Combat Story (Ep 27): Eric Hollen - Ranger | Green Beret| Olympian | Inspiration

and i felt this weight like i i was a big strong guy and i felt a weight i couldn't move like i couldn't lift myself up and i this is gonna sound crazy but i heard a voice that wasn't my internal monologue that said eric if you try to move again you'll die well i didn't know i had a 22 centimeter tear in my aortic arch welcome to combat story i'm ryan fugit and i serve war zone tours as an army attack helicopter pilot and cia officer over a 15-year career i'm fascinated by the experiences of the elite in combat on this show i interview some of the best to understand what combat felt like on their front lines this is combat story today we hear the inspirational combat story of eric holland a former ranger in 275 ranger regiment and green beret with 2nd battalion 10th special forces group this is a unique episode where we filmed in person for a change while eric and i were in graham texas courtesy of great coker who many of you will recognize from the podcast for an aviation hog hunt to benefit veterans and gold star families in this episode eric shares what was going through his head when he sustained a life altering injury on his horse farm in tennessee and how he persevered through dark times to reach a level of excellence very few will ever see eric was awarded usa shootings paralympic athlete of the year two years in a row and competed in the olympics as a shooter for the u.s he strives to help newly injured veterans through a program called care coalition which supports injured special ops soldiers i hope you enjoy his inspirational story as much as i did eric thanks for taking the time to share your story today it's my honor to be hanging out with you around appreciate it so much um i just quickly wanted to share the backdrop that we have here today we're in graham texas courtesy of greg coker who i had interviewed previously and some may know from the show but this is the young county warrior ranch it's an opportunity for vets to come out this weekend it's hog hunting which is pretty cool there's a shooting competition going on back here there's skeet shooting going on we did some fishing it's just a great opportunity i just wanted to put it unplugged for this place that really cares about vets and opens their doors to them all year long and i think it's a fitting place for us to be now that we've got uh eric here who is an olympic caliber shooter so it's a fitting backdrop for us as we kick off this interview so i wanted to kick off with this shooting theme and ask you about growing up the earliest time you had a weapon in your hand because i think somebody who has the shooting resume you do just imagine at a very young age you were picking up a weapon but maybe that's not the case no that's true um my dad was uh assistant chief police in my hometown so i was born and raised in santa cruz california so grew up on the beach but we did a lot of shooting as a kid and honestly my dad was like he thought i was terrible a terrible shot yeah i don't know if i just couldn't figure out like dominant eye non-dominant eye it took a while to figure it out as a little so i probably had a firearm in my hands with help from my dad like standing behind me when i was six geez yeah six you know and then all the way through childhood and into adulthood and was it out on a range or were you guys out hunting no i was on we shot on the range we didn't my dad wasn't a big hunter so everything i did was target practice stuff so okay and your your childhood was it mainly outdoors yeah a lot of outdoors like you know motocross skiing surfing and then organized sports as a kid football baseball that kind of thing if you think back to that childhood what was one of the more [Music] dangerous moments growing up i'm sure there are a lot well yeah so the adrenaline kind of i guess like as you think about i'm sure you interview a lot of guys we probably have like a common theme or common thread and you have a background military background as well correct yep that's right yeah so so they're kind of this adrenaline junkie kind of thing um and it started young for me i started motocross riding and racing about eight years old so there was wrecks and sudden stops and broken bones and trips to the hospital and all those kind of things and one i'm glad you brought that up one of the themes that i noticed talking to a lot of the folks who have been in the special ops community like you have and then have gone on to do things like you have so i mean you and we'll talk through it but you've got special ops in the military olympic caliber talent constantly chasing something it seems like did you have that kind of ambition as a kid did you recognize it then or did that develop over time no you know the so good question um i think focused effort kind of came to me um in special forces selection and assessment so yeah out at camp mccall like i learned how to navigate through that that's i guess four weeks of of getting gut checked yeah so so leading up to that i think you know like the injury and all these things that occurred after the fact um so was there an adrenaline-filled desire in my life absolutely was i seeking that yep so i surfed big waves i raced motocross i did all that as a kid and then at some point you know i kind of tried to figure out a way to to have that physicality and the adrenaline dump and all that stuff in my life for sure yeah that was part of it so it doesn't seem the thrill-seeking piece right yeah and so i was just going to say it doesn't seem like a big jump then for you to go into the military but if you could take us back kind of the decision what age you were yeah how you came to that so so the lord like the lord lord's never been subtle in my life it's always been like a hard hit in the head like left turn here so my left turn moment was as a senior in high school i was getting gas at like five o'clock in the morning getting ready to go surfing before class and i pulled in the gas station north of town north in santa cruz on highway one and um and two rangers grenada raiders were going to dli and so they got out of their truck and it was just one of those fortuitous moments where um i just bumped into them by happenstance but it wasn't by accident so those dudes were getting gas i was getting gas as a big strong kid and you know they had their starches and spits on their og 107s and their blackberries and the whole nine yards right and i was like i'd grown up around pro football players and all that kind of thing and these two dudes like had an intensity and something that i recognized and i wanted to be part of in a five minute conversation i knew that's where i wanted to go how how did you strike up that conversation so i was getting gas i was like hey what's up you guys rangers you know and they were like roger you know yeah we are you know i asked him a few questions and they had their combat scrolls and um and basically they were like well if you think you can make the team you know come try out and it was that kind of thing and it just was so impactful because they they had an intensity and a wherewithal about them that was unique to me that i hadn't really seen anywhere else like that yeah that i'd i kind of like yeah i will crush your soul kind of thing you know like and i just i felt something i felt that and it was like you know i don't know if you believe in divine intervention or like the lord saying hey man pay attention to this yeah man um at the time had you followed the military much before that i mean i did yeah the scroll and that beret yeah so i had a sense of it um so i had a step grandpa who was his name's earl taft and he was a man in world war ii in korea and he was a plank road member of the seal program for vietnam so and he fought joe lewis on ship stop stop he said it was the longest nine minutes of his life and he'd never been hit so hard but he downplayed everything he was a very strong man a very quiet presence um and so i actually was a waterman a good surfer a good swimmer and and i thought i wanted to do the navy seal thing and um and he kind of he said eric do the the army side of special operations you won't like being on ship for extended periods of time and i was like okay that's and then i met the guys you know at the gas station one morning early and then i went and signed up shortly there yeah was there ever a side of you that was like oh i couldn't go on that seal route or no no not really i knew it no i just no i didn't really ever look i haven't had a whole lot of regret or like backward thinking that way um yeah just kind of three meters in front of me is kind of how it led my life for the most part [Music] no no so the like it's hard for me not to think about things in context of past to where i'm at now and then how did i get here no that makes sense and i wonder i mean after you have that chance encounter not maybe not chance but that encounter with those rangers um was there was there ever consideration like maybe i'll do that later i'll go to college or was it like how do i get in to this thing as soon as possible yeah it was like there was a bit of a sense of urgency you know because that school educationally was a struggle for me like i had like those diagnosis of like add adhd dyslexia like i had these things that made me think like school was a hard work for me man yeah it was not it did not come easy but physicality in sports came very easy so so capitalist resistance in a way right like yep you do you like to do what you're good at yeah yeah and how uh i would imagine the way you describe your father your step grandfather they take the news pretty pretty well yeah they were like thank god he found something to go do because we didn't we didn't know what we were we don't want no i'm kidding but yeah you know humor is a coping skill right no it's true especially with the uh with