Multiple people in my family clean my father, are veterans.
Troops that have been to war and now they're back and think and be grateful for their service.
Sacrifice, love for their country, just unselfishness, all that they do for us. There are some people in this country who take extraordinary steps to provide for the freedom and security.
We forget that those people exist.
We know them as the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard. They call themselves soldiers, seals, rangers, airmen, sailors, devil.
Dogs, and so much more.
We call them fathers, brothers, sons and husbands, mothers, daughters, sisters and wives. We call them friend and neighbor. These veterans answered the call. Now we answer Theirs are the best our country has to offer, and we love them. Today we honor them and we start this. David Malsby is your host, and he welcomes you to this community of veterans. As together we are building the road to hope.
And indeed we are glad to have you along. On a Sunday afternoon on the nine to five o the AM dial in Houston, Texas, thank you for joining us wherever you are, if you're listening, to the magic and podcast. Thank you so very much for listening. Wherever you look for or listen to your podcast, just look for Road to Hope Radio. They were, by the way, this week marks eight years May the seventh, twenty seventeen. I think the maths right that eight years ago, twenty seventeen, eight
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on the speed dollar around our place. Use them a lot, oopsteam dot com. And when you're ready to to buy that piece of Texas where you're gonna build your dream home, Republic Grand Ranch dot com. It's not enough just to have the right home, but the right location. And you're not gonna find a better spot than Republic Grand Ranch dot com. All right, we got a couple of guys in the studio with us today. Glad to have you back, sir, h other than the Yankee cap. Uh feel special, Huh?
I feel specially when you acknowledge that. That's why I wear it.
You spell that makes you feel special?
Yeah, that's why we're it.
I like the special needs kids at school. So what we're talking about here.
Don't mess with my handicap.
Uh.
We want to give the world the grand reintroduction.
UH, good afternoon. Once again. This is our Robert McLean. I'm called Mac at the cap Hope. I'm lead leading mentor there for from Bravo Bay. I know that's a lot right there, but we'll get into more as.
We go along. Indeed, we also have one of the guys that's in our program currently. Want to introduce yourself. Tell us where you're from, where you serve that counting.
I am Michael Lee Walker Junior. I'm formerly part of the Army National Guard in Gainesville, Georgia, UH, part of the forty eighth Brigade Infantry UH deployed to Afghanistan. Went to Republic of Georgia for a little while in Uh yeah.
What'd you do in Georgia if Republic of Georgia.
Actually, somehow or another, I ended up got lucky and got volunteld to be a postal clerk.
As okay, all right, not the worst job in the world. No, it's actually a pretty good yeah, absolutely nice.
Very different from the infantry life.
I would think. So, yeah, we'll get into a little bit that though we're not. You know, tell folks all the time, we're not the worst story show. But we will get into that just a little bit. Quick reminder as we go through the course of the show, our Combat Trauma Support Line answered twenty four to seven by a combat vet. And I cannot overstress how important that is. It's a combat vet that's going to answer the phone. It's not a psych or someone just reading answers off
a screen. It's someone who's been there, experienced it, come back, dealt with it, grown from it, also gone through a great deal of training to have the responsibility of answering that phone. But I wish everyone would put this number in your phone, whether it's for you or for someone that you come across that might need our services at some point in time. Eight seven seven seven one seven seventy eight seventy three that number again eight seven seven
seven one seven PTSD or seventy eight seventy three. A combat vet will answer that phone for information about Camp Hope, which Michael is a part of that program right now.
Mac is.
