November 11, 2024 • 14 mins
For Veteran’s Day, our guest is respected military historian Stephen L. Moore, who takes us into the heart of the Vietnam War's covert Special Ops jungle warfare in BEYOND THE CALL OF THE DUTY, telling the story of the life and achievements of Robert Howard, the most decorated Special Forces soldier of all time. Stephen L. Moore, a sixth-generation Texan, graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. He is the author of two dozen books on World War II, Vietnam, and Texas history, including Patton’s Payback and Blood and Fury.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to get connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one OHO six point seven light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to get connected. For this Veteran's Day, our guest
is respected military historian Stephen Elmore, who takes us into
the heart of the Vietnam War's covert special ops jungle
warfare in Beyond the Call of Duty, telling the story
of the life and achievements of Robert Howard, the most
decorated Special Forces soldier of all time. Steven Elmore, thank
(00:34):
you for joining me on the show today.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Stephen Moore is a sixth generation Texan graduated from Stephen F.
Austin State University in Nakadoches, Texas. He's the author of
two dozen books on World War Two, Vietnam and Texas history,
including Patent's Payback and Blood and Fury. So Robert Howard
was a Special Forces soldier, a Medal of Honor recipient,
had eight Purple Hearts, even though wounded many more times
(00:59):
than that, received a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, a
Distinguished Service Cross. Yet his story is going to be
new to so many of us. How did you find
out about his story.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
I've actually got a family member and uncle in law
that was in mac v SAG Special Forces in Vietnam,
and what they did was classified. They could not speak
about it for decades, but he kind of hinted that
they did a lot of special ops duties. And I
kept saying, Wilson, in one of these days, we're going
to talk about this. And I eventually started going to
some of his Special Forces reunions in Las Vegas in
(01:30):
different places and did a book on those guys from
his recon company. And the one guy they all talked
about that was the bravest of all the brave was
Bob Howard, this supply sergeant if you will, that kind
of rose to great ranks later, But he amazed everybody
over there, and these guys were already beyond ordinary themselves.
(01:51):
So for him to stand out to these guys, that
said a lot. So it kept me curious and learning
more about mister Bob Howard later in life.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So Bob Howard was from Alabama. Can you talk a
little bit about his background?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yeah, he kind of came from a family's mom raised
a lot of kids, he had a lot of siblings.
He was the eldest, but they grew up kind of
in poverty. They didn't have a whole lot. And you know,
one of the favorite stories he related later was how
he was picked on as a kid and how he
was a good runner, he was a good athlete, and
he learned to run from the older bullies after school
who wanted to beat him up or steal his new
(02:26):
shoes or something. And his mother's mother, his grandma Kelly,
helped raise them. And she caught wind of this and
saw him running from the bullies and basically told him
at one point, you know, Bob's son, you don't run
from your troubles, you address him. You run toward your troubles.
And she made that point with him. So the next
(02:46):
day Bob Howard went back and confronted those bullies and
he came back kind of beat up and bruised and
cut up, but he pointed to his feet and told
his granny Kelly, that's got my shoes on. So she
was proud that he stood his ground. And some of
the lessons he learned from that tough woman was that
you face all your challenges head on, and in fact,
(03:07):
in warfare. Bob Howard was the one guy that always
ran straight toward trouble.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
It's a very interesting mindset. I think. You know, you
write about him being frustrated in the early weeks of Vietnam.
So he was in the military for nine years of
non combat service. Nineteen sixty five comes up. Actually, let
me talk. Let's talk about that for a minute. Okay,
he's twenty six when he arrives in Vietnam. It's very early.
What was his understanding of what was going to be there.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Well, he's in one hundred and first Airborne when he
first goes over there in his first tour of duty.
And you know, he told his kids and his family
knew later in life he was kind of a trouble guy.
He hit his ups and downs. He had some bouts
with drinking and having too much fun at times, and
he eventually decided to get married, get serious. And about
that time, he, you know, decided they're going to go
(03:56):
over to Vietnam. The wars escalating for America, and he
goes over there with the ground forces, serving on the
ground fighting with one hundred and first Airborne Division. But
it's not exactly what he was hoping it would be.
