My Story: Lt. Ken Harbaugh

Ken Harbaugh:

Hi, it’s Ken Harbaugh, Host of Warriors in Their Own Words. I’ve done well over 100 episodes of this show, bringing you interviews with veterans from WWII all the way through modern day conflicts. I even interviewed my own Dad, who served as a Phantom pilot in Vietnam. But I realized something recently – I’ve never shared my own story of service. Like a lot of vets, I am sometimes reluctant to talk about certain aspects of it, but I still think it is important to preserve these stories. It’s why we do this. So today, we’re going to change the format, just a bit. I’ll be talking about my time in uniform, but I can’t exactly interview myself. So I’ve asked my good friend, David Bellavia, to sit in as host. When I think about all the guests we’ve had on Warriors In Their Own Words, there are few I respect more than David. He is the only surviving Medal of Honor recipient from the Iraq War, and has an incredible ability to talk to people from any walk of life. Honestly, I barely feel worthy of being interviewed by him. He is the true embodiment of the values this show tries to convey. I am lucky to be his friend, and deeply honored that he agreed to own the mic for this interview.

One more thing. These shows normally feature just the voice of the subject, the person being interviewed. But I think you’ll agree that there are few people alive whose voice belongs on a show like this more than David Bellavia, so today you’ll be hearing both sides of the conversation.

David, over to you.

David Bellavia:

Hey, thank you for that, Ken. I appreciate it. As absurd as it sounds, let's start at the top and tell us your name, your rank, and your date of service.

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

Sure. Ken Harbaugh. I got out as an O3, which in the Navy is a lieutenant. I know that might be confusing for you as an army guy. And I was in from '96, joined straight out of college and got out in '05 and went back to school.

David Bellavia:

And what was the reason for you joining the Navy?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

It was a youthful, some might say naive kind of patriotism. I grew up in a military family. My dad was an F-4 pilot. My brother a couple of years ahead of me was on his way to becoming an F-16 pilot in the Air Force, and I was just goofing off. I was a college kid having way too much fun and it was at some point studying abroad actually, when I looked at my life and realized I had done really nothing to deserve the privileges I was enjoying, and literally the first thing I did when I got back to the states was walk into a recruiter's office. I will say, and maybe we'll talk about this later, but my understanding of patriotism and love of country and what it requires has matured a lot since then. But that's why I joined and I'm very glad that I did and proud of my service.

David Bellavia:

So '96, 5 years before September 11th, right? You've got this whole generation that joints because of 9/11. What was the threat on the horizon that you guys were training for day in and day out in the mid-nineties?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

So '96, I went in to be a pilot and nothing was really happening. My brother was going through Air Force pilot training to be a fighter pilot. I looked at the career he was going to have and it seemed like 99% of his flight hours were going to be training. I was looking at my buddies going out to fly fighters on carriers. 99% of their flight hours were going to be training. There were only a few platforms that seemed like they were doing real world ops all the time, and one of them was the EP-3. Speaking of the threat, the main mission of the EP-3 was to gather intel against strategic adversaries. So we were flying missions off of China and North Korea and Russia building essentially pictures of their order of battle, what they had, how their defenses looked, and that up until 9/11 was what the world looked like to us just preparing some future doomsday scenario, not really thinking about heat of battle moments at all, although we had some tenses encounters with Chinese fighters, but that's what we were preparing for was mostly intel collection.

David Bellavia:

Now, did you get a choice to pick what platform you wanted? Were you drafted into the EP-3? What was it about... EP-3 sounds like a conference in Vegas every year where we test out the new iPhone. So what was it about the EP-3 that you were like, "This is mine. I want this"?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

It is not a very sexy aircraft. It has been described as a giant target, but I actually graduated at the top of my advanced pilot training course and that gave me my pick of squadrons. I looked at that intel mission and I thought, "I want to be doing something where I am forward deployed, where I'm doing something that matters every day. I'm not just practicing to do something that might matter one day." And so I put EP-3 at the top of my list. It's what I wanted to do because of the mission, not because of the flying. The flying 99% of the time was pretty damn boring. There were moments of, what's that phrase, sheer boredom punctuated by moments of utter terror, but 99% of it was just drilling holes in the sky. But I picked it. I had my choice. I picked the EP-3 because of that real world mission.

