Welcome to Veterans' Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is
retired US Navy Seal Lieutenant Mark Green. He's a veteran of both Iraq and
Afghanistan, and he is the author of Unsealed, a Navy Seal's Guide to
Mastering Transitions. In the first episode with Lieutenant Green, we discussed how an
injury that ended a promising athletic career forced a major course correction in his future
plans, why he joined the Navy and then pursued becoming a Navy seal.
He also told us about the rigors of sniper school and the challenges he overcame
and becoming an officer. In this edition, we'll hear all about his deployments
in Iraq and Afghanistan and how he now helps service members readjust to civilian life
after leaving the military. In just a moment, Green will describe his first
combat deployment to Iraq, but right now we pick up with his officer's story.
After all the work it took to navigate the military bureaucracy to become an
officer, it was then time to be one and lead the enlisted men,
and that required some major adjustments as well. That was really challenging because I
had a hard time with the separation between, Hey, you're in a leadership
position. Now you can't buddy buddy with the enlisted guys. But I was
just literally enlisted guy three months ago. And so when I got to my
platoon at Team eight, They're like, you have to make that separation.
And some of these guys I worked with, I put through sniper school a
couple months prior, so they knew me as mark, but they were great
that the teams are really good about that rank structure. And so once they
saw my little butter bars is what they call them, my insign bars,
they called me all the time and went enlisted guys, address you, because
Circin made a bunch of different things, right, it depends on the way
it said. But they were always super respectulhen they were happy for me.
But I really learned my leadership style one My first platoon was fantastic from the
LPO and my chief, it just ran really well. And then the second
platoon, the dynamics were different, and I learned a lot from that experience
as well. So when I had my OCS class, I really just took
my lessons learned and said, okay, these are my problem children dron in
structuresho leave them alone. I'll discipline them, I'll make sure they make it
through. I was really just there to take care and make sure that these
young kids who were just playing, you know, Xbox and going to college
and drinking too much, to all of a sudden they're at OCS with these
marine drones structors who were just maniacal sometimes and they're great at their job,
but just to see the terror in these young people's face, and I was
like, hey, you have to make sure your class is taken care of.
So I really just I didn't perform as well on academics because I was
putting down fires all day and I could get some academics when I could.
But to watch the students progress from novice to expert in that atmosphere, it
was just really rewarding. So I just got to watch and watch them progress
and watch them grow. And then my favorite time in sniper school was when
my students would fire me, so, you know, you tell the wide
I like, don't know anything about the art of sniping, and then over
the course of ten weeks they start to pick it up. And then the
light switch comes on in the shooting phase and then the light comes on in
the stalking phase and you can see it. It's like, oh, I
get it. And then the best words I ever got was hey, Mark,
I'm good. Beat it. I was, so I get fired.
That was my favorite time of Sancris work. It's done here. Yeah.
I was like, yeah, you got it on your own and just to
watch the light bulb moments were really cool. So the best advice I got
from my dron instructor I'm some really good friends with. He said, you're
doing a good job as an officer or as a leader when your people come
to you with their problems. I was like, huh, okay, So
the last day of Lucis, kids are coming to me with their problems.
I was like, okay, I'm good. And then when I got to
my platoons, it was the same thing. It was family dynamics or you
performers or whatever, and they were just pulled me off to the side and
say, hey, what do you think about this? I was like,
Okay, I'm doing this the right way. If they're still trusting me with
their life, that only good life within their personal life. Let's talk about
your deployments now. First of all, to Iraq. It was the year
after the war began, I believe, two thousand and four, two thousand
and five, sectarian issues certainly ramping up at the time. Where were you
deployed and what merrily were you doing there? So we were in the Green
Zone and we were charged with them protecting the life of the Deputy Prime Minister,
doctor Barham Sali, and we had to make sure he got throughout our
rack safe and sound. So we were his personal detail and when he would
travel up north to Sulimania where he's from Van Kurdistan, then they're like,
okay, Mark, your principal's gone. Sniper team's going out and I really
just had to crawl walk around. They took me on an op that was
like okay, low level, but you just need to figure out the landscape
and what things look like. So you know, it wasn't training anymore.