what you went through i'm sure and we'll get into that so we've kind of um given an indication of the time frame as you're talking about the black beret for rangers which a lot of people here will remember i mean when they moved to the brown yeah the brown brick tamara it was a that was a big deal in the military so back when they had the black berets the starch uniform um when you joined up what year are we talking about and what did you sign up to do from the office so 92 i was in second ranger battalion from 92 to 96. okay we had a tactical pause for a helicopter takeoff which is not something you hear every day anymore but um so eric we were we were just talking about you signing up you kind of talked through uh initially signing up in 92 but if you can it sounds like you went right into the infantry with straight into the ranger uh battalion what what was that like at the time for you how old were you getting in and what was that training like because everybody is hurt it's just such a bear yeah i just you know i guess the thing about it that i that i really will never forget is when i first pulled in this second ranger battalion's compound and i looked around and i i knew i was home like i just fundamentally felt like i fit here can you just tell us yeah expand on that a little bit because you're just signing up right i mean you're the new guy but you still felt like this was where you needed to be yeah i just felt fundamentally sound there like these this is my tribe wow and that was before going through yeah [Music] geez um how how hard was that training for you because lord knows you go on to uh sf training but that first go around i'm sure you're you're young at the time what was that like for you yeah it was um you know the selection and assessment phases whether it's like rip to pre ranger to ranger school or um the q course selection and assessment and then the phases one two and three you you learn things about yourself and those in the progression of those selection and assessment phases like at some point it's so miserable and crummy and you're cold and wet and it's winter time for me in mountain phase of rain or school and i thought i was cold and miserable and then a snowflake went right in my ear hole and i was like i just wanted to throw a baby fit you know um and so those you know i'm so thankful to have had those experiences because i really feel like a number one thing i found out i i could flip a switch and lean into something and just turn all the paint off and just get through it right so that was that was the lessons learned and then as we you know as we move like as i moved into my injury right all of the all of the defining ah moments that i had in those suck vests those gut checks um really helped me navigate the injury yeah yes because like because the injury like really you know what i want to like what i want to talk about like my my special operations backgrounds built my foundation and and you're not even talking about just the combat of that it was it was the no i mean in time like we all like we aren't there to hang out like we all want that that scroll on our right shoulder that follows us wherever we go yeah the rest of our life so one of the guys i interviewed recently eddie penny was a dev crew guy but he started out in the marine corps and he described that moment that you just talked about like uh the aha moment he talked about this switch being flipped when he was a basic for the marine corps and a drill sergeant just took him out and smoked him one day and he said it made him a man at that moment and i thought a little bit about that because i feel like people in that line of work probably have a moment like that i wonder is there anything that comes to mind like was it was it the snowflake was it something at ranger school it was kind of a cumulative effect but you know there's like you realize through the selection process that well i mean you kind of have to lean into these things like i don't care if it's like the marshal training or the the guys that go through buds or or ranger selection assessment now rasp or or special force selection assessment or 160th or whatever like at some point they make it so crappy and miserable and hard that you like you just i don't know i guess i'm i'm elaborating in in theory like i think all of us have this fundamental similarity but for you for me individually like i can speak to that it was like i either pass or i i i'll die trying yeah like there was no that was it like it was there wasn't failure was not an option yeah that doesn't mean at times i thought you know like okay i'll quit tomorrow i'm just not gonna tell anybody today or whatever but but i did use little mind games on myself because i just knew that man all i got to do is get through today yeah or maybe the next hour but i just had to break it down like but quitting was never an option like just goes against the grain when you if i can ask what year did you go through ranger school 92 92 okay i asked because uh my brother went through in 94 and i only bring it up because i think that the phase the group ahead of him had seven right guys and so i i was just gonna make a point like it is life or death in that training i mean it pushes you to the limit and people don't want to tap out in that setting so 92 is and guys yeah so if we jump ahead we were talking offline here you mentioned that um second ranger bat was up for somalia but did not go i just i wonder in your mind how how were you able to take that was it difficult for you to watch that well for all of us because because we go to bed every night expecting to go to war the next day like we're not there to just hang out and then when the culture of the rangers you know like world war ii point the hawk in you know the cliffs of normandy and in you know north africa and italy and like those guys when they came into ranger battalion or ranger companies back then um it was a lifetime commitment like you stayed in your unit until you either were injured died or the war was over yeah so our history like we learned our ranger history from from um the kings james war forward right the colonies like before the colonies were a colony like 16 i can't remember the exact date but early 1600s so so we learn all that as young rangers and then we learn that history and then it's like ingrained into our culture and the beauty of like what i love about ranger ranger battalion and the men i served with as a young man like i'm in touch with most of those guys like there's five or six guys here that i served with then like we we get together once a year there's this kind of unique thing about the ranger regiment that's different than any other unit is is we were raised up together like your ranger buddy doesn't go anywhere without you like you're never by yourself it's uh to me it's a it's a very special place yeah i i can't you know it almost makes me a little emotional just really thinking about it because i've bumped into guys here that i that i worked with in ranger battalion and in group and tenth group and you know when we get together it's like we don't it doesn't even really matter what we're doing it just happens that we're doing some pretty cool stuff here yeah like running around in birds and shooting hogs and uh just man everybody has a huge smile on their face so there's there's a gold star kid right a couple of kids here um that dads were killed in in afghanistan or iraq and they're they're 12 13 14 15 year old kids and they come off the aircraft i watched those huge smiles on their face and it didn't matter if you were 12 or 65 you had the same look on your face getting off the bird it was amazing yeah and just for context like the aircraft behind us we were all sitting in that earlier did a pattern and were shooting stationary targets from it including kids and and you're right the gold star kids uh they announced kind of did a a little bit of an introduction for them uh earlier this morning and that was just hard yeah it's heartbreaking but hard to watch but yeah but i'll you know yes so one of my best friends in ranger battalion went to the unit steve langmack and i met his son carson a few weeks ago and rachel i met long ago and um rachel steve's wife and carson steve's son and um and when i was with them a few weeks ago up in montana i know this is going to sound a little funky but but i felt my brother's presence like i felt steve's presence around it was was phenomenal so i i can't imagine that gold star piece like to be carson and growing up without his daddy but around a lot of men that did know his dad yeah that's amazing um i i would ask then you said you were in the in the regiment for uh for four years then you decide to go to um the sf side of the house what was the decision there why uh why the move well you know it's like regiment well when i was there it was kind of a progression right like you didn't really homestead there i mean you could but i think most of us wanted to go go to the go to the unit go to kag and it was like a process right so for me it was like ranger battalion to essa to kag that was the course of action that i wanted to take um so i came into the chow hall one day and second ranger battalion looked around and i used to know everybody and i knew like four dudes and i was like okay it's time to go time to go how uh how was the transition for you and how long did you spend there before it was changed like so i didn't stay too much longer after that a bunch of my buddies were going to kag or they were going to fly helicopters so they could go to 160th or they were going the special forces were out and so you know shortly there after that aha moment i was i was probably out six months later wow put my paperwork in and often you know on the thing the next thing yeah so you had mentioned uh when we were talking beforehand um the operation in haiti so i wonder if we could just speak