Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
In a world where storytelling has been our link to the past since the days of cave drawings, there exists a timeless tradition. It's the art of passing down knowledge, and for Military Veterans, it's a crucial piece of their legacy. Join us on the Veterans Archives Podcast, where we dive deep into the heartwarming and awe-inspiring stories of those who served, no matter when or where.
Here, Veterans get the chance to be the authors of their own narratives. Through guided interviews in a relaxed and safe environment, they paint their experiences with their own words and unique voices. The result? A memory card in a presentation box, a precious gift they can share however they please.
But that's not all. These stories find a secure home in our archive, a treasure chest of experiences for future generations to explore. The best part? It's all a gift to the Veteran – our way of saying thank you for their service.
Tune in to the Veterans Archives Podcast, where history, heroism, and heartwarming tales come to life.
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Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
Forging Brotherhood: Bart Womack's Journey From Ohio to Iraq
When Sergeant Major Bart Womack decided to stay up late watching Tiger Woods play golf instead of sleeping, he had no idea that decision would save his life. Hours later, a fellow soldier would launch a devastating insider attack on his own unit in Kuwait, just days before they were set to cross into Iraq.
Womack's remarkable journey begins in Columbus, Ohio, where as the youngest of five siblings, he found discipline and purpose through early jobs before eventually wandering into a military recruiter's office simply to escape the cold while waiting for a bus. This chance encounter set him on a path through three decades of military service that would include elite assignments with the 82nd Airborne Division, ceremonial duty at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and leadership positions culminating as a Brigade Command Sergeant Major.
Throughout our conversation, Womack reveals the formative experiences that shaped his leadership philosophy—one centered on people and mutual accountability. He shares powerful insights about mentorship, explaining how he consistently instructed officers to "allow your NCOs to do their job, but don't allow them not to" while simultaneously telling NCOs they were responsible for making their officers successful. This approach created a powerful system of checks and balances that elevated entire units.
The heart of our discussion explores the 2003 Kuwait attack when Sergeant Hasan Akbar, motivated by extremist beliefs, attacked the command staff with grenades and gunfire. This tragedy, which killed two officers and wounded fourteen others, led Womack to develop critical security awareness strategies that he now shares with organizations worldwide: trust no one, observe and report, know your neighbors, listen don't just hear, and trust your gut.
With insider threats accounting for over 90% of mass attacks in schools, workplaces, and public spaces, Womack's insights extend far beyond military applications. His message is urgent and clear—we must move beyond reactive security measures to proactive awareness if we hope to prevent violence before it occurs.
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 in today. Yeah, glad to be here.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you inviting me Absolutely, so we'll start out.
Speaker 1:I'll say fairly simply when and where were you born.
Speaker 2:The great state of Ohio the great city of Columbus.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you're not a Michigan fan.
Speaker 2:Not at all. You know, buckeye, through and through, I tell people I didn't have a choice and I wouldn't change it if I did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I was down there for a conference a couple of years ago and my wife and I broke into the stadium down there and took pictures of ourselves 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 like growing up in Columbus? Is that where you grew up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, warner Rays, high School there and everything you know. Pretty simple, quiet, back in the times, when something did kind of happen out of the way everyone knew about it. Out of the way everyone knew about it. I was a fifth of five children. The last one, all of them are much older than I am. The oldest is 19, then 18, then 17 years, then the one that was closest, 11 years, passed away a few years ago. So now there's only four of us.
Speaker 2:But I don't allow those older people to treat me like one of their children. Right, versus, I'm just your brother, so I'll say stuff different than your children are allowed to say. Right, yeah, so that was strange, because they have children that are one is actually older than me, one was a little bit younger than me, and then they're like a year, two years, a few years apart, or whatever. Um, but they still call me uncle bart and I'll call them uncle. You know, whatever their name is, 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. Right, and they're saying uncle bart, because that was. You know, that was the proper thing to say. I didn't truly understand it. And then friends would say, how is that your uncle? He's like 10, 7, or whatever the case may be. So yes, that part was kind of strange.
Speaker 2:Yeah, school was fine. You had to go to school and necessarily 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't think I really knew what I wanted to do or be um, and I think back on it I can see how that kind of played out in terms of my classroom demeanor and especially academically. It would go from A's to D's and then A to D. And then my mother was like how can you make an A and a D in the same class, you know, just weeks apart. It makes no sense. And it didn't make any sense. It was like, okay, that particular time it had my attention and another time it didn't have my attention. But you know, as old as I am, that wasn't necessarily truly understood by academia to be able to fix it or adjust your course and all those types of things. So I did know that after graduation that I didn't want to go to college right away. I was 17, so I need a year to figure this out. I'll go after that year is up and I didn't make it to that year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, did you get sidetracked? Well, it always worked. I started out with a paper route so I always had my own money and it went from there to I worked in a bingo, made a whole bunch of money at bingos. Somehow they let children in there at years old, sold a little snacks and everything. You had to suffer through the smoke. But aside from that, I mean you got tips. You make great money just providing snacks for a big wet bingo. Well, and I think.
Speaker 1:I don't think people today realize like, because even when I was in the Navy, like in my office, people smoked and I had to wash my clothes every single night because they just smelled so bad.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, you go into a bingo hall. Yeah, it was like a smoke chamber, oh, big time, big time. And I don't know if I really expected that until you got in there and that was the environment. But you know, when you're 13, the money kind of overrides the smoke. Yeah, we didn't know about secondhand smoke then. Anyway, right, right, I would never do it today. You keep your money, it's all right, that's right. But yeah, good money as a kid, yeah. And then I went from there to I worked at a Kentucky Fried Chicken that got robbed. So they went that opportunity. I was like, okay, not gonna do that again.
Speaker 2:Then I went to a grocery store and, believe it or not, 1975, 76, I was making $13 an hour in a grocery store. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. I mean that's almost a lot of money 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 was bagging, but then I moved on to cashier, um, but that was a lot of money. I mean, I bought my own stuff. I used to buy um. I wanted to dress nice, so I wore dress, shoes, dress, shirt, dress, pants every day, monday through thursday. Friday was you know long before it was cloned.
Speaker 1: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 bagging groceries. You're dressing nice. Well, you had to wear I don't think we had a company shirt you had to wear like some type of beard.
Speaker 2:They had the logo on there, which is big bear at the time. But, um, not just like that for school, not for work, but because I had the money, you know, I mean I bought. I probably bought a few. Maybe I've had about three sixty dollar shirts that that I bought and they cost sixty dollars. They're called knick knicks, but most of them I bought on sale. I had quite a few of them and everyone knew just that knick knick shirt that, not that you had money, but they knew that shirt cost a lot.
Speaker 1:Right, right, something was going right for you.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, from there I graduated high school and still worked. I'm waiting out that time of the year post high school and my mother had a car that I drove. She had a driver's license but didn't drive. But she would not let me claim it to be my car. It was her car that I just drove, okay, but I was working at after high school. It was a place called the Sears Distribution Center, which was I don't know how many miles away it was, but pretty far you needed to drive.
Speaker 2:But then that next oldest brother wrecked that car and I had to start taking the bus and it started getting into the colder months and I remember leaving work and catching the bus and I would transfer routes downtown to get on a route to take me back home. And one day it was pretty cold and I said I'm going to the recruiter station to get warm. I know they're going to talk my head off. I'm sure they have something hot to drink or a coffee drink, or hoping they have cocoa or something right, um, I'll listen to this stuff and then I'll get warm and then I'll head back out there if I stop and go home.
Speaker 2:And I was 17, right, so, um, I knew 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 a couple hours just listening to them. I guess it started sounding a little more doable. Although it wasn't my interest, I didn't go in there for that but when I left it okay, there's nothing I can do. My mother would have to say yes, and I'm not telling her right now.
Speaker 1: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:Yeah. So that was October, my birthday wasn't until December and they would call the house and somehow I was the one answering the phone. Oh, my mother's not home. Well, let me know when she's home. Okay, and she would travel a lot. She had already retired after 35 years, I think, working for the government and she was always gone. That was her plan, right, right.
Speaker 2:So she got home from one of those trips and I said, okay, I've been talking to a recruiter or whatever, I'm just thinking about it, but you'll have to sign right now. She about it, but you'll have to sign right now". She said well, why don't you think about it some more? And then you'll be 18 years old and that's what you want to do. Then you sign. So that was the decision at that time. I still kind of let it go for at least another month and a half, I would say. Now we're into the next year in January. And then they called and said, okay, I guess maybe take a look at this. So went down there again, we talked for a little bit. I said, okay, I'll take the test and everything and then we'll see. So I did that and it was gone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know let me ask you because you weren't. Some people go to the recruiting office and they're like, oh, I'm ready to join and let's go, but it sounds like you were just like you know whatever. And so what was there like something that did like happen, where you were like, oh, maybe this is something I should do, or?
Speaker 2:was it just like let's just see what happens? Well, you know, I took the test and that wasn't necessarily, it wasn't binding, right you know, because you have to test to figure out what Jim was was going to be and all that right. So finally, what the choices are going to be and all that, right. So, finding out what the choice was going to be, I wasn't locked in, so it was kind of a no harm, no foul type of situation. But I took the test and then I went to work and then they were laying off and I was being laid off. I was like, okay, now this guy has been working ever since you, you know paper route days of maybe I was 11, and now you tell me you're cutting my job.
Speaker 2:It was like, okay, I have this new opportunity for a job and not only do I get paid, I get a roof over my head, I get fed. Uh, I get this job. I got to go through some stuff called basic training, okay, and I have this opportunity for next level education. Right, although they weren't pitching it as strong in those days, yeah, it wasn't a big deal Late 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 this isn't a bad thing after all, and two weeks later I was gone.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah yeah, didn't waste any time, did you so? So talk to me about basic training stepping off, you know, the bus or whatever, for the first time. What was that like?
Speaker 2:for you that that had to be different. Yeah, so first of all, I knew nothing about the Army. You know, those recruiters were in the hallway at high school. I'd just walk past the table A few of my friends, you know classmates. They would stop there or whatever, and I'd get a brochure and I'd say what's that say? What are you thinking? And some of those guys went in right after high school.
Speaker 1:And you weren't from a military family either, were you?
Speaker 2:Well, my oldest brother had served in the Navy but because he was so much older than me, he ran out before I even knew what was going on. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, and it wasn't like I saw him in uniform ever, so it wasn't something that was, you know, 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 about the military at all. So I left on the I guess it's the President's Day weekend. So we get to the Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and they pick us up at the airport, take us to the reception station there and they said someone will come get you in the morning for breakfast and everything.
Speaker 2:I think I wake up the next day, do the breakfast, come back and then kind of doing personal hygiene and everything. I see some guys slapping shaving cream on their face. No, that hadn't happened yet. And also Saturday, nothing's going on, it's just eating. There's no instruction, there's no one telling us anything. And then later on that day we hear this voiceover of our microphone or speaker I'm sorry, and the guy had inadvertently had the intercom on while he's on a phone call, so we heard everything about his night before and I know it was because we had seen no one, except for they told us what time child time was going to and just come outside, great. And it was like once you come outside, you just kind of go over to eat, wasn't even marching over you.
Speaker 1:You didn't know anything yet. Yeah, they tried. I think they tried to lull you into a false sense of whoa. This isn't going to be so bad, Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so we heard this guy talking on the weather. Still didn't know who it was. Then the next day, bam he burst onto the scene early morning. Get up, cursing and everything. Get up, get up, get up.
Speaker 2:That was our kind of a rude awakening to go to the chapel. We served the reception stage not basic training yet, but that's our first impression of anyone in the military that's in uniform, is barking orders and all this type of stuff to where I thought, okay, this is the start of basic training, but it wasn't. So he starts teaching us some marching and stuff after we got into formation and he's like he has this helmet liner thing that's shined, it's a black gloss with this go rank in the middle and the stripe around there and everything the old OD green uniform and his name was Joe Johnson and he looked like the GI Joe doll. Really, no kid about the GI Joe doll probably minus the scar right high cheekbones, square job. I mean just like that dude was like a poster from the army. Yeah, yeah, you know, boot to spit shine. Yeah, oh, the Green uniform. You know it's pressed and everything. There's nothing to ever look better than that. No, I remember those. Yeah, yeah. So there's nothing to ever look better than that. No, I remember those. Yeah, yeah. So he's barking all these orders. He teaches us some marching and everything.
Speaker 2:I remember stepping on this one guy's foot and he steps on his feet and said this is your left mf foot, this is your right in that foot and I play football and 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 him Because you know, those cleats playing football used to hurt when someone inadvertently stepped on your foot, right, right, and I was like Lord, it was just a reaction. So if he comes near me and stops in front of me and I just even perceive that his foot's going to raise up and step on my, he's probably going to get pushed. It's like that's foot's going to raise up and step on my, he's probably going to get pushed. It's probably going to be a bad thing, probably going to be a bad thing, but he's not stepping on my foot, that's true. So anyway, that didn't happen, thank goodness. So that, and I thought this guy was the drill sergeant. You know I had probably seen the habit and you know all this stuff was happening so fast. I didn't even make the correlation.
Speaker 2:And I remember the next morning now it's that holiday, that Monday there's still not much going on I was teaching a little 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 will MF shave. I think that was his favorite word Everyone will shave, right? Well, I had peach fuzz.
Speaker 2:I didn't need to shave. I think they had told us to buy certain things at the exchange or whatever, which was shaving cream and a razor. I had never put a razor on my face before and I'm literally putting the razor on my face before and I'm literally putting the cream on, looking at everyone. I grew up in a house with just a mother right, there's no one shaving at my house. I didn't have that lesson, nor did I have anything to shave A little thin mustache, a little very, very thin goatee. What I should have done was slap 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 it all over my face and once you start shaving where you haven't shaved, then it will begin to develop hair. Yeah, it all grows back. Yeah, but even where there's nothing right, I screwed my face up for life.
Speaker 1:Am I doing that? I want to ask you so. I know that when I was in basic training, a lot of folks there who people of color, when they shaved 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:Yeah, I eventually developed razor bumps or whatever. It wasn't immediate, it was just further down the line. The more you do it, the more damage you're going to cause, right? So one thing I told my sons and we'll get to that but don't ever only put the shaving cream and put the razor where you have hair. Now, right.
Speaker 1:You're going to save yourself a lot of trouble. Exactly.
Speaker 2:Exactly, especially in an environment where you're required to shave every day. Yeah, yeah, so that was a big mistake. So then now I think it's like Tuesday we started getting our uniforms and all that, and we're starting to wear them and he says that the drill sergeant are coming to pick you up. I'm like holy cow, like what was this dude? You mean, someone is worse than him. Yeah here, they come in there hollering at me. Get on the bus.
Speaker 2:You know everything they do right. So I don't think they ever compared to him. So and if they did, at whatever point, I don't remember noticing it. So he definitely schooled us well in terms of preparation, of what basic training would be, in terms of you know, that type of tolerance of hearing that stuff all day long. I don't ever remember being intimidated by the drill sergeant in any way. I don't know if people should, but anyway I don't remember that at all because of the fear this other guy had put in actually physically stepping on people's feet and stuff like that, of the fear this other guy had put in Actually physically stepping on people's feet and stuff like that. You prepared you well, then it sounds like.
Speaker 2:So the budget training was, I don't want to say, different. You have to go through all the stuff. I had a personal setback. Well, I didn't have a setback. What did I have to set back?
Speaker 2: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 first call and there was blood all over the pillow on the side of my face and everything.
Speaker 2:And somehow I scored this against the old world to barracks and they had the open Bay Because I started out in. But somehow I was able to move into one of the back rooms. They had two rooms at the bottom of labor to at the top on each side of it, and I was the one those rooms. So it was just me and another soldier there. I remember I had a top bunkie at the bottom. So then he seized the blood. I'm like, don't tell, don't tell, he goes to tell the drill sergeant.
Speaker 2:They're like you gotta go on sick call. You know you were afraid to do that because you didn't want to miss days and have to be recycled, all that crap. So I remember the. I think it was the walk of shame because when you went on a sick call, you had on your, you know, you had on your fatigues, but you had to wear low quarters. You didn't wear boots, you wore low quarters, you know, and the trainees always wearing their. I think we either wear helmet liners all the time or a helmet. It's kind of rare that you just had your little soft cap thing right. You got your soft cap, you got your shaving kit. You had to care if he was going to be put in the hospital. It was just standard, you know. You could have a tooth coming out 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 of shame, you definitely stood out right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was like a hundred years ago but I just remember that being a walk of shame. So did they figure out what was going?
Speaker 2:on. I think I just had a bad cold or something and I think I had tonsillitis. They gave me some stuff for that. It was fine. So no recycle. You got this thing rewrapped. There was never any other issues after that. I just remember that that was a. It felt like a setback because I had to do that walk of shame, right, and they didn't know what was causing it.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, that was pretty low 48 hours. Well, and I remember too, like basic 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 I remember the things that we would say about the guys wearing tennis shoes. And then you know, on the off chance, that you're the one having to wear the tennis shoes.
Speaker 2: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:Wow, yeah, I didn't experience that.
Speaker 2:I don't know if I would have said that. I don't know if we would have gotten to that or not. So you said that's why I specifically 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 my civilian clothes. It was not a part of my Army makeup. Yeah, we were issued a Reeboks for PT. I think we had some Converse type something, but that did not happen until like 1982. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see, I actually went, went the military in 84.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you score years. Yeah, it was not a bad, not a bad deal. So, yes, you kind of make it through. Anything else, anything else, stick out, you mind about basic training uh-huh, it was a fun one again.
Speaker 2:I didn't know anything like. I don't, I don't know. The first time I saw we have didn't have guns in our family, it was just, you know, my mother right, so my brothers had them or whatever. I never saw it. So you know, we started shooting on the range. They teach you the basic rifle marksmanship and all that, but having not shot one before, okay, I'm learning that. You know, tell you how to breathe, you know finger pressure and all that stuff.
Speaker 2:But I couldn't hit nothing Like I was terrible and for some reason I don't know if it was a drill sergeant or a range instructor that got out to the just in front of me a little bit not in my line of sight right, but just enough to see my face and I realized that I'm shooting right-handed. But my right eye was closed. You got the wrong guy and I think I was. I was always pretty good with my 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 took over for some reason. But some of these hit close the other one, oh, then it was easy. But then later on my career I would just play around and shoot that thing as well. I'm still pretty almost the equivalent of the right-handed shooter. Once you figure it out, it's getting there. Yeah, yeah, it helped me further my career to help others who couldn't shoot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and spoiler alert, there's a lot of people in the Army who don't know how to shoot. Oh, that's true. That's true. Yeah, I remember running a range for qualification and I won't mention his name because he's still a friend of mine, but he was a major and I was a staff sergeant and he was a ranger. He had the tab and everything, but that guy couldn't hit the broadside of a barn and at one point I was trying to help him, trying to help him, trying to help him, I said, finally, said, sir, why don't you just take that gun apart and throw it at the target? You'll have better luck there you go. And he didn't like that Anyway. So yeah, there's plenty of.
Speaker 2:So you made it through boot camp, I'm assuming. Did your mom or your family come down for graduation? No, okay, you know communication was not like it is now. Yeah, I don't remember even phone calls ever calling back and saying anything. To be honest with you, I can't remember one. I'm sure there may have been, but yeah.
Speaker 1:That was all cell phones or not cell phones, it was all pay phones. Oh, yeah, yeah, okay, now did you come home after base or did you go?
Speaker 2:right to AIT, no, straight to AIT. It wasn't until after AIT that I 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 first Admin specialist, I think is what it was called. Okay, yeah, one thing the recruiter told me was you don't want to be outside shining tanks. And I'm like I think you're right, I don't, you would have gotten a cold shining tank. So I'm like no, I don right, I don't, you would have gotten a cold shining tank. So like, no, I don't want to do that, right?
Speaker 1:So you picked a job. You're not going to be out shining tanks, not shining tanks. Yeah, so you headed to airborne school. Yeah, is that down at in Georgia, there, correct?
Speaker 2:One thing about the shining tanks and maybe it was about the duty of shining tanks that wasn't appealing. I think what was appealing was being outside. I can go back to my high school days and I would just stare out the window wanting to be outside. Why are we here? It's a nice day. Why am I in here?
Speaker 2:And I think that truly carried over in the early parts of my career in here. And I think that I mean that truly carry over in an early parts of my career, because now I'm working in this office and it's like I should be outside doing something. So it wasn't a surprise to me, gravitating toward industry, to be outside now, like you're outside, outside, outside all the time, right through all kinds of weather, but at least you're outside, you know. So now, maybe I'm a nature person. You know as a result, where, and I was likely that all along.
Speaker 2:It took me a while to discover that 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 pretty quickly and that's a complaint about it because you couldn't do anything about it. But I think that's the reason why, 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 at all. Yeah, we'll get to a story about that.
