Memorial Day 2025

 I spoke with Andrew Biggio, author if The Rifle  a collection of stories of veterans that each carried an M1 Garand.

Powerful stuff. 

Then I spoke with Scott Powell, author of Rediscovering America. We talked about Memorial Day, it's roots and it's meaning.

You can listen here: Your American Heritage Memorial Day

Ed Bonderenka

(00:03:02):

So I hope you enjoy this show, I trust you'll enjoy the interview and thanks for listening.

Americans have been to war before. They've gone to war with the weapons they had paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld and the weapons of war they took were often state-of-the-art. The Brown Besses, Kentucky long rifles. The Model 1873 Trap Door Springfield, the M 1892 Krag Jorgenson. I bet you never even heard of that one. And then the Lee Enfield and the Springfield Model 1903 in World War I and then the M1 Garand that won World War ii. The Garand was for a short time upgraded into the M 14 until the M 16 replaced it, followed by its little brother, the M four. But the M1 Garand is iconic of World War ii. Our guest today wrote a book called The Rifle, inspired in part by his ownership of an M1 Garand and he has come out with the sequel, the Rifle, back to the Battlefield. Given that the anniversary of both the start and end of World War ii, were at the start of this month, I think September 1st and second, each one day apart. I thought it would be good to talk to the author about this part of your American heritage. Please welcome Andrew Biggio. Hi Andrew, welcome to the show.

Andrew Biggio (00:04:16):

Thanks for having me.

Ed Bonderenka (00:04:18):

So you tell us the story, how you got inspired. You bought a gun, right? Is that legal in Massachusetts?

Andrew Biggio (00:04:28):

It's a ghost gun, actually. A ghost M1 Garand, no. Yes, it is legal in Massachusetts. And it's funny because Massachusetts man was so freaking liberal on everything. But when it comes to veterans, somehow we are like outstanding with supporting the vets and I've seen around the country. But of course my project being centered around a rifle has had its complications. But yeah, so I'm an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, served in the US Marines and my great uncle was killed in World War ii, who I was named after. So I had been asking myself the prices of war, not just from having friends severely wounded overseas and having Marines killed in action, things like that from my own state of Massachusetts. But it was more of what happened to my uncle, that 19-year-old man that was a boy that was killed in Italy during World War ii. And by reading his letters that he wrote home from the battlefields that my Garandmother saved under her bed in a shoebox, his first letter to his mother was about the M1 Garand, how much he enjoyed shooting it, how much he enjoyed carrying it. So when I read that letter, I had to go out, purchase an M1 Garand, feel what he felt, hold what he held and try to connect to this long loss relative. But little did I know this journey that it would take me on.

Ed Bonderenka (00:06:06):

Wow, that's cool. Yeah, I've held an M1 Garand before. I wanted the opportunity to shoot one once. I've never been entranced by it. I think it's a very heavy rifle. And the stripper clip makes it kind of, I like the M14, but the stripper clip and the loading of it makes it awkward. But my dad carried one in World War II also. It's interesting you talk about your uncle and trying to connect with him. I'm looking back at my dad and he never really talked about the war that much. I was recently presented with his dog tag just a couple weeks ago. A cousin of mine had found it in a drawer, and that just totally surprised me. I've seen pictures of him in uniform. He, a lot of vets won't tell stories except to other vets, and I don't know why. In fact, you know what?

There was a movie called Battleground and it came out, I think in 1949, and the producer was Dore Schary. I remember this because Turner Classic movies told me all this about the movie. But I watched it when I was a kid with my dad. And it's interesting, the story is that the studio did not want to do a war movie so soon after World War II thinking that it would not do well because everybody wanted to put the war behind them. And yet it turned out to be a… Dore Schary kept pushing for this project and he got it. And it was a phenomenal success as a movie because veterans took their families to see the story they couldn't bring themselves to tell personally. And here it was somebody describing it through a movie and the family could see what their fathers and husbands went through.

(00:08:01):

And my dad, my dad was at The Bulge. He never talked about it much, but I was watching it when I was a child with him once. And he pointed out certain things. I think there's a scene where I think that guy, they call Little Abner a hillbilly kind of guy. He takes his boots off in a foxhole. My dad says, you never ever do that. And my dad, I remember my dad had having trench foot all his life with Desenex and everything from the war, and that was just something he could relate to, but he just never talked much about it. He told me about stringing telephone wire through trees and getting blown out because he was he. Now I'm really digressing, but my dad ended up being a communications guy who strung telephones out to the front lines and observation posts. And so he actually went out often before the wave of battle would go.

(00:08:56):

And oftentimes it caught him while he was still moving. Everybody, the wave of battles overwhelming him. He got blown out of a tree once he said by an artillery shell. Oddly enough, I joined the Air Force to stay out of the army or frankly the Marines, which you couldn't be drafted into anyhow, or the Navy. I joined the Air Force because that's not really part of the military. You know that being a Marine, and I'm sorry, I don't mean to offend my fellow Air Force vets. We were military and we did serve, but I ended up basically in the same career field with microwave radio. I ended up going with the forward observers and the Rangers and actually being a combat support role. So there is that. So you looked these guys up. Now I understand that you showed this rifle to a neighbor of yours.

Andrew Biggio (00:09:47):

And just to piggyback on what you're saying, I interviewed many Wiremen communications guys who I met. I met over 300 World War II veterans, and I'll get into how I did that. But yeah, I brought a Wireman, a cable communications layer. I brought him back to Italy for the first time since he lost his leg when he was laying wire and artillery plea explosion happened right outside. Monte Casino blew his leg off when he was 19. He went back 75 years with me and I showed him where he lost his leg and where his squad leader was killed in that same explosion. So I have a very nice connection to Wiremen and guys in the communications fields from World War ii. But getting to that, how I got to find myself going back with World War II veterans to show them their foxholes, to show them where they served overseas, it started with me putting that M1 Garand after I purchased that M1 Garand that I was reading about in the letters, I started putting it in the hands of World War II veterans and recording their reactions and their emotions 75 years after they used to carry that thing, sleep with it, eat with it, live with it, depend on it whether they were a Wireman or a cook or a Medal of Honor recipient.

(00:11:05):

Everyone was connected to this rifle. And it started off with a friend of mine, a neighbor who was 92, who was in the Battle of Okinawa. When I put this rifle in his hands, even though he was weak and old, he shoulder it. He raised it up in the air, he was smiling from ear to ear. And we sat there and talked about the Battle of Okinawa for three hours until he was physically exhausted.

Ed Bonderenka (00:11:25):

Oh wow.

Andrew Biggio (00:11:27):

Yeah. And what the race against time that transpired afterwards was when I asked him to sign his name on the buttstock of the rifle that I always wanted to remember this moment. I always wanted to never forget Joe Drago from I Company of the second 22nd Marine Regiment, six Marine Division. I said, sign my rifle. He signed it. And when I left his house and I looked down at that name on that rifle, I knew I wanted to get as many signatures as possible. And now I have over 320 names on this M1 Garand. You can't even see the wooden stock of it. It's covered in white ink with names, places, countries, just been a terrific mission.

Ed Bonderenka (00:12:10):

That's a great job. And as you talked to these gentlemen, did you talk to their, were any of their families surprised by the stories? Had they ever heard them before you elicited them?

