By the end of my SF career, my team was one of the oldest in group. Probably one of the oldest in regiment. My team sergeant had hunted SCUDs in the gulf war in Fifth Group and my commander holds the regimental record for continuous time in command of the same ODA. First as a captain, then as a warrant. A record that will never be broken, because they’ve changed the rules to prevent it. By 2009, probably half the team was over 40 and a couple were around the half century mark. Staying operational that long is not an easy thing to do in this profession, and my elders on the team were my mentors, passing along hard lessons learned.

During that 2009 deployment, we had a capture-kill mission on an HVT. During the hit, our blocking position came under fire from small arms and RPGs. We called in air support a couple of times as we wrapped up SSE on the objective and made our way across the village to exfil. Dave and I took two squads of Afghans and moved out to secure an LZ for the chinooks while the rest of the team remained in covered and concealed positions. We set in a perimeter and just before calling in the pilots, our interpreter came running up to me. He had just heard the Taliban saying on the radio that they would attack our position and get revenge for their brothers we had killed. Dave and I put the Afghans on alert, told the rest of team to stand by, and settled in for more fighting.

My terp came running up with a disheartened look on his face. “Commander Matt, I am so sorry. The Taliban they say, ‘It is the greybeards, everyone go home and hide your guns. No more brothers die today.’” As we exfilled without any further fighting, I thought about that intercepted transmission. Much like active cops in the US, the bad guys gave us a street name. Life expectancy in Afghanistan is short, and anyone who lives as long as we had is seen as wise. And in our case dangerous. My beard wasn’t grey yet, but I was lucky to fight alongside and be mentored by senior teammates with the breadth and depth of experience mine had. The lessons they taught and the decisions they made kept us alive.

Now that I’m older than my senior leadership on the team and in the regiment was then, now that my beard is grey with the weight of experience, I’ve adopted our Taliban “street name” for my training company. I can’t ever repay those who came before me for the lessons that kept me alive. But I can pay it forward. I can pass that wisdom along to the next generation of warriors and add my own lessons learned to it. More than any victory overseas, more than any arrest as a police officer at home, that is the legacy I want to leave. Knowledge and wisdom. Given to me by those who came before. Added to and passed along to the ones who come after so that they too can one day be old, and grey, and wise. Then the next greybeards can add what they have learned and pass it on in turn. And so on down the line.