David Bellavia:

How do you define deployments when you're a pilot? You could be doing 45 different sorties that take you everywhere else, but is that deployment where you're forward deployed, where you're taking off from, where you're landing? Or do you consider the deployment, "I was eavesdropping on North Korea, China, Russia." Where have you been? What have you done and how do you determine that when you're a pilot?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

I guess we would consider the deployment where you're forward deployed from the base that you're flying out of.

David Bellavia:

Got it.

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

And we had bases set up all over the world. One of the neat things about the EP-3 is that it could actually operate out of relatively unprepared bases as well. So we weren't always at an established American air base or naval air station somewhere in the world. Sometimes we're flying out of much more remote places. And we would go out. A deployment would typically last six weeks, could last much longer, but we would deploy out to usually a established Air Force base somewhere in the world where we needed that asset and we would fly missions almost every day out of there unless the plane broke. And that happened a lot. But one of the cool things about being a naval aviator is that you're responsible for that too. The contrast with the Air Force pilots in my family where all they cared about was flying was pretty stark because in the Navy you got to lead your division or your maintenance team, whatever collateral duty they give you. That is almost as an important part of your job as flying the aircraft itself.

David Bellavia:

Your mission is to essentially collect information. Are you collecting phone calls, electronic data? What is it that you would say is the primary mission when you're up in the sky?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

Yeah, so the mission differed and got to be a little bit careful here for probably obvious reasons, but collecting signals intelligence and you can infer what that means. Can't talk about specifically what's in the back of the plane, but we're basically soaking up electrons and sending that product back to three-letter agencies in the US to help build a picture for our war fighters. That's what we did in peacetime. That was what I was describing earlier, thinking about China and Russia and North Korea and making sure we understood what they had and how we should prepare to take them on. Obviously in wartime after 9/11, the mission changed pretty dramatically, and in that case, you have a more tactical mission. In some cases you're helping people on the ground. You're not just preparing for some future scenario, you're in the scenario.

David Bellavia:

And so obviously let's break this into two pieces then. The day-to-day, you're deployed and you're checking out what China, Russia, and North Korea are doing. Do you have a schedule? Do you have a shift? Do you waking up doing PT, eating chow, and then getting in a bird, or is this just when you're needed?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

So during normal ops, there is a... It's amazing how choreographed this is. There is a schedule that is planned out and it brings together different branches and different SIGINT units, SRO, surveillance and recon units, and it puts them all together in this symphony of intelligence so that you're never lacking eyes in the sky. You always have that coverage of the target. Way above my pay grade, but I caught glimpses of the planning that went into providing this situational awareness for our commanders 24/7, and it's the thing that still awes me about what our military is doing every day that we don't even see. Those people on watch around the world, this whole infrastructure to provide not just our commanders, but our political leaders, the information they need to make some of the toughest decisions in the world, and sometimes it just happens like clockwork.

For most of my time in the military, most of my deployments, I was just a cog in that machine. I was a gear in that clock, and it was very regimented. We ended up getting a lot of those, we call them three for fives, a 3:00 AM briefing for a 5:00 AM takeoff. We would fly for up to 12 hours. We had a lot of endurance in that plane, and then we would come back, debrief, write our report and try to get some rest.

