#501： Zero to Hero： From Bullied Kid to Medal of Honor Recipient
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Summary
As a boy, Alan J. Lynch was a severely bullied and aimless kid growing up in the industrial neighborhoods of Chicago's southside. He went on to serve in the army, received the Medal of Honor for the valor he displayed when he rushed to save three fallen comrades during a deadly firefight in Vietnam, and dedicate his life to helping his fellow veterans. Today, I talk to Alan about a story which he shares in his recently published memoir, Zero to Hero: From Bullied Kid to Warrior.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast as a boy alan j
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lynch was a severely bullied and aimless kid growing up in the industrial neighborhoods of
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chicago's south side he went on to serve in the army received the medal of honor for the valor
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he displayed when he rushed to save three fallen comrades during a deadly firefight in vietnam
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and dedicate his life to helping his fellow veterans today i talked to alan about a story
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which he shares in his recently published memoir zero to hero from bullied kid to warrior we begin
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our conversation discussing his childhood when the bullying started and how it affected his youth
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alan then shares the aimlessness he had as a high school graduate how he carried it with him after
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he signed up for the army and at first struggled to adapt to military life we then discuss how alan
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ended up in vietnam the best friend he lost there in the harwin scenario that earned him the medal of
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honor citation alan then shares how receiving the medal of honor put him on a path of service and
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helping fellow veterans heal from the wounds of war and we end our conversation with a poignant
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discussion of alan's own battle with ptsd and how his motto of others not self has helped him deal
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with it after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash zero to hero alan joins me now
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okay alan lynch welcome to the show thanks for having me appreciate it
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so you just published a memoir of yours it's called zero to hero from bullied kid to warrior
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and it's about your experience as a child but also leading up to your experience in vietnam
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where you received the medal of honor before we get to that let's talk about your childhood because
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this was a i realized it was really interesting because it's your talk you grew up at a time like
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right after world war ii so it's an interesting time in american history what was it like for you as a
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kid well my my childhood was uh it was really neat especially you know in looking at it from today's
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point of view where kids are kind of bubble wrapped one of my first memories is walking to school
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kindergarten five blocks away crossing a busy street and 111th street in in rosalyn illinois and
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being able to walk to and from school at five years old playing with my friends you know uh after
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school until the lights went out playing games outside there was no air conditioning so you know
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all the windows were open most mothers didn't have jobs so they were home and so there was the kind of
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the mother underground so that uh when the boys when me and my friends were out doing stuff there would
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always be this feeling of being watched from some window somewhere so it was really it was really
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kind of a neat time and and even then we moved to a trailer park in homewood eli's trailer park and it
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was the same thing everybody just we we played we had fun we had the run of the trailer park we even
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crossed a real busy street i think it was lincoln lincoln ave and went into a cross through a graveyard
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and into a woods into bum town one time that's we called it back then and uh
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you know we had a lot of adventures a lot of stuff we moved to lake eliza indiana and had the run of
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the woods i could at you know like seven eight years old i could take a 410 shotgun go out into
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the woods and hunt squirrels and rabbit and you know it was it was a magic time to be a kid and it
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was a time when boys could just be boys another huge part of your childhood was your father who served in
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military during world war ii he seemed like he had a big influence on you as a young man he did my dad
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was was one of these guys he was of course raised during the depression the the real depression where
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they they worried about food and heat and clothing and all of this stuff and i was raised on depression
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stories of you know kicking coal off a freight car so they could heat their apartment at night and
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you know when the electricity was turned off how they were able to turn it back on so he was a kind
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of a fix-it man we never had a lot of money growing up so if there had if the house needed repair we did
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it and of course i being the boy was the helper and my dad gave me that sense of i can fix anything
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i can do anything did your dad serve in world war ii he never went overseas he was a dog handler
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gave me a love of dogs and i trained my when i was a kid one of my only friends was my dog duke and i
