Have you ever wondered what it's like to stare death in the face and come out the other side? Our guest, Mike May, a former serviceman with the 10th Mountain Division and now an account manager at Reemployability, lived through this very reality when his vehicle was hit by an IED explosion in Afghanistan. His recount of this life-altering event, the intense rivalry in his unit, and the emotional toll it all took on him is a riveting tale of human resilience.
Transitioning back to civilian life post-military service is a tremendous challenge that many veterans grapple with. In our chat with Mike, he candidly opens up about this struggle, sharing how the adrenaline of the battlefield clashes with the mundanity of day-to-day civilian life. We also delve into the importance of sharing our experiences, breaking stigmas, and understanding how these experiences can shape us into more productive members of society. We further discuss The Hero's Journey and other resources that provide crucial support to veterans reacclimating to civilian lifestyle. Tune in to this episode for an honest, inspiring, and enlightening conversation with Mike - it's sure to foster empathy for the unique challenges faced by our veterans.
If you are a veteran or know someone who is, please know that there are resources to help acclimate back into civilian life like https://theheroesjourney.org/.
Have you ever wondered what it's like to stare death in the face and come out the other side? Our guest, Mike May, a former serviceman with the 10th Mountain Division and now an account manager at Reemployability, lived through this very reality when his vehicle was hit by an IED explosion in Afghanistan. His recount of this life-altering event, the intense rivalry in his unit, and the emotional toll it all took on him is a riveting tale of human resilience.
Transitioning back to civilian life post-military service is a tremendous challenge that many veterans grapple with. In our chat with Mike, he candidly opens up about this struggle, sharing how the adrenaline of the battlefield clashes with the mundanity of day-to-day civilian life. We also delve into the importance of sharing our experiences, breaking stigmas, and understanding how these experiences can shape us into more productive members of society. We further discuss The Hero's Journey and other resources that provide crucial support to veterans reacclimating to civilian lifestyle. Tune in to this episode for an honest, inspiring, and enlightening conversation with Mike - it's sure to foster empathy for the unique challenges faced by our veterans.
If you are a veteran or know someone who is, please know that there are resources to help acclimate back into civilian life like https://theheroesjourney.org/.
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Speaker 2:Reemployability, reemployability.
Speaker 1:Reemployability.
Speaker 2:Season 3.
Speaker 1:The stories we share here on R-E-A-Audio are intended to show how people can overcome adversity, with the hopes of inspiring our listeners not only to overcome their own adversity, but to try to put themselves in other people's shoes, see the world around them as filled with other human beings, people with struggles, backstories and accomplishments. In our world today, dominated by social media, it's super easy to judge others from a distance and to compare your insights to what they're portraying on the outside. The thing is that we rarely, if ever, emphasize that none of these stories we share of recovery and accomplishment are over. In fact, as long as these human beings walk the earth, they're struggling and overcoming. It's a journey. Getting back to true human interaction, empathy and kindness, is one of the fundamental ways you can be successful in business and in life. It's rare that you get an opportunity to really sit down and get to know somebody, and so many times when you do, your outlook can be completely changed. I was fortunate enough to have that opportunity with Mike May this week, so let me set this up. Mike is a new account manager here at Reemployability. In his interview he presented himself extremely professionally Well spoken, clean cut. He mentioned he served with the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan during the interview, along with other background information and relevant business experience.
Speaker 1:A few weeks after he started here, we were discussing this podcast and I asked him if he had any buddies from his time in the Army that might be willing to tell their story of success and overcoming a situation or situations they'd faced. Mike said there may be a few, and he talked to him about it. He had two close friends that were injured when their vehicle hit an improvised explosive device, or IED. One friend was the driver of the vehicle, mark Wallace, and the other was injured to the point of having to be evacuated out, spending some time in an Army hospital. That was Sergeant Thomas McGready.
