Hey, guys, it's Mike Rowe, and this is the way I heard it, the only podcast for The Curious Mind with a short attention span, this episode, number one, 73, and it's called Visiting Hours, Visiting Hours, wrote it just the other day after I received an email from a fellow named Wesseh who puts things together over at the American Veterans Center every year around Veterans Day.

I do something for these guys. Usually I you know, I narrate some sort of retrospective. A couple of years ago, I did something on the Doolittle raid. Every year. It's something a little different, but it's a great celebration they put together for our veterans. And this year is kind of a big deal. They're commemorating the end of the Second World War, the 75th anniversary of the end of World War Two.

And Wes asked me if I would like to interview a couple of fighter pilots, highly decorated fighter pilots, legends, in fact, well on into their 90s, but still sharp as a tack.

And I said, obviously, of course, I would love to do that. So I'm going to be doing that shortly. And I'll tell you where you can watch the interview and and how you can check out the whole event sometime in the next couple of weeks.

But it got me thinking, you know, about truly about the greatest generation. There's not much I can say that hasn't already been said. But I remember I don't know when's the last time you've been to a nursing home or a hospital to visit anyone? Visiting hours are such a such a big deal to people who otherwise can't get out of their situation. And I last time I went full disclosure, it was it was years ago.

It was when my when my grandmother was in an assisted care facility, I go in there and I'd visit her and then I'd visit with some of the other people who were in there. And I remember talking to an old soldier and and just seeing his eyes light up. You know, he didn't know me really, but he knew of me. He had seen dirty jobs and I had a chance to visit with him. And it's so easy to forget, you know, the impact of of a visit to somebody who otherwise can't get out.

So that's what inspired the story you're about to hear. I I hope you like it. It's a little different than the kind of thing I typically do on the podcast. But it it's important, I think, and kind of personal. So I hope you like it.

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Mike, you won't know what you're missing until you see it for yourself. NetSuite, dotcom. Mike Anyway. This is the way I heard it. Visiting hours. According to the president of the United States, America would never see another soldier like him and the president was probably right. Certainly no one soldier had ever seen so much action. Two World Wars, a stint in Korea and more battles than he could recall.

Now retired at long last, the old soldier is relaxing in the place he calls home, looking down on the field of green and the wide river that flows below. It's a good home as homes go at a fine place to welcome his family, who come to see him every day. In fact, there they are right now, strolling up the driveway to say hello. The old soldier is always available during visiting hours, always a lot of men his age wind up alone and forgotten, especially in a place like this, but not him.

Family members are always dropping by to spend time and share a story or keep him up to speed on the latest news from home. Just last week, his daughter Susan had stopped by to tell him his grandson had been accepted to Harvard. How about that? And just yesterday, Cousin Billy brought word the old general store where he had met his wife, God rest her soul, was now a Starbucks. Well, time marches on.

These visits from loved ones are lifelines, just like the letters he received in France all those years ago, June 5th, 1918, one day after the Battle of Bellwood. He was only a private back then, a teenager from Baton Rouge among the first wave of Marines to charge into that unspeakable meat grinder on the Marne River. He was still in shock from what he had seen on that terrible day, the withering machine gunfire, the constant shelling and the brutal hand-to-hand combat.

But then a letter from Bakersfield arrived with his mother's writing on the front, a letter from home which he read in a muddy trench surrounded by dead friends, what his kid brother had made the basketball team.

When did he grow so tall?

Sally, the little tomboy from down the block, was Biloxi's Buttermilk Festival queen. Unbelievable.

And Freckles, the cocker spaniel, just had a litter of ten puppies, all of which were being named in his honor and given away to good homes around Boise.

With every sentence, the young Marine had felt a little more human, a little more determined to make it back home to the people he loved. Obviously, that determination paid off, not only did he make it back from Bellwood, he made it back from the Ardern, the battle of Hebra and Samael, each one bloodier than the next for his heroism. He was awarded the Medal of Honor, as well as the Victoria Cross. Unprecedented, but the old soldier was still a young man and just getting started when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Guess who was sleeping peacefully in his bunk aboard the USS Arizona? He was a lieutenant by then, one of 1500 sailors assigned to the mighty battleship when a torpedo bomb fell from the sky and sent them all toward the bottom of the Pacific. Somehow, he had made it back to the surface, only to find the ocean burning with thousands of gallons of gasoline and littered with hundreds of his shipmates burning to death in the salty brine. It's a miracle that anyone survived that terrible morning.

And yet, just six months later, there he was again in the Coral Sea and then again at the Battle of Midway, Corregidor, Mindanao and Lucene.

After that, it was back to Europe where he stormed the beaches of Normandy, fought the Battle of the Bulge and distinguished himself at Anzio. Through it all, no matter where the war raged, those letters from home always found him little lifelines that reminded him of why he was over there in the first place. His family could never know how much that meant to him or how much their visit today would lift his spirit. His final battle had taken place in Korea 14 November 1950, the Chosin Reservoir, a cold front from Siberia, sent the temperature plunging to thirty six degrees below zero.

He was a captain by then, commanding a few good men who were slowly freezing to death around him. It was the bloodiest battle he'd ever seen, even though the blood of his wounded men froze before it had a chance to flow. Again, he never expected to find himself among the survivors, the frozen chosen as they were called, but neither did he expect a visit from the president of the United States who stood before him long after his return and proudly declared to all assembled that there would never be another soldier like him.

As his loved ones draw near the guards, step aside, leaving him to relax in his usual spot while getting the latest updates from Biloxi or Boise or Baton Rouge, or was it Bakersfield? Honestly, it's hard to keep it all straight. He is old, after all, an old soldier whose real family includes every dead American who never made it back and all the loved ones who still grieve their collective passing. The president was right, there will never be another soldier like him because today every soldier's DNA is kept on file so his or her remains, no matter how small, can be positively identified.

Thus, the old soldier really is the last of his kind, a legendary warrior who everybody has heard of but nobody knows, a faceless hero who looks down on a field of green and the Potomac River that flows below there in a place called Arlington. You can find him still waiting for visitors and relaxing for eternity in the tomb he calls home.

The tomb. Of The Unknown Soldier. Anyway, that's the way I heard it.