Name: Medal of Honor Recipient Sergeant Leroy Petry | David Letterman
Uploaded: 2025-11-11T16:00:47.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Medal of Honor Recipient Sergeant Leroy Petry | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-11. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Medal of Honor Recipient Sergeant Leroy Petry | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-11. Transcript available.

Our first guest is only the second living service member since Vietnam to
receive the Medal of Honor,
the United States Military's Most Prestigious Award.
Please welcome Sergeant First Class Leroy Petrie.
Sergeant?
Sergeant?
What was your life like there?
I just grew up in a family of three boys, which turned into five.
Was the youngest, turned into the middle, so a lot of roughing around with the
older brothers, normal school life.
Didn't go so hot, my school.
Turned it around, realized myself, when I got out of the report card,
because like all the other kids, trying to sneak it and see it before mom and
dad did,
realized, hey, I'm not doing so good.
I need to turn this around or else I'm not going to have a future.
When you say not doing so good, give us a number, give us a letter.
What was the average for you?
Some C's? Were you making C's?
No, no, no, it was pretty bad.
I was getting into the D range.
Oh, D's.
Pretty bad.
I'll tell you something, the D's, that was my sweet spot.
The saddest part I had, my best grade was in bakery.
Best as a baker?
Yeah.
Wow.
I like to do a lot of cooking, but I realized I wasn't doing so good,
so I ended up transferring schools, and I made the honor roll my senior year.
Good for you.
My junior year, and made student of the month,
and the Chamber of Commerce gave me the bootstrap award.
The bootstrap meaning pulled himself up by his bootstrap.
And I didn't know what it was at the time, and they said it's sort of like the
Army's old bootstraps.
They used to pull their boots up by straps, and they said that's what you did.
You pulled yourself up.
Did you consider college at this point?
I had always had a passion for the military since I was about seven years old.
Now, where did that come from?
When you were seven years old, was your family in the military?
I've had some family members in the service, and my cousin was in the service
before I graduated.
And they never really talked about their service, but their pictures were on
their wall in their uniforms.
My brother was serving in the military at the time, and I had always wanted to
do it.
I tried college for a little bit, but that was more grandfather kind of
pressured me to go that route.
And now that I've been at it a little while, that's what I'm pursuing now is to
finish my degree,
because I knew the first thing I wanted to do was get in the military.
So you prevailed.
Your own will prevailed.
Help yourself.
And you, tell us about your military career at the beginning.
What was that?
Went through the normal, well, when I went into the recruiter's office, I said,
hey, I want a ranger contract,
because my cousin was a ranger at the time.
What is that?
Tell us what the rangers are.
What do they do?
The Airborne Rangers, it's a light infantry unit, airborne, that is used to
target anywhere around the world.
Usually wheels up 19 hours.
This is a blue ribbon outfit, isn't it?
Yes, sir.
This is the top of the heap.
These are, are they special forces?
They're special operations.
They fall under the umbrella with your SEALs, rangers, special forces.
What kind of training do you go through as a ranger?
It's pretty extensive training.
You start off with the normal basic training, then you go to airborne training,
and then you go to what they call ranger certification training, kind of a
selection period where it's called RASP now,
which stands for Ranger Assessment and Selection Program, where they kind of,
sort of like the SEALs, BUDS, and Special Forces weed-out phase.
How many years of training with the rangers before you were a full-fledged
member of that group?
I was a full-fledged member of that group, I would say, a little less than a
year.
In a year, yeah.
About six, eight months.
This involves parachute activity as well?
Yes, sir.
How many jumps did you make in training?
Oh, wow.
I'd say about 50 or so.
We used to do tons of jumps before 9/11, but then with the support of
Afghanistan and Iraq,
the aircraft to get jumps all the time isn't as frequent.
All right, so you come through ranger training feeling pretty good about
yourself.
You have to after that kind of indoctrination.
What do you do?
What's your first deployment?
2002 to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan.
What were your feelings about going in there?
A little nervous at first, a little excitement.
A lot of people, it's like almost a lot of people say you train, you train, you
train, but chances of you going to war are slim.
