I Believe – My Values

After coming home from Afghanistan, Fort Lewis, Washington was our next destination. Lindsey was six months pregnant with Hannah at the time and we were 3,000 miles away from her parents, when we had always been within driving distance. This was hard for her and she did not like being out in Washington. For me, it was similar in so many ways to my home state of New Hampshire that my soul felt like it was going home. Hannah was born in August of that year and I was gone for half the first year of her life, leaving for a month at a time five different times. I wasn’t thrilled about doing that, but that’s just a fact of Army life.

Usually when someone takes over command of a unit it happens three to six months after arrival, but in this case, I took command within two weeks of getting there and my soldiers weren’t even there. They were all in Fort Carson, Colorado, and the Army was in the process of moving them to Fort Lewis. The Army didn’t treat this as a PCS move for those guys, so some of them were given PCS orders six months later which caused a lot of issues for those soldiers and their families, in addition to everything else military families already deal with. 

This year for me was particularly challenging. I did not like myself for a solid eight or nine months because of the person I had to be, or thought I had to be, at work. When I showed up to that unit, it was a complete mess. We used to make jokes about it. I would say that under every rock there was a grenade and my First Sergeant would say they weren’t just grenades, but Bouncing Betties and grizzly bears that would run out and bite you. Every single time I would look into something the unit was doing, it was just another thing. My number one priority was the safety of the people getting in those aircraft, and I just wasn’t very nice about making sure that what needed to get done was done. I fired a lot of people because what was going on  just wasn’t ok.  

These issues became adversarial in many ways between myself, my First Sergeant, and the existing leadership there upon my arrival. There were so many problems, and it didn’t get that way overnight, and who do you blame but the leadership? No one likes to hear that they’re failing or to have their faults pointed out to them, and that is what I had to do in order to get this unit functional and to where it needed to be. I had been in Blue Max that was good at everything it did, and this was the antithesis of that unit. It was my job to fix that. But let me tell you, it was a very hard job being that person. It still hurts me to think about it. 

The silver lining in it all is that two years later the battalion won the Army Aviation Unit of the Year Award. I was extremely proud of that. It certainly wasn’t all me; there were a lot of really good soldiers in that unit who put a lot of hard work in, but I felt pretty good about the part I played in it. I also learned some important lessons about leadership through that experience that I have carried with me ever since.

I genuinely wish I had done a better job building a shared vision for the organization. What it basically means is that when one person comes up with a solution to a problem and then tells everyone else how the problem is going to be solved, it is much less effective than when the whole group comes up with the solution and implements it together, because now everyone owns it instead of one person. If I would have gone about things in this manner, I think things would have gone a lot more smoothly. There’s nothing I can do about it now, but I can take the lessons learned and apply them moving forward. Eighteen short months after arriving at Fort Lewis, Lindsey and I moved all our things into storage, she hopped on a plane back home to Pennsylvania, I drove the car across the country in like two days, flew back to Fort Lewis and hopped on a plane to Iraq. 

So Lindsey and I started dating each other, but it was a long distance relationship, as we did not live near each other. She graduated from college in the spring of 2008 and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia while I was finishing up at West Point. Upon graduating from West Point in 2009, I got my standard sixty days leave, and then went to Fort Benning, Georgia for BOLC B.

I was in the last class that was required to go there before going on to an OBC (Officer Basic Course) destination. I actually ended up doing BOLC B twice because when I showed up to my next station, Fort Rucker, nobody else had been there except me, and of course I had to do it along with everyone else. Lindsey ended up moving down to Fort Rucker to be with me in the spring of 2010. We realized just how crazy we were about each other and got engaged just six months later.

We set a date for our wedding and began making plans, but our marriage was made official much quicker than we expected at the county courthouse in Daleville, Alabama. I had PCS (Permanent Change of Station) orders for Fort Campbell, Kentucky and I thought I was going to end up in Afghanistan for our wedding. It was our desire to be married sooner than later, so that’s why we did it that way. We did end up having an actual wedding ceremony in May of 2011, so it all worked out. She is the love of my life, we’re best friends, we love being around each other, and she puts up with me, which is a really high bar. What more could I ask for?

