Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus, our guest in this edition as country music star Craig Morgan. But before this chapter of his life, he was Craig Morgan Greer who served seventeen years in the US Army. More than ten of those years were on active duty, and he served with a one hundred first and eighty second Airborne Divisions. And Craig, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you. Where were you born and raised? Born
and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. I'm the guy. I'm the one well up until this guy, Jelly Row in the music industry came along. I was the only one that was literally born in Nashville. I had to move away and make them think I was from somewhere else to get him to work with me in the music business. Had there been a history of military service in your family? An uncle? My dad was one of six brothers, and only one of those serves. But as far as my dad or granddad,
they were all none of them served. Why did you decide to serve and why did you choose the Army? I chose to serve because I wanted to do something different for some reason, I grew up. Even as a teenager, I worked with the rescue squad, the Volunteer Fire Department. I look back now, I don't think I really realized it then, but I had this sense of service. I wanted to do something that allowed me the
opportunity to help other people. Now, I think at the time, I was looking for the idea of the adrenaline rush of being able to jump on a fire truck and put out a fire. And you know, we all have idead As a young man, had these heroic visions of again being able to do stuff for other people. But I really think now as I look back, it was just wanting to be a part of something that was about more than just myself. And where did you do your training? I went.
I was under the OST program, the one station unit training in Fort Sille, Oklahoma, because I was a third fox Ford observer throughout my whole career. Yeah you're an artillery guy. Yeah, but somebody you got the chance to be airborne. How did that work out? It was wonderful. I loved it. I loved jumping out. I did it throughout my entire
career. And there were a couple of places here and there, that I was stationed where they'd I wasn't on jump status, but for the most part, and for most of my Army service, I was on jump status. I just you know, it was really funny when I enlisted. I remember going to the map station, uh and they said, the recruiters said, you want to be airborne, and I, this is the truth. I really thought that a man I'd be flying in some capacity or you know,
being born in the aircraft. I didn't really know I was gonna be jumping. So by the time I was enlisted and I figured out what was going on, it was kind of too late. So I went ahead and went through it all. What's that like jumping out? Was that the first time you ever did it? Yes, it was in the Army, was the first time. What's that feeling like? It's it's it's wonderful. It's awesome,
the idea of exiting an aircraft and you know, whatever speeds. And I had the great forceing of jumping out of almost every aircraft in an Army inventory, as well as a bunch of Air Force aircraft. It's exciting. You know, when I talk about those things, I tell people, if you can convince yourself to do something like that when you stand ready to exit the aircraft and you know that it's either gonna be really good and everything's gonna
work, or it's gonna be really bad. And for the most part, they've gone through this so many times and done it that they've alleviated, you know, all of the negatives that could take place, so you're fairly confident that everything will happen as it's supposed to. You'll exit feet needs to get a parachute open, make a dynamite parachute landing fall, and everything will be good, get up and walk away. But I know it don't always work
out that way. Sometimes there's issues. But that's the wonderful thing about that. When you you have it's such an adrenaline rush, But on top of that, it's knowing that you're training for the opportunity to potentially go somewhere and have to do that to protect the freedoms of our nation. You mentioned you were a forward or long range observer with the artillery. Explain what that role
entails. So my job was to call for adjust and identify any round that a bullet that was shot onto the battlefield from a weapon system other than a direct fire weapons system for example, shoulder fired weapon system. But like mortars, artillery, close air support, which is the aircraft that dropped bombs and bullets, attack helicopters, any of these aircraft, naval gunfire, any bullet that was shot from way away onto the battlefield. I was the guy out
there in front of everybody telling them where to put those bullets. Your hearing is really good for spending that much time with artillery. Oh no, my hearing is horrible. That's why yell. I can't hear a thing man, which is terrible for a musician. Yeah, that's that's a little bit of a challenge. So how do you accurately identify the target and give the or
it's training train as you find You know, it's important and imperative. I can't tell you it'spacially early in my career, you know, you're talking about in the late eighties and early nineties. You think about where we were at as a nation in relation to other nations, especially bad players in the world.
