On the 250th anniversary of Parris Island, Col. Grant Newsham and Col. Clio Pascal talk about the importance of the Marine Corps and how they have changed the lives of thousands of men and women for the better.
00:04:07.180And with officers, it has to be even harder because you don't want these Marines led by people who can't handle the stress.
00:04:13.680So the harder it is, the better it is.
00:04:16.940Of course, if it's gratuitous bullying, that doesn't really get you very far.
00:04:21.960But it is a pretty successful model that the Marines have for stressing people, showing what they can handle.
00:04:28.320And you instill the self-confidence in them.
00:04:31.020And that ultimately is really what it's about with the Marines, plus this absolute dedication and devotion to the nation, to the idea of freedom.
00:04:39.880You'll notice that after they do go out and fight and win, that the first thing they want to do is go home.
00:04:46.060They don't want to keep territory, stick around and enslave people.
00:04:49.380They just want to go back to their peacetime lives.
00:04:53.580And it's amazing that they keep getting this raw material and producing the kind of Marines they have.
00:05:01.580And to my way of thinking, this has always meant that at the senior most level in the Marine Corps, the senior officers, that there's an immense responsibility to get this right, to make sure that you don't squander this resource, don't squander these lives.
00:05:18.780And sometimes they do better at it than others.
00:05:21.640But the young officers, the staff NCOs, the NCOs, the junior Marines, they always perform superbly.
00:05:30.420It's just a question of how well they're led.
00:05:33.760To Colonel Newsom, in the film, and one of the things that jumps out at you is that you have the Lance Corporals and some of the corporals are 17, 18, 19 years old, by and large.
00:05:46.660The non-commissioned officers are not that much older.
00:05:49.180Some of the sergeants are, but a lot of the non-commissioned officers are in their early 20s.
00:05:53.740And the junior officers who are throughout this, the second lieutenants and first lieutenants, as Scott told you, he was, what, 22 years old.
00:06:01.680So you have a bunch of teenagers are just in modern American society where people are transitioning to that formative period to become men.
00:06:11.560You took this film because we showed it everywhere to Marines.
00:06:16.020And the feedback we got in showing it to Marines, whether it was at Pendleton or wherever we went, was overwhelming when Marines saw it.
00:06:23.660The most overwhelming, to Colonel Newsom's point, is that you went, I believe, out to the West Coast to show it to the Force Recon alumni.
00:08:41.760Whereas in all three segments, all three acts, Fallujah, Najaf, and Fallujah, it's this incredibly complexity of going door-to-door and kicking in doors and clearing houses or watching out for mosques, watching out for religious things.
00:08:54.940The complexity, the rules of engagement laid on 18- and 19-year-old kids and their leaders who happen to be 21 or 22 years old is almost mind-numbing in its complexity and how in the urban battle space when you have no time at all for decisions, how it eats on people.
00:09:12.280You can see why they have this concept of PTSD, how it starts to eat on people.
00:09:16.660Because in Fallujah, in the second Fallujah, it was 250,000 residences or 250,000, I think, locations you had to clear up to a million rooms or something.
00:09:27.380There's some statistic that's, like, overwhelming.
00:09:29.480There's something like that, like 200,000 population of Fallujah.
00:09:32.600Most of them left, but they all had houses, and you had to go street by street, house by house.
00:09:37.480Yeah, I mean, it's an incredible thing to ask of these people.
00:09:39.900I mean, of course, that World War II generation is called the greatest generation, but I do not necessarily think that those Marines were greater than the Marines in my film.
00:09:56.500Colonel Newsham, Jan Bender, a combat photographer who was on the trigger of his rifle more than he was even on his camera, is going to join us here momentarily.
00:10:08.040He said something very powerful at the premier.
00:10:11.180He had been a young guy that had been in the Army first and then was in the Marine Corps.
00:10:16.580He said about his Marine training, about how do you get ready for this, that what struck him about the Marine Corps is how tradition and custom and history are drilled into you every second of every day that you're a Marine,
00:10:29.900that you're just imbued with this so that when you come into situations like Najaf and Fallujah, you know what's required of you.
