Jay Vargas Pulls the Trigger
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from the Delta Sky Club to the Jet Bridge. This is elevating customer experience. This is Delta with T-Mobile for Business. Take your business further at t-mobile.com slash now. It was a late fall day and four men walked through a field, rifles in hand. The tall dry grass rustled as they moved. They were alert, listening for the sounds of other bodies moving through it too, watching for a shadow or a bend in the grass.

They went as silently as they could, ready to shoot as soon as they locked in on a target. The four men were the Vargas brothers from Winslow, Arizona, all of them Marines, and they were out hunting. The first brother caught a deer in his sights and shot it. He'd bagged a buck. Eventually, the second and third brothers did too, but the fourth brother, Jay, the youngest, couldn't seem to get one. He kept retreating to their campsite, putting his gun down.

His brothers cheered him on, tried to keep his spirits up. This was their yearly trip, a family tradition. They'd all grown up hunting together. Now they vowed to stay out until the last brother got his buck. They didn't want him to miss out, but he just couldn't seem to shoot his rifle.

I can picture it. The coolness of the day, the warmth between the brothers, the bright blue western sky and the call of birds overhead. And like an electric current underneath it all, panic from Jay, who couldn't pull the trigger. Who, in fact, would never pull a trigger again. He couldn't shoot a gun without remembering all the times he'd done the same thing in Vietnam. And he had something else to remember Vietnam by.

A Medal of Honor. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and this is Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery in combat at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. Each candidate must be approved all the way up the chain of command, from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House.

This show is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. The story I'm going to tell you today is brutally violent, and there's a reason those graphic details matter. It has to do with the aftermath of that violence. We'll look at why it's so important to talk honestly about what happens on the battlefield and how veterans tell their stories.

if they can even bring themselves to tell them at all. This episode is about Jay Vargas and a story that took him more than 30 years to tell. But once he did, it changed things. Not just for him, but for hundreds of other men and women just like him. By 1968, U.S. combat forces had been fighting the war in Vietnam for three years.

That January, the North Vietnamese military had launched a series of surprise attacks throughout South Vietnam, a campaign known as the Tet Offensive. It was the North's attempt to bring about a decisive end to the war. A young Marine captain named Jay Vargas was there. He was 29, on his second tour of Vietnam.

From the outset, he could tell it was going to be even tougher this time around. Here he is, remembering back on that tour. I got in it in late 67 and through 68, which was the worst time to be in Vietnam. We knew that the North Vietnamese were coming. And it was starting to turn ugly throughout the South Vietnam, everywhere. The Tet Offensive didn't end the war, but it changed the way people in the U.S. saw Vietnam.

Watching the carnage unfold on the nightly news, the American public realized that, despite what they had been told, the conflict wasn't coming to an end. The government had lied. This could keep going for years. The North Vietnamese leadership knew that popular opinion was souring on the war. They saw an opportunity: strike again, hard. And maybe then the U.S. would lose heart for the war altogether. So in the early spring of '68, they planned another campaign.

This one centered on the U.S. supply base of Dong Ha. The base was set about 12 miles south of the demilitarized zone, on the Bô Dư Quả Việt rivers, and it supplied all the friendly forces in the northern part of South Vietnam with ammunition, supplies, and medical support. It was strategically very important.

A series of abandoned villages sat across the river from the base. The largest one was Dai Do. There, the North Vietnamese military secretly built a sprawling maze of bunkers and armed positions pointed directly at the Dong Ha base. Then they quietly filled Dai Do with thousands and thousands of North Vietnamese army troops, all of them setting their sights on Dong Ha.

Their plan, take the base by surprise, overwhelmed the roughly 700 Marines that were stationed there and essentially shut down U.S. operations in that part of Vietnam. The entire area was covered in lush vegetation, which made it easy to hide what they were doing. The American command had no idea what was coming.

On the last day of April, 1968, the North Vietnamese Army, NVA for short, struck the U.S. forces at Dong Ha. They opened fire on a U.S. Navy riverboat, killing a sailor and wounding several others. The lieutenant colonel in command of the Marines, William Weiss, sent a company, around 200 men, to investigate the abandoned village of Dai Do.

Then when we found out how extensive the enemy positions were, they were very well constructed bunkers, they were very well camouflaged, mutually supporting. In order to take one bunker you had to come under the fire of two or three others, and it had obviously taken them a long time to build them. They had been in that area for quite a while to construct those positions.

