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In today's episode, Literature of War Foundation is talking to New York Times bestselling author
Sebastian Younger. He's talking about the healing power of having a stage with an audience that is
willing to listen and his new book in My Time of Dying. He's a New York Times bestselling author.
He wrote Tribe War Freedom, A Death in Belmont, Fire, and also wrote The Perfect Storm.
He's been a co-director of the documentary film Rest Repo, which was nominated for an Academy Award.
He's also a winner of a Peabody Award and the National Magazine Award for Reporting.
So enjoy this podcast from Literature of War.
Welcome to the Lit War Podcast by Lethal Minds Journal, where we seek out the moments that made
us who we are today one story at a time. I'm your host, Michael Jerome Plunkett,
and my guest today is bestselling author and award-winning journalist Sebastian Younger.
Sebastian has spent a career covering everything from the most dangerous jobs in America to major
international news stories around the world. His work examines the complexities of military service
and why so many people miss the war once they come home. He is also the founder of Vets Town Hall,
which seeks to give veterans of any era a chance to stand before their community
and speak about what it was like to serve their country. He is the bestselling author of The
Perfect Storm, War, Tribe, Freedom, and Coming in May of 2024 in My Time of Dying. He joins us today with a story.
Sebastian Younger, welcome to the Lit War Podcast. Do you have a story for us?
Yeah, do you want a story about myself or just a story from the world somewhere?
The most important moment of your life, putting you on the spot.
You know, I'm going to have to go with two. At both ends of my life, I'm 61, and the things that
are important and that change you and affect you, they change as you go through your ages.
You know, and I think one of the most important moments of my life was when my father, my father
was an upper middle class European from a sort of intellectual background. His dad was Jewish,
and they fled Europe when the when the Fascists started taking over everything. They came into
Spain in 36 and then to France in 40, and he came to this country because, as he said,
the Fascists would never come here. And he was so smart guy, made a good living, and he was pretty
affluent, and we lived well, right? And at one point, we had a friend who was a stockbroker
who made enormous amounts of money, right? And this was like maybe 1970. And I was a child,
and I was very impressed by money, and I said something to my dad, like, oh my God, what's
Jack do, whatever, whatever his name was. And he goes, oh, Jack just spends his life making money.
And I was like, wait, I thought that was the points, right? He's like, no, no, no, money,
he's like, if money is the least interesting thing in the world, like if you're making money
and not doing something else that's real with your life, you're not really living, it's a wasted life.
And I never forgot that. Like, I mean, my father was affluent, you know, he wanted to be comfortable,
but he never made the mistake that money was the point. And I took that with me through my whole
life. And I'm very lucky to live comfortably as well. I made a good living as a writer, and I'm
glad I'm not working for eight bucks an hour somewhere, of course, right? But you had the end
of the day, what are we alive for? Right, we're, you know, we're alive to love other people, to be
loved, to help other people, to help human dignity, to understand existence, you know, and money has
nothing to do with those things. And at the very end of my life, until now, I almost died. I had
a ruptured aneurysm that almost killed me. And I saw my father hovering above me as I was dying,
and they managed to save me. But there he was. And I'm an atheist. I'm a rationalist. I'm not
only am I not a mystic, I can say I'm an anti-mystic, like I just hate all that stuff, right? And
there he was. And it made me realize this other important thing, like, careful, you don't know
everything. Like, you may know nothing. Like, keep your mind open to all things.
Right. Wow. That's, so now, to take that a step further, that experience, that near-death experience
that you described, and seeing your father, did that rattle your rational beliefs? I mean, you
say that, like, you know, it's kind of a moment of recognition of like, you don't know everything,
but did that change the way you looked at it? Or are you still, do you still consider yourself an
atheist? Well, it's interesting. People blend the idea of there being a god with there being
something that happens after death. They're completely different things. And there could
be a post-death reality and no god, right? Or there could be a god that oversees a completely
physical world in which we're just biological beings, and we utterly and completely ceased
existing in every form when we die, even though there's a god, right? So there really are different
things. So what I would say is, I am an atheist. I do not believe in God. It does not order my life.
It does not change that effect when I do. And I don't think that's a plausible explanation for
how the universe works and got started, right? But now I'm not, I realize I'm, oh, I thought,
I thought I knew that when we die, that's it forever. We are biological beings. And when we rot
and decompose, we are no longer, right? And as a journalist, I've seen people who were dead an hour.
I've seen people who were dead a week. I've seen people who were dead a month or three months.
