Tymish Halibey

Director: Okay, can you say your name and spell it please.

Tymish: Uh, first name Tymish, TYMISH, last name Halibey, HALIBEY.

Director: Okay, and we are rolling.

Evan: Thank you. Okay, so my name is Evan Reedsom. It is Wednesday November 30, 2016, three in the afternoon. And I am here with Tymish Halibey and he's agreed to participate in the Veteran's Empathy Project so he's gonna share his story of his military service. Tymish, just to give you an idea of the interview, there's basically three parts. The first part's going to deal with kind of your upbringing, where you're from, what your childhood was like. The second part will deal with your military service. And then the final part will be your transition back to the civilian world. So that's fairly open-ended structure. So basically, we'll take the conversation where you want to 1:00go.

Tymish: Cool.

Evan: If you find something that we're moving too quickly, we forgot something that you want to really touch upon, by all means, we can revisit it.

Tymish: Okay, cool.

Evan: So I guess we can start Tymish. Can you tell me where you're from and where you were born?

Tymish: Yeah, I was born and raised in New Jersey. I am a second generation Ukrainian. My grandparents all came over after the war, second World War. Not a healthy place for either of the families of priests or of the families of partisans. So they all became displaced persons, now we call them refugees, in Germany and then came over. And so I have a pretty strong Ukrainian background. Actually, Ukrainian's my first language. Growing up, I went to Ukrainian school on Saturdays and then I went to Ukrainian Boy Scouts after that. So a lot of influence from having a strong, structured childhood. You know, if I hadn't been in scouting, I don't think I would've ever ended up 2:00joining the Marine Corps. Played sports in high school, football, wrestled, played lacrosse. And again, probably if I hadn't done those things, I probably never would've joined the Marine Corps either. And then when I was in college, played a little bit of lacrosse as well. I was also in a fraternity, I was a brother of Sigma Phi Epsilon at Rider University. Held some leadership roles with both the lacrosse team and with the fraternity. So, kind of been doing leadership things to one degree or another, throughout most of my life. After I graduated college, did a couple of different things in the corporate world. I did little bit of sales, I worked for a pharmaceutical company doing some accounting-type things. I worked as head hunter for a staffing agency. And then, I didn't really find what I was looking 3:00for. Actually I took a couple of weeks off one summer to go work at a Boy Scouts camp for three weeks. And we were out there in upstate New York for three weeks with the kids. Actually, it ended up being more like four weeks 'cause we did couple days on the front and back into a prep and break-down. But after being out in the woods, sweating and being eaten by mosquitoes and counting how much poison ivy I have on myself, I came back into the office with my nice cup of coffee and my breakfast burrito and I plunked down in front of my laptop in my suit and tie and I'm like, this is not as much fun as being nasty and disgusting in the woods. So I decided I was gonna make a change. And I decided I was going to go ahead and apply for officer candidate school and join the United States Marine Corps. Spent a whole bunch of time getting in shape because I wasn't exactly in shape at that point a couple of years out of college. So, got in shape, went to OCS, completed OCS and went to basic school. And, looking back, at one point at OCS they had the whole company sitting there in one of the classrooms and 4:00the instructor was talking about responsibility and he said, one of you guys is going to be a casualty, one of you guys is gonna die. And a couple of years later, while we were training to go to Afghanistan in September, I found out that one of my platoon mates from officer candidate school, First Lieutenant named Scott Fleming, had been killed in Afghanistan. He was an infantry platoon commander and he ended up getting killed in Afghanistan. But didn't really think about that at the time when I was in officer candidate school, but that was something they were trying to instill upon you. I think that's one of the things the Marine Corps does differently than the other services, is they really instill upon you how much of a burden command is. In the first part of your officer career at officer candidate school, the 5:00training is really led by enlisted Marines. Yes there's a staff platoon commander, a captain, who's had some time under his belt, but you spend more time with your three senior enlisted instructors, generally staff sergeants and gunnery sergeants, than anyone else. And those guys love to tell you about how you're worthless and you're going to get Marines killed. Yeah, keep doing what you're doing, you're gonna get Marines killed. Or something like, I'm gonna kill you before I let you go out there and get my Marines killed. I think that's one of the things that the Marine Corps does well, is kind of instill a little bit of humility on young officers. You're not that cool, you're not special because you have a college degree. You have something you need to learn. And you need to serve these Marines. They give all kinds of examples about that one lieutenant who ruined someone's change of command ceremony by fidgeting. You know, everyone's paying attention 6:00to him instead of the change of command ceremony. Or that one lieutenant who went and got food before the rest of his Marines and some young private didn't get chicken nuggets. Silly examples like that, but hey, don't be that guy. Don't be the one who screws up like this. So that's something they really heavily instill on you at officer candidate school. And then graduated OCS, got commissioned. We were actually one of the first classes to get commissioned at the Marine Corps museum, which is across the street from Marine Corps base Quantico. The museum had just opened pretty recently before we got commissioned. And it was very interesting to go there. In the middle of the museum they had the whole class of future lieutenants. We all raised our right hand, and the general read the oath and we got commissioned and my parents pinned on my bars standing in front of an old Amtrak from World War II. So that was kind of neat. OCS is really 7:00a job interview. It is not a school, it doesn't teach you how to be an officer. It's a ten week long job interview to see if you have what it takes. After you complete OSC, you go to basic school, which is a six month long school that every Marine officer goes to regardless of what you're gonna do in the world. And that's where you learn to become an officer. It's essentially, everyone learns how to be a provisional infantry platoon commander. And that's true for the folks who go supply, the folks who are air contracts, the folks who are law contracts, every single Marine officer goes through six months of basic school to kind of learn how to be a provisional infantry platoon commander. Coincidentally, actually, the warrant officers go to basic school as well, but they get an abbreviated three month course. So, every officer, warrant or commissioned goes through basic school and spends time out there. It's interesting how basic school works because 8:00those folks who are air contracts and those folks who are law contracts, already have their jobs, they know they're gonna be lawyers or aviators when they go out in the world. Everyone else who's a ground contract, we actually take all of the MOSs and rank 'em top to bottom on what order we'd like them in. And then what they do is, midway through the class, they take the names of everybody in the company, and your grades, they feed it into a computer and it gives the top guy, number one in the class, his first choice. And then it goes down to 101 and then 201 and then it comes back up to two, 102, and 202. And that way you get a fair distribution of the good, mediocre, and poor lieutenants among all the MOSs. So you don't have infantry is loaded with the top performers out of the class and then something like 9:00aviation supply or admin is all the guys who couldn't hack it. That was interesting. And there were a couple prior service guys in my company who had been gung ho on a certain job. You know, "I've been infantry for so long, I'm gonna keep doing it." And some of them ended up not getting that job. They ended up being air supply officers or admin officers or whatever, so it was kind of shocking to them. There were some guys who had been infantry guys for forever and they were like, "I'm gonna be a comptroller, I'm done sleeping in the mud." Good on you, man, you've done your time in the muck, so you're gonna go do comptroller things, so good on 'em.