It was targets are real and if they see you, you're out in bad
guy country. So the first time we were on our sniper we were doing
our first sniper op in a meadow. It looked like what we were trained
to. It wasn't in the deep desert, and all of a sudden,
I just see these little heads bobbing, and I was like, what in
the world is that? And I was like, does anybody else see that?
I was the tallest one, so nobody else saw it. So all
of a sudden, this dude, the goat herder, who walks this goat
path for how I don't know how long he's been walking, but he's all
these little goats are coming up. He's coming up with this old lady and
the goats start eating the bushes that were in and I was like, hey,
we got a guy. And I you know, everybody sniper reverence were
pointless at that point. Everyone has their pistols pulled out on this guy because
if he takes a look into that bush and looks at it, he's going
to see like six gringoes in there. So but the coolest thing was he
looked into the bush, and you can tell when somebody sees you, right,
he just looked into the bush, looked right at us, and just
kept he just kept looking and then took off. So we thought that he'd
seen us and he's going to call people in, but the guy never saw
us. I was just like, wow, this is this is crazy.
But you know, the the most interesting thing about being in the combat zone
for the first time was my alarm clock was a car bomb going off every
morning after morning prayers. So the first time I was awakened by it,
I thought that the bomb had gone off in our tent. So we go
into these command center and I was like, hey, we had you know
at eight o three, what would happen. It's like, oh yeah,
car bomb went off about six miles away. It was like that was six
miles away. And every morning after prayers, boom, it's buddy, you'll
fine. So that was my alarm clock every morning. Is that sectarian violence?
Are they attacking Americans? Are they Yeah, they were just attacking Americans
and they were after their morning prayers. You know, then the Mayhem would
start for the day. So what did that mean for you? That just
made it more real. You know, rockets are coming into the bases,
You're getting reports on rout Irish on Id's going off. Ads just started popping
up in in Irac. They've been in Afghanistan, but they just started showing
up in Iraq because the foreign finersy come in and that just changed that the
dynamics of both combat. You know, chessions were there. People from all
over the Middle East were coming there just to kill Americans, and the battlefield
had changed completely by the time we got there, and it was just chaos.
Let me follow up on one thing you mentioned that, you know,
when you're combat for real, obviously the targets are real. They could fire
back at you or put you in compromise position. In another way, when
you're at that grade of a distance, I don't know exactly what lengths you
were normally dealing with there. How do you confirm that you've got the target
you're looking for? There's unconfirmed and confirmed. So an unconfirmed kill is you
take your shot in your spot, like, hey, that was a good
hit, and if you don't, you know you've got a kill shop that
you can't there's not an officer who's going up to the body and say that
guy's dead. That's a confirmed kill. Everything else is unconfirmed. So we
do it's called a battle damage assessment, and sometimes it's rare that you get
to do it, because you know, once bullets start flying, that's when
you know they've been shot at before, so they scatter and they pulled the
dead off the ground, so you don't actually, you tend to not know
when you're doing sniper work if you actually got your target, do you have
specific targets in mind? Or are you just protecting your other guys and whoever's
a threat to them is who you need to focus on. Oh no,
this is when he was gone. So when we were down in Iraq,
we would actually go out into the city and we would set up in a
building. And what they teach you at snipers school is counter sniper. So
there said any mistake you make, there's somebody out there also hunting you.
So when you're looking at a target, you're also looking around the city and
it's like, okay, somebody's probably looking at me also, So you just
have to everything has to just be dialed in. You know, your gun
has to be completely matt painted matt. You have to have a cover over
your scope, your urban hide has to be flawless, and you're constantly changing
because the conditions are always changing. So if the sun is going down then
you're facing west. If that sunlight hits your scope and you don't have it
done properly, that other sniper out there is hunting. He was like oh,
there he is. So you're looking at your targets, but you're also
looking around. It's like, okay, I'm like camouflage enough to where some
other sniper who's out there can't see me. So between Iraq, which was
two thousand and four, two thousand and five, and your first deployment to
Afghanistan was twenty ten, what were you focused on in those intervening years.
