All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
And now your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
Hey, welcome to Veterans Radio.
All the great technology in the world wants to help anything when the power's not on.
So we are running a little late today.
I want to welcome you to our program.
I'm going to kind of condense everything down a little bit.
We've got the CEO of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation on Major General Jim Lieuchman.
Really excited to talk with him about the foundation.
Later on in the program, we've got Mark Liebsen on again.
He's the author of a new book entitled The Unlucky War Hero.
A really great story about the youngest enlisted man that had been captured and spent time in the Hanoi Hilton.
So stick around for that one.
Also joining me again today is another Marine.
I got Marines all over the place today.
I have to be careful. I have to watch their language.
Brian Bay, hey Brian.
Hey, how are you?
I am good. So we're going to get started right now.
And I need to do our normal thank our sponsors.
So I'll do the condensed readers digest version of them today.
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let's get right into our program.
So after a little bit of delay with the powers that be,
my guest today is Major General James and Jim Lukeman, President and CEO of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation.
Jim, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Thanks for having me on, Dale. It's great to be here.
Well, you know, it's great to be anywhere, as they say.
Yeah.
So I wanted to bring you on, let me go back and find my little press release for you.
You're retired from active duty in 2020 after 40 years,
continue a service in the Marines, born in South Carolina,
graduated from University of Notre Dame,
and was commissioned through their Navy ROTC program in 1980.
Let's see, your assignments included,
well, Rifling Weapons Platoon, Commander Alpha Company, and anyone mortar platoon commander,
blah, blah, blah, all these different commanders anyway,
who was there in Iraq with the 1st Marine Division during Iraqi Freedom,
just an astounding career.
Oh, and luckily I got to talk with Jim before we went on the air
and found out that he got this job offer two months after he retired.
What a great concept. I like that idea.
But Jim, tell me all about this Marine Corps Heritage Foundation.
It's a great organization I've heard.
Oh, yeah. Thanks, Dale. And it is a great organization.
And I'm the luckiest guy in the world.
Like you said, I spent my whole life in the Marine Corps.
I grew up in the Marine Corps. My father was a Marine.
Then I spent 40 years on active duty.
And when I retired, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do.
I knew I wanted to stay close to the Marine Corps if I could.
And so, yeah, just about two months into retirement,
a friend who was on the board called and said,
I don't know if you've heard, but they're looking for somebody
to take over the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation.
And I said, yeah, that'd be terrific.
So I was fortunate enough to get that job
and been doing that for four years now.
So the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation,
what we do is it's a nonprofit.
It's been around for a long time, about 45 years.
And the mission is to preserve and share the history, tradition,
culture of the Marine Corps,
and educate all Americans in what's best about the Marine Corps.
So that's our job is to share the Marine Corps story
with the country.
And about 20 years ago, one of the things
that probably the most significant accomplishment
of the foundation was to build the National Museum
of the Marine Corps, which is just outside of Washington, D.C.,
outside the base at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia.
And as you said, there's a whole lot of things going on
because rumor has it that there's some sort of birthday
coming up next year.
And I was just wondering what were some of the plans for that?
Yeah, rumor has it is right.
So 2025 will mark the 250th anniversary
of the United States Marine Corps.
250 years of first to fight,
250 years of honor, courage, and commitment.
And Marines are not shy about talking about that history.
So in addition to, I'll talk about the museums
and what happens there, but there's going to be a year-long
nationwide commemoration of the 250th anniversary
of the Marine Corps.
And we're working very closely with the Marine Corps
to do that.
Just last week, the commandant kicked it off
with a message and a short video that he and the Sergeant Major
of the Marine Corps put out talking.
It's time to start the 250th celebration now.
So we are on.
So that's the two things I think have been interesting
to folks is to talk about the museum a little bit
and then what's happening next year for the two.
Okay, so let's go straight to the museum, which is,
the website is just awesome.
I got to get there.
It's amazing.
I don't know, Brian, have you been to the National Museum
of the Marine Corps?
Yeah.
Okay.
It's a beautiful building.
It's incredible the design.
