The Daily Signal - Stories of America’s WWII Veterans and How a Rifle Became a Microphone

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

Andrew Biggio was excited to show his neighbor, a WWII veteran, the M1 Garand rifle he had recently purchased. The weapon was the most common rifle used in WWII, and Biggio thought his elderly neighbor would appreciate holding the gun.  “When I put that rifle into his hands and he raised it into his shoulder and started waving it around the room and pointing and smiling, and we talked about the Battle of Okinawa for like three hours,” Biggio, a Marine veteran himself, recounts.  Biggio was in awe of the stories his elderly neighbor had just shared with him. The rifle had not only triggered memories in the veteran's mind, but acted like a microphone, propelling the man to describe his war experiences in detail.  Biggio asked his neighbor to sign the rifle becasue he wanted to remember the stories he had just been told, and this gave Biggio the idea to find other WWII veterans and ask them to sign the M1 Garand rifle.  Today, “I have 320 names on that rifle,” Biggio says. “You can't even see the wooden stock. The whole rifle's full of white ink names.”  But the majority of the soldiers who have held the rifle have done much more than signed it, they described their war stories in detail while grasping the weapon, stories which Biggio has compiled into two book.  His first book, “The Rifle: Combat Stories from America's Last WWII Veterans, Told Through an M1 Garand,” was released in 2021 but could not hold all veteran stories. In September, Biggio released the project’s second edition, “The Rifle 2: Back to the Battlefield.”  Biggio joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to share some of the stories of the WWII veterans he has had the privilege of meeting and writing about.  Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A lot of these veterans taught me how to be a good dad. I'm sure a good granddad when the day comes. A good citizen, a good husband. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, November 10th, and that was Marine Veteran Andrew Bidgio. Tomorrow is Veterans Day, and so we are so delighted today to be talking not only with a veteran, but a veteran who has made it one of his missions in life

to tell the stories of World War II veterans, before it's too late. But Andrew has a very unique way of doing this. He uses a rifle, one of the classic rifles that was used in World War II. He has visited, sat with dozens of World War II veterans, and when they hold that rifle in their hand, he says it acts like a microphone for them. It opens their hearts and their minds to share the stories of what it was like to serve in World War II. So I'm so delighted that Andrew is with us today to share some of those stories and talk about the two books that he has written that highlight the stories of these amazing warriors.

So stay with us for our conversation with Andrew after this. Conservative women are problematic women. Why? Because we don't adhere to the agenda of the radical left. Every Thursday morning on the Problematic Women podcast, Kristen I, Cammer, Lauren Evans, and me, Virginia. Allen are joined by other conservative women to break down the big issues and news you care about. Whether you're interested in hot takes and conversations on pop culture or what Congress is up to, problematic women has you covered. We sort through the news to keep you up to date on the issues

that are of particular interest to conservative leaning that is problematic women. Find problematic women wherever you like to listen to podcasts and follow the show on Instagram. It is my pleasure today to be joined by author and Marine veteran Andrew Biggio. Andrew, thanks so much for being with us today. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. It's good to be in D.C. Well, I'm really excited to talk about both of your books today and the story of the rifle,

which is a story almost like I've never heard before. It's super unique. But before we get into talking about that, I want to ask you just to share a little bit of your personal story, your background. You entered the Marines in 2006. six, correct? Yes. Okay. Share a little bit about that experience for you, and what compelled you to say,

I want to serve my country in this way? Yeah, you know, I grew up in Boston my whole life, and Massachusetts is a very patriotic state in regards to veterans, a ton of Marines per capita in the state. So I grew up with St. Patrick's Day parades, Veterans Day parades, and seeing the veterans wearing those hats that said World War II, Korea, Vietnam was just something that always captivated me. I thought they were the most interesting people in the world.