He's in a firefight that's ill organized, you know, they're
hastily prepared, and he's quite frankly shot in the face
(04:17):
and almost left for dead in that battle. And when
he's recovering in a hospital later, he sees this Special
Forces guy whom he'd met years before in training, and
how the colonel comes to check on the SF guy
and how's he doing all this kind of stuff And
he's thinking, I'm laying here with a bullet wound in
my face and no one's come to check on me. So,
(04:37):
long story short, it got him interested in these Special
Forces men and what that was all about, and that
would ultimately turn Bob Howard's career around. As far as
the Vietnam War went.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
He was in a much different group of soldiers when
he ends up on his second tour with Special Forces
in nineteen sixty seven. What was most striking to him
about the difference between the Group A and the Group B.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, with the Special Forces Group, the fifth Special Forces
Group that helped operate what was known as mac B
SAG Military Assistants Command Vietnam, and the SG was kind
of an innocuous sounding name. Studies and Observations group, but
it was to class to disguise what they were really doing.
(05:21):
You know, they were supposedly operating in Vietnam, but these
guys were actually being sent, as they called it, across
the fence into Laos and Cambodia to disrupt the NBA
North Vietnamese Army or Vie Kong actions, sabotaging supplies, attempting
to grab prisoners of war. So all this was super classified,
(05:44):
and it was run in a different fashion than traditional
army forward operating bases would be. And you actually had
to volunteer for this. So when you went into Saigon
and heard the briefing about this unknown group, first off,
they didn't know the name. They agreed to sign the documents,
and then they learned they couldn't talk about it, and
(06:05):
anything that happened over there, the government would deny their
existence being over let's say Cambodia. If they were killed,
you know, he was obviously a rogue or he was
not attached to us, So you had to have a
different kind of personality just to volunteer for this stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
You talk about him, you know, I think there's a
sentence in the book it's like it's his happy places
being across you know, the fence down there. It takes
a certain kind of person to want action in a war,
to be bored and to want those things. Where do
you think that came from? He had his grandmother telling
him to run towards, you know, towards your enemies. But
(06:43):
there's got to be something more than that.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
I think that's just in his blood. You know. Bob
Howard just wanted to be the best he could be
at all times. And if he was over there to fight,
you know, by goodness, he's going to go fight. He
had a specialty of one of his military specialties, and
so he's assigned to the supply shack when he gets
to his forward Operating base or FOB two, and he
(07:07):
immediately volunteers to join the recon missions as quick as
he can in what they called a straphanger role. Straphanger
is basically a guy filling in for somebody else because
he's wounded, sick, killed in action the previous week. And
so Bob kept a rucksack and weapons ready to go
at a moment's notice to go jump on a chopper
(07:28):
and join a team across the fence, and the team
leaders are as. They were code named one zeros. Those
one zeros found out pretty quick that Bob was the
bravest of the brave, and he actually wanted to go
fight even when they weren't prepared to go into a fight.
He was just itching for it.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Our guest is Steven Moore. His book is Beyond the
Call of Duty, telling the story and life achievements of
Robert Howard, the most decorated Special Forces soldier of all time.
This is get connected on one six point seven light FM.
I'm Nina del Rio. When Bob arrives back in I
believe for his third tour. By then, he's been lauded
(08:08):
many times, received awards. How did that? How did he
take that responsibility with him back when younger soldiers were
seeing him. You know, you have to feel a bit
of duty towards them.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah, he was a shining example to a lot of
the younger guys because he wasn't there for the awards,
some of the wounds he received. He'd never bothered with
the paperwork to receive his purple heart. And today, you know,
he said he was wounded fourteen times. There's only eight
of them on record that he received, but he was
not there for the medals. In fact, you know he
(08:42):
was somewhat embarrassed by that. There's a couple of stories
in there where his wife's president in Fort Bragg when
he's getting eight medals in one ceremony, and she had
no idea he was going to receive the Distinguished Service Cross,
which was the army's top award that the army could offer.
But again, he was not there just for that. He
(09:03):
was there for the mission. But these guys learned from him.