You know, there's a progression and the officers signed you have to a disassociated
tour and there are certain checkofs that you have to have. I went to
Boat Team twenty, so our special boat teams who are our direct support,
great guys, and I deployed with the Boat Team twelve back in two thousand
and one and just saw how hard the job was. We just thought they'd
started up the boats and you got us on target. I mean it's a
two hours three hours before we launched, they were getting those boats ready,
and then once we're doing our business, they have to stay on station to
make sure that if things go south, they cover us on our x fil
and then get us back and then we just keep repeating that. So had
a really great group of guys. So when my disassociated tour, came up
to play I want to go over to the boats and just had a great
time. We were at the boats and those guys are such professionals and they
were professionalized I think in the early to mid nineties, so they had their
they went through their switch course when they became professional boat drivers. But that
was a great tour, and we deployed over the pay com and then there
was this little skirmish that have been going on over there and the Philippines that
we were a part of, and which was a completely different mission and we
were working with a different government agency and their rules were different, and we're
just like, okay, this is I never I did never even knew this
was happening. And then the rule that we were able to play over there.
I learned a ton on that on that deployment was great. That's retired
to US Navy Seal Mark Green. He's also the author of Unsealed, a
Navy Seal's guide to Mastering Transitions. Still to come. In this edition,
Green will tell us about his multiple deployments to Afghanistan and the mission that turned
into what he calls Mayhem. But before that and up next, Green finds
himself back in the last place he wanted to be or expected to be,
the classroom. I'm Greg Kurrn and this is Veterans Chronicles sixty Seconds of Service.
This sixty Seconds of Service is presented by T Mobile. T Mobile offers
exclusive discounts for a veteran and military families and are proud supporters of the National
Defense Network. Visit t mobile dot com slash military to learn more about how
they support our military community. In Hampton, Virginia, a national program called
Troops to Teachers with centers and states across the country, is helping veterans become
teachers. That program is having an impact in Hampton Roads. James Kimbrow is
a teacher at Cacouoton High School in Hampton. He's also a twenty two year
Army veteran. His journey to the classroom began while he was still in the
Army. He said, I just grew to absolutely love helping soldiers be better
versions of themselves, furthering their career, furthering their training, and helping them
go through that. When he retired, he reached out to Troops to Teachers
for help becoming a teacher. They've assisted up to three thousand veterans since twenty
seventeen. For more great veteran stories, just go to National Defense Network dot
com. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. This is part two
of our interview with retired US Navy Seal Lieutenant Mark Green. He's also the
author of Unsealed, a Navy Seal's guide to Mastering Transitions. In Just a
Moment, Green tells us all about his first deployment to Iraq. But first
something that scared him far more going back to school. And then I had
been going pretty regularly since I joined the Navy in ninety six. So in
two thousand and eight I applied for the Naval Postgraduate School and got selected for
that. But our detail named Margaret, I was going to go to the
Kumbai A School, or you the Special Operations Low Intensity Conflict course. You
read a bunch of books and you talk with others and special operators and you
just kind of understand case studies on combat and history and stuff like that.
That's where I was going to go and just kind of get a break and
reconnect with my family. And Martur's like, well, how many kids do
you have? I was like, I have three, and she's like,
well, you have too many damn kids and not have a job when you
get out, so I'm going to send you to get your MBA. I
was like, no, no, you're not. I funked out of college.
You know, I'm lucky to be here. She's like, now you're
gonna be fine, and I was pleading with her, and she's like,
honey, I just hit enter and you're in, so go enjoy Monterey.
