we wire him to a chair. so thank you all for coming and for papers. >> thank you. [applause]>> coming up on c-spaf honor recipients tell their stories at the ronald reagan library. then president obama chris sent a model of freedom. later the unveiling of the portrait of george w bush from the east room of the white house. tomorrow on "newsmakers", we are joined by rober khuzami. he talks about what the sec is doing to police wall street including its efforts to prevent another financial crisis and prevent fraud. that is a sunday at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern on c-span. >> sunday on "q&a". >> i think the problem is with

walter cronkite, people see him as the avuncular, friendly man, which she was, but there was another side of him that wanted to be the best. he was obsessed with the ratings. he is probably the fiercest competitor i have ever written about. and i have written about presidents and generals and c desire to be the best was very proud of. >> douglas brinkley on his new biography of walter cronkite sunday at 8:00 p.m. eastern and pacific on c-span. >> medal of honor recipients gathered at the ronald reagan library in california to discuss their experiences. speaking to an audience of several hundred middle and high school students, the veterans talked about the importance of community service. they answered questions from the audience. hosted by the annenberg presidential learning center and the congressional medal of honor

foundation, this is an hour and 15 minutes. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> for those of you i have not yet had the good fortune to meet, my name is tony pennie, and i am the director here at the learning center at the ronald reagan presidential library foundation. you saw a video introduction to the work being done at our partner organization. today, you have an opportunity to witness the power of this education program. the tradition here at the foundation, to honor our men and women in uniform by saying the pledge of allegiance, so please rise. the young men of boy scout troop 54 will lead us in that. please rise. >> begin. i pledge allegiance to the flag

of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under god, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> thank you verybefore i invitl guest to the stage, i would like to the point out a few people we have an audience who are here to suggest learning doesn't stop when the bell rings or when your diplomat inferred. we have in the audience today, roy and christina. he is the son of a medal of honor recipient. we have in the audience a corporal benjamin robert smith and his wife. he's a recipient of the victoria cross, which is the preeminent award for acts of bravery in wartime and australia's highest

military honor. thank you for joining us all away from australia. [applause] from our partners at the congressional medal of honor foundation, we have a number of members and their board as well as family members that i want to recognize. [reading names] all of the family members of our panelists who are here today, thank you for coming. [applause] from the office and the california state senator, we have ms. linda johnson. i would also like to recognize all the veterans and active duty military to have joined us today. please stand and be recognized for your service to our country.

[applause] in remarks to the congressional medal of honor society in 1983, president ronald reagan said "freedom, we must always remember, is never more than one generation away from extinction. each generation must do whatever is necessary to preserve it and passed on to the next, or it would be lost forever." i speak to our audience of students when i say i hope you recognize both parts of what president reagan said about freedom. each generation must do their part to preserve freedom. our speakers today represents some of america's best efforts to preserve freedom over the generations. but that's not enough. president reagan points out

passing it on from one generation to the next. the team at the congressional medal of honor foundation has put together a remarkable curriculum which invites students to delve into the stories of medal of honor recipients and explore important concepts like courage, commit, sacrifice, patriotism, integrity, and citizenship. it's one of the finest examples i have seen of how we can best pass on our values from one generation to the next. when we talk about education today, much of the discussion that happens in the media and politics in general revolves around tests. students in the audience know what i am talking about. from kindergarten onward, you have been tested continuously, some might say relentlessly, so much so that the word test itself causes a physical reaction that is not a positive one. your scores in literacy and math are used to evaluate what you have learned and how well your schools and teachers have done

teaching it to you. yes spelling test, vocabulary tests, math tests, physical education tests. just when you think you have been tested enough, you spent a week or to filling in the bubbles on the state test exam. i was in the classroom for years that we called these high-stakes tests. but i want to let you in on a secret. the test you take a classroom are not the real high-stakes tests. the tests you take outside of the classroom, the test you can't really prepare for are the real task. a real test is standing up to one of your friends if you think they're being a bully. a real test is being honest when it would be easier to lie. a real test is when you are on patrol in the french countryside and your platoon comes under heavy fire from german machine guns and mortars. sgt walter e. larsen was in that same position when he scrambled on to a mound of earth to draw the attention of the machine