When everybody stops and gets out of their car
to walk into the museum, the first thing they do
is they stop and look at it and take a picture
because it's beautiful.
And the second thing they do, they walk in
and they do it again because you walk into the museum
and it's got this great gallery that you enter.
And everybody, it's a wow moment for everybody.
But what that museum has is 250 years of American history
through the eyes of Marines.
So it goes from 1775 until today with the history
of the Marine Corps and the country.
It's open every day.
Two days it's closed.
It's closed on Thanksgiving Day
and closed on Christmas Day.
But every other day it's open nine to five free,
free parking right off of 95.
It's about 45 minutes south of Washington, D.C.
So we've had, it's been open since 2006.
So that's 18 years old.
She's 18 now.
And we've had over 7 million visitors come through the doors
and we reach a lot of kids both in the museum
and across the country through distance learning
because we have a distance learning studio in the museum,
which is a terrific education for folks.
And really it is a, it's a, it's a must see museum,
not just for Marines, but for anybody
that's interested in military history or just learning
about the country.
It's a terrific museum.
Well, I think it, you know, it's, it's got so many
things going on there.
I mean, the, I saw there's a Medal of Honor theater.
Sure.
It's got a big screen theater.
You know, it shows like, you know, type,
think IMAX is what it is.
And, and recently we just opened gosh, two months ago,
the last couple of historical galleries.
So we now have a gallery that covers
operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So 2001 ever since 9-11 up until today.
And it's really good because so many young Marines
and soldiers and others that are,
that served in Iraq and Afghanistan are still serving
come through that, those galleries
and they can see their service honored in a way
that makes them proud in the museum.
So, so for Vietnam veterans, a lot of,
a lot of y'all had to wait 30, 40 years
to be able to see your service in our museum.
But, but for the folks from Iraq and Afghanistan,
we have that now.
So it's, it's really a, the museum kind of immerses you in it.
It's more than just looking at something.
You actually feel like you're a part of,
of what it is.
It's just a fantastic, the whole thing is great.
I think so, you know, and the,
the foundation also does a lot of other things too.
We do.
You know, you're talking, the info that I got sent to me
was talking about some of the trend,
the transition programs that you have.
Yeah. There's a lot of things get hosted at the,
at the museum itself, but, but we support that
from a Marine Corps Heritage Foundation standpoint,
we support the history division, the Marine Corps,
we support the band, we support the museum.
We have a huge education component where we hire teachers
that work there at the museum.
And then inside the museum, there will be both employment
job fairs that we host inside the museum
and transition assistance programs.
So veterans can come, you know, it's one of the,
it's a, it's a location.
It's outside the gate at Quantico.
So you don't have to go on to the base to get into our museum.
And since it's open every day and it's free,
we can host events inside the museum for things
that veterans can come to with, without having to worry
about, you know, clearance and an ID card
and all the other kind of stuff to get on the base.
So it's a terrific location for that kind of event.
I mean, I'm just looking at the, at the website
here and the website for the Heritage Foundation is,
it's themarineheritage.org.
Correct.
MarineHeritage.org.
And I see you have a band festival coming up.
You have a lot of events.
Yeah, that's great.
Yeah, no, I mean, we play a lot of times,
I play music from different military bands and so forth.
And I've used the Marine Corps band
quite often.
In fact, the recently retired director of the Marine Corps band
is now the director of the University of Michigan marching band.
Correct.
Absolutely.
Yes.
So a lot of things that are kind of coming together here.
Well, what I was looking at, what I thought was really interesting
in the, on your website was the, that you have started
sort of an oral history project going,
where you're trying to get the story of as many Marines as possible.
Yes, absolutely.
And the history division is helping us with this
in the National Museum as well as to,
is to capture the stories of Marines who have served
and make that a simple project to be able to record them.
We've just started working on this,
but to be able to get veterans who come to our museum
to be able to tell their stories and record that in a way.
And then it either becomes part of our history division archives
or even the national archives who do this work as well
to capture people's stories.
Yes.
So that's a project we're currently working on at the museum.
Sounds like a great thing.
And you know, we've got a craft of craft of audience.
They walk through the door.
Yeah.
Well, it's not just, that's right.
