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Hey
Happy Weekend, it's Mike Waters from the Waters Wake Up Call.
Happy Veterans Day weekend, by the way.
I had a blast on Friday morning celebrating our veterans and we heard so many great veteran stories.
I was in the Navy and one of my first jobs was as a plane captain with F-14 fighter pilots.
And I had a rookie pilot that would not listen to my hand signals.
So I went ahead and got permission from the squadron commander and told him by my hand signals that his plane was on fire.
And that he needed to shut down his engines.
And your commander said, yeah, go ahead, do that.
That'll teach him a lesson.
Probably thought he was Mr. Top Gun himself.
Exactly.
I was actually with Top Gun.
We have .24 gun fighters.
That is awesome.
So thank you, of course, for your service.
Oh, you're welcome.
When did you serve, Vicky?
I was in from 85 to 89.
So yeah, around the time the Top Gun came out.
Tom Cruise was actually on base when I was there.
Wow, like just checking the place
out.
No, they were filming part of my hangers actually in that movie.
Vicky, sounds like you weren't even going to tell me that unless I asked.
I'm glad I asked.
Happy Veterans Day.
Well,
good morning.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Hollin Oats.
Thank you for your service, by the way, Hollin Oats.
I didn't fight in a war, so I salute all the veterans out there who have fought and died and protect this country.
Yeah.
You know, but thank all the vets.
Anytime I'm in the grocery stores or anything, I see anybody wearing a Vietnam or World War II hat.
or whatever, I always think of that.
Yep, every day, not just Veterans Day.
Although Veterans Day, we should just flood the place with thank yous and appreciation, but we should thank a veteran every day.
You're absolutely right.
Every day.
Well, and again, I thank you for your service and yeah, jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, what you were doing.
Well, thank you, yeah.
I think I told you my story when I first jumped out of the perfectly good airplane.
That's right.
And I soiled myself.
That's right.
I did.
For what
purpose was that first jump for?
You said you didn't see any battle.
Was it training?
Was it
training?
Okay.
I know I would have at least soiled myself
if I had done that.
So...
I suppose.
Cause how high up were you when you jumped?
I'm
afraid of heights.
I would never ever in a million years jump out of a perfectly good airplane.
Whether I had a parachute or not.
Absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, you're a better man than I, Hollanoats.
Not that we didn't already know that.
I don't jump on a plane much anymore.
Right.
You'll jump out of your truck every once in a while, because how high up is the cab?
10
feet, maybe.
Well, that's pretty high.
I think that's higher than I've jumped.
Well, again, I thank you for your service, Hollanoats.
Well, thank you.
When he was back in 1916, he was swimming down at the Cedar River.
They used to have a beach at Ellis Park there, right on the riverfront.
Anyway, a cry went out into the air for help.
He swam out and rescued a woman who was drowning, brought her back to shore.
A year later, he was in France, and he was wounded in one of those major battles in the hospital in France.
The nurse attending was one and the same.
She was the woman that he had saved for Brown in the river.
The other story is my father on January 1st, 1945 is...
Captain came to him and said, if the Germans are pushing, we don't know where they're coming from.
I need you to get your squad together and go out and blow some trees.
He was an engineer in the 14th Armored Division.
And he goes, Captain Diller is my half-track driver, the corporal.
He's waked out on a Section 8.
He's in the hospital.
We need every man that can walk.
So he put a squad together, threw a few cases of dynamite into the halftrack to blow trees and set up a barricade out in the mountains.
They drove up a mountain road, came around to Ben and there was a German panzer division sitting there with their engines off.
All hell broke loose.
They started firing on him and they had all this dynamite in this halftrack.
The halftrack driver wigged out and rolled the halftrack over the embankment.
My father was pinned by his wrist.
He woke up with a German
machine gun barrel right between his eyes and with his peripheral vision he looked over and seen one of his squad members was dead with a bullet between his eyes they took him prisoner and basically he was spent the rest of the war in prison camps four of them they kept moving him back after the battle of the bulge they moved him back farther and farther he ended up in mooseburg and
When an American scout chief fired on the camp, all the guards moved to the front end of this camp.
There was 120,000 Allied prisoners there, and they didn't know they were there.
Yeah.
And he escaped.
He ran out the gate, stole a bicycle, and beat it down the road, and ran into his own unit.
in my book I'm working on, maybe someday I'll forward it.
Have a great day,
Mr. Walker.
Some years back here at Sea Rapids, I had the honor and privilege to be Colonel Robert Ray.
