Shownotes
Goose is a retired USAF Colonel, who has led many commands during his 30 years in the military. His talk is about an extraordinary mission that took place in Saudi Arabia where he had to bring together 35 different commands and unify them. As you hear his story, you will hear his respect and passion for the soldiers under his command. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/wendy-green9/support Memorial Day brings out the best in us, and this week, we're diving deep into the significance of the day with our guest, Dr. Keith Goose Moncrief, a retired Colonel from the US Air Force. We kick off the show with some heartfelt words about honoring those who gave their lives for our safety and freedom. At the same time, we don’t forget to give a shout-out to all the essential workers keeping things running smoothly during tough times like the COVID-19 pandemic. As we transition into Goose's story, he shares his journey from the Air Force to the civilian world, emphasizing the importance of community. He reflects on the many memorials he's visited, the emotional weight they carry, and how they remind us of the sacrifices made for our country. Goose doesn’t just talk about the past; he brings it to life through personal anecdotes and experiences from his military career, illustrating the shared humanity behind the uniform. With a dash of humor and a sprinkle of nostalgia, Goose shows us that while we may have our differences, there’s a lot that binds us together. So grab a comfy chair, kick back, and join us as we explore this meaningful conversation about service, sacrifice, and community spirit. Let's make this Memorial Day one to remember!
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Transcripts
Foreign.
Speaker B:Listeners.
Speaker B:My name is Wendy Green, and this is the seventh episode of hey Boomers.
Speaker B:And it's a very special episode today in honor of Memorial Day.
Speaker B:We always have our loyal followers and I love to see them celebrate.
Speaker B:Say hello.
Speaker B:And we also always have our new followers and we love to see them say hello as well.
Speaker B:So let us know you're here.
Speaker B:And as we go through this broadcast, hey Boomer is all about conversation.
Speaker B:And we look to develop meaningful conversations and start to understand that even in our differences, we have more things that we are similar about then we are different.
Speaker B:So join us in the conversation.
Speaker B:Leave comments, leave encouragement, leave questions, just say hello, anything that you'd like.
Speaker B:We love to see that you're out there.
Speaker B:As I was preparing for this broadcast today, I was looking at the Rotary International magazine called the Rotarian, and there was a comment in there from our Rotary International president that I think just perfectly highlights what I'm trying to achieve with K. Boomer, and I'm going to read it to you.
Speaker B:He said our connection to one another is based upon mutual respect for our differences as well as our appreciation for what we have in common.
Speaker B:Community is the sum of individuals, individuals who have concern for one another, who care, share, and take responsibility.
Speaker B:And hey Boomer.
Speaker B:My hope is that we build a community through some of this conversation.
Speaker B:Memorial Day is a day that we set aside to recognize and honor the men and women in uniform who made the ultimate sacrifice to keep us safe and secure in our country.
Speaker B:I'd also like to take a moment to recognize some of the other workers who are currently working to keep us secure during this time of COVID 19.
Speaker B:Our grocery store workers, our sanitation workers, our medical workers, our emergency responders, and the people along the supply chain who are working to keep us with all of the things that we need.
Speaker B:Even though sometimes when you go to the grocery store or the hardware store, you're not going to find everything.
Speaker B:They're doing their best to get things that we need.
Speaker B:So let's think about them too, as we honor the men and women in service who gave their their ultimate for us.
Speaker B:Hi, Goose.
Speaker A:Hello.
Speaker B:Unlike my guest, Goose, I do not have a military background and I do not come from a military family.
Speaker B:I did, though, spend some time up in Northern Virginia, right outside of D.C. and I have visited so many of the memorials there.
Speaker B:The Vietnam Memorial, with all of those thousands of names makes me choke up even now.
Speaker B:The World War II memorial, the Korean War Memorial, and going to Arlington National Cemetery is almost overwhelming when you see all of those graves out there.
Speaker B:So it's.
Speaker B:It's an honor.
Speaker B:It's a time for reflection.
Speaker B:And as we go through this story today with Goose, I just want us to remember the wives who lost their husbands and the husbands who lost their wives and the parents who lost their children and the child or children who lost their parents.
Speaker B:Let's remember to pray, to be grateful, and to never take our freedom for granted and to thank those who have served.
Speaker B:And Goose, I thank you today for your service and for joining me on.
Speaker B:Hey, Boomer.
Speaker B:So let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Keith Goose Moncrief.
Speaker B:He's retired from the US Air Force as a Colonel after almost 30 years of service.
Speaker B:He has a BA in Political Science, Pre Law from Baylor University, an Ms.
Speaker B:In Adult Education from Troy State, an MA in Advanced Study of Air Mobility from the Air Force Institute of Technology, an MA in National Security and Strategic Studies from the US Naval War College.
Speaker B: In: Speaker B:I think he likes school.
