November 12, 2025 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Michael Schlitz had already spent more than a decade in uniform when his life changed in an instant. On February 27, 2007, during a road-clearing mission, an IED tore through his vehicle in Iraq, taking brothers in arms and leaving Michael with burns across most of his body and the long uphill work of recovery. The months that followed were measured in surgeries, setbacks, and small victories that felt enormous.
He could have turned inward. Instead, he chose to keep serving. Through years of healing, Michael found purpose in helping other wounded veterans face their own fights. Today he travels to hospitals, bases, and community halls, speaking with wounded veterans about resilience and the hard work of beginning again.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And if you want to listen to our show, go
to the iHeartRadio app or listen to the podcast well
wherever you pick them up up. Next, a story kindly
submitted to us by the Veterans History Project at the
(00:33):
Atlanta History Center, we will be hearing from Army ranger
Michael Schlitz, who served in Iraq.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I went in the military pretty much right out after
high school. You know, honestly, I was a little immature.
I knew if I went to college I was probably
going to struggle. I'd probably party a little too hard
and not really pay enough attention to the classes, and
I really didn't want to set myself up for failure.
Plus I was just kind of floating around life at
the time. I didn't really have the direction and really
(01:03):
an idea of what I wanted to do. And my
father had been a Navy veteran. My brother was already
in the Army, and at the time I didn't know it,
but he was about to go to Haiti for Operation
Uphulled Democracy. So my goal was to come in the military,
do a few years, maybe come back out, go to college,
and then figure out what I want to do. Came
(01:27):
in the Army in March in nineteen ninety six, did
my training here at Fort Benning, Georgia, Basic and ait
pretty much right off the get go of it. I
just fell in love with it. I liked the discipline.
I like the routine. I like the everyday challenges. I mean,
you pretty much woke up every day knowing what you're
going to do, but at the same time, there was
(01:47):
new levels of responsibility and challenges constantly thrown at you
to kind of keep you on your toes and make
you react.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
And to me, there's nothing else like it.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
We do talk a lot about the teamwork and coming
together as a team to uplished a mission, but you know, honestly,
the military has a lot of eye in there too,
Like you have to outperform your peers in order to
be promoted able to go to those schools, and I
always challenged myself to be better than those around me.
(02:16):
My first assignment after completing my training was one five
Infantry out of Fort Lewis, which was part of the
twenty fifth Infantry Division. About a year and a half
being at Fort Lewis, I got picked to go to Korea,
and then after Korea went to first of the five
oh second at one hundred and first, and right away
(02:37):
when I got to the hundred and first, you know,
I just started plugging away. I was a specialist at
the time, and I asked him, you know, can I
go to a pre ranger. I want to go to
ranger school? What do I need to go? And they're like, well,
we got to send.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
You to assault school. First.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
The very last thing you do is a twelve mile
foot march, and you know it's self release.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
You got thirty five pounds on your back. You have
three hours and it's an individual task.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
You know, it's your own. Yeah, there's other people out there,
but it's really on you. And I ended up coming
in first place for that, and so I did my
other classmates. And so the next day was graduation. My
first arm platoons, aren't I come to the graduation? And
I guess it was pretty normal that when you graduate
the course, i'd give you a four day pass to say, hey,
(03:20):
you know, good job, then come back to work. And
my company, my infantry company, was doing a ten mile
company race the next day, and my platoons aren't, said,
you know, first, aren't. Would like to give you the
four day pass, but we're having this race.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
We need to introduce you to the rest of the
guys in the company.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
We understand you did twelve miles, but would you come
out and do this run tomorrow? And you know, I'm
you know, being a young guy, and you know, wanting
to prove myself. I said, of course. So I showed
up the next day and I ended up taking third place.
I can remember my platoons aren't in first. Aren't again,
pretty much the only guys who know who I am,
pulling me off to the side and said, oh, by
the way, on.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Monday, you start pre ranger.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
So I've always been a pretty lean guy, so going
into reindeer school, you know, at five six, I only
weigh one hundred and fifty five pounds.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I can remember before.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Going to school them saying, hey, you need to put
as much fat on your body as you can, because
you know, once you're done burning through the fat, you're
gonna start burning through your muscle. And it, sure enough
happened to pretty much all of us, and it has
a very distinct ammonious smell. And at the time we
had the old bedus with the brown shirts, and.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Everybody's shirts would turn orange.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
It was because when you burn the muscle and it
puts off the secretion and everything, it would almost.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Bleach out your shirts.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And so two months later when I came out of
the swamps of Florida and they brief you, and it's
the first time I actually had stepped on the scale
the entire time, and I weigh one hundred.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And fifteen pounds.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I started at one hundred and fifty five pounds, So
in just over two months, you know, I lost forty pounds,
and for being somebody who was lean, that was actually
quite a bit. And you know, leading up to graduation,
those four days are actually allowed to start putting food
in your system. And I can remember eating pints of
hazen Das ice cream and you know, full pizzas, and
(05:12):
I mean you would just eat and eat and eat,
and then.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
When you could, you try to get some rest too.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
And so a graduation I had actually put on in
those four days, had got myself back up to one
hundred and thirty five pounds.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
But it was like all gut your eyes are still black.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
They're sunk it in. Your cheeks are sunk it in.
They're just reil looking. You're very weak looking, but you
have this little pot belly thing going on, you know,
under the uniform. But the majority of the people who
do go to school within that that point, we'll probably
lose anywhere from twenty five to about fifty pounds, depending
on how big you are. I went back to the
(05:47):
hundred and first I made sergeant. Shortly after getting back,
I was a team leader. And then the big Army
decided about it's time to go back to Korea, and
so packed my bags went back to Korea for another year.