Speaker 3:Remember the heat and the cold when we started talking about ranger school.
Speaker 2:Yeah, All right.
Speaker 2:So airborne school was different for me. There was a group of us that showed up at the same time. We knew that when we got there our class wasn't going to start right away. So they said, well, these guys will probably start next week or so. And they just put you on detail. So you're cleaning up the whole post, cutting grass, picking up trash, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2:So now it's June I think it's late May, june and in Columbus, georgia, so it's smoking hot. Oh, it's smoking hot. Oh, it's smoking hot. It's smoking hot Ten months out of the year. Yeah, and we're like the chain gang, like every day you get up and just do that, do PT, and then it's like you know what are we going to do for cleanup today? Just what do you call it? Police call or anything that was work call or anything that was work, and to the point where we only did that for a month. Airborne school is only three weeks long. We're there a month but we haven't seen air or born dude. They just need people to clean up their face.
Speaker 2:It was a scam. So the leadership just totally forgot about this entire group. That is really just the whole class. I don't know how you forget 100 and some odd people, but they just kind of forgot and that's all we did For a month. It was so bad that everyone was going to school for three weeks, five days a week for three weeks. We finished the whole thing in like nine days straight 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, three jumps to complete the week. That's what you had to do. In jump week we were doing two jumps. I think we had five jumps total. So maybe it was one a day for jump school. Right, for the normal class we were 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 so fast, yeah they already kept it captured for a month.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they might as well get you out of there.
Speaker 2: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 finally started. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that the first part. I mean. Rocky came out to the theater their own polls. We were. We knew when the movies were coming, because we knew we could go, because it wasn't nothing else to do. Yeah, um, obviously knew, when child time was um, weekends was washing clothes and yeah, it was a mess. We sang songs and in the evening 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 more grass all over the darn post.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, yeah, not cool. So you went back to your unit after airborne. Well, I was down on the side today, second airborne division. I was going to say something about airborne in general.
Speaker 2:I remember basic training. The airborne recruiters would come around hey, you want to go airborne, we have a tutorial about it at this particular time, and all that. So there was a break in the basic training schedule for you to go look at, look at the presentation and everything. So that's what you wanted to do. And me, super naive, like what's airborne? Oh, you jump out of airplanes. I'm not going to that. I think most of the people in the class in our tune were going. So I'm just following along and going right, okay, I'll listen. And in that presentation they said you make $55 more a month. I'm like I'm in, I don't care what you got to do, I'm doing it, that's right. So that's how I ended up doing Airborne $55 more a month.
Speaker 1:That's all it took. I'm detecting a theme in how you select what you're going to do. Money, money, money money. Yeah, I'll find out what it is later. There you go. I saw that.
Speaker 2:Gotcha. It's a great song, you know. They started a video of people jumping out of the airplane. Okay, that's pretty cool, I guess. I mean they live. Okay, $55 a minute.
Speaker 1:You know, everybody else watching that video was like, oh, I can't wait to jump out of the airplane. And you're like show me the money, yeah, yeah. Well, that's an interesting way of selecting people in school.
Speaker 2:So I get to the 82nd and sign to the unit and you know some of the like the first on it had been in Vietnam, the company commander being in Vietnam. That's kind of the error that the leaders were had been in Vietnam, where they just missed Vietnam by a few months, like they may have came in when, right as the war ended yeah, ended, yeah, yeah. So it was like that close. It never, really, never really hit me how close I was because it was a pretty good distance away from it. But you know you get there and see those guys, you know it's right there and it never really talked about, it, never really really came up at all. You just knew that they had been there and they were thankful to be in the job that they were in instead of being over there. But you had a bird's eye view of them. I would say surviving the Army, not just surviving Vietnam, surviving the army, because what they had to go through over there. And then you come back and you're still in how different, how different that was for them. They come back to all the, all the things that America was doing and giving to them and all that and now you have an army that's totally different, where arguably, most of the people that were within Vietnam had gotten out but they decided to stay in and it had been so many years it's making a career or whatever. So it was kind of it was a different dynamic and watching the army in those days of Even the whole army, make its transformation from the Vietnam era and it felt pretty quick after that.
Speaker 2: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 I got to Korea you didn't see, you know those Vietnam veterans anymore. They I remember, I remember seeing like many at all, like that patch on the right shoulder. You just didn't, you didn't see it 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 taking airborne vision to the second infantry division, and you still didn't didn't see it. Yeah, so the shift was pretty quick and I was in korea from 79 to 80.
Speaker 1:do you think that, uh, that had something to do with the fact that a lot of these guys were draftees and they did their time and they got the heck out, I mean, and they probably didn't want to go to korea and had enough years that they didn't have to, maybe, um, but now I did volunteer to go to korea.
Speaker 2:Some people just just assigned some volunteer, but I, I just I think that I don't know if that figured into their choice, because most of the people I'm referring to were already already some first class. Yeah, yeah, I think. Yeah, they're already some first class, so they'd already been in. Right, I think they were always on first class, so they'd already been in. And maybe it was that time of people that were that rank for them to retire or whatever. Not really sure, and maybe I don't want to say, I just stopped noticing it, it wasn't right in front of me like it had been. This wasn't this problem In any second. 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?
Speaker 2:I'm still an admin, an admin guy there, one of my mentors from 82nd. He was going over there and that's why I went. It kind of taught me the ropes of Army. He kind of taught me the ropes of Army. I was a pretty good shiner in my boots, but he kind of stood out like what are you doing there? Why is that thing looking a little bit better than mine? I feel like you're doing it and it's easier for you than me. So he took me under his wing and showed me those things. He taught me a lot in a short period of time. And then he was going to Korea.
Speaker 2:So I went to Korea I mean, I'm working in the same section. He wasn't my boss, just like he had not been my boss before, right, but you know, he took money under his wing there. He played basketball. You know, I reckon he was a sergeant I wasn't but he told me a lot of things from the very beginning. I just began to follow. So I went to Korea. Then I went back to it a second after Korea. I can't remember where he went at that particular time Because they didn't have cell phones and all that type of stuff, even computers even.
Speaker 1: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 the years. But you're right, like go to basic training, go to school. There was no Facebook or MySpace or Instagram or whatever you watch. If you ran into people, again, you ran into them. If you didn't, you didn't. It was a whole different group in Korea.
Speaker 2:Aside from him, it was a whole new learning experience in terms of people like the people I work with. Ironically, I take that back. There was one guy that we worked together in a little small section that I went to basic training with. What was that guy? It started in the Philippines, so imagine that You're trying to fill pins, you end up basically training with me at that time and then a few years later he's in Korea as well. So it became a pretty small world very quickly over there.
Speaker 2:Then I played basketball over there. I started doing Taekwondo over there. I actually got to fight down in a place called Kukyuan. Anyone listening that knows martial arts and knows Taekwondo, then you know part of origin is Korea and Kukyuan it's like the creme de la creme of where you can fight. As a Taekwondo and martial artist. I played football a little bit. I mostly did basketball and Taekwondo. I took up Taekwondo like every day, I think, except for Sunday. I started getting pretty good. I remember sparring the instructor and you know I'm 5'10" he's probably 5' 5-ish and I think he suckered me in. He let me get in a few shots To where I'm like oh, I can get in a few more shots. Next thing, I know bam, I'm on my back. I can get in a few more shots. Next thing I know bam, I'm on my back, feet up in the air and I'm just looking up at him and his hand is out there. He opened me up.
Speaker 1:He drew you in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he drew me in. It was kind of funny. But I remember that one pretty well. I was like, okay, don't do that again, Mr Parker's fast and he's sucking you everything's a lesson.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's great. So you uh, you uh, get back from korea, um, and you're back with the 82nd going back today, yeah, so what happens from that?
Speaker 2:so different, different um a different uh section I'm working in. This time it's a reception station, not a reception station, but then processing for everyone coming into a second. They had to come through there and we're far away from the flagpole. We just have our boss who's on first class and just the people we work with. And that was a pretty, pretty cool little setting right.
Speaker 2:And I had a person. My first car I had a 1977 Triumph. Spitfire was the coolest thing. Cool, color your cup for you. I can see you all this right here. Yeah, it was really cool. Did it have the tan interior? No, oh no, it didn't make that in 77. If it was tan either, and that's been sunburned when you see the turn colors. No, that's a great old car though it was. It was, um, I had my eyes on the tr7, but that cost a little bit more, you know. So I didn't put that. That spit fire man, that thing was cool. And then it kind of started messing up and I remember some, this guy. He's actually from Michigan, here, detroit, you know he played football, I think he went to some college and he messed up his knee and it ended up in the Army.
Speaker 1:They used to call me Walt, you know not Womack Walt, and it was kind of funny because he was this big old private, you know he was part of first class or whatever. Yeah, you're too big to be a part of first class, right? Yeah, he said that big old what you doing, you're too big to be a part of first class, right? Right, he looks like I was first surgeon or something yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So anyway, I'll say, hey, let's go to the mall. He's always going to go to the mall, right. But then something's wrong, my car to start or something like you had to push, start it all the 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 go whatever whoa, you must think I'm stupid.
Speaker 1:Anybody that's owned a British car.
Speaker 2:Yeah, knows those. British cars from the 60s and 70s. 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 had someone to push it for you. Yeah, and he would say why don't you have a push? Because you can't drive a stick. Why don't you teach me how to drive a stick so you can push? Yeah, like you're going to push that car with that guy in it.
Speaker 2:With that guy in it yeah, but he couldn't drive a stick, so I was always set free from that. Nice, how did he fit in there? That's, I'm trying to make sure of this. Yeah, he got in there somehow. Yeah, put the top down the wall because of the convertible.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, he's probably all like scrunched up inside the driver's seat.
Speaker 2:Then I left from there and went to, I re-enlisted so. So it was never a plan to stay in the military. It was, and I tell people to this day that the military is a good place to hide while you figure 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 that job is transferable to something that you think you want to do. When you get out that, your test scores can align with that if you do it strategically. Going to get food, obviously, I said the roof over your head and an opportunity to go to school. So you can make serious tries in a four-year enlistment if you plan it the right way. So I should mention that as soon as I got to that second, I started taking college classes. Taking college class, okay, yeah, and then you end up piecing all those things together from different schools or whatever to get your degree.
Speaker 1:So that's something people might not know about either, too, is that when you are in the military, all that stuff you do can translate into college credits can help you get your degree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't do that immediately. I didn't have any experience when I first. You know, as soon as I got to the 8th Second, I went to the office there and signed up for my first college class, which was all based at Fayetteville State University. So I took classes there the whole time I was there. That's the first time I was there. And then I got to Korea, did the same thing, got back to 82nd, did the same thing, then I reenlisted and somewhere in Atlanta I got promoted to sergeant somewhere in there and then went to Turkey.
Speaker 1:I want to stop you there, though. Why did you reenlist? Because you weren't planning on it. Did they offer you some money? I'm just curious.
Speaker 2:No money, no money. I thought I was going to do those four years and my thing was, you know, my mother had worked for the government for 35 years. My sister worked for the government for a total of 32. My other sister worked for another major company for 30 plus years. And not that I was planning to do 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 really hadn't figured anything out. What Bart Womack wanted to do in life. Yeah, to be honest with you, so it was just, if that's what I was going to go do, if that was my plan, I really hadn't figured out anything at all. So, but you had to take the test in the city that you wanted to work, and the test would never align to when I could come take it in Columbus. I would have to leave Fort Bragg and go there to do that, 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 I re-enlisted. So okay, let's try this again.
Speaker 2:I was having fun and although the recruiter didn't necessarily say join the Army and see the world, there were opportunities to go different places that I never would have gone. So now I'm in Turkey. I get there and they have a little Head Start class of Turkish and everything. So I'm learning basic Turkish, bottom line. I spent a whole year there with my broken Turkish, my little book, and I went all over Turkey, like all over. I could take every mode of transportation that they had. I could speak enough to go anywhere, eat anything, order any food. So it was fabulous in that aspect.
Speaker 2:Our teacher in that class. He taught a female volleyball team so we started following them around as they played. So that's another opportunity. It was another opportunity to go throughout the country as well. Um, it was, it was a great experience. I mean, I think by that head start class I dove into the culture, um, of all things. I remember when I first was.
Speaker 2:So now it's 1983, 83, yeah, and so whatever was happening in the world of 83, it was pretty quiet, like there was like some small stuff goes, like it was. It was, yeah, the small stuff was big enough to where when they picked us up from the airport, they took us to this hotel and said don't come out, we'll come get you to come out. You were told don't, don't, don't wear shirts with USA on them or anything that when you're done, sure, and they look cowboy hat, yes, yeah, and so that was enough to scare you into standing inside, that was for sure. I remember they picked us up, and this was long before we went up to the unit, which was about 40-some kilometers away. So we were in Istanbul and they had to pick us up to take us to where we were going to be stationed, a place called Çakmaklı, turkey, and I forget what day we arrived, but they took us down to the bazaar and that was a pretty cool experience of seeing that and you can buy whatever and you can barter, like what's barter? Okay, you can negotiate, okay, got it.
Speaker 2:And it was me and it's probably about six of us and one guy. 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 we hear Kunta Kinte. So by that time the movie Roots had been on the television. So we hear someone holler that Everybody looks and then all of us look. It's a different life that everyone's looking at us, you're like who are they talking about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, levar Burton's here somewhere. We're all looking around and everyone's looking at us. Oh no, wow, because you know, I don't want to say they're gradually becoming westernized, but they finally come on television over there. Yeah, it's 83, so what, seven years later? So we realized we were the butt of that joke. It was kind of funny, right. And then we go into this one little shop and we're talking to the guy and he's like he says White Shadow, well, there was a television series, remember that? Basketball, because it was a six-sevenths.
Speaker 2:Hey, he's just starting five. He had a name for all of us. I think I was the Kevin Hooks character. But it's just funny how our country becomes westernized and they start getting TV shows and all that type of stuff, how they just automatically would take people and put them into those characters right away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I remember watching those shows and, as part of being an American, you react to it differently than people who are learning about America through those shows. Right, and I think that that's how it is. So were there so in Turkey? Were there not a lot of black people, a lot of African American people? Was it just really much the? Because it sounds to me like they hadn't seen a lot of black people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm going to say, yes, I don't know that. I don't remember seeing any outside of the ones that I ended up working with on that base. Okay, so that would mean that I never saw any African people. That's what that would mean. You're in Europe at the end of the day, but no, not in those years. I don't remember one.
Speaker 1:So this is new to the people that you're meeting too.
Speaker 2:Really, yeah, not in Istanbul, I don't remember seeing it, yeah, and I went all over Turkey and didn't see it. I remember going to I think it was Ankara. Was there an Air Force base there? Mm-hmm, I didn't go to Insulik when I was there, which has an Air Force base, but at Ankara they did Pretty big one. So, aside from black people in that base, you didn't see them out in the public. And I took the trains.
Speaker 2:I played sports over there, like everything, and we're a very small unit, and we played intramural against each other. And then if whoever won the championship between that went to the higher headquarters in Italy, the Chinsa, to play for the championship for that sport. So I played basketball and we won and I didn't get to go. My boss wouldn't let me go. I Played tennis actually learned in tennis in high school oh, now to come back to that and I cross-country as well. So so what do we play? Tennis? I Finished tennis and there might have been a week in between. I finished tennis in Italy, went back to Turkey. I was there a week to get right back 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:And I came around another thing. So 6K would be about what? Five miles, right, yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can't remember the other thing. I ran, I had two or three events and then I came back from that and we had one in football. My boss said you're not going, no more traveling. He's like, you spent more time in Italy than you have in Turkey, so he wouldn't let me go for that. But then I ended up going later for volleyball. Yeah well, I played everything than you have in Turkey, so he wouldn't let me go for that. But then I ended up going later for volleyball. Yeah well, I played everything.
Speaker 1:That's what happens when you're a multi-sport athlete. Yeah, I played everything.
Speaker 2: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 and my boss not wanting me Let me go to something. I guess we'll say he's in favor of that. And that's when I volunteered to do a drill. So I, you know he wanted me to do something else. Like you, make a great one also, that's what you are, that's what you want. But well, that was to do something different. Yeah, yeah. So I put in a bit of drossard. So my assignment from from uh turkey was, wasn't joseph?
Speaker 2:okay, did you go? Where'd you go? To port jackson, for dicks. So, for dicks. Yeah, you know, I deployed out of fort dix after it was condemned. Ah, we were living in those old barracks.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, there was a guy that. So two influences. Well, one influence in Turkey proper and then another one I went to. It was called PODC. 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 to Run the Greek Marathon and I was running 60 miles a week. I run six in the morning, four in the evening and then ten straight on Saturdays and then took Sunday off.
Speaker 2:I think that was coming up in in the fall. I think that was coming up in the fall. I think it was in October and then September. In September I'm notified that I'm going to PLDC. Like I was on the wait list and I mean they tell me on like a Monday morning that you're going to PLDC, the person in front of you can't go. You need to fill this slot. Like a Monday morning that you're going to PODC, the person in front of you can't go. You need to fill this slot, you don't know where you can go. If you want to go, you have to wait. So I said I'm going. They told me Monday morning I'll leave Tuesday morning. Wow, that's fascinating. Yeah, that was kind of late September or whatever.
Speaker 2:So I spent the whole month of Octoberober at po dc and didn't get an opportunity to do the greek marathon. All that training, all that training I don't have, haven't. I just never attempted to carve out 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:Yeah, so you. Uh, how long were you in in Turkey then? A year, okay, so you were based in Turkey. You were only in Turkey, where every place else it sounds like. So you were there for a year. Then you opt for.
Speaker 2:For drill instructors yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's talk about that. Yeah, so, drill instructor, so let's talk about that. Just to close out the Turkey-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, because the tennis was in Naples, so I 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 of Italy, so it was one experience.
Speaker 2:By this time, I was only in the Army, just over. No, I'll take that back. I got the years mixed up. I apologize, it's going to work. I went to Italy in 80, I'm sorry. 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. Years, like just it's a matter of days, but in that five-year span, you know it was in korea and turkey and a lot of italy, yeah, yeah, and germany at some point too, in germany at some point, yeah, so I was seeing the world. Not, I didn't know that was gonna happen. Yeah, that's kind of a surprise, right. Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:So now it's one to my four dicks, new Jersey, for, for Joe's art school, my instructor at PODC who's on first class, really, really, really sharp guy he was. He was going to drill sergeant school the same time I was, so I thought I was like, hey, I was watching this guy, he looks sharp. I came here to kind of be like him, not really paying much attention to him, having not been a drill sergeant, right, you know he's on first class. I attention to him, having not been a drill sergeant, you know he's a sergeant first class, I'm a sergeant and he's just now going to drill sergeant school. So anyway, which I'm sure is going to be a pretty strange, since they've already been this great PODC instructor, right.
Speaker 2:And there was another influence in Turkey. This guy was a ranger and his background was common, but you know he was the only Ranger aside from the commander and the sergeant major. Yeah, that's pretty close to something I could play tennis, so jumpy just brings out the tennis book, which is pretty fun. That this our major in the chapel of good tennis, oh, okay, that's not a fair team.
Speaker 1:You got the big guy and you got the guy with guns on his side.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's our measure. Yeah, man, we would battle.
Speaker 2: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 in between like some barracks and you get shot there with a spanner because you had to. You want to see? Look, you're gonna eat that wall. If you wanna get this, you're gonna eat that concrete if you wanna get that wall back.
Speaker 2:You said Payne hit this one, yeah, but I wanted to mention the influence of the Ranger and it was just a quiet professional and I remember I said can I get some of your time? I wanna talk to you about being a rancher. He just told me everything that was so inspiring. You know something to do and it was a drill sergeant. Well, post, you know, post drill sergeant. So that was already, you know, in my vision after that drill sergeant thing.
Speaker 2:So I get there and you know, finish the drill sergeant school and I get assigned to the company and we had females and I remember like my first day it's like get up, go, wake up. The recruits target. Oh, you know like, hold up, you can't go through here. They get from first call or whatever. They get like 30 minutes to get dressed and everything like oh yeah, right, we're gonna throw some trash cans or something right, flip some bands or whatever, yeah, yeah, it was kind of funny. I was like, oh, ready to go hold up, can't go for you. Um, so of two years I had, had.
Speaker 1:uh, of two years I had five cycles of females and five cycles of males. So this was before they integrated males and females. Then, correct, okay, so there was females, but it was all female units, correct? Okay, all right, yeah.
Speaker 2:But my first cycle. So that first cycle I just fell in on a cycle that was only in progress and they probably had two weeks before they graduated, okay yeah. And then we picked up and it was males. So I had very little experience in 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. I was in the full group.