Speaker B:He is currently a course facilitator with Cornell University's Online Learning and is the Executive VP of the association of Supply Chain Managers, Chapter 152.
Speaker B: served in the Air Force until: Speaker B:And while in the Air Force, he had several commands both in the US and abroad and won several awards.
Speaker B: Naval war College Foundation: Speaker B:I love that one.
Speaker B:Goose has been married for 40 years and they have one son who did not follow in his daddy's footsteps of joining the Air Force.
Speaker B:He is in the Army.
Speaker B:So, Goose, thank you so much for being my guest today.
Speaker A:It's an honor.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Can you tell us just briefly how you got the name Goose?
Speaker A:Well, according to military tradition, anybody who asked that question owes the.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:The military person around of their favorite beverage.
Speaker A:But I'll, I'll let you off the hook.
Speaker A:That actually relates to my navigator days when I flew for the Air force in the KC135 era, fueling aircraft for about 14 years.
Speaker A:And so in the mid-80s, Top Gun came out and so I, I got the name Goose and it stuck.
Speaker A:So I've gone with it.
Speaker B:Well, it's been around a long time, so feels comfortable for you.
Speaker B:So Goose has a story to tell us that is going to include some visuals.
Speaker B:So let me switch over to that.
Speaker B:And if you want to start we.
Speaker A:Can walk through this again on Memorial Day when we honor the fallen men and women.
Speaker A:I want to take an opportunity to talk to the current soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who live in that tradition and all very much are aware of the sacrifice that went on before them.
Speaker A:And just like the Americans who invaded at Normandy, these men and women are willing today to do what it takes for the U.S. mission.
Speaker A:And I call it the American DNA.
Speaker A:You know, may come in all different shades and hues and backgrounds, but very much unified in their purpose.
Speaker A:So what you see here in this slide, I'm going to unpack it real quick.
Speaker A:There's a lot going on.
Speaker A:You'll notice the, well, that's me in the front there.
Speaker A:And this is the first of its kind picture.
Speaker A:But this tradition continued.
Speaker A:This was actually taken this picture at this time, or I should say 6:30 in the morning, late in May, which was the coolest time of the day to take it.
Speaker A:And if you actually did a close up, all of the Americans are soaking wet from the sweat.
Speaker A:As you look, you'll see that the Saudi Arabia folks also showed up with their trucks and whatnot, but they're not sweating.
Speaker A:But the specter that you see there is King Abdul Aziz, the man who unified the tribes of Saudi Arabia.
Speaker A: bly, some of them marriage in: Speaker A:And we'll talk more about this in a second.
Speaker A:But he actually influences everything that happens in Saudi Arabia even today.
Speaker A:Every one of the kings, his successors are his sons, 45 sons that he fathered in his time.
Speaker A:But there's a lot going on here that goes on even today under the army.
Speaker A: th Air Transport Days of: Speaker A:But again, and you'll notice there's a little bit of an embedded 300, because there's 333, folks.
Speaker A:So what happens with the Air Force is, and it happens to this very day, it's not a very big organization, nowhere near the size of the U.S. army.
Speaker A:And so when the U.S. air Force, in this case I was also the group or base commander at Altus Air Force Base.
Speaker A:You have little pieces of different functional capabilities.
Speaker A:And so all of these guys and gals deployed to all these different locations.
Speaker A:Now, the reason I bring this up is what this forces us to do in the Air Force is to put together pickup teams.
Speaker A:These are integral teams.
Speaker A:Like when you send a platoon in the army or whatever.
Speaker A:So what I had was, and this is what I had to do as a leader was to unify people from 35 different Air Force bases.
Speaker A:So this, whether they were cops, whether they were IT folks, whether they were medical folks, whatever, the whole gambit of what you take to run a base was deployed to Escon Village compound, the official term.
Speaker A:So what I'm going to walk you through here in the next 30 minutes or so is I will explain the deployed mission, some of the complexity that surrounded it.
Speaker A:This was kind of like a planet sized Rubik cube spinning in different ways.
Speaker A:Whether we're talking about all the agencies, the US Embassy, the US army, the other services, Navy, Marine Corps, and then of course the international complexity, whether we're talking about cultural, which was big, and also the language and then also really world context.
Speaker A:You know, in the Arab mine, for example, they are still at war with the Crusaders and suffered humiliation in places like Bethlehem, the massacre back in Bethlehem, they still think about that and that's their context.
Speaker A:And then for the Americans, it's a whole different thing.
Speaker A:Obviously a Judeo Christian view, which is completely different, along with this Socratic kind of approach to problems versus the Arab way of thinking.
Speaker A:And then throw into that the fact that I had to deal with the religious celebration there, where they go offline basically for about six weeks.
Speaker A:America, the beautiful American excellence is really one of the big takeaways.
Speaker A:Again, honoring the really wonderful tradition of military service in ways that are stunning.
