Veterans Day: The Moth Podcast

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Speaker 2 The moth is supported by AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca is committed to spreading awareness of a condition called hereditary transthyroidin-mediated amyloidosis, or HATTR.

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Speaker 3 Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm John Goode, your host for this week.

Speaker 3 Originally coined as Armistice Day by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919, the day we now hold as Veterans Day is a day that elevates and celebrates those who stood a post around the world in defense of freedom.

Speaker 3 Every year, on November the 11th, we remember and honor their commitment, service, and sacrifice. Our first story this week comes from Scott Young.

Speaker 3 Scott told this story at a grand slam in London, where the theme of the night was lost and found. Here's Scott live at the moth.

Speaker 4 If I'm complimented at all on my physical appearance, it's usually one of two things: my thick, full beard or my beefy, muscular legs.

Speaker 4 I get both from my mother.

Speaker 4 She's only 5'2, but she is built thick and has a hirsuteness many men would envy. I grew up to the acrid smell of the wax she boiled mornings to remove the whiskers from her chin.

Speaker 4 Yet all he ever heard growing up was, just like your father.

Speaker 4 Now I knew that wasn't physical because my dad's 6'4 and had a baby smooth face and as my mother liked to say, had to run around in the shower to get wet. He was so skinny.

Speaker 4 Not the jeans I got.

Speaker 4 So what was it about me that made me like my father? It's hard being compared to a ghost.

Speaker 4 See, my father died fighting in the Vietnam War when I I was only two. He was 21 and he had a choice.

Speaker 4 He could get released from active duty one month early or he could spend a week on leave in Hawaii with my mother and I. He chose to get out of active duty early.

Speaker 4 He died a war hero, killed by mortar fire, rescuing injured soldiers on the week he would have been in Hawaii with us.

Speaker 4 On my mother's birthday.

Speaker 4 If you wrote it as fiction, your editor would cut it because it's not believable.

Speaker 4 But it's my life.

Speaker 4 My father was drafted because he quit his job, left my mother and I, and took off to San Francisco for what he hoped would be the second summer of love.

Speaker 4 I can hardly blame him for that. He came back with a draft notice and said he was against the war and he wanted to ditch the draft and for my mom and I to run away to Canada with him.

Speaker 4 My mother said no.

Speaker 4 My mother said, be a man and fight for your country.

Speaker 4 Her regret is deep.

Speaker 4 Now when kids would ask me about my father, and I'd say he died in the war, they'd always say, I'm sorry, and I'd say, don't be, I never knew him. I was super defensive and I was...

Speaker 4 I resented their pity, but I was, you know, angry, and I didn't know why, so I just sort of buried those feelings.

Speaker 4 I did know that the Vietnam War veterans didn't get any parades. Nobody spoke with pride of serving in the one war America lost.

Speaker 4 And nobody back then honored my mother and I by calling us a gold star family. The Vietnam War was a mistake.
It was an embarrassment.

Speaker 4 And there was no space for me to be proud of my father, this war hero. So I wasn't.

Speaker 4 I was 24 when I decided to go to Bill Clinton's inauguration, a kind of last minute idea.

Speaker 4 And I was buoyed by his win, hopeful for the future, and I wanted to see this monument that they'd built for the Vietnam War veterans. And I knew my dad's name was on, and

Speaker 4 I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, so I purposely decided I wouldn't choose which day I would go there.

Speaker 4 So it was the third day I was there, and I found myself standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, looking down at the black gash of granite, and decided it was time.

Speaker 4 Now, when you enter, you can give them the name of a person, and they'll print out a piece of paper that shows you the location so you can find it.

Speaker 4 And I couldn't believe what the paper said.

Speaker 4 It said Ronald L. Young,

Speaker 4 born January 19th.

Speaker 4 It was January 19th.

Speaker 4 He died when I was two. We never celebrated his birthday.
The only birthday I thought of with my dad really was my mother's, the day he died, which was always a miserable experience, but still,

Speaker 4 I randomly decided to go that day.