guns and other members of his platoon could flee to safety. a real test is when you are flying a medevac helicopter in thick jungle fog in close range enemy fire trying to rescue fellow soldiers. in january of 1968, major general patrick brady flew in these conditions and despite the 400 blow holes found in helicopters flew that day, he was able to rescue more than 50 men. a real test is when infantry commander closes the landings and to any further operations because of the intensity of heavy fire, but you know american forces are in desperate need of ammunition and aid. and these circumstances, colonel bruce crandall made flights delivering ammunition and evacuating wounded men. a real test is when despite not having slept for 36 hours, you and your men are loaded into a landing craft, said down river

to join and tense battle. colonel j. vargas, in this situation, managed to carry fellow marines through hundreds of yards of intense enemy fire to get them to a safe evacuation point. only after three days of battle did he allow himself to be treated for bullet and shrapnel into suffered. these are the tests and no amount of cramming can fully prepare you for. lucky for us, we have role models like our panelists today who are willing to pass on their lessons of bravery and sacrifice to the next generation. join me in welcoming me these men to the stage. [applause]

gas >> i would like to start off our panel today by asking you to reflect -- the name of the curriculum is called lessons of personal bravery and self sacrifice. i would like to start off by asking you to reflect on what that means a given your experience and then we will turn to our student audience for questions. if i could start here and then head to the left.

>> my name is walter now was born and raised in the state of kansas. when world war two broke out in europe, i was going to a high- school. my grandfather who was actually a german born here in the united states, he told us we are going to have a war with germany or something like this. in 1940, when i graduated from high school, my brother and i decided we wanted to join the army. he was 4 years older than i, so we went down to the fort in kansas and my life changed from the time i had to go home and get my mother's signature.

she looked me in the i and my dad said he would sign it and my mom said with tears in her eyes, son, i wrote will only sign if you promise to be a christian soldier. i was shocked. i promised her i would do my very best and i remembered that from that time on, he made the impression on me that if i wasn't going to be a christian soldier, i would dishonor. i took that with me all the way through my military career. i did not do anything unusual, and i did not do anything that would dishonor, and i did not want to dishonor god. that is aware lived my life and i had a terrific military career. i have five years in the

military service and i had five landings and eight campaigns and i went all the way from casablanca and french morocco and landed in sicily and omaha beach in normandy. that is how i got started and my life has been changed ever since and it was the best thing that ever happened to me when she told me that. i can still remember as clear as today those tears in her eyes were coming straight from heart. i lived my life and the best thing that happened to me in military service was when my brother got killed. -- the baddest thing that happened. i remember all of these soldiers and all of these years and i have been back several times.

it is an honor to go back and respect the lives of these people. i saw some many people killed on d-day. i talk to schools all the time and i have to tell you one little thing. one little girl asked me how many people did i kill? i said i didn't kill any people. i said i wasn't trying to kill people, i was trying to kill the enemy and they were trying to kill me. so i am probably here today because i did what i had to do and it did not make any special efforts. but i did learn a lot from my mother and that is what kept me straight and honest throughout military service. [applause]

>> walt has me all choked up. my name is pat brady. i am universally known as the greatest helicopter pilot that ever lived. [laughter] you are privileged today to meet the greatest and the second greatest of all of that is questionable. i have been a member of the battle of honor society for many years. i know i don't look that old. the greatest thing we have ever done in our society, and we have done a lot of things with young people and veterans, with every cause we thought was right and just, but the greatest thing we have ever done is this

educational program you are here to learn about. they asked a guy if you had to do it all over again, would you do it differently? we can't. we have had our time and we are out of the arena. we can't live our lives over again. we can live our lives over again through young people. we have been there and you have never been where we have been. i had a boss of mind -- i really screwed something that bad, and he said to me pat, don't feel bad. no one is a total loss. they can only serve as a bad example. [laughter] we are here as kind of a bad example. we want to steer the young people around the obstacles we face. you have all heard of the programs where golfers go out and teach things like honesty,

integrity, essential elements of golf to young people through professional golf. our program goes out to teach patriotism, courage, sacrifice, what a true hero is and how to define a hero to the experiences of those of us who where the metal. that is what we are useful for and that is what we are dedicated to. this is a great thing we do. we are happy to do it and i look forward to your questions. [applause] >> my name is bruce crandall. it always nice to get the microphone after pat. you might think half the people who got the medal of honor or

