I went to college that year instead of taking the hard road you chose. After two deployments overseas, he was chosen to join the target surveillance platoon for duty of scout sniper. You may have noticed the ribbon with stars he is wearing today. That represents a few deployments he has made. 16. Wow. I have 10 times with the marine corps unit and five with special forces. Excellent. David that is my mistake. I was never good at math. [laughter] he retired in 2014 as command Sergeant Major for weapons training at quantico and is on the Editorial Board at annapolis. Thank you for joining us. [applause] david it is good we have navy and coast guard in here. This all started no kidding because of navy and coast guard officers that convinced me to write this. I was on the Editorial Board. I was not really editing anything. I was giving my opinion. I would read a story and say, it put me to sleep or whatever. But i enjoyed it. I am grateful to tell these stories about these heroes. I spent about five months researching. I spent a football season, basically, writing it. I finished the book exactly at 11 seconds, 11 minutes, 11th hour, four years ago today. When i hit save, i initially called it heroes you have never heard of. There is maybe one guy you have heard of, but you should have heard of them. You can take away the names and ranks, and they can be soldiers or whatever, but there are a lot of heroes we do not hear about. So we are here to honor them. It started out with me in 2005. A buddy said, lets go see the wounded at bethesda. So we headed up there during the week. In the afternoon during the week, it did not work out so well. We got stuck in traffic and came back. Tried it the next day, still did not work. The third day, we got in uniform and took off for bethesda. We finally got there. It was absolutely incredible. Not one wounded ever complained. Not one Family Member complained. 22 reserve marines in there whose job was to take care of those families. They were the greatest thing. I started going to college. I started enjoying writing. I kept writing. I still do to this day. Luckily, the press allowed me to dedicate the book to my dad, who was in world war ii. He died before the book came out, unfortunately. But he did a lot of things. One thing he did, after the war was over, they were in france. This town of french people had clubs and they were beating a man to death, this german guy. My dad said, im not going to watch this man i do not care if , he is the enemy or not. He got him out of there and saved his life. He was a reserve police officer. He worked at a Movie Theater and jumped in the middle of fights. That is how he was and that is what he taught me to do too. This is an absolutely incredible story. It is about six seconds. It only lasts for six seconds. You have two marines. This kid is from virginia. He is some dirtpoor, mixedrace kid from the ghetto. This is some rich kid from up north. They never met each other. They are left seatright seat. One is showing the other around. They go through a vehicle checkpoint and are told by the sergeant, do not let anything come through. A large truck starts coming down the road. We had barriers so vehicles cannot drive through. This thing is flying down, heading towards them. These two had never met each other before. They square up. One has a squad automatic weapon with a 200round belt. In the first two seconds, a light bulb goes off like, there is something wrong here. The sergeant said not to let anyone come down. No americans saw what happened. But luckily, there was a video camera. There was a 2000 pound bomb that blew up. But it saved everyone else. It killed them. Those two marines did not move. They knew they were going to die. They shot to save their friends. To me, that is the epitome they had never met each other before. But it is an incredible story. I have a lot of stories about navy corpsmen. Get around the infantry, and you will find that the corpsman is a protected species. He exposed himself multiple times to enemy fire. He was actually severely wounded. But he refused to get assistance. He continued treating marines with only one working arm until all the fighting was over. That is the type of corpsmen we have. This is Ricky Elliott, my corpsman during our time in iraq. He rode with me all the time. We never started trouble, but we were in trouble all the time. It is his fault. [laughter] david and while he is treating wounded marines, he is telling them how to save each other. Imagine this. This kid is in afghanistan, a lance corporal, junior guy on patrol. They have mraps, mineresistant vehicles. He is the turret gunner. Probably 15 feet off the ground. They get to the kill zone. When they hit the kill zone, an rpg takes out his leg. It will have to be amputated. You can imagine he is in a bit of pain. He refuses to get off the gun and continues to engage the enemy. He was directing people where to shoot. He got on the radio and pushed the mraps out of the kill zone to save everybody. When the fight was over, he passed out. I get chills talking about this kid. Amazing that he did that because he did not want his friends to die. Had he not done what he did, a lot more people probably would have died that day. In the book, it is dedicated to my dad. Then we go to iraq and afghanistan. In the middle, we have cacos, casualties, two of them for combat marines. This guy here happens to be a marine corps scout sniper, my First Casualty assistance. I had to tell his mom. I show up at the house and see his little sister. I ambushed her. Excuse me, maam. She walks away and does not talk to me. I go to the house. She left the door open. Kind of an invitation. I walk in. What