May 28, 2024 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Paul Monti, father of Medal of Honor recipient Jared Monti, tells his son's story.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories
Memorial Day special. All so long, we're honoring our nation's
fallen heroes. You might know the song I Drive Your
Truck by Lee Brice. It went to the top of
the country charts in twenty fourteen. But do you know
the story of the man who inspired the song. His
(00:32):
name was Jared Monty and he was a hero of
the highest caliber. Jared received the Medal of Honor for
his actions in Afghanistan in two thousand and six. Here
to tell Jared's story is Paul Monty, his father.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I think his lot in life was to try to
bring joy to anybody and everybody that he ever met. Well,
Jared was a very adventurous kid. There wasn't a tree
too high for m to climb, or a hill. There
wasn't a body of water too wide, too deep for
him to cross. There were certain characteristics in him that
(01:14):
became apparent as he grew. We liked to talk about
his life in terms of three principles that he lived by,
the first of which was to always try the hardest.
In this we noticed with him, whether it was sports
or school or anything else that he had to do
he was a kid that always gave a hundred percent
(01:37):
to everything he did. His second principle was to never
give up, and that became also a parent. One of
the stories I liked to tell regarding that was, uh,
he was a really, really good basketball player. He was
a pretty much the shortest kid in his class, but
he was a heck of a basketball player. And when
he went to middle school, he tried out for the
(01:58):
JV team and he was the last one cut from
the team. His fellow players said they were all going
to quit because Monty wasn't picked, and Jared got them
together and talked to them and said, hey, you don't quit.
(02:19):
You guys keep going. Don't worry about me. So that passed,
and the next year middle school, he tried out for
the team again, and again he was the last cut.
And then the third year he tried out again, this
time for the varsity and the varsity coach came up
to him and said, Jared, why don't you accept the
(02:41):
position as team manager and you can warm up with
the team before games, but of course you can't play,
and he accepted that. After the second game, the coach
found a uniform for him, because you know, it was
kind of embarrassing. He was the only one in street
clothes warming up. After the third game, the coach started
(03:02):
using him as, you know, a mop up player towards
the end of a game. By the end of the season,
he was outscoring some of the starters on the team.
At his graduation from middle school, when they were giving
out the awards for the basketball team, the coach got
up and read all the names, and then when he
(03:24):
got to the end, he said, he said, this last
guy is the epitome of what an athlete should be.
And he's the biggest mistake that I ever made in
my twenty five years of coaching basketball. What an honor
to a young man, and what courage it took for
him to do that, and to be that guy that
(03:44):
you know, never gave up, that kept on trying. What
a character he must have had to do that kind
of a thing. He always did the right thing, no
matter what it cost him personally. Doing the right thing
was just out of him. You know. One day when
(04:05):
I came home and looked in his room, his bed
was missing, and I called him and Jared, where's your bed?
He said, well, Dad, one of my friends was kicked
out of his house. He's sleeping over someone else's house
and they don't have a bed for him. He's sleeping
on the floor and he can't sleep. I don't mind
sleeping on the floor, Dad, so I gave him my bed.
(04:27):
Another incident, he came to me one day and said, Dad,
would you mind if I cut down one of those
spruce trees we have in the front of the house.
I said, well, what do you want that for. He said, well,
guys and I we want to have we want to
have our own Christmas tree. I said, well, okay, go ahead.
(04:49):
And it was only after his death when one of
his friends came up to me and said, mister Mounty,
you remember that Christmas tree Jared cut down, And I said, yeah, Well,
he didn't really cut that down for us. He found
a single mom in town that had three kids and
didn't have enough money to celebrate Christmas with the kids.
(05:10):
So he brought it to her house and got lights
for it and ornaments for it. He bought presents for
all the kids and for the woman, and then he
stayed and made Christmas dinner for them all and never
told the soul. It's these kinds of things that he did,
(05:33):
and with great humility. I remember a day when he
asked me to drive him to a weightlifting competition. I did.
