Ranger to Green Beret to Rock Bottom Then Redemption | Ricky Mills Interview

Ricky Mills is a former Army Ranger and Green Beret whose story goes far beyond combat.

From a difficult childhood to elite military service, Ricky built his identity around strength and resilience, until a near-fatal accident and traumatic brain injury forced everything to unravel.

In this episode, he shares:

•  What it’s like to lose your sense of self 
•  How trauma affects families, not just individuals 
•  The long road back from isolation and brokenness 
•  Why helping other veterans became his mission 

This is a raw conversation about identity, leadership, and what it takes to rebuild your life from the ground up.

Connect with Liberty Speaks: 

🌐 Website: www.libertyspeaks.com 

🔗 Follow on Instagram: www.instagram.com/_ownyourjourney_

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Ricky, why are you special? Why am I special? I'm not. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm not special. I think if I was to narrow it down again, I'm a Christian. So I would say because the Lord has chosen me to do the things that I'm doing now, I'm not that diff that's the whole definition. It encompasses everything.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

I'm Herb Thompson, a Green Beret and resolutionist.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

And I'm Corey Thompson, Herb's less hairy half and branding expert.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Our guests come from various backgrounds, but one thing is true. They are special. I think you're special. Corey does. We're gonna get into the audience, it's gonna think you're special. I mean, you're an army ranger, green beret, wild Jaeger veteran adventures now. Oh, by the way, we'll get into you got hit by a car and essentially were dead. You did go to that special force qualification course with a spy. Uh, you also we just found out met your mom on the Maury Povitch show. So we got some interesting um things to get into. So we appreciate you coming here, sitting down with us, and uh check us out, Liberty Speaks, LibertySpeaks.com. If you're interested in having speakers come and speak your organization or any brand advisory work, but I I want to take it back to what you were telling us, your upbringing. What was your upbringing like?

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Yeah, so watching your video really hit home. So I watched your video. You're you're from Wayland, New York. I grew up in Elbridge, New York. Started off in Wheatsport Trailer Park, Green Acres Trailer Park. Same thing. Shout out to Green Acres, yeah. And uh, no kidding, Green Acres Trailer Park. And uh, same thing. So, you know, Vietnam vet father, just trying to uh escape, go into the woods. The woods was a safe place, the house was not knowing I was gonna join the military, I didn't there was no other option. Uh looking back on it now, like the message that I like to tell a lot of veterans when they refused to file, my father had a purple heart. We could have all gone to college for free, unlike a purple heart, uh who knows what.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

But you know, the purple heart was buried in the basement in the box. So there was no there was no opportunity other than that. And I just wanted to be a soldier. I I was proud of my father and what he had done. My father told a lot of stories, and my father's a storyteller, so I'm a storyteller. You know, I wanted to be a part of a small group of men that could go out, you know, maybe behind enemy lines and do things that you know even 99% of like service members couldn't do. And I knew that, and that that's what I was I was chasing when I went in, you know, and joined the military. And it takes a while to get there.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Purposely joined wanting to go to Ranger Regiment or find your way there.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

I didn't know what a ranger was. I I had seen the movie The Green Berets, but still didn't know what a Green Beret was. Yeah, not kidding. I went down there with recruiters, it was the easiest, his easiest sell ever. I walked in the recruiter's office, he's like, What do you want? I was like, I want to be in the woods a lot and I want to jump out of planes. And he was like, watch this video. It was a 13 Fox video, 13 Fox, Ford Observer, Eyes of Death, you know, using the binoculars and seeing targets and calling in artillery and blowing things up. And I was like, Where do I sign? And I delayed entry program, and I I I shipped out in like July of uh 89. I have dealt with death since the very beginning of my career. I've lost soldiers or been around, wounded, and and whatever soldiers from the very beginning. It was so that basic training class at Fort Sill was the 1989 incident where the 155 round went out and landed in the middle of the basic training class and killed a bunch of the guys, the drill sergeant, the students were working on the drill sergeant in the field. When I showed up for AIT, we had formation. It's a field artillery post. So at five o'clock at night and at six o'clock in the morning, the can goes off. Boom. We're standing in formation, one of the first formations, and the cannon goes off. Boom. Half the formation hit the ground, so low crawling.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

Because they just experienced their buddies.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Yeah. So you got my your first taste of my my TBI. I have I have uh emotional control issues. You felt me like going there. I have a major traumatic brain injury. So that's that was a very small little me, like going off into my emotional whatever. I cannot control my emotions anymore. My kids will tell you this. I'm a big, you know, there's three you's the way you see yourself, the way others see you, and they're you the way you really are, right? The way we really are is who we want to work on, and that's who I'm working on every day. That's who I want to be, that's who I want to change and mentor. I don't care who what other people think about me anymore. And I know I judge myself way harder than anybody else ever could. So I can't listen to those two voices. Wake up and just try to be me. And that's who God wants you to be. That's how God sees you, He sees the real you. Desert Storm happened in 91. I was there in 90 and 91. They asked for volunteers to go over. That's the one time I called my father and said, Hey dad, they're looking for volunteers. That's you know, you know you're going to combat, or that we're going to combat when your unit goes to 110, 120%.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Yeah, you're getting max.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