David Bellavia:

That's crazy. When I talk to the pilots, it's interesting because when you're on the ground, there's a huge difference in tempo between a Balkan deployment, a peacekeeping deployment, and a combat deployment. And then when you talk to guys like you, because anything can happen up there, theoretically you could have a MiG, you could be shot at, you could... Anything could happen on a day-to-day basis, they're always locked into that. As soon as I'm in the air, I'm in Indian country, as soon as I'm out there, I'm in hostility. And the mindset over time, it's like when the war on terror hits, a lot of us had to reprogram, retrain, get ready for war, and so many of our peers that... I wouldn't know anything. I've never been near North Korea, China, Russia. I was shooting at Fort Benning, Georgia at popup targets. So was it easier to transition into a combat state when the Global War on Terror started?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

I think probably relative to folks like you, even though our fight was much easier, it was very different. The fact that in aviation, you're always thinking about things that can kill you every time you take off. And in fact, in my experience, the most dangerous moments I had in the cockpit in the air were not from getting shot at, but it was from things like weather, which doesn't care about peace time or wartime. When you look at the military, writ large military aviation, the vast majority of our incidents are mishaps or Class A Mishaps where an asset is destroyed or somebody loses their life, are not from shoot-downs or hostile fire, they're from things like weather or parts breaking or pilot error. So in that sense, yeah, the missions after 9/11 weren't totally different from the missions before 9/11 in a way that for you, I'm sure a mission in Iraq was very different than shooting pop-up targets at Benning.

David Bellavia:

Right. And so that whole experience of you get a briefing at 3:00, you're wheels up at five and you're in the air for 12 hours. The most Stoic disciplined person in the world can't be locked in for 12 straight hours. What is that experience like of just in the air continuously for 12 hours? That's crazy.

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

That's a great question. And one of the best things about the EP-3, the other reason I went that route in fact instead of the fighter single-seat route was that we had a crew, and usually amazing crews. By the time I was a pilot and commander, a mission commander, sit in left seat, I had a copilot in my right seat. I had a backup pilot for those long missions. So we had three pilots and two flight engineers. The flight engineers would sit right between us, slightly elevated, so they're looking over our shoulders and they ran all the systems. And you get to be pretty tight with a team like that, especially when you're in the suck together, as they say. When you're waking up that early, when you're flying those kinds of missions, you bond in a pretty cool way. That I think alleviated some of the drudgery of those 12-hour missions. But another thing is that the EP-3 was a strategic asset, so for some of our targets, we couldn't position very close to them. They didn't want an EP-3 in a country where it could be spied on or something like that. So sometimes our transits to the target just getting there was like four and a half hours, just four and a half hours of flying over ocean to be able to actually do the job. That sucked.

David Bellavia:

What's the continuity of that crew? How long are you guys together?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

You're together for the whole deployment and if a crew does really well together, there are ways that you can keep going out with those same crew members deployment after deployment. But, and I think this is true across the services, we don't keep people in units for very long. My operational unit, I was there for less than three years, so people are always cycling out and new people are coming in. That is probably the most disruptive thing. You get a senior mission commander who does maybe like one or two deployments and then they're off to the training squadron or something like that.

David Bellavia:

What kind of a domestic flyer are you today? Are you one of those obnoxious guys that is the backseat pilot? Are you calm and cool and this is just close my eyes, read a book, or are you checking out what's going on outside and the weather and the wings and everything else?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

I hate flying commercial. I hate flying commercial. A lot of my buddies actually fly commercial. They're upfront because that's how they've turned their military career into a living. It's probably much different for them, but being in the back, just that loss of control, I never used to have a problem flying commercial. Now every little pop or squeak or bang, I sometimes imagine the worst case scenario. That said, obviously commercial flying in the US is probably the safest way to get anywhere, so.

David Bellavia:

The disclaimer. Right, yeah. To all my friends out there, the good people at American, United, Delta. Yeah, no.

Of the things that you experienced in your military career, what's the one thing that stands out as, "I never expected myself-" I don't know if you call yourself Ken Harbaugh in your own soliloquy, but what was the thing that stood out and said, "Ken, I cannot believe you're this guy. I can't believe you've done this. This is the most shocking thing and here you are and you're doing it." What was it?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

There were a couple of moments like that. The first time I soloed was an incredible experience and a level of sensory input and sensation that I think few people ever experience in their lifetimes because every other time I had gone up, up until that point, I had an instructor usually behind me and just the psychological reassurance of that changes how you perceive the whole world. But the first time I took a T-34 up in the air by myself, it sounded different, totally different. It felt different. It smelled different. It looked different. Every little thing was... I was just... Every sense I had was on overload and that... I think every pilot who's soloed that way can relate to their first experience of that.

