The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Mark Hertling

Episode Date: April 22, 2026

If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Mark Hertling https://www.amazon.com/If-Dont-Return-Fathers-Wartime/dp/1966786727 “This journal was once a gift to our young sons. It is now a gift to anyone who cares to read it.”   When Major Mark Hertling deployed to Iraq in 1990 as the operations officer of an armored cavalry squadron, his unit was told 50 percent of them would likely sustain casualties. To him, that meant he might not return home and may perhaps never see his family again. To prepare for that potential outcome, he began keeping a journal, hoping that one day, if he didn’t return, his stories and wisdom would be passed to his young sons.  In an army-issued green notebook, Mark began recording his thoughts and hopes for his boys. He wrote of character, leadership, camaraderie, battles, cultural differences, religion, love, fear, and the things he wanted his boys to know about him and his experiences. In unfiltered, handwritten entries, Hertling captured the reality of combat in Operation Desert Storm: the waiting and missions, the chaos and courage, the brotherhood and grief, and the lessons of duty and humanity forged in war. What began as a father’s private messages became a rare chronicle of leadership and life in preparation for the crucible of battle. But he survived, returned home, and was able to watch his boys grow into men. Decades later, after both his sons became combat veterans themselves, one of them typed those original pages as a gift to his dad—to preserve the legacy for the family’s next generation. In revisiting those original journal entries, Hertling—having been promoted, having served in various positions, and having returned to the battlefields of Iraq over the next two decades—added reflections drawn from his life. Reflecting on various military assignments, then his post-retirement jobs as a cable news analyst, health care executive, and professor of leadership, these journal entries now provide valuable lessons on character, leadership, and service.  Part battlefield memoir, part father’s journal, part meditation on the challenges of leadership, If I Don’t Return is the story of a soldier who faced death, returned home, and continued to live a life of service. ‍ Giving Back: In Memory of Pete Way Fifty percent of the proceeds from this book will be donated to the National Ability Center (NAC) in Park City, Utah—an organization dedicated to helping individuals with disabilities discover their strength, independence, and purpose. Founded in 1985 as an adaptive ski program for disabled veterans, the NAC has grown into one of the nation’s leading centers for adaptive recreation. Today, it serves people of all ages and abilities, with service members, veterans, and their families making up nearly a third of all participants. Through sport, recreation, and education, the NAC empowers those it serves to build confidence, self-esteem, and lasting skills that restore not only mobility, but meaning. These contributions are made in memory of U.S. Army veteran Pete Way, a friend who was grievously wounded in Afghanistan but found healing, hope, and renewed purpose through the programs of the NAC. Pete’s courage and resilience reflect the very spirit this book seeks to honor—the will to endure, to grow even through adversity, and to live fully. If you would like to join in supporting this remarkable organization and the veterans and families it serves, please visit https://discovernac.org/support/ About the author Lieutenant General (Retired) Mark Hertling, DBA Lieutenant General (Retired) Mark Hertling served 38 years in the United States Army as a tanker and cavalry officer, culminating as Commander of U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army. During his military career, Hertling spent 38 months in combat. He served as a major and operations officer of a cavalry squadron during Operation Desert Storm, as Assistant Division Commander of the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad in 2003–2004, and later as Commander of the 1st Armored Division and Multinational Task Force Iron in northern Iraq during the 2007–2008 surge. After retiring from the Army in 2012, Hertling transitioned to the private sector as a Senior Vice President at a major healthcare organization. He was asked to design and lead a healthcare leadership program, work that led to his first book, Growing Physician Leaders (2016). His second book, If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal, was published by Ballast Books in 2026. From 2014 to 2024, he served as a senior analyst for CNN. He currently writes for The Bulwark and appears on MSNBC as a freelance national security analyst. Mark is married to his wife Sue. They live in Orlando, Florida, and are the proud parents of two sons, grandparents to five grandsons, and step-grandparents to two granddaughters.

You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

Because you're about to go on a monster education role. rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. This is Voss here from thecris Fos Show.com. I'm assuming there. Ladies, things that makes official. Welcome to 16 years, 2,800 episodes, one of the oldest surviving on a handful of podcasts still around,

still from broadcasting regularly. We bring you the Chris Voss show. Today, we're an amazing young man on the show. We're going to be talking about his book called, If I Don't Return, a father's wartime journal, March 10th. 26. You can pick it up right now by Lieutenant General retired Mark Hurtling. We're going to get into with him and find out his wonderful past, his inspiration, and some of the things he shared

with his sons, his family, and now he shares them with you. He served 38 years in the United States Army as a tanker and cavalry officer, accumulating as the commander of U.S. Army, Europe, and 7th Army. During his military career, he spent 38 months in combat. He served as a major and operations officer of a cavalry squadron during Operation Desert Storm, an assistant division commander of the first armored division in Baghdad in 2003 to 2004, and later as a commander of the first armored division and multinational task force iron in northern Iraq during the 2007 and 2008 surge. After retiring for the army in 2012, he transitioned to the private sector as a senior vice president

in a major health care organization. And he's also served from 2014 to 24 as a senior analyst for CNN. He currently writes for The Bullwork and appears on MSNBC as a freelance national security analyst. Welcome to this show. Mark, how are you? Hey, Chris, I'm doing great. And I've been excited about doing this for a long time. I've heard a lot about your show and looking forward to talking with you for a while. Yeah, we've done one or two episodes.

