Danielle Chastaine and Walter Wiley

[00:03] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Hello, my name is Danielle. I am 29. It is Tuesday, September 14, 2021. I am in Washington State, and my partner today is Walter Wiley, and he is my dad.

[00:19] WALTER WILEY: Hello, my name is Walter Wiley. I am Danielle's father, and I'm currently residing in Idaho. And today is the 14th of September, 2021, and I'm engaging in this conversation with my daughter.

[00:35] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: And how old are you, Dad?

[00:38] WALTER WILEY: 61 or 60. 61 is when I was born.

[00:43] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Right, exactly. Awesome. Thanks for meeting with me today, dad.

[00:50] WALTER WILEY: My pleasure.

[00:51] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: So, first question I have for you, and short and brief, because we could do a whole 40 minutes on just this question alone. Can you tell me a bit about your childhood and what that was like?

[01:06] WALTER WILEY: Very interesting. I was born in Germany, came to this country when I was 8. My mom was here about a year before I came to this country then because she became a citizen, I became this country, became a citizen also.

[01:26] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: What was, what was grandma's name?

[01:30] WALTER WILEY: My. My mother was her full. Ready, full long name? Catherine Armgard Regina. Maiden name Von Biltingsleben Married name Wiley. So.

[01:46] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: So. And when you came over in 61, that you didn't just stay in the United States, you guys traveled a little bit, right?

[01:55] WALTER WILEY: Yeah, my dad. My dad, he's still my dad, but I grew up believing he was my father, but turns out he's not. He's my stepdad, but he was in the military at time in the Air Force. We went, came to the States, went to Omaha, lived there about a year. Went to the Azores Islands off the coast of Portugal. Lived there about a year. Went to Rapid City South Dakota another year. And then. Then dad retired in 72 and went back to Omaha.

[02:32] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: What was Grandpa's name?

[02:34] WALTER WILEY: Grandpa Lewis L. Wiley.

[02:39] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: I'm curious. I didn't know this. Do you know what, what rank Grandpa Wiley was when he retired?

[02:48] WALTER WILEY: Air Force rank. Staff sergeant, which is the E5.

[02:51] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Gotcha. Cool. Who were some of the most important people to you when you were growing up?

[03:00] WALTER WILEY: I'm gonna say my dad. Yeah, I mean, he was very, you know, much a person I looked up to at that time and, you know, pretty much guided me along the way, kept me from doing stupid stuff in his stern manner. So.

[03:22] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Yeah, Grandpa Wiley was pretty important to you? Yeah, that kind of goes to the next one. Then you enlisted when you were, like, really young. You were 18 right out of high school. Correct. Why did you decide?

[03:37] WALTER WILEY: Yeah, I was 19. Reason I was still 19. As a senior, I had to repeat the second grade. When I came to this country right.

[03:48] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Because you didn't speak English, right?

[03:50] WALTER WILEY: I didn't speak English. I had to learn English, so I had to repeat the second grade. But I mean, back up a little bit. While my mom was here in this country, my sister and I, we lived in a children home and we referred to as Tante Heidi took care of us, you know, so that's another very important person to me.

[04:17] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Tante Heidi, an armed guard. Armguard.

[04:20] WALTER WILEY: Armed guard, yeah.

[04:24] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: So. So when you were 19 then and you were still a senior in high school, why did you decide to enlist?

[04:33] WALTER WILEY: Well, again, a lot of things. My second grade teacher predicted I would be in the military, and I joined the marines because they were the first ones to call. And about a week, less than a week later, I spoke to my friend in high school at that time, his name is Bob, and he already enlisted in Marine Corps also. So we went down to recruiter's office and asked them, sent us on the buddy program that same day. And that was, you know, beginning of that.

[05:16] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: I didn't realize there was a buddy program. Was that a real thing?

[05:20] WALTER WILEY: Yeah, yeah. You can enlist, join the military and have a friend to rely on while you're being indoctrinated.

