Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling Knows Leadership… And When It’s Lacking
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What was Lieutenant General Hertling's experience during his first combat deployment?
Home to the Rachel Maddow Show, Morning Joe, The Briefing with Jen Psaki, and more voices you know and trust. MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world. Learn more at ms.now. How do you lead? It's just not a formal position where you live in a special house with a parking spot outside and a bunch of security agents. You know, to truly lead, you have to exhibit character. You have to have emotions that bring you into connecting. I can't lead you unless I know what motivates you. So when you don't have those kinds of intellectual curiosities, I don't understand how someone who's in a formal position can call themselves a leader when their followers are not connecting those dots. Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of The Best People Podcast.
Sometimes the universe conspires to put the perfect person in this chair at the perfect moment. This is one of those weeks. If I Don't Return is not just a book, it's a way to get through the moment in which we're living, a moment in which we're covering a new war in the Middle East, a moment in which we ask every day if our leaders are deserving of the people They're leading, including the ones that voted for them. It's also a moment, though, where everyone should understand what it means when a president sends the country to war, takes the country to war and sends the men and women of our military into battle.
How does Lieutenant General Hertling define true leadership?
It is an honor to have Lieutenant General Mark Erling here with your new book, If I Don't Return. Thank you so much for being here. It's a pleasure. And those are very kind words, Nicole. Thank you so much. I feel like we get to do a version of the best people concept every time you're on the TV show. So thank you so much for the extended opportunity to talk to you here. I'm a little bit intimidated. You've had some unbelievable people on this podcast. Someone asked me what the idea, the concept is behind the best people. And it's this idea that we're fighting to protect our democracy. And these are the people we're fighting alongside. I mean, I never like to thoughtlessly borrow from fighters who've done real fighting for our country.
But does that resonate with you? It does. It does. But the other thing that I found interesting about listening and viewing your podcast is how many different kinds of people you have, which is, you know, when you asked me to do it, I was like, oh, wow, that's pretty cool because I hadn't seen another military person on here. We haven't had one. So that's just nice the way you're trying to diversify. I truly believe that the Trump movement is autocratic in nature. And to go study these moments, the democracy side only prevails when it comes from the more diverse sort of swath of society. And so the idea that artists and scholars and actors and politicians and military leaders are all on the pro-democracy side is the piece of it that makes me confident democracy will win.
Agree. Agree. Some strategery in there. Yeah, something like that. Well, speaking of, the journal is about your deployment and it starts with a really sobering and sort of gripping concept. Explain. Yeah, the book transformed from an original journal that I wrote back in 1990 and 1991 when we were notified through Armed Forces Network and CNN on our little house in Germany that that our unit was going to war and it was the first time we knew that was going to happen when the defense director cheney announced that the entire seventh corps was going to reinforce the 82nd airborne in iraq in 1991. so we scrambled around and and did all sorts of things the night we were told this and the next day we we put together very quickly and attended an intelligence briefing at our division headquarters the first armor division
And in that briefing, the statement was made, here's what we think we're going to do. The cavalry squadron, which I was the operations officer for, is going to be out front of the division by about 20 kilometers looking for the Republican Guard. That's going to be your mission. So we anticipate your unit taking about 50% casualties.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What was Lieutenant General Hertling's experience during his first combat deployment?
0:00–1:29
2
How does Lieutenant General Hertling define true leadership?
1:29–16:29
3
What inspired Lieutenant General Hertling to keep a wartime journal?
16:29–25:29
4
What lessons did Lieutenant General Hertling aim to teach his sons through his journal?
25:29–56:33
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