The Moth - The Moth Radio Hour: Veterans Day 2016: Iraq, Aircraft Carriers & Candy

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

A special Veterans Day episode of The Moth. A soldier trains to land his plane on an aircraft carrier, a future marine rebels against her abusive father, an Iraqi man risks his life working as a translator for the armed forces. Hosted by The Moth’s Artistic Director Catherine Burns. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by The Moth and Jay Allison of Atlantic Public Media. Hosted by: Catherine Burns Storytellers: Ted Hartley, Taniki Richard, Abbas Mousa

Attention Houston! You have listened to our podcast and our radio hour, but did you know the Moth has live storytelling events at Wearhouse Live? The Moth has opened Mike's storytelling competitions called Story Slams that are open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night's theme. Upcoming themes include love hurts, stakes, clean, and pride. GoodLamoth.org forward slash Houston to experience a live show near you. That's theMoth.org forward slash Houston. This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX, and I'm Catherine Burns. At the Maw, we invite people from all walks of life to tell true personal stories in

front of a live audience. In honor of Veterans Day, this week's episode is a tribute to the men and women who serve our country every day as members of the Armed Forces. In this hour, a future combat marine is forced to sell candy on the street to help pay her family's rent. A young Iraqi student risks his life translating for the American Army and our first story about how those guys ever learned to land planes in an aircraft carrier. It was told by Ted Hartley at the Radio Love Fest at the Brooklyn Academy of Music,

where we partnered with our New York City media sponsor, WNYC. Here's Ted Hartley, live at the mall. I remember that Sunday. There was bright, cloudless day, warm spring was in the air and April. And my father, he was going to read the Sunday funny to me and I was four years old. And it was joy. He read Little Abner and Papa. And we would laugh.

And when I would laugh, a broiler, he'd pick me up and throw me up in the air and I felt like I was going to go to heaven and there were little strong arms to catch me as I came back down. He was clear to the greatest man in the world and strongest, the biggest and the best. The best of was. It was a Sunday later, exactly. I came down my house and down the stairs in my jammies. And in our living room, it was filled with women in black, veils, black gloves, shoes,

shiny black, and they were whispering to each other. And I think one of them put her hand on my head and said, oh, Teddy, your father would have been so proud. My father would have been so proud of me. That meant he was gone. And he was gone instantly, disappeared. It was that fear of disappearing him, me next, and carried me all the way through Bray School and High School. And my savior, the thing I loved most of all that I would do after school, was watch documentaries or old newsreels of World War II. And the way the Navy fighter planes came in on the carriers.

And I thought maybe if I could do something brave and strong and glorious and something for my country, maybe then I wouldn't disappear. And so I applied for Annapolis, the Naval Academy, and got in, and I got graduated, and got my bars, and went through flight training, and got my wings. And now I was going to fly in the Navy's hottest new aircraft, called the F9F. It was the first plane the Navy had, really,

that would go supersonic right after takeoff. And you can get that thrill of not only lifting off, but then getting extra boost when your wheels disappeared, your flaps came up and off you went into space and you're climbing it faster than the speed of sound. And that was a great shape. And I hit all the gun retargets.

Now there's one thing left to do before we could join as a squadron and go out and find the big carrier someplace in the Pacific and be ready for what was going to develop into the Vietnamese war. But I had to get qualified for the carrier. In order to do that, they do something called a field landing carrier practice, which was an aircraft carrier drawn on the ground in an old field someplace. And you would have the LSO, the landing signal officer, a box at one end of it, and he would have his flags that he would wave across his throat if you were making good landing or allowed to land and waving off as though we're batting away bumblebees, waving his flags violently

in the air to mean you're not going to land, get going, buster. So you couldn't land and you'd have to go around again. We needed a hundred of those in this new supersonic jet to qualify. It was challenging. And even the old veterans in the squadron, the 27, 28, and 29 year old guys, they were pretty impressed by this.

And most of them came in getting eight or nine passes, so they were getting a hundred and a hundred and nine, or a hundred and eight. I came in some place in there, but McDonald's, I just can move aboard. McDonald's was impish, blonde, compact, lot of fun, laughed a lot, and a perfect aviator. And he went around that pattern in those two weeks and got a hundred landings in 101 passes. I was sitting at the bar with him that night after we'd all qualified and we were getting ready to go out to the practice carrier, the Torawa, which I'd seen in the newsreels about World War II. And now it was just used for practicing for jet landings. We had three to make.

