Bannon's War Room - Episode 5396： WarRoom Memorial Day Special

00:00:00.000 This Memorial Day, America honors her fallen heroes.

00:00:07.500 Live from Arlington National Cemetery, President Donald Trump participates in the traditional

00:00:12.680 wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, paying tribute to the brave men and

00:00:18.280 women who gave everything for this country. Real America's Voice and The War Room present

00:00:24.480 special coverage, starting right now.

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 It is Memorial Day, Monday, the 25th of May, in the year of our Lord, 2026.

00:02:08.180 We're here in the War Room, and we are live for the next four hours to bring you,

00:02:13.780 as only Real America's Voice in the War Room can do, Memorial Day, 2026,

00:02:19.220 as the President of the United States, Commander-in-Chief negotiates an end to the war in Persia,

00:02:25.180 and the Persian Gulf in Iran.

00:02:27.140 We'll be bringing you updates on all that and also stick to our traditional coverage.

00:02:32.240 We'll do a little bit of the parade and some of the speeches.

00:02:35.220 I've got my wingman, as I've had, I think now for 14 years, Patrick K. O'Donnell.

00:02:42.180 We did this at Breitbart Radio News for many years, then over here at the War Room.

00:02:47.000 They find this combat historian of his generation.

00:02:49.640 We're going to talk about Memorial Day, not Veterans Day, but Memorial Day of our honored dead.

00:02:56.580 So it'll be a couple hours this morning in our traditional 10 to noon time frame going through all of this and talking about the beginning of Memorial Day, how it started in Washington.

00:03:09.180 We'll have some guests on as we can pull people in.

00:03:12.800 we had such a tremendous feedback from Saturday's show

00:03:16.780 on Peleliu and Terawa and particularly the condition of the

00:03:20.380 remains of these Marine and

00:03:23.760 Navy, the remains of these heroes that we will also

00:03:28.820 have Mark Noah from History of Flights will join us and of course

00:03:32.500 Cleo Pascal who is out in the Pacific right now, the great

00:03:36.700 strategic pivot of the United States. I think

00:03:40.580 Moe's going to join us later also.

00:03:41.880 She was at the commencement on Saturday at West Point,

00:03:45.880 the United States military candidate update from her.

00:03:48.180 And then it's starting at noon, the president, the vice president,

00:03:52.120 and others in his official party will head towards Arlington National Cemetery,

00:03:58.020 of which we will cover live as we always do, the wreath laying.

00:04:00.820 And appropriate remarks from the commander-in-chief.

00:04:04.260 Patrick K. O'Donnell, thanks, brother. Good to see you again.

00:04:06.600 It's great to be here, Steve. It's an honor to be here.

00:04:08.820 The reason I'm so excited about this is all the great work you've been putting out and really that you're about to publish.

00:04:18.260 And as you know, I'd wanted this to focus kind of the center of gravity of this Memorial Day to be on 250,

00:04:24.560 given we're in the 250th year, and now we can see the door, as they say in prison, for July 4th.

00:04:33.820 4th and one of the things i've always appreciated about our coverage on july 4th it was really

00:04:39.160 coming through knowing you was about how you know the american revolution i say kind of ended

00:04:46.360 on the signing of the document july 4th the war of independence which we were in had already started

00:04:52.340 really picked up steam and of course they tried to crush they had the reason why more they so

00:04:58.180 important is to for our honored dead is how important actual the bearing of arms and conflict

00:05:05.580 has been in our freedom because right after the promulgation of the document that was our

00:05:12.900 declaration of independence really a declaration of war against the british empire and the king

00:05:16.820 they the expeditionary force i think the first elements of it landed and landed landed in staten

00:05:23.860 island like two days later the fort elements but it shows you and we're going to do a lot of

00:05:28.040 coverage on that this year to commemorate the 250th of the Battle of Brooklyn, Long Island,

00:05:33.080 all the things you've been experts in. But tell the audience quickly, we're going to get some

00:05:37.320 other guys in here too. Tell us about your third in the trilogy is coming out of the American

00:05:43.900 Revolution. The last 16 years, Steve, I've been working on, you know, the three books on the

00:05:49.380 American Revolution and the third book. 16 years of your life. 16 years of my life. For research

00:05:53.260 and writing. Yes, and it's been a pleasure. It's a journey. Each one of those books has found me in

00:05:58.980 one way or another, and each one of those books is a journey, and it's been an amazing journey.

00:06:03.760 The Revolutionary Snipers will be out in the next few months, and it's on the elite unit,

00:06:10.000 another elite unit, and that would be the Riflemen were the first snipers of the American

00:06:14.860 Revolutionary War. Untold story until this time, and they were also the first members of the

00:06:21.060 continental army the first then your your three books they all are elite units you've got uh you've

00:06:27.000 got the maryland regiment and washington's immortals you've got the then kind of the

00:06:32.260 naval aspect of it or the amphibious aspect in the in the men from uh gloucester marble

00:06:37.480 from marblehead and uh the naval element of it and now you've got the the sniper the more the

00:06:43.680 even special forces but when you say they're elite units it's interesting up until the war

00:06:49.360 you take these guys background they are ordinary citizens these are people going about their lives

00:06:55.280 and living their lives and because they're drawn into they all volunteer but they they're drawn

00:07:00.000 into this conflict as patriots they form these units and everyone every one of those units is

00:07:06.000 historical in the fact that it does extraordinary extraordinary work this is about just really

00:07:13.040 ordinary individuals it's a transformation between subjects and citizens and these men

00:07:20.400 make that transformation and revolutionary snipers it's some of the

00:07:25.680 you know true members of the backwoods that lived in the appalachians or on the frontier

00:07:33.520 they had to constantly battle native americans the elements just for survival it's all about

00:07:40.000 rugged individualism it's about men that could shoot some of the best shooters in the world at

00:07:45.780 the time that could shoot a target i mean the book they would literally demonstrate their skills

00:07:52.320 as they were marching up to boston they would stop at a town and then they would put apples on their

00:07:58.380 heads at 100 yards and they as a one guy said that they they lost a lot of apples because they shot

00:08:05.800 the apples right off the head of their their fellow riflemen through boards 200 yards amazing

00:08:12.320 shots the british knew they had something they didn't they didn't realize them they'd bit they

00:08:19.080 bit off more than they can chew but on the retreat lexington and concord which happened a year before

00:08:23.520 this is the revolutionary year the 250th um the year before and and taking the arsenal

00:08:29.720 or attempting to take the arsenal at Concord,

00:08:34.000 in the retreat back to Boston,

00:08:36.560 they realized that these were pretty tough hombres

00:08:39.240 and we're just going to roll over the sniper effect

00:08:42.040 and sniper fire coming from behind every rock and tree

00:08:45.500 because they had already fought the Native Americans.

00:08:48.920 They had to survive and hunt every day to survive.

00:08:52.100 Pretty good shots and pretty tough individuals.

00:08:55.680 It's an absolute miracle that force that went in to take

00:08:58.960 the powder and the cannon at concord and lexington actually survived it's called battle road

00:09:05.760 because that's what it was it was 700 men that had to somehow fight for their lives the british

00:09:12.600 to to make their way back towards cambridge and boston and they faced they faced ordinary americans

00:09:20.440 the minute men the militia 10 members of my family the mills fought at lexington and concord

00:09:26.740 two died at the the jason russell house which was a charnel house where there were over 10 bodies

00:09:33.940 the blood was like according to one account was ankle deep um because there were so many

00:09:39.860 bottles of bodies on the floor um at the at the russell house but um this is this is some of the

00:09:47.140 the vortex of the battle was it was now arlington um you've been you've been at this for how many

00:09:55.280 decades you started some people are just coming on to us the last couple of years you may not know

00:10:01.900 your deep background you started because you started doing oral histories of the greatest

00:10:06.540 generation because there was a great fear that if those oral histories weren't put on tape that

00:10:13.340 that we would lose the entire first person account of not that not the not the Eisenhower's and

00:10:21.240 patents and all that which are you know fully documented uh but you would lose it from the

00:10:25.740 ordinary the ordinary uh citizen soldier yeah absolutely steve i for me that this goes back

00:10:31.920 it wasn't something it goes back to when i was five years old and i i pulled out a world war one

00:10:38.300 book that weighed almost as much as i did and it was a photo history of the aef and i just became

00:10:45.560 consumed by it and there's an expeditionary force pershings pershings boys and and then it was world

00:10:51.480 war ii and you know everybody was into dinosaur books but i was into world war ii books and it

00:10:56.680 just grew and grew and grew on me and when i got out of college i started interviewing the members

00:11:02.200 of the world war ii generation i specifically started with the 82nd airborne

00:11:07.160 and some relatives in that unit and then and then i moved to the 101st and the independent units

00:11:12.840 and the rangers and i um i created a website called the drop zone.org and that was a virtual

00:11:20.060 community of all these individuals hundreds of of men and i'd go to their reunions and just

00:11:26.500 interview them for the whole weekend and you know i they they eventually said to me hey why don't

00:11:32.540 you write a book and i wrote this best-selling book by simon schuster called beyond valor we

00:11:38.220 get that on the camera can we hold that up again that was the um the beginning of it and it was

00:11:42.700 just a powerful story it came out of your interviews it did it did it came out of my

00:11:47.380 interviews and it you know i mean i have i i knew the the legends of d-day as personal friends

00:11:54.820 um you know leonard lamel who helped disabled the big guns at point de hock

00:12:01.240 colonel lewis mendez who is the battalion commander of the 508 at normandy you know

00:12:09.920 these personal stories i mean he was telling me about i'll never forget i went to his house

00:12:16.380 and he said to me love and respect and i'm like okay where are we going to go with this

00:12:24.080 love and respect that's what i'm that's how i believed i should treat my men with love and

00:12:30.180 respect. And it was powerful. And I just sort of, that's how I sort of try to treat people I

00:12:36.420 interact with too, because it's, it's so true, just love and respect. So simple, but true.

00:12:42.400 And his, his simplicity to that, but it was, this is a, this guy was a brilliant leader

00:12:48.920 on D-Day. And he talked about how he lost his radio operator, Gavin, General Gavin,

00:12:57.680 who was the division commander of the 82nd at the time assistant division commander i should say

00:13:03.840 ordered the 508 and his battalion to take a ridge that was heavily defended

00:13:09.200 and they were you know under mg42 machine gun fire they're they were getting chewed up

00:13:14.800 and he just he said look general you've got to come down here if you want to make that that

00:13:19.940 towards it. Mendez pushed the attack and they made the attack and at that point his radio operator

00:13:28.640 was was hit and Mendez went out there personally put him in a fireman's carry and took him off and

00:13:33.960 as he was taking him off he was hit in the head by a MG 42 round and I'll never forget he told

00:13:41.040 me how his the man's wife blamed him for his death and uh and it just took him so hard he

00:13:48.620 He was trying to save his life.

00:13:51.440 But that's the stories that are in Beyond Valor.

00:13:54.320 It's kind of the hidden war of World War II.

00:13:56.540 It's the feelings and emotions that many of these men went through.

00:14:00.600 But hang on.

00:14:01.300 Tell me about that for a second.

00:14:02.220 Because the difference, we always make a big difference here in the war room.

00:14:06.920 I'll tell you what we're going to break.

00:14:09.540 We make a big difference here in the war room because we do a lot of coverage of Veterans Day also.

00:14:15.740 Because there's a lot, tons of veterans in the audience.