[05:31] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: I like that. You know what was, you know, you said that you had a teacher predict that you're in the military, but do you remember, like, what was your, your personal reasoning? Like, was it just because you knew you'd have a job or something to do or.

[05:52] WALTER WILEY: I'm gonna go with mindset. I very, you know, I won't say very disciplined, but I just had that mindset. I was gonna probably do something. I didn't see myself doing anything in Omaha, staying in Omaha, you know, I didn't see a job for me there. So it was a way to get out. You know, you didn't see college?

[06:15] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: You didn't think college or anything?

[06:18] WALTER WILEY: No, that wasn't even my mindset at the time.

[06:24] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Gotcha. What, what do you remember about the day you enlisted? You told me a little bit about going in with Bob.

[06:33] WALTER WILEY: Well, again, backing up the day before we were supposed to go to enlist, we went to recruiter's office, you know, and said, well, we're ready. We would want to make sure where we need to be. And the recruiter said, well, you're supposed to go tomorrow, you're supposed to go next month. And at that point, Bob and I turn out, looked at each other and told a recruiter, well, the army across the hall will take us and send us on the same day. The recruiter Backed up, did some phone calls, some paper pushing, said, all right, you guys both go next month. So, yeah, we learned early how to finagle, so. But, yeah, we got on the plane, got on the bus, and got on the yellow footprints. Those who joined the Marine Corps know all about the yellow footprints.

[07:36] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: So what are those? Can you explain those?

[07:39] WALTER WILEY: They are footprints painted on the ground with the feet at a 45 degree angle is a proper stance. They indoctrinate you right off the bat. Get off the bus. Yeah, get on my footprints.

[07:55] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: That's intense.

[07:58] WALTER WILEY: That's polite.

[08:02] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: So what did your. What did you know? What did your grandma and grandpa say? What did your friends say when you told them that you enlisted to the Marine Corps?

[08:13] WALTER WILEY: Well, you know how Grandpa was being the harsh guy that he was. I told him I joined the Marine Corps. He goes, it's your life. You want to ruin it. But you have to understand, I mean, Grandpa Wiley at age 17, landed at Normandy, you know, World War II. He also did Korea and Vietnam. So, yeah, he knew the deal.

[08:43] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: He saw all of it.

[08:45] WALTER WILEY: Yeah, he did.

[08:48] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Can you tell me, you kind of told me why you chose the Marine Corps? Can you tell me a funny or good story from boot camp? Reminding you that this is on the. On the record.

[09:02] WALTER WILEY: I get it. I get it. So a couple different things. One, I've been making a military rack since I was about nine years old, getting my dad. So I knew how to make a military buck. You know, hospital corners, folded, tucked, and nice, neat. My bunk made at the time, his name was Caldwell, was in a hurry because he was nervous, you know, and messing things up. And I just told him, you can't do it right? Leave it alone. I'll do it myself. Of course. Drone instructor heard this and said, oh, we've got an individual. Get up here. Individual? What? That meant the quarterback was for punishment. You know, you called up on the quarterback. You do business and thrusts, push ups, rollovers. So I got to do that for about half an hour while everybody was making their bunk. Then I got to go back, make my bunk. That was one incident on another incident. I don't know why, for whatever reason, but they had us do Manual of arms. It's rifle maneuvers or left shoulder rifle, you know, right shoulder rifle, port arms. They had us do that with our foot lockers. Left shoulder foot locker. Right shoulder foot locker. So we basically beat ourselves up.

[10:34] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Oh, my God. When you were in the Marine Corps, though, you never actually were deployed overseas. Did you get deployed anywhere besides, I think you were stationed places like you were stationed in Hawaii and in Kansas and California.

[10:50] WALTER WILEY: Right.

[10:51] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: But you didn't get deployed anywhere.

[10:54] WALTER WILEY: No, when I was in Kansas was during the first. In 91. During the first Iran, Iraq thing.

[11:05] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Gulf War.