Speaker 4 I found my father's name on the wall.

Speaker 4 I ran my fingers over the etching.

Speaker 4 Facing the high black gloss of the Vietnam War Memorial is like seeing yourself through a mirror darkly. All of the complicated feelings around the Vietnam War.

Speaker 4 are embodied

Speaker 4 in the monument designed by Maya Lin. It is a splendid visual metaphor.
I could see the Washington monument proud, reflected, as though through a bleak haze.

Speaker 4 And I reflected for the first time in my life on my own loss.

Speaker 4 Standing there

Speaker 4 in the sea of flowers, mementos, notes, American flags of all sizes, burning candles everywhere at my feet. I was overwhelmed.

Speaker 4 I suddenly realized, you know, all those times people said sorry, and I said, don't be, I never knew him, was exactly why they were sorry.

Speaker 4 And why I was so sorry now.

Speaker 3 I wept.

Speaker 4 A stranger came up to me and put their arm around me while I cried.

Speaker 4 When I finally looked, I was stunned to see it was just a young girl, too young to be the daughter of anyone on the wall.

Speaker 4 She bared witness to my grief.

Speaker 4 We didn't speak.

Speaker 4 We didn't have to.

Speaker 4 I've now lived 30 more years than my father did.

Speaker 4 I never fought in a war, and I don't think I'm anybody's hero, but people still say, well, honestly, mostly my mother, you're just like your father.

Speaker 3 And now,

Speaker 4 now that makes me

Speaker 4 Thank you.

Speaker 3 That was Scott Young. Scott has always been a storyteller.

Speaker 3 From spinning fantastical tales on the playground, to publishing articles about LA nightlife, to creating marketing narratives as a creative director, Scott believes that we find life's meaning through story.

Speaker 3 To see some photos of Scott's family and of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, head to our website, themoth.org/slash extras.

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Speaker 3 Our next storyteller is Tom Sitter. Tom told this story at a story slam in Madison where the theme of the night was karma.

Speaker 3 Be sure to stick around after the applause to hear a one-of-a-kind conversation that I had with Tom, veteran to veteran.

Speaker 3 Here's Tom, live at the moth.

Speaker 3 Thank you.

Speaker 3 Hi, my name is Tom Sitter.

Speaker 3 93 years old and still breathing.

Speaker 3 Now,

Speaker 3 during World War II, I found myself

Speaker 3 in France.

Speaker 3 Now, the Battle of the Bulge had started in December of that year and continued through January.

Speaker 3 When we got there, it was pretty much over, but we were I was in a medical battalion and we had to clean up pretty much we carried bodies and parts of bodies and prisoners to uh

Speaker 3 to station hospitals into the aid cents

Speaker 3 now

Speaker 3 over there we ran into our arch enemies the 9th armored division these guys were all tankers and they were mean and we had all both trained in kansas during uh near fort riley during world war ii

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 we and the cavalry, I was in the cavalry at the time, we had these great uniform boots and breeches. And they really turned a lot of heads and we knew it.
We were

Speaker 3 pretty cocky. Anyway, we'd go into town and when the tankers would be there, oh by the way,

Speaker 3 in 42 they still had horse cavalry down at Fort Riley in addition to the mechanized cavalry. So when we go into town, the tankers would be in these bars.

Speaker 3 We'd come walking in and they'd say, I smell horse shit. The 29th must be here.

Speaker 3 And we gave as good as we got. As a result, there were a lot of fights going on, a lot of them.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 we would instigate fights. Well, we'd sing a cavalry song.
Bear with me.

Speaker 3 We'd say, the cavalry, the cavalry, with dirt behind their ears.

Speaker 3 The cavalry, the cavalry, they drink up all the beers. The infantry and tankers and the corps of engineers.
They couldn't whip the cavalry in 100,000 years.

Speaker 3 Well, that created quite a

Speaker 3 lot of fights too. Anyways,

Speaker 3 when we got over to Europe, we ran into the 9th Armored Division. I'll tell you how.

