.
And kept track of her until about 30 years ago and saw her in DC and then she disappeared.
She turned up nine years ago and I said, where the hell have you been?
And she said, well, I took my eight year old daughter and ran away and joined the circus.
And I said, what?
And yeah, she had signed on as a traveling nurse with Barnum and Bailey.
And a year later, she and her little daughter were aerialists in the Trapeze Act in the big top.
And she did that for 10 years and then she came back and got her nurse practitioner degree and license.
And then she got a PhD in public health.
And she turned back up and I said, well, you're not getting away this time.
I'm going to marry you.
She's Singapore Chinese now an American citizen, of course, but she was a first cousin of the old Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew,
who founded modern Singapore and made it run like a Swiss watch.
And she's nobody to mess with.
She still works every day at the community free clinic here in Concord.
She does.
She doctors people who had no insurance, people who are poor, people who are homeless and not inconsiderable number of people.
And there's a considerable number of homeless veterans who camp out in the woods behind the Harris Teter grocery store.
And if they're too spooked to come to the clinic, she takes her black bag and goes out in the woods and treats them out there.
I wanted to bring her up because she was actually in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive.
And she was indeed and was working with the street kids and war orphans in Saigon.
And a relative had a big house in Cholong, the Chinese section of Saigon, and that house was burned down.
So she went through some tough times.
That's what I wanted.
I wanted to get to that.
Now she continued on and just wanted to be a nurse.
And that's what she's been doing forever.
That's what she's been doing forever.
And she's going to keep doing it as long as she's drawing a breath.
She can't imagine retiring.
There are people out there and you're lucky that you found her again.
Oh, absolutely.
She says she's going to get another 15 years out of me.
We can only hope, Joe.
We need you around here.
We're talking with Joe Galloway here on Veterans Radio.
And the name of his newest book is They Were Soldiers.
It talks about the sacrifices and the contributions of Vietnam veterans.
And there are so many names in here that many of you will recognize some of them.
So let's go to another one of his old war buddies.
And that would be Lieutenant Colonel George Forrest.
Oh, yeah.
George Forrest is a real American hero and one of my heroes.
His company of the Fifth Cavalry was attached to the Second Battalion's Seventh Cavalry,
leaving Landing Zone X-ray in the Outdrang, headed for a clearing on the map three miles away
that they codenamed Landing Zone Albany.
And they marched for several hours in the heat and they marched and sat down,
stopped a 600-meter long column of American troops,
and they captured a couple of prisoners at the head of the column.
And the battalion commander, who was not the sharpest knife in the drawer,
decided he wanted to go forward and personally question those prisoners.
And he went up to the head of the column and then he thought,
well, he would call all of his company commanders forward with their first sergeants and their radio operators.
And he would personally point out where he wanted them to set up around the perimeter.
Well, that overlooks the fact that that's why God invented radios.
And as soon as they all got up there, they had walked into an L-shaped North Vietnamese Army Battalion ambush,
a fresh battalion that had not been committed in the fight at Landing Zone X-ray.
And they snapped the ambush.
And one thing George Forrest knew was that he had to get back to his company or bad things were going to happen.
And he's an athlete, he's, you know, six foot three and all muscle.
And he was young then and he took off like a streak of lightning.
He had two radio operators running behind him and both of them were killed.
He ran straight through the whole length of that ambush and made it back to his company.
He pushed them on the trail, he put them into a perimeter.
And by the time he got there, they had lost 17 men killed.
And George grieved their loss and felt guilty about it.
But his company lost fewer men killed than any other company in that march.
I'm back.
Yep.
And that evening, George sent a patrol of about 10 guys under a sergeant.
Sergeant Cluj, to be precise, he sent them back up that trail through the heart of the ambush.
They took some stretchers with them and they were able to carry four or five of the worst wounded they found.
And they picked up a bunch of walking wounded to go with them to take them back to the tail of the column.
And but they had rounded up 25 or 30 American wounded who were out on that battlefield in the dark.
The North Vietnamese were combing the place for their own wounded.
And anytime they came across a wounded American, they killed him.
And they left their, George's people left their medic, a very fine Latino out of Texas,
gave him an M-60 machine gun and plenty of ammo and then he had his medical kit.
And he shepherded the wounded in that area of the ambush through a dark night, pulled them all through.
George Forrest had a great impact on that battle.
And in my humble opinion, a great American.
He came home, he finished up as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army.
He went back to his old alma mater in Baltimore and coached football and was a counselor.
And then he was a principal of a high school in his old home county of St. Mary's, Maryland,
where he did his best to put young black Americans on a better course for their future.
And worked his tail off for a lot of years.
Now lives in Annapolis, if you ever run across him, throw him a salute because he damn sure earned it.
It certainly did. And there are so many people in this book that, you know, obviously we can't get to all of them today,
but you've given me a list of guests that I'm going to try and get on Veterans Radio.
So I'm going to impose on our friendship a little here later on and say,
okay, how do I get a hold of some of these people? We've only got about five minutes left, Joe.
And then we're talking with Joe Galloway. His new book is They Were Soldiers.
It's about the sacrifices and contributions of Vietnam veterans.
And I just wanted to talk briefly about Eileen Moore. And this is another nurse from Vietnam,
but she's no longer a nurse. So tell me a little bit about her if you can quickly.