Andrew Biggio (00:12:20):

Yeah, that's why I had to put pen to paper and start a book because it never really started off like I want to write a book. I wasn't even a good student. I didn't like school. You're cop, right? Yeah, I'm a police officer in Boston and I went into the Marines, came out, I did college, just do it to have the piece of paper and I wanted to still serve. And I went into law enforcement and studying and school and stuff that I was not interested really I did not like to do. And I really dreaded those kind of things later in life. But when I realized I was interviewing an XPOW from Gardner, Massachusetts, his name was Clarence Cormier. Clarence had served with the 106th Infantry Division during the Battle of the Bulge. And if those who don't know about that division, they had one of the largest surrenders since the American Civil War. They had a surrender almost 7,000 men at the Battle of the Bulge. That's how

(00:13:23):

Overran they were. And Clarence is 96 telling me this story with the rifle in his hands, remembering everything, how the Germans took his boots off and replaced his boots with old German boots and he had to cut the leather at the top out so his toes could hang out because the Germans boots were too small from him. And then they poked him and prodded him and got him on a box car, got him on a German train and sent that train towards Germany to put these prisoners in prison camps. Well, two American P 47 airplanes see this German train and what do you think they did? They stack straight it and little did they know these pilots are killing their own men killing these own American prisoners. And the Germans finally stopped the train. The Americans broke out and they laid on the ground and formed the letters POW with their bodies.

Ed Bonderenka (00:14:18):

Whoa, I hadn't heard that.

Andrew Biggio (00:14:19):

Yeah, big enough. So that when the planes were coming in for another dive, they bailed out last minute. Now Clarence is telling me this story and he is crying his eyes out at age 95 remembering this massacre. And when I left his house and heard the story, his daughter, to answer your question about family members being present and what the family members heard, his daughter grabbed me in the hallway and said, I've never, I always knew my father was a POW, but I never heard that story before. And I said to myself, if she doesn't know that story and she's the daughter, how many people across this country don't know that story? I have to do more due diligence and just start writing these stories instead of just getting a rifle sign for my own man cave. And that's what sparked the book The Rifle,

Ed Bonderenka (00:15:09):

As a mission. It's a mission you're on right now. You are still active pd.

Andrew Biggio (00:15:15):

Yes, I am.

Ed Bonderenka (00:15:16):

Wow. So you've taken a lot of personal time and I take it expense to accompany these vets to the former battlefields where they served. Is that right?

Andrew Biggio (00:15:28):

Yes, I have.

Ed Bonderenka (00:15:30):

Wow. Good man. Good man. You mentioned P 47. It's interesting that you did because you have a chapter in the book in the second book, Our Mary, which I think was dealing with P 47s

(00:15:51):

And a friend of mine, oh, I wish you could have interviewed him. His name is Nate Wieser. He died just a few days short of his hundredth birthday a few years ago. And he served active at Pearl Harbor for a year before December 7th. And his story always fascinated me because he was in radio himself and he had been given permission by his commander that if he was taking classes at the university in electronics, he didn't have to do mess. And so on December 7th, he was in the mess hall and the guy who was in charge of the mess hall resented Nate for getting out of mess duty. And on the seventh, at eight o'clock in the morning when the Japanese attacked and the first bombs fell, nobody knew what was happening in the mess hall. They just knew a tray had dropped. And the mess hall chief started yelling at Nate and blamed him for it.

(00:16:53):

And next thing you know, everything else is going to hell. And Nate got advice of what to do, and he stood outside, he was sent to the bottom of a hill and he was given a big walkie talkie at the time, a radio, and they had a Ma Deuce and they were stationed there waiting for the invasion of Hawaii. And he went on, Nate went on and they wanted to make him an officer. So they sent him back to officer candidates school in the States. That's when he realized he didn't want to be in management. He liked the hands-on approach. So Nate then was stationed in England waiting for D-Day and he was actually on a landing craft on D-Day. And so here's a guy, I don't know how often people survive, both Pearl and D-Day and then went on to be at the Bulge and he was involved in the three 82nd 365th fighter bomber group, and they worked on P 40 sevens and he got a bronze star for designing a circuit that they used to have two tubes.

(00:18:01):

Being in communications, I realized this, they had a transmitter tube and a receiver tube, and Nate figured out a way to make one serve as both, and he got a bronze star for an electrical, there would've been a patentable thing anywhere else, and it just kept the planes flying longer because if they had one tube go out, the other one was there and they could keep going and keep airborne. So yeah, there's all kinds of stories and folks I wish met him. Great guy. Great guy. So you want to talk about the pilot with the Armer? Do you recall that story offhand?

Andrew Biggio (00:18:38):

Absolutely, I do. So Ed Catrell is still alive. He's a hundred old, great name.

(00:18:45):

He's 101, he's still around. And I took him back to Belgium for the first time since the war and located his old runway where he used to take off every day during the battle. The bulge flew 65 missions. He lost two wingman, two of his roommates were killed during the battle bulge. One on January 1st, one on December 7th, excuse me, December 17th. And Ted Smith was killed on December 17th, was shot down by other me one oh nines while they went on a bombing raid. And Ed never realized that he had been buried in Holland. And when we went back to Holland, I surprised Ed with Ted Smith's grave and he broke down crying and it had been lifetime since he saw that name written out, especially on a cross. And the two of them were roommates during the Battle of the Bul and were close to each other. And we went back to Germany where Ted's crash site was, and the German farmer who occupied the land for the last 30 years says that his tractor has been kicking up pieces of that plane and gave us pieces of Ted Smith's plane.

Ed Bonderenka (00:20:01):

Wow. Wow. Yeah,

Andrew Biggio (00:20:05):

That's to be there with a 99 at the time. So Ed's 1 0 1 now, but to be there with a 99-year-old man and have some farmer German farmer handing him pieces of his buddy's plane, 78 years, 77 years, whatever it was after World War ii. This is the stuff I wrote about Ed as a pilot, ed on his combat missions, ed on bombing runs Ed on close support and then Ed returning. This is why it's back to the battlefield.

Ed Bonderenka (00:20:32):

You don't have a ghost writer, right? You wrote all this yourself.

Andrew Biggio (00:20:36):

Absolutely front of that.

Ed Bonderenka (00:20:37):

I want to tell our audience this book is, I don't know if it's well-written, but it's well-read. I'm enjoying the daylights out of reading these accounts. It's just phenomenal the way you present them. Some of the stories you tell, like the one character who was mobbed up, that was utterly fascinating that you just wonder, everybody in the military is not a saint. Everybody who comes out of the military is not a saint. And just because you're a veteran doesn't mean that you're necessarily a hero and boy. And that one guy you wrote about it was mobbed up. He's from Boston from your hometown, right?

Andrew Biggio (00:21:20):

Yeah, of course I changed his name. Of course.

Ed Bonderenka (00:21:24):

I didn't know that. Okay, good.

Andrew Biggio (00:21:26):

Yep, yep. Yeah, he's from the area originally Rhode Island did a lot of his crimes in Boston, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and got out of prison at age 98. It's like unbelievable.

Ed Bonderenka (00:21:43):

And that was an interesting story in itself. So it wasn't necessarily a war story, but it was a story of a veteran. I've been looking forward to this broadcast for a while and I'm finding it fascinating to talk to Andrew about his book. We have a couple minutes before the break, and I do have, I'm talking about people relating things that their parents have told them or their father's told them. Some people have moms who were in the war. My mom was a riveter at Willow run on bombers. She wasn't in, she wasn't a wack or a wacker, anything like that. But I did have an uncle who, I don't know too much about his war experiences except my dad told me that he was a Marine in the Pacific. And I don't know what island he was on, but he got the Bronze Star. He had come across, I think, I don't know if he was tracking them, but he had come across a Japanese patrol and he was one guy. I don't know how this happened. And he had a Thompson issued to him and he actually captured these Japanese and brought them back single handed. And the way he did it was he waited until he could catch them literally with their pants down.

(00:22:56):

Big tactical mistake. Don't everybody go to the bathroom at the same time. So yeah. Derek, how long we got? One minute. So I'm trying to fill time here. Andrew, talk for about 30 seconds.

Andrew Biggio (00:23:14):

With the rifle having 320 names, I was only able for both books, rifle part one and Rifle two is to do about 19 stories each of some of the best stories I've ever heard. A lot of people haven't heard already. And what separates this World War ii, but from the others is you have me, the youngest generation of America's veterans saying goodbye to the oldest generation of America's

Ed Bonderenka (00:23:37):

Vets. That is a way to look at it. It begs the question, you being a vet of the sandbox yourself, are you going to do an M four and do those stories

Andrew Biggio (00:23:50):

Maybe one day?

