The Warriors Path - Part 2: Freedom Isn't Free

My friends, dig both here. It's the first week in June 2022 and this is the second in a two-part presentation that we're calling the Warriors Path. Freedom isn't free. In our last podcast we talked about Memorial Day and its roots and what it means and then moved into talking to my friend Lieutenant General retired, Mick Kicklider, who was describing to us his responsibilities and his experiences between 1991 and 1995 when he had been asked by the president to lead the charge if you will on commemorating the 50th anniversary of World War II. At which time they did that over a four and a half year period around the world at the sites of major battles and the cemeteries connected with the results of those battles and whenever I talk to my friend Mick I'm just deeply moved by it. He had left us, if you will, by indicating that the Clinton's president, Mrs. Clinton during that commemoration for D. Day had had a luncheon on board the Britannica with the Queen, the Queen's Yacht and then transferred to a Liberty ship, a cargo vessel that had provided supplies for all those years to folks in Europe and to the military forces there and then the Clinton's had transferred to the USS George Washington, a United States aircraft carrier that was going to be part of the honoring ceremonies for that day, that next day June the 6th 1994 commemorating June the 6th 1944. We had left them there and I'll come back to that in a moment but let me give it this context again. When you think about 150, 160,000 Allied troops, Canadian British and U.S. forces landing on the beaches of Normandy off the English Channel in northern France, on one day in the strip of beach was 50 miles long and several thousand would never get off the beach because they gave their lives. It's just difficult to imagine as my father would say it boggles the mind. One young correspondent who was there who's now gone, the late Andy Rooney, described it this way in an article he wrote There have been only a handful of days since the beginning of time on which the direction the world was taking has been changed for the better in one 24 hour period by an act of man. June 6 1944 was one of them but the Americans the British and the Canadians were trying to do was get back a whole continent that had been taken from its rightful owners and whose citizens had been taken captive by Adolf Hitler's German army. It was one of the most monumentally unselfish things one group of people ever did for another. On the afternoon of June 5 1994 President and Mrs. Clinton had arrived on the aircraft carrier USS George Washington the next day would be a huge day according to General Kicklider but they had things to do or there were things to observe and celebrate on the afternoon of June 5th and he describes that forest. At the same time that this was happening late in the afternoon on the 5th we had an air drop to simulate the 82nd 101st who dropped in the Normandy the night before the attack the next morning. He's a paratrooper. Paratroopers. It was troops at the 101st and the 82nd but also we had World War II veterans and I forget the exact number but it was quite a large number and that's a long story but anyway had a number that jumped in World War II veterans that parachuted in the afternoon of the 5th. You've told me this one of my favorite parts originally you had said you know the liability or others that said the liability and their health and these are 80 some year old guys. Well some were 80 most were in their late 70s in that time but there were a couple in their 80s but the medical part of the Army and the lawyer said you know first of all they shouldn't do this and so I took that message back saying that you know we'd love to do it but if you could guarantee that nobody would be killed or we wouldn't get a permanent disabling injure to any of you you know we love you we we think the world of you but we don't want to see you get hurt and they were not happy with that answer so at a breakfast and we started having breakfasts in the White House primarily for the World War II veterans and their families with the president before Memorial Day before Veterans Day so at a breakfast and I think it was Memorial Day breakfast some of these veterans were there in uniform wearing their old uniforms at the breakfast they cornered the president Clinton and said you know we got this guy kick lighter that said we can't jump we really want to jump so the president called over an active duty general that was there who was special forces I think and anyway he asked him can they jump but he said I think they can't and so my my decision got tossed up in the air and so I rescinded it of course you did and then and then the but the proviso was that first of all you got to take a physical and you got to have a physical and says you're physically able you got to get re-certified by some of these parachute clubs that say you you're qualified to jump and if the jump master says the wins are too great that day whatever the jump master says you will not grumble that's the final answer how that qualifying thing go where they go to the parachute clubs did they all do they all they all claim they did it they claimed yeah and I trusted them implicitly my favorite part of this and I got to hurry but they jumped and then you couldn't find two of them well two of them we didn't we couldn't count for it and you know your heart beats awfully fast lastly you want to do it either and there were a lot of rivers and so when they landed in the river got tangled up in their shoot but but anyway we finally found them and both of them had been picked up by the locals taken to the local bar and they