I drove him there and I said, well, when do
you want me to pick you up or he want
me to come in? And he said no, no, no,
no no, I'll get a ride home with somebody else. Now,
after his death, I went up to clean his room
(05:53):
and underneath his bed was a box full of trophies.
He had soccer trophies and baseball trophies and basketball trophies.
But what stood out was this three foot trophy that
was under the bed of a weightlifter. And I read
the plaque and it said New England Weightlifting Championships, first
(06:14):
place under seventeen division. Jared Monty never told anybody it
wasn't being done for personal gain. It was just this
is something I want to do to, you know, for myself,
(06:34):
and that's what he did. It just carried on throughout
his life, and the culmination of all of that was
on that day that he died.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And you're listening to Paul Monty tell the story of
his fallen son. Am I goodness. If you're a son
and your dad speaks these words over you like this,
you are a one lucky man. And if you're a
dad who gets to speak these words about a son,
lucky father. When we come back, more of this remarkable story,
this beautiful story, Father and son bond, A fallen soldier's
(07:07):
story honoring all those who fell in all of our wars.
Here a Memorial Day More of Paulmonte's story and Jared's
here on Our American Stories. Liehabib here the host of
(07:31):
our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing
inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our
big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do
the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to Auramericanstories dot com and click the
(07:51):
donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to
Alamerican Stories dot com and give. And we returned to
our American Stories Memorial Day special in the story of
(08:14):
Sergeant first Class Jared Monty. When we last left off
Paul Monty, Jared's father was telling us about the kind
of person that his son was. Let's pick up where
we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Well, it was his junior year in high school, and
he came home and his dad, can I talk to you?
He said sure. He said, I want to join the army. Dad,
And I said, world, whoa whoah, Wait a minute, I said,
you know you're you're an age student. You're going to
go to college. Son. I said, well, Dad, you can't
afford to sum me to college. And I said, well,
(08:51):
you know, Jared, I'll just get another job. He said, Dad,
you're already working two and three jobs. Let me do this.
I'll go in the army and they'll pay for my college.
What was I to say? You know, being only seventeen,
I had to sign papers for him, and I did
(09:14):
very reluctantly. But you know, like I had said before,
he was a very adventurous kid. This really appealed to him,
this idea of you know, the adventure of the military
and seeing the world. And he loved his country, so
there it was. It was made for him. He was
(09:37):
a thirteen f Ford observer, what we used to call
the suicide squad because they were always operating behind enemy lines.
That bothered me too, I mean, like I said, we
called it the suicide squad. But dangerous things never bothered him.
You know, he loved the roller coaster, he loved riding
a motorcycle. That kind of thing didn't bother him, and
(10:00):
especially in the military where he knew how important it
was to saving lives. That's what he loved. He number
of times got himself into trouble in the military for
that kind of a thing, of being a little more
(10:20):
adventurous than some officer wanted him to be. I remember
an incident in South Korea where he had to take
his platoon out on basically a war games maneuver, and
(10:41):
they came to a stream which was flowing really quickly.
They were supposed to cross this stream, and when Jarvid
saw the stream, he halted his guys and said, you
know what, that doesn't look safe at all. Let me
go out and check it and make sure it's safe
(11:01):
for all of us. Now, being a sergeant at that time,
normally you would assign that to you a private or someone,
but Jared always led from the front. It was always
my boy's dad, my boys. He looked upon them as
(11:22):
young people that he had to protect. It was his
job to make sure his guys were safe. So he
forwarded the stream, but he ended up getting washed downstream.
They all thought he was dead, but luckily enough there
was a floating branch in the water that he was
(11:43):
able to cling to until they found him and took
him out. But that's again, it was always a matter
of him taking the chances and not allowing his boys
to be in the line of danger. That's just who
(12:04):
he was, it's just what he did. And yeah, he
ended up being twice deployed to Afghanistan. Probably the most
dangerous area in all of Afghanistan was this area in
(12:25):
the Kuna Valley. This was the place where the Taliban
would come in from Pakistan. This was their main route,
and the army had decided that they were gonna put
a kebash on this. They had tried number of times
and were never successful, but they did put together this plan.
