James Armstrong and Morgan Zipf-Meister

[00:03] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: Hi. My name is Morgan Zipf-Meister I am 39 years old. The date is March 14, 2023. I am in Brooklyn, New York, and today I'm here with James, who I'm going to interview.

[00:14] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Good morning. My name is James Armstrong. I am 40 years old. I live in Litchfield, Maine. I am here with Morgan, my interviewer, and it is March 14 of 2023.

[00:30] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: Awesome. So, James, we've just met. Why don't you go ahead and tell me a little bit about your background and where you grew up.

[00:42] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Yep. So I am originally from Georgia, middle Georgia. Grew up, was born, raised, grew up most of my life there. I've got. I've got five kids and, yeah, joined the military at 26 and had an interesting career.

[01:08] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: So what prompted you to join the military?

[01:14] JAMES ARMSTRONG: A better, a better, a better life for my family at the point. At that time.

[01:21] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: A family's history of military service, or were you the first one?

[01:24] JAMES ARMSTRONG: I did? My grandfather was in. He was a machinist during World War Two and actually helped machine the parts for fat boy and little boy out of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which was just lately in the news for their nuclear power plant. My dad was in the army for 23 and a half years, in the infantry. My mother was in the army. She was a generator mechanic. I've got a brother that's done seven tours overseas from Operation Desert Storm, Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. So we've got a pretty long, long history.

[02:03] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: And when you were growing up, did you always think that was something you were going to do or did you have.

[02:08] JAMES ARMSTRONG: No, no, it wasn't even in. It wasn't even in my wheel. Maybe when I was. Maybe when I was super, super young, you know, used to play army in the backyard, but, yeah, when I got to my teenage years, that was the furthest thing from what I wanted to do.

[02:24] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: What did you think that you were going to wind up doing or what did you want to do?

[02:29] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Marine biology always interested me a lot.

[02:33] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: And then wound up in the military regardless.

[02:38] JAMES ARMSTRONG: I did, yeah, yeah, I did it. Washington. It was. It was a tough time and having that many kids to support and trying to find jobs, and I've always been a hard worker, but, you know, I started my family right out of high school, so, you know, the. The college didn't come around and jobs didn't pay a whole lot in Georgia, so I needed to do something to really kind of make sure that they were all squared away and taken care of.

[03:13] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: And what branch were you in? Were you in the army also?

[03:16] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Yep. Joined the army reserves in 2008, and then went on from there.

[03:24] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: And so you wind up joining. What's sort of your first impressions? What do you remember about, you know, those first days?

[03:34] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Um, well, being older had its perks, and having a dad that was in the infantry had his perks. You know, I got some really good advice before I left to go in, and so it was everything I expected it to be.

[03:51] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: What advice did? Did he give you?

[03:56] JAMES ARMSTRONG: The old man pretty much just told me it was a game. He says, just remember, it's a game. Nothing you do is right, and, you know, it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter what you do. It's not going to be right. You know, if you. They tell you to go do something, go do exactly what they tell you to do, nothing more, nothing less. And, you know, just make sure you're doing the right thing all the time. And, you know, don't try to, don't try to put yourself out there, but don't try to, you know, keep yourself in the background. Kind of stay in the middle, and you'll go right through, so.

[04:32] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: And you found that to be true, helpful?

[04:36] JAMES ARMSTRONG: I found it to be really true. I've been in management job since I was 19. Obviously starting a family early and stuff. I had to figure out what I was going to do to make, you know, the best money I could. So I, when I joined the army and went into boot camp, it was a lot better to not have to be in charge of people. It was just, it was easier to me because I didn't have to answer for everybody in a management perspective, you know? So, of course, once they found out that I was a manager and what I call the real world, they, they put me in charge of people. But, you know, initially, it was, it was pretty much everything I thought it was going to be. It was hard. I went in when I was 26, and I was, you know, six to 285 pounds. So I'm a big guy, you know, not, I don't really, I can't really hide in the background too much. I've always been a big guy, so that's not going to change too much. But, uh, but, yeah, you know, it puts a target on you when you get there because there's something that they can mold and, and shape. But, um, the mental aspect of it was something they, you know, it's something they try to break you down and build you back up, you know, to, to teach you that you can do things. You know, you never know how far a human body can go until you actually push it through it and you have somebody pushing you. So, um, you know, even though I was older, I still learned a lot about myself.