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trained him a little bit and taught him a lot of tricks because of you know my dad's influence and
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how to train a dog properly and so on so but when growing up did your was there like a military ethos
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in your family like was there an idea that you know if you were a young man if you're a boy like you
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were supposed to serve in the military at some point or was that not really a thing i was woke up to
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reveille every morning my my dad would come in and whistle reveille so and and uh that was at 5 30
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religiously and my dad had this thing of when if my dad was up everyone was up and of course being a
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traditional family back in in the 50s my dad would would leave for work about 6 15 6 30 my mother would
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get up and cook him breakfast and of course i would be up and have breakfast with my dad and if i had
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school i could get ready for school in when we were out in indiana i had chores so when breakfast was
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done my dad went to work i went out to the garden i weeded the garden cut the grass and all that so
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there was this kind there was kind of a it wasn't a you have to join the military kind of thing but it
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was very clear that my dad was in charge it was very clear that i was expected to do certain things
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every day and you know listening to my uncles talk about their time in the navy my dad's time in the
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army air corps there was a real feeling of that was something i was gonna i was gonna have to do in
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my future when you were a young kid like you grew up in a decidedly working class family where did you
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have high ambitions as a kid or was your goal just like get a steady paying job after you graduated high
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school what was that like for you i had very little ambition i think what what happened was when i was
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when i was bullied it kind of just sucked the life right out of me and all i wanted to do when i was in
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high school was get out and i i did not want to go to summer school again i i had to go because i failed
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algebra my freshman year so i just basically i wanted to get through high school being white paint you
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know you're kind of it's kind of there you know it's there but you don't really recognize it
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and so basically it was get out of the get out of high school get a job somewhere and wait to get
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drafted and then i decided well i'll just enlist well let's talk about the bullying you mentioned
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that because that was a big part of your story when did that start happening to you when you were a kid
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fourth grade three kids came to class i don't know why they took an instant dislike to me
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but they did and my mother was a was quite a pacifist she had me convinced i don't know what it is
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with moms but everything has to do with you can knock out an eye so you know i had this idea that
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if i hit somebody really hard the eye would pop out and it was the idea of you know how would you
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feel if you hurt somebody how would you feel if you knocked out an eye or hurt somebody like that or
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whatever and so i became afraid of hurting somebody and you know when you give fear a place inside of
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you it grows like a cancer and it grew inside of me and i became afraid not only of hurting but of
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getting hurt now the funny thing was is as i was getting beat up my eye wasn't popping out you know
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and my teeth weren't falling out and my jaw was never broken and it was hit plenty of times
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but it never seemed to register with me that you know i should hit back and so i didn't and they made
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my life from fourth grade all the way through eighth grade a living hell did it get better after eighth
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grade you know we we moved to high school uh we moved to dalton illinois and it got a lot better
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because i was in a different school but i you know it's kind of one of those things of no matter where
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you go there you are so the kid that was bullied in grade school in junior high was the same kid that
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went to this brand new high school and it wasn't long before my cover cup got pulled and i
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basically i confronted a kid he stood up and i stood down i just walked away from him right in
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front of the whole lunchroom and so i was right back to being that that kid again and uh though
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the bullying wasn't as bad there was there was enough of it there were some you know of course
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every class has its bullies and uh they found me and a couple of my friends to pick on and i ended up
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having a couple fights in high school i lost them both but at least i fought what did your so your
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mom was the pacifist what did your dad think about it my my dad was not happy with me he wanted me to
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punch him his whole thing was when you push you push back when when somebody pushes you punch him in the
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nose someone messes with you you get into a fight you fight him even if you lose and you bloody him
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they're not they're they're going to think twice about fighting you again uh so he was not he was not at
