CONTINUING THE MISSION
An interview with Navy Veteran & Award-Winning Country Music Artist Brooks Herring.
Years later, the uniforms were no longer his dad’s. Brooks entered boot camp at 18. He served six years on active duty, deploying to Iraq and Africa, before later spending two years in Afghanistan working for the Army as a weapons specialist.
But his departure from the Navy in 2011 became one of the hardest periods of his life. After losing a close friend in 2006, Brooks volunteered for orders to Iraq carrying anger and a desire for vengeance; frustrations with his career, depression and heavy drinking followed. A DUI ultimately ended his Navy career sooner than expected.
“I had no purpose anymore. I had no mission anymore,” he said. That year, Brooks attempted to take his own life.
Not long afterward, while searching Craigslist for a bartending job, he found an
opening for a crane operator in Afghanistan. He knew nothing about cranes, but sent his credentials anyway. The response was an offer to return to Afghanistan as a weapons specialist.
“I feel like that kind of saved my life,” he said. “For the time being, it gave me another purpose. I felt like I was back in the fight.”
When he returned home in 2013, Brooks opened a restaurant with his dad, but still struggled to find what came next. At his brother’s urging, he eventually went to the VA to ask about education benefits. That decision opened a new, and unexpected, path.
Brooks enrolled at the University of South Carolina, earning a Bachelor of Science in Exercise Science and later a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree in 2021. His goal was to work with Veterans recovering from combat trauma and help them regain as much function as possible.
“I was always at my worst when I didn't have a mission, when I didn't have a purpose and I didn't have direction,” he said.
Music, however, had followed Brooks through nearly every chapter of his life. He began playing trumpet in sixth grade, drums in seventh and guitar at 14. He wrote songs and carried a guitar on every deployment.
In 2020, while still in physical therapy school, Brooks visited Nashville through a Veterans music program and was introduced to co-writing, writers’ rounds, recording studios and the Nashville music community.
“That was the turning point,” he said. “That was when I knew this is where I need to be and this is what I need to do.”
He finished his doctorate and began laying the groundwork for a music career. In 2022, he released his first song, “Why Me?,” which he had originally written in Afghanistan for two men that he had lost. By January 2023, Brooks had packed a U-Haul and moved to Nashville to study music at Belmont University and pursue it full time. But another change was still coming.
Alcohol had been part of Brooks’ life through the military, college and Nashville, where drinking easily became part of life as a working musician. After Christmas 2024, he decided he was finished with it.
“That was the last time I had a drink, was Christmas of 2024. I haven't had a single drink since.”
Sobriety also changed the way Brooks looked back at his life. He became more willing to take responsibility for his own decisions and to see some of the failures and closed doors in his past differently.
Today, service remains at the center of what he does.
“Every time I do something that I feel like serves someone else, there is a return,” he said. “And it's not anything monetary. It's not anything physical. It just lifts a weight off of my heart.”
Brooks uses music to help Veterans and Gold Star families tell their stories, sitting down with them to create original songs from their experiences, memories and loss. He also serves with his American Legion honor guard.
He believes that desire to serve began with his family, was strengthened by the military and has continued to take different forms throughout his life.
It’s also the advice he gives Veterans preparing to transition out of the military: have a mission, know where you want to go and continue finding ways to serve.
“You can stretch yourself so thin to become wealthy or to become rich or become famous or whatever else, and when all that stuff goes away, there's nothing left,” he said. “If you stretch yourself thin serving others, when you fall, there will be 100 arms there to catch you.”
For Brooks, the mission may have changed many times, but the heart behind it has remained remarkably consistent:
“Continue the mission, continue to serve.”
LISTEN NOW
Brooks’ first released song, ‘Why Me?’, was originally written in Afghanistan for two men he lost.
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