I Came For The Free Army Flashlight (Judy Fryover)

War zone medicine is not just trauma bays and helicopters. Sometimes it is 140-degree heat, dust storms that ground flights, and a charge nurse trying to keep blood running while a policy says patients must move in 72 hours. Judy Fryover, an Army Reserve nurse and later colonel, walks us through the real texture of military healthcare, from the small details that make you laugh to the moments that stay heavy long after you leave Iraq.

We start in Portland, Michigan, where Judy grows up as the oldest of eight in a tight, hardworking family. That foundation carries into a demanding nursing path through Lansing Community College, Sparrow Hospital, and decades of perioperative and surgical work. Then a chance conversation with a recruiter leads to a direct commission and a second career in the United States Army Reserve, complete with Officer Basic, learning acronyms, and discovering why NCOs keep the Army running.

Judy shares two Iraq tours from two very different vantage points: a combat support hospital caring for US service members, civilians, contractors, and detainees, and later Civil Affairs work at the Baghdad US Embassy where briefings, coordination, and leadership pressure replace the bedside. We also talk about veteran care after deployment through VA contract work, the challenge of earning trust in rural and underserved communities, and the leadership habits she swears by: never stop learning, write down objective facts, listen before judging, and protect your people.

If you care about military stories, Army Reserve life, combat medicine, nursing leadership, or veteran healthcare, this conversation delivers the kind of detail you rarely hear. Subscribe, share this episode with someone who serves or supports a veteran, and leave a review with the lesson you’re taking from Judy’s story.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Today is Monday, April 20th. We're talking with Judy Fryover, who served in the United States Army Reserve. So good morning.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

Good morning.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Thanks for having me at your house.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Oh, you're welcome. My pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

All right. Well, we'll dive right in with the with the first question. And that is when and where were you born?

SPEAKER_00 0:49

I was born here at St. Lawrence Hospital in Lansing, Michigan, but lived in Portland.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Okay. And you grew up in Portland? Yes. All right. So talk to me about what it was like growing up here in Portland.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Well, it was a much smaller community than what it is now.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

And um I'm the oldest of eight kids. And my dad was a World War II veteran.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

So but I just wish we knew more about him because when he came home, you just didn't talk a whole lot about what he did. And he was a guard in the Philippines for Japanese prisoners of war. And I can remember he told me they were in Chow, and he turned his head for just a second, and two of the Japanese prisoners were going to attack him, and he put his weapon on them. The other thing that's a mystery is after he passed away, my mom had 18 watercolor prints on some sort of muslim. They're beautiful. And she gave each of us two of them. And we had them frame and matted. And we think that it was done by a Japanese prisoner of war, and he bought the supplies because they're beautiful. But we just don't know. And it says WAM 1946 that my mom had written on them.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

And there's Mount Fuji in the background, and they're all done by Japanese, there's Japanese women in every picture.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

All right. You do you think that they were all done by the same person?

SPEAKER_00 2:13

We think they were all done by the same person. But he was dirt poor. So we we just and I tried looking up the provenance, but I I didn't get anywhere. But we wouldn't sell them anyway.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Oh no. Always nice to know where they came from. Exactly, exactly. So did I hear you correctly you were the oldest of eight children? Yes. Oh my gosh. You must have been like a second mom with some of the kids.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Well, some of them, but we grew up next to my maternal grandparents, and and my mom was one of fourteen, and she was one of the oldest ones. So my two youngest aunts were kind of close to our age. So we were up there all the time. Or they were at our house all the time.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

So it was really like one big giant family, though. Yes, yes. Okay. All right. And then um, so what did your dad do for a living then when he came back? Well, he worked at TRW in in the factory, is what he did.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Okay. And then he also worked at a lumber mill part-time in the Eden, actually with his two brothers. Uh-huh. He was a very hard worker.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

I I would think with eight children, you'd have to be a hard worker.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 3:11

And then tell me a little bit about your mom.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Well, my mom, um, she was a stay-at-home mom, so but she did all the cooking and the cleaning. She didn't let us do the laundry because she didn't think we could do it good enough. But we always had we usually had like meat and potatoes. But my dad, they would go and butcher, I'll have a whole cow butchered, a whole pig um butchered, and then we would can, we canned everything.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Beans, or uh uh peaches, cherries. I mean, it was delicious during the winter.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, we had great lessons learned too, I would imagine.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Yeah. And then um, so tell me about what's it like being a uh a a kid with eight brothers and sisters and then really kind of an extended family. So, how was that growing up?

SPEAKER_00 3:55

Well, it was actually wonderful because see, we did more with my grandparents and my aunts and uncles, and did more traveling to free things than my younger siblings. So they didn't get to know my grandparents and my aunts and uncles like we did.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:12

And it was always a lot of fun to go up there.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Oh, I'll bet.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Yeah, and then I mean my grandfather grew everything, and then they had goats. He even grew peanuts. They have a huge they had a huge rhubarb, and it was self-serve. You could you could unpick and pay as you go back. Back then, your people were a lot more honest.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I think you still see those stands once in a while. Because I buy corn from them when I when I see those roadside stands.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

Well, and and they didn't have a lot of money, but this is the way they were. If anybody came over and it was dinner time, they would set an extra plate.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

That's great. Yeah, yeah. That's great. Uh what about school?

Nursing School And Early Hospital Work

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Well, I went to St. Patrick's High School and then I went to Lansing Community. Well, I was at Michigan State first to get into their nursing program, but at that time, you weren't accepted until you were a junior. And so I also applied at Lansing Community College. So I got accepted into their program, so I went through their program. And then a few years later, I went back to get my bachelor's degree at Michigan State. And then later on, gosh, that was in uh uh let me see, 2000. When was that? Oh, 1996, I went back and got my master's at Michigan State.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Okay. And then so talk to me a little bit about uh school here in in Portland. Did you go to uh um public schools then for grade school?

SPEAKER_00 5:36

No, it was all at St. Patrick's, but at the time when I was in high school, um, I took a chemistry course and a side course up at the Portland High School. You could do it at that time. And they had um a uh oh what is it, a paddle ball thing, and they had it in the hallway, so I'd go up there and play. But unfortunately, somehow the government got involved and said that St. Patrick's students couldn't take the classes at Portland High anymore.

SPEAKER_01 6:05

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:06

So then we just continued it up at St. Pat's.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Okay. Did you play any sports in high school? They didn't have girls' sports back then. Interesting. No, they didn't. Okay. And then so what about some of your favorite classes then?

SPEAKER_00 6:20

My favorite classes, oh, biology, I loved history, English. The funniest thing, back then, most of them were Catholic nuns. And my dad told me I needed to take a typing class. There were five electric typewriters and the rest were manual. I sucked at it. However, this adorable old nun collected pennies for her mission. So I donated all my pennies to her, and she gave me like a pencil, she gave me an A in typing, even though I sucked at it.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Well, there's a lesson in there somewhere, isn't there?

SPEAKER_00 6:55

Yeah, and the other nun was older, and she was an excellent math teacher. Uh-huh. She was strict, but she was fair. And the following year, I'm not sure where she went. We had her for two years, and we had another nun, but her major was history, but we already had a history teacher. She was not as good at math. We wish now we would have had the older nun back.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

And we I asked her, we were a group of asked her, and she said I was better at um algebra than I was at geometry. So she she was a wonderful math teacher.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Oh, that's fantastic. Yep. So you uh you uh go through high school and then so you went to Michigan State first? Yes, for a year. For a year, and then decided to go into LCC's program?

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Yes, because they accepted me first. Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

And LCC's got a pretty renowned nursing program. Do they not?

SPEAKER_00 7:44

They have an excellent nursing program. And Margie was in the geriatric track, and she became in charge of the nursing program. And she got uh a certificate of of acceptance where if you went through the paramedic program, you could get your IRN in another year.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Yep, she was wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

All right. So talk to me about going going to college. What was that like for you?

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Well, it was tough in when I first um went because I didn't know anything. And the people in my group, my clinical group, they were LPNs or they were orderlies. So my first clinical was at a nursing home on the west side of Lansing. And I did not do, I I mean, I I didn't think I could do it. I was working as a waitress part-time. So Tom and I had just gotten married. I said, Tom, I've got to go to work and get some experience. So I got a job as a nurse's aide. And then halfway through my program, Sparrow Hospital had a um and a nurse extern program. It was one of the best things that I ever did because I had gone through, um, after I was all done, three medication programs through my nursing programs. The best one was at Sparrow Hospital. Sharon Gonzalez showed me all different shots, medications. It was the best medication program that I had been through because at that time I passed meds. So I they actually used you as an RN but paid you nurse extern wages.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Right. What a deal.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I learned quite a bit there.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

So and then I just got a job there.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

So you got married fairly soon out of high school then?

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Yeah, we got I graduated in 71 and we got married in 73.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

Okay. How'd you meet Tom?

SPEAKER_00 9:35

Um, on a blind date through his sister.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Oh, tell me about this. Tell me about this.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

Well, uh, we he he asked me out, so we did, and we had gone out to eat, and I'll never forget it. He was embarrassed because he had shut my coat in the door.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

Oh no. Oh no.

unknown 9:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:55

So we just continued dating and the rest is history.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Oh, that's excellent.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

And so you you got married, you said you got married in 73? In 73. Okay. And then um, how long before you had finished up your nursing program then?

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Well, let me see. I and I was I finished my associate's degree in 75, my bachelor's in 80, and then my master's in 2000.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Okay. And then you were working in between all that though?

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Oh, yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

So where did you start out as a as a once you got your degree, where did you start out in nursing then?

SPEAKER_00 10:30

I worked at Sparrow Hospital on the floor.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Okay.

Marriage And Building A Nursing Career

SPEAKER_00 10:33

You know, I mean, I I worked all over. And then I worked in um cardiac care. And then I did a lot of moonlighting in the ICU. And one time I worked in the burn unit because nobody else would do it. So they asked if I would just do a four-hour shift, and it was right next to the ICU, and I felt comfortable doing that. So I did a lot of floating.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Okay. And it sounds like you learned a lot.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

Oh, an awful lot.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

I I uh I worked in the outpatient surgical department though for 20 plus years, the perioperative area. And I did primarily same-day surgeries where um they would come in and see Jan and I. I worked with her for 20 plus years, and then they would come back and spend the night.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Um, one or two nights. But we did everything from brain surgeries, joint replacements, hysterectomies, um, and then we we had our open heart program, and I did all the open heart pre uh pre-assessment.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Wow. That's so you mentioned Jan a couple of times. Who's Jan?

SPEAKER_00 11:33

Jan was the RN that I worked with for 20 plus years, and we got along great.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

So did you meet her like at work then? Okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Yep. We started working together, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Uh-huh. And then you were just a team for all that time.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

So what'd you like most about Jan?

