Military Father | No Man Left Behind

My task was to take out one of the most high-value strategic command and control targets in Belgrade, the capital city of the former Republic of Yugoslavia. I felt absolutely totally confident that I was as well trained and well prepared as possible for any situation.

My mission that night was March 27th, 1999, and the next day was my daughter Gina's birthday. One of my strongest, most persistent thoughts that day was of Gina and so looking forward to the next day and being able to call her. I had already squirted away, you know, what phone I was gonna use and what time of the day, you know, let everybody know it's my daughter's birthday, you know, and I'm gonna need to use this phone at this time because there's nothing that is gonna prevent me from calling her and reaching her and connecting with.

So that was very important to me, the thought of my family's sadness and suffering, anguish and sorrow if something really bad happened to me. It was terrifying; the thought of them going through that was just unthinkable to me. Being shot down was not unexpected, so that did not unnerve me in any way when that all happened.

So it was all just very matter-of-fact. Okay, I expected that this was a strong possibility this would happen. There wasn't that element of sudden unexpected situations happening completely unnerved. The natural endorphins were flowing, so if I did have any injuries, I had a lot of adrenaline and endorphins.