No, this is not the same Robert Ray that was governor of Iowa.
this gentleman was actually a survivor of three and a half years Japanese prisoner of war and a survivor of the jibbaton death march
Wow
now my I'm one of my sons was kind of young at the time and when he was getting for foreign health he went lived with his daughter and He invited me to come out with my son when my son was 12 and he spent about four hours showing us
about the whole experience of being a prisoner of war with the Japanese, of maps of where the prisoners had escaped, and different things about the whole, just the whole story about it.
When we were done, his daughter came up to me and said, you know, I am so glad you guys came out.
My dad would never talk to me about his experiences, and I actually got to...
what he went through and what other people went through.
Wow, I
can't, I can't, I just can't imagine how she felt hearing that.
She was real happy.
Um, but you know, meeting somebody that had gone through all of that, um, during the Philippines was just a privilege and honor to do that.
And then for take the time to go over all this stuff with my son that me was, was just, was just great.
I mean, that had to be riveting those stories.
The brutality that they went through.
Prisoners war the Americans went through I was you just couldn't really comprehend it
right
now at all.
I mean well the baton death march If the soldiers were wounded the Japanese unit used him for bayonet practice at night
good God
if they if any civilian tried to give any water to any of the prisoners on the March the Japanese soldiers immediately butchered up killed him
And it wasn't nice, I was just, they aggressively went after him.
Inhuman.
It was, it was really an honor to meet somebody like that, a privilege.
And from what his daughter was saying, and she had never known any of this, and I can't imagine, you know, how she felt, and you hear about, and that had to be extremely traumatic for him to actually be able to talk about it in detail.
What was his state of mind as he was telling you all
this?
I mean, when I first met him, he actually told me about when he got stationed in the Philippines.
He was an officer and married, and he actually had his wife, and then there was another officer with his wife that were on the transport ship, taking him to the Philippines.
The only two guys on the ship with their wives with them.
Some guys
have
to do that, you know?
It's no way to escape
it.
It was really interesting on his story about that, but he was a nice guy.
Like you say, what an honor and a privilege to hear a story from that man.
I
think I speak for everybody in saying we so appreciate your family and your friend, Baton Death March and all.
Good
God.
Oh, great.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
him and all my uncles went down and volunteered when war broke out.
World War II, you just, you were excited to go and fight because you really believed in what you were fighting for.
Absolutely.
The cause, they all went down and volunteered.
Yeah.
And he said, if you want to see the truth to him, he said, watch that show the longest day.
He said that it's all documented and it's just like the real thing.
All those guys do that.
And he said, them beaches and those uh, those landing things, he said, it was just, just as true as you could get.
Pretty surreal, but do remember
picture that they all had after they had their pants hanging upside down on a clothesline.
Yeah.
Be for victory.
Very nice.
Yeah,
pretty
cool.
Yeah, like you say, the longest day is great.
And, you know, saving private Ryan, that opens, storming the beaches of Normandy.
Right.
I sure felt like not, I'm sure not like your dad, obviously, but really that opening scene, you just almost feel like you're there more so than any movie anyway, any other
movie.
Absolutely.
It's
It's horrific, but God rest his soul, but he did his job, and he said he did it for us.
They did it for America, for our freedom.
That is awesome.
That is a great story, Mike.
Okay, well, what you're doing today is good.
You keep it going for the best.
Right on, man.
Well, thank you for calling, Mike, and yeah, we're all very thankful for your dad and everyone like him.
Absolutely.
Have a good one,
Mike.
My dad had several brothers, and he was next to the audience.
and his brother was in the Navy station in Pearl Harbor and he was killed on Arizona and is in tomb there and on the 50th anniversary I uh set my my mom and dad there so that my dad could be we were hoping would be on the memorial at the time.
Sure, you're on go on the memorial,
yeah.
Because my dad said one day he's getting letters from his brother and then the next day nothing he was supposed to accept it as
brother was gone.
Right.
And so when my dad was 17, joined the Navy about a year before it was going to be the 50th anniversary, I called the Parks Department.
They're in charge of the memorial itself.
So they said they hadn't even thought about the planning of it yet.
So anyway, my sister worked for the government.
And so she called the Department of the Navy and they said, you know, the Parks Department and them were going to get together.
They had one day in
the mail
yet because he knows nothing about this.
that I was doing for them on their anniversary.
Wow, that's great.
Anyway, so in the middle, he gets from the commander of the Pacific fleet, he gets this, you know, beautifully handwritten envelope and he has no idea what it is.
And he opens it up and it's an invitation to be on the memorial.
And he was, he of course was brought to tears and he said, you know, this is better than winning.
Wow.
Anyway, so he not only got to be on the memorial, he was in the second row, sitting right behind the trainee and President Bush.
Like I bet it was meant to be.
That is awesome.
What an awesome daughter for you to do that for your dad.
I
can't
imagine how appreciative he was.
My dad has been passed and I just think of that and anyway.
Yeah.