And if we did that and they were smooth enough, we got our cuts. And we come back and we would pack our gear and the whole squad would fly off and we'd join our big super carrier and someplace out in the Eastern world. And we would be representing the country and the world's strongest, most impressive weapon

and aircraft carrier. So it was very exciting, and we were having drinks the night before the barges. Oh, a little bit, because we got to go to the carrier the next day. And I was sitting next to McDonald to my really loved. Always fun. And I said to him, McDonald, you aced it. Man, you got a hundred for 101.

That's perfect. Nobody came close to that. And he has face, which had been jolly and smiling, turned dark. And in quarters of his mouth turned down. He turned at me. It snarled. It threw his class down on the counter, broken a thousand pieces, scattered around the the officers club.

And he pointed its finger at me and he said, no, dammit. I did 100, 400, the damn LSO was just jealous. He waved me off. I should have had a perfect score. Something new about McDonald, he had a temper, and he was a perfectionist, but he was great. We took off the next day, all lined up, and off we went from Qonsa Point, we were to fly out over Block Island and formation, and you come down the other side of the carrier, so if you can imagine a racetrack, and you're coming down the other side of the carrier, so if you can imagine a racetrack, and you're coming down the far side of the racetrack and you're coming around the bend, and you're coming into the home stretch, and that home stretch is the carrier.

So you're 50 feet over the water, and as you come around, you begin to see the LSO, and Skipper I could see now, was already a board and he's Wingman. And I was up next by that time I was lining up on the ship. And I came in and I've heard the LSO talking in and his very calm voice about, yep, looking OK. I didn't make the world's best landing. But I was there.

McDonald was coming behind me, and I had to see McDonald. I wanted to see his first landing, and an F9 F on an aircraft carrier. And so I stood there as I watched McDonald coming in, and he was lined up, his wings didn't wobble, it gets guy can fly. But somehow, just as he got over the cut point, at the end of the carrier, his

nose came up a little bit. I'm not sure what he's thinking of it. It just came up enough and just that little bit, who will attack the LSO's attention, because if you come into high, you'll miss the wires. You're going to go steaming on across the deck and do damage to yourself or to somebody and you can't land. And when he waved it off and it's flags and the cannon went off and the siren sounded and everybody knew that he'd been waved off. And so far he was the first wave off. Now he had to go way up when, get behind everybody, but he came around again, lined up again, and he came in, and he still kept his nose high.

It all went what he was thinking, and he got waved off again. Everybody waiting for McDonald, the perfect aviator, to get aboard the carrier. I was back now on the LSO platform, and listed Gunners made standing there. Didn't know me, didn't know McDonald. He turned his buddy and he said, I don't know who that jerk is, but we're going to have

to shoot him down. McDonald came on in. If you were going to do three landings and you missed all three cuts, they would send you back to the beach while you still had enough gas to make it. And you probably would not go with that squadron any place again. The McDonald came over the cut. Elisso gave him the cut. He was lined up.

And then, as though McDonald was saying, screw you, think my nose is high watch this, and he dropped his nose violently. It's nose wheel first, bounced off the mainland to gear up into the end, air 50 feet above the carrier deck, not flying anymore, just hanging there in the air, seemed a long time, but it was less than three seconds. And many toppled off and fell over the port side of the ship. And by the time I rushed over, it was bubbles. Supersonic jet is designed to fly cut through like a knife, the air. And you pointed straight down into the ocean,

it'll do the same thing that way. And all I ever saw, McDonald after that, was a little bit of his tail disappearing down. So the choppers would stay there as long as they could till dusk, hoping something would come up, some clue, maybe somehow they would survive. The destroyers were going to go any place, they were job to stay there and look for the survivor. But the carrier had a job to do.

