Full Transcript is Below:
– Welcome into our NFM Salute for the month of July, 2022. I’m NFM TV’s Greg Sher. Special Forces Sergeant First Class Joe Dulmage has seen and learned a lot in his 19 plus years of protecting our freedoms, including many stints overseas during some of the most ferocious fighting in our nation’s history. Joe, lots to unpack as we chronicle your fascinating military and personal journey. Thanks for being with us and thank you for your service.
– Thanks for having me, Greg. This is great, I feel like Mike Farrell.
– [Greg] Ha! So, we should just get it all on the table right now. You’re either the lesser or better half, depending on who’s speaking of Karen Dulmage who is one of the most fabulous people and producers in the mortgage industry. In fact, we featured her, you can see right now, as our top producer in October of 2020. And so, this is the first time we’ve ever had a top producer and a NFM Salute in the same family. So, it makes this even that much more special. I’m in awe of you and your credentials. I just wanna get into Special Forces right off the bat. You’re a Green Beret. So, what does that mean?
– The training program for me, the pipeline was actually right around two years and that includes a collective group training. So, you’re learning your basic tactics. Once you pass that you go into some individualized training. So, my role was the medic, so I went to medical training. And we primarily train for an unconventional warfare environment, which is very complex, but essentially what it means is that we’re training to go to another country, and we want the ones that we’re training, who are more friendly to the United States to be in power. So, Afghanistan is a perfect example where we trained foreign nationals to fight against, in this case, an insurgency. Another thing I guess is that we have to have a language capability. Each group that is in special forces is assigned to a region of the world. My group was seventh group, so we were responsible for South America. And so, we had to learn Spanish.
– If you’re a layman and you don’t know what medics do, you think, oh, you’re just sitting in the tent waiting for somebody to get hurt. But that’s not anywhere near the fact. You are in the heat of things with your teammates. Tell us about that.
– Ideally, you’d have a 12-man team. There’s a couple leadership positions. There’s an intel position. There’s two weapons guys, two engineers, two medics and two communications guys. And you all come together to make up this team. So essentially, everyone on the team has a role, like a combat role. I’m a medic and hopefully my expertise doesn’t need to be used on the battlefield, but we’re primarily combatants, I guess you could say.
– Because the Navy SEALs, there’s so much advertising around it and there’s so many videos that are made about it, and these impossible camps where only a very small amount of people pass. Is the training to be a Green Beret as arduous, or is it different? Do you have to be a swimmer, for instance?
– Not really, you have to be able to swim but you don’t have to be proficient at that level. Now, there are specialties within Special Forces that do require that capability. I would say the big difference with Special Forces and SEALs, we have a little bit more diverse set of missions. So when you think of Navy SEALs, you primarily think of direct action, hitting the target, leaving. We have that mission as well within Special Forces, but we also have a number of other missions. So, it ranges anywhere from, like special reconnaissance, building up foreign nation’s military. Sometimes it’s a little bit more strategic.
– I know you know how to jump out of airplanes. Let’s take a look right now at you jumping out of an airplane. Approximately how many feet in the air were you when you jumped out of that plane?
– [Joe] That’s about 13,000 right there. So, you’re watching my first combat equipment jump in the school. A little wobbly on the exit but I’m still here to talk about it, so it’s a success.
– You rose up the ranks to become a Sergeant First Class. Can you tell us what you learned from leading men?
– I learned a lot about creating a culture for a team. So, just kinda being on the same operating picture, trying to get all the guys to buy into the same essential goals that we all have. Teams have their own personalities and it’s important to maintain that culture and build it.
– Joe, what’s the biggest challenge of serving in a combat zone?
– Obviously, you’re away from your family. You’re in a typically pretty stressful environment. The thing about it is, it’s kind of counterintuitive. But when you’re gone, I mean, that’s what you’re training for, you’re getting in the game essentially, as opposed to just practicing all the time. But then, even coming home and just kinda reacclimating to normal life, that’s a bit of a challenge.
– And I know that you wanted to even elaborate more on the sacrifices that all military spouses have to endure.
– Sure, 70 or 80% of guys in this profession get divorced. It’s a big challenge for families being back home. They have kids, they have lives, they have everything that they gotta take care of while we’re gone. So, I would say the families definitely have the big challenge.
– Joe, your resume is so stacked with various things that I have not even had a chance to mention that you are a Purple Heart recipient.
– Uh-hmm.
– Why did you receive that?
– I was just in the vicinity of a mortar round that got fired over into our camp. So, I was actually pretty lucky about that one, I was standing behind a generator. I just got hit in the leg with some shrapnel. I mean, I’m no worse for the wear from it, I don’t think. But if the generator wasn’t there, I might be telling a little different story.
– I wanna go backwards just for a minute. to talk about what led you into serving in the first place. So, your grandfather, your great uncle, your uncle, in fact, your great uncle, he fought in World War II and was actually killed in Normandy. How much of a role did all of that have to do with you wanting to serve?
– Well, I think it planted the seed really. My grandpa has a cool story too. He was fighting in the Pacific, he was in the Navy. He was actually shot down. Their plane landed in the water. They were in there for eight hours in a life raft, just the three of ’em. Got picked up from friendly forces, fortunately. Yeah, so he’s got a really cool story himself. Yeah, like you said, my great uncle, he was in the U.S. Army Air Corps and he was shot down over Normandy. So, that definitely planted the seed.
– Well, you’ve got retirement coming up and that’s a pretty big deal. What are you gonna do?
– I’m applying for a PA school now. I also want to teach self-defense here, in and around the Pinehurst area.
– The charities that you have chosen to earmark the $2,500 that we are going to donate. It’s actually two of them. One of them is Habitat for Humanity there in Moore County, North Carolina. And then also, the Rick Herrema Foundation, supporting military families outside of Fort Bragg. Why these two charities?
– The Habitat for Humanity, they’re doing amazing things here in Moore County. They’re working to provide affordable housing for those in need here. Rick Herrema was an SF soldier who was killed in Iraq in ’06. He was a friend of mine and a buddy started the foundation. And essentially what it is is they’re trying to provide family bonding, strengthening activities that people can do that once they get home from deployments. So yeah, I just wanna recognize those two.
– Well, you got it, we’ll be happy to cut checks to both of those. Before we let you go, we talked about Mike Farrell in the beginning and we have been taking a poll during this interview to see who the audience thinks is better looking.
– Oh, great!
– [Greg] We’re gonna see who the audience selected. Amazing, 99% of the population thinks you are better looking than Mike Farrell. Congratulations! You’ve accomplished it all now.
– Suck on that one Mike .
– Joe, thank you so much for your time and for your service. I really appreciate it so much.
– All right, thanks Greg, it was a great time talking to you, appreciate it.
– Sergeant First Class, Joe Dulmage, our NFM Salute for the month of July, 2022. I’m NFM TV’s Greg Sher. We’ll see you next time.