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HomeMy WebLinkAboutWilliam Zoeller TranscriptionCity of College Station Heritage Programs Oral History Interviewee: William Zoeller Interviewer: Jared Donnelly Transcriber: Brooke Linsenbardt Place: College Station, Texas Project: Veterans of Aggieland Jared Donnelly (JD): Yeah, I know you don’t have a whole ton of time, so I’ll just kind of just do a quick one. So real simple like, you know, where are you from, where were you born. State your name for the recording and all that goodness. 00:00:27: William Zoeller (WZ): Alright, sounds good. Are we live? JD: Yeah. 00:00:31: WZ: Alright. My name is William M, as in Mike, Zoeller (spells Zoeller). I was born in Houston, lived most of my life in the Spring, Woodlands area. JD: When were you born? 00:00:45: WZ: June 19, ’81. JD: What did your folks do? 00:00:52: WZ: My mother and my father owned a, messenger service. They were a carrier service that moved hotshots from medical centers and from medical center to medical center so, it was pretty neat. JD: So really involved there in the Houston area? 00:01:06: WZ: Huge. So they were quite aware of Houston, inside and out. JD: Did your dad serve in military or any family up the tree? 00:01:14: WZ: No. My father did not. He was in college at the time and, missed the whole Vietnam situation. However we have been able to look and find out that we have approximately five generations of Zoeller’s in conflicts, dating all the way back to the Civil War. JD: No kidding? Here in the states? 00:01:32: WZ: Yes. JD: So American then. 00:01:34: WZ: Hmm-hmm. Yeah. We had, the first, the first one we could find was, he was uh, basically a pooper-scooper, walked behind the, the horses and shoveled the stuff into, into a wagon. JD: [chuckle] No kidding. 00:01:47: WZ: Yeah. He, he entered as a private and he left as a private, so I don’t know what happened but. JD: Union Army? 00:01:52: WZ: Yes, he was Yankee. So you know, it kind of goes on from there. We had a fighter pilot from World War I. JD: Really? 00:01:58: WZ: Yup. He was. JD: There’s not too many of those. 00:01:59: WZ: No. It was pretty interesting. Normally they, they die pretty quick. JD: I imagine. 00:02:03: WZ: Yeah. They normally have like what, three, their life span is like three flights and you’re done. So that was pretty cool. JD: Three combat flight. 00:02:10: WZ: Right, three combat flights. If that. So from there we’ve got, we got two, World War II. JD: Grandparents or? 00:02:19: WZ: Yup. Grandparents did that. So that was a lot of fun. My grandfather was part of the same unit as, as Elvis was. JD: Oh, alright. 00:02:29: WZ: So that was a lot of fun. JD: In, in Korea I guess? 00:02:32: WZ: Yes. In, in the Korean area, theatre operation. So but that, that was, that was really interesting. JD: So do you think that influenced you at all? As, as a child by having a lot of people in the service? Like family tree I guess? 00:02:43: WZ: Well you know, not really. What basically happened I think, I really didn’t give the military any thought. I was kind of a, you know a loner-type, a lone wolf-type, type of kid. Just kind of mischievous. But. My uncle was in the army at the time and he had just gotten his role as a recruiter and I just so happened be his pilot candidate. JD: No kidding. 00:03:07: WZ: Yes. JD: When was this? 00:03:09: WZ: This was back in ninety—I, he started recruiting me back in ’98. JD: Right. 00:03:14: WZ: So that’s what happened. I ended up in the military because he wanted me in the military. I figured it was a pretty good bet; I wasn’t really doing much with my life. JD: Right. 00:03:24: WZ: So. JD: About how old were you then? Twenty-two? Twenty-one? 00:0303:25: WZ: No, no. I was seventeen. Hmm-hmm. JD: ’81 to ninety-, okay. 00:03:30: WZ: Yeah. So you can sign a contract at seventeen and. JD: So you’re folks said, “Sure.” 00:03:35: WZ: Yeah. They signed the contract. They said, “Get him out of the, get him out of the house.” JD: Had you finished high school? 00:03:38: WZ: I did. Finished high school. Did something, well no I went all the way through. So after I finished high school, about two months later I went off to basic training at AIT where I learned how to be a human resource clerk. Went to Fort Jackson, North Carolina. JD: AIT? 00:03:56: WZ: AIT. AIT is Advanced Individual Training. Basically that is where you learn about your, your job. Your trained for the actual position you’re going to be doing in the military. JD: So this is peace time army at this point. 00:04:10: WZ: Right. Yeah, this is definitely peace time. JD: So a little bit of Kosovo action I imagine. There’s nothing really. 00:04:12: WZ: Not really much going. Right, we had the Bosnia and the Kosovo. This, this is whenever we had the multiple conflicts around the world happening, but nothing significant or major in the, in the media. JD: Sure. 00:04:23: WZ: So it was kind of a quiet time as you can imagine. Which is kind of nice. Ended up going to several different schools. I learned how to be like a postal clerk after all that. So kind of sat around, did the army reserves. Sat there, went to my annual training. Went to my two weeks during the summer time and other additional training when necessary. And I believe it was 2002 when we got orders to deploy to Kuwait. JD: What unit were you with at this point? 00:04:54: WZ: I was with a 7-6 cavalry regiment. It’s a unit out of Conroe, Texas. It was in the aviation Apache unit. So it was. JD: Regular army, not, not. 00:05:06: WZ: No this was reserves. We were in the reserve at the time. JD: Reserve, okay. 00:05:09: WZ: And, right. So 7-6 cavalry regiment is where we deployed. And we ended up going to Kuwait on Operation Desert Spring. Basically it was an operation for a potential, probable conflict with Iraq. JD: Hmm. 00:05:25: WZ: Because at the time, you know, we had the tensions rising a bit but we weren’t really, you know, talking about going to war with Iraq, but everybody kind of knew it was going to happen. JD: Eventually, sure. 00:05:35: WZ: Right. It was on the, it was on the ve-, urge. And most of the climate over there was pretty on edge most of the time. JD: Take me back to 9/11 real quick. Just kind of jumped over that. So you were in the reserves at that point. 00:05:49: WZ: Right. JD: And um. I, I, did you get any sort of inkling that “Okay something’s going down here pretty quick.” Military-wise that you, you thought you were going to get called up I imagine at some point or? 00:05:57: WZ: Well what ba-, basically happened is I woke up, on, on the couch. Found out. It was a bad day all the way around because I woke up one-eye open and found out that my dog got a hold of my wallet and ate all of my money. JD: [chuckle] 00:06:12: WZ: So yeah, that’s what I first saw. And then I looked at the corner of my eye and I saw a building explode. And I’m like, “What’s going on?” I have no idea, T.V.’s on, money’s all scattered around shredded. I, this is just not a good day. JD: Where you were at this point? In Texas? 00:06:26: WZ: Yes, I was in Texas. I was in Spring so I wasn’t really doing much at the time. So I woke up a little bit and I didn’t know what I was watching on television and then I realized that it was the Twin Towers and we were under attack. So as you can imagine being, a reservist, always on-call, I was kind of sweating bullets. I contacted my supervisor by the telephone, by cellphone at the time. I had a flip phone. JD: Nice. 00:06:53: WZ: Yeah. And I got him on the line, and, or tried to you know, because at that time, we really couldn’t get the signals out. So I tried to get a hold of him, really couldn’t do it, but was still sitting by the phone just in case we heard anything, see if the phone rang or if I was going to be picked up by the MPs or another soldier unit or in the Humvee just to go over to the post. JD: Really? 00:07:17: WZ: Right. JD: They would have just sent out? 00:07:19: WZ: They would have sent out some soldiers in a Humvee to pick us up if they couldn’t get any sort of verbal or, or communication from us. JD: So there was a contingency for that, that situation that they’ll just rely. 00:07:29: WZ: Absolutely. Yes. JD: So do you have your kit like in the closet or something like that? 00:07:32: WZ: Pretty much. Well we’ve got some of our uniform and outfit and some personal equipment at the house. But most of our deployable gear, we leave at the unit. I think we got two duffle bags full of stuff. You know we got our (moped?) gear, our pro-masks are there—protective masks—weapons, other, other fun little items that we need to go combat. So yeah, most of that stuff was there so I just, I had to get my go-bag and get my uniform’s and load them all up if it came down to that, so I, I would be able to move out pretty quick. But primarily what our, our major focus would be at that time is to secure the location Conroe, Texas and make sure that we don’t, we’re not under attack because you can imagine that it’s a high-value target with all the Apache helicopters. We had like twenty-two Apaches and each one of those is like ten million [dollars] a piece. So. JD: Hmm. I imagine there was a great deal of uncertainty to with, with the attack. 00:08:25: WZ: Absolutely, yeah. So it, we, that was a pretty serious problem, trying to get everybody out there. It was, was pure chaos. JD: So were you at all brought in, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11? Like brought back, like let’s just get on standby real quick or? 00:08:38: WZ: Yeah, for a little while. We were doing twenty-four hour security details around the, the unit. In adjacency with the civilian guard who was there as well. So we were pulling guard and I was junior enlisted soldier at the time so of course, I got that duty. JD: Right. 