[Interview Begins]

SPRAGUE: Today is May 7th, 2024. This is an interview with Colonel Robert H. Buehler, who served in the United States Army from December 21st, 1981 to December 31st, 2011. This interview is being conducted by Luke Sprague at the interview room in the Wisconsin Veterans Museum for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum oral history Program. His wife, Michelle is present in the interview room. Okay, Robert, where did you grow up?

BUEHLER: I grew up in Wisconsin all my life. Born and raised in [XXXXXXXXXXXX]. And I lived in Madison for a year. I lived in Brodhead, of course, when I was born, and I also lived in Menomonee Falls. And then I pretty much called Germantown, my home of record since third grade.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And, what did your family do in Germantown?

BUEHLER: My mother was divorced at the time, and then she was remarried and then divorced again. So, she was a single parent with kids, brother. And and to assist us two sisters and a brother. And we lived, she basically worked in a grocery store. I even worked there with her at one point. And that was it. That was basically what we did.

SPRAGUE: What was the name of the grocery store in Germantown?

BUEHLER: Warner's Meat market?

SPRAGUE: Okay. And, your brothers and sisters names.

BUEHLER: Patrick is my youngest brother. Kelly is my second youngest. And then Sherri is my sister.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And, what schools did you attend?

BUEHLER: I attended McArthur grade school. And then I went to Kennedy Middle School and then Washington High School, which now Germantown High School.

SPRAGUE: What what got you thinking about military service?

BUEHLER: It was always in my blood. Since I was a little kid, I always played toy soldiers. I always played with. I watched a lot of horror movies, of course, but then I also had a lot of relatives that were in in the service, either World War two or Korean War, that kind of thing. But it was it was always in my, my DNA.

SPRAGUE: And, who were some of those relatives, if you don't mind me asking?

BUEHLER: I had an uncle, that served in the 32nd Infantry in World War two, and he was at the Battle of Lake Golf. From what I remember him telling me, he was in the field artillery. I had several other uncles. One served on, one of the battleships, and I don't know which one. It was, even had a great uncle that served from the, all the way from Normandy, all the way to into the heart of Germany, to the prison camps. When he when they liberated the prison camps. My mother has all those letters.

SPRAGUE: Do you happen to remember the, uncles name that served with the 32nd?

BUEHLER: He's. He lived in Linden Station.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BUEHLER: My gosh, I can't remember right now.

SPRAGUE: Okay. No worries. Just asking. Yeah. Would he have the same family name?

BUEHLER: I know his was. His last name was. Write them all.

SPRAGUE: Okay? Okay. Tell me about, your decision to go after and get a commission.

BUEHLER: Well, it was kind of by fluke. I went to the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, and one day there was a table sitting outside the, Common Area Commons, and they were recruiting for rappelling and for free, tactics team. So I stopped by the booth and I looked and they said, hey, you interested in or joining the tactics team? I said, what do you do? And said, well, we get to go out and play Army. And in the field, I mean, I get to put on a uniform, carry around a weapon and go play Army. And they said, yeah, just for fun. I said, I'm in. So I joined the, the tactics team. It was a squad leader tactics and then also rappelling. And then from there I got find out that I could become a commission officer while I was attending college at Whitewater.

SPRAGUE: In about what year at Whitewater was this when you joined the tactics team?

BUEHLER: Probably, probably the first year in 1977.

SPRAGUE: Okay. I see, based on your record, you looked like as a cadet, maybe you went to Air Assault School. Yes. What was that like?

BUEHLER: That was grueling. It was in 1980. We went during spring break, so, of course, when I got back, I had exams that I hadn't been able to study for. So, we went on our spring break to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and it was about a week. And, the last day was a ten mile road march. And then we graduated and went to cockpit right across the stage that afternoon. And I was, I was I hadn't even recovered yet from the from the race for the run. I graduated second in my class and air assault school. There was a 50% attrition rate and in the class.

SPRAGUE: Any advice for anyone going to air assault?

BUEHLER: Be a good runner and be in good shape and, just do your best.

SPRAGUE: What was the sequence going through ROTC? Was there like a basic camp or an advanced camp or what was the sequence of training?

BUEHLER: There was a what's called a advanced camp. And so we went to the advanced camp, our junior, between our junior and senior year. I had a lot of classes through college there. Through the ROTC department. The entire staff we had there were all Vietnam veterans. One was, one served as a second lieutenant, as a Ford observer and Hamburger Hill, several one of them was an air assault 101st, one was an EMP. And then they were just a fantastic staff and they really cared about me. So I went to, what was called advanced course at fort at Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1980. And it was hot.

SPRAGUE: I have to ask, you mentioned that Vietnam. Were there any did you, get any sense from these Kadri? If there was a particular mindset or guidance that they gave you as a cadet in future?

BUEHLER: They they taught us the basics. What? How to assemble, disassemble a weapon, land navigation. In fact, the served one of our sergeant major served in World War two, Korean War, in Vietnam War, and I believe he was a Polish national when he came to our country. They just taught us the basic skills of a soldier, and they drilled it in our heads. And because of that, we were probably ahead of our peers when we went to advanced Advanced Camp. And we were just confident in our abilities to lead.

SPRAGUE: Any of those people cadre stick out as mentors in your head?

BUEHLER: Captain, for Kasa, he was a ranger. He did not serve well in, in the Vietnam War. So he was post-Vietnam, but he was a good mentor. Our our, in fact, the the assistant PMS professor of military science, a lieutenant Colonel Rehnquist. I had the honor of serving at the same post as him at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. He was a field artillery officer. And then he became ordnance officer at Aberdeen. And he was a battalion commander there. I'm trying to think of, the colonel's name. He was just awesome. No idea. It just escapes me. His name. The all academy. All academy. The NCOs, the officers, they were all. They were there for us.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about, your commissioning.

BUEHLER: I was commissioned in December, 1981. And, it was just three of us that were commissioned at that time because everybody else had graduated in May. So I had to go on, for a full summer and a full fall because they changed the requirements on my degree in, Business Administration. So I had to take a few extra classes to get that done. It was just it was just a cold December, and it was at school and in the cafeteria or something like that, or the Commons, I believe it was.

SPRAGUE: And that was on the Whitewater campus, of course.

BUEHLER: And my, my, my wife was there, so.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BUEHLER: New bride.

SPRAGUE: Okay. When did you get married?

BUEHLER: January of 81.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BUEHLER: At school.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And, at your commissioning ceremony, who was your first salute issue to?

BUEHLER: Oh, yes. My uncle, he was my first salute and my last salute. When I retired, he was a master sergeant. When he retired from the National Guard here in, Wisconsin. He served up here in the headquarters. He also was, an Air Force veteran and a Army veteran, active duty at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And do you happen to remember his name?

BUEHLER: Donald Morgan.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Okay. So after your commissioned, you go to ordnance Officer Basic.

BUEHLER: Yes. At Aberdeen proving out. Maryland.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And what was that like going from college to active duty military?

BUEHLER: It was, it was different. It was a little different mindset here. I got to learn more. About what the military, how it operated, how it function. So they gave us the basics and all that. We even had to go on, tear down a a Jeep. And when we got done, we go, what do we do with these extra parts? And the instructor said, don't worry, we'll we'll figure it out for the next class. It was a combination of leadership and just, organizations and and how things work in the military.

SPRAGUE: What was the, primary mode of learning? Was it lecture?

BUEHLER: It was lecture, mostly, but then they had some hands on training, which later on in my career, I came back to Aberdeen to be in charge of that instruction, some of that instruction.

SPRAGUE: what? Moving back a little bit. What chose what drove you to choose ordnance?

BUEHLER: Oh, well, that was an interesting thing. I was medically waived to get in because of my skin. Eczema. But they told me I couldn't go combat arms, that I couldn't go combat support. So they said the only five choices I had were combat service support. And so it was Quartermaster, transportation. Finance, Ordnance. And that's the last one escapes me at this moment. But I looked at all of them. I said, well, if I'm going to be stuck in a combat situation, where would I rather be? I figured ordnance, because I have everybody's broke stuff and we can fix it and use it. So. And I thought it was an interesting field.

SPRAGUE: Could you help, define a little bit better for the civilians who are listening? What ordnance does.

BUEHLER: Ordnance? Well, it it basically, because of my career, the way I understand ordnance now, it's birth to death of equipment and supplies. So, ordnance was basically split into, your ordnance folks, which is your EOD, explosive Ordnance disposal. And then you had at that time they had a missile maintenance, and then they had tank automotive, which is what I went into. Later they combined the missile maintenance into the tank automotive because, missile maintenance no longer needed, armored carriers for it. They used shoulder fired rockets and things for anti-air. And, of course, they replaced a lot of the machine guns, went all the little quad guns and things on the back of things. So, it was tank automotive was what I was in the support and of taking automotive maintenance.

SPRAGUE: Now, is that, I've got to ask later, the Army would come along with was, is that a functional area or is that a specialty within ordnance, or how does that work.

BUEHLER: As far as the ordnance? Yeah. Tank automotive. Yeah, it was a functional area. And what the Army did then was once you became a captain, then they put you in what was called logistics. So you were a 90 alpha, which is what they called it. I kind of referred to it as a jack of all trades, but master of none. But by then I understood what quartermaster did because I did part of their job. I knew what transportation was because we had to transport our own vehicles and things. And then, of course, maintenance was the thing that we did the most.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So after, Ordnance, OBC, looks like you went down to Fort Sill.

BUEHLER: You think that was my first, first active duty assignment?

SPRAGUE: And it looks like based on the records you provided, it was Charlie battery staff and faculty battalion that.

BUEHLER: I started out. And in a weird for career progression, I guess you could call it. I started out what's called combat developments at the Field Artillery school. So there they talk about tests and testing equipment and and, developing and fielding new equipment into the military. And of course, field artillery is one of the branches of the army. So it dealt with artillery. And so I was, working in that field artillery school first with, what they called a field integration systems, branch. I worked for a civilian. Mr.. Mr.. De Biscay, and we were in charge of tracking how things were fielded through the Field Artillery Department. So we would host a lot of conferences, and I was in charge of a couple of classified safes, and I'd make sure we had those information available for my boss and other people. And then I got moved over what was called test branch. And the test branch was where they actually write the test questions for artillery or whatever else it was that the Army was doing jointly with the Field Artillery school. So we were basically about testing, and they had different phases of testing Army equipment to make sure that not the needs of the soldiers and the army.

SPRAGUE: That seems like a pretty interesting first assignment.

BUEHLER: As a second lieutenant, it's very unusual.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Do you think there's any particular reason why you were chosen, or did you elect to go?

BUEHLER: I really didn't understand why I was there, but I was there, and I did the best I could, and it actually. And later in life, it introduced me to what I could see I started. I basically started my career with the development and the, the creation of equipment. So birth of equipment. And when I entered my career, it was the death of equipment. What happens when equipment is taken away or when equipment is fielded? So, it it showed me the whole gamut of the entire military, how it worked as far as equipment.

SPRAGUE: And what was that like? Working for a civilian? Nothing.

BUEHLER: That was okay. One of my bosses was a retired major, and he was a civilian there. I had great respect for the civilians that worked there. A lot of them were very knowledgeable, and, and the institutional knowledge was just unbelievable.

SPRAGUE: Okay. You stay at Fort Sill. You. It looks like based on your RB, the two 25th Heavy Equipment Maintenance Company.

BUEHLER: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: General support. Tell me. Tell me about that unit and what its mission was.

BUEHLER: Right. Heavy equipment maintenance company. By definition, takes over a let's just say, a car manufacturing plant. So in a wartime, they would take over a manufacturing plant. And what a heavy equipment maintenance company does is it rebuilds, class seven or end items like a truck, a tank, whatever it is, they bring in the broken stuff, and we put it through a line, strip it down, repair it, and put it right back out as a as an end item to issue back to the, the soldiers in the field. So we would rebuild, transmissions. We had a canvas repair shop. We had a tank automotive shop. We had a I mean, it was just amazing what we had. We had even a small arms repair shop. So, the one we had, even a cannibalization point where equipment was turned into the military from all branches of service, and we would cannibalize that equipment for repair parts to rebuild things with.

SPRAGUE: It sounds vaguely familiar. And paralleling what the Ukrainians are doing with their vehicles and recovering tanks and stuff. Yes, vaguely. Okay. And during that time, you were, the automotive maintenance platoon leader?

BUEHLER: Yes.

SPRAGUE: So tell me about that. What that focused.

BUEHLER: On? Well, that was one of the platoons in the maintenance company that just repaired vehicles. So the wheeled vehicles, what the company had done with what they did with in the brigade and the battalion, as they had realigned our soldiers so that all the tank automotive went to the our sister company, the 226 maintenance company. So they repaired all the track vehicles, so all their repair parts and supply were geared toward that. And we took over all the wheeled vehicle mechanics. We even had a, a body shop that would repair damaged vehicles, too. So the Tank automotive platoon was just one of the platoons in the company, and I happened to be the platoon leader in charge of the health and welfare of those soldiers in my platoon.

