A Military Veteran’s Mission to Ukraine

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Call 800-AFAMILY or visit FocusOnTheFamily.com slash gift. Well, Chad Robichaux was a former Marine and he serves and protects Americans all over the world, most recently in Ukraine, in some incredible ways. And he's our guest today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Thanks for joining us.

I'm John Fuller. John, we owe so much here on Veterans Day to think about, we should think about it every day, but what we owe to veterans like Chad who dedicated and are continuing to dedicate their lives to protecting our freedom and safety. And today we want to honor them.

That's what this day is for. Chad has incredible stories of his time working to rescue people from conflicts like Afghanistan and the Middle East all the way now to the Ukraine. And we're going to learn a lot about what it means to be selfless. And he's got some great stories and is accomplishing so much that nobody knows about. Yeah, he really is reaching out and helping veterans in so many ways. Chad is married to Kathy. They have two grown sons. Both of those boys served in the Marines and they have a grown daughter and a pretty much baby adopted daughter. His latest book is called A Mission Without Borders, why a father and son risked it all for the people of Ukraine. It's a terrific read.

You can find out more at our Web site and we've got the link in the show notes. Chad, welcome back to Focus. Yeah, good to be back.

It's good to have you. Let's just start right with that comment I made about what you and those that serve with you, men and women in the armed forces. You know, at one point you think of it as a career, but when the bell sounds and everything's on like a conflict, those known, those unknown that we're engaged with around the world, I mean, it's everything on the line. Yeah, well, I've been in or around the military for 30 years now. And one of the things that my age has really let me see is the perspective of service much differently. Because when I went in the Marine Corps, 17 years old, I had this aspiration to be in special operations. That's all I ever wanted to do from 13 years old. I started preparing for that. So it was very much 13 years old. You knew, I knew.

Yeah. And your father or grandfather, right? You had, well, we go back to World War I, 85 years, World War I, World War II, Korea. My father was the first Marine in our family, served in Vietnam as an infantryman and probably didn't create the best scenario. It created a very dysfunctional home. But even though that I saw my dad struggle with anger and alcohol and womanizing and all these things. The one thing that made my dad proud and stand up tall was the fact he's a United States Marine. And so that made me have a desire.

I was like, if they can make that miserable guy happy, I want a piece of that. And maybe had this desire to be a Marine and I went to be in special operations. So my brother and I had had about 13, he was 14. We made the decision to do that together.

And we started training for that. And I think I maybe mentioned the show before my brother about a year into that was tragically shot and killed and created even more of a just division in my home. I ended up living on my own at 15 years old, but I never lost that goal of wanting to go into Marine Corps and pursue becoming a reconnaissance Marine. And so, but going in the Marine Corps at that young age, it was definitely a sense of service. So you went in at 18? 17. 17.

Was that legal? Yeah. Yeah. I got that parental consent to go in and I turned 18 actually in Marine Corps boot camp. And I think my father joined at 17 and my oldest son Hunter joined at 17. So, so yeah, we all That's amazing. Yeah.

Family tradition. Let me, let me turn this to your time in Afghanistan. Last time you were on and people can certainly go listen to this. I'd encourage you to do that because it was such a fabulous, insightful story about your time there in Afghanistan and what you did to help rescue people. But you work in, in, you can describe this role quickly for the listeners that didn't hear it, but you're kind of, you were out there by yourself pretty much doing that reconnaissance.

You were making friends with villagers. You ended up hooking up with a man named Aziz who became, I think your interpreter. Describe that relationship, how that came about and then what happened when the war came to an end there and we had that, you know, I guess you'd say wind up or retreat or whatever you call that. Retreat's a bracket word for it. Yeah. The, your further engagement there to get Aziz home or get Aziz here.

Yeah. Well, I mean, real quickly, Marine Corps doesn't have a JSOC element, Joint Special Operations Command element, so the Marine Corps allows people, we send people. And so I was very privileged to represent the Marine Corps at JSOC, Joint Special Operations Command, a tier one special operations unit. My job was AFO, advanced force operator.