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all happy with me i kind of think he wasn't very proud of me when i was in grade school and high
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school and being bullied and all that and so i imagine that affected you for a good deal of time
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right oh yeah yeah you know bullying takes away your self-image it destroys it and and if in a lot
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of parents don't know a lot of parents don't know that what they feel about their kids comes through
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if i would tell my dad as an example that i you weren't very proud of me he would go oh i was
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very proud of you were a wonderful kid but he wasn't he wasn't because i was the kid that was
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getting picked on i was the kid that had few friends i was the kid that you know they kept
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asking me why couldn't i be like one of my aunts or my uncles so it it did affect me it affected
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me greatly it just uh almost destroyed me so you spent high school just ready you know just getting
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ready to get out of high school and get out of town you decided to join the military why did
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you sign up was it just to get out of just do something different well i knew it was going to
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get drafted when i graduated in 1964 there was only a couple places you could go you could go to
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college or trade school and get a deferment or you got drafted that was it well i wasn't interested
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in anything i wasn't interested in cars i wasn't interested in getting my hands dirty and
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you know i certainly didn't have the grades to go to college so i knew i was going to get drafted
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so i decided i'm going to take control of my life and enlist so i enlisted in the army and i was going
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to be a personnel specialist and that didn't work out so well why didn't it work out so well they uh
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no they they offered me ocs uh officer candidate school and i so i had to change my my mos my military
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occupational specialty from clerk typist to infantry and that set me up of course to
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go to ocs infantry ocs and then uh when i when i got out of that i went to uh i went to germany
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and then i volunteered for vietnam from there and what did your parents think when you when you signed
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up with the military well my dad was happy my mother not so much my dad was you know i think my dad
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had this attitude of finally he's going to become a man because that's what the military does it will
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take raw material and make you a man and my mother of course was losing her little boy that you know
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they basically thought that i'd last about three seconds in the military i mean i'm here i am i'm
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in a barracks with a bunch of other guys have been bullied all my life how is this going to work out
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so they were pretty much afraid i know my mom was was not very happy at all and you so you
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mentioned yeah you did ocs but that didn't really pan out for you what what do you think happened
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there well i you know i it was another one of those no matter where you go there you are i was
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i went through basic training a leadership school and advanced infantry training i was a squad leader
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in basic and a squad leader in ait went through that harassment but ocs the harassment is a lot
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different and it's it's it makes uh basic training and advanced infantry look relatively easy and i
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started thinking that you know there this was a personal thing that the tack officers were were
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out to get me personally which wasn't true and so basically taking everything so personally my morale
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went down and i was just that that kid again so i i did a drop on request and did you like did you
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feel disappointed in yourself that you did that or yeah oh man i just i screwed this up again yeah
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it was well there here's another failure so far i failed everything except basic and ait
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so you know it's just yeah i was on that that track you know and it was just well i'm a dud
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that's all i am i'm just i'm a dud you're a zero that's the zero part of the story well so you dropped
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ocs you went to germany what were you doing there like were you did you think that you were going to
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end up in vietnam eventually and you just thought this is going to be my little i don't know a respite
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before that what was the idea about going to germany i went i went to germany i was uh i was just
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basically sent there and i thought germany would just be my last duty station i'd do my time in germany
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and in 1967 my three years would be up and i'd go home and that wasn't the case i didn't like being
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cold and in germany we did a lot of field training exercises out in the winter time and i got frost
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bite on my feet during one of those those training exercises and i was offered an opportunity to
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re-enlist i was offered some money a change of duty and i was starting to like the army i was really
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starting to like it it was that there's just something about being a part of a team and being
