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.
Veterans Archives is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Please visit our website for more information. www.veteransarchives.org
Veterans Archives: Preserving the Stories of our Nations Heroes
From Desert Storm to African Shores: A Michael Scott's Journey Through Combat and Chaos
Michael Scott's military journey spans decades and continents, weaving through pivotal moments in world history. From witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall to clearing minefields in Desert Storm, his story captures both the extraordinary experiences of military service and the profound challenges of homecoming.
Growing up in small-town Michigan with a strong family military tradition, Michael felt destined for Army service from childhood. When he finally enlisted as a combat engineer, he found himself thrust into world-changing events. Stationed in Germany during the Cold War's final days, he watched history unfold as the Berlin Wall fell, even bringing home a piece of the concrete barrier that had symbolized global division for decades.
Just months later, Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait sent Michael to Saudi Arabia, where he experienced the chaos and brutality of combat firsthand. His raw, unflinching descriptions of clearing minefields, encountering enemy fire, and the devastating aftermath along the "Highway of Death" offer a rare glimpse into warfare's psychological impact. The image of finding a wedding dress amid the desert carnage became a haunting symbol of innocence lost.
Perhaps most compelling is Michael's honest portrayal of life after war. Returning home at just 21, he struggled to find meaning in civilian work after experiencing such intensity of purpose. "I joke around that in the Army I had this heightened sense of purpose. I was part of something bigger than myself. I came home pressing parts in a factory thinking: is this really my life now?"
After nearly two decades away from military service, Michael rejoined at age 40, serving in psychological operations in Africa – a "combat light" deployment that nonetheless carried its own unique challenges. Now working in human resources, he powerfully advocates for veterans finding their "team" – people who understand their experiences and with whom they can process trauma without judgment.
What emerges is a profound meditation on identity, purpose, and healing. Michael reminds us that while veterans are forever changed by their service, finding connection with others who understand can make all the difference in navigating life after war.
How do you support the veterans in your life? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.
Today is Wednesday, august 13th 2025. We're here with Michael Scott, who served the United States Army. So good morning, michael.
Speaker 2:Good morning. How are you today?
Speaker 1:Great Yourself.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you Good.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you could join me this morning. It's kind of early 8 o'clock, but military guys don't usually sleep in anyway, right?
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'd give my right arm, even on a Saturday morning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm up at 6 o'clock wandering around the house. No one's up until like 9, 10 o'clock, certainly All right. Well, let's start out really simple. When and where were you born?
Speaker 2:So I was born in West Branch, michigan. It's a couple hours north of Detroit, oglemaw County, very small, poor county. There's probably about 20,000 people that live in the entire county, so very rural Northern Michigan. I was born there, raised there and I was there until the time I joined the army.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you know it's interesting because sometimes I talk to people who were like born somewhere and then it's just they moved 20 different places. So it's kind of interesting to talk to someone who's like stayed in the same town for all that time. Talk to me about what it was like growing up in a small town.
Speaker 2:I think you know I didn't know any different. You know that was back in the 70s and 80s, so we didn't have the information we did. Now I didn't realize how small my world was. Later, after I joined the Army, it opened my eyes to a whole new world. But growing up there, my father had been in the Army. Both of my uncles had been in the Army as well. My grandfather had served in the Army in World War II. So to me it seemed like I always knew I was going in the army. I don't know when I made that decision, but as early as nine years old I remember seeing one of my dad's old CAC uniforms with the yellow stripes on the sleeve and thinking that was just the coolest thing in the world. My uncle had been in Vietnam and he used to wear his old field jacket with the first calf patch on his right shoulder. And you know, again, it was just to me it was just amazing. I didn't really understand much about it, other than I knew that's something I wanted to do.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's really in your family then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess you know. When I think back on it now, it's just what it meant to be a man to me was. You know, every man I knew that I respected had served in the Army. So it almost seemed like destiny to me that I would eventually join the Army.
Speaker 1:Okay, any brothers and sisters.
Speaker 2:I have three brothers. Two of them served as well. My older brother actually went in the air force, so he did nine years in the air force. I'm not sure why he chose that other than the army, but you know, I think he he knew he wanted to do something in the military as well. And then my little brother, half-brother. He went in the Army and he was an Apache pilot but just missed a rock. So he was a total of six years in, I believe.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, and where did you fit the packing order?
Speaker 2:So my older brother was the one that did the Air Force. He was three years older than me Then I was next. My stepbrother was a year younger. He did not serve, but my half-brother was nine years younger than me and he's the one that was the Apache pilot.
Speaker 1:Okay, so there wasn't really a point in time where there were like four little boys running around the house then.
Speaker 2:No, it was a very uh. You know we had the two different families uh, so it was just uh, mostly my older brother and myself with my mother most of the time okay, well, tell me about your mom uh, so she, she was just a working woman.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, she worked as a bank teller for pretty much her whole life, hard working. You know, I think she raised us to just be respectful and you know, I think she was proud of both my brother and I that we joined the military and that we did the things we did. So you know, it was tough, I think, because she was both mom and dad at the same time most of the time, but you know, she did the best she could. She wasn't educated, neither was my father. So, you know, I went to school later in life, but again, our world was just very small. So that was all we really knew at that time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so did your mom remarry at all? Uh, she never remarried, no, okay all right, and then, uh, tell me a little bit more about your father, and I know that he served in the military, but but what about him as you were growing up?
Speaker 2:so he. He had served uh with the 23rd 25th infantry division in uh, hawaii. So again to was. You know I had no concept of what that was, other than I wanted to do something similar to that. He was a radio operator in the military but after as long as I remember he worked for Consumers Energy. He was a lineman for years. You know so, just hardworking, good guy. He's a very devout Christian, you know so, good, strong morals. And you know, again, when I looked at his military service I was just super proud that my dad had served in the military and I wanted to be a lot like him.
Speaker 1:Okay. All right Now. How old were you when your parents split up then?
Speaker 2:I was just five, okay, so I was pretty young.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. How'd that impact, though, the rest of your growing up, do you think?
Speaker 2:Uh, it definitely caused I mean, anytime you have a broken home, it caused a rift in the family, but uh, I don't think it ever changed. You know what I wanted to do? Um, but it definitely it. I mean it had a had a strong impact on, uh, my own development as a young man. I think, um, I think I I kind of rebelled against everybody for the longest time and, um, the army helped me kind of reel some of that in eventually or at least refocus it, right yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, you don't really have a choice to be a rebel when you're an enlisted man, you know. So that's true.
Speaker 1:That's very true. So, um, you know, I know you were talking about how, uh, west branch is kind of a small uh town, not a lot of money there, but um, it sounds like both your parents worked, your dad worked for consumers energy. Did that give you a different lifestyle than some of your friends? Or I mean, how did that work out?
Speaker 2:I would say we were very middle of the road up there. You know, there were certainly people that had a lot less than we did and there were certainly people that had a lot more than we did, but you know, it isn't a place where people are known for having a lot of money. So even the people that had money, it's not, uh, not the kind of money you think of, um, but you know, I, I think again, we, just we didn't know any different. We, uh, we we'd go hunt rabbits and you know, uh, play on the railroad tracks and all the dumb things kids did back in those days and, uh, for the most part, life was pretty good okay, well in.
Speaker 1:In. Uh, you know newsflash us city kids because I grew up in right here in lansing. When you talk about playing on the railroad tracks and all that stuff, we, we did all that too. That's interesting to me yeah, for sure yeah, so tell me about school, uh. What do you remember about going to school and how did you do Uh?
Speaker 2:so I think with my parents getting divorced, I I had a period where I was really a troublemaker at school. Um, I think as I neared high school I reeled that in a little bit and I was doing pretty well. Uh, I think once I got my driver's license and I knew I was joining the army, I started to not care and my grades really tanked towards the end, but I did pretty well. I knew college wasn't for me. Again, no one in my family had gone to college. They all went in the military. They were hardworking people and that was just the route I seemed destined for at that time.
Speaker 1:Okay, do you have any good, you know, troublemaking stories you want to share, maybe one that sticks out in your mind?
Speaker 2:I can't think of any specifically other than in the fourth grade I I remember Mrs Green Um, I was singing Popeye the sailor man lives in a frying pan. He turned on the gas, burned his ass and I don't remember how it ends. But she was not impressed with my little antics so I ended up sitting in the corner the rest of the day. But I was never really a horrible troublemaker, just more of a smartass, a little bit of a rebel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was one of my favorite songs when I was in about fourth or fifth grade. That's kind of funny.
Speaker 2:I thought that like we were the only school that had that one, but apparently that was universal. Must have made it up north too.
Speaker 1:I guess so. So I'm just curious. Um, you know, coming from a divorced family myself, um you know, when your parents split, uh, did you see them both on a regular basis?
Speaker 2:I mean, I know how it was for me, I'm wondering how it was for you uh, yeah, we, we did, but uh, my, my brother and I spent the majority of time with my mother. Um, my father kind of had his new family and even though he only lived a block away, uh, we just didn't spend that much time together. Um, I think, you know, with any divorce, uh, there's uh, my mother and father loved and hated each other at the same time you know how that works and uh, I think, uh, neither one of them ever got over it and uh, you know, uh, they they were never able to even sit in the same room together, even as I was an adult. But uh, so I think there was a period there where it was just easier if we weren't around my dad's house. Um, and it just, you know, it caused some rift between me and my father for a lot of years, but fortunately we were able to kind of repair that later on in life.
Speaker 1:So Well, all right. Sounds very familiar to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the same old story. Often you know the pattern isn't all that different when you have a broken home like that.
Speaker 1:Right, Right, but when you're the kid it doesn't matter if it's happening to other people it's happening to you? Right, exactly, yeah, so you, uh, sounds like you made it through high school, possibly by the skin of your teeth I graduated with a 2.5 um grade point average, so it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great, uh, by any means we wouldn't call it stellar no, it was.
Speaker 2:It was not a not. And honestly, uh, you know, I, I, I think I was more intelligent than I realized, so I could skate by pretty easily With minimal effort. I could get a C and I was pretty much giving minimal effort. You just knew what you had to do, to get it done. Exactly.
Speaker 1:I used to have a guy that I went to school with when I was in the Navy and he would always just do whatever it took just to get by, and he was always petty officer, minimum standard. So yeah, so you, you graduate high school and did you go into the late entry program? You just ship out right away.
Speaker 2:I went into late entry program at 17. I went into late entry program at 17. So I graduated in December or January, a little bit early. Knowing that I was going in the military. I decided to take a little bit of time off before I went in. I had enough credits for high school and I'd kind of disengaged already. So I graduated half year I was working in a local sawmill, just making a little bit extra cash and hanging out and drinking and doing all the things teenage kids do. And then August of 1988 is when I went in, so just about 28 years ago, yes, if my math is working correctly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, okay, yeah, for okay, yeah, for me it was like 40 years ago, but we won't talk about that 38 years ago.
Speaker 2:I can't do my math.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're right, it's that carry one that always gets me. So you knew you were going to go in the Army then, right.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I knew I was going in um and I had been working, uh with a couple other people on farms and construction. So I talked to a couple other uh guys that I knew in the army as well and I knew I wanted to be army airborne and, uh, one guy told me about being an engineer and it just seemed like something I really wanted to do. So, you know, I scored really well on the ASVAB and all I wanted to do was jump out of airplanes and blow things up. So they gave me my wish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, because that's pretty much what you're going to do, right.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:So you go in, you get all signed up. How long were you in delayed entry, then total.
Speaker 2:Probably eight months. Okay, yeah, because I think it was December or January when I I think it was December when we did the delayed entry. I remember sitting around the table in my house on 4th Street with my mother and she had to sign as well. So it was interesting when I think back on that. Yeah, how was?
