May 11, 2026 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, most people do not set out to make history, or even to live through it. More often, history simply happens to them.
Gulf War veteran and Our American Stories regular contributor Richard Muniz, from Colorado, shares two stories about living through historic moments without realizing it at the time, and reflects on what he learned from those experiences.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American stories, and we tell stories about
everything here on this show and our favorite types of
stories in the end, well they come from our listeners,
and this next story comes from one of our listeners,
Richard Munions. Today he tells us two stories on living
in history from the perspective of those who experienced it
(00:30):
and didn't even know it at the time. He has
our own Monty Montgomery with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Punctuality is an important virtue to a lot of people,
but for Richard Muniez, it was his senior year history
teacher that changed his outlook on life by skipping out
on the dates and class.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
When I was in the twelfth grade, I had a
history teacher with my name of Bill Mayhem. Now Bill
was a heck of a lot older than I was
at the time, and he had kind of a unique
approach to history. He felt that dates weren't important. In fact,
he also felt that dates is what turned people off
(01:10):
about history. You know, you had well Columbus came here
in fourteen ninety two and stuff like that, But what
was learned of history to him, most of it was boredom.
They couldn't see the relation that what happened yesterday, how
it impacts us today. If certain things happened happened, we
(01:32):
probably wouldn't be here today. But history is also a
lot more than about dates and about great people. It's
about little people. It's about the stories that are told,
stories that are usually forgotten within the generation or two.
For example, about Columbus coming to the America's important event. Yeah,
(01:53):
without it, like I said, most of us probably wouldn't
be here. However, what story you're told by the sailors
who went with Columbus, What stories we're told by the
Native Americans that meant them, what actually happened? We have
those events in our head. We have these events that
(02:14):
history gave us, but in most cases they're kind of
bare bone. Well, I've been lucky enough to have met
a lot of people who were at pivotal moments in history,
or they are events that history has kind of glossed over.
I've been in a few of those myself, and it's
(02:35):
very rare that you ever see the big picture. You're
part of it, and all of a sudden there are
you know, you've gone through it and stuff like that,
and afterwards you're telling the story about what happened, and
a lot of times you have no real understanding of
what you went through. For instance, I was in the
Gulf War. I was in two of the biggest battles
of the Gulf War. And it wasn't until years later
(02:56):
I even learned that they had names, and I wound
up talking of people, and I've discovered that their stories
were at pivotal moments. For instance, there's a man by
name of Levi Martinez. He was the Battle of the Bulge.
I remember when he told me this story. I was
(03:16):
getting ready to leave for basic training. Levi was my
father in law at the time, and I'd asked him
if he would give me something that belonged to him
that I could take with me kind of, I say,
I guess you might say it's a good luck charm,
whatever the case may be. Well, he gave me his
army ribbons and sitting right smack in the middle of
(03:37):
this is a bronze star. And I asked him, I said,
why did you receive this was? What was the story
behind receiving your bronze star? And he showed me the citation.
The citation it was usual military stuff. You're using fire
and maneuver. Private Levi Martinez was able to close upon
(03:59):
and capture a German machine gun. Nest Okay, that's pretty
cool stuff. Then he told me his version of the story.
This story happened like this. He was in Germany fighting
with Patton's army, and they had been advancing and whatnot,
(04:22):
and it was getting cold, Christmas was coming in. Winter
was here, and they were kind of slowing things down
a little bit. However, he also got worded at this
time that his mother had passed away, and that it
was he wanted desperately to go home and at least
(04:43):
see the family. Well that wasn't about to happen, after all,
you know, here they are in the middle of a war.
He was seriously needed right where he was. So what
wound up happening was this. They received orders to turn
nine degrees and start walking. He called this the long Walk.
(05:03):
And they walked and they walked and they walked, and
they was storming on him. It was cold, and they
just kept going. They knew that the Germans had attacked,
and that this was a desperate situation, that they had
the hundred first Airborne and several other units just you know,
literally pinned down. It wasn't good for us. They they
(05:25):
had to get up there and take care of things.