to that briefly kind of where were you at at the time what uh how old were you what was that experience like going in yeah i was like 24 years old i um it was in 94. so yeah it was close to my birthday like seems to be october is like the go to war month yeah battalion here but anyway it just um that was exciting times man like we were on the on the uss america and we were you know had all the assets there and everybody's ready to go to work and i think lessons learned from somalia was that you know being on an aircraft carrier is a stable safe platform to do mission planning and prep and so so then we launched into las chaos and and grabbed a dude and that was kind of the end of that like i know jimmy carter went in and had conversation with aristide and you know shortly thereafter he just kind of said okay i'm not going to play hardball with you guys um there's a couple of guys doing some bad stuff in the northern claw haiti in las chaos and so we went in there and grabbed that guy you know without getting into any of the operational details but if you could just like two years into this it's a couple years into your career here you're finally going in was it an infill on uh helicopters were you jumping in what was and what was the feeling like going in with that for you felt pretty good first time loading up with your boys you know feels really good and what was as you guys went in as much you know if you can't talk about it no problem but as you guys went in what was your role where were you um breaching were you covering what was your position in that so i was a forward observer so i was a fo so my all my buddies here like yeah hauling the freaking fo so yeah so i talked to air assets yeah with my platoon while they were going in you were there with them kind of yeah almost like the jtac today huh yes well yeah like an e-tac jtac kind of a situation yeah so that was my job with my platoon and was it kind of what you expected it to be coming out of that mission as you were coming back like i finally did this i was in this is what i was shot you know so the cool part was nobody got hurt everybody came home and years later i i talked to the battalion surgeon and um and i was like hey man you know like were you on the haiti mission he was like eric the the great thing about that mission was everybody came home you know and i was like yeah amen brother that's for sure because now we got a bunch of brothers buried in arlington you know and we missed their souls yeah but but the war fight like that's that was who they were you know that was who they were as men and that's that's all they wanted to do and that's how we identified ourselves and our worth yeah did that because i mean just being frank at the time not many people had gone and seen combat at the time so coming back from that like we had somalia of the year before right and i'm sure within the ranger community like that was obviously it was a big deal everywhere everywhere but certainly within the range it's heartbreaking for us 275 guys because we were down in el paso texas getting ready to go and we got bumped off the mission at the last minute so we were all wrecked you know yeah we're pretty upset about it but that's just the nature of this like we don't we don't make those calls and when we're a young man like that we think you know potentially we might be a little more important than we really are yeah with hindsight right yeah it's easier to see at the time it's like such an emotional thing yeah you just don't want to miss it feel like you got robbed if um if we jump ahead to obviously what happened to you if you can share the accident where you were at in your career at the time and then let's dig into what that was like so as i've progressed through the injury um so i've kind of the verbiage i like to give it is like catastrophic life-changing injury and so worst case scenario for me was wasn't like fighting and dying in some third world alley somewhere it was like that i understood that the thing that i was afraid of was getting hurt so bad that i couldn't take care of myself or my family or my or my my ranger buddies or my special horse's buddies right like god forbid i got i couldn't do my job [Music] and yeah so that so i used to not be able to talk about this man without oh yeah you tell me like i would just start i would just start bawling you know like it took it took probably 10 years before i could talk about this without getting them really emotional are you comfortable talking through what the accident was yeah just for context for people so from so for me uh i was a part-time farrier so i you know as a horseshoer on weekends when i wasn't deployed i was working so i was a trainer a breeder and a farrier so i was i was working all the time and so [Music] so it was a nice way to supplement my income um and i guess avoidance like through work yeah so so yeah so i had this like the career progression for me was to go to cag tryouts at some point i realized i had a decision to make like family or job and so i agonized over that decision for about six months and i realized that i couldn't have it all like i couldn't have a daughter that's a squared away kid and be gone all the time so the selfish side of me was like well you know i want to do what i want to do and the other part of me the the part of my soul that was connected to my child you know at two and a half years old and i'm walking around the barn hall with her and and she's daddy this and horsey that and i just realized hey man i can't i can't do both effectively so i pulled the plug and got out at nine years and then um i had a 38 acre horse farm in the johnson city tennessee area and um i had a rough day i had an old 430 john deere tractor you know no roll bar none of that and i was doing some landscaping work and the drag caught had a drag i was trying to smooth out a bank as i was going up the drag caught pulled the tractor over on top of myself and uh so i had gotten out i'd been out almost a year and i was actually i had had a conversation with my wife then uh like i think i made a mistake like i miss i miss my job in special operations like in two days later i was paralyzed and then six months later 911 kicked off geez i i don't think there's anybody who listens to this certainly the vets who listen to this that haven't had the same inner you know kind of come to jesus meeting about choosing the job or the family and myself included going through that i would love to still be doing that work but you know like my son is recording us today and and uh we spend way more time together and the gold star families here are a great reminder yeah and it's completely fine for people who don't choose that route you know and it works for them but i think everybody can appreciate the burden that it is and how difficult like any like you deployed yep i deployed i know the struggle it is like yeah the struggle like to not be whistling on the way out the door to go do your job with your boys but at the same time you're missing everything at home yeah it's like a love-hate relationship and it's it's it's really almost ethereal it's really hard to put your finger on the spiritual side of it you know but it's this huge piece of our soul is connected to the job but a huge part of our soul and who we are as men is attached to our family too yeah and if you could eric what what was the injury that you sustained just so that people who are listening can relate yeah man i had a sudden stop with the 5 000 pound tractor on top of me so i had a a broken back between l3 and l4 so just right above my sacrum um my diaphragm was ruptured pelvis was broken and i had a 22 centimeter tear in my aortic arch and i didn't bleed out so so that's a whole other [Music] conversation like a lot of stuff happens i'm in the in the two hours post initial impact of the tractor and then the subsequent six months the first six months of my injury and recovery a lot of godly well really the next year and a half there was a lot going on right so i don't know what your spiritual side is what we can focus on but that's some [ __ ] went down man i would love to dig into this um and i want because you you've brought up faith a few times now were you religious before that well i went to catholic school but i wouldn't say i was religious that's denied okay like if you're not catholic you don't get in so i kind of was like well my dad my dad's like protestant my mom's presbyterian um dad really didn't go to church very much went because i think he had to because my mom said let's go and then catholic school was in my lane because i was a little rowdy as a kid yeah i felt the discipline would be good for me and i think it probably was and then sounds like it may have taken on a totally different meaning after this incident so well so there's no battlefield atheist right keep going though sorry yeah man so there's no battlefield atheist which is yeah yeah so when i needed help man like i said earlier the the lord's always been like super obvious in my life it isn't a subtle message it's a hard hit in the head like eric left turn ranger um so so i'm trying to understand how to put my s there's so much to my story it's hard for me to get it all articulated right like i've and i've begun to work on that that layering process and so so initial injury but prior to that for about i'd say over a year i had kind of a looming sense of doom and i don't know how to put my finger on it i don't know how to explain it except that i felt just a sense of something that's coming right something's coming man like i don't know what it is but i know something's in route stay here and and again eric that is the that's if i got the timeline right almost like the six months before you exit the military to the six months after right so like well so here's the cool part like so yeah prior to getting out i had a sense of something was coming um but after