SPRAGUE: And the two 25th, I think it listed that was a force comm unit. Or was it. Wow. Who did it report to, or what was it organic to?

BUEHLER: We were. We reported underneath the hundredth service to support, Battalion 100th SARS. And then the 100th SARS came under the three 14th Field Artillery Brigade and then the field artillery brigade commander, third Corps.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BUEHLER: So we were attached at the, at that, post and the best job I ever have, a shop officer, the best job I ever had in my entire career was shop officer.

SPRAGUE: I think we're going to get to that here. So. Okay, so let's keep moving ahead here. Looks like your next, service August 84th to November 84th, still with a to 25th, was company training officer.

BUEHLER: It was it was an interim position, while I was waiting to become shop officer because the current shop officer was finishing up his tour, and then he'd be moving on to another duty assignment. So, they put me in as a company training officer, because that's where we had the biggest need at the time to get our company training program back online. So in addition to that, I had all kinds of additional duties like key and lock control, unit status reporting, and. I can't think of the other one. I just I had so many different additional duties that they had under that umbrella that I just helped run the company. The company?

SPRAGUE: Yeah. I was going to ask you, was it sounds like maybe they were preparing you for company XO or maybe that's a lot. It seems like to me, I don't.

BUEHLER: Know, but the training, being a training officer really opened up my eyes to things, and it, created a lot of opportunities. Training is what they did in the military. So now that was one aspect of my career that that helped me grow as an officer.

SPRAGUE: Okay. When you planned your training for the company, was it, was it in your a separate numbered company? Did you plan, as a company, or were you also talking to your battalion you were reporting to and they were saying, no, these are your requirements. How did that work? Functionally?

BUEHLER: It's supposed to work from top down, and then we go back up. So Brigade would give its guidance, and then the battalion would give its guidance on what the training which should be for the next year, what they wanted to focus on. And then the company would look at, okay, here's the availability of, blank ammunition, training areas, all those kind of things we'd, we'd ask for, and then we would plan our exercises based on that. The one of the things that was so interesting was our hire headquarters really didn't understand what a heavy equipment maintenance company does. So we're only like 50% mobile. We had like, a couple bobtail trucks to to move like maybe 13, 15, 20 trailers. So they said, we want you to take everything out to the field. And they treated us like a field artillery battalion. A battery should move. Well, we're just getting set up after a whole day, and they go, well, how many transmissions did you rebuild? None. Well. Why not? Because we're still setting up. It takes like a week to set this stuff up and get everything set. And then they wanted us to hurry up and pack up and move the next day, so we didn't get very much done as far as maintenance.

SPRAGUE: I was there any of the training, actually, on how to repair those vehicles or was it other?

BUEHLER: It was mainly mainly field like field defense, how to defend your your unit sectors and all that kind of thing. Convoys. I was a convoy commander for the whole unit too, so I had to move, plan for the convoy, give the routes, all that kind of stuff, call in when we got to the certain checkpoints. And, that was interesting too.

SPRAGUE: Okay, so moving on to shop, officer. Tell me about that position.

BUEHLER: Like I said, it was probably the most defining moment in my career. It was the best job I ever had. The very first day I started the job as a shop officer, I sat down at my desk and looked and said, well, what am I going to do? What's the plan for today? And probably not more than a half an hour. I sat down at my desk that morning. General Reimer walked in. He was a Third Corps artillery commander. And you walk into our office and I heard this attention. So I peeked around the corner because my office was off to the side. And, it was General Ryan Reese's morning. I was only a first lieutenant at a time. He said, good morning, Lieutenant. Let's step into your supply office and see how your operations are. So he walked in there, pulled out four job packets that we were working on for jobs, got the, docket register open for the repair parts request. And there were some issues with two of the bad packets. So he looked at me, says, well, 50% of your operations is, so to speak, messed up. I'll see you back in a month. And I'm like, oh man, my first day on the job. And the general's already telling me that 50% of my operations is screwed up, but it's probably the best thing he ever did for me, because after that, I sat down with each of my people in my shop supply and also with the the different platoons. And I, I sat with, first off with my supply and my, office. And I sat down with each one of them for a day, and I learned their jobs. And then I came up with the idea that said, okay. I looked at them. I said, if there's one thing you could change, what would it be and what do you need and when would you have it done by, you know, so you don't have to give me an answer today. You can wait a week or whatever, but if there's something that you want to change and you could change, what would it be? And every one of them took me up on the offer, and my job then was to make sure they had the support. And if there's something that they needed that I could take care of, I would take care of. Otherwise, I would look to my repair control supervisor, who was. Also, the second one that I got on board with was was the training NCO at the battalion who became my my second repair control supervisor, and he took me under my wing and taught me what it was to be an officer. He actually mentored me. And so Master Sergeant Walker forever will be my, inspiration. He was truly an NCO of that caliber. So pretty soon our operations were just running 100 miles an hour. But it was the people now that had control of their own destiny. And if they needed anything, they could come to me anytime and say, sir, we need we want to get this done or do you need to do it? What's your time frame? And if you got any problems, come back and let me know and I would make sure that they would get it done. I spent 50% of my time never behind my desk. I mean, I was always what I was taught was management by wandering around. So I would go to each shop and I would spend time talking to individual soldiers every day, ask them about their family, their what they're doing, their careers, that kind of thing. The warrant officers and after a while, they soon became they could trust me because as a leader, I wasn't there to find something wrong with them. I was just trying to make the operation and the people take care of them. And so I never worried about myself. I put the soldiers above everything and pretty soon our unit was just unbelievable, just humming along. We were we were doing so great.

SPRAGUE: What were some of the great, experiences that you had in that unit that you can think of?

BUEHLER: I remember telling, Staff sergeant, he was our inspection section, and I kept saying you would be a great warrant officer, and you go, no, sir. I don't want to be a warrant officer. I want to stay in NCO. I said, well, you don't have a choice. I put it in your own NCO year as your senior raider a couple times. And guess what? He became a warrant officer. Very successful. I think the greatest thing was just being a mentor and being able to write recommend letters of recommendation. Improving. I became very good at writing. And so, yeah, I was in awards. So I was the go to in the, in the company. A lot of times my other fellow officers would come for me for advice and, and I would provide it for them. I would always try to make sure that the insulators are written the best there. I made a few mistakes along the way, and and I went, man, why do I say that on that guy's NCR or that soldier? But, you live and learn and we're not perfect. But it was just a it was an honor. It was a privilege to do this for these folks. And, and I always had people coming to me. I even had one young, soldier coming in said, sir, would you write me a letter of recommendation to go to OCS? I said, you bet. And he became he went on to become an officer also.

SPRAGUE: You've mentioned, warrant officers a couple times. How many warrants were there warrants within your unit or how did that work?

BUEHLER: Especially in the maintenance units? There's there was a probably, I would say about 2 to 1 ratio of officers, lieutenants to warrants. We had CW three Chief Warrant officer threes and twos. Those were the backbone. They were prior enlisted. And so they were experts in their fields of whatever they were doing, whether it be automotive or, canvas repair or whatever it was. They were the technical experts. And I learned that when I was a cadet, when I went to Fort Knox for what they called, CTL, t cadet troop meeting training, and it was like about a one month thing where you actually went with an active duty unit, and it was at Fort Knox. And, there was a CW three there. And, Lieutenant came in one day thinking he was going to show this maintenance company some stuff. He was the battalion maintenance officer or a company maintenance officer. And he left humbled by this CW three. But the CW three was trying to teach him a lesson that, you know, you don't come in looking for trouble if you're not prepared and you really shouldn't be looking for trouble, you should be looking for cooperation and how to get things done. That was one of the things I had, never had an issue with when we went to a brigade, what they call a brigade shootout. I don't know why they called them that, but it was a brigade maintenance meeting and we would be sitting there. But I had already met with all the unit leaders, all the maintenance leaders I worked with, take home take automotive command, the liaisons, which later in my life I learned from the other side being on that with Army Materiel Command. But they were they were there to help. So I would put out, okay, here's what the problems I'm having with the equipment that you gave me. And here's. The problems I'm having in my unit, and I'm even putting some on my equipment for my unit on the back burner to get your stuff ready. So we would talk through all the problems and stuff and solve all the issues before the shoot out. So we come in there and that. But Gate Commander would look at us and go, do you have anything for 2 to 5 minutes? Company. And nobody would say question or they would or the liaison officer would pipe in and, you know, hey, we're having a spy issue with this, but we're working on it. Then they turn to my sister company, and then that's where all the focus was later. But yeah, customer relations, it was just. This part of it, part of the thing.

SPRAGUE: And that sister company was a 2 to 6. And the general that came in his name was Reimer. General Reimer, how do you spell that by chance?

BUEHLER: It's I r I e m e r. Okay. He later, retired. I think it's a four star. And they have the General Reimer Digital Library in the in the army now in honor of him.

SPRAGUE: So, and your your type, your title, in that shop officer role is, was you had both shop officer slash.

BUEHLER: Maintenance control officer. Yeah. The formal name was maintenance control, but the old name was shop officer. Everybody knew what shop officer was. So I was basically in charge of, you know, almost my own, I think a car dealership. You know, you brought your stuff in to get it fixed and or not to purchase new equipment, but anything. I was in charge of the entire maintenance operation. I was responsible to the company commander to make sure it was working and what I needed. If I needed help. And I'd let him know. Or her.

SPRAGUE: Good, good. Good point. Were there women in the unit at that time?

BUEHLER: There were it was women were becoming more prevalent at the time in the 80s. Just like anything else they were they were opening up the branches to the to the women in the service. So they had to go through the same career progression as everyone else, and it would take time. By the time I was, an excellent, an executive officer or a battalion training officer or logistics officer, I had a, a female for a battalion commander and and, later on, three star general. So to me, it was no big deal.

SPRAGUE: Any, poignant leadership experiences, that you'd be willing to share as shop officer.

BUEHLER: As far as, like.

SPRAGUE: Things that you're like, wow, I'm not going to do that again.

BUEHLER: I can do that again. Well, I just learned that, that integrity was everything. My name was my name. So if I if I want to be dishonest, guess what? You're going to know me as a dishonest officer or someone that's going to lie. So I tried as a human being never to compromise on one things. So one of the days, one of the couple first couple of weeks, I was there, one of the units pulled up and they were taking, our oil. We had 30 gallons of drum. We had drums of oil and things, and they were there loading up the back of their truck. And my NCO, petroleum NCO came in, said, sir, they're out there loading up the back of a truck with their oil. So I came out. I said, hello, where are you guys? We're so and so a unit with a shop officer told us we can just come by and take whatever we need. And I said, well, that shop officer doesn't work here anymore, so if you want something, ask. We'll help you out as best we can. But don't come in and take anything from my shop area anymore, because that's not the way we operate. And I even had people come in and say, what do you need? A case of coffee, whatever. I said, no, I don't need anything. Just tell me what you need and I'll see if I can help you get it done. So I just started off from square one, never compromising my principles. I'm there to serve people, and that's how I'm going to be. It's not what what's in it for me. It's how I can help others.

SPRAGUE: Okay. At some point, you go on, you go to Aberdeen Proving Ground. You go to the advanced course. Yes. What did you learn there? I learned.

BUEHLER: Higher echelons of of reality, I guess you could call it. The most important thing I learned was for how to be a, a sponsor for foreign students. At that time, we had each they would ask for sponsors. So we had foreign students that were there to to learn with us. And so we would help them with the materials if they had questions. So I had a, a captain from Tunisia. And so I would go over to his place, post there and I would tutor him on our, our procedures and policies and things, whatever they were taught in the class, if they didn't understand it, how the U.S. Army does things. Next thing I know, I've got 6 or 7 other foreign students in there with that with him, because I was doing such a good job with him. The other sponsors, I guess, didn't spend the time that I did. So, they all passed without even having to be, having a retake a test or anything. So I thought that was kind of neat. And it was great to form friendships with someone from another country. You learn a little bit about their culture. They learn about our culture. And it was it was an eye opener.

SPRAGUE: You stayed at Aberdeen, Aberdeen Proving Ground after that?

BUEHLER: Yes. I was, kind of shocked. They put in my paperwork for Fort Sill, Oklahoma or for Germany to go to Campbell, and I didn't get that. They said, oh, you stay here to Aberdeen. I said, well, why didn't you tell me that when I started here? And I could have made plans accordingly? So I was with the, staff and faculty there at Aberdeen and Fort Sill was the funnest job. Aberdeen was probably the most challenging and and hardest job I ever had in the military.

SPRAGUE: And why was it challenging?

