Forging Brotherhood: Bart Womack's Journey From Ohio to Iraq

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today is Friday, April 11, 2025.
We're here with Bart Womack,who served the United States
Army.
So good afternoon, Bart.
Glad you made that drive intoday.
Yeah, glad to be here.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
I appreciate you inviting me Absolutely, so we'll
start out.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
I'll say fairly simply when and where were you
born.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
The great state of Ohio the great city of Columbus.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Okay, so you're not a Michigan fan.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Not at all.
You know, buckeye, through andthrough, I tell people I didn't
have a choice and I wouldn'tchange it if I did.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Yeah, you know, I was down there for a conference a
couple of years ago and my wifeand I broke into the stadium
down there and took pictures ofourselves at the horseshoe Wow,
I mean, it's a technotic stadium, so it was very cool to be
there.
So tell me, what was it likegrowing up in Columbus?
Is that where you grew up?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yeah, yeah, warner Rays, high School there and
everything you know.
Pretty simple, quiet, back inthe times, when something did
kind of happen out of the wayeveryone knew about it.
Out of the way everyone knewabout it.
I was a fifth of five children.
The last one, all of them aremuch older than I am.
The oldest is 19, then 18, then17 years, then the one that was

(01:14):
closest, 11 years, passed awaya few years ago.
So now there's only four of us.
But I don't allow those olderpeople to treat me like one of
their children.
Right, versus, I'm just yourbrother, so I'll say stuff
different than your children areallowed to say.
Right, yeah, so that wasstrange, because they have

(01:36):
children that are one isactually older than me, one was
a little bit younger than me,and then they're like a year,
two years, a few years apart, orwhatever.
Um, but they still call meuncle bart and I'll call them
uncle.
You know, whatever their nameis, you look older than me, so
I'm gonna call you uncle.
This seems to work, right, yes,but imagine how strange that
was when we were 10 and 7.

(01:58):
Right, and they're saying unclebart, because that was.
You know, that was the properthing to say.
I didn't truly understand it.
And then friends would say, howis that your uncle?
He's like 10, 7, or whateverthe case may be.
So yes, that part was kind ofstrange.

(02:19):
Yeah, school was fine.
You had to go to school andnecessarily a school person I
mean I would get up and you know, don't get me wrong um, but in
terms of the classroom I don'tthink I really knew what I
wanted to do or be um, and Ithink back on it I can see how
that kind of played out in termsof my classroom demeanor and

(02:42):
especially academically.
It would go from A's to D's andthen A to D.
And then my mother was like howcan you make an A and a D in
the same class, you know, justweeks apart.
It makes no sense.
And it didn't make any sense.
It was like, okay, thatparticular time it had my
attention and another time itdidn't have my attention.
But you know, as old as I am,that wasn't necessarily truly

(03:04):
understood by academia to beable to fix it or adjust your
course and all those types ofthings.
So I did know that aftergraduation that I didn't want to
go to college right away.
I was 17, so I need a year tofigure this out.
I'll go after that year is upand I didn't make it to that

(03:26):
year.
Yeah, did you get sidetracked?
Well, it always worked.
I started out with a paperroute so I always had my own
money and it went from there toI worked in a bingo, made a
whole bunch of money at bingos.
Somehow they let children inthere at years old, sold a
little snacks and everything.

(03:47):
You had to suffer through thesmoke.
But aside from that, I mean yougot tips.
You make great money justproviding snacks for a big wet
bingo.
Well, and I think.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
I don't think people today realize like, because even
when I was in the Navy, like inmy office, people smoked and I
had to wash my clothes everysingle night because they just
smelled so bad.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
But, yeah, you go into a bingo hall.
Yeah, it was like a smokechamber, oh, big time, big time.
And I don't know if I reallyexpected that until you got in
there and that was theenvironment.
But you know, when you're 13,the money kind of overrides the
smoke.
Yeah, we didn't know aboutsecondhand smoke then.
Anyway, right, right, I wouldnever do it today.
You keep your money, it's allright, that's right.

(04:28):
But yeah, good money as a kid,yeah.
And then I went from there to Iworked at a Kentucky Fried
Chicken that got robbed.
So they went that opportunity.
I was like, okay, not gonna dothat again.
Then I went to a grocery storeand, believe it or not, 1975, 76
, I was making $13 an hour in agrocery store.

(04:51):
That's a lot of money.
That's a lot of money.
I mean that's almost a lot ofmoney now for where I'm at in
the grocery store, to be honest.
And I started out bagging.
It wasn't as much when I wasbagging, but then I moved on to
cashier, um, but that was a lotof money.
I mean, I bought my own stuff.
I used to buy um.
I wanted to dress nice, so Iwore dress, shoes, dress, shirt,

(05:16):
dress, pants every day, mondaythrough thursday.
Friday was you know long beforeit was cloned.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Casual fr Friday that was my sneaker day okay, I used
to work for a guy, wayne Lynn,who said he had a dress for the
job that you wanted mmm right.
So even if you're bagginggroceries.
You're dressing nice.
Well, you had to wear I don'tthink we had a company shirt you
had to wear like some type ofbeard.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
They had the logo on there, which is big bear at the
time.
But, um, not just like that forschool, not for work, but
because I had the money, youknow, I mean I bought.
I probably bought a few.
Maybe I've had about threesixty dollar shirts that that I
bought and they cost sixtydollars.
They're called knick knicks,but most of them I bought on

(06:06):
sale.
I had quite a few of them andeveryone knew just that knick
knick shirt that, not that youhad money, but they knew that
shirt cost a lot.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
Right, right, something was going right for
you.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Right, yeah, from there I graduated high school
and still worked.
I'm waiting out that time ofthe year post high school and my
mother had a car that I drove.
She had a driver's license butdidn't drive.
But she would not let me claimit to be my car.
It was her car that I justdrove, okay, but I was working

(06:42):
at after high school.
It was a place called the SearsDistribution Center, which was
I don't know how many miles awayit was, but pretty far you
needed to drive.
But then that next oldestbrother wrecked that car and I
had to start taking the bus andit started getting into the
colder months and I rememberleaving work and catching the

(07:05):
bus and I would transfer routesdowntown to get on a route to
take me back home.
And one day it was pretty coldand I said I'm going to the
recruiter station to get warm.
I know they're going to talk myhead off.
I'm sure they have somethinghot to drink or a coffee drink,
or hoping they have cocoa orsomething right, um, I'll listen

(07:27):
to this stuff and then I'll getwarm and then I'll head back
out there if I stop and go home.
And I was 17, right, so, um, Iknew I couldn't join on my own.
My mother would have to sign,so it was just just listen.
So I went in there.
I was probably in there for acouple hours just listening to
them.
I guess it started sounding alittle more doable.

(07:49):
Although it wasn't my interest,I didn't go in there for that
but when I left it okay, there'snothing I can do.
My mother would have to say yes, and I'm not telling her right
now.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
So we're free and clear.
Yeah, so you listened to them,you got on the bus, you went
home.
Then what happened?

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yeah.
So that was October, mybirthday wasn't until December
and they would call the houseand somehow I was the one
answering the phone.
Oh, my mother's not home.
Well, let me know when she'shome.
Okay, and she would travel alot.
She had already retired after35 years, I think, working for
the government and she wasalways gone.

(08:30):
That was her plan, right, right.
So she got home from one ofthose trips and I said, okay,
I've been talking to a recruiteror whatever, I'm just thinking
about it, but you'll have tosign right now.
She about it, but you'll haveto sign right now".
She said well, why don't youthink about it some more?
And then you'll be 18 years oldand that's what you want to do.

(08:51):
Then you sign.
So that was the decision atthat time.
I still kind of let it go forat least another month and a
half, I would say.
Now we're into the next year inJanuary.
And then they called and said,okay, I guess maybe take a look
at this.
So went down there again, wetalked for a little bit.
I said, okay, I'll take thetest and everything and then
we'll see.
So I did that and it was gone.

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah, well, you know let me ask you because you
weren't.
Some people go to therecruiting office and they're
like, oh, I'm ready to join andlet's go, but it sounds like you
were just like you knowwhatever.
And so what was there likesomething that did like happen,
where you were like, oh, maybethis is something I should do,
or?

Speaker 2 (09:30):
was it just like let's just see what happens?
Well, you know, I took the testand that wasn't necessarily, it
wasn't binding, right you know,because you have to test to
figure out what Jim was wasgoing to be and all that right.
So finally, what the choicesare going to be and all that,
right.
So, finding out what the choicewas going to be, I wasn't
locked in, so it was kind of ano harm, no foul type of
situation.

(09:51):
But I took the test and then Iwent to work and then they were
laying off and I was being laidoff.
I was like, okay, now this guyhas been working ever since you,
you know paper route days ofmaybe I was 11, and now you tell
me you're cutting my job.

(10:11):
It was like, okay, I have thisnew opportunity for a job and
not only do I get paid, I get aroof over my head, I get fed.
Uh, I get this job.
I got to go through some stuffcalled basic training, okay, and
I have this opportunity fornext level education.

(10:34):
Right, although they weren'tpitching it as strong in those
days, yeah, it wasn't a big dealLate seventies, early eighties.
No, I didn't mention it at all,I just knew that it was.
It was there.
So I said, okay, maybe thisisn't a bad thing after all, and
two weeks later I was gone.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Wow, yeah yeah, didn't waste any time, did you
so?
So talk to me about basictraining stepping off, you know,
the bus or whatever, for thefirst time.
What was that like?

Speaker 2 (11:02):
for you that that had to be different.
Yeah, so first of all, I knewnothing about the Army.
You know, those recruiters werein the hallway at high school.
I'd just walk past the table Afew of my friends, you know
classmates.
They would stop there orwhatever, and I'd get a brochure
and I'd say what's that say?
What are you thinking?
And some of those guys went inright after high school.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
And you weren't from a military family either, were
you?

Speaker 2 (11:25):
Well, my oldest brother had served in the Navy
but because he was so much olderthan me, he ran out before I
even knew what was going on.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
So, and it wasn't like I sawhim in uniform ever, so it
wasn't something that was, youknow, kind of cemented in my
head or what that looked like.
Never really talked about it,aside from your service in the
Navy.
That was it.
I was in the Navy, that was it,and so I didn't know anything

(11:52):
about the military at all.
So I left on the I guess it'sthe President's Day weekend.
So we get to the Fort Jackson,South Carolina, and they pick us

(12:14):
up at the airport, take us tothe reception station there and
they said someone will come getyou in the morning for breakfast
and everything.
I think I wake up the next day,do the breakfast, come back and
then kind of doing personalhygiene and everything.
I see some guys slappingshaving cream on their face.
No, that hadn't happened yet.
And also Saturday, nothing'sgoing on, it's just eating.

(12:37):
There's no instruction, there'sno one telling us anything.
And then later on that day wehear this voiceover of our
microphone or speaker I'm sorry,and the guy had inadvertently
had the intercom on while he'son a phone call, so we heard
everything about his nightbefore and I know it was because

(12:59):
we had seen no one, except forthey told us what time child
time was going to and just comeoutside, great.
And it was like once you comeoutside, you just kind of go
over to eat, wasn't evenmarching over you.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
You didn't know anything yet.
Yeah, they tried.
I think they tried to lull youinto a false sense of whoa.
This isn't going to be so bad,Right?

Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yeah, yeah, so we heard this guy talking on the
weather.
Still didn't know who it was.
Then the next day, bam he burstonto the scene early morning.
Get up, cursing and everything.
Get up, get up, get up.
That was our kind of a rudeawakening to go to the chapel.
We served the reception stagenot basic training yet, but

(13:39):
that's our first impression ofanyone in the military that's in
uniform, is barking orders andall this type of stuff to where
I thought, okay, this is thestart of basic training, but it
wasn't.
So he starts teaching us somemarching and stuff after we got
into formation and he's like hehas this helmet liner thing

(14:00):
that's shined, it's a blackgloss with this go rank in the
middle and the stripe aroundthere and everything the old OD
green uniform and his name wasJoe Johnson and he looked like
the GI Joe doll.
Really, no kid about the GI Joedoll probably minus the scar

(14:25):
right high cheekbones, squarejob.
I mean just like that dude waslike a poster from the army.
Yeah, yeah, you know, boot tospit shine.
Yeah, oh, the Green uniform.
You know it's pressed andeverything.
There's nothing to ever lookbetter than that.
No, I remember those.
Yeah, yeah.
So there's nothing to ever lookbetter than that.

(14:47):
No, I remember those.
Yeah, yeah.
So he's barking all theseorders.
He teaches us some marching andeverything.
I remember stepping on this oneguy's foot and he steps on his
feet and said this is your leftmf foot, this is your right in
that foot and I play footballand I'm like lord, please don't
let him come over here near my,near my feet, because I'm I'm
probably going to push himBecause you know, those cleats

(15:08):
playing football used to hurtwhen someone inadvertently
stepped on your foot, right,right, and I was like Lord, it
was just a reaction.
So if he comes near me andstops in front of me and I just
even perceive that his foot'sgoing to raise up and step on my
, he's probably going to getpushed.
It's like that's foot's goingto raise up and step on my, he's
probably going to get pushed.
It's probably going to be a badthing, probably going to be a

(15:29):
bad thing, but he's not steppingon my foot, that's true.
So anyway, that didn't happen,thank goodness.
So that, and I thought this guywas the drill sergeant.
You know I had probably seenthe habit and you know all this
stuff was happening so fast.
I didn't even make thecorrelation.
And I remember the next morningnow it's that holiday, that
Monday there's still not muchgoing on I was teaching a little

(15:52):
bit of DNC, right and left,face standing attention, blah,
blah, blah.
But that time, when we got up,I could hear one of the
microphones saying Everyone willMF shave.
I think that was his favoriteword Everyone will shave, right?
Well, I had peach fuzz.
I didn't need to shave.

(16:13):
I think they had told us to buycertain things at the exchange
or whatever, which was shavingcream and a razor.
I had never put a razor on myface before and I'm literally
putting the razor on my facebefore and I'm literally putting
the cream on, looking ateveryone.
I grew up in a house with justa mother right, there's no one
shaving at my house.

(16:34):
I didn't have that lesson, nordid I have anything to shave A
little thin mustache, a littlevery, very thin goatee.
What I should have done wasslap a little bit on the goatee,
slap a little bit under my,under my nose, and then done in
two minutes.
But no, what do I do?
I watch everyone else put itall over my face and once you
start shaving where you haven'tshaved, then it will begin to

(16:57):
develop hair.
Yeah, it all grows back.
Yeah, but even where there'snothing right, I screwed my face
up for life.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
Am I doing that?
I want to ask you so.
I know that when I was in basictraining, a lot of folks there
who people of color, when theyshaved it caused a problem with
their skin.
Did you have that issue as well, because a lot of them had to
get like special permission?

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Yeah, I eventually developed razor bumps or
whatever.
It wasn't immediate, it wasjust further down the line.
The more you do it, the moredamage you're going to cause,
right?
So one thing I told my sons andwe'll get to that but don't
ever only put the shaving creamand put the razor where you have

(17:46):
hair.
Now, right.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
You're going to save yourself a lot of trouble.
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Exactly, especially in an environment where you're
required to shave every day.
Yeah, yeah, so that was a bigmistake.
So then now I think it's likeTuesday we started getting our
uniforms and all that, and we'restarting to wear them and he
says that the drill sergeant arecoming to pick you up.

(18:11):
I'm like holy cow, like whatwas this dude?
You mean, someone is worse thanhim.
Yeah here, they come in therehollering at me.
Get on the bus.
You know everything they doright.
So I don't think they evercompared to him.
So and if they did, at whateverpoint, I don't remember

(18:36):
noticing it.
So he definitely schooled uswell in terms of preparation, of
what basic training would be,in terms of you know, that type
of tolerance of hearing thatstuff all day long.
I don't ever remember beingintimidated by the drill
sergeant in any way.
I don't know if people should,but anyway I don't remember that

(18:59):
at all because of the fear thisother guy had put in actually
physically stepping on people'sfeet and stuff like that, of the
fear this other guy had put inActually physically stepping on
people's feet and stuff likethat.
You prepared you well, then itsounds like.
So the budget training was, Idon't want to say, different.
You have to go through all thestuff.

(19:20):
I had a personal setback.
Well, I didn't have a setback.
What did I have to set back?
I remember my nose was bleeding.
I don't know what happened,nothing.
I don't know what happened.
It just started bleeding.
It just started bleeding.
I woke up.
I woke up, you know, at firstcall and there was blood all

(19:42):
over the pillow on the side ofmy face and everything.
And somehow I scored thisagainst the old world to
barracks and they had the openBay Because I started out in.
But somehow I was able to moveinto one of the back rooms.
They had two rooms at thebottom of labor to at the top on
each side of it, and I was theone those rooms.

(20:03):
So it was just me and anothersoldier there.
I remember I had a top bunkieat the bottom.
So then he seized the blood.
I'm like, don't tell, don'ttell, he goes to tell the drill
sergeant.
They're like you gotta go onsick call.
You know you were afraid to dothat because you didn't want to
miss days and have to berecycled, all that crap.
So I remember the.
I think it was the walk ofshame because when you went on a

(20:27):
sick call, you had on your, youknow, you had on your fatigues,
but you had to wear lowquarters.
You didn't wear boots, you worelow quarters, you know, and the
trainees always wearing their.
I think we either wear helmetliners all the time or a helmet.
It's kind of rare that you justhad your little soft cap thing

(20:50):
right.
You got your soft cap, you gotyour shaving kit.
You had to care if he was goingto be put in the hospital.
It was just standard, you know.
You could have a tooth comingout and then you had to take
that thing.
So it was like a walk of shame.
You definitely stood out right.
Yeah, it was like a walk ofshame, you definitely stood out
right.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
Yeah, it was like a hundred years ago but I just
remember that being a walk ofshame.
So did they figure out what wasgoing?

Speaker 2 (21:12):
on.
I think I just had a bad coldor something and I think I had
tonsillitis.
They gave me some stuff forthat.
It was fine.
So no recycle.
You got this thing rewrapped.
There was never any otherissues after that.
I just remember that that was a.
It felt like a setback becauseI had to do that walk of shame,
right, and they didn't know whatwas causing it.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
You know, yeah, that was pretty low 48 hours.
Well, and I remember too, likebasic training, when you saw
someone in the Navy.
When you did that walk of shame, you wore tennis shoes.
That's how you knew, and Iremember the things that we
would say about the guys wearingtennis shoes.
And then you know, on the offchance, that you're the one

(21:56):
having to wear the tennis shoes.

Speaker 2 (21:57):
You remember all the stuff you were saying about
other people and you're like, oh, I'm that guy now yeah, it's
funny you say tennis shoes,because I'm sure that's probably
what we would have done.
We didn't have tennis shoes.
Oh yeah, ran in boots,everything was in boots.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Wow, yeah, I didn't experience that.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
I don't know if I would have said that.
I don't know if we would havegotten to that or not.
So you said that's why Ispecifically said the low
quarter.
Yeah.
And then you said tennis shoes.
I'm like tennis shoes.
Did I even own tennis shoes?
If I did, it was a part of mycivilian clothes.
It was not a part of my Armymakeup.
Yeah, we were issued a Reeboksfor PT.
I think we had some Conversetype something, but that did not

(22:40):
happen until like 1982.
Yeah.
Yeah, see, I actually went, wentthe military in 84.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Okay, so you score years.
Yeah, it was not a bad, not abad deal.
So, yes, you kind of make itthrough.
Anything else, anything else,stick out, you mind about basic
training uh-huh, it was a funone again.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
I didn't know anything like.
I don't, I don't know.
The first time I saw we havedidn't have guns in our family,
it was just, you know, my motherright, so my brothers had them
or whatever.
I never saw it.
So you know, we startedshooting on the range.
They teach you the basic riflemarksmanship and all that, but

(23:21):
having not shot one before, okay, I'm learning that.
You know, tell you how tobreathe, you know finger
pressure and all that stuff.
But I couldn't hit nothing LikeI was terrible and for some
reason I don't know if it was adrill sergeant or a range
instructor that got out to thejust in front of me a little bit

(23:43):
not in my line of sight right,but just enough to see my face
and I realized that I'm shootingright-handed.
But my right eye was closed.
You got the wrong guy and Ithink I was.

(24:04):
I was always pretty good withmy left hand, with everything
and, um, not having shot before,I didn't know which side to
shoot from.
So that was pretty strong.
So I think that kind of tookover for some reason.
But some of these hit close theother one, oh, then it was easy
.
But then later on my career Iwould just play around and shoot

(24:24):
that thing as well.
I'm still pretty almost theequivalent of the right-handed
shooter.
Once you figure it out, it'sgetting there.
Yeah, yeah, it helped mefurther my career to help others
who couldn't shoot.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Yeah, and spoiler alert, there's a lot of people
in the Army who don't know howto shoot.
Oh, that's true.
That's true.
Yeah, I remember running arange for qualification and I
won't mention his name becausehe's still a friend of mine, but
he was a major and I was astaff sergeant and he was a
ranger.
He had the tab and everything,but that guy couldn't hit the

(25:02):
broadside of a barn and at onepoint I was trying to help him,
trying to help him, trying tohelp him, I said, finally, said,
sir, why don't you just takethat gun apart and throw it at
the target?
You'll have better luck thereyou go.
And he didn't like that Anyway.
So yeah, there's plenty of.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
So you made it through boot camp, I'm assuming.
Did your mom or your familycome down for graduation?
No, okay, you knowcommunication was not like it is
now.
Yeah, I don't remember evenphone calls ever calling back
and saying anything.
To be honest with you, I can'tremember one.
I'm sure there may have been,but yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
That was all cell phones or not cell phones, it
was all pay phones.
Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, now didyou come home after base or did
you go?

Speaker 2 (25:47):
right to AIT, no, straight to AIT.
It wasn't until after AIT thatI came home.
That was very briefly, and then, after AIT, was straight to
airborne school.
So what was your MOS then?
I was an infantry at firstAdmin specialist, I think is

(26:10):
what it was called.
Okay, yeah, one thing therecruiter told me was you don't
want to be outside shining tanks.
And I'm like I think you'reright, I don't, you would have
gotten a cold shining tank.
So I'm like no, I don right, Idon't, you would have gotten a
cold shining tank.
So like, no, I don't want to dothat, right?

Speaker 1 (26:29):
So you picked a job.
You're not going to be outshining tanks, not shining tanks
.
Yeah, so you headed to airborneschool.
Yeah, is that down at inGeorgia, there, correct?

Speaker 2 (26:40):
One thing about the shining tanks and maybe it was
about the duty of shining tanksthat wasn't appealing.
I think what was appealing wasbeing outside.
I can go back to my high schooldays and I would just stare out
the window wanting to beoutside.
Why are we here?
It's a nice day.
Why am I in here?

(27:00):
And I think that truly carriedover in the early parts of my
career in here.
And I think that I mean thattruly carry over in an early
parts of my career, because nowI'm working in this office and
it's like I should be outsidedoing something.
So it wasn't a surprise to me,gravitating toward industry, to
be outside now, like you'reoutside, outside, outside all
the time, right through allkinds of weather, but at least

(27:21):
you're outside, you know.
So now, maybe I'm a natureperson.
You know as a result, where,and I was likely that all along.
It took me a while to discoverthat that's what it was.
So I never I mean, obviously,when you're cold to cold no one
likes to be cold, um, or soaking, wet or anything but I think I
was able to overcome that prettyquickly and that's a complaint

(27:46):
about it because you couldn't doanything about it.
But I think that's the reasonwhy, yeah.
So I think we're opposite,because I'll take cold all day
long.
I don't want to get heat.
Me and Lee don't get along atall.
Yeah, we'll get to a storyabout that.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
Remember the heat and the cold when we started
talking about ranger school.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
Yeah, All right.
So airborne school was differentfor me.
There was a group of us thatshowed up at the same time.
We knew that when we got thereour class wasn't going to start
right away.
So they said, well, these guyswill probably start next week or
so.
And they just put you on detail.

(28:25):
So you're cleaning up the wholepost, cutting grass, picking up
trash, all kinds of stuff.
So now it's June I think it'slate May, june and in Columbus,
georgia, so it's smoking hot.
Oh, it's smoking hot.

(28:45):
Oh, it's smoking hot.
It's smoking hot Ten months outof the year.
Yeah, and we're like the chaingang, like every day you get up
and just do that, do PT, andthen it's like you know what are
we going to do for cleanuptoday?
Just what do you call it?
Police call or anything thatwas work call or anything that

(29:11):
was work, and to the point wherewe only did that for a month.
Airborne school is only threeweeks long.
We're there a month but wehaven't seen air or born dude.
They just need people to cleanup their face.
It was a scam.
So the leadership just totallyforgot about this entire group.
That is really just the wholeclass.

(29:31):
I don't know how you forget 100and some odd people, but they
just kind of forgot and that'sall we did For a month.
It was so bad that everyone wasgoing to school for three weeks
, five days a week for threeweeks.
We finished the whole thing inlike nine days straight

(29:57):
Saturdays, sundays or before.
It was just five weekdays.
We finished nine days straight.
I remember the jumps.
We jumped two times a day.
They were jumping jump week.
They were doing, I think, threejumps to complete the week.
That's what you had to do.
In jump week we were doing twojumps.
I think we had five jumps total.

(30:18):
So maybe it was one a day forjump school.
Right, for the normal class wewere doing two a day because we
had to make up the whole thing,complete the whole thing, in
nine days.
I mean, it brushes out here sofast, yeah they already kept it
captured for a month.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Yeah, they might as well get you out of there.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Yeah, we knew how to customize grass, I can tell you
that, no doubt.
So that was like a blur then.
Well, it was a blur.
It was a blur once we finallystarted.
Yeah, that's what I mean.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that thefirst part.
I mean.
Rocky came out to the theatertheir own polls.
We were.
We knew when the movies werecoming, because we knew we could
go, because it wasn't nothingelse to do.
Yeah, um, obviously knew, whenchild time was um, weekends was

(31:01):
washing clothes and yeah, it wasa mess.
We sang songs and in theevening go to the classic store
buy something to drink.
We'd sing Commodore songs,isaac Brothers songs, and next
day get up and go cut some moregrass all over the darn post.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
Wow, yeah, yeah, not cool.
So you went back to your unitafter airborne.
Well, I was down on the sidetoday, second airborne division.
I was going to say somethingabout airborne in general.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
I remember basic training.
The airborne recruiters wouldcome around hey, you want to go
airborne, we have a tutorialabout it at this particular time
, and all that.
So there was a break in thebasic training schedule for you
to go look at, look at thepresentation and everything.
So that's what you wanted to do.
And me, super naive, likewhat's airborne?

