The Moth - Veterans Day: The Moth Podcast

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

This episode originally aired on November 12, 2021. If you've been moved by a story this year, text 'GIVE25' to 78679 to make a donation to The Moth today. This week, two stories honoring Veterans, and a can’t-miss interview with 98-year-old WWII Vet Tom Sitter. This episode is hosted by Jon Goode. Storytellers: Scott Young honors the legacy of his Vietnam Veteran father. Tom Sitter retells a hair-raising tale from his WWII service. If you've been moved by a story this year, text 'GIVE25' to 78679 to make a donation to The Moth today. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Unwrapped holiday magic at Holt Renfrew with gifts that say I know you. From festive and cozy fashion to Lux Beauty and Fragrance Sets, our special selection has something for every style and price point. Visit our Holt's holiday shop and store or online at Holtrenfrew.com. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here. Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, built for breakthroughs with personalized workout plans,

real-time insights, and endless ways to do that. move. Lift with confidence while Peloton IQ counts reps, corrects form, and tracks your progress. Let yourself run, lift, flow, and go. Explore the new Peloton cross-draining tread plus at 1Peloton.ca.com. Welcome to the Moth podcast. I'm John Good, your host for this week. Originally coined its armistice day by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919, the day we now hold as Veterans Day, is a day that elevates and celebrates those who stood a post around the world in defense of freedom. Every year, on November the 11th, we remember and honor their commitment, service, and sacrifice. Our first story this week comes from Scott Young.

Scott told this story at a grand slam in London, where the theme of the night was lost and found. Here's Scott, live at the moth. If I'm complimented at all in my physical appearance, it's usually one of two things. My thick, full beard, or my beefy muscular legs. I get both from my mother. She's only five, too, but she is built thick, and has her suitness, many men would envy. I grew up to the accurate smell of the wax she boiled mornings to remove the whiskers from her chin.

Yet all he ever heard growing up was, just like your father. Now, I knew that wasn't physical because my dad's six, four, and had a baby smooth face, and as my mother liked to say, had to run around in the shower to get wet. He was so skinny. Not the jeans I got. So what was it about me that made me like my father?

It's hard being compared. compared to a ghost. See, my father died fighting in the Vietnam War when I was only two. He was 21, and he had a choice. He could get released from active duty one month early, or he could spend a week on leave in Hawaii with my mother and I.

He chose to get out of active duty early. He died a war hero, killed by mortar fire, rescuing injured soldiers on the week he would have been in Hawaii with us. on my mother's birthday. If you wrote it as fiction, your editor would cut it because it's not believable. But it's my life.

My father was drafted because he quit his job, left my mother and I, and took off to San Francisco for what he hoped to be the second summer of love. I can hardly blame him for that. He came back with a draft notice and said he was against the war and he wanted to ditch the draft

and for my mom and I to run away to Canada with him. My mother said no. My mother said, be a man and fight for your country. Her regret is deep. Now when kids would ask me about my father and I'd say he died in the war, they'd always say, I'm sorry, and I'd say, don't be, I never knew him.

I was super defensive and I was, I resented their pity, but I was angry, and I didn't know why, so I just sort of buried those feelings. I did know that the Vietnam War veterans didn't get any parades. Nobody spoke with pride of serving in the one war America lost. And nobody back then honored my mother and I by calling us a gold star family. The Vietnam War was a mistake. It was an embarrassment. And there was no space for me to be proud of my father, this war hero. So I wasn't. I was 24 when I decided to go to Bill Clinton's inauguration, a kind of last minute idea,

and I was buoyed by his win, hopeful for the future, and I wanted to see this monument that they'd built for the Vietnam War veterans, and I knew my dad's name was on, and I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, so I purposely decided I wouldn't choose which day I would go there. So it was the third day I was there, and I found myself standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial

looking down at the black gash of granite and decided it was time. And when you enter, you can give them the name of a person and they'll print out a piece of paper that shows you the location so you can find it. And I couldn't believe what the paper said. It said,

Ronald L. Young, born January 19th. It was January 19th. He died when I was two. We never said. celebrated his birthday. The only birthday I thought of with my dad really was my mother's, the day he died, which was always a miserable experience, but still, I randomly decided to go that day. I found my father's name on the wall. I ran my fingers over the etching.

