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Originally Published December 6, 2018

Well, we took a little break. Not much of a break, I was out doing what we Green Berets do best, winning hearts and minds. We appreciate you sticking around while we get this thing fired back up.

So, a lot has happened since we last posted. D is officially retired, with DD214 in hand. That is quite an accomplishment and D deserves a hearty thanks, as does his wife and family for keeping down the homefront while he was away. Congratulations!

As you can imagine, with retirement comes a whole host of issues. Some you can plan for and others you cant. But hasn't this been done before? Hasn't the Army thought through this process? Put systems in place to support soldiers when they part? They tell us we are set up to be leaders in the commercial sector, that our experience in combat, in the military, is far superior to our civilian counterparts.  But is it? Does it even translate?

Also, what happens to a soldier that is no longer a soldier? Both D & I, and the soldiers we served with, were born to be warriors. It's in our DNA. I was put on this earth to do exactly what I've been doing as a Green Beret. So when the time comes for us to take off the uniform, then what? Who am I, if not a soldier? If we are no longer Green Berets going to war to protect and defend our nation, our home our families, what, and who are we?

In the past few years, the Army and SOF  made some great efforts to address this issue. In classic fashion, the Army made a program to tackle the issue, this one is called "Resiliency Training" and it's about as effective as the brown towels issued at basic training for actually drying you off.  This plays right into transitioning and retiring from service. Transition doesn't happen in the last year of your Army career, and you can't depend on the army to prepare you for life outside the army.

The depth of these issues was addressed in a very timely and articulate piece written by BRITTA REQUE-DRAGICEVIC . This article spurred our conversation. I encourage you to go read it HERE.  Britta gets to the heart of what a lot of soldiers feel when they can no longer do the job that they were made for. She very well may have hit on the root cause of the suicide and depression epidemic facing our nation's soldiers.  A lack of purpose. If you were born to be a soldier and you can no longer a soldier, who are you? Without purpose what reason do we have to continue? Obviously, there are a million reasons, and suicide is not a viable option. But what we feel, what we experience revolves around this lack or absence of purpose apart from our lives at war.

If you like what you hear, be sure to subscribe, write a review, and share it with your friends.  If you disagree tweet us and let's talk about it. If you have a different perspective we would love to hear it, post it on our Facebook.  This is about abandoning the spoon-fed narrative and evaluating the facts for yourself, think critically, and deeply on these issues because they matter.  Let's hear what you have to contribute to the G-Base.