00:14:18.000 and obviously veterans have put the show on but it's also the right thing to do but there's a big

00:14:22.960 difference between memorial day and veterans day veterans day is to is to appreciate everybody's

00:14:28.400 service memorial day is for the honored dead um we don't need appreciation for our service because

00:14:33.200 this is the the elite of the one main slightly over one million that have died in combat

00:14:39.680 or kia for their country okay uh minstrel boy from blackhawk down the classic uh is going to

00:14:46.160 to take us out, and we're going to return with Patrick K. O'Donnell on a Memorial Day

00:14:50.500 special, Real American Voice of the World, in a moment.

00:15:09.860 It's Memorial Day.

00:15:10.940 It's Monday, the 25th of May, in the year of our Lord, 2026.

00:15:14.220 It is a, not a cold, it's been a very cool, almost cold last couple of days and rain constantly.

00:15:22.100 But the American South and Washington, D.C. need it.

00:15:25.680 We've had kind of a drought going on.

00:15:27.720 So in God's graces, we're getting beautiful, almost like a spring rain.

00:15:34.280 Patrick K. O'Donnell.

00:15:35.240 I'm going to go to Gary Sinise.

00:15:36.360 Gary Sinise, one of the great patriots in our country,

00:15:39.220 country in a very close, very close friend of Andrew Breitbart when Gary really first

00:15:43.180 started doing, getting very involved in his patriotic activity. A lot of that was

00:15:47.160 with Andrew Breitbart. So that goes way back.

00:15:51.200 Hold Up Beyond Valor. One of the things we do is make sure that you get full access

00:15:55.280 to Patrick's website and all that. And the reason is these

00:15:59.160 books are, almost read like novels because they're first

00:16:03.180 person accounts, right? You're saying. This one is an oral history of the elite

00:16:07.180 units of the war the rangers and the airborne and it's their stories here hold it up so we can see

00:16:11.720 their stories uh we got it okay fine their stories good from the df raid i'll stop direct all the way

00:16:19.340 through the the liberation of the camp but here's the important thing for the audience this is why

00:16:23.600 i love you and one of the many reasons i love you besides the fact you're a brawler um is that

00:16:29.100 you came out of college and we're doing this because you're obsessed you have a love for it

00:16:34.380 and love absolutely as soon as you went to a couple of these uh reunions you started recording

00:16:39.640 it this was all for free you weren't charging any money you weren't doing a book you did it

00:16:43.900 for the love and it was in that thing that people say you want to do a book beyond valor was really

00:16:48.120 done kind of before the tom brokow and uh and citizen soldier ambrose which is fantastic but

00:16:54.860 brokow and ambrose really focused on uh the greatest generation and made it a thing you know

00:17:00.840 The one thing about the greatest generation being raised and going to all those family reunions and just family gatherings every summer is that the veterans of World War Two for a long time did not talk about the war.

00:17:13.720 Right. When they first had the first couple of commemorations of D-Day, like the five year and 10 year were not really there wasn't a thing.

00:17:21.540 They didn't even go back for it. I think it was the longest day.

00:17:23.580 The movie came out and in 61, 62. And then people started thinking about going back.

00:17:27.680 it's quite interesting in france in in somebody i've seen somewhere somebody went back in a fifth

00:17:34.060 the fifth anniversary just to kind of walk around because it'd been so traumatic for them

00:17:38.400 and the french were actually down they were like negative on the americans and british coming to

00:17:45.760 freedom because their their economy was so depressed that they had had it better under

00:17:50.360 the germans so just human nature being what it is it's like the woman who gets after mendez for

00:17:56.460 trying to save her husband because he does die in his grass and just the human nature is such

00:18:01.800 that it will look for people to blame even though people are trying to do they're trying to free you

00:18:06.620 and sacrificing themselves to free you for the guys that i interviewed um they never wanted to

00:18:12.120 talk about it any ever and i always went to the guys that never wanted to talk about it deliberately

00:18:17.780 it was i would i would seek them out because those are the guys that were in the hardest

00:18:22.280 of combat and um in most cases they didn't want to talk about it for a reason because it was

00:18:27.640 it was traumatic and it was very traumatic for them and they wanted to bury the war that's one

00:18:33.080 of the that's one of the reasons they're such heroes is that the what we call ptsd today or

00:18:38.360 or uh you know battle shock or or is is was not it was like not talked about right guys i went

00:18:45.320 through were some of their they had seriously hardcore ptsd someone went through electric

00:18:50.360 shock therapy stuff that was elected experimental at the time um just never talked about the war

00:18:57.760 and i would seek them out is the and i would have their friends tell me who to talk to and i did

00:19:03.600 this all for free for years before it was anybody was doing any of this stuff and i was just

00:19:08.500 gathering the stories and they put them on the online uh on the drop zone and that was a virtual

00:19:13.760 community and it was a veteran themselves that said hey why don't you do a book was survivor's

00:19:18.260 guilt a big thing for these guys yes so many of their comrades had died yes in combat somehow

00:19:23.020 divine providence had sought them to actually live right there was that and then there was

00:19:28.080 survivor's guilt and then there were guys that that just they they hung up the uniform after the

00:19:34.200 war and then they got back to work and they built a family and they built a country and it's

00:19:39.480 you know it's it's a it's a variety of things it's it's it's what i call the hidden war

00:19:44.900 overall war two is what i brought out in in beyond valor and the risings i did a book on

00:19:50.200 the pacific too tcm does a uh a great job every memorial day of playing for they started with

00:19:55.640 bridging the river kwai on thursday night and then they play for the whole weekend

00:19:59.100 they curate you know some of the best war films ever last night they i think they traditionally

00:20:05.000 on the sunday night before if i remember a sunday before memorial day they play best

00:20:10.020 their prime time is

00:20:11.980 best years of our lives and they have

00:20:14.200 the Dana Andrews character that's that he's a

00:20:16.240 bombardier navigator a bombardier

00:20:18.280 actually on a

00:20:19.180 on a B-17 and

00:20:22.080 and he's back you know they all come to

00:20:24.120 Frederick March and in the

00:20:25.760 in the naval

00:20:26.640 what an actor he actually had lost both his hands

00:20:30.320 and

00:20:32.280 Dana Andrews plays the vet but as soon

00:20:34.220 as he gets back he wants to take that uniform off

00:20:36.360 very proud of a service but he wants to take

00:20:38.260 uniform off and never put it back on again in fact his soon-to-be ex-wife kind of forced him 0.99

00:20:42.900 to put it on because it looks so great and it looks like it just looks like an average schmo 0.99

00:20:47.300 in his civilian attire and she had married him before the war she wants him to wear that uniform 0.87

00:20:51.460 and he wears it like one time with her it does not want to put that uniform he just wants to

00:20:54.900 put it in the closet hang it up close the closet and those memories stay there that's absolutely

00:21:00.420 right i mean one of my close friends was sid solomon second ranger battalion charlie company

00:21:05.860 these are the guys that took the other extreme uh place called point de la posse and he

00:21:11.540 scaled a hundred foot cliff with a bayonet no ropes and then took out a uh a mortar position

00:21:18.660 uh atop point de la posse which was hitting you know all of each and then just moved forward

00:21:26.340 and then after the war he said to me look patrick i didn't want to loaf i didn't want to sit around

00:21:31.860 hung up the uniform and I just moved forward. This guy was rowing, you know, he was a rower,

00:21:37.780 and he was rowing up in his late 80s in the Schuylkill River. Early on, I think it was 1868,

00:21:45.300 I think it was Observance Day, it started, what became Memorial Day, Observance Day was Civil War,

00:21:50.980 but is that great generation in the late 19th and early 20th century that understood in a way that

00:21:57.860 I don't think we understand today, the importance of having institutions that work, right,

00:22:03.800 and institutions that reflect the core central values of this republic really understood

00:22:09.940 that, hey, the other nations of the earth had these memorials for their, you know, the

00:22:15.980 British, the French, and somehow because we're, you know, the French are on the French battlefields,

00:22:22.680 The English, you know, but we are going to be on battlefields all over the all over the world.

00:22:27.800 And so the whole official, the function that we're about to see today, this traditional function of not simply a parade,

00:22:34.400 but the commander in chief going to Arlington National Cemetery to have at the National Cemetery the other day on Thursday,

00:22:41.760 Neil McCabe said they put up 250,000 flags into 480,000 remains.

00:22:47.100 And but there's 250,000 flags put on by the old guard.

00:22:51.040 right but very early on i think as you know i'm a fan of all your books i love i devour very much

00:22:59.340 but one of the most powerful books that you have is about how this whole thing started and how it

00:23:05.540 started in france it is so moving and i and even other retellings of it you do the best job of how

00:23:12.400 we actually get to the day let's take a couple minutes and tee our audience up of of how that

00:23:17.920 actually started this is my uh very special book to me it's the unknowns do we have that

00:23:25.160 and it's um it's it's on the tomb of the unknown soldier it's called the unknown it's called the

00:23:30.540 unknowns because it's also about the body bearers and the men that brought the tomb the remains of

00:23:36.240 the the first soldier that's in the tomb uh from world war one home and this book found me too

00:23:43.020 because I was asked by Colonel Willie Buell, who was at the time the commander of the 5th Marines.

00:23:52.180 They were going back.

00:23:52.880 He's in my film, The Last 600 Meters.

00:23:54.660 He is.

00:23:55.200 He's a warrior.

00:23:55.980 He's an old-school Marine.

00:23:57.920 He's a fighting Marine Corps officer that's just an incredibly amazing guy.

00:24:04.480 um but he was the brigade he was the battalion commander of 3-1 in felucia when i was with them

00:24:11.560 as a volunteer combat historian in uniform uh and went house to house with those guys and he said

00:24:17.380 to me hey you want to come to france with us with the fifth marines we're going back for the first

00:24:22.580 time since world war one and they were going to bella wood to honor the marines of the fifth and

00:24:29.640 six uh marine regiments that fought the second division that were the boys at bellowood that

00:24:35.860 that stopped the great and marines this is why it's so important is that marines are were built

00:24:41.300 coming out of the beginning of the navy as like the royal marines were with the with the royal

00:24:46.140 navy they are there on ships they're amphibious force they're not bellowood is a kind of a ways

00:24:53.600 inland right you naturally would not think of the united states marines no beach at bellowood

00:24:58.740 And it's kind of like, why are the Marines there?

00:25:01.380 They're there because in 1918, in the summer of 1918, the Germans launched another great offensive.

00:25:08.820 And they are very, very close to taking Paris.

00:25:11.880 And it's the boys of the 5th and 6th and the 2nd Division and the 3rd Division of Pershing's American Expedition Air Force that are rushed to the front.

00:25:21.700 And the French Army is evaporating, Steve.

00:25:25.320 Well, they have four main casualties.

00:25:26.940 There's nothing holding it back.

00:25:28.740 And these boys go into the line, and it's at places like Bellawood that they hold the front. 0.54

00:25:34.140 And they stop the Germans with accurate rifle fire. 0.79

00:25:38.520 You know, a Marine is a rifleman first. 0.81

00:25:40.900 And they're just picking off.

00:25:41.840 Every Marine is a rifleman.

00:25:42.920 They're picking off the Hun with their springfields, bolt-action springfields.

00:25:48.360 And they're stopping them dead in their tracks.

00:25:51.720 And it's, you know, here that, you know, you have, you know, retreat.

