Episode 8 Transcript

Welcome to Commanders Briefing, a podcast where we talk about state defense forces with their commanding officers. This month we have on the show Briga General Mark Galhart, the commanding General of the Gen Georgia State Defense Force. Welcome, sir. How are you?

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (00:14): I’m fine. Glad to be here.

Jean Marciniak (00:16):

Thank you for coming on the show. I I’m very excited. You’re, you know, your state defense force is quite active, and I have a bunch of questions on, well, basically everything <laugh>. So before we kind of like jump in I’m kind of curious a little bit about you your history in the military. If you wanna kind of like dive in a little bit about that regarding your military and professional history.

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (00:44): Sure. I was glad to talk about myself.

Jean Marciniak (00:47): <Laugh>.

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (00:48):

I’m a prior service army officer. Started as a adjuvant general in the he corps doing HR stuff, but I started doing HR stuff in the 82nd Airborne Oh, wow. Which led me to a lot of other interesting, both classified and unclassified jobs. I retired after 22 years as a Colonel Select. Wow. the most impressive part of my career as I was selected and nominated to work at the White House as part of the White House Military office. Wow. Under the White House Communications Agency in charge of all the information technology for the president and the vice president and the White House and the Chief of staff. So I worked at the White House for almost five years in a two year joint tour that they kept extending Wow. Because they liked my work. So I worked for President Clinton. I actually wrote a book.

(01:43):

Oh my, my book is the title of my book is My Time at the Clinton White House. Talks about the military support to the White House. Talked about fun after behind the scenes stories about the support that the military does, non-political, non-partisan. But I did 22 years of Milit active military service. Then one day my wife and I decided to stop at Dobbins Air Force Base at the bx. I was retired. I had figured I had put up my uniform and when I was at the bx, I looked at a patch on someone’s uniform shoulder and said, I don’t recognize that patch. One of the things I did while I was in the services, I was a patch guy. I collected patches and I, I thought I knew all the Army reserves and National Guard World War II patches, and I saw this patch I didn’t recognize, and I asked the guy what the patch was, and he told me about the Georgia State Defense Force.

(02:49):

So there I am in subways at the BX at Dobbins Air Force Base. And I’m being told about this volunteer opportunity to support my state. So I asked my wife, Hey, let’s go check it out. We walked over to the headquarters of the Georgia State Defense Force. I had an opportunity to talk to the chief of staff and the general, and next weekend I was at Drill and I started as the G six when the Georgia State Defense Force doing comps and IT, and communications, which is what I did in the active component. Moved over to the G one Shop again, another job I had when I was in the active component. And then finally the governor asked me to take over as a commanding general a couple years ago. So there’s a little about my background and how I got into the State Defense Force.

Jean Marciniak (03:44):
I think that that’s that’s due for another book. Then <laugh>, what that, like a whole new chapter right there?

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (03:52):

Actually, I am writing a, another book about an atypical military career. Oh. Because I did as a HR officer or an AG officer, I spent more time in the field than most normal infantry people. I spent more time in classified positions and, and, and doing unique opportunities than, and, and I have no, no idea how I continued to advance to major lieutenant, Colonel, Colonel and now general because I, I didn’t do it the typical way. I did it my own way, with my own attitude, my own opinions on things, and it seemed to work well. So yeah, I’m writing another book about that.

Jean Marciniak (04:42):
Wow. Okay. Well when, when do you is it like for this year or next year or?

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (04:47):
No, I’m actually, I’m writing two other books this year. The Atypical Military Career Book is gonna have

to wait for those two to get through the pipeline first. Oh,

Jean Marciniak (04:59): Wow.

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (05:00):

Okay. I have found writing and authoring and speaking as my new opportunity to give back. So I do a lot of writing, authoring, speaking now. Plus I’m running for political office in my local city Oh, wow. To be a councilman for the City Council of Peachtree City here in Peachtree City, Georgia. And with elections going on, we have 10 more days to see whether I get elected to the city council.

