Life Liberty Happiness - 8.13.2025

This is Life, Liberty Happiness with Brian Schly and Trent Warner, streaming live each week on Media Squatch Plus and available on demand in the app or wherever you get your podcasts. Real Talk, Real Freedom. All right, everybody, welcome to another episode of Life, Liberty Happiness. I'm your host, Brian Slive. We are live in the David Hollmaker State Farm Studios along with Trent Warner. Audie. Every week. Imma, ye know this week is a little higher up. Yeah, I'm a little I am excited too. Emma's pushing buttons every week and I get somebody to text me that just laughs at Emma. Oh yeah, we did get one. There was a group text that we got about this is just stuff you say or act One one we got was if it's the same one you're talking about. But we do get some is why does she act like she's forty or like you're like you're old, like you're trying to an old. It was something like that, right. Yeah, by eight o'clock last night. That man, we got a great show coming up. Yeah, American Hero Stories is back. Yes this week. Excited about that. Yep, We'll we'll be talking to veteran David Harker later. Uh, right, now we'll get to backwards and forwards, you know. Thank you. I had a fun time this weekend, mister Warner. I convinced I wanted to go. You took Ashley. Yeah, I did not know this. I thought when you asked if you me wanted to go South Boston. Reah raising, Yeah, I was gonna go by myself. And then I'm like, man, I'm not going to the race by myself. You take her in case that dude goes belligerent again, that she can take care of. No. Actually, she called and she said, are you still wanting to go to the races? Because I told you before I wanted to go to Caesar's. Yeah, for an hour or so and then slip on over to the race. And then I was like, ah, I'm not gambling. So she called me and she said, are you still wanting to go to the race? I said sure, So we decided to No you tack Reagan. Nope, So just two of you went and came back that night. That's a long night, isn't it. No? It was nice, man. What times you get on ten o'clock? Maybe? No, I'm sorry we left the track at uh so probably around midnight, but we did something different, you know, white angle lens. So you know, you know how I am about uh sitting amongst the common folks. I was worried about not being able to get a a Skylocks skybox seat, yeah, uh because there it wasn't available online and I'm like, oh no. So we get to the train and I asked the lady and she's like, yeah, Sweet two is available, and I was like, all right, we'll try that. So I thought it'd be neat to try a different Sweet right, because when you go online, the only option you get is one. I didn't know that the others were even an option. Huh. So we got Sweet two and it was nice. It's in this dead like straight up from the start finish line. I mean, can you see Sweet one? You could? You look through the windows, so it's right next door. Yes, okay, so the media is in between you, okay, which we need to get media passes and cover it an hotties. My wife went besides Ashley, no listen. That brings me to my next point. It is great to have a wife that either one or two things. She either enjoys the same things I do, or she sacrifices to do the things that I like. And I don't know which is which with her because she will never tell me, because even if she liked racing, she'd never given me the satisfaction of knowing she likes it. Huh. But she invited herself to. Yes, well that was nice of her. Yeah, and it was. I loved it. I thought it was phenomenal. How did our god do? He qualified bad? Which, so here's what kind of started it. You know. I picked up my truck Saturday morning, which was great. I saw down in the parking line. Didn't even add to him too. Yeah, after two months without my truck, I finally got it back. Yeah. Oh, don't get me started on Trevrolet. But anyway, I was so excited about that, you know. And I get a phone call from the owner of the car and he says, hey, just checking to see if you were coming tonight, and I was like, no, I just got my truck back, you know. And uh, I just thought it was so neat that he called me and just check on things and you know, make. Sure but you did go, did you tell? Yeah? And so he had said, man, do think we got a good car? Tonight. He said, we came down to practice last night and we were within the tenth of the lead, and he said, we were second on the practice board. I don't know what happened in qualifying, but he ended up tenth and then he drove up and then I think he finished six or seven. So it wasn't a horrible night, but no stretch. What's his name? Corey Done? Yeah? Did Bob Davis? Was he there? Oh? That was the fun part. So he passed Bob and as he's passing Bob, he gets into him a little bit, shoves Bob up the track, and then a caution comes out from something else behind them. So I was like, oh, no, aqua, Bob is not gonna be happy about this, and so sure enough, man, it looked like he just ran it down and turned one as soon as they went back. And when he did, I don't know if Corey got on the brakes just to no prepare because he was going to run in the back of him. Oh okay, and I think Corey must have hit the brakes, pop hit, but then turn left and hit the wall, tore his car to pieces, and I don't just got a little dent in the back of Corey's so good for Corky. Anyway, it wasn't a lot of wrecks. So Ashley was like, he's all right, and I'm like, man, the racing was incredible. Huh yeah, it was fun. They had a fourteen year old win. Oh so he did? This is the from Stanton River Middle School? No? What? This is it from New York? No way? Yes? Wow, phenomenal and I mean unbelievable. He's a Krantz junior. I can't remember what his first name was. It's amazing. Wow, a fourteen year old racing men. So anyway, that was fun. Yeah, what about you this weekend? Mmm? I think it was just a pool weekend. Really didn't do anything nice. You and Ginger just man Ginger, Marty's been on vacation all week with the boys, so he's love with the dog by just holding down a fort. Emma. I'm afraid to ask, Oh, wow, you would I. Ski all weekend? How'd that go? It was fine? Something? Well, I was sore as can be because our boat doesn't have enough umph to it yet. I don't know, there has to be something wrong, so it like won't get on top of the water fast. Well, when you water ski, you need to pop right on top of that water. If not, you're standing in your ball for one hundred yards. So that's what I had to do. What's that's what I had to do. Did you say standing in your ball. Sitting on your ball with your skis together. I don't know anything about it. I'm assuming what you mean is your plane your boat, trying to get your boat on plane and it just wouldn't. Yeah, So Dad's standing on top of the boat, jumping, trying to get the nose down. Okay, as I'm doing like and as I'm dying back there, but eventually I popped up. I don't just start off a dock. Just my grandfather did that. He would not get wet when he skied. He would start on dock and he would go around the lake and you'll come back and land right on shore. Wow, never get wet. That's awesome. Good, all right? This weekend when you got Trent nothing playing, I'm heading tomorrow morning picking up pat my mom. Yeah, and we're heading to North Myrtle Beach. Oh, she hadn't been. You know, Mom goes six or seven times during the summer. She hadn't been all year huh and so and Reagan hadn't been, so I thought I'll get a quick trip and the dude, I totally forgot volleyball season. Oh that's right. So Reagan of course made volleyball, so she can't go. So it's just me and Pat. That'd be fun. Oh yeah, I'm looking forward to it. My mom and me and my mom have the same relationship as you and yours. Just you can sit around t f hat all day. You know, with man hurts drinking beer. Well, with me and Pat, it's tea. Is your sister going your brother? Nope? Just me? Huh Yeah. Let's see if Carolina and Kevin will go. Yamn, you got anything coming? Yeah, my sister's moving into Clemson, so Dad and I get to fill the minivan with all of her crap because she's in Colorado, so she doesn't get to. Do that part. What you're a great sister. Yeah, Dad and I are stuffing Oliver three hundred and twenty. Six books and in. The minivan and taking a six hour drive down to Clemson on Frat. Wow, moving everything in. I wonder if she's going to the the first game of the year. She is. She got season tickets oh. They got they got a big game. Who is it? Ellis ulus? You? That's right? The bad when it again? The Death Valley versus Death Valley? Is it again? Second? First weekend? The thirty first? Right? So yeah, the thirty Yeah. Our labor day. Speaking which programming programming? Note, Yes, I've got to ask you. We've got Aeron Stam coming to do the preseason special. Yep, so he's going to do the college football special. But it's going to be the third hour next week? So are we doing a three hour show? Not next week the week after. Taking off that morning? No, So August twentieth, he's coming in for the third hour and we're playing it on the twenty seventh. That's right, Yes, no, but I put up a hell of an argument. The twenty seventh is when we're interviewing Judge Krantz. That's right. So what I was asking is are we going to play the third hour live as a show or are we going to do now? I mean, can I finish that question? So? How are we going to interview Judge Krantz and do Aaron Stam in the same twenty seventh? We're going to do the show an interview just like we're doing today, right, and the college football preview will be released on its own, so it's not gonna be a part of the show, I don't think so. I'll just released it as Life Liberty Happened is College Football Preview with Aaron Stam sounds good. I've already done the promos and everything. Yeah, I just did it. She cut it quick, good bumper. I actually think you used to have one. I think what he went crazy and deleted everything on here though. So anyway, Yeah, moving on this day in history. This day in history, nineteen sixty one, Trent. Yeah, I was kind of shocked. At that date the Berlin Divide was created. So that's when East and West Germany they started. They literally brought in troops to put up razor wire. I would have thought I'd been long before that. I would have thought so too. Huh nineteen sixty one. You sure you looked that up right? Yes? And the wall wasn't built till after that. That sounds absurd. Yes, one don't have been right after the. War, so no, So yeah, the line of East and West was after the war. Yeah, but they had issues with people defecting so much that they put up the razor wire in sixty one. Shouldn't that be an example of why you don't want communism? People weren't leaving them one side going to the other side. They were going from the one side always to the other side. Correct, they were going from west east. To west to west right communism trying to leave, yeah, to capitalism or independence. Yeah, I'll have to check to see when the actual wall was built. Yeah, but it was definitely after that. So interesting. Some the history I got tomorrow is actually tomorrow, but it's in the chain of events of our last three Now this stay in history. Oh so two times ago you talked to us about the USS Independence or the USS Indianapolis getting sunk. Yep, but that's after it carried the nuclear weapon or the bomb Adam bomb components took them to Hawaii. On the way out, is when it got shot down or torpedoed, right, not shut down, but sunk. Yeah, Okay that if they had done it on the way in, the material would. Not have been there. And then last week you got mad at me because I said, well, I looked up and it was just seven days later is when the bomb actually hit And say that was last week's YEP. Well tomorrow. In nineteen forty five is when Japan said we're done. So each each of those sequences, three times in a row has been this day in history. Nineteen forty five, Japan accepted the terms of the unconditional surrender. Man, growing up in those days, could you imagine, yeah, the twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, in that range, growing up then? Did you get to watch Unbroken for the movie? No, it was last week's drama. Gotta watch that. It's really good Orld War two Unbroken? Right, yep, all right, Moving on to American history stories. The American dream is built on freedom, and that freedom comes at a cost. American Heroes stories presented by Life Liberty Happiness is a new series honoring the men and women who've sacrificed to protect that dream. We're proud to play a small part in preserving their stories for future generations. Life Liberty Happiness, a Media Squatch podcast, presents American heroes stories. All right, folks, welcome to the program. US Army in Vietnam veteran David Harker, welcome to the program. Thank you, Rian, good to be here. All right, let's kick it off with where it all started. Where were you born and raised? Was born in Letchburg, Virginia, some of the eighth nineteen forty five. My parents just moved from Newport News at the end of the war. Had brother, older brother, and sister, and I was the third of the seventh. So the last five of us were born here in Lynchburg. Oh wow, And you went to Brookville I did? Yes, Yeah, a great community. Yeah. School was a life in church back then. That was a social life and the life of the community. A real close knit community Brookfield, Timberlake area. So what was high school like? Were you an athlete? Was? I played football? I played baseball and I ran track. Yes. Now Brookville has a history in football. Now they've got a pretty good, pretty good track record of winning. Program was a good back in those days. We won the district championship my junior and senior years. Yeah. Oh wow. I was a starting half back and a linebacker at one hundred and thirty five pounds soaking wet, probably I had to fire and me yeah, uh, really good program. John bucker Hill was a coach and Click mc kenna did the backfield. We had two coaches and wow, yeah, and of course the district was all you wanted, no state playoffs or any regional playoffs or anything. So well, ye had Appomattox and Alta Vista were the powers to deal with Yeah. Crazy Yeah kind of still are in their groups. Yeah yeah, or at least mathomatics for sure more recently. So, Uh, what what got you into your like? What started your military service? What was your motivations? Uh? My unmotivation? I had academic problems of Virginia Tech, and I had to sit out. Uh so young people listening, Uh, do not neglect your studies or get deterred. Uh. So I had to sit out a quarter. Uh. They took me back at Mead Corporation, where I worked in the laborpool. I worked during the summer and laborpool and made enough money to pay my tuition to school. They took me back early. I flunked out of the winter quarter. So I was planning on re enrolling in the fall quarter and I come home one day. First I had to change my I had to tell the draft board that I was no longer a full time student, So my two S student deferment status changed to one A immediately. I came home on four or five weeks later and my mother handed me the greetings letter. Yeah yeah, So off I went to the United States Army. So you were at Virginia Tech. So what year would that have been. It's nineteen sixty seven. I was in my third year. Wow in a business, Holy cow and man. One bad semester and next thing you know, you got a slip. Let me tell you a little story about that too. Because my father in law was old Navy veteran. My wife and I dated in high school, didn't get married till I came back home because we'd broken up somewhere along the way. But I was still, you know, good friends with Clarence great man. And so I went by and said, Clarence got my draft notice. He said, well, David, let me tell you something. If you go, before you go get inducted, you know, into the military, you can go join any branch of service you would want to. I said, well, I didn't know that. He said, yep. And my advice would be go join the United States Army because you'll have three squares meal, three square meals a day, you'll have a warm bunk to sleep in every night, and nobody will be shooting at you. So I used to tell that story in the pow camp and the guys would laugh and they said, why didn't you follow his advice? I said, well, when I found out that i'd have to extend, you know, you know, for another year, I only wanted to do two years and go home. So I ended up with an involuntary extension along the way. Wow, I did more than my two year draft years. All right, so where you're drafted? Where's basic training at Ford Bragg, North Carolina, North Carolina? Yep? Yeah, and a eight two best damn company on the hill, sergeant, let's go, sergeant. So were you I mean, were you terrified? Were you fearless? What I mean? What are your emotions at that stage? No, I was just waking up real quick. I said, oh, okay, here I am. And when I'm at a train, I'm thinking, hmmm, I had a better deal of Virginia Tech than this, you know, getting up at five in the morning, going out double time, marching you know, about an hour, and coming back and cleaning the barracks up. Yeah, yep, I was just a little old PFC. So were you thinking? Were you knowing