You're normally at like 80, 90 percent, you never have enough guys. When all the interactive ready reserve guys start flooding your rooms and you go from like one guy or two guys per room to four guys per room, they're going. And so I call my dad, and my dad was like, I wouldn't do it. You're in a unit. If the war lasts long enough, you know, go with your unit, go with the guys. And and you know, the war what a hundred-hour war. Yeah, it was over. I'm like, no, counted in hours or so. I missed two wars now, you know. Uh Panama, I was in for it, missed it. Uh, missed Desert Storm. It was good leadership time to witness that stuff and then to to take that stuff, you know, the definition of military leadership to influence others to to accomplish the mission by providing purpose, direction, and motivation. To see other leaders and how they led or didn't lead. They think they're leading, but they're not really leading. Because we lead an example more than anything else. The story that comes to mind is coming to formation one day and having uh uh NCO stand in front of me, I'm E4 Ricky Mills, and you know, uh you stand out because I'm going from 175, now I'm 185, I'm ripped, I three whatever on the PT test, you know, I'm and uh this NCO goes down the line and stands in front of my face six inches. You think you're so special. One of these days you're gonna be just like us or me or whatever, and I can't remember, and I just I broke ranks and I looked him right in the face. Um, you know, you're at parade rest, and I'm looking forward, and I broke ranks and I looked right at him and said, No, Sergeant so-and-so, I will never be like you.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

What happened from there to to make you flip over to the dark side?

SPEAKER_00 6:58

And it's exposure. In ranger school, I met my first Green Bray, other than the guys running around, you know, December 1989 from a distance, you know. You they're like, Oh, they look cool, you know, that's what's going on by there. My the first green bray I ever met was in ranger school in 1992. I'm I'm a winter ranger, graduated in December to to be a ranger from the ranger regiment, which we have a very high, we have around three-week pre-ranger back then, and then we go, we have like a 90-something percent pass rate for rangers coming out of regiment and going to ranger school and passing. Because you can't be a ranger in regiment if you don't get your ranger tab, so there's no such thing as quitting. And so if you eliminate quitting, then it's pass fail. And so small unit tactics is what we do. I remember there was a mission, and uh we one of the officers who was lieutenant ran through the wire instead of running through the breach, he ran straight through the wire. Constantina wire sliced his knee open. So he was laying there. This is during Ranger School. This is in Ranger School, Desert Phase. And I remember uh his rucksack, the guy his rucksack was laying there, and we were all like, you know, you've lost so many people, people are quitting. You go from whatever, however man squad down to like men, and you're constantly when they empty when a guy leaves, you got to take his stuff, and everybody else has to carry his stuff. So when when guys quit, you're screwing the guys. Finish the phase, finish the phase and carry your load if you can't do anything else. To watch that Green Beret walk over and grab that rucksack and throw it on top of his rucksack and just not not even think twice. I was like, man, I was like, holy cow! And the rest of us are there, you're like, you're humping your stuff. We're all we're 80, 90, 100-pound rucksacks at this point. And you're just like, Oh man, I you're looking into rucksack, and and I wanted to be that guy. I wanted to be that guy that didn't question himself, that knew he could do it and he was gonna do it, and you know, not question it. It's gotta be done anyways, and just walk over and grab it and throw it on top of his, who's carrying maybe 200 pounds, anywhere from you know 160 to 200 pounds, walked off like it was nothing.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Right around this time of your life, when you're in the ranger regiment, you get a call to go on the Maury Povich show.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Yeah, I mean remember, we have to remember the Maury Povich show used to be clean. Yeah, so everybody watched the Maury Povitch show. It wasn't all this insanity that they have now, the shock TV. And it was you were either watching the Montel Williams show or you were watching Maury Povich show, it was clean. You know, my dad was a Vietnam vet, and uh he had met my my real mother, which I didn't know uh as a young kid growing up that my mother was my stepmother for a long time until I was like seven, and uh and they were like, Hey, we're going to visit your sister, and I'm like, I have a sister. What?

SPEAKER_03 9:47

Where'd we get her?

