A Soldier’s Road: From Istanbul To Afghanistan (Louis Goldstein)

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_02 (01:00):
Today is Monday, October 20th, 2025.
We're talking with LewisGoldstein, who serves the United
States Army.
Currently serving.
Correct.
All right.
Well, thanks for meeting me herethis afternoon.
Yeah, absolutely.
My pleasure.
All right, we'll dive right inwith the toughest question
first.
When and where were you born?

SPEAKER_01 (01:13):
So I was born in St.
Louis Park, June 28th.
My parents got to pick the datebecause I'm born at midnight.
So half of me is June 28th, theother half of me is June 29th.
My dad got to VS the questionwhich day, and so they chose the
28th simply because that was theday my mom was in labor.
The joke always has been it'sshorted her a day in the
hospital because they consideredthat a full day of labor.

(01:35):
It's always been instead ofgetting her a full three days,
she got a my dad shorted her aday out of accident.
Uh-huh.
Now, did you grow up in the sametown?
No, so at the time my familylived in New Brighton, which is
a suburb of Minneapolis.
Um so we lived in New Brighton.
Uh, we were there until I was inkindergarten.
And then uh by that time, we myparents had had my brother.

(01:55):
Um, so we moved out toHutchinson, Minnesota, because
my dad and his dad, my grandpa,had owned a beer distributing
business.
So he my dad got an opportunityto work with his dad uh in a
town called Glencoe.
And then so we lived inHutchinson, he worked in
Glencoe, but my dad was alwaysthe beer guy, so that's why we
moved out to Hutchinson.
Really, did that make youpopular later in life?

(02:17):
It it was kind of a curse.
It was a I don't want to say acurse.
It was a blessing and a curse.
I got really cool summerexperiences because in the
summer when I wasn't doingsports, my summer jobs were
helping my dad deliver kegs andbeers to the local bar, and I
got to meet all the people, andI got to meet everybody, I got
to meet the old vets, and I gotto talk to the old, you know,
townies and stuff like that.
Um much later in life, Irealized like, oh, that was the

(02:39):
day drinkers.
I grew up with a wide variety,but I loved the job and it was a
lot of fun.
Um, it was kind of a catch-22 inthe sense of like my dad was
always very worried about like,you know, he didn't want to have
his kids be the drinkers or beproviding like he was worried
about his job and some of theperceptions of that.
Right.
So it was kind of one of thosethings where it didn't, it was
great to be the beer man's kidbecause everybody knew my dad,

(03:02):
knew my grandpa, we all kneweverybody, but it was also kind
of stunky because I always hadto make sure that it wasn't me
providing anything on thegrounds of I didn't want to get
my dad in trouble or get thebusiness in trouble and stuff
like that.
And I wanted to play sports, andand that time it was you got
caught with alcohol, it was animmediate two-week suspension.
I was like, I don't want to misssports, so I I didn't do it.
Yeah, yeah.

(03:22):
So you just had one brotherthen?
So I had a brother and a sister.
So my brother is born, we'realmost Irish twins.
He's born in September of 86,I'm born in June of 85, so we're
pretty close.
Yeah.
Uh we grew up essentially almosttwins for a long time, except
for then at one point hesprouted past me.
He's like 6'2, and we couldn'tbe more opposite career path

(03:44):
than life type of a thing.
Uh-huh.
But we're really good friends.
And then my sister, who's sixyears younger than me, was born
once we moved out to Hutchinson.
Okay.
So you're the I'm the oldest.
Oldest of three.

SPEAKER_02 (03:54):
Gotcha.
So you you're a take charge kindof guy anyway.
Yeah, it was kind of how it fellapart for me.
Yeah, yeah, I got you.
It's funny, my my young myyounger brother uh was so
different from my sister and I.
We always claimed that he waslike the mailman's kid.

SPEAKER_01 (04:06):
Okay, we we joke all the time with my sister that,
you know, she was somethingdifferent from us.
Um, we always used to tell herthat, like, you know, well, my
mom and dad had another kid, butthat one died.
So this was you.
We would do stuff like that.
We were ruthless.
Well, yeah, you have to be.
It was two brothers.
I mean, we had a we didn't andwe were so close, like we were
basically each other's bestfriend for a long time.
Uh-huh.
And what so what was it likegrowing up like that then?

(04:27):
It was cool.
Um, I mean, his stuff was green,my stuff was blue.
That was kind of how we keptourselves apart for a long time.
Um, but we played sportstogether for a long time.
Uh, there was about a point kindof like towards middle school
where we kind of drifted offinto different things that we
interest.
Um, my parents were always coolwith like, you know, supporting
us in the things that we wantedto do.
Like, what is it you want to dotype stuff.

(04:50):
Um and then we went and would godo those things.
So like I did a lot of sports.
My brother did a lot of, he didsports, but then he kind of
drifted off into some otherstuff.
Um, he did a lot of likerobotics, non-robotics, that's
uh my son.
Uh he did he did like a bunch oflike different like project
stuff, project-based things, andgot into some different world.
Uh he did a lot of academicstuff.

(05:11):
So like he went to college earlyand stuff like this, and I
barely passed high school.
So we went down different paths.

SPEAKER_02 (05:18):
Yeah, yeah, I can I I can see.
So um you talk a little bitabout sports.
So uh what what were what werethe sports that you played in
school?

SPEAKER_01 (05:25):
Uh so I always did sports as long as I can
remember.
Um, from you know, pictures ofT-ball as soon as you could
walk.
Uh we're from Minnesota, so assoon as you can walk, you can
skate.
So I've always done hockey, I'vealways done football, I've
always done baseball.
So those are my three mainsports.
But I dabbled in everything.
I mean, I remember being inwrestling, tried wrestling for a
while, I've done all the parkand rec tennis courses.

(05:47):
You know, you name the sport, ifit was offered, we went and did
it kind of a thing.
Yeah.
Um as it as I got older, I Ireally ended up focusing in on
um football.
My town was kind of that's whatwe were known for, was our
football team, and then hockeyand then baseball.
So it went from football in thefall, hockey in the winter,
baseball in the spring and thesummer, and then rinse and

(06:07):
repeat and keep going.
So there was no time to not beable to do that.
No, there was no break.
You were always doing one of thethree, or something in between.
So um, but that was the bigones.
And then in high school, I Ilettered in all three of them.
Okay.
So that was kind of fun.

SPEAKER_02 (06:20):
Yeah.
So you barely but you barelymade it through high school, but
you made it through high school.

SPEAKER_01 (06:24):
Made it through.
So the joke, so my wife actuallyand I are married from high
school, so we're high schoolsweetheart.
So she's No way.
Oh, yeah.
That's awesome.
So that's another story.
But they um, so my thing was inhigh school, so I kind of had a
weird high school experience inthe sense of I went to high
school my freshman year.
My sophomore year, I took astudy abroad program, and I went
and lived in Istanbul, Turkeyfor an entire school year, and

(06:47):
that was September of 20 of2001.
So my 9-11 was spent inIstanbul, Turkey, learning that
experience from thatperspective.
So I missed my entire sophomoreyear with all my friends, and
I'd been in K through 12 witheverybody, and then came up,
came back, did my junior senioryear at high school.

(07:08):
And when I say I graduate, whenI barely quote barely survived,
is there was 232 or so in myclass, and I'm very much tenth
from the bottom in terms of GPAoverall.
And my report cut it eitheryou're an A because I liked you
as an instructor, or I likedyour class, or it's a D or
straight F.
Um, the joke, my wife alwaystalks about it, and I joke

(07:30):
because my friends know what is.
I have the distinction offailing fourth, fifth, sixth,
seventh, and eighth grade artand never taking another art
class again.
And I've never passed an artclass in ever.

SPEAKER_02 (07:44):
So suffice to say, you're not gonna take art
classes when you do it.

SPEAKER_01 (07:47):
Art and me did not get along at all.

SPEAKER_02 (07:50):
I gotta say this the first, I've never heard of
anyone failing art class.

SPEAKER_01 (07:54):
You fail art by simply not doing it.
That was I was just a stubbornSOP, is what I was.

SPEAKER_02 (08:00):
Yeah, I got you.
I got you.
So I want to back up a littlebit though.
So uh Istanbul, Turkey.
Yes.
Uh on 911.
Yes.
And I and I have to think therewere probably some people there
that were kind of celebratingthat.

SPEAKER_01 (08:13):
Not so much where I was at.
So I was in the metropolitanthat is Istanbul.
So Istanbul is right on theBosphorus.
I was on the European side, um,and I had a lot of friends on
the Asian side as the yearprogressed.
But when I had just gottenthere, I had just met my family.
I didn't know Turkish.
Um, the whole reason I ended upin Turkey was because my grades
weren't good enough to go toGermany.

(08:35):
So they said you could go tothese programs, and my options
were Russia, Turkey, uh,Thailand, or anywhere in South
America, and I chose Turkeybecause I was interested in the
Ottoman Empire at that point intime.
So I was very interested in thathistory.
That's how I ended up in Turkeybecause that's what I chose.
But what I experienced was atthat time, um, this was before
Erdogan, Erdogan hadn't won hisfirst election yet.

(08:58):
But the uh the people that I metwere very like this is not
represent the Muslim religion,this is not us, this is these
are radicals that we even wedetest and denounce, we want
nothing to do with these people.
We love America.
Uh make sure Mr.
Bush doesn't nuke us withsomething that people would tell
me all the time.
Um they wanted it known to meonce I disvolged that I was

(09:21):
American that they didn't standfor that, that they didn't agree
with it, that that was aperversion of their religion in
a sense.
So I never, in the year I wasthere, I never really
experienced any disdain towardsme as an American or disdain at
that time.
But what was interesting at thattime was from September to about

(09:43):
November, a little bit intoDecember, it was still front
page news in Turkey.
By about that after Thanksgivingfor my calendar, which they
don't have Thanksgiving, it'sjust my calendar internally, was
that 9-11 was just a thing thathad happened.
Like it was it was back pagenews, it wasn't front page

(10:03):
anymore, it it wasn't the topicof conversation.
So actually, when I came backlater that year in twenty two in
June, I got hit with it like itis was still had happened
yesterday, because that's howour country was dealing with it.
So I had a weird, you know,cultural experience coming back
to the United States and beinglike, oh, 9-11 actually is still
a thing.
Like it was a obviously I gotused to it, but it was a very

(10:25):
weird connection type of a thingbecause I didn't really talk
about it much when I lived inTurkey because it wasn't the
topic we talked about.

SPEAKER_03 (10:31):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (10:32):
But it was cool, it was a great year.
I had a lot of fun that year.
Learned a lot of things.
It's really interesting,especially Turkey.
You don't hear a lot of peopletalk about Turkey.
And that was one of the reasonsI was uh at that time I had an
interest in learning Turkish forthe sense of I thought I was
gonna pursue the learning thatas a language.
I was fluent, I've lost it now,I haven't spoken it in years.

SPEAKER_03 (10:54):
Right.

SPEAKER_01 (10:54):
But I also knew it was an you know it's a country
that neighbors Iraq, and I knewthat Iraq was gonna be a country
that we had an interest in.
We said watched the first DesertStorm and Shield the first time,
and we knew that we still had apolitical interest there, so
learning Turkish was something Ithought I could bring to the
army, but I ultimately didn't dothat.
Right.
Um, but it was a thought processat the time.

SPEAKER_02 (11:13):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
So I I wanted to ask you, youmentioned like just briefly that
you had like an interest in theOttoman Empire.
Uh like have you had an interestlike in military history since a
young age or Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (11:26):
No, it's kind of been uh I had a lot of friends
in high school, you know, in mytown where I grew up.
We talked military stuff, likemilitary history was kind of
like something we talked aboutrandomly all the time.
Um, I've always been fascinatedby the history of different
empires and how history is justhistory in general has always
been an interest to me.
Um if I think back to thatparticular time, I was I'd been

(11:49):
going from the Romans to theByzantines to you know the the
Ottomans and then the Ottomancrash after the first world war
and some of that history stuffwas of interest to me.

SPEAKER_03 (11:59):
Right.

