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Every Man a Hero, D-Day First Wave Medic Ray Lambert - Today, we're featuring New York Times #1 best selling author Jim DeFelice. Jim's latest masterpiece is Every Man A Hero. Jim's book is the memoir of US Army combat medic Ray Lambert who survived 3 separate amphibious landings during World War II. 3.
On June 6, 1944, Ray along with thousands of others landed on the beaches of Normandy. Ray was in the first wave...in the front of the boat and was hit immediately. Ray survived the day, pushing past exhaustion, his own wounds and kept saving lives, remarkable. Enjoy this riveting conversation between Pete A Turner and our dear, dear friend, Jim DeFelice! We also want to announce that the Break it Down Show is proud to support Save the Brave, a certified nonprofit that is committed to helping our veteran community and those affected with PTS. For more information and ways to give, go to savethebrave.org to find out how YOU can help. Episode Haiku Normandy Beaches An extraordinary call Each man a Hero Similar episodes Jim DeFelice Jim DeFelice Woody Williams |
Transcription
Jon Leon Guerrero 0:00
Hey, this is john Leon Guerrero. Our guest today is Jim de Felice. He's got more than a dozen New York Times bestsellers, many of them a celebration of unsung American heroes. In fact, he's like the Dr. Dre of American literature. Just like when a record label things, you really got something and it's time for you to turn it on. They send you to Dr. Dre and he locks the door behind you and you sequester for a month, and then emerged with a life changing piece of work under your arm. Well, Jim, is that for someone with a harrowing life, he will pull it out and shine a light on it from all directions.
Hey, this is john Leon Guerrero. Our guest today is Jim de Felice. He's got more than a dozen New York Times bestsellers, many of them a celebration of unsung American heroes. In fact, he's like the Dr. Dre of American literature. Just like when a record label things, you really got something and it's time for you to turn it on. They send you to Dr. Dre and he locks the door behind you and you sequester for a month, and then emerged with a life changing piece of work under your arm. Well, Jim, is that for someone with a harrowing life, he will pull it out and shine a light on it from all directions.
Jon Leon Guerrero 0:00
Hey, this is john Leon Guerrero. Our guest today is Jim de Felice. He's got more than a dozen New York Times bestsellers, many of them a celebration of unsung American heroes. In fact, he's like the Dr. Dre of American literature. Just like when a record label things, you really got something and it's time for you to turn it on. They send you to Dr. Dre and he locks the door behind you and you sequester for a month, and then emerged with a life changing piece of work under your arm. Well, Jim, is that for someone with a harrowing life, he will pull it out and shine a light on it from all directions. And when that story emerges, we're all gripped, captivated, enraptured, enlightened, and inspired. He's done it with the likes of Omar Bradley, Richard Marcinco, Chris Kyle, Ivan Castro and Johnny Walker. Today, Jim's back to talk with us about the new book. He's co written with Ray Lambert, who stormed Omaha Beach in the first wave at Normandy on D day, Jim has spent time with some real America heroes. But this story, even among all of theirs is really special. The book is called every man a hero and we know you're going to love it. Of course, if you're a longtime listener, you know Jim, he's a great guy and amazing ally, and someone whose work and work ethic and friendship we absolutely treasure in addition to every man hero if you haven't already, you should buy his previous book West like lightning, the brief legendary ride of the Pony Express. One of my all time favorite books and so much fun to read. As always, if you dig the show, please help us out. It takes just a minute to subscribe and hit the bill for notifications. If you're listening to the show on YouTube, or give us that five star rating and quick review if you're listening on iTunes or Stitcher. Those things help the show's profile and we love you for doing it and for listening in. And now, our guest today, our dear friend, we love him. You're going to love him too. Here's Jim de Felice.
Joel Manzer 2:03
Lions rock productions.
Unknown Speaker 2:08
This is James. This is Jordan. Dexter from the naked
Unknown Speaker 2:16
Baxter
Unknown Speaker 2:17
Gabby Reese is Rob belly.
Jon Leon Guerrero 2:18
This is Jon Leon Guerrero
Pete Turner 2:19
this is Pete a Turner.
Jim DeFelice 2:23
Hey, this is Jim de Felice. I'm the co author of every man a hero, which is an incredible story, a true story of combat medic Ray Lambert during World War Two, especially some of his exploits on D day, and you are listening to the breaking down show.
Niko Leon Guerrero 2:44
And now the breakdown show with john Leon Guerrero and Pete a Turner.
Pete Turner 2:49
Jim has been on many times almost every time he writes a book we have him on. Also, though co hosting a number of times. That's so I'm honored to call you my friend to have you on the show with me to have a copy of your book sitting here in my lap. Every man a hero. I just got it yesterday, and I'm already about halfway through it. So I will tell everybody in the audience, if you like reading books at all, especially about World War Two, you have to get this book, raise story. First Wave when they drop that first Hagen's boat gate, Ray is right there with everybody going out first.
Jim DeFelice 3:29
And he's right at the front right? goes out, he gets hit Eddie gets hit right away.
Pete Turner 3:35
And then spends the whole day as long as he's able until he's absolutely overcome by injuries. But that injury didn't stop him. He just kept going and going and going. And it's not just running up the bodies on the beach. You know, the whole book, Jim starts off with, you know, next thing you know, he's already in the water going underwater, and helping someone get d tangled from barbed wire. And you know, it's just incredible.
Jim DeFelice 3:58
He was he said, He's an incredible guy is still with us is 98 years old still drives, not with me, I drive, but he's an incredible guy. And on D day, by the time of D day, he had actually already been into the biggest invasions of the war in Africa and in Sicily, and he had two silver stars already. So I guess in some sense, you know, he had been preparing his whole service was preparing for that day. And yet incredible, you know, he's hit right away, he struggles gets to the to the beach, and then not to give the entire book away. But you know, he, at some point, he says I can't go on. And that is forced to go on. And he does go on it's he's he's a quite a guy. He
Pete Turner 4:47
had 98 years old. And actually he was there at the Normandy remembrance, the 75th anniversary, and Donald Trump, the president actually mentioned a significant portion of his speech was was referring to Ray and Ray was sitting right behind him.
Jim DeFelice 5:03
Absolutely. And, you know, if I didn't know any better, I would swear that he was just reading off the, the inside cover of our book, because he summarized is just, you know, with someone like Ray, you know, you can't really sum up their their whole life in you know, 60 seconds or whatever, I've been so many, so many different things happened. And it wasn't just random in the combat medics, you know, in general, certainly on that day, and throughout the war, and throughout history, but in World War Two, they saved hundreds and hundreds of Ben Ray was in charge, he was a staff sergeant in charge of about 30 men during the war. And so you know, you think about it in any of the in any given battle, you know, each guy probably saves a dozen, a couple dozen people, you know, you multiply that by 30, and then multiply it by all the battles they were in. I mean, y'all today, thousands and thousands of people owe their lives to these guys. You know, I was thinking on Father's Day, you know, as families, you know, we gather together with their fathers, you know, also in the room with Ray weren't just his, I mean, literally his descendants, but figuratively, all of the descendants, the, you know, the children of the guys who made it back because of him and because of his men. Just incredible.
Pete Turner 6:26
Yeah. So he lands on Omaha Beach. And again, we don't want to give the book away. You guys really have to buy it. And the standard thing applies when you guys go to Amazon and buy the book, read it, review it, that's what gets the book held up in front and recommend it to other people, it's already going to be a best seller if it's not already. And
Jim DeFelice 6:44
actually it is it is, of course, it'll be on the times. It's while it's on the times list that comes out Sunday. It's it's doing very well. And I have to say, yeah, it's all right. It's not. It's not me. But yes, it's
Pete Turner 6:56
all right. It's a story. But you're the master of this, making these stories and processing a min away for us. So it's for sure Ray's story, but man, you're the master at co authoring and getting us to a place that you know, I just have the highest regard for what you do, like with Johnnie Walker in his book. That's not an easy book to write. So you don't get out.
Jim DeFelice 7:18
Johnny's Johnny keeps me on my toes, Johnny and I actually are speed we're doing. We're doing a talk for a VFW, big VFW meeting this weekend. So we still do a lot a lot of stuff together. JOHN is everybody's different. I mean, it's really it's kind of an interesting thing, you know, to kind of meet to meet different people, young people from say Dave Battista to, to Chris, Chris Kyle, to Johnny Walker, to Jada, right? Right. Lambert, you know, you get, you don't have you don't have to be their friend to be able to do the book. And sometimes you have to, you know, you have to make decisions and help them make decisions that aren't necessarily the easiest thing for them. But it's been my privilege to be able to form fairly good friendships with most if not everybody I've worked with. And you know, they're always they're always interesting. They're always keeping you on your toes. I'll tell you that.
Pete Turner 8:18
Yeah, yeah. Well, you so you've covered a number of wars in your writing. I mean, obviously, the Omar Bradley book is sort of, I guess I haven't read it. But the one I look at the title, it's you know about the man. So definitely cover some World War Two, but it covers other things. You've got Ray, you've got Johnnie Walker, who's the most improbable seal of all time. Chris Kyle, of course, when you hear these things, you even it's not really a combat story, but it is, you know, the story of we had john for West like lightning, you know, the Pony Express book. And it's these these, primarily these men that take on these incredible challenges? How, how do they when you kind of sift them through time? How do you see a difference between Ray and Johnny and Chris, and you know, someone who's riding the Pony Express,
Jim DeFelice 9:09
they'll have different favorite drinks. You know, I'm very adaptable. So there. I think that on the surface, there's obviously you know, there's always obvious differences between Johnnie Walker, Johnny's, Johnny was an Iraqi, and pretty contemporary times you're raised in, in Iraq, much different backgrounds, say than Chris Kyle was, who was a tried and true Texan. And very different. All those guys are very different than than Ray Ray Lambert, who, you know, was born Alabama, before the war, and certainly comes from, I mean, America has certainly changed quite a bit since 1920, when he was born. But the thing that I see, one thing that kind of ties all of these guys together, for me is that that they deal with, they both dealt with. We've all dealt with very difficult circumstances. And they've all managed to kind of reach deep and come through. And each one of them, I say, would tell you that in their heart of hearts, they don't think that they're very special. Yeah, Chris. Chris was adamant about that. Ray is very insistent, it took months, I have to tell you, it took months and months and months to get Ray, to agree to to do the book. Because he didn't think, you know, it's like, well, nobody's going to want to read it. It's not, it was no big deal. I was just doing my job. My job was not a real was a difficult one. But you know, that's what I was doing. And Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny? Yeah, I know, he's read the book, I worked quite a lot on it. But again, you know, he's just an ordinary guy. And, and yet they had they were called on or put into situations where they had to do extraordinary things. And I think that's a an endlessly fascinating subject in it. You know, some people say, some people are inspired by heroes. And other people say, Well, you know, I read this story, and it's great, but I could never be that way. And, you know, I think that the message that comes through for me anyway, in reading it, working with all of these men, and women, Taya, Kyle did her memoir, and we've worked on some things together, that ordinary people can rise to the occasion, maybe not all of us. And hopefully we're not all placed in in the some of the most dire situations that make good good drama, good books, good movies, maybe but, you know, I certainly wouldn't wish some of the things any of the things really that happened to Ray. Yeah, the war on other people, but they all manage just kind of go beyond,
Pete Turner 11:59
yeah, find that that thing, whatever, whether it's a thumb of a rock on a beach in Omaha, or, you know, however, Johnny Cash, I don't even know how Johnny did it, I was actually able to talk to beta Johnny's wife, some of her story on the show. And it's just impossible, you know, what she had to go through? And I asked her a question and asked her specifically because I knew I had a sense of what the answer would be. But I phrased that I said, you know, how many times in a month was you in your kids like your livelihood, your lives outside of your control? And she kind of laughed, as you might expect, and said, two to three times a day.
