Bannon's War Room - Episode 2765： We Were One

00:00:00.000 This is the primal scream of a dying regime.

00:00:07.580 Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people.

00:00:12.800 I got a free shot at all these networks lying about the people.

00:00:17.080 The people have had a belly full of it.

00:00:19.000 I know you don't like hearing that.

00:00:20.420 I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that,

00:00:22.180 but you're not going to stop it.

00:00:23.120 It's going to happen.

00:00:24.380 And where do people like that go to share the big lie?

00:00:27.780 Mega Media.

00:00:28.680 I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.

00:00:34.620 Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?

00:00:38.320 If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.

00:00:44.740 War Room. Here's your host, Stephen K. Band.

00:00:50.660 Okay, welcome. War Room, 27 May, Year of the Lord, 2023.

00:00:55.140 Patrick K. O'Donnell.

00:00:55.780 Now, Patrick K. O'Donnell, the finest combat historian of his generation,

00:01:00.120 is going to be with us on Monday.

00:01:01.940 We do our, I don't think it's his ninth or tenth year of doing the Memorial Day special with Patrick with me.

00:01:08.800 And the reason I have Patrick is that he has either experienced himself as a combat historian

00:01:13.920 assigned to the Marine Corps in Fallujah or done 4,000 hours of oral histories with the veterans of World War II

00:01:21.560 before they passed away or gone back and done really the most incredible primary archival research.

00:01:28.200 And I'm talking about years.

00:01:29.140 When he writes a book on the Revolution or some of these wars that you can't really do direct interviews,

00:01:35.460 years of research and archives to tell the story.

00:01:39.260 So we're not going to have enough time on Monday because we're going to really be packed with going through

00:01:45.540 Arlington National Cemetery and going through the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

00:01:48.780 and how the whole process started in France with the great battles.

00:01:52.480 I wanted to spend an hour here, some time here today.

00:01:56.200 First off, because, you know, our audience has grown exponentially over time, so you join us.

00:02:01.540 I want to make sure for people I've known from the previous years, give me your background.

00:02:05.540 I mean, how did you arrive at a guy?

00:02:09.180 And here's the reason that Patrick's so unique, and you can go to his – we'll put his website up and check his books.

00:02:14.020 But he's got essentially first-person accounts of two of the most fascinating groups of really special forces in the Revolution.

00:02:22.520 And in these books in the Revolution, you get the whole kind of sweep of the Revolution all the way to a book in Fallujah,

00:02:33.980 which up until Bakhmut, the biggest battle of the 21st century was the Battle of Fallujah.

00:02:38.880 And you see it with a Marine rifle squad you're in in a first-person account,

00:02:42.760 and he's actually, as a combat historian, not a journalist, not a war correspondent,

00:02:46.800 but a combat historian is assigned to the rifle squad, and he's going house – he's going room by room, house by house in Fallujah itself,

00:02:56.720 and the whole arc between them.

00:02:58.420 And you've just spent – I'm not going to give away the book, but you've just spent years, as you do, doing something on the Civil War.

00:03:05.260 So you have done every major conflict of American history and really have a first-person account.

00:03:11.320 How did you get in?

00:03:12.220 How did Patrick K. O'Donnell – where did you come from?

00:03:15.300 How did you get to be the leading combat historian of your generation?

00:03:19.220 I came from a blue-collar family in Ohio, and my interest in history began when I was about four.

00:03:27.720 Four?

00:03:27.900 I was obsessed.

00:03:29.900 Yeah, I had a library of hundreds of books, of, you know, hardcore books.

00:03:35.160 I was kidding.

00:03:36.380 When everybody else was getting the dinosaur book, I was getting this hardcore World War I book of photos.

00:03:42.660 You know, I mean, I was obsessed.

00:03:43.960 Even at that young age?

00:03:46.140 Oh, absolutely.

00:03:47.340 My father would take – you know, I'd say, hey, can we go to the battlefield?

00:03:51.980 He'd be like, oh, you've seen one, you've seen them all.

00:03:53.640 I'm like, no.

00:03:54.880 So your father – this did not come from your father.

00:03:56.720 No.

00:03:56.940 Your father was not obsessed.

00:03:57.880 He was not obsessed.

00:03:59.020 But he loved history.

00:04:00.140 Right.

00:04:00.640 But what was it that –

00:04:02.080 I can't put it – I can't put it – I can't say.

00:04:04.580 Just something that was –

00:04:05.460 I was passionate about – I've always been this way since the beginning that I can remember pretty much.

00:04:14.180 And –

00:04:14.600 I follow you through high school?

00:04:15.580 Absolutely.

00:04:16.880 I was – I was – I was building – I mean, I was – we were national champion wrestlers.

00:04:23.260 I was wrestling all the time.

00:04:24.360 But I was building scale dioramas.

00:04:27.000 I was – you know, I had even more books.

00:04:30.600 When I went to American – the first place we went to was the Aberdeen Proving Ground.

00:04:35.100 I told my parents on our way down to D.C. we got to go because it – at the time it had the largest collection of German armor in the world.

00:04:43.700 And it was sitting out in a field.

00:04:45.740 And I had –

00:04:46.000 I mean, you know, they brought it back from Germany.

00:04:47.060 Yeah, but World War II.

00:04:48.100 They had Tiger II tanks and Tiger I's.

00:04:50.500 I mean, broom bars.

00:04:51.640 They had Anzio Annie.

00:04:52.520 I had to see – I was like, oh, my God.

00:04:54.080 It was – having to see that in American armor.

00:04:57.440 You know, I was interviewing World War II vets shortly after – right after college.

00:05:03.160 I mean, and when nobody else was doing it, I was –

00:05:06.760 At college were you also –

00:05:08.120 I was obsessed, yeah, and then also finance.

00:05:11.600 So I had business – I had a business background as well as history.

00:05:15.160 And I've always been into it.

00:05:18.080 And my thing has always been that first-person account.

00:05:23.800 My books are all small stories that tell the larger story, the small story of a small group of individuals that make a difference,

00:05:31.360 that change the course of history.

00:05:32.660 In one way or another.

00:05:34.240 And the thing about them, they're all ordinary men and women in this country that do extraordinary –

00:05:40.760 they become extraordinary.

00:05:42.240 Their units become elite units.