You want to see the rest of the museum?
That's right.
And most of our, I guess most of the folks that come through are veterans,
but again, we have a whole lot of, like I said,
school groups that come in and also just people that want to learn
more about the Marine Corps or they know a Marine.
And somebody says, hey, you got to go.
It's one thing we tell people if you're not a Marine
and don't know much about the Marine Corps,
you'll understand a little more why we are the way we are
after you've been through our museum and seen it.
I mean, we have a little laser rifle range in there inside the museum.
I see that.
So you can take a hand at shooting.
You can either shoot an M1,
which was the weapon of choice in Korea and the end of World War II,
or you can shoot an M16, which is the weapon of choice from Vietnam,
or you can shoot today's M4 in our little rifle range.
Well, I'm just, I'm looking at this.
So yet you have a BRIC program.
I saw you already got 30,000 BRICs.
Yeah.
There's about 125 acres on the site.
So there's a huge memorial park grounds that is adjacent to the museum.
And it's dotted with memorials to battles,
units, and heroes of the Marine Corps.
And you can walk the trails.
It's an ADA compliant sidewalk that moves through the woods.
And it's really, really nice.
I mean, it's just a very tranquil, peaceful place to go.
There's a chapel up on the hill that people use for weddings,
retirements, promotion ceremonies, all kinds of things.
There's a little pavilion down at the bottom of the hill
that people do for the same thing.
I mean, it's just the location and what happens there.
It's a living, breathing place.
And for Marines, every day, someone's getting promoted or retired,
or heck, we have commissioning ceremonies and we have funerals.
I mean, we take it from cradle to grave for Marines
in the National Museum of the Marine Corps.
And it feels like home for a Marine when you're there.
So it's a great location for all those things to take place.
I think it's a great opportunity.
How can our audience help out?
Well, certainly you can contribute to the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation,
which again, it's a nonprofit.
So everything we designed, raised the money,
designed and built that museum with contributions from grateful Americans.
That's who paid for it.
It's a fantastic place and you do that at marineheritage.org.
So we're a charitable organization and you get the full benefit
of giving to our charity at marineheritage.org.
But then also come see it.
I mean, just come.
Like I said, it doesn't cost anything to come in,
but you'll love it when you come in.
You'll see why we're so high on the museum.
I see.
It looks like a lot of kind of virtual tours anyway.
We do.
We do have a virtual tour on our website.
You can walk through the whole museum and see it virtually from our website.
I take that back.
The last two galleries that I talked about,
Iraq and Afghanistan and the 80s and 90s,
we haven't, that hasn't been added to our virtual tour yet
because they just opened two months ago.
So the virtual tour ends at the end of Vietnam.
Well, that's all right.
We'll get there though.
We'll get there.
I know.
But you can see it online or you can come see it.
And we talked about, Dale, we're going to do this 250th thing.
So this was this, this 2025, the 250th anniversary of Marine Corps.
This was, is a once in a lifetime opportunity for most of us,
you know, to be able to have that kind of a milestone.
And as the history guys, we decided a couple of years ago,
oh, let's, we're going to make this good.
I mean, we're going to, we're going to do this all year long,
all across the country so that everybody knows that it's the 250th.
And what, and really get a better understanding of what the Marine Corps has
done for our country for the last 250 years and what Marines have done for the country.
Sure.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
I mean, you know, everybody's,
everybody in the military is quite, quite aware of Marines.
And well, you guys are the tip of the spear all the time.
I mean, that's, that's, that's your whole purpose.
You know, you always are sent in first.
And do a wonderful, amazingly terrific job.
And I think that you, you know, personify the idea of duty, honor, and country.
And you live it every single day.
And even after they leave the Corps, they don't leave the Corps.
It's still there.
Well, and that's one of the things, Dale, that we want to highlight along with this 250th
is so many Marines have gone on to do great things in their communities
after leaving the Marine Corps.
And we want to highlight those Marines.
We call it hometown Marines or hometown heroes.
And throughout the year, next year, we're going to find them all across the country
in all 50 states.