And so that job is, there's very few people that do it. You just kind of be like being undercover and you go ahead of your unit to build all the congestion infrastructure, living and working with the local nationals. In the villages? All over.

Yeah. In the villages, cities, back, you know, it's your, I spent eight deployments to Afghanistan. I spent about two weeks on a base.

And so I, you know, lived and dressed in with the local nationals and, and I worked in what's called a singleton capacity, meaning by myself with a local national, that local national was Aziz. And so Aziz and I were in the mountains of Afghanistan, across the border in Pakistan and the Federal Ministry of Tribal Areas, building all the infrastructure, put our soldiers on target to capture, kill bad guys. And my command was going after whoever was on a top 10 list. And we did that probably over a hundred times, a hundred missions doing that in my eight deployments. And you know, Aziz saved my life multiple times in kinetic combat, but probably saved my life every day. Like don't walk there, don't eat that, don't talk to that person.

If you talk right now, they're going to kill us. So he's in, when we were not operating, I didn't go back to base and he went home. I went to his home. His wife Hatra made me my first meal and a warm meal. And I held his babies when they were born. So he was family to me.

So when the withdrawal took place, and I know we're not going to get into what I feel about the withdrawal because I go on and on about that. But when the withdrawal took place, the one thing I had control of was to go back and get my friend Aziz, his wife and six kids. And so I put together a small team of special operations veterans.

We went to get Aziz's wife and six kids. And in the midst of that, God orchestrated a miracle and used us to rescue another 17,000 people. I mean, that's amazing.

17,000. We captured a great deal of that story last time. So again, you can go and listen to it. But in that context, I mean, that's like phenomenal to be out there on your own in that way and dealing. I mean, your your sense of awareness has to be so high. Yeah. So you turned your focus after that you with the conflict in the Ukraine.

At that point, you're out of the service, I think. And yet there was this poll, kind of like what you did in Afghanistan during the withdrawal to get Aziz and 17,000 others out, which is amazing in itself. You turned your attention onto Ukraine. I guess the big question is what opportunity presented itself and why you said, okay, this is something we need to do.

Yeah. So when we first got there, you know, like everywhere else I go, we try to develop access and placement to make sure we get to where we need to go. And we start, you know, kind of assessing the area and how we're going to operate. And one of the things I want to see what the reality was, you know, you always want to see beyond the mainstream media what the reality is. And so we went to the border, seen the border crossings, went to some of the refugee centers. And I went to this refugee center and I've been to many places around the world that have had humanitarian crisis and seen refugee centers. But the one thing unique about this was it was only women and children and older men because all the men were forced to stay in the Ukraine. And when I seen that, it was just heartbreaking.

These women were scared and these kids were scared without their husbands or brothers or fathers there. And so we went and toured it and then we started walking away and I seen this flower shop. And I was with one of my buddies who is a Roman who speaks Ukrainian and Russian.

He's half Ukraine, half Russian. And I'm like, would you think we should get some flowers and bring back? Is it going to be weird? These women are going to think we have bad intentions because they're scared.

And he's like, no, they would love it. So we started buying as many flowers as we could. And then the lady asked, what are you getting all these flowers for? And we told her, the lady at the flower shop, they just started piling on flowers and going back and started giving flowers to these ladies. And it was just such a really sweet moment.

Someone were just taking a rose and balling up and smelling it and crying. And then the border, like we're going on to the border and seeing, when you see stuff like this, and I'm sure a lot of people that have watched this on mainstream media news, you get frustrated. Because a lot of things right now are happening because the governments of the world, including our own, by the way, are not doing the right thing. And I went on that border and I didn't see one government in the world represented on that border. And that reflects that. But what I did see were good people.

And what I've seen in my lifetime is when the governments of the world fail, good people stand up and do the right thing. And mainly it was churches from around the world, the Christian community on that border receiving these people, these women coming across wet, cold, their cell phones dead. They're out of gas. The line is 14 days long to get out of the Ukraine at that time. 14 days?