When 9/11 happened, I was actually in pre-ranger training down at 75th Ranger
Regiment, and the instructors had a TV out there in the field,
and they were seeing what was unfolding here in New York, and they were telling
us about it, and we were like,
"Hey, can we come watch?
We're concerned and interested," and they said, "No, you guys need to get your
butts back out there and keep training.
You might be going to war soon."
So at that point, that gives you a completely different perspective on what you're
up to, doesn't it, as a recruit?
Well, it does, but at the same fact, I mean, when we signed on that dotted line
to serve in the military,
you could go anywhere in the world, do anything, and you're risking it all at
that point.
So you go to Afghanistan.
Where in Afghanistan?
We bounced all over the place, up and down the eastern-western border.
And what did you and your fellow men and women rangers do?
We concentrated more on the high-value targets, the direct action.
High-value meaning, what does that mean for them?
The bigger fish of the...
You're talking about individual personnel?
Yes.
Enemy, high-ranking enemy suspects, guys like that?
Yes.
Yeah.
And you're going to capture them?
What are you going to do to them?
Normally, it's usually a capture-kill.
You try to do the best to capture them, but normally the targets we go after
are hostile and have a lot of firepower with them, and it gets pretty nasty.
Yeah.
How many missions did you embark on before you were injured?
Oh, wow.
That was my sixth rotation to Afghanistan.
Or fifth.
I'm sorry.
So you were redeployed five different times?
Yes.
Well, twice to Iraq and sixth to Afghanistan.
Right.
Is this common for a man or a woman to go there and serve and then ask for
another tour of duty?
Ours are shorter deployments.
We don't do that.
How long is a single deployment?
Anywhere from three to four months, but our up-tempo is so high.
We're doing one to two missions a day, and to keep that up for an entire year,
it's too much burnout on the force.
Right.
So they try to keep us fresh and keep our systems.
Now, when you say one to two missions a day, kind of describe the high and the
low of these missions.
What would be an easier mission?
What would be a more difficult mission?
There's no easy mission out there.
Yeah.
It's all difficult, but each mission has its different thing.
You might go out there, think you're going to be out there for a night, come
back.
You could end up staying out there for three days, a week, who knows?
Mm-hmm.
So being able to adjust, I think, is one of the great qualities we have in our
unit to, once we see what's on the ground, adjust to it.
You know, what you just said there, that's the kind of thing that is going to
stick with me for the rest of my life.
There are no easy missions.
See, I just thought, well, you know, maybe we'd have a slow day.
I guess in war, there are no slow days, are there?
Yes, it's a risk every time you're over there.
Okay.
So you first joined up in 2002, is that what you said?
1999.
Oh, I'm sorry, 1999.
And then May 26, 2008, that was the mission in which you were wounded and were
nominated for this award.
Am I right about that?
Yes, sir.
And what was that mission?
I know it was in daylight, and it was, it says here, a high-value target.
Tell us what you remember about that.
I remember preparing for the mission.
We got short notice.
We were going out, and we had, like I said, again, you get, sometimes you get
stuck out there.
So I normally, I would go to our little tent where we keep our chow and food
and stuff,
and I would grab snacks to put in my bag for the younger guys if we get stuck
out overnight or whatever.
And I walked into this tent, and it's, I mean, it's decorated like the 4th of
July.
And you lose track of time because of so much stuff going on over there.
And I looked around, and then it didn't hit me until I walked up to the sheet
cake and said, "Happy Memorial Day."
And I didn't realize it was Memorial Day that day, but we go out on the mission.
How many go out on the mission at one time?
It's dependent on how far and airlift and a lot of capabilities of support, but
there was approximately about 65.
What is this, Sergeant?
That is the compound where we were assaulting when we got, I got injured, and
that's pretty much where the incident took place.
Now, is this a compound that had been built by the enemy or a compound that
existed and was taken over by the enemy?
What was the nature of this structure?
I couldn't, we didn't get a whole lot of knowledge on how they got there or how
long they had been there.
All we got was that they were in that area, and we had moved in, and it was
just adobe-type mud buildings, walls.