And, you know, at all those stages, it's hard not to think, wow, there's nothing else. Like,
that's it, right? And particularly at three months, you're like, wow, I'm not even sure that's a body.
You know, it's the idea that we continue existing just seems implausible. But now I have to say,
because of what I experienced with my father, I don't know. And it's possible that in physical terms,
or in subatomic terms, that there is some reality post death that we just do not understand,
that has something to do with how the universe was formed at an atomic level, right? Like,
this is talking about the physical nature of the universe, like the way gravity has nothing to do
with God, right? Gravity is an elemental force, right? Well, likewise, consciousness may have
nothing to do with God, it might be a fundamental force in the universe like gravity is.
Well, I mean, I think that's a really balanced perspective, you know, so often a discussion
like that can go like one of two ways is like you can everybody's already in agreement with
each other or everybody's at each other's throats within, you know, a couple of minutes of putting
those opinions out there. But I think, like you said, your experience as a journalist, you end up
and you've lived at the extreme ends of the world in a variety of different situations with all
your different books and all your different experiences. But it's true when you see, when
you experience death in that way up close and personal, you know, for my personal experience
is working on an emergency ambulance, you know, transporting to emergency scenes, it's like,
you really begin to, I mean, just doing two months of that, I was like, I had to reconsider a lot
of my own opinions about death and about life too, right? Like the idea of when does life start?
When you have, there's so many complications that our bodies are so strange. And I think I feel like
it's one of those things where if you've not seen that in some form or another, you can get very
comfortable in a certain worldview, but seeing being exposed to that over and over again, can really
rattle that cage. I mean, do you feel like your experiences as a writer have cemented some of that
or kind of brought that to the surface or when did that experience kind of, when do you, when do
you form those kind of beliefs? Well, I, you know, I grew up in a godless household, right? I mean,
I was raised by an artist and a physicist and we never went to church. And my father, who was an
enormously compassionate, beautiful man, morally speaking, had absolutely no use for religion or
for God, and in fact, thought that those, that religion was the source of an awful lot of conflict
and death and destruction in the world. And we're seeing a little bit of it right now overseas,
obviously, and Israel. And so, you know, I just never thought about it. I'm just like, okay,
this is what we get. We're social primates, right? We have the exact same sort of quote after life
that chimpanzees do or lions might or ants do, like what we're made out of biology, right? And
so when we go, we go and thank God, I mean, imagine an eternity of consciousness. I could barely get
through math class in eighth grade. Are you kidding? You don't want me to stay awake for eternity? No
exit? No way out? I can't even get kicked out of class. Like, Jesus, I forgive the, forgive the
use of the Lord's name, but Jesus Christ, like, I don't want that. Who wants that, right? So,
you know, I was, I just grew up not thinking about it and concentrating on my life as I was living it.
And so now I'm thinking, okay, well, you know, in 1900, the physicists didn't understand the subatomic
world and the quantum world, right? And then they eventually found out it made no sense in
in macroscopic terms, right? All of this, the sort of law in Newton's laws, right?
So Newtonian era laws of physics didn't apply at the subatomic level. And, you know, likewise,
you know, maybe, maybe there's something going on after we die at that subatomic level that we just
do not understand. And there's some, there's an awful lot of weirdness. I mean, there's something
called the double slit experiment. And I shouldn't talk about this too much, because my book's coming
out in six months, and I can't ruin the, I can't ruin the party for my publisher. But I'll, I'll
sort of end with this, just as a, as a sort of an enigmatic thing that to think about, like,
in case we think we know everything, this has been, it's been demonstrated many, many times that if
you send a photon at two slits, and you don't watch it, you don't observe it, it will go through
both slits at the same time. Basically, you walking through two doorways simultaneously,
impossible in the macroscopic world, right? And it will, it will, and you can see that from the
strike plate on the other side, the signature on the strike plate on the other side. If you watch
it, if you, if you observe it, there's conscious observation, the photon has to pick one slit
and goes through one, right? Otherwise, it does something that should not be possible
in terms of Newtonian physics. So there's a great mystery, right? And we, and, and so
if that great mystery applies to what happens after we die, it wouldn't, it wouldn't shock me.
Wow. Yeah, I've heard of that experiment before. It's a very, very famous experiment about the
observable world. And like you said, the mystery that really is, is beyond that, what we can see
and what we can't see and what we can understand and what is yet to be understood. And so, so just
when is, when is your new book, what's it called and when is it coming out?