I didn't care about professional sports, things like that. I just really wanted to be a veteran. That was it. And this was in a world before 9-11. This was peacetime in the 80s, the 90s, and times I think we all missed today. And I think what solidified me wanting to join the military is I think a lot of kids my age had our youth robbed from us when we were seeing the Twin Towers burning on television, people jumping out of the buildings.

And I think I was in eighth grade when I saw two people holding hands and they jumped out of the South Tower of the World Trade Center. And I think that that's when it solidified, like I need to go serve. That was kind of my Pearl Harbor. And I think that's where it started

as far as military service for me. And during your time serving, you serve both in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring, in Afghanistan, was military service what you expected or thought it would be? Yes. Marine Corps boot camp especially was definitely a little bit more overkill than I thought it was. I mean, it really shook you to the soul of an 18, for me as an 18 year old kid who'd never left home, you know, kind of a mama's boy, I guess. That was rough. That was, I had combat veterans from Iraq in

Afghanistan as my drill instructors and, you know, grabbing you by the collar, your shirt, you throw it. and, you know, screaming. That's the kind of stuff. It definitely matured you real quick. And Iraq and Afghanistan in particular, it was exactly what I expected. But the amount of training I had, by the time you even got to Iraq and Afghanistan, you felt pretty elite. You had a lot of training, three months solid of training and scenarios of being in Iraq or Afghanistan

with role players, with scenarios, with guys who've been through it all. So when you get there, you're ready for worst case scenarios. You're ready for like World War III. But in Afghanistan in particular, I mean, we were so dominant as U.S. Marines. I mean, people were too even petrified to admit they were Taliban. You know, they would do motor attacks or IEDs and run away, that kind of thing. And so it really shocks me to see how Afghanistan turned out in the end run. Yeah, that's got to be, I mean, I just kind of can't imagine having served

there to then watch what has happened. How have you dealt with that and processed that? It hurts. It hurts. And I think any veteran in Afghanistan tells you that they don't care is probably lying. Because you take away, you took away years of your life to go serve, to be over there. Whether you were a chef cooking on a base or if you were in the infantry, you took away time from your family, took away blood, sweat, and tears. Perhaps maybe you had an even worse case where you lost a friend.

or a comrade, and to see the bad guys pretty much in control of the country again is, it's a rough hit. It's tough. And I guess I always, when I used to meet Vietnam veterans, of course I had utmost respect for them. But in the back of my mind, I would say, oh, these poor guys. I would say that in the back of my head. And now, I guess I became a Vietnam veteran overnight in a way.

How many years did you serve? Six years. Okay, okay. When you came back to Massachusetts, what was that adjustment like getting back into civil in life after serving for six years? So I had regular bumps and certain feelings. I think college was rough because I was like looking around like, who the heck do these kids think they are?

You know, this guy just stepped on my shoes in the nightclub and didn't even apologize to me. They're all disrespectful. People are in classes with their headphones on. Like, you know, that kind of stuff played games at my head. But I think what I had and what I think a lot of successful veterans have was I had a strong family network when I came home. My mom and dad were there for me. They didn't care if I was a big, bad Marine.

They were like, you're going to college. You're giving us some money that you earn so we can put in a savings account for you. So having that strong family network is super important so veterans don't fall through the cracks, you know. Yeah, so critical. Now, one of the things that happened after you got home was you came across a rifle. Talk a little bit about that rifle when you found it, why you decided to buy it. So I had a little bit of Survivor's guilt because the man I was named after was killed in combat. My grandfather's brother, my uncle, was killed in action in World War II.

His name was Andrew Biggio. My name is Andrew Bidio. I am named after him. So I did feel bad that this 19-year-old kid never got to start his life with killed in action, never got to have a family, never got to have go to college, never got to have kids, happiness, you know, goes from high school and gets killed within a matter of months of fighting in Italy with the 34th division. And that kind of ate me up because what happened to him that didn't happen to me?

