00:00:00SPRAGUE: Today is May 15th, 2026, 2026. This is an interview with Chelsey Willms. Is that how you pronounce it? I wanna make sure I got it right.
00:00:09WILLMS: Yes, sir.
00:00:10SPRAGUE: Willms, who entered the United States Army August 3rd, 2004, and was honorably discharged July 28th, 2006. Chelsey entered the service, the Army service, as Chelsey Rae Nichols. This interview is being conducted by Luke Sprague in the interview room at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum in Madison, Wisconsin for the I Am Not Invisible Project and the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. No one else is present in the room. Okay, Chelsey, where did you grow up?
00:00:47WILLMS: For most of my childhood, I grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and then my sophomore year I got moved with my maternal grandmother and grandfather in Sparta, Wisconsin.
00:00:56SPRAGUE: Okay, and what did your family do?
00:01:00WILLMS: My grandma, maternal grandma, was actually the clerk of court for Monroe County. My grandfather actually was medically retired and on disability for bipolar disorder. My mother, after I had graduated, went back to be a psych nurse and got her associate's degree. And then my father was like a rough framer, blue collar carpenter and my paternal grandmother worked on the family farm and also did like a CNA nursing out at Rolling Hills.
00:01:37SPRAGUE: Okay. And were any of them involved in the military?
00:01:42WILLMS: No.
00:01:43SPRAGUE: Okay.
00:01:44WILLMS: No one in our family.
00:01:45SPRAGUE: Okay. So, and what high school did you graduate from?
00:01:50SPRAGUE: Sparta High School.
00:01:51SPRAGUE: Sparta High School. Okay. What, what got you thinking about being in the military?
00:01:59WILLMS: When I was living in the dorms at Western Technical College doing my first year as, in criminal justice, I had met somebody that was going down to the recruiter and he asked if I wanted to go along and, I don't know, it just sounded like a really great opportunity. I thought the military and criminal justice went kind of hand in hand and school was difficult for me at the time, so I thought it would be a great way to, you know, be able to go explore the world, have education benefits when I was done, and kind of remove myself from my family and kind have some agency and ownership to my life and growing up inevitably.
00:02:42SPRAGUE: Okay, and tell me about the, what, were there programs that you were involved with while at Sparta High School?
00:02:54WILLMS: Yeah, so when I got moved my sophomore year from Green Bay to Sparta High School, I was a very angry teenager, as you could imagine, from getting moved my sophomore year. And as a result, I was doing defiant behavior, not going to school, trying to rebel and resist against this move. So as part of that, I was sent to Right Step. It was an involuntary, I know the Challenge Academy now is voluntary, back in 2002 when I was sent here it was involuntary, and it was a program for students, a, a quasi-military program for students that were at risk in, in some way or another. So I was sent there on my 16th birthday was my first day and it took me about seven months to figure out the program and how it worked and changed behaviors. And yeah, I did a total 360, 180, I should say 180 though. And yeah, ended up finishing my senior year, taking credits at the college level and doing really well. So it was definitely a positive experience, even though, you know, probably in the beginning, I looked at it as a negative, but I really liked the discipline, I liked the physical activity, I liked the things we were learning in Character Development. It ended up being an overall really positive experience.
00:04:25SPRAGUE: And did Righ Step end up affecting your decision to join the military?
00:04:31WILLMS: Oh yeah. I was like, oh, if I can make it through Right Step and the things that we had to do there, Basic Training should be a walk in the park.
00:04:41SPRAGUE: Okay, so did 9/11 affect your decision to enlist?
00:04:48WILLMS: Well, it's interesting because 9/11 was at the height of, of the war when I enlisted and it didn't deter me in any way. I mean, I very much accepted the fact that going and enlisting into the Army pretty much was a guarantee that I would be deployed overseas. I think if anything, it impacted the MOS I chose, thinking that food service would be safer for a lack of better term when I got deployed, just to find out that food service does not cook over there. They're the ones doing the convoy missions and kind of on the front line, so yeah.
00:05:24SPRAGUE: That must have been quite a shock, finding that out afterwards.
00:05:29WILLMS: Yeah, that and the enlistment bonus, I mean, they, they signed me up with a $14,000 sign-on bonus and to me I was like, oh my gosh, you know, like a 19-year-old, I felt rich. Like I just, I don't know, won the lottery in some way. And they didn't explain that that was divided out over five years and taxed a lot. So I think my first sign-on bonus or enlistment bonus, maybe I saw like $1,600 of that so I had a very skewed perspective of how that worked.
00:06:05SPRAGUE: What did your family say about enlisting?
00:06:10WILLMS: You know, it's interesting. Now looking back, I'm, I'm a mother and my youngest wants to go into the Marines and we are also at the height of wartime conflict and I kind of was like, no, why? Or why do you wanna do this? And it got me reflecting on like, why didn't my family really say anything to me of concern about that? They were just really proud, threw me, you know, a going away party and it was like a sense of pride that my family expressed, I guess. So, yeah, kind of interesting to look back and be like, you guys weren't scared of me deploying?
00:06:51SPRAGUE: Okay, and without involving too much how, what are you advising your, is it your son or daughter that wants to go into the Marine Corps?
00:07:01WILLMS: My son. You know, I, I feel like I projected my own experiences onto him when he said that and he met me with like, well, I would appreciate you supporting me type of stance and why are, are you sounding so critical and not supportive, and I appreciated him holding me accountable in a way because it was like, oh, maybe I am projecting my own military experience onto you and if that is something he wants to do I, I want to be supportive of him but his reasons were kind of similar, like he wanted discipline and I was like "well you know discipline is something you also have to find intrinsically. Yes someone's going to tell you what to do but you have to figure that out on your own." He's like, "well yeah and then they break you down and build you back up," I'm like, "um, okay I think they break you down and you have to figure out how to build yourself back up, but okay."
00:07:58SPRAGUE: So, where did you go to Basic?
00:08:00WILLMS: Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
00:08:03SPRAGUE: And it looks like you were there in early August.
00:08:06WILLMS: Yes, heat category four.
00:08:10SPRAGUE: What can you tell us about Fort Jackson in early August?
00:08:13WILLMS: It is incredibly hot. We also had, I think, one hurricane while we were there as well and I was not familiar with the south or climate or critters and one thing that will always stand out in my memory is how their mosquitoes while we were on range duty are like literally miniature hummingbirds. They are ridiculously enormous and brown recluses, I can't tell you how many times I just sat in the front leaning rest or had to do with our M16 when you're doing overheads like this, I chose that over hitting the wood line and posting up on my ruck to do any kind of missions. I was like, nope, I am terrified of those and they would infest our ruck sack sometimes when we hit the woodline. So yeah, those are core memories forever etched into my memory.
00:09:03SPRAGUE: Wow. So at your Basic, were, were the, were male and female together, or how did that work?
