EP 545. The Rifle Project

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. Today’s guest hails from the big city of Boston, Massachusetts, where he is a policeman. But he’s also got a really, really good story, a really good journey, a really good project, he’s going to tell us all about today. Andrew, how the heck are you?

Andrew Biggio: I’m awesome, brother. Thanks for having me on this all-American podcast.

Ramsey Russell: Heck yeah, man. We are all-American. We duck hunters are nothing but American. Anything but woke. Tell me this, Andrew. Where’d you grow up? Did you grow up in Boston?

Andrew Biggio: I did. I’ve been a city kid my whole life. Grew up in the city. You know, the first time I ever left home and saw the rest of the world was when I enlisted in the Marines in 2006 and was introduced to all sorts of people from all different backgrounds, cultures, and states. I basically got a quick, fast education as an 18-year-old kid in boot camp with kids from all over.

Ramsey Russell: The same could be said about Boston, though. That’s a big city with a lot. It’s a very diverse community, lots of people. I mean, I don’t know how many people, but it seems like the biggest city I’ve ever been in when I drive through.

Andrew Biggio: Yeah, Boston’s pretty big, growing up in the city, you don’t know anything about hunting, firearms, or outdoor stuff. So going into the Marines and having to live off the land, sleep in the field, and work with firearms was totally new to me.

Ramsey Russell: What was it like growing up before the Marines? What was childhood like in a big city like Boston? What did young Andrew do growing up for fun?

Andrew Biggio: You know, it really was fun. That was the only upside to it. Your friends lived below you, above you, to the left of you, to the right of you. We lived in a concrete jungle, but every family had kids your age. You would always be with groups all the time, playing manhunt, war, hide-and-go-seek, and things like that. So you always had a posse with you, you always had friends. You grew up with other kids. It really was great. You didn’t need a bus or a half-hour drive to someone else’s house. Everybody was right there as soon as you walked out your front door.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. So you grew up in a brownstone building, one of these apartment complexes?

Andrew Biggio: Oh, yeah. I’m in one right now with this podcast. But I actually grew up in public housing, so they were like townhouses. They were basically brownstones but the horizontal way. So it was all first-floor type living.

Ramsey Russell: And what inspired you to join the military?

Andrew Biggio: I don’t know what it was, honestly. Just at a very young age, I always felt a sense of duty. Both of my grandfather’s lost a brother in World War II, so I grew up with two Gold Star brothers in my family. One was killed in Italy, and one was killed in the Philippines. I was named after the one killed in Italy, Andrew Biggio, at age 19. My family named me after Uncle Andy, who was killed in World War II. I grew up with his name, and I just felt that serving was the right thing to do. Of course, what really reinforced that was being in eighth grade and seeing people jumping out of the Twin Towers on 9/11. Suddenly, kids my age had our youth robbed from us. We went from watching WWF wrestling or playing Pokémon cards to seeing planes flying into buildings and people jumping out of them, right there live on television.

Ramsey Russell: Do you remember exactly where you were on that day? I’ve never talked to anybody since myself included, who doesn’t remember exactly where they were standing and what they were doing when they got the news.

Andrew Biggio: I’ll never forget it. We were all sitting in class, and all of a sudden, kids started to get dismissed from class at a rapid rate. The principal would come over the intercom and say, “Student John Smith, come down to the office. Your parents are here to get you. Student Rebecca Jennings, come.” It just kept happening. We were wondering, “What is going on?” Then my teacher put on the radio. Still, I didn’t even know what the World Trade Center was. I didn’t really know what the Pentagon was. I was in eighth grade. I was walking home from school and stopped into the same convenience store I always stopped in after school to buy candy or something. I saw the television. It was a Hispanic convenience store, so their TV shows and cable television were more raw, unedited. There was no censorship on those channels back then. I watched two people hold hands and jump out of the World Trade Center. I saw that, and it really changed my life.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. So you think that was a pivotal moment when you said shortly thereafter, “I need to join the military and do something about this?”

Andrew Biggio: Yeah. Well, I figured it was all going to be over by the time I got out because I still had to go through high school. That was four years. I thought, “Oh, this is all going to be over by the time I graduate. I’m going to miss the whole thing.” But instead, both fragging’ wars were waiting for me when I got out.

Ramsey Russell: Were your granddaddies still around when that happened? When 9/11 happened?

Andrew Biggio: One of them was, yes, on my dad’s side.

Ramsey Russell: What were his thoughts about it?

Andrew Biggio: You know, I don’t really remember talking to him about it, to be honest with you. He was from the World War II era. I really don’t remember conversing with him about it.

Ramsey Russell: Okay. Did he ever tell you any stories about his time in the service?

Andrew Biggio: Oh, God. Yeah. Most of it was about getting the notification that his brother had been killed.

Ramsey Russell: Where was he when that happened?

Andrew Biggio: Coincidentally, here we go again, he got dismissed from school. They came on the intercom system and said, “John Biggio, will you come to the office?” He got dismissed from school and went home, where he found police had put caution tape around the house so that the neighbors wouldn’t bother my great-grandmother and would give the family some privacy. When he went inside, he found out his brother was killed in Italy. My great-grandmother never put up a Christmas tree again after that. She never put up a Christmas tree again.

Ramsey Russell: Really? Wow.

Andrew Biggio: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Did he ever learn any details about where his brother was in Italy or what he had been doing at the time?

Andrew Biggio: I brought him back and pushed him up the mountain where his brother was killed at age 89.

Ramsey Russell: Golly. What was that like for you and for him?

Andrew Biggio: That spawned this whole rifle project. In 2015, we found out that Andrew was killed on what was called the Gothic Line. It was a series of defenses north of Florence, Italy. It was up to the 34th Infantry Division to penetrate these defenses to keep pushing the Germans out of Italy. He was 19 years old and on one of these brutal hills, really, a mountain. We hired an Italian tour guide group that has a museum called the Gothic Line Museum in Italy. They brought us to the vicinity where B Company, 135th Regiment, was dug in on September 17, 1944. My grandfather walked with me maybe a mile or two up this mountain, and we planted an American flag.

Ramsey Russell: My goodness gracious. Okay, so 9/11 happens. You’re in eighth grade, you finish high school, and both those wars are waiting on you. When did you join? Where did you join? Why did you choose the U.S. Marines? And what next? Come on, there’s active war and you’re joining the U.S. Marines, so there’s a high likelihood you’re going to see active duty.