(31:57):
Oh, you jump out of airplanes.
I'm not going to that.
I think most of the people inthe class in our tune were going
.
So I'm just following along andgoing right, okay, I'll listen.
And in that presentation theysaid you make $55 more a month.
I'm like I'm in, I don't carewhat you got to do, I'm doing it

(32:18):
, that's right.
So that's how I ended up doingAirborne $55 more a month.

Speaker 1 (32:25):
That's all it took.
I'm detecting a theme in howyou select what you're going to
do.
Money, money, money money.
Yeah, I'll find out what it islater.
There you go.
I saw that.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
Gotcha.
It's a great song, you know.
They started a video of peoplejumping out of the airplane.
Okay, that's pretty cool, Iguess.
I mean they live.
Okay, $55 a minute.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
You know, everybody else watching that video was
like, oh, I can't wait to jumpout of the airplane.
And you're like show me themoney, yeah, yeah.
Well, that's an interesting wayof selecting people in school.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
So I get to the 82nd and sign to the unit and you
know some of the like the firston it had been in Vietnam, the
company commander being inVietnam.
That's kind of the error thatthe leaders were had been in
Vietnam, where they just missedVietnam by a few months, like
they may have came in when,right as the war ended yeah,

(33:26):
ended, yeah, yeah.
So it was like that close.
It never, really, never reallyhit me how close I was because
it was a pretty good distanceaway from it.
But you know you get there andsee those guys, you know it's
right there and it never reallytalked about, it, never really
really came up at all.
You just knew that they hadbeen there and they were

(33:48):
thankful to be in the job thatthey were in instead of being
over there.
But you had a bird's eye viewof them.
I would say surviving the Army,not just surviving Vietnam,
surviving the army, because whatthey had to go through over

(34:10):
there.
And then you come back andyou're still in how different,
how different that was for them.
They come back to all the, allthe things that America was
doing and giving to them and allthat and now you have an army
that's totally different, wherearguably, most of the people
that were within Vietnam hadgotten out but they decided to

(34:33):
stay in and it had been so manyyears it's making a career or
whatever.
So it was kind of it was adifferent dynamic and watching
the army in those days of Eventhe whole army, make its
transformation from the Vietnamera and it felt pretty quick

(34:53):
after that.
So, you know, come in in 77,.
You know in 77, I'm in 82nd,turn into 78, and so after that
I go to Korea.
And it's almost as if when Igot to Korea you didn't see, you
know those Vietnam veteransanymore.
They I remember, I rememberseeing like many at all, like

(35:19):
that patch on the right shoulder.
You just didn't, you didn't seeit like you did in the 82nd.
So you go from the 82nd to the,the 82nd, so you go from 82nd
to the, you know you're takingairborne vision to the second
infantry division, and you stilldidn't didn't see it.
Yeah, so the shift was prettyquick and I was in korea from 79
to 80.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
do you think that, uh , that had something to do with
the fact that a lot of theseguys were draftees and they did
their time and they got the heckout, I mean, and they probably
didn't want to go to korea andhad enough years that they
didn't have to, maybe, um, butnow I did volunteer to go to
korea.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
Some people just just assigned some volunteer, but I,
I just I think that I don'tknow if that figured into their
choice, because most of thepeople I'm referring to were
already already some first class.

(36:16):
Yeah, yeah, I think.
Yeah, they're already somefirst class, so they'd already
been in.
Right, I think they were alwayson first class, so they'd
already been in.
And maybe it was that time ofpeople that were that rank for
them to retire or whatever.
Not really sure, and maybe Idon't want to say, I just
stopped noticing it, it wasn'tright in front of me like it had

(36:39):
been.
This wasn't this problem In anysecond.
Exactly, exactly, yeah.
So you left any second.
You went to the secondnd,exactly, okay, exactly, yeah.
So you left 82nd.
You went to the 2nd Division,correct, okay, yeah, and what'd
you do in Korea?
I'm still an admin, an admin guythere, one of my mentors from
82nd.
He was going over there andthat's why I went.
It kind of taught me the ropesof Army.

(37:03):
He kind of taught me the ropesof Army.
I was a pretty good shiner inmy boots, but he kind of stood
out like what are you doingthere?
Why is that thing looking alittle bit better than mine?
I feel like you're doing it andit's easier for you than me.
So he took me under his wingand showed me those things.
He taught me a lot in a shortperiod of time.
And then he was going to Korea.

(37:23):
So I went to Korea I mean, I'mworking in the same section.
He wasn't my boss, just like hehad not been my boss before,
right, but you know, he tookmoney under his wing there.
He played basketball.
You know, I reckon he was asergeant I wasn't but he told me

(37:43):
a lot of things from the verybeginning.
I just began to follow.
So I went to Korea.
Then I went back to it a secondafter Korea.
I can't remember where he wentat that particular time Because
they didn't have cell phones andall that type of stuff, even
computers even.

Speaker 1 (38:00):
Yeah, it was hard to keep track of and you know it's
funny, that's not that long ago,but you and I have seen things
really change throughout theyears.
But you're right, like go tobasic training, go to school.
There was no Facebook orMySpace or Instagram or whatever
you watch.
If you ran into people, again,you ran into them.

(38:22):
If you didn't, you didn't.
It was a whole different groupin Korea.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Aside from him, it was a whole new learning
experience in terms of peoplelike the people I work with.
Ironically, I take that back.
There was one guy that weworked together in a little
small section that I went tobasic training with.
What was that guy?

(38:45):
It started in the Philippines,so imagine that You're trying to
fill pins, you end up basicallytraining with me at that time
and then a few years later he'sin Korea as well.
So it became a pretty smallworld very quickly over there.
Then I played basketball overthere.
I started doing Taekwondo overthere.

(39:06):
I actually got to fight down ina place called Kukyuan.
Anyone listening that knowsmartial arts and knows Taekwondo
, then you know part of originis Korea and Kukyuan it's like
the creme de la creme of whereyou can fight.
As a Taekwondo and martialartist.

(39:27):
I played football a little bit.
I mostly did basketball andTaekwondo.
I took up Taekwondo like everyday, I think, except for Sunday.
I started getting pretty good.
I remember sparring theinstructor and you know I'm

(39:50):
5'10" he's probably 5' 5-ish andI think he suckered me in.
He let me get in a few shots Towhere I'm like oh, I can get in
a few more shots.
Next thing, I know bam, I'm onmy back.
I can get in a few more shots.
Next thing I know bam, I'm onmy back, feet up in the air and
I'm just looking up at him andhis hand is out there.

(40:11):
He opened me up.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
He drew you in.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
Yeah, he drew me in.
It was kind of funny.
But I remember that one prettywell.
I was like, okay, don't do thatagain, Mr Parker's fast and
he's sucking you everything's alesson.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Yeah, yeah, that's great.
So you uh, you uh, get backfrom korea, um, and you're back
with the 82nd going back today,yeah, so what happens from that?

Speaker 2 (40:37):
so different, different um a different uh
section I'm working in.
This time it's a receptionstation, not a reception station
, but then processing foreveryone coming into a second.
They had to come through thereand we're far away from the
flagpole.
We just have our boss who's onfirst class and just the people

(41:01):
we work with.
And that was a pretty, prettycool little setting right.
And I had a person.
My first car I had a 1977Triumph.
Spitfire was the coolest thing.
Cool, color your cup for you.

(41:21):
I can see you all this righthere.
Yeah, it was really cool.
Did it have the tan interior?
No, oh no, it didn't make thatin 77.
If it was tan either, andthat's been sunburned when you
see the turn colors.
No, that's a great old carthough it was.
It was, um, I had my eyes onthe tr7, but that cost a little

(41:45):
bit more, you know.
So I didn't put that.
That spit fire man, that thingwas cool.
And then it kind of startedmessing up and I remember some,
this guy.
He's actually from Michigan,here, detroit, you know he
played football, I think he wentto some college and he messed
up his knee and it ended up inthe Army.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
They used to call me Walt, you know not Womack Walt,
and it was kind of funny becausehe was this big old private,
you know he was part of firstclass or whatever.
Yeah, you're too big to be apart of first class, right?
Yeah, he said that big old whatyou doing, you're too big to be
a part of first class, right?
Right, he looks like I wasfirst surgeon or something yeah,

(42:30):
yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
So anyway, I'll say, hey, let's go to the mall.
He's always going to go to themall, right.
But then something's wrong, mycar to start or something like
you had to push, start it allthe time.
Yeah, he said, whoa, you just,you just want me to push that
little raggedy car.
Because I say, come on, I go,not gonna do a coma, man, let's

(42:54):
go whatever whoa, you must thinkI'm stupid.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Anybody that's owned a British car.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
Yeah, knows those.
British cars from the 60s and70s.
The electronics were terrible.
Right, right, they were great.
Poker they were especially.
Get someone to push it.
Right, right, they were great.
They were Especially if you hadsomeone to push it for you.
Yeah, and he would say whydon't you have a push?
Because you can't drive a stick.
Why don't you teach me how todrive a stick so you can push?
Yeah, like you're going to pushthat car with that guy in it.
With that guy in it yeah, but hecouldn't drive a stick, so I
was always set free from that.
Nice, how did he fit in there?

(43:24):
That's, I'm trying to make sureof this.
Yeah, he got in there somehow.
Yeah, put the top down the wallbecause of the convertible.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Oh yeah, yeah, he's probably all like scrunched up
inside the driver's seat.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Then I left from there and went to, I re-enlisted
so.
So it was never a plan to stayin the military.
It was, and I tell people tothis day that the military is a
good place to hide while youfigure out what you want to do.
Again, you're going to get paid.
You're going to learn a skill,a job.
I tell them now make sure thatjob is transferable to something

(44:00):
that you think you want to do.
When you get out that, yourtest scores can align with that
if you do it strategically.
Going to get food, obviously, Isaid the roof over your head
and an opportunity to go toschool.
So you can make serious triesin a four-year enlistment if you
plan it the right way.
So I should mention that assoon as I got to that second, I

(44:24):
started taking college classes.
Taking college class, okay,yeah, and then you end up
piecing all those thingstogether from different schools
or whatever to get your degree.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
So that's something people might not know about
either, too, is that when youare in the military, all that
stuff you do can translate intocollege credits can help you get
your degree.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, I didn't do that immediately.
I didn't have any experiencewhen I first.
You know, as soon as I got tothe 8th Second, I went to the
office there and signed up formy first college class, which
was all based at FayettevilleState University.

(45:06):
So I took classes there thewhole time I was there.
That's the first time I wasthere.
And then I got to Korea, didthe same thing, got back to 82nd
, did the same thing, then Ireenlisted and somewhere in
Atlanta I got promoted tosergeant somewhere in there and
then went to Turkey.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
I want to stop you there, though.
Why did you reenlist?
Because you weren't planning onit.
Did they offer you some money?
I'm just curious.

Speaker 2 (45:38):
No money, no money.
I thought I was going to dothose four years and my thing
was, you know, my mother hadworked for the government for 35
years.
My sister worked for thegovernment for a total of 32.
My other sister worked foranother major company for 30

(45:58):
plus years.
And not that I was planning todo that, but I thought I was
going to work at the post office.
So, bottom line, government,government, government,
government, right.
And so in retrospect, I reallyhadn't figured anything out.
What Bart Womack wanted to doin life.
Yeah, to be honest with you, soit was just, if that's what I

(46:18):
was going to go do, if that wasmy plan, I really hadn't figured
out anything at all.
So, but you had to take thetest in the city that you wanted
to work, and the test wouldnever align to when I could come
take it in Columbus.
I would have to leave FortBragg and go there to do that,

(46:38):
and it just never aligned.
So it didn't happen.
So I re-enlisted.
So okay, just try this again.
And I didn't happen, so Ire-enlisted.
So okay, let's try this again.
I was having fun and althoughthe recruiter didn't necessarily
say join the Army and see theworld, there were opportunities

(47:00):
to go different places that Inever would have gone.
So now I'm in Turkey.
I get there and they have alittle Head Start class of
Turkish and everything.
So I'm learning basic Turkish,bottom line.
I spent a whole year there withmy broken Turkish, my little
book, and I went all over Turkey, like all over.

(47:20):
I could take every mode oftransportation that they had.
I could speak enough to goanywhere, eat anything, order
any food.
So it was fabulous in thataspect.
Our teacher in that class.
He taught a female volleyballteam so we started following

(47:41):
them around as they played.
So that's another opportunity.
It was another opportunity togo throughout the country as
well.
Um, it was, it was a greatexperience.
I mean, I think by that headstart class I dove into the
culture, um, of all things.
I remember when I first was.
So now it's 1983, 83, yeah, andso whatever was happening in the

(48:10):
world of 83, it was prettyquiet, like there was like some
small stuff goes, like it was.
It was, yeah, the small stuffwas big enough to where when
they picked us up from theairport, they took us to this
hotel and said don't come out,we'll come get you to come out.

(48:31):
You were told don't, don't,don't wear shirts with USA on
them or anything that whenyou're done, sure, and they look
cowboy hat, yes, yeah, and sothat was enough to scare you
into standing inside, that wasfor sure.
I remember they picked us up,and this was long before we went

(48:53):
up to the unit, which was about40-some kilometers away.
So we were in Istanbul and theyhad to pick us up to take us to
where we were going to bestationed, a place called
Çakmaklı, turkey, and I forgetwhat day we arrived, but they
took us down to the bazaar andthat was a pretty cool

(49:18):
experience of seeing that andyou can buy whatever and you can
barter, like what's barter?
Okay, you can negotiate, okay,got it.
And it was me and it's probablyabout six of us and one guy.

(49:39):
This other black guy was tall,I mean, he's probably six, three
and welcome to the mall.
And we hear to the mall and wehear Kunta Kinte.
So by that time the movie Rootshad been on the television.
So we hear someone holler thatEverybody looks and then all of
us look.
It's a different life thateveryone's looking at us, you're
like who are they talking about?

(49:59):
Yeah, right, levar Burton's heresomewhere.
We're all looking around andeveryone's looking at us.
Oh no, wow, because you know, Idon't want to say they're
gradually becoming westernized,but they finally come on
television over there.
Yeah, it's 83, so what, sevenyears later?
So we realized we were the buttof that joke.

(50:22):
It was kind of funny, right.
And then we go into this onelittle shop and we're talking to
the guy and he's like he saysWhite Shadow, well, there was a
television series, remember that?
Basketball, because it was asix-sevenths.
Hey, he's just starting five.
He had a name for all of us.
I think I was the Kevin Hookscharacter.

(50:43):
But it's just funny how ourcountry becomes westernized and
they start getting TV shows andall that type of stuff, how they
just automatically would takepeople and put them into those
characters right away.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
Yeah, well, I remember watching those shows
and, as part of being anAmerican, you react to it
differently than people who arelearning about America through
those shows.
Right, and I think that that'show it is.
So were there so in Turkey?

(51:20):
Were there not a lot of blackpeople, a lot of African
American people?
Was it just really much the?
Because it sounds to me likethey hadn't seen a lot of black
people.

Speaker 2 (51:31):
Yeah, I'm going to say, yes, I don't know that.
I don't remember seeing anyoutside of the ones that I ended
up working with on that base.
Okay, so that would mean that Inever saw any African people.
That's what that would mean.
You're in Europe at the end ofthe day, but no, not in those

(51:55):
years.
I don't remember one.

Speaker 1 (51:59):
So this is new to the people that you're meeting too.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
Really, yeah, not in Istanbul, I don't remember
seeing it, yeah, and I went allover Turkey and didn't see it.
I remember going to I think itwas Ankara.
Was there an Air Force basethere?
Mm-hmm, I didn't go to Insulikwhen I was there, which has an
Air Force base, but at Ankarathey did Pretty big one.

(52:28):
So, aside from black people inthat base, you didn't see them
out in the public.
And I took the trains.
I played sports over there, likeeverything, and we're a very
small unit, and we playedintramural against each other.
And then if whoever won thechampionship between that went

(52:49):
to the higher headquarters inItaly, the Chinsa, to play for
the championship for that sport.
So I played basketball and wewon and I didn't get to go.
My boss wouldn't let me go.
I Played tennis actuallylearned in tennis in high school

(53:09):
oh, now to come back to thatand I cross-country as well.
So so what do we play?
Tennis?
I Finished tennis and theremight have been a week in
between.
I finished tennis in Italy,went back to Turkey.

(53:32):
I was there a week to get rightback on the plane and go back
to Italy for track.
Wow.
So I was running.
What did I run 10,000?
5,000?
Wow, so I was running.
What did I run?
10,000?
5,000?
I think that was 6K.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
And I came around another thing.
So 6K would be about what?
Five miles, right, yeah?

Speaker 2 (53:57):
Yeah, I can't remember the other thing.
I ran, I had two or threeevents and then I came back from
that and we had one in football.
My boss said you're not going,no more traveling.

(54:17):
He's like, you spent more timein Italy than you have in Turkey
, so he wouldn't let me go forthat.
But then I ended up going laterfor volleyball.
Yeah well, I played everythingthan you have in Turkey, so he
wouldn't let me go for that.
But then I ended up going laterfor volleyball.
Yeah well, I played everything.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
That's what happens when you're a multi-sport
athlete.
Yeah, I played everything.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
It was a lot of fun, and all those championships were
in Italy.
What a great adventure.
Yeah, that's just amazing.
That's really.
My Turkish tour was sports andmy boss not wanting me Let me go
to something.
I guess we'll say he's in favorof that.
And that's when I volunteeredto do a drill.

(54:57):
So I, you know he wanted me todo something else.
Like you, make a great one also, that's what you are, that's
what you want.
But well, that was to dosomething different.
Yeah, yeah.
So I put in a bit of drossard.
So my assignment from from uhturkey was, wasn't joseph?

(55:17):
okay, did you go?
Where'd you go?
To port jackson, for dicks.
So, for dicks.
Yeah, you know, I deployed outof fort dix after it was
condemned.
Ah, we were living in those oldbarracks.
Okay, yeah, there was a guy that.
So two influences.
Well, one influence in Turkeyproper and then another one I
went to.
It was called PODC.

(55:38):
While I was in signed in Turkey, but PODC was in Germany.
So I had trained in Turkey to,but he was in Germany.
So I had trained in Turkey toRun the Greek Marathon and I was
running 60 miles a week.

(56:02):
I run six in the morning, fourin the evening and then ten
straight on Saturdays and thentook Sunday off.
I think that was coming up in inthe fall.
I think that was coming up inthe fall.
I think it was in October andthen September.
In September I'm notified thatI'm going to PLDC.
Like I was on the wait list andI mean they tell me on like a
Monday morning that you're goingto PLDC, the person in front of

(56:24):
you can't go.
You need to fill this slot.
Like a Monday morning thatyou're going to PODC, the person
in front of you can't go.
You need to fill this slot, youdon't know where you can go.
If you want to go, you have towait.
So I said I'm going.
They told me Monday morningI'll leave Tuesday morning.
Wow, that's fascinating.
Yeah, that was kind of lateSeptember or whatever.

(56:50):
So I spent the whole month ofOctoberober at po dc and didn't
get an opportunity to do thegreek marathon.
All that training, all thattraining I don't have, haven't.
I just never attempted to carveout 60 miles a week for the
rest of my life.
I just didn't do it again.
I didn't.
It's like I asked a lot of time.
Yeah, there's a lot of models.
Yeah, for sure.
So I just never tried again.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
Yeah, so you.
Uh, how long were you in inTurkey then?
A year, okay, so you were basedin Turkey.
You were only in Turkey, whereevery place else it sounds like.
So you were there for a year.
Then you opt for.

Speaker 2 (57:19):
For drill instructors yeah, yeah, yeah.
So let's talk about that.
Yeah, so, drill instructor, solet's talk about that.
Just to close out theTurkey-Italy thing some would
say that I was based in Italy,based in Turkey, worked in Italy
, played sports in Italy.
I got the CPs, though, becausethe tennis was in Naples, so I

(57:43):
got to go all over Italy as well, not just for Chinza I think
Chinza hosted the volleyball,but all the rest of those things
were in a different part ofItaly, so it was one experience.
By this time, I was only in theArmy, just over.
No, I'll take that back.
I got the years mixed up.

(58:03):
I apologize, it's going to work.
I went to Italy in 80, I'msorry.
I went to Turkey in 81, not 83.
Okay, yeah.
So by the time I left Turkey,it just reached five years, like
just, it was a matter of days.

(58:23):
Years, like just it's a matterof days, but in that five-year
span, you know it was in koreaand turkey and a lot of italy,
yeah, yeah, and germany at somepoint too, in germany at some

(58:44):
point, yeah, so I was seeing theworld.
Not, I didn't know that wasgonna happen.
Yeah, that's kind of a surprise, right.
Yeah, yeah, okay.
So now it's one to my four dicks, new Jersey, for, for Joe's art
school, my instructor at PODCwho's on first class, really,
really, really sharp guy he was.

(59:05):
He was going to drill sergeantschool the same time I was, so I
thought I was like, hey, I waswatching this guy, he looks
sharp.
I came here to kind of be likehim, not really paying much
attention to him, having notbeen a drill sergeant, right,
you know he's on first class.
I attention to him, having notbeen a drill sergeant, you know

(59:26):
he's a sergeant first class, I'ma sergeant and he's just now
going to drill sergeant school.
So anyway, which I'm sure isgoing to be a pretty strange,
since they've already been thisgreat PODC instructor, right.
And there was another influencein Turkey.
This guy was a ranger and hisbackground was common, but you
know he was the only Rangeraside from the commander and the

(59:47):
sergeant major.
Yeah, that's pretty close tosomething I could play tennis,
so jumpy just brings out thetennis book, which is pretty fun
.
That this our major in thechapel of good tennis, oh, okay,
that's not a fair team.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
You got the big guy and you got the guy with guns on
his side.

Speaker 3 (01:00:04):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's our measure.
Yeah, man, we would battle.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
They'd be cursing at me and what the little tennis
thing was.
It was like a little wall there.
You could kind of throw it inbetween like some barracks and
you get shot there with aspanner because you had to.
You want to see?
Look, you're gonna eat thatwall.

(01:00:26):
If you wanna get this, you'regonna eat that concrete if you
wanna get that wall back.
You said Payne hit this one,yeah, but I wanted to mention
the influence of the Ranger andit was just a quiet professional
and I remember I said can I getsome of your time?
I wanna talk to you about beinga rancher.
He just told me everything thatwas so inspiring.
You know something to do and itwas a drill sergeant.

(01:00:50):
Well, post, you know, postdrill sergeant.
So that was already, you know,in my vision after that drill
sergeant thing.
So I get there and you know,finish the drill sergeant school
and I get assigned to thecompany and we had females and I
remember like my first day it'slike get up, go, wake up.

(01:01:14):
The recruits target.
Oh, you know like, hold up, youcan't go through here.
They get from first call orwhatever.
They get like 30 minutes to getdressed and everything like oh
yeah, right, we're gonna throwsome trash cans or something
right, flip some bands orwhatever, yeah, yeah, it was
kind of funny.
I was like, oh, ready to gohold up, can't go for you.

(01:01:37):
Um, so of two years I had, had.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
uh, of two years I had five cycles of females and
five cycles of males.
So this was before theyintegrated males and females.
Then, correct, okay, so therewas females, but it was all
female units, correct?
Okay, all right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
But my first cycle.
So that first cycle I just fellin on a cycle that was only in
progress and they probably hadtwo weeks before they graduated,
okay yeah.
And then we picked up and itwas males.
So I had very little experiencein training females.
It was two weeks.
I was just kind of learning,watching and all that stuff
right.
But then we picked up the males.

(01:02:23):
I was in the full group.
So it was interesting becausethe very next cycle after that
and we get females again andhave them, you know the whole
basic training period and youhad to flip and learn quickly
what females were good at andweren't, because you're already
learning what males were good atand weren't, because you're

(01:02:47):
already learning what males weregood at and what not.
So instruction females thrivedLike you can tell them one time
and they can do it.
You can't tell them againbecause they're just new at it.
But you know they were justsmarter, bottom line.
They were smarter, especiallyas a group, where the males not

(01:03:07):
as much.
They can do a lot, a lot ofthings physically, of course.
They have a body strength andall those types of things.
But that was the differencewith the females they couldn't.
So you had to.
You had to allocate your timetowards strengths and weaknesses
.
They run it very quickly.

(01:03:28):
So with the females, for example, in week six they're throwing
their hand grenade forqualification.
They can't throw, they have noupper body strength and you know
, the hand grenade is just afake body.
It's not a real one.
They throw a real that.
Throw a real one as well.
But even the body of thegrenade is too, too heavy for

(01:03:50):
them.
I mean, we're talking like somethree feet.
I mean wind up, yeah, threefeet.
Yeah, you want to get a littlebit more with just the body,
right?
Yeah, so you pick, you'repicking them up from the
reception station and they maycome in as a whole platoon or
they may come in as you mighthave seven people.

(01:04:12):
But whatever that day one isgrenade is in their hand Going
out to this open field.
You're gonna throw a grenade,you know, multiple times One
group on this side, one group onthis side, one group on that
side, multiple times before wego in for each nail.
So by week six they can do it.

(01:04:33):
Now you get some like sports,you know, whoa, right, what was
that?
Okay, you guys gotta move back,or you go over there and throw
yours so you don't hit me orwhatever, but except the net, I
remember this one.
I was going to steal it outwith that right off the bat.
It was kind of crazy.
But that's the difference.

(01:04:54):
Is the body strength.
I'm just focusing on strengthsand weaknesses.

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
I think it's important to point out that it's
not that they couldn't do it,it's that they needed extra work
in order to be able to do it.
Right, right, right.
Everybody's got to be standard.
They don't use it.
I mean, yeah, they're notthrowing grenades back home for
the company.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Yeah, even in those, even in those years, you take a
male and a female.
You had a son and a daughter.
You're doing that.
Catch stuff with the son.
You know daughters playing withdolls or whatever.
You know what I mean.
That's how it works.
Yeah, so you just have to.
There's just certain things youhave to do differently, that's
all.
And once they figure out how todo it, you know now they're

(01:05:34):
game on.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
I got you.
So five cycles, that's a lot ofpeople that you got ready to be
in the military.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
Yeah well, 10 total, 10 total cycles, Wow.
So five of each.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
Okay, wow okay, I was miscounting, so 10.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
That's a lot of kids.
Yeah, I think the female cyclesprepared you for the military
overall, what you would be, justto make up the military right.
And if you look at someone whoonly worked with males and then
now you're in upper echelon inyour career or whatever, and now

(01:06:13):
there's a couple of females inthere, and then that's your
first time and you've been infor 12, 15 years, it's a little
different.
Yeah, you know, but that washappening to me in my fifth year
.
So anything after that you'reaccustomed to it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
This is a point in time, too, where the military
overall was predominantly males.
I mean I remember my time inthe 80s it was odd to see a
female in uniform, to be honest.
But as I got through my careerprobably like you saw it just
became a pretty even mix.
Yeah, at least for me.