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Oh, she well, we worked together. She was real smart. We just worked really, really well together. And she said it like it was, and we agreed on a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

So, I mean, we just we just did it.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

And now, was it one of those things where you you had strength and she had strengths and you could put those together and help each other?

SPEAKER_00 12:08

I would say yes. And then we primarily worked with the surgeons and anesthesia, because anesthesia would come and see the patients. And we knew all their idiosyncrasies, whether we wanted to or not, because we came we became very close to them.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Right. Well, you get to know the people you work with, especially in that kind of a setting, I would think.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

And if I couldn't do something, then she would do something, and if she couldn't do it, then I would do something. But we had a lot of funny stories. Um, one day I was taking care of this woman, and we had we had recliners. Well, I smelled an odor. It was just so bad. Well, she had to get an EKG, and so we had to flip the recliner up. Come to find out we left. She had stepped in some dog poop.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

And she thought it was me, and I thought it wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 12:58

No.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

And we drew labs. Well, this one big guy I had was in a recliner, and Denise was our tech. She drew his blood. Just like a snake after the blood was drawn. He slid all out of his recliner on the floor, passed out.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 13:21

So we got him up, but we had to call for someone to give him a ride home.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Yeah. Yeah. It's funny how the big guys uh maybe sometimes are the worst.

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Yeah. And then another time, this one guy came and Jan was doing him with his wife. The wife was asking all kinds of questions, in-depth questions, even about routine surgery. He had to have a test x-ray. X-ray called and said the guy was so nervous and shaking he wouldn't sit still enough for the x-ray. And we decided maybe the wife should have stayed at home because she didn't want to know all that information.

unknown 13:59

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Sometimes ignorance is a bliss, right? Poor guy. Yeah.

unknown 14:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

So so you worked for a period of time and then you went back to Michigan State?

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

To get your bachelor's.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Part-time, part-time. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

So you continued working at Sparrow.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Oh, yeah, because I carried the benefits. But at that time, what they were wonderful about, they had six 10 credit nursing courses.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

And you could you could get out of three of their 10 credit courses, but you had to take their final exam. So what I did, there was a nurse who had just gone through the program that I knew, she gave me her notes to study. Oh. And then you had to do clinicals. I had to do a med surge clinical and a psych clinical. And that saved a lot of money.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Oh, I'll bet. I'll bet. So and so uh what where was Tom working at this time then?

SPEAKER_00 14:46

Oh, he was working at Lansing Dairy. It's it's um they went out of business.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

So he was in charge of the distribution department.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Oh, okay. All right. Yeah, that whole business has gotten really big and it's not they don't have the small dairies anymore, it feels like.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Right. And then he went to work for Carl Vogt, who is a uh a mechanic, a heavy equipment mechanic, and got his business straightened out. And then he went to work for Schultz Incorporate, and they deal with um non-toxic waste.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

But he's very, very good at business and and finances.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Okay. So he would go in and fix things for them.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

He would go in and maintain them.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Because otherwise, with the recession, he would have had to lay lay off some some drivers and he gave them options. I can either reduce your your um hours or I'm gonna have to lay some of you off. And they went with the reduced hours and then it picked up again.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Oh, that's great. Yeah. What a what a great way to look at it.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Yeah, exactly. Giving them options.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Right. Most people would have gone in and just laid people off. Exactly. I would think.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Yeah, but he didn't do that.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Yeah. So you after you got your bachelor's degree, did you can so you just continued working at Sparrow though for this whole time?

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Yeah, because of the benefits, and I'm glad that I did, because um, at that time they don't do it anymore. If you reached the age of 55 and you had 25 years in, um, they would take your last five years and you could retire at 55, and they would average your highest three years, and then you could get a large bonus. And then with that bonus, you could either take it from them or you you could take a lump sum. We opted to take a lump sum and then just we invested it for our retirement.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

Okay. Now, so uh did you did you work at SPRO all the way up through when you got your master's degree done?

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Or yes, because at the time and I passed my certification exam, there were no nurse practitioner jobs. Right the few that were available in the area, um, they didn't I would have had to take like a two-thirds pay cut. And because of the two medical schools, the DO school, and um, they were taking some of the jobs, but it worked out well for me anyway. So I stayed there and it worked out well.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

So is that what happens when you get your master's degree, you become a nurse practitioner, or is that a different program?

SPEAKER_00 17:09

Well, the the well, if you take the nurse practitioner track, and there's a lot of different tracks that you can take. And now um most programs offer your your clinical doctorate.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

So you can just continue learning.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

You can continue learning. Okay. Because if you don't, you're gonna be left behind.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Right, right. My sister was it was a nurse, she retired recently. Oh, good. She was a nurse in Arizona, so I'm familiar with some of what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah, she finished up her master's and became a nurse administrator.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

So good for work in the office.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Yeah. Yep. She enjoyed it though. She loved being a nurse, as it seems like you did too.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Yep. And so at what point did you end up in the Army Reserve?

SPEAKER_00 17:51

Well, I that's an interesting story. In 1988, I was taking care of a female patient with routine surgery. Her husband was a recruiter.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

So and he wasn't pushy. So he's talking to me and asked, you know, and I said, I would be interested, but you know it didn't. He gave me a free army flashlight.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Well, so I was I was given, yeah, I was given a direct commission, and that's how it started.

SPEAKER_01 18:16

Wow. Wow, that's pretty incredible.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Yep, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

It's all being kind of at the right place at the right time.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

I I think, but I didn't know anything about it.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

And they told me I could um we had a medical unit in Grand Rapids at the time where I started.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Okay. And you were so how old in 1988 you would have been how old then?

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Well, it that i I was 35, and people in my my unit that they don't believe me because I had to sign a form saying that I would not get a pension because retirement at that time was age 52.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

And people didn't don't believe me. I said, I have the form. I I had to sign that.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

But my first drill weekend, we had no orientation officer. And they made me fill out all these forms because you didn't have computers then. Nobody would take it. And my first, my first um, and I didn't even have uniforms.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

So my first weekend, we were several of us were waiting for the commander. Apparently he was kept waiting and he yelled at us uh because he was and he became he was a great commander once I got to know him. And nobody would take these papers. I thought, finally, somebody did, and then we had a we had a basement, our building was old. And then he said, female coming through. To get to the other side, you had to go through the mail of latrain. I'd never been in the mail of the train.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:37

And and then on Sunday I went, I got yelled at again because you're supposed to be at the American Red Cross. Nobody told me. I said, Well, where is it? So they told me, so I went there. So I don't I'm surprised I still stayed in.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

I guess it was not a real good welcome into the city.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

And the other issue was at that time when I when I started, all our nurses got a$15,000 bonus, but they had to do three years. Some did not do their three years, some did their three years, and they got out.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

That kind of irritated me a little bit because we were all short.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

Yeah. Yeah. So you uh so as a when you got your direct commission, you came in uh what rank?

SPEAKER_00 20:20

As a first lieutenant.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

As a first lieutenant. And then so you didn't go have to go to any like boot camp or anything. Yeah, okay. Oh, oh, okay.

Officer Basic During Desert Storm

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Oh, yeah. You had to go to officers basic.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

But I thought, when was I gonna go? But it was during Desert Storm, so I'll never forget December 27th, 1990, I had it for Fort Sam in San Antonio, and there were 150 of us. Most were getting deployed, and it was bitterly cold. It was so cold. It was cold at Fort Sam. It was cold at Fort Sam, yes, yes, it was. And Amy Stark was my roommate, and um, but we did have New Year's Eve off. So we went down to the river walk, and that was great training. But I had never shot a weapon, let alone the M16. Or there were four of us, because they said, if you've never shot and you need it need a trainer, we'll we'll assign you one. So there were three nurses, and Claude was the pediatrician. We all had E4s, and then you had foxholes. These E my E4 wouldn't tell me what to do. I said, You gotta tell me what to do. He said, I ain't telling no officer what to do. So I didn't get very many tired targets. And Ann was right next to me. Her hot blanks were coming into my foxhole, and I could tell that these E4s are oh brother. So I said to them, I'll never forgot this. If you have a prostate problem, I can take care of you. I I don't think they knew what a prostate problem.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

And then we were from all over.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

And um, but I didn't have we didn't none of us had any warm weather gear. So I went to clothing sales. I wanted a liner for my jacket. All they had were extra, extra small and extra, extra large. And I said to the employee, why don't you have large and medium? Well, because we have to sell these first. I'm thinking, now what is wrong with that picture?

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Right. That's no way to run a business.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

No, and this urologist from Alabama had his Poncho on in formation one morning. I thought, why did he was cold?

SPEAKER_02 22:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

And then we had a unit party, and uh I you know, we're all we're all medical people. And he said, he got up in front of the microphone, and he said, Now remember, ladies, if you see me down on the ground, remember. And he pointed, these are not grenades.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

But you know things you would never get away with saying that.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Well, it's a deal, you know, we were medical. Right. And we had drill sergeants also in charge of us. Really? The active duty officers were deployed. We had a major and a captain, and and the captain was above board. Well, then she oversaw they were called gonads because you could have a logo. And and they were like individual ready reserves. And they had a shirt made for her at the end and said gonads.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

When they told her it was a sex organ, she turned B red from her neck up.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

She had no idea what that term meant to medical people. Oh no. Oh, I wonder if she kept the shirt.

unknown 23:42

I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

I told my husband and my mother at the time, I am not going to Iraq because they would have given us orders. When I came back, we went downtown to eat breakfast. Beth was a waitress. And the first things that how was Iraq? I said, Beth, I didn't go to Iraq. They're not going to send me to Iraq for two weeks. And then everybody kept asking Tom how I was enjoying Iraq. And they didn't believe them when I didn't go.

SPEAKER_02 24:09

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

And then my my great aunt's friend was in the hospital with a stroke. Her husband was a mayor. So I thought, well, let me go see her and let her know how she's doing. I was out the door and he said to another male visitor, Did you know she was in Iraq? But I thought, I'm not going to turn around and tell him, no, I was not in Iraq. We went for the two weeks.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Right. So you know, it's it's it's funny how people get things like that in their heads, right? Because in the Navy, I was what was called a fire controlman, but I worked on guided missiles. And so my mom for 10 years saw I was a fireman that I put fires up.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

So you know what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Absolutely. Absolutely. People get things confused.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Um they do. And I was glad, well, on our on our day to fly out, I got about 0,400 to take an earlier flight. Am I glad that I did? Because um half of us have stayed in San Antonio to wait, take their later flight, and half of us took the earlier flight. We get to O'Hare in Chicago, and our flight was canceled due to snow blizzards. So I'm running, and they said, Come on, let's go. Where are you going? I said, back then, you know, you had people at the at the date.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Right.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

And um, we were able to take another flight and because they didn't know what I was going to do. So luckily, and then we get to the Grand Rapids Airport. It's very late in the afternoon. Matt was our only pharmacist. His girlfriend was going to pick him up and wanted to go shopping. I said, Matt, it's not your fault. And then we had that was Friday, we had drilled that weekend. Well, they owed me a Saturday because I didn't it was after midnight when we got home. So I took the Saturday off. And then the Roth, they didn't come in until late Sunday morning to drill. Some stayed in San Antonio and some were stranded at Chicago. Boy, am I glad I I came back when I did.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Oh, you're very fortunate to get through.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

I didn't want to, but I thought, oh, I just want to get out of here. And Matt was our only pharmacist. No, we had 750 people, I believe. Well, there were a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

And so they wanted to know in one of our briefs if there were any pharmacists. He was our only one. So could you please come with us? And Anne Rhodes was an orange or something. He said, bye, Matt. See you in a year, Matt.

