Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
Speaker 1: the show where America is the star and the American people.
Speaker 1: And if you want to listen to our show, go
Speaker 1: to the iHeartRadio app or listen to the podcast well
Speaker 1: wherever you pick them up up. Next, a story kindly
Speaker 1: submitted to us by the Veterans History Project at the
Speaker 1: Atlanta History Center, we will be hearing from Army ranger
Speaker 1: Michael Schlitz, who served in Iraq.
Speaker 2: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3: I went in the military pretty much right out after
Speaker 3: high school. You know, honestly, I was a little immature.
Speaker 3: I knew if I went to college I was probably
Speaker 3: going to struggle. I'd probably party a little too hard
Speaker 3: and not really pay enough attention to the classes, and
Speaker 3: I really didn't want to set myself up for failure.
Speaker 3: Plus I was just kind of floating around life at
Speaker 3: the time. I didn't really have the direction and really
Speaker 3: an idea of what I wanted to do. And my
Speaker 3: father had been a Navy veteran. My brother was already
Speaker 3: in the Army, and at the time I didn't know it,
Speaker 3: but he was about to go to Haiti for Operation
Speaker 3: Uphulled Democracy. So my goal was to come in the military,
Speaker 3: do a few years, maybe come back out, go to college,
Speaker 3: and then figure out what I want to do. Came
Speaker 3: in the Army in March in nineteen ninety six, did
Speaker 3: my training here at Fort Benning, Georgia, Basic and ait
Speaker 3: pretty much right off the get go of it. I
Speaker 3: just fell in love with it. I liked the discipline.
Speaker 3: I like the routine. I like the everyday challenges. I mean,
Speaker 3: you pretty much woke up every day knowing what you're
Speaker 3: going to do, but at the same time, there was
Speaker 3: new levels of responsibility and challenges constantly thrown at you
Speaker 3: to kind of keep you on your toes and make
Speaker 3: you react.
Speaker 2: And to me, there's nothing else like it.
Speaker 3: We do talk a lot about the teamwork and coming
Speaker 3: together as a team to uplished a mission, but you know, honestly,
Speaker 3: the military has a lot of eye in there too,
Speaker 3: Like you have to outperform your peers in order to
Speaker 3: be promoted able to go to those schools, and I
Speaker 3: always challenged myself to be better than those around me.
Speaker 3: My first assignment after completing my training was one five
Speaker 3: Infantry out of Fort Lewis, which was part of the
Speaker 3: twenty fifth Infantry Division. About a year and a half
Speaker 3: being at Fort Lewis, I got picked to go to Korea,
Speaker 3: and then after Korea went to first of the five
Speaker 3: oh second at one hundred and first, and right away
Speaker 3: when I got to the hundred and first, you know,
Speaker 3: I just started plugging away. I was a specialist at
Speaker 3: the time, and I asked him, you know, can I
Speaker 3: go to a pre ranger. I want to go to
Speaker 3: ranger school? What do I need to go? And they're like, well,
Speaker 3: we got to send.
Speaker 2: You to assault school. First.
Speaker 3: The very last thing you do is a twelve mile
Speaker 3: foot march, and you know it's self release.
Speaker 2: You got thirty five pounds on your back. You have
Speaker 2: three hours and it's an individual task.
Speaker 3: You know, it's your own. Yeah, there's other people out there,
Speaker 3: but it's really on you. And I ended up coming
Speaker 3: in first place for that, and so I did my
Speaker 3: other classmates. And so the next day was graduation. My
Speaker 3: first arm platoons, aren't I come to the graduation? And
Speaker 3: I guess it was pretty normal that when you graduate
Speaker 3: the course, i'd give you a four day pass to say, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, good job, then come back to work. And
Speaker 3: my company, my infantry company, was doing a ten mile
Speaker 3: company race the next day, and my platoons aren't, said,
Speaker 3: you know, first, aren't. Would like to give you the
Speaker 3: four day pass, but we're having this race.