[11:07] WALTER WILEY: Gulf War, yeah. It's it. We got ready. We. Everybody got your shots. We all got ready to deploy and it was over so fast, we never left.

[11:17] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: That was Desert Storm.

[11:19] WALTER WILEY: Desert Storm, yes. Yeah.

[11:23] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Isn't that, isn't that the joke around why I was born?

[11:27] WALTER WILEY: Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Mom wanted to make sure that you had someone that she had because she.

[11:34] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Was afraid you were gonna go overseas.

[11:36] WALTER WILEY: Yeah.

[11:37] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: And then it turned out you weren't going anywhere.

[11:40] WALTER WILEY: Exactly. I again, punishment for me.

[11:45] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Remember? Can you tell when mom told you she didn't want to be alone? Can you tell what you thought that meant? What? Remember the day mom found out I was pregnant? What else happened?

[11:59] WALTER WILEY: Oh, yeah, well, we just adopted our dog. Normally, you know, you adopt dog shortly thereafter you wound up pregnant. Turns out we did both on the same day.

[12:15] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: What's mom's name?

[12:17] WALTER WILEY: Mom is my wife, Tammy.

[12:23] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Speaking of being stationed, you were stationed at El Toro, California when you met Mom.

[12:29] WALTER WILEY: Yep. Which is in Santa Ana.

[12:34] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Santa Ana, yeah. After. In Kansas is when you found out that you weren't going to be continuing your career as a Marine. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

[12:48] WALTER WILEY: Let me put it nicely. Bill is a four letter word. Literally and figuratively. The President, Bill Clinton reduced the military, the Marine corps, from over 400,000 to under 250,000. So I got told, thanks, but no thanks.

[13:10] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Right. So you didn't get to retire and mom was a freshly. Just newly pregnant. And you guys were, you were my age, right? You were about 29 years old. Yeah, yeah.

[13:22] WALTER WILEY: Because you were 30 when I was born or I was 30 when you were born.

[13:31] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: That's funny. What's. You know, so after that, you know, we talked about how you end up moving to Idaho and taking us with you. That was kind of your first step into civilian life. You had not never been a civilian in your adult life. What was that like? What was the experience transitioning?

[13:53] WALTER WILEY: It wasn't very difficult. I mean, I'm a, you know, get it done kind of guy. So once I find a job, which took a while, you know, took me about three months of unemployment and odds and ends to get a permanent job. But I mean, there I worked for a industrial gas and medical supply company. And my boss at time, you know, I worked for him, I did what he asked me to do. And after my first year there was my first review, annual review of how was I doing, did I meet his expectations and everything. And he asked me what was my goal. And my response was, to have your job. He goes, okay. So he made me a floor supervisor, lead worker.

[14:54] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: That's awesome.

[14:54] WALTER WILEY: So just my personality, it was about.

[15:00] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: It was about 10 years later, you decided to enlist again. Can you talk? Why did you decide to enlist and talk about who you enlisted with?

[15:12] WALTER WILEY: I got back into the service mainly because of 9 11. Yeah, that, and I got laid off from the job I had at the time. So, you know, I got into National Guard. Army National Guard. So. And I told my recruiter at that time, going from Marine, saw Army E4s in the army are not non rates. Non rate is not an nco. Non commissioned officer. I wasn't NCO for a lot of years in Marine Corps, so I wasn't gonna play that tell me what to do, go sweep the floor routine. So I told him, you can't bring me in as E5, because that's what I was when I got out of the Marine Corps. Don't bother. Which he did, fortunately, you know, and then I. I did what they called a try one. That means try the Guard for one year, see whether you like it, and then you can reenlist from that point. And within the first month of getting it, they told me they had an E6 slot open, which was a promotion, but I would have to enlist for more than one year. I'd have to enlist for three, three, four years. So, yeah, I did that. And then I, you know, they had to send me to school to set. To set me up to army standards, you know, which was all right with me. And, you know, I pretty much knocked school out of the park and came back. Well. And halfway through school, because I went to school January 11th of 2004, halfway through school, we got our deployment notice.