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Uh and then that's when I found out that I had, you know, that my stepmom wasn't my mother, that I had another mother, that and all this other stuff, and then I had a sister, and it's like and then my older brother is not my brother, you know, by blood. Well, okay, that's why he's allowed to beat the crap out of me constantly, you know. And again, you're I'm escaping to the woods for many reasons. I I knew that she was out there, but my sister and her brokenness needed more than I did because my sister and my dad's PTSD, whatever, sitting in a chair staring off Thousand Yard Stare. She was three when uh she was adopted away because she cried too much. My dad got back from Vietnam, drove from Texas to New York by way of Florida, gave my mom uh money for a bus ticket and kicked her out of the car, and then went to Syracuse where where we grew up. Met my sister, I think three times before I joined the military. But then I'm in 175 E5 Ricky Mills, just took just graduated from B Noch, you know, won every honor award there could be, so they made me uh soon-to-be Staff Sergeant, uh fire support NCO over at ACO. And uh that's when the phone rang and they were like, hey, it's the Maury Povitch show. We're doing a show on people looking for their their parents. Your sister wrote a letter. Uh, would you would you want to come in and be part of the show? And we were on RF1. I don't know if they call it that anymore. That's where you're like, you're in the hot seat, you're the battalion that's in the hot seat if there's a world event. So you have to stay within you gotta stay within 50 miles. This is back in the days when we had beepers. We had pagers, we don't have cell phones, we had pagers, and you had to go find a payphone and call in and say you know when we beepers going off. The whole like, remember the Navy SEALs movie with uh Sean or whatever those guys, but we have the beepers, cool guys. But I went to my chain of command and and and saw, and they were like, Yeah, sure, you know, I got for some reason they let me go. And I went up to New York City. The building we were in was the was the Montel William building, the Maury Poet show was inside. I remember being behind the stage and then my sister being out there. If you want to see the full episode, it's on the Wild Jagger Veteran Adventures YouTube channel. You can watch the from beginning to end. I remember being backstage and I'm watching a TV and they're filming me. Of course, they want to get my reaction. Man, they they really work you over. It's tough. My sister's reading the letter that she wrote to Maury Povich, and then she finishes the letter. Mori Povich goes out in the audience and he times goes the first female, and and she stands up and she's like, she's like, Oh, I feel sorry for you. I help you find your mom, goes the second person. Same thing. The third woman, he goes, he gives her the mic, and she goes, I'm your mom. Uh as a veteran and even a non-veteran, I would say I would highly recommend anybody that has never met their parent. If you can find the person, go do that because it healed a huge hole. I would be a totally different person right now if I still had that hole in myself, but it filled that hole and it helped me be a better husband, father, and stuff later to have that healed, not carrying that around on top of the other stuff I'm carrying around now, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Subscribe, click the little button down there right now for more great stories, both from Ricky and other people coming up. Going forward though, you went through the special forces qualification course with a spy. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

How was that? I get because you didn't know the the guy was a spy then, I'm assuming.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

The the key thing was I was married to a German girl and uh Darren Baldwin, uh, another guy, he's 10th grouper that died from traumatic brain injury. Yeah, good friend of mine. He had a German wife. When you have an international wife, the what the international wives kind of group together. Yeah, yeah. And they're they're not ostracized, but they don't share as much in common with the, you know, and the American wives want to be over here. So therefore, you know, uh spouses, you naturally, you know, I got a German wife, you have a German wife, and he has a right, he had a Russian wife. You're watching the Americans. Remember the TV show The Americans and stuff like that. I look back on that now and I try to look at my situ the situation we were in and go, holy cow, like it could have got dangerous at one point in time. It comes out that he he he had a Russian mother or he had something, but he is actually in the Russian military as a young guy. But it wasn't known prior. Yeah, there's pictures of him in a Russian uniform and stuff. And then somehow he got over to the US and actually came into the military, did his time, and then ended up going going after that green beret. And I ended up in the same Q course that I was in. How about that? Yeah. So commander's course indicator was he so you're you know they run a 50% drill. Hey, we're gonna run through this so we get the technique down, we're gonna do it at 50%. He'd do everything at 100%.

SPEAKER_03 14:42

And can you explain why?

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Because you don't want to hurt each other. So if a guy doesn't know how to do an arm bar or do a rear naked choke or something like that, you don't want to do the arm bar and blow a guy's shoulder out every time. So you do it at 50% until a guy's a guy taps, and you run through it because it needs to become fluid. It became you're when you're you know, you know you're good at martial arts or any kind of thing when it becomes muscle memory. Muscle memory is about everything. So when you're you're your body, you're rolling with a guy, you're in a fight, you're in some situation, and it just naturally flows through, and you end up like popping the guy's shoulder out of socket or breaking his leg or who knows what it is. So Pete didn't know, so I ended up being with Pete a lot because I could, you know, like look, it's like having a dog that bites too much. What do you do to a dog that bites too much? Bite the dog, and the dog learns not to bite. So I was like, all right, put Rick with Pete. And so, all right, man. So I was like, dude, you know, I'm like, like, you're gonna hurt me or I'm gonna hurt you. You need to stop, you need to settle down a little bit. And then we went from there, you go up, you do phase two, and then you start your 18 alpha course. And the the indicators that were in the because he got he he popped hot in the 18 alpha course.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Like for drugs?

SPEAKER_00 15:52

No, uh for for like hey, there are two students in this 18 alpha course that are questionable. We had a guy from Guatemala and we had a we had Pete, and they they like at the end of the 18 alpha course, they got pulled aside and had to go to like a board, and even then they thought it was like weird. They were like there's indicators, weirdness. Yeah, there's indicators. So the indicators for us, this the students, at least me as a as a broad external guy observing things, like I'm a people watcher. Whenever like we would go out to eat, as an example, I I did a year in Korea, so I wanted to take the guys in the Q course, 18 Alpha. We had lunch, we're doing the MOS phase. I'm like, hey, let me take you guys down, I'll buy you guys lunch at the Korean place. He he he couldn't do that, he ate borscht. He he he would pull out his bowl of borscht that his wife made, he had to eat borscht. Um, the the the combatives thing, and but he at the end of the Q course, he him and the guy from Guatemala popped hot, and they they had to do the some kind of board or something, you know, you're not there, yeah. But you know, hey, what's going on with you? What's on your background? This is kind of the Guatemalan guy like was pulled from the course because it was back then in the army. Uh what if if a lot of people don't know it out there, the U.S. military is used by a lot of foreign countries to train people. Yeah, hey, go to America, join the military, get your training, then come back to Colombia and work for the FARC or work for whoever is a trainer. So they use the U.S. military as train the trainer and then bring them back.