00:08:55: WZ: Right. So it, we did twenty-four hour operations for about three weeks just to make sure everything was good to go. Nothing major, nothing serious so it, we just kind of went back to business as usual afterwards, when everything calmed down. So we didn’t really miss much. JD: Right. And at this point you, you’re still private, private first class? Or corporal? 00:09:12: WZ: At this time I, I believe I’m a specialist. JD: Specialist, alright. 00:09:17: WZ: I believe so. Right. On the verge of getting my E-5 sergeant so, wasn’t too bad. So kind of just sat around 2001. And as you can imagine, we went to Afghanistan afterward, 2002-ish. JD: Right. 00:09:35: WZ: So it was just a matter of time. The question was “Am I going to Afghanistan? Or am I going to Iraq? Or am I gonna be stationed state-side?” But everybody knew, everybody in the unit knew that they were going to get deployed. In fact, we weren’t allowed to transfer units. We were, we were practically stop-lossed because we knew that we were deploying. We were a, a high value asset that we needed for, to secure perimeters. JD: With the Apaches, yeah. 00:10:02: WZ: Absolutely. Yeah, that’s what, that’s sort of what we did over there is pull security detail and, and escort duties and such. So we were stop-lossed. We couldn’t transfer units and we were just kind of training up at the time. And, lo-and-behold we received our order, and about six months after that we, I guess, trained up and then flew over to Iraq, or to, uh Kuwait. JD: Kuwait. And this was in 2002 you said? 00:10:31: WZ: This was in 2002. JD: In the spring? 00:10:34: WZ: Hmm-hmm. JD: Right, right. So how did you train for, for going to Kuwait? I mean you stayed in Texas I guess? 00:10:38: WZ: Believe it or not we did. We trained, I believe it was at Fort Hood. We did most of our training. I think primarily the reason why we did all of our training over there, Fo-, Fort Hood because Fort Hood is in unusual location. Fort Hood is more of a deploying location for the active duty soldiers. Because, so it’s not really a training group, like other, other major forts out there. Like Fort Dix, New Jersey is a big training operation to move soldiers into training ops in, into the combat theatre. JD: Right. 00:11:07: WZ: But the reason why we ended up going to Fort Hood. They do train and they do push units forward that aren’t part of First Cav or other units attached to it, Fort Hood directly. But because of the Apaches, we had ranges for the Apaches so our pilots could be trained into, into qualifications for approval to deploy over there. JD: Gotcha. 00:11:29: WZ: So we were deploying or we were in training for I think, about two months, two to three months. And then after about six months full of stateside training, that’s when we moved over to Kuwait. JD: And you were fully active by this point the, the whole training phase, you were brought up full active. Yeah, yeah. 00:11:47: WZ: Right. Absolutely. The first day we stepped at, we stepped on Conroe in uniform on those orders saying, “Ready for deployment.” Active duty all the way. We were assigned. We were assigned to. We weren’t actually attached to uh, an active duty military unit. Most reserve units get attached to active duty units. But we were a special case so we weren’t. We were still under the guidance of the, 244th aviation command out of Illinois. So that was kind of interesting. Which we came into some conflicts with that overseas. JD: Really? 00:12:28: WZ: Yes we did. It was kind of a weird, funny political thing. JD: Huh. I imagine, yeah. 00:12:32: WZ: Yeah. JD: Is there a lot of ana-, animosity between, between always, you know regular army units and the reserve units and things like that. 00:12:38: WZ: There really is. There’s a huge conflict between active duty and reserves. For some reason active duty think they’re better, the reserves think that, you know, “We’re just trying to just do our job.” And so there’s some stress going on there and most of our pilots in our unit, the 7-6 cavalry regiment, are veterans. You know they were in Vietnam, they were in Korea. Crazy pilots. They’re a little older than your average Lieutenant Butter Bar. Green horn, you know, holding on to the, the stick of a Apache helicopter. And that caused a lot of frustration because the active duty aviation units weren’t as gung-ho as the seasoned veterans of ours. JD: Interesting. 00:13:21: WZ: Right. So it was very funny because, there was a Blackhawk that was escorting one of our generals. And it started fogging up over in Kuwait and there was almost zero visibility, so it was very difficult. And of course the, the less-experienced pilots were saying, “We’re going to move back and we’re not going to make operation, we’re not going to make mission. We’re going to just go back home.” And we, or the 7-6 cavalry pilot said, “No we’re not going to do it, we’re going to continue on with our mission and we’re going to complete it.” So you can imagine that was a, they heard a lot about that afterward. JD: Really? 00:13:59: WZ: Oh yeah, yeah. Because they’re saying, “This reserve unit finished the operation, they finished the mission. Why did you guys do an about-face and go back home? Afraid of a little fog?” JD: Right, sure. 00:14:08: WZ: So yeah, it was things like that, that really kind of, kind of caused a bit of a stir. JD: So you headed over to Kuwait where they, I’m assuming they flew them all. But how’d they move the Apaches? 00:14:19: WZ: Hmm. No, they. Well during the six months of our train-up, the first week or two was primarily moving all of our gear to Beaumont. So that was, several Humvees, maybe about ten Humvees. We had Hemet tankers which are very large. Think of uh, of diesel, diesel trucks. JD: Oh okay. Fuel trucks. 00:14:42: WZ: With. Fuel trucks. Yeah, I, I suppose so. Some of them were fuel trucks, some of them were, were not so much. But about that size, fuel truck size. And so we had, I think, five or six of those Hemets. A couple of other items like a tow-truck going through the rear and everything. So, but that was fun. We had to drive our vehicles down to Beaumont from Conroe. Normally that’s not a bad drive, especially when you have police escorts clearing the road. JD: Oh wow. 00:15:09: WZ: That was really cool. JD: Yeah. 00:15:11: WZ: Yeah, so we basically had all the road to ourselves and the police stopped all traffic. But what made, what made it very interesting for the, the ride out there to move our equipment was the fact that it was raining cats and dogs. Now, I don’t if you know anything about military vehicles, but they are extremely heavy and they don’t like to stop and they kind of tread, and hydroplane quite a bit. JD: Oh wow. 00:15:36: Yes. So we saw, in my rearview mirror, mirror anyway, I saw some of the Hemet tankers kind of sliding and you saw the, the actual. JD: Fishtailing. 00:15:46: WZ: Yeah, fishtailing all over the place. Doing some, some jackknifing. JD: Wow. 00:15:51: WZ: Just going straight. And I’m just trying to truck on forward because if I stop or slow down that vehicle’s going to hit my rear end. JD: Yeah, and you’re in, you’re in a Humvee. 00:15:59: WZ: I was just in a little, tiny Humvee you know and so that would have been extremely fun. JD: Big tanker truck behind you? 00:16:03: WZ: Yes. JD: Gosh. [chuckles] 00:16:05: WZ: So that was, you can imagine how frightening that was kind of seeing in the rearview mirror, you know, it says, you know “Objects may appear closer than they really.” [chuckles] It kind of reminds me of that scene from Jurassic Park. JD: Oh yeah? Yeah. [chuckles] 00:16:15: WZ: Yeah. So it was, it was kind of cool. It was a, intense situation, but we all made it alive obviously. And we, we packed everything up onto a, a large tanker, uh carrier, boat, which kind of floated all the way over to the Persian Gulf and dropped all of our equipment off. JD: Way ahead of you guys. 00:16:33: WZ: Way ahead of us. Well I wouldn’t say way ahead of us because it took maybe a month or so. JD: Right, but it left a lot earlier than you guys left. 00:16:38: WZ: Right, oh yes. It takes a lot to get over there. JD: And the helicopters? 00:16:42: WZ: Yeah, the helicopters were in that ride as well. JD: Okay. 00:16:44: WZ: Yeah, they basically tied them all up, put them on a, on the train, train went to Beaumont. And they all went on that same. JD: And you guys drove all the wheeled-stuff down there. 00:16:53: Hmm-hmm. JD: Gotcha. Okay, cool. So then you flew? 00:16:57: WZ: Yup. JD: So you were there already? 00:16:59: WZ: No actually this was really cool. We are one of the few that did not do the C-130, puddle jumps. Which is good and bad I guess because sometimes it’s kind of nice to do it once, C, C-130 because sometimes we conveniently have engine problems in, in Dublin, Ireland. So you know, you might be stuck there in Dublin for maybe two or three days. JD: Hey, cool. 00:17:21: WZ: So yeah, it’s tragedy let me tell you. JD: I know right. [chuckle] What are you going to do? 00:17:25: WZ: Yeah, what are you going to do in Dublin for three days? JD: How are you going to entertain yourself? [chuckle] 00:17:28: WZ: Geez, oh. No Guinness at all, I’m telling you. But anyway, so we did our training, we were at Fort Hood. And we went from Fort Hood to Gray Army Airfield which is at Fort Hood, it’s across the street. And there was a actual civilian aircraft. JD: Like 747 or something like that. 00:17:49: WZ: Like 747, straight up entire civilian aircraft. And it was just us, it was just my unit. And my unit is only about 180 to 200 soldiers. JD: Rented out the whole plane. [chuckle] 00:18:01: WZ: Rented out the entire plane, just for us. And so that, what those planes fit four hundred, five hundred people, and so this one was just us. So we were able to like have our own aisle or lines so that we could actually relax and stretch out. JD: Right. Was it a commercial plane or was it? 00:18:15: WZ: It was completely commercial. JD: Like United or something like that? 00:18:19: WZ: Yeah, I don’t even remember what it was but yeah, it was definitely a franchise, it was a franchise plane. So that was really neat. And we just flew and it’s almost a twenty-three hour flight that we took to get to Kuwait. JD: You all flew direct? 