Speaker 1:was she okay with this.
Speaker 2:I think she was both proud and a little worried, as mothers are. You know, I think I was her baby, you know. So I was the last one out of the house. I'm sure that had a big impact on her, because she wasn't married, you know, she didn't have anyone else in her life at that time. So, uh, I think it was. It was a big step, uh, both for me and her, when I took off and went to the military.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so now, where'd you go to basic?
Speaker 2:Uh, so I did one unit training in uh Fort Leonard wood, missouri. Uh, so Fort lost in the wood, as often called oh yeah, um it Lost in the Wood as it's often called. It's a brutal environment down there. I believe it was about 100 degrees on the day I arrived and it was about 10 degrees when we were doing training in November.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it definitely has some mood swings down there, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:Now, what was it like for you, you know, stepping off the bus into basic training. Were you prepared for this because your family had told you, or were you not prepared for this?
Speaker 2:I don't know if anyone's prepared for it. I certainly was not. I had only flown one time prior to hopping on the airplane and going to St Louis, missouri, and then they throw you on a bus and take you down to Fort Leonard Wood and you know, as soon as you hop off, people are screaming at you and you're getting your hair all cut off and you know, I had nice long hair back then and it's just surreal and I think that's part of the indoctrination process obviously where they kind of break you down. But I don't know that any 18 year old boy is is ready for that.
Speaker 1:A little bit of shock and awe when you get there.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we were. You would like rubbing your head for quite a while.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm quite sure I did, and I think they gave you a choice of eighth inch or no hair and it's like, does it really matter? At that point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's the difference between eighth and no hair at all? We used to get yelled at in boot camp for rubbing our heads because apparently it would irritate your scalp. I don't know, Anyway, that's why I asked but anything stick out in your mind about basic training, Like are there some things that happened there that you're like? Anytime you think about bootcamp, that's what you think about.
Speaker 2:I don't really think about bootcamp a whole lot. It was tough. I think the one unit training you know it was, it was basically like 13 weeks of basic training. So you know, I hear other people go to their AIT and it got a little easier. I don't feel like it ever happened that way for us. The drill sergeants in that one unit training like that are just, you know, they're drill sergeants for 13 weeks. So I think we got a weekend off and then it was right back to business.
Speaker 2:But you know, blending, blending the two together, you you'd uh go on a ruck march all day long and then you'd build a bridge and you'd ruck back to the barracks. Uh and uh, they also found out I was going to airborne school. So they would run me at night because evidently if you failed airborne it was a reflection on them as well. So, uh, you know, being dumb enough to go in the airborne, I got to do extra PT. Um, I was a skinny kid probably 135 pounds when I joined the army. Uh, so anytime we would line up for chow. If there was a bigger guy in front of me, they would take his dessert and put it on my plate. So I quickly learned to. You know, squeeze up next to a bigger guy whenever I was in line, cause I knew I was going to get double desserts.
Speaker 2:Nice, so I guess, that that did stand out to me.
Speaker 1:That's the uh. Yeah, that's the army's way of a load leveling right. That's great. So, yeah, so you never really left boot camp for AIT then. It was just all an extension of all of that. So you get done with that. Did you come home after AIT then?
Speaker 2:I went straight to airborne school at Fort Benning, georgia. So we hopped on a bus and, you know, drove throughout the night. However many hours it took us, it felt like forever. You know, we stopped somewhere Memphis, I believe, tennessee and then continued on down. We got there in the early morning hours and it was definitely different because nobody was screaming at you to get off the bus but they showed us our barracks and where we would be and report first thing in the morning. They showed us our barracks and where we would be and, you know, report first thing in the morning. So it was definitely a weird transition for me because you know I wasn't used to regular army and you know I was still saying, yes, specialist, you know, to people and it was just kind of people like, okay, take that down a notch, would you.
Speaker 2:Right, you can always tell the new guy right yeah, exactly, I was definitely the fng at that time.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and if you know, you know with the fng. We're not going to tell people what that means.
Speaker 2:But but yeah exactly so.
Speaker 1:you know there's a common theme in the army and that is like okay, you went from fort le Leonard Wood to Fort Benning, but it's like out of the frying pan into the fire, because I know Benning is just hot as heck Almost 10 months out of the year.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it was definitely warm there, although that would have been late November, early December when I got there, so the days were hot but it would get a little cooler at night so you'd get a little reprieve from some of the heat. You know there were no air conditioned barracks back then, so you know you'd at least get a little cooler in the evening in the barracks. But it was just anyone who's been through airborne school, you know a lot of running, they love to run. So we'd get up and run seven miles every morning. I remember I believe it was on the first day, if I remember and they'd say look to your left, look to your right, because one of those guys won't be standing there when you're done. I don't remember if I said it out loud, but I certainly was like it's not going to be me and I knew that.
Speaker 2:And you know, whenever anyone tells me they're going airborne or special forces, just failure can't be an option. And for me, airborne school, failing was just never going to be an option. So, um, I ended up spraining my ankle in week one. I ended up spraining my ankle in week one. I went to the PX and bought some wrap and some aspirin cream, and every morning I would wrap it as tight as I could and I would go for a run, because you didn't want to tell anyone you're injured or you get recycled, and I certainly didn't want to spend any more time at airborne school than I had to, right.
Speaker 1:Right, and you know, I think people hear like I got up and I ran seven miles or I rucked 20 miles or whatever it is you did in the military A lot of us did it that your body will do what your mind tells it to do. It's not a matter. I mean you have to be physically fit, don't get me wrong. But I don't think it's a matter of physical fitness. It's really a matter of do you have the tenacity to make it through?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with that. I've. I'm not a big guy. I've never been the biggest, strongest guy, um, but in every school I've done whether it was airborne, mountain, warfare school, um, psychological operations, selection, just quitting was never an option for me. Um, you know there's always going to be someone faster, stronger, bigger. But uh, if, if you're not, if you don't give up, you don't quit, I mean your, your body will carry you through a lot more than you realize.
Speaker 1:Right. So you're, you're going through airborne school, watching the guy on the left and right fall out, and um, that has a. Does it have a fairly high failure rate then? And um, that has a. Does it have a fairly high failure rate then?
Speaker 2:Uh, at that time it was about a one third 25% to 33% failure rate. Um, I don't know if it's still that difficult these days, but uh, you know, um, we, we had a pretty good uh fail rate and they would just play mental games with you. I remember, um, one morning, it was quite warm, they just left us at attention for an hour, uh, standing in the hot Georgia sun, and then, uh, the Sergeant airborne came out with a glass of cold water and it was dripping sweat off of it and he said who wants to quit today? Uh, just come on in, we have cold water, cold ice cream. And sure enough, some people dropped out of formation and walked right up there. Uh, just come on in, we have cold water, cold ice cream, and sure enough, some people dropped out of formation and walked right up there. And it just, you know, to me, you, you could stand me in the sun all day. I'd I'd have to fall out and pass out before I was quitting.
Speaker 1:Right, your drink of water will come from an IV bag right, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:So how long? How long is airborne school? Uh, three weeks, uh, three weeks, uh. So you know there was a little lead up. I think I was there three and a half weeks, uh, just because you're, you're getting into the barracks and everything, uh. But you have a ground week, um, where you're learning parachute landing falls, uh, a tower week where you're jumping out of towers and falling off the 250 foot tower at Benning. And then final week is jump week, where you do your five jumps out of either a C one 30, or a one 41.
Speaker 1:So I think a lot of civilians listening to this that kind of blows their mind like three weeks from I've never even seen a parachute to I'm jumping out of a plane now I don't think they, you know, I don't think people realize how compressed things are. Like it's very intense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, any of those schools that you go through, you know that, you know. But the army, uh, the military, they, they keep you moving and there's long days 12, 14 hour days, however long it takes to get everybody through. Uh, uh, that that's what it's going to be. Uh, so a lot of training in a short period of time.
Speaker 2:I was uh kind of terrified of heights. So tower week was like horrible for me. I remember I was one of the last people to actually pass, because every time I would jump out of the tower, I just, you know, and I mean, would I would do everything wrong because I was terrified, yeah, and I remember, remember the Sergeant airborne with his clipboard. He looked down at it. He looked up at me with his uh condescending eyes and was get back up there and do that again. So I eventually got it right. But, uh, to your point, you know, it didn't matter if I was there for two hours or 12 hours. We were either going to get it right or I was going to quit, and I wasn't going to quit, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so did they play the game too, Like I remember a lot of times you're going to go on a seven-mile run and you get done with your seven-mile run and they wave you through like, oh, we're doing another mile. The. The idea was that just because you think it's over, it doesn't mean it's over and you better have a little gas left in your tank. They do kind of stuff like that when you really they absolutely did that.
Speaker 2:Now that you mentioned that, I remember that you, you were supposed to hit the finish line, but they would continue on up to the hangars and just run you another half mile or so just to see who would drop out. Because, uh, you know, again, it's a mental game, they're they're trying to see who's strong enough to stay in. Uh, I believe you could only fall out of two runs and you would fail the school. Um, you know. So, again, if you break people's spirit, they think they're done and you, you push them a little further. And there were definitely people who would fall out because they, they had already set in their mind that they, they were going to stop at seven miles yeah, you know the other thing?
Speaker 1:I want to go back to tower week real quick. Uh, the other thing I think the military does is um, makes you face your fears, right, like you don't have time to be afraid of. You're scared shitless, right, but you have time to be afraid of heights. You're scared shitless, right, but you have time to be afraid of heights. And how does that shape you later on, right?
Speaker 2:It definitely had a huge impact on me. I think even to this day. If something scares me, I do it just because I see that as a weakness and I have to get better at that. I talk about all the time with people at work. I do a lot of presentations now.
Speaker 2:I've been in learning and development for years, but I ended up getting a D in communications in high school. I was terrified of speaking in front of people. So when I got into the professional world, I forced myself to get up of speaking in front of people. So when I got into the professional world, I forced myself to get up and speak in front of people. Just because you know, if it's a weakness of mine, something I'm not comfortable with, I'll actually push myself to do that. I don't love spiders. I'm not going to go lay in a bathtub full of spiders, but you know anything like that spiders but you know anything like that that I find fearful. I continue to challenge myself. I go for hikes in the, in the mountains, all the time. So I don't love standing on the edge of a cliff and I won't do it on purpose, but you know I'm not gonna miss out on a hike just because it's it's near a cliff.
Speaker 1:Right, Right, Well, and isn't there a certain amount of I don't know like a little bit of adrenaline rush you get from doing stuff that just scares the hell out of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think, uh, you know I tell people all the time the military was the best and the worst thing that ever happened to me, cause, uh, from the ages of 18 to 21, I just had this heightened sense of purpose and I got to experience things that were just incredible. Uh, and you know, I just had this heightened sense of purpose and I got to experience things that were just incredible. And, you know, I think you have to find a way later in life to fuel that adrenaline in a positive way, and it doesn't always work that well for all of us.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we find a negative way to do it right Exactly. I'm sure we'll talk about that. So you get through airborne school. I wouldn't say get through like you got through it. What happens next?
Speaker 2:So I went home, I did a month of leave at home, I was home for Christmas, which was nice, and then I believe it was around January 9th I don't remember the exact date that I ended up, uh, being sent to Germany. Um, if you recall, they ask you where do you want to be stationed? I don't remember what I put stateside, but I remember from my overseas station I put, uh, korea and Hawaii, and they sent me to Germany. So you know, they don't really care what you want, it's the Army's needs first. So I ended up in Germany. Wasn't my first choice but absolutely, in hindsight, love the opportunity that I had to be in Germany for a couple of years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we all have that story about. This is what we asked for and this is what we got. But the great thing is you're absolutely right. Like all those things I got that I didn't ask for, they were great.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like I didn't think it was so great at the time, but they were great Right. So how long were you in Germany?