Jim DeFelice 12:39
Yeah, I was gonna say it'd be like, every day Yeah, hundred percent. And she, we have a great, there's a great story in codenamed Johnnie Walker, about when they finally leave, most, basically escape. Mosul. And that story, Johnny had not heard the first time beta told me that story was in her kitchen, we were standing around, we started talking, Johnny had not heard that story before. He didn't know that, that they had been the, the bus that they were on, had been stopped by much gene. And, you know, they were, you know, basically sweating out their their lives for a couple hours. They're not like I say, I would not wish, wish those circumstances on anyone. But I find the fact that that people like Johnny and Chris Ray, you know, have kind of risen above those things have gotten through. The one thing that they all seem to say is that when things were most difficult, they weren't thinking about themselves, they were thinking about, you know, in Ray's case, the guys that he was going to say, he, you know, had reached a point or been shot or hit by shrapnel. It wasn't clear, which, you know, a couple of times on the beach and was ready to collapse. And yet he kept going because he he heard other people, you know, crying for help, and I sort of, and you know, that does make him a phenomenal man makes him obviously hero and an inspiration for us. And hopefully, you know, God forbid, wherever in that situation, but hopefully, you know, whatever Spark, Tim will spark us as well.
Pete Turner 14:22
Yeah. You've written the book, The Rangers at dapp. Also another day landing story. How did that inform your tail with Ray?
Jim DeFelice 14:33
Well, one thing I learned from Rangers at TF, which is about the first Actually, it's the first action that the US Army takes on the ground in Europe, let alone the Rangers and they just been kind of invented and they're still being stood up. And the Rangers Go with the Canadians and the British on the attack. The one thing the one real lesson I learned in doing that book, I think, is that his tree has as maybe my college professors probably tried to drum into my into my head, but history has different perspectives. And when you go and you read the after action reports from that battle, and if they were for men who were engaged in the same area, the same engagement, the same little acres of combat, they each did a report and there were four different versions, that out what really happened, that can be a bit tricky. And that's before you get to commandos and their version, one of the kind of themes in that book was trying to locate the actual falling place of the first American in on the ground in Europe. And the difficulty in trying to pin that down in that, you know, I think that, for me is a metaphor about about history and truth and that we have to keep trying to come to terms with history, and yet we can never be 100% sure that we get it right. So we have to go back and back and try and you know, kind of try and place things in our mind, whether it's where somebody fell, where a grave might be, or really what that event and what that war not only means meant in the past, but what it means for us of what lessons we could draw,
Pete Turner 16:19
I was struck by your opening, and this is specifically written by you for the book, and you try to you know, like everybody you try to capture in words, something that is just indescribable. And you're very detailed with, with how everything starts, zero hour plus 15. So for those that don't know, like, that's 15 minutes out. That's it?
Jim DeFelice 16:43
It's about 615 630 on D day,
Pete Turner 16:47
right? Oh, let me actually say this, you have it at 645 in the book, okay. 645 06 45. And I'll cut the other stuff out. Okay, so 06 45, and you start taking your shot at doing and sort of the what all of the directors and all the writers tried to do was that on purpose that you'd like, like, I really want to try to explain this, how you seen it, because you seen it through the eyes of Ray and his peers that you were able to talk to?
Jim DeFelice 17:15
Yeah, I wanted, you know, I want to set the scene, I wanted to throw people right in there. It's, you know, from the beginning. And that was not something that I could do actually with Ray's voice at that point, because I hadn't was raised voices not established in the book and Ray doesn't, really doesn't talk the way that intro sounds. So that's why I kind of reverted to third person there. And in a couple of the books I've changed, you know, I use different strategies to kind of somewhat not that they're radical is somewhat unconventional, and putting a Kyle's voice into American Sniper, for instance, had not been done, certainly in the seal book, to that extent. But I think that, you know, for a fact, know, when it works, it works. And sometimes you have big arguments with, you know, with your editor, or whatever, but
you know, you win some.
Pete Turner 18:08
Yeah.
Jim DeFelice 18:11
I wanted, I wanted to throw people in there. I mean, it's such a dramatic time, if you've seen Saving Private Ryan, you know, Ray is about a, I don't know, maybe somewhere 75 100 yards to Tom Hanks is left somewhere in there. Yeah, I went through the same young, it's actually a different sector on that on that beach, but, you know, going through the same hell. And I think it's important, you know, that a lot of the people who are reading the book are people whose fathers and grandfathers and, you know, great uncles, and how that works, that they were in the war. And a lot of the correspondence that we've been getting emails, texts, and that sort of stuff, you'll have have talked about the fact that, you know, they were always wondering, their parents or their grandparents, their ancestors did not tell them, you know, what had happened there. And they were grateful for Ray for telling his story, so that they, you know, had a better understanding and insight. And that's what I'm trying to do with the pros. And you know, that part of the book is, you know, paint a picture, so that you can kind of throw yourself into, you know, into the past and also understand, you know, who ray is Ray, Ray, Ray will not say that he was a hero, but I can say he was a hero. And he was, yeah,
Pete Turner 19:37
yeah, yeah. What is it about that generation that has given them back? Because we, I think we've learned and evolved where hero status aside, you know, our comfort in telling our story? You know, Chris, didn't, Kyle didn't start out wanting to tell the story. But it started coming out. Have we learned that it's better to get these things out sooner? Do you think is? Is this an evolution? Or is it just just a difference between generations?
Jim DeFelice 20:01
Well, I think there's a couple of things going on there. You know, one, one is, it's a very different time Ray. As you know, the same with Omar Bradley, I mean, they're very adverse to doing anything that would sound like bragging, or, you know, or kind of advertising themselves, they're very judicious about that very tight lip. And that's just and it's not, you know, it's that entire generations, America is a different, much different place, it's turn of the 19th to 20th century, they have a totally different understanding of media, obviously, there's nothing, you know, Instagram, Twitter, whatever, cameras are hard to, even cameras at those dates are hard to come by, yeah, the converse of a totally different understanding, and you know, about putting themselves out, you know, the other thing too, though, is, is right, you know, and, you know, there's a lot more to raise life than just the war, and there's a lot more to every soldier that was in the world. Now, you know, and by the time I think that we start to engage, you know, my grandfather was in World War One. And by the time I was old enough to eat, you know, to even know that there had been a war, you know, it's 40 years, more than 40 years after the end of the war. And, you know, he's had 40 years of life and other stuff going on. And it was got other stuff to talk about, you know, I know how the Yankees are doing.
Pete Turner 21:27
Great, by the way.
Jim DeFelice 21:30
So yeah, ZF to kind of sit down and pull it out. In one thing, though, is that we, I think that there's kind of a consensus now. And in terms of the backup, a second war, obviously, as he certainly can attest, changes, changes you, your bill, and any dramatic experience is going to have an effect on who you are. And war is about as dramatic as you get. And, you know, I would say probably, we, the vast majority of men and women coming back from that kind of experience, you know, may have difficulty adjusting and in certain ways, and one thing that that seems to be kind of accepted now is that it helps to adjust to those things, it helped or to, I shouldn't say that to adjust to, to regular life, again, it helps to talk about the things that you've been through, that's not necessarily the easy thing, especially given the emotions, that can be very complex. And I don't want to turn this into a, you know, into a dialogue about post traumatic stress or anything like that. But, uh, but I think that kind of the, the attitudes towards that and towards encouraging people to talk about their experiences, has also had an effect on our generation in terms of, yeah, I was in the war. And this is what I did, I think we're much more ready to, to talk about about that and understand that it's not bragging. Unlike someone like, you know, Ray at the time, who didn't really talk that much about he also didn't have they didn't have the communication formats that we have now. The net podcast,
Pete Turner 23:14
yeah. podcast, when in general, I mean, the amount of communication Yes, the world had phones and all those kind of things. But you're talking about a farm kid from Alabama. And like he says, right in the beginning of the book, there just weren't that many doctors around the you know, there weren't phones in every house in every room, you know. And and heck, that's a generation ago. Now that you have phones in every room. You did say every pocket every pocket. Yeah, they're everywhere.
Jim DeFelice 23:42
Phone Think about it. My phone goes everywhere.
Pete Turner 23:45
Yeah, my phone and my laptop with me everywhere. And both of those things, in fact, are our phones. But you
Jim DeFelice 23:50
don't have to crank it as it is day. cranking?
Pete Turner 23:54
Ethel? Yeah, Klondike 615. Yeah.
Jim DeFelice 23:58
Although I guess with Syria, I'm thinking about it. What maybe serious just kind of a modern, contemporary incarnation of those,
Pete Turner 24:07
those operator and she is listening just like operators did. She's always listening. You said a couple things that are important to hit on and things that I've come to realize as a podcaster, we, we had on Harold Bray who survived the USS Indianapolis sinking in World War Two right at the very end of the Pacific fight. And he's still with us today. He's also 90 plus years old. And I realized I wanted to get and I wanted to tell that story. But I realized about halfway through the show, he's told the story 1000 times, and he's forced to constantly relive the five shiniest days of his life over and over again. Because we can't just get enough of it. We that we just were captured by it into that episode. And I think you'll appreciate this and I want to bring this back over to raise he was talking about the whole ordeal of being out in the ocean for five days, finally getting rescued one wanting to be nowhere near water for a long time. And then right at the end is kind of contemplating. And he said, You know, I, I never told my folks, they died without knowing that that had happened to me. Were and as a combat guy, especially understanding that generation a little bit, I got it, because you wouldn't want to stand out there is so many of your peers that had gone. So many parents that actually lost kids. And you just didn't want to, like it wasn't about it wasn't about Harold in that moment. And so as a combat guy, I'm shooting right past that. And john smacks me in the arm, it says shut up and listen to what he just said, you know, his parents and never knew what a crazy thing because that wouldn't. I don't think that could happen today.