Speaker 2:So it was interesting because the very next cycle after that and we get females again and have them, you know the whole basic training period and you had to flip and learn quickly what females were good at and weren't, because you're already learning what males were good at and weren't, because you're already learning what males were good at and what not. So instruction females thrived Like you can tell them one time and they can do it. You can't tell them again because they're just new at it. But you know they were just smarter, bottom line. They were smarter, especially as a group, where the males not as much. They can do a lot, a lot of things physically, of course. They have a body strength and all those types of things. But that was the difference with the females they couldn't. So you had to. You had to allocate your time towards strengths and weaknesses. They run it very quickly.
Speaker 2:So with the females, for example, in week six they're throwing their hand grenade for qualification. They can't throw, they have no upper body strength and you know, the hand grenade is just a fake body. It's not a real one. They throw a real that. Throw a real one as well. But even the body of the grenade is too, too heavy for them. I mean, we're talking like some three feet. I mean wind up, yeah, three feet. Yeah, you want to get a little bit more with just the body, right? Yeah, so you pick, you're picking them up from the reception station and they may come in as a whole platoon or they may come in as you might have seven people. But whatever that day one is grenade is in their hand Going out to this open field.
Speaker 2:You're gonna throw a grenade, you know, multiple times One group on this side, one group on this side, one group on that side, multiple times before we go in for each nail. So by week six they can do it. 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 or whatever, but except the net, I remember this one. I was going to steal it out with that right off the bat. It was kind of crazy. But that's the difference. Is the body strength. I'm just focusing on strengths and weaknesses.
Speaker 1: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 not throwing grenades back home for the company.
Speaker 2: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 with dolls or whatever. You know what I mean. That's how it works. Yeah, so you just have to. There's just certain things you have to do differently, that's all. And once they figure out how to do it, you know now they're game on. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I got you. So five cycles, that's a lot of people that you got ready to be in the military.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, 10 total, 10 total cycles, Wow. So five of each.
Speaker 1:Okay, wow okay, I was miscounting, so 10. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's a lot of kids. Yeah, I think the female cycles prepared you for the military overall, what you would be, just to make up the military right. And if you look at someone who only worked with males and then now you're in upper echelon in your career or whatever, and now there's a couple of females in there, and then that's your first time and you've been in for 12, 15 years, it's a little different. Yeah, you know, but that was happening to me in my fifth year. So anything after that you're accustomed to it.
Speaker 1:This is a point in time, too, where the military overall was predominantly males. I mean I remember my time in the 80s it was odd to see a female in uniform, to be honest. But as I got through my career probably like you saw it just became a pretty even mix. Yeah, at least for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wasn't shocking to see after that, right? Um, I played football, I played basketball. 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 or whatever the Intermole thing. I kept going. So I played basketball. I played football. I played pretty good at football, me and another Joe Sarney, buddy.
Speaker 2:We would approach those games it was flag football approach those games and say how many interceptions can we get? It was like you could make a beat on the ball and, yeah, we would have a bet about who would get the most interceptions. That was fun. That's pretty much the whole time as a drill sergeant. 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 for the AUSA convention and in those years they would have a special ceremonial event in the old guard and they'd bus you from the convention center over to Fort Meyer for that ceremony and they called it AUSA review or something like that. They don't do it there.
Speaker 2:So I went over there and, um, you know, saw that, you know, very impressive, the marching and all that stuff, and there was this one guy standing out there out in front. You know the building's way down, you can't really see eyes. And I looked at his face and I was like that's that Joe Johnson dude from my basic training time. That wasn't my Joe Sargent, but the Joe Sargent right, the dress on, my guy, the scary guy, yeah, so they do what they call a passive review and they go out this door. So this thing was inside because it was the month of October and they go out and I'm like that's that guy. I'm gonna go tell him that he was my blah, blah, blah, right, so this is this is a3.
Speaker 2:So six years and on six years since that time. Like how's he gonna remember me from that time? Yeah, um I don't know if I'm gonna make him.
Speaker 2:He's good everybody I don't know where they're going, going out and get out that door somehow. Then they march and just kind of go back to the unit, right, yeah, and I'm going, I'm trying to run, and I got on my class stage, right, I'm like, so I'm Johnson, and he stops. I was like, hey, who am I? Hey, who am I? Of course you don't remember that, right, yeah. So, anyway, you know the things are 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 guard now and I'm in Bravo Company, he's in Delta Company and those two companies are side by side. And there he is right, there again. You didn't yell that time, I didn't yell that time. Well, I did, and that reminded me because by that time it's two years after running him down. So he still didn't know who I am. But now I'm making him remember again and I'm going to be here because I'm stationed here. I got a little far ahead there.
Speaker 1:Oh no, but part of the old guard. That's pretty impressive. That's quite an honor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I leave. I guess I should mention when I so I'm still a drill sergeant now and it's time to leave Fort Dixie, I re-enlist. But then I changed my OS in 83 to infantry, okay, and my senior drill sergeant was a ranger. The guy was the senior drill sergeant before him was an infantry guy I'll bring him up again later but he was in the first platoon and I was in the second pl platoon. Then he became the senior drill sergeant for a little while. Then he left and we got a new senior drill sergeant. So he saw him first class and he's a ranger like just cool, not boasting anything, he would just smile. You never see him maybe. I think he got upset like a couple of times so it was kind of very noticeable because like Mike, he didn't just let everything go off his back right. But you know, I was talking to him even more about about when he was in school and it really just changed my MLS. He said, bart, you don't have to compete with every, every staff sergeant and infantry. You don't have to compete with 20%, only 20% give a darn. So that's your competition. So if you work hard you can not only get that 20%, you can even get even deeper. So that was pretty comforting to know that I didn't have to beat everybody like right off the bat, right. So yeah, it was only really competing with that 20 percentile.
Speaker 2:So I I leave Fort Dix and I ran list and then I put in for Korea. So I get to Korea, I'm here to get in one of these units and do this stuff, and I'm at the reception station and they see, I just come from being a drill sergeant. And then there's this unit that wants all the best of the best people. So drill sergeant tells me you want the best of the best. So they put my records in that pile. This guy calls me and talks to me hey, we like what you've done in your career so far. I want to take you to this special unit and we take you up there. You stay for seven days. If you like it, we'll sign you there. If you don't like it, we'll sign you to the secondary unit. Okay, let's go. So I go up there and it's in the JSA Joint Security Area and when you get up there they explain a little bit more about what the Joint Security Area is. And the KPA in North Korea is like right there. They call that North. We'll take you up North, we'll show you all that stuff and you'll be assigned to a platoon and you'll do the whole rotation with the platoon.
Speaker 2:After that rotation you decide if you want to stay or not. So obviously completely different. You know there's a real enemy there even though nothing had happened. So now it's 84. Nothing had happened since 76 when there was a call it a tree, tree cutting incident. But they're still in our country, right? So anyway, after about five, six days, they don't ask you for a decision until the whole time is over with. But I made my decision, and so I made my decision, and so that made my decision.
Speaker 2:This that's on, comes, took to my room and, embarrassed, talk 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 from fourth platoon. He's a squally. Hey, we need you over there, we need you to lead the ship over there. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't know him. He said okay, I just listen.
Speaker 2:About an hour after that the first sergeant comes down through the graves. First sergeant's like five, five, four. Maybe I'm a tall guy, yeah, a tall ranger right and he's barking. So he's like hold on, I'm gonna put you in the fort with two. I said why you put me in the fort with two. You don't ask me why. I'm gonna tell you why in the first song. So I called the little big person. He's the little Napoleon. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna tell you. You already know that there's a reason why. Yeah, why can't you just tell me the reason why? And so, anyway, I tell you what. I tell you they need your leadership over. Why don't you just leave with that? Why don't you like stroke my ego first instead of, like you know? Oh God, I'm in it Anyway.
Speaker 2: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 told me something else I can't remember, but it wasn't true. Aside from we needed leadership over here. He said something else. So I always mess with him to this day. Let me tell you how I met this guy. He started out by telling me a lot, right, and now we're friends, now we're best friends. So it's kind of funny how it all started out. And then he, I'm there for obviously you're in the tomb, but it's July. And then he, I'm there for obviously a year in the platoon, but it's July. And then he, he had already been there, he left in November, and right after he leaves we have a normal routine.
Speaker 2:So this is how it works here. Everyone's in this JSF Joint Security Force Company. There's four platoons and those platoons 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's platoon that's training and you just rotate. So when you go from off to QRF in the morning of that changeover, you're assuming the role of QRF. That platoon is assuming the role of North, so you're getting the ammo and everything from them and you're signing for it. It goes from near trucks to your truck. When you're QRF you're on call 24-7. You money through Friday In the daytime. You're staged at a place that's probably three miles from the barracks area, which is Camp Kitty Hawk, but about a mile from the JSA itself. It's just a QRF building, so that's where you're all day. You may be doing some training or some mapping or some stuff that you can do kind of locally there in that area because you're just on call for QRF. So that's what QRF is like.
Speaker 2:Then you change over from QRF to North. Then you go up North. Same kind of handover, kind of relief in place. There's ambulance stuff already up there and they come out and come in. Then you're up north in the JSA. So now you're the guards that are outside on the tours. When those happen, when we have a tour, they're out, we're out, and then when they have a tour we'll send a small presence out when the North has a tour. That's how that works. Then you transition from North to training. So ammo changeover and then whatever training you're going to do Sometimes it's local, but most but most time they have plans or something in some training area or whatever, before you go do, then after that you're off. That was kind of the rotation. So one day went north it's Thanksgiving 1984, it's Thanksgiving over there in about 30 hours.
Speaker 2:I used to have time zone and we had just finished this squad leader meeting and then we hear kind of sound like that, but it's a gunshot. And then you hear a couple of them and you know right away it's a gunshot. So we go through our drill to arm ourselves. Now I should mention that our platoon is half GIs and half Koreans and they would call them katusas, which is Augmented to United States Army.
Speaker 2:It is, uh, they are kind of the elite of elite in Korean society. Like parents have money, okay, you must join the military if you are 21 and in Korea, um, I think maybe, if you give it the ages now up to the age, but you have to wait until 21, but you have to serve in military for two years, like still to this day, you must serve in military for two years, yeah, so if you are the elite of the elite, then you have an opportunity to be a Catoosa and serve with the United States Army, versus being a ROC soldier, a Korean soldier. So this is like a prime assignment for them. For them, yeah, privilege, yes, and ROC Army is much tougher on them coming coming in there. So they really don't want that. Not these kids, but they. They always say no more rock soldier, you're like you're not rock soldier, dude.
Speaker 2:So so, anyway, gunshot happens and and I mention them because even though our total force of the platoon strength of the platoon is 36 people, well, about half, 18 or so are fighting the kpa, korean people's army, that that are assigned in that jsa on the north side okay, um, each guard post that we have has a us soldier, rock soldier, that's the way it kind of works. You're paired with them, yeah, so that was probably the only, that was the only US-Korea force that maintained that they were together during that was the ones that were in the guard post because there was no place for them to go, but the ones that were in our headquarters building didn't come outside to fight, so we had this exchange of fire going on. So what happened was there was a, there was a tour on the north side. A guy from China had planned to come to the JSA to defect. He was with another person, just those two on a tour and they had a Korean guard that was accompanying them on a tour on their side. He asked the guard to take a picture. I sorry, I said his buddy to take a picture of him with the guard. So his buddy took the picture. He took off running to the south and then eventually the guard chased after him, shooting Right, and that started a whole firefight.
Speaker 2:They start coming out of the building called the Gok and we start coming out where we are and now there's exchange of fire going back and forth. You couldn't really safely maneuver from the area of that building and it was kind of a low 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 the area where the talks take place and that was just a little bit higher. So they were kind of on some high ground and we were on some low ground. So anything they were shooting across was kind of going well over our heads. We had two deuce-and-a-halves out there, so we really kind of positioned ourselves under deuce and a halves for protection there and then the exchange just went back and forth.
Speaker 2:So me and my I was a team leader, I'm a squad leader now We'd go upstairs and cause, now we can see to the other side, kind of have to get out of the window like this to be able to see over there. And because of his position he has an M203. So we take some M203 rounds and go shooting in that area. So this thing called the beautiful something guard, but they're down in something guard, but you can never get anything in there unless you want something in there. Yeah, so you got a perfect vantage point I would say not viewpoint. We know where it is Right. You have to use indirect fire instead of direct fire to do anything, not, but we know where it is. We can't really see it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's this tree there. It's November, there's no leaves on it, you know, but it has all those crazy branches sticking out. So I said, look, don't, whatever you do, don't hit the tree, because that could just drop down and our soldier would be right there. The first round is the tree. Now it penetrates the tree Right the limbs or whatever, and doesn't get off course to land down there, thank God. So I remember, I remember thinking my hand is slapping up on the helmet. That's the one thing I said not to do. That's right. All right, fire again. And you hear the explosion. All right, fire again, don't hit the tree. So he fires again. It explodes. And then you hear yelling. Ah, do that again. Finally figured it out, really right, yeah, yeah, do that again. Finally figured out where they were at.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so while that exchange is going on and that nullifies it, our QRF had come up. Now it's Thanksgiving. They're sitting in a mess hall enjoying a Thanksgiving dinner. Yeah, and the way you responded is that the thing that's yelled out is load trucks and there would be drills to load trucks and there would be drills, the load trucks. You would just go to the qrf. That was like the drill, right, how fast can you load trucks? And they'll say that a few times they come over loudspeaker on the whole installation. There can't get out load trucks and at some point you've got to go. What you got got.
Speaker 2:They had 13 people of probably the same strip between 36 and 40. 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 take control of the situation and, bottom line, they have casualties. Like five of them went pretty good, three were killed and then we allowed them just to.
Speaker 2:There's some peace officers there they call them the Swiss and Swedes. They were kind of supposed to maintain the peace. They had come out of their buildings, which is on the same road where the peace talks were happening and all that, and they kind of facilitate that for them to come get their casualties and and take them back across or whatever. Now we had because they we had some workers working in our area and every time there's workers up there you'd have to have guards out there. So there was a GI and a and a Catoose out there guarding those workers and when the shooting first started and then one of the Catoosas got shot right in the face, he killed him Because when the shooting happened he ran to some high ground and, like I said, they were always higher than us, yeah, and because he went to the high ground that was behind us, he caught it right in the face and then the guy that he was with that, the GI that he was with got shot in the neck, but he had one of those kind of kind of fatty, meaty necks and he just went straight through.
Speaker 2:Well, not his neck, but the meat, oh yeah, just the little part, right, right. So he was, uh, no, he made it through that. Yeah, yeah, so you know, you never, you never know, like nothing had happened for seven plus years, right, and this thing comes out of nowhere, and that, and that the defector had ran all the way. He just followed the road and ended up at checkpoint one, which is, yeah, this checkpoint one might have been a half a mile away from headquarters-ish. Of course. They interrogated him and learned that he had defected and told him that he did, and the reason why he did, and his regret was that we had suffered a loss and someone was there no regrets on their side, but regrets on our side. So that happened.
Speaker 2:So it's 84, which was a year after Grenada, and I remember we had this award ceremony and the commander I forget his name forced our luck. This would not be another Grenada. So I guess they over-awarded any Grenada. Oh yeah, that's possible, it happens once in a while, and so it would not be another Grenada. Anyway, we did our award ceremony. A couple guys got a Bronze Star at that time. Some R-Combi B devices. Yeah, kind of the usual. Yeah, no CIBs, right. So that was that experience. I'm gonna ask you something about that though.
Speaker 1:So they didn't get cibs because it wasn't a declared like combat song, or they just, you know, because I'm not going to award these things, because it's not going to be granada, you know I was just curious why they wouldn't get a CID. I would say the latter yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And if you start the whole process of that attitude, are you going to go through the same 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 long time. Right, fight, and you're going to make a stance off of something else that is not going to be that.
Speaker 1:Those guys should have gotten their CIVs for sure. That's not how you approach things. You approach each situation based on that situation. They're all independent, I agree.
Speaker 2:I so agree. That was that, to be honest with you, the Knights, the days afterwards even immediately after, I should say. First and foremost because in the building we were in there was this little hole. So upstairs when we slept, while I was sleeping and I try to get the same spot to sleep in all the time you could look through and look at one of their guard towers and then see some of the Gok and then see some of the gawk. If you ever want to see the gawk for real, if you haven't seen it, there's a James Bond movie with Pierce Bronson and the movie starts out in Korea. That's the gawk. I've never watched that.
Speaker 2:I think there's an exchange of people for whatever reason in the beginning and in doing that exchange, like, the guy comes out of the Gok or whatever. However, they did CGI, the Gok for the movie or whatever, but that's it, that's what it looks like. So, anyway. And then from there there's another vantage point. We could see the road from Pyongyang up to the Gok. Now there's a tower that's out there as well. If you're out there at that tower, all you just see is the road winding forever. 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 the Gawk you can see all these people getting out of the truck. It was almost like a UPS truck style full of people, full of soldiers getting out. This is like right after yeah, within an hour, they were going to be ready.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it happened again.
Speaker 2:Or were they not going to wait, right? Oh well, yeah, they could be building up to. This is our first day up north and I think at that particular time it had switched. The rotations were two days. At that time we went to four days, so we were up there for four days. So this is the first day. I mean, this happened within hours of us getting up there. Wow, it's only a town go from there, so we still had, you know, the rest of that day, yeah, and then then three other days up there and they're like loading up and we thought we were outnumbered before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, keep in mind, half our platoon didn't fight, right? Yeah, I'm not sure why we didn't end that relationship right away as a country, but at least up up in the jsa we should have um. So we had that. That's probably the first thing on our mind. Are they going to come across or not? Because it's going to be a challenge 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 propaganda every day anyway, but now it was about we're going to come get you. The same guys who wouldn't come out and fight were the only ones who understood propaganda, so that the same guys who wouldn't come out and fight were the only ones who understood propaganda. So now they're really not going to come out and fight. We're going to know who you are.
Speaker 2:We're going to get you Whatever they were saying. We just knew they were saying more of it. We didn't know what they were saying, but the people that knew were going to do it anyway.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they weren't fighting in the beginning, so what else has changed? Yeah, so anyway, survived those three and a half days, went back, you know, went to our next part of the rotation or whatever. The next week you went up there. You probably thought about it a little bit, but I remember the exact, the very next week of going up there and there was a workup there. It was hammered, but the first thing, that first hammer sounded like a gunshot. Yeah, that's why I hit the table the first time I was like oh, here we go again.
Speaker 2:Then by the time the second and third, you realize it was just a hammer, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So the rest of the time there was that pretty uneventful then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uneventful. Propaganda ceased in uneventful then. Yeah, uneventful. You know, the propaganda ceased in the volume that it had been right after it ceased and I mean I hadn't really thought about it again.
Speaker 1:to be honest with you, you tend to get back into your routine or whatever you were doing, right? Yeah, you keep thinking about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, off days were spent um, at the funeral for for the guy who got killed and you know they cremated it was my first time being a part of witnessing that or whatever. It was almost like a like that's what you do and you, you go to it like they had the body, you know, like a church or whatever, and then, like you leave there and I go straight to the Cremation thing and you watch them put it in the fire is like, yeah, so I get, I guess that was part of process. It's one thing. To know that it happened is another thing. Like you go to it as a part of it, you watch it happen. Yeah, you watch. Yeah, that was different. Yeah, and obviously the smell, oh, yeah, yeah, wow, yeah, that was different. But then you know, after that it was just everything was kind of back to normal and he was a good kid too. Yeah, he was really good. I can see his smile right now. He was a really good kid. Yeah, I think that's the thing you just don't know. Yeah, yeah, that's tough. Anything else you want to talk about? To kind of wrap up Korea, to kind of wrap up on korea? Um, I mean, uh, I don't think there's much else there. I do I continue to go to school? I was still going to school there in between all that.
Speaker 2:Um, the guy that lied to me about coming in epic tombune influenced me enough to go to the old guard, which ended up being my next assignment. That was your next assignment, yeah, how was that? Oh, yeah, that was a lot. That was kind of everything, I think. Yeah, that prepared me for a lot. So I get there and they had this what's called a new man training and it had already been a drill sergeant. So the DNC already knew that stuff. But you had one of their style Right Different weapon, the M14. And marching I was already good at that. The M14 and Marginal's already good at that. You learn your style, but the only thing different is your feet's going one in front of the other. 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:it is now anyway.
Speaker 2: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 his wing and he showed me everything. He had been in Oak Grove before he went to Korea. Then he went back to Oak Grove, okay. So I mean he snatched me up out of basic training, I mean out of new man training.
Speaker 2:Now we're assigned in the same company, but in the beginning you're assigned in the company but you don't do anything because you have to learn in their mind what to do. Right, right, you can't march and you can't be a squad leader. So anyway, yeah, so I'm at that and 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. That accentuates putting one foot in front of another, or you're going to fall off, right, yeah? So I'm already a step ahead of what's going on in Newman already. And then he's teaching me how to march with a sword. So that's like the next level. So by the time I finished the three weeks in new man, I get to the company, knock and already march with a sword. No, I just need to be put in a ceremony to do it. But he's taking to take me through all that.