It's pretty cool. Yeah, you have. Congratulations on the new book. Give us your dot-coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Yeah, it's markhurtling.com, simple as that can be. I'm on Twitter or X now at Mark Hurtling, at Mark Hurtling, LinkedIn at Mark Hurtling. It's all pretty easy. I've been on for a while and have a little bit of a social media presence, but it's been fun talking to various people

about different things in terms of our democracy and what's going on in the world and some of the military operations we're conducting. What? Is there something going on in the world? A few things, yeah. Chinese curse. May you live in interesting times. And boy, we're in one now. So those few watching 10 years from now, it's 2026, folks, on YouTube. So we've got your book, give us a 30,000 overview.

What's inside? What it is, Chris, I'll explain how it came to be. It was not a book I expected to write. But back in 1991, I was in Desert Storm as a young major. And in a Calvary squadron went, by the way, my congratulations on pronouncing that the correct way. Most people say Calvary, and that's the church, not the... not the reconnaissance organization, but in a cavalry squadron that was in front of the first armored division. And when we were notified, we were going to combat. It was kind of a surprise.

We were notified over CNN, or in our case, Armed Forces Network, where they said the 7th Corps is deploying. I went in the next morning to make the story short, and we were told by a lot of intelligence analysts that we were probably going to suffer 50% casualties in our unit. So when you hear something like that, and you're a young guy with two young, sons and you've never been to combat before, you think about things like, what can I provide our two boys? They were seven and ten at the time, information about life. If I don't return, if I don't come back, what can I teach them in my words that perhaps a journal could give to them? So during the entire time we were deployed, I kept a journal every day that talked about

early on before we got into combat. It was just about mundane things like fear and emotion. and friendships and faith and those kind of things. As we got into combat, I described the war. And then for the couple of months after Desert Storm was over, while we were still in Iraq, I talked about post-combat operations. You know, I came home within eight months, and our boys were still seven and ten, so they weren't interested in the musings of their father. So it was thrown into a foot locker, never to be, never to come out, I guess, until our youngest son, who is now 42, who asked my wife a couple years ago where the journal was from Desert Storm, because he's experienced combat a couple of times. And unbeknownst to me, he typed it up into a word document, inserted a

bunch of pictures. And then in Christmas morning of 2024, he gave it to me as a present. It was a big surprise. I opened it up, started reliving all the emotions and the thoughts and sounds and sights and smells of Desert Storm. But then he said something, he said, Dad, you know, my brother and I looked at this, and both of them are combat veterans as well. And he said, you know, we've looked at this, we realized what you were doing. We have boys of our own now. You have grandsons. He said, you've got to finish this thing. Continue the writing on what you experienced over the next 35 years of your life because I had won the war a couple of more times. So what he gave me, Chris, provided an outline. And I just took the subjects I wrote about in 1991 and expanded from an old man's

perspective on what I had learned since then. And send it off to a publisher, said, hey, is anybody interested in this? The publisher gave me the normal routine of, hey, I'll get back to you in a couple weeks. Let me take a look and have a couple people read it. And he called me back the next morning and he said, hey, I was up all night long reading this thing. And he says, I think you've got a good book here. So let's publish it. And that's what we did. What a great gift. Yeah.

What a great gift done to your sons. Go ahead. Yeah, and I was just going to say it was very emotional and especially coming from two men now that served a total of eight different combat tours. So they understood the implications of writing about what you're experiencing in war. And it also talks about family because it was really geared toward family and leadership and character. development and values and all those kind of things. Yeah. Now there's different sections of the book.

Can you give us an overview of how that works and maybe some of the topics you're discussing in it? Yeah. The first section, the first third of the book is mostly the pre-war before we actually went into combat. It's arriving in Saudi Arabia, setting up things, preparing for operations, doing the kind of things that you do before you go into the attack. The second section is about combat itself.

And truthfully, that section I didn't write every day. You know, we were involved in a four-day ground campaign. So I summarized that campaign in the pages about during that section. And then the last section was the three or four or five months we were in Iraq and then back in Saudi Arabia after the war was over, experiencing post-combat. Some of the topics in the first section were faith and fear and emotions and love for family. The second section was really all about the military operation. and what we experienced. And I'll hesitate there and say when we, when you look back at Desert Storm and look at

the history books, that was a quick war. And it was conducted very effectively and efficiently unless you were there. And, you know, if you, if you understand the descriptions of combat during that conflict, it was a tough conflict. And we, our squadron suffered casualties. We had about 30 guys injured. I was one of them. We were wounded.