(12:49):
So Jared with his platoon and Chris Cunningham, who was
another sergeant. He was a sniper and he had his snipers.
So there were sixteen of them all together. Eight of
them were four observers and eight snipers, and they were
tasks to climb this mountain. The mountain was eighty five
(13:10):
hundred feet high. To set up an observation post at
the top of the mountain to view the crossing area
down below in the valley so that they could call
in fire when the main force a day later was
to come into the valley. So, in one hundred degree
(13:33):
heat and all of these guys carrying, you know, packs
of seventy plus pounds, climbing mostly at night, they climbed
hill twenty six ' ten. It took them two days
to climb that. Now, as an aside to that, the
night before they left to make this climb, I got
(13:57):
a call very early in the mon got me out
of bed, Get out of bed. I answered the phone.
He said hello, and I heard hi, Pop, Happy Father's Day.
And I was like shocked that he would call me
(14:18):
to wish me a happy Father's Day. And at the
end of that conversation he said, Dad, I gotta go.
We're leaving on a mission. And that's when they left
to climb that mountain. It was hot, they were out
(14:38):
of food, they were out of water, and the army
had made provisions to have an air drop for them
at the same time they were going into the valley
so that the helicopter dropping their provisions wouldn't be noticed. However,
because one helicopter was down needed repairs. The army decided
(15:03):
to postpone the attack into the valley for two days,
which left the guys at the top without food and water,
and the army then decided to send in their supply helicopter. Anyway,
the helicopter came in, it missed the drop point and
(15:24):
dropped the stuff way too near them, mocking their position.
As the sun was setting on that day, they heard
noises in the woods that surrounded this plateau about half
(15:44):
the size of a football field, and at that point
all hell broke loose. Small arms fire machine guns RPGs
started raining on their position so badly that these guys
couldn't pop their head up. One of them got his
(16:06):
rifle shot out of his hands. Another one was shot
in the in the wrist and in the back. The
trees surrounding them had no branches left on them, and
Private Bradbury and another soldier who had been kind of
(16:27):
at the point, they were in danger of being overrun,
and so they decided to run back to the opposite end,
where there were some rocks they could hide behind. The
one soldier made it, the Bradbury was hit and he
was down. You know, it's like being in the middle
of a of a football field or a baseball field,
(16:49):
totally devoid of any cover whatsoever, no rocks, no trees,
and the enemy was still fighting at 'em. Jared called
in for artillery, mortars, air support, danger close, which I
think people understand. That means the bombs are going to
(17:11):
be dropping so close to you that if you're not down,
the chances are you're going to be killed as well
as the enemy. And after calling in the coordinates, that's
when Jared he handed off the radio to someone else,
and that's when he tightened his chin strap. And Chris
Cunningham had said, I'm going out to get Bradbury in.
(17:35):
Jared answered him back and said, no, he's my boy.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
I'm going to get him when we come back. More
of the remarkable story of Jared and Paul Monty here
on our American Stories. And we returned to our American
(18:10):
Stories Memorial Day Special and the story of Sergeant first
Class Jared Monty. When we last left off, Jared and
a group of men he had helped to lead into
one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan were surrounded
by a group of fifty insurgents, outmanned and outgunned. And
to add to the situation, Brian J. Bradbury was down
and exposed to enemy fire. Jared decided he would expose
(18:33):
himself too, in order to save his private Let's return
to the story.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
He ran out to get Bradbury in. He was driven
back by the heavy enemy fire. There were at least
fifty Taliban firing at them. And then he tried a
second time and was driven back a second time, and
you know, not being able to give up and wanting
to do the right thing, out he went the third time.
(19:01):
That's when he was hit to the APG and he
was killed. And that's that's what led up to him
receiving the Medal of Honor. I haven't gotten through it.
