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I'm excited to be here to speak about vets,

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because I didn't join the Army

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because I wanted to go to war.

4
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I didn't join the Army because I had a lust

5
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or a need to go overseas and fight.

6
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Frankly, I joined the Army because

7
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college is really damn expensive,

8
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and they were going to help with that,

9
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and I joined the Army because

10
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it was what I knew,

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and it was what I knew that I thought I could do well.

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I didn't come from a military family.

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I'm not a military brat.

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No one in my family ever
had joined the military at all,

15
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and how I first got introduced to the military

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was when I was 13 years old

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and I got sent away to military school,

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because my mother had been threatening me

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with this idea of military school
ever since I was eight years old.

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I had some issues when I was coming up,

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and my mother would always tell me, she's like,

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"You know, if you don't get this together,

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I'm going to send you to military school."

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And I'd look at her, and I'd say, "Mommy,

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I'll work harder."

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And then when I was nine years old,

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she started giving me brochures
to show me she wasn't playing around,

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so I'd look at the brochures, and I'm like,

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"Okay, Mommy, I can see you're
serious, and I'll work harder."

30
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And then when I was 10 and 11,

31
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my behavior just kept on getting worse.

32
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I was on academic and disciplinary probation

33
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before I hit double digits,

34
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and I first felt handcuffs on my wrists

35
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when I was 11 years old.

36
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And so when I was 13 years old,

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my mother came up to me, and she was like,

38
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"I'm not going to do this anymore.

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I'm going to send you to military school."

40
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And I looked at her, and I said, "Mommy,

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I can see you're upset, and
I'm going to work harder."

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And she was like, "No, you're going next week."

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And that was how I first got introduced

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to this whole idea of the military,

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because she thought this was a good idea.

46
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I had to disagree with her wholeheartedly

47
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when I first showed up there,

48
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because literally in the first four days,

49
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I had already run away five times from this school.

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They had these big black gates
that surrounded the school,

51
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and every time they would turn their backs,

52
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I would just simply run out of the black gates

53
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and take them up on their offer
that if we don't want to be there,

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we can leave at any time.

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So I just said, "Well, if that's the case,

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then I'd like to leave." (Laughter)

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And it never worked.

58
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And I kept on getting lost.

59
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But then eventually,

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after staying there for a little while,

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and after the end of that first year

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at this military school,

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I realized that I actually was growing up.

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I realized the things that I enjoyed about this school

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and the thing that I enjoyed about the structure

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was something that I'd never found before:

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the fact that I finally felt like I
was part of something bigger,

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part of a team, and it actually mattered to people

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that I was there,

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the fact that leadership wasn't just a punchline there,

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but that it was a real, actually core part

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of the entire experience.

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And so when it was time for me to actually

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finish up high school,

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I started thinking about what I wanted to do,

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and just like probably most students,

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had no idea what that meant or what I wanted to do.

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And I thought about the people who I

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respected and admired.

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I thought about a lot of the people,

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in particular a lot of the men, in my life

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who I looked up to.

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They all happened to wear the uniform

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of the United States of America,

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so for me, the question and the answer

86
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really became pretty easy.

87
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The question of what I wanted to do

88
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was filled in very quickly with saying,

89
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I guess I'll be an Army officer.

90
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So the Army then went through this process

91
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and they trained me up,

92
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and when I say I didn't join the Army

93
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because I wanted to go to war,

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the truth is, I joined in 1996.

95
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There really wasn't a whole lot going on.

96
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I didn't ever feel like I was in danger.

97
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When I went to my mom,

98
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I first joined the Army when I was 17 years old,

99
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so I literally needed parental permission

100
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to join the Army,

101
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so I kind of gave the paperwork to my mom,

102
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and she just assumed it was
kind of like military school.

103
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She was like, "Well, it was good for him before,

104
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so I guess I'll just let him keep doing it,"

105
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having no idea that the
paperwork that she was signing

106
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was actually signing her son up

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to become an Army officer.

108
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And I went through the process,

109
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and again the whole time still just thinking,

110
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this is great, maybe I'll serve on a weekend,

111
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or two weeks during the year, do drill,

112
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and then a couple years after I signed up,

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a couple years after my mother signed those papers,

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the whole world changed.

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And after 9/11, there was an entirely new context

116
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about the occupation that I chose.

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When I first joined, I never joined to fight,

118
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but now that I was in,

119
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this is exactly what was now going to happen.

120
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And I thought about so much about the soldiers

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who I eventually had to end up leading.