Jim DeFelice 25:45
I don't know about that, though. I think that, you know, if we ran into you, if you ran into a burning car tried to pull somebody out? Would you tell your friends parents do that happens? And then it's weeks later, and you know, you your parents aren't in the greatest health or whatever? Would you? Would you be talking about that to them? Or would you be talking about something else? It's complex, I, you know, it's and I'm not comparing, you know, burning car to being, you know, in combat for six months or 12 hour in raise case for three, actually, four years, really think about it. But there, you know, the one thing you say, you know, he's forced to, you know, the survivors sometimes and telling the stories there, you know, they've told him before, and they're kind of reliving them and reliving them. And that's a point that that's a really good point, I saw that, you know, with Chris, because obviously he had a relive, he will relive a lot of what he had done in the war with me for the first time and yelling that with I then the toll that that took, I think was she was huge. And at first, I didn't really understand that. But then there comes to, you know, a time, you know, when the book comes out, and all of a sudden, the books doing well, and you're a celebrity and things things really can get crazy. And it can be a really, you know, can really take a toll on you and Ray started getting, you know, a huge kind of an avalanche of requests for interviews and stuff. And he just had to, you know, I kept telling him, so, okay, you don't have to do everything. But of course, the problem with Ray is you would tell Ray, you know, you don't have to do everything, you know, you don't have to be nice to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, Okay, well give this person 10 minutes. That's it? Oh, I can't give them 10 minutes. I can't, you know, it takes more than 10 minutes to, you know, to tell them what happened. So, you know, I think innately in his in his case, anyway, he's just, he's a really nice guy. Yes.
Pete Turner 27:50
kinda put even more strain on. Here's the thing as realizing is in talking to Harold, you know, one of his common themes, he talks about this stuff instant before, you know, the ship gets blown up, he's laying on the deck, look at the stars and just trying to be trying not to be down by the room and hot. So he's up up top. And he's, you know, a lot of guys are sleeping up there. And then the torpedo hits the ship lists, and he watches his shoes fallen to the ocean. You know, it's struck me as crystal clear memory for him that he's kept all this time. I know that when I stepped my foot into a combat zone, my first thought is just to kind of center myself, I look down on my shoes, like, Okay, I'm really here. I put my feet side by side and they go, okay, it's you know, what, even if you're getting out of a vehicle for a combat patrol, if at all possible. That's what I do to sort of center myself, remember my rules for combat, did re have those things where you're like, that's a such a curious thing to hold on to for the last 75 years.
Unknown Speaker 28:52
I think that there are certain memories that he holds on to very, very tightly, the guy that almost sliced up his hand and almost killed him with a band that certainly, that's really he's told that story to his family. And I think to some military people before, and that's a really vivid thing, he still has very much in his mind, some of the stuff that happened on D day, very vivid. Some of the other things, it's interesting that we would talk about some some of the incidents that happened, and it would be difficult, because remember, now, I mean, the war, you know, he was in his early 20s, when, you know, when the war took place, it's 75 years. It's 75 years later. So So much has happened. He would remember, like incidents or events, but the context around them was sometimes difficult for for him to go to know, until, and that's really where documents and stuff really became very, very valuable in doing this book, there were two times two times where he went into at least two times in a row vaping others been two times where I know of that he rescued people from from minefields. Yeah. Where he went in. And the first time is fairly is fairly vivid. And by the way, medical records help in those down. But the first time was was very vivid the second time the first that when he first described it to me was like, Oh, yeah, I went into another minefield. Okay, well, and Where was that? Ray? Somewhere there? Yeah.
Pete Turner 30:33
That's funny.
Jim DeFelice 30:34
So I guess that one, you know, wasn't but but when we kind of went into the actual description of it, it was pretty pretty harrowing. But But I guess the for I guess the first time you go into a minefield, that's that's the big. That's the big one. I don't know. I just, it just makes that.
Pete Turner 30:54
Yeah, just looking at the minefield, let alone running into it. Well, I mean, it's, it's it's a I think one of the things that has given me PTSD was was on I want to pause the helicopter broke to the point where it can still fly, but needed to go home immediately. And I was on the helicopter and so like, Hey, we're going to drop you off and keep going. So that you know, nobody crashes. So a bit of emergency but nothing, nothing crazy. And they dropped me off at the helipad. The helipad was well outside the bounds of the camp. And normally you came down on a patrol and they patrol back and, you know, you were relatively safe. There was no party to greet me there. And we were brief that they were 15 bazillion minds all throughout unmapped. And I spent the next hundred O our hours. So you know, I had kids around me it was good. But I was worried about mines. I was also worried about becoming the butcher of fill in the blank place where I was at. And I had just a constant stress because I was doing this solo combat patrol. And literally no one ever came. I walked all the way up No, like, what are you doing outside of my waiting on someone to come get me but you know that cause any like,
Jim DeFelice 32:07
gotcha. You could see where you had to go. That's Yeah, yeah, there was a road and I was going the wrong way.
Pete Turner 32:14
Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, the path was known. But it didn't make it any less terrifying, because I was like, What if someone is coming to play something. So I'm scanning every single thing for patterns of you know, it. So just, I think now about re going into a minefield, and that's burned into my mind, I can tell you tons of memories from that specific thing. And but you can't remember everything right? And so it's like, yeah, it was a minefield, I ran in and I grabbed this guy, and you know, all as well. So Ray had more than one D day. Let's talk a little bit about that.
Jon Leon Guerrero 32:47
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Pete Turner 33:02
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Pete Turner 33:17
Now enjoy the show. So Ray had more than one D day. Let's talk a little bit about that
Jim DeFelice 33:24
Lamson in Africa. And that landing is actually as amphibious landings go. Yeah, that was a relatively easy landing. I wouldn't say it was unopposed. But there was very, very light, the light combat around it. But it was also the introduction for most, including re Americans into combat in the first you know, in the, the they come on, on land. And, you know, and they have to two guys get lightly wounded. And then as they're going towards their objective, they see a bunch of, I'm going to leave out some of the details. But one of the highlights for me is they see a bunch of bodies in kind of a ditch by the by the water and one of the guys goes to goes to touch it and almost gets electrocuted because the it was live live. I guess the power lines have been knocked down. And that's apparently how that that for those fellows that died. And I think that was the first that's kind of the the combat in Africa, which is called Operation torches. Build landing is often something that's kind of brushed past if you're talking about World War Two, I doubt that it's taught in any sort of any high school classes about it. And probably not many, many college level classes. It's not in a lot of books, not very famous battles. But it was very important because it's the first time you know, large groups of Americans, they, as I said earlier, the very small groups of Americans had fought and dapp a few months before, but this is the first time that Americans are starting to see what words really like. And the American operations there continue and re is end up going east into 10. Asia. But before that happens, or actually, I should say in the process of that happening. Since we're talking about the entire army, the American army gets it gets its ass kicked. Yeah, there is a battles. And again, that's something else we don't talk about. Yeah. But that kind of ushers in that. That helps. Massively that gets Omar Bradley sent over to to Africa to find out what the hell is going on it gets patent right up there and pad will eventually patent and Bradley actually eventually take over. And yeah, the war starts to turn. Bradley was asked about immediately, actually, several times immediately afterwards, much after the war. You know, what happened with the the Americans Why did we not do well in the you know, in that first phase of the of the action? And while obviously there's going to be you know, yes, technical answers is he's actually a great tactician and blah, blah, blah, he kind of boils it down, generally to one thing you said that Americans had not learned to kill, they didn't know to kill they, they, we had not yet realize what war really is all about. And, and until we did that, no amount of leadership from the front, which is another proudly saying no amount of your doctrine in terms of using artillery and mobility, etc. All of that was useless until we kind of had that Killer Instinct, they were able to get over it. And, and I think that that's something that we don't know, certainly, you know, have, or we don't want to recognize today. And I think that a lot of us who have not been in work, you know, kind of have these kind of Hollywood ideas about it. But when we're kind of faced with with the reality of it, we're not willing to deal with that reality. And, you know, that's, that's, that's a problem. And it's a real, you know, war. What's the cliche war is hell yeah. Which is good reason to stay out of, out of it, when you can prevent it or, or not, you know, when it's not necessary, but when it is necessary, when you do have to fight, you gotta fight for the end, you got to kill people, that's your job. When I watch or I and I, typically Memorial Day, and several times a year, I try to remember, you know, people that have gone before us in terms of veterans, and
Pete Turner 37:51
I'll read Medal of Honor citations, and, you know, just spent some time in that history, just being familiar with it. And, you know, I'm always struck by, you know, these people, especially in World War Two, where they're just indomitable, and like you said, they're thinking they're pushing forward, despite their wounds, not for themselves, not their own preservation, but to, to not let their brother and sister down to, to, you know, fight off the enemy. And if someone has to go, it may as well be me. And they fight these impossible things. And I put myself in that the shoes of the enemy, you know, some some German kid who sees this American kid who's just indomitable who they shoot, and they blow him up, and he just keeps getting up and keeps coming and killing him. And that has to just be morally breaking if they survive that incident. And I don't know, I'm positive. It's not unique to America. But I wonder what it's like to be up against, you know, the guys on paleo live, you know, the guy that had fired up, you know, gigantic machine gun, you know, indefinitely it just smoking his arm and basically couldn't do it, again, without the the amped up nature of combat. But when I when I hear those tales, I think that it's just, it must be impossible for the enemy to see that to see that they're just going to keep coming. And I don't know how I'll survive this day.
Jim DeFelice 39:19
Yeah, I think what's all some of the other stories that I think are common to a lot of different wars. And one story that's it really is always impressed me is the way that in World War One during there was a Christmas Day arm assist, and the way that the soldiers the respect that they supposedly the soldiers from, you know, both sides got together. Yeah, they went out to no man's land and shook hands and, you know, had whatever was sale or whatever they were drinking, doing with the respect they showed for the other fellow warriors. Yeah, the Manson and you do see that I've seen that. You know, other people that I've known Vietnam veterans, for instance, talking, going back over to Vietnam, and, you know, meeting, meeting some, some of the men that presumably they, you know, they may have been shooting and trying to kill, because they understand, you know, they're there is a, I guess, a great respect for what it takes for that warrior spirit, which I think is what you're talking about, you know, to be there now. Do Americans have it more than than others? I don't know. I certainly couldn't spend a lot of examples of, you know, Americans who have those, you have that spirit and I think, partly our system by encouraging kind of individual rights and expression and that sort of thing. And partly, you know, our training and stuff encourages that. But it's probably, you know, it's deep within all of us that indomitable spirit. You know, I think it's probably a trait that crosses the human race to matter where you happen to be been born or what exact, you know, sequence of genes you have deep down somewhere at the base there that is that potential for that indomitable spirit.