The Marines that we sent were immediately drawn into battle. By the afternoon, a third of them had been killed or medevaced out. Remember, there weren't that many U.S. troops at Dong Ha to begin with, fewer than 700. They would end up facing down more than 10,000 NVA. One of those Marines stationed nearby was Jay Vargas. Jay was charismatic and soft-spoken, with regulation, short dark hair, and olive skin, quick to grin.

He was the company commander of roughly 170 men. Jay believed that his guys, the Marines of Golf Company or Company G, were some of the best in the service, or anywhere. Hard, tough, 17, 18, 19-year-old Marines. I'm not kidding you. They were the toughest, meanest little bastards I've ever seen. In fact, they called the whole 2nd Battalion of the 4th Marines the Magnificent Bastards.

They were tough, and they would have to be. Lieutenant Colonel Weiss needed all of those magnificent bastards to drive the NVA away from the base. Jay and his Marines were stationed several miles from Daidou. Because of NVA fire, it was too dangerous to fly the men in. So Jay's company was going to have to get there on foot. By the time they started marching, it was dark, and it took them more than five hours to get down to the battle.

They were dogged the entire way by an onslaught of artillery and rockets. Motor shells fell all around them, exploding into the soft soil, sending shrapnel everywhere. Quite a few of us took some hits. I didn't lose anyone, but we were all, you know, I had one leg messed up and everyone had shrapnel in them.

In fact, Jay's leg was really messed up. But he knew that if anyone realized it, he would be taken out of the action. So he had his leg bandaged and he changed into a clean pair of pants and swore the medic who helped him to secrecy. He wouldn't leave his company. By the time the men made it to base, they were exhausted. But there was no time to sleep. They were told to continue on to the fighting. That was the orders of, the minute you land at Dido, I want you to continue and push on through.

Early in the morning of May 1st, Jay's company got on boats and were ferried across the river to Dido. Once on land, they were 700 meters away from the village. First, they had to cross a rice paddy, and that paddy turned out to have NVA gunners on three sides. Jay and his men crept forward through thigh-high grass. It rustled as they moved. The men were exhausted but alert, their ears hyper-attuned to every noise.

watching for a shadow or a bend in the grass. Guns in their hands, ready to shoot as soon as they locked in on a target. Shots seemed to be coming at them from every corner of the paddy. And then they came to a horrifying realization.

The shots were coming from inside the paddy, too. We had spider holes popping up all over the place. You know, guys that were in the ground with bamboo on top of them, they would jump up and just start shooting us. And, you know, I started losing guys, but we were killing some, too. It's like a horror movie. The ground would shift, and a Marine would fall, dead or wounded. Jay realized they had to knock out the machine gun nests on the perimeter if they were going to survive.

So he took four of his men and made a run for them. But they were fish in a barrel. One after another, those Marines were wounded until Jay was alone. I ended up all by myself up there. But I knocked out three heavy machine guns and killed 14 in the trenches that I got hold of. And that opened us up and we came through and continued the attack.

Let's take a second to think about Jay's tone here. He's chuckling as he talks about this insanely stressful moment, facing down three machine gun nests on his own. It may seem odd, but it's a pretty common reaction to traumatic experiences. Laughter keeps the pain at arm's length.

And in that moment, at that rice paddy in Vietnam, Jay didn't allow himself to feel any fear at all. I had too much to do and I didn't have time and for some reason I was pretty doggone calm. Finally, Jay and his men got through the rice paddy and arrived at the village of Dai Do. They had been fighting for almost 24 hours straight and it just kept going.

They began to fight through the village, bunker to bunker. For a moment, it seemed to them that the enemy was pulling back. They might be able to secure Dai Do, maybe even get some rest at last. But the North Vietnamese knew they had way more soldiers than the Americans, and they began a ferocious counterattack.

The Marines were exhausted, short on ammunition. They were down to fewer than 80 men. Lieutenant Colonel Weiss told Jay to try and find somewhere stable and stay put. Night was approaching, the second night in a row without sleep. And by then, Jay and his remaining men had been pushed into a cemetery.

As Jay looked around, he realized it was full of freshly dug graves. Graves of NVA men who had been killed and buried during the previous days of fighting. If his men were going to make it through the night, they needed foxholes to hide in for shelter. So Jay made a grim decision. The only way that we could survive, and I know this sounds cruel, but I told everybody, dig up the fresh graves, put the body on the side. That becomes your foxhole.

