355 24 26018 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c78953d4456b167e9e74ba8f54460a4e.jpg 729b81abe3c9ef09acb4f9ee79f0f25b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Douglas R. Gilbert Photographs Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gilbert, Douglas R., 1942-2023 Description An account of the resource Photographs scanned from negatives and transparencies from the Douglas R. Gilbert papers (RHC-183). Douglas R. Gilbert (b. 1942) is an American photographer from Michigan. He was born in Holland, Michigan and is the son of Russell W. and Carmen (Andree) Gilbert. Gilbert earned a B.A. in social sciences and art at Michigan State University in 1964, an M.S. in photography from the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1972, and a M.S.W. from Salem State College in 1993. He is married to Barbara (McDonald) Gilbert, and has three daughters, Robyn, Rachel, and Anne. Gilbert took a serious interest in photography at the age of fourteen. In 1963 he joined the staff of Look magazine in New York as the second youngest photojournalist in the magazine's history. As a Look photographer from 1964 to 1966, he photographed folk musician Bob Dylan, the Newport Folk Festival, Simon and Garfunkel, the New York City Financial District, the children and facilities at the Manhattan School for Seriously Disturbed Children. From 1967 to 1969, Gilbert did several shoots, including that of folk singer Janis Ian for Life magazine. After moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1969 to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology, Gilbert conducted notable photo shoots of business and political figure Lenore Romney, and pursued more personal and artistic photography, focusing on urban and rural landscapes in Illinois and Michigan. He then joined the faculty of Wheaton College, where he taught from 1972 to 1982. In 1993, Gilbert graduated from Salem State College, Massachusetts, with a Masters in Social Work, and later pursued a second career as a psychotherapist. Douglas Gilbert died in June 2023. Throughout his photography career, he pursued both freelance commercial work as well as artistic work. His art photography is characterized by its classic black-and-white format, and features people, places and objects shot great attention and sensitivity. Gilbert's works are held in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, and the Grand Valley State University Art Galleries, as well as in numerous private and institutional collections. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960-2011 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="%E2%80%9Dhttps%3A//gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/783%E2%80%9D">Douglas R. Gilbert Papers (RHC-183)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Subject The topic of the resource Photographs Photography -- United States Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-183 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Image Type The nature or genre of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-183_C207-0020 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gilbert, Douglas R. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1962-11-06 Title A name given to the resource Governor Swainson on election night, Detroit, MI Description An account of the resource Black and white photograph of Governor John B. Swainson on the night of his attempted re-election and loss to Governor George W. Romney in Detroit, Michigan, on November 6, 1962. In the photograph, Governor Swainson is seen standing among his election night crowd with campaign photographs and re-election posters seen in the background. Scanned from the negative. Subject The topic of the resource Detroit (Mich.) Elections Governors--Michigan Swainson, John B. (John Burley), 1925-1994 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/783">Douglas R. Gilbert papers (RHC-183)</a> Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960s Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2cbb1cce08994e259125d9e6694d53d7.jpg d4e7aea059ccac63bd29c9681ddde365 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Grand Valley State University Photographs Subject The topic of the resource Aerial photographs Universities and colleges Michigan Grand Rapids (Mich.) Allendale (Mich.) Building Facilities Dormitories Students Events 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s Description An account of the resource People, places, and events of Grand Valley State University from its founding in 1960 as a 4-year college in western Michigan. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource News & Information Services. University Communications Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">News &amp; Information Services. University Photographs. (GV012-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960s-2000s Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Local Subject Subject headings specific to a particular image collection 1960s Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">University photographs, GV012-01</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-01_UAPhotos_000335 Title A name given to the resource Governor Williams reviews bill proposing the establishment of Grand Valley Description An account of the resource Governor Williams reviews bill proposing the establishment of Grand Valley introduced by Congressman Thomas Whinery on February 22, 1960. Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Allendale (Mich.) Universities and colleges College administrators Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives black and white photo https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1546221d6280c1ff1f184d8a9cb89286.mp4 1aa9a175ac723cb2ae10da21cba6ec45 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8d97f229b10dbb9c1d55bd4866d747fe.pdf d363ac532d1d332016774b4350737375 PDF Text Text Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Iraq War Michael Gower Length of Interview (00:11:54) Background: (0:00:22)  Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan  Four sisters, one brother  Was in school before entering the service  Enlisted, was not drafted  Joined the Army Enlistment: (0:01:58)  Basic training was at Fort Benning , Georgia o Break you down as a civilian, and into a soldier o Marksmanship, etc.  Rations are small, but very high in protein in Basic  After Basic training, you can go anywhere  Served in Iraq  Served in the First Stryker Brigade o Describes a Stryker (00:04:28) o First to go into Iraq with the Strykers o Large success, and the Army put more money into the equipment  Talks about more of the horrific scenes he saw (00:06:14) o Children getting torn to shreds by mortars o Insurgents  Made friends while over in Iraq o Interpreter is one of them  Was deployed twice  Had a difficult time communicating, mostly by letter at first, and then phones sometimes  Second deployment, by telephone and internet  Returned home August 2nd, 2007 o Vehicle hit by an improvised explosive and killed three of his squad and dismembered a few other squad members. o Was injured turning the explosive, and was discharged medically  Was difficult to readjust to civilian life  Stays in touch with his friends over Facebook and Together We Serve, and through phone calls After the Service: (00:11:48)  Learned that life is short � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower, Michael (Interview outline and video), 2009 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Gower, Michael Description An account of the resource Michael Gower was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and served with the Army in the Iraq War. He served in the First Stryker Brigade to enter Iraq, and was deployed twice. He was discharged for medical reasons on August 2nd, 2007 after being injured in an explosion that killed three of his squad members and injured several more. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Bailey, Anna (Interviewer) Luyk, Veronica (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States--History, Military Michigan--History, Military Veterans Video recordings United States. Army Iraq War, 2003-2011--Personal narratives, American Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-11-04 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GowerM0317V Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf video/mp4 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d248f8f358f1321179623ed3a7251e0a.mp3 ea6465518cc8cd8c63ba5dde7d96dc9c Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Maundy Thursday Series The Human Face of God Scripture Text Luke 22:19 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19980409 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998-04-09 Title A name given to the resource Grace Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on April 9, 1998 entitled "Grace", as part of the series "The Human Face of God", on the occasion of Maundy Thursday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Luke 22:19. https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/96754e87156a95ec45091b4468227308.mp3 ba643b51608a6e51153873038864c45a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Thanksgiving Day Scripture Text Deuteronomy 8:11-20, Psalm 116 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-20021128 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002-11-28 Title A name given to the resource Grace - The Root of Gratitude Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 28, 2002 entitled "Grace - The Root of Gratitude", on the occasion of Thanksgiving Day, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Deuteronomy 8:11-20, Psalm 116. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/005ae04935fa9d665bcc33c3c195c58b.jpg 04b0f9eb152817064d13f3d7241a8797 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Naval Recognition Training Slides Subject The topic of the resource Slides Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition Warships--Recognition World War, 1939-1945 Description An account of the resource Slides developed during World War II as a training tool, for top-side battle-station personnel on board ship and for all aircraft personnel, by the US Navy. In 1942 a Recognition School was established by the Navy at Ohio State University where the method of identification was developed. In 1943 the school was taken over by the US Navy. The importance of training in visual recognition of ships and aircraft became even more evident during World War II. Mistakes resulting in costly errors and loss of life led to an increased emphasis on recognition as a vital skill. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides (RHC-50)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1943-1953 Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Source <a href="http://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/477">Naval recognition slides, RHC-50</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-50_M4232 Title A name given to the resource Grace 11 Japanese torpedo bomber Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource United States. Navy Description An account of the resource Grace 11, Japanese torpedo bomber (tentative), January 1, 1945. Subject The topic of the resource United States. Navy Japan World War, 1939-1945 Military education Airplanes, Military--Recognition Slides Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/?language=en">No Copyright - United States</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Naval recognition slides (RHC-50) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1945-01-01 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e49a4303cab8c9a3d3f623dd5f6bdfb4.mp3 b81fc74dfe692aca1b4b58be054a677e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Pentecost XXVII Scripture Text Gen. 17: 1-7, Acts 2:32-39 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19891119 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989-11-19 Title A name given to the resource Grace and Ritual: Shaping A People Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 19, 1989 entitled "Grace and Ritual: Shaping A People", on the occasion of Pentecost XXVII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Gen. 17: 1-7, Acts 2:32-39. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/067897e013096a16accf55a6c23ba8ec.mp3 9253cfc09f84d851f655d1e87914d38f Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Pentecost XXII Series One Covenant of Grace - the Salvation of the World Scripture Text Galatians 3:28b, 29, I Thessalonians 4:14 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-19871101 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987-11-01 Title A name given to the resource Grace and the Healing of Personality Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 1, 1987 entitled "Grace and the Healing of Personality", as part of the series "One Covenant of Grace - the Salvation of the World", on the occasion of Pentecost XXII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Galatians 3:28b, 29, I Thessalonians 4:14. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4f6ac05e79fe568005d203ffdbd29161.mp3 86c2e7df5ad4741f16cf893f0530ce06 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard A. Rhem Collection Description An account of the resource Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar. Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Religion Interfaith worship Sermons Sound Recordings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rhem, Richard A. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaufman Interfaith Institute Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Language A language of the resource English Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1981-2014 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 text/pdf Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Event Midweek Lent Series What Wouldn't Jesus Do? Scripture Text Matthew 5:38-48, Luke 23:32-38 Location The location of the interview Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KII-01_RA-0-20000322 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2000-03-22 Title A name given to the resource Grace is the Last Best Word - But Will It Work in the World? Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Richard A. Rhem Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Clergy--Michigan Reformed Church in America Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.) Sermons Relation A related resource Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/ Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Description An account of the resource A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 22, 2000 entitled "Grace is the Last Best Word - But Will It Work in the World?", as part of the series "What Wouldn't Jesus Do? ", on the occasion of Midweek Lent, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Matthew 5:38-48, Luke 23:32-38. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e5c7828ce1a696523b713626acf4aa68.mp4 877a6b6629c0e156dfd2c618ef05dec8 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1475082bd5486544da6201a6aa2cc56a.pdf a4485d905b910331c5512cae3c667e93 PDF Text Text Grace, Matthew Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Name of War: Afghanistan War Interviewee’s Name: Matthew Grace Length of Interview: (2:03:26) Interviewed by: James Smither Transcribed by: Lyndsay Curatolo Interviewer: “We’re talking today with Matt Grace of Muskegon, Michigan and the interviewer is James Smither of the Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project. Matt, start us off with some background on yourself and to begin with, where and when were you born?” [I] was born in Muskegon, Michigan, November 5, 1988. Interviewer: “Did you grow up in Muskegon?” Yeah. [I] spent my entire life there. Went to Mona Shores High School and graduated in ‘07. Interviewer: “What did your family do for a living when you were growing up?” Well, both of my parents were originally doctors–– met in med school. Till I was about four, they both worked and then around four or five, when my brother came about, my mom kind of quit and stayed home with the kids. Dad’s still working. Interviewer: “Now, let’s see. You were born in ‘88–– 2001, September 11–– you weren’t quite 13. What do you remember about 9/11?” I was in sixth or seventh grade–– I wanna say seventh grade, but I might be wrong with that. I don’t remember exactly, like, when I heard the Trade Centers went down. I remember when the Pentagon was hit. At that point in time, I didn’t know what the Trade Centers were. I probably heard about it, [but] it didn’t register any kind of significance. Interviewer: “Did they do anything at your school or you just kept on with the rest of your day?” �I think we kept on with the rest of our day. I remember being in, like, band class or whatever and hearing that the Pentagon was hit. I was a little stupid asshole–– excuse me–– but I’m like, “Oh yeah. Down with the government.” or some stupid stuff. Interviewer: “Well, you get to do that when you’re twelve.” Yeah. And of course I didn’t know the significance. Then, of course, later on in the day when I get home, I turn on the TV and it’s all that everyone is watching and everything like that. (2:14). Interviewer: “Now, after that happens, did you pay much attention to the news after that? Or, ignore it for a while?” Yeah. I always was a pretty–– I guess–– informed kid, as much as a middle schooler/high schooler could be, I guess. I think it had to do with all of my friends being of the exact opposite political background as me, so any time any discussion of politics came up, I would have to be really informed to counter their arguments and stuff. I would go on to like Fox News, or wherever, and read articles that piqued my fancy–– which usually the military wants, so I kind of kept up with the war in general and everything. Interviewer: “And then, at what point did you start thinking about going into the service yourself?” Oh, that was always the plan or whatever. I mean, I can’t even tell you–– my earliest memories are like in the backyard with my next door neighbor playing “war” or whatever. Like, it’s not unusual for a kid to own a G.I. Joe–– [it] might be unusual for a kid to have a G.I. Joe of General Patton or whatever. So, that was me. It was always the plan–– I didn’t know exactly what branch I would want to go into or exactly if I was going to go to college first, or what I was going to do, but that was always a part of the plan. Like I said, one of my earliest memories is with my neighbor–– an older couple that would watch me–– and they would show me Gary Cooper or Cary Grant in old Alvin York films. I remember watching that and my grandfather also showed me Midway with Charlton Heston and Battle of the Bulge movie, all of that. I couldn’t get enough of that. I read books and everything. It was just a constant fascination. It was like go to college and join the Army, or vice versa. (4:44). Interviewer: “So when did you finish high school?” I guess that would be May of 2007. Interviewer: “And then how quickly did you enlist after that, or had you already?” �I enlisted right after that. I had talked to recruiters the previous November or whatever and I kept in touch. [I] enlisted in August and like a week/week-and-a-half later I shipped out to Benning. Interviewer: “Fort Benning, Georgia for basic training?” Yeah. Interviewer: “Which branch did you choose and why?” Not exactly a logical choice, but I knew I always wanted to fight and everything like that, so it kind of narrows it down to Marine Corps or Army. And I think I just kind of decided on it because Band of Brothers recently came out and I watched all that, so it was like, “I wanna go airborne” and everything like that. So, that was it. And I also watched Blackhawk Down and I was like, “I’ll go Army Rangers” or something. Of course, I don’t know how ignorant that was. (6:01). Interviewer: “So, it wasn’t so much what the recruiters had to say or what kind of things they were offering you, it was more of the idea in your own head––” Yeah. Interviewer: “–– of how you saw yourself. Okay, so you enlist in the Army, they pack you off to Fort Benning, Georgia. What kind of reception do you get when you arrive?” Well, when you first arrive–– [it’s] late at night. Spent a week in this place called 30th AG–– I believe it’s kind of the reception there where you get to spend a week going through, getting some shots, doing all kinds of paperwork. They keep you up for the first 24-36 hours and mainly you’re just sitting in one room, doing absolutely nothing. But, at that point in time, you’re not actually in with the drill sergeants–– they’re just kind of soldiers that are pushing you through. They’re jerks and everything like that because you’re day one–– not even a day one Private yet. But, I mean, they’re not yelling in your face or anything, at that point in time. You go through the mess hall and everything and it’s a normal Army depot–– it’s not the basic training food. I was thinking, “Okay, so far this isn’t too bad. I can handle this.” Then, after that week, right before they pick us up, they come by and they say, “We call your name, file out to the right. You are going to be eleven charlies. Mortar men.” I’m like, “I don’t want to be a mortar man. I signed up to be infantry.” They’re like, “Yeah, you’re infantry but you’re also a mortar man.” I’m like, “Don’t call my name. Don’t call my name.” He’s like, my name–– or my serial number, whatever it was. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I was called. They filed us up and I didn’t really know too much about what it was to be a mortar man, but everyone in that group was sent off and they were all mortar men, and that is what our basic training class was. �Interviewer: “To back up a little bit, at what point did you do testing for aptitude and that sort? Was that before you got there or after you got there?” Are you talking about the ASVAB? Interviewer: “Yeah.” I think shortly after I first talked to the recruiter in the November past. I wanna say it was a month or two. It was shortly after that I took it. (8:24). Interviewer: “So, was there any additional testing after you got to Fort Benning or just other kinds of paperwork?” Just paperwork. Not aptitude or anything like that. Interviewer: “Then, your preference had been infantry anyway, so it wasn’t like you were shopping for a particular school.” No. I wanted to like–– I still had that fantasized image in my mind where it was like I wanted to go airborne, I wanted to do Ranger. Kind of like lots of young, naive people think–– they’re like, “Everyone can do that,” or “ I’m special, I can do that.” And, I mean, when I first signed up, I went in as an 11X, which is like they can put you as an 11 Bravo or an 11 Charlie–– infantry [or] infantry warman. I asked my recruiter, “What’s 11X? I thought I wanted to do 11 Bravo.” He’s like–– I think this is the one lie he told me–– he’s like, “That just means they can, later on, go to Special Forces or airborne” or something like that. I’m like, “Oh, okay.” Interviewer: “So, you’ve been assigned, you join your company. Now, what’s the actual training like?” Well, all basic training is, it’s like they say–– the bare basics. When you actually, finally, first get to your unit you don’t know jack-shit or whatever, and it’s pretty much up to the guys there–– the Specialists, the level NCOs–– to teach you up on that. Basic training is just of the bare, basic familiarizations. It’s more, mainly, just to instill that discipline in you that makes it so you can function when you eventually get to your unit. (10:12). Interviewer: “How did they go about instilling discipline?” Well, just constantly yelling at you, smoking you–– physical punishment, push-ups or whatever exercises they can instill in you. I think one of the main things, looking back, is one of the things the movies get wrong–– I mean, I love Full Metal Jacket. It’s right there. It’s a lot like that kind �of experience except the drill sergeants aren’t beating us. But, one thing they get wrong is at the start they show a Private mess up [and] it’s like, “Drop and give me 50,” or “100.” No one ever told me to drop and give any number or anything like that. No one ever told me–– well, maybe one-on-one, if it was just me and a drill sergeant–– 90 percent of the time it’s everyone drops and you’re going to do push-ups until [they] get bored–– or alternate exercises just to continue to mess with you. I remember one time, the drill sergeant told us to drop for a reason and stay in a push-up position and he kind of walked out. He comes back three hours later and he sees us in the barracks [like], “What the fuck did you guys do?” I’m like, “Drill sergeant, you told us to do push-ups.” He was like, “That was three hours ago. I went to Taco Bell. Get up.” That’s kind of the constant thing–– a small fraction. It’s all kind of a game. I thought your job is to make sure you don’t do anything wrong and it’s the drill sergeant’s job to find what’s wrong. Well, the problem is, you don’t know all of the rules of the game yet. They do. So, that’s pretty much the gist of it. (12:16). Interviewer: “And then what sort of physical training do they do at that point?” I mean, you wake up in the morning and for the first three weeks–– during the red phase–– it was 4:30a.m. or 5:30a.m. or something like that. Do like an hour-and-half of PT or something. It varied. Sometimes you’d go on a run or they’d have you do some kind of circuit training where you’d run 100 meters with someone on your back. Then, there would be like some monkey bars, you’d do that. Then you’d have to carry this water jug somewhere–– I don’t know. It was all kinds of things, I mean. Apparently they’ve–– kind of–– “wussied” up the training from what I hear nowadays where they have this PRT crap that–– I don’t know. But, back then, it was just whatever they could think of. Then, the rest of the day you’d go off and you’d do whatever actual “learning” that you were doing, whether it would be on a weapons system or medical care or land-navigation, or whatever. Then, of course, throughout this whole time the drill sergeants are still buzzing around, trying to look for anything that is wrong. And they’re smoking you throughout the day and stuff like that. Interviewer: “How well did you hold up through this–– mentally and physically?” I think very well actually. Not to say that it wasn’t stressful, it was one of the hardest experiences of my life and everything like that. But, I mean, looking at some other guys trying to go AWOL or cried or something like that. I mean, it was stressful but I never got to that point. And physically, I went in and I was kind of on the more pudgy side. I wasn’t obese or anything like that, but I was definitely kind of husky, or something like that. I don’t know. So, I was towards the bottom third of my class, but before I went in I talked to a veteran and he told me [that] you get out what you put in. So, I kind of took that to heart. I mean, instead of like–– as you go along you learn ways to slack off–– to a degree. It’s kind of required because you can’t do push-ups for three hours straight. You have to find ways [like] when the drill sergeant isn’t looking, you go �down on your belly. But, I tried my best and did it as long as I possibly could. So, I started off at a low point, but at the end of basic my platoon out of 53 or like 56 people–– it varied when people went AWOL or went to a different platoon–– by that time we were done, I was like third or fourth on the PT scale in my platoon. I think I graduated with a 296 PT score out of 300–– though, there are certain ways you can go above 300, but there were only three or four people that got a better score than me. So, I did very well in that aspect. (15:33). Interviewer: “And did you understand why they were doing the things they were doing, especially with messing with your head and just trying to get you to automatically follow orders? They talked about breaking down and building back up. I mean, did you have any sense that that’s what they were doing, or were you just trying to survive?” I think it’s more, at that point, you’re just trying to survive. I wasn’t standing there going, “Why are they doing this to me?” But, I wasn’t trying to philosophically get inside their heads at that point in time and dissect their motives. It was just I gotta do this, this way, or we’re all gonna pay for it. Interviewer: “And that whole business with making the whole unit responsible is a way of enforcing discipline without them directly doing it. If there’s some guy who screws up all of the time, was the idea that the rest of you would make him clean up his act?” Not necessarily that, I think it’s more of a guilt-trip than anything else because it was never–– yeah, it was just a guilt trip at that point in time. I mean, there were points in time where it did fall on everyone. For example, we had this one kid that right off the bat said, “I don’t wanna be here. I’m going to go AWOL.” He tried to go AWOL–– twice. And after that, we had to have like six people around him at any given time–– like no more than three feet away. The problem with that is, when it comes to nighttime, you have fireguard. You have two guys on fireguard, and then you might have two guys on CQ, and then you might have another two guys on staff duty. And you kind of have to rotate those people in-and-out every hour–– the guard. The more people you have out there, the more people you have losing their sleep and so, to have six extra people out there, it falls on this kid. At this point in time, he’s refusing to train and everything like that, but they’re not sending him home yet. Unfortunately, his bunk was right next to mine so I would go to sleep and there were people with chairs sitting around him. I mean, he’d like cry at night and like they would–– I mean, people were pissed at this kid, understandably, I think. But, they’d whisper to him the whole night, “You piece of shit” and everything–– and like spit on him or something like that. No one ever beat him or anything like that. There was only one time where they actually came to blows. (18:15). There was this one kid, apparently he was causing trouble in another platoon, and my drill sergeant–– I don’t know if it’s because he’s senior or had a Special Forces tab or what–– but they’re like, “We’ll send him to this platoon. Maybe they’ll shape him up.” Well, he was literally there for a day. At some point in time, he �decided, “I’m not doing this. This is bullshit” or whatever. He thought he was some kind of gangster and hard kind of guy. [He’s] like, “I’ve seen some stuff.” My drill sergeant was like, “Shut up.” But, during that day he said, “I’m not training anymore. I’m done with this.” My drill sergeant was like, “Fine. Whatever.” And we’re going through chow and he’s in the line and the drill sergeant is like, “Oh no. You go to the back of the line. These guys have been training all day. You don’t get your food until everyone else has.” And he’s like, “Screw you” and throws his tray down at the drill sergeants feet and by the time we get back to the barracks, everyone is towing the line around the bay area of our barracks room and the drill sergeant is yelling like, “You’re going to watch this motherfucker get his stuff. He’s gonna walk out of here and never be seen again” or something like that. And he starts walking towards the back door of the barracks– – we’re not really allowed to go out the front, that’s where the drill sergeants come in–– and he’s like, “Yeah. You better use that back door” for some reason. As soon as he says that, the kid stops and turns around and tries to go out the front door. And our drill sergeant is like, “Second Platoon, are you going to let this guy walk out the front door of your barracks?” And we are like, “What does he want us to do?” Because the drill sergeants were very insistent from the start, like “You guys better not fight on my watch. I don’t want to deal with that paperwork. You better not go AWOL on my watch. I don’t want to deal with that paperwork.” So, they always told us not to fuck with each other because they didn’t want to do the paperwork and get in trouble. But the drill sergeant–– this kid keeps walking–– [like], “Second Platoon, are you going to let him walk out?” So we all start moseying into the kill zone–– the center of our bay–– and we’re like, “Come on man, go back out the back door.” And I actually stepped in front of him and I’m like, “Hey man, go that way.” (20:40). And as soon as I say that, he begins to raise his fist and as soon as that happens, ten guys just jump him. It’s like this giant pig pile in the center of the room. Eventually, the drill sergeant comes in and starts pulling people off and he gets him in this weird leg-lock thing and starts applying a little bit of pressure and the guy is just screaming, “Drill Sergeant. You’re going to break my leg.” He’s like, “You wanna fuck with me and everything like that? You wanna disrespect all of us here?” He’s like, “Drill sergeant, let me go.” He’s like, “Just say you’re a bitch” or whatever and he’s like, “I’m a bitch drill sergeant.” This guy who’s acting all hard. Eventually, they let him go and he was gone the next day. (21:37). Interviewer: “The other fella who didn’t want to be there–– did they eventually move him out of the unit?” Not while I was there. He was there throughout the whole time. Interviewer: “So, that’s an adventure so far. Now, how long did basic training last?” I believe day one or zero was August 30th–– I remember that because I was disappointed it wasn’t September 1st because I thought it would be kind of cool that the anniversary of when �World War II started [unintelligible]. And then we graduated on–– but I was satisfied because I got to graduate on December 7th. So, three months, give or take a little bit. Interviewer: “What did they do with you after that?” After that we got to go home for hometown recruiting and Christmas exodus, so it was like three weeks off where we got to go work for the recruiter for a week or two–– because we were doing that it wouldn’t count against our leave [or] when we could be home or anything like that. At that point in time, we’d just show up and the recruiter would be like, “Go hand out these flyers. See if you can put up these flyers” in local businesses or wherever. We’d knock that out in an hour and we’d just blow it off for the rest of the day. It was recruiters, I mean. They understood. They were like, “We don’t really care that much about these guys. Just let them do their thing.” Then after that, I think it was the first week of January I had to report to my first unit. (23:19). Interviewer: “And where was that based?” Fort Lewis, Washington. Interviewer: “And what unit were you joining?” A Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, 5th Brigade, 2nd ID. Interviewer: “So that's Second Infantry Division?” Yes. Interviewer: “The acronyms, we wanna make sure people are following. The person who is writing the outline for you.” Yeah. Alpha Troop and that whole mix of acronyms and stuff. Interviewer: “So, you’re with the unit. Now, the Cavalry units had certainly changed a lot over time in terms of how they’re equipped and what their missions are. At times, they’re more like an Armored Division, sometimes like Infantry. Other times, they’ve been airborne. How was the division set up? Or, were you just in a regular line Infantry unit–– or did they have special equipment or jobs?” Washington is a Stryker base, so we were Stryker vehicles. At this point in time, Cav Scouts, they’re just doing–– I would never tell them, they’re just doing the Infantry’s job. They would deny it vehemently because there’s this kind of rivalry, but, in a sense, they’re doing that same �thing. I won’t say that they’re as good as Infantry and everything like that, which I don’t think they’re as disciplined enough. But, they’re pretty much doing that thing. And then they do practice–– like the Strykers, they do have some big, old optical thing that they have mounted on top that can do their scouting and zoom in like a million times, or something like that. But, for the most part, they’re just doing, kind of, Infantry stuff. However, [it’s] just that their units are smaller and organized a little different. (25:06). Interviewer: “And then the Stryker vehicles themselves, describe those. What are you using them for?” Like, an actual, physical description of them? Interviewer: “Yeah.” Oh. I guess, if you want to picture it, it’s a giant, green brick with six/eight wheels or something like that. Then, the very front is sloped. Then the back drops down which let’s everyone go in and out. The Infantry model and the Scout model are pretty much, almost the exact same. I think there’s some slight differences. Then there’s like one with an actual 105 cannon mounted on top, and I think there are a couple other ones. But I–– being a mortarman–– we had the mortar variant. I forget the acronym for it, but you have an actual mortar mounted in the back of that. And at the top of it, it springs open–– it pushes open–– and it goes pretty much like this and the cannon raises out of the back and it’s on a turntable and you can rotate it all the way around. I believe the acronym for the actual cannon is RMS6-L. It’s a 120 millimeter mortar system and it can reach out and touch 6,700 meters, which is slightly less than the ground mounted system. You don’t get quite as much bang for your buck because it has a recoil system on it. Interviewer: “Well, 120 is still a good sized mortar and it can shoot a couple of miles.” Yeah. Interviewer: “So, that’s a really substantial weapon in and of itself. So, you get to Fort Lewis. At this point, was the unit preparing to go anyplace or had they been anywhere? Or were you just all in the base?” When I arrived, the 5th Brigade had just been stood up. I don’t know how long, but maybe a year or so ago. It is still pretty new. Like the deployment is not on the horizon at this point in time. I mean, we know we’re going somewhere eventually. That’s the reality of the Army–– everyone knows that you’re going to go somewhere. I think we eventually got word that we were going to Iraq and each platoon had to send off one guy to Arabic school, and you just kind of disappeared from the platoon completely for the next year. (27:54). We didn’t actually learn that we were �going to Afghanistan until we reached the National Training Center–– NTC. Like every combat brigade, before they deploy, they have to go to JRTC which is in Louisiana–– Fort Polk–– or NTC which is in Fort Irwin in California–– whatever geography they use [to] break it down. Pretty much, you just go to this place for a month and you run through some training and then you get done and they’re like, “You’re certified. You can go deploy.” Well, we thought we were going to Iraq this whole time, we finally got there and they’re like, “Oh no, you’re going to Afghanistan.” So, what you’ve been training for is not quite right. And like, “Oh yeah. That guy we took away from your platoon, who now knows Arabic, he can’t use that in Afghanistan. They speak Pashto.” Interviewer: “How long did you spend at Fort Lewis?” So, I got there–– I guess that would’ve been–– January of ‘08 and we finally deployed in July of ‘09. Then, we spent a year there, came back in July of the following year, and I left in October. (29:22). Interviewer: “How did you spend your time when you were based at Fort Lewis?” Well, my first year there–– at one point in time–– calculated it out and figured out that my first year in, we spent five months out of that year in the field. I don’t remember if NTC was a part of that equation or not, but that might’ve came to mind the following year. But, yeah. I couldn’t believe it. I calculated it out with all these trips up to the Yakima Training Center, which is like three hours by car, five hours by Stryker–– up in Washington. And it’s just wide open desert. Units from Fort Lewis will often go to train. It has a lot more room, whereas Fort Lewis is a lot more congested. Sometimes we’d just go out for a weekend on Fort Lewis for a border shoot or whatever, like that. But then we’d have troop, squadron, brigade level exercises, in which case we’d go out to Yakima for a week, two weeks at a time. Eventually, that adds up. That first year, I think, was the most I’d ever spent in the field at one point in time. I think it’s probably safe to say, on average, you’re looking at a minimum of two months out of the year doing some kind of field problem. Then if you have NCT or JRTC that’s another month on top of that. Of course, it varies between units and you can spend a lot more time. But, we’d go out there. Our First Sergeant had some weird grudge against [unintelligible] mortars or whatever. So, a lot of the time we’d get some of the shittier, heavier details and stuff like that. Most of the guys in the unit had been to Iraq and they really hadn’t used mortars to the extent that the guys that had been to Afghanistan had. Like my platoon’s Sergeant, he had been an Afghan vet so he was there. They shot a ton and everything like that. He was like, “These guys don’t know how to use us.” I don’t know. There was some kind of resentment there. (31:56). Interviewer: “How did they treat new people coming into the unit?” �It varies between platoon and platoon. My first platoon, it was great and everything like that. I didn’t have any problems with anyone–– maybe one of my sergeants. I think it was like a group of 12 or 15 guys. More platoon–– at least in the Cav world–– are a lot smaller. So, I mean, there was a little bit of hazing–– made me do push-ups for no reason or something like that. But, at the same time, there was my platoon sergeant, who, when he first got to the units–– like everyone else, slightly before us–– he came in and was only a Specialist at the time. And, in order to, like, fill out the whole–– they needed more NCOs in our little tiny platoon. So, they gave him Corporal and they tried to fast track him to E5, then E6 and everything like that–– so there’s that. (33:05). Everyone else is just Privates who got to the unit two/three months before me. And I think there was one other Specialist. There wasn’t like a ton of people to haze you. And our platoon sergeant really took on a father-figure persona and since all the other Cavs treated us shitty, there was a lot more camaraderie in our little crew–– who I remember trying to look out for each other. I think I was naturally a nice, young, naive guy, not hardened and resentful like I am now after everything. So, I got along with everyone and our platoon Sergeant was very much into platoon activities. We would go bowling together and stuff, like watch UFC fights. So, there wasn’t really anyone there to mess with me that much. (34:10). Interviewer: “You don’t really have a big divide between the experienced guys and the new guys because so many people were new.” Exactly. Interviewer: “Also, you’re talking here about Scouts versus mortars. Now, was the company a Scout company or the whole battalion? What does it actually mean to be a Cavalry Scout?” Well, I mean the brigade–– it seems the way that most brigades are organized, you have two or three infantry battalions in a brigade. Then, you’ll have a fuel artillery–– a battery is a company for them. Interviewer: “So a battalion would be standard.” Yeah. You would have like a few battalions of infantry, a battalion of artillery, and then you’d have a support battalion, and then a Scout squadron which is roughly the size of a battalion–– a little bit smaller. And then that breaks down into troops–– platoons–– so pretty much, we worked with me being part of a Cav squadron, we’re just infantry in the whole Cav world. Like, 11Charlie’s are always like the red-headed step-child of the Army because you’re in an infantry battalion. Your company is broken down into three platoons of regular 11-Bravo’s and then you’re going to have one platoon of 11-Charlie. They are always just that “add on.” It’s the same thing in the Cav world, except you’re one more step removed because you’re infantry and you’re �not Cav. I mean, you don’t even have that kind of thing. So, yeah. You kind of have a little bit of rivalry and disconnect from them. I mean, not to say that it’s some complete animosity where you’re butting heads all the time, but, you know, friendly kind of rivalries. You do, kind of, get to know and make friends outside of your platoon. (36:16). Interviewer: “Now, when you were on the base–– so the time you’re not in the field, you’re on the base at Fort Lewis–– are there other kinds of exercises or routine jobs you have? What happens there?” I mean, you have your daily things. You start your day, you do PT and everything for an hour/hour-and-a-half. I think when I first got there it was 6:30 to 7:30 and then they extended it to 8:00. Then, depending on what’s going on–– if you’re just coming back from the field, you’re just cleaning weapons all day. If it’s Monday, you’re going down to the motor pool and doing maintenance on your Strykers and everything like that. And then that can extend into other days of the week too, depending on if something needs to be done or whatever is going on. Or, some days you might be doing inventory. It all depends on what needs to be done right now. I wouldn’t say there’s a routine, but certain things you can expect to do. You’re going to be doing lots of layouts and inventory. You’re going to be spending lots of time in the motor pool cleaning weapons. Then, at the end of every day you have a certain area to clean. And that was kind of your day. And then, throughout that process–– I mean, some days you spend the entire time down in the motor pool or you spend the entire day doing inventory, but then a lot of the times you would do an hour or so of that, or maybe none at all that day. In which case, your leadership will try and teach you something whether it be land navigation, or have a class on doing the radio, or set up a glass house where you take some–– they call it engineer tape–– which is kind of a cloth and you make an outline of a room and you practice clearing rooms and everything like that. Sometimes we’d go down to the motor pool and we would throw up the back of our Stryker and practice manual gunning where, instead of using the digital system, you slap on an actual, legit mortar site and you actually try–– and were able to, depending on the position of the Stryker–– line up and actually run out poles, which with the mortar you’re supposed to adjust off of when you’re aiming and everything like that. But, most of the time, Strykers aren’t in the position so you’re trying to adjust off of the metal fences in the distance or stuff like that. So, the leaders just find different classes you can teach and everything like that. (39:15). Interviewer: “Okay, they keep you busy. Now, do you get time to go off base?” Well, yeah. It’s one of the things that people don’t really understand about soldiers. Like, every time I would come home my family was like, “So do you ever get any time to go do things on your own?” I’m like, “Yeah.” We’d get done with work at five o’clock or whatever it would be, and you’d be free. Unless you had CQ or staff duty or you have some kind of extra detail–– or you’re out in the field, of course–– but most of the time, as soon as you get off work, you’re “off �work.” You can have a car, you can go to town [and] do whatever you want, go to the bar. At that point in time, I really kept myself on base. I was a shy guy and I didn’t drink at that point in time. So, but yeah. You can go and do whatever you want. Interviewer: “So, you’re there for over a year basically and eventually, you are kind of gearing up with the idea that sooner or later you are going to go to Iraq. And then they send you off to the training center. Which one did you go to?” [I] went to the National Training Center which is in Fort Irwin. I forgot what JRTC stands for–– Joint Training Center or something like that which is in Fort Polk. I went there after my second unit. (40:45). Interviewer: “What do they do in that month of preparation?” I think for the first week you get down there and you're spending most of the time trying to unpack all your gear that you originally had to load up onto conexes and put on trains and stuff like that–– along with your Strykers. Which, that’s one thing that is different from NTC to JRTC–– which I think might be one of the reasons we went there actually. Now that I think about it, NTC, Fort Irwin out in the middle of the desert in California. JRTC you’re kind of in the middle of swamps, so you can’t really have Strykers rolling around. So, you had to unload that pretty much for the first week. You have to draw a “mod” of equipment which is kind of the “laser-tag” crap that you put all your weapons and vehicles and everything that never works. But, you put all of that on, you go out into “the Box” for two weeks in which case, each unit, depending on what your job is, you might have a battalion occupying this area and a troop occupying a FOB here. They have the unit that actually is stationed at Fort Irwin designated as the OPFOR–– the opposing force–– in which case they run around and they attack you and everything like that. So, just that kind of training. (42:18). For most of my time there they just kind of disregarded all the 11-Charlie’s and everything. We pretty much sat there, pulling guard in the middle of nowhere. But, I think that it might also be a reflection on NTC. I hear the experiences that people get there–– people I have talked to–– they’re usually a lot worse. A lot less useful than the JRTC in Fort Polk. There’s a lot more sitting