But, you know, it kind of gives. an American who hasn't experienced combat the feel and the sights and the smells of what happens. The third section was post-combat operations. And what we were seeing in terms of what Saddam Hussein had instituted in terms of torture chambers and what he was doing to his people, what we were seeing in the deserts with the Bedouins. So those kinds of things of wanting to get home in the third section was what it was all about. Set the stage for us. You mentioned that at the beginning of this and really,

the emotional part of it, you know, being, why was it determined at the time the military was telling you 50%, there might be 50% of casualties? This is the first time we're going to war in a long time. Yeah. Tell us about set that stage and how that played out and you leaving and your wife, of course, in the window, et cetera, et cetera, if you would. Yeah, well, what we were told, you know, we were going up against the Iraqi army. They were at the time, the fourth largest in the world. Saddam Hussein had spent a lot of money building an army. It had about nine or ten divisions worth of troops. They had good equipment, mostly Soviet made equipment at the time. They were, they had been at war for eight years with the Iranians and had had some tough combat there.

Saddam had used chemical weapons against the Kurds. So we were concerned about the potential use of chemicals against our forces. And we had, as you just said, we hadn't been at war. So we were not battle-hardened like we are today. And we were going through kind of a transition in our military as well, post-Vietnam, close to being post-the-Cold War. So it was, you know, it was a little bit sporty going into the thing. We put 500,000 troops on the ground inside of Iraq at the time for a desert storm and had a huge massive air campaign, but there were a whole lot of allies with us as well. So it was really a combined military, political, and support of the civilians, the citizens of our country in an operation that we had conducted in recent memory. I mean, we dated back to Vietnam, which was 15 years earlier in a very different kind of war.

This was a conventional fight, too. It was tank against tank, uniform soldiers against uniform soldiers, airplanes against airplanes. So it was, we anticipated it being very rough. It turned out not to be because of some things we had done in the military to improve our forces at the time. But it combined, and this is the important part, it combined our resources with our will. And those are two things you should always look for in combat is what's the will of the people, the will of the military, the will of the government, and what are the resources they have to commit. that will. We see that in Ukraine today against the Russians. You know, the Russians didn't have the will in their military, had the equipment, but not really well trained on it. So you see those imbalances

going on between will and resources equaling power. Yeah, I think they're consuming just the highest amount of Russian soldiers in that battle in the Ukraine now more than ever. I think it's just crazy. It's just a meat grinder for a Russian side. Yeah, I read something this morning that said there was 35,000 casualties that's dead and wounded on the Russian side in the last month. I mean, that's, that's just incredible. That's off the chart. Yeah. And so you talk about war, you're talking about leadership. And, you know, this is a, did it catch you at a moment? The reason you started writing the journal is, you know, you're a father. You figure you got time to teach some of these lessons to your sons. and then it becomes apparent you're being sent off to war.

There might be a 50% casualty rating. That must really hit home. You're like, holy crap. My sons can lose me in war. They won't have my leadership. They won't have my influence. Have I imparted the different things to them? I imagine that was kind of an interesting, you know, feelings and moments to go through

that you talk about your first chapter. Yeah, I was, I think, 34 years old at the time. Oh, wow. And when you think about, when you start, I mean, you don't think about mortality until you're much older or unless you've been diagnosed with cancer or something, then you begin worrying about it. But yeah, you're right. I mean, it was not only the kids, but am I going to have my wife as a widow? How is she going to raise these two young, very energetic boys without me? So it was really a love letter to all three of them, mostly to the boys.

Yeah. And families, I think you mentioned, weren't used to deployments back then. because we haven't really deployed since Vietnam. And, you know, this is a thing that, you know, now it's kind of normalized. We've had so many tours of duty and different things we've been doing on these different wars we've been doing. So it's pretty wild. You talk in the book about, what was the hardest part of the book to write about? I think there's a story that haunt you.

Oh, yeah. That wasn't the hardest part, but that caused me to make a decision. I had one journal entry where I had to tell the readers, the way I break this down, is it's normally the journal entry, which is about a page long, and then it has the post-journal reflection, you know, what occurred over the next 35 years. But in one particular journal entry, I talked about how after the war was over and we were basically going around to a bunch of bunkers to clear them after the ceasefire. And most of the bunkers we had cleared, didn't have anybody in them. They had equipment. They smelled like crap. They were filled with feces.

and urine and smells and it was just awful. But in one particular one, I went in all by myself. We had kind of become a little bit complacent. I went in one by myself and there was a guy inside. And as I walked in, he, you know, in the original journal entry, I talk about capturing them and bringing them out and all that. That's not what happened. And I said in my reflection that I lied in this journal entry to protect the boys.

But what happened was I walked in. this guy stood up and he started bringing his rifle up on me and I shot him at point blank range. And if that wasn't tough enough, after I shot him, he fell forward. I shot him three times with a 45 and he rolled forward. His helmet came off and inside the helmet, like most soldiers have, he had a picture of him and his wife and his kids. And that, you know, that kind of brings a little bit on moral injury. Chris, I was a tanker. I was a Bradley guy during the Gulf War.

I was on a Bradley. So we were actually engaging forces at 1,500 meters or more. So this was really the first time it was a face-to-face engagement. You know, as I heard one guy call it coffee breath close, where you kill a man and you understand the moral implications of doing that and what soldiers over the last two decades in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations have been doing face to face for since 2001. So it really does help you understand what soldiers are asked to do and how it's something we should not be asking any human to do, but we do, you know, in protecting our country. And that's haunted you for a lot of your years, isn't it?

