How to find your outdoor adventure passion - EP 290 Tango Alpha Lima

Retired Air Force veteran Brandon Fertig has transformed from a conservative, mild mannered civilian to a passionate outdoor adventurer.

An employee of Philips, he has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, skydived and whitewater rafted in Colorado, and gone scuba diving, rode horses, skied, fished, snorkled, kayaked, biked, and hiked all over the world.

Fertig’s eight-day climb of Mount Kilimanjaro was in support of MedTechVets, a nonprofit that helps veterans transition to rewarding careers.

Other topics in Episode 290 include the return of a Medal of Honor recipient’s remains, an update on Gulf War Illness treatment and a rare Stars Wars trading card.

Army Navy Game

USA250 Challenge

CDC recognizes Gulf War Illness

Medal of Honor recipient U.S. Army Capt. Willibald Bianchi have been identified

One-of-a-kind Star Wars collector’s card surfaces at US Army post exchange

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
We're back. Alphas.
We're coming in hot with inspiring guests, witty banter
and colorful commentary. Today's veterans and military
community. This is the Tal podcast.
Welcome Alphas. Today's guest has mountain
climbed in Tanzania, near is that where Tasmania is no scuba

(00:22):
in Korea, trekked in Guam, horseback in New Mexico, skied
in Utah, fished in Alaska, snorkeled in Micronesia, kayak
in the Indian Ocean, biked in Grease, hiked in Newfoundland,
and skydived and whitewater rafted in Colorado.
This apparently lazy person is none other than Air Force
veteran Brandon Furtick. In addition to his outdoor

(00:45):
adventures, Brandon served 20 combat centric years in the Air
Force. During his first enlistment,
Brandon retrained into an air crew job as a loadmaster on the
mining C130. Hercules, Hercules, Hercules
where he flew 3000 flight hours over 55 countries.
There's only seven countries. No, that's continents.

(01:05):
Whatever. And five continents.
Oh man, see that? I should have read ahead.
Now the joke's Dumber. Imagine that me.
Making a dumb joke. It's that is his 299 aerial
combat mission. He's one off.
Really. Really bro, one can do one more
lazy. That's what that is.
His 299 aerial combat missions included air support for combat

(01:28):
troops. Maybe he ran out of enemies he
got. Him ran out of enemies in Iraq.
Yeah, His 299 aerial combat missions included air support
for combat troops on the ground,aeromedical evac flights for the
wounded, and sobering and solemnmission of repatriating the
fallen. After 20 years of service,
Brandon has joined the civilian workforce where he's the Senior

(01:49):
Manager of Workforce Innovation 0, zeroing in on project
management, innovation and the Developing works workforce.
He also finds time to volunteer because of course he does and
fundraise with several veterans organizations.
And of course he spends time with his wife and kids.
I like how that's last because we both know that sometimes
that's just it is how it is, youknow?

(02:10):
Yeah, but it's the last but not certainly least.
Yeah, it's definitely not. It's definitely certainly not
least it's a it feels like that some months.
I think I think of these sort ofBIOS as a pyramid.
You just you know the the very last is the tippy top most.
Important. Yeah, it does feel a bit like
MLM. Or the last is the base and it's

(02:30):
the foundation of every. It's an.
Inverted your way. Either way it works.
So do you guys have any fun expeditions while touring the
world in the military or even after?
What's what you get? You get any crazy stories to
share? Fun expeditions while.
You know, I, as you guys know, I'm totally into horses and so

(02:51):
everywhere I went, I always wanted to, you know, get on a
horse's back. And I, and I, I did manage that
pretty much everywhere. Even in Iraq, one of the fun
places, I, I was doing an exercise, military exercise with
the Chilean army. It was like a big NATO thing.
And one of the Chilean officers brought me out to what his

(03:14):
family's ranch, cattle ranch, and so I helped herd cattle one
afternoon. So that was a really fun
expedition. I trained with the, the Canadian
Royal Air Force, but I, I mean, it wasn't really like an
expedition and in the military, no, it was pretty much like
deployments and then, you know, flying the Apache in different

(03:37):
locations, which let's be honest, like that was the great
expedition for me. So I think that and of itself,
you know when I was in Iraq 2010time frame which actually looks
like this guess was I might haveflown on one of his C130
missions either coming in or going out.
He did all of them. He.
Did all of them. He was there at the end sounds

(03:58):
like as well. But we were drawing down troops,
you know, at that time. So we were the last aviation
Army aviation brigade in the entire country.
So our brigade had all the way to Iran, all the way to Syria,
you know, all the way to the north, all the way to the South.
So I got to see a lot of the country and that was really

(04:19):
cool. I mean, that was, that was
certainly an expedition for sure.
For us, you know, kind of the downside of of having done, you
know, quality over quantity. Fallujah, Iraq for me and only
that one deployment was we did areally exciting one to where we
got to go to air conditioned trailers that had toilets in

(04:41):
them. Wow, that's.
You you think I'm joking? I will never forget this for the
rest of my life. You guys are laughing, I swear
to you when you've been using porta potties for five months
and like holes in the ground. We had a guy literally almost
pass out because we we had not been in any air conditioning.
In fact, there were times we could have been in air

(05:01):
conditioning, but you know, you can't go in and then step away.
You'll never forget it. Like it'll mess.
You up, I understand that air conditioning.
The acclamation is hard. Yeah, it's, it's like if you're
going to be outside somewhere, your last like 10 minutes of
driving, you roll your windows down because you don't, you
don't want to get there and be like, you know, you get out and
you step out and you're like, oh, I'm a spy and that's what I

(05:24):
do. But no joke, this sounds funny.
I'm not even like playing it down like I had it bad.
That was a great day like that. I will never forget.
I mean, we were cold. We were cold and using the
bathroom. It was a good day.
Sounds amazing. It was a good day.
You guys are jealous. All right, Well, great
expeditions from the horses to the helicopters to the air

(05:48):
conditioning. So we got a great show.
We'll catch up and we'll dive into some of these adventures
with Brandon Furtig. So Alphas stick around and we'll
be back with Brandon right afterthe break.
What's up, Legionnaires and sports fans, this is Adam Marr,

(06:08):
American Legion member and Army veteran.
I am beyond excited that the American Legion is continuing
their tradition of support for the Army Navy Game presented by
USAA, the first veteran service organization to sponsor
America's Game in its 126 year history.
That's right, the greatest rivalry in sports just got even

(06:31):
more meaningful for veterans like us.
We're honored to stand behind the incredible student athletes
who are not only competing on the field, but are also
committed to protecting the freedoms we hold dear.
And through this sponsorship, we're shining a spotlight on our
primary mission. Be the one our fight to end
veteran suicide. So mark your calendars.

(06:53):
Tune into CBS on December 13th at 3:00 PM.
Eastern to watch Army take on Navy in this epic, timeless
showdown. To learn more about the American
Legion's involvement in our mission, visit
legion.org/armynavygame. Let's cheer on our teams,
support our mission, and show the world what it means to be a

(07:16):
Legionnaire. Go Army.
Beat Navy Hua. Today we are joined by Medtech
that's mentor and and Air Force,by the way, best branch of
service ever. Air Force veteran Brandon
Fertig, who recently summited Mount Kilimanjaro and to to do
that, he was raising awareness and supporting transitioning

(07:40):
service members as they navigatethe difficult climb from
military service to meaningful careers, which I have a
meaningful career and I climbed lots of mountains, certainly not
Mount Kilimanjaro. So Brandon, I'm really anxious
to hear all about your experiences.
Welcome to the Tal Podcast. Thanks for having me.
I just, I, I want to talk to you, Brandon, but I have to ask,

(08:03):
Stacy, was the the difficult climb, was that on purpose?
Did you do that whole thing after the Mount Kilimanjaro
thing? Was that difficult climb?
Yeah, yeah. It was a molehill and it was
really high. It was very difficult, I was.
Just wondering if you pun on accident or if it just happened,
if you just actively do it. All right, how's it going?