Speaker A:Okay, right.
Speaker A: up basically founded there in: Speaker A:And then now this was four years subsequent to that.
Speaker A:So this was, you know, an opportunity to leverage my experience as a commander for Security Forces, Air Base Commander and all of my other experience.
Speaker A:So as I got ready to take command there from a terrific officer who ended up being the Air Base Andrews Base commander, by the way, Chris Jones, he was very, very, very capable communications officer.
Speaker A:And so to take command from him was a tremendous honor.
Speaker A:He had done a tremendous job.
Speaker A:And so this was a very solemn taking.
Speaker A:And in those days, I'll tell you, when America tells you that you were going to command and you were going to be there to protect America's sons and daughters and advance them in their careers and honor their service, this was a task which I guarded like my soul.
Speaker A:This was a 24 hour gig and under some very challenging conditions.
Speaker A:But on the day that I took Command I barely understood, you know, what it is I was going to be up against.
Speaker A:So the group itself again was the 64 troop carrier group, World War II, very proud tradition, the greatest generation, you know.
Speaker A:And as we go through the years and then to the present, they assumed, we assumed the Eskhan village from the army.
Speaker A: Actually that was in: Speaker A:So you think about it running the gamut from troop carriers, air training, expeditionary.
Speaker A:It was a complete spectrum of things that the group had been tasked to do.
Speaker A:But if you know the Air Force, flexibility is the key to air power.
Speaker A:And this organization represented that.
Speaker A:So if you look at the Eschon village history and I did my homework, I attended a Middle east orientation course where they told me about the differences between our culture and theirs.
Speaker A:For example, the primacy of time in our culture.
Speaker A:We look at our watches and it means something to us.
Speaker A:It's something that we, if you look at my supply chain background, you look at how do you do lean, you know, how do I make and economize my time?
Speaker A:And even our culture all the way around, we make the best use per acre, highest yield of our acreage of anyone in the world.
Speaker A:And so that's why we feed the world.
Speaker A:But so one of the things that concerned me obviously was to know the terror environment.
Speaker A: w you'll see highlighted here: Speaker A:This was an event where the security assistance team over near Doha, which is east, well east of Riyadh, the capital.
Speaker A:But basically it was a truck borne vehicle explosion device that basically barnstormed an air base.
Speaker A:The toll was 19 US airmen of all types, mostly fighter and air rescue types, could have been a lot higher except that the, you know, attentiveness of some of the folks in the the tower, they evacuated part of the building, but 500 people, 498 people exactly were killed with by terrorists, in this case Hezbollah.
Speaker A:And then not too long before I showed up, three compounds very similar to the one that we were tasked to guard.
Speaker A:Again, security assistance in this case contracted under the office program manager, Saudi National Guard, mostly army training, equipping and foreign military sales, but under the auspices of the US Embassy.
Speaker A:And again reinforcing the long standing relationship in this case you had a vehicle born IEDs where in the middle of the night they basically barnstormed the gate.
Speaker A:They had only two guards, no barriers and interestingly they basically ran around the base shooting people for a period of time and then parked a vehicle borne IED in front of this tower which took down, you know, it was an eight story tower.
Speaker A:So a very spectacular event.
Speaker A:19 People injured, mostly contractors, a lot of people from the Philippines, engineer types.
Speaker A:And again, about 177 mostly local nationals killed.
Speaker A:By the way.
Speaker A:I went to this location.
Speaker A:I didn't get a chance to go to Kobar, but I.
Speaker A:But Vanilla could help me understand the security setup at Eskon which resulted.
Speaker A:Cobar was basically abandoned.
Speaker A:But Vanill, the three compounds and the one that I visited, sort of a mark of shame to this day, not rebuilt.
Speaker A:So you think about it, all of the foreign nationals who work in Saudi Arabia considered guests of the King.
Speaker A:So a failed protection, you know, arrangement there that the King was very much ashamed of.
Speaker A:And even to this day they didn't rebuild it.
Speaker A:But I got a chance to walk that terrain.
Speaker B:When was that?
Speaker B:When did that happen?
Speaker A: That was in: Speaker A: what's not on the slide is a: Speaker A:Again, this was a member name was Paul Johnson.
Speaker A:So this was part of my thinking, right?
Speaker A:But Paul Johnson was a man who worked for the office.
Speaker A:Program manager, Saudi National Guard.
Speaker A:He was an engineer who worked on helicopters and was teaching the Saudis how to maintain their helicopters.
Speaker A:Paul Johnson was, to this day, there's no way to understand his killing.
Speaker A:This guy was perfect in terms of his speaking of the Arab language in the Saudi context.
Speaker A:Culturally, he was married to a local Saudi woman.
Speaker A:He lived in the Saudi community, was widely loved and adored in the Saudi community.