But again, he wasn't really concentrating on the war at
the time. He wanted to go home and be with
his with his people. That for all you know, his
heart was breaking over there, and here he is unable
to even express his grief. I remember him telling me
that as they were walking one day, all of a sudden,
(05:46):
a guy shoves him out, shoves him and throws him
into a snowdrift. And he gets up and asks what
the heck that was about, And the guy said, you
almost walked into the walk into the path of the
tank there. He already fallen asleep while he was walking,
and if this guy hadn't shoved him, they'd probably fallen
under the treads of the tank and then ran over.
(06:09):
Then they started getting up into the area around baths
Stone and whatnot. The Germans had seized this one small
town that established a machine gun nest outside of the community,
and this machine gun nests opened up on him and
his people and just firing away from having Pitten down
pretty good. Well in the middle of all this, he's
(06:30):
thinking about his mother and all he wants to do
is stand up and go home. Well, finally he said,
heck with this, I'm going to go and I'm going
home one way or the other. So he stands up
and he starts approaching the machine gun nest. There's no
fire maneuver to this, there's no running over from one
point of cover to another. And while firing at firing
(06:52):
at the enemy, he had just a nice little casual
stroll right up to the machine gun nest and they're
shooting at him. His people are yelling at him to
get down. He just walking. He wants to go home,
and he's going to go home one way or the other.
Eventually he winds up on the crest the machine gun nests,
(07:12):
looking down the seriously astonished Germans. And while he's up there,
he decides, well, well i'm here, I might as well
do something about it, points his rifle at him, and
they surrendered. And that's the story how he got his
bronze star. That's what history is about. It's about people
involved in extraordinary things, extraordinary events, and not realizing it.
(07:40):
An example from my own personal history happened during the
Gulf War. Now, this is doesn't involve a battle, doesn't
involve lighting up an enemy tank and fired on it
or anything like that. No, this involves almost the aftermath.
I mean the war was over to extends of purposes
with beaten the iraqis Now, what we were doing is
(08:01):
we were getting ready to go home. I was a
military policeman at the time, and what a military police
do is they are responsible for movement. We move the
division and part of our job was to perform the
route recon from Iraq through Kuwait and back to Saudi
(08:25):
Arabia's And we were excited about this. I mean we've
been over there for about six months and this meant
we were one step closer to going back home. I
mean it was great, we've made it through the war.
Now here's the problem. The war might be over, the
weapons of war are still out there and they're still
(08:46):
very much alive. Despite the ceasefire. You could still get
yourself hurt or killed out there. So what we did
was my platoon we were told to go back and
perform as route recon. So we're going down high highways
seventy and ahead of us we saw a bus and
on the back window was a placard that had a
(09:08):
British flight printed on it with the Brits. Now it
pulled over and a bunch of guys started getting out.
It's obviously, you know, on the road bathroom break. We're
about fifty yards away from when all of a sudden
we heard cow boom and there's this burst of dust
up and several of the British guys wanted to falling over,
fallen back. Oh, we knew what had happened right away.
(09:31):
What had happened. We had pulled over and walked right
into a minefield that was on the side of the road. Now,
our first instincts is human beings, says, oh my god,
we see people in trouble. We're police officers. We have
three people with us who are trained as medics. Why
not pull over and help them? Our allies, fellow human
beings on top of that, were hurt. We were in
(09:52):
a position to help them. That's what we're going to do. Well,
as we're starting to pull over, all of a sudden,
this one British guy comes around to think. He's waving
ass and yelling ass not to stop, to keep going,
and that's why lieutenant yelled, we have medics with us,
and he said, so do we. It's too dangerous here.
