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Now for today's program.
All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
And now, your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
Welcome to Veterans Radio.
My name is Dale Throneberry and we're going to talk about D-Day today.
And what would have happened if D-Day had been a failure?
We can't imagine that, right?
Okay, so there were 16 million Americans that served during World War II.
There are only 120,000 left.
And we're fortunate enough that we had a recording with one back in 2006.
His name is Len Lamell and he was on the first day of the invasion of Normandy.
And he's going to talk to us about that experience.
It's a great story.
Secondly, we've got Robert Lundgren and Robert is a historian, writes about the history of
World War II and a number of other things.
And we're just talking about what would have happened if Normandy had been a failure.
Can you imagine that?
So once you sit back and I think you'll find this program very interesting, hopefully entertaining
as we go to listen to the interview that I did with Len Lamell back in 2006.
And we're going to be joined here in just a second by Len Lamell, who is a survivor
of Normandy.
I climbed up the cliffs of Pointe de Hoc, blew up artillery, all kinds of things.
And I wanted to just give you a little background on our guest.
Len are sometimes better known as Bud, graduated from Point Pleasant High School in 1937.
Point Pleasant, New Jersey, which I just mentioned was our Schrader yacht sales.
And I have to ask you as we get into our interview, Mr. Lamell, if you know anything about Arnold
Avenue and Point Pleasant.
Yes, I do.
All right.
My grandfather lived on Arnold Avenue and my whole family grew up in Point Pleasant,
Manusquan and Spring Lake.
Well, that's where I grew up to.
No, that's great.
I think it's terrific.
I'm going to have to go over to Schrader yacht sales.
He said it used to be Johnson's boat yard.
Yes, I know.
Okay.
I'm an old motor.
Oh, terrific.
I'll have to get Ray in touch with you.
Mr. Lamell, I want to welcome you very much to Veterans Radio.
And to tell you, I want you to tell us a little bit about your experience on that morning
of D-Day in 1944.
Now you want me to?
Now, yes, your turn.
You don't want me to answer any questions.
Just tell you about D-Day.
We'll have questions as we go along.
All right.
I'll start off with you started coming in on the boats at the bottom of Pointe de Hoc.
We've got a 10-meter-wide beach that really isn't a beach.
That's true.
Not a beach.
Not in the sense of beach sand.
It was stones, round stones, called shingles.
But anyway, the so-called beach was very narrow at the foot of Pointe de Hoc, which are cliffs
100 feet tall and straight up.
And we landed there D-Day mooring.
Supposedly, we're going to be there by 6.30.
But we came off a channel steamer.
The channel steamer is a boat with cabins and everything.
It goes from England to France and from France to England just across the English Channel.
But that was our transport of the rangers.
And we were really deluxe that we had rooms to ourselves, a couple of guys to a room.
We didn't expect such a tender loving chair, but it was enjoyable.
Anyway, it was manned by British Navy men.
And they were the coxswans on our landing craft.
And we were supposed to land at 6.30.
However, the lead coxswain was lost.
He was heading for the wrong point.
There are many points along the Omaha Beach areas about seven miles in width and only
one third of it is the Sandy Beach where the troops landed on the Sandy portion.
The other two thirds are cliffs all the way up to over 100 feet as you proceed westwardly.
So our commanding officer general, or well he wasn't a general then, Colonel Rudder,
noticed this fact that we were seemingly headed for the wrong cliffs.
So he corrected the coxswain, had him pull to the right and paralleled the cliffs for
several miles, till we got up to point to Hock, which was several miles beyond the actual
Sandy Beaches of Omaha Beach.
And all during that time, the Germans of course are shooting at you, I'm assuming.
No, yes, but had we been on time, we'd have caught them in their quarters.
This is a big fortress with underground railway, underground tunnels and things, and sleeping
quarters and where the German troops lived.
But anyway, we would have caught them in their bed, and it would have been much easier, but
because we were late by 30, 40 minutes, they were aroused by all the noise and shooting
because they didn't expect anybody to come up to the cliffs.
They had no defenses against that.
They didn't think I was crazy enough to climb those 100 foot cliffs straight up.
So their defenses were aimed in a different direction.
But they came out and found that we were there, and so they kept shooting us off the ropes
and shooting us down from the cliff tops, rolling boulders down and dropping grenades
on us and doing everything they could to keep us from getting up there.
However, we were very fortunate.
We landed with 225 rangers and 180 of us got up the cliff and very quick time and managed
to find our way across at the top of the point to where the big guns were supposed to be.
And what did you find when you found the supposed big guns?
I didn't find the guns were not where they were supposed to be.
They were where our army intelligence said they were in these gigantic encasements.
But when we got there, there was telephone poles sticking out of these encasements.
We had studied the point to Hawk from aerial photographs, and from the aerial photographs,
they looked like the barrel of a gun sticking out of a big halosir or a ghostful gun.
