The Soldier Fund Podcast episode features Ben Derrick interviewing two National Guard Special Forces soldiers about their experiences and the unique challenges they face. The soldiers discuss their career paths, including the rigorous selection process and the physical and mental demands of their roles. They highlight the importance of teamwork, language proficiency, and cultural understanding in their missions. The conversation also touches on the emotional toll of their work, the difficulties in accessing healthcare, and the impact on their families.
Unknown Speaker 0:00
Music.
Ben Derrick 0:13
Welcome to the soldier fund podcast, the platform for untold stories from the National Guard Special Forces community join us as we delve into the lives of these elite warriors and the journey of our non profit dedicated to supporting their courageous mission to free the oppressed worldwide. I'm your host. Ben Derrick, let's dive in, Gentlemen, thanks for making the time to sit down today to discuss, I think, a topic that's gonna help so many who are like me, who haven't spent time in the military, understand this really complex system that you guys work in. So if we could just get some introductions, I know we need to be careful about this, except for you Jordan, because I've already done a great job putting you all over social media. That's fine. Yeah. So if you could just let the listeners know how long you've been in and maybe times downrange, 19
Speaker 1 1:07
years in 10 of those in special operations and three combat deployments. That's
Ben Derrick 1:13
something I want to come back to, because so many people in the civilian world assume you jump in and you're on that Green Beret track, but often there's a delay, and so you don't get there immediately. Let's come back to that, though, in just a moment. And I think we should probably just to be safe, just rank in time's down range for you.
Speaker 2 1:33
So I'm a Sergeant First Class in e7 I've been two combat deployments, one Afghanistan and one Iraq. I've been on the team for four years now, but 16 years total time in service.
Ben Derrick 1:46
So that's plenty of time in and spent time in another branch. Yep, yeah, we won't hold that
Unknown Speaker 1:51
against you.
Ben Derrick 1:55
So really, the question, the reason I've asked you guys in here today is, when I'm sitting with people and I start talking about National Guard Special Forces, everyone gives that kind of side tilt of their head. It's just very hard to understand for those of us that have basically were familiar with the Special Operations community based on movies, right? So we don't know much about how the actual life operates. So I would love to just start some conversation today about a National Guard is a lot different than most of us understand. Many of us think about family members who are in the National Guard one weekend a month, two weeks a year. That is definitely not the pace for you guys. And then also what it's like to be non active duty National Guard. And there's some a couple of things in between there that allow you to be working for the Army full time, but that's not the case for most National Guard soft guys. So maybe we could just start there, describing your path to get into the National Guard, and kind of what that rhythm is for you guys, whether it be op tempo with deployments or daily rhythms, just in an effort to help people understand kind of your way of life as a National Guard, Special Forces soldier?
Speaker 1 3:06
Yeah, sure, I'll start that's a lot. Yeah. So my first 10 years, just regular National Guard, what everybody imagines the one weekend a month, two weeks a year. And about eight years into that, I found out the Green Berets are inside the National Guard, and so started looking into that process and how to do that. And kind of what it is, is a guy raises his hand and says, you know, I volunteer to be a Green Beret, and then you go to a pre selection or pre screening phase that lasts five days. If you make it through that, then you're allowed to go to real selection, which is held in North Carolina, 21 days. For me, the time has varied over the years. And then if you are selected there, you are invited back to attend the Q Course. So
Ben Derrick 3:58
there's a selection before the selection, that's correct, and then add selection, there's a varying percentage of the class who's there for those 21 days, roughly, that actually makes it through. So this is, this is a real selection that we're talking about here, not just a stop along the journey. Yeah. So
Speaker 1 4:14
my class, just to give everybody kind of understanding of that, was roughly 430 guys on day one, and 119 of us finished, and actually were selected. And
Ben Derrick 4:27
this part of the process is is designed, I wouldn't say, to weed people out, but to help people understand pretty early on, there's a way of life on the other side of this process, and we can figure out pretty quickly whether you are built for that correct.
Speaker 1 4:41
I think you you figure it out. I think you figure out whether you're built for so if you are already in shape and you can meet most of those gates, there's a lot of self assessment built into that, where a guy is thinking, do I belong here? Can I do this? Is this really. What I want, and all this doubt starts creeping in. So yes, other guys in the CADRE are assessing you, but I think the more important thing is you're self assessing the entire time and talking about
Speaker 2 5:12
that self assessment, you see it through the Q Course, also like different phases and stuff. Dudes are like, You know what? This isn't for me, and they just quit a year and a half in Yeah, we actually
Speaker 1 5:20
just had this conversation. This week. I wouldn't say that I am pro athlete, stellar guy. I probably don't lift as heavy as some guys. I'm not as fast as some guys, but I guess my resiliency and mindset was there to back it, and because you'll see guys that are college athletes, national records holders, in whatever realm they're in, whatever genre of fitness you want to put them into. And these guys will walk away from it for one way, one reason or another. And you can justify quitting just about any way you want to, whether it's, you know, family or injury or, you know, this just isn't for me. They can come up with just about anything. Wouldn't you say, Oh yeah,
Speaker 2 6:05
yeah, it's definitely an average athlete can make it through everything and get his Green Beret on the other side in two, three years, however long it takes. But I have seen, just like Jordan said, I've seen dudes who are football stars at like collegiate level, national champions, and they just can't make it. Whether it's there, they don't have enough fat on their body. They're too muscular, or
Ben Derrick 6:34
that's my problem, actually, this solidifies. I can never be a Green Beret. Yeah, you
Unknown Speaker 6:39
just got way too much.
