A NEW KIND OF MISSION
Ten years ago, Blake Hall was nearly blown up at work.
A platoon leader in the Army Rangers, Hall was in charge of a reconnaissance unit stationed in Mosul, Iraq. His team was on routine patrol one day when a bomb exploded near their base. Then mortar shells began to fall, pummeling the combat hospital inside the base, injuring 10 during the first few blasts.
Suddenly, Hall was racing his men across the Tigris River, hoping to find the mortar unit. They were outnumbered and facing attacks from three directions, without air cover or other support. Yet they ultimately destroyed the unit, capturing four al Qaeda fighters and killing two, Hall says, while avoiding any casualties themselves.
“It was a miracle, really,” says Hall, who was awarded a Bronze Star with Valor for that day’s work. “God was good to us, to me, that day.”
Two years later, he headed back home to a promising civilian life—Harvard Business School, a prestigious internship with McKinsey & Company—that soon got, well, boring. Hunched over Excel spreadsheets in an office tower late one night, Hall turned to another intern and blurted out an uncomfortable epiphany: “Dude, 18 months ago I was hunting down an al Qaeda bomb network,” he said. “I don’t think I can do management consulting.”
It’s a feeling familiar to many returning veterans, one that has long spurred them to seek out the challenges and rewards of