14 days long. They're basically like in shock. Many of them are in shock. They're without their husbands. So it's mainly women and children. And there's people there that have piles of jackets.

There's people that have a cell phone so they can contact their loved ones and let them know they're okay with a SIM chip. There's people there with empty seats. They drove their empty seats in their car to be able to drive this. There was Indian guys out there making big bowls of warm cauliflower curry.

And there was this one guy that came from Germany. He drove a grand piano, pulled it behind his car. And he's sitting there in the snow.

It's like very cold, wind blowing. He's playing Elton John Imagine. And I went up and asked him, what are you doing? He's like, I just, I want to do something. I didn't know what else to do.

And all I know how to do is play piano. So I thought all they're going to hear is chaos and war when they come across the border. I wanted them to hear something nice.

It's kind of like the flowers. Yeah. Something peaceful, something right in a world that looks all wrong, right?

Yeah. So just, you know, it's just like I said, when the government's wasn't there doing anything, people came together and did the right thing. Well, this is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. And our guest today is Chad Robichaux. What an incredible set of circumstances he is encountering. And he captures, as he said, a small percentage of those stories in this great book. It's called A Mission Without Borders.

Why a father and son risked it all for the people of Ukraine. Get a copy of this book. You'll be inspired.

You'll be challenged. It's a terrific resource. And we have it here at the ministry.

The link to get yours is in the show notes. Chad, one of the efforts in the Ukraine that you were part of and planned was the rescue of a journalist named Ben Hall. What happened with Ben Hall and what did you and the team that you put together have to do with his situation? Yeah. Before I answer that, can I say one thing real quick? I think it's important for listeners to know. Because with Ukraine, there's been such a division, especially we both have Christian audiences and we're conservative people.

I've gotten so much heat from people. Why are you in Ukraine? Look at what's going on in America. We're giving hundreds of billions of dollars away. And I hear that and I agree.

I don't think the hundreds of billions of dollars are not going to the right place. Ukraine is a corrupt country. And people are saying, you know, Zawinski is corrupt.

And I agree. I personally believe Zawinski is corrupt. But people in Washington, D.C. are corrupt. And if you think, if you're surprised that a politician is corrupt, you should probably read a history book, right? I didn't go to Ukraine for Zawinski or President Biden or any politician. I went there to help people. And as Christians and conservative, especially conservative Christians, if we ever let our politics get in the way of our heart for people, we should probably change our politics.

That's really good. And I think it's important to note that as people hear about what we did in Ukraine, because people really are misunderstood about it because they don't, the mainstream media doesn't cover anything beyond headlines. In a million people, over a million people have died there, mainly women, children, civilians.

And that's what we've seen. And, you know, and Benjamin Hall was there. He was one of the journalists that was there to try to cover the truth. And he embedded himself in Kiev at a time when Russia was taking the capital city, Kiev. And so when he was there, the Russians were closing around Kiev.

They were trying to take the capital. They were ballistic missiles the size of telephone poles flying in the apartment buildings and civilian residences, MiG fighter jets dropping bombs, Russian infantry and tanks closing in the city. And he got hit. And when he got hit, his Fox correspondent, Sasha, was killed immediately. Pierre Zashevsky, his 25-year cameraman for Fox was killed immediately. The two Ukrainian soldiers that were protecting them, their security was killed immediately.

And he was catastrophically wounded and probably had about 48 hours to live. That information made it back to the Pentagon. And the Pentagon contacted us as well as the CIA's, what's called the Solo Special Operations Liaison Officer, reached out to us to ask us if we would step in to go get Benjamin Hall. The reason why is because the White House had forbid any U.S. presence, including the central intel. You think maybe, oh, well, maybe Delta Force was there, maybe the CIA. They were grounded to be able to go and do any kind of rescues or anything.

So, I mean, Delta Force, we were friends with all the guys. They were at the, I won't say what hotel, they were at a hotel and they were on standby and they were mad. They couldn't come with us, right? They wanted to go. The CIA wanted to go. So we were on the phone with the Pentagon and the Solo to coordinate this. And the Pentagon was coordinated to 82nd Airborne, the Army's 82nd Airborne liaison with us. And I remember getting a phone call.

