August 22, 2023 • 51 mins
Iowa native John Wayne Troxell is a retired United States Army senior non-commissioned officer who served as the third Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He opens up on The Good Stuff about his 37 years of military service, five combat deployments and the one person who stood by his side through it all.
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John Wayne Troxell's Book: Surrender or Die!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to the Good Stuff. I'm Jacob Shick and I'm
joined by my co host and wife, Ashley Schiff.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Jacob is a third generation combat Marine and I'm a
gold Star granddaughter, and we work together to serve military veterans,
first responders, frontline healthcare workers, and their families with mental
and emotional wellness through traditional and non traditional therapy.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
At One Tribe Foundation, we.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Believe everyone has a story to tell, not only about
the peaks, but also the valleys they've been through to
get them to where they are today.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
And each week we invite a guest to tell us
their story, to share with us the lessons they've learned
that shape who they are and what they're doing to
pay it forward and give back.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Our mission with this show is to dig deep into
our guest's journey so that we can celebrate the hope
and inspiration their story has to offer.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
We're thrilled you're joining us again.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Welcome to the Good Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
You might have heard of our guests today, John Wayne Troxall.
He was the senior enlisted advisor to the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the senior non commissioned
officer in the US Armed Forces.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
You retired in twenty nineteen after thirty eight years of
service for our Greek country, and we have the honor
of hearing him tell part of his story, the successes
and hardships that accompanied a life of service.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Even though this was our first time meeting him via zoom,
we really enjoyed getting to know John.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
First.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
We just want to welcome you to the show. John
Wayne Troxall, thank you so much for joining us here
on the good Stuff. We haven't had the pleasure of
meeting you in person yet.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Yes, absolutely, Jack and Ashley, it's an honor to meet
you all, but more of an honor that I'm allowed
to come on here and share my story with you all.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Absolutely, and we're so excited to dig In born in
Iowa and then served our great country for over thirty
seven years.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
He's a couple of minutes. Yeah, Yeah, how do I
address you? I mean, mister secretary?
Speaker 4 (02:05):
What do you do?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Because look, I got out of the Marine Corps with
well more than one page eleven. I'm just gonna guess
means you and I could get along just fine.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
I prefer you to call me John. I try not
to be lost in my museum. I was the SAAC,
I was a sergeant major and everything. I'm a retired
guy now and so I just try to be who
I am and what I'll always be, and that's John
Wayne Troxel. So John would be fine.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
I dig it awesome.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Well, the joy of this show is getting to share
amazing stories with our audience. But today Jake and I
are truly part of the audience ourselves, because you know,
we aren't yet familiar with you or your story. So
if you would do us the honor, just start from
the beginning.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
I grew up in a loving household, and as I
got older, although it was a loving household, I was
a mediocre athlete. I was a wrestler. I was a
pretty good student until I started discovering girls and beer.
And then I think, Jake, you know how that goes
all of a sudden, can go south in a hurry.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
No, but I know how that never happened.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
I was looking for purpose and direction, and as I
was going through high school, I wrestled until I was
a junior, and then my senior year, I said, look,
this is I'm not going to be an athlete. I
know that, so let me focus on other things. And
I started seeing guys in my neighborhood that were coming
back from the military, recruit training and everything. And when
(03:29):
they left, they were just like me, a guy that
didn't have purpose and direction and was going through life
doing the things that teenagers do, skirting the edge of
the law. And when they came back, though they were
sinewy muscular, their chest was out, their shoulders were back,
their voice was booming. They were confident, and they didn't
just walk anymore. They kind of saunters that air of
(03:52):
confidence that they had, And I thought to myself, I
don't know what they're feeding them in the military, but
I want some of that.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
John, Were you the first one in your family to serve?
Speaker 4 (04:03):
We didn't have a lot of military presence, but my
grandfather was in World War Two. I had two uncles,
one uncle that was in the Navy and a Vietnam veteran,
and I had another uncle that was a career sailor
and retired as a Chief Petty officer. But they didn't
have a lot of influence on what I was doing.
My older brother Tom joined the Army reserves, and he
(04:24):
was kind of one of those guys I saw that
came back and were transformed. But seeing guys like him
and other guys that had joined the Marine Corps, seeing
them come back, that was kind of what influenced me
to say, I want to do this.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And how did your family react when you came in
and told them that you were going to join the military.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Oh, they were supportive. They knew my mom, my sister,
my older brothers. They knew that living in the west
end of Davenport, Iowa, which there's not a lot of
opportunities there other than to get in trouble, that I
was doing something that was going to better myself, but
more importantly, make me a part of something bigger than myself,
(05:06):
and then I could reach any untapped potential that I
had for success in my life. I got into the Army,
and as Forrest Gump would say, I was kind of
like one of those round pegs. I just fit right
into the Army. And as I got through my recruit training,
my basic training at Advanced Individual training, and I went
(05:26):
to my first duty station, I thought, this is what
I'm going to do for my four year tour, and
I'm going to get out. And less than a month
after I got there, I met a girl named Sandra Jimenez.
On the first of February nineteen eighty three. I'm going
to he won in a club with a fake ID,
and all of a sudden, I asked this girl to
(05:47):
dance and she turned me down. The other Joe that
I was with a friend of mine, who was a
brand new private, I asked her like three times and
she turned me down. So he went and asked her,
and so she danced with him, and I was like, no,
she you know. So now I mean, I'm pounding beers
and whiskeys and everything, and I'm watching her dance with
my buddy. And it was on an elevated dance floor,
(06:09):
and all of a sudden, he backed up doing his
move and he fell off the dance floor. So me,
being the true battle buddy that I am, I raced
over there, jumped on the stage, took his place, and
after that, you know, the rest was history. We started
dating my wife and I. We got married six months
after I met her. She was pregnant soon after with
(06:30):
our first child, and I realized in a hurry that
this is what I need to do to take care
of my family. It's not individual responsibility. I have a wife,
and I have a son on the way, and so
I said, I'm going to put my effort into being
the best soldier I can be. And little did I
know that from then on my career would span almost
(06:51):
thirty eight years. And I never thought that I would
reach the pinnacle of the enlisted ranks in the Department
of Defense. But I just kept pushing forward, and my
focus was the better soldier I am, the better leader
I am, the better off the men and women in
my span of control are going to be, but more importantly,
the better I'm going to be able to take care
of my family. So that was kind of how I
got started and how I pursued my career was always
(07:16):
striving to be better the next day than I was
that day. And so if I wanted to be an
airborne ranger, I went out and did it. I wanted
to be a jump master, I went out and did it.
I wanted to be a pathfinder, all these things. Wanted
to get a college degree. I went and did it.
All the things that I thought would make me a
better person, better husband, a better father, but more importantly,
a better soldier and a better leader. That's what I
(07:37):
was focused on.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
And That's something that so many young people need to
hear too, because it's not self focused, that's not self
inter self gain, that's greater good all around. I want
to do X, y Z to make everything and everyone better,
not just myself but everyone around me. That way, we're bigger, stronger, faster,
more effective. Absolutely, it's a beautiful thing. No wonder you
(08:01):
achieved what you've achieved, but you also did it with conviction.
You set a goal and nothing was going to stop you.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
So you've got this long list of accolades, titles that
you've held, even conflicts that you've been involved in. Can
you think back to early in your career, was there
a tipping point that really kind of changed you or
shifted your experience in the military.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
I had been in the Army almost five years, you know,
I had just re enlisted and I got assigned to
the eighty second Airborne Division and Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
And when I got there, I had been in heavy
mechanized units and we were a peacetime military. So we
talked all the time about facing the Soviet military and
the East Germans, but it was never a reality. It
(08:50):
was like a star that you could see, but you
knew you were never going to touch And I got
to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and my wife and I
were driving on the base just to check things out
because we'd never been there before, and we saw this
five ton truck with a bunch of grimy paratroopers with
camouflage on their face sitting in the back of it.
(09:10):
Obviously they had just come from a drop zone conducting
a parachute jump. And Sandra even looked at these guys
and said, Wow, these guys are serious. And she looks
at me, Are you sure that you want to do this?
And I said, absolutely, you know. But then I got
into the unit and I realized all we talked about
was being prepared to go to war. That's all we
(09:32):
talked about, even though we were a peacetime military. But
we're a rapid deployment force. When we go on Division
Ready Force one, you got to be ready within an
hour to come in alert marshall, deploy and go to
combat in less than eighteen hours from notification. And so
even then, being a part of a peacetime military, it
refocused me and it caused me to start being the
(09:55):
best that I could be because of the level of
physical fitness that we required there, and then the level
of additional skills that required, like being a jump master.
And I still even in nineteen eighty eight, the Sandinista
guerrillas from El Salvador invaded Honduras and we got alerted.
I was in jump master school at the time, but
(10:16):
I didn't go. But we did a jump into Honduras
to show support for the Honduran forces. That was still
not a combat deployment. It was Operation Golden Pheasant. But
that kind of set a light off on me that hey,
this could happen anytime. But even still I wasn't completely
convinced that we would actually go to combat. Nineteen eighty nine,
(10:37):
I'm on Division Ready one Force, but it's the start
of half day holiday schedule. So I kissed my wife
and my two sons goodbye, and I said, hey, han,
i'll be back at noon and we'll go Christmas shopping
for the boys. And so I kissed her goodbye, and
I got in to the base. And as soon as
I got on the base, it was open posts then,
(10:57):
but there was an MP all of a sudden at
the ends under the base now and they were checking
ID cards. They said, hey, what's going on. They said, oh,
we're in hand security or whatever. So I got to
my headquarters and they said, hey, glad you're here. We
were just exercising the alert roster. We've been alerted. And
even then me and my teammates thought, are they going
(11:18):
to make us do an emergency deployment readiness exercise during
half day schedule? What kind of bullshit is that We
still weren't convinced that we were being alerted to go
to combat. Because if you in Panama at that time,
Manuel Noriega, the dictator that was running Panama, had lost
the election, but he did not concede. As a matter
(11:39):
of fact, his thugs ended up beating up the guy
that actually won, and there was a Navy lieutenant who
was killed because of the unrest down there. There was
a Marine Corps family and service member that were assaulted
and everything. And now all of a sudden, Americans had
Fort Chairman and elsewhere were at risk, and so we
got alerted. We were sent to the personnel holding area.
