Speaker 1: Hey, Street Walkers. This is a throwback episode with a
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor recipient and United States Army veteran, retired
Speaker 1: Master Sergeant Leroy Petrie. Leroy first appeared on the show
Speaker 1: May twenty seventh, twenty eighteen, and it was such a
Speaker 1: compelling and fun episode that I decided that it needed
Speaker 1: to be revisited. So enjoy this throwback episode. Tell a
Speaker 1: friend and thanks for listening. I believe that everybody has
Speaker 1: a story and I'm fascinated to hear them, So come
Speaker 1: with me as we take a walk down Fascination Street.
Speaker 1: This episode is with Leroy Arthur Petrie, who is a
Speaker 1: decorated Army Ranger from the second Battalion, seventy fifth Ranger Regiment.
Speaker 1: He retired as a Master Sergeant. Master Sergeant retired. Peetrie
Speaker 1: was awarded the Medal of Honor, the Legion of Merit,
Speaker 1: the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, Combat Infantryman Badge, among others.
Speaker 1: Master Sergeant Retired Petrie was kind enough to chit chat
Speaker 1: with me for the better part of an hour over
Speaker 1: the phone a few months ago, and this was before
Speaker 1: I had better equipment, so please forgive the quality it
Speaker 1: is the content that is important in this episode. So
Speaker 1: please enjoy my conversation with a real living American hero. Enjoy, guys,
Speaker 1: Master Sergeant Retired Leroy Petrie.
Speaker 2: It was Abraham Lincoln. I say that the nation that
Speaker 2: does not.
Speaker 3: Honor its heroes will not long endure. And that's exactly
Speaker 3: what we're here to do today, to honor an American hero,
Speaker 3: Master Starge Oft, Lerod Petrie. Our society places the wrong
Speaker 3: people on a pedestal too odds. An American society believes
Speaker 3: a hero is somebody can catch at football for twenty
Speaker 3: four million dollars. Somebody who can sing a song better
Speaker 3: than the next. There's somebody who pretends to be someone
Speaker 3: else in a fictional television script. Those aren't heroes want it.
Speaker 3: Only look at the man sitting before you today to
Speaker 3: see a true American hero, a man of courage, honor, character,
Speaker 3: and the first to tell you not without faults. Heroes
Speaker 3: are not born, they don't come from a certain class
Speaker 3: of society.
Speaker 2: They're not getting special training to make them a hero.
Speaker 2: I believe the actions of a hero come from the heart.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you a little bit about the hero
Speaker 2: I know, Master and Lee Red.
Speaker 4: Peatrie, Master scharge for Petri's professional military education.
Speaker 2: Includes the Airborne Course, Combat Life's.
Speaker 4: Air Course USR, Ranger Course or Your Leader's Course, Jump
Speaker 4: Master Course, Advanced Leader's Course, Senior Leader's.
Speaker 2: Course a combats of the one course he.
Speaker 4: Has earned, the Ranger tab, Combat Inficiuement's Badge, Expert Industrymans
Speaker 4: Basic and Senior parachutestag is a Canadian parachute Stage. His
Speaker 4: awards and decorations include the Medal of Honor, the Bronze
Speaker 4: Star Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, Purple Heart, Army Combination
Speaker 4: Medal with two oaklea clusters, Army Achievement Medal with Oakly Cluster,
Speaker 4: Army Good Conduct Medal, Third Award, National Defense Service Medal
Speaker 4: at Handstand, Campaign Medal with Combat Star, Iraq Campaign Medal
Speaker 4: with Combat Star, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, Global
Speaker 4: War on Terrorism Service Medal, NZEO Professional Development Ribbon Numeral,
Speaker 4: three Overseas Service Ribbon, and the Valorous Unit Award.
Speaker 5: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the White House as
Speaker 5: we present our nation's highest military decoration, the Medal of
Speaker 5: Honor to an extraordinary American Soldier, Sergeant first Class Leewary
Speaker 5: Petrie This is a historic occasion. Today is only the
Speaker 5: second time during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, indeed
Speaker 5: only the second time since Vietnam the recipient of the
Speaker 5: Medal of Honor from an ongoing conflict has been able
Speaker 5: to accept this medal in person. Leroy, the medal of
Speaker 5: Honor reflects the deepest gratitude of our entire nation. I
Speaker 5: want to take you back to the circumstances that led
Speaker 5: to this day. It's May twenty sixth, two thousand and eight,
Speaker 5: in the remote east of Afghanistan, near the mountainous border
Speaker 5: of Pakistan. Helicopters carrying dozens of elite Army rangers race
Speaker 5: over the rugged landscape and their target is an insurgent compound.
Speaker 1: The mission is high risk.
Speaker 5: It's broad daylight, the insurgents are heavily armed, but it's
Speaker 5: considered a risk we're taking because intelligence indicates that a
Speaker 5: top Al Qaeda commander is in that compound. The helicopters
Speaker 5: touch down and our rangers immediately come under fire. Within minutes,
Speaker 5: Leroy been, a staff sergeant and another soldier are pushing
Speaker 5: ahead into a courtyard surrounded by high mud walls, and
Speaker 5: that's when the enemy opens up with their AKA forty sevens.
Speaker 5: Leroy is hit in both legs. He's bleeding badly, but
Speaker 5: he summons the strength to lead the other ranger to
Speaker 5: cover behind a chicken coop. He radios for support. He
Speaker 5: hurls a grenade at the enemy, giving cover to a
Speaker 5: third ranger who rushes to their aid. An enemy grenade
Speaker 5: explodes nearby, wounding lee Roy's two comrades, and then a
Speaker 5: second grenade lands, this time only a few feet away. Now,
Speaker 5: every human impulse would tell someone to turn away. Every
Speaker 5: soldier is trained to seek cover. That's what Sergeant Leroy
Speaker 5: Petrie could have done instead. This wounded ranger, this twenty
Speaker 5: eight year old man, with his whole life ahead of him,
Speaker 5: this husband and father of four, did something extraordinary. He
Speaker 5: lunged forward toward the live grenade. He picked it up,
Speaker 5: He cocked his arm to throw it back. And what
Speaker 5: compels such courage? What leads a person to risk everything
Speaker 5: so that others might live? And for answers We don't
Speaker 5: need to look far. The roots of LeRoy's valor are
Speaker 5: all around us. We see it in the sense of
Speaker 5: duty instilled by his family, who joins us today. His
Speaker 5: father Larry, his mother, Lorella, his four brothers. We see
Speaker 5: it in the loyalty of an army ranger who lives
Speaker 5: by a creed. Never shall I fail my comrades, or,
Speaker 5: as Leroy puts it, these are my brothers family, just
Speaker 5: like my wife and kids. And you protect the ones
Speaker 5: you love. And that's what he did that day when
Speaker 5: he picked up that grenade and threw it back just
Speaker 5: as it exploded. With that selfless act, Leroy saved his
Speaker 5: two ranger brothers, and they are with us today.
Speaker 1: This valor came with a price.
Speaker 5: The force of the blast took LeRoy's right hand, trapnel
Speaker 5: riddled his body, said one of his teammates. I had
Speaker 5: never seen someone hurt so bad. So even his fellow
Speaker 5: rangers were amazed at what Leroy did next. Despite his
Speaker 5: grievous wounds, he remained calm. He actually put on his
Speaker 5: own tourniquet, and he continued to lead, directing his team,
Speaker 5: giving orders, even telling the medics.
Speaker 1: How to treat his wounds.
Speaker 5: When the fight was won, As he lay in a
Speaker 5: stretcher being loaded onto a helicopter, one of his teammates
Speaker 5: came up to shake the hand that Leroy had left
Speaker 5: that was the first time I shook the hand of
Speaker 5: someone who I considered to be a true American hero.
Speaker 5: That Ranger, said, Leroy Petrie showed that true heroes still
Speaker 5: exist and that they're closer than you think. That Ranger's right.
Speaker 5: Leroy lost a hand, and those wounds in his legs
Speaker 5: sometimes make it hard for him to stand, but he
Speaker 5: pushes on and even joined his fellow Rangers for a
Speaker 5: grueling twenty mile march. He could have focused only on
Speaker 5: his own recovery, but today he helps care for other
Speaker 5: wounded warriors, inspiring them with his example. Given his wounds,
Speaker 5: he could have retired from the army with honor, but
Speaker 5: he chose to re enlist indefinitely. In this past year,
Speaker 5: he returned to Afghanistan, his eighth deployment, back with his
Speaker 5: Ranger brothers on another mission to keep our country safe.
Speaker 5: This is the stuff of what heroes are made. This
Speaker 5: is the strength, the devotion that makes our troops the
Speaker 5: pride of every American. And this is the reason that,
Speaker 5: like a soldier named Leroy Petrie, America doesn't simply endure.
Speaker 1: We emerge from.
Speaker 5: Our trials stronger, more confident, with our eyes fixed on
Speaker 5: the future. Our heroes are all around us, and as
Speaker 5: we prepare for the reading of the citation, please join
Speaker 5: me in saluting one of those heroes, Leroy Petrie.
Speaker 4: Ladies and gentlemen, the guest of honor, Master Sergeant Retired
Speaker 4: Leroy A. T.
Speaker 2: Tree.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to talk to you. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for taking this time. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no problem.
Speaker 1: I would like to welcome you to the show. I'm
Speaker 1: going to go ahead and introduce you now if that's cool, okay,
Speaker 1: I would like to welcome to the show Master, Sergeant
Speaker 1: Retired Leroy Petrie. Mister Petrie, Welcome to the fascinations.
Speaker 6: Thank you. It's actually pronounced Petrie, like the dish. You know.
Speaker 1: That's funny because that was gonna be my first question
Speaker 1: because I have heard it both ways. I think they
Speaker 1: even said it both ways during your retirement ceremony.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's spelled like Petrie, but it's pronounced like Petrie.
Speaker 1: Gotcha. Well, from now on, I will refer to you
Speaker 1: as Petrie.
Speaker 6: Did you ever see that movie Land Before Time Little
Speaker 6: pterodactyls named Petrie.