They knew if they got into trouble, Bob Howard would
be like the first one to come in on a
chopper to try to help save their lives. So he
earned their respect.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
That story is really interesting to me. When he goes
to receive the award for Distinguished Service Cross. As you mentioned,
he had a wife, Tina, and two young daughters. When
you were even speaking with the comrades of Bob many
years later, How is it for them to talk about
their experiences all these years later, because some of them,
of course, are very harrowing. If Bob didn't speak about
(09:38):
his experiences, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
I appreciated that. I've worked with these guys on a
couple of books. And a lot of people don't know
what they did because Vietnam War heroes didn't come back
as heroes. That was not a popular war back in
the United States, if you will. So they came back
with their scars and whatever badges and medals they earned,
but a lot of people didn't care at that time.
They knew what they did. What Bob Howard and these
(10:04):
guys did, they couldn't talk about. They were just quote
unquote over in Vietnam pden the war. Nobody had any
idea they were being flown in by choppers and dropped
off ten miles in enemy territory with a good chance
that they would never come back. So it was beyond
harrowing for what they did. So they respect each other
(10:24):
for what they did. And there's probably half a dozen
or a two dozen more guys that deserved the Medal
of Honor for what they did. But in some cases
there's no witnesses anymore to what they did, or the
whole team was wiped out and no one is a
witness to what the team did.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Do you know what his perspective might have been on
his own survival? I ask that as some of it
was luck right, some of these missions. You just lived
by sheer luck you didn't get shot you whatever, right
did you know about his own perspective on that?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
You know, he was a man of God, even though
he may not have lived a godly life at all times.
He'd be the first to admit that to you. But
some of it was luck, some of it was maybe faith,
just coming up with a strong upbringing from his Granny Cali.
But yes, certainly, being hit by bullets in the head
or in the face multiple times, the guy besides you
loses his legs and you're having to put tourniquets on him,
(11:18):
you know, another millimeter and that piece of shrapnel could
have gone through your heart or your throat. He had
wounds that could have ended him where he could have
bled out. But luck and faith and faith and you know,
a combination of all the above. But he didn't think
about it. He would charge toward the enemy with the
machine guns or a rocket launcher or whatever it took,
(11:38):
and he wasn't concerned if he lived or died. And
back in his Medal of Honor mission, he kind of figured,
you know, as he related later, if this is how
I died, then I'm going out the way I want to,
but I'm going to go try to save that lieutenant.
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
In total, he spent Bob Howard forty months in combat
duty in Vietnam, including two years with the lead Covert Group.
All of the missions that went on, which is the
most perhaps emblematic to you of his valor.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
You know, the one that he was ultimately given the
Medal of Honor for was the third time he was
written out for it, but the second time was a
SLAM mission, a surge located, annihilate and monitor mission where
a large company goes in to help save another company
and they end up saying on the ground for many
many days, being marched toward enemy NBA territory, ammunition caches
(12:27):
and things like that, where they were in firefights, consistently
being attacked at dawn. There was a lot there. He
captured a prisoner of war during that particular mission, he
helped save a number of lives. He was wounded multiple
times where basically he's hit in the rear by shrapnel
(12:47):
and he kind of jumps around and forms his own
bandages out of a ponchot and just continues with the
mission when he could have easily been extracted and sent
back because he was wounded. To him, he would didn't lists,
he couldn't move, or it was that incapacitated. So to me,
that one's pretty outstanding, as well as the one he
ultimately got the Medal of Honor for.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Bob Howard ended up living a long life. He passed
away in two thousand and nine of cancer. He worked
with veterans and later took trips to visit active duty
troops in Iraq. What did he try and impress on them?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
He just wanted to have these troops know that they
were appreciated and they weren't forgotten about. They were in
Afghanistan and Iraq and these far away places just as
remote to Americans as Cambodia was in the nineteen sixties
to the common American. But I think for him it
was a sense of putting on his colonel's uniform and
going back over there and being one of the boys,
(13:43):
or one of the troops, so to speak. And he
reveled in that. He went with Gary Latrell and other
Medal of Honor recipients, and he relished that. He did
that many years in a row until his cancer caught
up with him, which He was kind of privately fighting
that battle and trying to keep it secret. But he
enjoyed that his son joined Special Forces later in life,
(14:06):
so it was just in his blood, so he had
no qualms about going back over in hot combat areas
to see the troops.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
There is so much more in the book in this
story Beyond the Call of Duty by Steven Elmore. Thank
you for joining me on Get Connected.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Happy Veterans Day.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven light Fm. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
of the station. If you missed any part of our
show or want to share it, visit our website for
downloads and podcasts at one oh six to seven lightfm
dot com. Thanks for listening.