(12:00):
We were trying to figure out what was going on,
and there was a freezing rainstorm going on too, and
we didn't have any heaters in the tents. We were in.
So now not only are we clueless on what's going on,
but we're pissed off because we're freezing our asses off
and we still think this is some kind of exercise
that we're going through and we're not getting our half
day schedule. So my platoons are Dave Freeman and I
(12:21):
finally said, screw this, let's go find out what's going on.
We walked into the brigade headquarters and as we walked in,
we saw officers around this table laminating maps of Panama.
And we looked each other and said, I guess we
know what we're doing now, And all of a sudden
we not real there's our answer. And then when we
got back to our tent, we were issuing ammunition, live grenades,
(12:44):
claim wars, all of that stuff, and all of a
sudden we knew this was real. We were packing all
of our ammunition in our combat gear, and the chaplain
walks into the tent. Hey, look, no pressure, but if
anybody wants to say a prayer, come on over here.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
The entire tent went up with the Yeah it's funny
how that works, right, Yeah, it's funny. How if you
have the guys that are like nah, I'm not going
to go to chapel. I'm too hungover or I'm still drunk.
And then you get the call and it's like, hey,
oh yeah, we're going. Hey yeah, I'll make it. I'm
gonna go. You guys send me see it. I'll be there.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Well, like they say, the phrase is there's no atheist
in foxholes. So that kind of changed. And so think
of this. There were no cell phones back then. They
cut the phone lines, so I didn't have the ability
to call my wife and let her know what was
going on. Oh man, And I just said, well, sooner
or later, she's going to figure out that I'm not
coming home and then I'm going to combat. Next thing,
(13:38):
you know, we loaded up on those on that frozen
tarmac at Pope air Force Base and we took off
and we're on our way to combat, you know. And
at one am we started parachuting in to Rio's airport.
The Rangers were jumping on the military airfield, Document Airfield.
We were jumping on the military airport. And little did
(14:01):
I know that my wife found out I wasn't coming
home by watching the news that night and seeing that
American forces were conducting a combat parachute assault into Panama
to toppol Noriega and to reinstate or in state the
rightful government and to protect American lives and innocent Panamanians.
(14:22):
And that's how my combat started. And for the next
week we secured all of our assault objectives, we expanded
our lodgment area out, and we started taking down targets.
But an hour into the first patrol I went in,
we lost our first American specialist in Alexandro Manrique Lozano
from second Italian five or fourth Parisheet Infantry Regiment. I'm
(14:44):
thinking to myself at that time, twenty four hours before this,
this young man was thinking about going home with his
family or spending time with his family over the holidays.
Twenty four hours later he gave his life in defense
of our country. And that told me that we've got
to dig in, We've got to get through this, and
we can't allow you know that we've lost an American
(15:05):
to kind of drag us down, and so we've re
We continued to focus and get after the enemy and everything,
and by the Christmas Eve, we had lost four paratroopers,
two on an assault on what I call Tinaheatus Hill,
which was this huge hill that we were taking down
the lt Grays, which were an elite force of Panamanians.
(15:25):
But at about Christmas Eve, the fighting started dying down
and I found myself pulling security around the Papal Nuncia,
the religious chapel that was in the heart of the
town where Noriega had holed up in trying to get
religious protection from being captured by us. And so as
I pulled perimeter security out there with my team on
(15:49):
our shared and armored reconnaissance vehicle, there was a Marriott
hotel across the street, and so I told my guys,
I said, hey, I'm going to go check it out
and see if there's any payphones in there, and we'll
see if we can contact our families. So I grabbed
one of my guys and we went over there, and
sure as shit, there were some phones in there. So
I picked up the phone and called collect to Sandra,
(16:11):
and that was the first conversation I had with her
since I had left, and it was a very emotional conversation.
I mean, the hair is rising up on my arms now.
It was the first time one I've had my baptism
by fire ending up in two point ambushes and stuff
like that. I've seen Americans killed, We've killed enemy fighters.
But now I'm having a conversation with my wife and
(16:34):
our children. And within that three minute call there was
a bit of solace in peace. But then after that call,
I had to go right back out into the combat zone.
But that there, Ashley, was the turning point that told
me that living this military life and this warrior ethos life,
(16:54):
regardless of what service you're into, what you do, that
on any given day, your life could change in a heartbeat,
and all of a sudden you could find yourself against
an armed enemy and combat as brutal and unforgiving as
it is. Unfortunately, good men and women perish in battle,
and we have to be best prepared to deal with
(17:15):
that brutality and unforgiveness in combat. And I told myself
as a leader, I'm going to make sure the men
and women in my charge are going to be always ready,
regardless of how long I stay in the military. That
was the point that changed me to now being always
wired for combat, even though we were still a peacetime military.
(17:35):
But then seven months later, Saddam Hussein invades Iraq and
I find myself back in a combat zone. But this time,
I think mentally and emotionally, myself and all of the
paratroopers I were with in my company, we were prepared
for it because we had already experienced combat. That's what
(17:56):
changed me into being somebody that was always going to
be folkscus on being best prepared for the conditions we
could face on the worst day of our life in combat.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
That's one of the blessings in the military. I mean,
there's no better way than just to get in and
do it. That's the best way to understand and prepare
for the next thing, whatever that is. And that's regardless
of Army, Marines, Air Force, Navy, coast Guard. That's the
best way to know. When you talked about that with
your wife, that's crazy to think about because we didn't
(18:29):
have the modern conveniences that we have today to be hey, haun,
I'm not gonna make it, I'm gonna be gone. Don't
know what I'm gonna get back. You didn't have any
of that. To not be able to have that effective
communication with your loved ones before you go employ what
you've trained day in and day out to do. That
brings in a whole different element that I've never really
(18:50):
thought about.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Yeah, and we had what we called family support groups
back then, but they were I mean they were about
doing bake sales and stuff like that and trying to
build morale, never with the thought that we might actually
go to combat. And so when I got back and
I was talking to my wife, but also other military spouses,
(19:14):
they talked about the first meeting the spouses had with
the command, the rear detachment command, and they talked about, hey,
your husbands were in combat. They parachuted into combat on
the evening of the twentieth of December, and they will
stay there and continue to fight until you know, Noriega
capitulates and Panamanian forces surrender. And in one of the
(19:37):
spouses even asked, so there's potential that they could get killed.
I mean it was an innocent enough question, but as
a peacetime military with peacetime families, you still hadn't put
it together that, as you just described, Jake, the level
of brutality, the violence of action equates to people get killed.
(20:00):
And so this in it is enough question, and the commander,
the redetachment commander, said yes, some may not come back,
and I was so happy to hear from other spouses
on how my wife was deemed as one of the
strong ones. Now, Sandra grew up as a first generation
Mexican American. Her dad was from Chihuahua, Mexico, her mom
(20:21):
was from southern Texas. They had nineteen kids, wow, nineteen
kids in twenty three years. She grew up poor, but
she had to be resilient through her childhood and everything
and as she grew up. So I think this kind
of upbringing prepared her. And she used to say this
all the time, and through my multiple combat tours, I've
(20:42):
got three sons I have to worry about, and I
can't sit around and talk gloom and doom or you know,
feel sorry for myself. I've got to be here for
my kids. And so that's nobody prepared her for that
other than her upbringing. But that was the focus she had,
and in it she knew I was in combat. She said,
(21:03):
I can't control what's going to happen with my husband,
but I can control what's going on with my kids.
I can keep them focused, I can keep them energized
with school. And then when they had these meetings and
we started talking about or the family started talking with
the rear detachment about the realities of combat. I would
say she was stoic to it because of her upbringing,
(21:25):
and it was I was so proud that when I
got back when people would come and compliment me on
my wife and how strong she was, and I said,
that's my Sandra. That's as I call her, my little windmill.
She has just always been that way through our entire
thirty nine year marriage.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah, congratulations on that, And what has that done to
lend to your success?
Speaker 4 (21:49):
As a matter of fact, I'm writing a book now
and it's called Surrenderer Die, Reflections of a Combat Leader,
and one of the chapters in there is going to
be what I call all give our Love to Sandra.
So I think when you are someone that's been in
the military for decades and throughout your entire career, you've
(22:10):
had a spouse with you, like I've had Sandra with
me through this whole ride, all of a sudden, your
spouse becomes synonymous with you. And so anytime somebody would
reach out to say hello to me, somebody I served
with in the eighties the nineties, two thousands senior officials
in the Defense Department or the administration or in Congress.
(22:34):
Every time they would say Hey, how's it going, or
how's it going, John, they would always say, give our
love to Sandra. And so I'm going to talk about
the importance of a military spouse to the success of
someone that lives in this warrior class. And if Jake,
you kind of talked about this a little earlier, that
if you don't have that outlet when you leave you know,
(22:57):
whether you're training or whether you're in cock, if you
don't have that outlet when you come back, known as
family and especially a significant other, your wife or your
husband or whatever, I mean, it's tough to deal with that.
And I would have never without Sandra's support, without her direction,
(23:18):
without her advice, I would have never reached the levels
of service that I reached. I had to have that person,
and she's always been that person. Now, don't get me wrong.
Our marriage hasn't always been beer and skittles, Okay, I
mean she's had to written really yeah, I mean she's
had to rip my ass sometimes, but it was because
(23:40):
I needed it. And then I would even tell you this.
She was the one that gave me an ultimatum about
a year before I was retiring that said, I need
you need to go talk to somebody about all this
anger you have, or I'm going to have to reconsider
the direction we're going. As a married couple, think of this.
We had been married well over thirty five years. She
(24:01):
was telling me there was something wrong with me. She
was telling me there was something wrong with me. When
I came back from just causing desert storm, I just
wasn't listening. And I thought to myself. In in the
eighties and nineties, PTSD and traumatic brain injury weren't even
things that were talked about. But when she told me that,
I went to see a therapist just to appease her.
But when I got in, when I got in there though,
(24:23):
it felt like my therapist at the time her name
was Gina, that she was ripping my skull open and
reading my brain. She knew exactly what was going on
with me and everything, and so she diagnosed me with PTSD.
