Desert Rat Testament

Host Mark Schauer talks with Col. John Nelson, a tanker and former product manager for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle who served as commander of U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground from June 29, 2023 to June 11, 2026. Nelson followed his service at Yuma Proving Ground by assuming command of White Sands Missile Range, a fellow Army Test and Evaluation Command subordinate.

Host Mark Schauer talks with Jerry Mayer, who grew up as an Army brat but served in the Navy from 1965 to 1986. He worked as a civilian at Naval Air Facility El Centro for 13 years before working at U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground from 2009 to 2021.

Host Mark Schauer talks with Lt. Col. (ret.) Robert Rutledge, a retired Marine who served in the infantry from 1968 to 1970 and as an officer from 1975 to 2002. A Vietnam Veteran and Purple Heart recipient, after retiring from active duty he was a civilian pilot at U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground from 2002 to 2015. He has spent decades volunteering with local community groups such as the Caballeros...

Host Mark Schauer talks with Chief Warrant Officer 4 (ret.) Jay Stokes, a Green Beret who served in uniform from 1974 to 1998 and was instrumental in relocating the U.S. Military Freefall School to Yuma Proving Ground in the 1990s. In retirement, he set the world record for most parachute jumps in 24 hours in 2006. A former president of the U.S. Parachute Association, he was inducted into the Inte...

Host Mark Schauer talks with Gary Magrino, who while on active duty served as transportation officer for U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground from 1982 to 1985. He and his wife loved the Yuma community so much they stayed in town, where he became prominent in the local business community. He founded the Greater Yuma Port Authority and today serves as Business Development Officer for the Cocopah Tribe.

Host Mark Schauer talks with Darin Meeks, who after retiring as an Army 1st Sgt. worked as a geodetics technician at Yuma Proving Ground from 2005 until his retirement in 2025. Raised in Yuma County and widely known in the community, for 13 years of his 22-year active-duty career he was an Army and Army National Guard recruiter in Yuma.

Host Mark Schauer talks with New York native Ron Basolet. After a 26-year active-duty career in the United States Marine Corps, Basolet brought his decades of experience in logistics to U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground's Combat Automotive Systems Division in 2006, at the height of the surge in Iraq. He retired in 2020 after a combined 40 years of service.

Host Mark Schauer talks with Sgt. Maj. (ret.) Ronald Rodriguez, the son of a career Army veteran who served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. After a career as a Military Policeman, Rodriguez served for more than 20 years overseeing Yuma Proving Ground's Emergency Services and Emergency Management functions. He retired in March 2025 after a combined 46 years of service.

Host Mark Schauer talks with Wayne Schilders, who grew up in Arkansas and enlisted in the National Guard during his junior year in high school. Joining the regular Army after graduation, Schilders trained in field artillery at Fort Sill and spent a year at Camp Stanley, South Korea before arriving at Yuma Proving Ground in 1982 at age 19. He was both Soldier of the Year and NCO of the Year while s...

Host Mark Schauer talks with Maria Johnson, a Navy veteran who was lead combat vehicle data collector at U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground from 1987 until medically retiring in 2013. She is today a resident of the Arizona State Veterans Home Yuma, where she was the first female resident.

Host Mark Schauer talks with Col. (ret.) Randy Murray, who was commander of U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground from 2014 to 2017. An aviator, prior to his command he had served in the Army for 24 years in positions that included testing aviation systems for the U.S. Army Operational Test Command. He retired from active duty in 2019 and today serves as International Program Integrator for the Army’s Pro...

Host Mark Schauer talks with Col. (ret) Stephen Kreider, who was commander of U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground from 2003 to 2006. After a 28-year Army career, he served as Director of the Future Combat System Combined Test Organization and as the Army’s Program Executive Officer of Intelligence, Electronic Warfare and Sensors. A West Point graduate, in 2023 he was inducted into the Command, Control,...

Host Mark Schauer talks with Col. (ret) John Bullington, who was commander of U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground from 2006 to 2009. After a 32-year Army career, he served as Assistant Director of the Arizona Game and Fish Department for nine years before retiring to Arkansas.

Host Mark Schauer talks by phone with Col. (ret) Reed Young, who served as commander of U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground from 2011 to 2014, which included the busiest test workload year in the post's history. Today, Young is the Program Manager for Robotics and Autonomy at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Host Mark Schauer talks with Teri Womack, who from 1986 to 2019 worked in a variety of positions at Yuma Proving Ground, from an administrative assistant at the Systems Test Branch to her final post as a marketing specialist working in the public affairs office. She was the primary escort on years of public bus tours of the proving ground done in conjunction with the Yuma Visitor’s Bureau.

Host Mark Schauer talks with Maj. (ret) James Branch, whose 22 years in the Army included serving at the Military Freefall School at Yuma Proving Ground from 2011 to 2013, first as executive officer, then as commander. Today he is the Senior Army Instructor for Yuma County, Arizona's first Army Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program.

Host Ana Henderson talks with Peter Efroymson, who worked at U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) as a firefighter and 911 emergency dispatcher from 1993 to 2024. Hear as he recounts his contributions and memories about his time responding to emergencies in and around YPG.

In this episode of Desert Rat Testament hear Alan Pumphrey, an officer who served as post adjutant at Yuma Proving Ground in the early 1980s who recently returned to visit for the first time in more than four decades. Hear as he recounts his memories of Cold War-era YPG with host Ana Henderson.

Host Mark Schauer talks with Minerva Peters, whose Department of the Army career began in 1985. After 15 years working as an operations research analyst with the Army’s Operational Test and Evaluation Command, she began working at Yuma Proving Ground in 2000. Attracting attention for her work on test programs for the Crusader self-propelled howitzer and Stryker combat vehicle, in 2006 she was made...

Host Mark Schauer talks with Mike Kingston, who served as a test photographer at U.S. Army Cold Regions Test Center as a soldier during the Vietnam era and as a civilian from 1989 to 2014. A former wildland firefighter well known as a volunteer firefighter in Delta Junction, Alaska, in his retirement Kingston was recently recognized as the community's volunteer of the year for his work on behalf o...

Host Mark Schauer talks with Jonna Pittman, who retired as U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground's Logistics Manager in 2024. Prior to starting her civilian career here in 2007, she served in the Army from 1977 to 2007, retiring as a Sergeant Major.

Host Mark Schauer talks with Command Sgt. Maj. (ret.) Forbes Daniels. Born in Guyana, he immigrated to the United States as a teenager and enlisted in the Army in 1981. His tenure as Yuma Proving Ground’s Command Sergeant Major from 2008 to 2012 was bookended by multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. He retired from active duty in 2017 and today works in a civilian capacity at the Army’s Fo...

Host Mark Schauer talks with Alan Tinseth, a nuclear engineer who worked at Yuma Proving Ground as a test officer and in the Technology and Investments Directorate from 1984 until his retirement in 2022. The son of a wounded veteran of the Korean War's Battle of Chosin Reservoir, in 1989 he was a test officer on a self-propelled howitzer evaluation for a foreign customer that saw a fatal accident.

Host Ana Henderson talks with John Curry, an Arkansas native who worked at U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground as a software developer and operations research and systems analyst from 1991 until his retirement in 2022. He supported testing for the Warfighter from the Gulf War through the Global War on Terror.

Host Mark Schauer talks with Yolanda Canales, who worked in U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground's public affairs office from 1984 until her retirement in 2016. A Yuma native, Canales was editor of "The Outpost," the proving ground's twice-monthly official newspaper that has published continuously since 1951. During her tenure "The Outpost" was named Best Small Army Newspaper in 1998, and Canales herself...