that at that point that Vietnam is a reality? And is that has that set in or is it even thought process at that At that point. Well, Virginia Tech. My good friend Steve Nice was in Shanks the one with me and down the hall, and we'd watch Walter Crime quite every evening, and yeah, we were where the war was going on on you that you know, the numbers were increasing, you know, that involvement and military involvement, and uh so, yeah, where it really hit me is when I got to Fort Pope, Louisiana and like a Spec for sat us down and said, okay, guys, you're gonna go to Vietnam after you finish advanced infantry training. It's like whoa, Yeah, I knew it was coming, but so you said a Spec four, Yes it is fourth class. Okay, yeah, you'd think a major general will be telling you that, right. Wow. Now did you choose infantry or they just told you or was that something you wanted to be? That was the process when I my G three testing was really good when I came to the Army. So first Lieutenant brought me into the office. I'm sure he said, you know, we could send you to OCS and you could pick any branch you want, you know, I said, well, I'm interested in flying, maybe helicopters, and again the idea of he told me, well, you'd have to extend you at least give us three years to you know, go to helicopter school and then you know, go off to Vietnam. But h I said, well, I'll just do my two So I deferred for infantry. Holy cow. All right, So you're down in Louisiana. Oh yeah, it's hot Tiger Land. Yes, it's miserably hot down there. How long are you there? For? Nine weeks? Nine weeks? Yep? So what's after nine weeks? Home for thirty days and then shipping to Vietnam. When I left Poke, I had my orders. I had orders originally for the ninth Infantry Division. Do you remember, Like, how do you got back home? I mean where do you like? We had a guest on him earlier. He hitchedhike. You know, it wasn't exactly. Did you have transportation to be able to get back on from Yeah? Yeah, the military gives you flight page. It flew back from New Orleans back to Richmond, Virginia. And a friend of mine, Jerry Goff, that went to school with me. He and I we're on the buddy system, and we ended up drafted together. Oh wow. We ended up in basic and advanced infantry training. We ended up in the same infantry company in Vietnam. But his parents picked us up and drove us back from Richmond. Yeah, all right, so let's see. So your next plane ride, I guess, is overseas. At that point it is about nineteen hours. Yeah, are you what type of plane are you in? Are we're in a wow? Tell me it was a commercial out. We flew commercial airline. We flew commercial airliners. Had stewards now here we are, you know. In our dress uniform. We've got orders and we've got Air Force Army and all. On the same flight we landed ben Wan. We didn't go out there respective military units. I went the ninetih replacement there it ben Wah. But anyway, so we flew I'm trying to think of the air base there, and well, first I flew from d C from Reagan air or Kennedy Airport out to San Francisco. Again the military paid for that. But then we got on the commercial airliners there. I was in a holding area there for about six days or so, and then they would load us up by groups and so it flew to Hawaii. That's a route we took. It was a northern route they took, but I flew the middle route and then from there to Guam. So we're flying in the night time the whole time, and we've got you know, movie up on the screen and all. And it's interesting. When we flew into Hawaii, they let us get off the plane while they refueled going to the airport. Well, I'm sitting beside a man that's got orders for the air force, and he's all upset, you know, he said, ah, you know, I said, well, I'm infantry. You know, I ought to be a little more worried than you. Just calm down. You could probably be at a secure base, you know. You you're not going to be out hunting down the enemy. And so get back on the plane. And he does not get back on the plane. He jumped ship. He went he went a wall only cow and the. Stewards came through a little while later and said with so and so I said, yeah, she got his papers. And I don't know whether they arrested him later or not, but you can't hide out too much, I think in Hawaii there. Yeah, yeah, and it'll bind you. Yeah, I've never it never crossed my mind that that's a reality. But sure. I mean you're eighteen years old at this point, right. Well, Brian, you know you think about it. Here you are operating search and destroyed missions in the middle of these villages, rice paddies up in them, and you just don't think about dying. You don't think about getting ambush. You just yeah, you just it's not in your mind. You know, when you do get hit, yeah, that will come later. Yeah, that's yeah. Then that's when, Yeah, the fierce it's in and yeah, the chaos of combat. Did you think you were trained as an infantryman ready for it? I like, were you confident going that you had been training? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And fire and movement was one of the strategies I use, a group of men moving up under the base of fire from the other and and just uh, yeah, it's a different type of warfare. I mean, Vietnam changed things a little bit in the types of warfare. And so I guess the war had been going a couple of years, so you had some people that knew, Yeah, I guess the best way to fight, Trent. I've read we were soldiers once in young and that group of the first Calf. Those guys had their hierarchy, their officers and n CEOs had seen combat in Korea. Yeah, and you talk about they went over as the Union and as time went on, some of those men rotated out, so they lost that. But that just and that you know, with the Eyedrang they held a day and a lot of it is due to those guys. And see, you know, we were wet behind the ears in my union. You know, we didn't have seasoned leaders. But anyway, but yeah, everything was still kind of still new, sort of new. For you right in the guerrilla warfare. You know, it doesn't translate into convincial war like we had been in in Europe. You know, even you know, Japanese had lines and you moved them and assaulted and we probably lost more people than we did in you know, in the European theater. But yeah, it's still though, yeah, yeah, mm hmm. All right, so your first you know a couple of nights there, what's you know, what's that? Like? What's you I'm assuming you've landed now you're in uh An area. When you start realizing, all right, this is what are what we're going to be doing here. Yeah, well it's hurry up wait in the military. So I'm there at this replacement uh barracks type. Yeah, the trains were interesting. Welcome to pulling out drums, you know, out in and burning them. Yeah uh so, But so there was just kind of boredom. Did have Thanksgiving, they had a really good Thanksgiving meal. I still have the program from the Wow. Yeah we did. So when I get orders and fly out that July, my orders changed from a ninth Infantry Division to the one I six Light Infantry Division, and so we flew up to Cheulib North near Danang, about fifty miles south of Danang, up in that area in the Quayson area, and so that's where I got with my unit. But I was still in Brigade Headquarters company area and so it was a secure area down by the beach. Roger Stawbach was down on the beach with a Navy group. They said he'd throw the football. You know, I never saw Roger, but he was down there with you know, with the Navy. They had an air base there and I don't know what his duties was, but he'd be throwing the football. And then they trained us and we did have a little in country training, and then when I flew out to my company, that's when then, yeah, here we are welcome to Firebase Central and up on the hillside, I don't know, five hundred and six hundred meters up in the air artillery guns in the middle of this fire base CI they have infantry has perimeter around to keep the enemy from getting to our guns. And so. The battalion that I was in was on this firebase and one company pulled security while the other three companies were out doing search and destroy, and then they would rotate around. So I'd only been there about three or four days, and we got relieved and we walked off the firebase into the no man's land in the enemy territory, off a firebase, and my first night, we were just moving very slowly at dusk under cover of darkness, got down the mountain side and we just sat up just right in the middle of a rice paddy, and I woke up with a leech on my lip had swollen up from getting blood. Flipped it off, and off we went next day. We worked a whole month of December out in the area Quayson Queson, not Quaison, but and Marines were in that area too. We're probably about fifty miles southwest of the nang and An area that the hundred and first Airborne had been in that area because I saw the screaminggal Eagle magazines and the huts we'd go in and so we'd go from village to village. You know, I don't know what our orders was. I was just a PFC, but you know we had a certain area to move to, in a certain territory to cover. In that whole month of December, every four days we'd get resupplied with sea rats, sea rations and if we didn't get socked in, and one time we got socked in, so we didn't get food for seven days. So we extended. We started getting right big and rice from the peasant people there and cooking it up. So that's how we operated. No showers, no nothing, just you know, moving every day, sleeping, set up. Positions at night. And yeah, is the group of you just a fire team of four or is it a skoy? This was a whole company, is us? My company was undersized? You know, two hundred men usually makes up a line company. We probably I did a count one time about ninety people in my company. So each platoon was really you know, short of men. Yeah, and each platoon will go out. No, we moved just a whole body of people. Yeah, what's Golf with your buddy? Golf? Was he was still with you? He was in a different squad. Yeah, Jerry was with us. Wow. He was a machine gunner. He had the big old machine gun. I had a little light sixteen and he had an ammal barrel with him. You know the machine gunners did. And what are you looking for? Actually when you're doing is it just the enemy that has guns? We're just looking? Yeah, make contact? Yeah, if we can, you know, surprise them and yeah, but you know you don't surprise them. They're tracking you and they know where you are and I'll find out later. Yeah, well when you are in their country and they know it, like absolutely, we know our own ridges. Yeah, so you're when you see your first gunfire battle. January of the eighth, nineteen sixty eight, the day I was captured. We did not have contact with the enemy that whole month we were out, And the end of January they did a Hello lift. They took us by helicopter over out of this hinterlands west of tam Kee, the provincial capital, over to the beach east of where we were about twenty minute flight thirty minute flight, and we did a combat assault there and did round up some Vietcong people, but didn't have any engagement with them, and then they put us on a deuce in half and took us back to brigade headquarters the thirty first of December, and we were supposed to have what you called in country R and R. We came into brigade headquarters. We dropped a gear weapons a perimeter around us so we were safe, and we got hot shop hours. We had a day. Area, and about the third day we were there, we were supposed to be there six days and so we got called back out and we had chinooks that took us back out at They carry about thirty combat loaded guys as opposed to Hui's and dropped us in the Hepduc area. There's a different area of operation for another brigade of our another battalion of Hours, and the company had been wiped out a few days before we walked back up on firebase end up. When we got up there that night, Company Sea of Second or the first got hit and it was it was like the fourth of July. You could see the rounds, the green rounds, the enemy rounds, and the helicopter was trying to run support and we ended up joining them as POW's Frank Anton's crew. They got shot down that night, and so anyway, we in the guns were off all night, they were shooting flares out. And so the next day we walked off firebase, picked up helicopters, went into that area where you know, they had already removed the bodies and there were still stacks of North Vietnamese troops around that hadn't been removed. And so that's kind of the first time in the helicopter. Anton's helicopter had a tail boom up in the air. He had to auto rotate, had a rice paddy dyke, and but they had already booby trapped it, and so and we would look and the crew was missing. They were missing in action. The co pilot had had made it back to friendlies. He got back to an Orbon camp, but the other three on a helicopter, Anti and the pilot and two door gunners and crew chief Robert Lewis and Jim Feaster were missing in action. I ended up being prisoners with them in Jong three years. Yea, So tell us of out how that goes down. I guess how do you get become a prisoner? At that point, we uh set up camp. That night. We went into the area where they had been hit, and you could tell. I saw one of them had they had a perimeter set up, and I saw a bush hat with great matter in it. Okay, that hadn't been removed from the area, so I could just iron envision, you know, when the men haddies. Uh, but instead of it still thought put his bush hat on, you know, not relaxing. But he knew somebody and they hit him I think from within. I think they had spider holes inside and hit him from outside, and UH killed a lot of I'm just pretty much wiped to come now. Anton said that when they rolled in on the gun ship, uh, he wanted flares on both sides, but he only got one flare, so he didn't know where to put his gun fire. So by the time he came back around, he got hit hydraulics knocked out, so he had to auto rotate and hit the ground and get off the ship. So we set up that night. We thought we were gonna get hit, but we didn't, and we walked operated a couple of days, just sweeping down through the valley with a couple of the companies, trying to locate the enemy. And the third day we swept down started early in the morning, about noontime. We broke lunch and the other company set up. We set up a perimeter, and a helicopter brought us some resupplies and took some gunfire. So that's when a squad of men left. The company CEO got on a horn and said, hey, you know, need a couple of riflemen for each platoon, and so about twenty of us. I did not have a good appetite. The other guys were eaten. I didn't volunteer usually, but I picked up my weapon and I went off. With the group. We did a fire and moving into the village where we'd been early in the day. And we got into the village of just women and kids in there screaming, and you know, we didn't hit anybody, but they were down. Uh yeah, so civilians were caught right in the middle. That that always bothered me a lot. Uh But and so they forgot to tell us. We decided to go in the village Catacorna back across the Low River and go into that village. Uh online, and maybe they were that they forgot to tell us that's where they were. So by that time Captain rolland Belchum, my commanding officer, had joined us with his r t O, with the Ford Observer and his r t O, and uh we set up a little staging. Area right on the banks of the Low River. And Belcher said, Okay, we're gonna get on, make a file of men, get online, and we're going to go into the village. So I'm the last man and a file of men and uh. So I'm in the middle of the river. Men in front of me, some of them are ready, kind of set, ready to go into the village, waiting for all of us. And I got my sixteen up at poured arms because the river is pretty swift. It's up, you know, almost to my waist and pretty you know. And I hear mortars going down the tube and I said, we don't have a fire mission. And I knew then. And what they did. They walked the mortars in on the men who were already out in the open and pushed them right into the ambush and just withering fire and killed the last I saw Captain Belcher. He was running point. Now the Captain's supposed to be back there. We left the rear support of five men, all of them enlisted guys. I don't even know whether anyone above the rank of e Ford, but anyway killed him as rt O. They killed the rt O, so we didn't have any radio contact. And I come across the river and I joined as a creek that comes into the river, and they've five men have gotten sheltered behind that creek bank, including my first sergeant, Richard Frank Williams, who had been in combat in Vietnam, and he became our leader. He was in charge now, and it's good to have good leadership. Top was forty one years old, and so he got us together and we fought them off. They came, they were on top of us, and they would come down and they couldn't see us crossing this path to assault guys on the other side of the river that we left his wrist suppard and we were shooting them and dropping them. We had a machine gun across from. Us to our backs. We were facing them because we had our bax to the creek