We see the entry point there. You helicoptered to the entry point? Is that
right?
No, no. We were offset from the compound itself. And if you got an outside
picture of it, there's multiple compounds.
So we were hitting multiple structures simultaneously.
Right. And began taking fire immediately, is that correct?
Yes, sir.
Yeah. And how soon after, and where did you, where were you first wounded in
this compound?
You had gotten inside, is that correct?
We, right where it says inner courtyard.
Yeah.
We were coming out of there to, I don't know if this, yeah, there it goes. I
can point on it.
We were coming out and we were crossing over here to clear out behind the
chicken coop and the chicken coop,
when two guys with, enemy, with AK-47s were shooting from their hip, just
spraying down that alley and hit me in the legs, hit the guy behind me, just
below his rib cage on the left side, PFC Robinson.
We, I, I kept running to, behind the chicken coop to take cover from just mass
volume of fire that we were taking.
I thought I had only been shot in my left leg and the bullet was stuck in there.
It sounds kind of ridiculous, but it was like Forrest Gump.
Something bit me and just start running, get, get, get behind cover.
And with the, with the shell in you, you continued to run.
Well, later on, I found out when, once I got to the casualty collection point
where we take care of our wounded guys,
is when they started cutting off my pants, that's when I realized it had gone
through both my thighs.
Right, right. Continued to function, not just one leg, both legs had been
injured, yeah.
And then there were grenades tossed back and forth.
I had, I had lobbed a grenade over the chicken coop toward the enemy as that
went off.
Sergeant Higgins, another one of our rangers, ran over to us.
I immediately, because they were junior rangers for myself, and I said,
hey, start helping Robinson, start pulling security on that corner, because we're
still taking heavy fire.
Enemy grenade came over in close vicinity, knocked those two down.
And they got up kind of in shock. Hey, what was that? What's going on?
I said, hey, they're throwing grenades. Keep your heads down. Keep pulling
security.
I'm still, at this point, keeping on my radio, informing command what's going
on, and we need support.
I just want to remind people right then and there, you have two legs that have
been shot,
and you're taking grenades being thrown at you.
You're on the radio trying to calm your buddies down, and they're still
throwing grenades at you.
All of this is going on.
There's still heavy volumes of 7.62 fire coming in.
The next thing I know is I'm turning to watch my corner around that chicken
coop.
As I turn to check out my guys, we weren't no further than about six feet, four
to six feet to the end of us.
And I see a -- I knew it wasn't ours. It looked like a pineapple grenade
sitting on the ground in the middle of us.
Immediately knew what I had to do, grabbed it to get it away from me and my
guys as I was throwing it.
My hand opened up and completely amputated the hand right at the wrist.
It went off in your hand as you were throwing it away. Is that what happened?
What does that do to a person in that situation?
Did you go into shock immediately? Were you stunned?
I think every person reacts to it different.
I sat up, and I can show you this hand actually comes off, but it looked
exactly like that.
It was flat, like somebody had taken a circular saw, and I can remember very
vividly.
I sat up and I looked at it.
I saw the radius and the ulna poking up about a quarter of an inch or so, and I
thought for a split second,
why is this thing spraying three feet in the air, gushing blood?
And then I realized, okay, what do you need to do to take control of it?
And I have a tourniquet, put a tourniquet on it, and just kept getting back on
the radio,
giving updates to my command because I knew as long as I was still coherent and
I could still do something,
I was going to be productive and for sure to keep my guys who were still, I
mean, I could only imagine what they were thinking,
seeing me get my hand blown off right next to them.
Was the objective successful? Was the mission successful?
It was. It was very successful.
You mentioned one of your buddies, there was also a friend of yours, a fellow ranger
lost in this operation.
Yes.
Who is that?
Specialist Christopher Gaither Cole.
Yeah.
In fact, I want to show you something.
This is kind of my living memorial I got put on there.
It's every ranger that we've lost since 9/11 on this side and from 2nd Ranger
Battalion.
And then I figured I had the real estate.
I went back to Operation Just Cause in Panama and also Operation Urgent Fury in
Grenada.