00:25:56.760 Hell, we just got here.

00:25:58.040 You know, the Marine Corps digs in and, you know, I was asked to be a guide for the Normandy Beaches, but I was there at Bella Wood with Ray Shearer, whose great uncle fought there.

00:26:13.020 And he mentions the fact that Ernest Jansen is a Medal of Honor recipient at Hill 142, and he's also a body bearer for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

00:26:23.560 And it was like there I knew my next book found me.

00:26:27.200 Really? It came to you just like that?

00:26:28.600 Yes, I was like, who are these other guys?

00:26:30.740 Somebody just telling you a random story.

00:26:32.360 Hang on for a second.

00:26:32.960 Just a random story.

00:26:33.680 That's how all my books are about.

00:26:35.140 You told me that your books find you.

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00:28:36.020 Memorial Day, 25 May in the year of our Lord, 2026.

00:28:40.460 We're in the middle of a conflict.

00:28:42.680 President Trump, his commander-in-chief, is negotiating.

00:28:45.840 We're going to have a little update on that, I think, later in the show.

00:28:49.840 That is back and forth.

00:28:51.100 But I think you can tell some of the people are not happy about coming to a peace accord

00:28:54.840 because they're already all over President Trump with very little information coming out about this. 0.99

00:28:59.660 We're going to come back to the foundation of this blackjack pershing,

00:29:03.220 the unknowns to tee up what the president's going to do.

00:29:07.540 But I also want to tie this into we're going to have Mark Noah and Cleo Pascal.

00:29:11.780 Cleo is out in the Pacific, and Mark Noah is going to come.

00:29:14.360 we're going to talk about because i think you were very moved too about the situation in tarawa

00:29:19.000 and pelelu particularly given your you were you were in bed as a combat historian with the marines

00:29:26.040 in fact one of your most moving books is uh was it we are one that we were one with at fallujah

00:29:33.480 yeah i just just posted on twitter or x the the dead the the fallen from this the first platoon

00:29:42.200 We lost five men in the squad.

00:29:44.860 I was in four.

00:29:46.200 Just in the Battle of Fallujah?

00:29:47.620 Just in Fallujah.

00:29:48.860 And the, I mean, the platoon had 60-some men that went in.

00:29:53.620 Only 19 were standing at the end of the battle.

00:29:57.540 And it was...

00:29:57.940 Five KIAs in a bunch of casualties?

00:30:00.740 Yeah.

00:30:01.180 Like multiple, multiple Purple Hearts.

00:30:04.140 It's the reason that I did that film with Michael Pack

00:30:06.120 is that people do not realize Fallujah.

00:30:07.040 But they kept going.

00:30:07.700 That was the thing.

00:30:08.360 It was amazing.

00:30:09.000 Yeah, Fallujah is a horrible battle.

00:30:10.600 Yeah.

00:30:10.820 Door-to-door.

00:30:12.200 I posted our fallen today and just, you know, reflecting on them and just what, you know, today is really all about.

00:30:20.540 I'd like to pull that and read those names in a second.

00:30:23.000 Let's go to, I want to play Gary Sinise.

00:30:25.940 Gary Sinise is one of the guys who are really going out of his way for veterans and Memorial Day and families and all that.

00:30:31.920 He is the, I guess, the Grand Marshal of the parade today.

00:30:35.640 Let's go ahead and hear the opening remarks of Gary Sinise.

00:30:39.380 Thank you so much.

00:30:42.200 how many veterans active duty first responders are here if you're if you're over there and

00:30:48.600 you're a veteran could you stand up and our active duty folks here and our veterans god bless you all

00:31:04.120 i didn't serve in the military i have family members who who did i have great respect for

00:31:09.160 For those who serve, I have Vietnam veterans in my family, on my wife's side of the family.

00:31:16.240 And I remember what it was like for them to come home to a nation that was kind of torn apart and divided at that time.

00:31:24.460 And it was a difficult, difficult time for our military at that time.

00:31:28.680 I learned a lot from the Vietnam veterans in my family.

00:31:32.440 I learned how difficult it was for them to go off to war and then come home to a nation that had turned its back on them.

00:31:39.720 And we could never, ever let that happen again.

00:31:45.620 So after September 11, 2001, having been involved with veterans in the 80s and 90s, I felt that there was a call to action at that point to step up.

00:32:00.160 And I realized there was a great role for citizens to play in backing up our military.

00:32:06.560 These are our defenders.

00:32:08.280 They're our providers of freedom.

00:32:10.960 And so we as citizens, we can take some responsibility to make sure that they at least know how much they are appreciated

00:32:21.120 and that their families know they're appreciated and that we never forget those who fall in freedom's defense.

00:32:30.160 So what I do at the Gary Sinise Foundation is just try to be this little rallying point for the American people who want to support our military.

00:32:38.180 And we have thousands, hundreds of thousands who go to our website and support us because they care about you.

00:32:45.280 They care about our veterans.

00:32:46.560 They care about our first responders.

00:32:48.440 They care about our families.

00:32:50.120 They care about our wounded.

00:32:51.280 And they care about our active duty folks.

00:32:53.660 We can never do enough, but we can always do more.

00:32:57.100 God bless you and God bless America.

00:32:59.140 Enjoy the parade today.

00:33:00.060 Thank you very much.

00:33:03.400 That's what a classy guy is.

00:33:04.920 It's always about somebody else, never talks about himself.

00:33:07.480 Gary Sinise, the brand marshal, I think, for the parade today,

00:33:10.500 has done so much.

00:33:11.180 In freedom's defense, it starts, you can tell in all your books

00:33:15.760 and throughout American military history, the honored dead,

00:33:19.180 it is in freedom's defense.

00:33:20.760 And they know the institutions they're defending.

00:33:23.140 They know their families, what American values are in the country.

00:33:27.260 but when you read into the details of it when it comes to the hottest parts the toughest parts

00:33:34.280 the ones that separate these these heroes it gets down to the guys to the left and right of them

00:33:39.500 they're they're fighting for the unit the unit pride in the in the in the camaraderie

00:33:43.700 in their uh in this kind of brotherhood of arms is really the dividing point

00:33:48.640 I mean, it was, I saw it firsthand in Fallujah.

00:33:53.980 It's, they were fighting for each other, you know, and after all the casualties, I'll never

00:34:01.320 forget, we lost Lance Corporal Michael Hanks, and I'll never forget just looking back, and

00:34:10.120 I saw the, you know, the guys were kind of on one knee with their weapons, and just that

00:34:17.540 forlorn look the thousand yard stare and uh corporal soyda lost his best friend

00:34:25.620 and he's like let's move out next house that's that's what they did i just it was remarkable

00:34:34.420 remarkable courage and then there were guys that came out of the aid station

00:34:38.420 that were wounded to get back just to get back in the fight and this is like aaron kent who was

00:34:44.420 He was one of our guys.

00:34:46.020 He showed me his paperwork from the aid station,

00:34:50.400 and then the guy was still wounded, and he somehow stole a weapon

00:34:53.980 and got back with everybody.

00:34:56.240 That's just the kind of guys that were there.

00:34:58.320 They're incredible.

00:34:59.120 You talk about the million-dollar wounds to get guys out and get them back.

00:35:04.400 You don't see that.

00:35:05.600 I don't think you see that a lot when you really study this.

00:35:07.960 In the last 600 meters, one of the biggest fights they had

00:35:10.520 was the combat marines that were wounded and some very seriously wounded the fight they had was

00:35:16.760 medics and personnel and corpsmen that they want to get back in the fight and they want to get back

00:35:22.460 in the fight right away for their buddies because they understood they were kind of outnumbered yeah

00:35:25.900 the corpsmen that we had were just incredible just constantly you know braving fire to to do their

00:35:33.600 job and save lives incredible amazing uh where that training comes in uh mo you were at uh you

00:35:41.500 were at uh west point um on i guess saturday for the commencement um pete hexath uh our secretary

00:35:49.720 of war a great pete hexath was uh was there to give the commencement address the president done

00:35:54.860 i think the day before we covered live he did at the united states uh coast guard academy what was

00:36:00.980 the commencement of West Point like, ma'am? It was truly an honor to be there. I was one of a few

00:36:07.680 board members that were there, and I think that Secretary Huckstep gave a great speech. It truly

00:36:14.360 was inspiring. You know, if I was able to, I'd get right back in the fight. You know, he motivated

00:36:22.220 the crowd, I think, just as much as the graduates, and they understand that they signed up in a time

00:36:29.320 when we were not at war and now they most likely um will have a high probability of seeing war

00:36:38.340 so they understand like Pete Hegseth said it's send me send me send us so it was very inspiring

00:36:50.400 to be there talk to me about that for a second because Pete obviously from the liberal media is

00:36:55.920 getting a lot of grief and particularly he's there one of the things he's been a great role model is

00:37:01.100 inspiring you know he was a combat veteran uh i think a major at the time um arose to major in a

00:37:07.620 i think a national guard reserve unit but he saw combat what was his message to the cadets in that

00:37:14.200 very moment where they're about they're just a few minutes away from you know putting stop being

00:37:20.300 cadets and start getting their commissions and being junior officers? What was his pitch?

00:37:27.360 Well, he wanted them to know that he stands behind them, that he's going to make sure

00:37:31.580 that they have what they need to be the best leaders in this army and that there is not going

00:37:40.140 to be a push for this woke agenda DEI anymore. We are, as he said in his speech, snapping back,

00:37:48.000 And they are the snapback to the correct and high standards that the Army was at before we started going down this DEI and woke agenda rabbit hole.

00:37:58.740 So it was very motivating.

00:38:00.440 And you could tell it fired up the cadets slash second lieutenants.

00:38:06.180 And they were ready to get out of that stadium and take their oath again because they take it at the end of the ceremony.

00:38:14.380 So technically, they are second lieutenants as soon as they are dismissed.

00:38:18.280 However, they were so excited to get out of Mikey Stadium and go do their commissioning ceremonies.

00:38:26.020 That's fantastic. I know the president's made it a high priority to get to stop this woke nonsense and get back to warfighting.

00:38:33.160 Correct. All the guidance that you and Sean Spicer has over at the Naval Academy, you have at West Point, all the presidential appointees.

00:38:41.160 And, of course, you had, I think, Congressman Womack was there also, the chairman of the board.

00:38:46.000 The mandate is to get back to warfighting and to get back to not simply warfighting, but the winning of our wars, correct?

00:38:53.880 Correct.

00:38:54.920 And I saw it when I went up for the Sandhurst competition.

00:38:59.240 I saw the training that the academy is doing.

00:39:02.040 They are getting back to what Secretary Heggs has said, that snapback.

00:39:05.700 They are focused on warfighting and getting rid of the world agenda that infiltrated our service academies.

00:39:12.280 So I think West Point is doing a very good job, and I look forward to making sure that we continue to build leaders of character at my alma mater so that they can be great leaders in the United States Army.

00:39:28.380 Mo, what's your social media? How can people follow you?

00:39:32.020 They can follow me at RealMaureenBannon on Twitter, or on Instagram, sorry, and Maureen underscore Bannon on Getter and Twitter.

00:39:39.960 And I just wanted to say today to everyone, I know I've said this before on Memorial Day, today is not a day to thank a veteran.

00:39:47.720 Today is a day to honor those that paid the ultimate sacrifice for this country.

00:39:52.120 So if you live near a military cemetery, get out and see those graves, those men and women that gave their lives, gave everything for this country.