[06:14] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: You know, did, um, those sort of, you know, physical tasks during boot camp. Uh, uh. Can you describe some of that kind of stuff for people who might not know what, you know, what they.

[06:27] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Yeah, I mean, um, you know, I called it the adult playground. You know, I mean, running and push ups and setups and all that stuff. You know, that stuff's, you know, physically taxing. It's when you get to do all the other stuff, the obstacle courses and, you know, the, the building, you know, repelling and, you know, and all that other stuff. That's. I found that to be fun. Even though it was physically taxing, it was fun. The one thing I didn't care for too much was the gas chamber. I don't think I found many people that, that do care for that too much, but that wasn't exactly the funnest part of the whole trip.

[07:07] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: You said that they, you know, identified you, you know, as a manager pretty quickly. Where. How did that path kind of come about and where did you move after basic?

[07:19] JAMES ARMSTRONG: So, yeah, so when you go on your first day, basically they, they sit down and have you fill out a piece of paper on, you know, like, what you did and, you know, before you got there. And I tried to be as vague as possible with all that, but you still have people that are pretty smart on, on their end. So, you know, they picked up, you know, that I was a manager and, and stuff like that, and it had been about two or three weeks that I was there that I think they kind of just let me slide to see how I was going to do with the physical aspect of it. And, you know, everybody gets their rotation, right? So everybody gets to be in charge at some point, you know, of other people, and you have to relay messages and things like that. I was just kind of hoping that it would slip past me so, you know, I didn't have to be in charge of 1820 year olds, so, but it all worked out. It was like I said, it was fun. It was, it was a lot. It was. The physical side of it was the hardest.

[08:22] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: So what was the next step in, in your military career then?

[08:27] JAMES ARMSTRONG: So I went from there to AIT, which was at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, there. I t stand for advanced individual training. So basically, you go to boot camp just to say, okay, you can be in the army, and then you go to your job, you know, your job training, you know, kind of, it's a miniature college. I was in the medical field. I was a 68 x ray, which is a behavioral health specialist. So I, you know, it was another thing that I thoroughly enjoy doing. We dealt with, you know, anything from, you know, people with PTSD, what they would call battle fatigue, drug and alcohol counseling, and then, you know, down to the. Down to the nitty gritty type kicking indoors and, you know, being placed with, you know, soldiers outside the wire and and basically doing what they do and and, you know, and trying to make sure that we preserve the fighting force is ultimately what the job was.

[09:43] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: So, so I'm understanding you're sort of working as a, like, behavioral therapist kind of Orlando or just in that arena.