It's called In My Time of Dying from the old gospel song. How's that for an old atheist?
Gospel song and Led Zeppelin song, okay? Like, that's to be clear here. In My Time of Dying,
it will come out May 21st with Simon and Schuster. Awesome. Very much looking forward to,
we've spoken about that a couple of times now and I'm very much looking forward to
to reading that and we'll make sure we get the word out about that. But maybe to switch gears here
a little bit. Today, I want to talk about a specific moment in another one of your books,
Tribe on Homecoming and Belonging, a book that I've read several times and I think there is a
tremendous amount to be taken away from and kind of sit with. And, you know, this is a book that's
about the power of sitting in communion with one another kind of, as you said before, there's a
lot of conflict going on in the world right now as we're talking here, multiple different countries
involved. And it doesn't seem to be slowing down any anytime soon. Here in the United States, we've
had unparalleled, you know, animosity amongst amongst our citizens, fellow countrymen, like,
you know, in a way that really hasn't been seen probably since arguably the 60s, if not even
earlier than that. There's a moment in Tribe very close to the end where you describe an experience
with the author Carl Marlantis, who is a Vietnam War veteran, also an author. And you talk about
an experience that you had when the two of you were having some type of speaking event.
Can you talk a little bit about that experience and what happened?
Yeah, if I'm remembering correctly, you know, I actually should have reread that section and
I forgot to in the chaos of my life. But there was Carl and I were talking, and I think the topic
had sort of turned to this puzzling thing, like why do soldiers war as hell as the cliche goes?
And indeed it is. But it's a lot of things, and not just hell. And we were sort of, the talks
sort of turned to like why do soldiers sometimes miss war? Very many soldiers often miss war.
And often they come home to this society that I'm sure they miss. They miss their families and
their girlfriends and, you know, go into Burger King or whatever. And then now, you know, they're
back here they are, you got it. Man, you made it home, you're alive. Congratulations. Like, here
you are. And they don't feel like they have a place. They don't feel like they want to be here.
What is that? And, you know, there's some real reasons, right? I mean, there's some interesting
reasons that reflect what we need as human beings and mostly we need closeness. And you get an
awful lot of closeness in war. And then when you come back, there's less of it. And on some level,
you know, I think that the human psyche is like, you know what, the trials and assaults the human
dignity that war is, is actually worth it to get the closeness that we all need. And this safe
society like that is absent all of those horrors, it's also absent any real human closeness, any
real community. And you know what, I'm not interested. And that's a very, it says a lot about what we
are as social privates, right? What kind of animals we are. Well, this gentleman got up and he was
very, very upset. I mean, really in a rage that we would suggest that soldiers missed war. And he
stormed out of the room. And, or something very much like that, again, I'm sort of going from
memory here for something that happened many years ago. But Carl, you know, Carl was, you know,
he was very, I mean, I was sort of annoyed, right? I mean, it's like, come on, man, this is a,
you know, there's no room for rage here. Like, I mean, I mean, this is a collection of peaceful
people, we're just having a conversation. Don't bring that in here. I didn't say that is what I
thought. Right. And Carl was basically like, yeah, that's war too. Like, you know, you go to war,
you're going to get some people that are really angry, like, sorry, that's part of the package.
Right. Along with everyone who was saluting and proudly talking about their service,
you're going to get that guy too. You know what? So you're either in for the whole package or
you're not. But don't be selective about what, you know, what parts of this you find to your taste.
Right. Now, and the assumption here, I don't know if you caught up with that gentleman or
if he was waiting in the lobby for you when you were leaving, but the assumption that was that
he was a veteran as well, that he was. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Carl said, yeah, of course,
Carl said that he's probably, you know, he was of the age where he could have been a Vietnam
vet. He also was of the age where he could have been a Vietnam conscientious objector.
Right. And equally outraged at the suggestion. Right. So it really could have gone either way.
I didn't talk about that with Carl, but in retrospect now, I'm like, wow, it could have been either.
Right. I mean, it's interesting, right? Because you've got, so both you and Carl had experienced
war. Carl was a Marine Corps Lieutenant Rifleman leading a rifle platoon in Vietnam.
You were embedded with infantry units during a war. You're not a veteran yourself, but you
experienced war as close as a person can experience it in some of the most intense
fighting of the war in Afghanistan. Now, and if we assume that this individual was a veteran
himself and experienced war in his own ways, I mean, I think there's something to unpack there
in the sense that we've got three individuals and the crowd as well, who was listening to this.