So we studied and studied and studied cards, We had pictures, all of these things that you go through over and over and over, and when we would do training exercises, we would actually the military would actually replicate those enemies, vehicles, clothing, all of those things. And we had great technology, and you know, it's advanced so much even since then that I mean shooting now we can tell you what kind of cigarette they're smoking. You
also attempted to become a ranger a couple of times. One time you had to stop due to a family crisis and another time you got hurt. But one of the things you stress in your book is that being a ranger and just like so many other things in life, you gotta want it real, real bad to go through what's required to become that. So what did you learn from from that experience and what it takes to pursue a goal of that
difficult Uh. Intestinal fortitude was a term that they came up a lot, and I would describe that as having the mental capacity to push yourself beyond what you think you might be able to do. The body is an amazing, absolutely amazing machine, but we don't we don't have the we don't always have the mental capacity to push that body to its capacity. So it's that we I just remember all the time here and you're gonna have to have the intestinal
fortitude to be able to push yourself beyond the pain and you can't. I mean, we've seen numerous things over the years where people have done certain things, like you know, they broke their leg and they still managed to. I watched it in in Korean Rangers school and I went through that school and I watched a TUSA, the Korean Augmentation of the United States Army Soldier finish a one hundred mile road march with a broken leg. So we have you
can do these things. And that's what Ranger school, and that's what the Ranger Battalion, any of the Special Operations community that I think that's the one thing that that is taught more than anything, it's the mental attitude towards your occupation, having the mental attitude to push yourself with the end goal of getting
home. You mentioned your time and Korea with the Korean Rangers. That seems to have been a pretty formative deployment for you, not only for your military career in the work you did with the Rangers, but also a musical opportunity that started to take it from more of a hobby to starting to put an idea in your mind. Yeah. Being born in Nashville. My dad was a musician, so I grew up in and around the music. But I actually, as I stated in my book, I think I wanted to get
away from that. I wanted to do something than what was going on in my life at that time. So that's why I joined the Army, and I dabbled at it throughout my career. I mean even in Airborne School.
I wrote a song about the Test Platoon, the first jumpers ever to jump, and in the process of doing that, the Black Hats heard about it, and at the time, the commander of the Airborne School was a guy named Leonard B. Scott wrote the book Charlie Mike, and he come to me in and said, we want you to perform this song that you're writing
at the Test Platoon banquet. It was the first banquet that that So it's for me and the music and the military have always kind of played, but it wasn't until I got to carea that I had a lot of free time. That was like a real duty station where you know, we had some free time and I had a guitar and I wrote a bunch and my buddies were very encouraging and all that stuff. You know. So there's still a lot of that goes on today. I see that when I go overseas and
visit it. Uh, these young men and women that are serving and they're hanging out in the barracks playing music and stuff. It's just a great way to kill some time and and and develop your talent. And that for me, it started then. And you want a special contest over there? Yeah, that allowed you to open for I think, let's saw Your Brown? Right, I saw your Brown? You gotta tell that story the interaction you had years later. Yeah, so so I opened up for Saw Your Brown.
I won the US Army Male Vocalist of the Year contest in Korea. And the reason I did that is because if you win, you get to go and what we used to do and they may still do it. They did a thing called the Soldiers Show where it was nothing but soldiers from all over the Army and they would travel the world's doing entertaining our troops. It was a really cool concept. Uh I want. I'm like, yes, I get to go do this, but my unit wouldn't release me. We
were short on thirteen foxes. So they're like, yeah, congratulations, but you don't get to go nowhere. But I did get to open up for a group that came over to Korea, and it was right after they had won a TV talent show and it was saw Your Brown and I'll never forget
it, you know, it's a cool thing for me. Well years fast forward, years years later, here I am in the music industry and doing one I was with Sawyer Brown, and I walked over to Mark, who he and I are now good friends, and I went up on his bus and I said, man, I don't know if you remember this, but a long time ago, you guys went to Korea right after y'all had won the TV show and y'all did a show and there was a guy that opened up for you and I was getting to it, you know, And he
goes, oh, yeah, that guy sang his butt off, but he couldn't play guitar for nothing. And I said, well that was me. He goes, well, some things don't change. That's fantastic. You later advanced to become a non commissioned officer at the Air Assault School at Fort Campbell, and you said you actually prefer air assault to standard paratrooping. Explain why. I don't know. I think I just I really enjoyed. There was a lot more involved, first of all, and I'm a I'm a master
blaster. I went to jump master and I went through you know, repel master and all that stuff. The jumping was fun, but there was a I don't know why, for whatever reason, this is just me. I'm I can't speak on behalf of everyone that's ever the stress level for a jump master is through the roof. I mean it's intense because you got a hundred jumpers or one hundred fifty jumpers, however minty jumpers, and you're the guy
responsible for ensuring when you do that JMPI that the inspection on them. You're responsible. So if a guy who exits an aircraft and has something wrong, it's your fault. And the same goes for a repel master. The intensity of something going wrong isn't quite as bad. Not to say that people can't get hurt, because it does happen. We've lost soldiers repelling for various reasons.