00:05:44.160 They become extraordinary.

00:05:46.080 One, they're training.

00:05:47.600 Two, there's something inside these people that comes out.

00:05:50.920 And what they do is unbelievable.

00:05:53.200 And it happens time and time and time again.

00:05:55.900 I think that's what we honor.

00:05:57.640 And, you know, this – the weekend and – and I realize for most people it's become the kickoff of summer and all that.

00:06:04.820 But the war in Posse is different.

00:06:07.160 We have to understand we anchor ourselves in these traditions.

00:06:09.800 This goes back to ancient Athens with Pericles' – you know, the funeral oration to the dead of Athens during the Peloponnesian War.

00:06:20.520 But it goes like an unbroken chain throughout the West.

00:06:24.160 And that's one of the things that you show particularly in the book that we'll go through in the – what we'll go through on Monday on Memorial Day.

00:06:29.540 We talk about the unknown soldier and the tomb of the unknown and how that had antecedents and – or precedents in – in France and other places.

00:06:39.140 But – so even in college you were obsessed.

00:06:42.340 Did you know then this was going to be your life's work?

00:06:44.960 No, I didn't.

00:06:46.260 I just – I just kind of let things kind of fall into place.

00:06:50.300 And I've been lucky in many ways.

00:06:54.580 And I just – I followed my passion.

00:06:57.760 And first thing I did is I started interviewing World War II vets.

00:07:01.620 Well, how did you do that?

00:07:02.380 You got a writing gig to do that?

00:07:04.100 You just started doing –

00:07:04.480 No, I just started doing – I volunteered to be purely –

00:07:08.940 Who did you volunteer with?

00:07:10.680 Myself.

00:07:11.600 No, no, no.

00:07:12.020 I mean was there an organization?

00:07:14.100 No, no.

00:07:14.260 You just said I'm going to just go interview.

00:07:15.640 Yeah.

00:07:15.960 You got the microphone on just –

00:07:17.220 Yeah, I just did that.

00:07:18.080 And I would go to the reunions.

00:07:19.340 And then I created a website called The Drop Zone, which is the first virtual museum in oral history project.

00:07:25.500 This is at the infancy of the internet.

00:07:28.260 And I was gathering the stories when pretty much nobody else was.

00:07:33.360 Was anybody else actually out there?

00:07:35.440 I know Studs Terkel did it for the good war.

00:07:37.680 Sure, but –

00:07:37.820 But was anybody else doing it systematically, going and talking to you about that?

00:07:40.980 No, and my thing was the elite units.

00:07:42.880 And it was the 101st Airborne, the 82nd.

00:07:46.240 I mean my friends were the heroes of D-Day.

00:07:50.600 And this is powerful, powerful.

00:07:54.200 To be able to talk to a guy that fought his way off of Omaha Beach, that laid the Bangalore torpedo that blew up the wire, that allowed them to escape from the beachhead, that changed the course of history.

00:08:07.660 Only two types of people on this beach, the dead and those are going to die.

00:08:11.220 Yeah.

00:08:11.780 The general said when they were backs against the wall, that Bangalore torpedo.

00:08:15.020 And how many men died?

00:08:16.060 And rangers lead the way.

00:08:17.680 I mean I interviewed the guy that heard that.

00:08:20.780 I mean I know these – I knew these guys.

00:08:22.980 Still at this – 101 years old John Rahn, still a good friend of mine who's the oldest surviving ranger officer and probably the oldest surviving officer from dog – white and dog green beach living to this day.

00:08:39.040 I mean –

00:08:39.680 This generation, the interesting thing about your oral histories, the greatest generation was very stoic.

00:08:45.320 They were raised – they never talked about – I mean you went 20 or 30 years even when the longest day came out in 1961 I think.

00:08:53.620 Nobody really – I remember going with my parents and going to all the reunions.

00:08:59.180 None of the veterans really talked about World War II.

00:09:01.600 It was only much later when Brokow did the greatest generation or things.

00:09:05.720 It was only really in the 80s that anybody – when Reagan went and gave the famous speech, the boys appoint the Hock. 0.76

00:09:12.080 But that generation was very stoic, right?

00:09:15.960 They didn't talk about it a lot.

00:09:18.200 Was it because the memories were too brutal or just that they were raised that they just didn't talk about things like this?

00:09:23.940 I think it's a lot of things.

00:09:24.960 I think it was definitely – the memories were very brutal.

00:09:27.780 Many of these – the men that I interviewed were at the tip of the spear.

00:09:31.040 They were either the airborne parachuting in behind the lines or the rangers.

00:09:35.560 So they saw pretty much all of it.

00:09:38.740 They were very stoic.

00:09:39.720 And they also believed in kind of moving forward, especially when they came home.

00:09:44.040 I'll never forget I interviewed – many of the guys are like, yeah, I'm not going to sit around and loaf.

00:09:48.620 I'm going to get back to work.

00:09:51.100 And they hung up there.

00:09:52.480 They didn't want to just like –

00:09:53.760 They didn't want to dwell on it.

00:09:54.680 They hung in high school and they just talk about high school all the time.

00:09:57.160 Yeah.

00:09:57.560 These guys were just like not looking in the rearview mirror.

00:09:59.900 They were moving forward with their lives.

00:10:01.360 When they came back from the war.

00:10:02.040 Yeah, many of them.

00:10:03.920 But what you also saw – and I brought it out in my book, Beyond Valor and many other books that I've written – there was a hidden war.

00:10:12.360 And they suffered from PTSD just like any other –

00:10:15.720 But you didn't – they didn't talk about that.

00:10:18.020 No.

00:10:18.160 That was never –

00:10:18.720 For the most part, they didn't.

00:10:20.740 But they – it resonated.

00:10:22.360 And many of the men also silently suffered or they dealt with it in their own way.

00:10:28.900 Many of them were alcoholics or –

00:10:30.780 Was that part of – do you think that that was part of the response that the – it had been so intense and it wasn't a generation that could talk things out?

00:10:40.040 No doubt about it.

00:10:40.860 That they just went into themselves?

00:10:43.340 Everybody has their own way of dealing with combat.

00:10:47.400 And, you know, some people dealt with it in one way and another – and others in another.

00:10:52.180 And that was – but I would say by and large, many of these men would – were moved on and just got back into life in one way or another.