Lindsey started a new job when we arrived in Fort Campbell so she was established in that way. All I wanted to do at this point was get on a plane to Afghanistan. I joined the Army and became an Apache Pilot for certain reasons, and I didn’t feel like I had gotten out of it what I was hoping for yet. It also had become very personal for me because my friend, Daren Hidalgo, who introduced me to Lindsey, had been killed in Kandahar by an IED in February of 2011. That was really hard to take. I finally got the opportunity to deploy into Afghanistan later that year and as I was in Manas, Kyrgyzstan about to get on a plane into Kandahar, my friend, Tim Steele was killed there by an IED also. So now this became a very personal mission for me- all I wanted to do was find and kill anyone who had thought it was a good idea to ever plant an IED in Kandahar, Afghanistan. 

The unit I was assigned to was “Blue Max,” which has a really long history going back to the Vietnam War. All the people in this company had been in Jalalabad, Afghanistan when everything got really intense in RC (Regional Command) East. They were there when the Battle of COP Keating and the Battle of Wanat happened. These guys had tons of combat experience and around 1200 flight hours, and I showed up as the new guy again. It was really great for me to be with soldiers who had that much experience though. 

As a platoon leader, it was very challenging. I became the only platoon leader in the company, as one left right before I arrived, another left right after, and they took the other one out around three months later. Even in a unit that good, you have to find things to improve. The platoon leaders couldn’t fly more than fifty or sixty hours a month because they just couldn’t get their work done. I had to find a way to make things more efficient, so I tapped into my ORSA (Operations Research/ Systems Analysis) and Excel skills from the Academy to make flight scheduling easier by projecting flight hours. This improved operations immensely and allowed me fly more hours per month while making the pilots’ lives easier. 

One day I’ll never forget from that deployment was Christmas 2011. I was in the front seat of the helicopter and we found an IED emplacer. While making sure that situation was resolved, my back seater hit the tether on a surveillance balloon, which sent it to the ground pretty quickly and broke the very expensive camera that was on it. When I got back, everyone was angry with me, and I wasn’t even the one who did it. With everything going on for the post accident, I was extremely busy, and I didn’t even call my family on Christmas Day. Lindsey knew that I had been out flying, didn’t hear from me at all, and there was no way for her to call me; she spent that day thinking I was dead.  I feel so terrible about it now.  

So because of this incident, I received a GOMOR (General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand) on the night I left Afghanistan. This was a very strange time for me because this was the greatest deployment of my life and so I was feeling high from that, but at the same time I had no idea if my career in the Army was over or not. I had to wait three very long weeks to find out my fate. Thankfully, the GOMOR had been filed in the restricted file instead of my performance file, so that’s why I’m sitting here talking to you today.

I learned a lot on that deployment. I finally won the respect of the other soldiers in the company after initially stepping on quite a few toes, but it took some time. I was only there for about a year, which is too bad because I would have liked the opportunity to have been a platoon leader for a longer period of time. 

My third deployment was to Afghanistan again, this time to Jalalabad, during which I was Pilot in Command and became an Air Mission Commander. As the Assistant S3, I planned every single operation that battalion operated for nine months, and continued to be involved in the planning for a total of two years. I also got to fly some of the air assaults. This gave me really great experience and allowed me to not only see, but be involved in the operational side of things.

So I got accepted to West Point and left for Prep School at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey in the summer of 2004. Somehow I did not realize that I was showing up to Basic Training again. I came fully prepared to just walk into my dorm room with my things and begin Prep School, but that was not the case and I had to shift gears real quick. While I was there, I found out my unit was deploying again to Iraq and this really upset me. I already was not really enjoying my time there, and this news made me feel horrible; I felt like I was abandoning my unit. That was the hardest day I had experienced up to that point. I honestly just wanted to quit and go back to my unit. My friend, Abe, told me over a phone call in so many choice words that I was, indeed, not coming back. I’m glad he said that to me, and glad that I ultimately worked through those feelings and decided to stay. 