Welcome to get connected with Nina del Rio, a weekly
conversation about fitness, health and happenings in our community on
one OHO six point seven light FM.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to get connected. For this Veteran's Day, our guest
is respected military historian Stephen Elmore, who takes us into
the heart of the Vietnam War's covert special ops jungle
warfare in Beyond the Call of Duty, telling the story
of the life and achievements of Robert Howard, the most
decorated Special Forces soldier of all time. Steven Elmore, thank
(00:34):
you for joining me on the show today.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Stephen Moore is a sixth generation Texan graduated from Stephen F.
Austin State University in Nakadoches, Texas. He's the author of
two dozen books on World War Two, Vietnam and Texas history,
including Patent's Payback and Blood and Fury. So Robert Howard
was a Special Forces soldier, a Medal of Honor recipient,
had eight Purple Hearts, even though wounded many more times
(00:59):
than that, received a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, a
Distinguished Service Cross. Yet his story is going to be
new to so many of us. How did you find
out about his story.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
I've actually got a family member and uncle in law
that was in mac v SAG Special Forces in Vietnam,
and what they did was classified. They could not speak
about it for decades, but he kind of hinted that
they did a lot of special ops duties. And I
kept saying, Wilson, in one of these days, we're going
to talk about this. And I eventually started going to
some of his Special Forces reunions in Las Vegas in
(01:30):
different places and did a book on those guys from
his recon company. And the one guy they all talked
about that was the bravest of all the brave was
Bob Howard, this supply sergeant if you will, that kind
of rose to great ranks later, But he amazed everybody
over there, and these guys were already beyond ordinary themselves.
(01:51):
So for him to stand out to these guys, that
said a lot. So it kept me curious and learning
more about mister Bob Howard later in life.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
So Bob Howard was from Alabama. Can you talk a
little bit about his background?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yeah, he kind of came from a family's mom raised
a lot of kids, he had a lot of siblings.
He was the eldest, but they grew up kind of
in poverty. They didn't have a whole lot. And you know,
one of the favorite stories he related later was how
he was picked on as a kid and how he
was a good runner, he was a good athlete, and
he learned to run from the older bullies after school
who wanted to beat him up or steal his new
(02:26):
shoes or something. And his mother's mother, his grandma Kelly,
helped raise them. And she caught wind of this and
saw him running from the bullies and basically told him
at one point, you know, Bob's son, you don't run
from your troubles, you address him. You run toward your troubles.
And she made that point with him. So the next
(02:46):
day Bob Howard went back and confronted those bullies and
he came back kind of beat up and bruised and
cut up, but he pointed to his feet and told
his granny Kelly, that's got my shoes on. So she
was proud that he stood his ground. And some of
the lessons he learned from that tough woman was that
you face all your challenges head on, and in fact,
(03:07):
in warfare. Bob Howard was the one guy that always
ran straight toward trouble.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
It's a very interesting mindset. I think. You know, you
write about him being frustrated in the early weeks of Vietnam.
So he was in the military for nine years of
non combat service. Nineteen sixty five comes up. Actually, let
me talk. Let's talk about that for a minute. Okay,
he's twenty six when he arrives in Vietnam. It's very early.
What was his understanding of what was going to be there.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Well, he's in one hundred and first Airborne when he
first goes over there in his first tour of duty.
And you know, he told his kids and his family
knew later in life he was kind of a trouble guy.
He hit his ups and downs. He had some bouts
with drinking and having too much fun at times, and
he eventually decided to get married, get serious. And about
that time, he, you know, decided they're going to go
(03:56):
over to Vietnam. The wars escalating for America, and he
goes over there with the ground forces, serving on the
ground fighting with one hundred and first Airborne Division. But
it's not exactly what he was hoping it would be.