helicopter pilots. that's not so. we had six total, i think during the war although we had some of the heaviest losses in combat. one of the privileges i had was commanding u.s. troops in combat. one of the greatest responsibilities i had was commanding troops in combat. last week, i spent five days at fort jackson, going through some of the training our troops to in basic training and i can hardly walk now. i'm not fit for basic training anymore. 61 years ago, i graduated from high school and i was in the same situation as many of you. i was 5 foot 6 and weighed 143 pounds. i didn't know what i was going to do except i was going to play baseball. instead, i got drafted by the army in some of the yankees or

the orioles. my batting average is three times my grade point. not too bad if you are graduating still. i ended up making a career out of the army. part of it was because i had been raised in a home that the service's one of the requirements. my father served in the navy, my uncles had served in the navy, and my mother went to work in a shipyard as a welder. a great uncle came to live with us so he could help take care of us. my grandmother lived with us. we learn by example during the war what we owe to our country and how lucky we were to be in our country. the young people of today are

probably the best generation we will ever have. some guy wrote an article about the second world war and said they were the greatest generation. so we always have the greatest generation. we are trying to pass on a legacy to you young folks so that you understand that courage is not a battlefield example. you all will have situations where you will be required to have courage, to say no when his dog proper answer, when others of the angus come to stand up for what is right. you will learn teamwork and relationships in your school life and then your real life. hopefully ever have to sit on the battlefield. no one hates war more than zero warrior. we as a group feel that way --

no one hates war more than zero warrior. the average age of this group is my age, and i don't want to talk about that. [laughter] we have three young guys that came on and they dropped our average age by one year. that did not make me feel any younger. i am real supporter of the program, and i am willing to help in any way i can to see that it gets to our young people. even in australia, i will be glad to know the teatime is ahead of time. thank you very much for having me here and it is a pleasure to be in the reagan library again. [applause] >> good morning. the first thing i will say it's

to the teachers and all the employees that work in the schools around our nation, especially the state of california. thank you for everything you are doing with our young generation. i have been in your shoes. i love to teach, still do, and i know the hardship she were going through in making great citizens out of these people that are here today and throughout the state of california. to ben and emma, thank you very much for being here, and the rest of the australian team, is always an honor to meet another warrior who has been highly decorated. it is an honor to be in your company. thank you very much. a guess i am a little different than some of the -- i am not a helicopter pilot. i was in the marine corps, and a

company commander. i did save about seven of my marines by going back into the battle and going forward with those that were knocked down, including my battalion commander. but there is more to that story. it tied in with an golden keys that my brothers gave to me. on the that i was about to go in to the corps. a lot of what transpired in my particular situation is based on those keys, and i am going to share them with you. hopefully some of you can put them in your pocket and maybe use a couple of them. i parents were immigrants could my mother was from italy and my dad was from spain. two of her sons were in world war ii. one fought on iwo jima and one fought in open now. --okinawa. the case they get me as i was

departing one evening from a small town in northern arizona real very useful. it all came true. my mother, for example, already had three marines, one in korea and to in world warii --two in world war ii. when i came home, i was devastated, having not been able to climb that ladder all the way up, but i had a wonderful father taught me, just look out for you went up the ladder. it was an honor, too. then i decided i wanted to go into the officers' corps and was in the marine corps. my mother had convinced my three brothers that you get in there, you sit down with him and tell him he is going to the navy. he is not going to be a marine.

that evening, she took my brother and my dad and told him to go start the car, we are going for ride. his conversation did not last very long. my brother says, we have been told by mom to convention not to go in the marine corps like we did. -- to convince you not to go in the marine corps like we did. my older brother and the los that if you don't, we are going to break your legs. [laughter] they were all highly decorated. they did not receive the highest awards, but they received quite a bit. the golden teased as they sat with that evening with me, i want to pass them on to the young people -- a golden keys.

