From Student to Teacher…

Matt Golsteyn would be his second-in-command, focused on the team’s strategy and operations. A 2002 West Point graduate and star baseball player from Winter Park, Florida, Matt was one of those rare officers who shone with both intellect and moral fortitude. He’d served with the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq and then tried out for Special Forces, landing in 2008 in a group trained by Jim in a guerrilla warfare scenario in the backwoods of North Carolina. Matt turned out to be the best captain Jim had encountered among dozens of aspiring Special Forces team leaders, and the gutsiest. Better yet, he’d just returned from months of fighting with an Afghan commando battalion in some of the country’s worst trouble spots. Matt knew how to navigate the clashing values of Western democracy and ancient Afghan precepts of justice—and make tough calls to save lives.

-Ann Scott Tyson. American Spartan (pg 57.)

When I was a Special Forces instructor during the final phase of training for soldiers to become Green Berets – I was dead serious about my job. I had already spent two combat rotations in Afghanistan and one 15-month combat deployment in Iraq, as well as, two years as a team leader on a special projects team. There had been much ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ by the time I had been given the gift of being an Unconventional Warfare instructor. I had seen too much. I had experienced too much. My best friends were still on Special Forces teams deploying and fighting. There was a possibility that the men I was training would end up side-by-side by with those guys…but for sure, if they passed my lane, they would put on the coveted Green Beret and be on a Special Forces team in combat. I poured myself into my new assignment.

I graded my students with the following matrix:

1. Performance – Could you perform to the standards that were in black and white. Task. Condition. Standard.

2. Physical and psychological toughness.

3. Personality – Were you personable?

4. Peer Reports – Did the other members of the student “team” rate you at the top of their list? The middle? The bottom? If you were on the bottom of every peer grade; something was wrong.

5. Passion – How badly did you want to become a Green Beret? What were you willing to do? Were you ready to kill? Were you ready to die?

6. Potential – There were some soldiers that came through that were just too “young”, they just didn’t have enough life experience to be ready; but would they be able to grow into it?

7. Presence – For the officers that went through my lane they had to have a leadership presence. A presence that made men want to follow them.

It was during this time that I met Matt Golsteyn. Damn. Here he is. Here is the one I had been waiting for. He had everything that a great Green Beret officer should have, and he had it in spades.

When he came through my lane, I had to work 20 hours a day in order to push him. It was very difficult to challenge him.

Once he graduated, we became fast friends, and he became a Special Forces team leader and deployed multiple times to Afghanistan where he was awarded multiple awards for valor and led his team in many battles to include the “Battle for Marjah”.

As I was preparing for an incredible mission to go back to Afghanistan and conduct a tribal engagement strategy, I was told I could hand-pick my men. He was my first choice.

For many reasons, mainly bureaucratic ones, it was not to be.

When it was all said and done – he was a better Green Beret than I could ever hope to have been – and Jim Gant has no better friend than Matt Golsteyn.

I shared all of this with you to tell you that during this entire time, Matt would show up at my house and we would sit down, and he would tell me, “Jim, don’t forget that God loves you. He has a bigger mission for you. He is watching over you.”

I did not believe him.

His words stayed consistent with me over the years as we both suffered through many trials and tribulations.

And now, all these years later, his words are true. Truer than any words I could imagine.

Thank you, dear Matt, for being THAT.

Not for being a great Green Beret…but being a true man of God.

Achilles absent, is Achilles still.

Together WE Transform – always, ALWAYS – TOGETHER.

Matt – I am your friend and ally in this life and the next – no matter what comes our way,

Jim

Proverbs 18:24