Evan: I don't know if I wanna talk about all that. There's a lot there that we should definitely discuss. I just want to back up for a moment, though.

Tymish: Sure.

Evan: You said New Jersey. Where were you, what city in New Jersey?

Tymish: Born in Summit, New Jersey. And then we lived in East Orange for a little while. And then we moved from East Orange to Randolph 10:00when I was three. My parents still live in Randolph in the same house.

Evan: Okay. I don't know if you said, when was that, that you were born?

Tymish: 1982.

Evan: Okay.

Tymish: I was born in 1982.

Evan: So am I, it was a good year (laughs).

Tymish: (laughs) Good vintage.

Evan: That's right. And you said you were an athlete? You were into sports and you were into Cub Scouts?

Tymish: Mmm Hmm.

Evan: Boy Scouts. Did you have other siblings?

Tymish: Yes, I have two younger sisters and a younger brother. They were also involved in scouting. We were all involved in scouting. We were all troop leaders and we all worked at summer camps. Actually, that one year right before I joined the Marines Corps, I was second in charge of the camp for the boys and my brother actually was one of the camp counselors. So he worked for me, it was really fun to be able to spend the summer with the two of us working together. It was pretty cool.

Evan: Mmm hmm, mmm hmm. And how did you get into that? Did you have your father was into it or?

Tymish: Yeah, my grandparents and my parents were all involved in scouting. Actually, my parents met on a scouting trip to Europe when they were younger. Yeah, a heavy influence from Lord Baden-Powell and the scouting community.

Evan: Ah, that's wonderful. So you went to school in Jersey. You were in sports, you were in scouts. Did you work in high school as well, or not?

Tymish: Not so much in high school, I did some random things in high school. I refinished a deck one summer for someone and you know, stuff like that. I didn't have my first real job until after I had graduated high school, my father asks me, "Hey do you want a car?" I go, yeah I do! And then he tells me, Mr. Garcia at the deli down the road needs some help down there. And I went, thanks. (laughing) So, trying to 12:00teach me responsibility in early life. And Mr. Garcia was the father of one of my fellow football players, so I worked with one of my friends from high school that summer between high school and college. I worked with him and we obviously caused more trouble than we got done, since we were friends. Yeah, that was my first job. And I worked same-same through college, I didn't work during the semester, but summers and holidays and stuff, I came home and I worked at a little family-owned butcher shop/catering business, I did that for a little over four and half years. And did it for a couple months after I graduated college while I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life.

Evan: So, this is approximately 2000 you graduate?

Tymish: I graduated high school in 2000, graduated from Rider University 2004. I didn't even think about the Marine Corps until about 2006, 13:00was kind of when I made the decision to do it. Went and saw a recruiter, kind of realized that I got some work to do insofar as getting in shape. One of the differences between boot camp and officer candidate school is, boot camp, they will make you a Marine by hook or by crook, officer candidate school, you need to want to be there, you need to kind of prove yourself. For instance, at the start of boot camp, you don't need to pass the Marine Corps physical fitness test. One of the first things you do at officer candidate school is run a PFT, and if you can't pass the PFT, if you can't run a first class PFT, you get 225 out of 300 points, they'll send you right home. So you need to show up ready to complete a first class PFT. So, that's kind of the difference.

Evan: I wanna talk about that, because that's so interesting. I'm having nightmares of trying to do pushups. (laughs) But before we get there, where did you say, what's the college name?

Tymish: Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.

Evan: Okay.

Tymish: It's right off of 206 between Princeton and Trenton.

Evan: Okay. And what did you go there for?

Tymish: Business management.

Evan: Okay. And then, was that something you knew going in? Is it something that kind of dawned while you were there?

Tymish: I knew I was gonna do business management when I applied. I was gonna do some kind of business stuff. I didn't know what exactly it was gonna be. But yeah, it wasn't like I was gonna be a liberal arts major or something like that, no. It was gonna be business of some sort or another.

Evan: Right. So then you graduate in 2004, approximately, you said?

Tymish: Mmm hmm, yep.

Evan: And then you do go to civilian sector for a little while?

Tymish: Mmm hmm.

Evan: And then you were talking about upstate New York. Where at in upstate New York, by the way?

Tymish: It's a little town called East Chatham, New York. It's actually right where the Mass Pike dumps into New York. If you look at a map, it's gonna be right were 90 and the throughway cross.

Evan: Okay. I ask, I go to the Adirondacks a lot.

Tymish: Yeah.

Evan: So, you get this urge of, I like Scouts more, I like being out in nature more. Had you had family in the military?

Tymish: My maternal grandfather had been a freedom fighter, partisan, terrorist, whatever you want to call him. They were partisans then, you know. If we were fighting them now, we'd say they were insurgents. But yeah, he fought the Soviets in Ukraine during the second world war.

Evan: Mmm hmm, mmm hmm.

Tymish: But he died before I was born of cancer so I never knew him, but I knew that was something that had been in my family and part of our family experience, I guess.

Evan: Mmm hmm. Was your family supportive of your decision to join the Marine Corps?

Tymish: At first they were like, you're gonna get your butt shot off or something like that. They were not very excited. But when I'm like, 16:00this is what I wanna do, then yeah, they were very, very supportive. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, they kinda saw that I wasn't happy doing what I was doing, that I wanted to do something a little bit more adventurous. So they came to terms with it, I guess is the right term.

Evan: Mmm hmm (laughs). And this was 2008 when you made this decision?

Tymish: 2006 was when I made the decision. It wasn't until late 2007, early 2008 that I finally got contracted and went off to OCS.

Evan: Okay. You talk about the adventure, were you nervous or were you excited? 'Cause I mean, you had been in college during 9-11. You saw what was happening in Iraq was kind of like, the surge is happening in 2007. So I mean, there's really escalation of violence going on in terms of what the Marine Corps' being required to do, or being asked to do.

Tymish: Sure, sure.

Evan: Is this something that was on your mind?