00:12:58.120When it came time to take a position that reinforced battalion and my company going up against it, used every supporting arm I could, artillery, aircraft.
00:13:15.620You don't want to attack a position where they know where they are, but you don't know where they are.
00:13:20.480So I said, there's only one thing you can do is fix bayonets, and when the bayonets went on, it's this amazing resolve that came over the company.
00:13:29.720It's like, this is as grisly as it's going to get.
00:13:34.080You know, we're not going to shoot somebody at 300 yards, or we're going to smash or slash or beat to death another human being, and at the end of that, at one end of this rifle, at the other, there's going to be someone alive and someone dead.
00:13:52.520Jack, tell me about that, going fixed bayonets.
00:13:55.620Well, see, I believe there was actually General Duarte who came in on that one, but talking about the fixed bayonets, I mean, it really gets you, and it was incredible to be in Philadelphia, to be with the Marines, to be with the Vietnam vets who went through this.
00:14:11.120And I kind of pulled a Steve Bannon there and said, wait a minute, hold on, walk me through this.
00:14:19.140And he paints this picture of going up against the communists, and he said, it's not 300 yards, it's not 200 yards, it's the length of a rifle.
00:14:29.120And at the other end of that rifle, it's another human being, and you're going to get in for the real grisly work.
00:14:34.940Like, that's what fixed bayonets means.
00:14:37.120But I thought what was so interesting, in that description, there was a moment he mentioned that when he gave that order, he actually said there was a firm resolve that came over the entire company.
00:14:49.420That when they put that bayonet to the end of their M-16, they all knew what was coming next, that now was the time that it was going to get grisly.
00:15:01.040Jack, you had an opportunity today, in kind of the cold and rain, to visit with Ernie Priate and his brothers in arms that gave so much in Vietnam.
00:15:12.940Talk to me about that, about the KIAs.
00:15:15.580Of the pamphlet they handed out, it was six or seven pages just of the killed in action in Vietnam from their unit.
00:15:24.400So we're there with Mike 3-7 Company, and that was seven pages, single-spaced, of the KIA.
00:15:33.520So you're looking at, and you're talking about some of the most intense fighting in the Tet Offensive, the post-Tet Offensive, where you've got guys, and Steve, not only that, but in the pamphlet, you had the dates next to one another.
00:15:48.300And you would read that so many of the men had died on the same day, and you realize, well, that's in the same activity, that's in the same action, whether it's an offensive or counter-offensive that they're involved in, or some ambush, some action with the Viet Cong, with the enemy, the NBA, that they were getting involved with.
00:16:10.520And it's an intensity that I think the average American, certainly in today's day and age, is just not used to.
00:16:18.780It's an intensity that even, and I had Dan Caldwell on the show today, and he was in Iraq, and he said, Jack, what the Marines went through in Vietnam, it was a magnitude higher than Iraq and Afghanistan, just in terms of the sheer numbers that were involved.
00:16:35.740And it's part of the history that I think has been kind of lost.
00:16:38.740Kind of lost, and you zoom out from all of it, that these are the best of us.
00:16:42.940These are the best men that the United States has to bear.
00:16:46.800And when we send them overseas, we better darn well know that we're doing it for the right thing and the right reasons.
00:16:53.680Because those men were willing, and in this case did, give the last full measure of devotion for their country.
00:16:59.420That you see, and the ages, they're so young, 18, 19, 20, and to see so many of them who didn't make it back at all, not to mention the ones that came back missing limbs, missing arms.
00:17:12.860And that's what you saw as well for the Marines that were still there today as a matter of honor and a matter of duty, as the general informed me, to stand there in the place for the men who didn't make it back.
00:17:24.240Yeah, the double amputees there today were just incredible.
00:17:29.900Jack, before I let you go, Philadelphia, the pride of a year before the country really comes together as a nation, the Marine Corps is born in Philadelphia on this day 250 years ago.
00:17:42.400Your thoughts as a native of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
00:17:47.420Well, Steve, as the Marines would have it, the United States could only be founded if the United States Marine Corps went in first and secured a perimeter.
00:17:57.000They went in to secure the perimeter about nine months prior, and then the United States could be founded.