Unknown Speaker 6:44
Counts you out not happening
Speaker 2 6:46
but, but it is legitimately 90% mental. It's like, do you have the quit in you or not? And it's me and Jordan's talked about this, where it's like we were just too stupid to quit. Yeah, like quitting has crossed my mind. And if anybody tells you that it doesn't, they're lying to you like I can't tell you how many times I've thought of different ways to quit honorably. How can I do this honorably without showing shame to myself and my family? Yeah, yeah. There's
Speaker 1 7:11
definitely some phases that I would say quitting is in your mind on a daily, if not hourly. Oh, yeah. Span. And the only difference between me and the guy that walks away is he verbalized it and actioned it, and so
Ben Derrick 7:27
yeah, and interesting. I've actually seen you in that, in that environment, this readiness exam, where you're assessing guys in this level now whether they're ready. And the best word I could apply to that is you're just very stoic because hearing you talk now, I think you're thinking understanding this battle is between the soldier and himself, yep, not between me and the soldier, right? And, of course, the tests are designed to really dig into that. But what you bring out, Jordan is that you were you knew going in, your destination was going to be a National Guardsman Green Beret. That's right, you knew what you were headed for. So that's not everybody's track, but, but that was your track. That's
Speaker 1 8:05
correct, yeah. So after the Special Forces Qualification, course, you immediately come back and are assigned to a team. And what is different, I guess, from active duty, is we know going up to Fort Bragg or Fort Liberty now that we are going to come back to the unit that we left from. So the pre screening, pre selection, you know that that's going to be your home?
Ben Derrick 8:35
Yeah, interesting. So this is part of the advantage, I would say, of being National Guard, is that you you get to kind of pick destination. That's true. So apart from that, though, the standards, and this is something that we discussed a lot, I wanted to get on microphone. The standards are the same between active duty and National Guard. Green Beret. A Green Beret is a Green Beret is a Green Beret. Absolutely. I think it'd be helpful for our listening audience to talk about those standards to understand just the level of pressure. I know you guys don't talk about it that way. It's just a job, but they're pretty high standards. To be a Green Beret, to be special forces, this isn't just about rucking up and passing a two year test. There's a lot that goes into it after that as well.
Speaker 1 9:17
Yes, man, I don't know where to really begin on so that you have the physical aspect that everybody kind of imagines. So it is physically demanding. There's a lot of intelligence built into that, too. You won't hear that a whole lot from the community. I don't think guys don't pride themselves on being smarter than the average bear,
Speaker 2 9:37
and I think that's because everybody in the community is smart. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 9:40
yeah, we're
Ben Derrick 9:41
bragging around, yeah,
Speaker 1 9:43
right, yeah. We're talking to each other, engaging it off of each other. And so we have a different bar that we're now comparing ourselves to. And I don't say that boastfully by any means. It's just kind of how it usually falls and and the way that's displayed is the. Technical skills that are taught. Every guy is required to speak another language fluently. You do six months of immersion training so you from day one, you walk in the classroom. You're not allowed to speak your home. You know your native
Ben Derrick 10:16
tongue. There you go. That sounds you're not allowed to speak your English.
Speaker 1 10:20
No English allowed, right? And then, you know, you got guys learning every language you can imagine, and these guys are doing it. So
Ben Derrick 10:29
all this is connected to where this soldier would most likely end up during a deployment. Is that correct? Yes,
Speaker 2 10:34
for Well, for the most part, it depends on your group and your area of responsibility. Different groups have different groups have different areas of responsibility. Therefore, you learn a different language, like we've learned how to speak Spanish, okay, maybe some dudes coming to us to learn how to speak French based on the
Ben Derrick 10:51
group, based on the group, yeah, and the part of the world that the group is engaging predominantly correct. This stuff gets a little bit weird to talk about, but most people wouldn't understand. Okay, physical preparedness, being good with weapons. I get that the language piece, though, is a little confusing, as I try to describe it. It really links into the mission of the Green Beret, working by with and through, correct yes, so let's talk about that for a moment, because you guys say by with and through, like everybody is supposed to know what that means. Our audience probably doesn't understand that, and I think it's one of the biggest distinguishing markers for the Green Beret in the soft community.
