Distinctly Montana Magazine

www.DistinctlyMontana.com 23 by HOLLY MATKIN A s a member of the U.S. Special Operations (SOF) community for nearly two decades, Rob Vaughan has accepted the likely imminence of his own death more times than he cares to count. When you dedicate your life to joining the ranks of the most highly-trained and supremely-skilled military units on the planet, a willingness and acknowledgment that you could pay the ulti- mate sacrifice comes with the territory. And while many of these elite military members also have spouses, children, grocery lists, and mortgages, none of that has a place when it comes to taking down the most sinister and high-profile threats to our nation. "We're set against the hardest targets known to man," ex- plains Vaughan, who served nearly 19 years of his 20-year mili- tary career as a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces–collo- quially known as the Green Berets–before he retired in 2014. "We resigned ourselves. There were times I said, 'I'm going to die. I know I'm going to die, and this is probably the rotation,'" he says. "So having to talk to your family about that–specifical- ly my wife–you actually make funeral arrangements before you deploy and plan out to the detail so you can take the burden off of them if you have to make the hardest sacrifice there is." In the early morning hours of August 6, 2011, a Taliban fighter in Afghanistan shot an Extortion 17 Chinook helicopter out of the sky. Thirty-eight of the world's most experienced and highly-trained commandos lost their lives that day. There were no survivors. Back at home, Vaughan's wife's phone began ringing off the hook as word of the single greatest loss of American life in the Afghan war tore through the Special Operations community. One of the fallen heroes aboard the flight bore a name similar to that of her husband. "She started getting calls from all of these people offering her condolences," he said. "She thought it was me." THE ILLUSION OF PEACE In the wake of President Joe Biden's declaration in August of 2021 that "the war in Afghanistan is now over," many Americans imagined our military servicemembers letting out a collective sigh of relief and hopping on the next flight home to their families. "I'm not convinced that the general public and civilians un- derstand that there are deployments happening right now and that we have people overseas at this moment who are actively being attacked," explains Ashley Smith, an active-duty U.S. Army Special Operations servicemember who has devoted more than 13 years to her military career. "We're still deploying and active around the world and we still have a very high OPTEMPO," said Smith, who was de- ployed earlier this year. "We're looking at multiple threats daily from different angles… I don't think the general public realizes that." Transitioning from these intense, high-stakes special ops de- ployments back to regular life at home carries its own trials and tribulations—especially considering the physical and mental toll such deployments have on our elite warriors. "Basically, half of your life is spent in combat, and you come home and it seems like nobody really knows or cares to know," says Skip Soderholm, a U.S. Army command sergeant major who led 200 servicemembers while serving as senior leader of an undisclosed special mission unit. Soderholm deployed 11 times during the Global War on Ter- ror to both Iraq and Afghanistan, serving 25 years before his re- tirement in 2019. "Most of what we did was a lot of direct-action missions, which meant that we went in and targeted specific individuals," he explains. "We went in to capture high-value targets–the leadership level of what was Al-Qaeda and targets like Saddam Hussein." NATE HILL OF NIVEUS PRODUCTIONS

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