(08:23):
Brandon? I'm I'm really, really super
glad to have you here today. And I I want to ask you, you
know, just give you a chance to sort of tell your story in your
own words a little bit. Can you give us a little back
story about what brought you into the military and then and
then what took you out? Oh man, how much time do we
have? We have as much time as you want
within 40 minutes. Yeah, I, you know, I wondered

(08:47):
how much. I wondered how much we could
explore this. You know, I want to keep it
tight, but I think I need to reach an audience.
So, you know, one of the things that I really struggle with with
how I would introduce this storyand where we where I'm at today
is I have to get you down to thethe lowest common denominator in

(09:08):
my life. And it was being raised in the
projects by a single mom. So you can you can imagine what
that's like. And some of the fears that came
with that would be, you know, I have neighbors who were beating
our doors down because they thought it was their house
growing up in a lot of fear. It was a very fear oriented

(09:29):
lifestyle growing up as a kid toinclude having, you know, just
not a lot of opportunity. The socio economic climate that
I grew up in was is it it's a typical American story.
It it's a lot of people's struggles.
And what do you do with those struggles?
How do you get yourself out of that?
So life, life lent itself a lot of fear as a young man and, and

(09:54):
I had to, I had to overcome a lot of that and, and to include
one of my classmates on my bus murders his neighbor to, to
knowing someone like that. And then to finding out the next
day at school that Joey wasn't coming home.
And I looked him up recently. He still is in, in prison in the

(10:15):
Pittsburgh area where I grew up.So, you know, I, I, I, I talked
to a lot of mental Health advisors coming out of the
military, why I felt like I had certain issues.
And when I got down to the things I never talked about,
those things were some of the things that also contributed to
what a veteran goes through in fear.
And so those fears sometimes will be perpetuated through your

(10:38):
life. But I never, the big story here
is I never identified with them.I was, I was going to refuse to
live like that. And so when 911 came about and
pulling, you know, pulling myself through high school
trying to make the best grades Ihad trying didn't have a lot of
input, didn't have a lot of leadership in my life.
And so when 911 hit, I, I, something clicked to me and it

(11:01):
was like, I need to do something.
I'd been doing a couple of yearsof college.
I was a computer guy at, at, at the beginning of the onset of my
career. And I really.
Nerd, Yeah. Major nerd.
I mean, far beyond nerd, I love to build electronics.
I was building circuits for, forcars and, and doing all these
little hands on jobs that were just fun for me.

(11:24):
But what what really pushed us in, I think a lot of G Watt
veterans, this is their, this isthe story here.
G Watt veterans came in saying we need to do something about
the current situation in our lives.
And that can be personal, that can be spiritual.
It could be the military. And you know, when we, when we
went into 911, some of us were even blindsided by the, the, the

(11:46):
Iraq war. I was still in school when we
found out, oh, by the way, we'realso going to be in Iraq.
So when I signed up, you know, my, my vision was Flight 93
crashed just miles from my housein Pennsylvania.
And knowing some of my family, family in Connellsville, PA, who
were affected by that, it was a very personal thing. 911 was

(12:07):
very personal for me. So, you know, I read the 9/11
Commission, I got smart on the issues and I and I really took
the time to start to understand that as a young man.
So you can kind of see where that energy is building for me
to kind of come out of my shell.Within the first few years of
joining the military, I knew computers weren't going to be
enough for me. So I started to find out what I

(12:30):
could do as a listing member without a degree that, you know,
I'd get one later on. But I met my wife in the process
of that and she really, really built the, the, I think this
the, the foundation I needed as a young man who didn't have a
lot of continuity in his life, if you will, came with it came

(12:50):
with a father-in-law. It came with a family I never
had. It came with opportunity.
And so here's this kid from, youknow, Nowheresville and, and
afraid of his own shadow at times to someone who's willing
now to go sign up and go throughSEER training, go through
aeronautics training, go throughC130 loadmaster training, go

(13:10):
through AirDrop training, go through, you know, work with
special operations, do things that put me on the front lines.
And that that was a transition. You know, I wish I had more than
the 40 minutes here to really expand on that because I really
think that's so big in the storyand why I'm why I'm trying to
write a book and to find a publisher that will help me tell
that story. Well, two things on my end.

(13:33):
Number one, that fear is so interesting because I always
felt like I was weak growing up in a lot of ways because I was
always afraid. But looking back, I realized
that you can't have bravery without fear.
And it never really stopped me from doing what I needed to do.
I just sometimes did it afraid. And and I realized that as I got

(13:53):
older that they're like, that's a normal healthy thing.
And it gives you a little bit ofadrenaline.
It gives you a little bit of, of, you know, if you can
function through it, then that's, that's what it takes to,
to grow. And, and I, I give you props,
writing and, and editing even worse is one of the hardest
things that I've done outside ofthe military.
So I, you know, anything we can do to help you, you push that

(14:14):
process along. You.
You let us know. That was another thing that's,
that's true. The I think what helped me build
that confidence to even want to sit down and do that is that Air
Force was paying for education. So I got a bachelor's and I got
a master's, put a package in forOTS and did all those things.
But that the, the year I did that, the, the package closed in

(14:38):
2017. You can go look this up for
whatever reason, you know, I, I,I think God had bigger plans for
me. But you know, I thought that's
what I wanted at the time, but the door shut on me.
So when doors shut, that's, that's another Ave. we can, we
can discuss doors shut all the time.
It wasn't like we have this likeexplosive force of nature in our
lives, making us who we are today.

(15:00):
It was like door closed. Now what door closed now what?
So, you know, for me, the doors kept shutting and I kept going
to college. That was literally what helped
me to start writing. And so by the time I finished a
master's and, and I'm working onthis, I actually had a professor
tell me, you know, Brandon and all the, all the classmates I,

(15:20):
that you have, you're the best writer I've had.
And so that really lifted my spirits to hear someone say that
because you, you constantly put yourself in a, in a small bucket
and you try to kind of see whereyou could go, but it really
takes some time. Someone telling you, no, you're
much more than just the sum of your parts.
I think the the the words Gestalt, you know, gestalt could

(15:43):
be is a fun word because it means you're greater than the
sum of your parts. You know, a bicycle has a wheel
and has a pedal has a handlebar,but all those together creates a
mode of transportation. So we are that gestalt.
We're that assembly of all of our stories that create that
effort in us to be something bigger than we we are right now.