Speaker 2 (01:06:52):
Yeah, it wasn't shocking to see after that,
right?
Um, I played football, I playedbasketball.
Give me our own company team,or whatever.
The animal thing kept going.
So I played basketball.
I played basketball.
We had our own company team orwhatever the Intermole thing.
I kept going.
So I played basketball.
I played football.
I played pretty good atfootball, me and another Joe
Sarney, buddy.
We would approach those games itwas flag football approach

(01:07:14):
those games and say how manyinterceptions can we get?
It was like you could make abeat on the ball and, yeah, we
would have a bet about who wouldget the most interceptions.
That was fun.
That's pretty much the wholetime as a drill sergeant.

(01:07:35):
There's this thing called AUSA,which is the Association of the
United States Army.
I'm not sure when it started,but in 1983, they bused us from
Fort Dix up to Washington DC forthe AUSA convention and in
those years they would have aspecial ceremonial event in the

(01:08:03):
old guard and they'd bus youfrom the convention center over
to Fort Meyer for that ceremonyand they called it AUSA review
or something like that.
They don't do it there.
So I went over there and, um,you know, saw that, you know,
very impressive, the marchingand all that stuff, and there

(01:08:27):
was this one guy standing outthere out in front.
You know the building's waydown, you can't really see eyes.
And I looked at his face and Iwas like that's that Joe Johnson
dude from my basic trainingtime.
That wasn't my Joe Sargent, butthe Joe Sargent right, the
dress on, my guy, the scary guy,yeah, so they do what they call

(01:08:52):
a passive review and they goout this door.
So this thing was insidebecause it was the month of
October and they go out and I'mlike that's that guy.
I'm gonna go tell him that hewas my blah, blah, blah, right,
so this is this is a3.
So six years and on six yearssince that time.

(01:09:13):
Like how's he gonna remember mefrom that time?
Yeah, um I don't know if I'mgonna make him.
He's good everybody I don't knowwhere they're going, going out
and get out that door somehow.
Then they march and just kindof go back to the unit, right,
yeah, and I'm going, I'm tryingto run, and I got on my class
stage, right, I'm like, so I'mJohnson, and he stops.

(01:09:39):
I was like, hey, who am I?
Hey, who am I?
Of course you don't rememberthat, right, yeah.
So, anyway, you know the thingsare where we go back to Fort
Dix and everything.
It's 1983.
Now we get a little fast, fast,fast forward A few assignments
down the road.
I am assigned to the old guardnow and I'm in Bravo Company,

(01:10:00):
he's in Delta Company and thosetwo companies are side by side.
And there he is right, thereagain.
You didn't yell that time, Ididn't yell that time.
Well, I did, and that remindedme because by that time it's two
years after running him down.
So he still didn't know who Iam.
But now I'm making him rememberagain and I'm going to be here

(01:10:21):
because I'm stationed here.
I got a little far ahead there.

Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
Oh no, but part of the old guard.
That's pretty impressive.
That's quite an honor.

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
Yeah, so I leave.
I guess I should mention when Iso I'm still a drill sergeant
now and it's time to leave FortDixie, I re-enlist.
But then I changed my OS in 83to infantry, okay, and my senior
drill sergeant was a ranger.
The guy was the senior drillsergeant before him was an

(01:10:56):
infantry guy I'll bring him upagain later but he was in the
first platoon and I was in thesecond pl platoon.
Then he became the senior drillsergeant for a little while.
Then he left and we got a newsenior drill sergeant.
So he saw him first class andhe's a ranger like just cool,
not boasting anything, he wouldjust smile.

(01:11:19):
You never see him maybe.
I think he got upset like acouple of times so it was kind
of very noticeable because likeMike, he didn't just let
everything go off his back right.
But you know, I was talking tohim even more about about when
he was in school and it reallyjust changed my MLS.
He said, bart, you don't haveto compete with every, every

(01:11:40):
staff sergeant and infantry.
You don't have to compete with20%, only 20% give a darn.
So that's your competition.
So if you work hard you can notonly get that 20%, you can even
get even deeper.
So that was pretty comfortingto know that I didn't have to

(01:12:00):
beat everybody like right offthe bat, right.
So yeah, it was only reallycompeting with that 20
percentile.
So I I leave Fort Dix and I ranlist and then I put in for Korea

(01:12:21):
.
So I get to Korea, I'm here toget in one of these units and do
this stuff, and I'm at thereception station and they see,
I just come from being a drillsergeant.
And then there's this unit thatwants all the best of the best
people.
So drill sergeant tells me youwant the best of the best.

(01:12:44):
So they put my records in thatpile.
This guy calls me and talks tome hey, we like what you've done
in your career so far.
I want to take you to thisspecial unit and we take you up
there.
You stay for seven days.
If you like it, we'll sign youthere.
If you don't like it, we'llsign you to the secondary unit.
Okay, let's go.

(01:13:05):
So I go up there and it's inthe JSA Joint Security Area and
when you get up there theyexplain a little bit more about
what the Joint Security Area is.
And the KPA in North Korea islike right there.
They call that North.
We'll take you up North, we'llshow you all that stuff and
you'll be assigned to a platoonand you'll do the whole rotation

(01:13:26):
with the platoon.
After that rotation you decideif you want to stay or not.
So obviously completelydifferent.
You know there's a real enemythere even though nothing had
happened.
So now it's 84.
Nothing had happened since 76when there was a call it a tree,
tree cutting incident.
But they're still in ourcountry, right?

(01:13:50):
So anyway, after about five,six days, they don't ask you for
a decision until the whole timeis over with.
But I made my decision, and soI made my decision, and so that
made my decision.
This that's on, comes, took tomy room and, embarrassed, talk

(01:14:11):
to okay, we need you over here.
This the tune.
So I come down my right seat,ride through well, interpret to
it mom.
And this guy's coming down fromfourth platoon.
He's a squally.
Hey, we need you over there, weneed you to lead the ship over
there.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
I don't know him.
He said okay, I just listen.

(01:14:33):
About an hour after that thefirst sergeant comes down
through the graves.
First sergeant's like five,five, four.
Maybe I'm a tall guy, yeah, atall ranger right and he's
barking.
So he's like hold on, I'm gonnaput you in the fort with two.
I said why you put me in thefort with two.

(01:14:54):
You don't ask me why.
I'm gonna tell you why in thefirst song.
So I called the little bigperson.
He's the little Napoleon.
Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna tell you.
You already know that there's areason why.
Yeah, why can't you just tellme the reason why?

(01:15:15):
And so, anyway, I tell you what.
I tell you they need yourleadership over.
Why don't you just leave withthat?
Why don't you like stroke myego first instead of, like you
know?
Oh God, I'm in it Anyway.
So I moved and all that stuff.
I'm over here in Fort Deer,right, and anyway, that guy that
came and told me that he toldme something else I can't

(01:15:36):
remember, but it wasn't true.
Aside from we needed leadershipover here.
He said something else.
So I always mess with him tothis day.
Let me tell you how I met thisguy.
He started out by telling me alot, right, and now we're
friends, now we're best friends.
So it's kind of funny how itall started out.

(01:15:58):
And then he, I'm there forobviously you're in the tomb,
but it's July.
And then he, I'm there forobviously a year in the platoon,
but it's July.
And then he, he had alreadybeen there, he left in November,
and right after he leaves wehave a normal routine.
So this is how it works here.
Everyone's in this JSF JointSecurity Force Company.

(01:16:20):
There's four platoons and thoseplatoons rotate.
There's platoon that's off,there's platoon that's QRF,
there's platoon that's north,which means you're working in
the JSA itself, and there'splatoon that's training and you
just rotate.
So when you go from off to QRFin the morning of that

(01:16:45):
changeover, you're assuming therole of QRF.
That platoon is assuming therole of North, so you're getting
the ammo and everything fromthem and you're signing for it.
It goes from near trucks toyour truck.
When you're QRF you're on call24-7.

(01:17:10):
You money through Friday In thedaytime.
You're staged at a place that'sprobably three miles from the
barracks area, which is CampKitty Hawk, but about a mile
from the JSA itself.

(01:17:32):
It's just a QRF building, sothat's where you're all day.
You may be doing some trainingor some mapping or some stuff
that you can do kind of locallythere in that area because
you're just on call for QRF.
So that's what QRF is like.
Then you change over from QRF toNorth.
Then you go up North.
Same kind of handover, kind ofrelief in place.

(01:17:53):
There's ambulance stuff alreadyup there and they come out and
come in.
Then you're up north in the JSA.
So now you're the guards thatare outside on the tours.

(01:18:15):
When those happen, when we havea tour, they're out, we're out,
and then when they have a tourwe'll send a small presence out
when the North has a tour.
That's how that works.
Then you transition from Northto training.
So ammo changeover and thenwhatever training you're going

(01:18:39):
to do Sometimes it's local, butmost but most time they have
plans or something in sometraining area or whatever,
before you go do, then afterthat you're off.
That was kind of the rotation.
So one day went north it'sThanksgiving 1984, it's
Thanksgiving over there in about30 hours.

(01:19:01):
I used to have time zone and wehad just finished this squad
leader meeting and then we hearkind of sound like that, but
it's a gunshot.
And then you hear a couple ofthem and you know right away

(01:19:24):
it's a gunshot.
So we go through our drill toarm ourselves.
Now I should mention that ourplatoon is half GIs and half
Koreans and they would call themkatusas, which is Augmented to
United States Army.

(01:19:56):
It is, uh, they are kind of theelite of elite in Korean society
.
Like parents have money, okay,you must join the military if
you are 21 and in Korea, um, Ithink maybe, if you give it the
ages now up to the age, but youhave to wait until 21, but you
have to serve in military fortwo years, like still to this
day, you must serve in militaryfor two years, yeah, so if you

(01:20:22):
are the elite of the elite, thenyou have an opportunity to be a
Catoosa and serve with theUnited States Army, versus being
a ROC soldier, a Korean soldier.
So this is like a primeassignment for them.
For them, yeah, privilege, yes,and ROC Army is much tougher on

(01:20:46):
them coming coming in there.
So they really don't want that.
Not these kids, but they.
They always say no more rocksoldier, you're like you're not
rock soldier, dude.
So so, anyway, gunshot happensand and I mention them because
even though our total force ofthe platoon strength of the

(01:21:06):
platoon is 36 people, well,about half, 18 or so are
fighting the kpa, koreanpeople's army, that that are
assigned in that jsa on thenorth side okay, um, each guard
post that we have has a ussoldier, rock soldier, that's

(01:21:27):
the way it kind of works.
You're paired with them, yeah,so that was probably the only,
that was the only US-Korea forcethat maintained that they were
together during that was theones that were in the guard post

(01:21:48):
because there was no place forthem to go, but the ones that
were in our headquartersbuilding didn't come outside to
fight, so we had this exchangeof fire going on.
So what happened was there wasa, there was a tour on the north
side.
A guy from China had planned tocome to the JSA to defect.

(01:22:10):
He was with another person,just those two on a tour and
they had a Korean guard that wasaccompanying them on a tour on
their side.
He asked the guard to take apicture.
I sorry, I said his buddy totake a picture of him with the
guard.
So his buddy took the picture.
He took off running to thesouth and then eventually the

(01:22:33):
guard chased after him, shootingRight, and that started a whole
firefight.
They start coming out of thebuilding called the Gok and we
start coming out where we areand now there's exchange of fire
going back and forth.
You couldn't really safelymaneuver from the area of that

(01:22:55):
building and it was kind of alow point where the rural Rabi
Sa'i was a little bit higher,where the road right beside it
was a little bit higher.
And then you went up to thearea where the talks take place
and that was just a little bithigher.
So they were kind of on somehigh ground and we were on some

(01:23:16):
low ground.
So anything they were shootingacross was kind of going well
over our heads.
We had two deuce-and-a-halvesout there, so we really kind of
positioned ourselves under deuceand a halves for protection
there and then the exchange justwent back and forth.

(01:23:40):
So me and my I was a team leader, I'm a squad leader now We'd go
upstairs and cause, now we cansee to the other side, kind of
have to get out of the windowlike this to be able to see over
there.
And because of his position hehas an M203.

(01:24:03):
So we take some M203 rounds andgo shooting in that area.
So this thing called thebeautiful something guard, but
they're down in something guard,but you can never get anything
in there unless you wantsomething in there.
Yeah, so you got a perfectvantage point I would say not
viewpoint.

(01:24:23):
We know where it is Right.
You have to use indirect fireinstead of direct fire to do
anything, not, but we know whereit is.
We can't really see it.
Yeah, so there's this tree there.
It's November, there's noleaves on it, you know, but it
has all those crazy branchessticking out.
So I said, look, don't,whatever you do, don't hit the

(01:24:45):
tree, because that could justdrop down and our soldier would
be right there.
The first round is the tree.
Now it penetrates the treeRight the limbs or whatever, and
doesn't get off course to landdown there, thank God.
So I remember, I rememberthinking my hand is slapping up
on the helmet.
That's the one thing I said notto do.

(01:25:05):
That's right.
All right, fire again.
And you hear the explosion.
All right, fire again, don'thit the tree.
So he fires again.
It explodes.
And then you hear yelling.
Ah, do that again.
Finally figured it out, reallyright, yeah, yeah, do that again
.
Finally figured out where theywere at.

(01:25:26):
Yeah, so while that exchange isgoing on and that nullifies it,
our QRF had come up.
Now it's Thanksgiving.
They're sitting in a mess hallenjoying a Thanksgiving dinner.
Yeah, and the way you respondedis that the thing that's yelled
out is load trucks and therewould be drills to load trucks
and there would be drills, theload trucks.
You would just go to the qrf.

(01:25:46):
That was like the drill, right,how fast can you load trucks?
And they'll say that a fewtimes they come over loudspeaker
on the whole installation.
There can't get out load trucksand at some point you've got to
go.
What you got got.
They had 13 people of probablythe same strip between 36 and 40

(01:26:07):
.
They had like 13.
Because you know this is real,you can't wait on everybody, you
have to.
So they're coming from a flank,so a fire's coming here and
they're coming from a flank.
By the time they get up there,the fire, the shooting had
stopped.
They come across and takecontrol of the situation and,

(01:26:35):
bottom line, they havecasualties.
Like five of them went prettygood, three were killed and then
we allowed them just to.
There's some peace officersthere they call them the Swiss
and Swedes.
They were kind of supposed tomaintain the peace.
They had come out of theirbuildings, which is on the same

(01:26:57):
road where the peace talks werehappening and all that, and they
kind of facilitate that forthem to come get their
casualties and and take themback across or whatever.
Now we had because they we hadsome workers working in our area
and every time there's workersup there you'd have to have

(01:27:18):
guards out there.
So there was a GI and a and aCatoose out there guarding those
workers and when the shootingfirst started and then one of
the Catoosas got shot right inthe face, he killed him Because

(01:27:38):
when the shooting happened heran to some high ground and,
like I said, they were alwayshigher than us, yeah, and
because he went to the highground that was behind us, he
caught it right in the face andthen the guy that he was with
that, the GI that he was withgot shot in the neck, but he had
one of those kind of kind offatty, meaty necks and he just

(01:27:59):
went straight through.
Well, not his neck, but the meat, oh yeah, just the little part,
right, right.
So he was, uh, no, he made itthrough that.
Yeah, yeah, so you know, younever, you never know, like
nothing had happened for sevenplus years, right, and this

(01:28:20):
thing comes out of nowhere, andthat, and that the defector had
ran all the way.
He just followed the road andended up at checkpoint one,
which is, yeah, this checkpointone might have been a half a
mile away from headquarters-ish.
Of course.
They interrogated him andlearned that he had defected and

(01:28:41):
told him that he did, and thereason why he did, and his
regret was that we had suffereda loss and someone was there no
regrets on their side, butregrets on our side.
So that happened.
So it's 84, which was a yearafter Grenada, and I remember we
had this award ceremony and thecommander I forget his name

(01:29:08):
forced our luck.
This would not be anotherGrenada.
So I guess they over-awardedany Grenada.
Oh yeah, that's possible, ithappens once in a while, and so
it would not be another Grenada.
Anyway, we did our awardceremony.
A couple guys got a Bronze Starat that time.

(01:29:28):
Some R-Combi B devices.
Yeah, kind of the usual.
Yeah, no CIBs, right.
So that was that experience.
I'm gonna ask you somethingabout that though.

Speaker 1 (01:29:48):
So they didn't get cibs because it wasn't a
declared like combat song, orthey just, you know, because I'm
not going to award these things, because it's not going to be
granada, you know I was justcurious why they wouldn't get a
CID.
I would say the latter yeah,yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:30:05):
And if you start the whole process of that attitude,
are you going to go through thesame like that career has been
our enemy for how long?
Yeah, long time.
Thank you, yeah, long time.
You've been in it for a longtime.
Right, fight, and you're goingto make a stance off of
something else that is not goingto be that.

Speaker 1 (01:30:28):
Those guys should have gotten their CIVs for sure.
That's not how you approachthings.
You approach each situationbased on that situation.
They're all independent, Iagree.

Speaker 2 (01:30:39):
I so agree.
That was that, to be honestwith you, the Knights, the days
afterwards even immediatelyafter, I should say.
First and foremost because inthe building we were in there
was this little hole.
So upstairs when we slept,while I was sleeping and I try

(01:31:01):
to get the same spot to sleep inall the time you could look
through and look at one of theirguard towers and then see some
of the Gok and then see some ofthe gawk.
If you ever want to see thegawk for real, if you haven't
seen it, there's a James Bondmovie with Pierce Bronson and
the movie starts out in Korea.

(01:31:22):
That's the gawk.
I've never watched that.
I think there's an exchange ofpeople for whatever reason in
the beginning and in doing thatexchange, like, the guy comes
out of the Gok or whatever.
However, they did CGI, the Gokfor the movie or whatever, but

(01:31:43):
that's it, that's what it lookslike.
So, anyway.
And then from there there'sanother vantage point.
We could see the road fromPyongyang up to the Gok.
Now there's a tower that's outthere as well.
If you're out there at thattower, all you just see is the
road winding forever.

(01:32:04):
You can't really see Pyongyang,but that road you see forever
that road you see forever.
And looking out at that road,all you saw was trucks of people
, of trucks coming in.
And then you look back at theGawk you can see all these
people getting out of the truck.
It was almost like a UPS truckstyle full of people, full of

(01:32:29):
soldiers getting out.
This is like right after yeah,within an hour, they were going
to be ready.

Speaker 1 (01:32:37):
Yeah, but it happened again.

Speaker 2 (01:32:39):
Or were they not going to wait, right?
Oh well, yeah, they could bebuilding up to.
This is our first day up northand I think at that particular
time it had switched.
The rotations were two days.
At that time we went to fourdays, so we were up there for
four days.
So this is the first day.
I mean, this happened withinhours of us getting up there.

(01:33:00):
Wow, it's only a town go fromthere, so we still had, you know
, the rest of that day, yeah,and then then three other days
up there and they're likeloading up and we thought we
were outnumbered before.
Yeah, keep in mind, half ourplatoon didn't fight, right?
Yeah, I'm not sure why wedidn't end that relationship
right away as a country, but atleast up up in the jsa we should

(01:33:23):
have um.
So we had that.
That's probably the first thingon our mind.
Are they going to come acrossor not?
Because it's going to be achallenge if they do, oh yeah,
absolutely.
Then we went back after the 40s, so nothing happened.
There was a lot of propaganda,which there would sound

(01:33:44):
propaganda every day anyway, butnow it was about we're going to
come get you.
The same guys who wouldn't comeout and fight were the only
ones who understood propaganda,so that the same guys who
wouldn't come out and fight werethe only ones who understood
propaganda.
So now they're really not goingto come out and fight.
We're going to know who you are.
We're going to get you Whateverthey were saying.
We just knew they were sayingmore of it.
We didn't know what they weresaying, but the people that knew

(01:34:06):
were going to do it anyway.
Yeah, they weren't fighting inthe beginning, so what else has
changed?
Yeah, so anyway, survived thosethree and a half days, went
back, you know, went to our nextpart of the rotation or
whatever.
The next week you went up there.
You probably thought about it alittle bit, but I remember the
exact, the very next week ofgoing up there and there was a

(01:34:28):
workup there.
It was hammered, but the firstthing, that first hammer sounded
like a gunshot.
Yeah, that's why I hit thetable the first time I was like
oh, here we go again.
Then by the time the second andthird, you realize it was just a
hammer, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:34:45):
So the rest of the time there was that pretty
uneventful then.

Speaker 2 (01:34:49):
Yeah, uneventful.
Propaganda ceased in uneventfulthen.
Yeah, uneventful.
You know, the propaganda ceasedin the volume that it had been
right after it ceased and I meanI hadn't really thought about
it again.

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):
to be honest with you , you tend to get back into your
routine or whatever you weredoing, right?
Yeah, you keep thinking aboutit.

Speaker 2 (01:35:10):
Yeah, off days were spent um, at the funeral for for
the guy who got killed and youknow they cremated it was my
first time being a part ofwitnessing that or whatever.
It was almost like a likethat's what you do and you, you
go to it like they had the body,you know, like a church or

(01:35:35):
whatever, and then, like youleave there and I go straight to
the Cremation thing and youwatch them put it in the fire is
like, yeah, so I get, I guessthat was part of process.
It's one thing.
To know that it happened isanother thing.
Like you go to it as a part ofit, you watch it happen.
Yeah, you watch.

(01:35:56):
Yeah, that was different.
Yeah, and obviously the smell,oh, yeah, yeah, wow, yeah, that
was different.
But then you know, after thatit was just everything was kind
of back to normal and he was agood kid too.
Yeah, he was really good.

(01:36:17):
I can see his smile right now.
He was a really good kid.
Yeah, I think that's the thingyou just don't know.
Yeah, yeah, that's tough.
Anything else you want to talkabout?
To kind of wrap up Korea, tokind of wrap up on korea?

(01:36:38):
Um, I mean, uh, I don't thinkthere's much else there.
I do I continue to go to school?
I was still going to schoolthere in between all that.
Um, the guy that lied to meabout coming in epic tombune
influenced me enough to go tothe old guard, which ended up
being my next assignment.
That was your next assignment,yeah, how was that?

(01:37:00):
Oh, yeah, that was a lot.
That was kind of everything, Ithink.
Yeah, that prepared me for alot.
So I get there and they hadthis what's called a new man
training and it had already beena drill sergeant.

(01:37:21):
So the DNC already knew thatstuff.
But you had one of their styleRight Different weapon, the M14.
And marching I was already goodat that.
The M14 and Marginal's alreadygood at that.
You learn your style, but theonly thing different is your
feet's going one in front of theother.

(01:37:41):
So that was pretty simple.
But the guy who?
So?
Now he's making up for the lie.
We only talk about it as a joke, right?

Speaker 1 (01:37:51):
it is now anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:37:53):
When I'm with him and I'm with somebody that I know,
I tell them how I met him.
He always cracks up about it.
Anyway, he took me under hiswing and he showed me everything
.
He had been in Oak Grove beforehe went to Korea.
Then he went back to Oak Grove,okay.
So I mean he snatched me up outof basic training, I mean out
of new man training.
Now we're assigned in the samecompany, but in the beginning

(01:38:15):
you're assigned in the companybut you don't do anything
because you have to learn intheir mind what to do.
Right, right, you can't marchand you can't be a squad leader.
So anyway, yeah, so I'm at thatand I'm doing that stuff in a
day.
Then after that day's over,he's teaching me other stuff.
Like, he puts me on the curb,so you're marching on the curb.

(01:38:37):
That accentuates putting onefoot in front of another, or
you're going to fall off, right,yeah?
So I'm already a step ahead ofwhat's going on in Newman
already.
And then he's teaching me howto march with a sword.
So that's like the next level.
So by the time I finished thethree weeks in new man, I get to
the company, knock and alreadymarch with a sword.
No, I just need to be put in aceremony to do it.

(01:39:03):
But he's taking to take methrough all that.
I mean in the kind of peoplelike who's that new guy?
He's like he's.
I really want you with thesword.
I'm here, what do I watch atthe store?
But you know, show me thatright away.
So that put me like way aheadvery quickly.
But you'd have to march up thesword for funerals, right, and
then you're hoping you get to doit out on the parade field for
a parade at that rank, becauseyou're the on the parade field

(01:39:25):
is where the, the platoons are,and not the squad leader.
So that put me ahead right away.
We end up being roommates livingoff post, being roommates
living in Alexandria.
He volunteers to be a guard atthe Tomb of an Unknown Soldier.
I'm still stuck in the company,if you will, as you go through

(01:39:46):
all that new man training stuffout there.
That was pretty kind of ourpretty much our relationship in
the company, if you will, whilehe's going through all that new
man training stuff out there,that was pretty much our
relationship in the beginning.
We were roommates.
He was prepping and everythingto be a relief commander down
there and I'm just back in theunit, right, because he had

(01:40:06):
known all about that from beingthere prior.
Well, I had my first timeseeing the two unknown soldiers
when I was finally assignedthere.
Yeah, it was a logical nextstep for him anyway, because
it's like a tour Right.
So I am probably there a year orso as a squad leader, or maybe

(01:40:31):
almost two years, and then hewas a third relief commander and
then he moved up to secondrelief.
So it's by height.
He was like 6'1" or somethinglike that, above six foot, and
the second relief their heightis like six, supposedly like six
foot to 6'2", maybe pushing itsix three, which is the second

(01:40:54):
relief.
The first relief is that six,three and taller, but the third
relief is five, ten to six foot.
So he had been third relief.
Then he moved up to second.
So I left a vacancy in third.
So then he told me about that.
So I came down there to try outfor that and it was me and
another guy that was in thecompetition together.

