Hi everybody and welcome to another Robcast and I am thrilled to have with me Corey Townsend and

Corey welcome. Hey, thanks for having me glad to be here. It's so

That's so great. I met Corey at Stratton Glazes apartment. It was like a year ago and

Corey told me that he had served as a soldier in Iraq in

Fallujah and we just had like a really brief conversation and I remember thinking at the time if I ever got a

podcast I

Would interview that guy just on the few minutes we had to talk

Because as a former soldier and the thing the issues that you were exploring I was like so many I need to learn from him and

So all my Robcast friends

Prepare yourself because we're gonna go in some really interesting places and I'm so excited because I've only heard little glimpses of Corey's story so

How did you end up a soldier? Maybe we should just start there. Yeah

In high school, I mean, I guess it starts even way before then

I grew up in a family that was

Sort of a broken home with parents that were not always around

Partly because the divorce partly because of other things but

so we

Were not wealthy by any means we were actually struggling really hard

I have a mother who

Worked her her ass off to provide for my brother and sister and I and she did a great job

But it's sort of like a lot of people that go into the military and I was from very humble beginnings

struggling and poverty and

So I worked full-time starting when I was 16 at a full-time job in high school

...