our panel moderator. >> [ inaudible ]. >> today we are honored to have as our panel moderator general nicholas b. kehoe. he was elected the first president of the medal of honor foundation in march 2003. the mission of the foundation is to perpetuate the medal of honor's legacy of courage, sacrifice and patriotism by supporting the objectives, activities and programs of the congressional medal of honor society. he retired from the united states air force on october 2000 after completing more than 34 years of military service and rising to the rank of lieutenant general. in his last assignment he served as inspector general of the air force.

please welcome general kehoe and our medal of honor recipients. [ applause ] >> good afternoon. let me make a comment on that video we showed. we like to start with that because it kind of sets the scene and brings forth the sense of humility that i have found that these gentlemen carry with them throughout their lives after they've received this medal. the sense of camaraderie that they feel for their comrades and

it also brings home the span of generations that have received this medal since the civil war where it was first awarded in 1863 to today where you saw the award of the first medal of honor to a living recipient since the vietnam war, sal junta. it is so gratifying to know that the young men and women who serve today do so with the same spirit of courage and sacrifice as those in the generations before them. and all of the men and women who serve. today we have two medal of honor recipients with us. i'll go into questions in just a minute, but let me introduce them first. we put the shortest guy in the middle. he's also a marine just to make sure he stays in line throughout this session. but on the far right, my far right is is bob foley. bob was a young officer in vietnam when he was involved in

an action for which he received the medal of honor. you saw the video reflecting on the people that serve and he, like others, were put into a situation where in their case they were ambushed and he took charge and made a difference and the people who were with him followed him through that action and they were successful because of it. the same sort of thing happened to barney barnum. i'll ask a couple of questions and bring out some of the things in their actions in just a minute. his unit was ambushed. he was a young first lieutenant with a lot of young marines and his commanding officer was killed, his radio man was killed and he had to take charge. that characteristic is present with all of those who have received the medal of honor in terms of being able to take

charge of a situation that we find incredibly hard to relate to and do something to make a difference. and to do something more in the case of saving lives than taking lives. i'm going to ask a couple of questions to set the scene here. sort of to warm up. i'd like you to be thinking about questions you'd like to ask, because as soon as i ask a couple and get it started, i'm going to turn it over to the audience. i'll come back at the end and ask one final question before we finish. then following that you will have an opportunity to meet these gentlemen upstairs and if you so desire to have them sign one of these medal of honor books. this book has the stories of more than 140 medal of honor recipients. all of them living at the time the book was written because their stories are recounted.

the photographs in there which are very profound were taken -- are all contemporary photos. so we're frequently asked how come audie murphy's not in the book or somebody like that. it's because had he passed away many years before this was done. oversimplified, this book has close to the last 150 medal of honor recipients who were living at the time it started back in 2003. it's continuously been updated. we just published the third addition within the last few months to include two of the living medal of honor recipients. we're about to go to a second printing and we'll put all three stories in there of the living recipients from the afghanistan war as well as all of those from world war ii, korea and vietnam that are in there already. there is a wonderful dvd, too, that has the video you just saw, plus some individual stories. so let me get started with just a few questions. something of the magnitude of the medal of honor, faced with, it leaves something searing,

burned into your memory that you probably never forget. as you look back on that time more than 40 years ago, i'll start with you, barney, what's that one thing that you remember to this day as if it happened just this morning or yesterday that you recall from that action? >> well, 45 years ago, i think the thing that i most remember is i had been in vietnam ten days. i had been with the unit five days. and when we were ambushed, that's the first time i was ever shot at. you know, i did the most prudent thing -- i hit the deck. and when i looked up from

underneath my helmet, all these young marines were looking at me and saying, okay, lieutenant, what are we going to do? of course, i started calling artillery and adjusted fire. about 20 minutes into the fight i realized that the initial rounds had killed the company commander. so i went out, picked him up, brought him back and he died in my arms and i went out and got the radio off the dead operator and strapped it on myself, called the battalion and told them what had happened and that i had taken over. so that is very vivid. but the most vivid thing i think is the way that the young marine came together. we were all scared. anybody who says in combat that they don't experience fear is smoking dope or just plain crazy. but what you have to do, because of your training, is how do you confront that fear? how do you confront that fear and then rely on your training

to continue to do the right thing at the right time? so when i took over that company. i hadn't had the same training as these young marines. they didn't even know my name but i had a bar on my collar and they knew the lieutenants were supposed to give orders. when i started giving orders, they did exactly what i asked them to do. there's no fury unleashed like a marine that's seen his brother marine killed or wounded. i had to guide them. i jump-started them, then i guided them and we worked together as a team. as a team we were successful at overcoming 10-1 odds that day. i think the most amazing thing that i remember is here we were in a very bad situation, but we came together as a team. we relied on each other, relied on each other's training, and we became successful. >> thank you. bob, as your action unfolded, you were a young officer out there and leading your company, what went through your mind that you still remember to this day?