My buddy C. Spray was our ground lead there. We're in a safe house and he gets, he's on the phone and he kind of gives his hand up for everybody to be quiet and he collects the information and he puts down the phone. He says, Benjamin Hall, the Fox News reporter, is catastrophically wounded. His team is skilled. No one's going to get him. He probably has about 48 hours to live.

And he has a wife and two little girls at home who's in. And everyone in that room raised their hand. And we crossed the border and we went into Kiev and C. Spray, there was two of us team separated. C. Spray was the Alpha team. I was leading the Bravo team and C. Spray's team got him.

We got him across the border. This is the middle of the Russian troops. This is like D-Day of Kiev.

This is D-Day of Kiev. How in the world did you maneuver in that environment? How many guys were you?

Well, we had, we brought nine of us across the border in two vehicles. And God, God, I got to get like ghosts. God orchestrated a miracle in this because whenever you're doing operations like this, you have to have us call, we call it access and placement. So you could be as good as you want it doing something. But if you can't be there, if you don't have the ability to be there, you can't do it.

So access and placement is key to these operations. So we knew the only way to get through Ukraine in the middle of the night and get through all these checkpoints that are un-orchestrated, you have to have a plausible reason to go. The most only plausible reason was medical teams. So we had just bought ambulances. We created an ambulance rescue company. We put stamps on it, made ID cards, and you put stamps on anything in the world. That's a good tradecraft secret.

You could get it anywhere. And so we had access and placement an hour before we got that call. And I believe God orchestrated time because if we would not have that in place an hour before that call, we would have not been able to get it. And so when we got Benjamin Hull, we drove him across the border and we were coordinating with the Pentagon and the solo. And the 82nd Airborne was waiting for us to cross that border. We got him on a Blackhawk helicopter. They flew him to an aeromedical unit. He flew to Landstuhl, Germany and then on the Brooke Army Medical Center where he saved his life. He saved his life. And well, he lost a leg, a foot, a hand that they put back on, an eye.

But he's, I mean, that's video of him dancing with his little girls on his prosthetics. Well, that says it all. Yeah. And then we were asked to go back and get Pierre Cieszewski's body. I said no, because obviously, but his wife got on the phone and said, I want my husband. And we said, yes, ma'am.

Change of plans. And we went. I mean, wow. That just sounds like the heart of God saving a life like that. I mean, that's what he does for each one of us spiritually. That's what we talk about everlasting life through Christ.

And this is a physical representation of that. That's what makes it so amazing, Chad. In fact, C-Spray, you mentioned him in the book. He had a comment that I wanted to ask you to make mention of where you're talking about these missions into the Ukraine and why you're doing it. And I think it was him who said it doesn't have to be worth it. Yeah. To really explain it, I have to tell you who C-Spray is. He sounds like a character.

Yeah. He's a guy, his whole life he wanted to be in the CIA as a paramilitary officer, which is the military paramilitary unit in the CIA. So he was the youngest at his time. He's the youngest person to become a Green Beret. Made it through the 18X program, become a Green Beret. Got Oxford educated, went to the CIA, went to ground branch and wartime branch was the paramilitary units of the CIA, became a precision rescue expert.

One of only the three most qualified precision experts in the world. And so he made it like the lottery to make it his dream job. He's in Afghanistan rescuing people with us at HKIA. And he took leave because the military wouldn't allow him to go there. He said he was sailing. And they catch him there. Don't mention that.

Yeah. They catch him there to say, hey, we love you. Slap on the wrist. Go back home.

You're not allowed to be out here doing this. And he resigned. Wow. He resigned from a job he worked his whole life to do the most prestigious job in military special operations for people he never met before from the country, not his own. He lost 37 pounds in that 10 days going outside the wire. We're having to force feed him bottles of water because he was selflessly rescuing these little girls and people. And so now we get to Ukraine and we're going to, he and I are on this operation. We're going to rescue this Marine. This US Marine had volunteered, got shot in the stomach. He got captured by the Russians. We had some information we're working with the CIA to go rescue this Marine. We ended up losing track of where he was.