Speaker 1 11:30
I would 100% agree with that. So our job is people and not, not necessarily what you would imagine or are thinking like gamers, thinking Call of Duty like, oh yeah, your job's people to go out and find them and kill them. That's probably less than 5% of the job. Maybe, maybe even smaller than that. The other percentage is actually working with other people and helping them become, well, I mean, that's what our motto is, free the oppressed. So depending on where they are, whether, even if they're free, now, it's how do we keep them free and improve quality of life, which can look
Ben Derrick 12:07
a lot of different ways, correct? Yeah, so, you know, fast roping out of a helicopter and shooting bad guys in the face, that's what we all think. Right? Those of us who haven't never put on a uniform, but the complexity of the mission of the Green Beret is stout, right? And it's not something that really can be walked into from a distance. This is what impresses me about you guys, is that you're willing to move in close to the populations that you're trying to help and share mules and sit in tents and talk about power struggles among villages. I mean, these are these are all things that you guys are doing that most people don't understand. That results in a pretty close emotional connection. If I could use that word to the people that you're helping, that leads to some difficulty as well.
Speaker 1 12:52
That's true. I think a really good example of this, and I'm kind of biased as a medic, but I'm going to talk about medics for just a second. You know, if I were just to say I'm an Army medic, most people associate that with tourniquets and being, you know, embedded inside an American Force and doing whatever they need me to, whether it's clinical or trauma medicine, whereas as a Green Beret, a Special Forces Medical sergeant, I have To learn not only trauma medicine, clinical medicine, dentistry, labor and delivery, then we're going into veterinarian skills and even preventative medicine side. So whether that's immunizations or digging a well, whatever that looks like.
Ben Derrick 13:36
So I don't we're going to be very careful on this podcast not to get too political, but I'd like to ask this question and have one of you guys take it. We all watched, and I'm using something that civilians understand and witnessed. We all watched, that the spigot in Afghanistan just get turned off from our perspective. And that led to a lot of things. My curiosity is you guys that were there, that were up close on this, you know, what does that do to you, understanding that you were working by with and through a population, and now that's just turned off. Was that a difficult thing to see?
Speaker 2 14:14
Yeah, it was, and it still is, because it's asinine. We put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears. I deployed to Afghanistan as a Marine, and put in a lot of time over there. You know, we're trying to it wasn't the Green Beret mission where we were legitimately working with another partner force. We did have partner force that we worked with, but it wasn't like the mission that I do now, right? But we were protecting the villagers there and like, just to see the the children running around with a sense of freedom and being able to play without fear of their dad's head being chopped off because he didn't grow a beard out properly, which isn't going on, right? Now, but dudes are getting fired from their jobs because they can't grow out a beard in Afghanistan. And so it's, it was extremely aggravating, because I've had dudes that I've known get blown up over there. And what was that for? Right? You know, like, what was the whole point of the war? Is my viewpoint, yeah.
Ben Derrick 15:21
The reason we're I asked this question is, and I appreciate your honesty there, because it feels like there's a sense of urgency for the civilian population to mobilize around you guys that have been a part of this global war on terror for 20 years. You know that has its effect on people, allostatic load, stress load, the physical part of it, and it feels like the government because it can't, honestly can't catch up with the need at this point. So our job at the soldier fund is to try to redistribute wealth and concern and listen to you guys more about the things that you've been through. Because the Green Berets don't stop with you guys. There are people coming after you, right? So it's about caring for you guys now, and also caring about the guys that we know that are currently in the Q Course, that are headed for this way of life and conflict around the world. So part of my curiosity is what you know caused you to move away from one branch and towards the mission set of the Green Berets,
Speaker 2 16:22
I felt a calling that I've always wanted to be in some form of special operations. Started out being in the Navy SEAL. Like, what kid doesn't want to be a Navy SEAL? You know, they got the greatest propaganda machine out there. No
Ben Derrick 16:36
kidding, books, looking at you. Jackos, yeah. So cool.