Speaker 2:I mean in the kind of people like who's that new guy? He's like he's. I really want you with the sword. I'm here, what do I watch at the store? But you know, show me that right away. So that put me like way ahead very quickly. But you'd have to march up the sword for funerals, right, and then you're hoping you get to do it out on the parade field for a parade at that rank, because you're the on the parade field is where the, the platoons are, and not the squad leader. So that put me ahead right away.
Speaker 2:We end up being roommates living off post, being roommates living in Alexandria. He volunteers to be a guard at the Tomb of an Unknown Soldier. I'm still stuck in the company, if you will, as you go through all that new man training stuff out there. That was pretty kind of our pretty much our relationship in the company, if you will, while he'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 everything to be a relief commander down there and I'm just back in the unit, right, because he had known all about that from being there prior. Well, I had my first time seeing the two unknown soldiers when I was finally assigned there. Yeah, it was a logical next step for him anyway, because it's like a tour Right.
Speaker 2:So I am probably there a year or so as a squad leader, or maybe almost two years, and then he was a third relief commander and then he moved up to second relief. So it's by height. He was like 6'1" or something like that, above six foot, and the second relief their height is like six, supposedly like six foot to 6'2", maybe pushing it six three, which is the second 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 out for that and it was me and another guy that was in the competition together. I think about two weeks out they quit because they treat you like a private. You know like you're running this run, do that? Got to help with this, help with that. You're just a new man, right, don't matter what you're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, so they're relevant, that you're going to be the, that you're training to be the relief commander in charge of all those guys that are going to leave. Be careful how you treat me. It might come back to haunt you when I'm in charge, but I'll do everything because this is part of it, right? Yeah? So I, the other guy quit, so I'm kind of the heir apparent, but I still got to go through everything, right? So I finished everything. So now I'm going to leave Commander, but it's short-lived, because I'm tagged to go to the advanced course, which is back at Fort Benning again, and that's two and a half months or something like that. So I was at the tomb for two months to get there in October, leave early January to go to advance course to about mid-March, and then I'm back at the 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, you know what, try another time, we're going to put someone else in his spot. Yeah, exactly, yeah, and the rest was better. Kind of lucked out on that. So I picked right back up where I left off and then I got my badge in May Back almost two months and then I immediately teach myself how to walk.
Speaker 2:So my job as the relief commander I also charge those nine people in every squad my job is to change the guard. That's the guy who walks out and says ladies and gentlemen, I have your attention please. And then you are the one inspecting the soldier, you're inspecting the weapon. That's what the relief commander job is. The guy who's walking, they don't have any rank on their blouse because the thing is not to outrank. If you're walking a man, you don't outrank the unknown because they don't know their rank. So I'm not taught in my training how to walk. Now you see it, but you're not taught that because that's not your job as a reef commander.
Speaker 2:And I remember making a correction on one of my soldiers who walked. Now, those guys who walked, they were trying to change the guard. John, let me change you. That's not your job. Your job is that right, but you know you let them a learning to, let them do it right. Yeah, but I couldn't walk because I didn't. I wasn't trained for that.
Speaker 2:So I trained myself how to do it, because I made a correction on it for something's like yeah, I understand. You saw it, but you don't know because you don't walk. You know, so you don't mean. Whatever your response was, you know like, okay, I know this from experience, blah, blah, blah. Right, so okay, you're going to do what I said, but note it, I don't walk. So then I told myself I don't walk. So that way, because every other job in the Army, for the most part, wherever you start, you move up, you've done that job. What I'm telling you is not because 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 the time with that. So he was right, I hadn't walked. I didn't personally know. That's not going to change.
Speaker 2:You're still going to take this correction, that's right, exactly so I taught myself how to walk. So now, what I was telling him to do when I walked, it was right in what I was telling him to do. He was lying or trying not to do what I was saying to do, but I taught myself to walk. So it was the people who were trained to walk always wanted to change the guard. It was never a person who was trained to change the guard trying to walk, so it was kind of, I wouldn't say, not heard of. It wasn't something that the relief commander did, it wasn't the usual thing, right. So I did that for and the timing of me teaching myself how to walk was super critical. Our relief was supposed to be nine people total but people were leaving. Timing was up in the Army, they were getting out of the Army and it was hard to be nine people total but people were leaving. Time was up in the Army, they were getting out of the Army and it was hard to get people down there.
Speaker 2:We were doing all kinds of stuff as experiments to try to get people. We took one guy who ended up being a stellar person, not to mention Toon Guard. We took him out of new man training Like he did his new man, and then we pulled him straight to the man training. Like he did his new man, yeah, and then we pulled him straight to the toe. So it was an experiment. Let's see if this will work. If it worked, then maybe we can repeat it. Yeah, I don't think we were able to repeat it, he was just an anomaly, but it worked for him. Yeah, that way he didn't go to the UN and learn all that other stuff that we would have to change anyway. It was just straight to this and it was super steady. But instead of having nine people in relief, we had five.
Speaker 2:So from April 1st to September 30th, the guard changes every 30 minutes. From October 1st to March 31st is every hour, so the person walking on the mat is out there for an hour, and those other months they're out there for a half hour. So now it's about so May, I got my badge, so it's late May, june, like in the height of the summer Hot. We were down to five people and they changed guard every 30 minutes. Excuse me. And good thing, I taught myself how to walk.
Speaker 2:So me and my assistant lift commander on a day of work, I would change the guard, every guard change. There's 24 of them. Guard change is about seven minutes-ish. Then you came back down, which means you had about 15 ish a little bit more before getting your 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. One guy was new of the five. We put him out there at the first walk eventually, when no one was watching. He just wasn't advancing fast enough. And then the last walk of the day and we had to do all the others, so I would rotate with my sister-in-law commander.
Speaker 3: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 out there for 12 hours.
Speaker 2:Eight was the first one and then 1900 was the last one. So, yeah, yeah, it was 24 guard chains, but I think it was eight walks of pro law, I can't remember. I think we were from five to four people with the same situation of putting that guy up once or whatever. It was a lot, but we had to rotate. So had I not taught myself how to walk, I would have to do all the guard chains. He would have to do that part of the walk. I'm able to rotate where it's one or the other. So it worked out. Yeah, at least, if you walked, you got a little bit of a break.
Speaker 3:Because you couldn't come down and go right back up Right.
Speaker 2:You'd be turning the rotation. But if the guard changed, you gets them good at getting dressed fast, you know what they wear, so you think about putting all that on in a short period of time. And then if you had a reef ceremony in between, they just never got in dress by the time. You didn't have to have the reef ceremonies. If the guard change was a couple hundred minutes, you were up there on an hour to say, ladies and gentlemen, if the guard change was, come on minutes, you get. You're up there on an hour to say, ladies and gentlemen, have attention please, like on an hour, and maybe it's nine minutes, eight or nine minutes total before you're back inside the quarters and then I would take Shoes off, pants off.
Speaker 2:I Start today shoes off, pants off so I can sit down, off, so I can sit down and not sure, even though, like, we have taping these collars, so whatever, reinforced collars, buying the best church we had today. Yeah, you have a tie on, just think about that. Look, but we have taping these collars, like the tape is probably over there, five deep. That collar is like it looks like a brace, right. Yeah, so I think I could loosen my tie and button that so I could there. Five deep, so that collar's like almost like a brace, right? Yeah, everything's like. So I think I could loosen my tie and then button that so I could do a little bit to my neck, but it took more time to button up the whole shirt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you may get to do that and sit down for like 10 minutes in and I push the envelope to get dressed further and further to like six minutes before I had to be out the door. Normally you start 15 minutes, like 15 minutes prior to that guard change, they would say a quarter till, and that's when you, when it gets up, start getting dressed, whatever right, I push that to at least 20 after 22, after it's just a little bit more. I know I can get the pants on fast time with shoes up fast. Then you get the blouse on, you button it. Now they're you kind of button it and they tape you off and everything. Help you get your belt on and they have to do all this fine tuning and everything. It's like getting ready for the Oscars. Yeah, yeah, for every guard champion or whatever.
Speaker 1: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:So as a relief command, I was there for 18 months total. Now there were some breaks in there, so I had two months in advanced course and then after that long summer stretch, in the fall, I went to Ranger School. Okay, so I had two opportunities where I was there and left to go to schools and come back. Then I came back after Ranger School it was another, ranger School was 60 days, something like that, yeah, and then after Ranger school, then I was there for Five more months. I'm gonna yeah, I got left in like May. Now it's not you need a left in May, people to start in old guard. I'm gonna put in song. For Three years. They went back to the Tony Peter Sardin in the Guard. So now I'm in charge of the whole thing.
Speaker 1:You know, something I didn't ask is at this point are you a staff sergeant? By now I'm a Sergeant First Class.
Speaker 2:yes, I was a. Actually, when I left the Chief Command, I was a motorboard Sergeant First Class. So when I left the 2nd and 2nd Command, I was a motorboard sergeant first class. Okay, so when I went up to the unit, there.
Speaker 1:I was a platoon sergeant, Okay, yeah, all right, I got you. Platoon sergeants are important Now. I spent 14 years enlisted and then went to OCS Okay, but I remember coming out as a lieutenant and getting my first platoon and Sergeant First Class Lucas was my very first platoon sergeant. That guy trained me and kept me out of trouble. That's all I can say, man. I just owe him my career.
Speaker 2:That's ironic. When I was platoon sergeant, I had a guy named my first platoon leader. There was a guy named Carson and then he left to go be an executive officer. The next guy came in. His name was Carson they're just cycling the Carsons through, yeah, and the first Carson knew he was going to be a career guy. The next Carson knew he was only going to do his time. Yeah, uh, he was west point guy and um, then I got a guy named sabai and, uh, he had, he had gone ocs. I think he'd like you had been 14 years. I think he'd like you had been 14 years. He was a SF and now he was a brand new platoon leader. So you know, my message to him was I'm the platoon sergeant, you're the lieutenant, go do the lieutenant stuff. You don't know what to do, and I know you don't know what to do. You have two platoon leader. Uh, brothers right around the corner, go talk to them.
Speaker 1: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 and go, right, but that platoon surgeon, he's been there for a while, right, everyone knows him, that's who they rely on, yeah, and then as you, as you move up and start majoring all that stuff, it's kind of the same like the officers rotate pretty, pretty quickly, but the enlisted part of it, at least from my experience, mean.
Speaker 2:You know we were the guys that held it together and kept the officers from hurting themselves. That's the continuity. Every first between there it was like okay, because he was already there as I could use youratoon now just for a minute. I'll be taking this in a matter of weeks. I feel good about that. You know it's yours now. They know you. You've been here for however long, it doesn't really matter. It's going to be a wash here in a few weeks. Then, of course, the new guy coming in knows it's not his. It was very important to tell the guy who'd been in Sonic First Class, because that's all he knows is I'm the guy in charge or whatever. You are your desk over there. You are or you were. You've got to fall in right here. You're in on it, mark. That's the first thing you need to concentrate on in this particular unit. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and I, you know, I think too that I think the guys that were enlisted first have a better understanding of that whole relationship.
Speaker 2:Some of them do, yeah, anyway, way better than the guys who go to ROTC or West Point, but not to take anything away from what they do, but it's just a different kind of leadership style. Yeah, You'd have to keep them out of. You'd have to remind them that they are not that rank anymore. Once you have that part down there, they're going to be all right.
Speaker 1:If they're smart, they already know it, right? Yeah, I got you.
Speaker 2:So anything else we want to cover from that time with the old guard? Well, I mean, I saw a young lady and got married. Okay, by the time I left there, we had a son.
Speaker 1:Now where was she?
Speaker 2:from? Was she from that?
Speaker 3:area, From that area yes, okay, yeah, I met her at a I ended up buying a house, uh-huh.
Speaker 2:I met her at a. I ended up buying a house, uh-huh. And we had a house party and my friend my friend's girlfriend was her friend, okay, and that's how she ended up at the party. That's a great way to get in trouble. She came with a guy, then he over drank and then that relationship was over.
Speaker 1:He over drank. I've never heard of that. That's a very nice way to say it. I'm going to use that. Sorry, sir, you over drank yeah.
Speaker 2:So I intentionally stayed in old guard for probably another year to get accustomed to military life, even though it's much different there. Because I knew my next assignment I was going to be, you know, gone. I'm going to be in the field. 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, you know. So get used to that. And then left there. Um, I'm promotable again, uh, by this time to to E8 and assigned to.
Speaker 2:Well, I should back up the guy that, the Joe Johnson guy, that when I first got to the old guard he was in a neighboring company as platoon sergeant. I'm a squad leader. He eventually makes first sergeant and takes over a company. I go to the tomb to be the relief commander. When I leave the tomb to go to be platoon sergeant, I go to him and say, hey, I need a job as platoon sergeant in your company.
Speaker 2:Now, people didn't like him, he was tough. Still the same guy from way back when I as a platoon sergeant in your company. Now, people didn't like him, he was tough, you know, still the same guy from way back when I was a GI Joe has not changed. Yeah, gi Joe has gotten worse and more people know about it. Right and like. No one wants to be in that company. You know, if you were trying to get out of the company I'd go to him and say I need a job in your company. So I get a job in his company. So now he's my first sergeant. So you go all the way back to this 90-nose skinny kid, 125-pound Bart Womack, first introduction to the Army, to now this guy's my first sergeant.
Speaker 1:Anyway, so now I'm a Whatever you say after this. You did this to yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. So I went, I went for you, you know so. So now I'm first started and I go. While I'm waiting to go for that job and where I'm gonna go, he's promotable to Sergeant Major and, consulting him about where I should go, I said just wait, let me see where I'm going to be assigned. So he ended up being assigned in Hawaii to a battalion. So I go to Hawaii. So now he's Command Sergeant Major and I'm First Sergeant in the same battalion. So now you have another assignment with them, right? Yeah, they know each other pretty well. Yeah, yeah. So that's how I ended up in Hawaii. That was the start off. And I get there and the unit I'm going to was gonna be deployed to Malaysia. So I'm in Hawaii two weeks and then boom, I'm gone to Malaysia. Now, remember, I told my wife at the time hey, this is going to be fast and furious once we get there, here it comes, because you're not having any more.
Speaker 2:You're running. Bravo, we get there to Hawaii, got a nine month old son. I'm there two weeks and then I'm gone 30 days in Malaysia. That's going to be tough for her. Yeah, so I had spent at that time. I had spent more time in Malaysia than I had in Hawaii. Yeah, yeah, I had enough time just to pick a house and pack and go Mm-hmm. Yeah. Then I come back and it's like the field all the time. Weather's always nice. Other Weather's always nice. Other places you have excuses about the weather or they might not plan train as a result or cut train as short or whatever.
Speaker 2:Not in Hawaii. So you're in the field all the time. The first two years I didn't sleep a month. The first two years I slept a month bed for 13 months, wow, yeah. Now, part of that was a six month deployment to Haiti. Yeah, but it still counts as a ton. Yeah, well, after that it was 30 days deployed.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting you say that my son was in Hawaii, he was in the infantry and he was there for a little while, but then he deployed right to Iraq and then he got back and then he went back to Georgia. But, yeah, hawaii, you're not really stationed there, which I hear is good because it's an island Like, yeah, hawaii, you're not really stationed there, which I hear is good because it's an island like it's really 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 another paradise. So when you're not in the field or deployed, it is a beautiful place to be stuck.
Speaker 2:To be honest with you, yeah, how's your wife handling all 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 way for her. Yeah, had another son, and so now there's two, and I think I ended that last year on a I guess it's a one-month deployment to a training center, jrtc, so a six-month in Haiti. Yeah, I was going to ask about that. Yeah, we spent six months in Haiti. This is when Aristide was ousted as the president and the coup takes over. The military coup takes over. I forget his name off the top of my head. We have to kind of put it was deep back in position. That's a different place. I had never, never, been to a place like that. They would just kill people. It is like it was nothing. Yeah, it's just like, let me go up to the car and open the door each other door like this so I guess nothing.
Speaker 1: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:But while I'm in Haiti, our brigade sergeant major decides he's going to retire. At the time the decision was made that the headquarters, the brigade headquarters would stay in Haiti for an additional three months, which ended up being six total. The battalion I was in was being deactivated, so as soon as it got back to Hawaii it was going to deactivate. So, and then the first sergeant of HHC brigade was retired, so him and the brigade sergeant major retired, so they didn't stay in Haiti, they went back to Hawaii to retire. So my battalion sergeant major he takes over as the brigade sergeant major, I take over as the 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:I was an HHC commander as well as a company commander before that. But yeah, hhc is like everyone you're in charge of, outranks you, yeah. And now it's HHC Brigade yeah, even worse.
Speaker 2:Right, even worse, if even worse, I looked at it as even better. What I knew was that at AJC Brigade I would learn everything. That would be my best experience to prepare me for Command Sergeant Maker yeah, being at the brigade level. So now you know I'm closer to the brigade commander Not that that was the motorcycle baranda, but that level of leadership and hearing things right out of his mouth versus through different layers of commanders, closer to all the plans at that level, how they did what they did to get it to the battalion level, which I hope you understand, what the battalion was doing after they received it.
Speaker 2:You know it just opened my eyes to that big level of planning that of course the next level is division, right. So it was intentional, well, to get the job, but more importantly, the experience. And then we went to JRTC. So this probably was the marriage ender, because I was set to PCS from Hawaii but I extended to go to JRTC because I wanted that deployment, even though it's not traditional deployment. I wanted that JRTC experience at brigade level. Yeah, jrtc experience at brigade level, yeah. And that was really the kicker of preparing you for command sergeant major at the battalion level and beyond was you've got the garrison part but, more importantly, you have the field part when you're going locally. But you have that JRTC part which is really, really interesting in my opinion, because you got to see it all, yeah, yeah, from the command and control perspective and not just at the company level.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Squads and platoons. Right, you're looking at the whole battlefield? Yeah, but you're not.
Speaker 2: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 you knew how to get it to them right. You know, because there's a lot of constraints with jrtc, you can't just like here. It didn't work like that. You know. So that it was a perfect setup to be able to see all of it and then communicate with those other first sergeants that were at the battalion level in their first position for the B-line or even their HHCs and what they needed and how. You know I mean it was, it was perfect, perfect.
Speaker 2:So I leave there and then I go to I'm still the first sergeant I go to the 6th Ranger Training Battalion, which is the Florida phase of Ranger School oh, and I'm a first sergeant there and then my duties are to take the big board of when the students come from the mountains to the Florida phase. You map out their grades who needs the patrols next and what their grade. Of course you get their grade on the patrol, but more importantly, you're managing their patrols. You're making sure they're checking all the boxes that they need to check. Yeah, you have to have a certain number of patrols to graduate. So you're looking at the big board 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 filling out for that for each and every patrol. In addition to that, you walk, you have to go play a patrol as well or patrols, I should say and then either myself or the commander had to be out there on patrol during jump days or waterborne days.
Speaker 2:So, waterborne, you're going down a river in RB-15, and then there was one jump in, maybe two jumps in the forward phase. There would be one to jump from the mountains. So after the mountain phase that's in Dahlonega, georgia they bus you back to Fort Benning. You do airborne prep what's not the 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 ready for the jump, to jump from Fort Benning into into Florida.
Speaker 2:Now, we prepped for that many a times, but we never did it. We'd always be weather out, so it 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 in Florida. Yeah, that would always happen, though. 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 know in a different way I'm like basic trainer or some other thing you may have done. It was.
Speaker 1:It feels like you've had the tremendous opportunity in some cases to see your military career from both sides right, like basic training and drill instructor, ranger school, and you know being there as an instructor at ranger school, so that's really a cool perspective. Not a lot of people get that necessarily Right, but you've seen it from both sides, you know what they're going through Right, and you know why Right, and it all makes more sense and maybe it makes you a better leader from that sense, yeah, um, we're going to stop right here and stop right there because that makes sense.
Speaker 2:That's the best uh compliment I've had. No, it's, it's uh, you know it does. I think the experience makes it makes all the sense of the world. And now you're older and you've grown, especially as well as leadership and people. I'll say people more importantly um, well, if you don't have that, you don't have anybody at least. So what's the purpose of leadership? And when you talk about people.