[17:09] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Yeah. When I was. When I remembered you enlisting, I remember one of the things you told mom was that the National Guard you would go once a month. And I think one of the selling points was that the National Guard had never deployed overseas.

[17:25] WALTER WILEY: This is true.

[17:26] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: That was a selling point of view. Re enlisting was that because we had me and Natalie and mom wasn't. Did not want you and mom were not interested in you going overseas.

[17:38] WALTER WILEY: This is true. I mean, we weren't expecting it, but I mean, it is what it is.

[17:44] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Yeah. How did that feel when you, you know, because you were in your 40s at this point, you had already served as A Marine and never went overseas before, and now you're at a place that you were pretty much promised you never go overseas, and now you're being told you're going to Iraq.

[18:00] WALTER WILEY: I kind of expected in one way. I mean, we're a country at war at that time, you know, so it did come as a total surprise, you know, did come unexpected at that time, yes. But, you know, Semper Gummy, right? Always flexible. Always flexible.

[18:23] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Did you say Gumby, like the cartoon Gumby?

[18:26] WALTER WILEY: Gumby, as in the character.

[18:28] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: You're a dork. Temper Gumby. What was the biggest difference between basic training for the National Guard in the early 2000s and basic training for the Marine Corps in the. What was it, the late 70s, early 80s?

[18:45] WALTER WILEY: Early 80s? I didn't do. I didn't have to do redo basic training because I did Marine Corps basic training. That was good enough for the Army. Now if I'd gone from army to the Marine Corps, I would have had to redo basic training.

[19:00] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Gotcha.

[19:01] WALTER WILEY: But the hardest part for me when I was in school was the lack of discipline. I saw. Case in point, I was in the chow hall eating breakfast, and the kid came in wearing a spongebob blanket, flip flops. And, you know, and his drill instructors or drill sergeants were sitting at. And they all looked at, who is he? And the guy said, he's one of mine. And they said, you gonna do anything about him? No, it's. Yeah, it bothers me. And being a student down there, at the time, I was not allowed to say anything because I'm a student, just like this kid is, but I'm still a sergeant, you know, So I had to eat my food, keep it quiet, keep my opinion to myself.

[20:03] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: If in the early 80s, you tried to go to chow hall and flip flops and, like, I don't know what the spongebob equivalent would be. Like, I don't know. A Wonder Woman.

[20:15] WALTER WILEY: Yeah. First of all, boot camp is different than this environment was. This was a school's environment. It's. They call it ait Advanced Infancy Infantry Training.

[20:29] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Gotcha.

[20:30] WALTER WILEY: So that's different than boot camp, but. Yes. I mean, if while I was in school, after I finished boot camp, I showed up like that, I'd have been in front of my sergeant major explaining myself.

[20:46] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: So when you. When you found out you were being deployed, where. Where. What was your exact mission? Where'd you find out you were going?

[20:56] WALTER WILEY: Ultimately, our unit went to Kirk Cook, you know, and fortunately, I got to fly into Kirk Cook, you know, which was A herring. Harrowing, you know, horrific flight because the person sitting next to me was, you know, not too fond of flying and her nails were digging into my arm.

[21:23] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: What was her name? Do you remember?

[21:27] WALTER WILEY: No, I don't. I don't remember her name. But I mean, it was, you know, a long flight. And when we came in for a landing, they had to do these evasive maneuvers. So the C130 was pitching and yawing, you know, constantly.

[21:45] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: You know, what were they avoiding? Were they avoiding being shot down?

[21:51] WALTER WILEY: I don't know if anybody was actually shooting. I think it was just, you know, a safety precaution. Just don't stand still long enough. That way they can't see where you are.

[22:02] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Gotcha. Those are huge planes to be doing maneuvers like that.

[22:08] WALTER WILEY: Oh, yeah.

[22:10] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: So when you went to Kirkuk and you were with the 116th, right.