Speaker 2 16:41
But then I finally found the Green Berets, and I was like, Man, I really like that, you know, like their mission is, like, at the time, whenever I was trying out that, you know, they were going and shooting people in the face with their partner force, yeah, you know, I was like, Dude, that's pretty cool. Like going in with those dudes and doing that, but it's our mission has always been to work with somebody else, and I always love to study other cultures and the history of those cultures and stuff like that. And so I was thinking, well, America is one of the greatest nations on the face of the planet, and so why not go into an organization that allows me to work with other people in third world countries, in war torn nations, or even in Europe that aren't in war right now, and just learning about those dudes and their families and, you know, building another brotherhood, instead of just Americans having that brotherhood expanding across the world. Yeah, and so that's one of the reasons why I wanted to be a Green Beret. That's
Ben Derrick 17:38
really well said, Yeah, I love that word calling that you're bringing up, because I hear that a lot. You said the same thing, yeah, I
Speaker 1 17:44
was gonna say, I really don't know what else to say, other than it's, it's a calling. And I can, I can take that back, you know, to even childhood, trying to figure out what I wanted to be as an adult. You know, when I, when I finally grew up, what am I? What does that look like? And, you know, the initial fault was maybe youth pastor, and then from there, it kind of went to something in the medical world, whether that's a pediatrician or something. And then my mind shifted somehow to military. And if I was going to be military, I wanted to go all the way in special operations. So start sifting through special operations, and something about being a Green Beret called out to me, and it's because of people. And so for me, throughout my life, I think there's a pattern of this, this calling to work with people, and that's the most important thing we have, and that's that's even one of our sayings, that is that people are more important than hardware. And I mean, I think that's it. There's only two things in life that matter, and it's your relationship with God and your relationship with people. So yeah,
Ben Derrick 18:47
it takes a special stripe. I think, as I've met you guys over the years, that's the one thing that kind of remains consistent, that the guys that are in this organization are here to help people, and the other things that you all go through or equip yourselves to be able to do, it's ancillary to that one mission. You know, freeing the oppressed isn't just something on a patch or an icon on a wall somewhere. It's actually the way of life. You know, I'd like to talk about, if we can, just in a moment of vulnerability and honesty, what that costs, though, the helper, you know, I say about you guys, you're always the helper. Never that helped, right? So we're gonna have to skirt a fine line here, because, you know, you guys talking about yourselves, you have one category for that complaining. But I think it would be helpful for our audience to hear, yeah, this this tempo or this way of life, looks kind of like this, and the typical stressors that you would see inside the National Guard, green Bray community, what those are like? Okay,
Speaker 2 19:47
I guess I think one of the main stressors that I face is to be the best member for my team that I can be, whether that's physical, being able to get these different. Skill sets, besides just being because I'm an 18 echo communication sergeant, right? Besides being good at radios and computers, what else can I get that'll help benefit the team? You know? And like, it's a kind of, like a group mentality. It's like, I want my team to be the best team there is, and I don't want to be the one to hold them back to me, that's the biggest stressor, and that's probably the way, how I was raised, with my dad and stuff trying to constantly impress him, and my wife has to remind me, like, Hey, you don't have to impress your dad anymore.
Ben Derrick 20:31
Well, that sounds like a wife, right?
Unknown Speaker 20:35
So that's the biggest stressor, yeah, you know? Well,
Ben Derrick 20:37
I think you're pointing out something. I will get to you in just a second, Jordan, but I think you're pointing out, you know, that's, that's a atmospheric pressure. Like, when would that ever go away?
Speaker 2 20:47
I don't think it will, because you self internalize it sure, like, your team probably looks at you and like, Man, this is one of the best dudes that we have. And they look at everybody on the team's like, Dude, this is an awesome freaking dude, you know? But inside, you're like, I can always be better, right? There's something like, I didn't run fast enough today, I can always run faster. Or I didn't deadlift as much as Joe on my team did. There's not a Joe on my team, right, right, as much as Joe did on my teams. Like, man, I'm a piece of crap. Yeah? Because this dude's 150 pounds, and here I am 225 pounds. Yeah, it's
Ben Derrick 21:22
part of the culture, though, right? Max effort, yeah, I say max effort all the time. Take the garments off. Max effort, you know, so, and this is part of the problem, you know, Jordan, you're not working closely together in HPW. This is an issue we discuss often. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 21:40
Talking about, I'm going to give it a different spin, not to avoid talking about myself, but just from an outsider looking in as a medic. So as a medic, I get the privilege of talking to my entire team and guys outside of my team now, with my current job in HBW, which is human performance and wellness, guys come to me, or I often hear like it is balancing life. You know, have being a husband, being a dad, trying to be everything they can be for their team, and then on top of that, most of our guys have injuries, and this is what I deal with as a medic, is because guys have the mentality we just discussed. They hide injuries because they don't want to let anybody down. And they're doing that at home. They're doing that and on themselves and bearing all of this weight by themselves. And then, you know, if we if we talk about it, or we have a way, an outlet, you realize everybody's in that same boat, and everybody has these different stressors coming in. The physical injuries are something you know, that we can see and can deal with. You know, if a guy has a broken arm, it's easy to say, Yep, it's broke. We're gonna splint it. It's gonna heal and get better. But if it's invisible, if it's a TBI or any kind of mental wellness, then it's really difficult to identify that. And what's really tough for our guys, I think, is it never shows up on the team. They always put out for the team, and it shows out at home. And as a medic, you hear about that, you start hearing that you know me and my wife are going through this, or I feel distant from my kids, and then that weighs on them, and then at some point, that is weighing on them to the point that they no longer can perform on the team. And now think about just everything we've said so far. What is that emotional load that that guy is carrying, that the things he cares about most in life, he actually feels like he's failing at it?