00:11:05.560 And then it would be – many cases, my interview would trigger a lot of the memories.

00:11:13.280 And they had never –

00:11:14.520 They had not gone back in detail when you were talking to them?

00:11:16.560 No.

00:11:16.680 No.

00:11:17.240 I would always ask them the questions, the hard questions.

00:11:20.540 What's your most vivid memory?

00:11:21.880 What's your most – what do you remember the most?

00:11:24.180 You know, what – and it would be stuff that nobody ever talked about.

00:11:29.480 It would be, you know, killing a prisoner, for instance, which is kind of like unheard of, right?

00:11:35.560 Or that what we think of an American combat soldier.

00:11:39.040 In popular myth.

00:11:39.700 Yeah, right.

00:11:40.300 But probably much more prevalent.

00:11:42.520 And it was in terms of, you know, sometimes when you're dealing with an airborne unit, that's – there is no enemy lines, basically.

00:11:51.580 But it is what it is.

00:11:53.500 And, you know, those are some of the stories that came out.

00:11:55.980 And they were powerful.

00:11:56.840 How much was the – that they had to prove them – so they were afraid of their – of being a coward?

00:12:09.660 How much was it that –

00:12:10.720 Peer pressure was a big thing.

00:12:12.100 Peer pressure, but even – maybe even to themselves.

00:12:14.000 How much was that fear that I've got – I don't know what I'm getting into, but I've got to be able to stand and deliver.

00:12:20.040 I can't – I can't waver.

00:12:22.440 Was that a big deal for you?

00:12:23.600 It was a big deal because everybody was a volunteer in these units.

00:12:28.440 And the washout rate was high.

00:12:30.860 And if you were there, you were special.

00:12:34.340 They were often told that they could beat five guys, you know, and obviously a myth.

00:12:38.720 But they believed in themselves that they could do extraordinary things.

00:12:43.480 And it – the legacy of these units, the American Airborne, for instance, in World War II, 101st Airborne, 82nd, these are exceptional units that have an incredible legacy of many presidential unit citations where they changed the course of battles.

00:13:02.020 Their actions alone, the story, stuff, story, and legend, it's incredible.

00:13:10.840 But it all comes down to – in all your books, the small units where you say you tell the bigger story, the small unit cohesion, small units, it's all individuals.

00:13:19.380 It's individuals in the defining moment actually make – use their agency, make a decision, take action, and that action drives not just the story but drives the event to a different place.

00:13:32.980 That's absolutely true.

00:13:34.140 So in each of these cases, it's that human element of their training of whatever it is that made them tougher.

00:13:44.640 And I think that's what's so important even today is that human agency.

00:13:49.020 But I fear that technology, as we've seen over time, will hinder that.

00:13:57.600 You sound like Patton.

00:13:58.780 Yeah.

00:13:59.240 You sound like Patton at the end.

00:14:00.400 I thought that all valor and courage and nobility of combat would be taken away by modern technology.

00:14:07.440 I'll tell you what.

00:14:07.840 Let's hold that.

00:14:08.820 We'll get into that.

00:14:09.940 I want to thank Patrick O'Donnell.

00:14:12.060 Kind of a preamble for what we're going to do on Monday.

00:14:16.120 One of the things we're trying to do here at the War Room is it is the – it's the opening weekend of summer, but it's so much more.

00:14:22.680 It's Memorial Day weekend.

00:14:23.660 This is not Veterans Day.

00:14:25.000 It's not thank you for your service.

00:14:26.260 This is about – this weekend, which will culminate with the commemoration on Monday at Arlington and at many military cemeteries,

00:14:33.960 hopefully all the military cemeteries throughout the country and many other places,

00:14:37.460 is about the commemoration of our honored dead, the war dead of the United States of America.

00:14:41.920 Short commercial break.

00:14:43.120 Be back with Patrick O'Donnell in just a moment. 0.91

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00:16:20.400 War Room.

00:16:21.480 Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.

00:16:23.880 Okay, welcome back.

00:16:28.260 It's Memorial Day week.

00:16:29.220 I'm here with Patrick K. O'Donnell.

00:16:31.560 Had anything prepared these men in any way about the ferocity of combat?

00:16:41.660 I think when the Spielberg D-Day movie came out,

00:16:48.340 that I think kind of shocked people the way it was shot on actually hitting,

00:16:52.660 hitting the beach at Normandy, Omaha Beach.

00:16:56.880 The longest day in these other movies had never really brought the intensity of combat.

00:17:01.780 And since that time, we've had, of course,

00:17:03.760 All Quiet on the Western Front that came out this year.

00:17:05.700 They're shot very differently.

00:17:08.440 But does even that expose the frosting intensity of combat?

00:17:14.100 That's one of the things I want to get across the audience.

00:17:15.880 These men and women in your books, the men and women that we honor this weekend and on Monday,

00:17:24.460 the level of violence is so incredible that it's hard to comprehend in these conflicts.

00:17:31.240 And you go to these cemeteries and you see the beautiful, peaceful nature.

00:17:34.180 The thing that's most juxtaposed is Normandy because you go at this magnificent cemetery,

00:17:49.260 the American cemetery, and they brought essentially all the war dead there were buried.

00:17:54.520 And it's so calm, it's so beautiful, and it's simplicity, and the monuments are so powerful.

00:18:00.460 Almost like you're back in ancient Rome or Greece.

00:18:03.640 And, of course, the crosses or the Stars of David.

00:18:07.600 But you're right looking on a beach that, and you have people there in the summer,

00:18:12.220 and there's kids running around, and it's just, it's a beach, and they're playing.

00:18:15.580 And you think about it and you go, my God, there was a time that this was literally hell on earth,

00:18:21.980 that you couldn't have gotten more intense than a D-Day coming ashore in those first couple hours.

00:18:28.360 And those men and women or those guys knew that they were going to be killed.

00:18:32.180 There's just no, the probability of surviving that would have been so low.

00:18:36.520 Is anything preparing, or do you think Americans even today understand the intensity of the actual combat that people go through?

00:18:44.220 Well, for the World War II generation, I think that there was some preparation in the sense that they were very hardened by the Great Depression.

00:18:53.120 And that was, that made people very tough, because they had nothing.