And think of this now, the stigmas associated with mental
health and Jake, you'll appreciate that my two bosses at
the time I was diagnosed to PTSD, the chairman was
(24:45):
fighting Joe Dunford Marine and the second trom.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I've had the privilege of shaking his hand a couple
of times.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Hey, and the Secretary of Defense the other you know
as the SAAC, you advised both the chairman and the Sectiff.
The sect deaf was a guy named Jim madd Matis
arguably the two hardest combat leaders in the history of
our force. And I had to lead delar Renzo Clinic
in the Pentagon, and I had to walk up there
and tell those two gentlemen that I was in therapy
(25:13):
for PTSD. There was a dude I have and Ashley,
I have walked a lot of miles in my life
up the mountains of the Hindu Christian Afghanistan. The longest
walk I ever had was leaving that clinic and going
to this Chairman's office and the Secretary of Defense's office
and telling them I was in therapy for PTSD. And
you know what Mattis said to me. He said, Okay, good,
(25:36):
what are you going back to Yemen to tell me
what's going on with al Kaeda in the Arabian Peninsula?
And then Dunford was kind of like, okay, good, pack
your shit. We're going to go to Afghanistan and Iraq
to visit the troops. It was a non issue to them.
I had given myself this stigma, but to them it
was a non issue. They were like, Okay, good, that's
good for you. It's going to make you a better leader.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah, that's and the listeners probably didn't hear it, but
started laughing so hard. I started crying, like it was.
Think about this. Branches are relevant, right, those are the
two names, I would say, arguably, since we were attacked
(26:18):
in two thousand and one, those are the two names
you would not want, Like you would rather cut off
a finger than have to go have those conversations with
those two. And you had both of them. Yes, yeah,
I mean if that's not that you don't have to
eat a piece of humble pie. You have to inhale
(26:38):
the factory.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Spot on brother, and that lesson for me. And I'm
going to talk about this in my book when it
comes to the Invisible Wounds of War. Told me that
we have to eliminate this stigma about seeking hell. And
I don't care how long you served or what you've done,
your military service will always be a part of Okay,
(27:01):
And there's some things in there that are going to
be constants, and especially if you served in combat, you
just don't flush that stuff under the table. I had
a conversation with a staffer in Washington, DC on one
of the trips. I was there right after Afghanistan, the
abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan, and I was talking to this
(27:22):
person about how I was very critical of the strategy
that we used, okay, and the undue stress and risk
we put on the men and women that had to
deal with getting all the US citizens and SIV people
and clearing out of Cowbo Airport. And I said, anybody
(27:45):
that knows anything about Afghanistan, you can't say in two
weeks we are going to move the troops out first,
and then we're going to try and get all the
non combatants out and everything, and then try to get
the equipment out. We kind of did that ass backwards
when we should have took the equipment out.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Or excuse me, you assistant, They wouldn't Yeah, we should have.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
Yeah. So this person who has no military experience, and
as the staffer says, well, the commander in chief made
a decision. You the veteran population and the serviceman need
to get over. I said, no disrespect, but you have
no problem saying that, Okay, you are desensitized to it
(28:25):
because you have no skin in the game. Right, you
have never faced a business end of an enemy rifle
or seen a buddy on your left or right get
vaporized by an improvised explosive device, and they went from
some precious, beautiful human into a pile of flesh, hair
and camouflage material. I said, you have no skin in
(28:45):
the game, So it's easy for you to say that,
I said, but we who have served are never going
to forget when we lose men and women, and we're
certainly not going to just throw away twenty years of
fighting in Afghanistan and say, okay, what's next. All right,
It doesn't work that way. And if we continue to
say veterans got to get over this when they're dealing
(29:08):
with the mental and emotional struggles of post combat, you know,
in post traumatic stress, then we are adding to the problems.
We are not trying to solve it.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
You know what. Just like you said, brother, this stigma
is killing us at the cyclic rate, yeah, and nightly.
And not just our warrior class either, not just our
brothers and sisters who've done the cloth of the nation.
This is a human problem around the world, and it's
become evident. It's very evident since the global pandemic, since
(29:44):
the world shutdown, and how everything in the middle and
emotional wellness realm has skyrocketed. Client intakes have gone through
the roof. I mean, you're getting burnout rates at the
cyclic rate with therapists and psychologists because it's like the
gates of open. It's a supply and demand issue now.
And so the fact that you started it because of
(30:06):
an ultimatum by Sandra, which I can't wait to meet her,
because I'm just going to give her a big, huge
giant hug because I get it. And I also understand
how iron sharpens iron absolutely, and I also understand how
when we come home, it's not just us they're affected. Rather,
(30:28):
you know, you're like me and you spend eighteen months
in the hospital and you're trying to figure out what
your new normal is, which is not normal at all.
We affect our entire family. You have to have a Sandra.
If you don't, it doesn't work. And I know that
you had soldiers that it fell by the wayside because
they didn't have a Sandra. They may have had a
(30:48):
spouse but they didn't have someone as strong and it's
cemented and as rooted in their own conviction as you did.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
That's the huge point there is that some military spouses
don't fully understand the power of their role. I'm not
trying to pass judgment on any military spouse or criticize them,
but every time I deployed somewhere, Sandra stayed in our house.
When I went to combat in Iraq or Afghanistan. You know,
(31:18):
she didn't go home to family. She said, I'm not
going to go stay in somebody else's house. This is
my house and I have to give normalcy to my children.
That's just the way she was when I was a
Striker Brigade Sir Major during the surge in Iraq in
seven and eight, when we put five army brigades and
two more Marine brigades in Iraq. You probably remember that
(31:41):
the first eight days of combat, my commander and I
had visited the morgue seven times to identify the remains
of some of our guys that had been killed in action.
At the same time as we are knee deep in
this combat back home, every time we have somebody killed
and after you official notification is out I would call
(32:02):
her and she would go to the memorial service. We
lost fifty four over that fifteen month tour and had
over five hundred severely wounded. She went to every memorial service,
every funeral. She went to visit the wounded along with
me in San Antonio and in Walter Reid. But here
the eighth day, I've been in combat eight days now
(32:23):
and the worst nightmare of any military family's life. The
two sedans that come driving down your neighborhood full of
guys in their service Alpha uniform and one guy holding
the Bible.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
At chaplain's for the listeners. That's the dress uniform.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
Yeah, those two sedans are the Casualtine Notification team. And
they happened to pull up in front of our house,
and Sandra was on the front porch reading a book,
and as they got out, all of a sudden, she
was starting to get paranoid. Here she went in and
told the kids, they go to your rooms, all right,
And she came back out and they were going next door.
(33:05):
And then as they went in, all of a sudden,
she heard the next door neighbor's wife start wailing. So
my next door neighbor green Beret Sergeant Major Brad Connor
had been killed in action. So now Sandra went from
someone that thought it was I that got killed in
action to now having to, you know, provide support and
(33:27):
solace to our next door neighbor who just lost her husband,
and to their children and everything. That's why a military
spouse that is engaged and understands is so important. But
there are service members out there that don't want their
spouses involved. And I will tell you I had one
guy in my brigade during that tour, a great sergeant
(33:51):
first class, a great non commission aficer. He was a
platoon sergeant. He didn't want his wife to worry, so
he told her, oh, I don't out of the wire. Ever,
even though every day he was out in the wire
and he was fighting al Qaeda every day. In his
last day as a platoon sergeant, when we were going
to pull him out of that platoon and put him
into a staff role where he wouldn't go out of
(34:13):
the wire, his vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive
device and he was killed in action. So when the
casually notification team let this person know, or let his
spouse know, she said, how can this happen. My husband
never went out alive. We have to explain the realities
of what we're doing. And if we think that we
(34:34):
are protecting our loved ones by not sharing in the
harsh realities of combat, stuff like this can happen. And
think it's already bad enough that her husband was killed
in action and that their father was killed in action,
but it was just amplified when they were under the
impression that he was just going to go over there
for fifteen months, sit in a staff role and do
(34:56):
nothing and come home in fifteen months. It even amplified
the pain and the anguish. And so I think in
our military couples there has to be these frank conversations
at all time.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
You're exactly right, bro, it's so important with Ash and
I and our boys. It's Honesty's the best policy, just period,
and that needs to be across the board because of
the simple fact, regardless of how it may make you
look or not look, it's all about preparedness. Because of
the fact that Sergeant first class said that to his wife.
(35:29):
Now his widow and children have a whole different layer
of healing they're going to have to go through that.
Otherwise could have been mitigated just by being straight up.
And that is why I think it is so important
that That's why I always say there's a significant difference
between communication and effective communication. Anyone can communicate effectively. Communicating
(35:52):
is an art, but it takes honesty and vulnerability. You
cannot have it without those two things. And so I'm
grateful for Santa. I cannot wait to give her a
hug man like because I get it. I get it,
and I know the true backbone. Yeah, and I know
why we're the best in the world. And there is
(36:14):
a lot of women and some men that have never
put on the cloth of this nation, but are a
significant reason why we're the best in the world and
we're still a free country.
Speaker 4 (36:25):
I think of Sandra and then her counterpart, my commander's wife,
Stacy fifty four memorial services and funerals. She I mean,
Sandra joined me in trips to the hospitals where here
are soldiers that are bilateral amputees or burn victims over
eighty percent of their body, or that are missing an
(36:46):
eye or something like that. And that has an impact
on a military spouse. And so when we talk about
these resiliency programs for our service members. It has to
be there for our military spouses as well.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Hundred absolutely.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
How do you feel like therapy has impacted your life?
Speaker 4 (37:05):
It was the best thing that ever happened to me,
all of a sudden, all the anger I had, and
I didn't need. You know, there are some that require
additional stuff, like service animals or medication or some I
just again fit like one of these round pegs. Just
talking to somebody for an hour once a week. It
(37:28):
made me calmer. My hyper vigilance was beginning to get reduced.
And I mean because and you probably had to deal
with this with Jake. You know, going to the grocery
store can be like a deliberate combat operation. One way. Yes,
it's one way in and one way out there.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
And there's people there, Yeah, there's there's people there that
you Yes, everything's over analyzed, everything is overthought. Everything is exhausting.