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I remember when we first, right after 9/11,

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three weeks after 9/11, I was
on a plane heading overseas,

124
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but I wasn't heading overseas with the military,

125
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I was heading overseas because I got a scholarship

126
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to go overseas.

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I received the scholarship to go overseas

128
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and to go study and live overseas,

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and I was living in England and that was interesting,

130
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but at the same time, the same people who

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I was training with,

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the same soldiers that I went
through all my training with,

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and we prepared for war,

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they were now actually heading over to it.

135
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They were now about to find themselves

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in the middle of places the fact is

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the vast majority of people,

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the vast majority of us as we were training,

139
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couldn't even point out on a map.

140
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I spent a couple years finishing graduate school,

141
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and the whole entire time while I'm sitting there

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in buildings at Oxford

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that were literally built hundreds of years

144
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before the United States was even founded,

145
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and I'm sitting there talking to dons

146
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about the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand,

147
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and how that influenced the start of World War I,

148
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where the entire time my heart and my head

149
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were on my soldiers

150
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who were now throwing on Kevlars

151
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and grabbing their flak vests

152
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and figuring out how exactly do I change around

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or how exactly do I clean a machine gun

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in the darkness.

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That was the new reality.

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By the time I finished that up and I rejoined

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my military unit and we were getting
ready to deploy to Afghanistan,

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there were soldiers in my unit who were now

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on their second and third deployments

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before I even had my first.

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I remember walking out with
my unit for the first time,

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and when you join the Army

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and you go through a combat tour,

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everyone looks at your shoulder,

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because on your shoulder is your combat patch.

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And so immediately as you meet people,

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you shake their hand,

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and then your eyes go to their shoulder,

169
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because you want to see where did they serve,

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or what unit did they serve with?

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And I was the only person walking around

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with a bare shoulder,

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and it burned every time someone stared at it.

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But you get a chance to talk to your soldiers,

175
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and you ask them why did they sign up.

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I signed up because college was expensive.

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A lot of my soldiers signed up
for completely different reasons.

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They signed up because of a sense of obligation.

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They signed up because they were angry

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and they wanted to do something about it.

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They signed up because

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their family said this was important.

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They signed up because they
wanted some form of revenge.

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They signed for a whole
collection of different reasons.

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And now we all found ourselves overseas

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fighting in these conflicts.

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And what was amazing to me was that I

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very naively started hearing this statement

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that I never fully understood,

190
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because right after 9/11, you start hearing this idea

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where people come up to you and they say,

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"Well, thank you for your service."

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And I just kind of followed in and started saying

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the same things to all my soldiers.

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This is even before I deployed.

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But I really had no idea what that even meant.

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I just said it because it sounded right.

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I said it because it sounded like the right thing to say

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to people who had served overseas.

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"Thank you for your service."

201
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But I had no idea what the context was

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or what that even,

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what it even meant to the people who heard it.

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When I first came back from Afghanistan,

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I thought that if you make it back from conflict,

206
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then the dangers were all over.

207
00:08:05,941 --> 00:08:08,138
I thought that if you made it
back from a conflict zone

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00:08:08,138 --> 00:08:10,437
that somehow you could kind of

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wipe the sweat off your brow and say,

210
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"Whew, I'm glad I dodged that one,"

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without understanding that for so many people,

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as they come back home,

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the war keeps going.

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It keeps playing out in all of our minds.

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It plays out in all of our memories.

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It plays out in all of our emotions.

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Please forgive us

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if we don't like being in big crowds.

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Please forgive us

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00:08:40,030 --> 00:08:42,354
when we spend one week in a place

221
00:08:42,354 --> 00:08:44,702
that has 100 percent light discipline,

222
00:08:44,702 --> 00:08:46,930
because you're not allowed to
walk around with white lights,

223
00:08:46,930 --> 00:08:48,417
because if anything has a white light,

224
00:08:48,417 --> 00:08:49,894
it can be seen from miles away,

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00:08:49,894 --> 00:08:51,607
versus if you use little green

226
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or little blue lights,

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they cannot be seen from far away.

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So please forgive us if out of nowhere,

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we go from having 100 percent light discipline

230
00:09:00,046 --> 00:09:02,599
to then a week later being back
in the middle of Times Square,

231
00:09:02,599 --> 00:09:07,730
and we have a difficult time adjusting to that.