Jean Marciniak (05:29):

Oh, wow. I wasn’t aware that, oh, wow. That’s <laugh>. I know the midterms are, are close. They, I keep getting reminders to vote <laugh>. All right. So I guess let’s move over to the Georgia State Defense Force. So I was wondering if you can list the kind of missions that Georgia State Defense Force is up to today?

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (05:49):

Well, the Georgia State Defense Force that has been around for many, many years is we get great support from our tag, our the Adjuvant General of the National Guard. We’ve got about 450 on the books of which 350 are very active, another 50 semi-active, and another 50 in ready reserves. We do three primary missions. We do mill to mill missions, which is our support to the National Guard here in the state of Georgia, and getting them ready for deployments, getting them ready for training. The second mission we do is we do missions for emergency management for Gemma Georgia Merchant Management Agency for hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, disasters. And the third mission we have is civilian missions, where we do public relations missions recruiting color guards, funeral details, parades, parking for events, crowd control, other types, civilian events myself, I’m speaking at two Veterans Day events next week. So just supporting and being in the community both as a recruiting tool and as a tool to advance patriotism here in the state of Georgia.

Jean Marciniak (07:24):
I’m also curious, cuz you do have I, I do see in the news often that you guys do, I think search and rescue missions.

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (07:31):

Yes, we do search and rescue as part of our civilian support. We have a mountaineering team up in North Georgia that helps in mountaineering and in search and rescues up in North Georgia. And we have been called out by other sheriffs and Gemma authorities to help with search and rescue. We’ve had what I would call successful, even though not to the point we would like search and rescues in the last six months, well, actually, I guess beginning of the year, year’s gone by pretty fast <laugh>. We had three this last winter where we found the individual not in a healthy state. We wish we would’ve found them alive, but we were able to provide closure and help authorities in a couple of different situations.

Jean Marciniak (08:30):

Yeah, I I noticed that that you guy, that you guys are very active. In fact, I think we just reported on some news that you guys were up in the, up in the mountains, up in the Appalachian Mountains getting some training.

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (08:43):

Correct. We’re, we do training everything from the coast down to South Georgia, up to North Georgia. Just recently, we had our annual training for our Task Force North, and we brought in air assets from the National Guard. We did search and rescue training. We did disaster training for searching facilities that might be in disrepair because of a hurricane or tornado. We did multiple events. There’s a large training National Guard training site in North Georgia. We used that here last month. We had more than a hundred, 125, maybe 150 of our State Defense Force members at that annual training. We try to have a larger annual training event once a year into September, October timeframe. We had our Task Force North training done. We were ready to do Task Force Central and Task Force South. When a hurricane came current hurricane Ion came and we canceled training to get and turned over ready for a hurricane support, and then a hurricane, decided to not hit Florida. I’m in Georgia and moved more to the east, but we train annually large training annually, and then we do small training throughout the year.

Jean Marciniak (10:29):

Oh, okay. Wow. so I’m kind of curious, out of the I think you mentioned around 450 troops that you have. I’m just curious how many do you how many, ballpark wise do you are, do you find that our prior service versus just brand new to the military?

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (10:46):

Well, that’s really changed over the year. 10 years ago when I joined the State Defense Force, we were about a third, a third and a third. And what do I mean by that? A third of us were retirees that did our full 20 plus a third were prior service that did some time in the service, got out and then came back to the state defense force, and a third were pure civilians that had not had uniformed service previously. So 10 years ago, that was our demographic. When we did our, at just this last weekend with Task Force North, I asked the hundred 25 or so folks in Accra, I said, how many of you were prior service before you joined? And only about 20% of our current state defense force seemed to be prior service at this time, which leads me to about 80%. Were non uniformed individuals that we have trained up with our training.