(16:05):
Outstanding. Well, I love that Brandon,
thanks for walking us kind of through your origins, you know,
into the military, you know, such a rich and illustrious kind
of career doing some some prettycool things.
We were talking just a little bit before the show about, you
know, how I may have possibly been one of the passengers on
one of your planes in Iraq when our our time overlapped their 20

(16:27):
years career. You know, I kind of want to go
to the mindset mountain in, you know, valley of kind of despair,
you know, metaphor, you know, was climbing count was climbing
Mount Kilimanjaro something thatyou'd always, you know, kind of
wanted to do, I think. Do you know, a little bit of

(16:47):
research about you understandingthat you have like a very
adventurous, you know, kind of background some some really cool
things. So maybe it was, you know, you
kind of always, you know, trekking that way.
But you know, there's the the metaphor of the mountain, right,
And in the peak and the pinnacleand in the valley.
And it's, you know, it can be cliche in some ways until you
actually go out on the mountain in those austere conditions and

(17:11):
you realize just how raw and powerful and vulnerable you
know, that you really are. So talk a little bit, you know,
about some of the stressors thatyou were overcoming, you know,
the literal kind of valley, you know, up to the top.
And what was that experience like for you?
What would you what would you want to share with the
listeners? Yeah, I think I have to go back

(17:34):
to probably the first time I climbed a mountain of sorts.
I climbed Pikes Peak, which was 14,000.
I met my wife in Colorado Springs and I was stationed
there in Space Command. I was a space as well.
I had a little bit of everything.
And so when I met my wife in Colorado, she, she married this
very timid young man and something, something snapped in

(17:58):
me. I don't know if it was
inspiration while I was in service.
It was maybe having that, that, that partner in crime, right?
My wife being at the catalyst, Ithink she laughed, she laughed.
We got we got pregnant with our first son in 2005 and he was
born in 2006. And that was the year I went

(18:19):
skydiving in Longmont, Co. I climbed Pikes Peak.
I was trying to do that. Tim McGraw song went skydiving
mountain, you know, Rocky Mountain climbing 2.7 seconds on
a boom named Fu Manchu. You know, I think for me, I, I,
you know, I, I wanted something more and, and it, it, I think it

(18:40):
was a, it's a gradual, it's a gradual growth.
When you see, like if I tell people my story and they're
like, wow, you've been you, you've done it all, you've
travelled the world and you've done this and that.
But all of those things were, were waypoints on a, on a map of
my life that I had to overcome each time.
I'm not, I think by nature a, you know, a Red Bull style

(19:03):
adventurist. You know, some of those people
spend years climbing, you know, these huge mountains and, and
doing things on the backs of, you know, aircraft flying upside
down. Some of these people are that
built that way. I'm here to tell you that's not
me. You know, I think when you look
at that and people are like, wow, you're an adventurous guy.
I'm like, actually, no, by nature, I'm a very thought

(19:26):
provoking, very cautious and very, it's cost benefit analysis
for everything for me. I want to know what the cost is.
Is it going to benefit me for that?
And if it does, does it, does ithit 3 or 4 things For me?
It's, it's a spiritual, is it, is it growth minded?
Is it something overcoming fear?And so, you know, when I first

(19:47):
ran up, you know, the mountain there in Colorado, I, I had a
lot of fear. It's 12 miles.
It's bar trail. It's called Bar Trail out of
Manitou Springs. And I went with a group of guys
and I said, you know, I've neverdone this before.
And they're like, it's, it's going to, it's going to test you
because I wasn't a very physicalperson when I was young and that
didn't come too much later. So at the time, it seems like

(20:10):
every time I went to go do something, well, you know, the
chaplaincy said, hey, we're going to put a group together to
go skydiving. I was like, oh, my heart.
I was sitting in my office in a computer closet in Shriver Air
Force Base in Colorado, this nerd.
And my heart was racing and my heart would sit in that chair
and I'd go, I have to sign up for this one.
It's $25 hits. It hits my mark.

(20:32):
You know, it's, it's the chaplaincy wanting people to
come out and, and 1st, you know,1st 15 people get get picked.
And so I'm sitting there workingmy heart's racing and I'm like,
my wife's going to think I'm nuts.
I need this challenge in my life.
I needed something to Get Me Outof my shell.
And so that was that was one of the very first times I did
something, any, any kind of crazy thing like that.
And then it'd become an addiction.

(20:52):
It's it starts to become a positive addiction.
I, we are all, we human beings are addicted people.
We're going to get addicted to something.
So instead of choosing some of the things that my father's that
my father chose or some of the things that my mother chose or
some of the people around in my life that didn't make great
decisions, love them to death, but they just weren't making
good decisions. Give me an example.

(21:14):
I wanted to choose things to to inspire.
I wanted to choose things that would have a story.
I wanted to choose things that would prove to my wife and my
sons someday that their father was someone who could rise to a
challenge. And so, you know, those were
even before I even went to retrain as a loadmaster, which
took a year of my life to to do all those schools and to do hard

(21:36):
schools. But I this is someone who came
out of school barely passing high school, barely having
grades that were were anything to write home about.
And then having go through load school and go through nine
months of training to rise to that and ace every single class.
Being like one of the quickest people to get done with what
they called a format, which was a, a task in your mind and an

(21:58):
ability to put pen to paper and to balance an aircraft with
thousands and thousands of pounds of air.
You know, cargo. You don't have a lot of time to
screw around in Iraq when you'reputting cargo on a plane.
You needed to know how to do that quickly.
So everything you did needed to be to excellence in an aircraft
world. You don't get, you don't get a
pass. You have to be at 85% or better

(22:19):
on all your testing. So you can see where my mind
over time transformed to allow me to have the tool set to then
go into a career field that's taxing like that and do it for
15 years and to earn the the chief enlisted aviator wings.
You know, that's something I'm very proud of.
It's a lot of people don't stickaround the C130 community.
It's just really hard on your body.

(22:40):
School's different when you see the purpose.
I think that's what makes schoolso hard when we're young.
You know, history is incredible.Now that I've been in the
military and I've seen things, history is like my favorite
subject. It was dreadful when I was
growing up. I, I did not, I was not a
student, not by, not by the normal means where I think
people just, you know, they're students and you see them.

(23:02):
I think my son's like that. He can sit down and do anything.
He is. I wish I was like him.
He's so inspirational, but you know, I think I gave him an, I
gave my son an, an environment for him to be that way, to have
confidence to do the things thatI couldn't do.
And I think that's one of the things is we don't give
ourselves in this generation. I'm a, I'm a very old

(23:23):
millennial. I'm as old as a millennial as
you can be in born in 1980. You know, our generation was
stereo stereotyped super hard more than any other generation
before us. Gen.
X will claim it, you know, I know some of y'all, you know,
millennials will say, well, no, millennials were given a really
raw deal. And, and it was like, you guys
aren't going to amount to anything.
And a lot of times that microgeneration between there,

(23:45):
we, we were trying to figure that out too, trying to turn the
stereotypes off, turn the thingsoff that, you know, oh, you're
not going to be great learners because you're you're too
involved in electronics or you're not going to be great at
this or that because of this. It just became a lot of noise
because now we had media, we hadInternet on, you know, untapped
amounts of input to our life. And, you know, as human beings,

(24:07):
you talk about education. You know, I think before
technology, you might have had ateacher or a parent or a family
member or a friend giving you inputs into your life.
As humans, our brains are only meant to convene or, or get
together like we are here with three people to give you some
input to see who you are. What we have now is a generation

(24:30):
that is incredibly confused because there's so many voices
that the brain can't even comprehend right outside of
societal norms of the past that we grew up with.
It's easy to see the the contrast to how our kids are
being so inundated with everybody's opinions.

(24:51):
And I tell them and I resettle them every day.
And I said, the only opinion that matters to you is yours
right now. You need to make a decision on
what that is for you. And, and I think that's the, to
me growing up, I think that's what I see the biggest change in
our generational, you know, pathforward is that we have to learn
how to control what's important to those who pour things into

(25:12):
us. What is the most important voice
because we have so many options now.
That is the challenge ahead and education being one of us.
I want to switch gears, Brandon,for a second because you know at
the top I mentioned you were a Med tech bets mentor, but for
the alphas listening, what is medtech vets and what do they do

(25:37):
and what do you do for them? This, this is really my favorite
thing right now. I love working for Phillips.
Anybody working there. I, I drink the, you know, the
Air Force, we talked about drinking the blue kool-aid.
Phillips is blue. So I'm still drinking blue
Kool-aid, but it's at a medtech company that's just amazing with
other people and their and their, their, their purpose.