And you've got 5,000 people dedicated to getting these aviators on the landing, getting the qualified sending them out to defend the country. So they were going to call the next flight. I hope they didn't, they can't call me because I am shaky. I am so shaky, my voice, I couldn't have taught, and they did call me. Now I'm getting up in the escalator and I start across the carrier deck toward my plane on the port side. And as I was going across the carrier deck, I was thinking, which one of these am I going to lie about? I knew that I couldn't fly that airplane, I knew it would

be dangerous to myself and maybe other people, and I couldn't fly it. On the other hand, if I said I couldn't fly it, they'd pull my wings. I certainly wouldn't. That whole part of my life would deteriorate. Got in the cockpit, got adjusted. Williston, the plane captain, he climbed up on the wing beside me, helped me adjust the shoulder braces. And was watching me as I went over each of the nine checks,

the air pressure, the oxygen supply, one by one. And he was watching me, I was touching the gauges, which you do to be sure you're looking at the right gauge. I had to figure out some way to keep them going. The, if you're gonna be catapulted off, as I was off the front of the carrier, you have to have full throttle on all the time. When you're catapulted off, you're going to go from zero to 130 miles an hour, the length of a basketball field. Your cheeks are going to feel as they're behind your ears.

But you've got your full throttle on, you better keep that full. Otherwise, you're going to go in the water, ahead of the ship, you're going to get run over. So the way you avoid that is there's a little spring loaded finger that comes up. It's called the holdback rod or the holdback. You hold it and you put 100% power on you, check your gators once again.

If it's there, you call into the air control and say, I'm ready to go, I'm good to go, and they taxi off, and I'll be going, I was not good to go. I can move it out about that, I was not good to go. Between the throttle and the whole back rod, I was able to get my finger, my index finger in, so that I wasn't going to get to 100% because I couldn't get the throttle all the way forward. I was going to be all right. I was going to say, I was going to go home again. I wouldn't disappear.

And I held it there long enough to decide, OK, I'm going to report this. I'm not lying. I'm not getting 100% power. I'm not doing anything really terribly wrong. And I pulled my finger out to hit an outlaw's circulation. And it was very stiff. And I pulled it out and had my hand in the throttle at 96%

getting ready to hit the mic button to call air control. Williston, standing on my wing, reaching through the cockpit, just put his hand on mine, and as he did, my hand as though it had been pulled by an invisible wire, just gently went that last half inch, and I went to full power. Williston turned around and looked at me and he said, you're 100% lieutenant, you're good to go,

have a great flight. And they texted me out. And they strapped me into the catapult. I ran the throttle all the way up and wrapped it around the rod and prayed a little bit as well as I knew how. And the catapult off the saluted would mention he was ready to fire me. and prayed a little bit as well as I knew how. And the catapult after saluted would mention he was ready to fire me, and I gave him a right hand saluted back that I was ready to go.

And I was launched into the air immediately. I was 130 miles an hour climbing to supersonic speeds. And I went around and I got in the line and I came back and I made another landing. And I went on and I made dozens more landings. Night and day, heavy fog, rain, midnight, sun and in your eyes. And I thought about McDonald and everyone's so well. I thought about my father and how they disappeared. And I knew there was a little fear down there, some place that was crying.

But I never thought about not being ready to go again. And it's carried me on through my whole life. That was Ted Hartley. He was born and raised in Iowa Farm Boy. In age 14, he won an essay contest sponsored by Warner Brothers. His 50-word essay called Why I Would Like to Fly, earned in flying lessons. Ted went on to be a US Olympic finalist in wrestling, a celebrated producer, and an actor appearing on the TV show's Peyton Place in Chopper 1, and in movies alongside Carrie Grant, Robert Redford, and Clint Eastwood.

We produce this veteran show every year, so if you or anyone you know as a vet, please consider pitching us a story. We're especially looking for stories told by female vats. Call our pitchline, which will let you leave a two-minute version of a story you'd like to tell. The number to call is 877-799-Moth. Or you can pitch us a story right at our website, themoth.org. Hi, my name's Jess. I'm 30 years old. I served as a platoon leader with the 25th Transportation Company. When I first got to the unit, it was kind of a mess. I was a brand new officer. I had no idea what

I was doing management-wise, but I got really lucky because I ended up with this fantastic, fantastic group of people. And one night in June, we were on a convoy. I was second in command. There was a complex coordinated ambush. It was a scary, spreeky moment of my entire life. And RPG went through my door and wounded everybody in my truck. A couple of our other vehicles took direct fire. But after that, we just, we really bonded. The whole unit, I mean, we had already

started to come together well before that. I've never been more proud to be a part of an organization in my life. I think I could spend the rest of my life chasing what I had for that 18 months and part of the challenge now is understanding that they'll never be anything like that again. You can pitch us your own story by calling 877-799-Moth or by going to themoth.org. Coming up, a future marine is fed up with her dad,

for forcing her brothers and sisters to become mini-con artists. That's next up on the Moth Radio Hour. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by PRX. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Katherine Burns and this is our special Veterans Day episode. Our next storyteller is Tniki Richard. We met Tniki at a Moth Community Workshop we did with the Wounded Warrior Project in