Speaker 2: We need to introduce you to the rest of the
Speaker 2: guys in the company.
Speaker 3: We understand you did twelve miles, but would you come
Speaker 3: out and do this run tomorrow? And you know, I'm
Speaker 3: you know, being a young guy, and you know, wanting
Speaker 3: to prove myself. I said, of course. So I showed
Speaker 3: up the next day and I ended up taking third place.
Speaker 3: I can remember my platoons aren't in first. Aren't again,
Speaker 3: pretty much the only guys who know who I am,
Speaker 3: pulling me off to the side and said, oh, by
Speaker 3: the way, on.
Speaker 2: Monday, you start pre ranger.
Speaker 3: So I've always been a pretty lean guy, so going
Speaker 3: into reindeer school, you know, at five six, I only
Speaker 3: weigh one hundred and fifty five pounds.
Speaker 2: I can remember before.
Speaker 3: Going to school them saying, hey, you need to put
Speaker 3: as much fat on your body as you can, because
Speaker 3: you know, once you're done burning through the fat, you're
Speaker 3: gonna start burning through your muscle. And it, sure enough
Speaker 3: happened to pretty much all of us, and it has
Speaker 3: a very distinct ammonious smell. And at the time we
Speaker 3: had the old bedus with the brown shirts, and.
Speaker 2: Everybody's shirts would turn orange.
Speaker 3: It was because when you burn the muscle and it
Speaker 3: puts off the secretion and everything, it would almost.
Speaker 2: Bleach out your shirts.
Speaker 3: And so two months later when I came out of
Speaker 3: the swamps of Florida and they brief you, and it's
Speaker 3: the first time I actually had stepped on the scale
Speaker 3: the entire time, and I weigh one hundred.
Speaker 2: And fifteen pounds.
Speaker 3: I started at one hundred and fifty five pounds, So
Speaker 3: in just over two months, you know, I lost forty pounds,
Speaker 3: and for being somebody who was lean, that was actually
Speaker 3: quite a bit. And you know, leading up to graduation,
Speaker 3: those four days are actually allowed to start putting food
Speaker 3: in your system. And I can remember eating pints of
Speaker 3: hazen Das ice cream and you know, full pizzas, and
Speaker 3: I mean you would just eat and eat and eat,
Speaker 3: and then.
Speaker 2: When you could, you try to get some rest too.
Speaker 3: And so a graduation I had actually put on in
Speaker 3: those four days, had got myself back up to one
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty five pounds.
Speaker 2: But it was like all gut your eyes are still black.
Speaker 3: They're sunk it in. Your cheeks are sunk it in.
Speaker 3: They're just reil looking. You're very weak looking, but you
Speaker 3: have this little pot belly thing going on, you know,
Speaker 3: under the uniform. But the majority of the people who
Speaker 3: do go to school within that that point, we'll probably
Speaker 3: lose anywhere from twenty five to about fifty pounds, depending
Speaker 3: on how big you are. I went back to the
Speaker 3: hundred and first I made sergeant. Shortly after getting back,
Speaker 3: I was a team leader. And then the big Army
Speaker 3: decided about it's time to go back to Korea, and
Speaker 3: so packed my bags went back to Korea for another year.
Speaker 3: You're always within your one year, you're always allowed to
Speaker 3: take a little vacation time. At some point, they caught
Speaker 3: mid to or leave, and so I was married at
Speaker 3: the time, and so my wife had come over and
Speaker 3: we just had just south of the peninsula, there's a
Speaker 3: little island. So we had gone down to the island
Speaker 3: for a few days, flown back into Soul. We're having
Speaker 3: dinner and the next day we're due to flight to Bali,
Speaker 3: Indonesia for a few days. And we're sitting there having dinner,
Speaker 3: watching the football game on the TV and we saw
Speaker 3: the first plane hit the tower, and we actually thought
Speaker 3: they had changed the channel on us, thinking they took
Speaker 3: the football game off and then put on a movie.