(19:24):
Next month will be fifteen years and I'm still stuck
in it. No one should lose a child. It's not
supposed to happen that way. It's you know, the parents
go first and the children grieve for them. I'll never
forget that night, nine forty five pm and sitting watching
(19:47):
America's Got Talent, and my doorbell rang, and I saw
two men come around the side of the hu in
uniform and I knew immediately, you know, you answer the
door and you get the government response. You know, we
(20:21):
we need to inform you that you know your son
was was killed in action, and from that moment on,
you just you're off somewhere. I remember sitting down with
them at the dining room table and having a stack
of papers shoved in front of me and asked to
(20:42):
sign this. Sign this, sign this, and you just go
through the motions. You don't want to believe what they're saying.
You want to think that someone made a mistake. I
was so I was so messed up. I mean, his guys,
(21:02):
they couldn't believe what happened. Monty was so revered to
them that nothing could ever happen to him. To this day,
they have the same feeling. They all. I don't think
any of them have ever gotten over what happened. He
(21:23):
wasn't just you know, their sergeant. He was their friend. Yeah,
I'm your boss and I'm gonna, you know, guide you,
but I'm going to be your friend. Back in the States,
every weekend he would either be going to someone's house
(21:44):
to help them put in a floor, or he was
having a barbecue for them, or if there was a
celebration for one of their children, he would be there.
He took care of them as if they were and
indeed they were his brothers. That's where my pride comes
(22:07):
in that he was such a good human being that
I wonder if I'm even worthy to be called his father.
It's really very, very difficult to understand that a person
like this is related to you, never mind being your
own son. I wasn't even expecting the truck. When they
(22:38):
delivered all his stuff from his apartment in New York.
The last thing that came off was his truck, and
I was like, wow, there was a empty bottle, well
it wasn't quite empty on the floorboards. He liked his jaw,
so he always had a bottle with to spit into.
(23:02):
That was in there. At toothpaste in there. He had mouthwashed,
He had a toothbrush, he had Yeah, he had a
little container of coins. He had Oh lord, just you
know a guy's truck. I mean, it's pretty much the
(23:23):
same even now, fifteen years later as it was when
he left. I never vacuumed it. It sure needs it,
but I just don't want to remove his DNA. I
don't want that sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. So yeah,
it's a little messy, but it's him and he's with
(23:45):
me when I drive it, so I don't drive it
as much as I used to. It was my everyday
vehicle for a while, and then I realized that it
had to be preserved, so I got another vehicle. But
I still make sure it drive his truck whenever, whenever
I can, at least once a week to get it
out and run it. Some people have said, you know,
(24:11):
time heals all wounds. It doesn't. It absolutely doesn't. I'm
fifteen years in and it's almost like it happened yesterday.
This is the way it is. The way my life
is now. You know, there's a door in front of
me with my son's name on it, and I'm expecting
(24:36):
to be able to open that door and go and
visit him, and go to sports games with him, and
go fishing with him, and just have him over my
house for a barbecue, to hold his kids, my grandkids
(24:57):
on my lap. That's what I expect when I open
that door. But when I actually reach out and open
that door, it's just totally dark inside. There will be
no barbecues in the backyard, there will be no Red
Sox games, there will be no fishing trips, there will
(25:20):
be no grandkids. I know the Lord works in very
mysterious ways, and I know that no matter who you are,
when a loved one dies, you always have that question
why God. But I was actually able to answer that question.
(25:43):
The whole thing that came about from my son's death,
the fact that we now have a charity that places
flags on every grave at the National Cemeterium born every
Memorial Day, in every Veterans Day, now placing seventy seven
(26:05):
thousand flags. The fact that we were able to give
out sixteen thousand dollars in scholarship money this year. The
effect that Jared's had on so many people, especially young people,
throughout the entire country, indeed in some cases the world.
(26:27):
It seems to me that God looked down and he said,
you know, Jared, you're doing a fabulous job on that planet,
but if you come up here with me, you'll be
able to do even more. And that's what he's been
doing since he passed, even.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
More in a spectacular job by Monty as always, and
my goodness, what a piece of storytelling from Paul Monty
and gotten through it. No one should lose a child
the parent goes first. He wasn't just their sergeant, he said,
(27:08):
he was their friend. He was such a good human being.
The story of Jared Monty, the story of Paul Monty.