You're always within your one year, you're always allowed to
take a little vacation time. At some point, they caught
mid to or leave, and so I was married at
(06:09):
the time, and so my wife had come over and
we just had just south of the peninsula, there's a
little island. So we had gone down to the island
for a few days, flown back into Soul. We're having
dinner and the next day we're due to flight to Bali,
Indonesia for a few days. And we're sitting there having dinner,
watching the football game on the TV and we saw
the first plane hit the tower, and we actually thought
(06:31):
they had changed the channel on us, thinking they took
the football game off and then put on a movie.
And so we're all kind of yelling, you know, because
it was kind of an American bar and soul like
put the game back on. And then we saw the
second plane hit and we realized, okay, something's not right.
So you know, we didn't even finish our dinner, you know,
we paid our check, jumped in a cab, went back
(06:52):
to our hotel where I had my work cell phone,
and it was like, yeah, vacations over, time to come home.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
The vacation is over, indeed and over for so many
of us, especially those who serve in uniform. And we're
listening to Michael Schlitz tell his story, his service story.
By the way, so much of his family, so many
members of his family, had served. And that is the
case throughout this country that military service runs through the family.
(07:20):
When we come back, more of Michael Schlitz's story here
on our American Stories. Here are to our American stories.
We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith,
and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that
need to be told, but we can't.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Do it without you.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love our stories in America
like we do, please go to our American Stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot com. And we continue with
(08:08):
our American stories and with Michael Schlitz's story. We just
heard about the day that changed America nine to eleven,
and that's September eleventh, two thousand and one. And let's
take it back to Michael.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Eventually moved up to a staff position running the resources
for all Ranger school Sometimes it was air assets, but
all the ranges land, pretty much everything except for AMMO.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
We had an AMMO guy who did that.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
When it was time for me to leave, I called
up my branch manager and said, hey, you know what's
the next deploying unit. He goes, well, the next next
guys to leave his tenth Mountain division.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
So that's where I want to go.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
And so I mean to me, there was no other options.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
It was this is what I want to go do.
And since I hadn't had the chance to really deploy.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
I knew I wanted to be on the next Chalco
one out, So I reported to tenth Mountain Division in
March of six, and we deployed in August of six.
So our sector was the southwest side of Baghdad. The
media at the time called it the Sunni Triangle or
the Triangle of death. You know, when we first invaded,
(09:18):
you know, the insurgents really didn't.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Know how to fight us, and as they studied us and.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Found out our operating procedures, then they could figure out
how to attack.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
It's a weakness, it's just like we do for them
and then are wounded and are.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Killed in actions had doubled, and so in six we
have what we call the surge. And basically the US
answer to that was to just triple the number of
US forces we had in erect.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
At the time and do a big sweep across the country.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
And that obviously in an area like that to it's
littered with roadside bombs, IED's improvise explosive devices.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
The more people you put in an area, the more
that can actually get injured.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
So we actually you did see are killed in action
and our wounded in action triple in numbers.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
But we were making a big push.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
We were finding those IDs, we were finding the insurgent sales,
so we were making a huge difference.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
It just it came at a cost.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
We had huge up armored vehicles. We had one that
was called the Husky. It was like a mind detecting vehicle.
And these vehicles were actually made for Africa, so they
could drive over minefields and have the mines explode, and
the bottom of vehicles instead of being flat like a
lot of the US vehicles, they had a v haul,
so they came down into a point like a boat,
and what would happen is when the rounds would come up,
(10:35):
they would shatter a way versus coming straight up to
the armor.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
And so we had mind detecting vehicles.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
We had troop carrying vehicles that just a little bit
heavy armored.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
So we could have some firepower on top. And then
we'd have the one that had the huge claw. So
if we found wire, we found.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Something that looked kind of suspicious, that claw would go
way forward to the vehicle.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Had a camera on it. We could interrogate it without
ever leaving the security of our vehicle.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
And there were signs where we would take three hits
in a single day.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Three IED's that we weren't able to spot them. They'd
detonate on.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Us, and as long as our vehicles would keep rolling,
we just kept rolling on with the mission.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
We didn't stop, you know.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Then February twenty seventh, two thousand and seven, came about,
so like any other day, woke up, you know, got
the guys ready, got the vehicles prepped, got them prepped,
brought him in, We did our briefings. They knew exactly
it was going to take us about fifteen hour patrol
that day to get through all the routes that we
had planned. And then you know, we loaded up and
(11:44):
we had been on the road about three hours and
we came across one of the routes.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
I believe it was rob Primus. It was actually a
dead end road.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
And typically when you plan your route, you never covered
the same spot more than once because if you do,
you get blown up because.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
They can predict you. Unfortunately, the dead end road there's
one way down.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
All the way back, and we had taken our time,
and anytime we're looking for the IDs, you're only going
about two miles per hour, So it's a creep crawling obviously,
why you need that heavy armored vehicles Because you're moving
so slow, it's an easy target.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
And we got down to the end of the road.
It's a very rural area.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
There was a lot of canals and farmland and not
the open desert that.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
People think of when they think of I racked. Once
we started coming back up, we picked up the pace
a little bit. I want to say.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
We were probably going about between five and ten miles
an hour, so it's not like we were speeding up
the road, but we weren't creep crawling along either.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And then I heard the blast.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I can remember hearing the boom, and before I could
even get like a choice for a letter word out
of my mouth, I was hitting the ground. And you know,
when you go through these training and you go through
all this stuff as a leader, you always want to
just pause for a second and just get a quick
battle damage assessment so you can make a quick decision.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
It can't be long. It's just a quick pause. And
as I did that, I.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Looked at my vehicle and I really at the time
didn't see anything out of the unusual about it.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
But I didn't see it was my guys.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
So I just immediately got up to run back for
my vehicle, and as I got closer to the vehicle,
that's when I could feel the flames hit me in
the face and I realized I was on fire. And
because I felt like it was in the torso area,
because it was just hit me in the face so bad,
I decided to drop my IBA or my protective vest,
and so I kind of just tossed it real quick,
(13:34):
got down and started to roll and I only got
about a roll and a half in and the heat
was so intense that it basically locked up my muscles.
