AIR ASSAULT: Fast and Furious Combat during Invasion of Panama | Craig Morgan

I joined the Army to do that. I didn't join the Army to train for the rest of my life. I joined the Army to train and then to go fight and protect the rights of the country. And I think most service members do. So for me, when that happened, it was like, boom, I get to do my job now. And I get to be a part of something greater than myself. You are about to embark upon the great crusade. To meet this mounting aggression. And make no mistake about it, good will prevail. 20 December 1989. Led by Air Assault, Airborne, and Special Operations forces, U.S. troops executed attack on military targets in Panama. Operation Just Cause. Their mission, restore the democratically elected government and arrest Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega on drug trafficking charges. 26,000 combat troops are deployed. It is the America's largest operation since Vietnam. Among the soldiers is 25-year-old Sergeant Craig Morgan of the 101st Airborne Division. His first time in battle. This is his story. Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. I'm the guy. I'm the one. Well, up until this guy Jelly Roe in the music industry came along, I was the only one that was literally born in Nashville. I had to move away and make them think I was from somewhere else to get them to work with me in the music business. Why did you decide to serve and why did you choose the Army? I chose to serve because I wanted to do something different. For some reason, I grew up, even as a teenager, I worked with the rescue squad, the volunteer fire department. I look back now, I don't think I really realized it then, but I had this sense of service. I wanted to do something that allowed me the opportunity to help other people. Now, I think at the time I was looking for the idea of the adrenaline rush of being able to jump on a fire truck and put out a fire. I did, as a young man, had these heroic visions of, again, being able to do stuff for other people. But I really think now, as I look back, it was just wanting to be a part of something that was about more than just myself. And where did you do your training? I was under the OSIT program, the one-station unit training in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, because I was a 13 Fox forward observer throughout my whole career. You're an artillery guy, but somehow you got the chance to be airborne. How did that work out? It was wonderful. I loved it. I loved jumping out. I did it throughout my entire career. There were a couple of places here and there that I was stationed where I wasn't on jump status, but for the most part, and for most of my Army service, I was on jump status. It was really funny when I enlisted. I remember going to the MEPS station, and the recruiter said, you want to be airborne. And this is the truth. I really thought that meant I'd be flying in some capacity or be involved with aircraft. I didn't really know I was going to be jumping. So by the time I was enlisted and I figured out what was going on, it was kind of too late, so I went ahead and went through it all. What's that like, jumping out? Was that the first time you ever did it? Yes, it was. In the Army, it was the first time. What's that feeling like? It's wonderful. It's awesome. The idea of exiting an aircraft at whatever speeds, and I had the great fortune of jumping out of almost every aircraft in the Army inventory, as well as a bunch of Air Force aircraft. It's exciting. You know, when I talk about those things, I tell people, if you can convince yourself to do something like that, when you stand ready to exit that aircraft, and you know that it's either going to be really good and everything's going to work, or it's going to be really bad. And for the most part, they've gone through this so many times and done it that they've alleviated all of the negatives that could take place. So you're fairly confident that everything will happen as it's supposed to. You'll exit, feet and knees together, parachute will open, make a dynamite parachute landing fall, and everything will be good. Get up and walk away. But I know it don't always work out that way. Sometimes there's issues, but that's the wonderful thing about that. It's such an adrenaline rush. But on top of that is knowing that you're training for the opportunity to potentially go somewhere and have to do that to protect the freedoms of our nation. You mentioned you were a forward or long-range observer with the artillery. Explain what that role entails. My job was to call for, adjust, and identify any round or bullet that was shot onto the battlefield from a weapon system other than a direct-fire weapon system, for example, a shoulder-fired weapon system. But like mortars, artillery, close air support, which is the aircraft that drop bombs and bullets, attack helicopters, any of these aircraft, naval gunfire, any bullet that was shot from way away onto the battlefield. I was the guy out there in front of everybody telling them where to put those bullets. Your hearing's really good for spending that much time with artillery. Oh, no, my hearing's horrible. That's why I yell. I can't hear a thing, man, which