>> well, i refer back to the video and i had made a statement of what is it that motivates young soldiers to do these things every single day? knowing that they're going to go into difficult situations and no matter what you do in training, to replicate the conditions of combat is totally different when you start getting shot at. and when you see a soldier that's getting killed or wounded. intuitively we know that it is leadership and teamwork and discipline and training and education and all of those things are very important in terms of motivating soldiers to what they need to do. i found the most compelling motivation was this notion of caring, compassion, consideration of others and respect. of course those are values which you need to inject into the organization and instill in the soldiers well before you meet some kind of crisis or some kind

of combat situation. but when we hit that situation the soldiers were so concerned about their fellow soldiers to prevent them from being killed or wounded. they would do anything to prevent that. these are their buddies, their comrades in arms, people they've been serving with for many months and there is that special bond that's established. so my biggest role was trying to ensure that i held them back, because if their buddy got shot, they were going to go after the viet cong or the nva soldier that shot them. so i think that's probably one of the biggest things that i remember especially on that day, because it was a very difficult, probably one of the most devastating and difficult situations that i had been in on that operation in 5 november 1966. it was a five-hour operation, between the time we went in at 7:00 in the morning and the time we came out at noon. i can remember that my adrenalin was running the entire time.

it's sort of like i equate it to -- you might identify with this -- being on a basketball court and when someone hands you the basketball, you can make a lot of decisions. you can shoot, dribble, pass, do nothing, but the read changes. that's the way it is on the battlefield. if you're not making split-second decisions, that read changes and so instinctively you have to make that decision to go do things. when you think about those five hours, essentially it is a blur. one of the most memorable things was, after it was over and we mad come out of the jngal and we're in a clearing and i was sitting on a log, several medics came up to me and said, sir, you're bleeding pretty bad. you need to get fixed up. and they were right. my fatigue shirt was covered with blood. anyway, those are the things that i remember and being most memorable on that day. >> thanks. one point i'd make, if you go to

that video we showed a few minutes ago and this camaraderie we referred to, is the emotions that these men feel when they retell their stories. you saw at the end of that video, really comes to life when they go back and tell their story over again and the feelings that they had for the men that they were serving with, it really comes forth and they recall that very, very vividly. it is such an important aspect of what our military forces are all about, particularly in those kinds of situations. let me pursue this notion of fear just a little bit more. i'll start with you, bob. we all feel apprehension in one or the other circumstances. we've all probably had some significant situation we've been involved in where we were afraid of something. nothing can compare to the magnitude of the situation that

these men faced and their fellow honor recipients as well as the men and women that they were with. but tell me, expand a little bit upon how you -- what you felt in terms of fear, if you did, or if you didn't. and if you did, how do you cope with it? how do your people cope with it? >> i get right back to this notion of caring. because when i was a brand-new second lieutenant assigned to the 25th infantry division -- you know, brand-new second lieutenant struggles sometimes. i did. in terms of how we're supposed to learn about my profession. but i had a wonderful platoon sergeant. i asked him one day what do i have to do to be a good officer. he said you have to do two things -- accomplish the mission and take care of your soldiers. and then he went in to a lengthy discussion about what caring meant and gave me examples of that and how important that was. and how important it was to the

soldiers to know that their leaders are definitely interested in them. every single aspect of what they do. not just on the job but their families and their friends. and so this notion of caring just has carried through my entire career. and when you face a difficult situation, when the enemy is there, when you're trying to maneuver your troops, there's two things obviously that are important. one is you're trying to accomplish the mission. the second thing, you want to ensure that your soldiers are able to survive the rigors of combat. and in this particular case, there was a decision that you have to make that gets into the tactics and techniques that are used at the lowest level, company level on a battlefield. that is this notion of momentum. we had great momentum going into this north vietnamese or viet cong concrete bunker complex and i didn't want to lose that. in fact, i felt i might have more soldiers in harm's way if