00:18:02.440And, of course, as the story goes, it was in Tun Tavern right there at Penn's Landing.
00:18:08.260So William Penn steps off his ship from England 344 years ago, almost 350 years ago today, and about 100 years before the birthplace of the Marines.
00:18:20.700And they're in this tavern, Tun Tavern, same spot we call Penn's Landing today.
00:18:24.980And they're all looking around, and earlier that day, the Second Continental Congress had given a – or the First Continental Congress, rather, had given a resolution for two Marine divisions.
00:18:37.160And they said, we need men who are willing to fight on – to go to sea and fight.
00:19:17.900Cleo Pascal, you've gone throughout the Pacific to talk about the sacrifice of what the 100,000 people are.
00:19:23.900We lost 100,000 Marines, and we lost 100,000 servicemen.
00:19:26.760And the vast majority of those Marines that died taking these islands and what we've given up to date.
00:19:32.000Your thoughts on the 250th birthday of the Corps?
00:19:35.860Well, just very quickly, to defend the honour of Boston, we were up in Boston for the – on Friday for their 250th, and there were 2,000 Marines at the convention centre going after one piece of cake.
00:19:52.980It was – I think that the Boston Marines have a lot to say about the Marine Corps today, and that is a city that loves their Marines and has given a lot as well.
00:20:06.640I think there are several cities in the United States that could go down a similar route, but really, that was quite phenomenal.
00:20:14.040And today, that little clip at the beginning, that wasn't a recording.
00:20:18.540That was Marines who had come down to the museum from – they'd come from New York and from Florida.
00:20:26.140They had driven all the way just to be there with their fellow veterans in order to be able to sing the hymn together on their birthday.
00:20:35.000And there was the oldest Marine we had – there was a 104-year-old Marine who handed the cake to the youngest Marine, who is a 19-year-old Marine.
00:20:44.180And that legacy and continuity was incredibly touching.
00:20:48.780But also there, walking in in time for the 2 p.m. cake cutting, was Sergeant Major Justin LaHue, who you had on the show,
00:20:55.280who is still very actively involved with history flight and trying to bring home the boys who are all over the Pacific and who are just waiting to be brought back.
00:21:08.940And as we discussed before with Sergeant Major LaHue, the Chinese are actively trying to make it difficult in places like Tarawa.
00:21:16.520So they are still – those men lying in those – on those beaches are still waiting to be relieved.
00:21:26.560And in the meantime, the Chinese are winning the Second Battle of Tarawa.
00:21:44.660So please go to historyflight.com and help Sergeant Major LaHue and all those guys bring home the Americans that are still waiting to come back.
00:21:55.460And thanks to Mark Noah as well, who founded History Flight.
00:23:28.980And one of them is about withdrawal from Afghanistan from the time that Joe Biden announced we're going to zero in April to the final withdrawal at the end of August.
00:23:40.200So unlike the last 600 meters, we do look at how it happened and why and who made those decisions.
00:23:45.380But it begins and ends with the bombing at Abbey Gate.
00:23:50.380And I think we should remember those Marines, the ones that died there, surely.
00:23:55.580But also we asked these young Marines at the gates, at Abbey Gates and at the airport, at Harman Kazai International Airport, to really do something, I think, even harder than what the Marines did in Najaf and Fallujah.
00:24:08.300They had to man these gates while all these Afghans crowded, begging to get on.
00:24:16.200They were throwing their children over barbed wire, over razor wire.
00:24:20.400And these Marines were having to stand at the gates.
00:24:22.140There was a panic, a herd that was trying to get out because only death awaited them, death or torture awaited them if they were left behind.
00:24:44.140And so there were times when they would have to take women and children back out of the gate to be surely executed by the Taliban.
00:24:54.760And to ask young people to do that, to have to decide, make this sort of Sophie's Choice kind of decision, bring some people in, and then take some people they knew should be in and let them out to be killed is a horrible thing.
00:25:10.220You know, these people suffer from what they call moral injury, a term I had not heard, which means participating in something that runs against your values, participating or witnessing.
00:25:19.900And that's even harder to deal with, I think, psychologically than PTSD.
00:25:32.220And I don't think they get the credit that they deserve for having to do that day after day in that kind of crisis, especially at this 250-year-old.