Speaker 1:As we continued the conversation, I learned that Mike was in that MRAP as well. See, it turns out that on the patrol the previous night their MRAP rolled over and wasn't going to be available for the next night's mission. So Mike and his team assumed they would be taking a Humvee with significantly less armor than the MRAP. Well, it turned out, at the last minute Uncle Sam was able to provide another MRAP to Mike's team and they were ordered to move all the equipment from the Humvee they thought they were going to be using over back to an MRAP. It was going to be a lot of work. Mike and his buddies were very resistant. If it weren't for the orders of a superior, mike's story would be much, much different, and it leads to the story you are about to hear One planned, unrehearsed and very real. Thanks, mike, for sharing your candid story with me and allowing me to get to know you better, as well as giving me permission to use the rest of your story as this week's podcast.
Speaker 2:I graduated high school June 1st and then was basic training June 14th. So, yeah, actually signed up in October of 2006 because I was in the delayed entry program. So when I was 17, like they let you enlist with your parents signing off on it. So that's what I did, and then it was kind of like just what I always wanted to do. Like I played sports, I like take direction. Well, like you know, tough skins.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like it worked out for me and then I didn't really know, like, what the infantry was per se. But once I got to Fort Benning, which is where I did basic training, they were like, you know, there's the MOS, which is the military occupational specialty for infantry. The designator is 11b, 11, bravo. So they instill in you from day one of basic training that there's only two jobs in the army there's 11b and 11 wannabe. So from day one they're jamming like without you there are no other jobs. Like everyone else's support, like without the infantry, you know. So like they're, you know, stroking your ego and gassing you up and like, really, you know you drink the Kool-Aid.
Speaker 2:You know, and then it was the same way when I got to the unit. It's half of the guys in the unit are 19 deltas, which are Cav Scouts, so Cavalry right, and then the other half are infantry. So there's this just huge rivalry there constantly. So so I'm a grade A's, a Cav Scout, my Wallace is an infantryman, I'm an infantryman, so we all had to kind of work together.
Speaker 2:So that was kind of like the tone that was that was set for I mean, honestly, since day one of being in the army and then going to 10th Mountain Division, it was an elite unit, like we were the most, we have been the most deployed division in the entire United States Army in the global war on terrorism. So I mean, like every year a brigade is getting deployed. So it was very high mission tempo. We were training constantly in the field and so it was like a really like I would describe it as almost like a professional athlete, like you're just eating, training, physical training, like it's just, you know, there's all the focuses on that. So we were really like I mean we didn't think about emotion or feeling or you know we didn't.
Speaker 2:We were young, you know. So I think that was. This also happened at the beginning of the deployment, like we had gotten into country in January and this happened in March, right, so we were still, like you know, kind of fresh out of the out of the gate. So a lot of us didn't really even have time to kind of decompress Like it was just like I mean I went the next day, I went on a mission to go get a new vehicle.
Speaker 2:Right, so it was not like oh, take some time and you know, think about it.
Speaker 1:It was just right.
Speaker 2:So, like it was years before, I even was like damn, that was pretty crazy, right, you know. So I think that was a little bit of like the like, the unseen impact of it, which is kind of like how it's a? It's a serious thing, but at the time, like you, don't really understand the gravity of the situation that we were in. So but really, like I mean, if we had it our way, like that would have been it, you know so there's that. But we all kind of really came closer together because of those things. And then, like I said, mark was in my wedding, mcgready was in my wedding, you know, like so people that I built like lifelong bonds with and have been able to overcome those obstacles. Mcgready lives out in California, he's worked for Tesla and he's worked for some airlines, so you know, just kind of like.
Speaker 1:Is his back recovery pretty well yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I would say, if after a few months and I have a picture of him like laid up on a cot, like holding like a bag of like Percocet or something Right. Just kind of like. You know this is like the silver lining, right, yeah, like it could be high on these prescription pills, at least while I'm laid up.
Speaker 1:How long was he isolated?
Speaker 2:I would say that was something that kind of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say it was at least three months, because I then took over his role as, like, the gunner in the turret, because that's where he was. He was in the turret. So that's why, like he took the majority of the of the IED blast and, like the Air Force EOD, the explosive ordinance disposal bomb team, came and like analyzed the site and was like, yeah, if y'all were in that Humvee, all y'all would have been dead. It would have been all. There was five of us in the vehicle while I was starting, mcgready starting higgling me and our medic, and really, like we hit the IED and it totally takes out the batteries of the of the vehicle, like it totally destroys the vehicle. So like we're trying to like radio to the rest of the platoon, like what happened, but you can't get any radio signal out, so they're all just like driving away.
