Bannon's War Room - May 27, 2024


Episode 3639： WarRoom Memorial Day Special： 'Our Honored Dead'


Episode Stats

Length

55 minutes

Words per Minute

158.21024

Word Count

8,736

Sentence Count

833

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary

On today's episode, we have a special guest on the show, author David Horschig. David is a Civil War aficionado and author of a new book on the Civil War, The Unvanquished. He has been a veteran of the U.S. military and served in the Korean War, Korea, World War II, and World War I. He is also the author of the new book, Unvanished: A Graphic History of World War One, and has been an avid Civil War fan since he was about 4 years old.


Transcript

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00:05:00.000 David.
00:05:01.000 After the Christmas special, this is my favorite show with you.
00:05:05.740 Christmas special is pretty good.
00:05:07.460 The combat, we first started doing it, the combat history of Christmas.
00:05:10.440 What are you talking about?
00:05:11.660 I go, hey, on one level, it's a commercial and obviously deeply religious holiday, but American fighting men have been fighting.
00:05:19.020 And we tell those stories and people go, wow, I didn't realize all that happened on all those different wars over Christmas.
00:05:24.460 But it's it's extraordinary.
00:05:26.180 And your reason I'm so honored to have you here on Memorial Day is I don't think anybody understands.
00:05:32.300 First off, what we'll talk about a little later in the show, which we always traditionally get to, is what happens today in Washington.
00:05:39.240 But really the the tomb of the unknown soldier, Arlington National Cemetery, the civic, really civic religion of of the United States in in your deep understanding of that and how we actually got to that.
00:05:52.180 But also the reason it's so great is you have you now with your new book on the Civil War, essentially covered the Revolution, Iraq, Korea, you know, World War Two, World War One.
00:06:05.460 You have your hands in all these and just tell amazing stories because this is remember as a veteran, this is not Veterans Day.
00:06:13.960 Veterans Day is 11 November, and that's because it it was really Armistice Day in World War One and then rolled over to Veterans Day.
00:06:23.460 That's where we do honor the veterans and veterans service.
00:06:26.200 A lot of people, I think, get confused about Memorial Day.
00:06:28.320 Memorial Day is not about service.
00:06:30.580 Memorial Day is about sacrifice.
00:06:32.180 It is for the honored dead of the United States.
00:06:36.300 And that's where we delve in.
00:06:37.500 And I really want to change it up because normally we start back with the World War One, how we actually got here with the Tomb of the Unknown.
00:06:44.220 We'll be playing a lot of footage of that.
00:06:47.280 I had experience as a very young child.
00:06:50.120 My dad took me to the my brother, older brother.
00:06:52.400 And I went to the to the internment of the Korean veteran back in the 1950s in the Eisenhower administration.
00:06:59.380 We'll talk about that.
00:07:00.500 But your new book, and I got to tell you, of all the great books, and I've loved I'd love that kind of two part.
00:07:09.140 The two part one of the revolution is one of my favorite, probably my favorite to be a third, soon to be a third, 250th.
00:07:15.400 But you stopped.
00:07:16.440 You took a break from the third and wrote your I think this is your first book on the Civil War.
00:07:20.940 This is.
00:07:21.440 But this has been my passion since I was about four years old.
00:07:23.720 And with that said, you can't you got drawn into this in this.
00:07:28.160 In fact, the other day when producer Cameron had we had some other stuff.
00:07:32.820 We had one of the great RV team here in a technician, one of the he was a camera operator and worked the board.
00:07:39.720 And we started talking.
00:07:40.920 He's from Southern Maryland in a complete Civil War aficionado.
00:07:44.880 And he got into it when he was very young.
00:07:46.660 He reads all the books on people are drawn to this topic, particularly in the certain obviously in the in the east, in certain parts of Tennessee.
00:07:53.720 Et cetera, because so many battlefields around and memorials.
00:07:56.280 You just drawn it to his kid.
00:07:57.700 Talk to us about the unvanquished and particularly related to Memorial Day.
00:08:03.380 You know, people don't realize that it's that our Memorial Day here kind of started with the Confederates, the daughters, the Confederacy.
00:08:11.800 And people, my folks are buried at the Arlington National Cemetery of the of the Confederacy, which is Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, which has the Pickett's Charge Memorial and all that.
00:08:25.160 How did you get drawn into the Civil War?
00:08:27.020 Talk to us about the unvanquished here on Memorial Day in 2024.
00:08:30.180 I was drawn into the Civil War was about four years old and I I was picking up military four years old.
00:08:39.580 Yes.
00:08:40.080 My first book was a book on World War One, which is massive.
00:08:43.000 I was maybe 30 pounds.
00:08:44.820 It was a massive book.
00:08:46.140 There's a 40 pound book.
00:08:47.280 It was a 40.
00:08:47.720 It was a pictorial history of World War One and it was graphic and hardcore.
00:08:51.600 And I was reading that instead of dinosaur books.
00:08:54.140 And then I was reading Civil War books.
00:08:56.180 You're flipping through these black and white.
00:08:57.440 And I was dragging my dad to Civil War battlefields.
00:08:59.680 He would tell me, you know, Patrick, you've seen one.
00:09:01.880 You've seen them all.
00:09:02.420 I'm like, Dad, no, we haven't seen enough.
00:09:04.380 Wow.
00:09:05.020 And I was going to we went to Fredericksburg.
00:09:07.700 We went to the wilderness.
00:09:09.180 We went down to Richmond.
00:09:10.240 Where were you raised?
00:09:11.380 I was raised in Ohio.
00:09:12.500 In Ohio.
00:09:13.560 And you were still drawn to the army in Northern Virginia.
00:09:16.840 You guys would come down here on family trips.
00:09:18.500 We would.
00:09:18.620 But our family trips were always we were never going to the beach.
00:09:21.480 We're doing historical things.
00:09:23.240 And I loved it.
00:09:24.440 And it was hardcore.
00:09:25.520 How did you talk to your parents?
00:09:26.680 They just said, hey, the kids got an interest.
00:09:28.440 The kids got an interest.
00:09:29.600 The kids obsessed.
00:09:30.520 The kids obsessed.
00:09:31.480 Were you obsessed?
00:09:32.200 I was obsessed.
00:09:33.100 I was collecting artifacts.
00:09:34.860 I was I had a book, a library of like I didn't know this part of Patrick O'Donnell.