[09:53] JAMES ARMSTRONG: So my job was, you know, I was. I was enlisted, so we were paired up with. With a doctor, essentially. You got to think 2008, 2009, this was the, you know, this was kind of the. The end of, you know, the Iraq war or trying to close out the Iraq war and then getting hot and heavy into Afghanistan. And we had already been in war since, what, 2001? So you're talking eight, nine years that we've already been there. So the. The fighting force needed a lot, and I don't think that I've met a soldier through that time who didn't have more than one. One job or one occupation. So we were all multi trained and and, you know, just trained and tasked in different levels. I was trained in, you know, medical aspect, you know, and then, you know, we were trained in a little bit of, like, counterintelligence type stuff. And and then the behavioral health side of it was. Was pretty interesting because, you know, we got to, you know, sit in with interrogations and, you know, just different aspects like that. So, you know, there were. There were things about the job that were fun, and there were things about the job that were pretty clinical. Um, and, um, so I got put on something that's not quite the clinical side. You had a. So you had the mos. You have two different. You have kind of like two different job, you know, areas. You have a fitness team and a prevention team. A fitness team basically operates a mental health hospital on a fob. You know, um, they do great work there, and the biggest thing that people need is sleep. You know, you got to think 18 year olds and, and, you know, they're going into war and, you know, they. The biggest thing that you can get is rippets and nicotine, you know, so caffeine and nicotine. So these guys have, you know, been up for, you know, I don't know, two or three days straight and seen their buddy get hurt or something like that, you know, and they're just not in the right mind frame. So a lot of the times, these guys just need rest. And so that's. That's pretty much what your fitness team was. Your prevention team worked in groups of two people. Pretty much. It was an officer and an enlisted. The officers were typically doctors in psychology or psychiatrist. And so you would join them and go out to, you know, wherever they needed you, basically. And, you know, you'd go give, you know, presentations to, you know, commanders, generals, whoever was in charge, and then you would try to implement the, you know, implement what you were trying to. What you were trying to accomplish. You were trying to implement the mission goals. And. And along with that, you were a soldier. You were there. So if they needed help, you were helping, you know.

[12:58] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: How long did you do that kind of work?

[13:02] JAMES ARMSTRONG: I joined in 2008. I volunteered for my first deployment in 2009, and I was actually injured in 2009.

[13:13] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: Okay.

[13:14] JAMES ARMSTRONG: So I never actually made. I never actually made it overseas. I was. I was involved in the Fort Hood incident in 2009, and I was shot three times there at Fort Hood by an army psychiatrist who was radicalized and was a muslim radicalist or whatever.

[13:36] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: So are you okay to talk about that a little bit?

[13:41] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Yeah.

[13:45] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: So what do you remember about that day?

[13:50] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Everything.

[13:53] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: Start out so just like any other day?

[13:57] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Yeah, I would say that I don't talk about it too much, but there's a. There's a. There's kind of two stories. There's one that you can. There's one that you could tell people, and there's one that you can't, if that makes any sense. So we had. We had gotten to Fort Hood, and I think it was November 4. We had gotten there. We had traveled by bus from Topeka, Kansas, to Fort Hood, Texas, and we were supposed to start our processing. So basically, they go through and check all your medical stuff and give you shots and, you know, and make sure you're in good health and stuff before you have a little bit more training, and then you jump on a plane and head overseas. So we got there. We were supposed to start in processing on the fourth. We were late, so we ended up going out to North Fort and basically just, you know, putting all of our stuff together and got ready for the next day. So we ended up going to what's called SRP, which is Soldier readiness program. They bring you to a building. They do all of your financials, you know, make sure your wills up to date, and then they start running through medical stuff, and about one or 02:00 that day was when the shooting started, so.

[15:27] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: So you had really just arrived?

[15:30] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Yeah. Yeah, I had been there. I've been at Fort Hood for one day. Yeah.

[15:34] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: And did you, having just arrived, I'm not too familiar sort of with the actual incident itself, but did you know the, the shooter at all or this person was there?