But when we got to our gun positions, we had been assigned to destroy them.
We found they weren't there.
We figured, well, we'll find our way inland because we had other parts of the mission.
The second part of the mission was to get out to the coast road that's about a mile
inland.
It was a coastal road between important sites.
We were to put up a roadblock to prevent the Germans from getting through to Utah Beach.
And we then had to destroy all their communications along that highway, which we did.
And when we got there, we islanded with 22 men in my LCA, manned by British sailors.
The 22 rangers with me.
By the time we fought our way through the Germans inland, I only had 12 left when I
got to the road a mile inland, approximately.
And while there, I told 10 of them, the section sergeants, to create a roadblock there.
While I asked one of the staff sergeants, my acting platoon sergeant, see, we were
in an acting capacity.
I was an acting platoon leader, which is a position of a lieutenant.
Jack Kuhn, my staff sergeant, he was acting in the role of a platoon sergeant, which
is a tech sergeant.
And so the 10 men that I left created a roadblock and took care of their communications, as was
the second part of our mission.
While Sergeant Kuhn, Jack Kuhn and I went looking for some evidence of where the guns
could probably or might be, we thought we'd hear them.
Well, we didn't hear them.
So we just had one choice.
People think we're heroes.
I don't think we were at the right place at the right time.
And lucked out, we went down this sunken road between high hedgerows, 9-10 feet high with
trees 60 feet high out of the top of them.
You could hide a whole column of tanks down this road because in back of those cliffs,
the land dips down into the lowlands and flooded areas.
So we leapfrog down that road, guarding each other.
There's only two of us.
We went beyond two lines of German defenses.
It's 8 o'clock before 8 o'clock in the morning.
And they didn't dream that there'd be a couple of American soldiers a mile or two inland
or whatever it was.
And so they didn't know we were there.
Bob, you had a question for our guest.
Len, how are you this evening?
Fine, thank you.
Now when you got to the top and you found that the guns weren't there, you actually
had part of your mission accomplished.
So to go inland and not just set up a perimeter there, took a bit of initiative.
Was that part of your training to take the initiative rather than take a defensive position?
We took charge.
Our motto is to be the best of the best.
We're all volunteers.
But in any event, we went down that road and found the guns.
They were very well camouflaged in an apple orchard.
And they were at the ready with their ammunition already to be fired.
But they weren't being fired for a reason.
They weren't getting fire orders back from their observation point out on the clips of
Pointe de Hoc, which was surrounded by e-couple of our range of battalion.
And they had them bottled up that they couldn't get fire orders back to where Jack Coon and
Sergeant Coon and I were.
So about 100 yards from us was 75 Germans.
It's now 7.30 quarter to 8 in the morning.
And they're all in this field at time of day.
They were just getting up and coming in the various states of undress to this meeting
they were having.
We were already behind the second line of defense.
They didn't know we were there.
So while they were busy engaged doing what they had to do, waiting for fire orders and
there was no one in the position, I asked Jack to get up on the high hedgerow there with
his machine gun and protect me as I would go into that gun position alone by myself
and knock out as many guns as I could.
So, you know, having to climb those cliffs, we could only carry one incendiary grenade
apiece and we had to travel light so we could muscle ourselves up those cliffs.
So he had one.
He gave me his thermite grenade and I had one.
So I went in and I destroyed a traversing mechanism and elevation mechanisms with the
thermite grenades.
So two of the guns over five that were there.
And I crushed the sites on all of them by wrapping my field jacket around my bottom
of my machine gun and smashing them.
And none of this could be heard because of the manner in which we were trained to do
these things.
So then Jack and I decided we would run back just 100 yards to where our roadblock was
and get as many grenades as we should carry back to come back and finish off the job.
That took about 10 minutes at most.
We came back and destroyed the other three so all five were put out of action by 8 a.m.
And that's early in the morning.
And they contended that we were the, I made the deepest penetration on D-Day morning.
We were the first military outfit to accomplish this mission and finish it.
And we did it all by 8 o'clock in the morning, which when you put out that kind of coastal
gun position is the biggest on the Atlantic coast.
They said that we saved thousands and tens of thousands of lives on the beaches and on
the ships is 5,000 ships out there moored, you know, with the invading force.
And this is why the planners of the invasion were really so keyed up about having some
way to ensure and guarantee those guns would be out of position because there were hundreds
and hundreds of planes that bombed it.
There were thousands of shells from the two battleships of Texas and the Arkansas.
And they all missed the target, none of them destroyed any of the guns.
And it wasn't for us.
The Rangers getting up those cliffs, finding them and destroying them, put them out of
action.
They were firing away uncontrollably and killing so many civilians and service people that
they said it was in the thousands.
So that's why it was so important.