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with a bunch of guys that are doing the same thing and you're learning to trust each other and
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so in the back of my mind i was kind of thinking this might be what i'm going to do the rest of my life
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and so i re-enlisted and i ended up going to berlin
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and i was assigned to a mortar platoon and not what i wanted to do and so again i being immature i copped
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a bad attitude i ended up getting two article 15s those are non-judicial punishments my first one was
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because i smarted off to my section sergeant and told him exactly in no uncertain terms what i what i
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thought of him and that cost me a 15 day confined to the barracks 15 days of extra duty seven days
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paying a suspended bus to private e3 and then i got a second article 15 for going awol to help a buddy
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that got some rather bad news from home and it was right about that time that vietnam was really
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starting to heat up and a lot of my friends were getting levied for vietnam and all of that
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i still had that stink of cowardice on me i i really needed to prove myself to myself i had
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i'd come a long way you know i was doing a lot of things for the first time in my life i had i had
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pretty good friends but i i just really felt the need to test myself and vietnam was the event of
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my generation so i volunteered you volunteered you didn't get drafted for it you didn't sit there
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i volunteered for the first cavalry division when i got everything i wanted i wanted infantry i wanted
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the first cav and i got all of it in spades i mean what did you know about vietnam before you signed up
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not a lot i mean i knew i could i was really good at giaga in fact that was the only class i did well
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on in high school so i knew where it was a lot of my friends were getting getting drafted when i was
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an ocs the first cavalry was was deployed by the time i had gotten to germany the battle of the eye
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drang had already been fought vietnam was now becoming a major engagement you know it was a war
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there were levies coming down all the time you know people that had time and service and all that
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to do to spend a year in vietnam being being levied for it and i just i just needed to be a part of it
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so you got sent to vietnam where did you serve there central highlands it was a place called
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bin den province it was the rice bowl of vietnam and what was your role you had you took on several
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roles while you were there right yeah i uh i started off carrying a um what they call the next m79 it was
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experimental model it was an m16 with an m79 grenade launcher underneath now it's called the m203
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a grenade launcher it's the same thing but i carried that and then i realized that that was a real heavy
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load to carry i carried 35 rounds of he some some white phosphorus willie peter some shotgun rounds
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smoke and then i carried 35 magazines for the m16 i didn't want to run out of ammunition
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after about a month and a half of carrying that i was able to get rid of it and just go to an m16
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for the first several months i was nothing i was a grunt i was just a spec for part of a squad
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then in november i got the opportunity was late november i got the opportunity to become a radio
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telephone operator an rto what you're this was 1967 1967 1967 1967 so you got there as you were there
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for how long were you there in vietnam i got there uh may 31st 1967 i left june 1st 1968 and i mean what
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were the conditions like when you i mean because sometimes you describe vietnam was kind of sounded
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kind of nice right you had these like pristine beaches and there's coconuts but then also was also
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terror sounded terrible at the same time yeah it it was a it was a paradox in 1967 we were still out to
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win the war at least that's what we thought i wasn't there i think it was about a month and the
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vietnamese had their national elections we were pulled out of the field and back to lc english
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so a lot of us thought that we were actually seeing an american democracy you know forming
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right before our eyes and we were like the uh the french during the american you know um war of
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independence you know we were we were there to help little did we know and i didn't discover this
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till i started studying vietnam years later that that the vietnam election was was rigged that it was
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basically a war that president johnson had no intention of really winning he didn't have the
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the stones to go in and actually you know fight to win so he was basically wasting us but we didn't
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know that in 67 we controlled our area of operation the bong song plane we had very we had a lot of
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contact but we won every battle it was you know we were overpowering the enemy all the time we were
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fighting both the nva north vietnamese army and the vietcong and we basically you know i wrote home i
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remember to my mom and dad that we owned we owned the area you know we did our ambushes and our all
