Episode Title: James Webb — The Warrior Who Never Left Vietnam

Date: January 6, 2026

Length: 54:17

Series: Kingdom People in the Pages of History (Robert Timberg’s The Nightingale’s Song)

Previous Episode: John Poindexter — “The Sub-Driver”

Focus Figure: James Webb (Marine infantry officer, Vietnam veteran, author of Fields of Fire, public servant)

Some men come home from war… and some never fully do. In this final character study from The Nightingale’s Song, Matt Geib explores James Webb as “the Marine’s Marine”—a warrior marked by Vietnam, shaped by loyalty to his men, and unwilling to let the nation forget the real cost of war. The episode builds a powerful contrast: Webb the truth-telling, grief-carrying warrior versus Oliver North the meaning-making, mission-driven warrior—and then brings it all under the searching gaze of Psalm 8: “What is man?”

1. The episode begins with Scripture confession and worship: “The Lord is my light and my salvation…” (Psalm 27 language).
2. Matt frames the series: five men connected to Annapolis, shaped by Vietnam, and later elevated into national power.
3. Today’s “final voice” is James Webb—introduced with deep admiration and emotional weight.

Webb is presented as:

1. A combat Marine who experienced Vietnam from the ground level (mud, fear, responsibility, loss).
2. A man with unusual emotional honesty compared with others in the series—troubled, angry, disillusioned, yet ultimately able to process the war rather than bury it.
3. A writer who gave voice to the soldier’s experience through the novel Fields of Fire (1979), described as one of the most authentic portrayals of Vietnam combat and brotherhood.

Key line of the episode: Vietnam didn’t just end—it followed men home into politics, families, and old age.

1. Matt introduces a striking metaphor:
2. James Webb (Marine) looked at life through the brutal clarity of war.
3. James Webb (telescope) invites humanity to look outward into creation’s vastness.
4. That contrast leads into Psalm 8:
5. “When I consider Your heavens… what is man that You are mindful of him?”
6. Vietnam forces the question from the foxhole; creation forces the question from the stars.

1. Born 1946, raised in a military family.
2. Naval Academy →...