00:09:10WILLMS: Yep, yep, we were a mixed platoon, 4th Platoon Hellhounds, and it was coed except when we were in the field it was separated. However, not when we were using the latrine or portapotties. We would still be integrated and together but under the supervision of a drill sergeant.
00:09:30SPRAGUE: Okay, and what was it like coming from rural Wisconsin to South Carolina, an Army post in South Carolina?
00:09:44WILLMS: I don't know, because I grew up in Green Bay.
00:09:49SPRAGUE: Okay.
00:09:50WILLMS: So I was able to be around a lot of diversity and actually see the best of, like, both worlds, urban and rural, which as I got older I appreciated that. But I guess in terms of, like, that, not really a, a culture shock or anything.
00:10:04SPRAGUE: Okay. What, what was, was your family there for graduation or not? Did they come down?
00:10:14WILLMS: Yup. It was my mother, my uncle, her brother, and my grandma and grandpa, my maternal grandma and grandpa came down. And before you could be released for Family Day, you had to pass your PT test. I could do the run, I could the push-ups, but I could not do the sit-ups. And you had do 56 in two minutes. And I remember, like, having so much anxiety and being like, oh my gosh, if I don't make this, I'm gonna be recycled and my family's all here and it felt like this extreme pressure and somehow I made it exactly at 56 and passed my PT test, but that's another moment of accomplishment I won't forget, as well as Tank Hill was the, the huge commemorative thing at the end of Basic Training before Family Day where you do your seven day, you know, bib, bib-wack, field exercise, road march, and that was testing in so many ways, physically and mentally. So I'll always remember being on Tank Hill and getting my coin and passing, and it was like, holy crap, I did it. Because yeah, basic training was nothing like Right Step. And, and yeah, it was a lot harder. It was not a cakewalk.
00:11:27SPRAGUE: Anything else you'd like to share about Basic?
00:11:30WILLMS: I guess if there's anyone watching this, the new generation, I think it's worth sharing as an oral history. Back in the day, we would have to wait by a payphone in line in order to call back home and we would someone screaming at us that our five minutes was up, there was no privacy. And I hear some of the newer generation that gets to go to Basic Training, like they get downtime and they get their phone and I'm like, what? There's a part of me that's like, That's not fair. Like, you should have to suffer like we did, right? But I'm like, oh, that's also evolution and we're evolving and then whatever. But it is worth saying our, our phone calls home were on a pay phone with a calling card with everyone standing behind us.
00:12:16SPRAGUE: I know what you're talking about, and I've experienced that on an Army post, so I know exactly what you are talking about. Exactly, yeah. So did you, did you go to AIT right after Basic?
00:12:34WILLMS: Yep, they put us on a Greyhound bus to Fort Lee, Virginia, which was night and day difference. Fort Lee was very cold during the months of, I think we got there November, December, and yes.
00:12:50SPRAGUE: Very cold.
00:12:51WILLMS: Went from very hot to very cold.
00:12:53SPRAGUE: Yeah, so that would have been November, December of '04, I think?
00:12:56WILLMS: Yep.
00:12:57SPRAGUE: Okay. What was the training like?
00:13:03WILLMS: We got to be mixed. What I remember from AIT is that we were mixed in Army and Marines. And so for 92 Gulf Food Service Specialists, a lot of our training for AIT is in the kitchen and learning how to read a recipe, how to cook, how to, you know, the specialty skills of, like, are you dicing, are you mincing, things like that. And I always found it really interesting that the Marines seem so locked, locked in and together and there was camaraderie and discipline and then you looked at the army and us and it was like, oh dear lord like we were constantly working against each other and there was no camaraderies and it seemed like a lack of discipline, so I always remember being at AIT and just watching the marines and kind of being like aw, I wish I could have joined the marines because i also kind of thought, is it okay to swear?
00:13:55SPRAGUE: Yeah.
00:13:56WILLMS: I always thought the marine females were just badasses and I always, like, wish I would have got to, you know, earn that title of, like, I made it as a Marine. But yeah, that's kind of what I remember about my AIT.
00:14:11SPRAGUE: So the Marines were training at Fort Lee with you, alongside you?
00:14:15WILLMS: Yep.
00:14:16SPRAGUE: Wow.
00:14:17WILLMS: Yeah.
00:14:18SPRAGUE: Did you ever have the Marine, excuse me, the Marine NCOs or Sergeants march you as an Army unit?
00:14:26WILLMS: I don't remember that and now even as you're saying that I'm like curious, I was like, gosh I wonder if any of them ever like got after us, you know, because of how we were behaving, but I don't, yeah, we weren't, like, intermixed, um, like, we weren't doing things together but they were alongside us training.
00:14:45SPRAGUE: So, tell me a little bit about running and being a road guard.
00:14:50WILLMS: Oh, that was probably my favorite part too of Basic Training, AIT, and my time at my unit was being able to do running formations and running and calling the cadences. So when you're in big formations running as a unit or running in basic training, you have the opportunity to call cadences and I loved that. Or when we were doing ruck march, ruck marching, you had to have road guards. So part of that would be like being able to sprint up, posting to stop traffic and then fall back. And I don't know, I just, I loved that challenge. I loved running and I loved calling cadences.
00:15:34SPRAGUE: What particular, any cadences that you like?
00:15:37WILLMS: Hey First Sergeant, look out your window, smack it on the pavement, we need entertainment. And I still love running and it's interesting when my mind will start to play tricks on me if I'm running a long distance I'll start singing "your left, your left" or start singing cadences to just get my mind in sync with my body, so yeah, I just, I loved cadences and running.
00:16:04SPRAGUE: So maybe the viewer doesn't know, a civilian may not know, about running forward as a road guard to cover an intersection.
00:16:14WILLMS: Oh.
00:16:15SPRAGUE: Could you explain a little bit about that and the amount of work that it is?
00:16:17WILLMS: Oh yes, 'cause it was and it was sprinting and slowing down and sprinting, but to me it was hard running in formation because you would be at someone else's tempo and usually they ran too slow which gave me shin guard or shin splints, shin guards, so I enjoyed the running or the road guard because what you would have to do is run outside of the formation and then once you've seen that, uh, let's say a stop sign or an intersection was coming up, then you sprint up to get ahead of the formation and then you're posting to stop traffic, inevitably, so the formation can either march through or run through and stay safe from traffic. And then once the formation makes it through, then I would secure my spot again, running in the, the formation and waiting until the next, or, or depending on how big the formation was, you could be relieving a road guard halfway through, depending again, yeah, how big it was. So I always liked being in the back because then I got to kind of run at my own and then get that sprint out.
00:17:20SPRAGUE: What, were there other courses or things at the end of AIT that you were involved with?
00:17:26WILLMS: No, I did try to go to Airborne, though, during AIT. And then my knee is...There was a lot of popping and cracking and things in my knee, so I wasn't qualified because they thought jumping would further impact and probably cause an injury, thinking about it. But yeah, Airborne. I really wanted to go Airborne. It's kind of sad I didn't get to.