bank and so we told him, you know, to start firing, and the gun was not operating. And last, you know, the next thing, I look and they were gone. They weren't there. So we were on our own. We started throwing grenades and yeah, it's like I said, it's it's hectic, it's chaos. It's just a deafening noise, all the gun fire and all. And so they don't hit any of us, and we're throwing the age. And I think, and this is what I believe, just you know, from thinking about it, and you know, the way they operate, they usually would overrun you and take prisoners, overrun you, kill anybody. You know that once they control the battle, either hide on back in the bush if if you held a day, well, they were in charge, and so I think they had orders to take prisoners. I believe that, okay, And so they pulled back. Well they the little lull top said, okay, we're gonna low crawl because we got this creek bank and we're going to shorten the distance across the open rice paddy back down CP. You know, because in the open rice paddy with fire, you know, you get shy in. But that's about all we can do is get back and try to fight another day. So we start low Crawley and we get to the place where the creek bank levels off, and we can see him there walking in the tree line. So we start moving and hoping, and they spotted us by the time, and we got a creek bank up behind us. Now we got to go over that. And I'm Michael Oliver, and I had the last two men down in the creek bed, and once they spot us, they start firing. Top goes over and he yells back. He said, the next man comes up, you got to get down quick. He said, this fire's heavy. He got, well, Ali, I'm looking at him. He's got this ashen look on his face. Wirey country boy from Tennessee. He'd been in country eight months, so you know, I'm the low guy. He goes up and over the right and he starts screaming. He gets just torn up. He didn't get down. And then I hear Top trying to keep him from going into shop, and he says, Oli, just take it easy. He said, take it easy. He said, I'm hit two. You know, he had already taken a round through his hand. Top had and hadn't said a word you know, and that was the first I knew, you know. And then Oli just dies and he said, Harker just holds your position. He else other guys. You know, we're using the boys command, and you know, we're gonna get help. See he's gonna come up, you know and help us out. And well they start coming at us, and so we start we're shooting them and revert again. They took it wasn't a normal way of operating, so they had that had orders because they could have swept it and just done us in. You know, they out number us, went about twenty to one, and so so for about two hours that's how they try to out maneuver and get around to us. In fact, one time during the day, somebody yells says, some friendly is coming up behind. So out of the six of us' vive Oli's been killed. So there are only five of us. I find out latest Sargeant Booker got killed of the group that had gone up and over the Rice Patty. And anyway, so. One of the men. Rapped the initial ambush, Vince Coglin from Philadelphia. I've taken training with Vince. His sixteen had jammed up, so we only had five weapons. We had two seventy nine grenade launchers in three sixteen's which in the whole lot. But anyways, again they try, well somebody else, No, it's the enemy. Anyway, They're still coming to us, and time's passing, and I hear at some point a voice, rapid Vietnamese voice. Rapid fire voice. The tonal sounded the language, and and Top stands up and I'm right below him, and I look up. I turned in a ninety degree. I'm still down in the prone as low as I can get. And the Vietnamese that picks him up has a pith helmet on. He's got his AK forty seven. And Top told me he didn't have his steal pot on because during the day around hit his steel pot and ripped it off like a can opener. Holy cow, it's a two piece set with a web gear and plastic piece with a steel pot down on it. So he stands up and he knows it. So he diverts a guy from me, and so I lay back down, and I don't have Top anymore, So. I got you. Are you by yourself? Now? Yeah, I'm the most forward man these other guys he's and he's gone, So now you're just you're just laying there. But let me back up, because I tell this, I have a testimony. Grew up in a good Christian family, made a profession of faith when I was nine years older. Westl'ship Baptist Church. So when we get to that point where we pin down again, I'm lying there and they're coming at us, and I said, it's no way, this twenty two year old, I'm not going to live for the rest of the day. It's no way I'm going to make it through this. I know that in my. Mind, and God gave me to live as Christ to Die's gain came through my mind, and. So I said, I believe. I believe, you know, in the resurrection, and I just hope the bullet hits me and I'm gone quick. Yeah. So that called me down, just that verse. It kept going to live as Christ to die is gain. That kept going through my head. That called me down, and I said, yeah, and I'll fast forward and back up a little. My father joined the Gideons because a friend asked him to. With a thought. Here's what he told me, which is a long stretch that if one of my captors would get one of those little Bibles and read it and half salvation, I would get better treatment. Well, well guess what my dad didn't know. But we've been there about eleven months and interpreted. Mister Home brought in idioan Testament that had been on one of the men that was captured, James Alexander Daily from Brooklyn, New York. The Gideons gave him there at the conduction center in Brooklyn, and he had it only when he was captured, and they kept that person and they brought it in and mister Holmes said, this little book. Camp had talked personality, hierarchy, had talked, talked about, well, this little book has something to do with this holiday that's coming up first of December, and said, okay, you can choose some words out of this and we'll prove them or not, you know, whether you can say them, you know. And so the first thing when I grabbed that book, I'm looking to live is Christ to die is gain Philippians won twenty one. Okay, Now I learned memory versus in church, but that anyway, so they forgot to take the Little Gideon Testament back. So we secreted it away in the thatch roof. Yeah, and I would you know, read it great source of comfort and help my faith. You know, it was my strength and helped me. You know, God becomes real in a situation like that. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, so the backa top stepped. As I'm laying back down or getting off my elbows and down, I'm thinking the creek takes me back into the lower river of you know, darks coming here soon. And as I look as an infantryman right on top of me of Vietnamese and he's got his ak, and so I plant my sixteen in the ground and I stand up. When I stand up from me to where she's sitting, two North Vietnamese troops were bent over one of their dead who had almost made it to us, had a big gut wound, and they were taking his ammo and his gun. You know, they were. Policing the area, and they hadn't seen me till I stood up almost at me, and they came over and they stripped me down, and they put a man in charge of me that had a out arm, and so I figured he was an officer. They had rifles. They went around policing up the dead Americans, getting all amo and weapons off of them. And this guy's in charge of me, and they owned the battlefield. He's walking in front of me back to this village where they ambush, where they were coming from and attacking us, And so I'm frantic. Had been taught to escape as soon after capture as possible, which you know, makes a lot of sense, don't get you. Know, I've got the guy. I've got my hand over his mouth, I got his arms pinned to his side, and I got to kill him. But I can't make any noise. He's got a ban at in the scabbard, and I try to get the banet out a scabbard and I can't. It won't come out. And the struggle, you know, he starts screaming bloody murder, and I mean, it's like you just on rapid fire your brain. There's a trail that we've been on, and it's funny. I'm thinking, I'm pretty fast, you know, and when it would steal second base, you know, I was a lead off guy. I'm pretty quick, you know, ran to two twenty four forty, I said, But I got my co when I'm thinking about my combat boots slowing me down. But I well, anyway, and the struggle, he gets the bear that out. He stabs me in the back, just a superficial wound. I had some complications from it. Later. I get his forty five American issued colt off of him, and I put up to his head and he wheels away from him and it's. Not locked and loaded. Oh wow. So I look up and it looked like a North whole North Vietnam's army standing around with a weapon. So uh yeah, and I got punished for that. We walked at night and they they duck wing me and they tied my arms. My arms swelled up the about three times and I had no feeling in them, and the more I try to get loose and tighter they got I've probably never been the excruciating pain like that. But anyway, so they took us back and to the village, and about that time, American artillery started coming in right in the village, and I think they put me down in a hole, and I thought I'm gonna die from my own artillery, yeah, and getting killed by it, but it's subsided. And then they started walking me down this trail. They took my combat boots off of me so I wouldn't try to get away again, and as I'm walking, I'm in this mindset that they don't take prisoners. That's how we trained. They're gonna kill me. They're gonna kill me, and I'm smelling dead bodies, and I think they got a common grave. But anyway, they take me to an old French house that's out. I guess they French plantation out there, stuck o roof and all you know, mostly just pool peasant villages, straw roof and but this was a plantation home. They had the headquarters set up. They were coming and go in. They had como where I strung out, and there's top and there's franchise Gene Cannon and there's Jim Strickland. Strickland had been captured. He was with the group that most would killed. He said that the men that you're supposed to stand up and attack the most intense fire, that the training, well, your natural instincts to hit the deck. And he said people were hitting the deck rather than standing up and assaulting them. And he said the bullets were going through the rice paddy dykes, killing guys. But he said. Around hitting near him and locked him out, and when. He woke up, they were already dragging him off a battlefield with como wire around him, but he was Strickland Cannon had been with my group and he had gotten to a point had way. He had a bird's eye view and he was telling the top you got somebody coming to your right front about twenty meters away. In Top without exposing himself with his wounded hand, would set that M seventy nine. And during the day Tops M seventy nine exploded on him, and OLI that died there beside him had a basic load at him seven. So he started using OLiS. But anyway, so yeah. Were you with all that firefighting are you and you just had the M sixteen? Are you running out of am I? Or are you trying to conserve it? Or you did no thought? I just you just yeah, Well they're not coming, you know in past, you know they just one of two occasional top wud say you just spray out front with automatic? I still on automatic? No, I still have Yeah I still had that. Oh yeah, Wow, you're listening to life Delivery to Happiness. We're talking with Army veteran David Harker. Take a breath for a second. David, You've only been I mean, honestly, just December and January, right, I mean six week did you just tell yourself, well, I just got here and I just got there, and it was like, oh man, your whole you're just trying to learn how to fight and you're captured only right. Yeah, yeah, what what do you are? You? Are you guy? That? It's interesting and that's six weeks. It's funny how you build up that spree, that camaraderie, that closeness to other guys that are you know, and I can name you know, my commanding officer, rolland Belcher, twenty seven years old up on firebase. I got to talk to him just briefly one time and just you know, great guy, great guy. And he dies there, you know, believing in democracy and freedom. Yeah, just left the family and all. And my platoon leader, Frank Severerts, he died out there near Belcher and he was from out of New Jersey. He was a horse guy album Ware County. You know. Just yeah, those guys that died, they just have a lasting impression and not modeling. Just that's I remember them because you have to move on. You can't sit there and cry. Don't want to sound ignorant either in your training, are you guys trained on what to do as prisoners, how to be a prisoner, or is this still so new to you that you guys have to learn on the fly. We had an eight day course Trent, Oh. Yeah, and it mainly consisted of they gave us some raw chicken and some rice or something, and we were supposed to cook that. We had instructions on you know, if you're captured, you know, in the bleachers. But then that night they gave us. That evening they gave us this food. We're supposed to cook it. And then we're supposed to go trails into the forest there at Ford Poke and there are people posing a via cong and they grabbed some of the guys. Vince Coglan, who's weapon jammed up. He played dead, He survived. He pulled bodies over him. He was one of our six had made it back, you know, besides me, Toping Canon died in captivity. But he. Said, David, and I'll tell you the story when I get back to Fort, to the hospital there in Pennsylvania where you know, I doing my recuperation and going through debriefing and all Valley Forge Army Hospital. I come back to the ward one day after undergoing examinations and tests and all, and there's Vince Cogglin's I did not know what happened Vince for five years and two whiles. And there it's like a ghost, he said, David, he said, I pulled the bodies over me. And he said when they pulled the bodies off, all they wanted was my. Sake of old watch. He said. They almost broke my wrists. They didn't check my pulse anything. So he lay there dead and they moved on out and he got picked up a day or so later when the army came in and secured the area and he fought some more. Yeah, he was a firefighting with the Philadelphia Police Department, one of the fire department. He died back some years ago. Wow. But anyway, so yeah, and now you're captured, and where do they put you now that you're in there? We capture. We walked about ten days back to the plantation. They're coming to go and they take us off one at a time and interrogate us. And again they get to kill me. I'm not going to live and they're starting to interrogate me, and the guy speaks very poor English. What is your unit anyway? And I'm saying, you know, David Harker US five two nine three nine name rank, service, numbing day of birth. Okay, I give him that, and he ain't buying that. And he makes it pretty clear that they got the power of life and death. Were you supposed to stand your ground? Well, when you have a weapon, maybe, but you know, here you are, you're on your own. It's just like okay, And yeah, it was rough. And at one point I got wise. I said, a unit like a unit on a stove. Well, they didn't know what a stove was or you you know, that's the only thing I could come up with. But he did, I know, he said to him, it's a wise guy. I'm going to take him out and shooting if he didn't get right. And they all started laughing at whatever he said to him, you know, because the riflemen was standing around. There were people that were doing the working going on, but some of them were there watching. Took me back. Anyway. We walked that night under artillery brags BE fifty two bombing close by, and just kept moving. And so about that sixth day we came to the village. Now we're getting farther away from friendlies, we're going farther west into their territory where you know. Up in the mountains of trunks on mountain. Range, and they do an interrogation again in this village and again, you know, I don't want this. I've had enough. You know, I did survive combat, but I don't want you know, I don't have any military very secrets, but I don't want to be pushed. To the limit. And so they take me down again, take us one by one. Took Top first, and he comes back. He said, don't tell him anything. I said, I'm not and I don't know anything. But yeah, So I sit down on this bamboo bench, has a little bamboo table there, and he's a kid, looks like he's sixteen. He's got a fixed maanet. He's standing beside me. He's my guard and n walks mister Bay interpreter, who I had met previously and saw him later. He works at region. He comes in and he's with some high ranking officer. The guy's got to cut across his face and I can only imagine he was in a bannet fight with French soldiers during the French and he he means business, and I'm thinking, woo, you know, he's a hardened infantry guy. And he you know, kept going on and went on, and he finally hit a nerve. He threw the interpreter. He said, well, what about your family back home? I had not thought