Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. We have a really special podcast for you today because my guest actually is a gentleman who I met at one of my daughter's Halloween parties. She was over at a friend's house and we were sitting around the bonfire in the back and Will was there and he started talking about he's a veteran. He started talking about his service, and I just thought it was so fascinating that I really felt like his perspective and his take on this should be shared with people,
because I'm somebody who I think you all know. I was not in the service, and I don't have a lot of friends that are veterans. So it's nice for me to be able to sit with someone and kind of see what it's like to go to be deployed to serve and come back home and what that whole experience is. And Will was willing to share that with us, so I wanted to bring willan Will Dirk's thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. And
it was a pleasure meeting you. So I'm so glad that you decided to agree to come on and talk about this stuff.
Well, thank you, Tutor. It was a pleasure to meet you also, and glad to be here and to share my experience.
So one of the things I was just telling you, one of the things that struck me is that you and your wife are both deployed together, and that's how you met. And you were both sitting there the other night when we were chatting, or a few months ago when we were chatting, and you were talking about your experiences when you were deployed, and she was like, you know, it's funny we were together and we have totally different memories. A lot of these things that I just don't even
remember happened. And I thought that was fascinating because we always think that, you know, everybody kind of experienced the same thing. But I think one of the things that we don't realize as civilians is that everyone comes back with different experiences and different scars when they've served.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, my wife, she doesn't remember a lot of the statistics and what we did there all the time. My mind, I just absorbed all of it when I was over there. When we left on September nineteenth, after the twin Towers were hit. When we got over there and we launched our first planes in at night.
I remembered standing up on the island of the aircraft carrier and just watching those planes take off and the sense of pride you have going and you know, going into war to defend our country and for who attacked us. And I remember that, and she really doesn't remember all of those details, but yeah, that was something that I will never forget, is seeing those planes take off at night for their first bombing runs into Afghanistan. And that
hits you pretty hard as a nineteen year old kid. Yeah, to see that happen and to know what's going to be happening from here on forward as we were over there, and knowing that those planes were going off to protect our guys on the ground and that you know, we're going to lose people, and that's that was hard to take in too. It's just something that you can't really comprehend until you go through it. And it was a good experience, and yeah, it was. It was something else over there.
And just for those that are listening, like I said, this was a Halloween party. And so we were just a few weeks away out from the October seventh attack on Israel, and I was asking you about that and I'm just wondering from your perspective that night. I mean, even now, what kind of memories does that bring up? Because everybody's calling it Israel September eleventh, and that was
really I mean that impacted all of us. Obviously, you went and served in like I mean that experience that you just talked about, going there knowing that you were fighting against someone who had just attacked us. When you see this attack on Israel, what is your What kind of emotions does that bring up?
It brings up stirs up a lot, because when, of course, when we were attacked, you just want to go out and you want to take care of business. You want to take care of who who attacked you and hurt you. You don't think of anything else. You just think of taking care of business. And that's how I feel. Israel felt like they were attacked and they're not going to
let that happened to their people. And so I feel, you know, I understand that what they went through, and how you just it's you got to try and take them out. You got to try and get people that attacked you and hurt you and killed your people.
So as you watch some of these college students and knowing that when you were nineteen you were going over there to fight. And you see some of these college students at some of our most elite colleges talking about a ceasefire and saying that Israel has no right to fight for themselves. What is your reaction to that.
It's with not experiencing with not those kids not experiencing that and being attacked to say, seize fire and don't go after those people that hurt you.
No one.
It's hard to get the terrorists because they blend in with the civilians, so it's hard to You have to go right into the heart of them in order to get it. And there there's going to be civilian civilian casualties, which is sad, but it's part of every war we've ever been in. It it happens. So I just I think that you just have that Israel hassages go in and do what they're doing. Yeah, it's sad to see civilians killed, but the terrorists used the civilians as shields.
