This is the French History Debating Society. I'm John Bachelor. I'm Memorial Day, with Michael

Yann, a veteran of several continents in the United States Army uniform. And Michael, on

and off over the years, has told pieces of the story. I'm never quite clear what time

it is and where Michael is when he's telling the story. Sometimes we're in Europe, sometimes

we're in Afghanistan, sometimes we're in Southeast Asia. I want to concentrate here

on Europe because when Michael was a younger man, there was a Cold War that was going to

end in extreme violence. And he trained, I learned over the years, he trained for the event

of the Soviets pouring through Poland, heading for Paris. Michael, can you call upon those

events and the people you served with and now you learned to end the Cold War?

Wow, it was really such a great experience since we did not actually have, I mean, the

Cold War obviously happened, but it was luckily a Cold War mostly. And what I did was, you

know, Reagan became president and there was a brief period where young people could try

out for special forces because when Reagan became president, there was a great infusion

of effort to increase our intelligence and our special operations forces and our navy.

And that sort of thing, there were, you know, the programs, the CIA program called QR Helpful,

which was to help the solidarity in Poland to resist the Russians. And then of course,

there was the war in Afghanistan that the United States helped fund the Mujahideen

to fight back against the Mujah, I mean, the Mujah were fighting back against the Russians.

Of course, the Saudis were involved and actually Chinese were as well as were the Pakistanis

and others, you know, and anyway, that's a very, you know, then of course there was brilliant

pebbles and all these different things that were used to undermine the Soviet Union. And

one little part was my, the two A teams I was on when I was a Green Bray. Now, I became interestingly,

...