So I got my academic blood kicked, and Monterey get my MBA. That
was an adventure in and of itself because I had a sociology degree with criminology
and all of a sudden, I'm learning business at the graduate level with no
background, so long and long hours of studying statistics and economics and microeconomics and
budgeting, and I mean it was brutal. And I've never been good at
the garbage in, garbage out, like read this book and we're gonna have
a test, because I can never figure out what was important, because to
me, everything was important. So I just had to survive the first nine
months of that portion. But then the second part was the analytics part where
they give you case studies and it's like Okay, let's think through this problem
and let's figure it out using your brain. I was just like, oh,
this is pretty easy because and the Seal Times, that's what you do
all the time. You know, you just analyze the targets. So you
just analyze the information that you have and you have to make a decision off
of and the best decision because their lives at stake. So once I got
to the analytics part, I was like, okay, this I understand,
and then ended up getting an Outstanding Thesis award. And that's when I met
a gentleman named Bobby and he said like, hey, where are you going
for your next tour? Just keep going to Seal Team maate And he's like,
who's your chief? And I was like, totally my chief? What's
He's like, wait, what's his name? They told him his name again,
He's like they're putting you two together. It's like, yeah, what,
yeah, what's the problem is? Like, do that dude used to
be a skinhead when he was younger? I was like oh okay, but
then he was my chief, so you know, I processed it all and
I was like, okay, well this is this is my chief. So
showed up a teammate met him and he was just a great, great dude,
and he and I had a great relationship. We didn't always agree,
but as far as we had an incredible amount of trust between each other.
We He ran the tactics and trained all the guys and I trusted him.
And one day we were doing some part of the workup and like until something
was bothering them and uh, he said, hey, Mark, you got
to tell you something. And I said, but when you were a skinheaded,
when you were younger, and she got so bad. He's like,
you after you do this whole time. I was like, yeah, somebody
told me at Grants, was like, well, why didn't you say anything.
I was like, because I don't. Here didn't matter. You and
I worked together. You're the best chief I've ever had, and it never
came up. It was never a problem. So I didn't care. You
were my chief and now you're my friend. Man. I didn't care about
any of this though. Great guy. Let's talk about the first deployment to
Afghanistan twenty ten that says shortly after President Obama had ordered an uptick in personnel
there. What was your location and focus on that deployment we were right at
the foot of the Hindu Kush and like we were at Camp Wolverine, and
we were I think about forty miles south in Kanahar, and you know,
we were working with the Lithuanians, and we were training up the Iraqi forces
and we were going out with them on patrol. And every once in a
while we go out with the conventional army guys because they needed some sniper overwatch
and we got our got our guys out on missions as much as I could.
And then that was a great book because it was completely different. You
know, we flew everywhere, and I took a tour of Afghanistan through a
helicopter and that place was just stunning. It was a beautiful place. And
the villagers they just wanted to be left alone, you know, like they
just want to raise their goats and raise their families and just you know,
just be left alone. So it was just a different mission. But when
you go into those villages, it's you're on high high alert because you just
never know who who's in town, and the Taliban are working with them,
so car bombs. We can only have so many routes in so once we
were driving, I just it was like, okay, this is probably your
last stop because they plant bombed everywhere. So we were there for the last
three months of my six month deployment, and then a couple of days before
there was a helo crash. I think Stilteam five and Silting three were doing
a turnover helo crash. Some people had died. It was Team four Team
five were doing a turnover. So the helicopter crashed on the mountain and the
skipper or the bass on the base at Aymark. We're going to recover the
helicopter and there's going to be a ton of firefights up there, and he
said have a good time, and I was like yes, sir. So
we voted up and we went to uh recover the helicopter, and sure enough
we got into a firefight on top of that mountain and it was it was
just mayhem up there. But then we were really we were fully supported because
they knew how how hot of a target it was. And we were recovering
onto the helicopter and you just hear round sitting the helicopter and they pulled us
off that mountain and the next day I on the plane home. That was
that was the worst part. Of the deployment was at that intensity. You
don't really understand the intensity because you just this just becomes your norm. And
then to be in a firefight and you know, pretty heavy one, and
then you land. You debriefed the op and the skipper says, hey,
go pack up. Your flight's eaven like six hours and six hours later I
was on a flight heading home. That's retired US Navy Seal Mark Green.