BUEHLER: Well, when I took over as as the tank recovery, chief, we taught, hotel eight, which is, additional skill identifier for tank recovery. We had to move into a new building, so I was in charge of getting us into a new building and setting up the operations. I learned to rely very heavily on my one officers, on my NCOs. And like I said, if they know that you're there supporting them and you're covering them, making sure they have what they need, giving the time off that they need, they'll bend over backwards to help you out because they know they can trust you and they know they can count on you. And, so that was like very stressful. I had, took over a hand receipt. I moved up as a division chief. I took over a hand seat that at that time was $100 million. Now I'd be like about 275,000 or $1 million in today's dollars. I had a secretary. I had 70 instructors. I had a student load or at least 5000 a year, and I had 155 pieces of moving equipment, anywhere from a battery of artillery to an M1 tank. I had the largest inventory in the United States Army of immediate tank recovery vehicles. I think we had 40 of them. We just had everything. And then I had 4 or 5 buildings that I had to that I even had a contractor they call basic knowledge and skills, and I was responsible for all that property. And what happened when I took over as the division chief is just got done doing the inventory with the last hand receipt holder, my predecessor and the property book officer at the Aberdeen died. So now all of sudden, they hand you a brand new receipt because they go through and they all and we're like, I don't have any of this stuff. So now I got to get all my paperwork out, show them I didn't have this. I turned it in, whatever it was. And I think within a couple of weeks after that, the next property officer died. It was just very freak. One died of a heart to heart attack. First one, I think, died from cancer. Second one died from a heart attack. And here I am still trying to get this $100 million hand receipt and all the while, properties coming in from all the other departments in the post to this, contractor. I only had to supply people. Unfortunately, my supply sergeant was involved in an incident and new Jersey, which involved in the structure of mine and him, with the state police. The, instructor was killed and the. Supply sergeant was charged with. And in this state, if you're part of a crime or something, you get charged with that. So here I have no supply, sergeant. Now, I'm in the middle of this, and then I have a bone infection in my arm that my arm swollen twice the size. I had been treated and I had a bone infection. So now I'm hospitalized at Walter Reed for a month. Almost a month. During this whole time that my hand receipts still unresolved, I technically could have said, look, I've been away from my Hennessey for 30 days. I could have walked away scot free. But I know I need to take control of it. And I managed to to get it all right. And help and help this, installation out with the property. But it was a challenge, and it was very stressful. I think I worked six, seven days a week for a month, six months straight with no break. I think I was pretty close to a nervous breakdown by that. I took a 30 day vacation and I came back refreshed. But it was it was stressful. And then on top of that, just just all the things that we had to do, people would come up from DC for tours. We gave, demonstrations to like the chief of Ordnance of, Great Britain, the chief of ordnance of Israel. So we'd have to put on our live demonstrations and things for that. That took like days, took us out of the classroom, took instructors away from what they were doing. But that's just the nature of the beast. Very stressful time.

SPRAGUE: So, were you, a captain at this point? Yes. Okay. And backtracking a little bit in the same vein, May 86th to September 87th, you were the you part of that was you were chief of the track vehicle recovery branch. Does that sound right? And then so and HHC, second Battalion, OS Brigade, what does a OS stand for?

BUEHLER: OS.

SPRAGUE: Ordnance support maybe.

BUEHLER: Could be.

SPRAGUE: Okay. It's not that officer support.

BUEHLER: Yeah, something like that.

SPRAGUE: So at that point, you were, you were as the chief of that track vehicle recovery branch. You were training people on M 88 or you were. Yes. Yeah. Okay.

BUEHLER: There was a variety. We had helmets, which were the, the wreckers. We had the old wreckers, the new wreckers. We had all kinds of new equipment that came online and designed for it. And then I'd turn around, sign it to someone else. But I was personally on the hook for it now. So, yeah, we did a lot of instruction on that.

SPRAGUE: How many people, you know, you mentioned two NCOs, two supply sergeants, and maybe that was later, but did you have like a section or a company or a branch? How do how how we had.

BUEHLER: We had a we in my branch at the time when it was just the recovery, I believe it was only about 30 instructors. And then when I took over the division, now I had 70 instructors plus the basic knowledge and skills they did Allison five speed transmission. They gave instruction on that, which was the new automatic transmissions coming into the army. How to repair them, take them out and put them into a vehicle. And then the basic knowledge and skills was just bringing all your mechanics and teaching the basic knowledge and the skills of maintenance, how things work, how they functioned, and all that was taught to officers, NCOs, foreign officers, everybody that came through the Ordnance School.

SPRAGUE: Oh, so there the officers would have learned what the enlisted learned as well.

BUEHLER: Yes, they were doing the same thing. I would they would be out in the mud, holding the chains, looking up to the tank and pulling it out. They learned how to use pulleys and, and, leverage and all that kind of thing.

SPRAGUE: So they would have received the H eight identifier as well or. Yes, yep, yep. Or whatever you call it. Okay. And then when you went up, you became chief of the division.

BUEHLER: Yes. That was the stress one.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And I assume the division included the branches or.

BUEHLER: Yes, which included that recovery branch.

SPRAGUE: Okay. What else do you want to share about that position as the chief of the division?

BUEHLER: That was, like I said, it was probably one of the more stressful positions I ever held because I had to be in so many directions. And again, I didn't sit behind my desk very much, but I spent probably 6 to 7 days a week just trying to keep up with the hand receipts, keep up with the demands of the job, and, just, just everything that had to be done in the military.

SPRAGUE: And what was. Looks like you spent maybe a year as division chief. Roughly. Yes. Is that a standard tour in that position, or is there.

BUEHLER: Usually about a year to a year and a half? 18 months is usually you get rotated between positions. That's about right. Sometimes two years. It depends on the individual where they were in their career. At that point I was a senior captain and I was looking for a company commander. Yep. And if I didn't get a company command I could pretty much say my career is done for career progression. Right.

SPRAGUE: And what were your feelings at the time in terms of what you thought the Army thought about you?

BUEHLER: I was worried because this was like 92, 93, I believe it was. Was it 96? I'm trying to think. All I know is that, the Army was. But not here is downsizing. No, that was bad. That was later. Later. That was later. That was later. Yeah. Well, in 82, 85, 86, 87. Yeah. They were still kind of downsizing a little bit. They were going through changes all the time, reorganizing stuff and cutting people. But at that point I saw a lot of my peers leaving the military. They were getting they were applying for. I was a reserve officer on active duty. So they called us, voluntary, indefinite or, ultra other than regular army. So I didn't have a combat patch, didn't have a company command yet. So I was kind of worried about my career if I would continue in the military. So I needed that company command.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. And, it looks like. Well, you were at, Aberdeen. You, went to Cass Cube.

BUEHLER: Yes. Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.

SPRAGUE: And what was that about there?

BUEHLER: You learned the, higher echelons of staff working on, like, a division staff or a brigade staff. Mainly division staff. So you were you were much higher at the echelons. You learned how to do planning or logistics. Planning a little bit. We did. We had a again, my instructor was a Vietnam veteran. He was with, field artillery, and he was with the, Arvin, the, the South South Vietnamese Army and helping them form a battery of artillery, whatever, and instructing them on how to operate there. He was a, what do they call it? Liaison. And so he was an advisor.

SPRAGUE: Sounds like he was, Vietnamese.

BUEHLER: No, no, you he was he was an officer. Okay. Army. Okay. But he served in Vietnam also.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Oh, and he was working with the RVN to set up. Yes, I want okay, just so I understand. Did you notice any pattern or any. I think I asked this already from those Vietnam vets of mindsets or thought patterns in terms of how to fight the next war. Was there an overarching theme or not?

BUEHLER: Not they tried to. They tried to impress. I think all, everybody tries to impress the next generation that's going to take over to try to make them ready to take over. So you're looking at your officers and enlisted and stuff that are below you. They're your your replacements. They're the ones that are carry on the traditions and, and the goals and whatever it is that that makes us what we are. So you're looking at them, trying to impart what you've learned from your predecessors and yourself to try to prepare them to take over. And that's what they were doing. They were getting close to the end of their careers, and they were worried about the future generation of the military. And so anything that you can tell us or impart to us, that's words of wisdom. They did. They were very passionate.

SPRAGUE: Okay. You come back to Aberdeen Proving Ground or back from school? Tell me about your company command. Bravo company?

BUEHLER: They were very interesting. What what was what was really striking was I needed a company command. So I was told by my company that I. The company command, that I was under the battalion, that there wasn't a position in my in that battalion. Well, that wasn't true, but so what I did was I went and I interviewed the other two battalions that were in Aberdeen, Training Battalions, and I interviewed at the one at Edgewood. And then I interviewed the one with the lieutenant colonel that I also had served with as a cadet at Whitewater. And then I made an it, and then I made an interview with my new battalion commander at, Aberdeen. And the next thing I know, I have three battalion commanders fighting for me, and that that's unusual. But my battalion commander that I was under for. Of the staff and faculty said, no, he's mine. I get first year. And. He was a Vietnam veteran, black lieutenant colonel, served in the infantry in Vietnam. Highly, highly respectable man, Colonel Hyatt. Deepest respect for him. He was an awesome mentor and, a very leader of integrity. He had high standards. So I got the privilege of serving under him as a company commander for Bravo Company, 16th Ordnance Battalion, which, unfortunately, after I left two years later, became the Army's scandal with Sex scandal. I guess you could call it whatever. You can look it up. But I wasn't there. It was two years after I left. When I left, we were one of my, soldiers and, a sergeant drill sergeant from another company. We're up for charges because they were cohabitating together. It was not a good time to be doing that kind of stuff in the military. Not with the battalion brigade commanders that we had with the high standards that they set.

SPRAGUE: But this would have been two years after you left.

BUEHLER: Yes, yes.

SPRAGUE: You left in May of 98.

BUEHLER: Looks right. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: And so Bravo Company, 16th Ordnance Battalion, 61st Ordnance Brigade. Yes. That sound about right? Yeah.

BUEHLER: Advanced individual training.

SPRAGUE: There we go.

BUEHLER: And the soldiers that were in my battalion and my company, half of them went to my where I just came from as the division chief. They went through the hotel. So I had those soldiers that were coming for the hotel training in my company. And then the other half went to the other, training that they were going in for their advanced individual training, their military occupational skills.

SPRAGUE: What are some of the challenges of a IT company?

BUEHLER: Well, when I took over company command, I took it over in December. All the soldiers went home and leave. They went home on vacation. Leave? So I had nobody there when I took over. Basically, when they came back, they were homesick. A lot of them. I had two soldiers that went AWOL in the hills of Tennessee. I'm talking to state senators, trying to get them to come back. I had all kinds of issues in the barracks. Just just all kinds of things that you can have with young soldiers that are immature. I had the largest female population on the post. That had its own challenges. When I took over, we had, I think, over 25 policy letters. I took it upon myself to reread all the policy letters. Rewrite them all. They were written in like a 14th grade level. Some of them were two pages long and were hard to understand what they even meant. So I got them all down to one page, sometimes two sentences. Three sentences. I was the only company commander to send them to JAG, to the Judge Advocate General for review. And the entire time that this JAG officer had been there, and soon to be brigadier general noticed that because he asked in his staff call, and then later asked me to come with him over to the seventh, I think it was Seventh Army. And in Europe, when I was getting ready to move from Aberdeen, seventh headquarters. And, it was very challenging. I could have pulled the kids, the soldiers, out of their classrooms, but I chose not to do that. So I conducted a lot of my business after they were out of class. And so that didn't help my family much because I wasn't home, as much at night. So I did most of my stuff between 6 and 8:00 at night, and I was always there in the morning for PT every morning. Physical training. It started at 5 or 530 in the morning, so I was there. Sometimes I would sleep overnight or I would. What I do is come in early, lay down, sleep for an hour on my on my couch at the unit, and then get up and be ready for that. Just because of the demands, I think even a couple times I just slept overnight in my office because I just didn't have the time to come home and drive back. So I lived in I lived in Edgewood and I worked in Aberdeen. It was it was, just challenging. And the thing that trained me in my as a cadet, I had to do a paper. My paper was on the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So I read the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I was the and I'm just jumping back now as a cadet. I said, you know, we have, policy on how to promote. So, cadets, we don't have a policy on how to demote or demote cadets. So I wrote that policy up and that was used. So when I got to, and then because of my law emphasis in college, I paid a lot more attention to the judicial part. So I became as a company commander. I also was a, summary court martial officer, the prosecutor. I even had to initiate some form, some summary court martials against some of my soldiers on the upon the advice of my battalion commander. I never. The first time I did, UCMJ Action Against a Soldier, which was, article 15. They threatened me with the with the, IG Inspector general. I learned real quick, if I have nothing to hide, I shouldn't have to worry. So I said, well, okay, here, I get the phone and call up the inspector general because I know it's their right to do that. And I turn the paperwork over to them, let them in, and if I'm doing something wrong, the IG will let me know. I learned never to fear the inspector general, because if I did my homework and they did everything proper, I'm doing the right thing for myself and for the soldiers and for the army. Many times I would downgrade an article 15 to a summary. Article 15, which meant that it was suspended. And then they got to go work with the first sergeant on extra duty. And most of the time, I never had those soldiers come back because. So First Sergeant would put them to work mopping and things. And, the humility of doing that in front of all their peers was probably more than losing a couple of bucks from their paycheck. My my goal was not to destroy soldiers, but to rehabilitate them or to bring them back around. And I had several soldiers do that. I mean, I would have chats with them while they're sitting there waiting, doing their extra duty or something. I give them a book to read. One of the books that I like to recommend was, Starship Troopers, and we would discuss portions of the book and, and again, like I said, with the policy letters, I gave those to the soldiers that would be sitting there. And I'd say, you read this and tell me what it means, and if they can't understand it, then we have an issue. We have a problem, and they would go on. It's pretty pretty forward to me, sir. I say thanks. If you got any questions or any comments, let me know. I took all those freely. So we had 13 policy letters when I got done. And I think kind of thing of having at 30 when I started and the drill sergeants were happy because it usually took about an hour to go through all the old ones.