[15:46] JAMES ARMSTRONG: You had never met them, so, no, I didn't know the shooter. The shooter was a army doctor, army psychiatrist who was stationed at Walter Reed. And there had been. There had been complaints that he was becoming radicalized. And, and so they, you know, they had kind of pushed him around a little bit. He was of, you know, muslim descent or whatever, you know, and so instead of. Instead of really kind of addressing the issue and maybe pushing this guy out of the army because it wasn't really kind of the place for him, if that makes sense, you know what I mean? Like, they. It was a lot of. It was a lot of PC political correctness stuff that they didn't want to, you know, and I gather they didn't want to upset the masses by, you know, we're at war with a muslim country and radicalist and, you know, this guy's expressing his views. And so, you know, if we just boot him out, then, you know, we're going to have an equal opportunity complaint or, you know, or something like that. And it wasn't until after he, you know, you know, went and, you know, killed 13, one of which was pregnant and, you know, injured 32 more of us that, you know, they started digging into his, you know, started digging to his background. He was under FBI surveillance and, you know, just all kinds of stuff from contacting Anwar awalaqi, which was another, you know, muslim terrorist. So he was in direct communication with him, and he was becoming more and more radicalized and, and, you know, had thrown up a whole bunch of red flags that they should have caught. So, so instead of acting really on those red flags, they decided they were going to deploy them, I guess. And so he was slated to deploy with a sister unit of ours. So I was out of the 1908 out of Topeka, Kansas, and there was a sister unit, the 467th, out of which would have been Seattle, Washington area, pretty much the west coast. I covered from Washington all the way down to California, and I was in a. I was in a really small mos, which is, which is my job. I was in a really small, you know, so there, I think at that time, there was only maybe 600 and something of us in the, in the United States military altogether. So, you know, to be in a very large military group and then for me to volunteer with a unit out of Topeka, Kansas, and then from Topeka, Kansas, to go all the way to Seattle. When I got to Seattle and the unit was there, I knew four people that I had met in basic training in AIT, you know, so they were beefing it up and they were trying to get people, you know, there because, you know, PTSD and our 22 a day and things like that was really ramping up hard. So, you know, they wanted to really kind of, they wanted to really crack down on and try to get to the bottom and try to help soldiers. So, you know, that was the main focus of our job.

[19:19] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: Yeah. And when the shooting started, was it just, you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or how did.

[19:29] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Or the right place at the right time, depending on who you ask.

[19:32] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: Sure.

[19:32] JAMES ARMSTRONG: How about that?

[19:35] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: How?

[19:38] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Um, so we had just gotten our vaccines. I mean, me personally, I just got my vaccine. It was around, you know, it was just after lunch, and a buddy of mine and, and myself were together. And basically you're going to stations to see which one you can kind of get to. And it's a race to try to get done because you want to be done in one day. You don't want this to take multiple days because it's just a pain. And so we had just gotten our shots for, you know, anthrax and smallpox and, you know, and whatever else they gave us, you just don't ask questions. So I was. I was seated in a. I was seated in kind of a waiting area, a line of chairs and a single building and basically getting ready to go see a pa. And they were just going to ask a bunch of medical questions and, you know, to make sure you didn't have anything that was going on. And so you start out on the back row and you kind of work your way forward. As one person gets up, you move up a chair, you know, so I had gotten in there, sat down. I had a, you know, kind of like a bag lunch type thing. I just got through eating my lunch, and. And so I had moved up a row and three seats. And so I heard, you know, someone, you know, someone yell, you know, Allah Akbar, which is Allah is good or Allah is greater. And then gunfire started going off. And at first, you know, you don't really expect it on a military base.

[21:13] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: So how surprising was that?

[21:16] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Right? And, you know, and that. And we just came from a training environment so, you know, your training environments, a lot of situational awareness. And so at this point, you know, I had just gotten to Fort Hood. Second day there, you know, all of a sudden, shooting starts going off and I'm like, great, another training exercise. Wonderful, you know, and kind of half ass reacted to what was going on. I laid my head down and kind of looked back over my shoulder. And it wasn't until I saw someone who was actually bleeding but gotten shot that I realized that it wasn't a joke. So, yeah, at that point, it was pretty much just chaos. I had a, another soldier beside me that I, that I knew very well. She was kind of curled up on the floor and into a ball and I was trying to get down the row of chairs. Of course, you can imagine the chairs were all over the place at this point. So I reached down to and grabbed her by her belt buckle and got her about waist high and took a step and then fella. So I spun around and kind of kept nudging her back, trying to get to cover and stuff. And so I got to a certain point and then, and then I looked down at my pant leg and I had a hole in my pants and they were replacement Ac use, so they were, they were new. Our old ones were all busted up from training and stuff. So I looked down and I noticed there was a hole in my pant leg. And so I kind of just thought to myself, I'm like, I've been shot, you know, and then I just, I ended up getting mad. I was, you know, then I, the words that came out of my mouth weren't exactly user friendly for any kind of podcast or anything else, but, yeah, at that point, I just started yelling and screaming. I was upset and I was Madden and so, and some curse words came out of there and so it wasn't really the, it wasn't really like a superb reaction. I would, I would say, I think that seems fair. Yeah.