Speaker 1:And they didn't realize it Right, they did not realize it.
Speaker 2:No, that's like a movie, like yeah, yeah, so we're dead on the side of the road and so we're just continuing on, and then the second vehicle in the convoy runs over an IED and gets blown up and that's what stops the convoy. And then the third vehicle looks back, which was a Humvee. So the third view we have three MRAPs, one Humvee. So the folks in that Humvee drove right over it too. So they're like really like the implications for all of us in that platoon. We're just like none of us should really be here anymore. So that in and of itself was kind of like crazy to think about as far as just like how isolated we felt and like our training kicked in and we never really were like, oh my, like panicking, right. It was just the training kicked in and then for the next few months, like I did that role, I was up in the turret, I was the gunner, I got, you know, the equipment that he would have gotten, and then when he got back he was more like on, like kind of like a light duty here, yeah, and then to be back with the unit but to not, you know, really be going out on patrol. So I think that was a little bit also kind of a hit to him.
Speaker 2:And then this turned out to be all of our last deployment. So Mark had been deployed to Afghanistan already before, but Grady had been deployed to Iraq already before. So for them this was kind of just like you know, this was it Like. When we got back we all transitioned out of the military.
Speaker 2:So I think a lot of us kind of just and like I said, this happening at the beginning of the deployment and then it really didn't give much easier after that. There were a lot more close calls and I think like all of those compounded were kind of like like I think one of those things on their own is enough to really mess with somebody. But I think like the cumulative nature of it kind of made us feel, like Oddly, like a little bit more proud, like we were able to kind of say like this was a tough deployment, like this wasn't like an easy one, and like I was saying that whole like bravado that they, that they instill in you, is kind of like Like you almost have like a gold badge. You know you feel better because, like you Experience terrible things like.
Speaker 1:It's very weird thing to wrap your head around. It's almost like being on a football team and actually being the one that's out there getting their ass kicked at the time, and not the guy that's sitting on the side bringing the water bottles of it.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, like when you're, you know, wrapped in ice after the game. It sucks, but you wouldn't trade that for anything, right? So that's how a lot of us felt, but a lot of us didn't really know how to deal with those things. So when we got back, like we all just like, didn't, wasn't healthy treatment right? A lot of self medicating and a lot of, you know, just Taking out stress in a not a constructive way.
Speaker 1:I can't imagine what it's like and just and this. So I I did not serve in the military. I wanted to. My dad was the 60s generation and he had a low draft numbers right and drafted into to go to Vietnam he instead chose to be in the.
Speaker 1:He enlisted and went into the reserve so the reserves all through the 60s and 70s, 80s and when first Iraq or the first golf war, right, he was deployed. Okay, he was a nurse at an evac hospital, so he wasn't like a infantry or anything, but he was, you know, having been in the military for that long, he was just jaded. Yeah, hated it. And when I wanted better for you yeah. I wanted to do that. Yeah, they were like no right. And and so I've always admired you guys A lot because I feel like I'm the guy that's sat on the sidelines right and it's.
Speaker 1:It's like it's kind of weird Because I heard I've heard nothing but very difficult stories. But yeah, I feel like I missed out on something. Maybe it's just the guy.
Speaker 2:I think I think it is definitely an ego thing, a lot of like a macho thing, but like I Mean, it's hard for me to like, like wish that upon anyone you know. So I guess it's it's like we and again we volunteered, right like that. The end of the day we may not have known what we were signing up for, but we did sign up. We weren't, thankfully, drafted or had to go through any of that, and my dad just told me he's had a. He said low, so I guess he had a high draft number, but he was like they lived in Buffalo, he was ready to go to Canada. He was like I'm not, you know, but thankfully I didn't really have any of those like horror stories from my family to kind of dissuade me from from enlisting. Yeah, and I don't know if I would have listened either you know I was 17.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna do what I want to do. I want to get out of the house. I want to get out of this town. I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 1:That's my thing too, but I'm like you know, I was always the good kid and I almost wish I had and, but it would have been a whole different story. And I and I'm not I'm not trying to make this about me, I guess what my point is is that I've always I've been very interested in those types of stories and things. So I read a lot.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, a lot of audiobooks, about you know.
