Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Dispatches From Normandy with Lt. Gen. Donahue, CSM Barker, and Tim Kennedy

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Lt. Gen. Donahue is the 39th Commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps and brings unparalleled experience from his extensive deployments and leadership roles, including his command of the 82nd Airborne Division and pivotal positions in NATO and Joint Special Operations. His journey from West Point graduate to overseeing operations across Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, North Africa, and Europe provides insights into modern military strategy and leadership. CSM Barker, the Corps Command Sergeant Major since August 2023, has a storied career spanning from rifleman to senior enlisted advisor. With numerous deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and a breadth of experience across various infantry and airborne units, CSM Barker offers a unique perspective on soldiering, resilience, and the evolution of combat tactics. In this episode, we discuss their leadership philosophies, the challenges of modern warfare, and the future of military operations, and how they have shaped and been shaped by their extraordinary careers in service to the nation.

Okay, got the red smoke. Gun runs. North and south. West of the smoke. West up of smoke. Okay, Kathy, west of the smoke. I'm looking at danger close now. Come on winning, man.

I can't be. Can't be clear not. I have an idea. You stop talking. Okay, yes, sir. All right. Who runs this podcast? You, right?

Exactly. This is my problem. We're going to listen to the MF last year. Yeah. Okay. The military, Tim and I were talking about this yesterday. recruiting was never an issue for me because I knew what I wanted to do since I was super young.

I remember there was recruiting efforts, but I was beating down the door. My Navy recruiter. My parents signed the waiver when I was 17 so I could enlist through the delayed entry program, which at the time I thought was super awesome. And then I had to wait until I turned 18 and graduate high school. So I'm not sure exactly why it exists other than to make recruiters happy. I literally kicked in the door. So I didn't pay attention to the recruiting efforts.

Tim was probably the same boat and probably the vast majority of people that we served with were in the same boat. It was a calling for them that I still at 46 can't describe exactly why. But for most people, it's not that. And you have to create an equity or a value proposition. And in my personal opinion, which counts for nothing other than how I think about things, I think the military writ large does a very poor job of talking about not what the military can do, but what the person can get for military service. To me, the social media posts that I would start with for military recruiting would have two people side by side.

One would have somebody who is in debt from $100,000 to $160,000, has a bachelor's, maybe a master's, and is working an hourly job, versus somebody who is four years into the military with zero debt, assuming they had good leadership and didn't get a card to 20% interest rate right off of base. Not that we know anybody that that has happened to. No debt. College is going to be paid for and likely a skill that they can roll into for probably a six-figure vocation that sets them up for success in life. My post would be which one of these do you want to be? And I would open with that and then talk about the things that we do in service later on to tell the other side of the story. Because almost all the messaging is multi-kim.

It's bang and bullets and things that blow up. And although that is obviously the role of the military, it doesn't attract everyone. The people at this table were attracted by those things. As much as I tell people I'm the most normal person that I know and the most sane person that I know right here, people disagree with me and I can't figure out why so to me most people will never get the chance to talk with a flag officer

or a CSM about what is life and the Army like I mean we can we can talk about why we're here in D-Day the roots all the way back to Europe I think what the military was at that point the values the ethos who we were as a country how that translates forward to the modern military

and I'd love to hear from both of you just what do you feel how do you feel the military is suited right now to face the challenges going forward and if there are gaps that we can identify how would you fill them with the information that you guys both have at the AVEX which is like 72 questions um so i think the first thing you're you know you're talking about recruiting right so the first thing is the army is doing better recruiting this year we're above glide path um so but but i think you nail it right So there's people join. Everyone is someone and they come from somewhere.

And everyone comes into the Army for different reasons, right? And you're right. The four of us came in for the reasons you talked about. Yeah. Right. You know, I didn't know much about the Army. They'll come from an Army family or any of the other things. But all I remember is I was a paper boy and, you know, Grenada happened.

And I was like 10 years old. And I was like, wow, what are these crazy guys doing? they're jumping out of airplanes. You know, and you saw it was on the front page of the, you know, my hometown newspaper, public opinion. And I was like, man, I don't know anything about that, but that looks pretty cool. I would like to do that someday.

And then, of course, I forgot about it, right? And I was just being a normal kid. And next thing you know, at some point I'm in the Army. And I'm like, you know, I want to go to that unit that did that. What was that unit? Oh, it was the Ranger Regiment, right? And by the way, he was a squad leader in ACO-275. We were together.

Wow. Right? So you got that group. And then the other day I read this book, this guy gave it to me from Fayetteville State, and it talked about exactly what you're hitting on. Basically, if you join the Army, you're almost guaranteed at a minimum that you're going to be middle class. And when you get out, you will probably, with the skills and everything that you've gotten, you're going to move your family into the upper middle class, if not more.

Right? So how do you square those two things? I think that's what we're seeing. And I also believe recruiting is harder because when we were all fighting and deploying, people are going, oh, I'm in. Our nation's at war? I'm in. And then suddenly when we stopped going, right, you had to change and adjust.

And you're talking about that adjustment to come back. So I think not just the Army, I think all the services are starting to adjust back to that exact thing. Okay. We just can't say, hey, join the Army and let's go fight together, right? And I'm just playing on that. It's now, hey, we're actually not a war, but, man, we're also at this transition point where we have to transform our military to match what's going on in the world. So you've all these multiple things coming together at one time.

And, you know, that's where I think we're at. So we're starting, you know, again, we'll see. You need several years of good recruiting, right? Several years. You guys know as well as anybody. But at least for this year and everything else that's going on, you see that we're starting to get on track. So do we understand that environment? And I think you had to nail it right there.

And guys like us, right, we're the problem sometimes too, right? Because that's what we're looking for. You know, what do I talk about all the time? People on war fighting. People in war fighting. I'm probably the worst recruiter in the world, right? Not to timidly. So, you know.

So, but what percentage is that out there? Oh, right? So, you know what I'm saying? So my message is probably pretty weak, right? To the people who you're trying to recruit. That's why I'm not in recruiting, right? I think it's a strong message, but I think if you change the lens that you look at it from, you can talk about everything that comes in life after military service too.