You know, why did he die and I live? And how can I do the most with his name, my namesake? And I remember my grandmother telling me she had saved some letters that he wrote home before he was killed. And I went in the shoebox one day under her bed, and I pulled those letters out, and the first letter I pulled out was, dear mom, today we fired the M1 grand rifle. It's a new rifle of the time. It's going to be better than the Japanese or the Germans rifle.

I loved shooting it today at basic training. He's writing this long letter to his mother about this rifle. And I said, holy cow, I need to go get my hands on an M1 grand rifle. I want to feel what he felt. I want to hold what he held. I want to connect with this long-lost relative, this kid who had this. piece of equipment when he died. So I went out and bought one.

Where'd you find it? The journey stats there. This particular one I ordered from a gun store in Arizona. And it was shipped to my house. And when I opened it up and held it and felt it, I mean, it was like my eyes are watering now thinking about the feeling. Little did I know what would happen when I brought it to my neighbor. What happened?

Because you share this story. I know in your books. But you showed that rifle to your neighbor who was also a World War II veteran, correct? Yep. So Joe Drago, six Marine Division, Okinawa veteran, Battle of Okinawa, one of the worst battles of the World War II. And he was 92 at the time when I brought this rifle to his house. Wow. I wanted to see what he thought, wanted him just to see what memories it brought back.

And I walked into his house and he was bound to his reclining. chair. He, you know, he was skinny. He was feeble. He was old. He was 92 years old, not getting much exercise, you know, and I put this rifle into his hands. I mean, he's hunched over at this point. And when I put that rifle into his hands, and he raised it into his shoulder and said, waving it around the room and pointing and smiling. And we talked about the Battle of Okinawa for like three hours. Wow. And soon enough, I forgot about the survivor's guilt. I forgot about being as dressed as a police officer. I forgot about everything. I'm bonding with this guy. And I said, sign your name on this rifle. I always want to remember this moment. And he was so hesitant.

He's like, I don't want to mark up such a beautiful weapon. And I'm like, just sign a joy. I always want to remember this. Because I knew he wasn't going to be around forever. I knew this was going to be a race against time. When I saw his condition, right? So I did my own military service. I went to college. Get on the police officer. Get on the police force. And then I realized seeing his condition, we had not much time left with any World War II veterans. So I said, sign your name on that. I wanted to preserve his legacy, and he did. And when I left his house, I looked down at his name on the rifle.

It said, Joe Drago, 22nd Marine Regiment, 6 Marine Division, Okinaw, and I said, that was awesome. I need to get as many signatures as possible. And right here, to this date, six years later, I have 320 names on that rifle. You can't even see the wooden stock. The whole rifle is full of white ink names. I represented every battle, every branch of service from soldiers from basic, you could be a cook, a sailor to medal of honor recipients, Navajo Code Talkers, Tuskegee Airmen, Japanese Americans who fought in Italy, guys who landed on D-Day, everything. It's incredible.

So you have used both a combination of this rifle to gather stories, to collect stories. And then obviously you have put these stories in both of your books, your first book, The Rifle Combat Stories from America's Last World War II veterans now, this brand new book that just came out in September, The Rifle II, Back to the Battlefield. How do you find the veterans? How do you find those that you want to share their stories? and what is their reaction when they hold that rifle in their hands? So when I got Joe's name and he fought in the Battle of Okinawa,

I said, well, now I got to get someone who fought in Europe, right? And then now I've got to get a guy who was in a B-17 bomber. And now I got a guy who was on Iwo Jima who might have saw the flag raising. So to hunt them down, it kind of searched by what units they served in, where they were stationed during the war. So in particular, I'll tell you how I find. found, so, you know, because my uncle was killed in Italy, I said, I wonder if there's any survivors from his division or unit that were with him that day. Wow.

So I looked, how I started to find men from the 34th division was I pulled the after-action reports from their division fighting in Italy. Okay. These are, these reports, I think, became declassified in the early 2000s. You can get them on the internet now, and it has the men's names. who was killed on certain days, who was captured, who was wounded, who earned medals of valor. And I started taking those names, putting them into Google search engines, white pages, yellow pages, and then, of course, find a grave obituaries to see if they were dead, alive. And some of the men were alive.