Speaker 1:I don't want to interrupt together. When you talk about people like you talk about that relationship of how your career followed. Uh, you know the other guy's career, right Like you, were just always like one or two steps below. I think people don't realize the importance of that because I know that my career followed a good friend of mine. Now, you know I was always one or two levels below him but we 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:Yeah, and he's a hard guy in his units and all those things, and I think I feel like I've kind of throughout signed up for hard. Let me make hard easier than it really is. Let me make harder easier than it has to be. Because if you can do that from a leader perspective, then it kind of sets you up to do a whole bunch of things. And I think in following him, the opportunities were there. First and foremost I needed those jobs. It just happened to be that. And if you can do it with someone that the opportunities were there, first and foremost I needed those jobs. It just happened to be that. And if you can do it with someone that you're accustomed to a bit, then you know all the better, because that way, when you want something, you know how to approach them to get it. Whether they figure it out or not, you know how to do it and that was very key, but they figure out how or not you know how to do it.
Speaker 1:And that was very key. I want to build some credibility with you and your people when they see this guy who's this tough guy or whatever and you're able to go talk to this person and get what you need.
Speaker 2:And yeah, it's almost like, how do you have this magic power, right, right, but it works out really well. But it ranged through what I learned as a ranger instructor and the first song down there was don't do dumb stuff Not me, but don't allow dumb stuff to happen. Don't fall under the. 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 pushing walking door and say let's change. But when you hear that we're changing that, because you have no reason or no basis, no data, nothing to substantiate doing this dumb thing, yeah, that answer of we always done it, that it that way is always an immediate change in anything, not the military, like anything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, to me that's a red flag when someone says we've always done it that way.
Speaker 2:Oh, then you don't know why you're doing it.
Speaker 1:No, Then what the hell are you?
Speaker 2:doing this for? Yeah, I don't care if it's written down or not. Yeah, it could be part of the standard. Tell me what's in there. You already had new technology in there, Like wake up.
Speaker 1:At this point, you've earned the right to ask why? Yeah, like you grew up in the military, you've got some rank, you've learned a couple of things, you've been a couple places, you've earned the right to go. Why are we doing this dumb thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you bring up a great point and I'll pause to talk about some leadership lessons because they come. They often come from the things that you don't like and what I learned from the first sergeant of the little big person disease, when he did not tell me why I had to move right away. I learned to tell my soldiers the why Good, bad, right or wrong. I'm going to tell you I don't need 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 for me to do, but the whole because it's my rank that's not leading the leadership to me. So that was like one of the first lessons I learned Explain the why, because now you have people motivated to do it, they're going to like it. I just need to know why. And then following this guy around or being, you know, signing units with him If you look at 100% of the things that he did, there's probably 75% I didn't like.
Speaker 2:But that was a leadership lesson and I would say you have a leadership kit bag. You know a kit bag that you put a parachute in right. You call it a briefcase. Outside the military it's your briefcase or your backpack, I don't care what you call it. You put those lessons in there that you are going to implement, the things that you learn. So the why was something. I put another issue back, even though my lesson from it was not in my favor in the beginning. And then 75% of what this guy did I didn't like. That went in my bag of what not to do. Not so much the 25% of the things that he did. It was more of the 75% that he did that I didn't like went in there. Don't do that. So you always learn it, even though it didn't look like the situation that's set up for you to learn.
Speaker 1:Some of the best leadership lessons on the planet are how not to do something. Like you, I've learned more from the stupid crap, right, because it's almost like you learn more when you fail at some things, right, those leadership lessons on how not to lead are invaluable, yeah, but I like the idea of putting it in a kit bag, you know toolbox, or you want to call it yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And if somebody was from working, you know, in a range department and dealing with the students, you know you may have to talk them out of, out of quitting, and what the repercussions are going to look like all the way down the road. You know, having having worked with platoon leaders, having worked with lieutenants, having worked with captains, having worked with majors, having worked with lieutenant colonels, what it can do for you versus sticking it out. Dude, it ain't that hard. I did it and that was another part of my inspiration to go to range school in the first place was I had a captain that was sorry. In my opinion, if you're sitting in the outtown, you are sorry. Maybe you didn't think you were and maybe you weren't trying to be, and maybe you're better now, but at that rank as the commander, you're horrible. Your first sergeant just didn't have the balls to tell you Right, and the first sergeant did try to cover up for a lot of them and make up for a lot of them. But that was interesting. That blankety-blank-ankety, blank, blank, blank can do it. That damn shit can do it. That was, again, not a good lesson, but it wasn't any lesson. It was very, very pivotal for me, in addition to those other influences of what I wanted to be, now I see this one who isn't that Right. Yeah, yeah, that was more inspiration to like do it in a hurry, and it happened fast for me, yeah, of going right behind that. That poor example, yeah yeah, all those things had a big reason too Right, right At the right time. So it was having worked at those different levels to be able to influence the students in a positive manner and relationship to that one thing that they were doing called regular school.
Speaker 2:Don't let them do dumb stuff To include walking 500 meters in the wrong direction and think, okay, what did I learn from that? Is that I know it can be part of it. I'm never going to see. What you're going to learn from that Is that it can't be part of it. You're never going to. I'm never going to see what your actions on the objective is like.
Speaker 2:That leadership part, I know right 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 20 people behind? So Bart Womack wasn't following them? 500 meters the wrong way, wrist to both back to the right way and never get to actions on the objective I'm halting. You need to check it. Come help him check it. That's your job, because they haven't too much pride Like I'm the person who leads your position. It's on me. Okay, true, you're going to get the grade, but are you going to make them help you or are you just going to walk around all night in the dark? Mind you, I'm not walking all around with you in the dark all night.
Speaker 1:Well, leadership is figuring out who's got the skill set right. Leadership isn't knowing everything. Leadership is having people around you who do know everything, and that's why you make them stop to think about those things and bring someone else in, as opposed to now.
Speaker 2:There will be other instructors, let them walk 500 meters the wrong way, but you never get to see those other parts. So let's just. Let's look at it from this perspective, right, and what's the most important part of what we're doing here? Is it the? Yeah, they can read a map, we can figure that out. That is part of it, right, and it's a big part of the grade. But let me see if they really really shine in this other part. I can overlook that, that other piece, because I know in a real life situation, the, the rest of 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 right here. Like man, I'll walk a thousand meters the wrong way and give them a no-go. There was a lesson learned somewhere, just not the one that I want to impart.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe that guy takes that as part of how not to lead, right. I mean, you can let people in a trading situation make a wrong decision, but how far are you going to let them go with it, right? Yeah, and I like the approach of you know, are you sure that that's you know? Why don't you double check it? And that goes back to my Sergeant, first Class Lucas, who, when I was about to make a dumb decision and I'll admit there were some dumb decisions he would say something like are you sure you want to do that, sir? And that meant he and I need to go talk someplace, not in front of the platoon, right, yep. So it was like I was going the wrong way and he was going to help me get back on track. Now we didn't always agree on the solution.
Speaker 2:Right, but we did when we walked out of that office. That's right. That's right. And this is not to mean that when I was a Ranger student, that someone should have done something for me. If I had done that, I would expect to get a no-go. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1:Great, that's just how it works. Yeah, so you really weren't there for that long. Yeah, so I had been three years of the first time in Hawaii and I go to get down there in September of 1996.
Speaker 2: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 in December. So then I'm gone that summer, I'm there through July, and then I'm in song major academy in August 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're right into it, because I finally 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 were trying to. I was trying to be assigned to Fort Bend while she worked in Atlanta, she was doing corporate America stuff. Right now, it was the closest big city, et cetera. There would have been nothing in Columbus at that time.
Speaker 1:There's still nothing at all. My son was in Phoenix City. It's a beautiful area, I'm just saying it's not a lot of jobs. I know.
Speaker 2:But the company she had worked for was putting her son someplace else, I mean to the point where that's Hawaii. That also goes with going to Maryland first and then they were changed to New Jersey. No, I'm sorry, they were going to Maryland first and then they were changing to California. So once we knew that, then they made an essential meeting via Binning. I didn't have to be there. So I ended up in Florida for the school.
Speaker 2:So I leave there and then we make the decision that some of these academies aren't going to be. It's not even a whole year, right, a whole county year. So you just stay where you are. I'll finish school 10 months from now, whatever it was. I got there, I think school officially started, all this graduated in May. I got there, I think school officially started, all this graduated and back. So instead of doing more moves, just stay there. I'll go to school and then after school we figure out what the next assignment's going to be, because I won't know until close to graduation time, right? So trying to prevent from over like three times in 18 months or something like that, if it was even that much. So that kind of led to devise that.
Speaker 2:So in the middle of sergeant major academy, her company moved her from california to new jersey. So the moves happened anyway, right. Just not the military Wasn't your fault, right? So I remember I had to get like an extra day out of school to do the move from California to New Jersey, and then I leave. So I'm going to kind of assign a 101st Airborne Division. I trained assignments with a guy. He had a hundred firsts and I had third brigade. Third ID was at Fort Benning and he wanted to go back to Fort Benning. So we switched and that job at Fort Benning was mech and I didn't want that.
Speaker 1:Yeah so we switched. So a little bit like shining tanks, shining tanks, I'm just gonna say, except they're Bradley's brothers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love them, bradley's brothers, no, I guess they were Bradley's.
Speaker 2:They did have a combination of both, I believe yeah.
Speaker 2:So you guys switched assignments. Yeah, we were Bradley's. Yeah, I'm sorry, we were Bradley's, yeah, so we switched assignments. I go to 101st, I'm in 101st for I don't even know like three months-ish, and then they changed their job from New Jersey to Northern Virginia. So there's another. They're happening anyway. Right, and then that was that was the straw, yeah. So, yeah, yeah, it's totally divorced. That that was I got before cameron, june of 98, and then divorce in january 99. So when I get there, um, you have to be aerosol qualified. I used to say a, the, the a and ranger, that's aerosol.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right all right, you know how to do that?
Speaker 2:Oh, you have to go. Soldiers are going to be looking at you as the leader of God. How are you going to influence them to go if you don't go? So the commander was adamant. That's the first thing you do Now. This unit, which is 2nd to 327th Infantry yeah, 2nd to 327th infantry. Yeah, second to 327th infantry was in 1st Brigade and the battalion's nickname is no Slack. One company is in Kuwait. One company is in Saudi. One company is in Haiti yeah, I told you about the Haiti experience, so I went there and left there. I was like I will never come back here again. Never say never. I didn't learn that then. Maybe it was a saying. I had never said it, so I didn't apply it, but I said it about Haiti. And then, as soon as I get to 101st, where am I going? Hey, go to see that company. Yeah, um, then, also with the salt, I went to kuwait to see those companies and then, after that, I came back.
Speaker 1:Then it was straight to beer assault school I couldn't get a slot before going over to see those companies. You know it's funny, I never thought about that at that level. You know, with the CSM, if you've got, like every place I've ever been, the companies have been, at least geographically, somewhat near each other, but I never thought about it from that perspective that you had companies all over the place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, parts of HHC was with all of place. Yeah, yeah, yeah, all the parts of and parts of HHC was with all of them. Yeah, um, it was a very, very small skeleton left in the rear. And then our Delta company that they were a total, a total. They had total terms. Yeah, so they, they didn't go. So it was only Delta company in this small part of HEC that was there when I got there.
Speaker 2: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. That was always my thing.
Speaker 2:Okay, first, you've got to conceive 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 they can see a new guy on the block, but it's been a week, then that's it. I've got to come back and do this thing. So that wasn't. I thought that the block. But it's been a week, then that's it. I gotta come back and do this thing. So that wasn't. I thought that could wait, but no, 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 I wasn't necessarily happy about that way.
Speaker 2:And then it was way, and then it was get up, go there in between, in between PT, starting out there in the first class. You know it's it's summer, how do I? There's no time to go shower anywhere, to come back, there's no time. So I got to bring this stuff to change or just let that stuff dry. Eventually that's what I ended up doing. I was like, okay, those BDUs, you can do it in PTUs and BDUs, they had to dry and then it's going to get wet again because it's summer and I sweat a lot. What's the point I wanted to make earlier when I did finally go to ranger school? I wanted to go in the wintertime because I sweat a lot. It was like I'd be laying down here with the bugs and gunpowder and all this stuff because I would never dry off in the summertime. I'd just sweat all the time.
Speaker 1:I didn't want that so I went in the winter I digress Good plan, though I was in Fort Leonard Wood and it was springtime.
Speaker 3:I was there for Officer Basic course, so it was like five months, but we did a couple of different FTXs and so during the day it's like 90 degrees and I sweat like a lot.
Speaker 1:And at night it would get down to like 20 20 degrees. And we're in these GP medium tents but they have these wood stoves to heat them and someone forgot to keep putting wood in the wood stove. And I woke up the next morning and I was frozen to my cot because my uniform was still wet. Yeah, yeah, and it wasn't just me, there was several. It was like frozen to our cuts from our sweat. So anyway, I digress as well.
Speaker 2: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 in the winter for that. But that was the same thing for for us all school. It's like how do I figure that part out? Once that, once I had that down, it was like compete like you do the stuff. But I think we had to do I don't know if it was three road marches or two. No, you had to do a six mile and 12 mile. That might have been it, but I'm competing, you know, I'm trying to. I'm running through the whole six miles.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm running six miles of the 12th so I'm definitely running six miles for the six mile.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm running. I'm probably seven and a half miles of the 12. Yeah and, yeah, I think both of them. I came in fifth place but I'm competing against people half my age one. But more importantly, they had in there and they got West Point and people in there, cadets in there, and then you have, then you have those ROTC folks and they're freaking track stars.
Speaker 1:They're what like 19 or whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it wasn't 19,. But track people. I'm like, yeah, so I didn't win it. I was kind of pissed about it. I won the old guy competition for that. But yeah, I went in the old guy competition and won the whole thing. That was like just competing. Yeah, it was cool. It was cool, it was a good experience. The one instructor there I don't know how we hit it off just young Sergeant cocky or whatever, I don't know. You pick on somebody. Could you a student drop so amazing to eat anywhere, john Mayer, for you drop, drop, sergeant Major. If you're anywhere, sergeant Major, where are you Drop? Okay, and I remember doing push-ups like you're not going to be assigned here forever, that's right you might not kind of like doing it, but then what happens?
Speaker 2: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:Drop yeah.
Speaker 2: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 doing push-ups.
Speaker 1:I told you that's right. You can do push-ups until I'm tired.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was pretty funny. So my time in 101st was just. I learned how and this is from my experiences as an HEC Brigade guy. You know I'm dipping my toes into Brigade's footprint often, you know, just because I knew stuff like we should have this appetite and we don't. We should have this epitome and we don't. Then we go up here and make some ways befriend the Brigade Sergeant, Major, and so we can do so all of you can get what I think we should get. Right. You know this is the days of the cycle system. I don't know if you remember that. So the Army is what is? It's green, amber and red. You know green is deployment status, amber is in the field and red is, you know you're on leave or you're doing details or school or whatever. Right, in 101st it's white, gold and black. So I think black was the, I think black was the green Gold. No yeah, gold was the training and white was the red. You know screaming evil colors.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, you got to do it your way. Yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:Anyway, we perfected the gold and the white. I'm sorry, we perfected the gold and the black, but not the white, except for details. That whole school part was not happening and I'm like this is wrong. We're supposed to be maximizing the school thing, that's what we told them. People raised their hand and come here for that in the first place. Blah, blah, blah. So I supposed to be maximizing the school thing, that's what we told them. People raised their hand and come in here for that in the first place. Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 2:So I went to the education center, like how do we get courses going? And they told me everything and got to have numbers and done. So I got very close to the Delta Company, first sergeant of the platoon sergeant more importantly platoon sergeant who had a master's degree, and I was thinking how can I capitalize on this academic excellence? His master's degree was from Michigan State. Oh yeah, I called him before coming here. I was like hey, I'm going to do this thing. I thought about you, he's on a month and a half crew someplace now. Anyway, we became really good comrades. So I developed this education system where we start out as doing the basics English, math, all those things and I don't have enough participation of people wanting to go with just my battalion, so I solicited the other two infantry battalions as well as the entire brigade combat team so I can have enough butts in seats to substantiate an instructor Right.
Speaker 2:So now in the white cycle, when the division and the brigade's saying that we need certain numbers from you to do it, I don't have this many. Where's the rest? They're at school, where they're supposed to be, they're supposed to be right and the soldiers loved it. Finally, this is a priority. You know what I mean. You know what I mean and you know you get chewed out for doing something wrong. I'm chewing you out because you're not at school, right, and like why it's not costing you nothing, like why, yeah, you have no excuse. So I had that going on and then as a battalion sergeant major, I would look at every NCOER before it goes up a gate. You know they've got to be in on time and they have to say the right things, because if they're not saying the things that they should, you kick it back and get it fixed right. But then you learn people can't write. People can't talk, not write, just physically write and you're not talk, which means you can't write.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, being that same guy, his name is Ron Gregg. I just say that in case someone some of you artists are close by I charged him to grade. So I set up, we set up mock counseling sessions and they would do a counseling session based on a particular scenario and then they had to turn those in 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 then I'd look at him and then we'd have a session with leadership. We're talking sergeant team leaders and staff, sergeant squad leaders.
Speaker 2:I think I probably let the platoon sergeants go, but we were able to fix a whole bunch of 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 at aptitude or intellect or that figure into it. You know. But to be this not only elite fighting force when we go to the field, we need smart, intuitive people all around.
Speaker 2:As technology begins to come into the military more and more, we gotta shape this right and that's part of it. Not only you have to be able to talk, you gotta be able to write, you gotta be able to counsel, otherwise who's wrong when somebody goes off? Course, I counseled them with that Hell. I don't even understand that. Oh, by the way, the person in counseling is much smarter than you. So if you come off like this, they're like, they're not in, they don't understand what the hell he said and they perceive to be much, much, much much. You know that your intellect is much higher than yours. They're not. You've lost their attention. You can't even fake it, other than do it, because I said to do it. Yeah, it's fake.
Speaker 1:Well, it's some of those, you know if you think about it too when you look at it. Ncoer.
Speaker 2:A lot of times, that's the only thing people know about you when it comes time for promotion or for a special assignment and if someone didn't write that correctly, you're screwing your soldiers right, yeah, but also don't come to me and say that from a disciplinary standpoint or a corrective measure standpoint, you counsel them on it, but it's not effective, it's not written the right way. Right, we can't do anything to anybody punitive. It starts with that counseling. So if that's wrong, we can't do anything.
Speaker 1:Well, and what's the purpose of counseling? To help that soldier be better?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And if you can't figure out what the hell someone's trying to tell you to do to be better, it's not an effective tool. Yeah, and I think trying to tell you to do to be better, yeah, it's not an effective tool. Yeah, and I think people get it wrong too. They think that counseling is a tool to punish someone. It can be, but really the purpose 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. But if I'm not doing it right, you're absolutely right yeah, so that that was.
Speaker 2:that was. Uh, I think it was a fun process. Yeah, um, but you could see right away what people didn't know. Okay, well, I suspect it and now we're gonna fix it. We're gonna use this, this white cycle, to fix all this stuff. That's what we did, so they all appreciated it.
Speaker 2:If no one's gonna come to you and say thank you for helping me the right, thank you for teaching me the right, but it meant the Army never taught them in the first place. That's what it meant, not how to do it effectively. So that was a huge highlight of creating an educational system that the Army would tell society we're doing all along, but it was not happening. So they were doing all along, but it was not happening. So, but if you take care of people, then they'll do things for you. You know that's true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember deploying to some things and you know the mentality of the leadership is someone 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 squad leader, obviously very, very critical and pivotal right, they would come at you and I would say look, this is very, very important, but so is getting your family squared away. Get them in the house, get them in the school, get them all that type of stuff. And when that's done, don't just get rid of keys and say, I'll check you out in a couple of weeks. Get them in the right place, then we'll bring you out to the field. We can go to the field a whole bunch of times, but this situation right here, you don't get that right. You may come home and they ain't even there.
Speaker 2:I'll get my time back from you. I am not concerned about that. It may not be this thing, it is critical. But guess what, before you came here 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 will survive. There's not a war, right? So get that part squared away. I'll get my time back from you. I ain't concerned about that. But they didn't want you to have taken care of them in that manner.
Speaker 1:Now, you can't give them a call Right, so you can't do anything you've been trying to do, because they know that you're gonna take care. Do, yeah, because they know that you're going to take care of them.
Speaker 2:you know you care yeah, and I did the same thing. What's up, what's up. So I finished my time as a battalion sergeant major. I created a not a pre-arranged, of course, but a training thing for my soldiers to go to ranger school. Not a division had a pre-Ranger, and I'd go down there and stick my nose in there, see what they were doing, like you're overdoing it, like you're not Ranger school, right, you know? Right, it's a Ranger school. You're thinking you're preparing for Ranger school. That's what it's for, not weed them out.
Speaker 2: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 them that and you can go to the vigilante. You need to go fix it. That guy ain't doing the right thing. You got the wrong person in charge, whatever you know, whatever it was. But you have credibility. So, but you have to take care of people in every single way in their families, and that's, you know. To me, that's what the military is about. You do that well, you've got them forever, and it's not a trick, it's just. You don't just say we take care of soldiers and families when you're at the podium, right, like you either do it or you don't do it, right?
