Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: This is the Spear, the Story of the Profession of Arms, a production of the Modern War Institute at West Point, brought to you by the west point class of 1984.
Welcome back to the Spear, the story of the profession of arms. I'm Dr. Charlie Feint, your host, and today's guest is EOD officer Michael Villahermosa. Michael, welcome to the show.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Hey, it's great to be here.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: Michael, let's start with your origin story. Why did you decide to join the army and what attracted you about Explosive Ordinance Disposal?
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Oh, man, that's a good one. So to be fair, when I joined the army, I had no idea what EOD was. Probably couldn't even spell it to be. To be honest, I was always interested in the military. I always wanted to join the army. My father served, both my brothers were in when I joined the army. And I thought I was gonna join right at 18. But you know, my dad talked me into, hey, go to a couple years of community college first, just to, you know, experience the civilian world.
And community college did not go well for me. Uh, I just, I just was not a good student. It's not where I wanted to be.
And my brother had joined. He came in as an 18x ray contract in 2002, so Special Forces candidate. And he made it through the pipeline. He became an 18 Delta Special Forces medic. And I thought to myself, that is what I want to do. And I can absolutely do that. Lo and behold, I could not actually do that right now. There's, there's a story there for, for perhaps another time. But, you know, I went through basic training in a pipeline. It was a brand new concept. All the people that went to basic TR together were going to be 18x rays, right? And they were going to have special forces drill sergeants. And then from there that group would stay together and they go to jump school together and then they go to Pre selection, pre SFAs together and then they go to selection together. And so I spent a long time with this group of people and I went to selection and I was not selected. Right. As a matter of fact, not only was I not selected, let's not, let's not mince words here, right? I was a day 0 non select.
You know, we had a class of about 300 people. And I was told that I failed the PT test. To be clear, I did not, I don't think I failed the PT test, right. I got told I did 23 sit ups, which was, you know, not normal because in pre SFAs you take a PT test every week. And so, you know, come as I've gotten older, right? Just a really big class, and they're trying to cut it down. And so I get back to the rear, you know, the TAC officer pulls me in nco.
I will leave his name out of it. And he goes, hey, man, do you want to go back to selection? And I had failed with my best friend. And I said, yeah, when are we going back? And he goes, not. Not we.
You.
You're going back. And I said, okay, let me pick at this scab a little bit. Why me?
And he goes, I was on a team with your brother in Iraq, and we could use it. We could use another one of you out in the career field.
And I said, no, thank you. You know, I didn't. I don't want to be the person who. Who rode coattails, right? That was never, never something I wanted to do in my career.
And I made that decision early on, Right. I have a. I have a military family. I don't ever want my name to be their name.
[00:02:57] Speaker A: Right.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Even though it's the same. I want to make. I want to make my own bones. And he goes, okay, well, have you thought about eod?
And I said, I don't. I don't know what that is. He said, look, we are currently. There's an EOD shortage within the community, within the force, and there is a current program where if you do not make it through SFAs, you can go to EOD school.
And I said, can I go to UD school or can we all go to UD school? Me and my. Me and my buddy? He said, no, no, you guys can both go. This is for everybody. I said, okay, then I'm going to do that. And so I went to EOD school. I went to Phase one out in Redstone Arsenal at the time. I was there for a couple months, and then I went to Phase two out at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. That's how I got into this career field.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: That's very interesting. How old were you when this happened?
[00:03:40] Speaker B: I was 21, so I turned 21 at Fort Bragg. 21. 22 during this pipeline.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: That's a pretty mature and thoughtful attitude to have for a young guy to take a pass on Special Forces because you wanted to kind of blaze your own trail.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: I think I realized at that point, you know, yeah, I was young, but you tie your horse to other people, right? That's forever what it is. There's always going to be a grumbling. There's always going to Be a grumbling like, hey, you know, that guy didn't actually make it. There's some nepotism, right? His. His brother's here, and we like him, so we let him come to you. Like, I didn't never want to. I didn't want that to be me. Right.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: All right, so now you're an EOD school. Can you describe what the trial process is like? Because EOD is highly selective, it's hard to get into that program, and it's even harder to graduate. Can you talk us through about what the application process was like and the types of things that you studied while you were in school?
[00:04:30] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. So EOD school is 143 training days. That doesn't include weekends, doesn't include, you know, holidays. And it really takes you from the very, very basics, how to identify a piece of ordinance to how do I deal with, you know, conventional, biological, nuclear, and improvised explosives. So we take someone from the ground up, you know, they know nothing, coming right off the street, and you teach them everything. So currently, you know, the attrition rate for your school is about 50%. You know, one out of every two people is going to make it through. It's a hard school. It's very mentally demanding. And I tell you that because, you know, school is not particularly physically demanding. There's just not enough time in the day. You know, you're there at School at 5:30 in the morning, and you're done at 5pm and then you got to, you know, you got to eat and you got to do pt, right? Because you don't have time to do it in the morning. And then you take a shower and you go to sleep, and then you do it again. And so when I was working there later in my career as an officer, what I'd tell students is, hey, EOD school is not physically demanding, but the career field is. If you can't keep up with the maneuver element and the people that you're supporting, it doesn't matter how smart you are, you're worthless. Right. If you can't get to the objective to do your mission, there's no point you being here. So it's a very. It's a very physically demanding career field. The schoolhouse, however, is not. It's very mentally demanding.
And, you know, I was going through school, and I had a First Sergeant at the time, First Sergeant Homan, Dan Homan, now retired.
And, you know, I'm a. I'm a private going through school, right? You don't, you know, when you're in an AIT environment, you don't really interact with the first sergeant. You know, you go to school and one day we're doing a PT test and he, you know, he called me over, he goes, hey, young private, what do you, what do you want? What do you want out of life? What do you want out of the Army? And you know, at this point, I've been to basic training, I've been to jump school, I've been to pre selection, I've been to selection, I've been to EOD phase one, and I'm in EOD phase two. I've just been like, I've just been training for two years and you know, meanwhile, the war is raging on the GWAD is, you know, in full swing. It's 2000, 2009, 2010. And I said, man, I just, I really want to deploy. I kind of feel like I'm a bum. I've been in the army for two years and I've never left a training command. And he just kind of like, he was like, okay. And that was it. That was a conversation. Right about three months from graduation, orders are starting to get cut. And my phone rings and Dan Homan, my first sergeant from school, had moved up to Fort Campbell and he was now a first sergeant at an EOD company at Fort Campbell. And he called me out of the blue, like based off one conversation, and he goes, hey, do you know who this is? And I said, absolutely not. I don't have a clue. He goes, this is first Ryan Homan.
Do you still want to deploy?
And I said, yeah. He said, when do you graduate? And I told him, hey, I graduated July 16th. He said, okay, two things.
Don't fail and don't take leave and I'll see you in a couple weeks.
And I showed up to Fort Campbell and I was in Afghanistan three weeks later.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Wow. Amazing that, that's pretty incredible that, that timeline. And it's, I think it speaks highly of the potential that the first sergeant saw in you that he would snatch you right outta the schoolhouse to take you out of deployment.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I don't, I don't know what it is that we saw. I mean, I'll be honest, I was just a, you know, a run of the mill PFC going through school. I'm not sure, you know, what he, what he saw in me. I'm happy he, I'm happy he took a chance on me. You know, we're still, we're still friends to this day, right? That's, you know, that's 15, 16 years ago, right. We still, we still talk. Great NCO really, really did some good mentorship and development on that deployment. But you know, I show up to Fort Campbell and I looked at him and I was like, where is everybody? You know, and so I'm a private, I'm at Reception battalion at Fort Campbell. And my first arm said, hey, you're be at the company in three days. So like I don't, I don't know anything, right? I'm a private, I'm at Reception Battalion. And they're like, hey, Reception Battalion is two weeks long. And I raise my hand and I'm like, hey, my first sergeant set up to be the unit in three days. And they laughed at me. Right? I mean, as, as one would do to a private.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: That's so cute, Private.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Oh yeah. And so my first sergeant, my battalion sergeant major and my brigade sergeant major came down to reception. Oh, and they're like, hey, we're trying to find Private Fear Hermosa.
And like everyone just kind of looked around and I cleared reception in two days. Like cif, the whole nine yards, right? They like hand walked me and someone, I remember someone else pulling me aside like, who are you? And I'm like, I have no ide. Like I, I think I'm just fuel for the machine at this point. Like they need a number to deploy with. And so we get to the company area and like, where is everybody? Everyone's on leave. Okay, what do I do with my stuff? He's like, you're going to throw it in the SI conics? Because all the other conics are banded and ready for deployment. So like that's how close I got to the unit, you know, like how close we were to deployment when I got to the unit.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And so you know, my, my team leader who I was going to work for, you know, he came in off of leave, took me to his house, you know, met his family, met his, met his wife, met his, met his kid. And he kind of said, hey, this is the stuff that matters to me. This is what I am trying to get back home to.
Great nco, probably the best NCO I've ever met in the army.
But I was not wanted there. And I don't mean that like in, in any type of negative way. I, I had, I had to cut my teeth out there.
They had been training for a two man teams are three people. So him and Aaron Merritt, my teammate, had been training to deploy as a two person team. And now suddenly here comes this new kid. Right out of the schoolhouse, he's going to go deploy with us to one of the hottest spots in Afghanistan, and I'm a liability. And I realized that, you know, I realized, like, I don't know anything. Right? About to go. I'm about to go deploy.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: That has got to be pretty scary coming in there. Basically, you don't have your chain of command. You don't have, presumably, a lot of friends there. You know, you're going to combat. What kind of things are running through your mind as a young private going over for your first deployment?