Absolutely. She came home like Diane with some PTSD and a lot of bad memories and some good ones.
She went to law school, got her law degree, ended up an appeals court judge in California.
And that's a pretty good way to go in the legal profession, but that wasn't enough for Eileen.
She wanted to do more and she wanted to do something for Vietnam veterans.
And she basically single-handedly set up a court system for veterans who get into legal trouble.
An alternative to go into jail or go into prison where they can come in before a judge and admit to their guilt
and then be sentenced to go into counseling and if they successfully complete a course of reeducation, really,
their criminal record is erased. And Eileen has done just a remarkable thing, a remarkable job on behalf of Vietnam veterans
and all veterans.
I know that Veterans Court program is now being utilized in most states across the country and I have a feeling that she was probably instrumental in getting the whole thing started, it sounds like.
I think she was the one who initiated it in California and it spread from there.
So we've got a lot of people here to be proud of as fellow Vietnam veterans and we just wanted to put their stories out there for Americans to read and understand who we are.
And I've for years been making speeches to veterans groups and active duty military and what I say is the Vietnam cohort may not be the greatest generation, as they said of the World War II guys, but by God, they're the greatest of their generation.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more. And I think if you stack them up against the greatest generation, if you put them all in the same situation, they would all react the same way.
You got it. You got it.
I think that's what people have to have to really remember.
The book is the book is they were soldiers the sacrifices contributions of Vietnam veterans. I encourage you to go out and get a hold of this there are so many names in here that you're going to recognize.
There's Oliver Stone, the film producer maker. There's Fred Smith of FedEx fame. There's Colin Powell in here there's Chuck Hagel as a senator.
Just all kinds of people men and women that I think it's really important that especially to the Vietnam veterans out there to check this out.
I think this is a great addition to anybody's libraries. Joe Galloway. I want to thank you very much for being on veterans radio again.
My pleasure and we'll do it again sometime.
We will do that. We will do that. I will be in touch with you. I promise.
Very good. Take care.
Thank you. Have a good Memorial Day.
And you as well and everybody else.
Thank you. Thank you.
Okay, I wanted to have Joe on here. I didn't play the thing that that he always he talks about helicopter pilots quite a bit in his other books.
He was did the narration for a for a a film called in the shadow of the blade and then there he talks about helicopters being a helicopter pilot especially being known as God's own lunatics.
And I kind of always appreciated that we're going to take a real quick break.
And when we come back, we're going to end our Memorial Day program with something special. We'll be right back.
This is Dirk Spelling. This is Eric Passley. This is Trace Atkins. We're a little big town.
The Rascal Flash. Hey, this is Jake Owen. This is Florida, Georgia line. Hi, my name is Justin Moore.
Right now during this COVID-19 crisis, Fisher House is keeping families connected by providing Facebook portal TV stations to VA hospitals and converted to become homes away from home for VA healthcare workers.
Want to find out more? Go to fisherhouse.org.
If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals, contact legal help for veterans at 1-800-693-4800.
They're experts in handling cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Their number again, 1-800-693-4800.
Music plays.
All right. Some of you may be familiar with that tune. That is the song, Arlington. And we're going to go out on that today.
But I did want to just remind everybody that Memorial Day is to remember those men and women who did pay the ultimate price, ultimate price during their time in service.
And so I did want to mention this little comment that someone sent me today that said that this Memorial Day, we remember those who sacrificed their lives for our freedom.
Our thoughts and prayers are with all of those who are grieving. May we, as Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg, highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.
And so we're going to end up playing the song Arlington by Trace Atkins.
And I'm going to, I'm watching the time go down here. And I want to thank everybody for listening today.
If you like the program, please send us a comment. Let us know exactly what you thought of the program, what you would like us to cover in the future.
I think that that's what's really important to you. So we will go now to that song and we'll play the song and then we're going to end up with taps.
So until next week, you are dismissed.
Music
I never thought that this is where I'd settle down.
I thought I'd die an old man back in my hometown. They gave me this plot of land. Me and some other men for a job well done.
There's a big white house sits on a hill just up the road.
The man inside he cried the day they brought me home. They folded up a flag and told my mom and dad, we're proud of your son.
And I'm proud to be on this peaceful piece of property.
I'm on sacred ground and I'm in the best company.
I'm thankful for those thankful for the things I've done.
I can rest in peace. I'm one of the chosen ones. I made it to Arlington.
I remember that it brought me here when I was eight. We searched all day to find out where my granddad lay.
And when we finally found that cross and said, son, this is what it calls to keep us free.
Now here I am a thousand storms away from him. He recognized me on the first day I came in.
And it gave me a chill when he clicked his heels and saluted me.
And I'm proud to be on this peaceful piece of property. I'm on sacred ground and I'm in the best company.
And I'm thankful for those thankful for the things I've done.
I can rest in peace. I'm one of the chosen ones. I made it to Arlington.
And every time I hear twenty-one guns, I know they brought another hero home to us.
I'm thankful for those thankful for the things I've done.
And we can rest in peace, because we are the chosen ones. We made it to Arlington.
Yeah, dust to dust, don't cry for us. We made it to Arlington.
Granger for the ones who get it done.