Speaker 3: And so we're all kind of yelling, you know, because
Speaker 3: it was kind of an American bar and soul like
Speaker 3: put the game back on. And then we saw the
Speaker 3: second plane hit and we realized, okay, something's not right.
Speaker 3: So you know, we didn't even finish our dinner, you know,
Speaker 3: we paid our check, jumped in a cab, went back
Speaker 3: to our hotel where I had my work cell phone,
Speaker 3: and it was like, yeah, vacations over, time to come home.
Speaker 1: The vacation is over, indeed and over for so many
Speaker 1: of us, especially those who serve in uniform. And we're
Speaker 1: listening to Michael Schlitz tell his story, his service story.
Speaker 1: By the way, so much of his family, so many
Speaker 1: members of his family, had served. And that is the
Speaker 1: case throughout this country that military service runs through the family.
Speaker 1: When we come back, more of Michael Schlitz's story here
Speaker 1: on our American Stories. Here are to our American stories.
Speaker 1: We bring you inspiring stories of history, sports, business, faith,
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Speaker 1: That's our American Stories dot com. And we continue with
Speaker 1: our American stories and with Michael Schlitz's story. We just
Speaker 1: heard about the day that changed America nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: and that's September eleventh, two thousand and one. And let's
Speaker 1: take it back to Michael.
Speaker 3: Eventually moved up to a staff position running the resources
Speaker 3: for all Ranger school Sometimes it was air assets, but
Speaker 3: all the ranges land, pretty much everything except for AMMO.
Speaker 2: We had an AMMO guy who did that.
Speaker 3: When it was time for me to leave, I called
Speaker 3: up my branch manager and said, hey, you know what's
Speaker 3: the next deploying unit. He goes, well, the next next
Speaker 3: guys to leave his tenth Mountain division.
Speaker 2: So that's where I want to go.
Speaker 3: And so I mean to me, there was no other options.
Speaker 2: It was this is what I want to go do.
Speaker 2: And since I hadn't had the chance to really deploy.
Speaker 3: I knew I wanted to be on the next Chalco
Speaker 3: one out, So I reported to tenth Mountain Division in
Speaker 3: March of six, and we deployed in August of six.
Speaker 3: So our sector was the southwest side of Baghdad. The
Speaker 3: media at the time called it the Sunni Triangle or
Speaker 3: the Triangle of death. You know, when we first invaded,
Speaker 3: you know, the insurgents really didn't.
Speaker 2: Know how to fight us, and as they studied us and.
Speaker 3: Found out our operating procedures, then they could figure out
Speaker 3: how to attack.
Speaker 2: It's a weakness, it's just like we do for them
Speaker 2: and then are wounded and are.
Speaker 3: Killed in actions had doubled, and so in six we
Speaker 3: have what we call the surge. And basically the US
Speaker 3: answer to that was to just triple the number of
Speaker 3: US forces we had in erect.
Speaker 2: At the time and do a big sweep across the country.
Speaker 3: And that obviously in an area like that to it's
Speaker 3: littered with roadside bombs, IED's improvise explosive devices.
Speaker 2: The more people you put in an area, the more
Speaker 2: that can actually get injured.
Speaker 3: So we actually you did see are killed in action
Speaker 3: and our wounded in action triple in numbers.
Speaker 2: But we were making a big push.
Speaker 3: We were finding those IDs, we were finding the insurgent sales,
Speaker 3: so we were making a huge difference.
Speaker 2: It just it came at a cost.
Speaker 3: We had huge up armored vehicles. We had one that
Speaker 3: was called the Husky. It was like a mind detecting vehicle.
Speaker 3: And these vehicles were actually made for Africa, so they
Speaker 3: could drive over minefields and have the mines explode, and
Speaker 3: the bottom of vehicles instead of being flat like a
Speaker 3: lot of the US vehicles, they had a v haul,
Speaker 3: so they came down into a point like a boat,
Speaker 3: and what would happen is when the rounds would come up,
Speaker 3: they would shatter a way versus coming straight up to
Speaker 3: the armor.