(11:54):

We have a, an extensive training program. We have our own training and doctrine command trade off within the state of Georgia. I’ve set aside individuals prior service and civilian teachers and educators to set up a training indoctrine command. So we do initial entry training for everybody, even if you’re prior service. Oh, wow. So everybody starts on the same sheet of music, because we’ll take a prior service, Navy prior service, air Force Marine, and we’ll bring them into this Georgia State Defense Force, which is oriented under Army style Management, uniforms and leadership. So we want that Marine, the Air Force and Navy personnel to ensure that they understand, you know, the ranks navy’s different than the rank structure in the Army. So we have initial entry training, we have bock at aoc, which is basic leadership training, advanced leadership training for both our officers and nco.

(13:00):

We run our own officer candidate school. So if we get a civilian that comes and joins us and that person has a doctorate degree or has a, an advanced degree in some sort of field, we’ll bring them in as a private and we’ll bring them in and allow them to experience uniform service at a lower rank. But yet we know they have skills that are much more advanced. So we’ll put ’em through officer or candidate school and then bring them in as a second lieutenant. Or in case of a chaplains or doctors or nurses or lawyers, bring them in as a a senior officer, a captain, or a major depending on what their degree in certificate provides. So we’re just like the ACT component in that respect. We try to follow the majority, if not all of the ACT component steps to ensure that we are a truly professionally trained uniformed force for the National Guard and the governor.

Jean Marciniak (14:12):
Oh, wow. Okay. Wow. I’m kind of curious on aside from I e t, do, do you offer like other development

courses like BOC or aoc?

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (14:21):

Yes, we have Bock AOC for NCOs. Ncos are the backbone of the service, but you can’t expect someone, especially since our demographics has changed to more civilians to understand what leadership is, understand what hip pocket training is, understand how to be a junior NCO or a senior nco. Those things have to be taught. You can’t expect someone to come in with them. So we have our training and doctrine command has a full range of training both for officer and nco.

Jean Marciniak (14:58):

Okay. Wow. So let’s, oh, I, I, let’s move over to the, the kind of meat of the actual podcast. I kind of wanna this was a where I really wanted to focus on you guys do something I would say unique that I would say I don’t think any other state Defense force does. And a lot of people love this mission that you guys do. And it’s called the opposing opposing force mission to op form mission. So kind of getting into that I’m kind of curious, when did it first start? I, I know you guys been doing it for years. When did it that mission first come to come to be?

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (15:41):

Well, the, the mission has morphed over time, but when did it really start is when National Guard members started deploying to Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran Kuwait, you know, overseas to combat missions. When the National Guard deploys, they have a training cycle where they train up before deployment. Same with the Reserve, same with the DACTIC component, but the National Guard here in the state of Georgia. We have several bases, both Fort Stewart, Fort Benning, Fort Gordon, but Fort Stewart has a deployment containment area with training sites, with ranges with billing and feeding capability for the National Guard. So what we will do is we will act as the opposing force in some of their final field training exercises to make sure they’re prepared for what they’re gonna get into when they get into a conflict area. And we have individuals within the State Defense Force that come from different ranges of background, both authenticity and grew up the countries.

(17:09):

We have a couple of individuals that grew up on the other side of the Iron Curtain. So we bring these individuals into our opposing force, and we’ll use all this doctrine that we know, plus things we know from bad guys and try to challenge the National Guard. And we’d like to think that every time that we get in the, the Wire inside the compound of the National Guard folks, we have helped save lives. We get a lot of great accolades from the National Guard units that have deployed, that come back, and they give us after action, Hey, thanks for doing this, that help you might want to tighten up this. And we do that. So we help the next round of National Guard soldiers going overseas.