00:17:51SPRAGUE: Okay, so tell me about going to and going to your next duty station.
00:17:58WILLMS: So I left AIT right before, or we graduated from AIT right before Christmas or the holiday season. And so I got, I wanna say like two, three weeks at home and then I was to report to my duty station like January 4th, 2025, or 20, 2005. And so, I drove out, actually with my mother to Fort Lewis in my two-door Honda Accord and she flew back home. But yeah, we did the drive out to Washington and checked into my, my duty station. That was my adventure out there.
00:18:42SPRAGUE: A couple questions. Did you choose Fort Lewis or were you just issued orders?
00:18:47WILLMS: Issued Orders.
00:18:48SPRAGUE: Okay.
00:18:49WILLMS: I think I would, like, chosen Hawaii or, like, somewhere, you know when they give you your wish list, but it's not guaranteed.
00:18:56SPRAGUE: Okay, and what was the drive like? Where did you drive from? Did you drive to Washington, where?
00:19:04WILLMS: Uh, so from Wisconsin, like Sparta, Wisconsin, um, all the way, I think it was like I-90 pretty much is a straight shot all the way there. And what I remember is the mountain passes being really scary and eye opening, especially in January in the height of snowfall and snow season and seeing the signs that said you needed, uh, What do you call those things?
00:19:29SPRAGUE: Chains? Or spokes? Yeah.
00:19:30WILLMS: Chains, yeah, to make it through the, the pass. Luckily, we didn't need those. But I remember just being like, what? And what is going on? But beautiful. I mean, honestly, if there was one place that I want to go and just live the rest of my life at, it would be Washington. It, I don't know, it's gorgeous. And I'm getting ahead of myself, but I feel relevant to say this here. When we in processed into our unit we had to go through a debriefing, like a suicide debriefing because in Washington, it's coast, like it's coastal Pacific, almost rainforest-like climate. And so it rains a lot and because of that I think depression is something that can spike. And I always remember being really confused about that because I never once felt depressed, but I'll always remember that debriefing of here's preventative measures and what to do and what to be aware of. Yeah, so that's always kind of stuck with me too.
00:20:30SPRAGUE: I understand, as a 12-year resident of the state of Washington, and having lived in Puget South for 12 years, I, it's call, we used to call it Kurt Cobain weather, unfortunately.
00:20:42WILLMS: Yes.
00:20:43SPRAGUE: And yeah, very much so, and okay, so yes, and January of '05, coming over the passes into the Cascades and across the Rockies.
00:20:57SPRAGUE: So beautiful.
00:20:58SPRAGUE: Absolutely, they would have said to you, do you have your chains, and are you ready to, are you ready to do this?
00:21:05WILLMS: Yes.
00:21:06SPRAGUE: Exactly. Okay. So, yeah, so what was that like coming into Fort Lewis and reporting for duty?
00:21:14WILLMS: I think I was just so excited. I loved seeing Mount Rainier. I loved the big green trees. I loved the location. I think that I was just eager and excited to get to my duty station, start doing my MOS, and that was not what happened.
00:21:34SPRAGUE: Tell us what happened.
00:21:35WILLMS: So I was first assigned to 2CR, 2nd Cavalry Regiment, that was transitioning from Fort Polk, Louisiana to Fort Lewis. And because of that, when we got to our unit, I mean, we were all intermixed with medics and Cav, Cav Scouts, infantry. We had an E-5 acting as our first sergeant because not everyone had, you know, gotten there or, oh, we haven't, we didn't have a DFAC. The medics didn't have a TMC. Um, I mean, it was for lack of better term to just be blunt, a shit show in a lot of ways. And there was a lot of downtime as we were waiting for that structure and our NCOs and chain of command to arrive and to get our facilities. So we were doing a lot of details, whether that would be edging, picking up trash, mopping, stripping, waxing floors repetitively. So for the first couple of months it was challenging because we weren't doing our MOS and we weren't with our, out, our platoons matching our MOS in units. It was, it was kind of getting built as we all were there.
00:22:56SPRAGUE: And was that part of that headquarters, headquarters troop of the 6th and the 2nd, or was that something else? Okay.
00:23:03WILLMS: Yep, yep.Thank you for clarifying that too.
00:23:06SPRAGUE: Yeah, no, I'm just trying to understand what's going on. So do you remember on Fort Lewis where you were?
00:23:15WILLMS: We were right down the road from the ranger barracks. I remember that. I don't remember the street or like, I, I could tell you probably by memory how to get there, but it was on the same one as the ranger barracks.
00:23:28SPRAGUE: Yep, probably on the east side of the airfield.
00:23:31SPRAGUE: Yep, yep.
00:23:32SPRAGUE: Down the road from 2nd Ranger Bat, somewhere right there, so you'd have, you'd have the barracks, and then the DFAC, and the woods back to the east towards Mount Rainier.
00:23:42WILLMS: Yup, and the airfield.
00:23:43SPRAGUE: And you'd have an open field, yeah, to your right, or as you're, yeah, to the west.
00:23:48WILLMS: Five miles.
00:23:49SPRAGUE: Yup.
00:23:50WILLMS: I know because we would run that airfield quite often.
00:23:56SPRAGUE: Interesting. And I happen to know, because I was a little further up the road but not yet, at first SF down the road from you so I know exactly where you're talking about with second Ranger bat so, okay.
00:24:10WILLMS: Yeah.
00:24:11SPRAGUE: So when did the, you know, did the DFAC open or when did it?
00:24:16WILLMS: Oh my gosh, I think we finally got it around, if memory serves me right, I wanna say June 20, 2005, so we were eating, well, and it was really nice, actually, we could go to the Air Force and eat at their dining facility. And at that time, my experience was the Air force was taken care of a lot better. And it had a lot more appetizing food, maybe should I say. So I, I went to McChord Air Force Base a lot to eat, yes.
00:24:57SPRAGUE: Wow. So you probably drove out the back gate or you drove around and into the main gate of McChord?
00:25:01WILLMS: Yeah, we could take both. Yeah, either way to get there.
00:25:04SPRAGUE: Wow. Nice.
00:25:05WILLMS: Yep.
00:25:06SPRAGUE: Wow, that's evil. Good for you.
00:25:09WILLMS: I know, I remember sitting there like, oh, well, why didn't I join the Air Force? You guys are taken care of in air conditioned barracks and everything looks so nice. It was perspective-witting.
00:25:19SPRAGUE: Yeah, and the barracks that I remember on the east side of the airfield at Fort Lewis, they were newer, but they were like 1950s or 1960s block or concrete construction.
00:25:31WILLMS: Two stories?
00:25:32SPRAGUE: Yep. Yeah.
00:25:33WILLMS: That now have since been condemned and torn down?
00:25:36SPRAGUE: Probably, yeah. Yeah, back in the day, twenty years ago. Yeah. So, what in your downtime did you do while you were there when you weren't working?
