If I Don’t Return: A General's Wartime Journal for His Sons

The Art of Manliness

Retired three-star General Mark Hertling shares the deeply personal story behind his book 'If I Don't Return,' a wartime journal he began du

Key takeaways

• Writing a personal journal for one's children can serve as both a legacy and a moral compass in times of uncertainty.
• True character is forged through adversity, failure, and humility—not just success or achievement.

Main topics

• Fatherhood and legacy
• Military leadership during wartime

Notable quotes

"If I'm one of those 50% that suffer a casualty and perhaps even die, who is going to help my wife raise those kids?"

Conclusion

General Hertling's journal, born from a moment of profound risk and love, evolved into a

Transcript preview

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Speaker 2 (2:10) Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the AOM podcast, which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers, and leaders that glean their edifying, life-improving insights without the fluff and filler. The AOM podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues through thought, word, and deed. Also, be sure to explore our articles in artofmanliness.com, read the deeper dives we do in our sub-stack newsletter at dyingbreed.net. and turn our content into real-world action by joining the Strenuous Life program at strenuouslife.com. Now on to the show. Speaker 2 (2:50) When Mark Hurtling learned he was deploying for Operation Desert Storm, he decided to start a journal. Back then, Mark was an army major and cavalry officer with two young sons. His unit would be out in front of the main force, and during an intelligence briefing, he was told it could suffer casualties as high as 50%. Mark realized there was a real chance he might not come home. So he began writing down what he was experiencing, along with the lessons about life, leadership, and character that he wanted his boys to know if he wasn't there to teach them himself. Mark did come home, and he went on to serve 38 years in the Army, including as an assistant division commander in Baghdad and later commander of the 1st Armored Division in Iraq during the 2007-2008 surge, before finishing his career as a commander of U.S. Army Europe. Decades later, that wartime journal became the basis for his new book, If I Don't Return. Today on the show, retired three-star General Mark Kirtland and I talk about the reflections it contains on making everyday count, planning for friction, marriage and friendship, handwritten notes, casual profanity, the moral weight of war, and what it means to build a man. After the show's over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash return. Speaker 2 (4:02) All right, General Mark Hertling, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's great to be with you. So you got a book out called If I Don't Return. And this book is based on a journal that you started while you were a major in the Army Cavalry during Operation Desert Storm. And it was a journal for your sons. So why did you start this journal during Operation Desert Storm for your boys? Speaker 3 (4:27) Well, you know, now that that's over 40 years ago that it happened, it's interesting because one of the things that not many people know is that we were told that we would be deploying via television. I got a call in Germany. We were all stationed in Germany at the time, and our unit was, and got a call saying, hey, watch TV tonight. The Secretary of Defense is going to be on giving a message. And we didn't know what the message was. We knew that there had been forces in. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, the 82nd Airborne had deployed over there in their quick reaction force, but they had been there since August. And we didn't know what this announcement was about. Well, we tuned in and Secretary Cheney and General Powell were on and they said that they were going to send the 7th Corps of the United States Army, which was based in Germany at the time after the Cold War still. And they were going to send them to Saudi Arabia to reinforce the 82nd Airborne Division and to continue to persuade Saddam Hussein to pull out of Kuwait. That shocked, as you can imagine, all of us that were listening. So there was a flurry of phone calls that night between the squadron commander, a lieutenant colonel, and myself. I was the operations officer as what they call the S3 in a cavalry squadron. Speaker 3 (5:45) We were immediately told that we would go the next morning to get an intelligence brief on what was happening. We went to the division headquarters the next morning, and during the intelligence brief, there was not a whole lot of information in terms of what we were Speaker 2 (6:00) going to do or what people anticipated would happen. But Speaker 3 (6:03) they did know that if there was any kind of offensive operation, that our cavalry squadron, which... The mission of the cavalry is to be out front of the fighters and use our eyes and ears to find the enemy and then turn them over to the armored battalions and the infantry battalions and the artillery. So we knew we would be out front. And the division intelligence officer said, because 11 Cav is going to be out front, they're probably going to suffer up to 50 % casualties. And that was stated openly in the meeting. So other staff sections could do things like... The personnel officer could say, okay, we've got to reinforce them with more people. And the logistics officers would start their planning to provide more logistics to us. But it shocked all of us in the cab, as you can imagine. We went back to our headquarters and I started thinking, holy smokes, I've never seen war before, unlike this current generation. This was the first time I was going to go into a real fight as opposed to just a training exercise. And I started thinking about... what that meant, not just for me, but for our families. And we had two young sons. Our oldest son was 10, name is Todd. Youngest son was Scott. He was seven at the time. My thought was, if I'm one of those 50 % that suffer a casualty and