00:09:39.680 I know his recent history of the last 20 or 30 years.
00:09:42.540 No, it's nothing new.
00:09:43.580 And everybody that went to grade school with me knew I was doing this stuff.
00:09:46.720 And I was drawing tanks.
00:09:48.620 I was you name it.
00:09:50.340 What was the interest at four, five and six?
00:09:55.340 What was it internally?
00:09:56.700 You want to know more about these people?
00:09:58.680 You they they what was it?
00:10:01.140 It was the stories.
00:10:02.040 I was obsessed with the stories.
00:10:03.460 I was obsessed with just sort of people that change things and history itself and how the ebb and flow of it.
00:10:10.320 But I was just I would love to go.
00:10:13.020 And I in all the books I've written, I always walk the ground whenever I can.
00:10:17.420 Like the Unvanquished.
00:10:17.940 Very important.
00:10:19.040 You can go visit northern Virginia.
00:10:21.820 You can go to Loudoun County and go to Prince William County.
00:10:24.660 The book's a driving tour of all these places, the mansions, the safe houses, which still have carpentry work for, you know, hidden compartments.
00:10:32.360 Why is it important?
00:10:33.440 This is one of the reasons your book comes to life.
00:10:35.280 This is one of the reasons I think the War and Posse is is is your part of the huge part of your fan base.
00:10:42.260 I love it.
00:10:43.120 These well, these books are all if they take you forever, just the research, then you write them.
00:10:50.280 But they feel like novels in the fact that they have a feel to them.
00:10:54.080 Part of that, as I tell people, you actually go on the research, not just into the into the archives.
00:10:59.040 You then go to the actual place.
00:11:00.760 So when you describe it, it's from a firsthand understanding of what the actual geographic place, because history is takes its place in place, you know, site specific.
00:11:12.640 What I want to do with all the books I've written is put you there.
00:11:15.840 It's the camera that just puts you there on the ground in 1864 and 1865.
00:11:20.720 I want you to feel what Lincoln was feeling or with the Confederacy was feeling of how desperate the situation, how how back and forth was.
00:11:28.740 It was certainly not a war that was preordained in any way.
00:11:33.760 And it's a miracle.
00:11:35.180 I mean, you kind of it it it it came upon people like a storm.
00:11:39.240 Right. Right. Out of nowhere.
00:11:40.420 I mean, I've been building for years, the tension and the and quite frankly, some of the hatred.
00:11:45.680 But the actual kinetic part of it caught people by surprise.
00:11:49.580 Indeed. And it was the election of 1860 that changes everything.
00:11:53.460 And that's where that's the beginning of your people and unvanquish before the conflict starts.
00:12:00.700 They're normal folks. Right. These are not super.
00:12:05.080 Most of them are not super engaged partisans on the political process.
00:12:08.500 No, most of them are not.
00:12:10.920 But you have within that some really extraordinary people like Richard Blazer, for instance, who's this he, you know, he has a riverboat on the Ohio River and he's a hack driver.
00:12:22.700 He drives a carriage up and down the road.
00:12:24.840 He's 34 years old. But this guy has a knack for hunting confederates.
00:12:29.520 But, you know, at the same time, he never would make it on the playground uniform, totally disheveled.
00:12:34.680 His one eye kind of wanders off to the side.
00:12:37.180 And then you got that combined with the command of the guy that would be the future publisher and founder of the L.A.
00:12:43.520 Times, Harrison Gray Otis, who's there, too, in a Republican.
00:12:47.940 One of the most powerful families.
00:12:48.840 And it's incredible. They're ardent abolitionists.
00:12:53.040 But on the other side of the spectrum, you have guys like John Singleton Mosby, who's this lawyer that, you know, in law school almost kills a man in a fight with a pistol.
00:13:03.780 And tell us about Mosby, because he's a fascinating, fascinating figure in the book.
00:13:07.720 Mosby is a towering figure.
00:13:09.820 He's a towering figure that is the pioneer of of American modern guerrilla warfare.
00:13:14.860 And he's an unlikely figure.
00:13:17.780 You know, he's five foot seven, eight, five foot seven, 128 pounds.
00:13:24.460 Brilliant.
00:13:25.240 And has gravitas.
00:13:27.940 And, you know, he is able to change the course of the war through his actions.
00:13:32.400 He's given his first command.
00:13:33.620 He's given a guy with a club foot and told to go by Jeb Stewart to go create a guerrilla warfare operation.
00:13:40.020 And it's a miserable failure.
00:13:41.300 He's captured at a train station by a company of Union Calvary, but makes lemonade, lemons out of lemonade by he's captured.
00:13:50.760 And through his prisoner exchange, he's transported down the James River on a steamboat.
00:13:55.740 And he sees all these reinforcements building up.
00:13:58.600 And he knows that that's part of a of an attack.
00:14:02.600 It's it's actionable.
00:14:03.900 A big troop movement.
00:14:05.400 It's it's he recognized.
00:14:07.200 He also sees the commands that are there.
00:14:08.860 This guy is brilliant.
00:14:09.820 He recognizes that it's several cores.
00:14:13.160 He knows that this is actionable, strategic level intelligence.
00:14:16.420 He gets off the boat.
00:14:17.760 The guy doesn't go, you know, like hang out somewhere.
00:14:20.140 He immediately rides to General Lee's headquarters.
00:14:23.400 He's exhausted, sudden meeting.
00:14:25.280 He's only a lowly lieutenant that pops into Lee's headquarters and are immediately suspicious.
00:14:29.420 Who's this guy?
00:14:30.780 And he convinces General Lee that this is an attack that's coming.
00:14:34.220 And sure enough, the Battle of Cedar Mountain is decided by Mosby's intelligence.
00:14:39.140 And Cedar Mountain is one of the more unknown, but more important battles leading up the whole campaign of Second Manassas.
00:14:45.660 Right.
00:14:45.900 It's really incredible.
00:14:47.580 OK, Patrick O'Donnell, the combat historian of his generation and a beloved, revered figure for the war and posse.
00:14:55.860 It's Memorial Day and we're on a Memorial Day special back in a moment.
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00:16:49.920 Our Honored Dead.
00:16:54.480 Patrick K. O'Donnell, Best Comprehensive Story.
00:16:56.400 I want to go back to your youth.
00:16:58.940 I can tell already in the chat people are quite interested in this.
00:17:02.680 How did you, after four and doing this, what was it then that as you went to elementary school, you started reading books?
