Jocko Podcast 115 with Dakota Meyer - Into The Fire, and Beyond the Call of Duty

2018-02-28T23:05:02Z

Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @dakota_meyer @echocharles 0:00:00 - Opening 0:04:21 - Dakota Meyer. 0:11:00 - "Into The Fire", by Dakota Meyer. 0:23:35 - Deployed to Iraq. 0:26:35 - Deployed to Afghanistan. 3:01:54 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 3:12:50 - Support: JockoStore stuff, Super Krill Oil and Joint Warfare and Discipline Pre-Mission, THE MUSTER 005 in DC. Origin Brand Apparel and Jocko Gi, with Jocko White Tea,  Onnit Fitness stuff, and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes). Extreme Ownership (book), The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, and Jocko Soap. 3:40:37 - Closing Gratitude.

AI summary of episode

I mean, you know, I, I was the only tactical guy in there, you know, and yeah, and it was, you know, they, they, when it came to the tactics, when it came to making sure that the weapons were ready, when it came to making sure that the vehicles were ready, that, that, that the, you know, that the, the, the, the jammers were working, that, you know, what, if anything that mattered in the patrol, it was on me. I mean, no, I mean, the facts of the facts are like here's, here's, I get so frustrated with people who want to like, like, I'm a factual guy, like, you know, I mean, I, I'm, everything to me is black and white. You know, sometimes I hear, I hear people, you know, people that don't understand at all what was going on in Iraq or Afghanistan, they'll, you know, we were, you know, America was occupiers and oxygen. It was kind of interesting, you know, because I was kind of the high-strung one on the team, you know, like I was like the one that always was, you know, we need to be ready to fight. It kind of like, you know, you know, kind of like how you know you're a diet that works for you. And, uh, you have to, uh, you have to move up and, um, you got to get within, uh, you know, a certain distance and whatever they tell you and then you got, you know, you have to veg up and whatever you take shot, you can do whatever you, you know, just, you take a shot with a blank, okay. But, yeah, I mean, you know, you don't, it just goes against, you know, and I think the one thing, you know, that it's so hard for us to wrap around is, how many times are you training? Oh, you know, because I mean, honestly, I know what sounds dumb, but I mean, by that time we're five years past it, and people had already got used to it, right? But, you know, what, what I feel like, you know, my life, I talk about my story and kind of what happened to me and then I come around and I, what does that mean to me, right? You know, you just look, you know, because it was a JV game and he's like, you know, don't come out next half. And, you know, most time, I mean, most time, look, I mean, look, I, you know, the people there want it to be better. So you know, for you, you know you're going, and you know you're going to go to combat. Um, but, um, you know, I think that, you know, you always got to hit that rock bottom, you know, I think that, and that was for me. I was learning every, I was going over to the BAS and learning, you know, all the medical stuff that I could, and I was, you know, I mean, everything I could do, like if I could get just a little nugget in knowledge and better myself and every aspect, I was doing it. And, you know, uh, I just, I just want people out there to know that, you know, I'm no different than anybody else. Yeah, I mean, just like, you know, you know, you start off, you got 1,000 meter lane. But you know, what I look at it is to understand how much it truly, you know, as the war fighter, you know, I think we take for granted so many times of what it really takes for us to be able to do our job effectively. Yeah, I mean, and he did that like, you know, they were so his commander, he was having problems with his commander and the guy who was leading those birds, you know, because they fly in two birds. You know, I ended up taking like I had the worst, like I got like the newest guys. You get the metal, oh my gosh, thank you, let's go party or so I don't know something, you know, like it's just, it's like, dang, but I did. But, you know, to those of you that didn't have the opportunity to serve for whatever reason, you know, if I could relate something to you, it's like, yeah, these, these people, these lieutenants, these sergeants, these staff sergeants, and their people, man. Yeah, I mean, you know, usually, but at this point, you know, the only show of force ever works is, I mean, they had so much momentum at this time. I mean, you know, I mean, they just, they instilled so much in me of what's right, what mattered, you know. I mean, that, you know, but that, if you remember what I said a little bit earlier about, you know, hey, we're not going to do the fighting. And you know, you know, we would get hit by indirect fire, you know, some. And then, you know, our early seal snipers, you know, and I don't know the full, I'll bring a sniper on here someday that knows the whole history of the seal sniper program. You know, I had to get the guy, you know, actually, you know, as names on my chest. So if you talk, like, you know, and the big thing I brought up was was, you know, what happens if you're calling it a MetaVac and you're calling in a call for fire? You know I don't know if it talks about it in the book, you know. And you know, you look at them, you know, well, you know, she's just a woman with a bowl, running. Like, it's not, you know, they just, they just know how to talk to their own, right? Like, you know, you know, you're either, you either gonna be a Marine or you're not gonna be a Marine, right? I mean, you take, you know, I mean, it takes, you know, 85% of the organization just to support that 15%. And who knows what those moments were like, you know, but there's moments of, there's, there's heroism there that we're never going to know about. You know, and that's why I get so upset about like, you know, the counselors or whatever, right? So if I know what it is, like if I know what it is that you want done and my job is to get it done and you give me parameters to do it within, I'll stay within those parameters and I'll get the job done. Like some girl that like like a girl would be like, oh, I'm going to Wait. I'm sitting back to, you know, back the trucks and they're going, you know, they're going into the valley. You know, you don't know where you're going to be at, but one day you're going to be tested. And I don't know how many times I got into arguments with people in the team of, you know, hey, this is how we need to do it. But, you know, even though it's a bullet magnet, I mean, just like right there, I think that kind of paints the picture. And that's, and I mean, look, I mean, it's, I always say the equivalent to try to make people understand like how, how I feel about it and the situation is, it would be like, you inside of a house and your family's there. I mean you just, I mean it's just like, I mean I just felt like everybody was dying. I mean, you know, my dad is a man who doesn't, you know, he doesn't care the social status. I like, like, I pick up the phone and are like, man, I'm like, no. And, uh, you know, I felt like I felt like people in America just needed something to hold on to. I mean, you know, that right there, I mean, that right there's everything. And they said, you know, we're not, you know, they, so many times the leadership got on me. You know, we're going to watch my little brother play, you know, all that. You know, because we, we were 21-man team, but we were broken to four-man elements and spread out, you know, in this area. Yeah, I mean, like they're going to just, they blow their load like right in the beginning and then they don't have enough. No, I mean, I mean, 100% I mean, dock late was rendering aid, you know, what stopped them was because Fossail was with them. We did everything from, you know, teach them weapons tactics and, you know, shoot and shoot and I did the change over for the NATO weapons, right? And honestly, man, I mean, I'm sure you saw me like sometimes, you know, I'm getting, I get emotional and I read your story. I did, they got me, they got me, I mean, they tell you something, they got me, you know. And like, like, 10 or 20 meters and then you take a second shot and if they see anything, you know, you, you fail to. You know, you still need to, you know, customs and courtesy, right? And then when you know your job and you know what's right, you, you do that. You know, I don't know how many arguments I got into with some of the, the leadership and teams.

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jocopodcast number 115.
[00:00:04] With echo Charles and me, Jocco Willing.
[00:00:07] Good evening, echo.
[00:00:08] Good evening.
[00:00:12] War is different for everyone who experiences it.
[00:00:19] On one end of the spectrum, there are some people who deployed to a safe area and protected by
[00:00:28] concrete and steel and barbed wire and their job, which is definitely an important part of the
[00:00:35] machine, but it just doesn't require them to be put into direct combat.
[00:00:42] And then with a little lock because of that situation, they can easily complete a wartime
[00:00:50] deployment with little or no contact with the enemy whatsoever.
[00:00:58] But they did their part and we are thankful for that.
[00:01:04] On the other end of the spectrum, there are some people that end up in anything but
[00:01:13] a safe area.
[00:01:14] They end up in the belly of the beast.
[00:01:20] They are called on to do more than is required and much more than could be expected.
[00:01:32] And that situation also creates a spectrum.
[00:01:38] Some men find it to be too much.
[00:01:45] And instincts of self preservation take over and they go into survival mode and they
[00:01:51] cover and they hide and they give up and they wait for the inevitable.
[00:02:03] But others do what they can.
[00:02:06] They try to do their duty.
[00:02:09] They put one foot in front of the other and they reload their weapon and they try to keep
[00:02:13] firing.
[00:02:16] That's the middle of the spectrum.
[00:02:19] And then at the far end of the spectrum, there are those men that step up and go forward
[00:02:35] across the threshold, really across the threshold of life and they go into the fire and
[00:02:42] into the flame and toward the unknown and toward death, not to save themselves.
[00:02:52] But they disregard their own safety and their own life to save their friends, their brothers
[00:03:05] and their comrades in arms.
[00:03:11] And then beyond even that, almost off the spectrum.
[00:03:20] There are those men that take that step across the threshold of life and death over and over
[00:03:27] and over again, not because they were ordered to not for a metal, not because of some
[00:03:32] men you factored set of ideals but simply because that is who they are.
[00:03:43] And I'm honored to have one of those men here with me today.
[00:03:50] I'm honored to have one of those men who have been here for a long time and I'm honored
[00:04:08] to have one of those men who have been here for a long time and I'm honored to have
[00:04:14] have three men greater than half in the Making What água A20 has.
[00:04:21] So, you'll always come into the building.
[00:04:27] You've always been here before.
[00:04:32] Okay.
[00:04:33] I have six men but, what do I do, be the channelwipie family?
[00:04:41] You know, I didn't come from money,
[00:04:43] didn't come from anything nice, you know.
[00:04:45] I ended up living my father, I'm adopted on my father's side.
[00:04:48] And you grew up on a farm.
[00:04:52] You know, it's just a simple way of life.
[00:04:58] You know what I mean?
[00:04:59] And that's just how we grew up.
[00:05:00] You know, my dad, you know, he always instilled in me.
[00:05:02] And you know, I have to give, you know, so much credit
[00:05:05] to my father and my grandfather.
[00:05:06] I mean, you know, I mean, they just, they instilled so much
[00:05:10] in me of what's right, what mattered, you know.
[00:05:13] You know, we're talking a lot of your childhood
[00:05:19] was, and I wrote down these notes, farm work, football,
[00:05:23] and females.
[00:05:24] Yeah.
[00:05:25] I mean, that's, that I told you, I'm simple.
[00:05:30] Yeah.
[00:05:31] That's it.
[00:05:31] That's it.
[00:05:32] You know, there's not much else.
[00:05:34] And clung me, you can tuck you down.
[00:05:36] And, you know, you wrote, you wrote a book.
[00:05:39] He's called into the fire and that's why I'm getting
[00:05:40] some of my information from him.
[00:05:42] And I would say that in the early descriptions,
[00:05:44] the way you describe yourself, not exactly
[00:05:46] Mr. sensitive is what we were dealing with back then.
[00:05:50] Oh, no, not at all.
[00:05:52] You know, I was, no, I wasn't sensitive.
[00:05:54] I was, I was just a hard-headed kid, you know.
[00:05:58] Said my ways.
[00:05:59] I, you know, my dad just instilled it in me.
[00:06:02] My dad instilled it.
[00:06:03] I mean, you know, my dad is a man who doesn't, you know,
[00:06:05] he doesn't care the social status.
[00:06:07] He's not a, you know, and I watch it from him.
[00:06:11] He's just a hard, hard guy, you know what I mean?
[00:06:13] And so there's not living in a house of two men, right?
[00:06:16] You know, me, and it's just my dad.
[00:06:17] Yeah.
[00:06:18] There's not, you know, there's not very me feeling.
[00:06:21] There wasn't a real nourishment to your sense of sight.
[00:06:24] There was not much nourishment.
[00:06:26] Yeah, there's one part of there talking about your
[00:06:28] football game and you jack up your elbow real bad.
[00:06:31] And so the coach got you in the locker room or whatever.
[00:06:34] Yeah, yeah, so I was sitting in the locker room and I,
[00:06:37] I, I had carried the ball.
[00:06:40] Play 18, 19 times the first half and I go in there.
[00:06:42] My elbows are like just jacked, right?
[00:06:45] I mean, you know, just get, we just get pounded.
[00:06:46] And I remember sitting in there and the coach like,
[00:06:49] hey, don't come out next half, right?
[00:06:51] You know, you just look, you know, because it was a JV game
[00:06:53] and he's like, you know, don't come out next half.
[00:06:56] And I'm gonna tell you something.
[00:06:57] My dad's seeing that I didn't come off
[00:06:58] when we were warming up for second half.
[00:07:01] And I mean, he came in there and that was not,
[00:07:03] that was not acceptable.
[00:07:04] The one thing my dad taught me is you started
[00:07:06] you finish it.
[00:07:08] Check, check.
[00:07:10] Now, what happened to that football career?
[00:07:12] What you did get some legitimate injuries, right?
[00:07:16] Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.
[00:07:16] I got, you know, I banged my knee up real bad
[00:07:19] on my sophomore year between my sophomore and junior year.
[00:07:21] Never really recovered from it, you know.
[00:07:24] And so I mean, I could have went and played somewhere.
[00:07:27] Like, I'm not gonna stick on my next hearing
[00:07:28] tell you I'd had full scholarships or anything.
[00:07:30] But I could have walked on somewhere, you know,
[00:07:32] probably played outside linebacker or, you know,
[00:07:34] a strong safety.
[00:07:36] But, you know, I just, I was gonna go play football
[00:07:40] and I'd planned on that.
[00:07:41] I'd been through the clearing house.
[00:07:42] I mean, I'd done everything I needed to do to go
[00:07:44] and, you know, my senior year and I just ended up
[00:07:46] going to the Marine Corps route.
[00:07:48] Now, I've talked a few times down here
[00:07:50] about the effectiveness of the Marine Corps recruiting program,
[00:07:55] which they have like the best recruiting numbers,
[00:07:57] but they spend the least on recruiting
[00:07:59] of any of the military service branches.