Jean Marciniak (17:58):

Wow. Yeah, that, I mean, when I first heard about the OP four mission, I I was surprised. And, you know, I, this was something that will, you know, help the National Guard in Afghanistan and, and and in the mission in Iraq mainly because I think before they weren’t able to have an opposing force, although they had to take their, from their own guys. So some soldiers weren’t able to get trained. So yeah, I, I, every time I see mission reports from your OP four unit, it’s, it, it’s, it’s amazing what you guys do. So, I’m, I’m kind of curious because I guess, so I’ll, I’ll give you some background. So to my next question. So we did a poll on state defense force.com a while ago. And we asked what mission they, their state defense force got involved in, and the majority of response respondents selected the OP four mission. And I’m kind of curious what advice would you give to other state defense forces on, on how to be assigned such a mission by their National Guard? Cuz since you guys are the only ones that have such a mission.

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (19:14):

Well, the, every State defense force is stood up, managed and maintained by their state for unique and specific reasons of that state. California, for example, has a mission that includes naval assets and firefighting assets, because those are two unique missions that California needs help with. Texas has a unique mission of helping with border patrol and border assets. So each state, depending on a geographic location, and I’ll use the state of Georgia, and one of our primary emissions is hurricane response because of, you know, if you’re in Maine, you’re not really worried about hurricanes too <laugh>. But if you’re in Georgia, we’re right in the path of the majority of the hurricanes that come up through Florida are off the coast. So each state has their own unique mission. So the first thing you have to do as a state defense force is ensure that you’re meeting the unique mission of your state.

Now, the state of Georgia has a large majority of National Guard individuals that deployed the state of Georgia is a, a relatively large state when it comes to mission overseas missions, both air and Army Guard. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> again, the state of Georgia has a large number of military bases. Stewart Gordon banning. And then that’s just the, the three major army bases. And you had the Navy, the Marine Corps logistics base, the Air Force bases. We have a large military presence in the South. So we have morphed into being able to help both with the equipment we need to do the mission and the training locations available for us within the state. So it really depends on that state and the, that state’s discussion with the tag. We all, all the state defense forces work for the National Guard. Some of them work further down than we do.

(21:38):

I am a line commander for the tag. I report to him monthly. In his monthly staff meeting. I re send him emails, you know, weekly. I am one of his three component commanders. And I stand right next to the Army National Guard Commander, the Air National Guard Commander, and the Georgia State Defense Force Commander. We stand ready along with our civilian counterparts, which is our fourth triad here in Georgia, to do whatever the governor needs and whatever the TAG needs. And we have provided in some areas like for something that we thought they needed, we tried it out, it worked, it worked well, and we continue to be asked to do it. So for other states to get into OP four missions, they have to start with the political realities of how you were seen as a usable, professionally developed uniform force under the tag.

(22:47):

Our state wears the US flag. We wear a uniform that is very similar to our National Guard. We are considered brothers and sisters in uniform service here in our state. Other states don’t treat their state defense force within the same style of equality. Our tag will go out to a mission, and it’s not until they go up and shake the hand of the soldier where he sees whether he is wearing a US Army name stripe or a Georgia name stripe on his utility uniform. Because we want to be brothers and sisters, exactly the same. We wanna be treated the same. We wanna meet the same standards. And because we are a professionally trained volunteer force that meets the same standards of the National Guard, we’re treated very well by our tag. So the first thing other state defense forces need to need to do is get that professional train standard that meets the same thing the National Guard does.

(24:01):

Like I say, we do annual training, like the National Guard. We meet on muted weekends, multi-unit training, assembly, weekends and that puts us shoulder to shoulder with the National Guard. And we help them the same way they help us, because it takes more than a minute to get a minute, man. If you want a National Guard soldier for a disaster, it usually takes somewhere around 72 hours to cut orders to give him time to tell his boss to get the unit together and move him down range. It takes me about an hour to get a Georgia State Defense Force member on site of a disaster. Oh, wow. So that’s a hand in hand relationship. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that’s what it takes to get the missions you want.

Jean Marciniak (24:48):

So with your UP four mission, that’s definitely a mission where you’re working hand in hand with the Army national Guard, international Guard. I’m kind of curious, what other missions do you have where you work hand in hand with your national Guard?

