Pushkin.

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Tell us what you love about the show, what we can improve on, or stories you think we've missed.

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Today we celebrate Veterans Day.

It's a time for us to reflect on the sacrifices made by the men and women who have served and protected this country across generations.

I'm JR.

Martinez.

In the last season A Medal of Honor Stories of Courage, I had the privilege of telling the heroic stories of some of the bravest veterans to ever put on the uniform, like sal Junta, who ran through a hell of bullets to save his best friend from capture, or Carl Sitter, the wounded marine captain who refused to be evacuated until the job was done.

Ordinary men who were thrust into impossible situations, who didn't just meet the challenge of the day, but plowed through it.

If you've been listening to our show, you know the value of that kind of courage.

But I'm here to tell you that everyone who has ever put on the uniform has a story.

So today I'd like to encourage you to talk to the veterans in your life and don't just thank them for their service.

Ask them about it.

It shouldn't end with just the thank you.

We're hard at work on the next season, a Medal of Honor, and it's coming in May of next year.

But in the meantime want to hear from you about what you'd like to hear from us.

We put together a listener survey.

Tell us what you love about the show, what we can improve on, stories you think we've missed.

As we observe this Veterans Day, we're recommitting ourselves to not just making the show, but making it better.

And you can help us to take the survey.

Head to bit dot lee slash m oh survey.

That's bit dot l y slash m o h survey.

That link is also in our show notes.

For this episode, I sat down with my producer Ryan Swikert to talk about what we owe our veterans today and what we can expect in the upcoming season of Medal of Honor.

Well, Jr.

I am so happy to be sitting with you here in Pushkin Industries in beautiful New York City.

Yes, sir, it's nice, beautiful cool outside here.

I am walking, you know, in New York and I'm like, and a lady sneeze.

I was like, bless you, and she just kind of looked at me, you.

Know, and just kept it moving, and I was like, Oh, I love New York right like, And it's.

I'm really excited to be talking to you about, you know, the things that you learned making this show and what the listeners can expect this upcoming season and today's Veterans Day.

It's interesting, Like I have veterans in my life, and you know, as a civilian, sometimes it feels like maybe you don't want to broach the subject with somebody to get them to talk about bad things that happened to them.

Yeah, what would you say to that.

Let them tell you, let them dictate.

You'll know immediately if this individual wants to talk, and if they do, how much they want to share.

Why are we underestimating that they're capable of telling us a lot of us don't want to infringe because they don't want to pry because they're afraid, you know.

But I think a lot of people don't want to infringe because they're they don't want that vet to be like, it's none of your business.

I don't want to talk about it because how it's going to make us feel exactly.

You know, you do these.

Little events and you know, you get get around kids and kids are like kids have no filter, man.

I mean as brutally, as raw as it may be at times when a kid would come up to me and like.

What happened to your face?

I mean, straight up, man, these kids are brutal.

But at the end of the day, I mean it's inspiring to see these kids that are doing that.

And that's I think as adults to some degree, like we need to kind of like still carry a little bit of that inner child in us because they're curious, fearless.

Just ask the questions, just go shoot.

From the hip man and veterans day.

You know, again, we're so used to going up to a vat, you know, and say thank you for your service, and what do they say?

Thank you?

And they're like, all right, have a good day.

Walk away, right, what happened there?

Yes, you allow someone to feel appreciated, and then that is equally important.

However, you just walked away not knowing what that person did, not knowing what you really thank them for.

That person now doesn't really know you, versus if you approached them and said, you know, yes, if you want to lead with the hey, I just want to say thank you for your service, really appreciated.

And they're like, thank you, and wou do you mind telling me?

Like, what what'd you do in the military?

You know, where'd you serve?

Just starting a conversation with the veterans in your life, right, that's it.

Yeah, that's it man.

I just tell people like, don't make the decision for that individual.

Let that individual tell you if they're ready to talk.

I want to back up just a little bit.

Of course, So a lot of listeners are familiar with your story, but I think a lot of new listeners might not be.

And being that it's Veterans Day today, I was wondering if you could just tell me the story of when you became a veteran.

Absolutely not all right.

That's okay.

I just wanted to ask, there we.

Go, there it is put it in practice already.

I love it, man, understand that.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to talk about it yet.

Yeah, exactly.

There you go see, and that's but that's that's the way to do it.

So essentially, I was a senior in high school in nine to eleven.

Took place, and like everybody, of course, confused, afraid, but also I think just felt this deep patriotism of what can I do?

I want to do something, and so the military now became that opportunity for me.

It was an opportunity for me to go serve.

It was an opportunity for me to get more disciplined, as opportunity for me to travel, get money for college.

All the things.

It was a one stop shop.

And so off I go to the army as an Infertruman and six months after I enlisted, I found myself in combat in Iraq.