Speaker A:So he was totally part of the Saudi DNA in every way.
Speaker A:And so when he disappeared and then the next, within the next month or so, they killed him.
Speaker A:This was again under Al Qaeda, but.
Speaker A:And all the screaming.
Speaker A:I had the horrible experience of watching Berg be killed because I had to watch it, you know, getting ready for this deployment.
Speaker A:But they never found Paul Johnson's torso, interestingly.
Speaker A:So the next slide here, the mantra of the hardest target in the kingdom was adopted.
Speaker A:I had with me about 333, so, you know, as a commander and all those different functional elements coming from 35 different bases had to find a unifying concept.
Speaker A:So the 300 and screams of aru and thickness that was epitomized by this particular film, eagerly adopted across all of the troops.
Speaker A:So my roles were pretty much shown here.
Speaker A:I was a member of the country team.
Speaker A:So I had every month go visit the embassy and get a briefing on the security.
Speaker A:You know, how the terrorism, you know, was going, what was going on with the terror, with the.
Speaker A:The the, the kingdom was doing about it and they were very harsh on people that were signing up to be or were purported to be members of Al Qaeda or whoever else.
Speaker A:So I was at the embassy and then I was also the Central Air Force Tactical Air Force's representative.
Speaker A:So in a way I worked directly for a three star who I'll show you pictures of here.
Speaker A:And I was his representative in the Saudi air Operations, air operations responsibility AOR and I was also the base commander, the installation commander in the army parlance the garrison commander.
Speaker A:So I was responsible for the care, feeding, morale support in every way for every person that was on that base or yeah at the garrison there.
Speaker A:And then again I had my separate hat as the no kidding Air Force er eg commander, the newest one.
Speaker A:So if you see the organization there, I've got two squadron commanders, a security forces commander there, John Booker, a really talented officer and he was the perfect fit for an organization that I ran.
Speaker A:And then for the support functions which I'll talk about more in a second I had lieutenant colonel Ken Stanley, another fine officer.
Speaker A:My first sergeant and my enlisted superintendent are like my right and left hand.
Speaker A:I mostly enlisted forces.
Speaker A:So selling them on the 300 and getting them on board was very essential.
Speaker A:You see Major Pedro Trinidad, the reason I put him on the slide is because he helped me do separate capers.
Speaker A:I had for example one of my firemen, contracted firemen, 47 year old guy always called Tony, who had a full up stroke while working for me, paralyzed on the right side of his body, completely immobilized and in need of help.
Speaker A:And so when I visited him downtown in a Saudi base, Pedro I will love until I die.
Speaker A:Because Pedro was able during the middle of a hot war to get me a C130 at Riyadh National Airport and a medical attendance team to help me get Tony on a gurney back home.
Speaker A:And miraculously Tony as he made his way back through mostly US army medical infrastructure, Longstrom, the base in Germany, base in Washington D.C. there or I should say the hospital in Washington D.C. he got better and better and he was fully mobile by the time he was welcomed to the open arms of his loving family back in Virginia.
Speaker A:So that's a great news and like I said, I'll love and owe Pedro to this day.
Speaker A:How he was able to get a C130 there in the middle of a hot war is something, I don't know, something like out of 24 the series.
Speaker A:So he was like my Jack Bauer.
Speaker A:So there I am, there I have my Responsibilities there with the two different squadrons, contractors, 60 of them, mostly IT personnel.
Speaker A:And then how you get them all on the same page again.
Speaker A:The unifying concept of the 300.
Speaker A:Here's some of the toughest guys I've ever met.
Speaker A:These guys are like expats.
Speaker A:I mean we heard about Hemingway and his being an expat places like Cuba.
Speaker A:But these boys, I mean they have a certain amount of their income which is, I mean they're very well paid.
Speaker A:They work for Vanill Corporation in this case.
Speaker A:But these fire dogs I called them, I mean these are some hearty guys and guys like Tony were kind of an exception to the role.
Speaker A:He worked dispatch.
Speaker A:But you know, if you, if I was ever going to be rescued from a fire, these, these boys and gals were hardy again, fully American DNA.
Speaker A:And we're lucky that they're over there supporting 64 AG, the folks that came after them.
Speaker A:About 60 of these guys up in the gym.
Speaker A:But the interagency challenge was pretty huge and I'll talk about that here briefly.
Speaker A:So in my job these security assistance organizations, the military of Defense and Aviation, the military Air National Guard so use amid them, we call them the US Military training mission.
Speaker A:Again representative by Major general who later retired as a three star running the Army Cyber Command West Pointer, General Hernandez Rhett.
Speaker A:Very smart dude who was a little skeptical about the Air Force running his security as garrison commander.
Speaker A:And you know he was a very complicated man to work with.
Speaker A:Office of Primary Program Manager Saudi National Guard Modernization Again the same place that Paul Johnson worked for headed by Chris Tucker who retired as a.
