frankchadhoeppel.me

It’s my privilege to write an annual Veterans Day and Memorial Day message to my current staff. Below is the 2024 version, which is a recycle of the 2021 version – and I freely admit to recycling because of time constraints. Enjoy.

Greetings, All. 

While I am a huge fan of recycling in all manner of areas of my life, I try not to do so in messages like this one. Veterans Day, like Memorial Day, is personally and professionally important – not only do I take pride in my service, but yours as well – and it deserves a certain level of effort.
However, there are other levels of effort required of all of us. Mine makes efforts like these less feasible, much to my chagrin, but I did find an article from a few years ago that I thought acceptable to re-share. I hope you agree. 

I joined the Army after September 11th at the ripe old age of 31. I followed my father, uncle, and seven great uncles into military service at a time of need, without any thought of how my desk-bound, IT Training coordinator body would cope with Army Basic Training. I was older than all my Drill Sergeants. My nickname was Grandpa. I am very glad I made the choice to enter as enlisted rather than an officer – for two reasons; I didn’t want to get rank just because I had a college degree, and I certainly didn’t want to find out I was a terrible soldier as I was leading troops into combat. Some things I did learn:
•	How to accept and accommodate extreme risk.
•	The importance of taking care of yourself – and the misery of learning that the hard way
•	Awareness and acceptance of self-limitations – and creating plans to either mitigate or overcome them.

After basic training at then-Fort Benning, Georgia, and Advanced training at Fort Bliss, I joined Predator Battery, 1st (Tiger) Squadron, 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment (Brave Rifles!) as a Bradley driver just in time to a) move to Fort Carson, Colorado, with my new wife and b) get orders to deploy to Iraq. As you might imagine, being in a shooting war has a set of experiences I will not delve into here, but several valuable lessons were imparted, including:
•	how to be a part of a team.
•	committing fully – maybe more than you thought possible.
•	doing your job under pressure with aplomb.
•	give more than others because you can – and sometimes because others need you to.
•	deal with loss and how to support others in their loss.
  
Even coming back from that first deployment wasn’t easy. After the longest and roughest flight I’ve ever had, from Iraq (hot desert) to Germany (rain) to Canada (snow) to Colorado (cool and dry) with an 11-hour layover in a hangar, I learned never to complain about in-flight entertainment – you could have none.  After getting home, I learned:
•	how to adjust to a new situation and paradigm.
•	process lessons learned and teach them to others.
•	accept that holding a leadership position and being a leader are not the same.

I also discovered:
•	my ability to be a walking Swiss Army Knife – by the time the second deployment to Iraq came about, I was running the Tactical Operations Center, providing all Administrative Support to the Battery of 183 soldiers, acting as the Headquarters platoon senior NCO, and flying Raven SUAVs in my spare time.  I had no idea how to do any of these tasks before I had been assigned them, but I managed. Again, sometimes you give more because you can, and sometimes you do what is needed of you. Sometimes they are the same thing. 
•	the principle of servant leadership – my unique combination of age, life experience, and relatively low rank made me a “budget Lieutenant” and was considered more accessible and less judgmental to soldiers than their platoon leader or platoon sergeant. It was my privilege to be the someone that “my guys” could turn to and get help. In hindsight, my commander saw these qualities and placed me in a role where the soldiers of Predator Battery benefitted from this the most. 

My best memories of the second deployment to Iraq have everything to do with this opportunity – helping “my guys” out however needed so they could do their roles effectively – and not what decorations I earned while “outside the wire” in battles for Tal Afar and along Route Tampa in Baghdad. And yes, “my guys” are still “my guys”. And no, the fact that I was not their commander changed nothing – they’re mine. I have made friends whom I consider brothers and sisters whom I never would have met had I not raised my right hand more than two decades ago. I do not write this as self-aggrandizement. By no means do I consider my experiences spectacular in any way – there are many of you that have orders of magnitude longer, more significant, and more intense experiences in uniform than I. I am thankful for all of you, and appreciate all of you that have shared some of those experiences with me. I’m just returning the favor – and maybe giving you a little perspective into the bald guy in Wyoming.
 
For those that are not Veterans, please take a moment to thank those of us – colleagues and customers – that wore a uniform in service of the United States and/or their allies. 

For those that are, enjoy the day, the discounts, the free dessert, and whatever else is available to you. You have unquestionably earned it.