(26:00):
What I found through Philips wasthe connection to medtech that's
so medtech inherently, for thosewho aren't familiar with that
terminology, it's anything that's connected, connected care
to a hospital. It's, it's amalgamating
technologies and informatics, information systems, servers, IT

(26:23):
equipment. A lot of people think in
medical, you have to be medical.No, we have a lot of clinical
people, but our, one of our biggest factors is, is
technical. And so we, we have helicopter
pilots that are prior Army, prior Air Force that make up
our, our team. We have a very highly technical
career field. Med tech kind of amalgamates

(26:43):
the, the tech with the clinical,with the nursing, with the
doctors, with the imaging, radiology.
You can imagine all of those things have to go into a data
system. All of that kind of originally
started with just like Kodak doing medical imaging back in
way back in the day. And then now you have everything
is on the server, everything became digital.

(27:05):
And now you have to have a team of very highly technical people.
You have to have them be highly clinical.
You have to have them have leadership skills.
You need to have them be projectmanagers.
We have the biggest contingent of project managers if you're
looking for a job as APM going to medtech, I mean, that's how I
got my start. So finishing PMP got me into
medtech. Medtech then transferred me over

(27:26):
to working with veterans becausethat's where my heart was always
at. So how that transition happened
was I, I pivoted on and that's really the big story for me.
It's when I mentor people. It's how do you pivot?
How do you get out of the military and pivot yourself onto
something that's going to be a great career for you and have
longevity? So Medtech then led me to
Medtech bets. Medtech vets is made-up of a

(27:49):
team of people who were they're,they're associated with Avamed,
some of the biggest people in the industry, Philips, Avamed,
GE at Siemens, all of the big ITcompanies.
We even work do work with Deloitte and PwC and a lot of
companies that have Ava. Let me, let me stop there for a

(28:09):
second. the VA, this is the coolest thing in the world.
I'm not only a VA customer and Ilove my VA at downtown Little
Rock here in the and we have oneof the best visons in the
country. We're in Vision 16.
I do work with Vision 7 down in the South, which it hits a lot
of you guys down there in the southern, the southern part of
the country. But our visiting system really

(28:32):
opened my eyes to what medtech look like because VA is
literally medtech. You walk into any VA hospital,
you're going to find all of those same people that built
their careers on the backs of serving others.
And then they find their way to,to GE, they find their way to,
to Advamet, they find their way to, I'm sorry if I'm forgetting
a lot of people to sponsor us. Just go look us up on Medtech

(28:54):
vets. But you'll see the connections
were, were vast. So I found a community, I found
my people, right? Like I started the conversation
earlier in the meeting. Where, where, who do I have a
voice with? That's the big thing.
Can you talk to what you enjoy? Because a lot of people will
pivot into their careers and notnot really have a lot of passion
for it. And then you have nothing to

(29:15):
build on. So for me it was like, OK,
Medtech vets, it's all the boxes.
It's, it's my team. I made really good friends with
them. They invited me out to Toronto
last year to speak, didn't know me from Adam.
And they trusted me with that ability to get up there and
speak and, and to share the story of who we are.
And then to then also be invitedback after, you know, I said,

(29:39):
hey, this year I want to do morefor you.
I want to fundraise. And they're like, what do you
want to do? I said, how about we climb
Kilimanjaro together? And I started building a team
and it was just a simple idea of, you know, being in that
place, Joe, where I had a lot offear, I had a lot of anxiety.
I was not AI know I'm not a natural mountain climber.

(29:59):
I had to, I had to train hard for that.
I'm a big rocker. I love to rock.
So I just started rocking more. I rocked every day for five
miles, 5 miles a day for nine months, the most miles I've ever
done in my life. And it I'm 45.
I mean, that's, you know, with with disability, there's things
I have to overcome for that. And so medtech vets is why we go

(30:19):
and inspire each other to do incredible things.
It's not Phillips, you know, plays a role in that to be my
employer. But when you go outside of
something where you can't get something back from someone, it
is so empowering to be able to say you did something for
someone. And I did it out of just sheer
enjoyment for doing something for someone else.

(30:40):
That is one of the most powerful, empowering things you
could do. And that's why why nonprofits
are so powerful today. They affect the VA, they affect
our medical systems. They affect our, our, our up and
coming veterans that we're goingto be needing to take care of in
the next 20 years. Somebody paved the way for us.
I want to be the guy that paves the way for the next.
I think it's pretty great if veterans want to get involved

(31:03):
with medtech vets. Is there a place they need to go
or website? Yes, I think the best, the best
way is LinkedIn. Now I know a lot of military
seem to not really be involved with LinkedIn until it's it's
time to transfer, you know, transfer out of the service.
I noticed a lot of people will just kind of hold you have a
placeholder. But one of one of the best

(31:24):
things that happened for me was the more effort I I put into
LinkedIn and career mindsets, the better things got for me.
I got off of Facebook or Instagram or whatever.
I was, you know, binging at the time I somehow started binging
LinkedIn. I want to start reading
articles. I want to start getting better
for others so that, you know, itbenefits me in the long run,

(31:46):
right? Where there's always something
in it for me. I think that's important.
You don't downplay that because I feel like a lot of times the
service members were like, we have to do everything for
everybody else. But you get, if you don't take
care of you, I can, I can promise you, you're not going to
be where you want to be in five years.
So you have to do something for you that creates a, a, an image
for yourself. And, and what does that image
look like? There's no wrong answer to that.

(32:07):
Like I just, I just happened to be very veteran oriented and I
think I just happened to be someone who came up from
nothing. And I have this desire to, to
elevate myself out of these places in my mind because I
still go to dark places. I still struggle with things.
I still am in a lot of times that mindset will come back.

(32:29):
And I think I heard actually on the American Legion podcast, I
heard, I think 1 gentleman say, you know, PTSD, for example,
isn't something I'm not going toovercome.
It's something I'm going to partner with.
What do you do with that? Don't, don't identify with the
problem, Partner with it. And I was just so blown away by
that mentality. And I was like that I'm not
adopting that one. I'm stealing that one.

(32:50):
And I think that's, that's how you reach out to one another.
It's it's individually on LinkedIn.
I don't think it's a website. I don't think it's just, you
know, websites to me are just kind of a dead end.
I want to be This is why you guys are so powerful.
It's the interaction that changes things.
And and I think LinkedIn is thatis got that interaction.
So to answer your question, yeah, I think LinkedIn is the
best way to reach out to medtechvets and get involved.

(33:12):
So what you just said really resonates with me because I
think that a lot of times and I'm not one of those people
that's like, let's get rid of the D at the end of PTS.
And I'm not one of those people that really thinks of it that
way. But as I've sort of matured in
my trauma, that sounds like sucha therapy term.

(33:34):
But I realize how useful PTSD iswhen you're the one that's in
control. Now, the problem with PTSD is
you don't know whether you're incontrol or not.
But having said that, when you have safe, sort of logical,
reasonable ways to mitigate the stressors, like just make sure

(33:56):
my doors are locked. I live out in the country.
I've got a a, you know, a A. I've got cameras outside of my
house. I've got, you know, a mini pig
that will protect me with her life.
I've got, you know, when somebody comes down my driveway,
I've got a bill that goes off inmy house.
Like I can't solve everything right.
And, and if, if Russia throws a helicopter over my house and

(34:18):
drops onto my roof, there's that, that's not something I can
reasonably expect to happen. But because I do these other
things and I stay on top of it and I don't, I don't ever just
ignore something that's bothering me.
I try to find the logic behind it.
I found that that PTSD is a survival tool when, when you're

(34:39):
in a good place and, and, and again, it's not something that
you need to beat. It's something that you have to
learn too. There there's an artist named
Ren who talks about his mental health and he says it's a, a
back and forth. It's a dance and it's a pendulum
and it goes back and forth and the farther you swing one way,
the greater the shadow beneath it.
And so that is, it's one of those things that that really

(35:02):
sort of made me sort of stop, stop fighting PTSD and finding
ways to mitigate and use it. You know, and, and, and so I, I
say that because I feel like outside of that stigma and the
transitioning and things like that, that we have to learn how
to do. I think that that a lot of times
we're failing these young peopleas they're coming in.