But but I just didn't feel like I didn't feel the same level of stress as a repel master, and there was a lot more to it. It's not just repelling out of aircraft. It's rigging the equipment that the aircraft are hauling back and forth. So there was a lot. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed that one week come back. Craig Morgan shares his story serving an Operation Just Cause in Panama, and he shares an important
perspective about how Americans should view relatively short combat operations. Our guest is Staff Sergeant Promotable Craig Morgan Greer, better known as country music star Craig Morgan. I'm Greg Corumbas, and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in this edition is US Army Staff Sergeant Promotable
Craig Morgan Greer. You know him better as country music singer Craig Morgan, but for seventeen years he was rising quickly through the ranks of the US Army, serving in the airborne divisions. We now pick up his story as Morgan explains that he was already assigned to serve in Panama in nineteen eighty nine when conditions there took a turn for the worse and he soon ended up serving in Operation Just Cause. I was actually a sign to the first five O eight
everyone Infantry Regiment in Panama. I lived in Panama. When I first got my orders, it was considered an assignment where your family could go with you. Shortly before I was scheduled to leave, we had a coup attempt. Everyone would everyone that's old enough remembers a lot was going on down there. So they stopped all accompanied assignments and made it an unaccompanied assignment. So my family and I were getting ready to leave and then all of a sudden I
had to say bye. I had to go by myself. But I will tell you that was a great That was a great experience for me, and you know, ended up getting there right in the middle of all of that stuff. So it was an intense tour from beginning until after Operation Just Cause was over. Let's talk about how your role in combat kind of unfolded here, because the first thing that happened is you you become the acting commander because
your commander was injured, and then you hurt your shoulder. Correct. Yeah, So my lieutenant got shot and by commander it was a fire team, you know, uh, and I was the senior fire support guy for our for the company. He gets shot and gets taken out. Uh, we're we're going into the U. We're actually landing on a golf course. We're air assaulting in. And I exited the aircraft a little early. I think we were about twenty feet or so off the ground. We had not touched
down just yet. I didn't realize it. And I was the guy in the door and what they called the hell hole, uh so what we called it, and it's well, you know, most of the road to warsh is coming in right there on it. And I also had to unhook the strap, and we had removed all of the seats and everything inside so that
we could pack more personnel in it. But I was the guy responsible for undoing the strap and then first one out, and so I undid the strap and I went out, and when I did, I realized when I hit the ground that we were waited. We weren't touched down yet. Uh. Fortunately everyone behind me knew they seen me fall. Uh. And I dislocated my shoulder in the process of doing that, and it was my right shoulder,
so that made it difficult to fire my weapon system. Yeah, in your in your book, your efforts to relocate your shoulder or I didn't say I was smart. When we started this. To put that back will tell you I thought I was tougher than I was too. I thought I was tough. Uh. Yeah, I tried. I don't know why. I don't know what made me think that banging it against a tree or a solid
object would put it back in place. But that's what I thought, and I actually knew that if I could get someone to do it properly, it would work, you know, by wrapping a towel and lay down and yanking it bang. Ended up after a few days. Finally came across a medic who was able to get it back in place. But at that point I pretty much beat it up pretty good. So what's it like to be in combat? And how does it compare with what you expected? This is my
perspective. I can't speak on behalf of anyone else that's been in combat, but for me, when people ask me that question, I tell them. For me, it was a lot like the movies. I literally related everything that was happening to movies, you know, war movies. That's what it felt like it was. Sometimes it was beyond surreal. There were moments when I felt like I was watching myself do these things. And I'm not trying to be not trying to be super weird or not, but that's what it
felt like. It felt like you sometimes you were having this out of body experience, like like when we found there was a grenade with the spoon was attached but there was no pen laying in the street, and everybody was freaking out, and I remember just walking over to it and picking it up and holding onto it and everybody's freaking out, running away from me and everything, and I'm like, it's still attacks, you know, just find a pin,
we'll put it back in. You know, any second that spoon could have popped off and I would have had to have gotten rid of it. But I don't know. Things like that happened that you just don't think about when you're getting shot at or or when you're shooting back. You just I don't know. It was just I remember being on the aircraft when were going in and the noise that I heard, that the sounds and you trying to process that and going, man, what is that noise? Oh, that's
freaking bullets hit inside of the aircraft. That's bullets passing by. And you could hear that even under the rotor wash, So I just remember all of it's brand new, but I remember looking at it and especially looking back still today, it feels like it was I was in a movie. I'm glad you described so vividly the intensity of that gunfire, because I think a lot of people, given the relatively short duration of operation, just cause think oh
it's Panama and no big deal. I mean, but there the intensity and what you and the other people you were with and throughout that mission went through lives were in harm's way. And so how did you and the other men were with how did you lead during that moment? Oh? Train as you fight, fight as you train. And I think you know, I've heard a lot of people say this. I spacially hear a lot the law enforcement officers talk about this. How you know when that when it happens, they
just go they just go into that mode. Uh. And I think that's a truth, which is why training is so repetition. It's that those things are so important, muscle memory, all of those things take place when you're thrown into that environment. You either do it or you fell miserably and you cuddle up. Uh. And I don't fault anyone for either that happens. You know, some people are are are equipped for that, and some people
aren't. Uh, that's just a reality. And I think you just you know, you you when you're when it happens, when the bullets start firing, Uh, you just go into the mode and you do what you've been training to do, you know. And the guy's like me when I join. And I don't mean this in a well I'm always careful how I say this. Well, I used to be. Now I've gotten to the point now I don't really care. But you know, I trained for that. I was a guy and this I don't mean this in a negative way.