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (25:01):

Well, let’s talk about C O V D <laugh>, which was a really big thing for state defense forces in general across the, the country. Yeah, that’s, we worked hand in hand with our National Guard on almost every emergency response within the state, whether it be a hurricane or tornado or covid. When Covid came up gema, Georgia Emergency Management Center would task the National Guard with specific taskings. The National Guard would divvy out those taskings throughout their units. And as I have mentioned before, we’re hand in hand with our Georgia Brothers and the National Guard. There are some aspects of supporting COVID that we were able to work on that the National Guard wasn’t. So the, the Health Services Group here in Georgia, there’s a, a National Health Services program for doctors, nurses EMTs to volunteer during an event such as covid.

(26:16):

And there was no way to bring them under a command and control cycle that was expedient and able to ma manage the large extent of expansion during covid. Other than the State Defense Force, we were able to bring on more than 400 doctors, nurses, EMTs in from the Health Services Command into the Georgia State Defense Force into our automated system. And we were able to deploy doctors and nurses. We would cut orders to make them State Defense Force members, Uhhuh <affirmative>. We would, we, we varied our uniform requirements for those individuals that usually have a medical uniform such as scrubs. And we were able to get requests from GEMA through the National Guard to us to support hospitals. We also supported the decontamination of nursing homes. So the, the actual decon units would be National Guard units that would go into the n nursing homes and do the decontamination inside the nursing home.

(27:38):

But in hazmat, you have to have two teams. You have to have the team that’s in the hot zone, then you have to have the team that’s in the warm zone that cleans the folks that come out of the hot zone off. We provided the warm zone teams where we cleaned off all the National Guard members and helped decontaminate their equipment so they could go to the next nursing home. We did several other missions such as food bank missions supporting hospital missions. So those that was very unique to Covid. We did more than 9,000 free man hours to the state of Georgia over a prolonged period of time. It was the largest period of time that the State Defense Force who stood up for day-to-day operations. We received a Georgia Unit citation from the National Guarding National Guard Award, the Georgia National Guard Award in support of the, the Covid missions. But we support our Georgia National Guard and Hurricanes in floods, in tornadoes, in large sporting events such as the Super Bowl. All we are are extension of professional volunteer uniform service. The National Guard can task us with any mission, and then we have the opportunity to say, yes, we can do that mission, or no, we can’t. Yes, we have the personnel. No, we can’t. Yes, we have the skillset. No, we don’t. So we’re just like any other guard unit in support of the TAG and the governor.

Jean Marciniak (29:22):

Wow, that’s amazing. I wasn’t aware that you that award. That’s incredible. I guess so which leads me to, I guess my next question and this is kind of like changing subjects. So I’m kind of curious, has the Georgia State Defense Force deployed out of state? I believe in EMAC missions in recent years.

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (29:48):

Every state Defense Force has an opportunity to support their state in every, whichever way that state seems needs that state defense force to support him. And we have not been challenged or asked to support outside of our state because our state itself hasn’t had that need or requirement. So, ya Askia, has the Georgia State Defense Force deployed anywhere else? The answer in the, the recent history of the State Defense Force would be no. And we are, we’re prepared to address any needs that the state of Georgia has for us.

Jean Marciniak (30:31):

Okay. which I guess kind of leads me into my next question. So not naming names, but I, one topic that I wanted to cover, what is New State Defense Forces? Right. so over the last 10 years, there have been new state defense forces that have been created. And I’m kind of curious because you mentioned that you you provided some support in, in, in some aspects. I’m kind of curious when a new state guard has been authorized by the state Right. And got funding and it’s in its early stages of forming where, where do they start? I mean, how do you create such a new organization you know, what organ, what other organizations do need to support them to get them fully functional? Cuz I would say that was a challenge in the last 10, 15 years for new state guards that are being formed on how to, you know, they got the funding and everything, but you know, to actually go from that initial stage of like, Hey, we got the money. Where do we begin to where you guys are where, you know, we have a whole set of missions. We have troops trained we are good to go right now.

