Speaker 1: This is Later with Lee Matthews The Lee Matthews Podcast
Speaker 1: More what You Hear Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive.
Speaker 2: He is a exert for more than thirty eight years
Speaker 2: in uniform, retiring as a US Army Brigadier General Paul
Speaker 2: Greg Smith also teaches counter terrorism strategy at Nichols College
Speaker 2: in Dudley, Massachusetts. He's written, I guess the best way
Speaker 2: to describe it as a memoir called Confessions of a
Speaker 2: week in Warrior thirty five years in the National Guard.
Speaker 2: Brigadier General Greg Smith, US Army, retired.
Speaker 3: Welcome, Thanks Lee, good talking to you this morning.
Speaker 2: Is this the best way to describe the book a memoir?
Speaker 3: You know, it is a memoir. It's a collection of
Speaker 3: sort of anecdotes and stories over thirty five years. Reason
Speaker 3: I wrote it is, you know, late in my career,
Speaker 3: I'd be telling people about my days as a lieutenant
Speaker 3: or a captain or that kind of and after they
Speaker 3: finished laugh and they'd say, you should write this stuff down. Well,
Speaker 3: you know what leave I did?
Speaker 2: Well that I know that the National Guard was once
Speaker 2: considered kind of the weekend warrior thing, but that all
Speaker 2: began to change at some point, didn't They didn't it.
Speaker 3: So part of the reason that I wrote this book,
Speaker 3: and there are a lot of reasons I wrote it,
Speaker 3: but one of the things that I love about the
Speaker 3: National Guard, and pardon me for being this cheerleader, but
Speaker 3: I joined an organization that was like the Keystone Cops
Speaker 3: in the late nineteen seventies, and I left an organization
Speaker 3: that was one of the most highly professional, flexible organizations
Speaker 3: in the United States government. It is I like to
Speaker 3: call the National Guard America's Swiss Army Knife, because it
Speaker 3: can take care of school kids, it can manage COVID clinics,
Speaker 3: it can drive school buses and it and a month
Speaker 3: later it can arm up and go to war. So
Speaker 3: you know, it does a lot of stuff. And it's
Speaker 3: grown over thirty five years from being kind of hapless
Speaker 3: to being this professional force, and I grew with it.
Speaker 3: So that's why I wrote the book.
Speaker 2: I know. I've had several colleagues, even several nephews, joined
Speaker 2: the National Guard as a means not only by which
Speaker 2: they could pay for higher education, but a means by
Speaker 2: which they could broaden their horizons.
Speaker 3: The travel opportunities are quite wonderful, but I've seen some
Speaker 3: places that I went to. I couldn't even identify on
Speaker 3: a map before I went, but it certainly did broaden
Speaker 3: my ear.
Speaker 2: Well, I am talking about small town America where I
Speaker 2: grew up, and you grew up and you did what
Speaker 2: your father did or something close to it, and you
Speaker 2: knew everybody, and everybody knew you going back three and
Speaker 2: four generations. So I'm hearing you chuckle. But even going
Speaker 2: to Fort Chaffe in Fort Smith, Arkansas for six weeks
Speaker 2: to these guys was broadening their horizons, I assure you.
Speaker 3: And you know what else happens late in that process
Speaker 3: is you get to meet people from different cultures, lifestyles,
Speaker 3: value systems that you might not meet in your small town.
Speaker 3: And you know what, when you're sharing a foxhol with
Speaker 3: them at two am in the morning, a lot of
Speaker 3: times the prejudices that you might have had and the
Speaker 3: biases that you might have had kind of melt away
Speaker 3: because you're all in it together.
Speaker 2: Brigadier General Paul Gregg Smith, Confessions of a weekend Warrior nicknames.
Speaker 2: I know that is as that goes with the territory
Speaker 2: as much as oh, I don't know, uh, maybe a
Speaker 2: nine milimeters pistol.
Speaker 3: Well, of course, I'm playing with the weekend warrior label
Speaker 3: because National guardsmen or anything but weekend Warriors at this point.
Speaker 3: But you know, at one time that was sort of
Speaker 3: a label. And to be quite frank I mean, some
Speaker 3: of the stuff that used to happen, you know, way
Speaker 3: back when when I was a second is really kind
Speaker 3: of laughable.
Speaker 2: Well, when I when I mentioned nicknames, I mean nicknames
Speaker 2: of your form of your of your colleagues. Isn't that
Speaker 2: kind of a kind of a code You call each
Speaker 2: other by the last name and then pretty soon everybody
Speaker 2: adopts a nickname of some sort.
Speaker 3: There are there are some some nicknames, although I gotta
Speaker 3: be honest, I don't know what mine was. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean there are sort of these affectionate nicknames that
Speaker 3: we call each other. A little different from pilot culture though,
Speaker 3: where where they have to have a nickname. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean there certainly is a closeness within the forest,
Speaker 3: and quite franklyly, that's why people continue to serve. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's about benefits. Yeah, it's about patriotism. But you know what,
Speaker 3: eventually a military unit becomes a family and you're part
Speaker 3: of that family. That's another thing in the book that
Speaker 3: I sort of go over is I had two families,
Speaker 3: you know, one was my wife and my children, and
Speaker 3: the other was the eight thousand men and women of
Speaker 3: the Massachusetts Army National Guard. They own my family still.
Speaker 2: Are confessions of a weekend warrior. Thirty five years in
Speaker 2: the National Guard, Brigadier General Paul Gregg Smith the US
Speaker 2: Army retired. And then when there is nationally or even
Speaker 2: a regional emergency like right now the hurricane down in Houston,
Speaker 2: and I've been through my share of hurricanes along the
Speaker 2: golf course, and had it not been for the National Guard,
Speaker 2: a lot of people wouldn't have had power, hospitals, et cetera.
Speaker 3: You know, Lee, when people say sometimes people will say me, so,
Speaker 3: what did you do in the Army? And I like
Speaker 3: to say my career was one disaster after another. The
Speaker 3: first day I was in the National Guard, we ended
Speaker 3: up sandbagging a river to save the pumping station in
Speaker 3: Conquered Massachusetts so that their water didn't get contaminated. And
Speaker 3: one of my last days in the National Guard was
Speaker 3: as the commander of the Joint Task Force Military Joint
Speaker 3: Task Force that responded to the Boston Marathon bombings. So
Speaker 3: in between there were hurricanes, blizzards, worker strikes, a tornado,
Speaker 3: on and on and on, and I was proud of
Speaker 3: every minute that I had the honor to respond to
Speaker 3: those emergencies.
Speaker 2: And he talks all about it in his book, Confessions
Speaker 2: of a Weekend War Year, thirty five years on the
Speaker 2: National Guard. Brigadier General Paul greg Smith, thank you for
Speaker 2: joining us.
Speaker 3: Thank you Lee, great talking to you this morning.
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Speaker 1: Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live
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