[23:26] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: What you're going through.

[23:28] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Yeah. And so you, you know, you make the statement if you're the right place at the right time, the wrong place at the wrong time or whatever, you know, or the wrong place at the right time, you know, it's, it's really a matter of, it's really a matter of perspective, you know, along with, you know, being shot, I performed first aid on, on a couple of soldiers that I knew and, you know, they ended up making it, so, so that was good. You know, if I hadn't been there, you know, somebody else probably would have done it or maybe not, you know, who knows? But, you know, you get this. You get this, you know, thing all the time where you're a brave person or whatever. And something I teach my kids and I tell people all the time, I said, there's a fine line between bravery and stupidity, and, you know, the only difference is the outcome of the situation, you know? So, you know, at this point, if you lived, it was kind of stupid, you know, if you died, it was probably brave. Who knows? You know what I mean? But I. There's really. There's really not much of a difference between the two in my, in my mind, I guess.

[24:39] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: Once you realized you had been shot, you know, and moving through that, how long before, you know, the situation calmed down or before you received any kind of treatment?

[24:57] JAMES ARMSTRONG: It was a while. I don't know, the, you know, minutes turn into hours. At that point, everything really kind of just slows down. I don't know if you've ever been through, you know, quote unquote traumatic, you know, situation or, you know, whatnot, but a lot of people that I've talked to and a lot of things that, you know, a lot of things that go around are everything. Time slows down and you kind of pick up every little detail and every smell and every sight. And I. So I had ended up in a. I had ended up in a cubicle at one point with another soldier that I knew from basic training. And so the shooter ended up going outside and started, you know, shooting at people outside. And, and then at that point, the building, pretty much anybody that was left standing, got up and, and tried to exit the building from the opposite side. Um, so I had gotten up and took a step and fell down because I had realized I was gotten. I'd been shot in a leg. And, um, so I, uh, I went around the back of the room and kind of came up through the cubicles, and, and then I saw her face down on the floor, and so I freaked out and, and I jumped in and rolled her over, and she hadn't been hit, so that was great. Um, you know, obviously scared to death. But I, um. I, uh. I don't know. I'm kind of a protective mammal, I guess, you know? So when you know somebody and, and, um, she was. She was short. She was very sweet. She was a very nice person. And I, you know, and I. When I saw her laying on the floor, my heart just dropped, you know what I mean? I was like, this can't be right. And so. But luckily enough, yeah, it was. She was, she was good. And she was okay. There was a civilian worker in the same office who was kind of under. Under a desk, you know, and, yeah, so once I found out she hadn't been shot, I kind of laid back, sat down, and, you know, just took a deep breath, and was like, shit, you know? And so it was at that point where, you know, she was like. She was like, oh, my God, that was so close. I. You know, I almost got shot and everything else, and I'm just sitting there taking a breath, and she goes, are you okay? And I'm like, I got shot in the leg. You know what I mean? And at that point, she freaked out, you know, so she goes. Starts taking off her belt, puts on a tourniquet on my leg. I mean, she really snapped into action, you know, and, you know, she. She did what she was trained to do, and she did a really good job. And so there was a cell phone in there. I made calls to the police and stuff, and then, um, I ended up calling my wife at the time and kind of just, you know, basically, like, this is what's happening. This is where I'm at. I've been shot. I'm fine. And it was at the point where I was like, I've been shot. I'm fine. Um, he comes back in the building and starts shooting people that are laying on the floor and trying to crawl away and stuff. And so, um. So then, you know, of course, my. I go, gotta go. Bye. You know, and you can imagine the. You can imagine the. The what that put her through, you know, being on the phone, and. And I later found out that she had called back, and then the phone answered, and at that point, she was hearing everything through the phone that was going on in the building. And so she had her own form of, you know, she had her own form of PTSD and, you know, things that were going on as well. So it was quite the. It's quite the experience. But, yeah, at some point, you know, they, they ended up. They ended up shooting the shooter a couple of times and got him down, and then all hell broke loose, and the chaos commenced, with people running in and perform at first aid. And, you know, and so I managed to. I managed to get out of the building and outside, and they all had us, you know, sit down in some spots and stuff, and they started doing first aid, and anybody that ran over to me, I told them to go somewhere else. You know, I. I ended up. I had a captain that I was supposed to be working with overseas came up to me, and you know, he runs up and, you know, he, you know, kind of covered in blood, you know, from his, you know, chest down, because he had been helping people out, and. And he runs over to me and, you know, he says, are you good to. I said, yeah, I just got shit hitting a leg. He goes, what about your back? And I'm going, yeah, I'm good, man. He goes, no, you're bleeding from your back. So I was like, oh, cool. So, um, the shirts they put on are called blouses. So I ended up taking my blouse off, and, you know, he looked at my back, and it's like, I don't think you're gonna die. And I'm like, okay, good. I was like, we're just gonna move on with our lives then. So how did you.

