Military Heroes

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone.
On September 11th, 2001, that's 25 years ago, in just a few months, a naval officer named Kevin Schaeffer was working at his desk inside the Pentagon when American Airlines Flight 77 tore through the building. Though his injuries were severe, he survived and went on to dedicate the next decade of his life to hunting Osama bin Laden.
A soldier named Mark Little survived not one but two IED explosions in Iraq, led his men through the second one while still in shock, and later founded a nonprofit to help other wounded veterans. And a pilot named Danielle, nicknamed Purple Thirio, climbed into a cockpit for the first time and knew that this was what she was doing, her life's work. These are some of the heroes next door, the American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines who went to war, who Martha Raddatz, ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent and co-host of ABC This Week on Sunday mornings, profiles in her new book. I think it's fair to say most Americans, civilians who don't serve in the military increasingly don't know anyone who does, have only an abstract sense of who these people are. Martha Raddatz, while also covering global and Washington affairs at the highest geopolitical levels, also wants to make sure some of their stories are known to the broader public. Again, Martha Raddatz is ABC News' Chief Global Affairs Correspondent and co-anchor of This Week. She covered every major military conflict of the post-911 era from the front lines. And some of you know she began all of it right here in public radio as NPR's Pentagon correspondent from 1993 to 1998 Her new book, The Hero Next Door, Stories of Patriotism and Purpose, is a dozen portraits of servicemen and women drawn from many years of reporting. Martha Raddatz joins me now. Martha, welcome or in a way welcome back to WNYC.

**Martha Raddatz** (2:13)
Thank you, Brian. It's great to talk to you this morning.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:16)
And listeners, we can take some phone calls on this topic, maybe especially from veterans or active duty service members, military families. What do you wish civilians understood about your service or that of your loved ones that they don't?
212-433-WNYC or is there any question from Martha Raddatz? 212-433-9692. And Martha, I'll note that you wrote in the introduction, I have no military background of my own, no ancestral ties to the military, and I didn't grow up in a family or culture that was tethered to war or the military life. So what drew you to this world? Why this book now?

**Martha Raddatz** (2:55)
I think this book now for precisely what you said, Brian. I think people feel disconnected from our military. We certainly went through a period post-911 where people were, sorry about that, thanking people for their service. But now they've almost forgotten that. And I think it's so important. And I've been around these people for decades. And I was there with the most critical days of their lives and sometimes the days that changed them forever. And I've just sort of never discarded people I am close to or have shared something like that. And I want other people to know. This is not, these are not superhuman people on the outside that you can't possibly get close to. A lot of these people left their homes in Texas or wherever and four days later after they're dropping out their kids at school in their minivans were in a Humvee and in a battle. And I think what inspires me most about this is these are people who, some of them are still in the military.
Some of them have gotten out, but the ones who've gotten out have found a new purpose. And I think it can inspire us all. It really inspires me.
I feel very strongly about this book and the stories in there. And I promise I am not trying to sell books. I want people to read this, to know who our citizens are, who volunteer for duty, who are right now in the Gulf, in the Middle East, 50,000 of them.
These are people who are doing work for us. They joined, many of them, because of 9-11, because our country was under attack and wanted to make it safer for people. So it's one of those things that, look, we all have opinions about the war, we all have political opinions, but this institution, this US. Military, is something that should be neither political or the ones who decided we should go to war. These are not the people who did that. These are the people who were given that job, volunteered for that job, and did it to the best of their ability. But more than anything, all the people in this book are really good people, and they want to make life better for people. One veteran said to me, I wish people wouldn't ask us how many people we've killed. I wish they would ask us how many lives we've tried to save.