always said a good example. set your standards high. always take care of your fellow men. the third one was kind of tough. whatever you do, don't ever ask a marine or anyone you are leading to do anything, in peacetime or in combat, that you would not do. how does that relate to you? if you go back to the first one, setting in your standards and examples high. at this stage in life, you should be writing down some objectives, but make them reachable objectives. be yourself. believe in yourself. believing your god, or whatever supreme being you believe in. always take care of each other. truly take care of each other. learn to do it now and make your friendships today, because friendship at your level right now will always be forever. like the rest of us, and still

close to my high school and appears that i had when i was growing up. we still communicate. take care of each other. in my time, and then there's, we did not have drugs. how did not know what those work. the main thing was, you don't need it. the energy that you can create within your little hearts and your bodies and minds is within you right now. it is a god-given gift. i will conclude by simply saying that enjoy life, it is truly a one time around. right now is when you want to establish yourself into what you want to be in the future, a great citizen, a great leader, a great future teacher, and educator, whatever dimension you want to get into. what promise me that you will take some of these golden keefe

and used them. i transferred them from the core into my everyday life, and they work. they are very simple. set your example, set your standards high, take care of yourself, and never asked anybody to do something you would not do yourself. thank you. [applause] >> now we are going to get some questions from students. many of the students in the audience have been studying your stories in going through some of this curriculum and learning quite a bit about the medal honoring what it means. some of the traits that are described in the curriculum. just as i know, in the audience we have bill and heather who

worked -- who both work with the medal of honor foundation. we will start over here. go ahead. >> firstly, i wanted to thank the panel as well as the collective middle of honor recipients across the country for your undying service to our country. i am here zang from arcadia high school. my question was, following your respective experiences in the field, how would your reintegration back into society? >> the question was, after your experiences in battle, what was it like to come back into society? >> i would like to answer that one, because i came back to

california and became a city manager in northern california, and i like combat better. [laughter] [applause] i actually spent three years doing prop 13, so those of you who were alive and understand the problem. [applause] leadership in the military or outside is the same. never leave from the back -- never believed it from the back. don't ever do things that you know -- that you don't know are the right thing to do. that goes from civilian life outside. >> like pat, i stayed in the years and continued

on with leadership, taking care of the marines, commanding different commands from a company up to an infantry regiment of 5000 marines. but nothing changed as far as my views toward society. i was very proud of what the marines did, as well as all of us that fought in vietnam. some people cry that we lost the war. i never lost the battle. i should not say i, we never lost the battle. the war was in our hands to win, but things happen with that we decided as a society, put so much pressure on the campaign. but it did not change my views as to live and the love of my country.

i enjoyed teaching students. >> i stayed in the military after i came back, and i don't regret -- there may be a lesson in this, i don't know. i did not want to go in the military. when i came out of high school, i had an opportunity to play football at several universities, but there was this foxy young chick, and she was going to university that did not have a football team, but they did have rotc, and it was mandatory. i hated it, every day. so i kind of put up with the military, and then one thing led to another and i ended up in vietnam's for a couple of years. my thing was, i was in berlin

when they built a wall. i looked around at the leadership and the people i saw who were serving their country in uniform, something i did not want to do, and i box -- i was there with norman schwarzkopf. i looked at these guys, and we get off the train in berlin, germany. a guy meet me, takes me to an important -- takes me to an apartment, there stood in the refrigerator and everything. the commander's wife the next day comes to see my wife, who was pregnant with our third child. wow, these people or something else. then they built the wall, we went through that kind of stress, shooting their own people off the wall. i just looked at the people around be in uniform and said there are some really wonderful leaders here. i would like to grow up and be

like them. so i stayed after the time in the military and learned a great many lessons as far as courage, sacrifice, what a real hero is, those things that hopefully we'll talk about later on. so did i. it reduced audit not come back into society after the military, i stayed in. i got to serve with some of the greatest people i have ever been around anywhere. knowing what i know now, i probably would have left home when i found out my parents were civilians. [laughter] but i love to be around military people. all young people ought to take a good, hard look at it. it will change your life. you will see leadership like you'll never see anywhere else. you are all part of the greatest generation. just take a look at it. it is a wonderful way to spend your life, even if you are only

in for a couple of years. what the heck? you are still serving your country and you'll come out with great skill, discipline, and stuff like that. i did not have a problem coming back into society after combat, not one bit. say.ve got something to i am the lowest rank up here. i am not staff sgt. i was a second lieutenant when i got my medal of honor. [applause] it was a battlefield commission, and on behalf of all the battlefield commission officers, i am a second lieutenant and the lowest ranking officer of here. that was for leadership.

our love of the staff sergeant right because it was better than second lieutenant -- i loved the sat -- staff sgt rank it really is a higher rank and what i am. it is a very good thing to be a staff sergeant, so i am kind of happy about that. i want you to know that these battlefield commissions did not come easy. you had to be a terrific leader in the battlefield to get a commission in the first infantry division. i found that out for sure. on december 9, was commissioned an officer. on december 16, on the day the battle of the bulge started, i became a second lieutenant in paris, france.