At first, I didn't really feel like I played a role.

I was like, what I mean, I'm not really doing anything here, Like I mean, not helpful to anybody.

I don't know any of this stuff.

And it took one of my leaders to give a briefing to our unit, and in that briefing he talked about the importance of service.

He talked about the importance of every single person in the role that they played and accomplishing our mission.

And he was giving this whole speech Man, and I literally was like, oh my god, all right, I get it.

Now, I do play a role, I do matter.

I am part of this team.

And you know, I was only in country Man for three and a half weeks, that's it.

And then on the fifth of April of two thousand and three, I'm driving a humvey through a city called Carbala when the front left tire runs over a roadside bomb.

There were three other guys in the humvy.

They were all thrown out, but I was trapped aside, and within a matter of seconds, this humvy was now in gulfed in flames, and you.

Know, I can't get out.

For five minutes that I was trapped inside of this burning humvey, I was in and out of consciousness because.

I had thirty degree burns.

But the biggest thing that was threatening whether I was going to survive or not was the fact that I had inhalation damage.

So I was inhaling all the smoke from the fire.

I had broken ribs.

It was hard for me to breathe, So this is what it sounded like.

It was like help, help, like that.

And then there would be these moments where my body would get really heavy, like my eyes would get heavy, my body would start to kind of get weak, and my eyes would be on the verge of closing and they would close.

But when my eyes closed, there's two things that I vividly remember.

One is feeling my breath.

I could feel myself breathing or trying to.

And the second thing is my thoughts.

And then I would tell myself, don't keep your eyes closed, because if you do, that's it.

You're giving up.

Someone's gonna pull you out.

Open your eyes and I would open my eyes and I would continue to screaming.

Yet, but what I learned from the fifth of Abel of two thousand and three is that hopefully I and the listener we won't find ourselves in a burning situation right where we're trapped.

Hopefully that's not the case.

However, life in itself, because it could be overwhelming and a lot of pressures can feel like we're in a burning situation.

And so what I've learned from that five minutes that I was trapped inside of that humvey is that when things start to feel a little overwhelming, when things start to feel a little out of control.

I just like to close my eyes.

I like to connect with my breath, and I like to connect with my thoughts well and ask for help right and ask for other things and trust that people will show up for you.

I had to trust in those five minutes that somebody was going to show up.

I had this false sense of hope that someone was going to come pull me out, and they did, and I was pulled out of the humbee, started the metavac process, put into a medical induce coma, ended up in San Antonio, Texas, and then three weeks later, came out of my medical induce coma to my new reality.

You know, after my injury, I was in a medical induce coma for three weeks.

And when I came out of my medical induce coma, the first question, no different than any other service member that I asked the medical team, was when can I get out?

And when can I get back with my unit and finish my tour.

And the first bombshell, if you will, that they dropped on me was they told me that I wasn't going to be allowed to stay in the Army.

I was going to be medically discharged.

That was really hard for me because I started to create this identity of Okay, I love this military thing, I love this uniform, I love this concept of service, like I love being a part of this, and now you're taking that away from me.

Also, within the same like week and a half, I saw my face and my body for the first time understood this of my injury.

And so I always say to people, you know, two weeks after I came out of my coma, I lost both of my identities.

Like I didn't know who I was.

And I mean at that point, I was just kind of going through the motions, just kind of surviving the day.

I had to really like go of the pressure of what long term was going to look like, and I started to really focus on just the short term, the now, the today.

And six months later, I'm asked to visit a patient who was in the hospital essentially navigating the same thing I was navigating six months prior, and I was encouraged to go in and talk to him, and you know, like a typical twenty year old, I was like, now, now, now, And you know, the staff who had at that point became more like my friends and family and this nurse, Miss Walker, she was like, no, go in there, and I was like, fine, I'll do it.

Gosh, I mean literally like a mother's son dynamic.

And do you know why you were so reluctant to go?

Because I was like, I'm twenty, what am I going to say say?

I don't know what I'm going to say to this individual, like nothing to offer.

And that was my first mistake because what I realized when I walked into that room and he was definitely in a bad place, I realized all I needed to do is just show up.

And I remember having a forty five minute conversation with this patient and when I left, I.

Was like, hey, man, I'll come back tomorrow.

He's like, yeah, man, I'd appreciate that.

Like it was a completely different vibe in his room.

And I started visiting patients every day.

And what that did is that gave me what part of my identity back, the ability to serve.

I realize I can serve again in a different way, in a different capacity, but I can serve.

I learned that I needed to be vulnerable.

The more that I've done that, I have found some really incredible people that I call my family.

Now I have created deeper connections with people that I probably never would have had.

I continue to keep this sort of shield in front of me, just trusting that you know, not everybody, but there are a hell of a lot of people out there that are equipped to show up for you, but you also have to equally let them know that you need that.