in fact i stopped and tried to pull out, even though it was kind of an overwhelming situation that we were going against. and so that kind of situation to set the stage for now the fear factor comes in because we were being fired at from viet cong, tied in trees in platforms that had sniper positions. we were being fired at from machine guns from concrete bunkers inside a jungle area with firing lanes cut waist-high cut through the foliage so you couldn't see them until you got down low to see them. so it was one of the most difficult situations that we had run into. the fear to me comes when you know that the mortar rounds are landing, grenades are landing. you know that these bullets are coming at you. but then when you see soldiers getting hit, that's what makes me angry. when some of my soldiers get

hurt or get hit. that's why i picked up the m-60 machine gun and went forward. but the fear factor for me -- and i think barney would say the same thing -- is that it's not fear about you getting hurt. it's fear for your soldiers. you're worried about 150 soldiers that are deployed in the jungle where the visibility is limited to ten meters and you've got triple canopy and in my case i wasn't even able to use all of the artillery and fire support that i normally might have because of the proximity of friendly troops into that area. so you're just worried about them and what's going to happen to them, and so you basically overcome your fear by the fact that you're so concerned about them that you can go out and do your job the way you're supposed to as a leader of those soldiers. >> good. thank you. before barney gives his answer, i'm going to open it up for questions as soon as we're through with this question.

i'd point out that there are microphones on either side. if you'd like to ask a question, please move to the microphone for two reasons. one, so others can hear your question, and two, because this is being recorded for others to be able to experience later on. so please move to one of the two sides and we'll be happy to answer your questions from there. barney. >> yeah. i would just reiterate many of the things that bob said. we all experience fear. the main thing is how you control that. how do you control the fear. and i had fear, whether when i was calling in my artillery that was against some machine guns well dug in that had us pinned down, and it was at the end of the gun target line and the rounds were going over our heads. i had fear that i would experience either a short round or my troops would get some of that shrapnel.

i made the decision if i didn't take out those machine guns with my artillery they had us pinned down and they might have wiped us out. so i was able to control that fear, because i wanted to make sure that mission was accomplished, that i took out those machine guns, and i would save more of my marines. and i think that throughout battles there is fear. i think the biggest fear is that when you tell a fire team to take out a trench line and they get shot doing it, you turn to the next fire team and say you go. your fear is how long is it going to take me to accomplish that mission so that i can save as many of my marine as i can. so for a leader i think it is self-control. knowing your job. knowing yourself. knowing your men. and hopefully making the right decision at the right time for the right reason. >> thank you. let me open it up to the

audience. you can direct your question to one or both. as you see fit. but who has the first question? >> i guess i win. >> you do. >> the video emphasizes that the recipients and many of the participants were very young. do you think that if people had been five or ten years older, their behavior might have been different? >> well, you know, combat, closing in and destroying enemy is a young man's war. the old guys are back in command in bunkers. okay? so i think this has a lot to do with it. you know, its -- as i said, it was a captain, lieutenant, sergeant's war that i was in. it was a captain and squad

leader's war that bob was in. we were the ones that were nose to nose and the old saying is, we weren't successful, the next if we weren't successful, the next act was -- the answer is it is a young people's war. >> that's an excellent question. i would say though that i was very young. brand-new second lieutenant. right out of west point. but i had two years in hawaii to hone my skills and i was fortunate to have some magnificent officers, non-commissioned officers who mentored me, who train me, and even though i struggled as a second lieutenant, when i took over rifle company as a 25-year-old captain, i was fully prepared. i felt totally confident about what i needed to do. i understood my leadership prerogatives and so even though i was still young, only two years later i was ready to command and control that company in combat and i understood what the consequences were and i

understood that i had to inject all those values in that company on a continuous basis so that they would do the right thing when the time came, when an enemy situation presented themselves. and i think that's one of the most powerful things. as i mentioned, respect is so important. if every soldier respects one another, then on that battlefield you'll have one cohesive unit that's going to be able to do what they need to do in a difficult period of time. >> and i find myself in a little different situation. i was an artillery man. you know, in the marine corps, all officers are infantry platoon commanders first, and all marines are riflemen first. you go through the infantry type training. after that training is completed, then you go on to be a helicopter pilot or a tanker or artilleryman. so my training was really a