Speaker A:As a two star major general.
Speaker A:But I turned these guys into fans of mine.
Speaker A:In fact over the course of the command I went from emails all lowercase from General Hernandez Goose, I need you to do this around the base.
Speaker A:I saw this when I was on my run which he would do with the week of heat during the day.
Speaker A:Very tough man to all uppercase Goose, I thought I told you emails which took me some time to sit back and internalize.
Speaker A:But we get to General Hernandez bringing his wife to my change of relinquishment of command months later.
Speaker B:You definitely earned his respect.
Speaker A:It was a tough go.
Speaker A:I was the first guy that that like I said, brought his wife to the change of command.
Speaker A:It took some work.
Speaker A: who had unified the tribes in: Speaker A:This was about 68 acres of terrain.
Speaker A:And you'll notice that there's a wall around it.
Speaker A:Very common to have compounds that the average Arab in the street couldn't look at.
Speaker A:And so the allowance for certain things to happen, for example alcohol under diplomatic seal was brought in.
Speaker A:And for the non members of the 64 AG, they were permitted to drink a certain amount.
Speaker A:I noticed as I was running the base that stuff that would be considered patently illegal, like pork bacon, that whenever they got through the customs that we had paid the obligatory Saudi tax, normally about 15 to 20%, let's say pork ribs missing and even though it was on the manifest, somehow disappeared during or during the inspection.
Speaker A:But that's the kind of quid pro quo and the intrigue that happens in the kingdom, sort of bartering.
Speaker A:But the.
Speaker A:And I normally talk in detail about the security arrangement there.
Speaker A:But mostly high rise towers, very much like Khobar and very much like what we saw there in the other Vanill compounds, high rise towers.
Speaker A:But the different tribes that were represented there, whether it was the OPM folks, mostly army support and then the use of minim folks which were across the board, all in different compounds, different levels.
Speaker A:I like for my guys to be in more austere conditions.
Speaker A:I wanted them to not necessarily be in luxurious compounds.
Speaker A:And unlike the folks in other organization, they didn't have guests from downtown who entertain, usually nurses.
Speaker A:But my guys, no, we weren't drinking.
Speaker A:And they were very much bought into being at the highest level of readiness.
Speaker A:But very much a desert environment there.
Speaker A:A lot of moving parts of the slide.
Speaker A:But everything from law enforcement.
Speaker A:The chaplaincy represented a challenge.
Speaker A:You know, we are strictly forbidden to proselytize Christian views on Saudi soil.
Speaker A:So this whole idea of having Sunday worship, I basically led sort of a, sort of a, you know, a very high intrigue caper every week to bring in the different chaplains.
Speaker A:In fact, I actually brought in one of the bishops.
Speaker A:And so you do it where basically he comes in not dressed in his ceremonial attire.
Speaker A:We vouch him through the Saudi perimeter and then we get them in and usher them in.
Speaker A:We hang our cross only when the celebrations are happening and then we police everything up.
Speaker A:What was interesting was a very large constituency developed with a lot of Filipino nationals who would be vouched onto the base.
Speaker A:And they comprised the choir, they comprised the deacons, a lot of the ushers, and were the most devout and enthusiastic celebrants.
Speaker A:You know, I tended to sit in the back row trying to be very low profile.
Speaker A:But that was quite a victory that we pulled that off each and every week.
Speaker A:You see some of the other services, but the anti tower terrorism thing and force protection was the biggest thing that we were there for.
Speaker A:Integrated base defense.
Speaker A:So here's some pictures of it.
Speaker A:They comprised everything from searches to long range force protection extended well outside the borders of the boundaries of the compound.
Speaker A:Very much able to take down a vehicle borne IED that might try to barnstorm the base.
Speaker A:And even if we had someone on the base, we had security forces that could do door to door as good or better than their army counterparts.
Speaker A:The dog's a very essential part of the base where a lot of the security assistance took place.
Speaker A:Liaisons down with the military defense, ministry of Military Defense, the various embassies downtown.
Speaker A:And so we had to ensure that no devices were placed on the under body of cars.
Speaker A:So inspections that took I got them down to about 10 minutes.
Speaker A:But again there are a lot of alerts where we had suspicious things that maybe the cars had run over and the dogs alert.
Speaker A:And then the base is called to a full state of readiness while we sort it out.
Speaker A:Our guys made it to the Desert Eagle cover and this was a deal where they were practicing going into one of the villas and basically routing out terrorists.
Speaker A:So I can tell you if I was working for Al Qaeda, I wouldn't want to be sought by this group because they were some of the toughest dudes and gals and all kinds of perimeter defense positions.
Speaker A:I found it to be my duty to improve these rather dilapidated perimeter defensive positions towering very much, you know, many, many feet in the air and surrounding the every aspect of the base.