is terrible for a musician. Yeah, that's a little bit of a challenge. Yeah. So how do you accurately identify the target and give the precise coordinates? Training. Train as you fight. It's important and imperative. I can't tell you, especially early in my career, you're talking about in the late 80s and early 90s, you think about where we were at as a nation in relation to other nations, especially bad players in the world. So we studied and studied and studied cards. We had pictures, all of these things that you go through over and over and over. And when we would do training exercises, we would actually, the military would actually replicate those enemies' vehicles, clothing, all of those things. And we had great technology. And, you know, it's advanced so much even since then that, I mean, shoot, now we can tell you what kind of cigarette they're smoking. You also attempted to become a ranger a couple of times. One time you had to stop due to a family crisis, and another time you got hurt. But one of the things you stress in your book is that being a ranger, and just like so many other things in life, you've got to want it real, real bad to go through what's required to become that. So what did you learn from that experience and what it takes to pursue a goal that difficult? Intestinal fortitude was a term that came up a lot. And I would describe that as having the mental capacity to push yourself beyond what you think you might be able to do. The body is an amazing, absolutely amazing machine. But we don't always have the mental capacity to push that body to its capacity. So I just remember all the time hearing, you're going to have to have the intestinal fortitude to be able to push yourself beyond the pain. And you can. I mean, we've seen numerous things over the years where people have done certain things like, you know, they broke their leg and they still managed to. I watched it in Korean ranger school. I went through that school, and I watched a katusa, the Korean augmentation of the United States Army soldier, finish a 100-mile road march with a broken leg. So you can do these things. And that's what ranger school and the ranger battalion, any of the special operations community, I think that's the one thing that is taught more than anything is the mental attitude towards your occupation, having the mental attitude to push yourself with the end goal of getting home. You mentioned your time in Korea with the Korean rangers. That seems to have been a pretty formative deployment for you, not only for your military career and the work you did with the rangers, but also a musical opportunity that started to take it from more of a hobby to starting to put an idea in your mind. Yeah. Being born in Nashville, my dad was a musician, so I grew up in and around the music. But I actually, as I stated in my book, I think I wanted to get away from that. I wanted to do something different than what was going on in my life at that time, so that's why I joined the Army. And I dabbled at it throughout my career. I mean, even in airborne school, I wrote a song about the test platoon, the first jumpers ever to jump. And in the process of doing that, the Blackhats heard about it, and at the time the commander of the airborne school was a guy named Leonard B. Scott, wrote the book Charlie Mike. And he come to me and said, we want you to perform this song that you're writing at the test platoon banquet. It was the first banquet that Dad ever had. So for me, the music and the military have always kind of played, but it wasn't until I got to Korea that I had a lot of free time. That was like a real duty station where we had some free time, and I had a guitar, and I wrote a bunch, and my buddies were very encouraging and all that stuff. There's still a lot of that goes on today. I see that when I go overseas and visit these young men and women that are serving, and they're hanging out in the barracks playing music and stuff. It's just a great way to kill some time and develop your talent, and for me it started then. And you won a special contest over there that allowed you to open, I think it was Sawyer Brown, right? Yeah, Sawyer Brown. You've got to tell that story. I won the U.S. Army Male Vocalist of the Year contest in Korea. The reason I did that is because if you win, you get to go on what we used to do. They did a thing called the Soldier Show, where it was nothing but soldiers from all over the Army, and they would travel the world entertaining our troops. It was a really cool concept. I won. I'm like, yes, I get to go do this, but my unit wouldn't release me. We were short on 13 foxes, so they're like, yeah, congratulations, but you don't get to go anywhere. But I did get to open up for a group that came over to Korea, and it was right after they had won a TV talent show, and it was Sawyer Brown. And I'll never forget it. It was a cool thing for me. Well, years, fast forward years, years later, here I am in the music industry and doing well. I was with Sawyer Brown, and I walked over to Mark, who he and I are now good friends, and I went up on his bus and I said, man, I don't know if you'll remember this, but a long time ago you guys went to Korea, right after you