Pete Turner 41:12
Yeah, yeah. That indomitable spirit is something we had woody Williams on the show, he's one of the guys have won a medal of honor on the wood Jima, and he just kept going back to the pill boxes and dumping his flame filler into the exhaust, you know, the air holes for those things, and just barbecuing the enemy? And you know, he would those things had about 90 seconds worth of fuel in them. And so he would just keep the give me a new one. I'll be right back. Give me a
Jim DeFelice 41:39
long time. 90 seconds in front of a. Yeah, not me, that's some of the most ferocious fighting and ever, ever, ever,
Pete Turner 41:50
ever. And imagine, you know, his American peers, just watching this guy put himself in harm's way. And the Japanese knowing that this guy's Never going to stop that they're going to have to kill them. And if they don't, he will kill every single one of them, which he ultimately did. He just kept going. said I don't think exclusively in American trade, there is something to be said for volunteers and, and the reason why you fight but these these stories are incredible.
Jim DeFelice 42:16
Absolutely. And I mean, you know, in our current our current military is all you know, all volunteer force and also self selecting. Yeah. And, and that may be a factor where we're to. Now Ray was volunteer, but you know, you had a lot of draftees as a movie. Um, so and, you know, so it's hard, I think, you know, like I say, I think that quality is within, potentially within all of our most of us, it's just a matter of circumstances and training. And maybe the way you were raised, bring it in,
Pete Turner 42:55
as Ray describes, actually, let me ask you this question first. So, the landing at Sicily, was that similar to Africa? Or did they progressively get worse
Jim DeFelice 43:05
and to assist Sicily is Sicily's a lot worse? The, the end up talking about the American sectors, the initial landing, you know, coming in from the water and stuff, they are under fire, as a matter of fact, man gets killed and presumably is killed in Ray's boat, but their instructions are not to stop and help him just get out. We talked about that in the book. Yeah. But what happens is that the the Italians and the Germans launch very ferocious counter attacks, very shortly after the American the American units come, come on shore. And there the Americans are faced with, fortunately, at different times, by very large infantry unit, and a very sizable unit of tanks, and they managed to defeat are survived really both both waves, the the tank combat is kind of interesting, because you have all along the American sectors and kind of different spots. You have the tanks attacking infantry men, you know, who are not, they haven't yet yet, for the most part gotten heavy weapons. On Sure. And, and in the areas near where Ray or where race battalion is, the only what the American started to do was make sticky bombs, basically, stick them on the side of the the armor, and it would take a couple, but they disable the tank, and where they would let the tanks come through on purpose or not. Yeah. And then the tanks would be vulnerable to, you know, to, to those sorts of attacks. And I'm sure there must have been one or two instances where they would have come up, you know, thrown a grenade into the hatch. Although that's not really documented in the book, but we're up with it happen.
Pete Turner 45:01
When Ray's telling you these stories, and you're trying to wrap your mind around it. Do you just keep digging for more details and snapshots of his memory? Or? And then how do you how do you protect against false memories?
Unknown Speaker 45:15
Yeah, that's, that's tricky. I had the advantage in this book in that having done you haven't done the Omar Bradley. Bradley did not was not at part of Operation Torch. But he is in Africa and is the corps commander, really, when much of the real heavy fighting that Ray gets involved in it was there. So I had a good man, he was corps commander Bradley was corps commander, under patent, the only corps commander under Pat, was patent was his own corps commander for separate Corps. And I don't know the patent got along with himself, as you know. That's another story. fair question. But anyway, Ed Bradley, of course, was that, you know, was the American commander for TJ. So I already had the architecture laid out of what happened. And then we started by just a bunch of informal talks and stuff, and, and then that allowed me to kind of bone up on, you know, where he had been some of the procedures do his background research, you know, what kind of equipment did Maddox carry and that sort of thing. And then, you know, and then we had, we were working on a pretty tight timeline. So we had some very low, very long formal sessions, where we would go through, we started chronologically, to find that that's the lead that lays a good basis for most for most people. And I would just my general, you know, my general kind of modus operandi is to let the person talk about what they want to talk about. And to kind of gently guide them, you know, towards, certainly towards more specifics. And to kind of guide went to the agenda, if they kind of slow down or whatever. What helped in Ray's case, in terms of questions, so much time had passed. And, you know, and memories can get memories kind of, you know, they're fragile things, they can get polluted by movies by something somebody else said, or by this, by that, you know, by wishful thinking, what helped helped us, in Ray's case, were some of the he had, he has a bunch of medical records. Maps, y'all, so we could talk we knew when, when people at his unit, for instance, were injured, including when he was, or at least when it was recorded, which wasn't always the right thing. And those were really good prompts, photos, good prompts, maps, it's not what I found with res memories really, really good. It wasn't so much. And this is often the case, it's not something much that somebody's memory is bad, it's just that they know, you know, they're not trying to give you every detail, they're not trying to give you the details, you really need to write a book, they've especially someone who, you know, has told the story a few times, they're going to like, kind of narrow the story down, narrow it down. And they'll just hit the highlights, which, you know, is great if you're in a five minute phone conversation. But if you have to write 85,000 or 100,000 word book, you know, you need a few more details. Yeah, you know, and, and obviously, some of them, you know, I don't really need Ray to, you know, describe what it looked like. But, you know, I need him to tell me what it felt like when he was, you know, driving, you know, driving it. So, you know, so I can get the details on what the cheap look look like, from a million reference units in your book, that sort of thing.
Pete Turner 49:03
So we're running it towards the end of our time, and I just wanted to get some reflection from you, because you you, like me, you gather these incredible stories, and they sit with you and they change and create a new version of you. So what have you What have you taken away from this book thus far?
Unknown Speaker 49:23
That it's very possible to, to live to a very, very old age and still be very active and, and mentally as well as physically. And I'll tell you what, and I know that this really has nothing to do with what the book theoretically is about, but I have a different view of what old ages now. I mean, it's not now, you know, obviously, you know, you accumulate physical, sure, you know, problems and stuff, but is array kept every still active as hell. And you know, he just just kept, you know, just kept at it kept doing things kept involved and stuff. And that's my role model going forward. And if I'm half as crisp as he is, when I'm, well, next year, even the hell with 98. You know, I'll be doing well, that I say I, you know, it's I know, that's that was books. Yeah. Yeah, that was that was the experience. And it's great. It's inspiring, you know, working with Ivan Castro, you know, and fighting blind, which is the name of that book. Yeah, it was like, okay, we can't you can do two furs, you know, when you can do, you know, two workouts a day and still, you know, and still survive. So I do two workouts. And now you know, now from this book, I, I have an inspiration for you know, where those workouts are going to get me when I'm 90? Yeah,
Pete Turner 50:48
yeah. Well, I like that. So pretty quickly here. All the world war two living memories, you know, from the especially from D day, they're going to be gone. And I don't know, the number of them dude's left from that day that are left but
Unknown Speaker 51:02
there's, there's not too many. There's not I, I, you know, I've talked to and I have talked to a bunch there. Fortunately, you know, they're older and they're 90 passed away. And they're a great resource. So if you know, somebody that has that, you know, that was there in the war, whether it was D day or not, you know, record their story. Just Yeah, let's get it get them to tell you what happened.
Pete Turner 51:26
Yeah, if anybody's got someone in their family or in their circle that that wants to tell their story. I'm glad to I'm glad to sit with them and grab them. When when did the last book or movie or tale about D day be told though? I mean, it seems like that it's just an ever producing well of incredible jaw dropping tales.
Jim DeFelice 51:50
Well, I hope there's room for one more
Pete Turner 51:55
is working on it now. So Oh, you are working on it. Now. Can you talk about?
Jim DeFelice 52:00
We're I it's we're the speculative stages. Okay. All right.
Pete Turner 52:07
Well, hopefully there's room for a couple more because you that'll be your third trip to that uh, that particular story and I can't wait to hear that. Everybody should get every man a hero rail and bridge tale. A combat medic first wave gate drops he's right there on deep in D day on Omaha beats the hardest speech ever. And I wanted to ask you because you open in the shoot you know what I'm going to buy a couple minutes you say in the in the open that the general was like, man, we might have to retreat? You know? Yeah, that's incredible. When you think about Bradley
Jim DeFelice 52:40
almost what happens is Bradley's not getting is the worst thing the the second worst thing when you're in a battle is to be getting information that the battle is going poorly. But that's the second worst thing. The worst thing the most worst thing or very worst thing not beginning and for any information from the battlefield because what
Pete Turner 53:03
does that mean? Worse Oh, hey, no one's got back I'll tell you anything
Jim DeFelice 53:08
you but here's what Bradley does. So Bradley is out on the Augusta which is a cruiser and that's his he that's his command ship and he's not getting any information and he's yell what is going to do it now he knows that Utah that the troops are on Utah which is the other American beach and as important as Omaha is for for a number of reasons you know he's faced with possibly sending you know thousands more people to their death if he just stays there or you know or as alternative would be to your reinforce Utah and at least save those guys and maybe you know change plans or what have you says not sure what to do. So what does he do? He does what any good general officer always does he looks around the room finds a captain and says Captain go get your butt over there and tell me what the hell's going on. Yeah, so he sends actually sends one of his aides very close to the beach and they get there and a PT boat and they don't land but but as they as they kind of get out of the smoke and everything the captain sees that there are troops coming up the rich American troops climbing up the ridge it says that's it we you know we can do this but we got to get more by we need all those troops in there. So they race back Bradley yo keeps the invasion going goes over to the boat where a lot of other generals are and says Get your butts on the pizza, we gotta kick out. So and that was really that's really the turning point at the for the Americans were there that people like Ray Lambert and his brother Bill were brave enough to withstand the fire and just keep going you know against great tremendous odds. And they really turned the tide that day was was General Roosevelt at Omaha risky at Utah, Teddy Jr. who actually was raised a vision assistant commanding general in Africa, and in Sicily, Teddy is on Utah is that he's also a great story to they land in the they land in the wrong completely totally, utterly wrong place on Utah. And Teddy kind of teli takes charge and is reputed to have said and knowing you know if you read any stories about it me, you know, you totally believe this. It's one of the the one of the officers said you know, we're in the wrong place today so that's okay, we'll fight the war from here and they march they march through to a swamp and and you know, and just keep going they get their objectives. The first day of Utah is a no invasion nothing in that war is a picnic but Utah's relatively certainly compared to Omaha is a relatively easy invasion. The tough stuff on Utah happens or the you tie area happens you know after that but yeah, Teddy was a teddy was quite a character.