[00:08:02] And it sounds like you got rolled right into that.
[00:08:05] I did, they got me, they got me,
[00:08:07] I mean, they tell you something, they got me, you know.
[00:08:10] But, but I think, look, I, you know,
[00:08:13] the products, the product with them, right?
[00:08:14] Like, you know, you know, you're either,
[00:08:16] you either gonna be a Marine or you're not gonna be a Marine, right?
[00:08:18] Like, you're, you either have it in here, you don't.
[00:08:20] Like, it's not, you know, they just,
[00:08:23] they just know how to talk to their own, right?
[00:08:25] And I think that's what they're so good at is,
[00:08:28] is that they know how, they know what would have fired them up.
[00:08:32] And so they say the same thing that would have fired them up.
[00:08:34] And if you buy it on it, then you're the type of person
[00:08:37] needs to be a Marine.
[00:08:37] If you don't, they don't want you anyways.
[00:08:39] You know what I mean?
[00:08:40] Yeah, that's a perfect way to put it.
[00:08:41] And this is 2006.
[00:08:43] 2006.
[00:08:44] 2006.
[00:08:45] Again, this is something I always have to remind myself,
[00:08:47] and I'll remind everyone else while I'm at it,
[00:08:49] is, you know, when I joined the Navy in 1990,
[00:08:54] there was no war going on, right?
[00:08:56] There was no war going on.
[00:08:57] It was just, you know, peacetime.
[00:08:59] And you're joining in 2006, where are two different countries?
[00:09:03] And 2006, things are not going well.
[00:09:06] They're a little quiet.
[00:09:07] And Afghanistan at that time.
[00:09:09] But Iraq is full more.
[00:09:10] I mean, that's when I was in the Marine.
[00:09:12] It was a real hard fighting, was taking place.
[00:09:14] And all our problems, the rest of Iraq, was pretty bad.
[00:09:17] So you know, for you, you know you're going,
[00:09:21] and you know you're going to go to combat.
[00:09:22] I mean, that's just like kind of a given.
[00:09:23] Yeah, I mean, I, I don't know that I ever really,
[00:09:27] understood that though until I was in.
[00:09:29] You know what I mean?
[00:09:29] I think that I don't think it ever really hit me.
[00:09:32] I never really, I didn't really join.
[00:09:34] I can't sit here and give you some moto story
[00:09:35] that I joined to go, you know,
[00:09:37] it's got a Venge 911, right?
[00:09:38] You want to hear something that's jacked up?
[00:09:39] Yeah.
[00:09:40] I joined in 1990, and I had the opposite view for it,
[00:09:42] which is, I mean, there's no war going on.
[00:09:44] I don't know how to say, should I go on the war?
[00:09:46] I was like, oh, it's all on.
[00:09:47] I can go, the seals got to be doing things all over.
[00:09:49] I don't know how you're doing stuff we don't even hear about.
[00:09:51] That's what my attitude is.
[00:09:52] And here you were staring at,
[00:09:53] there were two different zones, and you're like, I don't know
[00:09:56] for the way to happen.
[00:09:57] Oh, you know, because I mean, honestly,
[00:10:00] I know what sounds dumb, but I mean,
[00:10:02] by that time we're five years past it,
[00:10:06] and people had already got used to it, right?
[00:10:08] It was no longer like, oh shit, right?
[00:10:11] And the population, you know,
[00:10:13] in the average civilian, right?
[00:10:15] It wasn't, you know, because they've been doing it
[00:10:17] for what five years.
[00:10:19] And so, you know, I didn't really think about it.
[00:10:22] You know, I honestly, and you know, I joined,
[00:10:23] I wanted to go infantry.
[00:10:25] I wanted to fight, but I didn't really,
[00:10:28] I don't think it ever really hit me
[00:10:29] until I got into boot camp, you know,
[00:10:30] and then I really started understanding what,
[00:10:33] and when you were going boot through boot camp,
[00:10:34] at that time, basically every drone structure
[00:10:37] must have been coming back from the battlefield.
[00:10:38] All of them.
[00:10:39] I mean, I'm telling you, everybody, especially,
[00:10:42] especially in a school of infantry,
[00:10:45] they'd all, everyone had been,
[00:10:48] they were in the shoes.
[00:10:49] They were in the shoes.
[00:10:50] I mean, everyone I'm been in the shoes.
[00:10:51] Yeah.
[00:10:52] Even my recruiter, my recruiter,
[00:10:54] had just got back from Felicia.
[00:10:55] Dang.
[00:10:56] Yeah.
[00:10:57] And he'd been in the shoes.
[00:10:58] Yeah.
[00:10:58] Dang.
[00:10:59] Yeah.
[00:11:00] So, with that, I'm going to take it to the book right now,
[00:11:03] because, you know, I think I was never in the Marine Corps.
[00:11:06] I'm pretty sad about that sometimes.
[00:11:09] But I have like, read so much about the Marine Corps
[00:11:13] over my life and,
[00:11:15] hang around with so many Marines
[00:11:17] or work with the Marine so much.
[00:11:19] So whenever I get to Marine Corps boot camp,
[00:11:20] it's like strikes a romantic side of me.
[00:11:23] I just did this once,
[00:11:25] but at least get a little taste.
[00:11:27] And you did it really fast, which is great.
[00:11:30] But here it is, and it's just like,
[00:11:32] exactly what we're going to the book.
[00:11:34] Again, this book is into the fire by the go to fire.
[00:11:37] And here we go.
[00:11:39] So it began.
[00:11:40] Close haircuts to strip away your old identity.
[00:11:44] Exercise is to prove you're not half as strong
[00:11:46] as you figured simple tasks to show you that
[00:11:49] you're mentally weak, drill instructors
[00:11:51] who mock your attempts to look tough.
[00:11:53] It's right out of the movies, but it never stops.
[00:11:56] And there you go.
[00:11:58] You know what's coming.
[00:11:59] How many times did you watch Full Metal Jacket before you went in?
[00:12:01] A ton.
[00:12:02] Yeah. I mean, a ton.
[00:12:03] You know exactly what's happening.
[00:12:05] Yeah.
[00:12:06] Does that even help?
[00:12:07] No.
[00:12:08] It's just still.
[00:12:09] No, you could, I mean, you know,
[00:12:11] like during boot camp, it was the hardest thing I'd ever been through.
[00:12:16] So when I look at everything I did in the Marine Corps,
[00:12:18] it was the easiest.
[00:12:19] Yeah.
[00:12:20] That's the same thing with Buds.
[00:12:22] So first of all, when I went through Buds,
[00:12:23] and I didn't know anything about Buds,
[00:12:25] no one knew anything about Buds is 1990 when I joined the Navy.
[00:12:28] Didn't know anything about it.
[00:12:29] And so I always think that,
[00:12:31] like guys are coming in now,
[00:12:32] you can basically watch the entire Bud,
[00:12:34] you can watch the whole thing.
[00:12:35] You know what I think?
[00:12:35] They, the students eventually captured the schedules.
[00:12:39] Yeah.
[00:12:40] And so they'd actually know what's coming.
[00:12:41] And you know, you know how many people
[00:12:43] it keeps from quitting?
[00:12:44] None.
[00:12:45] I'm a nutritionist.
[00:12:46] Yeah.
[00:12:47] Okay, so it's gonna suck really bad.
[00:12:48] And now you know it.
[00:12:49] You didn't know it before.
[00:12:50] Yeah.
[00:12:51] You even know when it's gonna end.
[00:12:52] You know what I mean?
[00:12:54] Yeah.
[00:12:55] All right.
[00:12:56] Back to the book.
[00:12:57] The second month is the turnaround.
[00:12:59] When they build you back up,
[00:13:00] Sergeant Brady made me a squad leader,
[00:13:03] meaning he yelled at me for the mistakes of the other 10 recruits.
[00:13:07] That was all right.
[00:13:07] He had his job.
[00:13:08] I had mine.
[00:13:10] You bust it through,
[00:13:11] you get to graduation day,
[00:13:13] which was obviously awesome.
[00:13:15] And then it's,
[00:13:16] I spent the next two months at SOI School of Infantry,
[00:13:20] only 15% of the Marine Corps and the Army are in the infantry.
[00:13:24] And today's military,
[00:13:25] there are more combat pilots and infantry squad leaders.
[00:13:28] Dang.
[00:13:30] Yeah.
[00:13:30] Man, that's crazy.
[00:13:32] 15% of the Marine Corps and the Army are infantry troops
[00:13:36] for the ground.
[00:13:37] That's a interesting figure.
[00:13:40] In Vietnam,
[00:13:40] and I was talking about this with Laf and
[00:13:42] actually the whole echelon front team the other day.
[00:13:44] I had heard this somewhere,
[00:13:46] I heard it from Hackworth that in Vietnam,
[00:13:48] the height of the Vietnam War.
[00:13:49] There was a little over 500,000 troops on the ground.
[00:13:53] And it was only 10% of those troops
[00:13:55] that were infantry units at well on the ground and combat.
[00:13:57] Yeah, you know what I find so interesting about that fact.
[00:14:00] And that stat when I looked at it,
[00:14:01] you know, like I didn't understand it obviously when I was in.
[00:14:03] But you know,
[00:14:04] what I look at it is to understand how much it truly,
[00:14:07] you know, as the war fighter,
[00:14:08] you know, I think we take for granted so many times
[00:14:10] of what it really takes for us to be able to do our job effectively.
[00:14:13] I mean, you take, you know, I mean, it takes, you know,
[00:14:16] 85% of the organization just to support that 15%.
[00:14:20] To put you face to face with the enemy.
[00:14:23] Yes.
[00:14:23] There's got to be another, yeah.
[00:14:26] I mean, you look at a 10 to 15 to one or something like that.
[00:14:28] It's crazy.
[00:14:29] 10 to one.
[00:14:30] That's got to put you up there.
[00:14:32] But that's where works.
[00:14:33] And that's well, here we go.
[00:14:35] Breaking down, breaking down a little bit of what the Marine Corps is like.
[00:14:37] A Marine Squad is comprised of three four man fire teams.
[00:14:40] Everything you do is a rifleman revolves around that four man team.
[00:14:43] One man carries a weapon more powerful than those of the others.
[00:14:47] But that's a minor point.
[00:14:48] In the field, you don't do anything without those three other guys.
[00:14:51] You don't shit, sleep, eat or move without the other three
[00:14:55] knowing about it.
[00:14:57] Yeah.
[00:14:57] A Marine Squad with those three fire teams is like a boxer
[00:15:01] with three arms, one arm jabs with bursts of fire
[00:15:04] to keep the opponent off balance while the other arm loops
[00:15:07] around the left hook with a third arm ready to follow up
[00:15:11] wherever there's an opening.
[00:15:12] Four armers wounded the other two can keep fighting.
[00:15:14] Fire to pin down the enemy maneuver to finish them off fire maneuver,
[00:15:18] fire maneuver, fire maneuver.
[00:15:20] And I always have to point this out.
[00:15:23] Extreme ownership book, you know, this is cover move.
[00:15:25] This is what I was talking about the fundamental.
[00:15:26] This is that's the fundamental gun fighting tactic.
[00:15:29] Yes.
[00:15:29] Fire maneuver, I was called a cover move.
[00:15:33] So you get done with SOI.
[00:15:36] And you head out to the third Marine Regiment
[00:15:42] in Hawaii.
[00:15:43] Yeah.
[00:15:44] So how was that when you checking it?
[00:15:46] Oh yeah.
[00:15:47] Well we pulled in and as soon as we pulled the bus in the seniors,
[00:15:52] you know, they're all there.
[00:15:53] I'll just got back from a pedithead to the triad and had a hard deployment.
[00:15:58] They got to shit kicked out of them.
[00:16:01] And so we pulled in and they, you know, there's no empathy there.
[00:16:05] And so we pulled in and there's throwing beer bottles off the deck and they are all hammered
[00:16:09] it's in the middle of the night and you know, so it's like welcome.
[00:16:14] You know, but it was awesome.
[00:16:16] You know, I was honored to be out there.
[00:16:18] And how long it takes for the sniper bill to open up and for you to get that?
[00:16:22] Yeah.
[00:16:23] So it was, I think it was like around February.
[00:16:26] So I got there in October.
[00:16:29] So it's a 10 rock.
[00:16:30] So I got there in October, November.
[00:16:31] So November timeframe.
[00:16:32] I think I got to Hawaii, October, November timeframe.
[00:16:35] And then it opened in, January, February timeframe.
[00:16:38] Is it hard to get a sniper bill?
[00:16:40] Did you get lucky?
[00:16:41] No, no, no, no, no guy get a sniper bill?
[00:16:42] Yeah, so I did.
[00:16:43] So I was actually the youngest sniper in the Marine Corps in 2007.
[00:16:46] So what happened was, is I had ran in Docs.
[00:16:49] So you have to run an in doc to be part of the puttone.
[00:16:51] So you come in and then like you're on probation.
[00:16:54] So you run a huge in doc.
[00:16:55] You come in.
[00:16:56] You go on probation.
[00:16:56] And then you start, you know, usually you were going to deployment and then after
[00:17:00] deployment, you go to school.
[00:17:02] Well, they had a couple of schools.
[00:17:03] So that's open up and school.
[00:17:05] And they basically gave me the option of you can either go home on pre-deployment
[00:17:08] leave because we're heading that rack.
[00:17:10] You can either go home pre-deployment leave or you can go to sniper school.
[00:17:13] How old were you?
[00:17:14] I was 18.
[00:17:15] How many milliseconds did it take you to make that decision?
[00:17:18] I said, I've been with my family for 18 years.
[00:17:20] I'm all good.
[00:17:22] Oh, man.
[00:17:23] That's awesome.
[00:17:24] And then Marine Corps sniper school.
[00:17:28] That's a hard course school.
[00:17:30] Yeah.