Ed Bonderenka (00:23:51):

Yeah. And after the break, we're going to talk about more of these stories and a couple of the stories, a couple of signatures that you had to remove and why you had to remove them. So Derek, 30 seconds is that music? Well, let's just play the music then. Folks. Come on back After the break with my guest, Andrew Bigo, author of the Rifle,

Speaker 5 (00:24:32):

We were made to be courageous. We

Speaker 6 (00:24:41):

Finally breaks the chains. We were made to be courage, front lines standing.

Ed Bonderenka (00:25:03):

Well, welcome back to the second half of your American heritage. And joining me is our guest, Andy Bigo, and he is the author of The Rifle and the sequel, which we're discussing right now. The sequel is The Rifle Back to the Battlefield. And once again, if you're looking for a good read, this is a highly interesting read. It's well written. Consider it was written by a Marine. I think it's amazing. I'm sorry, I had to say that. My best friend's a Marine and his son, son,

Andrew Biggio (00:25:37):

You forgot to tell people it's a calling book.

Ed Bonderenka (00:25:40):

No, it's well written. I love the stories in it. They suck you in. You're getting a feel. These people as you're reading about 'em and you're feeling, except for the one guy who was the mobster, they're feeling people you would've liked to have known. And so yeah, and like I was saying, my best friend is a Marine and his son, who's a good friend of mine also, he just joined the Marines and now he's in Okinawa As military, I'm a military police, so I'm familiar with Marines actually having served on Camp Lejeune but not eligible for the lawsuit. I know a little bit of something about that. So once again, folks, if you want to call in and ask Andy anything, 7 3 4 8 2 2 1600. But some of the other stories that you have in here are just really fascinating. And to be honest with you, I'm a little bit jealous of your being in this position to be able to do this. During the break, you were showing me a plaque. Are you looking at my guns?

Andrew Biggio (00:26:54):

Yeah, the jealous one. I'm looking at a 50 cal looking at a,

Ed Bonderenka (00:26:58):

Oh, I wish I could afford, I wish I could afford the to shoot the Ma deuce. Anyways, where were we? I totally lost that thought. So yes, during the break you were showing me a placard that you had presented to you by Donald Trump, in my estimation is the president of the United States. And you said that he had awarded you $75,000. You want to talk about that for a bit?

Andrew Biggio (00:27:34):

Sure. I ended up serving in Iraq with one of Donald Trump's bodyguard's son. And when President Trump did a rally in Texas where he raised I think about 16 million for veterans charities that were spread out through the whole country, my buddy nominated my charity and President Trump chose it and sent me a check for $75,000 from the Trump Foundation to which I helped my foundation, which was New England's wounded veterans at the time. And we put that money towards a marine who needed a double arm trance plant and also bought a brand new truck, pickup truck from Reno loss' leg in Afghanistan.

Ed Bonderenka (00:28:20):

Wow. Yeah. That's great. That's great. Do you still have a charity?

Andrew Biggio (00:28:26):

Yes, I do. I still actively help veterans who have been devastated injured in Iraq and Afghanistan or during training post nine 11 and to help fund the trips that I bring veterans overseas with. So we are a 5 0 1 C3 nonprofit. I don't collect a salary, as you mentioned, I'm a full-time police officer and an author. So every dollar raised goes to the right cause, to the right soldier, marine Airman.

Ed Bonderenka (00:28:53):

And if somebody wanted to contribute to that other than Donald Trump, how would they do that?

Andrew Biggio (00:28:58):

They fought we ride.com. They fought We ride.com. We do that because one of our biggest fundraisers annually is a motorcycle charity ride.

Ed Bonderenka (00:29:11):

My son Scott, who's a retired Navy, he was on submarines chief of the boat at one point, and he just told me recently about riding with some vets in Connecticut. So I'm wondering if it was a similar organization or that organization, but yeah, good work. Good work. Yeah. So we have some of these other stories. I mean, some of these guys are in their hunters, like your story about the lobster man, the guy who owned this restaurant and he's still active at a hundred years old, still active in his restaurant with a walker greeting guests. And you interviewed him about his experiences. You want to tell us a little bit about the lobster man?

Andrew Biggio (00:29:57):

Yeah, the lobster man was a gentleman by the name of Mike Linta who just passed away actually.

(00:30:02):

And yeah, he didn't get to see the finished product unfortunately of the book, but Mike was with the 35th Infantry Division at the Battle of the Bulge, again, another bulge story, and he was a medic. And this kid at 19 years old is left with his whole platoon wounded, severely wounded with stomach wounds, chest wounds, leg wounds. As his battalion is kind of pulling back, he's left to be with these wounded soldiers and in the freezing cold, and he knows they're not going to survive overnight. So he comes up with the decision to surrender himself in the 20 wounded men, he walked into the German lines, crossfire artillery into the German lines, negotiated for them to take care of the prisoners and take everyone prisoner, but also make sure that they're getting medically treated. And he saved some of their lives doing that, but it cost him six months in a prisoner of war camp just to save their lives. He didn't even have to do that, but he did it. He starved to save those men's lives.

Ed Bonderenka (00:31:07):

Oh, that concentration camp, I mean, well, you mentioned that it was the prisoner of war camp he was in was almost the equivalent of a concentration camp. The horrible, this was not St. Stog 13, this was not fun and games. This was much worse than Stog 17, obviously from the movie, the Great Escape. And unless I got my St. Staggs confused now, I'm not sure, but whatever, you know where I'm going with this. So I mean these guys were, like you said, starving, malnourished, cold freezing, and their rescue by Allied Soldiers just sounded so much like when the allies came and set the concentration camp victims free. You were saying that in your Go ahead.

Andrew Biggio (00:31:59):

He was in a prisoner of war camp in the town of bad orb, Germany, which I believe at the time I've interviewed so many veterans in prisoner of war camps. I think it was S Stalac nine BI could be wrong.

Ed Bonderenka (00:32:10):

The other book says that I recall that. Yeah.

Andrew Biggio (00:32:12):

Okay. And it was seven men to one loaf of bread by the time they got liberated. And that was a day.

Ed Bonderenka (00:32:22):

Yeah, yeah. Imagine that

Andrew Biggio (00:32:24):

He was pounds, he was 90 pounds when they liberated him.

Ed Bonderenka (00:32:29):

Now you mentioned that when he, in the book, you mentioned that when he actually approached the Germans, he found that his, what is his sergeant or his commander, I can't remember, which had already been captured and was somewhat happy to see that he was doing the right thing. Is that right?

Andrew Biggio (00:32:50):

Yep. I believe he saw his lieutenant who originally left him with the platoon and said, Hey, we're going to go get help. But by the time he got caught, he saw his lieutenant had been caught too. So luckily he did not wait.

Ed Bonderenka (00:33:03):

Yeah, no

Andrew Biggio (00:33:03):

Help was coming.

Ed Bonderenka (00:33:05):

No help was coming. So the young man made the right decision. It's amazing when young men in war, and this is something I've said about the military, young men in the military, at one point, I don't want to tell this story in a sense of agGarandizement, but I was Air force and there was something that happened in South Carolina and it was a horrible blizzard, absolutely horrible blizzard. And I read about it years later. I didn't know, I thought it was kind of local. It was across the whole state of South Carolina and North Carolina to some degree, and we had to truck into a town that took us 10 hours to go 20 miles to get to this backwood town, which my wife and I just revisited just last year. And just to see how it had changed, it hadn't changed, but I was actually, there was martial law declared and I was I think 20 years old at the time.