the injury it was gone wow like gone so so again we had just a tactical pause with another aircraft coming in um eric if we're talking you you talked about this sense of looming doom coming really yeah it was kind of unique because i never really felt anything like that before i i wonder if after that the week or two after that injury the way that you felt at the time could you try to put that into words i i very few people can understand it but i want to set this up for yeah some other discussion yeah what i'd so so the message i'd like to send is like hey man there's a whole bunch of guys that have gone through walter reed and bethesda and in these medical military medical centers with catastrophic injuries similar to mine or worse right like i shot on the us paralympic team for 12 years and i saw guys that were hurt a lot worse than me right with the warrior games and things like that so um so upon impact like i saw a blinding flash of light right i felt excruciating pain it was overwhelming and then and then i lost a sense of time so i had a 5 000 pound tractor smashed me into the ground and so the the the orientation of the tractors is north south and i'm east west right so so somehow i get out from underneath the 5 000 pound tractor i don't know how that happened the next thing i know yeah the next thing i know the next thing i remember is waking up and my head is orientated towards the back tires which are upside down right in the air and my feet are down towards the front end of the tractor and i'm my back is to the tractor and i'm like this like i'm laying in bed wow and i have no sense of time or how long i was out or anything i just know i woke up and i wasn't in shock i did my primary secondary survey on myself i knew my pelvis was broke because i was like oop something doesn't feel right my breathing was a little off something i felt some pressure i didn't understand that my diaphragm was ruptured i thought i had a ruptured lung um yeah and so i i tried to i tried to stand up and i felt this weight like i i was a big strong guy and i felt a weight i couldn't move like i couldn't lift myself up and i this is gonna sound crazy but i heard a voice that wasn't my internal monologue that said eric if you try to move again you'll die well i didn't know i had a 22 centimeter tear in my aortic arch so so anyway i was like okay all right i'm gonna stay still and so i did deep breathing relaxation drills and and um and i had a conversation with the lord and i was there for a couple hours in the dirt waiting waiting for hopefully my wife to come check on me before she left to go to work because i the level of injury the trauma i sustained like i wouldn't make it through the night the docs don't know how i made it at all so that's a that's another story we'll get to that in a minute this is this is the part that i that i want to share with with guys that have suffered similar injury or or maybe they haven't suffered it yet and it's coming down the pipe i don't know um but i i said out loud like i'm talking to you right now ryan like hey man hey lord i'm tying a knot into this rope and holding on and i need you to stay with me and i felt a presence and i didn't know i don't know if it was like my ancestors that had died or the lord the spirit of the lord was with me it sounds crazy to talk about it like this but but i felt a presence and i felt safe and i felt like the man i am was good to go yeah the piece of laying in the dirt coming to jesus like there's no battlefield atheist like i knew i was hurt bad i didn't know how bad and i knew i needed help and so i said out loud like lord you know i'm going to time out the end of this rope and hold on and i need you to hang out with me until help gets here and i felt a presence now i don't you know like i said earlier and i know i'm probably backtracking a little bit but i felt this spiritual presence of the holy spirit or however you want to shape it but i knew i wasn't by myself and i also knew if this is the last day i have on earth i'm good like i've made good choices when nobody was looking i'm proud of the man i am and if this is my time to go roger that i'm good i'll go meet the command sergeant major in the sky and report ranger hall and reporting sergeant major i'm good so i know that we will get into this but there are darker days ahead in your story and it sounds like in this catastrophic moment you're thinking very clearly positively i got this i'm gonna make it or i'm asking for help to make it and i'm comfortable if i have to leave yeah if you had to i didn't i didn't i didn't feel fear i felt warm safe and if i if it's my i was hurt really bad i wasn't in shock when the paramedics finally got there i was talking to them just like you right now [Music] and if you had to then without jumping ahead i just wanted if we had to like do a story arc of going from a good place to a dark place from the moment that injury happens and even if we have to fast forward several years i know it gets bad but how long does it take before that starts to go downhill so for you so this word like i i think i what i'd like to address is the looming sense of doom that i have yeah right so is the is the tractor flipping over it's it's a bright green and yellow john deere tractor had been restored is like brand new and the tractor like was as dark as it was as black as the black you could perceive i don't even know how to explain it except it was a dark menacing presence and i had a moment of thought that was like this is this is gonna sound a little weird but i don't know how else to say it but i have this pret this fear of this is like this is the test this is the the demon this is the monster that's been looming over me like in the blink of an eye i was like the tractor was black and i felt a sense of doom and and fear for the first time in my life i've been scared lots of times this felt like like the monsters after me kind of a sense of thanks i don't know how to explain it other than that um the impact of the tractor you know the the sense of doom left immediately after the injury now the lord showed up and i asked for help and i got help and i laid in the dirt for a couple hours before help came so i had time to lay there and contemplate things and try to be quiet in my head and deep breathe and relax so you know i didn't know that my aortic arch was about to rupture right i had no clue that was even going on but but i felt the presence of the lord with me that that dark presence had was gone now like six months after injury once i realized that i was never gonna walk again then i was suicidal for for for a few months and and some some amazing things happened that alleviated that for me too um but there's there's a little more kind of divine intervention that i want to address so okay so help gets there paramedics get on site they're like hey this guy's mechanism we don't really understand what happened he's he's telling us but that the head paramedic was like we better get the life flight here because if they'd have loaded me up in the ambulance in the bus and bounced me through the pasture field and down the road like my aortic arch would have just blown up so so the birds coming in get to the hospital i'm about to go into surgery and and um they're going to put my back back together i could flex my legs and my calves and my feet and um and i was laying on the gurney and about to go into surgery and my wife noticed something under my pec like my left pec something did something weird and she was like hey you guys better check this out and i was conscious for this so i heard the conversation and everything so they send me back into the cat scan and my order looks like a balloon when you squeeze it it's about to go um so so the cool part is so i you know they put me out i don't wake up for a week they put me in a coma um you know medical induced coma to kind of let my body bounce back and all of that so when i come to i'm innovated i look at the nurse and i'm the guy that's sitting in the er with me in the or in the intensive care and i'm like hey man my family's not coming in here to see me innovated and all this i don't remember how to break the seal i know there's a there's an air bladder in here i need to crack that seal and bust that thing so i can pull this [ __ ] out and he's like er and i was like no man i'm good like i'm awake i'm good to go and so i freaking did all that [ __ ] pulled the innovation tube out and that was that i was good to go after that physically yeah the mental side that that that's to be determined here and you know over the next nine months so so the the surgeon that saved my life fixed my aorta um was a visiting surgeon from john hopkins who was like the head cardiac surgeon and he was visiting to do a medical rotation with east tennessee state's medical school because he was friends with the president of the university they went to med school together or something like that so the doc that saved my life was forescara dr forsgara if he came in to my room i had been awake for about a week and a half and he said eric i saved your life but you're never gonna walk again and i said hey doc that's cool and everything but i'm going to walk out of this hospital like you can go pound sound and i said it a little bit rougher than that but i that was the message i conveyed in grin and he said you're going to be all right he said i'll tell you this i've never seen anybody see survive an aortic tear like you had it just doesn't happen yeah the impending feel of doom that left right when that happened i nobody knows why that is have you ever given thought to like why it may have left at that time yes the test was like the impact was like okay man like you think you've done hard stuff before well guess what the test is getting ready to happen and and that i don't know the impending presence or the doom feeling or but it vanished after the after the