SPRAGUE: What was the, support like from your NCOs?

BUEHLER: The drill sergeants are awesome. They were awesome. Even. In fact, 1 or 2 of my had served with it at, Fort Sill. So it's a small world. You meet people throughout your career that you serve with again and again. And so I even had a drill sergeant that I had served with as a he was a maintenance sergeant and one of my platoons at, at, Fort Sill. No, they were all outstanding.

SPRAGUE: How was your, your relationship with your first sergeant or first sergeants?

BUEHLER: Excellent. I had two first sergeants while I was there. And you had to learn like I had learned when I was mentored with a master Sergeant Walker. You had to learn to build trust, and you got to learn to really communicate with each other and just be honest with each other on things. So my first sergeant and I were on the same page, and, it's one of those things where if you watch my back, I watch your back, and it's not so much to deceive people or to take advantage of things. No, it's to protect the soldiers and to protect our jobs. Because if I do something wrong, I could be destroying the career of some soldier unintentionally because of my lack of understanding or not doing the right thing the way I felt. I should do it because I wanted to do things that help soldiers, even, even when I was disciplining them.

SPRAGUE: What, what did you do to. You talked about sleeping in your office. What were what were some other things to help with that work life balance?

BUEHLER: I don't know if my wife and kids recognized me for part of my career, because I had this mindset that the army came first, and my family took a distant second for me. So there were times where they sacrificed for me. She would say, your dad's under a little stress today. Why don't we just leave him alone, let him take care of things. And, but I would try to make time for my kids and my wife. So there were times where I had to stop what I was doing and take care of them and balance that. But it was hard. I didn't realize it til later on in life. You. They put too much of the army forward first.

SPRAGUE: Do you think that's a thing that happens a lot where officers in particular think think army first and family second? Or is it or not?

BUEHLER: I think it's because I took too many things. Personal. And I had too much, invested in it that I didn't want to see it fail or see it go. You know? See, I would see myself as a failure if I didn't do it right. You take, the thing that the thing that I noticed, too, is I did some history on, on the military. And at that time, we had certain generals, the one that served Schwarzkopf was one of them. I read his biography, and now I see the parallels between what he was trying to accomplish and several of the other channels at that time. They were trying to switch. This mentality of the Army is the only thing you can do, and you're supposed to spend seven days a week working the know. You need to have time off. You need to spend time with family because your family is your support group. And so I saw those changes taking place in the military and I embraced it. And so now we weren't working seven days a week anymore like we were. They were telling us, oh, you're not working Saturdays or Sundays, maybe once a month or things. But, I mean, even when I was at Fort Sill, I would be up at the crack of dawn for a physical fitness, and then I would be out checking the barracks at 12:00 midnight. I had to sign because that was the mentality I had to sign in so they knew that I was doing it. And so I was getting four hours of sleep a day. That wears you down fast.

SPRAGUE: Any advice to people who are about to take company command? If you can encapsulate that in one, one sentence or one sentence, maybe a paragraph, a short.

BUEHLER: Okay.

SPRAGUE: What would you command?

BUEHLER: It's, first and foremost is to maintain your integrity, be honest and be truthful. Even if you make mistakes. Trust your instills and your and your other officers, but also at the same time, make sure that you're taking care of them and and watch out for the signs of maybe they're having difficulties, be there to support them. But the biggest thing is to gain trust by just maintaining being honest with everything you do.

SPRAGUE: After company command, looks like you want to take to.

BUEHLER: Yes.

SPRAGUE: Korea. Korea. HHC, 19th Support command. Yes. Tell me, looks like June of 90 to May of 91. Assistant plans and policy officer are assistant chief of material. Chief of staff. What? Tell me about that. What? That. What is that?

BUEHLER: Well, it was it was. It's it's a strange thing there, too. I was supposed to be the property book officer for an aviation maintenance company. Battalion again? Property, property, property. A lot of stress, lot of a lot of thing. And an aviation battalion for fixing helicopters. There's a lot of sets of kits and outfits and tools and stuff. But I got diverted because somebody at the 19th Support Command knew who I was from Aberdeen, and so they pulled me into their organization under the budget system, chief of staff material. So when I walked in there, it's like, oh, they're making briefing slides for the general all the time. I'm not doing that. Well, by the time I left, that's what I was doing. But we were in charge of the, the war plans and things for Korea, for the, logistics support under the 19th Support Command. So one of the things that I worked on was what I call the tip fiddle time phase deployment forces list, and that would be a fun time of war. They would activate these units from wherever they are in the States, and they would be time phased and they would come in. And so we had to look at how things were structured. And one of the things I noticed right away was they had the Ham codes, the heavy equipment companies far forward. It's like, why are they so far forward in front of all the stuff that they're supposed to be supporting? So that was one of the things that we changed on the on the tip fiddle. It's a classified document, but it had it's it's just everything that you had to bring into the, in the theater if something should happen.

SPRAGUE: It's called a tip, a fiddle.

BUEHLER: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Like fiddle, like violin.

BUEHLER: Well, that's the abbreviations. Time phase, deployment forces list. Okay. And we just called it the tip fiddle.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Was that tour on a company team?

BUEHLER: Yes. Okay. And at that time, I decided not to go home and tour. You can take a break mid tour. We felt it would be hard on the children if I came home and then left again. So I was there for the entire 12 months.

SPRAGUE: Did you regret not taking that mid tour or do you think it turned out better?

BUEHLER: I think it turned out all right. I think it was. It was an okay decision. The thing that was hardest was, is when I stepped off the plane, not too long after that, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. And so guess what? We were our deployments were on freeze. So there was a chance I might not even come home for after a year. They had frozen everything but my turtle, which we called our replacements, had already showed up. And so I left one year to the for the date. So I got to leave. But people who came in before me and after me, we're still there.

SPRAGUE: Okay, so backing up and having been a career veteran myself, so your turtle showed up even though you had been stopped. Lost? Yes, in theater. But you lucked out because the turtle was there to take over your post.

BUEHLER: Yeah. I mean, I was a turtle, too. So it's a term of affection, actually.

SPRAGUE: But yeah.

BUEHLER: For the guy who was leaving her gal.

SPRAGUE: Yeah, exactly. You're headed out the door. Yeah. I got to ask, did you have any involvement with, the KSC companies or the Rock Army while you were at, tegu?

BUEHLER: We did have katyushas, but the Korean soldier, us, equivalents that would serve with us did have 1 or 2 katyushas. I think that served not in our headquarters, but nearby. No, I didn't really have that, direct relationship with any of that. Okay.

SPRAGUE: And, you had mentioned you were briefing the general staff or what? If you can tell us what what staff was that or what element was.

BUEHLER: Or the Native Support command commander. I can't remember his name now, but, my colonel was the chief of staff of the, Chief Ax. Ax man. Assistant chief of staff material, which would be your equivalent of a G4 and, division staff. So we were preparing the briefing slides for him so that he could brief or we would brief whatever it was we had to brief on in the situation with logistics and things in Korea under our, our, responsibility.

SPRAGUE: And, that was out of Camp Henry.

BUEHLER: Yes. Okay. Walker. Camp Henry lived in Kent, lived in Walker and drove to, got on a bus to go to Camp Henry.

SPRAGUE: What do you remember about to go?

BUEHLER: I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I became a friend with with one of the Koreans there who befriended me. I guess he did that from every time somebody left. He latched on to another soldier. But I went on, I him and I would go. We would get on a train and we go see sights and things that I, that nobody would normally get to see. So I was in the, the mountains, up the mountain area up there, and there was a Korean lady that came up to me and, and, and wanted to hug me and thank me for profoundly everything she was from the Korean War. And she knew that I was an American soldier on my Korean friend would interpret for me and let me know his, and then I found out through him because I also brought him to church, chapel service there on post. He, like, come to chapel service a lot. And he was a Christian. His grandmother, her husband was executed in World War two because he was working with a missionary who was also executed to spy by the Japanese during World War two. So, I mean, just just profound. And and the, the guy who. Ran our little bar. Our little officers club was an ammo. He carried ammo during the Korean War. So you had a great respect for the culture there. I absolutely love the food.

SPRAGUE: It almost sounds like a an ongoing relationship if you would, between the Koreans and. What's going on with the Americans there.

BUEHLER: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Tell me what it was like coming back to the United States after serving in Korea.

BUEHLER: It felt good to be home. You really appreciated what you have here. You really do. I mean, there were still houses there. They had dirt floors, and some of them had some things that I looked at. Korea had changed drastically since the 80s. I guess the Olympics in 88, they modernized and everything was building up and things were building. But tegu had a population of 5 million people. At that time, Wisconsin barely has 5 million people. And it's twice the size of South Korea. I mean, 5 million people in one city. So you really have an appreciation for how things are done and how things work. Just a real quick side note, when I when I was there, they wanted replacements to go over for Desert Shield, Desert Storm, and, they brought three of us captains in three audience. Well, there's four of us. One had just gotten married and the other three of us. And he said, I need two volunteers to go. So three of us raised our hands. Two went, and I was on standby. I met those other two captains in Iraq. So, like I said, Army is a small world. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So back into the States. Where did you go next?

BUEHLER: All right, let's see. I got back from Korea and where I went next. Oh, my return, my return assignment, which is where I moved. My family was Rock Island. And it was with the chemical command. They call it the meet, conditions and Chemical Command.

SPRAGUE: United States Armament Nations and Chemical company, and. Yeah. And where is Rock Island, Illinois?

BUEHLER: Right in the middle of the Mississippi River.

SPRAGUE: And you were the. It looks like from about June of 91 to June of 93, roughly the armament, new equipment training officer.

BUEHLER: Yes.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about what what does that person do?

BUEHLER: Well, when you have new equipment coming on board from the military after it's been tested and approved and things and produced, you've got an issue that equipment to the military. So what they did was they had what was called a new equipment training team, and it consisted of what's called a total package fielding team. They're the supply people. They would bring the stuff and they would have you sign for it and hand it off. And then the new equipment training team net would train you on that equipment. So they would have a train the trainer sessions, and train you on how to maintain or operate the equipment. So for us on the maintenance side, we would go to the maintenance people for like, weapons. In this case, it was the Mach 19 we had to go back to Korea for and was right there on the DMZ. When we feel that it to the military police units. The other one was called the Pave adds product improved Vulcan Air Defense System, which sadly, the money was spent, was allocated and authorized, authorized and allocated. And they went we went to Hawaii for that. And it was the little, self towed quad gun system with all the computer stuff, so they would upgrade this equipment. And then about eight months later, they would turn it back into the military because it was being replaced, but the money was already authorized and allocated. So you have to spend it. You can't go back and not do it. So that's what we did. We did total package billing. Issued the equipment to the military.

SPRAGUE: In the the Vulcan system was the Priv adds.

BUEHLER: You know, the Pi beds, Pi. That's what they called the product improved Vulcan Air defense system, but it was replaced by the handheld shoulder missiles. The chaparral or not chaparral, but the Stingers. Stingers.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

BUEHLER: Okay. Which came off of the chaparral, A smaller version, I guess you could call it.

SPRAGUE: What was it like fielding the Mach 19, in Korea?

BUEHLER: That was interesting, because I had never been up to the DMZ. I was always south of Seoul. I've been up. A solve many times, but we were rap on the DMZ and you could hear the speakers and all that stuff, and we were firing in the no man's land. It was a it was an interesting, interesting thing. It was really neat. I was impressed with the system itself.

SPRAGUE: You mentioned firing into no man's land. Do you remember where that was by chance?

BUEHLER: Up by Camp Casey? A little north of that.

SPRAGUE: Might be the, Rodriguez range.

BUEHLER: Could be. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPRAGUE: You were bouncing rounds into the DMZ. Yeah. So, lots of time TDY or travel or. Yes.

BUEHLER: Or or I did go to. I did go to a few places, White Sands Missile Range, and, I can't think of the other places that I had to go to, but for conferences and things.

SPRAGUE: Looks like in 92 you went to, man print action officer. Course.

BUEHLER: Yeah. It's, it's it has to do with the human human side. When you do the, development of equipment and things, you got to take into account the average height of people, you know, all this and then ergonomics, the whole nine yards. So I think what it did was it actually complicated the testing and developing process, because that was the complaint we had when I was there as a second lieutenant, was they keep adding all these requirements and things into the system to develop it. That's why it takes ten years to get something or 20 years to get something out of the system, out of the pipeline, and actually into the hands of the soldiers, the XM 40 mask. We were writing the test questions for that, to see if it would be compatible in a howitzer or a tank. You know, they could hook it up. I got the reserves, what, ten, 15 years later and here I'm getting the mass for the first time. So that's it just takes a long time when you put all these requirements in there. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So, at this point, you're a senior captain. 93, junior 90? Yes.