He's also the author of Unsealed, a Navy Seal's Guide to Mastering Transitions Still
to Come. In this addition, Green shares his powerful story of his severe
struggles in readjusting to civilian life after leaving the Navy, and how that experience
fuels the work he does now to help veterans every day. But first we'll
hear more about his service in Afghanistan. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans
Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. This is the second
part of our interview with retired US Navy Seal Mark Green. In just a
few minutes, well hear about Green's difficult transition from military to civilian life and
how that's prompted him to help retiring veterans today, but right now he takes
us back to Afghanistan to explain why the terrain there did not allow him opportunities
as a sniper. We weren't doing any sniper work because the mountain, the
distance between mountain ranges was so vast that you know, you couldn't set up
on a mountain, So it was all when you go into a village,
it was just like everything was close. You know, you'd go into the
village and you know, these villages have been there for a thousand years.
There's no secrets in there. You can't hide anywhere. They you know,
that's their backyard. So it was just different and you had to interact with
the elders to get anything done. So it was just a completely different way
of operating because it was you just had to be patient. You knew that
was going to be happening, but you just didn't know when and where.
And we were working, like I said, we were working with the unions
and doing a different mission. So the combat environment was completely different than I
can understand, but it was it was as dangerous. It was as dangerous,
if not more so, because we had been fighting over there since two
thousand and one and I got there in twenty ten. So the locals and
the enemy had known our tactics and had adjusted to how we do business.
So it was the planning part of it was a lot more specific and you
had to have a lot more support doing seal ops. Over there's moved to
your twenty twelve deployment. Now how much different were things and where were you
and what were you doing on that one? So we were in Kandahar for
that one, and at that position at that point, it was more of
a staff. It was a staff, so I got to see the battlefield
from watching how the operations would happen. And then you'd have to manage assets
for the special operators in theater, and then you have to make sure that
they had all their and equipment. You had to approve their con ops and
you know, send them back because it was a non permissive so much.
And then we had to determine what their afghany counterparts, how capable they were,
and it was just it was completely it was completely different. We got
to go out every once in a while, but that was a different job.
And just to watch how the sausage is made. Really it's it's a
very deliberate process. At that point, it had gotten slow. It slowed
down a lot because the mission had changed so much. So it was really,
we need to make sure that the Afghanis are taken over their own country.
So I think I learned more on that deployment, understanding how at an
operational level that wasn't working on the tactical level anymore. It was, Hey,
the general and sect Death thinks, here's the way the mission is going
to go. So we're going to have to great to accomplish that mission,
as opposed to, hey, we we got a target package, we've got
a good intel, conditions are good, let's go out and shoot band guys.
It wasn't. That wasn't what that one was. It was we were
making sure that the guys who did go out on target had all the intel
that they need, had all the assets they needed, and all the support
that they needed so they could accomplish the mission and then come home. We're
talking with Mark Green, retired US Navy Seal. He's also the author of
the book Unsealed and Navy Seal's Guide to Mastering Transitions, And let's transition out
to that part of your story. You say that one of the toughest times
in your life came when leaving active duty. In fact, someone asked you
how you were approaching it. You instantly said you thought it was terrifying.
Your book is all about transitions. Of course, it was tough to adjust
to the military. Is you know, obviously transitioning from regular active duty to
being a seal, from enlisted to an officer, and now you're going through
this one. What was the most challenging part of returning to civilian life for
you? One how quiet it was like you didn't have you weren't prepping for
anything, and it was the loss of my tribe. I was not prepared
for what that was going to be like. You know, one day Friday
before I retired, I was Mark Green Navy seal, and Saturday it was
just Mark walking around the neighborhood. The only thing I was shooting at that
point were emails, you know, and it was like what And I didn't
speak the language anymore. I didn't know what I was good at. I
can't go on a resume and say, hey, you know, it was
sniper first seventeen years and you know, blue stuff up. And so I
really had to learn. I had to relearn how to integrate myself into society
and then make myself valuable and change my military language to how it would translate
into the civilian world. But then, you know, I didn't have a
mission anymore. Like I said, to not know what you're good at after
twenty years, it's really challenging because you can't go back. You're never going
to be the seal again. You know that locker room, You're never going
to recreate that locker room ever again. And you're not special anymore. You
don't have that support, you don't have that mission, you don't have the
guys to rely on. So I realized I was tolerated but not welcome.