Speaker 1: Yes, my son loved that movie. I think there was
Speaker 1: a little bit of racism in that movie. I think
Speaker 1: that like Bronosaurus or something said flatheads have no brains.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the way that this all came together was, I
Speaker 1: guess you were in San Antonio for some reason or another,
Speaker 1: and my wife was coming back from a flight out
Speaker 1: of town and she ran into you at San Antonio Airport.
Speaker 6: We're actually in the same flight. One of the prior
Speaker 6: sergeant majors of the Army was sitting in the same
Speaker 6: area as and when we were getting ready to leave
Speaker 6: the plane, we were stuck at the gate bridge whatever
Speaker 6: it's called, and waiting for them to open the door.
Speaker 6: This starm major of the army ended up telling everybody
Speaker 6: who I was, and your wife and I got to
Speaker 6: talking for a little bit, well waiting for them to
Speaker 6: open the door, and I was like, well he was
Speaker 6: a prior star major of the Army. I tried to
Speaker 6: shift fire on him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, had that work out?
Speaker 6: Not so well? You've gone out the door and I
Speaker 6: was like, oh, come.
Speaker 1: On, that's hilarious. Well you gave my wife a challenge coin. Yes,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. I have had this in my
Speaker 1: pocket pretty much ever since I got it. This is amazing.
Speaker 6: It's a small token of thanks for the people that
Speaker 6: mean something and have done something for our country.
Speaker 1: But you're that guy. You're the guy who did everything
Speaker 1: for this country.
Speaker 6: Yeah. But that's the one thing I realized is it's
Speaker 6: good to recognize people for things they do. There's so
Speaker 6: much negativity in the media nowadays. I like to bring
Speaker 6: a little positive aspect to people's lives that are deserving.
Speaker 1: You're not wrong. So was this coin for my wife
Speaker 1: because she served?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's actually you know, I believe it or not.
Speaker 6: I hate to say it, but and this there's nothing
Speaker 6: to do with your family. But I've had several instances
Speaker 6: where I've given a coin to couple they end up
Speaker 6: separating and that's the one thing they fight over. It
Speaker 6: sounds so silly, but you would be surprised that I've
Speaker 6: getten calls that say, hey, my wife took my coin
Speaker 6: or my husband took my coin. Can I get another
Speaker 6: one from you? Like, oh, man, that's hilarious.
Speaker 1: My wife led me to believe that you gave this
Speaker 1: to her to give to me, but in fact, you
Speaker 1: gave this to her. Now we're gonna have to get
Speaker 1: a device.
Speaker 6: No, don't get a divorce. You guys could share it.
Speaker 1: Na man, we're gonna have to get a divorce that
Speaker 1: way I keep it. So I did have a question.
Speaker 1: I did have a question. I'm looking at it here.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely beautiful, but on it is sort of like
Speaker 1: a Sideway's yellow diamond with the number two on it.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me why there's a two?
Speaker 6: It's an orange diamond. And what the two diamond represents
Speaker 6: is I put that on as a way to represent
Speaker 6: our history. If you've seen the movies Saving Private Ryan
Speaker 6: on the back of their helmets, they have an orange
Speaker 6: two diamond on the back of their second Rangers, and
Speaker 6: those were the Rangers of Second Range Battalion back during
Speaker 6: World War Two that scaled the cliffs of Point to Hawk.
Speaker 6: And they were also Delta Company, the same company I
Speaker 6: was in when I got injured, which we had just
Speaker 6: activated a few years prior, and so it's a way
Speaker 6: to pay respect to the Rangers that went before me
Speaker 6: as well as I put the Ranger tab and scroll
Speaker 6: on there to represent current day Rangers. And then on
Speaker 6: the outer ring you'll see a star on the left
Speaker 6: side of the star on the right side, and with
Speaker 6: the blue star on the left side, it represents is
Speaker 6: the families that have someone deployed, and the gold star
Speaker 6: on the right side is the one that represents those
Speaker 6: who have paid the ultimate sacrifice.
Speaker 1: It does a work of art. Did you get to
Speaker 1: design this?
Speaker 6: I did design the back myself. The front was designed
Speaker 6: by a lot of the Medal of Honor discipients use
Speaker 6: that as the front of their challenge coin and it's
Speaker 6: a it's just the Medal of Honor Foundation logo. Well,
Speaker 6: I don't mean to be disrespectful, but if I were
Speaker 6: to pick a side, I would say that the side
Speaker 6: you designed is the front, not the back. It's gorgeous,
Speaker 6: and that's what makes it unique is that most of
Speaker 6: us have the same front. But what makes it unique
Speaker 6: is the backside. How we it's our interpretation of what
Speaker 6: was important to us to put on there.
Speaker 1: Do you have to pay for these? Because I imagine
Speaker 1: you're giving them out all over the place?
Speaker 6: I have a At first I was, I was, but
Speaker 6: now I have a Our Medal of Honor Society gives
Speaker 6: us a stipend each year for use like paper, envelopes,
Speaker 6: kind of office stuff, and I choose to put all
Speaker 6: mine into coins. I think that's the most meaningful thing
Speaker 6: that is out there. And some of the guys will say, beliebro,
Speaker 6: you give out too many coins, You're going to devalue
Speaker 6: the coin. I said, My coins will never devalue because
Speaker 6: they mean the most to the people I give them to.
Speaker 1: That's the truth. This is absolutely amazing. Okay, so enough
Speaker 1: about this really cool coin. Let's talk about you man.
Speaker 6: I've been out of the army for almost four coming
Speaker 6: up on three and a half years, and I have
Speaker 6: been busier now than I was when I was active duty.
Speaker 1: Really, well, we'll get there, we'll get there. So first
Speaker 1: I want to wholeheartedly thank you so very much for
Speaker 1: your service, for your sacrifice, for being a badass, and
Speaker 1: for having my country's flag on your uniform.
Speaker 6: So thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: Now, you are the second living recipient of the Congressional
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War. Is that right?
Speaker 6: Yes, sir.
Speaker 1: You also were awarded the Purple Heart, the Legion of Merit,
Speaker 1: the Bronze Star, and bunch of other awards. Now this
Speaker 1: is going to sound like a really stupid question, but
Speaker 1: are you like the most decorated living veteran.
Speaker 6: No, No, far far away from that. I will say
Speaker 6: that there's a lot more people with far more medals
Speaker 6: than I have, But I never really cared about how
Speaker 6: many I had. It's just the value of each one
Speaker 6: and what it took to earn it is what made
Speaker 6: an impact on me. And believe it or not, most
Speaker 6: people outside of the military don't know what half the
Speaker 6: medals are to begin with, to include the Medal of Honored,
Speaker 6: A lot of people civilians are only knowledgeable on the
Speaker 6: Silver Star and the Purple Heart. Outside of that, it's
Speaker 6: the onesies and twosies here and there that recognize different metals.
Speaker 6: I mean, if you told people I have a Legion
Speaker 6: of America, most people like, ah, I don't know what
Speaker 6: that is.
Speaker 1: It sounds cool, Yeah, I gotta feel and most people
Speaker 1: would be like cool. Is that from the Boy Scouts?
Speaker 6: Yeah? I think those awards, Like I said, that's where
Speaker 6: I learned that it means something to recognize people, and
Speaker 6: even though the recognition is not nationally or sometimes even
Speaker 6: publicly known, that that recognition is needed and it means
Speaker 6: a lot to the person that's being recognized.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, Of all of those awards, which one is the rarest, like,
Speaker 1: the least awarded. Would that be the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Speaker 6: Yes, it's actually it's called the Medal of Honor. People
Speaker 6: will call it the Congressional because it's awarded by Congress,
Speaker 6: but it's just known as the Medal of Honor. And
Speaker 6: there's only been thirty five hundred awarded in our nation's history,
Speaker 6: and of the thirty five hundred, most of them were
Speaker 6: awarded posthumously. And out of the thirty five hundred, there's
Speaker 6: seventy one living recipients today. Of the seventy one, there's
Speaker 6: eleven of us under the age of seventy.
Speaker 1: Wow, are all eleven of you since Vietnam? Or how
Speaker 1: many cents Vietnam?
Speaker 6: All the eleven living are from Afghanistan?
Speaker 1: Gotcha? And you were the second?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 1: Wow? Do you have to be nominated for that award?
Speaker 6: The nomination starts at the lowest level, meaning the usually
Speaker 6: the people that were there on the ground with you
Speaker 6: and saw the action and bare witness to it have
Speaker 6: to write sworn statements testing to what they saw, and
Speaker 6: then it goes up to train a command like any
Speaker 6: other award, and then it is scrutinized and the process
Speaker 6: takes approximately three years just because every level that it
Speaker 6: goes up to it is scrutinized for errors, and at
Speaker 6: any level it can get bumped down to a lower award.
Speaker 6: And so it's a lengthy process, but it's lengthy for
Speaker 6: a reason. When it has to go across the desk
Speaker 6: of Congress and the United States President, it needs to
Speaker 6: be perfect.
Speaker 1: That makes one hundred sense. So you've told the story
Speaker 1: a million times of the events that led to you
Speaker 1: being nominated for this award. So if it's okay with you,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to cut in President Obama explaining that
Speaker 1: is that okay?
Speaker 6: You sure?
Speaker 1: Did you tell her better?
Speaker 6: I'd probably explained it in my quick version all special
Speaker 6: operations one evening got alerted that a high value target
Speaker 6: was moving in Afghanistan, that they had gotten some intel
Speaker 6: he was moving in Afghanistan, and so they basically shut
Speaker 6: down all special operations and said, wherever you're at state
Speaker 6: put whoever's area of operations, he pops up, and that's
Speaker 6: going to be the people that are going to action
Speaker 6: on it. And so normally, as rangers, we sleep during
Speaker 6: the day or do our daily activities during the day
Speaker 6: and go out on operations during the nighttime. Well, that morning,
Speaker 6: I was up early. I was going to check my
Speaker 6: email and do a few things in the office or
Speaker 6: a planning area whatever it's called. Not really in office,
Speaker 6: but the tent with computers. And I went in there
Speaker 6: and there was an officer that was on our duty,
Speaker 6: I guess, monitoring everything. And he jumps up from the
Speaker 6: other side of the room his computer and he says,
Speaker 6: they were go wake up the pilot's go wake everybody up.