Here on, all American stories.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories
Memorial Day special. All so long, we're honoring our nation's
fallen heroes. You might know the song I Drive Your
Truck by Lee Brice. It went to the top of
the country charts in twenty fourteen. But do you know
the story of the man who inspired the song. His
(00:32):
name was Jared Monty and he was a hero of
the highest caliber. Jared received the Medal of Honor for
his actions in Afghanistan in two thousand and six. Here
to tell Jared's story is Paul Monty, his father.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I think his lot in life was to try to
bring joy to anybody and everybody that he ever met. Well,
Jared was a very adventurous kid. There wasn't a tree
too high for m to climb, or a hill. There
wasn't a body of water too wide, too deep for
him to cross. There were certain characteristics in him that
(01:14):
became apparent as he grew. We liked to talk about
his life in terms of three principles that he lived by,
the first of which was to always try the hardest.
In this we noticed with him, whether it was sports
or school or anything else that he had to do
he was a kid that always gave a hundred percent
(01:37):
to everything he did. His second principle was to never
give up, and that became also a parent. One of
the stories I liked to tell regarding that was, uh,
he was a really, really good basketball player. He was
a pretty much the shortest kid in his class, but
he was a heck of a basketball player. And when
he went to middle school, he tried out for the
(01:58):
JV team and he was the last one cut from
the team. His fellow players said they were all going
to quit because Monty wasn't picked, and Jared got them
together and talked to them and said, hey, you don't quit.
(02:19):
You guys keep going. Don't worry about me. So that passed,
and the next year middle school, he tried out for
the team again, and again he was the last cut.
And then the third year he tried out again, this
time for the varsity and the varsity coach came up
to him and said, Jared, why don't you accept the
(02:41):
position as team manager and you can warm up with
the team before games, but of course you can't play,
and he accepted that. After the second game, the coach
found a uniform for him, because you know, it was
kind of embarrassing. He was the only one in street
clothes warming up. After the third game, the coach started
(03:02):
using him as, you know, a mop up player towards
the end of a game. By the end of the season,
he was outscoring some of the starters on the team.
At his graduation from middle school, when they were giving
out the awards for the basketball team, the coach got
up and read all the names, and then when he
(03:24):
got to the end, he said, he said, this last
guy is the epitome of what an athlete should be.
And he's the biggest mistake that I ever made in
my twenty five years of coaching basketball. What an honor
to a young man, and what courage it took for
him to do that, and to be that guy that
(03:44):
you know, never gave up, that kept on trying. What
a character he must have had to do that kind
of a thing. He always did the right thing, no
matter what it cost him personally. Doing the right thing
was just out of him. You know. One day when
(04:05):
I came home and looked in his room, his bed
was missing, and I called him and Jared, where's your bed?
He said, well, Dad, one of my friends was kicked
out of his house. He's sleeping over someone else's house
and they don't have a bed for him. He's sleeping
on the floor and he can't sleep. I don't mind
sleeping on the floor, Dad, so I gave him my bed.
(04:27):
Another incident, he came to me one day and said, Dad,
would you mind if I cut down one of those
spruce trees we have in the front of the house.
I said, well, what do you want that for. He said, well,
guys and I we want to have we want to
have our own Christmas tree. I said, well, okay, go ahead.
(04:49):
And it was only after his death when one of
his friends came up to me and said, mister Mounty,
you remember that Christmas tree Jared cut down, And I said, yeah, Well,
he didn't really cut that down for us. He found
a single mom in town that had three kids and
didn't have enough money to celebrate Christmas with the kids.
(05:10):
So he brought it to her house and got lights
for it and ornaments for it. He bought presents for
all the kids and for the woman, and then he
stayed and made Christmas dinner for them all and never
told the soul. It's these kinds of things that he did,
(05:33):
and with great humility. I remember a day when he
asked me to drive him to a weightlifting competition. I did.
I drove him there and I said, well, when do
you want me to pick you up or he want
me to come in? And he said no, no, no,
no no, I'll get a ride home with somebody else. Now,
after his death, I went up to clean his room
(05:53):
and underneath his bed was a box full of trophies.