SPEAKER_03 17:21

We worry about our kids' safety all the time. We worry about them out in public places because these days there's just so much to be worried about.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

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SPEAKER_03 17:38

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SPEAKER_01 17:56

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SPEAKER_00 18:09

And so the go the Guatemalan officer popped hot is like he's gonna go back to Guatemala and try to overthrow the country or something.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Yeah, something along those lines.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Something along the line. And Pete slid through. He was at my house uh on New Year's with my kids and my family. And again, go back if you haven't watched The Americans, go watch the Americans and see what happens when somebody like finds out that they're Russian spies. Yes, they don't live very long. Yeah, not that that would happen, but you know, as a as a guy, what if you know, what if somehow we f somebody found out. You both end up going to 110 together. 110, same company. He's down the hall at another ODA. I want to say he got pulled from the ODA because of the because he was doing funky stuff on the ODA. Then he got sent to some liaison position. He got pulled from the liaison position. Indicator, indicator, indicator.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

I know you did some stuff work work with the Balkans not to get into any secret stuff, but like what was that like for you?

SPEAKER_00 19:08

We had missions that we were on and we would rotate into different areas and regions. I'll say the Balkans, and uh we were on one of those reconnaissance and surveillance surveillance missions, uh, and for three months we were uh confirming or denying the president's presence of this car or this house or this person in different places. And and I, as a young captain on that that first uh three-month deployment, I started like the hair started standing up in my back and like we're supposed we're we're we're looking for vehicles and targets and houses and stuff, and I'm seeing terrorist activity. And we're we're supposed to be watching this, and I'm seeing like brown guys, you know, and I'm seeing muge activity and stuff like this. And we were not in the fight. So again, you know, uh 9-11 happened when I was in the Captain's career course. I tested out in German. I had a German wife, so I got a 2-2 in German. I skipped the language course. I'm going straight to 110, I'm going to Iraq, or I'm going to Afghanistan. I missed out on Panama.

SPEAKER_01 20:11

I missed out on your war.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

I missed out on Mogadishu. I missed out on Desert Storm. I'm going to combat. I need to shoot somebody in the face. And uh, and I got to 110, and no, and it went, and I got there and it was like breaks. And it was like, no, you guys have a mission. You are the Ford deployed battalion in Europe. We have missions for you guys here in Europe. And this is your mission, and this is your mission, and you're not going. And it was like, holy cow. So here we are uh in the Balkans, and I'm and I'm identifying for three months we're we're we're surveilling all this other stuff that's not interesting, you know, to anybody else. Still Green Beret missions and stuff. But uh, I'm seeing all this terrorist activity. You can tell an ODA commander that that's doing his job when his men are deployed, when his men are on mission. That's what an ODA commander's job is to do. Get missions for your boys. We don't want to be home. We didn't join the special forces to be at home with our wives and our kids. We joined the special forces to be downrange. And so my guys were like, if you talk to the guys on on ODA 033, we were, you name it, we did it. If something popped hot, we were on it. Um and uh but I came back from that deployment and and I like um I sat down on my computer, not kidding. We had three months, three months in, three months out, three months out. I got on my computer and for a month open source research on my computer, got it went to work, came home, and on my computer three, four hours a night researching terrorism, the Balkans. Uh, and it what it happened, it turned into a study and it turned into researching uh the Russian war in Afghanistan, the f the Mujahideen, uh How we trained, you know, these guys. But then when the war ended with with the with Russia, those guys didn't have any place to go. So you have all these highly trained Mujahidean guys that are looking for a fight. And they always want to go against America and the Israel and the West.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

The West, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

And so the Balkan War kicked off in the 90s. So here I am, it's 2000, 2003. The Balkan War kicked off in the 90s. Well, what happened was those guys I figured out through research, it's all open source. And what happened was I put together a three-ring binder and I did a synopsis. So the the front three to five pages was my synopsis of a three-inch binder of all open source stuff dealing with how the Muji Haddin would go to Turkey, lose their passport, get a new name, get new documentation, and then they would enter the war in the 90s. And that's where, like, you had Muj cutting Russian soldiers' heads off on video and stuff, you know, basically you know what I'm saying? Yeah, you know, the terrorist activity that took place in the 90s. And so in my research and stuff, I figured out these guys were still there. It's 2003, they were the trainers. So 9-11 happened. And you remember, they're the terrorists were were building up to 9-11. It's not like it started at 9-11. The terrorists were doing, you know, we hate the United States, we hate Israel, we hate the West. Way prior to 9-11. 9-11 just got us interested in figuring out why these people didn't like us, got us reading books and starting to figure out okay, well, they hurt me. I had to watch the towers go down, and now I want to go get some payback. The Lord made me a hunter. I I can I I've always been that kid since I was a little kid. If we go fishing, I'm gonna catch fish. If I go hunting, I'm the guy that's gonna get a deer. And that translated into like, I became a very good hunter of people using the same things. All people, just like animals, we all go to the bathroom, we all have to sleep, we all have to eat, we have relationships and all these things. And if you pattern that stuff, you can figure out where somebody is eventually on this day at this time, he's gonna be at this place, and that's what we did. I did that, you know, in the Balkans, but then I we also did that later on in Iraq when I worked with the uh the ICTF Iraqi countertrashing force sniper detachment. You know, I got to hunt people and solve other people's other units' problems. When Fourth ID had the IED thing that blew up the striker and killed all those people, and they turned that into a black zone, they called for sniper support. We went and answered that call. Fly in, do your mission prep, go in, take those guys out, eliminate the threat. Those guys fly back. I go over and see the botanic commander and say, Hey sir, we solved your problem, but you got to take back that ground, otherwise, in three or four days, they're gonna be right back in there doing the same thing. And that was that was fun.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