But again, I say, we were trained to do these things and be resourceful and think.
And we were lucky at the right time.
That was your job.
And those guns had a range of what it was, 25,000 meters.
I could have taken out all of the ships.
Fire 12 miles.
I think it's amazing.
I should also point out to our listening audience that I don't know.
Do you want to be called Sergeant or Lieutenant or just Mr.
Pardon?
Anyway, that you had been wounded on the initial assault.
Yes, I was the first one wounded in my company.
And you did all this while you were wounded?
I did it all with the wounded.
I got a luck out again.
I could call a machine gun bullet through my right side where the muscle is.
It didn't hit the hip joint.
I could handle it.
As a result of your knocking out that artillery battery, you and Sergeant Kuhn were received
medals for that.
Oh, yes.
And you got the Distinguished Service Cross and Sergeant Kuhn got the Silver Star.
I think that's incredible.
Yes, he became Chief of Police at Alton and Pennsylvania.
He died here about a year ago.
Isn't it amazing when you look back at what you did when you were what, 19, 20 years old?
I was 22.
He may have been a little enterot.
I think that the whole story is just amazing.
And I congratulate you and thank you for what you did to our service, to our country and
for our country at that time.
It happens.
By the way, D-Day happens to be my 60th wedding anniversary.
That is very true.
A veteran veterans radio salute to you and your wife.
What is her name?
Charlotte.
And I understand in reading your biography, we've only got 15 seconds.
We're going to take a quick break.
I want to end on this, that she climbed Pointe-Hawk also.
When we were 40 years old, I was in the power of some legal business.
We're talking with Lynn Lamell at the Second Ranger Battalion who was responsible for knocking
out the artillery battery that was located on top of Pointe-Hawk, climbing up a hundred
foot cliff.
Finding the guns weren't there, went down the edge row, found the guns, threw some grenades
in there, and melt them down, went back and got more grenades.
What were the Germans doing?
Were they watching you run around or they just never saw you?
No.
What were the Germans doing that we saw?
Yes.
They were gathering together in this field about a hundred yards away.
They didn't know there was any American soldiers that close to them.
They never dreamed that we were in among them.
Couldn't they?
40 or 50 year combat patrol of the Germans passed within 20 feet of Jack and I.
There's only two of us, and we hid behind a ditch behind a hedge row.
And fortunately for us, they didn't see us to detect us or we'd have been dead.
You have to have a lot of luck.
No.
I understand.
Surviving conflict is always a matter of a lot of luck, but it's just amazing that
you took the initiative to not only complete your mission, but to carry it all the way
through with a lot of your buddies and commanders and everything falling by the wayside.
I think that's just admirable.
It's something that American military has a history of doing that, and I think we all
should be very proud of that.
Oh, well, we're very proud.
We're very well trained.
And if you're the right place at the right time and you're trying to do something, you
do it.
Well, I don't mean to gush on here, but I just, I really do admire it.
And I wanted to have you back on our program at some point because I'd like to talk to
you more about what happened once post D-Day because I know that you were evacuated two
days after D-Day to get that minor wound taken care of.
Yeah, I'd try to turn black from gangrene.
You're just amazing.
It's Glenn Lamelle.
I want to thank you very much for being on Veterans Radio.
It's a great story and there's much more to it.
And we're going to have you back again to talk about this more.
Well, Ranger, you're very proud to be on here.
And I want to thank you very much, both of you.
I will.
Thanks, Glenn.
Okay.
Thank you both very much.
And we'll be talking to you again soon.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Wow.
Every once in a while, folks, we run into these incredible guests and Bob found this because
we were reading the information on Point the Hawk and we came across Stephen Ambrose's
book and he's talking about Glenn Lamelle as being the one man who went up the cliff
and blew up these artillery weapons.
And then thanks to the general and to another old friend of ours, Charles Crone.
Thank you very much, Charles.
We do appreciate your help.
We were able to get ahold of them and talk to him personally.
I just think that's amazing.
I want a story.
And again, if it hadn't been for D-Day and for all those men and our fathers and grandfathers
and so forth that fought in World War II, we wouldn't be here talking about them.
And I want to make sure that we make sure that we thank them.
It's such an American story, too.
It is.
I mean, it's an American story, the humility and bravery that and just going, just going
on, pressing, pressing on.
Taking the initiative is always something that the American military...
And you didn't know what was ahead.
You didn't know what was ahead.
No, because as soon as...
Well, everything was wrong.
The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor in combat given a member of the Armed
Forces of the United States.
There had been over 3,400 recipients of the nation's highest award.
This is one of them.
Private Dale Hansen killed 12 Japanese soldiers in a one-man attack on their positions.
Details after this.
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.
Hansen unhesitatingly took the initiative during a critical stage of the action and armed
with a rocket launcher, crawled to an exposed position where he attacked and destroyed a
strategically located hostile pillbox.
