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1:01

New York City to Iowa City, London,

1:03

Nairobi, and so many more. The Moth

1:06

will be performing in a city near

1:08

you featuring a curation of true stories.

1:10

The Moth main stage shows feature five

1:12

tellers who share beautiful, unbelievable, hilarious, and

1:15

often powerful true stories on a common

1:17

theme. Each one told reveals something

1:19

new about our shared connection. To

1:21

buy your tickets or find out more

1:24

about our calendar, visit themoth.org main stage.

1:27

We hope to see you soon. From

1:42

PRX, this is the Moth Radio Hour. I'm

1:44

Sarah Austin-Janesse from The Moth, and I'll be

1:46

your host this time. This

1:48

episode is devoted to American veterans. The

1:51

four stories you'll hear in this hour

1:53

from the battlefield and behind the front

1:55

lines were told live at the Moth

1:57

without notes in theaters across our country.

2:01

A soldier and his family cling to

2:03

routine during wartime. A female

2:05

pilot and an African-American Marine remember World

2:07

War II. And our

2:10

first storyteller, Mike Scottie, battles post-war

2:12

darkness after serving in Iraq and

2:14

Afghanistan. Mike

2:17

told this story in Albany, New York, at

2:19

a MOF night we produced with public radio

2:21

station WAMC. A

2:23

word of caution, this story includes frank

2:25

descriptions of the effects of combat. Here's

2:28

Mike Scottie live at the MOF. So

2:35

I can still remember the sound of

2:37

the front door slamming behind

2:39

me in my old apartment. It's

2:41

a small studio in New York City. And

2:44

I remember I had just gotten home from a

2:47

run and I threw my keys up on

2:51

the counter and they slid across and they ran

2:53

into my blackberry, which just happened to be ringing

2:55

it at that moment. And

2:58

at this point in my life, I'd been home from

3:00

the war in Iraq for about a year and a

3:02

half. Things

3:04

were starting to feel a little bit more normal. I

3:06

was in grad school. I felt good that day because

3:08

of the run. But

3:11

when I saw the name on the ID

3:13

on the blackberry, my

3:16

heart dropped because

3:18

it was my old commanding officer from the Marine Corps.

3:22

And in the year and a half that I'd been home, I learned that

3:24

when somebody from the Marines calls you during the

3:26

week, especially while it's

3:28

still light out, it means that somebody

3:31

that I knew was dead. So

3:35

a few seconds later, my

3:37

fears were confirmed and the tears were falling and

3:39

that was the reality.

3:45

I'd lost another brother and

3:48

it wouldn't be the last.

3:54

Now I joined the

3:56

Marine Corps because I wanted to defend my

3:58

country. I wanted to earn the title. of

4:00

United States Marine. I wanted to see if

4:02

I had what it took. After

4:06

September 11th, obviously everything changed. I had been

4:08

in for a few years at that point.

4:11

I was a First Lieutenant. And

4:13

I lost two friends in the World Trade Center, Beth

4:16

Quigley and Peter Apollo. And

4:19

I would think about how

4:21

they died. They died

4:23

violently on some random day at

4:25

work, where they're trying to earn a living. And

4:29

so I knew that I would do whatever

4:31

it took to help

4:33

find those weapons of mass destruction. I

4:35

would do whatever it took to make

4:38

sure that nothing like

4:40

that ever happened again on US soil.

4:43

That was something I was willing to fight for. And

4:45

I was certainly willing to die

4:47

for. Now

4:51

my job in the Marine Corps specifically

4:53

was that of artillery forward observer. And

4:56

I would call in over the radio the

4:58

enemy's position. I'd be up front with the

5:00

infantry. And I'd call

5:02

in those enemy positions to the artillery units

5:05

who were parked behind us. And

5:07

they would shoot these large barrages

5:10

of these shells on the enemy. And if they missed,

5:12

I would make a correction over the radio. Now

5:15

these shells are big. They're

5:17

heavy. They weigh over 100 pounds each. They're

5:20

made of high explosive and steel and

5:22

iron. And they're designed to burst into

5:25

large pieces of shrapnel. Each

5:28

piece can be up to the size of a man's arm.

5:31

And each piece is very dense and heavy, like a

5:33

crowbar, but jagged. And

5:38

these things, when they blow up, the

5:40

shrapnel covers an area the size of a football

5:42

field. And that's for one round.