But I joined the army to do that. I didn't join the army to train for the rest of my life. I joined the Army to train and then to go fight and protect the rights of the country. And I think most service members do. I know there are some that go in there and they just want to get their college money and they want to get back out, and they hope and pray that they don't have to go to war. As I've matured and gotten older, I hope and pray we don't have to
go to war. But I didn't join the Army to not go to war. Back then, I joined the Army to go to war. So for me when that happened, it was like boom, I get to do my job now and I get to be a part of something greater than myself. You also had the chance to work with the AC one thirty specter gunships. Yes, talk about that collaboration. It was one of the It was one of the greatest in my time of service because I got the I was in
the Army, but I experienced the privileges of the Air Force. I mean, and people ask me, what do you you know, what would you recommend? What branch of service would you I'm in that I go to And I asked them a line of questions, and their answer to those questions dictate what my answer would be. Because you know, if you're extremely strong headed, and you you know you're you want to be the bull in the china shop, join the Marines. If you're a bit of a thinker, but
you want to do some of that too, look at the Army. If you like electricity all the time and a good soft bed, joined the Air Force. I mean, that's what I would say, Uh, And that's not an insult. It's just a reality. And I really had the great privilege of meeting some very heroic people in the Air Force UH and being able to do that job working on the specters. So I was the Army liaison who flew on the aircraft. So I was actually on the aircraft kind of
like the UH. I was the go between between the Army and the Air Force guys, you know, helping with communications and target identification and communicating back and forth with the guys on the ground. It was a fun, fun job that And we were in Hurlbert Airfield, Florida, So I got to go to Florida lot. I was just down there. That's a fabulous place. Yes it is. And so one of the bizarre moments is that your
wife briefly thought you were killed there. Explain what happened there unbeknownst to me because I'm running around in Panama. I want to go back to something real quick before I talk about this. You alluded to the fact that you know the short duration of operation just cause, and that is it was obviously shorter than Desert Storm or any of the further forthcoming wars and activities we were involved
in. But we should never underplay the intensity of those situations regardless, because even though a war may last forever, a battle maybe a day, a battle maybe weeks, maybe months, whatever, And that's we have to appreciate that for these men and women that are serving when they go. I mean, there are operations going on through around the world that we might not even
know about, and they might be three or four day missions. Uh. You know, our Special Operations community is is working all the time, and these guys experience what we have seen on the news that took place in Operation Desert Storm again and forward. Uh. Those things were taking place before and they're taking place now, uh in spurts. But because they don't receive a lot of media, people don't understand the intensity. Uh, but take what
you've seen. We should take what we've seen on television, and those intense moments, long battles, long wars, and and it still happens, even though it might not be quite as long, the intensity is the same. I just wanted to go back to that because you know, you look at our World War veterans, Uh, those were those were you know, long term. These guys were out there for a long time and it was some
very intense moments throughout that time. Those intense moments take place regardless of the length of the war, and we should appreciate that for all of our service members. Now, my wife, unbeknownst to me, while I'm over there running around Panama doing the things we were doing, my wife is at home with a baby, and she's actually down in Texas with her dad, and
a military vehicle shows up, pulls in the driveway. My wife's seen it, and she wouldn't even go to the door because it was two uniformed service members. And everybody knows that when if your spouse or loved one is overseas and that happens, there's a good chance they're not there delivering good news. They're not bringing you home, they're not surprising you. That don't happen. So she was just mortified, scared so much she wouldn't even go to the
door. Well, her dad answered the door, and even he was upset, she said, visibly upset, and because he thought that he was going to have to hear the news that I had died, didn't have to tell his daughter. But they literally went to the wrong house. They went to the wrong house, you know, and that happens. It wasn't a bad it think like they were doing something terrible. They just they went to the wrong house and so for a few minutes there my wife thought I was dead.