00:17:12.020 I take it early on.
00:17:12.840 Do you remember what the first book about the Civil War, about war, other than the thing that really engaged you?
00:17:19.120 There was an American Heritage book on the Civil War, the golden book.
00:17:22.660 I got it.
00:17:23.280 Yeah.
00:17:23.460 I've had it as a kid.
00:17:24.540 I used to love those.
00:17:25.860 The illustrations were amazing.
00:17:27.240 And all the famous paintings are in there.
00:17:29.880 And I used some of those paintings in the Unvanquished.
00:17:33.360 And it's like, I love that feeling.
00:17:35.240 American Heritage.
00:17:35.760 And I think, what year were you born?
00:17:38.920 1969.
00:17:39.320 The American Heritage series, I think, came out for the commemoration of the 100th anniversary.
00:17:45.540 Being from Richmond, Virginia, that was a major.
00:17:48.260 It was started, obviously, in 1861 or 1961 and went all the way through.
00:17:53.080 The 100th anniversary was huge.
00:17:55.100 That American Heritage.
00:17:57.220 And I believe Bruce Catton.
00:17:59.680 Exactly.
00:18:00.100 Bruce Catton had written all of those and written The Great History of Lincoln's Army, Mr. Lincoln's Army, and then written his own history of the Civil War.
00:18:10.920 He was, if you take Lee's lieutenants and Douglas Southall Freeman was the historian of the Army of Northern Virginia.
00:18:22.320 Catton was the historian of the Army of the Potomac.
00:18:25.960 And the power of his books, they read like novels.
00:18:29.400 I mean, they start off as just, it's a narrative history at the highest level.
00:18:34.820 You're getting there.
00:18:36.760 But he came, he actually took over and became the editor at American Heritage to put out that series.
00:18:42.860 I remember that series like it was yesterday.
00:18:44.580 I used to sit there for hours.
00:18:46.120 That was me.
00:18:47.120 I would look at.
00:18:47.680 And that artwork was amazing.
00:18:49.860 Civil War, World War II, like the Battle of the Bulge one with the guy with the grease gun on the cover and the snowy, you know, pine trees.
00:18:57.120 I mean, I was obsessed with all this stuff when I was a kid.
00:18:59.840 And I was going to these battlefields.
00:19:02.220 How did you talk?
00:19:02.920 You're from Ohio.
00:19:04.060 So it's not like the Ohio had some stuff from the from the War of 1812 and stuff like that.
00:19:10.760 But it's not like a lot of recruits.
00:19:12.680 You go to Gettysburg, there's a lot of Ohio monuments.
00:19:17.200 But how did you talk to your folks as a little kid?
00:19:21.280 My dad loved history, too.
00:19:23.020 But it's one thing, I love history.
00:19:24.780 Another thing, take the family back in those days and schlep down to Chancersville, right?
00:19:29.980 It was not easy, but we did it.
00:19:32.160 And we loved it.
00:19:32.700 Did you start at Gettysburg?
00:19:33.840 We started, no, it was at Fredericksburg that I began.
00:19:37.740 I think it was the first start.
00:19:39.500 And well, and outside of the most brutal battles of the Civil War, Fredericksburg and St.
00:19:42.760 Mary's Heights.
00:19:43.480 And then we did the whole chain, Wilderness, Chancersville and Spotsylvania.
00:19:48.420 Yeah.
00:19:48.660 You can literally drive through these places.
00:19:52.160 And yeah, at six years old, Patrick O'Donnell does recreates the Overland campaign.
00:19:57.380 Did you end in Cold Harbor?
00:19:59.380 We did.
00:19:59.960 We did, I remember going to the Mule Shoe and some of those, you know, all that stuff.
00:20:04.600 I've done all that, too.
00:20:05.340 And then also the, then we did the Peninsula Campaign.
00:20:08.580 You know, it was, it was obsessive.
00:20:11.540 And, you know, I would go to the houses.
00:20:13.680 We can bond over this.
00:20:14.640 We'd go to the houses of these guys.
00:20:16.860 You know, in Ohio, we'd find like old mansions and stuff.
00:20:21.100 And then we'd go to like just every weekend we'd do stuff.
00:20:24.820 And I remember finding this old mansion that had a gas mask from World War I guy.
00:20:29.960 And his helmet, because they always brought those home.
00:20:32.000 Yeah.
00:20:32.160 And I, then I started to try to collect a little bit of that stuff.
00:20:35.820 I couldn't do it.
00:20:36.560 But, you know, then I got into it later in life.
00:20:39.400 But yeah, it was.
00:20:40.040 Who were the historians?
00:20:42.320 Was it Bruce Cantor?
00:20:43.260 Because I remember the first book I remember, besides World War II history, the first Civil War book, I remember being conscious of heaven read because my father gave it to me.
00:20:54.540 And I think it's because it came out in 61.
00:20:56.180 I guess I was 9 or 10 years old.
00:20:57.840 Was The Stillness in Appomattox, which ended the history of, he did too.
00:21:03.820 He did Mr. Lincoln's Army.
00:21:04.940 Then he did a history of the Civil War.
00:21:06.440 I think Stillness in Appomattox was a concluding volume.
00:21:09.300 I just remember it was so powerful.
00:21:13.060 He was such a great writer.
00:21:14.160 It was so powerful.
00:21:14.900 What's the first book you actually remember diving into and being yours?
00:21:19.700 It was probably the American Heritage Civil War book.
00:21:22.060 And then it would be after that, like Shelby Foote's books.
00:21:24.280 Yes.
00:21:24.540 I would be obsessed with those.
00:21:26.040 If you haven't read Shelby Foote's, he's a novelist that was going to write a 70,000 word.
00:21:33.420 Right.
00:21:33.720 And I think they upped it to 100,000 word history of the quickie, I think for the 100th anniversary, by a publisher.
00:21:41.800 And they said, you're a Southern novelist.
00:21:44.180 Could you do it?
00:21:45.220 And he, that became, I think for the next 30 years of his life, an obsession.
00:21:50.200 And he wrote a magisterial three-volume history of the Civil War, which Kent Burns based the Civil War on.
00:21:57.440 And then, yeah.
00:21:58.280 And then it just continued to grow after college.
00:22:00.520 I would interview, I was the only, I was interviewing World War II veterans.
00:22:03.600 I've interviewed thousands of them.
00:22:04.820 Well, people don't, and maybe aren't to understand this, you are probably on oral history.