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (31:50):

Well that the Georgia State Defense Force stands ready to help any other state that asks for our help. And the reason I say that is we’re all in service. That’s what we try to do. We’re try to help others, whether it’s within our state or outside of our state. And part of that is we belong to the State Guard Association of the United States sous, which is a organization of state guards that have gotten together to try to set up standards in across the board. Everything from what is the most prevalent uniform standard to what is the most prevalent training standards to assist each other in sharing how we do business. So we talk about, you know, what ID card do you use, what ID card do we use, what HR system do you use? What HR system do we use? How do you track your training?

(33:02):

How do you, what training do you do? So sous, which is a national organization which anybody can join, any state guards can adjoin sous, and I highly recommend any new neophyte just starting state guard or state defense Force. I would highly recommend recommend them to join SGAs. We have an annual conference that’s coming up in November. An example of that is the Florida State Guard has just started to organize they’ve asked for information on the same question you did. What type of training manuals do we have? What type of process do we have? We’re glad to share that with any state. And we mentioned too any state that’s starting about SGAs and about the conferences that sagas holes about the training that’s online that SOGA has, but a new state guard, the best thing they can do is get with their brother and sister states, hopefully ones that are next door to them.

(34:13):

I have physically gone to South Carolina. I asked for permission for my tag to go to South Carolina and look at them and what they do. I ask permission for my tag to go to Tennessee and look at what they do. I’ve had the opportunity to go to Ohio and Indiana and California. I’m gonna go up to New York and look at what the other state guards do. And by viewing what other, like, and similar organizations do, you can take the best of all these organizations and wrap them up and roll them up into how you wanna run your organization. But every state is different. Every state gets different missions from their tag. Every state has a different connectability with their National Guard and with their leadership and are look forward to do different things. So even though we try to have some sort of standards an example would be the uniform standard. (35:14):

Our state in the state of Georgia has a specific uniform standard that meets the National Guard needs and other states per the Department of Defense Regulation the uniform that a state defense force wears must be different than the federal uniform. So State Defense Force members can’t wear a US Army on their uniform. They must wear something else. In our particular state, we wear the name tag of Georgia, but we have the same color name tag as the National Guard does. In other states, they have black name tags that make their uniforms stand out differently. So each state has their own twists and turns on what they need. So one state can’t dictate or direct another state on how to stand up and what to do. But we can share best practices and in those best practices come up with best standards. And then that state can decide to do the best standard or do something different that their state wants ’em to do. I think I answered that

Jean Marciniak (36:28):

Question. Yes, very well. Thank you. I, I guess my follow up to that one would be ballpark wise so I believe it was last year, or might have been this early this year, that Florida State Guard got their approval and their initial round of funding, which I believe was about 10 million. It taking like just a general state guard, how long do you feel ballpark wise, from the initial authorization to having a fully trained force? Do you usually, do you think it would take like a year, two years, three years? How long do you feel that it would take a state guard to kind of recruit, train, and, you know, literally be able to be called for by, from the, by the state?

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (37:22):

So I don’t think it would be unthinkable to have a state guard stood up within a year. Each, again, each state mission and how they get things done is different. But if I was going to stand up a state guard, the easiest way to do do it is to get prior service military individuals as the core infrastructure of your state guard, take retired National Guard members that have a desire, continue to serve or get retirees like myself that have a desire to continue to serve and bring them right in. Because when they come in, they come in with training, they come in with knowledge, and that’s your core. And then from that core, you expand out to civilians that have less knowledge. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t advertise for civilians with no uniform service to begin a state guard. I would advertise for individuals that were prior service that want to help stand it up and bring them in.