I'm just glad that I could give him.
He was a veteran of Korea,
I'd like to say Happy Veterans Day, I miss you, and also, sorry, two of my brothers were veterans, so thank you to
them also.
last duty station in the army.
I was active duty from 95 to 06.
That's so cool.
Grandfather and grandson in both serving in Korea.
Oh, and I got a great 9-11 story too, actually.
Oh, all
right.
So on 9-11, I was stationed at Fort Wachuka, Arizona.
I was in the signal corps.
And we were having a post change of command on 9-11 that morning.
We're all out there to hold everybody and their mother who's in the military.
They're out on the parade field.
So the one general is giving, the post general is giving
the new general the duties of full watchuga
new general got on the podium and he says the change of command ceremony is going to be shortened the united states is under attack
this is not about and so this is a Arizona time so then we do pass a review how i witnessed 9-11 was the same way that you guys as civilians did in the child hall on these big uh
um big
screen TVs or or
yeah like the ones that the ones that are like on the ground you know back in the you know 90s of big ones
project the big projection televisions
yeah exactly
okay
and and then we see that we just couldn't believe it
know
What was
it like being in the military and you're in the signal core and
To hear a general say we're under attack, that had to hit you even harder than the rest of us.
Well, and yes, because we didn't know.
You know, I mean, when you're active duty at that time, you're doing field exercises and you're preparing, but when you're actually know that you're going to war, it's different.
And I remember flying from Fort Meade, which is in Maryland, and that whole process, going from Arizona to Tucson, so Tucson to Phoenix, Phoenix to Fort Meade down the first time that I went, that went three times.
Went to Iraq twice and Kuwait once.
And as an NCO and as a sergeant, you can't, how can you say this?
You don't let your soldiers know that you're nervous or scared or whatever.
Right, sure.
Great little lead.
I have never been so nervous.
How
could you not be?
How could you not be?
But did the men know?
Boy,
that's gotta be tough.
That's gotta be really tough.
I mean, that's gotta be the ultimate.
Going in to a situation like that, I can't imagine how many feelings you had.
Anxiety and nervous and scared and adrenaline was probably pumping and you were trying to pump yourself up to get ready for it.
And I just can't imagine all the things going through your system.
as well as your
mind.
Yeah, I just saw him tongue-in-cheek to say screw you for the last two segments.
you mean?
I didn't know I'd need Kleenexes this morning.
Oh.
So I'm not a veteran, but one of the best veterans I've ever had in my life was my great-grandpa.
Yeah.
And any who you were talking about giving and whatnot, he volunteered to serve in World War II.
He had no reason to.
He had five kids and he was married.
Wow.
His son, my great-uncle, who just passed last year, had told me a story about how when they were walking through Germany after all the destruction, there was a mother with two little boys starving, rattled, and my great-grandpa gave him the last piece of candy bar that he had.
And that's a big, it may sound like a small thing, but that had to be a big thing for your grandpa.
Oh, I mean, think about it.
I mean, he survived the bulge.
He was marching through the Ramagan Bridge.
Yeah.
He survived that attack.
So yeah, damn you.
Sorry, man.
It's Veterans Day.
What can I tell you?
It's a good day.
It's a good feel good day.
So I appreciate it.
Yeah.
Well, I appreciate you calling, man.
I really do.
You
brought the good word.
The story behind 11 and 11.
Is
it about World
War I?
I'll bet it's about World War I, right?
Yep.
Yeah.
He was on the 11th spot.
of the 11th day that we won World War I.
Right, yeah, the 11th hour, 11th day of the 11th month.
Yep.
Yep.
11 a.m.
And the story is my dad, who unfortunately has passed away, he was, he was a supply truck driver.
He was always, always at the front lines.
He could speak German, so he all prisoners back with him.
He goes, yeah, we turned around and we were, thought we were new with
Uh-oh.
Wow.
That, now that's smart and lucky.
He
had to be extremely brave, extremely smart, and extremely lucky.
He had the trifecta that day, thank God.
Yeah.
That's a great story.
Thanks for that.
You're welcome, Mike.
Give a memorial shout out to four uncles who served in World War II, one who served in Korea, and a good friend.
who served in Vietnam
you've got a lot of connections
and one mildly funny story about the one uncle from world war two okay i'd love to hear it he was a sergeant in the 632nd tank destroyer battalion in the pacific theater of things and he was a new guinea in battle and the japanese woke him up one night as he was sleeping on his tank destroyer by banning him
in the rear end
that's now that's a wake-up call right there
yeah they took care of business and you received the purple heart of course
i'm glad they still gave him a purple heart glad it wasn't something commemorating where he had been bayoneted i
don't think
they have one for that no i don't think so either and and rightly so weekday mornings 5 30 to