Speaker 6: Hesitated for a split second, and then went and started
Speaker 6: waking people up, and went and woke up my guys
Speaker 6: and told them start getting your gear ready, check your gear.
Speaker 6: I'll be back, And I ran to the chow tent.
Speaker 6: What I was going to do is I was going
Speaker 6: to grab some beef turkey packets or what we call
Speaker 6: lickey's and chewies, little things to stick in my day
Speaker 6: bag so that if we got stuck out, give those
Speaker 6: two the younger guys and it helps boost their morale
Speaker 6: if we were stuck out there for a while. No chow.
Speaker 6: But I'm walking through this tent and it's decorated like
Speaker 6: the fourth of July, red white and blue everywhere, and
Speaker 6: we can't really figure it out. And so I'm walking
Speaker 6: toward the end of the tent and I see the
Speaker 6: sheet cake, and I walk over to the sheet cake,
Speaker 6: and on this cake it says Happy Memorial Day. And
Speaker 6: I stopped for a second. I was like, wow, we
Speaker 6: had been doing so many operations almost nightly that I
Speaker 6: lost track of time, and I didn't realize that it
Speaker 6: was already a Memorial Day. And so I they took
Speaker 6: a brief second, and then I ran out, ran back
Speaker 6: to the planning bay. Immediately there we were briefed on
Speaker 6: what was going on, started our hasty planning, and next
Speaker 6: thing we know, I'm back out checking my guy's gear
Speaker 6: and then we're loading up on helicopters going out to
Speaker 6: the target. Immediately upon touching down, we realized it was well.
Speaker 6: Actually in the air, we realized it was a little
Speaker 6: bit different than normal missions because this was a daylight mission,
Speaker 6: and being a high value target, they usually have a
Speaker 6: better caution force with them that's willing to fight to
Speaker 6: the death, and so they're a little bit higher, highlyer trained,
Speaker 6: and we knew we were going to get into if
Speaker 6: they were there, we were going to get into a
Speaker 6: heavy firefight possibly, And so I'm going through all these
Speaker 6: different contingencies in my mind. What I'm going to do
Speaker 6: if we take a casualty, because our history has proven
Speaker 6: that we've taken casualties during daylight missions far often more
Speaker 6: than a night time, just because we have the element
Speaker 6: of surprise and the cover of darkness. So the other
Speaker 6: thing one of my first artist said was while we're
Speaker 6: flying in the helicopter, he said, normally you look across
Speaker 6: at the guys across from you, and you see their
Speaker 6: faces under a green glow of our night vision. He said,
Speaker 6: now you can see the color and pigment of their skin,
Speaker 6: and you can see the expressions on their face. And
Speaker 6: he said, it was definitely a different mission. We all
Speaker 6: had a little bit of butterflies. You could see it
Speaker 6: in everybody's face. And so as soon as our helicopter
Speaker 6: touched down, we started taking fire from a nearby field.
Speaker 6: Enemy fighter was shooting at us and thetoon leader and
Speaker 6: I went and neutralized that threat, and as we were
Speaker 6: clearing weapons and stuff from him, we got a call
Speaker 6: over the radio that one of the younger squad leaders
Speaker 6: had gone into the wrong compound across the street, and
Speaker 6: so I told mytuon leader, I'm going to break off.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna go with them and ride overwatch and he says,
Speaker 6: go for it, so I run over there. At that point,
Speaker 6: they I dart across the street and they were entering
Speaker 6: a compounded about nine foot walled compound, pretty big compound,
Speaker 6: and inside was two story building and then a smaller
Speaker 6: one story maybe six seven feet wide, probably about ten
Speaker 6: feet long. And they started going across the courtyard and
Speaker 6: started clearing the two story building inside right away. I
Speaker 6: was the last man in, so as soon as they
Speaker 6: got to that doorway and they started flowing into that building,
Speaker 6: I stayed in the doorway and I said, give me
Speaker 6: another guy. We need to start clearing this courtyard and
Speaker 6: clear that other building. Immediately I felt PFC Robinson bumped
Speaker 6: my shoulder and I knew I had another ranger with me.
Speaker 6: So we started to move, and as we started to move,
Speaker 6: two guys popped up to our left, maybe ten fifteen
Speaker 6: feet away. It started spraying ak forty sevens from the hip.
Speaker 6: I caught him out of my periphial vision as we
Speaker 6: were moving, and immediately I felt a strike. It felt
Speaker 6: like a sledgehammer to my left thigh. It impacted and
Speaker 6: I kind of did a kick to the side like
Speaker 6: a deer. When it gets shot, and immediately I knew
Speaker 6: I was hit, but I didn't know how bad I
Speaker 6: was hit. I thought, well, the bullets probably just lodged
Speaker 6: in the bone and they could dig it out later.
Speaker 6: Immediately just ran to cover, got behind a smaller building.
Speaker 6: Robinson got hit just below his armpit on his left side,
Speaker 6: and he followed me behind cover. I immediately told him
Speaker 6: watch that corner. Start checking yourself for injuries. I got
Speaker 6: on the radio. I prepped a grenade. I threw it
Speaker 6: over the building towards the end of it went off,
Speaker 6: kind of bought us a lull in fire, which sarn.
Speaker 6: Higgins ended up running to our position, and immediately they
Speaker 6: were to my right and we had our backs towards
Speaker 6: the building, and we were watching the corners to our
Speaker 6: right and left, and I told him check on, Robinson,
Speaker 6: watch that corner. I kept watching the corner to my
Speaker 6: left and calling up on the radio giving my command updates.
Speaker 6: At that point, my legs started to hurt a little bit,
Speaker 6: so I crouched down and almost kneeling crouching position. Next
Speaker 6: thing we know, we hear blast. Two guys next to
Speaker 6: me kind of turn around and say, Petrick, what the hell?
Speaker 6: Is that, And I said, they're throwing hand grenades. Keep
Speaker 6: your heads down, keep watching those corners. My biggest fear
Speaker 6: was that they were going to come around the sides
Speaker 6: and finish us off. And so I keep watching my corner,
Speaker 6: keep checking on them, keep calling on the radio. Well,
Speaker 6: on one of the checks, when I looked back to
Speaker 6: my right to check on them, I noticed on the
Speaker 6: ground right behind them. We were no more than two
Speaker 6: three feet away from each other, and there was a
Speaker 6: pineapple grenade sitting on the ground. So I knew we
Speaker 6: hadn't used pineapple grenades since Vietnam, probably, so I knew
Speaker 6: it wasn't one of our grades. Immediately recognized it as
Speaker 6: a threat, didn't really think about it besides getting away
Speaker 6: from them. Reached over, grabbed it with my right hand,
Speaker 6: leaned forward in an attempt to throw it, toss it away,
Speaker 6: and as I raised my head back up and sat
Speaker 6: back up, pulled back my right arm and it was
Speaker 6: the hand was completely gone at the wrist, like somebody
Speaker 6: had taken a circular saw and just cut it right off.
Speaker 6: Grabbed my forearm with my left hand started to pinch
Speaker 6: it as tight as I could. I looked at the
Speaker 6: wound to the radius and the old nu were poking
Speaker 6: up maybe a half of an inch. The blood was
Speaker 6: oozing pretty profusely, and it was a meat skirt, so
Speaker 6: to speak. The skin was flapped back a little bit
Speaker 6: around all the edges, but the hand was completely gone,
Speaker 6: and I'd see the dirt and the debris and smell
Speaker 6: some of the burner. It was kind of unreal. But
Speaker 6: this is what went through my head is I'm looking
Speaker 6: at this thing, going, man, how come this thing isn't
Speaker 6: spraying three feet in the air like in Hollywood. And
Speaker 6: so I finally snapped back to reality that I got
Speaker 6: to take care of this and reached over on my kit,
Speaker 6: grabbed a turner kit, wrapped it on my forearm, tied
Speaker 6: it down as tight as I could, stopped it from bleeding,
Speaker 6: checked on my two guys next to me, who basically
Speaker 6: got minor shrapnel, got back on the radio, let my
Speaker 6: command know what was going on. So my guys keep
Speaker 6: watching those corners watching mine. Next thing we know, we
Speaker 6: see one of our first sergeants coming up running towards me,
Speaker 6: and he reaches down and he grabs me by my
Speaker 6: kit and attempt to pull me up, and he says,
Speaker 6: come on, we're going to get you out of here,
Speaker 6: and I kind of pushed his arm away and I said,
Speaker 6: you're not taking me anywhere till you kill those sobs
Speaker 6: behind the building. And he looks at me and he
Speaker 6: saw that I was coherent, that I already started self aide,
Speaker 6: and he said, okay, well come back for you, and
Speaker 6: he ran off from the distance, and I think to
Speaker 6: grab some other guys to try to flank them. At
Speaker 6: that point, at the firing from the enemy stop, we
Speaker 6: had another lull and fire. I don't know if they
Speaker 6: were running low on AMML or what, but I was
Speaker 6: able to grab onto another guy and we ended up
Speaker 6: running over to where our medics were. We get in
Speaker 6: there and there's blood everywhere and they're treating guys to
Speaker 6: my right and to my left, and one of our
Speaker 6: dogs comes running up to me and he says, hey, sorry, Petrie,
Speaker 6: we need to treat you. And I said, no, I'm fine,
Speaker 6: I already got a tournique on here help those guys.
Speaker 6: And he says, well, we need to look at your legs.