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of that stuff that you do but they would run from us because we had such tremendous support and um
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you talk about a situation where you you actually you started making some good friends during vietnam
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you made one really good friend but you lost him quickly tell us about that yeah um his name was
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jerry bryans and uh we came in country together uh jerry was one of those guys that uh
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if we were down on our luck if we you know had no c rations or we're running out of cigarettes and he
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had one he'd share it he was just he was a good he was just a good guy real nice guy and uh when he was
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from shulzburg wisconsin and he told the story of uh how he was a kid he was out farming he was a
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farmer he was out on his tractor and lightning struck him and it almost killed him ended up in
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the hospital and then you know i guess a couple a year later or so he got kicked in the head by a
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horse ended up back in the hospital and he almost died twice and he said you know three strikes and
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you're out he says i know if something happens here i'm gonna i'll probably not survive it but he
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would say it and tell it in such a funny way we just have us in stitches any course with every story
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added a little bit to it well we were on a on a we were up in a contum province and we were in an
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area that looked a lot like wisconsin and we had had lunch together we were talking about you know
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getting going fishing we got back to the world and all that and we started to move down the trail
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our point men just hadn't gone probably 50 meters and our point men came back and signaled that there
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was movement and the lt went running up and jerry got behind a tree i got behind a stump and this guy
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i think i call him fred in the book got behind the bush he was our m60 machine gunner a real gunner was
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on r&r and so he had been newly assigned i think he came in with us or shortly after us but he had a
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real bad attitude he was kind of kid from new york real smart mouth we didn't know how lazy he was
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until the machine gun jammed but lieutenant came running back and he you know called ceasefire ceasefire
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ceasefire they're friendly unbeknownst to us the special forces were running with some mountain yards
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in the area we call them cidg civilian indigenous personnel so after yelling ceasefire three times
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jerry and i stood up and fred shot him in the chest with the machine gun which immediately jammed because
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it was so dirty jerry went down like a stone he ended up dying on the helicopter the medevac that
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came in they didn't tell me that for a few days because i threatened to kill him if jerry died so they
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gave it time to cool down and then over the course of a few days the a lot of my friends came up and
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talked about what a great guy jerry was and all of that and you know how sad it would be that if you
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know something happened to jerry i think everybody knew but me that you know three families would be
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destroyed the guy that jerry's family my family and the guy that that shot him when i found out jerry
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was dead i forget who it was probably probably saved me uh came up and had a nice chat with me
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because i was by myself having a cigarette and he said you know fred's gonna have to live with the
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fact that he killed one of our own and that kind of hit me and so i i didn't do anything and i told
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him i wasn't going to do anything but he was ostracized uh we didn't um accept him too easily back
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into the you know into the fold he earned his way back in and when i left vietnam he had made
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sergeant and i think he was a squad leader i'd like to think that he lived a good life in replacement
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for the life he took i that's what i'm hoping and how did that moment influence the rest of your
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experience in vietnam i never i didn't make a lot of friends after that um i had a lot of acquaintances
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i was friendly but i never got close to anybody i still i can't i can't i have a hard time getting
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close to people i just it's very difficult to do that it seems it affected me in a way that
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you know you make you make friends with someone and they get killed they die and that that that was
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kind of that's taken me a lot of years to deal with i you know the thing is now i know that i have
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the issue so i try real hard to you know be a little bit more friendly than probably i normally
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would but still it's difficult to do it we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors
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and now back to the show so for most of your life you've been the zero kid that got bullied
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no ambition uh smarted off to superiors uh would get busted down back to private first class
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uh but then you had this moment where you had the decision to go from a zero to hero and this is
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the scenario the situation where you where it eventually earned you the medal of honor can you