The young Marines climbed into the graves. They were running dangerously low on ammunition, and soon enough, the cemetery was totally surrounded by NVA. He ordered his Marines to fix their bayonets. Once the last of the ammo was gone, Jay knew they would be fighting hand-to-hand in the cemetery through the long night.

These powerful stories of those who helped protect our country are brought to you by LifeLock, the pioneer and leader in identity theft protection.

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So start protecting your identity today. Save up to 40% off your first year of LifeLock Identity Theft Protection. Go to lifelock.com slash metal to save 40% off. Terms apply. It's a special thing to be a member of Navy Federal because it's a member-owned, not-for-profit credit union. Their members are at the very heart of our mission.

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Plus, they offer resources like best cities after service to help ease veterans into civilian life and best careers for military spouses to help military families. So if you're a member of the Armed Forces, a veteran, a DOD employee, or a family member, you're eligible. Become a member today at NavyFederal.org. Navy Federal Credit Union. The members are the mission.

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I was joking with my producer Jacob the other day, who's one of Pushkin's most valuable employees. I hired him to be my assistant years ago in the most random manner possible. I think he saw a message board posting somewhere and I interviewed him for basically 10 minutes and said, go for it. I made a wild gamble on someone and got incredibly lucky.

But let's be honest, you can't rely on getting lucky when it comes to hiring people. Lightning's not going to strike more than once. You need a system and you need tools. And that's why LinkedIn is so important. LinkedIn is more than just a job board. They help connect you with professionals you can't find anywhere else. Even people who aren't actively looking for a new job.

In a given month, over 70% of LinkedIn users don't visit other leading job sites. So if you're not looking on LinkedIn, you're looking in the wrong place. Hire professionals like a professional and post your job for free at linkedin.com slash gladwell. That's linkedin.com slash gladwell to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Stories about war heroes often start in a kind of quiet way.

the young person who wants to give back, who finds himself in the military somewhat by surprise and then comes into his own. That's not really the Jay Vargas story. If you can be destined to be anything, he was destined to be a Marine. ♪

He was born in 1938 in Winslow, the youngest of four sons. I'm a product of an Italian mother and a Hispanic father, immigrants to this country. Family life revolved around his indomitable mom, Teresa, who was something of a local institution. She owned a Western goods store, and she spoke five languages fluently, including Navajo. His father was a newspaperman who worked for the Winslow Mail.

Jay was close to his brothers, although they were much older. The two eldest had joined the Marines when Jay was just a little kid, and the third brother, Joseph, followed suit. Two of us, Angelo and Frank, served in World War II on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Joseph was just ahead of me, and he served in Korea in the Choson Reservoir, which is an ugly battle. And, well, Korea was an ugly war.

When his brothers came home to Winslow, they never spoke about what they saw in combat. There was nothing out of the ordinary about that. People of that era rarely spoke about their war experiences. It was too hard, if not impossible, to reflect back. It was as if by not talking about it, they could strip away some of the terror.

Jay flirted with the idea of becoming a professional baseball player. In fact, he was recruited into the minors and played AAA after high school. But in the back of his mind, he had always imagined a future in the service. I knew where I was going, you know, and I used to play Marine out there with a broomstick by the backyard. Teresa, on the other hand, had a different idea.

She was fine with him joining the military. Both Vargas' parents were deeply patriotic and proud of their son's decisions to serve. But she did not want him to become a Marine. She was afraid that I was going to go into the Marine Corps. And she says, what's the matter with you, you know, stupido? You go into the Navy, they sleep in white sheets, big pillows, you know, they smoke big cigars, and, you know, they sometimes stand on a ship, and it's just a great life, and please don't go into the Marine Corps.

She made his brothers promise to dissuade Jay from the Corps. She told them, he will not go in the Marine Corps. You will talk to him and he will not go in the Marine Corps. You understand? Of course, Angela and Frank, you know, yes, Mama. One Sunday, when the family had gathered for their big family meal, the brothers agreed to sit down with Jay and talk him out of the Marines. And then their mother left the room. The meeting lasted about 30 seconds because Angela leaned over and says,

Jay, if you don't go in the Marine Corps, we're going to break your frigging legs. So Jay set off for the Marines, but only after he had promised his mom that he would make it home. On the night of May 1st, 1968, that promise was seeming more and more difficult to keep. The NVA knew that we were surrounded. They had us good. And nobody could help me, you know. Everybody said, they're not going to make it.