SPEAKER_01 (11:59):
Um city of Istanbul, Constantinople, and I got to see
a lot of stuff.
Like I went to Tokappa Palace, Iwent to see Hagia Sophia and got
to see it.
Uh went to the Grand Bazaar, I'ddonned the Galatessarai Tower,
I'd seen the Bosphorus Strait,I've seen the Galatesserai
trait, I've seen, you know, gotto walk the same place that the
Crusaders walked.
I mean, I got to see all thathistory, so that was really
cool.

(12:20):
Yeah.
And I got to see that when I was16 and got to live there for a
year.
So that was interesting.

SPEAKER_02 (12:25):
Now, is it true that was a the that was a larger
empire than the Roman Empire atone time?

SPEAKER_01 (12:30):
So by the time the the Byzantines were at their
height, they were, if not aslarge, because they claimed the
western half for a while.
Yeah.
Um, but they were in their ownsense.
And then the Ottomans, when theybecame the Ottomans, they were
actually a bigger empire in thesense of the Roman Empire.
So they were larger in terms ofsheer ground that they covered
or claimed to cover.

SPEAKER_02 (12:50):
Well, it's interesting you bring up
Constantinople too, because mywife is Greek.
Okay.

SPEAKER_01 (12:54):
And uh you want to start a conversation in Turkey,
just bring up now.
It's weird though, becausethey'll talk it, they get
passionate about it, but whenyou talk to the people, I never
got the sense of like they theycared.
Like they cared, but they theydidn't like they were like,
whatever, they're Greek, whocares?
But the governments, man, youtalk to the governments, and

(13:16):
there's a history that cannot bedisentwined because that history
is yesterday's history, even ifit's two, three hundred years
ago.
That is yesterday's history forthose two.
Yes, and for the Greek people aswell.
Oh, but understandably when youlook at some of the stuff that's
going on, but even for theTurkish people, when you look
at, you know, their war ofindependence with Auditurk and
stuff like that, and how theGreeks occupied, and then even

(13:38):
the the peace treaty after theyou know, all the islands that
are right there in the gene.
Like the but you've got historythat goes back in that area how
many different empires, how manydifferent governments or
societies have quote claimed itor left their mark in some way,
shape, or form.
So it's a very interestinghistorical place.

SPEAKER_02 (13:56):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (13:56):
Fascinating.
Oh, yeah.
Actually, when you look at thehow how far back the history
goes.
Yeah.
When you start going, you can'tthrow a stone and not hit
something where somebody, youknow, 2,000 years ago, 4,000
years ago could have walked on,or you know, if you go out on
the glipley or you go to buyTroy was.
I mean, I got to go down toIzmir and see some of that
stuff, and that was you know,and then you go to the Black
Sea, and then you want to talkabout the Rush, the Crimean War

(14:19):
and the Russians and all thatstuff.
You can you can go down thatrabbit hole for for days with
them.

SPEAKER_02 (14:24):
Oh yeah, it's all right there.

SPEAKER_01 (14:25):
And it's all living history to them.
Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 (14:27):
So it it's kind of crazy.
So in high school, then, wereyou the potential kid?
Like, you know, I say that inthe nicest way possible.
Like your guidance counselorwould be like, oh, Lewis has
great potential.

SPEAKER_01 (14:39):
He could do whatever he wants, he just doesn't do
what he doesn't doesn't do whathe's supposed to.
Yeah, no, that was that was acommon theme.
Yeah.
Um, I was like I had said, youknow, now I would look back and
be like, oh, that's probablyADHD, probably some of that.
Because I I really just lookedat it as like, if I liked your
topic, I was in.
So that would be like wood shopclass, you know, any of the gym

(15:02):
classes.
You know, different teacherswould incite me about different
ways that they taught or how Iconnected with their teaching
method.
So it could be English onesemester, but then the next
semester I hated the Englishteacher, so I didn't care about
English.
But the semester before, Icared.
Like it was kind of a weirddynamic, so my grades were kind
of all over the place.
But yeah, guidance counselorwould always that would be a

(15:22):
common theme.

SPEAKER_00 (15:22):
They'd be like, Yeah, he could do it if he just
applied himself.

SPEAKER_01 (15:27):
If he would just do it.
But I especially confused myguidance counselors because you
know, I did the foreign exchangestudent thing, I did that as a
sophomore, like I'd done allthese weird things, you know,
and the small town that I livedin, I mean Hutchinson, Minnesota
at the time was just barely over10,000.
Now it's like 15,000.

SPEAKER_03 (15:42):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (15:42):
But you didn't do that a lot, you didn't do a lot
of that stuff.
And then I was the one who did,and then I was still there for
two years, but I came back inJune of 02 and I joined the army
in November of 02.
So I was only home for a coupleof months before I joined the
Army.
Yeah, so let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_02 (15:59):
So you uh did you join like on a split option?

SPEAKER_01 (16:02):
Yeah, so I was a little split option.
So my whole thing was I'd alwaysknown I was gonna join the army.
Like that was kind of somethingI kind of had decided.
I just didn't know when.
Yeah, I just didn't know when orhow, but I had always kind of I
can't recall a specific time orage when I like definitively
decided like I'm joining thearmy, other than when I came
back.
So I've well, I should whenrephrase that.

(16:24):
9-11 solidified that I was gonnajoin the army in some way,
shape, or form.
Like that was done.
Like I knew that was gonnahappen.
I just had to get back andfigure out how to do it, and I
didn't know what to do.
But you didn't come from amilitary family.
So my the first, I was the firstin a generation.
My grandma was a whack, mygrandpa had been in the World
War II generation, my dad's dadhad done the National Guard

(16:47):
thing, um, hadn't deployed, buthad been in the National Guard.
He was all he didn't really talka lot about his military
service, but his was more likeNebraska National Guard in the
60s, 70s, where it was more likethe Good Old Boys Club thing.
Like, yeah, he did it.
No one's gonna take away thatservice, but it was more of
like, I'm in the National Guardbecause I I'm in the National
Guard and I don't have to do theother side of the army type of a

(17:07):
thing.
So that was more of how I that'salways been explained to me.
And he never really before hepassed, my grandpa never really
spoke to me.
Even after I joined, he wasalive for a few more years after
that, but he never really spoketo me about his service.
But I just it was always justyou know 50s, 60s, 70s National
Guard life, which was differentthan the guard now.
And then my grandma was a whack,my grandpa who passed away when

(17:29):
my mom was 11, I never met.
Um, he'd been in the specifictheater, PSC, you know,
conscript, in and out type of athing.
So there was, besides me, therewas no one else in my family who
had a military connection of anykind.
The closest my dad came, he hada conversation with the Marine
Recruiter in the early 80s.
When the Marine, he tells thestory is the Marine Recruiter
asked it, What do you want forthe Marines?

(17:51):
He goes, an education.
And the guy said he closed uphis book, paid for his lunch,
and just walked out the door.
I was like, all right.
So that's why so when I joined,it was one of those things.
I knew I was gonna do it, justdidn't know when.
Um, and because I didn't reallyhave a track on what I went,
like college wasn't what I wasthinking about.
I wasn't gonna do any of that.
I was like, I'm just gonna dothe army.
Army's easy.
I can do this, I can do that.
So when I came back, I showed upto school one day.

(18:14):
In the very first like twoweeks, there used to be the old
block TVs that would be up inthe hallway.
And our school had this, we weredistinct because we had this
quarter mile-long hallway, whichwas just ridiculous.
So I was walking down to one ofmy classes, looked up the
monitor, and said, uh Armytesting ASVAV today, this time,
if you do, you will miss.

(18:35):
We were on a block system, sothere were four blocks.
So I got to miss three of myfour blocks of instruction.
Really broke your heart, huh?
And I was just like, wait, sowhat do I gotta do?
Oh, you gotta take this test,you have to take this test to
get in the army.
And I get to miss three classestoday.
Yes.
Sweet.
Where do I go?
What room is it in?
I walked in, had no clue, thendidn't even know what the ASVAV
was.
Walked in, had a little sheetthat said, Are you interested in

(18:55):
the military?
I was a recruiter's dream.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,yes.
To everything that they wouldwant to know.
Took the test, winged it, noclue what was on that test, just
absolutely just like, sure, B,C, I don't know, whatever the
answer might be, could havecared less, scored well enough,
and then basically they cameover to me and I chuckle now
because my date of enlistment ormy date of joining is November

(19:17):
4th, and the only reason I'm inNovember 4th is because I was
his quota for the month.
I could have easily joined inOctober, but he held me over to
MEPS until I was the first dayavailable in November because
that was the easiest.
If you have ever been a recruit,he played that game.
Oh, he played that gamesplendidly.

(19:38):
Yes.
Like looking back, I'm like,well played.
Well played, my son.
Well played.
But yeah, so that's my so that Iwas that was that quick.
I was like, nope, yep, good.
I was 17.
I had no background, I hadnothing in a background for the
guy to like, I had no criminalrecord.
So I was he always joked withme, he goes, You're my you're
the easiest thing I'll everfucking recruit.
Right.
Went to my parents said, signthis.

(19:59):
My dad's like, sure.
I mean, they'd already just sentme away to Turkey for a year.
It wasn't gonna be a hard sellto sell at 60.
That's hey, at 70, can I jointhe RV?
It wasn't really a hard sell.
Yeah.
They signed the paperwork andthen I did split up.
So I started off drilling thatJanuary and did the drills and
then went to basic, came backfor senior year, and went to
AIT, and then I was in.
So where'd you go to basic?

(20:21):
Uh Fort Levinwood, uh, FortLeonard Wood because I was a
combined engineer I joined as acommon engineer.
Yep.
And I was a knucklehead.
I turned down what I'vecalculated to be somewhere in
the range of like$80,000 to like$60,000 to$80,000.
I was offered a$20,000 signingbonus and like a thousand dollar

(20:41):
kicker to my GI Bill to be acook.
Um I was offered a similar thingto be a truck driver, and then I
was offered some variations ofthat.
So if you had up everything Iwas offered, I turned all of
that down and said, I don't wantany of those jobs.
I don't want to be a cook, Idon't want to be a truck driver,
I don't want any of this.
I said, What else do you got?
And I'll never forget it.
The guy at MEPS, annoyed at mebecause I wasn't giving him what

(21:04):
he wanted, picks up an oldschool three-ring binder, one of
those, like it is the thick,heavy, like big ones.
And he literally goes, Boom,throws it down in front of me
and says, and he points, hegoes, he flips it open, he goes,
You tell me, and I don't, it wasjust a list of different jobs.
And he had flipped it open tocombat engineer, and I read the
combat engineer, demolitions andexplosive experts, clearing of

(21:25):
breaching of obstacles, workingin minefields and the demolition
of mines.
I want that job.
And he looked at me and goes,There's no bonus, there's no
kicker, and I go, that job.
And he goes, There's no bonus,there's no kicker.
And I go, that job.
And he's like, You're an idiot.
Sign here.
Right.
Straight up with theconversation of how I became a
combat engineer.

SPEAKER_02 (21:43):
But Fort Leonardwood, I I spent about
five months there.
Uh decent, but uh but verydifficult to be there.

SPEAKER_01 (21:50):
Yes.
I don't I've grown, FortLeonardwood has grown on me
because it's the home of theengineer.
So I've I've been there in mymilitary career now.
I have spent in probably intotality three years of my life
there.
Yeah.
In one way, shape, or form,between classes or something.
Um it's grown on me.
It is the home of the engineer,it's got history for us.
Um, but it wasn't bad.

(22:12):
I knew.

SPEAKER_02 (22:13):
They still have that little uh German restaurant
outside.
Yes, they do.

SPEAKER_01 (22:16):
Oh my god.
I still go there whenever Ilearn.
So good.
It's like a rite of passage.
You have to go there.
Like it's something you have todo.

SPEAKER_02 (22:23):
There's that place, and then there's the place on
the highway in the mountains.
It's a barbecue place.
Yes.
Oh, I can't remember the name ofit.
You know what I'm talking about,though.

SPEAKER_01 (22:31):
This is just it's it looks like you wouldn't want to
eat there.
Yeah, but it's the best barbecueyou're ever gonna get.
Oh, yeah.
Yep.
And we're not really talkingabout I can like picture it, but
I can't remember the name of it.
Yeah, loved it down there.
Just same with the German place.
I can picture exactly how to getthere, but I can't remember the
name of it right now.

SPEAKER_02 (22:43):
Yeah, my son actually came down to visit me
when I was there, and we went tothe German place.