And we're just going to bring a little more attention to that Marine who served three
years and got out and went on to become a, an ER doctor in the community or an EMT person
on, you know, riding in the ambulance for the fire department or got out and became
a school teacher and has been a school teacher for 30 years now in the community.
Or maybe they're a politician or maybe they were successful in business.
But we're going to highlight these folks that like so many that have been successful
doing other things.
They go back at their time in the Marine Corps and say, you know, I really owe everything
to what I learned from my drill instructor in boot camp.
And that's why I'm successful today.
But they've given so much back to their communities.
We want to recognize that as part of our 250th year long celebration.
Okay. Oh, you know, so we've been talking here with Major General James W.
Lukeman, United States Marine Corps retired.
He's the president and chief executive officer of the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation.
It's a long word.
Marine Corps Heritage Foundation.
And you, for more information, you can go to marineheritage.org.
I encourage you to go check out their website.
They take you to the museums through there as well.
And it's a beautiful site.
The pictures are great.
And there's a lot that you can learn.
Yeah.
All of us, whether, you know, no matter what service we were in,
whether, you know, or maybe we weren't ever in this service,
this is an opportunity for you to learn more about what the Marines have meant to America over the last 250 years.
Soon to be.
Almost there. Almost there. Almost 250.
Almost there.
So, Jim, I want to have you back on.
I mean, you know, because we got kind of rooked on time today.
Because of technical issues.
So I'd really like to have you back on,
especially if you have any great upcoming events that you would like to publicize.
I'd love to have you get you back here on Veterans Radio.
I'd love to come back to you.
Because yeah, there's a lot going on.
And so you go to our website.
That'll link you to.
There's another website called marine250.com that we put up.
That's got all the 250 stuff on it.
So you'll see there what's happening in your community or on the calendar throughout the year on marine250.com.
But yeah, start at marineheritage.org. It's all connected.
It's all linked together.
So that's cool.
Very much. Thank you so much, Jim.
Thanks, Tim.
Have a great happy holiday.
Merry Christmas and have a great new year.
Super pedaas.
Thank you very much.
All right, we're going to take a real quick break here and go to our Medal of Honor segment today,
which just happens to be a Marine.
So we will, we'll be back after that.
You're listening to Veterans Radio.
The Medal of Honor is the highest award for Valor.
And combat given a member of the Armed Forces of the United States.
There have been over 3400 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.
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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 weapons 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.
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Hey, we're back here on Veterans Radio and as you know, the first half of the program, as I mentioned before, we had a little technical problem, but that's okay.
We're back.
Yeah, that Medal of Honor today was a Marine.
That was to honor our first guest from the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation and the Marine Corps Museum and all those Marine things.
We're going to a little quick little transition here to another branch of the service.
And this is my friend from the Vietnam Veterans of America Magazine, the veteran, and that is Mark Leapson and Mark was on our program a couple of weeks ago.
We were talking about books that people needed to get for the holidays.
And we talked briefly about his own, but so I promised that I'd give him a little time now to talk about the one that he's releasing this week.
So welcoming Mark Leapson, an Army veteran, and this story is about a Navy veteran.
So Mark, welcome back to Veterans Radio.
Thanks, Dale.
Thanks for having me back.
We can talk about that really one great book that everybody must have for Christmas.
I think so.
It's called The Unlikely War Hero.
And it's the story of Vietnam War POW's story of courage and resilience at the Hanoi Hilton. And it comes out this week.
And actually, Dale, let me just say that the official publication date is Tuesday, but the book is available now.
I don't know why publishers do that, but they don't either.
But here's my yeah.
So I got hold it up again.
We're losing a radio audience. I got a really cool cover on it too.
It's called The Unlikely War Hero by Mark Leapson.
L E E P S O N. Too many ease.
So Mark, tell me about this story. Tell me about this young man.
Right. So it says the book is a slice of life biography of Doug Hague doll.
Who was the youngest and lowest ranking American during the Vietnam War, who was captured in North Vietnam and held in the Hanoi Hilton.
He was a 20 year old kid.
He was on a he was an ammunition handler on the guided missile cruiser called the Canberra, which was firing off the coast of North Vietnam.