were really having a great time describing what really happened 50 years ago tell them stories oh yeah they were they were having a great time they didn't want to be found they were a great bunch I might yeah they had it a great deal to the whole thing wrapping this up you had the meeting the night before with the president Mrs. Clinton you had a little exchange at the end where somebody encouraged you to tell them what the next day was like and then you went the next day right I just like to wrap up with those two pieces that little exchange on the aircraft carrier about what will tomorrow be like well after the air drop and everybody was accounted for I got on the helicopter and flew out to the aircraft carrier George Washington and my job was to go out and describe to president Mrs. Clinton what the events were going to be like as they began at Normandy the next day and so I did that and the first event was aboard the aircraft carrier the next morning with the president and the first lady dropped a reef in the water remembering all those who were lost at sea before they got a short so that was the first event that sun rises I recall next event was at point the hawk or the US Rangers went straight up a cliff and in the face of the enemy they took up some big guns that was the second event and the next ceremony after a point to hawk was Utah Beach and then there was a luncheon with all the heads of state and then we would come back and have the final event at the US military cemetery at Coveville looking on the whole beach a lot of the the barriers that were there on D-Day were still there was quite an awesome place if you have the bed there and so and that was the final event and and I I described you know how that sequence and would be all the events and then as I started to leave David Gergen was a was a special assistant to the president he said Joe Kicklider now tell the president really what tomorrow is going to be like and I was kind of caught off guard I mean I told everything I knew about tomorrow and he said tell him really what tomorrow is going to be like and so I thought for a few minutes and I said to the president and Mrs. Clinton I said well tomorrow is going to be the most emotional day you probably ever had to face it is going to be extremely emotional as you go through these events they're going to build and when you get to the cemetery at Omaha Beach the Coveville cemetery you are going to be totally mentally or emotionally exhausted it's going to be a very tough emotional day that's basically what I what I said at that point General Kicklider described for me again and I've heard it several times and never tire of hearing of it the sequence of events that took place at Coveville Cemetery the next day overlooking Omaha Beach and just as a descriptor some of you have seen the movie saving private Ryan in the opening sequence of an old man amidst the crosses and stars of David is at that cemetery there are almost 10,000 United States service personnel buried there this is how General Kicklider described the events of that morning it we always try to make sure that the key a key member of the program was the World War II veteran Walter Krunkuy was a master ceremonies the guy that introduces the veteran that introduces the president is also somebody that's prominent in the area and so in this case it was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charlie Cashfield who had been the supreme ally commander in Europe before and he'd have planned all this before he left so he introduces a guy named Joe Dawson Joe Dawson in World War II was about a six foot five tall Texan that was a company commander in the first infantry division on the beach and the battle was going I mean they were pinned down they're taking a lot of casualties it really looked almost like they couldn't get off the beach in fact and I believe this is correct General Bradley had already written a message that they were going to withdraw the troops off of Omaha Beach and reinsert them in Utah Beach which was not getting a lot of resistance and to bring those those Higgins landing boats back and load them up again would have been extremely dangerous but a young army captain company commander took a platoon and put together a Bangalore torpedo and they ran it all the way up the beach all the way to the top of the beach underneath the Constantino War and they blew it and there was an opening and they went right up and then began to open on up again and that opened the beach and that saved the battle he was given to the distinguished service cross for that action Joe Dawson was Joe Dawson introduces President Clinton so the chairman that introduces Joe Dawson and Joe Dawson describes you know what it's like to be able to beach that day and what it's like to have made that thrust up the hill and then he introduces President Clinton who's a keynote speaker well President Clinton tried twice to speak and was overcome with emotions and took the third time before he could actually begin to speak and so it was the power of all this and then when the speaking was over then we had a flyover we had aircraft from World War II and then we had the modern aircraft and then we had the missing man formation where these four aircraft go in and three directions and one go straight to heaven is the one who didn't come home and then after that we had 17 Navy ships that were representing the Navy and they line up and they pass in the review and the last ship to pass is the aircraft carrier and there was a young lady that was sitting in the president's office that night when I breathed the president very nice young lady she came up to me after the ships had passed cheers were