Speaker 3 When we first landed, the 20th Armored Division, our 12,000 men,

Speaker 3 tanks and

Speaker 3 armored cars and jeeps and everything else.

Speaker 3 The first thing they did when we landed in France was to break us up into segments and they put us with the 1st, the 3rd, and the 9th Army. So we were part of the 9th Army and

Speaker 3 up near the Rhine. We were next to the British and Canadian troops.
And during that time,

Speaker 3 we did ambulance duties and

Speaker 3 moved wounded and dead.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 we noticed when we got up to

Speaker 3 to close to the Rhine, our hearts sank. We knew, first of all, the Germans, when they retreated after the battle, they blew up bridges all the way.

Speaker 3 And we knew that when we got to the Rhine, we saw that immense body of water, we knew our hearts sank. We knew we were going to have to cross it, probably in rubber rafts or tiny boats.

Speaker 3 So we didn't look forward to that. And my Rosary got a pretty good workout during that time.

Speaker 3 Anyway,

Speaker 3 finally,

Speaker 3 this is, by now it was February of 1945.

Speaker 3 Now the Rhine River started as a trickle in the Swiss Alps and when it comes, goes northeasterly flowing into the North Sea, it becomes a huge river, you know, hundreds of yards across.

Speaker 3 And we just were frightened at the thought of crossing that.

Speaker 3 By early March, we had good news. Someone had captured a bridge at Ramagen.
It was a railway trestle bridge. And it was captured by our old arch enemies, the 9th Armored Division.

Speaker 3 Great guys.

Speaker 3 So anyway, we finally,

Speaker 3 we reunited, the 20th Armored Division, finally went to the point where we were going to cross. Now, the 9th Armored Division had fought terribly hard to win that.

Speaker 3 The Germans tried to blow up the trestle bridge and what happened is some of the charges, for some reason,

Speaker 3 God only knows, they didn't go off. So the 9th Armory had to go into that trestle

Speaker 3 under fire and to cut ire, cut wires, remove charges that didn't detonate. At any moment they thought the thing would go up into their face.

Speaker 3 And then at top of it, the bridge now was intact, but it was tilted and very shaky.

Speaker 3 You couldn't get a vehicle across there.

Speaker 3 So the 9th Armory dismounted, had crawled under fire, went across that bridge one at a time, under fire, and they established a bridgehead on the other side of the river.

Speaker 3 And they held that bridgehead, those

Speaker 3 lucky so-and-so's, held that bridge long enough for pontoon bridges to be built where we were. Well, the 20th Armored Division finally was united and we were going to cross at that point.

Speaker 3 Now when we got in our ambulance, we started off across a pontoon, a very flimsy pontoon bridge. The big bridges, sturdy ones, were for tanks and trucks.

Speaker 3 But as we got onto this pontoon, I could tell it was shaking. We were swaying from side to side and dipping and everything else.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 the water was choppy and the water was black and it was cold. It was in March.

Speaker 3 And we knew that if we made one mistake, that ambulance was going to go into the water with us in it and in doing so we're going to wreck that pontoon bridge, which means that if we survived the water floating downstream, our own troops would have been shooting at us.

Speaker 3 And who were waiting to cross the bridge, of course. But we finally got across the bridge.
We went over on the other side of the bridge, we reunited,

Speaker 3 and the 20th Army Division was attached to the

Speaker 3 7th Army. And we swept through Germany.
Now we went through down along Mannheim and Augsburg and south and east, and finally got to Dachau. Now that's another story, I won't go into it.

Speaker 3 And we got to Munich and finally we crossed the river and got

Speaker 3 into Bavaria. And as we headed towards the Austrian border, we almost reached it on May 7th, 1945.

Speaker 3 And the war ended.

Speaker 3 Now, yesterday was May 7th.

Speaker 3 And,

Speaker 3 I mean, talk about 72 years.