(00:34:11):

And when martial law was declared, I actually outranked the chief, retired chief master sergeant who was in charge of civil defense at the school, and he wanted to do one thing and the mayor wanted me to do something else and he called my commander and said, talk to him for a bit. He says, son, your commander wants to talk to you and handed me the phone. I says, yes, sir. And he says, son, you're in charge. Tell the retired chief master sergeant, I'll talk to him again. And I thought, holy cow. And only in the United States military, I don't think I've ever, I've been a plant manager, I've been a maintenance manager. I've never had the level of responsibility that I had as a young man in the US military, and I highly recommend it to, well, I'm not sure I'd recommend it these days with the people we have in charge, but it's quite the experience, isn't it?

Andrew Biggio (00:35:06):

Absolutely. Best thing I ever did, love that I served, didn't want to make a career of it. I knew a career out of it. I knew since I was a kid that I wanted to be a Marine and I wanted to be a police officer. And even if that didn't make me making a whole lot of money either, I love doing what makes me happy and I am living my dream right now and I lived my dream meeting all the men I read about my whole life and seeing in movies that influenced me to serve like Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers, like you said, these were the shows that displayed to the general public, to our country about sacrifice of veterans. Just like the movie you said back in the day, the World War II veterans enjoyed to put people in front of to show them, Hey, this is what it went through, even though I can't put it into words, this is what it looks like. This is what it went, what we went through. And I think that there's been a few good Hollywood movies that have done that, and I hope my book goes to TV or movies too, to keep that awareness of life, of what our veterans sacrifice for and why we stand for the flag and why we're patriotic, not because we're racist, not because we swing a certain way politically, but because of what these men did for where we are today.

Ed Bonderenka (00:36:23):

We owe a debt to those who fought for this nation. There's no two ways about it out. They often say that when you're in combat, you're fighting for the guy next to you and the Garand principles maybe go by the wayside, but these people, well, actually you and I also signed a document that said, we surrender the right to our life for this period of time for the defense of our nation, and please use it appropriately. I don't remember reading that part to please use it appropriately, but

Andrew Biggio (00:36:55):

Now it's not cool to be patriotic now it's not cool to love your country. It's trendy to not be any of that stuff, it seems. So that's why I love that my book plays a role in trying to reverse that. My social media pages, my Instagram pages, I have a lot of kids from 14 to 18 who follow me on social media or their parents write me emails saying thank you and how much they love it and they want to sign books for their son because they're not getting this. What I'm showing them, they're not getting it in high school to the extent at least.

Ed Bonderenka (00:37:25):

Well, that's true, and unfortunately with our education system, why somebody would want to stand up for what they are taught as a racist, homophobic, white supremacist nation who would want to support that because they aren't told about the promises of the US Constitution. They aren't told about the sacrifices that were made for them in prior battles so that they could live the life they do today. The freedoms that were paid for on the battlefield, and quite frankly, they also serve who watch you didn't have to be in a combat role. Often we see in some of the stories of the medics that you have that, in fact, I think there's a point where you say that some guys, the only time they picked up the M1 Garand was in basic training, and after that they were serving. They may have been a truck driver, they may have been a medic, they may have done some support function. Not everybody can be on the front line, but everybody can be frankly in danger. There was a lot of who were in bastion who weren't on the front line, and they were certainly in danger.

Andrew Biggio (00:38:41):

Absolutely. Everyone played a role, and that's what I wanted to represent on the whole rifle. I wanted to represent the whole war. So if you look at my rifle, you'll see names from every branch of service from B 17 pilots, to mechanics on ships to medal of honor recipients to Navajo code talkers, to black tankers, to female recruiters, to nurses, to doctors, to every job is represented on the rifle, every skill is represented, every battle is represented with the 320 names, not just names, but it's their legacy. When I speak at Memorial Day or Veteran's Day, I bring the rifle with me. I pick and name off the rifle, and then I talk about what that veteran went through. I share multiple stories. It's become now a microphone, and it was a microphone when I was putting it in the arms of all these veterans too.

Ed Bonderenka (00:39:41):

Excellent. Well done. In fact, you've had to remove a name or two from the rifle, is that correct?

Andrew Biggio (00:39:50):

Yeah, when I found out they were voted Democrat, I had to scrap, no, I'm kidding. I'm joking. Yeah, I know. I had a couple of liars, the guys that lied about their service, about lying really big time full of it, and they have been lying to their families for 75 years

Ed Bonderenka (00:40:15):

Now. I've read the one chapter in the recent book, chapter seven, A Case of Stolen Valor. I think the gentleman's name was Mel. Did you change that name by the way? That Good job. I'm glad you did. I wondered about that as I read that, because it's interesting how you handled that, that guy, if you don't mind, I'm going to tell how you told it to some degree. Basically, you met this gentleman and you asked him his story, and he was a local town hero, everybody. Oh, you got to meet Mel. And he went into the Legion Hall and everybody thought he was the man. He was the hero, and he was the real deal. And so you transcribed his story, and I'll be honest with you, Andy, when I was reading the story, knowing that this was a case of stolen Val right up front, I wondered, why am I bothering to read all of this stuff that he told you? It was all fabricated, but quite frankly, hit was quite the fabrication, huh? I mean,

Andrew Biggio (00:41:17):

Well, what's funny is that I originally wasn't going to call that stolen valor. I wanted you to be blown away and surprised by the end of it. But my editor said, Hey, listen, you don't want to dupe the reader just like you were duped. Let people know upfront. So I'm like, okay, if you say so, you're the editor. But I was originally going to just kind of throw, I was going to call the chapter pants on fire similar to liar, liar pants on fire. So you're trying to read the story and you're trying to figure out what the hell is pants on fire? And then you're like, oh yeah, you're

Ed Bonderenka (00:41:49):

Waiting for him to be in battle and his pants catch on fire, and then you get the real meaning of it at the end. That would've been

Andrew Biggio (00:41:54):

Good. Yeah, and I was very humiliated and embarrassed at first. Then I realized every real author and historian and researcher have all been burned. We've all been lied to. We've all been fabricated too. So it's nothing to be told. All

Ed Bonderenka (00:42:12):

Humans.

Andrew Biggio (00:42:13):

All humans. I also didn't want to give him any haters, any reason to say, oh, he doesn't know what he's talking about. His credentials suck because he brought a guy, a fake guy to Normandy, but it's happened to all of us. And the thing was, he wasn't veteran. He was a World War II veteran. He just was in the hundred first Airborne. He didn't jump into Normandy. He didn't escape capture and say all this stuff and all these different battles, and he was just a basic guy, and that's fine with me. I used to love and support the basic guys, and I still would've brought him to Europe on the premise that he was just a Joe somebody. But that happens is telling these lies since the 1970s, and it became part of his life.

Ed Bonderenka (00:42:59):

Sometimes when you tell a lie or you tell it long enough, it becomes your own personal truth and you start to believe your own lie. And I think it was interesting to tell that when you took him to where he was supposedly at the Chateau that was there and it was all there. Everything was there. It wasn't like, oh, now it's a shopping center. No, it's everything as it was when he portrayed himself as having been there and he showed absolutely no emotion, where are we now not recognizing here? He had it all clear in his head, describes it all. When you get there, there's no emotional attachment at all to the situation for him. And that began to cause you to challenge the veracity of his statements, right?

Andrew Biggio (00:43:48):

Yeah. That was the first clue. And then when I finally got the paperwork, I was like, you know what? I got to expose him before someone exposes me, and I didn't tell his family, and I didn't tell his kids because I don't want to humiliate them. It's not their fault, and I want them to think big of you. I want them to think Dad died a hero and that's it. And so if there's any questions about it, and I'll still deny it's who it is, but I thought it was very interesting, and I put it there for a lot of research and people to know that sometimes the greatest generation wasn't so great. They could lie, they could fabricate. It was hard to prove anything back then because the war was tough with record keeping. It was a world war. It was so many different cities, towns, villages, countries, 16 million World War II veterans. It wasn't easy to corroborate stuff.