Speaker 1:Well, just like the Army values, right, it can be a poster, or it can be how you live your life, right, you know, either it means something or it doesn't mean something. Right, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And I would tell soldiers that you know decisions I make in our 4th Institute and for soldiers you may not personally agree with, but guess what? When I go to the ATM I don't see your face. Exactly, I was telling him when I go to the ATM, I don't see your face and I sleep at night. I sleep at night. I'm not tossing and turning about that decision thing. Yeah, I sleep well at night. So once they hear that they know they well, I guess ain't gonna bother that matter at all, darn it. Um, I was gonna.
Speaker 2:So I spent three years as a battalion guy, which is kind of more than normal and I was loving my job and time was going by so fast I didn't even realize it. We deployed to Kosovo at the time. That was pretty fun. We got a real enemy over there just blowing up houses, trying to get the Albanians or trying to get the Serbs. That's what it was. Serbian area. We had those explosions happening 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 this Serbian town and if their technique was, or what they would do is if the building wasn't occupied, they'd blow that up.
Speaker 2:I remember they pissed at something, they pissed at us for some decision. So right across the street from where our headquarters was located they blew up this empty warehouse, right across the street. So I knew I shook the hell out of our headquarters. It was just a message Like this came off the wall. I was like whoa, you're getting that's too close. Yeah, but they would when the Serbians would. It was like a weekly convoy to go to Serbia and Albanians would wait till certain families left and then blow up their house so they had nothing to come back to. That was a way to kind of get rid of one family at a time. Wow, yeah, what a life, right, that's awful. Yeah, I remember we were patrolling one town and this house blew up and everybody runs toward the house as if the people who blew it up were gonna be there or whatever. Right, or you can catch them leaving the area or whatever. This is 2000. This is 2001.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you've been in the military for 20 what 24 years at this point?
Speaker 2:for 20? What 24 years of being 201, I guess by that time to the agency, can't the 70s me? Oh yeah, I'm not wrong, I was doing my birthday, I'm sorry. Yeah, 24. Yeah, yeah. And Then they changed the technique to where they would blow it up. We would go toward it and then it would be a second explosion, which was which was key. Learn that was key when we finally went to Iraq.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's always the ambush after the explosion.
Speaker 2:They didn't have an attempt to get us in their kill zone, they would just do a second one Well over there, they didn't really so.
Speaker 1:If I'm not mistaken, they weren't really looking to kill Americans. Correct Right, they just wanted to scare you.
Speaker 2:I don't even know if it was us. They knew that we were trying to keep them from getting rid of the Serbians. Right, did that say it was for the Serbians? I guess you could say that. But we never came out and said that. We never said that was the overall mission, but obviously to keep them from killing the Serbians. So we come back from Kosovo. Then a couple months later we paint the B-2, the brigade sergeant, in the same. It's in the same brigade, right, yeah?
Speaker 2:So I knew, obviously had 30 different experience and knew the whole brigade, knew the leadership of every battalion down, the squad leader, um, I knew everything that the unit wasn't doing, what they did well, what they didn't do well, what they needed to improve on all those things. Even as an officer of the Corps and when I was a battalion guy, I knew officers would come in and I'd talk to them one-on-one. You know the lieutenants had a certain script that I would talk to them about and here's one of the key things I would tell them. I did the same thing with someone that's going to be a company commander. Usually the company commander is already working in an SUV shop or something. Yeah, and the same thing with them is a new. Well, that's what I did at the time was come to the battalion, come to the platoon, but I would tell them, allow my NCOs to do their job, don't allow them not to do their job. So, you know, you got a new platoon leader and they had their platoon sergeant, or just small platoon sergeant, whatever they say, and so they'd have plato sergeant or a small platoon sergeant or whatever they say.
Speaker 2:And, um, there are certain things that have platoons that, in my opinion, it's that platoon sergeant'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 fix it. But you don't give up on fixing it, right, um? But you are responsible for their success. You make them a good platoon leader, which will make them a good executive officer, which will make them a good command when that time comes. You fail to do that, you impact the NCO Corps for, arguably, the next two levels of that officer'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 them successful as the platoon sergeant. Now they go become an ex-sojourner in a different company. They leave, go to their advance course, come back and they're going to come in at some place. Guess what doesn't happen.
Speaker 2:That NCO Corps doesn't get to do check, because what they saw in that platoon sergeant was Because what they saw in that platoon sergeant was platoon sergeant didn't do anything for them, which is a black eye for the NCO Corps. So they're not going to give the NCO Corps not necessarily an advantage. They're not going to allow them to do anything because they saw bad. So they don't let the NCO Corps do anything. They start playing all their training. They let the officers do like, do every single thing. They said well, I can't say I'm gonna take my squad out here and do this. Tucson can't say I'm gonna take my platoon to do this. Let's work on these drills, let's work on no, you have no input, because what I saw in the NCO Corps they didn't do that. Yeah, and after they finished that, after a year or 18 months or having a big day to second command as a company commander because they didn't allow it, they don't get to see it. Then he did as a battalion commander. So now we've just technically ruined two commands and I've seen it with my own eyes.
Speaker 2:So I would tell them new lieutenant who's scared to tell the between sergeants in most cases, allow them to do their job. Don't allow them not to. So if that between sergeant is not doing what they're supposed to do their job, don't allow them not to. So if Deputy Attorney Sergeant is not doing what they're supposed to do or what Deputy Attorney has been told that the Attorney Sergeant is supposed to do, you come tell me. Don't go to the company commander, because he may say well, I don't know what the company commander might say, I don't care what he might say. I'm telling you to come directly to me. Sergeant so-and-so isn't doing whatever. Then I'm going to go fix it and I'm telling the platoon leader when they come in, you do not allow your platoon leader to fail. So you see the message. Yeah, you double it down on both of them, right, it's a double-sided message, that's right.
Speaker 2:And I'm telling the first sergeant when they come in. I'm telling the first arms when they come in, I'm telling them to come to command at the same time. Yeah, and I might have talked to them when they were captain coming in working in a three shot. But now you're gonna be coming to command. Come on back, got another meeting, different job, same time. Don't allow your same time. Allow your first arm to do all things it's supposed to. Don't allow him to do what he's not. The minute he's not, I expect to see. It's between me and you. I'm not going to my battalion commander and tell him that that's what I look at. My name's on the sign, his name's on the sign, my name's on the sign. This is as much my responsibility as his, because when it goes bad, who are they relieving? People with names on the side?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Because they can pinpoint it down Right, right. Well, and you're ultimately responsible for the NCOs, yeah, and for the enlisted people as a whole, as a Sergeant Major. So why not?
Speaker 2: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's my talk. I have my commander beforehand. I don't need his permission to go talk to whomever. No, I'm not doing that. Other people might. I'm not. I'll tell you what I did, but I'm not asking if I can do it Right, because I have to ask him. What am I here for? If you just need you, then I'll leave you. Do it all, right.
Speaker 1:Well, if you have to ask, you know he's one of the guys that didn't have a successful platoon sergeant.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's right Out on the road. We can fix that from the very beginning. Yeah, yeah. So it didn't matter if it was officer or whatever, just like if it was out there and it happened. I don't expect the commander to come back and tell me if you saw it in front of your own eyes. Don't come tell me two hours later. You fix it. Come tell me what you fixed, but don't let it go, or whatever. And then come tell me, because it was an NCO who did it, because if it's the officer doing it, I'm telling him yeah. So when I got the brigades, the same thing. When the 05 came in, he's taking over Lieutenant Colonel came in and he's taking over the battalion.
Speaker 2:Having the same talk Allow your sergeant major to do their job, don't allow them not to. When the sergeant major came in, you same thing. But you got to do it all the way across the board, right. Then they all had the same message and then they all can police up each other, put them all on the same page, right. And that, I would tell you, was a lot of fun, because you're creating this one unit, one standard Again. Now I just say it when you're at the microphone, when you're at the podium we doing this, this is how we do it Period. And then you get to see without it becomes normal to you after a while, and then you see how good this unit really is, how good the people really are when you allow them to do what they're supposed to do. Yeah, and that was fun Like my hands are off that they're doing.
Speaker 2:Your job is to allow them to do it. Fix it when it's wrong, you know, slap some hands when that's what it takes. If you've done all the right things, the offense shouldn't be fireable, right? Yeah, you really screwed this up, but this is how we're going to fix it and then we'll do it again, but it shouldn't be fireable, right? I should not dive into that. No, I should not be a part of thinking they've done something that bad. Should not? Right, sometimes it happens, but should not you?
Speaker 1:don't want to repeat the same mistakes over and over again, although I work for some people 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:Yeah. So I come back stateside and then, you know, I move to brigade, I go get the brigade job and, like I said before, I already know all the people you know and I know what we need to do as a unit. I ended up working with that brigade commander for a little over a unit. I ended up working with that brigade commander for a little 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 when 9-1-1 happens and obviously we're ready to go. We're ready to go do our part, like now as the Army tries to figure out, or the Department of Defense tries to figure out, who responds to this call and all that. It's not our brigade, it ends up being another brigade we get to deploy, but it's not to Afghanistan, it's go to JRTC. Like we're already trained, we've done this already. What Wind us up? And let us go? Yeah, yeah. So each one of those commanders has to get their grade. So here we are, we're off to JRTC and by the time we come back is when a brigade from the 101st goes to Afghanistan. But we still think that we're next, next for something or we're gonna go there then anyway, I look, everybody's gonna get their turn, everybody get there to yeah, yeah, and that never happens, so that it's that Brigade Commander. Ladies, you do a change command, do? It comes in now.
Speaker 2:The new Brigade Commander had been a retired commander in the division prior. He was actually one of our OCs when we went to JROTC as a brigade. He's the brigade OC trainer or whatever, right, which is kind of funny. He's great enough. The brigade is going to take over. So he couldn't have any influence on one of the battalion commanders, or he can only have influence on. How did it work? He can only have influence on one 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. 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 by putting in that clause, if you will. So he comes and takes over.
Speaker 2:So he already knew. I mean, I already knew who he was. We would talk, you know, prior. I mean we'd talk long before he knew he was coming to brigade committee when he was there as battalion commander. So so that was good, him coming in. But here was the dynamic of him coming in versus his predecessors. Predecessor, when'd sit down and had that first talk, it was his brigade, right, I had to get my foot in and make it mine where, after he changed command, we had to sit down. It's my brigade. I remember in my slides I'm flipping whatever, I'm briefing or whatever. I'm flipping whatever and I'm briefing them or whatever and I'm telling them that like, and it 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, you'll get one of those. So you know, command Sergeant Mayweather had a star in the middle, yeah. He's an 06, right.
Speaker 2:You listen to me, you'll get one of those. You don't listen to me, no bueno, that was in that first sit-down briefing. He just laughed, but he retired as a three-star.
Speaker 1:There you go. He must have listened to you somewhere along the way.
Speaker 2:Oh man, but I think, unbeknownst to one another, he was a great team builder. Now, you don't get to pick every officer that comes into your unit, but you get to groom them like you picked them. Yeah, I don't get to pick every NCO, but I get to groom them like I picked them. That's what we did as a team. And I say unbeknownst, I didn't know that he was a team builder like that. I didn't even know I was a team builder like that, until the new division commander comes in, which is General Petraeus, and the division sergeant major introduces me to him and says he's the best team builder in the division. That's what he said about me.
Speaker 2:I never thought about it. I'm not sitting by it mired, right. Right, I don't have like a main tape. Right, it says that it marring. Right, right, I don't have like a name tape, right, it says that right, team builder, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But what I was doing is the same thing. I'm telling you. You know, with those, those leaders, when they come in the door and when I got to the brigade, I extended that to the BCT. Now, I had worked with these people, but from my foxhole, as a battalion guy, and I knew them, but I wasn't in a position of influence like I was when I got the brigade. And once I got the brigade, I did the same thing Come on in. This is how we're going to do it, you know, disrespect to what had happened beforehand and to the involvement. This is how we're doing it now. But again, that made all the difference in the world, to the 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 that before it was like that Because we treated them just like they were in 327th Regiment. Yeah, but that was. It's almost like the Army is watching our unit. We should do this everywhere, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:So it was somebody's idea somewhere, Right?
Speaker 2:right, but we lived it. Even when we got into garrison, we brought them in, you know, playing reindeer games, no matter 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 in their parent commanders, you know. So if it was Federal Utility Battalion, you know, they got a colonel, got their own colonel, but we had to bring a colonel in, you know, to make them a part of it all you know. So they didn't feel like they were left out there. That's my battalion.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, we omitted that by by defending them Right and and that and this. I did the same page, right, but yeah, if you and I think if you force it on somebody, it's different than if you bring them in, yeah, and make it their idea. Yeah. Yeah, it was very separate before I got the brigade Right, not that I did, I'm talking about together. Yeah, we were able to make it All-around team, no silos, yeah, everyone's kind of working towards the same. I call those guys today. They say best don't. They won't say their parent battalion or their parent, you 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 time under the old BCT system. Right Under they were. What was it called? Was the BCT only when we were together for the field Right or training field? Yeah, yeah, not in the garrison.
Speaker 2:So how long were you? How long did you do this? Did this like take you up to your retirement, or so? I was there for three years. The last 18 months-ish, a couple years or something like that was. So I got there in 2001. In 2003, we deployed to Iraq. Okay, yeah, spent a year in Iraq. Where were you at? In Iraq, we start out. I forget this place we first went to. We start out going through oh boy, started out going through Najaf. Then, after Najaf, we moved to the Karbala area and Babylon area. I remember going to a palace there. So when we first go through this palace me and the commander and our drivers and some other security people there's a couple of reporters around. They have their super cool antennas up trying to get a signal and it's this palace. And no power.
Speaker 2:But you go in and there's like in the walls, gold plated, this Gold all over Bathrooms or whatever. Right, we come back in less than 48 hours, all the gold's taken out. Oh yeah, this is very, very early. Like there's no sign of you know the Bathurst regime, like they're not around and what you notice on this particular palace is overlooking Babylon and it's like Saddam. It was intentional for these things to be way high up on the hill so you could just look down at the poverty and, you know, do whatever he did, so they wouldn't come near it. But they were watching it right, and either they figured that, seeing those military vehicles go up there and the vehicles no longer there, that it's safe now that they're there, so let's go in here and do this stuff, or they 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.
Speaker 2:Then we moved from there to Kiara, or we named that town Q West, and that base was a bombed out 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? Helicopters go in. It's put like that Rotary wing, rotary wing. Yeah, knew I screwed it up when I said it. It's next thing to be an airplane. Yeah, rotary wing.
Speaker 2:I say that three times fast, slow, even so, we were wearing these hangars at first and we had our whole brigade spread out on this thing. We'd actually lost one battalion. They went to support another brigade. So now we're down to two infantry battalions and part of the time we were in Karbala we picked up another battalion from the 82nd. So our brigade was actually on the 82nd. For about two weeks we were in that particular area and, that being on the 82nd, they had their division command in charge of that area. Their actual brigades were assigned elsewhere. Again, we pick up one battalion and we're under the 82nd Airborne Division Headquarters.
Speaker 2:So now I'm reporting to the 82nd Airborne Division, sergeant Major who had been legendary in the 82nd, and then their commander had been my brigade commander when I was in Hawaii. Okay, so I already knew him. He was the commander when I was in the battalion and in the brigade in Hawaii. So we went in there for two weeks and then we moved to Q-West, take over this particular spot. We got to build that whole area. I remember funny. We were there for a couple of days and these Iraqis are carrying this telephone pole thing. But I don't think it was even. It wasn't wood, it was something else. It was like what are you guys doing with that thing? Where are you going? He's like oh, we have electric All they had was the pole. No we have electric.
Speaker 2:You don't have electric, you didn't carry with it. You need more than that and that's not going to work. Yeah, it's kind of funny, oh gosh, yeah. So we're. You need more than that, that's not going to work. Yeah, that's kind of funny, oh gosh, yeah. So we're kind of going back and forth up to Mosul where the division headquarters was. There. Again, one of our battalions is assigned to the second brigade now to help police Mosul, and now we're just down to two. This particular time, and we stayed that way the whole time, early on, we bring in, you know, local sheiks and everything, because they thought that our nods could see through the females' clothing.
Speaker 1:I thought it was like x-ray glasses.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so we put on this whole fair, I forget what it was called I can't remember 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-going festival or something.
Speaker 1:A showing pole for the army, exactly.
Speaker 2: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 a couple weeks and we're in these hangars. And I tell the commander, I said, look, I venture out and go to the other side of this eventual base, right, and there's some buildings over there and everything.
Speaker 2:I'm like, hey, why don't we move over here? So I go back, tell the commander, 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 up inside this hangar and all of these hangars, right, just not sustainable, right. So we got to move. I came back and tell him that. So I take him over there and show him. Guess what he says this place is dirty. Oh, blah, blah, blah. I'm like this big old building. All you see is dirt on the floor, dirt and broken glass. So, okay, I let another seven days go by, I take someone back over here to clean up that building. Then I take them back over here. Oh, okay, we can move this. Yeah, this is nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this priority is messed up. That's what I think.
Speaker 2:Holy cow. So I used to kid my dad, like it'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 a building. We eventually get water put on the roof and something I don't want to say running water, but you have something going on. Right, we build some showers outside, 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.
Speaker 2:We get the, this dirt area near this big old building which ended up being our headquarters. We could sleep in like the headquarters. People slept in there, not the headquarters people. I say the like me, the commander, xo3, assistant threes there were some rooms for that drivers and then, if they weren't at that, like, there's all kinds of places right around it. There's a big area out there. We get gravel laid down, get the I don't know what you're calling it, but the like they still had things to create a landing pad for the helicopters. Oh yeah. Yeah, that's out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and now we're hosting like the division would have their commander navigate commander office call an office call. But there are meetings, like everybody wanted to come up there. Yeah, everybody wanted to come to that. So it's kind of funny. You pick it with everybody. Yeah, it's up to you, we'd still be in the hangar.
Speaker 1:Right, no one would want to come visit you.
Speaker 2:No one would come. Yeah, painted the headquarters, put our 101st screaming dude going in there and bass throwing all 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'd take our first casualties. It's at night and like an RPG they were hitting. Rpg V was took out, took out four people, so that hit hard. That was a. That was our first first casualties and I remember I was the first casualties and any division I don't think it was that, I can't remember, but definitely the first for us. Then we lost a kid, seven MCS Reds, four or five in a helicopter that was shot down and then the two in the attack that happened in Kuwait?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it was 11 total, whatever that math is. So is this a good point to talk about what happened in Kuwait?
Speaker 2: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 if someone, so we're going to talk about it. If someone wants to read, that is that you can get that at like Amazon.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, all right. So yeah, let's talk about what happened, because I remember this, but I mean I've never talked to anybody who knew anything about it. So what happened and, kind of, what did we learn from it? Let's talk about what happened first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so in the day four camp we were in Kuwait at this intermediate staging base and probably been there about 20 days or so, some a few days longer.
Speaker 2:And so it's March 22nd and the unit that was there before us had a television and it was in the command tent where myself, the executive officer, slept. So I had watched golf. I figured out how to get into American golf. I had watched golf the two previous days. It's the week of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, which I think was called it was something else at that time, different name of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, which I think was called the it was something else at that time, different name. Anyway, so the Thursday night I watched a big Tiger Woods fan. I watched him play that night and then Friday night I was watching but I fell asleep in a chair right in front of him. So now it's Saturday, so we had finished putting the final touches on our plans to cross the border to invade Iraq and at that particular time we were scheduled to go in at Thursday, so about five days away. But the plans are done, unless something changes or we get an update, have to augment or whatever it's done.
Speaker 2:Commander goes to sleep about 2,200 hours. First time he went to bed that early the whole time we were there and, um, I had, uh, went to the little shop at thing to buy me, buy me some snacks. So I got some snacks and everything. Watching tigers back at the field. I think we're probably not playing for the right and anyway, our ammo comes in a little bit early that day, right before sundown, the ammo comes and the time commanders make a decision they can guard it or they can hand it out in the dark if they want to Put some vehicle lights on or whatever. Oh, wait until the morning. So I remember my driver bringing me ammo, the 9mm ammo. So I'm going to sit there, I'm going to eat some snacks, watch the tiger, play golf, load ammo and I think I'm doing some bill pay. Yeah, multitasking be up to 4 o'clock watching golf, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, was when I was sitting, was a few feet from the entrance of the vestibule as you're going out, and it had the tent flaps there, right. So this is March and it's still cold at night. Got my little fleece jacket on so the wind would blow and that tent flap would scrape up against the floor. Just kind of looking. It's that again. Then it does it again and I'm sitting at the end of this table and I see these sparks. So I'm sitting at the end and I can see everything on the floor and this thing comes in and it's right up against the tip wall that's in front of me. It's probably about four and a half five feet away and I see these sparks and I say that my thought is we're in the land of not quite right and that's a not quite right grenade that's sparking before it blows.