Speaker 6: At that point, I had already completely forgot about my
Speaker 6: legs and I looked down and my pants are covered
Speaker 6: from my thighs down to my boots and blood. Mentally,
Speaker 6: I didn't want to leave the fight. I thought that
Speaker 6: if I could control a radio or provide overwatch, anything
Speaker 6: I could do would be supportive. And then I realized
Speaker 6: that even though I was in it mentally, that the
Speaker 6: body needs juice to run, and I had lost a
Speaker 6: lot of it that down, and I told him, okay,
Speaker 6: go ahead, take a look. And at that point they
Speaker 6: cut my pants off and realized that I had been
Speaker 6: shot through both my thighs, and they started putting turn
Speaker 6: of kids on my legs and packaging me up and
Speaker 6: tempt to metavac for me. And once they secured a
Speaker 6: helicopter landing zone nearby, they started to move me. And
Speaker 6: as they're moving me, guys who carried me up this
Speaker 6: little hill and I'm looking off on the top of
Speaker 6: the building with the two story building that was in
Speaker 6: the compact. I see some of our guys up there
Speaker 6: with their guns pulling security. And another guy comes running
Speaker 6: up to the litter that I'm being carried on and
Speaker 6: he goes, hey, Sarn Petrick, you're gonna be all right.
Speaker 6: You're gonna be all right. I'm looking at him I
Speaker 6: was like, get the heck away from me. I was like,
Speaker 6: go pull security because at that point I'm still in
Speaker 6: the leader mode and I'm thinking, either you're gonna get
Speaker 6: shot coming to comfort me, or I'm gonna get shot
Speaker 6: in this litter where I can't even defend myself. So
Speaker 6: they get us to the helicopter. They load us on
Speaker 6: the helicopter, and one of the last things that happened
Speaker 6: before we left the battlefield was Sartain Higgins came running
Speaker 6: up the ramp to me and he knilt down next
Speaker 6: to me and he said, you saved us. You saved us.
Speaker 6: And I got on the helicopter and we flew out
Speaker 6: to an airfield nearby. They basically unloaded us, put us
Speaker 6: on the side of us dirt airfield, and the helicopter
Speaker 6: took off back to support the mission. And I had
Speaker 6: two pas from my unit that were there working on
Speaker 6: all of us, and I can't see really what was
Speaker 6: going on because I was laid down tied to the litter,
Speaker 6: but they took care of us till about thirty minutes later.
Speaker 6: Six Wing aircraft a plane called the J mount Bird
Speaker 6: that has medical facilities able to do basically surgeries on board,
Speaker 6: picked us up and took us to Bogram. About midway
Speaker 6: through flight, I lost consciousness due to I guess the
Speaker 6: meds drugs that they put me on, and I forget
Speaker 6: what they call it, but they basically sedated me. And
Speaker 6: next thing I knew, I woke up in Germany. The
Speaker 6: next morning. I guess I had gone to Bogram. They
Speaker 6: did a wound wash out there and then flew me
Speaker 6: out to Germany. And I woke up in Germany, and
Speaker 6: that was crazy what went through my mind there. But
Speaker 6: I woke up and arm was all bandaged, and the
Speaker 6: first thing I asked the nurse for was a razor
Speaker 6: and some shaving crew, and she looked hit me crazy,
Speaker 6: And what was going through my mind was, Man, how
Speaker 6: many days when I was out? I must be pretty scruffy,
Speaker 6: because I felt my face. Probably by then it was
Speaker 6: like the next day's shadow at the five o'clock shadow.
Speaker 6: And part of our Ranger standard was Ranger will always
Speaker 6: be clean shaven, And so I didn't know who was
Speaker 6: going to come into my hospital room, whether it be
Speaker 6: a general, a colonel, or what, and so I needed
Speaker 6: to shave. That's what was going through my mind. I
Speaker 6: got my shaved, and that was the first time I
Speaker 6: was able to call home, and I knew that our
Speaker 6: rear detachment had called or had already gone by the
Speaker 6: house and told my wife and kids. My mother in
Speaker 6: law was here at the time, and told them kind
Speaker 6: of what they knew, what they knew of the story
Speaker 6: of what had happened. And so I'm thinking in my
Speaker 6: mind how I could let her know that I was
Speaker 6: doing okay. And so I called her from Germany and
Speaker 6: I said, honey, I got shot through both my guys
Speaker 6: and I lost my right hand and the phone goes
Speaker 6: kind of quiet for a minute, and then I said,
Speaker 6: the good news is Junk still there. And she realized
Speaker 6: at that point that I was doing okay and it'd
Speaker 6: just be a matter of time for me to get
Speaker 6: home and recover. But that's the mission in a nutshell, Okay.
Speaker 1: So I have a couple of fallow up questions. How
Speaker 1: many people were on that mission, including you?
Speaker 6: Ooh, that's a tough question. I'd say roughly fifty, somewhere
Speaker 6: in the thirty five or fifty neighborhood. And the only
Speaker 6: reason being is we're hitting multiple targets and it was
Speaker 6: in a rule Afghanistan and those compounds probably at least
Speaker 6: a few hundred meters between compounds.
Speaker 1: Where in Afghanistan did you say? Cobbo Pektia, province Pektia.
Speaker 7: Okay, hey, street walkers, here's a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 7: Let's get back into it.
Speaker 1: Of that thirty five to fifty or whatever that number is,
Speaker 1: how many he made it out? I guess how many didn't.
Speaker 6: One of our rangers was killed in action, and Special
Speaker 6: Scather Cole, who had come out of a two story
Speaker 6: building and I think he was attempting to come out
Speaker 6: and support us at the smaller building and another enemy
Speaker 6: which I had no knowledge of what was going on
Speaker 6: to my far right, but I guess there was some debris,
Speaker 6: some branches and stuff across the courtyard from them, and
Speaker 6: another enemy fire popped up from there and shot him
Speaker 6: just below his helmet, and one of the guys next
Speaker 6: to him picked up the gun and shot the enemy
Speaker 6: killed him, But we did lose Special Scater Cole that day.
Speaker 1: Got you, okay? So since you apparently sensitive missions like
Speaker 1: this were part of your job. In the movies, you
Speaker 1: always see, you know, the guy handing some other guy
Speaker 1: a letter for his wife, a last letter if you will.
Speaker 1: Did you have one of those? Is that just all
Speaker 1: Hollywood bullshit?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 6: I think some people do that, but you know, it
Speaker 6: was my wow seventh deployment. I didn't ever think about
Speaker 6: that too much. I said goodbye to my family when
Speaker 6: I left the house, and we all knew the risks,
Speaker 6: But no, I never really thought about leaving a letter.
Speaker 6: It probably isn't a bad thing to have one of those,
Speaker 6: but it was just not my thing.
Speaker 1: So you said that part of the Rangers I guess
Speaker 1: motto or whatever is to stay clean shaven.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's part of our Ranger standards.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I have a question about that because my
Speaker 1: neighbor is currently a Ranger, a Green Beret.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, that's the misconception that people get. There's a ranger.
Speaker 6: The ranger is where's the Ranger School And anybody in
Speaker 6: the Army can go to Ranger School. It's a school
Speaker 6: leadership school designed by the Army where you earn the
Speaker 6: Ranger tab. The Ranger tab is a school. Ranger scroll
Speaker 6: means that you're doing the Ranger things as part of
Speaker 6: your that's your career job in the Army. And so
Speaker 6: there's only three Ranger regiments or there's one Ranger regiment
Speaker 6: and three Ranger battalions, two in Georgia and one in
Speaker 6: Fort Lewis, Washington. And so outside of that, I mean
Speaker 6: there's people that, oh, my cousin's a ranger and Fort Campbell,
Speaker 6: or my friends a ranger in Fort Irwin. The only
Speaker 6: rangers are the ones actual rangers are the ones in
Speaker 6: Georgia and Washington. All the other ones they may be
Speaker 6: ranger qualified or prior rangers outside of that, they're not
Speaker 6: part of the Ranger regiment. I'm not taking anything away
Speaker 6: from them. But the standards that I talk about we have.
Speaker 6: It's called the Blue Book, and it's all the ranger standards,
Speaker 6: what your uniforms should look like, down to everything you
Speaker 6: will shave every single day, to include when you're on leave, holidays, weekends,
Speaker 6: and the intent is that you will maintain the ranger
Speaker 6: appearance at all times.
Speaker 1: Interesting because that fella that I mentioned has shoulder linked
Speaker 1: hair and most of the time a full beard.
Speaker 6: Those Special Forces guys they do that. There's special groups
Speaker 6: and the Rangers that are given a relaxed grooming standards
Speaker 6: where they can grow beards and a little bit links
Speaker 6: to your hair but they're on special missions, so to speak.
Speaker 1: You said that after you talked to your wife and
Speaker 1: you told her about your injuries, you know, once you
Speaker 1: crack that super rad joke, that she kind of knew
Speaker 1: you were okay, if I am correct, After you healed
Speaker 1: from those injuries, you went back. You re enlisted or
Speaker 1: re upped or whatever it's called.
Speaker 6: We enlisted, yes, five more years. I had the opportunity
Speaker 6: to get out, and I weighed a lot of people's input,
Speaker 6: and the majority of what I heard was most veterans
Speaker 6: say was that they regret not stay in or they
Speaker 6: wish they could have stayed longer. And so I looked
Speaker 6: at it as I had the opportunity to stay longer,
Speaker 6: and I didn't want to live with regret. I'm not saying, well,
Speaker 6: I wonder would have been like if I would have
Speaker 6: stayed a little bit longer. And there was an opportunity
Speaker 6: to take a job where I could take care of
Speaker 6: wounded veterans or wounded military and special operations the way
Speaker 6: somebody Liaison took care of me and my family through
Speaker 6: my recovery, and so it gave me a chance to
Speaker 6: do something to give back to what I was thankful
Speaker 6: for so.
Speaker 1: I washed windows for a living, and my wife freaks
Speaker 1: out if she knows I'm going to be on a
Speaker 1: ladder higher than about four feet. So what was your
Speaker 1: wife's reaction when you told her that you were going
Speaker 1: to go back?
Speaker 6: You know that was at that point she I don't know.