He had soccer trophies and baseball trophies and basketball trophies.
But what stood out was this three foot trophy that
was under the bed of a weightlifter. And I read
the plaque and it said New England Weightlifting Championships, first
(06:14):
place under seventeen division. Jared Monty never told anybody it
wasn't being done for personal gain. It was just this
is something I want to do to, you know, for myself,
(06:34):
and that's what he did. It just carried on throughout
his life, and the culmination of all of that was
on that day that he died.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And you're listening to Paul Monty tell the story of
his fallen son. Am I goodness. If you're a son
and your dad speaks these words over you like this,
you are a one lucky man. And if you're a
dad who gets to speak these words about a son,
lucky father. When we come back, more of this remarkable story,
this beautiful story, Father and son bond, A fallen soldier's
(07:07):
story honoring all those who fell in all of our wars.
Here a Memorial Day More of Paulmonte's story and Jared's
here on Our American Stories. Liehabib here the host of
(07:31):
our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing
inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our
big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do
the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to Auramericanstories dot com and click the
(07:51):
donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to
Alamerican Stories dot com and give. And we returned to
our American Stories Memorial Day special in the story of
(08:14):
Sergeant first Class Jared Monty. When we last left off
Paul Monty, Jared's father was telling us about the kind
of person that his son was. Let's pick up where
we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Well, it was his junior year in high school, and
he came home and his dad, can I talk to you?
He said sure. He said, I want to join the army. Dad,
And I said, world, whoa whoah, Wait a minute, I said,
you know you're you're an age student. You're going to
go to college. Son. I said, well, Dad, you can't
afford to sum me to college. And I said, well,
(08:51):
you know, Jared, I'll just get another job. He said, Dad,
you're already working two and three jobs. Let me do this.
I'll go in the army and they'll pay for my college.
What was I to say? You know, being only seventeen,
I had to sign papers for him, and I did
(09:14):
very reluctantly. But you know, like I had said before,
he was a very adventurous kid. This really appealed to him,
this idea of you know, the adventure of the military
and seeing the world. And he loved his country, so
there it was. It was made for him. He was
(09:37):
a thirteen f Ford observer, what we used to call
the suicide squad because they were always operating behind enemy lines.
That bothered me too, I mean, like I said, we
called it the suicide squad. But dangerous things never bothered him.
You know, he loved the roller coaster, he loved riding
a motorcycle. That kind of thing didn't bother him, and
(10:00):
especially in the military where he knew how important it
was to saving lives. That's what he loved. He number
of times got himself into trouble in the military for
that kind of a thing, of being a little more
(10:20):
adventurous than some officer wanted him to be. I remember
an incident in South Korea where he had to take
his platoon out on basically a war games maneuver, and
(10:41):
they came to a stream which was flowing really quickly.
They were supposed to cross this stream, and when Jarvid
saw the stream, he halted his guys and said, you
know what, that doesn't look safe at all. Let me
go out and check it and make sure it's safe
(11:01):
for all of us. Now, being a sergeant at that time,
normally you would assign that to you a private or someone,
but Jared always led from the front. It was always
my boy's dad, my boys. He looked upon them as
(11:22):
young people that he had to protect. It was his
job to make sure his guys were safe. So he
forwarded the stream, but he ended up getting washed downstream.
They all thought he was dead, but luckily enough there
was a floating branch in the water that he was
(11:43):
able to cling to until they found him and took
him out. But that's again, it was always a matter
of him taking the chances and not allowing his boys
to be in the line of danger. That's just who
(12:04):
he was, it's just what he did. And yeah, he
ended up being twice deployed to Afghanistan. Probably the most
dangerous area in all of Afghanistan was this area in
(12:25):
the Kuna Valley. This was the place where the Taliban
would come in from Pakistan. This was their main route,
and the army had decided that they were gonna put
a kebash on this. They had tried number of times
and were never successful, but they did put together this plan.