Staff at the program at Camp Hope. All that is at no charge to our veteran or their family. The information about that as well as our support groups, which I'm gonna guess. I don't know your whole story, but I'm gonna guess somehow are you. We routed to us through our Atlanta outreach chapter actually Gangzill, Yeah, there's a chapter right there in right. Yeah. All that information is available at our website PTSD so Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
ptsdusa dot org. Information about our support groups different cities across the country, as well as the virtual so you can jump on anywhere where you've got access to the internet ptsdusa dot org about all of our groups, all the support groups for our families, as well as the program that we run at Camp Hope, the Internet housing program designed to be six to nine months in length, sometimes a little longer. This depends on multiple factors, but again all at zero charge PTSD usa dot org and
we appreciate you checking that out. You can also follow along see the things that are going on in our organization through our social media ptsd USA on the X and Facebook ptsd USA. We'll be right back. Hey, We're welcome back Road to Hope Radio. Glad to have you along on this Sunday afternoon or wherever you're listening to the podcast. Thank you for joining us. Going to dip into the mail bag. It's been a couple of weeks
since we've done this. Shared a message that a veteran had written to me a couple of weeks ago, and when he did that, shared it on our social media, and then we've got some other vets wanted to chime in as well. So this message actually came in. This came in this week. So this is from a veteran named Mark, and he said, been watching your videos lately. I'm going to jump in on this action. When I came into Camp Hope in twenty nineteen, I was outfitted
with an ankle monitor. We've had several of those. Have we met guys coming in they're they've got the monitor there, they're on probation, they're their court ordered per se. I guess I don't know if say, yeah, this is your option other than jail. Anyway, he says, came in in Camp Hope at twenty nineteen, I was outfitted with an ankle monitor, and I was facing a life sentence thirty years in federal prison. Oh that's not that's not good.
Camp Hope was my sixteenth, good Gracious, sixteenth residential treatment program and my last I like that, He goes on to say. I graduated the program December twenty nineteen, and that same month I returned to court for my sentencing. In the transcript, which I recently read again, the judge sites of my extraordinary progress that I made while at Camp Hope. Instead of thirty years, he gave me three years probation. How's that from thirty years federal prison sentence
to three years probation and time served a miracle. I went on back to Ohio, where I re enrolled in college. I got off my probation a year early, only doing two of the three years. I earned my bachelor's degree in Education and Addictions Counseling. And in two weeks from now, I will walk across the stage to receive my master's degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. I will be six years sober this May thirteenth. Today I am a licensed
professional counselor and a licensed chemical dependency counselor. I'm also getting married in October. God is good all the time. Camp Hope helped me to save myself from my own self destruction. Thank you, Camp Hope.
About that, says stories.
Yeah, and we didn't even ask for anybody to do anything. They're just hey, I want you to know. This is what's going on, this is what I've been through, this is where I'm at today. That beautiful Yeah, and what was in the middle a little place called Camp Hope five acre campus in North Houston. It's it's a unique place in a unique program.
It works. It works. I'm glad to say.
You've been a part of it for how long now, I'm that four years? Four years a firmative. That's awesome. You know, Justin was in here last week and it was he's on four years too, So you guys must have come about the same time we graduated Saint John, gotcha. Yeah, that's awesome. For folks who don't know or understand what Camp Hope is, I can't really appreciate just how special that is because it's well we hear stories like we just shared with you from Mark. Uh. It's not an
easy job. No, it's not carry a lot of heavyweight doing that job. So someone uh In doing that for four years, that's Uh, that's quite an achievement.
I appreciate that, especially where I come from. I mean, I came I came here broken, but somebody prayed for me and that's what happens.
Yeah, and you know, some of our guys, uh get we give tours all the time of our campus. People coming out to hear about us. They want to see what we're doing and see how they can be a part of it. We love those opportunities to get people a tour, a camp, hope and see what's going on there. And some of our guys we'll talk about what happens there in terms of miracles, and this is so many miracles walking around. And well, I don't necessarily disagree with him.
I don't want to, you know, parse words with him, but yes, there's some miraculous things that do take place there, no question. But what I like when I think of you, for instance, Mac, like a true miracle God does without our participation. He doesn't need our help. Uh, He's able. He can do whatever he wants to do with or without my assistance. I think he wants our assistance, but
he doesn't need it. He wants our participation. I guess you say, but the life changes to taking place in your life required an awful lot of work on your part.
I would say, so, sir, you gotta be you gotta get to that point. You get tired of being tired one and it's just not gonna happen overnight. I came and kicking and screaming, didn't want it. But in the course of time, that miracle you got. Just got to wait for that, that miracle. Once you get that miracle, it's like an epiphany. It wakes you up to reality and then you're all in. It's nothing that can be
taken away from you in your past. That's what it is, your past, because all you can see is guys, blue, guys ahead of you. It's beautiful and it's a story. It's a new testimony rather than the negative testimony and thousand people that cried for you. It's it's amazing. It's amazing, and.