Yeah, it did. I, you know, for a long time, I was having recurring dreams, finally went to see somebody to talk about it, a counselor. My wife's suggestion or actually my wife's persuasion because she saw how I changed quite a bit. And, you know, when we, it was interesting, I'll share this with you. And I think I talk about this in the book. It's the same thing with our sons. You know, when you send your kids off to war, you're, you're proud of them that they're fighting for the country. But at the same time, you're worried about how they're going to.

going to lose innocence when they come home. And that's something that both of our kids did, and our daughter-in-law too. We have two sons and a daughter-in-law who all went off to war. And you see them losing their innocence because of their experience and how everyone that goes into combat suffers one form or another of moral injury. Yeah. I mean, I remember watching that war, that first Iraqi war on TV. And it did seem simple, you know, like you mentioned, you know, the details of the devils and the details and the ugliness of the proximity of war. And, you know, we all just saw bombs falling and you could see for the first time the video of the, you know, the missile going in and all that.

It just seemed like you guys are just storming across the desert, hence the desert storm, I guess. But the proximity of war, you know, seeing, you know, being eye to eye with the man. And I was moved when I read that about the story of the man. And, you know, you realize that, you know, we're all. human beings. It's not just this is the enemy, this is the friend, you know, he has a family and stuff like that. And yeah, I can imagine that would be daunting to have to live with. And many of our military folks have to face that. Yeah, they do. And it was even more important during the recent operations in Afghanistan and Iraq because all of the engagements there,

not all, but the majority were all very close in face-to-face kind of things as opposed to the the distance that tankers and cavalry guys have with their long-range weapon systems. But even then, I mean, it's interesting. I've talked to Air Force pilots and drone operators even, you know, that see the effects of them placing a drone or a weapon system from a drone on someone. I mean, we had drone operators in Arizona that were fighting inside of Iraq with their drones. They were controlling them from bases in Arizona, but they still had the kind of, I'll say it again, moral injury that you get when you know you're killing a fellow human being. It doesn't matter if

they're enemy or not. Yeah. And it's, it's their images haunt you. You know, you see war as hell. But yeah, it seemed like a clinical type of war when you watched it on the news. And I think it's important that you share, you know, what the real life experiences so that we we kind of understand the human element of it and the fallacy of it all. Yeah, well, we're right in the middle of engagements in Iran. And there are literally thousands of air sorties going on and ships at sea that are making engagements with merchant ships and capturing vessels that shouldn't be in a water that we've proclaimed as blockaded. You know, it seems sort of sanitary when you think about it in those ways. But, you know, you take a look at those pilots that are going off aircraft carrier decks or

launching from Missouri to take a 36-hour trip and a B-2. You know, it's human activity that really, you know, drives fatigue, drives the moral implications we talked about. You know, there are some things, I mean, talk about a couple of pilots that get shot down, you know, and imagine they are, you know, touted for their actions when they get shot down. But can you imagine a guy, you know, climbing a mountain for 48 straight hours trying to hide, trying to escape, evade the enemy? I mean, it's significant physical and emotional requirements involved in each one of those individuals that are being asked to go to war for our nation. Definitely. You talk in the book near the end about General Douglas MacArthur's Father's Prayer. Was that on your mind throughout most of the journal you wrote or did you come into that later?

No, it was. And I cited it in the original journal. I didn't have the exact words for it. And back then we couldn't Google the words, so I didn't have it with me. but I remembered reading it and we had a kind of a stitch on the wall, you know, a framed approach to MacArthur's prayer for his sons because we had two sons. And I ought to admit first, I'm not a huge Douglas MacArthur fan. I think he had some real foibles, but this prayer about what he wants from his sons

so he can say someday, you know, I'm very proud of them. It's really talking through character, essence of character. And it's become kind of a tradition in our house that not only do we have it, my wife and I have it in our home framed, but now both our boys have it because they have sons of their own. And it really gives you a guidance on what you should try and influence your sons to be. You know, human, respectful, you know, with a great sense of humor, but never taking themselves too seriously, always working proud.

Those kind of things are part of the MacArthur's prayer. And your listeners should take a look at Google that prayer and see how beautiful it is. Yeah, this is my love of my show. I got a first row seat and I learned so much from our guests. And even if I know something, they bring different perspectives. And I was just overjoyed to find this and discover it and read it today. I was like, wow, okay. I had never heard of this.

I grew up in fourth grade reading, you know, I was enamored with World War II. specifics in fourth grade in the 70s. And I would have read the bios of Eisenhower, MacArthur, all the great generals patent, all that sort of stuff. And, you know, I love war. I'd build a model ships and stuff. That was about as close as I got. But, you know, I mean, I remember reading about the waves of Marines that they would send

onto the Japanese islands. And if you knew you were in the first, like, four to seven waves, they were probably just going to be piling your body on the beach for cover. for your compatriots. And I remember thinking the moxie of the man that would look down that barrel and seek that maybe I can beat the odds or, you know, I'm going to go do this for my country, that takes a steal of character and person that I certainly am not. Yeah, yeah.