00:18:31: WZ: Oh no. JD: I was going to say. [chuckle] 00:18:33: WZ: [laugh] We went from there. We went from Gray Army, to Maine. We refueled in Maine. Made the jump over to Dublin and from Dublin we refueled. And then we went to Italy. And then from Italy we went to Kuwait. JD: Hmm. Are these all commercial? 00:18:54: WZ: This was the same flight throughout. JD: Oh I’m saying the, the airports themselves. 00:18:59: WZ: What about them? JD: You’re flying into commercial airports or going to military bases? 00:19:01: WZ: Oh yes, yeah. We were, we were going into the, the civilian airfields. And so. But we weren’t allowed off the planes at all. JD: Oh wow. [shudder?] 00:19:10: WZ: Yeah, we were, we were stuck on that flight for twenty-three hours. JD: Ouch. 00:19:13: WZ: Yeah. Especially for the smokers. JD: Oh gosh. 00:19:15: WZ: Fortunately though we were allowed to land in Italy and open up the hatches, the exit hatches. And so all the smokers just kind of piled out there and were smoking out the side of these exit hatches. JD: [laughs] Because you could not physically get off the plane. 00:19:30: WZ: You could not physically get off the plane. The Italians would not allow us off the plane. JD: That’s crazy. 00:19:35: WZ: No they would not. JD: Or I guess they don’t want a bunch of you guys running around. 00:19:36: WZ: No I, I guess not. JD: Yeah. They’d have to round you back up. 00:19:39: WZ: It was so terrible, yeah. Dublin wasn’t so bad. I mean they weren’t terribly, they just said, “Okay, whatever.” But Italy, not so much. You could not, period. [sighs]. And so and then we ended up over in Kuwait from there, which was very interesting because they don’t tell you something when you land in Kuwait. You’re stuck in a cabin with 72 degree weather, you know, climate control. And then you land, in the summer, in Kuwait, and they open up that hatch and you. It doesn’t really hit you until you actually cross the threshold. And then it hits you like a ton of bricks. The hot air smashes your face. You almost kind of lose your balance, and the first thing you do is you try to grab the handrail to gain your balance. Now the handrail is made out of stainless steel. JD: Oh it was pretty hot. 00:20:30: WZ: Yeah. It was really hot. It basically gave me a one-degree, a first-degree burn. It was, it was bad. So nobody tells you, “Don’t touch the metal there, don’t sit anywhere because it’s been steaming in the, in the heat so. JD: How hot do you think it is? 00:20:45: Oh I think that, it’s probably over there, maybe about 105. So that, it was a cool day in their summer. JD: [chuckle] Dry heat? 00:20:53: WZ: No Kuwait is actually really humid. Because it’s, it’s sort of on the same latitude as we are in, in Texas. And it’s right there on the gulf of, the Persian Gulf. So it sort of has a similar climate, it’s just hotter. JD: Right. So it was like a really, really, really, really hot day down here. 00:21:11: WZ: It was, yeah, it was a really, really, really, really hot day. Exactly. JD: But there, not, not the hottest. 00:21:15: WZ: No, not the hottest. So it was really hot. And it was, I would say it was slightly less humid. But I would say that’s because the heat was evaporating the humidity. JD: So hot, yeah. 00:21:24: WZ: It was just so hot so, yeah, it was, it was an experience just walking out that plane. JD: Hmm. But you’d had desert training of some sort. 00:21:30: WZ: Not at all. JD: Oh, wow. 00:21:33: WZ: No desert training. Most of our training was done in the forest, Fort Polk, Louisiana. We did, we did training. We did training at Fort Hood. And that was pretty much it for our combat training. So that was fun. A Similar experience happened for our deployment to Iraq. I unfortunately wasn’t able to make deployments in Iraq—I was injured in training at Fort Dix, New Jersey. But the interesting thing was we’re trying to train up for combat in Iraq. It’s hot, it’s dry, it’s nasty. And Fort Dix we start training some time in August, no make that November. November. Fort Dix, New Jersey. JD: So it’s cold. 00:22:24: WZ: Very chilly. You almost got snow, you’ve got a forest, it’s, it’s almost freezing most every day. Other days it was freezing. And so we’re bundled up and we’re doing firing ranges and we’re doing these training ops and we’re being taught about different things, different operations that’s currently going on over there, the current threats. But the entire time you just question, “why are we training at Fort Dix, New Jersey whenever it’s twenty-three degrees outside with the wind chill factor.” This makes no sense at all. JD: Right, right. Prepping for the desert. 00:22:58: WZ: Prepping for the desert. It would make more sense just to continue prep, training over at Fort Hood or N.T.C. located over in uh Death Valley. JD: Hmm. Oh sure, yeah. 00:23:08: WZ: Those locations would definitely have been more appropriate. JD: So your training was never applicable to the destination. 00:23:12: WZ: No. I have never had training applicable to the desert. Not at all. JD: [chuckle]. All right, so you’re in Kuwait and you guys, so about, you guys arrived you said in the spring of ’02. 00:23:23: WZ: Yes. JD: Right. And so you know that something’s going on but they hadn’t told you what yet. 00:23:28: WZ: Right. No they hadn’t really told us anything. And, so basically we weren’t really doing much. We were just kind of securing perimeter and, and just making sure Kuwait was protected because we were about to move in a lot of troops into, into Kuwait as we know now today. That’s where we initiated it. But so we were at ’02 to ’03. As you know, and ’03 is when we started mobilizing, units out there. And we were supposed to stay. The post commander wanted us to stay because as I said earlier, with the, with our veteran pilots. They’re just crazy. And they will complete missions, they will do whatever is necessary to complete missions, they are hardcore. But then that’s when we had a little bit of politics arise and of course, active duty needs to be the first one in. They need to do the first initial punch. They need to, they need to lead the way. No reserve unit’s going to lead the way. So we ended up not having our orders extended. Instead we stayed on our timeline and were sent back to the states. I’m okay with that. JD: About what time were you sent back? 00:24:35: WZ: Um. I’d have to look at my 2-14, but I think it was, I couldn’t recall. JD: So six months after you got there? A year? 00:24:44: WZ: Yeah. We were there for approximately nine months, we were there. And like I said, we were supposed to stay there for twelve months. JD: Right, right. And twelve months probably would have been long enough to step off. 00:24:54: WZ: Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. We literally left a month or two before we entered Operation uh Iraqi Freedom. JD: Right. So by the time you left, was it understood that the invasion of Iraq was going to be happening? Or was it still up in the air? 00:25:11: WZ: No. It was, it was about ninety percent sure at the time, because you could hear the political pressure talking about the, the axis of evil. And we had to talk about that. And we saw a big movement of a lot of special forces moving in. We saw movement of other, other assets, other actual combat assets moving into, into the, into, at the time I think it was Dubai was our post. Dubai no longer exists. We now do all of our operations out of somewhere else, I forgot the name of the post. But yeah, we knew something, something was up. Population increased significantly. JD: What was this base called that you were at? 00:25:54: WZ: It was, it was Dubai. JD: Oh Dubai was the base, okay. Right. 00:25:57: WZ: Dubai, yeah it, that was the base that we were at. JD: Like Du-bai. Like how do you spell it? 00:26:00: WZ: Oh. No, it wasn’t Dubai. I’d have to get to you on that because Dubai’s name of the city. JD: I know they named all the camps like different things and stuff, remember. 00:26:11: WZ: Yeah. Yeah. I honestly couldn’t. I, I don’t remember right now. And that’s only because, I don’t know. JD: It’s been a while. 00:26:18: WZ: It’s been a good minute. It’s been what, ten years? JD: Well, twelve years since, since 2002. 00:26:23: WZ: Twelve years. Yeah, yeah. JD: Twelve years ago now is when you were first star-, there I guess. Yeah. 00:26:31: WZ: Wow. Yeah, that, it’s been a long minute so. JD: So what was it like there in Kuwait, your day-to-day stuff? 00:26:37: WZ: Well day-to-day was relatively boring. I was counting beans basically is what we called it. Making sure head counts and. JD: Equipment. 