impact of tractor i never felt that sense of doom again like something's coming my way and it's there's kind of like this evil presence kind of feeling to it i don't even know it sounds crazy to talk about it but that's kind of how it felt to me that's how it felt to me there was no kind it just felt malevolent and then once the i mean the blinding flash of light and and the the impact of the tractor and the explosion of pain that occurred in my head but that that doom and gloom feeling was gone now now when i came home nine months later from the hospital and i was i realized my legs are shrinking i have bowel and bladder issues i'm never gonna walk again not now now i'm thinking about smoke checking myself like i'm like you know the next phase of this progression was i'm going to bed every night for the first 30 nights i'm home on my horse farm and and i'm asking the lord i'd go to bed every night saying lord this load this wrecking this rucksack i'm carrying is too heavy like if this is the rest of my life i don't think i can do it i need help now i was looking at my 45 like okay this is i'm not going to live my life like this um so so i don't want to interrupt your train of thought it's okay i mean it's a pivotal moment i've talked to several folks who have been in a situation where they had the weapon nearby and are feeling like that not the same scenario obviously for the reasons what's um what was it that kept you from taking taking the step well that's a great question so so we had a three-day toad strangling gully washer storm like they had to fly people medevac people out of their homes things like that we were up on the high ground right like don't build your fighting position in the low ground ranger that's just a bad call so i didn't um so we were good to go for that piece and uh at the end of that storm my wife was riding one of my horses out in our 38 acre hay pasture field and she found a balloon message right with a business card on it well the business card was from a church in western missouri and um it had some scripture on the back of the business card and it said if you find this you know this balloon message please contact this church in western missouri and let us know right so they could put a pin on the map to see where their balloons went for the kids for the youth group i actually have i still have the business card the bloom message i didn't realize it my ex-wife saved it yeah and so now that you know we're having this discussion like i um i have tangible proof well it gets better okay so the balloon message comes that's great okay cool so the pastor's father calls the house about two weeks later and he had been injured on the same model john deere tractors me doing the same type of work and broke his back between the same two vertebrae and he had a brief conversation with me like hey eric i was injured and paralyzed six years ago it's hard but it's gonna be okay so you know my simple way of looking at life was like all right the lord heard my prayer and he was like hey ranger holland rock up you're gonna be okay and i was good to go after that like that was my that was my divine intervention message like what are the odds of that happening at all let alone with the backstory and i was good man i was never suicidal again after that wow if i could ask that discussion that you had with the pastor not many folks who come back from combat have ptsd and they can relate to one another what you've gone through is a much smaller group of people right yes fewer people have gone through that do you think somebody who had not experienced that same type of injury and trauma so that's the balloon message and actually i'm going to put this if it's all right with you and you'll share it i'll put this on the video so if you can see it i can send you the picture yeah i would love it yeah it's legit so i wanted to show you like hey man it's not that's not a made-up i don't i got i'm i feel blessed to have tangible evidence to say hey man this happened it's verifiable [Music] do you think that you could have received that same advice from somebody who hadn't been through this or the fact that the pastor had had the same type of catastrophic life-changing incident yeah the mechanism the mechanism of injury was the same right so to me the way i the way i perceived it then and and i still do was the lord heard me he sent this message to me with the context of the backstory to be like hey ranger holland i hear you you know god's saying eric i'm taking a minute out of my day like i'm creating universes in life and stuff you're gonna be okay ranger like ruck up and get to work that's what i that's how i took it and i was good after that like that was a paradigm shift for me one of one of many to come but that was that was my validation in my mind it was something outside of my own internal monologue that i i rece i feel like i received a divine message that was sent to me now whether that's the case or not i don't know but what are the odds yeah for sure i mean it came like 750 miles to me and uh just before we jump to i think kind of these the greatness that you go on to in the shooting career and what comes next for people who are serving right now if you're if you're a vet for your active duty i've heard other people say just like you did you weren't worried about dying when you were observing you were worried about something like this happening right like that is really one of the worst legs that could happen like a catastrophic life-changing injury like okay like you got your legs blown off by a rpg or an ied or a bee bed or whatever the mechanism of injury is like it's not necessarily fighting and dying with your boys it's like getting hurt so bad that you can't function at a high level right at a high level not just like getting through your day but but we set the bar like really high for ourselves yeah like is i wouldn't at the apex but i was working towards the goal yeah and for people if you were speaking to somebody who's in great shape and at that level and is worried about that obviously you can't be there when that moment comes but if they are worried about that moment and they go into it now that you've gone through it how would you tell them to take that on the few moments after to the months after well just tap into your your strengths right ask for help seek out help and if it isn't going your way like you gotta you know that's that's a great that's a really good question ryan like it's hard for me to put that into words so so what i would say to a guy a who maybe has a sense of something's coming or or not and something just comes down the pipeline and hits you hard right so well like reach out to me that's i you know i'm 20 years into this thing now and i wouldn't trade the injury for all the good it's done to me so what i mean by that is i would the only way i would trade the last 20 years is if i could take all the experience and knowledge i've learned you know put it in the body i had before i got hurt like if i if it was one or two other two i i won't trade like i wouldn't go back yeah because i've grown like i've stretched i've grown through pain if we take from that from the moment where you oh you talked to the pastor you kind of overcome that dark spell at the time you don't have the tendencies again as you described it how long is it until you say all right i'm gonna go on this path and become an olympian basically what what took you there what drove you that so that's a that's another good that's a great question so are you sure you aren't trained up in therapy like i'm not you i was in the cia right so i feel like yeah i've been training so you got a little you got a little inside scoop um so yeah like so i knew about paralympic sport i knew after 18 months of as hard of rehab as i could do and not making an inch of gain for the first time in my life i didn't make a game like i trained as hard as i could and i got nothing back and so i was like okay man 18 months into this rehab and braces leg braces and parallel bars and everything at home and working my behind off and no progress i hit a wall you even said growing up like physicality was your it's a strength man that part was easy for me you know i'm not saying i didn't have challenges or anything but the physical part of my life was was was fairly easy for me yeah so um so so i was i was struggling with how to define myself post injury and i knew there was paralympic sport out there and all i knew was horses and guns i was a 18 bravo as a weapons guy as a ranger so i was like okay well what do i know i know how to shoot i know how to mess around with guns a little bit i know horses well i can't put i can't do the horseshoeing thing i can't be a farrier anymore i can't really do the horse the equine side of things anymore so i plugged myself into gunsmithing school it's a usa shooting i was in gunsmithing school in in denver area colorado and i knew the olympic training center was in colorado springs i'd been stationed in colorado springs at fort carson and 10th group and so one day i just drove down to usa shooting enrolled in there and introduced myself to whoever was working in the office and said hey i think i can shoot with your guys and i'll never forget this man i don't remember the young lady's name she was an intern um but i she kind of cocked the eyebrow and gave me the yeah sure you do yeah right and so it was so cool man and um and then it was on right so so i went in on the range and i i checked it out they they entertained me for a minute and um dan dan jordan was a collegiate national champion uh and had injured his broke his back on denali well mount mckinley you know he was at the university of fairbanks as a rifle shooter on their rifle team and he had broke his back he was like eight years into his injury at that point and he was out of town he was competing somewhere in europe or who knows where um and he