so i did have some leadership training. [laughter] >> we are honored to be with you all. now that you have promoted yourself, you have to buy the first round of drinks tonight. [laughter] >> on the second lieutenants pay, that is going to be tough. >> my question is, were you traumatized by all of the wounded soldiers your rescue? >> i had a real problem with blood and needles, especially the needles. whenever vaccinating me, i just hated that. the first time they took blood, i fainted.

so i was very apprehensive about going into a combat situation where people were in the course of the day, into tours in vietnam i picked up over 5000 people. we saw the human body in every possible, horrible configuration that it could be in. i was really worried about how i would physically react to that. even today, if i look on television at an operation or a needle, i turn it all. in combat, in the environment, it did not bother me. what bothered me is that people were hurt. that bothered me very much, but it did not physically bother me. i was so busy with what i was trying to do. there is nothing in the world greater than to save a human life. the teachers and the coaches do this also. they save their young lives. but to find your way through a

bunch of obstacles -- with meat being the greatest helicopter pilot that ever lived, i could find a way in there that no one else could find. to get your hands on the person who is seriously hurt and put them in the hands of the positions that can really say there live. that was a thrill beyond anything in life that i can think of. steak, lobster, sex -- can i say that? i don't care what it is. there is nothing in life to match saving human life. i guess that helped me overcome my incredible physical aversion to needles and blood. [applause]

>> hyper who or what inspired you to join in -- who or what inspired you to join, knowing you might not come back? who or what inspired you to join the military? knowing that you might not come back from vietnam. >> i got inspired by a letter that said greetings, you have been selected. [laughter] i suggest that if they ever start the draft again, they start the letters "saying readings, you have just been

shafted by uncle sam." if i had a choice, i could have gotten out of going because i was in the national guard picks all i do is tell the draft board that. but i knew i had to start at some time. i weighed 143 pounds and was 5 ft. 6. i felt like a couple of years in the army playing ball would be good for me, so i went in the army. the draft is the worst thing that ever happened to the military, in my judgment. it should not ever happen again. the draft did not give us bad people. it gave us some great people. a lot of them have college educations or partial educations. of what it did, gave a local judge in the share of the opportunity to tell our young hoods that they either go in the

army or go to jail. all they did was change where they went to jail. today they are all volunteers and they are doing a wonderful job. we ought to keep the military strong enough to encourage people to stay in that join, and to make their families live good enough so that they will. if i had it to do all over again, i would have done the same thing, because i found a career in the military very satisfying. i also found a career after i got out pretty satisfying, coming to arizona. [applause] >> i was wondering what was going through your mind when you

committed your act of bravery. >> my troops, my marines, their safety, and concentrating on bringing artillery, aircraft, helicopters, gunships in through the zone to annihilate the enemy. they always came first. still do. but i believe that is the way it should be. i think my brothers gave me some good advice about asking to do anything you would not do. i ended up taking machine gun misses and setting a couple of folks when my platoon got pinned down acrobatic. my troops were first in my life. >> that is the way it should be. [applause]

>> i want to know how the war changed too emotionally. -- change you emotionally. >> bruce always says he was 140 pounds and tall. i was about your size when i joined the marine corps. emotionally, i think it was the strong belief in god that really gave me the foundation to be strong and to accept life as it came, and probably the good advice my brothers gave me. they told me some ugly things before i went into combat, into the corps, i should say. it is not matter what we saw in vietnam. what amazes me is what the

gentleman to our right, lieutenant walter ehlers. what they went through in world war ii is just unbelievable. you cannot describe it. yes, we did see a lot. we did fight against some good warriors against us, but it did not really bother me emotionally. there were times when i came home it is i think this is true of all of us. take some time to kind of wind down. today a lot of our young troops are having difficulty with ptsd. the numerous deployment they are going on is just breathtaking. i think it is because we did the other thing and is because bruce and i, we did okay in baseball. he was an all-american and i was

an honorable mention all- american in our day. i think playing sports and physical activity and studying and accepting failure is something that is hard to accept, but that was one of the bullets of wanted to give you. it did not change my life. i wanted to get better. that is how you should be. he should be one of the best citizens of the state of california. how is that? [applause] >> my question is for any of you gentlemen. when you were saving men, if you think of them, or did you think of their families? >> i thought solely for my marines. as an example, there was one of my marines whose arm was just blown off, sitting by a tree.