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walk us through that situation that that scenario sure um we had been up in dakto and think about the
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middle of the middle of november we got taken back to join the battle of tamquan and
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for my part i was i was now a an rtl radio telephone operator and carried a perk 25 on my back
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along with basic load of ammunition and all that but i was kind of like my lt shadow
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and uh i got the day of the incident the day of the action we got a brand new lieutenant uh lieutenant
00:25:29.340
donald sutherland very courageous guy i only knew him for like four hours but what i found out but
00:25:38.240
what i didn't know until i started writing the book is that he pretty much demanded to go out with the
00:25:43.720
unit the day we are assaulted in he talked to our captain captain orsini and he said look i want to go
00:25:50.400
i want to do this i want to be a part of this give me the platoon so he got second platoon i became his rtl
00:25:57.240
and his shadow and is it was right after we had you know a break for you for noon chow and we started moving
00:26:05.980
in to relieve a company and hit the enemy from the side from the flank and we walked into an ambush it was a um
00:26:13.300
like a box like a three-sided box we walked right into the middle of it and all hell broke loose
00:26:18.480
and lieutenant ran up me along with him to the front to see what was happening about that time
00:26:25.540
we were taking fire sending you know traffic back to you know our our company commander letting them
00:26:32.200
know what was going on and we were taking fire from our flank and so on wilhelm who was walking one of
00:26:39.100
the point men came running back got shot about halfway to us i went out and i got him and i think a medic
00:26:46.600
came out as i recall to help us out and we got him back to our lines and he said that casaras uh
00:26:53.880
had gotten shot in both shins you know couldn't walk couldn't move so i asked the lt if i could drop
00:27:00.280
my radio and go out and get him which i went out there with the intention of getting him and coming back
00:27:06.120
and getting a medevac well that wasn't the case as soon as i got in the ditch and started doing what i
00:27:11.680
had to do all hell broke loose again a lot of fire came down and just as i thought well i'm going to
00:27:17.620
put him on my back and then i'm going to carry him out joe esparza came running across and got shot
00:27:23.720
pretty far from us but close enough to me so i could get him so i ran out and i got him and got him back
00:27:29.360
in the ditch and there we stayed unbeknownst to me at the time our company had pulled back
00:27:36.640
because they had taken such heavy heavy fire and they led one rescue mission to try to get to us
00:27:44.560
during that rescue mission lieutenant sutherland got shot in the head and died another guy got wounded
00:27:51.300
so they pulled back again they tried another time to get to us and again that didn't work then finally
00:27:59.360
an apc armored personnel carrier was was sent over they were going to back it up to our position
00:28:04.720
drop the back ramp and then we could load in and go away we saw the apc pull up to us lower its ramp
00:28:14.920
and then it got hit with an rpg and it was like are you kidding me we were literally feet away from
00:28:23.900
being rescued and when the rpg hit the hit the track my my captain orsini was blown out of the
00:28:31.500
the hurt turret the commander's hatch and ended up being severely wounded so they pulled back and that
00:28:38.720
was the last time they tried to get to us they then called in continuous artillery and airstrikes
00:28:43.080
and that went on for for a long time in the meantime we were you know killing a lot of vietcong and nva
00:28:50.680
and whoever was coming within you know place where we could get them
00:28:55.080
and then it got really quiet and so i thought it was time now to to see what we could do so i went
00:29:02.360
up and i made sure there was no vc working in the area and when i realized it was safe and had checked
00:29:09.200
a couple of hooches and some things i i moved i moved i think casaras first and got him to a place
00:29:16.360
then i went back and i got esparza and moved him to an area and then i was going to just start you know
00:29:21.200
doing a little bit of concentric you know trying to find our guys and i didn't go maybe 100 meters
00:29:29.380
and there they were and they called me we went back and got the wounded and we all got medevac together
00:29:34.200
so how long were you guys pinned down you know the citation and some of the stuff had had like two
00:29:40.880
hours i think we were there for about four it was it was right after chow we got in and it was dark
00:29:45.720
when we got out so we were there a long time yeah and it sounds like like you you weren't even like
00:29:51.600
really thinking about like like there wasn't like a point of sitting did you just decide that there's
00:29:55.820
some guys out there need my help i'm gonna go out there and do it like what was going through your
00:29:59.460
mind you just is that what you were thinking is i'm just i gotta go help my buddies yeah you know
00:30:03.840
you're you're trained in in in basic and in ait and it's the the warrior ethos that you never
00:30:10.300
leave your wounded but i i've been asked this question a lot in in a over the years as i've
00:30:16.900
gotten a lot older i've become more reflective and i i think i think the reason that i did what i did
00:30:23.600
was because of the upbringing that i had my mother and dad my grandfather and grandmother my whole
00:30:30.040
family was were made up of people who knew how to sacrifice not only for their family you know my dad
00:30:36.960
sometimes worked three jobs you know because he didn't think my mother should have to work
00:30:41.480
you know she had a tough enough job raising my sister and i my grandmother and grandfather used
00:30:47.020
to take food and clothing to poor people you know back in the 50s and early 60s my mother often took
00:30:53.560
in laundry and prepared meals for people in the neighborhood and such that were sick so this was
00:30:59.360
how i was raised and then you have your drill sergeants that tell you you don't leave your wounded they
00:31:05.100
you know and they they inspire you to you know that's what we don't do and they do that by you
00:31:11.320
know if you fall out on a run if you let somebody fall out on a run or you know during pt and you
00:31:16.880
don't help them out then you do a lot more so there's kind of that negative reinforcement so i think
00:31:22.700
when when that happened there was no time to think or to act there was no time to think you just had
00:31:28.640
had to do what i had to do and after you did it did you like were you thinking like wow that was a
00:31:33.820
that was a pretty crazy thing that i went through like that was that's something that worthy of the
00:31:38.320