But three individuals who experienced the thing they're all talking about and three or two rather
very distinct reactions to it. Now, you kind of, and in tribe, you use this experience to kind of
open up a broader concept of people speaking with each other, right? Not just being in communion
with one another, but communicating effectively. Was that the impetus for starting that's town hall?
Yeah. So, you know, I started anthropology in college and it sort of struck me that, you know,
there was all this talk and rightfully so this talk about trauma. And we were seeing people who
were really incapacitated by war time trauma. And I just sort of as an anthropologist,
I just sort of trained as anthropologists, I just sort of thought like,
that's odd. Like human life surely has been extremely traumatic since the beginning.
There are very dangerous predators out there. Warfare has been part of the human experience
from the beginning. The natural world is a harsh place and we, you know, we evolved in it for hundreds
of thousands of years. It can't be that trauma is incapacitating. Because if it were, the human
race wouldn't exist. Like give me a break. Like I'm asked to do on charges through camp and kills,
you know, you know, like whatever. Like, and then everyone's paralyzed with, you know, like grief
and trauma for this or lives. Who's feeding these people? Like who's like, come on, I do not believe
it. Right. And, and so, and it's not that I thought people were exaggerating their claim, although I
think sometimes people do that. Sometimes people do everything, right. But I feel like
I think the people that were really were suffering when they came back from the wars that America
was in. It occurred to me that maybe what went apart of their suffering wasn't just the trauma
that they experienced. I've experienced trauma. It affected me enormously. It didn't incapacitate me.
As a private citizen, I was a journalist overseas. I couldn't go to government to get a disability
check. I, you know, it went away, right. It's like when you lose a good friend, when they die,
yeah, you're paralyzed with grief for a week and then very sad for a month. And then you think
about them a lot for a year. And 20 years later, I'm sorry, you've moved on, right. You're not
still sobbing on a couch except for once in a while, right. And maybe on the universe, you know,
but people are adapted to recover from things, from terrible things. And so what it may be is that
in the military, you're traumatized in a group. You're in a unit, right. You're in a squad. You're
in a platoon. And then you come home. And for most of human history, people have come home from combat
and continued the healing process in and amongst the group that they were in combat with.
Not in this society. You're in and amongst people who don't have any idea what you went through,
right. One of the ways that the Native American societies in North America dealt with some of
this was to allow warriors the chance to address the entire community when they got back from
fighting, right. It was called the Gord dance. It was, it was started with the Kiowa, a Southern
Plains tribe, but sort of spread everywhere. And, you know, basically when the warriors came back
from combat, they had the chance, each warrior had the chance to sing, to dance, to retell his exploits
before the tribe, for the community, what he did for them, right. The people he killed for them,
the people he lost for them, the wounds he suffered, the risks he took, the pride he feels in his
service, the sorrow he feels, you know, et cetera, right. His anger at the leaders, you know, whatever,
right. And not only does it allow for a very powerful cathartic experience by,
for the, for the veteran, for the, for the warrior, but it forces, allows slash forces,
the whole community to engage, to take moral responsibility for the fighting. This isn't
just mine. This is all of ours. I did this for you. I have blood on my hands. I lost my brother
out there. Like that means we all have blood on our hands. We all lost brother. This is, we're
all in this, if you're going to send me out there to do this work, I'll gladly do it with honor,
right, with pride. But it better be, the, the, the, the moral responsibility and the emotional
fallout had better be taken, undertaken by everybody. The problem with the mass industrial
society is that we don't know any of the people that are keeping us alive, right. We don't, I don't,
I don't know any oil workers that drill oil out of the ground that keep my apartment warm and my
car running, right. I don't know any farmers that grew the wheat that I'm eating. Like,
none of us know any of these people, right. And we don't, a lot of people don't know the soldiers
that are keeping us safe, right. And, and so that is not, that has not been true for most of human
history. This is a new situation. So what veteran, what vets town hall tries to do is on Veterans Day,
the town halls are not open for business. There's a parade and whatnot, which is great,
but whatever, I don't think it has a lot of therapeutic value. But what you can do, it costs
absolutely no money. You just have to organize it. And you can go onto our website, vets townhall.org,
for a very, very simple sort of best practices about how to do this process. You open up the
town hall, you turn on the PA system, you send out announcements, you send out word that you're
doing this, and any veteran of any war who served in any capacity has the right to stand up and speak
for 10 minutes about what it felt like to serve this nation overseas. Before we get to the second
half of our interview, I want to take a quick second to thank our sponsors. This week's episode is
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It doesn't matter if you're combat or support or whatever, it doesn't matter, right? You had an
experience that you chose and although we've also had Vietnam vets who were drafted, World War II
vets who were drafted, but nevertheless you did the nation's work over there and the fallout,
the emotional fallout shouldn't be just yours and the pride in what you did shouldn't be just yours
either. It should be all, you know, to belong to the whole nation, right, as it would have for the
Kiowa. And if you, you know, like to say that you support the troops, great, like I like the
phrase, it doesn't sort of mean a whole lot, but no problem, I like it. That means showing up for a
couple of hours once a year to listen to veterans tell their stories and you will hear the most
extraordinary stories. You will hear veterans who are very proud. Some veterans who are very angry,
some veterans who literally are crying too hard to talk, which is its own kind of testimony.