about my family back home until then. I almost cry. You know, it's like, oh no, you know. And anyway, so I thought if and he made that clear, you know, he said, you know we. Can do you in. You know, you need to tell us. Uh, you know what, you know, you know what I know. I'm a PFC. I don't know when six weeks it's you know, but it's just a breaking you down, you know. So I'm thinking, once they take me out and put the blindfold on and I hear the clicking of them locking and loading, I'm. Going to just tell them whatever they need and what that might be. But they took me back and Top said during interrogation, you know, I won't know what unity's with. He said, I'm with the first Cavity Vision. He still got a first calve patch on, and they said, you're not with the first calve, you're with the one ninety six, and he said, okay. Yeah, and play the game. So so you guys are able to communicate with one another. They didn't have you isolated or Okay. On the last day, we come into this village and spend the night in that village, and that's where we see Anton and his two crew members. They walk us past them, and they look like they've been on holiday. You know, we're dirty, grungy. We're thinking they've already taken sides with the other. I mean your mind, you yes, I can imagine it. Yeah, it doesn't go right. And so the next day we're on the trail together and we were like, you know, we were the crew chie, you know, we're not collaborating with them. And we walk and we walk into a pow camp and the sun doesn't shine. It's like triple canopy. When we finally get there, we go up some rough mountain trails, little footpaths, and they have even made steps, you know, so that people can get around, you know, because they don't have helicopters. They get around on foot. And so we end up in that camp and the first person I meet is doctor Hal Kushner, the only physician captured during the war. He was with the first Cave Division. He was a flight surgeon. With him, Hal finished high school at GW. Danville, went to UNC, got his master's there in biology, and went to Medical College of Virginia. And he was interning at Tripler where he was born, Army hospital and he saw the wounded coming in, so he volunteered. And when they got there, one of the medic said, Doc, we hope we adn't got to name this clinic after you like we did the guy before you. But anyway, they were a night flight, ran into the side of a mountain and he was the only one to survived. He thought they were east of Highway, won they were west, but anyway got him and brought him to the camp. The helicopter fired off rounds, burned up and he got a couple of rounds in him. But anyway, he got taken. He was asked by their personnel to go work in one of their field hospitals, and he was he's a smart guy, well read just mean bringing guy. He thought it was against the Geneva convention. He found out lady, he could have gone, you know and done that, but he stayed with us. Couldn't practice medicine. We couldn't call him captain or they go crazy. Of course they weren't in a compound with us, but in their presence and just just his knowledge was a big help to us. We buried nine men in the Piow camps at all. How many of you were there? Again, I think that from that period. Christian was picked up in January, I mean in December fourteenth, but you know as a fluke they got him. But they had captured a marine and army guy against gouts thrown Atise in like July of that year. Bob Sherman had come into their hands. So from like sixty seven, the middle of sixty seven and up to the tent and I think that's when they decided they needed prisoners. And in the South they had a lot of pilots were shot down, they were getting them. Of the six hundred and seventy or whatever repatriot Americans, only about one hundred and ten of us were capturing the South. So our numbers were small because again that tactics up to that point, you know, they didn't take people, but they took us. So yeah, but anyway, top he was a big help, Doctor Kushner was and but that camp started growing with us. There was seven of us. It came into that camp and then later two Marin Marines Jose Hockei and didn't have came into the camp. They were with a cag Cevian action group, a pacification group, and the pfs that with them fled and they fought, you know, Vietnamese on their own, and both of them died in captivity. They didn't make it through. Fred Burns came to us. He was a Marine PFC out of Brentwood to Long Island, a good Catholic could have gone to not today as a bright kid, and he wanted to serve his country. And Fred didn't make it through. He died. He was eighteen when he was captured, nineteen when we buried him in January of sixty nine. These deaths are talking about, are these torture? Are they malnutrition? No, they just wounded. Our living conditions will horrend us. You know, we did have a bamboo bed. We slept on with the thatched roof. We did all the work except the building. We carried the materials and all but captors built the huts. We moved camp about four different times around different locations, and we got a little bit of rice. Okay, we had malaria. All of us had malaria. It would kick you in the butt, and they did. The only medicine had was quinin, and large doses of quanin would eventually take care of it. We had the nause you, the. Chills, high fever, delirious. Yeah, it would last year. Probably about fifteen to thirty days. You can take it a quana. Oh yeah, it was a killer. But anyway, so the camp grew. I used to know to probably about twenty five men. The original three members of that camp were Captain Eizen Brown captured in June nineteen sixty five, Bobby Garwood, the trader that we later testified against the camp Lea June, and then Russ Grissett, first Force Recon Marine and I mean you talk about some great US your marines, marine, scuba qualified pair of marine and recon and his recon group got a beehive in North Vietnamese and they didn't get extracted. Some of them got extracted. He some of them got killed, and he got captured. But he joined Isisen Brown and Uh and Uh Garwood about eight or nine months into that captivity. And by the time we came along, Garwood had crossed over was living with the enemy. It was out of camp. When I got there, uh isisen Brown had died and Russ, you know it was there. He is a force to be reckon with. But uh anyway, uh so we buried Russ in November that year. But just again the little rice uh that montyards around. We lived around the mountain people, the villages of them around. And you think the poor people bull in the hunter lands, in the backwoods of Vietnam that are working the rice paddies of backwoods they live in the sunny age. You get up in the mountains of moatyards, even more primitive loin claws, spears, women of bare breasts, the kids have naked, have the distended bellies. They can barely survive if they were like the Home Guard. Anyway, they cultivated fields of manyoc in third world countries South America, Asia, Africa. The cassava root is a staple of poor peasant people. And so I camp personnel would border with them, and we would go to these most yard villages five six miles of little footpaths, pull the roots up and bring them back in baskets sixty seventy pounds. Those of us who were able health enough. And that made up the bulk of that diet and then they had a rotten fish sauce called nukmum and provide a little protein. So we were just you know, just so you had to do labor. You were doing labor and then. Yeah, just just to survive. Yeah, yeah, and they didn't. We did have a political cadrere, mister Ho, and Ho spoke the King's English. In fact, he had some. French blood in him, I'm sure because he was about six one or two and his uh he was a party person. He you know, he was a political cadre and he gave us the political cause, you know, and at the end, you know, we had to sign political. Statements yeah or else, Yeah, you know. And uh so anyway, mister Hoes, not to. Touch a tough subject, but you mentioned a trader, and I just wonder in that environment you're in and you can discuss or not, it's all up to you what you want to talk about. But what makes a person a trader? And why would you not choose to do that or why would someone choose to do that? Is it just to survive? I just wonder how that works in that environment. Yeah. I wasn't there when Bobby crossed over when he decided to go live with them, learn the language. And in fact, I've seen some declassified information or Kushner guide it, and I've seen it that the Polar Bureau questioned why you would give some status to the American pow who's claiming to be you know with you you know, we've got guys up here and not proven themselves that aren't you know, had the status. And they gave him some title when the Patriot or something. But he. Was an opportunist. He's a liary. I never knew the man to. Tell the truth about his capture. He would come into compound from time to time, and he did tell us that he would go down into the American military areas and he's going to bull horn and tell the guys to throw down their weapons or what you know, and he would get shot at. So I don't know what his role exactly was, except he lived with them, and whenever he came into compound anything we said, Elliott would come back. Yeah. In fact, Grissett and eisen Brown, griss had told his story because eisen Brown was dead. That Bobby was living with them. He came into compound and they said, Bobby, we're going to escape tonight. You know you want to go with us. Oh well, next thing, here comes the camp commander with all his henchmen and said, we understand yours. They went on escape that night. Anyway, they pulled the Pungy stakes up. They went through the path at the Pungee Steaks and they wandered around for about two or three days. Griss said they would hide up during the daytime and walk at night. And when they recaptured them, they finally, you know, they didn't have any food, and they recaptured them. They brought them back to camp in about thirty minutes. So they didn't really get a three. Days in stead just thirty minutes away. Wow. Yeah, wow. But it's. The whole ordeal we went through. It's amazing, you know, I say it was God, and God gave a lot of good people to us. You know, we learned to pull together. Okay, surviving without anything you can become, you know, pretty selfish. Right, Yeah, I'm gonna make it out. And so here is how I explained it. We would kill a camp's chicken if it came in a compound. Russ would and his philosophy was smell kill a small pulley chickens. Don't kill a big one. I said, Russ, you're taking the same risk. He figured, if the smaller chicken, unless you're punishment. We said, that doesn't make a lot of sense. Wait, whoever killed a chicken? And Isaiah McMillan, one of our guys, was out a rule farm in Florida and he can grab a chicken and wring his head off and wouldn't make a sound. We called him the weasel. But it was clean in the pot. But whoever did it. Could say, Okay, you guys, get to you know, get the chicken feet and the beak, and I'm gonna I want the rest of the chicken. That was kind of you know, we called it the lion's chair. You took a risky untill later we became more selfless and altruistic, you know, and you divide it out, everybody gets equal share. And in the sick we didn't know what have can we keep people from dying? At top and Cannon had bad wounds. They never recovered from him. They're fading away and you're trying to do but you know they're tough. Count set up against the bed that that big support, bamboo support, and just moaned during the night because he never he was always in pain, you know. But you know, and we just took care of them, you know, later had to clean them, you know, in their last days, and they became incoherent. But it's interesting everyone just at the last would speak of family, mother, father, Russ. When he died, he said his sister's name. He gave her a dress in doubly Louisiana. It's like here he is dying in you know, his family. Wow, Yeah, Cushion. I stayed with him, you know while he struggled during the night. How long How long were you captive? I was three years. In the Jungles walked to Hachimn trail in nineteen seventy one. Sixty day Hike got to Hanoi on April first, nineteen seventy one, had left February first, and walked to hoach him In trail. We passed battalions, brigades of North Vietnamese troops infiltrading down the trail. We got rifle butts once we saw the Americans, but we went in six. There was twelve of us still living at the time, so it took us in six man groups walked the trail. I got to walk a ho Chiman trail through Laos, went over the trunks on the mountain. So it was And then how long were you at the final I was there two years, two more years, five years all together. And that was a place called Plantation. Gardens of pilots had been kept there. Then they moved them out and put the guys from the south in there. And when they started December bombing, I don't know where you've heard Linebacker two saturation bombing. When the piece of agreement broke down in October of nineteen seventy two, they decided to start saturation the. Arc lighting of Hanoi. And so we woke up. They've been going to bed. It was about eight o'clock on the ninth, about December the seventeenth, and there's a woom, woom, womb and they send wave after wave, and we figured, if you know that navigator is off the tenth of a second, that bomb's going to lie land right in the middle of the camp. They know, I'm sure where we are, and so in about the third night they started shooting the bee fifty twos down and Dave Young, who's a good friend of mine, b fifty two pile of the flue linebacker two. Remember at River Mount with me. And he told me that they had the same course and the north end of me is after about the third night said ah, this is of course a flying So they set the SAMs. Up and they started shooting down. They shot about fifteen of those beef fifty twos down. Wow, but it probably did more damage than all the fast movers ever did those years they bombed the north. You're up north at this point at is it creeping in your head? Any hope of getting out? Or you still just kind of reserved. To Brian, when we get a radio broadcast, mister Holme brings the portable radio into Adjoe Camp. Okay, the only modern thing. And it's on radio, the Voice of Vietnam. They're propaganda, say so we're listening to that and uh and it's so we find out Nixon's elected through that broadcast, and they kind of get excited because he's going to bring the end of the war. We get up, we start getting instead of the red vermin infested rice, we get like Uncle Ben's polished white rice, and we get a little higher ration. Well, after a while they say have no illusions, you know who. They realize it's not going anywhere. He's not going to bend or give to the all though an end, I think we pretty much did. But uh so that and we've learned about the moon landing through that bardercast. They said, you know, they put a man on the moon, but they came into the war in Vietnam. They won't leave us alone, you know so well. And I'm going to tell you I was sad. Voice of America. It should not be shut down. Mister Holme leaves, it's raining, he leaves a hut. We turned the Voice of America. You can't imagine. I mean you almost cry. You're hearing the real truth, you know, instead of that propaganda. You're here. Well, we're afraid he's gonna come back and catch us. We don't get punished pretty bad, so we don't keep it on very long. So that's my take on Voice of America to get to these countries that people don't hear the truth. You know, we all we've got a broadcast. Let me go back to an incident we had where we starving. This is around November of sixty eight, when been prisoners long and we're starving and Joe's ah hockey. We're sitting out. Just when the sun goes down, we have to get on the bamboo bed and go to sleep. We got no lights or anything. They have karenscene lanterns that come through and do a head check on us. We have punge steaks that are around as a perimeter like Barbara around us and we're we can So Joe sees a cat. They had just brought a cat from the lowlands because we infested with rats and mice eating and it sounds like Green Bay packers running through the thatch roof at night. I want them bit my toe, one't I. So they bring his cat up and Joe said, poor, that'd make a good meal. Next next thing, Russ had killed that cat. I blame him. He was, you know, and we had skinned it down. We had double edged razor blades. We didn't have any growth because we didn't have any protein. We have much to eat. But they did bring a razor blade once in a while office to shape and we hid for medical purposes. Lance boards doctor Kushion used as an instrument. We got the entrols out. Of the cat. We cut it down, you know, We. In fact cushion was supposed to throw the entrls away, and I went down to the stream a few days later and I look up and it's hanging up. He said, got through it. So we had everything but the palls cut off of it. And we're there by the fire and now we're always in bed, and the guard got suspicious. We had somebody posted of our group while we clean and when we've got it clean down, I