So we didn't get him so that we were asked to go identify these mass graves. And so we were, we had been awake for days, just him and I driving. We had been sleeping outside. We were just tired.

We were hungry. And this Fox news reporter that we were leaking this information to called us and she was just, she was nasty to us, to be honest with you. She was just kind of, she was not pro Ukraine, being there in Ukraine. And she was like, what are you guys even doing there? And I was just irritated with her. I was, and I was snapped back at her. I was like, it's the right thing to do. Like, you know, don't you get it? Like, like sometimes it's like saving a life.

Yeah, we're doing the right thing. And then she asked that question, right? You think about what he gave up. She said, is it worth it? And he just said, it's without even hesitation.

It doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be worth it to do the right thing. And a guy who gave up everything, right? And you contrast that with most Americans and I love this country. I love our people.

I'm a patriot, but the truth is most Americans are pretty, we're pretty selfish people because of our culture and the privileges we have here. And we put our ROI on everything. I'll get my time. I'll get my resources. I'll get my money. It might be a noble cause, but what's the, what's the return on investment? Well, what's, what's in it for me. And this guy who gave up everything says it doesn't have to be worth it to do the right thing.

We don't always have to have ROI. Sometimes we do the right thing just because it's the right thing to do. Yeah. I mean, I've never heard it said that way, but it's profound and it's very Christian to say it that way. I mean, in that moment, in the middle of me even doing this, it just convicted me. Cause I mean, I measure everything with like metrics of, you know, You know, I want also to mention Mighty Oaks.

I want to capture that. So we're leaving the battlefields and all of your veteran experience after you've served and the things you still do in these conflict areas to help people, whether it's delivering a flower to a child or a woman who's, you know, catastrophically impacted by a war and they're on the refugee path, or it's actively engaged trying to save a journalist who's about to die. But moving now back home, like you said, to Mighty Oaks and organization that you formed to do what?

Yeah. Well, Mighty Oaks is formed out of, you know, people caring for me. When I came home, I came home and dealt with the ability to panic attacks, anxiety, depression at a suicide attempt in 2010. And I did a lot of things to recover, but nothing was more profound than a restoration of my faith, becoming a Christian, surrendering my life to Jesus, and then being discipled for a year and taught how to live biblically in response to these things and make choices that the Bible outlines in response to the things I dealt with. And it was a profound thing for me.

And I had a deep burn in my heart to pay it forward. And that manifested at the founding of Mighty Oaks Foundation. And since that time, 14 years ago, I've spoken to over half a million active duty troops on bases around the world on the topic of spiritual resiliency. My podcast is called The Resilient Show because resiliency is the topic that I think matters most, not just in the military, but our culture and our world.

Being resilient and spiritual resiliency is at the foundation of that. And then we have a recovery program where we bring active duty service members, veterans, first responders to our ranches. We go through an intensive program. We do about $8 million a year for free. So if anybody, a veteran, a first responder or active duty service member is listening, spouse of, we even pay for the travel. I say we do.

I say that loosely. A grateful nation does through supporting us. Donors. Donors, yeah. And then we have an advocacy program. I've testified now a dozen times in Washington, D.C. before Congress and Senate. I served as chairman of the White House's faith-based coalition for veteran affairs and really pushing to make sure we have legislation and even got executive orders passed to make sure our veterans have access to faith-based programs.

And then Mighty Oaks is the international arm, too, that we don't do rescue operations. But my son, for example, who went to Ukraine, their team went in and trained 300 pastors to become chaplains. And that might not sound like a big deal, but if I could explain real quick, on a Sunday morning, you might go to church and it's half women, half men. Next Sunday, you go to church and it's all women. Where are the men? They're on the front line defending your homes and family. And this pastor, these are tight communities.