around and doing nothing and everything like that. I don’t know. I personally think the whole thing is a waste of money. The Army could probably organize it better, or just have some other unit out in Fort Lewis play opposing force for a couple of weeks or something like that. Yeah, it was kind of pointless. I think I heard that it cost 25 million to send our brigade down there–– or 50 million, or something like that. Which, I mean, could be completely hearsay and everything like that. I heard just because they have to have extra engines lying around in case our Strykers breakdown and stuff like that. And then we did have one day–– a couple days–– where we did mortar shoot. I think my platoon, if I remember correctly, went down a week before everyone else because we were supposed to take this class about how to search houses and everything like that–– which is �actually kind of fun. You go into a house and as soon as you get an inkling that they’re hiding something, you throw everything and just take their drawers and chuck them everywhere. It was actually pretty cool because they had actual Middle Eastern actors there and they had a mock-up village that was pretty decently realistic and everything like that. It was a nice little fun game trying to find their hiding holes. I ended up falling into a hole in one of the houses–– twice. Same hole, same house, same time. (44:27). Interviewer: “Aside from that, was there anything else that was cleared geared for Afghanistan?” Our whole training was kind of focused on the idea that we’re going to the Middle East and focusing [on] we’re going to be finding an insurgent guerilla force who is going to be using ambush and IED tactics. So, I mean, there are big differences between the two countries, but at the same time, the tactics are kind of the same. If I was an actual higher-up and looking at the thing, I would not take that approach of like, “Oh, they’re the same thing.” But, I mean, it’s the same legit training and everything like that. I don’t know exactly what they could’ve done differently that much–– at least on my level as a lowly Private. Eventually, one of my last days at NTC I got promoted to Specialist, but besides that I don’t know what more they could’ve done. Interviewer: “Now, after this though, how do they get you out to Afghanistan?” Well, we come back and we have a couple weeks of block leave beforehand–– a couple of months beforehand. You start packing everything up, put them on the railroad cars, you send them off. They ship all the Strykers over on boat. I believe they originally shipped them from the States to Diego Garcia, and we actually had to have some guys volunteer to go out to Diego Garcia and Afghanistan–– the AVANT Force to help unload the Strykers at Diego Garcia. Put them on planes, get them to Afghanistan, and unload them. So, send all that out beforehand (46:45).. We started doing some processing like paperwork, medical screenings, and testing your hearing beforehand. You get your smallpox, anthrax vaccinations. I remember the hearing thing because later on my hearing got destroyed by that. So, I think they established a baseline of where you are generally, so when you come back they can see if there’s something different–– I think that’s the logic behind that. You fill out your will and everything like that. Just basic paperwork stuff. Then, they start sending out flights of guys at a time. I think usually they have seven different sorties going out–– seven different parties. I shipped out July 20th and finally landed at Manas, an Air Force base in Kyrgyzstan. We sit there and you wait to get a flight to go to Afghanistan. (48:05). Then we were there for about a week, or something like that. In which case, you get there–– I remember when we first got there, I remember it being really hot there. So, we would try spending the most part of our day–– the hot part of our day–– trying to sleep and then we’d be awake during the night when it was cooler out. Plus, we had that jet lag going on. So, we’d spend about a week there admiring the wonderful Air Force defect with it’s �amazing–– just looking at all the Air Force women who are just amazing compared to the Army women. I’m just speaking the truth, okay. And then, I think it was the 28th or the 30th when we finally touched down in Afghanistan in Kandahar Airfield. I remember when I first touched down there and I got there and I stepped off the plane and I’m hearing all this time leading up, “It’s hot as hell in Afghanistan” and everything. I get off the plane and I’m like, it’s kind of warm out here, but it’s not too bad. My buddy is like, “Dude. It’s 8:30 in the morning.” I’m like, “Oh my god.” And it just got warmer and hotter from there. To the point where what stuck out at me was you’d exit our giant circus tent, where it has our entire troop or something in–– a couple of troops, actually. And you would walk out and you could immediately feel the moisture on your eyes just start evaporating and everything like that. It was just hell. July and August in Kandahar is not fun. (50:06). Interviewer: “Did they move you off to a base or did you operate out of Kandahar, or what happened?” At first, I don’t think they knew where the hell they were going to put us when we first got there and everything like that. The first few weeks, trying to unpack things, long-hours and hot days, really crappy and everything like that. All of our AC units in our Strykers, since we were in Washington it never got used so when we got to Afghanistan, they didn’t work. So, we had to get those fixed. And then, at some point in time, they decide to send my troop out to help out one of our sister battalions from the brigade who is out in Arghandab River Valley at this FOB called [sounds like “fraughtnack”] They had apparently been catching crazy shit out there. I think they hold the record for the battalion with the most casualties or something like that. They went in there and did some–– they went in there with the wrong perspective and just pissed people off and kind of made things worse, or something like that. I mean, I think it was already a pretty bad area, but we went in there to help them with–– there was an election going on I don’t know if it was presidential or parliamentary–– but we went to go help them. We showed up and whatever and on our way out there we picked up some Afghan security forces and were supposed to escort them to some election sites or whatever. And this was supposed to take like five hours or something that turns into some giant shit-show and we’re just rolling around, doing God knows what, and eventually, it’s the end of the day, we finally get to [Fraughtnack], and it was like we’re going to have to stay here. So, we sleep there for a few hours and grab the Afghan Army guys and we have to go escort them to a polling place or something like that. (52:34). I remember he said, “We take two routes here.” I don’t remember the name but it’s something like Happy Magical Valley Forest Trail, or something like that. Or, we could take this one other route called Route Monkey. To which all the Afghan guys were like, “No, no, no. The Taliban is all there. We don’t want to go down there.” We’re like, “We’re gonna go down there.” So, once again, we were getting lost and it’s a real narrow, rocky road and everything. We’re rolling down there with Strykers and it’s the middle of the night and we’re just switching people out of the gunter–– who was pulling security. I think at one point in time, when we were stopped, my �platoon sergeant actually hopped up and led our driver. We’re just trying to stay awake and everything like that. I remember we were stopped at one point in time, this is our first mission out, and it’s already not going too well. We’re just on this narrow road with walls on each side and trees hanging over us like, “This is hell. I’m so tired,” and all of the sudden I’m listening to the radio and I hear my platoon sergeant say, “IED. IED.” I’m like, “What? Are you serious? I didn’t hear [anything].” I’m like, “Are you joking? I didn’t hear anything.” Apparently, some of the Afghan guys, further up, they–– I don’t know if they hit an IED or someone set off an IED–– but they got blown up. They have little Toyota Highlander’s that they’re in. I think a couple of guys died and some guys in the back lost their legs. I remember driving alongside the vehicle and it was like, you had the engine block and then the cab is just completely gone. It’s like someone just took that part out. Then you have the actual bed of the truck or whatever. So, it didn’t take cheese to figure out where the guys were sitting who got blown up. Me and my buddies are sitting in the back like, “Oh my god. This is not good. This is our first mission. There’s now way we are getting through this deployment.” Eventually we get back to [Fraughtnack] and we scrapped the rest of the mission of escorting these guys back. (55:07). We went back to Kandahar. And I guess we’re going in there right at the time of the surge of Afghanistan starting up. I guess my perspective of that unique kind of thing is–– we were only gone a few days and we get back and our parking spaces are already filled in by connexes and shit like that. So, we get back, we’re driving around, trying to find a place to park our vehicles–– yeah. I think we stuck around there for another week or so and then we got called out to [Fraughtnack] to help out our sister battalion again. We go out there and they’re planning on some big sweep of the village area there. The whole idea is they’re going to go in there [and] we’re going to be sitting here blocking forces and they’re going to push all of the bad guys towards us, or something like that. Great plan, except these are guerilla fighters who can just throw down their arm and blend in with the population. So, the whole idea that you can just push them our way–– it doesn’t necessarily work. So, we pretty much sat on the side of this river for a week or so. Had Afghan kids coming up to us, begging for MRE goods the whole time. And those kids are worse than homeless people at Christmastime. You give them one thing and they will never leave you alone. Then, after a week there, [we] moved to a different spot, and I don’t even remember what we were doing there, but we sat there for another week. I mean, there was some fighting because at night you hear grenade blasts going off and then you hear mortars firing–– most of those, I believe, were just illumination rounds–– but you hear stuff going on–– firefight stuff–– at night. We’re just bored as hell where we’re at. (57:23). At one point in time, I remember, a part of our troop went out to some village to meet with some Afghan guys. They come back and they have this kid with them. I remember his face was all puffed out and my platoon sergeant went over to see what was going on, and the kid went down to the river near us and some of the soldiers were helping him wash up. Apparently the kid was up from Kabul or something like that, and he was going down south to go study, or something like that. Apparently this Afghan police chief kidnapped him–– or stole him–– and was keeping him as a sex slave. Apparently, they said his shins were busted and everything like that. When our guys went to visit them, they saw this kid, �and they were like, “We’re taking this guy.” They were like, “No.” They’re like, “No. Fuck you. We’re taking him.” So, he was really happy to see us. I think I heard that they gave him some money and put him in a cab and sent him up north–– something like that. So, hopefully he got to where he was going. So, besides that, we just sat in our one spot for a week and had some Afghan kids throw pomegranates at me–– that’s pretty much the gist of it. Meanwhile, I don’t remember what the battalion's acronym was, but apparently they’re getting messed up left and right. Like, one of their Strykers hit an IED and killed everyone in the back. Seven people gone, just like that. So, yeah. They didn’t have a good time. (59:14). We go back to [Fraughtnack] and we stay there for another couple of days, then we go out to help them search a village. We’re pulling overwatch–– security–– while their guys go through and search it. At one point in time, they go through the house and apparently some dude had put artillery rounds from the original Soviet invasion built into the foundation of his house. I didn’t see it, but from what they were saying on the radio, they were like, “These are all kind of spent rounds and they’re just built into the walls.” I don’t know if it was a structural thing or whatever, but then they’re like, “But this one here is alive.” Then there was this cool discussion like, “We’re just going to blow it up in place.” And the guy is like, “No, no, no. Don’t blow up my house. I’ll bring it out into the field and you guys can do whatever you want with it.” “He says he’ll bring it out into the field for us.” They’re like, “I don’t know…let him do it.” So, he brings it out into the field and they put some demo on it and they blow it up. Then you hear on the radio, “We’re going to need to take this guy into custody as soon as we take care of this.” Which, I guess, is a reasonable thing if you find some kind of bomb in there–– regardless if his house is made up of a bunch of spent bombs, you still probably want to question the guy. But, the problem was–– so we’re sitting a few meters away and looking down at this guy and this open field where they just blew up the thing. They walk up and as soon as they get to him–– one of our guys–– he grabs him and just hip-tosses him to the ground and just smashes the guy and then they put him inside the back of the Stryker and then they bring him back to [Fraughtnack]. (1:01:22). What I hear later on is–– once again, this could’ve just been rumors I heard–– right after that day, we went back to Kaf. I heard later on, that one of the reasons we got sent back there is because one of our lieutenants–– one of the guys from our actual troop–– went and complained to some of the leadership of this battalion saying, “You guys are being a little rough on this guy.” “Okay, we hear you. Leave.” Once again, I could be completely wrong. And the thing that–– another time when we were out there during this whole escapade, we were just sitting there at one point in time, during the night, and they saw some guys planting an IED on the side of the road. My platoon sergeant had a running bet with our XO–– our XO, who I, for some reason, hated with a passion–– and he said [that] he’d bet us that, “We will never use you guys. We’ll never fire one mortar the entire time we’re in Afghanistan.” The guy’s cruel. (1:02:26). Interviewer: “We were talking about your first deployment in Afghanistan and we were talking about the Executive Officer of your unit, who, for some reason, didn’t like you guys �and didn’t like mortars and wasn’t going to let mortars shoot. So, kind of pick up the story with that.” Yeah. It was kind of weird because how it worked, originally, he was–– when we were in our troop back in garrison, he was the Lieutenant in charge of the actual support headquarters section–– which included the mortars. Initially, we liked him. He was a good guy and everything. But then he got promoted to XO, and I don’t know if he got indoctrinated into the Cav “way” or whatever, but he ended up completely hating us and our platoon sergeant hated him and our whole platoon hated him–– he hated us. But he bet our platoon–– my platoon sergeant and he had a bet that we would never fire any mortars in Afghanistan, and if we did, we would never fire any highly explosive mortars in Afghanistan, and if he lost he had to buy us all pizza. I don’t remember what he got if he won. But, we were out some night, sitting around doing nothing of course, and apparently they see some guys planting an IED on the side of the road and we’re just like, “Come on. Call us, call us, call us.” But instead, this guy elects to call in air support and they have a couple Kiowas–– helicopters–– come in and they break these guys and kill them. From our perspective, we could only see the rockets and the machine gun rounds coming down or whatever the heck they were using–– 30 cal. All we could see was the rounds coming down from where we were at. (1:04:41). I think later on there was a video circulated of the actual infrared of them getting blown away–– at least that’s what they said it was a video of. I mean, at this point in time, after all the different Facebook videos and everything, they could’ve just gotten it from anywhere. But back in ‘09 or whatever, there probably weren't quite as many of those going around. I think that it was a legit video of them–– it could’ve been any other firefight, but I believe it was this one. Then, we went back to Kandahar. We still don’t have a solid, “Where are troops going to go?” We don’t have a home yet and everything like that, whereas all of these other guys, they’re set up on their own FOBs and they have their own quarters where they have their stuff. We’re just still backpacking our way around the country like a bunch of gypsies, as we would say. Once again, we come back and all of our parking spots are gone–– there’s all these new units and we have to find a new spot. But, eventually they get to the point where it’s the end of September and they’re like, “We’re going to send these guys to this place called FOB Ramrod. We’re going to attach [the] Alpha troop to 2/1 Infantry. They’re not going to be with 3/61 anymore. And, we’re going to take a company from 2/1 Infantry and we’re going to attach them to––” Did I say 3/61? I meant 8/1, at this point in time. “We’re going to take a troop from 8/1 and give it to 2/1 Infantry Battalion. Take a company from them and give it to 8/1. And then from there, we’re going to take two platoons from the Cav’s of Alpha troop and give one each to a company of 2/1, and then give two platoons from each of these companies to Alpha troop because…” I don’t know [why] the fuck. Because it’s the Army and nothing has to make sense. I don’t know. Maybe they thought there would be some kind of cross-collaboration where Infantry 11-Bravos mixed with Scouts–– I don’t know. Maybe they thought they would kind of complement each other. (1:07:02). �Interviewer: “Did the Infantry have vehicles other than Strykers? Would adding Strykers to a particular unit give it any advantage or benefit?” Well, all of our brigades had Strykers. I mean, you do have some support vehicles, LMTVs–– which are just big trucks–– supply trucks. Interviewer: “But the different units had essentially the same equipment?” I believe the Infantry varied its Stryker. It’s slightly different than the Scout one, where the Scout one has something on it where you can attach–– I believe it’s called an LRAD–– [an] imaging system or whatever. I think the Infantry vehicles had slightly more room in the back to accommodate carrying personnel and everything like that. But it’s still negligible, I guess. Interviewer: “So, they’re mixing all of these units up. Now, what happens with that?” So, we’re assigned to our particular sections and whatever. Once we got to Ramrod we pretty much, for the most part, we kind of stopped moving around and everything like that–– like the mortars. Everyone else–– I mean, the other guys still did patrols and everything like that. I believe one of the companies was stationed at another FOB or COP down the road–– and apparently they got attacked quite a bit, but where we were at–– if you know anything about the landscape of Kandahar, for the most part, it’s nothing but desert. Like a flat desert and there was one mountain in the distance and then you have villages here, here, and here–– just random, it seems like. But where our FOB was, it was just [the] middle of nowhere. When we first got there, my platoon was tasked with pulling hot gun, where you set up [the] Stryker and you have 24/7 just listening to the radio for them to call us for support whether it be HE–– high explosive– – or illumination. 99 percent of the time they would just call us for illumination at night for the patrols that were out. (1:09:30). We had our own tent right now–– they called it GP medium. We had like 13/15 guys in there–– it was pretty crowded. We just had our bunks and all of our stuff shoved underneath. We used some empty illumination round boxes to house some of our stuff. And we had about that much room between bunks and everything like that–– that’s it. Once again, reflecting–– there’s empty tents on the other side and all of the Cav platoons, they’re split up like eight guys each in their tents and we’re housing 13/15 guys in here. We’re just like, “Why can’t we stay in these?” Our First Sergeant was like, “I think I might want to turn it into a gym or something eventually.” But, once again, they all hated us for some reason. We hated all of them too. So, we’re stuck in these tents and we pull 12-hour shifts between us, so you split the platoon in half [for] 12-hour shifts. My squad, with our platoon sergeant, had midnight to noon and then our other squad with our Staff Sergeant would take over with his guys. There was no tent or anything set up at that point in time. It was just our Strykers sitting there, a couple of cots right outside. Then, we’d hang out and talk for a couple of hours and fire off some rounds when they called us, and then a couple guys would rotate out and they would go catch a little bit of �sleep in the cots outside of the Stryker. (1:11:21). If any missions got called, we’d yell out and they would come in–– we attempted to yell out and they would come in. It was actually kind of cool how we had it set up because we had two radios going–– one listening to the talk [of] the actual headquarters, talking out to the guys. We’re listening to the fire control talk on one radio– – who calls in the fire missions to us–– and then we also have the radio going listening to the guys out on patrol. We hear them call up for fire support–– not fire support, but “illumination”–– and we’d hear them calling up the fire request–– the fire mission–– to the talk. Meanwhile, we’re inputting all of our data and getting our gun up and then the talk calls back down to us, gives us all of the data, and as soon as they get done we’re like, “Shot over” and they’re like, “Oh, yeah. Shot out.” I mean, it was literally like that. It was like how were [we] set already? Also, where the whole fire support area is, there’s also a battery of 155s like 50 meters away or 25 meters away. They would also call for illumination rounds. And those things–– they’re just so loud and they just make you jump every time they fire. It’s kind of funny, this one time me and my platoon sergeant were sitting up late, doing our guard, and then like two or three other guys, they were sleeping on the side of the Stryker. (1:13:08). We get a call for an illumination mission. We started yelling to them, but they’re not coming and we need to get stuff up and going. My platoon sergeant is putting the information into the computer and he’s trying to pull out rounds at the same time and prep them while I’m trying to get the gun up. I’m getting the gun up–– which is supposed to be just my job–– then there’s supposed to be a guy prepping the rounds and there’s supposed to be a guy hanging the rounds, and then there’s supposed to be the platoon sergeant putting it all into the computer. But, it’s just me and my platoon sergeant doing all of this and we’re like, “Where the fuck is everyone?” Like, he’s prepping it, I’m actually adjusting the gun and I’m grabbing the round and running it over and dropping it back, and just doing this circle. Eventually we get done [and] we walk to the side of the Stryker and they’re still sleeping there even though we’re firing a 120mm mortar five feet away from their heads. [We’re] like, “Really? You guys didn’t wake up?” I guess [it’s] something you just get used to over time. And we stayed down there for like a month or so and guys started rotating out on leave and everything like that. At one point–– I think it was like October–– we had just gotten off shift, so it was about 12 o’clock, and my platoon sergeant went straight to the phone bank to call home. The rest of us went back to the tent to go to sleep. And they way it’s set up is you have your FOB and the walls out there, and then we had our mortar point right here and then you had another wall of HESCO barriers and then you just have a hole in the wall–– a gap–– and then you just walk out and go over there. (1:15:03). I had just walked around the corner when all of the sudden I heard the “thunk” and I’m like, “Huh. They’re firing already?” It kind of sounded different–– I mean, if you know what explosions sound like, outgoing and incoming sound different, where the actual explosion has this kind of “thunk” to it, whereas the outgoing is just this loud bang. I walk around the corner and I’m like, “That’s kind of weird.” I