SPEAKER_01 (22:47):
It's good.

SPEAKER_02 (22:48):
Yeah, yeah, you can put on some pounds.

SPEAKER_01 (22:50):
You can easily do it there.
That's what's so cool aboutLeonardwood, is because
Leonardwood's got the home ofthe MPs, the engineers, the
chem, and then transportation isalso there.
And you get all these people whocome back and they bring all
these places they've seen in themilitary and you bring it back.
And then you get their familiesthat they, you know, you marry a
Korean woman or something likethat, or other places you've
been, and they bring all thatculture back to Leonardwood.

(23:12):
It's kind of weird because it'sin the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere
Missouri, in the middle of theOzark Mountains, and in a place
where like it's the quidessential, like this is some
really crappy terrain.
Army base.
It's the quid essential OzarkMountain.
Nothing should be here, noreason for anyone to be here.
And the army picked it there,and yet it's this weird melting

(23:34):
pot of all these cultures fromall these places that the army's
experiences spider off into.
It's kind of weird place.

SPEAKER_02 (23:40):
It's yeah, but it's a because it is it is it's a
small southern town, is what itis.

SPEAKER_01 (23:44):
It really is, but it doesn't feel that way.
It is not a southern town.
Once you get in, it has thisthere's portions of it that are
old school southern, but so manypeople live off that base.
Like that, you know, St.
James, St.
Roberts, they don't existwithout Fort Leonard Wood.
They just don't.
They in Waynesville, they don't,those three towns, they do not
exist without Leonard Wood beingthere.

SPEAKER_02 (24:05):
So you uh you go to basic and Leonard Wood.
Uh talk me talk me through likeyour what was your first
impression when you got there?
Now I know that a lot of guys gothrough like uh reception for a
few days, which is nothing likeboot camp.
No.
Yeah, so talk talk to me aboutthat.

SPEAKER_01 (24:23):
So going to basic so obviously having played three
sports, I felt like I wasphysically fit to so once I got
there, basically I mean, I foundit kind of feels dumb to say.
I always call basic a milliondollar experience I would never
pay a nickel to do again.
Yeah.
But it was it was great.
I didn't really mind basic.
Like I know I don't have like ahorror story.

(24:45):
I've got fun stories from basic.
I mean, but even in the moment,like I never really found basic
to be like over the top.
It was everything I expected itto be.
People yelling at you for whatthey were doing, follow basic
instructions, heavyencouragement to do everything
you're already doing fast,faster.
And you know, as long as youlistened to what was being told

(25:06):
to you to do, it became prettybaseline.
And then when you got you messedup or stepped out of line, you
were corrected and brought backinto line.
And when you were in line, youwere rewarded for being in line.
It was like basic training to meat the time was pretty a
straightforward thing.
Um was a weird time to be atBasic as you in the history of
you know, I didn't know it then,but looking back now, I mean,

(25:26):
this is early 2000s.
So I was in what was calledHotel Company, which doesn't
exist anymore at Basic.
And it was a we were the one ofthe last, we were the last
company of hotel to go throughbecause we were the end of the
9-11 surge.
So everybody after 9-11 hadjoined.
We were the last of that.
So they had you now when you goto Basic Atlanta, what it's like

(25:47):
it's alpha through Echo, is allthey have.
We had all the way to Hotel, andthere had been in um uh India
before us, and they had alreadydisbanded India, but we were the
last of the hotel, so they'vecontracted all the way back up
to just Echo now.
Yeah.
Um But at the time, like this is2000 and summer of 2003, is when

(26:08):
I went to basic.
So this is we're talking, youknow, this is the end of the era
where they could, the drillstarts just got done where they
couldn't put hands on you.
So that is a couple years innow.
Uh-huh.
They are just transitioning intothe they can't they can swear at
you, but they can't like swearswear at you.
Like they can't degrade youanymore.
They can't call your mom names.

(26:28):
Right.
They can't do that, but they canstill kind of swear at you.
But this is the still in the eraof the the true smoke session.
Like the true on.
I remember going to basic andhaving what we call, you know,
make it rain.
Like they would close up our baywindows and then they would
smoke us until like itcondensation from the ceiling
came back down.
I had a drill start and hisfavorite thing when he was on

(26:49):
CQ.
Again, things I learned laterand could put the piece
together.
He would put CQ, he'd play F CQ,he'd pull up a chair, and he
would put Metallica on.
It was the only music we'd heardin forever.
We didn't care, it was music.
Right, right.
And he would just smoke us toyou know the Metallica Black CD,
and we would just for theduration of that CD, we'd just
do whatever workout he wanted usto do while he listened to music

(27:11):
and we had to do whatever he wastelling us to do until it was
muscle failure.
And I was like, all right,Roger.
So does Metallica still make yousweat?
Oh, I mean I still enjoy it,it's still a lot of fun,
especially my deployment.
We play Metallica all the time.
Yeah.
So it wasn't that bad.
Again, I think I was finebecause I was in shape from
sports, so some I wasn't one ofthe like I wasn't the smoke

(27:31):
sessions, weren't they wererough.
Like, don't get me wrong.
Like I got my ass handed to meplenty of smoke sessions.
I got my ass handed to me, and Iwould walk away from like, okay,
that sucked.
But I wasn't in a position whereI was also learning how to be
physical.
So it wasn't anything I wasn'tunaccustomed to from being in
sports where, you know, betweenfootball running gassers and
hockey running skating gassersand then baseball running the

(27:53):
bases.
I mean, it wasn't anything Ihadn't you didn't have that
obstacle over.
I didn't, yeah, it wasn'tanything I hadn't done through
my coaches I had in differentsports and you know, different
ways of doing things.
So it wasn't anything overlynew.
What was new was learning how toshoot the way the army wants
you, um, you know, learning towork as a team in a different
type of way than what a sportsteam does and stuff like that.

(28:15):
Um military movements andunderstanding, you know, how to
space yourself out and how to beresponsible for others versus
like, yeah, they kind of teachout in sports, but not the same
way the army does.
So that was kind of a lot ofwhere that came from.

SPEAKER_03 (28:26):
Okay.

SPEAKER_01 (28:26):
I think that was the biggest thing.
Then leaving and then comingback the next summer was
probably the hardest thingbecause I I had to leave a group
we'd started with and then comeback in and then join a group
that had already been togetherfor their nine weeks of basic
training, and now we were comingin as the the new guys and had
to like mess with them to doAIT.
And AIT for combat engineers atthe time was uh five weeks, four

(28:49):
weeks of training, one week ofuh graduation.
Uh-huh.
And that was we were stilllearning at that point in time
like how to defuse mines and howto find mines and go through
minefields.
That was a lot of what we werelearning at the time.

SPEAKER_02 (29:00):
So talk to me a little bit about what it's like
to take the split option becauseyou basically you come back and
you're in high school.
Yeah, it was weird.

SPEAKER_01 (29:10):
That was weird.
So it was interesting in thesense that I'd already been
gone.
Because when I'd left, so in mytown, I'd gone through K through
12 was the same grade.
Like when I graduated highschool, I probably knew at least
one detail about every person inour school simply because we'd
been together that long.

SPEAKER_03 (29:27):
Right.

SPEAKER_01 (29:28):
Um but when I had left, it was weird.
So when I left to go to Turkeyand I missed a sophomore year, I
missed a lot of things.
Like I missed a lot of like, youknow, the the stories that they
told about it their summers andtheir school year.
Like I didn't have thatconnection to them, so I was
kind of out.
Um but I was also we a weirdone, as much as I was a quote, a

(29:48):
jock, I could also I had friendsin the band, I had friends in
choir.
Like I could kind of go aroundand I never really belonged to
any one group kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 (29:58):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (29:58):
Um but being back was interesting because yeah, I
was you know, I folded my socksweird, and my friends made weird
because I was just ingrained inme in that point in time.
Like I um like one of the I canremember going to like the
national anthem at the footballgames and I would stand at
attention now.
And my friends were like, Whatare you doing?
I'm like, uh it's I'm supposedto.
This is what you do.
No, yeah, granted, if I go backin hindsight, maybe I wouldn't

(30:21):
have, but I still would havebecause at that point in time I
didn't know no better.
Right.
Um, so it was a littledifferent.
Um I don't know if I I noticed adistinct difference.
Yeah, I had friends who asked mequestions and were curious, but
not to a great extent.
Like they had known I'd done it,but they didn't really know what
it meant, yeah, type of a thing.

(30:42):
So I would tell them what itwas, I'd tell them what
happened, I'd tell them how ithad gone, and that would be kind
of the end of it.
And I don't really remember anymajor differences, mostly
because, from my perspective,ever how you having already been
gone for my sophomore year,joining the The army, being gone
my junior to senior year summerwasn't any different than I'd

(31:05):
already done, as far as myfriends knew, kind of a thing.
Yeah.
So I still have to do all thesports, so it didn't really make
that big of a difference.

SPEAKER_02 (31:12):
And you just so basic training was how many
weeks then for you?

SPEAKER_01 (31:15):
So that was nine weeks.
So I was there for a total often.
Reception, nine weeks, and thena couple extra days to like get
out of there.
Um, but I was there for about atotal of ten weeks.
So you pretty much missed thatsummer, though.
Yeah, so we school ended in likeearly June.
I left end middle of June.
Like I left like two weekslater, like I got a two-week
summer.

SPEAKER_03 (31:35):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (31:36):
And then I left.
I came back in August, and I wasbasically home one week before
school started.
And then I went right intoschool.
Okay.
So that was my summer.
Yeah.
Woohoo.
And then I when I left, when Igraduated, I didn't go back
until August to keep in timewith when I would have been
graduating otherwise.

(31:56):
Okay.
So I had a little, I had acouple months' break there.
Yeah.
So you got kind of a seniorsummer though.
Yeah, I got a kind of a seniorsummer because I didn't apply
for jobs, I didn't apply forcollege, because I knew I was
gonna go back to AIT, so Iwasn't in the mood to try.
So I never applied to a collegeout of high school, or I never
applied to a I mean I had jobs,so I just kept doing what I was

(32:17):
doing.
Between what I was doing at thattime, I was working for Target.
Um I kept that job, and I wasdoing odds and end jobs for my
my dad in the beer business.
So between those two things, andthen I coached the hockey team
for a year with my dad, I hadthings keep me busy.

SPEAKER_02 (32:30):
Okay.

SPEAKER_01 (32:31):
So then you uh hop on a plane, you fly back down to
Missouri?
Fly back down to Missouri,complete AAT, four weeks of
training, five.
I was there for six weeks, oneweek of reception, four weeks of
training, one week ofgraduation, and that was the end
of that.

SPEAKER_02 (32:44):
Well, you seem like the kind of guy that would do
this, but I have to ask, likeyou got there, and it's got to
be tough, right?
Because you like you weresaying, these these uh people
had already bonded through theirexperience in basic training,
but at some point, did you golike accepted into the group?

SPEAKER_01 (32:58):
Yes, I think we did.
There was a there was a periodbecause I what it happened for
us is when we got there, thecompany that we joined had
waited for two weeks for us.
So their entire basic had beenextended for two weeks while
they waited for all of us fromthat were the split-ops guys.
Oh, that makes you a lot of ohman.
We were already we were alreadypopular because they had just

(33:22):
completed basic, but then fortwo weeks, they just sat around
and marked time.
Oh, and whatever the drillsergeants could get them to do
to stay busy.
I can't imagine how many stupiddetails they did or whatnot.
Paint and rock.
Just waiting for us to get therebecause they couldn't move on
with their training until wewere in.
Right.
So there was a period when wegot to the first basic training

(33:43):
where there was some initialgrumbles of whatever, but it
honestly disappeared prettyquickly because once we all got
going, it meshed pretty quickly.
Um, I would say even though itwas four weeks within a week, we
were pretty much we were fine.
Yeah.
I think after that we kind offigured it out, like we made it
work.
Uh especially because I was a 12Bravo, so like uh basic training

(34:04):
at the time was 12 Bravo brokeoff this way and the 12 Charlies
broke off that way.
So there was only, you know,there was a half of us went this
way and half of us went thatway.
So we only really saw half ofthe company the whole time we
were there.
So the Bravos messed with theBravos and the Charlies messed
with the Charlies and we did ourthings and we came back in the
evening and then we would sleepand then we'd go off and do it
again.
Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 (34:24):
So at the end of that, then did you come home
again or did you just go to yourfirst duty station?