Facing the high black gloss of the Vietnam War Memorial is like seeing yourself through a mirror darkly, all of the complicated feelings around the Vietnam War are embodied in the monument designed by myelin. It is a splendid visual metaphor. I could see the Washington monument, proud, reflected as though through a bleak haze. And I reflected for the first time in my life on my own loss standing there in the sea of flowers memento's notes

American flags of all sizes burning candles everywhere at my feet I was overwhelmed I suddenly realized you know all those times people said sorry and I said don't be I never knew him was exactly why they were sorry and why I was so sorry now

I wept a stranger came up to me and put their arm around me while I cried when I finally looked I was stunned to see it was just a young girl too young to be the daughter of anyone on the wall she bared witness to my grief we didn't speak

we didn't have to I've now lived 30 more years than my father did I never fought in a war and I don't think I'm anybody's hero but people still say well honestly mostly my mother you're just like your father and now now that makes me proud thank you

That was Scott Young. Scott has always been a storyteller. From spinning fantastical tales on the playground to publishing articles about L.A. Nightlife to creating marketing narratives as a creative director, Scott believes that we find life's meaning through story. To see some photos of Scott's family and of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,

head to our website, Themoth.org slash... I wish. Tim's new Cravable Raps are made for the times your boss said the what now? Or your teacher mentions that thing I'm a bob. Need to pick me up? Snack back to reality with Tim's new cravable raps available in Chipotle or Ranch. Plus tax at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time.

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a better quality price. On link on Cepora. Or magazine. In line, our next storyteller is Tom

Sitter. Tom told this story at a story slam in Madison. where the theme of the night was karma. Be sure to stick around after the applause to hear a one-of-a-kind conversation that I had with Tom, veteran to veteran.

Here's Tom, live at the mall. Thank you. Hi, my name is Tom Sitter. 93 years old and still breathing. Now, during World War II, I found myself in France. Now, the battle of the bulge had started in December of that year and continued through January.

We got there. It was pretty much over, but I was in a medical battalion, and we had to clean up pretty much. We carried bodies and parts of bodies and prisoners to station hospitals into the 8th Sense. Now, over there, we ran into our arch enemies, the 9th Armour Division. These guys were all tankers, and they were mean. And we had both trained in Kansas near Fort Riley during World War II.

And we in the cavalry, I was in the cavalry at the time. We had these great uniform boots and breeches. And they really turned a lot of heads, and we knew it. Pretty cocky. Anyway, we'd go into town, and when the tankers would be there, oh, by the way, in 42, they still had horse cavalry down in Fort Riley, in addition to the mechanized cavalry. So when we go into town, the tankers would be in these bars.

We'd come walking in, and they'd say, I smell horse shit. The 29th must be here. And we gave as good as we got. As a result, there were a lot of fights going on, a lot of them. And a movie would instigate fights. We'd sing a cavalry song, bear with me. We'd say, the cavalry, the cavalry with dirt behind their ears. The cavalry, the cavalry, they drink up all the beers,

the infantry and tankers and the corps of engineers. They couldn't whip the cavalry in 100,000 years. Well, that created quite a... Thank you. That created a lot of fights too. Anyways, when we got over to Europe, we ran into the 9th Armored Division. I'll tell you how. When we first landed the 20th Armored Division, our 12,000 men, tanks and armored cars and jeeps and everything else,

the first thing they did when we landed in France was to break us up into segments, and they put us with the first, the third, and the 9th Army. So we were part of the 9th Army, and up near the Rhine, we were next to the British and Canadian troops. And during that time, we did ambulance duties and moved wounded and dead. But we noticed when we got up to close to the Rhine, our heart sank. We knew, first of all, the Germans, when they retreated after the ball, they blew up bridges all the way. And we knew that when we got to the Rhine, we saw that immense body of water. We knew our heart sank.

We knew we were going to have to cross it, probably in rubber rafts or tiny boats. So we didn't look forward to that. And my rosary got a pretty good workout during that time. Anyway, finally, by now it was February of 1945. Now the Rhine River started as a trickle in the Swiss Alps. And when it goes northeasterly flowing into the North Sea, it becomes a huge river, you know, hundreds of yards across. And we just were frightened the thought of crossing that.