i did is i sat her down. I got down on my knees and i looked her in the eyes and said, i have the pcr, the casualty report. I do not know much, i just know he was killed this morning. She looks at me and goes, he was a sniper. I am a sniper too. If you do not know, when you graduate, you get a hogs tooth, because we hunt pigs. She asked for the hogs tooth. She asked for it. What i do not know is the platoon knows how valuable it is. They were on scene, trying to find his hogs tooth. I took off mine and gave it to her. It made her very happy. The crazy thing is when the body came in a little bag, in the bag was only one thing the hogs tooth. Not the dog tags, just the hogs tooth. They asked me to give the eulogy. I had never given a eulogy. I got up at the podium and in my mind, i am saying, talk. People said there was a dramatic pause. I was in shock. There were all these people. They wanted to hear what i had to say. I did not want to mess up. I went to a catholic school. I am a recovering catholic. Not very good at it. That day, i prayed for 45 minutes do not let me mess this up. But we got to the jacksonville airport. There was a trooper from florida. We had an escort all the way. We got delayed and delayed. It is midnight now. I went to the store and bought cold sodas for everybody. I said, sorry this is taking so long. He says, i spent 24 years in the army. We go nowhere until our brother comes home. He had been off the clock for hours. He refused to leave the airport. If you watch the news, you would think everybody hates the military. Not true. Everywhere we went, we were supported by everybody. Even civilians in the airport. Holding their hands over their heart. Just incredible. I hate the news. 27 days later, i am with the family all day long, every day. I go to work early in the morning and spend the rest of the day with them. A couple days after i get done, i get another caco. I was in savannah, georgia. I got home and was sweating like crazy. My wife said, you got another caco. Ricky and i, one night, we were bombed for hours. That is nothing compared to these things. This one here, a mother, a wife, 7. 5 months pregnant, with her fouryearold hanging onto her leg. I am telling her her husband is dead. It was terrible for me. I break down these stories and explain how great they are. I tell you about breaking contact. One of the hardest things was being with that family everyday. When you do a caco, the first time you talk to them, they are in shock. The second time, they do not like you very much because they have to blame someone and you are the only one there. But every one of those cacos, on the third day, they treat me like family. First battalion navy corpsman, a filipino immigrant. Volunteers for the military. Volunteers to be a corpsman. Volunteers with the marines. Volunteers to go to sniper school, almost unheard of. And he graduated. There are only a few nonseal scout snipers. Then he went to the blue side, the navy side. He was not happy with that because there was a war going on. So he volunteered to go back. When he got out there, he was still not happy. He volunteered to go out with e. O. D. One mission, they were blown up. He and another tech were killed. But that is how he was. Pleasure to be around. Some of you have seen this story before. It is a famous one, on the front of leatherneck magazine. You may have been there at the time. Were you there . You are 16 . C 16, charlie company. Lance corporal gould is severely wounded. On that mountain, it is so steep, you cannot land a helicopter. They try to carry him, but they cannot. Hoopii throws his body armor and rifle down. He throws this kid on his back and brought him down the mountain for over two hours. He carried another human being down a mountain where you have trouble walking by yourself just to save his life. People said, how did you do that . His quote . You do what you got to do to take care of your boys. That is how he lived his life. Another corpsman, doc gould. Afghanistan. He is out there with a small element squad, 10 or 15 marines, and they are ambushed by a force of 35 or 40. Two times as big as this force. Doc returns fire. Some people think corpsmen cannot fight, but that is not true. They can fight to save themselves and others. He starts fighting. All of a sudden, they get a casualty. He rolls out to get the casualty. A couple marines go with him to take him to the l. Z. As they are medevacing this kid, they step on an i. E. D. Now everyone is wounded, and doc has fragmentation in his face and neck. But he refuses to go out of the fight. What he does is tells a marine how to save him while he is doing cpr on the other marine. Where do we get these people . Where do we get human beings like that . He continued doing what he had to do until everything was over. Then he allowed himself to be medevacd. There are stories in this book about killing people. Obviously, it is combat. And it was not intentional, but if you look at most of the stories, it is about somebody risking their life to save their friends. This is will hyatt. Works for a threeletter agency in the area. I will not get into details. He was a young corporal on e. T. T. He is attached to an army unit, attached to the Afghani National army. One night, he is coming from the shower. He is in flipflops, shower shoes. We call them silkies, little p. T. Shorts. They get hit. He does not put on body armor. He grabs a squad automatic weapon and attacked the enemy. Realizes he does not have enough firepower. Directs the a. N. A. To unleash the 50cal. That is not enough. He runs down the mountain and picks up a mark 19, almost 80 pounds. He throws this thing on his back and runs up the mountain. He