00:22:11.440 Yeah.
00:22:11.920 You did a great service to the country culturally and historically because you went out and got the oral histories.
00:22:18.660 Yes.
00:22:19.040 Of the greatest generation and others before they passed away.
00:22:21.680 I did.
00:22:22.120 And it was through the website called The Drop Zone where I gathered it through email.
00:22:27.360 But also, I would just go to these reunions every weekend when I was in my 20s.
00:22:32.100 I was at a reunion.
00:22:33.740 And it was all, I probably had the greatest.
00:22:35.840 Reunion of units, of regiments.
00:22:38.040 It was specific.
00:22:38.880 It was private.
00:22:40.060 I have probably the largest collection of private oral histories in the world of elite units and special operations units from World War II.
00:22:46.540 You really focused on this.
00:22:47.600 Yeah, I focused on first the 82nd Airborne and, you know, I mean, it was every regiment, every independent unit, like the 517, 551st, 509.
00:22:56.940 I mean, this medal right here was worn by a 509 paratrooper that, you know, this unit went in with 800 men and they fought the 15th SS Panzer Grenadier and they halted them.
00:23:08.480 They received the presidential unicidation.
00:23:11.340 Only 50 of these men walked out.
00:23:13.900 This guy never had a scratch.
00:23:14.840 He dropped in North Africa, too, gave them the medal to me, the Scapula OSS Man.
00:23:20.060 Wow.
00:23:20.340 Which was with the maritime unit, the first SEALs.
00:23:23.320 The 82nd Airborne, when did you, the bridge that had to hold across the marsh at, talk about that for a second.
00:23:29.840 All of those guys.
00:23:30.620 This was on D-Day the night before.
00:23:32.680 I wrote a book called Beyond Valor, which captures the stories of the Murtere River and Chef DuPont.
00:23:39.420 And this is Lafayette Bridge, which is the greatest, one of the greatest small unit actions in American history.
00:23:45.480 American military history.
00:23:46.300 And this is where the Germans are trying to cross the bridge and basically wipe out the beachhead.
00:23:52.320 And it's the 82nd that makes a stand and then recrosses the bridge and takes the positions.
00:23:58.500 And it's epic because I'll never forget.
00:24:00.980 I talked to Ed, one of the 507 guys that was in that charge, and he told me how a bullet whizzes or snaps.
00:24:10.500 And I'll never forget it till the day I die.
00:24:13.500 And then when I experienced it firsthand, I was in a drainage ditch in Fallujah running and crawling from two snipers for about 400 or 500 meters.
00:24:22.000 And I heard the bullets whizzes and snapped.
00:24:25.700 And then I also had a presence say to me, don't crawl any further.
00:24:29.220 And right where this white piece of paper was, a bullet landed.
00:24:32.580 And that changed my life.
00:24:34.280 Wow.
00:24:35.520 You've been out of life.
00:24:37.480 What in all the reading and leading up in the oral histories, how did that prepare you to then segue into being a writer, actually being a historian that would tell these stories?
00:24:47.720 I developed all my own techniques.
00:24:50.140 I didn't – I'm still kind of an island to myself.
00:24:54.660 I don't, like, interact with a lot of writers.
00:24:56.640 I don't, like, hang out at writers' conferences or any of that stuff.
00:24:59.460 I do my own thing.
00:24:59.980 You didn't go get a master's degree in creative writing syndrome?
00:25:02.960 No, no.
00:25:03.660 I just – this is something I guess I'm a natural at.
00:25:07.040 And I just –
00:25:07.960 Or you made yourself.
00:25:09.100 Yeah.
00:25:09.640 I just – I developed my own technique, which is I want to put the reader there.
00:25:13.900 But it's academic in the sense that every single footnote, you can trace back where the source came.
00:25:19.500 It's nothing that's made up at all.
00:25:20.780 Why is that so important to you?
00:25:21.820 Because we're telling –
00:25:22.600 Because a lot of the popular narrative histories, you don't have any footnotes.
00:25:26.340 You're just assuming the writer –
00:25:28.080 No.
00:25:28.340 I mean, like some of the great ones, Longest Day, who are great guys, but you're taking it on faith that these quotes happen and these things happen.
00:25:36.480 I want it to be real and true.
00:25:38.660 It's the truth.
00:25:39.820 And that's important to me.
00:25:41.620 So none of the dialogue in your books.
00:25:43.440 None of it.
00:25:44.340 Nothing.
00:25:44.760 And when we go to your books and you have this amazing dialogue and I look and you go back, you see a footnote.
00:25:50.420 You've taken that from a diary.
00:25:52.440 You've taken that from a recollection.
00:25:54.220 You've taken it from a memoir.
00:25:55.280 Excellent.
00:25:55.620 Or a report.
00:25:56.580 I want the camera to be there on the scene and I want the participants to tell the story in their own words.
00:26:03.280 And that's why The Unvanquished is so successful because we're putting the reader there and we're letting these participants tell their own story, which is powerful.
00:26:11.980 In The Unvanquished, starting in the Civil War and then leading through, people may not understand, you have tremendous resources to work for to go check, like battles and leaders in the multi-volume of a history of the Great Rebellion, right?
00:26:30.460 Right.
00:26:31.420 We – as a country, as a government, as a nation, there was a conscious decision to the degree possible to try to document a lot of this.
00:26:41.860 Which is an incredible source.
00:26:43.060 Incredible source.
00:26:43.840 But the oral histories, somehow the oral histories they didn't think about, right?
00:26:49.640 It was guys like yourself that went back and go, hey, you've got unit recollections and these unit recollections can be a little dry, right?
00:26:56.620 But you don't have a battles and leaders, which the Civil War you had guys writing or firsthand accounts.
00:27:02.060 You guys then, led by you and others, went and said, we better get these guys on tape before they leave because we need this.
00:27:09.740 And that's added to this historical record, which now is pretty overwhelming.
00:27:13.380 Yeah, that's especially true with World War II.
00:27:15.400 I even interviewed some World War I veterans, not many, but – and I also try to get both sides as much as possible.
00:27:20.960 I interviewed Japanese and German veterans for World War II.
00:27:24.980 So, yeah, it's all – I try to have stuff that's fresh that nobody's ever seen.
00:27:29.340 The Unvanquished.
00:27:30.260 Just tell people, a book like that from the inception to the day it publishes –
00:27:33.960 It took seven years.