00:26:45: WZ: Right, equipment, and assets. Making sure we’ve got requests for incoming new assets and personnel and tracking them and moving them. JD: Just for your unit? Or for? 00:26:57: WZ: It was, it was for all the aviation assets on post. JD: Oh, okay. So while you, while you’re specifically attached to the 76th, you were working for more than just your own unit with this stuff. 00:27:08: WZ: Right, right, yeah. We were, I was, I was part of the 7-6. JD: You say 7-6 or 76? 00:27:12: WZ: Yes, no. It’s 7, 7-6, 7 forward slash, or 7-back slash 6. JD: So is this like seventh battalion, sixth division, something like that. 00:27:21: WZ: Yes. It’s, it’s, it’s uh, seven, seven, the, the sixth, sixth Calvary regiment. Yeah, so it was sixth Calvary regiment. JD: What’d the seven stand for? 00:27:31: WZ: Squadron. 00:27:32: WZ & JD: Seventh squadron, sixth regiment. JD: Gotcha, okay. So you did more than just for the 7-6. 00:27:37: WZ: Right. JD: Right. 00:27:37: WZ: Yeah, we were counting beans for all of the aviation assets. JD: So you really did have a good idea of what was coming in because you counted that as they came in. 00:27:40: WZ: Right. Yes. Yeah, and then we reported all that stuff up to higher command. JD: So was this just checking lists, or were you physically going out and going, “Okay, we’ve got fifteen of these and thirty of these.” 00:27:51: WZ: No, the way the Army works is everybody’s got their small units and those small units report their units up to the chain of command and up the chain of command and then of course the numbers build up and accumulate and then it comes to me and I count them all up and I’m like, “Oh, check, check, check. We have plus two, plus five, plus six. We need plus four here, plus five there. We need to move this over here and move that over here. And I say pshw.” I’d fire that over that to headquarters. JD: Gotcha. So it, were you in air conditioning quanta houses something. 00:28:15: WZ: For, you know and ironically, that, I was kind of en-, envied by my peers because I was in air conditioning so that was really funny. And where some of my friends, especially those in the motor pool, were working in the heat, underneath a hanger, with shade, which I supposedly supposed to help, but really didn’t’. But yeah, it was interesting, it’s an interesting fact that when you’re walking around posts, you’ve got these massive ten or twenty ton A.C. units attached to these giant, this, these giant hangers and inside these hangers you’ve got conexes. You’ve got conexes stacked on top of each other. So it, each, each person has two or three people inside the conex. JD: These are those like little shipping containers looking things right? 00:29:01: WZ: Right, these, these are the shipping container groups. Yeah, so. JD: So you’d be climbing up the side to go up to the top of your sorta of. 00:29:06: WZ: It’s actually really nice though because they’ve got stairs, so it, it’s two levels. So you’ve got your lower level and your top level. And it was really well done believe it or not. It was, it almost felt like it was a small hotel community or something. It was really neat. So we did have access to internet. Not anywhere near what we have today where they can just Skype or, or just do face video, we didn’t have any of that. We had slow internet. We had conversation with telephone which was not so good, still isn’t very good but, yeah, I kind of envy today’s soldiers with all of their access and connectivity over there. My little brother had just finished a twelve month stint over in Afghanistan. And he stayed in touch almost throughout the entire time. And he’s an engineer. So he was out, always out there in the field picking up I.E.D.s. JD: Oh gosh. But he was always able to just call you up? 00:30:01: WZ: Yeah. He was always keeping us on track and telling us what’s going on. And of course, you know, there’s only so much he can tell us, limited information because it’s all classified. JD: Of course. But still a lot more connectivity than you had. 00:30:11: WZ: Oh yeah. It was, yeah, it was really cool because I was able to maybe communicate maybe once or twice a week. And he’s able to do it every day, so that was really nice. JD: Did you write? Or did you just stick with email? 00:30:20: WZ: No, we did a lot of writing. A lot of pen pals. There’s a lot of different organizations out there that write to soldiers you know, and give out free gifts and, and care packages and. JD: So were those things that were seen as just like “oh, that’s cute, but you know” or was it a very positive like, “this is really awesome. I really enjoy getting the care packages or the letters from people I don’t know.” Was that, was that a very positive thing for you? 00:30:44: WZ: You know it kind of depends on the, the soldier because some of them are just so accustomed to seeing it and it’s just they’re kind of “eh, it’s whatever. You know, I’m deployed again and I’m seeing all of this again.” You know, I’m sure it still gives them a good warm and fuzzy because surely that’s better than not receiving anything at all. But it just doesn’t really faze them. In my case, since it was my first time deploying anywhere, I saw it and I said, “Wow, that’s really cool.” People actually write and they actually you know, teachers are telling their students about what’s going on and writing to soldiers and sending that stuff forward. To me, I think that’s extremely important. You know, engaging the children into the, the actual real politics and what’s going on and keeping them mindful that there’s actual humans out there that are, that are fighting for their country. So I thought it was really neat. And yeah, I, I, I still have a couple of them actually. The ones that were actually really touching. I had, because I picked them up, because it was in the, the, the family center. And we just pick them up and whatnot. And I just hung up a couple of them on top of my rack so it was a lot of fun. JD: Yeah, cool. 00:31:45: WZ: So I had those and I had you know, my actual personal friends’ care package and stuff so. JD: Sure, yeah. Was there anything you just couldn’t get while you were over there that you really wanted? I mean I heard PX pretty well supplied with stuff. 00:31:55: WZ: It was. Well it was, believe it or not, it was okay. And what we didn’t have to PX, we ordered online. So we had access to Ebay and all of that. I bought so much stuff on Ebay while I was there. JD: Really? 00:32:07: WZ: Oh yeah. And. JD: Because you’re getting hazardous duty pay at this point right? 00:32:10: WZ: Hmm-huh. Oh yeah, getting, getting some good, decent money, we got the hazard pay and, and all of that fun stuff so. JD: And you’re still a specialist at this point? 00:32:17: WZ: No I, I received my E-5 just prior to going over there. I needed to you know take on more leadership positions. And so they promoted me to E-5 and I performed some pretty significant leadership functions while I was there. JD: Cool. Right, yeah. So I’m assuming you found that pretty valuable, experience-wise. 00:32:35: WZ: Oh yeah. It was great experience. It helped me learn a lot of aspects of, of management really. Trying to understand, prioritizing, and of course, as human resources, your hand is almost in everything that is necessary for the happiness and well-being of the soldier. Right, because if they’re not happy that’s when they come to your office and start yelling at you. You never see a soldier come over and be like, “Hey, great job! My life is okay. I haven’t gotten anything wrong.” But they will certainly tell you when their pay is messed up. JD: Right, yeah, of course. 00:33:04: WZ: So yeah, thankless job but very rewarding in the fact that you know that everything is on track and everybody’s, everybody’s happy. Well as happy as you can be. JD: Right. 00:33:14: WZ: So, given, given the circumstances. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t bad. The only thing that did kind of suck was the Army has a zero-alcohol tolerance. So while you’re deployed, there is no alcohol at all. JD: Well, no, no above-board alcohol at least, I mean yeah. 00:33:30: WZ: Right, yes, exactly. So the American military could not drink alcohol. Other military forces could, ‘cause we weren’t the only ones there. We had Australians, we had the Brits, we had Canadians, we had the Japanese. Yeah, we, it was, it was a multi-nation force. It was pretty much everybody at the time, all of our allies were participating in some form or another. JD: Did you inter-interact much with the, the other countries? 00:33:57: WZ: Oh yeah, no. I did my best to interact and communicate and just see how they. JD: On your own though. 00:34:02: WZ: Right, no, absolutely. JD: So this wasn’t part of your job at all. 00:34:04: WZ: No it wasn’t part of my job at all. Not at the time. And we, well at least I did. And every once in a while you’d see the, the Brits, ‘cause they’re obviously kind of an interesting group of characters by themselves. And they’re sunbathing on top of the conexes outside, in their speedos. That’s it, just their speedos. You know, you know, their. I was like, “Really? What, what’s going on here.” So. Yeah, it was kind of fun because the Brits have their own little area in the, the off-season and everybody. So everybody has their own little section so it's like when you’re walking around post, it’s like you’re going into those different ethnic groups, you know, sort of like Little China. JD: Yeah. In a big city or something. 00:34:38: WZ: Or. Little Korea, or, or. JD: So everybody was on the same post, but they had their own little corners I guess. So you could literally walk through. 