Hey, it's Waters from the Waters Wake Up, called Veteran Tunes Day this morning.
Celebrating the veterans with tunes and stories and anything we could think of.
Hello.
Hello.
I'm absolutely loving these Veteran's Day stories.
Oh, good.
I'm
glad.
So I've got a little bit of one of myself.
right.
I never serve.
OK.
My brother did.
My best friend did.
Everybody in my family, all that stuff.
Well, my best friend did three tours in Afghanistan.
And during his third tour, we found out, my wife and I found out that we were gonna have our son.
And made it a point to tell him, hey man, we're naming this kid after you.
That whole thing, right?
Wow.
17 years later to today, my son is on his way down the Ness to enlist.
Wow.
He's joined
the National Guard.
Wow.
So he's
18 now?
He'll be 18 in June.
Okay,
okay.
Going through all the stuff he can do while he's still in high school.
So by the time he graduate, he's already got a V3 and he's good to go.
Wow, so he's all about it.
He's so excited.
Actually, he just left a little while ago.
Yeah,
wow.
That's awesome.
Very
proud
parents.
Yeah, no kidding.
No kidding.
So your friend did three tours in Afghanistan.
And what's his name?
His name is Will.
OK, so that's what you named your son?
Yep.
OK, just so I have it straight.
Well, that's awesome.
What a way to honor your friend and then for your son.
on
really cool.
So did your son get to know your friend?
Well, who served?
Oh, yeah.
He's just got father.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Good.
We see each other all the time.
He calls him his uncle will.
So
that's awesome.
So did he inspire him?
Was was that part of the inspiration for going to enlist?
It was.
So I told him about like my grandparents from World War Two and that whole situation.
I've got uncles that did time in Vietnam, you know, Korea, all that stuff.
Yeah.
Well, I'm like you in the fact that I never served, but I am extremely committed to serving those who have served.
So anything, anytime I can do anything for the veterans, I jump at it.
By the way, that thing with bringing the asses home, good on you, man.
That's really cool.
Well, thank you.
We need more.
true patriot like yourself, Mr. Waters.
Nothing more true has ever been spoken.
Thank your son for his future service.
Yeah, I just thought it was so fitting that it was better in day without even.
the day he was
going.
Hi, Mike.
How you doing?
Good.
How are you?
This is Sammy from the derecho.
Do you remember me?
Were you the one whose mom told you to get
downstairs?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I
remember you.
So what's up today,
Sammy?
Sammy.
I don't know if I ever told you, but I'm also a veteran.
Well, thank you for your service.
When did
you
serve and what branch?
The Army and the late 80s, early 90s.
I was
a
Yeah, something like that.
Do you still cook?
I mean, were you a great cook in the army?
Obviously, I've heard rumors that the food not great in the army.
But I have to think that you probably changed that, Sammy.
We had deals with a surprise specialist and stuff.
We got special privileges, so we got the good stuff.
Yeah, it's up to guys like you to keep our men and women fueled, energized to do what they got to do.
So good on you, Sammy.
Right, we're up a lot earlier than everybody else, even.
Right.
Yeah.
Boy, what is it that they used to say in the ad, we do more before noon?
Most people
do all day.
Yeah.
Right.
I want to bring up something to you.
Well, my cousin, you know, a person always goes up to a veteran and says, well, thank you for your service.
Right.
Well, there's another little secret where you ought to do that.
And my cousin is in the army.
He said, what you do, and the veteran appreciates this better, or more often, is you go up to them, you tell them, welcome home.
I love that.
And thank you for your service.
I did that once.
Yeah.
And I sat down and, as DM said, welcome home, sir, and thank you for your service.
And he sat there and he looked up to me and he had tears in his eyes.
Because not many people welcome these soldiers home, you know.
Right, right,
yeah.
And he said it's about the best thing that you can do to these soldiers.
You don't sit there and say, thank you for your service.
You know, a lot of them would like to hear you say, welcome home.
Thank you for calling.
Welcome home.
And thank you for your service.
You bet.
Good morning, sir.
How are you doing today?
I'm doing pretty good.
How are you?
Good.
I got a couple Marine Corps stories.
I would love to hear some Marine Corps stories.
So I was facing the Marine Corps silent drill team.
I don't know if you know what that is.
You know, it does
sound vaguely familiar, but I'm not sure of the specifics and what exactly.
it is.
Why don't you explain that?
They do a drill with M1s and bayonets with no command.
So they travel over the world doing it, but so there were only 24 in the Home Marine Corps and I was one of the 24.
Wow.
So if there's no commands and it's all by memorization of numbers in your head and everything, people are always trying to get us to screw up.
One of the times we were doing it, we were doing it for a general's retirement.
Summertime, I'm California.
So they had a big grandstand and his daughter, which was, I guess, probably in her teens or twenties, kept flashing us, trying to get us to grew up.
Did you?
No.
No.
But you can kind of hear a slow rumble throughout the group.
Sure.
Oh,
the general's daughter.
General's daughter.
And then one at a time, so it was during Ford, back when General Ford was president.
Okay, so like mid-70s.
We were doing a parade and when you do the parade, so we have our rifles and we have the bayonets on and we're marching and nobody's allowed to break our ranks.
Yes, I know if you understand.
So as we're marching nobody can cut through or anything.
right.
So if somebody does, somebody does, we just surround them with our guns and bayonets.
Sure.
They leave.
So, well, back in the day, Gerald Ford's daughter was a real camera nut.
She tried crossing our ranks.
Well, so we're surrounding Gerald Ford's daughter with M1s and bayonets, and the FBI and Secret Service are surrounding us.