It sounds like a Veteran's day message.

That's it, man.

You know, as much as I'm putting you know, we're talking to the listener that's potentially civilian, I'm also talking.

To that vet.

It's hard walking the streets of the world, even if there's only five hundred people that live in your town, or there's five million people in New York City, you know, in the same borough as you right now.

It's hard, and it's easy to feel isolated, and it's probably feels and the short term better to isolate yourself.

But the long term, in order for you to be what you are destined to be, we have to be willing to like just keep showing up.

And the military they taught us that, and just because we're not in it anymore doesn't mean that goes away.

Show up for others and through that you start to kind of discover more about yourself.

And that was true for me as I started to discover so much more about myself by just showing up for others.

You talk about showing up, and you know, working on this podcast, you've seen that, Like, yes, a lot of these guys are very heroic and a lot of the things they did were amazing, but they got in those positions in the first place by just showing up.

Yeah, do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, man, I mean working on season two of Medal of Honor and listening to season one with Malcolm, it just reminded me of how important it is to simply just show up, to just be there, Like you don't have to have all the answers.

I mean, you listen to some of these individuals in season two and they didn't have extensive training, they didn't have combat training, they didn't get the luxury to go to this school and that school.

I did it right, Like that's a common and theme in some of these stories.

Yet when a moment asked somebody to show up, they just showed up and they figured it out.

Like guys were able to just navigate it and do some incredible things that I think they surprise themselves, which is why I think many of them are like why am I being awarded this incredible honor?

Like why do I deserve this right?

I think anybody would have done that.

I think we all would have tried to, you know, navigate it the same way.

And if there's anything you take away from this podcast, it's simply being inspired by these stories that for some of us, including myself, they feel like, no, these are fictional stories.

There's I can't no, that's not real, that happened.

I mean, it's easy to look at the things that these guys do.

It's just sort of like these amazing heroics.

Yeah, but really it's just the confluence of like this training, this ability, and the right moment.

Yeah you're I mean, and a lot of them it's just like what would I have done?

What would I have done if there was someone with a machine gun?

Like in a position, like what I have charged in?

What would I have done?

And so you easily start to kind of think these are like just superheroes and they're not.

They're human beings.

We all have this, we really do.

And I just love that I get to be part of the team to help keep these legacies alive and then help people that are listening realize that they too can be like Carl Sitter, they can be like Jefferson de Blanc, they can be like all these individuals that we've covered in the first two seasons of Medal of Honor.

It's a reminder for all of us as human beings, as Americans, as listeners of this podcast where we're listening to these stories, to just keep showing up.

We want to run away, but showing up might actually allow you to realize the true hero that is in you, that is just waiting for that moment to come out.

Jare I actually recently learned that you were on Dancing with the Stars.

I did not know this about you.

You're a man of many talents, you know.

Man, sometimes I forget that I was on Dancing with the Stars.

Not only were you on Dancing with the Stars, my friend, but you won.

The winners and new champions of Dancing with the Stars shut Out and cry.

Out, which makes you infinitely a better dancer than I could ever be.

How did this come about?

And like, I'm just curious about how and if you talked about being a veteran on the show.

Yeah, I was on that show and it was veteran first.

It really was promoted like we have this veteran on the show.

And what was cool about it is, yes, I went on to show the world that I have a personality.

Obviously I could dance, but it was just like this character like I just I'm silly of goofy, and but people were like, oh, that's cool.

Here's a guy that you know, some people will look at me like scary to see, you know, like the scars and whatever.

But look at him, he's actually like clowning, laughing, silly, like he's just a goofball.

And so it was, it was, it was awesome.

And I remember week three, I did a rumba.

We danced to the song Tim McGraths song.

If you're reading.

This, you did a rumba to a Tim McGraw song, Yeah, okay, I gotta look at that reading.

The lyrics are he's telling the story of a service member.

So he writes a letter to his wife.

Essentially he's saying, if you're reading this, I passed away while in the military.

I remember sitting in the rehearsal room with Karina spurnt Off, my partner, and I was like, yeah, this is an important story to tell.

Before we danced, they showed up the package again and it was about my recovery and oh man, just thinking about it, like they showed all these people, they interviewed them behind my back.

I had no clue they put this package together, which is the worst thing to do to somebody.

That's about the dance in front of millions of people.

You read to watch us before you.

I had to watch it, and so I'm standing there watching it, waiting for this package to end, the announce her to introduce us, and then the music starts playing we go, and I tell you, by the time we started, I had tears in my eyes, like and it wasn't just about me.

It was like, I'm telling the story of so many men and women.

I finished the routine, man, and I'm crying.

I only like ninety seconds, that's how long we dance on the show, and probably the last forty five seconds of that routine, I'm crying.