You're right, Anything simple as going to a corner store
is exhausting. It's like, this is not the way to live.
(38:06):
And the fact that Sandra gave you this ultimatum. We
have to protect the most important weapon will ever possess,
and that's the noodle float in six inches in between
our ears absolutely, because there's no prosthetic for that. Yeah,
the one we got. We have to be able to
(38:27):
talk to someone who's an unbiased third party that can
just help us make our souls lighter. That's it. There's
no judgment there. It's not a sign of weakness. It's
exactly the opposite, which I think now, especially after having
done it, you would completely agree with. It is a
sign of strength and courage. And it doesn't only make
(38:49):
you a better soldier, leader, husband, father, it makes you
a better human being that by default gives you the
ability to help other people.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Think of this. Think of our most elite special operations forces.
You know, the Sealed Team six is, the Deltas, the
Mars Socks and all them. They have embedded behavioral health
specialists as part of their human performance teams. Why do
our most elite special operation forces have those people? Because
they realize that mental and emotional challenges and PTSD and
(39:27):
things like that are significant, and even our most elite
special operators are not immune to the invisible wounds of war.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
That's right. We always forget we have all these titles,
especially in the military, as you know, just spade of spade,
you got pretty up there right, You still had a
ton of bosses. Yes, it's like they're never ending. The military,
it's insane. The fact that you were able to get
(39:59):
to that and be able to take that step has
been a force multiplier for the greater good in everything
around you. And not to say you didn't wake up
and have bad days. You're human. But that's the thing
that people forget, is that we're not robots. Ye're not robots.
And even those brothers serve shoulder or shoulder, it's like
(40:23):
we're we can't forget the most important God given title
first human.
Speaker 4 (40:28):
Absolutely, I realized having you know, now I'm in a
regular therapy session and life has all of a sudden
turned for me. And now the anger is starting to
go away, but the reflections are coming in. And I
knew that I raised three sons, you know, and I
was pretty strict with their upbringing. I wasn't abusive, but
(40:50):
you know, sometimes I used harsh language and sometimes I
did some things. So I knew that to get closure
with what I was doing, I need to let my
sons know that it was me that had the problem,
it wasn't them. As I was growing up, and so
I wrote a letter to all three of my sons.
I was still the SEAAC at the time, and I
included a book. The name of the book is Why
(41:10):
Is Dad So Mad? A book about PTSD and military families.
It is a children's book written by the author Seth
Castle and illustrated by Carrisa Gonzalez Oathen Why is Dad
So Mad? Oh? Wow? And I sent that to them
so that they could understand or hopefully understand that what
(41:33):
I was going through wasn't because I was a bad father.
It was because I had this thing known as post
traumatic stress disorder that I hadn't come to terms with,
and I certainly hadn't accepted it or anything like that.
That was probably one of the most emotional things I
(41:53):
had to do, and one of the most gratifying was
to write that letter to my sons and give them
this book so that they could understand what PTSD is about.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
It's almost an additional layer of therapy that you got
to go through by unleashing that and getting that off
of your soul. Thinking back on your life's journey, if
there was one person or organization that's made a significant
impact on your life, who or what would that be?
Speaker 4 (42:20):
Absolutely it's the United States Military, as you just described, Ashley,
the power of our nation, the United States of America
where opportunity and the American dream are alive. And then
the United States Military that allowed me to go from
some kid that had no purpose, motivation, and direction or
(42:41):
inspiration to all of a sudden, not only building myself
as a member of this warrior class, growing my family
as well, growing my potential and everything. What's culminated in
me having the honor to serve as the senior enlisted
guy in the Department of Defense, it has to be
the United States Military. The person is obviously my wife, Sandra.
(43:04):
I've had a lot of influential people in my life,
but I could not have made this journey for almost
thirty eight years were she not by my side through
the good times, the bad times, in all the fun
that we've had.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
I thought this was going to be a military episode,
and it's turned into this love story, like love a
country that y'all's beautiful relationship.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
It's awesome, hey, But like, here's the thing. Most people
could get on a ship, a plane, put on a
uniform and go do the things that we did. Yeah,
with the right amount of training, I think most people
could do, because most people will tell me like I
could never do that, and I'm like, well, you don't
know that.
Speaker 4 (43:45):
You don't know that.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Very few could be the backbone, the people that hold
it down at home and keep it together and keep
the wills turning and keep it well oiled while maintaining
their composure. Like that to me, Send me to the front. Yeah,
all day, every day. I'll eat the same MRI over
(44:08):
and over and over again. If you tell me that
I have to stay at home with the kids, not
knowing where my spouse is, not know send me to
the front with the water gun. I'll make it work,
like straight up, That's how I feel about it. That's
the truth of the matter.
Speaker 4 (44:24):
Hey, brother, you know, we live in a world where
people need safe spaces. Our safe space was wearing eighty
to one hundred pounds of kit every day with a
rifle with two hundred and ten rounds of ammunition, surrounded
by enemy, but surrounded by our brothers and sisters that
were willing to make the sacrifices up. That was easy. Yeah,
what's hard is dealing with what's going on back home.
(44:45):
That's right, I know, And I wouldn't wish that on
myself for nothing. I have so much admiration for my wife,
for people like Ashley and all the military spouses out there,
because they are an integral part of our national security, no.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Doubt about it. What do you do to recharge? What
do you do to say I need to take a
step back and recharge the batteries?
Speaker 4 (45:11):
It's uh spending with my family. I'm a pretty simple guy,
you know. I love watching TV Land and stuff like that.
I'm a homebody really, but my recharging is uh spending
it with family. Sandra and I every quarter we try
to take a mini vacation somewhere, even if it's an
overnight trip to a local casino or something. Just being
(45:33):
able to not have to worry about anything, enjoy the
love of my life with a cold beverage and maybe
going some karaoke and some dancing in there. That's kind
of I've never forgotten that it's okay and it's not
a sin to have fun. Absolutely, and so I am
all about turning myself into a jackass by getting on
(45:55):
a microphone and belting out some blank.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
I'll tell you what, bro yeah before I ask drops
the last question on you, just from our short conversation.
Trust me when I tell you this. We were family
long before we were family.
Speaker 4 (46:14):
I appreciate it. Brother.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
Last question, what feeds your soul.
Speaker 4 (46:20):
Doing for others? Seeing others succeed? What feeds me my
soul is seeing someone that reached out to me for
advice or that I've helped mentor and seeing them reach
their untapped potential, or seeing them reach their goals, or
seeing them get the things that they never thought they
could do. And the biggest pain I've had is where
(46:41):
I've loved someone so much and wanted them to reach
a goal and they've failed to reach that goal. I
hurt as much as they have because for some odd reason,
I feel like I had something to do with that.
So what feeds me is helping others attain their goals.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Absolutely well, this has been soul food for us. John
Wayne Truxil, thank you for everything that you've done for
our country. Thank you for everything that you're continuing to
do for your service, and everything that you've done since
you retired out of the military after thirty almost thirty
eight years. We're truly grateful and just so great to
(47:22):
get to know you a little bit better today.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
And this was the good stuff.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Yeah, I'd tell you what, brother, your family, anything, absolutely time,
anywhere say the word zero hesitation, I will jump in
fake leg and all. Don't worry about that at all.
That's one thing I can guarant damn to you.
Speaker 4 (47:42):
Well, I appreciate a brother and to shake you on, Ashley,
thank you so much for allowing me this opportunity. Thank
you for being family.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
Wow, that's awesome. What a great guy.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
John Wayne Truxel thirty eight years of service to our country.
There will only ever be one, no kidding, what a legend.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
I still just can't picture walking into those two offices,
to those two Marines and say, hey, I'm going to
have to get back from launch a little late. That therapy, right,
What an amazing list of accomplishments. That's the type of
leader the military needs. He was all about his guys and.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Would work so hard to become a more effective leader
for himself, for his men, for his family. Just an
incredible guy. What was the story he told you about
about the essays?
Speaker 1 (48:38):
Okay, here's the thing. We're all about physical punishment because
we're physical beings as warfighters. That's what we do day
in and day out, don't make us exercise our brains
if it doesn't have to do with clearing a room
in a three D warfare environment. And he would make
(48:58):
his guys, because you can only get a human being
to fill so many sandbags. He would make him write
five thousand word essays, typed up sighted and give him
twenty four hour turnaround time.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
I don't know many college kids that could accomplish.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
I would rather be beaten with a cane.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
That's just cruel punishment.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
It would be less painful. No wonder they listened.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Yeah, again, the type of leader he was.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
I would have looked at Gunny like he was high
on math if he told you to do that, Yeah,
because I would have looked at him like, wait, have
you met me? Yeah, that's not ever gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Ever, so many great lessons to learn from this conversation,
you know, for me personally, the one he said, always
striving to be better the next day than I was
that day. And clearly you know his love of his
wife and his boys, and his men, you know, and
women that served underneath them for decades.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yeah, he's definitely got a memory that's second to none too.
I mean remembering exact dates, exact people, and I mean
this is no small fee. But Alejandro Alsano, yeah, first
guy lost and service to our nation, and he'll never
be forgotten, just like John Wayne will never forget them.
We won't either. All their names need to be spoken.
(50:13):
It's why we get to take advantage of this presiuous
thing that we call freedom every single day, agreed.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
And for men like John Wayne Truxel, who are just
the epitome of what it means to be a proud
countryman to go on the cloth of our nation for
so long and do it.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
I mean you can hear the pride just oozing from him.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Unless we forget the great and the mighty and the
one and only.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
Sandra, that's right. I can't wait to meet her either.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
I mean, clearly she was put on this planet with
one job, that's right.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
If this episode touched you today, please share it and
be part of making someone else's day better.
Speaker 4 (50:52):
Put on your.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Badass caves and be great today. And remember you can't
do epic stuff without epic people. Thank you for listening
to the good Stuff. The Good Stuff is executive produced
by Ashley Shick, Jacob Schick, Leah Pictures and q Code Media.