(01:41:15):
I think about two weeks outthey quit because they treat you
like a private.
You know like you're runningthis run, do that?
Got to help with this, helpwith that.
You're just a new man, right,don't matter what you're doing.
Yeah yeah, so they're relevant,that you're going to be the,
that you're training to be therelief commander in charge of

(01:41:35):
all those guys that are going toleave.
Be careful how you treat me.
It might come back to haunt youwhen I'm in charge, but I'll do
everything because this is partof it, right?
Yeah?
So I, the other guy quit, soI'm kind of the heir apparent,
but I still got to go througheverything, right?
So I finished everything.
So now I'm going to leaveCommander, but it's short-lived,

(01:41:57):
because I'm tagged to go to theadvanced course, which is back
at Fort Benning again, andthat's two and a half months or
something like that.
So I was at the tomb for twomonths to get there in October,
leave early January to go toadvance course to about

(01:42:19):
mid-March, and then I'm back atthe tomb again, kind of picking
up where I left off.
So I was allowed to do that,because I look at it now and I
could have just said oh, youknow what, try another time,
we're going to put someone elsein his spot.
Yeah, exactly, yeah, and therest was better.
Kind of lucked out on that.
So I picked right back up whereI left off and then I got my

(01:42:39):
badge in May Back almost twomonths and then I immediately
teach myself how to walk.
So my job as the reliefcommander I also charge those
nine people in every squad myjob is to change the guard.
That's the guy who walks outand says ladies and gentlemen, I

(01:42:59):
have your attention please.
And then you are the oneinspecting the soldier, you're
inspecting the weapon.
That's what the reliefcommander job is.
The guy who's walking, theydon't have any rank on their
blouse because the thing is notto outrank.
If you're walking a man, youdon't outrank the unknown
because they don't know theirrank.

(01:43:20):
So I'm not taught in mytraining how to walk.
Now you see it, but you're nottaught that because that's not
your job as a reef commander.
And I remember making acorrection on one of my soldiers
who walked.
Now, those guys who walked,they were trying to change the

(01:43:42):
guard.
John, let me change you.
That's not your job.
Your job is that right, but youknow you let them a learning to
, let them do it right.
Yeah, but I couldn't walkbecause I didn't.
I wasn't trained for that.
So I trained myself how to do it, because I made a correction on

(01:44:03):
it for something's like yeah, Iunderstand.
You saw it, but you don't knowbecause you don't walk.
You know, so you don't mean.
Whatever your response was, youknow like, okay, I know this
from experience, blah, blah,blah.
Right, so okay, you're going todo what I said, but note it, I
don't walk.
So then I told myself I don'twalk.
So that way, because everyother job in the Army, for the

(01:44:27):
most part, wherever you start,you move up, you've done that
job.
What I'm telling you is notbecause I say to do it, it's
because I've done it.
You've done it to standard.
You know how to do it.
That wasn't the case at thetime with that.
So he was right, I hadn'twalked.
I didn't personally know.
That's not going to change.

(01:44:50):
You're still going to take thiscorrection, that's right,
exactly so I taught myself howto walk.
So now, what I was telling himto do when I walked, it was
right in what I was telling himto do.
He was lying or trying not todo what I was saying to do, but

(01:45:14):
I taught myself to walk.
So it was the people who weretrained to walk always wanted to
change the guard.
It was never a person who wastrained to change the guard
trying to walk, so it was kindof, I wouldn't say, not heard of
.
It wasn't something that therelief commander did, it wasn't

(01:45:34):
the usual thing, right.
So I did that for and thetiming of me teaching myself how
to walk was super critical.
Our relief was supposed to benine people total but people
were leaving.
Timing was up in the Army, theywere getting out of the Army
and it was hard to be ninepeople total but people were
leaving.
Time was up in the Army, theywere getting out of the Army and

(01:45:55):
it was hard to get people downthere.
We were doing all kinds of stuffas experiments to try to get
people.
We took one guy who ended upbeing a stellar person, not to
mention Toon Guard.
We took him out of new mantraining Like he did his new man
, and then we pulled himstraight to the man training.
Like he did his new man, yeah,and then we pulled him straight
to the toe.

(01:46:15):
So it was an experiment.
Let's see if this will work.
If it worked, then maybe we canrepeat it.
Yeah, I don't think we wereable to repeat it, he was just
an anomaly, but it worked forhim.
Yeah, that way he didn't go tothe UN and learn all that other
stuff that we would have tochange anyway.
It was just straight to thisand it was super steady.

(01:46:41):
But instead of having ninepeople in relief, we had five.
So from April 1st to September30th, the guard changes every 30
minutes.
From October 1st to March 31stis every hour, so the person

(01:47:01):
walking on the mat is out therefor an hour, and those other
months they're out there for ahalf hour.
So now it's about so May, I gotmy badge, so it's late May,
june, like in the height of thesummer Hot.
We were down to five people andthey changed guard every 30

(01:47:25):
minutes.
Excuse me.
And good thing, I taught myselfhow to walk.
So me and my assistant liftcommander on a day of work, I
would change the guard, everyguard change.
There's 24 of them.
Guard change is about sevenminutes-ish.

(01:47:49):
Then you came back down, whichmeans you had about 15 ish a
little bit more before gettingyour dress and go right back out
the door for the next one.
24, oh, that's a lot.
And then the guys.
They'd have eight walks.

(01:48:11):
One guy was new of the five.
We put him out there at thefirst walk eventually, when no
one was watching.
He just wasn't advancing fastenough.
And then the last walk of theday and we had to do all the
others, so I would rotate withmy sister-in-law commander.

Speaker 3 (01:48:35):
Either I'd change the guard 24 times or he wouldn't.
Was it 24?
Is that math right?
Or 12?
It would be 24 if you were outthere for 12 hours.

Speaker 2 (01:48:45):
Eight was the first one and then 1900 was the last
one.
So, yeah, yeah, it was 24 guardchains, but I think it was
eight walks of pro law, I can'tremember.
I think we were from five tofour people with the same
situation of putting that guy uponce or whatever.
It was a lot, but we had torotate.

(01:49:07):
So had I not taught myself howto walk, I would have to do all
the guard chains.
He would have to do that partof the walk.
I'm able to rotate where it'sone or the other.
So it worked out.
Yeah, at least, if you walked,you got a little bit of a break.

Speaker 3 (01:49:23):
Because you couldn't come down and go right back up
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:49:26):
You'd be turning the rotation.
But if the guard changed, yougets them good at getting
dressed fast, you know what theywear, so you think about
putting all that on in a shortperiod of time.
And then if you had a reefceremony in between, they just
never got in dress by the time.
You didn't have to have thereef ceremonies.
If the guard change was acouple hundred minutes, you were

(01:49:51):
up there on an hour to say,ladies and gentlemen, if the
guard change was, come onminutes, you get.
You're up there on an hour tosay, ladies and gentlemen, have
attention please, like on anhour, and maybe it's nine
minutes, eight or nine minutestotal before you're back inside

(01:50:12):
the quarters and then I wouldtake Shoes off, pants off.
I Start today shoes off, pantsoff so I can sit down, off, so I

(01:50:37):
can sit down and not sure, eventhough, like, we have taping
these collars, so whatever,reinforced collars, buying the
best church we had today.
Yeah, you have a tie on, justthink about that.
Look, but we have taping thesecollars, like the tape is
probably over there, five deep.
That collar is like it lookslike a brace, right.
Yeah, so I think I could loosenmy tie and button that so I
could there.
Five deep, so that collar'slike almost like a brace, right?
Yeah, everything's like.
So I think I could loosen mytie and then button that so I
could do a little bit to my neck, but it took more time to

(01:50:59):
button up the whole shirt.
Yeah, so you may get to do thatand sit down for like 10 minutes
in and I push the envelope toget dressed further and further
to like six minutes before I hadto be out the door.

(01:51:20):
Normally you start 15 minutes,like 15 minutes prior to that
guard change, they would say aquarter till, and that's when
you, when it gets up, startgetting dressed, whatever right,
I push that to at least 20after 22, after it's just a
little bit more.
I know I can get the pants onfast time with shoes up fast.

(01:51:44):
Then you get the blouse on, youbutton it.
Now they're you kind of buttonit and they tape you off and
everything.
Help you get your belt on andthey have to do all this fine
tuning and everything.
It's like getting ready for theOscars.
Yeah, yeah, for every guardchampion or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:52:00):
And that's a couple of years worth of doing that.
So that's a lot of work, yeah,so how long were you there total
.

Speaker 2 (01:52:07):
So as a relief command, I was there for 18
months total.
Now there were some breaks inthere, so I had two months in
advanced course and then afterthat long summer stretch, in the
fall, I went to Ranger School.
Okay, so I had twoopportunities where I was there
and left to go to schools andcome back.
Then I came back after RangerSchool it was another, ranger

(01:52:30):
School was 60 days, somethinglike that, yeah, and then after
Ranger school, then I was therefor Five more months.
I'm gonna yeah, I got left inlike May.
Now it's not you need a left inMay, people to start in old
guard.
I'm gonna put in song.
For Three years.

(01:52:51):
They went back to the TonyPeter Sardin in the Guard.
So now I'm in charge of thewhole thing.

Speaker 1 (01:52:57):
You know, something I didn't ask is at this point are
you a staff sergeant?
By now I'm a Sergeant FirstClass.

Speaker 2 (01:53:04):
yes, I was a.
Actually, when I left the ChiefCommand, I was a motorboard
Sergeant First Class.
So when I left the 2nd and 2ndCommand, I was a motorboard
sergeant first class.
Okay, so when I went up to theunit, there.

Speaker 1 (01:53:18):
I was a platoon sergeant, Okay, yeah, all right,
I got you.
Platoon sergeants are importantNow.
I spent 14 years enlisted andthen went to OCS Okay, but I
remember coming out as alieutenant and getting my first
platoon and Sergeant First ClassLucas was my very first platoon
sergeant.
That guy trained me and kept meout of trouble.

(01:53:41):
That's all I can say, man.
I just owe him my career.

Speaker 2 (01:53:45):
That's ironic.
When I was platoon sergeant, Ihad a guy named my first platoon
leader.
There was a guy named Carsonand then he left to go be an
executive officer.
The next guy came in.
His name was Carson they'rejust cycling the Carsons through

(01:54:08):
, yeah, and the first Carsonknew he was going to be a career
guy.
The next Carson knew he wasonly going to do his time.
Yeah, uh, he was west point guyand um, then I got a guy named
sabai and, uh, he had, he hadgone ocs.
I think he'd like you had been14 years.

(01:54:30):
I think he'd like you had been14 years.
He was a SF and now he was abrand new platoon leader.
So you know, my message to himwas I'm the platoon sergeant,
you're the lieutenant, go do thelieutenant stuff.
You don't know what to do, andI know you don't know what to do
.
You have two platoon leader.
Uh, brothers right around thecorner, go talk to them.

Speaker 1 (01:54:53):
Yeah, yeah so I think the thing too is, if you think
about the way it's structured,is that the platoon leaders come
and go, like officers come andgo, right, but that platoon
surgeon, he's been there for awhile, right, everyone knows him
, that's who they rely on, yeah,and then as you, as you move up
and start majoring all thatstuff, it's kind of the same
like the officers rotate pretty,pretty quickly, but the

(01:55:16):
enlisted part of it, at leastfrom my experience, mean.

Speaker 2 (01:55:20):
You know we were the guys that held it together and
kept the officers from hurtingthemselves.
That's the continuity.
Every first between there itwas like okay, because he was
already there as I could useyouratoon now just for a minute.
I'll be taking this in a matterof weeks.

(01:55:40):
I feel good about that.
You know it's yours now.
They know you.
You've been here for howeverlong, it doesn't really matter.
It's going to be a wash here ina few weeks.
Then, of course, the new guycoming in knows it's not his.
It was very important to tellthe guy who'd been in Sonic
First Class, because that's allhe knows is I'm the guy in

(01:56:01):
charge or whatever.
You are your desk over there.
You are or you were.
You've got to fall in righthere.
You're in on it, mark.
That's the first thing you needto concentrate on in this
particular unit.
Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:56:14):
Yeah, well, and I, you know, I think too that I
think the guys that wereenlisted first have a better
understanding of that wholerelationship.

Speaker 2 (01:56:24):
Some of them do, yeah , anyway, way better than the
guys who go to ROTC or WestPoint, but not to take anything
away from what they do, but it'sjust a different kind of
leadership style.
Yeah, You'd have to keep themout of.
You'd have to remind them thatthey are not that rank anymore.
Once you have that part downthere, they're going to be all
right.

Speaker 1 (01:56:43):
If they're smart, they already know it, right?
Yeah, I got you.

Speaker 2 (01:56:54):
So anything else we want to cover from that time
with the old guard?
Well, I mean, I saw a younglady and got married.
Okay, by the time I left there,we had a son.

Speaker 1 (01:57:03):
Now where was she?

Speaker 2 (01:57:04):
from?
Was she from that?

Speaker 3 (01:57:04):
area, From that area yes, okay, yeah, I met her at a
I ended up buying a house,uh-huh.

Speaker 2 (01:57:11):
I met her at a.
I ended up buying a house,uh-huh.
And we had a house party and myfriend my friend's girlfriend
was her friend, okay, and that'show she ended up at the party.
That's a great way to get introuble.
She came with a guy, then heover drank and then that
relationship was over.

Speaker 1 (01:57:33):
He over drank.
I've never heard of that.
That's a very nice way to sayit.
I'm going to use that.
Sorry, sir, you over drank yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:57:43):
So I intentionally stayed in old guard for probably
another year to get accustomedto military life, even though
it's much different there.
Because I knew my nextassignment I was going to be,
you know, gone.
I'm going to be in the field.

(01:58:05):
I'm going to be doing, you know, army and infantry stuff I like
going to the field here.
It's going to be different, youknow.
So get used to that.
And then left there.
Um, I'm promotable again, uh,by this time to to E8 and
assigned to.
Well, I should back up the guythat, the Joe Johnson guy, that

(01:58:31):
when I first got to the oldguard he was in a neighboring
company as platoon sergeant.
I'm a squad leader.
He eventually makes firstsergeant and takes over a
company.
I go to the tomb to be therelief commander.
When I leave the tomb to go tobe platoon sergeant, I go to him
and say, hey, I need a job asplatoon sergeant in your company
.
Now, people didn't like him, hewas tough.
Still the same guy from wayback when I as a platoon
sergeant in your company.
Now, people didn't like him, hewas tough, you know, still the

(01:58:53):
same guy from way back when Iwas a GI Joe has not changed.
Yeah, gi Joe has gotten worseand more people know about it.
Right and like.
No one wants to be in thatcompany.
You know, if you were trying toget out of the company I'd go
to him and say I need a job inyour company.
So I get a job in his company.
So now he's my first sergeant.
So you go all the way back tothis 90-nose skinny kid,

(01:59:16):
125-pound Bart Womack, firstintroduction to the Army, to now
this guy's my first sergeant.

Speaker 1 (01:59:25):
Anyway, so now I'm a Whatever you say after this.
You did this to yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:59:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
So I went, I went for you, youknow so.
So now I'm first started and Igo.
While I'm waiting to go forthat job and where I'm gonna go,
he's promotable to SergeantMajor and, consulting him about

(01:59:55):
where I should go, I said justwait, let me see where I'm going
to be assigned.
So he ended up being assignedin Hawaii to a battalion.
So I go to Hawaii.
So now he's Command SergeantMajor and I'm First Sergeant in
the same battalion.
So now you have anotherassignment with them, right?
Yeah, they know each otherpretty well.

(02:00:16):
Yeah, yeah.
So that's how I ended up inHawaii.
That was the start off.
And I get there and the unitI'm going to was gonna be
deployed to Malaysia.
So I'm in Hawaii two weeks andthen boom, I'm gone to Malaysia.
Now, remember, I told my wifeat the time hey, this is going

(02:00:38):
to be fast and furious once weget there, here it comes,
because you're not having anymore.
You're running.
Bravo, we get there to Hawaii,got a nine month old son.
I'm there two weeks and thenI'm gone 30 days in Malaysia.
That's going to be tough forher.
Yeah, so I had spent at thattime.
I had spent more time inMalaysia than I had in Hawaii.
Yeah, yeah, I had enough timejust to pick a house and pack

(02:01:01):
and go Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Then I come back and it's likethe field all the time.
Weather's always nice.
Other Weather's always nice.
Other places you have excusesabout the weather or they might
not plan train as a result orcut train as short or whatever.
Not in Hawaii.
So you're in the field all thetime.
The first two years I didn'tsleep a month.
The first two years I slept amonth bed for 13 months, wow,

(02:01:26):
yeah.
Now, part of that was a sixmonth deployment to Haiti.
Yeah, but it still counts as aton.
Yeah, well, after that it was30 days deployed.
Well, it's interesting you saythat my son was in Hawaii, he
was in the infantry and he wasthere for a little while, but
then he deployed right to Iraqand then he got back and then he
went back to Georgia.
But, yeah, hawaii, you're notreally stationed there, which I

(02:01:51):
hear is good because it's anisland Like, yeah, hawaii,
you're not really stationedthere, which I hear is good
because it's an island like it'sreally cool.
But it's an island, oh yeah,but it's really cool, it's
paradise.
This is true, no doubt about it.
It is completely anotherparadise.
So when you're not in the fieldor deployed, it is a beautiful
place to be stuck.
To be honest with you, yeah,how's your wife handling all

(02:02:12):
this At the time?
Okay, I, I guess I don't know,we end up getting divorced, so
maybe not.
Okay, yeah, she realized.
Maybe that just wasn't the wayfor her.
Yeah, had another son, and sonow there's two, and I think I
ended that last year on a Iguess it's a one-month

(02:02:34):
deployment to a training center,jrtc, so a six-month in Haiti.
Yeah, I was going to ask aboutthat.
Yeah, we spent six months inHaiti.
This is when Aristide wasousted as the president and the
coup takes over.
The military coup takes over.
I forget his name off the topof my head.
We have to kind of put it wasdeep back in position.

(02:02:56):
That's a different place.
I had never, never, been to aplace like that.
They would just kill people.
It is like it was nothing.
Yeah, it's just like, let me goup to the car and open the door
each other door like this so Iguess nothing.

Speaker 1 (02:03:15):
It's just like let me go out to the car and open the
door, shut the door.
There's a purple light there.
Yeah, it was really wild.

Speaker 2 (02:03:21):
But while I'm in Haiti, our brigade sergeant
major decides he's going toretire.
At the time the decision wasmade that the headquarters, the
brigade headquarters would stayin Haiti for an additional three
months, which ended up beingsix total.
The battalion I was in wasbeing deactivated, so as soon as

(02:03:42):
it got back to Hawaii it wasgoing to deactivate.
So, and then the first sergeantof HHC brigade was retired, so
him and the brigade sergeantmajor retired, so they didn't
stay in Haiti, they went back toHawaii to retire.
So my battalion sergeant majorhe takes over as the brigade

(02:04:04):
sergeant major, I take over asthe brigade HHC first sergeant.
So it's another tour together,if you will.
Wow, no joke, hhc is a.
That's a different ballgame.

Speaker 1 (02:04:20):
I was an HHC commander as well as a company
commander before that.
But yeah, hhc is like everyoneyou're in charge of, outranks
you, yeah.
And now it's HHC Brigade yeah,even worse.

Speaker 2 (02:04:31):
Right, even worse, if even worse, I looked at it as
even better.
What I knew was that at AJCBrigade I would learn everything
.
That would be my bestexperience to prepare me for

(02:04:54):
Command Sergeant Maker yeah,being at the brigade level.
So now you know I'm closer tothe brigade commander Not that
that was the motorcycle baranda,but that level of leadership
and hearing things right out ofhis mouth versus through
different layers of commanders,closer to all the plans at that

(02:05:19):
level, how they did what theydid to get it to the battalion
level, which I hope youunderstand, what the battalion
was doing after they received it.
You know it just opened my eyesto that big level of planning
that of course the next level isdivision, right.
So it was intentional, well, toget the job, but more

(02:05:43):
importantly, the experience.
And then we went to JRTC.
So this probably was themarriage ender, because I was
set to PCS from Hawaii but Iextended to go to JRTC because I
wanted that deployment, eventhough it's not traditional

(02:06:06):
deployment.
I wanted that JRTC experienceat brigade level.
Yeah, jrtc experience atbrigade level, yeah.
And that was really the kickerof preparing you for command
sergeant major at the battalionlevel and beyond was you've got
the garrison part but, moreimportantly, you have the field
part when you're going locally.
But you have that JRTC partwhich is really, really

(02:06:31):
interesting in my opinion,because you got to see it all,
yeah, yeah, from the command andcontrol perspective and not
just at the company level.

Speaker 1 (02:06:42):
Yeah, Squads and platoons.
Right, you're looking at thewhole battlefield?
Yeah, but you're not.

Speaker 2 (02:06:48):
Because of your position, you're not in charge
Exactly, yeah, it's beautiful,it's perfect and and you knew
what battalions needed and youknew how to get it to them right
.
You know, because there's a lotof constraints with jrtc, you
can't just like here.
It didn't work like that.
You know.
So that it was a perfect setupto be able to see all of it and

(02:07:12):
then communicate with thoseother first sergeants that were
at the battalion level in theirfirst position for the B-line or
even their HHCs and what theyneeded and how.
You know I mean it was, it wasperfect, perfect.
So I leave there and then I goto I'm still the first sergeant
I go to the 6th Ranger TrainingBattalion, which is the Florida

(02:07:33):
phase of Ranger School oh, andI'm a first sergeant there and
then my duties are to take thebig board of when the students
come from the mountains to theFlorida phase.
You map out their grades whoneeds the patrols next and what
their grade.

(02:07:53):
Of course you get their gradeon the patrol, but more
importantly, you're managingtheir patrols.
You're making sure they'rechecking all the boxes that they
need to check.
Yeah, you have to have acertain number of patrols to
graduate.
So you're looking at the bigboard how many have they had
thus far, who needs them next,which ones they're going to be
doing next, etc.
It's a big board You're fillingout for that for each and every

(02:08:15):
patrol.
In addition to that, you walk,you have to go play a patrol as
well or patrols, I should sayand then either myself or the
commander had to be out there onpatrol during jump days or
waterborne days.

(02:08:37):
So, waterborne, you're goingdown a river in RB-15, and then
there was one jump in, maybe twojumps in the forward phase.
There would be one to jump fromthe mountains.
So after the mountain phasethat's in Dahlonega, georgia
they bus you back to FortBenning.

(02:08:58):
You do airborne prep what's notthe right word for airborne
people out there.
I know that.
So we're going to comment yeah,trying to make me think I'm
going to take too much time.
Anyway, you're getting readyfor the jump, to jump from Fort
Benning into into Florida.

(02:09:20):
Now, we prepped for that many atimes, but we never did it.
We'd always be weather out, soit never like never, happened
for the year.
I was only there for 10 months,but we never jumped into
Florida because of the weather,but then there was one that
happened while you were inFlorida.
Yeah, that would always happen,though.

(02:09:41):
Yeah, it's just that transition, right.
So that was a fun time.
You know kind of full circle.
You were one.
Now you're back in it, you knowin a different way I'm like
basic trainer or some otherthing you may have done.
It was.

Speaker 1 (02:10:01):
It feels like you've had the tremendous opportunity
in some cases to see yourmilitary career from both sides
right, like basic training anddrill instructor, ranger school,
and you know being there as aninstructor at ranger school, so
that's really a cool perspective.

(02:10:21):
Not a lot of people get thatnecessarily Right, but you've
seen it from both sides, youknow what they're going through
Right, and you know why Right,and it all makes more sense and
maybe it makes you a betterleader from that sense, yeah, um
, we're going to stop right hereand stop right there because
that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (02:10:40):
That's the best uh compliment I've had.
No, it's, it's uh, you know itdoes.
I think the experience makes itmakes all the sense of the
world.
And now you're older and you'vegrown, especially as well as
leadership and people.
I'll say people moreimportantly um, well, if you
don't have that, you don't haveanybody at least.

(02:11:02):
So what's the purpose ofleadership?
And when you talk about people.

Speaker 1 (02:11:04):
I don't want to interrupt together.
When you talk about people likeyou talk about that
relationship of how your careerfollowed.
Uh, you know the other guy'scareer, right Like you, were
just always like one or twosteps below.
I think people don't realizethe importance of that because I
know that my career followed agood friend of mine.
Now, you know I was always oneor two levels below him but we

(02:11:27):
went places together.
But it's relationships.
When you talk about people,it's relationships and that's
what makes all the difference.

Speaker 2 (02:11:35):
Yeah, and he's a hard guy in his units and all those
things, and I think I feel likeI've kind of throughout signed
up for hard.
Let me make hard easier than itreally is.
Let me make harder easier thanit has to be.
Because if you can do that froma leader perspective, then it

(02:12:02):
kind of sets you up to do awhole bunch of things.
And I think in following him,the opportunities were there.
First and foremost I neededthose jobs.
It just happened to be that.
And if you can do it withsomeone that the opportunities
were there, first and foremost Ineeded those jobs.
It just happened to be that.
And if you can do it withsomeone that you're accustomed
to a bit, then you know all thebetter, because that way, when

(02:12:23):
you want something, you know howto approach them to get it.
Whether they figure it out ornot, you know how to do it and
that was very key, but theyfigure out how or not you know
how to do it.

Speaker 1 (02:12:32):
And that was very key .
I want to build somecredibility with you and your
people when they see this guywho's this tough guy or whatever
and you're able to go talk tothis person and get what you
need.

Speaker 2 (02:12:46):
And yeah, it's almost like, how do you have this
magic power, right, right, butit works out really well.
But it ranged through what Ilearned as a ranger instructor
and the first song down therewas don't do dumb stuff Not me,
but don't allow dumb stuff tohappen.
Don't fall under the.

(02:13:09):
You know why do we do this.
It's always been done that way.
We're changing that right away.
I'm not, I'm not pushingwalking door and say let's
change.
But when you hear that we'rechanging that, because you have

(02:13:29):
no reason or no basis, no data,nothing to substantiate doing
this dumb thing, yeah, thatanswer of we always done it,
that it that way is always animmediate change in anything,
not the military, like anything.

Speaker 1 (02:13:38):
Yeah, to me that's a red flag when someone says we've
always done it that way.

Speaker 2 (02:13:41):
Oh, then you don't know why you're doing it.

Speaker 1 (02:13:43):
No, Then what the hell are you?

Speaker 2 (02:13:44):
doing this for?
Yeah, I don't care if it'swritten down or not.
Yeah, it could be part of thestandard.
Tell me what's in there.
You already had new technologyin there, Like wake up.

Speaker 1 (02:13:54):
At this point, you've earned the right to ask why?
Yeah, like you grew up in themilitary, you've got some rank,
you've learned a couple ofthings, you've been a couple
places, you've earned the rightto go.
Why are we doing this dumbthing?