Speaker A:What was binoculars, et cetera, equipment shelves that were standardized.
Speaker A:I mean you can literally close your eyes.
Speaker A:And this is something I got from my maintenance background.
Speaker A:And you know that the flashlights are in the first drawer on the right.
Speaker A:So all of the perimeter defense positions were similarly equipped.
Speaker A:So a sort of standardization that the cops fell in love with me for that.
Speaker A:The other thing I did for the cops is there was a 12 story perimeter defense position.
Speaker A:And to be tough, their commanders typically made them go with their gear and all their equipment up those 12 stories flights of stories.
Speaker A:And I looked and saw an elevator.
Speaker A:And this dumb airman decided that, well, let's find out if the elevator works.
Speaker A:And it did.
Speaker A:And sure enough, those guys love me for the fact that they could use those elevators to get up there and not be totally gassed every time they showed up to work.
Speaker A:Every airman was a defender, lots of drills.
Speaker A:This particular person is a young Airman who represented the cooks.
Speaker A:So she was an Air Force services, morale, welfare, recreation troop.
Speaker A:And it was glorious to see troops even diminutive like her.
Speaker A:There was a girl similarly sized that was one of the defenders, the cops.
Speaker A:We're talking about maybe 5:1 and about 115 pounds.
Speaker A:And she used to haul around.
Speaker A:This girl's from Chicago, okay.
Speaker A:She used to haul around a.249, which was a really big sniper rifle with a lot of firepower.
Speaker A:And believe it or not, she used to walk around with that thing.
Speaker A:And I mean, I know we all see the movies, but if you actually hauled one of those things around, you see Rambo can't put one of those in each arm.
Speaker A:Nobody's strong enough to do that.
Speaker A:And every time I saw her, the cops got a lot of pride from just even seeing her show up to work with that gun.
Speaker A:But everybody kind of bought into that.
Speaker A:Every soldier or rifleman, in this case, every airman and defender.
Speaker A:So the international challenge was a much bigger challenge than working interagents.
Speaker A:As I mentioned before, the language barriers, the cultural barriers, and this slide here is a lot to unpack.
Speaker A:I'll do it in about a minute.
Speaker A:So the whole relationship, this particular lithograph was everywhere.
Speaker A:It was in the U.S. amendment headquarters, it was in the OPM SANG headquarters.
Speaker A:It was downtown at the U.S. embassy, it was in the Ministry of Defense.
Speaker A:This particular chart, this particular lithograph emblemizes the relationship, the enduring friendship between Roosevelt and the King Abdul Aziz, pictured here.
Speaker A:But also pictured here, kneeling on his knees, is a man named William A. Eddy, a Marine who was, because his parents were missionaries, was born in Lebanon and was a perfect linguist.
Speaker A:So he was the man for the task to talk to both parties.
Speaker A:By the way, king Abdulaziz was 6 foot 9, so he's normally portrayed sitting or whatever, but he fathered again 45 men, and then all of the kings of Saudi Arabia.
Speaker A:And William Eddy wrote an entire book about this relationship.
Speaker A:We're talking Roosevelt here on the deck of the USS Quincy on his way from Yalta, if you remember, the singular importance near the end of the war, that meeting Churchill, Roosevelt, and of course, Stalin.
Speaker A:But formulating the agreement, the two basic tenets of the agreement, security assistance, which is what was all about, what we're all about, even to this very day.
Speaker A: ard Oil American engineers in: Speaker A:Three things that the men had in common.
Speaker A:Both fancied themselves as farmers.
Speaker A:Both had Missions to protect and then the most important thing.
Speaker A:Both had rather tough physical ailments, as you know.
Speaker A:Roosevelt was relegated to a wheelchair, one of which he made a gift to King Abdulaziz, which he treasured.
Speaker A:And then King Abdulaziz because of injuries to his leg, unable to walk upstairs, treasured the gift from Roosevelt.
Speaker A:But the relationship again reinforce.
Speaker A:Here I am drinking sweet tea with my translator.
Speaker A:Here I am trying to get up after.
Speaker A:Again, this is legendary hospitality.
Speaker A:I got to hug lots of Arab men.
Speaker A:They kissed me on the cheek.
Speaker A:For a soul brother Airmen, that was a little tough to take for months, but we somehow got through it.
Speaker A:I couldn't do what all of the instincts in my body wanted wanted me to do, like run, sort of a flight or flight instinct.
Speaker A:But there I was trying to represent my troops.
Speaker A:I got them into good things.
Speaker A:I got them there for the US Embassy for the Christmas celebration.
Speaker A:There's my counterpart, believe it or not, his name is Colonel Muhammad.
Speaker A:I mean, how many Colonel Muhammad's was I going to meet?
Speaker A:But this was my counterpart was the military police brigade commander next.