BUEHLER: Yes, I was a senior captain at that point.

SPRAGUE: Okay. So tell me about. Tell me about it. Looks like you came out of active duty, I don't know. Tell me about that a little bit.

BUEHLER: Well, I saw it that during 92, 93, that's when we were downsizing. After the 1990, thing, the military started to downsize. So I again, I saw a lot of my peers leaving for various reasons. They were getting passed over for promotions. The pass rate was much lower to get promoted, and I didn't have a combat patch I didn't have I had my company command and that kind of thing. But I had too many of these, what they called nominative assignments. I didn't have the the aerosol, you know, the 101st, the combat units, those kind of things. So I wasn't worried, but I was. And here I was, so to speak, stuck at Rock Island. I saw several other captains get passed over while my time was coming up, and I was passed over for promotion to major. So what do you do? So they had this early out money that they could give you if you wanted to get out. Or I could wait another year above the zone and take my chances. But now that just pretty much you're done. So being a reserve officer, I said, well, I'll just take the money and run. So I took the early out bonus. They called it, SB, I think, took that move to back to West Bend and, started my life over there.

SPRAGUE: What was that? What what was going through your mind at that time in terms of going back to the civilian world?

BUEHLER: I really wanted to make the Army a career. At that point, I had 12 years invested, and I missed it. I really missed it. And I don't think it was because of the the jobs that I faced and the hardships I faced. It was the camaraderie, the just being part of that organization. I really missed it. So I, got a phone call and I went down and I didn't get a phone call. I went and interviewed with a unit down in Milwaukee, and they were going to be closing their doors a year later, too. But I didn't care. I wanted to get my foot back in the door. I told my wife I wasn't going to go back in and I wasn't going to do this. I guess what, I'm going in a reserve unit. She's like, I knew it.

SPRAGUE: So it looks like you were on IRR for a little time.

BUEHLER: Just for four months. Yeah. You got to be in for three months before you can come back in the system.

SPRAGUE: Okay?

BUEHLER: Especially from active duty.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. And then, what was the unit out of Milwaukee that you.

BUEHLER: It was called the Weapons and Equipment Company out of a weapons equipment battalion.

SPRAGUE: And help me out here. What does a weapons and equipment battalion?

BUEHLER: That's a logistics support unit. Okay. And they basically are the property holders for all the equipment for the division. Okay. It seems like that's where I always went. Yeah. So they had all the field artillery, equipment, radios, all that stuff that they would maintain.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. It seems like, a pattern where they, they want they want you on the hand receipt.

BUEHLER: I wasn't hand or seated for it.

SPRAGUE: Okay, cool. And, so what was that like? Having been on active duty and then going to drilling status in the reserves.

BUEHLER: I had a true appreciation for how the active duty army operated. I fully understood how it worked. I fully understand the mentality. When I briefed my soldiers when I was an air company commander, I told them because I had reservist, I had National Guard and active duty, and I would look at all of them every time I briefed the new class. I tell them, I don't care where you came from. These are your your brothers and sisters in arms. Someday you may be serving together in a in a combat zone. And that happened. So I that's how I treated. And I treat them all the same. Didn't matter.

SPRAGUE: And what does a a branch? Were you a branch chief at that time? Are the weapons and equipment section? What does that what do you do?

BUEHLER: I was basically a platoon leader.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BUEHLER: Or. Yeah, platoon leader. Because in the reserves are much smaller. They don't have the size that they do on active duty. So they try to have equivalents.

SPRAGUE: And, what was a typical drill like.

BUEHLER: We get there, and basically we'd had to worry about our training requirements to maintain our, our, readiness. So we were always training was either on the, on the firing range or doing land nav again, the same stuff I learned when I was a cadet. Just maintaining those proficiencies. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: And, what were you doing on the civilian side at this time?

BUEHLER: I worked in a grocery wholesaler warehouse down in Milwaukee. And I was working 60, 70 hours a week.

SPRAGUE: Wow.

BUEHLER: Yeah, I'd be starting. I'd start at six in the morning. I'd get done at six at night. 12 hour days. And then, you know, I felt like I was in the military and only working in the warehouse.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And then you went to drill?

BUEHLER: Yes. At least they come back to work. Those were some rough weekends because I didn't understand what they were taking advantage of me when I was working there. So.

SPRAGUE: Next unit, you go up to Fort McCoy. Yes. You serve with the, Combat Service Support Lanes team, which is part of second Battalion, three 38th Regiment, second Brigade.

BUEHLER: 85th Division.

SPRAGUE: Training. Support. Tell me, I, I have, I think I have an idea of what a combat service team does, but you tell me.

BUEHLER: Okay. We would take, reserve units and I think we worked with the National Guard too, on occasion. They would come to Fort McCoy for their annual training, like a one week training, and we would run them through what's called a lane. So we would do, like, either a convoy attack or we'd attack their convoy or, and basically it was a lot of times it was a convoy attacks. Or we would do, just additional training, drivers training. We again, we had all the equipment. So, where our logistics support battalion had all the equipment we would draw it from and we would set up a scenario, whatever they wanted for their kind of training for their logistic support unit. So it was basically your, combat service support folks, you know, transportation company, maintenance company. And it was a lot of times it was always convoys. We worked with convoys a lot. What would they would do if they got attacked?

SPRAGUE: Now, at this point, I want to say it was back in 93. You did. And you made major in the reserves.

BUEHLER: I was overqualified when I got out of active duty. I was way overqualified to my peers because I had battalion command. I had Command and General Staff College already. On as a captain.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Yeah, I see that.

BUEHLER: I mean, I had all these things that were already checked off that as a reservist, it's hard to do because you're, again, you're working in your civilian capacity and trying to balance work and family. And then the reserves has their requirements for training. So I had all those checks and blacks are done successful, company command, all that.

SPRAGUE: Do you think that would help you later in your, in your career?

BUEHLER: Oh yes. Yes.

SPRAGUE: And, so, moving ahead, you then went, you became, instead of the chief of the Combat Service Support Lands team. You stayed at second Battalion, looks like. But then you became the Battalion S-3.

BUEHLER: Their training officer. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: And what is that, like, coordinating all of these moving parts?

BUEHLER: So it was it was an active duty. So I had learned by the rule of, by hard knocks on active duty and what it was. And so now I'm doing it on a part time job, you could see. But it was a lot more than part time. I did a lot of it at home, too.

SPRAGUE: Yeah, that was one of my questions. As as you become your field grade and you're taking positions of greater responsibility as an officer in the battalion or battalion staff level. How how does that balance work out between the civilian world and, serving as a reserve officer?

BUEHLER: Well, one of the interesting things was in the 85th Brigade or 85th Division. They went to what's called multi-functional support or multi-functional, concept, where they would actually have active duty. So I had armor officers from active duty serving as brigade commanders and reserve units. So for them it was an eye opener, too, because they had spent their entire career active duty working with active duty armored units and active duty. All this and that. Then they come to the reserve brigade and now they've got volunteers. They got people who are from all walks of life that come here and train together. So their challenge was to how to balance all that too. And they had a great respect for the reserves, because Reservists and National Guard bring a lot to the table, because we have civilian experience that the military doesn't have. And then they're like, well, how do we get this done? Well, we'll take care of it because we know how we do it in the civilian world, you know, with like civil affairs and those kind of things. So we have a lot of knowledge and a lot of wealth that we bring. You know, we're not just focused on our, active duty careers our entire life chasing for the next rank. I never worried about that. I was always worried about, well, if I don't make it now, what do I do?

SPRAGUE: How does that, play out in terms of thinking about yourself as a citizen soldier? How does that how do those two elements come together, being a reservist and but also serving on the civilian side. Tell me a little bit about how that how that plays out, the ideal versus and the what people talk about the citizen soldier versus your experience.

BUEHLER: I there was always competing requirements. They some people don't understand that you just you don't have a lot of time. So my weekends, I'm fitting in training and then I have to come back to my job. And then during the lunch times or after work, I get phone calls, and they want me to take care of stuff from the reserve side of the unit. And a lot of times I brought work home with me. So I'd been doing my training. I used to have my table covered with, correspondence courses and things because I'd be doing my Army War College. I started Army Corps College, all this stuff on my on my table. I'd be working and trying to do stuff on what I normally do. It's a it was a challenge, a big challenge. There's a lot of sacrifice.

SPRAGUE: Do you think that, I've got to ask this, that the military recognizes and that the public recognizes that that sacrifice that.

BUEHLER: I don't know if if you if you haven't been in those shoes, I don't know if they would actually know. I know that people appreciate it. And people who have been in the same shoes as I would appreciate it because they know. But I unless you actually walk in somebody else's shoes, you'll never fully understand how much of a challenge it was to balance the whole life.

SPRAGUE: Just that I've got to ask, and this may seem transactional. Does that was that was it? You know, is that does that equation work out, that sacrifice that you've made of that personal time while you're doing those things over the life of your career, career? You know.

BUEHLER: If I could go back and change a few things, I would, but that's because I didn't know at the time, but I wouldn't I wouldn't give it up. I do it all over again. I would do it all over again, just because of just the satisfaction that it brought me. And, serving my country was a privilege.

SPRAGUE: Okay, so, looks like your next move was to the 1280 fifth Logistic Support Battalion as the Battalion S3, S4. What is a logistic support battalion.

BUEHLER: For the Logistic Support Battalion? They had all the equipment. So they had all the Humvees. They had all the weapons, all the radios, all the equipment for the brigade. So when the lanes teams would go out and do their training, they would come and draw that equipment from us. We had to maintain it. So I was basically a quartermaster. Unit.

SPRAGUE: And are you going through this and going through your career as a drilling reservist. Are you going through the same sequence in your head. Oh I need to. Kevin has three slot now I need to have an S four slot. Is that a previous.

BUEHLER: For career position.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

BUEHLER: from now you just naturally fall into it. And if you're watching what you're doing. Yeah, you'll naturally go for those next positions. I mean, I used to think, well, I, I that guy can do that. I can do that too, because I'm already doing half of what he's doing now. Or I could do what she's doing, but it's because I built up the confidence to do it, because I did all the hard knocks jobs. They prepared me for it. I don't think I earned it. I think I learned it, and so I was ready when the time came.

SPRAGUE: What do you think? Is there any particular theme in terms of being a good battalion's staff officer or an effective one, that if you were talking to a junior company great officer, you could say to them, this is what you need to be thinking about as a battalion. S staff officer Dash, whatever.

BUEHLER: I think the military is pretty good about career progression. You kind of learn early in your career that if you want to go up the chain things, so to speak, you seek out those kind of positions and those kind of jobs. You kind of learn that just because of the way they teach you and in the schools and things, but that you have the mentoring. Yeah. You would, you would recommend to your officers. Okay. This is where you are in your career. This is what I would recommend you start trying to do. And if you don't have this kind of training, this is where you should probably get some training on or whatever. If you're a good leader, you'll mentor your replacements, your mentor, the next generation.

SPRAGUE: September of 99 to May of 2000 Battalion Executive Officer. Where were you? I've got two things listed here. One from the resume. Second Battalion, Logistic Support, 411th Regiment. But I also have, I have the Orbi a logistic support battalion. Help me out with that. What was that? Do you happen to remember.

BUEHLER: Well, what happened was the 25th reorganized? They what they did was they they did away with that unit and they reorganized it under the second of the four elements. So they're designated the unit.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BUEHLER: So it's the same unit. It's just re designated.

SPRAGUE: Got it.

BUEHLER: And then executive officer is the, is the second in command for the unit. So if the commander becomes disabled, he or she is unable to perform their duties. That executive officer steps in and takes over, or they also take care of the staff, because the, the commander doesn't have time to do everything in the unit. They can't micromanage everything. So you have to have a second hand person to kind of help you take care of it. So the executive officer of basically make sure the staff is doing what they're supposed to be doing, keep the commander out of trouble, so to speak, because commander can't be everywhere. Do everything.

SPRAGUE: How what was it like being a battalion? XO.

BUEHLER: You were you were watching the battalion commander and seeing what they were doing. So I was learning all the challenges that the commander would have at that level, just like I did when I was in the other units. You know, you start observing because you're in their briefings, you're watching what they're doing. You're learning what's what's going on. Just making sure things are working. Just just making being that conduit, making sure everybody's and watching out for your officers and CEOs and things to make sure that they're, hey, we've got some trouble here or this person needs a break, whatever it might be, just to make sure that everybody's working toward the same goals.

SPRAGUE: And, how what were what were things doing on the civilian side at this point?

BUEHLER: Let's see, that was my one year was.

SPRAGUE: 89.

BUEHLER: 99. I was working I started, working at a company called Short Packaging. Okay. So that was a plastics plastic bag manufacturer. Pre-made bags on a roll. They were perforated on one side. And you use a machine and you can load them and things. So the same thing there you you can apply what you learned in the military to the civilian side and vice versa. It all boils down to training. If you don't have trained employees, they can't do their job and you can't hold them accountable because they're not trained. So it carried over very easily.