Speaker 2: And so we had mind detecting vehicles.
Speaker 3: We had troop carrying vehicles that just a little bit
Speaker 3: heavy armored.
Speaker 2: So we could have some firepower on top. And then
Speaker 2: we'd have the one that had the huge claw. So
Speaker 2: if we found wire, we found.
Speaker 3: Something that looked kind of suspicious, that claw would go
Speaker 3: way forward to the vehicle.
Speaker 2: Had a camera on it. We could interrogate it without
Speaker 2: ever leaving the security of our vehicle.
Speaker 3: And there were signs where we would take three hits
Speaker 3: in a single day.
Speaker 2: Three IED's that we weren't able to spot them. They'd
Speaker 2: detonate on.
Speaker 3: Us, and as long as our vehicles would keep rolling,
Speaker 3: we just kept rolling on with the mission.
Speaker 2: We didn't stop, you know.
Speaker 3: Then February twenty seventh, two thousand and seven, came about,
Speaker 3: so like any other day, woke up, you know, got
Speaker 3: the guys ready, got the vehicles prepped, got them prepped,
Speaker 3: brought him in, We did our briefings. They knew exactly
Speaker 3: it was going to take us about fifteen hour patrol
Speaker 3: that day to get through all the routes that we
Speaker 3: had planned. And then you know, we loaded up and
Speaker 3: we had been on the road about three hours and
Speaker 3: we came across one of the routes.
Speaker 2: I believe it was rob Primus. It was actually a
Speaker 2: dead end road.
Speaker 3: And typically when you plan your route, you never covered
Speaker 3: the same spot more than once because if you do,
Speaker 3: you get blown up because.
Speaker 2: They can predict you. Unfortunately, the dead end road there's
Speaker 2: one way down.
Speaker 3: All the way back, and we had taken our time,
Speaker 3: and anytime we're looking for the IDs, you're only going
Speaker 3: about two miles per hour, So it's a creep crawling obviously,
Speaker 3: why you need that heavy armored vehicles Because you're moving
Speaker 3: so slow, it's an easy target.
Speaker 2: And we got down to the end of the road.
Speaker 2: It's a very rural area.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of canals and farmland and not
Speaker 3: the open desert that.
Speaker 2: People think of when they think of I racked. Once
Speaker 2: we started coming back up, we picked up the pace
Speaker 2: a little bit. I want to say.
Speaker 3: We were probably going about between five and ten miles
Speaker 3: an hour, so it's not like we were speeding up
Speaker 3: the road, but we weren't creep crawling along either.
Speaker 2: And then I heard the blast.
Speaker 3: I can remember hearing the boom, and before I could
Speaker 3: even get like a choice for a letter word out
Speaker 3: of my mouth, I was hitting the ground. And you know,
Speaker 3: when you go through these training and you go through
Speaker 3: all this stuff as a leader, you always want to
Speaker 3: just pause for a second and just get a quick
Speaker 3: battle damage assessment so you can make a quick decision.
Speaker 2: It can't be long. It's just a quick pause. And
Speaker 2: as I did that, I.
Speaker 3: Looked at my vehicle and I really at the time
Speaker 3: didn't see anything out of the unusual about it.
Speaker 2: But I didn't see it was my guys.
Speaker 3: So I just immediately got up to run back for
Speaker 3: my vehicle, and as I got closer to the vehicle,
Speaker 3: that's when I could feel the flames hit me in
Speaker 3: the face and I realized I was on fire. And
Speaker 3: because I felt like it was in the torso area,
Speaker 3: because it was just hit me in the face so bad,
Speaker 3: I decided to drop my IBA or my protective vest,
Speaker 3: and so I kind of just tossed it real quick,
Speaker 3: got down and started to roll and I only got
Speaker 3: about a roll and a half in and the heat
Speaker 3: was so intense that it basically locked up my muscles.
Speaker 3: But I definitely was like, Okay, this is it for me.
Speaker 3: This is where my life ends. I'm going to die here,
Speaker 3: you know, face down on the ground and IRAQ him.