see all this dust coming in and I’m like looking around. I kind of walk–– our tent is like right here, then a wall, mortar point right here, and the explosion happened right here–– I walk out [and] I look around like, “Huh.” I walk a little bit further so I can see the mortar point around the corner and I can see our guys come �running out and I’m like, “Oh, shit.” And they’re like, “Get the guys. Get the guys.” So, I immediately ran in and I got the guys and said we got incoming and I ran to the phone bank and grabbed our platoon sergeant. Apparently, they fired a couple rounds at us and then I heard also that we had like the Battalion Commander and some guys [that] were outside the FOB somewhere and like they started taking incoming also–– at least that’s what I heard. So, we get up on the guns and we’re listening to the radio and the way it works is that they have some kind of radar system that, when a round comes in, it can give you where it came from. Not exactly the most accurate thing in the world, because on time we had a mortar incoming and it came back to us like, “The grid is blah, blah blah.” My platoon sergeant is like, “Wait a minute.” He starts plotting that out and is like, “That’s 12 miles away. We can’t reach that and neither can they.” So, it’s not foolproof, but they gave us a grid and we fired back at them and at least–– they stopped firing after that. I heard a rumor that someone went out and found a destroyed mortar or something after that. Once again, that could’ve been a rumor. Looking back, it’s hard to say. That was enough for us to earn our Combat Infantry Badge. We were all really excited about that. (1:17:45). Interviewer: “So, you actually got to fire an explosive round out of the mortar too.” Yeah. Yeah–– which was nice. Occasionally–– one other time–– we got some incoming and we returned it and don’t know if we hit anything or not because the initial reading that they gave us for the grid was completely off, so who knows if the second one was anywhere near it. But, we got to fire and then a few other times they called us in for high explosive rounds just so they could blow up a suspected IED site or something like that. We were really excited about that. A couple of our guys that were out on leave were pissed because they missed it and everything like that. One thing I forgot to say [was] when we first got to Kaf and before we went on that first mission, like the night before, we were ordered to go to the ammo-supply point and collect our mortar rounds and everything, because obviously we didn’t ship them over there with our Strykers. And we were sitting out there for, gosh, I don’t know, a few hours. We didn’t know what was taking so long. I didn’t think we were drawing that many. And we’re sitting there, back hatch down of our Stryker, and all of the sudden–– throughout the rest of the day–– we kept hearing the Air Force had the A-10s going over and firing. And they have a distinct sound of their gun, the rrr. So, I kind of had that in my mind the whole time. (1:19:22). And we’re sitting out there and all of the sudden all of the sudden I hear, “shhp” or something like that, and for that brief second it flashed through my mind like, “What the hell is the Air Force doing now?” But then, all the sudden it was like “boom” and we heard the explosion. We were sitting on the side of this berm and the inside is the actual ammo-point. The round goes in and they explode inside there–– kind of cool. We all got inside of our Strykers and closed the door and that was it. It was kind of cool, I mean, the round flew right over our heads. Kaf and everything regularly get some kind of rockets or mortars that come in. Most of the time it’s kind of pointless to even respond, because the way that they do it is they have time-delay fuses where they don’t even have to be �anywhere nearby. I mean Kaf, it’s kind of striking to me. It’s like an entire city just built out of the middle of nowhere. So, a lot of the time you would hear the air-raid sirens go off but the rounds land so far away, you can’t even hear it go off. No sign that anything even happened except for the siren going off and everyone having to go into the bunkers. By the time you get done with the deployment–– when you first get there you’re like, “Oh, cool. It’s an air-raid.” By the time you get done with the deployment you’re like, “I bet I can get to the Burger King on the boardwalk right now” while everyone is hiding out. I tried to do that, but I got caught by some douchebag Colonel. (1:21:11). So, there was that. But, back on Ramrod, after we fired like that, we spent some more time on hot gun. But, then we rotated off and other platoons rotated in. We got put on what was called [sounds like “mare so”] once again we kind of got stuck with the shit jobs where we had to go around and empty the trash bins or–– I escorted the Afghan workers around who emptied the porta potties everywhere, and stuff like that. The best job was the trash detail because you got to drive around in an LMTV and the Afghan guys would throw the stuff in the back and then when they were done, we would drive outside of the FOB. Once again, we’re in the middle of nowhere–– we didn’t really need any kind of security. We’d just roll out and dump it all out in some hole–– we had a giant, massive garbage hole–– and pour a bunch of gasoline onto it and light it on fire. A big old fire would go and everything like that. Though, apparently now people are saying burn pits like that give people cancer or something. I haven’t had any adverse effects, so I don’t know. Actually, I think at first they didn’t have Afghan guys and we had to pick up our trash ourselves, but eventually we got some Afghan workers and all we would do is just follow them around in our truck. I mean, it wasn’t a bad job. Well, it was a bad job but compared to some of the other ones, it didn’t require that much work. We did that on-and-off for a few months. Go back to “mares” back onto hot gun. We got lucky because the mortar platoon that relieved us, they were more motivated than us and they built a whole big tent/hut that had bunks and desks and everything. As soon as they got it up, we came in, kicked them out and we were like, “Awesome. We have a tent now.” (1:23:18). So, we had a good set up there. We had power–– you’d go down there and plug-in your laptop [and] watch movies or whatever all night. Or play Risk or something like that. It was just funny because I would always win, and we had this one kid who–– somehow–– I could always talk him into teaming up with me and then as soon as we’d conquer everyone else, I would betray him every single time. But, somehow he still kept on teaming up with me. But, that’s kind of here or there. Interviewer: “Now while you’re out there, do you have much opportunity to communicate with anybody back home?” We could communicate [with] back home. This is back in like ‘09 and ‘10, so the whole age of Skype and everything was not really quite there yet. Also, they were putting in the internet for us to get on the FOB–– like half of the FOB had internet, but of course, being the mortars, we’re off in the middle of nowhere where people don’t give a shit about us so we don’t have internet. But, they did have a phone bank–– an MWR station–– where we had four or five phones and then �there were some computers. You could call home. When we were on hot guns–– 12-hour shifts– – especially in the middle of the night, when most people were sleeping, there usually wasn’t a huge need. We had enough guys that we could spare someone if they wanted to, we could rotate and they could go put their laundry in or go use the phone real quick. (1:25:32). But, the problem was, as time went on, I think two of the phones broke and then also we had an entire battalion and I think we had some other guys on there, so this is a pretty decent size FOB so we had probably 700 people on this FOB, and we had like three phones. So, there’s always some giant line out the door and there’s a time limit of like ten minutes on the phone–– max. It was not a good set up. It’s funny, I would call my parents and we’re talking–– and I guess it’s a testament to deployment and Army people’s bad choice in women–– and you would just be sitting there and the guy next to you would start screaming into the phone at his wife or girlfriend [like], “Why am I checking the credit card balance [and] why the fuck are you at the club at two o’clock in the morning? Spending all of my money and I’m over here. I know you’re not out there with just your friends every single night.” I’d just be sitting there like, “Everything is going good here mom.” You’re just trying to ignore the fact that this guy is cursing out his wife. Actually, out of our platoon, I think we had four or five guys that got married within three months of deploying. I think three of those guys–– all but one–– got married two weeks before they deployed. Within a year of getting back, I think, all but one was divorced. I think one of them ended up spending the guy’s money on things like casinos and drugs, too. I don’t know if anyone actually cheated or not–– maybe. I know a couple of guys on my next deployment, they got cheated on by their wives. It’s amazing how common it is. I mean, you hear the stereotype, but it’s 100 percent true that there’s an infidelity problem in the military. (1:27:53). Interviewer: “There’s also a stereotype–– at least around some different bases–– that women are interested in marrying guys basically so they can get benefits or whatever else it is while they’re off someplace else.” Oh, yeah. I mean, that’s a lot of the idea. I think they’re definitely dependent hounds out there or whatever, but a lot of these guys–– a few of them–– they had been in a relationship for a while. I think at least two of them–– the one that lasted and another one–– they had known the girls before the Army and everything like that, and the other ones met them around the base. So, I don’t know if there were extra benefits or what. But, there’s an actual financial benefit–– supposedly–– for getting married because then you get your BAH, which you don’t get if you’re a single soldier living in the barracks. You also get BAS–– which is supposed to provide for food and everything–– which is a few hundred bucks a month. BAH, depending on where you’re at, is 1,000/2,000 bucks a month. And then, on top of that, you get separation pay for when you’re overseas which–– I don’t know–– is like three to six hundred bucks a month, or something like that. That’s of course, on top of all of your combat pay and everything like that. So, there is a benefit. And these guys think, “If we get married, we’ll get all of this extra money. We’re already dating, why not? I’m in love with you, we’re going to last.” And some of them are like �[they’ll] set up an allotment where it’s just like the bare minimum. The Army says [they] are only required to give her 800 bucks of my paycheck, so [they’ll] set up an allotment for that and [they’ll] be able to pocket all of this other money. And it never, never works out that way. Ever. (1:29:54). Because even if they set up an allotment where they only get this, eventually, they get ahold of the bank account number or they end up calling the unit saying, “I’m a wife of [this] soldier. I can’t support myself” or something like that. Then the Commander has to come in like, “You have to give your wife more money.” It never worked. I think my platoon sergeant had it down-pat. He went in and was like, “I know [if] I’m going overseas, I have to accept the fact that I’m not going to be making that much extra money. I know I’m not coming back to a big paycheck.” It really pisses off the married guys when they’re saying they are looking at their bank account. Like us single soldiers, we’re looking at our bank accounts, [and] our money is piling up, we have the extra pay, we don’t have anywhere to spend that pay while it’s piling up. While theirs is just sitting there and they know they’re getting paid more, but somehow they’re losing money, and everything like that. It’s ended a lot of marriages. (1:31:00). Interviewer: “Are there other phases of your deployment after the kind of the activities you’ve been talking about or do you just move around to different bases doing the same kinds of things for the rest of that time?” Well, we pretty much stayed on Ramrod for the rest of the deployment. We rotated between “maresell” and hot gun and everything like that. At one point in time I got leave to go home. It originally landed on Christmas, [but] I traded to go home on Thanksgiving because I didn’t want to go through the hassle of Christmas and everything like that. But then when I was home on leave, my guys got tasked to go back out to Arghandab to help out with that whole battalion. While they were there and I was back home, my mom’s telling me the FRG stuff. One day I woke up and she’s telling me, “Apparently your unit had some casualties.” Immediately, I’m like, “Oh, shit. Who is it?” She was like, “[Do] you know Joseph Lewis?” I’m like, “Joseph? Oh, shit. Lewis?” [It] was this guy in one of our platoons–– they were going through Arghandab and they hit an IED. He was driving and [it] killed him and everything like that. I mean, he wasn’t in my platoon, but I worked with the guy quite a bit. He was–– I think anyone in the company would hands down say he was kind of like the “joker”–– [the] funniest guy there. There’s kind of this stereotype–– I don’t know if it’s a stereotype–– I guess I can say it’s a stereotype, like when you first get to the unit they say to the virgins, “Oh, you better get laid” or whatever. My last unit–– the virgin, he always gets killed or something like that. He had this idea that it’s like the virgin who gets killed. It’s that weird, creepy guy–– naturally, it’s going to be them. But now, it’s always the ones who have the most. (1:33:24). Apparently he had a wife [and] a newborn kid and he told me that apparently he didn’t need to be in the Army anymore–– that he had made a bunch of money in the stock market. Enough that the Army gave him the option to leave, or something like that. Which, it could’ve been bullshit, or not, but either way, I knew he had a wife and kid. Yeah. It’s kind of that. One of the guys in my platoon, he was the guy's best friend. It �really hit him really hard. Yeah. That was a shocker and everything like that. I don’t know. Maybe it’s unique to me, but one experience I had was I liked the idea of war. I mean, I never immediately kind of feared for my life at any point in time, but there were some moments like that first mission–– or the few that we actually got to go on after that–– where it was like the night before, or a few hours before, and you’re just sitting there–– and maybe it’s just me–– but it’s like, “Wow. I could lose my life tomorrow” or something like that, or, “I could die tomorrow.” It’s a weird kind of awareness of your mortality, I guess you could say. I mean, eventually that goes away with boredom–– at least on my part because nothing exciting ever really happens, so complacency happens. (1:35:11). They warn you constantly about complacency, “Don’t become complacent.” But, it happens to everyone, eventually, to a degree, and you do things to minimize it. That’s where the discipline comes in [and] you can’t drone off too far. But, yeah. That was kind of a unique feeling and everything like that. But, for the most part, the rest of the deployment is very boring–– just illumination missions. Eventually we moved out of the tent and into CHUs or whatever–– the little housing units that they had where it’s like a box or an empty connex that they have renovated into housing. Eventually we got some internet–– I mean, it was slow as hell and it cost way too much–– but it was better than what we had. Eventually, it was just me and one other guy in a room as opposed to 13, so it was nice. (1:36:15). Interviewer: “Did you have any feel of how large your mission is going, or were you accomplishing anything? Or, do you have no idea?” I can’t believe I almost forgot. I sensed the surge or whatever outside when we were in Kaf, just because of the build up and everything. But, when we were out where we were at–– I guess I sensed it out there because they kept on building up the FOB and everything. Like, at one point in time we were trying to expand out the FOB to where we could actually have a 1,000 meter shooting range, or something like that. There was also talk that they might eventually make a landing strip just big enough for C-130s to land. Nothing ever came of it, like when we set up all these HESCO barriers for the shooting range, but we didn’t get around filling them and then winds came in and blew them all over. That was a couple good weeks of work gone down the drain, but I guess since that. And then there was also [that] my unit had a unique role in the fact that–– okay. So, at one point in time, while we were on hot gun, we’re listening to the radio and we heard on the radio, “Hey, CID is here and they’re going through second platoon’s Stryker right now.” CID–– the Criminal Investigation Division–– the cops, not the MPs, but the actual detectives of the Army, “They’re going through second platoon’s Stryker.” I’m listening to that radio like, “Huh.” We just assumed that they probably got some tip from the Afghans–– there were poppy and weed fields everywhere–– so we assumed they got a tip that someone was hoarding some weed, or something like that. (1:38:19). Then, a few days later CID came down and questioned us, and we each took a turn going in and talking to the guy. They’re like, “So, have you heard anything about anything illegal going on? Do you know why we’re here?” We’re �like, “I haven’t heard anything. We heard on the radio that you guys were going through second platoon’s Stryker’s.” At that point, they laugh and they’re like, “Really? They put that on the radio?” I don’t know. They kind of laughed that we heard about it. He was like, “Could you suspect why we’re here?” I’m like, “I don’t know–– just a wild guess, nothing to back it up–– maybe drugs or something?” And they’re like, “Okay. Whatever.” Then they leave. A little while goes by and we’re in the CHUs and we have the internet–– I’m still trying to stay informed–– and go onto FoxNews.com and see a thing like “Cavalry Unit Stryker Brigade Accused of War Crimes in Afghanistan.” And I’m like, “Oh, shit. I know why CID was here.” And apparently, one of our platoons–– like one of the infantry platoons that was attached to our troop–– they had gone out and they had murdered a couple of civilians and they had staged it to make it look like they had taken contact. Actually, one of our guys actually thought he had his chance to get his CIB through this. He was one of the guys that was initially gone on leave and he was going on a convoy with this platoon coming back from Kaf–– a supply run or something. Apparently, these guys shot a couple of guys and threw a hand grenade out and said it was an IED–– or they tried to fire an RPG–– and my guy, I don’t know, like they were somewhere else in the convoy and they didn’t know what was going on. But, they just knew an explosion went off, so he kind of had this hope that he was going to get CIB, but no, they had killed a couple guys. (1:40:49). One of them actually cut off a finger and hid it or something like that. So, I think a couple of guys are in Leavenworth right now because of that. One more experience, I guess, that kind of stands out is towards the end of our deployment. We were firing HE like the “fisters,” the forward observers. They were doing some training calling in fire missions and where the mortar point is, it’s on the far side of the FOB at the very end and then the FOB goes for 600 meters or something like that–– maybe longer. And we’re shooting over the FOB and if you know how a mortar works, you have the mortar and then you have the tail and on the tail you have what they call cheese charges, whereas there’s four of these little donut looking things that slip over it which are made up of like nitroglycerin and gunpowder. Depending on how far you want the round to go, it depends on how many of these cheese charges you lay on. If you only wanted to go 1,000 meters, you may only leave one of these charges on. We’re shooting charge one. So, one charge on [and] we’re shooting over the FOB. (1:42:30). At this point in time, I’m prepping the rounds–– I’m the ammo bearer. I’m taking out the rounds, I’m handing it to the guy. I’m taking off the cheese charges–– that’s what I mean by prepping. I’m taking it out of the tube, I’m taking the cheese charges off, I’m handing it to the assistant gunner who then drops the round. One guy is actually pointing the gun and the squad leader is putting the information into the computer. Some of these things, I mean–– cheese charges are not like a solid block. Some of them are a little more firm on it than others because they have to be easy enough to pull off. And I took them off. Apparently the charge that was left on it was not as firm around there as others. When I handed it to the guy–– I’m making it clear–– it was on the round. But our HE is this giant, six foot six, 260/300 pound guy, and he loves his job. He’s just swinging those rounds out there and dropping them–– he was having a good time. He takes this round–– and we’re just getting done with our fire for effect for about five rounds, just quick, off in a row like that–– and �I think it was the last round, I handed it to him and he takes it up and flings it up and drops it. But when he flung it up, the charge flew off [and] hit my squad leader–– who was putting the information in the computer–– in the face and dropped the round. As soon as that happens our squad leader holds up the charge like, “Dude. This flew off.” We’re like, “Oh shit.” Because we know–– we’re shooting over the entire FOB on charge one and that charge just flew off. (1:44:25). So, we’re immediately just looking over like, “Come on. Just make it over the FOB.” The round lands and we’re all the way on the other side. We see the dust or the dirt come up, [but] we can’t tell if it’s inside or outside the FOB. And we immediately started hearing on the radio, “Hey, we just had a round land inside the FOB.” It didn’t–– it landed right outside. But either way, we’re hearing this on the radio and we’re like, “Oh my god. We’re going to jail,” and stuff like that. And then there’s–– none of us are saying this, but personally, I’m thinking, “Oh my god. What if we killed someone,” an Afghan or especially if it was an American. I mean, how do you live with that? Eventually, the battalion Commander comes down to do a little investigation and at first we have a little issue with one of the rounds, when we first took it out of the tube, it was already missing some charges. So, the original ammo bearer, he was first prepping the rounds. He was doing all of this and he made note of that. I wasn’t doing the ammo bearing at that point in time, but halfway through the shoot he had to go catch a flight somewhere. So, initially when we did the count, we came up short on the cheese charges and they were just like, “What the hell is going on here?” It was like we’re hiding something, but then we’re like, “Remember that first round? It didn’t have all of the charges on there.” He’s like, “Okay.” So we get the charge, we get the numbers right, [and] we explain to them, “This is what happened, It was naturally loose. It came off. Shit happens.” They’re like, “Okay. We understand.” (1:46:40). But even still, the Sergeant Major took us out to where the round landed. It landed right outside a watchtower, which, during the day, is manned by Afghan Security Forces. We had to go in and apologize to the Afghans there. And the guard tower, it had bulletproof glass so you could see that some shrapnel had hit it, and up above on the top where it was wood you could see where a couple things were going in. It was bad because my squad leader, he’s kind of–– he was one of the guys who was first coming up with us. He was one of the Privates who came in before me. He got promoted, once again, kind of with us. We had a need for NCOs to fill some ranks, and he got promoted. But the problem was, he’s this guy that has this natural sarcastic grin on his face. So we go in to apologize to the Afghans and we’re like, “I’m sorry man,” and he just has this big grin on his face the whole time and the guys are just glaring at us–– that was awkward. But yeah, that was our first deployment and we rotated back, I guess. (1:48:09). Interviewer: “As you get close to the end of it, do you have a scheduled departure date or do you know approximately? Does anything change before you go?” Well, we had a general idea that was like we’ll be leaving in July, which you could kind of automatically figure out because you know deployments are a year-long at this point in time. As �you get closer