said, it was crazy. I was in my flipflops. It hurt to not have the flipflops on. He did all this fighting in shorts and his First Sergeant wrote him in for the award. He personally stopped 20 or 30. He got a commendation. That is the Second Lowest medal you can get. In my opinion, his actions were beyond a Navy Marine Corps commendation. He should have gotten the medal of honor. You cannot get much better than that. So, this guy is a Marine Corps Special operations battalion, second, 8th company. They are going on a raid. They get ambushed. The ambush is so effective that every marine and corpsman was shot. So he runs into the kill zone and gets shot as soon as he goes in. Everybody has been shot. By the way, he unloaded with his 240 in the beginning. He runs into the kill zone. He refuses treatment at first but realizes he is bleeding to death. He allows them to put a pressure bandage on him until everyone is medevacd and they kill the enemy. This is our Company Commander. My Third Company commander. He was a fourth reconnaissance enlisted marine. Went to college, came back. He was running the Reconnaissance Course for a while. Absolutely incredible leader. I got to know him because i was in charge of training for alsadr. This guy came to me and said, training for a raid. So i went and trained him. He came out. We never did get to go in. Alsadr is a proxy for iran. I wrote this at the end. I want to make all the people in this book famous. I think they deserve it. No one is ever forgotten until we forget about them. Veterans day is a good day to be out honoring those who serve. Some people talk about one force over the other. I think the military is the band of the hand. The air force, the navy, the marine corps, all form a fist to punch the enemy in the face. This is james booker, scout sniper, United States marine corps. Sergeant major for battalion 24. 2500 marines. He has an important job. He is a bad dude. They needed more information. So he got with an Undercover Police officer and did a meet. At the meet, he get ambushed. It is the undercover officers brother that tries to murder him. It did not work out well for them. There was a funeral after. Sergeant booker runs through ramadi and kills rpg gunners with accurate fire. They needed more intel. There were not enough counterintel guys. So he creates a six man team of kids. They go out and start doing reconnaissance missions. A bunch of lance corporals. Some of them did not speak the language. Some of them were hispanic or whatever. They did incredible reconnaissance missions. It saved a lot of lives by killing a lot of bad guys. I did not want to put a Sergeant Major in my book, but forget about his rank. What he did was incredible. My corpsman is always starting trouble with people. This little dude, 53, 120 pounds. Look what he can do. Their unit in ramadi comes under attack in 2006. It is a terrible attack, an ied. Close up the front gate. At the front gate, they have a m113, a dump truck that blew up. And then a mortar blows up a hallway and quickly wounds one of the marines. So the corpsman says, lets go get him. By the way, he is right here. This is marty. He and a corpsman bring the guy down. Throw him in a humvee. Doc takes his time. Does not get there in time. He says, im going to go. Drives across the compound. Slams into a dump truck that is on fire. He drove through a ball of fire, wall of fire. He pushes the ieds out of the way and drives to ramadi. 20 minutes is a long time. I always tell people, if you want to understand how long time is, i will punch you in the face for 20 seconds. Imagine what 20 minutes is like. 20 minutes is a very long time. He busted out of the gate. Drove for 20 minutes. A secure Reaction Force was coming, and he went by himself. When he got there, the doctors came out and said, if you had not gotten him here when you did, he would be dead. So marty is at my house, and i am giving him a signed copy of the book, and he said, i did not like that dude. [laughter] david but he needed his life saved. People talking about fighting for god and country. That is a bunch of garbage. The only reason we fight we might have joined for other reasons the only reason we fight is for the guy next to us. Does not matter if you are black, white, brown, protestant or catholic. We fight for each other. That is the one good thing about combat. We fight for each other. Marty here does all this stuff. It is not the purpose of the book. They gave him a Navy Marine Corps medal, lowest possible, and did not give him a v. He drove through a wall of fire. I talked to a Company Commander at the time. He told me, you are absolutely right. It is a travesty. Should have never happened. But that kind of stuff is happening all the time. Ramadi back then, they called it the wild, wild west. Just out of control. You have probably never heard of marty graham. He is actually in my book twice. 