(12:49):
So Jared with his platoon and Chris Cunningham, who was
another sergeant. He was a sniper and he had his snipers.
So there were sixteen of them all together. Eight of
them were four observers and eight snipers, and they were
tasks to climb this mountain. The mountain was eighty five
(13:10):
hundred feet high. To set up an observation post at
the top of the mountain to view the crossing area
down below in the valley so that they could call
in fire when the main force a day later was
to come into the valley. So, in one hundred degree
(13:33):
heat and all of these guys carrying, you know, packs
of seventy plus pounds, climbing mostly at night, they climbed
hill twenty six ' ten. It took them two days
to climb that. Now, as an aside to that, the
night before they left to make this climb, I got
(13:57):
a call very early in the mon got me out
of bed, Get out of bed. I answered the phone.
He said hello, and I heard hi, Pop, Happy Father's Day.
And I was like shocked that he would call me
(14:18):
to wish me a happy Father's Day. And at the
end of that conversation he said, Dad, I gotta go.
We're leaving on a mission. And that's when they left
to climb that mountain. It was hot, they were out
(14:38):
of food, they were out of water, and the army
had made provisions to have an air drop for them
at the same time they were going into the valley
so that the helicopter dropping their provisions wouldn't be noticed. However,
because one helicopter was down needed repairs. The army decided
(15:03):
to postpone the attack into the valley for two days,
which left the guys at the top without food and water,
and the army then decided to send in their supply helicopter. Anyway,
the helicopter came in, it missed the drop point and
(15:24):
dropped the stuff way too near them, mocking their position.
As the sun was setting on that day, they heard
noises in the woods that surrounded this plateau about half
(15:44):
the size of a football field, and at that point
all hell broke loose. Small arms fire machine guns RPGs
started raining on their position so badly that these guys
couldn't pop their head up. One of them got his
(16:06):
rifle shot out of his hands. Another one was shot
in the in the wrist and in the back. The
trees surrounding them had no branches left on them, and
Private Bradbury and another soldier who had been kind of
(16:27):
at the point, they were in danger of being overrun,
and so they decided to run back to the opposite end,
where there were some rocks they could hide behind. The
one soldier made it, the Bradbury was hit and he
was down. You know, it's like being in the middle
of a of a football field or a baseball field,
(16:49):
totally devoid of any cover whatsoever, no rocks, no trees,
and the enemy was still fighting at 'em. Jared called
in for artillery, mortars, air support, danger close, which I
think people understand. That means the bombs are going to
(17:11):
be dropping so close to you that if you're not down,
the chances are you're going to be killed as well
as the enemy. And after calling in the coordinates, that's
when Jared he handed off the radio to someone else,
and that's when he tightened his chin strap. And Chris
Cunningham had said, I'm going out to get Bradbury in.
(17:35):
Jared answered him back and said, no, he's my boy.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
I'm going to get him when we come back. More
of the remarkable story of Jared and Paul Monty here
on our American Stories. And we returned to our American
(18:10):
Stories Memorial Day Special and the story of Sergeant first
Class Jared Monty. When we last left off, Jared and
a group of men he had helped to lead into
one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan were surrounded
by a group of fifty insurgents, outmanned and outgunned. And
to add to the situation, Brian J. Bradbury was down
and exposed to enemy fire. Jared decided he would expose
(18:33):
himself too, in order to save his private Let's return
to the story.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
He ran out to get Bradbury in. He was driven
back by the heavy enemy fire. There were at least
fifty Taliban firing at them. And then he tried a
second time and was driven back a second time, and
you know, not being able to give up and wanting
to do the right thing, out he went the third time.
(19:01):
That's when he was hit to the APG and he
was killed. And that's that's what led up to him
receiving the Medal of Honor. I haven't gotten through it.