Jay and the Marines of Gulf Company, hiding in those fresh graves, knew they had to protect their hard-won perimeter at the cemetery in Daidou. We fought all night. Jay got a call on the radio from the admiral in charge of the flotilla of gunships on the Coiviette River. He said he was calling in fire to back Jay up. It was scary just listening to the rounds come in, but it blew half the countryside away, you know.

You could hear the enemies screaming and yelling because those guns were just wiping them out. The hours wore on. Night turned to the haze of dawn. Another morning without waking up, another night without sleep. And the Marines kept fighting, killing and killing and killing to keep from being killed.

Again, Jay sounds so casual as he's talking about this. Delivering the L.A. Times. But the situation could not have been more dire. Just as Jay had feared, his men ran out of ammunition.

They were hitting these dark-on-NVA with entrenching tools and helmets and rocks. Whatever we would kill them with, we did. Finally, it was daylight. And for some reason, that felt inexplicable to Jay. The enemy pulled back. The Marines climbed out of the graves. In the quiet, Jay could finally see exactly what they had been up against. And I'll never forget the look on all of our faces. I'm sure I was the same way. Our eyes were as big as owls.

And he could see exactly what they had done. There was blood smell all over the place. We had 384 dead NVA around us that we had killed all night. And keep in mind, my Marines haven't slept yet. None of us have. So this is probably 48 hours that no one had even closed their eyes. It was just continual fire.

All war is hell. That's a cliche. And it's a fact. And Vietnam was particularly brutal. We've all heard about the atrocities there, the cruelty. But Jay Vargas always speaks of his adversaries with deep humanity.

These weren't nameless, faceless soldiers he was fighting. He knew they were people. They were well-trained. They were smart. You know, the troops had to search pockets every once in a while when you knocked one down, and you'd find a laundry ticket from Hanoi, you know. And I'm going, Jesus, this guy came all the way from Hanoi, and he's got a laundry ticket here, and he's thousands of miles from his doggone home. You find pictures of their wives and children, and that gets to you.

So that morning, in that moment of quiet, when it felt like there was a reprieve, Jay and his men reburied the soldiers they had disinterred the night before. I honored those warriors. We made damn sure that we put the bodies back in the grave and covered them up. Jay's company had started that march two days earlier with more than 150 men. Only around 40 were left. They had been fighting for two straight days. They needed rest.

but the enemy hadn't actually retreated. A decisive victory was too important to the North Vietnamese cause. They were determined to take back Dai Do. Jay and Gulf Company met up with the remnants of three other Marine companies. They'd been resupplied with ammo, but it hardly mattered. At that point, the entire group of fighting Marines was around 300.

against an enemy that's still numbered in the thousands. We're killing every step of the way, but the NVA are holding tight, and they're making us pay for every foot of ground we took. This is another Marine who was there at Dido, Vic Taylor. It's like a tone poem with the horrors of war. Small arms fires are shredding everything above ground. Leaves and twigs and branches are coming down, banana trees getting knocked over, bullets snapping, cracking by.

Now and then make that spat sound when they hit meat. Somebody'd yelp. Rockets and RPGs flying. Whiz. Bang. Flash. Bang. Grenades going in and out fast as people could draw. The M26s and Chi-Coms passing each other in the air. It was a fight. It was a fight. And the enemy, they weren't down and defending anymore. Man, they were up and coming on. Threes and fours and sixes and eights popping out of the brush. All cammed up. Leaves in the helmets. Weapon held out in front.

little spiked bayonet shining, coming to the trot. Give them credit. They were soldiers, that's for sure. But also at that time, these beat-up, bloodied, bone-tired, raggedy-ass teenagers turned Marine. Beat-up, bloodied, bone-tired. Good God. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Weiss was sitting at a command post near the fighting, cigar gripped between his teeth. He knew how fruitless their prospects looked, but then he got the order.

Keep pushing forward. We didn't have anything left in us. What meager troops we had were tired, had very little sleep. They were hungry. They were low on ammunition. When I was ordered to continue the attack forward and retake Dintau, I told them, hell no, we can't do it. We're just out of steam.