running down her cheeks and and she said to me general kicklider I had no idea what you were talking about last night when you told the president and Mrs. Clinton that this was going to be an emotional day and she says I fully understand what you were talking about how much we owe those men and women of that generation in closing I asked general kicklider to reflect for us for just a moment or two on the effect of World War II the cost because for a younger generation or younger generations World War II is like the Civil War might as well be the revolutionary war because it's not in their lifetime but this is what he said I think when we think about World War II it is so hard to grasp how destructive and what great loss of life we had during that war you know the greatest way to preserve peace is preparedness and strength and we should do everything we could to prevent wars but if we can't we need to win them fast and with minimum loss of life and destruction World War II was it's hard to even grasp how destructive it was 60 million people lost their lives in that war mostly women's children in the elderly who got overrun now most people don't realize that in the war it's not just the combatants that get killed but it's the collateral damage that kills a lot of innocent people that are on the periphery of this war and then also in World War II many people were killed because of their ethnic background their beliefs their infirmities in death camps and concentration camps the Jewish people alone lost somewhere in I'd say 6-8 million people were murdered in concentration camps and that war the outcome was not certain we were not prepared for that war and we had to get prepared in a very short time and the way we got prepared was was the loss of lives of young Americans as we prepared we should have been prepared the winds of war the warnings were all around us but we were not ready for that war and I guess one of the saddest parts of that war is something that Churchill said when he was visiting the US afterward as a as I think he was against the President Eisenhower he was speaking at a small college and he said World War II was probably one of the most preventable wars in history and yet we didn't prevent it and we should really learn the skills of how to prevent things like this from happening and occurring and we sit at a moment in time where it feels like the tipping point in a lot of ways with what's going on now overseas and all of that somebody asked a friend of mine whom you know Vern Clark the former head of the Navy someone asked him a young person said is this is to start a World War III and who knows the answer to that we pray not we hope not we you know and we as you we should work with all diligence to ensure that it is not yes start a World War III yes the best skills the best leadership the best commitment that we can have we should do everything we can to preserve peace not at the expense of freedom but we should do everything we can to keep peace in the world. McKick Ladder general sir thank you for sharing your thoughts your stories thanks for the service all those years not just the 36 in uniform but the other 25 that's a long to long history of commitment and skills that you brought to the table. Well President of the University Dr. Folk it is an honor to be with you again as we have been together so many times in these past 30 years it's true and I hope we got 10 more oh man yeah 20 more of course you and I are both this is a bad way to say it you and I are both in our ninth decade yeah that is a bad way to say that makes the song but true thank you bless you blessings thanks and blessings what a delightful classy serious gentleman general McKick Ladder is I love being with him and around him well that's it for this couplet called the Warriors Path freedom isn't free thank you for being on this road trip with us numbers of you are going to be taking more road trips this summer I think I'm going to take one I've decided I'm going to take one just a couple of months on the road whether it's real or metaphorical makes no difference if it's in my head it must be real and we'll just do that so we'll be coming back to you in a couple of months we're used to closing our time by saying thanks for listening if you'd like to write a couple sentences a review that'd be great and then we go out with this music sounds like this however because of the seriousness and sobriety of this moment and our grateful hearts I want to leave you with a song that you've heard perhaps on television perhaps you've heard it in person you've been in a memorial service for a fallen soldier and at the end they play a 24 note tune that we call today taps at the end of the day on military establishments back a couple hundred years ago they would play a tune that was a French tune called extinguishing lights but during the Civil War a general butterfield called his bugler in and took the last five measures I believe of that song of that tune elongated some of the notes put spacing in and created what we know now as taps they think the word taps comes from a Dutch word for tattoo which is what they call the last song of the day in military parlance but I think it would be worthwhile for us to close this couplet of programs with that as we have explored memorial day and the 78th anniversary of D-Day June 6 1944 in 2012 the United States Congress designated taps as the national song of remembrance so please don't view this as being morbid or modland or overly sentimental this is a remembrance of the freedoms that have been bought with the lives of people who have gone before us and I think it's entirely right that we sign off this way. God bless you thanks for