was getting ready for the athens games in 2004. so so the rifle coach at that time said hey eric i think it was dave johnson was the coach and uh he said hey just come back when dan comes back he'll be back next weekend come down and meet dan and so i did and um and so i met dan he's in a chair i'm in a chair he's a elite level athlete he's been a able-bodied athlete we had all these things in common and um and so he gave me a rifle and i shot 10 meter rifle well i don't know if you know much about olympic rifle but it's a period dot on a on a typewriter is a millimeter dot well that's the ten ring at 33 feet right so so i'm shooting at the at the i got aperture size so round round target two round sights and i line everything up and i i scare the black like i'm i got leaner sevens all the way around right i can't get in the black and i don't think i shot a an eight you know like that's a long ways out from the ten right right so but they gave me a pistol and out of 20 shots i i put eight to ten in the ten ring and they're like hey you shoot pretty good and i was like well it's it's iron sights you know it's like this front sight rear sight everything lines up line everything up pull the trigger got it yeah so they said you know i went to lunch with dan and because he was in a chair and he said to me eric like this injury if you work it hard enough could be the best thing that ever happened to you and because he was an elite athlete before he got hurt he's a paralympic athlete after um and he's in a wheelchair and he was eight years into his injury i heard what he said i heard it i was like you're crazy i don't i said i don't know man i think you saw us in your future like they might need to drug test you so that's you saw it as the anti-doping agency that all us athletes have to you know perform to that standard so so i kind of kid with with dan about that still to this day did he did you have to prove to him that you could get in or was it that first round of shooting he could just see your no no i had i didn't have to prove much to him you know i just i shot with him quite a few times moving forward um i was in gunsmithing school i uh i'd come down on weekends and shoot as much as i could and i shot every morning for two hours before class at the arvada pistol range is the indoor kind of funky old-timey indoor shooting range and so i just i worked my ass off at it man i wore a gun out i had a an older model side cocker kind of spring-loaded 10 meter not even compressed air it was like pre-64. i don't even remember the model i just know i wore the bluing off that thing shooting it i shot it for two and a half two years maybe year and a half um yeah and i just wore it out and shot every day before class um i you know that was my routine shooting class and then the gym and you mentioned as we were talking offline it took a few years to make the team right yeah it took three three years to make it yeah so when you started trying were you thinking like i'm gonna get on that team that is my goal that was my goal after talking to dance yes yeah i knew i could do it and i'm not familiar with the selection process for that but assuming you have to call it so i do i know yeah yeah so please like what is it that that after three years they were like all right you're ready to go yeah you got this slot here yeah i just shoot a gold medal score from the previous games to make the team in a world cup geez so the cool part um so there's there's another piece of this story that is kind of faith-based so i i'd only told one of my arrangement one of my closest raider buddies that i had even been hurt wow he he spread the word and he he had come back from from a deployment rich canoe one of my best friends and we were in alpha company 275 together second ranger battalion together and he went uh flight school at fort rucker and then went went to fly while i was in the q course he was flying for the 18th airborne corps or the 82nd i can't remember which but he was doing his initial flight time right they got to do a certain amount of flight hours certain amount of time under nods before they can go to 160th tryouts so rich and i are located in the you know fort bragg at the same time we're working out together at lunch and um anyway super close and i'm close with a lot all my ranger buddies really but after injury i was ashamed of myself like somehow i'd screwed up and hurt myself and now i'm broke and i'm that guy i'm a mess i'm i'm i'm a [ __ ] mess man rich came the hospital two months into injury if that maybe six weeks he'd he'd been deployed somewhere and came home and came to see me yeah i'll never forget it and we were both wrecked he was i think he was wrecked more than me um can we dive in just a little bit to that the shame that you felt like where does that come from because just knowing you i'm sure one of your ranger buddies said that they were dealing with this i don't think anybody would hold it against him like where did that come from i don't know i don't know man i just thought you know my internal monologue was like oh you dumbass like how could you do this to yourself like you did this to yourself yeah like it didn't happen on the in the war fight it didn't happen based on someone else's decision-making process it was all just me on my farm tractor doing something i shouldn't have been doing and i had an accident and ended up breaking my body in half and crushing my soul like the analogy i use and i've i've said this before is is it was like pushing a ball under water the further you push it down the harder it pushes back eventually like my personality came back to the surface right with with force but it it took a while man it took a while is that some of the advice i think earlier you're saying to [ __ ] to open up about it like if you were advising someone else in this position yes yeah ask for help don't be ashamed don't don't don't let the injury define you as individual and you're gonna go through pain man like it's gonna define you for a minute it might be a couple years like for me it took a while so so the cool part the reason i kind of branched off onto that train of thought was simply because i'm in gunsmithing school i'm working my behind to make the shooting team and i get on a plane to go back to tennessee to see my daughter my marriage is is not working out right like the injury and it's very seldom will someone suffer kind of a catastrophic injury like this and and in their marriage stay intact it's it's like the death of a kid okay it just fundamentally changes the nature of the relationship to the point where it's overwhelming for both parties so so so i'm in denver international airport i'm going down terminal b to catch my flight and my team shark my sf team is coming this way in the airport lately completely by chance buy random random but not random yeah right so okay now my team start sees me i can't turn around yeah there's no there's no hiding it now and he's like eric like what happened brother and i was like mike i i had a tractor accident i broke my back and he's like we're going to key west for a dive recall we'll be back in two weeks you're coming to the house i was like roger that yeah can't say no so i go i go back to tennessee those guys go down to key west do their thing and come back and and i i go back i go to mike's house he helps me tune my resume up i'm still in gunsmithing school and he gets me a job with l3 communications i go to fort belvoir to tune their guns up to punch out for first infantry division to go to afghanistan so i'm there for six weeks i made a good chunk of change and it's thanksgiving air window of time and i go to but i go to walter reed on thanksgiving day i just felt this okay man walter reed's right here there's dudes coming home hurt you need to go you need to go so i did i went on one of the wards rolling in in my chair and just said to the head nurse hey my name is eric holland as an army guy and if there's anybody that could benefit from my company or my conversation please show me the way and she did so i go into a room with there's a young there's a marine there which is kind of weird at army hospital but there's so many dudes coming home hurt they're just putting people in beds so this kid was a pitcher for clemson right when in after 9 11 gave up his collar scholarship his mom has his room decorated with his guitar and all his memorabilia trophies pictures everything so the kids bilateral amputees so below the knee both legs are missing spinal cord injury and in a coma and hadn't woke up yet and so i just introduced myself to his mom and she just talked about her son for a couple hours and uh we just i just sat and listened and at the end of at the end of it when she kind of processed all the stuff that she was worried scared and afraid of and we were both in tears and i told her my recovery to that point what it looked like just like we've kind of talked about just up to the up to two years into my injury and she uh she looked at me and said eric you're the answer to my prayer well i just got that balloon message man like six months earlier like i understood what that meant like that was hugely impactful for me so i finished the contracting job up went back to colorado finished school started night class for a college degree to to get a clinical degree to work with behavioral health right so now i'm a licensed clinical social worker i got a master's degree i don't know how i pulled that off but i did fake it till you make it brother all right all right so so that that you know was just another piece of like if i hadn't bumped into mike you wouldn't have been in that area right and i wouldn't have got the contracting job and then i wouldn't have went to walter reed and i wouldn't have met this woman and so the lord was like bam ranger left turn yeah and you were like her balloon message right yes at that point all right yeah i know man how