He's in a firefight that's ill organized, you know, they're
hastily prepared, and he's quite frankly shot in the face
(04:17):
and almost left for dead in that battle. And when
he's recovering in a hospital later, he sees this Special
Forces guy whom he'd met years before in training, and
how the colonel comes to check on the SF guy
and how's he doing all this kind of stuff And
he's thinking, I'm laying here with a bullet wound in
my face and no one's come to check on me. So,
(04:37):
long story short, it got him interested in these Special
Forces men and what that was all about, and that
would ultimately turn Bob Howard's career around. As far as
the Vietnam War went.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
He was in a much different group of soldiers when
he ends up on his second tour with Special Forces
in nineteen sixty seven. What was most striking to him
about the difference between the Group A and the Group B.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, with the Special Forces Group, the fifth Special Forces
Group that helped operate what was known as mac B
SAG Military Assistants Command Vietnam, and the SG was kind
of an innocuous sounding name. Studies and Observations group, but
it was to class to disguise what they were really doing.
(05:21):
You know, they were supposedly operating in Vietnam, but these
guys were actually being sent, as they called it, across
the fence into Laos and Cambodia to disrupt the NBA
North Vietnamese Army or Vie Kong actions, sabotaging supplies, attempting
to grab prisoners of war. So all this was super classified,
(05:44):
and it was run in a different fashion than traditional
army forward operating bases would be. And you actually had
to volunteer for this. So when you went into Saigon
and heard the briefing about this unknown group, first off,
they didn't know the name. They agreed to sign the documents,
and then they learned they couldn't talk about it, and
(06:05):
anything that happened over there, the government would deny their
existence being over let's say Cambodia. If they were killed,
you know, he was obviously a rogue or he was
not attached to us, So you had to have a
different kind of personality just to volunteer for this stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
You talk about him, you know, I think there's a
sentence in the book it's like it's his happy places
being across you know, the fence down there. It takes
a certain kind of person to want action in a war,
to be bored and to want those things. Where do
you think that came from? He had his grandmother telling
him to run towards, you know, towards your enemies. But
(06:43):
there's got to be something more than that.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
I think that's just in his blood. You know. Bob
Howard just wanted to be the best he could be
at all times. And if he was over there to fight,
you know, by goodness, he's going to go fight. He
had a specialty of one of his military specialties, and
so he's assigned to the supply shack when he gets
to his forward Operating base or FOB two, and he
(07:07):
immediately volunteers to join the recon missions as quick as
he can in what they called a straphanger role. Straphanger
is basically a guy filling in for somebody else because
he's wounded, sick, killed in action the previous week. And
so Bob kept a rucksack and weapons ready to go
at a moment's notice to go jump on a chopper
(07:28):
and join a team across the fence, and the team
leaders are as. They were code named one zeros. Those
one zeros found out pretty quick that Bob was the
bravest of the brave, and he actually wanted to go
fight even when they weren't prepared to go into a fight.
He was just itching for it.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Our guest is Steven Moore. His book is Beyond the
Call of Duty, telling the story and life achievements of
Robert Howard, the most decorated Special Forces soldier of all time.
This is get connected on one six point seven light FM.
I'm Nina del Rio. When Bob arrives back in I
believe for his third tour. By then, he's been lauded
(08:08):
many times, received awards. How did that? How did he
take that responsibility with him back when younger soldiers were
seeing him. You know, you have to feel a bit
of duty towards them.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah, he was a shining example to a lot of
the younger guys because he wasn't there for the awards,
some of the wounds he received. He'd never bothered with
the paperwork to receive his purple heart. And today, you know,
he said he was wounded fourteen times. There's only eight
of them on record that he received, but he was
not there for the medals. In fact, you know he
(08:42):
was somewhat embarrassed by that. There's a couple of stories
in there where his wife's president in Fort Bragg when
he's getting eight medals in one ceremony, and she had
no idea he was going to receive the Distinguished Service Cross,
which was the army's top award that the army could offer.
But again, he was not there just for that. He
(09:03):
was there for the mission. But these guys learned from him.
They knew if they got into trouble, Bob Howard would
be like the first one to come in on a
chopper to try to help save their lives. So he
earned their respect.
Speaker 2 (09:15):
That story is really interesting to me. When he goes
to receive the award for Distinguished Service Cross. As you mentioned,
he had a wife, Tina, and two young daughters. When
you were even speaking with the comrades of Bob many
years later, How is it for them to talk about
their experiences all these years later, because some of them,
of course, are very harrowing. If Bob didn't speak about
(09:38):
his experiences, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
I appreciated that. I've worked with these guys on a
couple of books. And a lot of people don't know
what they did because Vietnam War heroes didn't come back
as heroes. That was not a popular war back in
the United States, if you will. So they came back
with their scars and whatever badges and medals they earned,
but a lot of people didn't care at that time.