We'll tree our own wounded, keep moving. So we wound
(10:13):
up going past to this day. I don't know what
happened he's been. I don't know if they any of
them were killed. I don't know if any of them
were just injured and have recovered from their injuries. Again,
it's history. You get your little teeny tiny segment of it,
and you don't know what happened next.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Richard mune As his story two of them, two soldiers'
stories here on our American Stories
This is our American stories, and we tell stories about
everything here on this show and our favorite types of
stories in the end, well they come from our listeners,
and this next story comes from one of our listeners,
Richard Munions. Today he tells us two stories on living
in history from the perspective of those who experienced it
(00:30):
and didn't even know it at the time. He has
our own Monty Montgomery with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Punctuality is an important virtue to a lot of people,
but for Richard Muniez, it was his senior year history
teacher that changed his outlook on life by skipping out
on the dates and class.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
When I was in the twelfth grade, I had a
history teacher with my name of Bill Mayhem. Now Bill
was a heck of a lot older than I was
at the time, and he had kind of a unique
approach to history. He felt that dates weren't important. In fact,
he also felt that dates is what turned people off
(01:10):
about history. You know, you had well Columbus came here
in fourteen ninety two and stuff like that, But what
was learned of history to him, most of it was boredom.
They couldn't see the relation that what happened yesterday, how
it impacts us today. If certain things happened happened, we
(01:32):
probably wouldn't be here today. But history is also a
lot more than about dates and about great people. It's
about little people. It's about the stories that are told,
stories that are usually forgotten within the generation or two.
For example, about Columbus coming to the America's important event. Yeah,
(01:53):
without it, like I said, most of us probably wouldn't
be here. However, what story you're told by the sailors
who went with Columbus, What stories we're told by the
Native Americans that meant them, what actually happened? We have
those events in our head. We have these events that
(02:14):
history gave us, but in most cases they're kind of
bare bone. Well, I've been lucky enough to have met
a lot of people who were at pivotal moments in history,
or they are events that history has kind of glossed over.
I've been in a few of those myself, and it's
(02:35):
very rare that you ever see the big picture. You're
part of it, and all of a sudden there are
you know, you've gone through it and stuff like that,
and afterwards you're telling the story about what happened, and
a lot of times you have no real understanding of
what you went through. For instance, I was in the
Gulf War. I was in two of the biggest battles
of the Gulf War. And it wasn't until years later
(02:56):
I even learned that they had names, and I wound
up talking of people, and I've discovered that their stories
were at pivotal moments. For instance, there's a man by
name of Levi Martinez. He was the Battle of the Bulge.
I remember when he told me this story. I was
(03:16):
getting ready to leave for basic training. Levi was my
father in law at the time, and I'd asked him
if he would give me something that belonged to him
that I could take with me kind of, I say,
I guess you might say it's a good luck charm,
whatever the case may be. Well, he gave me his
army ribbons and sitting right smack in the middle of
(03:37):
this is a bronze star. And I asked him, I said,
why did you receive this was? What was the story
behind receiving your bronze star? And he showed me the citation.
The citation it was usual military stuff. You're using fire
and maneuver. Private Levi Martinez was able to close upon
(03:59):
and capture a German machine gun. Nest Okay, that's pretty
cool stuff. Then he told me his version of the story.
This story happened like this. He was in Germany fighting
with Patton's army, and they had been advancing and whatnot,
(04:22):
and it was getting cold, Christmas was coming in. Winter
was here, and they were kind of slowing things down
a little bit. However, he also got worded at this
time that his mother had passed away, and that it
was he wanted desperately to go home and at least
(04:43):
see the family. Well that wasn't about to happen, after all,
you know, here they are in the middle of a war.
He was seriously needed right where he was. So what
wound up happening was this. They received orders to turn
nine degrees and start walking. He called this the long Walk.
(05:03):
And they walked and they walked and they walked, and
they was storming on him. It was cold, and they
just kept going. They knew that the Germans had attacked,
and that this was a desperate situation, that they had
the hundred first Airborne and several other units just you know,
literally pinned down. It wasn't good for us. They they
(05:25):
had to get up there and take care of things.