(38:29):

And you could, within a year, very easily stand up the state guard with prior service individuals. Then after you stand it up, you bring in more individuals and you start your training cycle. And your training cycle really depends on what that state wants. That state guard to do training for search and rescue in mountainous areas is a longer training cycle than to do crowd control at an event training for search and rescue. Inside broken down buildings is a lot different than doing traffic control on roads that have trees down. So the missions to do the harder missions will take more time because it takes more training to do easier missions. You should be able to do easier missions within a year if that is the desire of that governor to support standing up in a segmented fashion. So I think that answered it.

Jean Marciniak (39:40):

Yes, sir. I appreciate that. Thank you. So I guess one other, I guess moving to the next question. So throughout the country there are, I would say more active state defense forces. And then there are also less active state defense forces that we rarely see news from. I’m not gonna name names, but you know, generally, you know most people know who they are. For those less active state defense forces, state guards what recommendations do you have for them in regards to having a better working relationship with their National Guard and, and how to to, to, to get more missions? So they, I guess, you know, can report on, Hey, this is what we’re doing. You know, we’re very proud of what we did kind of thing.

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (40:32):

So relationships is the number one response to that question. The relationship between the commanding general of the State Defense Force or the commander, because in some cases they’re not generals, they’re colonels. The commander of the State Defense Force has to have a relationship with the National Guard. And that relationship has to show the professional training capability of the all volunteer force. Some individuals in government don’t understand the State Defense Force. They don’t understand our training. They don’t understand what tasks we can do to what level, what level of professionalism we have. So what you need to do is you need to sell that, eh, you, you need to articulate that. Maybe selling isn’t the right word. You need to brief not only the tag, but his brothers and sisters at command level throughout the state, the, the J three or G three training operations, individual, your state emergency Management center.

(41:56):

Say, we have this group of individuals trained to this level of training, and you explain to them what you can do, what you’re trained to do, and you ask them, please allow me to show you that we are trained to do this. And the more times you can show them the state, the leadership that you have capabilities to a certain level of standard, the more they will use you. So the problem with some of the states is there’s been too much bickering, inviting politics and the communications, the kumbaya of leadership. It’s not all about ordering people to do stuff, especially in an all volunteer force. It’s all about communicating skills, communicating abilities, showing those skills and abilities and say, please, can we do this? And let me show you how we can do this. And if we succeed in the first thing you give us, give us something else.

(43:13):

And we’ll try to succeed in that too. Here in the state of Georgia, we have, you know, I’ve been with the State Guard for 10 years and I’ve seen a little bit of change to the better every single year after Covid I mean, our tag spoke the praises of the State Defense Force, along with his National Guard and Air Guard Brothers and sisters, and the support we gave to the state. He mentioned it on the news, he mentioned it on the radio in the publications. When our state national Guard puts out their annual report, the State Defense Force has pages in that annual report talking about what we do and how we do it, and how we save the state money with a return on investment, how we provide services to the state as volunteers. So it’s really all about that communications.

(44:13):

Now, we’re not trying to take away a National Guard mission. We are trying to augment, assist, and help for the betterment of all. And if the National Guard ever has to go away like they did during World War I or World War ii, if they have to go do another mission outside the state, the governor needs a group of individuals that can st stand in the place of the National Guard to help with the governor with emergencies and disasters. And that’s what the State Defense Force is. And you don’t want to exercise that issue when the emergency happens. You want to exercise it now before the emergency, so everybody is ready when the emergency happens. So getting missions today during non-emergency events is exactly how you exercise those professional volunteers.

Jean Marciniak (45:13):

Wow, that’s a great answer. That’s perfect. And I guess my last question that I have for you is what are your long-term plans for the Georgia State Defense Force? Where would you like to see the Defense Force in five, 10 years in regards to missions and size and such?

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (45:33):

I’d love to double the size. My, my goal is 800 to a thousand members for the Georgia State Defense Force. That’s a, that’s a, an Olympic gold, gold medal. I don’t think I’m gonna get there. I’m but I gotta set a standard where I need to get to, to see if we can strive and stretch to get there. So my goal is double the size of the State Defense Force. My goal is to get a larger amount of volunteer members in the southern portion of our state where it is very hard to do recruiting and get volunteer members. My plan for the State Defense Force is to maintain the outstanding relationship with our governor, with our tag, with our National Guard. Continue to do the missions we have today. I would like to expand some of our missions when we’re ready to do that.