Pete Turner 56:06
Yeah. And he won the Medal of Honor that the RE when he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. So you win you win it you are awarded it
Jim DeFelice 56:14
you get it you will whatever your verbiage you want to use god damn it that's a that's one hell of an impressive Yeah.
Pete Turner 56:21
generals clearly was a nail health by the way out there swinging a cane a cane.
Jim DeFelice 56:28
Geez, he was a piece of work he and Terry Allen were Yeah, Terry Allen had some negatives about it. But they're certainly they're absolutely fun to write about. I'll tell you that.
Pete Turner 56:41
Yeah. Well, listen, come back when the next things ready. And then when you when Ray Ray's on the road with you this time. If you guys come to LA let me know and I'll pop up there and come hang out.
Jim DeFelice 56:53
grid. That'd be wonderful. Thanks for having me.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Hey, this is john Leon Guerrero. Our guest today is Jim de Felice. He's got more than a dozen New York Times bestsellers, many of them a celebration of unsung American heroes. In fact, he's like the Dr. Dre of American literature. Just like when a record label things, you really got something and it's time for you to turn it on. They send you to Dr. Dre and he locks the door behind you and you sequester for a month, and then emerged with a life changing piece of work under your arm. Well, Jim, is that for someone with a harrowing life, he will pull it out and shine a light on it from all directions. And when that story emerges, we're all gripped, captivated, enraptured, enlightened, and inspired. He's done it with the likes of Omar Bradley, Richard Marcinco, Chris Kyle, Ivan Castro and Johnny Walker. Today, Jim's back to talk with us about the new book. He's co written with Ray Lambert, who stormed Omaha Beach in the first wave at Normandy on D day, Jim has spent time with some real America heroes. But this story, even among all of theirs is really special. The book is called every man a hero and we know you're going to love it. Of course, if you're a longtime listener, you know Jim, he's a great guy and amazing ally, and someone whose work and work ethic and friendship we absolutely treasure in addition to every man hero if you haven't already, you should buy his previous book West like lightning, the brief legendary ride of the Pony Express. One of my all time favorite books and so much fun to read. As always, if you dig the show, please help us out. It takes just a minute to subscribe and hit the bill for notifications. If you're listening to the show on YouTube, or give us that five star rating and quick review if you're listening on iTunes or Stitcher. Those things help the show's profile and we love you for doing it and for listening in. And now, our guest today, our dear friend, we love him. You're going to love him too. Here's Jim de Felice.
Joel Manzer 2:03
Lions rock productions.
Unknown Speaker 2:08
This is James. This is Jordan. Dexter from the naked
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Baxter
Unknown Speaker 2:17
Gabby Reese is Rob belly.
Jon Leon Guerrero 2:18
This is Jon Leon Guerrero
Pete Turner 2:19
this is Pete a Turner.
Jim DeFelice 2:23
Hey, this is Jim de Felice. I'm the co author of every man a hero, which is an incredible story, a true story of combat medic Ray Lambert during World War Two, especially some of his exploits on D day, and you are listening to the breaking down show.
Niko Leon Guerrero 2:44
And now the breakdown show with john Leon Guerrero and Pete a Turner.
Pete Turner 2:49
Jim has been on many times almost every time he writes a book we have him on. Also, though co hosting a number of times. That's so I'm honored to call you my friend to have you on the show with me to have a copy of your book sitting here in my lap. Every man a hero. I just got it yesterday, and I'm already about halfway through it. So I will tell everybody in the audience, if you like reading books at all, especially about World War Two, you have to get this book, raise story. First Wave when they drop that first Hagen's boat gate, Ray is right there with everybody going out first.
Jim DeFelice 3:29
And he's right at the front right? goes out, he gets hit Eddie gets hit right away.
Pete Turner 3:35
And then spends the whole day as long as he's able until he's absolutely overcome by injuries. But that injury didn't stop him. He just kept going and going and going. And it's not just running up the bodies on the beach. You know, the whole book, Jim starts off with, you know, next thing you know, he's already in the water going underwater, and helping someone get d tangled from barbed wire. And you know, it's just incredible.
Jim DeFelice 3:58
He was he said, He's an incredible guy is still with us is 98 years old still drives, not with me, I drive, but he's an incredible guy. And on D day, by the time of D day, he had actually already been into the biggest invasions of the war in Africa and in Sicily, and he had two silver stars already. So I guess in some sense, you know, he had been preparing his whole service was preparing for that day. And yet incredible, you know, he's hit right away, he struggles gets to the to the beach, and then not to give the entire book away. But you know, he, at some point, he says I can't go on. And that is forced to go on. And he does go on it's he's he's a quite a guy. He
Pete Turner 4:47
had 98 years old. And actually he was there at the Normandy remembrance, the 75th anniversary, and Donald Trump, the president actually mentioned a significant portion of his speech was was referring to Ray and Ray was sitting right behind him.
Jim DeFelice 5:03
Absolutely. And, you know, if I didn't know any better, I would swear that he was just reading off the, the inside cover of our book, because he summarized is just, you know, with someone like Ray, you know, you can't really sum up their their whole life in you know, 60 seconds or whatever, I've been so many, so many different things happened. And it wasn't just random in the combat medics, you know, in general, certainly on that day, and throughout the war, and throughout history, but in World War Two, they saved hundreds and hundreds of Ben Ray was in charge, he was a staff sergeant in charge of about 30 men during the war. And so you know, you think about it in any of the in any given battle, you know, each guy probably saves a dozen, a couple dozen people, you know, you multiply that by 30, and then multiply it by all the battles they were in. I mean, y'all today, thousands and thousands of people owe their lives to these guys. You know, I was thinking on Father's Day, you know, as families, you know, we gather together with their fathers, you know, also in the room with Ray weren't just his, I mean, literally his descendants, but figuratively, all of the descendants, the, you know, the children of the guys who made it back because of him and because of his men. Just incredible.
Pete Turner 6:26
Yeah. So he lands on Omaha Beach. And again, we don't want to give the book away. You guys really have to buy it. And the standard thing applies when you guys go to Amazon and buy the book, read it, review it, that's what gets the book held up in front and recommend it to other people, it's already going to be a best seller if it's not already. And
Jim DeFelice 6:44
actually it is it is, of course, it'll be on the times. It's while it's on the times list that comes out Sunday. It's it's doing very well. And I have to say, yeah, it's all right. It's not. It's not me. But yes, it's
Pete Turner 6:56
all right. It's a story. But you're the master of this, making these stories and processing a min away for us. So it's for sure Ray's story, but man, you're the master at co authoring and getting us to a place that you know, I just have the highest regard for what you do, like with Johnnie Walker in his book. That's not an easy book to write. So you don't get out.
Jim DeFelice 7:18
Johnny's Johnny keeps me on my toes, Johnny and I actually are speed we're doing. We're doing a talk for a VFW, big VFW meeting this weekend. So we still do a lot a lot of stuff together. JOHN is everybody's different. I mean, it's really it's kind of an interesting thing, you know, to kind of meet to meet different people, young people from say Dave Battista to, to Chris, Chris Kyle, to Johnny Walker, to Jada, right? Right. Lambert, you know, you get, you don't have you don't have to be their friend to be able to do the book. And sometimes you have to, you know, you have to make decisions and help them make decisions that aren't necessarily the easiest thing for them. But it's been my privilege to be able to form fairly good friendships with most if not everybody I've worked with. And you know, they're always they're always interesting. They're always keeping you on your toes. I'll tell you that.
Pete Turner 8:18
Yeah, yeah. Well, you so you've covered a number of wars in your writing. I mean, obviously, the Omar Bradley book is sort of, I guess I haven't read it. But the one I look at the title, it's you know about the man. So definitely cover some World War Two, but it covers other things. You've got Ray, you've got Johnnie Walker, who's the most improbable seal of all time. Chris Kyle, of course, when you hear these things, you even it's not really a combat story, but it is, you know, the story of we had john for West like lightning, you know, the Pony Express book. And it's these these, primarily these men that take on these incredible challenges? How, how do they when you kind of sift them through time? How do you see a difference between Ray and Johnny and Chris, and you know, someone who's riding the Pony Express,
Jim DeFelice 9:09
they'll have different favorite drinks. You know, I'm very adaptable. So there. I think that on the surface, there's obviously you know, there's always obvious differences between Johnnie Walker, Johnny's, Johnny was an Iraqi, and pretty contemporary times you're raised in, in Iraq, much different backgrounds, say than Chris Kyle was, who was a tried and true Texan. And very different. All those guys are very different than than Ray Ray Lambert, who, you know, was born Alabama, before the war, and certainly comes from, I mean, America has certainly changed quite a bit since 1920, when he was born. But the thing that I see, one thing that kind of ties all of these guys together, for me is that that they deal with, they both dealt with. We've all dealt with very difficult circumstances. And they've all managed to kind of reach deep and come through. And each one of them, I say, would tell you that in their heart of hearts, they don't think that they're very special. Yeah, Chris. Chris was adamant about that. Ray is very insistent, it took months, I have to tell you, it took months and months and months to get Ray, to agree to to do the book. Because he didn't think, you know, it's like, well, nobody's going to want to read it. It's not, it was no big deal. I was just doing my job. My job was not a real was a difficult one. But you know, that's what I was doing. And Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny? Yeah, I know, he's read the book, I worked quite a lot on it. But again, you know, he's just an ordinary guy. And, and yet they had they were called on or put into situations where they had to do extraordinary things. And I think that's a an endlessly fascinating subject in it. You know, some people say, some people are inspired by heroes. And other people say, Well, you know, I read this story, and it's great, but I could never be that way. And, you know, I think that the message that comes through for me anyway, in reading it, working with all of these men, and women, Taya, Kyle did her memoir, and we've worked on some things together, that ordinary people can rise to the occasion, maybe not all of us. And hopefully we're not all placed in in the some of the most dire situations that make good good drama, good books, good movies, maybe but, you know, I certainly wouldn't wish some of the things any of the things really that happened to Ray. Yeah, the war on other people, but they all manage just kind of go beyond,
Pete Turner 11:59
yeah, find that that thing, whatever, whether it's a thumb of a rock on a beach in Omaha, or, you know, however, Johnny Cash, I don't even know how Johnny did it, I was actually able to talk to beta Johnny's wife, some of her story on the show. And it's just impossible, you know, what she had to go through? And I asked her a question and asked her specifically because I knew I had a sense of what the answer would be. But I phrased that I said, you know, how many times in a month was you in your kids like your livelihood, your lives outside of your control? And she kind of laughed, as you might expect, and said, two to three times a day.