00:25:50WILLMS: Uh, we spent some time, I know, like going to the Puget Sound, going to Mount Rainier, um, why is this drawing a blank, um, the, the place, Point Defiance.
00:26:06SPRAGUE: Oh, Point Defiance Park.
00:26:07WILLMS: Oh, that was one of my favorite to go to. I loved going there, having cookouts, yeah, we did a lot of cookouts and building camaraderie and finding connection, I guess, amongst each other.
00:26:19SPRAGUE: Okay, and did you get ready for deployments or anything while you were there or did you even get to that because you're setting up the unit, so?
00:26:29WILLMS: We finally got to that because we did have orders to deploy. My unit was then transitioned though from 2CR to 42ID during the time there, so between that January 2005 to the time that I left in July 2006, we were switched. We had a chain, change in insignia and unit, and yeah, it became 4th Brigade, 2nd ID Infantry Division. So the orders were to deploy that year, November 2006.
00:27:13SPRAGUE: So, what was camping like at Mount Rainier?
00:27:19WILLMS: Oh my gosh. Well, I will say it was, it was amazing and my mind is going back there right now of just, like, the views and the streams and oh my gosh I have never experienced something more gorgeous. But something that is just kind of a comical story is one of my battle buddies was from Colleen, Texas. Yeah, talk about culture. I didn't realize that camping meant different things in different places. So I had grown up camping here in Wisconsin, tent camping just seemed like a part of my family, a part of culture. And when we were going up Mount Rainier, you hit the base of it and it'll say this is your last place for food, for gas, all of that stuff. And I remember driving up there and he was Puerto Rican and he was like, "Oh you white people are so crazy, like why do we not have a gun? Like this is not safe." And I'm like "What are you talking about? I have never had to have a gun camping." And then when we got to the campground, like two and a half hours after driving up the mountain, there was a barricade of police because someone had stabbed somebody to death and they were looking for them and couldn't find them and I just remember him looking and like "I told you so" and I was like "What, this is crazy," so I didn't realize how primitive camping on the mountain can be and some of the individuals that are on the mountains may be doing illegal things, that was really eye-opening to me of how naive I had been to my own geographical location growing up. So yeah, a lot of learning but still so beautiful. I'd just do it with a little bit more awareness now if I went back.
00:28:58SPRAGUE: I'm smiling because I can speak directly to that experience, having lived there. So I know what you're talking about. So what, what was it like working at the unit and in the chow hall, and how was that?
00:29:13WILLMS: I loved once we got our DFAC, so you had either morning duty where you're getting up at like 3 in the morning to serve breakfast and if you serve breakfast you more than likely are serving lunch and then have the chain, or change in rotation and then your afternoon group would come in and cook, help clean up from lunch and then cook dinner. So I liked being on morning though, a little bit more than, than in the night time. But then there was also night baking. So you could also have third shift night baking, so depending on where you were, there was three different shifts of rotation, but then you could also work in the rations room. But no matter what you had, you still had to do motor pool, you still had to do PT, so on top of doing all of those you still had to cook too. So that kind of stunk, but we all got a four day weekend every month, which I liked. And when we went to Yakima and did field training exercises, we also got to take showers because we had to be clean to prepare food. So I was like, well, this isn't so bad because it does have some perks, right? Like showering and things like that. So I liked that part of it too. And then for the holidays, so like the Thanksgiving meal, oh my gosh, it was so cool being able to prepare. It was like a competition with ice sculptures and doing this huge spread of, you know, surf and turf inevitably. And so surf and turf is like your steak, your lobster, your shrimp, like everything. And that was a really, like, cool sense of pride and accomplishment being able to feed, you know, the whole unit for Thanksgiving, because that was also my first time ever being away from my family on a holiday. And I just remember being really sad and missing my family and our tradition at home. But that part gave me an immense sense of pride to share that with my battle buddies.
00:31:23SPRAGUE: Can you tell me, I don't know that the civilians who are watching this know, but if you could share with us, and you've touched on it, how different that Thanksgiving or Christmas meal can be for those soldiers. Because that's a big, that's a huge deal.
00:31:40WILLMS: Yes.
00:31:40SPRAGUE: If you could just elaborate a little more on that?
00:31:42WILLMS: Well, and especially, you know, once you assume responsibility for your life at 18, right, like that's where we have full governance of and autonomy, I guess, of ourselves as an adult here in the United States. I wonder is it like that in every other culture, 18 is the number and now I'm like kind of curious about that, but because of that I, I didn't realize how much my family traditions were ingrained into me and my sense of normal, so then going and having that first time away because you don't get to go home on the holidays you get like one chance to take leave and it's for a short amount of time and yeah, that was, it was just difficult because I, that was my first I guess experience of being away from my family and traditions and kind of having that opportunity to figure out who I am and then with that I think it's what builds that deep camaraderie with your fellow battle buddies because you only have each other and then you realize how important those relationships are and how you almost become like family and really fast with them because, again, you're all each other has. Especially to work through those, yeah, that was hard for me, that was hard that first being away.
00:32:57SPRAGUE: Yeah, I understand. I know, having gone through that as well, it is a very difficult moment.
00:33:03WILLMS: Yeah, life changing and perspective putting, right?
00:33:07SPRAGUE: Exactly. So, do you want to talk a little bit about what happened while you were with this unit and pivotal event that, or events that happened to you while you were serving in that unit?