Speaker 2 (02:14:09):
Yeah, and you bring up a great point and I'll pause
to talk about some leadershiplessons because they come.
They often come from the thingsthat you don't like and what I
learned from the first sergeantof the little big person disease
, when he did not tell me why Ihad to move right away.
I learned to tell my soldiersthe why Good, bad, right or

(02:14:31):
wrong.
I'm going to tell you I don'tneed you to like it, I just need
you to do it.
But if you understand the why,then I'm like okay, now I
understand why it's easier forme to do, but the whole because
it's my rank that's not leadingthe leadership to me.
So that was like one of thefirst lessons I learned Explain

(02:14:53):
the why, because now you havepeople motivated to do it,
they're going to like it.
I just need to know why.
And then following this guyaround or being, you know,
signing units with him If youlook at 100% of the things that
he did, there's probably 75% Ididn't like.

(02:15:14):
But that was a leadership lessonand I would say you have a
leadership kit bag.
You know a kit bag that you puta parachute in right.
You call it a briefcase.
Outside the military it's yourbriefcase or your backpack, I
don't care what you call it.
You put those lessons in therethat you are going to implement,
the things that you learn.
So the why was something.

(02:15:35):
I put another issue back, eventhough my lesson from it was not
in my favor in the beginning.
And then 75% of what this guydid I didn't like.
That went in my bag of what notto do.
Not so much the 25% of thethings that he did.
It was more of the 75% that hedid that I didn't like went in

(02:15:56):
there.
Don't do that.
So you always learn it, eventhough it didn't look like the
situation that's set up for youto learn.

Speaker 1 (02:16:04):
Some of the best leadership lessons on the planet
are how not to do something.
Like you, I've learned morefrom the stupid crap, right,
because it's almost like youlearn more when you fail at some
things, right, those leadershiplessons on how not to lead are
invaluable, yeah, but I like theidea of putting it in a kit bag

(02:16:25):
, you know toolbox, or you wantto call it yeah yeah, yeah, yeah
, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:16:31):
And if somebody was from working, you know, in a
range department and dealingwith the students, you know you
may have to talk them out of,out of quitting, and what the
repercussions are going to looklike all the way down the road.
You know, having having workedwith platoon leaders, having
worked with lieutenants, havingworked with captains, having

(02:16:52):
worked with majors, havingworked with lieutenant colonels,
what it can do for you versussticking it out.
Dude, it ain't that hard.
I did it and that was anotherpart of my inspiration to go to
range school in the first placewas I had a captain that was
sorry.
In my opinion, if you'resitting in the outtown, you are
sorry.
Maybe you didn't think you wereand maybe you weren't trying to

(02:17:12):
be, and maybe you're better now, but at that rank as the
commander, you're horrible.
Your first sergeant just didn'thave the balls to tell you
Right, and the first sergeantdid try to cover up for a lot of
them and make up for a lot ofthem.
But that was interesting.
That blankety-blank-ankety,blank, blank, blank can do it.

(02:17:34):
That damn shit can do it.
That was, again, not a goodlesson, but it wasn't any lesson
.
It was very, very pivotal forme, in addition to those other
influences of what I wanted tobe, now I see this one who isn't
that Right.
Yeah, yeah, that was moreinspiration to like do it in a

(02:17:56):
hurry, and it happened fast forme, yeah, of going right behind
that.
That poor example, yeah yeah,all those things had a big
reason too Right, right At theright time.
So it was having worked atthose different levels to be
able to influence the studentsin a positive manner and

(02:18:17):
relationship to that one thingthat they were doing called
regular school.
Don't let them do dumb stuff Toinclude walking 500 meters in
the wrong direction and think,okay, what did I learn from that
?
Is that I know it can be partof it.
I'm never going to see.
What you're going to learn fromthat Is that it can't be part
of it.
You're never going to.
I'm never going to see whatyour actions on the objective is

(02:18:38):
like.
That leadership part, I knowright now you ain't worth a darn
with that map.
Is it just you?
Does it have to be just you?
What about all these other 20people behind?
So Bart Womack wasn't followingthem?
500 meters the wrong way, wristto both back to the right way

(02:18:59):
and never get to actions on theobjective I'm halting.
You need to check it.
Come help him check it.
That's your job, because theyhaven't too much pride Like I'm
the person who leads yourposition.
It's on me.
Okay, true, you're going to getthe grade, but are you going to
make them help you or are youjust going to walk around all

(02:19:22):
night in the dark?
Mind you, I'm not walking allaround with you in the dark all
night.

Speaker 1 (02:19:29):
Well, leadership is figuring out who's got the skill
set right.
Leadership isn't knowingeverything.
Leadership is having peoplearound you who do know
everything, and that's why youmake them stop to think about
those things and bring someoneelse in, as opposed to now.

Speaker 2 (02:19:45):
There will be other instructors, let them walk 500
meters the wrong way, but younever get to see those other
parts.
So let's just.
Let's look at it from thisperspective, right, and what's
the most important part of whatwe're doing here?
Is it the?
Yeah, they can read a map, wecan figure that out.
That is part of it, right, andit's a big part of the grade.
But let me see if they reallyreally shine in this other part.

(02:20:05):
I can overlook that, that otherpiece, because I know in a real
life situation, the, the restof that unit is going to step up
.
You do have someone on point,that's on point, so it's just
different things like that.
Another strategy would be righthere.
Like man, I'll walk a thousandmeters the wrong way and give
them a no-go.
There was a lesson learnedsomewhere, just not the one that

(02:20:28):
I want to impart.

Speaker 1 (02:20:32):
Well, maybe that guy takes that as part of how not to
lead, right.
I mean, you can let people in atrading situation make a wrong
decision, but how far are yougoing to let them go with it,
right?
Yeah, and I like the approachof you know, are you sure that
that's you know?
Why don't you double check it?
And that goes back to mySergeant, first Class Lucas, who

(02:20:54):
, when I was about to make adumb decision and I'll admit
there were some dumb decisionshe would say something like are
you sure you want to do that,sir?
And that meant he and I need togo talk someplace, not in front
of the platoon, right, yep.
So it was like I was going thewrong way and he was going to
help me get back on track.
Now we didn't always agree onthe solution.

Speaker 2 (02:21:11):
Right, but we did when we walked out of that
office.
That's right.
That's right.
And this is not to mean thatwhen I was a Ranger student,
that someone should have donesomething for me.
If I had done that, I wouldexpect to get a no-go.
Yeah, that's it.

Speaker 1 (02:21:25):
Great, that's just how it works.
Yeah, so you really weren'tthere for that long.
Yeah, so I had been three yearsof the first time in Hawaii and
I go to get down there inSeptember of 1996.

Speaker 2 (02:21:43):
And I make this first song major academy in the song
major list in December.
So then I'm gone that summer,I'm there through July, and then
I'm in song major list inDecember.
So then I'm gone that summer,I'm there through July, and then
I'm in song major academy inAugust and you're divorced by
this time Not yet.
Okay, we're getting there.
But what happened?
How about pushing you into it?
Yeah, well, I mean, you'reright into it, because I finally

(02:22:08):
had left Hawaii before I did,because I stayed an extra month
to go to JRTC and all that Right.
And then I was trying, we weretrying to.
I was trying to be assigned toFort Bend while she worked in
Atlanta, she was doing corporateAmerica stuff.

(02:22:29):
Right now, it was the closestbig city, et cetera.
There would have been nothingin Columbus at that time.

Speaker 1 (02:22:34):
There's still nothing at all.
My son was in Phoenix City.
It's a beautiful area, I'm justsaying it's not a lot of jobs.
I know.

Speaker 2 (02:22:48):
But the company she had worked for was putting her
son someplace else, I mean tothe point where that's Hawaii.
That also goes with going toMaryland first and then they
were changed to New Jersey.
No, I'm sorry, they were goingto Maryland first and then they

(02:23:14):
were changing to California.
So once we knew that, then theymade an essential meeting via
Binning.
I didn't have to be there.
So I ended up in Florida forthe school.
So I leave there and then wemake the decision that some of
these academies aren't going tobe.
It's not even a whole year,right, a whole county year.

(02:23:36):
So you just stay where you are.
I'll finish school 10 monthsfrom now, whatever it was.
I got there, I think schoolofficially started, all this
graduated in May.
I got there, I think schoolofficially started, all this
graduated and back.
So instead of doing more moves,just stay there.

(02:23:57):
I'll go to school and thenafter school we figure out what
the next assignment's going tobe, because I won't know until
close to graduation time, right?
So trying to prevent from overlike three times in 18 months or
something like that, if it waseven that much.
So that kind of led to devisethat.
So in the middle of sergeantmajor academy, her company moved

(02:24:21):
her from california to newjersey.
So the moves happened anyway,right.
Just not the military Wasn'tyour fault, right?
So I remember I had to get likean extra day out of school to
do the move from California toNew Jersey, and then I leave.

(02:24:46):
So I'm going to kind of assigna 101st Airborne Division.
I trained assignments with aguy.
He had a hundred firsts and Ihad third brigade.
Third ID was at Fort Benningand he wanted to go back to Fort
Benning.
So we switched and that job atFort Benning was mech and I
didn't want that.

Speaker 1 (02:25:05):
Yeah so we switched.
So a little bit like shiningtanks, shining tanks, I'm just
gonna say, except they'reBradley's brothers.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love them,bradley's brothers, no, I guess
they were Bradley's.

Speaker 2 (02:25:16):
They did have a combination of both, I believe
yeah.
So you guys switched assignments.
Yeah, we were Bradley's.
Yeah, I'm sorry, we wereBradley's, yeah, so we switched
assignments.
I go to 101st, I'm in 101st forI don't even know like three

(02:25:41):
months-ish, and then theychanged their job from New
Jersey to Northern Virginia.
So there's another.
They're happening anyway.
Right, and then that was thatwas the straw, yeah.
So, yeah, yeah, it's totallydivorced.
That that was I got beforecameron, june of 98, and then
divorce in january 99.
So when I get there, um, youhave to be aerosol qualified.

(02:26:04):
I used to say a, the, the a andranger, that's aerosol.

Speaker 1 (02:26:11):
Okay, all right all right, you know how to do that?

Speaker 2 (02:26:14):
Oh, you have to go.
Soldiers are going to belooking at you as the leader of
God.
How are you going to influencethem to go if you don't go?
So the commander was adamant.
That's the first thing you doNow.
This unit, which is 2nd to327th Infantry yeah, 2nd to
327th infantry.
Yeah, second to 327th infantrywas in 1st Brigade and the

(02:26:37):
battalion's nickname is no Slack.
One company is in Kuwait.
One company is in Saudi.
One company is in Haiti yeah, Itold you about the Haiti
experience, so I went there andleft there.
I was like I will never comeback here again.

(02:26:58):
Never say never.
I didn't learn that then.
Maybe it was a saying.
I had never said it, so Ididn't apply it, but I said it
about Haiti.
And then, as soon as I get to101st, where am I going?
Hey, go to see that company.
Yeah, um, then, also with thesalt, I went to kuwait to see

(02:27:21):
those companies and then, afterthat, I came back.

Speaker 1 (02:27:24):
Then it was straight to beer assault school I
couldn't get a slot before goingover to see those companies.
You know it's funny, I neverthought about that at that level
.
You know, with the CSM, ifyou've got, like every place
I've ever been, the companieshave been, at least
geographically, somewhat neareach other, but I never thought

(02:27:45):
about it from that perspectivethat you had companies all over
the place.

Speaker 2 (02:27:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, parts of HHC was with all of
place.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, all the partsof and parts of HHC was with
all of them.
Yeah, um, it was a very, verysmall skeleton left in the rear.
And then our Delta company thatthey were a total, a total.
They had total terms.
Yeah, so they, they didn't go.
So it was only Delta company inthis small part of HEC that was

(02:28:11):
there when I got there.
So, so, how was aerosol school?
That's no fun.
It's fun, but it's no joke.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, it was logistically.

(02:28:33):
That was always my thing.
Okay, first, you've got toconceive that I'm assigned here,
my first battalion.
They're all over the place,which is fine, but I'm not even
there.
I get to go visit them so theycan see a new guy on the block,
but it's been a week, thenthat's it.
I've got to come back and dothis thing.
So that wasn't.
I thought that the block.
But it's been a week, thenthat's it.
I gotta come back and do thisthing.

(02:28:53):
So that wasn't.
I thought that could wait, butno, that wasn't ideal.
Yeah, they wouldn't.
Let me let the units come back.
Let me get into floating.
No, so from that perspective Iwasn't necessarily happy about
that way.
And then it was way, and then itwas get up, go there in between

(02:29:24):
, in between PT, starting outthere in the first class.
You know it's it's summer, howdo I?
There's no time to go showeranywhere, to come back, there's
no time.
So I got to bring this stuff tochange or just let that stuff
dry.
Eventually that's what I endedup doing.
I was like, okay, those BDUs,you can do it in PTUs and BDUs,
they had to dry and then it'sgoing to get wet again because

(02:29:46):
it's summer and I sweat a lot.
What's the point I wanted tomake earlier when I did finally
go to ranger school?
I wanted to go in thewintertime because I sweat a lot
.
It was like I'd be laying downhere with the bugs and gunpowder
and all this stuff because Iwould never dry off in the
summertime.
I'd just sweat all the time.

Speaker 1 (02:30:04):
I didn't want that so I went in the winter I digress
Good plan, though I was in FortLeonard Wood and it was
springtime.

Speaker 3 (02:30:16):
I was there for Officer Basic course, so it was
like five months, but we did acouple of different FTXs and so
during the day it's like 90degrees and I sweat like a lot.

Speaker 1 (02:30:31):
And at night it would get down to like 20 20 degrees.
And we're in these GP mediumtents but they have these wood
stoves to heat them and someoneforgot to keep putting wood in
the wood stove.
And I woke up the next morningand I was frozen to my cot
because my uniform was still wet.
Yeah, yeah, and it wasn't justme, there was several.

(02:30:51):
It was like frozen to our cutsfrom our sweat.
So anyway, I digress as well.

Speaker 2 (02:30:56):
But I'm with you, yeah, I just, I mean, I thought
about it.
I was like man, you sweat a lot, you're gonna be like wet the
whole time, yeah, so gotta go inthe winter for that.
But that was the same thing forfor us all school.
It's like how do I figure thatpart out?
Once that, once I had that down, it was like compete like you
do the stuff.
But I think we had to do Idon't know if it was three road

(02:31:18):
marches or two.
No, you had to do a six mileand 12 mile.
That might have been it, butI'm competing, you know, I'm
trying to.
I'm running through the wholesix miles.

Speaker 3 (02:31:27):
Yeah, I'm running six miles of the 12th so I'm
definitely running six miles forthe six mile.

Speaker 2 (02:31:35):
Yeah, so I'm running.
I'm probably seven and a halfmiles of the 12.
Yeah and, yeah, I think both ofthem.
I came in fifth place but I'mcompeting against people half my
age one.
But more importantly, they hadin there and they got West Point

(02:31:56):
and people in there, cadets inthere, and then you have, then
you have those ROTC folks andthey're freaking track stars.

Speaker 1 (02:32:09):
They're what like 19 or whatever.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:32:11):
Yeah, it wasn't 19,.
But track people.
I'm like, yeah, so I didn't winit.
I was kind of pissed about it.
I won the old guy competitionfor that.
But yeah, I went in the old guycompetition and won the whole
thing.
That was like just competing.
Yeah, it was cool.

(02:32:31):
It was cool, it was a goodexperience.
The one instructor there Idon't know how we hit it off
just young Sergeant cocky orwhatever, I don't know.
You pick on somebody.
Could you a student drop soamazing to eat anywhere, john
Mayer, for you drop, drop,sergeant Major.
If you're anywhere, sergeantMajor, where are you Drop?

(02:32:53):
Okay, and I remember doingpush-ups like you're not going
to be assigned here forever,that's right you might not kind
of like doing it, but then whathappens?
like a year and a half later,Sergeant Major, how you doing?
Let me just do push-ups now,but I need a job.

Speaker 1 (02:33:09):
Drop yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:33:10):
No, he just did it.
Oh, but I need a job Drop.
Yeah, no, he just did it.
Oh, he did.
Yeah, he just started doingpush-ups.

Speaker 1 (02:33:16):
I told you that's right.
You can do push-ups until I'mtired.

Speaker 2 (02:33:22):
Yeah, that was pretty funny.
So my time in 101st was just.
I learned how and this is frommy experiences as an HEC Brigade
guy.
You know I'm dipping my toesinto Brigade's footprint often,

(02:33:45):
you know, just because I knewstuff like we should have this
appetite and we don't.
We should have this epitome andwe don't.
Then we go up here and makesome ways befriend the Brigade
Sergeant, Major, and so we cando so all of you can get what I
think we should get.
Right.
You know this is the days ofthe cycle system.

(02:34:06):
I don't know if you rememberthat.
So the Army is what is?
It's green, amber and red.
You know green is deploymentstatus, amber is in the field
and red is, you know you're onleave or you're doing details or
school or whatever.
Right, in 101st it's white,gold and black.

(02:34:31):
So I think black was the, Ithink black was the green Gold.
No yeah, gold was the trainingand white was the red.
You know screaming evil colors.

Speaker 3 (02:34:45):
Yeah Well, you got to do it your way.
Yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 (02:34:52):
Anyway, we perfected the gold and the white.
I'm sorry, we perfected thegold and the black, but not the
white, except for details.
That whole school part was nothappening and I'm like this is
wrong.
We're supposed to be maximizingthe school thing, that's what
we told them.
People raised their hand andcome here for that in the first
place.
Blah, blah, blah.
So I supposed to be maximizingthe school thing, that's what we

(02:35:13):
told them.
People raised their hand andcome in here for that in the
first place.
Blah, blah, blah.
So I went to the educationcenter, like how do we get
courses going?
And they told me everything andgot to have numbers and done.
So I got very close to theDelta Company, first sergeant of
the platoon sergeant moreimportantly platoon sergeant who
had a master's degree, and Iwas thinking how can I

(02:35:33):
capitalize on this academicexcellence?
His master's degree was fromMichigan State.
Oh yeah, I called him beforecoming here.
I was like hey, I'm going to dothis thing.
I thought about you, he's on amonth and a half crew someplace

(02:35:54):
now.
Anyway, we became really goodcomrades.
So I developed this educationsystem where we start out as
doing the basics English, math,all those things and I don't

(02:36:17):
have enough participation ofpeople wanting to go with just
my battalion, so I solicited theother two infantry battalions
as well as the entire brigadecombat team so I can have enough
butts in seats to substantiatean instructor Right.
So now in the white cycle, whenthe division and the brigade's
saying that we need certainnumbers from you to do it, I

(02:36:39):
don't have this many.
Where's the rest?
They're at school, wherethey're supposed to be, they're
supposed to be right and thesoldiers loved it.
Finally, this is a priority.
You know what I mean and youknow you get chewed out for
doing something wrong.
I'm chewing you out becauseyou're not at school, right, and

(02:37:01):
like why it's not costing younothing, like why, yeah, you
have no excuse.
So I had that going on and thenas a battalion sergeant major,
I would look at every NCOERbefore it goes up a gate.
You know they've got to be inon time and they have to say the

(02:37:24):
right things, because ifthey're not saying the things
that they should, you kick itback and get it fixed right.
But then you learn people can'twrite.
People can't talk, not write,just physically write and you're
not talk, which means you can'twrite.
Yeah, so, being that same guy,his name is Ron Gregg.
I just say that in case someonesome of you artists are close

(02:37:48):
by I charged him to grade.
So I set up, we set up mockcounseling sessions and they
would do a counseling sessionbased on a particular scenario

(02:38:10):
and then they had to turn thosein and then we'd grade them.
So he was the red pin.
You got to be the bad guy.
You got to be the bad guy.
Then he came into me and thenI'd look at him and then we'd
have a session with leadership.
We're talking sergeant teamleaders and staff, sergeant
squad leaders.
I think I probably let theplatoon sergeants go, but we

(02:38:33):
were able to fix a whole bunchof things that you know.
They're not taught that,they're just your rank.
So this is what you do.
They didn't go back and look ataptitude or intellect or that
figure into it.
You know.
But to be this not only elitefighting force when we go to the

(02:38:54):
field, we need smart, intuitivepeople all around.
As technology begins to comeinto the military more and more,
we gotta shape this right andthat's part of it.
Not only you have to be able totalk, you gotta be able to
write, you gotta be able tocounsel, otherwise who's wrong

(02:39:14):
when somebody goes off?
Course, I counseled them withthat Hell.
I don't even understand that.
Oh, by the way, the person incounseling is much smarter than
you.
So if you come off like this,they're like, they're not in,
they don't understand what thehell he said and they perceive
to be much, much, much much.
You know that your intellect ismuch higher than yours.
They're not.

(02:39:34):
You've lost their attention.
You can't even fake it, otherthan do it, because I said to do
it.
Yeah, it's fake.

Speaker 1 (02:39:42):
Well, it's some of those, you know if you think
about it too when you look at it.
Ncoer.

Speaker 2 (02:39:47):
A lot of times, that's the only thing people
know about you when it comestime for promotion or for a
special assignment and ifsomeone didn't write that
correctly, you're screwing yoursoldiers right, yeah, but also
don't come to me and say thatfrom a disciplinary standpoint
or a corrective measurestandpoint, you counsel them on

(02:40:09):
it, but it's not effective, it'snot written the right way.
Right, we can't do anything toanybody punitive.
It starts with that counseling.
So if that's wrong, we can't doanything.

Speaker 1 (02:40:21):
Well, and what's the purpose of counseling?
To help that soldier be better?

Speaker 2 (02:40:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:40:25):
And if you can't figure out what the hell
someone's trying to tell you todo to be better, it's not an
effective tool.
Yeah, and I think trying totell you to do to be better,
yeah, it's not an effective tool.
Yeah, and I think people get itwrong too.
They think that counseling is atool to punish someone.
It can be, but really thepurpose of it is to help them be
better.
And then, if they're not better, I can show you how many times
I'm trying to help you be better, and if you're not getting it,
you're just not getting it right.

(02:40:45):
But if I'm not doing it right,you're absolutely right yeah, so
that that was.

Speaker 2 (02:40:50):
that was.
Uh, I think it was a funprocess.
Yeah, um, but you could seeright away what people didn't
know.
Okay, well, I suspect it andnow we're gonna fix it.
We're gonna use this, thiswhite cycle, to fix all this
stuff.
That's what we did, so they allappreciated it.
If no one's gonna come to youand say thank you for helping me

(02:41:11):
the right, thank you forteaching me the right, but it
meant the Army never taught themin the first place.
That's what it meant, not howto do it effectively.
So that was a huge highlight ofcreating an educational system
that the Army would tell societywe're doing all along, but it
was not happening.
So they were doing all along,but it was not happening.

(02:41:34):
So, but if you take care ofpeople, then they'll do things
for you.
You know that's true.
Yeah, I remember deploying tosome things and you know the
mentality of the leadership issomeone comes in new and now
you're going to deploy to here,we're going to go to this place
and do this thing or whatever.
You're going to be a squadleader, obviously very, very

(02:41:54):
critical and pivotal right, theywould come at you and I would
say look, this is very, veryimportant, but so is getting
your family squared away.
Get them in the house, get themin the school, get them all
that type of stuff.
And when that's done, don'tjust get rid of keys and say,

(02:42:17):
I'll check you out in a coupleof weeks.
Get them in the right place,then we'll bring you out to the
field.
We can go to the field a wholebunch of times, but this
situation right here, you don'tget that right.
You may come home and theyain't even there.
I'll get my time back from you.
I am not concerned about that.
It may not be this thing, it iscritical.

(02:42:39):
But guess what, before you camehere yesterday, someone was
doing that job Somehow.
Whether you train them or not,or whether they're getting their
training as they do it, it willsurvive.
There's not a war, right?
So get that part squared away.
I'll get my time back from you.

(02:43:00):
I ain't concerned about that.
But they didn't want you tohave taken care of them in that
manner.

Speaker 1 (02:43:06):
Now, you can't give them a call Right, so you can't
do anything you've been tryingto do, because they know that
you're gonna take care.
Do, yeah, because they knowthat you're going to take care
of them.

Speaker 2 (02:43:13):
you know you care yeah, and I did the same thing.
What's up, what's up.
So I finished my time as abattalion sergeant major.
I created a not a pre-arranged,of course, but a training thing
for my soldiers to go to rangerschool.
Not a division had a pre-Ranger, and I'd go down there and
stick my nose in there, see whatthey were doing, like you're

(02:43:35):
overdoing it, like you're notRanger school, right, you know?
Right, it's a Ranger school.
You're thinking you'repreparing for Ranger school.
That's what it's for, not weedthem out.
So, people, that's not your job,you're not running your
department.
So, but, having that experience, you can go down there and tell

(02:43:55):
them that and you can go to thevigilante.
You need to go fix it.
That guy ain't doing the rightthing.
You got the wrong person incharge, whatever you know,
whatever it was.
But you have credibility.
So, but you have to take careof people in every single way in
their families, and that's, youknow.
To me, that's what the militaryis about.
You do that well, you've gotthem forever, and it's not a

(02:44:18):
trick, it's just.
You don't just say we take careof soldiers and families when
you're at the podium, right,like you either do it or you
don't do it, right?

Speaker 1 (02:44:30):
Well, just like the Army values, right, it can be a
poster, or it can be how youlive your life, right, you know,
either it means something or itdoesn't mean something.
Right, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (02:44:41):
And I would tell soldiers that you know decisions
I make in our 4th Institute andfor soldiers you may not
personally agree with, but guesswhat?
When I go to the ATM I don'tsee your face.
Exactly, I was telling him whenI go to the ATM, I don't see

(02:45:02):
your face and I sleep at night.
I sleep at night.
I'm not tossing and turningabout that decision thing.
Yeah, I sleep well at night.
So once they hear that theyknow they well, I guess ain't
gonna bother that matter at all,darn it.
Um, I was gonna.

(02:45:22):
So I spent three years as abattalion guy, which is kind of
more than normal and I wasloving my job and time was going
by so fast I didn't evenrealize it.
We deployed to Kosovo at thetime.
That was pretty fun.
We got a real enemy over therejust blowing up houses, trying
to get the Albanians or tryingto get the Serbs.