Jim DeFelice 12:39
Yeah, I was gonna say it'd be like, every day Yeah, hundred percent. And she, we have a great, there's a great story in codenamed Johnnie Walker, about when they finally leave, most, basically escape. Mosul. And that story, Johnny had not heard the first time beta told me that story was in her kitchen, we were standing around, we started talking, Johnny had not heard that story before. He didn't know that, that they had been the, the bus that they were on, had been stopped by much gene. And, you know, they were, you know, basically sweating out their their lives for a couple hours. They're not like I say, I would not wish, wish those circumstances on anyone. But I find the fact that that people like Johnny and Chris Ray, you know, have kind of risen above those things have gotten through. The one thing that they all seem to say is that when things were most difficult, they weren't thinking about themselves, they were thinking about, you know, in Ray's case, the guys that he was going to say, he, you know, had reached a point or been shot or hit by shrapnel. It wasn't clear, which, you know, a couple of times on the beach and was ready to collapse. And yet he kept going because he he heard other people, you know, crying for help, and I sort of, and you know, that does make him a phenomenal man makes him obviously hero and an inspiration for us. And hopefully, you know, God forbid, wherever in that situation, but hopefully, you know, whatever Spark, Tim will spark us as well.
Pete Turner 14:22
Yeah. You've written the book, The Rangers at dapp. Also another day landing story. How did that inform your tail with Ray?
Jim DeFelice 14:33
Well, one thing I learned from Rangers at TF, which is about the first Actually, it's the first action that the US Army takes on the ground in Europe, let alone the Rangers and they just been kind of invented and they're still being stood up. And the Rangers Go with the Canadians and the British on the attack. The one thing the one real lesson I learned in doing that book, I think, is that his tree has as maybe my college professors probably tried to drum into my into my head, but history has different perspectives. And when you go and you read the after action reports from that battle, and if they were for men who were engaged in the same area, the same engagement, the same little acres of combat, they each did a report and there were four different versions, that out what really happened, that can be a bit tricky. And that's before you get to commandos and their version, one of the kind of themes in that book was trying to locate the actual falling place of the first American in on the ground in Europe. And the difficulty in trying to pin that down in that, you know, I think that, for me is a metaphor about about history and truth and that we have to keep trying to come to terms with history, and yet we can never be 100% sure that we get it right. So we have to go back and back and try and you know, kind of try and place things in our mind, whether it's where somebody fell, where a grave might be, or really what that event and what that war not only means meant in the past, but what it means for us of what lessons we could draw,
Pete Turner 16:19
I was struck by your opening, and this is specifically written by you for the book, and you try to you know, like everybody you try to capture in words, something that is just indescribable. And you're very detailed with, with how everything starts, zero hour plus 15. So for those that don't know, like, that's 15 minutes out. That's it?
Jim DeFelice 16:43
It's about 615 630 on D day,
Pete Turner 16:47
right? Oh, let me actually say this, you have it at 645 in the book, okay. 645 06 45. And I'll cut the other stuff out. Okay, so 06 45, and you start taking your shot at doing and sort of the what all of the directors and all the writers tried to do was that on purpose that you'd like, like, I really want to try to explain this, how you seen it, because you seen it through the eyes of Ray and his peers that you were able to talk to?
Jim DeFelice 17:15
Yeah, I wanted, you know, I want to set the scene, I wanted to throw people right in there. It's, you know, from the beginning. And that was not something that I could do actually with Ray's voice at that point, because I hadn't was raised voices not established in the book and Ray doesn't, really doesn't talk the way that intro sounds. So that's why I kind of reverted to third person there. And in a couple of the books I've changed, you know, I use different strategies to kind of somewhat not that they're radical is somewhat unconventional, and putting a Kyle's voice into American Sniper, for instance, had not been done, certainly in the seal book, to that extent. But I think that, you know, for a fact, know, when it works, it works. And sometimes you have big arguments with, you know, with your editor, or whatever, but
you know, you win some.
Pete Turner 18:08
Yeah.
Jim DeFelice 18:11
I wanted, I wanted to throw people in there. I mean, it's such a dramatic time, if you've seen Saving Private Ryan, you know, Ray is about a, I don't know, maybe somewhere 75 100 yards to Tom Hanks is left somewhere in there. Yeah, I went through the same young, it's actually a different sector on that on that beach, but, you know, going through the same hell. And I think it's important, you know, that a lot of the people who are reading the book are people whose fathers and grandfathers and, you know, great uncles, and how that works, that they were in the war. And a lot of the correspondence that we've been getting emails, texts, and that sort of stuff, you'll have have talked about the fact that, you know, they were always wondering, their parents or their grandparents, their ancestors did not tell them, you know, what had happened there. And they were grateful for Ray for telling his story, so that they, you know, had a better understanding and insight. And that's what I'm trying to do with the pros. And you know, that part of the book is, you know, paint a picture, so that you can kind of throw yourself into, you know, into the past and also understand, you know, who ray is Ray, Ray, Ray will not say that he was a hero, but I can say he was a hero. And he was, yeah,
Pete Turner 19:37
yeah, yeah. What is it about that generation that has given them back? Because we, I think we've learned and evolved where hero status aside, you know, our comfort in telling our story? You know, Chris, didn't, Kyle didn't start out wanting to tell the story. But it started coming out. Have we learned that it's better to get these things out sooner? Do you think is? Is this an evolution? Or is it just just a difference between generations?
Jim DeFelice 20:01
Well, I think there's a couple of things going on there. You know, one, one is, it's a very different time Ray. As you know, the same with Omar Bradley, I mean, they're very adverse to doing anything that would sound like bragging, or, you know, or kind of advertising themselves, they're very judicious about that very tight lip. And that's just and it's not, you know, it's that entire generations, America is a different, much different place, it's turn of the 19th to 20th century, they have a totally different understanding of media, obviously, there's nothing, you know, Instagram, Twitter, whatever, cameras are hard to, even cameras at those dates are hard to come by, yeah, the converse of a totally different understanding, and you know, about putting themselves out, you know, the other thing too, though, is, is right, you know, and, you know, there's a lot more to raise life than just the war, and there's a lot more to every soldier that was in the world. Now, you know, and by the time I think that we start to engage, you know, my grandfather was in World War One. And by the time I was old enough to eat, you know, to even know that there had been a war, you know, it's 40 years, more than 40 years after the end of the war. And, you know, he's had 40 years of life and other stuff going on. And it was got other stuff to talk about, you know, I know how the Yankees are doing.
Pete Turner 21:27
Great, by the way.
Jim DeFelice 21:30
So yeah, ZF to kind of sit down and pull it out. In one thing, though, is that we, I think that there's kind of a consensus now. And in terms of the backup, a second war, obviously, as he certainly can attest, changes, changes you, your bill, and any dramatic experience is going to have an effect on who you are. And war is about as dramatic as you get. And, you know, I would say probably, we, the vast majority of men and women coming back from that kind of experience, you know, may have difficulty adjusting and in certain ways, and one thing that that seems to be kind of accepted now is that it helps to adjust to those things, it helped or to, I shouldn't say that to adjust to, to regular life, again, it helps to talk about the things that you've been through, that's not necessarily the easy thing, especially given the emotions, that can be very complex. And I don't want to turn this into a, you know, into a dialogue about post traumatic stress or anything like that. But, uh, but I think that kind of the, the attitudes towards that and towards encouraging people to talk about their experiences, has also had an effect on our generation in terms of, yeah, I was in the war. And this is what I did, I think we're much more ready to, to talk about about that and understand that it's not bragging. Unlike someone like, you know, Ray at the time, who didn't really talk that much about he also didn't have they didn't have the communication formats that we have now. The net podcast,
Pete Turner 23:14
yeah. podcast, when in general, I mean, the amount of communication Yes, the world had phones and all those kind of things. But you're talking about a farm kid from Alabama. And like he says, right in the beginning of the book, there just weren't that many doctors around the you know, there weren't phones in every house in every room, you know. And and heck, that's a generation ago. Now that you have phones in every room. You did say every pocket every pocket. Yeah, they're everywhere.
Jim DeFelice 23:42
Phone Think about it. My phone goes everywhere.
Pete Turner 23:45
Yeah, my phone and my laptop with me everywhere. And both of those things, in fact, are our phones. But you
Jim DeFelice 23:50
don't have to crank it as it is day. cranking?
Pete Turner 23:54
Ethel? Yeah, Klondike 615. Yeah.
Jim DeFelice 23:58
Although I guess with Syria, I'm thinking about it. What maybe serious just kind of a modern, contemporary incarnation of those,
Pete Turner 24:07
those operator and she is listening just like operators did. She's always listening. You said a couple things that are important to hit on and things that I've come to realize as a podcaster, we, we had on Harold Bray who survived the USS Indianapolis sinking in World War Two right at the very end of the Pacific fight. And he's still with us today. He's also 90 plus years old. And I realized I wanted to get and I wanted to tell that story. But I realized about halfway through the show, he's told the story 1000 times, and he's forced to constantly relive the five shiniest days of his life over and over again. Because we can't just get enough of it. We that we just were captured by it into that episode. And I think you'll appreciate this and I want to bring this back over to raise he was talking about the whole ordeal of being out in the ocean for five days, finally getting rescued one wanting to be nowhere near water for a long time. And then right at the end is kind of contemplating. And he said, You know, I, I never told my folks, they died without knowing that that had happened to me. Were and as a combat guy, especially understanding that generation a little bit, I got it, because you wouldn't want to stand out there is so many of your peers that had gone. So many parents that actually lost kids. And you just didn't want to, like it wasn't about it wasn't about Harold in that moment. And so as a combat guy, I'm shooting right past that. And john smacks me in the arm, it says shut up and listen to what he just said, you know, his parents and never knew what a crazy thing because that wouldn't. I don't think that could happen today.