So that was something that struck me when we talked that evening was I asked you about this and you said, I mean, you can't really fight terror and you got into that in a way that, like I said, as a civilian, I never thought about because I think from the outside perspective, we look at war and we're like, Okay, these good, good guys go here, the bad guys are here, and it's pretty cut and dry, and there are rules to war, and we all know and we know there
are rules, but those of us who have not engaged, I don't think we really get what the rules are. So you hear people constantly like they're breaking the rules, and you're like, do you really know what the rules are? But you actually went through that with me and you were like, look, you guys don't get what we're dealing with on the ground when you fight terror. And you went there to fight terror. I mean, these have been
this has been the war on terror for years. So explain a little bit about how the rules of engagement are different for you than they are for terrorists.
So terrorists they don't follow, you know, like we have. You can't fire until fired upon terrorists, they just they'll just start firing. They'll set up they'll use children, of course as a weapon, they'll use any roadside bomb, They'll just use whatever they can to disguise it. So we can't see it. There's just no They just don't follow
any rules of any sorts. Where we have rules we follow with engaging the enemy, you know, sometimes it has to be cleared to engage if we're using mortars or whatever. Like I said, my buddy was a marine and he was telling me some of these things too, where they had to have it clear to make sure there's no shoppers or jets in the airspace. And so those rules that we have to follow really restrict when you're fighting
terrorism a group of people who don't follow rules. It makes us it's like tying your hands behind your back and trying to fight, which makes it tough on our men and women on the ground to take care of terrorists. And they're hard to see, right. They blend in with the civilians. They're not wearing a military uniform, and that makes it hard to fight them too, because they'll be your friend during the day when you're in their village, and at night there they're trying to kill you.
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. What do you say to people who are saying, well, then you can't fight them because you can't take the chance of hurting kids, and you can't allow you can't allow any of that to happen. So just let it stay there, because I mean, if you don't fight it, isn't this going to fester and become a much bigger terror problem.
It will, It will keep growing more and more. So in order to fight it, Yeah, you have to get in and get in there and dig them out. And in the process, civilians do get killed or injured, and you try to do your best for that not to happen, but it does. But the problem is with social media and our news, they're always over there and reporting back.
So that's another that's tough for our men and women too to do their job because they're always getting reported on and people back home see what we're doing over there. And sometimes war it's not pretty. It never will be.
It's so funny because we were I was on news Nation last week and the guy that I was on with was really very very much against any war overseas and the war in Israel especially, and he was talking about we were talking about, well, you've got to understand
that right now. If you look at the numbers, seventy five percent of these people in Gaza are supportive of Hamas and they are supportive of what happened on October seventh, and so you're really in an ugly situation because unless you take Hamas out of there, unless you can remove this government that is manipulating people, manipulating their minds, how do you have any type of living condition over there? And he said, well, you're saying seventy twenty five percent,
don't just to die. And I think it was interesting because Dan Abrams kind of stepped in and he was like, hey man, this is war. And that's the thing that I think I've seen so much on social media is that people are like, let's just not do this. But it's the good guys that would then be not doing this since stepping back. They did this on October seven. Nobody did this but them's there's no coming back from that.
Now they still have hostages. I mean, my goodness, they took hostages and we gave them that the Israelis negotiated out fifty of the two hundred and forty and gave them three times as many criminals. Yep.
Yeah, they can't get away with that. You have to stop them. You have to go in like Israel said, We're not going to let this ever happen again. Well, in order to do that, you have to go in and wipe them out. You have to take them out. So as Israel's going in and going house to house and finding tunnels and you know, taking them out, that's how you do it. I mean, they're they're getting the civilians out the best they can, but it's a war zone. It's not going to be easy to get the people out.
You mentioned your friend who is a marine, and when we talked that night, you were talking about how there were techniques that they used to get these terrorists to come out, and that was a lot of times playing babies crying, like loud babies crying, playing over and over and they would sit there and they would then also be listening to this or listening to loud music. And now those noises, these guys, these men and women have
come back. And for as much as that was to get out these terrorists, get them out into clear sight, that is also pretty triggering for these guys because they went through trauma when they're over there. So explain a little bit about what that was like for your friend and what that's like now.