But I definitely was like, Okay, this is it for me.
This is where my life ends. I'm going to die here,
you know, face down on the ground and IRAQ him.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
You know what am I going to do? I can't move,
you know, and I'm on fire.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
And about the time those those those emotions and those
thoughts were coming over my body, I could hear my
as you home for me. Before I knew it, theyre
hit me with that fire extinguisher and it went from
that extreme heat to the extreme cooling. And I don't
think I'll ever probably find the words to describe that
feeling of that cooling sensation and the relief it provided me,
(14:15):
like almost instantly, But then it also gave me, you know,
that emotional kind of aspect where came maybe I'm not
going to die here on the ground that if they
got to me and I feel like this right now,
then maybe I still have a fighting chance to go
on from there. One of my young sergeants, Sarnt Redmond,
wasn't one of my best sergeants. I actually had plans
(14:35):
on kicking them out of the army for some other
bad decisions he made. But two of the young guys
were going to grab me and start dragging me off
the road, and he stopped him, and he's like, no,
you can't do that.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
You have to get the spine board. If you drag him,
you'll kill him.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
And the only analogy I can really use, or the
way to explain it is, if.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
You think about baked chicken. You just pulled that baked chicken.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Out of the oven, you know, and how the meat
and this everything just kind of scups.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Out of the bone.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Well, I basically had just been burned alive, So had
they drugged me, everything would have just scopped off and
they probably would have killed me. The guys were talking
to me, you know, reassuring me, and I was getting
a little annoyed with it. I can't remember telling them
just to shut up. I got this, don't worry about it.
And before I knew it, I could start to hear
the chopper coming in. The helicopter, the metavact was coming in.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
All the guys would kind of lightly lay over me,
not enough to irritate the burns or anything, but just
protect me from the water rush of the bird landing.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
And they loaded me up.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
I remember there was a female flight medic. She asked me,
my name is social. I know, I got my name
out no idea about the social.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
And the megs just kind of kicked in.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Later on I found out they pretty much had to
start working on me right away and blot I Later years,
about two.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Years after it happened, I actually got to meet my surgeon.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
It was a Air Force colonel, and he said that,
you know, of his two years that he almost spent
over there, they they had never been attacked except for
the one time I was on the table and they
got a rocket attack.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
So things were shaken and stuff, and.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
He said, what he could remember was my legs is
everything above my boot was in really really bad condition,
and I I don't remember what the procedure was called,
but basically there was.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
A procedure they weren't supposed to do on burns.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Brooke Army Medical Center is like the Burn Hospital, one
of the best hospitals for burns, and there was a
procedure that they weren't supposed to do on any burn patients,
and he ended up doing it.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
I mean, it was the only way to save my legs,
because had that happen, they would have had to take
my legs too.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
So you know, here's a guy who now only saved
my life cause I was constantly flat lining and having
all kinds of issues. And the prognosis that was even
going back to the unit was I wasn't gonna make it.
That I was just too far gone at that point.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
And you were listening to Army ranger Michael Schlitz tell
one heck of his story, and he deploys to Iraq.
He doesn't get the easy space, and there isn't really
much of an easy space or place there, but he
gets the sony triangle. Then you overlay the surge and
particularly the insurgents use of minds that actually develop their
(17:21):
own name called improvised explosive devices, because that's what they were,
and his job was to find them, which meant he
and his units will go out at a crawl and
be open targets for not only these devices, but all
all kinds of attacks and all to protect fellow soldiers
from these IEDs and ultimately to secure the area. When
(17:45):
we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story
of how Michael Schlitz comes back from a near death
experience here on our American stories, and we continue here
(18:09):
with our American stories and the story of Army ranger
Michael Schlitz. Let's pick up where Michael last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Luckily, they stabilize me and pretty much sent me to
Brooke Army Medical Center and got there on to March
of seven, immediately put into ICU. I spent six months
in ICU.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Multiple skin grafts.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
At that point they had to make the call to
go and take the hands so I didn't lose the
hands from the explosion.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I actually lost the hands through the burns.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Like mentally, I knew, I knew how to walk and stuff,
but I had so much muscle damage and so much
weakness that when I would go to get up to walk,
like initially, I would just kind of crumble.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I couldn't walk, so they had to build that up.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
So, you know, sometimes it was just today, all we're
going to do a stand up.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Out of bed.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
The next day, you know, we're going to do two steps,
and now we're going to walk to the door. Like
one of the ways they motivated me is my brother
and my niece were down visiting and they allowed me
to walk to the ICU doors and my niece was
sit on the ground and it's really the first time
she got to see me too, and she didn't recognize me.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
And her name's Brina, and I always had a way
I'd always.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Saying and bringing Brina, and so I did that and
she realized it was me, and of course I had
to go back to.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
The room, so they shut the doors, and then she
was upset that she did get to hang out with me.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
It wasn't until I went to my welcome home ceremony
then I found out that three guys I had my
vehicle all passed away. You know, they didn't want to
tell me when I was in the hospital or going
through recovery because they didn't want me to mentally or
just have it stressed me out to the point where
i'd take a change. After about four months of the
(19:56):
burn warden and still going through it. The only way
they had let me out of the hospitals if I got
a small house on post House close to the hospital,
so if anything happened, I was still nearby. So Mom
and I moved into small, small, probably maybe seven hundred
square foot home, two bedrooms right on top of each other.