18 months later, he is on a raid. Two squads. His gear weighs more than he does. They are moving along and going to a weapons cache to take it out if they need to. He needs a fire team because he is tired of being pinned down. He attacks the enemy with 200 marines. They say, we get credit for being there, but colonel graham did everything. He engaged them with hand grenades by himself. He had a couple guys supporting him, but in the statements they say, Corporal Graham did everything. He lives in fredericksburg, where i live. He got a v this time. But i want you to understand something. That is the same award they give to somebody who spent the weekend doing a good job at toys for tots. That is pathetic. I spent 30 years in the marine corps and i know the award system pretty well. That was at least silver star stuff. If not navy cross. The thing is, he never complains about it. He is just a young guy. I do not think he knew he got screwed until i told him. I brainwashed him. Anyway, that is it. The book has 52 stories in it. There are two individuals in it twice. Marty and gunny vigiani. He is a marine corps infantry officer, gunner. The stories in this book are incredible. If anybody buys the book and wants it signed, i would be glad. But he is the one that needs to sign it more than me. He is the epitome of the young marines. Corpsmen are in the equation too. A quick story about Ricky Elliott and the trouble he starts. One day, we are going on the road, and he yells aks we get out of the vehicle. We are surrounded. Totally surrounded. Never trust Ricky Elliott to give you directions. Does anyone have any questions . Comments . Yes, sir. Do you have any suggestions about the award system . I am one of those people who is familiar with citations going back through military history. It does seem like there are many complaints about how the awards are being administered currently. Do you have a Sergeant Majors perspective on how this could be fixed . David a great question. How do we fix this award thing . It takes officers. It is the officers. I am not blaming the officers, but only officers can fix it. Although i can start an award, i cannot generate an award. I can do all the research. But only a commissioned officer can start the awards process. Only an officer. Ok . Then they have to decide what level the award will be. Sometimes, like in this case, ramadi was so crazy. They did not want to throw medals everywhere. What he did was impressive, but it was not a big deal because there was so much chaos going on. The fact is that if he had been a Second Lieutenant and done the same thing, i can tell you right now, i guarantee you he would have gotten a silver star or navy cross. No doubt about it. I do not know how you fix that. I will tell you this the infantry has a big problem. The problem with infantry is they think you are just doing your job. But killing bad guys is your job. Yes, it is. But when you envelop the enemy, that is more than normal. How to fix it . All i know is i can complain about it. Hopefully, some people will get it. There are only two officers in my book. It is not because i am against officers getting awards. One officer is brian standt. Ufc fighter. The reason i put him in there was not just heroics in iraq. But when he got out and became a ufc fighter, he became a spokesman for the marine corps as a civilian. He is an outstanding human being. I remember a fighter was talking crap about him saying, you may be a jarhead, but there is no artillery in there. He said, i have a few artillery right here. He beat the living crap out of him. Any other questions . I know it is controversial, but what is your view on the recent marine corps study about females in combat . David i have a degree in psychology, by the way. I am 100 against women in the infantry. Until we can bring up children and teach them here is the thing. You cannot change me right now. I will protect women. If two dudes are fighting outside, i would say, i have five dollars on the guy in red. But if a woman is getting hit, you want to help them. If you have a female that gets shot, we stop to help her and we get killed. The best way to save a casualty is to kill the enemy. Let me tell you something. If that person is going to die and i cannot wait two minutes to save them, theyre not going to make it. The best chance of survival, destroy the enemy. Women just get in the way. When we see women, it is instincts. It is distracting. In some ways, it is good. But in other ways, it is a bad distraction. I am against it, 100 . But there are what they call lionesses, women who work in small teams. They are not a problem. A distraction, but not a problem. They are needed to search women. Nobody wants men searching women, and especially in those countries. Thank you for your time. Have a wonderful veterans day. [applause] as the Sergeant Major said, we have the book in the shop. He would be happy to sign it. Thank you so much for being here. A Little Something for you to take home. David thank you, everybody. Have a great day. [applause] you are watching American History tv all weekend every weekend on cspan3. Likein the conversation, us on facebook at cspan history. Cspan campaign 2016 is taking you on the road to the white house for the Iowa Caucuses and monday, february 1, the live coverage begins at 7 00 p. M. Eastern. We will bring you live preconference coverage, taking your calls and texts. At 8 00 p. M. Eastern, we would take the democratic caucus. To see the event, be sure to stay on cspan and join the conversation on cspan radio and www. Cspan. Org. Tvrecently, American History has been airing a selection of oral histories with Africanamerican Community leaders. The project, titled explorations in black leadership, with the collaboration between the university of virginia leffler andhyllis julian bond. Up next, we hear from conservative commentator armstrong williams. He talks about his fathers influence on his upbringing, his internship working for South Carolina senator strom thurmond, and later, his involvement in the Clarence Thomas u. S. Supreme Court Confirmation hearings. This program is about an hour and 45 minutes. Bond armstrong williams, welcome to explorations in black leadership. Williams thank you for inviting me. Bond were very pleased to have you here. I want to begin with some questions about the brown decision. Now, it occurred five years before you were born, but what was the discussion, if any, in your family or what was the feeling t