00:33:21WILLMS: Yup. So when we finally got our unit and our platoons established, there were two platoons for '92 Gulf Sur for the DFAC. It made up two platoon. So those platoon had a platoon sergeant, and then four squad, squad leaders, and then the, the privates. Yeah, it was probably, I think I said like around June that we got our DFAC. And around that time, this was probably around like March or April when we had our platoons, our platoon sergeant had offered the opportunity for us to go and build camaraderie outside of the base in the unit. So we went to Ruby Tuesday's for dinner, went out to bowling afterwards and then took, took the, I guess, celebrations and team building to an individual's house that was married so they had their own place on University Place with their wife and, and their child. And our platoon sergeant came with us there as well. And during that, you know, like looking back I see something wrong with this, but at the time I guess I wasn't seeing anything wrong with this. It was like, oh wow, our platoon sergeant's just hanging out with us and this is really cool and we were drinking and things, but we weren't of age to drink. So I look back now and I'm like, wow, that's just, it's interesting, I guess, that the choices that were made. And during that as well, there were five, a group of five guys that I was just really close with. Even as a, a child and teenager, I was always like a tomboy. I was an only child, so I think I just, I don't know, I liked doing more of the guy things than the girly things and playing football and all those things so I just naturally aligned with this group of five battle buddies and one of them was from the Washington area, and interesting back then too, another one that was in this group of friends was given the option to go into the army or go to jail. That was also a thing back then. And the other one that had the wife and, and child, it was a situation where he got a girl pregnant and was like, I have to provide and take care of you. And he actually was transitioned out of the foster care system so he had nobody. Now looking back, you know, you see things a little bit different and clearer too. So that was his option and what he did to be able to take care of his, his family and married her and so we were at his house and the one that had lived there had access to things, I guess I should say, since he lived there. And the group of, of friends had all engaged in illegal activity but smoking marijuana. And so they were doing that while we were there and the platoon sergeant had, you know, seen that they were doing that and kind of pulled me aside and said, "you know, I'm the UA sergeant and if you do me a favor, I'll do you a favor." And it was a sexual favor. And I just remember thinking, okay, like I got to protect my battle buddy is, I'm being asked to do this and I agreed and that kind of started a lot of, of hardship that came after that. So of course my battle buddies were like "yeah Nichols take one for the team," because they were able to do what they wanted to do and not get in trouble for it and it's just really important to point that out because it wasn't until, I'll fast forward just for a second, jumping around, but in 2020 when I, when the world kind of shut down, I reconnected with a couple of my battle buddies and the one said to me, and he was in tears, apologizing for what they allowed to happen to me. And I was so confused during that moment because I was like, like what do you mean? I had carried all of this guilt and shame and not realized what had happened was wrong. Like I had thought that it was my fault. And he said he didn't realize until he became an NCO just how wrong that was. So that really started this, like, whole like, whoa, what, my whole reality that I've been carrying for 20 years is now being challenged to look it differently, but now jumping back to that. So he would call maybe at, you know, two, three in the morning and ask me to come over and I would do that. And this would kind of be the rhythm of things. And one day I was not feeling well at all and I remember another sergeant in our unit saying "Nichols, you better not be pregnant" and I was "yeah right," you know because what 19 year old thinks that that's actually going to happen to them, you don't, you know, those things happen to other people, not me, and I went to the TMC and I remember being really busy that morning and they take your blood and they're trying to figure out what's going on. And as a female, I think it's just standard practice to make sure that you're not pregnant. But I had been there all morning and it was then lunchtime. So I was released to go have lunch and come back and I'll never forget this day because I'd went and had lunch with my battle buddies and went back to the TMC and a captain came in and was like, "congratulations". And I'm like "What?" And she's like, "you're pregnant." And I was like. "What?" and I just remember my whole world kind of like crashing down in this reality of like, whoa, whoa, what am I gonna do now and as part of being pregnant you have to go to pregnancy PT and so I would go to a different formation and have different PT, physical training with other pregnant soldiers and I was about two weeks into pregnancy PT and I had established a relationship with another private who was female in our unit and I remember me and her one, on this specific day sitting in my vehicle waiting for our formation for our unit to, to happen and she was kind of just asking me like "who, who are you pregnant by?" and it's like "I can't say" and she was like, "yeah, I can't say either," and it's like okay and then, you know, she's started sharing a little bit more personal information like how she had gotten trichomoniasis from the individual she had got pregnant by and I was like "wait what," like, because I too had recently during all this found out that I had trichomoniasis and I was like, so then it was kind of like one of these things, like starting to question her like "Who are you pregnant by?" And then she shared and she could share every single detail of his house and layout and in that moment I was like, "oh my gosh, you are doing this to other soldiers in our unit" and rage just overcame me. And I think feeling like, like what did you do to me? And now I'm pregnant and she's pregnant and I went and I told another female sergeant in our unit and when I made that statement, I didn't really know what was going to happen from that. I was just so mad and wanted to tell somebody what had been happening and that night I had gotten a call from my platoon sergeant asking me to come over and when I went over there he was telling me he wasn't going to be able to take care of me or the baby if I followed through with this he would get a UCMJ, he would get kicked out of the military, all of these things. But he said all that would happen to me is if I went back and retracted my statement and said that I told a lie, I would just get an Article 15, 14 days' extra duty, and a demotion of rank. So I went back the next day and said that I made it all up and that I had lied. And I did in August 2005 indeed get an article 15 and 14 days' extra duty, which is terrible of an experience. They had no accommodations, even though I was pregnant, I still had to do extra duty. And that was, like, from six in the morning until almost like 11 at night. You're being sleep deprived, like you're back in Basic Training all over again. And I ended up during that time having a miscarriage, probably from the stress. And also during that time he had told me that I needed to move in with him. Yeah, so all very interesting things, but it is fact, because if you look up-
00:42:29SPRAGUE: Was that the document you showed me?
00:42:31WILLMS: Those are the documents, yes, that I did show you, and it's interesting, because there is something called like a true finder or white pages or something that's on the internet, and you can look up someone. So I looked up myself, and his address is listed on my address during that time, and I was like, wow, another artifact that I would have never known was gonna be cemented in time and be, you know, a part of the story later in life, but that is out there as well too.
00:42:56SPRAGUE: So, I don't think we've gotten to it yet, but we were talking about it before the interview, about your later Freedom of Information Act request and those records that didn't appear there.
00:43:09WILLMS: Yes.
00:43:10SPRAGUE: I mean, it's okay if you want to get to that yet, but...
00:43:12WILLMS: Yeah, and maybe it 's, it would be helpful to share this part and then get, get to that. So I had had the miscarriage. This is like June 2005. I'm living with him and he started coaching me on how to get out for mental health. He's like, "you can say that you have all these mental health problems, you know, from lying and doing all this erratic behavior." So then was kind of coaching me to get out of the, the military under a mental health and saying then, you know, we could be together and be a family and wouldn't have to worry about all the secrecy and lying and all of these things because I would no longer be in the military. And during that time in November, he also had said that he wanted, you know, to try to have another baby and be a family. And at that time, I didn't know it until I went home on leave, which is interesting, this is the part that I wanted to show you in the documents of timestamped of August 2005 when I had my article 15 and then when I went on leave November 2005, he was the one signing all of my leave paperwork and I didn't really put that together until I did this FOIA where it was perplexing to me like, if a soldier made false accusations, especially sexually misconducted ones, against their NCO, why was I still under his leadership? And I have proof of that because he signed my leave paperwork. But I went on leave, and while I was on leave I had just gotten my wisdom teeth pulled and I ended up having a dry socket. So I went out to Fort McCoy to get that taken care of and that's when I had found out I was pregnant with a successful pregnancy of my now son, who is 20. And so when I came back from leave, that's when my chain of command had said that I had left without permission, even though I had, they had signed off on all my documents, but because I was going through a mental health evaluation I wasn't supposed to leave, or I wasn't clear to leave. So then my pay was stopped, I was considered AWOL, plus now I'm pregnant again, so it was just a lot of things snowballing really fast. And then in February is when another, now it was an E-5 NCO, he had moved me under her for a direct chain of command on night baking. So since I'm not getting out under a mental health, now I'm pregnant, I'm still in the military. I'm assuming, but it probably screwed up his plans. So then he moved me under this sergeant for night baking and during that time, it was almost like I would be taunted, like, I felt at least it was like he was taunting me, like flirting with her and doing things in front of me because I couldn't do anything about it, but it was making me, like, furious. And so I remember just saying, I'm, I'm moving out, I'm pregnant, I have BAH, I can get my own place, and I did. I moved out, I got my own place, and during that time I had another incident where I had went to his house while I was living at my own place to try to talk to him and caught him with that NCO and now he's having sexual relations with her. And I flipped again and then went and told a different platoon sergeant what had happened, the whole story of the first time that I had came and told the sergeant about this to now, and he took it serious and took me to see our first sergeant and company commander and followed through with filing a formal UCMJ and court martial action. So during that, I was then completely removed from the DFAC, put into our orderly room under a whole total different chain of command, and the process also had began because we had our orders to deploy and I wasn't going to be able to have a family care plan to then honorably be discharged under a pregnancy chapter. So all of that was happening and I had left then. July 28th, 2005 was when my separation date and I was cleared from the military and my grandparents, my maternal grandparents, flew out to Washington to then drive me home, nine months pregnant. So, yep.