It's tough. I'll tell you, I'll tell you a quick story. I've got a friend down the street that I've made in the last two years. There's a guy retired Major General by the name of Ryan, R-A-A-E-N. He's 104 years old. Really? Yeah, he's in a local retirement community. And I happened upon him by chance because I got an invite to his 100th birthday party a couple

years ago. And I had no idea who he was. I started talking to him. It turns out he was a ranger. And now he is the last surviving ranger of the D-Day invasions. So when you look at the movie Saving Private. Ryan. This guy was no kidding Captain Miller. He was Tom Hanks. And, you know, I've talked to him about his stories of D-Day and the continuation through Europe with the Rangers. And I ask him how accurate

the start of saving Private Ryan is. And he shook his head and he says, it's not accurate. And I said, oh, it's Hollywood. And he goes, no. He says, it doesn't portray exactly what we went through. He says it's not descriptive enough. He says it's chilling to watch it, but he said what we went through is much more chilling. And this guy, you know, he's 104 years old now and he's still as, as, as, you know, lucid and smart as me. I mean, he, he talks circle. He's got great stories and he remembers names and he's in a wheelchair, but boy, his mind is sharp as attack. It's really great to talk to this guy. Good for him. 104. Yeah. It's a, It's crazy.

And I imagine the things you've seen. I mean, imagine a century where you've, it's passed and, and, you know, I mean, you and I came from,

you know, the age where you would rotate the dial to, you know, to call people and stuff. Yeah, exactly. Now it's all these phones and you're just like,

what the hell is going on? I mean, when we grew up, we threw dirt clods against the house for entertainment. Now they've got, you know, all this other stuff.

So the book is a great book on all the aspects I think of life, being a man, being a boy navigating it, being a father. You talk about friendship, character, leadership, camaraderie, cultural differences, religion, love, fear. You try and really cover the gambit. And I imagine at the time you're writing this journal, was that going through your mind? You're like, what topics do I need to impart to my sons in case I don't care? Yeah, you know, it's funny. I'd wake up every morning and, you know, I'd have all kinds of things to do,

as the operations officer of a Calvary Squadron, but I would be thinking all day long, what am I going to write tonight? What topic am I going to choose? And some of them, as you've seen in the book, were sublime, you know, character and leadership and faith and anxiety and fear. And some of them were just ridiculous, you know, in terms of writing about what I was having in my MRI that day and how people are trading them around. And what the chaplain was saying is he was going around to different church services, those kind of things. You know, so it was really kind of haphazard. And it was just, it was, I was trying to portray a day in the life of their dad so that they

would read it someday and say, oh, okay, this is what dad thinks about these different subjects. But I also covered, as you know, I covered one chapter on what to look for in a, in a wife or a mate. And that turned into a huge love letter, love letter to my wife, who we've now been together 51 years. And, you know, I think both of our sons have found mates. the same because maybe they took some of the advice I gave them what to look for, you know? Yeah.

I mean, it's, I can't imagine being in the situation where you're like, there's a 50% chance I might not return. I need to put this on the paper. And then just the overwhelming anxiety of, geez, what do I write? What do I talk about? And how do I get it out and get it on paper before, you know, maybe something might happen to me. And at one point, you were injured in the war, correct?

Yeah, yeah, I was wounded on the third night of the war, the third of four nights. Oh, really? Along with a bunch of other guys, we were under an artillery attack. And we had, you know, what some might call a mass casualty exercise. We had, I think there were 28 total troopers that were under this cluster ammunition that fell on top of us. But we were right in the midst of actually transferring from our reconnaissance mission because we had found the enemy. And by all accounts, I guess they found us.

us too. And we were passing a tank brigade through our line so they could go into the attack because a cavalry squadron with Bradley's isn't meant to conduct a frontal attack like this. So we were in the midst of coordinating that forward passage is what it's called when all this artillery came down on us. And it was about 2 o'clock in the morning. It was raining, as I recall. we had kind of been unscathed up to that point. We had had a couple of the smaller engagements. And then suddenly I was outside my vehicle talking to another guy to coordinate the forward passage. And suddenly I heard these five pops overhead.

And I looked up and it was kind of drizzling rain at 2 o'clock in the morning so I couldn't see what it happened. The next thing I know, there were, you know, thousands of bomblets coming down all over our position like hand grenades all over and that's what a that's what a cluster munition does so it was like it was sort of like i describe it as being inside of a popcorn popper and suddenly all kinds of screaming going on and all sorts of noise and vehicles being damaged and we had one that hit the top of our bradley and it it shered off a couple of antennas and things like that so it was it was pretty sporty but what was interesting is as guys were being treated here was i talk about this in the book, you know, back in 1990, a Calvary Squadron was all male. And I heard in the middle of the

early morning, before the sun came out, I heard a woman's voice treating one of our soldiers. I went over and I said, I went over and I said something to the person in the dark. I said, are you a girl? And because your voice is really high. And she replied, yes, sir, I am. She says, my name and she gave me her name. And I said, what are you doing here? I said, you're not supposed to be here with us. And she goes, at the beginning when we left the line of departure, she said they asked for, you know, volunteers because the cab was going to be up front and they might need additional medics. So she said, I told my unit, she was back in one of the support battalions. She said, I volunteered to go up and nobody told me I couldn't. So I've been with you the