Andrew Biggio: Yeah, and I wanted to, it’s really what I wanted. I wanted to go see combat. I joined the Marines in 2006, went to Parris Island, got out of boot camp, went to the School of Infantry, joined my unit, and then about a year went by and I deployed to Iraq in 2008. Then I deployed to Afghanistan in 2011, and I got out New Year’s Day 2012 after six years in the Marines. And it was really interesting. It was good. I’m so glad I served. I’m a little upset about the outcome of Afghanistan in particular, and I think a lot of veterans are. And they’ll be lying to you if they say they’re not. I think we had a real just war over there. I think 9/11 was our Pearl Harbor.

Ramsey Russell: The politicians got involved.

Andrew Biggio: Politicians, corrupt generals, companies, organizations who probably knew that this government they were trying to build wasn’t going to work. And yet we stayed there for 20 years and lost a lot of lives. If it was just going to be a shithole, we should have been out right after Bin Laden was killed. I think there were some cover-ups, and I think our three-letter agencies that we pay so much money, CIA, FBI, DIA, and whatever other groups, had to have known that this was going to happen. That’s what they get paid to do, intelligence. U.S. Lance Corporals, Corporals, and Sergeants, Marines, we get paid to kill the enemy by fire and maneuver, deploy, miss home, leave our home, and dedicate our lives as, you know, “just uneducated enlisted men and fight for our country”. And people who make more money than us aren’t doing their job. And there were absolutely no repercussions, resignations, nothing over that Afghanistan thing. So I’m hoping this new president relaunches a better investigation and people pay for what happened. At the end of the day, is it the Afghan people’s fault? 1,000%. They should be fighting for their own country, standing up for themselves. They had the resources, the supplies, the money, whatever. At the end of the day, yes. But I think there could have been some serious preventative measures taken.

Ramsey Russell: What was it like for a big city boy joining the U.S. Marines? What was your first impression when you put your feet on those yellow footprints? What was going through your head? And then when they later handed you your first gun, what was going through your head?

Andrew Biggio: Well, when I was standing on the yellow footprints, I just said, “Oh, I screwed up big time. I messed up. This is depressing. Why did I do this?” But I kept telling myself, I cannot go home a loser. I can’t go home a quitter. I am here. It sucks, but there’s no freaking way I go.

Ramsey Russell: Were they doing some yelling at you?

Andrew Biggio: Oh, more than that. There was definitely physical touching involved. Yes. Yeah. They grabbed you by your throat, the collar of your shirt, threw you. They were smacking you. You know, it was brutal. I mean, I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as it was in the 1960s and the 1950s, but it was enough to make you a killer by the end of it. And that’s what our military should be doing. But when they handed me my first rifle, Rifle Week, I said, “All right, I can do this.” And that was good. I became a better shooter, a better shot as my career in the Marines went on and now in law enforcement. I went from never shooting guns to not knowing how to shoot to being a basic, okay shot to being a good shot.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, you know, I’ve always heard. I talked to a Federal Law Enforcement Training Center shooting instructor one time who told me he would rather have a guy like yourself that was older, that had never touched a gun when he began to instruct somebody, rather than somebody like myself that was handed a shotgun when I was 8 years old and learned all kinds of bad habits. He said a more inexperienced adult becomes more proficient, all things equal, listens to the lessons better.

Andrew Biggio: Yeah, yeah. And right now, my son’s 5, and I already put the BB gun in his hands, and we’ve been doing a little bit of target practice. We got a .22 rifle as well, but we’re starting with the BB gun and will upgrade as time goes on. I want him to know more about, well, first of all, I grew up in a house with no guns. My mother was 18 years old, had me, me and her growing up, and there were no guns. This house has 100 guns in it. So I want them to know about gun safety, recognizing guns, and danger, and how to handle them so in case I’m not around or the safe’s unlocked or they grab a rifle hanging off the fireplace, things like that. So I got to start them now.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. So how long after you got out of basic training before you were, boom, shipped over on active duty?

Andrew Biggio: I think a year. Well, I was shipped over to Iraq the following year. I completed basic training, School of Infantry, joined my unit, and then found out they got orders to go to Iraq.

Ramsey Russell: And what was going on when your boots hit the ground in Iraq? What was that like?

Andrew Biggio: You know, 2008 was kind of the downward of really big combat operations. So I was part of President Bush’s surge. I think there was something like over 200,000 troops in Iraq at the time. Those numbers could be off, I’m going back now 16, 17 years. But I was part of President Bush’s surge. There were troops everywhere. I mean, it was huge. It was like mega bases, you know, chow halls that looked like Walmart’s. It was really developed, and we had to secure an area outside of a big air base called Al Asad Air Base, where dignitaries met, medical stuff was flown in, hospital stuff, injured troops, huge cargo planes, and things like that. We were responsible for three or four towns outside that area.

Ramsey Russell: Was there any firefight going on?

Andrew Biggio: No, not in Iraq. Yep, just not in Iraq. Really long, boring deployment, hard working though. You know, up all hours of the night delivering food and resources and securing this big base. I didn’t get my first combat experience until I deployed to Afghanistan, which was different, IEDs, mortars, rockets.

Ramsey Russell: How did you end up over in Afghanistan from Iraq?

Andrew Biggio: We came home after that long-ass deployment to Iraq. We came home, started training again, and we got orders in 2010 to go to Afghanistan.

Ramsey Russell: And then what? So tell me about Afghanistan.

Andrew Biggio: Yeah, I got to Afghanistan in 2011. We landed at Camp Leatherneck, which was a huge base in Helmand Province. They only started flushing out the Taliban again in 2010 because we had left Afghanistan basically alone to focus on Iraq. The Taliban had moved all back into these areas. In 2010, they had some rough goes, I mean a lot of Marines, a lot of British guys lost their lives, lost limbs, retaking Helmand Province. And so we were relieving these units that had really done a lot of fighting and a lot of, they were the shock troops. Myself and 20 others were assigned to an Afghan police station outside the wire. I lived outside the wire for about five months in an Afghan police station on Highway 1. I found about 42 IEDs alone that deployment. 42.

Ramsey Russell: How’d you find, what were you looking for?

Andrew Biggio: Oh, they would get lazy. The Taliban would come in, and instead of re-digging a new hole, they would put them in previous blast holes because it was easier for them to move the soil and the rocks around. So, they were getting lazy. They were just trying to throw IEDs and plant them, probably getting bonuses or paid off. If they were farmers doing it, they were getting paid by the Taliban. As long as they could just prove they buried a bomb, they would get paid. So, they were doing things lazily. We found a lot like that. They were dug in previous blast holes. The soil was soft enough, so we’d go in, take spray paint, and spray paint the soil. Then, if it looked like it was disturbed the next day, we would know somebody planted something. You could also identify things by little antennas sticking out of the ground, metal detectors, canine detection, things like that.

Ramsey Russell: Was that your job to find IEDs? Is that what your job was?