As a more seasoned pilot when I became a mission commander, there were moments after tough missions, especially missions beset by mechanical problems and weather challenges. When you would get the plane back and you would realize that you hadn't really processed any of that, you were just... It's a terrible analogy, but you were an autopilot the whole time. And it's not until you stop the plane, the chocks are under the tires and you realize that you're going to be fine, the crew's going to be fine, and there's just this incredible wave of relief that washes over you. I never cried in the cockpit, but there were some pilots who would. I didn't hold that against them, but that incredible release of tension after landing in a sandstorm in the desert or something like that, it's something I'll never forget.

David Bellavia:

Just recently this occurred to me, and it's embarrassing to say this, but I think America's so focused when they think of war as guy with the rifle boots on the ground, the video games are that way, the movies are, we have the GoPro images of people running around. The pilot experience is so outside of understanding of what our people are doing every single day on our behalf. And the idea that if something were to happen and you were like you five o'clock in the morning 12 hours away, you're 12 hours from an aid station, or you're five hours into the mission and seven hours to the aid station, you're out in the middle of nowhere and you're alone out there in the great frontier. We don't have those images, we don't have those stories. We just assume that you land, you take off, everything's the way it is. That first moment when you felt fear, mechanical, enemy, but it's registering and now you're not the third guy, you're not the fourth guy, you're not the assistant, you're the guy. What is it that you went to get through that?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

Yeah, that's a great observation because even most pilots don't experience the isolation that these long range recon crews do. People used to ask me, when you're flying a patrol, collecting intel off of North Korea or China or something like that. What happens if they come after you? What's the backup plan? What's the alert? And the answer is that there isn't one. It's basically your own wits. And there were moments where we'd get intercepted and we'd have to think, "How far do we want to push this?" Pre-9/11, it was always a game of cat and mouse, especially with the Chinese interceptors. And those were some…

Well, I'm going to give a little bit of a history lesson here. Before April 1st of 2001, it was a playful cat-and-mouse game. The Chinese would come up and intercept us with their F-8s or their long range fighters, and there wasn't really any sense that they were going to shoot us down. They were just going to harass us, try to push us away from their country. And it was almost a good-natured contest, a rivalry between crews and pilots that respected each other's profession. And they would get pretty close and it would get scary at times, but it never seemed personal. On April 1st of 2001, buddy of mine was flying an EP-3 from my squadron and one of these Chinese fighter planes collided with them and the plane crash-landed on a Chinese airfield, Heinan Island, and it became a massive international incident. You can google it to find out how it all unfolded. I guess the top bullet is that we got our crew back, but after that it wasn't fun anymore. After that, it wasn't a good-natured contest of flying skills between the top pilots of two rival countries. It was like, who's going to screw up first and result in another international incident? Or who's going to pull a trigger? Are these guys going to shoot us down on the next intercept? And we had one mission in particular where we really thought that was close to happening. And I had a couple of my crew members who... The first time I saw PTSD up close was during one of those missions.

David Bellavia:

Tell me about the mission, if you could. What happened?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

Yeah, there's a flight profile we were flying. This was shortly after we got that air crew back from China, and I was actually on the alert crew flying the first missions off of China after PR32 that the EP-3 that collided with the Chinese fighter went down. So we were on patrol, I was flying those missions. Eventually we got the crew back, two of the crew members wound up on my crew because of their special skills and we needed them in the air, and I didn't really appreciate what they had gone through in that aircraft that barely survived. But if I can paint a picture over audio, it might be hard to do, but when the Chinese fighter hit him, it knocked off the nose cone. It separated some of the antennas that wrapped around the control surfaces, but most dramatically the plane went into a 60 degree nose down inverted dive and was barely controllable. So if you're flying with your hand level, turn your hand upside down so the palm is facing up, point it towards the ground and you're screaming towards the ground at over 10,000 feet of descent per minute. The controls are pegged, you have no idea how fast you're descending, you're upside down, you can't hear anything. Wind is blowing through the airplane and you all think you're going to die. And by the grace of God and some pretty incredible flying, they didn't, they survived. But that clearly leaves its mark. That experience. It's almost the definition of PTSD. I don't have the textbook definition in front of me, but part of it is you've experienced or thought you were going to die or someone very close to you was going to die and it changes your brain's wiring.