It's like anything else. I mean, it doesn't mean everything's roses after that miracle. It's it's just it's a constant work.
Continue to work on something.
Yeah, and and life still happens. We still have our wins and our losses in our personal life. There's no escaping that. We don't just walk into some kind of euphoria that uh, you know, there's no trouble or no thorns in our life. That that's still there, but we know how better to cope with it exactly and handle those things as we move.
Forward exactly exactly.
But not always not always pleasant to walk through those times. Some of the hardest lessons I've learned in my life. I think you can identify with this Mac. I would never ever want to have to go back through those, but I would also never change what I learned from those, and I think that's what we see at Campellot HM.
That's where that's where we get our testimonies from. That's where we are able to share to next person, because if we don't go through it, then we can't be genuine what we're sharing, you know. So that means it's hope you got through. I got the way you can get through it because I've been there.
It's the power of the peer to peer. Amen, Michael. So you uh, did you join the army right out of high school? Or was there an in between? What happened?
There was actually in between. I didn't actually decide to join. Well, I had an epiphany at about twenty seven eight that was I was actually during that time I was going through like a personal drug rehab in a way. Gotcha and I was trying to find purpose, and it took me about a year and a half to finally bite the bullet, so to speak, at twenty nine, to take the oath.
And join the army. When was that, uh, twenty nine when I was twenty nine?
Was oh when you joined? You see, I was.
Born in seventy seven, so.
We're gonna do math. So I was six It sounds.
No, that was six. Yeah, September twenty seventh, two thousand and six, is when I took my oath.
Okay, actually, all right, very good. So you knew even though it was a National Guard, you still had a pretty good idea you're gonna likely get deployed.
Oh yeah, that was already And that was that I knew I was going. I knew I was that that was going to happen. That was a possibility.
All Right, We're coming up on a break. Those of you listening on the nine to five, Oh, we're gonna take a quick news break at the bottom of the goer. Those of you listen to podcasts, hang on just second. Guy has some really cool music, and then we'll be right back with more Road to Hope Radio and welcome back Road to Hope Radio. David Malsby here got Robert, who he lovingly call mac our Yankee brother. We only allow so many at a time. We got to kind of, you know, hold the fort there.
Jesas is used to it four years. I think I'm the only one to allow.
Uh, we've got a few Scranton guys Pennsylvania. Yeah, we've got to build a housing unit just for the guys to come from Granton.
It's crazy, like.
How in the world. Uh, there's a there's a judge up there that likes us, and he keeps he sees what's going on down here, and he keeps sending to the vets, which is great. That's the whole point, right, Like we want to help. But yeah, it's just odd like Scranton, Pennsylvania. Really, like we just keep getting guys from there's great. Yes, Uh so we've got Mac and here, we've got Michael. I'd say it's Army National Guard from Georgia.
All right, So two deployments in Afghanistan, No, just one at one one there and one to Republican Georgiana.
Republica Georgia, but don't don't say Republica Georgia in that country.
I found that out while I was there.
Oh it's country at Georgia, the country of Georgia, but on the map it says Republican. Well you're in Texas and they like to call it the Republic of Texas Texans kind of you know.
Yeah, it's a little opposite.
Yeah, yeah, don't do it. What was your When was your deployment to Afghanistan.
Two thousand and nine to twenty ten?
And what were you doing?
I was actually part of I've done all kinds of stuff, foot patrols, convoys.
Uh.
I actually trained, uh worked on training Afghan soldiers too, on how to properly you know dude, road clearing, building clearing, you know, like on hand hands on training on infantry skills.
So that was on nine, Yes, sir, all right, so you're at Camp Hope. So clearly m PTSD's part of your life.
Yes, I got. It's a little bit of complex PTSD and complex PTSD and combat TSD. It's kind of a double double edged thing.
When did you become a where something was not right?
Uh?
Shoot, probably I would say about twenty eighteen.
So it was a while several years.
Yeah, like struggling with it and like I knew I had it, but I didn't know necessarily what to do with it. I mean, I knew I needed to get some kind of help, and I would speak to people about my problems, but as far as like actually a treatment for it.
I was I was kind of lost.
Did the VA diagnose you?