And at four o'clock in the morning on April 6, 1967, he fell overboard.
Nobody saw it. You know, it was the middle of the night or early morning.
It was dark outside.
Doug says he does not remember what happened, although we do know that the big guns had five.
You know, it was a guided missile cruiser, but it we never fired a missile in anger in the Vietnam War.
But the ship had these big five inch and eight inch guns.
And if you've ever seen or heard them in action, you can imagine what it was like.
So there he is in the in the in the drink.
Nobody saw him.
The ship pulled off and he was a big strong kid.
You know, he wrestled heavyweight in high school and he was on the football team and so on.
And a good swimmer.
So he managed to stay a float in this in the South China Sea.
We don't know exactly when, but you know, I did get a hold of the deck log.
So I know when the firing started.
I know when the firing started that morning.
So I would say at least two, probably three, maybe a little bit more hours in the water.
He was about to go under when he looked up and saw a small fishing boat.
And he ripped off his t-shirt and waved it.
And the fisher, the guys in the boat saw him, picked him up and actually saved his life.
Doug says he wasn't captured.
He was rescued.
And they got him onto shore and they treated him fairly well.
I gave him clean clothes, dry clothes.
Then they turned him over to the North Vietnamese who kind of roughed him up a little bit and then shipped him up to the Hanoi Hill.
And that's the beginning of the story.
And I'll tell you just a couple of amazing things that why we call him a war hero because.
So first of all, Doug outwitted the North Vietnamese interrogators.
He was a 20 year old kid who barely got, he wasn't dumb.
He just didn't care when he barely got through high school.
But when he was, they did the same thing.
They interrogated all of them and they wanted all the information.
First of all, they didn't believe he fell off a ship.
They thought he was a spy, which was preposterous, but he convinced him he wasn't a spy.
And then he convinced him that he didn't have much to give them.
He was on the deck crew.
He was only on the ship for two months.
He wasn't like some guy who was flying a F-105 off an aircraft carrier and got shot down.
He was just this kid off a ship.
Not only did he convince him that, but he thought up a strategy that worked for him.
And that is that he played dumb.
He wasn't dumb, but when they started asking him questions, they said,
you know, write down the name of your ship.
He said, well, you know, how do you spell ship, you know, stuff like that.
They gave him an ink pan.
He put it in his mouth one time and inks a little all over him.
And he convinced them that he was this, you know, dumb kid and they realized he had nothing to give him.
So they look and he never tortured them.
They roughed him up.
They put him in solitary for one point at night for nine months.
It wasn't, but he never had the horrible torture that many of the other POWs had.
So the other, that's one aspect of the story, but the other thing is that it turns out Doug had this great memory.
And you know, the POWs were always trying to, at that point, they were not allowed to communicate with each other.
You could only talk to your roommate and, you know, and you remember the tap code that they devised, right?
Where they tapped on the walls of their cells and so they did communicate that way.
They did pass notes like when they went to the shower, they would take, you know, they got three cigarettes a day.
It would take the cigarette paper and write and communicate.
So word got around on different things, including who is there.
So when, when Doug's high and, you know, the, the, the POWs started an unofficial chain of command behind bars.
So they had your highest ranking officer in each of the camps.
And when, when the officers found out that Doug had a good memory, they said start memorizing names and they started feeding him names.
So long story short, he memorized 254 names, ranks and services and a little bit of information about the guys.
And then they ordered him to go home.
But, you know, little known fact 12, how do I hilt and POWs got what they called early releases.
11 of them signed statements saying they were war criminals. Doug never did.
They wanted him out of there.
But Doug refused the order because he knew how much the other POWs looked down on the other early releasees.
And the Americans.
Stances changed. It was after he got out of solitary and they ordered him again and he accepted.
So he went out with two others.
And August, September 8th or 9th, somebody first week of August of 69.
And when he got to Washington and got debriefed, he rattled off the names of 254 POWs.
Now we had.
I'm sorry. No, that's okay. I know you're on a roll.
It's your book.
But the thing that I wanted to mention was, you know, he memorized the names of these 254 people.
So it's sort of like when you do memorize something, you have to go through the whole thing, or you'll forget somebody.