SPEAKER_01 (34:27):
No, so I would I joined the reserves.
Okay.
So I so to do split ops, I hadto join the reserve of the
guard.
So I joined the reserve.
And the reason my reasoning atthe time is comical now, but it
made sense to me then.
Was I was gonna do the reserves,get quote, two years of high
speed training.
Uh-huh.
Boy, did I not understand thatprocess at the time.

(34:50):
And then I would go active duty.
That was gonna be my plan.
Right, I was gonna come in, getAI, I was gonna be in the army
for two years, I'd come out ofAIT, I'd go straight to active
duty, um, and that was gonna bemy life.
That was gonna be what I wasgonna go and do.
Um, that is not what happened,however.
So during, I did the completeboot thing, and when so I got

(35:13):
back, I started dating my nowwife when I was a junior, she
was a sophomore.
So at the end of AIT, when I'dalready graduated high school
and she was still in her senioryear, I did the whole propose to
her after AIT, oh textbook.
Textbook.
Textbook boot.
Oh, it's even worse than that.

(35:35):
If I Yeah, look, let's get thewhole story on this.
Let's just go down the wholething.
But let's caveat it with youdon't regret it.
No, I don't regret it.
We're still together, we gotthree kids, we're doing
everything together.
She's survived, two deployments.
I picked the winner, like I didall the right things in picking
who I picked, but um, she stoodby me during my lows and my
highs.
She's been there for me, but umcould not have done it any more

(35:56):
boot.
And I have paid that price.
It is constantly brought up.
Like I've had to I've had toredo it, I've had to my my kids
make fun of me for it.
Oh, it's a constant runningjoke.
So basically, from theperspective of the boot, I did
it the per like it might be thequintessential boot story, to be
perfectly honest.

SPEAKER_03 (36:15):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (36:16):
So did the whole, I wrote a letter to a parent,
said, Hey, I'm gonna marry yourdaughter, blah, blah, blah.
Wrote a letter to my parents,says, I don't give a fuck what
you think I'm doing, this iswhat I'm doing.
So it was that was that divide.
So you're making friends.
I made friends right off thebat.
Mom and dad, suck it up.
This is what I'm doing.
Hey, future in-laws, I love yourdaughter.
Can I marry her?
Get their permission, we'regood, cool.

(36:37):
I was 18.
So 18, no, what money do I have?
So it's the Walmart ring.
My mom gets off the old internetprint off, sent me that in the
mail, picked this one.
I circled the one I want.
She so she bought it from theWalmart for me.
Uh she comes, so what the familycalls, my my girlfriend now wife
comes down with my family.
So it's my mom, my dad, mygrandma, my brother, and my

(36:59):
sister, and our foreign exchangestudent from Thailand who's been
in my house for like all of fivedays.
They drive down in an old schoolminivan from Minnesota down to
Leonardwood.
We get there.
So I'm in uniform, all theseother things, right?
At the end of the ceremony,blah, blah, blah.
We break off.
And you know Leonardwood.
Yeah.
We start walking around.

(37:19):
Where do we go?
The German POW Museum.
Because that's I don't know.
More romantic.
More romantic spot.
So we start walking ahead of thegroup, and we get to a point,
and I had had to this day, theway I'll tell the story and the
way I always tell it is I had aspeech.
I had a whole, you know,something speech.
I had something.
I don't remember what that isbecause of what happened.

(37:42):
So I get to the point now.
My wife, she is the even thoughI'm in the army, we you know, we
don't like to break the rules,she's more of a rule follower
than I, ever will be and everhas been.
So I was in uniform, old greens,and I was stepping off just off
the sidewalk on the grass, and Iwas about to go to kneel.
As I'm going to kneel and I'mhitting my putting my hand in my

(38:03):
pocket to pull out the ring, Irealized I forgot to test one
thing.
I can't kneel in this uniform.
I literally feel like this goingto rip.
And so I've now I've got the ohcrap, I'm gonna rip my pants.
And I've got the oh shit, I havethe ring in my hand moment.
And I've got her slapping mebecause I'm now standing in the
grass, and she's all worriedthat I'm gonna get in trouble

(38:25):
because I'm in the grass becausethey've been given the welcome
speech from all the freakingSergeant Major saying, Stay off
my damn grass.
Right.
So all of this can buy.
So, what is my confident justfinished up AIT?
I can fucking find I.
You know, mines, diffuse minds.
I learned how to use aminesweeper, I can do all these
things.
All that confidence goes poof.
So, what do I muster up?

(38:46):
I take the ring, I look at herin the face, and I go, Do you
want it?
It's all I can muster.
That was it, that was all I canmuster with a do you want it?
Her face goes to, and we hadtalked about it, the idea of it,
so it wasn't like a hugesurprise, but she's in like a
hoodie and like all this, likesomething else, and she does the
whole like gets this panty face,turns and starts walking away

(39:09):
from me.
So I grab her by her her, I callit a hoodie, she calls it
something else, and I grab herand I turn her around and I go,
now this is where it goes fullboot.
And I have now I have thatmoment to like collect myself,
figure it out, like gain somecomposure, do something.
Nah, nah.

(39:30):
Well, do you?
It's all I got out.
She said, Yes.
My grandma thought I found it onthe ground and thought it was a
cool rig.
I had to explain to her what itwas.
Oh no.
And that was how I got engaged.

SPEAKER_02 (39:42):
Wow.

SPEAKER_01 (39:43):
Perfect boot story.
I think perfect boot story.
I think you deserve to be pickedon mercilessly for the rest of
your life over that one.
100%.
She did get my dad back, whichwas kind of funny.
My dad's deathly furratedheights.
On the drive home, we stopped atthe arch in St.
Louis, and it was one of thoselike semi-windy days.
If you've ever been up in thearch where you can feel just

(40:03):
breeze.
But if you've been up there,they've got windows that are
about like maybe this big, thislong, and like a ledge.
So my dad was leaning overlooking out the window, and my
now fiance pushes my like givesup a little shelf.
He was here and he was gone.
And it was like a cartoon, likewhere you see the like little
dust outline of where he hadbeen.
He'd moved that fast.
Like he was there and he wasgone.

(40:24):
And everybody was like, Did hejust die of a heart attack?
Like, what just that was all thesame, that was all the same day.
That was the whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 (40:32):
What an amazing day.

SPEAKER_01 (40:33):
That was a weird day.
And of course, Pear, who is thisforeign chain student who's been
with my family for all of fivedays coming from Thailand, has
this is her experience of like,welcome to America.

SPEAKER_02 (40:46):
Right, right.
Now she's gonna go home andthat's gonna be her.

SPEAKER_01 (40:48):
Yeah, that was her first impression of everything.
It's like, oh boy.
So but no, yeah.
So that's where I changedthough, because after I got
engaged, my wife gave me thewell, my wife gave me the whole,
like, she wanted to go tocollege.
Like her thing was she was goingto college.
Like I had never thought ofcollege.
College wasn't even on the fuckthe radar, I wasn't gonna do it.
And she basically said, I'm I'llmarry you, but you have to go to

(41:11):
college.
Or like, okay, fine.
What's four years?
I'll do four years and then I'llgo active duty.

SPEAKER_03 (41:16):
Right.

SPEAKER_01 (41:16):
Um, so we ended up going to St.
Close State.
So we went to St.
Close State.
So you went to high schooltogether and then you went to
college together.

SPEAKER_02 (41:24):
Yes.
And you're still together.
Yes.
That just that blows my mind.

SPEAKER_01 (41:28):
So we went to college together.
So we went to St.
Close State together.

SPEAKER_02 (41:30):
Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 (41:31):
Um, that's where we had our first daughter, and then
and we both did the fraternityand the sorority thing.
So we did those things, and thenwe did all sorts of fun stuff
there.
Um, I ended up like figuring outthat I actually liked school at
that point.
Like once I could start pickingmy courses, I really started
figuring out that I actuallyliked education, which is weird.
Um, but I figured that out.

(41:52):
Um during this whole time, likewhen I after I got back, I had
missed my unit's firstdeployment by f uh three months.
So I gra I graduated AIT inSeptember, and they had went to
MoB in they went to Moeb in likeJuly.
But because of when I came offof the out of school, they

(42:14):
wouldn't catch me up to the MOB.
Yeah.
So I missed the firstdeployment.
So I was like, all right, fine.
So I missed that.
And then of course, this isstill, you know, Afghanistan,
Iraq are hot and heavy.
This is still pretty high up.
This is everyone's leaving outthe door, like you're you're
going from an era where, oh, youhave a deployment patch to
where's your deployment patch?
Like we're going, we're makingthat transition.
Yeah.
So now it's about getting thatdeployment because you got to

(42:35):
get that experience.
So I'm in college, I survivedcollege, never had to deploy,
which what was a frustratingmess at the time, but also
annoying because I wasn'tgetting the experience that my
exactly.
Um I actually ended up missingthree deployments.
Uh, one I missed because it justgot off-ramped.
Um, another deployment, uh I wasa specialist and they were

(42:55):
looking for a specialist, and itjust turned out that they took
the guy that they knew versusme, the the nobody, which, salty
as I was, made sense, whatever.
And then another one, I got on,I was a specialist, I got
promoted to sergeant, and theysaid, nope, we don't need a
sergeant, we need a specialist.
So I got so I missed three of soI've missed four deployments, so
I made it to E6 before to staffsergeant before I ever got

(43:16):
deployed the first time in 2010,and it just so aligned that I
graduated college, got mybachelor's degree, and then I
got my first deployment, but Iwas already a staff sergeant and
I'd been in for eight years bythe time I got my first
deployment.
Wow.
Just because of how it all myparticular course worked out.

SPEAKER_02 (43:33):
And at this time, too, I I I can't make too fine a
point on this.
At this time, if you don't havea combat.
You're a nobody.
Well, not only that, but peoplethink that you've been avoiding.

SPEAKER_01 (43:44):
You're shucking something, and I missed three.
Yeah.
Four if you count the one that Iwhen my unit was already gone
and they wouldn't let me catchup.
Two, simply because one, theypicked somebody that they knew
versus me, fine.
Promoted, got the sergeant,didn't need a sergeant, wanted
an E4, missed that.
And then one just simply Ivolunteered for it and it just
never materialized.

(44:04):
Right.
So I missed four totaldeployments before I got my
first actual deployment.
Yeah.
But that was one of those eraswhere, like, yeah, you had to
start.
If you were going up the ranks,like, and I made staff sergeant,
and I didn't have a deploymentpatch.
Like, there were questions to bethat I had a logical story.
I didn't I could like, hey guys,I've been here.
Right.
This is what I've been doing.
But the more you explain it, theworse it looks.

(44:25):
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was it was an oddball thing.
And, you know, I'd already hadguys that were, you know, they
were in college, but they'dalready deployed once.
And then, you know, so there wasthings like that that were
happening.
Um, but I was just doing thereserve thing.
So I would, you know, I'd jumpon whatever school they'd send
me to.
I would do things, I wouldvolunteer when it came up, but
my unit just never got called.
And they'd have been called upin 04 to 5, so their rotation

(44:47):
didn't come up for a while.

SPEAKER_02 (44:48):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (44:48):
And then that was just kind of how it fell out for
me at the beginning, right offthe bat.

SPEAKER_02 (44:52):
So 2010.
So you've you graduated, what'dyou get your degree in?

SPEAKER_01 (44:55):
So I graduated in December of 09.
Okay.
And then I at that point we knewwe were deploying.
So I just stayed, I went on likebasically ADOS orders with my
unit.
Right.
And then we deployed in umAugust of 10, is when we when we
hit we when we deployed, did amonth of ramp up, and then we
hit ground in October.

(45:17):
Actually, what's the day?
The day is the 20th.
As of yesterday, my daughter,who is now turned 15, was born
48 hours after I got the countryin Afghanistan, said hello to my
wife while she's in the room, toour second daughter, and then
went out and was gone for 72hours on my very first mission
right off the bat.
That was that was the start ofmy deployment.