00:18:58.040 In some cases, they were starving.

00:19:00.500 So the Great Depression always...

00:19:02.620 That came out in your interviews?

00:19:03.820 Yeah, it did.

00:19:04.560 With oral histories?

00:19:05.400 Some of these guys would be part of the Civilian Conservation Corps, even at a young age, as teenagers.

00:19:11.820 They would leave their homes to make a little bit of extra money for their family.

00:19:17.360 And they would go through a very hardening process of, you know, not having any money or food.

00:19:25.600 So that, for the World War II generation, was absolutely a factor.

00:19:30.740 For the elite units that I interviewed, it was also the training.

00:19:34.420 And the training was incredibly intense.

00:19:36.520 It was, it was, you got some of the great, just individuals from that generation in these units.

00:19:44.980 The smartest, but also physically the toughest because of what they went through.

00:19:50.440 Just backbreaking in so many ways.

00:19:53.300 We had to do that.

00:19:53.980 It would build mental toughness.

00:19:55.200 We would have to do that from a standing start for World War II. 0.80

00:19:58.060 Remember, the first campaign in North, North Africa at Kazarin, we had sent troops over and they went over, I think, in the, Pearl Harbor was December of 41.

00:20:09.980 The North African campaign, I believe, Torch, started in September of 42.

00:20:15.340 So they had almost a year.

00:20:16.740 But people were not trained at all.

00:20:18.140 I mean, they kind of were throwing people into combat.

00:20:20.480 The Germans were essentially laughing at us.

00:20:22.900 And even the British said, this is such a disaster.

00:20:25.260 It wasn't about the heroism.

00:20:26.300 I mean, people got chopped up.

00:20:28.380 And one of the criticisms was that you didn't have enough junior officers that knew what they were doing, but you particularly didn't have field officers that had a clue of how to manage men.

00:20:37.580 And it was just a, it was just a slaughterhouse.

00:20:39.880 So from that, they, they, we got better at training people.

00:20:43.920 My, my book, Beyond Valor begins with 50 American Rangers at the D upgrade.

00:20:48.860 And that was a, um, that was in August, uh, 42.

00:20:55.840 And that was a, a real training point for, for many of these men because they were mixed in with British commandos.

00:21:03.280 And it was a disaster in many ways.

00:21:07.800 And these 50 men were then.

00:21:10.360 There was a raid into France to find out.

00:21:12.180 It was a raid into Dieppe, France.

00:21:14.080 And, uh, they wanted to test the German defenses of the Atlantic wall.

00:21:18.720 And what it did is it showed just how unprepared the allies were for a naval assault.

00:21:26.280 Because there was huge pressure by the Russians to open a second front.

00:21:29.260 That was what it was all about.

00:21:30.640 To open a second front, you had to, you had to take on the Atlantic wall.

00:21:34.280 And what the British couldn't do politically, you couldn't take any more slaughter of first, you couldn't have another day, the first day of the Somme.

00:21:41.380 You couldn't have another, the British politically church on these guys have been, so they were always hesitant to do it.

00:21:47.000 They wanted to try some.

00:21:47.940 We were certainly not prepared.

00:21:49.640 And it took two years, two more years, basically, in order for us to be, almost two years, for us to be prepared for D-Day in 1944.

00:21:59.460 And, um, you know, I'm in with these.

00:22:01.180 Could you imagine that army in North Africa, N-42, torch at Kazarin Pass?

00:22:07.000 That could they, the amazing thing is that is, I don't know, September, October of 42, that that would be ready less than two years later.

00:22:15.820 To, to, to, to, to hit the, you know, that landed D-Day?

00:22:19.680 I was, I interviewed the men that were the tip of the spear of, of Operation Torch.

00:22:24.640 And this was the Darby's Rangers.

00:22:27.340 The guys, the 50 Rangers that were in that raid on D-Up were part of Darby's Rangers, and they were part of the first ranger battalion that went in in Oran.

00:22:37.160 And the, um, I wear this every day.

00:22:40.080 I think it's a St. Christopher's medal that was worn by a member of the five of them.

00:22:45.500 And a scapula.

00:22:46.460 And a scapula.

00:22:47.760 You got, you got double, you got double.

00:22:49.760 Yeah, this, this, I wore this in Fallujah.

00:22:52.600 I got it about two weeks before I went.

00:22:56.020 And both veterans said to me, you're going to need this where you're going more than I do.

00:23:00.760 So, and the, the St. Christopher's medal, I've always worn, it was with a member of the 509 Parachute Battalion.

00:23:07.900 And the 509 were the first parachute assault into North Africa.

00:23:11.840 They took some airfields from the French.

00:23:15.040 And they're a storied unit.

00:23:17.100 I mean, it's just an amazing unit.

00:23:18.720 This, the individual that I wore this with, he was, of 850 men in the Battle of the Bulge, only 55 men were standing.

00:23:27.360 They were all either wounded or killed.

00:23:29.120 They fought against the SS Panzer Division, or Regiment, I should say.

00:23:36.420 And they fought all through North Africa.

00:23:38.640 They were at Anzio.

00:23:39.740 I mean, it's a storied unit.

00:23:42.920 And, yeah, just, that was, these are some of the people that are in my books that are just, you know, extraordinary Americans.

00:23:51.020 How did they, given these elite units, because you did both, you've done both Darby's Rangers, and you've done Merrill's Marauders.

00:24:01.200 I have.

00:24:01.640 Merrill's Marauders would be in the Burma, would be the story. 0.97

00:24:04.580 I interviewed every Ranger.

00:24:06.280 There were six Ranger battalions in World War II.

00:24:10.160 And then there was also Merrill's Marauders, and then something after that called Task Force Mars.

00:24:16.840 And I interviewed veterans from every one of those units.

00:24:20.760 You've interviewed all six, but every six, every, every, every, from every six, six, every, all six of the battalions, plus Merrill's Marauders, Task Force Mars.

00:24:30.680 And I would just go to these reunions, and I'd spend four, three days just sitting there with a microphone and interviewing these guys.

00:24:41.380 And that was just some of the most extraordinary experiences of my life.

00:24:44.960 And those reunions are essentially gone.

00:24:47.200 They are.

00:24:47.900 Do the children and grandchildren still hold them?