whole time you've been riding along. And truthfully, Chris, that was my epiphany moment of how good women are in combat because she was just as brave as any of the men and she was willing to go up and be with us when we needed somebody and that was pretty cool yeah but i mean three days in that must i mean you're you're thinking oh you already have this thought of your head of that 50% thing and you know now you kind of almost have an immediacy to i need to get more into this journal and stuff and and yeah i mean a father's a father really shapes a son in some in some in myriadicey to i mean a father interesting ways. I, you know, I had a interesting relationship with my father growing up. I remember the exact moment. Some of my 30s, he actually told me that he was proud of me. And that was like

pulling teeth. It wasn't until your 30s, huh? Until my mid-30s, yeah. Yeah, I was in my mid-30s and my father. You know, we had a troubled relationship for most of our things. But it's interesting to me, you know, even after he's gone, you know, the impact the father has on his sons. I don't know if you want to talk about that or maybe what your experience was in your son's, you know, love of this journal and sharing it back to you and how much has influenced them. And why is that so much important that interaction between a father and a son and teaching for the next generation? Oh, man, it's interesting. There's an old expression by Mark Twain. I see if I can get it right. He said something like, you know, when I was 16 years old, I couldn't believe how dumb my father

was and by the time I was 21, I realized how smart he had become in the next five years. You know, it's one of those kind of things because there are different times in your life in the child-parent relationship where they depend on you and where they're really needing your advice and counseling guidance. And then they kind of drift away. And what I've found now with two older sons is they come back to you. And I think you saying your father's comment when you were 30 is, you know, part of it is, again, mortality. You realize that you need to say some things that you haven't said before. But secondly, it's an understanding of how some people really show love,

how they really kind of connect with people using different techniques. And, you know, there are some, I know there are some fathers that I know who feel like they got to be real hard and have a straight face all the time and really being, that's not me. I laugh a lot. I slap people on the back a lot. And I've told our kids since they were born that, you know, almost once a day that we love them. But there are some that don't do that. And, you know, that requirement for love between generations in a family is critically important, in my view. But it's interesting how you display that. And sometimes it's teaching. Sometimes it's through words. Sometimes it's through tough love and allowing your kids to make mistakes.

And it's interesting, Chris, we were talking about it. Our oldest son and I were having a phone conversation the other night, actually. And he said, you know, you can say things now that you've experienced it with your kids. And he's got three boys of his own now and two girls. And he says, I didn't realize how hard it was to parent until you become a parent. yourself. And our youngest son at one point said to us, he says, we were standing out watching his two boys play and do something crazy. And he said, Dad, he says, I just want to let you know that I want to apologize for everything I ever did to you that was harmful because these two boys are putting me through hell at times. And I just want to let you know that I should have

told you a long time ago that I appreciated all you're doing. So you just learn those kind of things from your parents. And it's fun, you know? I'll feed you the quote. When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant, I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned at seven years. That's it. Thank you for correcting me on that. That's great. What a great quote. I'm glad you shared this with me. You know, the older I've gotten, you know, my father passed in 2014, I believe. And the older I've gotten, especially in my 40s and 50s now, approaching 60, the more I realize I should have had a better appreciation for my father.

I mean, we did have a tough childhood together, and he didn't deal with things very well. But, you know, he was struggling with his experience, you know, and most parents are doing the best they can. Yeah. You know, I mean, you have to give them that sort of grace. And I think, I think his children, sometimes we look at our fathers and be like, you're supposed to be perfect. You know, we have this. We put them on that, on that.

pedestal and you know they're fallible too they're human beings I think that's what that's what happens during the teen years as your kids are growing up they start realizing that you do have foibles that you do tell bad jet dad jokes you know that the dad jokes are terrible and you're you're listening to different kind of music and you're wearing different kind of clothes all those things are factors but then after on you know after a while they get back into it and they say hey deep down beyond the dad jokes and the clothes and the dancing, you know, he's not a bad guy. And he's taught us a lot and he's done the best he could, you know. Yeah. I was lucky enough at the end of my dad's life. He was starting to go into dementia, but he was starting to have, you know, health issues. And I sat down with him and I spent a few weeks

with him and I was having what we call it clear the decks. And I was sitting down with him and saying, you know, let's talk about some of the things that I've had issues with you over the years that I kind of held on to. And what are some things that, you know, you, you know, your experience with me that you've held on to. And we cleared the decks and we talked about them. And we, we had a great discussion. It wasn't, you know, like maybe some of the arguments we used to have when we were younger. And that was really important. It got to a point where, but when the time did pass that he came, he left, I cleared the decks. And, and, and I'd asked him several times, Is there anything we haven't cleared the decks on?

