November 12, 2024 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Paul Monti drives his son Jared's truck, an act which inspired the hit country song "I Drive Your Truck" by Lee Brice...but the story is much more than that of a song. Here's the story of Jared Monti, a true hero who died in service of our country trying to save a fellow soldier in the mountains of Afghanistan.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show.
Up next a story in a way about a song,
but so much more. You might know the song I
Drive Your Truck by Lee Brice, but do you know
the story of the man who inspired the song. His
name was Jared Munty and he was a hero of
(00:31):
the highest caliber. Here to tell Jared's story is Paul Mounty,
his father.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
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 him 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
(01:05):
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
(01:27):
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
(01:48):
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.
(02:09):
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
(02:32):
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. And then after the third game, the
coach started using him as you know, a mop up
(02:56):
player towards the end of a game. By the end
of the season, he was out scoring 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 got to the end, he said, he said,
(03:17):
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 you know, never gave up, that kept on trying.
(03:38):
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 I came home and looked in his room, his
bed was missing. And I called him and I jared, uh,
(04:02):
where's your bed? He said, well, Dad, one of my
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. Another incident, he came
to me one day and said, Dad, uh, would you
(04:23):
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 wanna have uh wanna have our own
Christmas tree. I said, well, okay, go ahead. And it
was only after his death when one of his friends
(04:44):
came up to me and said, mister Mounty, you remember
that Christmas tree Jared cut down And I said yeah.
He said, 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. So he brought it to her house and
got lights for it and ornaments for it. He bought
(05:06):
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, and with great humility. I remember a
day when he asked me to drive him to a
(05:29):
weightlifting competition I did. I drove him there and I said, well,
when do you want me to pick you up or
do you want me to come in? 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
and underneath his bed was a box full of trophies.
Had soccer trophies and baseball trophies and basketball trophies. But
(05:53):
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 place
under seventeen division. Jared Monty never told anybody it wasn't
(06:14):
being done for personal gain. It was just this is
something I want to do to, you know, for myself,
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 (06:38):
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.
You're one lucky father. When we come back, more of
this remarkable story, this beautiful story father and son bond,
a fallen soldier's story. More of Paul My story and
(07:01):
Jared's here on our American Story Folks, if you love
(07:30):
the great American stories we tell and love America like
we do, we're asking you to become a part of
the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America
is a good and great country, please make a donation.
A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents
is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to
our American Stories dot com now and go to the
(07:51):
donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we returned to
our American Stories in the story of Sergeant first Class
(08:14):
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 (08:27):
Well, it was his junior year in high school and
he came home and 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 an age student. You're going to go
to college. Son. He said, well, Dad, you can't afford
to sum me to college. And I said, well, you know, Jared,
(08:51):
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
(09:13):
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
(09:35):
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
(09:59):
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
(10:19):
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
(10:40):
they came to a stream which was flowing really quickly.
They were supposed to cross this stream, and when Javid
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 for
(11:00):
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 dead, my boys. He looked upon them as
(11:21):
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
(11:41):
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
(12:02):
he was, it's just what he did, and yeah, he
ended up he twice deployed to Afghanistan. Probably the most
dangerous area in all of Afghanistan was this area in
(12:24):
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 kebasha on this. They had tried number of times
and were never successful, but they did put together this plan.
(12:47):
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 ALTI together. Eight of
them were four observers and eight snipers and they were
tasks to climb this mountain. The mountain was eighty five
(13:08):
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
(13:32):
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
(13:55):
a call very early in the morning. 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
(14:16):
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
(14:36):
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 repairs, the army decided to
(15:01):
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
(15:22):
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
(15:43):
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
(16:05):
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
(16:25):
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 football field or baseball field, totally devoid of
(16:48):
any cover whatsoever, no rocks, no trees, and the enemy
was still fighting at him. Jared called for artillery, mortars,
air support, danger close, which I think people understand. That
means the bombs are going to be dropping so close
(17:12):
to you that if you're not down, the chances are
you're going to be killed as well as the inn.