Ed Bonderenka (00:44:43):

You mentioned the fire, the records fire of 73. That affected me personally because I was applying for a transcript for my community college of the Air Force credits, and I couldn't get them. And there was a while before I could even prove I was in the Air Force, it seems. And a lot of that got straightened out. Finally,

Andrew Biggio (00:45:05):

Are you sure you were in your Canadian liberation medal for running to Canada?

Ed Bonderenka (00:45:11):

Not me. No. No. Is that

Andrew Biggio (00:45:12):

Why it was birds?

Ed Bonderenka (00:45:14):

No, no, no. Sorry about that. In fact, quite frankly, I was evading the draft. I had a draft number of, I think 36, and I was sitting in training with my buddies and we were watching the evening news, and that year, Richard Nixon ended the draft at the number 32. And I want to a rebate. I want a do over, how do I get out of here? But I got to tell you, my four years in the Air Force I'm proud of. It's not a vet thing or look at me, I'm a vet. I'm happy with what I did for the country, and I'm happy for what the country did for me and how they entrusted me with the responsibility they did to be able to say I was a staff sergeant. And the US Air Force to me has a lot of meaning now, not the people who are in the Marines who think that we just sleep in the Hilton, but I understand that

Andrew Biggio (00:46:10):

The Hanoi Hilton.

Ed Bonderenka (00:46:12):

Yeah. Well, not the Hanoi Hilton, those guys. Yeah. Did you run into any, well, I'm sorry, of course, different war. Do you have any plans for another book on different, say Vietnam or even the Sandbox where you were? It's just you could do a series, you could do a TV series on Amazon Prime Easy on your book. I expect to see it episodic.

Andrew Biggio (00:46:34):

Yeah. I'm definitely not done writing. I am giving up World War ii. It's harder and harder. Chasing ghosts is very difficult to corroborate stories and get interviews. Sometimes I have to go to Boston to Bend Oregon just to hear someone else from the same division tell the same story. And that's rough. That's a lot of miles. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of time away from my family. So I will be moving on to different conflicts. I haven't decided which one yet, but this is in my, well, you know

Ed Bonderenka (00:47:01):

Something. Yeah. I'm sorry. I hate to interrupt you. We're getting short, but the Korean War, what they call the forgotten war, I mean, I've known people who were in the Korean War and actually a friend of mine, he died recently, pastor Max and boy, he got hit and he got sent to Japan to recover. When he came back, his whole unit had died in an attack. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that went on in Korea that a lot of people don't hear about.

Andrew Biggio (00:47:27):

Yeah. Well, it's harder to do. It's easier to find a World War II veteran than it is a Korean War veteran.

Ed Bonderenka (00:47:34):

No, I wasn't aware of that.

Andrew Biggio (00:47:35):

Yeah, because World War II went on longer, more veterans served in World War II than in Korea, and they're only like five years apart from each other. So

Ed Bonderenka (00:47:47):

A lot of 'em did double duty too. A lot of guys got out of World War II and just stayed on for career so that a lot of them just stayed in and made a career of it, and then some of those even went to Vietnam for that. But Well, we've got, Derek is kind enough to let me know. We have a minute left, and I was actually observant enough to notice it this time. So any closing? You got 30 seconds for closing. Andy Bigo, author of the Rifle.

Andrew Biggio (00:48:13):

Oh, just if anyone's interested in my book, they can find the rifle on Amazon, the rifle too, on Amazon and on Instagram, I'm at the rifle, and you'll love my journey and what I'm doing for these World War II veterans. And we're not done. We're going back to the 79th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge and the 80th anniversary of Normandy.

Ed Bonderenka (00:48:33):

Thank you very much, sir. Folks, come on back. Your American heritage next week. God bless America. America, bless God

_________________________________________________

Ed Bonderenka (00:49:49):

Good afternoon, and welcome to a special Memorial Day presentation of your American heritage. So we're talking to Pat the Handyman, and Pat's a friend of the show, and he's been a broadcaster on WAAM before and an advertiser, and he's also involved with the Vietnam Veterans Organization. Pat, tell us a little bit about that.

Pat (00:50:13):

Well, my involvement started after nine 11 when Gary Lilly, who was a cb, and he invited me out to an event to support the troops. So every year we a Memorial Day event at the Ypsilanti Township Civic Center at 7,200 Huron River Drive. I've been part of that for over 20 years. And we get the greatest speakers who talk about the greatness of America and of our fighting men and women. Also, I'd like to throw into this, that many of these people are still serving in our society, unknown heroes, that you would never know the things that they had accomplished in the military who live a life of dedication and service to their fellow men and to their country. And that's what it's all about.

Ed Bonderenka (00:51:06):

Okay. Yeah, and I've been to the last few years of events and particularly one o'clock Memorial Day, that's Monday. And give that address again. And you said that there's an event the night before also.

Pat (00:51:21):

Yeah, so 7,200 Uron River Drive. It's the Ypsilanti Township Civic Center on Uron River Drive, just east of Whitaker. You can only turn to the east there. And the evening before we retire, the flags Sunday, May 25th at about 6:00 PM they meet for the annual Memorial Watch Fire, and the watch fire is set up for soldiers to find their way home. So there's plenty I could say about it, but for me it's a deep and an emotional ceremony because I love God and I love my country, and I love my fellow man, and a way of serving is serve different groups that are available for me. It's with the American Legion Post 2 82 in Ypsilanti. They're local. I help out there as often as I can.

Ed Bonderenka (00:52:20):

Okay. Well, pat, I just want to make people aware of it. You don't have to get up early to be there at one o'clock Monday, show your support, show your patriotism, show your love of this country and your honoring the Fall and who have supported the Republic. So thanks, pat. I appreciate you calling in, and thank you very much. Thank you for your service.

Pat (00:52:42):

Thank you too, ed, for all that you're doing

Ed Bonderenka (00:52:44):

For the balance of the show. We're going to play a repeat of a show I did with Scott Powell concerning Memorial Day. So if there are any normal anomalies concerning political events, please excuse them. Okay, because there's a lot of good stuff in here. Why reinvent the wheel and have Scott come back and talk about Memorial Day again when we did it so well the first time? So I hope you enjoy it. My guest today is Scott Powell. Scott Powell has been an entrepreneur for 30 plus years, founding two companies, and he has been a fellow at Stanford's. Hoover Institution is currently Senior Fellowship senior fellow at The Discovery. He's been a frequent guest on national radio and tv. He's also published 250 articles plus in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Barron's Financial, New York Post, Washington Times, Chicago Tribune, and some two dozen, three dozen other newspapers and journals in the US and in Japan and Europe also.

(00:53:44):

And he's been called on twice to provide expert witness testimony for the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, so he knows a thing or two. Scott's also the author of the wonderful book, rediscovering America. We've spoken to Scott a couple times in the past about his book, and I suggest you look into it, buy it even. It is pretty good. I like it deals with each of the holidays. I asked Scott to come on today to talk about a few things. One of 'em is that it's Memorial Day weekend. Scott's article on Memorial Day has been published in a number of major venues. Scott, why don't you tell the folks where they can go to read this piece?

Scott Powell (00:54:26):

Well, it was published in Town Hall today, and then it'll be published in Newsweek and in the Federalist over the next few days, probably before Memorial Day. It's their discretion.

Ed Bonderenka (00:54:43):

Okay, thank you. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, and then we'll get on. You can tell us about Memorial Day weekend and Memorial Day and the holiday.

Scott Powell (00:54:55):

Well, this holiday piece on Memorial Day is really taken from a chapter in my book, although I focus a little bit more on the origin of the holiday and the importance of the meaning of that origin, which is tied to the Civil War than I did in the book, the book, it's more expanded. So I think the article is more powerful than the chapter in the book because it's very focused on this important meaning behind the spiritual meaning behind our Memorial Day because it's so important for us to recapture those same values because they have the power to save our country. So we'll talk about that, but let me back up a little bit further and explain why I wrote the book Rediscovering America. I have been an observer of America for a long time. My first book was written in 1988. I worked on it for four years.