So yeah, he being over there. He served a year in Iraq, and yeah, he would say, they played loud babies crying and loud music, rock music just to drive to the terrorists crazy to where they'd come out and then they could engage them in combat. And so now he's at home or at work or wherever, he'll hear these sounds, but there's nothing playing sometimes in it. He loses a lot of sleep over it, and it's hard for him sometimes to listen to certain music. He says, Yeah,
there's certain times I don't. I don't really listen to certain songs anymore. I can't. I can't listen to him or even hear them because they'll trigger memories from from the war. So it's hard on him. It's there's times where he doesn't sleep much at all and shares that with me, which is nice. He can get that off his chest and help him get through through it to where maybe one day he will be able to get a full night dress and listen to that music again, but it will take a lot of time.
And one of the things that you were talking about, when they're out there and these guys are not abiding by the rules of engagement, you could be as a marine. You could be stationed on a hill where you can see them planting bombs, roadside bombs, and if they're not engaging you, there is nothing you can do. But you can see them doing this. And this is going to affect people in our military. How is it possible that that you can't do anything? That seems crazy?
That would be where they wouldn't get permission to mortar them because of there could be choppers in the area or jets in the area, and so he said they wouldn't be able to get permission to take out the terrorists while they were doing that, and they would just have to sit and watch and then watch the convoy come up the next day or so and get hit. So that was hard to do because they could have prevented that. And he said, well, you don't hear anything
flying through the air. You don't see anything. He's like, we could have just quickly launched a few mortars and taken them right out, but the rules won't allow them to. So that was tough on them too.
So for all this grief that our service members get during wartime, I mean, this is what you're dealing with on the ground. These are hard decisions. You're watching really horrific things happen, and that was obviously a war on terror. We see this now in Israel. But as someone who was over there and engaged yourself, when you saw the pull out from Afghanistan, what did you think of that?
I had mixed feelings about that. One. I felt all the sacrifice that our military put in, all the men and women, all those years that we put in there, and the people that we were able to help and we're able to live a good life just went right down the drain and they just went right back to the old ways that it was. And that just broke my heart from me because we made progress and then it was all gone. And to me, I thought, well why then,
why why do you even try to do anything? And then the other part of me was like, well, you have to do something And it wasn't my decision to pull them out. Is it a good thing that they're home, Yes, but all the progress we made was lost. And that's what the tough thing is to fight terrorism. You can't gain when you're trying to fight terrorism unless you stay the course the whole way. But then you would have to constantly be in Afghanistan and keep pushing them back
because terrorism. I don't think we'll go away.
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. So what is the answer to fighting terrorism? I mean, it's funny because I was talking to my pastor about this and he's like, this is these are wars that have gone on for thousands of years, and it's kind of funny when you hear like the the pundit or the social media influencer who comes out
and it's like, I've got the solution for this. We're just going to sit down and have these two groups talk and we're not gonna have any dangerous killing or anything. I mean, what happened on October seventh was incomprehensible. I think because it was incomprehensible, that's where so many people have been like, hey, let's just not do anything. You know,
it stopped. Now it's over, and they can't really fully comprehend what these people in Israel have experienced, what they have suffered, what they've lost, but what also they have seen. And so we look at this and we go, okay, well, this war on terror is extending now to Israel. But This war between Israel and Hamas has been going on for years and years and years. So is your opinion that it is possible to wipe out Jimas.
I think you can, and to an extent, I think you can push them way back, but I think they'll always be there. I think they're always the terrorists are always going to be somewhere. You may be able to push them back and shrink it way down, but I don't think you'll ever eradicate them off the face of this earth.
What do you think the best way is for us to support our men and women who are serving and those who come home, Because I know you and I have talked about this as well. Folks that are coming home are feeling lost, and there's this in many cases we have, I mean we have what twenty two veteran suicides every single day. Yeah, this is something that it seems like it's not happening through the VA, It's not
happening through government programs. Are there programs that are supporting our men and women that you would say, hey, if you have the ability to support these programs, put your money there, put your volunteer time there.
Yeah. If there are private ones, yes, absolutely, I think the VA and the government could step up, step up a little more and offer more things to our veterans, maybe even direct them to private places, private organanizations if they can, and help them get to that place they need assistance. I think, I think our country always it to them to give them assistance to either travel to get to the place, financial something to help them out, whatever they can do to step up.