(02:45:45):
That's what it was.
Serbian area.
We had those explosionshappening nearby.
That's different.
That's what we get every day.
Yeah, that's a little different, especially when it's close.
But you're not being targeted,right?
Yeah, but you're in thisSerbian town and if their

(02:46:10):
technique was, or what theywould do is if the building
wasn't occupied, they'd blowthat up.
I remember they pissed atsomething, they pissed at us for
some decision.
So right across the street fromwhere our headquarters was
located they blew up this emptywarehouse, right across the
street.
So I knew I shook the hell outof our headquarters.
It was just a message Like thiscame off the wall.

(02:46:34):
I was like whoa, you're gettingthat's too close.
Yeah, but they would when theSerbians would.
It was like a weekly convoy togo to Serbia and Albanians would
wait till certain families leftand then blow up their house so
they had nothing to come backto.
That was a way to kind of getrid of one family at a time.

(02:46:56):
Wow, yeah, what a life, right,that's awful.
Yeah, I remember we werepatrolling one town and this
house blew up and everybody runstoward the house as if the
people who blew it up were gonnabe there or whatever.

(02:47:17):
Right, or you can catch themleaving the area or whatever.
This is 2000.
This is 2001.

Speaker 1 (02:47:25):
Okay, so you've been in the military for 20 what 24
years at this point?

Speaker 2 (02:47:36):
for 20?
What 24 years of being 201, Iguess by that time to the agency
, can't the 70s me?
Oh yeah, I'm not wrong, I wasdoing my birthday, I'm sorry.
Yeah, 24.
Yeah, yeah.
And Then they changed thetechnique to where they would

(02:47:57):
blow it up.
We would go toward it and thenit would be a second explosion,
which was which was key.
Learn that was key when wefinally went to Iraq.

Speaker 1 (02:48:16):
Yeah, there's always the ambush after the explosion.

Speaker 2 (02:48:21):
They didn't have an attempt to get us in their kill
zone, they would just do asecond one Well over there, they
didn't really so.

Speaker 1 (02:48:30):
If I'm not mistaken, they weren't really looking to
kill Americans.
Correct Right, they just wantedto scare you.

Speaker 2 (02:48:36):
I don't even know if it was us.
They knew that we were tryingto keep them from getting rid of
the Serbians.
Right, did that say it was forthe Serbians?
I guess you could say that.
But we never came out and saidthat.
We never said that was theoverall mission, but obviously
to keep them from killing theSerbians.

(02:49:00):
So we come back from Kosovo.
Then a couple months later wepaint the B-2, the brigade
sergeant, in the same.
It's in the same brigade, right, yeah?
So I knew, obviously had 30different experience and knew
the whole brigade, knew theleadership of every battalion

(02:49:25):
down, the squad leader, um, Iknew everything that the unit
wasn't doing, what they did well, what they didn't do well, what
they needed to improve on allthose things.
Even as an officer of the Corpsand when I was a battalion guy,
I knew officers would come inand I'd talk to them one-on-one.

(02:49:47):
You know the lieutenants had acertain script that I would talk
to them about and here's one ofthe key things I would tell
them.
I did the same thing withsomeone that's going to be a
company commander.
Usually the company commanderis already working in an SUV
shop or something.
Yeah, and the same thing withthem is a new.

(02:50:07):
Well, that's what I did at thetime was come to the battalion,
come to the platoon, but I wouldtell them, allow my NCOs to do
their job, don't allow them notto do their job.
So, you know, you got a newplatoon leader and they had

(02:50:28):
their platoon sergeant, or justsmall platoon sergeant, whatever
they say, and so they'd haveplato sergeant or a small
platoon sergeant or whateverthey say.
And, um, there are certainthings that have platoons that,
in my opinion, it's that platoonsergeant's job to make that
platoon leader successful.
If they are so so, so, so, so,so bad, that's gonna come out
and you can't do anything to fixit.
But you don't give up on fixingit, right, um?

(02:50:51):
But you are responsible fortheir success.
You make them a good platoonleader, which will make them a
good executive officer, whichwill make them a good command
when that time comes.
You fail to do that, you impactthe NCO Corps for, arguably,

(02:51:15):
the next two levels of thatofficer's career.
If they're so so, so, so, so,so, so bad, they're not going to
make it to captain anyway,right, right, but if you fail to
do your job in making themsuccessful as the platoon
sergeant.
Now they go become anex-sojourner in a different
company.
They leave, go to their advancecourse, come back and they're

(02:51:39):
going to come in at some place.
Guess what doesn't happen.
That NCO Corps doesn't get to docheck, because what they saw in
that platoon sergeant wasBecause what they saw in that

(02:52:03):
platoon sergeant was platoonsergeant didn't do anything for
them, which is a black eye forthe NCO Corps.
So they're not going to givethe NCO Corps not necessarily an
advantage.
They're not going to allow themto do anything because they saw
bad.
So they don't let the NCO Corpsdo anything.
They start playing all theirtraining.
They let the officers do like,do every single thing.
They said well, I can't say I'mgonna take my squad out here
and do this.

(02:52:23):
Tucson can't say I'm gonna takemy platoon to do this.
Let's work on these drills,let's work on no, you have no
input, because what I saw in theNCO Corps they didn't do that.
Yeah, and after they finishedthat, after a year or 18 months
or having a big day to secondcommand as a company commander
because they didn't allow it,they don't get to see it.

(02:52:44):
Then he did as a battalioncommander.
So now we've just technicallyruined two commands and I've
seen it with my own eyes.
So I would tell them newlieutenant who's scared to tell

(02:53:05):
the between sergeants in mostcases, allow them to do their
job.
Don't allow them not to.
So if that between sergeant isnot doing what they're supposed
to do their job, don't allowthem not to.
So if Deputy Attorney Sergeantis not doing what they're
supposed to do or what DeputyAttorney has been told that the
Attorney Sergeant is supposed todo, you come tell me.
Don't go to the companycommander, because he may say
well, I don't know what thecompany commander might say, I

(02:53:25):
don't care what he might say.
I'm telling you to comedirectly to me.
Sergeant so-and-so isn't doingwhatever.
Then I'm going to go fix it andI'm telling the platoon leader
when they come in, you do notallow your platoon leader to
fail.
So you see the message.
Yeah, you double it down onboth of them, right, it's a

(02:53:46):
double-sided message, that'sright.
And I'm telling the firstsergeant when they come in.
I'm telling the first arms whenthey come in, I'm telling them
to come to command at the sametime.
Yeah, and I might have talkedto them when they were captain
coming in working in a threeshot.
But now you're gonna be comingto command.
Come on back, got anothermeeting, different job, same
time.
Don't allow your same time.
Allow your first arm to do allthings it's supposed to.

(02:54:09):
Don't allow him to do what he'snot.
The minute he's not, I expectto see.
It's between me and you.
I'm not going to my battalioncommander and tell him that
that's what I look at.
My name's on the sign, hisname's on the sign, my name's on
the sign.
This is as much myresponsibility as his, because
when it goes bad, who are theyrelieving?

(02:54:31):
People with names on the side?

Speaker 1 (02:54:33):
Yeah, Because they can pinpoint it down Right,
right.
Well, and you're ultimatelyresponsible for the NCOs, yeah,
and for the enlisted people as awhole, as a Sergeant Major.
So why not?

Speaker 2 (02:54:46):
give you the opportunity to help fix it.
Well, my name's on the side,I'm responsible for it all.
Yeah, what I'm saying is that'smy talk.
I have my commander beforehand.
I don't need his permission togo talk to whomever.
No, I'm not doing that.
Other people might.
I'm not.
I'll tell you what I did, butI'm not asking if I can do it

(02:55:07):
Right, because I have to ask him.
What am I here for?
If you just need you, then I'llleave you.
Do it all, right.

Speaker 1 (02:55:15):
Well, if you have to ask, you know he's one of the
guys that didn't have asuccessful platoon sergeant.

Speaker 2 (02:55:18):
Oh, that's right Out on the road.
We can fix that from the verybeginning.
Yeah, yeah.
So it didn't matter if it wasofficer or whatever, just like
if it was out there and ithappened.
I don't expect the commander tocome back and tell me if you
saw it in front of your own eyes.
Don't come tell me two hourslater.
You fix it.
Come tell me what you fixed,but don't let it go, or whatever

(02:55:43):
.
And then come tell me, becauseit was an NCO who did it,
because if it's the officerdoing it, I'm telling him yeah.
So when I got the brigades, thesame thing.
When the 05 came in, he'staking over Lieutenant Colonel
came in and he's taking over thebattalion.
Having the same talk Allow yoursergeant major to do their job,

(02:56:05):
don't allow them not to.
When the sergeant major came in, you same thing.
But you got to do it all theway across the board, right.
Then they all had the samemessage and then they all can
police up each other, put themall on the same page, right.
And that, I would tell you, wasa lot of fun, because you're

(02:56:25):
creating this one unit, onestandard Again.
Now I just say it when you'reat the microphone, when you're
at the podium we doing this,this is how we do it Period.
And then you get to see withoutit becomes normal to you after

(02:56:47):
a while, and then you see howgood this unit really is, how
good the people really are whenyou allow them to do what
they're supposed to do.
Yeah, and that was fun Like myhands are off that they're doing
.
Your job is to allow them to doit.
Fix it when it's wrong, youknow, slap some hands when

(02:57:07):
that's what it takes.
If you've done all the rightthings, the offense shouldn't be
fireable, right?
Yeah, you really screwed thisup, but this is how we're going
to fix it and then we'll do itagain, but it shouldn't be
fireable, right?
I should not dive into that.
No, I should not be a part ofthinking they've done something
that bad.

(02:57:27):
Should not?
Right, sometimes it happens,but should not you?

Speaker 1 (02:57:36):
don't want to repeat the same mistakes over and over
again, although I work for somepeople who try to try to make
all of the mistakes.
That's a different story.
So so you, so we're in the,we're in the like early 2000s,
now kind of in your career, yeah.
So what happens?
You get done in Kosovo, right,you come back stateside.
So what's?

Speaker 2 (02:57:55):
Yeah.
So I come back stateside andthen, you know, I move to
brigade, I go get the brigadejob and, like I said before, I
already know all the people youknow and I know what we need to
do as a unit.
I ended up working with thatbrigade commander for a little
over a unit.
I ended up working with thatbrigade commander for a little

(02:58:15):
over a year.
I think it was about 14 months,14 months before a new
commander comes in.
But now this is 2001,.
So obviously September is when9-1-1 happens and obviously
we're ready to go.
We're ready to go do our part,like now as the Army tries to

(02:58:42):
figure out, or the Department ofDefense tries to figure out,
who responds to this call andall that.
It's not our brigade, it endsup being another brigade we get
to deploy, but it's not toAfghanistan, it's go to JRTC.
Like we're already trained,we've done this already.
What Wind us up?

(02:59:03):
And let us go?
Yeah, yeah.
So each one of those commandershas to get their grade.
So here we are, we're off toJRTC and by the time we come
back is when a brigade from the101st goes to Afghanistan.

(02:59:25):
But we still think that we'renext, next for something or
we're gonna go there then anyway, I look, everybody's gonna get
their turn, everybody get thereto yeah, yeah, and that never
happens, so that it's thatBrigade Commander.
Ladies, you do a change command, do?
It comes in now.

(02:59:47):
The new Brigade Commander hadbeen a retired commander in the
division prior.
He was actually one of our OCswhen we went to JROTC as a
brigade.
He's the brigade OC trainer orwhatever, right, which is kind
of funny.
He's great enough.
The brigade is going to takeover.
So he couldn't have anyinfluence on one of the

(03:00:13):
battalion commanders, or he canonly have influence on.
How did it work?
He can only have influence onone of the battalion commanders.
I think that's how it worked,because the other two would have
been gone when he got there,something like that.
I think that's how it worked,because the other two would have
been gone when he got there,something like that.

(03:00:33):
They didn't want no pre-command.
Is it undue influence?
Yeah, is that the word?
Yeah, I think that's the word.
Yeah, I'm familiar with that.
Yeah, they omitted that byputting in that clause, if you
will.
So he comes and takes over.
So he already knew.
I mean, I already knew who hewas.

(03:00:54):
We would talk, you know, prior.
I mean we'd talk long before heknew he was coming to brigade
committee when he was there asbattalion commander.
So so that was good, him comingin.
But here was the dynamic of himcoming in versus his
predecessors.
Predecessor, when'd sit downand had that first talk, it was
his brigade, right, I had to getmy foot in and make it mine

(03:01:21):
where, after he changed command,we had to sit down.
It's my brigade.
I remember in my slides I'mflipping whatever, I'm briefing
or whatever.
I'm flipping whatever and I'mbriefing them or whatever and
I'm telling them that like, andit went exactly like this On my
slides it had my rank.
I said you see that right there, you listen to what I tell you,

(03:01:44):
you'll get one of those.
So you know, command SergeantMayweather had a star in the
middle, yeah.
He's an 06, right.
You listen to me, you'll get oneof those.
You don't listen to me, nobueno, that was in that first
sit-down briefing.
He just laughed, but he retiredas a three-star.

Speaker 1 (03:02:06):
There you go.
He must have listened to yousomewhere along the way.

Speaker 2 (03:02:11):
Oh man, but I think, unbeknownst to one another, he
was a great team builder.
Now, you don't get to pickevery officer that comes into
your unit, but you get to groomthem like you picked them.

(03:02:32):
Yeah, I don't get to pick everyNCO, but I get to groom them
like I picked them.
That's what we did as a team.
And I say unbeknownst, I didn'tknow that he was a team builder
like that.
I didn't even know I was a teambuilder like that, until the

(03:02:55):
new division commander comes in,which is General Petraeus, and
the division sergeant majorintroduces me to him and says
he's the best team builder inthe division.
That's what he said about me.
I never thought about it.
I'm not sitting by it mired,right.
Right, I don't have like a maintape.
Right, it says that it marring.
Right, right, I don't have likea name tape, right, it says
that right, team builder, yeah,yeah.

(03:03:16):
But what I was doing is the samething.
I'm telling you.
You know, with those, thoseleaders, when they come in the
door and when I got to thebrigade, I extended that to the
BCT.
Now, I had worked with thesepeople, but from my foxhole, as
a battalion guy, and I knew them, but I wasn't in a position of

(03:03:38):
influence like I was when I gotthe brigade.
And once I got the brigade, Idid the same thing Come on in.
This is how we're going to doit, you know, disrespect to what
had happened beforehand and tothe involvement.
This is how we're doing it now.
But again, that made all thedifference in the world, to the

(03:04:00):
point where they wish they were,they wish we were 100% in the
brigade, which later, like now,that's what it is, that's what
it works now they wish thatbefore it was like that Because
we treated them just like theywere in 327th Regiment.
Yeah, but that was.

(03:04:21):
It's almost like the Army iswatching our unit.
We should do this everywhere,oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:04:27):
So it was somebody's idea somewhere, Right?

Speaker 2 (03:04:30):
right, but we lived it.
Even when we got into garrison,we brought them in, you know,
playing reindeer games, nomatter what we did all the time,
they were always a part of it,yeah, but that was the
team-building process.
But we also had to bring intheir parent commanders, you
know.
So if it was Federal UtilityBattalion, you know, they got a
colonel, got their own colonel,but we had to bring a colonel in

(03:04:52):
, you know, to make them a partof it all you know.
So they didn't feel like theywere left out there.
That's my battalion.
At the end of the day, weomitted that by by defending
them Right and and that and this.
I did the same page, right, butyeah, if you and I think if you
force it on somebody, it'sdifferent than if you bring them

(03:05:16):
in, yeah, and make it theiridea.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was very separatebefore I got the brigade Right,
not that I did, I'm talkingabout together.
Yeah, we were able to make itAll-around team, no silos, yeah,
everyone's kind of workingtowards the same.
I call those guys today.
They say best don't.
They won't say their parentbattalion or their parent, you

(03:05:37):
know, like the Vardy thing,whatever it was, for example.
Or the support battalion,whatever their thing was Discom,
they wouldn't say that.
They say best, don't Right,because you're all the same,
you're all the same group.
Yeah, that's awesome.
And we lived it the whole timeunder the old BCT system.
Right Under they were.
What was it called?

(03:05:58):
Was the BCT only when we weretogether for the field Right or
training field?
Yeah, yeah, not in the garrison.
So how long were you?
How long did you do this?
Did this like take you up toyour retirement, or so?
I was there for three years.
The last 18 months-ish, acouple years or something like

(03:06:33):
that was.
So I got there in 2001.
In 2003, we deployed to Iraq.
Okay, yeah, spent a year inIraq.
Where were you at?
In Iraq, we start out.
I forget this place we firstwent to.
We start out going through ohboy, started out going through

(03:06:54):
Najaf.
Then, after Najaf, we moved tothe Karbala area and Babylon
area.
I remember going to a palacethere.
So when we first go throughthis palace me and the commander
and our drivers and some othersecurity people there's a couple

(03:07:19):
of reporters around.
They have their super coolantennas up trying to get a
signal and it's this palace.
And no power.
But you go in and there's likein the walls, gold plated, this
Gold all over Bathrooms orwhatever.

(03:07:39):
Right, we come back in lessthan 48 hours, all the gold's
taken out.
Oh yeah, this is very, veryearly.
Like there's no sign of youknow the Bathurst regime, like
they're not around and what younotice on this particular palace

(03:08:02):
is overlooking Babylon and it'slike Saddam.
It was intentional for thesethings to be way high up on the
hill so you could just look downat the poverty and, you know,
do whatever he did, so theywouldn't come near it.
But they were watching it right, and either they figured that,

(03:08:23):
seeing those military vehiclesgo up there and the vehicles no
longer there, that it's safe nowthat they're there, so let's go
in here and do this stuff, orthey just took a chance, right,
yeah, 42 hours, 48 hours later,we came back.
The goal was gone places, yeah,yeah, um, so we're in that area

(03:08:48):
.
Then we moved from there toKiara, or we named that town Q
West, and that base was a bombedout old Iraqi air base, like
the one where it had been bombed, so you couldn't land anything
on it, only fixed wing.
Am I right?

(03:09:09):
Helicopters go in.
It's put like that Rotary wing,rotary wing.
Yeah, knew I screwed it up whenI said it.
It's next thing to be anairplane.
Yeah, rotary wing.
I say that three times fast,slow, even so, we were wearing

(03:09:33):
these hangars at first and wehad our whole brigade spread out
on this thing.
We'd actually lost onebattalion.
They went to support anotherbrigade.
So now we're down to twoinfantry battalions and part of
the time we were in Karbala wepicked up another battalion from

(03:09:55):
the 82nd.
So our brigade was actually onthe 82nd.
For about two weeks we were inthat particular area and, that
being on the 82nd, they hadtheir division command in charge
of that area.
Their actual brigades wereassigned elsewhere.

(03:10:18):
Again, we pick up one battalionand we're under the 82nd
Airborne Division Headquarters.
So now I'm reporting to the 82ndAirborne Division, sergeant
Major who had been legendary inthe 82nd, and then their
commander had been my brigadecommander when I was in Hawaii.

(03:10:40):
Okay, so I already knew him.
He was the commander when I wasin the battalion and in the
brigade in Hawaii.
So we went in there for twoweeks and then we moved to
Q-West, take over thisparticular spot.
We got to build that whole area.
I remember funny.
We were there for a couple ofdays and these Iraqis are

(03:11:04):
carrying this telephone polething.
But I don't think it was even.
It wasn't wood, it wassomething else.
It was like what are you guysdoing with that thing?
Where are you going?
He's like oh, we have electricAll they had was the pole.
No we have electric.
You don't have electric, youdidn't carry with it.
You need more than that andthat's not going to work.

(03:11:24):
Yeah, it's kind of funny, ohgosh, yeah.
So we're.
You need more than that, that'snot going to work.
Yeah, that's kind of funny, ohgosh, yeah.
So we're kind of going back andforth up to Mosul where the
division headquarters was.
There.
Again, one of our battalions isassigned to the second brigade
now to help police Mosul, andnow we're just down to two.

(03:11:48):
This particular time, and westayed that way the whole time,
early on, we bring in, you know,local sheiks and everything,
because they thought that ournods could see through the
females' clothing.

Speaker 1 (03:12:04):
I thought it was like x-ray glasses.

Speaker 2 (03:12:06):
Yeah, yeah, so we put on this whole fair, I forget
what it was called I can'tremember Some unique name and we
showed them everything the nods.
It was a booth.
We had tents set up.
They'd go in there.
There was food.
It was like a dead-goingfestival or something.

Speaker 1 (03:12:24):
A showing pole for the army, exactly.

Speaker 2 (03:12:25):
That's exactly what it was.
Yep, but you know it's building.
What is it building?
Hearts and minds.
Yeah, yeah, trust the emergency, right, yeah, I think we're
there, for we're there for acouple weeks and we're in these

(03:12:49):
hangars.
And I tell the commander, Isaid, look, I venture out and go
to the other side of thiseventual base, right, and
there's some buildings overthere and everything.
I'm like, hey, why don't we moveover here?
So I go back, tell thecommander, hey, there's all
kinds of stuff over there.
We need to move out of it.
We can't stay in this deck.
He and I are in a sick upinside this hangar and all of

(03:13:14):
these hangars, right, just notsustainable, right.
So we got to move.
I came back and tell him that.
So I take him over there andshow him.
Guess what he says this placeis dirty.
Oh, blah, blah, blah.
I'm like this big old building.
All you see is dirt on thefloor, dirt and broken glass.

(03:13:35):
So, okay, I let another sevendays go by, I take someone back
over here to clean up thatbuilding.
Then I take them back over here.
Oh, okay, we can move this.
Yeah, this is nice.

Speaker 1 (03:13:52):
Yeah, this priority is messed up.
That's what I think.

Speaker 2 (03:13:54):
Holy cow.
So I used to kid my dad, likeit's up to you, we'd still be in
the damn hangar, right, yeah,so now we put out this whole
thing, you know the whole,because there's a place for
everybody to live inside abuilding.
We eventually get water put onthe roof and something I don't

(03:14:15):
want to say running water, butyou have something going on.
Right, we build some showersoutside, go outhouse, but it's a
shower, something going on.
There was some showers outside,a little outhouse, but it's a
shower.
We put down this.
We get the, this dirt area nearthis big old building which
ended up being our headquarters.
We could sleep in like theheadquarters.
People slept in there, not theheadquarters people.
I say the like me, thecommander, xo3, assistant threes

(03:14:40):
there were some rooms for thatdrivers and then, if they
weren't at that, like, there'sall kinds of places right around
it.
There's a big area out there.
We get gravel laid down, getthe I don't know what you're
calling it, but the like theystill had things to create a

(03:15:02):
landing pad for the helicopters.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, that's out there.
Yeah, and now we're hosting likethe division would have their
commander navigate commanderoffice call an office call.
But there are meetings, likeeverybody wanted to come up

(03:15:24):
there.
Yeah, everybody wanted to cometo that.
So it's kind of funny.
You pick it with everybody.
Yeah, it's up to you, we'dstill be in the hangar.

Speaker 1 (03:15:33):
Right, no one would want to come visit you.

Speaker 2 (03:15:35):
No one would come.
Yeah, painted the headquarters,put our 101st screaming dude
going in there and bass throwingall across the building.
Got to make it home one day.
Yeah, we better know for sure,that's for sure.
I think before we moved we'dtake our first casualties.
It's at night and like an RPGthey were hitting.

(03:16:01):
Rpg V was took out, took outfour people, so that hit hard.
That was a.
That was our first firstcasualties and I remember I was
the first casualties and anydivision I don't think it was
that, I can't remember, butdefinitely the first for us.

(03:16:22):
Then we lost a kid, seven MCSReds, four or five in a

(03:17:00):
helicopter that was shot downand then the two in the attack
that happened in Kuwait?

Speaker 1 (03:17:17):
Yeah, so it was 11 total, whatever that math is.
So is this a good point to talkabout what happened in Kuwait?

Speaker 2 (03:17:22):
Yeah Right, because this is, you actually wrote a
book about this, right, right,okay, embedded in me the inside
of a threat, right, and ifsomeone, so we're going to talk
about it.
If someone wants to read, thatis that you can get that at like
Amazon.

Speaker 1 (03:17:38):
Okay, yeah, all right .
So yeah, let's talk about whathappened, because I remember
this, but I mean I've nevertalked to anybody who knew
anything about it.
So what happened and, kind of,what did we learn from it?
Let's talk about what happenedfirst.

Speaker 2 (03:17:58):
Yeah, so in the day four camp we were in Kuwait at
this intermediate staging baseand probably been there about 20
days or so, some a few dayslonger.
And so it's March 22nd and theunit that was there before us

(03:18:22):
had a television and it was inthe command tent where myself,
the executive officer, slept.
So I had watched golf.
I figured out how to get intoAmerican golf.
I had watched golf the twoprevious days.
It's the week of the ArnoldPalmer Invitational, which I
think was called it wassomething else at that time,

(03:18:44):
different name of the ArnoldPalmer Invitational, which I
think was called the it wassomething else at that time,
different name.
Anyway, so the Thursday night Iwatched a big Tiger Woods fan.
I watched him play that nightand then Friday night I was
watching but I fell asleep in achair right in front of him.
So now it's Saturday, so we hadfinished putting the final
touches on our plans to crossthe border to invade Iraq and at

(03:19:06):
that particular time we werescheduled to go in at Thursday,
so about five days away.
But the plans are done, unlesssomething changes or we get an
update, have to augment orwhatever it's done.
Commander goes to sleep about2,200 hours.
First time he went to bed thatearly the whole time we were
there and, um, I had, uh, wentto the little shop at thing to

(03:19:31):
buy me, buy me some snacks.
So I got some snacks andeverything.
Watching tigers back at thefield.
I think we're probably notplaying for the right and anyway
, our ammo comes in a little bitearly that day, right before
sundown, the ammo comes and thetime commanders make a decision
they can guard it or they canhand it out in the dark if they

(03:19:51):
want to Put some vehicle lightson or whatever.
Oh, wait until the morning.
So I remember my driverbringing me ammo, the 9mm ammo.
So I'm going to sit there, I'mgoing to eat some snacks, watch
the tiger, play golf, load ammoand I think I'm doing some bill
pay.
Yeah, multitasking be up to 4o'clock watching golf, right?

(03:20:16):
Yeah, was when I was sitting,was a few feet from the entrance
of the vestibule as you'regoing out, and it had the tent
flaps there, right.
So this is March and it's stillcold at night.
Got my little fleece jacket onso the wind would blow and that

(03:20:38):
tent flap would scrape upagainst the floor.
Just kind of looking.
It's that again.
Then it does it again and I'msitting at the end of this table
and I see these sparks.
So I'm sitting at the end and Ican see everything on the floor
and this thing comes in andit's right up against the tip
wall that's in front of me.

