You have now entered Free Range American Podcast, presented by black rifle coffee.com.

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Hi.

Welcome back.

Maybe back. I don't know. Are they back? Did they come back? Hopefully they came back to another one of our shows. Special guest today in town from Washington State. Mr. John Wayne. You might recognize him. No, not the John Wayne. You're thinking of. Mr. John Wayne Troxel. The third SEAC? Third senior

enlisted advisor of the chairman. Highest enlisted rank ever achieved. So you got to the last level.

Yes. Yeah. I reached my level of competency. You know, that Peter principal thing.

Well, I mean, they always, I've always heard there's no E10.

This is kind of E10.

Yeah, you know, and that's kind of a, that's kind of a myth because when you look at the

CAC and all the service senior enlisted, because of incentive pays you get for those

positions, you're making about a thousand more dollars a month than the average E9.

So in reality, you are an E10, even though there's no such animal as an E10.

Well, we can just start saying, well, actually, well, that's crazy.

You've had quite the career.

I mean, we can start where you put those parachute wings to use.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was a long time ago, 1984. I graduated from Airborne School. I joined the Army,

not really knowing what I wanted to do. And when I got in the Army, all of a sudden I saw these guys running around with these maroon berets and these jump wings or these black berets at the time.

You know, where did you go to Basie?

Fort Knox, Kentucky in September of 1982.

And then I was stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas in the Third Armored Calvary Regiment,

and a unit from the 82nd was visiting or training. And we were kind of sponsoring them.

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