Oakbrook, Illinois. Larry Rosen from the Moth worked with Tnke and spoke to her on the phone about her service. So tell me where you served. Okay well I served all over foreign and domestic from Camp Pendleton all the way to Japan. I've been to Iraq and back. Did you have a particular occupation within the service? Well, every Marine has one specific purpose, and that is to use that trigger finger. So I was an expert rifleman, and I loved shooting guns, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to join.

Yeah, my MOS, my military occupation service, was a aviation electronics technician. So I actually worked in secret gear in the electro-counter measure section of the rotary aircraft. The final show of the workshop Teneke was a part of was very intimate, just the 10 participants and some staff. We usually only play stories from full live shows here on the radio, but her perspective is unique and we thought you'd want to hear it. Here's Teneke.

My six siblings and I hustle candy for my drug addicted parents. Every day coming home from school, I drop my backpack and pick up a couple boxes of fruity swirl peppermint sticks to go out and hit the streets. There were four teams. They got an older one and a younger one and then the middle child, I mean he was old enough so he basically with eyes distance you could kind of keep an eye on him for productive teams. I'm 14, the second oldest of seven. But I'm the leader.

I know how to get it done. They depended on me to make sure that these boxes got sold. Everyone got three boxes each, and Justin believed on average, we were making about 180 to $250 every couple of days. And life was good because we were able to eat. And we had a good scheme going, too. It went something like this. Excuse me, sir.

Would you like to buy some candy for our church? What church? We didn't have any church. It didn't exist. And if they said no, then we would say, would you like to donate? I came up with that idea. You had to maximize the sale, right? That was the type of person I was to get it done. And we did that because if we didn't sell, we didn't eat. And in my mind, because I was afraid of my father, if we didn't sell, we might get beat. So we did that day in,

day out. Till about 14, I went from 14 to 15 years old. And then the guilt setting, why would these people keep giving us this money? They know we come here every day. They say, God bless you child and give the money or the donation. And I'm like, God can't be happy with this. We're liars. This is a scam. Why am I doing this? And it would eat at me, tearing like the fibers of my soul apart. And I knew I just couldn't do this anymore. I came home from school one day, and my parents were up, surprisingly, and dressed.

I looked in the corner, and there were at least 25 boxes of candy waiting on me. One stack had more than the other stacks, and I knew that was probably mine. I was the most productive. And I said, while looking down on the ground, the red carpet flat dirty and nasty, I looked down and I said, daddy,

I can't do this anymore. I don't want to hustle candy anymore. And my mom, she chuckled. And I slowly looked up in my dad's face, and I could see his eyes just squinting at me, when his chopped up beady just as she lips. And in his Caribbean voice, he said, Tanniki, you're gonna sell the candy.

Don't mess with me. And I knew what that meant, too. It meant cruise it or bruise it. So I kept selling the candy. And we went on like this. I started to rebel passively. I'd come back and I wouldn't sell the boxes of candy. He would yell at me spitting, just call me names,

pushing me out the door, and even at night, he would make me go back out there and sell that candy. Now, since I was a leader, my brothers and sisters, they kind of picked up on my rebelliousness. They started to rebel. My sister would throw away perfectly good boxes of candy. My brother would hide the candy money and take it to school for lunch

and not turn it into my dad. The teens were falling apart. And my dad knew it, and he knew that I was the culprit. He had to get me up out of there. So he came to me one day and he said, Teneke, go ahead, you can get a job. I was like, yes, I made it. I have an opportunity to make my life better.

I can relieve myself of this guilt that I felt by hustling these kind-hearted people who were so willingly giving us their money and knowing that we were lying, knowing that I was a liar. I would be relieved of this and I would have a respectable job. So within a month, I went and got myself

a job as a cashier at the first fast food joint down the street. I was so proud of myself. Three weeks later I got a check. My first check. So happy. And he shows up at my job. And he said, Tannicky, give me the check. Now I'm not going to lie to you. I was disappointed. I handed over the check. I kind of knew. I mean, my parents are crackheads. You really think that I'll be making a check and they're not going to get it? Come on. But I expected that. But what I didn't expect was what he said next.