5:44

And we'd shoot 50 or 100

5:46

of these things in the same area to just obliterate

5:48

everything. So that was my job. I

5:50

would call in the shrapnel onto people.

5:54

And I can remember very quickly

5:57

understanding what that meant in Iraq from

5:59

the beginning. seeing all of the dead

6:02

bodies on the sides of the

6:04

roads as we drove along.

6:06

We'd hit an area and then drive through it. And

6:09

I can remember the bodies would

6:12

be in these very unnatural positions

6:14

and their eyes would

6:16

have many times turned this very deep

6:18

black and their mouths

6:20

would be open and I thought

6:23

I could see the looks of pain on many of

6:25

their faces. And

6:28

unfortunately sometimes they

6:30

were the faces of children who were in the wrong

6:32

place at the wrong time. And

6:35

those faces, they stay with me. So

6:41

I realized quickly that once all

6:43

of the politics have been stripped

6:45

away for those who are fighting it and those who are

6:47

caught in the middle of it, war is

6:49

nothing more than a slaughter. And

6:54

it is filled with things like chaos and

6:57

hesitation and uncertainty and fear.

7:00

There's fear that you are going to

7:04

make a mistake and get your friends killed. There's

7:06

fear that there are other human beings out there who are trying

7:08

to kill you. There's fear that you could

7:10

be maimed or wounded or burned. And

7:14

there are things like chaos. The

7:16

chaos like the day that we

7:19

finally made it to Baghdad. And we

7:21

transitioned from fighting in the

7:23

countryside where if you could see it you could kill it to

7:27

fighting in a city where you couldn't see more

7:29

than across the street or maybe half a block.