With his weapon subsequently destroyed by enemy fire, he seized a rifle and continued
his one-man assault.
Reaching the crest of a ridge, he opened fire on six Japanese and killed four before
his rifle jammed.
Attacked by the two remaining Japanese, he beat them off with the butt of his rifle and
then climbed back to cover.
Returning with another weapon and supply of grenades, he fearlessly advanced and destroyed
a strong mortar position and annihilated eight more of the enemy.
The Medal of Honor series is a production of Veterans' Radio.
Military veterans touch everyone's life.
I'm guessing right now you're thinking of a veteran, a close friend, relative, maybe
it's you.
Even the toughest of us sometimes need help but don't know where to turn for support.
You don't need special training to help a veteran in your life.
We can all help someone going through a difficult time.
Learn how you can be there for veterans.
Visit VeteransCrisisLine.net VeteransCrisisLine.net, a message from the U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs.
There was an article in the New York Daily News this morning, it talked about Vince Scully
and I don't know how many of you are Dodger fans or watch the LA Dodgers or have anything
to do with the Dodgers.
Vince Scully has been broadcasting for the Dodgers for almost 60 years.
It seems like he was with them in Brooklyn when I was growing up.
But yesterday it introduced a couple of stories during the game to remind people about D-Day.
One of the stories that he talked about was that if it hadn't been for D-Day and the victory,
of course, that the Allied troops had against the Germans in World War II, that they wouldn't
be sitting there in Dodger Stadium watching a baseball game.
And I thought about that as I read the article and it just struck me as to how important
D-Day really was.
And I know that many of you are history buffs out there, but the idea of being a history
buff is that I don't know if you were aware of what was going on during World War II around
America on each coast.
Did you know that the Japanese had attacked the Aleutian Islands up in Alaska and had
captured part of that?
Did you know that the submarines were off the coast of New Jersey and North Carolina
and Virginia and were trying to smuggle spies aboard?
Did you know that the submarines were attacking troopships and resupply ships right after
they exited the harbor as soon as they got out about four or five miles out?
I didn't know this stuff.
And I think it's so important that we know this.
And the American people at the time in the 1940s really answered the call.
And we're going to be talking more about that with our guest when we bring him on.
But I just want you all to remember, if you see one of these elderly gentlemen out there
because there's less than a million World War II veterans left and you see him with
his World War II hat on, you better go up and thank him because whether you are in
banking or you're a techie or you're an investment or you're a computer guy or you're an actor
or actress, whatever it is, if they hadn't done their job on that day, June 6, 1944,
we may not be here.
We may not be speaking this language either.
So just think about that.
Okay?
The other thing I want to talk to you about just shortly is veterans radio.
We're kind of coming to a point in our career here with veterans radio of making a decision
whether we should stay on terrestrial radio, which is commercial radio like our home here
at WAM Talk 1600, or do we go straight to the Internet?
And we need your input because unfortunately it costs a little money to be on commercial
radio.
So I'm asking you today to please think about supporting veterans radio if you would.
Go to veterans radio, click on, there's a banner ad at the top because we're trying
to do a fundraiser.
And if you would click on that banner ad at the top and whatever you can do would be
greatly appreciated by all of us here at veterans radio because we do want to stay on the air.
We do want to stay the source of all of these great stories that we've been telling you
over the last 12 years.
Think about some of them.
The men and the women that we've had the privilege of talking to active duty veterans, retired
nurses, people at the VA, politicians, all of these things we have been talking about
here on veterans radio for you.
So if you could help us out, we'll be greatly appreciated.
So that's all.
I'm not going to talk about that anymore today.
Joining me on a program right now is my guest for today and that's Robert Lundgren.
And let me give you a little bio on what he was a captain in a merchant marines with 100
gross ton license for the inland waterways of the United States.
And he operated passengers ships up the Potomac River in the Chesapeake Bay.
Currently works at the National Institute of Health.
His passion however has been history, ships in the Navy.
He's written a couple of books which we'll talk about later but he's determined to get
the history right.
And as are we here on veterans radio.
So Bob Lundgren, welcome to veterans radio.
Thank you so much for having me.
It's such a privilege I think to have you on the program and is Bob okay?
Oh yes, that's fine.
All right.
So tell me how you decided to get more involved in the idea of talking about this greatest
generation.
Well, I'm 52 years old so my parents are all from the World War II generation.
My uncle, Jack Burke, went in on the Six Ways at Omaha Beach and I consider him my hero.
My other uncle, he was on William Ewing, was in the merchant marines and he ran the romance
convoys to Russia.
Both of them had harrowing experiences and they were major influences in my life.
And when I was kind of floundering when I was just a young kid, my aunt Ruth Ewing gave
me a book called Incredible Victory by Walter Lord which is on the battle in Midway.