I mean, we hear so much about trying to make sure people can get their healthcare in other ways, you know, we hear about we're going to pay for the private jet to take you to get your personal health care. We're going to make sure that this you have access to this or that if you fall into this category or that category. Why do you think that there is not a greater push for this for our veterans. Do
you think that this falls on politicians? Because I mean, it should be something the government is providing, and yet this is not really a top conversation when it comes time for an election.
No, and I agree. I I feel that yes, it's a volunteer. We sign up. We know that we could be going to combat, we could be going into harm's way, but there's no training to prepare to prepare you for what you'll see, what you'll do. So when we come home, I think it would be on the best interest of the government to make sure that the person they just sent to war is taken care of and can come back into civilian life, because it's it's not as easy
as just you're discharged, now go get a job. I was listening to the radio the other day and there was a marine on there saying, when you're in the military, you have a purpose. You put your uniform on, you know what you're doing every day. When you get out, you don't have that uniform on anymore, you feel lost. What am I supposed to do?
Now?
You know you have in the military, it's very regimented. You have this to do, this job, this task, this mission. When you get out, if you don't have that anymore and you've been doing it for some time, it's hard to adjust back into that civilian life. So that you know, I don't know if there's I don't know how to fix that.
Well, I think there are organizations. Before I let you go, I want to ask you there's this new trend on TikTok. I don't know if you've seen this. It is service members who are currently in active duty somewhere, whether they're in training or they're over deployed, they are currently service members and they are filming videos of five reasons why
you should never join the military. We already have recruitment that is way down, and I think that these trends on social media, I mean, we see these trends in every other area. How devastating is it to see And what would you share from your experience to tell people that they should join the military.
From my experience, the military was a great experience for me. It helped me grow as a as a person. It helped me to have that drive to enjoy everything I have in my country that I have here, all the freedoms we have, and just knowing that those freedoms could go away at any time. If someone doesn't step up to protect them, then we could lose them. One thing I can say is, yeah, is it always fun? No, it's tough times in there. I had a lot of
tough times. So it helps you grow and helps you realize, Hey, the country we live in and what I did or the people next to me, did you know we have the freedom to do, have freedom of speech and do what we want so and it gives you that sense of a pride where you live, knowing that you stood up and said I'll defend it to the best of my ability, all the way up to death. So for people you know out there who are protesting against the military,
I don't think that's something that should be done. You should encourage people to join and protect their country and their loved ones.
Yeah. Absolutely, well, I mean, we are so grateful to you for your service. And I watch these TikTok trends and I think this is just to become personally famous, and this I have to say, I don't think this is about true military service. And if you are serving, then you've chosen to serve for a reason. I think that these trends have to go by the wayside. But
I appreciate you. I appreciate what you've done for us, and I think that people should know you also had a lifelong friend that you met when you were there, So you ended up meeting your wife while you were serving, and now you have two children together.
We do, Yes, that was yeah, eighteen years married now, and it was very It was an honor to serve with my wife and be deployed overseas together. And the one of the biggest things too that I miss there the men and women I served with. That camaraderie you build, you can't find that anywhere else. It's a special bond between everyone. So whoever you know, people want to join that. You meet so many different people from all over the country, and it helps you broaden your experience and the views
of other people too, from different states. That was really helpful to me just growing up in a small town, meeting people who've never seen snow before, or you know, the little things you don't think about. So that's a big thing too.
Yeah, I think that when I hear people talking about their service, their time and the service and that camaraderie, I think that's so important for us to talk about because right now, the reason we see a lot of these young people that are joining protests and getting involved in these clubs that are that are negative in some ways because they're looking for a place of belonging. And
we've talked about it several times on this program. There are ways to have that place that home that are different than getting involved in something that is a protest. You there is faith, and there is service, and these
are two great places to build community. And I know a lot of our service members come home and they come home from that camaraderie and they join into a faith community, and that is Those are two places where you can be involved in something that is way bigger than you and you can get a lot out of that and learn a lot from that and then pass that along to other people. And I appreciate you coming on today to talk about your experience. Will Dirksey, thank you,
you're welcome. Thank you, Tutor, and thank you all for joining us on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. For this episode and others, go to Tutor dixonpodcast dot com. You can subscribe right there, or head over to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts and join us next time on the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Have a blessing.