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Oh, poor Matt.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

And they wanted him to deploy. And he said, no. But at that time, the active duty people met help were deployed in the combat zones and we would take their places.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Right.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

Well, when he got back home, the letter was waiting, and he worked in the pharmacy at Fort Sam.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

So he was a good guy.

SPEAKER_02 26:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:56

And we had a New Year's Eve party. Um, Amy said, okay. And I said to him, get the door, Matt. And he said, I'll bring the chips and the dips coming by herself.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Oh, it sounds like a great time.

unknown 27:12

It was.

SPEAKER_01 27:13

So were things a little bit better back at your unit then after Officer Basic course? Did you have a better understanding of how things worked and all that?

Learning Army Culture And Leadership

SPEAKER_00 27:21

A little bit, but I I took me a long time to learn all the acronyms.

SPEAKER_01 27:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

And it and then, but I was not going to be one of these officers who did not know the Army alphabet. So what I did was I hated running. You know, we had to do the two-mile run.

SPEAKER_02 27:35

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

So I started practicing the alphabet in my head in order. Then once I got that down, then I would look at billboards and spell it out. And I was I either major or lieutenant colonel. And these two unless they'd want to how I spell my last name for something. And I went really fast. Fryover, Romeo, Yankee, Esther, Victor, Ecker, Romeo. They didn't think then I saw they didn't think as an officer I knew it.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Right. Well, and those things stick with you. I think two things stuck with me. One is military time. I've never forgotten that. And two is the the the phonetic alphabet or the military alphabet.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Well, and the other thing, when they handed me the orientation book, I read it from cover to cover. On the inside of the cover, in bold black, is that sergeants are the backbone of the army, and I lived that. If I needed information, I would go to the NCOs that I knew had the information. I mean, the officers were good, but many of them didn't want to learn the combat stuff.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

And they told you what they thought. And I said, Oh, that doesn't sound right. So I stopped going to them. And and the NCOs never never steered me wrong.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Yeah, if you trust your NCOs, you're they're gonna help you. You you'll be successful.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

And and they run, they run, they do run the backbone of the army.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Right. Absolutely. So how long were you?

SPEAKER_00 28:57

So did you stay at the unit in Grand Rapids your whole time, or did you pr pretty much I yeah, yeah, I was in there, but they changed my unit five times in like 10 years.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

So, but I did. But you know, we had several different commands. People came, people got out.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

Yeah. And the whole time, so the whole time you're working at Sparrow and you're doing your time in the Army Reserve as well. Now, did you deploy with that unit?

Combat Hospital Training Before Iraq

SPEAKER_00 29:24

No, no. Okay. Um, I deployed with um, oh, is it the 325th Combat Support Hospital out of Missouri, out of St. Louis, Missouri. We were from 29 different states. Wow, we did our training at Fort McCoy. It was all 11 Bravo training, infantry training. There were 450 of us. I think we were five platoons. My platoon were all nurses, and my squad we were all nurses. Um, it was brutal, brutal training, but we loved the training. And it was a heat cat five.

SPEAKER_02 29:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

And um, the master sergeant who's in charge of training ignored the heat. So we had a lot of heat casualties. When three of their trainers went down, they brought a Miller van in to make sure that people were being safe. But by then, and you're you're in your full battle rattle, your RBA, your Kevlar, your weapon. But it was the best training that we ever had. As a matter of fact, our squad, we ambushed the simulated sniper, didn't get one shot off using all hand signals.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

How do you like that?

SPEAKER_00 30:30

They we loved it. We were high, they were shocked.

SPEAKER_01 30:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

And then we had to find an IED in a vehicle. And there were four of us. And they said, get a password and be calm. It was so realistic. We found it and yelled IED and went running. It was so realistic. And my husband says, Judy, you listen to those trainers because if you come home in a pine box, I'm gonna be pissed. Those were his exact words.

SPEAKER_02 30:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

And we had a break, and I asked three of the trainers, now, if I'm with you guys on a convoy, because I don't want to be a burden, what do you want me to do? They said, Oh ma'am, you'll never, you'll never do that. I said, I never say never. And they said, You're right. So they talked me through it. And what they said, if we have an injured soldier, we are gonna have you take care of that soldier and we will do your force protection.

SPEAKER_02 31:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

It was awesome training. And then we had to do a ruck march. It was so hot. We could either do it at 1500 or 0400 in the morning. We had some downtime. There were 50 of us. So we decided to do it at 1500. Well, there were five of us females in our early 50s. And um, this young lieutenant nurse was behind Betsy, and I said, run, ladies, run. And we would run and then go, does he know how old we are? And we made it, I don't know, five miles or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 32:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

And there were three young bucks, two young bucks that came in first. It wasn't a contest, but us five females were the top after that.

SPEAKER_02 32:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

And they were impressed.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

We were tired, dirty, and hungry. But when they told us that, we were thrilled.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Uh-huh. So how long were you at Fort McCoy then?

SPEAKER_00 32:19

We were there three months, four months. Okay. Is what it was great, great, great training.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

But I could not, I could qualify wearing the gas mask. Uh-huh. And you I got like 30 out of 31 shots, and night maybe like 30 out of 32 shots. I could not qualify. But you and you didn't have the um the foxholes then. But you had to do unsupported and supported. And and the the rangers were great. And um one one uh our pharmacist told me that do it this way. So I didn't say, What are you doing wrong? And I said, Well, he told me, don't do it that way. I would come real close. Well, then um a Navy group came in. They had never fired. You had to load the magazine. They were so slow loading the magazines. The Ranger and I, we started loading them and we went faster, faster, faster. At the end, he said, How many did you load? And he won. And one morning I said to them, I said, Hey, you guys, you know there's a job opening and they filled it. Who? I said, Me.

unknown 33:32

And they left.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

My very last time to qualify, I don't know if I qualified or not, and I had a different ranger. And the control tower put their thumbs up, and I took my gloves and patted the guy's shirt, and it was all white. I left my finger.

SPEAKER_01 33:50

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

It was a tough range to qualify. Yeah. I could hit the 300 meter, but they didn't tell me to hit the 50 meter in the chin. And then I was given wrong information. Well, if you hit the rocks around, it'll go up and pop it down. It doesn't. Yeah. It didn't work that way. But they were great. And they said I was doing everything that I could do. And our sergeant in charge of us, he said, you know, today's my birthday. You have to qualify while it wasn't. But the day I qualified, he wasn't there. And he was a great guy.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Oh. Well, you got through it though. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

I got through it with persistence.

Arriving In Iraq And Hospital Life

SPEAKER_01 34:31

Yeah. And so where did you deploy to then after?

SPEAKER_00 34:33

I deployed, we deployed to Tacob Spiker, which was outside of Tucret.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

So is where we did. It was hot during the summer. When we got to Kuwait, they gave us 12 days to acclimate to the heat. It was 140 degrees.

SPEAKER_02 34:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

People were cranky. But my two battle buddies, we weren't cranky, and we were in open bay with us nurses because we didn't have much training. We had a couple of briefs. They took us out at 0200 to do a functional shoot. We only got 10 shots. But there was a camels up going across the range. We had to wait for them to cross. Right. Because if you shot them by accident, you had to pay for it.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

Camels get expensive too.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 35:21

Yeah. So you spent two weeks in roughly two weeks in Kuwait and then.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

Oh no, no, no. Oh, yeah, yeah. Two weeks in Kuwait, yes.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

And then did you convoy to Spiker or did you fly to Spiker? Do you remember?

SPEAKER_00 35:33

We flew into Baghdad.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

And then they took us on buses to Spiker.

SPEAKER_01 35:38

Oh, okay. All right. So and so talk to me, what was it like when you got to Spiker?

SPEAKER_00 35:43

Well, um, they had outside, it was huge. And they had all these buses that would take you to where you wanted to go because the Air Force had a mess hall. Well, the night dining facility, we had a mess hall. So we had some some downtime. So my friend and I took every single bus. They had a red bus, green bus, blue bus, white bus. Well, some of our friends, they were waiting. They were thought the bus was red or blue, but they had signs in the window. And the one driving, well, we heard about you, so we're gonna take you on a tour because that's all we wanted to do.

SPEAKER_01 36:17

Yeah, you wanted to see what what it was about.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

And it was a combat support hospital. We had an emergency department, we had an ICU, and we had a step-down unit with 20 beds. Um, and we took care of detainees, we took care of our soldier, our military contractors, we took care of DOD employees, and we took care of detainees, and we took care of the civilians.

SPEAKER_02 36:41

Wow.