In the ballroom where they film Dance with the Stars, every single person was standing out.

The response that we got from that, what people told us, what thank you?

Thank you for telling that story.

I think that's interesting because that's pretty much what you're doing on this show too.

You know, you are in conversation with these interviews with these veterans who have done these amazing things, and you're telling their stories.

Yeah.

I think one theme we're circling here in this conversation is storytelling.

How important that is to the veteran experience, right.

One hundred percent.

And we need more vets to be willing to share and to talk as much as they.

Feel comfortable with.

Why is that important?

Because it is important for people to learn about who we are one so again we can have a connection.

But you know, we'd like to say in the military, we fought for your freedom, We fought for your right, and I think some of us we lose sight of that when we come home and we're struggling.

And what I like to remind them is like, Okay, it's easy to say you fought for everyone else's right, but you also fought for your own.

You deserve to live, you deserve to heal, you deserve to go through your process to get the out.

You deserve that you fought for yourself, man, like, not just everybody else.

But for you too.

I tell my story and I'm hoping that there's a VET that's listening right now, or a loved one of a vet, and they're like, you know what, all right, maybe what I'm struggling with it's.

Okay, but I should reach out.

Maybe it encourages the listener right now to say, you know what, oh man man, I need to have a little bit more compassion and not just look at them as like trained robots that just know they're human beings that have lives, that have emotions, that have feelings, that have the same desires that we do.

They have aspirations, right like they have those same things, but they also still have those complications like we all do.

One of the things I noticed you said earlier was that you would developed this identity as a soldier, right, And that was something that didn't come easy to you.

At first.

You weren't really sure what you were doing there, and then you got leadership that helped you find that identity, right.

But then you get injured and you have a new identity, right.

And for the past twenty years you've been a veteran, and I just wonder you know what you've learned in those twenty years with this identity of being a veteran.

I'm proud.

I'm proud of the initial decision to join the military, not really understanding this fraternity that I was joining.

I'm grateful because it gave me the opportunity to discover myself.

It gave me a space, a platform to identify the greatness that lied in me.

It gave me the avenue to discover that.

And the military helped me find this concept of service, helped me find this importance of teamwork and how to show up and how to be a leader, and how to get people, you know.

To buy in.

And I'm grateful.

I have no regrets, man, absolutely none.

I mean, it's kind of hard to really encapsulate like what my life has been over the last you know, two decades.

I mean, it's it's kind of wild, to be honest.

I've kind of like the Forest Gump in a sense of just kind of like just yeah, sure, I'll try that.

Sure here.

I mean, I never hosted a podcast like this, you know, And here I am doing that, this working with this incredible team and telling these incredible stories.

And I feel the passion and love to tell these stories in such a careful way that we do them justice.

And it makes me feel like I'm kind of back in the military in a sense, like I'm part of this team.

What are you looking forward to in this upcoming season?

The medal of honor?

Oh man, what you guys have up your sleeve, what you guys do, and how you do all this research and put all these stories together, and you know, I'm the final piece that comes in and helps, you know, try to tell them.

It's unfortunate that it's May of next year when episode one is going to be released, you know, because I feel like I'm like, I want this now.

Well.

The good thing is you can go listen to season one.

It's easy two, right.

But I'm just I'm excited to just learn and to just be inspired because I know there's a lot of stories in there that are just going to be incredibly motivating and inspiring and a reminder of what humans are capable of doing.

And I can tell you just from having worked on some of the stories coming up, that they're capable.

Of a lot.

Yeah.

I can't wait, man, I can't I can't wait.

So I hope everyone that's listening now, I hope that you put some sort of alert reminder May twenty twenty six, Medal of Honor, season three.

I hope you tune in as well and we can go on this journey together.

But before that, as I said in the opening, click on that link in the show notes, I mean truly when we say this, we mean that we want to hear from you.

We want to understand what are some things that you want to know.

What are maybe some subjects, maybe some individuals, whatever it is like, just this is a community and we want our listeners to feel like they're part of our community.

Because they are.

They matter.

We want these stories to continue to live, So reach out to us, communicate with us.

But set that alert that reminder for May twenty twenty six, Season three, episode one.

All right, jay R, thank you so much for doing this.

It was a pleasure, my man, Thank you so much.

Yeah, same here, brother, But thank you again for listening to this special episode of Metal of Honor.

Once again, we'd love to hear from you.

If you have a couple of minutes, please take our listener survey.

Head to bid dot lee slash m oh survey.

That's bit dot l y slash m oh survey.

That link is also in our show notes.

This episode of Metal of Honor Stories of Courage was produced by Ryan Schwiker.

Our editor is Lydia Jean Kott.

Sound design and additional music by Jake Gorsky.

Our executive producer is Gonstanza Gayadovio.

Original music by Eric Phillips and I'm your Host JR.

Martinez