Speaker 6: I think she trusted me because a few years before
Speaker 6: she told me that she didn't want me to reenlist,
Speaker 6: and she says, you've done enough deploymentsst time for you
Speaker 6: to get out. I went to work and it happened
Speaker 6: to be my birthday, and I came home and opened
Speaker 6: the door. She said happy birthday, and I said, honey,
Speaker 6: guess what. I just re enlisted for six years. She
Speaker 6: knew what it meant to me, and she knew that
Speaker 6: I made good decisions for the most part, and trusted
Speaker 6: me in the decision making. And I know that she
Speaker 6: probably didn't express it, but there was probably a little
Speaker 6: bit of fear. But you should have seen me this
Speaker 6: last Christmas. I was on our rooftop. I took some
Speaker 6: rope and I tied a Swiss what we call a
Speaker 6: Swiss seat, basically a repelling seat out of rope, and
Speaker 6: then I tied into a hook on the top of
Speaker 6: my roof on the third floor and was putting up
Speaker 6: Christmas light.
Speaker 1: What is wrong with you? Man? That's crazy.
Speaker 6: See I had the safey line. The thing is. I
Speaker 6: told my wife, I said, if you see me dangling
Speaker 6: over the side called the fire department, she knew I'm
Speaker 6: out of rope. I said, I don't know if I
Speaker 6: find the rope with one hand.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's talk about your hand for a minute.
Speaker 1: I heard you in another interview explaining that your hand
Speaker 1: is pretty state of the art and that you have
Speaker 1: some attachments that go with it.
Speaker 6: Yes, it's called the Island. It's by a company called
Speaker 6: Touch Bionics.
Speaker 1: Did you say island?
Speaker 6: I limb limb. The arm itself was fabricated down at
Speaker 6: the Center for Intrepid in San Antonio. That's where I am, unfortunately.
Speaker 6: M Yeah, And I was there for about nine months.
Speaker 6: And the fingers move kind of like a lot of
Speaker 6: people are like, oh man, it's like the terminator like
Speaker 6: Luke Skywalker. It doesn't have individual articulation, but all the
Speaker 6: fingers move in it. Each finger stops when it meets
Speaker 6: a certain amount of resistance, so that you have more
Speaker 6: dexterity to grab different shapes. It also has a four
Speaker 6: three sixty left and right rotation, and then when you
Speaker 6: twist the hand to the right or left enough, it'll
Speaker 6: come off and you can put on different attachments. I
Speaker 6: have open end wrenches, vice gripts, full set of covery knives,
Speaker 6: a golf attachment. I just got a potato pillar, a
Speaker 6: pizza cutter. I have a bow release, I have a
Speaker 6: workout arm, you name it. There's there's so many different attachments.
Speaker 6: Our military and is doing a better job taking care
Speaker 6: of it's wounded than they ever have. The intent is
Speaker 6: that if you did something before, or you want to
Speaker 6: do something, that they'll do their best to find a
Speaker 6: way to make it happen for you.
Speaker 1: I heard that you have a fishing rod attachment.
Speaker 6: No, they have a fishing rod attachment. I didn't get it.
Speaker 6: I really haven't fished. I think I fished twice since
Speaker 6: I lost my hand, and so it's one of those
Speaker 6: things that I just I almost don't have the time
Speaker 6: to do it anymore. Eventually, one day, if I get
Speaker 6: older and have the time, I might end up picking
Speaker 6: it up again. But right now in my life I'm
Speaker 6: not one of those guys that all the attachments that
Speaker 6: I have I use. I don't have them on display,
Speaker 6: just to hey, look at all the things I have,
Speaker 6: all the things I have I use, the things I
Speaker 6: don't use that I attachments that I was given that
Speaker 6: I tried out, or that I didn't end up saying no,
Speaker 6: this isn't really for me. I ended up donating them
Speaker 6: back to prostics there in San Antonio and told them
Speaker 6: that if there's people in the local community that can't
Speaker 6: afford it, they can have those ones.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, man, you should have stopped by when you
Speaker 1: were here in San Antonio. Just kidding.
Speaker 6: I was all over that place. I tried every barbecue
Speaker 6: place in San Antonio.
Speaker 1: What'd you think.
Speaker 6: Texas Pride was the best. It's actually in Atkins, Texas.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: My wife and I were watching Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive Ins,
Speaker 1: and Dives one Sunday morning and he had stopped by there,
Speaker 1: and so that was the focus or one of the
Speaker 1: focuses of that episode, and we just looked at each
Speaker 1: other and we were like, what are we doing today,
Speaker 1: Let's go there. So we went and checked it out.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you liked it.
Speaker 6: There's a small group of special ops guys while I
Speaker 6: was there that were injured, and when one of us
Speaker 6: would leave the hospital, we'd all get together for dinner
Speaker 6: and kind of farewell that person back to their unit
Speaker 6: or wherever they were going. And we ended up going
Speaker 6: to that pizza place, the one with like the forty
Speaker 6: two pound pizza or whatever. It is a big louse,
Speaker 6: I think, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Big lose or something like that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we ordered the second to the largest pizza between
Speaker 6: like eight of us and we couldn't finish it nice.
Speaker 1: Well. San Antonio was I think number two for fattest
Speaker 1: cities for like a decade. So then now you know why.
Speaker 6: And I do get down there every so often. I
Speaker 6: love can Antonio. I was just there for the the
Speaker 6: Army All American Bowl, and I had gone to that
Speaker 6: a couple of years. I ended up going down there
Speaker 6: one time, me and I was the grand Marshal of
Speaker 6: the Fiesta's River parade.
Speaker 1: That Army ball is that is that why you were
Speaker 1: here when my wife met you?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was actually very excited because I had gone
Speaker 6: probably four years ago, and I did not know that
Speaker 6: I at the time that I was going to be
Speaker 6: taking the game ball out to the fifty yard line
Speaker 6: with that the oldest living veteran who at that time
Speaker 6: was one hundred and seven, And I'm sitting next to
Speaker 6: him on the bench and We're getting ready to take
Speaker 6: this game ball out. And I looked at him and
Speaker 6: I said, sure, I just read an article on you
Speaker 6: a month ago, and I said it. In the article,
Speaker 6: it says you attributed your health and age to cigar
Speaker 6: smoking and wine drinking or whiskey drinking. And he kind
Speaker 6: of leaned over and whispered to me because I didn't
Speaker 6: think they were going to take me seriously, and I
Speaker 6: was surprised he talked out to the fifty yard line
Speaker 6: by himself and assisted and right back. And I was
Speaker 6: actually really excited because I heard he was going to
Speaker 6: be there again this year, more than twelve and he
Speaker 6: lives I think he lives just north of there in Austin.
Speaker 6: And wow, the day of I showed up and they
Speaker 6: said he wasn't gonna make it, that he wasn't feeling well,
Speaker 6: and I said, understandable, he's one hundred and twelve.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I got to take the game ball out with
Speaker 6: Pete Dawkins and I had met him a few years
Speaker 6: prior at the Army Navy game and we had done
Speaker 6: an interview. It was him, myself and Roger Starbauch. To
Speaker 6: have those two guys next to me in an interview,
Speaker 6: I felt like, wow, it was pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: I bet those duos looked at you and felt like wow.
Speaker 6: I'd tell you what impresses me though, is a lot
Speaker 6: of people that I meet and I get to meet
Speaker 6: a lot of celebrities and wealthy people and executives. And
Speaker 6: what really impresses me though, is with all these athletes
Speaker 6: and stuff, is that I'm not only impressed by what
Speaker 6: they do or what they've achieved, but what they do
Speaker 6: after their achievements. And that's what is at least a
Speaker 6: big impression on me. Is the person may become after
Speaker 6: the fact, and so you can attain all this wealth
Speaker 6: and all this celebrity status, but what you do with
Speaker 6: it is what really makes a difference to me.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. I think one of the biggest local
Speaker 1: former athlete, celebrity heroes or whatever is David Robinson, the
Speaker 1: former Spur.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I met him a couple of times. I
Speaker 6: tell you, he raised his boys right there. He's got
Speaker 6: some good boys there.
Speaker 1: Well, from all accounts, I've never met him, but from
Speaker 1: all accounts and everything I've seen and heard about that guy,
Speaker 1: he is salt of the earth. Like he preaches at
Speaker 1: the local church sometimes on Sundays. He used his wealth
Speaker 1: and his fame, I guess to create a school for
Speaker 1: underprivileged children. Like the guy's just salted the earth. Super
Speaker 1: good dude, from what I've.
Speaker 6: Heard you were mentioning, David Robinson, are you a Spurs fan?
Speaker 1: I would like to say that I'm a huge Spurs fan.
Speaker 1: I've been born and raised in San Antonio my whole life,
Speaker 1: and that's our only professional sports team because soccer doesn't count.
Speaker 6: They are huge on soccer up here.
Speaker 1: Gross. So the Spurs came to San Antonio right around
Speaker 1: the time that I was born, so I kind of
Speaker 1: feel like we came to San Antonio at the same time.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I feel like I'm a big sports a
Speaker 1: big Spurs fan. Why what do you have to say?
Speaker 6: Well, I love the Spurs. They're a great team, and
Speaker 6: they've been a great team for a number of years now.
Speaker 6: But Papovich, prior service veteran and a lot of the
Speaker 6: players would come and visit the troops in the hospital
Speaker 6: on a regular basis. I think it helped them be
Speaker 6: well rounded players and realized that, hey, we going to
Speaker 6: do this for a living because there's other people doing that.
Speaker 6: And not to mention the tickets, they give a lot
Speaker 6: of tickets to a lot of the wounded veterans and well,
Speaker 6: Peter Holt the owner of the Spurs Vietnam also owner
Speaker 6: of Caterpillar. They do a heck of a lot to
Speaker 6: support the veterans and the military and the local community there.
Speaker 6: In my impression, like I said, what people do with it,
Speaker 6: that's why I love the Spurs and it's a pretty
Speaker 6: good team too. Well.
Speaker 1: I agree. Next time you're in San Antonio, if you
Speaker 1: give me enough notice, I'll get tickets and I will
Speaker 1: take you to a game.
Speaker 6: Sir, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: If you ever find yourself in San Antonio and ask
Speaker 1: some time to kill, I would be honored to escort
Speaker 1: you to the Chester A. Nimitz Pacific War Museum in Fredericksburg,
Speaker 1: which is about forty five minutes from my house. I
Speaker 1: would absolutely love to take you there. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've got a decent sized house with extra rooms. You
Speaker 1: can even stay here if you want to, you.