to it, they eventually start making up a chalk list of what flight you’re on. I mean, naturally they don’t just pull the whole unit out all at once. The new unit slowly goes in as you slowly go out. Eventually you get word [of] what truck number you’re on and eventually your number comes up and you drag all of your stuff out to the airfield, get on a helicopter, fly back to Kaf, wait there for a couple of weeks or something, catch a flight back to Manas, wait a little bit there, catch a flight back home. Interviewer: “Now, when you get back to the States, do they do any kind of debriefing or other kinds of things to help you adjust to being back home again, or do you just get sent home?” Well, we had to inprocess and then there was some more paperwork, do some medical screenings, and do my hearing test again because firing 60 millimeter mortars, except for this particular one, where I fired and didn’t have my earplugs in at the time and it like blew out my hearing. I couldn’t hear for about three weeks–– well, it slowly came back–– but for at least a week or so all I heard was “beeeer.” I thought I might’ve lost my hearing at that point. (1:50:06). I still do have some hearing loss and tinnitus. The VA gives me a little bit of money for that, so I think it’s worth it. But yeah, you do some screenings. I think at one point in time one of the stations you go through–– you had to fill out some form on the computer or whatever. I remember one of the questions was like, “How many drinks do you have per month?” Or like, “On average, how much do you drink?” And, “How often do you have six or more alcoholic beverages?” At this point in time, I wasn’t even really drinking then. But, there were some times where you would go out and you would go into a bar or you would go into your buddies place, and you drink that night. I’m like, “Maybe once a month I have six or more beers at one particular time.” Which is very mild for the Army. So you go through and this lady was looking at your file like, “Okay. According to this, you have six or more beers once a month. Do you wanna talk to someone and get some help with that?” I’m like, “What? Why?” “This says that you’re getting falling-down-drunk at least once a month.” I’m like, “No I don’t want any help. This is fine. I’m 21 years old right now. I’m in the Army. Trust me, this is not a big deal.” Then, yeah. You come home [and] you go on block leave. I think at one point in time during the inprocessing someone asked us if there was anything we wanted to talk about or something like that. I don’t know if anyone took them up on that, I think most guys just said flat out, “Nah. I’m good.” (1:52:03). Interviewer: “So there’s not really much of any kind of effort to provide education about what kinds of stuff to watch out for in terms of behavior or anything else, or different things to be aware of when you go back to being a civilian–– not a civilian, but back in the States because you still have time left on your enlistment?” �I don’t remember if we had–– I mean, they warned us not to go out and get DUIs and stuff, [but] I don’t remember if we actually had any classes the first time around. We probably did–– I don’t exactly remember. I know we had some stuff [after] my second deployment where they went through and were like, “This is going to be a big adjustment for you married guys. It’s going to be like living with a stranger.” I think at one point in time they had something about interacting with civilians or something. I’m just thinking back to my second deployment. I just remember because I had one of the funniest–– inappropriate–– pick-up lines. Hopefully no one that’s eventually going to interview me or admit me to grad school or something like that sees this, but there were these civilian ladies and they’re asking us, “Tell us a good pick-up line” or something like that. They were like, “It can be the most raunchy thing. Tell us a funny pick-up line.” I don’t remember where it was going into, I think it was interacting with civilians at the park. One guy raises his hand and is like, “Hey. You know how I know we’re going to have sex tonight?” “How?” “Because I’m stronger than you.” So, it was kind of one of those things that was funny. So we had some reintegration training, at least the second time around. I’m pretty sure the first time too, I just don’t recall totally. (1:53:56). Interviewer: “So you do come back, you get some leave home or whatever because you have been overseas, and then do you go back to Fort Lewis? Or, what do you do next?” First you in-process at Lewis and then I think we got pretty much most of August–– you have an opportunity to take leave. I mean, you’ve been saving up [for] leave. They charge you for your leave when you’re overseas, so you have the option to take a month of leave. I think I took three weeks because I wanted to have a little bit of leave in the bank and also I was PCSing to Colorado soon, so I wanted to make sure that I had some extra travel days if I needed them. So I think I spent three weeks in August on leave. Came home, did some out-processing from the unit, and then I went out to Colorado. Interviewer: “So you have a new unit you’re being assigned to out there?” Yep. Interviewer: “What unit is that?” 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division. Interviewer: “Is this a unit that is recently back from somewhere, or planning to deploy? Or, kind of, where are they in their sequence?” They deployed in roughly the same timeframe as us. I want to say they got back like a month before we did. They were in Afghanistan also. They were up in the Kunar area, and they actually �saw some real shit up there. One of their troops actually got into a big, massive engagement where a couple of guys actually walked away with medals of honor and everything like that. So, in a war where there has only been a couple dozen medal of honors, two of them came from this one action. So, yeah–– they had just gotten back. I in-processed with them and everything like that. (1:56:04). Interviewer: “Now, why were you changing units? Was that a standard procedure or did you request to move?” No. When I was deployed–– when I originally enlisted, I enlisted for three years. When I was deployed–– I said earlier–– I absolutely loved my platoon and everything like that, despite the way that castouts cheated us and our shitty unit. I absolutely loved it. I enjoyed my job and everything like that–– the people I worked with–– so I wanted to reenlist. So, I reenlisted overseas and part of that was that I got to choose from a select group of options of places I could PCS to. It’s one of the enticements or benefits of reenlisting. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but you get some choice of where you get to go. Not every single place, but depending on what units need–– troops–– and what units don’t. Interviewer: “And you said ‘PCS’ too. What does that mean?” Oh PCS–– oh gosh, what does it stand for? I don’t remember actually what the acronym stands for, but it’s when you move from one unit to another. I remember I had a choice between Hawaii or Colorado. I heard good things about Colorado–– people loved it. Hawaii, of course–– it’s Hawaii, so that’s also a thing. The problem is that I had been living in Washington for a few years. Where it is–– if you’ve ever been to Washington, especially the Fort Lewis area–– you know that nine months out of those years it is raining and you don’t see the sun. And then I go to Afghanistan where it is hot all year round, except for like December where it gets down to 50/60 degrees–– minimum. So, at this point in time, I’m like Hawaii sounds nice, but I come from Michigan. I want seasons and everything like that. I want a Summer and a Winter and everything like that–– I was an idiot, I could’ve gone to Hawaii but I chose Colorado. (1:58:26). Interviewer: “Was it not an option to stay with your original unit?” It was definitely an option, but at this point in time I was thinking I wanted to stay in for 20 years. From talking to my NCOs and everything like that, you need to move around, at least a little bit, to get experiences or whatever. I mean, not just stick with just Strykers. You should go to MAC, infantry, airborne, to show that you’ve moved around. Also, you want to experience different things and everything like that. To get away from Washington where it’s–– apparently everyone wants to go to Fort Lewis, until you actually get to Fort Lewis–– at least if you’re an infantry guy who actually has to work outside quite a bit, whereas, I don’t know, if you’re an �office person it’s great. Because it is absolutely beautiful most of the time, but it rains so much. If you’re working outside that’s not great. Interviewer: “So, you’re going to Colorado now. This is a unit that has got a lot of people who are themselves veterans who have been over, deployed, and back. How do they treat you coming in? Do they pay attention to whether or not you’ve been anywhere?” I mean, you’re not viewed as a Private at this point in time. They see that you’re a Specialist, that you have CIB and a combat patch on your shoulder–– they give you some credit or whatever. I mean, you have Specialists that are in a similar situation. They have experience and they’re not a day one guy. Even the NCOs–– like the E-5s or whatever–– they know that they were just recently Specialists themselves, so they show you quite a bit of respect. Even the higher-up NCOs, they expect that you know stuff. There’s no real reason to haze you and everything like that. (2:00:28). So, when we first got to the unit–– when you get back from deployment, no one really wants to do anything. No one. The higher-ups or anyone. Because you just spent your whole year–– I mean, you don’t have a deployment on the horizon. Things are still slow and you’re still waiting for all of your gear to get back–– which takes a few months. So, not a lot of need to immediately jump into things. A lot of the times you could skip PT–– even when we did do PT, all of our E-6s and above in our platoon, the mortar platoon, which was consolidated into the headquarters troop of our squadron, all the E-6s and above were broken in someway–– which, by the time you get higher up, lots of guys end up having some kind of leg, knee, back problem. They are eliminated in PT in some different way. They’re not doing PT, so they just delegate it to the E-5s. But I mean, everyone is just in this platoon fully relaxed and everything–– and they just got back from deployment. So they’re like, “Go do PT.” “Roger that.” We’d walk off behind some barracks to start doing our stretches. We’d stretch for 15 minutes and we’d just go back to our barracks for the rest of PT. Even then, our troop was pretty much located right across from the barracks–– especially where the mortars were located. They were in a separate building, kind out of the way with no one looking in on us. Our leaders–– I mean, you hear about these different units. Some units where their leaders are like, “No. Everyone stays till five regardless of if you have anything going on.” Our platoon, at this point in time, was like, “We don’t have anything going on? Well, then we’re going to have you guys sit here and do nothing at this point in time. If we have a class plan, and we can pull the mortars out of the arms room, or we can get our hands on some maps, [then] we can do some training. But, if we don’t have anything going on, go back to your rooms.” It’d be like [you’d] come in at 9:30, stay till 11:30. Then they’d be like, “Go to lunch. [At] 13:00 we’ll have ‘room inspections.’” And as long as your room was squared away–– your NCO might come by like, “Yeah, you’re good.” Or, they might not even come by at all. Then you’d be off. Or they’d be like “13:00. Go to the gym.” We showed up to the gym in case anyone stopped by–– they never did–– and you’d just kind of hangout, then you’d go off. That lasted for a few months. It was great, but eventually things changed. (2:03:13). �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GraceM1924V1 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grace, Matthew Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-02 Title A name given to the resource Grace, Matthew (Interview transcript and video, part 1), 2016 Description An account of the resource After leaving his first unit after his first deployment in the Fall of 2010, Matthew Grace moved to Fort Carson, Colorado where he was assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division. At this point, Grace was a Specialist and was quickly back to his normal routine by January of 2011. As a Specialist, Grace took an interest in helping to train his unit’s new group of Privates, specifically through PT and weaponry. Grace found out that he was leaving for his second deployment in the Summer of 2011 and left for Afghanistan in April of 2012. Grace left later than the rest of his unit to go to dog handling training, but eventually flunked out and returned to his unit in Afghanistan. Once in Afghanistan, Grace’s platoon had the job of specifically ensuring the safety of their Battalion Commander and getting him to wherever he needed to go. This was his platoon’s main task throughout the entire deployment. Grace’s tour was over at the end of November/the beginning of December of 2012. Upon finishing his deployment, Grace returned home to the States and took his block-leave, returning back to work for the remainder of his time with the Army. Grace’s ETS date was January 26, 2014. Grace encountered minimal amounts of reintegration training once resuming life as a civilian. One thing Grace was required to do, was to create a plan for life after reentering society. Grace applied to a couple universities and eventually ended up attending Grand Valley State University where he studied history to eventually get his PhD and become a professor. As a whole, Grace believes that his time in the Army plays a big role in his life and states that he would not be as successful as he is without it. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States—History, Military Veterans Video recordings Afghan War, 2001-2021—Personal narratives, American Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401. Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/253162f51b6e851aae4f840a7d34145c.mp4 db0c0e99bea54a322d062a1cb617d413 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8dbfa8355d934843c26947d37c208fec.pdf 854ec6ab446cc8925aaf3482bc2f141b PDF Text Text Grace, Matthew Grand Valley State University Veterans History Project Interview Name of War: Afghanistan War Interviewee’s Name: Matthew Grace Length of Interview: (1:32:43) Interviewed by: Taylor Lewis Transcribed by: Lyndsay Curatolo Interview: “Alright, we’re here today again with Matthew Grace. Matt, I think we left off [when] you had just come back from your first deployment in Afghanistan, and you had been assigned to a new unit. Can you give us an idea of when that was again, and remind us what unit that was?” I got to my new unit–– I left my old one [at] the end of September/beginning of October in 2010. I moved to Fort Carson, Colorado where I was assigned to 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division. Interviewer: “And what kind of training were you doing? Were you gearing up to go to Afghanistan again? Give us an idea of what you were doing.” Well when I got to this unit, they had just similarly gotten back from a deployment in Afghanistan. I believe they got back roughly a month or so before my unit got back, which was in July, so probably June or something. I don’t know exactly when they got back–– pretty much the same time that we did. So, they were in kind of the same phase where no one was really motivated to do any work and everything like that. I mean, you’re in the Army–– you know you’re going to deploy again. But when you get back, you know it’s not gonna be for a while. And, you still haven't gotten all of your conexes back, or in some cases vehicles if you send them over, or whatever it may be. So, anytime you get back from deployment there’s some kind of chill period for a couple months and everything like that. I believe last time we talked about how, pretty much, anyone Staff Sergeant–– E-6 and above–– in my platoon errored some kind of physical profile where they couldn’t do PT with us. Or, I don’t know. I’m sure some of them probably didn’t want to do PT. (2:17). So, they kind of left it to the NCOs in the unit–– the E-5 Sergeants–– to do it. But pretty much, it’s all these E-5 Sergeants who are just coming back from deployment who have themselves been recently promoted to Sergeant from E-4. Then you have a bunch of other E-4s who were either with these guys when they were in Afghanistan, or incoming guys like me who just got back from Afghanistan themselves. Pretty much when you in-process, you usually in-process with a bunch of other replacement kinds of guys. One of the �guys who went to the same platoon with me was in my previous platoon from my first unit, so I mean we’re all good buddies and then everyone else, they’re all from similar circumstances. So, you have guys who are leading you, who are not that much more experienced than you. Though, I mean, I’m not taking anything away from them–– they are more experienced than you. But at the same time, it’s not like you’re a new Private–– there’s a level of respect there and everything. So, we get there [and] they don’t really want to do PT, we don’t want to do PT either. [The] leaders tell us to go do PT and we just kind of blow that off and everything like that. (3:34). Interviewer: “So are you accepted in this new unit? Was there any sense of, ‘He’s a new guy, we don’t want to talk to him.’ Or, were you given a certain level of respect because you had been deployed already?” Yeah. I mean, pretty much if you’re a Specialist in the Army, you have a combat badge on–– a CIB on–– I mean, most leaders aren’t gonna mess with you too much or anything like that. I mean, they’re going to come down on you if you don’t know the right thing and everything like that, but you’re beyond the hazing phase. No one’s gonna come up to you and just tell you to do push-ups for no reason or anything like that–– they recognize that. Basically, we were in this chill period for the first few months until probably–– I mean, you slowly start moving out of it. Slowly training starts coming around. And then some days, you can’t just blow off everyday. Slowly, you have vehicles and mortar police that you need to take care of. There’s still inventories and layouts to do, and slowly you start getting field problems–– maybe just like a mortar shoot for a couple of days–– just to certify and everything like that. When you’re a mortar, you’re required to shoot so many rounds a year or something like that–– do one mortar certification a year, or something like that–– or six months. (5:07). [It’s] the same thing with marksmanship. Every soldier has to go to the range at least once a year–– but us being combat arms, that’s maybe expected a little bit more than just once a year since your weapon is your job. So, I mean, you start coming down with more ranges and everything–– just basic things. At first it’s just like we are going to the range just to recertify your weapon since you’ve gotten back from deployment or everything like that. But then, I mean, towards January when we started coming back up for mortar certification we’re outside, we’re pulling our mortars out of the arms room and signing them up and running drills and everything like that. So pretty much by January we were starting to get back into things. (6:01). Interviewer: “Of 2011?” Yeah. January of 2011 I kind of remember starting to get back to things. I mainly remember it because it was so fucking cold that first winter there in Colorado. There was a field problem where it was like one day–– I think it was probably 50/55 degrees or something like that, not too bad. I mean, enough that we were able to like take off our tops when in the field and just have our tan t-shirts on. Then, in like 36 hours the temperature goes down to like negative 30. �Needless to say, no one can really let that kind of shut down that field problem because when it’s that cold–– unless you’re like out in Alaska or you’re training for that–– it’s like, you can’t have people outside. They’re going to get hypothermia and have toes start falling off. So, that got canceled. But pretty much that entire January it was really cold. But, I mean, more or less, it continued for a few months after January, continuing to ease our way back into things. More and more field problems and everything like that. Still, it’s still a group of–– you have a bunch of Specialists, like myself [and] my buddy from my old unit and a bunch of other guys, and you have NCOs, and there’s still this kind of level of respect. It was until, I think, about May/June period–– May, I want to say–– we got an actual fresh batch of Privates straight from basic training and everything like that. Anytime that happens you kind of get a little excited because–– I mean especially being first Specialist–– like this is your first group of soldiers to help train up and you kind of have authority over and everything like that–– do some of the hazing yourself. (8:06). Interviewer: “So to pull it back a little bit, you’re kind of in this period where you come back and things aren't as strict, I guess, as they once were. You’re kind of in that period of limbo. Did you have time to go out and explore the local area? Did you spend more time with your family? Describe that–– what you did outside of your military duties during that time.” I was seeing soldiers that didn't have any family. I mean, I don’t get–– you know, my family is the same way–– they don’t understand that if you’re not out in the field or you don’t have CQ or staff duty where you have to man a phone for 24-hours, or you have some weird detail that comes down where they say, “Hey. You need to go guard this ammo supplier or these vehicles for a day” or something like that. I mean, on the average day, you go from 6:30 to 4:00 or 5:00 at night and then you get off and you’re done. I mean, it’s a 6:30 to 5:00 job, with some rather lengthy breaks in between, between PT and during lunch and everything like that. But, I mean, it’s kind of like a normal job in that aspect or whatever. I mean, in my case, I lived in the barracks, so you go to the barracks. I had my truck or whatever, I can drive off post all I want. I can go to the bars and everything like that. I mean, I wasn’t that big into the bar scene, but I did go out with my platoon and everything like that. I mean, my platoon drank a lot–– which is pretty typical for any kind of infantry unit, but yeah, they drank a lot. And we’re still kind of in that same kind of boat where there’s still that kind of no one is fucking with each other or anything like that, and that kind of respect. So, I mean, it didn’t matter if it was a work night or not, I mean, you–– guys in my unit, I mean, they were always–– every single night–– out at the bar and in the barracks drinking and everything. You would show up the next morning [to] PT still drunk or hungover, formation reeking of booze and stuff like that. And that’s just kind of the way of combat arms or anything like that. Especially when you’re fresh off of a deployment. There’s definitely excessive drinking and everything like that. I remember one night I was drunk where my buddy had to take me home, another guy in my platoon got a DUI. Now there’s a �couple of my buddies that got lost trying to find their car and eventually the cops pulled over and started talking to them and one of my buddies threw up on the cops shoes. So, I mean, yeah–– pretty standard stuff. I mean, when you’re outside of work, you’re free to do whatever you want. (11:15). Interviewer: “So when you get this new batch of Privates in, what sort of role did you play in kind of getting them up to shape within your unit?” Well, I mean, PT of course. That’s where it all starts and everything like that. Especially in Colorado when you are going to that kind of elevation. No matter where you are, you’re sucking. I mean, the best guys in PT will show up and usually one of the first things we would do is we take them on–– they call it “The Roller Coaster”–– where right in the back of my units in Fort Carson, there are all these rolling hills where people would go out and run PT and everything like that. Their nickname for that was like “The Roller Coaster” or whatever. Anytime you first get people in, you take them on a ruck march back there and everything like that–– or just any kind of thing. You’re running up and down these hills, your body is not acclimated to it, you can’t breathe. Pretty much everyone–– their first time–– pukes or something like that. So, I mean, you sort of start them off there. Then, I mean, they’re fresh Privates. Basic training doesn’t