00:24:49.860 Some of them carry them on.

00:24:51.300 Yeah, they do.

00:24:52.460 But for the most part, they're, they're gone.

00:24:55.480 And it's, you know, I, it's a very sad thing because I spent a large portion of my life, you know, being with these veterans.

00:25:02.700 And now they've, for the most part, my friends are largely gone.

00:25:07.540 Tell me about the reunions.

00:25:09.040 They are.

00:25:09.340 They're powerful.

00:25:11.100 You would just go to these things, and usually no frills.

00:25:16.240 They would, it was a, you know, a modest hotel, and these men would gather.

00:25:21.060 And the, the coolest thing.

00:25:23.760 They were from all walks of life.

00:25:24.960 All walks of life.

00:25:26.160 Um, from all parts of the United States, too.

00:25:29.400 And they would gather, and, uh, they would, they would remember.

00:25:35.400 And in some cases, it would be the first time they would remember.

00:25:38.960 I would, I would, I would trigger a lot of the memories, and, uh, that, that they had never talked about in, in 50 years or more.

00:25:48.500 And I was the first person to talk about the war.

00:25:52.120 Most of them would, a lot of these guys would just think about the, the happy memories and stuff.

00:25:56.480 And I asked a whole assortment of things.

00:26:00.380 And all the interviews I had, um, were, were exceptional in the sense that I was recommended by somebody else.

00:26:06.880 So I always knew who would be the guy that would not embellish the stories or anything else.

00:26:12.620 It was always the truth, for the most part, as they remembered it.

00:26:17.540 And then I had the, the unit reports and everything else in my mind or with me.

00:26:24.520 And I could take some of that stuff and, and provide that in the questions I asked them.

00:26:30.140 4,000 World War II veterans.

00:26:33.720 You, you've interviewed 4,000.

00:26:35.000 Either orally through, on the, on tape or through email.

00:26:39.580 I created a system called eHistories.

00:26:42.900 This is in the early to mid-90s when email and the internet was sort of at the beginning.

00:26:49.340 And I was using that to interview them too.

00:26:52.260 Are you the first really to do this?

00:26:53.820 I mean, stuff started and broke up in a very, there were others, but the eH thing.

00:26:57.880 Yeah, for sure.

00:26:58.600 I created this thing called the Drop Zone Virtual Museum, which still is out there.

00:27:01.800 And it's, it's a, it's a museum that focuses on the history of the men and their photos and their scrapbooks and all that stuff.

00:27:09.140 If we don't, if we lose that, we've lost something very elemental to this country.

00:27:16.120 You agree?

00:27:17.740 Absolutely.

00:27:18.180 I think that our history is, in many ways, just as we look around, is, is, is disappearing.

00:27:26.920 It's very important.

00:27:28.980 It's, our history is, is, is, is, is who we are as Americans.

00:27:33.220 We're going to deal with that when we get back.

00:27:34.900 We're going to take a short commercial break.

00:27:36.480 Honored to have the preeminent combat historian of his generation, Patrick K. O'Donnell, in the war room on this Memorial Day weekend.

00:27:45.020 Again, the commemoration of our honored dead, the war dead of the United States of America, our republic, back in the month.

00:27:51.880 For War Room veterans,

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00:29:52.660 Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.

00:30:01.180 Welcome back.

00:30:02.080 It's Saturday, 27 May in the year of the Lord, 2023.

00:30:04.920 It is the kickoff for our Memorial Day commemoration coverage.

00:30:10.560 I'm with Patrick K. O'Donnell.

00:30:11.900 Patrick is going to join me for a Monday as we've done now for, I don't know, 8, 9, 10 years.

00:30:18.640 Patrick, you just said something before the last break.

00:30:20.120 Do you think we're in jeopardy of losing, number one, the memory of our history and, two, the connection to that memory?

00:30:29.880 I think absolutely that's the case.

00:30:32.260 There's danger of that pretty much all around us in different flanks and different ways.

00:30:38.160 Either it be renaming military bases or just the interpretation of our founding, which is fundamentally, in some cases, it's anti-American.

00:30:53.500 I'm all about, you know, looking at things from different angles, and that's certainly important in all cases.

00:31:00.200 But I think there's a lot of, there's a great issue of, our history is in danger of being lost in many cases.

00:31:08.960 All my work has really been about, it's always been like the story is the story.

00:31:14.520 It's always been to try to preserve those stories and those legacies.

00:31:18.420 And I don't, and I think the other danger that we have is there's a lot of people that put a bias, their personal bias on history.

00:31:29.480 I try to just, in most cases, all cases actually, is just let the story tell itself and let the.

00:31:36.180 Let the actors, let the actors in the play.

00:31:38.680 Yeah, exactly.

00:31:39.140 Let the soldiers themselves.

00:31:39.840 And it's, it's, it's their own words that, that tell their story.

00:31:43.920 It's, it's those primary sources that my books are made up of.

00:31:47.360 And I, I see there's a.

00:31:49.200 Are they in literature or in literary, you know, theory, are they reliable narrators?

00:31:57.520 Well, I think they have their own bias as well, of course.

00:32:00.880 And you have to sort of, you have to suss that out.

00:32:04.200 You have to look at all of the, the components and pieces as a historian when you're putting together a book from different sources to, to tell something.

00:32:13.760 But yeah, sure.

00:32:14.240 There's, there's always a bias from a certain perspective.

00:32:17.160 When you talked about, you just said about changing the names of the base of the fort, Fort Hood and Fort Bragg come to, to mind immediately.

00:32:25.500 And, and Fort Bragg, obviously, the honored 82nd Airborne.

00:32:29.820 And then you've got Fort Hood out, out west, right?

00:32:33.940 Was it third armor at Fort Hood?

00:32:37.400 Yeah, there's this, this changing of names.

00:32:40.300 I mean, that, that, that was a, an important phase in our history was a reconciliation.

00:32:45.640 The coming together of the north and south begins at Appomattox.

00:32:50.600 It's, it's there that, that Lee and Grant set this amazing example of, in many ways, forgiveness.

00:32:59.100 And the bases, in many ways, were a part of that reconciliation to, to give a tip of the hat to, to the vanquished, in this case.

00:33:10.760 Um, so I, I think that's, that's, it certainly is a, a, a real, a great danger in many cases, constantly renaming things in, in, in, in looking upon our history in a different manner.