00:47:56SPRAGUE: Might have that been 2006? Sorry.
00:47:58WILLMS: Oh 2006, yes. Thank you for clarifying. Yes, July 28th, 2006. Nine months pregnant. And I had had my son, his due date was September 1st, but I had him August 20th, 2006. So I had been home for like two weeks, and then had him. And I was living with my grandma when I got out of the military, and that just wasn't sustainable in, in my eyes. So my only option at the time was to go into public housing, and to be independent I had to be dependent on social services, inevitably, Badger care for insurance, food stamps for food, housing assistance, and vouchers for housing. And I just kept buying into this notion of if I use my 9/11, post 9/11 GI benefits, that education was gonna be my ticket into stability and to be able to provide for my son. And so fast forward, me and my son probably lived through that until 2011, when I finally started getting some sort of stability. I was married in 2014 and divorced in 2016 and just really struggling a lot, I think, with my mental health. And now what I know is just living in a chronic state of stress, trying to provide for my child while also carrying this immense amount of shame like I was the one that ruined his life because I had turned him in. So I had, I never knew what had become of that court martial because I had left, and it wasn't until last year when I participated for the first time in the I Am Not Invisible campaign that the individual who had interviewed me also worked as an attorney in the legal for the Marines. And she was the one that had told me about FOIA, or the Freedom of Information Act. I had not known anything about that. So after that, I had submitted all of the paperwork and I just wanted to know what had ever became of it. What had become of it is none of my records were found. It was as if that court martial had never existed. They couldn't find any record on him beyond he was released from the military and, and retired. So he got his full benefits and full retirement and it was like a year of trying to process and make sense of all of that with an MST psychiatrist through the VA of like what happened to me, because when my battle buddy and me connected in 2020, he said, you know, because I was struggling so much with my mental health, I had already been diagnosed with PTSD in 2016, he said, "your PTSD is probably a result of MST, Military Sexual Trauma", and helped me through the VA. And that was such validation, I think in some ways, like, okay, so this did happen to me, this is real, the, the military, the VA is affirming this. But then it was almost like the cognitive dissonance of like, accepting a different reality than the one that I had narrated and thought was true for 20 years. Again, I'm the reason my son doesn't have a father, I ruined somebody's life because I'm so dramatic or mentally unstable, all the moral injuries and things that came with that and the immense amount of shame. And so after I did my first interview and then did the Freedom of Information Request Act and then found out the truth, it all started to make sense. Well, of course the court-martial didn't happen. How could it? I'm the main witness and I wasn't there. So I'm grateful that the military has taken action against the system and some of its faults, like what had I feel happen to me by removing the chain of command when a soldier comes forward and shares that there has been some type of sexual misconduct or military sexual trauma. But I look back and it's like, if my chain of command would have done things appropriately, I would have not been released. I mean, I had the right to stay in the military even while pregnant and have my child there. I would have gotten maternal leave to be able to stay with my child during those first three months. Instead, I had him and two weeks later I was in college trying to figure out, you know, how to survive and provide for my child. Paternity would have been established. Paternity did not get established for him. It took, I want to say, almost four or five years for the state of Wisconsin to track him down and establish paternity, which it did, and paternity was established and he was the father but I just look back and the system failures were hard to process the last year because my life and his life could have looked so different. And then when I did get my records and what was in there, yeah none of my records that I have copies of were in there, which just leads me to assume they were destroyed to brush under the rug. Yes.
00:53:26SPRAGUE: Raising my hand as a good student. So the records that you've brought in with you today is, we're going to hopefully get some of those-
00:53:34WILLMS: Yup.
00:53:35SPRAGUE: -into your archival record. And those are records just for the historian 50 years from now. Those are records that you kept--
00:53:42WILLMS: Yup.
00:53:43SPRAGUE: But when you did your FOIA Act pull they were, they were gone.
00:53:47WILLMS: They were gone. But what was in there which was really interesting was my medical records from Madigan. It was like in June 2006 one of the medical providers in there put in my medical records that the things that I was sharing with him were very concerning and he would be doing a formal request for IG to investigate further and also referred it to a social worker. But that was right around the same time that I was being out processed, so clearly the timing must have not matched up. I have no idea. I'll never have those answers. But when I found that in my medical records, I was like, oh my gosh, think of how different too my life would have been if IG would have maybe gotten that sooner and maybe made sure that I was there for the court martial and followed that through so he could have been held responsible or what if the social worker would have reached out to me, maybe I wouldn't have had two decades of mental health because of the grooming and manipulation and gaslighting that he had done to me that had totally caused so much of a moral injury that affected my mental health and affected my relationships and no tears will come that one. That still comes heavy.
00:55:05SPRAGUE: That's okay, that's why we got the Kleenex, Kleenex box right there, if you need it, yup. Do you need a break?
00:55:11WILLMS: Nope, it's okay. It was just a lot, a lot of hardship and life that was stolen from me that I'll never have justice for but I have found peace for and I think part of me telling my story and the facts of it now, these are the facts, that's my justice is just to tell my story, so.
00:55:32SPRAGUE: And I remember you telling me about it's the Inspector General because they won't know-
00:55:37WILLMS: Oh yes.
00:55:39SPRAGUE: Who, what an IG is and Madigan is the army hospital at Fort Lewis and then, yeah, that would have made a huge difference.
00:55:47WILLMS: Huge difference.
00:55:48SPRAGUE: So nothing happened, nothing, that just dropped off?
00:55:52WILLMS: Yup.
00:55:52SPRAGUE: In addition to the records at the unit dropping off?
00:55:56WILLMS: Yep. And then he was released with full military benefits, while me and the child that he helped create suffered, struggled greatly.
00:56:13SPRAGUE: You're welcome, here, let me help you out. Sorry. There we go, that's yours.
00:56:16WILLMS: Oh, thanks. I thought I wouldn't cry, but thank you, Luke.