little different thrust than bob's. knowing that i would be in the supporting arms. but thank god that the marine corps concept is all lieutenants or infantry men first because i went from being an artillery man to being an infantry man in the snap of a finger. >> yes, ma'am. >> hi. first of all, thank you for your service. we really appreciate it. also, how did those experiences on those early days of your future help you in future missions? how did it change you? >> well, since i've worn this medal now for 45 years, when i go to make tough decisions, whher it was in uniform, or in the civilian government jobs that i have had since my retirement, i have held this medal and said what would those young troops think about this

decision i'm about to make? i got to make some tough decisions in their presence and we were successful. i'm a caretaker and i've worn this medal in their honor for all these years and it's helped me make some tough decisions. because i've said what would they say? what would they think? would they be proud? would they concur? so this is one thing that i've always looked back on. >> i think it's an excellent question. i think it again gets back to this notion of values and training and education that you get when you're very young. i know i spent four years at west point, and an awful lot of time spent on honor and integrity and trying to do the right thing. and which is why i believe that you have an obligation to pass that on so that other people also would appreciate those values so that when they're put in difficult situations, then they can respond.

and i think that really transcends across the united states army and our armed forces. all of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and coast guardsmen not only are providing training and tactics and techniques and how to avoid ieds and all those things, there's training in values. loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage. those aren't there just so we can rattle them off or look on posters. they're there because leaders take those as very important parts of our ethos and that we're going to have those values, it's very important in the judgments we take, actions we take and words we speak so when we have a soldier on point who goes into a village or difficult situation or walks down a line as the head of an ambush, we hope that that soldier is making all the right decisions based on those

identified army values that are so important to the united states army and our armed forces as an institution. >> before i go to the next question, let me inject one thing here on how we try to perpetuate the legacy of what these men stand for, these men who wear the medal of honor. we would say that embodied in the medal of honor are some important values that you've heard about here already this morning. i would characterize them as primarily courage, sacrifice, selflessness to think of others before yourself. those are attributes you don't need to be in combat to apply. you can do that any day. so the programs that the medal of honor foundation has instituted to try to perpetuate what these men represent are aimed that way. character development program and a lot of our education programs are aimed at trying to get people to want to do the right thing in difficult

situations, and to think of someone else on their right or their left before themself and apply that in day to day. it won't even be close to the magnitude of the situation that these men faced, but wouldn't our world and our country be a better place if we all thought that way? it's just a basic principles. >> thank you for your service and thank you to any of the men and women in the theater who have served or are serving in the military. i would be interested in knowing the nature of the investigation that is conducted from the time someone is nominated for the medal of honor to the time the decision is made. i presume it is made ultimately by the president of the united states but i don't know that for sure. what do they look for to determine that courage and those kinds of attributes have been demonstrated in the action that you took? >> first of all, there's an

awards manual. military awards manual. and it has medal of honor, navy cross, silver star, bronze star, right down. every medal and it has criteria, what someone needs to do to be considered for that award. so when there's an action and people see it, then they recommend someone for an award. then the first thing that happens is, people have to have statements. you have to have people who have seen the action. okay? and they have to write up statements. then you have to have a commanding officer who gathers those statements and forwards them to battalion. the marine corps or -- they go to battalion. the battalion commander has a board and they look at them to make sure that the criteria for the award that's been recommended has been met. if he concurs then it goes to regiment, the division. back to washington.

it depends on what level of the award as to what level can approve it. okay? division commander in marine corps can approve bronze stars. silver stars are the secretary of the navy. okay? navy cross, secretary of navy. medal of honor, the president. at each level the award package is looked at and scrutinized to make sure that the statements support the action and then they determine what level is that. and at any level it can stop. it can be downgraded. a board can make that determination. in the case of the medal of honor, it comes to the joint chiefs of staff, then the secretary of defense, and the secretary of defense takes it to the white house. now, it's presented by the president in the name of the

congress. and that's generally how the system goes. and it has worked very well and as i said, it's -- people have got to see it, people have got to write it up. i have to admit that i feel bad as a commander. there are young whipper-snappers out there that have done phenomenal things and didn't get awards. a number of reasons is -- the battle went on for ten days. by the time it was over, then people forgot about what sergeant smith did. and didn't sit down and write it up. so i think in the fog of war there are great soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines that do phenomenal things but they don't get an award. so as i said, someone's got to see it -- bob carrey, governor of nebraska, now president of the new school, navy s.e.a.l. says to get the medal of honor, you have people who have to have seen it, they have to be able to write and they can't be your