Wow. Well, you mentioned a moment ago that there are missions that we don't know about and special forces, and you were actually plucked out of Panama and sat with some special forces and probably the CIA, although you sudden you weren't quite sure. So what's it like working in those kind of sure but not totally sure type of situation? This is just like a movie. I'm telling you. That's my analogy, and I don't know any other. I don't know a better way to describe it. It's just sometimes you again
have these out of body I did. I can only speak from my perspective, but I remember as we were moving through the jungling, you know, and we had to strip everything off of our uniforms, and there was no patches, no names, no nothing to work to do what we were doing on the mission we were on. And it's just you just don't It just felt like a movie. And oddly enough, now watching movies, it's like, especially movies that might it's exactly like that. Some of the movies I
watched now, and I go, that's exactly what we did. That's exactly the way it happens. You just some stuff, you know, and you're privy to only so much information, and yet you're here doing this. It's you know, it's weird. It's kind of like being told to, you know, come in here and clean the carpet. You don't know what kind of carpet you're cleaning, You don't know what kind of cleaner you're doing, but you show up and they hand you the cleaner and you and you're told
you better. Every spot has to get off or you know, you're not gonna get paid, and you don't know if the carpet cleaner's right or you know, but you go in there and do it and end up carpet gets cleaned. Is that part of training where you just accept the fact that they're only going to tell you so much and you don't really have to try to press them with more information or anything like that. Why are we here? What are we actually trying to accomplish? Yes? I think it is the
training, And you know we trained that way when I first started. First of all, you gotta remember we didn't have we didn't even have internet. Really, communications was very limited. We didn't have cell phones and all these things we didn't have, especially didn't have Thank god, we didn't have TikTok, Instagram and all that crap. You know, it's probably a good thing, but there were numerous training operations, especially at a BRAG where I remember
the first time I got a bag phone. Remember the old bag phones. Yeah, you carried it over your shoulder and you had it. I got that because I got tired of when I would leave as a as a team leader, I got tired of having to call into the c Q the charge of and go, hey, it's a Sartain Greer. I'm gonna go to the movie theater. I'll call you when I get there and let you know what seat I'm in. Go to the movie theater with my wife and my kid, go in the movie The Inner and set down and figure out where
I'm sitting. And I'd have to go tell that. Literally, this is the way this happened when we were on on QRF and I would at to say, hey, here's the person's name, here's the number. They know where I'm sitting, and they would write it down at CQ so that if a call came in and we had the deploy and it happened on numerous times, and so you would get a phone call, the guy would come running in. Hey, they won't They said you need to leave. So I
would go back to you. We would get there, go through the motions, and sometimes that's as far as it would go. Sometimes you get on a plane, you're on the aircraft. You don't know if you're going to war or if you're just doing a training jump or what it is. And you would get on the aircraft and they would hand you maps and everything and you go, Okay, cool, we're training. We're gonna be jumping into here and this is what we're doing. Or you would get a map and
go, this looks like South America. You just don't know, but that's what you do. You trained for that. But what it does, it forces you to think fast and work fast to process. Uh. That's why I think soldiers and service members are the greatest people in our country. They're the smartest, they're they're the they're able to do things that the average American can't do. And it's because of those kind of situations. It's why they make the best CEOs. They make the best leaders, and when they get
out, they become the best employees. One of my favorite stories in the book deals with your ingenuity. You had been given an assignment during desert storm that you weren't particularly pleased with. You wanted to be there, and you're assigned to Fort Bragg, but you found a way to get over there anyway. Yeah, I'm not sure if I should share the story. We'll leave that. We might leave that, but because I'll tell you I did something
that was It was completely inappropriate and unprofessional. When you should follow the orders every young service member joining the military Act, you really should follow your orders as long as they're I mean, there is a I do believe we all have a moral standing fourth which we should rely on. So if someone's telling you to do something that is completely morally incorrect, you shouldn't. But telling someone that they shouldn't go overseas, I don't think it was a moral So
I found a way to get there. Myself and another non commissioned officer by the name of John Davis were to deliver some weapons down to a particular location to be shipped over and someone came up with some orders that allowed us to go with the weapons. I don't know where they came from. Didn't last long though someone else found out their orders were not correct. We had to
go back to brag. So this is going on even in Panama. And even as time's going on, you're getting more and more serious about your music and you get more into writing as as the nineties unfold. So how were you able to do that while you were still active duty and just in free time, just like anybody else when they would You know, a lot of people do a lot of things. Uh, you know, military people get it. If you're not in the military, you don't understand being in the