Caring For Detainees And Children

SPEAKER_00 36:41

And my first week there, I I was a charge on days, and my buddy was charged on night. We worked 12 to 14 hour days with one day off. Well, we had a they called them high-value targets, detainees. And when you got them, whatever unit captured them, they had to have two of their from the unit um guard them. They were the only ones that could bring their weapons in, and we had barriers that we had to put around them. And our interpreters had to put their name signs on. Well, I get a call from from um, they were special forces that caught them. We they we called them secret squirrels. Well, the commander called me during the day, and he wanted to know if they could take that high-value target out and make the arrangements. I said, sure, no problem. So they took them out, no problems. Well, then our intel comes, this sergeant comes, and and another sergeant, and he wanted to know what happened. I said, the commander called, I said that they could take him. And they told me he was supposed to go in the middle of the night because he's a high-value target. And and by the way, we never had this conversation. I said, what conversation? Because that had happened again in our emergency department. I didn't say anything to him. They had a job to do. But why didn't you tell me this? We've got the guy there. You should have said something to me. And then one time we had three of them. One was a little boy. It's hard to tell their ages, probably between eight and twelve. He was caught holding the door for the extremists, insurgents, terrorists, and so he was captured. He was shot in the legs, and we had to have barriers. Supposedly his father was killed, and there was an uncle and a and another one. And the uncle's trying to talk, somebody's trying to talk with him. But our our chief doc came in. Where's the uncle and the nephew? I got along with. I said, What uncle and nephew are you talking about, sir? I don't know what you're talking about. But if you're talking about the three, their names are on the board because we had a board. Right. Nobody told me for sure it was an uncle and a brother. Well, then all of us, we had that little boy for a long time. All of a sudden he just cried, cried and cried, and there was no consoling him. We had DVDs, we had so one could go, but the other two had blood going. So I I said to our interpreter, who should we take first? And he said, the little boy. And what they do is they took him to our main camp in out of Baghdad. You had to go in the red zone, and they put them at Camp Cropper, and they would rehab these kids, giving them food, clothing, teach them, and then send them back to their village. Uh-huh. I understood that he passed away. Oh. Is what what I said. And then we had another one. This isn't this, I gotta tell you, um, he sent to high heaven, and the two soldiers that were guarding him had the barriers. He could have been anywhere from 30 to 50, and he stunk. I thought, the this is not gonna stop. So I put a garbage bag on me, took two female medics with me, and we took him in the female latrine shower, which is right behind, kept his shorts on and gave him a shower, and I told him how to wash his privates. He he was very thin and he was very cold. So one of them agreed to trim his hair, I had him brush his teeth, and we had clean clothes. So we gave him some clean clothes. I scrubbed his stretch stretch stretcher down, put clean linens on it. He kept saying, Shucran, she cranes, thank you. I do not believe that he was a terrorist. Allegedly, he was forced to hold the door open, um, or they would have killed him. Because if you don't have anybody to protect you.

SPEAKER_02 40:30

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

So, but I do I he he he would he had on PTSD depression. I strongly feel he was not a high value target at all. And then when they whisked them away, they would um they would be interrogated, but we we had nothing to do with that.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Right, you just took care of them until it was time to go.

SPEAKER_00 40:48

And another time there was this convoy going through, and there was a cr a village, and one person was running up to the convoy. This female female commander said, We better not shoot. It was an infant who had gotten shrapnel or shot in the abdomen, and they knew we would give him care.

SPEAKER_02 41:06

Right.

SPEAKER_00 41:07

Well, he had to have a colostomy, and he would not eat, so we gave him a feeding tube. Now, again, our the the chief doc in charge, her daughter was a speech therapist, and let's try this. We tried everything. And then because his mom couldn't come, his young uh uncle came, and we had another young in the ICU. This this kid was and they bonded very well. And then I was in the ICU for a month, and he was hooked up, and and I could tell he was not in pain. Well, this medic wanted me to give him something for pain. I said no. But we had a we had a uh swing out in the bat, so I took his poles, took him out there, swung with him and sang, and that was the best thing he loved that. So, and then he he went back to his village, he was brought back to do a reversal. Unfortunately, he had a cold, uh. So they couldn't do that.

SPEAKER_01 42:05

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

So that's a very sad story.

SPEAKER_01 42:07

Oh, yeah, yeah. It sounds like you were very busy there.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

We were very busy. We had, and then one time, but we were at the mercy of the Air Force because the policy stated that um no more than 72 hours in our area. Well, because there were so many sand dust storms, uh, you it was like looking at a negative photo.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

Right.

SPEAKER_00 42:29

So they would cancel many of the um uh flights. And um so so we were at the mercy, but one time, oh, and I had two that had blood going, and then we had three that were going out. We had them out on the tarmac, okay. It was hot for an hour and a half, and it was canceled. So I was a little irritated because these were American soldiers, and we had to redo the paperwork and readmit them all again. And we also had to get their weapons because their weapons were in our personnel department. So our chief nurse came in and said, Well, the Air Force says you're holding these people up. I was hot and I let them have it. I said, So they keep us on the tarmac in the hot sun for an hour and a half before you realize it's canceled. I said, and I've got blood going and wounds. I said, don't give me that. And he shut right up and he understood what I was saying.

SPEAKER_02 43:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

So don't tell me to rush, you know. Oh, and we had to get discharge orders and go over discharge with them. And then they were, they were in flown to Longstuhl, Germany, and then from there um to the United States.

Evacuations, Dust Storms, And Tensions

SPEAKER_01 43:36

Right. So for people listening, essentially they would come to the cache and you would get them stabilized, uh, and then you would send them off to usually Longstuhl, right? Yes. And then from there they would go to like Walter Reed or wherever.

SPEAKER_00 43:49

Yes, but one time we had three, I'd never seen a Purple Heart given. Three of them were given that day. Yeah these three soldiers all we had a set CT scanner, all came back positive for brain tumors. You know, one did not sound good at all. And what I did was I started collecting their patches, and one soldier, his um uniform was ripped to shreds with his patch, not one scratch.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 44:19

Yeah, and the body armor worked because somebody else was shot and it left a bruise. So I mean, oh, it was and then you know, it it was sad because we had one, she was shot in the back. She be a a civilian, a teenager, older teenager, she could became a paraplegic. So, and then she got physical therapy, and he was a cute physical therapy assistant, and he's taught her arms, and I took up and I was kind of dancing, showing her how to do it. And do you know our docs or physical therapy department made a wheelchair for her out of wheels and put like one of those white plastic chairs on it? But the sad thing of it is her mother came. We only had one hour to show her how to straight cast.

SPEAKER_02 45:06

Right.

SPEAKER_00 45:07

And I said, What about putting in a urostomy, a permanent, and a colostomy? So they discussed it with them. And um, because she wouldn't be able to have a stool on her own.

SPEAKER_03 45:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 45:18

And she she wanted to get pregnant and have a baby. So I hope she lived, but you know, you you don't know.

SPEAKER_01 45:25

Right. You just patch them up and send them on their way.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

Exactly. Right, exactly. And when we had them and they were being discharged, our interpreters, our interpreters were great, would go with them to the gate. But if they came to the gate, they didn't want to wait there that long.

SPEAKER_02 45:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 45:42

Because there were snipers out there.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:44

And supposedly snipers were were over at us because we had out a perimeter road, which we were not allowed to go on. And then they had these old, old, old um, what do they call them? That you that they could go up and shoot. And one time my friend and I went up on one because they weren't being used anymore.

SPEAKER_01 46:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

And then we said, we better get down. There might be a sniper out there.

SPEAKER_01 46:06

Probably not the best place to be.

unknown 46:07

No.

SPEAKER_01 46:08

Yeah. So yeah. And so what what year were you there?

SPEAKER_00 46:13

That was in 2007, 2008.

SPEAKER_01 46:15

Okay. And and um you were so you were there for the whole 12 months then? Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 46:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

All right. Now, did you ever have the opportunity? So you treated uh American soldiers as well. Did you have any opportunity to see them uh afterwards, or you just never were able to no, some of them did well, but I know some of no, we we never did hear the outcomes. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

I mean, one had a severe fracture, and I don't know if it was going to be amputated or not. He was upset. I we just we just never heard that.

SPEAKER_02 46:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

But we had some dogs one time. Oh, Mary, my best friend, worked in the emergency room, and two dogs were injured, and they were howling. And she said one had to be put to sleep. It was awful. And I had taken care of an Iraqi general who was an ally of ours, and I asked if I could have a patch. Well, they brought me two the next day, and I gave her one. Oh. Because she um she was so she was very appreciative. The other interesting thing is we had the band um that was that was near our our quarters, and once she was practicing the flute in our in the latrine shower, it was beautiful, and she apologized. But their mission was to guard the blimp. Oh. Because we had a blimp that would go up and gather intel.

SPEAKER_01 47:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 47:43

And they had to make sure that it was down and tied down.

SPEAKER_01 47:46

So the band was guarding the blimp.

SPEAKER_00 47:48

The band was guarding the blimp.

SPEAKER_01 47:50

Yeah, yeah. And I I you know, when I was there, I remember too, like there were um uh laundry and uh it was some sort of laundry and something. Anyway, they they did they were there doing convoy security. So people often did jobs outside of what their jobs were.

SPEAKER_00 48:08

Well, and we didn't have washing machines, yeah. You had they were contracted, yeah. There were Filipinos, and you would take your laundry, you and your laundry bag, and they would do your laundry. They were fantastic. Well, we had this one Colonel Doc, he was a riot, and um, they're trying to tell him where to go for his laundry. Take this road. He didn't, he was so confused. I said, sir, come on, I gotta pick mine up. I'll take you. And we're walking along. He said, This is not a road. This is not a road at all. I said, sir, we're in Iraq. This is considered a road, and I understand what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 48:45

Right. He just took it a little too literally.

SPEAKER_00 48:48

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 48:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:50

And then I'll never forget. I was there Thanksgiving morning. It actually snowed a little bit. It was cold during the winter because we were further north. Yeah. And um, they the MWR was fabulous, and they had this race. And my OR friends asked, You want to run with us? I go, Okay, at 0, 4:30 in the morning because they would close the roads down. If somebody had said I'd be into Iraq on Thanksgiving Day, okay, if somebody said I'd be running at 4 30 in the morning, I would say no. And they went, we had so much fun. And um, I kind of came in last because I was older. I got a 25 gift certificate to the PX that they had there. I won because I was the only female in my age group.

SPEAKER_01 49:31

So you won your age group, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

So we entered all of them that they had, right? And that was a lot of fun. We would I we would dress up with what we had in costume.

SPEAKER_02 49:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:43

And then we third country nationalists ran our dining facilities, and they worked hard. They decorated it for Christmas and Thanksgiving, and but they would give you huge meat portions, and I kept telling them smaller, smaller, smaller, and they got to know me. And one time one of them lifted up a little piece, just a little piece with his fork. Because most gained weight.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:11

Oh, yeah. Because you could have as much as you wanted.

SPEAKER_01 50:14

Yeah. And the food, depending on where you were at, the food was good.

SPEAKER_00 50:17

It was very good.

SPEAKER_01 50:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 50:19

But we had we had tacos on Wednesday, and I was sitting with who ever heard of Taco Wednesdays? Why don't they have it on Taco Tuesdays? And they didn't have any sour cream. Oh. Well, I had taken the sanitation course, became certified, and we got to go back there. Because we had to buy them from some certified vendors. And if they couldn't get through, they couldn't get through. So and they just couldn't buy it off from the locals.

SPEAKER_02 50:42

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 50:43

So, and they didn't under a lot of people didn't understand that.

SPEAKER_02 50:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:47

And then my second one was totally different in 2009-10.

SPEAKER_01 50:52

Um, I went to So So before we get there, so you you came back.

SPEAKER_00 50:56

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 50:56

And then so you were home for about a year then?

SPEAKER_00 50:59

Yeah, about that. And I went back to my unit.

SPEAKER_01 51:02

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 51:03

So, and then um I asked uh my my good friend Joe asked me if I wanted to join Civil Affairs. I go, why not? So I signed up to go to Iraq with Civil Affairs.