Ben Derrick 23:39
Yeah, yeah. And then in in a way to cope with that is to try to find a way to get back out the door, right, yeah, whether on a contracting job or figuring out a deployment to hop on. You know, because we go towards proficiency and away from deficiency. And what you were explaining just a moment ago is that if it isn't a gold medal performance. There's something wrong. It's a deficiency. I've got to shore up this deficiency, which is different than than Gen pop. You know, Gen pop is like I got out of bed today. You know, give me a paycheck, right? You guys are on the exact opposite end of the spectrum is, if I'm not performing at optimum levels, it's not that I'm letting myself down or my career down. You guys are thinking about the guys to your left and your right, a little bit different too. Most people don't understand when you guys say teams, this is a group of people that you're with. You really get to know over years from deployments and all sorts of other things. You guys operate as kind of a miniature family. There's supposed to be 12 guys on a team, correct? That's correct, yep. So you guys call them odas, which is another thing that I've had to try to figure out. By the way, the alphabet soup inside the army is a little bit ridiculous.
Unknown Speaker 24:54
90% of that, yeah, I
Speaker 1 24:55
just know when to use the correct alphabet letters.
Ben Derrick 24:59
My favorite thing is. Ask Jordan, hey, what does that mean? He's like, I don't know. It just means when they say, you go there, yeah.
Speaker 2 25:04
One of my greatest fears is when I'm teaching a class to other operators or soldiers, and I have to throw an acronym up there that I didn't research that acronym, and somebody's gonna ask me, like, hey, what do you what's that acronym? I don't know. Bro, I saw it in a book. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 25:19
I can't tell you,
Ben Derrick 25:20
yeah, that's it. So the balance between who you need to be and want to be at home with the people that matter most to you, and who you need to be and want to be away with the people who are experiencing oppression around the world, that's like being ripped in half. I would assume, you know, there's, there's a real skill level that you've got to employ there. And what I see, or what imagine is true is, for instance, you're sitting in line at Chick fil A, the order's taking too long, and you've got Americans losing their mind, right? And you're like, I was just across the world watching people have to do incredible things just to get clean drinking water. I think you're gonna be okay waiting on this milkshake, right? So you guys are kind of suspended between two cultures. I'm sure that takes its toll.
Speaker 1 26:07
I mean, we call it first world problems. I think that gets thrown around quite a bit now on social media or whatever, but I think in our community, it's it's a real thing, we identify very rapidly that this is not a real problem. Yeah,
Speaker 2 26:20
right about the time that I start having these first world problems is when I'll go somewhere else, to another country and realize how blessed we are in America, yeah, and we
Ben Derrick 26:30
can have more of that go out there, right? More that message you
I don't want to be aware of them, right? I would rather you guys handle that, because I'm not cut out for it, but the fact that it takes a toll on you guys, I think we're trying to explain to our audience, being in the National Guard is different than being active duty, in that you are not co located to many of the resources that big army is putting out there. Doing a great job with this is part of the dilemma that we're trying to solve inside of this battalion. Why these microphones are turned on right now? So I'd love for us to explain a little bit of that as well.
Speaker 1 27:15
Yeah, I think the easiest problem to point out is we are decentralized. So if we were active duty, we would be on a post somewhere, just like you imagine in your head. We all live close to that post. We go to work at that post. If we need to go to the hospital, they have that. If we need to go to just a clinic, they have that. It's all right there, whatever army program you can imagine, it's there with a representative there. Now take that and scatter it over 48 states. And where do you even put that? And how do you get that help to the guy not saying that it's not being done or that we're, you know, someone isn't trying to do those things. It's just, how do you do it? We mean, we face that job. Ben with just HPW having to travel to three different states, and still, there's probably still a guy that's in our battalion that we haven't ever seen. Yeah, it's very likely that he's out there somewhere.
Ben Derrick 28:10
Yes, very difficult to implement a brick and mortar solution, absolutely, to this problem, but it's natural for organizations, entities, governments, to want to establish a solution at a place, and it makes sense for the majority of Green Berets, but for the stripe that you guys are in the National Guard, it makes absolutely no sense, right? And this is, this is the problem, and I'm sure you've experienced this as well. Like, how to, how do we get next to the resources that we need to do this job. Yeah,
Speaker 2 28:41
and so like the active duty side, for those that don't know, like Active Duty Green Berets, they have what's called the Thor gym. Did they change the name yet
Unknown Speaker 28:50
it falls underneath HBW, but okay,
Speaker 2 28:52
so they have, like, the Thor gym, where they get a professional coach come in and train their team, and then they get physical therapy after that, if you need physical therapy, and it's all there in one building, and their doctors are right there to be like, Hey, man, you might need this shot in your knee today to help with the pain or whatever. You know, whereas, like, I'm dealing with an issue with my back right now, and I don't have that option, like, I have to go to my primary care manager, who then refers me to an orthopedic surgeon, so then I got to wait two weeks to get into that orthopedic surgeon, and I'm dealing with the pain of not being able to get get out of bed most mornings. And then I finally get to the orthopedic surgeon, and then he has to be like, Hey, this is your plan. What do you want to do? And I tell him my plan. Well then he's got to submit that to get that approved, for me to go somebody else to get a consultation, and then I get that consultation for them to talk to me about something else, and then that's got to get approved. And it's just this vicious cycle with with track here that I I don't really understand, because I'm not in that world. But, you know, like, if I was on an active duty base, they'd be like, Hey, bro, here it is. And probably within a week, you know, I'd have the. A solution already there provided to me. Yeah.