Speaker A:And what I'm going to go through here is a succession of America's wonderful.
Speaker A:I mean the best people that I'm ever going to work with, the best people that I'm ever going to serve with were all there and it was routine to them.
Speaker A:And for a very little bit of money, especially if you're enlisted.
Speaker A:These people are inspirational.
Speaker A:They got me up in the gym.
Speaker A:I mean they could replace me with a roster of 100 folks.
Speaker A:We've heard Colin Powell talk about how he found that out when he got to the one star training school.
Speaker A:I knew that they could replace me on a single if I had any improprieties of any kind.
Speaker A:But these people are irreplaceable.
Speaker A:Come again from 35 different bases and forming sort of the most wonderful pickup time team that I'll ever see.
Speaker A:This airman here, his wife and he just newly married.
Speaker A:And when he got his deployment orders within two weeks of being at his first base, he asked his wife who was pregnant and she told him, hey, what else did you join the Air Force for?
Speaker A:Go out and deploy and do your job.
Speaker A:So her considerable sacrifice, the spouse organization there on the local base took her under their wing.
Speaker A:And he was embraced by of course, the 300.
Speaker A:But these are heartwarming stories.
Speaker A:Again, here's the dog handlers.
Speaker A:I've had a whole bunch of stories to talk about them little different.
Speaker A:They much prefer the company of dogs than people.
Speaker A:But they were essential to what we did at Escon Village and then again, you know, at the high ready.
Speaker A:These guys trained me on how to do their job, but I always stand aside when I see airmen.
Speaker A:This level of excellence, some of the worst maintained this, this, I mean they, they didn't equip us with the best equipment.
Speaker A:These are the oldest humvees in the military inventory and they were not up armor.
Speaker A:But my maintenance guys maintained a 95% readiness which was higher than any other motor pool in the in the entire region.
Speaker A:My guys also did honor guard duty at the request of the use of item folks.
Speaker A:But again, look at the excellence there.
Speaker A:90S club guys decided that they were going to make good use of the deployment and we gave them coins because they scored 90s on their career development courses.
Speaker A:So they were doing a lot multitasking but getting better developing in their profession which helped them for promotion by the way as they returned back home.
Speaker A:We did a 24 hour relay 1 mile relay with teams starting at 9 o' clock in the morning and ending at late at night.
Speaker A:But this guy here decided to do his miles with 100 pound backpack.
Speaker A:So it just gives you an idea how hardy the team was.
Speaker A:I thought he was crazy personally.
Speaker A:This guy here showed up six weeks later, he was 30 pounds lighter and completed his career development courses.
Speaker A:So he was obviously very much entitled to a coin.
Speaker A:So we like to call out the good things that guys did.
Speaker A:This is the coin which I have, you can see the size of it, which I gave out almost 300 coins for high achievement and the support of the effort.
Speaker A:We had no injuries even though we were working in really tough conditions.
Speaker A:130 Degrees outside on a cement parking apron and with engines running on C17s.
Speaker A:No maintenance guy injuries, no aerial port up and downloading cargo injuries and no heat frustration, which was a miracle frankly.
Speaker A:We tried to celebrate not only the Air Force anniversary, but I had to feed on their birthdays.
Speaker A:We recognized them.
Speaker A:Crab and steak.
Speaker A:I told my boss, the General north, three star general that this cost $10,000 a month.
Speaker A:I said hey boss, are we really willing to pay that?
Speaker A:And he said for our troops, spare no expense and recognize them on their birthday so they know they appreciate their service.
Speaker A:So as base commander I made it happen across the services.
Speaker A:Base chaplain again, a lot of intrigue sneaking him in.
Speaker A:There's General north and no, that's not Osama bin Laden.
Speaker A:Even though this guy looks like him.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:No, we didn't capture him that day.
Speaker A:But General north ended up with a four star.
Speaker A:He's a man that when you talk to him, you feel like a better person.
Speaker A:It was a wonderful thing to have his leadership man here pictured.
Speaker A:Moments before this, there was a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan.
Speaker A:And very calmly he asked to be dismissed and apologized for his absence.
Speaker A:And he talked to the president on some communications that we had set up.
Speaker A:And then he got right back on the schedule to talk to all the troops.
Speaker A:And I didn't really understand that he had gone through that until I watched the news that night.
Speaker A:But what a wonderful leader.
Speaker A:And this is the last slide.
Speaker A:So we pulled it off with the 300 and we protected the kingdom and protected all of the security assistance teams that had gone to Estan village for refuge after some really horrible terrorist attacks.
Speaker A:And they all returned home to the welcoming arms of their families.
Speaker A:And so it's a great story which I think epitomizes tremendous support of representative of the legacy of all those who have gone before us.
Speaker A:I thank you for the opportunity, Gary Tompkins, basically pointing me out to you.