And that's where it's that that timeframe, you know, I
(20:18):
was still probably sleeping sixteen hours a day. I'd be up,
they'd change my bandages, and I'd eat, and that's pretty
much all I I'd go to sleep, wake up, eat,
go to sleep, wake up, eat, and go sleep. And
but for Mom, that that was probably some of the
most horrific time, besides just learning about the stuff. But
she had to take it. She had to do a
(20:39):
lot of the won't care. She had to do all
the coke and the cleaning. I wasn't allowed to sleep
on my sheets more than once because of infection, So
I just put all that on her. And obviously she
didn't have anybody to help her, so she.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Was doing all that on her own.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
And eventually, you know, I got my first prosthetic, and
that night I can remember going home and Mom cooked
and cut all my.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Food up for me.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
But that very first time I was able to feed myself,
and that was huge for me, because leading up to
that first protec, I couldn't trust myself, couldn't feed myself,
couldn't take myself to the bathroom. There was really very
little I could do on an average statement myself, and
that affects you mentally. Obviously I contemplated suicide, but you know.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I didn't want to let Mom down.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
And then you know, I had my brothers in the
army and a lot of people who visited me, and
you never want to let anybody down. So ultimately, because
of that support system is why I didn't commit suicide.
But when I had that first prospectic give me that
little bit of hope, that little bit of independence. And
then shortly after that I got the second prosthetic, and
you know, I just kind of did on the gost.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Sense, and not that I don't have bad days or
you know, take turns here and there.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Still I can't say I never saw my life going
in the direction it has. One of the things I
battled with a sense of purpose. You know, my entire
adult life, I was a soldier. I lived for my career.
I would have pretty much everything in my life took
second second string to my career, Like I wanted to
be a soldier.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
This is what I do.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
And you know, if I mean missing a wedding or
missing somebody's birthday, or missing a big, big event that
if if it was for the military and something I
had thought I had to do, I.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Would always pick it over everything.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
And uh, you know, even my marriage, like I got
divorced well before the injury, but I always put my career.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
It's just it's who I was.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
And now I didn't feel like I could be a
soldier anymore. I felt like, you know, my identity had
been struck for me.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
I didn't know what I was going to do.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
And you know, Mom and I would have conversation like
I don't know what I could do, and I was like, well,
maybe you could do some public speak.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Then I'm like, I can't do that, you know, and she,
you know, she.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Would try to guide me, and you know, I couldn't
foresee what where life would take me at the time,
and or or even at you know, falling back on
my career as an instructor giving classes to a few
hundred kids, you know, or soldiers are doing any of
those things. But as they started doing more events, they
would ask me to come speak, and I told my
story more. And I had that opportunity to go over
(23:10):
back to Iraq on three different occasions through a thing
called Operation Proper Exit. And so when I came back,
I just kind of went full in and motivational speaking
and leadership speaking companies, units, nonprofit events, charity events, and
so that's why I do now, and you know, it's
my purpose, it's what I like to do. It keeps
(23:32):
me around both the veteran community, guys who served, whether
it was World War Two up through the current conflicts,
or it's the active duty guys, every branch you can
think of. It just allows me to get around to everybody.
And I've had a great support network. Obviously I didn't
do it on my own.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
You know, the Brotherhood has been very very good to me.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
I mean, whether it was my guys out of Tenth Mount,
the Rangers I served with, you know, guys that you know,
I was a private with that still keep in touch
with me. It's a very very tight knit community. And
you know, I'm just I'm a proud Army veteran, you know,
you know, I'm glad I got the chance to serve.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
I can picture my life without it.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
But obviously, veterans, you know, it takes a certain mentality
to serve your country. And obviously after fourteen years of war,
you know, everybody who goes over there comes home a
little different. You know what really kind of bothers me
is when I go in public, I could have three
veterans with me. Two might be suffering from postmatic stress,
(24:38):
one could be have a TBI at traumatic brain injury,
and then there's me and the only one they'll think
is me, and they just forget about these guys. But
those guys' service is no different than mine, you know.
And I have, you know, guys that have multiple deployments
always coming up to me and saying, you know, my
you know, my service isn't quite the same. It isn't
(24:59):
like you now, your service is the same as mine.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I had one bad day which changed, you know, this
part of me.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
But the actual service serving your country is no different.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
You know, anybody on any given day, can I have
a bad day, and I'm what a bad day looks like.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
But we don't know enough about the brain and the
way things function to fix the brain right now. And
you can throw mads at it and you can do
different things, but ultimately brain's going to do what the
brain's going to do. But for somebody like me who
has a physical injury, the guys that have leg injuries,
there's always a way to adapt.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Something I can figure out. You know, even before I
have prosthetics.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
I used to take the gatorade bottles, drill hole in
the cap, put the cat back on and feel you know,
I have my drink and I have a straw in there,
so I can carry it myself. So for me, life
is always about adapting and changing and doing stuff. But
when you have a TVI or you have PTS to
the higher functioning levels, you don't have that option.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
You know, you can't control it.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
So they may look what you considered normal, but they're
struggling more so than a lot of the.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
People that you considered disabled.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
So I think it's important to stay in touch with
everybody and not fall.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Off the grid.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
It's going to be harder for those guys who who
maybe move to those rural communities away from military posts,
away from some of the larger organizations. But in today's society,
and especially with social media, you know in Facebook, I mean,
there's so many veteran groups on Facebook that you can
reach out to, and maybe you don't get to go
(26:35):
up and have dinner with them once a week or
once a month, at least you can communicate or if
you're having some issues, somebody to vent to. And nobody
understands a veteran like a veteran.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hengler,
and a special thanks to Michael Schlitz for sharing his
story about his service and all that happened while he
was on duty in Iraq, losing three of his pals.