mean we're salivating. We figured that three pounds of meat on this cat, and Isaamh McMillan says David told her. He said, guys, I ain't superstition, but I'm not eating none of that cat. Said he wasn't going to eat any of that cat. He's going to kill a chicken now and eat it, but not the cat. And so he said we could have his share, and we in the chow the moatyard guard gets passed and he catches us. We've been caught. At first he thought, ah, they've killed a wild animal. That's pretty ingenious. When they found out it was a camp's cat in the camp commander came down and they got the lanterns out there. It's like a Japanese warflick and we're thinking, whoo. So before they get down, some of the guys have fled gotten back on the bed. I'm in the middle of it and some of the other guys and they know, and so we're standing out. But we decided, okay, we're going to. Tell them. All of us saw this. Animal running across through the compound. We grabbed rocks and we threw it at it. We killed it, and you know, we thought it was a wild animal. And we realized, you know, we weren't gonna come tell you or whatever. So because we knew they like to single somebody out as a scapegoat to you know. And so that's the story, we stood by. And so Garwood's out there mster Holmes interpreting. We love the camp's cap very much. You've killed the cat, and we think, and really, you know, you people would have eaten it too, you know. Sure. Yeah, So we're there and Russ for some reason took the blame. As soon as he came out of his his mouth quiet and dang drop kicked him to the ground. And Russ a pretty big guy, uh there's six three probably, and he's and and they beat him real bad. And then they beat the rest of us and tie us up during the night and keep us out. Uh, and took me in Strickland and we had to bury the cat outside of compound. Well it's figured they dug it up later and ate it themselves. So that was the aborted. Food project. Are you guys making names for the captors? Are there around you enough that you know personalities and who they are and like you make up names? Are you even picking up the language? Yeah? Just words? Yeah, we do. When we leave camp. We do not have an interpreter with us, which isn't the real good thought if you think about it, to go to these villages. And I'll tell you a tale about that. I had been sick with malaria and I had boys on me, and I'm a worker. I'm decided the only way I'm going to live is I got to get up and move. I can't sit around got and so the whole time I'm thinking I gotta get back to work. I gotta get And I was sick. I was a sick puppy and sicker than I thought. I got the point. I said, Okay, I'm going to one of these we called them runs. So I put my name in the hat. We had to say who was going next day. We told them the night before and then we had a guard per person and Willie Watkins went that day. I went, and Robert Lewis and maybe Jim Strickland. So as we're walking out of camp, we're not one hundred meters out of camp, and I am faint and I said whoa, And I told the guard I got to hint. They say, no, no, no, we started this journey. You go in. I said, no, no, I can't make it, you know, and trying to tell it. So off we go. And so I'm telling me, he said, guys, you know, I just can't, you know, make it. They said, what we'll do when we get to the field, you just sit down, You just go you try to make it. And so we got the feel. I sat down and the guards wouldn't have any of that. No, no, no, no, you go. Well you can stack a basket full, or you can stack it. You it just it's and so I started just putting a few in there, and they were So when we leave, Willie Watkins has a ten foot stride and Willie's a tall, lanky guy out of some to South Carolina. He says, okay, David, you're going to be the lead man. Well, okay, set your pace again. They said no, no, no, So that left sweetye Pants with me long and so. I'm with Lom. The others have gone on up the trail and I can barely make it up this hillside. I am. I just can't. I can't get much breath. I'm weak, and so I fake a fainting spell. Well, he and buying that. He locks and loads and puts a bandet upon his old mouths or rifle, and I'm thinking he's gonna shoot me here and go back and say. I tried to escape. I don't know, I got deep within, but I was able finally to get to this last village just before I camp. Maybe I don't know, half a mile from my camp, and here comes Willie Watkins out of the village, and they like Willie. He hadn't got anything, he ain't got a guard with him. He and got his basket. He grabs me. I mean I almost hugged the guy. I mean he grabs my basket and me and off we go. And I managed to get back and I recovered from that better. Wow. But anyway, so yeah, it was good to know or we didn't know the language that well, just a few to get by, all. Right, So how how does it end? How do you end? The pow. The peace Agreement, the Paris Piece of Cords was signed in January nineteen seventy three, and it provided for the release of prisoners theirs and ours. Were you aware that this was a We knew it was, it was coming. And yeah, the bombing had stopped. It was silent, so we figured that had gone back to the table and Jose Anzeldua was captured. He had gone to language school. He was a marine when he was captured. He had a kit carton Carson scout with him. Vietnamese come from their side, come over to our side. They executed him right there in front of Jose. Anyway, Jose spoke Vietnamese and he heard through the camp radio in Vietnamese. He said, hey, guys, the war was over. We had been moved from plantation over to Wallow Jail. No Way, Wilton were there from like the end of December till March when we got released. So that was my experience with Honoa Hilton, just kind of a holding till we got on the airplanes to leave. Let me back up in the Laos, you know, there were any prisons that came out. Hanging on everywhere. Incredible. When we were walking the trail, they had waste stations, as we called them. So every encampment they had was about twenty miles spaced about twenty miles apart. You'd walk about twenty miles a day, and when you got to there, they had come o wire laid out. They were communicating with Anoise through telegraph or whatever radio and they had these big vats, mainly just vats for cooking, and then they had it set up for sleeping. They had holes dug in the ground about twenty feet by fifteen feet with long bamboo poles on the top of them, so they could the soldiers could put their hammocks underground and sleep underground pretty much. And these pretty ingenious, you know, good they figured all that out. We were above ground, but I did have a hammock, which is got almost better sleeping than a bamboo bed. So we would once we got over the trunks on mountain range. We had our own food cook but we got these way stations. They were cooking forests. We would go draw rice out of these big vats almost like an entrenching tool. They were shoving the food out, cooking up just in vast quantities. So we got hot rice and we'd go back and eat it at the location where we were staying that night, right there in that encampment. And the next morning we get hot rice, and then they give us a bowl. Bamboo or. Banana leaf rice wrapped in a banana leaf for the trail during the day. At noontime when we stopped, we'd eat the cold rice. So I'm drawing rations at night, and that Luck, Lieutenant Luck, had fought in the plane of Jars. He was our guy. He was an infantry guy, and he really had some empathy for us. You could tell he got us more rice and we had he kind of you know, you just got that feeling. Anyway. He was with me, and I'm looking where the rice is coming out here behind me, you know, somebody putting around in the chamber, and I'll turn around as a Laotan peasants sit and he's got and Luck grabs his rifle and through an interpreter, he says, you know, when we get to the pilots are shot down, we kill. Him, we don't, you know, So you know, he wanted to kill me, and they said no, no, no, no, no, you're not killing. This American, you know, wow. And so that was just my take. You know, that's probably what they did. You know, if a Vietnamese didn't get to him before the oceans, you know, the villagers would you know, kill a polis. I mean, honestly, you're in probably the poorest area of forest areas. Any food that you're consuming is food that they're not consuming it. I mean, you're asking from them, so like killing you is easier than feeding you. Yeah, Trent, that's interesting. When I got there and we're in these little going to these poor villages, they ain't got a pot to piss in. You know, they're working hard. They don't have any men of you know, all the men and military age are gone, you know, so it's the old women, the young women and the little kids that are working these rice paddies. I just I mean, it's like, oh my, they can't spell a word democracy. But you know, I understand some of them. But you just I said, you know, I've read about this in Time magazine, a national geographic. But when you're there, it's just to see it and then to get up in the mountains and see those people. Wow. Yeah, I say a prayer for their life's. Improve whodos that's amazing of you? Yeah? Wow. When when the day comes when you're finally free and you're I guess you're catching a plane coming back to America, Yeah, or you go into a hospital first, what's what? Yeah? Well, my group was about the second or third. They did us in groups, and I think I was the first from the South to come out. Pilots had been released. And then so we have a date set and they come and get us out of the cell with the other Americans, take us to a holding sale, give us Western stipe type windbreakers and pants and shirt and a little duffel bag like we've been on vacation, you know. And so we sit there noontime, rolls around and they bring food in. We said, why are you bringing food? We've been released today. They said the peace agreement fell through. Oh my goodness. And that backs up to I was gonna tell you with Nixon we did we got Oh, maybe we this roller coast. Maybe we're going to go home. Brian. I had a thought at one point, if I'm fifty five years old, when I get released, and I'm in good health. I'll have a good few years left. That's was kind of my thought. Yeah, I mean, and every day becomes like a million years. Here you are in the border, in the jungle. I liked the out of doors, and I didn't like malaria or but we did get mosquito nets in that. But anyway, so living had become kind of commonplace, you know, and the possibility escape. Was better there, you know. But when I got north, in the boredom of a. Cell and you know, the same old stories, you know, and we're not traveling and walking, you know, getting exercise. We at in the courtyard maybe an. Hour a day. But yeah, so they come a few days later and I do they open up the big old iron gates of that old French prison. Yeah, and there it looks like a whole annoy population to stand outside the gate. And they got these vehicles waiting for us, and we get in them. Uh, and they just you know, want to see the Americans. And as we're riding along, I told you to be fifty two, you could see it tore the railroad up, yeah, and all the infrastructure. It did a lot of damage. And so we've come down to Xyloon Airport and the old Quansa hangars are there, and I see them and we sit there while we wait, and then all of a sudden we start moving and as we come around, there's a CEE starlift or the Air Force plane with the American flag on the back of it. Oh ya, oh gosh, wow, yeah, oh yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm happy the war's over and we're getting maybe gonna get home. But we are our names read as a one star general American general there and they're they're sitting beside the and Rita and I got up to salute to general, you know hey, And then I get an escort to Air Force. I think one of them was a lady walk us back up the ramp of that and put us on the plane and we take off, and a little while later the pilot comes on. He said, we're out of North Vietnam airspace. We're in international airspace. And you talk about crying and screaming, and you know, oh, the cheer went up. And then we landed in the Philippines. You know, we know the anti war movements big, you know, but we didn't know what, you know, to expect. We land and the dependent families just lying at tarmac there we'll, I mean, and so you can. The ranking man on that plane gets to make a statement. President Marcos is there. The Bassart the Philippines is there, you know, all the dignitaries. As we get off the plane, we shake all their hands. But the ranking man makes a statement. And we're in the Philippines for about two days, some prelibertary medical you know, just to make sure we're okay. And then we fly back to the US. And that was a great flight. And we land in Honolulu at the air base there hicem in the middle of the night and again people lining fence, a cyclone fence, and they've got American flags, they've got lays, and it's about Chesthai. We're going up and they putting lays around at next and they've given us American flags and yeah, and one lady says, I'm from a hometown, no kidding, I. Said, you're from madasety you know where else the river? Yeah, I said, I am home. Well, when I was at the Philippines. Steve Walthall, who lived briefly up in a house in a rental house up road from where I was raised, was in the Navy and he had a good position. He got over to see me, you know. So it was a hometown guy that I knew in first Americans and and I had uh we had an escort who was the same rank. I was, the sixth by the unstaff sergeant. He kind of came from the same background as me. And the first thing he said, everybody in your family's alive. Well, you know, I you know, that's the first time I'm thinking about Well, I guess I've thought about it. So that's a relief, you know, out of. Seven children, you know. And uh so he lets me they put in a call to my mother, to my home. And my mother is the first one I talked to. And I tell people she sounded like a he'll building from out of Western and uh uh my dear mother out of Killy in South Carolina for two notch roads. She grew up on the sand farm. I had the best mother in the world. But anyway, Yeah, they went through a lot. That's something you know that. You get lost in. You know, the families back home is suffering that they went through. And they didn't know. How were they informed? Did they they know you're missing? They know they're not hearing from you, and they know there was an ambush, that type of thing. Did they wonder if you're still dead in the jungle or how do they know you're actually a prisoner. The first camp I get to a triple canopy. We moved that camp several days later. Augusta and the Chief of Puerto Ricans they released them as to show us solidarity. Puerto Ricans were subject to draft, whether you know or in the US. One of them was marine and one of them was army, and they brought in names out. So that's the first of about I don't know. Eight weeks after I'm captured, word gets back through the Casualty Assistance officer to my parents and the hey, David's names on this list. And then Willie Watkins, Jim Strickland and Koy Tinsley were released in the fall in nineteen sixty nine, and they brought word out until my family. But from then until I got released, they didn't know. And so when the list comes out, the Casualty assistant officer for my parents, Major Plumber, lived in Norfolk, and so he calls up and says, I've got the list. They said it was David's name on. He said, I can't tell you over the phone military, I have to come there in person and let you know. And he got there like in the middle of the night, knocked on the door. He'd had the flu that day, but he got up and his wife drove him down there and he said, David's alive. He's a man. You saw. There's a different color in my family as a major plumber, the great guy. Anyway, so my brother Danny, next to the youngest, went up and down Taylor Road, knocking on doors about two AM's and David's home. That was going on. Yeah, wow, So they were excited. Before we went on the air. You showed us what you wore over there. So is that stuff you just brought with you when you were released? I did, I brought that out. I don't know why why would you bring that? And I don't know, you don't want to souve in air. But the sandals, you know, were just yeah, yeah, up until I got those that had taken my boots. So I was walking barefoot when you walking up Stony Creek beds, Yeah your feet, you know, I'm a tenderfoot egg. But they finally brought those into Mosquito nets in September, and yeah, they were lifesavers. You just the little things like how hard was it once you got back to kind of get I guess back in the it's been. Six years you were going. I mean it's six years since you left. So I did it feel like, wow? That changed? What was right? What was your recollection of being back? I just fell back into it. I just assimilated. It just was a back. And see I was not married, you know, you know, with the wife and children that yeah, so uh and my parents. Yeah, I just right away when I came to the airport. There were about ten thousand people at Preston Glen