By early March, we had good news. Someone had captured a bridge at Ramagan. It was a railway trestle bridge, and it was captured by our old arch enemies, the Ninth Armour Division. Great guys. So anyway, we finally, we reunited the 20th Army Division, finally went to the point where we were going to cross. Now, the 9th Army Division had fought terribly hard to win that. The Germans tried to blow up the trestle bridge and what happened,

and some of the charges for some reason, God only knows, they didn't go off. So the 9th Army had to go into that trestle, crawled under fire, and had cut wires, removed charges that didn't detonate. At any moment, they thought the thing would go up into their face. And then at top of it, the bridge now was intact, but it was tilted and very shaky. You couldn't get a vehicle across there.

So the ninth armor dismounted, had crawled under fire, went across that bridge one at a time, under fire, and they established a bridgehead on the other side of the river. And they held that bridgehead, those lucky so-and-so's held that. bridge long enough for pontoon bridges to be built where we were. Well, the 20th Army Division finally was united and we were going to cross at that point. Now when we got in our ambulance, we started off of us a pontoon, a very flimsy pontoon bridge. The big bridge, the sturdy ones, were for tanks and trucks. But as we got onto this pontoon, I could tell it was shaking. We were swaying from side to side and dipping and everything else and the water was choppy and the water was

black and it was cold. It was in March. And we knew that if we made one mistake, that ambulance was going to go into the water with us in it, and in doing so, we're going to wreck that pontoon bridge, which means that if we survived the water floating downstream, our own troops would have been shooting at us. And who were waiting to cross the bridge, of course. Well, we finally got across the bridge. We went over on the other side of the bridge. We united, and the 20th Army Division was attached to the 7th Army, and we swept through Germany. We went through down along Mannheim and Augsburg and south and east, and finally got to Dachau, now that's another story, I won't go into it, and we got to Munich, and finally

we crossed the river and got into Bavaria. And as we headed towards the Austrian border, we almost reached it on May 7, 1945. and the war ended. Now, yesterday was May 7th. And, I mean, talk about 72 years. And today I'm here telling that story because I wouldn't be here had it not been for those incredible bravery

of those glorious bastards, the 9th Armored Division. That's here for Tom Sitter. That was Tom Sitter. Tom was born on August 16th, 1923 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He's a retired building and fire inspector. and World War II Combat Medic, who served in the European Rhineland and Central Europe campaigns. In his 40-month Army service, he was a motorcyclist in both the mechanized cavalry and military police, a medic, bugler, boxer, and litter-bearer.

Litter-bearer is not what it sounds like. In this instance, litter means stretcher. Tom currently resides in Madison, Wisconsin. In the conversation you're about to hear, it is my distinct honor and privilege to speak with Tom about its life and service in the Army. Hello, this is John. Is this Mr. Tom Sitter? This is he, yes. Fantastic. It is an honor and a pleasure to have this conversation with you. First off, as always, I'd like to thank you for your service.

for all that you've done for this country and for us. I myself, I was in the Marine Corps during the first Desert Storm. And guys like you definitely paved the way for guys like me to come along and just following your footsteps. You were a very young man when you joined the Army, like 20 years old. Is that correct? I just turned, yeah, I just turned 19. Just turned 19? 1942, yeah.

Wow. So what inspired you to enlist? I had a Hollywood version of what the war was all about, you know. I had no idea what war or anything was really like, but we were all filled with enthusiasm in those days, young guys. Right. So once you got in and got enlisted and did boot camp and went over, how did that change you as a person? Like once you saw what war really was, how did that, I guess, inform these formative years of yours? well over over a long period of time it made me a pacifist and abhor war i wasn't until after

after i'd been in combat for a while and then i lost my very best friend of roy sanders who was killed with 36 infantry uh i gradually it wasn't it wasn't a sudden thing it was like over the years i just so i thought that war was so so useless And nobody really wins in a war. What's one of your most vivid memories from your combat days? Our division was one of two that liberated that cowl, the concentration camp. And that is something I will never, never, ever forget. It was just mind-twisting to see people treated like that.