I had a couple of those crew members on one of my missions. Not too long after that we had an intercept. We didn't have a collision, we weren't screaming towards the ground, but it was close enough and tense enough that one of those crew members just froze up. I won't embarrass the person except to say that it was clearly the effects of PTSD, the inability to do his job, just huddled in a ball. It took me a while to realize just how incapacitated this person was from severe PTSD and thinking it was going to happen again. I've had a different attitude towards PTSD ever since. But moments like that I think brought home the seriousness of what we're doing.

David Bellavia:

What is that? Because I think anyone who experiences something for the first time, you've got the George Patton approach where you emasculate someone for being a human being and scared. And then you have the approach that you obviously care about these people. They're not just sailors, they're not just airmen, they're people. But you have a mission to do. And so it's one thing to talk about this over a cup of coffee. It's another thing when it's still ongoing, when the threat is still there. So what did you do and what are the lessons that you learned from that day?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

Yeah, there were other situations where I metaphorically grabbed people by the lapels and said, "We got to pull ourselves together. We got to do this." In this case, I didn't do that. First of all, I was upfront pilot in command and I was just getting these reports over the radio like, "Hey, seamen so-and-so is out. We are not going to be able to man this station." And I had enough things to worry about upfront with this fighter that's right next to us that I was dealing with that it. Was mostly the aftermath of that incident where I really thought about just how PTSD changes someone. In that moment though, I was dealing with a Chinese F-8 on my wing.

David Bellavia:

What is the actual protocol in that circumstance? Obviously you have a mission to do, but you can try to be maverick and try to be cool, but you can also end up flying to the earth at 9.8 meters per second. So what is going through your head and then what are your choices?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

It's a great question. I tried to maintain some strategic awareness and tried to think about not just the orders we had, but the bigger picture and what it would mean if we had another incident. But in terms of protocol, the MO of the US Navy is to maintain open sea lanes and right of navigation. And if we are in international airspace and a Chinese fighter is telling us that we are not, our directive, it's not a hard and fast order, but our directive is to hold the course, maintain international law, hold your ground as it were, and make the point that we're not going to be bullied even though you're the ones with all the guns and we have none. We're doing something entirely legal within the bounds of international law and we're not going to fold just because you're trying to intimidate us. That said, you don't want an international incident. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor here, and there are one or two missions where I'm like, "It's not worth it. We're going to alter our course." It was often sometimes just a judgment call.

David Bellavia:

But the one advantage you have is range, and so they can't continue to harass you in perpetuity. At some point they're going to have to go back home and do their thing. But what are some of the things that can happen when someone is in a jet flying wing to wing or trying to harass you, overtop you, under you? I think back to that September 11th story when the C-130 was given the order to basically slam into an airliner if it didn't respond. And I'm thinking, I don't even know what that's all about. What happens to two planes in the air that even touch? What's going through your head and what are the things that could happen when you're harassing an EP-3 with a jet fighter?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

It's not good. I think the Hainan Island incident, that April 1st, 2001 incident is a great example because-

David Bellavia:

Yeah. Object lesson right there.

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

It sure is because that EP-3 barely made it to the ground. The F-8 that collided with it did not. The pilot of that F-8, Wang Wei was his name, they never found him. The South Pacific is a big open expansive of water, and even if you do get out, and apparently some of my buddies saw his shoot, they never found him. It is very likely that if you have an accident somewhere like that, you're a goner. Now, we do have some tools for survival and being found, but I wouldn't bet my life on them.