Speaker 1:Afghanistan yeah, and even Vietnam era, or two stuff.
Speaker 2:So definitely yeah.
Speaker 1:I feel like I'm, and it seems like every story that I hear in books and talking to people. It's it's always the same thing. It's like it's it's this when I come home. It's. It's like the adrenaline you're so used to. Adrenaline rushes right. And now I'm sitting in an office, in a cubicle. Totally yeah, it's gotta be really hard.
Speaker 2:It is, yeah, and and it's. It's hard when, like, like you, had a vision of what, like you wanted to do and then, you know, they just didn't. They pan out, you know. So, like you, like I said, I spent my whole childhood dreaming of this idealistic, romanticized vision of what the military was, based off of movies I saw. And you know I had never met anyone in the infantry, I had never talked to anyone other than my recruiter, right, so it was definitely like a Rose-colored glasses out, look, and I don't, I don't feel like I'm jaded, I feel like I was maybe just naive, you know, and like, had people told me that, like I said, I don't really think, I think it may have honestly Notified me more, right, like yeah, so I think, like, for us, like the biggest thing was like how do we like Talk about the things that make us feel weird or feel bad, but at the same time, like we kind of brought that upon ourselves?
Speaker 2:So that's always been, I think, kind of like the, the stigma around sharing is like Well, it's a sad story, but you know, you kind of like you, right?
Speaker 2:So it's a little bit of um, like, kind of like well, who wants to hear that you know what I mean, like who cares, you know, so a lot of us just kind of just went our separate ways and it wasn't really for years before we all you know like realized you know like it's, you're not going to find that type of stuff in the in the civilian job force.
Speaker 2:So that camaraderie and a sprit of core and you know the just the like, the drive and purpose that you're given you. Just, I mean, the civilian world lacks a lot of like the mentorship and the whole like, like you said, that guy's like um for your son. He was, like you know, the old guy who taught him. You know, like that's the things that, like you don't find in the civilian world. So a lot of us in the army were just like man, this sucks, you know. But the army also sucks too, right, it's got its own whole litany of reasons why people get out. You know like, if we could have stayed deployed, I probably would have stayed in, as oddly as that sounds.
Speaker 1:Doesn't sound that so I heard that kind of yeah, and I think that's, and I and again, I'm not trying to put words in your mouth but I feel like sometimes those are the things that guys are. They feel like when they say that it's such a taboo to say I actually enjoyed doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's a little uncouth, you know it's a little savage for some people to hear like that, but for us I mean like you're treated like an equal by you know officers, right, and then, because you're the one pulling guard while they're sleeping, you know, they know that these guys are keeping me alive and when you get back there's none of that risk. There's none of that. That's steak. So now, all of a sudden, you're just a wiser trash in your trash. Can you know why? You know, why is you know like it seems, so petty?
Speaker 1:right Right Right.
Speaker 2:Oh, you can't have a hot plate in your room and you know, like little thing, like I'm getting nickled and dying for things. When I was driving a million dollar vehicle and shooting a rocket launcher, you didn't have any problem then, you know. So I think a lot of us just wanted to kind of bury it and move on and not let it define us, and that's just like. That's more naive. That's just going from one hopeful situation to the next and I think a lot of us have come to this conclusion that it's just the way it is and it'll always kind of be a part of us, and I think we've started to like learn how, to like function with it and be productive members of society, staying out of jail, staying out of trouble, staying out of toxic relationships and trying to to give back to the community and help, because that's, I think, what really was like fulfilling for us.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to leave our conversation here because it's a great pivot point that leads to how Mike has taken his experience and that of his friends and use them to formulate the man he is today. We're going to post part two in two weeks. If you are a veteran or know someone who is, know that there's assistance to help in reacclimating to civilian life. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann is a close friend of employability so I'm going to provide the website for his not-for-profit the hero's journey in the show notes. It's a great place to start and I know that if his not-for-profit isn't right for you, the folks at the hero's journey will be happy to point you in the right direction. Thanks again for listening. Look forward to having you back in a few weeks.