 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the General Douglas McArthur Leadership Award Ceremony. Our host for today's ceremony is Lieutenant General Walter E. Payett, Director of the Army Staff. Accompanying Lieutenant General Payett is Captain Retired Timothy J. Lockhart of the General Douglas McArthur Foundation Board of Directors. Please stand for the arrival of the official party and remain standing for the singing of the National Anthem by Staff Sergeant Ethan Green from the United States Army Chorus and the invocation delivered by Chaplain Brigadier General William Green Jr., Deputy Chief of Chaplains. Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air Caved proof through the night that our flag was still there Oh say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave Please bow with me as we ask God's blessings upon this special occasion. Almighty God, we come to you with gratitude for the leaders we are honoring in this ceremony today. By their sustained personal acts of integrity, influence, and selfless service, all of them have demonstrated themselves to be Army leaders matter and who make a significant difference in the units and organizations where they serve. Heavenly Father, bless these leaders who uphold the ideals for which General McArthur stood, duty, honor, and country. We ask that you give each one of them a sense of well-deserved pride and sustained purpose as they continue to serve the soldiers and families of our Army. Their actions have increased the trust that Americans can place in our Army as we serve and defend our great nation. Almighty God, we pray knowing that we are never the sole contributors to our success. Others always help us along the way and with Thanksgiving, we acknowledge the families, teammates, friends, battle buddies, commanders, and NCOs who have contributed to the development of these men and women assembled before us today. All of them could share stories of support and of mentors who examples they have followed. It is by supporting those around them that they too have become leaders whom others follow. And now, Lord, we ask that you use the honors bestowed upon these soldiers today to challenge each of us to serve the cause of freedom with a renewed, and we ask that you inspire all of us to stand together to meet every challenge we face in the days ahead. All this we pray in your blessed name. Amen. Please be seated. The General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award is presented annually to recognize company-grade officers who demonstrate the ideals of duty, honor, and country. Today, the 2022 General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award is presented to 27 officers in the active Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard who display the leadership traits epitomized by General MacArthur. Throughout a broad spectrum of positions, these officers display true commitment to Army values, unequal technical and tactical competence, a mature understanding of their leaders, subordinates, and peers, and they exercise influence and leadership traits required for building cohesive teams that support the Army. These officers are the leaders of our future. The MacArthur Leadership Award is presented by both the Department of the Army and the General Douglas MacArthur Foundation. The Army is pleased to host this event and appreciates the MacArthur Foundation's active role in promoting junior officer leadership. Ladies and gentlemen, Lieutenant General Piot. Hey, thanks a lot. A lot of VIPs here today for this occasion, or to get to meet all of our MacArthur Award recipients this year, but also many of them like me don't want to be called back through active duty, so we're going to look in the eye and make sure you got that mission well in hand. But thanks, General Vreen. Thanks for being here. And teammates, Trevor, wow, the commander of Military District Washington. Thank you for being here today. Dwayne, thanks for being here. Thanks to everyone for joining us. What a thrill. It is for all of us to be here today. I'm excited. I had to bring a Navy captain with me for so they say we class up the place here. It's kind of cool to walk down. I don't think I've ever shared a ceremony with a Navy captain. So quite an honor, sir. Thank you for joining us today. Douglas MacArthur, we talked so many times about how he faced many challenges and was always at the tip of the spear and willing to make a tough decision at the right time. We talked earlier today about his exploits as a young officer throughout World War One as a Brigadier General meeting his team going over the top with young soldiers into no man's land. That's a caliber leader he was. But as war broke in World War Two, he courageously led the United States in their efforts in the Pacific. But it's what he did host conflict to that I would like to reflect a little bit on today. As he moved into Japan, he studied what could have been a very difficult time for a nation torn by war. It just suffered two atomic bombs and brought up people together and started to build a relationship in a nation from the ashes of war. He knew how to do that. He knew the Orient and he knew the leaders that he needed to engage with. But it was at a time too after such a devastating war that our nation thought it would be best now to downsize our army because we have long-range fires and there wouldn't be a need for land forces in the Pacific. Sound familiar? Everybody bought into it. After such a devastating war, it was easy to believe we would never fight this type of war again. It was logical to downsize. We were on occupational duty. Our equipment, we're not prepared for combat, but combat did not wait for us to be prepared. And that mission will never change. Our nation will never ask if the United States Army is ready. They will expect it. And they expected it as war broke out in Korea after we divided a country with not too much thought, just took a line, took about an hour for the staff to recommend. Here's where we should divide it and we did it and we didn't see what was happening in the country post-conflict in Korea. North Korea did and they sought their opportunity. They attacked and they swept through South Korea and we held on to a tiny perimeter down near Busan. Their armor was better than ours. Our equipment would not do anything to their tanks. Our soldiers were not prepared nor were they ready to go and we sent soldiers unprepared, untrained into lethal combat. And