The command had realized that if the NVA were flushed out of the villages and into the rice paddies to the north, they would be totally open to the U.S. fighter planes overhead. The more that the Marines could push the enemy into the open, the more the planes could mow them down. They had to keep going, finish the job. But the Marines themselves were being mowed down. And Jay's company was right in the middle of it.

A lot of us were out of ammo. The NVA was out of ammo. You know, we were killing each other with knives and bayonets and everything we could possibly survive. Jay called in airstrikes and mortar fire from the Navy gunships to help drive the enemy back. And just at that moment, his commander found him. Colonel Weiss came up and kind of fell in the trench with me. He says, what the hell's going on? And I said, you better get out of here because I've called artillery on myself.

and my Marines, and they know it. I told my Marines, I said, "Hey, grab your butts because I'm bringing it in." And the colonel turned around, and just as he turned around, he took three shots in the spine. My two radio operators took shots in their head immediately. And so I was bringing in artillery and naval gunfire, so I had three radios in my hand, and my radio operators were already dead. It was clear that they had to get out of there if anyone was going to survive.

So I told everyone, let's start going back. And we went back into a defensive position. But what happened, and some of the Marines didn't make it all the way back. And the NVA were still amongst us just running around because they had no ammo. They were trying to figure out what the hell to do. And so we're jumping on each other. I'm dragging the colonel back almost, I think it was 75 yards. I kept dragging him back and he was bleeding like a pig. Remember what I said before about laughter and trauma?

Here it is again, as Jay looks death in the face. And this is a funny part, and he loves to tell this story. I was great with a rifle, because I grew up shooting rifles all my life, but I couldn't handle that .45 pistol. So at that stage, I had my pistol out when I was dragging, and this NVA soldier came out of the riverbank and lifted his weapon to ding us, and he could have wiped us out.

I fired his pistol and it hit the ground first, bounced up and hit him in the stomach. And I'll never forget the expression on his face like he said, I'm sure he said in his language, how in the shit did you do that? And he fell back into the river. And I'm laughing now because General Wiest still tells that story. He says, God, don't give Jay a pistol. Give him a grenade, give him a rifle, but don't give him a pistol. He's laughing at a situation that's not just serious, but deathly serious.

But what the hell else are you going to do? How does a person make sense of an experience like this? It's insane. It's tragic. But laughing at the absurdity is part of how Jay makes sense of his own story. Here's the thing. When you listen to as many veterans telling their war stories as I have, you start to see patterns. A casualness. A detachment sometimes. When talking about an incredibly stressful situation. As though to spare the listener the details.

Because how could we really understand? And something else. In descriptions of battle, the enemy is often described as a wave or a wall or a cascade, a force. There's rarely an acknowledgement of the underlying humanity there. You almost never hear the story about the enemy soldier who's like, how in the shit did you do that? But Jace saw the men.

The men fighting next to him, those fearless young bastards who wouldn't give up, but also the well-trained soldiers that he was killing. He saw it all, and it was more than anyone should have to take. That final afternoon on the battlefield in Daidou, Jay ordered the surviving Marines to fall back. The remaining men had to get to safety.

But he quickly realized that seven of his Marines couldn't move on their own. I had some Marines that were wounded, and I went back and I said, I'm going to go back for my Marines. So I went in seven times and brought back seven Marines out. Seven times, through the men killing each other with bayonets and knives and rocks.

They were battered, bruised, and worse, particularly a young Marine named Sammy. When I was taking a colonel back, Sammy was sitting on a tree there, and his body had blown off his left arm. And the steel had burned him so bad it wasn't even bleeding, but his arm was laying on him. And I said, Sammy, I'll come back to get you. So once I got the colonel back, I went back for Sammy. And I put him on my back. Thank God he was small.

We got to moving backwards and he turned around and he said, Skipper, I want my frigging arm. And I said, you got to be shitting me. So I had to turn around and go back. And the SBA is running around. And I got this guy.

So I bent down, and I said, "Okay, I can't reach your arm." And he said, "I can get it." So he reached out and got his arm, and I got him back. The last time I saw him, the corpsmen were taking him to the choppers, you know, and he had his arm in his chest right there. He was—for some reason, he thought he could put it back on. They were all in shock. You can tell that, right? The way Sammy thinks they can reattach his arm, the way Jay is laughing, even as he's horrified. Jay made it home.

Colonel Weiss made it home. Those seven men Jay saved made it home too, but none of them made it home the same. These powerful stories of those who helped protect our country are brought to you by LifeLock, the pioneer and leader in identity theft protection.

