The Unsung Veteran

06/17/2026

"You're gonna get out and it's gonna be like you're standing still while all your boys in the Marine Corps are continuing to move forward." That's Carl Able on the part of transition nobody warns you about.

Carl joined the Marines at 18, came up in intelligence, and finished as a training chief teaching young Marines. This week we sat down and talked about getting out, that rough first year, and finding the next mission once the uniform comes off. We don't agree on politics, and we said so right out loud — then had a real, honest conversation anyway. Two Marines, talking like men. That's the whole point of this channel.

https://youtu.be/AFYEAmfMeTY

If you know a veteran who'd connect with this, share it their way.

Carl Able joined the Marines at 18 after a recruiter in dress blues...

06/07/2026

The Unsung Veteran has a home now: www.theunsungveteran.com

One place for all the conversations, where to listen, and resources for veterans who need a hand. There's no topic on this channel. The topic is you.

Know a veteran whose story should be heard? You can reach out right from the site.

If this is something you believe in, share it with a veteran who'd want to find us.

06/03/2026

Joe Gonzalez tore his lungs on a Desert Storm deployment. The Navy told him to walk it off. He coughed up blood for fifteen years before a doctor finally connected the dots.

We sat down on the porch and talked about all of it — the injury they walked off, the VA denials, the coma, the rage, and what he built coming out the other side. He calls it The Landlord Theory: the pain, the anger, the PTSD, the addiction — those are roommates in your head. You gotta stay the landlord.

My heart's broken for him in places. He's still searching. But he's built something real out of what he's been through.

Episode 22 is live. If you know a veteran who'd connect with this, share it their way. 🌊

https://youtu.be/nxYOthGqE3A

05/27/2026

Antoinette Berrafato's service dog used to unload her dryer and pull the laundry basket from room to room — because Antoinette couldn't.
That's a sentence I wasn't prepared for. I went into this knowing she'd had a TBI and used a service dog. I didn't know the depth of it — 18 months housebound, a walker, a full-time caregiver. An 11-year Army vet, an air assault medic, a tech CEO. Down to that.
She came back. Lives off-grid now, grows her own food, and turns around to pull others up — the young woman in a wheelchair Antoinette taught to kayak, who walked across a stage for the first time a month later.

That's the comeback. Full episode is live.
https://youtu.be/gJquRK5nSWI?si=kCjCvEZ9keDpyvWl

If you know a veteran who'd connect with this, share it their way.

05/25/2026

Today, stop.

Pray for the ones who never came home. Pray for the families still carrying their names. Pray for the brothers and sisters who came home with them but didn't survive the quiet years that followed.

And if you knew one of them — if you carried a name out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, or anywhere our flag has been — tell their story today.

That's how they stay unsung no longer. Their story doesn't die with the ones who knew them. It lives because somebody chose to say their name out loud.

Trust that God has a plan. Today, His plan is for us to remember.

05/20/2026

Rand Timmerman walked off a plane from Vietnam in dress greens, got called a baby killer at the boarding gate, and came within an inch of doing something he could never take back — until four stewardesses gently took the stanchion out of his hands. Decades later, at 72, he hiked 1,863 miles of the Appalachian Trail with his younger brother — Rand four years sober and chasing the man God always wanted him to be.
We talked about all of it — Vietnam, the nightmares, his father telling him not to talk, the JAG career, the bottom, and the prayer in a parking lot that changed everything. Marine to Marine, this one stuck with me. ❤️

https://youtu.be/-kpMAEawHM4

If you know a veteran who'd connect with this, share it their way.

Rand Timmerman enlisted in the Marine Corps on a dare and a hangove...

05/13/2026

There's a moment in this conversation where Lavelle describes a Marine veteran — raised in the U.S. since he was six months old, pledged allegiance every day in school, enlisted, served honorably — dropped off at the Tijuana border at 2 a.m. with no money and no Spanish. That hit me.

Lavelle spent 25 years in the Army, was on the ground during Black Hawk Down, jumped into Panama at 19 with rounds going past his ear, and now he's directing a documentary called Served in Exile — telling the stories of non-citizen veterans who were deported after their service. It's a complicated subject, and we didn't shy away from any of it.

Lavelle— grateful you brought this one to the porch.

If you know a veteran who'd connect with this, share it their way.

Listen on Spotify https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/theunsungveteran/episodes/Ep-19-Lavelle-Lemonier--Deported-Veterans-and-25-Years-of-Service-e3isi3b
Listen on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unsung-veteran/id1877168685
Watch on Youtube https://youtu.be/_zDoFFyA8aM

05/06/2026

Scott DeLuzio got the worst news of his life — that his younger brother Stephen had been killed in action — and was back in a firefight fifteen minutes later. They were both Army National Guard infantrymen deployed to Afghanistan at the same time, stationed about eighty miles apart in country that may as well have been a different planet.

This week's conversation with Scott hit me hard. He's open about the grief, the survivor's guilt, the years of anger that followed coming home, and what it actually took to find his way back — including walking into the Vet Center when he didn't know what he'd find on the other side. He wrote a book about it, Surviving Son, partly so his brother's name keeps getting said out loud.

If you know a veteran who'd connect with this, share it their way.

Army National Guard infantryman Scott DeLuzio deployed to Afghanistan in 2010. So did his younger brother Stephen. Only one of them came home.Topics Discusse...

04/29/2026

"I called up the taxi. Taxi comes on base, picks me up, takes me to the airport. I leave."

That's how Lee Ettinger's separation from the Marine Corps ended — no classes, no counseling, no debrief. Just a cab ride.

What followed was two years of hard relapse before something he still can't explain pulled him back. Then Japan, Hollywood film sales, a Netflix survival show, and now a supplement company he built from scratch after five years of research. Lee's story doesn't fit a clean arc — and that's exactly why it's worth hearing.

You can listen to whole conversation here:
Youtube: https://youtu.be/HqrcfPqJCNA
Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/theunsungveteran/episodes/Ep-17-Lee-Ettinger--From-Shore-Party-Marine-to-Netflix-Survival-Show-to-Supplement-Founder-e3ilhof
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-17-lee-ettinger-from-shore-party-marine-to-netflix/id1877168685?i=1000763599475

If you know a veteran who'd connect with this, share it their way.

Lee Ettinger | From Drugs to Shore Party to Entrepreneur

04/22/2026

Ron Cooper told me something I can't shake: "The 10 people who made noise at the airport were much louder than the 100,000 people who were silent."

That's how Vietnam veterans came home.

In this episode, Ron walks me through 300 combat missions in the F-4 Phantom, what it was really like flying Linebacker One and Two, and the day 119 aircraft were dedicated to pulling one downed airman — Roger Locker — out of North Vietnam after 23 days on the ground. No man left behind isn't a slogan to Ron. He was there.

He also shared the four men whose words shaped him long before he ever climbed into a cockpit. Quiet, specific, honest. 🇺🇸

If you know a veteran who'd connect with this, share it their way.

Ron Cooper | F-4 Pilot, 300 Missions, and the Four Men Who Built Him