[00:17:31] And 50% of Trisha and Rape.
[00:17:32] Yeah.
[00:17:33] We had seals in it with us.
[00:17:34] Yeah.
[00:17:35] And then, you know, our early seal snipers, you know, and I don't know the full, I'll
[00:17:39] bring a sniper on here someday that knows the whole history of the seal sniper program.
[00:17:42] But it's deeply rooted in the Marine Corps sniper program, deeply rooted.
[00:17:46] Just like all of our training is rooted in Marine Corps scouts and raiders.
[00:17:49] There's a lot of crossover in those early days.
[00:17:52] But the Marine Corps sniper program, now everyone's going to think that's a civilian's
[00:17:56] going to think like, oh, you're sitting on a gun shooting.
[00:17:58] But that's not really the hardest part.
[00:18:00] That's like 5% of the job.
[00:18:02] Like it's like the, it's.
[00:18:04] I would say I would say it's less than that.
[00:18:06] You know, I mean, you got, I mean, the communication piece of the mission planning.
[00:18:10] I mean, there's so much, I mean, you literally, you literally are the, you know, the commanders,
[00:18:17] the tying commanders, trigger fair.
[00:18:20] Mm-hmm.
[00:18:21] You guys do have these stalking, right?
[00:18:23] Oh, yeah.
[00:18:24] That's just a gut check.
[00:18:25] And how much did you weigh at this point?
[00:18:27] Probably about 180, 185.
[00:18:29] And it's, um, where do you guys do your stalks?
[00:18:32] Uh, so we're in Hawaii.
[00:18:34] So I went to Hawaii sniper school.
[00:18:35] Okay.
[00:18:36] And we, we do them out in the Koukus out.
[00:18:38] And just dripping sweat.
[00:18:39] Oh.
[00:18:40] Lane in there.
[00:18:41] Lane in there.
[00:18:42] Lane in there.
[00:18:43] Lane in there.
[00:18:44] Lane in there.
[00:18:45] Lane.
[00:18:46] Crawling is terrible.
[00:18:47] Crawling for four hours and going 35 meters.
[00:18:47] Yeah, I mean, just like, you know, you know, you start off, you got 1,000 meter
[00:18:50] lane.
[00:18:51] You know, and they're, they put an observer up and they're using the best glass.
[00:18:54] There is, and they're sitting on this truck.
[00:18:56] And, uh, you have to, uh, you have to move up and, um, you got to get within, uh,
[00:19:03] you know, a certain distance and whatever they tell you and then you got, you know,
[00:19:07] you have to veg up and whatever you take shot, you can do whatever you, you know, just, you
[00:19:11] take a shot with a blank, okay.
[00:19:13] And then they come over and so, uh, they put a walker on you.
[00:19:17] A walker on you and then they try to walk, you know, back and forth.
[00:19:21] They try to find you and saying, see you or anything, then, you know, you lose.
[00:19:25] And then you got to take a second shot while, you know, because that walker gets within
[00:19:28] the vicinity of you.
[00:19:30] And like, like, 10 or 20 meters and then you take a second shot and if they see anything,
[00:19:35] you know, you, you fail to.
[00:19:38] So it's, you know, and what's a walker?
[00:19:41] So basically they bring a guy out who is like, who has like a stick or something and they
[00:19:46] can see him and then they try to say, so they go, okay, I think I see him here.
[00:19:50] So I need you to take left three steps and then back four steps.
[00:19:53] They try to walk him on you.
[00:19:54] That's true.
[00:19:55] That's true.
[00:19:56] When they get to you, do they say sniper at your feet to the guy?
[00:20:00] Huh?
[00:20:01] So yeah, yeah, yeah, you like to say it, sniper at your feet.
[00:20:04] That's the same thing that they say in the seal sniper school.
[00:20:07] That's what they say.
[00:20:08] They get there and they go, okay, sniper at your feet, you know, you're busted, you
[00:20:10] fail.
[00:20:11] Three steps left, two steps up, sniper at your feet.
[00:20:13] Yep.
[00:20:14] They'll say, nope.
[00:20:15] Yeah, I mean.
[00:20:16] So there's, there's the crossover that shows you that that stuff is rooted together.
[00:20:19] And there's a guy by the name of Skinta who is one of your instructors.
[00:20:23] You want your instructors, right?
[00:20:25] And here's a, here's a, going back to the book, Skinta told us about a sniper team in an
[00:20:29] Overwatch and a half constructed building in Ramadi in 2004.
[00:20:33] It was a warm, dull day and after several hours, they dosed off and never awakened.
[00:20:38] Insurgent, sneak up and shot all former reans in the head.
[00:20:41] They left behind a high powered M48A3 and it's excellent, Schmidt and Bender scope.
[00:20:48] Over the course of the next year, they allegedly killed two more Americans before Marines.
[00:20:51] And I protect them out and recover the rifle, Skinta hammered home his message, no every
[00:20:56] aspect of your job and never, never let down your guard.
[00:21:00] So if you slack off or you take things for granted, you die.
[00:21:04] He, um, I had a, look, I was fortunate to have a lot of people around me that influenced
[00:21:09] me.
[00:21:10] I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm nothing special.
[00:21:11] I'm the product of my environment.
[00:21:13] And my, I'm, I'm direct reflection of my leadership.
[00:21:15] I'm so fortunate.
[00:21:16] But I'll tell you right now that, um, what I did that day, um, was because him was, was because
[00:21:23] of the mentality that he instilled in me, of knowing your job, knowing it and obsessing with
[00:21:29] it and knowing every aspect of it and knowing everybody else's job around you.
[00:21:33] And then when you know your job and you know what's right, you, you do that.
[00:21:37] You don't worry about what everybody else says.
[00:21:39] Yeah, that the, the, the non-commissioned officers that again, they're saying guys that
[00:21:44] raised me in the sealed teams have such a huge impact.
[00:21:48] And what, what I also found interesting about this was this story about these snipers,
[00:21:55] when I got to her body in 2006, we heard this exact story.
[00:21:59] And you know, it was another thing that made us more paranoid and made my guys more paranoid
[00:22:03] being out there.
[00:22:04] And we actually had thought, I didn't, this has 2004.
[00:22:06] We thought it happened a little bit later and closer to our deployment.
[00:22:09] But, um, yeah, man, just, uh, just a nightmare.
[00:22:13] Yeah.
[00:22:14] Well, another little commentary from you here back to the book, shooting another human
[00:22:20] being was a math problem.
[00:22:22] You were either right or wrong with no subjective in between, decided by someone else.
[00:22:27] I liked problems that were black and white, life or death before taking a shot at a target
[00:22:32] 1000 meters away.
[00:22:33] You had to calculate the effects of the light air and altitude, wind, humidity, angle of
[00:22:38] fire, cartridge velocity and gravity.
[00:22:40] You had to align the target, the background, the terrain, the weather, the noise and the
[00:22:44] weapon.
[00:22:45] You had to work in concert with others at the same time.
[00:22:47] The target enemy was figuring out how to kill you.
[00:22:50] Combat was a zero sum decision making played for the highest stakes.
[00:22:56] Liver die.
[00:22:59] And the 31 people started the course and 13 people graduated.
[00:23:04] So that, that should tell everyone why that sniper designation is so damn hard to get.
[00:23:10] It is.
[00:23:11] Because it's no joke.
[00:23:12] And there's usually at any point in time, there's not, there's usually around 300 school
[00:23:16] train snipers in the Marine Corps at any time.
[00:23:18] Really?
[00:23:19] Dang.
[00:23:20] Yeah.
[00:23:21] That's, in my task unit, which is about 40 seals, we had 13 snipers.
[00:23:25] Yeah.
[00:23:26] It was so awesome.
[00:23:28] Killers.
[00:23:29] Killers got lucky.
[00:23:30] You know, I got lucky.
[00:23:31] This is the stars aligned.
[00:23:33] Okay.
[00:23:34] So now you're trained up and then in 2007, you deploy to Iraq.
[00:23:38] I did.
[00:23:39] First deployment.
[00:23:40] How pumped were you?
[00:23:41] I was pumped.
[00:23:42] I just got out of school train sniper.
[00:23:44] Man, you know, I'm ready to go.
[00:23:46] I'm ready to go, turn the heat up, right?
[00:23:49] And where we were going was actually a bad spot.
[00:23:51] I mean, we were in karma.
[00:23:52] Nope.
[00:23:53] And it had been bad, but it was like, we were part of that surge.
[00:23:57] And when we got there, we took some contact once.
[00:24:01] And just like the water falls and turned off.
[00:24:04] You know, you go from streets that you're fighting down.
[00:24:07] And then you go to the next thing, you know, you can walk down the no gear.
[00:24:10] And so what were you guys doing just doing patrols?
[00:24:12] We were doing a lot of dwell ups.
[00:24:14] Which is what we could go out.
[00:24:15] Basically what they were the theory on this was we would go out off the five and stay like
[00:24:19] four or five days in a house.
[00:24:21] And you know, you know, we would get hit by indirect fire, you know, some.
[00:24:26] But I mean, but I was only there for like 45 days.
[00:24:30] And then you got, I got what hit in the hand, we're going to go with it.
[00:24:32] I got I got bid on the right hand by a spider.
[00:24:36] And actually suffered severe nerve damage loss to the movement my last three fingers.
[00:24:41] And they cast a vacuum for this.
[00:24:42] Yeah, or met a vacuum back to Germany.
[00:24:44] Yeah, so they sent me to Alessad and tried to fix it there.
[00:24:47] I did, they rushed me and I had two surgeries in Camp Fluja.
[00:24:51] And then they moved to Alessad and they sent me back to Germany.
[00:24:54] And I was there for like 25 days in the hospital and trying to save your hand basically.
[00:24:59] And then they sent me home and then I was having to do occupational therapy to get, you know,
[00:25:03] to get my fingers back.
[00:25:04] I wouldn't move, you know, when were you back in Kentucky?
[00:25:08] No, I was back at Hawaii.
[00:25:10] Okay, back in Hawaii.
[00:25:11] Yeah.
[00:25:12] All right.
[00:25:13] But you did have a little bit of Kentucky with you there in the form of bourbon.
[00:25:16] Yeah, yeah, a lot of it.
[00:25:18] I was drinking.
[00:25:19] I was a drinker.
[00:25:20] Started getting after it a little bit.
[00:25:21] I did.
[00:25:22] I didn't even a little bit too much.
[00:25:23] Yeah, too much.
[00:25:24] You know, it was hard.
[00:25:25] It was hard coming home and knowing my teammates were still over there and knowing that my unit
[00:25:29] was still there.
[00:25:30] And I wasn't part of it, you know.
[00:25:32] And then did you go, did you have to go back or you came back to states like on leave?
[00:25:38] No, no.
[00:25:39] After you were after your hand was hurt.
[00:25:41] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:25:42] So I came back to Kentucky.
[00:25:43] Got it.
[00:25:44] And you hung out there for a while.
[00:25:45] And actually you lost a couple friends at that time.
[00:25:47] Yeah, I did.
[00:25:48] I did.
[00:25:49] Just tragic, tragic situations.
[00:25:51] Yeah, it was terrible.
[00:25:52] You know, I had to get the guy, you know, actually, you know, as names on my chest.
[00:25:56] And he would play football together.
[00:25:58] And he had called me, I was leaving the hospital.
[00:26:02] And I was coming home that weekend.
[00:26:04] And he had called me.
[00:26:06] He had called me right before I was on the way to the hospital and said, hey, man, we're
[00:26:09] going to go to this football game.
[00:26:10] You know, we're going to watch my little brother play, you know, all that.
[00:26:13] And I got to call as soon as I was leaving the hospital.
[00:26:15] And he had, he had a wreck and got killed.
[00:26:17] Yeah, close friend.
[00:26:18] I lost another friend.
[00:26:20] She got killed in December.
[00:26:24] Take.
[00:26:25] Yeah.
[00:26:26] Not exactly what you want to go home on leave for man.
[00:26:28] That's harsh.
[00:26:29] No, no, no, but you know, it's just the way it goes.
[00:26:34] And then, so you spend that time on home.
[00:26:36] You go back, you rejoin your retirement.
[00:26:37] And this is when you find out that they want volunteers to go help out in Afghanistan.
[00:26:41] Yeah, so we had built up.
[00:26:42] I was back probably a year and a half, went to Mount Sniper School.
[00:26:45] And, you know, I became a charge mountain.
[00:26:48] I got married, totally promoted.
[00:26:51] I was, you know, I was a Lance Corporal leading a five-man team with a sergeant on it.
[00:26:55] You know.
[00:26:56] You know, I ended up taking like I had the worst, like I got like the newest guys.
[00:27:01] They gave me the newest guys.
[00:27:03] And we ended up being the general support team.
[00:27:06] So we moved all the way up to the platoon and ended up being one of the best teams of
[00:27:11] the turn.
[00:27:12] And yeah, so we're out at 29 Palm.
[00:27:15] Is doing our final training up to go back to Iraq.
[00:27:17] And this was when nothing was going on in 2009.
[00:27:18] I mean, they weren't letting you leave the wire, right?
[00:27:21] And we had no mission.
[00:27:22] So it kind of sucked, right?
[00:27:23] And they came and said, when you five volunteers go to Afghanistan.
[00:27:27] And I said, what's the mission?
[00:27:29] I said, we don't know, but we just need five bodies.
[00:27:31] I raised my hand, said, yeah, I'm ready to go.
[00:27:34] Again, like I would be milliseconds.
[00:27:36] Yeah, no, no.
[00:27:37] This is zero.
[00:27:38] That decision.
[00:27:39] And so what you were volunteering for you find out later is it is embedded training
[00:27:43] team advisory teams?
[00:27:44] Explain what that's all about.
[00:27:45] So an embedded training team is where they take different ranks in different skill sets,
[00:27:50] Marines, and they put them, or you know, whatever, you know, military unit.