What he would make me do. He said, your brother's waiting on you. Go over to the gas station and sell the candy. The blood in my skin started to boil. I was so angry. You lied. How could you lie? You said if I got a job, I wouldn't have to hustle no more.

But I went. And while I was walking, I said, can I at least go back home and change my shirt? He said, no. One day, I got my work clothes on, and I was heading out. And he was sending the rest of the teams out, too. Now, but because I was working, they weren't as productive as they used to be. And he needed that money right then and right now.

So he told me, Teneke, you're not going to work. You're going to go out there and help them hustle this candy. And this time instead of looking down on the carpet, I looked them up in his face. And I said, no, no, I'm not. And he's laying down on the little mattress in the living room. And he looks up at me and said, yes, you are. And I said, no, I'm not. And he jumps up and he blocks the front door. I told him, I said, you're going to get me fired. I got to go. And in front of my brothers and my mother and my sisters,

I told him, I'm not hustling for you anymore. And he slapped me. And I fell to the ground and I started crying. And I screamed. And I said, I'm going to work. He said, no, you're not. He grabbed me by the hair and drug me from the living room into all the way into the back room. And I'm screaming and crying out in pain. He slams and locks the door. Now I'm sitting there kicking at the door screaming,

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I started looking around. I took my hands and drive my face, and I looked around for a solution. I saw the window. Now, we got quiet, so my siblings came in there to check on me. When they found me, they saw my hands hanging over the window sill. They ran over to the window, and was like, Teneke, you're gonna get in trouble, daddy's gonna get you. You're gonna get in trouble for this. Come back in.

I said, no, I'm not. I'm going to work. Let my hands go. Now, the window ceiling was kind of digging into my palms at this time, but I still had enough energy to pull myself up. I could, but I said, you know what? At this point in time, if I'm gonna be in trouble

for something, I'm gonna be in trouble for something I stand for was right. I'm not going to gain the approval for something that's wrong. And I let go. APPLAUSE Teneke Richard is an 11-year retired disabled Marine Corps veteran. Here's a little more from Larry Rosen's interview with Tniki. When I joined the Marine Corps, I was looking for everything that I thought I had inside of myself, which was the honor, courage, and commitment.

I didn't care what job I was going to do. I didn't, honestly, I really didn't care where they would put me. Every time someone would tell me, oh, you're going to this duty station or this command and it's going to suck, I would be like, I don't care, I'm going to make the best of it. Because up until then, I was struggling. I knew what it felt like to go to bed hungry. I knew what it felt like to be around drugs and violence and abuse.

And so in my mind, joining the Marine Corps was going to restore all the things that I felt like I lost in my childhood. And when I joined, I really kind of heard that little voice inside of me saying, you can do it, you can make your life better. You can be a patriot, which I am a patriot at heart. I love my veterans, love my veteran brothers and sisters,

and you can serve your country and serve your community in an honorable way. You can hear Larry's full interview with Tniki Richard at the Moth.org. One last thing, Tniki has her own web show, a bid chat, and I love this. She was the Trinidad and Tobago 2017 delegate for the Misplenitary International Pageant in Las Vegas. Do you have a story for the Moth?

Collar Pitchline, which allows anyone to leave a two-minute version of a story. The number to call is 877-799-Maw, or you can picture the story right at our website, themawth.org. My name is Ray Christian, boom North Carolina. I was a paratrooper assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and I had been in the Army for nearly 10 years and I had never had a major parachute malfunction. We were conducting a night combat equipment training jump over Sicily Drops home. The inside of the aircraft ate C-130 as dark, illuminated only by the dim red floor

light and the jump warning light above the exit door. The jump commands are given. Green light go. We exit the aircraft, each of us, one behind the other into the darkness. You take up a good tight body position as the prop blast blows you away. Count to 4,000 your main shoot should deploy. I exit 1,000, 2,000, 3,000. My main shoot doesn't deploy. I'm slung into the air on my back and I can see the stars. I'm twisting and turning and I hit the side of the plane. I'm being towed behind the aircraft by my arm entangled in another jumper's static line. Again, you can pitch us your own story

by calling 877-799-Moth or by going to theMoth.org. Coming up, a young Iraqi student pays a huge price for translating for the United States military. When the Moth Radio Hour continues. The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and presented by the Public Radio Exchange, PRX.org. This is the Moth Radio Hour from PRX.