And the thing that I thought in the book that was so humorous was when they said, okay, well, who was there?
And he started going, you know, you know, Colonel this theory, major that.
And the guys are slow, slow down, slow down.
And because I can't slow down, it's like I'm on a bicycle.
If I slow down, I gotta go back to the beginning and start over again.
So they finally got wise and recorded them giving out all these names, but he did.
He memorized 254 names of which something like 60 some odd they'd never heard of before.
You are correct. And I was just going to say that Dale about recording them because he was going so fast.
Yeah. So we had, look, the North Vietnamese trumpeted some of the prisoners like John McCain.
Remember, his father was the chief of naval operations in the Pacific.
You know, they love that they took pictures of him, you know, friendly newspapers from other communist countries ran it.
So and they did it like they did like that for a few other people.
And we had Intel and we knew we knew the names of probably, I don't know, 100, 150, something like that.
It's not clearing me from all the research I did, but we had a fair number.
But when they went through Doug's names, they were able to change the status of 63 guys from missing in action to prisoner of war.
In other words, that they were alive and they notified the family.
So 63 families got word for the first time through Doug's information that their husband's father's son was alive, if not well, but at least in the prison.
So that was huge.
And the other thing is Doug, you know, because they they didn't think he was valuable to them, they gave him more freedom, you know, comparatively speaking to the other POWs.
I mean, they let him out of his cell more to do sweeping details and stuff like that.
So he was able to observe a lot that a lot of the other POWs didn't about stuff that was going on.
Plus, he reported firsthand here in the torture sessions and hearing other prisoners talk about it.
This was the first time that we had information about exactly how the POWs were being treated when the North Vietnamese were sort of claiming that it was humanitarian.
And they, you know, they bring friendly people over there and they had these staged press events where they gave him nice food and they cleaned him up and so on.
So it was it was a it was a big deal thing when Doug turned over that information.
But not just the names is what I'm saying.
No, I mean, as you said, you know, I forget what you said in the book about, you know, the nickname for they wasn't, you know, like the dumb one.
And the incredibly stupid one.
That's what the guards called him.
And, you know, and how he was able to play this off.
I'd like to kind of go back, you know, here's this guy.
You know, from Clark, what, South Dakota.
I mean, that's that's a that's a town of about nobody.
You know, maybe 150 people or something in those lines. And that's, you know, that's one of the great American stories that, you know, these, these people from these tiny towns all over the country that that, you know, become so important to the history and to,
you know, saving their fellow, you know, people in the military, that you know that we're not aware of them. And this is that this is what I liked so much about your book.
And this is, you know, this, you know, guy for this, you know, the Jimmy Stewart wonderful life stuff and I know, you know, this small town America, that is so cool and, and how he was kind of reluctant to, you know, be involved with with all of the
POW, you know, things that were going on after he got back. So could you kind of address that a little bit.
Yeah, sure. And you're right, Clark actually is a little bigger than that. They probably had about 1300 in Clark, but still it's an Eastern South Dakota. It's very simple.
And yeah, so, you know, after he his debriefing, he and one of the other guys who came back with did a press conference at the at Bethesda Naval Hospital where they were held for three weeks for all the psychological and physical tests and so on.
And that was the first time that that it was announced by people who knew how the North Vietnamese were really treating the POWs. And what happened after that was that very same day Ho Chi Minh died.
And there was a change in the Politburo treatment of the there was the North Vietnamese pop is there is a document resolution as somehow we have it. I've seen it.
Right, like a month after that, in which North Vietnamese, you know, put out this statement, you know, well, we treat POWs humanely. However, because we are good, we are going to be more lenient.
And you know what they were not just because of what Doug said, the Nixon administration was putting more pressure on the Johnson administration didn't really.
And because of Ho Chi Minh's death, but what Doug gave and the fact that the cat was out of the bag, you know, sort of speak about torture, and you read the POW members, I interviewed five POWs, they all say the same thing.
By the end of 1969, they were given three meals a day instead of two, the food improved torture did not stop but it abated significantly. So there's even a bigger, you know, macro picture part part of the story.