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 Jared answered him
(17:34):
back and said, no, he's my boy. I'm going to
get him.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
When we come back, more of the remarkable story of
Jared and Paulmonte as told by the father about a
fallen son here on our American Stories, and we returned
(18:09):
to our American stories and the story of Sergeant first
Class Jared Monty. When we last left off, Jared was
surrounded by a group of fifty insurgeons, outmanned and out gunned,
and to add to the situation, the fellow soldier, Brian J.
Bradbury was down and exposed to enemy fire. Jared decided
he would expose himself too in order to save his private.
(18:31):
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
He ran out to get Bradbury and 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.
(18:58):
That's when he was hit by the Yappi 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.
(19:21):
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, ninety five pm. I am sitting watching
(19:44):
America's Got Talent and my doorbell rang and I saw
two men come around the side of the house in uniform,
and I knew immediately. You know, you answer the door
and you get the government response. You know, we, uh,
(20:18):
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
(20:39):
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,
(20:59):
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
(21:20):
wasn't just you know, their sergeant. He was their friend. Yeah,
I'm your boss and I'm gonna 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 to
(21:41):
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 in
(22:05):
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
(22:35):
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 chaw,
so he always had a bottle with him to spit into.
(23:00):
That was in there, at toothpaste in there. He had mouthwash,
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
(23:20):
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
(23:42):
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 I 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,
(24:08):
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
(24:33):
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
(24:54):
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
(25:17):
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.
(25:42):
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 Cemetery and born every
Memorial Day and every veteran now placing seventy seven thousand flags.
(26:06):
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. It
seems to me that God looked down and he said,
(26:30):
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 more.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
And a spectacular job by Monty as always. And my goodness,
what a storytelling from Paul Monty. I haven't gotten through it.
No one should lose a child.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
The parent goes first.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
He wasn't just their sergeant, he said, he was their friend.
He was such a good human being. The story of
Jared Monty, the story of Paul Monty. Here on our
American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show.
Up next a story in a way about a song,
but so much more. You might know the song I
Drive Your Truck by Lee Brice, but do you know
the story of the man who inspired the song. His
name was Jared Munty and he was a hero of
(00:31):
the highest caliber. Here to tell Jared's story is Paul Mounty,
his father.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
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 him 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
(01:05):
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
(01:27):
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
(01:48):
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.
(02:09):
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
(02:32):
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. And then after the third game, the
coach started using him as you know, a mop up
(02:56):
player towards the end of a game. By the end
of the season, he was out scoring 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 got to the end, he said, he said,
(03:17):
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 you know, never gave up, that kept on trying.
(03:38):
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 I came home and looked in his room, his
bed was missing. And I called him and I jared, uh,
(04:02):
where's your bed? He said, well, Dad, one of my
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. Another incident, he came
to me one day and said, Dad, uh, would you
(04:23):
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 wanna have uh wanna have our own
Christmas tree. I said, well, okay, go ahead. And it
was only after his death when one of his friends
(04:44):
came up to me and said, mister Mounty, you remember
that Christmas tree Jared cut down And I said yeah.
He said, 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. So he brought it to her house and
got lights for it and ornaments for it. He bought
(05:06):
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, and with great humility. I remember a
day when he asked me to drive him to a
(05:29):
weightlifting competition I did. I drove him there and I said, well,
when do you want me to pick you up or
do you want me to come in? 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
and underneath his bed was a box full of trophies.
Had soccer trophies and baseball trophies and basketball trophies. But
(05:53):
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 place
under seventeen division. Jared Monty never told anybody it wasn't
(06:14):
being done for personal gain. It was just this is
something I want to do to, you know, for myself,
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 (06:38):
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.