SPRAGUE: Did you find that on the civilian side, there were particular positions that worked well? And, with your military leadership positions, or was there any particular pattern there or.

BUEHLER: It's a different mindset, though, because now you're profit driven. You're there's all kinds of competing things. And anytime you have people you're still going to have the politics doesn't matter with the military or not. So you have those people skills, those people challenges how you deal with different types of personalities, how you deal with, who to watch out for, who not to watch out for. It doesn't matter where you're at. So you've got people who are have their own agendas, and you have people who compromise their integrity or don't care about and how to get ahead. And that doesn't matter what life you're in or where you work. You just you just do the best you can and watch out.

SPRAGUE: May 2000. Looks like, you became battalion commander.

BUEHLER: Yes.

SPRAGUE: Second Battalion. For 11th Regiment. Second Brigade, 85th Division.

BUEHLER: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: What was that like?

BUEHLER: It was, how do I say this? I had to take over as an executive officer, as an acting battalion commander. And so I was at my 20 year mark. If I didn't make lieutenant colonel, I basically retired at that point, and I threw my head in because now I was acting battalion commander. Active duty armor officer as a brigade commander. So I threw my head in with, I think, one other person. We applied for the position, and since I was already in that position and I had had great respect for what I was already doing, the list did not come out from the time of Colonel till a week after the selection for battalion commander. So the brigade commander had to call the A and say, well, did this officer make it or not? I have to make a decision on who I choose. When he came back and told me had been selected for battalion commander, I knew right then and there that I was going to be promoted to lieutenant colonel. So that was an unofficial thing, but it's something he had to do because he had to fill that position, and that's when it was supposed to be filled. So the day that I took over command as a commander, I also pinned down a ton of colonel. And that was a humble but great privilege to do. Command is something that, it's not something you just you're given lightly. It's a great responsibility.

SPRAGUE: Did you, in thinking about it, had you thought about that you were going to make battalion command or what were your thoughts up until that point?

BUEHLER: My wife would tell you I always it was worst case scenario. Well, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to make it and just try to be, what do you call it? Not negative, but, kind of putting your expectations down a little bit so that I wouldn't be disappointed if I didn't make it. But I wasn't worried either way. God had a plan for me, so I wasn't worried.

SPRAGUE: What do you think were some of the key elements to you becoming a battalion commander?

BUEHLER: Just doing my job. Just doing and going above and beyond. Sometimes just taking care of people, working with everybody, working with the staff, being. Just being there.

SPRAGUE: What are some advice you could give your fellow officers who've never taken battalion command?

BUEHLER: If I were to give any kind of advice on battalion command, any command, any level of command. Check everything. Make sure that, you know, do a do an inventory of of the unit. See where the strengths and weaknesses are of the unit. Talk to all the different leaders in the unit when you're taking over, making sure that they understand what their roles are on the unit, what your roles are, what your goals and expectations are as a group, not just yourself. What do they want? What do they want to do? What do they want to accomplish and help them accomplish it, too? It's not about the commander. It's about the people. Put the people first. But be careful of yourself. You got to take care of yourself, too. You can't burn yourself up. And I almost did that a couple of times. Take care of yourself as well. Balance everything as best as you can, and sometimes step back and let somebody else take it. Take it. Hey, you don't have to be there all the time. Let somebody else, because that's how they learn. Hey, you're going to be acting commander for the this month or whatever. Give them the ropes and then kind of just step back. And if they need help, give them help. Otherwise, entrust them and tell them to work with their NCOs and officers that they've got, because that's what they're there for. It's a team.

SPRAGUE: What was a typical drill like as battalion commander?

BUEHLER: I would, get up to Fort McCoy. It's about a three hour drive from here. From West Bend, I should say two hours and 45 minutes, give or take. I would get up there the night before, and I would. And at that time, they didn't provide, reimbursement for, for hotels. So everything I had to do, I had to come out of my own pocket so I could either get a hotel there on on post. A lot of times I couldn't afford it, just because what I was making at the time in the civilian job. So the armed, the reserves was actually helping my budget. So I would, sleep in the office, get up early in the morning before everybody came in, showed up, take a shower, get dressed and be ready and sit on my desk by about six, 630 before the unit. By about 630, I'd be ready. And then the sergeant major would usually show up first and command sergeant major, and then we'd go over whatever we had to do real quick. And then as the unit people came in, they signed in. And then we had our formation and put our we had our training schedules already made. So we just go over the training schedule quick and everybody starts marching to what they had to do for that weekend, get what I had to get accomplished. And then of course, then they got to go to meetings with the brigade. So we never, never ended meetings, meetings, meetings.

SPRAGUE: So at this point, at some point, what here in Battalion Command, where were you on September 11th, 2001?

BUEHLER: September 11th? I was at work and I walked into work and they the first tower was burning. And then as they were talking, I watched the second airplane hit the second one, and I said, oh, no. And then the then later it was the Pentagon. Of course, they turned T.V. off at work because by then everybody's like, what are you going to? There's nothing you can do. I said, well, I'll probably be getting a phone call. And they did. They activated half of our unit at that time. And then later on, I was activated to come over up to Fort McCoy. And, we trained, people on convoy convoy operations because that's what we did best.

SPRAGUE: Would that be in 2001, or would that be later, a little later?

BUEHLER: 2000 and, three, I think 2000, something like that. I think it's when I went up there and I still had to go up there during my drill weekends, and I would check in on how the unit's doing and things. I had an executive officer that was taking care of everything for me because he was mobilized the other half. And so he became my replacement when I left as the battalion commander, because he did such a good job.

SPRAGUE: Okay. How did, how did 9/11 change things for your unit going forward?

BUEHLER: We had, a bigger sense of purpose now. And now we actually understood why we were who we were and what we were doing. People were highly dedicated to to making sure that the soldiers that were leaving Fort McCoy when they were mobilized through there were prepared as best as they could prepare them for convoy operations. That was a big sense of, purpose, renewed purpose.

SPRAGUE: Do you think that when coming into 911 that your unit was ready for that wartime mission? Yes. Yeah, I think we were. Okay. And then it looks like you went on active duty, and this is probably what you were talking about in January 27th of oh three through September. oh three.

BUEHLER: Yes.

SPRAGUE: And then you mentioned half of your unit had gone on active duty. Was that how did that work then?

BUEHLER: They mobilized half the unit right away, so that they could start ramping up the training at Fort McCoy. As the mobilizations took place through port McCoy for the reserves and guard units that were being activated, and whether they were being sent overseas or somewhere else to take an active duty unit's place, you know, their operations to support the post or whatever it was that they were doing. Yeah. And then, then the other half, then they mobilized the other half of us and some of them stood down, went home because they were done. And if they wanted to volunteer to stay on, they could stay on a second year.

SPRAGUE: So and this would be for, Operation Enduring Freedom.

BUEHLER: No, operation noble eagle.

SPRAGUE: Noble eagle. Okay. Thank you for the clarification. And before you are, put on active duty. What were you doing on, civilian side?

BUEHLER: Let's see. What was I doing? It's still working. It's I doing. I was still working at that shirt packaging at the time.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Where are you activated from?

BUEHLER: Oh that's right. Yeah. I had just started a new job at, at, at, plastic components. So I'd only been there a year, and they were downsizing because of the economy at the time. So they they were in the injection molding plant. So a lot of injection molding plants went out of business during that time frame. So I was just there almost a year and they had already started cutting. So that was probably a good thing. I got got to leave at the time. And then when I came back, they they had to give me a different position when I got back.

SPRAGUE: So you're talking about when you were activated in oh three. That was good timing.

BUEHLER: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Did they have any issue with you being put on active duty or how did that.

BUEHLER: No no, no, they understood. They understood it. They knew what I was was doing.

SPRAGUE: So your mission at Fort McCoy during active duty during Noble Eagle was to.

BUEHLER: I was battalion commander in that capacity. So you attended all the briefings every day. What my staff was doing and how they were organizing the training for each day. And then we had to brief the brigade commander. Every day almost. It was a daily thing.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And, come back off of active duty. Could you have stayed on active duty or. Yeah.

BUEHLER: They asked for anybody who would like to come back off, because, again, you could extend again for another. Whatever it was, I felt it was time because I had been there as a battalion commander long enough, and my executive officer and a few other people who were looking for a command needed it. And I felt that was my time to step aside, because I'd been there at the unit at Fort McCoy for like nine years. I felt that was a change, so I needed to. I wanted to go for, like a division level. I was ready for a division level position.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And, December of oh three, you become, assistant deputy chief of Staff logistics, G4 at HHC, 84th Division.

BUEHLER: I'm assuming HHC is just where they were. They were you were assigned to for administrative purposes, for pay and and all that. It's it's a it's an interesting thing, but, his name is Follett. Colonel Follett, Mark Follett. I followed his career in the reserves. He was my battalion commander. He was an S3. He was also my battalion commander at one point in the three, three, eight. And then he left to, to go to 84th and he, was there assistant G4. Well, he called me up and said, hey, I got a position down here. If you're looking for a position and it's a potential for a Colonels position because I said, well, lieutenant Colonel, now I gotta find a lieutenant colonel position. So he told me he had a position to take my position. His position. I said, okay, so I applied and got it, interviewed with them and took over his position. Then the G4 at the 84th was retiring. So I put my head in for the G4 position and they gave it to another colonel. And when he came in, of course, I helped him transition into the job. And, since I was now promotable to colonel, I needed a position for Colonel. The same individual calls up and says, well, I'm down here in the, 314 theater under your support command. How'd you like to put your head in for my job? Okay, so I followed him, and I also followed him again after I left there down to Rock Island because he was the commander down there. So I followed this man's footsteps for a couple jobs.

SPRAGUE: Mark followed fold for one year. Treaties.

BUEHLER: Treaties.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And, so what does a assisted deputy chief of staff for logistics do?

BUEHLER: Well, he's the executive officer for the G4. Okay, so the G4 is in charge of all the logistics for that division, all the training, all the, same thing we did when I was a support battalion. We had we did share the meals. We took care of, the weapons we took care of. So it was all the equipment for the entire division. We were the property book officers for that division. We had to make sure we had accountability of all the, property. We did the inspections of the units that had their property. We had to make sure they were maintaining accountability. Did did reports a survey on them if they lost equipment or damaged it. So we were basically responsible for all the equipment in the division.

SPRAGUE: And so then the next part of that, I think of what you just described is also the supply officer was that. Yeah. Yeah. Inclusive of that.

BUEHLER: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BUEHLER: We did inspections of the of the division okay. Our team.

SPRAGUE: Do you find anything interesting during your inspections?

BUEHLER: No, no, I just hope that they were maintaining accountability of things.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And, in oh six, he went on to. Looks like you were promoted to colonel.

BUEHLER: Yes.

SPRAGUE: January 26th, 2006. And then you went down to the 4/16?

BUEHLER: Yes. Yeah, I think that's that's something different. That's for 16th. Yes.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. For 16th. Theater in. Your command? Yes. In Darien, Illinois. As the deputy chief of staff material.

BUEHLER: So I was the G4. G4.

SPRAGUE: And tell me a little bit about that, because that's that's theater level. That's not division.

BUEHLER: That's big. When I came to the unit, at that point, they were just in h h d I think headquarters, headquarters detachment of like 200 some people. The Army reorganized the reserves and took all the engineering units west of the Mississippi River. Not to not I don't think we had Hawaii or Alaska, but we had everything west of the Mississippi and the Ohio Valley River with all the engineering units, which is the vertical and horizontal ones. Vertical means they build buildings, and horizontal means they make the roads and the concrete beds. Military police, firefighters, no chemical units and chemical units in the United States Army Reserves all became under that command. So they went from 200, 12,000, up to 12,000 soldiers. And guess what? All that property and logistics support, like meals and rations and all that kind of stuff. We had to maintain accountability of all that.

SPRAGUE: It seems like a big responsibility.

BUEHLER: For a reservist. It's big.

SPRAGUE: Any hints or ways not to do things are ways to do things right for maintaining accountability.

BUEHLER: Well, I had a staff of four people. They were, active duty. Some were active duty and some were, active guard reserves. So that meant they were full time like I was when I was active duty. You just served in that capacity. So that staff would function on a day to day basis. But I would get phone calls during work. Afterwork have to sign paperwork, whatever it was. Then our staff grew to, I think, 12 people, full time staff. We had sworn officers. Majors. I mean, not just NCOs anymore. It was a full complement of staff. They took care of the property books. They took care of the, exercises. So if we had a, an exercise in Bolivia where we had to send some construction units down there, wherever it was, we were doing, like, joint training and things. We had to arrange for the, transport, loading and transport of all the equipment on the ships. Or by air. But most of it was by ships. And taking care of passing not so much passports. That was just normal thing, but. And just property, property, accountability and everything. It was the logistics of the whole operation. It was a lot. A lot of work.

SPRAGUE: What do you think about the dynamics, between, the drilling reservist and, active reservist? That person who's always there. Yeah.