00:56:19SPRAGUE: It's okay. That's what it's there for. We're never sure if we're gonna use them or not, so it's good just to have them. That's part of being a veteran, part of life. So, you've talked about it a little bit, but what else do you think, how else do you think the, what you went through and how the Army in this case, how could have that been handled differently?
00:56:57WILLMS: I think it could have been handled differently. For the first fail, I feel like in the system is removing me from his chain of command. That one's perplexing looking back. Maybe had someone follow up with me, maybe a social worker would have helped, you know, like why did you make this statement and then take it back instead of looking at me as like I'm this liar and I kind of got an outcast from the, the unit after that, because so many of my other platoon, you know, battle buddies in our platoon looked at him as, you know, this great NCO that they respected so much. So then I was looked at as, you know, the liar and the person that tried ruining his life when they had no idea what was going on. The only people that knew the truth is me and my five other battle buddies. So that would be like the first part which I know they have since removed the chain of command. So that's good to see that other women, or even men, telling the stories, the system did take accountability. And I think the, the other fail in the system was not having me stay in and just like, hey, you have the right to have your child here and you're a critical piece of this investigation and in order to see the, the court martial through, we need you. And so I think it should have been required for me to stay in until I had that baby as a part of, not that baby, my baby, my child, and as a part of the investigation I shouldn't have been allowed to get out on a chapter before I had him. I think that was another failure and that medical provider reaching out to the Inspector General and social worker I just, I wish that would have happened. That feels like another system failure. So looking back that's what I identify as fail points and where things could have went totally different in different outcomes in different ways had someone just taken a different course of action. But then, you know, there's shame on the unit then, and a huge investigation, and a lot that they have to deal with on top of getting deployed. Maybe that's my brain trying to rationalize why my chain of command made the choices they did or, I'll never know. Those are answers I'll ever know, right? It's just, I'm always just wondering.
00:59:28SPRAGUE: Yeah, and it's interesting too, in the documents that you showed me that individual is still in your chain of command signing your documents as you're exiting and he's involved in it.
00:59:40WILLMS: Yeah.
00:59:41SPRAGUE: That's very interesting.
00:59:43WILLMS: Mind-blowing.
00:59:45SPRAGUE: There was even a document in there on safety and, and safety levels signed off on. Seems a little contradictory.
00:59:54WILLMS: I mean yes. I'm laughing only because it's not funny, it's just like yeah, make it make sense. The irony.
01:00:00SPRAGUE: So, do you think, you've heard, obviously, a little bit about how the Army has changed, the military has changed. What are your thoughts on that in terms of your situation and situations like yours that happen, what, you know?
01:00:25WILLMS: I guess my first thought almost goes skeptical and cynical though, like, oh, just because it gets removed doesn't mean that people don't talk in chain of commands or, you know, like I, I feel cynical in some ways, but also something I'm learning is this word duality, two things can exist at the same time. And so I'd also just want to hold on to hope that that is being taken serious and leaders are being held accountable and you know, fraternizations being enforced and that even soldiers coming in know their rights and warning signs. I know they do a lot with, is it called SHARP? Yeah, and just preventative things. I just look back, because I did a lot of self-blaming of like, well, I put myself in that situation and why didn't I say no? And it's like, no, at the end of the day, hard, fast, there's no arguing it as an NCO. You don't cross that line. So no matter what the responsibility was put on him, no matter how anyone wants to spin it, right, to try to put the blame on me, no matter what it, it, it is on him as a leader. And I just, yeah, I guess I would hope that there's just more education around that and for privates coming in to know the warning signs or what to do to, yeah.
01:01:46SPRAGUE: Were there, did you have other veteran women who encouraged you along the way when they heard your story or were you, maybe you didn't want to share it or how did that, you know, when you're back here in Wisconsin was there any connections or supporting groups there?
01:02:04WILLMS: No, because when I came out it was, again, from this like lens of I'm a bad person, I've done wrong, now I'm a single mother. There was so much shame, shame, shame, shame. I carried so much shame and so I know one of the questions when I was looking it was like what does Veterans Day mean to you and back then it used to be like I'm a failure. I, I signed up and I didn't even deploy with my unit which, you know, left a moral injury on me too. And I didn't feel like a, a veteran, something that was a sense of pride almost then became also a sense of shame and sometimes, you know, you tell someone that you were in the military and they'd be like, oh, how long did you serve? And you'd say two years. And then it would be like why two years? And then, you know, then the guilt and the shame and the embarrassment would surface again. So it wasn't until 2020 when my battle buddy kind of reframed that and then I was able to get service connected through the MST coordinator in Tomah at the VA. Shout out to my psychiatrist, I won't name her, but holy moly, they have an amazing program. I know there's duality too, but sometimes the VA gets a negative perspective or bad rap. I have nothing but positive things to say about the VA and so much gratitude and thankfulness for the services that I have been provided to help repair some of the harm and the damage that was done. I've been with my psychiatrist for four years now. Every Friday we meet and it has taken a, a long time to unpack and process and co-regulate with someone and learn tools and I finally feel like I'm getting to the spot where I can start to see some light. You know, before it was just so much mental health and depression and anxiety and suicidal ideation and not being able to really make sense, probably because you can't really make sense of this, but to find acceptance in it. And I don't know if I would have had that connection and opportunity to take advantage of those resources, if I would mentally be at a place where I'm at now or even physically like at a place where I can actually function. So I'm indebted and grateful at least for that. It did, the story ended, I think, in the best way, I don't want to say like the best, happy. I have hope. I have hope where I didn't and I am grateful that the military acknowledged it, took responsibility for it, gave me that validation and gave me that access to resources and support. But I also think with that, if I would have had that right away, maybe I, you know, wouldn't have suffered as much and then caused harm to my children. And I've had so many negative impacts on my job and my career because anything that I perceived as a threat, especially with somebody in power of me, I mean, I would freak and have this huge explosion in reaction. So I've been put on performance plans, I've been fired, and I could never figure it out. And finally I was able to identify, well, it's because I feel like someone's having control and power over me, which is putting me right back into the place where someone had control and power over me, so. Yeah, that part has been very helpful.
01:05:39SPRAGUE: So, you've, you've given us the silver lining.
01:05:42WILLMS: Yes.
01:05:43SPRAGUE: That's good. What about taking back your voice?
01:05:48WILLMS: Yeah, I think it feels really powerful and important because I've never got to have a voice. Instead I've had, like, shame and again, walking around as if I'm this liar and I ruin people's lives and make things up. But even more important than that, I have the opportunity to tell my story from a place of grounded healing and facts where I feel like last year when I told the story, thank you for destroying that, but there were a lot of tears. I was still very confused. My story was still coming with a lot of unprocessed emotion and, and weight. So that ability to do the FOIA and get the facts, I'm just grateful to tell my story today from a place of facts.