Like Tim was joking. He jokes with me all the time. He's an adrenaline junk and he likes to do all these dangerous things. But I enjoy those activities. But what you don't see is I take every lesson that I learned in the military. to how to view an objective from the 30,000 foot view to literally getting ready to breach a door. And I apply those to all those things that I do in the military as well. You know, the ORM cycle.

I mean, everything from weather study to terrain study to using, you know, a communication plan, how am I going to stay in track of loved ones, the people that I'm going to be out there with, making sure they're trained, current, and competent. But I'm constantly out there assessing risk, which is a weird thing to say when you're zipping up a nylon suit and getting ready to jump off a cliff because there's absolutely no way to reduce that risk to zero, but I can get it to a threshold where I'm comfortable. I learned all of that in Afghanistan and Iraq. I don't know how to put that on an Instagram post, but I also own a coffee shop now in Montana

of all the bizarre things that I do. And I have 40 employees, all but two of them are, they're actually right in the wheelhouse recruiting age for the military. Early teens to mid-20s. You know, it's not a vocation for anybody. they kind of pass through. I know it's going to be a transitory job. I use the leadership skills that I learned in the military to use, to model our business, a metric-based approach. I mean, I call it our weekly, you know, sync meeting where we look at our previous seven and our next seven.

I wonder where I learned that from. Like, I'm not creating any of this stuff. I'm taking 17 years of experience and saying, well, this works if I can modify that. That works if I can modify that. And that's in addition to all the experience, you know, communication. skills, interpersonal skills, ability to plan all of those things. You can take that combat message. I mean, the hard reality is, and Tim and I were talking about this yesterday, I think it's a very valuable thing. If people remember, they are completely and utterly replaceable. At some point in time, the service is going to move on with all three of you. Yeah. I mean, the day that you're done, the service has moved on. I didn't get to choose when I got out. But I was, I was medically

retired and they said, you're done here. That sucked. The Army, the military, gives something that is a commodity that nobody else currently is giving to the level in which it's given, which is leadership. And decision making. Yeah. So from kind of like... You just talked about. Yeah. Peak of leadership in the entire military in the seats that you both hold.

And he's talking about post-military career. All of our friends are wildly successful entrepreneurs. Like and every single one of them come from your respective backgrounds. So not just for your careers, but more like everyone that's kind of sitting in here right here, for them to know what looks, what happens after that ETS date, what happens as soon as they hang that uniform up, in addition to like the GI Bill, that decision making, that program management and that leadership, I mean, it's truly priceless. It makes you unstoppable and I don't know how to, I don't know how to, I don't,

I don't know how to convey that message properly. So I think, and I want the CSM to talk here in a second, but the first thing is anyone who's, someone comes and asks me about getting out of the Army, I say, are you kidding me? I've been in the Army for 32 years, man. Don't talk to me about getting out of the Army, right? Talk to you too, right?

For all the reasons you just, both of you just described. One of us here just reenlisted, so maybe not the best person to talk to. I'm not moving on. But, see what are your thoughts? Yeah, I think, you know, kind of going back to your original point about recruiting, I think the Army is a huge, huge enterprise, you know, especially when you compare it to the other services. And we have so many more different opportunities, so much, many different more jobs.

So we're looking for so many different kinds of people. So, you know, much more diverse in our organization for the talent and the types of people that we're looking for. And so I think part of it, you know, we've got to get better. at is how do we recruit? You know, if you, if you're a college football team coach and you're going out scouting for talent, you know, you're going to go to where the talent that you're looking for that you want to bring in and start, start bringing those folks in. And so I think we could do a little bit better at being able to identify that instead of just kind of setting baseline levels of things that, you know, if you can do these things, that come on in. But being able

to focus and and and I think you know with the amount of recruiters we've put out there we're better positioned and posture to do that I think you know we also have to realize the environment it's tougher for for recruiters to get into some of these schools you know where a lot of this talent resides and then the other thing too is you know we're also recruiting it's not so much the the kids coming straight out high school delayed entry program like you and I did you know it's it's kids post college and so we got to open our aperture up to that as well because Because, you know, while the, you know, and also acknowledge this generation's different, you know, they want to want challenges, they want to do things that are meaningful.

And so, you know, being able to take a look at those things. And that's how we pull them in. And again, we're doing better. But, you know, I think we can't, we can't take our foot off the gas. We've got to keep positive because, you know, what makes us successful is our people. Do you think that the peers that put us through treating thought that our generation was different as well? Oh, absolutely. Every generation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So. I think that's, I think that's a common repeating cycle. We can't escape. Yeah. The, uh, the, the, the first on recruiting, like the areas that we, we are turning people away, and I guarantee it's this way for the other services.

Cyber, any sort of signal specialty, you know, any of those type tech things, medical, all the ones that there, we, people are, again, we're turning people away for those things. That's all also going to be automated in three years. Oh, yeah. Learn a different school, people. Sorry. But they're coming in with the skills to do all these things. But you're absolutely right.

But more and more things, you know, anything to do with drones, turning people away, right? But to your point, right, this army is completely transforming into something completely different too, right? and more and more things human machine integration drones all these things are going to there's these new forms of mass that are out there they're going to come back to us and ultimately it's going to be completely different

recruiting environment and it's going to be changing so we got to match all that right yeah hey one last thing is in that so there's this great you know trilogy out there called the Pacific trilogy right and after Guadal Canal a bunch of people they're

all the, you know, people wearing uniforms like us, they do an after-action review. And they, one of the big takeaways was, boy, this generation, you know, they're not tough enough, they're not this. You know, we call them the greatest generation now, right? So there's always going to be someone who says, hey, I would tell you, this generation is freaking smart. They're way better than, I'll just, I'll pick on, you know, me.

I'll see anyone who's in my generation, this generation's actually better. I have a 16-year-old daughter, an 18-year-old son, and a 20-year-old son, and their ability to self-start and learn exceeds. My 18-year-old son has already started two businesses from his computer. I'm like, I don't know if I went to school on time when I was that age. They're smart. They are for sure. Random thought. I asked him this yesterday.