Airport, the Lynchburg Regional Airport where I had left to fly out to California from Well up to DC in and out. And so Cardinal Airlines provides an airplane to fly me back when there's a little catch to it because they got the Delbi sets. I guess WVa. Then guy on there to interview me on away flight back from Reading, Pennsylvania back to Lynchburg Airport, he said, what do you think about all these people? What's he talking about? All these people? And when we flew over the airport. There was I had always envisioned in my mother's four year hallway and my family there a little small house. I said, my family's grown quite a bit. That was good to see everybody. Class mates from Brookville High School. When word got out the you know, my name was on the list to be released, they were having a little get together. They said, we ought to do something. Chris Anne overfelt Moore. I married Buddy Moore, star football quarterback at Brookville. She was one of the ones that had ended up. So they got a group together and you saw the bumper sticker. They printed the bumper stickers that said welcome home David for a dollar piece. And so after the preliminary Brookville band was there played, My preacher was there, Carl Collins had a prayer, and then the sea parted and there was a corvette and they took me up to it and I said, well, how do you get into it? You know. They wanted a push button or whatever hand you know that levery pushed down. They showed me how Wow. So I've got the. Corvette and I had restored it. I've enjoyed it. Yeah, God, you still have the corvette. You still have over it Oh, yeah, I have to drive it over here sometimes you got a cow. Yeah, that's amazing. You said you cruised the country, right, Is that one of them I did? Yeah? Yeah, in the quart I did. I went back to Valley Forge, came home on leave, and then went back and got discharged from there. Uh. Most of my fellow p w's stayed in and made top enlisted rank and made a career of it. You know. I went back to Virginia Tech and got my degree and got into probation and parole work. But anyway, Yeah, drove cross country. My youngest brother, Lewis went with me, and we stopped in Refuia of Texas. Jose As Odua been fishing out in the gulf and yeah, and followed him out to California to his marine base out there, went up and saw cousins up in the San Leandro and yeah. We just just day to day. Your perspective would be great than anybody else's. Yeah. Somebody said drive the Pacific Coast Highway. So we went to the Pacific Coast Highway, camped out a big sur National Park. It's a beautiful If anybody has not driven the Pacific Coast Highway and gets beautiful. Oh yeah, it's oh yeah, you got well I camp. You know, they have a tent set up, so I didn't have a tint. We just got a handbag. Well, I guess I could probably you could probably ru better than anybody got any bamboo beds. The police officer was on vacation next to us LA. Police officer said, did you stop it? Saying me and I said, he said the hearst manch I said, I didn't know about it. I stopped, so I. Missed that I did that to her yet and the. Grand Canyon went to the Hoover Dam. Yeah, oh, the Hoover dams. Yeah, yeah, you just did that. That's one that's on my bucket list. You did all that in your We did camp out at Lake me that night. It was two hundred degrees. I mean, you couldn't get your breath. Wasn't that hot in Vietnam? Sir? Oh yeah, wow, So. You just that is a question. What was the weather like in Vietnam? We got bone chilling cold during their winter months, right, yeah, it got cold and we had a little piece of cloth, you couldn't call it a blanket, maybe a sheet. It was about two feet wide. And maybe six feet long. And that kept the mosquitoes off of us too. We got the mosquito nets and when it got. Cold, you know, we couldn't light a fire, you know, we would prefer to have a fire going, get by fire and keep warm and keep a because any light would attract spoder planes and we'd get bombed. In fact, that's you know, the starvation, the disease, infectious diseases and all that took lives, and you know. Was our enemy. The Americans were our enemy too, because we got arc lighting. But we got about a half a mile a click away. It was about a half a mile and you could hear the bombay doors over and you can hear the bombs whistling, and you hope the next one. You know, does not hit you. Oh whom. Yeah, we had arc lighting near the end of our stay there. Maybe that was one of the reasons. I never knew it was cold. I never knew it would be I've always seen the you know, it's hot in the jungle and it's sweaty and all that. No snow. It were just it's cold, and you know, the poor diet we had up north. When it got cool, we did have a kind of like a wool blanket there we could cover up with. And uh, we fared better. Food was better up north. Yeah, and uh we got a pumpkin soup one time, cabbage soup the other. And uh, they didn't feed us rice. They gave us a loaf of French bread, a half a loaf, and some mornings they would have a little sugar with it we could dip in. It's a treat. And uh and People's Republic China supplied little can spam or whatever who wasn't American grades, but anyway, it. Was some protein Chinese grade spam. So uh, let's see just one. I'm trying to think of just I mean, I can't, I just can't picture all of just all that's going on. Like when you come back, how do you just does that just the switch just goes off and you're you become just a regular citizen, and you don't. I do well, I go back and sleep in my parents home till I go off to Virginia Tech. I buy a townhouse up in Virginia Tech. And and I'm a guy owning a four bedroom townhouse you know, in oak manor Yeah, Like it was an incredible story and going. And going to class. Yeah, you just you move on. How were your grades your second time around Virginia Town a little better? I thought they're gonna be straight a's. Yeah. I never was a real scholar. I was good in English, I guess right. Yeah, I wrote a pretty good presentence report for the judges. You know, when I was a probation officer. Was social background. But uh, yeah, it's just I got war out first on because I felt like, you know, I've got to tell a story. You know, people the first hand account, and churches would invite me and I just you know, and but over time, you know, when I came back after I got my degree and bought a house and lived here and got married. Uh, high schools would have me come and history teachers and I did a lot of that, you know in church groups and early on. Uh, civic groups still. Have me come and talk. I do it a rotary club at Namous sometime in November. But yeah, not like it used to be a steady. But wow, Well it's an incredible story. And thank you so much for coming in today and chet that with us last question. Yeah, we always in the show with the last question. This this will ought to be interesting. So, uh, if you could spend twenty four hours with one person in history and you could pick anybody present, day or past, who would it be and where would you hang out with them? Wow? I don't know, I guess George Washington, how did you do it? Are Thomas Jefferson of Virginia? Well they're both Virginias. Yeah, one of them, Thomas Jefferson, you know who wrote that, you know, declaration and it was involved in all that, you. Know, the founding of this country. But George Washington, you know, moving the troops without my Yeah. Those two men just men of statue, men of integrity, you know, men of character. If I recall correctly, Gary Witt, that was his same answer. Now he's a Purple Heart recipient, so he really wanted to know where that where that would have come from and that idea and just talk to him about that. And it's interesting. But you would say that because Gary, when he mentioned why he went in the military in our interview with him, he said, you were captured and he thought somehow, some way he could be a hero. Yeah, he wanted to come find you. Yeah. Gary's old Brookfield boy. Yeah, yeah, I see, It's just an amazing You guys are some amazing men. Their country is uh, it's in debt to I mean, just the stories and the grit that you had to survive all of that. You think about it, Brian, you leave a good, comfortable home and go fight so somebody else can. Yeah, I mean, and you'll die. It's just that's pretty incredible. And you know when you think about it. Medal of Honor recipients, I just you talk about a group I admire, you know, and they have no ego, none of them. I mean I've met some in there, and I know they just you know, they went above and beyond, you know, that grit that a lot of people don't have. But that's what I think about the citizen army, you know that went to World War Two and won, you know, free Europe. That I'm just. Another person that served in the military. Now I have a story to tell, but a lot of guys, you know, have stories to tell. There's just a lot of them out there. But that was the generation I came up in. We love country, ask not what you know the country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. You know, you know, Kennedy was right. You know in that peace corps. I've met people been in a peace corps. You know, what a great statement that people will do that go help other people. I get the Virginia Tech magazine and I hadn't seen it lately, but back some years ago. I mean, these stories are these people that graduated agriculture or whatever enginey and they're going, you know, and just that servanthood, that sacrifice, you know, because people, and that's to me, defines America. It's not our strengths and that nuclear weapon. It's in the hearts and the minds of people and Americans and we're a good people. We're good people. We care about each other, we care about this constitution, we care about freedom and democracy and free speech. We you know, those are just ideals that we still carry forward. I had the opportunity POW Organization awards scholarships in my granddaughter, Emily Grace Emmanuel going to women marry I've told you, guys, And at the Brookville Award ceremony, I presented her with that scholarship and they wrote out and just when I read it, I cried. You know, I didn't write it out, this pill and all it says she stands for those I said she does I should. Yeah. Amen, And so I got to speak to the Brookville family and you know, along with other people that got scholarships. But yeah, you can tell I love this country and his people. Yeah, wow, yeah, thank yeah, Thank you again for coming in today. We are we are. Yeah, it's an incredible story. I've gotten honored Connor Leonard and Humboldt. Yeah, thank you again again. You're listening to Life, Liberty, Happiness and we were interviewing US Army and Vietnam veteran David Harker. Thank you. Insurance in Bedford. I'm David Honaker, local State farm agent. Whether it's home, auto, or life insurance, We've got you covered with personalized service and great rates. Let us help you protect what matters most with the reliability and trust of State Farm. Call us today at five four zero five eight six eight one ninety four, or visit our office that is conveniently located at one two three two East Lynchburg Salem Turnpike in Bedford, right beside the Walmart. We are your go to state farm agent. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Call us today at Boom Tractor. We're more than just a dealership. We are your. Neighbors, serving Virginia and West Virginia. We offer top quality equipment and personalized service to support your farming and construction needs. With locations in Bedford, Danville, Salem, with Aeville, and Louisbourg, We're always nearby, ready to lend a hand. Trust Boom Tractor where community comes first and your success is built on quality and integrity. Since nineteen eighty four. I don't know how we Yeah, I mean, I don't know. There isn't a part that's that good. Well have at it. Yeah, Now, it's just one of those things where m I'd looked up at the clock one time and I think it was the first time I looked up and it was six fifteen or something, and I'm like, I don't even care, or like yeah this there was a time where I was almost going, I wonder if he'll come back, and because I kind of want to know more of like. What it's like when it's to be back. I mean, this detail was incredibly good, but we could have just delved into more of the the Hochei Min trail and the walk and what that's like. And oh, there was just so many questions too to keep going. That was just unbelievable. Yeah, well, now back to drama. What do you think, Emma dude, I could, Yeah, I really liked it. I looked up a few times and Emma's peaking around peak. Yeah, so it's really engaging. He's a really good not storyteller, but he's also a story I just. Yeah, I can't imagine. I know, Trent knows, I'm for five years. I'm a wos man. Like you know, when I'm at the river, it's like, uh, you know, just sometimes like i gotta walk up that just to my tree stand, and I'm like. Well, these you know, these stories have made me personally calmer. If you want to say, like things aren't bothering me, it's just like I don't really have anything to complain. About, no, you know, like it's just good stuff. Yeah, there was a part of me that thought, when you're like, I know this sounds so horrible, but I like when you're when you as a child, or even now, when you when we were going to Vegas right the night before, You're excited I get to go to Vegas tomorrow. I'm gonna it's gonna be cool. And then I think this dude is leaving a prison camp. Imagine that dude's excitement when he finally, you know, gets on that plane. I was waiting for you to go. Ah. Nice. He did make a comment when he said when they like didn't make it very far and it was like they were only thirty minutes away and it took them three days, and you. Were like, that would have been me. Yeah, I would have made it not anyway. Yeah, it's unbelievable. So what do you want to do the rest show? You want to hit anything in your highlights? Yeah, yeah, I mean we'll skip well, I mean, well we'll go through some of this stuff. But we didn't have a lot anyway. But I started a new show. It's called Untamed. It was okay, it's on Netflix. It's not bad. And I did finish the SEC. I did too. It's pretty cool, you know what. It reminded me of the first year that tried to survive. Remember Mercedes and Red Bull did not participate because in Ferrari they just did the lower tier. Yeah, the SEC was just the lower tier. Let's see what happens next year when these teams, which LSU was smart enough. Tennessee was a little smart enough to at least they got pre publicity to be on Netflix. Yeah, their quarterbacks are getting interviewed, right, You at Alabama, you at Georgia can't do something like that. I thought you very similar. I thought the exact same thing. And I know you're not a Shane Beemer fan, and they're parts of Shane Beemer that I'm not a fan of either. Yeah, but I still look at it and I go, man, he's done a really good job there. Yeah, it's funny. He'll face Virginia Tech here in a couple of weeks. So I was watching the Arkansas part, thinking, come on, Gruden, you've got to become the Arkansas coach. Yeah, but I don't love Pittman so much. Man, I stay there. The dude can't walk. He's out of breath. Just because he beats Tennessee. That's how and you get those wins and they're like, yeah, you can have another year. I see. I just thought he ain't gonna make it. Listen. It goes back to what you and I have talked about before. When why do we look at these programs like Arkansas They were never a powerhouse. They're never gonna be a powerhouse. That don't really mean anything. It was like the dude was on a dust doorknob at the right door to step whatever they call it. No, but I thought there was a part that he said that was important that I think people need to understand. About being fired. Yes, that was the best line. Of the whole show. I'm gonna get my money. His severance pay is twenty million dollars to. Be by, right, But that secretary in there's just. Two weeks Yep, that's all she gets, two weeks notice. And people don't realize, like the the you don't realize graduate assistants don't get paid there. Go look, I've always said Nick saban Is probably is the greatest college coach of all time, right, go look at his resume. He's at fifteen different places before he gets to Alabama. How many times did you Wikipedia the coaches to see. Where they had been constant? I did that? Yeah, almost everyone at that And why I. Love the guy at Vanderbilt. In my mind, I think you can never win there. Yeah, there's no commitment, but he'd been in the twenty he'd been on the run for twenty years, and he was probably at twelve different places. Right for the one shot that he's got and he deep down he knows, you know. But I think about that, and then I think, you know what, Boise State was no good at one time. Virginia Tech was no good at one time. I mean, Frank Biemer built that, you know. Uh so I don't know, but it's yeah, it's a good show. And I think, what why do you keep looking at your fish bowl? What your fish bowls lighting up? Oh? Water thing? It looks like a fish like you should have a little fish in there, doesn't it, Trent? It does? Good? Point idiot, all