What do you think those dead friends of yours would like the version of you that you've become to be honest like you think you're doing that many service by behaving this way?

The answer is obviously no.

Let's go.

Welcome to.

Welcome to Citizen, we've got a special guest today. Chris Van Zant, you are a former tier 1 operator and now you kind of just hang out right? Really, just hang out all the time. That's what I do.

Well, let's get into some of this stuff. So, um, I always ask this question of anybody that was in the

military. What made you decide to to join up? Because I think you got in before 9-11, right?

I did, yeah, 1995, straight out of high school.

Yeah, my answer, I mean, it's pretty simple.

I'm not unlike a lot of folks.

I think I needed some structure.

I wanted the challenge of the military.

I thought it had a lot of things that were very appealing to me.

But kind of more importantly was I grew up with two grandfathers at World War II vets and I was the youngest of all the

grandchildren and my grandfather on my mom's side I kind of got him at a time of

his life he was older and he actually started to share some stories from World War II and when he talked

about it whether he was telling a good story or a bad story or a sad story or a happy story he sort of

always talked about his time in the service with such reverence.

And so my only frame of reference about the military was from his combat time in World War II

and the fact that he spoke so highly of it and all the people that he was involved with and his mates, I think it just appealed to me and it stuck with me and it's probably the major reason why I joined.

Yeah, there's a, um, I think a big part of, you know, uh, coping I guess with all the all the sacrifice and stress

over the time is knowing that what you did was worthwhile and that's been a bit of a

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