Hosted by Ashley Shick and Jacob Shick. Produced by Nick
(51:13):
Cassolini and Ryan Countshouse post production supervisor Will Tindi. Music
editing by Will heywood Smith, edited by Mike Robinson,
Welcome to the Good Stuff. I'm Jacob Shick and I'm
joined by my co host and wife, Ashley Schiff.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Jacob is a third generation combat Marine and I'm a
gold Star granddaughter, and we work together to serve military veterans,
first responders, frontline healthcare workers, and their families with mental
and emotional wellness through traditional and non traditional therapy.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
At One Tribe Foundation, we.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Believe everyone has a story to tell, not only about
the peaks, but also the valleys they've been through to
get them to where they are today.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
And each week we invite a guest to tell us
their story, to share with us the lessons they've learned
that shape who they are and what they're doing to
pay it forward and give back.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Our mission with this show is to dig deep into
our guest's journey so that we can celebrate the hope
and inspiration their story has to offer.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
We're thrilled you're joining us again.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Welcome to the Good Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
You might have heard of our guests today, John Wayne Troxall.
He was the senior enlisted advisor to the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the senior non commissioned
officer in the US Armed Forces.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
You retired in twenty nineteen after thirty eight years of
service for our Greek country, and we have the honor
of hearing him tell part of his story, the successes
and hardships that accompanied a life of service.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Even though this was our first time meeting him via zoom,
we really enjoyed getting to know John.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
First.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
We just want to welcome you to the show. John
Wayne Troxall, thank you so much for joining us here
on the good Stuff. We haven't had the pleasure of
meeting you in person yet.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Yes, absolutely, Jack and Ashley, it's an honor to meet
you all, but more of an honor that I'm allowed
to come on here and share my story with you all.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Absolutely, and we're so excited to dig In born in
Iowa and then served our great country for over thirty
seven years.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
He's a couple of minutes. Yeah, Yeah, how do I
address you? I mean, mister secretary?
Speaker 4 (02:05):
What do you do?
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Because look, I got out of the Marine Corps with
well more than one page eleven. I'm just gonna guess
means you and I could get along just fine.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
I prefer you to call me John. I try not
to be lost in my museum. I was the SAAC,
I was a sergeant major and everything. I'm a retired
guy now and so I just try to be who
I am and what I'll always be, and that's John
Wayne Troxel. So John would be fine.
Speaker 3 (02:32):
I dig it awesome.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Well, the joy of this show is getting to share
amazing stories with our audience. But today Jake and I
are truly part of the audience ourselves, because you know,
we aren't yet familiar with you or your story. So
if you would do us the honor, just start from
the beginning.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
I grew up in a loving household, and as I
got older, although it was a loving household, I was
a mediocre athlete. I was a wrestler. I was a
pretty good student until I started discovering girls and beer.
And then I think, Jake, you know how that goes
all of a sudden, can go south in a hurry.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
No, but I know how that never happened.
Speaker 4 (03:07):
I was looking for purpose and direction, and as I
was going through high school, I wrestled until I was
a junior, and then my senior year, I said, look,
this is I'm not going to be an athlete. I
know that, so let me focus on other things. And
I started seeing guys in my neighborhood that were coming
back from the military, recruit training and everything. And when
(03:29):
they left, they were just like me, a guy that
didn't have purpose and direction and was going through life
doing the things that teenagers do, skirting the edge of
the law. And when they came back, though they were
sinewy muscular, their chest was out, their shoulders were back,
their voice was booming. They were confident, and they didn't
just walk anymore. They kind of saunters that air of
(03:52):
confidence that they had, And I thought to myself, I
don't know what they're feeding them in the military, but
I want some of that.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
John, Were you the first one in your family to serve?
Speaker 4 (04:03):
We didn't have a lot of military presence, but my
grandfather was in World War Two. I had two uncles,
one uncle that was in the Navy and a Vietnam veteran,
and I had another uncle that was a career sailor
and retired as a Chief Petty officer. But they didn't
have a lot of influence on what I was doing.
My older brother Tom joined the Army reserves, and he
(04:24):
was kind of one of those guys I saw that
came back and were transformed. But seeing guys like him
and other guys that had joined the Marine Corps, seeing
them come back, that was kind of what influenced me
to say, I want to do this.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
And how did your family react when you came in
and told them that you were going to join the military.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Oh, they were supportive. They knew my mom, my sister,
my older brothers. They knew that living in the west
end of Davenport, Iowa, which there's not a lot of
opportunities there other than to get in trouble, that I
was doing something that was going to better myself, but
more importantly, make me a part of something bigger than myself,
(05:06):
and then I could reach any untapped potential that I
had for success in my life. I got into the Army,
and as Forrest Gump would say, I was kind of
like one of those round pegs. I just fit right
into the Army. And as I got through my recruit training,
my basic training at Advanced Individual training, and I went
(05:26):
to my first duty station, I thought, this is what
I'm going to do for my four year tour, and
I'm going to get out. And less than a month
after I got there, I met a girl named Sandra Jimenez.
On the first of February nineteen eighty three. I'm going
to he won in a club with a fake ID,
and all of a sudden, I asked this girl to
(05:47):
dance and she turned me down. The other Joe that
I was with a friend of mine, who was a
brand new private, I asked her like three times and
she turned me down. So he went and asked her,
and so she danced with him, and I was like, no,
she you know. So now I mean, I'm pounding beers
and whiskeys and everything, and I'm watching her dance with
my buddy. And it was on an elevated dance floor,
(06:09):
and all of a sudden, he backed up doing his
move and he fell off the dance floor. So me,
being the true battle buddy that I am, I raced
over there, jumped on the stage, took his place, and
after that, you know, the rest was history. We started
dating my wife and I. We got married six months
after I met her. She was pregnant soon after with
(06:30):
our first child, and I realized in a hurry that
this is what I need to do to take care
of my family. It's not individual responsibility. I have a wife,
and I have a son on the way, and so
I said, I'm going to put my effort into being
the best soldier I can be. And little did I
know that from then on my career would span almost
(06:51):
thirty eight years. And I never thought that I would
reach the pinnacle of the enlisted ranks in the Department
of Defense. But I just kept pushing forward, and my
focus was the better soldier I am, the better leader
I am, the better off the men and women in
my span of control are going to be, but more importantly,
the better I'm going to be able to take care
of my family. So that was kind of how I
got started and how I pursued my career was always
(07:16):
striving to be better the next day than I was
that day. And so if I wanted to be an
airborne ranger, I went out and did it. I wanted
to be a jump master, I went out and did it.
I wanted to be a pathfinder, all these things. Wanted
to get a college degree. I went and did it.
All the things that I thought would make me a
better person, better husband, a better father, but more importantly,
a better soldier and a better leader. That's what I
(07:37):
was focused on.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
And That's something that so many young people need to
hear too, because it's not self focused, that's not self
inter self gain, that's greater good all around. I want
to do X, y Z to make everything and everyone better,
not just myself but everyone around me. That way, we're bigger, stronger, faster,
more effective. Absolutely, it's a beautiful thing. No wonder you
(08:01):
achieved what you've achieved, but you also did it with conviction.
You set a goal and nothing was going to stop you.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
So you've got this long list of accolades, titles that
you've held, even conflicts that you've been involved in. Can
you think back to early in your career, was there
a tipping point that really kind of changed you or
shifted your experience in the military.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
I had been in the Army almost five years, you know,
I had just re enlisted and I got assigned to
the eighty second Airborne Division and Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
And when I got there, I had been in heavy
mechanized units and we were a peacetime military. So we
talked all the time about facing the Soviet military and
the East Germans, but it was never a reality. It
(08:50):
was like a star that you could see, but you
knew you were never going to touch And I got
to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and my wife and I
were driving on the base just to check things out
because we'd never been there before, and we saw this
five ton truck with a bunch of grimy paratroopers with
camouflage on their face sitting in the back of it.
(09:10):
Obviously they had just come from a drop zone conducting
a parachute jump. And Sandra even looked at these guys
and said, Wow, these guys are serious. And she looks
at me, Are you sure that you want to do this?
And I said, absolutely, you know. But then I got
into the unit and I realized all we talked about
was being prepared to go to war. That's all we
(09:32):
talked about, even though we were a peacetime military. But
we're a rapid deployment force. When we go on Division
Ready Force one, you got to be ready within an
hour to come in alert marshall, deploy and go to
combat in less than eighteen hours from notification. And so
even then, being a part of a peacetime military, it
refocused me and it caused me to start being the
(09:55):
best that I could be because of the level of
physical fitness that we required there, and then the level
of additional skills that required, like being a jump master.
And I still even in nineteen eighty eight, the Sandinista
guerrillas from El Salvador invaded Honduras and we got alerted.
I was in jump master school at the time, but
(10:16):
I didn't go. But we did a jump into Honduras
to show support for the Honduran forces. That was still
not a combat deployment. It was Operation Golden Pheasant. But
that kind of set a light off on me that hey,
this could happen anytime. But even still I wasn't completely
convinced that we would actually go to combat. Nineteen eighty nine,
(10:37):
I'm on Division Ready one Force, but it's the start
of half day holiday schedule. So I kissed my wife
and my two sons goodbye, and I said, hey, han,
i'll be back at noon and we'll go Christmas shopping
for the boys. And so I kissed her goodbye, and
I got in to the base. And as soon as
I got on the base, it was open posts then,
(10:57):
but there was an MP all of a sudden at
the ends under the base now and they were checking
ID cards. They said, hey, what's going on. They said, oh,
we're in hand security or whatever. So I got to
my headquarters and they said, hey, glad you're here. We
were just exercising the alert roster. We've been alerted. And
even then me and my teammates thought, are they going
(11:18):
to make us do an emergency deployment readiness exercise during
half day schedule? What kind of bullshit is that We
still weren't convinced that we were being alerted to go
to combat. Because if you in Panama at that time,
Manuel Noriega, the dictator that was running Panama, had lost
the election, but he did not concede. As a matter
(11:39):
of fact, his thugs ended up beating up the guy
that actually won, and there was a Navy lieutenant who
was killed because of the unrest down there. There was
a Marine Corps family and service member that were assaulted
and everything. And now all of a sudden, Americans had
Fort Chairman and elsewhere were at risk, and so we
got alerted. We were sent to the personnel holding area.
(12:00):
We were trying to figure out what was going on,
and there was a freezing rainstorm going on too, and
we didn't have any heaters in the tents. We were in.