00:34:45: WZ: You could literally walk around and, and go to like all, all the flags. All of our nat—it’s all of our nation flags. JD: Wow, that’s pretty neat. 00:34:52: WZ: It was really fun because you get to talk to them and you get to see different perspectives and different cultures and how they all interact. It was a, it was a fun experience trying to see that direction. And I think a lot more soldiers should take that opportunity. JD: Yeah. So did, did the military sponsor or, or foster of any sort, sort of some like, “Hey, everybody come and let’s do this fun thing together from all the different countries.” Or was it, you had to make this initiative entirely on your own. 00:35:14: WZ: Most of it was individual nation based. There were some post-operations that we did that was everybody. But for the most part, it was more individualized. JD: Right. So if you wanted to interact, it was very, very on your own initiative. 00:35:30: WZ: Yeah, it was, very much so. Yeah, so. Which obviously was extremely difficult because we did have an incident where, you know our, our, our men hit. It was friendly fire, because we had communication problems between, I don’t, I don’t remember if it was the Brits or the Canadians. But we were, we were strafing them. And oops. JD: In a training mission? 00:35:52: WZ: Yeah, it was a training mission. And so there was a lack of communication. And I think everybody was okay, it’s just the fact that it happened. JD: Yeah, it’s pretty scary stuff. 00:36:00: WZ: It should not happen. But yeah, I don’t know how it is now with communication. I’m sure it’s a lot better than what it was then, twelve years ago. I would hope so. JD: Gosh, yeah. What about Kuwaitis? Did you, did you get to go out in the population at all? 00:36:12: WZ: I did. I ended up having to work, for the, for the logistical group, the S-4. The S-4 section is basically in charge of, logistics and inventory and equipment. And at the time he, the commander, the captain at the time, he wanted to get some unit coins built and made. JD: Oh, sure. Yeah. 00:36:39: WZ: Yeah, right, so that we can distribute them out and you know, memorialize for all of our soldiers and everything and give them away and thank you, thank you. Because the commanders get the coins and the coins’ given out you know. JD: Was this on the, the regiment level or the squadron level? 00:36:52: WZ: Yeah, this is at the squadron level. Hmm-hmm. So in order to do that, we had to go into town, into Kuwait City and, try to coordinate and talk to the, the local uh smiths to, to create these coins. So I ended up having several escort missions to Kuwait City. I, I volunteered for that, even though I was a human resource clerk, I took the opportunity. Because I was always one of the better marksman in the squadron. JD: Really? 00:37:18: WZ: Yeah. JD: But in, in, in Kuwait though, I mean did you find yourself in a shooting situation or that was a fairly safe environment right? 00:37:26: WZ: Oh absolutely not. JD: Really? 00:37:28: WZ: No. It, you would think, just because they’re a friendly nation doesn’t mean its people are extremely friendly. As you can imagine, the very wealthy. The way the demographics of Kuwait is, there’s a population of two million. There’s only one million Kuwaitis and the rest are indentured servants. JD: Wow. 00:37:47: WZ: Yeah. Brought in from India or other locals. JD: Indentured servant or more of migrant labor? 00:37:53: WZ: Both. JD: Okay. 00:37:54: WZ: So it’s kind of, it’s kind of a weird mix. So, but you can definitely tell the difference because the, the, the migrants and the indentured, skinny, under-, undernourished. And the Kuwaitis were nice and plump. JD: Yeah, I imagine the, the sort of the economic difference in society was huge. I’ve heard that quite a bit about the third world that, you know, there’s not a huge difference here in the states where just about anybody can get a cell phone if they want one, even if you’re really poor. But in other countries, that you’re literally very, very, very poor. And it’s a huge gap. So it was, you saw something similar in Kuwait. 00:38:26: WZ: Oh yeah, it was extremely, extremely uh polarized. So but their culture was a little bit different. And of course, we’re in uniform. You know. JD: So you carried weapons in Kuwait City and. 00:38:37: WZ: Right. We, we carried 9 millimeters. JD: Okay, so not, not, not your rifles. 00:38:40: WZ: Not our rifles. That would, we thought that would be too intimidating. JD: Yeah. [chuckle]. 00:38:45: WZ: [chuckle] Yeah, so we just, we had side arms. We had pistol side arms. So it was just like two or three of us, and we’re just walking around. JD: In uniform. So how did, how did, what was the reaction? 00:38:55: WZ: Well, for the reaction from the market was great. The bazars, they loved us. They loved Americans. Yes, they wanted our money. JD: Did you, did you spend American currency or were you. Okay, wow, so. 00:39:07: WZ: Yeah, they took American currency. But the, the ratio was really bad. I think it was four dollars for every single Kuwaiti dinar. So, you can imagine that would be you know, kind of pricey for us as Americans to buy something so it was expensive. But we did a lot of trading. At least I did whenever I was in town or at the bazars. We did a lot of trading in wood. They wanted wood. And in return we got precious gems and jewelry. JD: For lumber? 00:39:37: WZ: For lumber. It’s very weird, like I traded a wooden chest set right? For some, for a really nice Arabian, rug. Beautiful. JD: A chest set that you just had or bought or I, I mean. 00:39:51: WZ: No I actually had a friend ship it to me from the states. JD: For this purpose? 00:39:55: WZ: For this purpose. Yeah, yeah. So for, for this beautiful rug that would normally cost probably like a thousand dollars. JD: And you, you just bargained for this? 00:40:04: WZ: I just bargained for it. That is part of their society. If you’re not bargaining, they don’t want to deal with you. JD: Really? 00:40:09: WZ: No. That is just their culture. They, they want you to bargain, they want to communicate, they want to interact. That’s how they are. The, the Arabs. I was really surprised with my first interaction with true Arabs because I kind of, I didn’t really know. I was kind of stereotyping based on what our media says about them. JD: And the military didn’t give you any sort of training on culture? 00:40:28: WZ: Well the military does give cultural training. But you know it’s very difficult to take that training, that whatever few hours of training you get from that, verses an entire lifetime, exposure to this idea of, of the Arabian world, the Arabian peninsula. So it was just very interesting because they were very, very, very friendly. They were very touchy-feely. They were all huggy, they wanted to hold your hands. They were just very, very close. JD: Wow. 00:40:58: WZ: Yeah. It was very interesting. For instance, I randomly went into a jewelry store. Now I go into a jewelry store here, I might get waited on, I may not. It all depends on how I look I guess. JD: Yeah, sure. 00:41:08: WZ: You walk into a jewelry store over in Kuwait, which is a dime a million because it’s Kuwait. And. JD: And you’re in uniform with a side arm. 00:41:17: WZ: Yeah, I’m in uniform with a side arm. [chuckle]. And they come over and they ask if you want a drink. Of course, it’s rude to say no; it’s part of their culture as well. So of course you say, “Yes.” And they ask you what you want. And then they get you a glass bottle. They open it up in front of you, so it’s not like you’re getting poisoned. So they open it up in front of you and they pour you a drink, while you’re shopping, or not shopping when they try to talk to you. So it was very curious. It was a very different type of atmosphere to go shopping. So a lot of fun. Completely different society than I was expecting. So it was, it was a lot of fun. But we did have a couple of, eyes on us from distance. You know it wasn’t from the merchants, but some of the, I don’t know if they were locals or if they were servants of any sort but you know. So you got to always kind of stay mindful and vigilant of your surroundings just because you are an American in an Islamic nation and there is kind of friction there. JD: Sure, yeah. 00:42:12: WZ: Yeah so it was, it was always got to stay on, on track but we did try to have fun when we could. JD: Sure of course. So then you came back to the states. 00:42:20: WZ: Come back to the states, sit around and. JD: And you’re still active duty at this point. 00:42:24: WZ: No, yeah, they, they brought me back in the reserve status and so nothing really fun happens until I transfer units. I transferred from the 7-6 cavalry regiment to another reserve unit here located in Bryan. It was the 2-11th mobile public affairs detachment. M.P.A.D. JD: Were you transferred, did they, did you ask for a transfer? 00:42:49: WZ: I asked for a transfer. I, look, I got bored of human resources and I wanted a change and so I became a print journalist. A lot of fun basically what we’re doing here. JD: Yeah. 00:43:01: WZ: So I did that for a little while and then we finally got orders to join the fight in, in Iraq. We were to be stationed, or my unit was stationed over in, Camp Liberty, one of the presidential palaces. JD: Oh cool. 00:43:20: WZ: Because when we went over there, when we, when we took over, we, we occupied all of Hussain palaces and used them as headquarters. Very fancy. JD: Right, same thing with World War II. 00:43:33: WZ: Yes of course, why, why wouldn’t we? JD: Of course now you need the building. 