He survived, but he lost three of his pals, lost
his hands, and lost so much but gained as much
(27:09):
too back learning about the Brotherhood, learning about the Tenth
Mountain Division, and so many others who helped Michael schlnts
his story the story of so many of our soldiers
who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here on our American
Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
And if you want to listen to our show, go
to the iHeartRadio app or listen to the podcast well
wherever you pick them up up. Next, a story kindly
submitted to us by the Veterans History Project at the
(00:33):
Atlanta History Center, we will be hearing from Army ranger
Michael Schlitz, who served in Iraq.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
I went in the military pretty much right out after
high school. You know, honestly, I was a little immature.
I knew if I went to college I was probably
going to struggle. I'd probably party a little too hard
and not really pay enough attention to the classes, and
I really didn't want to set myself up for failure.
Plus I was just kind of floating around life at
the time. I didn't really have the direction and really
(01:03):
an idea of what I wanted to do. And my
father had been a Navy veteran. My brother was already
in the Army, and at the time I didn't know it,
but he was about to go to Haiti for Operation
Uphulled Democracy. So my goal was to come in the military,
do a few years, maybe come back out, go to college,
and then figure out what I want to do. Came
(01:27):
in the Army in March in nineteen ninety six, did
my training here at Fort Benning, Georgia, Basic and ait
pretty much right off the get go of it. I
just fell in love with it. I liked the discipline.
I like the routine. I like the everyday challenges. I mean,
you pretty much woke up every day knowing what you're
going to do, but at the same time, there was
(01:47):
new levels of responsibility and challenges constantly thrown at you
to kind of keep you on your toes and make
you react.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
And to me, there's nothing else like it.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
We do talk a lot about the teamwork and coming
together as a team to uplished a mission, but you know, honestly,
the military has a lot of eye in there too,
Like you have to outperform your peers in order to
be promoted able to go to those schools, and I
always challenged myself to be better than those around me.
(02:16):
My first assignment after completing my training was one five
Infantry out of Fort Lewis, which was part of the
twenty fifth Infantry Division. About a year and a half
being at Fort Lewis, I got picked to go to Korea,
and then after Korea went to first of the five
oh second at one hundred and first, and right away
(02:37):
when I got to the hundred and first, you know,
I just started plugging away. I was a specialist at
the time, and I asked him, you know, can I
go to a pre ranger. I want to go to
ranger school? What do I need to go? And they're like, well,
we got to send.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
You to assault school. First.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
The very last thing you do is a twelve mile
foot march, and you know it's self release.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
You got thirty five pounds on your back. You have
three hours and it's an individual task.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
You know, it's your own. Yeah, there's other people out there,
but it's really on you. And I ended up coming
in first place for that, and so I did my
other classmates. And so the next day was graduation. My
first arm platoons, aren't I come to the graduation? And
I guess it was pretty normal that when you graduate
the course, i'd give you a four day pass to say, hey,
(03:20):
you know, good job, then come back to work. And
my company, my infantry company, was doing a ten mile
company race the next day, and my platoons aren't, said,
you know, first, aren't. Would like to give you the
four day pass, but we're having this race.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
We need to introduce you to the rest of the
guys in the company.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
We understand you did twelve miles, but would you come
out and do this run tomorrow? And you know, I'm
you know, being a young guy, and you know, wanting
to prove myself. I said, of course. So I showed
up the next day and I ended up taking third place.
I can remember my platoons aren't in first. Aren't again,
pretty much the only guys who know who I am,
pulling me off to the side and said, oh, by
the way, on.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Monday, you start pre ranger.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
So I've always been a pretty lean guy, so going
into reindeer school, you know, at five six, I only
weigh one hundred and fifty five pounds.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I can remember before.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
Going to school them saying, hey, you need to put
as much fat on your body as you can, because
you know, once you're done burning through the fat, you're
gonna start burning through your muscle. And it, sure enough
happened to pretty much all of us, and it has
a very distinct ammonious smell. And at the time we
had the old bedus with the brown shirts, and.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Everybody's shirts would turn orange.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
It was because when you burn the muscle and it
puts off the secretion and everything, it would almost.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Bleach out your shirts.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
And so two months later when I came out of
the swamps of Florida and they brief you, and it's
the first time I actually had stepped on the scale
the entire time, and I weigh one hundred.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
And fifteen pounds.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I started at one hundred and fifty five pounds, So
in just over two months, you know, I lost forty pounds,
and for being somebody who was lean, that was actually
quite a bit. And you know, leading up to graduation,
those four days are actually allowed to start putting food
in your system. And I can remember eating pints of
hazen Das ice cream and you know, full pizzas, and
(05:12):
I mean you would just eat and eat and eat,
and then.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
When you could, you try to get some rest too.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
And so a graduation I had actually put on in
those four days, had got myself back up to one
hundred and thirty five pounds.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
But it was like all gut your eyes are still black.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
They're sunk it in. Your cheeks are sunk it in.
They're just reil looking. You're very weak looking, but you
have this little pot belly thing going on, you know,
under the uniform. But the majority of the people who
do go to school within that that point, we'll probably
lose anywhere from twenty five to about fifty pounds, depending
on how big you are. I went back to the
(05:47):
hundred and first I made sergeant. Shortly after getting back,
I was a team leader. And then the big Army
decided about it's time to go back to Korea, and
so packed my bags went back to Korea for another year.
You're always within your one year, you're always allowed to
take a little vacation time. At some point, they caught
mid to or leave, and so I was married at
(06:09):
the time, and so my wife had come over and
we just had just south of the peninsula, there's a
little island. So we had gone down to the island
for a few days, flown back into Soul. We're having
dinner and the next day we're due to flight to Bali,
Indonesia for a few days. And we're sitting there having dinner,
watching the football game on the TV and we saw
the first plane hit the tower, and we actually thought
(06:31):
they had changed the channel on us, thinking they took
the football game off and then put on a movie.