Speaker 2:So I arrived in January of 89. We arrived shortly after the Rhein-Main bombings in 88. So when I first arrived there they took me to Smith-Kassern in Aschaffenburg, germany, and there was a bulldozer and a 113 with a 50 cal mounted on top at the front gate and I was like, where the hell did they send me? This is more like Beirut than Germany, but it was just a heightened sense of security at that time. Um, so I spent, uh, two years in a Schaffenberg, the engineers. We had our own concern. They're not like big military bases here in the U? S, they're kind of scattered throughout the cities in Germany. Uh, at least they were at that time. A lot of those have closed since. But, um, we had a local training area nearby that we used to go to and uh and do a lot of training at. But at that time 1989, it was still East and West Germany.
Speaker 2:So later in January there was Reforger 1989, which was a big show of force against the Eastern Bloc Soviet Union countries. So we did maneuvers on the Czechoslovakian border, you know, and again a dumb kid from northern Michigan. All of a sudden I'm standing on the Czechoslovakian border looking through a pair of binoculars at a Russian guard looking back at me a thousand feet away, a thousand meters away, and uh, it was just surreal. Um, you know, uh, people talk about the cold war and it was. It was uh. It's still hard to explain to people what that meant, because there was just this constant tension in Europe, and to to see this 25 foot tall fence with Russian guards on the other side was just, it was a lot to take in at 18.
Speaker 1:Yeah, did you get the sense that, uh, that guy across the fence maybe felt the same way you did?
Speaker 2:I don't think so. Uh, the Russians were really good at posturing and I feel like every soldier they put on the front was six foot two blonde, just built like a brick shithouse for lack of a better term.
Speaker 2:And I mean, you know, they were really good at just being stoic and looking like they were in control. I'm sure to them, I was just this puny little kid on the other side that they were chuckling at, but it was a very interesting thing to see. And then, if we fast forward to November of that same year, that's when we woke up one morning and we're watching AFN in the barracks Armed Forces Network the worst television ever, but it was all we had to watch and we were witnessing people tearing holes in the Berlin Wall while Russian guards were watching it, and it was just unbelievable because it was like a week before you had been shot for doing something like that. Uh, so it was actually my buddy, joe jammer, who was, uh, from ogle ma county as well.
Speaker 2:We ended up in the engineer unit on the same day, oddly enough, so we'll talk more about that. But, uh, small town, um, we ended up in the same unit and he, he said we need to go to berlin. So that day we went down to our office and put in for a three-day leave, and the next weekend we hopped in a car and we drove through the russian corridor into east germany, into berlin, and we walked through the Berlin Wall into East Berlin, where there were Russian guards standing everywhere, so we didn't spend much time there. We turned around and walked back through the wall, but I have a picture of me sitting on top of the Berlin Wall and I have a big chunk of the Berlin Wall that I pulled off myself. I found a chunk of rebar on the wall and I started working it until the piece came off and that that still sits in my cabinet at home.
Speaker 1:Wow, I mean, I remember watching it on TV. I can't even imagine being there. Like that's the definition of surreal right, it really was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know it's so hard to explain, like even driving across East Germany, just the oppression, the lack of signs. You know, here you see a gas station off of the road. There it was just barren and you would see a little town off in the distance. Of course we weren't allowed to go to any of those, but the fact that there was no advertising at all and you'd see an east german police officer pull up next to you and he'd just glare at you, and it was terrifying and people lived this life every day.
Speaker 2:Uh, when we went into east berlin, we, we stepped in a little shop and it was. It looked like it was from the 1800s, it was just shelves with a few cans and and bread. You know, uh, we said guten morgan. And they looked over at the russian officer, like we don't even want to talk to these americans. It was pretty obvious we were americans, right? Uh, you know so we, we didn't feel welcomed by anybody. So, again, we didn't spend too much time in east berlin. But uh, it was. It was just unbelievable and it's hard to explain because there's nothing like it, save for maybe North Korea on the earth today. That's like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think people misunderstand the effect of communism on a country. I remember going to Romania in 87. And the people there were starving, but there were fields just full of produce, right, but it was all going to the Russians, right, and the people that lived there weren't getting anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. Uh, it was definitely strange, and I think in 1990, the two Germanys reunited and the East Germans were just so happy to be out from under the Russian control, to your point. I think the daily oppression that people went through was just more than most of us could ever imagine yeah, yeah, exactly so I.
Speaker 1:Were they not like? So I gotta ask this question because of because the way the army works right. Were they not concerned about giving you a pass to go there like because really all hell was breaking loose and it was.
Speaker 2:so there were a lot of protocols we had to file, and evidently I didn't know it then, but we did have some status of forces agreement with the Russians. Okay, and when we went to the Russian corridor there was a US consulate, I guess, with a military attache there, and they basically told us make sure our gas tank is full. We won't be stopping anywhere between here and East Berlin. So as we made it through East Germany, we weren't allowed to get off the freeway, and if we were, we were threatened with arrest and detention until we would be brought back to the US military and then we would actually be court-martialed by the US military for not following orders. So it was very strict guidelines and I think that status of a forces agreement kind of. You know, again they call it the Cold War for a reason, because we weren't actively at war, but we weren't going at war, but we we weren't going to tolerate any shenanigans from either side.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, exactly so you, uh, how long? How long were you then in germany at the at this point, or?
Speaker 2:so I was there just shy of two years when, uh, well, the wall came down. I'd been there there about, uh, less than a year, okay, and then about a year and a half is when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and uh, that that kind of changed things quite a bit. Uh, there were maybe six to eight months where it felt like the world was just at peace. You know, again, the wall had come down. It was a surreal situation. They were talking about downsizing our military at that time, and in August of 1990, saddam Hussein decided to invade Kuwait, and I didn't know it at that time, but within a month our unit was starting to spin up and get ready to deploy there.
Speaker 1:Okay, before we get there, I do want to ask one other question. So you woke up in the morning and you saw the wall coming down. Was there any indication ahead of time that made you think this was going to happen?
Speaker 2:Not really. Do you think this is going to happen? Not really. Um, you know, looking back on it you can kind of see a little bit of uh, when reagan went there and and gorbachev and him were getting along well and it's a mr gorbachev, tear down this wall, uh. But you know, from my point of view, I arrived in january and again I'm looking across at a Russian guard and even up until November I didn't see it as a possibility. I was just in shock when I saw it on AFN that they weren't actually shooting people or ripping the wall down. It seemed to change almost overnight. Actually shooting people or ripping the wall down, yeah, it seemed to change almost overnight.
Speaker 1:Okay, I was just curious if you guys heard rumbling. So so you're there, you see the wall come down and you get a little bit of. Oh, you know, the olive branch doves are flying around and all of a sudden, there's always going to be one idiot right, and this time it's Saddam Hussein.
Speaker 2:Yeah for Saddam Hussein yeah, for sure, yeah.
Speaker 1:So what happens?
Speaker 2:so, uh, he invades, uh, kuwait, obviously, and um, the whole US military starts spinning up. I think we sent 82nd Airborne was one of the first on the ground there. A couple ranger battalions uh went in and then the build-up just started happening like crazy. November we got our orders that we were heading to Saudi Arabia and I believe we left just a couple of days after Thanksgiving Most of the families were allowed to go home and spend Thanksgiving with their families. I was alone in Germany, so obviously we had Thanksgiving at the chow hall A turkey roll, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:A dry turkey roll. And then I think I was on one of the advance planes if I recall correctly, advance party and even that was funny, because at the time I think it was solid twa, one of those airlines that no longer exists. Uh, we get on this big 747 and we're walking up the stairs onto the plane with all of our weapons. And I remember, uh, we had chartered it, the us military had chartered it, but the stewardesses that were on there were just looking at us like what the hell is happening, because all these guys are coming on with weapons. We didn't have ammunition with us, but you're carrying weapons onto a plane and throwing M60s up into the luggage rack on top. And it was an interesting time to be a part of the US military, for sure.
Speaker 1:I bet they still took your nail clippers though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't remember, but they probably did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So when you headed to Kuwait, where did you actually start out?
Speaker 2:So we flew in to an airfield outside of Daharan, saudi Arabia, and then we hopped on some buses. We went to the docks in da haran. We spent a couple of weeks there waiting for our equipment to arrive, because it was coming by naval vessel, so all of our m113s. We also had a heavy equipment platoon that had bulldozers and other heavy equipment that the engineers use, so we sat on the docks for about two weeks. It was hotter than Hades. Of course it's Saudi Arabia, you know. You get the humidity off the ocean and you're on a blacktop all day long in the hundred degree heat. And it was a, it was a long two weeks. Uh, sitting on the docks waiting for everything to show up, gotcha Nice and acclimated, didn't it?
Speaker 2:Oh yes, right away. You went from Germany to Saudi Arabia and it quickly changed, uh, from maybe 70 degrees to a hundred and a hundred plus, in no time.
Speaker 1:Right, and nobody cares because you still have a job to do, right, I mean?
Speaker 2:And you have to be in full uniform at all times, of course.
Speaker 1:Full, did you guys have to have all your stuff on? But you're in Bahrain, right? So it's not really.
Speaker 2:Bahrain was right across from Dahran. Okay, so we're in the same general area, but the docks are right there across the causeway is Bahrain. So, yes, we, you know, in those days we were allowed to go down to t-shirts and the LBE was a lot lighter. We'll talk about my second set of service, but, you know, later on, when we had plate carriers and everything else, it was a lot more. The LBE wasn't horrible to wear back back at that time and we had summer uniforms that weren't, uh, soaked in permethrin.
Speaker 1:So there were some advantages, even though it was ungodly hot right, right, yeah, I guess you can take off as much as you want. It's not going to change how, how nice and warm it is. So your equipment finally arrives. Uh, what happened? Where do you head?
Speaker 2:so we, once we get our equipment, uh, we moved up to, uh, the wadi al-batin, um hafar al-batin is a, a city north of there, um, when the locals actually called it hell, because it's just the middle of nowhere and it's hot and nothing grows out there. If, if you can imagine a gravel road that just goes on for 100 miles, that's just the middle of nowhere and it's hot and nothing grows out there. If you can imagine a gravel road that just goes on for 100 miles, that's that's kind of what the terrain is out there. There's not a bush or a blade of grass that grows anywhere.
Speaker 2:Um, and it it was just, uh, you know, we set up in the middle of nowhere. We hadn't received gps systems yet, so we were navigation was like impossible because there was no, no terrain features. So at nighttime we would often triangulate cities in the distance because we could see their lights, and then that's how we would kind of guide throughout the day. But oftentimes we'd keep track of our miles as we were moving and once we hit 10 miles we'd start doing circles to find out where we were supposed to be, because, you know, it was easy if you're off by a degree or two. There was nothing to navigate by out there.
Speaker 1:Wow, no Blue Force track or anything, not in those days.
Speaker 2:We did eventually get Magellan handheld systems, which, again, that technology was new to us at that time, but it amazed us. You know, we could get three or four satellites and all of a sudden this little arrow would point us in the right direction.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I can't even imagine that when I, when I deployed it was, we had all the cool stuff. Yeah, you were on the cutting edge of all of that.