Some of the men, I cold called them on the phone, just said, if I heard like an old voice on the end, I'd say, hello, sir, I have this rifle I want to bring to your house, and they would just hang up on me. They'd have some, like, scam artist. So I would take photos of the rifle. photos of me in the military, photos of other World War II veterans who signed the rifle, mail it to their house. Dear sir, I'm not a scam artist,

I just want to preserve your story. My uncle was killed with your unit. Sure enough, I'd get a letter back. I'd love to take back. I'd take part in this project. It's an honor. I think of the 320 veterans that signed the rifle,

I only had two that didn't partake. And I think the two that didn't were just really close to end of life and didn't want any veterans. visitors, that kind of thing. It wasn't that they didn't like the project. It was just sure. They would deal with some stuff. Now, among all of the World War II veterans that you have spoken with and you've had the honor of sitting down with, sharing their stories in your books, is there one story that really sticks with you that maybe you continue to think

about on a pretty break in my place? Oh, yeah. I use this example a lot because people say, well, it's great you got 320 names on your rifle, but what made you want to write the book, what stories and it was I was visiting a man in Gardner, Massachusetts, and his name was Clarence Cormier. Clarence, you know, and his family said, well, I don't think Dad's going to talk about it, but you can meet with them. And Clarence was with the 106th Infantry Division during World War II. And for those who don't know about that division, they had one of the biggest surrenders since the American Civil War. They had to surrender 7,000 men at the Battle of the Bulge. They were one of the first hit units, first overrun.

Clarence was literally in Europe for two weeks, and then he became a prisoner of war. He didn't even get to fire a shot. So here's a guy who could have lied to me, told me he fought valiantly to his last bullet, and I would have ate it up because I wasn't there, and it was 75 years ago. Yeah.

But he sat there, and he cried to me on his couch about being captured, about getting put in a box car, a train by the Germans. he was so tight inside the train crushed up against other prisoners of war the train started heading towards Germany once they were captured in Belgium two American fighter planes

P-47s see this German train and they start strafing it little do they know they're killing their own men that there's thousands of American prisoners and he's telling me the story he's crying his eyes out at age 95 and I said oh my God I've never seen a 95 year old man weep like this like I was so taken back

and they broke out of the train they got on the ground and with their bodies they formed the letters P-O-W standing for prisoner of war so when the planes were coming around again I'd do another strafing they saw the letters that appeared at BW and they pull up last second

and Clarence delivers this emotional testimony about this incident oh my God the tear is rolling down his face this is when I decided to put pen to paper because his daughter grabbed me and said, I always knew my father was a prisoner of war, but I've never heard him say that story. And I said, I have to do more than just collect names for a cool item in my man cave.

I need to write these stories. And I went from an average C student to a bestselling author somehow with this. Well, it's incredible. And I think so many of us have had those thoughts across our mind of family members who have served. And it is something that's so emotional for so many folks who have served, that it is hard. I know to open up and share. But it seems like there's something really powerful about when, for one, speaking to a fellow veteran,

but then also holding that object of the rifle in their hands. Sure. The rifle acted as a microphone, acted as a time machine. And no, it's funny now is they used to hold it, look at the rifle and go, wow, I fired this in a base of training. Oh, I can't believe that. I carried this when I was 19. Now they sit there and they stare at the other names. Wow.

And the locations that guys have written on the rifle, like Pearl Harbor, Normandy, and they're infatuated with all these men, and they're looking at all their buddies now. No, that's something I never brought up in other podcasts or interview is now that when these veterans look at the names now, and they know they're only one of 150,000 World War II veterans left in the country. They're seeing all their buddies on that rifle. Yeah, and it's uniting them in a powerful way. Now, you are serving veterans in so many powerful ways, and one of those is through a nonprofit that you have launched in New England, Boston's Wounded Vet Run.