(03:20:59):
It's probably about four and ahalf five feet away and I see
these sparks and I say that mythought is we're in the land of
not quite right and that's a notquite right grenade that's
sparking before it blows.
So I get up and I take a newofficer in there as well.

(03:21:21):
He's on the other side of thetable.
I know he can see what I cansee from this side.
He can see cause he's on thatside.
So I'm not worried about hisactions.
But the commander is asleep.
He didn't know what's going on.
So I run, get up immediately,run to the back of the tent.
Now, when I'm sitting thereworking, there's a fluorescent
light there, you know, bright asday.

(03:21:42):
Right by the time I get to theback of the tent it's pitch dark
, can't see nothing.
Get him up, say hey, gotta getout of here.
There's a grenade about toexplode in front.
So he didn't know what's goingon.
You know, looks up, gets hisboots on, so I'm gonna count to
three and we're gonna run.
So I count to three, I positionus in the middle.
You know the aisle there.

(03:22:03):
Now he's all the way in theback, has the whole back part to
himself.
You know, um, you know it's atemper tent, so it has the air
conditioning unit in the backand then things all tied up, you
can't get out the back, so wehave to go out the front.
So I got the three, we startrunning down and go the aisle.
I make it outside and Realizehe's not there.

(03:22:27):
So I start calling for him.
And I was telling him, sir, sir, you know, I know we're in some
type of attack or under sometype of attack, but I don't know
what or where the enemy is.
So and there's no response.
Then I hear a gunshot.
So I pull out my weapon, cockit, attempt to cock it, and you

(03:22:50):
know I got nothing.
So I had been loaded ammo, I hadmy weapon, I had been loaded
magazines, I should say.
And so I had my weapon and myholster that had a magazine in
it, but no, rounds hadn't gottenthat far yet, okay.
So I hear this gunshot, Ipulled a handle to the rear.

(03:23:12):
There's no animal in there, soyou get not right.
So I'm screwed.
So you know they say you don'tbring a knife to a gunfight, you
don't bring a non-functionalweapon to a gunfight, you don't
bring a gun with no bullets,right.
So in that gunshot I hear ayell and I know that Dexil has

(03:23:38):
been shot.
I hear a yell and I know thatthe XO has been shot.
So I gotta figure out how I'mgonna defend myself and him and
find the commander.
So my solution is go to the top.
They have to have a weapon andammo.
So I run in there, holler forM4 and ammo and not.
So while they're getting that,I'm positioning people at the

(03:24:00):
inches that I came in, as wellas throughout the talk, and I'm
kicking the chair cursing theguards.
I had gone out to the guardtowers previously a few nights
to check on them, make sure theywere doing the right thing and
they weren't.
Now, this can't I tell people.

(03:24:20):
It was ten football fields big,but actually bigger than that,
I can't even describe it.
And all around it is a 12 footburn of sand and then
constituted a wire above that.
Everyone trying to infiltratewould have to come up that sand

(03:24:40):
somehow without sinking all theway in.
They'd climb the wire somehowwithout the guards seeing them
Right.
But this has to be insurgentsand the guards had to have
fallen asleep for them toinfiltrate.
So I finally get the weapon andthe nods and the ammo.
You know, I'm locked and loadedand I'm back out of the tent.

(03:25:03):
I'm back out of the top, headedto my tent to find the
commander and the executiveofficer and it does not.
It's not worth the darn.
You need the sliver of a starand there's nothing.
So you get to the tent andthey're not there.
You know I'm calling for themagain.
The low tone is not there.
You know I'm calling for themAgain.
The motel is not there and likeno one is outside but me, like

(03:25:26):
there's no, our people aren'tout there, the enemy's not out
there, like nobody's out there.
But I know we got to find, youknow, both of these the enemy
and them.
So I go back to the top, tellsomeone to go look for the
commander and the XO while Ilook for the enemy, because no

(03:25:49):
one was out there.
I could go on the radio and Icalled my previous unit no slack
because they had been there.
I mean, we had three infantrybattalions.
There's 5,000 people in thiscamp, but I called them.
Yeah, I called no Slack, 6.
We need a platoon.
I said we need a squad.
No, making a platoon to come inthe vicinity of the top.

(03:26:10):
So he said, okay, send themright over.
And then I walk away from theradio, so go back out.
And then someone comes over theradio and says, hey, do you
need an FLA?
Well, I know one person's shot.
So I say yes, send it in thevicinity of the talk and I go
back out, then I'm challengedimmediately.
You know Halt, who's there, andI recognize the voice of the

(03:26:32):
guy I served with for 14 yearsprior and he says so maybe
what's going on?
I don't know, maybe Romaine hasbeen shot.
He said well, so has CaptainSeifert.
Um, he said what happened tothe lights?
I said I don't know.
So the lights that had been outthere had been off.
I didn't even think about that.

(03:26:53):
So in those two quick trips,those two quick trips, I learned
later that a grenade had beenthrown in our tent and that's
why the commander went out,because the grenade came in and
knocked him back into hissleeping area, and now he's out

(03:27:20):
somewhere.
The grenade had been thrown intothe second tent and because of
the explosion in the first tentand the gunshot, they had begun
to stand up.
So a grenade explodes at a 15degree radius.

(03:27:40):
So if you're above 14, ifyou're above 14, you're probably
going to get hit.
If you're below 14, you mightbe okay.
And I said it exploded at 15,and I'm saying being below the
14 because one guy in the secondtank got trapped on his feet.

(03:28:01):
He was laying down, so that 15degrees, not as high as you
would think.
So the ones who were standingout, they took a lot, of, a lot
of straddle In the third tent.
By now they're up and they'd be, someone would be getting

(03:28:24):
outside.
So a grenade had been rolledinto their tent and after that
one person was shot in the back.
So imagine them coming out whenthe grenade goes in.
They're already out After thegrenade goes in, then they're

(03:28:45):
shot in the back.
Whoever shot it ran off.
So one person in the third tentwas on his way out, realized he
didn't have ammo, went back toget his ammo and when he started
to come out that grenade thatwas going into the third tent
exploded 17 inches from where hewas standing, obviously

(03:29:05):
throwing some assault in the air.
So now we've got severalcasualties in tent number two
and tent number three, likemassive casualties.
The fourth tent was the NCOs.
The first again the first tent,myself, the commander, the
executive officer, tent numbertwo and three.
Tent number two had mages andsome captains.

(03:29:27):
Tent number three had allcaptains, a couple of tents.
So those two tents are thefocus of the CCP, the Caj
collection boy, but those whodon't know, and the triage
begins.
The 4th 10 had NCOs in it.

(03:29:48):
They're coming out and they'reputting people in bunkers and
getting their areas secure.
By now I'm doing the same thing.
They're coming out and I'mputting them on the perimeter
that ties into these Texasbarriers.
Now these Texas barriers are atotal few times what we call
Texas Right.

(03:30:09):
So all that's taking place thetreatment of the casualties and
triaging them and getting themon FLAs to take to the local aid
station that's on the camp ishappening at the same time while
we're looking for the enemy.
So I go back in the talk andsay something had to have

(03:30:30):
changed in this camp, being allthese nights and nothing, like
no one had probed or anything.
And then someone says well,sergeant, major, these
interpreters came in last night.
Bingo, it has to be them to gofind them.
So we locate the interpreters.
Then we got them on the ground,hands behind their head, m4s

(03:30:54):
pointing at their heads.
We take them into custody.
And the lieutenant?
They don't know what's going on.
They have nothing to do withthis.
So now we're back to square one, looking for the insurgents
that we have no sign of, and I'mthinking if these guys can come
in here, create all this chaos,then we're gonna get

(03:31:16):
annihilated.
We're gonna go to Iraq, we'regonna cross that border.
In a few days we're gonna getwore out.
Our intel is horrible on theirfighting capability.
And this is the beginning ofyour war, yeah, yeah.
Two days prior, the shock andawe happened in Baghdad.
I call it bombs on Baghdad.

(03:31:37):
That happened, yeah.
So we're looking for insurgentswith no sign.
The first medevac helicopterlands catatruz and lunar under
that.
It's making a one minute flightto the hospital.
That's about a minute away, 500meters.

(03:32:02):
And as soon as that lifts off,the second one lands to be
loaded.
While that's being loaded, oras it's being loaded and it
begins to lift off, there's ahuge explosion in the sky.
And now we think it's a hugeexplosion in the sky and now we

(03:32:23):
think we're.
It's a coordinated attack, likethey're attacking us from the
air and on the ground.
I have to fast forward to thatexplosion that a picture bag is
assigned to division.
They hear explosions andgunshots and all that.
They spot on their radar a fastmoving object coming in through

(03:32:45):
the sky.
So they think it's a Scud andshoot it down.
It ended up being a Britishfighter jet returning from a
mission.
So they wipe that jet out, aswell as his crew, but we put it
to the ground.
We're still about to square oneof where they had all the
insurgents, so the commander andXO ended up being helping with

(03:33:11):
other casualties, even though XOhad been shot.
So at the end of the vestibulehe had his pistol out.
Just right at the end he gotshot in the hand which went
through the other hand and thenwent through his leg.
So he's bleeding from all threeof those wounds and helping

(03:33:33):
other casualties at the sametime.
And the commander so thecommander from the grenade blast
had knocked him back into asleeping area.
He had his arms bleeding.
He ended up having just twopieces of shrapnel in his arms.
That's what flying razor bladesdoes.
So he's in a talk and he sayswe need to get a calendar of

(03:34:00):
personnel.
We make that call over theradio and we learn that a
Sergeant Akbar is missing.
So are grenades and ammunition.
Now most of them are in theheadquarters.
Like who's Akbar?
Now we know who he's assignedto over there.
So, engineer that's assigned toour second battalion.

(03:34:22):
He was on guard duty guardingtheir ammo that they were
handing out.
The next morning, the privatethat was on guard duty with him.
He told him to go to sleep.
I'll take him until we'rerelieved.
He used that time to startopening up a place of ammo as
well as fragmentary grenades andincendiary grenades.

(03:34:43):
Now, where that battalion waslocated on the camp was at least
300 meters from the brigade airforce.
So what he had done was open upthose crates, take out ammo and

(03:35:04):
grenades, come all the wayacross the desert 300 meters to
attack the headquarters, not the800 plus people that was in
that battalion.
That would have been slim easypickings, slim easy pickings,
right.
But he had a mentality to takeout the head, the body would
follow him, take out theheadquarters and then the

(03:35:30):
disposition, demeanor, attitudeof the soldiers assigned to the
overall unit would falter, right.
So once we learned that it's him, myself and the intel officer

(03:35:50):
commodity brigade headquartershad a talk at the same time.
Keep him going around all night, going to bunkers, checking on
people.
Who do we have here, walkingaround with a pistol in his hand
, who's in the bunker, givinghim some instructions.
Moving to the next one, I hadbeen putting soldiers in

(03:36:10):
security positions throughoutthe perimeter, checking back and
forth inside, etc.
Looking for an enemy, at thesame time trying to prevent
friendly fire, but we come outof the top once we know it's
Sarnak enemy.
At the same time Trying toprevent friendly fire, but we
come out of the top once we wentand saw an outbar.
At the same time he realizedthere was a bunker that he

(03:36:31):
hadn't gone to.
I go start telling ourleadership who we're looking for
.
And you know, he's wearing thesame thing we are.
And I remember the first time Isaid, wait a minute, you mean
it's one of our own?
I'm like, yeah, that's what weknow so far.
You can go tell soldierswhatever you want to tell them

(03:36:52):
in that regard.
I don't know what to tell themin terms of what I want.
So the intelligence officer goesto that bunker.
Again, he's walking around withhis pistol and he says as he
approaches what do we have here?
And the response is it's onAkbar.
Akbar didn't know we werelooking for him and another
person in the bunker says who heis.

(03:37:13):
I realize Akbar has done hisattack.
Now he's in the bunker with afellow soldier but does nothing
to him, and that was the secondbunker he had gone to after the
attack.
The other one was full.
A female took charge in thatbunker and she was trying to get

(03:37:37):
accountability and personnel inthat bunker Names etc.
And ask him, but he didn'trespond.
Now she knew she didn'trecognize him.
Yeah, and he wouldn't tell herhis name and she just gave up.
But after two grenades you're inthe first tent gunshot Grenade.

(03:38:00):
Second tent Grenade.
Third tent gunshot.
Now he's in a bunker withpeople, do nothing.
Elkwich still has his weaponand he has fire grenades.
So he leaves that and goes toanother bunker.
Now he's in this one with justone other person Anyway.
So the intelligence officersask who's there?

(03:38:21):
Since I'm not barred, heholsters his weapon, keeps
walking toward the bunker andthen he takes it down.
So that's how Akbar'sapprehended.
I had been, you know, walkingaround all night, still no ammo,
my fleece jacket on, still noammo, my fleece jacket on.
So once he was apprehended Itook the time to go get, look at

(03:38:50):
my gear and ammo and all thatstuff come back, and so now they
have him down his flex cuff.
But when I went to my tent Inoticed that there was a piece
of expanded brass right on theoutside which obviously was from
when he shot the XO.
The colors in the tent aredestroyed, burned out, so that
first object that came in thespark was an incendiary grenade.

(03:39:13):
And now I can see, see wherethe frag grenade blew up and my
whole sleeping area was all trapholes, like my baby sack had

(03:39:34):
holes on, like my Swiss cheese,worcester Swiss cheese and
creamer holes.
The tent wall that was right atmy head full of holes.
I had these grimoire holes.
The tent wall that was right atmy head full of holes.
I had this wall locker therethat someone found in the desert
and said, hey, somebody gottafind your wall locker.
The wall locker was shattered.
Excuse me, wall locker wasshattered, but my whole sleeping

(03:39:56):
area was all just so had I beensleeping out watching Tiger
Woods play golf then I wouldn'tbe sitting here in front of you.
Yeah, yeah, that's.
That's pretty heavy.
So had I been sleeping outwatching Tiger Woods play golf,
then I wouldn't be sitting herein front of you.

Speaker 1 (03:40:02):
Yeah, that's pretty heavy.
Yeah, I mean, if I'm going tobe a military guy, I'm going to
make a joke right now and sayyou're a Tiger Wooden note and
say you saved my life.
I said Tiger Woods, a book thatwas a long time ago so, yeah, I
mean it has to make you thinklike everything happens for a

(03:40:28):
reason.
Right, you weren't in your bunkat that time.
Yeah.
You know, there's some otherthings you have to accomplish in
your life before it's your turn.
Right, yeah, that's right,that's right.

Speaker 2 (03:40:37):
Yeah.
So very poignant and very true.
And yeah, the first night I waswatching I was awake watching
the whole thing.
Second night I fell asleep in achair right where everything
would have been.
Yeah, third night I'm preppedto watch another thing Got your
stacks, got your and not sleep,yeah.
So think about this Incendiarygrenade, frag grenade gunshot

(03:41:01):
first.
10.
This incendiary grenade, fraggrenade gunshot first time
private.
A second time frag grenade,third time gunshot outside the
frag grenade came in.
Incendiary, incendiary grenadecame in first when we
apprehended him.
We apprehended him.

(03:41:22):
He had in his protective maskcarrier five more grenades three
frag, two incendiary.
I think.
When he threw that firstincendiary grenade he realized
it wasn't an explosion.
It was like, oops, I threw thewrong one.
He didn't throw anotherincendiary all night.

(03:41:43):
So we talked about, had I beenasleep, what would happen had he
not screwed up the grenades andI say screwed up because he
didn't throw another one thenI'd have never saw the sparks
and I still wouldn't.
We sit here talking to Right,you wouldn't have heard the

(03:42:06):
warning at all, right, right, itmight have made a different
sound on the floor, but I didn'treally hear the sound, that
certain flat move and thensparks.
So we apprehend him.
I go to my tank and my gear.
I come back and I'm pissedbecause I see my whole stupid

(03:42:29):
area blown up and like thatcould have been me, like I want
to do something to him.
I go back over there with theintent of doing something to him
and as I get ready to do mysomething, here come some

(03:42:52):
captains.
Why'd you do this to him?
They're talking to him.
You know he's on the ground,but now I have to hold them back
.
So they blew my plan or theysaved my career or life, I don't
know which one.

Speaker 1 (03:43:00):
they did Probably a mutual thing there.
They probably saved theircareers as well.

Speaker 2 (03:43:04):
Yeah, yeah, I don't think they were going to do what
I was going to do, right?
Yeah, yeah, I wasn't just goingto holler at you did, yeah,
anyway.
So that blew that plan.
So one of the guys says youknow, here's his weapon.

(03:43:25):
So I take his weapon and Ismell it, see if it's been
recently fired and it had.
And then he says well, here arethe grenades.
What do you want me to do withthem?
I said just leave them in thebunker.
If they blow up in a bird nest,right place for them in the
bunker, right.
So I take the weapon and I putit on safe, but I don't clear it

(03:43:50):
.
I don't want to disturb therounds.
Great, take the weapon backover to where that expanded
brass was.
I found in front of my tent andI put a guard on it and said
don't you leave.
I'm the only person that canrelieve, because I knew that if
that weapon with that magazineand those rounds and that

(03:44:15):
expended brass came from that,that those doted would match.
So I just wanted that there inguard, right?
So now we have evidence.
Thank, csi for that.
Thanks for watching me sometimes.
So he's taken over to you know.

(03:44:37):
Remove from that particulararea, away from everybody.
I could hear one of our guyssaying like, why did you do this
?
And he had asked him before.
But as soon as he started toanswer, he told me to shut up.
So he asked him again.
He said well, you told me notto answer.
Well, you told me to shut upbefore.
No, I'll answer this time.
And he says to keep y'all fromkilling our women and raping our

(03:45:00):
children, our women and rapingour children and I did?
I didn't.
I couldn't connect the dots ofwhat all you are meant.
What the hell are you talkingabout?
Our right doesn't even work.
Didn't take the same oath thatI did.
Yeah, so what he meant was hewas of Muslim faith and that's

(03:45:26):
what he meant by O-U-R our yeah,unbeknownst to us, and he had
been asked prior to deploying,was he going to be okay with
that, which he replied yes.
So what we learned two yearsafter the fact at the trial?
They had kept the diary and hisdiary.

(03:45:50):
I have to read this becauseit's his diary entries and I
never want to mess it up.
So these are actually his words.
These are actually his words,okay, 1993.
I do not like the military.
They have too much control overpeople's lives.
I suppose I am justanti-government.

(03:46:11):
A Muslim should see himself asa Muslim only.
His loyalty should be to Islamonly.
Now, before I read the next one, it's important for me to point
out that religion doesn't pullthe trigger People do.
They become radicalized, theybecome extremists and then they
take action.
That's just how it works, nomatter what it is.

(03:46:33):
It doesn't have to be areligious belief or religious
ideology, it's just whateverthey feel the theory is, but
religion doesn't pull thetrigger.

Speaker 1 (03:46:43):
The actions.
I just want to be clear theactions of one Muslim person
does not mean that that's howevery Muslim person is Correct.

Speaker 2 (03:46:50):
This is the actions of one person, Right, Based on
what he believes Right 1996,anyone who stands in front of
you shall be considered theenemy and dealt with accordingly
.
1996, destroying America was myplan as a child and as a
juvenile and in college.

(03:47:12):
My life will not be completeunless America is destroyed.
Destroying America is mygreatest goal.
1998, he joins the army.
So a plan In February 2003,.
Remember, we go over here lateFebruary, early March.

(03:47:33):
I'm not going to do anything aslong as I stay here, which is
Fort Campbell, but as soon as Iam in Iraq I'm going to try to
kill as many of them as possible.
So there was nothing thathappened that night that we had

(03:47:54):
a clue to.
Social media wasn't like it istoday, although he did post it
on there.
So it wouldn't have beennothing that we would have seen
ahead of time if he didn'tverbally say any of these things

(03:48:16):
ever.
There was no clue.
So because so it bothered me,was that like?
What was the sign?
There was no sign.
There's going to be.
As soon as the ammo comes, I'mgoing to kill him.
We didn't know that last entryat all.

(03:48:37):
So what was present?
Now we know he wasn't the bestsoldier of some standard.
He was still a soldier.
He wasn't demoted as a resultof it Not performing in a
position as a sergeant.

(03:49:04):
So what was there?
So that always bothered me Wasit him not playing in reindeer
games, as I call it?
So if all the platoons over hereare doing whatever, or the
squad or sections over here aredoing whatever football whatever
and he's not in thatenvironment in Kuwait football
whatever, and he's not In thatenvironment in Kuwait, that's

(03:49:26):
something I'm not saying ithappened, but I'm saying, if it
did happen, it was something.
In an environment like that,that young leadership that was
closest to him sort of saw it asa problem.
But it as a problem.
But is it a problem at home?
Mother could be sick, mothercould have just been diagnosed,

(03:49:50):
wife could have been, orwhatever.
Okay, wasn't married, so itwouldn't have been that,
Something along those lines.
That should be the firstdaughter of a leader that's
closest to her.
Or I'm just scared as hell to gofight this war.
My point is that happening begsa question.
Someone exhibiting thisbehavior that's a little odd.

(03:50:14):
That you're not joining inreindeer games.
It begs a question, why?
What's wrong?
And he might have said, orlet's just say in a situation
like that, the person could sayI'm scared to go fight.
This is happening at home,whatever.
But if that's being presentedand your leadership ignores it

(03:50:37):
and it doesn't go ask, then youmiss an opportunity to fix
something, maybe save someone'slife or whatever.
So it always bothered me thatthere had to be some sign.
The sign wasn't going to be I'mgoing to try to kill him, so
the animal's gone.
He didn't know an animal wasgone, but what was there?

(03:50:59):
So that always bothered me.
So that's part of the reasonwhy I wrote the book.
I knew the world didn't knowabout this story.
I thought the world should knowabout this story, not just
because it's my soldiers, that'sa huge part of it.
I wanted the world to know thatthis happened Right, that
someone can actually use themilitary to create an attack

(03:51:22):
like this.
And this is way back longbefore you know school shootings
was routine, long before peoplein the military were trying to
do this Right.
So we set a precedence that themilitary, in the end, still
hadn't really fixed.
As a result, continues tohappen Six years later, and you
know the attack happening inFlorida, texas.

(03:51:43):
Same ideology, same reason forbeing radicalized, same reason
for being extremist.
He saw someone do it andcomplete it, and once they get
away with it.
They did it and pulled it off.
I should say so I can too, forthe same reason, because the
military didn't learn theirlesson.

Speaker 1 (03:52:05):
So why not, let me toss a little, let me play
devil's advocate here Inlistening to this because I
haven't read the book yet butjust in listening to this and
then when we look at whathappened on 9-11, and when I
look at what happened when I wasdeployed, the one thing I can
say is that our enemies are verypatient.

(03:52:26):
They're so patient, in fact,that there might not be a sign.
Because if you look at thesetwo soldiers in particular, they
had been in the military for awhile and had assimilated, had
been in the military for a whileand had assimilated, you know,
I mean like not assimilated,because they hadn't lost their,

(03:52:47):
their beliefs and they knew whatthey wanted to do.
But when you look at that diaryI mean we're talking years like
this guy was so patient thatmaybe there just wasn't a sign.
And I equate it really to myexperience with um, with veteran
suicide.
But so many times we sit backand go, well, gosh, you know, we

(03:53:09):
should have seen something.
The problem is there's notalways a sign, there's not
always something to see, right,I think that we could do a
better job in both arenas,especially the veteran suicide
area.
But but my point is that wecould do a better job in both
arenas, especially the veteransuicide arena.
But my point is that we alwayswant to think that there was
something we could have done orsomething we could have seen,

(03:53:29):
and I would argue that sometimesthere's not.
I mean, we look back at 9-11.
Yeah, there's some things weshould have seen Some guys
overstayed their visas orwhatever but that's just how it
was.
There wasn't this giant warningflashing that this is going to
happen, and I don't think thatthat's what happened here.
I think this guy was so patientand had planned it so well that

(03:53:51):
even if someone would ask himthat question, he'd have a
reason.
Yeah, that's just my viewpoint.
I just, you know Now, he didn'tplay in reindeer games, some of
them.

Speaker 2 (03:54:01):
Yeah, I guess my point about the reindeer games
is it begs a question.
Yes, now you wouldn't gonna saythat I'm gonna kill you in a
couple days.
That's why.
But this, this consistency isnot playing in a reindeer games
has to be inquired about In anattempt to mitigate it.
Or, more importantly, watch him, not for this, just watch him.

(03:54:27):
Something's going on with him.
That's what I mean.
But if you're not experiencedas a leader, just young,
whatever, maybe you didn't wanthim in the reindeer games in the
first place, so you didn'tinquire about it.
You really didn't want him overthere, so you never even asked.

Speaker 1 (03:54:41):
But that's a problem too.
That's a leadership problem.
That's a definite leadershipproblem.

Speaker 2 (03:54:46):
Maybe this guy doesn't go and throw grenades
and shoot up his own unit, butmaybe there's something else
going on and something elsehappens and to the point where,
if that was the case, with thatleadership with him, he didn't
try to hurt them, right, he knewwho he wanted to hurt them
Right, he knew who he wanted tohurt.
He knew my name by virtue ofhell.
It's on your wall in yourcompany.

(03:55:08):
So you know right, and you knowthe commander, you know the
executive.
The people you hurt, aside fromthe commander, you didn't know
them, right, you walked 300yards across the desert floor to
hurt them.
But the people you may not like, for whatever reason, even
though you already said you'regoing to kill as many as

(03:55:29):
possible, you didn't even startwith them, right?

Speaker 1 (03:55:34):
It's easy to kill people you don't know Right.

Speaker 2 (03:55:37):
Yeah, and the attacker at Fort Hood, nadell
Hassan.
He had applauded the acts of9-1-1.
Right.
People who he served with hadwatched the read, said that, but
that didn't.
That was a sign that theydidn't do anything about Right.
You think about that time, thatday, on that day, the days to

(03:56:02):
follow, even now, that someoneapplauded that and you told
nobody until after you killpeople?
You know six years I'm sorry todo my math for eight years
later.
All right, now you want to tellyeah.
So it always bugged me thatthere was a sign and I wanted

(03:56:27):
people to know about the story.
But the key thing in the bookyou get a twofer, and not just
this story that I want people toknow about, and that he set the
groundwork for this to happenagain and again, not just in the
military, but a whole bunch ofplaces that I came up with these

(03:56:53):
strategies to mitigate anattack like this from happening
again.
When I was sitting down writinga book, I contacted a publisher
and said they wanted a bookproposal.
I had to quickly Google that tofigure that out.
The email in the back said giveme a week.
I created a proposal and sentit to them.
In the proposal I write that ifthe military keeps doing what

(03:57:19):
they're doing, they're going tokeep getting what they're
getting.
It'll happen again if you don'tmake some changes, not
manifesting it.
And that was in 2008.
I wrote that Before the attackhappened in 2009.
It was inevitable and for thesame, reason you needed to have
done something.