Andrew Biggio: At the end of the day, it was everybody’s job. I was infantry, but at the end of the day, everyone became an anti-IED man because that was their number one weapon.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. So, I guess you got into some firefights over in that part of the world?

Andrew Biggio: There were a lot. The Afghan police were getting ambushed, killed. And that’s kind of what happened. When a truck full of dead Afghan police pulled up, these were people we trained every day. That actually folded into why I wrote the first chapter of my book. Seeing those guys all get killed and dying for their country like it was nothing. I mean, there was no value of human life over there, Afghans versus Afghans killing each other like nothing. In the first chapter of my book, it was about unloading those dead Afghan police out of the back of that truck. That made me want to dig into the letters that Andrew Biggio wrote before he was killed in Italy, see how he went through war, how he survived, and the things he saw.

Ramsey Russell: What were some of the parallels between what you saw and what your namesake saw over in Italy?

Andrew Biggio: It’s funny because he was an angry little infantryman. He was an angry little grunt in the mountains. Infantrymen are historically angry. Anyone who isn’t infantry gets called “pogues,” which means “person other than grunt.” We’re all upset because we have to live in a dirt hole, and they get to live on bases and enjoy hot food and things like that. And I’m not bad-mouthing people who weren’t in the infantry, I’m just saying that’s commonly the attitude in the military. When I’m reading these letters home, he’s writing, “Dear Mom, don’t think everybody’s on the front lines like me. For every guy on the front lines, there are 300 men behind him. They’re all drinking wine in Rome, and we’re up here in the hills in Italy fighting.” So, he was bitter. And then, the last letter was very, very sad. It was, “Dear Mom, can you please mail me a gold cross to wear around my neck? I don’t want to go up this hill again. It sounds like they’re going to make us go up this hill tomorrow. Please mail me a gold cross I can wear.” That was his last letter home.

Ramsey Russell: How old was he?

Andrew Biggio: Nineteen.

Ramsey Russell: Golly.

Andrew Biggio: Begging his mother for a gold cross. Can you imagine being his mom, opening that letter, knowing your son is somewhere else in the world, begging for a gold cross around his neck? That letter was written September 12, 1944, and he was killed in action on September 17, 1944. He knew it was coming, that poor kid. I think about so many of those kids whose names we’ll never know, who are buried over there in Normandy, Italy, Belgium, and Holland. They literally fought for our country, fought for our way of life. What do we do to remember them in today’s world, with today’s youth?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Andrew Biggio: That’s why I’m happy to do my project and put it on social media. At least the kids are getting it right there in their face on their phone rather than in the classroom.

Ramsey Russell: Did you have any moments over in Afghanistan where you were watching a lot of your close friends die or become injured? Did you ever wish you had that gold cross?

“Wildlife exists because hunters fund conservation. It’s a renewable resource.”

Andrew Biggio: No, thank God, no. I never had any of my friends die in front of me. But I had tons of friends wounded, severely. One of them is working at my American Legion post right now. He lost both his legs on my deployment, Greg Karen. He’s retired and working as a bar manager at my American Legion post. I did a fundraiser for him right when we came home. He stepped on an IED that was in a wall of a house they were searching, and it took off both of his legs. Because of him, I’m doing all of this. I’m looking at 60 people I know who were wounded, on my wall right now. I’ll turn my camera. These are all the veterans I’ve helped who were severely wounded, double amputees, triple amputees. Some of them were quadruple amputees. These guys weren’t in my unit or division or anything like that. I just wanted to help them.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. I apologize for asking this question, but I have to. What is going through your mind in the heat of a firefight? Is it one of those instances where your training kicks in? The U.S. Marines have taught you what you need to do reflexively, to just move forward and do your job. I mean, there’s got to be a first time for everything. And I imagine there’s young Andrew, you’ve been to Iraq, you were on a policing mission, no IEDs, no firefights. Now, you’re thrown over to Afghanistan. Next thing you know, there are bullets whizzing by your head. What in the world goes through your head in that moment?

Andrew Biggio: I know it sounds sadistic, but fun.

Ramsey Russell: It’s just an adrenaline surge?

Andrew Biggio: You know, I do want to say, where I was, there were no real firefights. Where we set up our police station, it was almost impossible for them to ambush us. But that meant they adapted to what we did. So, we had a lot of indirect fire. We had IEDs, rockets, mortars. When you know they’re landing and you’re seeing little clouds of smoke puffing up, I mean, it’s kind of fun. It’s what you signed up for. You’re a warrior. That being said, I can’t speak for every veteran’s experience. I read horror stories about guys getting ambushed, trying to get out of their Humvees, and having to crawl underneath because they had half a dozen AK-47s firing at them. Thank God I haven’t had that experience. That’s the reason why I like to give back to wounded veterans, because I was lucky. I was very lucky not to ever be in a horrible position like that. But we as Marines, I think we want that. We want to be in a firefight. We want to take indirect fire and take cover. Its experiences of everything. I’m sure the guys who landed on Iwo Jima wouldn’t say something like that, but it’s generational. We want to wear the uniforms of those who came before us. I had a very positive experience in the military, and I’m there for the guys who didn’t. But you know what? I’ve got to be honest with you, 99% of the severely wounded veterans I meet, who are forever altered by their war injuries, would do it all over again. They are such inspirations. My friend lost an arm and a leg in Fallujah, Brian Johnson. I’ve been friends with him for 10 years, and I’ve never heard him complain once. Never heard him complain once, I swear to you. And he goes back to Europe with me all the time to bring World War II veterans back. He’s there, marching through the mud and the foxholes with his prosthetic leg, just to be there with the World War II guys.

Ramsey Russell: Golly. Well, we’re going to talk more about your project in a minute, but was there an aha moment when you were doing active duty? Was there an aha moment that made you or compelled you to go out and begin this project? What did you see, or what did you do? What was going on? Was it something over in Afghanistan?

Andrew Biggio: You know, it wasn’t. My whole time in the military, it was all about just hurrying up and getting the hell out of this, getting out of this uniform, getting out of this military, completing my contract, getting home, getting back with my friends. You know, when I was in Afghanistan and Iraq, you’d have to sign a list, and then you’d get to go on a computer for an hour at the big base and log onto a computer and log onto social media or email. And I would log on and see all my friends on Facebook going apple picking, going to Halloween parties, and I’m sitting here in the desert. So the whole thing was like, let’s get the home. Excuse me. I don’t even know if I’m allowed to swear on this podcast. I apologize.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, go ahead.