[22:18] WALTER WILEY: That's the battalion. I was with the 145th Brigade.

[22:23] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: 145Th Brigade. Who. What was your. What was like, your role or your job? Why were they sending you there?

[22:30] WALTER WILEY: Basically, I worked in what they called as a raid repairman. So I worked in electronics and the area we're in. And Kirk Cook was in the FOB Ford area, a base, you know, so basically I was a fabbit. So I stayed on base for the most part, except for mid to early 2004. I mean, 2005, they had elections in Iraq, and the outlying units had little area basis compounds. So we were called to provide security to the compound so that the units that were on these compounds could be out in town and provide security for the town. So at that point, I was out there. I forget the name of this little fob, but, you know, while they were out there, we provided security. And being the E6 at the time, I was platoon sergeant, you know, NCRC security. NCOIC means not commissioner, officer in charge.

[23:55] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Gotcha. And this was overall. It was called Operation Iraqi Freedom. That was like the overall mission for everybody, right?

[24:04] WALTER WILEY: It was OIF3 at that time.

[24:08] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Gotcha. Track backing up a tiny bit. You know, when you found out, you said that you were a little bit surprised, but also not surprised when you found out you're being deployed to. Do you remember telling mom and me and Natalie, do you remember our reactions when we told. When you told us.

[24:25] WALTER WILEY: No, I can't. I'll be honest, I can't remember exactly. I knew mom wasn't overly concerned. She knew I'd be all right, but.

[24:33] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Yeah. When you were overseas, what did you miss most from home? What did you. What was something that you missed the most while you were over there?

[24:46] WALTER WILEY: Well, I mean, missed you guys. You know, mom and I spoke at least once a week on the phone. I don't know how she puts you guys on the phone. Maybe once a month. But, yeah, there are certain freedoms, you know, that you had to do without, you know, and then when you walk from point A to point B, you had to wear at least 100 pounds of gear for safety reasons. Yeah. So.

[25:20] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: So hot and heavy all the time?

[25:22] WALTER WILEY: Pretty much. Well, and I've said this many times, when it gets hotter here, like 100 degrees, I've been hotter, you know, 120 in the shade. 130 in the shade. Yeah.

[25:38] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Yeah. With all that equipment on.

[25:40] WALTER WILEY: Yeah.

[25:41] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Sounds awful.

[25:44] WALTER WILEY: You know, I guess it's my mindset type person I am. It's what I had to do at the time, you know, lamenting over it was. It's not my character.

[25:56] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Right. So when you were over there, can you just. Can you tell me about maybe somebody you remember fondly that you served with or. A couple people.

[26:11] WALTER WILEY: Basically? My boss at time was Brains, not what he used to be. Yeah, Phil Knox, he was my boss at time. He was a SAR first class. Gunny comes to mind because that's the Marine Corps version of SAR first class. But, yeah, him. There was a guy named Calvin Haynes. Steph Sergeant Haynes. He was. He was old fart at the time. Michael. Michael Martin. You know, me, Mikey and I were pretty good friends. We stayed pretty close for a long team, a lot of years. So I think the camaraderie comes from you're in an environment that's not friendly to you or those that you're with. So it brings you closer together.

[27:19] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Yeah, that makes sense. When you were over there, do you have, like, a fun memory or like a funny story about those people from when you were over in Iraq?

[27:34] WALTER WILEY: Well, see, I'm trying to remember the name of the food one that we had, what called locals, you know, that would come on the base to do work manual labor. The stuff wrapped in grape leaves and stuff. I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head. But anyway, one of those guys had some, so I tried. He says. He asked me if I liked it. He brought me a huge plate of it the next day. So I just gave him 20 bucks, which is probably a month's worth of wages, you know, but nothing to me. Yeah. So, yeah, that When I went to that Ford operating base out in town, they had. What was. Who we called Mitch Mitch was an eagle that they had as a mascot. And the medics had tried to repair Mitch's wing many times, but he kept flapping it and re. Breaking the wing. So they had dad pk. So Mitch was the one wing eagle.