[30:00] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: Did you feel at that point where.

[30:02] JAMES ARMSTRONG: You just totally in shock or, you know, mission oriented? You know, I saw people lying on the ground, and I wasn't dead, so I tried to help out as much as I could.

[30:19] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: And so do you think that's inherently, you know, sort of who you are or was part of sort of the behavioral, you know, like, part of your training and everything kicked in that, you know, sort of dealing with PTSD and that kind of.

[30:36] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Well, I think that. I think that it's a little bit of both. You know, you never know who. You never know who or how you're going to react until you put in a situation like that. You know, I've seen people that. That I thought were going to be, you know, just jam up and. And, you know, put together, and I I saw him fall apart, and then I saw people like, you know, Thompson was the girl on the floor who, you know, you would think that you would never want to. You would never want to have her, you know, deal with anything like that, you know, ever, because how sweet she was, you know, and she jumped right into mission status and, you know, and started doing what she was trained to do. So I think a lot of it has to do with who you are as a person, you know, and know a lot of what you've seen in life and a lot of the things that you've dealt with and how you deal with things.

[31:27] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: Yeah, we only have about ten minutes left, and I feel like we're just sort of scratching the surface of everything that you have to share with us. But, you know, after all the chaos and everything calmed down, how, you know, how what happened to the sort of just wrap up the story of, you know, being injured and line of duty and what happened with your military career after that?

[31:53] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Yeah, I mean, after that. I mean, you know, to summarize it up was we got wrapped up in a political nightmare. We, you know, the shooting happened during an election year, and we became, you know, the hot topic of the moment. And I met a lot of people from the president down. You know, a lot of people shook your hand and, you know, told you that they would help you and be there for you. And as soon as the dust settled and the heat was off, they ended up calling it workplace violence and tried to save their, you know, reputations as far as, you know, things that go on in the government and political stuff. And. And one of the biggest things I remember is Obama ran for a second term, and he made a statement that nothing, that no, no terrorist attacks have been made on the United States since he was in office. And at that time, we had had several. They just didn't categorize them as terrorist attacks. We were. We were legitimately at war, you know, and the, I would say the disillusion to that factor, you know, maybe trying to calm the masses or you, you know, whatever was, was not, you know, I don't think it was advantageous. You know, it wasn't something that was, that was good for the country or people in it, but then you've got stupid people that were going out and attacking, you know, people of the muslim faith just because they were muslim, you know? So what, you know, what side do you stand on? You know, I think, you know, and the things that I've learned throughout my life and, you know, and things that have gone on is just, you know, tell the truth and, you know, no matter what, you know, the american people and all these people, they just tell them the truth and just, you know, stop trying to hide behind everything and, you know, I think that'll get you more votes than anything else, you know, but, but go ahead.