Well, on May 7th of 1945, when Germany surrendered, with all you had been through, like, how did that feel to you? Do you remember that day? Yeah, I'll tell you, for one thing, the war was winding down. We knew the last week or so of the war. There was hardly any resistance at all. Germans were coming out of the woods with their hands up, hundreds and hundreds of Germans trying to surrender. It had to be very careful. Some of them would come out of the woods that get shot. Oh, wow. When you heard they surrendered where, I mean, you knew ahead of time, But when you got the official word was, was it just thoughts of like, oh, well, you know, we're heading home now?

Yeah, we were down in Bavaria, very close to the Austrian border. And Berchtes Garden, which was Hicker's Mountain Retreat. I had the privilege of going through that place, too. That was really something I never forget. we were going through we got everybody was on a rush see everybody assumed that Hitler was hiding down there when the war was ending

we were on a race after we left that cow to get to Bertus Garden to capture Hitler and Martin Borman Oh wow okay The French were also headed in that direction and 101st Airborne 101st Airborne got there first so they took over at Berchtes Garden

so when we got there we were swarming through the place like a bunch of locusts, you know, trying to get souvenirs. I didn't pick up a couple, but anyway, I heard a couple guys, hey, sitter, come in here. I walked in this big bathroom. It was the largest bathroom, and we assumed it was Hitler's, and they were both taking old ink into bathtub, and I went with him. I want to be known as somebody that pissed in Hitler's bathtub. Listen, I think you should get business cards, and that should be...

Yeah, I thought they had that show on two years ago. I've got a secret. I thought, I'd like it on that show. They never guessed in a million years what I did. So after you, you know, after your enlistment was over, after you got out of the Army, how was your adjustment back to civilian life? We got back, of course, I hear the millions and millions of young guys looking for job. Jobs were really hard to find, and you didn't have much choice, but we got out early enough in January of 1945,

and the bulk of the guys getting discharged were still selling service. So we got ahead of a lot of guys, but we were unskilled, you know. We had to take whatever job was offered, but I was struggling along with a lot of other guys. You know, the skills that we had learned in service were not helpful. Right. So now, you know, at the age of 98 years young, having, you know, lived through World War II and having served and haven't seen everything this comes since, all of the other wars, what advice do you have for, like, the younger generation or the world

at large today? Oh, boy, probably all the things that my mother taught me. Try to be honest. Never lie to yourself. Many of us have done that. We've done things that were wrong, and we lied to ourselves to do it. Treat people like you would treat themselves.

I've learned to hate bigotry. I don't have much hate for a thing, but there's a lot of disgust for people that are bigoted. Which is something because, you know, World War II. I mean, part of what's at the root of that war is bigotry. You know, at the root of bigotry is ignorance. And then, you know, once you're around a group of people and you get to know them, then you're like, oh, wow, most of what I've been told isn't true.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, in the military, they would always say, you know, we're all the same in a foxhole. There is no, no black, no white. We're just, we're in here together trying to push toward the same goal. Yeah, right. Speaking of goals, I heard that a few years back, you won the story slam in Madison. Yeah, I won. Fantastic.

That's the best experience. I'm bragging now, but I was the first one ever to get a 10. Oh, I love it. I love it. You should put that on your business card. Urinator in Hitler's tub and the first person to get a 10 at the Madison Store Slam. Well, Tom, thank you so much for your time today. We greatly appreciate it.

Nice talking to you. All right, bye-bye. That was easy. To see some photos of Tom, Head to our website, the moth.org slash extras. That's all for this episode. From all of us here at The Moth, have a story-worthy week. John Good is an Emmy-nominated writer, raised in Richmond, Virginia, and currently residing in Atlanta, Georgia.

John's work has been featured on CNN's Black in America, HBO's Deaf Poetry Jam, and TV1's Verses and Flow. He has written a collection of poetry in John. short stories entitled Conduit and a novel entitled Midas. John is a fellow of Air Serenby and current host of the Moth, Atlanta. This episode of The Moth podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Janice, Sarah Jane Johnson, Julia Purcell, and me, Davy Sumner. The rest of the Moth's leadership team includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bowles, Kate Tellers, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Cluchet,

Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Inga Gladowski, and Aldi Kaza. All Moth stories are true as remembered by storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, visit our website, the moth.org.