The Army told Paul Benfield he was colorblind. That left him two job options: mortician, or truck driver.
So he enlisted as a human resources clerk instead. On purpose. Because the human resources clerk is the person who files the transfer paperwork.
Retired US Army Major Paul Benfield served 21 years, from a broke peacetime Army in 1997 to the Pentagon in 2018. He enlisted, went to war, came back, commissioned as an officer, and did it all again. He was in a hangar in Hungary on September 11th, 2001, five days after his first daughter was born. He took an RPG to his truck in Fallujah. He raided the wrong house in Baghdad. And he is one of the few people who can tell you honestly what changed across the entire Global War on Terror, because he saw it from the bottom and from the top.
Michael Schwartz has known him since high school. They were next door neighbors. Michael tried to talk him out of enlisting, and says so on the record.
This is not a special operations highlight reel. It is a career, start to finish, told by a friend.
Chapters:
0:00 Cold open
2:28 Why this interview, 25 years after 9/11
5:33 Meet retired US Army Major Paul Benfield
6:36 The peacetime Army: saying "bang bang" because there was no money for blanks
11:03 He went to Airborne School before he ever joined the Army
13:33 Colorblind: your choices are mortician or truck driver
16:11 The loophole: enlist as the clerk who files the paperwork
16:56 Korea, the 82nd, and the plan backfiring
18:20 The phone call from JSOC, February 2001
19:58 What JSOC was actually doing before 9/11
26:51 September 11th: a hangar in Hungary and a colonel who thought it was a drill
31:16 Tracking casualties, and six hours total in Afghanistan
35:41 "Done by Christmas," and the whack-a-mole that followed
38:02 Afghan small arms: AKs, PKMs, and a British Enfield
42:47 Becoming an officer, and curing his own colorblindness
48:15 What "human resources" means at a tier one unit
52:23 M16 to M4: the rail system that changed everything
55:22 Ranger, Green Beret, Delta: who is who
1:00:29 Why nobody can tell you how Delta picks
1:04:30 Hollywood and the broken veteran myth
1:09:22 Ranger School, and the vendetta that backfired
1:15:50 Sadr City during the surge
1:20:52 The RPG that hit his truck and did not go off
1:29:45 "We shot him on purpose. He was just the wrong guy."
1:38:19 Two definitions of corruption
1:41:15 Kabul falling
1:44:07 1997 to 2018: what actually changed
1:45:38 Twenty one years, four kids, and a marriage that survived it
1:49:33 "I told him it was the stupidest idea. I was wrong."
1:51:29 Is the war on terror even over?
If you served, if you have a kid thinking about enlisting, or if you have only ever seen this war through a movie, this one is worth your time.
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What really separates Rangers, Green Berets, and Delta Force?
127 views 10 hours ago