perhaps even die, who is going to help my wife raise those kids? Not only is she going to be a widow, but there are going to be two young boys who don't have a role model. I decided at that point to start writing a journal when I got to the desert and just tell them about life before a war and then life during a war and life after the war if I was lucky enough to survive. And that's how it all started. That's a very long story, Brett. I'm sorry, but that's how it all came about. So Speaker 2 (7:51) you did return, right? So you wrote this journal thinking like, okay, I might not make it. Speaker 3 (7:55) Yeah, that's the spoiler alert to the book. I did return. Speaker 2 (7:58) Yeah, right. So what happened to the journal? during that, you know, until now when you published it? Speaker 3 (8:05) Well, our two boys, when I returned, it was eight months later. You know, it wasn't a couple of years. I wasn't dead. And they were still their same ages of 10 and 7. So they were not interested in reading the musings of their father or the deep thoughts of their dad while he was away. They just wanted to play ball and play with their Legos with me and Speaker 2 (8:25) stuff like that. So I kind of threw the journal into a footlocker. Speaker 3 (8:28) Now. Both of our sons and one of our daughters-in-law became soldiers later on. And they knew about the book. I think both of them had read it as they got older. But I didn't think either one of them had really paid a whole lot of attention to it. It was just something in my past until Christmas morning of 2024. And what happened was our youngest son and his boys were visiting us on Christmas in that time frame. And after we had the big... debacle of a normal Christmas of opening presents and being half asleep because our grandsons woke up too early and those kind of things. He came up to me with a box when everybody else was done. And he said, Dad, this one's just for you. I opened it up. And what it was is he had taken the journal and turned it into a Word document. He had typed it up, which in and of itself was a difficult task because my handwriting is terrible. And he got a large percentage of it exactly right. There were some words that he couldn't decipher. But he had turned this into a manuscript and inserted pictures that he had found that were not, you know, iPhone photos. They were old Polaroids and pictures from people with throwaway cameras that provided photographs during the operation. And he put them all in a context of a manuscript. But then what he said after I thumbed through it and got very emotional and all the sights and smells and sounds of the desert started coming back, he said, you know, Dad, my brother and I knew what you were trying to do. You were trying to prepare us in case you didn't come home. And now you have five grandsons. So you've got to continue your journey from 1991 to today because you stayed in the Army. You did a whole lot more things. You went to war a couple of more times. And you have a lot more knowledge about the things you wrote about in the book. So take those subjects and expand them for your grandchildren. Speaker 2 (10:27) And that's what you did with this book. Speaker 3 (10:29) And that's what I did. And truthfully, Brett, I think when he gave it to me and asked me to do that, he knows what kind of guy I am. I'm a huge procrastinator. And he likely thought I wasn't going to do it. But I did. And I surprised him six months later and sent it to him. And he was... impressed by it and thought it was very emotional and that we should publish it as opposed to just leaving it for the family. Speaker 2 (10:54) Yeah. I love this book because as you said, you basically, it's a journal of your whole entire time in Operation Desert Storm. And so you're telling your kids, you know, sort of the day-to-day of what's going on. But as you said, throughout, you're weaving in these lessons that you want to impart to them. And it reminded me, have you seen that Michael Keaton film, My Life? Speaker 3 (11:15) Yes. Speaker 2 (11:15) Yeah, right. So for those who aren't familiar, this is a 1993 Michael Keaton film. Every time I watch it, I just bawl my eyes out. But he plays this guy who gets diagnosed with kidney cancer, but then his wife's pregnant. And so he decides, well, I'm not going to make it for my son. So I got to create all these videos on how to tie a tie and how to deal with girls. This project reminded me of that film. Speaker 3 (11:39) Yeah, but I tell you, I think it struck me as I was writing it that it was more than that. It was also a history of not just our family, but also of our army, the wars we were fighting in, our country to a degree, the lessons that I had learned about leadership from just experiencing it to studying it and then later teaching it, the other kinds of... of jobs that I had in my life that applied things I had learned in the military, like healthcare and being an analyst for a cable TV station and working with others in a hospital. So it was an evolution of not just thoughts about that war, which came so early in my life and which could have affected our family significantly, but it was really a compilation of growth. and lessons that you can teach. That's the thing that I thought was really amazing because, and first of all, you talk about the Michael Keaton film. I get teared up every time I watch it as well. And Brett, I will tell you in writing this book, there were incredible moments of emotional breakdowns, not just from the remembrances of some of the tragedies and the chaos that were part of. that initial combat tour, but also bringing back some of the memories and the chaos of other tours in combat, but also just life events as well. And realizing how I wish I had reflected more and thought about life in a different way and really compiled things. That's one of the lessons I'm trying to teach. I teach it at a business school to MBA students. And that's one of the things I'm asking them to do is to keep a journal. and to look back on it and to see how your growth is occurring and how you are developing as a human being. And it shouldn't just be in terms