Speaker 6: Man, I appreciate that very much.
Speaker 1: I was listening to your retirement ceremony. There is some
Speaker 1: podcasts that I guess they uploaded the entire audio file
Speaker 1: of your retirement ceremony. So I had a couple of
Speaker 1: questions about that. I'm assuming that it was taking place
Speaker 1: in Seattle or thereabouts.
Speaker 6: Actually it took place on Fort Lewis here. It was
Speaker 6: in an old theater right next to my unit.
Speaker 1: Okay, first of all, why was Howard Schultz, the CEO
Speaker 1: of Starbucks? Why was he there?
Speaker 6: So I invited him. It's going to turn into a
Speaker 6: little bit of a story. I had gone to Starbucks.
Speaker 6: I had been invited by some of their veterans a
Speaker 6: few years back. Starbucks got a bad name with the
Speaker 6: military early on in the war. I think a young
Speaker 6: Raine sergeant wrote to Starbucks during I think it was
Speaker 6: like three or so and said, hey, Starbucks, send us
Speaker 6: free coffee. And being a company they said, they replied,
Speaker 6: they said, hey, we can't outfit the whole military with
Speaker 6: free coffee. They turned around there, oh, Starbucks hates the troops.
Speaker 6: They don't support the troops. Da da DA, and Starbucks
Speaker 6: ended up turning around and saying, hey, you buy a bag,
Speaker 6: we'll give a bag in their stores. Living like forty
Speaker 6: miles south, I figured, well, I want to go see
Speaker 6: for myself, see what the Starbucks is really about in
Speaker 6: their support for veterans. So I said, it's only forty
Speaker 6: miles away. I drove up there, went to the headquarters
Speaker 6: and met the guys pull the veterans. They told me
Speaker 6: you want to take a tour, and they started walking
Speaker 6: me around the building and they actually had a monument
Speaker 6: built inside the building tribute to the troops, to a
Speaker 6: lot of veterans and those that were deployed that we're
Speaker 6: serving and that were employees of Starbucks. And so I
Speaker 6: was like, oh wow, this is awesome. Is actually pretty impressive.
Speaker 6: And as we're keep walking around, they said, hey, do
Speaker 6: you want to meet Howard Schultz? I said sure, I'm
Speaker 6: thinking we're going to go shake hands, say hi, and
Speaker 6: then keep moving on. And we got to meet him.
Speaker 6: He welcomed me into his office and we sat down
Speaker 6: and we talked for quite a while. It ended up
Speaker 6: turning out he said, I don't want you to only
Speaker 6: talk to my veterans. I'd love for you to talk
Speaker 6: to my whole company, and so it ended up getting
Speaker 6: worked into all the Starbucks. Howard Schultz addressed the company,
Speaker 6: and then I got to talk to the company. About
Speaker 6: six months later, he invited me back and said, hey,
Speaker 6: I'd love for you to come to this breakfast. We're
Speaker 6: having a big announcement. I think he'd love it, And
Speaker 6: so I went up there and they were announcing that
Speaker 6: they were hiring ten thousand veterans and spouses. Awesome. And
Speaker 6: so a few months go by, I get another message
Speaker 6: from Howard Schultz saying, Hey, I am putting a small
Speaker 6: get together at my house. Love for you to come
Speaker 6: by say a few remarks. So I go up there.
Speaker 6: I sit all day at the shareholders meeting, go to
Speaker 6: his house that evening, and small group of people are there,
Speaker 6: Oprah Winfrey, Bobby and I, Center of Gifford and her
Speaker 6: husband and secretary of the old Secretary of Defense Gates,
Speaker 6: just an array of people. And about an hour and
Speaker 6: a half later we go out into a tent in
Speaker 6: his backyard. And it's later in the evening and he
Speaker 6: gets up there with his wife and he says, I'd
Speaker 6: love to announce that the Schultz Family Foundation is contributing
Speaker 6: I forget the exact amount, but it was millions of
Speaker 6: dollars toward helping our veterans, TBIPTSD, that kind of thing.
Speaker 6: And I think the intent was to these other people
Speaker 6: with deep pockets to jump on board. And I got
Speaker 6: up there, did my five minute little top and I
Speaker 6: had to go home because we were moving homes at
Speaker 6: the time. A few months later down the road, he
Speaker 6: sends me a note again and says, Hey, I'm writing
Speaker 6: a book. I have a co author that's working on
Speaker 6: this with me. Would you mind if we put your
Speaker 6: story in this book? And I said sure. So then
Speaker 6: the book they said, is going to be coming out
Speaker 6: on Veterans Day that year. He ends up saying, we're
Speaker 6: doing that concert in DC called the Concert for Velor.
Speaker 6: We're teaming up with HBO, and it's going to have
Speaker 6: some of the stories as vignettes during the concerts the
Speaker 6: show on the big screens. I'd love to have you
Speaker 6: and your family come out. And the book ended up
Speaker 6: getting released that same day in all the Starbucks worldwide,
Speaker 6: and this concert ran from the Capitol to the Washington Monument.
Speaker 6: It was ridiculous. They had these jumbo trons all the
Speaker 6: way down and it was free to all veterans of
Speaker 6: public and it was amazing. They had so many big
Speaker 6: names there. We met a lot of the presenters that
Speaker 6: were introducing the bands and stuff, and we were staying
Speaker 6: at the same hotel. Jack Black, Jamie Fox, Metallico, was there, Eminem,
Speaker 6: you name it. They had all these different bands that
Speaker 6: were just big at that time that were just amazing performances.
Speaker 6: And in between the show vignettes of these stories that
Speaker 6: were in the book, a lot of great stories.
Speaker 7: But hey, street walkers, here's a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 7: Let's get back into it.
Speaker 6: He ended up sending me a copy of the book
Speaker 6: that him and Regie, the other author, had signed, and
Speaker 6: Howard wrote to it in it saying, Leroy, thank you
Speaker 6: for us on this journey. And Howard Schultzen and so
Speaker 6: I figured been around him quite quite a bit, maybe
Speaker 6: send him an invite to my retirement. And I was
Speaker 6: actually shocked that he came and he spent a good
Speaker 6: portion of the afternoon in my retirement. But it really
Speaker 6: made me realize though. I mean, I was so impressed
Speaker 6: how much he had done in just that short one
Speaker 6: and a half two year span. I was just like, Wow,
Speaker 6: and reading the book. It talks about his dad serving
Speaker 6: in World War Two and not really knowing what his
Speaker 6: dad did. A lot of my buddies will ask me, well,
Speaker 6: did he give you a Starbucks card for the rest
Speaker 6: of your life? I said no, I don't really care.
Speaker 6: I said, he's given so much to the veterans and
Speaker 6: our our communities that I don't want anything from him.
Speaker 6: I think he is given enough. He still continues to
Speaker 6: support the veterans. And I'll get a note from some
Speaker 6: of the guys up there every now and then, and
Speaker 6: Gon'll shoot me a hey, thank you. You got us
Speaker 6: started on the right path, and our veterans are doing
Speaker 6: well up hearing that for me is an unknown story.
Speaker 6: Not a lot of people know about it, and I
Speaker 6: don't mind that. For me, that's the success story right there,
Speaker 6: is that it's continuing to benefit our veterans and impact
Speaker 6: a lot of people out there.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you are super, super duper all about
Speaker 1: the military. How old were you when you decided you
Speaker 1: wanted to be in the military.
Speaker 6: About seven or eight.
Speaker 1: I'm laughing because when I'm seven or eight, like I'm
Speaker 1: playing in a pile of fire ants and eating mud
Speaker 1: and you're deciding that you're going to protect me so
Speaker 1: that I can do that.
Speaker 6: It got into my head at a young age. Back then,
Speaker 6: we used to have the tube televisions and the teacher
Speaker 6: would will accart with a tube television into your classroom.
Speaker 6: She'd turn on the television and we'd watched the news,
Speaker 6: and that was kind of where we got our current
Speaker 6: events for part of our history class. The thing that
Speaker 6: was going on at that time was those are stor
Speaker 6: I can't remember which one, but my mom's cousin was deployed,
Speaker 6: and that really started getting my gears turning because the
Speaker 6: family was all talking about him being deployed. I started
Speaker 6: asking questions, well, why is he over there fighting for
Speaker 6: those people, not realizing that he was not only over
Speaker 6: there fighting for them, he was over there fighting for
Speaker 6: us and risking his life for that. And the thing
Speaker 6: I realized too was for going to both of my
Speaker 6: grandparents served in the military, and because you walk into
Speaker 6: their homes you see their picture in uniform in their
Speaker 6: living room with family pictures, and it really dawned on me.
Speaker 6: They never talked about their service, but they wanted everyone
Speaker 6: that they welcomed into their home into the first room
Speaker 6: to see that picture, and it was something they were
Speaker 6: proud of. And so at a young age, I started
Speaker 6: realizing that I may not make a career out of it,
Speaker 6: but I wanted to serve, and so I went in
Speaker 6: with that initial thought that hey, this might only be
Speaker 6: four years, and it turned into so much more, and
Speaker 6: I realized the difference that I was making. I felt
Speaker 6: a lot of people I joined prior to nine to eleven.
Speaker 6: There was no foreseeable war in the future at that time.
Speaker 6: But I didn't join to go war. I joined to
Speaker 6: make a difference to the people to the right and
Speaker 6: left of me, and to the people back home if
Speaker 6: I had to deploy. And so that really is what
Speaker 6: became my inspiration to and join the military.
Speaker 1: Well, you remember how we started this off by talking
Speaker 1: about how you met my wife at the airport. She
Speaker 1: was actually in the Navy. She was deployed when it
Speaker 1: turned from Desert Shield to Desert Storm. Oh wow, So
Speaker 1: she was out there back then when you were deciding
Speaker 1: that you were going to do this.
Speaker 6: That's awesome, that is awesome, But you take another significant
Speaker 6: time like that. I was actually getting ready to go
Speaker 6: to ranger school. I was in what we call pre
Speaker 6: ranger down in Fort Benning and we were out in
Speaker 6: the field at this place called Cold Range where they
Speaker 6: do a lot of pre ranger training. Out in the field.