So you did get to war then.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

You did so they make it yeah, but but so in the in the Balkans, so this is a good story.

SPEAKER_03 25:13

So Yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to start. No, you're on the pathway there. You're good.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

So I took the three reminder to the s2, and I I I walked up to the S2. Remember, there's three months in between, so about a month of research. I walk into the S2, I walk up, and I give it to the S2.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

The intelligence officer handing it for those.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

And I I forget about it. I'm like, I'm like, okay, this it this again, you're probably I'll probably say this three or five times in the next 10 minutes. This was my GWAT. So, like two months, a month later, two months into the three months off, they call me up and they're like, hey, you need to go up to the S2. And I'm like, okay. So I go up to the S2, I walk through two layers of security, and there's my current company commander. The company commander I had on that deployment is now the S3. I got a brand new company commander who doesn't know the mission set. He does he has no clue what's going on. And I just turned into three the three and binder on the static, you know, this terrorist terrorist activity that we observed. And so they were like, hey, Captain Mills, we want you to be the R the RNS commander for this deployment. You'll be the commander over three ODAs. Captain Ricky Mills, ODA 023 commander, team leader. And I I look I I stood there and I looked over, and the major who's my company commander is sitting there, and I'm like, Bravo Company has a company commander. Like, shouldn't he be the guy in charge? And they said, they said, you know the mission set, you know what's going on. We want you to lead to be the RNS commander. And I I sat there, I stood there, and I looked, and I like, I was like, It's an uncomfortable position. It is so I've been thinking about how to say this for two days now. I took a big old chopping block and I took my stuff out and I put it on the chopping block and I laid a knife next to it for the next period of time. And I said, I'll accept the mission only if we waive the two the we had the sockier rules of the road, the two-man rule and the midnight rule. So I didn't want to be the RNS commander over three ODAs and then ask them to do something that I couldn't do or wouldn't do, or not have them be able to do something that I had done.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Limit them, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:31

To limit them, because the bad guys, the bad guys like are they're up at night, they operate at night, they're doing most or they're they're waking up at three or four o'clock in the afternoon, they're going to bed at three, four o'clock in the morning. And I and and I was on target by myself and during my three-month deployment. So I know I'm not gonna say you have to have a buddy because there are times when you need when one guy has to go and get it done. So then they said, You got to go brief uh sockier on that. So I grabbed my stuff and I went down, Captain Ricky Mills, and I had to go see the colonel at Sokir and get permission to waive those two rules. And I'm walking around, I'm walking around with a wooden chopping block with my stuff on it. And that's important because this when the story ends, you'll you'll fully understand. There's a more there's there's a big thing at the end of this. So we ended up deploy deploying on the next three-month uh deployment to the Balkans. We had we were the first unit to get permission to do CT counterterrorism under the intelligence that I had. So when we went in, I had I had vehicles, I had license plates, and I had names of people that were in country that I had confirmed were in the Mujahideen and the Russian war in the 70s that had somehow disappeared and then popped up again in this region. So when we when we went in as the RNS commander, my guys already had missions. As soon as we hit the ground, I'm like, go find this vehicle, go find this guy, let's do it. And then we so I sat, I was in I was in an office with an Intel guy, you know, and the other ODAs went out and did what ODAs do. And the Intel started coming in. So I had my Intel guy, we charts and darts, man. Our office was probably the size of this room, and we started doing link diagrams, we started doing this, vehicles, everything. We started doing that.

SPEAKER_03 29:25

Were you like, yes, I knew it.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