military. You're not sleeping in a tent and getting up every morning and going shooting people and doing those kind of things every day like you see in the movies that that part of the movie only takes place in the war. Again, now we have movies that depict that, that show people that have actual lives and we all did. Uh. So my life when I wasn't at work, when I would get up in the mornings, I would go in
do pt have clean up, have breakfast, make formation. We would do training for our day, have our final formation day and go home just like everybody it goes to work. When they go to work, they finish up in the day and they go back home in the evening, and we would have our weekends off for the most part. So during that time I would I would write and play guitar and try to make stuff up and have fun with it. I will tell you when all that was happening, I've really
never seen myself as a full time singer, slash writer or whatever. I did enjoy writing, and I thought if I ever had the opportunity to do something in the music business, I wanted to do it writing songs because I knew that I could do that, even while I was doing what I really enjoyed, which was the military, the army. And it wasn't until later on that in the process of writing songs and recording those songs, I got
noticed as a singer. And even then, I will tell you, I wasn't sure that I wanted to do it, because I knew how difficult it was. I had friends that have been in business. I watched my dad do it, and I knew that being a successful in a national touring artist, now there's a difference in that and just doing it and doing it at a regional level. There's a lot of guys that do and have a normal job and they get up and go to work, and then on the weekends
they play in bars and clubs and they do they do well. They make a lot of extra money in and there's guys that end up doing it and they quit their job and that's all they do is travel around locally and try to open up for guys that make it nationally and that kind of stuff. But I really just wanted to write. I wanted to write songs and create that way. And again, I knew that you could make money at that right up front, if you get signed to a publishing deal writing for a
company, you could make money. Whereas in the entertainment world, uh, you know, everybody thinks that. You know, like my first two years of being in the business, everyone that worked for me made more money than I did. Everyone, the band members, everybody made more money and I did. So that's why I stayed in the Army. I kept thinking it, any day I'm going to quit this crap and go back full time in the Army and get out of the get out of the savey life, get
back into the Army. But every time I would think about that, something would happen that would encourage me. God just nudged me every time. He every I thought, I'm not doing this music crap, it's not who I am. I'm a soldier. I'm going back. God would do something that
made me see that that's where I needed to be at the time. US Army Staff Sergeant Craig Morgan Greer, when we come back, he has a big decision to make pursue a dream of music stardom or pursue the top enlisted position in the entire US Army, And later Morgan shares a big announcement, I'm Greg Corumbas and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veteran's Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in this edition is US Army Staff Sergeant Craig Morgan
Greer, better known as country music star Craig Morgan. At the end of our conversation, Morgan will share some big news that had not become public at the time of our conversation, but we'll get to that a little bit later. By the late nineteen nineties, Morgan faced a dilemma continue a very six scessful military career towards what was a very real chance of becoming the sergeant major of the US Army, the top enlisted man in the entire army, or
follow his dreams of a career in music. Yeah, there were a couple senior ranking officers that had I don't want to say befriended, whose opinions I very much respected, having worked for him. One gentleman in particular, Colonel Bill Greer, I'll never forget set down to his office in General Shelton, who became later became a prominent figure in our military, in our political leadership
for our military. But both of them told me, based on how I was performing and my all everything that was happening in my military career, that I there was no question that I could be. They said, you could be the start major of the Army if you keep on this path. But Bill Greer said, as much as I believe that, I also believe that you have an opportunity to be successful in that business. And you know,
and so he encouraged me to pursue it. And he's the one that said, look, when you leave active, go straight into the active reserves. That way, you don't lose any breaking. There's no break in time and service, and if you feel like it's not what you want to do, if it's not working out, you can come right back in. You don't lose any rank, you don't lose anything. So it seemed like a perfect opportunity. Of course, it absolutely broke my wife's heart. She didn't think
I should do it. She wanted to stay in the army. But she was also very encouraging. You know, She's like, you know, and I knew that I was at a point in my military career that if I didn't try it, I wouldn't I wouldn't continue, I wouldn't try it at all. Now, you know, looking back, I think i'd have been okay with that. I'm not the guy that has regret. I think had I stayed in the Army, I'm not the guy that would have went, oh man, I wish i'd have done that to see if I could have
made it. I don't think that would have been my mindset. I would have continued to write songs and play my guitar on the weekends with my buddies, and I might have even became one of those guys who got to do shows at local bars on the weekend, and then Monday got back up and went to formation. You know. Uh, And there's nothing wrong with that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I just chose the other path.