00:40:02.940 In honor of Memorial Day, I am wearing a teammate of one of our security, Carl Fisher, his teammate that was killed in Afghanistan in 2016, to honor him because he gave his life fighting for this country.

00:40:18.720 Mo Bannon, we'll take that to heart. Thank you so much. Appreciate you.

00:40:25.300 Thank you.

00:40:27.500 Mark Lucas, talk to me from Article 3. You're a veteran. Memorial Day, sir.

00:40:35.400 Yeah, it's a very special weekend, and I was able to take my 13-year-old daughter to a memorial over the weekend.

00:40:41.560 I was able to show her some of the service members I served with in Afghanistan that pay the ultimate cost,

00:40:48.000 but then also there was a service member that committed suicide here in Iowa that was one of

00:40:54.640 those deaths that we never saw coming and just reminding her of what the cost is for combat.

00:41:00.880 But it's a weekend of mixed emotions. I also celebrate my wedding anniversary with my wife

00:41:05.180 and it reminds me that these service members would do anything to spend another dinner with

00:41:10.060 their spouse or to throw a football with their son. So I spent this day and started it like I

00:41:15.720 try to do every day in prayer you know i lead veteran action and i'm all about action action

00:41:20.740 action but i tell people that one of the greatest actions you can do is to pray and so i offer up

00:41:26.480 these memories and these prayers to for these service members to god that they can see the

00:41:31.200 light of their face but especially today when we've had 14 casualties in iran there's going to

00:41:37.020 be a big gap in families all across this country and then pray for those spouses those parents

00:41:42.300 those children that they can have peace because after the weeks go by and the months go by

00:41:48.460 there's an outpouring of support but they become lonely and they will always remember that hole in

00:41:53.020 their heart so today is a very special day that we take seriously like mo bannon said it's not

00:41:58.300 about veterans although we're very proud of our service the best thing that we can do is offer up

00:42:02.780 these prayers and to honor those people that pay the ultimate sacrifice talk to me about this scourge

00:42:07.740 I'm going to get to you on this topic. Tell me the scourge of suicides. Why haven't we been able,

00:42:13.980 you know, the greatest generation, you know, kept it internally and obviously that paid with broken

00:42:20.540 families and alcoholism and all types of things. But it seems today the suicide rates are still

00:42:26.780 very high or any suicide coming out of a veteran is unacceptable. Mark, why do you think we have

00:42:33.100 still this scourge of suicide among veterans and particularly people in assault combat?

00:42:37.740 It's because of despair and really oftentimes despair is driven by traumatic events, but

00:42:45.920 also it's driven by the fact they don't feel like they can get help.

00:42:49.600 And so when people go to the VA, for instance, and they want to talk to somebody and the

00:42:54.660 VA turns them away, it increases that despair.

00:42:57.500 And I think one of the greatest drivers of veteran suicide that we see today is the fact

00:43:02.900 that the Department of Veterans Affairs isn't serving people.

00:43:06.360 Now, there's different hospitals across the country that do good work, but we had two veterans at the same hospital in San Antonio, Texas, at the Audie Murphy VA Hospital, who committed suicide.

00:43:17.400 One of them was actually a Navy veteran who wrote a book about veteran suicide with his father.

00:43:23.320 He stepped into the hospital. He wanted to talk to somebody. Nobody wanted to talk to them.

00:43:28.120 He said that they were like robots that just wanted to give me pills, and he committed suicide on the front step of that VA.

00:43:33.660 A few months later, a Marine did the exact same thing.

00:43:37.760 These guys face despair and they want to get help.

00:43:41.540 And the VA, the exact institution that was built to help these people are failing them.

00:43:47.000 And that's why Veteran Action, we're supporting the Veterans Access Act, which is a bill that's right now in the House of Representatives.

00:43:53.860 President Trump supports this bill.

00:43:55.260 The White House does.

00:43:56.540 This will codify the reforms that President Trump passed in his first term, the Mission Act,

00:44:01.920 which would give a veteran choice in health care,

00:44:05.140 that the VA can't see you in a timely fashion,

00:44:07.860 that you can go to a private health care facility.

00:44:10.000 And I truly believe that if we pass this bill

00:44:12.040 and also the Veterans Bill of Rights Act,

00:44:14.340 that this will allow veterans to seek help faster.

00:44:17.800 It will help get them the help that they need right now.

00:44:21.080 And so hopefully it can save lives.

00:44:22.720 And these bills not only are the right thing to do,

00:44:25.420 they're politically very popular.

00:44:27.700 I commissioned a poll with Mark Mitchell at Rasmussen.

00:44:30.040 The Veterans Bill of Rights Act of 2026 has 96 percent support.

00:44:36.800 The Veterans Access Act has 84 percent support.

00:44:40.780 And if you talk to military voters and veterans, they're 75 percent more likely to vote for somebody to support these bills.

00:44:46.340 But this is what I don't understand.

00:44:47.640 This has been a priority from President Trump from the first campaign.

00:44:51.200 And we did the executive wars and all that.

00:44:52.980 He's gone through a couple of a couple of VA heads.

00:44:56.120 But, I mean, this is not kind of a priority.

00:44:58.180 This is a very high priority for President Trump and people that are close to him, like Ike Perlmutter and others that have made this a priority.

00:45:06.500 How can it have been a priority for President Trump?

00:45:08.620 And we're still, as you're saying, we're still having, is the VA, is it that bureaucratic?

00:45:13.060 I mean, the audience would support anything that helped veterans.

00:45:17.860 And particularly in this issue, which is of veterans that have served their country, served in uniform, served in combat,

00:45:25.720 They come back and have such despair that they take their own lives.

00:45:30.020 So there has to be some reason it's not delivering.

00:45:33.200 And the VA, I think the people over there understand it's a priority

00:45:36.000 because they just feel they've given somebody a pill that takes care of it.

00:45:40.720 This also scourge we've had are trying to medicate our way out of this.

00:45:45.320 Is that the issue?

00:45:46.340 Is the issue that modern society doesn't have the spiritual

00:45:48.940 or religious underpinnings or understructure?

00:45:53.040 Your Axios Day has a huge story just about on the practical politics side, how the secularization of the nation to a large start is making it very difficult to actually reach people.

00:46:02.500 But is that what's the underlying reason for this has to be something?

00:46:06.100 And why are we not delivering to make sure that we're on Memorial Day?

00:46:10.120 It's, you know, the million that are honored dead are not increasing every year because of people that take their own lives.

00:46:18.340 We have a bipartisan problem when it comes to veteran issues on Capitol Hill.

00:46:22.700 And unless there's a political incentive, they just seem not to really pay attention to it.

00:46:28.080 And that's why I started Veteran Action.

00:46:29.580 We have to change the politics on veteran issues.

00:46:33.780 This has vast bipartisan support.

00:46:37.020 The American people believe that veterans deserve choice in their health care.

00:46:40.120 They believe that they deserve better health care from the VA.

00:46:43.540 And that's why I had to commission the poll.

00:46:45.220 I had to show these politicians.

00:46:46.740 I've briefed the NRCC.

00:46:48.020 I've briefed the White House.

00:46:49.000 I've showed them that I've delivered some great opportunities for victories on a silver platter, that 75 percent of voters who they see a congressman support this bill are more likely to vote for that person.

00:47:01.920 We see a five percentage gap between the support of President Trump and congressional Republicans. Here are two bipartisan bills they can pass right now that will help them with veteran voters, because right now we're seeing that veteran support is softening for Republicans.

00:47:18.340 And it's why it's because they haven't done anything.

00:47:21.560 President Trump passed the Mission Act in 2018.

00:47:24.760 He passed the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act in 2017.

00:47:28.400 I worked with him on both those bills.

00:47:30.540 That's why he had such solid veteran support.

00:47:33.180 But veterans are like the NFL.

00:47:34.780 They ask you, what have you done for me lately?

00:47:36.880 And right now the VA is continuing to fail.

00:47:39.320 These two bills can help solidify veteran support.

00:47:42.240 But more importantly, it will help veteran lives save them today.

00:47:46.020 uh mark where do people go one more time where they go to find out all this information

00:47:51.340 go to veteranaction.org i created a action center like i did for the article 3 project so the war

00:47:57.980 room posse can go there and they can contact their lawmakers to tell them to support the

00:48:01.760 veterans access act good mark thank you thank you for everything you do for the veterans and

00:48:07.360 particularly here on memorial day thank you sir thank you hey you got to help me out here

00:48:12.660 O'Donnell. If you look at these giants in the late 19th and early 20th century,

00:48:19.260 and it gets back to the blackjack Pershing,

00:48:24.260 they did not, and I realize it wasn't covered, so there were people that had PTSD and had severe

00:48:29.720 coming out of World War I with the mustard gas and some of the horrific things. But I don't

00:48:37.280 believe we had this issue with suicides, right? You had suicides, or you're saying it's different?

00:48:44.060 I think we did. I just think it was publicized as much. But not the skirt it is today.

00:48:49.240 It is. It's a big issue. What do you mean it's an issue? You serve with it.

00:48:53.640 I mean, I was there, and we now have more men that have committed suicide than were killed in action

00:48:59.160 in Iraq and Fallujah. Give me that again. More men have committed suicide than were killed in

00:49:05.960 action in iraq more men that served in iraq and afghanistan yeah we have higher it's higher

00:49:12.880 suicide at least in the at least in the in three in some of the units i was in yeah the units you

00:49:18.020 were in three one you're you're saying that the suicides after the fact are higher than the kia's

00:49:25.260 yes yeah it's it's it's it's a terrible thing and and i i've seen it uh firsthand is that is that

00:49:34.460 is that modernity is because it's all it's all it's there's different factors that are involved

00:49:40.120 and it's it people respond to this trauma in different ways uh you know what they saw was

00:49:46.580 extremely traumatic because it was house to house it was fighting that was hand to hand

00:49:51.440 you know in your face personal combat um and then it different things i i one of our guys

00:50:03.300 Because, you know, as he mentioned earlier, the VA would just give him pills to deal with the problem and not attack the root.

00:50:14.060 To medicate it.

00:50:14.720 To medicate it.

00:50:15.840 And then people would self-medicate with alcohol and a variety of other things to somehow get through it.

00:50:24.200 And then there was this situation then, I'm not sure how much it's changed, that if you sought help,

00:50:33.300 You could not be promoted.

00:50:34.920 And if you can't be promoted, you cannot stay in.

00:50:38.220 And that was a vicious cycle.

00:50:40.800 Give me this internally.

00:50:41.520 Internally, if you seek help, if you seek help, they log it into your service.

00:50:46.620 I'm not sure how this is today, but this is when I was writing We Were One.

00:50:51.940 I would hear the stories constantly.

00:50:54.460 People couldn't seek help because if they did, it would be a detriment.

00:50:58.140 And then they would, so then they would therefore pile on the alcohol or the pills to somehow deal with it.

00:51:07.400 And we had one of our guys, terrible situation, where he was self-medicating and he got a DUI.

00:51:15.440 And the DUI, they said, was an automatic expulsion from the Marine Corps.

00:51:23.500 and his entire life was based on service and all he wanted to do was be a marine

00:51:29.740 and he took out his service pistol and he killed himself after that and that's just

00:51:36.360 it's just i was the first one of the first people to get the call it was just a terrible thing to

00:51:43.400 have to you you have to sacrifice your dream you know it's just not right uh let's go now there's

00:51:50.540 efforts to restore his

00:51:52.540 you know

00:51:54.000 his service record and

00:51:56.120 he deserves it because he was a great marine

00:51:58.680 in Fallujah

00:52:00.160 and his service afterwards too. Unbelievable.