7:32

And it was

7:34

chaos. And your radios wouldn't work so

7:36

well because the buildings

7:39

blocked the signal. And you had 1,500

7:41

Marines assigned to 80 square

7:44

blocks and you're all trying not to shoot each other because

7:46

the enemy is in between you and you've got another 1,500

7:48

Marines on your left and

7:50

on your right. And

7:53

the bullets would snap through the air and you wouldn't know

7:55

where they'd be coming from. And I

7:57

remember that every time a Marine would get killed. None

8:01

of us would look each other in the eye for a little

8:03

while, you know, the guys in my vehicle, because it was

8:06

all just becoming a little bit too much. We

8:10

hadn't slept in two or three days and nights, and

8:13

I remember

8:15

I'd looked to the west, just

8:17

happened to be looking to the west one instant, and

8:20

I saw a very large artillery

8:22

barrage land on the edge of

8:25

our battalion's position. And I knew

8:27

by the way that it landed that it was

8:29

US artillery, and I knew what was happening in

8:32

that instant. We had just hit our brothers with

8:34

our own fire, so I picked up the radio

8:36

and I screamed, check firing, check firing, and I

8:38

shut down all of the artillery in Iraq that

8:41

the Marines were shooting for a few minutes because I had

8:43

no time to figure out what was happening. And

8:45

I knew the next barrage was going to land directly on us,

8:47

and it would hit one Marine, and

8:50

it took out a few of his organs and

8:53

entered them through the abdomen. The

8:55

next one would have been a lot worse. I

8:57

remember slamming the radio handset down and being

8:59

angry, shaking my head,

9:01

because somebody had shot into our zone

9:03

without permission, and

9:05

I realized that in

9:08

a war, the difference between life

9:11

and death can be a few

9:14

millimeters here or there, a

9:16

few seconds, or the fact

9:18

that one tired Marine happened

9:20

to be looking in the right direction at the

9:22

right moment. I thought to myself,

9:24

you know, I shook my head, I said,

9:27

this all better be worth it, because we've

9:29

been fighting for months and we haven't found

9:31

any weapons of mass destruction. So

9:35

when I came home, there was a day that sticks

9:38

in my mind. It was

9:40

November, I'd been home for about a year. I was

9:44

driving from Manhattan out to Long Island, I

9:46

had a fresh haircut, my

9:49

dressable uniform was very neatly pressed, and

9:52

I was on my way to be the pallbearer

9:55

in yet another Marine's

9:57

funeral. This Marine's name

9:59

was... Lieutenant Matt Lynch and

10:02

his older brother Tim had

10:04

called me and asked me to

10:06

carry his little brother's coffin. Tim and I

10:08

had served in Afghanistan together. I

10:13

can remember carrying

10:17

Matt's coffin with my white

10:19

gloved hand and

10:22

gripping the rails tightly,

10:26

the rail that runs along the edge of the coffin, because

10:29

I didn't want to drop it. I

10:34

remember a few minutes later trying

10:36

not to wince as

10:38

the rifles went off as they gave Matt his final salute

10:40

in front of his loved ones, because

10:42

it was the first time that I'd

10:45

heard gunfire since the war. Later

10:48

that evening I sat at the

10:51

bar in the Maid Maid Inn in Long Island and

10:53

I just drank beer after beer.

10:57

The tears came and I didn't care who saw them,

10:59

I was still wearing my dress blues, because at that

11:01

point I had just

11:04

given up of ever finding, any

11:06

hope of finding weapons of mass

11:08

destruction. I

11:11

was searching for meaning in the deaths of men like

11:13

Lieutenant Matt Lynch and others that I'd

11:16

lost and I

11:18

couldn't find any. As

11:20

a warrior, my

11:23

belief system began to unravel and

11:27

that took me to a very, very dark place. It

11:31

took me to the edge of the abyss and

11:33

I stood there looking in and I

11:35

remember wondering whether or not I was going to

11:37

just jump off, whether

11:40

or not, wondering whether or not

11:42

suicide for me was going to be the way to go. I

11:45

would have these conversations with myself, like

11:49

whether I should make it look like an accident and

11:53

go for a run in New York City one day right into the

11:55

path of a bus. Or

11:58

should I make a spectacle of the whole thing? and

12:00

take a flight to San Francisco, do

12:03

a swan dive or something off

12:06

of the Golden Gate Bridge, just

12:08

like the first person to ever kill themselves

12:10

there. And that was a veteran from World War

12:12

I. And

12:17

then I thought about my mom and dad and

12:20

what it would do to them if I

12:22

went through with it. And

12:26

I knew that I just couldn't do

12:28

it. I knew that I had to survive

12:32

for them. So

12:35

I started talking. I

12:37

started listening. Started

12:40

reading and opening

12:43

up a little bit, getting out there. And

12:46

the Marine Corps, the first

12:48

thing that I realized was that there were a lot of

12:50

other veterans my age who felt the

12:52

same way. And then I realized

12:54

that even the Marine Corps knew

12:57

that it had a problem on its hands. And

12:59

they needed to help do

13:02

something to stop the few and the proud

13:04

trained killers from killing ourselves because

13:07

we were doing it in record numbers. And

13:11

the Marine Corps put out this video that was

13:13

on their website and had a bunch of colonels

13:15

and generals on there and high ranking sergeants talking

13:18

about how they struggled about the war, after

13:20

the war. And

13:24

about halfway through the video, this woman

13:26

comes on and she's a Navy psychiatrist.

13:29

And she had served in Fallujah on the front

13:31

lines with the Marines, helping them, helping talk to

13:33

them as they came off the line. And

13:35

she had struggled. She talked about her struggle. And

13:40

she looked into the camera and

13:42

she said, "'It's okay to

13:44

be angry. "'It's

13:48

okay, Marine, to be

13:50

sad. "'It's

13:52

okay if you're not okay. "'And

13:57

I remember those words, they hit me like

13:59

a train.' because I'd never

14:02

heard words like that before.

14:05

It never occurred to me. And they

14:07

were exactly the words that I needed to hear at

14:09

that moment. Because

14:12

the Marine Corps teaches you that

14:14

vulnerability is weakness. Because

14:16

in war, vulnerability

14:18

is weakness because the enemy will

14:21

exploit that vulnerability and kill you

14:23

and all of your men. But

14:26

when you come home, vulnerability is the one

14:28

thing that will allow you to survive. It

14:30

will allow you to take those demons that

14:33

are inside of you and drag them from

14:35

the darkness out into the light. And

14:38

they cannot survive there. They cannot hurt you there.

14:44

So now I no longer search for meaning

14:46

in the war or in

14:48

the deaths of these beautiful human

14:50

beings, these Marines and

14:52

soldiers. I

14:56

find meaning in helping fellow

14:58

veterans and

15:01

allowing other veterans to help me because that's what

15:03

we do. We take care of each other just

15:05

like we did in the war. So

15:10

now when the phone rings, it's not 3 p.m.