they held the line. Just four short, five short years since World War II ended, no one thought they'd be back in that place again. And there when the country was all in despair and everybody was blaming everyone for how we got here and people didn't think we would be able to hold on to South Korea, one man thought different, Douglas MacArthur. Again, sought a problem that looked to be impossible to solve, came up with a solution. Today many will either criticize that solution or cause it a very simple solution, but he chose to go deep into the enemy's rear outflank and cut off the North Korean assault. He chose to do a landing at Incheon. It sounds easy today. It was anything but he didn't have forces that were used to doing shore landings anymore. Those soldiers moved on. Plus Incheon is not really a desirable place you want to go ashore on. You have to test the tides exactly right. If you get it wrong, you're not going to get there. If you get it wrong again, you're never going to get there. It was a terribly complex, high-risk mission. MacArthur knew he had to do it. Many people told him to do it, but his leadership led people to believe in what he was saying could be done. So they did all the right mitigation measures, but still he had to instill confidence in people that doing something everyone thought was impossible was exactly the right thing to do. Again, he led by leading. And where it was hard, he was in the center of it. And where it was extremely dangerous, he took responsibility for it. And he led on that invasion. And now it seems elementary, but it cut off the North Korean Army. It changed the state of that war. Soon the shoe was on the other foot and the U.S. was now on the offensive. And the U.N. countries with us pushed North Korea all the way back up. The war goes on for three years, but what happened that day was due to the incredible leadership of Douglas MacArthur. It shows us again that our training prepares us for the expected, but it's our education, our culture, our environment growing up that prepares us for the unexpected. And we will always face the unexpected, as our nation did in the outbreak of the Korean War. And Douglas MacArthur had to lead him to something that wasn't a expected solution. He led to an unexpected solution. It was his leadership that got us there. There are other examples of that. I go back to my own personal example while on a mission in Afghanistan, we did a medical readiness visit to a village in eastern Afghanistan. And it was a really pleasant day. We were able to take female doctors with us. We were able to see the entire village, most of the tribe. It was kind of a fun day. And those fun days don't happen too much in combat or in Afghanistan. As we left the village though, the children lined the road on the way out to hold out their hand to receive a pen or a pencil or a small gift is very common in Afghanistan. And you just, it brought you back to your humanity to see these little kids with dirty faces putting their hands out and just wanting something. It was a pleasant time. Except when the last vehicle forwarded through the children and through a grenade onto that into his turret and then waited for the explosion. Luckily, it didn't go inside the turret. Luckily, it rolled off and lodged within the equipment carried on the rack of the military vehicle and exploded. As soon as he heard explosion, again, he did what he was trained to do. He got up, he slew his .50 caliber machine gun, he saw the fleeing figure that threw the grenade. But in a second, he decided not to shoot. Not what he was trained to do. We pulled back into that village and after being so gracious, I tried to shame the tribal leaders. Okay, why if I come in such good faith would you throw a grenade at us as we leave this town? They thought we were going to search every home, arrest every man. We elected to just stay. And I told the tribal leader, bring us those responsible and then we'll leave. We stayed for a day, another day. It got cold. It was snowing. We didn't have any tents with us. We stayed for another day and then a sergeant major who normally is the common sense person of a battalion told this battalion commander, hey, sir, you really got to go and get back to your headquarters. You got a battalion to run. So I went to the village elder and I told him, you're showing me that you're not dealing in good faith. But if you bring those responsible to our base and we'll have a talk and we'll decide how to move forward. If not, I'm coming back in a couple weeks, knowing they'd never come back to our base with the people responsible, that we would come back here and try to work out a way to figure out how we could get better deal and relationship with this town. Well, sure enough, in about a week in our base camp at Orkney, I get a call in the headquarters. They said, sir, the village elders are out there outside and they said they came to meet you and you told them to come and bring the people responsible, not knowing what I was in for. We had them into our little room, our meeting room in the base headquarters and they brought the boy that threw the grenade. He couldn't have been any more than 10 years old and would kill his family and take all the kids over to across the border and put them in a school there. And they brought his father with the child and they said, but we give you his father instead. If you'd let us keep the boy, we'll let you arrest his father. And I remember looking in the father's eyes. Now, my training had told me to arrest them both, to arrest the village, to shame them both. But my education and experience and having just lost my father before this deployment, I looked in the eyes of that father and I chose a different course of action. I decided that I would introduce that boy to the crew that he threw the grenade on. Now, the soldiers thought I lost my mind at this point, but I wanted them to see the human side of the conflict. I wanted them to see that we weren't infidels, that we were people, people that left our homes and were invested in the security of their nation at all costs, even if it costs us our own life. It worked. And that young boy saw and he met the soldiers in the Humvee and actually gave them a ride in it. I still can't believe they did it. They did think I was a little bit nuts. And we left them go back to their village. We never had a problem in that village ever again. So the solutions you think you have to take at certain times based on your