Speaker 1 30:02
I mean, we barely understand it, so it's really hard to expect anyone else to understand it. But I explained this exact same conversation this past week with a friend of mine who's never served, and he was like, Man, you would think they would just give you a voucher, like you need physical therapy. Why does the army not just give you a voucher and send you together? And I was like, it doesn't work that
Ben Derrick 30:22
way. Yeah. That way. That sounds too easy at all.
Speaker 1 30:24
It doesn't work that way at all. So, yeah, there's a lot. Again, none of this is to say that it's not happening. It's just not streamlined. So it's not easy. It's not easy. And one so here's the problem with National Guard SF guys, they already don't want to say what's wrong with them, so they finally are hurting enough that they say what's wrong with them, and then it gets watered down in this process, and they're just like, man, whatever. Like, I'll just, I'll just be in pain, because this is normal. This is everybody's hurting, so we'll just deal with it. And then they never get it fixed. Yeah, figured out, right? Yeah. We'll just, you know, I'll watch some YouTube videos, I'll self medicate, and we'll roll,
Ben Derrick 31:07
yeah, it's okay if we go there to that self medication coping thing, sure, sure. I mean, this doesn't have to be personal stories, but again, we're just opening the window here a little bit so that people can view in these coping mechanisms, whether it be substance abuse, pornography, abuse, I mean, you name it, whatever makes a guy distracted and feel better. These things, their origination point is most often we're either not sleeping or we're hurting like hell, and we need some relief, right? Just because of what the job forces you to do, physically, right? However, the end state is still, we've got an addiction to a substance, or at least we're coping with the substance. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 31:49
I mean that. That's, I feel like that's spot on. It's a compounding effect. And this is, this is something you and I talk about regularly, and we teach it in front of our guys, that, you know, a guy's not sleeping, so he can get a prescription for a sleeping pill. So we'll mark that one down. If he doesn't do that, he's probably drinking to help him go to sleep, and then, so we got a sleeping pill or alcohol, then I'm in pain, so I'm going to take ibuprofen and Tylenol, and when that doesn't work, then I'm going to get a prescription for pain meds. Let's see, just due to the high allostatic load, like high stress levels, and then all of the other things, you got guys with intimacy problems, so now they're going back to the pharmacy to take take care of that problem, knock that off due to certain types of injuries that our guys sustain and not sleeping and not eating. Well, hormones are all out of balance, so guys are going and getting hormone replacement therapy. So, you know, very rapidly, we're, like, stacking up a whole pharmacy on one guy, yeah, and, and he, he's either following that protocol correctly or he's not. I don't know. You know, patient compliance is a nightmare, especially as a medic, much less a medical professional who only sees you when you come in. I mean, I see my guys every day, and I can't get them to take, yeah, just swap a band aid out
Ben Derrick 33:07
patient compliance with with males and alpha males at that. You know, it's like this. So this old, this batter, everything that goes into this batter, man, it is. It's a difficult problem to try to solve, and we're not going to solve it in just one swipe. Like, here we go. We can fix all this, but part of the solution has to be talking about it. And traditionally, talking about it has been a no go.
Speaker 2 33:31
I feel like, because I've been thinking about this the whole time, like I grew up where you just didn't talk about it, you may end up quit being, you know, a wuss, and move on, and you'll figure it out, you know, to be a man. But with this HBW stuff, with what you guys are doing, I'm starting to realize that more people are willing to be vulnerable about what's going on, to reach out for that help. You know, whether it's like, I see it on my team, you know, it's like, Hey, I'm hurting right now. I don't think I could do this. And everybody else is like, Yeah, I mean, I'm hurting too. Do we have to do this? Or can we, like, take a little bit of time off to try to heal ourselves, right? You know? So you're starting to see that.
Speaker 1 34:17
I think a good analogy is, you know, sports is easy to understand. You're like, hey, these guys are professional athletes. Equate that now we are professional soldiers that are treating our bodies as such. You know, most guys are really good about diet and staying on a workout regime, whatever it looks, whatever that looks like for them, but the injuries and the rehab or prehab, if you will, isn't there?