(35:24):
And it's weird to think this waybecause when we came through, we
felt like we were adults lookingback.
And I, I mean nothing against these young 18 year old men and
women, but you're going to look back and wish you had known some
of the things that we're about to talk about and that we have
already talked about. And one of those things is that
these hard things that happen inyour life, this desire to, to,

(35:45):
to push yourself is going to have consequences for better,
for worse. And if you push yourself too
far, you're going to burn and you're going to pay for it in
your 50s and your 40s with your joints and stuff like that.
And it's not going to get betterevery year.
So I, I say all this because what do you think?
Us not just as as the American Legion, but also as veterans.

(36:06):
What do you think we can do to help prepare some of these
people? We don't have access to a lot of
these young people going in, butI think that we can all agree
that in a lot of ways, we we fail them transitioning out.
And I'm not, I'm not diving intothe the transitioning out of the
military thing is a huge can of worms that we could get hung up
on. So instead of focusing on what

(36:27):
the military is doing wrong, I want to ask you, what do you
think us as individuals can do to help these people?
To give them resources that they'll actually trust and use
to help them reach a place wherewe're where we wish somebody had
come and talked to us when we got out that we trusted.
How do we reach these people that are getting out and and
teach them and pull them into the American Legion if that's

(36:49):
what it takes? Yeah, that's, there's so much to
unpack and I think I took everything in, you said and I
yeah, I, you know, I struggle with a lot of things and I was
hoping not to not to get too. I think that we got to go down
that road sometimes, man. I think what we're doing is
we're doing ourselves a disservice when the stigma of

(37:10):
how it might affect someone and what we say.
I, I have to, I remember someonetelling me, just deliver your
story. Don't, don't push what have work
for you onto others, but give them an example so they might
have a tool kit. Every one of us has a story.
So I think, you know, in our companies very careful about
that. We're very, very cautious of our
wording because we don't want tosend someone into a place where

(37:33):
we don't know where that might go.
We want to have control of everything.
But can I just share that I've lost two friends to suicide and
they were both on the other side.
It wasn't during service, it wasafter.
And I sit here and rack my brainabout could I done anything
different and could I have what?What did I know about that

(37:56):
person that might have done if Icould have done something
different to save them? And a lot of times, time and
time doesn't heal all wounds andspace and, and, and distance
does not heal all wounds. And you can't be there for that
person when they're in San Antonio and you're in Guam, for

(38:17):
example, or, you know, I, I lived in Guam for three years up
until 2022. And so when I hear of someone's
passing, it's like, could I havereached out to them?
Could I have called more? You know, I, I remember actually
sending this person a, a challenge coin that has shark on
it. Like that was my last time I
talked to them and I don't know what's going through their

(38:38):
lives. And I used to think, well, it's
it's this or it's that. And I can I just tell you, I
think that I don't know if this is the common denominator, but
this is my story is purpose. When, when I get to a place in
my life and I was just AC130 guy, I didn't see, I didn't see
ground combat. I had I had a lot of close
calls. I've seen crazy things like

(39:01):
rockets going over our aircraft.I've had combat action metal and
if they were allowed to, I thinkwe would have more than just
one. And you come home with bullet
holes in your plane and you go back to your room.
You're like, what am I doing here?
Is this really, is this challenge worth it?
We've had loadmasters get hit inthe head at the at the scanning
window over those contested areas that we've worked in.

(39:24):
And you go home. You're like, God, I hope that
person doesn't take that, that moment in their life and make it
all about that one moment. And you're like, what do you do?
What am I going to do to make sure I'm not going down that
road that leads to something like that?
I can't, I can't speak for others because I think that's
what our, our, you know, we're always trying to fix it, right?

(39:46):
The military is always trying tofix it.
DoD is trying to fix it. Why do we have such a high rate
of, of, of suicide? Why?
You know this, why that and incorporation?
I'm a project manager. We go down the YS of every
different hole you can think of for a root cause analysis.
And we we do it to death and waste time doing it in my
opinion. I think we have to hold each
other accountable to what we canand can't control.

(40:08):
I think my, my story is that when I get in a dark place, I
try to do something for somebodyelse.
There's a song that I made that I did to this like montage video
of Kilimanjaro. It's on my LinkedIn page.
And it's a, it's a, it's not a well known rock band, but it,
this guy's music was just, it just hit me so hard that when we
do something for somebody else, it gets us out of that dark

(40:31):
place. When we make it about us, we
will fail every time. We can't do it alone.
And that's what Kilimanjaro actually came out of was I was
in this, it was January this year.
I was in my bed laying there. It was dark.
I couldn't sleep. I was in emotionally.
I think for some reason we always get the hardest around

(40:52):
holidays for some reason. And I just remember feeling so
crappy that day. And I just remember thinking, I
need to, I need another challenge.
I need another, you know, boost of what works for me and my
purpose. But yeah, you find your purpose.
I, I looked over at my wife and I said, babe, I'm going to climb
Kilimanjaro. I've been thinking about it for

(41:12):
a long time. And she laughed.
And I go, no, I'm serious. And she goes, no brain.
And I, I know you, I know you'reserious and you're going to make
it happen. Like that's the kind of, that's
the kind of spouse I have. Like you've been married 22
years. She just gets me.
And so I told her, I said, here's my why.
And then I said, you know what? After after that thought
developed, I said how can we usethis to change others?

(41:33):
How can we use this to affect others?
I need this for me. What can we do to raise money?
Can we raise money? I called up I y'all, I called up
Tower. I called it the Towers
nonprofit. I called up red, white and blue.
I think they actually had a climb, red white included.
I count. I called up all the big
nonprofits and I, I just couldn't get any momentum.

(41:55):
Medtech vets comes out of the woodwork and they're like, dude,
we will support you up to $250,000 to go raise money.
And I was like, this is what I need.
And I and it and this whole yearhas been supported by the
thought I'm doing something for someone else.
And it has been one of the brightest years of my life.
Now, I don't care who you are and what capacity you serve, but

(42:16):
if you spend a lot of time down range and I have 36 months down,
down range in a 130, you know, it's not like we're strategic.
We're not coming out of the the theater.
So seeing a lot of those different things happen.
One, there was one other time I want to share with you and I
know I'm going long, but I want,I want this to be another reason

(42:36):
to fix something for yourself. I had, I was, I was in Iraq and
I was carrying the repatriated remains out of Iraq flight after
flight after flight. And I, I mean, I'm not, I'm not
kidding, hundreds of caskets outof Iraq and I'm loading them on
to a 1:30. We're saluting them on the way

(42:57):
out of Iraq, out of Baghdad and Biop and in Balad.
We did those double shuttles. We, we flew them back to Salim
and put them on AC1717, took them up through the system to
get them back here to the states.
We had a repatriated remains funeral for every one of those
people. And I started to come back to my
room. I would just be, I would just be
bawling you all. I would just be.
I was like, I did not understandwhat I was getting myself into.

(43:20):
And if you're, if you're any kind of person that has a heart,
that stuff will wear on you. I don't, I don't care how strong
you are. I would be crying in my room.
My roommates who are also enlisted aviators would be at
the gym or something and I wouldjust find my place with God and
I, it got me to a place where I could cope.
Something that happened to me was I took one of the names of

(43:41):
the people that I, that we manifest them like, like
passengers. They're not cargo.
They are human beings. We, we, we honored them that way
and we brought them home over and over and over for month
after month of this. And it wasn't always that
mission. We did, you know, combat, we did
air drops, we did combat cargo moves, we did seal team moves.