And I feel like not only does it help vets, but it brings communities together. It's totally
apolitical, which allows people to experience being in one place at the center of a community
without being identified by their political markers, by their political beliefs.
We are all there as citizens. That's it, end of sentence. And it's a very powerful experience
for all involved. And I really urge people to do it. It's, it doesn't cost a dime and it's really
very simple to set up. Right. I mean, I think it's such an interesting concept, right? Because
like you said, you mentioned in there, there's these phrases, you know, support the troops or
the parades that'll happen around, you know, Veterans Day to thank our service members. And
the, you know, the phrase, thank you for your service, which I personally started hearing
like an hour after I graduated from boot camp and went into town in my uniform, like it starts
instantly. Now that's a product I would argue of this current generation. And in some ways,
I think the country is like almost atoning for the way we treated our Vietnam veterans and that
there's still this like this resurgence right now of like almost lip service, right? These kind of,
I don't want to say they're empty gestures, because I feel like that's projecting a little bit too
much onto it. But there, it's a little, it's, it's an action, right? That's an action giving out a
coupon or free meal or something. While there's some good intention there, it's an action. And what
you're talking about is, is the opposite of action, which is listening, right? Is to sit there and
just listen. Now, I mean, this is also something that this concept, somebody getting up and speaking,
it's not new necessarily, right? Like you said, there's other cultures that have done it.
This is the way a lot of group therapy groups are set up, like Alcoholics Anonymous and even
the ID Confession through the Catholic Church, right? Is it, were those, do you see a current,
like the power really comes from giving like giving a stage to an individual?
Yeah, I mean, there is, there's something very powerful in bearing witness to another person's
experience. And the forum, as you mentioned, say of AA, where it's a, it's a benevolent and
non-judgmental, but also no bullshit environment. Right. You are, you are totally safe to confess
the things you are most ashamed of, you're encouraged to, right? And people will listen
without judgment and support you. And you know what, it's a, it's an act of great patriotism
to listen to, to be anti-war. I grew up in a liberal household, right? And I have a very nuanced,
I think, I hope very nuanced understanding of when we do and don't need to go to war as a
nation, right? I mean, I have my own opinions about all this, but my background is very liberal,
right? And I think it's a great act of patriotism for someone who is
implacably opposed to war in all cases, which is not me, but to listen with respect and real
attention and lack of judgment to a soldier saying, you know what, my service is the thing
I'm most proud of, right? And, and this is a great nation and I served it well and, you know,
etc. I like it's an act of real patriotism to, to not agree with the war that person fought,
but to bear witness to what they, the way they experienced it. Likewise,
people who are, I don't want to say pro-war, because that just sounds absurd, but, but
who have not, who do not particularly question US rationale for going to war, Vietnam and Iraq,
for example, wars that were, you know, quite, you know, history is shown to be quite questionable
in their judgment. But they're really, you know, really sort of like completely accepting of that,
to bear witness, to stand and listen without judgment to a Vietnam vet saying, you know what,
that whole thing was complete bullshit, right? We were sent to die in a war that made no sense,
you know, etc., etc. And you stand and listen to that without judgment, because that's their
experience too. And we're all Americans, we have to figure out how to make all this work.
Those are acts of real patriotism and, and real unity in this country. And, you know, I feel like
our, our, our political leaders, not all of them, but enough of them to make this happen.