Speaker 3 And to this day, I'm here telling that story because I wouldn't be here had it not been for those

Speaker 3 incredible bravery of those glorious bastards,

Speaker 3 the 9th Armored Division.

Speaker 3 Let's hear for Tom Sitter.

Speaker 3 That was Tom Sitter. Tom was born on August 16th, 1923, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Speaker 3 He's a retired building and fire inspector and World War II combat medic who served in the European Rhineland and Central Europe campaigns.

Speaker 3 In his 40-month Army service, he was a motorcyclist in both the mechanized cavalry and military police, a medic, bugler, boxer, and litter-bearer. Litter-bearer is not what it sounds like.

Speaker 3 In this instance, litter means stretcher. Tom currently resides in Madison, Wisconsin.

Speaker 3 In the conversation you're about to hear, it is my distinct honor and privilege to speak with Tom about his life and service in the Army.

Speaker 3 Hello, this is John. Is this Mr.
Tom Sitter?

Speaker 7 This is he, yes.

Speaker 3 Fantastic. It is an honor and a pleasure to have this conversation with you.

Speaker 3 First off, as always, I'd like to thank you for your service, for all that you, you know, have done for this country and for us. I myself, I was in the Marine Corps during the first Desert Storm.

Speaker 3 And guys like you definitely like paved the way for guys like me to come along and just follow in your footsteps.

Speaker 3 You were a very young man when you joined the Army, like 20 years old. Is that correct?

Speaker 7 I just turned, yeah, I just turned 19.

Speaker 7 1942, yeah.

Speaker 3 Wow. So what inspired you to enlist?

Speaker 7 I had a Hollywood version of what the war was all about. You know,

Speaker 7 I had no idea what war or anything was really like, but we were all filled with enthusiasm in those days, young guys.

Speaker 3 Right.

Speaker 3 So once you got in and got enlisted and did boot camp and went over, how did that change you as a person? Like once you saw what war really was.

Speaker 3 How did that, I guess, inform these formative years of yours?

Speaker 7 Well,

Speaker 7 over a long period of time, it made me a pacifist

Speaker 7 and

Speaker 7 abhorred war. It wasn't until after, well, after I'd been in combat for a while and then I lost my very best friend, Roy Sanders, who was killed with 36th Infantry.

Speaker 7 I gradually,

Speaker 7 it wasn't a sudden thing. It was like over the years, I just

Speaker 7 thought that war was so... so useless.

Speaker 7 And nobody really wins in a war.

Speaker 3 What's one of your most vivid memories from your combat days?

Speaker 7 Our division was one of two that liberated the Krau, the concentration camp. And that is something I will never, never, ever forget.
It was just mind-twisting to see people treated like that.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 on May 7th of 1945, when Germany surrendered, with all you had been through, like, how did that feel to you? Do you remember that date?

Speaker 7 Yeah, I'll tell you, for one thing, the war was winding down. We knew the last week or so of the war, there was hardly any resistance at all.

Speaker 7 Germans were coming out of the woods with their hands up, hundreds and hundreds of Germans trying to surrender.

Speaker 7 They had to be very careful. Some of them would come out of the woods, they'd get shot.

Speaker 3 Oh, wow. When you heard they surrendered, where, I mean, you knew ahead of time, but when you got the official word,

Speaker 3 was it just thoughts of like, oh, well, you know, we're heading home now?

Speaker 7 Yeah, we were down in bavaria very close to the um austrian border and uh berchtesgarten which was which was hitler's mountain retreat uh i had the privilege of going through that place too

Speaker 7 that was really something to

Speaker 7 never forget

Speaker 7 uh i

Speaker 7 i we were going through we got Everybody was on a rush. Everybody assumed that Hitler was hiding down there.

Speaker 7 When the war was ending, we were in a race after we left Achau to get to Berchesgarten to capture Hitler and Martin Bormann.

Speaker 3 Oh, wow, okay.

Speaker 7 The French were also headed in that direction, and the 101st airborne. The 101st airborne got there first,

Speaker 7 so they took over at Berchesgarten. So, when we got there, we were swarming through the place like a bunch of locusts, you know, trying to get souvenirs.