And so we're all kind of yelling, you know, because
it was kind of an American bar and soul like
put the game back on. And then we saw the
second plane hit and we realized, okay, something's not right.
So you know, we didn't even finish our dinner, you know,
we paid our check, jumped in a cab, went back
(06:52):
to our hotel where I had my work cell phone,
and it was like, yeah, vacations over, time to come home.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
The vacation is over, indeed and over for so many
of us, especially those who serve in uniform. And we're
listening to Michael Schlitz tell his story, his service story.
By the way, so much of his family, so many
members of his family, had served. And that is the
case throughout this country that military service runs through the family.
(07:20):
When we come back, more of Michael Schlitz's story here
on our American Stories. Here are to our American stories.
We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith,
and love. Stories from a great and beautiful country that
need to be told, but we can't.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Do it without you.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not
free to make. If you love our stories in America
like we do, please go to our American Stories dot
com and click the donate button. Give a little, give
a lot, help us keep the great American stories coming.
That's our American Stories dot com. And we continue with
(08:08):
our American stories and with Michael Schlitz's story. We just
heard about the day that changed America nine to eleven,
and that's September eleventh, two thousand and one. And let's
take it back to Michael.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Eventually moved up to a staff position running the resources
for all Ranger school Sometimes it was air assets, but
all the ranges land, pretty much everything except for AMMO.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
We had an AMMO guy who did that.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
When it was time for me to leave, I called
up my branch manager and said, hey, you know what's
the next deploying unit. He goes, well, the next next
guys to leave his tenth Mountain division.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
So that's where I want to go.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
And so I mean to me, there was no other options.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
It was this is what I want to go do.
And since I hadn't had the chance to really deploy.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
I knew I wanted to be on the next Chalco
one out, So I reported to tenth Mountain Division in
March of six, and we deployed in August of six.
So our sector was the southwest side of Baghdad. The
media at the time called it the Sunni Triangle or
the Triangle of death. You know, when we first invaded,
(09:18):
you know, the insurgents really didn't.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Know how to fight us, and as they studied us and.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Found out our operating procedures, then they could figure out
how to attack.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
It's a weakness, it's just like we do for them
and then are wounded and are.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Killed in actions had doubled, and so in six we
have what we call the surge. And basically the US
answer to that was to just triple the number of
US forces we had in erect.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
At the time and do a big sweep across the country.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
And that obviously in an area like that to it's
littered with roadside bombs, IED's improvise explosive devices.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
The more people you put in an area, the more
that can actually get injured.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
So we actually you did see are killed in action
and our wounded in action triple in numbers.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
But we were making a big push.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
We were finding those IDs, we were finding the insurgent sales,
so we were making a huge difference.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
It just it came at a cost.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
We had huge up armored vehicles. We had one that
was called the Husky. It was like a mind detecting vehicle.
And these vehicles were actually made for Africa, so they
could drive over minefields and have the mines explode, and
the bottom of vehicles instead of being flat like a
lot of the US vehicles, they had a v haul,
so they came down into a point like a boat,
and what would happen is when the rounds would come up,
(10:35):
they would shatter a way versus coming straight up to
the armor.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
And so we had mind detecting vehicles.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
We had troop carrying vehicles that just a little bit
heavy armored.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
So we could have some firepower on top. And then
we'd have the one that had the huge claw. So
if we found wire, we found.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
Something that looked kind of suspicious, that claw would go
way forward to the vehicle.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
Had a camera on it. We could interrogate it without
ever leaving the security of our vehicle.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
And there were signs where we would take three hits
in a single day.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Three IED's that we weren't able to spot them. They'd
detonate on.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Us, and as long as our vehicles would keep rolling,
we just kept rolling on with the mission.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
We didn't stop, you know.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Then February twenty seventh, two thousand and seven, came about,
so like any other day, woke up, you know, got
the guys ready, got the vehicles prepped, got them prepped,
brought him in, We did our briefings. They knew exactly
it was going to take us about fifteen hour patrol
that day to get through all the routes that we
had planned. And then you know, we loaded up and
(11:44):
we had been on the road about three hours and
we came across one of the routes.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
I believe it was rob Primus. It was actually a
dead end road.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
And typically when you plan your route, you never covered
the same spot more than once because if you do,
you get blown up because.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
They can predict you. Unfortunately, the dead end road there's
one way down.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
All the way back, and we had taken our time,
and anytime we're looking for the IDs, you're only going
about two miles per hour, So it's a creep crawling obviously,
why you need that heavy armored vehicles Because you're moving
so slow, it's an easy target.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
And we got down to the end of the road.
It's a very rural area.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
There was a lot of canals and farmland and not
the open desert that.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
People think of when they think of I racked. Once
we started coming back up, we picked up the pace
a little bit. I want to say.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
We were probably going about between five and ten miles
an hour, so it's not like we were speeding up
the road, but we weren't creep crawling along either.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
And then I heard the blast.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
I can remember hearing the boom, and before I could
even get like a choice for a letter word out
of my mouth, I was hitting the ground. And you know,
when you go through these training and you go through
all this stuff as a leader, you always want to
just pause for a second and just get a quick
battle damage assessment so you can make a quick decision.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
It can't be long. It's just a quick pause. And
as I did that, I.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Looked at my vehicle and I really at the time
didn't see anything out of the unusual about it.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
But I didn't see it was my guys.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
So I just immediately got up to run back for
my vehicle, and as I got closer to the vehicle,
that's when I could feel the flames hit me in
the face and I realized I was on fire. And
because I felt like it was in the torso area,
because it was just hit me in the face so bad,
I decided to drop my IBA or my protective vest,
and so I kind of just tossed it real quick,
(13:34):
got down and started to roll and I only got
about a roll and a half in and the heat
was so intense that it basically locked up my muscles.