You know, so we're in Normandy. It's the 80th anniversary. We were at Utah, or no, Omaha Beach this morning. That's a mess. Low tide. Everywhere I've been, this is my first time here. It was one of the last places I,

if not the last place on my bucket list. And I think I pushed it off because of the gravity of it, the weight of it. Because I can't stop myself from only seeing things from a tactical perspective. Being on Omaha, like, are you kidding me? 400 yards minimum of open beach with barricades and IDF

and overlapping things. fields of fire and people have been practicing their natural point of aim for three years. I mean, okay. Tim was like, what boat would you want to be on? I'm like, 700 maybe. The patriotism from the French, seeing the World War II veterans, right before you guys came out and relisted Tim, he literally had to get his army voice on for a little bit to tell people to back up.

We had to put caution tape up because they were crowding in on them. I'd like scream, like back up, be nice. I'm going to start taking faces. He didn't add that last word. He did not add that last part. That was the men that you just realized to start off on the wrong floor. You were thinking that. You all have that inner voice, right?

You like them over here. I'd like to speak with you real quick. Now, it was the level of voice where you realized there was actually not a question involved in what he said. It was very directive in nature. And everybody took a few steps back. But here's the question. do you think that there will ever be a celebration or anything even remotely like that for the people who have served for the last 20 years? We were just talking about this, right?

And yeah, I don't know. You know what I mean? I don't think so. So my question is, Bobham was pretty right. What do we do to do that, right? I'm pretty confident all the places we all, all the four of us were running around. they're not going to be like, hey, we want you to come back for the 20th anniversary, right? If they did say that, I don't know if I would go.

Right. They really don't worry about my vest. Everything is fine. I have a tax appointment that day. I can't make it. So I guess my question is, what do we do? Right. And, you know, General Miller was out here just two or three hours ago, right?

And so we talk about this all the time. What do we do about this, right? So I do think we, you know, kind of like what the bunch of senior leaders did after World War I, after World War II, you know, Gavin on the, you know, one of the big anniversaries in 1984, so the 40th anniversary, he made everybody come out here, right? He ordered them all to come out, right? So, and, you know, you talk about strategic to tactical, right? And, you know, Keith Nightingale, he said. summed it up very well. On the 9th of June, if you do not get this causeway right out here, the whole thing stops. So on the 9th of June, the company commander, you know, Captain Saul, the chanted command went from him to Eisenhower. Either he makes it or he doesn't. And if you don't think that in between Saul and Eisenhower, there was, you, you, three division commanders sitting back, well, that's not true. You had two division commanders waiting to

punch through here. You had the division commander, the assistant commanding general, and the, you know, the corps commander all running around in here, pushing people physically and moving tanks to get this through, right? You talk about that pressure. So they were good enough to do all that. I think it's incumbent upon, ultimately, you know, I'll pick on myself here, me and the likes of General Miller, General Dunford, you can go on and on, right, Admiral McRaeve, And all these guys that we all know, at some point, when do we start bringing everybody back together? Right. And I think we're going to have to do that.

Yeah, I don't think it's possible to bring them to those countries. You think maybe something like bringing them back to their home unit? I think home unit. Just say, hey, we're going to meet at some location and we're going to talk about everything. Right? Yeah. Because just talking about what all you've done is really, really important, as you guys know. Right.

They literally storm beaches climbed cliffs, but liberated not just a nation, you know, but a consonant and then saved the world from tyranny. And that's, I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's a sentence that you can plant a flag on. You know, the, the, the heritage of the rangers climbing those, those cliffs. And, you know, as soon as they crest the top, there's machine gun positions 20 meters away. It's just, it's madness. Uh, you know, 20 years at war for us. Um, I never. I think I had the same.

absolute confidence in what we were doing being right as the men did in 1944 like we were fighting evil you know when i watched a woman in a polka dot dress look out of a window and decide if she's going to burn a lie or not or jump to her death and that is the i mean that is the description of evil and we were fighting that thing call it whatever you want on on you know like profiteering for oil i don't care about any of that stuff what we were fighting was evil and to celebrate that we were fearlessly, courageously,

bravely, every single day going out and combating that. I mean, I'll do that all day long. And that should still be celebrated. Like, it shouldn't be like hanging our head in shame that we don't have a place to plant our flag like in St. Mayor, you know, or point the hawk.

But, like, F those guys. Yeah. You know? The, yeah, I'm involved. I mean, you've been, you know, I'm not going to talk about it. about units or anything else, but I was at that level of command that we were going exactly

except for five straight years. Yep. I mean, I'll tell you what, I was a, I was a pretty, I mean, I was a mean, callous dude, right? I mean, that mean, talus, that's keeping it G-rated, right? And like you, I love deploying. I still love deploying. I got five kids. I want to be with my kids, but I'll tell you what, if there's a deployment, if there's

something going on, I better be there, right? And I don't know if it's a sickness. I don't know if it's, you know, whatever it is, I don't know, right? But, you know, so I think we have to kind of celebrate a little bit too of who we are. It's okay, right? And, you know, the term, you know, probably isn't the most popular thing to say, I don't like the term resilience. Like, I'm not resilient, okay?

We're all getting stronger, right? I'm not a survivor. I'm getting stronger. Right. And we got to tell, you know, we need to make sure we talk about all this stuff, right? Think of the people you were with. And you were around the best people in the world. And they were damn good people who were willing to go do that, right? And so again, this is about, this is why I think we got to get people back together.

Sarmajor, do you think that there's a divide, you know, I mean, he's a war. You're a warrior. You come from the most elite units on the planet, the three of you. and communicating, like, we're a warrior nation. Like, we began, you know, in 1770s when, you know, a shot was hurt around the world and we killed everyone that was part of the opposition force and kicked them off this continent and told us that we were free. That's our beginnings. And then through World War I, World War II, like, that's kind of at our core.