What can you tell us about your hand here?
I tell you, when I lost my hand, I thought I was going to get a hook, which I
also have a hook.
But then when they gave me this, I was in awe.
I mean, this is pretty much like a normal hand.
It's got a few awesome features.
It works just off the same muscles that I would to open and close my hand.
And then it has a few other things as far as when it comes off.
You can put different attachments on there.
It's got rotation as well.
So it's got a bunch of neat features.
Now, it's none of my business, but what do you use the rotation for?
Well, if I have something in this hand and I got my hand in this posture and I
want to grab something sideways, it's easier than having to put something down.
I see. I see.
And it's really good for a lot of the double arm amputees because they can't
manipulate the wrist as easy.
But it sits up here on your muscles.
It's got a little sensors that pick up the slightest muscle movement.
You can see my muscle twitching.
That's just remarkable.
That's just remarkable.
That's amazing.
Yes, it is amazing.
And for an amazing man.
And you've gone back since.
Yes.
You're still in active duty.
I'm trying to go back in November.
What about your, you have four kids?
Thank you.
What about your kids?
If they came to you and said, "Oh, we would like to enlist one day and fight
for our country," what would you say to them?
I'd be honored to have my child serve in the military.
In fact, my oldest is thinking about West Point.
He's 17.
Well, second oldest.
And then my youngest, he's all about, he's going to be a Ranger.
He goes out with Dad everywhere.
It's all about the Army.
There are 84 living Medal of Honor recipients, 14 from World War II, 13 from
the Korean War, 55 from Vietnam, and 2 from Afghanistan.
The other, Staff Sergeant Sal Giunta was also on this program.
And this is the other one right here, Sergeant First Class Leroy Petrie.
Nice to see you.
Great pleasure to be here, sir.
Good luck.
Thank you very much.
We'll be right back with Sarah and Jessica Parker, everybody.
Thank you.
Thank you.

Medal of Honor Recipient Sergeant Leroy Petry | David Letterman

Our first guest is only the second living service member since Vietnam to
receive the Medal of Honor,
the United States Military's Most Prestigious Award.
Please welcome Sergeant First Class Leroy Petrie.
Sergeant?
Sergeant?
What was your life like there?
I just grew up in a family of three boys, which turned into five.
Was the youngest, turned into the middle, so a lot of roughing around with the
older brothers, normal school life.
Didn't go so hot, my school.
Turned it around, realized myself, when I got out of the report card,
because like all the other kids, trying to sneak it and see it before mom and
dad did,
realized, hey, I'm not doing so good.
I need to turn this around or else I'm not going to have a future.
When you say not doing so good, give us a number, give us a letter.
What was the average for you?
Some C's? Were you making C's?
No, no, no, it was pretty bad.
I was getting into the D range.
Oh, D's.
Pretty bad.
I'll tell you something, the D's, that was my sweet spot.
The saddest part I had, my best grade was in bakery.
Best as a baker?
Yeah.
Wow.
I like to do a lot of cooking, but I realized I wasn't doing so good,
so I ended up transferring schools, and I made the honor roll my senior year.
Good for you.
My junior year, and made student of the month,
and the Chamber of Commerce gave me the bootstrap award.
The bootstrap meaning pulled himself up by his bootstrap.
And I didn't know what it was at the time, and they said it's sort of like the
Army's old bootstraps.
They used to pull their boots up by straps, and they said that's what you did.
You pulled yourself up.
Did you consider college at this point?
I had always had a passion for the military since I was about seven years old.
Now, where did that come from?
When you were seven years old, was your family in the military?
I've had some family members in the service, and my cousin was in the service
before I graduated.
And they never really talked about their service, but their pictures were on
their wall in their uniforms.
My brother was serving in the military at the time, and I had always wanted to
do it.
I tried college for a little bit, but that was more grandfather kind of
pressured me to go that route.
And now that I've been at it a little while, that's what I'm pursuing now is to
finish my degree,
because I knew the first thing I wanted to do was get in the military.
So you prevailed.
Your own will prevailed.
Help yourself.
And you, tell us about your military career at the beginning.