(45:39):
Wow, that's just that'scraziness.
So that was how we started it,and then it was a year of route
clearance.
Doing that that deployment was ayear of route clearance.
Now, where were you at inAfghanistan?
Hellman Province, Afghanistan.
Uh so if uh Hellman Province atthe time was the quote king of
opio um opium.
Yeah.
Um so we were Camp Leatherneck,uh, which was kind of a marine

(45:59):
base.
We our army battalion andheadquarters were stationed in
Kandahar, and we were thecompany that was kicked out to
Camp Leatherneck to be thesupport for route clearance out
there.
So we did what was called at thetime log pack route clearance.
So we didn't run a route A to B,B to C, and just keep rotating
through.
We ran an A point-to-point,making sure that there are these

(46:23):
convoys for different log packsor different supply drops to
Naz, St.
Um Nazaj, Shagazi, Um Shikvani,Payne, these different places in
Hellman Province.
We would run up and back.
We basically run a convoy upthere, they'd unload, and then
we'd run them back through theHellman Desert, is what we were
doing.

(46:43):
So you were busy.

(47:22):
Yes.
Uh it was we were on a prettyconsistent run of we'd be gone
for at least a week, be back for72-ish hours, and then rinse and
repeat.
Some missions would be like, oh,it's going to be, quote, three
days, and then we'd be gone forseven.
Then it would be, oh, threedays, and then we'd be gone for
two.
So sometimes it wasn't, itwasn't always consistent, but we

(47:43):
was normally by the time you gotback, you had about 72 hours of
refit and you'd go right backout.

SPEAKER_03 (47:46):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (47:47):
So it was a pretty consistent rinse and repeat that
we would do it.
The longest we were ever outsidethe wire for one mission, I
think we hit 17-ish days.
I think we hit.

SPEAKER_02 (47:58):
But I but again, I at least for me, like that makes
the deployment quick.

SPEAKER_01 (48:04):
It went real quick.
Um it was a it was a very busydeployment.
Um, ups and downs as everydeployment has.
You have your everything orflow.
Um but ultimately it was apretty quick deployment in the
in the grand scheme of things.
Like it it feels long in themoment, but once you look back,
you're like, whoa, that wentfast.

SPEAKER_02 (48:23):
Yeah.
So is there anything about thatdeployment that sticks out in
your mind when you think aboutthat deployment?
This is something that you wouldtalk about.

SPEAKER_01 (48:29):
Uh the fact that at the time we thought we were just
doing our job.
And at the time I really justfigured it was what we were
doing, but we got by the time weleft to describe what we did or
what we accomplished and why itwas so weird, was by the time we
left, we had three different twoor higher stars come down and

(48:51):
tell my specific company thankyou for what you did and
leaving.
At the time, I was like, okay,that's just cool, we're leaving
country.
Then I realized, like, no, starsdon't come and say goodbye to
every unit that's leavingcountry.
That's not a normal thing.
And when I went back and got tolike kind of sit with it a

(49:13):
little bit, it's becauseultimately what our the company
achieved and what our unitachieved between our three
different platoons and thedifferent leaders that we had,
at the time we were told wassomething that hadn't been
achieved before.
We had over 300 IAD fines ordetonations, but that's and we
called getting hit a find.
So but we encountered over 300plus IADs in a year between

(49:36):
three companies, and we didn'tlose anybody.
And we only, out of everyone weescorted, we only ever lost
three people in the entirety ofwhat we were doing.
So getting between our hit andfine ratio to only lose, and we
lost one I one EOD tech, and welost two soldiers from a uh CSB
company we were escorting.

(49:58):
That was it.
But for our record for what wedid, our fines and everything we
did, and we walked away withpretty much everybody walked
away with almost a I don't wantto say everybody, we had over
50% of the company had a purpleheart, if not multiple purple
hearts by the time it was allsaid and done.
So it was once I had time tostep back and realize what we
accomplished, it was a prettycool accomplishment considering

(50:19):
what we did and the conditionswe did it.
And we were a reserve unit.
Yeah.
And we had to fight the whole,you're a reserve unit, you don't
know what you're doing.
I'm like, yeah, but we can doit.
So we fought that too, and we wewent got past that to the point
where we were getting asked byname to be the unit that would
go on that mission with them bythe time we left.

SPEAKER_02 (50:41):
So because you were trusted, and so it was a it was
a cool thing.

SPEAKER_01 (50:45):
So I mean I think the coolest part about that
deployment was we we broughteverybody back.
Everybody that was organic to mycompany came back.
Yeah.
That was a pretty coolaccomplishment for everything
that we were doing.

SPEAKER_02 (50:54):
No small feat at all.

SPEAKER_01 (50:56):
At all.
No, it's not.
And all of the odds were againstus.
Right.
To it's sure, great.
We have awesome technology.
I mean, technology was amazing.
You have the the insertion ofthe mine rap of the MRAPs, the
mine resistant ambit protectedvehicle, class of family of
vehicles was a huge improvementto our route clearance
abilities.
We had some really creative uhsoldiers who found some really

(51:19):
creative ways to make thetechnology to even enhance the
technology we were alreadyusing.
Um, Husky, um, one of our Huskydrivers, they created a rake and
they improved upon a rake designthat the uh the army had
furnished us with, and theyimproved on it.
We we created TTPs that we wereable to share across the country
at the time that allowed forpeople to um make things happen.

(51:41):
So it was a pretty coolexperience at the end of the
day.

SPEAKER_02 (51:44):
Yeah.
Well, and I think you find thatin uh reserve and national guard
units, I believe, more thanactive duty, is that you have
these people who do things otherthan the army, right?
Yes.
So they have these other ideasthat they bring.

SPEAKER_01 (51:55):
And this is what I will I will always kind of say
it this way.
I've been in the reserve myentire career.
I've either been a TPU soldier,which is the one week in the
month, two weeks the yearsoldier, or I've been the AGR
soldier, which is I'm the activeduty reservist who ensures that
the reserves can come in on theweekend and be trained.
Right.
Or that their training is readyto go.
That's essentially the twodifferent worlds I've lived in.

(52:16):
But I've always been in thereserves.
And what I will always say aboutreserve soldiers is they have a
harder job than any active dutysoldier because as an active
duty soldier, I respect and lovewhat they do.
But they do that one thing andthey do that one thing well.
Are they the best combatengineers?
Probably.
Because they can combat engineerlike nobody else.
Can they infantry like nobodyelse?
Yes, they can infantry likenobody else.

(52:36):
Can they truck drive like nobodyelse?
Absolutely, they can truck drivelike, and they know how to do it
in an army fashion.
But my reserve guy, my reserveunit, we can combat engineer.
We might not it's gonna take usa minute to catch up, but we can
do it.
It's gonna, we're not gonna comeout of the gate.
Right.
We're we're we're gonna be minorleague, probably down at like

(52:56):
single-A ball to start.
We gotta we gotta build us upfor a little bit.
But we learn real fast.
And that's partly because, yeah,this staff sergeant who is a
combat engineer, squad leader,on the civilian side, he's
running an entire network oftrains at you know, northern
railroad, something or other,yeah, maintenance requirements.

(53:18):
So when he comes in, he brings awhole different perspective.
And then this platoon leader isa combat engineer, but on the
other side of the life, he's abranch manager for some large
Fortune 500 company who has tomake sure all this other stuff
functions in the logistics.
So they're bringing thesedifferent perspectives from
their not only their personaland their professional lives,
but they're then they'recombining that with their

(53:39):
military experience.
And yeah, we might not start offlooking great, but I've always
every reserve unit I've everbeen with, and uh when we go to
training rotations at an NTC orJRTC, at least in my personal
experience, yeah, not gonnafreaking sugarcoat it.
We come off and we look like abag of ass.
Right.

(53:59):
That first that we gotta knockthe rust off, we look like a we
look dumb, we we don't have thequote military bearing the same
way because that staff sergeantand that platoon leader might be
buddies on the outside and theymight talk in a different way
and it might not look quotemilitary, right?
But they have that relationshipand they can freaking get shit
done because they can talk toeach other in a way that I don't

(54:19):
see active duty doing.
And on top of that, they're somuch quicker to adapt to stupid.
Because once not that activeduty isn't adaptable, but I've
just in my personal experience,I see reserve units adapt
faster.
Right.
Because we're just used to it.
Oh, you have to.
Because we come in for a drillweekend and we have 48 hours,
and when you break down those 48hours, it really comes out to

(54:40):
that in a total of 48 hours, Imight ultimately have 16 hours
worth of actual legitimatetraining time to accomplish a
month's worth of what an activeduty unit has.
So that's 16 hours to accomplisha month's worth of training and
stay the same level ofproficiency.
We become pretty adaptive prettyquick.

(55:02):
Guard reserve units have areally unique thing that we can
come into the fight, especiallywhen you our experiences through
um Iraq, Afghanistan, we justhave things to bring to the
fight that an active duty unitdoesn't bring to the fight.

SPEAKER_02 (55:15):
Right.

SPEAKER_01 (55:15):
Or it's different.
I wouldn't say they don't bring.
We just bring a differentflavor.

SPEAKER_02 (55:18):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't, and I don't I I wouldeven argue not one is not better
over the other.
They're just different.
They're just different.
And now you have it's a forcemultiplier, right?

SPEAKER_01 (55:27):
But the combination together of their professional
proficiency at their specifictask and our professional
adaptability, and you combinethe two of them together, no one
is better than the other.
Reserves aren't better thanactive, and activism isn't
better than reserves because wehave a different skill set.
But when you combine our skillsets and you put us in units
together, we force multiply thewhole thing.
Yeah.

(55:47):
And it is a then you combine thewhole American military model
compared to some of our foreigncountries and some of even some
of our adversaries.
It's it's an even quadruplebecause of how we empower our
soldiers to do down to thelowest level, whereas some
countries, you take out thatofficer, they're dead in the
water because they don't knowwhat the hell to do.

(56:07):
Whereas you can take everyoneout in the chain of command
except for that last private,and that last private will still
have a monochrome of an idea ofwhat it is they're supposed to
do and why it is they're doingit, and how to possibly get it
done, even if they're the lastguy standing.

SPEAKER_03 (56:20):
Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (56:21):
Not many militaries can do that because of the way
we try to create a team.

SPEAKER_02 (56:26):
Well, and I think the Russians even said years ago
that one of the reasons theynever attacked America is
because we don't follow our owndoctrine.
Our own doctrine, right?
I mean, we have doctrine, andeveryone would tell you you have
to have a plan, but none ofthat, again, none of that
survives the first shot fired.
But at least we have a plan.
And the problem is they wouldfollow our doctrine and we

(56:47):
wouldn't even follow it.
And they would be like, well,they should be doing this, but
they're doing that.

SPEAKER_01 (56:52):
And it's a great way to operate, actually.
Doctrine is a guideline.

SPEAKER_00 (56:56):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (56:57):
I think that that was something that was kind of
funny.
I got when I went to my CCC whenI became a captain, and I had to
go to you know, companycommanders course for engineers,
that was right during thepandemic, is when I was at
graduating, and I got put indoctrine, and we were writing a
brand new engineer platoonmanual, and I got to write, I

(57:17):
didn't get to write the wholething, but I got to be the final
person that kind of made somelast edits, gave some last input
from a common engineer side forthe survivability, the
contability, uh, chapters withinthat platoon book.
And I got to, and I looked atthat doctrine, I was writing it,
and then I came back out to aunit and started training.
I'm like, F that doctrine, we'regonna do this.
I mean, I've been the only guythat had a hand in writing that

(57:38):
doctrine.
Yeah.
And that doesn't even followthat doctrine because it didn't
make sense for the situation wewere in.
The situation dictates theaction.
Yes.
Doctrine is a guideline.
Yeah.
And I think that that issomething that is so unique
about our militaries.
Like we have, we spendincalculable hours writing
doctrine.
I'm here at ROTC as aninstructor.
I'm teaching doctrine.

(57:59):
Right.
But even I teach the cat.
Like, I'm teaching you whatdoctrine is because it's a
baseline for you to which tobuild ideas from.
It's how we communicate acrossthe army, is that we have a
baseline of understanding whatour doctrine is.
But then from that baseline, youcan get creative.
You at least have a startingpoint from which to branch off,
create ideas and stuff likethat.
And take that doctrine and applyit to the situation you're in

(58:22):
and be that way.
And that's what makes our thearmy unique and well, the
military in general unique thatway.