all had won the TV show, and you all did a show, and there was a guy that opened up for you, and I was getting to it, and he goes, oh, yeah, that guy sang his butt off, but he couldn't play a guitar for nothing. And I said, well, that was me. He goes, well, some things don't change. Yeah, true story. That's fantastic. You later advanced to become a noncommissioned officer at the Air Assault School at Fort Campbell, and you said you actually prefer Air Assault to standard paratrooping. Explain why. I don't know. I think I just really enjoyed it. There was a lot more involved, first of all, and I'm a master blaster. I went to jump master, and I went to rappel master and all that stuff. The jumping was fun, but there was a – I don't know why, for whatever reason, this is just me. I can't speak on behalf of everyone that's ever served. The stress level for a jump master is through the roof. I mean, it's intense because you've got 100 jumpers or 150 jumpers, however many jumpers, and you're the guy responsible for ensuring when you do that JMPI, the inspection on them, you're responsible. So if a guy exits an aircraft and has something wrong, it's your fault. And the same goes for a rappel master, but the intensity of something going wrong isn't quite as bad. Not to say that people can't get hurt because it does happen. We've lost soldiers rappelling for various reasons, but I just didn't feel the same level of stress as a rappel master. And there was a lot more to it. It's not just rappelling out of aircraft. It's rigging the equipment that the aircraft are hauling back and forth. So it was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed that. Well, let's move on to 1989, and that is Panama, Operation Just Cause. What role did your unit from the 101st have there, and how did you plan for it? Well, I wasn't in the 101st in Panama. I was actually assigned to the 1st of 508 Airborne Infantry Regiment in Panama. I lived in Panama. When I first got my orders, it was considered an assignment where your family could go with you. Shortly before I was scheduled to leave, we had a coup attempt. Everyone that's old enough remembers a lot was going on down there, so they stopped all accompanied assignments and made it an unaccompanied assignment. So my family and I were getting ready to leave, and then all of a sudden I had to say bye. I had to go by myself. But I will tell you, that was a great experience for me. Ended up getting there right in the middle of all of that stuff. So it was an intense tour from beginning until after Operation Just Cause was over. Let's talk about how your role in combat kind of unfolded here, because the first thing that happened is you become the acting commander because your commander was injured, and then you hurt your shoulder, correct? Yeah. So my lieutenant got shot. And by commander, it was a fire team. And I was the senior fire support guy for the company. He gets shot and gets taken out. We're actually landing on a golf course. We're air assaulting in. And I exited the aircraft a little early. I think we were about 20 feet or so off the ground. We had not touched down just yet. I didn't realize it. I was the guy in the door in what they call the hell hole, or what we called it. And it's where most of the rotor wash is coming in right there on you. And I also had to unhook the strap. And we had removed all of the seats and everything inside so that we could pack more personnel in it. But I was the guy responsible for undoing the strap and then first one out. And so I undid the strap, and I went out. And when I did, I realized when I hit the ground that we weren't touched down yet. Fortunately, everyone behind me knew. They seen me fall. And I dislocated my shoulder in the process of doing that. And it was my right shoulder, so that made it difficult to fire my weapon. I don't know why. I don't know what made me think that banging it against a tree or a solid object would put it back in place. But that's what I thought. And I actually knew that if I could get someone to do it properly, it would work, you know, by wrapping a towel and laying down and yanking it back. Ended up, after a few days, finally came across a medic who was able to get it back in place. But at that point, I pretty much beat it up pretty good. So what's it like to be in combat, and how does it compare with what you expected? Yeah, this is my perspective. I can't speak on behalf of anyone else that's been in combat. But for me, when people ask me that question, I tell them, for me, it was a lot like the movies. I literally related everything that was happening to movies, you know, war movies. That's what it felt like. Sometimes it was beyond surreal. I felt like I was literally, there were moments when I felt like I was watching myself do these things. I remember being on the aircraft when we were going in and the noise that I heard, the sounds. And you're trying to process that and going, man, what is that noise? Oh, that's freaking bullets hitting the side of the aircraft. That's bullets passing by. And you could hear that even under the rotor wash. So I just remember all of it's brand new. But I remember looking at it, and especially looking back still today, it