And if I see some of the guys out in town, like Hey,
what are guys doing? And can I can I join you? Can I
hang out for beer or something, that's like yeah, we'd love to,
but you know, we're heading down the key or we're doing we're doing the
missions, continuing on. And at that point I realized, like, oh,
well, that makes sense because the mission of the military is designed to
continue and thrive without you being there. They're training there, they're bringing in
and training up your replacement all the time. So when I left, it
was you know, mission didn't stop and the guys op tempo didn't stop.
So then I was like, then it was just quiet. And then you
know, then your invisible injuries start to manifest because you know you're you're not
occupied, You're just sitting in it. And luckily for me, I had
a dream job out at the University of Southern California where I went out to
USC and all of a sudden, I had a tribe, an instant tribe.
They just really embraced me. Hey, you're a trojan now. I
was like, no, no, I just got here. I just worked
here. Like yeah, it doesn't matter, you're you're part of the cult
now. So I had a mission again, I had a tribe again.
I was supporting the students and the president of the university, and in such
a big city, I really found a great purpose. See, the first
job I had was fundraising, which I was terrible at. But then I
got to work. My boss said, hey, this isn't working for you.
Where would you like to work? I was like, I'd love to
work in the veterans programs at the Provost Office. So that was at two
o'clock. At three o'clock, he made the change and I reported to a
new guy. And the guy's name was Mark Todd and just an amazing guy.
And he said, Mark, here's a job. We don't actually have
enough work for you, so just go find stuff to do. So I
embedded with the football team. I was a mentor to the tennis team.
I was working with a cardiologist. I was doing public speaking. You know,
I was tailgating, I was going to football games. I was just
I was incredibly happy with that. And then they just had programs and stuff
available for veterans, who are you going through transition and cognitive issues are happening,
and like, hey, don't worry about it. We have a specialist
over across the street, and we really make sure you're taken care of.
So had I not had that opportunity to go out and immediately get incorporated into
a new tribe, the new mission, even though I had all that support,
there were those times where I was just I felt like a burden because
I wasn't good at anything. Yet. I wasn't good at my new job.
I was in a brand new city, was trying to keep my family
together, and you know, we're going through a divorce. So then I
was just like, man, I'm not really good at any one thing.
I feel like a burden now. And I just thought like, well,
the place would be better if I wasn't around. Yeah, that was very
real. And I had a friend who happened to call me right when I
was at the worst point, and she said, are you all right?
And I was like no, I'm having to go through a rough patch.
And I said, to have guns in the house, will you just come
over and just make sure they're out of the house. And before she hung
up to the phone, she's like, well, you know, we love
you around here and you're you're valuable, right. I hear you, but
I don't believe it. And she said, okay, I'm on my way.
So she lived about thirty minutes away, and so I was like,
get out of the house, walk down to this store, walk around a
little bit, and come back. It usually takes about thirty minutes. So
as I was coming back there she was. She just pulled up and she
just gave me a big hug and walked upstairs and told her where the stuff
was and she grabbed it and she just gave me a huggs like I'll see
you tomorrow. That one act of kindess just kind of snapped me out of
it because I was inspiraling so much to where I was going to take my
life. But it was just it was like the thought of maybe just be
better if I wouldn't know how. And then I really started to recover after
that, and those thoughts never crept back in, but you know, I
still had cognitive issues that I was dealing with and some signs of PTS that
I was still working through. As strange as it was, LA, the
city of LA took care of me. And so based on your own story,
I'm guessing the encouragement now that you're sharing with other veterans or anybody else
whos struggling for major transitions is to find what you found, a purpose,
a mission, people around you that you know will be there for you.
There's so much help out there. Just go find the help that you need,
because reach out to either your network or reach out to the mirriad of
nonprofits that are out there that specifically target what you're going through. And it's
just to please, don't take a permanent solution to what's often a temporary problem.