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Well, I mean, the cool part about young privates is we're pretty dumb. So I was like. I was. I was really excited. I mean, this is like, you know, this is what you train to do. For me, the mindset was always, there's no point being on the practice squad if you're never going to get to play the game. Yeah, that's always been, you know, that's always a thought I had when I was younger. And so, like, I kind of felt at that point in my career, I've been in for two years, never deployed, never been to a unit, just been in training. I felt like I was shamming, right? I felt like I was, you know, dodging a deployment, even though. Even though I wasn't. It's just this feeling. So I finally felt like, okay, here we go. This is my chance to prove myself right, prove myself to a team, prove that I know what I'm doing.
And the concept of, like, hey, you're going to war, during the surge in Afghanistan, that never really clicked with me until I got there.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: I understand that sentiment. 911 happened when I was a company commander, 2nd Infantry Division, in Korea. And my frame of reference on that up to that point had been like, Panama, first Gulf War, Granada. So I just knew that the war in Afghanistan was going to be over before I got out of Korea.
And then I got to Fort Huachuca, where the officer advance course was. I was in training there. And the Iraq War kicked off. And at this point, I'm just losing my mind because I'm gonna be the only kid on my block without a combat patch. And then I go to fifth Group because Special Forces is definitely gonna go down range. Right. But they just gotten back from a deployment, so it looked like I was never gonna get to go. Ultimately, of course, I did, as most of us did during that time period. But I completely understand that sentiment. And I think your analogy to the practice squad versus kind of being in the super bowl, which is how I saw it is pretty good one.
[00:12:09] Speaker B: Yeah, it was definitely. It was definitely something. I met the unit on the plane, right? So I'd met my. I'd met my team leader. He was the only one I knew, you know, and everyone's traveling in civilian clothes, right? And I have no idea who anybody is.
And, you know, everyone's talking with their first names, and I called somebody by their first name. And let me tell you what, as a young private calling a senior E7 by their first name, I got put in my place really quick. I had no idea who he was. Right. I mean, so, like, I think in that moment, I kind of realized, like, okay, it's time to. It's time to be quiet and observe and figure out.
I don't want to blacklist myself here before we get started. You know what I mean?
[00:12:50] Speaker A: That's a bold move, young private. Well played.
[00:12:53] Speaker B: It was. It was a bold move indeed.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: All right, so you. You get overseas. What year is this again?
[00:13:00] Speaker B: So this is 2010. This is August. August 2010.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: Yeah, that was still pretty sporty time over there. So you're finally over there. You finally got your chance to play in the big game. What were your earlier experiences like once you got on the ground?
[00:13:14] Speaker B: I mean, I'll tell you my first experience on the ground, which I think fundamentally shaped how I viewed that deployment, how I viewed war, and how I just kind of viewed the EOD community as a whole. And Captain Jason T. McMahon, right?
We're coming into country. It's the end of August, beginning of September, and while we're in the air, Captain McMahon is. Is killed in action in Afghanistan. And, you know, no one has any communication on the aircraft. So we land, and the sergeant major, I think brigade level sergeant major comes out and he goes, hey, guys, Captain McMahon was. Was killed, rather. He's not dead yet. He. I think he. At this point, he had been. You know, he's at the hospital at Bagram, but he was, you know, it was. It was known.
And, hey, if you guys want to go say goodbye, now is the time to go see him. And so you have to understand, Captain McMahon is like a hero within the community. I mean, he's a Silver Star recipient.
And so he went on this mission because, you know, one of the team members couldn't, right? And he's like, I will take their place. And during a. During a pretty severe firefight, they were doing a hot X fill, and there wasn't a lot of COVID so he put the. He put the EOD team behind cover.
And he wound up getting. Getting shot in the head.
And somehow, even after being shot, he's. He's calling for fire. You know, he's a. He's a prior infantry guy. He's a. You know, he's Ranger tab. He starts calling for fire, and, you know, they load him on the aircraft. And so my first experience in Afghanistan is we get there, I don't know who this guy is. I've never met him, right? The whole company goes to go say their goodbyes, and I'm kind of staying back in the rear. When they come back, they're like, hey, you are going to be a rifle bearer at Captain McMahon's ramp ceremony.
And I remember standing there, I had literally put on E4 specialists on the aircraft, right? It was just time. There's like, they literally threw it at me. They're like, hey, put this on. And I remember standing there as they loaded his casket onto the aircraft at Bagram and thinking to myself, what have I gotten myself into? I mean, if you've ever experienced a ramp ceremony, they're absolutely. They're absolutely terrible. You know, they're beautiful. They're terrible. It's a. It's. It's very hard to describe what they are, but I remember standing there, you know, as they loaded them onto the aircraft and thinking, what. What have I done? What have I gotten myself into? Best and worst thing, right? That completely, you know, took that notion away that war is. Is something different, right? That is something from a movie, that it's something cool. And, you know, like, it just. It sucked that out of me as a young dude. And we hadn't even gotten where we were going yet, right? I mean, we hadn't even. We hadn't even collected, you know, our combat load. Like, that was my first experience in country.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: That's got to be a tough thing for a young guy to do. Those ramp ceremonies are incredibly moving events, even if you don't know the guy. I went to a couple ramp ceremonies for Ranger regiment guys that I didn't know. I didn't have a lot of interaction with them. They were. They're just guys I supported. But even if you don't know that guy, what incredibly emotional thing, especially for a young private. He's kind of wondering what he's gotten into at this point.
[00:16:24] Speaker B: You know, I remember standing there at the ramp ceremony and just, you know, it set the tone. It set the tone for the deployment. I think it dissuaded me of any notion that I was invincible, which, you know, when you're when you're 20, I think that's 22 at the time, right? Like, you're invincible. When you're 22, you're invincible. Nothing can hurt you. And that really just put everything into perspective. Hey, we're in a war zone, and we're going to war.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: You're already at E4 at this point. Were you making rank quickly?
[00:16:53] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I made. I made.
The thing about EOD at the time is there was not enough of us. Right? So, you know, you're patting yourself on the back as a young E4 because you're going to the E5 board in country. And then as soon as we came back and went to the E6 board, I picked up. I picked up E6. In four years, you're flying through the ranks because there's not enough people to do the job, right? And so, on the one hand, you know, internally, you're like, look at me. I'm a. You know, I'm a big sergeant. I'm a big staff sergeant. On the other hand, in hindsight, promoted way too quickly to understand fully the job and what it means to be an nco. And I would argue, you know, we could talk about it as we. As we progress a little bit. I was a very tactically and technically proficient EOD soldier.
I was probably a really bad NCO because it was not something that I was focused on. Right. You know, but I remember, you know, before I went to the E5 board, and this was, you know, this is a little bit further into that deployment, but we would be driving out to missions, driving out to. To IED calls, and my team leader be like, say the NCO creed. And I'd just be driving on the VIX headset saying the NCO creed. And he's like, again, again, Again. Right? And like, all right, stop. We have an id. We go work on that, and we get back in the truck like, I', sweating, you know, blowing up robots and building charges. And he goes, okay, say the NCO creed. Like, just over and over and over and over again, right? Repetition.
And so, like, you know, I went to the E5 board in. In Afghanistan during. During the height of. Of the surge.
And, you know, I walked out of there as an E5. I think points were 14 at the time. To pick up E5. We just. We needed. We needed people.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: Talk to me a little bit about your first call, your first mission as the EOD tech in country. What was that like for you?
[00:18:41] Speaker B: Yeah, so first call was super Monday. I mean, like, we're Talking.
A maneuver element had been outside the wire, and they had left some mortars outside the wire.
And so we got called that these mortars had been stacked up by Taliban, man.
They want to make sure they weren't booby trapped. And so we went out there, and I drove the robot out there, and I knocked over all these mortars, and there was nothing there. And that was the mission. That was my very first call, right? And I was like, all right, this is nothing crazy, you know, but that was like, you want to talk about anticlimactic?
That was my first call. I got my cab, my combat action badge. We were at a polling place, and so we had just worked. You know, at this point, we're trying to do fair and free elections in Afghanistan.
And, you know, they were sending out maneuver elements, these polling places. This polling place was completely abandoned, and there was IDs in the ground. So we pulled out a couple IDs out of the ground.
And based on regulatory guidance, you know, an EOD technician cannot get a cab for working on an ied.
It's actually written. It's written in there, right?
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Oh, interesting.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Yeah. So you can't get a combat action badge for doing your job. Just cool. And we're driving back, and there's a sandstorm, and I'm driving, right? I'm just. I'm the driver, and eod, we go back and forth. We don't dedic. Dedicated driver. So you're either one day you're the driver, the next day you're the gunner. You know, we just go back and forth, and we're driving through the sandstorm, and I start hearing like, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink. Like, you know, like rain on a hot tin roof. And I look at my team leader, and I go, what is that? And he goes, oh, yeah, we're getting shot at. And I go. And I go, really? He's like. And he looks at me deadpan, and he goes, congratulations, you just got your cap.
And I said, I don't want it for something this silly. He's like, that's not how this works. You were engaged by the enemy. So that's the first week into the deployment. You know, I'm thinking like, you know, man, this is what I get my cab for. But lo and behold, we wound up getting in, you know, several firefights a week out there with the maneuver guys that we were supporting. They were incredibly busy during the surge, and this was a time where if the maneuver element, if the infantry guys left the wire.