Speaker 2:I would equate it to being in the middle of the ocean, you know, if you don't have anything to navigate by. Really all you have are the stars and the sun, and that's kind of how we felt when we first got there. Of course, we we weren't equipped to navigate that way. We're used to terrain features and a grid eight digit grid to get us where we're going.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, I never really kind of thought about it, but, yeah, there's not a lot of terrain features and they and they move in the desert. So where, where are you, um, actually headed then, and how long did it take you to get there?
Speaker 2:so, um, how far over. Teen had to be at least a couple hours north. Some of our equipment we could ship with our 920 semi-trucks but the tracks, the M113s we all had to drive up there and they move at about 30 miles an hour. So it took us it felt like all day to get up to where we were going. And then, because we were an engineer unit, we pushed up berms around our area and that was pretty much the only terrain features in the area at that time. By late December the desert just exploded. With little concerns like that, units were just showing up daily. But when we first got out there it was just absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1:Right, no neighbors.
Speaker 2:Not at all no.
Speaker 1:And so what was your mission then, while you're there? Did they really not quite have one?
Speaker 2:yet. So when we look back on it, we were trying to do a show of force. So every um, oh, what are, what are the uh vehicle covers you put out?
Speaker 1:Oh, the you're talking about, like the camo radar camo.
Speaker 2:So we set up camo nets everywhere and we we'd put them over top of anything. Nets everywhere, and we we'd put them over top of anything. And it was basically to fool the Iraqis, to show that we had more vehicles and more force than we actually had. So we would set up even little mock concerns and just put up, uh, put up camo nets, uh. So we did that for a couple of months, but then, after more units arrived, it was less important to do that. But initially we were vulnerable because, you know, we, we didn't have the full force on the ground yet. And then, once first infantry got set up, we, we ended up being linked up with the first infantry division okay, all right, and it it sounds like the iraqis didn't have the uh, the will or the force.
Speaker 1:Maybe that we thought that they had originally too?
Speaker 2:no, that is for sure. Um you know, we were told the republican guard was just gonna destroy us right so. But we were terrified. But you know we we were expecting 20 to to 30% losses because the Iraqi Republican Guard had been at war with Iran for years. So they were hardened troops and they were really supposed to know what war meant and looked like. And our technology at that time was untested. We had been to war for 20-plus years. We had been to war for 20 plus years.
Speaker 1:So I think we didn't even know what our own capabilities were leading up to that war. Yeah, I think we found out really quickly as a matter of fact, we did yes. Yeah, so what was it? So what was it like? I don't want to say typical day, because there's no such thing, but what was a day like. Once everyone kind of got there and you're now part of the 1st Infantry Division. What were you doing?
Speaker 2:Most of the days the heavy equipment platoons were really busy them, because I was combat engineer as demolition specialist, but, um, they were going to different areas and helping people set up berms and dig, uh, pit toilets and all that kind of stuff, uh, but most of our day was spent on guard duty. We we kept like 75 guard at all time because we thought there might be preemptive attacks by the iris. They didn't happen, except for a few small areas, like Kafji was one that people have heard about. But for the most part the Iraqis didn't go on the offensive, which was probably very good for us because we would have been caught with our pants down early on.
Speaker 2:But most days were just boring, trying to stay out of the sun. You know we'd play volleyball or you spent your time sitting on the berm staring out into the darkness. I remember at nighttime a lot of times I'd have the starlight scope mounted on top of my M16 and I would just kind of watch people smoking cigarettes around. You know it was. It was really boring, so you just did what you could to amuse yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's nothing worse than having bored soldiers, though there's lots of ways to lots of ways to find trouble when that happens.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Well, the good news is uh, you know you were. You were 20 miles from uh an electric pole, so there wasn't uh too much you could do to find trouble out there yeah, well, that's, that's a good thing.
Speaker 1:You're right now. How long? How long were you there doing this?
Speaker 2:so we probably spent, uh, the better part of a month up near hafar al-batin. Uh, then, january 16th I think, is when the bombing started, and you know, we had some artillery come in a few times, but for the most part we'd just sit there at night and listen to the carpet bombing and you'd just feel the whole earth shake. Two weeks before the invasion so that must have been early February we moved up to the Iraqi berm. So there was this huge 40 foot berm between Iraq and Saudi Arabia that somebody had pushed up at some point and that was kind of the border, if you will. It wasn't heavily guarded, but you could definitely tell where it was at.
Speaker 2:So we moved up on the border and we spent a couple of weeks up there. And when we moved up there the shelling got a little more regular for us because we were a lot closer. You'd hear Iraqi drones come over at night. We could never spot them in the sky, but you'd hear them and then the next day we'd get hit by artillery. So they would, uh, the us moved artillery batteries up, uh behind us and they, they quickly countered the iraqi artillery and and destroyed at least 75 of their artillery even before we went in uh um in february okay, so let's talk about that then.
Speaker 1:What was it like to now finally move into Iraq? Uh, how was that?
Speaker 2:So I, we were attached to two, three, four armor um first infantry division and as engineers, uh, we, we cut holes through the berm with explosives and bulldozers. Holes through the berm with explosives and bulldozers, and we were kind of leading the charge to mark the lanes, because the Iraqis had used a lot of landmines in those days. So, engineers, part of our job is to cut lanes through. So we came under some pretty direct fire a couple of times and we got through the first set of minefields and after that they actually brought M1s up that had tank plows on them and they cut through the last few sections as we got closer to the actual tanks. So, battle of 73 Easting I don't remember if that was the first day or the second day, memory alludes to me a little bit, but it might have been the first day of the war. We were part of that initial punch into the 48th Iraqi Infantry Division. I believe is the one we chewed up initially.
Speaker 1:Okay, believe is the one we chewed up initially. Okay, now something too, uh, that I don't know, that a lot of people realize, is when you say engineering, a lot of people think engineering like I'm going to design a tower, I'm going to build a building, and uh, you know from experience the engineers, uh, they're out there looking for ieds and mines and and uh, clearing all that stuff out of the way, which I don't think a lot of people know or understand.
Speaker 2:No, and it has changed a little bit over the years. To your point, modern engineers are more IED and route clearing. Back during Desert Storm, there were a lot more landmines than there were IEDs. So that was our major focus was cutting through the landmines. Once we got beyond that, it was using explosives to destroy bunkers, caches of weapons. We were used as light infantry several times just because of the speed with which we were moving. Just because of the speed with which we were moving. Obviously, with 113s we couldn't take on a T-72 tank, so they would have us peel off and go into the light trench lines and kind of overwhelm the enemy on that front.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you're like right, pretty close combat then uh, yeah, when, after we cut through the berm, uh, it felt like we drove forever. I think it was 26 miles until we we hit the first iraqi tanks and there was one m1 in front of me that was plowing through the minefield. We were probably only rolling about five miles an hour when I saw the tank rock, and off in the distance I see this tiny little puff of smoke and I mean I knew he had hit a tank and I would later learn it was almost three miles out that he hit that first Iraqi tank. So again, our technology was untested. I think we were saying our max range was a mile and a half back then and we almost doubled that range and one shot while rolling with the tank plow and direct hit. It was amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's no small feat.
Speaker 2:No, you know. So we still had a couple miles to push forward. By then all the M1s were opening up. Iraqi tanks were returning fire, but very minimal, uh, damage to anybody. I mean you'd see them hitting the, hitting the dirt. But um, they were. They certainly didn't have the kind of range or technology that we had. I remember, as we were going through there, I remember an Apache helicopter pulling up over to my left and just watching the hellfires rip off into the distance. It was definitely an overwhelming amount of force that we brought against the Iraqis. I think there's also a misconception that the Iraqis never fought back and they all surrendered, and that certainly was not the case. We exchanged fire with them many times. We just overwhelmed them to the point that we broke their will to continue to fight.
Speaker 1:Right? Well, a lot of it was technology. I think you know after my time in service. A lot of it, too, is just the american soldier like I don't know how to describe that like even if they had crappy technology, they'd find a way to make it work yeah, I think we, we have aggressive tactics.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, if you look at, uh, we were part of that big Hail Mary, right hook into Iraq. Um, you know, schwarzkopf was like we're, we're just going to crush him and I mean, that's, that's the I know. In the army, our doctrine is you run towards enemy fire, not away from it. Uh, you know. So you hear gunshots, you turn and you face the gunshots and you start moving towards it. Right, and that's, you know, effective, because you meet violence with a greater violence. And you know, that seems to work for the US military To your point. Even when we're at overwhelming odds, the American soldier seems to find a way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, close with or destroy the enemy, right. I mean that's what you kind a way yeah, close with and destroy the enemy, right. I mean that's that's what you kind of do, yeah and um. So there was another question I was going to ask you as we're going through this and, uh, I must be getting old cause I forgot my. I forgot my question. That doesn't happen very often. But uh, yeah, so you're, you're um. I think the other thing too that's what I was going to this was going to get at is that we do have this doctrine and we do have these, you know, ttps and all these other things that published in books and here's how you do this and here's how you do that. But I think the one thing that we don't do is we don't always follow this. Like we have a plan right, but we don't always follow, like that, that thing that was printed in the book, that that's kind of the foundation, but that crap never works because it's that's not how it works in the field.
Speaker 2:No, uh, we definitely train, and I think that is the big thing is you? You train so you know how you're going to react. But, uh, you know, combat is complete chaos. Uh, I remember when we were first, after the first shots were fired. We're getting a little closer. All of a sudden somebody opened up a machine gun and I'm like who in the hell is shooting? I had no idea where it was coming from. So, uh, it turns out it was in the lane next to us. But, um, and there was another point, I'm kind of like a prairie dog. I have have my head sticking up, kind of looking around, and uh, some Iraqis sent some a volley of rounds overhead. Uh, they were probably 15, 20 feet ahead over my head, but you could hear them zipping by and, uh, you know, you quickly realize, hey, that's probably not a smart idea to be sitting up here like a prairie dog. So, to your point, you you're not really prepared for any of that. I was 20 years old. We prepared for a lot of things, but you just don't know until you're in the middle of it.
Speaker 2:And especially with Desert Storm, we were moving so fast and at one point we'll fast forward a couple of days we got separated from our unit and we ended up being transferred to another unit just because as we were hitting enemy positions they were moving on and attacking the Iraqis. At the Battle of Norfolk, another big tank battle that took place. So we ended up separated from our unit and we ended up with 216 task force. But on that first day, you know, to get back to the chaos of everything we closed in on the first Iraqi tanks.
Speaker 2:I remember I'm driving and I look to my left and there's this burning T-52 tank and there were bodies and body parts hanging around it. And I remember, just looking over to my left and all of a sudden I just hear this big thump and I remember dirt falling on me and then everything just went black. We had ran over a landmine and I don't think I was out long minute to. I can't say for certain, uh, but I mean I I kinda started to come to and I I'm yelling into my boom mic, you know, is everyone okay? And it was just dead silence. And I for a minute I was like panicked right, because I was certain they were dead.
Speaker 2:You know um. I'm also reaching down to see if my legs yeah, I was gonna say you're doing the whole.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everything's here, nothing, no blood patting everything down because you, you're, it's like mike tyson just punched you in the face, so you're, you're, dazed, you don't really know what's happening. Um, so, once sergeant basher, he hits his boom bike and he's like, yeah, yeah, I think we're okay, you know. So, um, I roll out of the track and I'm looking to see if we'd been hit, because I thought we were hit by a tank round at that time, yeah, um, so I'm looking to see what the damage is and as I walk towards the back, I see my trailer and the axles are blown out from under it and some of our equipment scattered around the desert. It was six inches narrower than my track, so my track missed the landmine, but my trailer hit it and you could see in the armor where shrapnel had embedded into the armor, did a splash into it.