Jim DeFelice 25:45
I don't know about that, though. I think that, you know, if we ran into you, if you ran into a burning car tried to pull somebody out? Would you tell your friends parents do that happens? And then it's weeks later, and you know, you your parents aren't in the greatest health or whatever? Would you? Would you be talking about that to them? Or would you be talking about something else? It's complex, I, you know, it's and I'm not comparing, you know, burning car to being, you know, in combat for six months or 12 hour in raise case for three, actually, four years, really think about it. But there, you know, the one thing you say, you know, he's forced to, you know, the survivors sometimes and telling the stories there, you know, they've told him before, and they're kind of reliving them and reliving them. And that's a point that that's a really good point, I saw that, you know, with Chris, because obviously he had a relive, he will relive a lot of what he had done in the war with me for the first time and yelling that with I then the toll that that took, I think was she was huge. And at first, I didn't really understand that. But then there comes to, you know, a time, you know, when the book comes out, and all of a sudden, the books doing well, and you're a celebrity and things things really can get crazy. And it can be a really, you know, can really take a toll on you and Ray started getting, you know, a huge kind of an avalanche of requests for interviews and stuff. And he just had to, you know, I kept telling him, so, okay, you don't have to do everything. But of course, the problem with Ray is you would tell Ray, you know, you don't have to do everything, you know, you don't have to be nice to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, Okay, well give this person 10 minutes. That's it? Oh, I can't give them 10 minutes. I can't, you know, it takes more than 10 minutes to, you know, to tell them what happened. So, you know, I think innately in his in his case, anyway, he's just, he's a really nice guy. Yes.
Pete Turner 27:50
kinda put even more strain on. Here's the thing as realizing is in talking to Harold, you know, one of his common themes, he talks about this stuff instant before, you know, the ship gets blown up, he's laying on the deck, look at the stars and just trying to be trying not to be down by the room and hot. So he's up up top. And he's, you know, a lot of guys are sleeping up there. And then the torpedo hits the ship lists, and he watches his shoes fallen to the ocean. You know, it's struck me as crystal clear memory for him that he's kept all this time. I know that when I stepped my foot into a combat zone, my first thought is just to kind of center myself, I look down on my shoes, like, Okay, I'm really here. I put my feet side by side and they go, okay, it's you know, what, even if you're getting out of a vehicle for a combat patrol, if at all possible. That's what I do to sort of center myself, remember my rules for combat, did re have those things where you're like, that's a such a curious thing to hold on to for the last 75 years.
Unknown Speaker 28:52
I think that there are certain memories that he holds on to very, very tightly, the guy that almost sliced up his hand and almost killed him with a band that certainly, that's really he's told that story to his family. And I think to some military people before, and that's a really vivid thing, he still has very much in his mind, some of the stuff that happened on D day, very vivid. Some of the other things, it's interesting that we would talk about some some of the incidents that happened, and it would be difficult, because remember, now, I mean, the war, you know, he was in his early 20s, when, you know, when the war took place, it's 75 years. It's 75 years later. So So much has happened. He would remember, like incidents or events, but the context around them was sometimes difficult for for him to go to know, until, and that's really where documents and stuff really became very, very valuable in doing this book, there were two times two times where he went into at least two times in a row vaping others been two times where I know of that he rescued people from from minefields. Yeah. Where he went in. And the first time is fairly is fairly vivid. And by the way, medical records help in those down. But the first time was was very vivid the second time the first that when he first described it to me was like, Oh, yeah, I went into another minefield. Okay, well, and Where was that? Ray? Somewhere there? Yeah.
Pete Turner 30:33
That's funny.
Jim DeFelice 30:34
So I guess that one, you know, wasn't but but when we kind of went into the actual description of it, it was pretty pretty harrowing. But But I guess the for I guess the first time you go into a minefield, that's that's the big. That's the big one. I don't know. I just, it just makes that.
Pete Turner 30:54
Yeah, just looking at the minefield, let alone running into it. Well, I mean, it's, it's it's a I think one of the things that has given me PTSD was was on I want to pause the helicopter broke to the point where it can still fly, but needed to go home immediately. And I was on the helicopter and so like, Hey, we're going to drop you off and keep going. So that you know, nobody crashes. So a bit of emergency but nothing, nothing crazy. And they dropped me off at the helipad. The helipad was well outside the bounds of the camp. And normally you came down on a patrol and they patrol back and, you know, you were relatively safe. There was no party to greet me there. And we were brief that they were 15 bazillion minds all throughout unmapped. And I spent the next hundred O our hours. So you know, I had kids around me it was good. But I was worried about mines. I was also worried about becoming the butcher of fill in the blank place where I was at. And I had just a constant stress because I was doing this solo combat patrol. And literally no one ever came. I walked all the way up No, like, what are you doing outside of my waiting on someone to come get me but you know that cause any like,
Jim DeFelice 32:07
gotcha. You could see where you had to go. That's Yeah, yeah, there was a road and I was going the wrong way.
Pete Turner 32:14
Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, the path was known. But it didn't make it any less terrifying, because I was like, What if someone is coming to play something. So I'm scanning every single thing for patterns of you know, it. So just, I think now about re going into a minefield, and that's burned into my mind, I can tell you tons of memories from that specific thing. And but you can't remember everything right? And so it's like, yeah, it was a minefield, I ran in and I grabbed this guy, and you know, all as well. So Ray had more than one D day. Let's talk a little bit about that.
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Pete Turner 33:17
Now enjoy the show. So Ray had more than one D day. Let's talk a little bit about that
Jim DeFelice 33:24
Lamson in Africa. And that landing is actually as amphibious landings go. Yeah, that was a relatively easy landing. I wouldn't say it was unopposed. But there was very, very light, the light combat around it. But it was also the introduction for most, including re Americans into combat in the first you know, in the, the they come on, on land. And, you know, and they have to two guys get lightly wounded. And then as they're going towards their objective, they see a bunch of, I'm going to leave out some of the details. But one of the highlights for me is they see a bunch of bodies in kind of a ditch by the by the water and one of the guys goes to goes to touch it and almost gets electrocuted because the it was live live. I guess the power lines have been knocked down. And that's apparently how that that for those fellows that died. And I think that was the first that's kind of the the combat in Africa, which is called Operation torches. Build landing is often something that's kind of brushed past if you're talking about World War Two, I doubt that it's taught in any sort of any high school classes about it. And probably not many, many college level classes. It's not in a lot of books, not very famous battles. But it was very important because it's the first time you know, large groups of Americans, they, as I said earlier, the very small groups of Americans had fought and dapp a few months before, but this is the first time that Americans are starting to see what words really like. And the American operations there continue and re is end up going east into 10. Asia. But before that happens, or actually, I should say in the process of that happening. Since we're talking about the entire army, the American army gets it gets its ass kicked. Yeah, there is a battles. And again, that's something else we don't talk about. Yeah. But that kind of ushers in that. That helps. Massively that gets Omar Bradley sent over to to Africa to find out what the hell is going on it gets patent right up there and pad will eventually patent and Bradley actually eventually take over. And yeah, the war starts to turn. Bradley was asked about immediately, actually, several times immediately afterwards, much after the war. You know, what happened with the the Americans Why did we not do well in the you know, in that first phase of the of the action? And while obviously there's going to be you know, yes, technical answers is he's actually a great tactician and blah, blah, blah, he kind of boils it down, generally to one thing you said that Americans had not learned to kill, they didn't know to kill they, they, we had not yet realize what war really is all about. And, and until we did that, no amount of leadership from the front, which is another proudly saying no amount of your doctrine in terms of using artillery and mobility, etc. All of that was useless until we kind of had that Killer Instinct, they were able to get over it. And, and I think that that's something that we don't know, certainly, you know, have, or we don't want to recognize today. And I think that a lot of us who have not been in work, you know, kind of have these kind of Hollywood ideas about it. But when we're kind of faced with with the reality of it, we're not willing to deal with that reality. And, you know, that's, that's, that's a problem. And it's a real, you know, war. What's the cliche war is hell yeah. Which is good reason to stay out of, out of it, when you can prevent it or, or not, you know, when it's not necessary, but when it is necessary, when you do have to fight, you gotta fight for the end, you got to kill people, that's your job. When I watch or I and I, typically Memorial Day, and several times a year, I try to remember, you know, people that have gone before us in terms of veterans, and
Pete Turner 37:51
I'll read Medal of Honor citations, and, you know, just spent some time in that history, just being familiar with it. And, you know, I'm always struck by, you know, these people, especially in World War Two, where they're just indomitable, and like you said, they're thinking they're pushing forward, despite their wounds, not for themselves, not their own preservation, but to, to not let their brother and sister down to, to, you know, fight off the enemy. And if someone has to go, it may as well be me. And they fight these impossible things. And I put myself in that the shoes of the enemy, you know, some some German kid who sees this American kid who's just indomitable who they shoot, and they blow him up, and he just keeps getting up and keeps coming and killing him. And that has to just be morally breaking if they survive that incident. And I don't know, I'm positive. It's not unique to America. But I wonder what it's like to be up against, you know, the guys on paleo live, you know, the guy that had fired up, you know, gigantic machine gun, you know, indefinitely it just smoking his arm and basically couldn't do it, again, without the the amped up nature of combat. But when I when I hear those tales, I think that it's just, it must be impossible for the enemy to see that to see that they're just going to keep coming. And I don't know how I'll survive this day.
Jim DeFelice 39:19
Yeah, I think what's all some of the other stories that I think are common to a lot of different wars. And one story that's it really is always impressed me is the way that in World War One during there was a Christmas Day arm assist, and the way that the soldiers the respect that they supposedly the soldiers from, you know, both sides got together. Yeah, they went out to no man's land and shook hands and, you know, had whatever was sale or whatever they were drinking, doing with the respect they showed for the other fellow warriors. Yeah, the Manson and you do see that I've seen that. You know, other people that I've known Vietnam veterans, for instance, talking, going back over to Vietnam, and, you know, meeting, meeting some, some of the men that presumably they, you know, they may have been shooting and trying to kill, because they understand, you know, they're there is a, I guess, a great respect for what it takes for that warrior spirit, which I think is what you're talking about, you know, to be there now. Do Americans have it more than than others? I don't know. I certainly couldn't spend a lot of examples of, you know, Americans who have those, you have that spirit and I think, partly our system by encouraging kind of individual rights and expression and that sort of thing. And partly, you know, our training and stuff encourages that. But it's probably, you know, it's deep within all of us that indomitable spirit. You know, I think it's probably a trait that crosses the human race to matter where you happen to be been born or what exact, you know, sequence of genes you have deep down somewhere at the base there that is that potential for that indomitable spirit.
Pete Turner 41:12
Yeah, yeah. That indomitable spirit is something we had woody Williams on the show, he's one of the guys have won a medal of honor on the wood Jima, and he just kept going back to the pill boxes and dumping his flame filler into the exhaust, you know, the air holes for those things, and just barbecuing the enemy? And you know, he would those things had about 90 seconds worth of fuel in them. And so he would just keep the give me a new one. I'll be right back. Give me a
Jim DeFelice 41:39
long time. 90 seconds in front of a. Yeah, not me, that's some of the most ferocious fighting and ever, ever, ever,
Pete Turner 41:50
ever. And imagine, you know, his American peers, just watching this guy put himself in harm's way. And the Japanese knowing that this guy's Never going to stop that they're going to have to kill them. And if they don't, he will kill every single one of them, which he ultimately did. He just kept going. said I don't think exclusively in American trade, there is something to be said for volunteers and, and the reason why you fight but these these stories are incredible.
