Command
I joined the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell as a Weapons Squad Leader. After years in the close-knit Special Forces world, I took on a different challenge: leading nine soldiers who had never deployed and depended entirely on experience they didn’t yet have.
On June 18, 1996, seventeen days after my promotion to Staff Sergeant, my squad was assigned to Chalk 2 for a live-fire air assault. At treetop level, the main rotor blades of our Blackhawk collided with Chalk 1. Both aircraft went down. Six soldiers died that day, including five from our company and our First Sergeant. I survived, and our unit had to keep going. Despite injuries that required physical therapy, I returned to full duty, scored a perfect 300 on the Army Physical Fitness Test, and was commended by the Army Chief of Staff for actions taken to treat and evacuate casualties.
My career moved quickly. I earned the Expert Infantryman Badge and the Air Assault Badge as Distinguished Honor Graduate. Then, I became Senior Operations Manager for a 700-man air assault infantry battalion. I managed the operational training program, ran the Pre-Ranger Course, and built a networked database that tracked real-time training statistics across five companies and 700 individual records. I designed a command-training program that achieved 100% qualification rates and saved thousands of man-hours each year.