they were fighting as hand-to- hand. i promised i would go back and get him. how do i feel about that? i went back and found him. when i had him on my shoulder and i was running back to give psmen ", he "rny skipper, i want my damn arm." so i went back and got his arm, and then we put him on the chopper. >> i never thought about it at the time, but when we saved a soldier's life, we were also saving a husband or a son, and also the grandchildren and great-grandchildren that would come from that one soldier's life that we saved. you don't think about that at the time, but that was something

that i thought about later on. like any kind of life saving, it is just a wonderful thing to be able to do, but at the time that it is going on, you are so busy that the only emotion is really focused, concentration, to try to get the guy out and get him to the hospital. later as i have reflected on the number of children and grandchildren and marriages and stuff like that that were involved in the lives that we saved over there. so that is a gratifying thing for me. >> thousands of missions that he flew in, he picked up not just one or two wounded warriors. i would say he saved 1000. >> one of the things that the

vietnam war produced was medical evacuation from all of our cities and remote hospitals and stuff. that is one of the really positive things that came out of that work. we say blocks of life in the civilian community afterwards. when you are doing the job, you don't think about it. you never get to meet the people you are carrying out and they don't get to meet you. if i could find out all the guys i carry on, i would charge them $5 apiece and then retired again. [laughter] but you treat the guys on the ground, they were my family. it actually develop a sense of ownership with them. you keep that for years afterwards. we will get together in another

month or so, the group that was in that battle. it is great to do. we had each other on the back and then we talk about how old it looks. we developed a relationship that is important on the battlefield, but it does come back to when you get back home and get to meet the families and realize there are that many grandchildren and running around. >> that is what i said earlier. now is the time to start taking care of each other. it is not that hard. i am not saying you have to love everybody completely, but now is the time to establish hot that camera robbery among yourselves and your classmates, and -- time

to establish that camaraderie. >> sometimes you'll meet people in strange places that you actually rescued. in combat, we knew each other only by call signs. one day i am doing a demonstration at a teleconference that shows the community around fort benning held that helicopters looking combat. this beautiful young thing -- beautiful young lady walked up to me and said, can i hug you? i said, you can hug me all day. so she did. shortly thereafter, her husband came behind her and he was limping. to make a long story short, it turned out that i was the pilot,

and he recognized my call sign. i had picked him up in vietnam when he was wounded. another time i am going to the handball courts and somebody said, are you double nickel? i said yes. he said he did me a favor one time, what do you drink? i said scott. the next day he has a half gallon of johnnie walker black scotch. we do tend to be people that you have rescued in combat, which is very rewarding. >> thank you for the question. [applause] >> we will take one more live question. i want to mention that we have an online audience that wanting of the web cast.

>> walter ehlers, if you could go back to war, would you change anything? >> if i went back to the war, i would be sure that all the soldiers had as much training as they could possibly get before they were put into a war. that is the most important thing. i did not get mike cuellar for being rambo or anything like that. i was only doing my job. i had two years of training before ever went to war, -- i did not get my medal of honor for being rambo. when i got my medal of honor, i was only doing my job. i went out and rescued a man who

had gotten wounded after we let the rest of the squad returned to cover, safely back behind hedgerows there. it is something that you do naturally. you don't think about it, and i didn't know anything about getting a medal of honor until december of 1944. i got it for the ninth and 10th of june as a staff sergeant, and everybody says what were you doing, and somebody said why don't you go back, what were you thinking? i said i was not thinking, i was just doing my job. had i been thinking, probably would not have gone back for it. things like that happen. i have to tell you that -- i am

not telling you to be a christian or anything like this, but i am telling you what it does for you. for instance, i had a man and i ask him to go to church with me one morning. he said i am an atheist. i said you can be anything you want to be. so he did. he went to church. when he came out, he said i am an atheist. again, i told him, you can be anything you want to be. the first battle we got into in africa, the tanks were coming down and they were shelling us. they told us to begin on the hill up there. keith is out there digging in on the hill. he said god, help me, god, help me. [laughter] after it was all over, i said,

are you still an atheist? he said yes. i said, how come you are asking god to help you up there? >> he said, there wasn't anybody else to asked to help me. you hear these things, and i actually see them have been in combat. people really talking to their fate automatically, even though they thought they have given it up. it is a hard thing to give up. and actually, what are we fighting for? we are fighting for our freedom. freedom of anybody's religion. if they want to be freed with it, they ought to believe. [applause] >> i would like to make one comment to him.