We went with them because we just knew there was so many IDs out there that there was no point in them going out, pulling security on id.
Another group of people has to bring us out there. We work on it. Then we're just like, hey, look, if you guys leave the wire, we will go with you. So if they got in firefights, we got in firefights. If they found IDs, we handled IDs.
And we just, you know, we work nonstop with these guys, and, you know, you hear a lot of complaints.
You know, hey, EOD took forever to show up. I think one of the things that we prided ourselves on was the fact that we went out with them.
And so when a unit would, you know, they'd be outside the wire for a couple days, and they pull security for a couple days while the other platoon went out, we went out with the other platoon. Wow. We were just constantly outside the wire working, you know, anywhere from two to seven IEDs in a day, sometimes more.
And we were just. We were busy. It's always busy.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: What did that do for your relationship with the Maneuver Force? Going out all the time with those guys?
[00:21:49] Speaker B: So this goes back to that. That team leader I'm telling you about, my first team leader, you know, if you look at, you know, support relationships, our support relationship was such a way that, you know, we were. We were general support to them. We didn't have to do anything we didn't want to do. We had a higher echelon. My first team leader was very, very clear that when you are on somebody else's base, their cop, or you are a member of that cop. So when they would go out and do area beautification, we would do area beautification. And I would. I would complain about it, you understand, like, when they would have to fill two sandbags before they're allowed to eat chow, we would fill two sandbags before we would eat chow. We didn't have to do that based on the support relationship. But he said, you got to understand, like, we are living with them.
And so our relationship. I still talk to. To some of those infantry guys. I mean, it was a fantastic relationship. I mean, they. They got in firefights, we got in firefights. They knew that if they needed something, we were there to support them. And we would never question a call. Right. I mean, we had plenty of calls that were trash. Where we'd go out there was nothing. But we always had the mindset that it is better for them to not be sure and Call EOD and for us to come support them than to, you know, tell them to pound sand for sure.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: And I think that's such an important point. I was a support guy for most of my career. I came into the branch detail program, So I did four years in the infantry and then 23 more as an intel guy. And it's always hard to get credibility with the guys that you support, but you do that in a number of different ways. You show up fit, you show up competent, you show that you're willing to shoulder your share of the task. And it sound like you guys were doing that, and it paid off for you.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: Yeah. And I mean, a lot of that, you know, credit where credit is due, right? That. That's having a fantastic nco, fantastic team leader. Because you have to remember, when I showed up here, I didn't know anything. I mean, like, I was. You know, we had. We had team ball caps made, right? So that's got like an EOD badge on it, the unit. And then your name on the back. And the back of my hat said prospect.
Right? I was. I was prospecting for a spot on the team. And, you know, it took a couple months to. To prove that I wasn't dumb.
You know, in a lot of ways, I just really was right. There's what you learn in school, and then there's practical, you know, application.
There's knowing tools that aren't taught in schoolhouse. And so, you know, my first couple months, it was in assessment period. You know, my team leader put me through the ringer. He made me work out with him, and he demands a physical specimen.
You know, so I worked out with him nonstop. When we went on missions, I would sit on my hands and I would observe, and I was treated.
I was treated like a kid. And that's. By the way, that's not said in a. In a pejorative way like that is. It's what I needed, right? To kind of understand how things worked. And then as I got a little bit better, a little more comfortable, you know, driving robots, building charges, putting him in the bomb suit, doing all this type of stuff, you know, then I was given a little more trust. But I'll tell you this story.
You know, we were running a bunch of IDs, and I loaded that. We had one robot at the time, and I loaded this robot in the back of the truck. And I was. I mean, this is probably ID 4 or 5 for the day. Like, I'm. I'm spent. Everyone's spent. It's hot, and I Loaded this robot, and when I put it back into the truck, I broke it.
I broke the robot deadline, right?
And I knew it, and I didn't say anything, right, because we were done for the day. So we're going to go back to the house, I'll grab another robot out of the Conex, we'll do a hot swap. No one's ever going to know about this, right? And sure enough, on the way back, we find another ID and they call EOD Ford. And so we get up there and my team leader goes, hey, drop the robot.
And I have to look at him, I have to say, hey, I broke the robot.
And this man did not miss a beat. He said, all right, get out the bomb suit, put me in the suit. So I'm putting him in the suit. And it's a, it's a two person task to put someone in the suit, right? This is not something you do by yourself. The suit weighs, you know, roughly a hundred pounds.
The last thing you do is you put their helmet on them, right? The helmet has a comm system and some lights and a little circulating fan that doesn't really keep you cool. It really just keeps the mirror from fogging up, the. The lines from fogging up. And I go to drop the visor, and he looks at me and he goes, hey, if I die, it's on you.
And then I dropped the visor and he went down range and he worked on that id.
And that was a hard lesson, man. That was, that was a hard lesson because the whole time I'm sitting there and I'm like, I just got this man killed, right? And he came back and like, you know, took him out of the bomb suit and, and he was a fantastic nco. I mean, he just had a light switch, right? He was able to, to, to really get the message home. And that comment, by the way, got the message home. And we talked about afterwards, you know, hey, you move too fast because you were tired and you're trying to stow this robot. Like, he walked me through the paces. He's like, you're dumb.
Like, you got, you got lazy because you were tired. And we don't do that on this team.
It was very matter of fact, it was very to the point and a hard lesson was learned there. And so I like to think that, you know, I've emulated over the years that leadership style that very.
Hey, there's a time to yell, right?
That wasn't the time to yell. There's nothing anybody could do about it. That the equipment was broken, and now we're having a conversation after the fact. I'm sure he wanted to yell, probably want to kill me. Right. But. But, you know, at that point, he realized that that's not, you know, constructive here. And so throughout my career, I've tried to maintain that.
Okay, what's a. What's a calm way to approach this where we can still drive a message home and explain what happened?
[00:27:23] Speaker A: That vignette I read online, and that's actually what made me want to talk to you. I read it on one of your social media outlets. EOD happy Captain, which we're going to talk about a little bit later on in the show. There's so many things you can learn from that vignette in terms of leadership lessons. So you got the leadership lessons from you that you just articulated, hey, we're getting complacent or retired. We have to do things the right way or their consequences. What I thought was particularly interesting from a leadership perspective is your team leader told you to put him in the suit. You're EOD tech as well. You broke the robot. So why didn't he put you in the suit and send you down range to diffuse that ied?
[00:28:03] Speaker B: Yeah, so we have an entire validation process for team leaders. Right. And so it's always going to be the senior person on the team that's validated to go do that job. And so, you know, one thing that we do is we do things as safely as we can in accordance with our publications, in accordance with, you know, army safety. And so it's always a senior person that goes downrange in the suit.
You know, could I have done that maybe? You know, it was a time in the war where, where, where anything went. But, you know, he wasn't.
I don't think he was actually mad at me at that point. Right. I think it was more of a, like, I'm going to prove something. This guy, the man was incredibly competent. I mean, probably to this day, the best EOD NCO and technician that I've met. Right.
[00:28:48] Speaker A: He's doing.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: He knew what he was doing.
And it was just, you know, it was cool and calculated, but it made me sweat, without a doubt. Right.
And it's, you know, it's. It's that type of. Of mentality, you know, that I use going for. When I was a team leader, I went back in 2013. Now I'm the guy in the suit. Right. And so your team members are the people that are responsible for making sure that you have the tools you need and One of the reasons for that is we call it bomb suit brain, right? But effectively, the suit is heavy and the suit is hot, and it's already hot outside. And this thing happens when your core temperature gets super hot, your brain stops working.
You start making really bad choices, bad ideas. And they sound great, right? These ideas. This is. I have reinvented the wheel here, right?
And we train our team members in such a way that they are willing to say, hey, I think that's a bad idea. Don't do that.
And so two. Two stories here, really quick. The first is, you know, the team members are responsible for the tools. I'm in the bomb suit. My team member hands me the metal detector. Is it on me to make sure the metal detector is actually turned on? Yeah, probably. Probably should have done that, right? What you normally do is you take your metal detector you put against your boot, you make sure it beeps.
I didn't do that.
[00:30:04] Speaker A: Right.
[00:30:04] Speaker B: And I walked down range to an ID that I knew where it was at.
And I take the metal detector and I wave it over the ID, and nothing happens. And I realized in that moment that there were no batteries in the metal detector, right? So I had, like, walked all the way down to this thing looking for secondaries, and I was ready to lose it. And I remember that story with my team leader, and I just very calmly walked back up range and I said, hey, this doesn't have batteries in it. Let's fix that. Let's deal with this id, and then we will have a conversation later, right, about doing the right thing. I will tell you after that conversation, never an issue with the team, right? And I think it was, again, it was. We were busy in 13 as well. I think it was just a complacency thing. One team member thought the other team member put batteries in it, and the other guy thought the same thing about the other guy. And lo and behold, I'm down there without a metal detector that works.
And, you know, it all worked out. It's a good learning point. But, I mean, these are like, you know, let's. Let's not minimize it. These are very dangerous experiences when you're down there without that stuff. But I will tell you another incident. You know, I'm on probably in 13. I'm probably on my fourth or fifth ID for the day. I'm smoked, it's hot. There's an IED in a tree. And, like, in my mind, there's no way a robot's going to get that. So I create this whole plan of how I'm going to attack it.