But again, he wasn't really concentrating on the war at
the time. He wanted to go home and be with
his with his people. That for all you know, his
heart was breaking over there, and here he is unable
to even express his grief. I remember him telling me
that as they were walking one day, all of a sudden,
(05:46):
a guy shoves him out, shoves him and throws him
into a snowdrift. And he gets up and asks what
the heck that was about, And the guy said, you
almost walked into the walk into the path of the
tank there. He already fallen asleep while he was walking,
and if this guy hadn't shoved him, they'd probably fallen
under the treads of the tank and then ran over.
(06:09):
Then they started getting up into the area around baths
Stone and whatnot. The Germans had seized this one small
town that established a machine gun nest outside of the community,
and this machine gun nests opened up on him and
his people and just firing away from having Pitten down
pretty good. Well in the middle of all this, he's
(06:30):
thinking about his mother and all he wants to do
is stand up and go home. Well, finally he said,
heck with this, I'm going to go and I'm going
home one way or the other. So he stands up
and he starts approaching the machine gun nest. There's no
fire maneuver to this, there's no running over from one
point of cover to another. And while firing at firing
(06:52):
at the enemy, he had just a nice little casual
stroll right up to the machine gun nest and they're
shooting at him. His people are yelling at him to
get down. He just walking. He wants to go home,
and he's going to go home one way or the other.
Eventually he winds up on the crest the machine gun nests,
(07:12):
looking down the seriously astonished Germans. And while he's up there,
he decides, well, well i'm here, I might as well
do something about it, points his rifle at him, and
they surrendered. And that's the story how he got his
bronze star. That's what history is about. It's about people
involved in extraordinary things, extraordinary events, and not realizing it.
(07:40):
An example from my own personal history happened during the
Gulf War. Now, this is doesn't involve a battle, doesn't
involve lighting up an enemy tank and fired on it
or anything like that. No, this involves almost the aftermath.
I mean the war was over to extends of purposes
with beaten the iraqis Now, what we were doing is
(08:01):
we were getting ready to go home. I was a
military policeman at the time, and what a military police
do is they are responsible for movement. We move the
division and part of our job was to perform the
route recon from Iraq through Kuwait and back to Saudi
(08:25):
Arabia's And we were excited about this. I mean we've
been over there for about six months and this meant
we were one step closer to going back home. I
mean it was great, we've made it through the war.
Now here's the problem. The war might be over, the
weapons of war are still out there and they're still
(08:46):
very much alive. Despite the ceasefire. You could still get
yourself hurt or killed out there. So what we did
was my platoon we were told to go back and
perform as route recon. So we're going down high highways
seventy and ahead of us we saw a bus and
on the back window was a placard that had a
(09:08):
British flight printed on it with the Brits. Now it
pulled over and a bunch of guys started getting out.
It's obviously, you know, on the road bathroom break. We're
about fifty yards away from when all of a sudden
we heard cow boom and there's this burst of dust
up and several of the British guys wanted to falling over,
fallen back. Oh, we knew what had happened right away.
(09:31):
What had happened. We had pulled over and walked right
into a minefield that was on the side of the road. Now,
our first instincts is human beings, says, oh my god,
we see people in trouble. We're police officers. We have
three people with us who are trained as medics. Why
not pull over and help them? Our allies, fellow human
beings on top of that, were hurt. We were in
(09:52):
a position to help them. That's what we're going to do. Well,
as we're starting to pull over, all of a sudden,
this one British guy comes around to think. He's waving
ass and yelling ass not to stop, to keep going,
and that's why lieutenant yelled, we have medics with us,
and he said, so do we. It's too dangerous here.
We'll tree our own wounded, keep moving. So we wound
(10:13):
up going past to this day. I don't know what
happened he's been. I don't know if they any of
them were killed. I don't know if any of them
were just injured and have recovered from their injuries. Again,
it's history. You get your little teeny tiny segment of it,
and you don't know what happened next.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Richard mune As his story two of them, two soldiers'
stories here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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