Tymish: I'll tell you honestly, I was more concerned or afraid of failing or screwing up than I was about this nebulous idea of getting 17:00hurt or getting killed. One of the things that really made me pick the Marine Corps over any of the other services was I was watching the push to Baghdad on TV. And this was before I'd actually kinda considered joining the military. But I was watching some footage, and there was a tank sitting under an overpass and he's hammering rounds downrange and you see four guys come into the shot and they're carrying a fifth guy on a stretcher. And the guy's kinda sitting up and you see him jerk back a few times and I thought he was taking rounds. I thought he'd gotten hit. As they kind of turn a little, you see that the guy on the stretcher is covering the other guys that are carrying him. So they're carrying him out on a stretcher and he's providing cover fire from the stretcher as they're carrying him out. And I'm like, that's harsh! That was pretty impressive. I was like, if I'm gonna do anything, those are the guys that I wanna be out there with. So that was kind of an inspiring moment.

Evan: Mmm hmm, mmm hmm. So you decide to join the Marine Corps and then where is OCS at?

Tymish: Officer candidate school is located in Quantico. It's in Marine Corps base Quantico. It's the southernmost tip of Marine Corps base Quantico. Actually the next door neighbor for OCS is HMX1, the president's helicopters. So there light there is right at the end of the runway, it's right next to OCS so every morning as we stood in line for chow, you saw the little light going for their runway.

Evan: Mmm. And how long was the OCS again?

Tymish: 10 weeks.

Evan: 10 weeks. And this is leadership training, that's what it's designed for?

Tymish: It's a weeding out process. It's a job interview, really. It used to be their informal slogan for officer candidate school is 19:00Attrition is the Mission. So they wanted to make sure they were only letting people through who were there for the right reasons. They didn't want folks who were looking for a benefit or whatever. They wanted people who wanted to lead Marines who wanted to be there for the right reasons.

Evan: And did you see that process happen? I mean, how many were in your platoon? And how many...

Tymish: Sure. I wanna say our platoon started with 60 folks. And we graduated forty-somethingish. But yeah, there were certainly folks who were sent home for any variety of reasons. From something as unfortunate as injuries to just couldn't adapt to the military lifestyle. They're were argumentative or compative or whatever. Part of the OCS process is, you assume leadership roles in your platoon. So, if I'm the candidate platoon commander, I have a candidate platoon sergeant and a guide and there's also a company candidate platoon commander and 20:00a company, Jesus Christ, I can't even say it anymore! A company candidate commander and then there's a platoon commander who's a candidate. So, every level of the leadership is mirrored. There's staff and a candidate. And then, as you go through that, the folks who are your superiors and your subordinates all write an evaluation of your skills as leader. Some folks just couldn't control their peers. You know, they got steamrolled by the platoon and they ended up showing that they couldn't lead folks. So a big part of it is kind of getting evaluated on your leadership capabilities. Trying to lead your peers when they really have no reason to follow you except for the fact that 21:00you're wearing the pins that day.

Evan: Mmm hmm.

Tymish: So you know, a lot of folks couldn't deal with that. They couldn't make people do what needed to be done or some people actually failed out academically. Some people physically couldn't cut the training, so they ended up going away.

Evan: It's kind of learning on your feet, right?

Tymish: Absolutely, yeah. Officer candidate school is a lot like a reality TV show. There's challenges, and there's two exercises called SULE one and two, Small Unit Leadership Exercise, where you take a squad size of about 13 folks and they're like, you're gonna run this course and at each station, a different candidate takes over the squad. And you guys have a mission that you need to accomplish and they tell you that you gotta write it out in the five paragraph order format. The infamous OSMEAC: orientation situation, mission, execution, 22:00admin-logistics, command & signal. You know, so you gotta write your little five paragraph order and they give you like five minutes to do it. And you have like, you know, fifteen minutes to execute. So, they wanna see that you're able to put your thoughts in this Marine Corps approved format of the OSMEAC. And then you go ahead and execute it. There's actually two kinds of mirrored exercises. There's SULE, which is that, and it's got a real tactical flavor to it, you know, you gotta do like a little patrol or you gotta go do something. And then there's LRC, which is the Leadership Reaction Course, which is the same kind of thing, but it's like an obstacle course. Like, hey, here's a water obstacle with some boards and barrel and you gotta get your squad across this water obstacle. So one of them is like Double Dare, the other one is actually like a little bit of tactical thinking type of exercises.

Evan: So you have those type of scenarios, but then you said also about academically. So you have classrooms as well?

Tymish: Yes, OCS does include classroom time. There's classes, some of it's military studies type of things, hey this is the actual structure of the Marine Corps. You know, what does a platoon consist of, who are the people in a platoon, here are some basic military tactics, you know, patrolling and technical and tactical proficiency type of things. History of the Marine Corps. Basic stuff about what are the characteristics of the M16, lightweight magazine fit, air cooled, shoulder fired, gas operated. I'm missing a few in there, it's LMGAS is the acronym. But stuff like that, that's basic military knowledge. That yes, you would otherwise be taught at boot camp and so the academic portion of officer candidate school is not rigorous, it's not difficult, but when you don't have a lot of free time, you're 24:00running around from one event to the next to the next, and when you're not going from event to event, then you need to be squaring away your squad bay, cleaning your rifle, and doing whatever else that needs to be done to maintain yourself. It does get a little bit challenging. At OCS there's not a lot of, hey you're screwed up, we're gonna make you do pushups till you fall over and die. It's, hey you screwed up, give me a 300 word essay on why time hacks are important or accountability of your equipment, which doesn't sound like big deal, but when you don't have any time at all to do it, then yeah, it is big (laughs). You know, those little 300 word essays end up piling up pretty quick. (laughing)

Evan: You hear stories about basic training, I know this is different than basic training, but there's often a transformation that happens in basic training, where it seems really difficult, people don't like it, and then by the time they leave basic training, they love basic 25:00training. They had so much fun, they like working out, they like the organization. Did you find a similar experience? Did OCS become enjoyable, or was it always enjoyable?