And and here we are. Listeners and viewers. You need to get Craig's book, if for no other reason than the story of what he said to General Shelton down in what we see. Yeah, you know, it was dark. I couldn't tell who he was, and my mission was my mission. I didn't realize that my mission was his mission too. That we were on a training exercise, and uh, I was. I had we jumped in early before everyone, myself and the LARST, the long range surveillance guy
that was with me, uh and my rto. We were there to call for fires clear the drop zone so that the heavy drop and the personnel drop coming in would be cleared. You know. So we go in early and we do our thing, and we smulate clearing the battlefield, you know, with artillery, and we had I think on that one, that particular training extrade, we had simulated naval gunfire and the whole bit a lot of fun. But I was told when the number three jumper on the number three aircraft
exited. That's who I go to. So we're on the drop zone waiting, watching as the aircraft are coming. You can set them off in the distance, you know, and we're you know, some identifying number three. First off, we go, man, these aircraft are low. Something is not right, and so they get lower and lower and lower, and we realize, oh, holy shit, this is a heavy drop. This is the equipment's first. We thought personnel were first and then the equipment equipments first.
So we run off the drop zone as the heavy drop comes in. Then we run back to the drop zone and I'm watching the number three aircraft and I'm watching number three jumper parachute pops. I go straight to him and I run up to him and I'm like, are you Major such and such? And he goes no, and I'm like, you know some inappropriate words and and uh and he's like, what is it? And I said I have to I'm here to debrief Major such and such and he goes, well,
you can debrief me. And I'm like, who the EF for you? And he said selling, I'm General Shelton. You can tell me. Yeah, And he took it well. Later, oh he was a champ. He was a sport. In the after action review, of course, I'm expecting waiting any minute to get my butt reamed out, you know, because this young staff start mouthed off to the commanding general. But he was like in the in the briefing, he literally said, where is uh?
We're starting? Who the EF for you? He called me out, and my commander was you know, the colonel was there, Lieutenant Garner or Devarti commander was there, and I had to explain myself to him what happened. And but it all worked out, you know. And so you pursued the music career, and obviously it's turned out to be a tremendous success. But as we were talking before we started recording music, like pursuing goals in the
army requires a ton of patience, resilience, perseverance from setbacks. That's the mindset you kind of need for life. It's kind of the point you like to make in the book. Yeah, I would tell you that music was worse. It was. It was much more difficult, uh, and is and can be. It requires a lot of intestinal fortitude, mental patience. You know. In life, we tend to compare ourselves to others doing what we do. We use that as our bar or our balance and try to
figure out how to progress. And what I have learned through the military and in every occupation that I've ever had, but in particular the military music is your bar should not be set by others. You should set your own bar. You should set your goals and based on what it is you can and want to attain, not what others can and want to attain. In the military, in the army, if I max my PT tests, if I did my job properly, I could progress, and it didn't matter what the
other other NCOs were going. I was not competing with them, And now I was, to some degree, I was competing for a particular job. But if I did everything right, I was going to get that job, no questions. You know it would happen. It just does not happen that way. In the music there's so many factors in the music industry that are out of our control. I can write a hit song and I can sing it and everybody goes it's the greatest vocals you've ever done. And it can
be a great song. The production can be fabulous, the label can love it, and we can deliver it to country radio, and they cannot play it, and the consumer cannot hear it, and that song not be a hit, even though we all know it's a hit song. Certain factors take place that alleviate you from the process of being successful with that particular song. Now, fortunately for me, I had a lot of hit songs I have
over my career and we still have success. And with the changes in our society now technology in particular, with the influx of all the social media platforms, uh, there's new avenues for us to do that. And we found during COVID, during the shutdown during the pandemic that it created a whole new a whole new avenue for a generation that had kind of country radio was no longer a part of their career, you know. Again, fortunately for me, I had such a big radio career that I get I got to continue
touring. I you know, we still have a successful touring business, but not quite as much new airplay on radio. They're not playing all of my
new music as much. But cause of these new the influx of the social media platforms and the Spotify and iTunes and all of these things, it's as if that you know, we kind of transition from one streaming method to another, from traditional radio and CDs and all of those things now to these other platforms where our music is being heard, and there are actually artists that are coming into the industry that are starting there. They're not starting in country through
country radio. The people are hearing their music through those platforms now. One of the interesting things, of course, is that while you've decided to pursue your music career in the late nineties, most of your career has taken place while America has been at war. Yeah, and one of the stories that absolutely resonated with me is how one of your songs came on the radio when a soldier or veteran was very seriously thinking about taking his life and your song
made him stop. Yeah. I've heard so many of those stories, and I mean, it's very it's moving. Uh. It's those kind of stories that make me really appreciate the magnitude of what it is we are doing and the impact that we can have. And I when I speak, and I do a lot of speaking in engagements, I tell people you never know what your life or words or whatever it is you may be doing. You don't know how they're going to impact other people. So you should every day.