00:33:24.600 Do you think today that the, the combat history is, is harder for younger generations to connect to?

00:33:30.960 Or is, is there still a section of men and women?

00:33:34.940 I know, for instance, Mo, I dragged her every, uh, Civil War battlefield.

00:33:39.900 Uh, and, and she liked it, but I mean, I think she could have opted, opted out of a few of them, went to Chancellorsville a couple of times, you know, Virginia.

00:33:48.000 The, the wilderness in Spotsylvania where it's 104 degrees in Virginia summer, she might have thought of some other things to do.

00:33:54.120 But, um, obviously it resonated with her.

00:33:56.860 It's one of the reasons she went to West Point and then went to the, to the 101st afterwards.

00:34:01.300 Um, do you think it's tougher to reach a younger generation that's on social media and TikTok?

00:34:07.500 I think it certainly is.

00:34:08.820 But I think, and I think the key though is, is how, how you connect with them.

00:34:13.840 If you connect with them through story and really the stories of these Americans in many cases are just exceptional, extraordinary.

00:34:22.260 They revere their grandparents and their parents and their grandparents and great parents.

00:34:26.340 Are they connecting to these World War II stories right now or the Korean War stories?

00:34:30.160 I say it all depends.

00:34:31.620 Um, you know, I mean, it depends on, on who you're dealing with because there are, there is a certain segment of the population that does connect.

00:34:39.420 And then there are those that don't.

00:34:41.040 It's about how to history is taught.

00:34:43.400 That's the, another important thing.

00:34:45.120 What have you learned about that?

00:34:46.340 I think through story and connecting people with the past.

00:34:49.920 And if you, if you have an assignment in a class where you're, you ask somebody to, to investigate, you know, a pension file of a Revolutionary War soldier, then that, that person might make a connection to just an average individual.

00:35:07.260 That it's a lot different than memorizing a date and a place.

00:35:11.560 It's, you know, you really get sort of a personal connection with history.

00:35:16.060 Like, is the hardest war for us still to comprehend or to see about the valor?

00:35:21.760 Is it, is it still Vietnam?

00:35:24.080 Is Vietnam the hardest that you, of all the ones you've done, what, what's the hardest to actually not bring to life, but to, um, um, tell the stories of?

00:35:34.980 Because is Vietnam still the hardest?

00:35:36.520 I think that might be one of the, the, the worst, but also I think our current wars, Afghanistan and Iraq.

00:35:43.660 I know from the guys that I've was with, they don't talk about it at all ever, unless it's with among themselves.

00:35:53.460 But even then they don't, they don't.

00:35:55.800 Explain that.

00:35:56.120 What do you mean by that?

00:35:56.840 I think there's a, I think that there's a, a fear of, uh, misunderstanding with people that weren't there in many cases.

00:36:06.040 These are all volunteer forces.

00:36:07.820 Yeah.

00:36:08.480 There are no drafts.

00:36:09.580 So this is two, two, two wars there for 20 years.

00:36:12.480 That group is a silent group as well.

00:36:15.040 They don't talk about it ever.

00:36:16.940 And even, even with, within our groups, it's, uh, not talked about either.

00:36:22.620 They have the highest PTSD, maybe not the highest, but now the PCT is a defined thing.

00:36:27.920 It's very high.

00:36:28.700 And then 40, uh, suicides a day.

00:36:30.900 Very sadly, we've, um, exceeded, uh, suicides in the unit that I was in that, and then we had in combat deaths in Fallujah.

00:36:39.740 Oh, stop.

00:36:41.120 In the unit, there are more suicides.

00:36:43.040 You lost four in combat.

00:36:44.720 KIAs? 0.91

00:36:45.420 Yeah.

00:36:45.580 We had, we had, um, about over 50 that were killed in Fallujah and there's now more suicides than there were.

00:36:51.580 Hold it.

00:36:52.060 The unit overall, your, your squad had four.

00:36:54.320 Yeah.

00:36:54.540 I'm talking about, uh.

00:36:55.520 Give me the unit.

00:36:56.220 What was the unit?

00:36:56.900 Three, one.

00:36:57.660 Three, one.

00:36:58.840 Yeah.

00:36:59.520 Had 50 killed KIAs?

00:37:01.060 And then there's now more.

00:37:02.460 Yeah.

00:37:02.700 There's a, it's a very, it's a very sad thing.

00:37:05.880 I mean, is that an extraordinary number?

00:37:07.220 50 killed in action in Fallujah?

00:37:09.980 It was even higher than that, I believe, but yeah.

00:37:12.580 And you've had more.

00:37:13.340 So you've not, that unit of Marines.

00:37:17.220 I mean, this is kind of the elite of the elite.

00:37:19.100 You're telling me of combat Marines, there are now more suicides than there were.

00:37:24.860 That's what I've been told.

00:37:26.300 Is this back to a lack of, of, of, um, belief in the country?

00:37:31.260 Is this a religious, uh, the drop in religious belief and outward participation in religion?

00:37:37.380 It's hard to say.

00:37:37.940 Yeah, I think it's, I think it's a, it's a situation that's all, it's all based on, um, the individual and how they, they process the events.

00:37:46.500 But I think the other thing is you've had, you know, economic downturns and, you know, people have looked back, um, at different things.

00:37:56.140 We never talk about those suicides as part of the honored dead.

00:37:58.980 We don't talk about them as the casualties of these wars.

00:38:02.080 They're not added as the casualties.

00:38:03.560 Should they be?

00:38:04.540 I think so.

00:38:05.860 Is everybody's, you know, they've been touched by war.

00:38:09.160 This is true sacrifice that, I mean, there's, there's, there's so much, a tremendous amount of sacrifice goes on for those that have served.

00:38:18.560 And those that, also the families of those that have served, everyone.

00:38:23.160 When you go to Section 60, and Section 60 is the section they open up for the Iraq and the Afghanistan war dead. 0.54

00:38:31.000 You see that in the younger families.

00:38:33.060 I mean, Andrew Breitbart, the reason, one of the things of Andrew Breitbart's change is he bought a house that overlooked the National Military Cemetery that's right there in Westwood.

00:38:41.300 It's right in the middle of Los Angeles.