And this generation, I'm proud, you know, of my friends and the things that you guys have done. And I like to to brag about the things, the units that you've been, the units that you've been, like that's, that's a beautiful, rad thing. But I don't know if that is understood and received. Do you think that we can communicate the things that we do and how we do it a little bit better? And how do we do that? Yeah. I think it's interesting. A couple guys have hit me up on this exact talk.

And they said, hey, quit talking about problems. Right. Because that's, that's such a small percentage of your service. talk about all the great things. Don't dwell on those things. They were talking about, you know, the people of New York, he goes, anything they ever hear about is the bridge to towers, you know, run or whatever. He goes, well, that's all about, you know, what's great about that?

Like, talk about all the other stuff that happens as well, right? And then, you know, dovetail that into what you let off with, right? Hey, if you join the Army, if you join the Marine Corps, if you join the Air Force, Navy, whatever, you know. Hey, this is what you're, look at all the great things that are going to come out of it. You're here. This is what you're going to be able to do. This is what you're going to learn. This is the people you're going to be with.

And this is where you're going to end up if you want to hang around. Or if you just do one, one, you know, then this is where you're going to be when you come out. And again, it's not about being resilient. It's about getting better. It's about helping everybody. It's about being part of a great team, you know. I mean, hell. are the talent and you know just because the army right the talent that you see every day

we just re-enlisted a kid right out here he joined when he was 29 years old right he was working in a shipyard started off as a guy who just like you know the lowest level didn't go to didn't complete college was a middle man came in the army, just became an 18-series guy. He's in the 82nd right now. I mean, you talk to that guy? Man, he's got a college degree. His wife is extremely, you know, does really well

in, you know, financial sector, Cleveland State grad. I mean, just, you look at it and you're like, man, that's an amazing story. You're the American that everyone should be. So, anyways, off on a tangent now. How'd you find your how did you navigate your way out of that callous place? Probably the first thing was my wife. Well, there was a couple things, right?

Because it took me a while. That's the first thing, right? Did you recognize it when you were in it? Probably not. This is me I wasn't fully aware. Yeah. Right? But probably not.

I think it was a survival thing too, right? Because I knew I was going back. Right. So I think, you know, my wife and I, we had, you know, we had five kids, like I said, but later, I was after 05 command. Right. And when my kids was going along and fell and, like, hurt their knee, and I was like, hey, get up. You're all right. And I wasn't saying it like, hey, get up.

You're going to be right? It was because that's what you do to a friend. And, you know, if you run through the streets of Fallujah and someone got down, you You know, you picked them up, hey, man, don't worry about everything's going to be okay, right? Because you don't know what just happened. And you want to give them, hey, it's hope. Let's keep on. Everything's going to be great, right?

Survival. And my wife was like, hey, that's not someone you serve with. That's your kid. Like, you just don't say that to your kid. You know what I mean? I was like, ooh, yeah, you're right. And I think that made me kind of. Turn the light all of a bit.

That was the first moment, and I distinctly remember that where I told, I got to dial it in. I had a moment like that, too. Yeah, you don't realize. as the stereo equalizer bars or maybe just being shifted up or down just in touch. I'm not that smart to think of it that way. I just knew like, man, that's not, you know, I'm not being the dad. I should be. Yeah. People ask me about combat, you know, if you slide everything to attend and you get used to that and you come home and baseline at home as a three, I mean, is it even reasonable to expect somebody to be able to hear anything that's going on?

I had exact experiences like that. You seem to be smarter than me because I think it took me about half a dozen to recognize what was going on. But the same thing, what was a huge deal to somebody else did not register on my emotional scale because whatever had just happened,

like you need to sort that out immediately on your own because you're holding us back. My wife is like, we're going to the grocery store. Like, oh, yeah, that's probably not as important. Took time, though. You know, the other thing too is, You know, like you guys, you've always worked out. You know, we all grapple.

We all do all those different things, right? And I think that helped you out as well. You didn't know it. I didn't know it. I'll put it that way. Right. So, you know, the Army calls it holistic health and fitness. Incredibly important.

Taking care of your body, not drinking too much. You know, sure as hell, not using drugs and everything else. I don't care. Why don't care anyone tells you? Like, you don't do those things, you're significantly better off. We were kind of tussling about it. You know, I think this heavily falls into the NCO side. He's like, can we solve the suicide problem?

I was like, yeah. He's like, I don't think we can. I think it's like a culture problem. It's like, it's a species problem is what I said. I know, but as a species, when you start taking little bits of the pie and split it up with, are they exercising, how are they eating, are they getting sleep? Is there too much caffeine? Are they using tobacco?

Are they using any drugs? What is their home life life? What is their economic life like? I've seen one of those things is just an accumulating stressor. And as those things start directionally, both positively and negatively, I mean, it has significant impact. And once those dominoes start falling one way or the other, it's really difficult to turn the ship.

But it can be turned. And you start addressing holistically the entire human optimization of like, okay, how do I, you know, not that I'm like this totally optimized person, but I'm really disciplined. Not last night because we had to free and work. and get up at midnight and then be on the road by 3 a.m. But with sleep and cold plunging and working out and diet and being faithful and all these things, like add, how do you take care of soldiers? Like how do we get them not to be hitting rippets, you know, not to have a wad in their mouth, not to be going out downtown, you know, like they're deployed and trying to find something downrange.

It's because there's a culture problem in the Army, you know, that we can do anything and we can. But we should be able to do anything with in the right conditions and that is Yeah, I think I think you know good kind of going back to suicide you know I think it's it's it you're right it's a it's a species problem And I think you know I think it's a it's not right it's not right it's more of more of a first world problem You know when you start really peeling it back and and you know we've been struggling with this for for for many years trying to solve it because it's it's it's in our nature You know we see a problem we want to we want to tackle it's we want to solve it but you know every suicide is unique to that person every person has a tipping point and I think you have to have to realize once you start

realizing that and you have to start understanding what is what is it that for that that individual and then you know the other part of this thing where drugs come into this that's an accelerant you know out adding alcohol to a problem doesn't make the problem go away it it steers it in the the wrong direction for that that tipping point. You know, and what we're finding, you know, we're working with, you know, our chaplain is putting together a program to build durability is really what we're after. You know, somebody that can tough, can take a beating and it's, and just get stronger from it, you know, we're not sponges that bounce back. You know, we get stronger and continue to push

forward. So I think, you know, taking that approach, and you do have to, you have to do some hard things to make you hard. And I think, you know, and that's when you kind of come to those those realizations, you know, of, hey, I can get through this and you have to do that. It's kind of an iterative process. And doing that with your teammates is another part of that too, knowing that there's people here here for you and that you can count on them. And I think when you start getting away from that and people start going to that isolation, that's when, you know, the team has to start queuing them. Like, all right, what's going on with this person? And there's physiological indicators too.