(46:39):

You know, everybody’s talking about cyber and the civilian Cyber corps and how we can help in that. We’ve looked at that several times and haven’t been able to breach that yet. There’s some other areas where I’d like to expand into that. Some other state defense forces have gotten into a certified military support group, like an MP Corps, a certified engineer group that can do better battle damage assessment or hurricane assessment on bridges. There is a tremendous ability to expand what we do in support of the state without taking anybody else’s job away from them. Again, we’re an all volunteer force that wants to just help and support, but my number one plan is to try to increase the size. We’ve had a hard time at doing that. We’ve had a hard time. Like I say, our volunteer organization or group has gone away from prior service to more civilians.

(47:48):

So we’re actually getting more civilians. We’re, we’re hit, we’re tapping that target market, but we’re not able to get as many prior service members as we used to. I don’t understand why. Maybe we’re just not recruiting in the right spots. But recruiting not necessarily retention. Once people join and see what we do in the real world missions, they have a tendency of staying. But recruiting and getting more individuals is a primary plan for the Georgia State Defense Force, I would say continue The current missions we have, we can’t really add more missions unless we get more resources. It’s a resource dependent, budget dependent expansion. So not only do I need want more people, I need a little bit more funding. And we just haven’t gotten there yet.

Jean Marciniak (48:51):
Okay. Awesome. So I guess that concludes the interview. Is there anything that you wanted to cover that

I might have missed?

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (49:00):
Well, I would say to anybody that’s listening to this podcast, you know, I was a volunteer firefighter for more than 30 years, giving back to my community every time I move somewhere. I’m volunteering today to run for city council as an elected official. I think volunteerism in our country provides for a strong backbone of patriotism support to your neighbor and your community. I would ask anybody that’s listening to the podcast, if you haven’t looked at your own state defense force or a way to volunteer within your community, whether that be Red Cross or at the library. At the hospital, volunteer, volunteer to help others. And you’ll get a reward for yourself. You’ll understand that your life has more meaning when you give to others. I would ask you, if you’re not part of a state defense force, look at your state and see if you can join your own state defense force.

(50:11):

And if you’re listening from the state of Georgia, my name’s Mark Gohar. I’m the commanding general of the Georgia State Defense Force. And I personally invite you to come join our team, come join our family here in the state of Georgia, and do a mission that helps your neighbors do a mission that helps your neighbors during their worst time in their life when their house has been blown away from a hurricane. You wanna see someone come walk up to you and say, how can I help? And you can be that individual that says, how can I help? We will train you. We will teach you. We will understand that you’re a volunteer that only has a certain amount of time to give, and we will be flexible to meet your needs as you’re flexible to meet the state needs. Thank you for your time and listening to me here in the state of Georgia. We love to have anybody that want to come join us. Thank you very much.

Jean Marciniak (51:07):
Kind of reminds me of a quote that says there’s nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer. I believe

it was Jimmy Doolittle that mentioned that I believe he’s a General, general Doolittle.

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (51:20):

I’ve volunteered my whole life and I continue to volunteer today. And I thank the Patriots that live within the United States. Just need to know that there’s opportunities that they have. I didn’t know about the Georgia State Defense Force until I stopped at subways, at McDell Air Force Base, and I looked at a patch and asked a question. Hmm. So I would ask you, if you listen to this podcast, go ask a question, go see where you can volunteer.

Jean Marciniak (51:50):

Wow, that’s perfect. Place to end. Thank you so much general for coming on this show. I really appreciate it to get your feedback. And I I know for a fact that this is going to help many people in in their state defense force.

Brigadier General Mark D. Gelhardt Sr. (52:05): Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.