Some of our political leaders have actually, actually tried to worsen the, to make worse,
to exacerbate the cultural, economic and political divisions in this country that exist in any country,
make them worse because it benefits these individuals politically. It is their fault,
it is our leader's fault. And we fell for it, but it's our leader's fault that the country is at,
that we're at each other's throats politically. And I think one way to start healing that is
you're never going to reform the politicians, right? There's too much money in politics,
there's too much power, it's too corrupt, it's never happening, right? But from the ground up,
you can change things. And I think from the ground up, American citizens have to start
tuning out their leader, the, the toxic leaders that we have, some of the toxic leaders that we
have and understand that they're, that you're, your strongest ally is your fellow citizen you may
not agree with. At the end of the day, that's your strongest ally. And that's America's strongest
form of defense against fascism and terrorism and everything else that the world has to offer,
the unfortunate nation. Well, yeah, in some ways, we're more connected than we've,
than we've ever been, right? Through the use of social media, the internet, that global
perspective is more, I mean, we're watching things happen instantly, simultaneously, we're,
we're not waiting for this. And in some ways, I would think that that would make us, that level
of clarity would bring us closer together. But clearly, that's not the case in a lot of ways.
Like you said, there's a lot to be gained by keeping attrition going and keeping, keeping
people at each other's, at each other's throats, speaking broadly. Now, do you, these experiences
so far, because this organization, that's Town Hall's been around for a little while now, is there
any, have you seen, is there any experiences that have stuck with you attending any of these,
these events or any moments you could share with us that, that have kind of shown the power of it?
Oh, yeah, I mean, the early ones, I mean, I'm, I think some of these people have passed on, I think.
I'm not sure we're going to get any more World War Two vets. But in the very beginning, this is
2015, you know, we had a couple of World War Two vets, that most extraordinary stories, right?
You know, one guy who signed up at 16, maybe, and fought in the Pacific, like crazy stories,
right? Amazing, amazing stories. And, and he said he came home and he wore a knife around his ankle
for the rest of his life, just to make sure, right? Amazing guy. And, and I mean, there were,
there were people who were still deep in grief about people they'd lost and struggling with the
idea that it was their fault, just heartbreaking stories. And there was one, one older, older lady
in her 70s who stood up, the first one with, with Representative Seth Moulton, who also offered an
extraordinary story as a Marine Lieutenant in the, in Ramadi or Fallujah, I can't remember which,
but taking a break because he was, he was personally exhausted and he needed water and he
needed to take a knee for five minutes. And I think they were in a cemetery and during that break,
one of his men got, took a bullet in the forehead. Imagine the guilt. Right. And that's why he's
never, he was awarded some high, high medal of courage for his service. And he never mentions
it to the media. He's a politician, right? He never mentions it to the media because he just
thinks, why should I get that when I didn't bring that boy home? Right. Alive. And very, very powerful.
But so many, many stories like that. But finally, I'll just, just to rearrange everyone's
brain for a moment. There was an older, an older lady who stood up. And I was like, you're, wait,
what's happening here? And she said, I fought in Vietnam in the infantry and I said, wait,
oh, wait a second. And she said, and then I came home and got a sex change. And here I am.
You know, it was a pretty conservative audience in every way. I was like, oh, yes, America,
like awesome. Right. Like that can happen. Fantastic. And you know what, you know,
you know, the conservatives or the liberals out there, they're uncomfortable with this kind of
thing. This person fought for your country, like they are freaking patriots. So you better take
them as they are at, you know, like right now in their life, like honor that because, you know,
that's one of the things that makes this country great is that that can happen. And that, you know,
like that we, that we can honor it in a meeting like this. It's extraordinary.
Well, it's also interesting you bring up that this is multiple generations of different veterans,
right? Like you've got had World War II veterans showing up and that generation is quickly,
quickly escaping us. And there's, there is kind of this, this grab to hold on to those stories
and grab those experiences before they're gone forever. And I mean, did you notice,
was there, so what I'm getting at is like, there's, there's a factor of time in here, right? The guy
who just got out of the Marine Corps six months ago is a lot different than the guy who got out
three decades ago, four decades ago, who's, who's at the very end of their life with a completely
different perspective. Did you notice any change? Like, were the stories kind of aligned along a
timeline in that fashion that people's perspectives softened or hardened based on where they were
at in their post service?
No, I mean, I don't think, I didn't see any pattern like that. I mean, there was a sort of basic
division. I mean, there was a sort of basic divisions of people who were in deep sorrow.
And that was their primary emotion, right? And then there are people who may be
grieving somebody, but were their dominant emotion was that they're very proud of their service.