Speaker 1 (03:57:40):
If you keep doing the same thing over and over again,
you get the same result overand over again.
They did nothing with thisattack.

Speaker 2 (03:57:46):
Like.
Still to this day, they haven'tcalled it anything Like nothing
.
Terrorism is what I would callit personally.
That's what everybody shouldcall it.
The army has it.
That's what it is.
Yeah, they almost haveabstinence against the word for
this attack.

Speaker 1 (03:58:00):
Well and you see that in, I just want to bring this
point out is that in New Orleans, when there was a terrorist
attack, the FBI was veryreluctant to call it a terrorist
attack until way later in theinvestigation.
What was clear to me sitting onmy couch?

(03:58:21):
That's a terrorist attack.

Speaker 2 (03:58:23):
I know one when I see one.
Yeah, it's.
I agree with you.
I think some entities, they arebreaking down the word for what
they want it to be versus whatWebster says.

(03:58:45):
It's very simple.
What Webster says and you lookat that and say this attack is
that If people are terrorized,it's pretty simple.
I think we're afraid to putlabels on people today.
You don't want to label people,but when it's a terrorist

(03:59:07):
attack it is.
It walks like a duck and quackslike a duck.
It's a duck If I look at themilitary alone, where they allow
that word to be used forsomething that they want it to
be used for something that theywanted to be.
In 2021, a Coast Guard officerdisliked the Democratic Party so

(03:59:32):
much that he made a hit listand he was taking out Nancy
Pelosi, aco I can't remember allthe names and he just put them
on a list to take out.
He did research to see if theyhad government security or not.
And his house.

(03:59:53):
In his house he had like abunker of I forget how much
ammunition and weaponry he hadRight a bunker of I forget how
much ammunition and weaponry hehad Right, but more than enough.
He could have took out all ofCongress, if I should say it
right here, he could have doneanything he wanted to with as

(04:00:14):
much ammo and weapons that hehad.
How he got caught was he wasusing his government computer to
look up certain things.
That's how he got caught.
Was he was using his governmentcomputer to look up certain
things.
That's how he got caught aCoast Guard officer.
He served in the Army and nowhe's an officer in the Coast
Guard.
But that's how he got caught.

(04:00:35):
But they say a terrorist attackwas foiled and I'm thinking,
okay, so now it's a.
But they say a terrorist attackwas foiled and I'm thinking,
okay, so now it's a foiledterrorist attack, just because
some guy made a list.
Let me think about this.
So he wrote something down andsaid what he was going to do,

(04:00:56):
but he didn't do nothing.
This guy wrote something down,said what he was going to do and
did it, and it's nothing.
So I think it's convenientlyused for whatever reason.

Speaker 1 (04:01:17):
Someone is using it For whatever purpose, if it
serves the purpose we're goingto call that person right.

Speaker 2 (04:01:25):
So in the book to help people out and try to yeah,
so they can mitigate this fromhappening in their space.
I put these strategies in therenow.
First is trust no one.
So I say trust no one.
So I don't know what goesthrough your mind when I say
that.
Maybe it's a little bitdifferent.
But when I say, say it to theaudience, and I'm speaking at
schools or I'm speaking atorganizations or whatever, and I

(04:01:46):
start on these strategies and Isay trust no one, I know
they're going to think in theirmind well, you've got to trust
somebody, or I trust this way,or whatever.
What I want them to think aboutis how they trust, because some
people say, well, I trustpeople and tell you the reason
not to, and I'm thinking, well,one gone, right.
But I can't shake their trust.

(04:02:07):
All I can do is tell them thestory and then say trust no one.
They can think about how theydo it.
Think about how you do it,because I trust it.
I wear the same uniform aspeople.
I sit the same uniform aspeople.
I'd sit in the same branch ofservice as everybody else and
others.
I raised my hand, just likethey did and took a note, and

(04:02:32):
that backfired.
In fact it would have killed mehad I been in different places.
So trust, man, that's out ofwork.
I mean, I don't know what youneed, you got to show me.
But whatever you think you haveto show me, you have to do it
over and over and over and overand over, and then I'll give you
a little bit of something thatif I give it to you and you mess

(04:02:53):
it up, it won't even matter.
Trust is earned by giving away,that's right.

Speaker 1 (04:02:57):
For some people.

Speaker 2 (04:03:00):
Some people will say what I just told you, that I
trust them until they give me areason not to.

Speaker 1 (04:03:05):
What if that reason is a bullet or a hand?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 (04:03:09):
Yeah.
So from this attack and I'llget to the rest of the
strategies in a minute I learnedthat we don't go home with
people at night, so we don'tknow what they're writing in
their diary.
No profession level ofeducation, audiology or religion

(04:03:31):
is above reproach.
There is no profile.
An insider threat is closerthan anything.
That's my takeaway and for theaudience, they need to think
about that as well.
But in addition to that, ifthis happened inside the close
knit brotherhood of the armedforces, it can happen in any

(04:03:52):
campus community organization,at any time, anywhere.
Begin to embrace that domesticterrorism is not a new reality
and it's not.

Speaker 1 (04:04:02):
I want to be clear anywhere, begin to embrace that
domestic terrorism is not areality, and it's not.
I want to be clear.
I want to ask for someclarification.
Yeah, and I think what you'resaying at least what I'm hearing
is it's not a Muslim, it's nota white supremacist, it's not
this or that.
It could be anyone of anyreligious belief, of any ethnic
background.

(04:04:23):
There's no, it's not a.
It is truly an equalopportunity employer when it
comes to terrorism.

Speaker 2 (04:04:28):
There's no profile.

Speaker 1 (04:04:30):
There's not.

Speaker 2 (04:04:30):
So don't look at religion, don't look at the
level of education, don't lookat the ideology, it doesn't
matter.
You start putting it in thisbox, then that other box will
get you.
Yeah, you don't miss something,that's right.
You start looking for peoplewho committed an attack on 9-1-1

(04:04:52):
, then someone who looks like meor, more importantly, someone I
bar, gets you Right Because youfocused on something else.

Speaker 1 (04:05:04):
Right, I think you can go all the way back to the
70s, when Iran took our hostagesand there were people from
different ethnic backgrounds.
Like I recall, I worked for aguy named Eddie.
He was Lebanese.
He actually bought a t-shirtthat said no, I'm not, I'm
Lebanese, because he was beingharassed as a Lebanese person.

(04:05:25):
But there were other thingsgoing on in the country that had
nothing to do with people whowere brown.
Right, it had a lot to do withpeople who look differently and
so no, I, yeah, once you focusand put the blinders on them to
one spot, the other spot doesdefinitely come again.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:05:39):
So trust, no one observe listen and report and
put the blinders on under onespot.
The other spot does not wannacome and get you.
Yeah, yeah.
So trust no one.
Observe, listen and report.
Know your neighbor, and I don'tmean just me.
By your house, I mean fellowstudent, your fellow coworker,
any environment you're in,especially ones that you
frequent.
Know it.
Listen, don't just hear.

(04:05:59):
And your gut, when your gutstarts talking to you, telling
you that something don't lookright well, something don't look
right.
Something don't sound right,which means something likely
isn't.
Your gut's telling you thatthat's strong.
You listen to your gut Now.
I never advocate for people toget in between the potential

(04:06:21):
attacker, but that's what weneed to report.
That's what we need to callsomebody who handles this, not
you.

Speaker 1 (04:06:30):
Well, you know, you talk about trusting your gut.
When I was going to school, Ilearned that that's actually a
physiology thing, that whenpeople say they felt it in their
gut or they had a feeling aboutsomething, there's actually
like medical science behind whyyou should listen to that, which
I didn't know.

(04:06:50):
I just thought it was like anold wives tale.
But you're right, how manytimes have you not listened to
your gut and then something badhappened?
So I think that that's to meintuition.
Yeah, it's very important.

Speaker 2 (04:07:02):
Yeah it's talking to you all the time.
Are you going to ignore it?
That's the thing and it'stelling you to do something, or
the tone that you see somethingdanger close and what you're
gonna do with it right?

Speaker 1 (04:07:16):
yeah, maybe maybe, having been in the military for
as long as you and I were, welook at that differently, maybe
than some other people, but Itrust my gut.
I'm not going down that streetor I'm not going to that party.
Whatever it is, I'm not doingit and I'm going to talk to
somebody about it.

Speaker 2 (04:07:33):
Yeah and for people who haven't served.
When something happens andsomeone close to it neighbor or
whatever is interviewed, what doyou hear them say I knew what
you do.
You did nothing, but I alwaysknew.
That's what you hear them sayall the time.

(04:07:53):
That's all these tactics.
The same thing is said.
The same thing is said when theschool shooting happens.
I never thought it was going tohappen here.
It's a copycat world.
Someone else has done this.
They look at that and they tryto up it one.
You know, let me kill one more.
We kill five more.
So I go down as this particularmodern right.

(04:08:19):
So there's this thing called aproximity illusion.
The closer you are to it, themore you think it ain't gonna
happen.
You're in disbelief even ofthese attackers.
They're parents, not my son,not my nephew, not my cousin,

(04:08:45):
but they saw all these thingswe're talking about and these
strategies Mainly the last oneof what your gut's telling you.
But they've observed it already, they've heard something
already, they know already.
They've heard something already, they know.
But it's that proximityillusion that says can't be so.

(04:09:12):
Then the school shooting goesdown, and it's just 16 year old,
son, son, whatever.
I just thought I soundsomething like that.
I never.
I mean a lot, I just forgot tolock up the gun that particular
time.
I I never.

(04:09:33):
It's that, but I am a fix.
Those dead people it waswounded people Because he's gone
for life, the ones who survived.
But the proximity illusion saysI don't see it and I don't hear
it.

Speaker 1 (04:09:50):
You know this is nothing new, right?
Because you know where you'reat right now.
We're in Bath Township.
You know what happened in BathTownship in the 1920s the worst
mass school killing in history.
And I and I bet there was a lotof people who saw that coming
but didn't say there, didn'tthink this guy was gonna do
anything right, school, yeah.

(04:10:11):
So absolutely, we have about 40minutes left.
Oh, we don't have to take thewhole 40 minutes, but I don't
want to rush you either.
I'll edit this part out.
What I'd like to do is wrap upon the book and then talk about

(04:10:35):
your transition from themilitary, a little bit about
what you've been doing since,clearly, you've written a book
from the military.
A little bit about what you'vebeen doing since, clearly,
you've written a book.
And then I'm going to ask youyou know what advice do you have
for people?
So I'll ask you know, whenpeople are listening to this
year, what message do you havefor?
Them.
You know, when you said don'ttrust anybody, it reminds me

(04:10:55):
when I was deployed.
Our motto was trust no one,admit nothing and make
counter-accusation.
That was how we looked at ityeah yeah, all right, okay, so
I'll talk about the book.
So one more time, if you wantedto go through those strategies,

(04:11:16):
what were the strategies thatyou're telling our audience?

Speaker 2 (04:11:19):
then yeah.
So first of all, one is trust.
No one Observe.
Listen and report.
Know your neighbor, listen,don't just hear.
And your gut.
Now, when I'm out speaking, Ihave stories for each one of
those strategies.
So you know, say like that, itmay not hit home, it may or may
not, but when I start tellingyou the stories associated with

(04:11:41):
it, how to employ a businessstory, it becomes a little more
clear.
So, talked about that trust.
No one reserve, listen, report.
I was a.
I was a property manager.
Apartment building I got itright after I got it on a couple
years after.
And apartment building right Itook out it right after I got it
on a couple years after.
And apartment building rightacross the street from UCLA 60

(04:12:05):
units occupied, one, twooccupied by teachers and the
rest were students.
So I don't know like runningthe barracks Assault rate in
Chicago was simply in thebarracks.
When people have to pay money,okay, this could be good or bad,
yeah, that's right, that'sright.
But the parents it was likethem dropping them off to
somebody.
They entrusted their child tome in this apartment building,

(04:12:30):
barracks thing, right.
So I first took over.
I come out of a door and Irealized this light isn't on.
So I go back in, come outanother door lights not on.
So I say, okay, let me startwriting these things down.
I was probably in the job for acouple of weeks, right?
Just never had gone outside atthat hour until the lights were
out.
So I start writing stuff down,go out another door, come back

(04:12:54):
out different viewpoint, do somemore writing.
But I say to myself if someoneis watching me right now, this
should be suspicious behavior.
So it was Casey.
So I go back in again now startdoing the interior lights.
So when I make a new one, I makeone order and get up on the

(04:13:16):
fifth floor here freeze, oh youknow what that means.
Right floor.
I hear freeze, oh man, you knowwhat that means, right.
So I hear the voice behind me.
It sounds younger than mine.
I said, okay, I hope there beno accidents or whatever, no
itchy finger or whatever.
So I say put your hands up,drop your pen and paper, hand
down your back and gethandcuffed.
So they said, well, you fit thedescription of someone that was

(04:13:38):
calling.
I said, no, I am thedescription because I already
told myself right.
So I get my ID.
They see my military ID and seeSergeant Major.
So they say, oh, they startcalling me Sergeant Major after
that and they take the handcuffsoff.
So I say I appreciate youcoming quickly.
I don't know why there's fiveof you with guns drawn for a

(04:14:00):
person armed with a piece ofpaper and a pencil, but when I
call you for something going on,I hope you come just as fast
and with as much force.
But the point is someone wasobserving and they reported
Cause they were inside, theycouldn't listen.
Now mine went either side ofthat whole campus, on the other

(04:14:20):
side, but on the side of theapartment building, flat house,
flat house.
I couldn't see no one lookingat me.
But, like I said, if someone islooking at me they should think
this is suspicious behavior.
So my point is they've donethat right.
The police didn't, thedispatcher didn't.
They'd done that right.

(04:14:41):
The police didn't, no, thedispatcher didn't.
The person that saw me could nothave escalated any higher than
a person with a pen and paper.
The know, your neighbors, justI mean we hear all the time
after an attack, especially ifit happens in your neighborhood
or whatever or someone talkingabout either they confirm what

(04:15:02):
their gut has told them of itbeing.
I thought I saw something, orthey had no idea.
It's one or the other.
He was right beside me.
It could have been me.
No, he decided to do whateverto neighbors five streets over
or not in your neighborhood, andhe's not.
He seemed like a nice guy Likeyou.
Hear it all oh yeah, Right,yeah yeah, streets over or not
in your neighborhood and it'snot.

(04:15:24):
It seemed like a nice guy likeyou hear it all oh, yeah, right,
yeah, yeah.
Um, listen, don't just hear.
College classroom, 19 year oldsophomores, criminology classes
don't talk about guns.
So if you soon say I have a gun, I have a gun, another guy says
well, I have a gun, I have an47.
And it's in the trunk of my car.
And they kind of laugh and goon and go on and there's a

(04:15:44):
professor in there.
Class goes on, but at the endof class one student comes to me
.
This is a military school, youknow, so we have some
jurisdiction where other schoolsmay not.
He comes to me and says so, I'mmajor, he was in class, I made
you a, he was in class andso-and-so.
We were talking about guns andso-and-so said he has an AK-47.
And he says he has it in thetrunk of his car.

(04:16:04):
His car is right out there.
I don't know what you're goingto do with it, but I heard it
and it sounded a matter of fact.
So there you go.
So Steven comes back, take himand walk him to his car.
He'll get about 100 feet away,says I just want you to know
before you get to my car.
I have an AK-47 in the trunk ofmy car.

(04:16:28):
Now, that was ill-willed, wasplanned.
He was supposed to make with afellow student a day prior.
This is a Monday.
He's supposed to make up on aSunday.
The weapon was gonna be takento that other kid's dad's house
that lived in the rural area.
Dad was going to lock it up.
Students were going to come outthere on the weekend and shoot,
lock it back up again.
They leave.
But they missed link up the dayprior.

(04:16:50):
But instead of him coming toclass and keeping his mouth shut
, he had to say he had his AK-47.
And it's in the trunk of my car.
But all those people in theclassroom, they didn't listen to
that part, they were justhearing.
But the one night Joe waslistening and said it sounded a

(04:17:12):
matter of fact.
So if we're listening, we'llpick out the stuff that we need
to pick out.
If we hear the wife say, takeout the trash, we'll let her out
.
If we hear your wife say, takeout the trash, we'll let her say
that five times so we can getready to take it out.
Or she throws it at us, whatelse?
Yeah, it's going out, it'sgoing out.
But if you do it immediately.
Okay, you were listening andcomplying right.

(04:17:33):
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, and then we talked aboutthe gun, and then we talked
about the gun Right.

Speaker 1 (04:17:38):
Yeah.
So what I want to say about allthat, before we wrap that up,
is that you know you can do allof those things and a lot of
times nothing's going to bewrong, but you may have
prevented something.
So, yeah, maybe he's got theAK-47 in his trunk and he's got
you know it's all altruistic,like he wasn't going to do

(04:18:01):
anything, but maybe somethinghappens and now he's pissed and
now he's got this gun in histrunk.
So you don't know what youprevented.
Sometimes and that's importantto understand you had a pen and
a paper.
You were not a threat.
Maybe the next guy is, or maybeyou got a pen and a.
You're not a threat right now,but something changes in the

(04:18:21):
midst of what you're doing andnow you are a threat.
That's right.
So people need to understandthat You're not going to see
probably 90% of the time you'renot going to see a result from
saying something.
But you may have preventedsomething and you can't prove a
negative.
That's right.
You can't prove negative.

Speaker 2 (04:18:39):
That's right, even when it's a nine-year-old
brother that said after 9-1-1,sometimes things like that have
to happen.
The younger brother that'sincarcerated.
That's what he said.
Sometimes things like that haveto happen.

(04:19:03):
But at his age, in the age ofthe fellow students he was
talking to, it didn't resonatethat there's something wrong
with that.
They heard it, but did they saythat he?
At least they heard it.
They didn't tell anybody thatthey heard it until after this.
Didn't tell anybody that theyheard it until after.

(04:19:26):
This dude is one of the BostonMarathon Bombers.

Speaker 1 (04:19:27):
Then it comes out Well, they weren't listening to
what he said, right?
You know, that listening partis something that we should be
doing on a day-to-day basis, nomatter what we're doing, right,
because we should be activelylistening to what people are
saying right, and not justthinking of what our next
thought is going to be.

Speaker 2 (04:19:41):
Or hanging around people who have something to say
, so we can actively listen.

Speaker 1 (04:19:46):
That helps.
Yeah, so you.
The thing that gets me is thatthis happened at the beginning
of your deployment.
You make it through the rest ofyour deployment and then you
redeploy home.
How long were you in themilitary after this deployment

(04:20:06):
before you retired?

Speaker 2 (04:20:10):
So I come back in 2004.
I become the commandant of theIn-Civil Academy about three
months after that.
I'm in that job for six, sevenmonths, or something like that.
Then I become the DivisionSergeant Major.
So I'm the Interim DivisionSergeant Major.

(04:20:30):
Then I don't get picked forthat job and then I retire.
So I retire in 2006.
Okay, so I retired in 2006.
Okay, so, immediately uponretirement I loaded the truck
and moved close to Beverly.
Literally, beverly was probablyless than a mile away.

(04:20:52):
Yeah, nice, yeah.
Because I knew that I wanted topursue acting and military
technical advising.
In fact, even before we went toIraq, I was taking acting
lessons in Nashville.
I would go down on the weekends.
On the weekends, I would godown.
So I was already had more thanone foot in the door and knew
what I was going to do and evento be considered for the

(04:21:15):
Division Sergeant Major, I wasthe last one to put my name on a
list.
I did Division Song at the timebecause they said what you
gonna do and it was like thelast day that you could do it.
That I did it right Because Ithink in the back of my mind I
thought, well, if I do this, I'mnever gonna pursue the acting

(04:21:38):
piece.
But I put my name on it but Ididn't get it.
As a result, it's like you hadsaid earlier about what was my
life was saved for a reason.
My life was saved to tell thestory and to do this work.
I fully believe that To be soclose which, if I wasn't telling

(04:22:04):
you I would think about thatbut I know that I would give my
life and spirit for a reason todo this work and tell this,
because no one is talking aboutthese strategies, no one even
aligns this attack to all theseothers in any manner, and I

(04:22:37):
truly believe that I willsaveate a mass shooting or
insider threat attack inacademic institutions, in the
workplace, in places of worship.
I would like for each of thoseentities to in the public as a
whole to embrace the fact thatthese are insider threats.

(04:23:00):
More than 90 percent are insiderthreats, meaning it than 90%
are insider threats.
Meaning it's a fellow studentthat's already going to the
school.
It's already a co-worker.
People are just walking in offthe street.
The student at this school isgoing to go to the diocese, this
one or not.
If I go to 7, let's do this.
That's not it.
They're already in there.
They are a current student or aformer student.
They have some association withthe school.

(04:23:22):
More than 90% so it's aninsider threat.
The mass shooter is the resultof the attack that just happened
.

Speaker 1 (04:23:38):
Yeah, let that sink in.
Yeah, let that sink in.
So if someone listens to whatyou're saying, then there's a
lot of preventable things thathappen?

Speaker 2 (04:23:54):
Yeah, and I think the education for that needs to be
continuous.
I venture to guess that everyschool has been trained on how
to react to the active shooter.
They know the run, the hide,the fight.
They know that Most casesthat's the extent of it, but
it's not proactive.

(04:24:14):
I'm talking about let's keepthe bullets from flying in the
first place, because they willtell you if you are being in a
situation where that, becausethey will tell you if you are
being situation aware, thatteenager is going to tell you,
that 21 year old college studentis going to tell you in some
way, shape or fashion based onthe strategy that I was talking
about.
But if you're not situationaware, then don't know what to

(04:24:35):
tell you I think we're missingthat piece.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:24:40):
In all of the training we're missing that
situational awareness piece.

Speaker 2 (04:24:44):
In academic institutions.
It's not about me having adesire to go speak there, that's
part of it.
The biggest part is all of themworkplace, academic institution
as a whole.
They are the first line ofdefense, right by employment

(04:25:07):
situation or their strategy.
They are the first line ofdefense.
They're the closest to thewould-be attacker, the eventual
attacker.
They become the first line ofdefense, not the ability of
technology to lock the door,that's part of it.
You're gonna spend some door,that's part of it.
You're going to spend somemoney, that's part of it.
Bringing a trainer for the runhide fight, that's part of it.

(04:25:28):
But that's not the end of it.
And any of those, like I talkedabout the proactive part, you
have to have that part and Ithink in embracing it, if you
truly want to save lives in thatenvironment, then I have to be
allowed to share this withstudents.

(04:25:50):
I can smooth it over so itdoesn't sound, you know, so bad
for their psyche.
They already know that ithappened someplace else.
Right, but I can smooth it over.
But I think the person that hasthe ability to prevent it
should be the person to hear it.
But we can do train-the-trainerwhen we train the faculty and

(04:26:15):
staff and let them deal with thestudent government and break it
down somehow.
But if the student knows someof this, they're better off,
because it is the student who'stelling the other student
they're the ones that aretalking.

Speaker 1 (04:26:27):
That's right, just like in the military, you're
going to know someone who'stalking to privates, exactly
Because they're talking, they'regoing to tell you everything,
and I'm afraid to tell them.
Yeah, I know what's the bestway to do that.

Speaker 2 (04:26:40):
Linkedin would be the fastest way.
I'd love to come out and sharethis knowledge.
I can do keynotes about it.
I can do workshops about it.
I can do other training.
If you have a big organizationSay you're an IBM you have
different footprints.
You do it at the headquarters,but it also needs to happen at

(04:27:03):
those other footprints do youhave a website, too, that people
can go to?

Speaker 1 (04:27:09):
I do, it's barbelneckcom.
Easy enough, yeah.
So I mean it sounds like youknow you've written a book and
it sounds like you're prettysuccessful at what you do, and
it sounds like you're prettysuccessful at what you do and it
sounds like you have a plangoing forward.
You're not ready to just sitdown and take your retirement,
and we've talked about a lot ofstuff over the last four and a

(04:27:30):
half hours, but as we kind ofwrap up our conversation today,
I always ask people the samequestion at the end, and that is
you know, 100 years from now,or five years from now, or 10
minutes from now, when someone'slistening to this story in this
conversation, what message doyou want to leave with people?

Speaker 2 (04:28:03):
You know, in the first part we got to hear about
Oral Womack's career and how hemoved through it and how certain
parts of it affected his life.
More important than hisleadership and people.
Everyone can be a people person, but if you can, you're going
to learn a lot.
You can save lives.
You can get the most out ofpeople to be the best they can

(04:28:23):
be, which is those who haven'tdone it then know how fulfilling
that can be.
But it is very fulfilling andrewarding, even though you don't
get something handed to you andthey may never come to you and
say you did have this particularimpact, which is fine.
But most people have theability to bring that out of

(04:28:45):
someone and, as it relates tothe story, the reason to tell it
was to show people how theinside dirt is close to anything
I remember in the book insideto it, as close to anything I
remember in the book.

(04:29:06):
I had one there.
We have met the enemy and it isus, and I remember someone
asking what do you mean?
It's us.
Well, we're the ones doing it,no further than the person
beside you or someone like them.
We are the ones who do it.
It's not this organization overhere all the time than the
person beside you or someonelike them.
We are the ones who do it.
It's not this organization overhere all the time, it's not

(04:29:26):
this thing created or whatever.
It's us.
We are the ones doing it.
That's what happened in thisattack and it continued to
happen in other times.
The takeaway has to be a quotethat I use because I think it
tells everything as it relatesto this security and safety.
Part of no professional levelof education, ideology or

(04:29:52):
religion is a proper approach.
There is no profile.
The insider threat is closerthan you think.
All right, well, thank you.

Speaker 1 (04:29:58):
Thanks for spending four and a half hours with me on
Friday afternoon.
This has you think Alright,well, thank you.
Thanks for spending four and ahalf hours with me on a Friday
afternoon part.

Speaker 2 (04:30:04):
This has been great.
Yes, it has.
Thank you.

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