training may be the wrong ones. Military decision making and military solutions sometimes limit your perspectives on a problem. And as leaders, we've got to fight to gain all perspectives, even if they're different than ours. We face many challenges today around the world. You don't have to look hard to find wars and they seem to be everywhere and very lethal. But you can also come back to our own country and the problems we're having right now still with racism and extremism and disinformation and the threats posed to our nation and the globe brought on by climate change. We have to have adult conversations on these issues. As a nation, we need to learn to talk without shouting at one another. We need to listen without judgment. And we need to res... And I think it's going to take the army and young talented army leaders to lead our nation back that way. I think we need to find our soul again. Every time I come home from deployments, every time I travel on airport, much like many of you, everybody thanks me for my service. And I always remember the many veterans who came home that were not thanked. Their country spit in their face and never welcomed them home properly from Vietnam. Our generation has not experienced that. We experience a society that respects their military and they thank us for our service every time they see us. It's always hard to accept. You may feel the same way. For years, I humbly could barely say welcome. Now I've learned to say, and you do this too, grab their hand, look them in the eye when they say thank you for your service. You look them in the eye and say you're worth it. You're worth it. This nation is worth it. And that's how you're going to lead us into the future. Proud to serve with you, all of you. You're all worth it. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Lockhart. General Piot, distinguished guests and the United States Army officers being recognized here today. It is an honor being with you to represent the General Douglas McArthur Foundation and to have the privilege of participating in the presentation of the General McArthur Leadership Awards. As you know, success in life and during a military career is underpinned by the invaluable support received from us and mentors. I would like to begin by acknowledging all those stained and encouraged the soldiers being recognized here today. In the words of General McArthur, important new chapters of history are written every day and new heroes capture our imagination. Yet it is critical that we never forget times past the heroes of yesteryear and the lessons of their successes and failures. The General Douglas McArthur Foundation is dedicated to preserving General McArthur's contributions to history and to ensuring his continuing relevance to future generations of Americans. Today these awards fulfill another of the Foundation's goals, that of recognizing outstanding leadership and notable achievement. General McArthur once said, a true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader but becomes one by the quality of his actions and the integrity of his intent. Faithful to these words, General McArthur's life and service were guided by the enduring values of duty, honor, and country. In keeping with the Foundation's mission to perpetuate these values, today's awards are presented to recognize company-grade commissioned officers and warrant officers of the active Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard. The soldiers you see here today were selected for their excellence in leadership and commendable representation of the honor. On behalf of the General Douglas McArthur Foundation, I congratulate you on your achievements and your selection to receive the General McArthur Leadership Award. May God bless you and your families, and may God bless the United States of America. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, Lieutenant General Pyatt, joined by Captain Lockhart will now present the 2022 General Douglas McArthur Leadership Awards. Today, each recipient will receive a bust of General McArthur, sculpted exclusively for this ceremony by Zenos Frudakis, a member of the National Academy of Design. Each bust is cast in bronze, mounted on a walnut pedestal, and weighs approximately 15 pounds. This year's General Douglas McArthur Leadership Award recipients are Captain Alec M. Baldwin, Arkansas Army National Guard, Captain Lindy E. Barrett, U.S. Army Forces Command, Captain Spencer L. Bentley, U.S. Army Forces Command, Captain Ethan C. Dewart, U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Captain Robin D. Felder, Connecticut Army National Guard, Captain Hunter W. Firebaugh, U.S. Army Forces Command, Captain Logan A. Forrest, Kentucky Army National Guard, Captain Ryan R. Ghibli, U.S. Army Forces Command, Captain Ethan U.S. Army Forces Command, Captain Jacob W. Jeffhire, U.S. Army Forces Command, Captain Sean W. Jordan, U.S. Army Reserves Command, Captain Michael J. Kelly, U.S. Army Reserves Command, Captain Brian Kim, U.S. Army Reserves Command, Captain John A. Logan, U.S. Army Reserves Command, Captain Mark E. Manabusan, Ohio Army, Captain Jeremy R. Martin, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Darian D. Meitzel, Minnesota Army National Guard, Captain Paul J. Owens, U.S. Army Europe and Africa Command, Captain Richard J. Payne, West Virginia Army National Guard, Captain John J. Privetera, U.S. Army Reserves Command, Captain Brett R. Rankowitz, U.S. Army Forces Command, Captain Vinny Trejo, U.S. Army Forces Command, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Shana Villanueva, U.S. Army Reserves Command, Captain Marvin J. Woods, U.S. Army Forces Command, Captain Christopher A. Young, U.S. Army Reserves Command. Ladies and gentlemen, please give all of today's awardees a big round of applause. Ladies and gentlemen, please stand and join in the singing of the Army Song. It can be found inside your program. We fight for the right and to build the nation's might and the Army goes rolling along. Proud of all we have done fighting till the battle's won and the Army goes rolling along. Then it's high, high, hey, the Army's on its way. Count up, the fate is loud and strong. For where we go, you will always know that the Army goes rolling along. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's ceremony. Thank you for attending and enjoy the rest of your day. Will the awardees please join Lieutenant General Piot and Captain Lockhart and Colonel Davis for a group photo.