Tymish: I don't think anybody enjoys OCS. No, I don't think anybody enjoys it. I think that when you look back on it with folks you were there with, you remember some things fondly like, hey that was kind of funny when that happened or it seems kind of funny and absurd looking back at it, but I don't think anyone really enjoys OCS. Mostly because there is that constant specter of, you get injured, you're going home and you're going to have to do it all over again. In boot camp, if you get hurt, they'll cycle you back into another platoon approximately where you left off training, where if you get hurt at OCS, you go home and you gotta go through the entire program again. They don't let you show up week six and pick up training. You're gonna go with a blank slate from day one with a whole fresh group of guys. 26:00I think that element of stress makes it a little bit more difficult to look at it fondly. I think basic school has a little bit more of that. Basic school you actually get a little bit more free time, you're treated more like a human, less like a recruit. I think that has a little bit more nostalgia. I mean, there's still some folks who can't stand Quantico just because that's where the basic training environments are. I think basic school has a little bit more of that kind of, the schoolhouse I remember fondly, more so than OCS.

Evan: Mmm hmm, mmm hmm. (laughs) You said the basic school, so you graduate OCS after 10 weeks. That's when you receive your 2nd lieutenant?

Tymish: Yep, that's when you commission.

Evan: Okay. And your parents came down for that, you said?

Tymish: Yep, yeah, I had a whole bunch of friends and family came down. Actually the graduation ceremony from officer candidate school is separate from the commissioning ceremony because there are several different components of officer candidate school. There's some folks who 27:00are there for, what they call the PLC platoon leader course, which is, you go for a shortened period over two summers while you're in college, and then you get commissioned when you graduate. So some folks complete OCS and don't pin on. They go back to school until they've graduated and at that point they'll have a commissioning ceremony at home from either their selection officer or someone back home, an ROTC commander or someone will pin them on after they've graduated college. The program I went through was OCC, officer candidate course, which means that you're gonna do straight through, and then you're gonna get commissioned right after and go to basic school. You complete that as either someone who is coming into the Marine Corps already with a degree or someone who has just graduated college and then is going to 28:00program.

Evan: Mmm hmm, mmm hmm. And basic school is on the same base?

Tymish: Yeah, so I95 bisects Marine Corps base Quantico. The eastern side is kinda the administrative side of the base. That's where you have all of the administrative part, the airfield, HMX1, officer candidate school is over there. There's a small woodland training area there, it's not as extensive. The other side, the west side of I95, there's Camp Barrett, which is the actual facility of basic school. And then it's training areas. It's tank trails, land nav courses, the FBI academy is squirreled away in the back corner there. That is the training side of the base. Yeah, so they're on the same installation, but they are several miles apart. And I don't recall ever seeing a candidate while I was at basic school because we were over there and we had the ability to go off base when we felt like it. Not when we 29:00felt like it, but once training was complete for the day or for the weekend, you know, we got to go off and do our thing.

Evan: Okay. And this was approximately six months long?

Tymish: Basic school is six months long, yes.

Evan: And similar size platoon size element?

Tymish: So basic school, they run a 300 lieutenant company or 300 officers. Lawyers will finish law school and then go to basic school. So they OSC, commission, law school, and then you come to basic school. So they show up as captains, which has got to be difficult, showing up as a captain with a bunch of lieutenants learning all the same stuff. But yeah, it was 300 officers organized into six 50 person platoons.

Evan: Mmm Hmm. And this is, you said earlier, training to the infantry?

Tymish: Yep, provisional infantry platoon commander training essentially. So you go through everything from some squad sized tactics to 30:00squad reinforced tactics to platoon sized tactics. And then there's three big field exercises, FEX one through three. And each one is increasing complexity and size. So the first one is just a squad sized exercise, so everyone goes through and gets to play as a squad leader. And then you go to a squad reinforced, so a squad with a machine gun section, so you learn some machine gun tactics. And then you go to a platoon sized element and you do offensive and defensive stuff. They've been doing this for a long time so it's very cleverly laid out. So there's three platoons on the offense, three platoons on the defense. So there's always someone out there in the woods that you're trying to hunt down and get.

Evan: Mmm hmm.

Tymish: So you do all that, there's also a patrolling package, patrol FEX. There's also a convoy field exercise just 'cause of the nature 31:00of the current conflicts. So there was a convoy exercise and then there was military operations in urban terrain, MOUT training. So you get a week of that, where half of the company is in the little MOUT town and we're all holed up and they gotta come attack us. And then we all get back up and come back to life and switch sides, and we attack and they defend. Yeah, it's a broad range of stuff. At the very tail end of the class you talk about amphibious operations. One of the things they were really stressing at is getting back to our naval origins as Marines. So we did do, they called is AMFEX, the amphibious exercise, which was really us going to Little Creek amphibious base, and we got to tour all of the equipment, we spent one night on an amphib, the USS Wasp, I believe LHD2 I think. But we spent one night on the ship to 32:00kinda get a sense of, all right, this is what the ship looks like, this is the facilities, this is how much space you get, you know. There was a call for firing exercise, which they actually have a, I think it's a platoon sized element of cannons at basic school. And their only purpose in life is to shoot in support of lieutenants learning how to be FOs. So you did some stuff on the computer and then you went out there and you got to play FO with real... My whole time in the fleet, I worked with the new M777 lightweight Howitzer. At basic school was the one and only time that I ever saw a MIC 198, the old 155mm Howitzer. So that was the one time I ever saw the one niner eights. They 33:00were all being phased out as I was coming into the fleet, so we did get to see the old 198s shoot, so that was kinda cool.

Evan: Mmm hmm, mmm hmm. Did you choose this as a duty station or was that just assigned?

Tymish: From what I remember, I think my order of preference was Okinawa, Hawaii, and then east coast, west coast. And I'm really glad that I got Hawaii rather than Okinawa because Okinawa, they get the short end of the stick even more. 12th Marine Regiment headquarters is in Okinawa, but they are kind of a shell organization. They don't have firing batteries or battalions attached to them. There's a program called UDP, Unit Deployment Program, where an east coast, a west coast, and a Hawaii battery, at the same time ostensibly, go out to Okinawa and they form a provisional battalion. And then they go out and do exercises and stuff. The thought process behind that is, it's 34:00cheaper to send Marines out there for six months at a time and pin C-Service deployment ribbon on them, as opposed to moving whole families out there. 'Cause it's really expensive to move families out there. So that program kinda got pulled back a little bit because of the war. We were one of the first ones to turn it back on. That was my first deployment, was Okinawa Japan. So that was interesting (laughs). We were the first ones to do that in awhile, so some of the equipment had been in storage for awhile so there were some struggles with bringing equipment out of essentially mothballs and getting them up to spec.

Evan: Mmm hmm. So you're stationed in Hawaii and then you go to Okinawa for six months, is that right?