(00:56:00):

So it was written really largely before that National View called it the most important book on politics in the election year 1988. And what I did in that book was I documented the growth and influence of the Marxist radical left in America and focused really on a constellation of organizations, really a network, we could call it a cabal of left-wing organizations, tied to the Institute for Policy Studies, which was located in Washington dc And these people literally hated America and sought to bring America down. So they built bridges to Congress and to the media, and that was back in the 1980s. That process has moved to pace and the network of left-wing influence and the encroachment and domination of our culture by the left had just grown and grown and grown until we got the Obama period. Barack Obama did more damage to the United States than any other president, with the exception perhaps, of Joe Biden, Who Was basically in a continuation of the Obama administration. So by the time the Trump administration came along, I could see that these folks are continuing to really confound the Constitution and tie up the Trump administration. Trump administration was pinned down because the left really had quite an amazing and broad continuous campaign against him that included the Mueller interrogation, which went on for almost two years, and then he had two impeachments and so forth. So I have readers of the articles that I've been writing. I've been writing primarily on economics for the Discovery Institute, and some of the readers commented when they saw that I had written an article or two on holidays. They found 'em very engaging, and in fact, I found that it was easier to publish articles on the holidays than it was on economics. So over the course of about four years, I wrote on every single holiday in the scope of nationally recognized holidays. So that's 11, actually, it's 10 holidays. I added an additional holiday. Well, it's 11 holidays, but I added an additional holiday, and that was Constitution Day, which is a national observance holiday. No one gets the day off, but it is a profound holiday when you think about it.

(00:59:03):

It was actually created with a great idea in mind, and that was that the public schools would take Constitution Day, they would suspend their normal curriculum for that day and focus only on understanding the Constitution. Wouldn't that be amazing if every year in our public schools there would be a focus on the Constitution, and of course the grade schools would be very elementary, but as you move through high school, you get a real understanding of how the Constitution works, its history, how profound it is in terms of providing checks and balances to mitigate corruption and really empowering people to be all that they want to be because the Bill of Rights protects our God-given unalienable rights to be free, creative, pursue our dreams and so forth. There's nothing like the Constitution in any other country. It was the first real constitution of its kind, both protecting people's rights, but also we recognize that it is the vote of the people. The people determined the legitimacy of our government. So our government has no legitimacy outside of what the people have voted for. They vote in the government, and in that process, it is legitimized. So

Ed Bonderenka (01:00:34):

I can hear my audience right now saying they didn't vote this one.

Scott Powell (01:00:39):

No, of course. Well, that was another reason why I've sort of dropped my other work, and I'm just focused really on trying to wake up Americans, because if we don't have honest elections, if we can't recapture electoral integrity, we don't have a nation right now. We're living really as a banana republic with an illegitimate government.

Ed Bonderenka (01:01:02):

Yeah. Yes, amen. In fact, I feel that we are frankly in the midst of an undeclared civil war right now. As I said in my opening prayer, we are at war. It's a spiritual battle. I believe that there are forces of good and evil, and no one less than Tucker Carlson said as much recently, and I think many people's eyes are becoming open to this. When you see the gross, gross perversion that's being foisted on the American public, what is the motivation for doing something like that? It's got to be the demon speaking in your head saying, yeah, go ahead, do it. So given that we are in the midst of this, I feel like Abraham Lincoln, given that we're in the midst of this great battle, I really want to quote him. I was going to play some audio of Abraham Lincoln, but I couldn't find any.

(01:01:53):

So we're in the midst of this great battle, like his second inaugural, and we find ourselves at a juncture. What are we going to do? And it's not to shoot, one is to pray. There are other things that we can do, but we have to realize we're in this battle. That's step number one, realize you're at war. And I thought, what great war spawned Memorial Day? Oh, the Civil War. In fact, I posit that we're in the third civil War. The first one was actually the what we call the Revolutionary War. But when you look at who is fighting, who, what was a civil war? Memorial Day is all about celebrating the war dead, not celebrating. You'd come up with a word for it.

Scott Powell (01:02:39):

I was celebrating in a phrase or a sentence. Memorial Day represents the spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation, which led to the reunification of the nation. I believe that the southern states were justified in their seceding. In all honesty, I think it was a mistake for Lincoln to have assembled 75,000 troops and marched them into Virginia going into the South. And by doing that, he basically took the first step towards a civil war, and that could have been avoided. The reality is that when Lincoln ran for president, he didn't run on an anti-slavery platform. He ran on a broader platform, but the people in the south, they had many grievances against the north, even before Lincoln was elected. But they really felt that Lincoln would encroach on their state's rights. And so it is very sad that we paid such a big price, but in price, we are really free of the past. We're free of the legacy of slavery because what happened in the Civil War, even though it started on the issue of secession, and interestingly enough, the union was losing the war for the first 16 months of the Civil War,

(01:04:37):

Robert E. Lee, he was the best general. And in fact, Lincoln recruited him and he turned down Lincoln because Robert E. Lee felt that he might have to go to war against his friends and family in Virginia. He couldn't do that. And so he just said, no, I can't. I'm not going to take that. And then he got recruited by the Confederate Confederacy and he took that job. Scott, he was an amazing military leader. He was only one of two people in all of West Point history, which is nearly 200 years old to graduate with no demerits, only two people. One of 'em was Robert E. Lee. He was an amazing Christian. He brought more soldiers to Christ, more people to Christ than probably any other military general in the history of the country.

Ed Bonderenka (01:05:34):

To my knowledge, he was also opposed to slavery. He

Scott Powell (01:05:37):

Was opposed to slavery. He sure was. It wasn't just a statement or a belief. He acted on it. He freed his own slaves. He had very few. His father had, I think three slaves that he inherited. Those were freed. And then when his wife, Mary Es, who was a descendant of the Washington family, of the George Washington family, it was really Martha Washington that Mary Es was a descendant from Martha Washington.

Ed Bonderenka (01:06:18):

I didn't know that.

Scott Powell (01:06:20):

Yeah. She married Robert E. Lee, and when her mother died, her parents died. They inherited all of their properties. The Arlington Plantation. There are actually two plantations that they inherited, and I think they had 169 slaves on those two plantations. And Robert E. Lee said about doing, preparing to free those slaves. So they really cared about their slaves and they educated them, they cared for them, and they wanted to prepare them for their freedom. And Robert Lee, there was a lot of paperwork. He just didn't free your slaves. You had to kind of do paperwork and a filing. And Robert Lee did that even after the Civil War started. He was still working on this family matter, and he was able to get it completed before Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. So Robert Lee has the stature of freeing his slaves before Lincoln freed the slaves through the Emancipation Proclamation. See, he was a remarkable man in many ways.

Ed Bonderenka (01:07:30):

Robert Lee was from Virginia, and so was Thomas Jefferson. As far as I'm given to understand Thomas Jefferson didn't free his slaves because he was legally bound not to, that he could not free them. I think he could free them on his own death or something like that, but I'm not too clear on that. But there were constraints against Thomas Jefferson even freeing his own slaves. And in that state, geez, we're going down a road here, a number of roads, and I love this. Trust me, I wanted to talk about Memorial Day, and you and I talked a couple of days ago about Lincoln, and you said what you said in that conversation, I thought maybe this is the guy I want to talk to about Lincoln because I had somebody else on, and we got totally away from that. And I've heard so much disparagement about Lincoln that he led the destruction of the Republic as we know it. And I mean, there's certainly two polls to this. He either saved the Republic or he destroyed it. And you sound like you're somewhere in between. But let's talk about the roots of Memorial Day, which is of course a civil war. And then get back to that topic perhaps.