I'm not really going to talk about TTPS here. And I tell my team member, and Brian looks at me and he goes, that sounds dumb.
And I said, what do you mean that sounds dumb? He said, I think that sounds really dumb. He said, I bet you a case of beer that I can take care of that IED from start to finish with the robot. And I'm like, there's no way. That's the easiest case of beer I've ever won in my career.
Easiest case of beer I drink Yingling. So get ready. He goes, oh. He goes, okay.
And this man, I don't know how he did it, but he pretty much drove that robot up the tree, knocked this idea out of the tree, pulled it off route, took a charge down there with the robot, blew it up the whole night. I didn't have to do anything. And he just very, again, very calmly, very matter of factly looked at me and said, I also drink Yingling.
And so there's a lot of. Look, there's a lot of mutual trust. You know, you talk about mission command and, you know, build cohesive. Build cohesive teams through mutual trust. Yeah, you have to have that in. In this career field, we run small teams.
We run teams that are very, very busy. And still, even, you know, the GWAT may be over, but we all know there's still a lot of operations going around the world.
This is a community where we are stretched thin and you really have to trust the person to your left and your right.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: There are a couple of things I want to follow up on with you. You mentioned Bob Margin in the suit. And there was a point in my career where I thought I was going to get out of active duty and go back home to Huntsville, Alabama. And they have an EOD National Guard unit there is very interested in joining. In fact, I started the application process, but the army decided to stop loss everyone with an intel mos, so I couldn't get out. But I remember talking about the suit, and one of the things they told me they tested for was claustrophobia, because I guess it's very claustrophobic in the suit. Is that accurate?
[00:33:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it's very claustrophobic. That is. Actually, you know, there's a bomb suit assessment test that we put people through when they come to EOD school. And it's a lot of. It's a lot of PT, right? It's carrying a 155 in the suit and, you know, doing some. Doing some calisthenics. But really what it is, is it's seeing when we drop the visor on you.
I mean, it's, It's. You know, if you've ever been in an MRI machine, that's what it's like, right? It's like being in an MRI machine. Not only that, you have blinders on. You can only see, you know, a very small portion through your eyes. You can't really see to the left, you can't really see to the right. And so if you ever watch videos of someone in a bombsuit, you'll see them. They turn their whole body like a spaceman to look at stuff, right? And it's just, it's very heavy when you lay down, you turtle. So you gotta learn. You have to have good core strength. You gotta figure out, how do I get back up after I'm laying down in the dirt?
You know, it's an. It's an exhausting thing. But yeah, claustrophobia is a big one. You can't really hear either. Cause the helmet's padded.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: I was also thinking about your first vignette you shared about going down range with a piece of faulty equipment. And it made me think of another thing that I stress, cadets in terms of leadership lessons is don't make assumptions. You don't have to.
If you have the time to confirm, don't assume that somebody did the right thing. Don't assume that someone understands. Take the time to confirm. And I think in this case, if they would have taken time to confirm an assumption, that that would have probably saved them a butt chewing on that particular incident.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: Yeah, the old, the old trust but verify. Yeah. I mean, and look, you know, I'm not without fault in that scenario. And I think that's one of the reasons that, like, you know, looking at it holistically, you can't turn around and then yell at them. Right. Like, I had an obligation as well to make sure that the tool that I was going to use was good to go. Right. That's not, that's not necessarily on them. It's on me. And I realized that when I was down there, like, hey, this is, this is something that I have failed as an NCO to train them on, you know, PCCIs. Right. Make sure that we're good to go.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: Yeah, we've got to all do that because the consequences in this, this line of work that we're in are severe. Even when you're not in combat, even when people aren't trying to actively kill you in a foreign country.
[00:35:11] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And they were trying very hard back then.
[00:35:13] Speaker A: Well, in fact, they tried so hard, they almost succeeded with you during one of your deployments. You ended up with a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star medal for valor. And if you're comfortable with it, I would like to have you explain the circumstances about that so we can unpack those lessons learned as well.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: Yeah, let's do it. It's not actually a story I tell that often or really ever, but, I mean, why. Why not? Let's. Let's talk about some leadership stuff. So EOD does not operate on the same timelines as, you know, the. The unit that we support. Right. We support areas. We don't support units. And so our timeline had lined up in such a way that we were coming to the end of our year in Afghanistan, but the 101st guys that we were supporting were. Were on the way out. And so they're in the middle of their rip. TOA relief in place, transfer of authority with. With this incoming unit. And these infantry guys that we were with had been through the ringer. I mean, they did not take a KIA while we were there.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:36:10] Speaker B: Which. Which at the time was all of their sister companies had. They had a lot of. They had a lot of wounded guys. They had a lot of Purple Hearts on that deployment, a lot of firefights. They done a lot of kinetic activity. I mean, we. We took the fight to the enemy and we. We killed a lot of people on that deployment. Right.
We killed the right people on that deployment. That's something I think that they took a lot of pride in and that we took a lot of pride in as well, is that, you know, we did not have an issue with civcas. We were in firefights, and we were.
We were taking care of the bad guys.
Having said that, they were exhausted. I mean, this is. The light is at the end of the tunnel. They have a date that they are going to leave this cop. And so this new unit comes in, and I won't name the unit, but, you know, they.
They weren't good, right? They just. They just weren't good. And the guys that we were supporting understood that. And so what they were doing is they were taking these guys out on missions to get their feet wet, local kle, you know, a kilometer away, you know, and then we'll come back, a mounted patrol through a friendly area, and then we'll come back.
And the two company commanders got into a pissing match, right? The incoming company commander really just tested the pride of the outgoing. And he said, you know, you guys talk about this combat that you've seen. You talk about all these Purple Hearts that you guys have, but I think you're, I think you're full of it.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: Because we've gone out guys and we haven't seen anything. Not so much as a mortar, not so much as a, you know, an incoming rocket, not so much as a rock thrown at us. We think, we think you're full of it.
And I mean, that's, that's quite the thing to say to, you know, maneuver company commander, an infantry guy who's just spent the last year doing a fantastic job at keeping his formation alive. Right?
And he said, okay, fine. He said, tomorrow morning we are going out to this town called Naza Kill. It was a, it was a very well known Taliban stronghold. And he said, you guys will get your feet wet.
And so of course, at this point, I've changed out team leaders. One thing that we do within EOD is we, we change team leaders, we change team members, we rotate people around during deployments to keep people from getting complacent. Yeah, right. And so I, I, I am still there. I actually came back to the same place that I started my deployment and I'd gone away in the middle of it. Different team leader, prior infantry guy, really, really great dude.
And he goes, hey, we're going on this mission. He said, because this is going to end badly. And so this town was known to have an outer perimeter of IEDs. I mean, just, just think like a landmine field right outside.
And so the plan was to go into this village and conduct a kle, right? Which I think they knew at the time was going to, was going to kick the hornet's nest. And so, you know, it's just me and him. Our third team member has already moved back to the rear because, I mean, when I say we're getting ready to go home, I'm talking like we are less than two weeks away from being back in the States. Like, that's how close we are here. And we've already had a deployment where, like, everyone's had more than one close call at this point, you know, so we're not exactly super stoked to be out here. Right? But you know, you do the job that you're, that you're assigned. And so we get out there and they decide to dismount and go into the village and they dismounted every NCO from the vehicles. Every single one. Right. Because everyone wanted to go get their, their cib. Of course, everyone get their cab and their cib. So everyone Everyone dismounted. I am the only guy back with the element, right? So it's the EOD truck and probably four infantry, you know, mat fees and I'm the only nco and I am driving because I know the area. And we had stolen an infantry private, brand new PV2, maybe a PFC. He's up in my gun turret and I'll. He's up in this gun turret. We are in a 4x4 Jerve, which is a navy vehicle. And that's important for this story because the gun turret, the opening for it is incredibly small. Like it's, it's, it's meant for a hobbit, right? It's not, it's not big. And he's in this gun turret.
And so, you know, sure enough they go into the village and within a couple of minutes they are taking direct contact.
And I can't get a hold of anybody on the radio. You know, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to get a hold of my team leader, Rob, and I just, it's just not working right. There's, there's is garbled. And so I decided to maneuver the element, right? I hear that they're in contact. I can kind of make out that they're going to move from, you know, the east to the west side of the village. And I took command of the ground element and we started moving west, right, so we could meet him at xfill. And as we're moving out there, we start taking accurate PKM fire and AK fire.
And I tell the gunner, I say, hey, there's, there's an enemy position right up there, right? You know, we see plumes of smoke from the mortars. You know, we see the PKM fire and I, you need to kill them, right? Like, and I tell the gunner to, to open up on 240 and he does.
And about six rounds in the weapon system jams, maybe a little bit more than six rounds in, right?
At this point we've identified ourselves to this, to this ambush position that we know they're there, right?
And so they start shooting at us. And at this point, you know, I can't, I can't get to him in the turret because that turret opening is so small through the truck.
And so I open the door to the vehicle and I start directly engaging with my M4 at the, that got these guys that are in this ambush position.
And I thought I killed them both, right?
I think I only got about one of them at that time. And they walked in rounds. And the rounds impacted, you know, I was using the truck door as cover. The rounds impacted the truck door, sent ricochet frag into, you know, my, my entire right side. So my, my right arm, my right leg, you know, was pulling paint chips out of my right leg for like two weeks after that.