00:43:35: WZ: Got to be posh. No, no, they’re not, they’re not going to use it, surely we’re not going to use it. So it was a lot of fun. I obviously didn’t go, but I heard a lot of great stories about it. And so there we go, we got our orders, did the train-up. I was vital in that role. I was making sure at the time, I was a what they call, a unit administrator. It’s a civilian job. JD: But you’re active again by this point. 00:43:57: WZ: Right I’m active again at this point. So I’m kind of working both groups. I’m working as an active staff sergeant because I got promoted between here and there. JD: To E-6? 00:44:07: WZ: To E-6. JD: Yeah. 00:44:09: WZ: And so I was helping and getting everything done on the military side, but also on the civilian side, trying to get the unit ready to roll out as well. So I was trying to get all of my military training done, while getting all of the unit ready to, to deploy. It was crazy. It was a lot of work, it was a lot of work. JD: And this, you’re still in Bryan at this point or you guys are? 00:44:27: WZ: Yes. We’re still in Bryan. We were in Bryan for about four months. JD: And was that your first real involvement in the, I guess in the A&M area with the, with the [inaudible]. Right. 00:44:35: WZ: Right. And so we did, we did a lot of just prep-up and getting everything ready to go around here in this area. And, then after that, that’s when we went to Fort Dix, New Jersey and we did our, our serious uh O.I.F.-type training exercises. JD: What are you guys attached to at this point? 00:44:51: WZ: We were attached to, First Cavalry. JD: So still an airborne unit, or an, an air unit. 00:44:57: WZ: No actually First Cav is a, c-, large. Well the cavalry, the, the Army, you got to consider the cavalry was originally horseback. So cavalry. JD: Oh, it would have been air cav, that’s what I’m thinking of. 00:45:10: WZ: Air cav was what I was at 7-6. But the First Cav was basically tanks and other mobile unit strikers. JD: Right. Mobile, mobile mechanized stuff. 00:45:19: WZ: Right. So that’s pretty much what we did. We were assigned to them. And we did a lot of training. First Cavalry is also that, the large shield with the slash with the horse. So, yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun. JD: Yup. But something happened. You got hurt. 00:45:33: WZ: Right. Just going through, just going through training exercises and I was injured. Just silly, silly back, back problem that occurred just, just by jumping off of a, jumping off of a tiny little truck. JD: Right. 00:45:47: WZ: You shouldn’t jump off trucks. But you know, you never think that’s going to be, be a problem. But years of hiking and you know marching and all the other stuff, riding in Humvees on, on terrible terrain with a Johnny Kevlar on your head, knocking you back and down. So yeah it just kind of tweaked the wrong way and it really, really messed me up and made me not deployable. So ended up having to. I, I tried my best to try to train with the rest of my unit, but I knew I wasn’t deploying with them. But I felt like I should be there till the very end because you gain such a strong, uh union with your comrades, especially with a small unit, like a, like a M.P.A.D. An M.P.A.D. had twenty soldiers in it, so they’re very small. JD: M.P.A.D.? 00:46:30: WZ: Yeah, the Mobile, Mobile Public Affairs, Mobile Public Affairs Detachment. JD: Gotcha. 00:46:36: WZ: Yeah. I’ll be sure to write that down for you. But, yeah, so that’s what we did. We were twenty-man units and those twenty-man units are attached to active duty units and then we release media sources. Media information. JD: Right. And you were attached to a whole division. 00:46:52: WZ: Right. JD: So you’re twenty guys were the media for the whole. 00:46:55: WZ: Right, for the whole division. Yeah, we’re, we’re pretty much connected to the First Cav, period. And there might be three over there at First Cav that are coming with us. And of course, we communicate with the other different groups, and the, the command group as well. But yeah, yeah, we were pretty much charged with, all of that. JD: Wow. What year was this when you were in Fort Dix? 00:47:15: WZ: Let’s see, I got out of the military in 2011, 2010, 2009. So it’d be 2009, 2009. JD: Wow, so a lot of time had passed since you were in. So, so how long was it between when you were with the 7-6 and then when you transferred over to, to First Cav there so. 00:47:34: WZ: I’d say about five years. I’d say. JD: It’d be reserve for five years. 00:47:36: WZ: Right. JD: I gotcha. So sometime from ’03 to ’08 roughly I guess? Reserve? 00:47:41: Yeah, pretty much. JD: Yeah, doing, just doing your two weeks and one weekend a month? 00:47:45: WZ: Just doing my two weeks, but I was also the unit administration so I was doing full-time civilian work because reserve units don’t run themselves magically just for that one weekend. JD: Gotcha. So you didn’t have other, other employment or anything like that? 00:47:56: WZ: No, that was my job. My, my civilian job. And assuring the unit was, was ready to mobilize at any given time. JD: Gotcha. So you didn’t get to transfer over to the, the information unit. Made E-6 at that point. 00:48:09: WZ: Made E-6. JD: And then you got hurt in ’09. 00:48:12: WZ: Trained up. JD: Trained up. 00:48:15: WZ: Yes, we, we were mobilized in ’09. We moved over to Fort Dix, New Jersey, and we performed our training. And training consists primarily of firing your weapon, cultural exposure—so we know what, what to expect. We do stacking, which is you got six soldiers, a squad if you will, a squad is six soldiers, lined up, kicking in doors and learning how to clear rooms. JD: Right. But even as a, as a media group you were still, yeah. 00:48:46: WZ: Even as a media, especially as a media group because you just never know if you’re gonna be attached to a squad and you’re going to be a camera following them. You know, because you just never know. With the, with the M.P.A.D. units, we, we find what, what stories we want. Nine times out of ten we are already out there communicating with soldiers all around, and we’re looking for stories. We find a good story, we talk to our commander. We’re like, “Hey, I got this great story idea.” And either they say, “Yea or Nay.” And of course the commander says, “Well take this story instead.” But every once in a while, you’re like, “Oh this looks like a cool story” or “this is a really cool human feature. This guy’s really doing something awesome within his unit.” And then you go and you ask. And then you spend maybe three or four days with that unit, out there doing what they do. JD: Sounds like a really cool deal. 00:48:27: WZ: It’s a, it’s a lot of fun, especially if you’re A.D.D. because you might be with the medics one day, or you might be with air cav next day, or you might be with special forces another day, with a ride along on one of those dune buggies with a fifty caliber. So that was a lot of fun opportunities, so. JD: Were you excited to go back? 00:49:50: WZ: You know, I was kind of anxious I’m sure. I don’t think anybody’s really excited to go over there unless you’re really gun-ho for war. Because it’s not as glamorous as the, as the T.V., as the movies make it of course. And you’ve got friends who come back and you’ve got friends who don’t come back. I had several friends from previous deployments, over there at O.I.F. who did not return. So that’s always, that’s always a challenge. It’s always hard to uh recover from. Especially whenever you know you might be going over there next. And of course, you know, every soldier’s already aware that, you know, no matter how much training you go through, if there’s a bullet with your name on it, you’re, it’s, you’re down. There’s nothing you can do about it. I mean obviously you don’t want to stand up in the middle of a firefight. But you got to walk in realizing that you are potentially a dead man. So just you know, live for the, live in the moment, live for your, your, the man to your left, the man to your right. You know support each other throughout that campaign so. It’s, it’s it really is a strange bond I don’t think it can really relate to, maybe police, maybe the police and the fire department have the same sort of bonds because of the, of the threats they have to go through but. So it was a curious, curious time. So understanding that mentality and where we’re going. I wasn’t excited to go, but I was anxious and I, I was ready to go. And I wanted to be there primarily for my unit. I knew that we had orders, I was under contract to do it. So got to do, got to do what my country wants me to do, regardless of any political interest. You know I got called up, I do it. So, yeah. That’s pretty much right. JD: Reminds me of another question too so did you agree with the, with the war at that point. Or at any, or I guess, did it change over time, the course of the war and things like that? The way you reacted to it, the way you felt about it politically and things like that? 00:51:43: WZ: Well politically speaking, I was always, always pro, entry into Iraq. And from antidotal stories from my friends, they say that we’ve actually helped in many, many ways regarding Iraq. We brought in a lot of new hospitals. We built a lot of schools. We tried to increase quality of life. We tried to clean up their mounds of trash because you know, the people had trash mounds outside their, their streets—on the streets, large amounts. So you know, we were not only securing the area and trying to remove the insurgencies, but we were also trying to improve the, the, win the hearts and minds of the people, which is the mission of our military. So in that regard I was, I was very pro-war because I knew that we were helping the people. JD: Doing something good. 00:52:36: WZ: Exactly. Despite the agendas that our government might have. But then we started making some mistakes like the Battle of Fallujah, was a huge turning point for me, for the war. Just because. JD: The first one? 00:52:51: WZ: Yes. Because it, it was just so bloody and so unplanned. And it was, it was, it was bad. It was extremely bad. And, I had a couple of friends who were directly involved in that, in the Battle of Fallujah. JD: Marines? 