(44:02):
We did really fun stuff too. I think because get the get that
fun side of the job is what we love to serve each other.
But what, what was where only that deployment was.
I needed to make a connection towhat was happening in my life.
I took one name. I looked up that individual.
He was going home the next day. Y'all he had died in a roadside
bomb. I found him on Facebook.
I befriended him and his wife and his mom.

(44:26):
He was 22 years old. I reached out to his mom when I
got back off that deployment andshe lived in Plant City, FL and
I went down. I called her.
I said I want to come down there.
I want to talk to you and I needed to make a connection with
you. This is maybe even just for me.
And she was falling on the phoneand she goes, I, I never
understood what I didn't get thestory of what happened to him.

(44:48):
I said honestly, it, it, it was just as they said.
And we the next day we, we had him on a plane home to you.
And I can't tell you how I carried that name around for
seven deployments. It happened on my first
deployment and I'm sorry. No, I apologize.
That's something that was the second deployment and the first
deployment. It made a connection for me that
what I'm doing over here is so much more important than how I

(45:12):
feel. There is only healing when I do
something for somebody else and so that was the game changer for
me that got me through all thosedeployments.
It's got to be we got to do something for someone else.
That's what leads to our healing.
Well. There's AI want to jump in real
quick, Brandon? There's a song called Angel
Flight by Rodney Foster and Darden Smith that was written

(45:34):
about the C130 aircrew repatriating American fallen.
So check that song out. It's pretty, it's pretty
compelling. I think it's written exactly for
you. Oh.
Word. Thank you.
Yeah, I'll write that down. Angel Flight.
Well, Brandon, you can see how, you know, we could probably have
this thing go for for hours. That's what I love about this

(45:54):
show. I mean, it in and of itself is
it's a therapy. It's it's storytelling, it's
being able to connect into yeah,certainly like our our time in
service. But like, you know, we get the
opportunity to learn about your service.
And the thing that's that's really emanating, you know, here
at the end is you're talking about how, how on the other side

(46:17):
of service do you bring it back around to service?
And I think what I'm also hearing is that there's this
search for mission and purpose and community, you know, on the
other side. And we talked about all these
pathways, whether it's inside Phillips or inside the the
nonprofit. You know, how do you how do you
find yourself? You know, again, how do you

(46:39):
assign yourself that that new mission?
Yeah, you got to provide for your family.
But sometimes, you know, that doesn't really fit the bill when
in the most formidable years of our life, we were defending
freedom in our country, in our homeland and our, our families.
And you give that mission to somebody in their 20s.
And then you say, all right, nowgo work and, you know, medical

(47:03):
tech and be normal and go work in a cubicle.
And you had to be there at 9 andcheck out at 5.
And your first boss is going to be a 26 year old, you know, MBA
and they're going to take you through the warehouse and tell
you about leadership in the warehouse.
And you have to bite your lip and bite your tongue because
you're saying to yourself, you know, I, I had a different
leadership training, but how do I, you know, convey that to you?

(47:26):
I think the other thing that I really hear from you is also
this suffering that happens. And it certainly happens within
the military. There's different variations of
it. If you don't like the word
suffering, you can say strugglesor you can say challenges.
But I think suffering is a part of the human experience.
And I think societally, you know, we shun away from

(47:48):
suffering and go towards, you know, convenience.
However, there's a suffering that happens out on the
mountain. There's a transformation, you
know, that happens. There's a refinement and a
purification and going into yournext and best form.
So I think it's also what we're also talking about is shifting
the perspective from suffering as something to avoid, as some
suffering that is something thathappens to us in our journey of

(48:10):
life. And it's not the life sentence.
It's just an agent that's helping us become that next
version of ourselves. And oftentimes, as you were
saying, those doors that are closing along the way, you those
doors can be the thing that completely overcomes you, or you
can realize that that door beingclosed with just so that it

(48:31):
could Orient you to the map and the route that you were always
supposed to follow. I think that's one of the
benefits of being a little bit older that I hear in your story
is, you know, you're able to look back and make sense of all
that, you know, aggregating together, right?
So we're so we're so grateful for the, the path that you're
on, the service that you're doing, you know how you're
showing up and leading in serving and above all this

(48:54):
storytelling that you're out there doing.
We need more of you. We need more like you being able
to do it. And, and also, Brandon, you do
it quite well. What we're we're going to have
your social media handles in theshow notes.
We're going to ask the alphas toconnect with you and follow the
channels. Stay tuned for the updates on

(49:14):
your book. That's, that's hopefully coming
out in, in the near future. Is there anything before we kind
of close here today, Brandon, that you'd want to share with
our Alphas that we haven't touched on briefly?
No, it doesn't have to. Well, I think I want to end it
on maybe a lighter note because the, you know, time constraints
always kind of leave you in a mid thought.

(49:35):
I think. I think there's, there's hope,
there's strength, there's growth, there's opportunity.
Connect with people like medtechvets, connect with people like
the American Legion. Our our Legion president here at
70 Post 74 here in Central Arkansas is now the state
president. He's a he's a go getter.
He's someone who leads the way. And find people who will get

(49:57):
you. Don't surround yourself with
people who just want to hear youand kind of keep you where you
are. There's nothing wrong with that.
We all need a support system. Surround yourself with people
who are positive. Surround yourself with people
who are growing. Surround yourself with people
who will help give you opportunity.
In fact, that's how I got where where I'm talking to you today
is because I have incredible people in my circle.

(50:19):
Your circle will make or break your career post military.
And, and I'll tell you what, it's a crap load of fun when you
find the right people. And you, you are my people.
Well said. Well said.
All right, Alphas, His name is Brandon Furtick.
He's an Air Force veteran, and you should connect with him on
LinkedIn. We really.
Appreciate, especially if you'rea publisher.

(50:39):
Especially if you're a. Publisher.
We really. Appreciate.
Yeah, we've, we've appreciated the time you spent with us,
Brandon. Thank you.
Thank you for your service, brother.
All right, Alphas, stick around for some scuttlebutt after the
break. Hi.
I'm Pam Ray, national president of the American Legion on
Sillery. The American Legion Auxiliary is
thrilled to be part of the American Legion Family USA 250

(51:01):
Challenge. The challenge is a special way
to honor our nation's 250th birthday.
Participants can choose 1-2 or all three categories, but the
one that means the most to me iscommunity service because that's
our primary focus in the American Legion Auxiliary.
We put service first as a way tohonor the generations of
veterans who came before us to protect our freedoms.

(51:23):
There are many ways to achieve the community service goal.
A unit could serve 250 meals to hubless veterans, prepare 250
care packages for deployed troops, or create 250 quilts for
veterans in VA hospitals. There are so many ways you can
participate, but the best way isto do it alongside your Legion
family. Visit legion.org/USA 2:50 to get

(51:46):
started. All right, Alphas, we hope you
had a suspiciously great break. Now it is time for some
scuttlebutt. What you got for is Miss Stacy
Pearsall. Well, I'm going to actually pass
the buck right on to Adam. Yeah, I'll take that torch,
because for years, the nature and origins of Gulf War Illness,

(52:12):
a medical issue affecting as many as 1/3 of the nearly
700,000 U.S. troops who deployedas part of the first Gulf War,
were not fully understood. But over time, the demand for
treatment and recognition of theproblem grew, as it often does.
Studies consistently indicate that GWI is strongly linked to

(52:34):
chemical exposure during the Gulf War and is associated with
multiple objective abnormalities, including
structural brain changes, mitochondrial dysfunction,
inflammation, and immune system changes.
It's defined by a profile of symptoms consistently identified
across Gulf War veteran populations that include