medal honor were you just like i just got to go on that was just part of my job now on to the next
00:31:42.740
thing that's it i you know i don't i really don't believe at this point that i deserve the medal of
00:31:55.840
honor i was put in for it by my peers i've always felt that i as a result of that getting that medal
00:32:03.100
that i owed something and i had to give something back which is why i devoted my life to veterans but
00:32:08.060
you know i i look at people that did so much more than me that you know got a bronze star or distinguished
00:32:16.480
service cross or a silver star and i i go you know how did how did i get this and you know it's kind of
00:32:24.400
even when i was going through a lot of stuff the one thing in the back of my mind was that i had to
00:32:29.160
i had to now earn it there there's a scene in saving private ryan where tom hanks is the captain
00:32:37.860
is shot and private ryan runs up to him and he he looks at him and he says earn this and that's kind
00:32:45.660
of how i felt so yeah that changed your life and as you said like you spent the rest of your your your
00:32:50.920
life really you know trying to earn that so talk about what how did you how did you go about earning
00:32:56.240
your medal of honor in your mind well it it uh i started as a veterans benefits concert at va hospital
00:33:02.160
and uh worked with returning vietnam veterans i had ended up doing a couple things there i i worked in
00:33:09.360
a drug unit some of our guys in the 70s were coming back hooked on various drugs and so i i did that
00:33:16.600
the more i got into veterans benefits work i became a veterans benefits counselor and i started
00:33:22.580
filing claims for veterans and helping them with appeals and i really started to like that
00:33:26.920
then i became chief ambulatory care at the north chicago now the level federal medical center
00:33:32.100
and i really worked hard to to make sure that veterans got what they deserved but the biggest thing
00:33:38.000
was when i became a member of the executive director of the vietnam veterans leadership program
00:33:42.380
and started working with my brother veterans and getting them jobs and and helping them to
00:33:47.720
you know get through the the big unemployment that we had back just at in the 70s and 80s and then um
00:33:56.800
the best thing the best thing and something that i turned out to be really exceptional at
00:34:02.260
was as a vietnam veterans of america service officer and i did that through the illinois attorney general's
00:34:09.400
office they only let me work appeals and a lawyer taught me how to write legally and she was she was
00:34:16.740
really good with the red pen and i took i my caseload was nothing but va appeals i didn't cherry pick i
00:34:24.900
worked really hard to get the hardest cases i could find and i won most of them
00:34:29.980
and i probably well i've made millions of dollars for veterans in compensation i i worked in uh my
00:34:39.680
with the first attorney general i worked for neil hardigan and i we went to washington and lobbied
00:34:44.460
for judicial review of va claims with vietnam veterans of america and so i was i'm i'm very very
00:34:51.500
proud of that and then after i retired in 2005 we we formed the lynch foundation to help veterans that
00:34:59.160
of our current war that were coming home that were falling through the cracks and our program is now
00:35:04.620
part of operations support our troops america which we now have care packages we send overseas we work
00:35:11.640
with gold star families and what we call leap of faith and then we have the lynch program that helps
00:35:16.380
veterans with having financial difficulty so yeah you've been doing a lot to turn that metal in in
00:35:23.900
your mind and uh helping your your fellow veterans but you also talk about in the book like while
00:35:28.920
you were helping veterans with different problems not only financial career drug problems but you're
00:35:35.500
helping them with their the problems with ptsd and those emotional problems of trying to figure out
00:35:40.980
sort of go through the the stuff that they went through psychologically during the war but you
00:35:45.840
yourself started experiencing ptsd during this when did that start happening and how did it manifest
00:35:51.460
itself 1973 it was the summer of 1973 it was the first time that i ever had a dive on the floor startle
00:36:01.020
reaction it was hot i had just got off the bus from work i was walking home about about three blocks
00:36:07.600
i was soaking wet when i got home it was hot it was humid got into the house and got in some dry clothes i
00:36:15.640
sat down to dinner there was a flash of lightning and the roll of thunder and i was on the floor
00:36:20.740
and uh my wife said that i got a strange look in my face and ended up on the floor and started with
00:36:29.040
a bad startle reaction sudden noises uh would just you know make me duck and sometimes i was at one
00:36:37.140
event where they fired a civil war cannon i ended up on my in my suit you know diving on into the mud
00:36:44.180
but then i had started having intrusive thoughts and anger and you know the vivid thoughts of vietnam a
00:36:54.040
smell which set me off uh heat different things smells uh a few nightmares suicidal ideation
00:37:03.020
the whole nine yards and it came in waves i would have times when it would be
00:37:08.380
fine and i would have a normal month years you know of not much happening and then something would
00:37:17.220
set me off and i'd get very depressed and angry and reclusive and drink way too much and you know
00:37:24.880
all the all the negative stuff and when did you start you know realize that you got to do something
00:37:30.520
about this at what point it was in the early 90s i had been doing a lot of work with with veterans
00:37:35.820
filing a lot of claims uh and what would happen is i would read the medical records
00:37:40.640
on some of the appeals that i would be fighting and that would bring back even more vivid memories
00:37:47.620
because you're reading about somebody that was in combat and i would go my gosh this is exactly what
00:37:52.260
what i did this is where i was this is what i went through and so that would bring trigger memories
00:37:57.920
so eventually i i realized i needed to get help and things were not going good at home and
00:38:02.280
i was kind of a well i was a jerk i could put that in a lot stronger terms but i won't
00:38:08.020
and it was made very clear to me that i need to get some help so i went to uh the evanston vet
00:38:14.200
center in chicago i started seeing betsy tolsted who was the uh psychologist there she wanted to put
00:38:20.960
me on medication and i told her no i had been worked in a va hospital i saw what the va does with
00:38:26.120
medications so i said no you either fix me give me the tools i'll work hard i'll do everything you
00:38:32.720
say i'm in it to win it i'm not not here to play games i said but i'm not going on medication so
00:38:38.740
we worked and the first time i saw her was for a couple years i think two three years
00:38:43.620
and she pretty much she helped me out she she actually gave me my first good christmas since