[00:27:53] They put them together, and they embed them with, you know, an Afghan unit.
[00:27:59] So we were embedded with 80 Afghan's, a whole, not a, it was a company.
[00:28:06] And so that's, we just lived, we did everything with them.
[00:28:08] We did everything from, you know, teach them weapons tactics and, you know, shoot and
[00:28:15] shoot and I did the change over for the NATO weapons, right?
[00:28:18] So we took them from the Soviets and the NATO weapons, and that's another key factor
[00:28:22] that we need to bring up to talk about and that gunfight.
[00:28:26] So we were, you know, teaching them on that, quall and them all, and that, you know, everything
[00:28:29] from everything.
[00:28:30] And we did everything with these guys.
[00:28:33] Because then, did you do any kind of work up before you went over?
[00:28:36] Yeah, so with that team, you're actual team that you're going to deploy with?
[00:28:41] Yeah, so we did, we did a work up with them.
[00:28:42] Actually, I just left point, I'm palms.
[00:28:44] I go back and we trained for like a month or two in Okinawa, Japan, with this new team.
[00:28:50] And then we head back to Tween Up Bombs.
[00:28:52] And then we went back, so we went to Bridgeport and then we came down Tween Up Bombs.
[00:28:57] We did all our mountain stuff at Bridgeport, all our mules and all that stuff, you know,
[00:29:01] packing and then we came down and did it, ended in Tween Up Bombs and then we headed over.
[00:29:07] And that was with that four-man team.
[00:29:09] Yeah, with Lieutenant Johnson, Gunny Kinnafick, and Doc Layton, myself.
[00:29:15] I'm going to talk about those guys a little bit here in the book.
[00:29:20] Lieutenant Mike Johnson's former team at Monti, this is where you end up, place called Monti,
[00:29:25] which is 10 miles north of another fob called Joyce, Lieutenant Johnson, Sonny, and Smiling
[00:29:31] with an easy laugh, but completely professional with the highest standards.
[00:29:37] I'd climbed mountains with him in California.
[00:29:39] Of course, and I knew he was a strong physically as he was mentally.
[00:29:43] Staff Sergeant Aaron Canifick was a personnel specialist with eight years expertise in
[00:29:49] administration, so his job was to bring some order to the Afghan personnel procedures and
[00:29:54] prey records.
[00:29:56] Doc Layton, our corpsman, would provide some basic medical care to the Afghans and the
[00:30:00] villages, but his primary job was to be ready in case any advisors or Afghan soldiers were wounded.
[00:30:06] I had a job too.
[00:30:07] Lieutenant Johnson put me in charge of tactics, operations, and weapons training.
[00:30:11] Before each patrol, I approved of the Afghan scheme of maneuver, inspected the radios
[00:30:16] and guns, coordinated fire support, and planned an emergency escape route.
[00:30:20] This was far easier than planning the sniper missions I'd been trained for.
[00:30:25] So you were kind of the most tactically savvy guy in the group being a sniper already
[00:30:32] to point to Iraq.
[00:30:33] Yeah, no, I was, and what prepared me was my training that I'd deal with my team, my
[00:30:39] sniper team, and look, I had, you know, people thought I was crazy.
[00:30:42] They thought I was crazy the way that I was training in my platoon before you were going
[00:30:45] to Iraq.
[00:30:46] We're not going to do anything.
[00:30:47] I'm like, I don't give shit.
[00:30:48] I was still learning tax at, and I was still learning, you know, sat calm, and I was
[00:30:52] still learning HF.
[00:30:53] And I was still learning how to learn a crypto.
[00:30:54] I mean, I wanted to know every aspect of every part of the job.
[00:30:57] I was learning every, I was going over to the BAS and learning, you know, all the medical
[00:31:02] stuff that I could, and I was, you know, I mean, everything I could do, like if I could
[00:31:05] get just a little nugget in knowledge and better myself and every aspect, I was doing it.
[00:31:11] So yeah.
[00:31:12] I was going to go over to this team.
[00:31:16] I mean, you know, I, I was the only tactical guy in there, you know, and yeah, and it was,
[00:31:23] you know, they, they, when it came to the tactics, when it came to making sure that the
[00:31:27] weapons were ready, when it came to making sure that the vehicles were ready, that, that,
[00:31:30] that the, you know, that the, the, the, the jammers were working, that, you know, what,
[00:31:34] if anything that mattered in the patrol, it was on me.
[00:31:37] It's on you.
[00:31:38] Yeah.
[00:31:39] The trucks were loaded.
[00:31:40] The reason that the Marine Corps put the teams together like this is because, well, that
[00:31:45] they're trying to develop the whole Afghan army, every aspect of it, not just the tactical
[00:31:50] side, but they want like the administration so that the people can start getting paid on
[00:31:54] time and the organization.
[00:31:55] So they got the lieutenant in there.
[00:31:56] And at the same time, they want to help the villagers.
[00:31:58] So they put a corpsman in there, so do medical work.
[00:32:01] So that's kind of just an animal, if anyone's thinking, why the hell would you put together
[00:32:04] a team like that?
[00:32:05] It's because the people that are supposed to do the fighting are actually supposed to be
[00:32:07] the Afghans, right?
[00:32:09] And, and, and the team is there to support them, help them train them and get them ready.
[00:32:13] Yeah.
[00:32:14] And that's that's the, that's the theory.
[00:32:15] Right.
[00:32:16] The theory is that you train them.
[00:32:17] You know, you train them.
[00:32:18] You know, you train them and they do the fighting and you're just there to advise them.
[00:32:23] Right.
[00:32:24] But it never works that way.
[00:32:25] It does.
[00:32:26] It didn't work that way in Iraq and, and one of the things that I pointed out many times was,
[00:32:30] you know, what kind of, you, you're, you want to develop a relationship with, with a group,
[00:32:34] right?
[00:32:35] And, and now you say, okay, we're in a train, you, but when it comes time to do something
[00:32:38] dangerous, you guys just go by yourselves.
[00:32:39] That's not, you know, I've been in a relationship.
[00:32:41] You're, you're, in fact, you're going backwards.
[00:32:43] No, it's, yeah, it's the same way.
[00:32:45] So you get there and you start doing, you're just kind of going on patrols.
[00:32:50] You're going on patrols with the, with the Afghan army company.
[00:32:54] It was kind of interesting, you know, because I was kind of the high-strung one on the team,
[00:32:57] you know, like I was like the one that always was, you know, we need to be ready to fight.
[00:33:01] You know, I don't know how many arguments I got into with some of the, the leadership and teams.
[00:33:06] You know, because we, we were 21-man team, but we were broken to four-man elements and spread out,
[00:33:10] you know, in this area.
[00:33:11] And I don't know how many times I got into arguments with people in the team of, you know,
[00:33:14] hey, this is how we need to do it.
[00:33:15] We need to stay up.
[00:33:16] I mean, I was, I was trying to train them.
[00:33:17] I was doing stuff of, you know, trying to train them to do IVs at night with, like, nods.
[00:33:21] And they're like, why the hell are we doing this?
[00:33:23] You know what I mean?
[00:33:24] Like, and a lot of people, you know, look down on it.
[00:33:26] And, and, and I said, I'm going to prepare to fight.
[00:33:29] And they said, you know, we're not, you know, they, so many times the leadership got on me.
[00:33:33] We're not going over there to fight. We're going to advise.
[00:33:36] And that was the mindset of a lot of this, and I'm not going to say my team, but a lot of the team.
[00:33:42] And, uh, and it showed.
[00:33:44] Yeah.
[00:33:45] Yeah, you know, for everyone out there, that's where in uniform right now, man.
[00:33:50] Be ready for the worst case scenario all the time.
[00:33:53] Be ready for it.
[00:33:54] You know what I tell him is.
[00:33:55] I said, you know, Lieutenant Johnson was a, was a, a calm guy, satellite guy.
[00:34:01] Locke, and was a blue-side quorum and gunny canific was an S1 guy.
[00:34:06] You know, and I always wonder, do you think that they ever thought they'd be in one of the deadliest
[00:34:11] battles in Afghanistan?
[00:34:12] Do you think they ever thought they didn't?
[00:34:15] You know, you don't know where you're going to be at, but one day you're going to be tested.
[00:34:18] Yeah.
[00:34:19] You better be ready.
[00:34:22] So you guys are rolling out on these patrols.
[00:34:24] Here's a good kind of aspect of what you see on those patrols.
[00:34:29] When you call the army, the Afghan army soldiers, ask ours.
[00:34:32] Am I saying that?
[00:34:33] I call it ask ours.
[00:34:34] Ask ours.
[00:34:35] All right.
[00:34:36] Here we go back to the book.
[00:34:37] When we walked into some hamlets, you could feel something was wrong.
[00:34:39] When kids through rocks at you, you knew what the parents were telling them.
[00:34:45] Sometimes the ask ours grabbed the kids soccer balls and sliced them apart.
[00:34:50] This didn't win any hearts and minds, but it did stop the rocks.
[00:34:54] Whenever the elders hurried through the ceremonial tea, though, I'd watch the ask ours.
[00:34:59] When any soldier senses danger, he crouches down a few inches to make himself less of
[00:35:04] a target.
[00:35:05] When the ask ours did that, I went on full alert.
[00:35:09] Houghes, I'm saying that right.
[00:35:11] So his name's Faazel, so I had named him Houghes in that to protect him.
[00:35:15] He's how he's here in America now.
[00:35:16] Okay, we're good.
[00:35:17] Houghes was our lead interpreter and we quickly learned our best warning system.
[00:35:22] At 37-year-old Sergeant Major retired from the Afghan Army, Houghes had served in Koonar for
[00:35:29] three years with advisor teams.
[00:35:31] The Afghan soldiers distrusted him because he refused to support their never-ending schemes
[00:35:35] to skim off the Americans.
[00:35:37] So he's your most trusted advisor, interesting that you point out how when soldier sense
[00:35:44] danger.
[00:35:45] I was telling you about J.P. my lead sniper and one of my two Patoons and two bruiser.
[00:35:50] When he came on the podcast, I described him walking through the streets and I told you
[00:35:55] man, I didn't think J.P. was going to live because J.P. was too brave for his own damn good.
[00:36:01] But when I'd be watching, I'd be like holding security and watching Patrogo and you'd
[00:36:06] see, you know, I'd see you guys moving with that little crouch because everyone's expecting
[00:36:09] that the shooting's going to start.
[00:36:11] And I'd see J.P. man walking with his head up and his chest out like ready to get something.
[00:36:15] Man, his nice feet 23 years old, the knock that you can die.
[00:36:21] So that's my brother, J.P.
[00:36:23] That's awesome.
[00:36:24] And the other thing that, you know, when you're in these foreign countries when you're
[00:36:28] in Iraq, you're in Afghanistan, the locals, we can't tell the difference between it.
[00:36:33] We really can't tell the difference between a good-body bag.
[00:36:34] I now you learned some sense of it when you go, okay, that guy looks shady.
[00:36:38] And you're probably pretty accurate, but a guy like half-hez, you're going to know.
[00:36:43] No, you can't.
[00:36:44] Definitely.
[00:36:45] He was the unofficial fifth member of our team inside of Hamlet.
[00:36:49] If he shook his head at us, we knew it was time to forget the tea and get out.
[00:36:54] So how much good, how much, how often would you go into Hamlet and the people cool and
[00:36:59] all good and drink and tea?
[00:37:01] And, you know, most time, I mean, most time, look, I mean, look, I, you know, the people
[00:37:06] there want it to be better.
[00:37:07] I mean, they live in the shit.
[00:37:09] They live, they want it to be better.
[00:37:11] You know, they're just caught in a bad situation.
[00:37:12] It's not, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a, it's
[00:37:14] a simple equation.
[00:37:15] You know, there's nothing simple about the life that they have to live.
[00:37:21] You made some friends going back to the book and the hills along the Pakistani border, no
[00:37:25] Afghan military or civilian had much of anything.
[00:37:28] I think practically every American soldier, Marine, tried to help in some way.
[00:37:31] We purchased candy and trinkets and the markets to give to the kids.
[00:37:35] I soon had two little buddies boys about 10 or 11.
[00:37:38] They'd hang around the main gate.
[00:37:41] My dad made that trying to say, when they saw me at first I'd buy him coax and then started
[00:37:47] sharing my care packages from home, soap, candy, peanuts, gun, gum.
[00:37:51] Maybe a decade from now.
[00:37:53] Some kids remember that some Americans were kind of them, even when their older brothers
[00:37:56] were shooting at them.
[00:37:58] Maybe not.
[00:37:59] You don't help out because you expect something in return.
[00:38:03] So you're, you're a human being man trying to take care of some kids out there.
[00:38:08] I think this is getting into your first sort of legit, we'll call it combat.
[00:38:20] And you're taking some small arms fire.
[00:38:22] I'm going to the book here.
[00:38:24] Staff Sergeant Canific was standing outside a bunker about 100 feet from me.
[00:38:28] My or were under attack yield.
[00:38:30] Technically yes, but the shepherd, there's some shepherd out there, but the shepherd
[00:38:33] was shooting without poking his head up to aim.
[00:38:35] He had one chance in a thousand of hitting us.
[00:38:37] A second harmless, harmless burst followed the bullets cracking more than 10 feet above
[00:38:42] our head.
[00:38:43] Call for already now.
[00:38:44] Staff Sergeant Canific yelled holding the radio out, head, head set out towards me.
[00:38:49] Oh nice.
[00:38:50] Staff Sergeant soon to be gunnery sergeant Canific needed the lowly corporal's help.
[00:38:55] I trotted toward him, stopped.
[00:38:57] Assumed parade rest postures armed lock behind my back, chest pushed forward and the
[00:39:02] wide open and paced into respectful expression on my face.
[00:39:06] What does the staff sergeant wish the corporal to do?
[00:39:10] Another burst from the AK.