It inspired me and I began simply to read books.
And the more I read, the more I wanted to know and it basically changed my life because
I found the stories of the individual men and the heroism incredibly motivating.
It is amazing isn't it?
When you get the opportunity to talk to some of these men and women who have been in these
historic battles and they are just so calm about it and they are so humble.
Well, no, I really didn't do anything and they finally pull the story out of them and
it is hair raising and your hair turns white while you are listening to them.
But they are just this unusual generation of human beings.
Oh yeah, they are so modest and they don't look at themselves as heroes but they are.
And that was a war that had to be won.
That was not something that they could shrink away from.
The governments of Adolf Hitler and Mussolini and the Empire of Japan, the whole world
would have been different had they been successful.
And we are all very fortunate in the United States that we prevailed.
Oh absolutely, absolutely.
I mean it wasn't one of these political wars to stop the spread of whatever ism is going
on at the current time.
I can only imagine, as you said, my father was in World War II also as were all my friends'
fathers, although I didn't realize it at the time because of course our fathers never
talked about what they had done.
I have always been amazed at the idea that all of these people volunteered to go to war
to preserve what we have got still today.
And as I was saying earlier on, I just want everybody to remember that even though these
older men and women are starting not to look so good, that we need to thank them because
they were 20 years old one time and they did everything in their power to keep America
safe and to protect it.
And that's why I was trying to point out the idea is that we were being attacked from
all sides.
It's just that we never hear these stories.
It seems like when we go through our history lessons.
When I was listening to your introduction, there was actually two German youth both in
the Chesapeake Bay.
Really?
Yes.
Wow.
They were trying to get to Baltimore Harbor which was a major port.
And yes, we found them and thanked them within the Chesapeake Bay.
So it was, yes, they were all around us and both on the east and west coast and really
all around the world.
And if I might, I don't think many Americans realize that the common soldier was not placed
in a very high honor until after the American Civil War.
It was Abraham Lincoln that put the common soldier on such a high pedestal within our
society.
Soldiers of the war of 1812 or the revolution, once the war was finished, they were relatively
forgotten.
But it was the Gettysburg Address which altered American society.
And of course at Gettysburg, Lincoln was commemorating a national cemetery.
I believe it was the first national cemetery in the United States.
But this is how the American people can truly honor the World War II generation moving forward.
It was in the second half of the Gettysburg Address, he said, in a larger sense, we cannot
dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot holler this ground.
The brave men living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor
power to add or detract.
The world will little note and will long remember what we say here, but it can never forget
what they did here.
It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from
these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last
full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died
in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom and that the government
of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth.
Now the way we can apply that is basically as the World War II generation passes into
history, we will no longer be able to talk, but we must read about it.
And it is really, really important for us to teach our children and keep their memories
alive.
By doing this, you raise them to a status of immortality, for they will be having an
impact on future Americans for centuries and they will never leave us.
No and that is one of our purposes here at Veterans Radio ever since the beginning of
the years we have been trying to tell the actual stories of veterans and active duty
military because we know in many cases that history books have a tendency, sometimes they
have a tendency, they do not get the full story because there are how many editors
does a story have to go through before it is finally printed.
And so, right, well you know.
I laugh because the editor is not the author's friend.
No, they are not.
They are trying to figure out.
They always want to put in more and the editor always wants to cut out.
I know, they just do not understand sometimes, I guess.
They are doing a job, they are trying to get a book published that is going to sell a lot
of editions and so forth and all you are trying to do is to get your story of the stories
of the men and women that you know about out there.
And just to remind our audience, just real quickly, I was looking at some statistics
here because I did not know exactly where we were going to go today that there were
16 million Americans that served during World War II.
Right now there are approximately 855,000 that are left and they are passing away on
average of around 500 a day.
So we know this is not going to last forever and even though we wish that they could, you
know, it is not going to happen.
But wow, what a legacy that they have left though for 70 years.
We have been retelling many of their stories over and over again and we are also finding
that now they are willing to tell their stories more than they were when they were in their
30s and 40s, much like other veterans have done.
Yes, my uncle Jack was not one to talk about it and we respected that but his specific
story now has been lost to history.
And one of the things, as you said in your introduction, if you see a World War II vet,
thank it, okay, because there is not much time left for us to actually talk.
If you have a relative who is a World War I vet, have them write their story down because
once they pass, if they don't, then that story is also lost to history.
And those stories are very, very important.
They become our national heritage.
We are all just one gigantic family and we share this heritage and we take pride in this
heritage.
And as we learn our heritage, it does shape our political views and unfortunately war
is politics through the use of force.
And one of the things as kids grow older and receive that privilege of the power of vote,
okay, is that they have to shape those political views to hold politicians accountable for
what men and women have sacrificed for.
That's what's important.
Absolutely, Bob.