[28:47] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: That was pretty cool. Didn't you feed mice or, like, random rodents you found to Mitch?

[28:53] WALTER WILEY: Yep. Yeah, I did. And on that subject, when I came back home from Iraq, you were in the seventh grade.

[29:02] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Mm.

[29:03] WALTER WILEY: And your teacher at the time thought it would be good punishment. Actually, I was home on leave at the time. Yeah.

[29:09] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: You weren't.

[29:11] WALTER WILEY: Yeah. It would be good punishment for you to have one of your parents sitting next to you. Yeah.

[29:17] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Yeah. Ms. Anderson.

[29:19] WALTER WILEY: Yeah. And unbeknownst to her, I showed up in uniform with a thumb drive of everything that I had from over there. So I pretty much took over the class in front of, you know, with her, with her permission, of course, and did this huge introduction and what I did. And everybody's like, that's your dad. That's who I am.

[29:42] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Yes. You showed all. You showed the pictures of Mitch eating, like, you showed video and pictures of Mitch eating, like, mice and rats and other things you found. And like, of camel spiders, which are like.

[29:55] WALTER WILEY: Yes.

[29:55] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Because your face. And I was in class were like, thinking that was the coolest thing. And it was. Ended up not being a punishment and which I love because I hated that teacher. So I was happy that it did not work out for her. Yeah. You were gone for, like, two years. You weren't. You weren't initially supposed to be gone for two years, but they kept.

[30:22] WALTER WILEY: No. No. Well, again, back. I just joined the National Guard and they sent me to school for six months, which was in January 11th. I came home in after school for a week. Then we went down to Texas for ramp up training, which was six months long at that time. And then around November time frame, we actually deployed and went to Iraq.

[30:54] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Right.

[30:54] WALTER WILEY: So it appeared. And didn't come home till about November of the next year. So in a period of two years, I was home for maybe six weeks.

[31:04] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Yeah. They let you home for, like, a little bit. That was it. So you're gone for two years.

[31:12] WALTER WILEY: Yeah. In March of 05, I came home for two weeks.

[31:17] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Right. We have a newspaper clipping somewhere of that. When you did get to come home for good, what was it like? Do you remember what it was like when you got to come home?

[31:32] WALTER WILEY: I mean, one thing that crossed my mind, we had, you know, a parade and everything. And I'm thinking about all these people who came Home previously from different wars that didn't have parades, you know, but we were all component. You know, we did our job. That's the way I looked at it. That was my job at the time.

[31:53] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: What do you remember of the actual day when you got to come home? Like, the feelings and your thoughts around that?

[32:02] WALTER WILEY: I'm just glad to be home, you know, I mean, I didn't feel traumatized or anything for being at war for about a year long. But, I mean, just a little side story, about two or three months later, I was down in Georgia again. I was playing golf, and about 500 yards away from the golf course was the interstate. And the cement truck was going down the road and it blew a tire. And this big boom went up. And I caught myself down one knee, and I'm looking around. I'm the only one down on one knee, so backing that up. When I was in Iraq, there was a lot of mortar fire coming in every now and then, you know, and you'd hear these big booms, you know, did it hit a building? Did it make it hurt? Stuff like that. But you hear that, the warnings, and you hear the whistling of the mortars. So that big boom, it's like it was more of an instinct than, you know, anything else.

[33:13] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Right. You had to protect yourself. I didn't know that story.

[33:18] WALTER WILEY: The third hole of a golf course.

[33:23] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: It'S a good excuse for if you didn't win the game that day.

[33:27] WALTER WILEY: Sure, we'll go with that.

[33:30] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: When you got back, you know, what was your career like with you came back, how did you. You worked up the ranks and you did a few things still because you stayed in the National Guard. Up until about three years ago, I.