i know right like when i tell this story it just blows my mind yeah it's not subtle yes yeah um and at the time you i mean you're getting your master's degree at night you're also like honing your shooting skills right yeah so my daughter's in tennessee i made enough money on that six eight weeks of contracting that i was good to go for a few months and i packed all my stuff finished gunsmithing school finished the semester packed all my stuff moved back to tennessee to raise my daughter be a dad like i had wrapped my head around the wheelchair the injury i i was no longer as frat i was just broke man my soul was crushed like i was just i was just lost for the first time in my life like i couldn't orientate my cosmos it was just going in the circle i felt like i'm in the weeds for the you know i don't know what to do how to do it everything seems immense overwhelming no direction like i'm just holding on for dear life and i'm curious what it was like once you got back to that pinnacle level of competition right because you were in that with the ranger battalion sf yeah and then you're you're the other shooter that's a great question so so i had shot well enough at the olympic training center with usa shooting you know it was probably six months and i was down there every chance i got and the coach the pistol coach at the time was was kind of an ass so i'd drive an hour and a half to get down there and like if if he felt like i was shouldn't be there like he'd kick everybody off the range and turn the lights out on me jeez he was a dick so so i'd be like well okay that was freaking great so that just pissed me off even more then i was like okay it's on like yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna use this i'm gonna do this yeah i used it for fuel so he didn't know he was motivating me i was like okay man you're not a special operations guy you're just some pistol shooter what have you done with your life you know i i've i was angry like i i flipped that switch and focused that effort and started chasing the score and um so i packed all my stuff went and one of the coaches had shot at eastern kentucky on their rifle team dave johnson he was cool and dave said hey man you're from johnson city tennessee the east tennessee state had a rifle re-team they still got a range you can train there and go to school and be a freaking dad do your job what are you doing yeah so i was like okay cool so i packed up my stuff and hauled ass back home and raised my kid and went back to school at east tennessee state well not back but i signed up for college there got my undergrad there and shot my behind off every day and and went to class and my daughter worked out in the gym with me like six years old she's like dad what are you doing to me i'm sick so i'm like i don't care you're working out with your dad yeah you're gonna learn some skills yeah so so this is this is cool right so there's more to this story so mark mirage colonel mark mirage is the rotc commander there and his first shard i don't remember the guy's name 100 first guy so i'd be on the range shooting and the rotc guys would come in and i'd just be like hey man i'm i'm training too is it cool if i just set my stuff up next to you guys and train and they were like yeah sure and i was i was drilling it with this old broken down pos of a pistol you know i mean i was shooting i was shooting holes in my target like 30 rounds like tight groups and and uh and i had some drills set up and so the first aren't had enough shooting experience to be like i think he shot ipsick or idpa or something and he's like holy crap this dude's shooting pretty good so he talks to mark right unbeknownst to me and mark talks to the talks to me you know we're like out with the burger king on campus or something he's like hey man what's your deal and i was like well here's my deal blah blah blah ranger battalion group and he's like okay and so i didn't know it but he talked to the rotc cadets and they had a kind of a slush fund and so they gave me 3 500 bucks enough to buy like the pistol i needed to compete with was 2 000 at that time and and they um and they gave me some travel money to get to to matches so i took that and my score jumped 30 points overnight so i was shooting like 555s out of 600. i'll i jumped to 575 like from one gun to the next it was that dramatic of a change was just the system i was using i shot it as best as it could shoot yeah i just thought it was me like right like it's always operator air yep so the east tennessee east tennessee states rotc program sponsored me without sponsoring me right like i gave you that yeah and uh and then i hit the bricks man and i made i shot a funding score 18 months later but the fight the thing that i loved about shooting was you're just up there all by your lonesome man it's you and your gun and your head and your thoughts and in learning so i could shoot the scores and practice but when i'd get in the match in competition the score became an obstacle right so so the analogy i use like not too many like our shooting sports aren't talked about you don't really see them maybe at the olympics they'll show some stuff um related to the shooting sports but not not very much so the the fight that i the part that i had to learn how to navigate was focus on this shot i got to do 60 of these but this shot right now is the only shot that matters and to steal my mind and focus on the process of of shooting the shot so so hold control aiming control trigger control you know breathing control follow through so one of those steps was a little bit out of process but but that's the scheme of maneuver for me was like these five steps of shooting an effective shot process will result in the goal which is the score well it took me it took me almost 18 months to learn how to manage that so meaning i'd shoot my first 30 shots in the match and be world class scores i'm shooting 95s 96s out of uh 100 points strings and then i realized holy smoke i'm on fire and as soon as i thought that thought then i started chasing the score and i'd lose it the wheels had come off yeah and so i'm at a winter airgun match in colorado springs at usa shooting i'm i'm traveling i'm i'm robbing peter to pay paul to get there and coach ray ariando was a 88 olympian rapid fire pistol shooter and uh he watched me shoot and he came up to me after a match and said eric i'm i'm at the amu my name's coach ray ariando i want to help you make the team come down to the amu every chance you get and i'll coach you wow and so i was a six-hour drive from east tennessee johnson city to fort benning and i drove that every chance i had every long weekend and i'd i'd sleep at a buddy's house i'd i'd sleep in the cheapest goddamn hotel i could find whatever it took i'd stay at a friend's house and i got that's how i did it so so 18 months into the injury or 18 months into the funding uh i shot in 2006 at a world cup at fort benning at the army marksmanship unit i shot the funding square i needed to make the team it took three years wow three years of working i shot every day for a minimum of two hours a day six seven days a week at least so if um if you jump then to the time where you're where you're shooting in the olympics what was that feeling like so so the you know there's no way to prepare for that day like i shot for eight years for so i had eight years of work that boiled down to two matches 10 meter and 50 meter pistol there was no way to prepare for the the pressure the expectation the gold medals right there i shoot good enough to win the distraction of the event was was overwhelming so like i'm in my hold my hold's very still i have a really it's almost a detriment so i could see my hold get very small and i just would get on the trigger just enough to push it and then i'd push my shot into the eight ring there's a ten ring hold yeah i so so the in both of my events and i had meddled in world cups i had podiums like numerous times i don't know eight ten times i wasn't on the podium every time but but at least one out of three oh is it i was in the fight all the time but that day man that day there was just i couldn't do it like i knew i was i knew my head space wasn't right i knew there was not the wheels came off there was nothing i could do about it the amazing thing was so my last string my my 50 to 60 shot string i shot a 97 so that's only three shots out of the ten ring so seven tens right so but the thing of it was i knew i had paid attention to my score i knew where i was at and i had messed it up so bad that i knew i was done and then i could relax and relax yeah yeah so so the cool part of this made me think of another piece of something i missed in this conversation that i wanted to address so the rotc side the making the shooting team side there's something in there that's important i can't remember what it was now well maybe did you end up going back to the olympics so i shot one time 2012 was my shot 2016 was in rio i had just about finished grad school um i needed to get to work and so i i continued to shoot but not not at the level that i had leading up like i had to get to work man like i'm broke yep like i got student loan debt i got i got a kid to raise there's there's all these things going on and i was so i continued to compete but my focus was had shifted but i was a good enough shooter to still play got it so oh this is i gotta go for it thanks man so so the the paradigm shift right like this is the this is the piece that really just i was talking about it to to jeff walker who is a my 18 delta in second time 10th and um and we were going to have coffee and i was like jeff you know this this paradigm shift for me didn't just happen overnight it was like four years into my injury i'm at the olympic training center in colorado springs i'm coming out of strength and conditioning i just had a great workout and i'd shot well that morning i'm feeling