[00:39:11] This is no time to be a smart ass, Meyer.
[00:39:13] A few more rounds still wait too high.
[00:39:15] I'm locked at parade rest.
[00:39:16] I staff sergeant.
[00:39:18] He balanced the headset considering whether to throw that me.
[00:39:21] Meyer hurry up.
[00:39:22] He had started calling in the artillery mission and when I got to him, he was asking me,
[00:39:27] what do I say now?
[00:39:28] Left 100 dropped 200, I said he repeated it on the radio.
[00:39:31] What now?
[00:39:32] He asked, fire for effect.
[00:39:33] I said, should be dead on.
[00:39:35] Okay, fire for effect, he repeated over the radio.
[00:39:40] That's it.
[00:39:41] I'm gonna hit the guy, but it's funny that you even in that situation, you were talking
[00:39:47] about being a kind of a wise ass when you're a kid.
[00:39:49] You're still a wise ass.
[00:39:51] Yeah, you know, the thing about Kenneth Dick was, me and him were buttonheads.
[00:39:54] Real hard.
[00:39:55] At that time, we were buttonheads.
[00:39:57] You know how some people would just take over, like he took over and tried to make
[00:40:01] up for his lack of nothing against him.
[00:40:04] He wasn't a combat, I mean, it wasn't his job, but what he tried to make up for in the
[00:40:08] lack of his combat knowledge was his authority, right?
[00:40:11] And so, he had kind of pissed me off pretty bad about asking me to do, you know, you
[00:40:17] can you stand a parade dress?
[00:40:18] He was all big on it, right?
[00:40:20] And it's like we're on a cop.
[00:40:22] You know, you still need to, you know, customs and courtesy, right?
[00:40:26] And so I got used that situation to make a point.
[00:40:29] He just kind of pushed me over the edge.
[00:40:31] But after that, we were, yeah, that's a kind of a kind of a kind of a kind of
[00:40:34] brody guy's up, right?
[00:40:35] Yeah, brody guy's up, right?
[00:40:36] Yeah, brody guy's up, right?
[00:40:37] Yeah, that's all, that's great.
[00:40:38] You had some good afghan soldiers in there.
[00:40:39] You were talking to me about them, early one guy, the by the name of Dodd, Oli.
[00:40:43] Here you go.
[00:40:44] He was fun to talk to, open, friendly and fearless.
[00:40:48] We'd sit around talking and asking questions of each other, like kids in middle school,
[00:40:51] learning as much as we could about each other.
[00:40:53] He proudly cleaned his saw five times a day and absorbed every tip by giving them about
[00:40:56] shooting.
[00:40:57] He was the most disciplined ass car on base.
[00:40:59] That's why we gave him the saw on the first place.
[00:41:01] So you had good relationship with that.
[00:41:03] Yeah, I mean, I had a good relationship with all my afgans.
[00:41:06] I mean, I, I, I, I, I, at least two meals a day with them.
[00:41:10] Um, you know, usually I didn't eat breakfast with them.
[00:41:13] I would eat it over at the, uh, over at the, uh, you know, the childhood.
[00:41:17] But I used, you know, that was my, that was my policy.
[00:41:20] I mean, every night, I dinner with them every single night.
[00:41:23] I would eat dinner with my afgans soldiers, because I was no better than them.
[00:41:26] Yeah, man.
[00:41:27] You know, sometimes I hear, I hear people, you know, people that don't understand at
[00:41:33] all what was going on in Iraq or Afghanistan, they'll, you know, we were, you know,
[00:41:38] America was occupiers and oxygen.
[00:41:40] And it's like I always remind them like we were fighting alongside the Iraqi soldiers,
[00:41:44] fighting alongside the afgans soldiers.
[00:41:46] Yeah.
[00:41:47] I mean, spilling blood.
[00:41:48] Yeah, I mean, we weren't, I mean, just because it was Iraq and Afghanistan,
[00:41:51] war, we weren't fighting Iraq and Afghanistan.
[00:41:53] We were fighting with them.
[00:41:55] We weren't fighting against Iraq or Afghanistan.
[00:41:57] Yeah.
[00:41:58] We were fighting next to them.
[00:41:59] You know, we were helping them against the same enemy.
[00:42:02] Yeah.
[00:42:03] You know, so many people miss that point, man.
[00:42:05] And it's a, it's an important point to be missing.
[00:42:08] It's a, it's a, it's a big, it's a big fact.
[00:42:11] Yeah.
[00:42:12] Man, I hear that and it just turns my stomach, man.
[00:42:16] Um, now I kind of joked about that first situation being your first combat.
[00:42:20] And now you had legit your first kind of trial by fire.
[00:42:23] Yeah.
[00:42:24] Um, you're at combat.
[00:42:26] You're at the outpost at cop, Monti, and you're under attack.
[00:42:30] You actually got some wounded, some ass cars are wounded.
[00:42:33] And you're, you're going back to the book where's that, where's that sergeant can't
[00:42:36] affect I yelled.
[00:42:37] Doc Laitton pointed toward the northeast tower.
[00:42:39] Get over there and stay with him.
[00:42:40] I yelled suicide bombers sometimes rush the wire trying to take and take an infidel with
[00:42:45] them as they evaporated in a red flash without hesitating.
[00:42:48] Doc Laitton ran down the stairs across the open space and into the tower with staff sergeant
[00:42:52] to kind of fake two or three seconds later, a rocket slammed into their bunker exploding
[00:42:57] into pieces and a half grand worker huddled there behind beside the sandbags smoke rolled
[00:43:02] out of the tower.
[00:43:04] They're gone.
[00:43:05] I yelled the Johnson not believing what I just seen.
[00:43:07] I resumed firing.
[00:43:08] It's all you can do.
[00:43:09] The best first aid at that point was to return fire.
[00:43:14] Johnson worked the radio.
[00:43:16] Fox 3-1, Fox 3-1, this is Fox 3.
[00:43:18] Staff Sergeant Kenneth Fick, Doc Laitton, come on, answer up.
[00:43:21] We kept firing, but it seemed unwirledly now.
[00:43:24] We were on automatic.
[00:43:25] The Johnson got on the radio again.
[00:43:27] 3-1, Fox 3-1, this is Fox 3.
[00:43:30] Staff Sergeant Kenneth Fick, Doc Laitton, come on, answer up.
[00:43:34] Then finally.
[00:43:35] Yeah, yeah, this is 3-1.
[00:43:37] We're good.
[00:43:39] Ten minutes later, our attack helicopters began strafing runs low rumbling birds like
[00:43:43] a giant burping.
[00:43:45] Incredible firepower, those lovely birds, enemy fire ceased attack over.
[00:43:50] Johnson and I ran over to the bunker and staff sergeant, Kenneth Fick, Doc Laitton, stumbled
[00:43:54] out.
[00:43:55] Four of a set on the bloody sandbags and the growing dust talking about it.
[00:43:59] Their eyes were slightly glazed and wide wide open.
[00:44:03] Lieutenant Johnson, Staff Sergeant Kenneth Fick, Doc Laitton, weren't infantry.
[00:44:08] They had considered that by coming to Afghanistan they might die, but it hadn't kicked in
[00:44:12] until now.
[00:44:14] Now they had heard the screams and seen the blood.
[00:44:17] Everybody stood covered understood now that if we went home together it might not be alive.
[00:44:23] The askers were cleaning up the bloody mess, not six feet from us, taking away the rip-up
[00:44:27] body of their friend.
[00:44:30] We mumbled some stuff.
[00:44:31] All of us were too embarrassed to talk about our feelings, but we knew what we were all
[00:44:34] thinking.
[00:44:35] This shit was for real and there were only four of us.
[00:44:40] We'll be there for each other.
[00:44:41] Doc Laitton said, the surfer dude surprised me.
[00:44:45] He had said the one thing that made any sense.
[00:44:48] Yeah.
[00:44:52] That was the Sunday before.
[00:45:00] So Gange Ghal was on a Tuesday.
[00:45:02] That was September 6th of 2009.
[00:45:05] There was a huge rocket attack.
[00:45:08] I mean they were dialed in.
[00:45:09] It was terrible.
[00:45:10] I can remember it as if I was there.
[00:45:12] It was terrible.
[00:45:13] How many rockets did it fire?
[00:45:15] I think we had nine, the 107th.
[00:45:18] It hit dead on, just nine that hit inside of not the whole base, but just my afghan base.
[00:45:26] That's probably what we're at right now is probably bigger than that.
[00:45:31] It was terrible.
[00:45:33] That was a wake-up call.
[00:45:35] It was for all of us.
[00:45:38] It was for all of us.
[00:45:39] It was for them.
[00:45:40] I'll never forget.
[00:45:44] I'll never forget.
[00:45:45] I mean we finally said, I talked about what do we do, if we lose one of it, what do we
[00:45:49] want?
[00:45:51] Gosh, it was so real.
[00:45:54] I had met a back-to-out guy, the wounded soldier that day.
[00:46:03] He was put me in for a bronze star.
[00:46:07] I'm there for Gidey.
[00:46:08] We were walking through in the little hooch and he said, where we lived at.
[00:46:14] He was just kind of joking a little bit later on that day.
[00:46:16] He was like, hey, the way shit's going for you and it's unlucky as you are, he goes, you'll
[00:46:22] probably be in for a metal honor before this deployment's over with.
[00:46:26] It's just crazy.
[00:46:30] That's two days before you guys had down to Gondra Gaul.
[00:46:35] We'd actually got to call that night that we were supposed to go to Gondra Gaul in the
[00:46:39] 7th.
[00:46:40] And they ended up pushing it right to the 8th.
[00:46:44] So we left the next day.
[00:46:46] We talked about a little bit here.
[00:46:47] Gondra Gaul laid two miles north of Joyce and we drove right by the mouth of the valley.
[00:46:52] Gondra Gaul sounded like the name of an Irish town full of smiling faces and friendly pubs.
[00:46:58] I could see a few of the larger compounds far back on a hillside nestled against steep
[00:47:03] ridge lines.
[00:47:05] Bad place, half as muddered, bad people.
[00:47:08] So you're getting right away getting told.
[00:47:10] No, I mean, we were told instantly.
[00:47:12] I mean, we were told like, I mean, we, I mean, yeah, there was no doubt.
[00:47:17] Now one thing that I think made you feel more comfortable, a little bit more comfortable
[00:47:21] you talk about in the book.
[00:47:23] Historically, the Taliban had not sprung ambushes from inside villages.
[00:47:26] So that wasn't discussed at the briefing.
[00:47:28] Plus we were going in with 90 Afghans and 15 advisors with a bulltune from 1-3-2 deployed
[00:47:34] behind us in a quick reaction force.
[00:47:37] This shows us this show belongs to the to our Afghan counterparts.
[00:47:42] Fabio, I'm saying that right.
[00:47:43] Fabio.
[00:47:44] Fabio said, we advisor will stand off to the side and let them talk with the elders.
[00:47:50] We're not in the lead.
[00:47:51] We're assisting.
[00:47:52] That made no sense, I thought, considering who is doing the briefing and who is hearing
[00:47:56] it, we were in the tactical lead even if we claimed otherwise.
[00:48:01] That's a political thing.
[00:48:03] Yeah, I mean, I, I think it's an ignorant thing.
[00:48:07] Well, I think it's an ignorant thing too, but the reason it happened.
[00:48:10] No, no, of course.
[00:48:11] I mean, technically we fail under.
[00:48:13] So I mean, technically the way that this works is crazy is this sounds.
[00:48:17] I was working for like my commander was Afghan commander.
[00:48:20] Whatever the Afghan commander told me was what I was supposed to do.
[00:48:23] Right.
[00:48:24] I mean, I'm saying that's a political thing for us to say politically, look, the Afghans
[00:48:28] are running this operation.
[00:48:29] Yes, yes, yes.
[00:48:30] I mean, that, you know, but that, if you remember what I said a little bit earlier about,
[00:48:34] you know, hey, we're not going to do the fighting.
[00:48:36] I mean, that, that's the mentality of the leadership of team.
[00:48:40] Yeah.
[00:48:44] Yeah, not good.
[00:48:46] Then as you just said here, that that made no sense.
[00:48:49] I thought, and you were a corporal 20, how old were you?
[00:48:52] I was 21, 21 years old, and you're looking at this going to hey man, this doesn't make any sense.
[00:48:57] We're the ones that are sitting here briefing it.
[00:48:59] We know where the ones that know how to call for fire.
[00:49:01] Yeah, I mean, and I brought, I mean, first off, first off, the Afghans can't even
[00:49:05] talk to anybody that calls for fire or the helicopters.
[00:49:07] I mean, they don't even have any comms with them.
[00:49:10] They're on HF.
[00:49:11] Yeah, you know what I mean?
[00:49:13] Yeah.
[00:49:14] I mean, I, so the three main factors that I brought up in the brief, and I brought up
[00:49:21] it, look, we're only, everybody's going in.
[00:49:23] We have over 12 different moving elements between the OPs and different teams inside this
[00:49:27] patrol, all in one frequency.
[00:49:31] I brought that up.
[00:49:32] I brought up the fact that we didn't have direct air supporters on 15-minute strippler,
[00:49:37] and that's in Jalalabad.
[00:49:39] So they were taking it as if the birds would be there within 15 minutes.
[00:49:43] I said, that's not what 15-minute strippler means.
[00:49:46] That means all the ground in 15 minutes, and then they still got 90, probably 60 minutes
[00:49:50] to get from Jalalabad to us.
[00:49:53] And so that was the other factor in the other thing that I brought up was why would we
[00:49:58] put our snipers, 2,000 meters away from the village outside of their effective range
[00:50:04] in the weapons.
[00:50:05] There you go.
[00:50:06] But here's what I was told.
[00:50:07] I'm in E4 in the United States Marine Corps.
[00:50:09] What do I know about mission planning?
[00:50:12] And that's why I was taking out the team.
[00:50:14] Chuck.
[00:50:16] So when you say, when you talk about getting taken out of the team, explain how that went
[00:50:22] down a little bit.
[00:50:23] So you got your former team?
[00:50:24] Team Monty.
[00:50:25] Yeah, team Monty.
[00:50:26] What they did was, they had, they put the teams, you would go with your Afghans in
[00:50:33] here to do their part.
[00:50:36] So our team was supposed to go to the back of the village, cover the backside of it, and
[00:50:41] then we were going to search a couple of house up there for a machine gun.
[00:50:44] And while the meeting went on, and they took me out of the team because I brought up those
[00:50:49] concerns.
[00:50:51] And they kind of took it as me going against the orders, questioning their authority, and
[00:50:57] they replaced me with gunny Johnson.
[00:51:02] So I'm just, I just have to say this right now.
[00:51:04] So I talk about this all the time.
[00:51:06] If you're in a leadership position, you don't want Yesmen.
[00:51:09] You don't want Yesmen.
[00:51:10] You want the corporal that says, hey boss, I don't understand why you do that right
[00:51:14] now.
[00:51:15] And if you're answer to your subordinate is because I said so, or it's you're an E4,
[00:51:20] be quiet, or you're an E5, be quiet.
[00:51:22] If that's what your answer is, that means you don't have a real answer.
[00:51:25] That means that what you're doing is probably wrong.
[00:51:29] So surround yourself, the best people you can have in your team are the people that are
[00:51:33] going to question what what it is that you're your plan is.
[00:51:36] And if they question it and you can't don't have a good logical answer and your plan
[00:51:39] doesn't stand on its own two feet, well think about it and reassess it and take some advice
[00:51:45] from down the chain of command on how what we could do to change this plan up.
[00:51:49] I mean it was, look, they're complacent.
[00:51:55] That's the type of mentality you have when you don't expect to go get your ass handed to you.
[00:52:00] That's why you need to expect to get your ass handed to you every day and train like
[00:52:03] it.
[00:52:04] Yeah.
[00:52:05] You know, when I was running training we trained for worst case scenario all the time.
[00:52:10] It was like worst.
[00:52:11] You know what?
[00:52:12] And it was insane.
[00:52:14] Like we had great financing for our training so the training was awesome.
[00:52:20] We had mayhem going on.
[00:52:21] We had paint balls and we had laser, this multi-million dollar laser tag system.
[00:52:25] We had role players and it was awesome and I wanted mayhem and we would put guys down
[00:52:30] and you'd have to carry them out and it would be like, we'd be mayhem.
[00:52:35] And sometimes guys go, this is kind of unrealistic and what are the chances of this really
[00:52:38] happening?
[00:52:39] Yeah.
[00:52:40] And I'd be like, look, if this doesn't happen, great.
[00:52:42] You don't ever have to worry about it happen for real.
[00:52:44] But if it happens, you'll be ready for it.
[00:52:47] At least as ready as you can be.
[00:52:48] Yeah.
[00:52:48] So you get pulled off the team.
[00:52:54] I got pulled off the team and my job was going to be to stay with the vehicle.
[00:52:57] So like basically we were going to drive vehicles and park the vehicle.
[00:53:00] Now it was the other thing I said.
[00:53:02] I said, this is dumb.
[00:53:03] Why would we leave our up armor guns a couple miles away?
[00:53:10] And they said, you ready for the response here?
[00:53:13] You ready?
[00:53:14] Well, Dakota.
[00:53:16] Because if we want to go into the village, clandestine, you have a 90-man patrol.
[00:53:21] Yeah.
[00:53:22] Yeah.
[00:53:23] That's not going to happen.
[00:53:25] Just a paint depiction for everyone.
[00:53:26] Basically, there's a deep ravine walls on either side at the top of the ravine.
[00:53:32] It kind of splits into two other ravines and there's kind of villages on both sides of that.
[00:53:37] Yeah.
[00:53:38] It splits into two, like it's kind of like two valleys inside of a big valley.
[00:53:41] Right.
[00:53:42] On the right hand side was another bad valley, but we were going in the left hand side when
[00:53:45] that was Gangegar.
[00:53:47] And I mean, this this terrain was built to fight.
[00:53:52] It was built to fight.
[00:53:53] I mean, they had trenches in it.
[00:53:55] The trenches in it that they used to fight out of.
[00:53:59] It's not.
[00:54:01] And obviously you're walking up the valley, which means automatically you're in the
[00:54:05] low ground, which is not where we want to be ever.
[00:54:08] All right.
[00:54:11] Now you, the one of the guys you were going to be working with in the hummers was staff
[00:54:18] Sergeant Juan Rodriguez Chavez.
[00:54:21] Here we go back to the book.
[00:54:22] I saw it out.
[00:54:23] Staff Sergeant Juan Rodriguez Chavez, our motor transport chief.
[00:54:28] I know them for five months.
[00:54:30] He didn't stand on the rank and we traded stories about growing up on farms.
[00:54:34] He had grown up on a ranch in Mexico, having a similar approach to life.
[00:54:37] Rod Nye had been come friends.
[00:54:39] He was in the eighth grade when his family moved to Texas where he learned English played football
[00:54:43] earned good grades and roped cows and rodeos.
[00:54:47] Our team called him hot rod.
[00:54:48] He laughed a lot, bragged about how smart his two daughters were and kept all our vehicles
[00:54:52] in top condition.
[00:54:54] Rod, this mission is fucked up.
[00:54:56] If the shit at the fan I said, we're going in.
[00:54:58] My team's walking point and they'll get cut off.
[00:55:02] We have to go in and get them out.
[00:55:06] And he looked back at you.
[00:55:08] Devil dog, Rod said, say the word and I'll do the driving.
[00:55:14] That's legit.
[00:55:17] He's the man.
[00:55:18] He's the man.
[00:55:20] And continuing on, you say having some sort of contingency plan now I walked back to the
[00:55:25] advisor headquarters and briefed Lieutenant Johnson.
[00:55:27] By the way, Lieutenant Johnson didn't want you out of the team either, right?
[00:55:30] He wanted you stay with.
[00:55:31] He can't figure a pist.
[00:55:32] He knew that you should be with the team.
[00:55:36] The things you hear me, I said, I'm coming in.
[00:55:38] Rod will drive.
[00:55:39] Radio your coordinates and get down to the wash.
[00:55:41] Fucking climb in and we'll haul us back to the main body because they were going to be
[00:55:44] exposed on the far end of that wall.
[00:55:46] Yeah, so everything that I did was planned out the night before.
[00:55:51] Chuck.
[00:55:53] Everything that I did was planned out the night before.
[00:55:56] And it was all in our team.
[00:55:57] I mean, I told him.
[00:55:58] I told him, I said, you know, you say the word and I'll head in there.
[00:56:01] I don't care.
[00:56:02] I'm coming to get you.
[00:56:04] And I mean, that we had this all planned out.
[00:56:06] Like all they had to do was get to the road and I would be there.
[00:56:13] Continuing on back to the book in the talk, a report about Gondrigal had come in via Brigade
[00:56:19] Internet, a special forces team reported that 32 fighters were moving from Pakistan to reinforce
[00:56:24] Gondrigal.
[00:56:26] Half an hour later, the video feed from an unmanned aerial vehicle showed a man with
[00:56:29] a mortar tube on his back and ring a known safe house to kilometers north of Gondrigal village
[00:56:34] 10 minutes later, four more men entered the same house.
[00:56:37] So you're watching this.
[00:56:38] What?
[00:56:39] So here's the crazy part.
[00:56:41] Nobody told us.
[00:56:42] Oh, so you didn't even get that report.
[00:56:44] Nobody told us.
[00:56:46] Chuck, um, and I got to point out to everyone.
[00:56:51] I'm obviously skipping giant chunks of this book.
[00:56:54] And there's a awesome amount of detail that that Dakota goes into and how this is going
[00:57:01] down.
[00:57:02] And I'm kind of hitting the wave tops to get to get the story there.
[00:57:05] But, uh, okay, you don't even get that intel, but doesn't matter because the next
[00:57:11] day, I guess, where you're going into the valley.
[00:57:14] Um, you got a guy with you named Swenson.
[00:57:17] He's in charge of some border police.
[00:57:18] I'm Afghan border police.
[00:57:19] Is that right?
[00:57:20] Yeah.
[00:57:21] Swenson's border police turned to half as when the lights went out.
[00:57:27] Dushman, he said.
[00:57:28] And I said that right.
[00:57:29] Dushman, Dushman, Dushman, which is another term for enemy for enemy.
[00:57:33] Dushman, they said, we must turn back.
[00:57:36] So they're already freaking out.
[00:57:37] Yeah.
[00:57:38] So they, I think, uh, I think that they were, they were, uh, like, some of the police had
[00:57:43] already knew they had leaked.
[00:57:44] Oh, tipped it off.
[00:57:45] Yeah.
[00:57:46] They had had information one way to get leaked when we were coming in.
[00:57:48] They had leaked a plan.
[00:57:49] Yeah.
[00:57:50] So I think that that's why they were trying to bail out in my opinion because they knew
[00:57:54] it was already there.
[00:57:55] Bit, yeah.
[00:57:56] It's got it.
[00:57:58] And just before five in the morning, Rod and I heard gravel crunching on the
[00:58:02] treason.
[00:58:03] Now you're actually in position.
[00:58:04] You dropped off the guys and now the Afghan team with some of the advisors, including
[00:58:10] team months, you're heading up the valley and you're waiting at the bottom end of the
[00:58:14] valley.
[00:58:15] Yeah.
[00:58:16] I'm sitting back to, you know, back the trucks and they're going, you know, they're
[00:58:17] going into the valley.
[00:58:18] And, um, yeah, at this point now everybody's leaving the valley.
[00:58:21] Yeah, this, this part, just before five in the morning, Rod and I heard gravel crunching
[00:58:26] on the trail, men, women, children, sheep and goats suddenly hurried by our trucks heading
[00:58:31] out of the valley.
[00:58:34] Predon always brought the first sing song called a prayer followed by per people scaring
[00:58:38] about.
[00:58:39] And this is just, you knew right then, right?
[00:58:42] Oh, 100% on it's on.
[00:58:43] No, 110% on it.
[00:58:45] Yeah.
[00:58:46] So this, you know, just for anyone that's listening, that our isn't putting two and two
[00:58:50] together here, there's a village with a bunch of civilians in it and the civilians all
[00:58:55] leave and they take their animals with them.
[00:58:57] They take all their, they take everything that's worth anything with them.
[00:59:01] So they know that there's, it's on.
[00:59:06] Going back to the book as Lieutenant Johnson approached the first row of houses, he radio
[00:59:10] back to Gaza that he and Lieutenant Rulau were heading toward the house of an e-mom.
[00:59:16] One of the village elders.
[00:59:18] Seconds later in RPG streaked in from the east followed by a burst of PKM, a Russian
[00:59:22] made machine gun that shoots a hefty 7.62 millimeter cartridge.
[00:59:25] It started tearing up the ground in the Adobe walls as the men took cover among the
[00:59:29] terrorist walls, more PKM fire came in from the northeast, joined by AKs at a closer range.
[00:59:35] Enemy fighters were crouched inside the houses and below the windows of the school house
[00:59:39] on the southern ridge.
[00:59:40] They were hiding in the alleyways and dug in behind the stone terrorist walls to the
[00:59:44] east.
[00:59:45] It does in fixed positions and we're shooting downhill with the sun behind them.
[00:59:51] Do you have any note there doing?
[00:59:54] Yeah, this is again.
[00:59:59] Do anybody with any kind of military knowledge whatsoever when you read that paragraph
[01:00:04] or that, that does two paragraphs right there.
[01:00:06] You see that you are in a horrible, horrible scenario, multiple enemy machine gun positions
[01:00:13] in elevated coordinated attack.
[01:00:18] Yeah, horrible.
[01:00:22] And here's your thoughts back to the book.
[01:00:24] I waited for the firing to die down, but it didn't.
[01:00:29] The chaos of the RPG explosions, PKM machine guns, AKs and M16s increased.
[01:00:34] I heard the report of a recoilless rifle, basically a hundred pound shoulder or tripod
[01:00:38] mounted cannon, a sure sign of a planned ambush as the douchemen don't lug that over
[01:00:43] the hills for an exercise.
[01:00:45] Then I heard the crump crump of their mortar shells.
[01:00:48] There was a wide babble of voices on the command radio, advisors yelling at each other
[01:00:52] to clear the net.
[01:00:53] No one was taking charge.
[01:00:54] There was no central command.
[01:00:56] I was pacing around frustrated, being out of the fight and not being able to help.
[01:01:03] So you'd seen enough of little fire fights that would be able to burst the fire and then
[01:01:08] people are going to run the fire.
[01:01:09] Yeah, I mean, like they're going to just, they blow their load like right in the beginning
[01:01:12] and then they don't have enough.
[01:01:14] They're not able to like us, resupply.
[01:01:16] They don't sustain anything.
[01:01:20] This was endless.
[01:01:22] And then you mentioned this earlier and again, just to kind of point out to people so they
[01:01:25] understand what you were talking about.
[01:01:28] You said, hey, there's going to be 14 different maneuver elements.
[01:01:31] 12 different maneuver elements and they're all on the same net.
[01:01:35] And what that means is they're all in the same radio frequency.
[01:01:39] So picture this, you're trying to have a conversation on the phone, but so are 12 other
[01:01:44] people, 11 other people, all trying to have a conversation on the phone at the same time.
[01:01:48] Yeah, with their nerves, with their nerves, while their rock chaos is happening.
[01:01:53] Yeah.
[01:01:54] And so this is what you end up doing is actually on a phone, you have a better chance
[01:02:00] because a phone will kind of let some of that traffic through.
[01:02:03] But when you start stepping on each other on the radio, they just cut each other off
[01:02:07] and you can't hear anything.
[01:02:09] That's exactly what happened.
[01:02:11] And the other piece of it was it's not just that.
[01:02:13] It was all that one frequency, everything had to be relayed through those snipers to get
[01:02:18] back in the elevated high ground.
[01:02:20] To get back to, could you, did you have direct comms at the guys in the ground?
[01:02:23] Yes, I did, but I'm saying like to get to the command.
[01:02:25] So if you talk, like, you know, and the big thing I brought up was was, you know, what
[01:02:29] happens if you're calling it a MetaVac and you're calling in a call for fire?
[01:02:33] Yeah, you're trying to, that's like trying to call the fire to
[01:02:37] the apartment and the ambulance and you're trying to call them at the same time.
[01:02:41] Like you've got to, you got to separate them.
[01:02:42] Actually, that's not a good example.
[01:02:43] It's trying to call the ambulance and an active shooter and trying to maneuver all that stuff
[01:02:47] happened at the same time.
[01:02:48] Yeah.
[01:02:49] Back to the book.
[01:02:52] Soon, both ridge lines were sparkling with fire as the ass cars and dooshmen engaged
[01:02:58] each other with rocket-papeled grenades, smoke and shrapnel filled the air.
[01:03:06] Winston, he's on, this is Highlander, sexy yelled over the den.
[01:03:10] Four to four line of troops pinned down at X-ray Delta and heavy enemy fire, request immediate
[01:03:17] suppression.
[01:03:18] Fire, Kilo, Echo will adjust.
[01:03:20] So he's trying to call fire.
[01:03:22] You're back and you and Rod says, what do you think Rod said?
[01:03:28] If the dushmen caught around the rear, I said and closed the back door, they'll catch
[01:03:32] our people in a fire sack.
[01:03:34] This is deep shit.
[01:03:35] They got to get out of there.
[01:03:37] The way to break up an ambush is to hammer it with heavy fire.
[01:03:40] The Humvee gave us armor, mobility, and a heavy gun.
[01:03:43] We would roll in and bring team-monti back to the location of the command group.
[01:03:48] I grabbed the radio and called Fox 3, Lieutenant Fabio.
[01:03:51] No reply.
[01:03:52] I tried Fox 6, Williams, and then Fox 9, first sergeant Garza.
[01:03:57] No one replied.
[01:03:58] I was calling for permission to enter the valley asking for it from anyone who would answer.
[01:04:03] Finally, Fox 7, Valdez, up on the northern ridge, answered on the net.
[01:04:07] Fox 3-3, you request to enter the valley, are denied.
[01:04:12] Fox 9 says, you are to stay at your present location.
[01:04:18] And again, I'm throwing out a bunch of different names here.
[01:04:20] These are all the different leaders that are out there on these different 12 elements.
[01:04:23] And when you read the book for yourself, you can kind of catch and understand exactly what
[01:04:27] was happening there.
[01:04:29] But the basically what was going on was your call and who would have a little answer to
[01:04:35] get permission to drive out the valley and give a hand.
[01:04:37] Yeah, I'll show you a different mission.
[01:04:41] I put down the handset and sat there, listening as the dozen advisors try to talk over
[01:04:45] a single radio channel.
[01:04:47] It was sheer bedlam.
[01:04:49] This is bullshit, Rod.
[01:04:50] I rechecked the ammo belt in the Mark 19.
[01:04:52] Rod sat in the driver seat.
[01:04:54] You ready, Rod?
[01:04:55] Give it a few more minutes, Meyer.
[01:04:56] You'll fry for this, he said.
[01:04:58] He was right.
[01:04:59] I'd get sent home for disobeying a direct order.
[01:05:01] There was no question in my mind about that.
[01:05:03] I was already on thinnest with Garza, Fabio, and Williams.
[01:05:06] So I sat there frustrated, listening to the shooting, flexing my hands on the grips of
[01:05:10] the Mark 19 and breathing hard.
[01:05:12] I tried to calm down.
[01:05:14] Maybe the battle sounded worse on the radio than it really was.
[01:05:17] Son of a bitch.
[01:05:19] Inside the tactical operations center at Joyce, so Joyce is a couple miles away.
[01:05:24] And the tactical operations center is where they're running this, they were the supposed to have
[01:05:30] kind of situational awareness of everything that's happening and they're supposed to be
[01:05:33] able to supply fire support.
[01:05:35] So that's when we're talking about the tactical operations center at Joyce, that's where it is.
[01:05:39] Captain Aaron Harding was the senior officer on duty from midnight to eight in the morning,
[01:05:43] the battle captain.
[01:05:44] He had been in Afghanistan for eight months, but had rarely controlled fires and certainly
[01:05:48] not, and certainly none like this.
[01:05:51] As artillery stood by at Joyce, a few miles away and it, a sawdobod, a few miles away,
[01:05:58] harding asked for more and more information from the men on the long table.
[01:06:03] Who was requesting the fire missions?
[01:06:05] Was it shadow four, highlander five or Fox three?
[01:06:08] What had they heard from Fox six?
[01:06:10] Who was presently in charge?
[01:06:11] The marine advisors or the Afghan army?
[01:06:13] Did the ground commander know where all his troops were?
[01:06:16] Had they double-checked the grids of the KEs?
[01:06:20] The asked question after question.
[01:06:23] At Joyce, 120 millimeters, millimeter mortars were fired for, fired 15 minutes after
[01:06:28] Fabio requested.
[01:06:29] The first shell, though, struck within 50 meters of the enemy position, the next flurry
[01:06:33] of shells was on target.
[01:06:36] That would be the only effective fire mission of the entire day.
[01:06:42] This is one of the things that you're going to get more into.
[01:06:46] We actually recently talked about the battle in the hydrangea valley and those guys would
[01:06:51] absolutely 100% have been overrun and what saved their ass over and over again was artillery
[01:06:56] and fire support.
[01:06:57] That's the biggest advantage that we have on the battlefield as Americans.
[01:07:02] 100%.
[01:07:03] And your team is calling for the advisors are calling for it.
[01:07:07] They're not given it.
[01:07:08] They're not given it.
[01:07:09] I mean, they shut it down.
[01:07:11] And to try to give the benefit of the doubt here of why they shut it down, I totally understand
[01:07:17] it.
[01:07:18] But it goes back to the one thing I said, right?
[01:07:20] I mean, they couldn't probably couldn't figure out who the hell was calling what and
[01:07:23] where what was where.
[01:07:24] I mean, I don't know that I could have confidently fired around.
[01:07:28] But part of it was because of the layout of everybody on one frequency.
[01:07:33] You know, it goes back to the initial problem.
[01:07:36] Like, I don't know if I could have fired around.
[01:07:37] Now, in my piss that they didn't fire around, that's literally like it was wrong.
[01:07:41] It was wrong for the reasons they did it.
[01:07:43] But the confusion was so chaotic in the beginning, especially.
[01:07:52] But I can tell you this, that if they had got the round, it had broke the enemy.
[01:07:58] And again, to advance your point of giving the benefit of the doubt, if they have no
[01:08:04] idea where families are, they could have fired rounds on friendly forces as well.
[01:08:08] Well, exactly.
[01:08:09] And then, you know, they'd have been accountable for that.
[01:08:11] And I'll tell you that's, that's a hard decision to make to possibly, you know,
[01:08:18] fratur side blue on blues is in my opinion.
[01:08:21] That's going to look like a worse thing that can happen in war.
[01:08:24] And so what these guys are being asked to possibly do is risk a fratur side, which in
[01:08:31] their minds and most probably a lot of military minds, I think mine included.
[01:08:38] Well, it's hard to say, what's better?
[01:08:41] You know, risk fratur side or risk getting overrun.
[01:08:45] Now, if we know for a fact, people are getting overrun, then you're like, okay, we'll
[01:08:48] risk fratur side.
[01:08:49] And that's why that happened.
[01:08:50] Sometimes, for people, so I drop that bomb no matter what.
[01:08:54] But to say, I'm not 100% sure people are going to go overrun, but I'm still going to take
[01:08:58] the risk of fratur side at this point.
[01:09:00] That's probably why they're holding off.
[01:09:01] It is in the beginning.
[01:09:03] Yeah.
[01:09:04] And they get to a point where they call the danger close rounds and try and take responsibility
[01:09:07] and we'll get there.
[01:09:10] To book the enemy above, the enemy above worked their way around the edges of Valley shooting
[01:09:15] downhill, the Taliban machine gunners tracked in on one asker than another than another.
[01:09:20] It was a killing ground.
[01:09:22] They're all over the place.
[01:09:23] Swenson was thinking to himself, I may not make it out of here.
[01:09:28] If you hunker down and don't shoot back, you will surely die.
[01:09:32] The other side gains confidence and rushes forward in the frenzy of combat soldiers act
[01:09:36] like sharks.
[01:09:37] They sense weakness and circle in.
[01:09:40] Thinking off the wounded and the defenseless slowly, the douchemen were closing in from both
[01:09:46] sides of the wash.
[01:09:48] So they were ready.
[01:09:49] Oh, let me tell you something.
[01:09:50] They were good.
[01:09:53] They were good.
[01:09:54] They were trained.
[01:09:55] Bad gear.
[01:09:56] You know, they had play carriers.
[01:09:58] They were taking the uniforms off our dead guys.
[01:10:02] They put Kevlar's on.
[01:10:04] They're good.
[01:10:08] They'll try to get fire support here.
[01:10:10] Swenson identified enemy positions at four grid positions.
[01:10:13] There are two basic ways of calling in artillery.
[01:10:15] You can give the grid coordinates of the target or the kilo echo number for a grid in a
[01:10:21] just after the initial round or you can give your own location and a compass bearing to
[01:10:26] the end instant to the target.
[01:10:27] The second technique is called a polar mission provides the guns with the locations of both
[01:10:31] the friendly observer and the target.
[01:10:34] Tell the talk all-sended polar swenson radio to Kaplan.
[01:10:38] That's on me.
[01:10:39] Give them my initials.
[01:10:40] I'm making the decision not them.
[01:10:42] Assuming accurate fire, the US mortars will less than two miles away.
[01:10:46] The only target endangered by the polar plot was the enemy.
[01:10:49] By sending his initials, Swenson was taking full responsibility.
[01:10:53] If anything went wrong, if a friendly soldier or civilian were hit, the burden rested
[01:10:57] squarely on Swenson not with the talk in the rear.
[01:11:00] The talk responded to the polar request by asking again for information that was impossible
[01:11:05] to provide.
[01:11:06] There were all the friendly troops.
[01:11:08] What was the forward line of trace of the friendly units?
[01:11:10] Was everyone accounted for?
[01:11:11] Were any civilians endangered?
[01:11:16] Kaplan told Shadow, the relay team above the him, tell the talk that it's critical.
[01:11:21] I repeat critical.
[01:11:22] We have advisors pinned down.
[01:11:25] The talk denied Shadow's fire mission.
[01:11:27] Furious sergeant summers at Shadow 4 pressed back against the talk.
[01:11:30] The main element is being hit from the north, east, and south.
[01:11:34] All elements are engaged.
[01:11:36] I repeat, all elements are heavily engaged.
[01:11:38] We need fire missions now.
[01:11:41] The NCOs inside the talk were doing their job.
[01:11:44] And the artillery and mortar crews wanted to oblige, yet it seemed to sergeant summers
[01:11:49] that every time he relayed a fire mission, the talk asked him 20 questions.
[01:11:53] The second string was running the show here and not well.
[01:11:58] In fire fights, it's not unusual for 200 to 2000 artillery shells to be fired over
[01:12:03] the course of the first hour of the battle at Gonjagal.
[01:12:06] When men lay trapped in dying, the talk at Joyce allowed only 21 artillery shells to be fired.
[01:12:17] Since World War II forwarded servers, had received artillery fire under the rule of silence
[01:12:23] is consent.
[01:12:25] When an observer called for fire, the mission went by radio to the Operation Center and to
[01:12:29] the guns.
[01:12:30] The violence by the Ops Center constituted consent for the guns to fire.
[01:12:36] In the 21st century, with computers making instant firing calculations, within two minutes
[01:12:40] shells could be hitting the target.
[01:12:44] But beginning about 2006, sergeants and loutonets on the front lines were trusted less.
[01:12:49] The high command believed the grunts were too quick to call and fires that endangered civilians
[01:12:54] resulting in an embedded population that supported the insurgency.
[01:12:58] The solution was to apply a strict new rule.
[01:13:02] Two months before Gonjagal, General Stanley Macristol, the senior commander in Afghanistan
[01:13:07] issued a directive that forbade the use of artillery against or near any structure likely
[01:13:12] to contain civilians unless the higher the next higher headquarters commander had approved.
[01:13:20] That ended silence is consent.
[01:13:23] The high command had shifted decision making from the battlefield to the staff.
[01:13:29] Swenson was not trusted to make the hard decisions.
[01:13:33] Instead, officers in the talk with a confused idea of the battlefield had to decide whether
[01:13:38] to honor his requests for fire.
[01:13:42] Yeah, I know that's where my problem comes in, right?
[01:13:45] If the doctor is, I give my initials, I take their responsibility.
[01:13:51] But then follow the doctrine.
[01:13:54] That's where they went wrong.
[01:13:57] And I'll tell you something else that you talked about how confusing it was over the net.
[01:14:01] Clearly it was obviously very confusing.
[01:14:04] How long would it take to verbally explain the layout of this whole situation?
[01:14:12] It would take a very long time.
[01:14:14] It would take an extremely eloquent person who had the time to kind of compose himself
[01:14:18] and sit there and try and explain it.
[01:14:20] That's why you make Keylo Echoes.
[01:14:23] That's why you have these pre-plan fire positions so that you don't have to think anymore.
[01:14:27] We can direct fires.
[01:14:29] And instead of having to communicate what the situation on the ground is, what you communicate
[01:14:32] is this is what we need.