Speaker 2: You know what am I going to do? I can't move,
Speaker 2: you know, and I'm on fire.
Speaker 3: And about the time those those those emotions and those
Speaker 3: thoughts were coming over my body, I could hear my
Speaker 3: as you home for me. Before I knew it, theyre
Speaker 3: hit me with that fire extinguisher and it went from
Speaker 3: that extreme heat to the extreme cooling. And I don't
Speaker 3: think I'll ever probably find the words to describe that
Speaker 3: feeling of that cooling sensation and the relief it provided me,
Speaker 3: like almost instantly, But then it also gave me, you know,
Speaker 3: that emotional kind of aspect where came maybe I'm not
Speaker 3: going to die here on the ground that if they
Speaker 3: got to me and I feel like this right now,
Speaker 3: then maybe I still have a fighting chance to go
Speaker 3: on from there. One of my young sergeants, Sarnt Redmond,
Speaker 3: wasn't one of my best sergeants. I actually had plans
Speaker 3: on kicking them out of the army for some other
Speaker 3: bad decisions he made. But two of the young guys
Speaker 3: were going to grab me and start dragging me off
Speaker 3: the road, and he stopped him, and he's like, no,
Speaker 3: you can't do that.
Speaker 2: You have to get the spine board. If you drag him,
Speaker 2: you'll kill him.
Speaker 3: And the only analogy I can really use, or the
Speaker 3: way to explain it is, if.
Speaker 2: You think about baked chicken. You just pulled that baked chicken.
Speaker 3: Out of the oven, you know, and how the meat
Speaker 3: and this everything just kind of scups.
Speaker 2: Out of the bone.
Speaker 3: Well, I basically had just been burned alive, So had
Speaker 3: they drugged me, everything would have just scopped off and
Speaker 3: they probably would have killed me. The guys were talking
Speaker 3: to me, you know, reassuring me, and I was getting
Speaker 3: a little annoyed with it. I can't remember telling them
Speaker 3: just to shut up. I got this, don't worry about it.
Speaker 3: And before I knew it, I could start to hear
Speaker 3: the chopper coming in. The helicopter, the metavact was coming in.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: All the guys would kind of lightly lay over me,
Speaker 3: not enough to irritate the burns or anything, but just
Speaker 3: protect me from the water rush of the bird landing.
Speaker 2: And they loaded me up.
Speaker 3: I remember there was a female flight medic. She asked me,
Speaker 3: my name is social. I know, I got my name
Speaker 3: out no idea about the social.
Speaker 2: And the megs just kind of kicked in.
Speaker 3: Later on I found out they pretty much had to
Speaker 3: start working on me right away and blot I Later years,
Speaker 3: about two.
Speaker 2: Years after it happened, I actually got to meet my surgeon.
Speaker 3: It was a Air Force colonel, and he said that,
Speaker 3: you know, of his two years that he almost spent
Speaker 3: over there, they they had never been attacked except for
Speaker 3: the one time I was on the table and they
Speaker 3: got a rocket attack.
Speaker 2: So things were shaken and stuff, and.
Speaker 3: He said, what he could remember was my legs is
Speaker 3: everything above my boot was in really really bad condition,
Speaker 3: and I I don't remember what the procedure was called,
Speaker 3: but basically there was.
Speaker 2: A procedure they weren't supposed to do on burns.
Speaker 3: Brooke Army Medical Center is like the Burn Hospital, one
Speaker 3: of the best hospitals for burns, and there was a
Speaker 3: procedure that they weren't supposed to do on any burn patients,
Speaker 3: and he ended up doing it.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was the only way to save my legs,
Speaker 2: because had that happen, they would have had to take
Speaker 2: my legs too.
Speaker 3: So you know, here's a guy who now only saved
Speaker 3: my life cause I was constantly flat lining and having
Speaker 3: all kinds of issues. And the prognosis that was even
Speaker 3: going back to the unit was I wasn't gonna make it.