David Bellavia:

What would you classify as the best thing about your service?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

The best thing was the camaraderie, was flying a crewed aircraft, and if I had to boil it down to moments, it would be those early flights you're taking off. If it's the middle of summer, the sun's just beginning to brighten the horizon. And you take off and as you're getting up to altitude, you see it come over the horizon and it's just a magical moment. The plane is making that dull thrumming sound. You've got people that you would give your life for around you, and it's just the most beautiful setting you can imagine. Taking off into the sunrise rise was a pretty cool experience and a lot of those experiences you only really appreciate years later realizing that you'll never do anything like that again.

David Bellavia:

And so if that's the best, the worst is what, the worst experiences of your service?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

The worst experiences, honestly, the worst was making the decision to get out and I got out in '05 in the middle of two wars, Iraq is going on, Afghanistan is going on. I had a two-week-old daughter at home and I made... The toughest career decision of my life was getting out when better men than I, better people than I stayed in. I know I did what was right for my family, but it is a heavy and guilt-laden moment making that decision to leave your buddies behind and go do something safe. That was hard.

David Bellavia:

And walk me through what that pressure is like because it's all about obligation and as a husband, as a father, that is I think the thing that most civilians can really gravitate to and understand, but you have this other side of your obligation, which is the people you care about, the unit, the Navy, the country, that wrestling back and forth. How long does a decision like that take to make?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

It took me months. I got out after a teaching tour at a military college, the Citadel. I was teaching cadets and midshipmen who were going to go fight. Some of them didn't come back, a couple of them didn't come back. And the way I was thinking about it was, "I am asking these young men and women to go fight in my place as I am preparing to get out," and that was tough. It really did boil down to that conflict of responsibilities and deciding as a new dad. At the Citadel, I had a child on the way. When my daughter was born. It crystallized in that moment. I'm like, "I'm getting out. This is the most important thing in my life right now. There's nothing more important than this baby."

And I got out, but I wrestled with that for a long time. I remember a few months later I was at law school at the time. I had gotten into Yale Law School, which is not exactly a military friendly place. There's not a lot of uniforms there and I was at a coffee house across the corner from the law school in 2006 probably that summer, and a couple of half ton army trucks rolled by narrow street between the coffee shop and the law school. They were probably from the armory north of town. And some kid sitting next to me sipping his latte said, trying to be funny, "What, is there a war going on?" There wasn't just one war going on, there were two, Iraq and Afghanistan, and something in me snapped and I stood up. I remember actually knocking over my drink. I was going to give this kid a piece of my mind and I realized that was more about me than him and that-

David Bellavia:

Wow, that's growth.

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

And it really wasn't his fault that we have built this system where the people who carry the burden of defending this country exist on the other side of a wall that we tolerate. And those doing the fighting on the nation's behalf all too often do it so anonymously that a kid in a coffee house in New Haven, Connecticut doesn't even realize there are two wars being fought in his name.

David Bellavia:

That's a great story and it's so true too. It's like that... When Bush said, "What do we do? We go to the malls and go shopping." And you got 50% of the country's like, "No, we pick up arms and fight." And the other half is saying, "We don't want to." What are you supposed to do? And your experience and your ability to I think break that down is pretty... That's pretty shocking.

You talk about you're not ever going to be in the shape that you're in when you're in the military. You talk about the things that you did every day, and then we get older and we realize, "I still have these experiences. I still have this knowledge, but everything else is pretty much perishable." But sometimes when you transition to a civilian, you realize that other things that you didn't think were perishable also become perishable, like your ability to handle stress. When you're in uniform, you can handle all of it. You can do... You've got Chinese fighters on your wing and you're like steely-eyed missile man. You're pining your ears back, you're ready to go. And then when you don't have those tests all the time or you're not under that type of pressure, law school, totally different, fatherhood, totally different, getting a job, maintaining, paying your bills, stressful, but not the same type of stress.