But at this point, there's a break in the fire. And I think to myself, well, those guys are dead. I've killed them. It's time to, you know, it's time to get this weapon system back in action. And I start climbing on top of the truck because I can't get in from the bottom. And, you know, I start field stripping a 240 because this round is jammed. It's like nothing I've ever seen before. And, you know, just so you're tracking what happened, this was not a, a poor weapons maintenance issue. I mean, we kept that gun clean and oiled. It was good to go. We were in a very bumpy area.
And what happened is the rounds in the can just kept bouncing up and down, up and down, up and down and up and down. And the last row of rounds, so, I mean, he fired a full can pretty much. So maybe not five or six, but the last round in the can had completely flattened. The bottom of the round was, was completely flat. And so when it went in, it completely jammed. I field stripped the entire weapon.
At this point, I'm getting shot at some more, right? Because it turns out we didn't kill everybody that we need to kill.
And so, you know, we get the weapon system back up and running and back and jumping. So at this point, I've, I've maneuvered the ground element into position.
I feel stripped to 240.
I've engaged with my, you know, with my M4, and we wound up, you know, neutralizing that, that enemy position. Come to find out after the fact that the maneuver element on the ground inside the village, because comms were bad, had no idea those guys were there.
So they were pretty much walking into, you know, an L shaped ambush. They were walking to the L portion of it, the little leg of the L, right? They were, they were walking into it and they had no idea. And so, you know, after, like literally, you know, we had neutralized that position and maybe 45 seconds later, the dismounts came out.
So the BSMV effectively was written that I was credited with taking out the position, maneuvering the ground element, and then saving the dismounts on the ground.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: That sounds like some pretty good examples of disciplined initiative. So you didn't have comms. You moved to the sound of the guns, and you did what needed to be done. And it's interesting to me also that the army did the right thing, especially for a relatively junior guy. You were a sergeant at this point?
[00:44:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I was an E5 sergeant. Yeah.
[00:44:35] Speaker A: Yeah. E5 Bronze Stars are notoriously hard for the junior ranks to get, especially ones with a V device on it. So I think it speaks highly, not only of your own performance, but of the approval authority that that award went through.
[00:44:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, yeah. Yes, without a doubt. And in hindsight, yes, without a doubt. You know, we talk about everything in doctrinal terms, you know, disciplined initiative and moving to the sound of the guns. But at the time, I'm two weeks from going home, and my team leader, Rob, who's a guy that, like, I know his wife, like, I know him really well, like, Rob is going to die.
That's what the mindset was. The mindset, you know, And I remember having this conversation because they had dismounted all their NCOs, and I was on the net with the other trucks, and I said, hey, we need to move to the west side of the village. And this is probably like 10am but we got there around 7 in the morning, and one of the privates gets on the net, and he goes, which way is west?
[00:45:36] Speaker A: Oh, gosh.
[00:45:37] Speaker B: You know, and so I'm like, hey, put the sun behind you and start driving. Like, you know, you need to. You need to hurry up and get over here. And so, like, you know, that's the other part of this. Of this. You know, we were the first truck there. We were the first truck to engage. And the other trucks were kind of trying to figure out like, hey, where are we going? What are we doing? And so there's a lot of leadership lessons here to be learned.
Not necessarily that I did the right thing, but that, like, hey, you need NCOs, you need soldiers and leaders that are able to communicate. Right. And communicate through the nonsense, you know, because things get very, very loud in combat. And the voice you're looking for is the calm voice. I will tell you, if I had not had my first team leader, who was a very calm and methodical man, I don't know what I would have said on the radio, but I just remember when Rob came back, he was like, we could hear you. We could hear you on the radio. You couldn't hear us.
He was like, we are tracking what happened. We did not know the ambush position was there.
So thank you for that. But he's like, you conveyed your message to the maneuver element.
And it's not a story I ever really tell. I. I think I've told that story maybe twice. I remember. I remember calling my dad right after it happened because I did get a Purple Heart from that and a Purple Heart. You know, if people are listening and don't understand the award, a Purple Heart is considered a right of the soldier. And so that award is approved.
That was August 6th. That occurred August 7th. And I had a Purple Heart on August 11th.
And the intent of that award is so that it travels. It travels with the service member in case they're killed in action, that they have that awarded to them before they make it back to the States.
The other part of that that I did not know is when you are wounded in action, your next of kin is notified, right? And so my mom, because I'm not married at this point, right. I'm. At this point, I'm dating my now wife, but she wasn't, you know, she wasn't listed as an emergency contact. My mom was notified that I was wounded in action.
Right.
Which is not ideal.
That's not a great thing, Right. And so, like, I called my dad after it happened because I kind of suspected that something along those lines would happen. I didn't realize how quickly. And I kind of explained the story. Hey, here's what happened. I'm fine. I'm returned to duty. You know, this is not a big deal, because it did not. At the time, it did not feel like a big deal. It felt like I did what anybody else would have done. And to this day, I still think that anybody would have done what I did in that situation.
But I'm happy I told him that story, because when my mom was notified, you know, he was able to be like, yeah, he's. He's. He's fine.
But, you know, you talk about adrenaline, right? And, you know, there's this thing in the army, you know, when someone gets hurt, it's called trauma. Naked, right? You cut off all their clothes and make sure that, you know, it's something in training you never really think about, right? I get back. We get back to the house.
I'm in uniform. I know that my arm is, you know, lacerated pretty good. I'm going to the medic next door, and I'm talking to my team leader, and I'm like, you know, I'm gonna throw on pts before I go over there. And I took my pants off. And I did not realize that, like, I had A million puncture wounds in my. In my right quad and thigh from, you know, probably from my hip down to my knee. Like a million pinpricks because the bullets hit to the side of the vehicle and shattered, right? So, like, I had no idea it happened. You know, I took. I took my pants off, and I was bleeding everywhere, and I went over there, and the medics, you know, pulled out a bunch of pieces of frag. And like, literally for probably like three months after that, they were working their way to the surface, and I'd go in there with tweezers and pull them out. I think I saw a piece. I think I saw a piece or two in there. Right?
You know, it's. But again, it's not a story that I've ever really bothered to tell, mainly because you don't get arrest on your laurels in this profession. That's not just the od. That's just the army, right? It's like, yes, that event occurred and it happened, but it doesn't define who I am as a soldier and who. It doesn't define who I am as a leader. And I don't ever want to be the guy who's like, hey, guess what?
Fifteen years ago, I got a Bronze Star for valor. You know, I mean, like, that. That's. That's. It's. It's. You know, it's great, right? But, like, that doesn't do anything for the private who is wondering why the chow's not great and their barracks room has mold. You know what I mean? Like, that doesn't. That doesn't help them at all. And so I've never really told the story because, you know, what. What.
What's the point? It's a. It's a moment in time.
[00:50:11] Speaker A: Well, I'm glad you shared that story with us, because I think it's particularly useful from the leadership angle on it. And I've talked to a lot of recipients of valor awards on this show. We had Chuck Ritter on. Silver star recipient, good friend, good friend, good dude. And I think to a person, to a man, to a woman, they. They all had the same attitude you did. Anyone would have done the same thing.
I. I'm not here to talk about myself. I want to help people. I. I wouldn't talk about this normally. I think that's a very healthy and very productive attitude to have. But at the end of the day, you. You all did do that. You did these things, and you were recognized with these awards, and I think that's a good thing.
[00:50:54] Speaker B: It definitely provided Some credibility for that deployment. I remember I came back from that deployment and I went to my E6 board. And so this. You have to realize that this event had happened probably two months before I went to the E6 board, and I go to the board, and I walk in there.
Maybe not two months, because I already had the award on my chest at this point, it doesn't happen that fast. So maybe this is like a year later, but I walk into the E6 board and the sergeant major and all the E8s, I walked in there, I saluted, I sat down, and they said, sergeant Fear, most of we have no questions for you. You're dismissed. That was my E6 board. Right.
[00:51:34] Speaker A: Like, that was.
[00:51:35] Speaker B: That was my E6 board. And I was like, I didn't really understand what happened. I thought I had done something wrong.
[00:51:40] Speaker A: Right.
[00:51:42] Speaker B: I walked out of there, and they came out and they're like, yeah, you're. You're going to be a staff sergeant. Congratulations.
[00:51:49] Speaker A: Amazing.
[00:51:49] Speaker B: And it was that. It was that. It was because a couple people that were sitting on that board understood what had happened.
[00:51:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:57] Speaker B: And that I kept people alive. And it just. It was very surreal. And I think that was the moment where I kind of was like, I don't. I don't need to talk about this. I don't need to tell stories about this. I don't need. This is something that happened, and this goes back to that. I don't want to ride these coattails. I don't want to rest on these laurels. I still have a lot I want to do in the army, and I don't want this to be the thing that defines my service.
[00:52:24] Speaker A: I think that's another key point. No matter what you have on your sleeve, your collar, your chest, at some point, you've got to deliver for your troops. You got to be that leader for it. And I was thinking when you were talking about being that calm voice on the radio, being that calm in the storm, that's kind of a primary function of leaders, especially in combat. We're constantly involved in situations of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Vuca clause was called it friction. And we've got to be that sponge. We've got to be that lubricant to get that friction free, and we've got to be that calm voice. I think even in my own experiences, our soldiers react to us in a lot of ways. If we're excited, they're going to be excited. If we're panicked, they're going to be panicked. But if they're calm. They're probably going to be calm. And I think that's a useful thing to remember when you're in stressful situations is to be that port in the storm for the troops.