(19:24):
Next month will be fifteen years and I'm still stuck
in it. No one should lose a child. It's not
supposed to happen that way. It's you know, the parents
go first and the children grieve for them. I'll never
forget that night, nine forty five pm and sitting watching
(19:47):
America's Got Talent, and my doorbell rang, and I saw
two men come around the side of the hu in
uniform and I knew immediately, you know, you answer the
door and you get the government response. You know, we
(20:21):
we need to inform you that you know your son
was was killed in action, and from that moment on,
you just you're off somewhere. I remember sitting down with
them at the dining room table and having a stack
of papers shoved in front of me and asked to
(20:42):
sign this. Sign this, sign this, and you just go
through the motions. You don't want to believe what they're saying.
You want to think that someone made a mistake. I
was so I was so messed up. I mean, his guys,
(21:02):
they couldn't believe what happened. Monty was so revered to
them that nothing could ever happen to him. To this day,
they have the same feeling. They all. I don't think
any of them have ever gotten over what happened. He
(21:23):
wasn't just you know, their sergeant. He was their friend. Yeah,
I'm your boss and I'm gonna, you know, guide you,
but I'm going to be your friend. Back in the States,
every weekend he would either be going to someone's house
(21:44):
to help them put in a floor, or he was
having a barbecue for them, or if there was a
celebration for one of their children, he would be there.
He took care of them as if they were and
indeed they were his brothers. That's where my pride comes
(22:07):
in that he was such a good human being that
I wonder if I'm even worthy to be called his father.
It's really very, very difficult to understand that a person
like this is related to you, never mind being your
own son. I wasn't even expecting the truck. When they
(22:38):
delivered all his stuff from his apartment in New York.
The last thing that came off was his truck, and
I was like, wow, there was a empty bottle, well
it wasn't quite empty on the floorboards. He liked his jaw,
so he always had a bottle with to spit into.
(23:02):
That was in there. At toothpaste in there. He had mouthwashed,
He had a toothbrush, he had Yeah, he had a
little container of coins. He had Oh lord, just you
know a guy's truck. I mean, it's pretty much the
(23:23):
same even now, fifteen years later as it was when
he left. I never vacuumed it. It sure needs it,
but I just don't want to remove his DNA. I
don't want that sucked up by a vacuum cleaner. So yeah,
it's a little messy, but it's him and he's with
(23:45):
me when I drive it, so I don't drive it
as much as I used to. It was my everyday
vehicle for a while, and then I realized that it
had to be preserved, so I got another vehicle. But
I still make sure it drive his truck whenever, whenever
I can, at least once a week to get it
out and run it. Some people have said, you know,
(24:11):
time heals all wounds. It doesn't. It absolutely doesn't. I'm
fifteen years in and it's almost like it happened yesterday.
This is the way it is. The way my life
is now. You know, there's a door in front of
me with my son's name on it, and I'm expecting
(24:36):
to be able to open that door and go and
visit him, and go to sports games with him, and
go fishing with him, and just have him over my
house for a barbecue, to hold his kids, my grandkids
(24:57):
on my lap. That's what I expect when I open
that door. But when I actually reach out and open
that door, it's just totally dark inside. There will be
no barbecues in the backyard, there will be no Red
Sox games, there will be no fishing trips, there will
(25:20):
be no grandkids. I know the Lord works in very
mysterious ways, and I know that no matter who you are,
when a loved one dies, you always have that question
why God. But I was actually able to answer that question.
(25:43):
The whole thing that came about from my son's death,
the fact that we now have a charity that places
flags on every grave at the National Cemeterium born every
Memorial Day, in every Veterans Day, now placing seventy seven
(26:05):
thousand flags. The fact that we were able to give
out sixteen thousand dollars in scholarship money this year. The
effect that Jared's had on so many people, especially young people,
throughout the entire country, indeed in some cases the world.
(26:27):
It seems to me that God looked down and he said,
you know, Jared, you're doing a fabulous job on that planet,
but if you come up here with me, you'll be
able to do even more. And that's what he's been
doing since he passed, even.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
More in a spectacular job by Monty as always, and
my goodness, what a piece of storytelling from Paul Monty
and gotten through it. No one should lose a child
the parent goes first. He wasn't just their sergeant, he said,
(27:08):
he was their friend. He was such a good human being.
The story of Jared Monty, the story of Paul Monty.
Here on, all American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com