feels like I was in a movie. I'm glad you described so vividly the intensity of that gunfire, because I think a lot of people, given the relatively short duration of Operation Just Cause, think, oh, it's Panama, no big deal. But the intensity and what you and the other people you were with throughout that mission went through, lives were in harm's way. And so how did you and the other men you were with, how did you lead during that moment? Oh, you train as you fight, fight as you train. And I think, you know, I've heard a lot of people say this, especially hear a lot of law enforcement officers talk about this, how, you know, when it happens, they just go into that mode. And I think that's the truth, which is why training is so repetitionist. Those things are so important. Muscle memory, all of those things take place when you're thrown into that environment. And you either do it, or you fail miserably, and you cuddle up. And I don't fault anyone for either that happens. You know, some people are equipped for that, and some people aren't. That's just a reality. And I think you just, you know, when it happens, when the bullets start firing, you just go into the mode and you do what you've been training to do. You know, and guys like me, when I join, and I don't mean this in a, well, I'm always careful how I say this, but I used to be. Now I've gotten to the point now I don't really care. But, you know, I trained for that. I was a guy, and I don't mean this in a negative way, but I joined the Army to do that. I didn't join the Army to train for the rest of my life. I joined the Army to train and then to go fight and protect the rights of the country. And I think most service members do. I know there are some that go in there, and they just want to get their college money, and they want to get back out, and they hope and pray that they don't have to go to war. And as I've matured and gotten older, I hope and pray we don't have to go to war. But I didn't join the Army to not go to war. Back then, I joined the Army to go to war. So for me, when that happened, it was like, boom, I get to do my job now, and I get to be a part of something greater than myself. One of the bizarre moments is that your wife briefly thought you were killed there. Explain what happened there. Unbeknownst to me, because I'm running around in Panama, my wife is at home with a baby, and she's actually down in Texas with her dad. And a military vehicle shows up, pulls in the driveway. And my wife's seen it, and she wouldn't even go to the door because it was two uniformed service members. And everybody knows that if your spouse or loved one is overseas and that happens, there's a good chance they're not there delivering good news. They're not bringing you home. They're not surprising you. That don't happen. So she was just mortified, scared so much she wouldn't even go to the door. Well, her dad answered the door, and even he was upset, she said, visibly upset, because he thought that he was going to have to hear the news that I had died and have to tell his daughter. But they literally went to the wrong house. They went to the wrong house. And that happened. It wasn't a bad thing, like they were doing something terrible. They just went to the wrong house. And so for a few minutes there, my wife thought I was dead. You also had the chance to work with the AC-130 Spectre gunships down there. Talk about that collaboration. It was one of the greatest in my time of service because I was in the Army, but I experienced the privileges of the Air Force. And people ask me, what would you recommend, what branch of service would you recommend that I go to? And I ask them a lot of questions. And their answers to those questions dictate what my answer would be, because if you're extremely strong-headed and you want to be the bull in the china shop, join the Marines. If you're a bit of a thinker but you want to do some of that too, look at the Army. If you like electricity all the time and a good soft bed, join the Air Force. I mean, that's what I would say. And that's not an insult. It's just a reality. And I really had the great privilege of meeting some very heroic people in the Air Force and being able to do that job working on the Spectres. So I was the Army liaison who flew on the aircraft. So I was actually on the aircraft. Kind of like I was the go-between between the Army and the Air Force guys, helping with communications and target identification and communicating back and forth with the guys on the ground. It was a fun, fun job. One of my favorite stories in the book deals with your ingenuity. You had been given an assignment during Desert Storm that you weren't particularly pleased with. You wanted to be there, and you were assigned to Fort Bragg, but you found a way to get over there anyway. Yeah. It was completely inappropriate and unprofessional. Okay. You should follow the orders. Every young service member joining the military, you really should follow your orders. As long as they're—I mean, there is a—I do believe we all have a moral standing forth which we should rely on. So if someone's telling you to do something that is completely morally incorrect, you shouldn't. But telling someone that