I was like, we're doing it. We're we're this was this was my war on terror, on terrorism. This was my GWAT. And uh we did what we did for three months, and at the end of three months, uh, we took the three months of collection on on all the stuff that we did and turned it into a paper, probably a 10-page paper, that went to the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on the status of terrorism in that region of Europe. So at the very end of that deployment, it's crazy. The reason I'm telling this story is because again, I wanted to talk a little bit about like meeting veterans where they are, and and nobody knows what a veteran goes through. And a lot of different veterans go through stuff that that they they tuck in. So at the end of that deployment, uh, I was down, we were getting ready to swap out. And I'm I mean, we just had a very, very, very successful deployment. I had written all the awards for all the guys and everything, and we're down there and we're getting ready to rotate out, and I'm sitting there and the phone rings, and it's the lieutenant colonel that's in charge over me when I was working where I was working. And he says, I want you to tell, I'll say Pat and Russ, I want you to tell Russ that he needs to pay for the damage on this vehicle. And I'm like, I'm like, sir, I'm sitting there with my team sergeant and my warrant. And so I was like to bounce stuff off your my team sergeant, my warrant, and not just run through into decisions. And he goes, You're gonna you're gonna call Sergeant So-and-so, Sergeant First Class Russ, and you're gonna tell tell Russ he's gonna pay for this vehicle. I was I was I think I stopped and I said, Sir, let me call you back. And I stopped and I looked at my team sergeant, I looked at my warrant, and I I was like, I was like, I was like, I can't do that. These guys are on mission. If we start asking operators, Green Brays operators to pay for stuff, they're on mission, they're doing stuff for their country. You know, if they have to start paying to do that, like this is gonna send a really bad message. So I call the lieutenant colonel back up and I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, hey sir, I've talked to my guys, and I'm like, it would send a really bad message. We we can't I'm you know, and he goes, if you don't tell that soldier to do that, I'm gonna do a 15-6 investigation. And I and I and I said, sir, with all due respect, I had to reach way down. I said, sir, with all due respect, you have the right in your position to do a 15.6. I am not asking my guy to pay for the vehicle. And he hung up. Like three minutes later, the phone rang, and it was my former company commander who's now the S3. Rick, you're fired. And I got fired for the first time.

SPEAKER_01 32:11

You said in 2007 you had some very I mean, you almost died, right? You got hit by a car.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Yeah, so uh I had given all that time to my wife, uh, or my wife had followed me around for all those years. And the kids, you know, when you're on an ODA, your kids don't know you. And so I volunteered for a SWIC assignment because I I I knew it was my last three years in the Army if I was gonna do 20, or uh if I was gonna do more, at least I would have three years with my so I I volunteered for a SWIC assignment, went out west, Fort Bragg, Camp McCall, small unit tactics instructor, had my branch visit at that time. Uh again, very successful ODA command. So I was I figured I'd be set for uh to be a company commander. My idea of getting in shape was uh I lived at Woodlake on the north side of Fort Bragg, north northwest corner of Fort Bragg, and Camp McCall's in the south. So I was gonna drive my car to work with my bicycle, ride my bike home 35 miles, and the next morning I would ride my bike again. Low impact, you know, saving my body. Very first bike ride. Uh road, all I remember is getting on my bike and turning left on a 15501, uh, past the Mexican little Mexican restaurant right there that we all eat at the gas station. And I woke up three days later. That was the first bike ride. Very first bike ride. The only reason I'm alive is because of the shape that I was in, because of the fact that I did Ironmans and stuff. I can I can at that time, not necessarily now, like a 150-155 heart rate, I can do that all day, you know. But it that's nothing. But to them, you know, at a 150 to 170 heart rate, they're like, we can't get his heart rate.

SPEAKER_03 33:52

Stochocardia.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

Happens a lot of times with a brain injury. Yeah, you're they can't get your heart rate down. So they induced a coma to get my heart rate down. So I was in a coma for like three days, didn't eat anything. I woke up three days later and then I died. I flatlined. There was a nurse, two cars back that jumped out and brought me back to life.