Because I just want to be clean. And even after he's been gone since 2014, I've often, you know, had epiphany moments where I go, God, I should have valued my father more, spent more time with him. There was so much more he was really trying to teach me that I didn't recognize. I mean, I often say to people all the time, I say, I wish my dad, I can get my dad back so I could just say sorry one more time. I should have, I should have done better. and you know it's tough to do but I'm glad you share this in the book a lot of military books we lead we have on the show authors they you know they write these leadership books and there's a bit of stoicism in there I think most of the military leaders like yourself I speak to you know Marcus Aurelius

meditations stoicism is kind of a thing and so they really don't delve much into the emotion like you talk about and I think what you try and say in the book is that emotional intelligence is important as a man and as a point maybe yeah no absolutely and you know one of the things that is you're talking about your relationship with your dad it's a conclusion i came to in writing the book was boy you you want to be a good dad and you think about how what am i passing along to our kids and how am i being that role model but what you just mentioned is it made me realize it you know i should have been a much better son as well you know it's a two it's a two-way street You know, there's being that good father, but there's also, how do I be a better son to my parents?

And sometimes you recognize it like you did, like I did, probably a little bit too late. You wanted to be better in terms of understanding who your dad was. So that gets to your question about the emotional piece of it. Yeah, I tried to put a lot of emotion into this book. I got to tell you, as I was writing it, I'm here in my little office, which is right off the kitchen. And by the way, my wife just texted me the same quote you read because she must be listening to us. And she just finished Ron Chernow's book on Mark Twain. So she must have had that one written down.

Anyway, you know, what's interesting is she would come in every once in a while and I would be a mess. Thinking about not just what I wrote in 91, but how I was elaborating on it, you know, in the 35 years since. And what I wished I had known back then, which of course, none of course, of us can go back 50 years in our life to start all over again, but we sure wish we had the knowledge that we have today. Yeah. I mean, I went back and read my journals when I was writing my book Beacon's leadership. And yeah, it's, I was amazed at the young man I was, I was looking at.

I almost wondered to this day if he was smarter than I was in his vision and in his outlook. And it was interesting to look back and many of the goals I ended up achieving, you know, I want to make $100,000 a year. It took a while to do that, but I eventually did it. And all my goals had been achieved that I'd scribbled down on some yellow pad years ago. And so it was really interesting experience, and I'm sure you had that with your cathartic moments and reflecting back on these things and life lessons you learned. I think you mentioned the book. Your wife says you cry at store openings, I think.

That's supermarket opening. I'm kind of the same way, man. You give me a puppy commercial that's sappy. There it is. Or a Budweiser commercial with the Clydesdale's running. Yeah. You know, it's one of the things that I really took away from the book was, from writing the book, was the importance of self-analysis, of continuous.

We don't take time to reflect as much as we should. You know, I used to tell my subordinate leaders when I was still in the Army, hey, you know, take a couple minutes a day to just reflect on what you're doing, see if you're doing the right thing, think about it a little bit. But we don't really do that. I mean, we may do it about what our missions or our tasks are on our professional life, but we don't take time to think about who are we as people when you're 50, 60, 70 years old or younger.

And I think that's an important part of who we should become, you know, are we being the best person we can be? One of the chapters I wrote about in the book was the New Year's resolutions and how you should, you know, everybody makes them, nobody keeps them. You know, should we wait until the 1st of January to resolve to be better than we were the following year? Or is that something we should do with ourselves every day, every day when we wake up? How do we be better, you know? Yeah.

And you were in the midst of that with the journal in this book. You know, you're trying to get this on paper before, you know, maybe the worst happens. Yeah. You know, it's interesting, too. I'll share one more thing with you, Chris, about the book. I wrote another book about eight years ago that I was asked to write from my organization about growing physician leaders because I taught a physician. That's my only other book.

And as I was writing it, this guy told him, I was shaking my head during the editing process. And the editor told me, he says, hey, you know, Heming, I think it was Hemingway that said, writing a book goes through the three ends of writing. Have you heard this one? I believe so. Go ahead and tell us. Okay. The first M is the book is your mistress.

and you love being with it all the time. The second book is when it becomes your master and you're going through the editing process and the time you don't want to spend with it, people keep coming back to you and saying, you've got to spend more time and fix this and fix that. And then the third piece is your monster. When it's finally published, it has all kinds of problems.

I didn't go through any of those with this book. Oh, really? It was just fun to write, and it's even more fun to hear people are reading it and enjoying it and learning something from it. So that's good. Yeah, I mean, it's a wonderful tome. And like I say, it's very different than most military books that I read.

And I love military books. I, you know, we have one of the greatest militaries on earth because of the structure of how we do it. And the acumen to, you know, honor ethics and morals and different things like that. I mean, you know, I remember, I remember what was the state departments. I remember seeing the collapse of leadership of the Russians and starting to really, see how the Russians were behaving when they started the Ukraine war and taking a look at their hierarchy of leadership and how it works and how you can decapitate part of it just by taking out a leader by their structure where ours is very different the the leadership endures even if a

leader's taken out the unit still knows what its mission is and and of course you know they're forcing people to fight that war buying them off technically sent in a war and i mean some of the meat grinder stories you're hearing of the soldiers tied to trees and by their own commanders and the abuse and sending them on suicide missions. I think there was some of this that came out recently. But yeah, I love in your book how you talk about the emotional context of it. Because like I say, a lot of these great leaders books are wonderful. But, you know, they're very stoic and very placid, maybe plassus, in other words, cold maybe when it comes to the emotion part of it. And I'm glad you talked about it because I, you know, I imagine as a leader you do