Andrew Biggio: Okay. Yeah, it was, “Let’s get home. Let’s start a family. Let’s get a job.” The Marine Corps hadn’t been in a huge war since Vietnam, really, since after 9/11. So there were a lot of guys who went into the military during peacetime. And, you know, if you didn’t go to the Gulf War or Desert Storm, you really served during peacetime, like the majority of the Marine Corps. So now, if you’re a post-9/11 guy enlisting, all of a sudden you’re thrown into a uniform, you’re thrown into combat training, you’re thrown into Iraq. You come home, more combat training, you’re thrown into Afghanistan. I mean, what some guys couldn’t get in the Marine Corps in 20 or 25 years, you got in 4 years as a private or a corporal. So there was a lot of exodus, people getting out of the military. They wanted to go home, get out, and start a life, and that was enough for them. And I was one of those guys.

Ramsey Russell: And so when you were dreaming about coming back home, what were you most thinking about? What did you most want to do? What about home? I mean, was it a big old greasy cheeseburger at your local cafe? Was it just sitting in the den at your mama’s house? I mean, what did you most miss or most want to do? “I’m home.”

Andrew Biggio: Yeah, now that you ask me that, it makes me think of Andrew Biggio’s letters home too. You know, he just wanted to go home to this local diner and show off his war medals and his uniform, and he never got to do that. And mine was just, yeah, come home, have a chicken parm sub, you know, that’s what we eat up here in the Northeast, chicken parmesan. Have a girlfriend, have a steady girlfriend, and then, you know, take the police exam one day and just be with my younger brothers. I missed my younger brothers dearly.

Ramsey Russell: And so how many brothers do you have, Andrew?

Andrew Biggio: I have two younger brothers. So I had this anxiety of coming home and being with them and being with family. And, of course, now when I sit back and you ask me that question, I think, “I’ve taken so much for granted. I don’t see them enough now.” I wanted to see them when I was away, but now I’m home, and work consumes my life. I’ve got two kids of my own. But yeah, the objective was to get home, so I didn’t think much about the guys who wore the uniform before me. I didn’t realize my division fought on Saipan and Iwo Jima. You know, I was just gonna get home. And then, when I started thinking about those dead Afghans in the back of that pickup truck, that’s what spawned me to start reading my uncle’s letters, which spawned me to buy the M1 rifle you see behind my back.

Ramsey Russell: Yep. Well, was being a Boston policeman on your mind? When did you decide you wanted to be a cop after service?

Andrew Biggio: Oh, I wanted to do it as soon as I could. So back then, when I got out of the military, being a police officer was still a wanted job. They only offered that test every two years, I think. So it was hard. It was damn hard to get on the police force. It was a favored job. I mean, you had to be a disabled veteran to get on the job, first of all. Then you had to score like 100 on the exam, and the exam only came every two years. So I think I took my original exam in 2013. I got hired in 2014 or 2015, and that’s when I got on the police force.

Ramsey Russell: What was that like? What’s it like being a policeman in Boston?

Andrew Biggio: Well, it used to be an amazing, awesome job, and now it’s a job where you just have to walk on eggshells. And it’s really hard to walk on eggshells when you’re dealing with the public, you’re dealing with the mentally ill, you’re dealing with drug addicts, you’re dealing with people on the worst days of their lives, and yet you have to be careful and walk on eggshells. It’s always been a brutal profession, especially when you have to go hands-on with someone, place someone under arrest, take away someone’s freedom, or, God forbid, use lethal force. So now, when you do that with cameras sticking in your face, everyone’s going to judge you, everyone’s going to second-guess you, everyone’s going to hold your feet to the flame, if they think they could have handled it differently. But they’re not dealing with what you’re dealing with every day, day in and day out. As a police officer, you cannot be a pushover. And being a pushover means being tough. And people don’t like tough. Sensitive people, little people hiding behind their computer screens at home, don’t like tough because it makes you look like a bully. But really, it’s like, do you want your criminals to rule with an iron fist, or do you want your cops to rule with an iron fist? Because one of them has to.

Ramsey Russell: Good versus evil. That’s right.

Andrew Biggio: One of them has to. I arrest people, and I see people who have the worst days of their lives. They find out their wives are cheating on them and lose their minds, smashing up their house, or they find out their kids are on drugs and their kids stole 50 grand from them. Things like that. I see it. And I never judge these people. When I see them the next day, or the day after, or in a restaurant, I don’t judge them. They had a bad day. Because I could have a bad day tomorrow just like them. I’m raising two kids right now, you know, and so it takes you a while because you get on the job, you’re very young, you’re immature, you don’t have kids. Yeah, you have. Some of us had military experience, which I highly recommend either going to college or going to the military before you get into law enforcement. So you have some maturing going on, you have some life experience. But right now, beggars can’t be choosers. So kids are going right from high school, the taking the police exam, you know, basically. And so that’s how sometimes you develop some of these cops that people don’t like. You know, just the kids that are labeled as power tripping and things like that.

Ramsey Russell: Was Boston part of the defund the police movement? How did that go over?

Andrew Biggio: Oh yeah, we had big protests and riots where they destroyed the whole city. The police were never defunded, we actually make more than we ever did now. But politically, there was some legislation passed to really put us through the wringer if we make mistakes and take away our qualified immunity and stuff like that. So it wasn’t that successful, but they did set up some sort of scheme to try to screw us over if we do make a mistake.

Ramsey Russell: Hey, the reason I asked that question is, here you are, a former U.S. Marine. You’re also a policeman wanting to make the world a better place. What did a guy like you think, when we were all, most of the world, sheltered in place back during the pandemic and all this stuff started? What was going through Andrew Biggio’s head when you saw Minneapolis burn while the politicians, the police, the mayor, and everybody else just stood on the sidelines? I was getting texts. I was in a conversation yesterday, Andrew. Somebody said, “Well, how safe is it in Mexico?” I go, “Compared to what?” You know, because I just never will forget during that time in American history, my phone was vibrating, just about to melt, with text messages coming in from around the world asking me what in the hell was going on in America. They were sitting at home in Mexico and Azerbaijan and all these foreign countries watching the news, also watching Minneapolis burn with complete impunity. You know, what was going through your head when stuff like that was going down?