[34:00] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: I know. Go ahead.

[34:02] JAMES ARMSTRONG: So, so, yeah, so, you know, we. Like I said, we ended up meeting the president, and I moved to Maine because that's where my wife was going with my kids and when I was getting deployed to be around family. And so I came up here and ended up staying. And it was hard. It was hard on both of us. Ultimately, the marriage failed. And I think a lot of it was due to Fort Hood and a lot of the PTSD that she had and, of course, PTSD stuff that I had, you know, and I don't think it was until probably the. The end of our marriage and really kind of trying to figure it out that she actually had PTSD, you know, it was quite a few years before she ever talked about the fact that she was on the phone, you know, when all the stuff happened. You know what I mean? So.

[34:59] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: How.

[34:59] JAMES ARMSTRONG: It was hard.

[35:00] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: How old were your kids when. When this happened?

[35:03] JAMES ARMSTRONG: I think my son was. My youngest son was three and his brother was five. And then my other kids, I had a six and a seven year old at that time. So, yeah, they were pretty young.

[35:17] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: Did they process all of any of that?

[35:24] JAMES ARMSTRONG: No, I think that the older one kind of saw mom crying and didn't really understand. Somewhere around his, you know, 10th or 11th grade year, he ended up doing a report for school on Fort Hood. And I think my youngest one is going to do the same this year. In which case, you know, they, they wanted to interview me. And I told him no, you know, you can just figure it out online. Everything's there. So. Told him what to Google and where to go and. And so, you know, he, you know, he went through that and really, it changed. It changed his perspective, I think, on a lot of things. And, you know, right now he's in the military, which I'm proud of him. I think every man has to go their own way and do their own thing and do what they can feel compelled to do. I'm not super excited about it, you know, but you can. But you can go into the military and make a career if you're. If you're smart about it, you know? And. And I think that's what he's doing. I mean, he's really, he's really good. He's really dedicated, and, you know, he's pretty competitive. He wants to be a higher rank than my dad was or that I was, so, you know, I'm all for that. Make the money, you know, and he's a smart kid, so. But, you know, I have.

[36:59] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: We're getting close to the end of time, and I just have two more questions. We can kind of wrap up on those. But, you know, if one day, you know, your kids were to sort of listen back to this, you know, is there anything that you kind of want to leave them with about your experience?

[37:18] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Um, the biggest things that I. That, you know, that. That my life lessons were and, you know, through all of this was that we can't control everything that happens around us, and it's going to affect you in some way. Never make excuses and don't play the victim. You know, you. You have things that happen to you. You can't. You just can't control it. And so, you know, learn from. Learn from the situations you've been in. Keep people close to you that. That love you and care about you. And try to be as understanding as you can about other people. Their face, their religions, their creeds, or however they, you know, however they, you know, define themselves. But, you know, be honest about the things that go on around you and, you know, and really kind of just love the people that are around you because life is very short, so, you know, you. You learn to appreciate every day after that.

[38:32] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: That's really beautiful. I think maybe we can wrap it up there. That seems like a good note to end on. I just really want to thank you for taking the time today, James, and sharing your story with us. I think.

[38:45] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Sure.

[38:46] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: A lot of people.

[38:47] JAMES ARMSTRONG: There's a lot more, so maybe we'll.

[38:51] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: Have to do a part two one day.

[38:52] JAMES ARMSTRONG: Maybe one day.

[38:54] MORGAN ZIPF-MEISTER: Well, thanks again. It's really nice to meet you.

[38:57] JAMES ARMSTRONG: It was really nice meeting you as well.