Jim DeFelice 42:16
Absolutely. And I mean, you know, in our current our current military is all you know, all volunteer force and also self selecting. Yeah. And, and that may be a factor where we're to. Now Ray was volunteer, but you know, you had a lot of draftees as a movie. Um, so and, you know, so it's hard, I think, you know, like I say, I think that quality is within, potentially within all of our most of us, it's just a matter of circumstances and training. And maybe the way you were raised, bring it in,
Pete Turner 42:55
as Ray describes, actually, let me ask you this question first. So, the landing at Sicily, was that similar to Africa? Or did they progressively get worse
Jim DeFelice 43:05
and to assist Sicily is Sicily's a lot worse? The, the end up talking about the American sectors, the initial landing, you know, coming in from the water and stuff, they are under fire, as a matter of fact, man gets killed and presumably is killed in Ray's boat, but their instructions are not to stop and help him just get out. We talked about that in the book. Yeah. But what happens is that the the Italians and the Germans launch very ferocious counter attacks, very shortly after the American the American units come, come on shore. And there the Americans are faced with, fortunately, at different times, by very large infantry unit, and a very sizable unit of tanks, and they managed to defeat are survived really both both waves, the the tank combat is kind of interesting, because you have all along the American sectors and kind of different spots. You have the tanks attacking infantry men, you know, who are not, they haven't yet yet, for the most part gotten heavy weapons. On Sure. And, and in the areas near where Ray or where race battalion is, the only what the American started to do was make sticky bombs, basically, stick them on the side of the the armor, and it would take a couple, but they disable the tank, and where they would let the tanks come through on purpose or not. Yeah. And then the tanks would be vulnerable to, you know, to, to those sorts of attacks. And I'm sure there must have been one or two instances where they would have come up, you know, thrown a grenade into the hatch. Although that's not really documented in the book, but we're up with it happen.
Pete Turner 45:01
When Ray's telling you these stories, and you're trying to wrap your mind around it. Do you just keep digging for more details and snapshots of his memory? Or? And then how do you how do you protect against false memories?
Unknown Speaker 45:15
Yeah, that's, that's tricky. I had the advantage in this book in that having done you haven't done the Omar Bradley. Bradley did not was not at part of Operation Torch. But he is in Africa and is the corps commander, really, when much of the real heavy fighting that Ray gets involved in it was there. So I had a good man, he was corps commander Bradley was corps commander, under patent, the only corps commander under Pat, was patent was his own corps commander for separate Corps. And I don't know the patent got along with himself, as you know. That's another story. fair question. But anyway, Ed Bradley, of course, was that, you know, was the American commander for TJ. So I already had the architecture laid out of what happened. And then we started by just a bunch of informal talks and stuff, and, and then that allowed me to kind of bone up on, you know, where he had been some of the procedures do his background research, you know, what kind of equipment did Maddox carry and that sort of thing. And then, you know, and then we had, we were working on a pretty tight timeline. So we had some very low, very long formal sessions, where we would go through, we started chronologically, to find that that's the lead that lays a good basis for most for most people. And I would just my general, you know, my general kind of modus operandi is to let the person talk about what they want to talk about. And to kind of gently guide them, you know, towards, certainly towards more specifics. And to kind of guide went to the agenda, if they kind of slow down or whatever. What helped in Ray's case, in terms of questions, so much time had passed. And, you know, and memories can get memories kind of, you know, they're fragile things, they can get polluted by movies by something somebody else said, or by this, by that, you know, by wishful thinking, what helped helped us, in Ray's case, were some of the he had, he has a bunch of medical records. Maps, y'all, so we could talk we knew when, when people at his unit, for instance, were injured, including when he was, or at least when it was recorded, which wasn't always the right thing. And those were really good prompts, photos, good prompts, maps, it's not what I found with res memories really, really good. It wasn't so much. And this is often the case, it's not something much that somebody's memory is bad, it's just that they know, you know, they're not trying to give you every detail, they're not trying to give you the details, you really need to write a book, they've especially someone who, you know, has told the story a few times, they're going to like, kind of narrow the story down, narrow it down. And they'll just hit the highlights, which, you know, is great if you're in a five minute phone conversation. But if you have to write 85,000 or 100,000 word book, you know, you need a few more details. Yeah, you know, and, and obviously, some of them, you know, I don't really need Ray to, you know, describe what it looked like. But, you know, I need him to tell me what it felt like when he was, you know, driving, you know, driving it. So, you know, so I can get the details on what the cheap look look like, from a million reference units in your book, that sort of thing.
Pete Turner 49:03
So we're running it towards the end of our time, and I just wanted to get some reflection from you, because you you, like me, you gather these incredible stories, and they sit with you and they change and create a new version of you. So what have you What have you taken away from this book thus far?
Unknown Speaker 49:23
That it's very possible to, to live to a very, very old age and still be very active and, and mentally as well as physically. And I'll tell you what, and I know that this really has nothing to do with what the book theoretically is about, but I have a different view of what old ages now. I mean, it's not now, you know, obviously, you know, you accumulate physical, sure, you know, problems and stuff, but is array kept every still active as hell. And you know, he just just kept, you know, just kept at it kept doing things kept involved and stuff. And that's my role model going forward. And if I'm half as crisp as he is, when I'm, well, next year, even the hell with 98. You know, I'll be doing well, that I say I, you know, it's I know, that's that was books. Yeah. Yeah, that was that was the experience. And it's great. It's inspiring, you know, working with Ivan Castro, you know, and fighting blind, which is the name of that book. Yeah, it was like, okay, we can't you can do two furs, you know, when you can do, you know, two workouts a day and still, you know, and still survive. So I do two workouts. And now you know, now from this book, I, I have an inspiration for you know, where those workouts are going to get me when I'm 90? Yeah,
Pete Turner 50:48
yeah. Well, I like that. So pretty quickly here. All the world war two living memories, you know, from the especially from D day, they're going to be gone. And I don't know, the number of them dude's left from that day that are left but
Unknown Speaker 51:02
there's, there's not too many. There's not I, I, you know, I've talked to and I have talked to a bunch there. Fortunately, you know, they're older and they're 90 passed away. And they're a great resource. So if you know, somebody that has that, you know, that was there in the war, whether it was D day or not, you know, record their story. Just Yeah, let's get it get them to tell you what happened.
Pete Turner 51:26
Yeah, if anybody's got someone in their family or in their circle that that wants to tell their story. I'm glad to I'm glad to sit with them and grab them. When when did the last book or movie or tale about D day be told though? I mean, it seems like that it's just an ever producing well of incredible jaw dropping tales.
Jim DeFelice 51:50
Well, I hope there's room for one more
Pete Turner 51:55
is working on it now. So Oh, you are working on it. Now. Can you talk about?
Jim DeFelice 52:00
We're I it's we're the speculative stages. Okay. All right.
Pete Turner 52:07
Well, hopefully there's room for a couple more because you that'll be your third trip to that uh, that particular story and I can't wait to hear that. Everybody should get every man a hero rail and bridge tale. A combat medic first wave gate drops he's right there on deep in D day on Omaha beats the hardest speech ever. And I wanted to ask you because you open in the shoot you know what I'm going to buy a couple minutes you say in the in the open that the general was like, man, we might have to retreat? You know? Yeah, that's incredible. When you think about Bradley
Jim DeFelice 52:40
almost what happens is Bradley's not getting is the worst thing the the second worst thing when you're in a battle is to be getting information that the battle is going poorly. But that's the second worst thing. The worst thing the most worst thing or very worst thing not beginning and for any information from the battlefield because what
Pete Turner 53:03
does that mean? Worse Oh, hey, no one's got back I'll tell you anything
Jim DeFelice 53:08
you but here's what Bradley does. So Bradley is out on the Augusta which is a cruiser and that's his he that's his command ship and he's not getting any information and he's yell what is going to do it now he knows that Utah that the troops are on Utah which is the other American beach and as important as Omaha is for for a number of reasons you know he's faced with possibly sending you know thousands more people to their death if he just stays there or you know or as alternative would be to your reinforce Utah and at least save those guys and maybe you know change plans or what have you says not sure what to do. So what does he do? He does what any good general officer always does he looks around the room finds a captain and says Captain go get your butt over there and tell me what the hell's going on. Yeah, so he sends actually sends one of his aides very close to the beach and they get there and a PT boat and they don't land but but as they as they kind of get out of the smoke and everything the captain sees that there are troops coming up the rich American troops climbing up the ridge it says that's it we you know we can do this but we got to get more by we need all those troops in there. So they race back Bradley yo keeps the invasion going goes over to the boat where a lot of other generals are and says Get your butts on the pizza, we gotta kick out. So and that was really that's really the turning point at the for the Americans were there that people like Ray Lambert and his brother Bill were brave enough to withstand the fire and just keep going you know against great tremendous odds. And they really turned the tide that day was was General Roosevelt at Omaha risky at Utah, Teddy Jr. who actually was raised a vision assistant commanding general in Africa, and in Sicily, Teddy is on Utah is that he's also a great story to they land in the they land in the wrong completely totally, utterly wrong place on Utah. And Teddy kind of teli takes charge and is reputed to have said and knowing you know if you read any stories about it me, you know, you totally believe this. It's one of the the one of the officers said you know, we're in the wrong place today so that's okay, we'll fight the war from here and they march they march through to a swamp and and you know, and just keep going they get their objectives. The first day of Utah is a no invasion nothing in that war is a picnic but Utah's relatively certainly compared to Omaha is a relatively easy invasion. The tough stuff on Utah happens or the you tie area happens you know after that but yeah, Teddy was a teddy was quite a character.
Pete Turner 56:06
Yeah. And he won the Medal of Honor that the RE when he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions. So you win you win it you are awarded it
Jim DeFelice 56:14
you get it you will whatever your verbiage you want to use god damn it that's a that's one hell of an impressive Yeah.
Pete Turner 56:21
generals clearly was a nail health by the way out there swinging a cane a cane.
Jim DeFelice 56:28
Geez, he was a piece of work he and Terry Allen were Yeah, Terry Allen had some negatives about it. But they're certainly they're absolutely fun to write about. I'll tell you that.
Pete Turner 56:41
Yeah. Well, listen, come back when the next things ready. And then when you when Ray Ray's on the road with you this time. If you guys come to LA let me know and I'll pop up there and come hang out.
Jim DeFelice 56:53
grid. That'd be wonderful. Thanks for having me.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