Scott Powell (01:08:45):

So after the Civil War ended with the Confederate defeat, and that was in 1865, I think in April, the surrender at App Courthouse in Virginia took place. And then of course, it was incumbent on healing the nation. And unfortunately, only a few days after that surrender, Lincoln was assassinated at the Ford Theater in Washington dc. So Lincoln, who was a very compassionate man, there's no doubt about it, his Christian character and faith grew tremendously through the Civil War because he was really at great odds to see this huge loss of American life. He's the president of the United States and the United States. The Civil War is a mass slaughter of American men.

 

Scott Powell (01:09:55):

It was heartbreaking for him. And he was in prayer on his knees many times, and he couldn't understand. He thought that he could bring about the reunification quite quickly upon assuming office, but not so the Civil War. In the first 16 months, Lincoln, the Union forces were being defeated by the Confederate forces and Lincoln prayerful man that he was really struggling and he knew that the Confederates prayed to the same God that he did because look, the South was probably more Christian than the North culturally.

(01:10:40):

So you're praying to the same God. And Lincoln can't understand why God isn't showing him favor because after all, he's the President. He thinks he's doing the right thing, but he's losing. So through that, he had, I call it an epiphany or an answer to prayer, but he came to realize and felt that God said to him, you need to align the cause of the war with the abolition of slavery. Up to that time, the cause of the war was over secession. Slavery was not an issue. God made it an issue. And Lincoln then, who was against slavery, said, yes, I need to make an emancipation Proclamation. However, he was advised not to release this emancipation Proclamation from a position of weakness. So he sort of made a bargain with God that I will release this emancipation proclamation when we can push the Confederates back down into Virginia when we can have a victory. So it was after the Battle of Antietam that the Union finally had a victory over the Confederates that was thinking it was in September of 1862. And so that was the signal God delivered. God answered that prayer. So it was time to release the Emancipation Proclamation, but again, he was counseled Do it at an opportune time. He chose January 1st, 1863 to release the Emancipation Proclamation. The Civil War then was a war to free the slaves.

Ed Bonderenka (01:12:32):

Excellent. And let's continue along those lines after the break. Folks, come on back after the commercials and join us. My guess is Scott Powell, and we're talking about Memorial Day and actually Lincoln, the Civil War and the battle we're currently in. Come on back. Your American heritage.

Ed Bonderenka (01:13:47):

So folks, welcome back to your American heritage this Memorial Day weekend. And I'm, as we said earlier, speaking with Scott Powell, author of Rediscovering America and a number of other books on the economy and very knowledgeable person we're discussing all the Civil War, what caused the Civil War. Of course, Memorial Day is in response to the Civil War. And Scott, before we go on much more about Lincoln, I have a couple of things I want to ask you about that since you seem knowledgeable on the subject and the Civil War ends. And so then something named Decoration Day comes up. What prompted this?

Scott Powell (01:14:27):

Well, what happened was, I mean, in the aftermath of the end of the war, there was a need for reconstruction. Unfortunately, Johnson, who was the vice president, assumed the presidency. Johnson was actually a Democrat from the South.

Ed Bonderenka (01:14:47):

Yeah, amazing.

Scott Powell (01:14:48):

Isn't it amazing? And he was not the man that Lincoln was. And so he didn't handle reconstruction as compassionately, probably as Lincoln would have. So the nation was still in a divided situation, but there were in two places in the South, on the one year anniversary of the end of the war, groups of women decided that they wanted to make a gesture of forgiveness and reconciliation. So they chose to decorate with flowers, to put flowers on the grave sites of union soldiers as well as their own Confederate soldiers. And they did this in two places in Columbus, Mississippi that was in the, I think it was the Friendship Cemetery, which came out of the Battle of Shiloh, which is one of the famous battles. And there were 1600 odd people buried in that cemetery. And they decorated equally the grave sites of union soldiers that had slaughtered them only a year and a half before.

(01:16:09):

And their confederate, their fallen fellow Confederate, and then in Richmond, Virginia, the capital Confederacy, there was a prison, a military prison camp on Bella is off in the James River, right off Richmond. It was part of Richmond actually. And so there were soldiers that died there, and they were all union soldiers. It was only union soldiers who were imprisoned there. So there was another group of women that decided to do the same thing there. That was on May 30th, by the way, of 1866. And that's maybe one reason why for many years, Memorial Day was celebrated on May 30th, and that was the official holiday that was all changed when the Uniform Holiday Act was passed, which basically made holidays fall on Mondays so that federal workers and American families could have three day holidays

Ed Bonderenka (01:17:14):

And everybody could figure out what the holiday was about while they go to the sales for sheets and picnic. Yeah.

Scott Powell (01:17:22):

So anyway, so what's profound about this is that the Confederates were defeated. They were the vanquished, and they were also, their territory was really destroyed by the Union forces Sherman's march to the sea.

Speaker 4 (01:17:41):

Oh, yeah.

Scott Powell (01:17:42):

Most of the battles were on Confederate soil. And so there was a lot of destruction and a lot of ill will towards those Yankees that did this to them. And yet these women in a Christlike way chose to forgive the Union soldiers putting flowers on their graves. This was picked up by one of the big newspapers in New York commenting that this was a gesture, a remarkable gesture of reconciliation. And so Memorial Day has its roots in forgiveness and reconciliation. Later it became, when it was turned into Memorial Day, it then became more a broader holiday remembering those who died in all the wars that America fought. But I felt this year to focus on forgiveness and reconciliation because we're a very divided nation right now, and the profoundness of Memorial Day is that there is a way back. There is a way to forgive and to reconcile, unfortunately, because there's no cultural center anymore in America, and there's a war against Christianity. I think it's a very tough course to bring for the people on the left, the loony left, if you will, the America haters. I don't think that they're capable emotionally, mentally, spiritually, of moving towards reconciling with the patriotic side of America.

Ed Bonderenka (01:19:27):

As I was reading your article, I was thinking as we come out of this, this is a battle. This is a war between these two forces, and they're going to have to be thoroughly vanquished just like the south was. They're going to have to be, I'm not blood thirsty. I'm not talking about killing all of them, but they're going to have to have their noses rubbed in it, just like American forces felt that Germany had to pay. No, you don't get to surrender. You have to pay. You have to see what you did. And thus you can repent of what you did. And like you were saying, the South and the North were both basically Christians to some degree had a Christian culture, and that's a good point to come from for reconciliation. But how are we going to come out on the other side of this and do the same thing? That's going to be difficult.

Scott Powell (01:20:20):

Well, let's go back to Nazi Germany. How did we handle, how did the world deal with Nazi Cy? They surrendered, Hitler committed suicide, but they didn't let that close the war. They also had something known as the Nuremberg Trials where justice was pursued, adjudicated. And I believe many people went to their death that were involved with the Nazi regime. So I think that as you point out Ed, I think that for us to get through this civil war, there has to be justice. There has to be an adjudication of justice and people who have violated the Constitution, people who have committed treason and sedition, and there are many that have that are Americans have committed a treason and sedition. They should pay the price for having committed those crimes. And that might be the ultimate price that might be death.

Ed Bonderenka (01:21:31):

You have to show that there are serious consequences. You can allow them to pray. You can give them a chance to repent, but there has to be a price to pay because if there's never a price to pay, it will happen again. People will not know the seriousness of it. We just can't. It'd be like the streets of any major American city where Soros das are letting everybody out of jail. You get what you let happen, you get more of it.

Scott Powell (01:21:57):

That's right. That's right. So we're in a period now of great wake up. I mean, I think that what our nation needs is a combination of a new reformation and combined with a renaissance reformation and a real revival, a spiritual revival. If we have that foundation, I think we're more likely to bring a solution to our division, which would compel, I think, a process of some ad adjudication right now. The founders were very wise in creating a system of checks and balances because they felt that each of the branches would check the other and check the corruption of other branches, that it would mitigate corruption overall. But right now, we have a lot of corruption in all three branches in the federal government. And so it's very hard to get an adjudication in our current legal system. So would it be military tribunals that'll about justice?