SPEAKER_02 (58:29):
It allows you to take action in the absence of
orders, which you have to do.
Yes.
Like you can't be waiting forsomeone to tell you what to do
when you're in the middle ofsomething.
Correct.
So you uh I want to back up alittle bit.
So you you said something thatkind of struck me.
You said that uh, you know, youdidn't think about the success
until you got back and had timefor that to soak in.
So you had a very activedeployment, your first

(58:49):
deployment um to Afghanistan.
Um did you find that when yougot back, like you had time to
think about the totality of itand and and how dangerous it
really was.

SPEAKER_01 (59:03):
And how did that impact you?
Not in the moment.
I think when I first got back, Iwas still obviously when I first
got back, first two years I wasjust kind of like I was still
going in the army, I still knewI was gonna do it.
Yeah.
So I didn't really set in.
I think I've only come to thatrealization recently, as I've
had more time to kind of comeout of high tempo and get into

(59:23):
this environment I'm in now.
Right.
Um and kind of give me anopportunity to think on it.
But I also I guess I kind ofknew what it was at the time.
I just didn't realize how big ofa deal it was, if that makes
sense.
Yeah, it does.
Um but no, I think it's like ifgotten space and time from that

(59:43):
deployment in 10 to 11, um, it'sbecome more crystallized, like
how incredible it was to be apart of that type of a thing.
Because my second deployment, Iwould love to have a do-over
because I don't want to rememberanything from my second
deployment.
That can be a throwaway.

SPEAKER_02 (59:58):
Well, let's let's dig into that for just a moment
then.
So you you got back in 11.
So if you if you were boots onground uh October, so you got
back like October, November?

SPEAKER_01 (01:00:09):
I got back in August of 11.
Oh, so you didn't do that.
So they counted the they countedour train up month and a half as
part of our deployment.
So I was on boots on ground for11 months, is what I was.
Yeah.
We didn't get that.
Yeah, so that was they changedthat up.
So then I did, so from 11 uh tomy next deployment in 16, I was
in the middle of a couple ofthings.
So I ended up taking, I didn't,I graduated, I had graduated, I

(01:00:32):
didn't pick up a job, I had juststayed, was gonna deploy, so I
went to deploy.
So my return from my grad mydeployment was my essentially my
college graduation.
Right.
So I found a job, I got lucky,and I got to work for Wounded
Warrior Project, being thealumni manager in Minnesota,
covering one, two, three, sevenstates, being the point of

(01:00:52):
contact for anyone that wantedto come to Wounded Warrior
Project as the first point ofcontact for all anyone in seven
states.
Um, and that was really cool,and I got to do some amazing
things in that job.
But I was in a race betweenfinding a job like Wounded
Warrior Project or trying to goactive duty.
Wounded Warrior Project won,gave me a job, so I didn't go to
active duty because I didn'tpull the trigger fast enough and

(01:01:13):
I didn't get the paperworkthrough, so I stayed reserved
because I was still trying toget to active duty.
And ended up doing WoundedWarrior Project, and while I was
at Wounded Warrior Project, um,and actually right after I got
back from deployment, I promotedthis sergeant first class.
So I was still doing the reservething, still doing that, doing
Wounded Warrior Project, runningthat, and it was just I was went
right back into the high tempostuff.

SPEAKER_03 (01:01:34):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:01:34):
I mean, my wife will tell you that I ran too fast
because.
I was all over the place, alwaysgone, constantly doing stuff.
I went from deployment rightinto Windows Warrior Project.
And I love what I did at WoundedWarrior Project because it was
the best job I'll ever have, nomatter what I do in the rest of
my life, because I had a simplemandate.
Find them, help them.

(01:01:54):
That was it.
It was the totality of my job.
And whatever I thought wasnecessary, I had card blanche,
blank check.
And when I say that, there's atime I worked for Wounded
Warrior Project, that was whatit was.
They gave me a$10,000discretionary decision-making
power that if spending$5,000 ona decision was going to get you
a water heater because that'swhat you need, I can do that.

(01:02:15):
That was my job.
I get to give away a weddingonce.
That was and I got to call itwork.
I got to be help people have thehappiest day of life, and I got
to be there on their worst dayof life, and I got to do
everything in between and dowhatever I could to figure it
out how to help them.
Couldn't have asked for a betterjob.
But I was still trying to goactive duty and I was still
trying to, and I got a mentorwho pushed me to go to the

(01:02:36):
officer's side and get mylobotomy and switch off to the
dark side.
So I did that.
But the disconnect is complete.
Yes, I completely disconnected.
But I was also at thattransition where I made seven.
I knew I was up for eight.
I didn't want to leave the line.
I was having too much fun withthe line.
I didn't want to leave.
That's where I wanted to be.
If I went up to first sergeantor master sergeant, I I'm in the

(01:02:59):
I'm never going back.
Right.
You're not a green tabber.
I'm not a green tabber anymore.
I'm not going to lead soldiers.
I'll lead soldiers, but not inthe same way that I wanted to.
Right.
So I made the decision to switchover to the officer's side and I
applied for the final what wascalled the direct commission
program.
So what I did was basically tooka promotion packet, modified it,
sent it off, got picked up for acallback to an interview board.

(01:03:23):
It was a lieutenant colonel,four majors, and they asked me
the silliest questions I've everbeen asked.
They asked me, you walk aroundthe corner and you see two
soldiers fighting.
What do you do?
I'm like, you have a soldier whoapproaches you and wants to buy
a car.
How do you describe credit tothem?
I was like, Wow.
So it was what those questionswere, and they're actually board
questions that I went back, Iknew were coming because I'd

(01:03:44):
gone to the board for this, isthey always wanted to see your
decision-making process and yourcritical thinking.
I gave them answers.
I guess I did well enough.
They took my packet, took all ofit together, and well, the way
the board worked at the time wasit was called the fire and
forget board.
So basically, I had a positionon hold where a company had
agreed to take me as a competentengineer officer if I passed

(01:04:07):
this board, however long ittook.
They would hold it up for twoyears.
So the process was packet, wait,board, wait.
And then I waited for anothernine months where they would do
this packet because basicallywhat it did was like every
quarter they did a regionalboard.
If your packet passed theregional board, at the last
quarter of the fiscal year, theyput all those that passed those

(01:04:30):
regional boards into a pile.
They then had a board, reviewedall of them, ranked, racked and
stacked them all, and thenCongress said you can commission
X number of direct commissions.
And if your number was above thecutoff line, congratulations,
you made it you got directcommissioned.
And I was lucky enough that Iwas high enough on that OML and

(01:04:52):
I got selected.
Um, so I went, joined a unit,uh, left the unit I'd been with
my entire military career for 13years at that point in time, had
been in the same unit for 13years, left that unit, joined
another unit, went to Bullock,graduated Bullock, deployed two
weeks later.
Holy cow.

(01:05:12):
Because I had a buddy of mine,so Bullock for engineers is six
months by the time it's all saidand done.
And so I was gone for six monthsat Fort Leonardwood.
I had a buddy while I was therethat I ran into who had been
when I was when he was a teamleader, I was his Joe.
When he was a squad leader, Iwas his team leader.
When he was a platoon sergeant,I was his team leader.
When I made a platoon sergeant,he was my platoon sergeant in
first platoon, and I was aplatoon sergeant for second

(01:05:33):
platoon.
So we were next.
So we ran into him.
He was now the first sergeantfor this company.
And he asked me if I wanted tobe one of his PLs, and I went
off and became one of his PLs.
Oh, that's awesome.
So that was how I got to thatone.
And ultimately he ended up notbeing the first sergeant, he
ended up being my platoonsergeant.
So no, I was the PL and he wasmy platoon sergeant, or my
platoon sergeant, so that waskind of fun.
Yeah.

(01:05:54):
Um, but that deployment So wheredid you deploy to?
So that one was to Kuwait.
So that one was so I became anengineer officer and I went and
joined a construction company.
Yeah.
Different mission, differentworld, different time.
Afghanistan's not whatAfghanistan was in 10-11.
It's not this fast-paced thing.
It slowed down.
We're pretty much just in Bagramin the BGDA, the Bagram Air

(01:06:14):
Group Defense, something orother.
I can't remember what theacronym states are.
Just not as sexy as that.
It's not it wasn't as sexy asmission.
And we were basically, it wasjust one of those missions where
you were stuck on Kuwait.
And they were great people inthat unit, but that deployment
just wore everyone down.
Yeah.
But it was an example of I had aleader who I just to this day I

(01:06:36):
jokingly tell people, I mean, wecould both reach our 90s, and if
he finally dies of naturalcauses, you might want to still
investigate me for murderbecause I might have finally
found a way to rid him of theearth.
Um, because every breath ofoxygen he takes is a waste of
oxygen for the rest of theproductive population.
If I can say that.
So you didn't like him?
No, no.

(01:06:56):
His leadership style is justrough.
I just um we kind of conjoledaround the fact that we didn't
like him.
That was kind of the biggestthing.
Like to give you an idea of howlike an example of how
leadership can change things.
I told you my first deployment.
That that Captain Peterson frommy first deployment, that that
man was the leader I expoused tobe someday.
I hoped to be.
This this gentleman who Ideployed the second time with as

(01:07:19):
a company commander, he waseverything I hoped to never be.
And to sh to kind of give anexample of how he was thought of
was he he one day brought backum a chocolate milk from the
DVAC.
No big deal, whatever.
We all did it.

SPEAKER_03 (01:07:34):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:07:34):
Um, but he forgot it in his satchel that he had, and
it firm it got so hot becauseit's Kuwait, the you know how
this is.
Yeah, I know what's gonna happenhere, and it ferments and
explodes.
Right.
But it exploded and it smellslike absolute dog shit.
Oh yeah.
But it looks like shit.
And he was so, and because hedidn't he had forgotten he had
done it, and we were just incommonwealth hooches, like my

(01:07:56):
hooch with the other lieutenantswas just on the other side of
his door, his hooch.

SPEAKER_03 (01:08:01):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:08:01):
So we smelled it and saw it, and we're like, it
looked and smelled like shit.
It was legitimately thought forfour for 24 hours.
We investigated could somebodyhave gotten into our building,
taken shit, and flung like it.
That was the level of hatred ordisdain that there was for this
particular gentleman that thatwas a viable thought process.

(01:08:25):
Right.
Like that was so out of leftfield and so not normal, but
because of who he was as aleader, it was feasible, if that
gives you an idea of how was heyour captain Sobel, kind of?
Kind of, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (01:08:38):
Almost although Sobel took care of people.
He was just a terrible leader.

SPEAKER_01 (01:08:41):
He wasn't that.
His biggest thing was, and whyHep made that deployment was it
just there was just a there wasno trust.
Yeah.
There was no trust, and thatbickled down to all of us.
So we as lieutenants started tostop trusting each other because
it was it created this toxicenvironment was everyone was out
for each other.
Yeah.
Or everyone was out forthemselves.
Yeah.
And the only way you couldsurvive was by getting off base.

(01:09:01):
So there just wasn't a lot ofbase opportunities to get off
base for expended periods oftime.
So you were kind of trapped andbouncing back.
So bored, not a fun mission.
Time in idle hands, and it wasalmost worse because my first
deployment, you couldn't talk toanybody.
Like you barely talked toanybody.

SPEAKER_03 (01:09:19):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:09:20):
Um, and my first deployment, it was weird because
I ended up getting the statphone once, and I got to talk to
my wife on mission, and itactually was kind of funny
because uh she'd actually gottena phone call that mission that I
had been uh sent to Walter Reed,and that wasn't.
Oh, that was kind of weird.
That's a whole different thingwe can get to in a second.
But my first my seconddeployment, I had a cell phone
24-7.
Yeah.

(01:09:40):
My wife could call me onWhatsApp or whatnot, and I could
hear about the day's problem,but I could do nothing to solve
anything.
I could do nothing to fixanything, but I could just hear
about all the problems.
So that's not helpful.
It wasn't helpful for anybody.
No, that was at all.
So between all of that, it wasjust a kind of a crummy
deployment, to say the least.
Um and I left that deploymentand I came home.

(01:10:03):
I was home for 20, no, 21 days,and I took an AGR slot in San
Diego, California.
So for what turned out to belike almost two two years, I
wasn't I was home, but for allof like a month.
Oh, jeez.

SPEAKER_02 (01:10:19):
So you didn't move your family to San Diego.