SPEAKER_02 34:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

I wake up three days later, and then you do PT, OT, and all that stuff. 11 days after dying on the side of the road, getting hit by a car in cycling gear. I'm wearing like a singlet. You know, you see those guys on the tour front. That's what I'm wearing, and I get hit by a car at 60 miles an hour. And uh 11 days after getting hit by that car, my wife comes and picks me up, wheelchair out of the hospital, takes me to my house, pulls up in the driveway, got a cast on my right arm, full cast on my left arm, the velcro kind, and the and the neck. I'd broke my C1, C4, L5, S1, broken uh elbow, six broken ribs, partial hemothorax. So one of my ribs broke through and and punctured my thing, and I was bleeding and air inside my lung cavity, and then I broke my Tibfib fracture, torn PCL, ACL, medium meniscus. I get out of the car, rip all the casts off, go in my garage, grab my Cyclops fluid trainer, set it in my living room, put my bicycle on it, climb onto my bike and ride for an hour. Get off the bike, take my flexor all perk oxycotton, and drink a bottle of wine and pass out for 23 hours. Wake up the next day, get back in my bike and do it again. I was a miracle. You know, like a month later, you know, when they were looking at how my body recovered, they were like, You're a miracle. I'm like, you guys don't really know what I'm doing at home, do you? The previous Ricky Mills, or even after that, until I went to a clinic, when I really when I found out that I was broken and and my wife kicked me out of the house, I had anger management issues, major traumatic brain injury. I didn't, I don't, I did not know myself. So the signs and symptoms of a major traumatic traumatic brain injury. Remember the old football incidents where the guys were like they were they had concussions and stuff for being hit in the head so many times, and they were killing their families and wives. There were football players that were like hurting people bad because and they didn't know what they were doing, they didn't know themselves. It's the same thing, and we have a lot of veterans out there with traumatic brain injuries and stuff from IEDs and things, and they're maybe going through the same type thing, but I didn't know myself. And in my world, after all the stories that I just got done, there was no room for weakness. So you buck up buttercup, you know, and but and here I am like I'm broken, really? Me? I I gotta carry people off the mountain. I've got four kids and a wife. I what am I gonna do? I we all have to justify the things that happened to us and where we're at in life and the things, but but yes, I am I am a big Christian now, and I do realize that the Taurus, the the ranger was just gonna keep plowing forward and keep pushing. I wanted to be uh a battalion, I was gonna be a company commander, I was gonna stay in, I wasn't gonna get out at 20, and that's not what the Lord wanted me doing. And the Lord said, Well, I made you the man you are, and I'm going to I'm now I'm going to start turning you into what I want you to be. It took me well, it took me a long time to understand that the reason I got kicked out of the house was because my wife was afraid of me, and my children were afraid of me. And my children thought that I was going to hurt them. The one thing that parents are supposed to do, and this is a message to to veterans are out there that might that this might touch. Maybe this is the message you need to hear. Um, we're supposed to be providing our children, our families, our wives with security and stability. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, stability and security, one, right? Uh and a lot of veterans, you know, got their guys in jujitsu and their kids like they're not playing soccer and baseball and and getting to have fun lives, you know, they have to be the right place, the right time, and to standard. And if you don't do it to standard, then you know, and and and I would again, yeah. I told you the story upstairs. When I was screaming at my family post-accident, I was outside myself. I was five feet behind myself with my arms crossed like this, watching myself scream at my family and going, oh no, Rick, you're doing it again. I mean, that's some crazy stuff. Tell that to a psychologist and get like, you know, the 70% for PTSD. I don't think I had PTSD until I got a TBI. But the traumatic brain injury took every emotion that I have, like the rain outs, every small emotion is like I have a little breakdown. Weird, it's weird, it's weird. So it turned me into this per person. My the other thing I like is my life was a highs and lows roller coaster. And I was having rain, I was, you know, I'm I'm homeless, I'm living in a business, I'm trying to turn it into a business, I'm going to trade shows, I'm trying to figure out how to pay the bills, trying to see my kids every two weeks. But in doing that, like I'm forcing myself to sit down in these meetings and have these rain outs episodes. And I'm and I don't know myself, I don't like myself anymore. And my life is just this roller coaster of emotions and pain and and everything. And it it took it it took me to to like I went to the clinic 2018. I finally went back to the States. I had 30% disability. What had happened is the the guy who got on the bicycle 11 days out of the after dying built my body back up to the point where when I did my retirement physical, I stood in front of this Indian doctor. I'm not doing the physical, I had no clue. I didn't know anything about like uh VA benefits and VA healthcare and all this other stuff. And he's like, Bend over, and I'm touching my toes. I'm I'm hyper flexible. You know, I have a broken back. I got a broken, you know. And I remember I knew I screwed myself when the the doctor, I I use my Indian voice for this, my wife's Indian, so it was like, Mr. Mills, you are I want to thank you. You are a great example for fitness for the rest, you know, for other soldiers. And I was like, I I didn't say it out loud, but I was like, you just effed yourself. And that's exactly what happened. So this broken body and broken mind that I had put together just got 30%. And then I went to Germany, and from Germany, I didn't have the ability to change that 30%. I should have had 100%. But you know, you put yourself back together. I was 39, I was 37 when the accident happened. I retired at 39 years old. Uh 56 now. That stuff starts creeping up on you. Uh the TBI that everybody got and an IED or one, whatever happened to their head, that comes in the form of an early onset dementia for many of our brothers in in their 50s. You know, I can see myself falling apart. I have vision issues. Sometimes I wake up and I have a hard time seeing out of this eye. The pain issues are ridiculous. But in in my world with Wild Jigger Veteran Adventures and wanting to support, knowing, knowing that the Lord is working through me and trying to touch these veterans, trying to find, trying to meet veterans where they are. My pain is nothing compared to I know what that that veteran is suffering. I've been there at the very bottom. And you can be a statistic with one bad decision and make a permanent uh solution to a temporary problem. And so the the physical pain and and whatever I have going on now that I'm a healed person, I have my 100%. I'm I'm fixing the relations, trying to work on my relationships with my kids who are now talking to me again. Either, you know, me and I have a new wife, my second wife, life is better. The Lord wants us to know to suffer joyfully. So, yes, was I hit by a car? Did I die? Did it break me? Am I the man that I was before physically? But I don't have to be that physical specimen, Superman, in order to do the things and find vets and work with vets. The story is in the struggle. So the way I gain and credibility and legitimacy with veterans is I go, I meet veterans where they are, whether that's the end of a bar. You know, Jesus dined with sinners. You know, uh I meet veterans at the end of a bar. I meet veterans in a national park living for who knows how long. I meet veterans where they are, and and then I gain the and maintain their credibility and legitimacy with them by just telling my story a little bit. I've been divorced. My kids told me to F off and they don't want anything to do with me. I had 30% for 10 years, you know, and they and they listen and then they go because a lot of these guys they think they're alone in what they're going through. They're the only ones going through this. Nobody else is going to understand. So they have to keep it private. They're isolating themselves. They they they they they don't want to hurt anybody, and they don't, they're tired of being hurt, so they isolate. And so finding them in their isolation, finding them in their brokenness, talking to them about my brokenness, and then leading by example, providing the purpose, direction, and motivation for them to go, hey, he did it. Maybe I should listen to him. Maybe, and that's all the little videos and stuff that are on the Wild Jagger Veteran Adventures channel. It's like, hey, it's just small stuff, but it's the small, it starts, it's the little victories, the Sear School, the little victories. You know, when you're in the bottom of the pit and you're trying to find your way out of that pit, you're gonna you might do something bad to yourself, hurt yourself, or hurt somebody else. Just one little thing can like, if it stops you from doing that and gets you to another day, and then maybe you can heal. Little bit and start finding your way through.