SPEAKER_01 51:15

And you were what by now you were a major colonel. Lieutenant Colonel.

SPEAKER_00 51:19

Lieutenant Colonel then, yes.

SPEAKER_01 51:21

So then you you end up with civil affairs then.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

Right, but they're headquartered at Fort Bragg. Okay. So we were at Fort Bragg, there were 105 of us. Uh-huh. We were at Fort Bragg for almost three months taking the Civil Affords Civil Affairs class. Most were lieutenants, a few captains, and a major. And we had 11 teams. And on my team, we had three colonels, and the rest of us were lieutenant colonels, and I was the only female. And you were in charge of a team.

SPEAKER_02 51:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 51:50

So, um, and it it was not an easy course. And you had to um write a paper on a subject that they gave you before you went, I got the Quran. So, but luckily, a friend, I mean, an acquaintance who had turned Muslim gave me an English version of the Quran.

SPEAKER_02 52:09

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 52:10

Am I glad? Because you also had to do a PowerPoint program. And I went to the library, one whole wall from top to bottom was filled with just material on the Quran. And then I was told I wouldn't pre you and certain people had to present. Well, I had to present. So, um, and then we we had the weekend off, so we went hiking.

SPEAKER_02 52:34

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 52:34

And this one guy, soldier, was wonderful. His parents had been Chinese missionaries. He knew everything about the Middle East and the Quran. And I said, Can I can I have you contribute to the class? He didn't want to, but he said, I'll trade you. He said, I got an army manual.

SPEAKER_01 52:54

Oh, geez. Poor guy.

unknown 53:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:00

And I'm not a PowerPoint guru. Well, we had to have a roommate, but my roommate was. So she made me a PowerPoint with the five pillars. So, but I realized they didn't know us anything about the Quran. Because with my first combat tour, we had a lot on the Middle Eastern culture because they didn't want us offending them.

SPEAKER_02 53:21

Right.

SPEAKER_00 53:22

You know, like you don't say you like something if you're in somebody's home because they'll give it to you.

SPEAKER_02 53:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 53:26

You don't look them straight in the eye, you don't show your feet. And then one of the things you can say to them is a lock, um, oh, what is it? It was just on my mind. Because it means good morning.

SPEAKER_01 53:38

Oh, a salam alaykum.

SPEAKER_00 53:40

Yeah, salam alaykum, alaykum salam. Right. And then um, and they liked everything orange because we we had actually an Iraqi unit that was injured that was working beside our unit. And there were five of them. And so I was taking care of the one. He was kind of total care. Well, then you had to give report every morning to the docs, and and we would take turns. We had five of them. They loved everything orange. I had one day off. Mary was our major cardiologist, hospitalist. She was fantastic. And Judy, they want to know where you were. I said, I had to have a dab. Then they started like American patients becoming needy. Right. So when I got in report, I said, gotta go, gotta go, gotta go. The chief surgeon he said to me, My goodness, you certainly were verbal this morning.

SPEAKER_01 54:35

So this is your second deployment then.

SPEAKER_00 54:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 54:37

Now, where did you go for your second deployment? At the Baghdad U.S. Embassy. Oh, goodness. Okay. Yeah. All right.

SPEAKER_00 54:43

And it wasn't glamorous. I was popping Pepsi every single day because I had to brief General Odierno, our four star in charge, like every eight to 12 weeks. You had one PowerPoint slide. I am not a PowerPoint guru. And you had 350 words, and they better match. They had to go up four levels, get approved, and then come down. When I got there, I was a nurse, reservist, and a female. They didn't know what to do with me. I thought, then why am I here? And they ignored me. They weren't rude, but they ignored me, the front office. And I had in my command, let me see, a three-star, two-star, one-star admiral, and two Fulbirds. And my Fulbird, my immediate chain, he was a West Point grad. So I had to put on this mandatory function with two State Department people for a worldwide women's thing at the ambassador's house. General Odierno came as a guest. Well, um, all this Iraqi middle-aged woman wanted was a picture taken with him. And we had the band there. It was a civilian function.

SPEAKER_02 55:57

Right.

SPEAKER_00 55:58

And so um I General Odierno was there with his photographer. I went up to him. They were getting ready to go out and ambassador give the speech. I said, General, I didn't yell at him, not once, but twice. And I said, Oh, this Iraqi woman wants her picture taken with you. He graciously turned around. The photographer took her photo. I got a photo with him, and um, and he sent it to me.

SPEAKER_02 56:26

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 56:27

And we had to write reports. So I asked Ambassador Hill for his speech. It was on an envelope. He was shocked because they tolerated each other. Because the State Department had a different philosophy than the DOD. Right. And he gave it to me, and his aides were there, and one said, Well, where are you from? And I went like this. Oh, Kalamazoo. I said, close enough.

SPEAKER_03 56:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 56:52

Well, and then um Jenna Odie Anna had to be briefed um five days a week, and it was and it was live. And um, this is the first time apparently he had ever done that after it was all done. He said, By the way, I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed the the women's um international function yesterday. Well, they came out of their front office and said, Hi Judy, how's it going? I thought, what he turned it around for me. Yeah, he recognized hard work. He was one of my favorites. He was an officer and a gentleman. He always said, Please and thank you. I have his coin. I adored the guy, and he was very busy because he had to fly to the United States a lot and uh in Congress. And then I don't know if you knew he became Joint Chiefs of Staff for the Army when he left. He the only time he ever got angry in one of the PowerPoint slides, he had kept asking, they had to give a report on how many were injured and how many were killed. He kept asking to separate them, but they didn't separate them, so he lost his temper a little bit. And then when it got done, my my friends and I, we said, how this isn't that difficult. He's asked it more than once, why can't they separate it? But he had just come back from Congress. You know, and it's a long flight. You're tired. It is, but I adored the guy. Matter of fact, up here, um, they were selling these Kiwas for um, I think for profit for the Boy Scouts or some darn thing. So I got this Kiwa. I and and I have Jenna Odierno's signature on here. Oh, okay. And I got everybody else's signature.

SPEAKER_01 58:44

Yeah, why don't you go ahead and sit down and um we get that?

SPEAKER_00 58:48

And it's all over. It's on both sides, it's on the sides. Uh-huh. And I had General uh Lanza, our two-star who was in charge sign it. He said, Oh, you got his signature. And I go, Yeah, I did. Because these T-walls, I you know, are you know are the were the barriers.

SPEAKER_01 59:31

Oh, right, right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:33

So it had a little chip in it because he took several and and it came back a little battered, but uh you've got it though. Yep, and I got his signature's on here someplace I'd have to look for.

SPEAKER_01 59:45

Right. Well, what a great memory.

SPEAKER_00 59:46

Isn't that a wonderful thing?

SPEAKER_01 59:48

Yeah, that is. That's really nice.

SPEAKER_00 59:50

Yep, and it's on both sides.

SPEAKER_01 59:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:52

You know, and I love it. The coin, everything's on here.

SPEAKER_01 59:57

So and so you were there for uh again, another a year then?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:02

Well, it was probably about eight months.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:05

A year if you can all the training, the training was then at Fort Dick.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:10

So, but I'm not fond of Fort Dick's. I was there for Command and General Staff College. Not my favorite place to be.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:18

Not a great place.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:19

And and then you know, then the um Air Force base was across from that course since they merged. Um, and we we would go across there. Um they really didn't like us in their territory.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:32

But that base was so much nicer.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:33

The Air Force base was it was a wonderful base. Oh, yeah, yeah, is what we did. And that that train, but it was there was probably only about 17 of us.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:43

That it was totally different from my first combat tour.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:47

Yeah. So you came back in 2010?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:52

Okay. Was it uh what time of year was it that you came back?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:55

Oh, it was spring because when we got to um back to Fort Dix, everything was green. I mean, we were used to seeing all this sand. As a matter of fact, um, as a lieutenant, I had my own room. It would have been banned here because I had a gap like this in between my door.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:12

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:13

And you had a footlocker and a bed. That was about it. Um, but I was glad to have my own space. But I bought stuff from the gal who had my room. I had a TV with a DVD player. The TV didn't work. Oh, what else did I? Oh, I bought a bicycle from her and something else from her. Well, then my heat didn't work and it was cold. I was triple dressed. I thought, you know, I'm not in the field. I need to get this taken care of. So I went to um the contract housing. She was one of oh, and and one of my lights were out. And there was a puddle of water on the floor. So she comes over. All I wanted was the heat fix. So the the old whatever, they fixed it. But she gave me a heater to use, a plug-in heater. When she saw the door and the water and the light, this is not acceptable. And I said, Oh, don't make me move.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:05

Right.

Coming Home And Adjusting Back

SPEAKER_00 1:02:06

And she fixed it all up, and we were talking about leave because I wanted to go to Germany and Tom was going to meet me there. But they said nobody goes on leave. Well, then they changed it. But at that time in 2008, you know, things were expensive. Right. They couldn't tell me when I was leaving. So she was from Savannah, Georgia. She said, go to Savannah, Georgia. I said, What's there? She said, and she told me, but she also said, stay at the hotel outside of outside the city. The same hotel was triple inside of the city of Savannah. I said, why? She said, because it's Savannah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:42

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:42

So um we flew, I flew from uh Fort Georgia to um Savannah. And then the hotel where we stayed, Tom is driving to meet me, picked me up. All I it's a Sunday, all I wanted was a beer because you couldn't drink alcohol. So I was still in uniform. So he took me to the Kroger store, and I've got a beer. And this one customer said, You can't buy that beer, and I thought, the hell I can. Well, I get up to the cashier, no beer, no alcohol sales on Sunday. Yeah. So when I went out to go town him, ah, the next county over. I'll take you to Walmart. It was the same thing. No alcohol sales. So I go back to my room. Tom wasn't there yet. Take a bat, take a bath. But you know, there's I I it was nighttime for me. Yeah. So I went to bed. It's like two o'clock in the afternoon.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:35

Tom finally comes around two o'clock in the morning because there had been a whiteout in Ohio, so we had to stay in Ohio. And I was wide awake then. Opens up a bottle of wine, and I so, but I did you it takes a while to get used to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:50

Oh, yeah. You get your clock gets all messed up.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:53

Yeah, and then they had the St. Patrick's Day Parade.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:55