SPEAKER_01 (01:10:21):
No, they all moved with me.
Oh, okay.
So they moved with me because Ibecame AGR.
Yeah.
So I moved on to San Diego, sothat, and that's when I started
my AGR career.
Nice.

SPEAKER_02 (01:10:28):
But what'd you do in San Diego?

SPEAKER_01 (01:10:30):
So I was an operations officer for a route
clearance company, uh-huh, iswhat my official title was.
Um, did that for about threeyears.
Um, so my entire career hasbeen, you know, squat, you know,
started off as enlisted and didthe 12 Bravo thing in the
headquarters company.
Then I moved to a uh a route,the actual engineer platoon up

(01:10:52):
in Brainerd, Minnesota, from St.
Cloud, Minnesota.
Did that all the way up fromspecialist to sergeant to staff
sergeant to sergeant firstclass, all in that unit.
And that was a Mac unit, whichwas a mobile augmentation
company of engineers.
So we were in charge of uhmobility, culminability, and
survivability.
Did all those missions.
Then I did uh became an engineerofficer, went to construction,

(01:11:13):
and then I went back to theroute clearance world.
And then I was there for threeyears as a lieutenant.
Then I went to triple C, got myschool there, and then I was in
Dubuque, Iowa for two, three anda half, three years.
Then there I was the plansofficer, HC company commander,
firefighter company commander,fell in to cover down on three
other companies while they werewithout um their company

(01:11:34):
commanders.
So out of the eight companies, Icommanded four of them in some
way, shape, or form.
And then I was also theoperations officer because the
operations officer we had wasthere but wasn't there.
Right.
Someone had to do it.
Someone had to do it.
He was there, good guy, like theguy.
Um, it just was one of thosejobs where I was kind of doing
it.
Yeah.
So just didn't know what hedidn't know.

(01:11:56):
Right.
So um, but it was cool.
Um, and then I came here, andnow I've been here for the last
two and a half years, and I gotone more year, I got this
semester and next semester, andthen I'm off to the next thing.
So you did you come here as acaptain then, or you were
captain here?
I I came captain here.
So I came here as a captain.
Okay.
And this was supposed to be mytake-a-knee uh situation.
Right.
Um, I ended up through a varietyof random experiences, ended up

(01:12:19):
being the professor of militaryscience at the University of
Michigan for 18 months withmyself and a started first class
as the only two green suitorsand three civilians.

SPEAKER_02 (01:12:28):
And uh that's no small feat or task here at the
University of Middle.
This this school is no joke.

SPEAKER_01 (01:12:35):
No, this was uh it was cool.
It was a really coolopportunity.
Yeah.
Got to learn a ton of coolthings.
Um, I don't know the video can'tshow you, but on the boards,
we've got the like a war game westarted while I was here, so
that's been kind of cool.
I actually got to take uh acadet to the war college to get
them certified in war gamedesign from the college.
That's pretty incredible.
From the stuff we've got to gotto do while I was the professor

(01:12:55):
of military science.
Now I've I've fallen back intomy assigned role, which is to be
the XO for the ROTC programbecause we've got a new uh
professor of military sciencehere, and then I'll rotate out
and leave at the end of the nextsemester.
What a great experience, though.
So yeah, absolutely cool.
Can't complain.
I mean, I've gotten to do somereally weird things in my
military career.
Um I can't complain about any ofthe things I've gotten to do.

(01:13:16):
It's been really fun stuff.

SPEAKER_02 (01:13:18):
Do you find though, like if you if you're the kind
of person that seeks thosethings out, you'll find them.
Like I because there's so muchopportunity in the military that
people don't take advantage of.

SPEAKER_01 (01:13:27):
There's what I have seen, and now in a couple of
days will be a 23-year militarycareer.
Yeah.
Is I specifically I always telleven the cadets, I kind of tell
them this, is like I love theengineer branch because I've
never there's so much I don'tknow, and I've been in this
branch for 23 years.
Okay.
23 years I've been doingsomething engineer, and
everywhere I turn, there'salways something new I could do.

(01:13:49):
I didn't know it existed.
I could do that, I could dothis, I could do that.
Um, but I think the military'sgot that everywhere.
It's yeah, I try to I get peoplewho ask me why should I join?
I go, the military will spit youout, chew you up and spit you
out if you let it.
Because if you come into itwith, I don't know what it will
do, I don't want what it wants,sure, it'll just take it'll take
advantage of you.
You know, it'll take advantageof you in every way, shape, or

(01:14:11):
form.
And it does my career, I'm sureit's done your career.
But at the same point in time,what it does is if you don't let
it take advantage of you, youcan also find ways to take
advantage of it.
I've gotten certified in suicideintervention and prevention, and
I can now teach suicideintervention.
I've gotten to do that.
I've got to teach here, I got myinstructor certification, I've

(01:14:34):
gotten to go to differentplaces, I've gotten to see
Germany, I've gotten to seedifferent countries, I've gotten
to um, you know, live in uniqueplaces that see this country in
a way that I would have neverseen it if I had never joined
the army in terms of likejoining AGR and doing stuff like
that.
I've gotten to so many weirdthings that I've gotten to go
and do simply because I joinedthe army in some way, shape, or

(01:14:56):
form.
I mean, would be that betweencivilian experiences, my job at
Wounded Warrior Project, I wouldhave never had that job if I
hadn't been in the army in someway, shape, or form.
Right.
And I got to do crazy stuff withthat.
I the military has so much tooffer because no one's
experience is ever going to bethe same, period.
Yeah.
I could serve with the samepeople for 23 years straight,

(01:15:18):
and we will both walk away withcompletely different experiences
on how we took advantage of itor didn't take advantage of it.
And that's what's so cool aboutthe military is it's it has a if
you don't, once you you can'teven, there's no, even when
you're in it, you don't evenknow what it all has to offer.
Right.
Because if you're interestedabout it, if you're curious
about it, if you have an idea, Ipromise you, if you look hard

(01:15:40):
enough, talk to the rightpeople, there's either a pathway
because somebody's already doneit, somebody thinks it's a good
idea and they'll support you, orthere's a program dedicated to
just that anyway, and all yougotta do is is advocate for
yourself.

SPEAKER_02 (01:15:53):
Right, right.
Because you know, the all thosedifferent paths you talk about,
um, sometimes you just gotta bea pit bull.
Yeah.
But if you're a pit bull, you'llget it done.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16:01):
Do whatever you want.
Right.
You I've there are people whoI've seen who've wrote out
six-year careers and done onecontract and love what they've
done.
I've seen people who've took didnothing and did a six-year
contract and walk away withsalty, and I can understand to
some piece, but at the sametime, they're gonna go, you
didn't do anything to helpyourself either.

SPEAKER_03 (01:16:20):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16:20):
And then there's those that join in and they find
something and it turns into acivilian thing they want to go
do.

SPEAKER_02 (01:16:26):
Or we're well, I think to some to a certain
extent, we're all responsiblefor our careers when it comes to
the military.
You will run into people whowill submarine you.
I mean, you can't I I serve 21years, you're 23 years, you're
gonna run into that person.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16:39):
Yes.

SPEAKER_02 (01:16:40):
But then you're either gonna let it wreck you or
you're gonna roll on and go onto the next thing.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16:44):
Yep, exactly.
There's the one weird thingabout our job and one of the
military is we're always on themove.

SPEAKER_03 (01:16:49):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:16:50):
Because it's you're normally somewhere now three.
If you're if you're a reservistor a national guard, yeah, you
might stay in the unit for along time.
I stayed in one unit for damnnear 13 years.
I knew all those people.
Like when I made Sergeant FirstClass, they were still people
who I knew were me as we werespecialists together, and now I
sergeant first class.
So that's not uncommon in theguard and reserve.

(01:17:10):
You go to active duty, though,you're always moving every three
years.
So you don't like somebody,cool, in three years you're
gone.
Or in two years.
And it might be that it fallswhen you only suffer that person
for a year.
Yeah.
Okay.

SPEAKER_02 (01:17:22):
Unless you want to be, you're not gonna be stuck in
work.
Right.

SPEAKER_01 (01:17:25):
You don't have to stay anywhere.
You always have a pathway to goto the next thing if you so
choose.

SPEAKER_02 (01:17:30):
Right.
So I don't want to forget this.
Uh you brought it up.
And so now we need to talk aboutit.
So you're you talked, so you'rewe're gonna go back to your
first deployment.
Yeah, oh that's it.
You talk to your wife on the SATphone, and all of a sudden
you're at Walter Reed.
Tell me about that.

SPEAKER_01 (01:17:44):
Yeah, that was a kind of a it was one of our
weird things that happened inour deployment, and one of the
other times we got to see ageneral come down and talk to
our company is so at the time inAfghanistan, if your vehicle got
hit and you were uh a mace test,which was the I can't forget, I
forget what mace stood for, butit was like the mental agility
cognitive assessment orsomething like that.
Yeah.

(01:18:04):
And basically it was a vocaltest where a medic would read
off like five words, repeatthese five words, and then you
do these other like, here's ninenumbers, repeat these numbers
backwards to me, something likethat.
Like it was a version of thistest.
And after every explosion, ifyou didn't pass the mace test,
if you weren't physicallyinjured, broken bones, something

(01:18:25):
like that, if you had aconcussion, you got medevaced.
So we were getting hitconstantly, but we weren't
getting injured, but we weregetting concussed.
So yeah.
So we were we were failing themace test.
So what had happened is we wouldgo, we would send them if you
got Medevac, even in country,they still called your family

(01:18:45):
back stateside to tell them thatyou've been Medevact.
Why they were doing this, Ididn't understand at the time.
I still don't really understandwhy they're doing it.
But basically, even if it was ain-country Medevac, just from
mission to back to base to justbecause you failed the base
test, you were considered aMedevac.
Cool.
I got I went on leave, told mywife how this worked.
Like, hey, if you get this phonecall, it's nothing, don't worry

(01:19:07):
about it.
It's just how they do it.
Nothing's happened, they're justmoving us back to base.
Like and that was the truth,because that's what we'd
experienced.
Um, so in this particularmission, my vehicle got hit.
And my vehicle, there were fourof us in the vehicle, and I was
an asshole because I was a squadleader, and I was also, I never
wanted to not be on missionbecause there was no way my

(01:19:27):
soldiers were gonna go onmission and I was gonna not be
there with them, right?
Regardless of the cost tomyself, however that went.
We'd also made a rule in ourunit that uh all the squad
leaders, so the E6s and above,we had the mace tests.
So if the medic couldn't get tous fast enough, we could
administer the mace test as a togive a preliminary report back.

(01:19:48):
Yeah.
I just memorized the mace test.
My medic was a friend of mine.
So whenever they would come tomy truck, I'd just be like, what
version?
They tell me the version, so nomatter how concussed I was, I
could know what I was doing.
Your memory's good.
So I was fine.
Yeah.
So I could stay at mission.
This particular mission, we gothit, no big deal.
We go through the process, blah,blah, blah, blah, blah.
Ultimately, I'm the only one inmy truck that stays.

(01:20:09):
Everyone else in my truck gotmetavacted.
Partly, one was because we justdidn't have room for anybody
else to cross seat anybody, sowe just took everybody and I
stayed.
Yeah.
Anyway, we go through mission,mission continues on.
Nothing, we're on mission foranother, I think we were on the
mission for like another twodays.
Like, to me, life had continued.
No fucking problem.

SPEAKER_03 (01:20:29):
Right.

SPEAKER_01 (01:20:29):
We get to where we were going, and this is the one
time we had been given a satphone, and we were given the
opportunity, it got passedaround, and you said, like, hey,
you can call home if you want,because we have this sat phone.
And this is that firstdeployment where we didn't, the
only time you talked was whenyou were back on base.
So to be able to say hi and talkon a sat phone, which nerd me
was like, Cool, I have a satphone.

(01:20:50):
This is cool.
I've never been able to callhome.
I'm gonna be neat.
Yeah.
So, hey, it'd be neat to sayhello from a satellite phone.
Yeah.
Because that was relatively newtechnology, or at least it was
the first time a lot of us hadseen it.
Called my wife, said, Hey, I'mhome, hey, it's me.
She goes, I'm like, Well, whathappened?
What I hadn't known, and whatour whole company was unaware
of, was that after my vehiclegotten hit, that call had gone

(01:21:14):
out.
What happened was thatunfortunately they had two
mix-up happen.
So another platoon in adifferent part of the country
had the same thing happen to oneof their family members, but
their family was actually calledand told that their family
member had their service memberhad been killed on a phone call,
which breaks every never everypolicy in the book on how I was
supposed to be handled token.