Uh? Kind of nonchalantly?
Yeah, I mean I mean it's like, yeah, there's definitely something up with you, but you seem like you're dealing with it, okay, But that was I struggled with intellectualizing things, so I kinda I shut off the emotion aspect of it, which is pretty common, yes, and uh kind of come up put my own mental understanding of it, and then it just kind of bottles up for a while, then it comes out, bottles up for a little while, then comes out.
Nothing really unusual about that, right, Mike, No, that it.
Isn't there isn't.
We hear that a lot. Yeah, sinks a choir shutting down the emotions, because that's what you got to do, really the function and a lot of the guys that have come through that I've had, you know, linked the conversations with like that was what they had to do to be able to fulfill their job. And I'm gonna say probably this might be a slight exaggeration, but not one hundred percent of medics and Corman would tell me that they had to shut down emotionally to deal with
what they were seeing. And it wasn't so much about the carnage of war as it was about what the citizens were doing to their own children. I heard that over and over again. So the only way you can cope with that having a moral compass.
Well, it's kind of like not necessarily even you know, the locals doing that, just purely a human being doing that to another human being.
Yeah, the value of life, Like some of those folks that we were encountering in war had zero value for life. Right, So when you see that and you do have a value for life, that's hard to to manage that.
Well, then you have other aspects of it. Two, you have to kind of shut off your own moral of life too to protect another life. It's a really complex thing.
To even try to understand.
Yeah, exactly, So when you come home, and this is the deal about PTSD that I in my experience, there's a lot more to it than what I know. But I'm not a doctor. I don't claim to be. But I've talked with an awful lot of awful lot of veterans deal with combat related PTSD and some folks who
know their PTSD is not combat related. Uh, But the whole concept of you know, going to war, doing what you have to do day in and day out, and you know, the whole concept of it's more about it's more about those of you are serving with and deploying with, and it is even you know, for flag and country and patriotism and all that. That's just you're there doing your job. But the number one job is making sure you protect your brother, of course, guide to you left
and to your right, of course. And when you're doing that all day, every day in you know, life or death circumstances, and then you come home and everything about that is gone. But the brain doesn't rewire itself to I'm home now, and that child over there is not a threat to me or to my family. A child over there might have been may or may not have been, but it may have been, child here is not, and the brain just doesn't rewire itself back to here's where I'm at, and it's different now my own.
Yeah, pretty much, we can't lay all go, well, we don't lay our guard now, you know, we pick up that can't sit. You know what our back to the door is like, you know, we still wire, We still waiting. You know, Will was on the wait moment. You know it's going to something to happen.
That's sound familiar to you most Yeah, too familiar?
Uhse I, I don't know. I'm wired a little a little little cuckoocka too.
I don't worr.
I don't worry about that door over there. Let somebody come in, you know, I could put my back to it. I'll be just fine. They better be really sneaky, you know what I mean. But I mean that's just that just comes from I mean, being ready at all times. I mean, it's just one of them things. Is it's really hard to like shut that off sometimes, especially if you're in a new environment, you know, and you don't you don't know people a lot, so you're kind of
on guarden, don't even mean to be. You could just be simply going to a gas station that you never stopped at before and being just on highlert and it's really weird and you kind of got to kind of shake it off.
Like cobwebs.
There are certain guys stations and you I'm a little worry of to be honest. Yeah, I'm sure I want to go in there might not be to my best interest to going to that place, right, Yeah. How long were you in Afghanistan?
I was in there for a full year.
A full year, okay, and when you came home.
Shoot, it was really weird for me to go out in the I would go, but it was kind of I could fit. It was like really weird. I you know, even though most of the time in foot patrols, you know, I was the point man anyway, but I didn't have the guy to my six nine.
And uh three number one, you know, and it was kind of because I was the sixth but what you know, So I'm I was like really like all head on a swivel when I first came back.
Boy, and that's hard to maintain. Yeah, I mean that'll wear you out. That will absolutely worry Well.
I really really was wearing everybody else out. You know. It's like, man, he needs calm down.
Yeah yeah, I mean I still kind of do is something I.
Actually when he's your said than done? Right.
Yeah, Sometimes I have to catch myself.