Now you may think, I'm smart, I'm careful with my data, I don't need to worry. But the truth is, a lot of your personal information is in the control of others, like your doctor's office, your bank, your insurance provider. All it takes is one breach of any organization that has your info and you could become a victim of identity theft.

LifeLock is a leader in identity theft protection and empowers you to take control of your identity, alerting you to more uses of your personal information and fixing identity theft if it happens. Guaranteed. Or your money back. LifeLock offers extensive, proactive protection, and all plans include the LifeLock Million Dollar Protection Package.

So start protecting your identity today. Save up to 40% off your first year of LifeLock Identity Theft Protection. Go to lifelock.com slash metal to save 40% off. Terms apply. It's a special thing to be a member of Navy Federal because it's a member-owned, not-for-profit credit union. Their members are at the very heart of our mission.

That's why they offer exclusive rates, discounts, and tools to help you achieve your financial goals, like earning and savings of $461 a year, an average credit card APR at 6.81% lower than the bank industry average, and 24-7 access to award-winning customer service from their stateside member service representatives.

Plus, they offer resources like best cities after service to help ease veterans into civilian life and best careers for military spouses to help military families. So if you're a member of the Armed Forces, a veteran, a DOD employee, or a family member, you're eligible. Become a member today at NavyFederal.org. Navy Federal Credit Union. The members are the mission.

Navy Federal is insured by NCUA, equal housing lender. Dollar value shown represents the results of the 2023 Navy Federal Member Giveback Study. Value claim based on 2023 internal average APR assigned to members compared to bank industry average credit card APR published in the Federal Reserve's G-19 Consumer Credit Data Release.

I was joking with my producer Jacob the other day, who's one of Pushkin's most valuable employees. I hired him to be my assistant years ago in the most random manner possible. I think he saw a message board posting somewhere and I interviewed him for basically 10 minutes and said, go for it. I made a wild gamble on someone and got incredibly lucky.

But let's be honest, you can't rely on getting lucky when it comes to hiring people. Lightning's not going to strike more than once. You need a system and you need tools. And that's why LinkedIn is so important. LinkedIn is more than just a job board. They help connect you with professionals you can't find anywhere else. Even people who aren't actively looking for a new job.

In a given month, over 70% of LinkedIn users don't visit other leading job sites. So if you're not looking on LinkedIn, you're looking in the wrong place. Hire professionals like a professional and post your job for free at linkedin.com slash gladwell. That's linkedin.com slash gladwell to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

Jay returned from the battle at Dido with multiple wounds. A bullet had gone through his side, and he had been hit by shrapnel. Not just that initial wound in the leg, but shell fragments in his right arm and through his mouth. The physical damage was serious, but it would heal. The mental toll was something different.

He didn't talk about what had happened to him on the battlefield. He wouldn't. Not even to his brothers. Even though he knew they had been through terrible combat experiences of their own. What kind of words could possibly sum up those three sleepless, bloody days? There are no words. That kind of experience lives inside you and surfaces even in the smallest moments, like a hunting trip with your brothers, when suddenly you find you can't shoot a deer.

My oldest brother, Angelo, sensed that I couldn't pull the trigger. More than 30% of Vietnam veterans suffered from PTSD. And recent studies have shown that for veterans, talking about traumatic experiences, in other words, telling their war stories, is the first line of defense against PTSD. But Jay just wouldn't. He assumed that once you came home, you didn't talk about it.

Like that's the way it was supposed to be. Not even when he found out in May of 1970 that he was going to receive a Medal of Honor. Jay's mom, Teresa, had passed away just a few months earlier. And in her honor, Jay decided that he wanted to have her name, not his name, inscribed on the back. Mom died about, I think it was about four months before, almost six months before the presentation. Would have been the highlight of her life.

So I called the White House one night asking for the Marine liaison officer whom I knew. I forgot that it was like 4 o'clock in San Diego, but it was 7 o'clock, 7 p.m. in D.C. And the phone was ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing. And so all of a sudden, about the 15th ring, somebody picks up the phone and he says...

"How can I help you?" And I said, "My name's Jay Vargas." He says, "I know who you are, Jay." And I said, "I have a favor to ask of Colonel Caulfield." And he said, "Well, what's the favor?" I said, "I'd like to have my mother's name put on the back of my medal." And he says, "That's easy. I'll take care of that. Don't worry about it, Jay." He says, "Is your family coming?" I said, "Yeah, my brothers are coming. Mom's not." He says, "Oh, I'm sorry that you lost. So that's why you want to put the name on the back of the medal?" I said, "Yes, sir."