Ben Derrick 34:46
Yeah, just the care, the self care, yeah, it's a denial of self lifestyle, so we're not overcorrecting. But I think it is good to approach things to say, wait a minute, is this necessary, right, or is this the best way? I think is part of that. You know, I've got a device that's telling me that I actually slept three hours last night. Is this the day to go for it? Probably not still
Unknown Speaker 35:09
go for it. Well, I
Speaker 1 35:11
think that's, I think that's where the soldier fund actually comes in. Is, is the the wearables that you guys provided has been significant. Most of the guys are wearing them, and they're watching their sleep. And then, you know when me and you go out and educate them on how to sleep and why sleep's important and all that it we all know sleep's important, yeah, but it's different when you actually understand and break down sleep, the different stages of sleep, and you look at yourself and you're like, Man, I'm yeah, I'm going to sleep, but it's light sleep all night long. And so guys start looking at that and trying to, they realize that one beer or three beers or whatever, there it is. They're, they're partaking in, man, I went from having some REM sleep in there and some deep sleep to now I'm, I'm having only light sleep, and I'm waking up all throughout the night. This isn't good for me, and that's awesome to be able to show a guy who wants to be optimal, yeah? Because they immediately take that and they're like, Well, I can't be optimal doing this. I need some lifestyle changes in here. But that was only you know. It's easy to point out, because you guys provided wearables that directly show you on your cell phone what's going on, yeah.
Speaker 2 36:17
And I think one of the things going back to the training, is like, we're trained to perform at our best with 30 minutes of sleep. That's true too, you know, over a week period, and then you get up and you go and perform, and then you get 30 minutes of sleep again that night. And it's like, well, yeah, I feel like crap, but I got more than 30 minutes of sleep this night. That's
Ben Derrick 36:37
the That's the measure, right? 30 minutes that's right, yeah. And it's
Speaker 2 36:41
just it's ingrained in us. Like, even when you deploy, there's points and times when you won't sleep for a few days, you know, and so, like, you still perform, and you still get after it. And I think that just goes back to, like, our bodies are just in that high stress environment, where it's always in that high stress environment even whenever we get pulled out of it, that we can't calm down enough to sleep like whenever y'all did that brain tap study with the wearables and all that stuff, I didn't I knew I wasn't sleeping that well, but I would literally go to sleep and then wake up like I just went to sleep and I didn't get any sleep that night, and I just felt like I got run over by A garbage truck. But then doing that brain trap study that you guys provided and made us do, like I feel like now I'm actually able to get better sleep. I'm not waking up as much throughout the night. I'm waking up a little bit more refreshed.
Ben Derrick 37:35
Yeah, isn't that incredible? It is. It's awesome, you know? And I mean, thinking about it, you take per soldier, you know, whoop, for a year, it's like 200 bucks, right? You know, I mean, I pour 200 bucks of milk down my drain every year, right? You know, out of my cereal bowl. There are ways to solve this problem. And I think the redistrict distribution of wealth is such an important thing, and it doesn't take a whole lot of money to make a big impact for you guys, because it's not like you're sitting around in victim mode, like somebody saved me. Somebody help me, right? You're actively engaged in trying to solve the problems that you have. It's just getting the resources to you and being able to help this formation on OPM, we need other people's money to make this work, right? And we've got, thankfully, I think, because of the provision of God, we've got access to you guys to be able to do this. We don't have to have a sense of control, but we can just put some new things in there, change, change the metrics a little bit for you guys, and take people, honestly like me, who have said, Man, I really wish I would have done that right. And after being around you guys, I'm not sure I'll say that much anymore. I really wish I would have done that, you know, or fanboying over you guys, because really, the honorable life that you're leading, the difficult things that you have been through, the difficult things that you've moved in to make an impact in, and our ability to be able to serve that just by handing over some money to an entity that's doing good. I mean, what a gift that could be for civilians, right? You know, part of my concern, too, is when you guys talk about TRICARE and doctors, it just blows my mind that we don't have doctors around all of these places in the battalion. They're like, if you're SF, you know, you get to speed pass, you go to the front of the line, right? This is part of what I think the soldier fund really needs to make a move in. Next is getting doctors, local doctors, local PTS, acupuncture, like, hey, this guy's got a stamp on his passport, right? This SF, get him into the front line and get him seen. Yeah.
Speaker 1 39:31
I mean, that's, that's a whole nother conversation, I think. And it's, it's no fault of the doctors, but it kind of plays back in a short version, if we were on a post, then those doctors would be working with us every day, and they would understand the injuries, understand the job, understand everything about what you're doing, understand what the military needs, documented. If you go to a civilian doctor who is probably taking good care of you, they they don't understand what your job. Is, you know, you spend 30 minutes, 40 minutes, explaining what a Green Beret does, and then, like, we're doing this over there. Yeah, yeah. And even if they try to grasp it at all, they're and they look at some of the injuries some of our guys have, they're like, you don't need to be doing this lifestyle anymore. And but if you're going to this is kind of the best way forward, maybe. And then it's like, Well, okay, now I got to explain to you the documentation side of the house of what I need you to write, because you just telling me I can't do these things isn't enough, right? So it's that's a whole nother, and
Speaker 2 40:32
I feel like to cut you off there, like the doctors and the physical therapists on base where a Green Berets are, or any special operations, like they understand, like Jordan said, what we do, because they've studied us, right? I go to a doctor around here, and they're like, so what do you do? I'm like, Oh, I'm a Green Beret. They're like, what? What is that? I'm like, we know what a Navy Seal is. They're like, Oh yeah, they're awesome. I was like, Yeah, we're better than them. I'm kidding. I'm kidding, but you know, they just don't know. They have no clue what it is that we have to do for our jobs in special operations,
Ben Derrick 41:10
education is such a huge component. We haven't even touched on this yet, and we're running out of time for the day, but a big part of yours job is jumping out of perfectly good airplanes and helicopters. It
Speaker 2 41:21
depends on the helicopter depends on the airplane.