really teach you very much. I mean, it teaches you like–– it familiarizes you with it. I mean, they teach you stuff, but you’re not sure of it. Then you don’t remember certain parts. I mean, they teach you how to take apart a 240 Bravo machine gun and everything in basic training, but for most Privates, you get to your unit [and] you don’t remember that stuff and everything like that. (13:02). So, you have to retrain them on all of that stuff. They–– like the mortars, you only get a week's worth of training on the mortars in basic and that’s like what it is– – it’s just very basic and very familiar and everything like that. You don’t know anything. I mean, just working the actual sites and the guns–– different mortars have a little different finesse to them and everything like that. Between the 120, 81, and the 60 millimeter mortars–– just [the] different feel of them. I mean, pretty much when you’re in basic, all you do is kind of just learn the very minimum of getting your gun up on the poles and everything like that–– the aiming poles for the mortar. But, I mean, there’s so much more to being a mortar than that–– knowing each one of the jobs and everything like that. Knowing how to declinate and all those kinds of things. Then there’s just all kinds of things–– map-reading–– no one knows how to read a map when they get out. They don’t remember how to do any kind of first aid–– pretty much anything. You just have to teach them everything. And, I mean, you just had to hammer and hammer [it] into them. All of the Army skills, what they call them are perishable skills, where if you don’t use them, you lose them. So, I mean, there’s a constant kind of redrilling, and even once you teach them, you have to drill and drill and drill them on that. Once again, you’re kind of teaching them a level of discipline and everything like that, whereas [when] you first get into the Army, you still have that individual mentality and you’re still not used to the hierarchy–– and let’s just face it, the bullshit and illogical kind of decisions that you see. (15:10). Whereas when you’re a �brand new Private–– these new Privates come in and you get a job and it’s like, “Why do we have to do this?” “We have too. That’s why.” It’s like every Monday, you have to go down to the mortar pool and you have to do maintenance on your vehicle and check it–– regardless if you even started that vehicle in the past week. You still have to do it. So, they’ll come down like, “Why do we have to do this?” or, “Why do we have to do this layout for the third time this week?” I mean, a lot of the time it’s, “You don’t have to worry about it. That is for someone else who is higher up, who has a bigger picture of the circumstances, who [it] makes sense too.” Where you’re at, it seems stupid and everything like that, but I’ll say that half of the time there’s a reason. The other half of the time, it’s just busy work or someone’s just trying to cover their ass or they don’t know what the hell is going on [and] they’re just telling you to do something stupid. So, you’re trying to get them into the right mindset of just “do your job, recognize your role, and go on.” I mean, you’re not telling them–– you’re not making them into robots or you’re telling them not to think, but you’re getting them used to not questioning every single little order. You have to have a little bit of trust, and you might not understand your circumstances, but if you’re out there in combat, you can’t be questioning, “Why are we moving like this? Why did we fly through them like that?” “It’s because I fucking told you too.” It’s kind of like that. (17:00). Interviewer: “So at what point did you find out that you were going to be deployed again?” I don’t remember exactly when we figured that one out, but it was always there. I mean, we knew it. I don’t know exactly when word came down that, “You’re going to Afghanistan” in 2012, but I mean, it came down. I’m probably gonna say around sometime mid-summer in 2011. We had just moved into this new area. Our entire brigade moved to this other part of the post and everything. [I’m] pretty sure that’s when we kind of figured it out. Yeah, because pretty much at that point in time we knew we were going because in November, I believe, we went to JRTC down in Fort Polk. We had to get some kind of a heads-up to that, yeah. Interviewer: “So, were you doing any type of training to get yourself ready again to refresh?” Oh, yeah. I mean, you’re always training–– maybe not every single day. Sometimes you’re down in the mortar pool doing layouts, but like I said, depending on what your leaders decide–– depending on how much free time you have–– one day you’ll do a class on map-reading. Another day you’ll trial your mortars at the arms room and you’ll set them up in the back of your troop and you’ll run out some poles and you’ll do some drills. You’re going to the ranges and stuff. Then, of course, we have field problems mixed in where we would go out to the field for a week and you might do traditional 11-Bravo industry tactics–– like convoy tactics–– or you might just be out there doing mortar stuff, which is usually the case. (19:15). Usually we go out and do–– we spend part of the day doing mortar stuff and we’ll have another part of the day �where we’ll go out and do battle drills and squad movement and platoon movement techniques and everything like that. I guess I’ll say that one of the benefits of being a mortarman is since you’re just kind of attached to whatever unit you’re on, you’re never a part of the majority. You know, a lot of the time people kind of let you go off and do your own thing. And since none of your leaders–– like above your platoon level–– are mortarmen, they usually don’t take too much interest to come down and look too closely at you. They’ll stop by one time during the entire field problem and besides that, the rest of the time, it’s pretty much up to just your leaders discretion how exactly you’re going to be training and everything like that. (20:19). Interviewer: “What was your mindset knowing that you were going to go back to Afghanistan? You had already been there once. What were you thinking? How did you feel about the fact that you had to go back?” I was excited. I joined my first deployment or whatever, [but] this time I had a fresh group of Privates taking underneath my wing and everything like that so that was fun. I was looking forward to that. I hadn’t experienced anything too horrific or anything like that during my first deployment, so I still wanted to go over there and do my job, kill some Taliban or whatever. Interviewer: “So when did you leave?” Well, I guess, I personally left in April of 2012–– late April–– whereas the rest of my unit left in the beginning of March. Before we deployed or whatever, after JRTC and all of that stuff, each platoon or unit was asked to give up a guy to go to this dog handling for a couple months beforehand, where we would work with bomb sniffing dogs and they trained us up on that. Then they would send us out and we had a dog we were supposed to go–– when our platoons would go out. (22:19). So, I went through that. We spent some time in Indiana then Arizona. It was like the Ranger School of bomb sniffing dog course–– not like it was some real physical challenge or anything like that. I mean, it was just the fact that the attrition rate was like 50 percent and I eventually ended up flunking out because you have to have a certain–– you have to be able to read your dog and I just wasn’t able to get my dog to respond to me. I guess I didn’t read him very well but, nevertheless, I didn’t make it through that. Then they send me back to a unit and they had all deployed, so now it was just kind of waiting–– I’m sitting there with a bunch of kind of like broken guys doing rear admin stuff–– rear administrations of who couldn’t deploy and other guys who either just got into the unit or for some reason they couldn’t deploy when everyone else left and we’re kind of just sitting there waiting for a flight. So, we sat around for two/three weeks or whatever. Then we shipped out to Afghanistan, once again. [We] went the same route pretty much. I think we ended up stopping in Manas for a few days and then, instead of flying into Kandahar, we flew into Bagram. And once again we kind of just disseminated out into different units once we were there, and tried to get our flights to our respective FOBs where all of our guys were out at that time. (24:19). This time around my unit was in Nangarhar �province which is further north. My platoon was actually stationed at a FOB called Finley Shields, which is kind of right in the heart of Jalalabad–– which is the capital of that province. So, I mean, that was kind of a nice change of pace from Kandahar, where you were out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the fucking desert. Jalalabad is a lot more green–– I mean, still a rather arid environment, but still we’re in a city. Then the area outside of the city, it’s still kind of built up with villages and they have irrigation going and everything like that, so we actually had some kind of farmland to look at occasionally. But, it was still mostly desert once you got further out and everything like that. My platoon this time around, instead of doing the whole mortar thing, what my unit did was they took the mortar platoon–– which was originally assigned to the headquarters troop in our squadron–– and we probably had 20 some odd guys in it, and right before deployment they–– well not right before–– but a certain time before deployment–– probably around JRTC–– they split the mortar platoon up and five guys went to alpha troop, bravo troop, charlie troop. Then, my section–– it was probably about 12/13 guys–– we stayed in headquarters and we were tasked as the personal security detachment for our squadron commander when we were in Afghanistan. So, when we were in JRTC, we weren’t actually doing the training of an actual mortarman–– we were doing convoy tactics and everything like that, and kind of training to escort this guy around. So, that’s what we did when we got to Afghanistan. (26:40). Interviewer: “Was that similar to your first mission in your first deployment?” No. I mean, the first mission in the first deployment was we were just supposed to take some ANA, Afghan Army guys, to some polling stations or something like that. I mean, we weren’t tasked with watching after our squadron commander ever. I mean, the first deployment, that first mission was just these guys were tagging along with us–– we’re driving through these places, they got off–– whereas my platoon in this particular mission, our job was to specifically ensure the safety of our battalion commander and get him to wherever he was going. So, I mean, typically we had a select few places where we went. I mean, as battalion commander or squadron commander, he’s not going out on patrols and everything like that. But, we’re escorting him pretty much everyday to whatever FOB that alpha troop is on, or the FOB that charlie troop is on and bravo troop is on. Then there was just the other main bottom area, which was literally right across the row where he might occasionally go and everything like that. Even just across the street, you can’t go outside of the gate without an escort. So, we had to get in our vehicles and drive over there. (28:07). Interviewer: “So were you driving these vehicles? What was your specific role?” I was a gunner on–– I forgot the system–– but pretty much we had four vehicles. They were MATVs, which, if you know what an MRAP is, they’re smaller, they’re four-seaters, and then you have the gunner standing up out the top. I was in the lead vehicle, but instead of having one �standing at the top of the system, we had one of the automated turret systems, where I would be sitting in the seat behind the driver [and] I have a video screen right here, and I have pretty much a joystick, [so] I just worked the gun from there. A really cool system and everything like that. So, yeah. That was my job. Then occasionally, a lot of times we’d have like one guy who couldn’t do such-and-such. He couldn’t go on the mission for some reason, in which case another guy might take my spot and I would rotate out into another gunner’s position where I would be standing up top in a different vehicle. I don’t know. It’s kind of weird. I’ll say about a third of the time I went out, I had to switch out with someone else’s spot. Usually I’d go into–– I’d actually be in the vehicle with our squadron commander standing up top. That guy was kind of a douche. (30:06). Like, he was the kind of guy who really, really got off on the whole Army thing–– like in a bad way. Like, way to gung-ho and everything–– and not in a good sense. I mean, he was kind of pudgy and everything like that, so he’s not like some kind of super Ranger guy–– though he did have his Ranger tab, which is another funny story–– but he’s the kind of guy that would smoke cigars inside the MATV when we were going around. He actually named his son Patton and everything like that, so yeah. He’s striving to be the next Douglas MacArthur and everything like that. But, we were escorting him around. We would escort him to–– in addition to the various FOBs out there–– we would escort him also to the governor’s palace in the middle of the city and everything. He would usually go there once a week and he would talk to the Afghani governor there about–– I don’t know what. (31:17). Interviewer: “Did you have any contact with the enemy in any of these missions that you were on?” No. I didn’t. I mean, one thing that kind of puts in perspective how these–– how do I say this? You kind of got a sense of the Taliban’s actual ability to perceive things in the fact that we didn’t get attacked. This is 2012. The Afghan Army is more–– I mean, they’re running patrols out there. They’re all over the province. You go out and you see them everywhere. And the Taliban knows that our time is kind of winding down. When we would go out, we would roll through an area. It’d be like–– maybe we would get to a FOB and then we’d hear like that ten minutes after we passed through that area that the Afghan Army came through and they hit an IED or something like that. Or, it was like either right before or right after. I mean, we’d roll through these areas every single day, so you kind of got the sense that they knew that they didn’t want to provoke us too much to get more involved than we already were. Well, I don’t think we were that active, I mean, even with the patrols and everything at that point in time. And also, I think this might be kind of an economic kind of thing where as we’re driving these giant MATVs, whereas the Afghan Army is driving Toyota Hilux’s. It takes a much bigger bomb to blow us up and even if they start firing at us, we’re in a giant armored vehicle. It would be very hard to actually kill one of us and not the Afghans. (33:37). �Interviewer: “Do you think they purposely avoided your convoys because they couldn’t do much to you?” Yeah I do, because, I mean, there were many times where the Afghan Army got hit right after we came through an area. So, that meant they would have had to watch us go through–– and there were points in time where we had to stop and wait at a certain area, so if they really did want to hit us, they could have. I mean, there’s one main road. There’s not a lot of alternate routes you can take or anything like that, so we’re going to like four different places and we’re rolling out every single day. They know we’re going through there everyday–– if they wanted to hit us, they could have hit us. I mean, I don’t know if it was also the fact that–– they probably knew that also it was our squadron Commander out there so, I don’t know, maybe an idea that [if] you take out this guy, a whole shit-storm would come down on you. But again, a province up in Kunar–– our brigade Sergeant Major or whoever, they were out doing some key leader engagement and a suicide bomber took him out. So, I mean, it’s not like the Taliban is everywhere laying off–– and it all depends on the area and everything like that. I mean, Kunar has always been kind of a shitstorm in certain areas of Kandahar. Like I said, it’s always been kind of a bad place. But, where we were at, nothing much. (35:10). Like a couple of weeks before I arrived, they attacked our FOB and everything like that. They blew up [a] big old hole in the wall of our FOB, and a couple Taliban guys came storming in and there was a big firefight and our guys ended up just completely waxing those guys and everything like that. They threw grenades and ended up burning down a couple barracks and there were holes through other barracks walls and everything like that. Like, they blew a hole in the wall right here and then there's a line right here of CHUs where our guys were staying. One of my NCOs, he was on the first floor and his room’s like right on the very end and there–– he wasn’t there at the time–– but he came back to his room and there are bullet holes all through his place. Our guys took him out. A few guys got wounded, but no one seriously or anything like that–– just flesh wounds and ankles or something like that. Guys got Purple Hearts, but these Taliban guys got destroyed real quick. I wasn’t there for any of that, but besides that nothing much happened. One time we were on patrol–– one time we were escorting a guy–– [and] another one of our platoon’s were out and they got into a little firefight with the Taliban. We were right by their area and we just stepped on the gas and literally, as soon as we pulled up, the firing stopped. I don’t know if they saw us pulling up or what. Or maybe they were more likely to attack this other platoon because they recognized that my platoon was the one with the squadron Commander. Or, for all I know, it could have been just completely dumb-luck. You don’t know. You can’t really sit down and talk with the Taliban. As far as we know, our interpreter wasn’t Taliban and he couldn’t tell us that. (37:39). Interviewer: “Now you had talked before, when I asked you about how you felt about going back to Afghanistan, that you wanted to go and you wanted to essentially–– you said something on the grounds of you wanted to get contact with the enemy–– or you were, in a way, looking forward to it. Was there any frustration that you weren’t getting contact with the enemy? Did you want that, in a way? Or, were you happy that you were––” �Yeah. I wanted the firefight and everything–– and do all of the cool guy shit you see in the movies, but I mean at the same time, you go out on patrol every single day and it just gets monotonous where it’s like, you’re just done with it. You’re like, “This is just bullshit” and everything like that. My first deployment–– anytime they ever needed any mortar to go out on some kind of mission, I wanted to go. By the second deployment I’m like, “I don’t want to go out today. I want to stay in my room and watch movies.” [Like], I didn’t want to get my gear on in 110/120 degree weather, so I can drive down the same road I’ve driven down for the past three months and everything like that. So my desire for combat was definitely dulled in my second time around and everything like that. (39:17). Interviewer: “Just kind of serve your time and go home at that point?” Yeah, pretty much. I mean, the whole time I continued to desire [it], but it is also this counter desire that I don’t want to go out and do this bullshit right now. I’ve escorted this commander to FOB Toracom 30 fucking times–– it’s going to be the same thing. Though, at the same time, certain FOBs have certain benefits, whereas Toracom and–– I don’t remember the couple of other FOBs–– it was FOB Torkham which was right on the border of Pakistan where the actual border crossing is. So, it was kind of cool where it was kind of all of the bounds up and around. You could actually run up a couple of them and see Pakistan. They had really good food, so that was always a benefit if you went there. Then there was FOB Shinwar, which was a shithole. They didn’t have any good food. Then there was one other one where our Bravo Troop was at and they had good food, so we would go there. A lot of the time, we’d steal a bunch of sodas and Gatorades from their mess facility and keep them for our platoon. We couldn’t do that at our FOB. I mean, there were some benefits to that, but yeah. (40:58). Interviewer: “Now, did you have any sort of experience or, not contact, but relationship–– or did you come across any members of the Afghan Army?” Yeah. Like I said, being 2012 there’s this increasing emphasis on getting the Afghans involved and everything like that. When we first got there, anytime our commander wanted to go out–– which was damn near everyday–– there was our facility and then there was a compound that was attached to it. When I say compound, it was another kind of bricked-up, walled-in area and everything like that. But, there was a gate in between and they couldn’t cross over into our area– – we had to go over there. Just to go over there, we needed to escort our Commander over there just because there was this–– we didn’t trust the Afghanis at this time. There were a lot of Afghan Army/Afghan Police attacks on soldiers, so we couldn’t just allow him to walk over there. So any time he had to go over there and meet someone, one of our guys had to come. But then any time we rolled out, we had to go over there and tell them, “Hey, we want some of your guys to go escort us.” We’d go there and tell them we’d have to wait for them to show up. �They’d usually be late or something like that. Eventually, it just got to be too much of a hassle so we just said, “Fuck it.” (42:49). One time, we did have some of these guys come over–– I think they were Afghan Police and Afghan Army–– and you spent the day trying to give them some training–– like marksmanship training, working with weapons and everything like that. We told them how to promptly hold and then get down behind your weapon and have a sturdy shooting position. Then we took them out to this little 25 meter range we had built up on our FOB, and we set up some targets and we had them shoot at it, and they were pretty much the worst fucking marksmans I have ever seen in my life. I didn’t expect them to be getting bullseyes or anything like one after another, but I assumed [that] when you have a target that is three feet, three-and-ahalf feet by two-and-a-half feet wide, only 25 meters away, and you have an AK-47, you should be able to hit the paper at least. I mean, you don’t even have to aim out of your sights for that–– you can just point and shoot. I could give a gun to my kid sister or something and she could do that, but these guys–– I mean, it’s remarkable how they were completely incompetent at this and they couldn’t hit the paper. I mean, they didn’t know how to just aim down their sights at all. It was shocking. (44:30). Interviewer: “Were they using any sort of American weaponry?” Yeah. There were–– I believe the Afghan Police, they tend to have the whole, kind of, leftover AK-47s, whereas the actual Afghan Army, they have M-16s that they got from us somehow. So yeah, they had two different weapons mainly, but they were pretty fucking incompetent. Pretty much after the first few months, we just stopped worrying about them. Interviewer: “Talking to some other veterans, a lot of them had talked about how marijuana usage was common, at least in their experience with the Afghan soldiers. A lot of them would get high while they were on duty. Did you see anything like that?” No. Like I said, pretty much our interactions with them was [to] go grab them, tell them we’re going out on a trip to escort our Commander somewhere, tell them, they show up, our Commander shows up, begin the vehicles, we rollout. So no, I didn’t actually see any of them getting high and everything. But, I mean, I’ve heard stories from other guys. My first deployment, our unit ran some kind of training program for the Afghan Army on our FOB, and I remember hearing one of the Afghan guys in the training program–– I don’t know if they failed out–– I don’t remember exactly what was going on–– but he was going through like withdrawals during the training program. They needed to miss [for] some medical treatment or something like that. I don’t know. Then you hear other things like that the Afghan security forces in the towers smoke weed or something like that. But, I didn’t see it. (46:41). Interviewer: “So you were talking about–– we were talking earlier that it was known that, especially like within, you guys knew [that] the Taliban had a sense that the Americans �were in the process of pulling out, you know. Give control to the Afghan people. How did you feel that was going? Did you feel like that was going well or not?” From my perspective, it seemed fine. I would say yeah, these guys–– the Afghan Army and everything like that–– they