And he says, I can take care of that. And I said, sir, who the hell am I talking to? He says, this is President Nixon. It was Dick Nixon. His exercise route in the evenings was to go around all the corridors. And later on, he told me he was on his evening walk. And he says, that damn phone kept ringing and ringing. I just opened the door and I picked it up. There's not a lot to love about President Nixon. But this is one of the only stories that makes him sound kind of awesome.

Anyway, Jay saw his medal as a way to acknowledge the magnificent bastards who served alongside him. You can still hear the catch in his voice when he talks about them. You know, when I wear my medal, I'm putting it on for everyone that served with me in that particular battle, and especially for those that sacrificed their lives. But if I could pound this damn thing into powder, I would give a little bit to each one of my raids. He was now famous for his actions in combat.

And if you win a Medal of Honor, people expect you to talk about what happened. But Jay couldn't. Jay went on to serve in the Marine Corps for almost 30 years, never speaking about what he had seen during that three-day battle. After it was over, I think I just wanted to continue on with my career. Post-traumatic stress kind of leaked into my brain, like it has to many of the warriors.

Finally, Jay's brother told him that he needed to go get help. And he did. And he took on a new challenge: helping other veterans with their trauma. He became the secretary of the California Department of Veterans Affairs and moved up from there to the U.S. Department. He traveled to hospitals, speaking to veterans. He learned more and more about what those wounded warriors were going through and what they were lacking.

He advocated for a program to support their mental health after they had left the hospital. He did incredible work in suicide prevention for veterans. This post-traumatic stress is a toughie. It's a silent killer. So I'm traveling the countryside and visiting commands, wounded warriors, women veterans about PTSD and suicide. As he did on the battlefield, he fought tirelessly to save their lives.

Jay Vargas was in his mid-60s before he could finally tell his own story. I'm going to be honest with you. It took me 36 years before I could sit here and talk about this. I tried to do it with the Medal of Honor Society. You know, we couldn't get through the first taping, couldn't get through the second tape. It took Jay three tries to get it down. That's a lot of what you've been listening to today. When he decided to tell it, he told the whole thing.

Not just the glory, but the trauma too. Not about killing some anonymous enemy, but about honorable men who carried pictures of their mothers in their pockets and laundry slips for shirts they'd never wear. By telling his story this way, J. Vargas shows what soldiers give up during war, what they have to sacrifice of themselves to get through a battle like Dido. They go to fight and they see terrible things.

Those things stay with them. Nobody should have to live with those kinds of horrors, but they do. Jay dedicated himself to helping veterans negotiate their stories, to live past them. And when he told his story, he did it in such a way that the rest of us could see the trauma firsthand. And from three nights of unbelievable carnage and pain, he distills a very simple lesson.

Life is too damn precious just to throw away. That's the case on the battlefield and when you come home from it too.

Special thanks to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, the American Legion,

U.S. National Archives, and the Reagan Foundation. If you want to learn more about our Medal of Honor recipients, follow us on Instagram and Twitter. We'll be sharing photos and videos of the heroes featured on this show. We'd also love to hear from you. DM us with a story about a courageous veteran in your life. If you don't know a veteran, we would love to hear a story of how courage was contagious in your own life. You can find us at PushkinBonds.com.

I'm your host, Malcolm Gladwell.

I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and I'd like to take a moment to talk about an amazing new podcast I'm hosting called Medal of Honor. It's a moving podcast series celebrating the untold stories of those who protect our country. And it's brought to you by LifeLock, the leader in identity theft protection. Your personal info is in a lot of places that can accidentally expose you to identity theft.

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The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Since it was established in 1861, there have been 3,517 people awarded with the medal.

I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and our new podcast from Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia is about those heroes, what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. The Medal of Honor podcast is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. This is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History.

Hey there, you've got to check out season two of Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power. It's going to be epic.

To catch you up, Sauron has returned and nobody in Middle-earth is safe. Season two is all about the greatest villain of all time. And if you're like, I'm not into that stuff, think again. If you love action, fantasy, or drama, you'll love Rings of Power. Season two of The Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power, premieres on August 29th, only on Prime Video.