Speaker 3: That I was just too far gone at that point.
Speaker 1: And you were listening to Army ranger Michael Schlitz tell
Speaker 1: one heck of his story, and he deploys to Iraq.
Speaker 1: He doesn't get the easy space, and there isn't really
Speaker 1: much of an easy space or place there, but he
Speaker 1: gets the sony triangle. Then you overlay the surge and
Speaker 1: particularly the insurgents use of minds that actually develop their
Speaker 1: own name called improvised explosive devices, because that's what they were,
Speaker 1: and his job was to find them, which meant he
Speaker 1: and his units will go out at a crawl and
Speaker 1: be open targets for not only these devices, but all
Speaker 1: all kinds of attacks and all to protect fellow soldiers
Speaker 1: from these IEDs and ultimately to secure the area. When
Speaker 1: we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story
Speaker 1: of how Michael Schlitz comes back from a near death
Speaker 1: experience here on our American stories, and we continue here
Speaker 1: with our American stories and the story of Army ranger
Speaker 1: Michael Schlitz. Let's pick up where Michael last left off.
Speaker 3: Luckily, they stabilize me and pretty much sent me to
Speaker 3: Brooke Army Medical Center and got there on to March
Speaker 3: of seven, immediately put into ICU. I spent six months
Speaker 3: in ICU.
Speaker 2: Multiple skin grafts.
Speaker 3: At that point they had to make the call to
Speaker 3: go and take the hands so I didn't lose the
Speaker 3: hands from the explosion.
Speaker 2: I actually lost the hands through the burns.
Speaker 3: Like mentally, I knew, I knew how to walk and stuff,
Speaker 3: but I had so much muscle damage and so much
Speaker 3: weakness that when I would go to get up to walk,
Speaker 3: like initially, I would just kind of crumble.
Speaker 2: I couldn't walk, so they had to build that up.
Speaker 3: So, you know, sometimes it was just today, all we're
Speaker 3: going to do a stand up.
Speaker 2: Out of bed.
Speaker 3: The next day, you know, we're going to do two steps,
Speaker 3: and now we're going to walk to the door. Like
Speaker 3: one of the ways they motivated me is my brother
Speaker 3: and my niece were down visiting and they allowed me
Speaker 3: to walk to the ICU doors and my niece was
Speaker 3: sit on the ground and it's really the first time
Speaker 3: she got to see me too, and she didn't recognize me.
Speaker 2: And her name's Brina, and I always had a way
Speaker 2: I'd always.
Speaker 3: Saying and bringing Brina, and so I did that and
Speaker 3: she realized it was me, and of course I had
Speaker 3: to go back to.
Speaker 2: The room, so they shut the doors, and then she
Speaker 2: was upset that she did get to hang out with me.
Speaker 3: It wasn't until I went to my welcome home ceremony
Speaker 3: then I found out that three guys I had my
Speaker 3: vehicle all passed away. You know, they didn't want to
Speaker 3: tell me when I was in the hospital or going
Speaker 3: through recovery because they didn't want me to mentally or
Speaker 3: just have it stressed me out to the point where
Speaker 3: i'd take a change. After about four months of the
Speaker 3: burn warden and still going through it. The only way
Speaker 3: they had let me out of the hospitals if I got
Speaker 3: a small house on post House close to the hospital,
Speaker 3: so if anything happened, I was still nearby. So Mom
Speaker 3: and I moved into small, small, probably maybe seven hundred
Speaker 3: square foot home, two bedrooms right on top of each other.
Speaker 3: And that's where it's that that timeframe, you know, I
Speaker 3: was still probably sleeping sixteen hours a day. I'd be up,
Speaker 3: they'd change my bandages, and I'd eat, and that's pretty
Speaker 3: much all I I'd go to sleep, wake up, eat,
Speaker 3: go to sleep, wake up, eat, and go sleep. And
Speaker 3: but for Mom, that that was probably some of the
Speaker 3: most horrific time, besides just learning about the stuff. But
Speaker 3: she had to take it. She had to do a
Speaker 3: lot of the won't care. She had to do all
Speaker 3: the coke and the cleaning. I wasn't allowed to sleep
Speaker 3: on my sheets more than once because of infection, So
Speaker 3: I just put all that on her. And obviously she
Speaker 3: didn't have anybody to help her, so she.