Speaker 3 I did pick up a couple, but anyway,

Speaker 7 I heard a couple guys, hey, sitter, sitter, come in here.

Speaker 7 I walked in this big bathroom. It was the largest bathroom, and we assumed it was Hitler's.
And they were both taking a leak into the bathtub, and I went with them.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 7 I want to be known as somebody that pissed in Hitler's bathtub.

Speaker 3 Listen, I think you should get business cards, and that should be.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 7 I thought they had that show on TV years ago, I've Got a Secret. I thought they get on that show.
They've never guessed in a million years what I did.

Speaker 3 So after you,

Speaker 3 you know, after

Speaker 3 your enlistment was over, after you got out of the army, how was your adjustment back to civilian life?

Speaker 7 We got back across. Here's millions and millions of young guys looking for jobs.
Jobs are really hard to find. And you didn't have much choice, but we got out early enough in

Speaker 7 January of 1945.

Speaker 7 And the bulk of the guys getting discharged were still in service. So we got ahead of a lot of guys.
So, but there weren't, we were unskilled, you know, we had to take whatever job was offered.

Speaker 7 But I was struggling along with a lot of other guys. It didn't, you know, the skills that we had learned in service were not helpful.

Speaker 7 Right.

Speaker 3 So now, you know, at the age of 98 years young,

Speaker 3 having, you know, lived through World War II and having served and having seen everything that's come since all of the other wars.

Speaker 3 What advice do you have for like the younger generation or the world at large today?

Speaker 7 Oh boy, probably all the things that my mother taught me. Try to be honest.
Don't never, never lie to yourself.

Speaker 7 Many of us have done that. We've done things that were wrong and we lied to ourselves to do it.
Treat people like you would treat themselves. And

Speaker 7 I've learned to hate bigotry.

Speaker 7 I don't have much hate for a thing, but there's a lot of disgust for

Speaker 7 people that

Speaker 7 are bigoted.

Speaker 3 Which is something because, you know, World War II, I mean, part of what's at the root of that war is bigotry. You know, the root of bigotry is ignorance.

Speaker 3 And then, you know, once you're around a group of people and you get to know them, then you're like, oh, wow, most of what I've been told isn't true. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And, you know, in the military, they would always say, you know, we're all the same in a foxhole. There is no black, no white.
We're just, we're in here together trying to push toward the same goal.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 speaking of goals, I heard that a few years back, you won the Story Slam in Madison.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I won.

Speaker 3 Fantastic.

Speaker 3 That's the best experience.

Speaker 7 Yes, I'm bragging now, but you're the first one ever to get a 10.

Speaker 3 Oh, I love it. I love it.
You should put that on your business card.

Speaker 3 Urinator in Hitler's Tub and the first person to get a 10 at the Madison Storage Limp. Well, Tom, thank you so much for your time today.
We greatly appreciate it.

Speaker 7 It was nice talking to you.

Speaker 3 All right. Bye-bye.

Speaker 3 To see some photos of Tom, head to our website, themoth.org/slash extras.

Speaker 3 That's all for this episode. From all of us here at The Moth, have a story-worthy week.

Speaker 8 John Goode is an Emmy-nominated writer raised in Richmond, Virginia and currently residing in Atlanta, Georgia.

Speaker 8 John's work has been featured on CNN's Black in America, HBO's Deaf Poetry Jam, and TV1's Verses in Flow.

Speaker 8 He has written a collection of poetry and short stories entitled Conduit and a novel entitled Midas. John is a fellow of Air Sarinby and current host of The Moth Atlanta.

Speaker 8 This episode of The Moth podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Janess, Sarah Jane Johnson, Julia Purcell, and me, Davey Sumner.

Speaker 8 The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Clouce, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Gladowski, and Aldi Kaza.

Speaker 8 All moth stories are true as remembered by storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, visit our website, themoth.org.

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