right, it's rude. That's why she has nightmares about. You, everybody. I had a nightmare that Brian yelled at me and he fired me. So my nightmare, trust me, it was all right. Moving on sports, it's time for my trauma. Did you have drama? What do you go? Really good movie to write down to watch? Okay? Do you have an Amazon Prime? Yeah? Okay, watch Let Him Go. It's Kevin Costner and Diane Lange and it's like Yellowstone, It's Montana, It's and he is a badass. Right, let him go? Let him go? All right? Speaking of letting go the glen, this weekend it was a snooze fest. Now, before we go much further, I do appreciate how Dad gone good SVG is and I think Denny Hamlin said it best later on. The only way he loses at a road course is if a caution catches him at the wrong time. That's the we're so far by, cut tired something, Yeah, we're so far behind. Because what was so funny as I've heard people talk about when NASCAR was in its heyday, let's say nineties to the mid two thousands, Right, you had really good road courses at the beginning, but then everybody else sucked was horrible. Yeah, but then NASCAR started to kind of all the drivers started to get better and better, Like aj Allmendinger said that. He's like, when I first came in, they were you know, they were horrible at it, and it was easy to pass them. And then each one of them got better and better, and then this guy comes in and they're like, we were awful. You know what the people forget the most about it is he drove on the other side of the car. That's exactly right. He was left handed shifting gears correct. I don't know if the clutch was the same reverse or not, but it just as amazings me. The guy drove on the other side of the car and he's coming here and killing professional drivers. And let's remind people he's not in the Hendricks car. That's right, He's not in a Joe Gibbs car. Yeah, Hey, why did track House take credit? Let's see, maybe I misunderstood Zilich. When he won on Saturday before he broke his collar bone falling out of the car, it said Junior Motorsports on the back of the car. Everything the post that I'm reading is given track House credit for Zillach that. Was or he has signed with track House, and so I think there's a there's a little marriage there where, you know how Gibbs has sort of that junior program. So I think track House spotted Zilich first signed him in the junior program, and Junior Motorsports was part of that path. Okay, but it was a junior win, right, yeah, gillis. Yes, Zillach has won six times this year and all with Junior right right. Yeah, he is the next big thing. And I love that he does the Red Bull commercials. I don't know if you've seen him with Max Verstapping I mean they're they're kind of they joke each other about you come race this car. I'll come race F one, okay, And I think Zillag could racing F one car. I really do. Just can't stand on his car. God, that was Did you see what happened, Emma? Did you see what happened with Connor Zilich? Race car driver Trent sent me the video, so I had. I had watched the race, and then as soon as he won, I just cut it off. Yeah, because I not the last lap, but how he got the lead was freaking incredible. I think people forget about just how amazing his run was. But then you, my brother sent me a text, Man, that kid screwed up bad, and I'm like, what is he talking about? I thought, as you had said previous on the show, that during the celebration, maybe hit somebody with a car. I keep waiting for that to happen. Somebody's gonna get run over. But then you sent me the video and I'm like, oh my god. So his when he went to stand up, Emma on the car, you know what I'm talking about getting out of the car, his foot slipped and it sort of got caught in the car and he hit face first. Yeah, he hit the pavement. Pavement, Yeah, fell fell out, fell. Off the car. I honestly, you said hip. The only thing that I thought is this dude's brain dead. Dude, he's not gonna recover from this. The angle that I saw, the first thing, he grabs his hip, but I guess it was because his collar bone was broken. He was trying to get his arm up, but he was grabbing his hip, and so the video doesn't the one that I saw doesn't really show what hits. But yeah, I saw did you see the TikTok of him? Could have broke his neck? On that show with Tommy Baldwin and Bubble Wallace's spotder that the video, Connor is doing the interview with him, did you see that. I've seen the interview. Where he says, basically his first words are you know he's a yeah, and I could get I can understand that he's like embarrassed the whole situation. He was conscious, but he was actually guess semi conscious. He doesn't know that he was awake at that time. His first memory was he's on a cart. Yeah, Yeah, that was crazy, all right, Yeah, spent too much time that. All right? I know I did just Richmond. This weekend, I have not made my picks. So if you remember, was it what year was it that he did the Was it last year at Austin took out both drivers to win? Yes? It was it was last year, wasn't it? Because that's what got Logano in the playoffs? Right? No, Logano got in the playoffs because of the light. The Bowman's car was too light. Austin J. Dylan won. Didn't Austin Dillon win? They took it away from him? Yeah, and they should have, by the way, I mean that was I sort of remember that. So who do you have this weekend? I never thought about it? All right? You want to move on, Let's move on. Yeah, let's just all right, don't forget. Coming up in a couple of weeks, we'll have the college football preview with Aaron stan Ye looking forward to that. Two weeks from now, will interview Judge Krantz, his local uh who served in the military's medic So very cool, we'll we'll talk with Judge Krantz. Can't wait for that interview. He's the general district judge here in Bedford County, Virginia. Bedford guy, also a professor at Liberty University. Uh, god, what to Krantz? God? First name? Why is this? My wife is going to kill me? Randy Krantz? You know what he teaches law? Yeah? Hello, No, not all right? Moving on? You got anything? Do you want to talk about sports? Mm? What's happening? It's time for news. You realize when is a light bulb golf trend that not one person is listening from here on out after that interview, like got us off? I mean even with have at It, They're like, nah. Have about it coming up? I think they always skip that. You know how e when you can run your finger, they get pasted. Have at it, Kevin, all right. That's all your side eye Trent? Oh me, all right? Oh what's happening? Man? Your boy Trump is tough on crime and I appreciate it. It cracks me up man. The liberals just oh my god, I had to do this, Trent. I captured a Facebook post this week, okay, and it says, if there was such a quick and easy solution to homelessness crisis, why hasn't it done been done before? Why didn't we just solve it everywhere else? Wave a magic wand and poof, they're gone. Are we really pretending crime in DC is worse than other cities? And I read this in all the comments, all the dictator, the authoritarian, all this stuff, right, and it's so stupid, Like, I'm dude, you're what you're saying to me as an American citizen is look, it's crime, It's okay. Are they going? Are they walking those streets? Of course not? Of course not. Dude. How many times did we go to Baltimore back in the day to go to the oil games and there was all you could do was stay within the block or two of the harbor. Absolutely you would not well, you'd be dumb, and I did. You couldn't walk out beyond that, right, I mean you could actually. Get jacked, Yes, dumb like and to think. Okay, so they did you see the list of the cities around the world and the murder rate per one hundred thousand the murder rate. Okay, so the first stat was forty five per one hundred thousand people are murdered in DC if you went and then because they've manipulated the numbers, is now twenty seven. And they say, see, we don't have a problem it's improving. Okay, twenty seven per one hundred thousand is still three to four times more than these cities Bogata, Colombia. Wow, right, Brazil, Rio, Havana, Cuba. We're more than any of these other Mexico City. We're three times what Mexico City is. Well, here's what's with the good number. Here's what I love. What I've often said about reporters and media is they don't live in real America, right, So they don't they're kind of tone death. Yeah, accept this issue. I've noticed the liberal media. While they will shoot these statistics out there, I've heard a lot of them that are liberal, they are going, I live here. It ain't nice. Exactly, and you know what's going to happen. So I always keep thinking, what's the next eighty twenty issue that Trump can come up with? This is it. It's a no lose situation for him, right because if it's bad, it's just it was bad before, correct, But if he improves it any all of these liberal people that have to live there have to give him the credit, which they want. But deep down, I'm glad he did this right and get this, he picked the one of the worst blue cities. I think it's the fourth worst city in the in the country. If it works, the people in these blue cities have got to say, why can't we be safe. It's a great place for the seed to be planted. Yeah. Oh it's so smart. I love it. Man. Uh, here we go again with headlines. Yeah. I literally am scrolling. I love doing this. I always click on the Dow Jones right, and I checked to see whether it's green or whether it's red. And what tickles me is as soon as I check that, you scroll down when once you you see the graph and they give you articles from usually New York Times, a bunch of them, and it'll tell you why. It is a certain way that always amazes. So literally, I'm watching NBC News I think it was, and theirs statistic was how inflation is on the rise? Okay. I click on dal Jones and it's up five hundred points, and I go one, if you met another trade deal? Right, Like, I'm in my mind, I'm thinking, wow, how is it up five hundred And I scrolled in and it goes terrific, you know, inflation news, And I'm like, wait a minute, I just watched NBC where it told me here we go. Inflation's bad, and I'm like, what in the hell? Man? It drives me nuts. So we're up. I didn't I checked before I came over here, but I didn't. I think it's up nine hundred points or eight hundred for the last two days. Two days. Idiots, more winning, more winning. Uh, this is I've found this interview. I don't know if you've seen this. Back to the redistricting right, yes, where these other states are going to stick it to us, except they already did it. They've already done it, like you know, it's so stupid and they were so bad at it that their supreme courts were like, nah, you can't do that. Yeah. So here's what they keep screaming in Texas or you're jurymandering, except for their courts have said you can do what you're doing. Yeah, here's New York. And this is when a this is the governor of New York that can't even like when faced with facts, this is what they say, go ahead, cut one. Here's how National Reviews summarized it. They said, it was only three years ago that New York's Democratic legislature drew up a map so brazenly contemptuous of basic rules the govern a district's contiguousness that the state's Democrat dominated Court of Appeals throw it out. The New York Times at the time called those maps comically contorted. That's their quote. So your state's highest court at the time, all the judges appointed by democratic governors, they threw the maps out. So fair to say democrats have done what they're now accusing Republicans of doing. No, we follow the rules. We do it every ten years. Based on that, you didn't follow the rules, Well, we did. Follow the rules, so the court was wrong. We followed the rules. It's so funny that because they do the same thing to Pritzker, the guy from Illinois, same thing, and they're just. We did it. We don't see you don't see what you see in front of it. We lied cheating steel once every ten years, the way you're supposed to. Yeah, if they would have just waited, it would be okay for them to manipulate. God, there's such losers, man, losers and liars. Speaking of liars, Jasmine Crockett, I didn't I got the interview, but it was like four minutes, so I didn't want to bring it on. Yeah, the guy that you like that did the AOC segment that we played earlier a couple of weeks ago where he was talking about AOC lying about where she grew up Jasmine Crockett. Right, she's this, you know, ghetto, you know, grew up hard, not even clothes. Now, yeah, I've seen this. Saint Louis, Missouri and went to the most expensive school and one of the most prominent schools in America. When you see her in her original campaign in her interviews, she's miss ivy league, right, Yeah, it's just they're so fade flyers. Is that what you got for us? No? I decided not to because it was so long. Okay, she said, I do want to, so I do want to play this clip basically of us winning still right, says there, win, win, win, We're gonna. Win, win, win, and we're gonna make America great again. This is what happens when you have a president that understands and this is what this is what angers me most about stupid democrats, liberal democrats. Look at his administration. Democrat, right, Bessett, who you love so much? Love that guy? Have you looked at his resume? Not exactly a Republican, Right, not even close. What if I told you that he was the protege of George Sorows, that would scare me. Worked for him for many years, many many years, donated to Barack Obama, donated to Hillary Clinton. Now you're scaring me. I'm just telling you the truth. Your commander in chief does not care if you've got the right policies. He wants you doing your job and doing it well, it's what I love about him. If you're not doing good, he fires you. He fires you, get rid of it. That's the way it should be. Don't keep continueing the miss take exactly. So this is one of by the way, the guy talking not exactly a Republican. But here is how Trump is making America great again. Whin win win cut to He's going to bring all these jobs back. Well, how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There's no answer to it. He just says, well, I'm gonna I'm going to negotiate a better deal. Well, how how exactly are you going to negotiate that? He also asked us to think about what more we could commit to doing, and mister President, we took that challenge very seriously. I'm glad to be here with you today, and I'm very proud to say that today we're committing an additional one hundred billion to the United States, bringing our total US investment to six hundred billion over the next four years. That was Apple, Yeah in America. Yeah, that's Obama's favorite famous She. Is gonna wave a magic wand no, he's going to negotiate, which is what the man does and does well. And he finally has people in there that are fighting for him, you know what I mean? Yeah, all right, moving on quickly, Mount Rushmore, Let's steal quick. So next week Mount Rushmore will be Rhinos. The five worst Republicans. Yes, five worst Republicans? Are you kidding? Hey, we got a lot of We got a lot of feedback on the Democratic one. Yes, So Emma, you've got a week to come up with a rhino Republican in name. Only five worst Republicans? Yeah, okay, this week, did you even come up with any? I said, I don't watch the news. Hey, Trent told me just to say that that is the answer. She's young, nerds, we've been watching this since we were young. We all get around to hate them. Yeah, watching US news and you'll pick up more. Of liberal media. Can't wait to find out what Trentz is. Yeah, because trust me, I debated on this for a long time. Yeah, my number one, Yes, Leslie Stall can't stand her, and you know why she's on my list for the one interview that where she just tried to make Trump look like an idiot. I can't stand it. I know whatch one you're talking about. But she's got a whole career of that stuff. Sure, yeah, exactly. Number two, Yes, Rachel Mattout. Now, she was number one on my list, but we only have her as the same on our five. And she's the reason she's like on mine. Although deep down inside I kind of like her because she's hot. No, because she cries when she loses. Yeah, and I love to watch a good movie. You get a little Ashley taint from that, Like when you look at her, do you kind of no picture Ashley? Jesus God, No, I don't know. I kind of get it. That's why I thought you might think she was attractive. Move it on. F Chuck Todd. Yes, one of the worst, most despicable people. Especially who he replaced, right, didn't he replace the guy that everybody loved before the Tim Russert, Tim Russell. Yeah, and he was so good. Yeah, you didn't know who he voted for. That to me is what a journalist would be. Yes, you don't know who they voted. Correct, And yet here we are. God, do you remember how bad he was during COVID. Dude, he's no. But now, if you what I hate Chuck Todd more than anything about is his stupidity of like we don't know what you're talking about, Like he'll switch you know what I'm saying. Well, I mean I've always supported No, you haven't. Yeah, shut up, I hate him. They forget We got social