Speaker 2:It was and you know, again I'm just looking at this like holy crap, we just ran over a landmine, right, right. So I, I'm crawling up on top of my track because at that point I don't want to walk anywhere, realizing I'm in a landmine, a minefield I think it was just an anti-personnel mine, but still didn't want to step on one yeah um and I, I got back in my vehicle and you know, uh, I shoved it into drive.
Speaker 2:My captain's like what are you doing? I said we can't sit here, sir, you know we're taking fire. So, um, we just dragged that trailer across, uh, uh, the desert for a couple of miles, with, you know cutting a big furrow behind us. Uh, eventually they brought a hem it up to to take it and put it on that. But uh, I, I don't remember how long we dragged that. Things get a little fuzzy, so I try not to fill in the holes because I partly I think, uh, just the speed we were moving and turns out, you know, uh, mild traumatic brain injury isn't real good for memory.
Speaker 1:So no, that's true, that's true. The other, you know the other thing too is you're talking about you're moving so quickly. All of these things are happening Like this isn't slow motion or like a movie. I mean, this is just happening, right, so much so that you get separated from your unit, you get passed to another unit. You're just moving forward because you can't, you can't not move forward, right, um, did you find that like there was no time to react, there was no time to think about it until it was done?
Speaker 2:yeah, um. So especially those first uh couple of days, we went 30 hours straight combat yeah no sleep.
Speaker 2:Uh, we were just rolling, moving. Um, you know, we we had, uh, while I'd ran over a landmine, we had hit light infantry positions and we were literally clearing trenches with a squad at a time. Um, we usually had a bradley supporting us for heavy bunkers and stuff. But, uh, you know, it all just becomes a blur to your point. And, um, it was just one battle after the other, another group of prisoners we were taking. You know, it all starts to blend together to some extent.
Speaker 2:And then, on, I believe, the fourth day of the ground war, they called the ceasefire. Not all of us were happy about that choice, but, you know, nonetheless, to your point, it starts to give you time to think about things. And it starts to give you time to think about things as we were heading down into Kuwait, because part of that agreement was we would move out of Iraq, except for a five-mile DMZ that we established. We were driving through the night and one of our units found this kid's body, so we ended up sitting there with him for a couple hours until graves registration came and picked them up. And that's when it, you know, we knew we had taken some losses, but that was like really real at that moment when you're sitting there looking at a kid that's about the same age as you and you know, just dead in the desert all alone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah, but for the grace of god, that could be you, right absolutely yeah, now you didn't, so it doesn't sound like you didn't take any casualties, though, in your direct, not in our company.
Speaker 2:Um, so with the first infantry division, I believe they had a total of 21 combatant deaths in that those four days. Um, we would later learn that our headquarters for 9th Engineers, we had two guys taking prisoner of war. They were actually lost for five days before somebody realized they were gone. We actually found out from the Iraqis that they had been taken prisoner. So you know again, logistics in those days were really bad. The battlefield was moving so quickly we ended up being scattered in with other units. We had other units you know I could go on and on about the stories but we had another unit that was trailing us that got killed by our own people because they were where they shouldn't have been, you know. So it just it was chaos. You know, to your point, as we talked before, we didn't have blue force tracker. In those days we didn't know who was who. All we could tell is there's a heat signature on the horizon. So if you weren't where you were supposed to be, you could easily end up in a friendly fire incident.
Speaker 1:Well, and if you think about it, I think this is like the first asymmetric, this is like the beginning of asymmetric warfare. Right, there's no front line anymore, it's kind of everywhere, and I think we saw a little of that during D-Day. But I mean, eventually you had front lines, you know, you had established, but that just didn't happen in the desert.
Speaker 2:No, we, and we overwhelmed them, uh, even more than I think we thought was going to happen. Our tanks just never stopped. I mean, they just kept moving and kept attacking. Um, at one point, we we were taking prisoners, but, uh, we were handing them off to cooks and mechanics because the battlefield was just moving so quickly and we were moving forward to hit the next light infantry section. So the speed and everything was just overwhelming. Um, at one point, uh, the first infantry division was chasing down retreating iraqi tanks and and chewing them up, and that was about the time when they called the ceasefire yeah, yeah, I mean the enemies definitely got the message.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you moved on. So did you guys head down to like kuwait city then?
Speaker 2:the message yeah, so you moved down. So did you guys head down to like kuwait city then? So we went, uh, there's a border crossing called safwan um and that's, uh, the iraqi side. I don't remember the city that's on the kuwaiti side, but uh, that's where we moved into safwan airfield and, uh, the border area, um, after we left that kid with somebody from Graves Registration, we headed down to Safwan.
Speaker 2:We set up a hasty perimeter around the airfield and then we drove into the little Kuwaiti city and I remember, as we were driving in there, there wasn't a building that wasn't just riddled with bullet holes and you started to see the devastation that the Iraqis had left on the Kuwaiti people. So, to your point, I think, when we were fighting the Iraqis, you didn't really have time to think about the horrors of war. I guess You're just, you know. But then when we started going through Kuwait and you saw the women coming out with the children and just the horror and hollow eyes, you know, I mean, it started to make you really angry. The lack of men that were around the Iraqis had killed so many of them that it was just commonplace. People were starving, hungry. We were throwing MREs out of our vehicles to locals. They'd literally fight over an MRE.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't fight for an MRE ever I'd fight you if you made me eat one.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, you know. So it was a weird dichotomy for me, because I was angry as hell at the Iraqis but at the same time, none of it sat well with me. I mean, there's no good way to kill another human being, you know, and we were tasked to move into the highway of death, if you remember that. There we chewed up the Iraqis as they were retreating out of retreating out of Kuwait, cut them off and, uh, and there were just vehicles and bodies all over the road. So, because we had a heavy equipment platoon, uh, they took a bulldozer and kind of opened up the roadway and then we were, uh, taking care of any explosives left behind. Uh, we had sea tractors, uh, they were actually tasked with picking up bodies of body parts. Our bull bulldozers made shallow graves for graves registration and we spent the better part of a day putting bodies in pits, which I remember again, I'm 20 years old, sitting there eating my lunch, trying to be a tough guy because you don't want to show any weakness to anybody, but that really didn't sit well with me for a lot of years afterwards, you know. But uh, it was, it was just apocalyptic, it was hell on earth and I mean there were just bodies everywhere.
Speaker 2:At one point I walked away from the pit and, uh, I cut across the highway, walked through some trucks that were burned out and again there's body parts everywhere, burned Iraqis. And I walked through these two vehicles and I feel like I was almost at a breaking point. I just had to get away from everything. So, around this truck and a dog barks at me and I'm like Barney Fife, trying to get my 45 out because he scared the hell out of me, you know. So I finally get my 45 out and the I, I start to pull up and the dog barks again, he runs off.
Speaker 2:But then I realized he'd been chewing on a human leg or a piece of what was a human leg, and I'm like, I remember just thinking you know, where is God in all this? It was too much. And so I look off into the desert and maybe 200 meters away there's just this white Mercedes Benz with the trunk open. And so, you know, I'm still like I just I'm wanting to get away from everything. So I walk towards that Mercedes and the trunk's wide open. You can see some luggage in there that's been rifled through, probably from the Iraqis during the initial evasion back in August of 90. And it's, it's surreal sometimes the things that happen.
Speaker 2:And there was this wedding dress in the back of this, this Mercedes, and I just I don't know how to explain it was like just too much yeah and I remember hearing my dad's voice because, uh, he would always be like just pray about it, and I forgive my language, but I remember saying I don't feel like fucking praying right now. Yeah, you know, and I, I was literally just like, uh, all the days prior to that came like all down at once and you could see some bones near the driver's door where somebody had been killed, probably the male driver, bullet holes in the side of it and about 100 meters away, these damn dogs are eating a dead Iraqi and I just I lost it at that moment.
Speaker 2:I also carried an m16 at the 45 right um, so I pulled my m16 up and I popped the first dog. Um, I, I remember like for a minute, he picked his head up and I could just see the blood on his muzzle and I just lost it. So I dropped him. Um, I, the dog started to scatter. I shot another one, I hit him in the ass and he spun around in circles. Um, and then I popped off one more round. I remember hearing sergeant basher yelling as I'm shooting scott, scott, what are you doing? And I popped off a couple more rounds and by then there's just like tears streaming down my face and, uh, I, I quit shooting. But he's he's like making a beeline right towards me, yelling at me, and I put my hand up and he just stopped. He knew it was like and I'm like give me a minute.
Speaker 2:And there were no, no words exchanged, but he just stood there staring at me and I'm like, so I just started walking off in the desert again, you don't want to show any weakness, I don't want to see anybody to see me crying. You know what I mean. So I took a few minutes and, just like, walked off into the desert and had to compose myself. But it it, it just got to be. You know all the death, the killing. It was just more than anyone should have to endure and way too much for a 20 year old kid like I.
Speaker 1:I just I can't. It's hard to wrap my head around like no matter where you turned at that point, it's just death.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, you know part of again that war, it was just death. Yeah, you know, part of again that war for us was we were as efficient as you could be and obviously that isn't a good thing when you're talking about human life and the toll it takes. So part of that, as good as the war was in our favor, it was hard to realize you were part of. Just you know, I think the estimates are 80 to 100,000 Iraqis we killed in those few days my unit alone. We took 2,000 Iraqi prisoners but we destroyed an entire Iraqi division. So that leaves 6,000 to 68,000 guys that we buried, you know. So it was the as good as it was. We didn't take a lot of losses. That the other part of that is. I mean, I said it before, there's no good way to kill another person and it sits with you, yeah, so yeah, well, I think the narrative back home is just just as you said.
Speaker 1:You know, they, they all surrendered and they ran away, but we don't talk about the overwhelming loss of life on the side of the enemy.
Speaker 2:And at the end of the day I mean, you do what you have to do it's a lesser of two evils right, yeah, and I've written a lot of those short stories, traumatic things that I went through, but to your point it was just death everywhere and it seemed like you always found the damn boots. I don't know if you experienced that when you were in Iraq, but for some reason the boots always stay intact. The rest of the body can be scattered all over the place, but, um, I remember that distinctly, just along the highway of death, uh, around the tanks, you'd always see those damn boots laying there, and nine times out of ten there was still somebody's foot in it.
Speaker 1:So yeah yeah well-made boots. Yeah, gonna buy stock in that company.
Speaker 2:Whatever reason, the leather seems to hold it together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. So how long were you actually there then?
Speaker 2:I mean, so we stayed till May. So we stayed in Kuwait for a while and we were mostly blowing up Iraqi stuff that was left behind. We were doing missions into Iraq. We had that five-mile demilitarized zone. Not all of the Iraqi units had gotten the information, so we actually had to force a few of them out of there. We never exchanged fire but there were some tense moments. But when we'd show up with a tow-tube missile launcher and an Apache they usually got the idea that we meant business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe we should go guys, Maybe we should get out of here.
Speaker 2:Because we showed up at one compound and I remember the guy was yelling at my captain. You know, this is Iraq, we're not leaving. And one guy ran into this building. Well, I pulled my .45 up and I pointed it we're not leaving. And one guy ran into this building, Well, I pulled my 45 up and I pointed it right at the guy. Of course then he settled down a little bit, but there was a tense standoff for about an hour. But once the Apaches finally arrived, you know, there was no more argument, they were leaving.
Speaker 1:Right, right, because all Dad has to do is threaten to spank you, and you know he means it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. But yeah, there were a few moments like that, even post-war, that we were still engaging with the Iraqis. They wanted to take their weapons with them and we're like, yeah, no, those are all standing. We blew up so many tanks and munition depots, buried a few chemical weapons that we found um, and then I remember one time we had the.
