Green Beret 18Z, Nick Lavery Dive School Instructor, Overcoming Suicide, Cook to SF - Trevor Beaman

About This Episode
Join our weekly Combat Check-In Newsletter (www.combatstory.com/newsletter) to get a short email from Ryan for people who love and support our veterans, service members, and their families. It has info on a significant event in military and/or intel history, a funny military joke, an update on a current event I'm following, something I'm doing that week in my life, a book I'm reading, a look at an upcoming interview, a reflection on a past episode and more! =======
Today we have an inspiring and vulnerable Combat Story from Trevor Beaman, an active duty Special Forces 18Z (former 18E). He went from Army cook to long range surveillance to Green Beret while overcoming significant challenges along the way. In an interesting twist, he would even be an instructor at the Army’s dive school where he oversaw Nick Lavery’s successful completion of the course.
Join our weekly Combat Check-In Newsletter (www.combatstory.com/newsletter) to get a short email from Ryan for people who love and support our veterans, service members, and their families. It has info on a significant event in military and/or intel history, a funny military joke, an update on a current event I'm following, something I'm doing that week in my life, a book I'm reading, a look at an upcoming interview, a reflection on a past episode and more!
As a warning, there are moments in this episode in which we get into some difficult content about abuse from Trevor’s childhood that may be hard for people to hear. We also, however, discuss how Trevor overcame that abuse and adversity and would go on to lead fellow Green Berets in combat.
Trevor’s path is anything but straight as he dealt with recruiting slight of hand that brought him in as a cook but eventually found his tribe with 3rd Special Forces Group. After multiple deployments, he voluntarily sought out mental health support and, in a positive turn of events, was granted the time to get healthy again.
He has 18 months of active duty service remaining, still supporting Special Operations and is writing a book about his experiences in a way that will help others help themselves. He has an inspiring Ted Talk about overcoming some of the traumatic experiences of his life that provides more context about him and his career and, with that, I hope you enjoy this important story from Trevor Beaman.
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Show Notes:
Chapters
- 00:00Intro
- 00:37Guest Introduction (Trevor Beaman)
- 01:54Interview begins
- 02:25Breaking Rules
- 04:40Childhood and abuse
- 07:35Abuse and leadership
- 09:45Ted Talk
- 19:50Deciding on the Military
- 25:05DeleteMe Ad
- 26:32Time in the National Gaurd
- 32:28First encounter with the Green Berets
- 37:37Perspective on younger self
- 46:11Kevin Flick and Alive Day
- 48:00Dealing with loss of old teammates
- 56:34First shot at O.D.A.
- 01:07:19Performance after trauma
- 01:10:27Hardest deployment
- 01:21:46Deception training
- 01:25:40Mental Health while deployed
- 01:34:00Dive school
- 01:48:15Would you do it all again
- 01:51:42Sentimental Items
- 01:52:52The next 10 years
- 01:56:17Listener comments and shout outs