And, and, and then there were, you know, there, then they were way fewer, but there are some
people who were quite angry. Vietnam and frankly, Iraq as well, right? Not Afghanistan so much,
which sort of corresponds with my feelings about the two wars. I didn't cover Iraq because,
frankly, I was against it and I didn't think I could be objective. Afghanistan, I understood the
rationale morally, legally, politically, strategically, and I got it after 9-11. And I was
for it and I, you know, I've been going to Afghanistan since the mid 90s. It was a country
that I was very fond of way before 9-11 happened. And then after, after 9-11, I thought, oh my
God, you know, America could really do a lot of good in Afghanistan. You know, if we do this right,
unfortunately, I don't think we did. But so you, you know, you sort of, there was a little bit of
that and the responses Iraq, there was a lot of bitterness around Iraq. And then there was,
you know, a sort of subset of this, which was sometimes people who really would sort of confess
like, I didn't do enough. I didn't fight. I was just, you know, quote, just a supply clerk or whatever.
And, and, and, you know, some people get really teary. Like, I'm ashamed. Like, I mean, I wish
I'd done, I wish I could have done more. And those in some ways were really the heartbreaking people.
And I was in a, I was in a, I was leading a talk once and a guy stood up, a big tough looking dude.
Like, some ways the bigger and tougher they are, the harder they cry. I don't know, it's crazy.
Right. And this guy stood up and, and he was a CB and, you know, his job was to, was to build
stuff on these remote bases. And he's, and he said, you know, I never, I, nothing happened.
Like it wasn't hard. And I, and I feel guilty that I didn't do more. And he said, it went,
he said, until one point a platoon came in from a lot of combat deep in the, deep in the mountains
or wherever he was, he was in Afghanistan. He said, they were dirty. They were beat up. They had
a hell of a few weeks. And they came in and he had built them up sort of plywood platformed
just like sleep on out of the dirt at this fire base. And, and he said they were, they all like
came up and shook his hand and thanked him. They were so grateful. And as he told this story,
you know, this wasn't a vet's town hall. It was just an event somewhere.
As he told this story, he started crying and he was enormously embarrassed to me crying
because he was a six foot three Marine, right? And he's crying in front of a bunch of people.
And, you know, I would, I wanted to sort of help him. I don't, I don't know, like do something,
right? And so I said, I said, I said, thank you. And I said to everybody, I said, he's,
he said, he's crying. He's doing our crying for us. Like war is a serious thing. And we
should all be crying, but we're not. He's, he's crying for us. And really, we should thank him
because we should all be, we should all be doing what he's doing right now. And we're not.
And, and at that point, half the room started crying and we were, we were good. So, you know,
this, yeah, my, my friend of mine was joking, like, especially younger, making grown men cry
since 1997, right? So, you know, but there's, you know, when you're at that level of emotion,
there's something real going on there, right? And listen, I'm, you know, I have a long and
terrible history of make, making sure I don't cry when, when I should be, you know,
which should be, I should be feeling something, you know, so I know exactly how this works.
And, you know, frankly, how damaging it can be to a person.
Right. I mean, that's, I think that's also an interesting topic is, is how do the audiences
react in events, in events like this? Like, because for me personally, I can always tell
how approximately close an individual is to a military community, by the way they,
they react to when they found out that I served in the Marine Corps, right? Because sometimes
people take on this like seriousness that like, I don't know, like for me, it was,
and I'm one of those individuals who, you know, had some of these feelings of like,
I should have done more a little bit because I was six years in the reserves, the Marine Corps,
and, you know, in infantry MOS, and I never deployed, right? I never saw my closest experience
to war was very, very distant, just knowing people who'd been there and done that. And I,
I personally, you know, I have my own ways of having dealt with that. And I feel fine now,
but it's interesting to me that like the first or second question people will ask me,
once they find out I was in the Marine Corps, where did you deploy to? You know, that's like,
first thing I have to, and you know, my answer is like, well, Long Island, you know, that's
where I was for six years, more or less, you know, that's, I didn't, I didn't go to Afghanistan,
I wasn't in Iraq or anything like that. And it's kind of interesting that, you know, some people
who, you know, they were in the military themselves, or they, or they had a spouse or whatever,
it's, it's, we just, we jump right over that there's a certain communication that's just
already established, because we come from that shared experience in whatever way, regardless of
whether they went to war, they didn't, or whatever, they're just a commonality there. But there's
individuals who like, they don't know how to act almost, they don't know how to act from the
second they find out about the military, they do the thank you for your service thing. And I think
this is an interesting experiment and an interesting venture in the sense that it gives veterans a way
to just get up there and share their, their experiences, you know, just total freedom.