But I definitely was like, Okay, this is it for me.
This is where my life ends. I'm going to die here,
you know, face down on the ground and IRAQ him.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
You know what am I going to do? I can't move,
you know, and I'm on fire.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
And about the time those those those emotions and those
thoughts were coming over my body, I could hear my
as you home for me. Before I knew it, theyre
hit me with that fire extinguisher and it went from
that extreme heat to the extreme cooling. And I don't
think I'll ever probably find the words to describe that
feeling of that cooling sensation and the relief it provided me,
(14:15):
like almost instantly, But then it also gave me, you know,
that emotional kind of aspect where came maybe I'm not
going to die here on the ground that if they
got to me and I feel like this right now,
then maybe I still have a fighting chance to go
on from there. One of my young sergeants, Sarnt Redmond,
wasn't one of my best sergeants. I actually had plans
(14:35):
on kicking them out of the army for some other
bad decisions he made. But two of the young guys
were going to grab me and start dragging me off
the road, and he stopped him, and he's like, no,
you can't do that.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
You have to get the spine board. If you drag him,
you'll kill him.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
And the only analogy I can really use, or the
way to explain it is, if.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
You think about baked chicken. You just pulled that baked chicken.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Out of the oven, you know, and how the meat
and this everything just kind of scups.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Out of the bone.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Well, I basically had just been burned alive, So had
they drugged me, everything would have just scopped off and
they probably would have killed me. The guys were talking
to me, you know, reassuring me, and I was getting
a little annoyed with it. I can't remember telling them
just to shut up. I got this, don't worry about it.
And before I knew it, I could start to hear
the chopper coming in. The helicopter, the metavact was coming in.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
You know.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
All the guys would kind of lightly lay over me,
not enough to irritate the burns or anything, but just
protect me from the water rush of the bird landing.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
And they loaded me up.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
I remember there was a female flight medic. She asked me,
my name is social. I know, I got my name
out no idea about the social.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
And the megs just kind of kicked in.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Later on I found out they pretty much had to
start working on me right away and blot I Later years,
about two.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Years after it happened, I actually got to meet my surgeon.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
It was a Air Force colonel, and he said that,
you know, of his two years that he almost spent
over there, they they had never been attacked except for
the one time I was on the table and they
got a rocket attack.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
So things were shaken and stuff, and.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
He said, what he could remember was my legs is
everything above my boot was in really really bad condition,
and I I don't remember what the procedure was called,
but basically there was.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
A procedure they weren't supposed to do on burns.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Brooke Army Medical Center is like the Burn Hospital, one
of the best hospitals for burns, and there was a
procedure that they weren't supposed to do on any burn patients,
and he ended up doing it.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
I mean, it was the only way to save my legs,
because had that happen, they would have had to take
my legs too.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
So you know, here's a guy who now only saved
my life cause I was constantly flat lining and having
all kinds of issues. And the prognosis that was even
going back to the unit was I wasn't gonna make it.
That I was just too far gone at that point.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
And you were listening to Army ranger Michael Schlitz tell
one heck of his story, and he deploys to Iraq.
He doesn't get the easy space, and there isn't really
much of an easy space or place there, but he
gets the sony triangle. Then you overlay the surge and
particularly the insurgents use of minds that actually develop their
(17:21):
own name called improvised explosive devices, because that's what they were,
and his job was to find them, which meant he
and his units will go out at a crawl and
be open targets for not only these devices, but all
all kinds of attacks and all to protect fellow soldiers
from these IEDs and ultimately to secure the area. When
(17:45):
we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story
of how Michael Schlitz comes back from a near death
experience here on our American stories, and we continue here
(18:09):
with our American stories and the story of Army ranger
Michael Schlitz. Let's pick up where Michael last left off.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Luckily, they stabilize me and pretty much sent me to
Brooke Army Medical Center and got there on to March
of seven, immediately put into ICU. I spent six months
in ICU.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Multiple skin grafts.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
At that point they had to make the call to
go and take the hands so I didn't lose the
hands from the explosion.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I actually lost the hands through the burns.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Like mentally, I knew, I knew how to walk and stuff,
but I had so much muscle damage and so much
weakness that when I would go to get up to walk,
like initially, I would just kind of crumble.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
I couldn't walk, so they had to build that up.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
So, you know, sometimes it was just today, all we're
going to do a stand up.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Out of bed.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
The next day, you know, we're going to do two steps,
and now we're going to walk to the door. Like
one of the ways they motivated me is my brother
and my niece were down visiting and they allowed me
to walk to the ICU doors and my niece was
sit on the ground and it's really the first time
she got to see me too, and she didn't recognize me.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
And her name's Brina, and I always had a way
I'd always.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Saying and bringing Brina, and so I did that and
she realized it was me, and of course I had
to go back to.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
The room, so they shut the doors, and then she
was upset that she did get to hang out with me.
Speaker 3 (19:36):
It wasn't until I went to my welcome home ceremony
then I found out that three guys I had my
vehicle all passed away. You know, they didn't want to
tell me when I was in the hospital or going
through recovery because they didn't want me to mentally or
just have it stressed me out to the point where
i'd take a change. After about four months of the
(19:56):
burn warden and still going through it. The only way
they had let me out of the hospitals if I got
a small house on post House close to the hospital,
so if anything happened, I was still nearby. So Mom
and I moved into small, small, probably maybe seven hundred
square foot home, two bedrooms right on top of each other.