They knew what they did. What Bob Howard and these
(10:04):
guys did, they couldn't talk about. They were just quote
unquote over in Vietnam pden the war. Nobody had any
idea they were being flown in by choppers and dropped
off ten miles in enemy territory with a good chance
that they would never come back. So it was beyond
harrowing for what they did. So they respect each other
(10:24):
for what they did. And there's probably half a dozen
or a two dozen more guys that deserved the Medal
of Honor for what they did. But in some cases
there's no witnesses anymore to what they did, or the
whole team was wiped out and no one is a
witness to what the team did.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Do you know what his perspective might have been on
his own survival? I ask that as some of it
was luck right, some of these missions. You just lived
by sheer luck you didn't get shot you whatever, right
did you know about his own perspective on that?
Speaker 3 (10:55):
You know, he was a man of God, even though
he may not have lived a godly life at all times.
He'd be the first to admit that to you. But
some of it was luck, some of it was maybe faith,
just coming up with a strong upbringing from his Granny Cali.
But yes, certainly, being hit by bullets in the head
or in the face multiple times, the guy besides you
loses his legs and you're having to put tourniquets on him,
(11:18):
you know, another millimeter and that piece of shrapnel could
have gone through your heart or your throat. He had
wounds that could have ended him where he could have
bled out. But luck and faith and faith and you know,
a combination of all the above. But he didn't think
about it. He would charge toward the enemy with the
machine guns or a rocket launcher or whatever it took,
(11:38):
and he wasn't concerned if he lived or died. And
back in his Medal of Honor mission, he kind of figured,
you know, as he related later, if this is how
I died, then I'm going out the way I want to,
but I'm going to go try to save that lieutenant.
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
In total, he spent Bob Howard forty months in combat
duty in Vietnam, including two years with the lead Covert Group.
All of the missions that went on, which is the
most perhaps emblematic to you of his valor.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
You know, the one that he was ultimately given the
Medal of Honor for was the third time he was
written out for it, but the second time was a
SLAM mission, a surge located, annihilate and monitor mission where
a large company goes in to help save another company
and they end up saying on the ground for many
many days, being marched toward enemy NBA territory, ammunition caches
(12:27):
and things like that, where they were in firefights, consistently
being attacked at dawn. There was a lot there. He
captured a prisoner of war during that particular mission, he
helped save a number of lives. He was wounded multiple
times where basically he's hit in the rear by shrapnel
(12:47):
and he kind of jumps around and forms his own
bandages out of a ponchot and just continues with the
mission when he could have easily been extracted and sent
back because he was wounded. To him, he would didn't lists,
he couldn't move, or it was that incapacitated. So to me,
that one's pretty outstanding, as well as the one he
ultimately got the Medal of Honor for.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Bob Howard ended up living a long life. He passed
away in two thousand and nine of cancer. He worked
with veterans and later took trips to visit active duty
troops in Iraq. What did he try and impress on them?
Speaker 3 (13:22):
He just wanted to have these troops know that they
were appreciated and they weren't forgotten about. They were in
Afghanistan and Iraq and these far away places just as
remote to Americans as Cambodia was in the nineteen sixties
to the common American. But I think for him it
was a sense of putting on his colonel's uniform and
going back over there and being one of the boys,
(13:43):
or one of the troops, so to speak. And he
reveled in that. He went with Gary Latrell and other
Medal of Honor recipients, and he relished that. He did
that many years in a row until his cancer caught
up with him, which He was kind of privately fighting
that battle and trying to keep it secret. But he
enjoyed that his son joined Special Forces later in life,
(14:06):
so it was just in his blood, so he had
no qualms about going back over in hot combat areas
to see the troops.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
There is so much more in the book in this
story Beyond the Call of Duty by Steven Elmore. Thank
you for joining me on Get Connected.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Happy Veterans Day.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
This has been Get Connected with Nina del Rio on
one oh six point seven light Fm. The views and
opinions of our guests do not necessarily reflect the views
of the station. If you missed any part of our
show or want to share it, visit our website for
downloads and podcasts at one oh six to seven lightfm
dot com. Thanks for listening.
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