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:56

So this woman who always um contracted for buses, so we meet in the Kroger parking lot. Well, she went with a different contract company. The buses weren't available. So there was a van with two American, African American guys driving it. And this couple with a handicapped adopt said, Would you like to share it with us? I said, sure. So we go down there and they were outside in front of City Hall. When you want to come back, then you call us. All the streets were closed up. We had a great time. We called them, they came to pick them up, but then they got a call from this elderly woman who wanted to be picked up. Come to find out her husband had been retired from the New York police. He was in the fife and drum band. They lived in Florida and they came up to participate. She missed the bus back to the hotel. She was cranky. She did not want to get on the bus or on the van when she saw these two two guys. And I said, ma'am, it's fine. Then she was tipped and yelled at them for taking so long. But all the streets were closed. Right. They were trying to find a way to get. So we got a tour free. Well, I called a taxi, and they told me to walk six blocks. If I could have walked six blocks, don't you think I would have? Oh my, she was cranky the whole way. They finally dropped her off. These guys were so good. We gave them a great tip.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:20

But this woman did this every year and hired them. And I don't know if she left them a tip or not. And then they kind of chuckled. I said, Tom said at first, oh my, maybe they left her behind on the park.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:33

I wouldn't be surprised.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:35

So, um, but well, we had a great time in Savannah. I mean, and the people were very, very nice. I didn't know they grew race down there.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:44

Oh, neither did I.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:45

We we visited Tybee Island. Um, I I mean, they had an army that was used for the Civil War. We went to the smallest chapel. We went to um, oh gosh. Oh, we even went to Fort Stewart. I said I wasn't gonna go to Fort Stewart. Well, this one um employee came up, you come with us. There was a long line.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:06

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:06

And when she's when they saw the ID, she let us go through on our on the one that didn't have any vehicles that was, I guess, restricted.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:16

So, and they had a wonderful, wonderful museum from the all the wars outside somebody. It was very, very well done. So we were glad that we met.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:28

It sounds like a great little vacation when you got there. It was.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:32

It was, and um, what's that, what's that airport in Georgia? They were wonderful. Uh-huh. Atlanta, the Atlanta Airport.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:40

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:41

It's where we flew in and flew. But when we came back, when we were out in the field at at Mc at um, they they wanted us, they wanted volunteers to take a ride in the C 130. So I thought, okay, we did, buddy, oh man, this isn't so bad. Well, let me tell you something. When you're flying in one and it It's packed and you're in the jump seat and your knees are hooking with, and there's no place to put your bags. Oh, yeah. And there's no air and no heat. Have you been in one?

SPEAKER_01 1:07:08

I have several times. They're pretty miserable. They can be, yes, they can be.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:12

Because and then when we were at um, oh, where was it? In Kuwait at the the Navy ran the the um you know the flight. We were there for four days. Flights were canceled, and their infrastructure does not support you being there for four days. Oh no. I only had my PT uniform, and that was it in my uniform. And you'd have to go and report every single day, twice a day, to see if you could go.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:41

And some didn't report. And then finally, they kept us until 0400. I finally went up. I said, Can't you let us go get something to eat? Or why are we still here? Reporting early in the evening, and the seats were very uncomfortable. People were trying to sleep, and they said, Get your feet off the the seats. Finally, they let us go. Oh, it was pretty miserable. And then when we got back, we didn't have a ride. Three of us didn't have a ride back.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:12

So we finally got a ride back. By then, I think, what is it? 0300 in the morning? And I reported, they wanted me to take the PT test that day. I said, No. I said, I'll take it tomorrow. I said, I am not taking the PT test this morning.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:26

I don't blame you.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:27

I'm too tired.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:28

Yeah.

Retirement, Promotions, And Army Paperwork

SPEAKER_00 1:08:29

So that, but I'm glad that we went. And then you had to store your weapon and your uniform and all your stuff in a locker before you could continue on your flight.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:37

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I remember that. So, oh you do? Yeah. You had to put everything in the locker, and then when you came back.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:43

Did you come home for your leave then?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:44

I did. I did. Yeah. So when you finally returned home then after this uh um deployment, now were you still working at Sparrow?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:57

No, I had retired. Okay. Because, see, I retired in 2008.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:02

Because if you reached that age of 55, and matter of fact, Tom went with me. She didn't want me to retire from human resources. Right. If he hadn't come with me, I would not have retired, but it was the best thing that I ever did.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:14

Yeah. How did it feel to walk out of that hospital the last time and know that you were going to be retired?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:20

Oh, I was fine with it. Because I was then I I did more in the military. So that's why um it worked out really well for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:27

And then so how long did you stay in the reserves then?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:29

What well I was there for a total of um 24 and a half years. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:35

So you what year did you retire?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:38

Oh, to mandatory retirement, 2013.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:42

And I had put an extension in, but when I was in Iraq in 2010, we had to draw down 50,000 people.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:50

So as a matter of fact, we had 60 generals. They were sending the worker bee units home. And I said to the major who worked in the G1 shop, why don't you send some of these generals home? He said, You see this? Do you think me, a major, is going to tell them they have to go?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:04

It doesn't work that way.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:06

Because Congress didn't tell them how to draw down.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:08

But then my last two months, I was in a non-um billet. So um, and they were asking people to go go home early. But um, I had a call from um, because General Lonza says, you need to don't, if you are sitting in front of your computers at our army, shame on you, you need to be out and be active. So I did. And then um, after I gave my first brief, I went with the chaplain. That was absolutely fabulous. And I went someplace else. So I was on the um on General Odin Airnose on those briefs on the slides. And somebody, I worked mostly with Mayor said, Did you get in trouble? I go, What? Did you get in trouble? I said, No, why would I get in trouble? Well, your predecessor did, and I just looked at them. I thought, no, why would I?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:55

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:55

And then when we had the band back at the um for this function at the um at the nobody had made any arrangements. They had their weapons and they had their instruments. I had to get a bus from the State Department lot um and get a bus driver, and that was a pain in the butt because I had sipper, nipper, and and use of a State Department. None of them were compatible.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:19

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:20

That then, you know, the SIPA was classified, and you couldn't put non-classified information on the zipper computer. Well, so I had to get an extra key. I went to my billet, there were two of us in there, and I and I put the weapons in my foot locker and gave them an extra key. Okay. Then um, then they they they performed, they did a fabulous job, but their flight was canceled. So these two State Department women, they had no place to stay, made arrangements for them to stay in the State Department apartment. But then I had to go into the U.S. Embassy because they had to use a SIPR phone to get a flight out. And um, you know, the I didn't know that um the Marine Corps did all the the um security and they let me in. Well, I don't know. One of the guys I worked with, we were one big open room with the Q. Right, you shouldn't have done that. You know you couldn't have not have done that. I thought, screw you, you are not in charge of me, and the Marine Corps are above board, and if they didn't want me to do it, they wouldn't let me do it. They had to get out.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:27

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:28

So then this one um building that we were using that Saddam Hussein had had built, um, it had been bombed like you wouldn't believe. And and you had to go up, I don't know, 200 steps, and you could see all of Baghdad. And this one cute young thing wanted to see it. I don't know how many times I climbed up to great way to get in shape. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and uh, who was it? They they were the first contractors. What was their name? Brown and um they were the first contractors that came to Iraq.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:00

Oh, I know who you're talking about, not Halliburton.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:02

No, no, no. The three three of them got together. But anyway, they put five million dollars in that building because there were offices there, and then they stopped because it was too destroyed.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:12

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:13

So I took Joe as a med tuck from um from uh Montana. He worked in the office, he was the captain, he was such a good buddy, and um, I took him and his friends up there. So um, and they loved, I don't know how many photos that they took. I said, All right, let's go up there again, and it was hot.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:32

So they made these out of out of spent brass. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:36

I paid, and he he helped me, I paid 50 bucks for all three of them.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:40

Those are really nice.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:41

Aren't those pretty?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:43

He bought a whole bunch of them. And then I forgot my last two months. Oh, and then I I worked with the military, I worked with several U embassies, uh I worked with USAID, the Treasury Department, the all of them. But anyway, so I had um a first sergeant call me because this um commander that was going to take over the military because for the Iraqis, she wanted me to be her ex-all. Well, then so I went to this colonel and he said, Um, oh no, I think we have a job for you. I said, Well, you need to let me know by 1500 today. So I spent the last two months at at the um at Victor at our the main camp. You know what they had me doing? All I had to do was put PowerPoint presentations from all the units, and an E4, E5 could have done it.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:37

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:40

From way up here to way down here. Oh, plus I had to write a report getting on um the supercomputer because everything classified was on there.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:50

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:50

I had to write a weekly report and turn that in, set up a conference that we had to have. I was very busy. Then before I left the embassy, they told me I had to write down everything that I did. I thought, what for? So I wrote it all down, and Tony was navy. He was great. You did all this? I said, Well, what do you think I've been doing?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:12

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:13

And then come to find out he came for a visit. He was fabulous. And he said, Um, you know you're a missed. I go, what? He said, you get a lot of phone calls still. But all my contacts that I knew that I relied on, they they they're they're they were all done.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:32

Oh, the other thing I had to do, we had to meet with this group of Iraqi women, and it was the only hotel in the room. And what was his name? He was a foreign service officer. He was great at mediation. So I had to call the carpool reserve, a car that was all armored. And uh, and you had to have these placards. When you went out into the green zone, you had to take the placards down.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:56

And you had to stop at all the checkpoints. So, and they were very serious about that. And um, one time though, and oh, you're trying to wind the window, the window down, and you had to check your vehicle to make sure that it wasn't, you know, that it wasn't um bombed or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:12

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:13

So, but uh I thought, oh, if somebody had said I'd be doing that, I thought, oh, you're crazy, I would not be doing that. But he hated it there, but he did such a great job at mediation. And they're just like people because you know the Sunnis and the Shias hated each other.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:27

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:28

And there was this one, she looked like a nun, and she was well educated. She had her PhD, I believe, in education. Her 16-year-old son had been shot and killed by Saddam. So she hated all of them. She would not compromise at all. One of the women walked out, and our mediator said, that is not the way that we operate in America. And um, and the other one went out and she came back. We never did make much headway with them. So, but it was very, and that hotel, it would have been banned here. Right. But it was the only hotel in the green zone, and they charged a lot of money. So, anyway, and so I spent my last two months. But this crazy colonel who had who had come with us, I don't know what she did. There were two colonels who were fired from the State Department. Said, get rid of them. They created positions for them.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:21

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:21

And Tim, he was Navy, and he was upset. He said, This never would have happened in the Navy. I said, Where have you been? This is the Army.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:30

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:31

So she told me I had to put on this function once a month. You had to um, you had to put this thing for all colonels, generals, uh, master sergeants, command sergeant majors. And so this other major um helped me put it on. And one interfered. And we had it, it was um a four-star hotel with a pool and everything over on the other side of um of the base. It was beautiful. I got my own tour because it was where the president and the vice president stayed. And um and she said, well, she said, we're gonna change the venue. I said, we are not changing the venue. And I said, because too many people were telling us wrong things. I said, if you hear this again, you let me know because we are done with this.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:22

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:23

And it was a lot of work, and and um, but we got through it okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:28