Speaker 2: Was doing all that on her own.
Speaker 3: And eventually, you know, I got my first prosthetic, and
Speaker 3: that night I can remember going home and Mom cooked
Speaker 3: and cut all my.
Speaker 2: Food up for me.
Speaker 3: But that very first time I was able to feed myself,
Speaker 3: and that was huge for me, because leading up to
Speaker 3: that first protec, I couldn't trust myself, couldn't feed myself,
Speaker 3: couldn't take myself to the bathroom. There was really very
Speaker 3: little I could do on an average statement myself, and
Speaker 3: that affects you mentally. Obviously I contemplated suicide, but you know.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to let Mom down.
Speaker 3: And then you know, I had my brothers in the
Speaker 3: army and a lot of people who visited me, and
Speaker 3: you never want to let anybody down. So ultimately, because
Speaker 3: of that support system is why I didn't commit suicide.
Speaker 3: But when I had that first prospectic give me that
Speaker 3: little bit of hope, that little bit of independence. And
Speaker 3: then shortly after that I got the second prosthetic, and
Speaker 3: you know, I just kind of did on the gost.
Speaker 2: Sense, and not that I don't have bad days or
Speaker 2: you know, take turns here and there.
Speaker 3: Still I can't say I never saw my life going
Speaker 3: in the direction it has. One of the things I
Speaker 3: battled with a sense of purpose. You know, my entire
Speaker 3: adult life, I was a soldier. I lived for my career.
Speaker 3: I would have pretty much everything in my life took
Speaker 3: second second string to my career, Like I wanted to
Speaker 3: be a soldier.
Speaker 2: This is what I do.
Speaker 3: And you know, if I mean missing a wedding or
Speaker 3: missing somebody's birthday, or missing a big, big event that
Speaker 3: if if it was for the military and something I
Speaker 3: had thought I had to do, I.
Speaker 2: Would always pick it over everything.
Speaker 3: And uh, you know, even my marriage, like I got
Speaker 3: divorced well before the injury, but I always put my career.
Speaker 2: It's just it's who I was.
Speaker 3: And now I didn't feel like I could be a
Speaker 3: soldier anymore. I felt like, you know, my identity had
Speaker 3: been struck for me.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what I was going to do.
Speaker 3: And you know, Mom and I would have conversation like
Speaker 3: I don't know what I could do, and I was like, well,
Speaker 3: maybe you could do some public speak.
Speaker 2: Then I'm like, I can't do that, you know, and she,
Speaker 2: you know, she.
Speaker 3: Would try to guide me, and you know, I couldn't
Speaker 3: foresee what where life would take me at the time,
Speaker 3: and or or even at you know, falling back on
Speaker 3: my career as an instructor giving classes to a few
Speaker 3: hundred kids, you know, or soldiers are doing any of
Speaker 3: those things. But as they started doing more events, they
Speaker 3: would ask me to come speak, and I told my
Speaker 3: story more. And I had that opportunity to go over
Speaker 3: back to Iraq on three different occasions through a thing
Speaker 3: called Operation Proper Exit. And so when I came back,
Speaker 3: I just kind of went full in and motivational speaking
Speaker 3: and leadership speaking companies, units, nonprofit events, charity events, and
Speaker 3: so that's why I do now, and you know, it's
Speaker 3: my purpose, it's what I like to do. It keeps
Speaker 3: me around both the veteran community, guys who served, whether
Speaker 3: it was World War Two up through the current conflicts,
Speaker 3: or it's the active duty guys, every branch you can
Speaker 3: think of. It just allows me to get around to everybody.
Speaker 3: And I've had a great support network. Obviously I didn't
Speaker 3: do it on my own.