Andrew Biggio: Well, I think we should all be glad that the governor who gave up his state or handed his state to the mob, we should be glad he ain’t vice president. Isn’t that crazy that they even considered him to be a vice president? Like the ground zero of lawlessness. So what was going through my head was, oh, I was devastated. I was very upset. Law enforcement had just become the worst profession, the most witch-hunted profession. We were going to lose something that happened in Minneapolis with a cop, now cops in Boston are going to lose their rights and their money because of that. That doesn’t make any sense, you know? Law enforcement is the only profession where, if somebody screws up in another part of the world or the country, we all suffer for it. It’s ridiculous. We didn’t have anything like that going on in Boston and that incident, I mean, it was disgraceful how those cops handled that, you know. But, at the end of the day, you still need to protect the house, your police station. You still have to protect your state. You still have to maintain law and order. And so I said to myself, “I can’t believe I traded America’s most favored uniform, the dress blues, for America’s most hated uniform, the police uniform.” You know? And it made me think, like, “Damn, if I had foreseen any of this or how this was going to happen, I would have never gotten out of the military.” I would have done 20 years in the military. And if I saw the way law enforcement was heading, I’d stay in the military. And I think I can still say that right now, that I would have stayed in the military if I knew the direction law enforcement was going to take in this country.

Ramsey Russell: This corporate media, I don’t care which channel you watch, they present one narrative or one view that, in my humble opinion, I think the last election was living proof that doesn’t always reconcile with reality. So when all this mess was going on, you’re on the streets, as a Boston policeman, I just can’t believe, I believe that 80% of humanity worldwide are just good, decent people that want to make a life for themselves, go to work, do the best they can, provide for their families, and be happy when they can. That’s just how I think, we’re all just human, and everybody’s doing the very best they can. But as a policeman in Boston, when all this was going on, did you feel like 100% of everybody out there on the streets was against you, or was it a different form of reality than what the news was presenting?

Andrew Biggio: No, we had a great reception from people. You know, we may be liberal Massachusetts, but people came out in the hundreds with lawn signs that said, “Support our police. We support law enforcement.” Yep. People came out in the hundreds with support, local law enforcement yard signs, and sent us food and cookies to the police station, and it was awesome. So people came out in support. Yeah, we had to deal with these crazy mobsters and these people who traveled from out of state to come and disrupt things and make it look like they had bigger numbers than they actually did. So it was good. It was good.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Okay.

Andrew Biggio: But, you know, the politicians, they crumble to people who tweet them things. So whoever has the loudest voice on Twitter can get the best of the politicians sometimes.

Ramsey Russell: It’s the vocal minority. It always is the vocal minority that causes all the stink that tweets. The rest of us are just working, I feel like. And I feel like, again, during the last election, I think the silent majority woke up, showed up, and voted. That’s what I think happened. We’re tired. I think we’re all tolerant to an extent, but at some point in time, no, we’re not tolerant. This is not the version of America we want. And I think we all showed up and voted. I believe every single person listening to this podcast supports law enforcement. Every one of us does. It’s the America we grew up in. It’s the vision we want anyway. So when did your nonprofit start? What is your nonprofit? When did it start? Why did it start?

“We raised $25,000 for my friend. Then 300 bikes became 4,000.”

Andrew Biggio: So when I got back from that deployment in Afghanistan and my buddy lost his legs, I said, “You know, I got to do something for guys that are severely wounded.” I went down to Walter Reed Hospital, and I saw how many guys were laid up in those hospital beds with severe injuries. So I decided to do a motorcycle rally for my friend up in Boston because, at the time, and I still am, you know, an avid motorcycle rider. We had about 300 motorcycles show up. And I said, “This was great.” We raised him about $25,000 to buy him a brand-new car. Then we did it the following year, and those 300 motorcycles turned into almost 1,000 motorcycles. And then, 14 years later, we were having almost 4,000 motorcycles come to this event. It became Boston’s biggest motorcycle rally, and we were raising, by now, over a million dollars. No one gets paid a salary. I give all the money away, and it’s just my way to do the right thing. And it’s not even just about the money. When these kids see thousands of motorcycles revving their engines up for them and riding for them, and we educate the communities we drive through, it just shows them that we appreciate their sacrifice.

Ramsey Russell: Why the need for this? Okay, that’s what I’m saying. These are soldiers that gave their all, gave everything they had and, sometimes, the ultimate sacrifice, but certainly injuries for their country. Why is there a need to take care of them beyond what the VA or the military should be able to?

Andrew Biggio: I could tell you a million horror stories. But, yeah, nonprofits have picked up the slack for what the government should have been doing. Early on in my Marine Corps career and when I just got out, they still didn’t have it down pat. Guys lose their arm and their leg, and they have to apply for a VA housing modification loan that takes almost a year to get approved. And if you don’t do the paperwork correctly, they have to mail the paperwork back to you. Then it goes back and forth. And if you finally get the paperwork done and you get the grant to modify your home, it’s not even enough money. It was only like $60,000 to modify, to put wheelchair bathrooms and wall-to-wall carpeting and hand railing. It was just a joke, a total joke. So that’s why these nonprofits have just been building houses for wounded veterans and stuff like that.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, the VA is not doing their job. When did the rifle come into play? And how is that a part of your nonprofit?

Andrew Biggio: Yeah, the rifle came into play because when I was reading Andy’s letters home before he got killed over in Italy, I saw the first letter that said, “Dear Mom, today we fired the M1 Garand in basic training. It’s a new kind of rifle. It holds eight rounds. It’s going to be better than the Germans, better than the Japanese,” because at that time, he didn’t know where he was going to deploy to. And he wrote about how much he loved this rifle. And I said, “I need to go out and buy one. I want to hold what he held. I want to feel what he felt and connect with this long-lost relative who I shared a name with.” So I bought the rifle and I took it to my neighbor, who was in the Battle of Okinawa. He was 91. And I put the rifle in his arms. The way he picked that thing up and shouldered it as if he was 18 again was awesome. He was smiling ear to ear. We talked about the Battle of Okinawa for like three, four hours. And I said, “Sign your name on this rifle. I never want to forget this.” And he signed it, Joe Drago, I Company. That meeting with him was so therapeutic. I forgot about the stresses of being a police officer. I forgot about the stresses of being a veteran. I said, “I want to collect as many names as I can on this rifle.” And I went on to interview over 500 different veterans.

Ramsey Russell: Golly, look at that.

Andrew Biggio: Yep, over 500 names on this thing, this bad boy. And how my nonprofit came into play was that I was meeting a lot of these guys and finding out that they’ve never been back to their battlefields in Europe or Normandy. So I started bringing them back with funds I was raising, not only helping wounded veterans but taking wounded veterans, taking the World War II veterans, pairing them together, and bringing them back to Omaha Beach, bringing them back to the Battle of the Bulge. And it was like an addiction, an addiction. I mean, you’ll see I got pictures and stuff from all over the world in my basement of these trips I’ve done.

Ramsey Russell: Boy, I tell you what, that M1 Garand, I believe that was a .30-06.

Andrew Biggio: Yep, it was.

Ramsey Russell: That is the gun, to me, that made America great to start with in World War II. That was an amazing gun. What do you know about the M1 Garand? Why was it such a great gun?