I'm Katherine Burns. Our final story in our Veterans Day Special is from Abbas Musa. We met Abbas when he put his name in the hat and told a story at our slam series in Milwaukee. A Moth fact, we produce more than 500 storytelling competitions around the world every year. We record them and one of our producers listens to every single one of the 5,000-plus stories told on these stages. When my fellow math host and director, Meg Bulls, heard at Boss tell his story, she thought he was so good that she immediately picked up the phone and called him to see if he wanted to tell a story on our main stage. Here's a boss Musa, live the Moth in Charleston, West Virginia, where we partnered

with West Virginia Public Radio. I was in a van on my way to school driving through the center of Baghdad. It's one of these vans that has a row of seats behind the driver where you sit backward with your back to the driver looking out the back of the van. I remember I was sitting behind the driver and in front of me was my friend. She used to study English literature so she and I were speaking in English to practice. As we passed the children's hospital, all of a sudden I felt a wave of heat followed by an incredible explosion.

The force of the explosion sent people flying from their seats. My friend jumped on me and hugged me. I put my arms around her as she cried, but my eyes were just fixed on the explosion, the fire and the smoke behind us. I remember seeing a girl coming out from behind the smoke, trying to run away. Our drivers sped away trying to get to safety, not knowing if another explosion is coming. We were just five minutes away from school. And I wasn't a shock. I couldn't believe that someone just drove a car bomb into the Chilurin Hospital.

I mean, how evil can you be to do something like that? I grew up in Baghdad, Iraq, and car bombs were in everyday occurrence after 2003. My 25 minutes right to school took two hours because of the many and many checkpoints in the city. We kind of got used to it, but we weren't happy. My mom would hug us and kiss us every day before we left for school, because she know this might be her last hug or kiss. I always told myself that I should focus on school

and get my degree, and tomorrow's going to be better than today, hoping to see an end to the Sunni and Shia Civil War, and to see a strong Iraqi military defeat al-Qaeda. Once I graduated, I got a job, and I had to cross town to get to this job. But after all the news of the sectarian killings and kidnappings, one morning my mom said, this salary, this job paid, wasn't worth the cost of the risk making that journey posed. So my only choice was to leave Baghdad. On Thursday, November 23 of 2006, I kissed my mom and siblings goodbye. I didn't

cry because I almost never cried. What my mom was asking me to be careful and take care of myself. And she hugged me tight and her eyes start tearing. I wiped her tears and I told her, I'll be okay. I'll be fine and I'll come visit. But she said, don't. I'm okay with you being away in a life, better than you be closed and always in danger. Then my dad takes me to Baghdad Airport and as I was trying to drag my heavy suitcase,

I was wondering why wasn't so heavy. And that's when it hit me. My mom knew I'm not coming back to Baghdad. So she started with everything I owned. I arrived in Kurdistan State in Northern Iraq, and I managed to get a job. And every day after work, I would go and sit by the square and just watch people walking after sunset. Cars driving after sunset.

I remember watching the colors of the traffic light because they were actually working. In Baghdad we had 6 p.m. curfew, no one was out at sunset. I never sat out at sunset. People here live normally without the fear of an ID or a car bomb that would take their lives in a second. I'll just sit and enjoy the peace. But I wasn't very happy because I kept thinking about my family back home and their safety.

Later, I got a job offer to work for the US military as translator. And my first challenge as translator was the American accent. In Iraq, we studied English from elementary school, but we studied the Queen British English. So there were so many words that I couldn't understand, because Americans, when they speak, they swallow waters.

One time a soldier asked me, do you want the water bottle? I was like, what? He was like, water bottle. I was like, what? What is water bottle? I was like, what? It has like water bottle. I was like, what? What is water bottle? Because I couldn't hear the teas, just the ars. And I was like, this, I was like, oh, how about a vulture? All the time when I worked for a unit from Mississippi, after working for four units from the North and Midwest.