Now, this isn't actually necessarily a physical run. Talk a little bit about what you all do at your nonprofit. Yeah, it's a motorcycle charity run. I started it 14 years ago, and it was because when I came home, I started to meet different veterans actually at, you know, I think I met a veteran at Fenway Park who was being honored actually by Tim Wakefield, who just passed away. And his name was Vincent Mannion Brodor, and Vincent had his whole skull replaced with plastic from being wounded by an IED in Iraq.

And at that time, the VA housing modification loan or grant was terrible. It took years to get. And these guys were getting discharged from Walter Reed Hospital into these homes back at their houses in Massachusetts, let's just say, and not the homes were at Monarch. modified for them. So I started a motorcycle ride for Vincent to raise money for a new roof on his house, some carpeting. And then it was such a great idea that the next year, those 300 motorcycles that showed up for year one turned into 1,200 motorcycles. Wow. And the next year, 3,000 motorcycles, 4,000, you know, I think we've had over 5,000 people at this event in 13 years. And every year, I choose different wounded veterans and give them all the money. I don't earn a, make a salary out of it. It's total non- nonprofit and you know my my source of income is being a police officer so and when does the when does the run happen the motorcycle ride happened it's the the Sunday before Memorial Day weekend okay every year in Boston yeah and can anyone

participate anyone doesn't matter if you have a Huffy or a Harley Davidson or a sport bike we we would love for you to come that's awesome that's awesome well we'll leave a link of the show notes so that folks can find it and know how to get involved but for all of the stories that you have been honored to tell. And just this project, this amazing project of talking to so many veterans, what is maybe one of the greatest lessons that you feel like you have learned in this journey? Yeah, I've learned that's a powerful question,

and I've got to start thinking a little bit more about that because I learned so much not about just being a good veteran, right? Or patting myself on the back for serving 15 years ago. But a lot of these veterans taught me how to be a good dad. I'm sure a good granddad when the day comes. A good citizen, a good husband. Some of these guys were married for 75 years. And what they were able to do with their lives where they came home from the traumatic stuff of World War II, Battle of the Bulge, fighting in the hedgerows in Normandy, maybe fighting in Burma.

They come home, they went to college immediately. They got a career. They had a family. They stayed so busy, not time to dwell on things. When they retired from one job, they got another job. When they retired from that job, they did something else. They stayed so busy. And that was the key, the longevity of their life is what I noticed.

And that's what I hope to do. I hope to try it. They all became kind of in a way, especially if I wrote about them, they became kind of like unofficial grandfathers to me. So I've taken a little bit from everybody, you know, and that's what I thank them for, honestly, because sometimes I came, I come home from work and I'm a little wrapped up ball of stress, and I would say, what would Clarence Cormier do, who was a POW for five months, who came home, had five children, became a nuclear engineer, became a successful man, his kids adore him,

love him, and cried at his funeral. how can I be him, you know? I love that. Well, encourage all of our listeners. Check out the website, The World War II. That's www.I.I.I.Rifel.com to learn more. Pick up a copy of both books and just learn the stories. I mean, dive in to really honoring our World War II veterans, what they have done.

But thank you, Andrew. Thank you for your time today, for your willingness. And for your willingness to share stories that otherwise we would be losing. in history. Thank you. Thank you. And with that, that is going to do it for today's episode. Thanks so much for being with us here on the Daily Signal podcast. Quick announcement before we go. We do not have a top news edition this afternoon. The Daily Signal team is off today in honor of Veterans Day. So we hope that you enjoy your day. Take a moment to thank the veterans in your life. We are so glad that today we were able to bring you that conversation with Andrew Biggio and share

some of the amazing stories of our veterans. But we hope that you have an excellent weekend, and we will see you right back here on Monday morning. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to you by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Luey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com. Thank you.