Coming into Prep School at West Point, I think I definitely had an advantage over cadets who were there fresh out of high school. I knew where bad grades got me, and I wasn’t going to make that same mistake again. Even though I couldn’t shake this lingering feeling I had in the first semester that I was going to fail, I worked my butt off and graduated really high in my class. My experience at West Point felt easy to me all the time, and I think it’s because of the perspective and experience I had obtained from being in the Army already and being deployed. If any other cadet asks by the way, I will vehemently deny that I said it was easy. 

On Branch Night my final year there, I already knew what I was going to get. My choice to join the aviation unit was made on that aforementioned ridiculously long drive out of  Iraq into Kuwait. While we were sitting there waiting for CPT Dondero to find the key to his Blue Force, an Apache helicopter flew overhead and it was so close to the hood of my truck, what seemed like 10 feet up to me. The pilot then turned that helicopter straight up in the air and brought it right back over the truck even lower than he was the previous time. I was in utter amazement and told myself that that’s what I needed to do. I was going to become a pilot, but not just a pilot, an Apache Pilot, because that dude had a gun and I thought that was awesome. 

After receiving my slot in aviation, I ended up having somewhat of an existential crisis. All of my friends, the people I knew and loved and respected at the Academy, they all went into infantry. I felt something akin to buyer’s remorse; had I chosen the right path? I wrestled with that for about the last six months or so that I was there and it was a pretty difficult time.

Having said all that, I can now confidently say that I absolutely made the best choice for myself going into aviation. I’ve never met someone who’s an Aviator and is like, “Man, I wish I’d been walking this whole time!” The reverse does happen though. You’d think more people would learn that they don’t like walking around in the woods, but apparently not.

While I was still at West Point, during my Cow (3rd) year in 2007, I met my wife, Lindsey at an Army-Navy football game. My friend, Daren Hidalgo, also attended the Academy and his parents used to throw this big hotel party for the Army-Navy game each year. He comes from a family with many service members including his dad, his two brothers, and one of his brother’s wives. Anyway, one of Daren’s best friends in high school was Lindsey’s college roommate and they came to the game together. That’s one of two good things that came out of the five Army-Navy games I went to as a cadet- meeting Lindsey. The other one was watching the Navy mascot get speared by a rugby player in the end zone. That may sound bad, but he deserved it. Army had been getting our butts kicked for too many years in a row, and the mascot came over and was waving the Navy flag right in front of our faces, bragging and boasting. This guy just came from behind him and annihilated him, took his legs out ninety degrees and just smoked him. It was so great to see that. The offender got a coin from the Army Chief of Staff, and then a brigade board (he had to walk 100 hours). 

The Army is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It has given me experiences and opportunities in life that I never would have had otherwise, led me to meeting my wife, and put me where I am today. How did my journey begin? Let me take you back to an infamous day in American history- September 11, 2001.

I was a senior in high school when the attacks happened. Like most other kids my age, I was just trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, applying to colleges, and wondering what my future would hold. The events of that fateful day filled me with very strong emotions, mostly anger, and the path I was to go down from then on began to take shape. Within three weeks I enlisted in the Army, as did about half of my friends. I was going to fight back, fight for America, and stand up for freedom.

To be clear, my mom was not thrilled about it at first. She was concerned for my safety and my life, which is definitely understandable, especially after the horrific attack that had just been unleashed on our country. The conversations unfolded and as we discussed options more, she became more comfortable with the idea. She signed my paperwork (I was only 17 at the time) and I became a paralegal in the United States Army.