(52:57):
persistent fatigue, cognitive difficulties, chronic pain,
respiratory issues, skin problems, and gastrointestinal
distress. Now, Gulf War veterans have
additional resources to get diagnosed and receive treatment.
Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
formally established a specific diagnostic code for Gulf War

(53:19):
Illness Move, giving long overdue validation for veterans
affected by the condition. The CDC designation, which took
effect in October 2025, represents a significant step
toward enhancing diagnosis, standardizing care, and
advancing research for Gulf War syndrome.
The Gulf War Illness diagnostic code, in case you're wondering,

(53:42):
T 75.830 Gulf War illness is included in the International
Classification of Diseases 10th Revision Clinical Modification.
So that's the ICD 10 CM, which is the system used by healthcare
providers across the United States to classify diagnosis and
recommended procedures. And, and what that means in in

(54:05):
common language is if you don't have a code to go in there, then
doctors within the system and standard of care cannot put that
in. They cannot treat it.
They cannot attach it to any kind of insurer or payer,
thereby, you know, making it something that's not treatable.
So it's a big deal. In the past, the lack of
specific codes have been a barrier for veterans, forcing

(54:28):
medical evaluations to document Gulf War Syndrome symptoms under
broader, less descriptive categories.
This created difficulties in tracking the problem and created
barriers for veterans seeking benefits and recognition for
their service connected health problems.
So to receive a diagnosis under Gulf War Illness Code, a veteran
must meet several specific requirements.

(54:49):
First, the individual must have deployed to the Gulf War Theater
between August 1st, 1990 and July 31st, 1991.
A veteran must. Second, a veteran must
experience chronic symptoms lasting for six months or longer
that began either during or after the deployment.
And the veteran must exhibit symptoms in at least three of
the six areas. Fatigue and sleep problems,

(55:12):
Pain, neurological, cognitive and mood disorders that could be
like dizziness, balance issues, depression or anxiety,
Gastrointestinal, gastrointestinal issues like
chronic diarrhea, nausea, irritable bowel syndrome,
respiratory problems and dermatologic issues.
Right. So issues referring to the skin.

(55:32):
For symptoms to be considered for the diagnosis, they must be
at least moderate severity or the veteran must experience
multiple distinct systems. And look, there's some more, you
know, kind of on about this and the diagnostic codes and and
what's happening here. But this, you know, I just came
back from the burn pits 360 Galaand that they had in Texas.

(55:56):
It was really cool to kind of hear the story of that
organization really just coming about in the last maybe 5 or 6
years and what they did through the veterans of the second Gulf
War, what they were experiencingfrom the toxic and chemical
exposure and the challenges being faced.
A lot of what we just talked about, you know, here

(56:16):
specifically for the the first Gulf War and the PACT Act.
So it doesn't say here that the PACT Act is directly tied to
that, but I'm wondering if that helped kind of push forward
these designations for the Gulf War Syndrome.
I'm so curious about that because if it if it was relevant

(56:36):
for them all the way back in 1991, Why is that?
What what what were they doing different that makes this not
relevant for? Why doesn't this apply to anyone
from 2003 On? What what What specifically do
they believe was the cause of this Gulf War?
The GWI? The Gulf War?

(56:58):
Illness that doesn't apply to people who served 10 years later
15. Years later.
So you're you're you're Joe, what you're trying to say is
that you thought it was a regional thing.
So why? Why?
What was impacting them then notimpacting people 20-30 years
later? Yeah, I think it was some of the
chemicals that were being used at the time were being

(57:19):
associated with the link. Oh.
Yeah. OK.
So like the bug spray and stuff like that, I I'd heard I had
read something about that. I haven't read up on GWI.
That's why I don't know the difference between what what
they were dealing with versus like the.
Pack Yeah. And I don't, I don't know what
the burn pit situation was like in the first, you know, Gulf
War. You know I've learned about it

(57:39):
since because of you know it. Smelled like they didn't burn
anything. They had oil, oil burning.
That was a big, a big part of itas well.
I think. I don't know if the pathology
has been linked to one particular chemical or what, or
what so much it was in a compound of of the environment
and the chemicals being used at the time.

(58:00):
But you know, it's a lot like a lot like our generation where
it's sort of erroneous as well. It could be burn pits.
But what was it specifically in the burn pits or was it
collective? Was a country based?
Yeah. Yeah, I I think to me is like
listening to all the burn pit 360 stories and former VA
Secretary Shulkin and some of the Congress members there and
Jon Stewart was there, you know,kind of talking about it.

(58:22):
Everything is reactive. Like on the other side of it's
almost like there's and it has to come through the terrible
stories of the challenges faced within the veteran community.
And then it's like retroactivelywe're going to, you know, try
and kind of connect the dots, you know, do the science and OK,
yeah, that makes sense. It's it's just seemingly so

(58:44):
backwards, you know to me that you.
Know how many lives have to be ruined before the government
acknowledges something like this?
Too many. 1 is too many. 1 is too many.
But let's just recognize this iswhat it is.
It's a good news story. It is good news.
It's acknowledging for those 700,000 and there's pathways

(59:05):
here. So one thing I'll say before,
you know, turn it over to you, Stacy, this diagnostic code may
streamline the process for veterans filing disability
claims with the VA, right? So that's a big one to be able
to, to get what you've earned, you know, because of this, to
help get the support you need going forward.
And the VA has its own regulations for service

(59:25):
connected conditions. A formal diagnosis provides
strong medical evidence that cansupport the veterans claim right
for Gulf War illness. And that's pretty much, Yeah,
you know, the, the, the, all thesupporting evidence, you know,
that you need to show, you know what you have.
But now that that code's there, that process is going to be

(59:46):
easier. So since the announcement by the
CDC, Stars and Stripes has reported that Ronald Brown, a
toxic wounds consultant with Vietnam Veterans of America, has
launched a mission to push VA toprovide disability payments for
coverage of GWI. So perfect.
More work to be done, but progress for sure.
Nice The remains of Medal of Honor recipient U.S.

(01:00:10):
Army Captain Willibald Bianchi have been identified.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced this recently.
Bianchi was killed on January 9th, 1945 after US Naval
aircraft, unaware that there were prisoners on board, scored
a direct hit on the Japanese transport ship, dubbed Health
Ships by the American P and WS and now Our Morrow in Tokawa

(01:00:35):
Harbor. An estimated 431 unknowns were
killed in the sinking, accordingto Hexat.
During one of the most harrowingchapters of World War 2,
Willabald Bianchi demonstrated remarkable bravery, valor and
selflessness, National Medal of Honor Museum President and CEO
Chris Cassidy said in a press release 80 years after he was

(01:00:56):
killed. We are grateful for the work of
the Defense POW and Mia Accounting Agency to account for
Captain Bianchi and finally bring him home.
By the way, we did an episode with them.
We're going to put that link back in our show notes if you
want to listen to it. It's pretty extraordinary what
they're doing, that group anyway.
At the National Medal of Honor Museum, Bianchi's legacy of

(01:01:16):
service and sacrifice will be preserved and shared for
generations to come. Sent to the Philippines in April
41 to serve with the 45th Infantry, the Philippine Scouts,
the Minnesota native was among the very first Americans to see
combat in World War 2. On December 7th, 41, the
Japanese swept the Philippines where, retreating into the

(01:01:37):
jungle, Bianchi and his comradescontinued their fight against
Japanese horses despite A rapidly dwindling supply of
food, medicine and ammunition. Cornered on the island, Bianchi
nonetheless volunteered to lead the attack to wipe out the enemy
machine gun nests in Too Old River Pocket on West Baton on

(01:01:58):
February 3rd, 1942. Just to clear, this is 2 months
of running. Sounds like it, yes.
OK, Holy cow. All right.
I just wanted to clarify that everywhere.
Yeah. Yeah.
Summer, January, February. Yeah.
Wow. According to Department of
Defense, Bianchi was shot twice through the left arm or, excuse

(01:02:19):
me, the left hand. But he refused to stop for aid,
tossing his rifle aside and and shooting from his pistol
instead. As he rushed toward the Japanese
machine gun nest, Bianchi silenced it by tossing grenades.
The danger was not over. Bianchi was shot twice more in
the chest, but the in. Indefatigable.