But she tried to set me up for failure. I had just moved. But what was it called? It wasn't victory, or was it victory? Because the other thing I got to do, this sergeant did bus tours, and on Sunday we had rats, big rats, that would always chew through our computer cords.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:47

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:47

And we had a half a day off Sunday. I thought I'd come in and get some work done. They didn't work. So I thought I'm gonna go on this bus tour, but they were individual cars. We got we got to see where Saddam Hussein was detained, and security was so tight so that he couldn't escape. It was an incredible, incredible tour. Incredible. And Saddam Hussein, he had built this huge palace called Victory of America. And he would roll a coin, the subfloor was marble, and if it didn't, if it if it didn't stop, he would make him replace it. He had one of the world's largest chandeliers.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:25

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:26

And um, oh, and then he but he also put a daycare there. It was headquarters for his Air Force and his Air Force there, because he knew we would not bomb those two. Well, somehow we were able to get 500 bombing material there. Uh so um it was a very and then he built this huge for his grandkids, huge Flintstone type cave. It was huge, and all these canals, and they had refrigerators. You could see where the stoves were, but the canals were disgusting. The only one they cleaned up was in front of the embassy and these two nationals that were. I saw them one morning and they flipped over because there'd be fish like this in there.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:14

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:14

It was disgusting.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:17

So anyway, I'll I'll shut up now. You're fine.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:20

So so you uh you came back, was so you was that your last deployment then, or did you have to do that?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:26

No, well, that was my last combat deployment.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:29

Um, I they were looking for people, I think, to go to Afghanistan. Yeah. But I thought, you know, I think I've had enough. But then I was recruited and I went to go work for the Regional Support Command um up at Fort Snelling in Minnesota. Okay. I had helped them out off and on 2004, 2005. And what we did was we were in charge of 19 states, and if they were less than 50, they would come to uh to us. If more than we would go to the we had to make sure that deploying units um were deployable. And that's what we did.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:04

So you did that after your last year?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:05

After my I did that in 11 and 12 for a year and a half. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:09

And then uh, did you come back to a unit here in Michigan for your last year?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:15

Well, no, because this is an interesting in order for me. Well, see, I was up for promotion to colonel. I was in Iraq at the time. Well, I didn't realize they didn't get enough papers. The second time I had an attitude and I said, screw it. The third time I thought, okay, I'm I'm up at Fort Snelling. It was everything, I I'll bet you I sent them over 100 pages, packs because everything was paper. Right. And then I got a new photo, but I had spilled water on my jacket. I go in there, the guy was nice, didn't have a didn't have an iron. So this female um came in and she had a they had a blow dryer. So I blew because it showed up on the photo. Yeah. And you know, you had to make sure that your your awards matched on paper, and you put it, I had to put all in abbreviations. I had to have it certified. It was kind, and then I had to have one form from my unit um to go into the IRR because if I found if I spent six months minimum in the IRR, I could be automatically promoted.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:16

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:16

Well, we had a new commander. I never met him. All I needed was a signature. I filled it all up. They ignored me. I was ticked. So I called, I emailed this commander. I know they were he gave him hell because he thought it was already taken care of. Within 24 hours, I had it and I got a phone call because I had put my extension papers in. But I knew the guy. He said, Are you going to um are you going to um extend? I said, No, because I had a year and a half left. I would have to have my own slot. They're not going to take somebody for for uh the year that I had. Right. So I went in the IRR.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:54

My my and I only had what less than a year to go.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:57

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:58

But when I got promoted to major, um, I didn't know this. Um, we in in our unit, you could be triple slotted. Okay. So I called the personnel to see because I was frustrated because I needed security clearance and they hadn't. She said, that's not the issue. Three things were not the issue, but she goes, You're not going to get promoted. I said, What are you talking about? She goes, You're not in your own slot. So I said, Thank you. So I called Gary Mattis. He was wonderful. He was a Miltech and he was mumbling on the roster. I didn't know what he understood. But he put me in my own slot, and that's how I got promoted to major. Now, our chief nurse, our command was in Southfield. She had two nurses. They didn't do it. They didn't know you had to do it. Nobody told you. So one, it was her second year around, and she had to get out. One, it was her first time around, and she said they're two of my best nurses. So if Gary had not done that, I would not have been promoted. But then the other thing, back then you didn't have a computer. I had 12 copies. Nobody would listen to me. Finally, Mr. Mattis, who worked in group, he would tell Cindy, who was from Boston with crude jokes. And it was after formation. And he looked at me, he said, What's wrong? I said, Nobody will listen to me. He said, Give it to me. I gave him a copy. He had me promoted by 10 o'clock Monday morning to major.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:23

Took care of you.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:24

But you have to take care of your personnel also. Some of them didn't treat them very well, but I always did. How are you doing? They did not have an easy job.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:33

No, no, and it's a lot of people to take care of and a lot of things to know.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:37

Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:38

So when you so did you retire? Were you able to retire then from the reserves? Oh, yeah. So you retired as a colonel or a lieutenant colonel?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:48

As a colonel.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:49

But see, what they would do is that's why if I went into the IRR, they would backdate it for three years. And it was quite a bit of a difference between lieutenant colonel and colonel.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:00

Oh yeah, absolutely. So Oh good.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:03

So that that that um helped me a lot. But um, well, and then when I was when I was promoted to major, um, I called Fort Bend, Indiana, because and I went up the chain, and yep, we got it, we sent it to Ohio. So I called the next level in Ohio. I said, okay, I'm gonna call Utah. That was the last, please don't do that, we'll take care of that. I didn't believe her because I thought, I don't believe you. I just didn't believe the system. So I called Utah. Yep, we'll get it. It was on their desk, we'll get it back to Fort Ben. I called Fort Ben, the guy was wonderful and said, You're promoted. But if I had not done that, I don't believe I would have been promoted. You had to be very proactive.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:44

Oh, yeah, you had to take care of yourself for sure.

Teaching Military Nursing Students

SPEAKER_00 1:25:46

Yeah, and then I needed this one form for major, and I was in our line at the unit for an hour and a half. I get up there, and the sergeant said, I don't have it. I said, you know, I need form DA. And um, so there was another sergeant in there. So he came up and I said, I need form DA. He went to a door and he pulled it out. Now, this other sergeant was shocked. I could see the look on his face. Now, whether he didn't like officers, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, or if he didn't want to give it to me, I thought maybe he couldn't find it and he was just helping him out.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:15

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:16

But I played the broken record. I thought, I am not leaving until I get that form.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:20

Yeah, you have to you have to advocate for yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:22

Well, you can't yell at them because they have jobs to do too. And with one cute E5, she said she's an E4, you're afraid. You can't yell at them because I yelled at him, I was so frustrated, and then you don't want to help you. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:35

You gotta, you gotta, it's a fine line.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:37

Yeah. So my last one was at Fort Snelling for a year. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:41

And then so you retired out of the military. Was there like a was there like a day where you put the uniform on for the last time and you knew that you weren't gonna put it on again?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:50

That would have been up at Fort Snelling.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:51

Yeah. How did that feel to know that you were just you were done?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:55

Well, you know what? I mean, it it was a good life, and I had the 24 and a half years. I I don't miss the politics. I do miss a lot of my battle buddies.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:04

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:04

Oh, because I taught nursing students, military nursing students also. That was one of my jobs. And um, I was recruited, gave her a three-year commitment, but it was a full-time job. But I love the other instructors I worked with, and we were licensed through the state of Delaware. So, but it was a full-time because I didn't, you had to prepare for your lectures. We did the clinicals. I'd be eating a sandwich in between clinicals and setting up my lectures.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:33

And after three years, I wanted out, and she goes, Well, don't you know what you're doing? But each group is different.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:38

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:39

And and they had care plans. I didn't have enough time to check them at the end of drill. So I said, you know, you guys we can stay another couple of hours, but but I put all red over it because we would go to Delaware, they'd go to Delaware for two to three weeks at a time. I said, take your care plans with them. And when we got there, and after what they asked me to give a lecture on care plans, I'm a lieutenant. You guys are majors, you don't know care plans. So it must be they liked the care plans. And this one student I had was in civilian coach, he goes, ma'am, you were, ma'am, you were tough. But I was fair.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:12

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:13

And I said, you know, you gotta do the care plan, but can do they have the critical thinking skills? We got Marilyn and I, she was awesome from my unit. She she taught at Grand Valley. We got no orientation, nothing. We were from 10 different programs, 10 different states, and um we didn't even have a ride to the hospital. So this one captain from New York said she would give us a ride, and that unit was from New York. Well, when I gave this, he was a vice principal of New York City. He was getting ready to retire, and it was an LPN program. I gave him this guy who was just about total care. His his daughter had a mental illness, his wife was an invalid, he had no knees, he had had surgery. His wound opened up. He was a four-man transfer and a diabetic, and I think at least 12 to 15 medications. So I gave it to this guy. And she said, You didn't what? Do you this was their first time in the hospital? Why didn't somebody tell us that? But it was too late.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:16

Right.

Post-Military Contract Clinician Work

SPEAKER_00 1:29:16

But he did well. We had him for three days days, but he had to know the medications. I had to look them up. On the third day, I took his medication cards out of his hands. I said, Now I know you know this. But this one nurse, it was St. Francis on the highest hill in Delaware. I loved it, and the staff. Well, why don't you take him for a fourth day? I said, that's too many for even regular nurses. But when he had his roommate, and you know what he said? He said, They'll take real good care of him. Now, and the this his family doc was trying to get him into rehab. He came in and he said, Get rid of that piece of shit. He was talking about my student stethoscope. Right. So he pounded on us, here, you listen with this. And then he told me he finally got him in the rehab unit and he was transferred already. Well, we had our last brief, and this principal, he was like E8, and he said, Where's Bill? So I said to them, I said, Could you please go up to see him? He's asking for you. The second year he told me, ma'am, you really brought up my self-confidence. You know, what a compliment.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:24

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:25

So, but I loved it, I love the teaching, but it's a lot of work.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:29

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, you get to impact all those people who get to impact other people. So I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about. Um, so you retired in 2013. Yeah. Uh from the military. You had retired earlier from Sparrow. Um, what have you been doing since retirement?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:47

Well, then I took some part-time jobs. Uh-huh. Um, but but um, oh, I know what I did. I forgot. Then I worked for contract companies as a nurse practitioner. Okay. Um, most of them were VAs, but um, my favorite contract company that I worked with the longest was um a medical company out of Omaha, Nebraska. They treated me very well. I went to Rapid City, South Dakota first for four months. Um, but again, there was no orientation. The orientation was all on benefits. I did not know their electrical medical record. I had veterans, older veterans, 12 in one day on multiple medications, multiple diseases. And I was putting in 60 L's a week. Bev might see the RN. If it weren't for her, I don't know what I would have done. I was only supposed to see four a day for a week. Right. I finally said to her, What the heck is going on? She said, the former, she was a physician's assistant, knew she was retiring, would give them all a hug and a kiss and tell them to come back.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:53

Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:54

And Bev said, they've been rescheduled three or four times.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:57

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:58

My gosh. So, and once you get used to the panel, so then they wanted me to come back home and come back for two weeks. I said, that's too much traveling. I'm not going to do that. So I went up to Rice Lake, Wisconsin at a small VA clinic. I really liked that VA. They were poor. It was in a rural area and they were dirt poor. They asked me to, their medical director came to see me wanting to know if I would be full-time. Sure. So I applied for the job directly, talked with Tom. I get home, but they take you off on their government email. So when I went back to, I went back to Rapid City for another year. Well, they said, well, obviously, you don't want the job, they're human resources because we didn't hear from you. It was on their government email. I didn't have access to it. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So then um then I went to Madison, Wisconsin and worked at that VA clinic. I loved that VA clinic also. There were 12 docs. Um, I loved it. This one doc was fabulous, but he was internal medicine. He was real smart. But he said um it was it was really he needed to do more. So I wrote um Dr. Montgomery, who was in charge, he was a retired colonel, by the way, from the Navy. Uh-huh. And so they let him do more things at the hospital. And he was great. I mean, I would go to him for some advice. And I needed to go, am I on the right track with this older couple? His office was next to mine. So I went back and I told them, and then you know what? They said, we didn't like him. That's why we stole it.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:33

Oh no. But he's a business. Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:36

So I went to go work there. But they only paid me 36 hours a week.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:41

And then the gal who was in charge of the admin people, she was also military. And she goes, Well, we don't have enough money. I said, Don't give me that. I said, It is how the VA spends their money. And she didn't say a word because she knew that it was true. Right. And then let me see, where so I and then I went to go work at um OMAC, Washington, for the Oregon um Colville Indian. I loved that job. That's a whole different ballgame. They have to earn your trust. Totally different culture. I just loved it. Dr. Smith was just wonderful, and we had another MP. Um, but they couldn't get people to work there because it was so world, they didn't want to work there. Um, and then the medical director retired and they couldn't recruit anybody. So Dr. Smith took over as medical director. I I adored the guy. You could go to him for anything. And I absolutely loved it. It was just they asked me to, he wanted me to come back. But I said to him, Oh, bring a camper, rent a camper. We got lots of you can bring your cat, you can bring Tom.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:49

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:50

But once you reach um western Minnesota, it's all mountain driving. I'd never driven in the mountains.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:56

I I I just love I love the people I worked with. We had a dental clinic, but no, no, no narcotics. Um, not even nitrous oxide. So if they needed further, they they had to refer them out. A lot of issues.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:11

So how long did you do contracting then?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:13

Let me see. Several years.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:16

Yeah. When did you finally stop working?

SPEAKER_00 1:35:18

I stopped working, let me see. My li I October 19th. Oh, it was shortly before COVID. Okay. Because I I went to work actually doing um physicals and assessments for recruits in Lansing.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:33

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:34

Um, but it was with um Chesca Company in Texas, and there was a retired Obi-Gin Doc and another MP. The medical director was a civilian, and um, and they didn't hire me right away. And I said, you know, red flag should have come up then. So I didn't like it that way because these it was all recruits. I love the major who was in charge of it.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:59

But they would send these people in who never should have been recruited in the first place.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:04

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:04

I mean, one, she had seen her brother commit suicide. She had been been abused and and neglected, and she had some severe mental illness, and she was trying to get into the Air Force. And so I said, This lovely object, what do I do with this? I said, I don't know what to do with this. And she said, You just need to write a report, write it all out, put it in. She goes, They're not gonna take her.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:30

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:30

Or any other branch is gonna take her. So they would kind of put people in there like that. If they didn't meet weight, um, they would put them on a weight loss program. And if they met weight, then they could they could join. But um, I don't know. I just didn't, I didn't the medical director, she was excellent and she had expertise. But you know as well as I, when you when you have civilians and they have no military background, it's a total different culture.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:58

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:59

And and she didn't understand our our command was in Chicago. She didn't understand them. Yeah. So but I love the staff that I worked with. Oh, that's a crazy thing. And then not only that, then you had to call in the night before to see whether or not you were needed. Then when you got there, you had to call in. And you had to call in when you left. I am thinking, and then the phone number didn't work.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:22

So by by fall of 2019, it was time to I I was done.

Final Lessons On Leadership And Learning

SPEAKER_00 1:37:27

Yeah. I was, but I still get uh lots and lots of requests because uh well, then I had the experience.

SPEAKER_03 1:37:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:34

And you know, they like hiring veterans because it's a tax deduction for them. And I had my security clearance. And you know, they like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:43

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So you have done a lot of stuff in your life.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:48

Yeah, it's been a good life.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:50

Yeah, I was gonna say it's been it's been great. Um, you know, kind of as we start to wind out, we've been talking about an hour and a half, if you can believe that.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:56

Really? Yes. Well, and the other thing, I never asked, never asked someone to do anything that I would not do myself.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:03

But if I knew somebody was gonna give me a problem, I would write down, write all objective data, who, what, where, when. And this officer that was in charge up at Fort McCoy, um, she didn't follow any protocols. And um, she was the officer in charge. And she sent me an E4 demanding that she get her smallpox vaccination. With the history of eczema, you're exempt. This contract doc exempted her. He was fabulous. She ignored the request. We had probably two or three hundred soldiers there. Yeah. And she ordered her to have it done. I went to her office, excuse the soldier. You want her to have it done, you give it. Well, she ignored me. So I sent her over to our officer in charge who was wonderful. Not in realizing he wasn't there. Well, Colonel, he was a lieutenant colonel. He was an active duty cardiologist from Fort Gordon. And he didn't know what to do. He came over. So we let her wait outside. I worked in the shop room. And so I had we had three E6s and two civilian LPNs who were fantastic. And um, he didn't know what to do. I went and got her. I let her, you tell him. She left. He still didn't know what to do. So he called our our officer in charge and said that she's exempt. She threatened to take her four-day pass away before they deployed. She could not do that. And so when Colonel, when he came back, I went over to talk with him. I said, she can be rude and disrespectful to me, but I will not let her threaten a soldier going to Iraq. Do you know what he said? I thought she was getting better. That's what he said. Wow. And then there was this crazy PA. She was on contract, but she would spend an hour and a half talking over their mental health issues. We had a robust mental health clinic. Matter of fact, the sergeant, he was in my unit. He was wonderful. And um, they got into huge fight. I don't know. And she Cindy wanted, she wrote 12 pages, typed them out. She wanted to put my name on it. I said, Cindy, you can't, because I didn't hear her hear anything. Well, we had a centrifuge, we had all kinds of noises. The and the deep freezer, three refrigerators, the enlisted always had a movie on the refrigerator. And like I was here, and they were way over here. I said, You cannot put my name on there. Well, apparently it was sent, and she was relieved of her duties. She could finish out her month or whatever she had left, but they told they had had it with her.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:36

Because she didn't do and she she was the captain. So anyway, I mean I got along with her, and she she was a nice person, but she did not follow safe safety rules.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:48

Right, right. So I don't have that.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:51

No, you can't have that.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:53

But there was another, he was retired military, he was a contractor, and one day he was shoveling snow. He knew everything about the insurance. He got a lot of great reviews. And I said, Why are you shoveling the snow? He wasn't supposed to. Well, I got to help. And the sergeant and they were all contractors. She's the master sergeant. One day she's shoveling snow. I said, Why are why are you doing this? She goes, I can't make them do it. It's not in their contract.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:23

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:23

So yeah, it's been a wonderful career.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:25

Oh, yeah. Okay, so what else did you what so I really have one other question to ask you, honestly. And so this is I I I close every interview with this question. And that is, you know, a hundred years from now, when someone's listening to this story or they're watching it, what message would you like to leave for people?

SPEAKER_00 1:41:43

I think never stop learning, never give up. Don't get angry, you know, write down your objective data, treat people if you don't know them because you've never been in their shoes before. Listen to what they're telling you. And if you are in charge, take some affirmative action and support them. Brainstorm. If you need brainstorming, you know, ask them in their positions, okay, what would you do to help improve this? That's what our my favorite commander did. It was his first. This is I learned so much from him. His very first formation, he sent out cards. He said, I want you to write down what you don't like about this unit. But he said, But don't say you don't like my brown eyes. I can't do anything about that. We had a great XO. He relieved the chief nurse and the assistant chief nurse because they didn't support the nurses. I didn't know them that well because I was doing other things. They were relieved of their duties. He put in Lieutenant Colonel Sue Pole and Major Hudson as our chief and assistant chief nurse. We had an outstanding first sergeant. He kept the morales up and he would participate as much as he could. He was wonderful. That was a wonderful command.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:00

Matter of fact, we had somebody coming in, they needed people to sign up for three different missions. And I we all signed up more for three of them. He said, I've never seen this before. I said, I've never seen morale this high. What is going on there? I said, we have a great supportive command.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:16

Oh, supportive people will do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:18

Yeah, and I I learned from the best commands, I've had mediocre and bad throughout my whole life, and leave that behind.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:26

And when I write down if they're going to give me a trouble, I've only had to use it a few times because they just wouldn't listen to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:32

I said, if you don't listen to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:35

So well, great. Well, you know what? Thanks for taking this time out today to share your story with me. This has been wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:42

So it helped. Because Tom told me not to go on and on. Oh no, this has been great. This has been great. I appreciate it. I forgot, yeah, because it's been it's been a wonderful career. I really do miss it. I really do. You know, and and you've been in, if you've not been in it, you just don't understand it.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:58

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:58

Do you agree?

SPEAKER_01 1:43:59

I agree. Well, I think that's the benefit of what we're doing today. You know, with the with the hundred, this is the 154th story. People can listen to these people who've never been in the military and and get an understanding of what military people do and what they go through.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:14

Well, and another advantage was when I was working in the VA clinics, I I was up front with them and I let them know that I was a veteran with two Iraqi tours. I never told them my rank unless they asked. So they kind of knew not to fool with me.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:28

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:28

And some of them in Madison would be 15, 20 minutes late. Well, I didn't realize one doc wouldn't see them. So I thought, oh, because so I changed my as if you've got 10 minutes. What do you want to discuss? And they were shocked. You guys are veterans. You know it's going to take you long. It's not fair to the people who show up on time.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:46

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:46

They showed up on time after that.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:48

Sometimes you gotta hold people accountable, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:44:50

Exactly. Exactly. I mean that Tom said, wrap it up.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:58

With Tom saying that, we will wrap it up. So again, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:02

Oh, you're welcome.