You talk in the book and many others have as well about the horrific
suicide rate among veterans. Oftentimes there's post traumatic stress or maybe traumatic brain injury
or whoever else you want to classify the trauma that they've seen. But how
much of it And I don't know if it's possible to quantify this, but
how much do you think it is that difficulty of transitioning back into civilian life.
I think it's probably ninety percent of it, really, really, I
think so, yeah, because it's such a oftentimes catastrophic loss, and if
you're not planning for it, and all of a sudden, you're one day,
you're you know, you're serving your country and you're accomplishing the mission.
You're grade at your job. You know, you put sometimes decades into this
specialty, and you're an expert out of you're a SERGECT matter expert. You
know, you have prestige with whatever you're doing, and then all of a
sudden, you're all that's gone. The military doesn't prep you for what's next,
and that's not their job. You know, their job is to man
train, equipment, deploy forces throughout the world to accomplish the mission, whatever
that mission is so when you leave, they fully supported you while you were
in one hundred percent percent taken care of and they give you a course to
to kind of get you started, but they still have a mission to accomplish,
and they've armed you with so many different skills and the attributes you need
to survive out there, but they don't prepare you for how you know,
catastrophic it can be to lose that blanket of support that you've grown to take
advantage of, or it's so readily available that it becomes invisible and you don't
understand how heavily you are supported. And then you know, so many people
go through a divorce and you're home, you're unemployed for the first time and
for my case, twenty years, and you still have to put food on
the table and life is still happening, and you're just oftentimes not prepare for
the speed at which that happens, and you don't give yourself enough time and
grace and understanding to say, Okay, I'm going to be okay, I'm
just going through a rough path right now. You either self medicate, or
you get into the wrong job, or you're just taking some time to figure
life out, what life looks like now, and it's a process and it
takes years. I was heavily supported and it took me four years, and
over the course of that time, I learned how to manage life again as
opposed to just getting my butt kicked by it. Mark, just a couple
of questions left in our remaining moments together. What, more than anything else,
do you want readers to take away from your book unsealed? I want
them to take away that transitions are a normal part of life. You've gone
through several and the way I wrote the book was, you know, athletic
transition, career transition, becoming a parent, transition, losing a parent,
and all those are transition points. So I want the service member to read
it and connect and say, Okay, this person struggled and he was you
know, at some of the highest levels in the military. He figured out
a way to navigate that. But then I also want either the spouse to
say hey or the significant others say hey, this is what I see you're
going through, and this story is exactly what you're going through. Read this
story and maybe read the entire book, or your children also see it.
Because everybody transitions together. It's not just the individual transition, the entire family
unit transitions and if the kids say, hey, mom or dad, this
is what you're going through. This is a little bit of a roadmap to
get you over that hump and let them know that they're okay and there's support
out there for you. So that's what I want to get. I want
somebody to say, hey, I'm having a tough time transitioning and maybe one
of these stories resonates and helps as a catalyst to start the healing process.
Lastly, when thinking about your twenty years of service in uniform, what are
you most proud of? I am most proud of the last deployment. Your
mission is to get everybody home. And when I was on that plane,
came in country with my guys and we're on this plane to see where thirty
coming home. And I'm counting heads and everybody who came on deployment and Michael
tone and made it back, and those the best sleepless night I've ever gotten.
So because I just kept recounting, it was like, Okay, yeah
that's Mikey, Yeah that's Patty, Yeah, that's Billy. You know,
everybody's coming home. So that was as a leader that was the best part
of my career professionally personally was having all four of those kids in mine.
We were just amazing, awesome. Mark, It's been an honor to have
you with us today. Thank you so much for your time, thank you
for the work you're doing, and thank you most of all for your service.
We appreciate it very much. Thanks so much for your support, and
thanks for having me on today. Retired US Navy seal Mark green. He
is also the author of the recently released book Unsealed Navy Seal's Guide to Mastering
Transitions. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veteran's Chronicles. Hi. This is
Greg Corumbus and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American
Veterans Center. For more information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You
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