We should think about that when we get up, before we go to work. We should think about how we can be a positive impression on other people. Uh, and don't allow our our wur situations to dictate our output. Uh. You can turn you can turn it around. That that particular story, Uh, it was actually a two part which was beyond belief. Really
that young man. I'll never forget it. We've played the Washington State Fair and he had a prosthetic leg and he was standing there and I had gone I just released the new album at the time, and so I was signing them. You know, when you first start, you're willing to sign anything just to sell it, you know. And so we would do signings of merchandise after the show. And at this point we've kind of gotten away from signing merchandise. But because I released a new album, everybody that bought it,
I was gonna come out and sign the record. So we had this huge line, and you know, we're sitting there and I'm like, this is gonna take hours, But how awesome is that that I get to set here for hours and sign autograph. But I looked over and I seen that young land stand there with this prosthetic leg, and I said, come on up, you don't need to you don't have to stand there and wait. I you know, gathered in my head. I assumed he was a soldier and he said no. He said, I want to I I need to
talk to you. I want to talk to you. If you don't mind, I'll wait till we're done. And so I told him my tour man, the said get him a chair anyway, he don't need to stand here the whole time. Then Winn't got him a chair, and he would not sit down. He stood there the whole time, and he waited till the very end. It was almost almost two hours of signing, and he waited. And when he came up, he sat down in front of me and I said, sit down, and I want to hear what it is so
important that you were willing to stand that and wait for two hours? He said, Man, I was in Iraq and such and such, and I was driving down the road and I had a CD player and I had your first CD and I was playing it and he said, this song Paradise. He said, I just loved it. And he said, uh, he said, your music saved my life. I said, okay, won't tell me out and I literally giggled. You know, I'm like, yeah,
tell me how my music saved life. He said. We were driving down the road in the hun V and that and he said, my it we bumped and my and it skipped and he said, so I reached down to get the CD player and to hit the button to go back to the beginning song, and a sniper shot through the window and hit the seat and it's like, oh wow that. I said, well, that wasn't me, that was God looking after you. He said, well, God used you, and he said he used you again. He said, fast forward.
I got out. I had lost my leg and I d and uh. He said. I was sitting at the house and he said, I literally had the pistol and I had put the magazine and chambered around and I put it up to my mouth and he said, I was going through this and I was thinking, this is the only way that I can end this pain, and everything was to do this. And he said a song came on the radio called almost Home. He said, I put my gun down.
That's powerful. And we both sat there and cried and talked for a bit, and uh, it's like, man, you know, I said, Well, here again, I said, I appreciate that you're sharing this, and it does mean a lot, I said, But what it really means is that God was looking after you and he cares, So don't do that crap again. But yeah, it's pretty powerful to hear those stories, and
I've heard a bunch of them. Incredible impact. We're just about at a time, Craig, but I know you've got some special breaking news for us. Yeah. So then the military, obviously, it has been a big part of my life. My God, my family, my country, and it's literally in that order those the three priorities in my life. And having served for you know, just over seventeen years of my life, I'm always looking at ways to work with and give back. So here in the very
near future, I am re enlisting in the Army. I am going back in the Army. I am going back in the army. Fantastic. I've had a great music career and now I have the opportunity to utilize that platform to help promote the importance of our military and our army in particular, and work with army and the army recruiting command and the Army Band and anything that I can do to try to encourage people to join the United States Army and be all they can be. That that has been my platform since I joined
the Army. I have spent my life attempting to be all that I can be. People joke about it. I raced motorcycles, I've raced cars, I've jumped out of airplanes. I've done it both in the military and in the vilion life, and everything that I have ever done, I've tried to do it to the best of my ability, and as I talked about earlier, not do it to the best or be better than someone else, but just be the best me that I can be at everything that I'm doing.
And the Army is going back to the be all you can beat campaign, which I think is absolutely the greatest thing they've done. Since I've been in and out this Army of one and this all this other crap, I think it is horrible. We all individually, when we are being all that we can be, collectively, we will be the greatest. And I get to be a part of that. Again. Outstanding Craig, Thanks for breaking that news with us, and thank you so much for your time today, and
thank you for your service. And you're soon to be continuing service to our country. Oh, thank you, Craig Morgan, country music star. But before that, Craig Morgan Greer seventeen years and soon to be more than that in the US Army, more than ten of those years on active duty. We also served with the one hundred first and eighty second Airborne Divisions. I'm
Greg Corumbus. This is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information, please visit American Veterans Center dot org. You can also follow the American Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter. We're at AVC
update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube channel for full oral histories and special features, and of course, please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please join us next time for Veterans Chronicles