Hazard Ground

Command Chief Master Sergeant William Markham had a 30 year career in the Air Force starting in 1986. During that time he directed several airstrikes and in 2001, he was the first Airman in Afghanistan as a Combat Controller attached to "Triple Nickel" which he later received a silver star for actions of gallantry. After his retirement, Markham continued to serve his community first with the Speci...

Ryan Robicheaux grew up in Arkansas where he earned his Pilot's license in high school. After witnessing the tragedy of 9/11, Robicheaux enlisted in the Army National Guard and after college became Army active duty where he attended Warrant Officer Candidate School. He was awarded a slot to fly the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior. Robicheaux deployed twice to Afghanistan and has translated his experiences in...

Gregg F. Martin, PhD, Major General, US Army (Retired), served on active duty for 36 years, until May 2015. He is a combat veteran, Bipolar Survivor, Airborne-Ranger-Engineer qualified soldier, and Army Strategist. He commanded an engineer company, battalion, the 130th Engineer Brigade in combat during the first year of the Iraq War in 2003-04, including the attack from Kuwait, up the Euphrates Ri...

Kevin Haley joined the Army at 21-years-old as Military Police. His position quickly escalated to Protective Services Detachment (PSD). His work included guarding USAREUR HQ and the USAREUR 4 Star General's house. In addition, Haley was asked by General David McKiernan to deploy to Afghanistan as his PSD mission leader from 2008 to 2009.  Support the podcast by supporting our sponsors at www.hazar...

Timothy Grovenburg is a U.S. Army Veteran who joined the Army in 2017 and became part of the 101st Airborne Division. He relatively quickly deployed to Erbil, Iraq for a 9-month tour where he experienced moments of uncertainty. All of that time encouraged him to start Easy Company Outfitters, a boutique apparel brand delivering premium vintage Hawaiian shirts and beach lifestyle apparel. The compa...

Mike Lamonica served 24 years in the Air Force as a Combat Controller (CCT). It was more than just a job for him - it was what he was built for. The passion he had for the job is something you still hear in his voice today. Over the course of his career - which spanned from the first Gulf War up to 2011 - he executed multiple combat jumps and played key roles in pivotal operations throughout the G...

Partly inspired by his grandfather’s stories of combat and survival from WWII, David Bellavia decided to enlist as an Army Infantryman. It was pre-9/11, and the world was relatively quiet. Fast forward to the early days of OIF, and Bellavia is now in the thick of it, experiencing combat like his grandfather had. One of those battles - taking place in Fallujah on November 10, 2004 - would ultimatel...

Laura Nicholson is a British Army Air Corps aviator who has flown multiple combat tours in Afghanistan. Her bravery under fire while flying Chinooks during one of those deployments earned her the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). During the operation for which she was awarded the DFC, she not only braved Taliban rockets to save a U.S. Marine, but she also rescued a wounded Afghan mother caught in...

Ray McPadden is a former Army Ranger, serving with 2nd Battalion/75th Ranger Regiment. Inspired to serve after 9/11, he began his time in the Army as an Infantry Officer with the 10th Mountain Division. Between Iraq and Afghanistan, he served four combat deployments, spending nearly two years fighting along the Afghan-Pakistan border during one of those tours. In fact, his unit established the fir...

Sara Wilkinson is the wife of Navy SEAL, Chad Wilkinson. After 21 years of service, Chad took his own life - the result of the compounding effects of blast wave injury, TBI, and PTSD. He left behind Sara and their two teenage children. Sara's story is one of triumph, heartbreak, resilience, and strength - the strength that Sara not only displayed as the spouse of a Navy SEAL who was deployed const...

Dick Thompson is a Vietnam combat veteran and Green Beret. When he started his military career, he volunteered for the most dangerous path he could take, ending up in Vietnam with MACV-SOG, where he served as a Team Leader. With MACV-SOG he conducted covert unconventional warfare operations, never knowing if he and/or his entire team would return to base once they left the wire. It was a process t...

It's not often that we get someone from the AC-130 community on the podcast, but this time we were lucky enough to get someone who is a bit of an establishment in the community. Bill Walter is a retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant and former AC-130 Gunner. He has played key roles in the AC-130 world for decades. In this episode he talks about his impact on that world from the early days and Op...