Speaker 2:So I get up and I take a new officer in there as well. He's on the other side of the table. I know he can see what I can see from this side. He can see cause he's on that side. So I'm not worried about his actions.
Speaker 2: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 there working, there's a fluorescent light there, you know, bright as day. Right by the time I get to the back of the tent it's pitch dark, can't see nothing. Get him up, say hey, gotta get out of here. There's a grenade about to explode in front. So he didn't know what's going on.
Speaker 2:You know, looks up, gets his boots on, so I'm gonna count to three and we're gonna run. So I count to three, I position us in the middle. You know the aisle there. Now he's all the way in the back, has the whole back part to himself. You know, um, you know it's a temper tent, so it has the air conditioning unit in the back and then things all tied up, you can't get out the back, so we have to go out the front. So I got the three, we start running down and go the aisle.
Speaker 2:I make it outside and Realize he's not there. 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 some type 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, cock it, attempt to cock it, and you know I got nothing.
Speaker 2:So I had been loaded ammo, I had my weapon, I had been loaded magazines, I should say. And so I had my weapon and my holster that had a magazine in it, but no, rounds hadn't gotten that far yet, okay. So I hear this gunshot, I pulled a handle to the rear. There's no animal in there, so you get not right. So I'm screwed. So you know they say you don't bring a knife to a gunfight, you don't bring a non-functional weapon to a gunfight, you don't bring a gun with no bullets, right. So in that gunshot I hear a yell and I know that Dexil has been shot. I hear a yell and I know that the XO has been shot. So I gotta figure out how I'm gonna defend myself and him and find the commander.
Speaker 2:So my solution is go to the top. They have to have a weapon and ammo. So I run in there, holler for M4 and ammo and not. So while they're getting that, I'm positioning people at the inches that I came in, as well as throughout the talk, and I'm kicking the chair cursing the guards. I had gone out to the guard towers previously a few nights to check on them, make sure they were doing the right thing and they weren't. Now, this can't I tell people. It was ten football fields big, but actually bigger than that, I can't even describe it. And all around it is a 12 foot burn of sand and then constituted a wire above that. Everyone trying to infiltrate would have to come up that sand somehow without sinking all the way in. They'd climb the wire somehow without the guards seeing them Right. But this has to be insurgents and the guards had to have fallen asleep for them to infiltrate.
Speaker 2:So I finally get the weapon and the nods and the ammo. You know, I'm locked and loaded and I'm back out of the tent. I'm back out of the top, headed to my tent to find the commander and the executive officer and it does not. It's not worth the darn. You need the sliver of a star and there's nothing. So you get to the tent and they're not there. You know I'm calling for them again. The low tone is not there. You know I'm calling for them Again. The motel is not there and like no one is outside but me, like there's no, our people aren't out there, the enemy's not out there, like nobody's out there. But I know we got to find, you know, both of these the enemy and them. So I go back to the top, tell someone to go look for the commander and the XO while I look for the enemy, because no one was out there.
Speaker 2:I could go on the radio and I called my previous unit no slack because they had been there. I mean, we had three infantry battalions. There's 5,000 people in this camp, 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 in the vicinity of the top. So he said, okay, send them right over. And then I walk away from the radio, so go back out. And then someone comes over the radio and says, hey, do you need an FLA? Well, I know one person's shot. So I say yes, send it in the vicinity of the talk and I go back out, then I'm challenged immediately. You know Halt, who's there, and I recognize the voice of the guy I served with for 14 years prior and he says so maybe what's going on? I don't know, maybe Romaine has been shot. He said well, so has Captain Seifert. Um, he said what happened to the lights? I said I don't know. So the lights that had been out there had been off. I didn't even think about that. So in those two quick trips, those two quick trips, I learned later that a grenade had been thrown in our tent and that's why the commander went out, because the grenade came in and knocked him back into his sleeping area, and now he's out somewhere.
Speaker 2:The grenade had been thrown into the second tent and because of the explosion in the first tent and the gunshot, they had begun to stand up. So a grenade explodes at a 15 degree radius. So if you're above 14, if you're above 14, you're probably going to get hit. If you're below 14, you might be okay. And I said it exploded at 15, and I'm saying being below the 14 because one guy in the second tank got trapped on his feet. He was laying down, so that 15 degrees, not as high as you would think. So the ones who were standing out, 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 outside. So a grenade had been rolled into their tent and after that one person was shot in the back. So imagine them coming out when the grenade goes in. They're already out After the grenade goes in, then they're shot in the back. Whoever shot it ran off. So one person in the third tent was on his way out, realized he didn't have ammo, went back to get his ammo and when he started to come out that grenade that was going into the third tent exploded 17 inches from where he was standing, obviously throwing some assault in the air.
Speaker 2:So now we've got several casualties in tent number two and tent number three, like massive casualties. The fourth tent was the NCOs. The first again the first tent, myself, the commander, the executive officer, tent number two and three. Tent number two had mages and some captains. Tent number three had all captains, a couple of tents. So those two tents are the focus of the CCP, the Caj collection boy, but those who don't know, and the triage begins. The 4th 10 had NCOs in it. They're coming out and they're putting people in bunkers and getting their areas secure.
Speaker 2:By now I'm doing the same thing.
Speaker 2:They're coming out and I'm putting them on the perimeter that ties into these Texas barriers. Now these Texas barriers are a total few times what we call Texas Right. So all that's taking place the treatment of the casualties and triaging them and getting them on FLAs to take to the local aid station that's on the camp is happening at the same time while we're looking for the enemy. So I go back in the talk and say something had to have changed in this camp, being all these 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 go find them.
Speaker 2:So we locate the interpreters. Then we got them on the ground, hands behind their head, m4s 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 with this. So now we're back to square one, looking for the insurgents that we have no sign of, and I'm thinking if these guys can come in here, create all this chaos, then we're gonna get annihilated. We're gonna go to Iraq, we're gonna cross that border. In a few days we're gonna get wore out. Our intel is horrible on their fighting capability.
Speaker 2:And this is the beginning of your war, yeah, yeah. Two days prior, the shock and awe happened in Baghdad. I call it bombs on Baghdad. That happened, yeah. So we're looking for insurgents with no sign. The first medevac helicopter lands catatruz and lunar under that. It's making a one minute flight to the hospital. That's about a minute away, 500 meters. And as soon as that lifts off, the second one lands to be loaded. While that's being loaded, or as it's being loaded and it begins to lift off, there's a huge explosion in the sky. And now we think it's a huge explosion in the sky and now we think we're. It's a coordinated attack, like they're attacking us from the air and on the ground.
Speaker 2:I have to fast forward to that explosion that a picture bag is assigned to division. They hear explosions and gunshots and all that. They spot on their radar a fast moving object coming in through the sky. So they think it's a Scud and shoot it down. It ended up being a British fighter jet returning from a mission. So they wipe that jet out, as well as his crew, but we put it to the ground.
Speaker 2:We're still about to square one of where they had all the insurgents, so the commander and XO ended up being helping with other casualties, even though XO had been shot. So at the end of the vestibule he had his pistol out. Just right at the end he got shot in the hand which went through the other hand and then went through his leg. So he's bleeding from all three of those wounds and helping other casualties at the same time. And the commander so the commander from the grenade blast had knocked him back into a sleeping area. He had his arms bleeding. He ended up having just two pieces of shrapnel in his arms. That's what flying razor blades does. So he's in a talk and he says we need to get a calendar of personnel. We make that call over the radio and we learn that a Sergeant Akbar is missing. So are grenades and ammunition. Now most of them are in the headquarters. Like who's Akbar? Now we know who he's assigned to over there.
Speaker 2:So, engineer that's assigned to our second battalion. He was on guard duty guarding their ammo that they were handing out. The next morning, the private that was on guard duty with him. He told him to go to sleep. I'll take him until we're relieved. He used that time to start opening up a place of ammo as well as fragmentary grenades and incendiary grenades. Now, where that battalion was located on the camp was at least 300 meters from the brigade air force. So what he had done was open up those crates, take out ammo and grenades, come all the way across the desert 300 meters to attack the headquarters, not the 800 plus people that was in that battalion. That would have been slim easy pickings, slim easy pickings, right. But he had a mentality to take out the head, the body would follow him, take out the headquarters and then the disposition, demeanor, attitude of the soldiers assigned to the overall unit would falter, right.
Speaker 2:So once we learned that it's him, myself and the intel officer commodity brigade headquarters had a talk at the same time. Keep him going around all night, going to bunkers, checking on people. Who do we have here, walking around with a pistol in his hand, who's in the bunker, giving him some instructions. Moving to the next one, I had been putting soldiers in security positions throughout the perimeter, checking back and forth inside, etc. Looking for an enemy, at the same time trying to prevent friendly fire, but we come out of the top once we know it's Sarnak enemy. At the same time Trying to prevent friendly fire, but we come out of the top once we went and saw an outbar. At the same time he realized there was a bunker that he hadn't gone to.
Speaker 2:I go start telling our leadership who we're looking for. And you know, he's wearing the same thing we are. And I remember the first time I said, wait a minute, you mean it's one of our own? I'm like, yeah, that's what we know so far. You can go tell soldiers whatever you want to tell them in that regard. I don't know what to tell them in terms of what I want.
Speaker 2:So the intelligence officer goes to that bunker. Again, he's walking around with his pistol and he says as he approaches what do we have here? And the response is it's on Akbar. Akbar didn't know we were looking for him and another person in the bunker says who he is. I realize Akbar has done his attack. Now he's in the bunker with a fellow soldier but does nothing to him, and that was the second bunker he had gone to after the attack. The other one was full. A female took charge in that bunker and she was trying to get accountability and personnel in that bunker Names etc. And ask him, but he didn't respond. Now she knew she didn't recognize him. Yeah, and he wouldn't tell her his name and she just gave up.
Speaker 2:But after two grenades you're in the first tent gunshot Grenade. Second tent Grenade. Third tent gunshot. Now he's in a bunker with people, do nothing. Elkwich still has his weapon and he has fire grenades. So he leaves that and goes to another bunker. Now he's in this one with just one other person Anyway. So the intelligence officers ask who's there? Since I'm not barred, he holsters his weapon, keeps walking toward the bunker and then he takes it down. So that's how Akbar's apprehended.
Speaker 2:I had been, you know, walking around all night, still no ammo, my fleece jacket on, still no ammo, my fleece jacket on. So once he was apprehended I took the time to go get, look at my gear and ammo and all that stuff come back, and so now they have him down his flex cuff. But when I went to my tent I noticed that there was a piece of expanded brass right on the outside which obviously was from when he shot the XO. The colors in the tent are destroyed, burned out, so that first object that came in the spark was an incendiary grenade. And now I can see, see where the frag grenade blew up and my whole sleeping area was all trap holes, like my baby sack had holes on, like my Swiss cheese, worcester Swiss cheese and creamer holes.
Speaker 2:The tent wall that was right at my head full of holes. I had these grimoire holes. The tent wall that was right at my head full of holes. I had this wall locker there that someone found in the desert and said, hey, somebody gotta find your wall locker. The wall locker was shattered. Excuse me, wall locker was shattered, but my whole sleeping area was all just so had I been sleeping out watching Tiger Woods play golf then I wouldn't be sitting here in front of you. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's pretty heavy. So had I been sleeping out watching Tiger Woods play golf, then I wouldn't be sitting here in front of you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's pretty heavy. Yeah, I mean, if I'm going to be a military guy, I'm going to make a joke right now and say you're a Tiger Wooden note and say you saved my life. I said Tiger Woods, a book that was a long time ago so, yeah, I mean it has to make you think like everything happens for a reason. Right, you weren't in your bunk at that time. Yeah. You know, there's some other things you have to accomplish in your life before it's your turn. Right, yeah, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So very poignant and very true. And yeah, the first night I was watching I was awake watching the whole thing. Second night I fell asleep in a chair right where everything would have been. Yeah, third night I'm prepped to watch another thing Got your stacks, got your and not sleep, yeah. So think about this Incendiary grenade, frag grenade gunshot first.
Speaker 2:10. This incendiary grenade, frag grenade gunshot first time private. A second time frag grenade, third time gunshot outside the frag grenade came in. Incendiary, incendiary grenade came in first when we apprehended him. We apprehended him. He had in his protective mask carrier five more grenades three frag, two incendiary. I think.
Speaker 2:When he threw that first incendiary grenade he realized it wasn't an explosion. It was like, oops, I threw the wrong one. He didn't throw another incendiary all night. So we talked about, had I been asleep, what would happen had he not screwed up the grenades and I say screwed up because he didn't throw another one then I'd have never saw the sparks and I still wouldn't. We sit here talking to Right, you wouldn't have heard the warning at all, right, right, it might have made a different sound on the floor, but I didn't really hear the sound, that certain flat move and then sparks. So we apprehend him.
Speaker 2:I go to my tank and my gear. I come back and I'm pissed because I see my whole stupid area blown up and like that could have been me, like I want to do something to him. I go back over there with the intent of doing something to him and as I get ready to do my something, here come some 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 they saved my career or life, I don't know which one.
Speaker 1:they did Probably a mutual thing there. They probably saved their careers as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I don't think they were going to do what I was going to do, right? Yeah, yeah, I wasn't just going to holler at you did, yeah, anyway. So that blew that plan. So one of the guys says you know, here's his weapon. So I take his weapon and I smell it, see if it's been recently fired and it had. And then he says well, here are the grenades. What do you want me to do with them? I said just leave them in the bunker. If they blow up in a bird nest, right place for them in the bunker, right.
Speaker 2:So I take the weapon and I put it on safe, but I don't clear it. I don't want to disturb the rounds. Great, take the weapon back over to where that expanded brass was. I found in front of my tent and I put a guard on it and said don't you leave. I'm the only person that can relieve, because I knew that if that weapon with that magazine and those rounds and that expended brass came from that, that those doted would match. So I just wanted that there in guard, right? So now we have evidence. Thank, csi for that.
Speaker 2:Thanks for watching me sometimes. So he's taken over to you know. Remove from that particular area, away from everybody. I could hear one of our guys saying like, why did you do this? And he had asked him before. But as soon as he started to answer, he told me to shut up. So he asked him again. He said well, you told me not to answer. Well, you told me to shut up before. No, I'll answer this time. And he says to keep y'all from killing our women and raping our children, our women and raping our children and I did?
Speaker 2:I didn't. I couldn't connect the dots of what all you are meant. What the hell are you talking about? Our right doesn't even work. Didn't take the same oath that I did. Yeah, so what he meant was he was of Muslim faith and that's 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 years after the fact at the trial? They had kept the diary and his diary. I have to read this because it'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.
Speaker 2:I do not like the military. They have too much control over people's lives. I suppose I am just anti-government. A Muslim should see himself as a Muslim only. His loyalty should be to Islam only. Now, before I read the next one, it's important for me to point out that religion doesn't pull the trigger People do. They become radicalized, they become extremists and then they take action. That's just how it works, no matter what it is. It doesn't have to be a religious belief or religious ideology, it's just whatever they feel the theory is, but religion doesn't pull the trigger.
Speaker 1:The actions. I just want to be clear the actions of one Muslim person does not mean that that's how every Muslim person is Correct.
Speaker 2: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 the enemy and dealt with accordingly. 1996, destroying America was my plan as a child and as a juvenile and in college. My life will not be complete unless America is destroyed. Destroying America is my greatest goal. 1998, he joins the army. So a plan In February 2003,. Remember, we go over here late February, early March. I'm not going to do anything as long as I stay here, which is Fort Campbell, but as soon as I am in Iraq I'm going to try to kill as many of them as possible.
Speaker 2:So there was nothing that happened that night that we had a clue to. Social media wasn't like it is today, although he did post it on there. So it wouldn't have been nothing that we would have seen ahead of time if he didn't verbally say any of these things 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'm going to kill him. We didn't know that last entry at all. So what was present? Now we know he wasn't the best soldier of some standard. He was still a soldier. He wasn't demoted as a result of it Not performing in a position as a sergeant. So what was there? So that always bothered me Was it him not playing in reindeer games, as I call it?
Speaker 2:So if all the platoons over here are doing whatever, or the squad or sections over here are doing whatever football whatever and he's not in that environment in Kuwait football whatever, and he's not In that environment in Kuwait, that's something I'm not saying it happened, 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 as a problem. But it as a problem. But is it a problem at home? Mother could be sick, mother could have just been diagnosed, wife could have been, or whatever. Okay, wasn't married, so it wouldn't have been that, Something along those lines. That should be the first daughter of a leader that's closest to her.
Speaker 2:Or I'm just scared as hell to go fight this war. My point is that happening begs a question. Someone exhibiting this behavior that's a little odd. That you're not joining in reindeer games. It begs a question, why? What's wrong? And he might have said, or let's just say in a situation like that, the person could say I'm scared to go fight. This is happening at home, whatever. But if that's being presented and your leadership ignores it and it doesn't go ask, then you miss an opportunity to fix something, maybe save someone's life or whatever. So it always bothered me that there had to be some sign. The sign wasn't going to be I'm going to try to kill him, so the animal's gone. He didn't know an animal was gone, but what was there? So that always bothered me. So that's part of the reason why I wrote the book.
Speaker 2:I knew the world didn't know about this story. I thought the world should know about this story, not just because it's my soldiers, that's a huge part of it. I wanted the world to know that this happened Right, that someone can actually use the military to create an attack like this. And this is way back long before you know school shootings was routine, long before people in the military were trying to do this Right. So we set a precedence that the military, in the end, still hadn't really fixed. As a result, continues to happen Six years later, and you know the attack happening in Florida, texas. Same ideology, same reason for being radicalized, same reason for being extremist. He saw someone do it and complete it, and once they get away with it. They did it and pulled it off. I should say so I can too, for the same reason, because the military didn't learn their lesson.
Speaker 1:So why not, let me toss a little, let me play devil's advocate here In listening to this because I haven't read the book yet but just in listening to this and then when we look at what happened on 9-11, and when I look at what happened when I was deployed, the one thing I can say is that our enemies are very patient. They're so patient, in fact, that there might not be a sign. Because if you look at these two soldiers in particular, they had been in the military for a while and had assimilated, had been in the military for a while and had assimilated, you know, I mean like not assimilated, because they hadn't lost their, their beliefs and they knew what they wanted to do. But when you look at that diary I mean we're talking years like this guy was so patient that maybe there just wasn't a sign. And I equate it really to my experience with um, with veteran suicide.
Speaker 1:But so many times we sit back and go, well, gosh, you know, we should have seen something. The problem is there's not always 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 we could do a better job in both arenas, especially the veteran suicide arena. But my point is that we always want to think that there was something we could have done or something we could have seen, and I would argue that sometimes there's not. I mean, we look back at 9-11. Yeah, there's some things we should have seen Some guys overstayed their visas or whatever but that's just how it was.
Speaker 1:There wasn't this giant warning flashing that this is going to happen, and I don't think that that's what happened here. I think this guy was so patient and had planned it so well that even if someone would ask him that question, he'd have a reason. You know what I mean. Yeah, that's just my viewpoint. I just, you know Now, he didn't play in reindeer games, some of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess my point about the reindeer games is it begs a question. Yes, now you wouldn't gonna say that I'm gonna kill you in a couple days. That's why. But this, this consistency is not playing in a reindeer games has to be inquired about In an attempt to mitigate it. Or, more importantly, watch him, not for this, just watch him. Something's going on with him. That's what I mean. But if you're not experienced as a leader, just young, whatever, maybe you didn't want him in the reindeer games in the first place, so you didn't inquire about it. You really didn't want him over there, so you never even asked.
Speaker 1:But that's a problem too. That's a leadership problem. That's a definite leadership problem.
Speaker 2:Maybe this guy doesn't go and throw grenades and shoot up his own unit, but maybe there's something else going on and something else happens and to the point where, if that was the case, with that leadership with him, he didn't try to hurt them, right, he knew who he wanted to hurt them Right, he knew who he wanted to hurt.
Speaker 2:He knew my name by virtue of hell. It's on your wall in your company. So you know right, and you know the commander, you know the executive. The people you hurt, aside from the commander, you didn't know them, right, you walked 300 yards across the desert floor to hurt them. But the people you may not like, for whatever reason, even though you already said you're going to kill as many as possible, you didn't even start with them, right?
Speaker 1:It's easy to kill people you don't know Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the attacker at Fort Hood, nadell Hassan. He had applauded the acts of 9-1-1. Right. People who he served with had watched the read, said that, but that didn't. That was a sign that they didn't do anything about Right. You think about that time, that day, on that day, the days to follow, even now, that someone applauded that and you told nobody until after you kill people? You know six years I'm sorry to do my math for eight years later. All right, now you want to tell yeah.
