Evergreen Podcasts | The Honor Project
265 episodes listed below
PRESS PLAY
The unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. From archived tapes of WWI veterans, to conversations with modern-day warriors, these are their stories, in their own words.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Extended veteran interviews turn military operations into precise accounts of equipment, responsibility, danger, and decisions made under fire.
Warriors In Their Own Words builds military history from extended firsthand accounts, with narration supplying just enough operational context to place each speaker inside a larger campaign.
Sixteen demolition teams line up on D-Day; you hear what it felt like to be number eleven.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A blunt artilleryman's memory of the push toward German soil, carried by hard-earned detail.
Robert Weiss's account traces a U.S. Army forward observer on the push from Normandy toward German soil, where the job meant moving ahead of the troops to find artillery targets and accepting a higher risk of being cut off.
A rescue story built from calls, terrain, and survival.
The episode follows a rescue effort at ground level, with one man trapped under enemy control while repeated attempts try to reach him. What stays with it is the detail: failed pickups, air controllers, helicopters turning back, ground fire, and the plain cost of every decision.
A D-Day demolition account that earns its force through exact, unsettling detail.
The episode turns on the work of U.S. Navy combat demolition units landing in the first waves, clearing beach obstacles so the landing craft can get through.
A restrained Vietnam account about patience, discipline, and survival.
The piece treats Vietnam as a test of patience, discipline, and one clean shot. Chuck Mawinney moves from a small ranch in southeast Oregon and a childhood of hunting into the slow work of stalking, waiting, and trusting a rifle, a spotter, and nerve.
A blunt armored-war account where mechanics, minefields, and bad assumptions decide the fight.
The topic-editor sees this as a blunt account of the Sherman and the gap between what crews hoped for and what the field actually offered. Belton Cooper comes across as strongest when he stays close to the work itself: what failed, what crews expected, and how recovery became…
Forward observers, artillery, and the hard problem of keeping infantry alive under fire.
The episode follows soldiers remembering forward observers working close to danger, where artillery, illumination, and infantry support had to be managed under pressure.
A plainspoken Wake Island surrender account that turns on one chilling near-execution and the force of remembered detail.
Sergeant John Swede Pearsall's Wake Island account reads less like a tidy surrender story than a close-up of how quickly a battlefield can shrink to a few men, a sword, and a moment that almost turns into an execution.
A covert-war story built from gear, terrain, and field-level detail.
The episode presents SOG as a very deadly covert joint service task force and stays close to J.D. Bath, a communications specialist, as it moves through the practical side of the operation: team names, training, comms work, gear, and the hard geography of moving quietly behind…
Outnumbered units, remembered under fire.
Battle maps, war films, and patient context.
War news, tested against military reality.
Antique European history, read aloud.
William Horn calls the CG-4A "the only aircraft in the history of the Air Force that was designed to crash."
Robert Weiss recounts how ROTC at Purdue, an accelerated wartime schedule, and Officer’s Candidate School brought him into the Army as a second lieutenant.
Jerry Markham of Navy Combat Demolition Unit 46 recalls landing on Easy Red Beach on June 6, 1944.
An EB-66 mission over North Vietnam goes bad fast.
Chuck Mawinney's story begins in southeast Oregon and carries into Vietnam.
This episode features firsthand accounts from WWII veterans, focusing on the inadequacies of the Sherman tank against German armor, the brutal hedgerow warfare in Normandy, and innovations like the hedge chopper.
Sergeant John Swede Pearsall recounts his experience as a Marine defending Wake Island in December 1941, the surrender to Japanese forces, and his subsequent three and a half years as a prisoner of war in China.
Victor Croizat, a University of Syracuse ROTC graduate commissioned in the Marine Corps in 1940, describes his path from Philadelphia Navy Yard basic school to commanding Company A of the 1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion.
Douglas Dillard of the 551st describes being woken at 3 a.m.
Leonard Lamelle, first sergeant of D Company, 2nd Ranger Battalion, describes training that cut 2,000 volunteers to 500 men and included climbing 200-to-300-foot cliffs with no safety rope.
Clarence "Budd" Anderson of the 357th Fighter Group explains why the P-51 Mustang's long range let escorts follow B-17 and B-24 bombers to Posen, Poland, and back, while admitting its 85-gallon fuselage tank made it unstable until half-burned.
Barnum has Marines blow up their packs and cross 500 meters under fire in squad rushes, leaving no one behind.
Raiders stuck decals on every airplane reading 'your airplane has just been blown up' while the brass watched.
William Platt's backseater takes his AR-15 and fires out the window at enemy spider holes on Skyline Drive.
Tom Wilson recalls a Mach 3.5 SAM bursting beneath his F-4 near Yen Bay: "There's no boom. High explosives go crack."
If you own Iwo Jima, you can land a B-29 on it, and that made it the most valuable real estate in the world.
Tom McCarthy, a 5'5½", 128-pound Worcester bricklayer, walked into a recruiting office with 35 cents in his pocket and left as a paratrooper-to-be.
Warriors In Their Own Words presents archival first-person accounts of the November 20, 1943 Tarawa landing, in which about 5,000 Japanese defenders faced the 2nd Marine Division.
This episode features interviews with Vietnam War forward observers Barney Barnum and Brian Thacker, who share firsthand accounts of their combat experiences.
SOG carried a bland cover name.