So now not only are we clueless on what's going on,
but we're pissed off because we're freezing our asses off
and we still think this is some kind of exercise
that we're going through and we're not getting our half
day schedule. So my platoons are Dave Freeman and I
(12:21):
finally said, screw this, let's go find out what's going on.
We walked into the brigade headquarters and as we walked in,
we saw officers around this table laminating maps of Panama.
And we looked each other and said, I guess we
know what we're doing now, And all of a sudden
we not real there's our answer. And then when we
got back to our tent, we were issuing ammunition, live grenades,
(12:44):
claim wars, all of that stuff, and all of a
sudden we knew this was real. We were packing all
of our ammunition in our combat gear, and the chaplain
walks into the tent. Hey, look, no pressure, but if
anybody wants to say a prayer, come on over here.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
The entire tent went up with the Yeah it's funny
how that works, right, Yeah, it's funny. How if you
have the guys that are like nah, I'm not going
to go to chapel. I'm too hungover or I'm still drunk.
And then you get the call and it's like, hey,
oh yeah, we're going. Hey yeah, I'll make it. I'm
gonna go. You guys send me see it. I'll be there.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
Well, like they say, the phrase is there's no atheist
in foxholes. So that kind of changed. And so think
of this. There were no cell phones back then. They
cut the phone lines, so I didn't have the ability
to call my wife and let her know what was
going on. Oh man, And I just said, well, sooner
or later, she's going to figure out that I'm not
coming home and then I'm going to combat. Next thing,
(13:38):
you know, we loaded up on those on that frozen
tarmac at Pope air Force Base and we took off
and we're on our way to combat, you know. And
at one am we started parachuting in to Rio's airport.
The Rangers were jumping on the military airfield, Document Airfield.
We were jumping on the military airport. And little did
(14:01):
I know that my wife found out I wasn't coming
home by watching the news that night and seeing that
American forces were conducting a combat parachute assault into Panama
to toppol Noriega and to reinstate or in state the
rightful government and to protect American lives and innocent Panamanians.
(14:22):
And that's how my combat started. And for the next
week we secured all of our assault objectives, we expanded
our lodgment area out, and we started taking down targets.
But an hour into the first patrol I went in,
we lost our first American specialist in Alexandro Manrique Lozano
from second Italian five or fourth Parisheet Infantry Regiment. I'm
(14:44):
thinking to myself at that time, twenty four hours before this,
this young man was thinking about going home with his
family or spending time with his family over the holidays.
Twenty four hours later he gave his life in defense
of our country. And that told me that we've got
to dig in, We've got to get through this, and
we can't allow you know that we've lost an American
(15:05):
to kind of drag us down, and so we've re
We continued to focus and get after the enemy and everything,
and by the Christmas Eve, we had lost four paratroopers,
two on an assault on what I call Tinaheatus Hill,
which was this huge hill that we were taking down
the lt Grays, which were an elite force of Panamanians.
(15:25):
But at about Christmas Eve, the fighting started dying down
and I found myself pulling security around the Papal Nuncia,
the religious chapel that was in the heart of the
town where Noriega had holed up in trying to get
religious protection from being captured by us. And so as
I pulled perimeter security out there with my team on
(15:49):
our shared and armored reconnaissance vehicle, there was a Marriott
hotel across the street, and so I told my guys,
I said, hey, I'm going to go check it out
and see if there's any payphones in there, and we'll
see if we can contact our families. So I grabbed
one of my guys and we went over there, and
sure as shit, there were some phones in there. So
I picked up the phone and called collect to Sandra,
(16:11):
and that was the first conversation I had with her
since I had left, and it was a very emotional conversation.
I mean, the hair is rising up on my arms now.
It was the first time one I've had my baptism
by fire ending up in two point ambushes and stuff
like that. I've seen Americans killed, We've killed enemy fighters.
But now I'm having a conversation with my wife and
(16:34):
our children. And within that three minute call there was
a bit of solace in peace. But then after that call,
I had to go right back out into the combat zone.
But that there, Ashley, was the turning point that told
me that living this military life and this warrior ethos life,
(16:54):
regardless of what service you're into, what you do, that
on any given day, your life could change in a heartbeat,
and all of a sudden you could find yourself against
an armed enemy and combat as brutal and unforgiving as
it is. Unfortunately, good men and women perish in battle,
and we have to be best prepared to deal with
(17:15):
that brutality and unforgiveness in combat. And I told myself
as a leader, I'm going to make sure the men
and women in my charge are going to be always ready,
regardless of how long I stay in the military. That
was the point that changed me to now being always
wired for combat, even though we were still a peacetime military.
(17:35):
But then seven months later, Saddam Hussein invades Iraq and
I find myself back in a combat zone. But this time,
I think mentally and emotionally, myself and all of the
paratroopers I were with in my company, we were prepared
for it because we had already experienced combat. That's what
(17:56):
changed me into being somebody that was always going to
be folkscus on being best prepared for the conditions we
could face on the worst day of our life in combat.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
That's one of the blessings in the military. I mean,
there's no better way than just to get in and
do it. That's the best way to understand and prepare
for the next thing, whatever that is. And that's regardless
of Army, Marines, Air Force, Navy, coast Guard. That's the
best way to know. When you talked about that with
your wife, that's crazy to think about because we didn't
(18:29):
have the modern conveniences that we have today to be hey, haun,
I'm not gonna make it, I'm gonna be gone. Don't
know what I'm gonna get back. You didn't have any
of that. To not be able to have that effective
communication with your loved ones before you go employ what
you've trained day in and day out to do. That
brings in a whole different element that I've never really
(18:50):
thought about.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Yeah, and we had what we called family support groups
back then, but they were I mean they were about
doing bake sales and stuff like that and trying to
build morale, never with the thought that we might actually
go to combat. And so when I got back and
I was talking to my wife, but also other military spouses,
(19:14):
they talked about the first meeting the spouses had with
the command, the rear detachment command, and they talked about, hey,
your husbands were in combat. They parachuted into combat on
the evening of the twentieth of December, and they will
stay there and continue to fight until you know, Noriega
capitulates and Panamanian forces surrender. And in one of the
(19:37):
spouses even asked, so there's potential that they could get killed.
I mean it was an innocent enough question, but as
a peacetime military with peacetime families, you still hadn't put
it together that, as you just described, Jake, the level
of brutality, the violence of action equates to people get killed.
(20:00):
And so this in it is enough question, and the commander,
the redetachment commander, said yes, some may not come back,
and I was so happy to hear from other spouses
on how my wife was deemed as one of the
strong ones. Now, Sandra grew up as a first generation
Mexican American. Her dad was from Chihuahua, Mexico, her mom
(20:21):
was from southern Texas. They had nineteen kids, wow, nineteen
kids in twenty three years. She grew up poor, but
she had to be resilient through her childhood and everything
and as she grew up. So I think this kind
of upbringing prepared her. And she used to say this
all the time, and through my multiple combat tours, I've
(20:42):
got three sons I have to worry about, and I
can't sit around and talk gloom and doom or you know,
feel sorry for myself. I've got to be here for
my kids. And so that's nobody prepared her for that
other than her upbringing. But that was the focus she had,
and in it she knew I was in combat. She said,
(21:03):
I can't control what's going to happen with my husband,
but I can control what's going on with my kids.
I can keep them focused, I can keep them energized
with school. And then when they had these meetings and
we started talking about or the family started talking with
the rear detachment about the realities of combat. I would
say she was stoic to it because of her upbringing,
(21:25):
and it was I was so proud that when I
got back when people would come and compliment me on
my wife and how strong she was, and I said,
that's my Sandra. That's as I call her, my little windmill.
She has just always been that way through our entire
thirty nine year marriage.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah, congratulations on that, And what has that done to
lend to your success?
Speaker 4 (21:49):
As a matter of fact, I'm writing a book now
and it's called Surrenderer Die, Reflections of a Combat Leader,
and one of the chapters in there is going to
be what I call all give our Love to Sandra.
So I think when you are someone that's been in
the military for decades and throughout your entire career, you've
(22:10):
had a spouse with you, like I've had Sandra with
me through this whole ride, all of a sudden, your
spouse becomes synonymous with you. And so anytime somebody would
reach out to say hello to me, somebody I served
with in the eighties the nineties, two thousands senior officials
in the Defense Department or the administration or in Congress.
(22:34):
Every time they would say Hey, how's it going, or
how's it going, John, they would always say, give our
love to Sandra. And so I'm going to talk about
the importance of a military spouse to the success of
someone that lives in this warrior class. And if Jake,
you kind of talked about this a little earlier, that
if you don't have that outlet when you leave you know,
(22:57):
whether you're training or whether you're in cock, if you
don't have that outlet when you come back, known as
family and especially a significant other, your wife or your
husband or whatever, I mean, it's tough to deal with that.
And I would have never without Sandra's support, without her direction,
(23:18):
without her advice, I would have never reached the levels
of service that I reached. I had to have that person,
and she's always been that person. Now, don't get me wrong.
Our marriage hasn't always been beer and skittles, Okay, I
mean she's had to written really yeah, I mean she's
had to rip my ass sometimes, but it was because
(23:40):
I needed it. And then I would even tell you this.
She was the one that gave me an ultimatum about
a year before I was retiring that said, I need
you need to go talk to somebody about all this
anger you have, or I'm going to have to reconsider
the direction we're going. As a married couple, think of this.
We had been married well over thirty five years. She
(24:01):
was telling me there was something wrong with me. She
was telling me there was something wrong with me. When
I came back from just causing desert storm, I just
wasn't listening. And I thought to myself. In in the
eighties and nineties, PTSD and traumatic brain injury weren't even
things that were talked about. But when she told me that,
I went to see a therapist just to appease her.
But when I got in, when I got in there though,
(24:23):
it felt like my therapist at the time her name
was Gina, that she was ripping my skull open and
reading my brain. She knew exactly what was going on
with me and everything, and so she diagnosed me with PTSD.
And think of this now, the stigmas associated with mental
health and Jake, you'll appreciate that my two bosses at
the time I was diagnosed to PTSD, the chairman was
(24:45):
fighting Joe Dunford Marine and the second trom.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I've had the privilege of shaking his hand a couple
of times.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Hey, and the Secretary of Defense the other you know
as the SAAC, you advised both the chairman and the Sectiff.