BUEHLER: They were the professionals as far as the knowledge base. They knew what was going on day to day. So you had to trust that they would do what they're supposed to do on a day. And we had some outstanding NCOs that could just move mountains. They could get a ship's, all that kind of stuff. All arranged for they knew who to contact, what to get done. They would get the orders written up, all that kind of stuff. They just took care of everything. I never had to worry. I never had to worry about the job getting done.

SPRAGUE: April of oh eight. You go over to the future operations section at Rock Island, Illinois. What in the world is, the division chief of future ops?

BUEHLER: Future ops? I had to scratch my head to when I got the job. It's more. It's kind of like strategic planning. It was a, just a name that they gave to that position. But really, what you were doing was what you normally do as an officer. You take care of your soldiers, you make sure they're they're ready to go. They're, mentored. But it was a position that, was basically with with operations planning. If they had an operation that they were going to and take you and embed you in with, you had to make sure that you could you could accomplish the mission with the people you had.

SPRAGUE: That must have been quite the commute from Russia to.

BUEHLER: That's been the Rock Island. Yes. Yeah. And it's funny because I left Rock Island after an active, active duty. And that's where I retired from. From the reserves. So it was deja vu in that.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about. In oh nine or. Actually. Sorry. Oh 8th November oh eight. How you wound up back on active duty and going to Kuwait. Well, tell me what brought up led up to that.

BUEHLER: When I was at the at the, engineer command down in Darien, Illinois. We were at the two year mark, and I felt that it wasn't between me and the staff, the chief of staff. We felt that that I guess I wasn't the right fit for them. I don't know, because I was an ordinance officer, and they were trying to fill a position for, overseas to Iraq. And, and I was one of those positions that they could fill, and they weren't going to put me in that position. So I didn't understand. Maybe they had a different objective or different people in mind, but whatever. So, I left the command and of course, I got a phone call from Mark Fowler. He says, well, I've got a position down here for you in my multi-functional support command down here at Rock Island. So great. So I got there, and when I showed up for drill the first day, I walk in. And who's sitting at the desk next to where I'm sitting? Colonel Germann. Colonel Germann was the G. Fourth, the 84th Division. He's the one that took the position away from me and forced me to go down to there in Illinois. And he was retiring, and he wasn't going to go. So Mark Fowler told me right away when I came, he's as well, by the way, you're also being mobilized. I said, well, if I'm not ready to go, then why am I here if I'm not? So that's probably probably the one of the reasons I left the command down in Darien, because they weren't going to send me over because they had other people they wanted to put in the position that I was on that I was qualified to do. So, I got I guess you could say my wish that if they're going to mobilize me, I guess I'm going to go.

SPRAGUE: So what? Pre mobilization. Primo did you do?

BUEHLER: They actually did some training on the island itself. They had this run through, of course, 50 cal, 50 caliber Webb, small arms, all that kind of stuff. They just ran us through the course. The third majors and that from AMC came down and and the material and the command there, and they set up a course, had us go through life saving procedures, all that kind of stuff, basic knowledge and skills that a soldier needs to survive on the basic level. Just refresher training on that.

SPRAGUE: And, what were you doing on the civilian side at the time?

BUEHLER: Let's see, I was, working at, PCI at the time, I believe I was, what was I doing? Well, I was working on the floor and manufacturing and. I said, I got to go. I said, okay, so they gave me a farewell party, and off I went.

SPRAGUE: What was your, when you find out you're going to get deployed? What what was your thoughts? What did you tell your family? What was what was their reaction?

BUEHLER: I think they were scared of it. I was kind of wondering myself. I mean, I'd been to Korea, but it was during that time when they were in the Middle East, so we didn't know if we were going to be sent or not. I think it was just a time of uncertainty. You're not really sure what's going to what, what to expect.

SPRAGUE: And, so you were the mod in the multi-functional support command, detachment 14.

BUEHLER: They had several detachments.

SPRAGUE: Yeah.

BUEHLER: Our detachment was supposed to go to Iraq, and the other detachment was supposed to Afghanistan, and they were assigning us as filler to the Army field sustainment brigades that that were over there. The Army Field Sustainment brigades took care of all the logistics support they needed for equipment that was under Army Materiel Command.

SPRAGUE: And that would be the, 401st FSB.

BUEHLER: Yes, 402nd up in Afghanistan.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Yep. Those two units. So you first go to Camp Earth. Jan.

BUEHLER: Camp John, wait.

SPRAGUE: Kuwait. Tell me about what you did there.

BUEHLER: We can, I worked with, I can't think. AMC, sua, Army Materiel Command, Southwest Asia, Brigadier General, and he was the forward element of of Army Materiel Command that dealt with any kind of equipment issues that they had for fielding or sustaining any kind of equipment, again, birth to death. So if there was any new equipment coming into the theater, we have to make sure that the that it was fielded correctly. And then, of course, what the Army did was it was more it was expensive to take and have a unit bring all its equipment over and then turn around, bring it all back. So what they did was they brought over equipment and they left it there. And then units came in and drew that equipment. So just like a heavy equipment maintenance company, you get this equipment from the field, efforts broke or worn down, refurbish it back up, maybe have contractors doing it. Which would they did. And you'd have units, but mainly contractors, and the military maintaining accountability for it and the maintenance units itself, working with the contractors. And then they would issue that equipment back out. And then when it was done, they turn it back in and they'd issue to the next unit that would come in to take their place. So they had this huge field of equipment in Kuwait that they drew from.

SPRAGUE: What was your, experience like, dealing with or working with the contractors in theater? It was all right.

BUEHLER: It was it was a it was they they had their purpose. Of course, they were making money as a contractor. So, a lot more than I was making, I believe. But, that's just the nature of the beast. So. No, it was fine. We worked with a couple of contractors just to make sure they were getting what they had. They had a, a program there where they were refurbishing, Humvees, armored Humvees, and then selling them to the Iraqis to replenish their, their stock. And then they were also forming logistics, maintenance facilities and that kind of stuff for the Iraqi army. So we were helping them reestablish themselves from after the downfall of Saddam.

SPRAGUE: Did you know or was it part of a plan that you would be, going up to the for a second and. Yes. Yeah, that was part of the plan.

BUEHLER: Yeah. I was supposed to go initially, but they just like when I got to Korea pulled me aside and I went into the, swap cell.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BUEHLER: Because I was a colonel and they didn't really need another colonel up there. The FSB is commanded by a colonel, so they have 4 or 5 colonels. It's just like command overload. Okay. So now I was with the staff, which had lieutenant colonels, majors, colonels, all that stuff down there.

SPRAGUE: So, looks like in June of oh nine, you went up to Camp Victory in Iraq. What was that like? How did you get there?

BUEHLER: Flew in.

SPRAGUE: What was that like?

BUEHLER: It was it was interesting, right? Because they they do this crazy I even or whatever you call it, where the plane does all these maneuvers that come in so they don't present themselves, I guess, as a target in case there's somebody down below. And we were in full battle rattle. I guess you could call it helmets and everything. And our weapons. It was. It was a different feeling, but I felt safer there than I do sometimes. Home because everybody was armed. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: So what were your impressions when the gate went down?

BUEHLER: They they were there to greet us and take us in and processes in. Felt just like Korea.

SPRAGUE: Okay. And while you were at Camp Victory, I'm assuming that's where you are, because that's what you said. Where what were you doing while you were there? A little more detail.

BUEHLER: Well, they had me embedded with the, I called the I think it's the MFI, G4 staff, which was, multi forces Iraq, which fell under General Ordonez, who is the commanding general at the time there. So they they were in charge of supporting the combat units that were in country doing the convoys and, search and destroy or whatever their missions were. They were just in charge of all the that.

SPRAGUE: You had, mentioned during the pre-interview, some of the briefings with, General Odierno. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

BUEHLER: Oh, yeah. That that one. The thing that stuck to me the most was. We would be, we had everything was video. So we had video conferences. I mean, we'd have video conferences. When I was in Kuwait. We had video conferences when I was up in Iraq with the rest of the world, and they were secured videos. So while we were in Iraq, he would have his daily briefs and our all a staff would be at their desks and our I'd be on my computer and you could listen or watch the briefings, and it was just the daily brief of what was going on in the country. They would come up with, you know, if there was an attack or whatever came up and what was the they would maybe talk a little bit about the attacks or whatever incidences occurred. But he always closed his briefings, about an individual soldier, airman, marine or contractor who had lost their life in Iraq. And he would tell you a little background about them, where they came from, who they what they did before they came in the service. When they came in the service just pretty much a, a a small biography on the individual that lost their life in Iraq. What unit they were with, where they lost their life, under what conditions, whatever it may be. And, you know, the survivors of the of that individual, whatever it was. But it was a touching story because he would always say that this is why we're here. Whatever you do for your job, whatever you do on a daily basis, don't forget that these people lost their lives. And if you can do something to prevent the next one from happening, do your job. Just do it. Do it. Well, because this was what we're here for, and we don't want to lose more people because you didn't want to do your job. So it was it was a way to get people to say, this is why we're here, and we don't want to forget who we've lost. Very humbling. Every day.

SPRAGUE: So, what was a typical, day, working there, like.

BUEHLER: 12 hour days on staff. So we were preparing the briefing slides, and again, I'm doing briefing slides, but it's a good thing I did it in Korea, and I understood how it work. So we would we would get the information, whatever our general needed to report on his daily briefs that we did our weekly briefs, and we'd get the slides in turn. And after a while, we got to learn his personality and how he. Did things. So we would have back and brown information in the bottom of slides in case they had asked for information. A lot of times he didn't ask us for some of that stuff, but we just knew after a while you knew what he needed to do his job, and that's what you were there to make sure that the general was successful in reporting whatever he had to report.

SPRAGUE: So and this was briefings for General Odierno or somebody else.

BUEHLER: Could be for him, but it was mainly for Army Materiel Command back home, because they wanted to know what the challenges were overseas, especially with the equipment that we were refurbishing. In some cases, the equipment was brought back to the States to be refurbished by the, depots for Army depots. So there would be equipment that had to be identified for that too. So there was like a balance between what you kept in country and what was not in country. Any challenges that they were having with certain types of equipment if they were going to get more equipment in state, you know, all kinds of things. Just it all had to do with equipment.

SPRAGUE: Who provided security at Camp Victory?

BUEHLER: They had their whatever police force they had either contractor or. And in many cases, they had contractors at the gates. But they also had military as well, augmenting by contractors.

SPRAGUE: And was camp Victory was at near the Baghdad International Fair.

BUEHLER: Yes. It was. Okay. It was a huge, huge complex of many different little bases.

SPRAGUE: Any shelling or mutterings while you were there?

BUEHLER: There were a couple, we had some some missile attacks there. You know, they would fire their random little missiles into the base. And that the closest that came to me was, one that was like 100m away from where I was going into a dining facility. I was already in there at the time, and by then they had already, hardened all the dining facilities because of some of the tragedies they had in earlier conflicts, like at, in Saudi Arabia and, and of course, in Iraq, too. So there was a missile attack. It was like 3 or 4 missiles that came in. You could hear the guns whirring, the, phalanx system, whatever they had to the land system of what the Navy used. Sometimes the sirens in that and that missile attack actually killed several soldiers from one of the divisions that was stationed there. Was a couple who just kept going. The rockets. This one, I think, fell short. So, yeah, the next morning we got a briefing and and there you go. You see it? You see it in the briefing. What happened?

SPRAGUE: Did you have to take cover or what? I assume so when this.

BUEHLER: Not this one. When I was in Berlin, when we got there, we had to take cover because we got the air raid warning, but fortunately, the rockets were way on the other side of the base. But you don't know. You don't know what's going on. And until you get the all clear, you get to sit there with all your fellow soldiers huddled in whatever designated area they had. So I got to learn. I got to meet the chaplain up there.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. You had mentioned during the pre-interview the, experience of a lot. Can you expand on that a little bit.

BUEHLER: As far as.

SPRAGUE: Fires or bombings and the aftermath?

BUEHLER: They were more so on the convoys, and I never was in a convoy, thankfully. Okay. I have a deep respect for the people that had to do that kind of job, but, yeah, we had we had sometimes there would just be a random missile attack. But the just. It's not the same as being fired at. You know, it's surreal. It's not. You don't really think you're in that much danger until you realize if it actually killed someone and then you're like, oh, that could have been serious. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: You had mentioned, during the pre-interview, that you had toured some of the, bath house that were people were executed in.

BUEHLER: Oh, yes. In, in Camp Victory. There you have the bath house, you have the Perfume Palace, those kind of things. The bath party house. We hit, and took out. They were having a party at the time, I think, when we, did our strike, they had a pool. They had a pool in the inside pool, but they never used it for swimming or anything. They never filled it with water. But in the bottom of the pool, there's still blood stains from the people they executed in that in the pool.

SPRAGUE: So, any other, experiences in Iraq?