Yeah. You know, the, you know, lack of sleep and things like that, cortisol levels. I mean, there's biological things that are tied to this as well. But I think, you know, that interaction, making somebody feel like they belong is a big part of what we're getting after. And that's the risk goes to reception and integration, you know, bringing somebody off the street into the Army, bringing them on the team. How do you receive them?

And then how do you, how do you let them go? How do you push them off to the next phase in life? Is it, you know, don't let the door hit you on the way out or making sure they've got a good place to land are big factors. We've been talking about that this week too. I'm coming to the opinion that I don't know if the military is the best organization to actually off-ramp their people. I mean, how many years did it take us to get good at our jobs? Like at least half a decade. And I think my exit from the Navy was a two-week program, full disclosure.

I attended zero days, but had all the signatures required. So I'll let other people figure that out. Not advocating that as an approach. Point is it's heavy on one side of the scale and lighter on the other. But maybe that is a perfect role for NGOs or organizations that can work with the military to take a much more hands-on approach than the military itself. I want the military good at off-ramping people. I want the military good at murdering people.

Like, we're supposed to be the most lethal fighting force on the planet. But if I'm focusing on, like, give them all the incentives to come in and want to be part of the greatest organization on the planet. But once they get here, they have to be the best of their job. We're not just a deterrent, but every single nation should look at us and be like, and that is a bad idea.

And it's like if we're spending our time looking on how am I looking for this next person's job, yes, we have to take care of them. We have to position them to be successful in wherever they're going to go, however longer they're going to be in the military, or what are they going to do afterwards. But first and foremost, lethality is our job.

lethality both in preventative and actions on should be like you know that's what we got to be good at well i think you guys both nailed it right hey up until a certain point it's what you just described right and once you hit a point that's when you transition over and you have to go through everything so you know absolutely like i said don't ask us how to get out yeah you know so we're bringing in groups part of our transition and you guys should come whoever you guys want come in come and be part of our transition the idea we talked a little about even if you just put do a video or anything else right because it's math you guys should be talking about and by the way number one we want it there there are men and women yeah yeah we want them to be successful right but the other thing too is when

they go out what's going to tell our story people who come out and go hey you know something i did four years in whatever service i loved it i was around the best people and everything else just where I was in my life I decided to get out I went and got college degree did this became state trooper I don't care what you did right you know so when I got out you know they did a great job bringing me in and they did a great job taking me out yeah you can trust these people yeah good join the service that's the generational service yeah well I said you know another part of this too is is you know our type A personality sometimes so we see a problem try to try to solve you know and

And what does the Army do? We build a program to take care of it. And so we've got to be careful that we're not making a hammock for soldiers. We've got to have something there to catch them if they fall down. We've got a lot of great programs that do that. But some of our programs, you know, some of this is life. And it's growing up to be an adult and you've got to figure it out. Sometimes that's how you learn your lessons. And we've got to let soldiers kind of struggle through that a little bit sometimes.

You know, now you talk about a generational difference, right? And we all know this, right? And you go around the Army, they're like, oh, Donnie, he's a big tech guy, right? But, you know, when we all met our significant others, right, we had to do that face-to-face. Right? You couldn't do it through a phone, you couldn't do this. You don't lead through a phone. You don't tell if something's going on somebody, you know, hey, are you okay?

Yeah, I'm okay. Well, who the hell is not going to say, yeah, I'm okay? But if you see somebody face to face and you go, hey, man, are you okay? And they go, oh, yeah, I'm okay. Oh, I got a question. What did you do last night? Blackout drunk, obviously. Oh, grabbed a bottle of line.

Went out to the beach with a comfort. Oh, you're telling me you're okay, man? No, you're not. Right. I mean, let's be honest. Nobody's going to say that to a three star, though. They're like, sir, I am great. No, no, no, no.

But I'm talking. The world to be here, sir. But that's just it, right? Donnie Hugh and Barker aren't going to solve that problem. To your point. You're not going to get told the truth. Right. So, no, I'm talking about it that, at that team, squad, troop, section, whatever you're in.

I'm talking about that level, right? That's, but that generation doesn't like to do it. We'll do that in a heartbeat, right? I mean, we have incredibly candid conversations with people, and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, like, what do you mean? What'd you do last night? Like, hey, hey, man, I got a question, where do you live? Why did you pick that neighborhood? You know, why'd you do this?

Why'd you do that? What do you mean? Oh, you're going to get out of the Army? What's your plan? Okay, well, make your plan. Come see me. Right? No, no, no, no.

Come see me. And we'll calm up. No, no, get your butt up here, right? But they don't like to do that. And that's not because they're, it's just the way it is, right? It's that generation. So how do you, this goes into holistic health, right? How do you build them to do it?

No, no, no, you got to do eyeball to eyeball leadership here. You got to do eyeball to eyeball caring about each other, right? You got to have the guts to tell someone, hey, man, you drink too much. Hey man, the rumor is you're, you know, taking whatever, right? Like, no, no, no, guys, you know why people give people fentanyl? Okay, because you become an ATM machine, some junkie who all he wants to do is make money off you, right? You see what happens when people, and then they cut everything with fentanyl because it gets you addicted, right? And they don't give a shit if you die, right?

So all these things are all these little microcosms we're in. And, you know, CBD, it's legal off post. Right? So you're competing with all that. That when I was a platoon leader, I'd have to deal with that. Right. So we're asking more of these folks, too, right? And so how do we just, you got to be up front with them, you know?