were incompetent. I mean, they showed up late and they couldn’t shoot and everything like that. But at the same time, I think they do have some NCO–– some guys who have been in it. Occasionally, you’ll see a guy who actually looks squared away and everything like that. Like I said earlier, when you go out, they are doing patrols and everything like that. When you see them, I mean, you’re bound to pick up something. You can only hit so many bombs before you start realizing [that] we need to start looking for bombs and how to look for them. So, these guys did know things. There’s times where I remember one time going out and we would drive up and we had to stop because the Afghan Army guys were in a row because they just found an IED and they were waiting for Explosive Ordnance Disposal–– EOD–– to show up. So they are able to find these bombs. They have some competence to them, so there’s that, and there weren't too many attacks in the whole Nangarhar region. So in that area, it did seem pretty squared away. And not every Afghan is a pot-smoking, loser or whatever. (48:48). Our interpreter, he was actually from Jamabad and at the end of the day he would go home to his family and stuff like that. He was the same age as me at the time and everything like that. I mean, he had his head on his shoulders. He was a smart guy and everything like that, pretty cool. He wasn’t any kind of radicalized or anything like that. He had some pretty liberal, enlightened views. Though, I mean, there was one funny time where one of the guys in my truck–– another one of the Privates that came in, but by this time, now that we’re deployed, he’s actually very competent. He was one of the more successful soldiers, but he was one of the guys who just always liked to talk shit and get underneath people’s skin. I guess you could take it as a compliment at the fact that he felt comfortable enough to mess with our interpreter and everything like that. [Had] a big debate about–– at one point in time–– about the Quran and everything which is normally a big no-no. [It’s like] just don’t bring up religion around the Afghans. But, I mean, the guy’s pretty cool. (50:11). It was just funny for the fact that at one point in time he was saying, “No. It’s been proven all the stuff in the Quran,”–– I’m not a theological expert by any means, but according to his claims, at some point in time Muhammad or Allah like split the moon in two and then put it back together. He said that NASA went up and actually verified that. My buddy is just like making fun of this and I [had] just had [it]. I’m like, “No. No. No. That is not true. We are NASA. NASA is our program. They did not find any of this. We would have heard about this.” But, yeah, besides that he was a really good guy and competent. So not all Afghans were all radical, kind of extremists or incompetent drug addicts. I mean overall, there wasn’t too much action going on in the region. I mean, you did see them out there and some of them hit IEDs, but they also found quite a bit. I doubt the Taliban is any more competent than the Afghan Army. (51:30). �Interviewer: “So, your main job was to run these convoys. Were you doing anything else during this deployment?” No, not really. That was our main task, just to escort our Commander around. And, like I said, he was a rather gung-ho guy. He wanted to actually get into contact more than anyone else I think. I remember one time the Taliban had detonated a huge bomb in the road or whatever. There was a massive crater–– I mean, looking at this room, [it] was probably about the width of this room or something like that. So I mean looking at the room, I don’t know–– ten feet wide or something like that. So, it was a pretty big crater and it was in the middle of the actual paved street on the way to one of our FOBs. So as soon as they detonated that, all of the sudden, for the next like two weeks–– we went to that FOB every single day–– and like the day after this happened we went there [and] we went to FOB Shinwar. We were there and we were going to roll back and as soon as we pulled out of the gate, our Commander came over the radio, “Let’s go and stop by that crater and actually stop and get out so I can take some pictures of that. As soon as that came over the radio everyone in my truck goes “Ah. You idiot.” Because, I mean, just come out and say it. We know you want to stop and try to draw fire or something like that. You want to stop by an IED site to take pictures? I mean, come on man. I want to get into contact too, but don’t do it in a way that is actually willingly exposing us to contact. If it happens, it happens but yeah, no one really liked him. (53:48). Interviewer: “What was your opinion on the general status of the war in Afghanistan at this time? It’s kind of a general question, but did you have a sense of how things were going in a broader sense when you were there?” I don’t know. I would say [during] my first deployment–– and maybe it was just for the fact that more people got actually killed out of our brigade than in the second time around, and I think we were also a little more consolidated whereas the second time around–– my first deployment, most of our brigades were within the Kandahar province, whereas this time around–– I meant most of our battalions within our brigade were in Kandahar–– but the second time around it was only like 361 in Nangarhar. I think another battalion was up in Kunar, and I don’t even know where everyone else was. So I think it was a little bit harder to get a sense of how things were–– we weren’t getting attacked, so. But I mean, you hear some attacks. Then also people–– it kind of seemed like we weren’t going out on patrols as much and everything like that. So it’s really hard to say. (55:24). I don’t know, I mean Afghanistan, it’s never going to be like a westernized nation or anything like that. But I mean, at the same time, when we go out to the Governor’s palace and you can see schoolgirls out–– depending on the time of the year–– that kind of stops in the summer. But I mean, you actually see schoolgirls out going to school, so that’s one positive sign that the Taliban isn’t too influenced or anything like that and there’s some kind of success there. I guess you could kind of get a sense that–– when you roll down the road, you can get a sense that some areas are more friendly to the Afghan government–– the U.S.–– than �others. Sometimes you go down the road [and] kids and people would wave at you and you would wave back. Other times you roll through an area and people are just mean mugging you and fucking little kids are throwing rocks at you and everything like that. So, I mean, you kind of get the sense that–– I mean, judge by the kids. If the kids are nice to you, the area is probably pretty good. [If] you roll through an area where kids are throwing rocks at you or something like that, you probably can get a sense that their daddies don’t like you too much, but yeah, I don’t know. Nangarhar, most of the time, seemed pretty well put together in the sense that as well as an Afghan province could be put together and everything like that. (57:04). Interviewer: “Now is there anything else in your second deployment that sticks out to you that maybe we didn’t cover? I know you mentioned that–– I think it was Combat Outpost Keating–– The Outpost book that was written.” Yeah. Interviewer: “You had some men in your unit that were involved in that? Or you were somehow––” Well just for the fact that–– like going back to when I first got to the unit. Like I said, these guys had just gotten back from Afghanistan–– or they had just gotten back from Keating and the rest in the Kunar/Nuristan area. Our bravo troop who was up at Keating–– my platoon Sergeant at the time, I don’t know if he got wounded there or not, but I mean, at one point in time he got wounded or whatever. But he was at Keating when it all went down. They lost one of their mortars there. Another one of my guys, he was at Keating when it went down. He earned a Silver Star. Like you said, the book The Outpost, a few times he got excused for the day to go interview with the actual guy who was writing the book. When we first got there, there were these guys that were at Keating, who were now in my platoon working with the guys who got the Medal of Honor, [and] guys that also died and everything like that. Then the rest of the guys–– even if they were at Keating–– they pretty much experienced contact on like a constant basis. They fired a shitton of mortars. My first Sergeant when I got there and my roommate when I first got there, they had both been wounded when they were up during that previous deployment. They weren’t at Keating. Actually, the first Sergeant and my roommate got wounded at the same time and they were together. So I mean, they had a pretty tough deployment and everything like that. Now it’s kind of interesting that these guys were at Keating and everything like that. (59:38). Interviewer: “So when was your tour over? You said you got there in late April, when did you finally end up leaving?” �At the end of November. I don’t know if we made it to December. If we did it would have been the first couple of days of December. I know we did miss Thanksgiving, so it was definitely at the end of November that we finally left there. Interviewer: “Now was there any type of award ceremony? You’ve been on quite a few combat missions. What was that whole process [like]? Was there any type of award?” Yeah. Well traditionally, the way it has become–– which is kind of messed up–– is everyone kind of gets an end-of-tour award, where your platoon Commander writes up a recommendation and they submit it. Typically Specialists like myself and Privates below and even–– I’ll say typically E-6 and below, they get Army Commendation medals, unless you actually saw combat or you did something valorous, in which case you might get an ARCOM with a V device–– V for valor–– or a Bronze Star with a V device or just a Bronze Star. Of course, if you do something more extraordinary, you get something more. But yeah, standard procedure [is] just ARCOM. (1:01:38). Though my first deployment, I got fucked out of that because there was some weird guidelines my first unit about like–– I don’t know, it was weird. Like all of the Scouts got awards, but all of our guys got kind of fucked over. Whereas my PCS award–– that’s another thing–– it’s like anytime you leave your unit, you’re just getting an award also. So, I got an Army Achievement Medal for my first unit deployment and transferring out of my first unit. But my second time around, I got ARCOM for that. But the whole system is just fucked up and it pisses a lot of vets off because it’s just an automatic thing. And it doesn’t matter what you do really. I mean, it matters what you do–– if you do something valorous, you are going to get something more, but it’s fucked up because I–– who went out on patrol everyday–– am getting the same award as someone who sat inside the wire, just inside the talk all day. I personally don’t think anyone should get an award for just going over there. I mean, guys in World War II–– you go through Hiroshima, Okinawa–– it’s like you have a campaign ribbon or something like that. Now, it’s like I put on my Class A uniform and I’m looking like a South American dictator and everything with all of my ribbons and cords and everything like that. So I mean, that’s kind of fucked up because, in a way, it seems like you’re implying those guys didn’t last which is obviously not true. (1:03:21). But even so, I know guys that have gotten into combat and everything like that and they still come out with just ARCOM, whereas anyone who is E-7 or above, they automatically get a Bronze Star which is completely fucked up. You can have an E-7 or a First Lieutenant or something who sat on their ass in a talk, or just coordinating the base defense–– and I’m not saying they don’t work, but they’re never putting their ass on the line. I’m not saying I did either. I’m not saying I deserve anything, but I’m just saying that I know guys who did do this and you’re saying that this guy who did nothing–– just because of his rank–– deserves more than this Private, or whatever, who’s been working his butt off and putting his ass on the line. You’re giving him something more? I’ve heard the argument made, “Well when you’re higher up…When you’re an E-7 you’re a Lieutenant, Captain, you have more responsibility. You are responsible for all of this.” Which, okay, yeah that’s true. You have more �in your scope of focus, but you’re telling me that a Private who goes out every single day, sweats his ass off, watching his buddies back and everything like that, gets into contact and everything like that. Maybe he loses friends and everything like that. He’s putting himself on the line. I mean, he’s working physically harder–– maybe his job isn’t as mentally toughest. When I say mentally tough I mean like intelligently engaging, like maybe his job doesn’t use as much critical thinking, but you’re telling me that he’s not working as hard as this person who’s sitting on their butt all day. He’s probably working harder. He’s putting his ass on the line. And still, this E-7–– this Lieutenant–– is getting more than this Private. That is just fucked up to the ultimate level. (1:05:34). Like I think I mentioned on the earlier tape, the guy from our troop that got blown-up and killed, I’d worked with him closely on a number of occasions. I really liked the guy and everything. I never hung out with him outside of work, but I mean [a] real funny guy–– awesome person–– and he got blown-up and killed. His wife and his kid are never going to see him again, and he gets a Bronze Star for that. The same award as this fucker who’s sitting in a talk doing nothing. He gives his life, and according to the Army, he gets the same award? It is the biggest fucking injustice in the world. (1:06:18). Interviewer: “It’s kind of like insufficiently awarding people for what they’re doing.” Yeah. I don’t want to say insignificant, which would imply that some people deserve more–– I’m saying people deserve less. Go ahead and give that Private in our comp, but don’t give that First Lieutenant, who’s in the talk, any award. Don’t give him shit. You don’t need it, who cares? I mean, there’s this thing where it’s like now in the Army, if you want to get promoted, you need awards and everything like that. Well, change that system and everything like that. You don’t have to give away all of these awards. I mean, I think it does an injustice to soldiers in the past who didn’t get awards like they do now, and it definitely does an injustice to lower-ranking soldiers who do more and risk more [who] get something awarded than someone who possibly had a “cake job” their entire deployment. Interviewer: “Do you think that can affect their performance or their performance of their duty? Or do you think that doesn’t really come in?” I don’t think it comes in because when you’re out on patrol you’re not thinking “I want an award. I want an award.” I mean some guys–– I’m sure–– do want to get some kind of award or recognition. I mean, I never really gave a shit that much about that, except for when it came to the idea of promotion points. Since it is a part of the game, you do need promotion points–– it shouldn’t be a part of it, but you do. So I just wanted those promotion points. But overall, and even if you do want an award, I would say for probably about 99 percent of people it’s not like a constant thing where you are thinking about it and it’s motivating you or not. I mean, you’re there to do your job–– that’s what you care about–– whether you do your job and are fulfilling your obligations to the guys around you and your unit. (1:08:28). �Interviewer: “So you finished your deployment, where did you go?” Well [I] finished the deployment, went back home to the States, same kind of thing with my first unit around. You get back, it’s the beginning of December, you’re waiting for everyone else to get back, you’re finally going to take your post-deployment block-leave during Christmastime–– when you would normally take block leave. But, we had a few weeks to go. We’re waiting for people to get back. Pretty much, we’re going into work at nine o’clock [and] they’re telling us to go home at 9:30. Interviewer: “Where were you at this time?” We’re back in Colorado–– Fort Carson. I mean, we’re still waiting for guys to get back. There’s nothing to do. There’s absolutely nothing to do. And the rear detachment guys who didn’t deploy, they can stay at whatever details or CQ staff duty that’s going on–– any kind of maintenance–– they just leave that to those guys. The guys who just got back, they’re not going to make you do anything like that. So me and my buddies, everyday–– coming back from deployment, especially the second time around, it was just awesome because all this money and everything like that. Nothing but free time. And some guys completely blow it all, but I mean, mainly, it’s just the fact that me and my buddies would get off of work at 9:30 and would immediately go to the shop at the little convenience stores on post. They sell alcohol there, and we would just get three cases of beer and we’d just sit at our barracks room all day playing Call of Duty until five o’clock–– drinking the whole time until we got bored–– and then we’d order pizza and then we’d start playing drinking games and everything like that. Then we’d go back to playing Call of Duty–– this was all at two o’clock in the morning. Get up, go into work, and repeat the same process again. It was so fun and [we] drank so much, but it was so chill and we had no worries. (1:10:43). Interviewer: “How much time did you have left in the military when you got back from your second deployment?” About a year. My ETS date was January 26, 2014. We got back in December of 2012, but I had saved up enough leave that I was going to be able to start my terminal leave pretty much the last two months or so–– two-and-a-half months. I had enough leave saved up that I could leave the Army early, and for the last two-and-a-half months of my time. I was home and everything like that. I was just using my leave days up. So yeah, about a year left. So I quickly got into the “I’m checked out” kind of mindset. I mean, I still did my job and everything like that. I continued to train the new batch of Privates that came in afterwards and the Privates from the past deployments who are now turning Specialists. That’s always kind of a nice little feeling of accomplishment, seeing how far they’ve progressed and everything. Especially considering like– – I’m sure my NCOs would disagree–– but considering that I would say I spend probably, like �me and some of the other Specialists, we probably spent 75 percent more time with these guys, teaching them stuff more than you would see any of our NCOs. They did teach them, but kind of, like, some of the–– it was really me and a few other Specialists that really hammered into these guys. (1:12:36). Most of the time the way it kind of worked was our NCOs were going to spend most of their day inside the office and everything like that–– the mortar office. They would tell us to go out and do something. They would tell us Specialists and we would go out and make sure the Privates did it and we would help them along the way and teach them things. Like, working with the Humvees and everything like that. Then, of course, there would be other times where the NCOs would ask us to lead classes–– and they would teach classes too and everything like that–– and whether we’re leading the class or the NCO’s leading the class, we’re there teaching them the whole time. What the NCO might run through–– like taking apart and putting together a 240–– as soon as they’re done, we split off behind weapons and it would be like me on one weapon, supervising a bunch of Privates and everything. I don’t need the training, they know I can do it, so they tell me to make sure that they do it. You kind of slowly teach these guys how to be soldiers. It’s kind of like a good accomplishment seeing how far they go and everything like that. (1:13:51). Interviewer: “Did you spend the entirety of your 12 months training this new batch of guys then? Or did you have other duties as well?” Well the Privates didn’t get there until like May, June, July–– kind of like when the first batch of Privates got in. Maybe a later bit later, actually. Maybe it was like June/July we got the new Privates in. But at this point in time–– well, one part–– I was checked out. So the NCOs aren’t going to ask too much of me when it comes to this new batch of Privates. I worked with both, but at this point in time, the Privates from the first deployment, they’re Specialists now. It’s their job to take care of these new Privates. So anytime a job would come down, they’re not going to ask me–– well, they’re still going to ask me–– but at the same time, they’re going to ask these other Privates–– or these new Specialists–– to take care of these Privates because they’re going to be the next leaders and everything like that. It’s their job to teach these guys up. At this time, I’m three levels up the hierarchy of Privates, new Specialists, “I’m getting out, I don’t give a fuck.” So I was just kind of at the point where I’m kind of senior [to] all of these guys–– it’s kind of just more supervising them. Though, it’s hard to supervise and not give input or anything like that. I mainly tried to take a step back. Any time any of my old Privates/new Specialists would come up to me and a lot of the time I would say, “It’s your job. Figure it out.” and everything like that. (1:15:58). Interviewer: “Does anything particularly stick out to you during this time, or is it kind of waiting till that clock runs out? �I was mainly waiting till the clock runs out. We had to go through a bunch of classes that you have to do when you’re exiting. Interviewer: “Describe those.” I don’t remember. We had to go through some finance class. Teaching us [how] to write resumes. You need to go around and make sure you have all of these different paperwork stamped off from finance. You need to make sure you turn in all your gear, which is the biggest pain in the ass of all because they want it looking better than you actually got it–– and that’s not an exaggeration at all. I don’t know. There’s so many different [things]–– it takes like three months to get it all done and stuff. Interviewer: “Do they try to give you some guidance as to how civilian life is going to be different than what you’re used to in the military? Since the fact that you had been on two deployments–– like was there an effort to try to help you decompress and to get you back into civilian life as smoothly as possible or do they kind of let you do that on your own?” Well when you first come back from deployment, they did give us a couple of classes on that–– or something like that–– like how things are going to be different. And when you’re exiting our military again, they kind of go through the same kind of classes where it’s like, “Things are different” and everything like that. I mean, like you go to college [and] these little 19 year-olds are going to frustrate the hell out of you and people are not going to be disciplined. I mean, they tell you all of this stuff–– I don’t know how well it works. I don’t know how well they can prepare anyone for that. It’s just–– I think–– individual level. (1:18:00). Some guys handle it more than others. I mean, some people are just charismatic and can just jump right back into civilian life, and then others have a hard time reconnecting. There’s like such a divide between the civilian mindset and the military mindset of priorities, personal responsibility. Civilians, of course, are going to complain about things that soldiers are going to find trivial and you don’t have the connection between you and civilians that you had in your unit and stuff. Some people handle it better than others, and of course some people have other demons that they might have held onto from their deployment or whatever. They can’t reintegrate as well, and I don’t know, the Army just messes up your life in a lot of different ways and everything like that, and then you’re starting completely over with your life. [You] get out and depending on how long you spent in–– I spent six years in–– so I go to college and I remember being in this Spanish class and saying what years we were born in in Spanish, I was born in ‘88 and the closest person to my age was like 1994 or something. I mean, there’s this big kind of divide and these kids are just getting out of high school and you’ve been on two combat deployments–– and of course if you stay in longer, it’s even worse. I don’t know. It depends on the person, like I said. My squad leader for my second deployment–– I don’t know exactly what happened–– when I was transferring out of the unit, I thought he