Speaker 2:So it always bugged me that there was a sign and I wanted people to know about the story. But the key thing in the book you get a twofer, and not just this story that I want people to know about, and that he set the groundwork for this to happen again and again, not just in the military, but a whole bunch of places that I came up with these strategies to mitigate an attack like this from happening again. When I was sitting down writing a book, I contacted a publisher and said they wanted a book proposal. I had to quickly Google that to figure that out. The email in the back said give me a week. I created a proposal and sent it to them. In the proposal I write that if the military keeps doing what they're doing, they're going to keep getting what they're getting. It'll happen again if you don't make some changes, not manifesting it. And that was in 2008. I wrote that Before the attack happened in 2009. It was inevitable and for the same, reason you needed to have done something.
Speaker 1:If you keep doing the same thing over and over again, you get the same result over and over again. They did nothing with this attack.
Speaker 2:Like. Still to this day, they haven't called it anything Like nothing. Terrorism is what I would call it personally. That's what everybody should call it. The army has it. That's what it is. Yeah, they almost have abstinence against the word for this attack.
Speaker 1: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 very reluctant to call it a terrorist attack until way later in the investigation. What was clear to me sitting on my couch? That's a terrorist attack.
Speaker 2:I know one when I see one. Yeah, it's. I agree with you. I think some entities, they are breaking down the word for what they want it to be versus what Webster says. It's very simple. What Webster says and you look at that and say this attack is that If people are terrorized, it's pretty simple. I think we're afraid to put labels on people today. You don't want to label people, but when it's a terrorist attack it is. It walks like a duck and quacks like a duck. It's a duck If I look at the military alone, where they allow that word to be used for something that they want it to be used for something that they wanted to be.
Speaker 2:In 2021, a Coast Guard officer disliked the Democratic Party so much that he made a hit list and he was taking out Nancy Pelosi, aco I can't remember all the names and he just put them on a list to take out. He did research to see if they had government security or not. And his house. In his house he had like a bunker of I forget how much ammunition and weaponry he had Right a bunker of I forget how much ammunition and weaponry he had Right, but more than enough. He could have took out all of Congress, if I should say it right here, he could have done anything he wanted to with as much ammo and weapons that he had.
Speaker 2:How he got caught was he was using his government computer to look up certain things. That's how he got caught. Was he was using his government computer to look up certain things. That's how he got caught a Coast Guard officer. He served in the Army and now he's an officer in the Coast Guard. But that's how he got caught. But they say a terrorist attack was foiled and I'm thinking, okay, so now it's a. But they say a terrorist attack was foiled and I'm thinking, okay, so now it's a foiled terrorist attack, just because some guy made a list. Let me think about this. So he wrote something down and said what he was going to do, 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 conveniently used for whatever reason.
Speaker 1:Someone is using it For whatever purpose, if it serves the purpose we're going to call that person right.
Speaker 2:So in the book to help people out and try to yeah, so they can mitigate this from happening in their space. I put these strategies in there now. First is trust no one. So I say trust no one. So I don't know what goes through your mind when I say that. Maybe it's a little bit different. But when I say, say it to the audience, and I'm speaking at schools or I'm speaking at organizations or whatever, and I start on these strategies and I say trust no one, I know they're going to think in their mind well, you've got to trust somebody, or I trust this way, or whatever. What I want them to think about is how they trust, because some people say, well, I trust people and tell you the reason not to, and I'm thinking, well, one gone, right. But I can't shake their trust. All I can do is tell them the story and then say trust no one. They can think about how they do it. Think about how you do it, because I trust it.
Speaker 2:I wear the same uniform as people. I sit the same uniform as people. I'd sit in the same branch of service as everybody else and others. I raised my hand, just like they did and took a note, and that backfired. In fact it would have killed me had I been in different places. So trust, man, that's out of work. I mean, I don't know what you need, you got to show me. But whatever you think you have to show me, you have to do it over and over and over and over and over, and then I'll give you a little bit of something that if I give it to you and you mess it up, it won't even matter. Trust is earned by giving away, that's right.
Speaker 1:For some people.
Speaker 2:Some people will say what I just told you, that I trust them until they give me a reason not to.
Speaker 1:What if that reason is a bullet or a hand? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So from this attack and I'll get to the rest of the strategies in a minute I learned that we don't go home with people at night, so we don't know what they're writing in their diary. No profession level of education, audiology or religion is above reproach. There is no profile. An insider threat is closer than anything. That's my takeaway and for the audience, they need to think about that as well. But in addition to that, if this happened inside the close knit brotherhood of the armed forces, it can happen in any campus community organization, at any time, anywhere. Begin to embrace that domestic terrorism is not a new reality and it's not.
Speaker 1:I want to be clear anywhere, begin to embrace that domestic terrorism is not a reality, and it's not. I want to be clear. I want to ask for some clarification. Yeah, and I think what you're saying at least what I'm hearing is it's not a Muslim, it's not a white supremacist, it's not this or that. It could be anyone of any religious belief, of any ethnic background. There's no, it's not a. It is truly an equal opportunity employer when it comes to terrorism.
Speaker 2:There's no profile.
Speaker 1:There's not.
Speaker 2:So don't look at religion, don't look at the level of education, don't look at the ideology, it doesn't matter. You start putting it in this box, then that other box will get you. Yeah, you don't miss something, that's right. You start looking for people who committed an attack on 9-1-1, then someone who looks like me or, more importantly, someone I bar, gets you Right Because you focused on something else.
Speaker 1:Right, I think you can go all the way back to the 70s, when Iran took our hostages and there were people from different ethnic backgrounds.
Speaker 1:Like I recall, I worked for a guy named Eddie. He was Lebanese. He actually bought a t-shirt that said no, I'm not, I'm Lebanese, because he was being harassed as a Lebanese person. But there were other things going on in the country that had nothing to do with people who were brown. Right, it had a lot to do with people who look differently and so no, I, yeah, once you focus and put the blinders on them to one spot, the other spot does definitely come again. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So trust, no one observe listen and report and put the blinders on under one spot. The other spot does not wanna come and get you. Yeah, yeah. So trust no one. Observe, listen and report. Know your neighbor, and I don't mean just me. By your house, I mean fellow student, your fellow coworker, any environment you're in, especially ones that you frequent. Know it. Listen, don't just hear. And your gut, when your gut starts talking to you, telling you that something don't look right well, something don't look right.
Speaker 2:Something don't sound right, which means something likely isn't. Your gut's telling you that that's strong. You listen to your gut Now. I never advocate for people to get in between the potential attacker, but that's what we need to report. That's what we need to call somebody who handles this, not you.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, you talk about trusting your gut. When I was going to school, I learned that that's actually a physiology thing, that when people say they felt it in their gut or they had a feeling about something, there's actually like medical science behind why you should listen to that, which I didn't know. I just thought it was like an old wives tale. But you're right, how many times have you not listened to your gut and then something bad happened? So I think that that's to me intuition. Yeah, it's very important.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's talking to you all the time. Are you going to ignore it? That's the thing and it's telling you to do something, or the tone that you see something danger close and what you're gonna do with it right?
Speaker 1:yeah, maybe maybe, having been in the military for as long as you and I were, we look at that differently, maybe than some other people, but I trust my gut. I'm not going down that street or I'm not going to that party. Whatever it is, I'm not doing it and I'm going to talk to somebody about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah and for people who haven't served. When something happens and someone close to it neighbor or whatever is interviewed, what do you hear them say I knew what you do. You did nothing, but I always knew. That's what you hear them say all the time. That's all these tactics. The same thing is said. The same thing is said when the school shooting happens.
Speaker 2:I never thought it was going to happen here. It's a copycat world. Someone else has done this. They look at that and they try to up it one. You know, let me kill one more. We kill five more. So I go down as this particular modern right.
Speaker 2:So there's this thing called a proximity illusion. The closer you are to it, the more you think it ain't gonna happen. You're in disbelief even of these attackers. They're parents, not my son, not my nephew, not my cousin, but they saw all these things we're talking about and these strategies Mainly the last one of 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 proximity illusion that says can't be so. Then the school shooting goes down, and it's just 16 year old, son, son, whatever. I just thought I sound something like that. I never. I mean a lot, I just forgot to lock up the gun that particular time. I I never. It's that, but I am a fix. Those dead people it was wounded people Because he's gone for life, the ones who survived. But the proximity illusion says I don't see it and I don't hear it.
Speaker 1:You know this is nothing new, right? Because you know where you're at right now. We're in Bath Township. You know what happened in Bath Township in the 1920s the worst mass school killing in history. And I and I bet there was a lot of people who saw that coming but didn't say there, didn't think this guy was gonna do anything right, school, yeah. So absolutely, we have about 40 minutes left. Oh, we don't have to take the whole 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 up on the book and then talk about your transition from the military, 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've been doing since, clearly, you've written a book. And then I'm going to ask you you know what advice do you have for people? So I'll ask you know, when people are listening to this year, what message do you have for? Them.
Speaker 1:You know, when you said don't trust anybody, it reminds me when I was deployed. Our motto was trust no one, admit nothing and make counter-accusation. That was how we looked at it yeah yeah, all right, okay, so I'll talk about the book. So one more time, if you wanted to go through those strategies, what were the strategies that you're telling our audience?
Speaker 2: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, I have stories for each one of those strategies. So you know, say like that, it may not hit home, it may or may not, but when I start telling you the stories associated with it, how to employ a business story, it becomes a little more clear. So, talked about that trust. No one reserve, listen, report.
Speaker 2:I was a. I was a property manager. Apartment building I got it right after I got it on a couple years after. And apartment building right I took out it right after I got it on a couple years after. And apartment building right across the street from UCLA 60 units occupied, one, two occupied by teachers and the rest were students. So I don't know like running the barracks Assault rate in Chicago was simply in the barracks. When people have to pay money, okay, this could be good or bad, yeah, that's right, that's right. But the parents it was like them dropping them off to somebody. They entrusted their child to me in this apartment building, barracks thing, right. So I first took over.
Speaker 2:I come out of a door and I realized this light isn't on. So I go back in, come out another door lights not on. So I say, okay, let me start writing these things down. I was probably in the job for a couple of weeks, right? Just never had gone outside at that hour until the lights were out. So I start writing stuff down, go out another door, come back out different viewpoint, do some more writing. But I say to myself if someone is watching me right now, this should be suspicious behavior. So it was Casey. So I go back in again now start doing the interior lights.
Speaker 2:So when I make a new one, I make one order and get up on the fifth floor here freeze, oh you know what that means. Right floor. I hear freeze, oh man, you know what that means, right. So I hear the voice behind me. It sounds younger than mine. I said, okay, I hope there be no 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 get handcuffed. So they said, well, you fit the description of someone that was calling. I said, no, I am the description because I already told myself right. So I get my ID. They see my military ID and see Sergeant Major. So they say, oh, they start calling me Sergeant Major after that and they take the handcuffs off. So I say I appreciate you coming quickly. I don't know why there's five of you with guns drawn for a person armed with a piece of paper and a pencil, but when I call you for something going on, I hope you come just as fast and with as much force.
Speaker 2:But the point is someone was observing and they reported Cause they were inside, they couldn't listen. Now mine went either side of that whole campus, on the other side, but on the side of the apartment building, flat house, flat house. I couldn't see no one looking at me. But, like I said, if someone is looking at me they should think this is suspicious behavior. So my point is they've done that right. The police didn't, the dispatcher didn't. They'd done that right. The police didn't, no, the dispatcher didn't.
Speaker 2:The person that saw me could not have escalated any higher than a person with a pen and paper. The know, your neighbors, just I mean we hear all the time after an attack, especially if it happens in your neighborhood or whatever or someone talking about either they confirm what their gut has told them of it being. I thought I saw something, or they had no idea. It's one or the other. He was right beside me. It could have been me. No, he decided to do whatever to neighbors five streets over or not in your neighborhood, and he's not. He seemed like a nice guy Like you. Hear it all oh yeah, Right, yeah yeah, streets over or not in your neighborhood and it's not.
Speaker 2:It seemed like a nice guy like you hear it all oh, yeah, right, yeah, yeah. Um, listen, don't just hear. College classroom, 19 year old sophomores, 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 go on and go on and there's a professor in there. Class goes on, but at the end of class one student comes to me. This is a military school, you know, so we have some jurisdiction where other schools may not. He comes to me and says so, I'm major, he was in class, I made you a, he was in class and so-and-so. We were talking about guns and so-and-so said he has an AK-47. And he says he has it in the trunk of his car. His car is right out there. I don't know what you're going to do with it, but I heard it and it sounded a matter of fact. So there you go. So Steven comes back, take him and 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 of my car.
Speaker 2:Now, that was ill-willed, was planned. He was supposed to make with a fellow student a day prior. This is a Monday. He's supposed to make up on a Sunday. The weapon was gonna be taken to 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 out there on the weekend and shoot, lock it back up again. They leave. But they missed link up the day prior. But instead of him coming to class and keeping his mouth shut, he had to say he had his AK-47. And it's in the trunk of my car.
Speaker 2:But all those people in the classroom, they didn't listen to that part, they were just hearing. But the one night Joe was listening and said it sounded a matter of fact. So if we're listening, we'll pick out the stuff that we need to pick out. If we hear the wife say, take out the trash, we'll let her out. If we hear your wife say, take out the trash, we'll let her say that five times so we can get ready to take it out. Or she throws it at us, what else? Yeah, it's going out, it's going out. But if you do it immediately. Okay, you were listening and complying right. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then we talked about the gun, and then we talked about the gun Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what I want to say about all that, before we wrap that up, is that you know you can do all of those things and a lot of times nothing's going to be wrong, but you may have prevented something. So, yeah, maybe he's got the AK-47 in his trunk and he's got you know it's all altruistic, like he wasn't going to do anything, but maybe something happens and now he's pissed and now he's got this gun in his trunk.
Speaker 1:So you don't know what you prevented. Sometimes and that's important to understand you had a pen and a paper. You were not a threat. Maybe the next guy is, or maybe you got a pen and a. You're not a threat right now, but something changes in the midst of what you're doing and now you are a threat. That's right. So people need to understand that You're not going to see probably 90% of the time you're not going to see a result from saying something. But you may have prevented something and you can't prove a negative. That's right. You can't prove negative.
Speaker 2: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's incarcerated. That's what he said. Sometimes things like that have to happen. But at his age, in the age of the fellow students he was talking to, it didn't resonate that there's something wrong with that. They heard it, but did they say that he? At least they heard it. They didn't tell anybody that they heard it until after this. Didn't tell anybody that they heard it until after. This dude is one of the Boston Marathon Bombers.
Speaker 1:Then it comes out Well, they weren't listening to what he said, right? You know, that listening part is something that we should be doing on a day-to-day basis, no matter what we're doing, right, because we should be actively listening to what people are saying right, and not just thinking of what our next thought is going to be.
Speaker 2:Or hanging around people who have something to say, so we can actively listen.
Speaker 1:That helps. Yeah, so you. The thing that gets me is that this happened at the beginning of your deployment. You make it through the rest of your deployment and then you redeploy home. How long were you in the military after this deployment before you retired?
Speaker 2:So I come back in 2004. I become the commandant of the In-Civil Academy about three months after that. I'm in that job for six, seven months, or something like that. Then I become the Division Sergeant Major. So I'm the Interim Division Sergeant Major. Then I don't get picked for that job and then I retire. So I retire in 2006. Okay, so I retired in 2006. Okay, so, immediately upon retirement I loaded the truck and moved close to Beverly. Literally, beverly was probably less than a mile away. Yeah, nice, yeah. Because I knew that I wanted to pursue acting and military technical advising. In fact, even before we went to Iraq, I was taking acting lessons in Nashville. I would go down on the weekends. On the weekends, I would go down.
Speaker 2:So I was already had more than one foot in the door and knew what I was going to do and even to be considered for the Division Sergeant Major, I was the last one to put my name on a list. I did Division Song at the time because they said what you gonna do and it was like the last day that you could do it. That I did it right Because I think in the back of my mind I thought, well, if I do this, I'm never gonna pursue the acting piece. But I put my name on it but I didn't get it. As a result, it's like you had said earlier about what was my life was saved for a reason. My life was saved to tell the story and to do this work. I fully believe that To be so close which, if I wasn't telling you I would think about that but I know that I would give my life and spirit for a reason to do this work and tell this, because no one is talking about these strategies, no one even aligns this attack to all these others in any manner, and I truly believe that I will saveate a mass shooting or insider threat attack in academic institutions, in the workplace, in places of worship. I would like for each of those entities to in the public as a whole to embrace the fact that these are insider threats.
Speaker 2:More than 90 percent are insider threats, meaning it than 90% are insider threats. Meaning it's a fellow student that's already going to the school. It's already a co-worker. People are just walking in off the street. The student at this school is going 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 a former student. They have some association with the school. More than 90% so it's an insider threat. The mass shooter is the result of the attack that just happened.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let that sink in. Yeah, let that sink in. So if someone listens to what you're saying, then there's a lot of preventable things that happen?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the education for that needs to be continuous. I venture to guess that every school has been trained on how to react to the active shooter. They know the run, the hide, the fight. They know that Most cases that's the extent of it, but it's not proactive. I'm talking about let's keep the bullets from flying in the first place, because they will tell you if you are being in a situation where that, because they will tell you if you are being situation aware, that teenager is going to tell you, that 21 year old college student is going to tell you in some way, shape or fashion based on the strategy that I was talking about. But if you're not situation aware, then don't know what to tell you I think we're missing that piece. Yeah.
Speaker 1:In all of the training we're missing that situational awareness piece.
Speaker 2:In academic institutions. It's not about me having a desire to go speak there, that's part of it. The biggest part is all of them workplace, academic institution as a whole. They are the first line of defense, right by employment situation or their strategy. They are the first line of defense. They're the closest to the would-be attacker, the eventual attacker. They become the first line of defense, 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 some money, that's part of it. Bringing a trainer for the run hide fight, that's part of it. But that's not the end of it.
Speaker 2:And any of those, like I talked about the proactive part, you have to have that part and I think in embracing it, if you truly want to save lives in that environment, then I have to be allowed to share this with students. I can smooth it over so it doesn't sound, you know, so bad for their psyche. They already know that it happened someplace else. Right, but I can smooth it over. But I think the person that has the ability to prevent it should be the person to hear it. But we can do train-the-trainer when we train the faculty and staff and let them deal with the student government and break it down somehow. But if the student knows some of this, they're better off, because it is the student who's telling the other student they're the ones that are talking.
Speaker 1:That's right, just like in the military, you're going to know someone who's talking to privates, exactly Because they're talking, they're going to tell you everything, and I'm afraid to tell them. Yeah, I know what's the best way to do that.
Speaker 2:Linkedin would be the fastest way. I'd love to come out and share this knowledge. I can do keynotes about it. I can do workshops about it. I can do other training. If you have a big organization Say you're an IBM you have different footprints. You do it at the headquarters, but it also needs to happen at those other footprints do you have a website, too, that people can go to?
Speaker 1:I do, it's barbelneckcom. Easy enough, yeah. So I mean it sounds like you know you've written a book and it sounds like you're pretty successful at what you do, and it sounds like you're pretty successful at what you do and it sounds like you have a plan going forward. You're not ready to just sit down and take your retirement, and we've talked about a lot of stuff over the last four and a half hours, but as we kind of wrap up our conversation today, I always ask people the same question at the end, and that is you know, 100 years from now, or five years from now, or 10 minutes from now, when someone's listening to this story in this conversation, what message do you want to leave with people?
Speaker 2:You know, in the first part we got to hear about Oral Womack's career and how he moved through it and how certain parts of it affected his life. More important than his leadership 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 of people to be the best they can be, which is those who haven't done it then know how fulfilling that can be. But it is very fulfilling and rewarding, even though you don't get something handed to you and they may never come to you and say you did have this particular impact, which is fine. But most people have the ability to bring that out of someone and, as it relates to the story, the reason to tell it was to show people how the inside dirt is close to anything I remember in the book inside to it, as close to anything I remember in the book.
Speaker 2:I had one there. We have met the enemy and it is us, 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 over here all the time than the person beside you or someone like them. We are the ones who do it. It's not this organization over here all the time, it's not this thing created or whatever. It's us. We are the ones doing it. That's what happened in this attack and it continued to happen in other times. The takeaway has to be a quote that I use because I think it tells everything as it relates to this security and safety. Part of no professional level of education, ideology or religion is a proper approach. There is no profile. The insider threat is closer than you think. All right, well, thank you.
Speaker 1: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 a half hours with me on a Friday afternoon part.
Speaker 2:This has been great. Yes, it has. Thank you.