Tymish: It was supposed to be six months, and then they decided that fresh battalion 12th Marines was going to deploy to Afghanistan, so 35:00they pulled us back after four months so we could start spinning up to go to Afghanistan. So I knew, when I was still in artillery school, that were gonna go on the UDP to Okinawa. We knew that already. So when I got there in October, we were starting to spin up to get ready. We had one firing exercise we were gonna do out on the Big Island. We were gonna come back and then we're gonna pack up and go to Hawaii. And that was like, in March, yeah it was March, 'cause I celebrated my birthday in Okinawa. So we went out there in March, we were out there for the four months, we did one firing exercise in like June or July. Okinawa, another place where we're not allowed to shoot our artillery. You have an artillery regiment stationed on-island, can't shoot artillery. So what the Japanese government agreed to is, they would pay for the relocation of the artillery for three shoots a year so we could train. So, bought and paid for by the government of 36:00Japan, they shipped all of our guns and our equipment to Hokkaido, all the way up north, and we went to this place called Yausubetsu Maneuver Area. That was the Japanese ground assault defense force's training area out there. And we spent a couple of weeks out there, shooting our cannons at Yausubetsu. And immediately when we came back from Yausubetsu, they told us, hey we're cutting you short, you're coming home, you're gonna deploy to Afghanistan. So we turned around and we came home. It was early August, we came home early August, and they gave us a little bit of leave, and we were gonna go on another firing exercise in like Octoberovember, and then in January, and then as soon as we came back from Christmas we were gonna go to Enhanced Mahave Viper, which is the predeployment exercise for everyone going to 37:00Afghanistan, then we're gonna deploy in March, I think it was March, to Afghanistan.

Evan: Where's Viper at?

Tymish: Enhanced Mohave Viper happens at Twentynine Palms, California in the middle of the Mohave desert. Everybody who goes to Afghanistan goes through that. It's an interesting exercise, I don't think they do it anymore, they call it something else now. It's still a big combined arms exercise that they run frequently, but they don't call it Enhanced Mohave Viper anymore I don't think. The challenge for an artillery unit, well any support unit, is that Enhanced Mohave Viper is designed to prepare an infantry unit for deployment to Afghanistan. So they brought us out there so we could do some of the ancillary stuff. So there's IED training that happens. There's additional training that happens out there, but when an artillery unit rolls up for EMV, they're expected to be prepared to fire. Again, customer service, I'm 38:00supporting the maneuver commander. And that's what they expect you to do, to support the maneuver commander. So he's gonna do his stuff, you just happen to be shooting. Oh, by the way, we'll give you the IED training and some language training, there's some role players that you'll interact with and stuff. So that part of the training we got same as the infantry men, but for the maneuver part of it, it was designed for the maneuver element to be able to exercise their skillset.

Evan: Mmm. And how long is that?

Tymish: It was a little over a month by the time we got out there. So the challenge for us is that we couldn't bring much of our own equipment. We fell in on, I believe it's called the EEP, the Exercise Equipment Pool. So we had to fall in on a bunch of equipment which we weren't familiar with, didn't know the status of, so we had to fall in on it, kinda get it all pulled together and ready. And then we went 39:00out there and we did our exercise. And that was January, in the middle of the high desert. It was cold, I'm surprised how cold it was. (laughs) It was not pleasant. Spent almost five years on active duty. I never once went on a warm weather field exercise. Never once, all of our field exercises up there, you know once you get up on the volcano, it's cold up there. I never once, until I went out to the reserves, but yeah, the high desert in the middle of January is bad. I remember at one point someone's chili froze to their spoon as they were serving it. So that was kinda interesting.

Evan: Is this 2011?

Tymish: 2010.

Evan: 2010, January?

Tymish: Yeah, January 2010. And then we went to Afghanistan. No, no, no. Yeah, you're right. So I got there in 2009, so 2010 was the 40:00Okinawa deployment, so 2011, yeah 2011.

Evan: And then you deployed to Afghanistan, where at?

Tymish: We were in a place called Helmand Province, Fiddler's Green, right outside of a city called Marjah. This was after the big battle of Marjah, so we came in after that. Actually, funny story, when we were going to Afghanistan, they flew us KBAY, Koneohe Bay to Shannon Ireland. And then were supposed to go Shannon Ireland to Manas Air Base, we were gonna get off of our commercial aircraft, board a C17 in Manas, and then fly in with C17 to Camp Leatherneck, Camp Bastion, whatever they call it nowadays. So we land in Shannon Ireland, aircraft full of Marines, we hand carried our weapons, they put a zip tie through the ejection port, but we hand carried our weapons, we get off the plane in Shannon and we're kinda hanging around. You're not allowed to drink, all right noted thanks. In Ireland, can't drink Guinness, got 41:00it. So we're there and we're just waiting and waiting and waiting. Eventually someone comes out and tell us, they're like, hey you guys might be here awhile. The plane malfunctioned, a door refused to close or something like that. So we're like, oh great. So we wait like eight hours at the airport and they're like okay, we got permission to let you out of the airport. 'Cause apparently there's a law that uniformed foreign military aren't allowed in Ireland. So they're like, we got permission, we're gonna take you to hotels and you're gonna stay there until we get the aircraft fixed. Okay, this is part midnight, so we roll into this little country hotel in Ireland, right outside Shannon, and it's myself, there's another lieutenant, and then all the enlisted Marines. I think they broke us out by platoon. So I'm standing there at the desk, the Marines are getting their keys, and this young lance corporal runs up to me, "Sir, sir, Osmama Bin Laden's dead! We're not going to Afghanistan!" I'm like, you're obviously an idiot, get away from me. Then another Marine come up, "Sir, 42:00Osama Bin Laden's dead, are we still going?" I'm like, what are you talking about? I turn the TV on in the bar, sure enough, Delta had schwacked Osama Bin Laden the night were supposed to fly into Manas. So, you know, all the Marines are like, Yeah, we're not going, we're going home, beer for everyone! I'm like, no, no, the war's not over because they killed Osama Bin Laden. Go to your room, you're still not allowed to drink beer. I'll see you guys at breakfast. So, you know, it was this whole thing where we didn't have our cell phones 'cause we were going to Afghanistan. We didn't have cell phones, so we had like one TV there at the bar. The whole battery's climbing over each other to watch the TV. We were there for a couple of days, and they fixed the plane, and they flew us out to Manas. And we went on to our deployment in Afghanistan.

Evan: Mmm (laughs). Helmand Province, is that how you say it, Helmand?

Tymish: Helmand, yep.