What was that?
Went through the normal, well, when I went into the recruiter's office, I said,
hey, I want a ranger contract,
because my cousin was a ranger at the time.
What is that?
Tell us what the rangers are.
What do they do?
The Airborne Rangers, it's a light infantry unit, airborne, that is used to
target anywhere around the world.
Usually wheels up 19 hours.
This is a blue ribbon outfit, isn't it?
Yes, sir.
This is the top of the heap.
These are, are they special forces?
They're special operations.
They fall under the umbrella with your SEALs, rangers, special forces.
What kind of training do you go through as a ranger?
It's pretty extensive training.
You start off with the normal basic training, then you go to airborne training,
and then you go to what they call ranger certification training, kind of a
selection period where it's called RASP now,
which stands for Ranger Assessment and Selection Program, where they kind of,
sort of like the SEALs, BUDS, and Special Forces weed-out phase.
How many years of training with the rangers before you were a full-fledged
member of that group?
I was a full-fledged member of that group, I would say, a little less than a
year.
In a year, yeah.
About six, eight months.
This involves parachute activity as well?
Yes, sir.
How many jumps did you make in training?
Oh, wow.
I'd say about 50 or so.
We used to do tons of jumps before 9/11, but then with the support of
Afghanistan and Iraq,
the aircraft to get jumps all the time isn't as frequent.
All right, so you come through ranger training feeling pretty good about
yourself.
You have to after that kind of indoctrination.
What do you do?
What's your first deployment?
2002 to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan.
What were your feelings about going in there?
A little nervous at first, a little excitement.
A lot of people, it's like almost a lot of people say you train, you train, you
train, but chances of you going to war are slim.
When 9/11 happened, I was actually in pre-ranger training down at 75th Ranger
Regiment, and the instructors had a TV out there in the field,
and they were seeing what was unfolding here in New York, and they were telling
us about it, and we were like,
"Hey, can we come watch?
We're concerned and interested," and they said, "No, you guys need to get your
butts back out there and keep training.
You might be going to war soon."
So at that point, that gives you a completely different perspective on what you're
up to, doesn't it, as a recruit?
Well, it does, but at the same fact, I mean, when we signed on that dotted line
to serve in the military,
you could go anywhere in the world, do anything, and you're risking it all at
that point.
So you go to Afghanistan.
Where in Afghanistan?
We bounced all over the place, up and down the eastern-western border.
And what did you and your fellow men and women rangers do?
We concentrated more on the high-value targets, the direct action.
High-value meaning, what does that mean for them?
The bigger fish of the...
You're talking about individual personnel?
Yes.
Enemy, high-ranking enemy suspects, guys like that?
Yes.
Yeah.
And you're going to capture them?
What are you going to do to them?
Normally, it's usually a capture-kill.
You try to do the best to capture them, but normally the targets we go after
are hostile and have a lot of firepower with them, and it gets pretty nasty.
Yeah.
How many missions did you embark on before you were injured?
Oh, wow.
That was my sixth rotation to Afghanistan.
Or fifth.
I'm sorry.
So you were redeployed five different times?
Yes.
Well, twice to Iraq and sixth to Afghanistan.
Right.
Is this common for a man or a woman to go there and serve and then ask for
another tour of duty?
Ours are shorter deployments.
We don't do that.
How long is a single deployment?
Anywhere from three to four months, but our up-tempo is so high.
We're doing one to two missions a day, and to keep that up for an entire year,
it's too much burnout on the force.
Right.
So they try to keep us fresh and keep our systems.
Now, when you say one to two missions a day, kind of describe the high and the
low of these missions.
What would be an easier mission?
What would be a more difficult mission?
There's no easy mission out there.
Yeah.
It's all difficult, but each mission has its different thing.
You might go out there, think you're going to be out there for a night, come
back.
You could end up staying out there for three days, a week, who knows?
Mm-hmm.
So being able to adjust, I think, is one of the great qualities we have in our
unit to, once we see what's on the ground, adjust to it.
You know, what you just said there, that's the kind of thing that is going to
stick with me for the rest of my life.
There are no easy missions.