And, you know, we have to tell them, hey, and by the way, no, this is easy. We didn't say it was easy, right? Leadership's not easy. So, you know, sort it out here. Let's have a real conversation and what we really have to do. And because they lead through phones and everything they've done

is through Zoom, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? It's just different. We're the last generation that grew up without phones in our hands from the beginning. Which is why we were the best because we didn't have it, then we had it. But we know how to use it enough. Well, I mean, I don't know.

I'm pretty good at it. I like them things. It's fair. Yeah. And by the way, you need it. It's the world we're in. You know, I mean, that's, that's half the problems that we're solving all these issues. We've got to solve out there through that stuff.

Right. And it's super effective. How much is the big army making changes to make it hard for people to fail? Like, you're talking about the, I like your definition of resilience. We're not using it. To me, so the textbook definition of resilience, right, is pushing an object from its natural state and it returns to that state, which I think is incomplete. It should be and. stronger. Right. Which leads to, yeah, resilience, she should not be like, hey, I got pushed,

and I came back and I'm just as good. Like, like, point zero, zero, whatever it is, stronger, which is what our training was, right? Like, Buds is 180 days long, and I tell people this, any human being on earth can make it through one day. It's, can you stack 180 days on top of each other that makes it actually difficult? It's the grind. How do you get ready for that? You push yourself and bend yourself before the world or selection program does. Like, it's not rocket surgery by any stretch. But I also remember living on base when I was getting ready to go to Buds and I'd go to the chow hall because it was what I could afford and I think it had the caloric properties of this table perhaps you know

it's cheap food because it was devoid of any nutrition whatsoever it was basically if I look looking back on it a buffet of carbohydrates um that was a cost value analysis for me there was plenty of opportunities to drink on base. The community that I came from, I don't think anybody would disagree, had a steeped tradition in drinking. We were very good at fighting war, perhaps slightly better at getting drunk.

I think that flipped a little bit after 9-11, but it could be argued. Is the Army making changes to make it harder for these people to fail? We're looking at the defect. What are we serving people? Are there facilities not only training, I mean, you know, I remember being 20, like, oh, what's rehab and recovery?

No, I don't do that. I train. I'm in my mid-40s now. I'm a little bit more interested in rehab and recovery. I wish I had been then as well. I would go to the gym and ignore everything else they had. And actually, I think back on it, they didn't have anything else. It was a weight pile.

Like, just when I was leaving the East Coast Command, I missed this, like, beautiful recreation with, like, saltwater flotation pods, whirlpools, altitude chambers, all of these things. but that's at a place that has a large checkbook. Is the Army making changes along those lines to help? Absolutely. So part of the H-2F program is for holistic health and fitness. It's physical, mental, spiritual, sleep and sleep and medical, I'm sorry. Spirituality. Physical, physical, mental and sleep.

Yeah. And diet, I'm sorry, what I was trying to get back to you. So with diet, you know, we're doing a lot to revamp how we do feeding. You know, a lot of it's structure. You know, we change in the Army structure and our 92 gulfs, our cooks, are going to be focused on field feeding. And so what are we going to do to feed our soldiers right now? You know, some of the challenges we have is, you know, our dining facilities are per brigade.

And so it might be over a mile or two miles. for some of our soldiers to get that. So it's, how do we increase access? So we have multiple problems here. So, you know, some things we're doing is adding food kiosks within the footprint so they can go and grab something from there. Also doing a grab and go style.

So, you know, a soldier can come into the dining facility for breakfast, pick up their lunch and dinner, take that back and be able to reheat it. And the quality of the food is the other part that's much better. You know, we realize you have to, you know, body composition is 90% you know, what you do in the kitchen, about 10% what you do in the gym.

And so, you know, we're realizing that. We're given those options. You know, we're also looking at doing a campus-style feeding. So think of, you know, any college campus that has different vendors that are available. So a soldier can go in there and get their food and make some healthier choices as well, you know. But we have to balance that, too, with, again, we're dealing with 18 to 21-year-olds. They're going to eat tacos or eat cheeseburgers. Those types of things are going to be out.

there and that's just just kind of a fact but giving them that those healthy choices so it's it's not just burgers that they have to choose for more you know that they can they can get you know a salad or something something a lot more structured and also providing them the education for for what the what the diet plans is is you know this is what you should be eating these are the macro breakdown and so it's an incredible amount of of information that that that they're getting and it's not just one class It's part of the culture of the formations. And then you look at the another part of this, when you look at the physical, we're putting resources towards us.

So it's more fitness facilities. You know, we have these facilities for the brigades that they have actual gym equipment. You know, it's not just go out and work out in a piece of grass in front of the headquarters building. No, it's they have weights, they have strength coaches, they have trainers. And then we have reconditioning folks there that can help soldiers that are, injured get them back back in the fight sooner. We totally revamped our postpartum pregnancy program as well now so that they can work out, you know, realizing that that's a part of life too. And so how do we get them back, you know, being able to continue to work out with their formation

and just really scale things for them so that they can continue to be with their team? Because that's one of the biggest reasons why we do training is to, you know, do things together as a team and build that cohesion. Hey, and the Army directed us to just kind of, this brings all these things together. They said, hey, 18th Airborne Corps, define lethality. And everything the CSM Barker just talked about

is part of that of what you are when you're lethal. So when you on board, you're getting all of these classes of how to eat and everything else. So now we're starting to see the proof in what people are actually. All the takeaway food, it's only healthy food. These key eyes.

are predominantly healthy food. Now, I mean, we all have, you know, our, you know, or the day that you get to you, whatever you will, however you do it, right, depending on your age or where you're at, okay, or level of discipline. Okay, I'm, I'm 53. I can't do that anymore, right? Yeah, I don't have two days, though. Yeah, so I, I, I started stretching at age 50. God, I wish I would have, I know, we're a little behind the power curve. So, yeah, but, but they have it all, and you're seeing them, they're embracing it, right? Does every person in every unit in 18th Airborne Corps embrace it? Of course not.