Little Yvonne, he's been in his youth program, and now he's off defending our families and our freedom and our neighborhoods. So the pastors had a desire to go out and serve their men and their young men that was defending, but they didn't know how. They didn't know how to sleep in the woods, poop in the woods, put on a tourniquet.

And how are we going to be a burden? How do you administer to someone who's in the middle, not PTSD, but in the middle of losing buddies? And the average lifespan is 4.5 days for a Ukrainian troop on the front line. So the clock's ticking when they go. So how do you administer to that? And so Mighty Oaks and our international team went in and trained 300 pastors to chaplains and equipped and deployed them to the front lines to administer. So that's some of the things we do at Mighty Oaks.

And it's amazing. We'll put a link on the website for people that can go there. But Chad, let me ask you right at the end here, if I could, Veterans Day again, veterans that are going through experiences like you went through with PTSD. And you mentioned it quickly, but I caught it in terms of depression, suicidal ideation, highest rates of suicide exist amongst the veteran community. Can you pray for them right now as we end today?

Can I ask you to do that? Lord, we just we come to you and on this Veterans Day and I ask Lord that you will penetrate the hearts of every veteran in the families of Lord. We know that that the freedoms we have in this country are God ordained from in our Constitution. But they've been they've been maintained and you've been orchestrated through your provision in order to bring service members since 1775. And every man and woman had done the uniform since 1775 and fought, bled and died for these freedoms. Lord, we as Americans appreciate them.

Lord, today on Veterans Day, if you could just penetrate the hearts of every veteran and know they're loved, they're appreciated. We honor them for their their preservation of our freedom and the sacrifices they make, whether in combat or not in combat, just by raising your hand and being willing. Lord, we as a nation are grateful for them, regardless what they see on the news and politics and division and divide. Lord, they will know wherever they fall, that this country is a country of patriots who love and respect and thankful for them.

Lord. And I thank you that we were born in a country that were born in those freedoms, Lord. And I pray that these that these veterans and active service members will have access to to you being the solution to the hardships that they face in their service. Lord, that we will we will win the war in the halls of Congress that we have before our senior victories before that.

We'll see those victories again. They will win the war in Congress that every active service member, the veteran will have access to you as a solution to their hardships and trauma. Lord, we'll see a spiritual revival in our United States military and that our military will be strengthened and emboldened with the spiritual resiliency that only you can provide, Lord. And I pray today for the families of our service members that they will enjoy this day that honors them on Veterans Day. In Jesus name. Amen.

Amen. Chad, thank you so much. Thanks for everything you've done. It's insufficient to say thank you.

But you embody the the whole perspective. And I am grateful for what you and your family has done for our nation. Well, yeah, I'm thankful. Well, I'm thankful for what you guys do. I focus on the family and you know, you guys have not just been good friends, but if those don't know, ministry is hard. And I have a wife of twenty nine years and we went to Hope Restored. Yeah, a lot of pastors go, a lot of ministry leaders go. And and so you guys served our family.

Well, it's a cherished endorsement. So thank you so much for that. And you need to get a copy of the book, A Mission Without Borders. Get that directly from Focus on the Family.

Make a gift of any amount. And like we often do, because we believe in the content so strongly, if you can't afford it, get a hold of us. We're going to get it to you. That's our mission as a Christian organization, especially for veterans. We get it and we'll trust others who can cover the cost of that.

And the idea is just to give you hope. And that's what focus is here to do. That's what Mighty Oaks is here to do for you, particularly as veterans. Yeah, we're a phone call away. The number is 800, the letter A and the word family, 800-232-6459.

We'll have a link to all these resources and further details about Mighty Oaks and Chad's great work in the show notes. Well, join us next time. We'll hear from Dr. Ken Wilgus with insights to help you launch your teen into adulthood. We live in an unusual culture that does not have a standardized means of transitioning our children into adulthood. Because of that, you don't have to give teenagers everything they want.

But they do need to know, am I on a track here where you will be out of my life and it will be up to me? On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. We'll talk with you, pray with you and help you find out which program will work best. That's 1-866-875-2915.