have to put on that front, right? You have to put on that stoic sort of front. You know, we're going over here as a CEO of a company's. I have to do the same thing. But the emotion of it, a lot of people flesh out and you do that in your book quite well. And I think talking about the emotional intelligence thing, it's really important for people to learn nowadays about that. Yeah, I think you're exactly right on that. And, you know, one of the things I once heard from a senior commander of mine is he said, you know, a leader doesn't have the right to have a bad day. And that is true in and of itself because you can't show others that you're having a bad day if you're a commander or a leader because you immediately affect the organization. But God knows,

any kind of leader knows that they're going to have bad days. Things are going to go wrong. So you somehow have to be a little theatrical in terms of how you do it. But truthfully, Chris, the reason I liked my role in the military. and being able to serve so many years, what I didn't anticipate it at the start was the fact that you just meet so many great people. And I'll just say it the way it is. You just, as a leader, you've got to give a shit about others.

And you just got to care for other people if you want to be successful as an organization. So that was what was fun. I personally just like people and like meeting new ones and had a chance to do that as, a member of the U.S. Army for four decades. So as we go out, we want people to pick up the book.

We could probably sit here and talk about. It's just a wonderful book, and I love what you shared in it. And it's a human book, too. I mean, there's some of the military books I've read are pretty, what's the static, kind of dry, dry, dry. And so I think your emotions, you know, we all have these. You know, this is the experience of life in the world. You know, sometimes surviving in the world is a war into itself,

especially if you get cancer or other things, you're battling for your life. I think we all kind of are on some scale. But yeah, if I could have my father back, I would probably be apologizing to her for a lot of things. And the older I seem to get, the more the value is. And it's sad that we don't come to that. You know, you mentioned earlier that the kids usually return when they get their own kids. Yeah, they do. They absolutely do.

They're like, this is much harder than my dad made a look. So I should maybe check with him for advice. So as we go out, give people. your final pitch out, sir, to pick up the book and your dot coms, where people can find you, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, I hope everybody has a chance to take a look at the book. I had fun writing it. I hope people have fun and get emotionally involved when they read it. My publisher told me the other day, he says, you know, there's an interesting dynamic with this as a military book. I said, what? And he goes, you know, you're on the cover. It's obviously in combat. And it says,

if I don't return, a father's war, he says, we're getting more reviews on Amazon from women than we are from men. He says it is truly a family book and you talk about relationships within the family. But it is also, hopefully, what I learned in my 10 years working for a cable news network is the American public don't know a whole lot about what goes on in the military. So hopefully it's an informative book too. But yeah, I hope people pick it up. Oh, the other thing I should mention is 50% of the proceeds go to the National Ability Center out in Park City, Utah, which teaches people with disabilities. They call it the National Ability Center because they want them to have the abilities. But it teaches people with disabilities how to ski and enjoy the outdoors.

And most of the people there are veterans with amputations or things like that. Fifty percent of the proceeds go there. You can find the book on either Amazon, Barnes & Noble, primarily from Ballast books because they will if you order from ballast books they'll send you an autograph copy which I sign dutifully every couple of months and and my social media sites are all at mark hurtling either Twitter LinkedIn blue sky or my website is at markhertling.com so please let me know what you think and I appreciate anybody that picks up a copy thank you mark we certainly appreciate having you on the show Chris it's been a pleasure talking to you thanks so much for your insight well and for opening up a little bit about your life. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think like you said,

this is a family book that harkens towards the relationships of a family, a father and a sons, and of course, wife, and just the experience of it, the emotional of it. You know, right now, we've been on YouTube for 18 years, and so they like to write stuff like the iPhone 2 isn't, isn't $20 anymore or something, you know. And, you know, people watching this years from now, or decades from now this on YouTube, you know, we're in the midst of the Iran War, I guess, we call it at this point. And, you know, this book is probably very important for our time right now to understand what our soldiers are going through.

You know, we just recently saw a report about how they can't get food over there where I think some of our people are cut off, our military is cut off and they're eating just scraps from the looks of it. And, you know, understanding what we're really putting humans in front of with these wars. They're not clinical. They're not static where you can just, you know, look at them and be like, you know, so is this war thing. And I think, you know, a lot of people in America right now seem to just be dismissive of it at this point. Maybe it's because we're tuned out from too many, you know, these little wars we do.

But it's a book that can really bring that home, I guess, I'm going to say. War is not sterile. War is a human endeavor. There's always chaos. There's always friction. There's always dysfunction. It's not a video game where you can reboot and start all over again when someone gets hurt. And that's hopefully what's in the book, too.

I hope people realize that that's part of the reason I wrote it as well. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate it. It's a great pleasure talking to you. Thank you. Folks, out of the book where refined books are sold, if I don't return, a Father's Wartime Journal out March 10th, 2026. It'll pull on your heartstrings, but it's a wonderful human story.

Go to Goodreads.com, Forteousness, Christchristch, Christfoss, Facebook.com, Fortresschast Christfoss, and all that's a crazy place on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. You've been listening to the most amazing, intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning, consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult the doctor for any resulting brain bleed. All right, Mark. Wonderful show. Great.