[00:53:24] Speaker B: Yeah. I think one thing I've learned over time is that yelling is for communication. Not like yelling at somebody. Like yelling because it's loud.
Not yelling because I'm mad.
You know, I've. I think in my entire career, you know, through multiple deployments, I've probably yelled twice.
It was more like a, hey, pull your head out of it and let's get back into the fight. And it worked. Right.
You know, if you yell all the time, you're, you're, you're a yeller. I think constant calm communication is what really gets, you know, your people working and holding people to a standard. Right. Soldiers want standards. I'm a firm believer if they know the standard, they'll meet the standard. When the standard shifts, it becomes questionable. Right. If they'll meet it or not.
[00:54:11] Speaker A: I know you want to move on from this because there's a lot more to you than your Bronze Star for Valor and your Purple Heart. But I thought there's one more interesting thing that I want to bring up. When I was doing my prep for the show, one of the things I looked at was your Bronze Star cert. And I just out of curiosity, looked at the signature block at the bottom, and it was signed by Major General Bill Rapp, who's now retired. And Bill is a friend and a mentor of mine, and it used to be commandant here at West Point. I just thought that was an interesting coincidence that the guy that approved your BS Is a guy I knew. Because I don't. I don't know a lot of G O's.
[00:54:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. It's a really small world. The 06 that signed it for EOD is a guy named Leo Bradley. And I wound up, you know, meeting him and becoming friends with him over a decade after the fact. Right. And I think, look, you know, credit to that geo, now that I'm sitting here as an officer, you know, you kind of mentioned it earlier, right. Junior enlisted soldiers do not get the awards that they deserve more often than not.
[00:55:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:04] Speaker B: Credit to him where it is due to. Because I looked at that award literally, probably for the first time two years ago when I was putting stuff into my I love me book. And on the 638, his chief of staff recommended downgrade. Everyone recommended this award. Chief of staff recommended downgrade. And he pretty much put a line through that and circled the proof, right? And so like you don't see that a lot. I don't know the man.
If you're friends with him, say, hey, you know, thanks, thanks for doing the right thing.
[00:55:31] Speaker A: I'll be sure to do that. I'll be sure to pass that along to him. I think he'll get a chuckle out of it. That'll be great.
So you mentioned that you became an officer. So at this point in your career, in your story and your timeline, you're a staff Sergeant, you're an E6, you've been in the army for a while, you've got a couple deployments, you've got some pretty good career development. Why did you decide to make the jump from non commissioned officer over to commissioned officer?
[00:55:57] Speaker B: I think it'd been in my mind for, for a little while. As a matter of fact, I started to build my green and gold packet on the first deployment. And then, you know, I just, I, I didn't want to, it just wasn't the right time, didn't feel right.
But really what it comes down to is I had, you know, some moments where I realized that NCO power is delegated power, right? I mean if you read 620 Army Command Policy, right? Power comes from the officer and is delegated down to the NCO.
When you have good leaders, they empower NCOs and they allow NCOs to get out there and get the job done.
And it works like a well oiled machine.
When you have bad leaders and bad officers and that delegation isn't occurring, you have great NCOs that are, that are hamstringed, right? They're handcuffed. They can't get the job done the way that they should be able to get the job done. They're always going to make it happen because NCOs are the best thing ever to happen to the military.
And they can, they can do anything, right? But you know, it's that, it's that delegated power. And I thought to myself, look, I want my NCOs to run the show, right? I'm going to be the commander, I'm going to be an officer, I'm going to be in charge. But like I want to go to work and tell these NCOs like, hey, here's the intent, get after it, right? That was really it. I had a couple really bad experiences in NCO where I dealt with leaders that really micromanaged, really took power away from the nco. I had a moment where I had Recommended UCMJ for a soldier as an nco. I'd gone, talked to the commander, I said, hey, sir, I think we should do this.
Will you support this?
He went, yeah, let's do it. Gave the soldier the counseling, said, hey, I'm recommending UCMJ action to the commander. Then the soldier went and talked to the commander and the commander backtracked completely and it completely cut my legs out from underneath me. And by the way, not a bad officer, not a bad guy. There was more to the story that I just was not aware of at the time.
But in that moment, I remember sitting there and being like, what just happened?
I don't have a say in what we're doing here. I think that was the catalyst, that was the real moment where I said, okay, I'm going to put together this packet for Green to gold.
And at the time, not much was known about green to gold by the force. I knew it existed. I talked to several people, how do I do this green to gold thing?
And officers would tell me like, yeah, it's a thing, no clue. Figure it out. So I figured it out from the ground up how to do the screen of gold thing. And my buddy and I created the Green to Gold Facebook page which now has about 13,000 members where we, we mentor and develop NCOs and young junior listed soldiers that are trying to become officers. Right. Because the answers just were not there. What does a competitive packet look like? We didn't know the year I was selected in 2016, I think 123 people were selected. Wow. And I got in there and you know, I went to college for a couple of years utilizing the GI Bill. Right. You're, when you do green and gold, you're responsible for paying for your own school. And it completely reset my brain.
You know, I was reaching a point with, with you know, deployments and OP temples. One thing we have not talked about is one of the EOD mission sets is stateside response. Right. And you know, protection for VIPs, the president, the vice president.
And so I deployed 10 to 11, and then 2012, I was on the campaign trail, traveling for the election, just non stop, come back, go right into training for deployment. Go right to, back to Afghanistan at 13 where I ran a team, come back in 14, go right to ALC and PCs, you know, and I was just, I was burned out. And so I had told my wife, at this point, my wife, I had said, hey, same girl I was dating before, by the way.
I said, hey, here's what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna drop a green gold packet. And if I'm not selected, I think it may be time for, for me to look for work outside of the Army. I was just spurred out, right? I mean we just, we were going a mile a minute and you know, thankfully everything worked out. The stars aligned. I was selected for the program, I did that and it completely just reset me. And when I went in there, I was, you know, I've been in the army now for 10 years. When I commissioned, exactly 10 years.
And I said, hey, when I am an officer, when I become an officer, when I commission, I'm going to be, I want to be the type of officer that I needed when I was a junior enlisted soldier. Right. Like be the leader you needed when you were young. I think is kind of the way I frame it now because young soldiers need good leaders. That's not me saying I am one, but that's saying if a junior soldier on their first enlistment contract has a good leader, statistically they will stay in the Army. That's right. If they have a bad leader as their first enlistment as their first person that they see statistically, they will, they will get out.
How can I, you know, uphold standards and discipline, train the force hard to go back to war, right. But also like just be a human, just be a person, you know. And I think, I think that's something that's easier to do when you're a second lieutenant who's been in for 10 years, who's deployed multiple times.
[01:01:11] Speaker A: It's such a key point that you make about the importance of leadership and retention and, and how people view the military. So I spent 27 years in uniform. I had some really, really great leaders, but I also had some really bad ones. I tried to quit the army twice and couldn't once because I didn't realize that when you PCs you have a year on AD, so tagged on. I didn't read the fine print. And the other time it happened was I couldn't get out because I got stop loss. I mentioned that earlier and both those times and one other time later in my career, which I decided to stay in on my own but had another terrible leader. It was all because of leadership. I would have quit the army multiple times if I could have at that point.
And I think related to that is the importance of the non commissioned officers. So the problems that I had were all with commissioned officers, my battalion commander or staff officer, whatever, but the, for the enlisted troops, the bulk of the army comes from Them and those non commissioned officers are so clutch. And the point you're making earlier about how you want to lead as an officer and how you want to be led as an nco, I think is a case study in mission command. So when you got NCOs who are by doctrine the backbone of the army, when you're, when you're able as an officer to give them clear intent, promote that shared understanding, build some mutual trust and give them the type of mission type orders which involve the what and the why and let them sort out the how and empower them with some discipline, initiative and allow them to accept prudent risk. You get some amazing results.
[01:02:46] Speaker B: You hit all the tenants there. Yeah, I mean, you're, you're 100% correct, though. Like, you know, I don't think a lot of junior soldiers realize it, how good our NCO core is. Right. Like, I've had the opportunity to travel the world. I have trained armies in other parts of the world. Right. Not just Afghanistan. And the one thing that I take away after every interaction is we are the best army in the world because we have the best NCO corps in the world. Yeah, that, that's plain and simple.
[01:03:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:03:12] Speaker B: I was training, I was training in a country where I showed up. It was me and an nco. I'm a second lieutenant, but I've also been in the army now for, for 12 years. Right. I show up to go teach a class, and everyone in this class, and they're with an E7A star, first class, and everyone keeps looking at me. And I had to look at the class and be like, he's a subject matter expert. He's the nco. They're like. And they looked at me and they said, but you're the officer. And I said, that's not how this class is going to run for the next 28 days. Right. Like, what he says goes. And I just had this fundamental, you know, realization. Right. We talk about all the time, our NCOs are so great, our NCs are so great, but the reason our NCOs are so great is because I can give them a commander's intent and a mission order and they can execute without any other guidance. They can just get out there and get after it. Other countries can't do that. Right. That is why RNCO Corps is the envy of every other military and they want to be like us because we have officers that go out there and say, hey, Sergeant, you know, Sergeant Jones, I need to do this no later than this time.
And they just say Roger, and then they go and they do it right. I mean, like, it's the craziest thing in the world. If you've ever seen it run. Well, it's fantastic.
[01:04:23] Speaker A: You know, I, I agree. And I think it all comes down to the. The one tenet that we haven't talked about, the first one, which is confidence.