Actually when I first went into the ve court program, I walked in there and immediately I was at parade rest and didn't even realize it. And one of the guys from the Jay's Place that's actually part of the ETS foundation the outreach there, he's like head of ease soldier. I was like, oh my bad, took my hands from behind my back.
You know, all we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with more of Road to Hope radio and we're walking back. Glad to have you along. But Mac, in your United States Army vet, Michael, I state it's Army National Guard VET. Michael. You mentioned it, so I'll just touch on it and we'll move along. But you mentioned being in the veterans courts situation there, Yes, is that where you heard about the foundation PTSD Foundations.
They actually have a VET group that you go to weekly, you know, so you have some time to just it's kind of like a it's a group setting with nothing but vets in there because all the other stuff that you do there is with civilians integrated with you, and that gives you that one day a week, you know, to just talk with vets and this that and the other and not be judge judged by maybe some heathen craziness that might come out of your mouth.
You know well, and you know that's the great thing about our support groups and about Camp I mean, it's it's that safe haven. It's that environment where it is. It's all combat vets, so they've got that shared experience. Different locations, maybe different you know, eras of war, but combat and all that comes along with that, and just the safety I can I can be vulnerable here. I can say what's on my mind, even though it may sound a little odd to somebody. You're surrounded by people
who've been there and done that. So when did the talk begin about coming to Camp Hope.
I was actually having a little bit of a moment where I felt myself kind of reverting back to twenty twenty three in my I got a very aggressive again. That's what kind of caused me to be in the vech Court program. And luckily at that time, like I said, I had gotten to know the guys through the VEC Court programming and actually Camp Hope had been mentioned a few times. I was like, hey, come get me. I was like, come get me now. Okay, when did you get here January twenty seventh of this year.
Okay, so you've been here for a little bit, yeap, What's what's changing, if anything? For you?
I'm actually starting to, i mean, appreciate myself, if that makes sense.
I love it.
Although I may be a little I don't want to say broken, cracked. I'm glued back together now and I'm starting, you know, him myself back together and like, you know, I'm not so bad after all.
Yeah, some folks term it as broken. Some don't like that term. I kind of look at it as a wounded and like say, for instance, cancer left undiagnosed and untreated, it's going to cost you. And PTSD will do that. It will cost you if it goes undealt with so diagnosis or not, however you choose to go about it, there's got to be some kind of treatment, some kind of how do we deal with this in a healthier
way for you? When you were doing this on your own, was alcohol or something else involved or what was going on?
Well, I just said a lot of emotional dress, okay, because I mean prior to that, you know, I was doing the the little bit of self medicating with you know, alcohol and stuff like that, but I and I knew that wasn't it. I wasn't abusing it, but I was using it kind of what you would call, I guess as a crutch anyway. And I was because I was
bouncing back and forth with I was. I was going to church and stuff like that and going out and doing the street ministry and this that and the other and all that, and I was like, dang, something still is not right. I still ain't right. So then I was like, oh, I mean getting this relationship and I was like, no, I'm still ain't right and this that and the other, and yeah, long and behold twenty twenty or twenty twenty three, it was like, I don't know, I was done.
That was when it was what everybody, I guess would call come to Jesus meeting.
But even then, it took you over a year to make the choice to come to camp. So what did you do in that time?
In that time, I was in jail for seven okay you know, and then I uh, you know, yeah, seven months of jail, and then I had about two months to get ready to go into the ve court program and stuff. So there was a whole year there, and then I'd done a whole another year of the actual the program and stuff, and I I was like, I'm okay, but I'm not okay. I just something I don't know.
It's like, see, you've been in camp for roughly four months roughly. What's it been like for you?
For me, I helped when I first got there, I was very standoffish, kind of like I am high alert, kind of figure out.
Comes in that way. Yeah.
Yeah. But now for me, now I feel.
I've found people, you know, I can be vulnerable with, you know, and them not take offense to my aggression, you know, even though I don't really get a I call it aggressive, but it's actually just kind of very passionate, uh speaking.
You know, there's a lot of that around our place. Some people very passionate about a lot of things. What are you looking forward to.
Uh, Actually, I'm looking forward to keeping uh some peace actually and keeping it because I mean I kind of feel like I've been fighting for it for a long time.