00:27:35.180 Seven years.
00:27:35.880 And it was all handcrafted, hardcore research done by me.
00:27:39.500 I don't have a staff.
00:27:40.800 I do this myself, and I love it.
00:27:43.220 I haven't worked for 25 years, Steve.
00:27:45.300 No reason – or otherwise, you can say you've worked every day for 25 years, but it's your love.
00:27:50.500 But I love it.
00:27:51.080 It's my passion.
00:27:52.020 This is fun for me, and I like to explore and find new things, and it's about America, right?
00:27:57.740 It's about who we are as Americans, an exceptional country.
00:28:01.180 I think you're – with ordinary people who do exceptional things, achieve exceptional things.
00:28:06.940 It's what the books are all about.
00:28:08.520 It's about personal agency and people changing the course of history.
00:28:11.540 Short break.
00:28:12.180 I think this is why you're beloved by your readers.
00:28:14.540 Short break.
00:28:15.320 Patrick K. Dunn on the other side.
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00:29:32.700 Okay, welcome back.
00:29:56.640 Top of the hour, we're going to get into Patrick's deep understanding of Memorial Day,
00:30:01.100 the traditional commemoration we have, and particularly around Arlington National Cemetery
00:30:06.420 and the Tomb of the Unknown.
00:30:07.500 You know, in preparation for this, I've been doing some traveling.
00:30:10.920 People know we've been doing the show on the road a lot.
00:30:13.780 I went back just to make sure, and I read a couple of combat histories of World War I,
00:30:19.480 and the scale of slaughter, it came out of nowhere.
00:30:23.440 You had the assassination on the 28th, I think, of June.
00:30:29.020 It didn't make the front page of the Times of London until the 28th.
00:30:34.440 Again, it's until the 28th of July, and the mobilization had started.
00:30:39.580 They were, the guns of August were there in four days, and by the third week of August,
00:30:45.560 the scale of combat is just over one.
00:30:47.920 The first year, 1940 through 1915, you're talking a million.
00:30:52.000 I mean, you sit there, and it's all slaughterhouse, just a slaughterhouse,
00:30:56.020 and you think that Victorian era.
00:30:58.640 Here, also, you had two countries.
00:31:01.440 You had one country, but it was obviously split politically about the dynamics.
00:31:06.560 They had two different kind of ways of life, except in the rural areas were very similar,
00:31:10.420 but these are very strong Christian values, very strong Victorian values,
00:31:14.480 and you get into your book, and quite frankly, the viciousness of the combat,
00:31:19.980 although on a smaller scale, is pretty shocking.
00:31:23.220 I mean, one of the things about this book is that you have people who are countrymen
00:31:27.180 and very close, boom, and then all of a sudden, they're in a vicious,
00:31:31.680 I mean, vicious war-to-the-knife fight on people who were not politically partisan.
00:31:37.260 They really weren't caught up in any of this,
00:31:38.820 and then all of a sudden, and it's one of the powers of the book,
00:31:41.900 all of a sudden, you're in this kind of special forces guerrilla war,
00:31:45.120 which are always the nastiest wars,
00:31:46.900 and in the Civil War, bad as horrific as the combat was,
00:31:49.960 and it was horrific.
00:31:50.620 You did the Overland campaign.
00:31:52.340 You look at the Western campaign, right, with Contrell and what happened out there,
00:31:58.280 and Nathan Bedford Forrest,
00:32:00.860 and you look at the guerrilla war, which was not Lee.
00:32:03.840 You know, Lee and these guys were very Victorian.
00:32:05.420 That guerrilla war is a whole different thing,
00:32:07.020 but, man, the viciousness of it is shocking.
00:32:09.220 Yeah, the Unvanquished is born in Missouri,
00:32:12.040 where it's neighbor against neighbor.
00:32:14.920 You don't know who your enemy is at all,
00:32:17.060 and it's vicious and violent,
00:32:19.080 and it's John Fremont, the first Republican candidate.
00:32:23.020 The great Pathfinder.
00:32:24.200 Yes, the Pathfinder, 1856, presidential candidate for the Republican Party.
00:32:28.680 The first Republican Party, but not Lincoln.
00:32:30.280 It was Fremont.
00:32:31.040 Yes, and he is...
00:32:32.380 And Mrs. Fremont always thought that he should be the president.
00:32:35.400 But it's there that his command, he has this...
00:32:39.480 He's the Pathfinder, as you mentioned.
00:32:41.260 He's the explorer.
00:32:42.540 He spends a lot of his time prior to the Civil War exploring the Great West.
00:32:47.760 He is, you know, extremely successful through his scouts in the West,
00:32:51.860 like Kit Carson.
00:32:52.740 The famous scout.
00:32:53.400 He discovers, quite frankly, what we call the discovery of California
00:32:58.100 and makes the path to California.
00:32:59.640 He's not an American here.
00:33:01.440 He's a global hero.
00:33:02.580 You could argue he's the first media celebrity, like Horatio Nelson.
00:33:07.360 He's at that level of global...
00:33:09.480 They know as much about Fremont and London as they know out here.
00:33:12.740 He's a global figure.
00:33:13.940 Becomes a U.S. senator in Canada, and then he has a command in the Civil War.
00:33:16.940 But he transfers some of this Western knowledge of fighting Native Americans
00:33:20.340 and exploring to create a scout unit to deal with Missouri,
00:33:25.300 which is this, you know, hotbed of insurgency.
00:33:28.440 And he creates the Jesse Scouts.
00:33:31.640 And they're named after his wife, Jesse Fremont, who's...
00:33:37.460 You know, one account says she's the most extraordinary woman of her age.
00:33:40.780 She's beautiful and brilliant.
00:33:41.760 She's beautiful, brilliant, well-read, and she's...
00:33:44.600 She's the daughter of one of the most powerful U.S. senators
00:33:46.920 in the history of the Senate.
00:33:48.160 And she herself is powerful.
00:33:50.260 Powerful.
00:33:50.720 No, she could have been...
00:33:51.540 But the story, when he gets kind of relief for command
00:33:56.440 because he's got his own ideas about how this deal ought to be run,
00:33:59.680 like free the slaves immediately,
00:34:02.240 she takes a train back to Washington, D.C.
00:34:06.900 And John Hay writes this story in his memoir.