(01:23:06):

I just don't know. But I think we need to think out of the box on how we adjudicate crimes against America. We had, in 2020, we had a true insurrection. That is to say that the legitimate election of a president was denied by vote fraud, by an orchestrated process, and you could focus on many different things. Let's just focus on the a hundred Biden laptop, which had all this documentation of corruption of the Biden family, the FBI came into possession of that laptop in December of 2019. They had that laptop for 10 months before, more than 10 months before the election. What did they do? What did the FBI do? Nothing.

Ed Bonderenka (01:24:02):

Oh, I'm sorry. It's not that they did nothing. They hid it, they hit it. They actively hid it. They didn't just do nothing. There was an activity there where they buried it and they hid it. And man, I remember when I first heard about that laptop when I was watching Tucker Carlson, he had Tony Bobinski on there, and I thought, this is it. This is it. And then none of the major news organizations were reporting at it. All the American people weren't allowed to hear about it. You had Facebook and Twitter shutting down any discussion whatsoever on it, and people losing their positions as they spoke about it. People are fearful to say anything.

Scott Powell (01:24:45):

Yeah, what we've seen is that our government has been infiltrated, the media has been infiltrated, the government agencies have been infiltrated. And we saw this right through the COVID period. I mean, no sooner. Of course, COVID broke out in the last year of the Trump administration. But what we saw during that time and saw into 2021 and even in 2022, is that the government agencies are violating the First Amendment. They are in a very real way, they controlled what the media would say. They had portals to Twitter to Facebook, and they would say, well, you have to de platform these doctors that are recommending alternatives to vaccination. So we had a complete blackout on alternative therapeutic preventative treatments like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, which were proven drugs safe. They've been around for a long time. They're also very cheap. But as you may remember, and I'm getting off topic here a little bit, in order for the vaccination regime to go forward and be released, there had to be no other treatments available in order to get emergency use authorization, which allowed a fast tracking of these vaccinations.

Ed Bonderenka (01:26:29):

Yes.

Scott Powell (01:26:30):

So that they really didn't go through proper testing. We know that Now.

Ed Bonderenka (01:26:36):

Go ahead. So

Scott Powell (01:26:37):

They had to actually violate people's First Amendment rights and block people from even considering when talking about these alternative therapeutics because they wanted to protect the vaccination regime. And of course, we now know that it's very, what's come out of the vaccinations is very, very controversial. We've seen a lot of vaccination injury and even deaths that are very, very alarming. But this pattern continues. Look, in these commerce hearings, they brought in whistleblowers from the FBI that really were alarmed about the politicization of the FBI that the FBI had been corrupted in a very significant and broad way. It basically had been politicized, and they decided they were going to blow the whistle. Well, what's happened to these whistleblowers, the FBI has fired 'em, has made their lives miserable, and several of them can't be found. Now we don't know where they are. This, we are living in a banana republic now.

Ed Bonderenka (01:27:55):

It's the war. It's part of the war. It's the clandestine war against us. And agents are being taken off the table. And man, I don't want to sound like some tinfoil hat guy, but boy, you know what they say, conspiracy theory is just history ahead of its time. It's a, yeah. So

Scott Powell (01:28:15):

That's what compelled me to, all these things have compelled me not only to have written this book Rediscovering America, but to spend, to really give more of my time to educating the people about what's really going on. Because we are a country of the people by the people and for the people. And if the people in America wake up, we can take this country back

Ed Bonderenka (01:28:44):

And wake up entails a number of things. It's actually a, to stop watching entertainment that just distracts you from what's really going on to actually be motivated. Find out why is my 401k drying up? Why is it costing me twice as much for hamburger than it used to? And we need to be able to inform our neighbors of what these are. We need to be able to approach our friends and neighbors. And when they say, oh, that's just politics. No, actually, politics is what governs your life, whether you like it or not. And you need to know what's governing in your life.

(01:29:27):

You said something, and I think we've covered Memorial Day and reconciliation pretty good. And we are going to have to come to that place of reconciliation. If we're going to have a nation at some point, the battle must cease. And you mentioned something about why the Civil War started and that it wasn't about slavery, but just yesterday, I was reading Abraham Lincoln's speech of, I think it was 1858, a house divided. And it pretty much spoke to me that the whole battle was going to be about slavery. That he saw that coming and that we had to avoid being a house divided. And then he ended up governing a house divided, and he didn't get a chance to bring back together. That house divided, like you said, it was left up to Johnson, and that just didn't go over so well. He was basically a Democrat and the party of slavery. They were virtually the party of the South actually presided over the end of the war. I mean, really, it's like, go ahead, write a book and put that in there. See how many people believe that. Most people don't even know that. We

Scott Powell (01:30:46):

Don't. No.

Ed Bonderenka (01:30:48):

So let me ask you your take. Was Lincoln a good guy or bad guy?

Scott Powell (01:30:53):

I think he was a good man, a very good man. Did he make political mistakes? Was he a classic politician? That is to say equivocating on issues for political ends because he was a wartime president. I think he took some liberties that he couldn't have taken in a peace time. For instance, he suspended habeas corpus. I mean, that's a sacred, right.

Ed Bonderenka (01:31:21):

But I've heard that. I've read that. I have read about that. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm also told, I've read other sources that say he had the right to do that at that time, that it was constitutional at that time because of the situation he was in. Whether that's true or not, I'm not a lawyer. I just know I've read both. But I got to say one time. One time, habeas corpus as opposed to everything else that was going on. You implied, and I'm not arguing with you, I'm investigating here, you implied that he could have avoided the Civil War, that perhaps he was responsible, personally responsible for the Civil War. I have heard that claim made that why did we attack the south? And I've always said, well, they fired on Fort Sumpter first. And then other people said, well, why was Fort Sumpter still there?

Scott Powell (01:32:12):

Right, right, right. No, the Southern states had a lot of grievance, much like the early colonists had grievances against King George and British rule. The Southerners had a similar series of complaints, and they were over taxation and representation, much like the Revolutionary War period, because in the South, Charleston was a major port for exporting. And there were duties that were collected there by the federal government. Large sums of money in taxation. We didn't have an income tax.

Ed Bonderenka (01:32:56):

It was tariffs.

Scott Powell (01:32:58):

A lot of the financing of the country was done with tariffs. And many of these tariffs were collected from southern, the southern economy. And the Southerners felt that they got nothing back. That the money went off to Washington, DC and was used by the federal government, primarily for the northern states. And they had very little, they felt shortchanged. And this was a long running complaint that they had. So there were reasons before the Civil War for the south of being at odds with the North. But I think because Lincoln was known as being an anti-slavery president, they finally decided that once he was elected as president, that they would secede from the country. And when they did secede, they didn't suspend the Constitution. The Constitution, the Confederate constitution is identical to the Constitution of the United States, except in some small details.

Ed Bonderenka (01:34:12):

Yeah, slavery. I remember that one. Okay. Well, geez, we've got about,

Scott Powell (01:34:19):

I think if it had been, look, there was a lot of anti-slavery sentiment in the South and had had political pressure been brought to bear, I think the South could conceivably have weaned themselves from slavery. They had to suspend slave trade by 1808 because that was put into the Constitution in 1787.

Ed Bonderenka (01:34:46):

And I'd also read where they were in some articles I read where they were fighting to get it back there was the Nebraska settlement. Darn, this is really good. But we've got about one minute left, and maybe we can pursue this another time if you'd like, because I've always found it fascinating. But folks, we've been talking to Scott S. Powell, author of Rediscovering America, Google his name, Scott Powell and Memorial Day. You'll find a number of places you can read this article. And Scott, I want to thank you again for joining us today. You're welcome. Person here, and I value your input. Thanks for joining us. This has been

Scott Powell (01:35:28):

Thank you.

Ed Bonderenka (01:35:29):

Oh, you're welcome. This has been Your American heritage. And folks, come on back next week and we'll talk some more. God bless America, America, bless God. And have a great Memorial Day weekend.