Larry Winters grew up in a house his parents bought when it had no electricity, no running water, and no bathroom. He was three years old when they moved in, and the rest of his childhood was spent helping his father, a Navy veteran and aircraft electrician, make the place livable. By the time Larry was a teenager, the work had turned into something harder: a physically abusive relationship he couldn’t see a way out of. At 16, he moved out, built a cabin behind a neighbor’s house with scrap lumber, and supported himself working at a dairy bar. At 19, without telling his parents, he walked into a recruiter’s office with two friends and signed up for the Marines.
What he found at Parris Island wasn’t what he expected. In this episode, Larry walks through the turning points of boot camp with unflinching specificity: the drill instructor who chipped his front tooth pouring hot sauce down his throat, the moment a senior DI smashed his thumb in a rifle chamber and made him sing the Marine Corps Hymn while bleeding, the blanket parties where recruits beat each other with soap-filled socks. Somewhere in those weeks, he says, he realized he was being brainwashed. He also realized he couldn’t leave. By 1969 he was in Vietnam as a helicopter mechanic and eventually a door gunner, stationed at Phu Bai and then Marble Mountain outside Da Nang.
The episode’s emotional center comes about halfway through, when Larry describes a day on the beach when a corporal ordered a small group of Marines to open fire on Vietnamese sandpan fishing boats, boats carrying unarmed civilians and children. Larry refused. He fired into the sand at his feet while the rest of the men hit the boats. He didn’t kill anyone that day, but he says he should have done more to stop it, and that moment has stayed with him for over five decades. It became, in his telling, the seed of what he now teaches and writes about: moral injury. His argument is direct and worth hearing in full. The veteran suicide epidemic is not primarily about fear or trauma in the traditional PTSD sense, but about conscience. About being asked to do things that violated who you understood yourself to be, and never finding a way to reconcile it.
Larry came home, threw his uniform out of a helicopter on the way out of Vietnam, married his high school girlfriend, went to community college, ran a taxi company, and eventually became a therapist. He’s now 78, has written one book, “The Making and Unmaking of a Marine,” and is finishing a second. He works with veterans, he’s spoken with active-duty soldiers in Israel during the current suicide crisis there, and he keeps writing poetry, carving walking sticks, and building sculptures in his backyard. His prescription for healing isn’t complicated, though he says it’s the hardest thing to actually do: be present. Listen long enough that the person talking believes you’re really there. Create something. Find your voice. This is one of the most honest, hard-earned conversations we’ve had on the show, and it will stay with you.
📕 Larry’s first book “The Making and Unmaking of a Marine” — https://www.amazon.com/Making-Making-Marine-Larry-Winters/dp/0979229340
📕 Larry’s upcoming book: https://www.koehlerbooks.com/book/the-tug-of-war-a-reckoning-with-moral-injury-and-telling-the-truth/
Larry’s Substack: https://larrywinters.substack.com/
Listen to Larry’s full interview on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.