Speaker A:And I appreciate the Rotary Club and President Green there for allowing me a forum to brag on some absolutely inspirational people.
Speaker B:I appreciate you taking the time to do that.
Speaker B:I just have two questions for you because I know we are short on time.
Speaker B:One is, can you talk to me about the leadership skills or insights that you got when you had to bring so many different commands together there in Saudi Arabia?
Speaker A:I read leadership books every time I get a chance to do anything.
Speaker A:And so I came in having read a lot of Lombardi and, you know, the lessons that he teaches.
Speaker A:But early in my time there, another coach, John Wooten, the illustrious wizard of Westwood, died.
Speaker A:And I watched as the entire sports world mourned his loss at 99 years old.
Speaker A:And so I obsessed on his leadership and.
Speaker A:And what I got from him that worked because it was puzzling how I was going to bring all these people together because they were even at dinner, they would eat together and even, like the cops would work, would only eat with cops.
Speaker A:So how do I get everybody kind of mixing it up?
Speaker A:And when I looked at how Wuden approached everything with kindness and presence and supportive communication, I decided to work that into my game.
Speaker A:And I was very successful.
Speaker A:Hardened.
Speaker A:I can't tell you what it's like to go to an airport and run into one of the 300 all these years afterwards and they'll stream out at the airport, Colonel Moncrief.
Speaker A:And then when we embraced the sense of kinship and love and the fact that we went through that experience together, it is no way to explain it unless you're a veteran.
Speaker A:These folks are from another base, from another, you know, specialty.
Speaker A:But we shared something, you know, fear, I guess, through a long period.
Speaker A:But that's how I did it, honestly.
Speaker B:Okay, a question from the audience is, Aru, where does that come from?
Speaker B:Did I say that right?
Speaker A:So what before I deployed is I was, you know, again, gathering my thoughts and trying to figure out my strategy.
Speaker A:Just gone to a Middle Eastern orientation course.
Speaker A:So probably the best and worst thing that I did was go to one of these big movie theaters and see the movie 300.
Speaker A:I was so pumped after that.
Speaker A:And what was fun about that, Greek mythology is not an insult to the Arab technology we're talking.
Speaker A:So the whole context of it.
Speaker A:I had the historian's office study it before I went public with it with the team.
Speaker A:And I got their approval because, believe it or not, that's okay.
Speaker A:Greek.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:You know, if I come in there with a different motif, crusaders or something, like, not okay.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I always like to ask my guests, the final question is, what are the takeaways?
Speaker B:For the people today that are watching this and for people that will see it on YouTube or hear this on.
Speaker A:A podcast, the two takeaways that I want for people to take is, the country's in really good hands with armed US Military.
Speaker A:And it's because lessons that date back even before World War II are learned and then established as doctrine and are learning points today.
Speaker A:You have to study for an entire year before you get battalion command.
Speaker A:And that's because you have to be the best person, the best artilleryman, the fittest, and a person who commands respect technically.
Speaker A:And also, they have to read, in the course of army commanders, hundreds of books on leadership.
Speaker A:So the country's in very good hands.
Speaker A:And then the second takeaway is not only that.
Speaker A:And so on Memorial Day, you know, we have to be very solemn in terms of the sacrifice of many, but know that even when you lose one single life, every commander from across the spectrum loses.
Speaker A:I mean, a part of themselves.
Speaker A:So I'm blessed that.
Speaker A:And they're very committed.
Speaker A:Like, they were like, a patriarch in my case.
Speaker A:And, I mean, there's no parent that worries more about their people than the commanders that deploy.
Speaker A:So I'm blessed that I got out of that without having to make that phone call that we're all familiar with, but blessing to be able to ever have those responsibilities.
Speaker B:Yes, you are blessed.
Speaker B:And you told me that you couldn't see all the comments.
Speaker B:Lots of comments of, thank you for your service.
Speaker B:So we definitely appreciate that.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Let me briefly tell you who's my guest for next week.
Speaker B:His name is Tony McDade.
Speaker B:I don't know if you know Tony.
Speaker B:Tony has had a life of service, starting as a Baptist minister and then moving into the non profit sector.
Speaker B:Tony is now the executive director for a non profit here in Greenville, South Carolina called United Ministries.
Speaker B:And he is actually getting ready to retire or semi retire.
Speaker B:We'll see which way he goes.
Speaker B:But he's going to talk about a life of service to kind of carry this forward and his life of service from the ministry to nonprofits and how there are so many opportunities for us in the community to build a community by giving back.
Speaker B:So I am looking forward to my conversation with Tony.
Speaker B:He's a wonderful guy and thank you again.
Speaker B:We all have stories to share and that's what I like to do on hey Boomer.
Speaker B:So let's start conversations one story at a time.
Speaker B:My name is Wendy Greene and this has been hey Boomer.
Speaker B:Thanks, Goose.
