Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
5:49 | Montana boy Mike Burke stepped off the plane in Georgia and thought he was going to die. The heat and humidity were unbelievable. He was bound for basic training at Fort Benning, where he had a contract for basic and Airborne school. But his sight was set beyond that.
Keywords : Mike Burke Fort Benning basic training heat drill sergeant Airborne School Ranger Ranger Indoctrination Program (RIP) buddy system
It was a great homecoming for Mike Burke after his Afghanistan tour. He went right back to hard training and, he didn't know it yet, but the next deployment would be to Iraq. The weeks before Saddam was deposed were chaotic but then the victors basked in the appreciation of the Iraqis, at least for a while. (Caution: strong language)
It was chaos. There was no standardization of equipment between the Army, the Marines and Special Ops as Operation Iraqi Freedom unfolded. The outcome was inevitable, though, and Saddam was toppled. Mike Burke recalls his unit's involvement in the Jessica Lynch rescue, and "capturing" a high ranking Ba'ath official only to get a big surprise.
We gave them a taste of freedom. Mike Burke wants all veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq to be proud they had a hand in that. Now it's up to those folks to decide if they want freedom bad enough to fight for it.
When Mike Burke was a teenager, he was at a kegger when he observed two 20 year olds ogling the high school girls and messing with the younger boys. It was an epiphany. The military became a clear path forward.
When you get to the Ranger Regiment, you have to prove yourself as a private before you can progress to Ranger School. Mike Burke just happened to catch the eye of the platoon sergeant and was catapulted ahead of others to go for it. (Caution: strong language)
In Ranger School, you can get peer reviewed out by vote of the others in your training unit. In Mike Burke's unit, all the other guys were officers who all knew each other. He was about to get the shaft.
Mike Burke made it through Ranger School and became a member of the Ranger Regiment. His battalion was on a training exercise in Germany when the startling news of the 9/11 attacks reached them. They were ready to ditch the training and go to war but that's not how it went.
When Mike Burke heard about another Ranger unit jumping into Afghanistan in 2002, they figured that was it. They'd missed the war. That proved to be very wrong and, later that year, they were there as well.