00:25:59.480The story's never told that those young people, those young Marines, were tasked with also making the decision of life and death of others, not just, not worried, just don't be worried about yourself.
00:26:09.920You've got to make the decision for these other people, too.
00:29:27.380You know, I didn't know this until the guys at Field of Greens, the doctors and the experts, told me about it and then gave me information.
00:29:50.160Because Americans eat so many processed and ultra-processed foods and not enough fruits and vegetables, many, perhaps most, are 10 years older on the inside than their actual age.
00:42:16.740Jan, you tell this, people have seen, right, you know, war movies, etc.
00:42:21.400But you made a comment pretty early on in your interview that when you first got there, you were the new guy, right?
00:42:29.520Historically in the movies, the new guy gets it first.
00:42:31.720Talk to me about that when you first joined up as the new guy, about to go into pretty intense combat.
00:42:38.680Yeah, so the nature of my job as a combat correspondent, and not unique to me, it's the, you know, the skill set as a whole.
00:42:46.520You typically drop into units just before things get interesting.
00:42:51.300And that's exciting, it's fun, but you become somewhat of a bad luck charm.
00:42:56.160And it's important to integrate with your team and understand how they move and flow and communicate so that you can, again, be an asset, not a liability.
00:43:08.760And you know from experiences you've had in life, you know, the last thing you want to do in the midst of a high-intensity situation is change things up.
00:43:19.340You know, hand somebody a new tool or, you know, change the plan last minute.
00:43:23.620And so these Marines are trained to fight in their teams the way they're constructed and throwing the new guy in can sometimes create interesting scenarios.
00:43:33.860But I was really blessed in the sense that I had been out with 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines before.
00:43:38.840I knew a number of Marines that I ended up in the same squad and fire team as.
00:43:42.180And so I was able to integrate quickly.
00:43:45.260I think initially, you know, there would have been a belief that transitioning from, you know, the fire team that I stuck, stitched in with to maybe another squad or another battalion might have made sense or another platoon rather in the battalion might have made sense.
00:44:02.360But it became really clear to me and the team that I was with that this is not the time of changing thing.
00:44:11.960We've got to lock in, lock and load with what we've got and clean together to get it done.
00:44:19.320What did you learn about yourself in this fight?
00:44:21.960Yeah, I think, you know, it may sound cliche, but in the midst of, you know, when you face your mortality, it has a clarifying effect.
00:44:42.600And so I definitely forged a deeper relationship with God and the men around me.
00:44:55.320I think you, you know, nothing bonds like shared suffering or sacrifice for a common cause.
00:45:01.180And between that, that reality and the reality that you'll never feel more alive than when you're that close to dying, those things have a clarifying effect and serve to energize you with purpose and clarity.
00:45:19.960So I, leaving the city, I, one, was overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude and love for gratitude that I made it through, you know, physically unscathed, which was pretty rare in that group of Marines.
00:45:37.520And also bonded to the men around me and just a great admiration for, um, their courage and tenacity and their unwillingness to quit.
00:45:53.120Um, so that incredible experience, uh, that I, you know, forever grateful for and changed by.
00:46:47.700And I, I will say this after seeing it on the big screen, because I haven't seen it probably in over a decade on the big screen with the sound and everything like that from when we first started taking it around and showing it to Marines.
00:46:58.680Um, as bloody as it is, as awful as it is in the situation, I don't think, and this is what the generals told us first.
00:47:06.640I don't think you could have a better recruiting film for the Marine Corps.
00:47:10.660Well, these guys, I mean, you can see why PBS did think I was central casting.
00:47:16.480You know, these guys, like Jan, are incredibly articulate and Scott Cuomo.
00:47:21.320And they happen to be normal U.S. Marines.
00:47:24.000And when you see them so young in the film, not that they're not still great, but, you know, you see them as young people and speaking from their heart.
00:47:31.420And it's a, it's a pretty, I was, I had not seen it on a big screen myself in a long time.
00:51:38.000On the 250th birthday of the United States Marine Corps, what stuns me is you see this film and you realize this organization has been around for 250 years and it gets better every day.