00:53:05: WZ: And. No, Army. One Ranger and one, Cavalry. And that, and they were there and they were and they were shot at pretty good. I had a story of one of my friends who was there and he was on a Humvee and he was firing his fifty caliber. And he had a bullet hit his chest. Could have killed him, but he had a flak jacket on. But you know and that would have knocked him out if, if he didn’t have a grenade in the way. So the bullet hit the grenade and then hit his flak jacket, right. So he just kind of got knocked back and then he was kind of traumatized and smokes flying out here right. Gunpowder and everything and. He’s looking down, he’s saying, “What? What is all this?” And he looks into the manhole and he looks, talks to his sergeant. He’s like, “Sarge, I think I was just shot.” You know, mind you there’s gunfire everywhere right. And he’s like, “Get back on the fifty cal!” Uh, so that was an interesting little story that he told me about his little op, his little stint over there at Fallujah. But yeah, it was, it was really bad. So I started questioning like, “Well why, why are we doing Fallujah if, you know, we can’t secure it. We’ve tried securing it a couple of times. And you know, I, I don’t know.” And just seeing, just seeing all the, all the human loss I think, both sides actually. It wasn’t just on the American side. I was just seeing loss on both sides. That’s when I started really kind of questioning how, how much difference we’re making over there. But you know, I, I was still pretty much pro what we were doing. But I don’t think it was until after I left the military that it really kind of dawned on me that I think that there were, we made plenty of mistakes in Iraq. And we, you know, and it’s being shown now because, it’s, Iraq’s in another civil war right now and it looks like that it’s gonna end up turning just like it was, anti-American. You know. So what are we gonna do then? Is history gonna repeat? Are we gonna go back in there and do the same thing? [Door knock—brief interruption] 00:55:34: WZ: Alright. But. JD: How did you get to A&M I guess is the next question, which actually where, so you hurt your back. You end up in Walter Reed? 00:55:40: WZ: Hurt, hurt my back. I was at Walter Reed. Went to Walter Reed for two years. JD: Wow. 00:55:45: WZ: Yeah. JD: So what was it? Would have been like slipped disk I imagine. 00:55:47: WZ: Yeah. It was, it was slipped disks, bulging disks, in my primarily L-4, L-5. And it was just pretty jacked up. And of course you know then they were doing the full medical scope for me and found out you know. I just assumed migraines were common in, in people. They’re like, “No, no, no, that’s not common.” And I had like straight migraines. And I had like two a month. So that was actually a problem and so they were trying to treat that and trying to figure out if there’s like tumors or anything or, or any actual like T.B.I. which uh Traumatic Brain Injury. So yeah, going through the entire treatment process and going through all of that until they decided to say, “Okay, you’re unfit for duty.” So, we’re gonna. JD: After two years. 00:56:29: WZ: After two years. JD: Did they fix your back? 00:56:31: WZ: N-well it’s manageable. You know, a lot of therapy and all of that. It, it helped my back as much as they could. JD: Migraines? 00:56:39: WZ: The migraines they’ve got medication for. They weren’t really able to identify any sort of major problems or anything so. You know, bumps, bumps and bruises. Some, some busted, busted stuff so. But that’s okay, the Army, the Army said, “Okay, we’re sorry. Here’s some, here’s some money and have a nice life. Wish you could stay.” JD: Medical discharge? 00:56:58: WZ: Right, honorable medical discharge. JD: In 2011? 00:57:01: Yes. JD: Yeah. 00:57:02: WZ: Hmm-hmm. JD: I had a buddy hurt his back in boot camp actually, but he knew if he’d wash out the boot with medical, as well. So he said he spent all of his pay on, on getting pain killers so he could make it through. It something like, he was on a rough march, stepped in a weird, a pothole weird, didn’t really notice it. And took off, he took off his hit belt when the march was over and just collapsed. It took him a while to get processed. And he had, he was regular Army, but he said he had a lot of problems with people not really going, “You’re hurt? Okay.” Because, back injury. They’re hard to diagnose. I’m not saying they’re easy to fake, but they can be, if you’re smart about it. 00:57:38: WZ: Hmm-hmm. JD: Not that he was or you were obviously. But it was, he, he had a lot of animosity for that. And, he, he got his medical, he got out. But kind of crazy. This was much more recent. Well actually no, actually that I think of it, this is probably, shoot, yeah, actually this is probably ’09. Yeah, it’s about same time you were. 00:58:00: WZ: Yeah. JD: Yeah, yeah. 00:58:01: WZ: Yeah, it, it happens. A lot of soldiers do get a lot of animosity from that, but at the same time, I’ve seen a lot of, lot of tragedy at fort, at Walter Reed. A lot of tragedy. A guy, I saw soldiers coming back, without limbs. The worst of it is the, the soldiers with the P.T.S.D. because yeah, yeah. I, I did a small stint over at Ward 53 which is the, the mental, mental behavior, therapy and all that so. Yeah. JD: In treatment? 00:58:34: WZ: Hmm? JD: In treatment or did they. 00:58:34: WZ: In treatment. Yeah, I, I was doing some treatment there for a little while. And yeah, no, communicating with those with the P.T.S.D. And I saw, saw some serious P.T.S.D. They were very traumatized. I don’t if they’ll ever truly recover from, from what they’ve seen over there. JD: Yeah. 00:58:51: WZ: And it affects everybody completely different like, like I met another a medic. Only had an arm left. All three of the other limbs were, were destroyed. But he had a most positive outlook on life. He was a medic and he went in there, he, everybody got a blown-up there. They, they were trying to clear a room. The, the insurgent pulled the pin and blew himself up and hit everybody. And so the medic was helping everybody despite the fact that he had no arms or legs. So yeah, it takes a special person to be a medic. JD: Right. 00:59:19: Yeah, so. JD: And his reaction to it, so did he not have P.T.S.D.? Or was it sort of just a? 00:59:23: WZ: It, yeah. I mean he, he it. From, from what he was saying he really didn’t have significant P.T.S.D. I think he said he was kind of already kind of aware as a medic the you know, the trauma and, and the, the just how gruesome and, and bad it can be, how, how bad it can get so. He seemed like he was, like in upper great spirits. Where on the other hand I’ve seen others who were you know, just so bad off that they try to kill themselves and you know, they’re feeding out of a, a tube from their nose because they blew their face up and lost their jaw. So and, and just so many soldiers who were just you know, in that sort of mental state. And a lot of them you know, in treatment. I don’t know what they do, not only in the behavioral, but physical problems, you know arms, legs, whatnot, other damages that had incurred. But most of them were addicted to, to pain killers. Because you know, it’s “Hey, take the pain killer, take the pain killer.” And so a lot of them were just really dependent on, on medications. So that was really terrible thing to see. But despite seeing the negative aspects of it, they were receiving probably some of the best care I’ve ever, ever seen in my life. So, yeah. JD: There at Walter Reed. 01:00:40: WZ: It had its negatives and it had its positives. JD: That’s just a very interesting way to round out your career in the military. Goodness. 01:00:47: WZ: It certainly was. Well you know and I kind of appreciated it because it allowed me to see the, the end factor of war. Seeing, seeing the conclusion of what happens to people throughout war. Because you always see the, the, the soldiers coming back and all celebrating. And we know that people come back injured, but you never really are exposed to how many people and it’s, as a, as a journalist I couldn’t help but ask questions and, and, if they were able to you know, talk to me about it. But I was always so curious about you know, their personal stories and what they went through and. You just really find how true the American spirit is by some of these people. It’s just their, their stories are so amazing and yeah. And, if you get the opportunity to, to talk to some of them [sighs]. JD: I hope to with this project, I really do. 01:01:35: WZ: It’ll be, it’ll be amazing. A lot of them that I’ve spoken to, especially the, the, the wounded soldiers. You know they, they’ve toughed it out. You know they’ve not only fighting the war now, but they’re also fighting the war you know from, from then, they’re fighting the war now. Even still, even after the military. Just because you know, it, it’s such a, it’s such a traumatic experience. So it’s, it’s interesting. But yeah, so I ended up doing the Walter Reed. And I was taking classes. I figured I was already human resources and why not just do more human resources. JD: Online? 