This is John Batchel, conversation with my colleague, Colonel Jeff McCausen, United States Army

retired CBS News, about the president of the United States signing an executive order,

reinstating in some fashion the 8,200 members of the military who refused the vaccine during

the pandemic and were obliged to leave the military.

They were invited back. I believe they'll be compensated for their loss of service.

About 110 members have come back, I learned, after the Biden administration rescinded the

mandate to take the vaccine in 2023.

Jeff tells a story, however, of Washington, of the Revolutionary War and of the Civil War,

and how each of the commanders and the troops at the time dealt with vaccines that were available, sometimes mandated,

sometimes volunteer, sometimes a consequence of spreading disease used by the enemy, biological

warfare. Here's Jeff McCausen to remember vaccines, prevention of infection, and use of biological warfare by adversaries.

More of this later.

I think not, but of course, that's a subjective as opposed to an objective evaluation

on my part.

Clearly, this was an extraordinary circumstance, a pandemic, you know, one-a-century pandemic.

I had seen a similar case, of course, during the Gulf War when there was a fear that

the Iraqis might use biological weapons, and most importantly, botulism.

And several vaccines were created rather quickly.

But the truth were given the option

of whether they took that or not, because they had not been fully vetted in a fashion that one

would normally do trying to come up with a new vaccine. So that may well have been the case

with the COVID vaccination. In the case of the Gulf War botulism vaccination, I also

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