And I'm like, oh my God. That's like a whole new language. I don't remember I ever said the word come again. Say again. As much as I said it to them. Being translator, I would be translating paperwork documents in meeting with Iraqi police, Iraqi military, local mayors, leaders, with top US military commanders,

and other times, Pina soldier and Iraqi local labor. And it helped me, I learned a lot about the soldiers I worked with. It also kind of made me feel kind of living like a soldier without a weapon. Those soldiers I worked with, they were my new family on base. Even though it was dangerous, but for me it was safe, because I was surrounded by many armed soldiers. So if someone was shooting at us, they would shoot back. I felt protected. So after a year from being gone, I really missed my family. And I wanted, I asked to go

on vacation to see them during Christmas and New Year. And so I go down to Baghdad, I spend great time with my mother, with my siblings, my dad. One evening, I took a two mile walk to a nearby restaurant. After I ate, I was feeling a bit lazy and full. The sun was setting, so I decided to take the bus. In Baghdad, most buses are those passenger vans and one pulled over to pick me up. The van was empty, so I sat in the front passenger seat. The driver was listening to really loud music. I didn't care for that. I told him what I needed to get off.

And when we got to my stop, he didn't stop. So I told him, hey, you missed my stop, but you can drop me off here. I'll walk back. And he said, oh, I'm sorry. I was distracted by the loud music, I'll turn around. And I was like, it's okay, you can drop me off here, I'll walk. And he said, no, no, he insisted on turning around.

So I was like, okay. At the end of the street, he turned left and instead of turning around and then he took the highway ramp. And I'm like, where you did not turn around, where are we going? And that's when he gave me the evil face and said, you'll know once we get there. With no speed limits on the highway, he was driving at least a hundred mile per hour,

or even more. My heartbeat started to increase to the point I felt I can hear it, I can feel it's shaken. And, you know, and I have no idea what to do or what's gonna happen. And living in Baghdad, you know, and I have no idea what to do or what's gonna happen. And, living in Baghdad, you know, you probably would hear about a kidnapping almost every day in the news, but they never tell you what happened or what to do if this happened to you. So, I had no idea what to do.

I looked at him and I saw his gun in his hand and I was like, oh my God, I was so afraid that he knew about me working for the US military because then I'll be beheaded no matter what. I thought of hitting him like what Tom Cruise or Jack Bauer would do, but in the movie, the lead actor always survived because it's a movie. In reality, a terrorist would just put a bullet in my head or simply crash the van and kill both of us. At that time, the sun was set and all I can think of is, am I going to see another day? Am I going to see my family again?

Am I going to see my mom? And at that point, I just wished if I just stayed home and spent more time with them. Soon he exits the highway and his speed goes down. He was still driving faster than he should, but slower than he was on the freeway. All of a sudden I see and hear by checkpoint on my right. And a voice inside of me said, if you don't survive this now, you might not survive it at all. It was now or never. And without thinking, I opened the door and I screamed the words, help me, but I wasn't able to know if they heard or saw me. And again, that voice said, the pain of the jump is nothing compared to the pain of being terrified

until they behead you. And without thinking, the next thing I knew, I was on the ground. And all I can remember is me getting up and drawn. I don't remember if I'd rolled. I don't remember feeling any pain. I just ran. I ran for my life. I make it to the checkpoint, and that's what I felt, all the pain from the jump.

And thank God I didn't break any bones. And I fell on the ground. And the two soldiers rushed to help me, asking what happened, what happened, and all I could do is pointing to the street. I couldn't even, I couldn't take my breath to even speak. But I have made it. I have survived.

Later the police escorted me home. And my mom was crying, but at the same time, she was happy that I'm alive. But we knew I couldn't stay. I left back that early the next morning And my mom was crying, but at the same time she was happy that I'm alive. But we knew I couldn't stay. I left Baghdad early the next morning going back to the Army base. No one will be years before I ever returned. In July of 2009, I got my special immigrant visa.

It's a program that was set for Iraqi translators and their families to come to America because once you work for the US military, you will forever be al-Qaeda target. I was able to come here and my family followed me and my mom was the most excited because now we can all live in one country in peace. I got my citizenship. I was very happy or excited to live my American dream. I enrolled in the State University to get my master's degree. And life was going well for me.