What was that transition like from service to civilian and what are the things that you carried with you in the civilian world and what are the things that you woke up one day and said, "Man, I used to be able to handle all that"?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

I think sometimes the types of civilian stressors you're describing are made so much worse because you have this self-image of yourself as somebody who can handle anything. I would lose my mind sometimes as a dad of a stubborn toddler. And looking back, how does that even compare to landing in whiteout conditions? It doesn't, but it's a different kind of stress. You're in a different frame of mind. You're in a totally different place as a person. There are things that just can't prepare you for fatherhood and the stresses of everyday life, and the kinds of things we experienced in the military sometimes aren't the preparation you think they are. It's a great question because I still struggle to contextualize the things in my life today in terms of what's an actual problem or what's an invented problem, and that is really important perspective to have.

It can also go the other way when you're coming out of the military where a lot of the decisions you were making were life and death and trying to adapt to a civilian job where nothing seems quite as important can be a tough transition. A friend of mine, Jason Kander, he had a political career and still has, I think, a very positive voice in that space. Talks about his first legal job. The partner put a stack of papers on his desk. I'm probably butchering the story, but the essence of it is here. Puts a stack of papers on his desk and says, "This is super-duper important. If we don't get this exactly right, it's going to be a big deal." And Jason looks up and is like, "Is anybody going to die, man?" He didn't last long at that job, but that's a mindset we need to get away from. Right?

David Bellavia:

Where's the fire? Yeah, exactly. Do you think you would've fought, served, led better as a father with children than you would've as a bachelor without kids?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

Wow. I don't know. There's this apocryphal story that they tell at survival school pilots have to go through, something called SERE. It's the ones with families back home that seem to always do the best because they're fighting to get home to something. There's one of these apocryphal stories about an aircrew stuck in a life raft north of the Arctic Circle, and all the bachelors end up dying and the one dad survives because there's some fire inside him that keeps alive. So maybe, but I don't think I have the strength of character. I know I didn't have the strength of character at the time to go downrange with a young family at home, and hats off to those who do it. I don't know how they do it. We need them to, but I wasn't one of them.

David Bellavia:

What is the one thing that you could take from your military service that you use as a father? What's the one characteristic, the one trait where you're like, "This is something I'm going to use"? Subordinance, stress, your moral compass, all of those things you did from '96 to 2005, and now you've got a preteen on the couch and you're like, "Hey, this is my lesson for you as an O3. This is what-"

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

Stay hydrated. That's number one.

David Bellavia:

Aspirin, change your socks.

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

I think it's this idea about serving others as the route to actual fulfillment and happiness. And I don't mean that as an appeal to patriotism, I mean that as a way to live every day. When I think about service to others during my time in uniform, I'm not thinking about my country really, I'm thinking about my air crew. I'm thinking about the people I was really there for day to day. Theoretically it was my countryman back home, but in fact it was my crew. And that gave me a sense of fulfillment and purpose that I think is the key to happiness. If I conveyed anything positive to my 18-year-old, now that she's off at college, it's that that spirit of service is the key to happiness.

David Bellavia:

Wow. Well said. Now you're a civilian. 2005, we get Katrina, we get all of these natural disasters. We start hearing about this group, Team Rubicon, and you join Team Rubicon. And I got to tell you, is that... First of all, it's cool. You're helping, but you're helping kinetically and you're helping in a way that honestly, a lot of people don't want to help. I'll write the check. I'll send you money, but I'm not going to put on a hockey helmet and get on a raft and suture anyone. This is a level of patriotism and sacrifice that really... I was super proud that they represented the generation because they were doing it for people in need from all these disasters. How much of that, after you do something with Team Rubicon and you're all over the place helping out, do you realize, "I still got fight left in me"? Do you feel the guilt of wanting to go back to service? Does that help stem the missing of the Navy or does that actually breed more, "I should have stayed in, I should have done this. I want to go back"?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

It helps so much. It helped me. It has helped the 100 thousand plus other veterans who have joined Team Rubicon. And for those who are scratching their heads, wondering what we're talking about, Team Rubicon retrains military vets to respond to disasters around the world. I'm actually wearing a Team Rubicon shirt right now. That's how proud I am of my time in that organization. I left years ago, eight years ago. I am about as proud of my service with Team Rubicon as I am of my time in the military. And yes, it absolutely helps to quiet some of that angst about leaving military service behind and leaving your brothers and sisters behind.