Speaker 2:We found these surface terror missiles. They must have been 10 feet long. So we we wired them up with c4 and we were, we were just going to blow the whole lot. We cooked them off and as we're sitting there, one of these missiles just comes streaking across the desert, probably a few hundred meters to the side where we were at, and we're like, holy shit. And then, as it's sitting there burning, another one cooks off and goes shooting up in the sky and we're like, oh man, we need to get out of here. So things don't always work out the way you think they're going to To your point you made earlier, you have doctrine about how to wire things up, but we'd blow up caches of weapons, especially artillery rounds, and not everything would cook off, and then you'd have secondary explosions and hot artillery rounds that come flying out of the bunker. So we quickly learned if we were going to load anything up. We went about two to three times the amount of demo we thought we needed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good rule of thumb, huh Yep.
Speaker 2:Just double it.
Speaker 1:So you know, I'm curious like you know, you're getting rid of munitions. You're blowing up whole tanks, that kind of stuff. Did you find that to be like a nice buffer from what you had experienced in that four days to now? You're just kind of getting rid of equipment and there's some, I don't know. When we blew up weapons caches there was something fun, like it relieved the tension almost. Did you find that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you know engineers are a little nutty to begin with, because anyone that's gonna stand, or in a bunker full of demolitions, and you know, you know, at any point you could just be a pink mist if something goes wrong, right. So, uh, you know, but there were there were times, yeah, when the bigger, the boom, I mean it's just exciting. We blew one bunker and the lid must have went an eighth of a mile into the sky and you could just see the shockwave coming across the desert. You know you could see it pushing the dust, the moon dust in front of it, and I mean you just feel it in your chest and like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Like a little kid right, Like when you're lighting off firecrackers. As a kid right, Did you see that thing fly?
Speaker 2:And then there were, you know, most of the time it was fine. There were other times, a couple of times, we had to defuse mines. That was terrifying.
Speaker 1:Oh, but.
Speaker 2:Which an anti-tank mine is pretty stable, but there's something about unscrewing the top and pulling the fuse out of it that just everything in you doesn't want to do that very, uh, counterintuitive to go up and do that.
Speaker 1:But I mean that that comes back to what we talked about really early on, and that is that you run to the sound of the gun, you don't run away from it and you have to make yourself do things that your body is saying this really isn't a good idea. In your brain, every part of your body is like this is not a good idea, but you have to do it yeah, exactly, and you know it's, it's what you're trained to do.
Speaker 2:It's uh, and in those instances, uh, most of the time we just blow things in place if we could, right. But the one I'm talking about where we had to diffuse these minds is because they were right out front of this guy's house and when we showed up there, it's just a rock hut, you know, with the blankets and the windows, and he had these kids running around and I remember he waved us down. We didn't speak any Arabic, you know and he goes over and he picks up a damn pot and there's a landmine under it. We're like, oh, whoa, what the hell, you know, and it's right out front of his house. We went in his house and the Iraqis had stored some munitions in there. We were able to move that stuff out, but the landmines we didn't want to take the chance of moving because it was so close to the house. So we ended up diffusing those before we removed them. But anything that was a little further out we just blew in place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the safest way to do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So this continued on for how long, then, before you left Kuwait?
Speaker 2:So we were in Kuwait in March. We must have been at least two, two and a half months in Kuwait. Engineers were the busiest in Kuwait because there's so much demolitions that were left behind, unexploded ordnance I mean there were cluster bombs in and day out, either blowing up caches, a weapon, getting rid of any things that were left in Kuwait, or any unexploded ordinance that was discovered. So we were never at a lack of things to do and we were also at Safwan. There we were part of the Shoah force. When they did the surrender, schwarzkopf came in. We always had something to do.
Speaker 1:Tell me a little about what it was like to leave and come back. Did you go home afterwards?
Speaker 2:I went back to Germany. Initially, we went down to King Fod Airport and we were there just a week or so, uh, it was. That was kind of surreal too, because a USO band came in and you know we'd been living in the desert for months at that point and, um, all, all men at that point, you know it would combat arms was strictly men back in those days. So you know, we we had seen a woman or a chow hall in three months. So I know, when we showed up at this air base we must have looked like animals. You know we're dirty, we have loaded weapons, grenades hanging off of us, and we walk into this chow hall and I just remember these Air Force guys looking at us like what the hell just walked through the front door.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, I I think that's kind of like an analogy for later on. You just you don't come home the same and it takes a while to get back to normal. But, um, getting back to Germany was, was nice, you know, it felt kind of normal, uh. But I think you don't even realize it at first, but you start to get little glimpses of like, maybe I'm not quite as normal as I was before I before I left, uh, but I was only in germany for a couple of months and then I ets'd out of the army okay and um, you said something about uh not being the same and in um, you know, I I've often heard people say, like the people that go to war aren't the people that come home?
Speaker 1:right, and you just can't. That's just not how it works. And so you ets'd out of the army fairly soon after getting back from combat and what so to talk.
Speaker 2:Walk me through that that was probably the worst thing that could have happened to me. Um, because you know, I talk about how I was down in a trench with a hand grenade and a 45 and four months later I'm, I'm back in Michigan, um, and there's nobody was talking about PTSD or anything back in those days, um, and it was just. You know, you go back to normal life, but there's nothing normal about anything you just went through. Uh, I remember, like the first time I heard fireworks, I was practically under the counter, you know, yeah, um, and I, I just remember I don't think anyone knew how to help me with what I was going through. I certainly wasn't at a point where I was 21. At that time, you know, I didn't know how to deal with any, uh any of this stuff. I'd I'd gone.
Speaker 1:You're 21. Um, you're in that unique situation where you uh left combat and then ETS pretty quickly. You come back home like battlefield to home and I'm I'm assuming you went back to West branch then when you got back, I did, uh, I.
Speaker 2:I spent a little bit of time in the Detroit area, but eventually um went uh back to West Branch. Um, after a couple of months, um started working in a factory. Uh hated everything about it, you know. So I, I, I joke around all the time that uh, in the army I had this heightened sense of purpose. I was part of something bigger than myself. I came home I don't think I could articulate it at that time, but I'm pressing out parts in a factory and I'm thinking is this really my life? Now? There has to be more than just this life now. You know, uh, there has to be more than just this Uh.
Speaker 2:So at first, uh, the first couple of years were probably the worst. I don't know how I didn't end up in jail or dead, to be honest, cause I was just living a little crazy Uh, but I would say the first five years when I came home, I it just. It took me a while to get back to normal. The second factory I worked in I met a Vietnam veteran and he could just like listen and not say much and nod his head and we could talk about things like yep, you know, you didn't have to articulate it, but you knew the other guy had seen some shit, so that that started to make me feel a little normal again, helped a little bit.
Speaker 2:But when I was 26, my daughter was born and I think that was the moment I realized I need to fix myself. I can't keep living like I am. So probably the best thing that ever happened to me was having a daughter, because I think I would have been way too hard on a boy. It softened me up a little bit and it kind of forced me to figure out how do I, how do I fix myself? Cause I knew I wasn't, I wasn't okay.
Speaker 2:Time to get your shit in one sock basically Exactly yeah, so you uh, so were you married at this time I was, uh, we. I got married a couple of years after I came back, so uh, 93, and then in 96, we had our daughter. Okay, how'd you meet your wife? So I actually met her when I was home on leave. Uh well, that's when we started dating. I had known her for years. I knew her family, um, again, oklahoma County, west branch, small small town. So she was a freshman in high school when I was a senior. But we started dating when I was home on leave, before Desert Storm.
Speaker 1:Okay, so, local gal, get married, have a daughter. Now, was your wife working at the time too?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's funny because we look back at all the chapters of our lives. I was working at a factory and she was the head cashier at Kmart. So you know our lives have come a long way since then. But you know, to your point I think she would definitely tell you I was not the same guy. She met a year prior to that. You know, I definitely came home different. I think it definitely caused some issues for us early on in our marriage. But again having a daughter, I think, is the best thing that happened to me and it definitely helped straighten me out.
Speaker 2:It wasn't just overnight, obviously A long journey to find your way back to whatever normal looks like, uh, but one of the things, uh, I didn't mention. Oddly enough, we had another guy from Ogamaw County get transferred into our unit right before we left for desert storm. So three guys from Ogle Maw County in the same company. I don't know if it's divine intervention or just random, but the odds are astronomically slim that that could happen.
Speaker 2:He came back to Ogle Maw County about five years later and the two of us could talk about things that I couldn't talk about with anybody else, and it wasn't just and it was different than even talking with the vietnam veteran, because we literally chewed the same dirt, we experienced the same things. I mean, uh, we would both sit and talk about. Uh. One of the short stories I I wrote is he didn't make it One of the guys that we popped in. I mean, he's sitting there just staring at us and then he ended up eventually dying. But you know, we both were there for that event, so it was. You know, you had a shared experience. That is just different than anything anybody else could even talk about with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's power in that in talking with other veterans is just different than anything anybody else could even talk about with. So there's there's power in that in talking with other veterans. In fact, that's why we're doing what we do. Right Is, other veterans will hear this and be oh well, maybe I'm not as unique as I thought I was, cause I think I think we all kind of think to some extent nobody else could possibly be going through this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and I worked in veterans' mental health for a while and I think that's one of the things is traumas all look different, but at the end of it there's not. The war may be different, the setting may be different, but the way we internalize it and, you know, carry that with us looks the same. Um, and it's, I think. You know. You come back to to the U? S and, uh, you go to work in a factory and you know maybe one or two other veterans and uh, you, you feel very alone, you know, and uh, everything, everything about war is not what we're taught to. You know, we're taught to respect life, we're taught to treat people with kindness, and then you, just you, become an animal, you become a savage, and it's like your identity isn't what it used to be.
Speaker 1:Right, well then you have to reconcile that at some point. Some people just never do, but I think you have to. Right, well then, you have to reconcile that at some point. Some people just never do, but I think you have to. So clearly, you no longer stamp parts at a factory and Kmart doesn't exist, so your wife's not a cashier there anymore.
Speaker 2:Walk me through. So after your daughter's born, kind of walk me through what happens. So I eventually started a hardwood flooring company. I did that successfully for about 12 years. Um, my wife had went back to school when my daughter was young, probably five or six years old uh, to become an attorney, uh. So after 2009, she passed the bar exam and got a job down here in Lansing. So I started shutting down my wood flooring business and sold the house up north. We were kind of in transition for about a year or so, but at that same time I decided to go back in the Army a second time and join the Army Reserve while going back to school to get my degree.
Speaker 1:All right, so let's talk about that decision First of all. How'd your wife take that?
Speaker 2:So one of the I don't think she was thrilled about it, but one of the things she said is that when she came home and told me she wanted to be an attorney, I said let's get you signed up for classes.
Speaker 2:And she said you know, I was always her biggest cheerleader and supporter, so when I decided I wanted to go back in the army, she felt she had no choice but to support me in my decision and I think for me there's always a part of me that'll be a soldier and you know, um the early two thousands, I felt like I was sitting on the sidelines watching Iraq and Afghanistan and, um, I wanted to work with veterans. As I said, I worked in mental health for a little while, uh, and I thought some more modern, relevant experience would help me connect with some of those veterans and in helping them through some of the issues. Uh, part of that was I was talking to a couple of rock veterans and it's like I saw myself, you know, 20 years later. So I just felt like I had something to offer, I could see what they'd gone through and, you know, I just felt like I had to do something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you joined the Army Reserve. Are you in engineering again?
Speaker 2:No, I went back in as psychological operations. So our unit was in Grand Rapids, 321st Psyop Company.
