MG Trevor Bredenkamp

MG Trevor Bredenkamp sat down with me for Heroes Live.

First active duty general I sat down with. I was his black hat. Stick leader in jumpmaster school. His wife too. She has two stars as well. Had them a little longer than he did. He had just pinned the second one. Full name Trevor John Bredenkamp.

Air Force brat. Parents from Nebraska. Farm kids. Met at the University of Nebraska. He was born in Ottawa, Canada. Dad was communications electronics. A school up there. Next time Trevor went back to Canada he jumped Petawawa. Observer-controller out of 3-505. Working for the 504.

Midwest. Virginia in elementary school. New Jersey in middle school. Korea for high school. 1984 to 1987. Senior year outside Norton Air Force Base. San Bernardino. Class of 80 in Korea. Class of 850 in California. A handful of military kids. He had to make new friends again. He later gave lieutenants three jobs on purpose. New platoon sergeant. New peers. New commander. Iterate.

He did photography in Korea. Asian Games in 86. Subway signs he could not read. Hong Kong. Thailand. Boy Scouts took him to West Point as a middle school kid. Junior ROTC. Sergeant Major Metcalf had enlisted when Truman was president. Student government. Cadet leadership. Out of 80 kids six or seven went to the academies. AFKN. General Lindsay. He wanted photography. Auto mechanics. The Army. No ROTC scholarship. West Point took him at the last minute in 1988. He went to England as a cadet and trained there.

Four assignments in the 82nd. Field grade. Battalion commander. Brigade commander. He tells people he only served in the 504th. The 505th. The 506th. The 507th. About 25 of his field grades are battalion or brigade commanders now. That is success to him. Climate first. Then culture. People want to be part of it.

Alone and unafraid. That is what we said about those Stinger teams. Jump a missile. Hump it to the highest hill. One shot. One kill. Not sure how you get out. He still talks slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. He got some scars from me being his black hat.

He took a pause ahead of the promotion and thought about how he got here. The people who invested in him. The people who let him fail and not be a failure. The ones he worked for. The ones he worked with. The ones who worked for him. That is why we hit record. Get the story on tape before we are too old or too sick to tell it.