BUEHLER: I got to see one of the only two left, mosaics of of Saddam Hussein on the wall because they had taken down almost every they took down everything that they that reminded them of him. Of course, he's dressed in military uniform, which he never served, but he embellished himself like that. I was actually. Off the base in Iraq at one point. Didn't know it when I was visiting, the maintenance facility. I can't think of the name of the base to. They were building a maintenance facility for the Iraqi army, and, the the civilian that picked me up was a captain I served with at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and the combat developments. So here it is almost 30 years later, and I'm looking at him. He's got a beard now. He's a little older, but he has that voice and I'm looking at him. And we finally said, what's your name? And he goes, said, you don't remember me, do you? He says, oh, you're Lieutenant Buehler. You were Lieutenant Buehler at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. We work together and branch a small world.

SPRAGUE: What was his name? If you remember.

BUEHLER: I just don't remember his name now. Okay. But there was so interesting. Like I said, the army is such a small world. Be in the back streets of tegu. Or. I was up in Seoul and I ran into a maintenance sergeant that I served with at, Fort Sill, just in the middle of nowhere, just, hey, at the shops.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. So, you had mentioned during the, pre-interview, you had witnessed, and maybe it wasn't in Iraq, but, some fraud waste.

BUEHLER: Well, yeah, it's it's you see things over there, and I always, question things. They had a maintenance facility they were building in Afghanistan, and I was told, just be quiet, you know what you're talking about. But they just poured so much money into this facility. And a couple of years later, like a year and year and a half later, turned to my colonel that I was serving with over there. And there's this big article, fraud, waste and abuse. Right? It happens. It happens in anything. Even in a company of civilian company. It happens. I was always, looking out for that kind of stuff just to make sure that we weren't abusing or or, wasting government services. But who are you going to tell if the people in charge or don't want to change what they're doing? You can't, you know, and if you make an accusation, you better back it up. I don't have the didn't have the resources or the knowledge of everything that's going on. It just from appearance. It just didn't look right that we're spending all this money for something that was going to be wasted anyway.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Any, burn pit exposure while you were there?

BUEHLER: Yes. Indirectly. Indirectly. One day I walked out of my quarters at, Iraq, and my eyes were burning so bad I had to go back in and wash them, and I couldn't go outside, for I was on a Sunday, my half day. So half day meant that I could. I didn't have to work in the morning. I could go back into work at 1:00 and then go home at seven. So that morning when I got up to go to church, chapel, I couldn't because my eyes were burning so bad. There was something burning downrange. Yeah. So I just had to go wash my eyes out and lay down and wake up and hope it was cleared by then. And it was. But yeah, there was burn pits and stuff out there, but sandstorm very nasty. Those were nasty. I couldn't see five, ten feet in front of you sometimes.

SPRAGUE: What was, what were some of the more poignant experiences that you remember from your service at Camp Victory?

BUEHLER: The camaraderie. You know, you're all in it, all there to do a mission, and you're trying to do the best you can. Humor was a big thing. We used a lot. We had good times with humor, a little bit of humor, briefings. Just just. It was the culmination. I had seen everything from my whole career, and it just all came together. At that point, you could just see working with the Army Materiel Command, birth to death. I had experienced so many facets of that in my career, and this was kind of like the closing part of it. That was just kind of satisfying, actually.

SPRAGUE: Okay. You can also mention during the pre-interview, the. There was a drowning accident that happened over there. Is that in Rome somewhere else?

BUEHLER: No, this was at, at, Fort Sill.

SPRAGUE: Fort sill. Okay.

BUEHLER: There. Throughout your military career and and even in as as life is, you're going to experience some tragedies. We had two soldiers that drowned in a lake. They were out partying and a little bit too much to drink, and they fell out of their canoe and and drowned. So that was a tragedy in our unit. I had a specialist that I was working with as an air load planner for our unit. So we had to do planning on how to load on either rail or air. And she worked with the Air Force, so she was very familiar with that. She was murdered. They know. And I just worked with the the day before. And the next day she's there telling me she's gone, you know. So they have a funeral service for that. Suicides. That was another thing that was very hard on people. I think I have known of 4 or 5 suicides during my career in the military. One was at Aberdeen next door, and one of the sergeants, one was the son of one of the officers I knew. That's that's really hard. Even I've known of suicides from servicemen or service people after I got out, too. So it's just that's that's the hard part.

SPRAGUE: Is there any, common thread? These suicides that you can identify?

BUEHLER: Some are just like normal life. People get disappointed with what happens to their choice. You know, they lose a girlfriend or or whatever, divorce, that kind of stuff. They can't deal with it. So they're going to take their life just because I can't deal with it. They don't want to take the loss. And a couple of them were service related. They had so much trauma, that they just couldn't deal with life anymore.

SPRAGUE: Did you find yourself in any of those leadership roles, being asked or presenting material to try to deal with, suicides in the military?

BUEHLER: Well, the the one that we had at our in the unit next door, they, of course, you know, tried to set, you know, try to make sure that everybody was, you know, if anybody needed help or anything that they could get it if they, if they felt they needed it. So back in that timeframe, it wasn't as, I don't say prevalent. It just happens. It just happens in life for different circumstances.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Anything else? Jumping back, that you'd like to share about serving in Iraq?

BUEHLER: I think on Sunday mornings, I. Yeah. Sunday mornings. My wife was just whispering over there. Sunday mornings I would meet my future son in law on, Sundays. So I was privileged to have a car over there, and so I would. He worked in, Camp Cropper, and he was a guard over there at the prison. But they had. And I would pick him up, in the morning on Sundays and my half day off, and we would go off for breakfast, and then we'd just hang out. And, so I got to know my son and my future son in law, which was nice during the last 4 or 5, six months in Iraq.

SPRAGUE: And how did he how did he find out about you and know that that you were there?

BUEHLER: Well, because my daughter was dating him.

SPRAGUE: Okay.

BUEHLER: So it's hard not to know who's there. So I hooked up with him when I was over there. And when I found out when I got up to Iraq, I looked him up, found out where he was serving through my daughter and my wife and and established that contact. So that was nice.

SPRAGUE: And, your daughter's name is Nicole. Nicole. And your son in law's name? Brandon. Brandon. Okay. And at the time, he was serving in what type of unit?

BUEHLER: He was in the 32nd Infantry. And he was, as a guard. They're designated their unit. You think he was supposed to be field artillery? So he was, I don't know what the unit specific company or whatever it was, but they were at camp proper.

SPRAGUE: And, coming out of theater, coming back to the states from Iraq, what was that like?

BUEHLER: Surreal. I did come back at the halfway point to visit. I surprised my daughter after graduation for college, but I didn't do it like everybody else where they come on stage and disrupt. We did it at the hotel before we went to the graduation. But, no, it was it was nice to be home. I was ready and they tried to get me to go back.

SPRAGUE: Oh, really?

BUEHLER: Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Tell me about.

BUEHLER: That. I had already put in my retirement paperwork, and they wanted me to come back and be the G4 in Kuwait in 2011, and that's when the waterfall would have occurred, when all the equipment came out and we were drying out from Iraq. And I thought, no, I don't want to do that.

SPRAGUE: And it would have been back to back tours and theater.

BUEHLER: Would have been a yeah, it would have probably been another the other year at least.

SPRAGUE: Wow. So instead, you had mentioned you'd put in your retirement papers. And your next you come back. I'm assuming you come back off of active duty. And you become the deputy commander, detachment 11, Army Materiel Command, Army reserve component, Army reserve sustainment, Rock Island. There's a mouthful.

BUEHLER: Yeah, it's a mouthful. It's a fancy way of saying I was a team chief for a, Joint Munitions Command, multifunctional had all these different officers and we were all located throughout the United States. So I didn't always see the people that I had on my, under my team. But if we were to be mobilized, we would show up at whatever they wanted us to do. We would actually take the place of an active duty officers position and take their their role over. So I worked with Joint Munitions Command, who was also there. They take care of all the munitions for the entire services. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and federal government, some of the federal government services. They managed all the munitions that's either produced, stored or issued in the United States. Pretty nice all over the world, actually. So I would have my position. I probably would have taken over as a deputy commander for a, munitions plant in a time of war.

SPRAGUE: Wow. Very interesting. So. And what were you doing? I'm assuming this is drilling. What were you doing in the civilian side at that time?

BUEHLER: I was still working at, plastic component or, plastic components.

SPRAGUE: Any issues with coming back to the states after serving in Iraq?

BUEHLER: No. Not really. I was happy to be home.

SPRAGUE: Yeah. Tell me about, your decision to retire.

BUEHLER: Well, I you have, the military is based on the upper out system, so not everybody gets to get to retirement age. If you don't make general well, then you've got to retire because your time and grade is up. I either have to retire at age 60 or 30 years. Well, I wasn't 60 at the time, but I was at my 30 year mark. It's, it's. And to me, it's a good system because you don't want people staying for 40, 50 years in the military. By then. They're just I think they've overstayed their their turn, and they don't make room for the next generation to come in. So it's a mandatory retirement date. I had to retire at 30 years of service, which I have no regrets.

SPRAGUE: And, what did it feel like? Was there any particular feeling the day after you retired?

BUEHLER: Relief. I think finally, that I could finally put all this behind, and that it was worth it, too. I just I was at peace. That was okay. I'm proud of what I had to do, and and I would do it all over again if I had to. Of course, now, in hindsight, I would do it differently, maybe in a little bit. But everybody knows that you can't go back and change stuff. So, no, it was a privilege and an honor to work with so many fine people throughout my career. You crossed paths sometimes several times.

SPRAGUE: Can you tell me a little bit, a little bit about, your Bronze Star for meritorious service?

BUEHLER: Yeah. I had mixed emotions about that. I went and complained to my Colonel Hughes was my my my boss over in Iraq. He he's a great guy. I met him, and actually, I met him at, the 84th when I was down as an assistant G4. And here I walk in and here he is in Iraq. I was kind of complaining and said, you know, they're giving out all these bronze stars to these folks, but I didn't understand. There's two different there's a differentiation. You got meritorious service. And valor because I was mixing the two. And I thought they were giving bronze Stars out. On the valor side. The cheapen, the award. So it's the Bronze Stars for meritorious service. And they were giving those out quite a bit to senior officers and stuff. So I'm more proud of my Legion of Merit than I am anything else.

SPRAGUE: And why are you particularly proud of the Legion of Merit?

BUEHLER: Because that's like the pinnacle for me. I mean, I didn't get a Silver Star for for combat or anything. I never expected to in my life anyway. And if I did, I did. But now it just it's just the culmination of the whole experience. 30 years of hard work.

SPRAGUE: And, if you do, you continue any of those relationships with people that you served with?

BUEHLER: Yes. I still have some contacts on LinkedIn, and I still maintain, with Facebook. My wife does too, with people we've met throughout the years. We went to a retirement for a brigadier general who is the in charge of all the National Guard for the United States. Like six chaplains, I should say. He just retired. We went to college together. He was to. I think he was a freshman when I was a junior. And I remember the first time I told him, I said, get in for classes, bite, because it's not as bad as his bark, you know? So he says, just relax. He's a human being like everybody else. Yeah.

SPRAGUE: Any involvement with, veterans organizations?

BUEHLER: I'm very active in the Veterans of Foreign Wars. I feel it's a privilege, because I've known a lot of my relatives were members of it. And I also just recently joined the American Legion about two years ago. I felt it was time to do that, too. I'm a but I'm a, post commander right now for my VFW post 1393 in West Bend. And I'm also a district commander of 20 posts. Mine is included in one of those in the state here. Sixth district. We're having our challenges, too. As the veteran population ages and there's this big gap in veterans, there's not a lot to recruit from anymore. So our organizations are shrinking.

SPRAGUE: They're coming up on, Memorial Day. Any thoughts on Memorial Day?

BUEHLER: It's a solemn moment. I had the privilege to be a guest speaker at, City of West Bend for Memorial Days, and I think I did it in 2001 and 2011. It's it's a solemn day. I participate whenever I can every year in the memorial services. I think it's. What's frustrating for me, though, is that people like to thank me for my service on Memorial Day and saying, that's not what this day is about. That's what Veterans Day is for. This is a day to thank the the, the families who've lost their loved ones in service to our country. Those are the ones you should be at least thanking or recognizing.

SPRAGUE: What do you think, your life would be like if you hadn't served in the military?

BUEHLER: I don't know. I don't know, but I tell you, it's it's shaped who I am. My dad was very proud of me. He served overseas in Salzburg, Austria, under the occupation force in Austria after the Korean War. So he was right at the tail end of the Korean War, and he served over there. He was very proud of me. He was amazed that he had a son that became a colonel. And people are still amazed that I am.

SPRAGUE: What motivated you to do this interview?

BUEHLER: I thought it would be a neat idea to leave some kind of a record behind. I mean, I've gotten books with all my stuff and written writing, but just the personal interview I thought was a neat way to share.

SPRAGUE: Did we miss anything you'd like to cover?

BUEHLER: I can't think of anything else. All I can say, it was a privilege. An honor to serve.

SPRAGUE: Okay. Well, from one veteran to another. Thank you for your service.

BUEHLER: You're welcome.

SPRAGUE: This concludes the interview.

[Interview Ends]