But to your point, you know, Doug, they sent Doug out around the country after he got out of Bethesda Naval. And he went to naval bases all over the country. He met with families, he was able to meet two or three people who they said, did you see my dad, you see my husband.
Yes, I did see him three weeks ago or whatever. And he did participate in other events to popularize the cause of the POWs but he got out of the Navy early in the fall of 1970, and he went to San Diego.
And you know where he wound up working at the Sears School there at Coronado.
Yeah, it's gonna ask you about that. Yeah, as a civilian.
We're talking, we're talking with Mark Leifson here and the author of the book is the unlikely war hero and it's just a great story. In fact, Tim O'Brien of the, you know, the things they carried is one of the finest nonfiction narratives to emerge from the Vietnam war.
And Mark, I have to really congratulate you and I agree with him entirely.
It's just a wonderful story of how this man, Boyd initially, man, survived this. I mean, when he got home, he suffered from survivor's guilt more or less.
And, you know, after a while, I thought he was kind of being played by the POW movement that was going on and he backed out.
And the last thing was, as you just mentioned, was that his job was to be part of the survival escape of resistance and survival evasion resistance and escape program in San Diego for 30 years.
Yeah, and he turned out it was he's a really good instructor.
I've heard from people who took the class and credited him with doing things that if not save their life really made things a lot easier for him.
Yeah, so, you know, I think, I think Doug performed one of the greatest acts of heroism in the Vietnam war outside of combat.
Think about thinking, you know what those interrogators did they, you know, tortured guys to within an inch of their life they tortured some to death.
And it worked.
And he was like if you ask POWs about early returnies, they get a sour face, but they almost invariably say, oh wait, except for Doug Higtal, because he came home and made things better for the families, made things better for the guys in Hanoi.
No, I did. And I just, I love the book.
I mean, I, you know, when you know the author and then you know the book, I just found it so so interesting when you to follow this, this man.
And I'm like, I don't want to give it all away.
He's still live.
But he's kind of in communicato with people that doesn't respond to a request of for, you know, talking to him about things.
But he lived, he lived with the stockwell family for a while.
Kind of stock. Yeah, yeah.
And some other people he and you know, they kind of lost contact with him. It seems like he did have some issues with his with his internment that, well, of course you would.
But I, you know, I, again, I encourage people to go out in this book, especially if you're a Vietnam veteran.
And you want to know a little bit more about what was going on in Hanoi and even what is going on.
This book is so thorough, folks.
He talks about the history of the Canberra, the cruiser that he was on.
It was the stuff I never knew.
It's so thoroughly researched and some great, just great information that lets you know what other branches are doing.
You know, earlier on we were talking with Marines and you learn a little bit more about what Marines do.
And now I learned a little bit about, you know, four guys living down in this steam room 20 hours a day.
But anyway, so in closing, I guess I better say, so Mark, what would you like to say about this book?
It is now available everywhere.
It is available, actually.
Yeah.
It's on the online bookstores. Your local bookstore should have it, like I said, even though the official pub date isn't.
In fact, there was a really great article in the independent newspaper UK reporter interviewed me.
And it came out a week ago today and we, I just wanted to say the book became the number one bestselling Vietnam War history book on Amazon last Sunday.
And now it's still up there number three. So yeah, it's called the unlikely war hero by Mark Leapson.
Read it. That's an order.
Okay guys. All right, we got to go.
I love it.
Thanks Mark.
All right, it was kind of a short program today, but we got it all in.
So I wanted to make sure that every week we go out on a version of God bless America and today's is done by Jimmy Fortin and Sonya.
Thank you yearly.
And it's just God bless America.
So all of you will see you next week.
We'll be back for all of us here.
God bless America.
Land that I love.
Stand beside her.
And guide her.
Through the night with a light from above.
From the mountains to the prairies to the oceans.
White with foam.
God bless America.
My home sweet home.
God bless America.
My home sweet home.
God bless America.
Land that I love.
Stand beside her.
And guide her.
Through the night with a light from above.
From the mountains to the prairies to the oceans.
White with foam.
God bless America.
My home sweet home.
God bless America.
My home sweet home.