I sign all of my letters that I send out for Veterans Radio with a quote from George Washington
and it says, the willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war,
no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans
of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by our nation.
Absolutely.
I mean, it started at the very, very beginning.
If we look at the Revolutionary War soldiers, what were they before they volunteered?
They were farmers and they lived out in the wilderness or they lived in the cities or
whatever it was and they were fighting for our cause.
And this is the thing that I want our youth to understand.
And it sounds like you want to do the same thing.
There are certain values that we attach to being an American, most of us.
And we want to make sure that our kids know that those values are, that we're trustworthy,
that we're loyal, that we're helpful.
That sounds like a Boy Scout.
But that's very, very true.
It is.
Okay.
Democracies fight on moral grounds.
Okay.
And this was from the very famous author who wrote his book on war, Klaus Witt.
Three people fight for moral values.
And if the moral values aren't justified, then a free people are not going to be in
favor of that war.
However, if those moral values are well-defined, they are unstoppable.
Okay.
In World War II, the moral values were as clear cut.
It was a battle for freedom versus totalitarianism.
And the United States was willing to absorb massive casualties for freedom.
And we even today have inherited a much better world than, I can't imagine what the world
would have been like if Adolf Hitler had prevailed.
Or any of those three had prevailed or Stalin had prevailed or any of these dictators would
have prevailed.
What would the world be like today?
And we ask people just to sit back and say, okay, you saw what they were doing in order
to achieve their goals.
Can you imagine what they would have done if they had one?
Where would we be now?
You wouldn't be sitting home playing with your Game Boy, that's for sure.
And you probably wouldn't be going into a career, whatever career that you wanted to,
or you still wouldn't have the ability to just tell your politicians what you think
about them.
Absolutely.
You would never have freedom of speech, you would never have freedom of religion, you
would never have, the Bill of Rights would have been disappeared.
Well, I'm sure that thing would have been checked off right away.
Yep.
So let me get back to you.
We're both getting off on tangents here.
For a guess, I was up at the Northville Ward Church last week.
They had a patriotic concert.
We met probably 20, 25 veterans and each one, I thanked them for their service and they
kept, each one of them would kind of look at me like, what did I do?
And you kind of go, you saved the world.
Don't you realize this?
You saved the civilized world and we are so grateful for what you did.
And we just have to, again, I know we're being redundant here, but just reminding people,
I think these people are do something or put the flags out on Memorial Day or whatever
the service happens to be, help them out.
Let's get back to you.
You mentioned in the promo that I got is that Memorial Day is always a big day.
We put out all of the flags on the grays and everybody's very understanding about veterans
on that particular day.
When we look at D-Day, I don't think that we realize unless we watch the History Channel
24 hours a day like some of us probably do, we don't realize how many people were involved
in D-Day.
I want to, you know, the logistics of D-Day and, you know, these other invasions is just
amazing to me.
The numbers that I'm looking at is, you know, they had 150, some 1000 Allied troops storm
the beaches of Normandy.
Some of them storm the right beaches.
Some of them didn't get to storm the beaches they wanted to because the currents threw
them south or, you know, away from the main beaches.
In fact, that's what I was talking about earlier with Ben Scully.
He said that on D-Day, one of the organizations that a famous, world-famous author was going
to be on the beach, Red Beach at Omaha, and his landing craft were forced to the south
and he landed on the boat.
And in his backpack, he had the first six chapters of his book, Catcher and the Rye,
and it was J.D.
Salinger.
And, you know, the famous people that we grew up reading about and listening to were there.
And I think that's just amazing.
There were many, I mean, many athletes stopped playing ball and joined up.
Okay, there were actors that stopped acting and joined up.
This was a country that was completely united.
And the only sense that I'd lived through was immediately after 9-1-1 to get a sense
of how united this country became.
I wish the country could always be that united, but it is hard for us really to go back.
That's the closest I can think of how the country really was after Pearl Harbor.
The country united like it's never been united before.
And the only thing I can even think of that comes close was the immediate aftermath of
9-1-1.
Well we do have a lot of veterans out there, 400 and some odd thousand that are still around
that do remember Pearl Harbor and answered the call.
I just wanted to talk briefly about something that I mentioned Vince Scully earlier on and
he told a story where he tried to paint this picture.
And I want you to imagine this picture of any of you if you can remember when you were 19
or 20 years old.
And you were approaching the beaches where all the bad guys were, whether they're Nazis
or Japanese or the Italians or whoever it was.
And as you approach the beach, you're 19, 20 years old, you've got 80 pounds of gear on
your back.
The front of the boat goes down and they start shooting at you with machine guns and you
only have one direction to go and that's into the water.
And this is what happened on D-Day at the invasions of the Philippines, the invasion
of Italy, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, all those other things.
And it says that they had to race through the water.
Many of them, they both opened their front flap too soon and many of them drowned.