The sect deaf was a guy named Jim madd Matis
arguably the two hardest combat leaders in the history of
our force. And I had to lead delar Renzo Clinic
in the Pentagon, and I had to walk up there
and tell those two gentlemen that I was in therapy
(25:13):
for PTSD. There was a dude I have and Ashley,
I have walked a lot of miles in my life
up the mountains of the Hindu Christian Afghanistan. The longest
walk I ever had was leaving that clinic and going
to this Chairman's office and the Secretary of Defense's office
and telling them I was in therapy for PTSD. And
you know what Mattis said to me. He said, Okay, good,
(25:36):
what are you going back to Yemen to tell me
what's going on with al Kaeda in the Arabian Peninsula?
And then Dunford was kind of like, okay, good, pack
your shit. We're going to go to Afghanistan and Iraq
to visit the troops. It was a non issue to them.
I had given myself this stigma, but to them it
was a non issue. They were like, Okay, good, that's
good for you. It's going to make you a better leader.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah, that's and the listeners probably didn't hear it, but
started laughing so hard. I started crying, like it was.
Think about this. Branches are relevant, right, those are the
two names, I would say, arguably, since we were attacked
(26:18):
in two thousand and one, those are the two names
you would not want, Like you would rather cut off
a finger than have to go have those conversations with
those two. And you had both of them. Yes, yeah,
I mean if that's not that you don't have to
eat a piece of humble pie. You have to inhale
(26:38):
the factory.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
Spot on brother, and that lesson for me. And I'm
going to talk about this in my book when it
comes to the Invisible Wounds of War. Told me that
we have to eliminate this stigma about seeking hell. And
I don't care how long you served or what you've done,
your military service will always be a part of Okay,
(27:01):
And there's some things in there that are going to
be constants, and especially if you served in combat, you
just don't flush that stuff under the table. I had
a conversation with a staffer in Washington, DC on one
of the trips. I was there right after Afghanistan, the
abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan, and I was talking to this
(27:22):
person about how I was very critical of the strategy
that we used, okay, and the undue stress and risk
we put on the men and women that had to
deal with getting all the US citizens and SIV people
and clearing out of Cowbo Airport. And I said, anybody
(27:45):
that knows anything about Afghanistan, you can't say in two
weeks we are going to move the troops out first,
and then we're going to try and get all the
non combatants out and everything, and then try to get
the equipment out. We kind of did that ass backwards
when we should have took the equipment out.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Or excuse me, you assistant, They wouldn't Yeah, we should have.
Speaker 4 (28:05):
Yeah. So this person who has no military experience, and
as the staffer says, well, the commander in chief made
a decision. You the veteran population and the serviceman need
to get over. I said, no disrespect, but you have
no problem saying that, Okay, you are desensitized to it
(28:25):
because you have no skin in the game. Right, you
have never faced a business end of an enemy rifle
or seen a buddy on your left or right get
vaporized by an improvised explosive device, and they went from
some precious, beautiful human into a pile of flesh, hair
and camouflage material. I said, you have no skin in
(28:45):
the game, So it's easy for you to say that,
I said, but we who have served are never going
to forget when we lose men and women, and we're
certainly not going to just throw away twenty years of
fighting in Afghanistan and say, okay, what's next. All right,
It doesn't work that way. And if we continue to
say veterans got to get over this when they're dealing
(29:08):
with the mental and emotional struggles of post combat, you know,
in post traumatic stress, then we are adding to the problems.
We are not trying to solve it.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
You know what. Just like you said, brother, this stigma
is killing us at the cyclic rate, yeah, and nightly.
And not just our warrior class either, not just our
brothers and sisters who've done the cloth of the nation.
This is a human problem around the world, and it's
become evident. It's very evident since the global pandemic, since
(29:44):
the world shutdown, and how everything in the middle and
emotional wellness realm has skyrocketed. Client intakes have gone through
the roof. I mean, you're getting burnout rates at the
cyclic rate with therapists and psychologists because it's like the
gates of open. It's a supply and demand issue now.
And so the fact that you started it because of
(30:06):
an ultimatum by Sandra, which I can't wait to meet her,
because I'm just going to give her a big, huge
giant hug because I get it. And I also understand
how iron sharpens iron absolutely, and I also understand how
when we come home, it's not just us they're affected. Rather,
(30:28):
you know, you're like me and you spend eighteen months
in the hospital and you're trying to figure out what
your new normal is, which is not normal at all.
We affect our entire family. You have to have a Sandra.
If you don't, it doesn't work. And I know that
you had soldiers that it fell by the wayside because
they didn't have a Sandra. They may have had a
(30:48):
spouse but they didn't have someone as strong and it's
cemented and as rooted in their own conviction as you did.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
That's the huge point there is that some military spouses
don't fully understand the power of their role. I'm not
trying to pass judgment on any military spouse or criticize them,
but every time I deployed somewhere, Sandra stayed in our house.
When I went to combat in Iraq or Afghanistan. You know,
(31:18):
she didn't go home to family. She said, I'm not
going to go stay in somebody else's house. This is
my house and I have to give normalcy to my children.
That's just the way she was when I was a
Striker Brigade Sir Major during the surge in Iraq in
seven and eight, when we put five army brigades and
two more Marine brigades in Iraq. You probably remember that
(31:41):
the first eight days of combat, my commander and I
had visited the morgue seven times to identify the remains
of some of our guys that had been killed in action.
At the same time as we are knee deep in
this combat back home, every time we have somebody killed
and after you official notification is out I would call
(32:02):
her and she would go to the memorial service. We
lost fifty four over that fifteen month tour and had
over five hundred severely wounded. She went to every memorial service,
every funeral. She went to visit the wounded along with
me in San Antonio and in Walter Reid. But here
the eighth day, I've been in combat eight days now
(32:23):
and the worst nightmare of any military family's life. The
two sedans that come driving down your neighborhood full of
guys in their service Alpha uniform and one guy holding
the Bible.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
At chaplain's for the listeners. That's the dress uniform.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
Yeah, those two sedans are the Casualtine Notification team. And
they happened to pull up in front of our house,
and Sandra was on the front porch reading a book,
and as they got out, all of a sudden, she
was starting to get paranoid. Here she went in and
told the kids, they go to your rooms, all right,
And she came back out and they were going next door.
(33:05):
And then as they went in, all of a sudden,
she heard the next door neighbor's wife start wailing. So
my next door neighbor green Beret Sergeant Major Brad Connor
had been killed in action. So now Sandra went from
someone that thought it was I that got killed in
action to now having to, you know, provide support and
(33:27):
solace to our next door neighbor who just lost her husband,
and to their children and everything. That's why a military
spouse that is engaged and understands is so important. But
there are service members out there that don't want their
spouses involved. And I will tell you I had one
guy in my brigade during that tour, a great sergeant
(33:51):
first class, a great non commission aficer. He was a
platoon sergeant. He didn't want his wife to worry, so
he told her, oh, I don't out of the wire. Ever,
even though every day he was out in the wire
and he was fighting al Qaeda every day. In his
last day as a platoon sergeant, when we were going
to pull him out of that platoon and put him
into a staff role where he wouldn't go out of
(34:13):
the wire, his vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive
device and he was killed in action. So when the
casually notification team let this person know, or let his
spouse know, she said, how can this happen. My husband
never went out alive. We have to explain the realities
of what we're doing. And if we think that we
(34:34):
are protecting our loved ones by not sharing in the
harsh realities of combat, stuff like this can happen. And
think it's already bad enough that her husband was killed
in action and that their father was killed in action,
but it was just amplified when they were under the
impression that he was just going to go over there
for fifteen months, sit in a staff role and do
(34:56):
nothing and come home in fifteen months. It even amplified
the pain and the anguish. And so I think in
our military couples there has to be these frank conversations
at all time.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
You're exactly right, bro, it's so important with Ash and
I and our boys. It's Honesty's the best policy, just period,
and that needs to be across the board because of
the simple fact, regardless of how it may make you
look or not look, it's all about preparedness. Because of
the fact that Sergeant first class said that to his wife.
(35:29):
Now his widow and children have a whole different layer
of healing they're going to have to go through that.
Otherwise could have been mitigated just by being straight up.
And that is why I think it is so important
that That's why I always say there's a significant difference
between communication and effective communication. Anyone can communicate effectively. Communicating
(35:52):
is an art, but it takes honesty and vulnerability. You
cannot have it without those two things. And so I'm
grateful for Santa. I cannot wait to give her a
hug man like because I get it. I get it,
and I know the true backbone. Yeah, and I know
why we're the best in the world. And there is
(36:14):
a lot of women and some men that have never
put on the cloth of this nation, but are a
significant reason why we're the best in the world and
we're still a free country.
Speaker 4 (36:25):
I think of Sandra and then her counterpart, my commander's wife,
Stacy fifty four memorial services and funerals. She I mean,
Sandra joined me in trips to the hospitals where here
are soldiers that are bilateral amputees or burn victims over
eighty percent of their body, or that are missing an
(36:46):
eye or something like that. And that has an impact
on a military spouse. And so when we talk about
these resiliency programs for our service members. It has to
be there for our military spouses as well.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
Hundred absolutely.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
How do you feel like therapy has impacted your life?
Speaker 4 (37:05):
It was the best thing that ever happened to me,
all of a sudden, all the anger I had, and
I didn't need. You know, there are some that require
additional stuff, like service animals or medication or some I
just again fit like one of these round pegs. Just
talking to somebody for an hour once a week. It
(37:28):
made me calmer. My hyper vigilance was beginning to get reduced.
And I mean because and you probably had to deal
with this with Jake. You know, going to the grocery
store can be like a deliberate combat operation. One way. Yes,
it's one way in and one way out there.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
And there's people there, Yeah, there's there's people there that
you Yes, everything's over analyzed, everything is overthought. Everything is exhausting.
You're right, Anything simple as going to a corner store
is exhausting. It's like, this is not the way to live.