Or the vast majority, and then the combat unit's probably 97% on it. So all that stuff has moved out. It's that J-Soc model cascading down. It is. Absolutely. Which is good. I mean, one of the, you know, a portion of the name of the command I'm at was development. It was literally in their charter to test and evaluate and develop things.

It's rough to see it take almost 20 years to cascade down. but I mean better late than never. I suppose. I mean, so now you're seeing all that stuff. And you're seeing the results too, right? The citizen-leitha State, we need the whole third infantry division in this, right? Ultimately, everyone who's in their formation

will go to a one-day class to learn how to do the proper way of working out, a whole day, okay? And pretty soon it's going to be everyone who comes into that division, you will get it, and now be part of your onboard. Commander and CSM have to go through together. The Division CSM just took all of the CSMs through all that, right?

So you're seeing all these things, and then we changed, you know, you now have tank crews doing stress shoots with a tank. So when you talk about the permutation of stuff out there, the field artillery. So the third infantry division didn't do real well in this big field artillery competition. They just smoked everybody. And part of it's just lethality study. I mean, you're starting to see these things come to fruition. Yeah.

You know. But what do you do for the cyber person? That's a good question. Well, you got to, they're interested in it. They want to do it, right? Maybe it's not the same as the tank crew. It's not going to be, right? But you want them to do it.

You want them to be part of that same culture. Because no matter what, it's about here and up here, right? That's really what we're talking about. Yeah. So, and you nailed it, right? There's a matter what little process you've been through, it's about here or no. Yeah.

32 years in the Army, what's been the highlight? You got any one particular thing that stands out? No, I think there's something at every level. Do you ever think you were going to have three stars, or was that the goal when you joined? No. In fact, every decision that I made at the time, everyone said, you know, this is it.

Career suicide moves? Right. But luck and chance, right? I mean, so, but yeah, I mean, you look at, you know, similar organizations that we served in everyone's like, you know you're going to retire at best as a lieutenant colonel now, right? But other people, right, the General Miller's Admiral McRavens of the world are the ones that were able to, you know, get people like us out, right, to be able to do that. I think we're changing things the right way. Yeah. How about you, Sergeant Major?

I peaked as a platoon start. The Army hasn't realized it yet, though. That's how I described getting a commission. It was my proof that the military advancement system was broken. Yeah. I slid right through the cracks. Or, as I like to say, just don't quit, then they have no options. I later found out they didn't have enough applicants for the program the year that I applied for,

so that probably helps. Just show up and don't quit. You're going to be over. Okay. Do you have anything that sticks out, though, over your career? I think every level there's been, there's been, there's been significant things, you know, you know, as a, you know, I think one of the things that, you know, when I was a junior NCO, you know, there was, I didn't have a whole lot of say in what we did, you know, but, but I had to make, make damn sure that, that we were doing exactly what we were told and doing it to the, to the standard.

But I had my thoughts on how we can do it better. And now as I, you know, as I, as I moved through the ranks, I got a little bit more say and how we should do things and what we should be doing. But it's a little bit harder to be able to influence down to that lower level because you have that chain that you have to work through. And so how do you increase your influence and how do you get those touch points to be able to make those changes and get the team moving in the right direction? But I think, yeah, every level it's been something special.

I think, again, I think being a platoon start was the sweet spot because, yeah, some of the autonomy that you have, you know everybody within your formation you know them really well and then as you move up from there it gets a little bit more more distant but but i think the amount of good you can do for the organization is grows with with that level of responsibility as well what about the other side of the coin what is the low point mean you it's not an uncommon response i've brightened your life in many ways to him i don't know you know you know you know you know I've been so fortunate and so many great things have happened and had so many great memories.

That's why I can't answer that question because I think it changes as you go along, right? But, you know, low point, I just remember being a, you know, for the Army, right? Being a major is a really hard job, right? And I was doing two jobs at one time. I was deploying with the one job, and then I had to come back and do a bunch of stuff with our selection stuff and do both jobs at the same time. And me and my wife were trying to have kids, and if you're not home, kind of goes back to being, you know, the faithful one and everything else. You know, that's extremely important, right? But if you're not together and you're doing all the right things in your marriage, you're probably not going to have kids.

And you just put all that pressure in together. that that 12-month period was the hardest 12-month period of my military career hands down right I mean I was just so much was being asked it was an important time you know what everything was going on in both Iraq and Afghanistan we had to recruit we had to build another formation me and my wife and so I just remember all the stuff that was going on that time period that was very, very hard. Now, on the flip side of that, because my wife's such an incredible person, her and I, we actually grew out of that and got even closer, right?

But man, those were some tough, tough days, really tough days. And then the other one, too, is any time you lose somebody, right? I mean, you know, everyone has their own way of doing that, you know, and everything. But no matter what, you know, there's always, you know, there's always. you know, there's certain dates, right? Yeah. That you always remember and you try to make sure that this goes back to, you know, it's not being resilient, right?

Say, hey, what are you doing to get better? What are you doing to earn it, right? You know, and I think that's, that kind of drives you as well. About you, Serge, Major. I think it's, you know, definitely loss, but I think probably more so unnecessary loss. like suicides and, you know, fatal accidents. Those are those are the kind of that I think I would say are probably the low points. Because you can reason with and justify the other ones, you know,

but when it comes to those types of losses, it's a little bit harder to deal with. What are your highs and lows to him? He was just completely spacing out when you guys were talking. Now, it's, um, the, honestly, the maps behind him incredibly destructive. I'm like recognizing what fighting took place in some of these and how important they were for Normandy, the success on D-Day. So it's, you know, if we didn't get that port right there. Which is where we're staying. And we have time we're driving by the port we're talking about it.

We're five, four miles away from that. By the way, that was the only road to it. But you had to get it to get everybody there. Right. And those dominoes, like you don't get this road. You don't get that port. You don't get reinforcements. Everybody here is trapped.