SPEAKER_01 44:03

I'm small little steps. It's not one big leap. Yeah. Just a little positive.

SPEAKER_00 44:07

A little bit. Make it to another. Remember, it's it's it's it's we are, you know, the Lord is preparing you for what He has prepared for you. He taught us to just take one more step. If I can just make it one more kilometer, if I can just make it one more day, don't quit. The hardest thing for me and what I do, and this I guarantee everybody that works with veterans out there understands this completely. You can't help a veteran that doesn't want help. So when you find a veteran, I have a three-try rule. I don't quit at the end of three tries. I have a three-try rule because I don't want to push somebody too far away. It's like my relationship, my daughter doesn't talk to me right now. My three sons do talk to me, but my daughter's at the point. If I keep pushing, I'm just pushing my daughter further away. She wants time and space. I have to sit here and carry that pain of not seeing and talking to my daughter to let her heal so that maybe someday she'll come back and we we can start the conversations that I'm having with my sons. The model that I made up last year, and it came to me, you know, the things come to me, and then I'm attentive to that, and I put it out helping veterans find/slash live their best veteran lives now. And it and that starts with the baby steps, the little victories and stuff. But finding veterans, finding veterans where they are, and then, and we do it a lot through the outdoors. So right now we're limited in our capability due to funding, due to location. Uh right now I'm in New York, John McCollum's in New Jersey. We've had uh Frank Atkinson down in Georgia, Florida, and we've got Greg Trainor in Pennsylvania. This is the year uh that we are gonna go try to do 50 states wide. So it's linking in the veterans, identifying veterans that need help, bringing them in, taking them fishing and hunting, exposing them to the outdoors, getting them out of the cesspool or the swamp that they live in. I know what that's like. It's horrible. The isolation, the acidic, the swamp that you're living in, the swamp that you voluntarily leave yourself in, that you will stay there, right? I say it like this: like I'm a very highly trained person on this planet. When when nine when everybody back in the day was putting their finger in my face and saying, You're the problem, you have anger management issues, you're the problem, you're the problem. I'm the problem. No, I'm not the problem. I'm a problem solver. I'll solve the problem, I'll remove myself. And removing yourself comes in several different ways. We're losing 22 guys a day. Yeah, some guys do it that way, some guys isolate, some guys go live under a bridge. A lot of guys, my last time that I was getting ready to quit, I was gonna pack a backpack and go disappear. I was I I wouldn't be here now, you know? Yeah, but the Lord had had another plan for me. Other plans. Yeah, that was right before I went to the clinic and finally started realizing why how why I was broken. To go full circle, it goes all the way back to uh like when I was a kid. And if my dad was just thinking that used the disabilities for the for the purple heart, yeah, you know, I probably would have joined the army anyways, but what about my brothers or what whatever else? And the thing that I talk to a lot of veterans about that have kids, the educational benefits for kids uh that are out there, the healing, the reconnecting with relationships with your children, you might not be able to repair that relationship with your spouse. Adults are different. No, when adults commit suicide, it creates a pattern, just like the Bible says, the sins of the man will be uh revisited by like up to three to five generations later. The children of adults who commit suicide are more likely to commit suicide. Right. Would you commit suicide if you thought that your son or your daughter would be more apt to commit suicide like a couple years from now? Or would you suffer, would you suffer joyfully through the pain, maybe go get some VA benefits, go get your VID card, get your 30%, 70%, 90%, 100%, get a little income coming back in, and and try to through little victories start your life again. Try to find slash live that best veteran life is not fun, it hurts, but it's better than not being around. A personal testimony. My son just told me that he's him and his girlfriend are pregnant.

SPEAKER_03 48:45

Oh, wow. Congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 48:49

I'm gonna be a grandfather, and I'm in his life, I'm back in his life, and you know, this and now that's the next generation that you get to positively impact.

SPEAKER_03 48:59

Yeah, yeah, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 49:01

I mean, I get to travel this country and and I went through a period in my life where where I said I don't I didn't have any friends, but that was a lie. I was lying to myself. That's that isolation and isolating yourself and lying to yourself to to justify, you know, the isolation. Um I just spent like every night I spend the night at a different place with another friend. And the relationships that I have and the the love that we have for each other. You know, like you know, I tell men, you know, I love you, man. You know, I wasn't that guy before. No, I was too hard to do that when I was, you know, before. But now it's true, you know. Love your neighbor, and who's your neighbor? Your neighbor's everybody. The most valuable thing in my life, if I had to name one thing, would be my relationship with the Lord. That's the basis.

SPEAKER_03 50:00

Subscribe, like, and comment, and don't forget to set those notifications. We'll see you next week with another special guest.

SPEAKER_01 50:08

Until then, on your journey.