Evan: Helmand, this is in Easter Afghanistan?

Tymish: Southern.

Evan: Southern.

Tymish: Southern.

Evan: Okay, this is a pretty volatile area?

Tymish: Yeah, Helmand was real bad. There was a big battle for Marjah before we got in there. Actually, the fire base that were in, Firebase Fiddler's Green, was built for the push into Marjah. I believe it was Operation Strike of the Sword, was what they called it. That was a really big battle before we got there. It had been getting better as we got there, so yeah, it was better when we were there than it had been.

Evan: Mmm hmm. And am I correct in thinking that this was primarily a Marine Corps area?

Tymish: Yep, mmm hmm, yep, Helmand was overall only Marines.

Evan: And was the training, I mean this is something they talk about. It's always difficult as battlefields are fluid and everything, tactics are always changing. Was the preparation that you received at Viper, did it prepare you for what you experienced in Afghanistan?

Tymish: Yes and no, there were some aspects of it that were very, very helpful. Kind of the IED training is always good. That is something 44:00that has been a huge consideration, so I think the IED training was very worthwhile. So, when we actually got to Afghanistan, we weren't interacting a lot with the locals. We were working with an Afghani national army unit. So, we were talking with their soldiers. So the kind of vocabulary and language training that we'd gotten had been kind of like interacting with people and civil affairs type of stuff. You know, hindsight being 20-20, what would've been more helpful is some kind of military technical language. But yes, there's a lot of value in Enhanced Mohave Viper. A lot of the Marines that work in Enhanced Mohave Viper and the coyotes, which is the TTCD, Tactical Training 45:00Exercise Control Group, their call sign is coyote. Coyote is all folks who have been out there, so they know you're getting a lot from their experience. I think that the war had been going on for a while and there was a large body of material that we could access. We had all scrounged up copies of The Bear Went Over the Mountain, which is the soviet memoirs and scenarios that had played out. So we had a couple of copies of that floating around. So we were going through that. The other thing we got our paws on was, we found some copies of The Other Side of the Mountain, which is the Afghani notes, some of the stories from their commanders about what they'd done. So we were going through that kind of stuff, seeing what they'd seen, what was going on. By the time that we were there, the conflict had really kinda 46:00established itself and settled down to the point where we had mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles. The driving of humvees outside of bases was not authorized. We had one humvee in our battery that was modified to have a tool kit on the back of it. So it was a two passenger humvee with this big toolkit siting on the back of it. Not authorized to drive the damn thing, so they put it on a flatbed and they towed it around behind one of our armored trucks. Because we were not authorized the use of the humvees. That's the point that I was in Afghanistan. So the M-ATVs, the mine Resistant All-Terrain Vehicles, were in use instead of humvees. All of the MTVR medium tactical vehicle replacements, the seven-tons that the Marine Corps uses as its prime mover, all of those were up-armored. They had the big turtle 47:00backs on the back for troops to ride in. So they had gone heavy, for lack of a better term. So it was pretty well established what were supposed to be doing out there.

Evan: Mmm hmm, mmm hmm. And your primary mission, you said then, there's a transition happening at this time, right? America's trying to train Afghan forces to take the fight to the Taliban.

Tymish: Yes, so our battery did something kinda cool. Typically, a normal artillery battery is organized into two platoons, a guns platoon and a headquarters platoon. Guns platoon is the six gun sections and then headquarters platoon is everyone else, cooks, bakers, candlestick makers. In reality, in artillery battery, it's four observers, the fire direction center, motor transport, communications, and whoever else may be attached to us. We were given the mission that we were gonna build two three-gun firing platoons and each one was gonna carry out a 48:00totally separate mission. 2nd Platoon was going to be mobile, they were gonna chase light armored recon around the desert and provide fire support for them whenever they needed. So that was their mission. My platoon was gonna be hanging out in a place called Fiddler's Green, which was the fire base that had coverage of Marjah. So our guns were the ones that could reach Marjah. And we were gonna be stationary for the whole deployment. We were gonna hang out there and we were gonna provide fire support for anyone in our area of operations who needed it. We were co-located with the battalion headquarters battery. So there was gonna be a heavy command presence. But the way the base was designed, it looked kinda like a barbell. So you had one part of it which was the command area. You had the battalion command post, there was a landing zone, there was a motor pool for the battalion, and all the stuff down there. Then there was this long berm, a road with two 49:00berms on either side of it, and then there was the firing point was down here. The intent was that you weren't gonna have the guns swinging directly overhead of personnel and stuff. So it was kinda like this barbell type thing. When we got to Afghanistan, that's what we were gonna do. We were gonna sit on our butts and just shoot the guns and provide security for ourselves, we weren't really gonna be going anywhere. Shortly after that, they determined we were gonna start handing off. So it was decided that the area between the two was gonna get bermed in and then they were gonna put an Afghan National Army battalion in there. And that was gonna be their camp and they were gonna be transitioning to taking over the area and we were gonna train 'em. So we got this company and their organization was different than ours, So it was technically an infantry company with an artillery battery as part of it. Excuse me, an infantry battalion with an artillery 50:00battery as part of it. So they had, I want to say, eight soviet made 122s, I think they were, Howitzers. And we were told, hey, this is gonna be your thing. So at the time, it was myself, the battery executive officer, and one other lieutenant. We were the only officers in the firing battery in the platoon. The battery commander was with the other platoon, the first sergeant was with the other platoon. So it was essentially my platoon and the executive officer. And, you know, we were doing our thing. I raised me hand, I'm like, hey why not, let's do this, I'll take charge of it. So my platoon sergeant and I really kind of dove into it. We were like, we're gonna do this, we're gonna train these guys. And when we had been spinning up, when we'd been getting ready, they'd given us kind of some broad brush stroke talk of how to work with the Afghanis. And it was kind of this whole Lawrence of Arabia. It's better for them to do it their way, rather 51:00than you trying to do it perfectly your way. So it was, they needed to be invested in it. When I was at Fort Sill, our gunnery instructor had done kind of a similar thing. He had done some civil affairs stuff, he had been embedded with an Iraqi unit. And he had given us a whole bunch of info. He had shown us a slideshow of the stuff he experienced and talked to us, let us interrogate him about what it was like working with these other militaries. That was really helpful and kinda put my brain in the right place and kinda doing some expectations management. So these guys showed up and we had some training materials that were in Russian. They'd given us Russian manuals for the equipment. So we had some Russian manuals. I speak Ukrainian, okay, I can muddle through some of this stuff. We had some training 52:00materials that were in Dari with some bad English translation. And then there were Tarjamans, interpreters, embedded with our headquarters unit. But we were told that we are not the priority. The entry control point gets priority, any patrolling after that. And then if there's time, they'll come and help you guys out with training. So it was kind of a struggle being low man on the totem pole when it came to language support, but we knew what we needed to do insofar as building the relationship before anything else. So it wasn't even gonna be like, all right, we're gonna train every day. Two or three days a week we'd go over there like six o' clock and drink tea with them. And that was it, we'd just go over there, and we'd hang out and drink tea. Extremely sugary tea. We'd trade cigarettes with them. They loved american cigarettes and after having one or two of theirs, I can see why. They love French fries. I don't know why, but they love French 53:00fries. And actually, their French fries are really good. They had a little propane burner, they put a pot of oil on it, and they'd make up some French fries, and we'd sit there and eat French fries with 'em. Very good French fries. It was building the relationship with 'em, just hanging out with them a little bit before we tried training them. They invited us over to dinner a couple of times. They had the ability to go out in town and buy stuff from the markets, so they made like a rice pilaf with beans and some sort of stew with a goat. We'd go over there and, I'll be honest, their food was better than ours any day of the week. Our cooks did what they could with the prepackaged and the tray rats and whatnot, but we went over there for fresh food. And we invited them over to our camp and we all sat around the table. And their commander and our commander and their platoon commanders and I hung out. We kinda talked and started building that relationship. 54:00We went over there a couple times for no other reason than to just hang out and watch TV with 'em. We watched some kind of movies in, I think they were in Chinese, low production quality stuff, and they got really excited about it. It's like the Mongol horde's attacking when there's a picture of a cannon going off and they all got really excited like, that's us, that's us! So some of it was just relationship building. Just going over there and talking with 'em and admiring their collection of pigeons. They kept kept pigeons in their tents. It was just building that relationship with' em and kind of letting them know that we were there for them. And then eventually they saw the value in having us train them. So they would come down to our position and we'd mess with some of the equipment and we'd go to their position and they would work with the guns. Their training was kind of like something out of the 1800s 'cause it almost looked like 55:00something out of a Civil War manual or something. 'Cause they would get online, they would count off like, "gunner number one, gunner number two, section chief." And then they would run at the cannon, get in position, and then they would do the drill. So it was kind of a formulaic, close order drill oriented kind of thing rather than what we would do. When we look at our training standards, you would set up the cannon from, it's hooked onto the truck and the truck is moving. And you would evaluate the battery from the minute the last truck stops moving to the battery being ready to shoot. So for that, it was a little bit more schoolhouse kind of, they didn't really have a tactical mindset to what they were doing with their guns.