they shouldn't go overseas I don't think was immoral. So I found a way to get there. Myself and another noncommissioned officer by the name of John Davis were to deliver some weapons down to a particular location to be shipped over. And someone came up with some orders that allowed us to go with the weapons. I don't know where they came from. Yeah, well, leave that as a mystery, I guess. It was. It was a mystery. Didn't last long, though. Someone else found out them orders were not correct. We had to go back to Bragg. So while this is going on, even in Panama and even as time's going on, you're getting more and more serious about your music and you get more into writing as the 90s unfold. So how were you able to do that while you were still active duty? Just in free time. Just like anybody else, a lot of people do a lot of things. You know, military people get it. If you're not in the military, you don't understand. Being in the military, you're not sleeping in a tent and getting up every morning and going shooting people and doing those kind of things every day like you see in the movies. That part of the movie only takes place in the war. Again, now we have movies that depict that, that show people have actual lives, and we all did. So my life, when I wasn't at work, when I would get up in the mornings, I would go in, do PT, clean up, have breakfast, make formation. We would do training for our day, have our final formation day, and go home. Just like everybody else, it goes to work. When they go to work, they finish up the day and they go back home in the evening. And we would have our weekends off for the most part. So during that time, I would write and play guitar and try to make stuff up and have fun with it. And I will tell you, when all that was happening, I really never seen myself as a full-time singer slash writer or whatever. I did enjoy writing, and I thought if I ever had the opportunity to do something in the music business, I wanted to do it writing songs because I knew that I could do that even while I was doing what I really enjoyed, which was the military, the army. And it wasn't until later on that in the process of writing songs and recording those songs, I got noticed as a singer. And even then, I will tell you, I wasn't sure that I wanted to do it because I knew how difficult it was. I had friends that had been in the business. I watched my dad do it. And I knew that being a successful national touring artist, now there's a difference in that and just doing it at a regional level. There's a lot of guys that do that and have a normal job, and they get up and go to work. And then on the weekends, they play in bars and clubs, and they do well. They make a lot of extra money. And there's guys that end up doing it, and they quit their job, and that's all they do is travel around locally and try to open up for guys that make it nationally and that kind of stuff. But I really just wanted to write. I wanted to write songs and create that way. And again, I knew that you could make money at that right up front. If you get signed to a publishing deal writing for a company, you could make money. Whereas in the entertainment world, everybody thinks that my first two years of being in the business, everyone that worked for me made more money than I did. Everyone, the band members, everybody made more money than I did. So that's why I stayed in the Army. I kept thinking that any day I'm going to quit this crap and go back full-time in the Army and get out of the civilian life, get back into the Army. But every time I would think about that, something would happen that would encourage me. God just nudged me every time. Every time I thought, I'm not doing this music crap. It's not who I am. I'm a soldier. I'm going back. God would do something that made me see that that's where I needed to be at the time. Music, like pursuing goals in the Army, requires a ton of patience, resilience, perseverance from setbacks, and that's the mindset you kind of need for life is kind of the point you like to make in the book. Yeah, I would tell you that music was worse. It was much more difficult and is and can be. It requires a lot of intestinal fortitude, mental patience. You know, in life, we tend to compare ourselves to others doing what we do. We use that as our bar or our balance and try to figure out how to progress. And what I have learned through the military and in every occupation that I've ever had, but in particular the military music, is your bar should not be set by others. You should set your own bar. You should set your goals based on what it is you can and want to attain, not what others can and want to attain. In the military, in the Army, if I maxed my PT test, if I did my job properly, I could progress. And it didn't matter what the other NCOs were doing. I was not competing with them. Now, I was to some degree, I was competing for a particular job, but if I did everything right, I was going to get that job. No questions. You know, it would happen. It just does not happen that way in the music. There's so many factors in the music industry that are out of our control. I can write a hit song, and I can sing it, and everybody goes, it's the greatest