(38:06):
And the fact that Sandra gave you this ultimatum. We
have to protect the most important weapon will ever possess,
and that's the noodle float in six inches in between
our ears absolutely, because there's no prosthetic for that. Yeah,
the one we got. We have to be able to
(38:27):
talk to someone who's an unbiased third party that can
just help us make our souls lighter. That's it. There's
no judgment there. It's not a sign of weakness. It's
exactly the opposite, which I think now, especially after having
done it, you would completely agree with. It is a
sign of strength and courage. And it doesn't only make
(38:49):
you a better soldier, leader, husband, father, it makes you
a better human being that by default gives you the
ability to help other people.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Think of this. Think of our most elite special operations forces.
You know, the Sealed Team six is, the Deltas, the
Mars Socks and all them. They have embedded behavioral health
specialists as part of their human performance teams. Why do
our most elite special operation forces have those people? Because
they realize that mental and emotional challenges and PTSD and
(39:27):
things like that are significant, and even our most elite
special operators are not immune to the invisible wounds of war.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
That's right. We always forget we have all these titles,
especially in the military, as you know, just spade of spade,
you got pretty up there right, You still had a
ton of bosses. Yes, it's like they're never ending. The military,
it's insane. The fact that you were able to get
(39:59):
to that and be able to take that step has
been a force multiplier for the greater good in everything
around you. And not to say you didn't wake up
and have bad days. You're human. But that's the thing
that people forget, is that we're not robots. Ye're not robots.
And even those brothers serve shoulder or shoulder, it's like
(40:23):
we're we can't forget the most important God given title
first human.
Speaker 4 (40:28):
Absolutely, I realized having you know, now I'm in a
regular therapy session and life has all of a sudden
turned for me. And now the anger is starting to
go away, but the reflections are coming in. And I
knew that I raised three sons, you know, and I
was pretty strict with their upbringing. I wasn't abusive, but
(40:50):
you know, sometimes I used harsh language and sometimes I
did some things. So I knew that to get closure
with what I was doing, I need to let my
sons know that it was me that had the problem,
it wasn't them. As I was growing up, and so
I wrote a letter to all three of my sons.
I was still the SEAAC at the time, and I
included a book. The name of the book is Why
(41:10):
Is Dad So Mad? A book about PTSD and military families.
It is a children's book written by the author Seth
Castle and illustrated by Carrisa Gonzalez Oathen Why is Dad
So Mad? Oh? Wow? And I sent that to them
so that they could understand or hopefully understand that what
(41:33):
I was going through wasn't because I was a bad father.
It was because I had this thing known as post
traumatic stress disorder that I hadn't come to terms with,
and I certainly hadn't accepted it or anything like that.
That was probably one of the most emotional things I
(41:53):
had to do, and one of the most gratifying was
to write that letter to my sons and give them
this book so that they could understand what PTSD is about.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
It's almost an additional layer of therapy that you got
to go through by unleashing that and getting that off
of your soul. Thinking back on your life's journey, if
there was one person or organization that's made a significant
impact on your life, who or what would that be?
Speaker 4 (42:20):
Absolutely it's the United States Military, as you just described, Ashley,
the power of our nation, the United States of America
where opportunity and the American dream are alive. And then
the United States Military that allowed me to go from
some kid that had no purpose, motivation, and direction or
(42:41):
inspiration to all of a sudden, not only building myself
as a member of this warrior class, growing my family
as well, growing my potential and everything. What's culminated in
me having the honor to serve as the senior enlisted
guy in the Department of Defense, it has to be
the United States Military. The person is obviously my wife, Sandra.
(43:04):
I've had a lot of influential people in my life,
but I could not have made this journey for almost
thirty eight years were she not by my side through
the good times, the bad times, in all the fun
that we've had.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
I thought this was going to be a military episode,
and it's turned into this love story, like love a
country that y'all's beautiful relationship.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
It's awesome, hey, But like, here's the thing. Most people
could get on a ship, a plane, put on a
uniform and go do the things that we did. Yeah,
with the right amount of training, I think most people
could do, because most people will tell me like I
could never do that, and I'm like, well, you don't
know that.
Speaker 4 (43:45):
You don't know that.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
Very few could be the backbone, the people that hold
it down at home and keep it together and keep
the wills turning and keep it well oiled while maintaining
their composure. Like that to me, Send me to the front. Yeah,
all day, every day. I'll eat the same MRI over
(44:08):
and over and over again. If you tell me that
I have to stay at home with the kids, not
knowing where my spouse is, not know send me to
the front with the water gun. I'll make it work,
like straight up, That's how I feel about it. That's
the truth of the matter.
Speaker 4 (44:24):
Hey, brother, you know, we live in a world where
people need safe spaces. Our safe space was wearing eighty
to one hundred pounds of kit every day with a
rifle with two hundred and ten rounds of ammunition, surrounded
by enemy, but surrounded by our brothers and sisters that
were willing to make the sacrifices up. That was easy. Yeah,
what's hard is dealing with what's going on back home.
(44:45):
That's right, I know, And I wouldn't wish that on
myself for nothing. I have so much admiration for my wife,
for people like Ashley and all the military spouses out there,
because they are an integral part of our national security, no.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Doubt about it. What do you do to recharge? What
do you do to say I need to take a
step back and recharge the batteries?
Speaker 4 (45:11):
It's uh spending with my family. I'm a pretty simple guy,
you know. I love watching TV Land and stuff like that.
I'm a homebody really, but my recharging is uh spending
it with family. Sandra and I every quarter we try
to take a mini vacation somewhere, even if it's an
overnight trip to a local casino or something. Just being
(45:33):
able to not have to worry about anything, enjoy the
love of my life with a cold beverage and maybe
going some karaoke and some dancing in there. That's kind
of I've never forgotten that it's okay and it's not
a sin to have fun. Absolutely, and so I am
all about turning myself into a jackass by getting on
(45:55):
a microphone and belting out some blank.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
I'll tell you what, bro yeah before I ask drops
the last question on you, just from our short conversation.
Trust me when I tell you this. We were family
long before we were family.
Speaker 4 (46:14):
I appreciate it. Brother.
Speaker 3 (46:16):
Last question, what feeds your soul.
Speaker 4 (46:20):
Doing for others? Seeing others succeed? What feeds me my
soul is seeing someone that reached out to me for
advice or that I've helped mentor and seeing them reach
their untapped potential, or seeing them reach their goals, or
seeing them get the things that they never thought they
could do. And the biggest pain I've had is where
(46:41):
I've loved someone so much and wanted them to reach
a goal and they've failed to reach that goal. I
hurt as much as they have because for some odd reason,
I feel like I had something to do with that.
So what feeds me is helping others attain their goals.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Absolutely well, this has been soul food for us. John
Wayne Truxil, thank you for everything that you've done for
our country. Thank you for everything that you're continuing to
do for your service, and everything that you've done since
you retired out of the military after thirty almost thirty
eight years. We're truly grateful and just so great to
(47:22):
get to know you a little bit better today.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
And this was the good stuff.
Speaker 1 (47:25):
Yeah, I'd tell you what, brother, your family, anything, absolutely time,
anywhere say the word zero hesitation, I will jump in
fake leg and all. Don't worry about that at all.
That's one thing I can guarant damn to you.
Speaker 4 (47:42):
Well, I appreciate a brother and to shake you on, Ashley,
thank you so much for allowing me this opportunity. Thank
you for being family.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
Wow, that's awesome. What a great guy.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
John Wayne Truxel thirty eight years of service to our country.
There will only ever be one, no kidding, what a legend.
Speaker 1 (48:06):
I still just can't picture walking into those two offices,
to those two Marines and say, hey, I'm going to
have to get back from launch a little late. That therapy, right,
What an amazing list of accomplishments. That's the type of
leader the military needs. He was all about his guys and.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Would work so hard to become a more effective leader
for himself, for his men, for his family. Just an
incredible guy. What was the story he told you about
about the essays?
Speaker 1 (48:38):
Okay, here's the thing. We're all about physical punishment because
we're physical beings as warfighters. That's what we do day
in and day out, don't make us exercise our brains
if it doesn't have to do with clearing a room
in a three D warfare environment. And he would make
(48:58):
his guys, because you can only get a human being
to fill so many sandbags. He would make him write
five thousand word essays, typed up sighted and give him
twenty four hour turnaround time.
Speaker 3 (49:12):
I don't know many college kids that could accomplish.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
I would rather be beaten with a cane.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
That's just cruel punishment.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
It would be less painful. No wonder they listened.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Yeah, again, the type of leader he was.
Speaker 1 (49:25):
I would have looked at Gunny like he was high
on math if he told you to do that, Yeah,
because I would have looked at him like, wait, have
you met me? Yeah, that's not ever gonna happen.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Ever, so many great lessons to learn from this conversation,
you know, for me personally, the one he said, always
striving to be better the next day than I was
that day. And clearly you know his love of his
wife and his boys, and his men, you know, and
women that served underneath them for decades.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yeah, he's definitely got a memory that's second to none too.
I mean remembering exact dates, exact people, and I mean
this is no small fee. But Alejandro Alsano, yeah, first
guy lost and service to our nation, and he'll never
be forgotten, just like John Wayne will never forget them.
We won't either. All their names need to be spoken.
(50:13):
It's why we get to take advantage of this presiuous
thing that we call freedom every single day, agreed.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
And for men like John Wayne Truxel, who are just
the epitome of what it means to be a proud
countryman to go on the cloth of our nation for
so long and do it.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
I mean you can hear the pride just oozing from him.
Speaker 1 (50:33):
Unless we forget the great and the mighty and the
one and only.
Speaker 3 (50:38):
Sandra, that's right. I can't wait to meet her either.
Speaker 1 (50:41):
I mean, clearly she was put on this planet with
one job, that's right.
Speaker 3 (50:46):
Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2 (50:47):
If this episode touched you today, please share it and
be part of making someone else's day better.
Speaker 4 (50:52):
Put on your.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
Badass caves and be great today. And remember you can't
do epic stuff without epic people. Thank you for listening
to the good Stuff. The Good Stuff is executive produced
by Ashley Shick, Jacob Schick, Leah Pictures and q Code Media.
Hosted by Ashley Shick and Jacob Shick. Produced by Nick
(51:13):
Cassolini and Ryan Countshouse post production supervisor Will Tindi. Music
editing by Will heywood Smith, edited by Mike Robinson,
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