Andrew Biggio: Yeah, Patton said it was the weapon that won the war. And it was a great gun because we hadn’t had semi-auto at that point yet. We did not have a semi-auto rifle at that time. The standard infantry in Germany and Japan were still using bolt-action rifles. So now these troops could move forward, right? They could shoot from the hip, they could hip-fire, they could keep the enemy’s head down while they advanced by going bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. You know, I met so many infantry guys and interviewed so many infantry guys who were like, “You know, this thing could basically be automatic if you really wanted it to be.” And that would keep, you take a whole company or a whole platoon of soldiers firing eight-round clips without having to reload, I mean, that’s enough to keep a squad of Germans pinned down.

Ramsey Russell: Heck yeah. So you read your uncle’s letters, realized about this M1 Garand, you went and bought one. You met with a 91-year-old neighbor who told you some amazing stories. What stories did he tell you after he held that gun? What did holding that M1 Garand of yours elicit in him that he shared with you, that made you forget about the rest of the world and feel, I guess, just in the moment, inspired to get him to sign your gun. Tell me about that first meeting and what kind of stories he was telling you.

Andrew Biggio: Well, he was basically telling me about landing April Fool’s Day, 1945, on the beaches of Okinawa. And that war is not black and white, good versus evil. Sometimes the greatest generation did some not-so-great things to win World War II. And he really got into, really quickly, about the war crimes and things they did to win the Battle of Okinawa that would put today’s Marines in jail.

Ramsey Russell: Really.

Andrew Biggio: Oh, yeah. He really painted a picture for me that I didn’t have to hide in the shadows of the greatest generation and that I shouldn’t believe everything I read or see in the movies. There was just so much that happened. You know, he thought the incident where Marines pissed on the dead Taliban in 2011 was a joke. He said, “That’s nothing compared to what we used to do, nothing.” So here I was, not being blinded by this Saving Private Ryan-themed good vs. evil, bad Germans, bad Japanese, swing dancing, milkshake drinking, V for victory, hoo-ha, la-di-da stuff. He gave it to me raw. He gave it to me real. And he made me feel normal. He made me and my war, and what I was a veteran of, feel normal. They were just lucky to have the media on their side back then, the newspapers, the news clippings, the radio that all supported what their soldiers were doing back then.

Ramsey Russell: From that first signature to over 500 interviews and signatures on that M1 Garand sitting behind you, who did you interview next? How did that progress? How did you go from that one story, that one guy, to now I want to meet more? Who was the next guy? How did this progress?

Andrew Biggio: Well, I said, “Okay, I just got a little taste of the Pacific. I should interview someone who was in the European theater, the Battle of the Bulge.” I interviewed Clarence Cormier, who was a prisoner of war. He got captured at the Battle of the Bulge, and the Germans put him in a boxcar of a train. He was stuffed in there with thousands of other prisoners, and the train was destined for Germany. Two American fighter planes saw this German train and they opened up on it, strafing it, not knowing they were killing their own men, their own POWs. Watching Clarence cry in the living room, holding this rifle behind me and explaining the story at 95 years old, watching a 95-year-old man weep, recalling how he had to fall on the ground with all the other POWs and form the letters P-O-W with their bodies so the airplanes could see them, when the airplanes were coming in on their third dive, they saw that the guys had fallen on the ground and formed the word “POW” with their bodies, and they stopped shooting. It was such a horrific experience for him, laying there, hearing those airplane engines coming in, puckering up, wondering if he was going to get shot by .50 caliber bullets. And then he went on to be a freaking prisoner of war after that. His daughter grabbed me and said, “I’ve never heard my dad tell that story.” When she told me that, she said, “I always knew my dad was a POW. I just never heard him say that story.” When his daughter told me that, I said, I have to do more than just collect names on a rifle. I have to put pen to paper. And that’s when I wrote my book, “The Rifle”.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Andrew Biggio: And I chose 19 of the best stories, and it became a number one best-selling book.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah. What are some of the other stories you heard?

Andrew Biggio: Well, so many. I mean, just some had been, you know, told before and were in other books or movies and things like that, depending on the division of the veteran I interviewed. Because I interviewed some guys in the 101st and 82nd Airborne, of course, the miniseries Band of Brothers covered a lot of that. But I interviewed just some really good unknown divisions, little less known units that fought in World War II that get no coverage and no PR. Their division doesn’t exist anymore, as they were disbanded right after World War II. So there was nothing to keep them going like other active-duty units like the 82nd Airborne, the 101st, or the Marine Corps. And it was just enough for me to put pen to paper. As somebody who was a C and B student in high school, to write a number one best-selling book, that’s how passionate I became about some of these stories.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Were they all World War II veterans that you’ve interviewed?

Andrew Biggio: Yes.

“My uncle never talked about WWII. He just shook his head and walked away.”

Ramsey Russell: Okay. Tom Brokaw described those as America’s Greatest Generation. I read the book, and it was amazing. You know, he interviewed a lot of people like you’ve done and about the Greatest Generation. And one thing he talked about was, whether they were over there as nurses or infantry or wherever, and whatever they did, almost to a person, they just, when they got dismissed and came home, they just tucked it away in a little box, so to speak, compartmentalized it, and then just moved on and lived productive lives. It’s like they never, hardly ever talked about it or told those stories again. And so it doesn’t surprise me that the one gentleman that was a POW had never told that story. I’ve heard that about people. I can remember asking one of my wife’s great-uncles. He and five brothers out of seven, the youngest being 16 years old at the time, they all went. They were part of the expendable part of civilization. They weren’t the generals’ sons. They went to the dirty stuff. But I remember asking Uncle Buddy one time, “What was it like? What went on?” And his eyes just grew black, like a storm blowing in the sky. And he stared at the ground and just shook his head. That’s all. He got up and walked away. He just couldn’t even talk about it. And back when his family went back over to Germany for one of the big reunions, his wife went, his kids went. He didn’t go. He said, “I’ll never go back.” Did you encounter some of those people? I’m guessing that a lot of the stories you heard, it was the first time they’d ever told that story, all these years later.

Andrew Biggio: You just said reminds me of a gentleman named Al Bucciarelli, who lost his leg. Actually, I got his leg right here.

Ramsey Russell: Golly.

Andrew Biggio: He lost his leg and said, “I’m not going back.”

Ramsey Russell: He lost his leg. He said he’s not going back.