that is not a decision you can change to mark critz once you make it, you go on for life. cannot change your decisions next week or the week after. >> i would just add a little vignette, when walter is talking about would you do it over again. there is another medal of honor recipient named webster anderson, a great powerful soldier. he was in vietnam one night in the were overrun by the communist. the first wave took off both of his legs. he still fought on. the next attack, they threw a hand grenade into his position. webster, a hand grenade and when he was throwing it away, took off his arm. they were in the middle of a tropical storm, and i managed to get in and get webster and his wounded guys and get them to the

hospital, where the save his life, but he lost both legs and he lost an arm. webster and i became very close. he thought i had saved his life. we would go and talk to students like this around the country. it would not sit. we had to prop him up. he had to fake legs and a fake arm and he had a cane on. we brought him up and kids would ask questions. they called him mr. serjeant webster anderson. if you had to do over again, knowing what you know now, two legs and one arm, would you do it again? webster looked at him and said kidd, i only got one arm left, but my country can have it any time they want. to me, that was the definition of a true patriot. webster anderson, a great black soldier. [applause]

>> leroy keith tree is in fort washington right now. ask him that question -- leroy petrie. ask him if he would do it again, and he said i would do it again next time left-handed. good attitude. >> the question that comes from online, students have been submitting these are the last couple of weeks. what helps you to be strong, think clearly, and not to give up? in the situations you were in in battle, is there anything in your past or your training -- what was the that really helps you in that moment of intensity and danger that really helps you rise to the occasion? >> did you hear the question? >> i think it was training.

in my case, i could never go home and embarrass my brothers. that was the big thing. i am going to go back to the love of troops. i really do. when you lead them into combat, and pat covered this, you better know what the hell you are doing. you better be carrying any better be smart. the art of anticipation is a lost art, and american society today. learn how to anticipate. that was another key my brothers gave me. >> what inspired me to do what i did is that i had a lot of training in the military service. i was the leader with a lot and had not had any combat training before, went into normandy, and when we got into this situation

in the hedgerows, we knocked out three machine-gun nests and then we knocked out a mortar position. the next day, i was the leader of my squad, and i knew it number-one thing was, i could smell the germans. had a platoon leader who had just come over from fort benning georgia. he was a lieutenant. he tell me to go out and go into this town. my platoon leader tell me to take the squad out, and i started to lead the squad.

he said sgt, we don't do it that way. he said, you send out two of your scouts, and i am going to follow them, and then you bring the squad behind them. i said, that is not the right way to do it. my squad was not that well trained. i said well, that is why i do it. he said, this is a direct order. so they go out in germany. they got pinned down by at tank sitting in a little town out there across an alley. they saw these guys coming across the field so they started firing on them. they got into a hole in could not get out. so i got a bazooka and ended at

the tank. hit the tank and some soft spot. i knew where to shoot at. he had never shot the bazooka before. so that was his first shot and it hit that soft spot and the germans came out of that tank like flies. pretty soon we went over and captured the tank. we captured the tank and then i came back and said lieutenant, it is ok to come out now. and he did, and he apologized to me. he said i will never tell you how to run your squad again. [applause] >> the one thing that i learned in the military, and you learn

this in life, too. we are not all born equal. we are just not. you look around you and you see people bigger, faster, smarter, stronger, they have better here than you have. -- better hair. we are simply not all born equal. but there is one way, and i think this is the key to success in life and what we try to teach in our program, that we are all born equal. that is in terms of courage. each of us can have all the courage you want. you cannot use it up. it is the key to success in life. it produces great success from those among us who were not given credibility and did not have great opportunities in their life. to me, courage was a very important thing. where does it come from?

