Ship’s Log #53 · October 22, 2026
They Knew Their Jobs. They Didn’t Know the Mission.
Nobody cares what you know, until they know you care.— Lt. Col. Eric W. Hommel
Episode Summary
Lt. Col. Eric W. Hommel has lived several lives inside a uniform — Cold War Navy submariner, Air Force combat commander, Provincial Reconstruction Team leader in Afghanistan’s Panjshir province, and a decade inside the Pentagon. In this conversation with Jeanne Andersen he talks about the road project he stopped so 541 Afghan families would be paid for their land, metrics that reward motion over progress, Immersive Prolonged Exposure for veterans still haunted by wars they never understood, and why knowing the mission matters more than knowing the job.
His memoir, The Losing Game, is a first-person Afghanistan account that ends by holding its author accountable. Today he walks Arlington National Cemetery with veterans and families through Vigilance Tours — still living the rule he learned on the ground: nobody cares what you know until they know you care.
The Two Truths and a Lie segment spans a fast-attack submarine, Camp Lejeune, and the Order of the Combat Spur. Stay to the end to find out which claim isn’t true.
About Lt. Col. Eric W. Hommel
Founder, Author, Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. · Vigilance Tours, LLC
Eric Hommel is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, author of The Losing Game: How to Lose a War and Fail Veterans, and founder of Vigilance Tours at Arlington National Cemetery. He began as an enlisted Navy submariner during the Cold War, later commanded a provincial reconstruction team in Panjshir, and spent a decade in Pentagon legislative liaison work. He still mentors the people who stay — and measures success by putting himself out of business.
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