00:34:10.580 She shows up to the Willard Hotel at like 1 in the morning
00:34:13.540 because she's got to deliver a handwritten note
00:34:15.460 or bring a note from Fremont,
00:34:18.840 who's just been relieved for calls, but it hasn't been announced.
00:34:21.500 And she shows up to Lincoln's...
00:34:23.080 Lincoln said, no, go get her.
00:34:24.280 I've got to meet her right away.
00:34:25.460 They go to like the green room.
00:34:26.660 She walks in and Lincoln says something
00:34:28.900 and she's up in his grill,
00:34:31.220 literally treating him like a deck seaman.
00:34:33.420 And, you know, he gets out of there
00:34:36.140 and he just tells Hay and these guys,
00:34:37.980 get her out of here, right?
00:34:40.020 She just thought Lincoln is just some grundoon,
00:34:42.760 some servant, right?
00:34:43.780 She's Jesse, you know...
00:34:45.700 And one of the great quotes of the book
00:34:47.460 is she's the better man of the two between her husband and herself.
00:34:50.360 She's one of the most unique...
00:34:51.380 By the way, just for the book,
00:34:52.240 she's one of the most unique women in American history.
00:34:54.260 Absolutely.
00:34:54.700 And she is...
00:34:55.980 She, we believe, she's the one that said
00:34:58.000 that these scouts should wear the uniform of their enemy,
00:35:00.960 Confederate uniform.
00:35:01.700 And they are...
00:35:03.220 Tough, smart broad.
00:35:04.140 She is amazing.
00:35:05.460 And they named the group after her in her honor.
00:35:08.800 And, you know, it's got a...
00:35:10.740 This is fit for Hollywood.
00:35:12.380 We've already got interested in it.
00:35:13.680 But it's like these guys are seedy in many ways.
00:35:16.860 They're able to go in and infiltrate into Fort Donaldson,
00:35:21.060 you know, under disguise.
00:35:22.180 I mean, one guy literally comes out as a woman,
00:35:25.420 you know, in disguise.
00:35:26.640 But they have some great tradecraft that they develop.
00:35:29.280 But they also have a dark side.
00:35:31.760 And that is they steal anything not nailed down.
00:35:34.340 And their commander, John C. Carpenter,
00:35:37.580 is part of the problem.
00:35:39.480 He is a...
00:35:40.480 If you look at it in the person...
00:35:42.420 If you go to...
00:35:43.360 Because it's all the border war.
00:35:44.840 Remember, they weren't decided...
00:35:46.260 The whole initial stage of the Civil War
00:35:48.500 was going to be decided on which way the border stage went.
00:35:50.760 Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, McClellan.
00:35:54.520 They actually...
00:35:55.000 West Virginia is part of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
00:35:56.600 It breaks off.
00:35:57.820 But then you've got Maryland.
00:35:59.160 And you've also got this section of Northern Virginia.
00:36:01.360 These are all the borders of the Mason-Dixon line.
00:36:04.180 And people, quite frankly, got a little bit played both sides
00:36:07.140 because they don't know how this thing's going to turn, right?
00:36:10.020 It's very uncertain how this thing's going to go.
00:36:12.560 Exactly.
00:36:12.880 And so that's why you don't know who your enemy is.
00:36:15.820 You don't know who your friend is.
00:36:17.300 And the farther West you get,
00:36:19.440 that thing in Missouri is about as nasty a partisan war.
00:36:23.300 I mean, John Brown came from there.
00:36:25.700 Contrell came from there.
00:36:27.240 You had the Redley, the Bushwhackers.
00:36:29.480 I mean, the Jayhawks.
00:36:30.620 You had Lawrence, Kansas, arguably the greatest...
00:36:34.700 One of the great tragedies in American history, right?
00:36:37.480 I mean, it is vicious.
00:36:38.980 I keep saying that foreshadowed the horror of the Civil War.
00:36:44.280 Right.
00:36:44.500 And what happens is this unit, which is trained out there
00:36:47.060 and learns how to deal with the guerrillas in Missouri,
00:36:50.140 is then moved to West Virginia, which is also a, you know, a cauldron of, you know...
00:36:57.100 Well, first of the West Virginia, that Scotch-Irish had no use for the plantation aristocracy.
00:37:01.520 They had no use for them.
00:37:02.600 They said, what are we doing here, right?
00:37:03.920 We got a country.
00:37:05.300 They're kind of...
00:37:05.800 They're backwoodsmen, but they got very strong values.
00:37:09.080 And they never understood the elites in the Tidewater area,
00:37:13.040 and particularly for Richmond, you know, what are we doing here, right?
00:37:16.620 They were hardcore, tough people.
00:37:19.580 Very tough people.
00:37:19.780 And that war...
00:37:21.320 Well, look, they carved out a state from Virginia.
00:37:25.380 Which I think is interesting, too, is in the summer of 1863,
00:37:29.700 West Virginia comes into the Union as a slave state,
00:37:33.140 which is sort of a bizarre thing, if you really think about it.
00:37:36.440 Well, they couldn't push it too hard at that time.
00:37:37.760 Yeah, and it becomes a slave state, but it's these rivalries.
00:37:41.240 But the state is where the main supply roads from the railroads and also the main lines go through for the Union
00:37:48.200 from the Midwest to Washington, D.C.
00:37:50.420 So they have to be guarded.
00:37:51.860 And it's here, there's a buffer state.
00:37:53.620 And it's the Jesse Scouts that are acting as...
00:37:57.040 They lead raids there on the Confederate railroads and also help protect the railroads there,
00:38:02.380 but they're also leading the armies.
00:38:03.520 And it's, you know, there's just really powerful stories of what these guys do.
00:38:10.820 And what happens eventually is they're...
00:38:13.340 After John C. Fremont decides not to take command under John Pope,
00:38:17.420 he leaves and most of the Scouts are disbanded.
00:38:20.940 Carpenter is actually cashiered out of the Army because of his, you know, his illicit activities.
00:38:25.640 But this small remnant of Scouts stay around,
00:38:29.560 and they're moved from one command to another where they do some amazing things.
00:38:33.520 The commands, particularly the more Victorian Army Northern Virginia.
00:38:38.960 You had Virginia gentlemen, and you had all these units from North Carolina and from Alabama.
00:38:42.880 But this was the officer corps there was West Point and the elite of the elite of the southern gentry.
00:38:50.140 Did they have a natural problem?
00:38:52.540 Because they're kind of guys that say, hey, these are essentially criminals, right?
00:38:57.500 They're fighting for us.