vocals you've ever done. And it can be a great song. The production can be fabulous. The label can love it. And we can deliver it to country radio, and they cannot play it. And the consumer cannot hear it. And that song will not be a hit. Even though we all know it's a hit song, certain factors take place that alleviate you from the process of being successful with that particular song. Now, fortunately for me, I had a lot of hit songs I have over my career, and we still have success. And with the changes in our society now, technology in particular, with the influx of all the social media platforms, there's new avenues for us to do that. We found during COVID, during the shutdown, during the pandemic, that it created a whole new avenue for a generation that had kind of, country radio was no longer a part of their career. Again, fortunately for me, I had such a big radio career that I got to continue touring. We still have a successful touring business, but not quite as much new airplay on radio. They're not playing all of my new music as much, but because of the influx of the social media platforms and Spotify and iTunes and all of these things, it's as if we kind of transitioned from one streaming method to another, from traditional radio and CDs and all of those things now to these other platforms where our music is being heard. And there are actually artists that are coming into the industry that are starting there. They're not starting through country radio. The people are hearing their music through those platforms. While you decided to pursue your music career in the late 90s, most of your career has taken place while America has been at war. Yeah. And one of the stories that absolutely resonated with me is how one of your songs came on the radio when a soldier or veteran was very seriously thinking about taking his life and your song made him stop. Yeah, I've heard so many of those stories. I mean, it's moving. It's those kind of stories that make me really appreciate the magnitude of what it is we're doing and the impact that we can have. That particular story, it was actually a two-part, which was beyond belief, really. That young man, I'll never forget it. We played the Washington State Fair, and he had a prosthetic leg, and he was standing there, and I had just released a new album at the time, and so I was signing them. When you first start, you're willing to sign anything just to sell it. And so we would do signings of merchandise after the show. At this point, we'd kind of gotten away from signing merchandise, but because I released a new album, everybody that bought it, I was going to come out and sign the record. So we had this huge line, and we're sitting there, and I'm like, this is going to take hours. But how awesome is that that I get to sit here for hours and sign autographs? But I looked over, and I seen that young man standing there with his prosthetic leg, and I said, come on up. You don't have to stand there and wait. I gathered in my head, I assumed he was a soldier, and he said, no, I need to talk to you. I want to talk to you. If you don't mind, I'll wait until we're done. And so I told my tour manager, I said, get him a chair anyway. He don't need to stand here the whole time. So I went and got him a chair, and he would not sit down. He stood there the whole time. And he waited until the very end. It was almost two hours of signing, and he waited. And when he came up, he sat down in front of me, and I said, sit down, I want to hear what is so important that you were willing to stand up and wait for two hours. He said, man, I was in Iraq and such and such, and I was driving down the road, and I had a CD player, and I had your first CD, and I was playing it. And he said, this song, Paradise. He said, I just loved it. And he said, your music saved my life. I said, okay, well, tell me how. And I literally giggled, you know, like, yeah, tell me how my music saved your life. He said, we were driving down the road in a Humvee, and he said, we bumped, and it skipped. And he said, so I reached down to get the CD player and to hit the button to go back to the beginning song, and a sniper shot through the window and hit the seat. And it was like, oh, wow. I said, well, that wasn't me. That was God looking after you. He said, well, God used you. And he said, he used you again. He said, fast forward, I got out. I had lost my leg and IED. And he said, I was sitting at the house, and he said, I literally had the pistol, and I had put the magazine in and chambered around, and I put it up to my mouth, and he said, I was going through this, and I was thinking, this is the only way that I can end this pain and everything was to do this. And he said, a song came on the radio called Almost Home. He said, I put my gun down. It was like, poof. That's powerful. And we both sat there and cried and talked for a bit, and it's like, man, you know. I said, well, here again, I said, I appreciate that you're sharing this, and it doesn't mean a lot, I said, but what it really means is that God was looking after you, and he cares. So don't do that crap again. You know, just, you know. But yeah, it's pretty powerful to hear those stories, and I've heard a bunch of them.