Karl Marlantes: How I Came to Terms with My Navy Cross
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 26 May 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Karl Marlantes, a Vietnam War veteran and the award-winning author of Matterhorn and What It Is Like to Go to War, received the Navy Cross after leading an assault during a brutal battle in Vietnam. Long after the fighting ended, he found himself thinking less about the medal and more about the young Marines who fought alongside him.
Marlantes joins us with a deeply personal account of his service and the young men he served beside
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.2 | And we return to Our American Stories. |
| 0:17.2 | And up next a story from Carl Merlantis. |
| 0:20.2 | Carl is the author of the award-winning books Matterhorn |
| 0:22.7 | and what it's like to go to war, |
| 0:25.1 | books that took him 30 years of reckoning and soul-searching to write |
| 0:28.7 | after his service in Vietnam. |
| 0:31.9 | While in Vietnam, Carl and his Marines were engaged against the North Vietnamese Army, |
| 0:37.1 | often called the NVA. |
| 0:39.6 | And in so doing, Carl earned many medals, including the second highest award for valor our country |
| 0:45.8 | bestows. That would be the Navy Cross. But Carl often asked himself a question, why did he |
| 0:52.0 | receive the awards when others, who hadn't been awarded, |
| 0:55.7 | had done so much more? Here's Carl with the story. |
| 1:00.0 | The NVA had dug in on a couple of hills on Mudders Ridge, and at that time I had been |
| 1:08.5 | promoted to the company executive officer. |
| 1:11.7 | We were on the assault and I couldn't stand to not be with my platoon because I'd just |
| 1:17.1 | giving them up to take the new job and a new, brand new, platoon commander. |
| 1:22.9 | It'd only been in one firefight. |
| 1:24.9 | So I just, I joined the flatoon, just to help out. |
| 1:29.3 | And there was a kid that was clearly, you know, panicked. And if you don't seat the magazine of your |
| 1:42.3 | M16 correctly, it won't work. |
... |
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