Evan: Mmm hmm.

Tymish: When we first got there, the expectation was made clear that these guys are not gonna shoot. They don't have ammo, you're probably 56:00not gonna see these guns fire, but do what you can with 'em. And then after a couple of months, they said, hey you're gonna take these guys out and you guys are gonna shoot. So that kinda changed the pace of what we wanted to do. It was kinda like, okay, we need to take this seriously. We're gonna shoot. You know, so that kinda changed the thought process on what the training was gonna be like.

Evan: Sorry to interrupt. Do you think overall, obviously Afghanistan is still going on the longest war in American history, at least formal war. Was it affective, what you were doing? Could you explain maybe, if it wasn't effective, what the shortfalls are, or the pitfalls in terms of a battle...

Tymish: So, certainly I felt what we were doing was effective. We were training the Afghan National Army. You know, they were better off when we left than before we met them. I don't really know how it went from there. It's kind of fragile thing, you know. It could've been 57:00really easy for that knowledge and the training, all the work that we went to, to kinda go away if the next folks that fell in on that position didn't keep it up. So it coulda kinda gone either way. It's tough to say, you know. I think we made a difference. I think that, that unit was better off from what we taught them. I think that they kinda took it a little bit more seriously. They kinda understood what was going on and what we were there to do to help. I know there were instances of other countries that had treated the Afghanis differently. They had kind of had a contemptuous or kind of a dismissive attitude of the ANA. And they had, had green on blue incidents 58:00where the Afghanis had killed some folks. We didn't have any incidents like that, but I think letting them know that we were there to help them out helped a lot.

Evan: Mmm Hmm, mmm hmm. And this is a six month deployment for the Marine Corps?

Tymish: Yep.

Evan: Approximately?

Tymish: Mmm hmm, yeah. Yeah, we went out there, yeah it was six months.

Evan: So you end up leaving there and where do you go after that?

Tymish: Came home from Afghanistan, came back to Hawaii, and at that point I had about a year left on my contract. I didn't know if I was gonna stay in or not. But at that point I moved to the fire support section of the battalion. And I was doing essentially forward observing 59:00and fire support planning with the battalion headquarters section. So we did one exercise in the spring after we came back. And then, that summer, I went on a Rim of the Pacific exercise, which was cool. It's essentially, they get together a whole bunch of countries around the Pacific Rim, they put together a task force, and they pretend to invade Hawaii. So it was interesting because we did ship board stuff. Like they'd been saying for years, they want to get back to their amphibious roots, so we put an artillery battery on a ship and we carried it around and then deployed it. We were part of the task force headquarters so we were there advising the colonel on fire support matters, we were supposed to control fires from the amphib, from the ship. We were supposed to do clearance of fires and coordinate between, okay destroyers are gonna be shooting here, cannons are gonna be shooting here, there's air here, and kind of doing all the math to make sure, 60:00you know, aircraft and bullet aren't occupying the same space at the same time. Aviators get really, really excited when you tell them big sky, little bullet. They don't like that, they want to be told where the bullet's gonna be. And we do that, we tell 'em stay above, stay below. When you tell them stay below, which means they're gonna be flying under the trajectory of the cannon, they go, "what?" Yep, I can do that. (Evan laughs) Tough for fixed wing, easy for rotary wing. Yeah, so that was an interesting exercise. You know, working with people of all different countries. We worked with the Australians quite a bit, they were very proficient. The Canadians were involved as well. And then there were smaller elements, everyone from the Tongans to the Koreans to the Russians. So, it was interesting.

Evan: And this is all in Hawaii? This is your last year?

Tymish: Yep.

Evan: And this big exercise. And then what do you do after that? When your year's up?