And I, you know, better than I. But I think there's a stance in the NCO creed. It starts off with no one's more professional than I, so which goes to. To competence there.
[01:04:39] Speaker B: Competence. Competence is my watchword.
[01:04:42] Speaker A: And Indeed. Indeed. And if you start with a baseline of competence, a lot of this other stuff starts to fall into place. If you got the right leadership.
[01:04:50] Speaker B: You know, when you build.
Right as an officer, you build the metal, the mission essential task list. You kind of break down how we're gonna do this metal crosswalk and how we're gonna get there. When you watch your NCO's train and you watch, you know, you figure out who's good at what and you make those people in charge of your training plan, there is nothing that those guys and gals can't do. Like, period. NCOs can make the impossible happen. And so, like, I've just seen it. I've seen it in combat. I have seen it, you know, in the formation as an officer. I have seen it, you know, in training iterations around the world.
They can't do. I mean, like, they can do the impossible. They make things just magically appear, you know, especially property, when you're missing it. That's a joke.
[01:05:26] Speaker A: For legal purposes. That was a joke. Very good. Very good.
[01:05:29] Speaker B: Correct.
[01:05:31] Speaker A: Well, speaking of legal purposes, one of the things I'd like us to get into is the story of how you got involved in social media and how you're doing it the right way and above board and things like that in the military. Because that's actually a fine line to ride. It's all. It can be a hard thing to do. I mentioned earlier in this discussion that you came to my attention because of a post on your social media site, EOD Happy Captain. So I'd like to move into that a little bit, talk about that, talk about your work, your experience with the Harding Project.
But let's start with the basics. What is the EOD Happy Captain? How did you get involved in social media, and how are you able to do it in a way that supports Department of War objectives and still remain edgy, relevant and interesting?
[01:06:15] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a. I mean, that's A hell of a question. That's like a 12 parter. No, but you're look, so social media is a tool just like anything else, right? When we're out there, you know, telling our story, social media is the tool. And so, you know, the, the mindset is, is that, look, currently less than 1% of the population is in the military. Right. Less than 6% of the living population has a veteran status.
[01:06:43] Speaker A: Right.
[01:06:45] Speaker B: The last results that came out says that less than 25% of the American population is eligible for service either due to, you know, physical requirements or mental requirements.
So you're dealing with a very small pool of people. The numbers of people who know someone in the military have dropped exponentially.
And so there's a void in this space. There's a vacuum where these stories matter. They matter because American soldiers are American citizens. Like, that's who we work for. We work for the American people.
If those stories are not out there being told, then the vacuum is filled. And it's generally filled with bad actors who have a narrative, whether that's, you know, a country or an individual.
They will fill that vacuum and they will fill that space.
So I think, you know, there's a need for some of those stories to be out there. That's number one.
Number two, it is hard to measure the risk versus reward in the social media space. It's very easy to measure the risk. Right. We can, you can give it a good Google and you'll see people that have been removed from command, removed from position for, for saying something that they should not say. There's a lot of risk in the space.
The part that's not quantifiable is the reward that is in the space. I have had people message me, I want to join the army. I've helped them with that. I've had people message me, hey, I want to go EOD school. What do I do? And I've helped with that. I've had parents message me, my kid is at EOD school. How can I better support them? I've answered those questions. Those are things that you can't really quantify. I can't tell you if I've helped put anybody in the army. I can't tell you if I've guided anybody towards eod. I hope that I have.
I think that stuff matters. I think the stories out there matter.
How do you support Department of War objectives, army objectives in the social media space?
Look, there's a lot of great things that are happening.
You don't have to say anything political. You don't have to say anything about current world events. You have to say anything about that stuff to go find a great story that's happening in the army, period. There are soldiers that are out there just getting after it every single day. Young men and women that go to work, they put in the hard hours of PT and they get really, really good at their job, right? It's easy to tell the stories, and then it's easy to tell the stories that I want to tell about my background.
At some point, I'm going to turn to the old man who's telling old war stories.
That's something I try to stay cognizant of. But there is a lot of leadership potential in the social media space.
There are stories that are worth telling. And anytime I try to tell a story, I try to say, here's how it impacted me. And I tell a lot of stories where I was wrong, where I made a mistake because I'm a human being and other soldiers and it's okay, right? It's okay to make hard mistakes in training, and that way you don't make them on the battlefield. Right? There's hard lessons that need to be learned. How did I come into it? I don't know. This was never the intent. I never wanted to do social media. I just kind of want to go out there and tell stories.
When I decided to start up a Twitter account now called X, I really just wanted, like, a repository for my story that someday I could show my kid. That's really it, right? Like, you know, I've had my brain rocked a lot from a lot of explosions. It's just the nature of the beast and the nature of being an EOD tech while deployed. You know, I've had several TBIs and my memory is not what it once was. And so I would see something online, I'd be like, oh, that reminds me of this story. Let me post it really quick. With always the intent of, someday my kid will be older and he'll have this repository for who his dad was. He can read these stories and maybe not think his dad is super lame. Even though I probably am in his eyes now, he's still young enough that I'm cool. But, you know, at some point he'll look at it and say, okay, my dad, my dad did something that, that I think, that I think matters.
You know, the other thing I like to talk about there is, is veteran suicide, right? It's not. It's not a particularly happy topic, but I think it's important for people to know that there's other people that have. Have shared stories, that have shared combat experience, that have shared, you know, traumas.
I've lost. At this point in my career, I've lost more friends to suicide than I've lost to. To combat. And that's a very sobering thought. In many ways, I think that those deaths, those suicides are related to combat, you know, because a lot of it stems from combat trauma.
Social media has opened a door where I can now reach a large group of people and tell those stories. You know, I could tell stories, you know, about my buddy Nick, who, you know, was an infantry guy, and then he became an EOD guy, and then he became an Apache pilot, and then, you know, a couple years ago, he took his life and the impact that that had on his family and the community.
And like, you know, hey, you're better here than not here.
It's good to have those conversations, good to have hard conversations.
I'm just a guy on social media telling my story because, you know, I'm amazed anybody wants to listen to it. I'm amazed anybody wants to read it, but I'm happy that they do. And the moniker EOD Happy Captain literally comes from. There's a guy on Twitter called Sad Major, and he's an anonymous account, and he posts really funny things about being a staff officer. And one day I posted something and he said, you know, if I'm the Sad Major, you're the Happy Captain. Because there's a lot of negativity online. You do not have to look far to find it. And I kind of made a conscious decision that there is a way to frame things. There's a way to tell these stories that we can focus on some of the positives that come out of it. There are positives to the worst things that happen. Yeah, right. That's not negating that those bad things happened. But there is a way to frame a conversation, to create discourse, without just being like, this is dumb, and that's stupid, and I don't like this, and I don't like that. Right.
[01:12:36] Speaker A: I think the point you made about writing is so important for veterans to understand.
When I first came into the special operations community, it was at a time where SOF was wrestling with the quiet professional versus silent professional ethos. And it. And too many people, in my opinion, were being the silent professionals, where you don't talk about it at all. But if you don't talk about the profession, if you don't own your own space, someone else will. So I think it's Important to get out there to share those stories.
And what I also found it sounds like you have as well, and countless other vets. When done in the right way for the right reasons, writing is therapeutic for the guy. Doing it is also useful for the people reading it, most of whom you'll never know. Like you were talking about before, you don't know how to measure the impact, but they'll know they're not alone. Because while there's so many things you can do in the military, chances are someone had a similar experience to you, or they will in the future.
And if they read your work, they'll know they're not alone. Or better yet, they'll have that in the back of their mind when they. When they face something similar down the road.
[01:13:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think, look, the Army's Harding Project initiative, which has now been institutionalized into the Combined Arms center, is. Is a good thing, right? I think, you know, there's a question, and you hear it a lot with social media. Who are you writing for? Are you writing to have a big following, or are you writing for specific people? So, like an example, right? A restaurant that has a million followers, but none of them are going to the restaurant because they're in other parts of the world. Doesn't matter as much as a restaurant that has 500 followers all in the same town, all who go and dine there. That's how they do business. That's how they get their money, right? The same concept applies to military writing. And really, any writing. The first question is, who are you writing for, right? If I'm writing a very specific piece that I want to target these three senior leaders, I want them to read it. I don't care if a thousand people read it. I care if three people read it, right? I care if the right people read it.
And trust me when I tell you there are senior leaders out there that are reading that stuff. And sometimes they're doing it anonymously, right? But they're reading that stuff. I remember. I remember going back to the start of this conversation, right? I was. I was failing out of community college. I was going nowhere fast. I decided to join the army, and I joined the army, and I called my dad and I said, thank God I'm done with learning stuff. You know, like, thank God I'm done with school, right? And he just kind of. He did the exact same thing you did. He laughed.
But like, I have found in the last, you know, really five, five to 10 years, started reading a lot more, and now just military stuff. Just like, just reading, you know, books from Fortune 500 company CEOs and, you know, just people that have dealt with problems. Because when you read things, you get a really good understanding of problems you may never deal with, but when that problem comes, you have an arsenal to deal with it.
[01:15:30] Speaker A: I think if you listen to podcasts with senior leaders, it could be guys like General Rapp that we mentioned, General Petraeus, who you've met, General McChrystal, just, just name them. They'll say the same thing. You are read and read broadly because you never know when that piece of information that you think is completely unrelated might pay off for you down the road. Is that something that you encourage or that you will encourage with your cadets now that you're helping to lead an ROTC detachment?