See, I just thought, well, you know, maybe we'd have a slow day.
I guess in war, there are no slow days, are there?
Yes, it's a risk every time you're over there.
Okay.
So you first joined up in 2002, is that what you said?
1999.
Oh, I'm sorry, 1999.
And then May 26, 2008, that was the mission in which you were wounded and were
nominated for this award.
Am I right about that?
Yes, sir.
And what was that mission?
I know it was in daylight, and it was, it says here, a high-value target.
Tell us what you remember about that.
I remember preparing for the mission.
We got short notice.
We were going out, and we had, like I said, again, you get, sometimes you get
stuck out there.
So I normally, I would go to our little tent where we keep our chow and food
and stuff,
and I would grab snacks to put in my bag for the younger guys if we get stuck
out overnight or whatever.
And I walked into this tent, and it's, I mean, it's decorated like the 4th of
July.
And you lose track of time because of so much stuff going on over there.
And I looked around, and then it didn't hit me until I walked up to the sheet
cake and said, "Happy Memorial Day."
And I didn't realize it was Memorial Day that day, but we go out on the mission.
How many go out on the mission at one time?
It's dependent on how far and airlift and a lot of capabilities of support, but
there was approximately about 65.
What is this, Sergeant?
That is the compound where we were assaulting when we got, I got injured, and
that's pretty much where the incident took place.
Now, is this a compound that had been built by the enemy or a compound that
existed and was taken over by the enemy?
What was the nature of this structure?
I couldn't, we didn't get a whole lot of knowledge on how they got there or how
long they had been there.
All we got was that they were in that area, and we had moved in, and it was
just adobe-type mud buildings, walls.
We see the entry point there. You helicoptered to the entry point? Is that
right?
No, no. We were offset from the compound itself. And if you got an outside
picture of it, there's multiple compounds.
So we were hitting multiple structures simultaneously.
Right. And began taking fire immediately, is that correct?
Yes, sir.
Yeah. And how soon after, and where did you, where were you first wounded in
this compound?
You had gotten inside, is that correct?
We, right where it says inner courtyard.
Yeah.
We were coming out of there to, I don't know if this, yeah, there it goes. I
can point on it.
We were coming out and we were crossing over here to clear out behind the
chicken coop and the chicken coop,
when two guys with, enemy, with AK-47s were shooting from their hip, just
spraying down that alley and hit me in the legs, hit the guy behind me, just
below his rib cage on the left side, PFC Robinson.
We, I, I kept running to, behind the chicken coop to take cover from just mass
volume of fire that we were taking.
I thought I had only been shot in my left leg and the bullet was stuck in there.
It sounds kind of ridiculous, but it was like Forrest Gump.
Something bit me and just start running, get, get, get behind cover.
And with the, with the shell in you, you continued to run.
Well, later on, I found out when, once I got to the casualty collection point
where we take care of our wounded guys,
is when they started cutting off my pants, that's when I realized it had gone
through both my thighs.
Right, right. Continued to function, not just one leg, both legs had been
injured, yeah.
And then there were grenades tossed back and forth.
I had, I had lobbed a grenade over the chicken coop toward the enemy as that
went off.
Sergeant Higgins, another one of our rangers, ran over to us.
I immediately, because they were junior rangers for myself, and I said,
hey, start helping Robinson, start pulling security on that corner, because we're
still taking heavy fire.
Enemy grenade came over in close vicinity, knocked those two down.
And they got up kind of in shock. Hey, what was that? What's going on?
I said, hey, they're throwing grenades. Keep your heads down. Keep pulling
security.
I'm still, at this point, keeping on my radio, informing command what's going
on, and we need support.
I just want to remind people right then and there, you have two legs that have
been shot,
and you're taking grenades being thrown at you.
You're on the radio trying to calm your buddies down, and they're still
throwing grenades at you.
All of this is going on.
There's still heavy volumes of 7.62 fire coming in.
The next thing I know is I'm turning to watch my corner around that chicken
coop.
As I turn to check out my guys, we weren't no further than about six feet, four
to six feet to the end of us.
And I see a -