Upon graduating high school in June of 2002, I traveled to Fort Jackson, South Carolina for Basic Training. Let me tell you, for a New Hampshire kid, South Carolina in the summertime is hot! I remember meeting the Puerto Rican National Guard guys who were there learning English, learning the ropes, and I’ll definitely never forget the first time I had to do push-ups there because it was accompanied by fire ants crawling all over my hands and biting me relentlessly. My hat got knocked off my head on my way off the bus when we arrived, and so there I was, running around with my hand on top of  my head (because your head had to be covered all the time) while the Drill Sergeants screamed at me. Not what you would call enjoyable by any stretch of the imagination, but I realized at that moment that maybe the Army and I were going to be just fine with each other.

I didn’t care that people were screaming at me and making me do push-ups. I could completely tune out everything that was going on around me and just focus on the task at hand. I thought to myself, “This guy’s going to yell at me, okie dokie, but eventually he’s going to stop and I will move on with my life, and until then I will just tune him out.” There are so many things that happen in the Army that are out of your control, like going on drives in unarmored Humvees fully aware of the possibility that an IED might explode at any second. Or the time I was in Iraq in 2004 on a drive to Kuwait with Captain Dondero- the drive was supposed to take 12 hours but ended up taking about 36 because CPT Dondero lost the keys to his Blue Force Tracker and then got us lost twice.

There’s nothing I could do about any of that, and when I can’t do anything about something, I don’t stress about it, I just suck it up and roll with it. Like my comrade Jesse Powell would say, “When you’re in a river of insanity, just go limp.” His explanation was an illustration about whitewater rafting that goes something like this: “You ever hear about people getting hurt really badly in whitewater rafting accidents? You know who doesn’t get hurt? The drunk people. You know why? Because they don’t know any better; they’re just floating down the river. That’s how you gotta be in life.” I thought to myself that he actually had a lot of wisdom in what he was saying, and that is pretty much how I live my life and it has served me well.  

I turned 18 in Basic and completed my AIT (Advanced Individual Training). Jeremy Mayhall was my roommate during AIT, went with me to Airborne School and Fort Bragg, and is my best friend to this day. We had a group of friends whom we still keep in contact with including Abe Marquez, George Pierce, Mike Fisher (now a Command Sergeant Major), and Ian Northrup (now a Sergeant Major). It’s pretty funny for me to think about our days with Ian in AIT and the fact that he’s a Sergeant Major now. Mike and I deployed to Iraq together in my first unit and he was my NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer). I ran into Abe in Kuwait in 2017, and George in Erbil, Iraq in 2016 because we ended up being there at the same time. How amusing that you end up seeing some of the same guys you were a Private with fifteen years later. 

I graduated AIT right before Christmas of 2002 and then went off to Airborne School in February of 2003. The guys in that battalion had all just gotten back from Bagram, Afghanistan, so myself and the other new guys were the only ones in the entire company who didn’t have a combat patch. All we wanted to do was deploy; we just didn’t want to be the only slick sleeve dudes in the unity anymore. We got our wish in August of that year with our first deployment to Fallujah, Iraq. 

While I was in Iraq, I started thinking about my future with the Army. It seemed a good fit and like it was the right place for me. If you asked my mom, she’d tell you I’d been drawing American flags since I was about four years old, so maybe I was always destined to be here. Making a career out of the Army sounded better and better to me the more I thought about it. West Point wasn’t an option for me out of high school, as I really didn’t start getting my act together until about my junior year, and so ended up graduating with a 2.7GPA. However, it was an option for me at that point. I remember my step-dad talking to me about the military service academies, and when we were briefed on West Point in AIT, the idea started working itself around in my head.

I called my mom from Fallujah and spoke with her about it. She told me to think about it before I made a decision that was going to impact the next ten years of my life. So I did, and I made the decision to put in my application for West Point. CSM Mike Fisher, my NCO at the time, helped push my application packet through to MAJ Stone, who pushed it up to Colonel Smith, my Brigade Commander, who signed my packet. I still remember sitting in COL Smith’s office as a Private in 2003 and him taking the time out of leading a brigade of soldiers in combat to talk to me about the decision to apply to West Point. It was his recommendation that got me in.