Ben Derrick 41:26
That has this effect as well. That's kind of a violent enterprise, right?
Unknown Speaker 41:30
I mean, it definitely
Speaker 2 41:32
is for me. You are the worst it is. Yeah, yeah. It aggravates me seeing my old sergeant, Team Sergeant jump out of that airplane before me, and then I'm the last one out of the stack, out of the plane, and I hit the ground before him, and he's still up there where he jumped out of the
Unknown Speaker 41:49
plane, yeah? Just loving life, just a carnival ride. Yeah? He's
Speaker 2 41:52
like, Hey, how was your land? And I was like, I felt like I hit a ton of bricks. Oh, it was like, I landed on soft, fluffy clouds. That's
Ben Derrick 41:59
right, yeah. A mutual friend of ours. I was at a jump a year ago, and we almost had to get a ladder to pull the guy out of the air, like he just wasn't heavy enough to land right. He was upset about it so well, if I could, maybe we could wrap up this way, just asking you guys, we've talked a lot about the difficulties, and thank you for that. It's been very helpful. And I think our listeners are going to appreciate that. I'd love to hear just a part of your career, a way that your career has shaped you, changed you that even today you're grateful for. When you think about yourself going through selection in the Q Course, all these years later, all the miles under your boots, what's something that's changing you're grateful for?
Speaker 1 42:41
Oh, man, there's, there's actually several things I'm grateful for. I'm grateful for my family. Like a lot of the things that you take for granted, you you realize there's more important things in life, kind of going back to the first world problem, stuff, you know, having a having a wife, having kids, having the freedom of religion, being able to go to go to church on Sunday, spend time with my kids and barbecue with friends, that kind of stuff. It really has a lot of meaning to you know, it makes you love this country. It makes you love home. There's, there's nothing like flying back into the US and here and welcome back into us airspace. So it's a different kind of feeling. Yeah, I
Ben Derrick 43:25
can imagine.
Speaker 2 43:27
I can't top that, like, that's like my family is I say this, you know, my family is the most important thing to me, but I still rip myself away from them, you know, selfish, selfishly, it seems at times, you know, but they put up with a lot of stuff that nobody understands, unless you're around a base, you know. Like, yeah, we have a lot of Green Berets in this area, but like, when we're deployed, it's like, everybody's three sheets to the wind sure, you know. And there's no support for them, because nobody understands what it is like. This last one, my wife went home and tried to reconnect with old friends, and they asked, like, well, how you doing? And she tried to tell them, but they're just shunder because they don't understand, yeah, you know, I guess shun is not a good word, but you know, they just, they don't understand what it is, what it's like, you know, like, I could literally get blown up at any moment by flying IED with wings, you know? And like, she's terrified of that, you know. And I'm I'm not, I'm just like, well, you know what? I didn't die today. So, like, it's a good day, good
Ben Derrick 44:31
day, still breathing.
Speaker 2 44:33
But she's like, calling me crying because, you know, she saw there was another attack where we're at and all that stuff, you know? It's like, Babe, it's fine. Yeah, if it happens, it happens. Easy for you to say, Yeah, it's like, there's but it's, it takes a whole different toll on them and for them to put up with that. And the kids, like my, my youngest son, he still has separation anxiety and freaks out, you know, whenever we drop him off somewhere, and it's just whenever I'm get to be home with him. Yeah. Know, Like Jordan said, it's just being it's being home with your family.
Ben Derrick 45:03
Yeah, when you guys see what you've seen, the stuff that most of us take for granted is a really big deal, you know? So while I have you guys on the mic, I would say this just appreciating friendship with both of you and being accepted in the community. That being the case, I know you guys don't hear this enough, so this is an opportunity for me to say, to go out into the world, thank you for what you guys do, for the calling that you felt on your life and the sacrifices you have made and that your families have made to allow you to do what you do, and a huge sense of gratitude, more than is highlighted in our modern media, people across the country have a huge sense of gratitude for what you do, and we're committed to helping you guys as much as possible. Thanks, man. Thank you for tuning in to the soldier fund podcast. If you're inspired by the stories of these elite citizen warriors and want to support their mission. Visit us at the soldier fund.org your contributions help us to continue to back the Special Forces soldiers of the National Guard as they fight around the world until next time, stay committed to stand with those who serve you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai