Oral History Interview with Darrel D. Feucht

[Interview Begins]

SPRAGUE: Today is May 12th, 2022. This is an interview with Darrell D., A.J., Feucht, who goes by A.J., who served in the Wisconsin Army National Guard from July 4th, 1983, to July 31st, 2013. Is that correct?

FEUCHT: That is correct. Some of that was in the Army Reserve. Most of it was in the Wisconsin Army National Guard.

SPRAGUE: Okay. This interview is being conducted by Luke Sprague at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. New interview room for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Oral History Program. No one else is present in the room. Okay. Darrell, could you tell me about where you grew up?

FEUCHT: I grew, I was born and raised in Columbus, Wisconsin, which is right up the road in Columbia County. Born in 1962. I have two younger sisters, older brother. My father passed away in 1973 at the age of ten. And my brother is ten 00:01:00years older than I am. He's a Vietnam veteran. And so, I was kind of catapulted into. The, I guess to say I became the man of the house at a very, very young age. It's you know, Columbus is a, is a rural small farm community. I spent a lot of time in my childhood working on my uncle's dairy farm. I did a lot of farm work and on farms, even though I was considered in a city of 4000 people, a city boy. It was country and rural and participated in sports like any small-town boy would do. And I was a member of the FFA, The Future Farmers of America and a handful of other clubs. And then I graduated from college high School in 1980.

And here's a little bit of--so I was involved in a lot of things. I was your 00:02:00average student, kind of jokingly, we say, AJ is average Joe. So, when I was your average student asked my guidance counselor in high school where most of my friends are going to school because I really didn't know what I wanted to do afterwards, and they all said they're going. Most of your friends are going to go to UW-Madison. And I said, "Well, I like to go there." And he said, "Well, I don't know if your grades are gonna work." And so I applied, and I was denied. And I applied again. And I was accepted on a probationary level. And I, actually, had to write a paper that summer to get into the UW and I was accepted, and the rest became, I guess, history. I ended up graduating from UW-Madison in 1985.

Now, while I was in school I really, see my, I mentioned earlier my brother was, is a Vietnam Veteran. I come from a line of Air Force veterans, and on my dad's 00:03:00side, I have uncles that fought in World War II. That were either in the Army, Army Air Corps, but in most of my family were Air Force, including my brother. So, I was a good friend of mine named Joe kind of talked me into this Army thing. And, and I've known Joe. We could look at each other. He's from my, he lived right behind my house, and we could see each other over the fence kind of thing. We've known each other since we were little tykes. And halfway through school he kind of nudge me. He's like, "would you be interested in this Army ROTC thing?" And I was like, "I don't know." And they said, well, I'll pay for your books and tuition for--for a couple of years." And I'm like, "okay", So I'm like, this ain't a bad deal. So I go off to what was called it was Basic camp, which is a basic training kind of thing at Fort Knox, Kentucky. But when you come out of that, it was for people that would go into the ROTC program.

So instead, most pro--most of those programs are four years. If you've done some type of basic cut the first two years out, you do the last three. So, 1983, I jump on a blue bus in Kentucky with no air conditioning. And I reported the weekend of the 4th of July 1983. And went through basic there. I graduated and I received what was called the Guaranteed Reserve Forces Duty Scholarship which is kind of a--I said it was like a Reagan-era thing because Reagan was building up the military and, and [lo and behold??] it paid for two years of my school. I graduated and like I mentioned, at UW Madison, 1985, I was commissioned a second lieutenant at the same time. What's it called? Being academically aligned. And, and that was the beginning of my military journey.

I was in The United States Army Reserve here in Madison. My first assignment was 00:05:00a school. It was called the 45th USAR [US Army Reserve] School. And a little caveat, we, actually, still have reunions to this day with that school. There's some--some old--some folks that still show up at that and recognize me as the--as the butter bar that I was when I was in the school. So that brings us--that brings us up to the beginning of my career.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So just for clarification, and I was curious about and doing research on you, were you interested in being on and reserve status versus active duty or what was your--

FEUCHT: You know, I, I was but I will--I will say this. And the deal was when I graduated, there--I was given the scholarship, but it was for a six-year commitment in the reserves. And I'll be honest, I thought I was making a deal with the devil. You know, I think it was like six years. I'm like oh my gosh, it's a long time. At that time, I thought it was a long time. But I said, "You 00:06:00know what? I can do this." It's a--it's a pretty deep, you know, and I--I had the fortune of many as a junior, as a cadet and a junior officer to be exposed to senior NCO and senior leaders that--that planted the seed for me to say, you know, this ain't a bad deal. So you gotta remember kind of 19, it was. So, this was '80, early eighties. Yeah, that's why I--I had; I was asked to go on active duty while I was at Fort Knox. I also, when I did my engineering officer basic course at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, I was asked there if I wanted to go on active duty.

And, interestingly enough, there were 130 some lieutenants in my class. And that was called EOBC, which is an Engineer Observation Course. There's only about ten of us that are reserve component, and all the rest were West Point grads. So, 00:07:00they were kind of jealous in the fact that we went home when we were done and they all went to Korea, Germany. That was their choice. It was 24 months in, in Germany, or 18 months in Korea. But they were somewhat envy of us that, like I said, we went home. It was December of '85 when I completed that, that course.

SPRAGUE: So, your bachelor's degree was in agriculture?

FEUCHT: Correct. My--it's through the Agricultural Engineering School at the UW Madison, and it is called agricultural mechanization and management. So, it's--it's an agricultural business degree, but you take some technical courses to know how machinery work and how it's applied.

SPRAGUE: And if you would quickly go back, you mentioned this 5045th school or help me out on that.

FEUCHT: It's the Yes. Yeah, the 5045th USAR school. It's, uh, so at the time it was where people were--it was a schoolhouse that would teach reserve component courses like NCO courses, Non-commissioned Officer Courses, senior courses for non-commissioned officer. We would teach the advanced course for officers who would teach at that time command and General Staff College. But what that was, is either it was correspondence to which we provided, or it was one weekend a month somewhere, either at Fort McCoy or other locations throughout Wisconsin that you would need to take these classes for reserve component officers and soldiers that are either part of the Reserve or the Guard and can take these classes. I started there. I was --I was the custodian of officer course exams. And it was interesting because I was a cadet. Then I became a second lieutenant 00:09:00and they thought this would be a good position because it created a situation where I couldn't be enticed or bribed or whatever into give me the answers to an exam and be like, "No, you don't work for me", you know. And so there was this check and balance that worked really well as a brand-new lieutenant to I--and what helped me in that was I understood Army courses.

I had no idea what some of the acronyms were at the time for some of the classes. So, but it was really it was, it was a good experience. And that was the beginning. They-- they actually, we met in the--it was a school on Lexington Street behind the Gardner Bakery for those that might remember Madison, I don't even know if it's a schoolhouse any more or not. We would have the first floor on weekends. And like I said, we still, we actually are having a reunion this 00:10:00May. We meet in Middleton and it's probably about 20 people that still that show up and some real old timers do. So.

SPRAGUE: Huh, so did you choose the Army Corps of Engineers for any particular reason or--

FEUCHT: Well, this is kind of funny, and I'll share with you. I kind of I already knew from my professor of military science that you're going to be an engineer because you have all the math and the physics and everything behind you. But back then, when I don't know if it's still how it works today, but you fill up this thing called the Dream Sheet, and you ask for three branches that you like. And I, I, and the reason I say this is funny because the United States Army Nursing Corps was the first one that I picked and because I heard great things about it. And, and my second was engineer, and I believe my third was infantry. And [lo and behold??], I was selected as an engineer officer, which we kind of knew. So, but and you know what? I don't, there's one thing I've learned 00:11:00is I just don't look back. I mean, that decision was made my entire career. I was an engineer officer. I wore the castles for my whole career. And, you know, I never thought about changing branches or anything. So, yeah, I'm, I guess I'm loyal to the Engineer Corps.

SPRAGUE: [Laughs] So after you become a second lieutenant, what, what was the-- the sequence of where you went? What was your first unit?

FEUCHT: Well, I was like I said, I've been, I've been blessed through my career. So, I'm--and it's now, I've been a second lieutenant for a little bit. I am what now is called an I'm an engineer bra--I'm a branch qualified officer, which was kind of rare back then. There was, and when I mentioned. I was academically aligned, that means I had my degree, I had my commission, and I also was school qualified with as an engineer, which is very uncommon. Most people would get 00:12:00their commission but not finish their degree yet, and they would still be going to school to get the degree. And then there are some people who get the degree, get their commission, but would have a tough time breaking contact with an employer to go finish a 4-to-6-month basic course. I had all that done. So, I was contacted by a colonel who I'm still friends with to this day, believe it or not, and he was the battalion commander of a unit here in town, and it was the 2nd Battalion of the 339th Regiment, 1st Brigade of the 84th Training Division. And he said, "Hey, I have a company command available for you." And I was like, "Wow." And I was, you know, I'm a one year second lieutenant. And I said, "Can we do that?" And he says, "Yeah, because your school qualified and there's a shortage and etc., etc." And he hired me. And it was it was kind of a shock to 00:13:00some of the senior NCOs. But I was blessed once again to have great senior NCOs. And I commanded Charlie Company and I, the 2nd Battalion, 339th Regiment. And the 84th Training Division was headquartered out of Milwaukee on Silver Spring, and I commanded that company.

And that's--so the training company is, you would displace, basic training companies across the United States. So, here's an example. You have a basic training going on at Fort Knox or something or Fort Jackson or whatever you would have your drill sergeants would fall in two weeks during that period and kind of give the active component cadre a break during that time. But they would also train it. And the whole idea was to have this reserve of basic training 00:14:00companies that if the Army needed to stand up soldiers quickly, you had these, these available. So, we would fall in on the active component basic training companies and like I said, displace. And then, you know, during an eight-week period. Most of the time it was always like zero week or week one or those kinds of things because you didn't want to really rock the boat too much with the active-duty cadre because they wanted to establish a continuity throughout the company. And so that was our role. And, and we did that. And I was a member of that company for a couple of years.

I then, for a brief period of time commanded Alpha Company in the same battalion. And then so I was promoted. The first lieutenant became a captain. I was first lieutenant only for about a year and then became captain. And I was 00:15:00asked to believe, I was the battalion as one for a period of time. And then something occurred. I received a phone call on a Saturday morning from our brigade commander, and he says, "A.J.," he goes, "Hey, you have been selected to be the aide de camp for Major General Mike [Brzozowski??], the commander of the 84th Training Division." And I'm go-- I said, "Well, I don't know if I'm the politically correct guy for this. And, sir, I appreciate the offer." And Skip goes, "Well, A.J., it's not an offer. You're going." I said, "Yes, sir." You know, six bags full. Got it. And packed my bags up. And I worked for a two-star for about a year and a half. And I have to tell you, that was an incredible 00:16:00experience for company grade officer, because I had, I got a--I got a really good understanding about how division structure worked. I worked very closely with his chief of staff, and all his G staff. Had the opportunity to travel pretty much wherever I wanted to. I had the chance to spend a couple of weeks in Washington, D.C., working for General Streeter, who was the commander of the military district of Washington. And it was, that was just before the Clinton administration came on board. So, I had an opportunity to spend some time with what was called the AFRIC, which is the Armed Forces Reserve Inaugural Committee. I had a chance to meet then secretary of defense, oh, shucks. He was the--from Wyoming. The--

SPRAGUE: Cheney?

FEUCHT: Cheney. There we go. Dick Cheney. So. And one of the things I remember the most of this, the whole trip is I stayed at Leslie, Fort Leslie J McNair. And I remember the room they put me in. I was-- it was like an old building. And I walk up, and I put the key in, and there's a plaque on the door and it says, "In this room, Walter Reed discovered the cure for malaria." And I spent two weeks in that room. And then the room was very, it was very nice, let me tell you, it was on the Potomac River. But I always remembered that because to me is the tradition of the military. It's just it's I'm sitting; I'm sitting, I actually sat in that room going Walter Reed sat in this room and came over. And I mean, it's just to me, it's just it's amazing. So, it was just one of the many, many things that occurred.

SPRAGUE: So before General Streeter, who was the two-star, what was the name of 00:18:00that general, the 84th?

FEUCHT: The 84th is Michael [Brzozowski??].

SPRAGUE: Okay.

FEUCHT: And if you're gonna ask me to spell it, I'm gonna--

SPRAGUE: Okay.

FEUCHT: Mike-- General [Brzozowski??]. He was a great guy to work with. He. He's a Harley rider. It was interesting. It was one of the funniest memos I've seen. And I don't know if you know how generals talk to each other. They always have their formal name, and then they'll cross it out and put. So, it'll be like, General [Brzozowski??]. and he'll cross it out and write Mike in. And that's how they talk to each other. So, if general, some other generals they'll cross his name out and sent him. And the co-- I got correspondence once that I had to him that the three-star was telling General Mike that he can't ride his Harley to drill in uniform. [Laughs]

SPRAGUE: At the time, he was a commanding general?

FEUCHT: He was the commanding general. Two-star commanding general of the Training Division.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Okay. I had you, but these are all, this is within the 84th?

FEUCHT: Correct.

SPRAGUE: At what point before or after was your involvement with the 86th? Maybe I have that wrong.

FEUCHT: Well, that-- at the USAR School that was the 86th Dark Com.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

FEUCHT: That was the, the Blackhawk patch that I wore as a cadet before I was commissioned. So, the school was that patch.

SPRAGUE: Aha, so that explains that.

FEUCHT: Yep.

FEUCHT: That's a -- that's a great, great catch.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Blackhawk. And that was that school, 5045th?

FEUCHT: 5045th, yes.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Got it. My bad. Okay. Okay, so about the same time, I'm guessing 00:20:00you're starting your career with, would've been Great Lakes Higher Education?

FEUCHT: Yes. I started with what was called Wisconsin Higher Education Corporation. WHEC in October of 1987. Um, and I actually just retired from what, over many years it was finally Nelnet N-E-L-N-E-T. Retired the 15th of April of 2022. Uh, so the company I started at Wisconsin Higher Education Corporation, they were part of the state of Wisconsin. The, um, I guess the best way to describe it is they succeeded from the state and created it not-for-profit, not stock held corporation. And that became Great Lakes Higher Education 00:21:00Corporation, which then became Great Lakes Education Alone Services Inc. And about four years ago that, they were purchased by Nelnet out of Lincoln, Nebraska. So that's, so if I make reference, that's how it started with WHEC, and I left with Nelnet. All kind, all acronyms.

SPRAGUE: Did, did you find it that your work there, did it dovetail at all or was there any continuity between that and what you were serving in that?

FEUCHT: I will tell it, the company was very, very generous through my entire career. Uh, when I started there one of the vice presidents was an Army National Guard colonel and which was very helpful. Our corporate counsel and at the company at that time, who later became the president of the company, which 00:22:00became the chairman of the board, is a retired Air Force colonel. So the company and it was very, very, um receptive to me being in the guard and they gave me all the time I needed for any type of duty that I had. It was a great relationship. I am once again blessed and very thankful for all the, for that thirty years that I was in. And they kind of overlap a little bit. But for all those years, the company was very receptive. Now, I will add that we are that company is a federal contractor with the Department of Education. So, the, uh, they really, truly follow USERRA [Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act] rules and other things, and they really made it very comfortable for me. I had never had an issue in during any of my deployments. I never had any issues during drills or if I had an additional annual training of some kind, a 00:23:00two-week year or two-week there and always worked it out with my boss. It was always it's never an issue. I'm very thankful for that. It really, it was--it's kind of unheard of I think, you know. But it was, I was very blessed to have that relationship.

SPRAGUE: So you're still with the 84th. You were doing a thing out of Washington, D.C. You were the aide de camp to General [Brzozowski??].

FEUCHT: [Brzozowski??].

SPRAGUE: [Brzozowski??]. Sorry. And what, what happened next?

FEUCHT: After the tour of the aide de camp, which is usually 18 months, two years, I rotated back into I believe, a battalion position still within the 1st Trai--1st Brigade. Uh, I was, I think the next big thing that happens is I did a 00:24:00lot of schooling, too, as a captain. There is, uh, I, after my engineer, officer of basic course, I can somebody told me I should back up. Somebody told me whenever you have the opportunity to finish your military schooling, do it. And so, I immediately. I don't think I ever really decent role from a school. I was always, either, actively in it when after my basic course, I went to be an engineer officer advanced course, which is mostly correspondence. Then, uh, what they had was, was called CAS U, which is Combined Arms Staff Services School [Combined Arms Services and Staff School (CAS3)].

And I was doing that as a captain and immediately upon completing my combine, 00:25:00CAS U, there's command at General Staff College. I showed up in my first command at General Staff College as a captain, which is unheard of. I was the one that like the last they allowed to go in and I got a lot of looks [laughs] from people and, and, and it was got to the point where there had to have a lot of the schools that when I went because there's four phases to that school you kind of had to have an no-salute zone because I mean it was just it was a saluting frenzy.

But while, while I was in the school, I ran into a handful of majors that were in the National Guard, Wisconsin Army National Guard. And I don't know, is there's always this, I don't want to say this a little bit internal, maybe joking going on at the reserves. Ah, you go to Reserve, you go to the Guard, you 00:26:00know, you always hear there's always only--only, the, we send the bad ones to the guard and everything, you know, and then, it is--it's, it's kind of like the Army Navy stuff, like at the Navy is the Army whatever, you know, but we're all one happy family. But they talked me into, um, transferring to the Wisconsin Army National Guard. Um, and I'm still a captain. I believe this is 1995 now, but s--in between the time I came out of aid to camp, I had a couple battalion positions in the three in the one shop, they talked me into coming to something called the 332nd RAOC [Rear Area Operations Center].

SPRAGUE: Okay, before we go in.

FEUCHT: Yeah,

SPRAGUE: Before we go ahead, just to wrap it up. Any interesting leadership challenges or things that you dealt with while you were earlier in as a company commander in the 84th? Anything that you remember that sticks out that you'd be 00:27:00willing to share.

FEUCHT: Leadership challenges ahead as you know, I, I had two first sergeants, one in, uh when I was a Charlie Company commander, and I had another one when I was the company commander who I still talk to, to this day. They were tremendous resources. I did some, I will share a foolish story that I, and it's a great leader and I share this with people as, so one of my first range going to the range of Fort McCoy. There's a, there's this thing about that you should you draw the amount of ammunition that you need, and you use up the ammunition and you don't really turn ammunition back in. So, I foolishly following the procedure, made a phone call that said, "Hey, we still got a container or two of 00:28:00some rounds and the ammo supply points like, okay, fine, you can turn it in." And the NCOs were like, "Hey, sir, this isn't how this works." But I-- I look back on it as a great learning experience because they made me walk through the gauntlet of shame to turn that stuff back in. And, and, you know, I can laugh about it now, but I remember going to the SP and walking in with a couple containers of rounds and turning it in. And I remember the civilian that was working there was like looking at me like, really? You know? And I'm like, yeah, 'cause they don't like it. So, they, they have to go through paperwork as well. And why are we going through paperwork for this little amount and whatever. And so, the lesson learned, you know, and I will tell you, the NCOs never really gave me a lot of grief about it, but I can tell that it was it was a great experience for them.

Another, another time when I was at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, this is, actually, this 00:29:00is funny. The drill sergeants came to me we had an outbreak of headlights in the barracks and, and the drill sergeants said, "Hey, sir, do you mind addressing the soldier, the basic trainees about this? Because we don't know if you can keep a straight face about some of this stuff." And I said, "Yeah, I'd be happy to." So, I go in and, you know, they bring everybody attention and go in and if you want, you know, you be that stern captain leader type or whatever. Yeah. This is what, you know, listen up, everybody. Somebody brought this in here and blah, blah, blah, and we got to fumigate everything and we're gonna powder everything down or whatever. And, um, and I was explaining to me, you know, what this is, and these are, ah, little bugs, whatever, and, and we had two Polynesian basic trainees that were in there, and they, and they were, their eyes were big as saucers, and they were really scared to death. Like, I just 00:30:00thought something was wrong. And I'm like I just told something was wrong. And I looked at you two, "what's the matter with you two?" "You, sir, free to speak to the commander." I said, "yeah, go ahead. What's up?" And he said, "how big are these things?" You know, they had this vision that these things are like, like huge. And I go, "no, no, no, they're microscopic. They're very small. You really can't see 'em, blah, blah." They, "okay. Thank you." [laughs] They're like and I could hear the drill sergeants outside laughing about this, you know.

And I come out and I said, "okay, how did that, how'd that go? He said "thank you, sir. We really appreciate you doing that, because I don't think any of us could have kept a straight face doing all the things." So it was, I said, "well, I'm glad I could help out, so now go to take care of this." You know, and then you walk off. But yeah, but there is one of many, many stories that I often thought I'd be probably write a book about. But if I wrote, I'm sure other people come forward say, "Oh my gosh, I experienced the same thing." So.

SPRAGUE: So, uh, hopping back, I had you, you had mentioned it was '95, but I had you down in '94 as a transfer to the guard, or am I wrong or--

FEUCHT: No, I think you might, it could be '94. I--

SPRAGUE: That's okay. I'm just looking for clarity. Yeah. So you're thinking on that? They, they convinced you to--

FEUCHT: Well, they, first off, first off, it's a 332nd RAOC I go, "What in the blazes is a RAOC?" It's called Rear Area Operation Center. This is very Soviet doctrine stuff. This is what it is, is a group that the 332nd had like 48 soldiers in it, and they were located in Hartford, Wisconsin at the time. Um, they have senior NCO they have a bunch of captains. What you do is when you 00:32:00establish, so let's say there's a front, and it's, let's say it's in Germany and we've heard of everyone talk about the fold gap is where the Soviets would come through and you have this rear area that you would have overwatch of, and you would be the battle damage assessment types. You would be, if the commander wanted to know, what do I have available in the rear of the fighting front. This group would be, would describe everything for the commander, paint the picture for them. You have X number of bridges; you have x number of bridges that are certain classifications. You have a couple that are that are destroyed, and they need to be repaired and out of, you know, so they were, they were the eyes and ears of some of the logistical support in the rear area and in, and in the battlefield, there was like four of these areas. So, it was like the four quadrants. And each of RAOC would have one of those ri--areas of responsibility.

It's commanded by a lieutenant colonel. Um, and what it brings to a commander, a combatant commander, it's got a lot of technical expertise. You have intel, you have engineers, it's very engineer heavy, and you have a lot of planners. You know, if the commander wanted to implant this to it, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna tack forward. How long can you all provide logistic support and the throughput into the rear area to the front kind of thing. And we, and we, and that's what we did. We're, we're the plans and assessment for, for the combat commander and the theater. Those four RAOC reported to what was called and RTOC, 00:34:00which is a Rear Tactical Operations Center which became a ROC which is a Rear Operation Center, which we'll get into as we progress through the timeline.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So that 332nd RAOC was part of the Wisconsin Army National Guard?

FEUCHT: Correct.

SPRAGUE: And they reported to at the time an hour talk. Is that a administrative unit? Is that a standard? How does that work?

FEUCHT: The RTOC was commanded by a 0-6. They were usually co-located with a corps, ours was the 142nd RTOC out of the Texas National Guard and their war that back then, you had this thing called the water trace meaning you, that's who you if something happened. This is who you would report to, they reported to three core out of Fort Hood, Texas. So, I spent many summers at North Fort Hood 00:35:00and Fort Hood, Texas doing what we would, we would exercise ourselves doing things called the warfighter exercise, where we'd all come together for a couple of weeks. You were given you would have a be a civilian contractor where they actually provide a scenario for you. And we'd even do sand tables in a big gym where we would do, but it was all a scripted, a war fight. And what they would do is they would send us injects every couple hours, and you would have to react to that. So, you know, something happened. How would you react to this? And that was your, that was your whole two weeks.

SPRAGUE: So how long were you with the 332nd RAOC? Roughly.

FEUCHT: I was there a couple of years. We moved from Hartford to Berlin, Wisconsin pretty much as soon as I, I was probably in Hartford for less than a 00:36:00year. We packed up, moved to Berlin. I was in Berlin. I want to say a couple of years, and I was pulled out of the 332nd and then went to the 64th Troop Command.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Before we go ahead of the troop command, somewhere in there of '98, it looks like you were working on a master's degree or not?

FEUCHT: Yes.

SPRAGUE: How did that fit in that?

FEUCHT: I, I'm actually, you know, I'm gonna be looking down.

SPRAGUE: Okay. No problem.

FEUCHT: I can't remember most of--

SPRAGUE: Don't worry. That's fine.

FEUCHT: Well, I'll, I'll go back to, I graduated from UW, I mentioned in '85, got my degree while I was working at Great Lakes. One of the vice presidents came to me and said, "hey it would behoove you to get your accounting degree." And I said, "okay, we can do that." And I went, this was '92 to '95, I went to 00:37:00Lakeland College and took my night courses and got my accounting degree. I will admit I sat for the CPA exam once if anybody knows anything about the CPA exam, there are four parts to it. I passed two. I did not pass the other two and I did not go back to finish it. So I don't know if that would have helped, you know, I don't know. I don't look back, but, but I had my second degree from Lakeland. So immediately after that, as I mentioned earlier, I continue, I'm always continuing my education. Someone told me that, "hey, if you have visions of sticking around at the National Guard, it would behoove you to have a master's degree. So, I jumped into Silver Lake College, was offering a master's degree in management and organizational behavior. And in '97 to '99, I took that. What was 00:38:00interesting is probably half of the class that we would meet, we'd meet one night a week in Madison, and half the class was some of my peers, cause we all--we all kind of got the message. Yeah, if you, some of the history of the guard, the adjutant general, a long time ago, I made it a requirement to get your commission.

You had to have a bachelor's degree because there were some officers in their eighties and nineties that were in the Guard that did not have a bachelor's degree and they made, and then that rule kind of came down, it says, in order for you to make you can be an officer but one of the rules was to make major field grade you had to have at least a bachelor's degree. And the writing on the 00:39:00wall, too, was, if you wanna make colonel as a field grade you should probably have a master's degree under your belt. So, nothing really was official, but you could see it when they would do qualitative retention boards. Some people weren't retained, and you went, you know, why weren't they retained it in every degree? You are like, okay, the writing, it's not really official, official, but the writing is, is there, you know, so how your tea leaves would tell you things look, this is what you can do. So, I by '99, had my master's degree which once again was one of those. I'm glad I did it because it's to this day reaps great reward for me.

SPRAGUE: Okay, so moving ahead, the 64th Troop Command?

FEUCHT: Correct.

SPRAGUE: I wanna make sure we have that right. Tell me a little bit of that would have been '98, '99, somewhere going way back when, or not.

FEUCHT: No, I'm-- I'm gonna cheat. I'm going to look at my sheet here. Yeah, this is, I came on board it looks like February of '99 to the Troop 64th Troop Command here in Madison.

SPRAGUE: And just for the readers here, what if you could indulge us? Tell me, explain how 64th Troop Command fits up roughly underneath the structure.

FEUCHT: Okay and that's a great question. So, most states have what's called a troop command in the Wiscon-- I'm sorry, in the National Guard, if you, if you go to other states, they'll have something, they'll have their own troop command. What that is, is are non-traditional units that don't fall into what we call traditional units. And I'll explain that, maybe I'll tell the tale about the 32nd Infantry Brigade. So, you have, that within the 32nd you have 00:41:00traditional infantry battalions, you have a field artillery battalion. You have what we, we, I call, or what most people call traditional units, and that, and they fall under the division, at that time was the division but now it's a brigade. So, the 32nd Brigade but what their state has in the troop command, these other units, and they consist of the, you've heard you mentioned the of the RAOC and the ROC, MP Company, Heavy Transp[ortation] Company, a light transportation company, a maintenance battalion with a couple of maintenance companies. You had a, you had the MPAD, which is the Public Affairs Detachment. You had the 132nd band in the Army band. So, these units, the state has, but 00:42:00they didn't really have a traditional, they don't really kind of fall under what we call a traditional hierarchy. So th--they have this thing called the troop command, which is commanded by an old six colonel, and all these units roll up to them. But all these units have their own war trees for they report. So, I'll go tactically they report to the troop command-- commander, but technically they can report to other units outside of the state.

Another one that I failed to mention was the aviation battalion. So the Blackhawks. The other reason they do that is you got to remember that the Wiscon-- that the Guard, the National Guard you're a dual headed mission. So Army Reserve is a reserve for the Department of the Army that if something happens and they need to activate folks, they report under Title 10 and they 00:43:00report to the Army. And then National Guard, you can have that same thing, but you can also be activated under Title 32, and you can do a state mission. I've, I've done two state missions in my career for flood, floods in Crawford and Vernon County. This is, then you report to the governor, the assets you just mentioned, all those types of units that--that are at the governor's disposal for things within the state. You know, the aviation battalion gets activated quite often for things. Um, yeah. So that kind of tells you a little bit about what the troop commands and what they consist of. It's, it's, it's basically units you need that don't have a home, but you got to have a technical or I'm sorry, a tactical chain of command that they report to.

SPRAGUE: And where did you start out with what was your first position there?

FEUCHT: I think it came on as the S-1. The S-1, yeah and the adjutant for troop command.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

FEUCHT: And now it's, I've had several, I was fortunate and then there's the other thing with officer career development. And I've always been a proponent of this, is, rotate people through other assignments, if you've used stovepipe too much in it, like an administrative position, then you don't have any operational or intelligence experience that if you want to be well, well-rounded for as a commander, would the groom, groom people as a commander, you want to rotate people in those assignments. So, I had assignments in the S-1, I had assignments as the assistant S3. I've had, uh, I was an assistant to the deputy commander for your command. So that just you want to rotate so you get it in a sense. You 00:45:00get a flavor of everything, and you have a good understanding it also helps you understand what all these units do. Um, you know, to, to, to someone. What are all these? you know, what and why. It takes a while to figure out what to do and then once you figure out what they do, then you know how you could use them in a state emergency. Um, and quite often you find myself with the adjutant general or even the governor explaining, you know, why, you know, where do these soldiers come from? "Well, hey, sir, this is, this is the resource you have." Um, you know, I think one of the most interesting, and a lot of people know this from the state of Wisconsin has a Quarry Company up in uh, Ashland, Wisconsin. And what their unit does is exactly what it says they produce aggregate when you need it. And let me tell you, when you have a flood, that's exactly what you 00:46:00need. Yeah. So, it's those kind of things that, um, in a sense, you have to educate even some of your senior military leaders as to what the, what resources you have available.

SPRAGUE: So where were you when 9/11 happened?

FEUCHT: All right. Let's bring this to 9/11. So, actually, the morning of 9/11, I was in my office at Great Lakes, and I was the assistant S-3 which is the operations officer for, and I was a major at 64th Troop Command. The first tower gets hit, I had one of my people poked their head in my door 'cause I was in a meeting and said, "Hey, one of the World Trade Center towers was hit." I was like, "oh okay." You are like, all right. I don't know. It was like 45 minutes later, same person looks at my office, says, "Hey, the second tower was hit." I 00:47:00looked at him and I said, "This changes everything." I just knew it. I knew it. I grabbed my phone. I called the, [as a matter of fact, I just talked about this the other day with him, I called the operations center major and I said, "Doug, are you watching this?" And he was, "Yeah." He goes, "What do you think?" And he goes, "we're already starting to lock armories down. We don't, we don't know what's coming." I said, "okay, let me know what you want to do." And that day I think for everybody that can remember it. I mean, it really kind of changed the dynamic for anything. The next day, I got a phone call, I said, "hey, we need some assistance. We're go--we need the MP Company, which is part of troop command. We got to activate them." We're not exactly sure for what, but and I remember, um, meeting up with the deputy troop command--commander and going down 00:48:00and talking to the commander and the MP company and say "we're hearing something about airport security mission. We're hearing some stuff about security at armories we're hearing", and so we were like, one thing that I learned sometimes in the military, you kind of make it up as you go 'cause we did not know, you know, everyone, we didn't know what was going to happen next. And so a good friend of mine who I worked for when he was a troop command-- commander, he took command at the airport security mission a few days later. We provided support with the MP Company and activated them. I spent a lot of time making sure that our armories were locked down and security systems working the way they're supposed to. And gotta find, my find is hard to believe, but there's-- there's a 00:49:00lot of armories in the state and a lot of weapons systems locked up in vaults. Um, and we just want to make sure everything was secure. So, we spent a few days doing that, and then as we knew, we just kind of rode, rode things out. So that would've been September '01. We can probably from here go to July of '02.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So, I have you moving ahead. I have it in June '02, but it may be July as the 64th Detachment Commander support Detachment Commander.

FEUCHT: So, I'm a senior major and I'm being told I'm being groomed for command as an 05 as lieutenant colonel. And it could have been late June, early July of '02. I get a call from the troop command commander saying, "Hey, we're going to 00:50:00select you to command the 64th Support Detachment, which is the 64th barrack in Monroe, Wisconsin." And I was, I was kind of tickled about it because it's ROC. R-O-C Rear Operation Center. The um, yeah, I would've gotten, that got me my lieutenant colonel. So that was June, July-ish of 2002. I took command of the ROC. I want to say it was probably late July because within 30 days I am in our office, my civilian office, and St. Paul, Minnesota and my cell phone rings, and I turn it over and I see who's calling me. And I go, answer the phone. "Hey, 00:51:00Kevin, what's up?" He goes, "got a minute?" I said, "I'm in a meeting." He goes, "call me when the meeting's over." I hang up the phone and I look at everybody in the room and I go, "this isn't a good call." And they're like, "what's up?" I said, "I'll tell you later." Get the meeting done. Call him back. He says, "the ROC being activated is been mobilized." We're the second unit I-- in the state to be activated. The 829th Engineer Group was the first unit to be activated. Earlier, was a few months earlier, we're, we are now the second unit to be activated. So, I get my full-time crew together and by early September we are in Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

SPRAGUE: So that must have been.

FEUCHT: I will. I'm gonna share with you the fruitcake speech. [Both laugh] So 00:52:00we had no idea what we were doing, what we were, what was going on, other than we were being mobilized. The 18th Airborne Corps out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, wanted us. I was linking up already with the G-3 of the Corps and we're like, okay, we didn't know if we were heading to Iraq. We were being mobilized under the contingency that we would either go to Iraq or we would go to Afghanistan. And I gotta remember in September of '02 we were still, not, we were not in conflict with Iraq yet. The Operation Iraqi Freedom did not occur until March of 2003. So, there was a lot of things that were occurring at that 00:53:00time that we really couldn't talk about because the military side of the house, we kind of already knew that we're heading into Iraq. And then this is, this is all unclassified now. So, so we showed up. We actually drove, we can take our own POVs [Privately Own Vehicle] and we drove down. And the night before we reported to the morgue station.

We were all in a hotel right outside the main gate of Fort Bragg and I'll never forget my sergeant major, and I walked into this. We're gonna meet in the lobby and just chat and we get in to walk in the lobby and all 48 units are standing there and I'm looking, and I have all these faces looking at me. And I was scared poopless. No one knew were we going, no one knew what was up. They just all, we bailed within a few days from our families. And I sat to him, like I said, man, "I don't know what I'm gonna say." You know, and all-of-a-sudden, I go, you know, my grandmother used to give me fruitcake every year at 00:54:00Christmastime. I hate fruitcake but you know what? When she handed it to me, I would always say thank you. Thanks, Grandma. I greatly appreciate this is very nice to you because I know how much love and admiration, she put in there making that fruitcake for us. And I'd always, like, take it to work and give it away to the guys like fruitcake. And I said, "Guess what? We're going down the fruitcake trail. You're gonna be asked to do stuff. You're not gonna like it. You're gonna be filling out forms for the third time. You're gonna get frustrated. Look at the person and say, no problem. And just do it and just thinking this fruitcake." To this day, I still get fruitcake at Christmas several, you know several years later, my grandmother died and, and I missed the fruitcake just because of her, her down. But I have a number of people that went on that 00:55:00deployment 20 years ago. We're actually having a reunion this summer that come up to me and jokingly say, you know, that fruitcake speech was one of the best speeches for the time because we all didn't know what we were doing. I have fruitcake T-shirts. I get jokes that to me. But you know what? We didn't, we didn't know.

And the next morning we show up in the mold station. We basically, in process for the 82nd Airborne, deploys their brigade out. So, we all, you know, get our shots. We get this, but our mission was, at the time, the intel section and the operations section of the 18th Airborne Corps was forward at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, already. They were very short personnel, and everyone knew that what was called the 1003 Victor was being developed. That is what now is known 00:56:00as Operation Iraqi Freedom. That is not a classified thing, as a matter of fact, one day on CNN, someone makes a comment, "there's this thing called 1003 Victor". [??] well, okay, that's the end of that classification but that morphed into Operation Iraqi Freedom. We and I remember earlier, I mentioned that the ROC and the RAOC have all this talent, and what they did is we took by position by person, and we put people down in seats that were empty within the Corps because the Corps was deploying the 10th Mountain, the 82nd, the third ACR [Armored Calvary Regiment] to Iraq. And they didn't have people in seats to do all the ordering. That's where we came. We were so--believe it or not, most of the orders written for Operation Iraqi Freedom March 23rd, 2003, were written by 00:57:00Wisconsin Army National Guard officers and senior enlisted. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Huh.

FEUCHT: [Laughs] And that's what we did. So, we had the unit for a whole year. We were scattered everywhere on the planet. We have people forward in Iraq, we have people forward in Kuwait. We had people forward in Afghanistan. We had people all over. It was, it was the command and control was very, very difficult. And then after 365 days through some miracles, only know to the Lord, we all came back together at Fort Bragg, and we all went home.

SPRAGUE: Did they have any requirement that you were parachutist- qualified or 00:58:00didn't matter in this case, or you care? I have to ask.

FEUCHT: That's a, that's a great question, Luke. That's I wanna explain. So we showed up and we were handed our uniform. We were handed desert, the desert tan, the, oh, they call those things, the chocolate bar one or whatever it was that earlier desert tan. Had a [maroon beret??]. And there was a great debate at first that we had to get rid of the Bucky Patch and we had to put on the 18th Airborne Corps patch. And, and I, you know, and finally said, you know what? If this, and actually that was a great decision, I'm gonna tell. And one of the reasons why is if you walk around Fort Bragg wearing a black hat, you will stand out like a sore thumb. So, the integration was, it was a great decision. They wanted us to integrate because there are periods of time where I would be in a meeting and all of a sudden someone would be like "you're National Guard soldier." And I was like, "yeah, what are you doing? What are you doing there?" 00:59:00You know, and then they would look at your, your resume, and they'd go, "you don't have jump wings." I said, "no, man, I'm an engineer officer from Wisconsin National Guard. And they're like "okay." And I actually have a funny story about that.

So I worked, we worked for a one-star, and he wrote us pretty hard, but it was, it was a great learning experience. And then far too often he would always ask, and finally, one day in a meeting, he's like, "AJ, how many people do you have that want to go to jump school?" And we actually sent some people to jump school over there cause after March 23rd, when the, when I, Operation Iraqi Freedom kicked off, our, we went immediately to a Monday through Friday work schedule. I mean, it was because our work was done and it was basically just doing quality control, backfilling, that kind of stuff. But up until then, we were 12 on, 12 off the whole time. So, the opportunity came up between March and September when 01:00:00we came back home on September '03, anybody wanna go to jump school? Anybody, whatever, and we had people that went to school. I said, "why not? We're here. You're on active duty and if you, and if your boss says it's okay, do it." So, the meaning, you know, is how many people you gotta want to go to jump school? I said, "there's 12." And he said, "if I have 13 seats, will you go?" And I say, "sir, no way." And, and the whole room went dead silence because you're like you just told the Emperor I had no clothes. And I said, "Sir, I'm an engineer officer, my boots are in the mud." And he's like, "okay", you know I said, I've never had a desire to go to jump school. I, I'm a ground pounder guy. I have seen many of my peers the morning after a night jump and I'm going, nope. I y'all hobbling around and you all aching. And I was in an aircraft watching them jump out. I have been, but I'm going, no, that's not for me. We actua--I was 01:01:00asked to participate in a night jump, and I know very knew, I smile. [??] I know what a PLF, Parachute Landing Fall, you know, I know some of this stuff. I, you know, the stand up in, any of that. I know some of the language. But I, once again, you grab the NCOs that know what they're doing, the jump masters that know what they're doing, and away you go. And we, you're doing night jump, which is actually kind of neat and you go, believe it or not, some nights days you go out to the, or some days you go to the drop zone, you can watch the stuff, they'll drop equipment, they'll, I mean, it's really neat stuff but I, it wasn't for me. So that's like a long answer to a short question. So, I well, I was there I, being the commander of the unit, I was also what was called the during deputy director of operations for the G-3, and the 18th Airborne Corps. That was, so I wore two hats.

SPRAGUE: Now, what's your unit to help me out a little bit here? Were you assigned, attached or re--your 64th Support Detachment Commander, Correct?

FEUCHT: Yeah, we were attached to the 18th Airborne Corps.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

FEUCHT: So, they could kind of do whatever. And that's, like I said, we had people going all over the place functioning at, we did not function really as a unit, only administratively. For life support, for promotions, awards but your technical job, you were, you were working for whoever you're working for. A couple of neat things about, I actually sat right seat left seat with General William Garrett, who's now the force command commander, and Bill and I had a great working relationship. If there is one thing I learned, and then several deployments that I've had, is that the active component really hangs their hat 01:03:00on data rank. It's, it's a big thing even though you're the same grade, you're the same rank, if you're with another lieutenant colonel and you have data rank on them, they immediately go into this Yes sir mode. And I, and I was just like, Bill, is Bill and AJ, right. You know, he's four-star general running for [??] and, but I-- I always, I always been the type of person that I try to relax that, but that's always been an active, active component. So, in the end, one of the things that I did, that was, I thought it was very interesting in his career is somehow some way I had overwatch of the 18th Airborne Corps Rotary Wing Safety Office, which consisted of three CW5 [Chief Warrant Officer 5] and a major. And what this, what this team did is anywhere on the planet, if an army 01:04:00rotary wing aircraft went down, this team would deploy forward and try to figure out what happened to the aircraft.

The only one that I, that I was involved in and had experience is the 10th Mountain, a Black Hawk inverted up at Fort Drum and flipped over and killed most of the people in the aircraft that night. And I'll never forget the warrant conversations I had with the board officers. They knew within minutes what was wrong with the aircraft. They did, did you have, you know, you got like a hundred plus years of experience between these threes. CW5, first off, it's a tough rank to make, but these people knew everything and anything about Black Hawk aircraft and they knew, and I'll be darned several months later, if they 01:05:00weren't spotted on with what went wrong. And I, I was just always amazed by that. I mean, it was a tragedy, but it was, but it was, you know, you learn from it. Just like any other aviation accidents. You always try to prevent it from happening again. So, I learned, I knew a little bit about aircraft, but I learned a lot about aircraft spending time with those folks, and I'm an engineer. And then we came home in September of 2003 I stayed on with ROC for, I think for another year, year and a half, maybe like three years. We did a trip to Japan.

SPRAGUE: Yes. Tell me about that a little bit if you can.

FEUCHT: Okay. This is actually, so the Japanese, Japan has what's called the 01:06:00Japanese Self-defense Ground Forces. Basically, their army on the island to defend themselves for, but mostly a domestic operation element consisting of MPS, medical folks, etc., etc. The Japanese government or government approached someone and said, "we would like to participate in Operation Iraqi Freedom." Later on, later on down the road the Japanese had to change their constitution to allow them because their constitution would not allow them military personnel to leave the island from post-World War Two. So, Japan had to change their constitution to allow that. So once that occurred, someone said, "Hey, how are we going to train them to do what they want to do?" So [lo and behold??] the Wisconsin Army National Guard gets a call and said, "hey, since you have the 01:07:00expertise in this stuff, would you be interested in go over and spent three weeks with them to train them before they leave to go to Iraq?" And I said, "yeah." And I, that was an very, very interesting three weeks. They were very receptive to our presence. It was more of a celebration, I think, than anything. We, every, every day you work hard and every night we would always celebrate, I had soldiers that had the opportunity to go spend nights with families that they were working, so they'd be working side by side with their Japanese counterpart, and they would allow them to go spend an evening with their families. I had an interpreter that I met at Narita Airport, the lieutenant from the Japanese Self-defense Ground Forces. Now, what was really another interesting thing is 01:08:00that these soldiers are the best that Japan had to offer. They were the, you know, we learned that these are, these, we are sending our best. And the lieutenant I had as my interpreter when I first met him, he was way too starch for me. I'm a Midwest guy, and you could tell you haven't figured it out by now, in the eyes of the military I'm very respectful of this and that. But you know what? When you gotta, you know, I'm, I maybe buckaroo might be the right word or whatever. So he was very, very starched here, whatever and there were times that I literally have to pull him off to the side and I say, "listen [??] you need to relax around me because if you're nervous, I'm nervous. And if you Yes sir, I'm like, okay." And he, he was Japanese by the time we left I finally got him to, like, laugh a little bit and joke around a little bit. It was a great 01:09:00relationship for the time that we were there.

One experience that I remember very much was, I showed up late for a meeting and I walked in, and I sat down next to 'em and I sitting there and they're meetings going on and I'm looking in, and I'm looking around the room and, I'm pretty good at telling the atmosphere. And I said, "why is everybody looking at me?" "They are mad at you." "Why?" He goes, "because you came late." I'm like, "okay. All right. I want you to tell everyone that I was with your general, and that's why I'm late", which is true. And he goes, "What?" And I said, "I want you to tell everyone that now." And he stands up and he goes, "excuse me, excuse me." And he says it all in Japanese, and all of a sudden you can see everyone. Oh, okay. And everything was good again. And he sits down. I said "I was, I really was. I'm not doing that, just but I really was, your boss was holding me up and I got here late." So, but it was just one of those many cultural experiences 01:10:00that I had that I would shake my head going and I'm like wow. Do you know, and we would do, in the military, we would do things that we would call battle drills. Basically, a just a rehearsal. Do you know that there is not an interpretation of a battle drill in Japanese? It took us days to explain to them that rehearsing something is acceptable, their, their, their culture is we do things right the first time and, and, and like, yeah, well our culture is we practiced it a few times to get it right, so we do it right. And that was, that was a struggle for, for a while. And we finally kind of we broke through the barrier for that.

But I remember the first time we did it, we did a battle drill. We went through this and all-of-a-sudden, I've noticed there's a couple of people that are some 01:11:00Japanese soldiers very distraught you know, I mean, just like, man, I mean, we just, all we did was the mission was call for fire in your rear, which is a very, very tricky maneuver. You don't, you gotta be very careful about calling artillery fire in your, in the rear where you have friendlies. And that's, that's, you have to do that by the numbers. And it's, it's very, very dangerous. And so, we did a drill for that, and, and a couple of Japanese soldiers were very distraught about it. And I asked him to interpret. I'm like, "what's going on here?" And he's like, "well, they failed." And I said, "well, no, they fail", I mean and, and, and that's when we found out. We're like, "whoa, wait a minute. You know what?" And then I said, "we need to sit down". And like I said, we really, literally spent a day just explaining this is why we do this. And it finally it kind of sunk in is like, okay, you know, you're good and we'll do it again, and we'll keep doing it again until we get it right. And, but you know, 01:12:00you got, when the day is done and you head hits the pillow, you're just like you're like, wow that was, things that you kind of take for granted here and you go to other countries, and you do something just don't think that it's there's a clear interpretation of how that works. So that was, that was a great, that was a great mission.

SPRAGUE: So, at that point, you were probably at a major still or--

FEUCHT: I'm lieutenant colonel.

SPRAGUE: Lieutenant colonel. Okay and where about [similar posts were back??]?

FEUCHT: So, I came out a command of the 64th, I was commander of the 64th RAOC, came out of that command and came, I came-- I came back to the staff of 64th Japan.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Yep. I'm with you, yep. Was it also during that time or maybe a 01:13:00little later that you had the thing with Nicaragua?

FEUCHT: Yes.

SPRAGUE: Or is that much?

FEUCHT: I'm trying, this one is, this one's gray. I remember the mission well; I just don't remember what my capacity was if I think I was at true command already because when I came out of command at the ROC, which would have been about 2004-ish, I came up as the operations officer for the 64th Troop Commander. And, so we were asked once again, and it's kind of how this goes, I said, you'll have that, we called the big Army, Department of the Army will ask states if they're interested in helping out with certain missions. We were asked, we, okay, let me back up just one more step. Wisconsin National Guard, Army National Guard has a partnership program with a couple of countries. 01:14:00Nicaragua has been a partner for many, many years, I believe we still have. And I, and it was a partnership with Ukraine, and I believe now we have a partnership with New Guinea. So, it changes depending on the needs of the army and the state can have the staffing and people power. So, for a long time, we had a partnership with Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan army was hosting an event where the southern South American countries, so you have all of the, and I can't remember it was called the Conference of Ame--of American of the South or something like that. And what that was, is you have all the countries like Panama and Nicaragua in the Dominican Republic and everything. They all come together, and they have a conference annually. In each different country would 01:15:00host that. Well, it just so happens to the year. Then we were asked to come down, Nicaragua was hosting it. So the United States Army Southern Command asked if we could, we want, we, if Wisconsin could help out with that because our, we're in a partnership program with them. And if you could go down, basically it was help them to achieve success. And we said, yeah, we'd be happy to.

So I've been to, I actually went to Nicaragua a couple of times, but we went down for this and spent three weeks down there. And it was basically just call right seat, left seating with our counterparts there and making sure that the conference is a success for them. And, and it was, and we were working through SOUTHCOM, which is the, the Army side, the active component side of the house. And that was, it was a good three weeks. And it was, it was successful mission 01:16:00for them. And the other thing that we would do is Wisconsin would provide a lot of the equipment they had for domestic operations in Nicaragua, like old deuce and halfs, old equipment that we had, and we would provide wrenched earners to show them how to do maintenance on those vehicles. That was, that was kind of a big thing that we would be down there pretty regularly for.

And then we'd also do a medical mission. The medical mission was basically go out to the villages and provide basic medical support, inoculations, those kinds of things. And then, one joy that I always got out of it, working with the medics, going out to the villages is we always take duffel bags full of medical supplies and we just leave. We just leave it for the, for the village or the town. So here you go when we leave, this is, this is yours. You guys can 01:17:00maintain it in your little village first aid station. And yes. And I didn't, really realize this, but Nicaragua has a very large European, Anglo population. There's a lot of Europeans in Nicaragua, and believe it or not, a lot of former Soviet folks that are there. One nig--one night we actually went, there was a couple of establishments that were, within I let just call it the Green Zone that we could go to. And we walk in and there's, there's like a whole bunch of European folks there, and they are like okay. And you start talking to 'em and a couple of 'em were Russians and they just said they retired from their Russian Army. And they, and they said, "you know what? We like it down here. The cost of livings pretty inexpensive. Life is good and this is we're living." I was like, wow, I didn't, I didn't know that. So, some of the interesting things working 01:18:00with the Nicaraguan military summary. So, I was going down you would, you would provide bio--bios ahead of time, your military bio, and you would get the bio of who you're meeting with and there would be a bunches, there'd be some of the stuff redacted out of it because, well, Nicaragua hasn't always been a friend of the U.S. and they were also partnered with the Soviets. And the other thing is you would look at some of their uniforms, and if you look at their uniform in ribbons, they would have ribbons when the Nicaraguan officer would fought in Afghanistan, as with the Soviet Union. So, you know, you just kind of look through that, you just look past that. And, but I always thought it was interesting was like, wow, it's really you know, we come full circle, we're all good friends and we all get along now, which is, which is great.

SPRAGUE: So that must have been a bigger impact at the time. Post-Cold War, 01:19:00thinking about that, about the Soviets and the Russians and Nicaraguans, I would imagine, than we would have maybe thought of it up until very recently. I would imagine--

FEUCHT: Well, I believe and don't, I'm trying to think sort of Manuel Noriega, I can't remember who was the, he was the prime minister, president of Nicaragua he came out of power, and he was actually I can't remember, was him or his wife or something, was trying to get back in power or something, because there was, when we were there and when we drove through a part of the city that there was a lot of protesting going on from the farmers and stuff that they didn't feel they were getting their share. I remember us being in a vehicle and someone come out sort of banging on the window with a pipe and I forget the soldier that was, I was sitting next to you carried an AK-47 and he put up against the window and 01:20:00that kind of, you know, everybody back off a little bit through. But it was, the--Nicaragua's a neat country. I mean, and, and I think our relationship with them is still pretty decent, but, but they, they always said, they always had a desire to learn, and they were always friendly. So it was, you know, I never felt uncomfortable there compared to some of the other places.

SPRAGUE: And so, a couple of the roles you had in the 64th Troop Command Operations Officer and Executive Officer and then Commander?

FEUCHT: Correct. I was executive officer for Todd, who was the, my, who was my commander for about a year, and, and I wanna say it was '07. He had an 01:21:00opportunity to go work over at the state headquarters and a domestic operations position, and that's when I took command. I believe it was August 2007 of 64th Troop Command.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

FEUCHT: Yeah, and I, you know, here we are. You know, like earlier we're talking about, I didn't even think I was, I was going to make it six years, and [lo and behold??] I'm being pinned with an eagle and, and becoming an 06. Actually I'll, I will never, General Ma-- Major General Al Wilkening, who was the adjutant general. Al's passed away here a couple of years ago, but I'll never forget. He pinned me, my-- my pinned my eagles on, was a great mentor, great officer with the Air Guard. And I'll never forget, he looked me right in the eye and he says, 01:22:00"the eagles always look forward at the troops. So, when you pin, when you have your eagles on [inaudible] a colonel or a captain in the Navy, if you look at their eagle, make sure that the eagle is looking forward." I'll never forget that.

SPRAGUE: So that would imply, on your collar they're looking up or looking--

FEUCHT: Usually right here on the boards.

SPRAGUE: On the boards. Okay.

FEUCHT: And you'll have one here have that's looking, it's looking kind of down and forward.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Okay. What, what can you tell me about your leadership philosophy while being in command?

FEUCHT: You know, I actually had to publish a document on what my command philosophy was going to be. So, you know, you got to, let's kind of think about 2007. We're now 16--what's--no, I'm sorry, not 16. We're six years after 01:23:009/11/01. Pretty much every unit that's in the Guard is either deployed forward to Iraq or Afghanistan. And the ones that haven't are on the docket already. So one of the things is that I was taking care of soldiers. That was, I've always been--I say this, and I've told this to many of my NCOs. I'm like an officer who thinks like a non-commissioned officer. I, you know, I'm always, sometimes even to a fault, that I always want to take care of troops. I always spend time asking the private what, what they do and then sit and watch what they do. I'm interested in what you do. And, and sometimes it's overlooked. You know, you never you never forget where you came from, is another philosophy I had. I 01:24:00remember once, like painting rocks. You know, basic. I lost my meal card when I was at basic and I remember mopping the first sergeant's office every night and getting yelled at me. I remember, he's Puerto Rican. And he was saying stuff to me that I didn't understand in a language I didn't understand, but it wasn't good. So, and I you know. But I remember those things and, and all of us have been have been through it. And to sit with, you know, soldiers, like, oh, I will stop somewhere and say, "Private," or, "Specialist," about "What is it, What do you do?" "I'm a refueler." "How does that work?" Yeah. How do you how do you put the hose in an aircraft upside down? And how does the fuel get in? I mean, "Explain that to me?" You know, there's things I don't know, you know, and, you know, and I always thought these soldiers appreciate you knowing what they know.

But I, you know, and all the other ones I think, are, you know, I guess, continuing education it's always been my kind of my beam. I when I was troop 01:25:00command, commander, the two people that were in my office the most was my staff judge advocate, which is your lawyer, and my chaplain. And, you know, and don't get me wrong, I spent a lot of time with my sergeant major as well. But those two, I always would jokingly say, "One of you is tight with the Lord, and the other is tight with the devil." [Sprague laughs] [Inaudible] what's going on with both. You know. So, but actually, I, once again I was blessed to have, I had two great chaplains. I had a couple of great Staff Judge Advocates that always would tell me how is the pulse on the legal side. And I always had soldiers in trouble and we always was--The troop commands consisted of anywhere between 17 and 1800 soldiers all across the state. And there's always somebody getting into trouble for some reason. You know, it was and I did that until 01:26:00September of 2010, I believe.

SPRAGUE: Any other experiences from the troop command that you want to share?

FEUCHT: You know, I have, I was blessed to have some great staff. So, in the Guard you have a lot--you have. So I was, I'm what's called the traditional soldier, meaning I'm, you know, one like the commercial-- one weekend a month, which is really not true. But we're in--but the staffing was always full-time soldiers. So, we in our officers and you would have a cadre of full-time, and they would either be federal technicians, which meaning they could wear a uniform and it could be wearing civilian clothes. Or they would be AGR, which is Active, Guard and Reserve. And true command always had an AO, which was an 01:27:00administrative officer, which is usually the executive officer, and that would be the full- time person that would be doing the day in and day out stuff with the unit. I was in communication with him almost daily and I would be in that. I would be in my office over there at least once or twice a week. I mean, it was, there was always something going on within your command, be it a state mission or Iraqi Freedom or Enduring Freedom or, or something. It was it was a very active time in the Wisconsin National Guard.

SPRAGUE: Why don't we go ahead and take a quick break there?

FEUCT: Sure.

SPRAGUE: This is segment two with Darrell Feucht, Colonel Feucht, and Luke 01:28:00Sprague. And we are starting segment two of the interview with him. So we dropped off at about September of 2010.

FEUCHT: Yep. Correct.

SPRAGUE: And I'm showing that you had some involvement where you then changed your assignment to--looks like the domestic operation. Tell me.

FEUCHT: Correct. So I was command, of troop command from September of '07 to, or August of '07 until 2010. Usually that's a two-year command. It's waivable to a three-year command. I was in command for three years. and a month or two. And, you know, in its normal rotation that you come out of that command. And what I went to is the J4 position, the Domestic Operations Director of Logistics. That 01:29:00is a mouthful and I'll explain a little bit what that all means. So, in the state of Wisconsin, in the Wisconsin Army National Guard, you have the Air National Guard. So those two guards report to the adjutant general, the two-star. Um. When you see G in front of things, like G1, G4, that's G stands for General staff. Which consists of the [inaudible]. So, the G staff would be part of the Wisconsin Army Guard and the Air Guard. Wisconsin, after 9/11, created a joint staff, which is J. Which is what the J is and you're going to--Army, another thing to remember is Army is green and Air Force is blue. The Joint Staff is purple. You'll see a lot of things around it that are purple color. So, you have this joint staff and you have your typical, let's call it J1, 2, 3 and 4. So 1 is administration, so like pay and those kind of things and 01:30:00awards and other things. J2 is intelligence, which is other issues within the state where there could be a threat to the Wisconsin government or there could be threat to the United States government or federal properties. The 3 is the operations area, meaning any disaster relief that you would have--tornado, flood and riots in any cities, those kind of things. And 4 is, logistics. What does the entire Wisconsin National Guard's 10,000 airmen and soldiers have to offer to the state if something were to occur, be it a flood, a tornado, etc.? And you're in, you sit in a seat that has overwatch of all the assets we have available. Up to this point, most of those assets come from the Army side. 01:31:00Mentioned that we have a quarry team, you have MPs, you have medical, you have all these, excuse me, resources available. And then on the other side, you have the same thing. You have civil engineers. You have firefighting capabilities, you have technical engineer support. So, there's, there's all these resources that are available to the governor if something were to come up. So that's what the Joint Staff does.

So, I came on the command September of 2010. Became the J4 for domestic operations. I believe, that's what I did. We did some. We're always doing it every year. It's either a flood mission. A tornado mission, but Wisconsin's always been very active in some type of state activation. And as I mentioned in my career, I've been involved in two flood missions in Viroqua and Crawford 01:32:00County. Where we would show up. I mean, I'd show up in uniform. As a matter of fact, I remember getting a call and I told my employer and to my boss, I said, "Hey, the state needs us. A big flood going on. And they're like, "okay, great, just let us know what you're doing." And they give me the time either.

FEUCHT: Most of the time, I would usually just be kind of a leave with pay kind of thing, which is always very nice. Um, and I would go over and I would meet with the, what I remember the most was in Gays Mills and Soldiers Grove coming into town, meeting the Crawford County Emergency Management person. And we'd all meet in a room and kind of get a status of what's going on and who's all there and who's available. And I'd be in my uniform and they'd say, and I would basically say, "What can the National Guard do to help?" You would work through 01:33:00the Wisconsin Emergency Management, which is WEM for short. Well. That is who the Crawford County Emergency Management person would work with. So that person would say, I need some resources for something, you know, whatever they needed. They needed MP support because they have roads or bridges or things that are flooded and they don't want anybody trafficking. And the State Patrol and the county sheriff is taxed, so they need other people. Those requests usually went from the Emergency Management up to WEM and then WEM would look at us because we're all in the same room and say, "what can the Guard provide? General Wilkening was coming out of command as the adjutant general and General Don Dunbar was taking over as the adjutant general for the state. Um, this was one 01:34:00of his first flood missions. I was asked to go down, and General Dunbar was like, "Hey, whatever they need, let us know."

So, when I got down there and I basically said, "What can the Guard do?" And they're like, most of the people in the room, like, "well, I don't know." I don't know if you've got a lot. They said, "We got a lot of roads out. We need aggregate." And they're like, "Can you do that?" I said, "Well, if you have a quarry, I can get quarry team in here." And what we would do, because you could sit there and go, well, we don't want to be taking away the role of local contractors. So what we would do is say that the the town roads and the county rules would be handled by the local contractors. We'll take care of the state roads and, and anything federal and, and everybody would be good with that because they the local contractor would be overwhelmed with town and county stuff already and would have the ability, and whereas we would come in on the federal side and say we can get federal funding to do this. And within a day or 01:35:00two we had a quarry team set up in an abandoned quarry and we were producing two, three-inch aggregate and we're dropping it off for people and fixing roads and stuff and at least making making it somewhat trafficable so people could still move around in the county. So those are some of the things that we did. There was a couple of times--the Air Guard brought in--all right, this is kind of funny. And then after the flood, it's funny, but so are you--people have seen those big giant round bales of hay or straw sitting on the field? Well, can you imagine those floating down a river, and they look like giant, like huge marshmallows bobbing up and down? Well, one of--there was a dam in Crawford County that had a lot of these piled up against them, and it was causing an issue with the dam. And so we actually sat down and tried to figure out how we could move these things. And one of the ideas which actually kind of worked is we would gaff them with with a rotary wing aircraft and you pull them out and 01:36:00get them up on to the shore and just get them out of the water. Yeah. Because I don't know how else you would move it, because once these things are water-saturated they actually weighed a few tons.

So, but those are just one of the many things that we would help out with. And that's what my role as the logistics person would be. What could we, what can we provide? What do we have for logistics support on behalf of the state for statewide emergency?

Um, so I in 2010 I did that. I was later on in the year, I was at a conference in Washington, D.C., and some, and I was with my sergeant major. I will never forget this. I was with my sergeant major. We were sitting listening and a guy gets up, a colonel gets up on the stage. He starts talking about, there was the 01:37:00National Guard is doing agricultural business development teams to Afghanistan. And I've sat there and I and my ears perked up and I was like, "Wow, this is interesting." And he started talking about some of the states that were doing it. Indiana, Georgia, Texas, California, Iowa. But they were all states that had land grant universities that had agricultural-specific studies at them. And I'm sitting there going, "that is a really interesting mission. How come Wisconsin isn't doing something like that?" And I looked at my sergeant major, and I was like, "What do you think?" He's like, "Wow, that would be that would be a really neat mission for us." So, I went back to our state and I was in a meeting and I just mentioned it. And while, lo and behold, Wisconsin has it wasn't asked yet 01:38:00because we, the 32nd Infantry Brigade was deploying, which is about half of the Guard in the state. So there, so someone thought that there this is, we were being tapped too much already. And governors can do that. The governor can say, "Listen, you know, you're taking half of mine. You know, I need I need at least a minimum of something back here in case something happens." So, to stand up another unit and stand up, more people could be difficult and that is very common during at least the last two decades for National Guard units deployed. And that was kind of the, that was kind of the end of it.

Well, a few months go by and, um, I want to say this is now in the latter part of 2010, and we're in early 2011. And I get a phone call saying, "Hey, Wisconsin 01:39:00is, wants to do an agribusiness development team." And I'm like, "Really?" And guess who they're looking at to lead the team? [laughs] Now, before we go any further, I wanted to share with you my reaction to that was, everything I have done in my life led to this point. I mean, I have an agriculture background, I have an engineering background. I have all these things. It's like this is a really, I'm, my first degree out of the College of Ag & Life Sciences. And CALS is is who we tapped to help us out with all this. And they were just absolutely, the outpouring of support from the university was tremendous. And so I said, 01:40:00"Lets--I'm in." First time Wisconsin has ever done anything like this. And one thing I mentioned earlier, and I'll mention it again, is with the military you try to find someone who's done something like this and has done it well, because very rarely do we all do something that has never been done before. Now, it's never been done in Wisconsin, but it has been done in other states.

So, we reached out and got a hold of a few folks that have done it. Indiana was using Purdue University, and we reached out to them and said, "Hey, what model are you all using?" And they showed us, and how the teams were built and depending on where you were going. And that was the other thing is, depending on where you went you'd have to know a little bit more knowledge of what the 01:41:00agricultural base was there, what, what did they have. We were selected to go to Kunar Province. Now there's this immediate sigh of, Oh boy. Because if you're familiar with Afghanistan at all, the Kunar province is up in the Pech Valley and, and you're about six miles from the Pakistan border. Half of the Congressional Medal of Honors have been awarded out of that valley. I mean, it is--there's a lot of fighting going on in the Valley. So, I'm like, okay, that's what we picked and that's where they want us to go. The first--a little history of the agricultural business development teams in that area. The first team to go in was California. The California team wrote a book that kind of became required reading for all of us. The California team was replaced by the Iowa 01:42:00team. The Iowa team was replaced by the Illinois team. We replaced the Illinois team. Wisconsin too replaced us. And then the mission was curtailed due to drawdown in Afghanistan in late 2014ish during the Obama administration.

All right. So that was a little, little bit of a look at how things game came to be with the mission. So, we were given a template, and half of the team was operational security. So, it was infantry--riflemen. The other half consisted of a team of agricultural specialists and some administrative and logistics support. So we decided, well, actually before we get to that, I needed, I got 01:43:00funding to have a full-time person come on board, and to do a lot of this work. And I'll share with you, this is actually, this is just to tell you a little bit of how I am. I got a phone call from a peer who says, "I have someone for you. This captain is awesome. Great operations guy. He's got Iraq experience, blah-blah-blah." And I call him. We meet at The Mineshaft in Hartford. At the bar. I. If there is one thing I can tell in an interview with someone in a matter of minutes, if this person is really the fit or not the fit. And we hit it off. Bill and I hit it off really well. And I said, "You hired." And he was like, "When can you start?" And I said, "You can start tomorrow."

So he came on as our full-time person. And to this day, we still joke about the 01:44:00interview that was over, over a draft beer. And he was the first full-time person that I had brought on to the team. So what we decided to do--so a little bit about the team. I need to have, I need to have a security force. Where am I going to get that from? So I reached out to Marty, who was the commander of the 32nd Infantry Brigade here, and I said, "Marty, would you be interested in supplying 32 soldiers to us that can be our security force?" He goes, "You have no idea how many people are interested in doing this mission." And I'm like, "Okay." They made a contest out of it. So, what they did is they--so the32nd Infantry Brigade is consist of, like, the 128, the 127, the 105th. They took a 01:45:00squad out of each of those units and they had a little competition who wanted to be on it. We ended up with some of the best and finest soldiers that I've ever worked with. And these, our security force was exceptional. Now, as we all know, with team building, there is the forming, the storming, the norming and the performing [Sprague laughs]. And the storming was a lengthy period, because it was, what we had to get through was, I had the best of the 32nd as our security force. How are we going to fill the rest of the positions? I needed forestry. I needed agronomists. I needed two veterinarians. I needed an agriculture 01:46:00marketer. Horticulturalist--the use of that. And we even got a hydrologist. So what we decided to do, and maybe I'll even--before we did that, I got another phone call from General Dunbar and he says, "I'm coming to pick you up. We're heading to Governor Doyle's office. He wants to know about this mission and you need to explain it to him." And I said, "Okay."

So we drove down to the Capitol, went into his office, and he goes, "What do you"--very nice about it, and I knew him before that because I was with, on a flood mission with him before that. So we knew each other. And so the governor's, "Can you tell me what is this mission?" And I said, "Well," and I said, "it's an agricultural development team. You got to understand, 87% of the economy in Afghanistan is agriculture. They have been in conflict for many, many 01:47:00generations. And a lot of that expertise of how to plant corn and those kind of things is gone. They just, they don't have it anymore. And they need to be kind of reeducated on how to do agriculture successful. And our mission is to provide them that training to do legitimate crop production, animal husbandry and a number of other things." And I explained to him the positions we had, like the two veterinarians. And he goes, "We don't have veterinarians in the Army National Guard." And I said, "Governor, we have Army National Guard members that are veterinarians." And immediately the light bulb went off and he goes, "You're right." And I said, "Yes, sir. And you know what else does for us? Is I can take infantry people, and we're going to ask them what skill sets they bring: electricians, plumbers, finish carpenters, all those kind of things.

So, we did an inventory of all the specialties we had in addition to their military specialties, and those, and then right away it was like, Oh, my gosh." And I said, "Sir, you can only get that in the National Guard. You can't get that on the active component side. And that's why this mission is so tailored to the National Guard." I've had a number of civil affairs folks come forward saying they can do that type of mission, but not as specific as we were because ours was tailored to the province that we actually went to. So, so the, so the, I want to say the azimuth was set and the governor was on board. He was--this is a great mission. And then we explained to him how we're going to do, you know, we're going to get some of our training from the College of Ag & Life Sciences at UW-Madison, which I'm an alum. And everything was great. So, we started the 01:49:00ball rolling. I can't remember where Scott Walker comes into this. Governor Walker, I can't--when did he come on? Was it January of 2011? 2012, maybe? Okay. And the only reason I bring that up is because we transition to a new governor and I had to explain it all over again.

SPRAGUE: Oh. [Feucht laughs]

FEUCHT: So. And but the first time we had the idea was with governor, we explained, I had to sit down with Governor Doyle. So. All right, what do we do? How are we going to find these people? So we came up with the idea of holding a job fair, as crazy as that may sound. So, within the Guard, we put out the positions we needed and what we're looking for. And we had over 300 applicants that were interested in going on this mission. We, I had retirees come forward saying they wanted to go on this mission. So we sat down with resumes and 01:50:00everything, and we work through with what people could offer and skill sets. And I remember I mentioned earlier about I'm looking for secondary skill sets like registers, electricians, plumbers.

FEUCHT: Believe it or not, one of one of the guys I had on the team was a small engine repair person, and I don't know how many times we would go into a village and they would have a water pump for a tractor. And some of these tractors are old Russian-made or European-made tractors that are sitting and haven't moved or haven't operated in years and are and the soldiers on the team would think this is great. And it was like a challenge and they would grab some tools. And I'll tell you what, if there wasn't a celebration, is when that thing, when something started that hasn't been running in how many years and this person was an Army trained infantryman, Leonard Bravo, but, yet a small engine repair guy who just 01:51:00knew how internal combustion engines worked really well and would just make thing work. Those were the kind of skill sets that we were looking for. So we advertised. We got more than what we needed. And we and unfortunately had to tell people we turn people away, but we put together a really good team of people that were interested n being. So there was 58 of us on the team. U--m.

SPRAGUE: Was there any--was it all Army National Guard or was there Air Force?

FEUCHT: That's a great question. We it was, we had two Air Force Air National Guard individuals. One of them was a professional pest manager and the civilian side, which reaped us great reward when we got in country, because this person, and every--talk about some of the--and every time somebody would hand me a bug 01:52:00and I would be, I have no idea what this is. And I would look at him and he goes, "I have never seen that before in my life." But, but it's got this many legs and it's got this many of this, and knowing that this is how you kill it. [both laugh] So I'm going, that's good enough for me. So, we developed the team, put it together. Now, how are we going to train everybody?

SPRAGUE: I have a quick question. Interrupt you, sorry.

FEUCHT: No.

SPRAGUE: What is the significance of the it being the 82nd ADT? if I missed that let me know.

FEUCHT: No, that's a that's a great question. And the answer is I have no idea [inaudible].

SPRAGUE: Fair enough.

FEUCHT: How that happened is you-- when the-so it's a unit that doesn't exist. So, in the world of the Department of Defense and the Department of the Army, 01:53:00and I don't know if they work with heraldry. I don't know how this works. But all-of-a-sudden, one day our unit was created and through the system and the thing showed up and it says you are now bestowed the 82nd Agri-business Development Team. And we're like, Where did that come from? There's no lineage. We know of one agri-business development team that we were with that actually went, painstakingly went through the Office of Heraldry to get a number that was associated with legacy within their state. And they said that that was about as hard as was the mission to do that.

SPRAGUE: Wow!

FEUCHT: Yeah. So, we didn't question it. We, we all kind of jokingly thought it was kind of neat because of associated with the 82nd Airborne and the All-Americans, that kind of thing. And some people, to this day, even think that is you're associated with the 82nd Airborne. And I was like, you know, I don't 01:54:00think so. But, yeah.

SPRAGUE: So then for administrative purposes, while you were here stateside, what, what, who did you roll up under? Were you directly Wisconsin Army National Guard? A joint force, or--

FEUCHT: Okay. That's that's another great question. Since we had two Air Force individuals and remember earlier I mentioned the Air Force Blue Army Green, we rolled up under the joint staff because we were a joint unit. And I will, as long as were talking a little bit about that, that was huge in that soldiers got--so we did the mission. Soldiers would get recognition for working with a joint unit, and that was a big deal because it opened-up, um, if you were in the 01:55:00Army, you can get an Army Achievement medal, you can get an Army Commendation Medal in the Air Force, you get an Air Force Commendation Medal, Air Force Achievement Medal. If you are a joint unit, you have the ability now to do joint awards and joint commendations for people. It opened, it also helped for NCO noncommissioned officers and officers to have true accredited joint staff or joint unit there under their belt. So, when they would go before a promotion board or something, people would say, "You know, I spent time in a joint unit." That was, that is, at the time we were doing this mission, that was the beginning of people getting joint accreditation for working with joint units. And that was--in a sense, we did have Air Force staff on our team that allow us to do that. Now, it also created some logistic headaches. Um, we [laughs] had to 01:56:00pay them under the Army--Army people were paid under the Army pay system. The Air Force are paid under the Air Force paid system. Equipment was ordered under the Army. Air Force ordered under the Air Force. So 56 people were kind of treated one way, and two were treated the other. But it was worth the effort. So--

SPRAGUE: Who got their supplies first [laughs]?

FEUCHT: Usually they're, well, you know what? The Army, the army did, but the Air Force, some of their stuff would show up and they would be just a little bit different and in some cases would be the even nicer. [laughter]

SPRAGUE: Shocking,

FEUCHT: I know, [Sprague laughs] But we would always, we had a we had a way of working it out. One of the challenges really was the pay. That was because 01:57:00everyone was eligible for hazardous duty and a couple other things. And we we really had to tap into the joint staff within the Wisconsin Guard to really, in a sense, to have overwatch. They had to make sure they were paid properly. Yeah, it was that was that was a it had, it had many benefits that outweighed some of the hindrance. But we work through those. So. Uh, so we finally got the team together. And we had to put together a road map to, up to our deployment, which was in early 2012. So we had pretty much all of chunk of 2011 to do what we wanted to do. One of the things we created, and we sat down with--this is 01:58:00actually a funny story. So I made an appointment with the Dean of the College of AG and Life Sciences in Madison, and we went to her office and I said, Hey, this is who we are. This is what we this is who I am. "We want to put together a 40-hour short course at the Arlington [Wisconsin] Agricultural Research Station and then call it Ag 101." And what we wanted to do was, it was basically to level set everyone on the team with basic agricultural knowledge for Kunar Province, Afghanistan. Things that we didn't, things I knew that the team didn't know. There is as many dairy cattle in Kunar province is there is Dane County. We had a lot, we bumped into a lot of dairy cattle. You wouldn't think that, but 01:59:00there was a lot there. It's just small villages, had a lot of small farms. And a dozen here, a dozen there, kind of thing, but they all added up. So that was like one example. Her initial response was, we're not interested. And I said, "Good, because Purdue is." And that was the end of the conversation. So [laughs].

SPRAGUE: Wow!

FEUCHT: Yeah. And Purdue was very interested in us coming down to Indiana and doing everything. And that turned the tide right away. And so what we did is I happen to know enough people within College of Ag & Life Sciences. We all sat down and we came up with a 40-hour short course and we did it out at Arlington. We did it here on campus. We did it--and it was and it was to cover everything that we were going to run into from artificial insemination on dairy cattle, pest management, some water control and irrigation challenges. Beekeeping was a 02:00:00thing. Um, but all of these things that we put together in this course. We also went to old World Wisconsin down in, oh, gosh. What is that? It's south. South-east of here. Kind of close to Milwaukee. And if you're not familiar with it--Old World Wisconsin is Wisconsin, 1800s. And you go throu there and they have people that dress up in the garb and they do what they did in the 1800s. Farming of the 1800s and that. We spent a day down there with some custom training because we were, that's what we were running into in Afghanistan was some very fundamental agricultural practices. So, we spent the day there. And 02:01:00then when we all graduated from that, we did things that I didn't know is, the College of Ag & Life Sciences had, at least back in 2012 or 2011, there were many Afghan professors here that were interested in sitting down with us to teach us. And I didn't realize how many there were that go all the way back to the Soviet invasion that relocated to the United States and that were either adjunct or faculty members here at the UW. Um, we had, I would say, about a half-dozen of our instructors, uh, some of which were very familiar with where we were going because that's where they came from. So, it was a great learning experience for everyone. Um, then we created what we called our reach-back 02:02:00capability, meaning we now knew who all these experts were here at the College of Ag & Life Sciences. So while we were on the ground in Afghanistan, if we had an issue with something, we could reach back to entomology. We could reach back to plant pathology. We could reach back to our points of contact here to help us resolve something. So an example would be we go to a greenhouse. If there was something happening in the greenhouse, we could take pictures, we could send them back to plant path and they would say, "Hey, that's a deficiency in" something. Now, in Afghanistan, you just can't run down to the Ace Hardware store and buy your NPK fertilizer. So, you'd have to get creative with what you would have available to you there. And once we get into the country, I'll explain some of those things that how we'd resolve that. But for now, we least have this ability that we can reach back to the College of Ag & Life Sciences at the UW. It was a great, great relationship. Um, so the team's been trained teams 02:03:00ready to go, All the agri-business development teams go through Camp Atterbury, Indiana, and all of that gets us caught up to maybe some of your questions or?

SPRAGUE: Yeah, no. So tell me, what was that mobilization training like?

FEUCHT: So, I mean, there's two ways you can approach mobilization training. You can go to the mobile station and you can have them do everything for you and spend an absorbent amount of time in Indiana. Or you can do a lot of this at home station or Fort McCoy, [Oakfield??] or something. And when you get to Camp Atterbury, you're going to spend the minimal amount of time doing the required stuff that you have to do there before you go forward. So, you can spend 02:04:00anywhere up to 45 to 60 days at the mobile station or as few as 24. We elected to spend a few days there, so we tried to do as much as we could at home station, utilizing resources we had here to minimize the amount of time that we were at Camp Atterbury. So, all the agri-business development teams go through Camp Atterbury. When we when we arrived there, um, it was, uh, you now, at this point, you know other, other ADTs in the area. So we were good friends already with Minnesota. We already established a good relationship with Illinois, who were we were replacing, and Missouri was another ADT that was there at the same 02:05:00time. So, you know, you're kind of like your brothers and sisters of like teams. But when we got, we, we had all left Indiana at different times going to different places in Afghanistan. So, the mobile station we spent a lot of little time as we could there. Did what we had to do. We were eager to get to Kunar Province, and I went forward. We had a leadership team go forward for about a few days to meet, doo face to face with our Illinois team. Came back and then it wasn't too soon after that we all--then I had kind of advance party go forward. And then the rest of the team followed on before we all arrived in Kunar. It takes you--when we went over you will go from Indiana to Manas, which is 02:06:00Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan which is called--actually, Manas is what they refer to as the "Gateway to Afghanistan." It is a place that I experienced the coldest I've ever been and the warmest I've ever been [laughs]. Um, because we went through there in January and it was really, really, cold. And then so that's one way to get into Afghanistan. Another way is if you go through, I believe, it's Qatar, or Kattar, depending on--but we went in and out through Manas.

SPRAGUE: How do you spell Manas in English? Or try.

FEUCHT: I think it's M-A-N-A--S.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

FEUCHT: Manas Air Force. It's an airbase.

SPRAGUE: In Kyrgyzstan?

FEUCHT: Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Was--were you--was that your mission in the 82nd? The development team--was that part of Joint Task Force Manager or is that a separate, more--

FEUCHT: That is one and the same.

SPRAGUE: One of the same. Okay. I want to be; clarify that for me. Straighten me out on that.

FEUCHT: Well, we designated ourselves as Joint Task Force Badger and uh, but our, our, our, I think you call it MTOE, MT&E, was 82nd Agribusiness Development Team. So but we like, I was trying to once again to have emphasis on the joint. I wanted, you know, 82nd, ADT, Agribusiness Development Team doesn't tell you much. Joint Task Force Badger was, is, what we call ourself. It's on our coin. It's on our guidon. I wanted the word "joint" to really be prominent in what we all did so people would know that this was a joint, joint operation.

SPRAGUE: And I have that written down as, looks like, OEF 13?

FEUCHT: Thirteen. We were part of OEF 13. Um. I'll go back, just for a second digress just a bit. When I went to. Fort Bragg, North Carolina, that was OIF 1 and OEF 2. So, and there were, it's usually the rotation, so it was like you can kind of guess it's about a year. So, if 2012, you were like every ten, nine months they would do a rotation. So, we were the 13th rotation of Operation Enduring Freedom.

SPRAGUE: Okay, So, you come into country, where do you where do you land? Where do you first enter?

FEUCHT: We enter at Bagram Airfield [base??], and that is pretty much where 02:09:00everybody comes in out of when you're in Afghanistan. Um, Bagram Airfield is, is a massive Air Force base. Um, it is. There's a lot of traffic going in and out. From there you can either go forward at fixed-wing or rotary-wing, depending on who's making the travel arrangements. But from here we would most likely--we took a fixed-wing to Jalalabad, and that is a very short landing strip. Basically, a C-130 is about the biggest thing you can put in there. A very small airfield. As a matter of fact, you crossed it day and night. You cross the 02:10:00airfield, there's a traffic light for pedestrian traffic, and there [Sprague laughs] is a big giant green light or a red light. And there's also a lot of drone traffic in and out of there. From there, you can only go rotary-wing to Asadabad, which is basically FAB [Forward Operating Base] Wright where we stayed.

SPRAGUE: And is, if you can tell me, is that how you got there, by rotary-wing?

FEUCHT: That was it. You know, it was the first time I arrived at FOB Wright was exactly how it was portrayed in the book we read from the California ADT.

FEUCHT: We arrived at night and we were on a Chinook, and they basically push 02:11:00you out the back of the Chinook and you're on a big pile of duffel bags and totes. And they basically just keep your head down because the blades are still turning and it's a blackout FOB, so there's only red lens. There's no white light and the Chinook takes off and the dust clears and there's a little bit of a silence. And the next thing you hear is "Colonel [Feucht"??] or "Major [inaudible]. Yeah, okay. It's going to take you a minute or two to acclimate your eyesight, but I'm standing right in front of you." And you're like, Okay, see, step--you can't see anything. But, you know, it's interesting because that's exactly what they said in the book. In the book, they shove you out in the middle of the night. There is no light, white light, whatsoever. You'll see some red lenses, that kind of thing. Dust is flying or whatever. The Chinooks take-off and and you're greeted by a party there that will get you to where you 02:12:00need to go. So FOB Wright is a very, very small outpost right outside of Asadabad. It's named after a communications specialist that was killed there several years prior to that, And let's see it's maybe Jason Wright or something to that effect. But there was a little memorial right there at the landing, at the landing strip--it was the heliopad. I'll say a few things about it. It is a former Soviet Union base, um, because you will walk around the base and you'll go--I always remember the restroom. Everything is in Russian. It's all written in Russian. All the symbology is Russian. Um, things that are embedded in the 02:13:00concrete were all in Russian. So it was an it was, I don't know, and it was--and our security force hated it because it's in a bowl. And there, it was, um, we had outposts around outside of the perimeter that would keep an eye on things for us. But it was strategically, it was the worst place you could be.

SPRAGUE: Give me your first impressions when you were pushed out of the back of the Chinook, laying in the pile there, what thoughts that crossed your mind?

FEUCHT: What in blazes are we doing [both laugh]? Uh, no, it was--I'll tell you what. I really appreciated the fact the California team wrote a book, because there was, there was things in the book, that, and names nd buildings and things that they reference in the book that when I went at daylight and you could walk 02:14:00around in the FOB, you're like, "Oh, man, this is what they're talking about." This is, you know, this is, these were things that they were referencing and then you're like, "Okay, I get it," you know. So that was that was very helpful. It's a small, it is a really, really small FOB. There was kind of a makeshift track on the inside of the wire, and the track wasn't, you know, like any more than something like three-quarters of a mile. I mean, it was just this very, very small post. Or base, I guess.

SPRAGUE: Who--was there an existing security unit there at Camp Wright, and what was it composed of?

FEUCHT: Camp Wright. Well, we had, you co-located with three entities. You co-located with a PRT, which is a Provincial Reconstruction Team, which is 02:15:00provided by the United States Navy. They would do infrastructure builds. They were the, like, schoolhouse building. They had overwatch of governance with the State Department. Um, and it was, you know, I want to see like the Seabee stuff that they would they would do. It was commanded by an O5. I think that's a lieutenant commander maybe. I don''t remember my rank really well with the Navy. But it was a small team just like us. Kinda 'a lot of similarities. A specialty team that would be builders and governance people and then a security force that would travel with them to provide protection for them. Um, and as we get into this, I'll mention that we eventually merge as part of the drawdown. But so they 02:16:00were there, The ADT was there. There was a handful of other alphabet soup. USAID was there, who became a really good partner with us. They had, let's just say, the wherewithal to do things, but never really had the transportation to get things they had to where they needed to be. So we had a, we developed a good partnership because we could provide that transportation. Uh, um, and, uh. There was a presence of other--how do I say this? Other alphabet soup- civilian-type folks that were working in their own little, tiny compound doing their thing. And I will tell you, they, they provided us intelligence that we normally wouldn't get from our own intelligence background which was very helpful. So, 02:17:00there was many, many times that we knew something was coming in advance just because of their presence being with us so, um, so that was really it. And then we had a--one thing, as crazy as it may sound, that FOB Wright was really known for, is it had a really tiny dining facility and it was one of the best in theater. All the special operators would stop there to grab food [laughs].

SPRAGUE: Wow.

FEUCHT: I heard rumor when I got, when, that it was supposed to be really good. Our Illinois team told us it is, that, he goes, "If there is one thing you will look forward to here, it is the food." And I was, like, "Really?" And, and sure enough, the this the the dining facility was a tiny, tiny little place. But they had, and I don't know how they did it, it was, [Haliburton's] Brown and Root was 02:18:00the contractor and did most of the contracting there. All the cooks and most of the people were either Anglo from Europe and some--that were there on tours--supported by locals. Locals would come on the FOB and provide support. But the food was--the coffee was horrible. All right, that part I will tell you--the coffee, as a matter-of-fact, and there was a story about the coffee in the dining facility, and we think they left the cleaner in the coffee [Sprague laughs]. People would get sick off of the coffee. But the coffee was horrible. But everything else was great. They had they had a seafood and steak night every now and then. And it was it was tremendous. It was really, and it was open, it had extended hours. You could get soup and sandwich all the time. But I don't know how many times I would, we'd be somewhere on mission, and someone would say, "Where you guys," you, know, yeah, " where are all from?" I said, " Well, 02:19:00we're staying, we're at FOB Wright." "Oh, man! We stopped there for the food!" And I said, "I don't know, I keep hearing that." I mean, it was. It was. It was true. Um, so, but a nice--there was--some of the locals did a lot of, there were some floral arrangements, some gardens that were there that were just beautiful. I mean, just and the locals would come in and be the caretakers of that. Um. I mean it's just a really, it was a really neat post, but it was a pretty dangerous place because during the, um, the wet season and the fighting season, we would get rocketed and shelled pretty regularly just because of our, pretty much our location.

SPRAGUE: Did you have any experience with that while you were there?

FEUCHT: We did.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

FEUCHT: And, uh, I think it was 62 meter--millimeter mortars and Chinese 103 02:20:00rockets were the weapons of choice, I think. But it was pretty regular. The FOB was equipped with an early warning system, so you sometimes would have maybe a good ten, 15 seconds that there was inbound. And you could usually find a place that you can take cover. Someday, most of the days they were very inaccurate. And there were some days that they were just unbelievably accurate. You just--you know, how in the world? So, yeah.

SPRAGUE: Anybody injured or hurt in the unit?

FEUCHT: We had a couple of people that were injured, but not severely.

SPRAGUE: Okay. What was that like, being shelled, getting mortared?

FEUCHT: Well, the first couple times it was, it was, it was quite an experience. But after a while, you, just like anything else, you kind of got used to it. And and then you would have new people arrive. And if you've been there for a few months you'd be like, you know, "Oh shucks, we got to take cover," and then [makes sound] say no worry about it, and you can hear them whistle by and then you go, "Okay, they missed," or, you know, you maybe had some impact in the compound and, and any of the dust would come off of the ceilings and a few things get knocked over and you're like, "Okay. they're getting pretty close today."

SPRAGUE: So, tell me about day-to-day.

FEUCHT: Okay. So, we did a, we did a change-of-authority with, uh, with the Illinois team. Illinois team packs up, goes home. And, they, we probably had an 02:22:00overlap of about a week or so. Um, and they were eager to get home, which I get. And then we took over the mission. Um, we would have a, every night we'd have a briefing about what we want to be, but prioritize the things that we had. And our priority of mission was based off of what the Illinois team handed to us. And that was based off of what the director of, director of the DAIL is what it stands for--[Director] Agriculture. something, and Livestock.

SPRAGUE: Irrigation.

FEUCHT: Irrigation. There we go. Thank you. And livestock. The DAIL. Each province had a DAIL and ours, ah--oh, shoot! Hold on a second. Give me just a second here. Mohasal--was our, and I can spell that one for you. M-O-H-A-S-A-L-- 02:23:00uh, decent fella. We would meet with him pretty regularly. He would have monthly meetings with all of his district. Uh, ah, it's kind of like--the best way to describe this is, like, Dane County has an agricultural extension agent. And just imagine if you had the DAIL was that extension agent. And each county had, or each, I'm sorry, each township had their own agricultural person you go to. That's, that's kind of how that was made up there. So each of the little districts would have their own agricultural agent that would, would come to us with things that didn't work. And we have this priority list. So there was a number of things that we work on. We identified all the greenhouses that were in 02:24:00our area and we would support. There was a couple water projects we worked on and that was basically just channeling some of the Kunar River water to provide some irrigation to some folks that were without. Another one was, uh, well, well-drilling or well, putting in some wells for some folks, uh--others. was some pest management. Pest management was a big one because it was some places we ran into critters and insects and stuff that we didn't know, so we did pest management. We conducted a handful of artificial insemination. Uh, where the beekeeping came in, we didn't do much of that. But what that was is we had six females on the team and those Females would also be part of a FET, which is a 02:25:00Female Engagement Team. Uh, American soldiers cannot interact with Afghan females. That, that was, that was the rule. But we would run into females that would ask via their, their clan, their husbands or whatever to help out with some things, one of which was beekeeping. And you've got agriculture, you need bees. And someone decided let's, let's let the females do the bee stuff. So and then we would use our Female Engagement teams to meet with some of those folks. So we had the list. We would go on how would, they would be, depending on the intel, our intelligence as to if it was a kind of a hot area or cold area, meaning there's IEDs or some kind of thing. We would work with the engineer company that was close by that would do road-clearing and some you know, we would go obviously go out to places where the routes had been just cleared, 02:26:00cleared recently and uh, because those are usually the safer routes. Um, we would do, I would do Key Leader Engagements, KLEs, and and that was just meeting with people. Um, so were like meeting with the DAIL. I would sit in meetings with him, he would talk about what his priorities were. I will tell you with the Afghan people, they would ask for a lot. And we would do what we can. You know, working with our partners, the USAID [United States Agency for International Development] and some others, we would work with them as to, you know, one thing is they could provide seed. USAID, they provide wheat, seed, those kind of things from a reliable source.

SPRAGUE: What, who, how did that work today? Was it provided--

FEUCHT: USAID had their own logistics, their own way of doing stuff. They would show up with a, there's a, trucks called jingle trucks. It's basically a flatbed 02:27:00truck like we have here, and they have things hanging on them that would jingle. You know, in the back of it it would be like a palace seat or something. And I would be, like, "Where did this come from?" Well, the USAID worked out something where they got it from Pakistan or something. And then you have, you know, is this good seed? Is this bad seed? Because far too often you would get bad seed because something, somebody peddled some bad stuff and you don't want to. Because what would happen is you plant that, it would fail and then the low, everyone would be pissed. And I'm sorry, they'd be mad and then, you're like, okay, so let's just start from the beginning with good seed that works in this, in this climate. And, and you see we can do a couple of rotations of crops. Whatever. Whatever makes best. The other one is tubers. We would do onions, garlic, those kind of things. And if you can get good bulbs. And most of the 02:28:00locals knew where we can get some of those good things that they could get it. Just like I said earlier, you just it's not like you can go down to Menards and Ace Hardware store and I mean, that's, none of that was really available. So you had to be kind of smart about where you got this stuff from. But the USAID Navy was a great partner in providing some of those resources. They just didn't have the people power to get the stuff to where it needed to be. And that's where we would help out with that.

SPRAGUE: What--how did you communicate with the people?

FEUCHT: With the other--

SPRAGUE: You know, with the Afghan nationals?

FEUCHT: We had a team of interpreters that were cleared through their, our local authority. So, I got again, there's a couple more things I need to add to this too. We, even though I had my own, we had our own, our team had our own security force, 4th Infantry was the battlespace owner. They and Colonel Jim Mingus was 02:29:00the commander that I worked with. And you remember earlier I mentioned about how they are in date of rank. We're both 0-6s and I had date of rank on him. So, he kind of [inaudible]. What's interesting is Jim ends up becoming the 82nd Airborne commander. He's got I think he's got his third star already, but great guy. And what I always liked about Colonel Mingus is it didn't matter you were Guard or not. He was, I'm here to support you. And if things got bad, just pick your phone up and I can be here with whatever you need. That's the 4th I.D. patch right there.

SPRAGUE: Is that why, does that tie to that, or is this a different patch?

FEUCHT: Yes. That's it. That's the that's the patch.

SPRAGUE: So we're looking at the 4th I.D. patch, which is part of the Wisconsin Veterans collection, part number or object number V2015.3.12. I just wondered, 02:30:00because I was looking through your stuff and I'm like, "what's that doing in there?" Now we know.

FEUCHT: Well, the uniform and the patch to go along with it, this the, and the picture doesn't do it justice. But this was the first--that uniform being a FRAC[U] uniform, which is the, it's called the Army--it's an acronym within an acronym. It's, so, we were Operation Enduring Freedom, and it was the Operation Enduring Freedom Camo Pattern. So it was the OCP. There we go, OCP uniform. And it was a different color. And we were the first ones issued. That patch is the OCP color, and that's why, I gave ya [inaudible] when I donated the uniform and the patch. It's it has it's not quite green. It's kind of a digital green digital print. So yeah, I was going to say that it the, yeah, the uniform we had actually was, had an acronym within the acronym. There we go.

SPRAGUE: [Both laugh] Within the acronym, right.

FEUCHT: That's when you know you're running out of acronyms.

SPRAGUE: [Inaudible].

FEUCHT: So yeah, so we had the 4th I.D. was the battlespace owner and we would meet with them pretty regularly. There were many, times and this is I think for reestablish the, it was the professional courtesy that he would say, "I can provide you a security team." And I said, "No, I'm going to work my own. And he kind of, in a nicer--"I got a team that's battle proven and tested." And, ah--

SPRAGUE: What was his response to that?

FEUCHT: He was good with it. He was very good with it. We had a great working relationship. Um, so, so our, like our daily stuff, we would either do key leader engagements, the ag team would go out. I would sometimes go out with them, depending on who we were meeting, what we were doing. We tried to get out 02:32:00every day. Um, you know, but there was sometimes it was just, we call, I would call off a mission because I had a, had a great intel officer and if I, if he ever came to me, Paul came to me and said, "Sir, I don't think we should go out tomorrow. I just got it--I'm getting the vibe, I'm getting some warnings," well, ah, and we'd call off the mission and and we just postpone it. We just do it the next day or whatever we felt, um, we think of, things have got a little better. So, um, it's still, you know, and, oh, you you mentioned about who, and I had interpreters. Um, and we also had young professionals. Okay. And I'll explain what those folks--.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

FEUCHT: It was a couple, about a half dozen folks. To understand how the school system works there, they had these high schools and they had a university. But 02:33:00their universities were kind of like our high schools. Their high schools were kind of like intermediary schools. So, this would be back ratcheted down because we would work with the Kunar University. And you would think, right away, UW-Madison, you know, it's like a technical high school where they would teach technical skills and probably even kind like a trade school almost, but they would call it "the University." So, these young professionals were students at those schools. They were trusted advisers for us. They were cleared and they were actually paid by us. We would pay them a stipends for things that they would do. And they would, they would, we would meet them in places. So if we went to a particular village, we would meet them there and they would, they would be, in a sense, the conduit for us, you know, in the segway for us to, 02:34:00if--you didn't want to be in places a long time. Let's just put it that way. So, anything we can do ahead of time is great. So when we went into a village, you didn't want to you, didn't want to spend a whole day there doing something. You would spend maybe a couple of hours, and then there were some warning signs that you would get that your welcome was wore out. Um, the, uh--

SPRAGUE: What were some of those warning signs, if you don't mind?

FEUCHT: The black flag of the Taliban would be raised across the field. Um, and you know, so [I don't know??] how you would stay. You would see the flag and you would realize, Okay, they're here, and they know we're here. But if suddenly, if the flag is getting closer and there's more flags, then you're welcome's worn out and it's time to go. There was a number of times that we experienced that. 02:35:00We were, we helped, um, assist finishing a cool underground storage facility in a village that the Illinois team did. And. And quite often we would only spend a brief period of time there, um, for those reasons. Um, so, and I want to say that cool versus cold. Cool, is like the old--it's basically a root cellar, like grandma and grandpa had, but actually a really nice one. I mean, you can store a lot of stuff in there. So that was, that was one of the, one of our missions. So these young professionals would, we're really handy because they knew the locals, they lived there. They were cleared folks that could be trusted. And 02:36:00like I said, they received a stipends, too. So very beneficial team that we worked with.

SPRAGUE: So how did the, the dynamics of the teamwork? You'd go out with these "Young Professionals," and let's say you come into a location. Was the intent to instruct the locals on how to do the work, or assist them with existing work or provide where, you know--?

FEUCHT: I think it would be all of the above.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

FEUCHT: We kind of knew ahead of time if we went to a village what--because we knew the priorities from the DAIL and then we, so we would go down, so the individual that we would visit regularly is a fellow named Lasoud. This was the most Westernized Afghanistan person I think I ever run into. So his home was this big enclosed area. It had a cell tower in it because he knew that he could 02:37:00make money off of the cell tower being there. But he grew a lot of tuber crops that he supplied to high-end restaurants in Kabul. Kabul was almost like a day drive from where he was. But people in these restaurants would come out and buy his produce because it was the best around, and we would help him with planting and also educating other folks on how to plant in his little commune that he had. But he was, he had a lot of swagger and he knew how to make money. And but he was really, he helped train locals. Like I said, you know, some of the produce that he had in his gardens and greenhouses that he had, he was pretty commercialized guy for-- and did really, really well. But like I said, his 02:38:00produce was recognized by many. And he would train others through helping with us to grow these exceptional crops that he seemed to be able to do. So that was, that was one, uh, we had a number of greenhouses that we would assist with. One of the greenhouses, Jamal's Greenhouse. That was within a block of where we were. Jamal was a very outspoken, uh, Afghan. He, uh, he wanted to train women--females--in things that were kind of forbidden. Meaning I want, I want them to become, have their own greenhouses, do their own thing or whatever, etc. And we visit him a few times, and he was one that we had some pest challenges with or whatever. Uh, unfortunately, while we were there, Jamal was killed and 02:39:00under suspicious circumstances and, uh, we helped take over, allow his brother and his kids to take over the greenhouse and do some stuff. Um, you know, I can't speak to if his outspokenness led to his demise or not, but it was under suspicious circumstances. And unfortunately. He was a good guy. He was--I just call maybe a change leader that that really wanted to do better things for for his people. And unfortunately, he was killed while we were there.

SPRAGUE: What--did you have any sense of, while your team was doing these things, overall, what your contribution to the counterinsurgency, COIN, 02:40:00activities was? And did you have any ability to gauge that?

FEUCHT: That's a great, that's a that's a great question. Our mission was legitimate crop production. Did we see stuff other than that? Yeah. Did you--did we, um, how do I want to say this. We tried our best to--Here's the, here's an example that I use. If you ran into a person that wanted to produce some watermelon, and watermelon, let's say, was selling on the open market for something, for a little bit more than what opium was getting for, getting on the black market. You could negotiate sometimes with the, say, "Listen, can you allow this person to grow this if they still continue to grow this," and turn, 02:41:00turn an eye to the whole thing. If that keeps the family alive, then that was acceptable. We did not touch any illegitimate crop. It was, just, like, I guess, did we see it? We saw it. Um, but it was just you you would just create problems for your team, and I'll explain that. What does that mean? I'll explain that the easiest way. Our vehicles had ADT in big letters on the top, on the sides, on the back. One day we went out. We had a vehicle with that out. That was not on it. It took fire right away. So that tells you they know what that means and they know that we're here to help the people. So it kind of sent us a signal that, um, you know, we were there, we--and when it was all said and done, when 02:42:00the mission was complete, you know, we had to try to come up with how many people do we think we impacted while we're there. And we think it is not too far to say that it was 100,000 people. I mean we trained a lot of classes in a lot of different communities. Um, so, you know, each of those persons went back and talked to five people. You know, we did a lot of positive impact folks.

SPRAGUE: Mm-hmm.

FEUCHT: So along comes the transition, meaning, um, the administration wants to drawdown under 100,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and what are we going to do? So that summer, so we're probably, we're, you know four or five--actually, when we 02:43:00were leaving Camp Atterbury, there was some discussion about us not going, you know, the curtail because the administration wanted to cut down. They wanted to get from 100,000 to 30,000 troops lickety-split. And how are they going to do that? So, you know, the ADTs, PRTs [Provincial Reconstruction Team], everything was looked at real hard. So, you know, we when we were there for months and all of a sudden there's this dialog about, hey, We need to, either we're going to curtail the mission and it's over, or we've got to come up with a solution. Well, our solution was that since we live with the PRT, and they have a security force and we have a security force, let's share our security force, which means the security force is going to go home along with some other folks. Well, while we were there, I have I had a very ambitious executive officer and I said, "Rob, go out mission shop. Go to Kabul. See if anybody's looking for a team of 02:44:00thirty-some people, etc., etc.." Now, you might think that's kind of weird, but that's exactly what you do when you're in theater [laughs], because the missions change. They always change. So the word came down that the PRT and the ADT are going to merge, and they already had a plan for that. We went to Kabul looking for somethin', and now, lo and behold, we run into the, um, at Camp Phoenix. It was Task Force Hydra, which was the Georgia National Guard. And the commander of that unit said, "Hey, we have a shortfall for 100 days for a Quick Reactionary Force in Camp Eggers," which is the Green Zone in Kabul. And I said, "Would you 02:45:00be interested in our team doing that?" And he's like, "Heck, yeah." So I go to our security force and said, "Guys, you either go home, or you going to Kabul for 100 days to do this mission. And they are like, We're going to Kabul [laughs]. So, so what happened was we're like, so the team, the ag part of the team merged with the PRT and the PRT then ended up with two cells. So they had one security team. And a handful of us, meaning myself and a couple of other folks like my intelligence officer, my XO, and a couple other folks all found roles at Task Force Hydra in Kabul, and we called it the 100 day one. It was a hundred-day mission. And our thought was that's going to extend us, you know, 02:46:00longer to be here and we can add value. That was always my thing. If we're adding value, then we're good. So that summer we went, uh, oh, we all packed up and we drove to Kabul, and, uh, we integrated within Task Force Hydra, which was the Georgia.Guard, as I mentioned. And we brought along a handful of the Missouri ADT staff. So if you remember upfront when I said we were in Atterbury and I said we were there with the Missouri folks--

SPRAGUE: Mm-hmm.

FEUCHT: --they were going through the same thing as this curtailment. And I got a call from them and we all sat down with the commander of the, of Hydra and I said, "Hey, I got a couple of Missouri guys with me." And he says, "We'll take them too." Because they were real short, that this was, So Georgia's thing was, this was their second, the MEB [Maneuver Ennhancement Brigade]. The--I think it was the 648th MEB.

SPRAGUE: 648th.

FEUCHT: Yeah. MEB. Um. This was, I think, their second deployment there and they were kind of short-staffed. So we felt just kind of like we did when I was back in 2002 going to Fort Bragg. We filled some seats that were empty for them. And and one of the--so everybody kind of had an assignment. We did some, uh, some police assistance with the local law enforcement in Kabul. The QRF [Quick Reaction Force] was set up with our security force and they all stayed at Camp Eggers, and I and a couple others were asked to be part of a strategic planning team. And what that was, was--but the, and I can't remember what his name was, but the general that was in charge of the ground forces in Afghanistan. We had a 02:48:00commander's emergency relief fund that was about $300 million. The commanders had discretion to spend money. Within a year, that fund was going to be zero. And we had to sit down and basically tell some of the locals that the funding you are getting for certain things is going to go away. Where else can you get that funding? And believe it or not, there were a lot of other countries that were there that would provide funding. The Dutch, the Germans had, had an interest in Afghanistan and in certain projects were interested in providing or taking over or providing some of those funds, some of the funding. So we developed a strategic plan to wind those funds down and how we would go about it. We all sat down at a table for a couple of months and came up with a plan 02:49:00that was accepted. It was basically telling folks this, the US's money is going away. We got to figure out where you get the other money from. So. The plan itself was classified and and I, we actually thought it was pretty decent. Now, we didn't make a lot of friends [laughs], when we rolled it out. But I think everyone kind of knew the writing on the wall. That was, you know, this is, this stuff is going away. So. So that finished out, in a sense that we did that.

SPRAGUE: Now, you didn't have any choice in that case? You had to find another mission?

FEUCHT: Or they were going home.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

FEUCHT: It was really easy to go home at that time. Because, like I said, the Obama administration said we want to, we want to-- we had 100. We went from 130,000 troops down to 100,000. And then the word got on the street that they want to go down to 30,000. So, you actually, believe or not, you'd ask for 02:50:00volunteers. And we want to go home. And we actually had a couple of people who said, "You know what? This is like my third deployment kind of thing. I'm ready. I'll go home." "Okay." And it was no questions asked. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't a bad thing. It was just all, any way that you could come up with to curtail the number of boots you had on ground, because that was one thing we were doing every week was, you know, where is the head count? How many boots on the ground, because you had to show a decrease in the number of folks that you had. So every unit in the country was figuring out a way to send some people home for some reason. But, we, in a sense, I said, we're here. So we did what we could. Most of the team was there for about nine months. The other part of the team was there just about 13 months.

SPRAGUE: How long were you there?

FEUCHT: I was there until September, so I was, I was on the nine-month kind of deal.

SPRAGUE: What was a--while you're in country, what was it like in terms of being away from your family in Wisconsin?

FEUCHT: Uh, you know, I have to compare it to '02, '03 and the Internet, Facebook, that stuff was not, you know, it was a random cell phone call or a phone call with a ATT calling card. Now come up to 2012. You had. We had Internet cafes. Everyone could pretty much communicate at home with, you know, things like Skype or Facebook or those kind of things now. And and and believe it or not, where we were, bulk mail could get to us pretty quick. Mail, normal letter mail. would take about a month. But if you ordered a box from home of 02:52:00some goodies, you could get it within about ten days. So there was something and I was told the reason being letter mail got thrown into a bag. And when the bag was full it would get dropped into your [FOB??]. Boxes, when they had too many, they'd get rid of it right away. So, with mixed, I have a mixed kind of sense, but, so communicating with our home wasn't really too bad. Um, I mean, I could communicate with my boys pretty regularly. Um. He had, I had three different types of email. You had the unclassified--excuse m--unclassified email. I had shipper email, which is the security one. And then I had another one that was a classified email in country. Um, but, uh, I will tell you the one downfall though, with the, we had where we were there, and not in our unit, but another unit, there was a casualty within the area. And the soldier's wife found out 02:53:00about the casualty on social media. So what occurred is, if we had a casualty in our area of operation all media would come down until next of kin notification. So you could be on the Internet cafe, and it would literally come down. And that was the reason why. It was just shut off all communication until next kin notification and then it was brought back up again. And I get it. I mean, as a commander, I'm sitting there thinking and I'm like, Oh, man. It was, you know, what a terrible way to find things out. But, you know, you you try to have a balance of allowing soldiers to communicate at home and at work, but then sometimes too much of communication is a bad thing. So.

SPRAGUE: What were you able to do when you were in-country during your downtime?

FEUCHT: Um, I well, probably our favorite was cigar-smoking [both laugh]. In this, and then we laugh, but this is--so there was a club within Afghanistan called the Tiki Bar Cigar Aficionado Club, and there was branches of them. There was, we had one in Kabul, There was one at Camp Eggers. Um, and, and they went as far as you get patches. You had a patch, you wanted a patch, but it was like on Wednesday night, you could go down to the--and it was like, it reminded me of MASH, in the movie, where you go into the ro--it was all the hanging netting. A couple, some sofas and some furniture and you're basically in a bomb shelter. 02:55:00And one night a week we'd all go down there and there was like the head of the Tiki Hut group. Would always, you could always say, "Hey," you know, I'm Cigar International," can always get a cigar [laughs] in about ten days. And we'd order, and there, and and sometimes, all of a sudden, you get the word going, "Hey, we've got a special," you know, this box came in and everyone would want to come down to participate. So you go down and, you know, and have a cigar. And sometimes you'd be able to sit out at night in an enclosed area. You know, like I said, I mentioned that Wright was a blackout FOB. So we had to be careful about, um, what you illuminated and didn't illuminate, what could be seen and not and stuff. But that was that was kind of it. You know, you could go down to some of the shops that were right outside of the gate at most FOBs, and you could buy, you know, the dollar movies kind of thing. We watched literally four 02:56:00days after it came out, I can't remember, it was one of the Avenger movies or whatever. And for a dollar, you can buy a movie and you'd watch. And it was basically someone holding up a camera in the theater [Sprague laughs] It was horrible, but it was a dollar. You know, those kind of things. But, you know, I think soldiers would keep themselves entertained with games. And there was, General Order #1 was no alcohol. There was no alcohol in theater. It was a great rule. And if you're caught with it you were sent home. Once again, looking for a reason to get rid of people. Draw down the numbers. And the beauty of the ADT--everyone wanted to be there. Everybody wanted to be there. So I, I had no issues with the UCMJ, which is the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I had no issues with letters of reprimand. It was everyone that was there wanted to be 02:57:00there and wanted to do good. And and as I said, 58 of us went over and 58 of us came home, and we were truly blessed.

SPRAGUE: Were, when you returned home, was it as a unit or as individuals or how did that go?

FEUCHT: We came. There was a first group of us that came home in September, um, but there was the the ag team, which was the specialty people and [Fred??] were--they stayed behind with the PRT. They were there until February. Um, and that was February of 2013 that they came home. Uh, when the last persons of the team of 58 of us--boot hit the ground, that's when I announced my retirement.

SPRAGUE: Were the two connected or how does that [Feucht laughs]--

FEUCHT: Ahhh--

SPRAGUE: [Laughs] Or--

FEUCHT: It was a pretty emotional event. I, ah, it was the first night I slept--knowing everybody got home. I was coming up, I knew July of 2013 was my 30 years. I was with the adjutant general, and the deputy adjutant general that day when they all came home, and I looked at both of them, I said, "I'm going to retire in July of 2013." And they're like, [inaudible] and Mark asked me why. And I said, "Sir, everybody's home." I said, I mean, this may sound bizarre, but I was like John Elway, I won the Super Bowl and I announced my retirement right after that.

SPRAGUE: Mm-hmm.

FEUCHT: I said, I can stick around in the Guard--it still had value, but you know what, this, this was stressful and everybody's home and they're safe. And 02:59:00I'm going to walk away. And we just won the Super Bowl. I'm walking away.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

FEUCHT: And and I got to tell you, it's kind of emotional for me, but it's, you know, it was a tough decision, too. But I would--part of me was like, I'm I've done everything I can here. We stood up a mission from scratch. The first time the state has ever done anything like it. We all went. We went to one of the worst spots on the planet, and we all came back. And, you know, I got a handful of folks on the team that struggle, but, and we lost one member of the team due to suicide. But, um, but I you, know what? I did everything I could to make sure everybody got home and and I just, I said, I'm walking away from this. It's kind of--this may sound weird, but it's be a hero, or a goat. I know too many people 03:00:00that have stuck around in the service, and then done something stupid and then they're asked to leave. And now they're the goat, you know, and all they remember is that bad thing you did versus the good things you did. So I just. I just. It's time. And. And that's the, and that's the story.

SPRAGUE: So, one of the interesting things that you did today is you brought in your unit guidon--

FEUCHT: Yep.

SPRAGUE: --your unit flag.

FEUCHT: Mm-hmm.

SPRAGUE: If you would, if you'd go grab them and show us--tell us a little bit about them. That would be superb on camera. Make sure we're getting you filmed here.

FEUCHT: [Gets guidon] All right. This is--I can talk to you while we're doing this. There we go.

SPRAGUE: Let me back out [moves camera]. Okay. There we go. Go ahead.

FEUCHT: This is our unit guidon that I've been carrying ever since we came back. But once I'm on it is--I want to make sure that, ah, I think it's the same thing on both sides. Yes. All right, so it's the 82nd, which is our our number, 03:01:00Wisconsin ADT. And we have the, we have the 9th in the front. But what what it is, is it's got the Bucky Badger patch, which represents the Wisconsin National Guard. And then we've got some wheat that's on here. And our Joint Task Force Badger with surrounded by a golden wreath. Believe it or not it, was our unit--we had a little contest at the beginning. It's just come up with what we think we ought to have is our our unit insignia. And we came up with a bunch of them. And this is the one that the soldiers selected, So.

SPRAGUE: Huh. Interesting.

FEUCHT: Mm-hmm.

SPRAGUE: So that Guidon is now retired. It's no longer in active service.

FEUCHT: That, this guidon has been cased since the deactivation of the unit back, ah, which would have been February of 2013. And it's been sitting in, ah, 03:02:00in my house. And I'm thinking that it's going to stay here at the Veterans Museum when I, when I head home. Today, anyway. And this, we had made up, this [displays flag] is everyone that's on the team, and, again, you can see, over on my right-hand side here is the leadership of the team, and then the ag part of the team which is down below. And then on the left hand side is the security force that we had. And then down at the bottom is a list of all the places we were while we were over there. Uh, the, what you have is are insignia that's on here. And then on the bottom we've got Bucky Badger. That's basically our unit coin that we have embossed on the flag. I won't share with you and I will go on the record here in sayig we were allowed to use Bucky Badger. Uh, we got permission through the trademark office at the UW. Um, as long as I am not 03:03:00making money off of this, and with the partnership and everything we have with UW, they allowed us to use it, and we do not make money off of this. So.

SPRAGUE: Interesting. [Pause] So basically what you're telling me is your unit members designed your unit insignia, kind of, whatever it's technically called.

FEUCHT: That is correct.

SPRAGUE: Wow.

FEUCHT: I will, I will share one more interesting design story, but I have to take off my jacket and my shirt, which I will now do. But anyway--

SPRAGUE: Okay [laughs].

FEUCHT: I have always had this idea for a tattoo which consist of the bar and shield to become a Harley rider and an eagle and a flag and some other stuff. And I had this vision in my head. And I found out that one of our security force members is an artist and could do some of this stuff. Well, one day we're 03:04:00like--it was a bad day on the FOB, let's put it that way. And I mentioned to him during this episode I said "Hey, I understand that you're like an artist or whatever." Hey sir, "This is a heck of time to bring this up." And I says, "Well," I said, "I got this idea for a tattoo." And he goes, "Ok. Alright. Whatever." That was the end. A couple of days later, he comes in my office and he said, "Hey, what was that idea you had again?" And I penciled it out a little bit. And he says, "Okay, I'll go, I'll go work on it." A couple days later, he comes back, he hands this thing to me and I'm like, I mean, I'm like, "This is awesome." I said, I go, "This is great! This is exactly what I was thinking!" And I said, "Thanks!" I go, "I really appreciate this." He says, "No problem, sir." "We make it through this whole thing. I'm getting a tattoo of this." And he goes, "Naw, come on." I says, "Yes. Yeah." So I got a tattoo on my shoulder of the, that drawing.

SPRAGUE: Wow [Feucht laughs]. Huh.

FEUCHT: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So any, you know, any. You know, I have to ask. Any thoughts about the United States withdrawal last year, last August?

FEUCHT: Yeah, it was, ah, it was, it was pretty emotional few days, at least for me and for a whole bunch of members of the team. I was being reached by a bunch of them saying, "Hey, sir, what do you think?" And my, my take on it is, I tell everybody, for a brief period of time, over the 20-year period we provided the best we could and we gave them a great life for a period of time. It's not our responsibility to what has occurred now with the withdrawal. You know, we did 03:06:00what we could for one year while we were there. And there is no question, and we all know it, that we made a whole bunch of lives better. It's unfortunate that it ended the way it did. Um, but that's not within our control. We did what we could while we were there. You know, in overall, for the 20 years-ish, you know, a complete generation, had the best we could offer for a period of time. Um, you know, and it didn't end the way we wanted to do. I don't, I don't know what other ending you could have had, and then I don't know if it really matters to sit there and dwell on it or even think about it. But it had, it had a, it didn't end the way we wanted it to. But like I said, from one generation at least we created a great life for, uh, for a country the best we could. And for 03:07:00a chunk of that period, we gave it our best from, you know, from Wisconsin. So, um, you know, and during that time when that occurred, I've had a number of people from within theater reach out to me. And I--some of them--I have actually, even, in the last ten years, a handful of some of the Young Professionals and interpreters and some other folks have relocated in the U.S., um, and I have been in contact with a couple of them. Uh, there's a couple of them that are actually doing really, really well in the United States, which is good. And I've mentioned, you know, there were, after the fall of Afghanistan, there was, I read through our ADT social media pages, I've had a number of people reach out to us, and unfortunately, most of which I can't positively 03:08:00identify, the few positive ideas I've had I referred them to the State Department or any contacts I had, because there's, you know, not too much I can do, but I can at least forward them to the right people that may be able to provide them some assistance.

SPRAGUE: Any other thoughts on that?

FEUCHT: No, it's, you know, like I said, it had, it's been, it's been quite, it's--what, a 20 years!. I mean, I, you know, some of my career, you know, I got in in '83, and if somebody in 1983 would have told me I was going to be in Afghanistan at some point in my military career, when the Soviet Union was occupying Afghanistan, I would have been like, "You gotta be kidding me!" But it's just amazing how things change, you know, over the years. Um, I don't know. 03:09:00I don't know. I wouldn't change a thing. I don't regret a minute of the time that I've been in. There's been good times and been some bad times. Um, but, uh, you know, it's all worked out. It's all worked out well. And I can only hope that we've influenced a bunch of people positively in all the places I've been over the years.

SPRAGUE: Mm-hmm. What--do you have any involvement with any veterans organizations at all?

FEUCHT: I do. I'm, I'm actively involved in VFW 7591 here in Madison. I'm actually on the House committee there. I am the chaplain for American Legion Post 501. Um, I am also a Freemason and a member of Commonwealth Lodge 325, 03:10:00which is about a block from where we're sitting right now. And part of the Masons have a group called National Sojourners, which are military members that served honorably that are Masons can become members of National Sojourners. And I've been involved, I'm, actually, I'm actually the president of National Sojourners, Truax Chapter 197. And our, and our, what we do is we promote Americanism. Uh. Recently I've asked to--there's a Vets-to-Vets program for, um, Agrace, uh, Care here in town. And they are now bringing the Vets-to-Vets program back online post-pandemic. And I'm going to be a volunteer for them. 03:11:00Basically, my role is, if we have vets that are in hospice care want to speak to other. vets and other combat vets, there's a couple of us that are available to sit and listen to those folks.

SPRAGUE: So I've got to ask. Memorial Day is coming up. What do you do for Memorial Day?

FEUCHT: I, uh. I'm part of VFW post. 7591 Black Knights, which is our color guard. And we traditionally march in the Monona parade, which was going to be down Broadway this year. But now they've moved it back to Monona Drive, which is a great thing. So, um, and then, after the parade, we go to four different cemeteries in town and present honors. And then, so that's a long day and it's 03:12:00we start like at ten in the morning and we hop in a bus and we go to--and then at the end, at about 3:00, we end up at our VFW, present honors and then have a little, little luncheon kind of thing. That has been been my Memorial Day probably for the last couple of years, less the one where it was canceled during the pandemic. So, um, I don't know, maybe it's my--the older I get that that day seems to be getting I always thought it'd be kind of getting easier. It seems to be getting tougher. And I don't know how that is with other veterans, but you know it is. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: I understand. Did we miss anything you want to cover?

FEUCHT: Well, we covered a lot of stuff. I hadn't really--I mentioned it a 03:13:00little bit at the beginning, but I, I sit here and talk about my whole career, and I just think it's been this whirlwind of things that occurred that led up to the--and I call it the pinnacle of my career. You know, the Ag mission, the first time doing it out of Wisconsin. You know, connections with CALS, the College of Ag & Life Sciences, which is very near and dear to my heart. And you know, doing some engineering stuff in another country and trying to help out folks. And it's just--if somebody would have told me that was going to happen, if somebody in 1983 would have just sat down and said, "You're going to become a 06 in the Army National Guard. You're going to lead a team Afghanistan. You're going to do this stuff." I would have said, "Man, what are you smoking?", [Sprague laughs] because that's just crazy! But, you know, it's just been so rewarding. I mean, it's, ah, and I just think of, most of the things that I've 03:14:00done have led to to that. And I don't know what kind of--I wouldn't say it's divine intervention, but it's just, you know, even, even the adjutant general said, "Man, you were, like, designed for this mission. You know, all this stuff you have." And, and, I said, "Well, sir, this is my calling." This is my calling, you know? So, um, it's been a great ride.

SPRAGUE: What motivated you? Oh, sorry. Go ahead.

FEUCHT: Oh, the only other--and I just, I'll just toot my horn just one more time. Uh, I'm, uh, was inducted to the Wisconsin National Guard Hall of Honor for the Wisconsin Army National Guard. And that's kind of reserved for people that have just done things for, the, you know, people, things that other people haven't done. And to me, that was quite the bestowed honor. And then, uh, inducted into the University of Wisconsin-Madison Army ROTC Hall of Fame, and, 03:15:00uh. now I'm drawing a blank. It was, who was the aviator that flew first in The Spirit of St Louis.

SPRAGUE: Lindbergh.

FEUCHT: Charles Lindbergh.

SPRAGUE: Charles Lindbergh.

FEUCHT: When you're hanging on the wall with the picture of Charles Lindbergh next to you, I just think that's kind of amazing. So, yeah.

SPRAGUE: Well, if you don't have anything else, thank you for your service.

FEUCHT: And thank you for your time, Luke.

SPRAGUE: This concludes our interview.

FEUCHT: Okay.