was staying in [and] he was going to PCSing–– moving �to Hawaii and everything–– but I found out that shortly after I got out, apparently he did not PCS and for some reason, he got out of the Army. I thought he reenlisted or whatever, but I don’t know exactly what happened. I don’t know if he got in trouble–– I don’t think he did–– or I don’t know if there’s some kind of program that let him opt out, but he got out and for some reason he killed himself. I don’t know if that was Army related or not. (1:20:51). Interviewer: “Before we paused here you were talking about dealing with different people that you’ve known dealing with being out of the military and kind of decompressing [and] readjusting into civilian life. I wanted to pull it back just a little bit and just talk about when you got out of the service, did you have an idea of where you wanted to go, what you wanted to do, did you have a plan?” They require you to have a plan before you get out. Like, you have to show them that you have employment and some kind of housing setup before you get out or something like that. I don’t know what happens if you don’t show them that–– I mean, they can't just keep you in forever, but that’s a part of it. You have to do that, so before I got out I started applying around–– I knew I wanted to go back to school, so I started applying around. I applied to Western and I applied to Grand Valley. (1:22:04). Interviewer: “What did you want to study?” Well, I wanted to study history and I originally went in as a Social Studies major, with the whole other teaching major thing, but I quickly decided that I wanted to go beyond just high school or whatever. I wanted to eventually go on and go to grad school and get a PhD and become a history professor, so I quickly switched over to actually just a straightforward history major. Interviewer: “So you did choose Grand Valley–– just to make that clear.” Yes, I did choose Grand Valley. My grades were okay in high school. I think I had a 3.4 or a 3.3 GPA. I didn’t think I could have gotten into Michigan, though now that I’ve talked to some veterans I probably could have because as long as you have that GI Bill–– a guaranteed paycheck for the school–– they lower their standards somewhat for you. I’ve heard of people getting into Michigan with lower GPAs than mine, but I could be wrong. But yes, I chose Grand Valley. Like I said, at the time I thought that I was going to possibly go into a high school history teacher. I remember going through school and I knew a number of my teachers went to Grand Valley, so I was like it’s only an hour away from my hometown. I spent all this time away, teachers went there. It seemed like a good fit. (1:23:44). �Interviewer: “Is there anything that you would like to mention before we end this interview here? How would you say that the military–– being in the military–– and your deployments affected your life overall?” I don’t know if there’s anything else to add for my military experience at this point, but overall how it impacted my life, I guess I’d say I would definitely not be as successful as I am now. Like I said, in high school I wasn’t the worst kid, I wasn’t the best kid ever. Right in the middle of my class–– 3.3 GPA so I was like, so it was like a B+ average. But, I mean, my parents rode my ass the whole time. I probably shouldn’t have even gotten that GPA and stuff. But now that I’ve been at Grand Valley, I’ve done very, very well. Like, I think my GPA is a 3.9 right now and I hold that to the military. One, I mean, it’s given me the discipline to do work–– I mean I still struggle to get myself to do work and stuff instead of playing video games sometimes, but it’s helped me somewhat there and it’s given me kind of fear of failing, and also this overall lull that I recognize–– I guess I can recognize–– how do I say this? I know what I am capable of. So the Army has given me the ability to strive to that level of what I know what I am able to do. (1:26:04). I’m not saying that I’m a complete perfectionist or whatever, but I know I can be right up there and everything like that. And when I fall short of that, I get on myself and everything like that. That’s thanks to my Army training. You’re expected to be able to perform at this high level and if you’re not there, your leaders get on your ass about it. Also, I think it’s just being in the military and I think I’ve also always had an inquisitive mindset and having worked with people from every different kind of background–– being over in Afghanistan kind of late in the war when people are kind of asking questions about its validity and everything like that. Or, being in the Army, getting these orders that I didn’t understand and working with leaders that would give me jobs and telling me to go tell these Privates to do these jobs, at the time it seems like they’re unfair or they don’t make sense, and that kind of helped me get into the mindset where I am able to stepback and kind of look at the whole picture and trying way different sides of the argument and try and put myself in the mindset of leaders [and] put myself in the mindset of the Privates and everything like that. So, I mean, I think that’s helped me, especially being a historian, where you have to kind of put yourself in different positions and different motives and stuff like that. I mean, and the Army just gives you–– it teaches you to think in a different way whereas a lot of the times, just working with Privates that are fresh out of high school and everything, there’s just kind of this thing where the answer is just not there, civilians tend to not know exactly where to look–– or it’s like you look one other place, then you just kind of give up. (1:28:21). An example, we’re tasked with doing some layouts. We get all of our stuff out at the convex we’re at and we have done and we put it back in. The Privates go to shut the door, and the door doesn’t latch or whatever and they just keep on going back and forth with the lever. And it never occurs to them to look around and [see] how to troubleshoot the situation and everything like that. Where they’re like, “Specialist Grace, the door’s broken.” And I have to go up there and instead of trying to force it or whatever, you just have to take a step back and I’m teaching them to take a step back and look around at all the different kinds of parts of that situation where �you had to diagnose the problem. And I just look up and the top of the way it latches, they have these hooks that go in and kind of secure themselves, and I’m like, “The hooks aren’t lined up” or something like that. It’s just–– civilians, in my experience, don’t know how to take that step back and look and think. Like anytime you’re in the military, you should know that chances are when you’re out on patrol, your radio is going to go down for some God knows reason because that’s how radios work. And initially, when you first get in, the radio doesn’t work. It’s like, “Okay. Is it plugged in?” “It’s plugged in.” “Is it on the right channel?” “It’s on the right channel.” “Why isn’t it working?” And then you just stop right there, whereas when you get more experience you learn to take a step back like, “It’s plugged in. It’s on the right channel. Okay. Is the dagger working?” No not the dagger–– is the time right in it? (1:30:18). The way encryption works–– the way the radios work–– you put in the encryption or whatever and all the radios are synchronized with a different time and the way the encryptions works is, the radios are bouncing around different frequencies all at the same time. So, you put a time into all of the radios and then everyone’s radios are in sync, so then when your radio’s frequency bounces up to this different frequency, it’s going to be on the same frequency as someone else's radio which is bouncing up at the same time. Whereas if you’re not in and don’t have that encryption and you’re not on that right time, you’re not going to be bouncing around at the same frequencies at the same time. And also, at the same time, it’s like, you take your step back to correctly input it, and ask “Is the encryption filled? Is that input?” Perhaps the cable is frayed that the rack is in. The connection where the actual radios go in and connect, perhaps the little metal things that insert into the back of the radio mount–– maybe one of those is busted. Maybe the antenna is not working. I mean there’s just so many different things that as you’ve been in for a while, you’re able to take a step back and look at the situation and kind of look at each individual part of the process, whereas a lot of the time, I think civilians are just kind of one and done. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work and instead of trying to figure it out, they just go and immediately ask for help. So that’s how like in the civilian world and academia, being able to step back and look at a problem from different angles and everything like that. And as a historian, kind of look at, once again, being able to look at different points of view and see what’s wrong and why it’s wrong. Interviewer: “Matt, thanks for coming in and sharing your story with us.” (1:32:23). � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Veterans History Project Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. History Department Description An account of the resource The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1914- Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a> Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American Michigan--History, Military Oral history Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American United States--History, Military United States. Air Force United States. Army United States. Navy Veterans Video recordings Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James Boring, Frank Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RHC-27 Language A language of the resource eng Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GraceM1924V2 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grace, Matthew Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016-02 Title A name given to the resource Grace, Matthew (Interview transcript and video, part 2), 2016 Description An account of the resource After leaving his first unit after his first deployment in the Fall of 2010, Matthew Grace moved to Fort Carson, Colorado where he was assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division. At this point, Grace was a Specialist and was quickly back to his normal routine by January of 2011. As a Specialist, Grace took an interest in helping to train his unit’s new group of Privates, specifically through PT and weaponry. Grace found out that he was leaving for his second deployment in the Summer of 2011 and left for Afghanistan in April of 2012. Grace left later than the rest of his unit to go to dog handling training, but eventually flunked out and returned to his unit in Afghanistan. Once in Afghanistan, Grace’s platoon had the job of specifically ensuring the safety of their Battalion Commander and getting him to wherever he needed to go. This was his platoon’s main task throughout the entire deployment. Grace’s tour was over at the end of November/the beginning of December of 2012. Upon finishing his deployment, Grace returned home to the States and took his block-leave, returning back to work for the remainder of his time with the Army. Grace’s ETS date was January 26, 2014. Grace encountered minimal amounts of reintegration training once resuming life as a civilian. One thing Grace was required to do, was to create a plan for life after reentering society. Grace applied to a couple universities and eventually ended up attending Grand Valley State University where he studied history to eventually get his PhD and become a professor. As a whole, Grace believes that his time in the Army plays a big role in his life and states that he would not be as successful as he is without it. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Smither, James (Interviewer) Subject The topic of the resource Oral history Veterans History Project (U.S.) United States—History, Military Veterans Video recordings Afghan War, 2001-2021—Personal narratives, American Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University Libraries, Special Collections & University Archives, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI, 49401. Relation A related resource Veterans History Project (U.S.) Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Moving Image Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video/mp4 application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ed71d75fe4eab7d2da388080447b017b.jpg 368b6313e8464e5774175132ae407490 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GrackiJohn_Photo01 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992 Title A name given to the resource Gracki, John Description An account of the resource John Gracki, Chemistry Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College teachers Universities and colleges – Faculty Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng 1992s https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b80b872083a2cd0e7b6f955d88570950.jpg 942e1a5e35c83532f864efece1a883b9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GrackiJohn_Photo02 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977 Title A name given to the resource Gracki, John Description An account of the resource John Gracki, Chemistry Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College teachers Universities and colleges – Faculty Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng 1977s https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a86d49675d86610151c7a3fd5a173dfe.jpg f922374ed85245127d3e8093bcfa2ea8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GrackiJohn_Photo03 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1979 Title A name given to the resource Gracki, John Description An account of the resource John Gracki, Chemistry Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College teachers Universities and colleges – Faculty Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng 1979s https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/41c565feea54c6a50026c21e18c3a9df.jpg 540339345bc72107799ecf3904e0d6f8 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GrackiJohn_Photo04 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1979 Title A name given to the resource Gracki, John Description An account of the resource John Gracki, Chemistry Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College teachers Universities and colleges – Faculty Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng 1979s https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b061efa3273403de2c2e688614b6ebd0.jpg cce070cfeb26723f79f7c15db6571884 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GrackiJohn_Photo05 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1976 Title A name given to the resource Gracki, John Description An account of the resource John Gracki, Chemistry Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College teachers Universities and colleges – Faculty Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng 1976s https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/be464b9da6a0fc8e65528457b75705aa.jpg 090f2b32fe109f07e96834df4bfdfcf0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GrackiJohn_Photo06 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992 Title A name given to the resource Gracki, John Description An account of the resource John Gracki, Chemistry Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College teachers Universities and colleges – Faculty Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng 1992s https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8159e1aac554a7d5764ada8b32818dc3.jpg 954ad364364acf81eee44cbd12210367 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GrackiJohn_Photo07 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Gracki, John Description An account of the resource John Gracki, Chemistry Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College teachers Universities and colleges – Faculty Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/11cf6b01e4f9316bb0a2d375f599af43.jpg 573a798247e3b65e11678eb4238a3cb2 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GrackiJohn_Photo08 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Gracki, John Description An account of the resource John Gracki, Chemistry Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College teachers Universities and colleges – Faculty Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b85223feeec795be2bc52a59ba53d3c3.jpg e5475ddad9058575f2b33bec3dff0574 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GrackiJohn_Photo09 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Title A name given to the resource Gracki, John Description An account of the resource John Gracki, Chemistry Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College teachers Universities and colleges – Faculty Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/463a56c73f025fd2cbe699d017c8ac49.jpg 50c326657b002ab7cec0346225d9c9c5 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faces of Grand Valley Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource University Communications Description An account of the resource A non-comprehensive collection of photographs of Grand Valley faculty, staff, administrators, board members, friends, and alumni. Photos collected by University Communications for use in promotion and information sharing about Grand Valley with the wider community. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960s - 1990s Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived GV012-03. University Communications. Vita Files Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copryight Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University College administrators College teachers Colleges and universities -- Faculty Michigan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-03 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Language A language of the resource eng Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GrackiJohn_Photo10 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grand Valley State University. University Communications Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Title A name given to the resource Gracki, John Description An account of the resource John Gracki, Chemistry Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University – History College teachers Universities and colleges – Faculty Michigan Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived University Communications. Vita Files, 1968-2016 (GV012-03) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. Special Collections and University Archives Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng 1971s https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/061c3dce2d637b70f65a8bd0931f0c27.pdf c970d8ab05279672bcaf88fc6e230e63 PDF Text Text Open to WGS Workshop will be held: Wednesday, November 1 6-Bpm maJors, minors, LOH 167 Studies minors . . and LGBTQ Learn more about graduate schools! Where should you apply? When should you apply? What's the process? This workshop will be facilitated by Susan Mendoza, Ph.D DINNER WILL BE PROVIDED! R.S.V.P. TO WGSSTU@GVSU.EDU QUESTIONS? WGS GVSU.EDU � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource GVSU Sexuality and Gender Flyers Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource The Rainbow Resource Center Women and Gender Studies Department Women's Commission Gayle R. Davis Center for Women and Gender Equity Description An account of the resource Digitized posters, flyers, event notices, and other materials relating to gender expression and sexuality at Grand Valley State University, with materials spanning from 1974 to 2019. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974/2019 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Digitized from collections at the Rainbow Resource Center (formerly the Milton E. Ford LGBT Resource Center), Women and Gender Studies Department, Women's Commission, and Gayle R. Davis Center for Women and Gender Equity. Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In Copyright Subject The topic of the resource Gender identity Gender expression Sexual orientation Women's studies Queer theory Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-09 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource eng Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context DC-09_SGF_WGS_2018_Grad-School-Info-Workshop.pdf Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018-11-01 Title A name given to the resource Grad School Info Workshop Description An account of the resource Poster of grad school workshop for WGS majors inlcudes location, time and date. Subject The topic of the resource Women's studies Universities and colleges--Graduate work Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Language A language of the resource eng Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f14ee8c1089f21f719c3ebf14efaa1d9.jpg 8dd8baa0239a651d2c37f22c6d60703e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Grand Valley State University Photographs Subject The topic of the resource Aerial photographs Universities and colleges Michigan Grand Rapids (Mich.) Allendale (Mich.) Building Facilities Dormitories Students Events 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s Description An account of the resource People, places, and events of Grand Valley State University from its founding in 1960 as a 4-year college in western Michigan. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource News & Information Services. University Communications Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">News &amp; Information Services. University Photographs. (GV012-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960s-2000s Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Local Subject Subject headings specific to a particular image collection Commencement 1960s Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1968 Title A name given to the resource Graduates arriving at Commencement Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-01_UAPhotos_001690 Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">News &amp; Information Services. University Photographs. (GV012-01)</a> Description An account of the resource Graduates filling in the seats during Commencement ceremony. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Language A language of the resource eng Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Allendale (Mich.) Universities and colleges Events Students Graduation ceremonies Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In copyright - Non-commercial use permitted.</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives 1960s black and white photo https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/195bb62c5f212c0c615e20eb4a3412f3.jpg 826647893a71454439948cc9b2e9631b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Grand Valley State University Photographs Subject The topic of the resource Aerial photographs Universities and colleges Michigan Grand Rapids (Mich.) Allendale (Mich.) Building Facilities Dormitories Students Events 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s Description An account of the resource People, places, and events of Grand Valley State University from its founding in 1960 as a 4-year college in western Michigan. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource News & Information Services. University Communications Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">News &amp; Information Services. University Photographs. (GV012-01)</a> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpg Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource image Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant 1960s-2000s Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Local Subject Subject headings specific to a particular image collection 1990s Source <a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/41">University photographs, GV012-01</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context GV012-01_UAPhotos_000243 Title A name given to the resource Graduating members of Delta Zeta sorority commencement Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dostie, James M. Description An account of the resource Graduating members of Delta Zeta sorority at 1992 commencement. Subject The topic of the resource Grand Valley State University Michigan Allendale (Mich.) Universities and colleges Students Fraternities and sororities Events Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-NC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource image/jpeg Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives black and white photo