Andrew Biggio: Yep. And so they, I think they ended up going without him. And I met him in 2019, and I brought my friend who lost his leg in Iraq. I said, “Al, your story is amazing. You were 19. You lost your leg. It changed your life. And you didn’t even want, “He didn’t even want to go home after he lost his leg. He didn’t want to face his mom. He was humiliated. And I said, “You know, your wife’s passed away. You’re sitting here alone. Would you want to go back to Italy now?” He goes, “Yeah, I think I would. I’d go back now.” I said, “Let’s do it.” We hopped on a plane, and we went back to Italy. We took him back to the spot where he lost his leg, and we took him to the Rome American Cemetery and showed him his squad leader’s grave. We showed him his squad leader’s grave, the one who was with him when he got killed.

Ramsey Russell: That’s got to be a very sobering experience to walk back over some of those battlegrounds with some of these old veterans. What are some of their reactions, Andrew?

Andrew Biggio: I’ve seen a mix. I’ve seen them fall on their knees crying. I’ve seen tears of joy. I’ve seen total, total silence. And I’ve seen them grab me and hug me and say, “Thank you for bringing me back here.” And I’m looking at all the photos again of all these men that have passed away that I’ve brought back because I’ve got them framed all around my little man cave here. And, man, it just was such an awesome experience. I thank God. I thank God for allowing me to do that with these guys. I mean, and I caught them late. I didn’t get into this until 2016, for crying out loud. Most of these guys were gone. But I got to bring all the 18-year-old guys who were 18 during the war, because they were the youngest. And now they’re, you know, if they were born in 1925, that was most of my clientele because they would have been 18 in 1944.

Ramsey Russell: You know what? This past summer, my wife and I went to France, and we went to Normandy for a few days. And we went down to Omaha Beach and to the one I believe just north of there or just south of there. And, man, what struck me at a glance, it just blows my mind. You know, we’ve seen the movies, we’ve seen the old black-and-white documentaries and stuff like that. What got me at a glance, we walk out on this beach, and it’s just like every other vacation beach on earth. There are vacation cottages, there are people sun tanning, there are people reading books, and you don’t think about all this stuff that’s going on. We went to Normandy, and they were breaking out the little tourist books and telling us about the strategy, telling us about the timelines, what was going on. And he was in a hurry, wanted to go somewhere else. I said, “No, I gotta walk up this hill in a minute.” And so I took off up the hill, and you’ve got those bunkers. And in one of those tiny little bunkers the size of a walk-in closet, there were 75 of those lined up and down those beaches. And each one of those little machine guns they were shooting, those German machine guns, could shoot about 1,800 rounds per second. And there were 75 of them hailing down. As I’m standing in that bunker, I take out my Google Earth, and we’re at high tide. We hit there at high tide. So about the time the boats came in, those little Higdon Cypress wooden boats landed on that beach. And I took my time, my little measurement, and to that tideline was a half a mile. I’ve got to run half a mile, under 75 times 1,800 per minute, withered by fire. And I’m thinking, how in the world did they do that? It’s unbelievable when you see. It’s sobering to sit there and go, “Oh my gosh, these 19-year-old kids, loaded to the hilt, soaking wet, storming up this hill to take this machine.” It’s unbelievable.

Andrew Biggio: Whole companies were wiped out of men.

Ramsey Russell: You know, in the opening scenes of Private Ryan, the old man is walking around that cemetery and looking for his people. And I never thought, I just assumed that was Arlington in Washington, D.C. But it’s not. It’s right there around Omaha Beach. And we walked through that cemetery, and it’s just sobering. I just can’t imagine what it would be like to walk through there with some of these vets that had been there decades before.

Andrew Biggio: Yeah, it’s like it became an addiction. And one thing I think about those kids is some of those kids probably never had a visitor. You know, some of them, I mean, sure, the grounds people and the locals, you know, do adopt a grave and things like that, but some of those kids probably never had a visitor. You know, some of those kids came from runaway homes. Some of them, their family’s too poor to travel to Europe to visit their grave. You know, things like that.

Ramsey Russell: Did going to those places throughout Europe and the South Pacific, did just being there elicit emotion and stories out of these veterans?

Andrew Biggio: Oh yeah. I never been to the South Pacific with any veterans, but all of Europe. Oh yeah, the stories came back to them. What was even crazier is the human emotion of the civilians who lived through the war that are still there, that are in their 80s and 90s, and having them come out and hug these veterans and say, do you remember this? And thank you so much for my liberation. Thank you for saving me. And I hosted American soldiers right here in my very bedroom to get them out of the cold. I mean, we saw all of that and them crying, and it was just, it’s been awesome. And this is my last trip coming up this December for the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.

“I saw guys with no legs, no arms. I had to do something.”

Ramsey Russell: Wow. You know, a lot of what you’re doing, working in your nonprofit and raising money for veterans that have lost their legs, lost their arms, maybe likely broken spirits as well as bodies. What advice, other than some of the down-in-the-trenches, the horrible wartime memories some of your World War II veterans have, has any of them imparted advice or wisdom for the modern-day vets to shake out of PTSD and move on productively and successfully in their lives like the world’s greatest generation did? What are some of the words of wisdom that those vets have to offer?

“Duck hunting connects people. It’s about purpose, not just ducks.”

Andrew Biggio: Yeah, well, the first thing I’m going to tell you is so many of them never shook out of their PTSD, and they didn’t make it. You know, the guys that live today, to be in their hundreds, did. But so many of these guys died wicked young. I mean, because all the research I was doing to find survivors of different units, these guys died in the 70s and the 60s. They drank their asses off and some committed suicide even as well. And there were just so many of them. There were 16 million veterans then. Today there’s less than 1% of the population. So we get more attention when negativity happens to us or PTSD and things like that. But the guys I interviewed, the guys who had longevity, they didn’t plateau at their military service. They came home, they got a job, they went to school, they started a family, they retired from one job, jumped to the next job. Some of them had two, three jobs they retired from because they stayed focused. They didn’t dwell on the past. They gave themselves a new purpose, gave themselves a new mission, and stayed focused. So busy that they didn’t have time to think about feeling sorry for themselves. And I try to preach that to all the other veterans and the younger veterans who read my book. You know, the book was based on how to live a successful life after combat, how to live a successful life after the military, as these guys did. That was the first book. The second book, Rifle Volume 2, I did cover the guys who came home and screwed up. I covered guys who came home and ended up in jail, guys who attempted suicide, guys who were lying about their service. But then to show that it’s okay to make mistakes and that you can bounce back from that as well. And so I covered both of that stuff. But that’s the best advice and wisdom I got from some of the older veterans.

Ramsey Russell: Do you feel like some of those oldest vets that worked nonstop were workaholics? Was that their way of coping with PTSD just to distract themselves and not, you know, to keep that demon at bay?

Andrew Biggio: Absolutely. I met a guy from Virginia who didn’t start running road races until he was in his 60s. Ran his first marathon at age 60 because he had done everything. He starts running, you know, and I named that chapter “The Running Man.”