Tymish: Yeah, so at that point I was coming up on three years and I was gonna be kinda three years on Hawaii with 112. And at that point I 61:00was trying to figure out if I was gonna stay in. And they do a process called career designation where they look at everyone who has a certain amount of time in the active duty, and essentially it's like a promotion board, they figure out who they want to offer the opportunity to stay in. I want to say, out of the 21 lieutenants in my unit, nine of them were offered the opportunity to keep playing. And I was not one of them. So I think it was like Labor Day that I found out that I wasn't going to career designate and my end of active service was like November 1st. (laughing) So I'm like, ah crap, gotta figure out what I wanna do. So I ended up going through the exiting active duty, they have program called Taps and Tams and it's kinda like, what do you wanna do, how do you get a job, and how do you 62:00translate what you've been doing on the active duty to what you're gonna do out in the world.

Evan: Mmm hmm.

Tymish: Went through that program, got out, didn't know what I was gonna do, came home, and (laughs) I came home like a week before Hurricane Sandy. And then the power went out at my parents' house, so I was driving in to Morristown every day for a week to go to the bar so I could get WiFi so I could start sending out resumes. So I got hired on with Home Depot. About two months from when I got out I started in January of 2012 with Home Depot. It was interesting. I started with Home Depot in the supply chain in Massachusets, moved out there for the job, it was the right job with the right company in the wrong place. So I moved out there and it was, I'll be honest, it was a tough transition. You know, going from, hey things are gonna happen. I was told more than once, you can't treat these people like Marines. So 63:00there was a little bit of a struggle trying to kinda turn it off, especially 'cause I was still doing some Reserve stuff at the time. I was still working with the reserve battery, one weekend a month, two weeks a year. So I was still out there doing Marine things, then trying to come back and manage the workforce at Home Depot. It was a struggle, it wasn't easy to turn it off or to kinda back off my expectations a little bit. Like, hey I told you to do this, there are legal repercussions to not doing what I tell you to do. That's no longer true. So it's tough to back off from that.

Evan: Mmm hmm, mmm hmm. Yeah, I imagine. So you're at Home Depot, then you leave Home Depot?

Tymish: Still at Home Depot.

Evan: Still at Home Depot.

Tymish: Still at Home Depot. I've been with Home Depot since I got out of the Marine Corps. About almost two years ago, I transferred down 64:00here to the facility in Breinigsville Pennsylvania just because Pennsylvania is wonderful. I love the Lehigh Valley, it's beautiful. I didn't really like Massachusets all that much so I moved down here and still with Home Depot. I decided that I was gonna use my GI Bill. That was part of the impetus to get me out of Massachusets was, if I start applying for MBA programs, that means I'm there for another three years.

Evan: Mmm hmm.

Tymish: I didn't want to be there for another three years so I figure, I'll move and I'll start applying for MBA programs. So I moved down here, applied for Lehigh. I would say that if it had not been for my time in the Marine Corps, I would not be working for Home Depot. Home Depot does a very good job of hiring on veterans, especially the building that I'm at now here in Breinigsville. I wanna say, probably 50% of our leadership team is veterans. I actually have a gentleman I work with who was in my basic school class. I'm walking through the 65:00building one day and he's standing, I'm like, hey you look familiar, what branch were you in? He's like, "You look familiar, what branch were you in?" Come to find out that he and I were in the same basic school class. He was there to interview. I don't think I would be with Home Depot, in the position I am, if it hadn't been for the Marine Corps. And I know I wouldn't be going to Lehigh if it wasn't for the Marine Corps. The GI Bill is a terrific benefit. I definitely wouldn't be doing it if I didn't have the GI Bill behind me.

Evan: Mmm hmm, mmm hmm. Well, I think that kind of...

Tymish: Brings it full circle!

Evan: It does bring it full circle and we're out of time, but is there anything that you would like to say? You know, thoughts we didn't touch upon? Or anything you want to say about your wartime experience, your military service, that we haven't discussed or anything you 66:00want to share?

Tymish: I could tell all kinds of stories. (Evan laughs) I'm glad I did it. I've never been happier than when I was on active duty and doing Marine things. It was terrific, you got to do all kinds of crazy stuff, went all kinds of crazy places. It puts you next to, and gets you to understand, folks from so many different walks of life. More so than anything else. I'm gonna sound like a recruiting commercial when I talk about this, and that's not what it's supposed to be. When we were about to go Okinawa, the division CG decided that the officers in the division didn't know their Marines, we don't know 'em well enough, we're not good leaders. And we were mandated that you were gonna get to know your Marines. So we had all of our Marines write their autobiographies. And I told 'em, I'm like, here's my 67:00guidance, write the autobiography, put in there what you feel comfortable putting in there. Don't put anything you're not comfortable with. And make sure it's tight. I've got terrible handwriting, I'm not gonna read yours. So I got this binder full of autobiographies from my platoon sergeant. And I'm going through 'em. I had, I wanna to say it was something like 59 Marines at the time. One of them wrote a story like, I went to college, I got bored, I didn't like it, so I signed up. Every other one of them, had some sort of crappy home situation they came from. My parents threw me out of the house 'cause I was dating a black girl. I was getting beat up at home, I grew up in poverty. Parents were addicted to drugs and I didn't want to end up that way. Suicide here, abuse there. Not a one of them out of the entire unit had a conventional parents, dog, 2.5 kids, white picket fence. And these folks, I slept soundly in a foreign country, with these guys 68:00holding machine guns, because I trusted these guys, because the Marine Corps made them great Americans. You know, maybe they were great Americans before and we just didn't know it. What the military did for these folks, and I can only imagine where they would've been if they hadn't joined the Marine Corps. But, it's amazing what an organization like the Marine Corps, the values that organization has, what it can do to change people. Reading through their little biographies, their autobiographies, and seeing what they were doing and what they were capable of, is amazing. We had one kid who, they called him Meathead, he was a state wrestling champ for New York, and he described himself 69:00as an idiot, said he wasn't a really smart guy. And then we showed him gunnery, and showed him, hey do this math and you can make this big gun go boom. And all of a sudden, the kid took to math like he'd been raised by Pythagoras. No one ever made it interesting to him. All of a sudden, you put an explosion at the end of the thing, and the kid, he wasn't an idiot, he was a real smart guy, he had just never been interested by anything that school had to offer for him. I'm kinda curious, what would it have been like if someone had been able to interest him in any of his school subjects rather than, he's Meathead, don't worry about him, you know, he's gonna go do something.

Evan: Mmm hmm, mmm hmm.

Tymish: So again, I couldn't be happier that I did it and it was an amazing experience.