Van of Valor

By Dr. Kevin P. Wallace
Van of Valor

BARTELSO, Ill. – The late summer sun was beginning its slow descent over the cornfields of Southern Illinois, casting long shadows across the grounds of the Standin’ Proud Veteran’s Tribute. 

It was day one-hundred-and-something of our 280-day journey. We had rolled into Bartelso with the Van of Valor covered in the dust of many miles, enough distance to circle the entire globe. 

We had shaken hands in the rain of the Pacific Northwest and swatted mosquitos in the humidity of the Florida panhandle. 

We sat at kitchen tables and VFW posts, collecting the oral histories of 317 heroes.

But standing in front of me now was Bob Pierce.

His eyes were sharp as flint. When we shook hands, Lauren (my wife and partner in this mission) noted the grip. It wasn’t aggressive; it was definitive. It was the grip of a man who had held onto life when life tried to let go.

We sat down on a couple of folding chairs near the memorial wall, the hum of a generator and the distant chatter of veterans providing the background track, ironic for what would be revealed as the noise of Panama

Bob’s file says he enlisted in 1983. But when I asked him where it really began, he didn’t start with a date. He started with a sound.

“Panama,” he said, a rare smile cracking his weathered face. “Operation Just Cause. We had Noriega’s ass on the run, and we’re holding the presidential palace. And for 36 hours… 36 hours… some genius decides to blast Ozzy Osbourne over the speakers. ‘Crazy Train.’ Over and over.”

Lauren laughed, but Bob shook his head. “You had to be there. We were hyped up on adrenaline, waiting for the world to end, and Ozzy is screaming about going off the rails. It was insane. It was the military. It was perfect.”

That story set the tone. From Panama, we traveled through Desert Storm, the dust of Somalia, and the mountains of Afghanistan. 

Bob didn’t just serve in the Army; he was the Army. He served with the 3rd Ranger Battalion, the 101st Airborne, and as a senior NCO and Drill Instructor. He was the guy who, when things got tight, just nodded and kept going.

I asked him about the first time he was asked to bleed for his country. The transcript says it was 2003, outside Kabul. But hearing it in person is different. You see the pause, the slight turn of the head as he looks at a point a thousand yards away.

“We were chasing them,” Bob said, his voice low. “Trying to get into a village on the highway to Jalalabad. And they didn’t want us there.”

He described the round hitting him. A “through and through” in his upper shoulder and chest. In the telling, he instinctively touched the spot on his torso.

“I just dumped quick-clot in it,” he shrugged. “The kids were freaking out, yelling for a medevac. I told ’em to shut up. We had a job to do. The hole would either clot up or it wouldn’t.”

He said it with such nonchalance that it took a second to register. He was shot. In the chest. And he told his men to stop worrying because they had a village to clear. That wasn’t bravado; that was a culture. It was a culture of mission first, self last. It was a culture that kept him alive that day, but a culture that would later make the transition to civilian life feel like being dropped on a foreign planet with no map.

The Flash and the Silence

Then we got to 2011. The IED.

Bob explained how he wasn’t even supposed to be on that truck. He was a senior E-9, a First Sergeant. He should have been in the command post. But the gunner got sick. “Rock paper rank,” Bob called it. “I’m a grunt, he’s a truck driver. I took the Mark 19.”

For four days, they escorted convoys. On the fourth day, trying to help a scout truck on the highway near Wardak province, the world turned white.

“I don’t remember the blast,” Bob admitted. “I remember the flash. Then I woke up in Landstuhl, Germany.”

The silence that followed that sentence was heavier than the Ozzy Osbourne story was loud. The explosion didn’t just tear through the armor of the vehicle; it tore through the wiring of Bob Pierce’s brain. A Traumatic Brain Injury. Severe. It took pieces of his memory, pieces of his balance, and pieces of the man he used to be.

Three years later, sitting in an office, a doctor looked at him and said, “We broke you too much, Pierce. Will you take your ball and go home?”

They didn’t ask if he wanted to stay. They told him he was broken. For a man who had defined himself by service, by being the one who kept going, being told to stop was a different kind of death.

The 22.

I leaned forward. This is the part of the interview that always hurts, but it’s the reason we do this. The Van of Valor isn’t just about collecting stories; it’s about building a bridge back to life.

“The war didn’t end there, did it, Bob?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, Doc. It didn’t. I’m losing more brothers and sisters now than I did in combat. Twenty-two a day. It’s a different battlefield.”

Bob’s mission shifted. He stopped fighting enemies overseas and started fighting the silence at home. He told us about taking vets into the woods, into hunting blinds. He talked about the Warrior Bonfire Project, and Wounded Warriors in Action.

“It’s about reminding them,” he said, looking me straight in the eye. “Reminding them that there’s a reason to wake up. We get so wrapped up in the chaos, the politics, the arguing. We forget.”

He quoted the Constitution then, and it wasn’t a political stump speech. It was a plea.

“Our Constitution says, ‘in pursuit of happiness.’ Why can’t we go back to that? Just be happy. Be happy we’re here. Be happy we have the freedoms we do. I’ve seen parts of this world where if you kill somebody, they hang you in the town square. We live in paradise and we spend all our time complaining about the weather.”

The Ride Home

As the sun dipped below the Illinois horizon, Lauren packed up the recording gear. We had been talking for nearly two hours. Bob stood up slowly, his body aching from the TBI and the decades of wear and tear.

I thanked him for his service, a phrase that feels so inadequate in the face of such a confession. But Bob just nodded toward the Van of Valor, parked proudly by the entrance of the tribute.

“Thank you for doing this,” he said. “For driving all those miles. For listening.”

As we prepared to leave Bartelso, heading to our next appointment, I looked at the odometer. 27,000 miles. Farther than the circumference of the Earth. We had started this journey to find heroes, and we found them. But in Bob Pierce, we found something else: a mirror.

He showed us that the “Pursuit of Happiness” isn’t a destination. It’s a patrol. You put one foot in front of the other. You take care of the guy next to you. And when you get shot down, you let someone help you back up.

If you or a veteran you know is struggling, please call 988. Reach out to the VFW, the American Legion, or groups like the Warrior Bonfire Project. You are not alone. The Van of Valor is still on the road, and we will keep listening.

To support the ongoing mission of capturing these stories and meeting veterans where they are, visit www.HelpVoV.com