But even though I was happy with my life, I felt something is missing. Every time I see a post on Facebook from one of my soldiers friend that I worked with in Iraq, I feel that I should be with them. I was afraid on losing my new safe home, America, like I lost back then. In back that I was weak, and I couldn't belong to an organization or an entity to help me stay and defend my city, but in America I'm strong. And today I'm an assurgent in the Army National Guard, because I can belong to an organization

that can prepare me to defend my adopted country and do my part as a citizen. Because I know how it feels living on the terrorism, and I don't want to ever experience that again. Thank you. That was a boss Musa. A boss immigrated to the US in 2009 through a special program for translators and was granted US citizenship. Abbas received his master's degree in the summer of 2015 in economics and now works as an economist for the Department of Commerce. He's currently writing his memoir.

The Nine Abbas told his story, his former boss, Julie Garrity, who's a colonel in the Wisconsin Army National Guard, was in the audience. She and Abbas had worked together in the Middle East during the war and then ended up living just a few towns apart and was concerned. Our producer Janelle Piper sat down with the boss in Julie after the show. I want to ask the two of you just to describe for people what the relationship is like just between a translator and a soldier. Like what is that dynamic like? Well, you know what's interesting because I got to tell the gentleman next to me

that is a military person and going out of a base and realistically your life's in danger, right? And he's been around in all his life, but I don't know this man. And instantly, I have to trust him. Me and Abbas had a moment where things got a little bit dangerous for me. And I needed someone to help me talk out of a situation.

And I had to trust him to say what I was saying, to correctly translate what I was saying. And not know if that's what he's doing, being faced by very, very angry people and have to instantly trust that this man is doing that for me. And I mean, that forges a special bond for people that, you know, when they start smiling and nodding their heads at me and they let me go, I know he told the truth.

I know he was saying what I was saying. And that's an instant trust and, you know And that's a bond that will never be broken. I mean, honestly, this guy saved my life that day, and not only my life, right? I mean, so that's the relationship between an interpreter and someone in the military. It is not a typical relationship as a military commander and another soldier or a translator, which is very true,

because sometimes when I tell my friends, my soldier's friend, that, yeah, I'm going to meet the colonel, and their husband would come and we're going to dinner and they're like a colonel. But the thing is about colonel Guarantee when she was like, when met in Iraq, even with her high rank, with her position, she was not just a family for me. I have other soldiers that they feel she is there.

The person they look up to, they feel they are protected just because she's there, you know, they trust her. A boss Musa and his friend, Colonel Julie Garrity. This has been our Veterans Day special and I come from a long line of veterans myself. My direct ancestor is followed in the Battle of Kings Mountain through the American Revolution and served in both World Wars. My stepbrother Chris Butler is currently a lieutenant colonel in the Alabama National Guard and is served in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Egypt. And then there's my own dad. He was stationed in Thailand during the Vietnam War. He left when I was

just six months old and was gone for a year. With him away so long and me so young, he was worried that his only child would know him when he got home. So my mama had an eight by eleven picture of him printed and framed and she set it on the floor in a corner of the living room. So it would be right at eye level for me, a crawling baby. Every day she set me down in front of the picture and would point at it and say, Daddy, Daddy, that's your daddy. Cut to one year later in the summer of 1970. Daddy had made it back alive and was flying to the Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. In those days, you'd walk down the stairs of the plane right under the runway and your loved ones would meet you in the tarmac. The way Mama tells it is she approached the plane.

She saw my father coming down the stairs and I broke away from her and ran towards him yelling, daddy, daddy, daddy. So I shout out to my father and all the fathers and mothers and men and women who give a big part of their lives and service to their country. That's it for this episode of the Moth Radio Hour. We hope you'll join us next time.

Your host this hour was the Moths artistic director, Catherine Burns. Catherine also directed the stories in the show along with Sarah Austin Genets, Meg Bulls, and Larry Rosen. The rest of the most directorial staff includes Sarah Haberman and Jennifer Hickson, production support from Timothy Looley. Special thanks to Moth Community Instructor David Krab, and everyone at the Writers Guild initiatives hellendoyedoyche Writing workshops.

And also our friends at Wisconsin Public Radio. Our pitches in this hour came from Jess Williams in Minnesota and Ray Christian in North Carolina. Most stories are true, is remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by The Drift. Other music in this hour from Boards of Canada, Lawless Music,

Stellwagon Symphonet, RJD2, and Regina Carter. The Mawf is produced for radio by me, Jay Allison, with Vicki Merrick at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, ferdinnd, and peaceful world. North Radio Hours presented by PRX. For more about our podcast for information on pitching your own story and everything else,

go to our website, thumoth.org. TheMawth.org.