You're one lucky father. When we come back, more of
this remarkable story, this beautiful story father and son bond,
a fallen soldier's story. More of Paul My story and
(07:01):
Jared's here on our American Story Folks, if you love
(07:30):
the great American stories we tell and love America like
we do, we're asking you to become a part of
the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America
is a good and great country, please make a donation.
A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy six cents
is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to
our American Stories dot com now and go to the
(07:51):
donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot Com. And we returned to
our American Stories in the story of Sergeant first Class
(08:14):
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 (08:27):
Well, it was his junior year in high school and
he came home and 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 an age student. You're going to go
to college. Son. He said, well, Dad, you can't afford
to sum me to college. And I said, well, you know, Jared,
(08:51):
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
(09:13):
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
(09:35):
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
(09:59):
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
(10:19):
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
(10:40):
they came to a stream which was flowing really quickly.
They were supposed to cross this stream, and when Javid
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 for
(11:00):
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 dead, my boys. He looked upon them as
(11:21):
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
(11:41):
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
(12:02):
he was, it's just what he did, and yeah, he
ended up he twice deployed to Afghanistan. Probably the most
dangerous area in all of Afghanistan was this area in
(12:24):
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 kebasha on this. They had tried number of times
and were never successful, but they did put together this plan.
(12:47):
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 ALTI together. Eight of
them were four observers and eight snipers and they were
tasks to climb this mountain. The mountain was eighty five
(13:08):
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
(13:32):
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
(13:55):
a call very early in the morning. 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
(14:16):
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
(14:36):
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 repairs, the army decided to
(15:01):
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
(15:22):
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
(15:43):
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
(16:05):
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
(16:25):
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 football field or baseball field, totally devoid of
(16:48):
any cover whatsoever, no rocks, no trees, and the enemy
was still fighting at him. Jared called for artillery, mortars,
air support, danger close, which I think people understand. That
means the bombs are going to be dropping so close
(17:12):
to you that if you're not down, the chances are
you're going to be killed as well as the inn.
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 Jared answered him
(17:34):
back and said, no, he's my boy. I'm going to
get him.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
When we come back, more of the remarkable story of
Jared and Paulmonte as told by the father about a
fallen son here on our American Stories, and we returned
(18:09):
to our American stories and the story of Sergeant first
Class Jared Monty. When we last left off, Jared was
surrounded by a group of fifty insurgeons, outmanned and out gunned,
and to add to the situation, the fellow soldier, Brian J.
Bradbury was down and exposed to enemy fire. Jared decided
he would expose himself too in order to save his private.
(18:31):
Let's return to the story.
Speaker 2 (18:37):
He ran out to get Bradbury and 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.
(18:58):
That's when he was hit by the Yappi 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.
(19:21):
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, ninety five pm. I am sitting watching
(19:44):
America's Got Talent and my doorbell rang and I saw
two men come around the side of the house in uniform,
and I knew immediately. You know, you answer the door
and you get the government response. You know, we, uh,
(20:18):
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
(20:39):
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,
(20:59):
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
(21:20):
wasn't just you know, their sergeant. He was their friend. Yeah,
I'm your boss and I'm gonna 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 to
(21:41):
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 in
(22:05):
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
(22:35):
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 chaw,
so he always had a bottle with him to spit into.
(23:00):
That was in there, at toothpaste in there. He had mouthwash,
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
(23:20):
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
(23:42):
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 I 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,
(24:08):
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
(24:33):
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
(24:54):
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
(25:17):
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.
(25:42):
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 Cemetery and born every
Memorial Day and every veteran now placing seventy seven thousand flags.
(26:06):
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. It
seems to me that God looked down and he said,
(26:30):
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 more.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
And a spectacular job by Monty as always. And my goodness,
what a storytelling from Paul Monty. I haven't gotten through it.
No one should lose a child.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
The parent goes first.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
He wasn't just their sergeant, he said, he was their friend.
He was such a good human being. The story of
Jared Monty, the story of Paul Monty. Here on our
American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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