00:38:42.540 Because, in fact, the U.S. Open that will be played is just right down, is really right down within a quarter of a mile of the cemetery.

00:38:51.240 It's beautiful.

00:38:52.140 And overlooking it, one of the things that got Andrew, who didn't come from a military background, a family had not been in the military, really had no involvement,

00:38:59.220 was to see the young families come back for the section they opened up for the, for the burial of the honored dead in Afghanistan and Iraq,

00:39:08.300 were right there in back of where his, his, his backyard on the cliff would look down over and see these young families.

00:39:14.520 And it started to have an impact on him.

00:39:16.820 The sacrifice of the war was more than just the warrior itself.

00:39:20.760 It was the entire family.

00:39:22.080 It was.

00:39:22.600 And that's what I've seen.

00:39:23.820 It's a cradle to grave kind of experience that, you know, you see these just extraordinary sacrifice on the part of Gold Star families,

00:39:36.020 everybody else that have evolved in that, in that, in that, those, those warriors that have given their entire, you know,

00:39:45.000 last full measure of devotion for our country.

00:39:46.740 What, um, this weekend, you know, it's gotten to be the kickoff of, uh, and we'll talk a little bit about this more on Monday.

00:39:56.840 It's gotten, it's the kickoff of summer.

00:39:58.700 Obviously, it's gotten to be a big, um, you know, with the car sales and all the sales and people going to the beach.

00:40:05.380 Do you believe we've lost the memory of what Memorial Day is really supposed to be about,

00:40:11.800 particularly when they shifted it from the 31st of May to the, to the last Monday in the month?

00:40:16.340 So you got a, a three-day weekend and now people make it a four-day weekend?

00:40:20.780 I'd just say it depends on who you asked.

00:40:22.940 You know, the, the, the, the groups that I follow, the people that I'm still with, in touch with from Iraq,

00:40:30.280 they're very much in touch with the meaning of Memorial Day and how powerful it is.

00:40:36.120 And they remember the sacrifices of those, those young men.

00:40:41.400 Has, um, you did, you did the book you were embedded with, but you haven't done to date,

00:40:48.200 maybe I'm wrong, you haven't done another book about either Iraq or Afghanistan.

00:40:52.840 No, I wrote, um, the book that I wrote was, we were one, uh, shoulder to shoulder with the

00:40:58.760 Marines that were in Fallujah.

00:40:59.680 And that was my book, but it was not a book of, it was not a, um, personal memoir in any way.

00:41:06.620 It was about eight best friends that go to Fallujah in 1st Platoon 3-1 and, uh, it's what

00:41:13.200 they experience.

00:41:14.040 And then I intersected that experience, uh, in, in the battle, in some of their toughest battles

00:41:21.220 in, uh, an area of Fallujah called Queens, where it was house to house against, um,

00:41:29.200 a Star Wars bar of international jihadists, including Chechens, you know, people from 1.00

00:41:36.180 multiple net 16 or 17 different countries that were there.

00:41:41.100 People don't realize Fallujah, and the Marine Corps would tell you, one of the toughest

00:41:46.940 battles the Marine Corps has ever had, a city of 250,000 people, they, a lot of the people

00:41:51.320 left, every bad element, they try to draw, the American military strategy, draw all the,

00:41:56.520 draw the Star Wars bar in there.

00:41:58.660 Yeah, and they were highly trained, but they were also on, we saw liquid adrenaline in most

00:42:05.760 cases, or methadone, or.

00:42:07.900 They were jacked up on drugs.

00:42:08.900 They were on, uh, many of them, yeah, we saw the syringes all over the place.

00:42:12.660 So you had super fighters in many ways, guys that, you know, saw the entire building collapse

00:42:17.620 on people, and they're still firing their AKs underneath the rubble.

00:42:21.760 Just, uh, they would take enormous amounts of bodily damage and still keep fighting.

00:42:27.680 Yeah, they were just, uh, an incredibly, uh, bunkered enemy that was determined, and very, uh,

00:42:33.340 very determined.

00:42:35.600 For one of the great battles of the Marine Corps, it's, it's, in the largest battle, or

00:42:40.480 the most intense battle, set-piece battle, only probably topped by Bakhmut, the siege of

00:42:46.260 Bakhmut, which is now, and it's, you know, coming up on one year.

00:42:50.260 It doesn't get the type of coverage you think it was.

00:42:52.800 Your book is, I think, probably the most prominent book about Fallujah.

00:42:55.860 My book is a very unique book, in the sense that it's a relic of the battle, and what

00:43:03.120 I mean by that is all the oral histories, or most of them, were done at night, when we

00:43:09.540 finished an engagement, or a couple weeks afterwards.

00:43:12.780 In the moment.

00:43:13.640 Yeah.

00:43:14.040 In the moment.

00:43:14.540 So it was, it's raw emotions and salty.

00:43:18.780 It's, it's an incredible.

00:43:20.400 No, it's amazing.

00:43:21.140 It's an incredible oral history, in many cases, in their own words, of what happened.

00:43:26.240 And it's, and then a couple weeks later, we did, uh, you know, group interviews, and we

00:43:33.880 diagrammed every, every ambush, everything.

00:43:36.700 Okay, short break.

00:43:37.540 So it's incredibly detailed.

00:43:38.800 We're going to be back with, uh, the combat historian Patrick O'Donnell in the warm in a moment.

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00:46:20.920 Okay, so I'm going to break an exclusive here, and that is you've been researching for the last five years.

00:46:28.880 Five years.

00:46:30.000 Yeah.

00:46:30.540 Five years.

00:46:32.040 Look, this guy is a national treasure.

00:46:34.880 Because as people know, I'm a voracious reader.

00:46:37.000 I read it all.

00:46:37.680 His books are read-like novels.

00:46:39.160 For five years, you've been researching, for the first time, the Civil War.

00:46:47.500 I don't want to tell the story at all.

00:46:48.800 It's actually, since my childhood, I've been in the Civil War.

00:46:52.540 But this is, as a professional, I've dedicated yourself to a project.

00:46:56.600 If now seeing, in studying the combat of the Civil War, Patrick K. O'Donnell, where do you rank in ferocity of battle?

00:47:06.520 World War II, World War I, Revolutionary War, Civil War, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam.

