Retired Lieutenant General and Professor of Practice in Leadership at Crummer, Mark Hertling published “If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal” on March 10, 2026. This work is a war story drawn from Hertling’s 1991 journal entries from his time as a general during Operation Desert Storm, which provided the structure and outline for his book.
Before anything else, Mark Hertling is a husband, father, and now a grandfather. His inspiration stemmed from his family, whom Hertling said they have been his anchor through every chapter.
Major Mark Hertling has spent 38 years in the United States Army as a lieutenant general commanding soldiers mostly in Europe and in combat. After that, he took up a career in healthcare leadership, then became a national security analyst on cable news. Hertling commented that “those experiences were meaningful, but they also came with a lot of scar tissue — lessons learned through difficult, often high-stakes environments.”
Currently, Hertling serves as a professor at the Crummer School of Business at Rollins. He has learned from and drawn from his previous experiences to help young leaders think deeply about who they are, as well as how they lead. He is passionate about getting to work with “terrific and sparkly smart MBA students on leadership issues: character, ethics, and the value of a liberal arts education.”
During the process of writing his book, Hertling wrote for his sons and for his wife. Every thought of emotion, character, friendship, love, faith, thoughts of home, and prayer were for them. He revisited the original entries that shaped those pivotal thirty-five years: all the combat experiences, watching as his boys grew into men and became fathers, which allowed Hertling to reflect on what he had thought then, and what he had come to understand since.
Hertling said, “The book began during a very uncertain moment.” Before being deployed to Desert Storm, which was a reconnaissance element that supported a 20,000-soldier division, Hertling was told he and the others could suffer up to 50 percent casualties. “That kind of reality forces you to think differently,” he said.
During that time, Hertling and his wife had two sons, aged 7 and 10. He began to write a journal for them. This journal was not about operations or tactics, but instead about life. “If I didn’t come home, I wanted to know what I believed, what I valued, and what I hoped they would carry forward,” said Hertling.
Now, having come home from Operation Desert Storm and lived through thirty-five years of a whirlwind of experiences, Hertling felt the need to continue his journal for his grandchildren. These now-published lessons were for his family, but also for anyone with a purpose trying to navigate life.
“If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal” is available for purchase at Barnes & Noble, on Amazon, and Kindle store.
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