And everybody here's going to die. Hey, we answered all the questions. Now you got to answer them. Do you remember that time a few minutes ago where I asked you a question that you just tried to deflect? I don't know what you're talking about. I'm just placating to discuss a map. Highest point of your military career. A sunrise in the Erzgan Valley of Afghanistan after fighting that I didn't think any of us were going to live through.

And just seeing a sunrise and there's a palm granite tree there. There are palm granite trees where I grew up in California. And I actually wrote a poem about there are many palm granite trees, but this one's mine. I literally like uprooted it and I brought it back to the ballroom with me. And I like paid this little savage, this local to water it and like take it. And that that was just symbolic of, you know, a baptism, baptism through fire and not dying. And then low, I think, when I think to a 24 year old, egotistical,

thought he was invincible, new to a team. There's just a lot of shame and embarrassment about the first deployments and how I interacted with my bosses. And, you know, I literally got a fight in a fight

with my team sergeant. As we lost, 160th lost one of the helicopters to gunfire. And we had a helicopter assault force mission that night. And so they had to change the load plan. And I was one of the most

junior guys on the team so he removed me from the low plan i was like you're so stupid to my team sergeant to an e8 and to john mcfee and uh you're like i'm the fastest i'm the strongest i like you know i should put me on this plane kid carlos off carlos is old you know and uh he's what i should have been doing it right was like loading radios doing headspace and timing on machine gun making sure like our speed bags were loaded up like all the things that good soldiers should have been doing and just like thinking back to those days it's it's just really embarrassing. All the things, all the friends that maybe didn't, wouldn't have got hurt, all the, the more bad guys we could have got. It's like, I don't know, those, those are two.

How many years have you been in, Sergeant Major? 28. 28, 32. So 60 years of combined service. What are you guys going to do with that when you get out? What do you want to do with your life post-military? Spoiler alert, it's coming for both of you. Oh yeah, you kidding? I'm a year to year, man. I'm a year to year. He's got a little bit more wrong. I'm year to year. Well, so I got five kids, right?

15-year-old twins, 11-year-old twins, and a nine-year-old. So I got to make sure that I get them through college and stuff like that. So I'm going to work with that. Just like we talked about, I want to give back to us somehow do that, right? But you don't want to be, just from the world we come from, like you don't want to be the rah-rah. That's not, right? So you want to create that forum where we come back together

and we do celebrate what we did. And it sounds kind of weird, but whatever, like, be like completely powerful, right? Like, everyone gets together. Sorry, I was distracted. What? Now they have 10 more minutes. Do they have five more minutes?

Okay. We got plenty of time. I saw that ended. I was like, I was like, well, you were flashed, that's what I saw it. But she's like, flashed. That's not my podcast. Listen, I have three more hours on this card. He's the three star.

Where do we got to go? He's setting the rules here. Yeah, re-listment, sir. You got lots of stuff to do. I think this is super important. I'll get you guys out of here in five minutes. But hey, so if you would ask the question again. What do you want to do with the rest of your life post-military?

You guys have 60 years of combined service. You're giving back to a nation. May say nobody even understands or recognizes the work that you have cumulatively done. How do you want to live your life moving forward from your military service? What do you want to do with that? I'm a hillbilly from Western Pennsylvania. My dad raised me and my mom was a drug act. I thought I had two incredible sisters.

Matt, what the military has afforded me has been unbelievable. So I want to give back. And really, three groups. The first is my family. We got a bunch of kids that I got to get through college and stuff like that. I got to get back to my wife, who's incredible, who's been there the entire time. I want to give back to us, right? I don't know how to do that, but I want to do that.

And then obviously I'm pretty passionate about the Afghans that fought with us. Right. And so those are the three primary groups, and then give back to society somehow helping kids. So that's, you know, I talk to people by that all the time. Sergeant Major? Yeah, you know, it changes from time and time. I treat every job as if it's my last, you know, really since probably after about 20 years. And, yeah, at one point I think I was going to get out after my second brigade and I thought I was going to go join the Border Patrol.

You know, that was probably, you know, and then a few months later I get hired to go be the Division Sergeant Major for the 101st Airborne Division. So it's always kind of trying to recalibrate what, you know, what it's going to, what, what you're going to do. But, you know, I have a son that's a diesel mechanic, you know, it'd be great to, to support him and, uh, and help him start his own business. Uh, you know, I have a 17 year old daughter that's here with me that made the trip and, uh, with aspirations to be an orthodontist. So I'm going to have to make some money to pay for that, you know, but really to be able to, to be able to set my, my, my children up to, to do, to, to pursue. what they want to do. You know, they made a lot of sacrifices for me to be able to pursue what I wanted to do. And so, yeah, that my main focus is really making sure that they're set up for what they want.

And after that, you know, I think it's, it'll change. I think, you know, that's what I notice with a lot of guys that do retire is they go get out with a plan and then six, they might start down that path, but then, you know, about six months, two years later, they go down a different path, you know, and I think, you know, the one thing that's got me this, to this point, point so far as there's been a path laid out before me and I just I just show up and do my best and things tend to work out. So it's not something, not something I think about too much because I know, you know, whatever it is is going to present itself. Last question. I'll get them out of here because I think I already know your answer. We're going to end it on a positive note, assuming that I'm correct in your answer. So many people talk about the greatest generation 80 years ago. I can't even fathom climbing over the ladders and into the boats and knowing what you're

going into. And a lot of people will say there's just so many changes in our current generation. Given your station in the Army, you understand the manning, you understand what they're tooled for, what they're equipped for. If we were ever pressed again like the young men and women were 80 years ago, do you think that the U.S. is ready to answer the call? Absolutely. People all the time say, what's the number one thing you don't do real well? I mean, super fortunate to be the 18th Airborne Corps commander, 42% of the operations. Army forces in 18th Airborne Corps, right? You know, the number one thing I don't do is get all the talent out of all the people in the 18th Airborne Corps. We are a wash of talent. It is unbelievable how much we got. And if we truly turn the spickets on and industrial base and everything came back to where it needs to be, we would kick anybody's ass anywhere in the world. That's how you end the podcast. That's it. Gentlemen, thank you for your time.