00:52:02.580 Okay, hang on.

00:52:04.140 We're going to take a short commercial break at the top of the hour.

00:52:07.620 President is going to leave

00:52:08.720 I think the White House close to

00:52:10.460 noon. I believe the

00:52:12.320 actual ceremony at

00:52:14.600 Arlington National Cemetery will commence

00:52:16.440 at 1230. I believe that the president, the

00:52:18.500 vice president will be there. There'll be some appropriate remarks. They'll be laying

00:52:21.640 under the wreath. We'll do the traditional evolution, as they call it, at Arlington

00:52:27.680 National Cemetery Day. The Tomb of the Unknown. We're going to get to how that all started.

00:52:33.020 Patrick Hayden wrote a book about it called The Unknowns. But first, when we come back

00:52:37.940 from commercial break, we're going to go to the vast Pacific. We're going to go to two

00:52:43.620 of the bloodiest battles with more heroes that maybe a lot of you have not

00:52:49.620 heard of, Terawa and Peleliu. And what is Memorial Day like there today? Mark

00:52:57.840 Noah from History Flights and our own Cleo Pascal will join a short commercial break.

00:53:13.620 This Memorial Day, America honors her fallen heroes.

00:53:29.920 Live from Arlington National Cemetery, President Donald Trump participates in the traditional

00:53:35.100 wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, paying tribute to the brave men and

00:53:40.700 women who gave everything for this country, Real America's Voice, and The War Room present

00:53:46.900 special coverage starting right now.

00:53:49.580 2026 25 may the special annual special coverage we give every memorial day

00:54:16.680 for our honored dead,

00:54:19.320 the over a million that have died

00:54:20.680 and killed in action

00:54:22.000 or died in defense of their country,

00:54:23.800 their republic.

00:54:26.860 Might add Tina Peters.

00:54:28.720 I think there's a prayer vigil.

00:54:30.360 I might try to pick up some of that.

00:54:31.700 Tina Peters gets that first. 1.00

00:54:32.820 A gold star mother,

00:54:33.740 a gold star mother

00:54:34.880 who is in prison

00:54:36.660 in a high security prison in Colorado.

00:54:39.060 Embraced that on Memorial Day.

00:54:40.340 How does that feel?

00:54:41.800 Gave her son for,

00:54:42.720 in defense of his country.

00:54:47.720 We're going to go, the Gold Star mothers are actually speaking up at Arlington,

00:54:50.400 our Gold Star families.

00:54:51.460 We're going to jump to that, get a little of that, maybe dip into the parade.

00:54:55.920 I want to thank the engine room is on point today.

00:54:58.960 The engine room had a, I think this is one, I think this is the Texas,

00:55:02.420 one of the Texas branches of our engine room said, Steve, let's keep it simple. 0.99

00:55:08.000 Veterans should get all benefits of illegal aliens.

00:55:11.040 boom don't want to get too political today but i think that is a great recommendation

00:55:16.860 um we had two very special individuals on the show on um on saturday and uh the overwhelming

00:55:25.980 and i mean my phone blew up the entire day uh and as i said we're gonna we're gonna get this

00:55:31.640 sorted out mark noah from history flights and our own cleo pascal mark i want to start with you

00:55:38.120 What is History Flights? And tell me about Terawa and Peleliu, particularly Terawa that I know that you're trying to work on, but being blunted by the Chinese Communist Party and just bureaucratic ineptitude.

00:55:50.240 What is History Flights? What do you do, sir?

00:55:53.040 History Flight is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that has conducted more than 150 missions overseas in the last 20 years, finding lost sites of MIAs and recovering them.

00:56:09.400 and we've succeeded in recovering more than 350 missing American individuals and including

00:56:17.720 complete individuals. We've recovered lost graveyards that we found on Tarawa and we've

00:56:23.480 also recovered numerous air crew that were lost in the Pacific and in Europe and those individuals

00:56:33.320 were often, you know, there's a misconception that a person who's deceased from a large

00:56:39.780 explosion is not recoverable, but that's not really true.

00:56:43.320 We recovered a B-26 bomber crew that had had four 1,000-pound bombs on board that detonated

00:56:51.080 when the plane crashed, and we recovered those individuals.

00:56:54.640 So there's a wide range of possibilities if there is enough interest from the country

00:57:02.900 to support it I think that I think this is what and I want to make sure we're very clear about

00:57:08.520 this we're not trying to be critical of anybody but we're just I think when most audience members

00:57:13.400 because you've been on Breitbart radio as Patrick had been years ago when most people hear this

00:57:18.480 they go look I know there's an MIA situation in in Vietnam and maybe even part of Korea

00:57:25.120 and there are people very involved in that and some of the governments want to look the other

00:57:29.020 the way, et cetera, et cetera. But when you talk about World War II, right, I thought, isn't it,

00:57:35.160 they're kind of shocked that there's a group like yours that is going out and doing this effort,

00:57:40.220 and when you put out the number 80,000, that there are 80,000 individuals whose remains have

00:57:47.620 not been gathered up or collected and buried with appropriate military honors, I think people are

00:57:56.700 like stunned like isn't this the kind of compact you make as you sign up uh that if you're you're

00:58:03.980 going to give all if you're wounded in combat what did uh what did lincoln saying to get it

00:58:09.660 get his burger no not get his very dress he said in the second inaugural address that powerful

00:58:14.860 second order address that we give comfort to the widow and the orphan and those hurt in battle

00:58:19.900 that most people assume that the government not just takes care of you medically right and clearly

00:58:25.180 in this ptsd there's there's a gap but that the remains of you if you die in combat if you're

00:58:31.840 killed in action in defense of your country that the government and the american people not just

00:58:38.000 have an obligation they have a willing obligation to find your remains and to somehow reunite that

00:58:45.480 with your family or if they choose to be uh buried in one of these magnificent simple uh but powerful

00:58:53.520 um cemeteries we have throughout the world sir well it's a a dramatic uh conflagration is what

00:59:04.660 world war ii was and in the summer of 1944 america was losing a hundred thousand people per month

00:59:12.960 killed wounded or missing and by law they were required to publish the kia's in the local

00:59:20.540 newspaper, but the missing were not required to be written down in the local newspaper.

00:59:27.660 And so by the end of the war, there were 78,979 that were still missing and over 8,000 from

00:59:36.880 the Merchant Marine.

00:59:37.860 And certainly finding people who disappeared in lost instances in the ocean is extremely

00:59:46.440 difficult and often impossible, but not impossible.

00:59:50.540 There have been many MIAs that have been recovered from underwater crash sites of aircraft.

00:59:57.040 And then there were also 7,400 missing from Korea.

01:00:01.720 And today there's still 1,566 missing from Vietnam.

01:00:07.000 But the MIA issue for World War II is enormous.

01:00:11.800 And so that's why we elected to put our limited resources in the World War II theater to see how much.

01:00:19.820 but hang on one second hang on one second i just want to make sure i get the math right

01:00:26.120 and people should keep this in mind one of the finest books i ever read about world war

01:00:32.020 two was called annihilation and it's about as these wars continue they get more vicious because

01:00:38.140 you know you just get angrier both sides right of the killing and the thing and they get they

01:00:43.660 get more intense they reach crescendos of combat on both sides as world war ii did

01:00:50.380 obviously stopped by the dropping of the uh in the pacific theater ended all hiroshima and nagasaki

01:00:57.840 although i might add that uh a lot of that was because the japanese imperial command knew that

01:01:02.660 the russians took what hokada island that there would be a very different post-war for japan than

01:01:08.360 at the Americans. They surrendered to the Americans. You said 100,000 in 1944. There

01:01:13.940 was 100,000 a month KIAs missing in action or casualties. On the missing in actions from World

01:01:20.980 War II, there were how many at the end of the war? You said 975,000 roughly missing in action?

01:01:29.840 Well, there were 415,000 American KIAs in World War II. And after they did the post-war recovery

01:01:36.860 effort, there were still 78,979 missing. And there were also over 8,000 from the merchant marine

01:01:45.060 that were still missing. So how did, but we had a major government effort post-war to find the

01:01:54.460 missing or to find even the KIAs and foreign battlefields and to either return them to their

01:02:00.840 home for burial or to bury them in a national military cemetery, whether it's in the Philippines

01:02:06.620 or the Cliffs of Normandy or throughout Europe, correct?

01:02:11.520 That is correct.

01:02:12.400 There was an enormous effort.

01:02:13.960 I think they recovered more than 300,000 individuals

01:02:17.740 and brought them back to burial in America

01:02:21.500 or in the American Battlefield Monument cemeteries that are overseas.

01:02:27.820 And so the remainder, the 78,000,

01:02:30.400 from the time that stopped,

01:02:34.080 that take four or five years after the war, right,

01:02:35.940 when the money ran out in the 1950s was there any program still with 80 000 missing in action

01:02:44.860 was there any concerted effort to continue on and try to find those they figured hey they're airmen

01:02:50.880 over europe or their navy or merchant marines or they'll be in the deep jungle or the beaches of

01:02:59.000 terror was this gonna be too tough that we just quit there was no there was no effort in the 50s

01:03:04.520 the 60s or the 70s. And when the Defense Department started to do, they were forced to do

01:03:12.120 an MIA program for Vietnam because of the outpouring of public anger about the Vietnam MIA

01:03:19.760 issue. When they did that, they started a very small, underfunded organization at Hickam Air

01:03:26.680 Force Base in Hawaii, run by a retired colonel named Johnny Webb, who's a friend of mine, a very

01:03:32.460 good guy. And he used some of his own money to fund the search for some of these people. And

01:03:38.760 because they were given money just for Vietnam. And so they would get reports, you know, hey,

01:03:45.240 we were digging a building on Tarawa and we dug up a grave. I mean, that has happened on Tarawa

01:03:52.160 since before I was born in 1965. The first grave on Tarawa that was dug up in construction that

01:03:59.800 I'm aware of, was dug up in 1961. But, you know, we recovered a Congressional Medal of Honor

01:04:08.000 recipient, Alexander Bonnyman, on Tarawa in a mass grave with 52 other individuals. And there

01:04:14.600 was a building built on top of the grave. And we dug down through the floor and recovered

01:04:19.560 12 individuals that were underneath the building. But when we did that, we found evidence that when

01:04:25.960 they had built a building, local construction workers had dug right through some of these

01:04:30.800 people's bodies and had taken the gold fillings out of their teeth. And, you know, that's the

01:04:37.180 kind of degradation that has happened from the neglect of not looking for people in the most

01:04:43.740 effective way possible. Okay. So hang on. This is, I got to make sure I fully comprehend this

01:04:50.780 because sometimes when I hear the story, it's so incomprehensible.

01:04:55.620 You have airmen in the 8th Air Corps.

01:04:58.560 I think somebody told me one time, you're 80,000 total.

01:05:01.160 There may be up to 30,000 or 40,000 of these airmen all spread throughout Europe.

01:05:07.520 You've got, obviously, merchant marines.

01:05:09.340 You have Navy.

01:05:09.800 You have people that are very, obviously, the remains are difficult to recover,

01:05:14.600 if there even remains left.

01:05:17.540 But at Terawa and Peleliu, these were very specific objectives.