00:38:58.300 Did they have a problem initially with the tactics?
00:39:01.820 Because, remember, the war in the East, they made a big deal that it was not the war in the West.
00:39:08.560 The war in the West not just had Sherman and Grant had a different way of just...
00:39:12.620 But they didn't approve of what was happening in Missouri.
00:39:16.540 It wasn't the way gentlemen fought.
00:39:18.460 They understood.
00:39:19.260 I mean, Robert E. Lee in particular was constantly torn between this guerrilla warfare
00:39:23.660 that was blossoming under his command and its benefits, but also the detrimental side,
00:39:29.760 which is he understood the information war and how if these people executed civilians,
00:39:34.660 it could totally turn the tide the other way.
00:39:37.460 So they created something called the Partisan Ranger Act in 1862, which tried to put these guys under the command of the Confederacy,
00:39:48.180 under the command of the Confederate Army, which was partially successful.
00:39:52.440 And what you get are two authorized commands.
00:39:55.560 One of them is Mosby's Rangers, and they're considered, they're amazing in terms of their paralysis on the battlefield.
00:40:05.740 And they're also coming, they're also from...
00:40:07.800 Highly disciplined.
00:40:08.480 They're also from the war in the valley where Stonewall was...
00:40:11.400 They are from, today you would argue, some of the most expensive real estate in this country, Middleburg, Virginia.
00:40:17.340 If you, if you, this, these are magnificent estates with horses as one of the great equestrian centers of this country for super elite.
00:40:25.920 I mean, where most of the Rangers fought is, I call it God's country.
00:40:30.480 It's one of the most beautiful parts of this nation.
00:40:31.920 And many of the men were from the homes in and around that area.
00:40:35.320 And they were, many of them were also wealthy members.
00:40:38.780 And they also relied upon these plantations for safe houses because they were being haunted by men in my book.
00:40:45.800 For instance, Richard Blazer and Blazer Scouts, the Jesse Scouts.
00:40:50.640 And it's this clash between these two, these two groups on horseback.
00:40:54.040 You cover, the power of the book is you cover both the Union part of it and the Confederate part of it.
00:41:02.140 So you see it through both, the two lenses.
00:41:04.820 You have to tell both sides of the story in order to tell this story.
00:41:08.940 And it's, it's an epic clash.
00:41:11.140 I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's fascinating too.
00:41:14.180 I mean, you get the, the Jesse Scouts, there's, there's scenes in there where, I mean, one of the Jesse Scouts, Archibald Roland Jr.
00:41:21.320 Is one of the guys that I followed through the entire book.
00:41:24.420 And he's witnessing the burning of Chambersburg.
00:41:27.040 And then literally a day later, he's watching a bullfrog battle against a black snake.
00:41:33.040 And the, the men are transported back to their battle, their, their childhood and literally betting on it.
00:41:38.180 And then within an hour, they are in a, they are in the midst of a Confederate cavalry charge.
00:41:45.720 They are in their Confederate uniforms and they are literally charging with Confederate cavalry because they have nowhere else to go against a Union position.
00:41:53.700 I mean, can you imagine that?
00:41:56.560 How did, in the book, how did Memorial Day from, from the Confederate dead, how did Memorial Day get its real, because it started as a, as a, as a, as a Confederate commemoration.
00:42:10.640 It begins the, there's evidence that it begins in Warrington, Virginia, not far from here.
00:42:15.240 And it's, it's part of Decoration Day where they were.
00:42:18.280 Talk to us about Decoration Day.
00:42:19.260 They're strewing the, the, the graves of the fallen.
00:42:21.980 They're honoring them with flowers to decorate their graves.
00:42:24.880 And this is occurring through the South, but also in the North too, especially after Gettysburg, where they're trying to remember and honor the fallen.
00:42:36.880 We don't talk about this, that the nation was traumatized by this war.
00:42:41.260 This is why what happens after the civil war, the, the, the nation's traumatized.
00:42:45.980 The level of destruction, the level of bloodshed was, I mean, you talk about Waterloo, the civil war, I think we had 30 Waterloos or 40 Waterloos.
00:43:02.180 We had, what Europe had known as these massive battles out of nowhere.
00:43:07.000 And the partisan nature of this, because America wasn't used, that was, was so vicious.
00:43:11.680 You talk about shooting civilians and killing civilians.
00:43:14.100 These people got to the part of killing civilians, wouldn't even, not even, it's part, another day at the office.
00:43:20.300 That's what's so stunning about it.
00:43:21.980 That's why the, that's why the Decoration Days were so important because the nation was traumatized and they had to think of something in our cultural structure to start to get over that.
00:43:32.080 Okay, we'll take a short break.
00:43:33.140 Back in a moment.
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00:45:15.420 Tell me some stories about the honored dead of your book, The Unvanquished.
00:45:19.140 The book is dedicated to two soldiers that gave their last full measure of devotion to the United States.
00:45:27.320 And the cover photo is a haunting one.
00:45:30.940 He's almost looking back through time at us, I think.
00:45:35.540 And that's Sergeant Joseph Frith.
00:45:37.180 He looks modern.
00:45:38.120 He does.
00:45:39.280 It looks like the guys I see at the conferences, some of the cameramen and guys that work for us.
00:45:44.560 He looks like a modern man.
00:45:46.380 It's an exceptional story.
00:45:48.180 I mean, courageous, brave.
00:45:50.940 He's part of Blazer Scouts or the Jesse Scouts.
00:45:54.320 And it's, you know, we're coming up on the anniversary of the Battle of Lynchburg.
00:45:58.720 And these men led the armies specifically towards Lynchburg.
00:46:04.540 And it was in and around Covington, Virginia, where they're coming out of West Virginia,
00:46:08.560 that the scouts had a clash with Confederate scouts.
00:46:14.560 And it was a violent clash.
00:46:16.620 It was a meeting engagement.
00:46:18.440 And Frith was in action, along with the other members of the Blazer Scouts or the Lincoln Special Forces.
00:46:26.820 And they were able to repel this small group of Confederates.
00:46:30.560 But in the midst of this action, one of the men that was in, he had no business being there.
00:46:37.640 He was riding with the scouts.
00:46:39.100 He was a clerk.
00:46:40.220 He was there.
00:46:41.120 And his pistol discharged as he was falling from his horse.
00:46:45.820 And it shot Joseph Frith in the stomach.
00:46:49.740 Totally random accident.