00:47:14.080 Give me your rankings.

00:47:15.260 Number one, the Civil War.

00:47:17.260 Number one, the Civil War.

00:47:18.660 Yeah, because it was so close, combat.

00:47:21.840 The level of intensity was amazing.

00:47:25.780 Just ferocious, hand-to-hand.

00:47:27.680 Had the technology overtaken the tactics?

00:47:29.500 That was the thing.

00:47:31.120 They didn't quite get it.

00:47:32.400 I mean, the rifle musket changes everything.

00:47:34.780 They're using Napoleonic tactics.

00:47:36.540 But I think everything, in many ways, much of what we've seen in textbooks, there's a lot of myth to it.

00:47:47.300 In other words, what I mean by that is one of the things that you'll come away with when you read the book.

00:47:52.980 It's quite a different look at the Civil War.

00:47:56.120 It's a very different perspective.

00:47:57.680 I can't get into the details.

00:47:58.920 No, I don't want to talk about it.

00:47:59.840 But what I say, what it wasn't was just a situation where the North had an overwhelming number of men and supplies and equipment and overwhelmed the South.

00:48:11.500 It wasn't the case at all.

00:48:12.600 In fact, it's really quite a miracle that the war ended up the way it did.

00:48:19.080 A total miracle.

00:48:19.780 The political complexity of this, this book, I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen, will be a blockbuster.

00:48:27.280 His other twos have been bestsellers.

00:48:28.880 This is going to be a, I mean, big bestsellers, but this is going to be a blockbuster.

00:48:33.780 The technology, both Lee and Patton both said it is good that war is so horrible.

00:48:50.560 Or we would get to love it too much.

00:48:53.640 Is that seen by, at the general level, but not seen?

00:48:57.500 But that fails to resonate at the private or the person in the trenches level where it's hell all the time?

00:49:03.820 It certainly resonated in the Civil War.

00:49:05.800 In fact, many Americans looked at it as a forever war that would never end.

00:49:10.400 And they wanted it to end.

00:49:14.160 And, yeah, this book that I've written will bring that to the reader's attention.

00:49:21.820 Okay, I don't want to give any more away.

00:49:25.060 Just say it's not on presale.

00:49:26.960 We've got about a year to go, but we'll have, we'll make sure we do this right.

00:49:32.080 How do people, first of all, I want to thank you.

00:49:34.320 I want to thank you for Monday.

00:49:36.260 Patrick will be here on Monday as we do our, I don't know, ninth or tenth annual session with Patrick on a, on a, on the War Room Memorial Day special.

00:49:46.540 And we'll really be spending time about Arlington National Cemetery, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, all of it.

00:49:53.160 So I want to thank you in advance for that.

00:49:55.960 It's an honor to be here, Steve.

00:49:57.180 I, I really always appreciate it.

00:49:59.520 You're a national treasure.

00:50:01.280 You've done amazing stuff.

00:50:02.480 Stop, stop, stop.

00:50:03.420 I got the easiest job in the world.

00:50:04.740 I provide a platform for the best people in the country, which are guys like you, men and women like you.

00:50:09.380 How do people, I want to make sure everybody can get to your writings.

00:50:12.040 I want to make sure everybody can get to your books.

00:50:13.460 I want to make sure everybody can get to your website, the Drop Zone, everything you've done, the 4,000 interviews you've done.

00:50:19.660 You're, you're a treasure because you went when nobody was doing it.

00:50:22.620 And we have that now in posterity.

00:50:24.360 If you had not done that, it would not, this is what I say about human agency.

00:50:27.440 If Patrick K. O'Donnell is a young person, not going to have done it, it'd have been lost.

00:50:31.900 And those oral histories are everything.

00:50:33.440 That's what we have really to, that's the, like Homer, that's the ancient storytelling that connects one generation to the next.

00:50:40.100 And it was because of you, it happened.

00:50:41.500 So where do people go to get all your content?

00:50:44.980 My website is Patrick K. O'Donnell.com.

00:50:48.540 And then my, my Twitter account is at Combat Historian.

00:50:52.620 And that is also my, my Getter account as well.

00:50:55.540 At Combat Historian.

00:50:56.280 At Combat Historian.

00:50:57.440 I follow you on Getter.

00:50:58.680 I'm not on, I'm not on the Twitter.

00:51:00.360 Well, thank you for, thank you for doing this.

00:51:03.960 And five years of research.

00:51:06.340 The book will come out in the spring of 2024.

00:51:10.420 So it'll be, it couldn't be more timely, right?

00:51:12.940 Of the presidential election and everything, the country will be on the line then.

00:51:15.900 So it couldn't be more, couldn't be better.

00:51:18.240 And you'll do your natural book tours.

00:51:20.100 You do that.

00:51:20.720 Are you doing any speaking engagements?

00:51:22.340 You can tell people.

00:51:22.720 I'm always doing speaking engagements.

00:51:24.340 And people can see that on the website.

00:51:26.060 You notify where you need to.

00:51:26.820 Yeah, I'm, I'm a, I'm a professional speaker and I'm, I've been, I'm constantly engaged

00:51:31.780 in different speaking engagements.

00:51:33.620 Yeah.

00:51:34.480 Patrick, you don't want to miss him if he, if he speaks.

00:51:36.880 Okay.

00:51:37.440 We're going to leave you with a, some images and music that is appropriate for this weekend.

00:51:44.940 We'll be back here on Monday.

00:51:47.060 Patrick K. O'Donnell and myself will be talking about Memorial Day itself, the Tomb of the Unknown

00:51:52.140 Soldier, Arlington National Cemetery, Captain Bannon will actually join us for part of that.

00:51:57.260 So until Monday, uh, we're, this has been the word I want to thank, uh, Real America's

00:52:01.600 Voice, the folks in Denver, my crack team here, everybody for putting this together, uh, until

00:52:07.180 Monday, uh, I will be up on Getter for the entire weekend, uh, may actually do a couple

00:52:12.600 of Getter lives.

00:52:13.280 Let's check it out.

00:52:14.300 Thank you very much.

00:52:15.140 We'll see you Monday.

00:52:22.140 We'll see you Monday.

00:52:52.140 We'll see you Monday.

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Bannon's War Room - May 27, 2023

Episode 2765： We Were One

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