01:06:40SPRAGUE: And I've, I've, I've got to go there. It's great that we had that first interview and Ellen was able to, we'll say her name because she interviewed for years, Ellen Healy to her credit, incredible interviewer, long time volunteer here at the museum--
01:06:56WILLMS: Yes. Thank you, Ellen.
01:06:57SPRAGUE: Yes.
01:06:58WILLMS: Thank you.
01:06:59SPRAGUE: --Was able to assist you and make a change, make a life change.
01:07:04WILLMS: Life-changing. That literally what, like, yeah I'll look in the camera again and thank you, Ellen, if you watch this. That was life-changing to me because it gave me an opportunity to have, again, the facts which then helped me. I don't know if I'll ever find closure on it, so I don't want to use that maybe as the word, but I was able to find peace because, again, I took on so much of that weight as if I'm the problem, I'm bad, a lot of that comes with the PTSD from MST and moral injury of this, like, black and white thinking and I was able then to have something to grab onto to work through that by understanding the facts, even though I was very angry when I got it, yeah the facts gave me a sense to have, make peace with it and know actually what happened instead of it open, right, and not really knowing did he ever get court-martialed and I don't have to carry the guilt anymore that I ruined his life because I didn't ruin his life. He, he got to walk away with full benefits and retirement, so.
01:08:13SPRAGUE: I'm sure that's got to bother you. It would bother me.
01:08:17WILLMS: Yeah.
01:08:18SPRAGUE: Yeah. So is there anything that you'd like to cover talking about, about that experience and, it's a long experience, it's almost a lifetime, that you'd, you'd like to talk or say that we haven't gotten to?
01:08:45WILLMS: I don't know, I think I, I feel confident that I was able to share the story again focused on the facts and the systems and how systems failed me and I guess here's the silver lining and the duality even though it was, uh, I don't even know the word for it, unfortunate, a harming set of experiences. On the other side of that, I got the greatest gift and it's my son, so. I'm thankful for that. He's a pretty cool human being, and I don't want him to carry the shame or, like, that's a part of, it'll always be a part of his story and his legacy, right? But yeah, it's the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me out of a very unfortunate and, I don't know the word for it, unfortunate circumstance. Duality. Shout out to my psychiatrist.
01:09:51SPRAGUE: Two things can be true, two things true at once.
01:09:53WILLMS: Yes. That's what my psychiatrist keeps working with me on, duality, and I couldn't figure it out and I couldn't figure it out and I got there with him because, yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say necessarily I'd want to do that all over again, but if it meant that I got to be his mom, I, I'd be okay with that. That makes sense.
01:10:16SPRAGUE: So, I, I think one of the questions that comes to my head is, as a soldier who served on Fort Lewis, how do you, acknowledging you, a soldier who served on Fort Lewis, how do you, how do you think about that, about being a veteran?
01:10:36WILLMS: Oh, I have a lot of pride in it now. I feel like having a voice, being able to process and get the facts, it's like, no, I still served, I still signed up, up during a time of war and conflict knowing well I would be deployed. And I feel I got to reclaim my pride and my service. The duality again, right? There could be these not so good parts of the military, but there are so many amazing parts of military too and to walk around and roll my shoulders back and hold my head high and say, you know, "I'm a veteran" and I served and that, that got to, that didn't get taken from me. I got to take that back and yeah, I have a lot of pride in my service and there's still so many good moments from it and, yeah, I'm just grateful I got to experience that part of it instead of carrying all the shame and, and, and feeling like I didn't have pride in serving, just shame. I have a lot of pride now.
01:11:44SPRAGUE: Good.
01:11:45WILLMS: Yes.
01:11:46SPRAGUE: Good. Did you, I'll ask again, I guess, did you, is there anything else you'd like to cover?
01:11:58WILLMS: Well, I guess, if we're like tying this all together, I would just say if, if someone said, "If you have a magic wand and you could go back and change it, would you still go into the military?"
01:12:08SPRAGUE: I can ask that question!
01:12:10WILLMS: I would, I'd still have signed up and I just think if I could have had a magic wand I would have, knowing what I know of myself now, I would have been a little bit stronger, you know, and said "no" and, and had that courage. But what I've learned, not to over-psychologize, or psychiatrist, or psychology language, right, but there are different personalities in there, you know, our nervous system that is scientifically backed. Some people go fight, flight, freeze and I've always been a more shy, conflict-avoided, passive person, so it just, it made sense why somebody of his nature that, I mean, inevitably he, he was a, what do I want to say, he knew how to point, pinpoint his target, right? And, and unfortunately, I carried all of the, the traits that just made me easy, easily vulnerable and susceptible. And I think I've come to peace with that though, again, not with shame. And now I've learned where my voice is even to say no, like set boundaries, right? I can say no. And just because you have authority over me doesn't mean I have to do something illegal or against my morals or values just because you're in a position of power. I think if anything it's given me more fight for justice in that way and figuring out how to use my voice, but in a way that can be heard. Not the soldier that was going, you know, to my two NCOs at the time erratic and emotional and ah because nothing really gets solved that way either and so I've learned to temper that down and channel it out in ways that are actually productive and that's, that's what I think is also a silver lining but, something good that grew out of something unfortunate.
01:14:00SPRAGUE: Okay. I definitely feel a connection with you having served on Fort Lewis, just about the time when I was in.
01:14:12WILLMS: That's wild.
01:14:13SPRAGUE: And it's interesting that we would meet 26 years later in Wisconsin and, through the interview process and through the I Am Not Invisible program. So I think I'd like, you know, to reach out to you as a fellow veteran. And yeah, I mean, that's huge, what you've been through and, and having the courage to come forward and that's incredible, so.
01:14:42WILLMS: Thank you.
01:14:43SPRAGUE: Thank you.
01:14:44WILLMS: Thank you for seeing me. Thank you for that validation and thanks for the camaraderie, that brotherhood to just, yeah, give me that because I remember one time he was, he's since passed away but he was first sergeant for a unit and remember when I started unpacking this stuff with him, like, "are you sure I didn't do something wrong, like, but what if I did?" And he goes, "no", like, he was the one that kept cementing that into me, like a hard fast he was wrong. Yeah, I don't care how you want to spin this. It was on him, 100%. But he said to me after that, he, he started tearing up and he said, "you know, I'm just so sorry for what happened to you." He's like, "I am a three time combat deployed veteran and I think what happened to you is worse than anything I did or saw over there." And that kind of put me back where I was like, what? And he goes. "Yeah, the injury you sustained is nothing compared to going to war", and he apologized to me for that, and that kind of moved me from a man to say that to me. I was like, oh, thanks for that gift and moment of not feeling alone or feeling the shame, but feeling seen and acknowledged and affirmed that, yeah, what happened just wasn't right, but it happened, and we can't erase it, we can't undo it, right? It is, hopefully we can just learn from it.
01:16:03SPRAGUE: Okay, on that note, we'll then close the interview.
01:16:07WILLMS: Perfect. Thank you for the opportunity.
01:16:09SPRAGUE: You're welcome, anytime.