Many of them were shot as the gate went down.
So just imagine if you were in that situation, how would you react?
What would you do?
Do you understand now why some of these men don't tell their stories?
I certainly do.
We're here on Veterans Radio talking about this greatest generation and how we can honor
them.
And with our guest, Robert Lundgren, who has written a book about the invasion of the Philippines
and is trying to help us and help everyone out there figure out a way that we can honor
these World War II veterans.
Bob, welcome back to the program.
Thank you.
The biggest thing I really want to say, there's two messages.
Yes, I want to talk about my book, but the biggest message and the most important message
is for parents to, if your kids are already into war gaming and they like to play World
of Tanks or World of Warships, they're already, you have an avenue into World War II history.
And the reason I'm focusing on World War II history is simply because this generation
is soon to leave us and we won't be able to ask them directly anymore.
So the kids fall in love with the P-51 Mustangs.
The kids fall in love with the Sherman Tanks and they play the Yamato versus the Iowa,
but it's more important to get them to know the people that were on board the ships and
in the planes and in the tanks because it is those human stories that they will identify
with later in life, that they will recognize that our privileges and freedoms were not
truly free.
It gives the memorials when you visit our International Cemetery or the Vietnam Memorial or the World
War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., it gives these memorials a true emotional impact, but
only if they learn their heritage.
And I can actually tell you a story.
Can I continue to go?
Sure.
Okay.
Go right ahead.
The U.S.S. Samuel B. Roberts is one of the destroyer escorts in my story.
And Samuel B. Roberts, the man, was a young Marine who was killed on Quartica now, saving
the lives of his fellow Marines.
And basically, the U.S. Navy to honor him named a ship after.
The first destroyer escort, DE-413, was at the naval battle of Samar.
And the group of Japanese battleships came through the central Philippines, surprised
by six aircraft carriers, and the Samuel B. Roberts charged to try to protect those ships.
And she was destroyed in the process.
And then the U.S. Navy in the 1980s commissioned a new frigate, the Samuel B. Roberts.
And her commander, Paul X. Wren, made sure that every man on his ship knew about the
first Samuel B. Roberts.
Well, the nice thing about what he did by teaching the heritage on April 14, 1988, the
new frigate, Samuel B. Roberts, was struck by a mine in the Persian Gulf.
Suddenly these 18- and 19-year-old kids, without any warning, found that their ship was in
the dark, because she lost power, she was on fire, her back was broken, and she was dying.
And these men ran to the battle station.
And as they passed, there was a painting of the original Samuel B. Roberts, the World
War II Samuel B. Roberts, next to the bird.
And Captain Wren noted, he didn't, he just noticed, that as his men ran to their battle
stations, they reached out and touched the paint, okay?
They knew where the bar had been set, and they knew that they were going to answer the call.
And they did exactly that.
They saved their ship, and they didn't lose a man.
It's because they knew where the bar was set to begin with.
And that bar was set by the World War II generation, okay?
And this is his book.
A man, Bradley Peniston, told that story.
And his book is called No Higher Honor.
And that's how you honor the World War II generation.
But the first step is learning about it.
And if we become too apathetic with our history, and don't teach our children, and don't teach
our kids, then history will repeat itself.
Another war will come, and another generation will pay the price for freedom.
Mentioning these sailors on their ship, you know, living up to the reputation.
I flew helicopters in Vietnam, and every once in a while, we would, when you're a pilot,
I think this is all pilots, I don't know if it's just us or not.
You know, you kind of develop this attitude and a little bit of a squagger.
And we were stopped one time by some real live officers, but we're not pilots.
And they wanted to know, why did we act this way?
And we said it's tradition.
It's John Wayne.
It's Hell Fighters of the Pacific.
It's all those pilots that went before us that taught us that we have to feel that, or, you
know, nothing can harm us.
And otherwise, we wouldn't be able to do our job.
And I think that that plays into what you were saying about these sailors.
They knew what preceded them and who these men were that preceded them.
And they had a reputation that they had to uphold and a standard that had been set for
them.
Would you think?
Absolutely.
And Commander Wren went on to go, he didn't anticipate his teaching of heritage would
have that kind of effect on the morale of his troops.
And he suddenly realized, of course, after everybody was safe and he had more time to
reflect how large an impact of simply teaching what the original Samuel B. Roberts did in
her heroic action and what the man did on Guadalcanal and how that was internalized with
the new crew.
Now, these were kids.
They weren't alive during World War II.
They weren't born, you know, they were like, you know, my age and I was born in 1963.
So I was born well after World War II.
And but this is where reading history changed my life.
And it gave me a respect for the veterans and for all men in service that changed my
life.
And I do believe that if you if you notice that your kid is playing World of Tanks,
doesn't, you know, find a good book, a history book that tells the stories of what those
men actually went through.