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Did you talk to any of them that were able to somehow successfully cope with PTSD besides work, just get into their head and get into their emotions and deal with it and prevail?

Andrew Biggio: Yeah, you know, the most thing is a lot of these World War II vets that are living today, they quit drinking, you know, and they certainly weren’t drugging, but they quit drinking to be able to focus. You know, any type of substances are really not helpful when you’re trying to suppress stuff, and these guys really quit all that stuff in the 70s and 80s, drinking and stuff like that, to keep moving with their lives. And that’s what I try to preach too.

Ramsey Russell: You started off innocently enough, getting all these veterans, meeting with them, taking them back to the battlegrounds. You’ve got a nonprofit, you’ve written two books. What do you hope to accomplish? Is there a third book in the works? I mean, how’s this going? You follow what I’m saying. Is it accomplishing what you want it to accomplish, and what’s next for you, Andrew?

Andrew Biggio: It absolutely accomplished what I was trying to accomplish. Getting the word out there, sharing these stories. You know, the social media aspect reach is hitting younger kids too. And what’s next is I’m going to be writing about Vietnam. It’s time to give these guys a little bit more credit.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Yes, it is. Yes, it certainly is. And I appreciate hearing your story. I appreciate hearing so much about this thing. Andrew, I’m going to ask this question. Go ahead and finish this question. Then I’m going to ask you one more. How can people connect with you? Where can they get their hands on these books about The Rifle?

Andrew Biggio: Yeah, they can. Amazon, The Rifle. Facebook, The Rifle. Instagram, The Rifle. And they can connect with me really on Instagram at The Rifle with an underscore. They’ll see it, Combat Stories of America’s Last World War II Veterans Told Through an M1 Garand. But I’m very easy to find if you type in “The Rifle Andrew Biggio” on Google or anything like that. Email me, reach out if you have World War II veterans who you want to see featured on The Rifle, I’ll be happy to do that as well. And we’ve got a GoFundMe right now going on the Instagram page and the Facebook page to bring these five World War II veterans back to the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.

Ramsey Russell: Fantastic. The last question I’ve got is relative to World War II. Now you’re going to move on to Vietnam. You yourself are a, quote, modern-day veteran of a modern-day war. You were talking about the 3 or 4 decades in between Afghanistan and the last time that the Marines had been truly in war and active. What are some of the differences or changes between that generations? Like, how different is being a veteran today versus World War II? What are some of the similarities and differences that these guys are having to cope with or deal with?

Andrew Biggio: Well, the difference is for sure, we have more training today. We have more training and more technology. You know, now it takes about a year of training before you can even deploy overseas. Back then, it was like you did your eight weeks of boot camp, you got handed a rifle, and you got sent into a meat grinder of the replacement system. But, you know, there are lots of similarities. You know, I think even though politics and the way wars, the recent wars, have been run post-9/11, we still had the quality of Greatest Generation kids enlisting after 9/11, wanting to go fight, wanting to go serve, wanting to die for their country that we saw after 9/11. Unfortunately, our government screwed that up on how to handle such charisma and bravery. But we saw the volume of what we had for the Greatest Generation as what they did back in the ’40s. And, you know, maybe it wasn’t used in the right fashion, but that’s why we always respect the veteran and not the mission.

And certainly there are so many nonprofits now that promote PTSD and this “feel bad for me” stuff. So a lot of veterans today are labeled as being broken and things like that, stuff that was not ever promoted or looked at during World War II. A lot of mental anguish and any problems were totally swept under the rug because they didn’t want to build a stigma that veterans came home broken or mentally injured. That would hurt propaganda to get people to enlist, and that would make our troops look weak. So really, we have the potential, with the power of social media and the power of media, to build such a mighty army and military as we did back then. But as of right now, if one political party disagrees with the other, they’ll do anything to tarnish what our troops look like, especially if it was the other political party’s idea to send troops somewhere. So I see a lot of similarities, but I see the differences. Other than that, I think we’re still able to produce the same kind of men we did back then when push comes to shove.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. Andrew, thank you very much. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your nonprofit and for what you’re doing to bring attention to this. Thank you for what you’re doing for those vets in the world’s greatest generation and beyond. I appreciate you.

Andrew Biggio: Thank you so much.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Andrew Biggio: Hey, and don’t forget, you know, you gotta take me on a duck hunt. I’ve never been.

Ramsey Russell: Well, if I do it, I’m going to wait until I’m back up in your neck of the woods. I’ve got plenty of friends up around that area, and we’ll just hunt right there in your backyard, and I’ll show you what you’ve been missing all this time.

Andrew Biggio: Yeah, we have the Belle Isle Marsh Reservation, which is right here, actually, in my district as a police officer. And they go out a couple of times a year, and I see them on a little boat doing the duck hunt and stuff. Because people will call in, “Oh, we heard a gunshot,” and I’m like, “Oh, those are the duck hunters. The duckies.”

“You all come out here to shoot a duck? I’ll take care of you tomorrow.”

Ramsey Russell: Well, it’s funny you say that because I was just sitting here thinking. I had some friends from out west that told a story last year on a podcast. They had gone out to Boston, and the captain had bad problems. This was way back when, ten years ago. And long story short, they ended up on the 6 o’clock news as a Coast Guard rescue. And one of the Boston policemen that was there said, “You all come all the way out here to shoot a duck?” And they go, “Yeah, we come out here to shoot ducks.” He says, “I tell you what, dude, you all meet me in the morning, and I’m gonna take care of you.” And he took them into a neighborhood, dropped them off at a trailhead of a little city park or something, and said, “If you all get any problems, you give them my name. Here’s my card. You give them my name.” And they walked down the trail. He said, “We didn’t know where we were. We just did what the cop said to do.” And they went and shot the ducks they were after. As they’re walking out, the whole neighborhood was waiting on them, cheering and clapping and carrying on. Come to find out, they were in the city limits, and the cop had just given them a pass. You can’t arrange nothing like that, can you?

Andrew Biggio: I think it has to be my district. I think it’s my district that that happened in.

Ramsey Russell: Ah, okay, well, good, good. Maybe we can find us a honey hole. But anyway, seriously, Andrew, I very much appreciate you coming on. I have greatly enjoyed this conversation.

Andrew Biggio: Thank you, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Folks, you all have been listening to my buddy Andrew Biggio. Check out his books: The Rifle 1, The Rifle 2. Great stories. A lot of good inspiration, man. Thank you, Andrew. And thank you all for listening to this episode.

Andrew Biggio: Thank you, Brother

Ramsey Russell: Mojo’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. We’ll see you next time.