I don't think I told the second half of that New Haven Cafe story, which is that a couple of days after I had that spell in that cafe where I was going to give this kid a piece of my mind, I found myself driving down to Bethesda Naval Hospital because I wanted to reconnect with some of the Marines recovering there. That's where they all would go to after being blown up in Iraq at the time. And I had the most... I had this really silly notion on the drive down that I would show up. I gave them a heads-up that I was coming, that I was going to show up and provide the company and comfort that these wounded warriors were looking for. And exactly the opposite happened. They inspired me.

I remember one of them in particular, a young Marine, about to be wheeled into his 10th reconstructive surgery, and he looked me in the eye and he said, "Sir, I lost my legs. But that's it. I didn't lose my desire to serve or my pride in being an American." And it was that encounter that made me realize that what I needed to do with this second chance I had with this law degree, with this experience, and this network I was building was serve veterans. And ultimately, that led me to Team Rubicon, and I've been a veteran's advocate ever since.

David Bellavia:

Tell me, I got friends that went and tried to fight. Well, they did, they fought ISIS and now they're running around and trying to help out Ukraine against the Russians. And I had a pretty interesting conversation with one of these guys when he came back because he realized, "I'm old." The willingness to go out there and do it, the morality, the clarity of morality to know that you're doing something for the right reason against pure evil, but I can't hit the 85 mile an hour fastball anymore. And that's sobering and humbling. And in a way, you saved yourself from that mere moment at 2:00 AM by saying, "I'm going to be a civilian." Yale Law School isn't exactly... That's not where they send the parachute riggers. That's a pretty impressive institution. But you're in that world. Did you ever have to face that? Did you have to acknowledge I'm not the guy? In our own head, we think we're 25 and we got the yoke in our hands.

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

Yeah. Well, I have actually faced that more recently, thinking about Team Rubicon and really wanting to get out on an operation. They do some really incredible stuff, setting up clinics around the world, responding to disease outbreaks and earthquakes and typhoons, and realizing that, with my back and knees the way they are, I'm going to end up taking a bed in one of those clinics. I'm not going to be helping people if I go downrange with Team Rubicon today. I better stick to the stateside operations. And that is a humbling realization when you have to pass the torch to those younger and fitter and better at what you used to be good at.

David Bellavia:

Ken, as we wrap this up, and it's your show and you've talked to World War II studs to Vietnam, to our own generation, and you think about your dad, you, your brother, all put America before themselves. What is the Harbaugh legacy?

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

Wow. Gosh, maybe it's that. Maybe it's service above self and country first. I might modify that though to suggest that the patriotism I want to pass to my kids is a patriotism that focuses on what America should be, not what America has been. It's a patriotism of optimism and hopefulness more than a patriotism of nostalgia.

And I guess this brings us full circle. The naive patriotism that led me to join the military was really the patriotism of privilege and nostalgia and this feeling that I was giving back to a country that had given me so much, which is all true. But I think the greater patriotism comes from those who are fighting to make this country better. In some cases, fighting after having been discriminated against, having been shut out of some of the advantages this country offers. And they don't give up. They fight on to make the country what it promises to be. And that's what I want to pass to my kids.

David Bellavia:

Ken Harbaugh, thank you for your service and thank you for your friendship. I really appreciate it.

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

Same to you, David. This has been great. I don't think we can do this again, but let's keep having conversations like it.

David Bellavia:

I love it. And by the way, after seeing you do this, I want to do mine over again because yours was far more... You had more depth and more things to say. I appreciate it, man. God bless.

Lt. Ken Harbaugh:

Thank you, David.

Thanks for listening to Warriors In Their Own Words. If you have any feedback, please email the team at [email protected]. We’re always looking to improve the show.

And if you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to rate and review.

Warriors In Their Own Words is a production of Evergreen Podcasts, in partnership with The Honor Project.

Our producer is Declan Rohrs. Brigid Coyne is our production director, and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our Audio Engineer.

Special thanks to Evergreen executive producers, Joan Andrews, Michael DeAloia, and David Moss.

Hide Transcript