Speaker 6: They had one little shack where the cadret would hang out,
Speaker 6: and we were out there doing our drills and getting
Speaker 6: scuffed up and whatnot. And next thing we know, we
Speaker 6: hear something about everyone starts surrounding this cadret a little
Speaker 6: shack and inside they had I don't know if they
Speaker 6: had a TV or radio or what, but it was
Speaker 6: nine to eleven and they were telling us little bits
Speaker 6: and pieces of what was going on, and we wanted
Speaker 6: kept asking them no more. And I came out and
Speaker 6: he started yelling at us to get back to training.
Speaker 6: He goes, you guys will probably go into wars, and
Speaker 6: I'll get out there and keep training. And little did
Speaker 6: he know how right he was.
Speaker 1: Shit. I was test driving a used car right then
Speaker 1: when all that happened.
Speaker 6: It's kind of like JFK. Everybody knows where they were
Speaker 6: at that point in life. You look at the kids
Speaker 6: that are joining the military right now. Shoot, most of
Speaker 6: them were not even a year old.
Speaker 1: You are correct, And I feel like we're still fighting
Speaker 1: the same war and we are.
Speaker 6: But I'll tell you, I just came back from Afghanistan
Speaker 6: in December and a lot has changed.
Speaker 1: How So a.
Speaker 6: Lot of the Afghans. We're doing exactly what we talked about.
Speaker 6: We're letting the Afghans start taking the fight to them.
Speaker 6: We're better preparing the Afghans to fight for supporting them.
Speaker 6: We're still doing a little bit of operations, not much,
Speaker 6: but the Afghans are taking a lot of casualties. It's unfortunate,
Speaker 6: but it's needed. They need to start fighting for their
Speaker 6: own country just as much. And what's surprising is the
Speaker 6: way the Caliban and al Kada were able to hold
Speaker 6: onto that country for so long in control of it
Speaker 6: was they kept the country population ignorant. Most of them
Speaker 6: had less than a second grade level education when we
Speaker 6: first got there. And now seeing women in parliament there,
Speaker 6: seeing the schools being built, seeing the hard paved roads
Speaker 6: that are built, it's phenomenal. The towns that have electricity.
Speaker 6: One of the most shocking things to me was when
Speaker 6: I was there two trips ago. We're flying out of
Speaker 6: Kabul at night in the Blackhawk and I look down
Speaker 6: and I see all these neon lights which look like
Speaker 6: clubs and tons of people in the street. I'm going, Wow,
Speaker 6: they're actually living a somewhat normal life. And for me,
Speaker 6: that was the impact that kept me to pointing was
Speaker 6: seeing the positive role that we played while we were
Speaker 6: over there, and having civilians come up and say, we
Speaker 6: wish we love Americans. We wish you guys would stay
Speaker 6: here forever, and I say, we love to also, but
Speaker 6: we have families to get back to it, and we're
Speaker 6: here to help you stem on your two feet so
Speaker 6: that you can defend yourselves and live happy lives. And
Speaker 6: so it's really different when you get to see not
Speaker 6: only the bad side of it, but positive side. I
Speaker 6: got to wrap up here in about five minutes. I
Speaker 6: got to go pick up my son.
Speaker 1: Dude, no worries. You have already given me more time
Speaker 1: than I deserve. So I hear there's a stature in
Speaker 1: honor of you. Where is it?
Speaker 6: Santa Fe, New Mexico, my hometown. It's about an eight
Speaker 6: foot statue. It's intricate detail. It's right downtown in front
Speaker 6: of city Hall, and it's pretty un I did a
Speaker 6: tandem skydive into the unveiling. But at the end, at
Speaker 6: the unveiling. I kind of told the community there that
Speaker 6: nobody really wants a statue of themselves while they're living
Speaker 6: but growing up there, knowing the poverty that's around there
Speaker 6: and the kids that don't finish high school. It doesn't
Speaker 6: matter who the statue is of, but what it represents,
Speaker 6: it'll do great things for those that come in contact
Speaker 6: with it, and so it's a statue of inspiration for others.
Speaker 6: The artist great guy. He was a governor of the
Speaker 6: Peblo just north of Santa Fe. He approached my dad
Speaker 6: about the idea, and my dad said, I don't know,
Speaker 6: I've talked to my son, but he said, how much
Speaker 6: does one of those things cost? He said about two
Speaker 6: hundred and fifty thousand dollars And my dad said, well,
Speaker 6: I don't know where we're gonna find that money, and
Speaker 6: he goes, don't worry about it. I already talked to
Speaker 6: my tribe and the casino is going to cover the cost,
Speaker 6: and so uh woke Pubblo. They're the ones that paid
Speaker 6: for it, and city hall donated the land to place
Speaker 6: it on. But what he also did was he made
Speaker 6: two foot statues replicas, and I believe he was selling
Speaker 6: him for fifteen grand and he gave one to my
Speaker 6: father and he gave one to me.
Speaker 1: That's the most amazing thing I've ever heard in my life.
Speaker 1: That is fucking fantastic. So I listened to your retirement ceremony,
Speaker 1: and during that ceremony, you got sort of awarded a
Speaker 1: couple of awards, but your wife, Ashley got awarded some
Speaker 1: awards as well for her contributions and support. I was
Speaker 1: already crying after hearing your awards and your story, and
Speaker 1: then I completely lost my shit when your wife got
Speaker 1: these awards. So what did that mean to you?
Speaker 6: I was happy because she I think she got more
Speaker 6: than I did, deservingly. So a lot of people don't
Speaker 6: realize it, but our family sacrifice more than we do.
Speaker 6: We get to go to a job where we get
Speaker 6: to work out and hang out with guys bs and
Speaker 6: have a good time and shoot bullets and blow things up,
Speaker 6: and a lot of times even when we're home and
Speaker 6: out training, our families are at home while we're out
Speaker 6: there in the field that night. And when we're deployed,
Speaker 6: they're the ones that have to worry about the bills
Speaker 6: being paid, the kids going to school, the kids going
Speaker 6: to basketball, practice, soccer, practice, dentist, you name it. And
Speaker 6: they have a lot more to worry about than what
Speaker 6: we do. It's easy to say, while you guys take
Speaker 6: the potential of getting killed, well, they're the ones that
Speaker 6: every night go to sleep and wake up and think
Speaker 6: about the possibility of us getting killed as well and
Speaker 6: not coming home and having to live there and the
Speaker 6: rest of their lives without us. And so the sacrifice
Speaker 6: in a hole comes from the families, and not only
Speaker 6: the husbands, the wives and husbands and children, but the parents,
Speaker 6: the family members. And the sad part is any loss
Speaker 6: is a significant loss because it's not only felt by
Speaker 6: the immediate family, it's felt by anyone who's ever come
Speaker 6: into contact with that individual, and even those who may
Speaker 6: have not. I just know the story. And so that
Speaker 6: was a great moment that I was happy that they
Speaker 6: were able to do for her and the family.
Speaker 1: I think it was really amazing that the military really
Speaker 1: respected and honored the sacrifice and the just amazingness that
Speaker 1: your wife and your children, you know, just I just
Speaker 1: I could not believe it. I was very very It
Speaker 1: threw me for a loop because I didn't see it coming. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna let you go, but before that, I
Speaker 1: want you to tell everybody where they can find you
Speaker 1: on the various social medias pretty please.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, there is a lot of fake ones out there.
Speaker 1: There really are. And so a friend of mine was
Speaker 1: asking me if I'm following you on Instagram and I
Speaker 1: said no, because there's so many that appear to be him,
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure which one is him. So on Instagram,
Speaker 1: you are just Leroy Petri and I guess a picture
Speaker 1: of my dogs.
Speaker 6: I'm still learning Instagram. My sons still teak to me
Speaker 6: about it. I have two posts, nine hundred and eleven followers,
Speaker 6: and I think it's funny because I think the those
Speaker 6: two posts that I have is my Sonny Sushi and
Speaker 6: the picture of my flag in my backyard. On Twitter,
Speaker 6: it's just at Leroy Petrie and it's a picture of
Speaker 6: me standing next to our memorial at my unit. My
Speaker 6: Facebook is just Leroy Petrie and a truck I had
Speaker 6: about eight years ago, or to Tacoma. The unfortunate part
Speaker 6: about my Facebook, my family said about a year ago,
Speaker 6: is that you're limited to how many friend requests you
Speaker 6: can accept. I reached five thousand a couple of years
Speaker 6: ago and they said, nope, can't have any more friends.
Speaker 6: I guess you have to. You have to create a
Speaker 6: fan page or something like that.
Speaker 1: Something like that. I feel like you should reach out
Speaker 1: to Facebook and or Mark Zuckerberg because there's no way.
Speaker 1: Five thousand is a limit. You should reach out and
Speaker 1: if you don't, I.
Speaker 6: Will, And I've reached out to Twitter. I keep trying
Speaker 6: to get them to verify me so I can get
Speaker 6: that little blue check mark. I don't know how to
Speaker 6: go about doing that. I try the way they say,
Speaker 6: but so waiting for them to give me a little
Speaker 6: blue check mark.
Speaker 1: I will focus all of my attention on getting you
Speaker 1: that blue check mark.
Speaker 6: I would love that. That would be awesome.
Speaker 1: Thank you so very very much. Is there a fund
Speaker 1: where people can donate money to either support your challenge
Speaker 1: going addiction or a fund that you're super into. Is
Speaker 1: there a play for people can go.
Speaker 6: One of the best organizations I found out there that
Speaker 6: helps take care of our wounded veterans and our active
Speaker 6: duty is organization called David ARDE's Troops First Foundation.
Speaker 1: And that is where you prefer that people go to
Speaker 1: throw money.
Speaker 6: Absolutely throw as much as you can that way. It's
Speaker 6: a great organization that does a lot of meaningful stuff.
Speaker 6: I'll tell you a few of their initiatives that they have.