00:38:51.240
vietnam i used to go into a deep depression around thanksgiving and it wouldn't end until
00:38:58.340
march april sometimes longer and in therapy we talked about you know some of the things that
00:39:06.860
that were really bothering me and one was the death of my my buddy jerry
00:39:10.800
and she gave me an assignment to find his grave and to film it so i went out and i bought a
00:39:18.920
little camera a little movie camera and i went out and i found his grave which took me
00:39:24.520
the better part of a day finally found out where he was buried and uh i filmed that i talked to him
00:39:32.040
told him what was going on in my life and all of that left my business card on his gravestone
00:39:37.380
and came home and in the meantime my wife had cooked dinner and beef stroganoff was her
00:39:44.480
was and is her her go-to dish she's really good at cooking it each of my kids uh told me what
00:39:52.100
mattered most to them and then i told them about jerry uh my youngest son brian was named after him
00:39:59.540
i didn't know you know in the army we go by last name so all i knew by was brian's so my my son's name
00:40:06.560
my last son's name is brian and he was named after and i explained why and i told him about jerry
00:40:12.540
and it was like i had the best christmas yeah i mean you were able to start treating that wound that
00:40:20.220
you you had yeah and i'm at is it still ongoing yeah yeah yeah i'm able to handle it a lot better
00:40:28.840
but um yeah it's you know obviously it's kind of raw still no of course one thing that struck me
00:40:38.740
something you you wrote about and we've talked about too on this podcast this sort of ethos that
00:40:43.300
you grew up with thanks to your parents your mom your dad grandparents and something that's helped
00:40:48.840
you a lot this idea and i love this mantra it's others not self how has that helped you not only
00:40:57.520
you know i mean that's kind of what helped me made you do the thing that that you got the citation for
00:41:01.880
the medal of honor but it seems like it's the thing that's been therapeutic for you after the war
00:41:07.040
this idea of others not self yeah it it actually it saved my life i was on a very bad path and it was
00:41:16.460
it's one of those you know it's it's like a guy drowning in in a knee-deep water it was right
00:41:22.100
there right in front of me my whole life and i didn't see it what what ptsd does to us
00:41:29.980
is it forces us to dwell in upon ourselves we become almost like a black like a like an emotional
00:41:38.140
black hole and i can tell you the way my my friends and i talked about it it was my ptsd won't let me
00:41:44.420
my ptsd we own it i had nightmares last night i i my my intrusive thoughts my this my that and and
00:41:53.260
and it's all about you it's all about me it's all about what i'm going through well at the worst
00:42:00.220
possible time in my life i had to focus on somebody else and not me my my dad got terminal lung cancer
00:42:07.560
and spent a year dying and so for that year it was you know at the end at the end of the work day
00:42:15.940
go to the hospital during the weekend go down and give my mom a break because she was she was taking
00:42:21.760
care of him and my sister was you know just a few doors down but they were both being run ragged by
00:42:26.480
him because he was having so many issues and so many problems with the lung cancer and so i would
00:42:32.780
go there on the weekends and stay overnight sometimes i'd go there you know take a day off work and go on
00:42:38.560
a wednesday and come home on a thursday so i was totally focused on my dad my symptoms didn't go away
00:42:44.800
but they just lessened to where they were just very manageable a couple years later my after my dad
00:42:52.740
passed my mother suffered a massive stroke and ended up i ended up going to the nursing home to see her
00:42:58.980
you know when she was close i would go with sometimes during the week and every weekend i would go see her
00:43:03.680
and again i was concentrating on my mom i was concentrating on on seeing her the symptoms mitigated
00:43:11.180
and became a lot less and by accident it kind of hit me um boy when i was taking care of my parents
00:43:21.740
so and again it's kind of this one of these serendipity things i was at a rotary i think i was
00:43:31.440
given a talk there and one of their things is not self others or others not self something like that
00:43:38.200
well i couldn't remember exactly what it was so i thought that's it that's the key if i focus on
00:43:46.360
the needs of other people and i put them first then my situation my ptsd is no longer the total focus
00:43:56.320
of my life it's other people and so i put that on my challenge coin others not self and i put that in
00:44:04.260
my pocket so when i start getting into that pity poor me mode and you know my ptsd and i even try
00:44:11.100
now not to use any ownership of it i i i view it almost as well i do view it as the enemy it's like
00:44:18.200
the vietcong it's like the nva and i'll be damned if it's gonna win so i fight it like that i i that's
00:44:24.000
why i'm you know i do what i do with uh with the foundation and do other things and the first person
00:44:29.680
i put first was my wife and my kids and my grandkids no i love that that mantra others not
00:44:35.340
self because i've seen that in my own life you know i i don't have ptsd but whenever i get down
00:44:40.800
on myself and feeling down as soon as i shift my focus away from myself like things and focus on
00:44:47.340
others it just it just goes away and it's amazing what that can do yeah yeah i tell you it just
00:44:55.260
i've been um a lot of a lot of veteran friends that i have i i let them know that's for me that
00:45:02.180
was the key it may not work for them but but for me that's that's the big key well alan this has been
00:45:07.900
a great conversation is there some place people can go to learn more about the book zero to hero
00:45:11.960
i know they sell it on amazon i've heard uh some people have founded at borders you know i uh i know
00:45:20.940
it's on amazon and where can people go to learn more about your foundations they can go to operations
00:45:26.880
support our troops america they can google that or just go osot dash america just type it into their
00:45:33.440
search engine and that'll tell you all about what we do well fantastic alan lynch thanks so much
00:45:38.140
your time it's been a pleasure thank you for having me appreciate it my guest today was alan lynch
00:45:42.860
he's the author of the book zero to hero it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you
00:45:47.940
can also find out more information about his veterans foundation at aj lynch foundation.org
00:45:53.020
also check out our show notes at aom.is slash zero to hero where you can find links to resources
00:45:59.820
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website artofmanliness.com
00:46:11.460
where you can find all of our podcast archives got over 500 there and we also got thousands of
00:46:15.640
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00:46:31.420
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