[33:43] WALTER WILEY: Did so when I first got back, I was just a guardsman, you know, one week in a month, whatever. You know, what they have out there are federal technicians that provide services to the National Guard, maintenance services on that line. A person that we knew, Michael Martin and myself, that we knew worked, needed some people to work out at Mates, a division out in the desert from here, anyway. So we will work. No, that's out at Mates, way out there in the desert. So we were working in the supply room at that, which they really liked, both of us working in there because we were very organized and stuff. But halfway through our 90 days of temp tech in Mates, Mikey ran across Chief Warrant Officer Cahill, John Cahill, who said. Who was the maintenance chief for the combined service maintenance sports shop, csms. He saw Martin and goes, and we work for Chief Cahill over in Iraq, he goes, oh, I need you. I got a place for you. And Mikey at that time told, well, Wiley's working out there at mates also. So both of us, you know, why not work for John Cahill has 10 temp text. And about two, three months later, a position opened up which was permanent and we all applied for it and I got it. So Martin and I were both federal technicians supporting the Army National Guard. And at that time. Say again please.

[35:40] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: I was saying, and in the National Guard you worked up the ranks too. So you had a civilian job and an army position. Right.

[35:48] WALTER WILEY: So, you know, being the maintenance guy, people got to know who I am and what I did. And I became eligible to pick up E7. And at that time my boss on the civilian side, federal technician side, was also my first sergeant first sergeant on Garmin. Anyway, so garments time as first sergeant came up was, was coming to an end and the position opened up and the commander of the unit at the time approached me at the end of drill and asked me was I putting first sergeant. And prior to this conversation I was a boot, you know, E7. I wasn't going to put in first certain E8. But you know, he approached me, so of course I answered, yes sir. So I put in for it. There was a board and I guess I won the board and got first started. So I became first sergeant of the signal company at the time, the reason we went, I went signal is. Signal is communications, talking on the radio, ordinances, maintenance, fixing the radios. Prior to going signal, I was ordinance rate repairman. But my repair company moved up north and I didn't want to have to drive way up to Lewis Nido just to go to drill. So I crossed over signal which took over our existing space. And then so I became a. From a repair to a user.

[37:43] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: That's awesome.

[37:45] WALTER WILEY: Yeah, well, we got like go ahead.

[37:52] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: So we have about two minutes left. You know, one of the things I really wanted to focus on was like your time overseas and stuff with everything going on. We're, you know, that the Iraq, but we were in the Middle east since, you know, 9 basically since 91. It was such a long war. You went and then you saw your, your troops go while you were serving as first sergeant and sergeant first class. Well, what would you give veterans who served recently about coming and who recently who are coming home now that we're pulling out of Afghanistan? What kind of advice would you give them about adjusting?

[38:35] WALTER WILEY: I mean, I know it can be hard. The thing is, realize what you did was, you know, for a better good than you just, you know, for yourself. You were serving your country. You know, I mean, that serving your country goes way back in my family history. My dad, my grandparents, you know, they serve their countries, so. And yeah, I know that it can be difficult dealing with certain personal issues, but the overall part is you did what you were supposed to do.

[39:22] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Yeah, right.

[39:24] WALTER WILEY: And if you need. If you have problems because of the actions you saw, you should talk to somebody about that and deal with that. You know, I'm a type A personality. You know, I do what I have to do. Good. Just not good enough. I can always do better.

[39:45] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: So how do you feel about, you know, looking back on it now with some time between? How do you feel about the time you spent over in Iraq?

[39:56] WALTER WILEY: I look at back at it fondly. I mean, I enjoyed my time there. Me. What we did basically provided safe environment for the locals and everything, you know?

[40:09] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Right.

[40:10] WALTER WILEY: So.

[40:12] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: Well, dad, we hit our 40 minutes, but thanks for talking with me today. Thanks for letting me pick your brain.

[40:21] WALTER WILEY: Yeah, I enjoyed it. So hopefully I made your day as well as you made mine.

[40:28] DANIELLE CHASTAINE: You always make my day.