What, what have audience reactions been like? Or is it individuals showing up who are already
kind of involved with military communities? Well, you know, I think there's a lot of probably a
predominance of military related military connected people in the audience, but not
exclusively, but either, you know, they're very, very welcoming and compassionate. And we're,
we, you know, we, we, we are part of the package that you will download if you'd want to do events
town hall, part of the package are some sort of instructions about what to say to the audience
before this kicks off and how it all sort of work just to sort of, you know, like clockwork aspect
of it, like this happens and that happens. But one of the things we say we're very explicit about
is this is not political and this is not a forum to argue the merits of a war, right? This do not
do it. This is that there's no Q and a and we will tolerate absolutely no back and forth about
whether we should have or shouldn't have fought this or that war. And, and so, so I mean war is
divisive and it should be divisive. It's the worst thing there is right. So it's not divisive,
we're in trouble, right? I mean, if you don't have people saying the opposite thing to get
everyone to examine their assumptions, you're, you're going to have some problems, right? And so,
but we don't want that in events town hall where the point isn't to sort out which wars to fight
and not fight. The point is to help the people that fought the wars that we chose as a nation
that we chose to fight to bring them back, right? And, and you know, vets talk with each other about
their experiences. They're reluctant to talk to other to civilians and non vets about their
experiences. But then they complain that they feel like they're not part of society. You can't
have it both ways, right? Like you're not going to feel like you're part of society. If you refuse
to tell the part of society you're trying to join, like what you went through. Yeah, even if it was
very little, right? Like, and, and so you can't sort of like, no, no, no, they, they can't understand.
They don't deserve to know this is special knowledge, you know, and then complain. But I don't, I feel
like I don't fit in. Like, of course, you don't feel like you don't fit in. You're not freaking
communicating with them, right? So, so vets town hall is a chance to sort of like stop with that
bullshit and like get everyone like on the same page. And I've never seen an adverse negative
reaction in a vets town hall. It just doesn't, it just doesn't happen. I mean, it's a little,
you know, I'm an atheist, I don't go to church, but, you know, from my understanding of church is
people raise their hand in the back and start arguing with the priest, right? It's a sacred
space. It's a sacred time. Like you're there to experience and listen. That's it. Right. Well,
I mean, I want to say thanks for joining us today and letting us in on this, on this venture that
you have going. Is there any plans coming up this this Veterans Day for vets town hall?
Yeah. And, you know, again, we are organized, my organization, our organization
doesn't itself organize events, right? I mean, we facilitate, we help people
organize events locally. Yeah, there's vets town hall over the country. But go on to the website
vets town hall dot org. And it's not too late. You can set you can stand one up in a week, right?
I mean, it did just not, you know, there isn't a lot of legwork on these and there's zero expense
basically. So most of the moment, you have to get the word out and people will come.
Great. Well, we'll definitely make sure we get the word out there. Hopefully some people will
step up. We'll see a bunch of these all over the country and we'll see what comes of it. So
thank you again for joining us today. My pleasure. Thank you.
Be sure to pre order Sebastian's new book in my time of dying, which comes out in May of 2024.
Literature of war has always been about getting books into the hands of our troops.
Those men and women were currently serving all over the world right now.
We are right in the midst of our first library campaign in which we are attempting to donate
500 books to five different units. We are past the halfway mark to our goal, but we still need
your help. Please head to the link in our description for ways to donate books to our troops.
This episode was recorded at the National Veterans Memorial and Museum in Columbus, Ohio.
For more information, please visit nationalvmm.org on ways to support this museum and its mission
of helping veterans tell their stories. Lastly, you don't have to be published by a major publishing
house for your story to matter. There's a group of veterans in North Carolina who are proving
that to be true right now. Brothers and sisters like these began as a creative writing program
in 2016 for Vietnam veterans who are struggling with PTSD. It has since grown to include veterans
from other wars as well. These are men and women from all walks of life who have taken the time
to tell their stories in their own voices with their own words. We're going to highlight some of
these stories in the coming weeks, but please take a moment to check out their page at brothersand
sisterslikethese.com. Once again, I'm your host, Michael Jerome Plunkett, and I will be back in a
few weeks with another story and another conversation.
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