This episode is all about leadership - leadership in combat, in government, and in business. Tommy Sowers is a former Green Beret who is also a multi-sector leader in the political, military, government, academia, and entrepreneurial worlds. He and Mark also worked together during Mark's first deployment to Iraq. Following multiple Iraq combat deployments as a Green Beret, Tommy went on to become...

Growing up on a farm in Kentucky, Luke Coffey had an urge from a young age to join the Infantry, turning the agrarian landscape into a makeshift battlefield whenever he could. After high school and a short attempt at college, he made joining the Infantry a reality. He would see two combat deployments in one relatively short enlistment - one to Iraq and one to Afghanistan. His Afghanistan deploymen...

From an early age, it was Tyler Mendelson's dream to become a United States Marine. His father was a Marine, and he wanted to serve his country after 9/11. He also grew up about an hour and a half from NYC, and his father had helped with the World Trade Center recovery effort, so the attacks hit extra close to home. His second dream was to become a filmmaker, partly so he could tell other veterans...

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Rick Dickson's initial combat deployment was to Diyala Province, Iraq in 2006. He spent 15 months there with his unit, when violence in the country was reaching an all-time high. It was combat and survival in the truest sense. Following that deployment he would go on to become an Armor Officer through the Army's Green to Gold program, and eventually transition to Public Affairs, where he still ser...

If ever there was a warning shot for the detrimental effects of long-term, sustained combat operations on soldiers in modern warfare, Curtis Grace's deployment to Afghanistan in 2012 fits the bill pretty well. In this episode, Grace talks about that greuling deployment to the Panjwai District of Afghanistan, a Taliban stronghold. A deployment that dovetails with the Panjwai Massacre, orchestrated...

Kim "Rooster" Rossiter is a retired Marine Corps Major and combat veteran of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM. His story is tightly interwoven with his daughter Ainsley's, who was born with a terminal illness in 2003. Instead of shirking from the difficult task of facing Ainsley's inevitable fate, Rooster and his wife embraced it to ensure Ainsley lived every moment of her time on earth. The Rossiter's eve...

This week we explore the lighter side of combat in the War on Terror, with former Cavalry officer and aspiring writer, Brett Allen. Inspired by the events of September 11, 2001, Brett went into the Army as an officer a fews years later. His quest to serve in combat took him to Afghanistan in 2009, and while not immune to the effects of a well placed IED, his experience in combat fell short of what...

Dr. Paul Roach is a recently retired Navy Combat Surgeon. At a young age, he intended to follow in his father’s footsteps into psychiatry. But trauma surgery was his calling, and he followed it all the way to the brutal and bloody environs of the war in Afghanistan. It was there he recalls his worst combat losses, and one quad-amputee Marine in particular, that he helped save against the odds.* Th...

Three months into his run for mayor of Kansas City - which seemed destined for victory - Jason Kander suddenly dropped out of the race. He did so to confront years of post-traumatic stress that nearly drove him to suicide. His PTS was a direct result of his deployment to Afghanistan where for months he often worked outside the wire as an Army officer, mostly without any fire support - just him and...

Mike McGuinness is a three-time Afghanistan combat veteran. His story is a study in why leadership - meaning the presence of qualified people in leadership positions - is so important, from the lowest echelons of the military, all the way to the top. McGuinness served honorably for 16 years. He was also a squad leader in convicted war criminal Clint Lorance's platoon, which would ultimately lead t...

Will Thomas is the founder of Operation Hawkeye, an organization that has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the families of fallen special operations servicemembers for a decade now. The really interesting part is that Will started Op Hawkeye when he was in middle school! Moved to action by the downing of Extortion 17 in Afghanistan in 2011, Will decided to do something tangible to help...

Thomas Schueman takes us through a young Marine officer's first taste of combat - a very real baptism by fire that ultimately prepared him for the day he'd see it again. Schueman talks about the survival of combat, not just on the battlefield, but also at home. Focusing on that survival at home is not just something he talks about; he's taken action by starting his own non-profit, called Patrol Ba...