00:46:51.160 Random act.
00:46:51.320 This guy was pretty much indestructible until that point.
00:46:55.520 And he's brought to a home near Covington, Virginia, Mrs. Dickinson's home, or Dickens.
00:47:06.140 And there's a – I unearthed an amazing article in the Milan Times.
00:47:12.240 This is in Milan, Ohio.
00:47:13.200 He's from northern Ohio near the lake.
00:47:18.000 He's only a few miles from my home town of Westlake.
00:47:22.740 And he was recruited out of there.
00:47:25.160 And he's brought to the bed of Mrs. Dickinson.
00:47:28.560 And he basically spends an entire day writhing in pain.
00:47:35.320 He's mortally wounded.
00:47:36.140 And the entire command is – there's a surgeon there.
00:47:41.260 They try to bring him back.
00:47:43.460 And it's a powerful story because his father writes in the letter in the Milan Times that Joseph taught you how to live but also how to die.
00:47:57.140 And he died a noble death.
00:47:59.140 And one of the aspects of this book is to find his unknown grave.
00:48:05.560 He's buried in somebody's private cemetery or back of that house somewhere.
00:48:11.700 And I'm hoping that this – that haunting image of him, you know, is able to transcend time and place and –
00:48:20.020 And when – where did –
00:48:21.820 Covington, Virginia.
00:48:23.360 Yeah, Covington is way down, yeah.
00:48:25.540 It's not too far – I mean, Staunton, that whole area.
00:48:29.940 But it's not too far from the West Virginia border, which these men were – they were leading the Army, Hunter's Army at the time and Crook's Army through West Virginia towards Lynchburg.
00:48:43.780 And then that has the whole dynamic of the summer of 1864 where Jubile Early saves Lynchburg and then marches up – or marches through the valley towards Washington, D.C.
00:48:55.040 And nearly takes the capital.
00:48:56.800 Lincoln goes out to the ramparts.
00:48:58.720 I mean, they hadn't – barely, barely, barely saved D.C.
00:49:01.820 D.C. was totally shocked by Jubile Early and almost took it.
00:49:05.600 Stunned.
00:49:06.340 Stunned.
00:49:06.780 And Lincoln famously would say, you think I'm going to be beat?
00:49:11.740 I know I'm going to be beat and badly.
00:49:14.540 This is in the election.
00:49:16.200 In the election.
00:49:17.100 Yes.
00:49:17.260 But, you know, I mean, to his credit, he literally still holds the election.
00:49:20.520 Yes.
00:49:20.780 Which is incredible.
00:49:21.580 And then he even has his staff or cabinet sign a memorandum called the Blind Memorandum that they will participate with the president-elect if they lose.
00:49:31.500 Now, hang on.
00:49:31.980 Which is incredible.
00:49:32.560 Now you're getting down to Trump country now because that memo is so important, and they'd never want to talk about it.
00:49:39.160 In – I think it was July or August of 1864, he's running against – Lincoln's running against his former field commander, McClellan, the general of the – and McClellan's a peace Democrat.
00:49:53.100 They're saying, hey, we've got to cut a deal with the Confederacy.
00:49:55.760 We have to make a deal.
00:49:57.640 Now, he changed a little bit as it gets on, but initially his thing is that Lincoln –
00:50:01.840 It was totally in line with that policy of an armistist negotiation and preserving slavery, and this is the Democrat Party.
00:50:09.320 Democrat Party to say now –
00:50:11.360 And I mentioned that the campaign platform for 1864 was written partially by the Confederate Secret Service.
00:50:18.520 It's another aspect of my –
00:50:19.460 It's another – hold on.
00:50:21.320 That's another reason.
00:50:22.260 Look, the – Lincoln in this memo basically to the cabinet secretary – remember, team of rivals, he picked all the best guys that ran against him to be on the cabinet of the smartest lawyers in the country, Seward particularly, Stanton, right?
00:50:39.100 You had some heavyweights.
00:50:40.140 You had some heavyweights in that cabinet.
00:50:41.660 And they basically – and this gets back to Trump and the peaceful transfer of power.
00:50:48.140 He – Lincoln says, hey, look, we haven't put the country through this thing for nothing.
00:50:53.300 We just can't – and we're not going to negotiate – we're not going to negotiate – we're not – we're going to have an election, and the people are going to vote in that election.
00:51:04.320 And whoever wins, wins.
00:51:10.640 And if the other side wins, you know, eventually they will take over.
00:51:16.080 But we've got unfinished – if that happens, there's unfinished work.
00:51:19.820 That's what his memo was.
00:51:21.040 And it leaves open the question was for March 1865, would that be the day they actually turned things over?
00:51:28.680 Because he made the point that we have to finish the work that we set out to do.
00:51:32.200 I think he was going to turn it over, but in those months, in between, he was going to go whole hog.
00:51:37.720 And that's – whole hog is kind of the other member of the Jesse Scouts that I should – we should talk about that gave his whole – his life to our country.
00:51:46.680 And that would be Henry Young.
00:51:51.020 And Henry Young is an extraordinary figure, Steve, that takes over under Phil Sheridan, the Jesse Scouts.
00:51:59.100 And he has got this, like, chameleon-like appearance.
00:52:04.480 He can become a peddler.
00:52:06.260 He can become – he goes to a recruiting station for the Confederacy and recruits soldiers.
00:52:10.300 And then, you know, puts his men through the test.
00:52:14.280 And he's buried somewhere in Mexico.
00:52:18.440 Also unknown.
00:52:19.140 In an unknown grave.
00:52:20.280 And that's the Unvanquished.
00:52:21.420 I mean, the stories and reviews are on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and Wall Street Journal.
00:52:26.720 You say –
00:52:28.040 Best-selling book.
00:52:28.780 You say these guys are extraordinary.
00:52:30.840 They stepped up into the moment and became extraordinary.
00:52:33.920 But if the war had never come on, if you look at them pre-war, they'd have been average citizens.
00:52:40.140 They were living – they were living good lives, but an ordinary life like most people live, right?
00:52:47.820 It was this – this cataclysm, this catastrophe hit.
00:52:53.020 And certain – the power of it is all of a sudden people you would never expect become these great combat leaders.
00:52:59.000 And that's something that I think we see in every generation.
00:53:01.540 We're going to talk about that.
00:53:02.400 People step up, Steve.
00:53:03.600 It's Memorial Day.
00:53:04.720 To save the country.
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