[01:15:59] Speaker B: Yes, I think. I mean, that's. That's the, that's the simple one word answer is. Is Yes. I think, you know, look, priorities of work, right? So there are times in your life where you just don't have time to read for recreation. And that's. That's fine, Right. Right. Now these, these ROTC cadets, you know, I need them to get a good gpa. I need them to do well in school, I need them to stay in shape, and I need them to commission because the army needs them, right? We need good leaders out there.
So, you know, if they're not reading for, for recreation, now, that. That's actually fine. I need them to read for. For school, for grades.
Having said that, I read a lot of books, right? Like, I listen to a lot of books. I listen to books when I drive, and I try to not read military things.
I just, you know, I do sometimes, right? And I mean, you know, I'll read, I'll read some military books, but I try to read books that I think will. Will make me a better leader. And that's not always military stuff. There's a really good book called Range by David Epstein, right. Which talks about being an expert in nothing but having an understanding of everything. It's a fantastic book, Right. I recommend that one to, to everyone. It's an easy read and it kind of opens your eyes to like, okay, it's good to have a specialty. I have a specialty. I'm an EOD guy, right?
But it's even better to have range. It's better to have range in everything that you do.
So, yeah, I encourage them to read and I encourage them to read, you know, not just military stuff, right.
[01:17:32] Speaker A: I think it's extremely useful, and you can often find direct military Applications to things that you think are unrelated. When General McChrystal was in charge of JSOC, he would push US business school readings, which at first I was kind of resentful about, because that's not why I came to jsoc. I came to JSOC to get after Al Qaeda, not get after an mba. And one of the things that he made us read that I still recall, and I have a copy of today, is an excerpt of a book called Starfish and the Spider, which is about leadership organizations. Yeah, for sure. Highly recommend for ROTC cadets. What's one cadets? Anybody in between?
And as I read it, of course, it's pretty obvious what the utility of it was. We were getting after Al Qaeda as if it was a spider organization, and we should have been approaching it as a starfish. So I think there's a lot that can be learned that applies the military profession, even for. For things that you think are unrelated.
[01:18:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I think one of the books that honestly, you know, really fundamentally just changed how I viewed problems. There's a book called the One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey, right? It's. You can read it in probably 30 or 40 minutes. And effectively, what it is is it's giving people their own problems back.
And so, you know, what do you do as a leader? Someone walks into their office, they have a problem. You know, most people will sit there and they'll try to solve the problem with them. Right. What that book really gets after, at its core, is how do I give the monkey back to you? How do I give you the problem back? Right? Where I empower you to go make a decision and handle yourself. Because inevitably, what happens is if you bring me a problem and I say, all right, all right, Charlie, I'm deal with that. And then two weeks later, I bump in you. I'm like, hey, whatever happened with that problem? You sit there and you're like, I don't know. You told me you were going to handle it. Right?
It wasn't my problem, but suddenly now it is. And really what that book gets after, at its core, is how do I take your problem, help you work through it, give it back to you so you can decide it? Because I'll tell you one thing. Like, you know, that has a lot of military application. Yeah, Right. I don't have the. I don't have the time. You know, I just came out of command where I was in charge of over 200 people. I don't have the time to solve 200 individual problems. No, what I do have the time to do is mentor and develop people to solve their own problems.
[01:19:40] Speaker A: I want to go back and talk about the Harding Project. You mentioned that earlier, chief of staff's method of promoting writing in the profession. They are partners with us in the Modern War Institute. I am personally a fan of them and the individuals that lead it.
So what's your experience been like with the Harding Project, and what would you like our listeners to learn about it or do now that they know about the Harding Project itself?
[01:20:06] Speaker B: So the first thing I'd say is read, right? Read stuff from the Harding Project. Because this is. All the military magazines are back up and running. And these are. These are. A lot of them are young soldiers, young officers, young NCOs, who are writing about very real problems and how they have solved them.
And so you can go to line of departure and you can, you know, you can look at what is armor doing, what is infantry doing, how are we solving, you know, issues that we're seeing in Ukraine. How are we solving rapid jumping of talks? How are we setting that stuff up? How are we communicating? How are we dealing with these things? So, number one, go read.
Number two, if you have an idea, go write. I mean, like, you know, there's this. There's this concept people think like only senior leaders should be writing.
And I will tell you this, I'm not living in a vacuum. The average junior soldier is working their ass off, right? The concept of going home and writing something is. Is why would I do that, right? I'm going to the field, and then I'm coming back and I'm showering and I'm going to the field again, right? That's the life of a lot of junior maneuver guys. And so, you know, this isn't. This isn't a let them eat cake type of comment, but when you're out there in the field, take some notes in your little book and say, this really did not work, or this really worked really well. Here's what I'm doing with drones.
And maybe you won't write about it right away, but maybe you'll write about it at some point. And there are plenty of great mentors in the Harding Project who. There's one for each of the branches, and they will help mentor, guide, and develop you to write something that is great. And if you're interested in that, go be a Harding fellow. Go apply. I think the application window is open right now through the Broadening opportunities program. And go write and handle, you know, be the curator for your branch magazine. And, you know, Have a decision what happens next. People read that stuff, right? And this goes back to that first conversation. I don't need a million people to read my article.
I need two people to read it.
You make sure those two people read it.
[01:22:04] Speaker A: In addition to the Harding Project, which, as you mentioned, got so many different things going with the different branch magazines and things like that, there are a number of great outlets out there. If you got something interesting to say, there's somebody that'll publish it. Of course, at the Modern War Institute, we get a lot of content. We often get a lot more content than we can even reply to. So many people writing into us. There are a lot of other good ones out there. War on the rocks is good task of purpose, does a lot of good work. There's a lot of good things out there. So I echo what you were saying. Start reading, start writing. And not everyone is good at it, even with the assistance now of AI. So it might take you a couple times and worst case scenario, if you can't find any new, publish it.
Start your own blog. Just do it the right way and for the right reasons.
[01:22:49] Speaker B: No, I think that's. I think that's key, right? I mean, I don't think, you know, my personal opinion is there's no reason not to be in the social media space. You gotta be very careful with what you say.
But I do think there's utility and benefit not just to the formation, but to the average American citizen reading the thoughts of soldiers. I think it matters.
[01:23:05] Speaker A: Well, Michael, as we come to the end of this conversation, which has gone on a lot longer than it normally would because it's such a fascinating discussion, I know you're brand new to the 5th Brigade ROTC. What are some of the things that you're looking forward to in terms of working with the cadets in your new role?
[01:23:24] Speaker B: I will tell you, nothing makes you feel younger than being around young soldiers and cadets who are hungry to do a job, right? And I think that's one thing that has kept me, kept me young, right, is being around young professionals who are answering. They're answering the nation's call, right? They want to serve. You know, whether you do. Look, whether you do four years, 10 years, you know, 30 years. I went to a retirement ceremony today. There was a guy who was retiring at 40 years.
[01:23:49] Speaker A: Amazing.
[01:23:49] Speaker B: You know, it's honorable service to the country. So one what I want to instill in them is like, hey, this is a great profession full of great people, and we are giving you an opportunity at a very young Age to lead, right? Lead America's sons and daughters. And that's a very powerful thing, right? That's a very important thing. And it's a lot of responsibility. And the average 20 year old doesn't get that responsibility. We're going to give it to you. So I'm looking forward to getting out there and mentoring and developing and just, I'm looking forward to just being around cadets that just want to get after it and commission into the Army.
[01:24:19] Speaker A: So for any cadet listening or any young leader, enlisted non commissioned officer, commissioned ROTC cadet or West Point Service Academy cadet, what are some key takeaways or leadership lessons that you want to impart with them before we wrap up the show?
[01:24:36] Speaker B: Two big ones. The first one is, is listen, right? Listen to your NCOs, junior leaders. You know, you've been through ROTC, you know, maybe you're a lieutenant. It doesn't really matter what level you're at.
It's a team, right? And if you can build that bond and have that good relationship with your nco, whether they are a platoon sergeant or a first sergeant or a SARM major, that matters a lot. And the second is be humble, right? Just be humble and understand that. Be the leader that you wanted when you were younger. It's okay not to know everything. As a matter of fact, it's concerning if you think you know everything. Right?
The army is designed to mentor and develop you. It's meant to build you, right? We don't expect a PV2 to come in with all the answers. Just the same way we don't expect a lieutenant to come in with all the answers. So it's okay to sit back and learn and listen and just kind of absorb your operating environment and get really good at it and do PT Always,
[01:25:35] Speaker A: always implied task PT every day. Well, Michael, this was a fascinating discussion. I really appreciate your time. This was a very fun episode for me to do personally. I think a lot of people will find it interesting and useful and, and I thought it was a very productive use of my time. And on behalf of Colonel Pat Sullivan, the director of the Lotter Institute, and for me personally, I wanted to say thank you for your time and for sharing your leaders with us. And I look forward to having you and maybe some of your cadets here at West Point sometime down the road.
[01:26:07] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me. I greatly appreciate it, sir.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Spear. The Spear is produced by the Modern War Institute at West Point. What you hear in each episode are the views of the participants and don't represent the position of West Point, the Army or the US Government. Be sure you're subscribed to the Spear on Apple podcasts Stitcher or your favorite podcast app, where you can also give the podcast a rating or leave a review which helps us reach new listeners. And if you aren't yet following MWI on social media, please find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Thanks again for listening.