01:05:23.860 These are essentially island atolls with beaches that were hit by the Marines in some of the bloodiest combat in American history.

01:05:33.100 And that combat has been recorded by some of the most well-documented, well-written stories about that.

01:05:39.680 But it can't be lost on the Marine Corps or the War Department or Congress or whatever that X amount of people died and these are the remains we've got.

01:05:49.940 I just I can't get my head around as powerful and as great as this country was in the 50s and the 60s before the turmoil really started that people didn't say, hey, at Terawa, we're still missing a thousand people or at Peleliu, we're still missing 500 people.

01:06:05.700 How did that happen?

01:06:06.460 How did we get to a situation where a runway is built over a temporary?

01:06:10.900 They bury these Marines where they died on the beach.

01:06:14.540 Right.

01:06:14.940 How do we get into a situation where somebody's building a runway

01:06:17.980 or somebody's building a building over or some backhoe goes through what you just said

01:06:23.340 to to to desecrate the remains of of the of the of the fallen

01:06:30.180 and then allow somebody to go in and get the go and get the gold out of their teeth.

01:06:34.100 how could that possibly happen, sir? Well, it happened quite a large amount of times all over

01:06:40.220 the world from World War II casualties, but in Tarawa specifically, there were 42 temporary

01:06:46.080 graves that were built by the Marines themselves with the corpsmen and with their religious

01:06:52.880 personnel. And, you know, like Father Francis Cayley helped to lead the burials on Tarawa.

01:06:58.420 And I was fortunate enough to interview over 100 Tarawa veterans, and one of the guys who was stationed on the island after the battle that was an airbase told me that he was walking from his tent to the mess hall, and they would walk past a grave, a large grave with more than 40 American Marines buried in it.

01:07:25.640 and then one day they walked past it and it was gone and there had been a road

01:07:30.620 built on top of it by the Seabees and he said that his squadron commander went in

01:07:35.900 to talk to the leader of the Seabees the commander of the Seabees group on Tarawa

01:07:41.120 and the discussion denigrated into a fistfight and and that's exactly how

01:07:47.120 they lost the graves on Tarawa is they built a modern airbase and the tempo of

01:07:52.280 of the war effort was considered to be more important.

01:07:55.320 And we recovered that grave

01:07:57.160 that Rawls Klotfelter told us about,

01:08:00.320 and we saw the road that-

01:08:02.260 Hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on one second.

01:08:04.900 I gotta go to break.

01:08:06.100 You're saying there were 42 great sites,

01:08:10.040 not just greats, 42 around Tarawa.

01:08:13.100 We're gonna get to all that.

01:08:14.540 Patrick K. O'Donnell, Cleo Pascal,

01:08:18.400 Mark Noah in the war room.

01:08:22.280 welcome back memorial day uh 2026 it's 25 monday 25 may in the year of little of 2026

01:08:34.600 um i want to go mark noah's going to stick with us clear pascal we're going to get to

01:08:40.040 my wingman here at patrick haydell gonna stick with us i want to go to jim rickard's one of our

01:08:45.800 best contributors on geopolitics capital markets but today jim tell about your was it

01:08:52.200 your father that fought at Peleliu, sir?

01:08:56.600 That's right.

01:08:57.240 My father fought at Peleliu.

01:08:59.140 He was, as a child, I wasn't an expert on the order of battle,

01:09:03.420 but I once asked him, what was your division or group?

01:09:05.480 He said, all firsts.

01:09:06.880 He meant 1st Marine Division, 1st Regiment,

01:09:09.600 known as the 1st Marines, and 1st Battalion.

01:09:12.940 They went into Peleliu.

01:09:15.440 The battle started on September 15th.

01:09:18.680 Thank you for putting up that picture.

01:09:20.140 That's my father on the right with one of his Marine buddies.

01:09:23.000 That picture is taken in 1944 in Pavuvu.

01:09:25.820 Pavuvu is in the Solomon Islands.

01:09:27.780 It was used as basically a starting point, an organizing point for Marine invasion.

01:09:33.580 So Pavuvu is where you got organized and set up, and then you went out from there.

01:09:38.680 They left in early September.

01:09:40.840 By the way, a quick footnote.

01:09:41.780 My father was 17 when he enlisted, but he altered his birth certificate so he could

01:09:48.800 do that to make it look like he was 18.

01:09:50.580 He was, I would say, was patriotic.

01:09:53.100 The Marines would probably say gung-ho, but he actually forged his birth certificate to

01:09:57.080 make sure he got in as a 17-year-old.

01:09:59.940 Basic, you know, Parris Island, live fire, machine gun fired over your head, crawling

01:10:03.520 through the swamp of barbed wire.

01:10:05.220 But then on to Camp Pendleton, San Diego, and then the Pacific, Papua.

01:10:08.960 so that was the staging area for the invasion of Peleliu. The 1st Marines, 1st Marine Regiment,

01:10:16.320 commanded by Colonel Lewis F. Puller, known as Chesty Puller, my dad always called him Chesty,

01:10:23.440 they went in on the northern beach. The beaches were organized north to south. The northern

01:10:28.080 beach was White Beach, but that was immediately adjacent to a feature about a 90-foot cliff called

01:10:34.880 the point. The Marines called it the point. The Japanese had blasted a cave explosive, put heavy

01:10:42.480 artillery in the cave, and then sealed it up mostly with steel doors. It could just open up enough to

01:10:48.720 fire, but the Marines couldn't very easily or very well counterattack or do anything. They had to

01:10:53.760 actually assault the point. From there, they moved inland to a feature, let's see if I can pronounce

01:11:01.840 that Uma Brogol pocket, but the Marines called it Bloody Nose Ridge. And I'm sure you know,

01:11:09.580 Steve, the historians have looked at Peleliu. I'm talking about the 1st Marines because that

01:11:14.780 was my father's unit, but the 5th Marine Division, 7th Marine Division were also

01:11:18.460 in the fight. The 5th Marines had the airfield objective. The 7th Marines were to secure the

01:11:25.780 southern part of the island. The 1st Marines were going further north into this Bloody Nose Ridge,

01:11:31.320 as it was called. Historians have considered this the bloodiest, most bitter fight of the entire

01:11:38.500 war. And it's not to kind of denigrate, you know, we had the Battle of the Bulge and Patton and D-Day

01:11:45.720 and, you know, Okinawa, we know all the rest. But for intensity, high casualty rates, the number

01:11:53.400 killed, the relative smallness of the objective. And even today, historians debate, well, did you

01:11:58.660 really have to do it. Peleliu came out of a debate between MacArthur and Nimitz, Admiral Nimitz and

01:12:05.600 General MacArthur, and they actually met with FDR in Hawaii to sort it out. MacArthur wanted to

01:12:13.320 attack the Philippines, take the Philippines, but that's why Peleliu was an objective,

01:12:18.440 because it had an airfield, and MacArthur wanted to protect his flank in the invasion of the

01:12:22.860 philippines nimitz wanted to skip the philippines go to uh taiwan today taiwan at the time was

01:12:29.340 formosa the ultimate objective was always okinawa okinawa was the place you were going to get to

01:12:34.320 and then from their stage the invasion of the main islands of japan kyushu that that invasion

01:12:40.520 didn't happen because of the atomic bomb but they the war department estimated 500 000 casualties

01:12:46.320 uh so i want i want to i want to go back to something just for a second the cbs about the

01:12:52.240 situation in terroir we are not disparaging the seabees the order of the day was take these

01:13:00.340 islands these islands are basically stationary aircraft carriers you build a runway we got to

01:13:05.360 get we got to get air power air power was going to destroy the imperial japan so that we didn't 0.70

01:13:11.920 have to have an invasion of course that didn't until the atomic weapon came up even lemay's

01:13:16.760 firebombing of of uh japan the japanese were dug in and they looked at a four million man invasion

01:13:22.180 with 500 000 to a million casualties but that's why terawa the objective of the seabees is is

01:13:28.340 different than hey we got to collect the bodies etc he's saying hey look i got orders i got to

01:13:32.100 build a runway i'm going to build a runway because we got to get planes up um what was um i want to

01:13:39.020 go also to this concept of pelelu there was this big debate that you need to do the terawas and

01:13:44.040 the Pelelus? Could you just go around these objectives and actually hit and actually take

01:13:49.560 things instead of doing these frontal attacks? You know, MacArthur was very, one of the reasons

01:13:55.400 the Navy and the Marine Corps were not high on General MacArthur, and he was not that high on

01:13:59.300 that. He didn't believe in frontal attacks. He believed in New Guinea. He had specialized in

01:14:05.600 don't just take them, just don't go to every port. You got to skip around them and cut off their

01:14:09.620 supply lines. What was it about Peleliu and Terwa records? Well, Peleliu had a landing

01:14:17.440 ship, and the Japanese controlled it at the time before the invasion, and they could have used that

01:14:21.500 to launch aircraft at any invasion of the Philippines. And that was MacArthur's reason 0.73

01:14:26.720 for wanting to take Peleliu. Of course, Nimitz said, skip the Philippines and keep going north.

01:14:33.380 So FTR came down on the side of MacArthur, and that was the reason for the invasion. But whether

01:14:39.440 again, let historians debate whether it was necessary or not. The fact is it happened and

01:14:44.480 it was one of the most bitter, bloodiest, hard-fought battles in history. I mean,

01:14:49.820 that's not an overstatement. Again, historians agree on that. My father's group, they went in

01:14:55.620 under the 1st Battalion. The commander there was Everett Pope. When they were up in the pocket,

01:15:05.920 at the Bloody Nose Ridge. They went in with a company, basically 100 men, just under 100 men.

01:15:15.240 Nine came out. They fought all night. They were out of ammunition. They fought with canteens,

01:15:21.560 knives, rocks, hand-to-hand, multiple assaults, made it through the night, and then eventually

01:15:28.760 came out, but only nine survived. That was my father's group. Again, I'm talking about my

01:15:33.780 father because that's my personal experience but this was no different from what every uh every

01:15:39.240 marine uh yeah first division or fifth or seventh of that matter went through it was just an

01:15:44.240 unbelievably hard-fought battle uh general rupertus was the commander of the first marine uh division

01:15:50.980 uh puller was the first regiment the first marines but uh general rupertus was the commander of the

01:15:56.480 first division he said before the invasion this will take three or four days um it took uh took

01:16:03.160 two and a half months, again, with record casualties. And as far as the Japanese willingness

01:16:09.100 to fight, the Japanese did fight to the last man. Their commander committed a seppuku,

01:16:14.620 ritual suicide, at the end. But then they eventually accomplished the objective.

01:16:22.620 There was a Japanese lieutenant and a group of 20 men who held out until 1947. I mean,

01:16:29.620 We all heard their stories, but this was true on Peleliu.

01:16:32.360 They never got to him, and he just held out in a cave

01:16:34.180 and was not kind of persuaded to surrender, so to speak, until 1947.

01:16:39.680 The flamethrowers were crucial.

01:16:42.460 Once the Marines, my father, by the way, he didn't talk about it much.

01:16:46.020 We were little kids, six, seven years old.

01:16:47.720 Like, hey, Dad, how many, you know, the enemy did you kill or whatever?

01:16:50.460 He would not talk about it.

01:16:52.060 He told a couple stories.

01:16:53.200 By the way, it was 115 degrees.

01:16:55.320 You're walking over volcanic and coral, sorry, not volcanic, coral rock in 115 degrees.