15:12

on a Tuesday, you

15:16

know, with the news that someone's been killed.

15:18

It's 3 a.m. on a Sunday morning and

15:20

a buddy is calling because he's upset. Maybe

15:22

he's had a little bit too much to

15:24

drink and he's angry or he's sad or

15:26

both because

15:28

his demons are eating him alive. And

15:31

I say to him, I love you, brother. Lay

15:34

it on me. And then we

15:37

talk and then we talk some more. And

15:39

I listen. And before

15:41

we say goodbye, I always say,

15:45

no matter what happened over there or

15:48

no matter what's happening to you right now

15:51

or no matter what will happen later on down

15:53

the line, one thing is

15:55

for certain and that's

15:58

it's okay. that you're not

16:00

okay. Thank

16:03

you. applause That

16:22

was Mike Scottie. Mike is

16:24

the author of The Blue Cascade, a

16:26

memoir of life after war. As

16:29

a former U.S. Marine and veteran of

16:31

both Iraq and Afghanistan, Mike

16:33

is also a founding board member

16:35

of the military charity Reserve Aid.

16:39

We talked to Mike after he told his story.

16:42

Telling Mike's story up there was a very, I think,

16:46

cleansing experience. Enlightening

16:49

in almost a way. The

16:51

friendships that you make in the military,

16:53

especially in kind of like combat units

16:55

where you're training for something put

16:58

all of you to harm's way together, and you're

17:00

relying on each other from

17:02

a survival standpoint, that forges

17:04

a very, very deep and

17:06

solid friendship that is, it's

17:09

different than most people would

17:11

experience. It really,

17:13

really is a brotherhood, and it spans generations.

17:16

You know, if somebody comes up to me and tells me

17:19

they're a Vietnam War vet and I can see it in

17:21

their eyes, they've been through some things, there's

17:23

just a trust that's there. If you know

17:25

that person that well, it's kind of a

17:28

baseline level of appreciation for each other. That

17:35

was Mike Scottie. To see photographs

17:38

and find out more about all of our storytellers, go

17:40

to themaw.org. Coming

17:47

up next, a story from 97-year-old

17:49

World War II veteran Dawn Seymour,

17:52

who was a women's Air Force service

17:54

pilot, also known as a WASP. or

44:00

you could do close hand to hand

44:02

but fighting with it and come out on top.

44:05

This is the type of that all the men had trained

44:07

that. But then when we got down

44:09

there, we were surprised that

44:11

the jungle warfare was

44:14

something that we were not used to, certainly. But

44:17

the main thing that surprises we

44:19

went down there and these were imperial Marines.

44:22

Now, have you ever heard the expression the

44:25

imperial Marines? The imperial

44:27

Marine is about six foot

44:29

tall, the average one of them. A

44:32

very able adversary in

44:34

any man's army. And this is

44:36

the type of people we came up against. Well,

44:41

at the time, I was, my mother got a

44:43

letter that I was missing in action. I

44:45

hadn't been missing in action. Had been detailed to

44:47

a group that was going onto the hills and

44:50

spy on the Japanese because they hadn't had a

44:53

colonel down there was making

44:55

fools out of the American army. His

44:58

tactics and so forth, they just befuddled everybody.

45:00

You know, what was happening? What was going

45:02

on? So we have to,

45:04

we have to find out what's going on. So

45:06

we observed from the hilltops and

45:09

we found out that the

45:11

airplane that was reading us every night, or

45:13

every two or three nights, and

45:16

disappearing into nowhere, was

45:18

coming out of a mountain. They had a mountain

45:22

that they had put up a plane on

45:25

a box car, a flat car. And

45:28

it was on hydraulic pulleys

45:31

and it would come out to the front and

45:34

the plane would take off and then they'd shut it up

45:36

again. A pool of hail, just

45:38

like it was a mountain that hadn't been disturbed.

45:41

And that's how he, when he got through with

45:43

his strafing and bombing, he would go back there

45:46

and close the mountain up. And look, there's nothing

45:48

there. When we found out

45:50

that and we reported that back to the headquarters, and

45:53

they took that mountain out, there's

45:56

no more of that type of stuff. But

45:58

then...