good and jesse beckham one of uh he was the one of the sled bobsled members for sled 3 for bobsled team 3. so jesse's coming out of the gym i'm coming out of the gym and he's like hey eric man how are you competing like how you representing your country are you doing your job wow you know and i was like yeah bro i'm crushing it like i'm i'm podium and not more times than not but but uh every other time i'm earning my keep yeah and that's when i realized i was like holy smoke man i'm the only one that sees the chair like nobody else sees it like here's a here's an able-bodied olympic athlete he's a bobsledder he's like hey man like how you doing yeah how are you competing right nothing bad no he didn't care like can you walk damn and that's when i was like well shoot like every everybody else is just looking like eric holland yeah dude you're representing your country in the paralympics right like that's a big deal they don't just let you no they don't just let you become a resident athlete at the olympic training center like you can't buy your way in there that's when i that's when it that paradigm shift like completely shifted into place like i was like i'm the only one that sees the injury why am i carrying this around that brings up a question i wanted to ask and i don't want to take up too much of your time here but this one in particular and if if this takes us on a negative direction it's no problem we'll we'll skip it is there something that you would say to people who do not have this type of injury that just bothers you because i would imagine like you see the chair but just what you said somebody else looks at you and doesn't see it it must feel like that's that's how it should be you're almost like a mind reader that's a great question so i got a really good answer for that and this is a great example so i just finished competing for my country in london in 2012 with the us paralympic team general dempsey martin dempsey chairman of joint chief staff came and watched me shoot like that was awesome i'm on the plane coming home didn't meet the standard in my mind at all so i'm kind of like i feel bipolar i'm like super proud that i did it and super disappointed in myself at the same time i'm like happy and sad right so i go to get we land in dulles in in dc and getting ready to get off the plane the plane's taxiing and the pilot comes on and says oh and by the way eric holland u.s paralympic usa shooting team member just competed for his country in london paralympics and finished 14th and 24th in the world in his two events whole plane blows up it's great get off the plane rolling through the airport and a guy comes up to me and says hey man like you're in a wheelchair it's really good to see you out i just got back from london competing for my country and this dude's like hey man really good to see like a dude like you out in a wheelchair traveling around doing stuff i went in the bathroom and just cried did you yeah i just bawled i was like i wanted to throat punch that guy yeah he's like what do you know man but he was just trying to be nice like yeah in his way i see in the world and i'm like dude i just crushed my injury i just represented my country like i've no idea i've just reached all the goals that i had set for myself right so it makes me tear up just talking about yeah yeah that happened and the advice then is just like don't see the chair right it's it does so the message that i want to convey like the reason i really get and then i just appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about this ryan today is like the message i want to send out is is i don't care what your injury is like if you have a pte diagnosis or ptsd diagnosis whatever you want to call it however you want to shape it depression anxiety a physical limitation whatever that is like you don't it's a choice to allow that to define you as an individual and i just i i just fundamentally feel that if i can share my message as a message of hope and inspiration like hey if i can do it anybody can and don't let don't let the injury define you yeah that's the message i really want to send that's that's that was what i struggled with and that's what it took me to took me the route i took is because i wanted to i was a special operations member i got hurt i got crushed figuratively and literally and then i was able to work my way up to re-establish a bar that was equal or maybe exceeded anything i had done as an able-bodied guy in my entire life and now i wouldn't trade the injury so you've answered one of the questions i'd like to ask everyone i i will modify it slightly but there are two two more questions one is and i've never interviewed an olympian so i'm going to modify this one also was there something you carried with you when you were in combat that had and when i say in combat or when you were shooting in the olympics or at that level that had sentimental value good luck something that you needed to make sure you have with you no it's always no i didn't have it i didn't have any uh a little good luck charm or i didn't have anything like that i had the american flag sewn on the back of my wheelchair um but no i didn't carry anything with me that's a fair answer yeah and then the last one and again i you've touched on this but you've been through more than anybody i've talked to um both what you did in uniform and then certainly afterwards would you go back and do all that again absolutely like i'd just do it better so my daughter's a active duty service member she's at 25 bravo she's um that's a cyber security like she's a cyber warrior and she's a great ski racer and she grew up the olympic training center like all these cool things happened so i would not i wouldn't like i don't i i don't see the negative in the injury that doesn't mean like i didn't suffer and at times initially early on yes absolutely like that injury defined me i just it's somehow some way i that you know i alluded to the the ball you push the ball underwater and the harder you push it down the harder it pushes back and eventually my personality launched you know came back to the surface and i was good to go and so i can look at it now and see all the all the blessings and all the benefit and all the the divine intervention that interceded in my life and it wasn't subtle to me it was a hard hit like left turn yeah yeah thanks so much for the time eric this is great yeah thanks yeah appreciate it i know we got more stories ahead so eric we we had wrapped up our interview down in texas which was a great experience for both of us i know as we were editing the podcast you had reached out because you you asked for just a little time to clarify a few items from our interview so the floor is yours want to turn it over to you for whatever points you'd like to uh to clarify there yeah thanks ryan so so the clarification i just wanted to add um you know to the timeline because because the linear progression of you know military career like there was a few bumps in the road and i didn't i didn't feel comfortable addressing it at the time but then when i watched the clip i thought you know i need to address this just just from an ethical and um just from my like a moral point of view so so i just wanted to um to clarify that you know my timeline coming to second range of battalion was 1992 i was 26 years old 25 and a half i think and and in the progression for me was special forces selection and assessment and then the sf medic course in san antonio the 18 delta course and i didn't pass it so so i got an opportunity to come to ranger battalion which which basically meant i come in and uh made it through rip ranger uh indoctrination program and then sergeant major lg called me into his office and said hey man you didn't pass the sf medic course and so your selection and assessment to come to my ranger battalion is um rip to pre ranger to ranger school and then to battalion and so you know i just i didn't really want to talk about my failures i i like talking about successes for sure everyone does things that i you know that i struggled with or i didn't do as well as i could have or anyway i avoided it down there in texas and i just wanted to clarify that here tonight just from uh integrity standpoint yeah i think everybody listening can understand that and certainly people who have heard this podcast before will recall like folks like tom shea who who had to go to bud several times um and you know totally understandable to not want to share something like that um i think it actually shows even more of the perseverance you have and probably another element that has made you so successful overcoming this life-altering um event that you have so well well thanks ryan thanks for giving me the opportunity to get you know to kind of tighten it up i appreciate it no absolutely so thanks again eric appreciate it and i'm sure everybody will will further appreciate you as a person what you've gone through hearing this thanks i hope you enjoyed this combat story people often write to me with incredible stories and suggestions for interviews if you want to share a combat story of your own or from someone you served with record yourself for up to five minutes and email it to ryan combatstory.com i'll select some of these stories and feature them at the end of our episodes thanks for listening stay safe

Channel: Combat Story

Views: 11,337

Keywords: Delta Force, The Unit, Special Forces, Special Operations Forces, Squadron, Operator, Todd Opalski, Force Recon, Marine Recon, Marine Scout Sniper, Marine Sniper, Marine Corps, The Marine Corps, Hoora, Devil Dogs, NCO, Non-Commissioned Officer, Zen Commando, Ranger School, Ranger, Army Ranger, Costa Rica, Iraq, Afghanistan, CIA, paramilitary, 1st SFOD, American Badass, Olympics, Olympian, paralyzed, paralympian, USA, Team USA, USA Shooting

Id: WhCqmeF3coI

Length: 96min 56sec (5816 seconds)

Published: Sat May 08 2021