01:17:00.960 It's cutting through your boots.

01:17:02.880 They were low on water.

01:17:04.660 The Navy supplied the water in barrels, but the barrels had been used for oil.

01:17:09.040 So it was oil residues.

01:17:10.180 The water was, in effect, poisoned.

01:17:12.600 That was one of the most scarce resources.

01:17:15.880 And they just kept going.

01:17:17.460 They just kept fighting.

01:17:18.360 The first division had 70% count.

01:17:22.420 Sorry, first regiment.

01:17:23.240 I want to be clear.

01:17:23.960 First Regiment had 70% casualties.

01:17:27.120 As I say, there were certain pockets and battles where there were 90% casualties.

01:17:31.140 And fighting with bricks and stones.

01:17:36.500 Unbelievable.

01:17:37.220 And he didn't talk about it much to you when you were a kid?

01:17:41.880 No, there's one story he told us.

01:17:43.840 He was entering a cave.

01:17:45.860 My father was a mortarman.

01:17:48.580 Mortarman worked in two-person teams.

01:17:51.420 One guy carried the mortar itself and the sights and so forth.

01:17:54.760 The other Marine carried the ammunition.

01:17:56.640 And then they had to set up very quickly, had to elevate it, and then do the sight,

01:18:01.500 and then drop the mortar shell into the mortar, and then it would fire.

01:18:07.700 But the accuracy was a little bit hit or miss.

01:18:10.920 And they used a technique called bracketing.

01:18:13.140 So you would have a target.

01:18:14.540 You would think you had it right.

01:18:15.500 You would fire.

01:18:16.360 If it went too far, like, OK, raise the elevation a little bit, try to get it.

01:18:20.440 the second time but it took two or three tries to really get on target and then that was uh you

01:18:25.700 know a challenge in and of itself the battles you're part of the battle but the battles are

01:18:30.200 raging around you but my father went into a cave with two other marines at the time he just had a

01:18:34.520 sidearm because like he was the mortar man so he didn't have a rifle um and a japanese uh you know

01:18:42.420 imperial soldier came out from around the corner in the dark practically didn't have a gun he had

01:18:48.300 samurai sword. He just ran at them with the samurai sword and shouted, you die marine kind 0.96

01:18:55.100 of thing, bonsai type of shout. My father just had a sidearm. He was close to getting decapitated,

01:19:03.820 but the guy next to him had a BAR, a Browning Automatic Rifle machine gun, basically. It just

01:19:08.300 cut the Japanese warrior in half. That's how it was. To your earlier guests, a lot of these caves, 0.74

01:19:17.020 Once they secured it with explosives or plane throwers, whatever it was, they had bulldozers, and they just sealed them up and kept going.

01:19:28.360 So your prior guess is absolutely right.

01:19:31.240 I'm talking about Peleliu, but it's true in other islands.

01:19:34.060 There are graves in Japanese and certainly some Americans buried in those caves.

01:19:39.920 The one big thing about Peleliu and, again, your other guests, you were talking about Tarawa and Kwajalein Atoll and the Marshall Islands, same thing.

01:19:50.320 On those assaults, the Marines came ashore, but the Japanese put all their defensive power near the beach or just behind the beach.

01:19:58.240 And it was just a fight on the beach.

01:20:00.000 Bloody, there were navigation errors, some of the landing craft opened up too early, the Marines came out and drowned.

01:20:05.960 Jim, just hang on one second.

01:20:09.240 I'll take a short commercial break.

01:20:11.260 Memorial Day, 2026.

01:20:13.020 We're turning them off.

01:20:28.420 Welcome back to our wall-to-wall coverage.

01:20:31.220 We're coming up from the hour where the President and Commander-in-Chief

01:20:34.000 We'll be heading towards Arlington National Cemetery to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown and have some appropriate remarks.

01:20:42.760 Jim Rickards, your father was how old when he lied about his age to get into actually to volunteer for the Marine Corps?

01:20:50.700 He was 17 in the spring of 1944, forged his birth certificate or order it in some way.

01:20:58.160 I don't think the Marines were too particular, actually.

01:21:00.960 And so he enlisted when he was 17, but saying he was 18 based on an altered birth certificate.

01:21:07.200 But 17, he was off at Parris Island.

01:21:09.540 And then by the time of the invasion, he had turned 18.

01:21:12.140 One of the stories he did tell us, he crossed the international dateline on a vessel, of course, going to Pabuvu on his birthday.

01:21:18.860 So he said, I lost my birthday on the way.

01:21:20.400 But yeah, 18-year-old, basically, in the most horrific conditions.

01:21:25.840 I should point out, Steve, that the first division won what's called a presidential unit citation awarded by President Roosevelt.

01:21:35.600 These are not participation trophies.

01:21:37.480 They're highly specific as to time, date, place, et cetera.

01:21:41.360 So it was first division, September 15th through 19th.

01:21:45.400 It was the worst part of the fighting, although it continued for a long time.

01:21:49.240 September 15th, 1944.

01:21:50.980 and the presidential unit citation is considered the equivalent of the Navy Cross in terms of

01:21:57.060 Bauer. So it's sort of like we can't even figure out who did what. If you're fighting with a knife

01:22:02.000 and hand-to-hand, you get this. That's the equivalent of the Navy Cross. They gave him

01:22:06.000 a presidential unit citation. Unbelievable. Jim, what is your social media? Where do people

01:22:12.720 follow you, sir? Yeah, thanks, Steve. Rickardswarroom.com is our landing site.

01:22:19.020 You can go there and learn about our publications and so forth.

01:22:23.720 So we hope people check it out.

01:22:25.620 We put a lot into it, and we specialize in predictive analytics.

01:22:29.900 But one of our inputs, by the way, Steve, when we do the predictive analytics is history.

01:22:34.440 So I think that what we're doing, what you're doing today is excellent in that regard.

01:22:39.920 I appreciate you, sir, and the audience does too.

01:22:42.380 Thank you so much.

01:22:44.300 Rickardswarroom.com, the landing page for strategic intelligence,

01:22:47.420 It's our special relationship with Jim Rooker.

01:22:48.980 It's one of our best contributors.

01:22:50.160 Thank you.

01:22:52.780 Comes from pretty good stock, doesn't he?

01:22:54.880 Cleo Pascal, the Pacific, part of America because we're a Pacific nation.

01:23:02.180 Your thoughts, ma'am, on these battles on Memorial Day?

01:23:06.480 Yes, thank you.

01:23:07.980 So Peleliu, go back to Peleliu for a minute.

01:23:10.740 It's five square miles.

01:23:12.640 It's a tiny little island in the ocean, and that's why so many of these battles were so pitched.

01:23:23.460 There was nowhere to go.

01:23:24.560 You had to take the whole island in order to be able to hop on to the next one or else secure it, and that's still the case.

01:23:32.540 And I'd like to just talk a little bit about what those men who died on those beaches gave us, which was 80 years of peace in the Pacific and relationships with countries in the region that are unlike the U.S. has with anywhere else.

01:23:51.940 So Peleliu is in the country of Palau, independent country, in free association with the U.S.

01:23:59.180 And you mentioned President Trump was at the Coast Guard commencement.

01:24:02.900 So was the president of Palau, President Sir Engelwipps Jr. was there because people from Palau, independent country, and the Marshall Islands, and the Federal States of Micronesia,

01:24:14.240 the three countries in the Central Pacific and free association with the U.S. can and do serve

01:24:20.120 in the U.S. military, including in the Coast Guard. So President Wipps was there. President Trump

01:24:27.020 recognized him in order to congratulate Palauan, who had graduated along with the rest of the

01:24:34.240 Coast Guard class. And this goes to what you talked about before, in terms of the veterans,

01:24:40.780 Because the people, the citizens of Palau, Federal States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, who serve alongside, bleed alongside, and die alongside American service members all over the world, go home.

01:24:55.960 And as per the Compacts of Free Association with the U.S., they're supposed to get veteran services, health care services, when they go home.

01:25:03.900 And in spite of the best efforts of Congress, and this really is a bipartisan issue, they're not getting them.

01:25:09.580 There seems to be some issue at VHA, Veterans Health, and you're seeing suicides of Marshallese.

01:25:22.640 I know that specific case because the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands is a veteran himself,

01:25:31.300 U.S. service veteran who has recruited into the U.S. military, and he's had to attend the funeral of

01:25:39.340 a service member who came home, couldn't get the care he needed, and committed suicide in the

01:25:44.180 Marshall Islands. So this relationship of deep trust that was born with the blood on the beaches

01:25:52.080 of Peleliu and then grew into this relationship, unlike any other, between independent countries,

01:25:59.460 Marshall Islands is where Kwajalein is, the U.S. base, but also where one of those other battles that Mr. Rickards was just referring to was that has now is being betrayed at a very fundamental level by the U.S. military not honoring its written commitments to those service members who fought alongside the U.S.

01:26:23.680 and died at home because of lack of treatment.

01:26:29.800 So this issue of the Central Pacific and the peace that was bought on those beaches

01:26:36.200 and those 100,000 Americans that died in the Pacific,

01:26:39.600 and that gave us such an incredible period of peace and prosperity in the Pacific 0.54

01:26:45.180 that the Chinese are now trying to undermine from Tarawa,

01:26:50.160 from not letting Mark Noah and History Flight bring back the men from Terua to the way that 0.57

01:26:58.500 it's being sabotaged, perhaps inadvertently, one would hope, from within the U.S. government

01:27:03.600 is starting to fracture. And I'm actually today in Taiwan, which is feeling this very strongly.

01:27:13.300 Palau is a country that recognizes Taiwan. So it's not just standing for freedom by sending

01:27:20.580 Palauans to fight alongside Americans, but it's even standing up for Taiwan. And I just, it's

01:27:29.420 the strength of the bonds that were built in the sacrifice of just over 80 years ago,

01:27:40.320 um is starting starting to weaken and i think that um personally i find that a uh a very difficult

01:27:48.160 uh burden to to bear um when uh talking talking to those um who gave so much

01:27:57.620 hang over a second because we're gonna come back and try to tie all this together with you

01:28:02.180 including taiwan was it palawan remember darren beady one of the leaders of the mega movement

01:28:07.840 has spent much of his youth in Palau.

01:28:11.260 Little-known fact, little-known MAGA fact.

01:28:14.540 Mark Noah, Terawa, the Chinese Communist Party.

01:28:19.000 In your efforts and other people's efforts now to get to go

01:28:22.820 and make sure that we bring back our honored dead from Terawa,

01:28:28.340 that has been interrupted.

01:28:30.160 Curl me if I'm wrong.

01:28:30.960 Has that been interrupted by the Chinese Communist Party saying

01:28:33.280 you cannot get access to these remains, sir?

01:28:39.560 Yes, that's correct.

01:28:40.600 The Chinese Communist Party has moved into the Central Pacific using the same footprint 0.60

01:28:46.780 that the Japanese did in the 1930s, with the exception of the islands where America has

01:28:53.480 influenced.