media that shows us what. Yeah? Uh, little George Stepanopolis. I agree with you there. I didn't have him on my list. But yes, despicable human being, horrible guy. Yep. And last but not least, Lawrence O'Donnell. Gotcha can't stand him? Yes, And what usually were a little bit spotty around here is I never got a chance to mark up the agenda today. I'm sorry about that. Just kind of got just work. It just really got swamped. So anyway, my list I had Rachel Maddow is number one for me. I've been watching her for a long time. Whoopy Goldberg, I've got awful person just to be on the view that long. Have you seen the rumors about the view being canceled? It is not on air right now. I've seen it in a lot of places. Yeah, they've they've been off now for is it just a break or is it they really haven't said? You know, gondn't wonder. So I watched. I saw a pretty reliable person that I like on Twitter X that said, here is the list of liberals not on air? Anymore interesting that USA I D has lost funding? Like have we been? Like we've always talked about how does how does a channel that has such low viewership stay on air? Yeah? But what if it's taxed, you know, subsidized by tax dollars to keep it on air? That would be a good answer. So anyway, be interesting to find that. How about this one, Keith Olberman, do you remember the guy from ESPN and that he was on before Rachel Maddow? Awful guy, Yeah, horrible. Like you talk about Trump drain syndrome, he's got it in spades. Yeah. And I think the thing that we're that we don't want to take lightly is these are bad human beings on top of being bad journalists. Liars, And I mean, maybe you can say they're just brainwashed and really believing what they're saying, but I also think they would just lie just to make the point. They would absolutely and. They're supposed to be a journalist. Okay, this one, she's not on air anymore, but got fired Joy Reid awful, Yes, awful. Yeah. And the last one I got because I think I had to make this on here because when I say it, you're going to be like, definitely needs to be on there. Jalil Hill. Yeah, you remember that one. Yeah, good lord, what a great We. Could have just kept going with it. It's like the worst liberals. Yea, take a sip of my hydro water here. When you sponsor something, you don't double sponsor something. I don't know what you're talking about. You don't sponsor two different drinks. You sponsor a drink. You don't see a NASCAR driver get out and take a swig of water and then take a swig of coke. First of all, it's mountain dew in hydro water, all right. But it's not made by the same company. You got to learn how to advertise. It's not the company of the water, it's the bottle that creates it. Yeah, but there's two different drinking, two different things. You're subtracting from the diet mountain do users. You gotta learn how to advertise. Put the bottle of water you used right next to it. A marketing guru. Then why haven't you bring any sponsors? They don't know me yet. I just got three things to say. Emma's on It. Just won't get out. I know, I'm sorry. I didn't know what we were going to do, this whole thing. Doc God, all right, cut tim, Okay, calm down. No no, so so now so listen, why does every liberal Emma, please don't turn into one of these Please don't turn I just I just don't want you to. Just you're going into communications, and the way to move up is to be one. Listen to this woman, how she talks about Trump and she's supposed to be I forget what her actual uh she Oh she is on God, she's on a on a podcast. Jennifer Welch is her name. And now I'm trying to remember what it was. I even looked up what she did that was supposed to be so important. Oh, she's on those interior decorating shows on Home and Garden or whatever the HGTV type stuff. Listen to this woman. I've had it with. White people that triple Trump, that have the nerve and the audacity to walk into a Mexican restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, an Indian restaurant, go to perhaps their gay hairdresser. I don't think you should be able to enjoy anything but cracker barrel. And if you want to triple Trump and you want to browbeat DEI, and you want to browbeat gay people, and you want to browbeat black people as you've been doing for four hundred years, and you want to browbeat this generation of immigrants that come over here and open up businesses, earnestly pay their taxes. You want to demonize them and call them rapists and felons and all this shit, when the felon is the teeny weenie shrimp cock piece of shit Cankeles Mctaco tits at the top of the ticket. I have fucking had it from top to bottom. White people that triple Trump should be banned, boycotted from enjoying the best thing that America has to offer, which is multi culturalism, Get your fat asses out of the Mexican restaurant, Get your fat asses over to Cracker Barrel, because nobody wants to see your fucking smug ass, teeny weeny pink arm, big gut around. Nobody wants to see that shit, No one. Yeah, and you're scared of her, you're scared of Republicans and democracy? Yes? So is there anything about her that seems nice? Oh? These people are, they're calling us racist. She literally just ranted that the most racist thing, Like, there's not multiph cultural people working at Cracker Barrel. Yeah, you just are lying, you racist piece of shit. She is. If you're Cracker Barrel, why not sue the piss out of her? Yeah? I mean, come on, like, I can't enjoy a Mexican restaurant. I'm paying them to make money. First of all, you idiot, know when you say what she says? Yeah, when's the last time we've got me patron up here? When's the last time you saw them rounding up workers at mea patron and sending them anywhere? I haven't, you won't, right, God. What you do see is them rounding up Garcia, who was from another country, who was part of MS thirteen over here. That's who they're rounding. Up her hatred. Obviously she's a pink hat right, Obviously she's one of them. Yeah. So anyway, Hey, if you're worried about crime in DC, yes, okay, here's the guy that's going to give you an idea of what it's like. All right. Cut fifteen. Driving home, my staff lives here in the hill, reminded me, don't stop at a stop lay until I'm out of town if I see a red light late at night, since there's very little traffic slow up at the other block, so I never come to a full stop except in the middle of the block because of car jackets stopping a light, people standing in a corner walking up with a gun. There you go, Joe Biden, there's your crime. He just described it right there. You want to talk about a despicable human being, that's one of them. All right. This is a guy that I'm just going to start referring to as forty eight. I'm starting to in my text I call him as forty eight, and so he's just forty eight to me. So this is what I have been waiting for since we have taken back over as taking office is to start putting people in handcuffs like they did Trump, start getting them to trial. Listen to this answer, cut forty eight. Do you want to see indictments? I absolutely want to see indictments, Maria. Look, of course, you've got to have the law follow the facts here. You don't just indict people to indict people. You indict people because they broke the law. But if you look at what Tallsea and cash Betel have revealed in the last couple of weeks, I don't know how anybody can look at that and say that there was an aggressive violations of the law. What they basically did is they defrauded the American people in order to take Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign talking points and turn them into intelligence by defrauding the American people, defrauding the intelligence agencies lying about what the Intel said. They would take something that supported a Hillary Clinton campaign talking point, and they would overemphasize it and exaggerate it. They took anything that actually contradicted that narrative and they buried it deep and through that they actually laundered Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign talking points through the American intelligence services. That's a violation of the people's trust. That's a violation of what our intelligence services should be doing. And I absolutely think they broke the law and you're going to see a lot of people get indicted for that. Here's the thing that we should really bother the American people. What do you want our intelligence community to be doing. I want them to be catching bad guys. I want them to be making sure that terrorists aren't going to kill innocent American civilians. I don't want them laundering Hillary Clinton's campaign talking points into the American media and giving them this air of legitimacy. It is sick and it's disgusting. It hurt the intelligence community, it hurt the American people, and it hurt the first Trump administration. We've got to have consequences for it, or we're just going to see the same play repeated again and after man. Dude, when you hear these answers that what was the lady you said from the Congress with Lady Crockett, When you hear her aoc or or shiff or Schumer, Dude, last night, have you seen the thing about Schumer making up the family? Yeah, there's a man and woman that he's been talking about for twenty years that he leans on them, talks about being at Thanksgiving with them. They're fake. There's no two people, whatever their names were. When you hear those answers, and when you hear that guy talking, I mean, it's just night and day. It's despicable. Yeah, the stuff that they do, Yeah, to stay in power. And that's the thing that's exactly not money, that's power, that's right, and to just lie. It was like one of the Tucker interviews, one of the former congressmen said what made him sick was once you become a very political, powerful political person in DC, you become where you start bragging that you can actually contradict yourself the next day and no one will say anything because you're that good of a politician. And Chuck Schumer is one of those. I just get I get tickled how things become facts when they're not. Like they still talk about January sixth as being the violent day. Yeah, the insurrection, it's even called insurrection. It wasn't an insurrection. But where was the violence? Right exactly? Obviously there were things broken and rioted and that kind of thing, but nowhere close to what happened the summer. We saw no, right, I just stuff becomes facts, and that's what well, I mean, just bothers. There's a whole culture of climate change. I'm still going to say, you're going to North Myrtle, right, you could have gone to the same beach thirty years ago. If the waters are. Going higher, would you be able to go to the same beach. Oh, I've always said that exactly. I'm going to the same beach I did when I was a kid. Once I can't go, I'll know the right water's rising. Idiots, idiots, what's the uh? You keep looking back over here? What's going on? Well? I thought you were signaling something like over my shoulder. All right, is this in the show? Yeah? Oh I thought it would never come that's what. Okay, So this is five minutes long, and I don't know if you want to get that far into it, Emma, but it is really good and you like preaching. Right, you play it and I'll get to listen to it on the way to Myrtle Beach in the morning. Oh, will you have it uploaded by then? Uplifted wid Yeah, uploaded by the. I uploaded every night before I leave. So your mom is really going to enjoy that. You make sure you haven't uploaded or else. Yes, that's what I. Because I'm not joking. I think I did cry, make her cry or sleep? Brian, can I say? And he fired me? And everybody's like, he can't fire. You, And I was like, well he did, No, I can't. Did I come and save the day? You weren't there. I was probably fired before you got here. That's right. So this is what he's doing. This is how to parent, and it is the best. Your mom will absolutely love this sermon. We'll see you next week. Yeah, we got Aaron stam and the special show coming up eight weeks. We mean two weeks. He's doing the interview next week, but. It's not playing next week. God, he's coming next week. He's coming next week after the show. Yes, oh, I thought he's coming two weeks from now. No, the third hour. We will be taping his segment next Wednesday at seven. And I'm gonna I'm going to bring you supper, Emma. You know we'll bring you supper. I'll bring you supper, and he's going to fire you. Well, cater the whole thing. It's a college football preview. It should be. It's one subject that you actually will know about. What did you just say? It's one subject? Well you actually know about what What. Did I thought? You didn't eat meat? I can eat chicken, I can't. How about cat? God story? That's like I was looking because I know how much she loves cats, and he's talking about it. I'm looking around the computer to see what your reaction was. Do you see the dead cat on independence as a little kitten? I wanted to save it. But let me, let me, let's just get one thing straight, Emma, you would be eating cat if if you live in it. It has for legs. She's allergic to four legged animal. That's why she can. Just stop. I think these things are made. Tell that to me when my throat's closing. Let's put it to the test. Just see if I can sneak in a bird a slatter. Next drop some bacon. What can you eat next week? I can eat turkey's chicken. What if I went to wing stop on the way down, I got appies? Got what? Somebody knows what your lingo is? What the hell is an appy appetizers? Oh? I can smell the nutrients now, Oh, we'll have it catered. Don't worry. East Coast East Coast Wings is good. That's on my way down. I could do it. Okay, do it. Yeah, we're gonna college football preview. We've got a regular show and then him come on because he can't get here till seven. Yeah, but we have technology now where we can pull it up. Yeah, that's true. Emma's far more advanced. Yeah for this than I've got to do some research. I'm going to do some research while I'm at the beach. Aaron's last year's predictions. Yeah, see where they ended up? Probably not as good as mine. Oh, I wasn't here. It was you and Travis did the show. Oh it was phenomenal. Jerk, see you next week. You some of you, some of you who are women, Now, that was a time in your life when you would roll your. Eyes at your mother. Because you thought she didn't know what she was talking about. And some of you have this testimony. When you rolled your eyes at your mother, you were on the other side of the room, and before you could say, Jackie Robinson, she was all over you like a bad dress. With a fistball up Heffer, what did you say? I brought you in this world. I wish I had somebody who was raised like I was. Raised those of us here who are men. We came to a certain point where we thought we could take our father. We had already sized them up because when I was growing up as a boy, and my daddy would not let us walk around in the house with our t shirt on, because my mom and both of my sisters were in the house, and my daddy would have us to get up all the boys, eight boys and my family, and my dadd had said, get up and put some clothes on, look like you're going somewhere. A man ort to looked like he's got something to do. Get up and put your clothes on, or walk around in his house with no shirt on. And I sized him up, and I said to myself, when I get to be a man, I'm gonna walk around naked in my house if I want. And one day I got my own house and my daddy came to my house and he said, son, put your shirt on. Please. Now, in my mind, I said, who you think. You're talking to? But you know what I did. Because our parents were not our friends. I wish I had some help to preach right here. They failed us, They clothed us, they provided for us, but our boundaries that we could not cross, and parents, you need to set up some boundaries to let your children know. I am your provider, I'm your protector, but I'm not your pal. Give here to my instruction, incline to the words of my mouth, and I will teach you things. Empowerbles. My grandmother used to sit us down and tell us stories. Remind us of our history. Bring us back to the time when we were nobody. We couldn't dress like we dress here on Sunday morning. The reason why church started at eleven o'clock was because they had to get the master ready to go to church early. And by time they got all of the master out of the house, it was eleven o'clock and they started having church out behind the slave quarters, in hush arbors where they could not even be heard are scene because they were nobody all the week long. But Sunday morning, something got a hold of them and they realized that they were not what they were told they were, but in their hearts and in their spirits they were children of God. And although they were baffooted in the slave quarters, they sing, I got shoes, You got shoes. All God's children got shoes. And when I get to heaven. I'm gonna put on my shoes and shout all over God, you got shoes this morning. Shout you gotta card this morning. Shout you got a job this morning. Shout. He's been good. He's been good. He's been good. Bow bow, taste. And see. That the Lord is. It's good.