(01:02:43):
Gosh, that's quite a word. That's a good one.
Soldiers refused to stop clambering aboard the US tank.
Bianchi took command of an anti tank aircraft machine gun and
blasted the second enemy machinegun position.
He was shot in the chest guys twice and he was doing this.
He was subsequently shot again and knocked off the tank.
It was only then that Bianchi came to arrest the soldier.

(01:03:06):
Took just one month to recuperate.
My God, what a Marine before rejoining his men.
Wait, was he army? Was he Army or Marines?
This is Army I think. Was he?
Yeah, okay, Probably the only reason they're still doing
stuff. Okay so anyway, on April 1942

(01:03:27):
with no choice but to recoup or or capitulate, excuse me
Bianchi, alongside some of the 9700 Americans and their 66,300
and Filipino allies surrendered to the Japanese.
Yikes, that had to be scary. The already weakened or sick
Allied soldiers were forced to trek 60 plus miles with little
food or water, and during what was later termed the Baton Death

(01:03:50):
March, the Japanese executed anyone who broke formation and
couldn't keep up and casually butchered others.
According to historian Peter Duffy, men were left where they
fell, sometimes to be run over by Japanese vehicles.
During breaks, most prisoners were forced to sit in the hot
sun. The best estimates, Duffy

(01:04:10):
continued, suggested that approximately 500 Americans and
2500 Filipinos died during the March.
Despite these horrific conditions, Bianchi endured,
with many soldiers crediting himwith moving through the ranks of
desperate men trying to lift their spirits and to get them to
walk on. By the way, Shot twice in the
hand, shot twice in the chest. For the duration of the war,

(01:04:32):
Bianchi survived several harrowing POW camps.
At each, according to the Minnesota Medal of Honor
website, he took his role as caretaker seriously, bartering
with the Japanese for food for his starving soldiers.
Many servicemen wrote to Bianchi's mother following the
war, telling her that they owed their lives to her son.
Gosh, that's moving. Bianchi was transferred from the

(01:04:53):
Bilibid Prison in Luzon to the Japanese transport ship Orioku
Moreau. Am I saying that Oriaku Meru
Meru in December 1944, where it was sunk by American aircraft
mere days later? Gosh, that kills me.
But how could you know? You wouldn't know, would you?
Bianchi survived this. Oh my gosh.

(01:05:16):
Bianchi survived this that sinking before being fatally
transferred to the Inoro Meru, where he, alongside an estimated
300 period WS, was inadvertentlykilled.
Oh my. Gosh.
It's crazy. This soldier was proximately
awarded the Medal of Honor by General Douglas MacArthur in in
45 for his conspicuous gallantryand intrepidity.

(01:05:40):
Man, I'm struggling with words today and beyond the Call of
Duty for his actions back in thePhilippines and today.
His remains have been identifiedas part of the DPAA's Inuromaru
project, which aims to identify the remains of over 9928PO WS
killed aboard the ships Eruku Maru and Noro Maru and Brazil

(01:06:01):
Maru. Now Bianchi's name, engraved in
stone and overlaid it with gold on the walls of the missing at
the Manila American Cemetery, has a bronze rosette next to it,
signifying that at long last, Captain has been found.
With a name. I've never heard anybody with a
first name or last name like that, which means that that name
has been retired. The ultimate man has been born

(01:06:25):
and that's it. No one can ever use that name
again unless you're in his family.
Pretty incredible, Joe, what do you got?
I have got a story about Major Corey Watkins who didn't expect
a trip to the post exchange for a meal to end with one of the
rarest treasures in the world ofStar Wars trading cards.
AUS Army Reserve Behavioral Health officer stationed at Fort

(01:06:46):
Fort Hood, TX, was on his drill weekend in Fort Sill, OK, this
month when he stopped by the GameStop inside the exchange.
Oh, that that old, that old, that old stop.
We've all done that one. On a shelf.
Pushed in the corner, he noticedthe store's last box of Star
Wars cards. Down in the corner was a dented
blaster of 2025 tops Chrome StarWars, he wrote Sunday in a

(01:07:07):
Facebook post on the Star Wars Card Collector group.
Someone clearly decided to kick it in the corner instead of
picking it up, so he bought the box, set it aside after his
meal. How do you not just start
opening those anyway? Cuz you're not.
When you're not an Uber nerd, food matters.
I'm just a nerd so, and even I'mtempted.
But when he finally opened the pack, the entire exchange heard

(01:07:28):
his reaction. Inside was the one of one Luke
Skywalker card autographed by Mark Hamill, who played the
character in seven Star Wars films.
That's bananas. Such cards are BANANAS.
Such cards are highly coveted bycollectors and can sell for
hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
In 1977, tops, Luke Skywalker Trading Card held the previous

(01:07:49):
record for the highest sale price of any Star Wars card
after it sold for 78 grand. That record was broken August
5th. But you talk about Uber nerds,
you know, back in the day though, like now Uber nerds have
money like that's, that's they're doing it, dude.
In the back of my mind, when somebody comes into a flush of
cash like this, they're like, I'm quitting my job but this guy
can't because he's in the military.

(01:08:10):
But anyway, boom. You put in his two week notice.
They're like denied. I'm gonna buy more Quid cards.
Maybe it'll happen again. Yeah, you go ahead, you let me
know because on August 5th, a one O 121 Star Wars Galaxy Super
Factor card sold for 100 grand, according to a TOPS Instagram
post. So you get to beat that.
TOPS confirmed the rarity of Watkins card on his social media

(01:08:32):
accounts, amplifying his story. I bet the person who's like,
there's one of these and no one knows where it is.
I wonder how many of those have been thrown away by accident,
you know? But discovery carries an added
resonance. Hamel is the son of a Navy
exchange officer and graduated in 1969 from Nile C Kennick High
School, which moved in 1971 fromYokohama to Yokosuka Naval Base,

(01:08:55):
Japan. As a teenager, he performed in
school plays at Kinnock years before returning to visit as a
Hollywood star during the Japanese release of the first
Star Wars film. Wow, we.
Got links for that because? We're cool, that's what we do.
There was a card that sold for 78,000 that was in 1997 but he
didn't sell his. This isn't he isn't sold it yet.

(01:09:17):
So what is it worth? Is it worth like a million or is
it? I don't know.
What do you do? Count inflation?
I'm thinking like 150 K probably.
It's a one of one from. The if a Galaxy Super Fractor
sold in 1921 card sold for 100 grand, a AA1 of 1 Luke.
Well, what is a galley foil? Super fractor.

(01:09:41):
It's got hologram notes on it. OK.
So it's like but so that's like a more recent one, but this is
like a night. Is this a 19?
Is this a 25? A dented blaster of 2020.
What is a dented blaster? I don't know.
OK. All right.
So we got a good. Card.
I don't know, I just need one. Good find at the local GameStop.

(01:10:05):
Always stop by your local on base GameStop.
You never know what you're goingto find.
That's the moral of this story, boys.
That's right, you never do. You never know what you're going
to find. Just like tuning in to the Tal,
you never know what you're goingto find alpha.
So we thank you for listening. And a reminder that we're now
hosted on Spotify. If you follow us on Spotify, you

(01:10:26):
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(01:10:47):
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Laters.