Speaker 1:Okay, and how was that? Because you'd been out of uniform for a couple of years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I had a 19-year break in service before I went back in, so I went back in at the age of 40. Back in, um, so I went back in at the age of 40, uh, you know, at that time they were desperate for people. So, 40, 40 was uh still acceptable to come back in if you're a prior service, uh, but as you know, at 40, you're the old man in the army.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and guess what? You don't bounce anymore, by the way, you crack and splat and everything else.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it was definitely uh odd coming back in, you know, I made Sergeant pretty quickly but because of my old, uh, all my old history in the military, but uh, you know, coming back in as a, an enlisted person, e4, and then becoming a Sergeant at 40 years old, you're you're definitely the old man in that category.
Speaker 1:So there's two camps on this right. There's the one camp that's like God dang, that guy's old, and then there's the other camp that's going boy. He really must have screwed up if he's 40 years old and he's just now making sergeant. I wonder what he did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was funny. But I, uh, I always, I've always led by example, you know. So, um, even at 40, I would challenge myself to make sure I pass the 18 to 21 physical fitness standards. So I, I, I never allowed somebody to make the excuse Well, I can, I can pass your your physical fitness. Old man, Right? No, I pass yours, so keep up yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Bring on buddy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, uh, you know, leading by example and I think with a little bit of age, uh, I was a little more relaxed in my leadership style than a lot of the military is. Uh. So I think, uh, my genuine concern for other soldiers showed through. I could still be a hard sergeant at times, but uh, you know, I think it didn't take me long to really build rapport with the guys, even though they're 20 years younger than I was oh yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1:You um, so you uh crossed over at a different rate, so you had to go to school for that, correct.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we did travel training. The 100th Training Brigade met us in Fort Dix and we did the SIOP selection course there.
Speaker 1:Okay, lovely, fort Dix, new Jersey.
Speaker 2:Oh, I hate that place. I spent way too many hours there.
Speaker 1:That's where we did our train up for deployment. Yeah, us as well. Oh my God.
Speaker 2:The second our um train up for deployment yeah, is that a four Us as well? Oh my God. The second one, which we'll get to here in a minute Frickin horror story.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so you, uh, you're, you're chugging along, you're you.
Speaker 2:Now are you in school too, as well as going to Michigan state uh to get my undergraduate in psychology uh at the same time, I was working in a veterans treatment court, so deeply involved in the community and veterans affairs just because, again, I kind of had a passion for it Finished my degree in 2014 and immediately found out I was going to be deployed to Africa.
Speaker 1:Nice. So before we get there, I want to ask though this is kind of a side note when you went to MSU, did you take the veteran's certificate course that they offer?
Speaker 2:I did not. Okay, I did not.
Speaker 1:Their social work department offers this really great certificate course. I didn't know if you were familiar with that.
Speaker 2:I am familiar with that, but I think that came about shortly after I had uh finished my master's in human resources okay, that makes sense, all right.
Speaker 1:So so it's. You say it's 2015 yes, got your degree and they're like oh, guess what?
Speaker 2:you're going to africa yeah, so, uh, 20 2014, I got my degree uh, that was in aug, August, because I had been taking summer classes and we got tasked to send a psychological operations detachment to support a joint task force in Horn of Africa. So I was selected for that Africa Uh. So I was selected for that Uh and um, I ran our product development attachment portion of that uh as the NCOIC. But, um, you know, we get tasked to go where we're putting together. This ragtag group of people I often say the, the PSYOP uh group, is the misfits of the Army. They're intelligent enough to be dangerous, but too smart to be infantry, but not refined enough to be an officer.
Speaker 1:What do they say? I need a guy that's smart enough to do the job and dumb enough to take it.
Speaker 2:Yes, I feel like psychological operations is exactly that. Uh, it's definitely a eclectic group of people that end up in that. Uh, but, but we want people who think outside the box. Uh, so, um, but that doesn't always work with the typical army hierarchy where you do what you're told yeah, yeah, there's I.
Speaker 1:So I was in the national guard, so I yeah, there's always like it seems like there's always a little bit of friction. You gotta like almost prove yourself and then, once you do, everything's fine.
Speaker 2:But regular army looks at you a little bit differently oh, absolutely, and you know I did as well when I came out of active duty. Um, I would look down my nose at the guard reserve guys and um, but I think when you're prior active and you go into the reserve regard, you bring some of that with you, um, but yeah, it's definitely a different. And then when you're attached to a regular unit, to your point, I feel like you have to. You have to prove your worth, because they're still just looking at you like you're a reserve guy who's just here for a deployment.
Speaker 1:But your advantage, I think, is that you have to your point an eclectic group of people with all of this civilian experience that they bring into the military, which I think is really helpful when you're trying to get stuff done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, our deployment to Africa. We were able to get a lot of stuff done while we were there. Um, it was I called a combat light deployment, cause we weren't actively engaged. Uh, we were doing kind of some proxy war stuff with with uh African nations. But, um, you know that group of guys and a couple of women that uh deployed over to Africa, we, we were able to put out more series of uh psychological operations product in that year than than they had seen for a decade prior to that. So, um, to your point, people came in with all kinds of different skills and uh, you, you want those people that think outside the box, cause they, they find a way to get things done that uh, you know, sometimes the bureaucracy, the army, you have to get creative to find a way around that.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yes, you do, and that's the, that's the advantage of that civilian background, cause you know how to get around things. Absolutely. The army guys don't Right. They're more worried about their evaluations. Yep for sure, yeah, exactly. So walk me through this deployment because it sounds I don't know, sounds kind of cool. Psyops Africa.
Speaker 2:It was interesting. It was difficult for me because we were big on force protection there, me, because, um, we were big on force protection there, uh, and I think that's just a. You know, I think things changed because Iraq and Afghanistan, we'd gone to this Bob mindset and that was hard for me to wrap my head around because, um, as a former engineer, you know, my job is outside the wire, not in the wire. Uh and same with psychological operations. I can't be effective sitting behind a wall, uh, so I I did struggle with that a little bit. Um, you know, you need to unleash me a little bit so I can do my job, uh, so we eventually found a way to get that done, but, um, the whole deployment was just different for me. You know, there's a lot of similarities, but every war, every, every deployment is different and unique in its own way. Um, but, uh, camp Leminijibouti is just, it's horrible. Uh, but it was a great deployment.
Speaker 2:Uh, we, again, we accomplished some really cool things while we were there. We, we were working down in kenya for a while, uh, working with, um, somali dissidents, because we would develop products and run it by Somalis who had left Somalia recently, before we would put our radio or print products. We made a comic book while we were there that we gave to school children because they had just recently established a federal government and Somalia had been 29 years without a government, so people didn't even have an idea of what a federal government was. So we were trying to, at the youth level, at every age group we had different products that we were trying to instill this idea of. We are Somali, we're one nation, not just the tribe Somali, but the nation of Somalia.
Speaker 1:And so when you talk about products for anyone listening, that's not military, you're talking about like literal products, like leaflets and booklets and things like that, and then also um radio shows, I guess that kind of thing. Um, you know, I, I remember psyops in Iraq. They were handing out, uh, soccer balls and things like that as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really depends on the priorities of the deployment. So for us, we were again trying to support the Somali police, support the idea of a Somali government and degrade al-Shabaab, who is the bad actor in that area. So all of our products were revolving around that. We had radio stations where they would talk about issues in Somalia. A couple of our radio announcers actually were shot and killed for speaking out against al-Shabaab. So there was a real threat there. But it was just different for me because, having gone through Desert Storm, I was probably a little too lax. You know, I'm like this is nothing.
Speaker 2:But it wasn't nothing. I mean there was a real threat, real danger there, but it all depends on what you already know, wasn't nothing? I mean there was a, there was a real threat, real danger there, um, but it's all depends on what you already know. You know so, um, but we did, uh, we did get quite a bit done while we were there working with, uh, the somali government. Um, everything had to go through them, uh, for approval, so we had to work with our legal team at Camp Lemonnier.
Speaker 2:Again, I have a copy of this comic book at home that went out to Somali kids. It was kind of like an Archie-type comic book. It would present you with a moral issue, which is funny. I showed this to other people and they're like well, we've never had to worry about finding a crate of hand grenades. So the moral issues were a little different in some of these stories. And then they would call the local police for resolution because that was new to them Before. It was just tribal and warlords and you solve things by contacting the guy with the ak-47. So right it was.
Speaker 2:It was definitely a unique set of things we were working on. We also helped set up a school house in uganda for psychological operations. Ugandans were interested in having their own psychological operations group, so we established a schoolhouse in Jinja at their war college, went down there and trained them on our tactics for a couple of months we met them there again and trained them again, so got to go to Uganda a couple of times and train in their their war college, which was really unique. You don't think that you'll be teaching classes on the deployment, but that was a part of what I ended up doing while I was there as well.
Speaker 1:So I want to. You know, that kind of brings up a point that I think sometimes, when people talk about going to places that are tribal, whether it's, you know, Iraq or, uh, Africa, when they think tribal, um, I think there's this tendency to really think that you're dealing with some people who aren't very intelligent. Um, you know, like you, you have to respect the people that you're with, but when you talk about teaching them psyops in their war college, I don't think people think about it in those terms. When they think about Uganda or some other areas, but they are. These are well-developed societies and areas and, whether they're tribal or not, they're very intelligent people who, uh, you can't discount.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree with that. I think, uh, you know, from our American lens and what we see on the television, we have a hard time understanding, uh, other cultures and, um, some of the kindest people I've ever met were, you know, in Somalia. Not everyone there is looking to kill you, you know. Some of them are just fantastic people who are just trying to get by. I think one thing I learned on that deployment is there's certainly bad actors out there, but I think there's more good in most people than there is bad. I think most people just want to live their life, you know, and live in relative peace, but there's certain parts of the world where that isn't. They don't have the rule of law that we have here in America.
Speaker 1:Right, I think we came up with a uh, a phrase called iraqi. Good enough, right? Like they're never going to be, they're going to meet the american yardstick of of success, but they're going to meet the iraqi yardstick of success, which is just as important yeah, and I think that's part of it is.
Speaker 2:uh, you know, you have to stabilize the nation first, and that was a big thing. That we were trying to do in Somalia is just get some sense of normalcy, some sense of national pride, and then you build from there. You know, we take it for granted that most people behave the way they're supposed to here in the United States, but we have police forces, we have rule of law. That's established. There's parts of the world where that's just not the norm.
Speaker 1:Right, right, and you kind of have to accept what their normal is and work from that point forward, absolutely so how long were you in Africa then?
Speaker 2:So that was a year deployment uh, 10 months in country, um, but we, we arrived there in january. I believe we left the first part of november, so it might have been a little over, it might have been closer to 11 months, but that we were in country okay, and how was that for your wife and your, your daughter?
Speaker 2:I think it was difficult for them. My daughter was in college at the time, um, but I think my wife it was probably more difficult, for for one her daughter was gone and then all of a sudden I'm gone and, uh, she's kind of on her own for that year. Uh, the differences, I think, was that, you know, I could use Skype, uh, which was new to me. My first deployment, we lived in a GP medium in the desert, uh, and now I lived in a Connex that was air conditioned and I had internet and I could Skype my family. So, uh, it's not the same as being home, but it certainly wasn't three weeks to get a letter, like it was during Desert Storm. So, uh, 24 years between my two combat deployments, and it was. It was just funny to me how some of it was the same but some of it was so incredibly different oh yeah, I can only imagine.
Speaker 1:So you, uh, you finish your deployment and then you come home. Now Typically, um, you know, coming back from deployment on active duty is a lot different than coming back from deployment, uh, in the reserves. But this is almost the same for you, right? Because you came back from deployment in ETS and now you're coming back. What was it like to come back from Africa?