01:02:10: Yes. Well, for the first week, for the first semester was online. And then I decided to take courses over there at the University of Maryland. Over there at, in Adelphi? Yeah. So ended up going there. The University of Maryland. Took some classes, a lot of core classes. Then I came back here to College Station because I obviously lived here because of my unit, so I lived here. And at which time I said “Well I’m no longer in the service.” My civilian job was dependent upon me being in the service. It’s called like dual-status. So it was dependent on me being a soldier. Since I wasn’t a soldier, I didn’t have a civilian job. I had to resign my civilian job. JD: And you left an E-6? 01:02:51: I left an E-6. JD: Yeah. 01:02:52: WZ: Right. JD: With medical? 01:02:54: WZ: With medical. JD: Right. 01:02:55: WZ: Right. So here I am, I’m sitting at home twirling my thumbs and I said, “What am I going to do next with my life?” You know, I really had nothing to do. But I knew I needed to continue education. So I’m at College Station, why not go to A&M? JD: Right. And you got the G.I. Bill. 01:03:09: WZ: Got the G.I. Bill. I got plenty of stuff. Why not do it? Why not? Here, right time, right place, make it happen, create a new career for myself. JD: Fall of ’11? 01:03:19: WZ: Yeah, pretty much. Started at Blinn Community College and took some more core classes and some electives. And then I found geography and then I said, “Wow, that’s a really cool class.” And took more GEO-type courses which led me into the degree program at Texas A&M. And then I went into the Geography with G.I.S. which got me the internship here at the City of College Station so. JD: Cool. And you graduated this May? 01:03:44: WZ: I graduated May 2014 and I, I graduated with a G.P.A. 3.8. Magna cum laude. So very proud of that. JD: Excellent, excellent. Yeah, 01:03:55: WZ: Thank you. So you know. But that discipline, high-grade in my opinion, was a factor based on my military discipline. JD: A product of your? Yeah. 01:04:03: WZ: Yeah, it was definitely a product. It was definitely a result of what the Army has taught me. So throughout, throughout my life the, the Army’s pretty much molded me into a, a, a person I think that, is going to be extremely successful. More so than if I decided not to, I am blessed that I was given the opportunity to serve. It was definitely a grooming experience. JD: Yeah. You’ve had an interesting arc though, to start with you know, peace time army. Then 9/11 and then the build up to the invasion and then about to go again. And then Walter Reed right there at the end when it’s basically over and you’re dealing with, quite literally, the results of the war. 01:04:43: WZ: Right. JD: As I said it’s, that’s a really interesting arch. 01:04:46: WZ: It really is. Yeah I saw it from the beginning and, and all the way to the end. I just wish I had the opportunity to actually go into Iraq. You know, that way I would have that aspect of the story and, and the, sort of how the environment was over there. Because I, I hear a lot of stories, but unless you’re actually there. And one thing that I’ve been told time and time again is I cannot explain to you the smell. And he said, “It smelled so bad.” And it was a unique bad smell. JD: Just Iraq in general or combat or? 01:05:15: WZ: Just, just in Iraq. JD: Just in Iraq. 01:05:17: WZ: Just because there is garbage everywhere. It was, it was bad. From what I understand. That’s, that’s what I’ve been told by many soldiers. And it’s like, “You will never know what that smell is unless you’re actually there.” But every once in a while I, they, they get a smell that is similar and it can kind of trigger you know, their whole P.T.S.D. stuff. JD: Really? So they’re not going to go work in a dump or something like that? [chuckle] 01:05:34: WZ: No. Heck no. [chuckle] So it’s, it’s interesting. But yeah, yeah you’re right. Saw, saw pretty much the entire. JD: Arc. Yeah, yeah. 01:05:42: WZ: Arc? Yeah, I’ve never actually looked at it that way, but yeah, pretty interesting. JD: Yeah. That’s good, that’s great. Thanks a lot. This is I think, a really, really interesting look at, at, at many, many parts of the, of the, of the period that you don’t really hear or think about. I, I, you, you so much, and so many people who were involved in Iraq and Afghanistan were, were involved in that aspect of it rather than build-up. There’s not a whole lot of guys that were there in peace time before, unless they were Persian Gulf or something. I, I bet, I bet a lot of your pilots were Persian Gulf guys. 01:06:15: WZ: Oh yeah. Yeah. JD: Yeah. 01:06:16: WZ: A lot of them were Persian Gulf. They were Persian Gulf, they were yeah. They were old and crusty, but they were darn good what they did. JD: Do you stay in touch with any guys from either of the units you were with? 01:06:26: WZ: I do. I just, I stay in contact with my old platoon sergeant. JD: From? 01:06:31: WZ: From the 7-6 Cavalry regiment, from twelve years ago. Basically he is almost a second father to me. He’s taught me so much from the military, which, which kind of transposed into my civilian life. And so yeah, he was, he was a really, really strong influence in my life. So basically second father type. And fortunately he lives close. He lives over in Willis. JD: All right. 01:06:53: WZ: So, you know I see him every once in a while when I get the opportunity. He actually came down for my graduation. So that was really kind, that was really cool. JD: Yeah, yeah. 01:07:00: WZ: But that’s pretty much it. Just him. JD: Yeah. What about you know, the A&M, College Station, just the area itself as the sort of the way they, the community for, for veterans. Do, do you notice this as different than other places because there’s so many here and this is prevalent in the military with A&M? 01:07:14: WZ: Yes. A&M, because I think of the, the Corps and the Corps values and the cadets the. Very pro-military, very supportive of the military. A lot of, a lot of campaigns to, to assist in the military, as well as like the Wounded Soldier program, the V.F.W., the American Legion. I know A&M has this, has a great V.A. program as well supporting soldiers. A lot of different additional programs to have soldier support in the case they need it. So it’s, A&M has been a, a significant influence in helping me uh, transition from soldier to citizen. Because a lot of soldiers have a lot of difficulty with that transition because it’s a completely different world. JD: Right. 01:08:07: WZ: So, yes. This area is definitely more pro-military than other places. I remember, because I was in training, so I was, this was back in 2002-ish, after 2001, after 9/11 and everything. No, no this was, this was during Iraq War actually because I met somebody. I was coming back from training and I was in uniform and I was, I was screamed at believe it or not. But you hear so much stuff about the pro-military and that everybody was so pro. I must have run into that one hippie, or something but definitely anti-military. JD: Somebody screaming at. Here in Texas? 01:08:48: WZ: Yeah, yeah, it was here in Texas. I was going to a Kroger. Yeah. I was pushing a cart, in my uniform, going to Kroger, minding my own business. And this woman was just on a rage talking about me being a baby killer and how I’m just killing everybody and you’re expand-extending the, the, the capital and imperialism. And it was just, it was bad. I was like “What, what, what is your deal?” JD: When do you think this was? 01:09:13: WZ: This must have been I think in 2004 because tensions were somewhat high to, I guess by some factions of the American people about why, our reasons in war because you know, they were pro-, they’re, they’re saying we’re there for oil. Which is. JD: Yeah, those folks camped out at Bush’s place there outside of Waco. For a long time. 01:09:32: WZ: Right, yeah. So it was kind of interesting. Yeah, trying to. Because I always get so accustomed to saying, “Oh thank you for your service.” And it’s “an honor” and this and that. But it was just interesting getting that reaction because I don’t. JD: Was that the only time it’s happened to you? 01:09:44: WZ: That’s the only time it’s every happened to my, my twelve and a half years of service. So yeah. So it was interesting. You know, it, it, it gave me an opportunity to, to think about how the Vietnam soldiers were when they came back because they weren’t very well treated. And yeah, if you’re being taught that or, or, or being told that every day I, I can, I can see why a lot of the V.F.W. veterans over there from Vietnam or the way they are just because that, that negativity is, is so terrible. So yeah the positive influence, the positive social atmosphere to, to, to bring the soldiers into the, into the denizen ship of, of the, of the municipal I think is a fantastic opportunity for, for them to, to really you know grow and, and just appreciate you know, the society that they’re currently living in. JD: Right, the community, right. 01:10:32: WZ: Yeah so it’s, it’s a lot of fun. I liked it. I’ve been over in Conroe and Spring and these places are, they say they’re pro and they say “Hey thank you,” but I do think that College Station goes out of its way. JD: Yeah, interesting. I don’t want to take up any more of your time, it’s been a little longer than I, I thought. Which is fine for me, but I know you’ve got a lot got a lot going on this weekend but. 01:10:53: WZ: Yeah, it’s completely fine. For the next couple, today and tomorrow, it’s just a matter of me just packing up all my stuff so. JD: Which is never fun. 01:11:01: WZ: [sigh] JD: I hate moving so much. 01:11:02: Well you know. End Tape.