It will open his eyes.
And it yes, sometimes the subject matter is grizzly, but that's just as important.
Okay, that they understand that it's not a movie.
Right.
And reading is an active process.
Watching a movie is passive.
You'll actually create more emotional imprints on your mind, which is of course going to
then later affect your decision making by reading than by watching a movie or a video.
I totally agree, I think the idea that they realize that some of these men that are being
honored that were killed in combat, they're not going to get up and be in a movie next
week.
They know they're gone forever.
We need to honor them and respect them.
We're talking with Bob Lungry about and I'm going to give him an opportunity to talk about
his book.
We talked about the Atlantic and now we're in the Pacific.
And so tell me, how come people don't know about Samar?
Well, in reality, it may be people have heard of the Battle of Leitek golf.
The Battle of Samar, there are like four major battles in the Battle of Leitek golf and the
Battle of Samar is one of those battles.
The Battle of Leitek golf was really from October 24th through October 26th.
And the battle that occurred off Samar, which is an island in the central Philippines just
north of the island of Leitek, which is where General MacArthur landed his troops to begin
retaking the Philippine Islands.
What?
Okay, yes.
It is actually a famous battle for those who know about naval history.
It is probably one of the most heroic actions that the US Navy ever fought.
A very large section of the Japanese battle fleet was successful at coming through the
central Philippines and coming around into the Philippine Sea.
And it surprised a group of six escort carriers, a little small American task group that was
nicknamed Taffy.
There were three of them and this was Taffy three.
And they were completely outdone.
The story has not been told accurately.
And so for 70 years, people have been given a certain perception of those events.
And as I read through the Japanese primary documentation and the American primary documentation,
what I realized was everything I thought I knew wasn't entirely true.
So this book is actually written more like a research paper because, and it provides
the reader the primary documentation and Commander Evans was a Cherokee Indian.
That's kind of important because Johnson was hit with three 14-inch shells.
I mean three, according to the previous accounts, three 14-inch shells.
So 14-inch shell weighs 1,486 pounds.
In reality, she was hit with three 18-inch shells.
And each 18-inch shell weighs 3,200 pounds.
So it was the equivalent.
Hold on.
Wait a second Bob.
They were hit by a 3,000 pound bomb?
Bullet.
Oh.
Okay.
It is the equivalent of six 14-inch shells.
And the USS Johnson, who's weighed 3,000 tons, was literally thrown onto her side by the
impact and her main mass whipped so hard and so violently that the yard arms snapped and
the master gyro capable of withstanding 2,000 foot pounds of shock was physically cracked
in half.
Her men all suffered concussions as the shock wave ripped through the ship.
The captain, Commander Evans, had his shirt blown off his chest and he lost two fingers.
The ship was literally wrecked from the, luckily, she ran into a rain squall.
And she was making a smokescreen.
And the combination, what Admiral Curita saw on board the Yamato from about 11 miles away,
she saw the Yamato hit the Johnson.
He saw the ship explode and when the smoke cleared, she had disappeared.
And he thought he had sunk her.
But really, the Johnson had just disappeared behind the rain squall.
And that's one, it prolonged her life.
The Johnson would not survive the battle.
But it did prolong her life and Commander Evans would be awarded the Silver Star for
this action.
We've had so many guests on the program that were in the Pacific that would tell these
stories of the ships being, as you just mentioned, knocked all the way on their side.
In fact, one was talking about a typhoon cobra and he was hanging on in the control room,
for lack of a better word, perpendicular, you know, perpendicular to the ship.
The ship was on its side and when it came back upright, it flew him against the, I'm
not an Navy, windshield of the ship.
The barcat.
Yeah, that's the one.
And I'm so amazed at these people that actually even get on these ships and, you know, be
out there in the middle of the ocean and you've got people throwing 3,000 pound bullets at
you.
And how they survived that, I don't know.
I would never go near water again.
I don't think.
I don't.
The sad part about this story is the Americans would lose four ships.
They lost the USS Cowell, the USS Johnson.
The family would be Roberts and the aircraft carrier, Gambier Bay, during the surface battle.
The St. Low would be sunk by a kamikaze aircraft and she went down as well.
Thank you very much for being on Veterans Radio.
Thank you so much.
All right.
Thank you very much.
This is what we do here on Veterans Radio.
We try to tell these stories and pass the information along to you about what our men
and women have done in combat.
Well, now back to World War II and they're disappearing rapidly.
So if you've got a veteran relative that hasn't written down their history or said anything
about it, get the Veterans History Project kit.
You can just order it from the government.
Just put Veterans History Project and you can, all the questions are there.
You can fill it in.
Send it off to Library of Congress and your grandfather or your dad will be there forever.
Also, I'd like to just thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio.
We always appreciate your listening to us.
So until next week, thank you all very much for listening.