Speaker 2: You know, the Brotherhood has been very very good to me.
Speaker 3: I mean, whether it was my guys out of Tenth Mount,
Speaker 3: the Rangers I served with, you know, guys that you know,
Speaker 3: I was a private with that still keep in touch
Speaker 3: with me. It's a very very tight knit community. And
Speaker 3: you know, I'm just I'm a proud Army veteran, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm glad I got the chance to serve.
Speaker 2: I can picture my life without it.
Speaker 3: But obviously, veterans, you know, it takes a certain mentality
Speaker 3: to serve your country. And obviously after fourteen years of war,
Speaker 3: you know, everybody who goes over there comes home a
Speaker 3: little different. You know what really kind of bothers me
Speaker 3: is when I go in public, I could have three
Speaker 3: veterans with me. Two might be suffering from postmatic stress,
Speaker 3: one could be have a TBI at traumatic brain injury,
Speaker 3: and then there's me and the only one they'll think
Speaker 3: is me, and they just forget about these guys. But
Speaker 3: those guys' service is no different than mine, you know.
Speaker 3: And I have, you know, guys that have multiple deployments
Speaker 3: always coming up to me and saying, you know, my
Speaker 3: you know, my service isn't quite the same. It isn't
Speaker 3: like you now, your service is the same as mine.
Speaker 2: I had one bad day which changed, you know, this
Speaker 2: part of me.
Speaker 3: But the actual service serving your country is no different.
Speaker 2: You know, anybody on any given day, can I have
Speaker 2: a bad day, and I'm what a bad day looks like.
Speaker 3: But we don't know enough about the brain and the
Speaker 3: way things function to fix the brain right now. And
Speaker 3: you can throw mads at it and you can do
Speaker 3: different things, but ultimately brain's going to do what the
Speaker 3: brain's going to do. But for somebody like me who
Speaker 3: has a physical injury, the guys that have leg injuries,
Speaker 3: there's always a way to adapt.
Speaker 2: Something I can figure out. You know, even before I
Speaker 2: have prosthetics.
Speaker 3: I used to take the gatorade bottles, drill hole in
Speaker 3: the cap, put the cat back on and feel you know,
Speaker 3: I have my drink and I have a straw in there,
Speaker 3: so I can carry it myself. So for me, life
Speaker 3: is always about adapting and changing and doing stuff. But
Speaker 3: when you have a TVI or you have PTS to
Speaker 3: the higher functioning levels, you don't have that option.
Speaker 2: You know, you can't control it.
Speaker 3: So they may look what you considered normal, but they're
Speaker 3: struggling more so than a lot of the.
Speaker 2: People that you considered disabled.
Speaker 3: So I think it's important to stay in touch with
Speaker 3: everybody and not fall.
Speaker 2: Off the grid.
Speaker 3: It's going to be harder for those guys who who
Speaker 3: maybe move to those rural communities away from military posts,
Speaker 3: away from some of the larger organizations. But in today's society,
Speaker 3: and especially with social media, you know in Facebook, I mean,
Speaker 3: there's so many veteran groups on Facebook that you can
Speaker 3: reach out to, and maybe you don't get to go
Speaker 3: up and have dinner with them once a week or
Speaker 3: once a month, at least you can communicate or if
Speaker 3: you're having some issues, somebody to vent to. And nobody
Speaker 3: understands a veteran like a veteran.
Speaker 1: And a terrific job on the production by Greg Hengler,
Speaker 1: and a special thanks to Michael Schlitz for sharing his
Speaker 1: story about his service and all that happened while he
Speaker 1: was on duty in Iraq, losing three of his pals.
Speaker 1: He survived, but he lost three of his pals, lost
Speaker 1: his hands, and lost so much but gained as much
Speaker 1: too back learning about the Brotherhood, learning about the Tenth
Speaker 1: Mountain Division, and so many others who helped Michael schlnts
Speaker 1: his story the story of so many of our soldiers
Speaker 1: who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here on our American
Speaker 1: Stories