what allows you to use courage on the battlefield or anywhere else? the answer is simply fade. i have never seen anything else to explain what people do in combat or in the classroom or anywhere else. i believe there is something to work dying for, something worth somewhere above and beyond the person that you are that is more important than that particular moment. i can explain my faith. i would not do it for anyone else, but fate is the foundation of courage. courage is the key to success in life. i have said this before, and i have been almost get a bunch of times, but i was never afraid. they was a substitute for fear. it gave me -- face was a substitute for fear. allow me to do things that

otherwise would not have been possible. faith is the source of everything and anything that i ever did in combat. [applause] >> pat is right. as i said earlier, believe in god or your supreme being or whoever you believe in. he is right. i don't think a day goes by without communicating with the big guy to watch over me. i even asked him to help me on the golf course, but he has been letting me down. [laughter] >> jay had his family that he was afraid of. the marines gave him courage for that. one of the things i got asked

the most was, didn't you have fear? i did have fear, but it was fear of making a bad decision that calls a blind man to die or some of the men not -- that caused one of my men to die or some of the men i was supporting. i was more afraid of making a bad decision. that is more important when you are doing those things, in my judgment. we should have fear you are going to cause a problem for your troops. >> i have two bullets i fail to pass on to you. if you fall or you fail, it is not the end of the world. i was over in new mexico talking to some of the students. some of them had blown an algebra class. there's just no way that they could get through it, and they

were ready to quit school. don't ever quit. get into some other general map or something. we are not all scientists. i was not worth a darn in math. when i started taking calculus and geometry, i said that's it. i've got to go into another field. but don't ever be afraid, if you fall down and failed, get back up. don't be afraid, as pat put it very well, lean on your face. get back on your feet and keep going forward -- lien on your faith. if you make a mistake, admit. if you truly know that you made a mistake, don't ever hesitate to say i made a mistake. allied just get you deeper -- a

lie just did you deeper into your inner soul [applause] . >> it pains me to do this, because i think that given the opportunity, we could see here for hours upon hours. but we are out of time. so here is what we are going to do. i know that part of the program, the malick honor, is bringing recipients into classrooms viaskype or may be asking questions. those of you still have questions, have your teachers get in contact with me. we will get those questions answered. i don't want you to leave here feeling we have had a question has been unanswered. i apologize tremendously. i would also like to ask, at the beginning of the talk today,

colonel vargas was mention the keys that he was given. in closing, i would ask that each of our panelists give us one key, giving your experience, your help -- carroll wisdom and courage, if you had just one key to pass on to our audience today as a final word, what would that be? >> you heard me say earlier, believe in yourself and be yourself. it is very important to be yourself. i have seen great students trying to guess like those guys whose pants are nearly falling off. the yourself and believe in yourself. always believe in yourself. that is my advice. >> if i did not have faith, i would not have been able to do what i did.

i left it in god's hands. i figured that i had to do this because it had to be done. i had no control over when i was going to die or anything like this. i was fighting to live. so i never worried about dying, but i was really scared a the time. i was fighting to live. i was not fighting to die. and i put my faith in god, and somehow it worked, and i am still here today. and i still have my faith in god and in my children and in my grandchildren. i think they should know that the great courage in the best thing you can do in your lifetime is to have faith. i did not set out to be a hero or anything. i had no idea was ever going to

get a medal of honor. i read about in the stars and stripes. that is how i found out i was getting a medal of honor. i said i was reporting back to duty. he said you were supposed to be back in the state's coming getting the medal of honor from the president. i said yes, i read about it in the stars and stripes. that is how i found out about it. it is a great thing to have faith. >> it takes my friend a while to get his thoughts together, so i will go before him. the thing i would leave with all of you, and i want you to go to the program. faith, sacrifice, love in action. the key to happiness in life,

and a hero cannot separate business from heroes. celebrities are not heroes. look around you and realize how blessed you are to be an american, how extraordinary it is. the other thing i would ask you to do, and we are all part of this. america has no kings, no queens, no dukes and duchesses and all that stuff. but we do have a nobility in america. america's and ability is called veterans. those of us who are part of america's nobility are required to pass on to the younger people, in terms of being a bad example, a way around the

obstacles that we faced in life. i was on the golf course with my friend at the other day and he brought out a tape major that measures how close you are to the tent -- brought out a tape measure. he said here is your life span, and here is where you are. so here is your life span, and you guys are right here. it's not as well be further ahead when you get to where i am then you are today. be further ahead when you get here than you were when you were right here. that is the thing we try to do for this program that we have. we are living our lives over again through you, and trying to keep you from making the same stupid mistakes that we made as stupid mistakes that we made as