232
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Please forgive us

233
00:09:09,162 --> 00:09:11,001
when you transition back to a family

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00:09:11,001 --> 00:09:15,105
who has completely been maneuvering without you,

235
00:09:15,105 --> 00:09:17,132
and now when you come back, it's not that easy

236
00:09:17,132 --> 00:09:20,776
to fall back into a sense of normality,

237
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because the whole normal has changed.

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I remember when I came back,
I wanted to talk to people.

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00:09:28,820 --> 00:09:31,579
I wanted people to ask me about my experiences.

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00:09:31,579 --> 00:09:33,327
I wanted people to come up to me and tell me,

241
00:09:33,327 --> 00:09:34,642
"What did you do?"

242
00:09:34,642 --> 00:09:36,129
I wanted people to come up to me and tell me,

243
00:09:36,129 --> 00:09:37,747
"What was it like? What was the food like?

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00:09:37,747 --> 00:09:42,272
What was the experience like? How are you doing?"

245
00:09:42,272 --> 00:09:44,333
And the only questions I got from people was,

246
00:09:44,333 --> 00:09:47,064
"Did you shoot anybody?"

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00:09:47,064 --> 00:09:48,890
And those were the ones who were even curious

248
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enough to say anything.

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Because sometimes there's this fear

250
00:09:54,218 --> 00:09:55,783
and there's this apprehension that if I say anything,

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I'm afraid I'll offend,

252
00:09:57,259 --> 00:09:58,633
or I'm afraid I'll trigger something,

253
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so the common default is just saying nothing.

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The problem with that

255
00:10:05,890 --> 00:10:07,496
is then it feels like your service

256
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was not even acknowledged,

257
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like no one even cared.

258
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"Thank you for your service,"

259
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and we move on.

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What I wanted to better understand

261
00:10:21,809 --> 00:10:25,123
was what's behind that,

262
00:10:25,123 --> 00:10:30,875
and why "thank you for your service" isn't enough.

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The fact is, we have literally

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2.6 million men and women

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who are veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan

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who are all amongst us.

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Sometimes we know who they are,

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sometimes we don't,

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but there is that feeling, the shared experience,

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the shared bond

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where we know that that experience

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and that chapter of our life,

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while it might be closed,

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it's still not over.

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We think about "thank you for your service,"

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and people say, "So what does 'thank
you for your service' mean to you?"

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Well, "Thank you for your service" means to me,

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it means acknowledging our stories,

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asking us who we are,

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understanding the strength

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that so many people, so many
people who we serve with, have,

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and why that service means so much.

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"Thank you for your service"
means acknowledging the fact

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that just because we've now come home

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and we've taken off the uniform

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does not mean our larger service to this country

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is somehow over.

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The fact is, there's still a tremendous amount

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that can be offered and can be given.

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When I look at people

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like our friend Taylor Urruela,

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who in Iraq loses his leg,

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had two big dreams in his life.

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One was to be a soldier. The other
was to be a baseball player.

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He loses his leg in Iraq.

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He comes back

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and instead of deciding that,

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well, now since I've lost my
leg, that second dream is over,

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he decides that he still has that
dream of playing baseball,

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and he starts this group called VETSports,

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which now works with veterans all over the country

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and uses sports as a way of healing.

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People like Tammy Duckworth,

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who was a helicopter pilot

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and with the helicopter that she was flying,

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you need to use both your hands

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and also your legs to steer,

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and her helicopter gets hit,

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and she's trying to steer the chopper,

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but the chopper's not reacting

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to her instructions and to her commands.

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She's trying to land the chopper safely,

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but the chopper doesn't land safely,

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and the reason it's not landing safely

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is because it's not responding to the
commands that her legs are giving

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because her legs were blown off.

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She barely survives.

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Medics come and they save her life,

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but then as she's doing her
recuperation back at home,

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she realizes that, "My job's still not done."

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And now she uses her voice

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as a Congresswoman from Illinois

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to fight and advocate for a collection of issues

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to include veterans issues.

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We signed up because

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we love this country we represent.

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We signed up because

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we believe in the idea and we believe in the people

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to our left and to our right.

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And the only thing we then ask is that

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"thank you for your service"

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needs to be more than just a quote break,

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that "thank you for your service" means

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honestly digging in

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to the people who have stepped up

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simply because they were asked to,

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and what that means for us not just now,

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not just during combat operations,

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but long after the last vehicle has left

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and after the last shot has been taken.

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These are the people who I served with,

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and these are the people who I honor.

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So thank you for your service.

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(Applause)