“On 9/11 I was in my office, getting ready to go out and talk with some military lawyers at Fort Myers. As I was getting ready to leave, one of my NCOs said, “Turn on the TV,” and we saw the second plane hit the WTC. I remember telling my staff, “This doesn’t look right, I’m heading out, but keep me in the loop.” On my drive back to the Pentagon, we saw the plane hit it. There were guards trying to keep us from getting into the building and I remember running around them and up to my office to check on my staff. They were gone and safe, thankfully. Then we went around to where the plane had struck the building and it was complete chaos. Just tons of confusion and being told there was another plane coming. We all moved to a safer area and things stopped for a moment. Then people just started showing up: fire and rescue and LEOs and first responders … the next ten or twelve hours were a blur, just trying to help where I could. At one point I tried to go into the building to see if we could help anyone. I barely made it a hundred feet. There was just too much fire and smoke. Once they put the fires out, they had to get the remains of the victims. Initially, they wanted the soldiers of the Old Guard to do it. I instantly said, “No, that needs to be mortuary affairs. That’s their job. The Old Guard can move the body bags.” It was tough asking those things of soldiers. There were 125 people killed in the Pentagon and sixty-four Americans on the plane. As people were moving bodies and clearing rubble over the subsequent days, I mostly let people talk as they needed to. The job of the Sergeant Major of the Army is to listen to people and their troubles. Any coordination or calm that I could offer for our people when things got the most stressful — that was my mission. During periods of reflection, other traumatic military events flood my consciousness. As a young soldier in Vietnam, my position was overrun, and I recall stepping over bodies of men who weren’t much older than me. You never get tough enough to accept some of the things you see in a warzone. Not all battle wounds are visible. Exiting the military was extremely tough. Fortunately, my wife Gloria and my children were there to make the transition a lot smoother. They had been there during deployments and TDYs, and in retrospect, it saddens me to have missed so much time as my children grew up. I owe Gloria Tilley a great amount of gratitude for allowing me to stay laser-focused on the military and the Army, because the last fifteen years of my career consisted of multiple positions with increased levels of responsibility: Brigade, Sergeant Major, USCENTCOM CSM, and ultimately the SMA. For three and a half years as the SMA I traveled over 800,000 miles. No, I did not think the war would go this long. American Freedom Foundation is an organization I helped start to assist transitioning veterans with scholarships and their military separations. We just started the Your Next Mission podcast to increase our ways to help. It’s a weekly show, and it’s the first step in trying to give veterans more support. The podcast is the crawl phase. In the walk phase, we’ll do Facebook Live weekly. In the run phase, we’ll have live video and you’ll be able to call in and ask questions. I had initially worked for someone else after leaving the military, but I quickly decided I wanted to work for myself. So, I started J. Tilley, Inc and Pinnacle Five. We do consulting, contracting, and leadership development. At the time my undiagnosed PTSD was addressed with anger and frustration. As I’ve grown, I’ve learned that talking and communicating helps. So does golf: I’ve had three holes in one, and I’m totally hooked.”