And, of course, you got to remember, our guns don't even have any bullets or firing pins.
Right.
They're surrounding us with real guns with bullets and firing pins.
and uh we went back down finally we got through the weave and everything went back to normal so yeah
was was Ford there or was it just his daughter?
I don't recall people there kind of have you know like it's when you get kicked in the machine you don't really know what uh color the your toenails are you
know
those are great
stories though
you know it was uh you know it was a lot traveling it's a lot of living hours he went 30 in a feedback
But I don't think I trade it for anything.
No kidding, man.
Well, you're of a very elite group of guys.
That's pretty impressive.
Let's see what it was again.
The Marine Corps silent drill team.
Sounds like it would be a blast to watch.
If
you just watch a little clip of it, you'll be
impressed.
I plan on.
As soon as we're done with this call, I'm going to go and find one.
If you mess up a costume case of beer.
It's a small price to pay.
Could you share it with... Could you share in the beer yourself if you...
You had to buy it?
No,
no, you
bought it for everybody else.
Oh, that's too bad.
That's too...
I don't have to.
But
again, it's
price you have to pay.
It was.
You had to be perfect.
You didn't spend hours and hours to be perfect.
And that's what makes people want to screw you up even more,
because it's all about perfection.
It is.
I have a shout out to all the veterans, and I have a veteran story for you.
Oh, great.
Okay, my dad was at Normandy.
Yeah.
World War II.
He got some awards and all this stuff and he said it just like the movies.
He said climbing them hills and those guys with those little grappling hooks trying to get up there and take them pillboxes out was absolutely true.
And it's the most horrific thing you could ever see.
He lost his best friend and...
Him and all my uncles went down and volunteered when war broke out.
In World War II, you were excited to go and fight because you really believed in what you were fighting for.
Absolutely.
The cars, 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, then beaches and those landing things, he said, just as through 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, um, God rest his soul, but he did his job and he said he did it for us.
Yeah.
He did it for America, for our freedom.
That is awesome.
That is a great story, Mike.
Okay, well,
yeah.
And what you're doing today is good.
You keep it going for the best.
Happy Veterans Day, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike!
Well, good morning, good morning, good morning, Hollin' Oats!
Thank you for your service, by the way, Hollin' Oats.
I salute all the veterans out there who protect this country.
yeah
anytime i'm in the grocery stores or anything i see anybody wearing a vietnam or world war two 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
day.
Well, and again, I thank you for your service.
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 in the 82nd Airborne.
I was...
For what purpose was that first jump?
Was it training?
Was it... Yeah,
training.
Okay.
Training,
yep.
I know I would have at least soiled myself
if I had
done that.
So...
Gonna do it the first time, man.
I suppose
because how high up were you when you jumped?
Well,
you're a better man than I holla notes.
Not that we didn't already know that.
Right.
You'll jump out of your truck every once in a while because how high up is the cab?
Well,
that's pretty high.
I think that's higher than I've jumped.
Well, again, I thank you for your service, holla
notes.
My great uncle was a veteran of the First World War.
He was sent down first to the Mexican border in 1915.
When he was back in 1916, he was swimming down at the Cedar River.
They used to have to 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.
And in the hospital in France, the nurse attending
him was one and the same.
She was the woman that he had saved.
Wow.
Some years back here in Cedar Rapids, I had the honor and privilege to meet Colonel Robert Ray.
This gentleman was actually a survivor of three and a half years, Japanese prisoner of war, and a survivor of the baton death march.
Wow.
Now, one of my sons was kind of young at the time, and when he was getting more foreign health, he went and 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 maps and talking about the whole experience of being a prisoner of war, maps of where the prisoners had escaped, 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 through.
hear exactly 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 but you know meeting somebody that got through all of that 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.
It
was.
The brutality that they went through and prisoners of war the Americans went through I was you just couldn't really comprehend it
the baton death march if the soldiers were wounded the Japanese used him for band at practice at night.
Good God.
It was really an honor
to meet somebody like that and a privilege.
And from what his daughter was saying, and she had never known any of this, and I can't imagine how she felt.
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?
Oh, his state of mind was that.
Excellent.
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.
Yeah.
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.
Like you say, what an honor and a privilege to hear a story from that man.
A
lot of relatives
I'm all proud of all of my brother in Vietnam too.
And a happy Veterans Day for all of them.
My dad had several brothers.
He was next to the youngest.
And his brother was in the Navy stationed in Pearl Harbor.
And he was killed on Arizona and is in tomb there.
And on the 50th anniversary, I sent my mom and dad there so that my dad could be, we were hoping would be on the memorial.
I'm
sure you're on go on the memorial.
Yeah,
I'm sorry.
My dad said one day he's getting letters from his brother and then the next day, nothing.
He was supposed to accept that his brother was gone.
Right.
And so when my dad was 17, he joined the Navy about a year before it was gonna 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 on me yet.
So anyway, my sister worked for the government.
So she called the department of the Navy and they said, you know, the department of them, we're going to get together.
They had one day in the mail yet cause he knows nothing about this.
This was a surprise that I was doing for them on their anniversary.
Wow.
That's great.
Anyway, yeah.
So in the mail, he gets from the commander of the specific fleet.
He gets this, you know, beautifully handwritten envelope and he has no idea.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And he opened it up and it's an invitation to be on the memorial.
And he was, of course, was brought to tears and he said, you know, this is better than winning the lottery to me.
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 said, it was...
that
is awesome what an awesome daughter for you to do that for your dad I imagine how appreciative he
was
three of my brothers were veterans, so thank you to them
also.
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