Speaker 2:So I, I think you know, we, we had the yellow ribbon ceremony when we come back, and that was new to me. We didn't have anything like that the first time. And I remember people sitting around talking about deployment and I, I remember almost scoffing at it a little bit like this was easy, man, this was nothing, you know. And it wasn't until later that I realized it wasn't, it wasn't nothing, it and again, you know, you only compare it to what you know and compared to Desert Storm, it felt like nothing at the time. Um, but we did. We lost a kid while we were there.
Speaker 2:Swaggart, um, I mean, that struck everybody hard. I didn't really think about it until about a year later, all of a sudden, I was thinking about Swaggart, you know, and you, you realize the. It impacted you a lot more than you realize. And you're a year away from family. Um, you know, because you have the, the pre-deployment, post-deployment, we were definitely well over a year total.
Speaker 2:But I think, um, I started to realize, you know, even a easy deployment isn't easy. So I think that's the one thing I I had to like remind myself as I was working with veterans. We're very good at trying to out trauma one another. You know, oh, you didn't see any real action. You know, um, but the the fact of the matter is, you know there's there's days, even in Africa, that were very tense. Matter is, you know, there's days, even in Africa, that were very tense. You know, we got in the middle of a political situation where they were shooting rubber bullets into the crowd. I mean that's traumatic. To me it didn't seem like much, but again, it's not a small situation. When you're three white guys in a crowd of Africans and bullets are flying, I mean it's no small thing.
Speaker 2:No, it's not a small thing. So you know, I think it took me a while to realize, as I joke, and I call it a combat light deployment, but it had a bigger impact on me than I realized. Call it a combat light deployment, but it it had a bigger impact on me than I realized and I think, I think I had to take a little time to think it through and realize that it was, it was bigger than I, than I thought, yeah, yeah, and I feel like too.
Speaker 1:It's perspective that, um, I remember coming back from deployment and going right back to work and the problems that people had at work just seems so tiny like are you kidding me? That's a problem, uh, and then having to go back and realize that, yes, people's problems are their problems and you can't do that. That comparison, right?
Speaker 2:the combat shaming yeah, uh, no, and I think we're veterans sometimes we're our own worst enemy because, again, you know we look at everybody's medals and where they've been and you know what's your resume compared to mine and you know really we should be supporting each other. I mean, if you signed up and served, then you know you might not have had the same opportunities I did or other people did, but you know we all at some point decided we were going to raise their hand and be part of something bigger.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, in, in even non-combat roles, support what we do, uh, in combat roles. So it's all I think there's. I don't think anything's more important than the other, right Cause without one you don't get the other. So your time in the reserves, you were working then.
Speaker 2:I was working part-time, I was working in the Veterans Treatment Court in East Lansing and going to school, and then, because I was psychological operations, I actually spent anywhere from 90 to 120 days per year in uniform, so it was a little more than your average reserve or National Guard commitment. I did a lot of schools Army Basic Instructor School, army Warfare School, just to name a couple and then we just had more training opportunities because we were a special operations group.
Speaker 1:Right, probably training was just not open to just anybody, right, right. And how long did you serve in the reserves then?
Speaker 2:So I did a six-year stint on that one, from 2010 to 2016. I got out in September of 2016. I have a picture I'm wearing my uniform on September September of 2016. I have a picture I'm wearing my uniform on September 11, 2016, the last time I wore my dress blues. I still love that picture and take a look at it every now and then. One of the things we'll talk a little bit more, but there's five, six combat veterans in that photo and two of them have taken their lives since that photo was taken, and it's just. You know, I think when we talk about combat deployments or even just being in the military, people experience things that are just difficult to digest and I think you said it before not everyone gets back to normal.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know, for me and for a lot of people that I talk to, you know, I think this goes back to what we were talking about way earlier is that when you're in it, you're just pushing through, you're getting it done, you're getting it done, you're not thinking about it. It's when you come home, and it's late at night and you have time to process it. And that's to me, that was the hardest part. I mean, I deployed with 217 soldiers and I didn't lose one of them until I got home, you know, and I think it is.
Speaker 1:And it's not always the combat, like you saw in Iraq or in Kuwait and those other areas. Sometimes it's that deployment to Africa that really impact people as well. I mean, everyone processes things differently, but yeah, and it's years later. It's not like right. When you get back, it can hit you at any time.
Speaker 2:One of the guys in that photo that I referred to. He was in Kosovo, so most people don't think of Kosovo as a combat deployment, but he was there early on on the ground and he saw the atrocities that happened there. So he wasn't directly involved in combat, but I mean that stuck with him and he never seemed to get over it and you know, obviously he ended up ended his life just two years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's hard too for the people who are still around, because I think, as veterans especially, we always think of what could we have done, but also as veterans, we need to understand that if someone's going to do something, they're going to do it, like all those signs that they tell you about in school that they don't exist no, um, usually in my experience, uh, you know I've lost three guys from my unit, uh, in the last few years and, um, they're, they're some of the toughest guys you'll ever meet and they're not asking for help, they're not showing the signs you think you would normally see.
Speaker 2:So it's a lot to take in as a soldier, as a NCO. Those were my guys and I felt responsible and that's hard to separate yourself from that. But at the end of the day, all we can do is try to find our own team. I tell veterans that all the time when you get out, find some fellow veterans and, you know, surround yourself At least make some connections, go out and have a beer, go for hikes, like I do once every year with a couple of old veterans, and that way you can feel some sense of normalcy, because you joined a group that is different and you were made differently, so you're never going to fit back in completely and that's just a reality and I think people try to fight that and I think you almost just need to embrace that. You were made differently and you know you're not going to be normal anymore and no one's going to think some of those jokes are funny.
Speaker 2:No, and that's I think that's the hardest part is knowing. That's why you need those veterans, because you can do some of that dark humor that you can't when you go to work in human resources, like I do now. You know. So knowing when to, when to let staff sergeants got out of the box and when to keep them in the box is something you have to. You have to learn yourself absolutely so.
Speaker 1:You, uh, you do your time in the reserves. You, you get out where. Where are you working at this point? So?
Speaker 2:as soon as I got out of the reserves, I started doing my master's program in human resources at Michigan state Um, so I wasn't working at all. I went full time in my master's program, finished that in a year and a half Uh. And then I went to work, uh in veterans and mental health with um mid-state health network Um, mostly they work in the Medicaid system, uh, but I was working to help veterans uh get connected with their benefits um and get mental health treatment wherever possible.
Speaker 1:Okay, and um, what, what else? What from there, Cause I? I know where you're at now, I'm just trying to figure out how you got up.
Speaker 2:So, uh, you know, I actually loved working in that area Um the veterans mental health, but I won't lie, um losing two guys back to back for suicide, um took a toll on me and at the same time COVID hit and I I was like I, just I, I can't sit at home while veterans are popping themselves.
Speaker 2:Uh, you know, and um, I decided to get out of, uh that area just because I think it was weighing too much on me. Um, so I ended up, uh becoming a leadership training specialist at a Glambia nutritionals uh, building on my HR background, my training background that I had in the military as well, uh, and then I quickly realized I didn't love working in the factory, even on the uh, even on the salary side of things, uh, so I only worked there for two years. Now I work at Greenstone farm credit system. Uh, I think the cultures there is a fantastic and um, I think I've definitely found my home there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know. Interesting statistic, HR guy Um, did you know that 50% of veterans who get out of the military leave their first job in the first year?
Speaker 2:I have heard that before, because I used to work with a guy named Mike Poima in InvestVets and we talked about the difficulty transition that veterans have. And you know, when I go back to, I came home and I was stamping out parts. I was not out parts, I was not qualified for anything. I had done some of the coolest things on earth I jumped out airplanes, I blew things up, I fought in a war. I've been awarded a Bronze Star medal. I mean to me I was like I had gone from the top of the world to now the only thing I am qualified for is pressing parts in a factory and I hated every minute of it. So it doesn't surprise me that other veterans have the same kind of experience. You know, whatever they did in the military is better than pressing parts pressing parts.
Speaker 1:So somebody said somebody, there's a cartoon somewhere that uh, it's got a guy and it says you know, ptsd is knowing that you're never going to be as badass as you once were. Yeah, because when you're in combat and you're doing those things and you're I mean when you're in in that whole arena, you're it's I.
Speaker 1:I liken it to being a rock star oh yeah and then you come home and you're like from hero to zero, cause no one gives a shit, like they're nice, they thank you for your service, but nobody cares about all that stuff that you did. No, to a certain extent.
Speaker 2:And I think you're. You're spot on there and even if you didn't serve in combat, you can again. You know, just being in Germany, the training we did, the things we experienced, even before I went to combat. You've done something so much more than other people will ever experience. And then you come back and it's like this is my life, seriously Well yeah, that's true, and think about how young a lot of our veterans are.
Speaker 1:Like you said, you came home at 21.
Speaker 2:You had already lived a whole life experience, really yeah, and you know you're, you're indoctrined into this whole new culture. I mean, the military is built on indoctrining you into into its culture. And 18 to 21, you're so impressionable, you know. So I still to this day say there's always a piece of me that's a soldier. You know and you said before you do so many cool things at a young age and you're almost at like the apex of what you're ever going to do at a young young age. It's kind of like you got the opportunity to play in the NFL, then you got injured and you can't play football anymore. So who am I now?
Speaker 2:right you know what do I do? And I feel like, whether you're a soldier, marine, air force, uh, navy, uh sailor, you know. I mean, who are you once you leave the military? And I think there's almost like a little identity crisis there, because you know you're, you're not Sergeant Scott anymore. You have to. You have to find out who Michael Scott is and how is he going to survive in this world. That doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:Right, right and and find people who understand your experience too. That's, I think that's key. So you're working at Greenstone now. Um, how's the family? What's going on with, uh, with all of these folks?
Speaker 2:Oh, the family's good. Uh, you know, um, I've, I've been blessed, I think over the years. Uh, seeking education and and trying to figure out my own stuff has been good for me. But, um, my, my wife has grown a lot as well. I said she's an attorney. She now is a in-house counsel at MSUFCU. My daughter finished her degree as a physician assistant just a few years ago, so she's out in California fluent in Spanish, which she didn't get from me, but she's just doing fantastic. So when I look back at all the rough times, when I first came home from Desert Storm, I feel completely blessed about where me and my family are now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and rightly so. So we've covered a lot of ground in the last two and a half or so hours. Is there anything we haven't talked about that you wanted to cover?
Speaker 2:you wanted to cover. No, um, I think you know, mostly when I'm talking to other veterans, uh, I really encouraged them to define their team, whether it's a former guys you were in the military with or just some old Vietnam veteran you met at the lunch table, you know, find somebody that uh gets you and understands you. Uh, because, to your point, you can't talk about certain things in the workplace. Nobody wants to hear about the real things that happened in the war.
Speaker 2:When you start talking about dogs eating dead bodies, it doesn't sit well with people, right, and I laugh about that a little bit, but it's it's, it's just the reality of it. Nobody wants to hear it. Um, so it shouldn't be a normal conversation, but you know you, you also shouldn't bury it inside and just pretend it never happened, because I don't know, I carried it for years and I never spoke about it and it just uh, you know it'll eat you up inside. So you got to find your team that you can have a little dark humor with, that you can uh go, disconnect and just have some fun and uh be as normal as you can, because uh, every day in HR I can't, I can't talk about those things.
Speaker 1:No, that's frowned on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:I think that's some great advice for folks out there, so I appreciate you taking the time out to sit down and share your story with us, and just thanks for being here, michael.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. No-transcript.