And that's where it's that that timeframe, you know, I
(20:18):
was still probably sleeping sixteen hours a day. I'd be up,
they'd change my bandages, and I'd eat, and that's pretty
much all I I'd go to sleep, wake up, eat,
go to sleep, wake up, eat, and go sleep. And
but for Mom, that that was probably some of the
most horrific time, besides just learning about the stuff. But
she had to take it. She had to do a
(20:39):
lot of the won't care. She had to do all
the coke and the cleaning. I wasn't allowed to sleep
on my sheets more than once because of infection, So
I just put all that on her. And obviously she
didn't have anybody to help her, so she.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Was doing all that on her own.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
And eventually, you know, I got my first prosthetic, and
that night I can remember going home and Mom cooked
and cut all my.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Food up for me.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
But that very first time I was able to feed myself,
and that was huge for me, because leading up to
that first protec, I couldn't trust myself, couldn't feed myself,
couldn't take myself to the bathroom. There was really very
little I could do on an average statement myself, and
that affects you mentally. Obviously I contemplated suicide, but you know.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
I didn't want to let Mom down.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
And then you know, I had my brothers in the
army and a lot of people who visited me, and
you never want to let anybody down. So ultimately, because
of that support system is why I didn't commit suicide.
But when I had that first prospectic give me that
little bit of hope, that little bit of independence. And
then shortly after that I got the second prosthetic, and
you know, I just kind of did on the gost.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Sense, and not that I don't have bad days or
you know, take turns here and there.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Still I can't say I never saw my life going
in the direction it has. One of the things I
battled with a sense of purpose. You know, my entire
adult life, I was a soldier. I lived for my career.
I would have pretty much everything in my life took
second second string to my career, Like I wanted to
be a soldier.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
This is what I do.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
And you know, if I mean missing a wedding or
missing somebody's birthday, or missing a big, big event that
if if it was for the military and something I
had thought I had to do, I.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Would always pick it over everything.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
And uh, you know, even my marriage, like I got
divorced well before the injury, but I always put my career.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
It's just it's who I was.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
And now I didn't feel like I could be a
soldier anymore. I felt like, you know, my identity had
been struck for me.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
I didn't know what I was going to do.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
And you know, Mom and I would have conversation like
I don't know what I could do, and I was like, well,
maybe you could do some public speak.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Then I'm like, I can't do that, you know, and she,
you know, she.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Would try to guide me, and you know, I couldn't
foresee what where life would take me at the time,
and or or even at you know, falling back on
my career as an instructor giving classes to a few
hundred kids, you know, or soldiers are doing any of
those things. But as they started doing more events, they
would ask me to come speak, and I told my
story more. And I had that opportunity to go over
(23:10):
back to Iraq on three different occasions through a thing
called Operation Proper Exit. And so when I came back,
I just kind of went full in and motivational speaking
and leadership speaking companies, units, nonprofit events, charity events, and
so that's why I do now, and you know, it's
my purpose, it's what I like to do. It keeps
(23:32):
me around both the veteran community, guys who served, whether
it was World War Two up through the current conflicts,
or it's the active duty guys, every branch you can
think of. It just allows me to get around to everybody.
And I've had a great support network. Obviously I didn't
do it on my own.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
You know, the Brotherhood has been very very good to me.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
I mean, whether it was my guys out of Tenth Mount,
the Rangers I served with, you know, guys that you know,
I was a private with that still keep in touch
with me. It's a very very tight knit community. And
you know, I'm just I'm a proud Army veteran, you know,
you know, I'm glad I got the chance to serve.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
I can picture my life without it.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
But obviously, veterans, you know, it takes a certain mentality
to serve your country. And obviously after fourteen years of war,
you know, everybody who goes over there comes home a
little different. You know what really kind of bothers me
is when I go in public, I could have three
veterans with me. Two might be suffering from postmatic stress,
(24:38):
one could be have a TBI at traumatic brain injury,
and then there's me and the only one they'll think
is me, and they just forget about these guys. But
those guys' service is no different than mine, you know.
And I have, you know, guys that have multiple deployments
always coming up to me and saying, you know, my
you know, my service isn't quite the same. It isn't
(24:59):
like you now, your service is the same as mine.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I had one bad day which changed, you know, this
part of me.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
But the actual service serving your country is no different.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
You know, anybody on any given day, can I have
a bad day, and I'm what a bad day looks like.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
But we don't know enough about the brain and the
way things function to fix the brain right now. And
you can throw mads at it and you can do
different things, but ultimately brain's going to do what the
brain's going to do. But for somebody like me who
has a physical injury, the guys that have leg injuries,
there's always a way to adapt.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Something I can figure out. You know, even before I
have prosthetics.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
I used to take the gatorade bottles, drill hole in
the cap, put the cat back on and feel you know,
I have my drink and I have a straw in there,
so I can carry it myself. So for me, life
is always about adapting and changing and doing stuff. But
when you have a TVI or you have PTS to
the higher functioning levels, you don't have that option.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
You know, you can't control it.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
So they may look what you considered normal, but they're
struggling more so than a lot of the.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
People that you considered disabled.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
So I think it's important to stay in touch with
everybody and not fall.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Off the grid.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
It's going to be harder for those guys who who
maybe move to those rural communities away from military posts,
away from some of the larger organizations. But in today's society,
and especially with social media, you know in Facebook, I mean,
there's so many veteran groups on Facebook that you can
reach out to, and maybe you don't get to go
(26:35):
up and have dinner with them once a week or
once a month, at least you can communicate or if
you're having some issues, somebody to vent to. And nobody
understands a veteran like a veteran.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hengler,
and a special thanks to Michael Schlitz for sharing his
story about his service and all that happened while he
was on duty in Iraq, losing three of his pals.
He survived, but he lost three of his pals, lost
his hands, and lost so much but gained as much
(27:09):
too back learning about the Brotherhood, learning about the Tenth
Mountain Division, and so many others who helped Michael schlnts
his story the story of so many of our soldiers
who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here on our American
Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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