(01:21:35):
So in my case, what happened wasuh my driver, who was a
gentleman by the name of Cahill,his wife had gotten a phone call
that he was in Walter Reed, andthey were actually getting ready
to send him out there.
Well, they had missed up hisinitials.
He was Dan G.
Cahill, and it was Dan, I can'tremember his actual, but it was

(01:21:55):
Dan G.
was the one that was actually inWalter Reed, but they called the
wrong Dan Cahill's family.
So the wrong family got notifiedthat some of that happened.
For me, what happened was thatmy wife got called and said I
had been Medevact, and thatthey'll hear more.
Okay, which is what I warned herwas going to happen.
Right.
Which would be I will call us,they'll call you that I'm
Medevac, I will call you in alittle bit because I'm just at

(01:22:17):
the local Camp Leatherneckhospital.
Obviously, I didn't call.
She waited a day, she calledback.
Uh, they said, well, if hehasn't called, he's probably
gone the long show because it'smore serious than that.
And that's what they told her.
Oh my goodness.
So now they've told her thatI've been Medevac.
Then they've told her that if Ihaven't heard, if she hasn't
heard, then it's probably moreserious and she's probably been
sent to somewhere else.

(01:22:38):
And I don't know any of this ishappening.
Nobody in the unit knows thatany of this is happening.
So then when I finally and thenshe finally calls later and they
say, Oh, we have no record ofhim anywhere.
We don't know where he is, so wedon't know what to tell you.
So now it's gone from he'smedevact, he's serious, to we
don't know where he is.
So while in all of that, 48hours, I'm just continuing

(01:22:59):
mission like nothing happened.
So when I called, I wasinadvertently in inserting
myself in the middle ofsomething I didn't know what was
happening.
Uh-huh.
What we found out afterwards isthat somewhere, somehow,
protocol had broken down notjust once, but three different
times for three differentfamilies.
Well, six families ultimately,by the time it was all said and

(01:23:20):
done.
Yeah.
And we had a we had a two-starcome down and apologize to our
entire unit.
All I had to say was, all hesaid was, do not worry.
Those responsible have been heldheld accountable.
And we're like, Roger?

SPEAKER_02 (01:23:33):
You don't want to know.

SPEAKER_01 (01:23:34):
Yeah, but so from my wife's perspective, I was
missing and presumed somethingfor a while because they had no
clue where I was.
So for like 48 hours, I wascompletely out of the loop.
But that was one of our thingsin our deployment that's kind of
weird.
So it was a couple of us thatgot hit up in that one.
But yeah, but that was a weirdthing for us to that's crazy.
It's another one of those randomstories like how?

SPEAKER_02 (01:23:56):
So we've we've covered a lot, like all the way
up through where you're attoday, and it sounds like you
still have plans to do some morethings before you uh before you
hit that retirement button andand uh and go on to the civilian
world.
Is there anything that wehaven't covered that you wanted
to talk about?

SPEAKER_01 (01:24:11):
Uh I think I think we've hit a lot of it.
I think that one thing that'skind of unique, I think that's
giving me perspective as I'vegotten older, weirdly.
I mean, uh so I don't there's alot of like, I know, as you know
too, there's wean we don't liketalking about like our service
histories and like our awardsand stuff like that.

(01:24:32):
But I think there's one that Ithink is kind of like a a
randomly stupid story that Ithink is funny.
So I have two purple hearts frommy time in Afghanistan.
I split a vehicle in half,walked away from that, and then
on my last mission, on the ripmission, I was the gunner and
been the first time being gunnerand got hit again.
Yeah uh and got hit twice in 45minutes and then hit in the

(01:24:53):
truck, knocked out, got in themedevac vehicle, got hit in that
vehicle.
Oh my god.
That was how that last two went.
It was kind of a fun one.
But what I think is uniquelyweird, and I've learned to kind
of think it's a comical thing tosay, is there's two things that
are unique about the purpleheart is the day it's designed,
it was awarded and designed, oras an official award, which is
February 22nd, 1932, and thenthere's National Purple Heart

(01:25:15):
Day, which is August 7th.
My first one is February 22nd,my second one is August 7th.
So my two Purple Hearts are onthe exact days that are relevant
to the Purple Heart.
Wow.
Which is just out of all of theironies of my military career, I
for a long time I never spokethat I had Purple Hearts.
Like I hated them.

(01:25:35):
I hated them, I hated them.
I used to call we used tojokingly call them enemy
marksmanship awards.
I was just gonna say that.
That's what they were.
It was a it was a significant,it was a signal that you had
failed to do your job.
Right.
Because in my world, if wedidn't find, if we failure to
find the ID meant that somebodygot hurt.

SPEAKER_03 (01:25:50):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (01:25:50):
I I had two of them.
I had failed twice.
Like, and I ended up gettingblown up 13 times, but the only
two of them counted as purplehearts.
But those are two distinct marksthat I actually wear.
Like the army, like the enemygot me twice.
Like I failed twice.
For the longest time, I lookedat them as that.
As I've grown and gotperspective and can make light
of them and kind of look at it,it's it's kind of funny to say

(01:26:14):
that that's a mark that I havein the military is that A, I got
this random thing that noteverybody gets.
B, to then get them, how I gotthem, weird, and then to have
them fall on those specific daysis like I don't know.
I I've grown to kind of thinkit's kind of a comical story to
tell in the sense of like howdid that happen?

(01:26:36):
Of all the strange things that'sall the coincidences of all of
the things that can happen in amilitary career, that's
ridiculous odds.
Oh, it is.

SPEAKER_02 (01:26:45):
You should buy a lot of days on both of those days.

SPEAKER_00 (01:26:48):
Both of those days, it's like keep going for it.

SPEAKER_02 (01:26:50):
Because A, you survived the whole thing, and B,
it was on those two days.
That's that's kind of fun.

SPEAKER_01 (01:26:55):
But no, I I I from other than that small funny
antidote that I think is justkind of funny to tell, is I've
loved every I've been in this,I've had ups, I've had downs,
I've had incredible highs, I'vehad incredible lows, but I
wouldn't change my militaryexperience for one second.
I've I wouldn't be where I'm atbecause of it, because of the

(01:27:17):
military.
I, you know, went to college.
I now have a master's degree.
I'm about to get a secondmaster's degree.
I'm, you know, go I've gottenthese crazy opportunities.
I mean, for the kid that barelypassed high school to say that
he's got to be the professor ofmilitary science at the
University of Michigan.
Yeah.
No one had that on their bingocard.
No.

(01:27:37):
I can promise you that wasnowhere on the bingo card in any
capacity whatsoever to say thatthat the kid that graduated high
school and joined the army at 17and want only wanted to be a
combat engineer, make it thefirst sergeant, do 20 years
active duty, that kid would lookat this, you know, me sitting

(01:27:58):
here today and go, you're noteven the same person.
Like they wouldn't, theywouldn't know how to reconcile
where we ended up for what wethought we were joining.
Yeah.
And I think that's the coolestthing I've gotten to say about
my whole entire military storyis that I just followed it where
it made sense, and I've lovedevery second of it.
I've even even the low parts, Iwon't, yeah, I can't say I love

(01:28:18):
those low parts.
But in the grand scheme ofthings, I've had a pretty
freaking good career and I'vehad it pretty nice at the end of
the day.
Those hard times shaped who youare, right?
Right.
In some way, shape, or form, Iam who I am because of these
experiences.
Yeah.
And I don't know if I would havebeen the same person if I didn't
have the military.
I mean, I'm that can be King'sJ, and that's kind of a cop-out
answer in a lot of ways, becausewell, if I hadn't done it, I'd

(01:28:40):
just be somebody else.
I got that.
Right.
Track and all.
But it's more of the I don'tthink I would be doing or have
as much access to pursue thingsI'm passionate about, be given
opportunities if I didn't havethe experience I've had, and the
people who I've gotten to servealongside with, both those that

(01:29:01):
I've worked with, those I'veworked for, and those that I've
had the innumerable honor tohave in some way, shape, or form
been in charge of, who'veentrusted me in some way, shape,
or form to do the right thing.
Without them and all theircombinations, I wouldn't have
had the opportunities I've had.
Period.
End of story.

SPEAKER_02 (01:29:19):
Well, and so that's a nice segue, with all of that
said, to kind of put a uh afiner point on it.
You know, as people arelistening to your story, um, not
people 10 minutes from now, butpeople 100 years from now,
because that's the idea, right?
Right.
Um, what message would you leavethem with?

SPEAKER_01 (01:29:37):
So I tried to think about this for a while.
I didn't I couldn't think ofanything specific other than
what I would hope somebodywatching this, so to whomever is
watching this now, is if you'relistening to the story and
you've listened to this insaneramble down these different
pathways, is that you can walkaway with that the end of the
day, soldiers are still humanbeings.

(01:29:58):
Is at the end of the day, whenyou're reading a history book
and you read like X number ofsoldiers did this, or X number
of people were thrown into thisbattle, and X number of people
were, you know, casualties ofsomething like this, or X number
of something that relates to thefact that there was a soldier
and a is every one of thosenumbers is a human being with a

(01:30:19):
story as unique and as differentas my own story.
And that as much as we can lookat history and you've got quotes
like Stalin, you know, fivepeople is a problem, you know, a
million people, and one personis a tragedy, and a million
people is a statistic, you gotquotes like that all out there.
Is there's a monoclonal of truthto those because we it's easy to

(01:30:40):
forget that behind every one ofthose numbers, every time we say
we're sending you know a hundredthousand people to go do X,
that's a hundred thousandindividual human beings who have
come together to make a teamfill their capacity, working at
their individual task inside ofa larger task, instead of
another task, instead of anothertask, all working to accomplish

(01:31:02):
one mission, which from ourconstitution is to defend this
United States and to defend ourform of government and defend
our way of life.
Every one of those individualsfor the last 50 years has
volunteered for that in one way,shape, or form.
We don't have a draft since1973.
We haven't had a draft, wehaven't had conscripts.

(01:31:22):
So every single person that youread in that history book from
there forward until if you'relistening to this 100 years from
now, 20 years from now, andthings haven't changed, then
that means in all of that time,every single one of them has
volunteered to do this.
Willingly, knowingly said thatthey would do this for whatever

(01:31:43):
their motivation was.
And that motivation can be asdifferent from mine as a
17-year-old kid who just wantedto join the army because that's
what you did after 9-11, to theperson who joins it because it's
I've met people from everythingwhere this is the family
tradition.
You know, I did this because itwas this or jail, or I did this
because I didn't know what to dowith my life, to I did this
because I just needed to getcollege and I'm getting, I'm in

(01:32:05):
here for the money and I'm gone.
Whatever the reason was, everysingle one of those individuals
that you hear in a story, everysingle one of those numbers you
hear, if you ever read militaryhistory, if you're reading
military history now, that's anindividual human being.
I think that's the biggest thingI'd want you to take away is
that our stories are as uniqueas the you and me sitting here.
We have shared understandingbecause we've been in the, you

(01:32:27):
know, you and I, we've shared auniform, we've worn the uniform.
There's a monocome weunderstand.
Your unit your individualexperience is gonna be a million
times different than my own.
It's a million times differentthan the person who's listening
to this right now.
Is we we might share similarbackgrounds, but uh there's
still an individual behind thatstory.
I think that's the biggest thingthat kind of want to make sure

(01:32:48):
people walk away with or thatthe person listening to this is
walking away from, is that it'san individual collective that
makes this work for us.
Yeah.
And I think that that is uniqueamong the militaries in the
world.
It's like we all have that,there's a bond, we talk about
that, and I know militaries haveit their own way, but I really
think we have a unique structurehere that makes it work just
that much better.

(01:33:11):
I would agree.

SPEAKER_02 (01:33:12):
Well, thank you for sharing that with me.
Thanks for spending theafternoon with me.
I really appreciate it.
That's been great.
Appreciate the time.

SPEAKER_01 (01:33:17):
All right.

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