Colin Powell

The United States marks Veterans Day tomorrow. And very recently, we lost one of the most revered veterans of modern times.

The son of Jamaican immigrants, Colin Powell was a lifelong soldier.

He joined the ROTC while in college in the 1950s, then served two tours of Duty in Vietnam in the 1960s. In 1979 he was promoted to Brigadier General, and by 1989, he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

When George W Bush was elected in 2000, he named Powell his Secretary of State. a post Powell held for Mr. Bush’s first term.

I met Colin Powell in 1996, when he was promoting his autobiography, a book called My American Journey.

So here now, from summer 1996, Colin Powell.

Colin Powell died last month. He was 84.

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Mary Tillman

Recently the 20-year war in Afghanistan came to an end. Have his given all of us time to reflect on those two decades.

We also remember the 23 hundred or so US servicemen and women who died in Afghanistan.

One of them, in particular, drew public attention. Then-27 year-old Army Ranger, and former NFL star, Pat Tillman was killed in 2004.

But that tragedy was compounded when the Pentagon apparently attempted to cover up the circumstances of his death.

Mary Tillman on C-SPAN

It eventually was revealed that he was killed by a so-called “friendly fire.”

A few years later, Pat Tillman’s mother, Mary Tillman, wrote a book about her son and her fight with the Pentagon. And that’s when I met her.

So here now, from 2008, Mary Tillman:

Pat Tillman was posthumously awarded the Silver Star and a Purple Heart.

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R. Lee Ermey

It takes a certain kind of man to be a successful u.s. Marine drill instructor. It seems to come naturally to some men.

And one of them turned it into a successful acting career.

R. Lee Ermey was nominated for a Golden Globe for his work in the 1987 film “Full Metal Jacket.”

He went on to play tough, rugged authority figures in a number of other movies — even “Toy Story.”

In 2002 the History Channel came calling, and made Ermey the star of the show “Mail Call, which quickly became the network’s most popular show.”

It was in the middle of that show’s seven-year run that I met R. Lee Ermey, when he came out with a book based on the series.

And no need to cover your ears. This interview is G-rated.

So here now, from 2005, R. Lee Ermey.

R. Lee Ermey died in 2018. He was 74.

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Winnie Smith

Memorial Day is an occasion to pause and honor those who have given their lives in military service.

But we can also remember those who went to war to save lives.

In 1963, a 21-year old student nurse named winning Smith joined the Army, and in 1966 was sent to Vietnam, where the war was escalating. She was there until 1967,

But it wasn’t until years later that she realized that she, like many of the servicemen she treated, or suffering from PTSD.

I met her in 1992, to talk about her book called “American Daughter Gone to War.”

So here now, from 1992, Winnie Smith.

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Chuck Yeager

He was a farm boy from Hamlin, West Virginia. Chuck Yeager join the Army at the outset of World War II, Have it wasn’t long before he became a fighter pilot.

Two years after the war ended, in 1947, Chuck Yeager became the first test pilot to break the sound barrier.

He rose through the ranks to become a general, before retiring.

By the time I met him in the fall of 1988, Yeager was still finding new adventures. He and his longtime friend Bud Anderson co-wrote a book about their adventures hiking in the High Sierras.

So here now, from 1988, Chuck Yeager and Bud Anderson:

Chuck Yeager died last December. He was 97,

Anatoli Gribkov & William Smith

For a few days in mid-October 1962, the world teetered on tghe brink of all-out nuclear war between the United States, led by President John F. Kennedy, and the Soviet Union, commanded by Premier Nikita Khrushchev.

Photo: CIA Map, 1962 Cuba

It began when U.S. spy planes detected Soviet missiles being shipped to, and installed in, Cuba.

President Kennedy weas determined not to allow what was seen as an act of Soviet aggression in our hemisphere, whil Khrushchev was acting in what he believed was defensed of Cuba against possihble U.S. aggression.

The situation quickly escalated into a showdown that brought us to the edge, but ultimately, cooler heads prevailed.

Bob Greene

BG PAUL W TIBBETS JR

Tomorrow, August 6th, is the 75th anniversary of the first-ever use of a nuclear weapon in war, when the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

At the controls of the B-29 called the Enola Gay was a young pilot named Paul Tibbetts.

After the war, Tibbetts returned to a very humble and private life in Ohio.

Bob Greene

As the 1990s were drawing to a close, Chicago Tribune columnist and author Bob Greene was finally, after years of trying, to get Paul Tibbetts to talk about his history-making flight.

The result was Greene’s book “Duty.”

So here now, from 2001, Bob Greene.

Paul Tibbetts died in 2007 at age 92.

Bob Greene is 73 now. He left thre Chicago Tribune in 2002. His last book was publsihed in 2009.

Adm. Elmo Zumwalt Jr.

On this Memorial Day 2020, a very moving story of a father and son caught up in an unpopular war, with an unexpected and poignant outcome.

In the 1960s, U.S. forces in Vietnam used the defoliant known as Agent Orange in an effort to make it harder for enemy forces to hide in thr jungle.

Agent Orange was very effective — but it also proved very deadly for hundreds of U.S. troops who were exposed to it.

In the late ’60s the Commander of Naval Forces in Vietnam was Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr.

His son, Elmo Zumwalt III, was in the Navy — and was among those exposed to the Agent Orange his father ordered.

Perhaps as a result of that exposuyre, the younger Zumwalt developed cancer.

Father and son jointly wrote a book in 1986. That’s when I met them.

Hollywood did make a TV movie based on the Zumwalts’ book, with Karl Malden as Admiral Zumwalt and Keith Carradine as Elmo III.

But less than two years after our interview, Elmo Zumwalt III died at the age of 42.

Admiral Zumwalt passed away in 2000, at the age of 79.

The U.S. Navy named a guided missile destroyer program the “Zumwalt class” in his honor.