01:28:54.420 And in Tarawa, they have moved into the main hotels, are completely full with military 0.98

01:29:02.060 age Chinese individuals in civilian clothing. And they have succeeded in having our work permits 1.00

01:29:12.260 denied. And so we have not been able to go back out there for a year and a half now. And as we

01:29:17.960 mentioned earlier, the American graves on Tarawa are routinely disturbed by accidental work and

01:29:24.840 construction activity. And we were, when we had an office out there, which we still have our office,

01:29:31.140 but we have it's unstaffed but we were able to to rescue numerous american marines that were hit

01:29:38.260 in construction uh projects and today that's impossible

01:29:41.880 mark where do people uh go to find out more about history flights more what you do like i said we're

01:29:50.020 going to get uh hopefully get involved here and make sure you get uh access at the highest levels

01:29:54.600 because this is a situation that's just not acceptable particularly yes i'm already trying

01:29:59.560 of Thorpe. So where do they go? www.historyflight.com. And then also we're on Facebook at History

01:30:07.920 Flight. And one last thing I'd like to mention, I was able to spend Memorial Day of 2017

01:30:13.960 recovering 10 American Marines that were buried underneath the house. And we purchased the house,

01:30:21.040 demolished it, and then dug down through the floor and recovered these Marines. 0.94

01:30:24.600 And it was a very, very moving day for all of us. But the third individual that we recovered, this is an example of the severity of the sacrifice these people went through. He had a bullet in his shin. He had a Japanese 7mm bullet lodged in his hip joint, and he was missing his head.

01:30:48.860 That is the example, the blunt example of what the sacrifice is like. And people should, you know, and they rightly do respect that. And these people that are scattered all over the world and missing an action status deserve the same respect as everyone else.

01:31:09.920 Mark, Noah, thank you. One more time. Where do people go?

01:31:14.320 www.historyflight.com

01:31:18.400 and you can check out

01:31:20.120 all the different stuff we've done

01:31:21.540 and support it if you like

01:31:22.800 it's a very worthwhile project

01:31:24.800 thank you brother

01:31:28.120 we'll talk to you after the show

01:31:29.340 and have you back on

01:31:30.380 thank you

01:31:31.960 on Memorial Day

01:31:33.920 History Flight

01:31:34.880 the decision at World War I

01:31:40.140 on the unknowns

01:31:40.980 the President of the United States

01:31:42.180 Commander of Chief

01:31:42.760 is going to be heading shortly

01:31:43.640 to Arlington National Cemetery to do an evolution that happens on every Memorial Day.

01:31:54.360 Walk us through how was the beginning of the unknown soldier

01:31:59.000 and it became such an iconic part of the United States of America,

01:32:03.240 particularly in our, not just commemoration, but in our memory of these wars

01:32:09.280 and how we honor the dead.

01:32:11.280 allies that that began the tradition of the tomb of the unknown soldiers first the french

01:32:18.220 then the english and then the united states had tens of thousands and the english and the the

01:32:24.440 the french we're going to break in a minute it was probably the last break we'll be able to take

01:32:28.320 for the next couple hours the french and the english it's right in the middle

01:32:34.120 of their major metropolitan areas i mean that the arc de triomphe is right there their eternal flame

01:32:40.960 is right and that that is considered the heart of paris the same with the uh with the with the

01:32:46.400 english correct and then these traditions the tradition of bringing a an unknown back and then

01:32:53.760 honoring that soldier that to then represent all that that served and fell in combat um

01:33:02.800 this tradition begins with the french and the english and then there's a movement in the united

01:33:07.280 states to do something similar and you know at first there's the war department or the department

01:33:14.700 says that they can you can bring your you know soldier home well they first thought that they're

01:33:19.800 just going to leave everybody there and then they'd be able to identify the bodies of individuals but

01:33:25.420 there's still thousands of unknown soldiers known but to god yes right and then you go to you go to

01:33:31.200 Normandy. And then there's a... Hang on one second. Let's go to Britain. We'll clean that up,

01:33:37.540 and then we're going to come back to Patrick K. O'Donnell, the finest combat historian

01:33:43.840 of his generation. His stories get down to the Jim Rickards level, where you're telling those

01:33:51.300 personal stories of the 18-year-old kids. Think about that there for a second. A kid lies about

01:33:56.240 his age at 17 to get into the marine corps and then at 18 he's a uh in one of the highest casualties

01:34:03.360 uh across the vast pacific it's clear as point that is america

01:34:12.400 because we are a pacific nation short break back in the world in london

01:34:26.240 Okay, um, you know, we're going to get, and we're going to make this a war room project

01:34:34.700 for the posse, because everything the posse takes on, we accomplish, if you don't, if 0.98

01:34:39.720 you don't quit, we'll win, um, on the situation with the, uh, the 80,000 still from World

01:34:46.140 War II, it's, it's, it's mind-boggling, and particularly given the sacrifice, you heard

01:34:52.340 from Rickards and Peleliu,

01:34:54.780 Cleo nailed it.

01:34:56.120 It's such, these are so small.

01:34:58.800 In fact, one of the criticisms later

01:35:00.180 is why are you taking all these atolls

01:35:01.800 and given such high casualty rates?

01:35:05.580 But there's no room to fight.

01:35:07.340 Also about the Japanese fighting to death,

01:35:11.240 when my ship pulled into Guam

01:35:13.400 heading to the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean

01:35:16.040 in 79 after the hostage,

01:35:17.940 because we were in the Hawaiian op area

01:35:19.760 when the when the embassy was taken so we immediately organized um and and departed

01:35:27.380 not for the western pacific where we were supposed to patrol a deploying patrol for the second time

01:35:33.780 when i was on the destroyer but head immediately to the north arabian sea and uh the persian gulf

01:35:39.840 and strata hormones really the north arabian sea where the two or three two carrier battle groups

01:35:44.140 i think still a part of these negotiations with the president to the exact same spot um

01:35:49.620 um we pulled into guam for some repairs we had some sonar problems and um and they had an old

01:35:55.800 dry dog i think from world war ii that was 1979 in 1972 a japanese soldier had walked out of the

01:36:04.800 jungle in very famous i think he's the last guy to surrender 1972 he came out and so and basically

01:36:11.620 gave up and we one of the tours back then that guam's very much changed now it's a big i think

01:36:16.240 honeymoon thing but back then it was still pretty raw you you could one of the tours you would take

01:36:20.480 I mean it was not an official tour but we had time off on the ship you go down and you go out and the

01:36:26.300 tanks were still there and the half tracks were still there and you can imagine their bodies were

01:36:30.600 still just buried right under the sand but it was kind of a living monument right there in the 70s

01:36:36.120 that war was still and I will tell you even when President Xi came to um came to the uh we had the

01:36:44.900 mar-a-lago event in 2017 that lunch we spent on the last day half of that lunch was spent on she

01:36:51.860 talking about world war ii and the impact on his parents and his generation it's like the second

01:36:57.840 world war in the pacific is like it's like in the middle east these vendettas you got the second

01:37:03.980 world war is of uh is of you know current in fact today's financial times of london

01:37:10.760 he's salmon colored not pink it's salmon colored she railed against japan's remilitarization at

01:37:18.640 the trump meeting this is just coming out now it wasn't just simply taiwan because they said it's

01:37:24.780 what what ruby didn't get a chance to talk about what the media is now reporting she's bigger

01:37:29.760 problem was the re the rearmament or the remilitarization of of japan so we'll get to

01:37:36.460 all that we got a couple of minutes i want to continue to particularly till the president gets

01:37:39.800 up there he's going to lay the reef at the tomb of the unknown the old guards up there how did we go

01:37:47.220 from france doing it in england doing it to the united states we want to do it and then pershing

01:37:52.320 these guys thinking through how you actually do it and bring it back to it's a grassroots movement

01:37:58.320 that is it bubbles up what do you mean grassroots it's it begins with multiple people saying hey

01:38:03.600 look, we need to do something similar. And it's a woman who's a very powerful woman who's an editor

01:38:10.300 of a paper called The Delineator, Marie Maloney, she writes one of the first pieces that this needs 1.00

01:38:16.240 to happen. And then others fall into line, like Congressman Hamilton Fish from New York, who's an

01:38:22.940 officer in an all-black unit, the Harlem Hellfires. He recognizes this as a way to recognize some of 0.87

01:38:28.840 his men and their sacrifices. And this movement just gained steam. The New York Times jumps on

01:38:35.500 board and others. And, you know, it's Fish that writes the, you know, the paperwork, congressional

01:38:43.580 stuff to move it forward. And then eventually what happens is the Gray's Registration Service

01:38:49.220 overseas goes to the major cemeteries that the AEF fought in, Bellawood and others. And they

01:38:56.880 find the remains of those that are unidentified and they specifically look in the pockets for

01:39:03.240 any kind of identification they want to make sure that that the soldier has no identification

01:39:09.640 whatsoever to identify them they then remove very carefully the remains and then they burn

01:39:15.500 the the burial card of where that person was removed from so they don't know ever and they

01:39:21.100 move that person back there there's four remains and they're brought they selected there's going

01:39:26.280 to be of all those i get they're going to select four curate four of those remains that are that

01:39:31.560 have no identification whatsoever they burn the burial cards they can't find exactly who those

01:39:36.460 people were from which grave then they bring the four back to chalons to the hotel de vil and then

01:39:44.560 they select an honor guard they specifically select one of the members of the occupation

01:39:50.440 force that's still there a guy by the name of sergeant edward younger who was a a grunt that

01:39:57.960 had been seen through everything but initially they were going to use a general officer to select

01:40:03.280 of the four you know which would be the unknown and what was what happened is the next you know

01:40:08.620 the french kind of interceded hey we always had an enlisted man this is about an enlisted it's the

01:40:13.920 french that yeah they say that and then they pick younger who's sort of an unlikely choice in a 0.73

01:40:19.980 sense but he's he's perfect in the sense he was the quintessential dough boy that had been with

01:40:24.560 the second division that had fought in some of the great battles and he's given the this this

01:40:30.220 monumental task he's given a bouquet of of roses that he's told to select that the unknown and

01:40:38.260 there's you know is this in the city hall where the actual it's in the city hall put me in the

01:40:43.920 room it's it's in the room there's there's flowers there's four flag draped caskets there's uh somber

01:40:50.800 music playing in the background you know younger is in his his best uniform and he's given the

01:40:56.300 bouquet and he says in his handwritten notes that i found at the national archives that he

01:41:02.080 then his hand is just drawn to the casket as he lays down the flowers the roses he thought it

01:41:08.400 was some he thought it was some power some power outside of himself yes and he thought it was

01:41:12.900 somebody that he fought with that was that was his that was his feeling and he they said put

01:41:18.680 it on this cast and he lays it down it was just his arm just moves effortlessly without any kind

01:41:24.240 of motion and the the unknown is is is selected and then it goes on a journey um by sea hang on

01:41:33.060 for that journey we're gonna get the journey is unbelievable that book is what the unknown the

01:41:37.600 the notes if you've got a um how many books have you written 14. yeah this is one of my favorites

01:41:45.220 this is a so meticulous your research on this is so meticulous thank you i um i i yeah i love all

01:41:53.120 the books that i've written this this book is very powerful and it's about the you know the boys of

01:41:58.240 17 and 18 that just sort of the lost generation that hardly anybody knows about but they changed

01:42:04.240 the world. And they change America

01:42:06.380 into a superpower.

01:42:07.980 The American Expeditionary Force

01:42:09.960 brought the First World War to an end because 1.00

01:42:12.080 the Germans figured 0.93

01:42:13.280 if they're going to just pound in

01:42:15.500 fresh troops, we can't do it. Short break.

01:42:18.140 Cleo Pascal, Patrick de O'Donnell.

Bannon's War Room - May 25, 2026

Episode 5396： WarRoom Memorial Day Special

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