Speaker 6: One is called Operation Proper Exit, which is a great
Speaker 6: thing that they do where they take the veterans, combat
Speaker 6: wounded veterans that have served the overseas and take them
Speaker 6: back into the country, into theater to visit the troops,
Speaker 6: to visit the hospitals where they are treated, to visit
Speaker 6: the commands. And at the end of the trip they
Speaker 6: get to leave the country on a normal aircraft and
Speaker 6: how to meta that aircraft. And there's been going on.
Speaker 6: It'll be trip number twenty four coming up. And over
Speaker 6: one hundred and twenty five troops or so have gone
Speaker 6: back down range after the recoveries, paraplegics, amputees, you name it.
Speaker 6: Another one of their initiatives is a thing called Operation
Speaker 6: Warrior Call, which I am actually a spokesman for. And
Speaker 6: what we noticed. We went to a convention put on
Speaker 6: by the DoD and the VA for suicide there Dallas
Speaker 6: a few years back, and realize that we have every
Speaker 6: resource under the sun to help these veterans and these
Speaker 6: military folks that are committed suicide. The problem is we're
Speaker 6: not reaching the ones that aren't raising their hands or
Speaker 6: walking into these facilities. They're the ones that are isolated
Speaker 6: that we need to find, and we found the only
Speaker 6: reason way we're going to find them is if we
Speaker 6: start an initiative called Operation Wark Call, where we ask
Speaker 6: everyone to basically take an oath to say I will
Speaker 6: call at least one person I know that has served
Speaker 6: or is serving in the military once a week minimum
Speaker 6: to check on their welfare and just see how they're
Speaker 6: doing and or visit them. And that's the way we're
Speaker 6: going to find those people that are isolating themselves and
Speaker 6: having difficult times and get them the help they need
Speaker 6: and be honest. And another initiative they have is service dogs.
Speaker 6: They do some of the finest service dogs I've seen
Speaker 6: out there for a lot of our wounded veterans. And
Speaker 6: besides that, they also do another thing. They do different outings,
Speaker 6: hunting and golfing. And we just cut the ribbon on
Speaker 6: last year and June near Bethesda Naval Hospital the new
Speaker 6: Walter Read whatever they have called a sack of seven
Speaker 6: homes that were build that They are called the Peachrie
Speaker 6: Honor Village and the main road down the center is
Speaker 6: called Chief Chris Kyle Court, and it is a village
Speaker 6: designed as transitional housing for wounded veterans in the area
Speaker 6: that will have ongoing treatment, and it gives them a
Speaker 6: place to stay rent free for up to two years.
Speaker 6: And the intent is that they are progressing on with
Speaker 6: their lives and that they'll pay utilities. But it is
Speaker 6: similar to a Fisher house, except it's not like a
Speaker 6: hotel environment. It actually gives you a home to live
Speaker 6: in and neighbors that are going through similar situations as yourself,
Speaker 6: and turns out to be kind of a great support
Speaker 6: group as well. And so those are some of the
Speaker 6: initiatives that are going on. There's a few more work
Speaker 6: where we're actually I'm meeting with them next week and
Speaker 6: we're going to plan out this year's events and this
Speaker 6: year's support for our troops and our veterans. This is
Speaker 6: overwhelming for me. I mean, you talk about all those
Speaker 6: things that are done in my honor. I mean here
Speaker 6: in my town they have a main street named after
Speaker 6: me in a plaque down at city Hall, and too much.
Speaker 6: I mean it's too much, but it's the same way
Speaker 6: I look at it. Though it's not for me, it
Speaker 6: may have my name on it, but it's not for me.
Speaker 6: It's for everyone that comes across it and sees it
Speaker 6: and hopefully it inspires them to do more.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing, Master Sergeant retired Petrie. It is
Speaker 1: for you. It is also for everybody who didn't survive.
Speaker 1: You represent everybody who made it and didn't make it.
Speaker 1: So thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Speaker 6: Thank your wife for putting us in touch as well,
Speaker 6: and for her service.
Speaker 1: She is the most excited that she met you. She's
Speaker 1: met some really cool people, but she tells everybody about
Speaker 1: when she met you. I'm gonna let you go. I
Speaker 1: will hit you up when this comes out, so you
Speaker 1: can tell everybody I am indebted to you forever. You
Speaker 1: have my phone number.
Speaker 6: Goodbye, all right, take care.
Speaker 2: Admiral mc raman will present the Leachion of Merit attention
Speaker 2: to orders.
Speaker 4: This is to certify that the President of the United
Speaker 4: States of America has awarded the Legion of Merita to
Speaker 4: Master Sergeant Leroy A. Petrie for exceptionally meritorious service in
Speaker 4: multiple positions of increasing responsibility and authority, culminating as the
Speaker 4: Wounded Warrior Adviser. Master Sergeant Petrie's professionalism, leadership, and commitment
Speaker 4: to excellence will have a lasting impact on those with
Speaker 4: whom he served.
Speaker 2: His outstanding efforts are in keeping.
Speaker 4: With the finest traditions of military service and reflect great
Speaker 4: credit upon himself. The seventy fifth Ranger Regiment, the United
Speaker 4: States Army Special Operations Command, and the United States Army.
Speaker 2: The Order of.
Speaker 4: Saint Maurice recognizes individuals who have contributed significantly to the
Speaker 4: Infantry in ways that stand out in the eyes of
Speaker 4: the recipient seniors, subordinates, and peers. These individuals have also
Speaker 4: demonstrated the highest standards of integrity and moral character, an
Speaker 4: outstanding degree of professional competence, and have served the United
Speaker 4: States Infantry or the Infantry community with distinction. Appearing before
Speaker 4: a most judicious and discriminating committee of tried and proven
Speaker 4: Army infantrymen and Infantry patriots, being known that mess Sergeant
Speaker 4: Leroy A. Petrie was tested and found worthy of special
Speaker 4: recognition for outstanding contributions to the community of the Army Infantry,
Speaker 4: and is hereby inducted into the Honorable Order of Saint
Speaker 4: Maurice for outstanding contributions to the Infantry. Saint Maurice is
Speaker 4: the embodiment of courage, justice, commitment to principle, leadership and gallantry.
Speaker 4: So too, the aforementioned individual embodies these qualities and represents
Speaker 4: excellence in the infantry.
Speaker 2: Therefore, the Chief of Infantry and the President of the
Speaker 2: National Infantry.
Speaker 4: Association acknowledged that this patriot is due special honor respect
Speaker 4: for now in posterity. The Commander's Award for Public Service
Speaker 4: is hereby awarded to Missus Ashley Petrie for exceptionally meritorious
Speaker 4: service in support of the seventy fifth Ranger Regiment. From
Speaker 4: May two thousand and eight to July twenty fourteen, Missus
Speaker 4: Ashley Petrie devoted countless personal hours and resources as a
Speaker 4: mentor and spokesperson for wounded warriors. Her personal example of
Speaker 4: strength and character directly impacted wounded service members and their families.
Speaker 4: Missus Ashley Petrie's exceptional service is consistent with the highest
Speaker 4: permission to civilian service.
Speaker 2: And reflects distinct credit upon her.
Speaker 4: The seventy fifth three Ange Regiment in the United States
Speaker 4: Army Admiral mccraven will now present Missus Petrie with the
Speaker 4: Shield of Sparta Heroin of Infantry.
Speaker 2: This recognizes individuals.
Speaker 4: Who have contributed significantly to the promotion of the infantry
Speaker 4: and the families of infantrymen in ways to stand out
Speaker 4: in the eyes of the recipient's peers.
Speaker 2: The National Infantry.
Speaker 4: Association hereby recognizes Ashley Petrie with the Award of the
Speaker 4: Shield of Sparta, Heroin of Infantry, for having served the
Speaker 4: infantry community with distinction, for having demonstrated a conspicuous contribution.
Speaker 2: To the infantry family and community, for.
Speaker 4: Representing the highest standards of integrity, moral character, professional competence,
Speaker 4: and for demonstrating a volunteer and supportive spirit. Appearing before
Speaker 4: a most arduous and discriminating community of tried and proven
Speaker 4: Army infantrymen and infantry patriots.
Speaker 2: Being known that Ashley.
Speaker 4: Petrie was found worthy of special recognition for outstanding contributions
Speaker 4: to the community of Army Infantry and is hereby awarded
Speaker 4: the Shield of Sparta Heroin of Infantry.
Speaker 6: See I screed.
Speaker 8: More my red red.
Speaker 2: I'll take the back of the ring Morley, so rid my life.
Speaker 2: See or I set the fact that as a ring
Speaker 2: I got expected to be a birth.
Speaker 6: That's why are an assault.
Speaker 8: I have shot my comrade.
Speaker 1: I'll set myself in a lark.
Speaker 2: This is wrong morals right, I'll sold all of my
Speaker 2: sera past, whatever may be.
Speaker 8: What I said as a.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of the world.
Speaker 2: I'm as acycic allfa, so I gotta sees her off.
Speaker 2: He is addressed here.
Speaker 8: But I'll set the example.
Speaker 2: Brothers fall exactly.
Speaker 6: I'll leave the end of my country.
Speaker 5: I shall beat them on.
Speaker 8: The wheels back. Or I bet, friend, I'll part of
Speaker 8: all my mind, try to not reg to work.
Speaker 6: I'll never leave him all the combat all hand.
Speaker 7: Yet a certain fans, I have a mirror f my country.
Speaker 7: I had a lot of fly. He has the more
Speaker 7: of you to part.
Speaker 2: I love the rain, contact and believe the mission. Oh
Speaker 2: be a lossie Ray you see the way, Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2: This concludes today.
Speaker 5: Severally, thank you all for attending this extraordinary ceremony for
Speaker 5: this extraordinary hero.
Speaker 8: Opening music is the song Magnolia from the twenty fourteen
Speaker 8: album In Transigence, used with permission from Douglas Miley Clark.
Speaker 8: Closing music is Apollo from the two thousand and one
Speaker 8: album Into the Known by the band Sapphire. Thanks for
Speaker 8: hanging out with us and getting to.
Speaker 1: Know a little bit about our guest.
Speaker 8: We'll see you next time on Fascination Street.