[01:14:34] And this is where you need to put it.
[01:14:36] I mean, that's 100%.
[01:14:38] I mean, that's 100% it.
[01:14:42] You could never, first off, you could never relay all the information there.
[01:14:47] And guess what, in the end of the day, it was irrelevant to what they were needing to do.
[01:14:51] And also by the time you, if you could relay it by the time you relay it, it would be different.
[01:14:55] Because what are you going to tell everyone to sit still for a minute while I explain where you are?
[01:14:58] That doesn't work.
[01:14:59] That's why decentralized command is so important on the battlefield.
[01:15:04] This is the exact reason why decentralized command is so important on the battlefield.
[01:15:07] When you centralized command, people that actually are there that need to be able to make decisions
[01:15:12] make things happen.
[01:15:13] Can't do it.
[01:15:15] And by the way, how do you overcome a situation like this?
[01:15:19] How do you overcome a situation where, okay, you're my subordinate.
[01:15:24] You work for me.
[01:15:26] And I don't, I don't want you to be able to have the ability to fire because I'm afraid
[01:15:30] you can hurt civilians.
[01:15:31] How do I solve that?
[01:15:32] The way to solve it is not to say no, I don't care that you're that authority.
[01:15:35] The way I solve it is to say, okay, Dakota, let me explain some things to you.
[01:15:40] We need to protect the civilian populace.
[01:15:42] We need to make sure we don't damage any infrastructure to the best of our ability.
[01:15:45] I want you to understand how strategically important that is.
[01:15:47] Do you understand?
[01:15:48] Let me put you through some scenarios.
[01:15:50] What if you were here in this happened?
[01:15:51] What would you do?
[01:15:52] What if you were here in this happened?
[01:15:53] What would you do?
[01:15:54] I train you and I build trust so that I can decentralize the command.
[01:15:58] That's how you overcome it.
[01:15:59] You don't overcome it.
[01:16:01] It's a shortcut to try and centralize and it ends up getting people killed.
[01:16:03] All right, go back to the book, Fox 3-1, Lieutenant Johnson finally came up on the radio.
[01:16:19] We're pinned down in a house, receiving accurate fire from the next house.
[01:16:23] We have to get out of here.
[01:16:25] He was caught off by others, pushing to use the same frequency, three or four advisors
[01:16:29] were trying to talk, stepping on each other.
[01:16:31] I could hear the strain and the voices, the lack of crisp borders, the front to yelling
[01:16:35] of men who are pinned down.
[01:16:38] After a few minutes, Fox 3-2, Staff Sergeant can't have tried to pass his location on the
[01:16:43] grid to Fabio.
[01:16:45] I can't shoot back there and said because I'm pinned down, they're shooting at me from the
[01:16:48] house.
[01:16:49] It's so close.
[01:16:50] Grid.
[01:16:53] Three-2, this is three-three radio, Staff Sergeant can't have picked.
[01:16:56] Repeat your grid, repeat your grid, or you radioed to the benefit.
[01:17:00] Repeat your grid, repeat your grid.
[01:17:01] See, he faded as he was trying to tell you his grid.
[01:17:06] Nothing after that, but static and garbled voices.
[01:17:09] That broke it from me.
[01:17:11] I had promised my team I would be there, as far as I was concerned, my command element
[01:17:16] wasn't in command.
[01:17:26] Twice I had heard Shadow say that air would be on station in 15 minutes.
[01:17:31] Nothing happened.
[01:17:32] How long do you do nothing while your friends are fighting for their lives?
[01:17:36] Fox 7, this is three-three, sitting here is stupid, we're going in.
[01:17:40] Rod and I were on the net with Valdez.
[01:17:42] There was no dispute among us.
[01:17:43] It was about 0-600 time to move.
[01:17:46] I was the vehicle commander, so the fault lay with me for disobeying orders if I arrived
[01:17:50] in the valley and discovered that the command group had the situation under control.
[01:17:54] I knew there was a good chance I'd be sent back to the states and disgrace.
[01:17:59] When I shouted the askers to follow us, they looked confused.
[01:18:02] Up on the north outpost, Valdez grabbed a senior Afghan sergeant.
[01:18:06] The sergeant radio to the Afghan drivers clustered around our truck urging them and passed
[01:18:10] to to follow me.
[01:18:12] Mortar shells were falling a football field away to our west.
[01:18:15] The enemy knew our trucks were somewhere on the path, but on certain just where.
[01:18:19] The explosions made the askers jumpy.
[01:18:22] Just the same, some of them jumped into two homies and roared into position behind us.
[01:18:26] Rod, let's go.
[01:18:27] I said he put it in gear.
[01:18:35] Now by that time you start actually going into the valley and as you're going in, by that
[01:18:41] time several askers were stumbling out of the battlefield, some bleeding a few without their
[01:18:45] rifles all exhausted.
[01:18:47] Where Americana, y'all, dust, dust.
[01:18:50] The asker's pointed up toward the village.
[01:18:52] So as you're driving in, you're seeing guys fleeing the battlefield.
[01:18:56] I mean, it was terrible.
[01:18:59] Like as we go in, you're just seeing these guys come out and it's in Ramadan so they
[01:19:03] won't either.
[01:19:04] They won't drink any water and they're coming out of this battle and they're just like,
[01:19:07] you're not even close to the valley yet and they're coming out of this battle.
[01:19:10] They don't have any weapons on them.
[01:19:12] They're just broken, they're bloodied, they're, they're been shot.
[01:19:16] They've just, I mean, you're carrying each other and you're just like, what are we going
[01:19:22] into?
[01:19:23] Somewhere behind us was a US Army Paltoon.
[01:19:29] It seemed to me to be a time for them to make a move.
[01:19:33] They were the quick reaction force, our insurance policy.
[01:19:36] Valdez was on the radio arguing with dog 36, the quick reaction Army Paltoon commander,
[01:19:41] dog 36 is Fox 7, Valdez radio.
[01:19:44] Radioed.
[01:19:45] You need to get in there, man.
[01:19:46] Fox 3, 3 is 2, you're front and a home V. Drive East until you link up with them.
[01:19:50] Fox 7, this is dog 36, the Lieutenant, our vehicles are too big for the mission.
[01:19:56] We were driving on a footpath that was barely wide enough for our home V. Valdez came up
[01:20:00] with an alternative dog 36.
[01:20:01] This is Fox 7.
[01:20:02] I understand, drive forward until you reach the Afghan vehicles, use them to get into the
[01:20:06] fight.
[01:20:07] There are people out there dying.
[01:20:09] The Paltoon leader said he had to wait for clearance from the talk at Joyce.
[01:20:13] Yeah.
[01:20:16] What kind of vehicles did the QRF have?
[01:20:18] They were in MAPs.
[01:20:19] Okay.
[01:20:21] God, I mean, how did you excuse?
[01:20:27] Yeah, I was awesome.
[01:20:28] Would it be to have an M-Rop role into this situation?
[01:20:30] Yeah, I don't think they could have the road wouldn't have to.
[01:20:33] Too small.
[01:20:34] Yeah, because they ended up coming in in one of those.
[01:20:35] It looks like a tank, but it's on wheels.
[01:20:37] And it ended up flipping over off the bank.
[01:20:42] But they, like at the end of the day, we had Tuna Humbies.
[01:20:44] I mean, we just brought in 90 people sitting right there, they could have jumped in,
[01:20:49] huh, me, isn't it?
[01:20:54] The helicopter ops center called back, saying the retasking of the birds had been canceled
[01:21:00] because Lance had not called his own brigade headquarters to ask permission and because
[01:21:05] another mission, North of Gondra Gaul was of higher priority.
[01:21:09] So one of the guys in the, in the ops center had actually said, you know what, screw
[01:21:12] it, I'm calling for he, and he hadn't called the brigade and run through the proper
[01:21:17] chain of command and they shut him down.
[01:21:20] Yeah.
[01:21:21] So here we go, more than an hour into the fight, the situation was as follows.
[01:21:28] Team Monti was trapped in a house in the US and Afghan commanders were pinned down by shooters
[01:21:33] closing in on them from three sides.
[01:21:37] The north and south observation posts were under fire.
[01:21:40] The ass cars were caught in the open with nowhere to hide.
[01:21:43] Rod and I hadn't reached the wash.
[01:21:46] The one three two quick reaction between was not quick reacting.
[01:21:49] The talk at Joyce was paralyzed, preventing artillery support and the helicopter gunships
[01:21:56] had not arrived.
[01:21:57] Is the perfect storm?
[01:22:03] Damn, that's just, there's absolutely nothing else to go wrong right now.
[01:22:16] It's the perfect storm.
[01:22:17] It is the absolute perfect storm.
[01:22:24] Swenson wanted a massive artillery barrage because the douchemen didn't have overhead
[01:22:30] to cover artillery airbrush would send millions of lancets raining down toward them.
[01:22:35] Hundreds of shells had to shake the mountains and roll thunder down the valley.
[01:22:39] The douchemen were zealots but they weren't crazy.
[01:22:41] Once artillery began exploding overhead, gunmoth, AKs wouldn't get up and run forward in
[01:22:46] the open.
[01:22:49] Yet the talk refused to fire at Gangegol on the a few miles from camp Joyce.
[01:22:54] Unleasing a barrage in your own backyard wouldn't win any applause at higher headquarters.
[01:22:58] The directive from the high command was so clear, do not employ air to ground or indirect
[01:23:03] fires against residential compounds to find as any structure or building known or likely
[01:23:08] to contain civilians.
[01:23:10] Unless the ground force commander has verified that no civilians are present.
[01:23:23] And that rule right there is written so impossible.
[01:23:32] What do you do?
[01:23:33] The village you get shot at.
[01:23:34] So you run through their use of the military.
[01:23:37] You should.
[01:23:40] You know, I have to look to like a full review of the artillery or this specific directive
[01:23:47] but normally the self defense thing trumps everything.
[01:23:50] But usually that's what I always say, right? I always talk about artillery and you know,
[01:23:54] artillery is a say blah blah blah blah.
[01:23:56] But then at the end of it, it always ends.
[01:23:59] It says or hostile act hostile intent.
[01:24:05] But it's all by interpretation.
[01:24:06] I mean that it goes back to the commanders.
[01:24:08] I mean, you know, I don't blame the artillery that Stanley McCristal put in place for what
[01:24:16] happened that day.
[01:24:17] I blame the people, the leadership who was incompetent to make a decision.
[01:24:25] You know what I mean?
[01:24:27] It's like nobody wants to just own it and take accountability and take responsibility.
[01:24:32] And say, you know what?
[01:24:33] I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do.
[01:24:35] They want to be able to say, well, I didn't do it because, well, this is the order.
[01:24:39] Come on.
[01:24:40] Come on.
[01:24:41] You know, if you're in a leadership position, take responsibility.
[01:24:46] Yeah.
[01:24:47] You got to do the right thing.
[01:24:53] This is bottom line and that's what makes leadership hard.
[01:24:56] And sometimes the right thing is the break rules.
[01:24:58] Sometimes the right thing is to not follow orders.
[01:25:01] Sometimes orders are wrong.
[01:25:03] And you shouldn't follow them.
[01:25:04] And the polling said, if you're in charge and you get tasked with something that's wrong
[01:25:09] and you execute it, you're culpable.
[01:25:10] Doesn't matter if you get ordered or not.
[01:25:14] Sometimes you break the rules going right back to the Yesman thing.
[01:25:18] And I guarantee the intent of staying a crystal, putting this RRE in place wasn't to deny
[01:25:25] guys that were pinned down my enemy fire.
[01:25:28] But again, how are we communicating it?
[01:25:32] And we put in the priorities in place correctly so that everybody knows.
[01:25:38] Yeah, I mean, you know, when it's put out in an email, it's kind of like it's as dangerous
[01:25:44] as you interpreting me a text.
[01:25:46] Mm-hmm.
[01:25:47] I mean, everybody looks at it different.
[01:25:50] Yep.
[01:25:51] And you know what?
[01:25:57] That's why things like commanders intent are so important.
[01:26:00] So if I know what it is, like if I know what it is that you want done and my job is to get
[01:26:05] it done and you give me parameters to do it within, I'll stay within those parameters
[01:26:09] and I'll get the job done.
[01:26:11] And I'll come back to you and say, hey, boss, I had to bend the rules a little bit here,
[01:26:14] but I got the mission done.
[01:26:15] Or I might call you back and say, hey, I'm getting ready to break the rules to get the
[01:26:18] mission done.
[01:26:19] Do you want me to break them or not?
[01:26:21] Yeah.
[01:26:22] All right.
[01:26:28] Back to the book, Shadow, the Army Outpost on the Southern Ridge replied that the
[01:26:32] talk at Joyce said the fire mission was too close to the village.
[01:26:36] Too close to the village, Lieutenant Johnson said, if you don't give me these rounds right
[01:26:40] now, I'm gonna die.
[01:26:47] Try your best.
[01:26:50] Shadow replied, knowing the talk would not fire.
[01:26:55] Try your best.
[01:26:58] Try your best.
[01:27:03] From the tone of Shadow's voice, I knew he was on the verge of complete rage.
[01:27:08] He wanted to strangle the officers in the talk at Joyce.
[01:27:11] I felt the same way.
[01:27:12] This couldn't be happening.
[01:27:14] We were on the same side.
[01:27:16] We weren't Marines or soldiers.
[01:27:18] We weren't Americans or Oscars.
[01:27:20] We were one lone group fighting desperately to stay alive.
[01:27:23] The villages, villagers, one our friends.
[01:27:26] This was a war and my team was on the verge of dying.
[01:27:29] Who's side was the talk on?
[01:27:32] Radio call after radio call, swints and kept requesting smoke.
[01:27:37] Finally around 0630 the talk at Joyce permitted four white phosphorus rounds to be fired
[01:27:43] into the southeast backside of the village, too far away to conceal my team.
[01:27:49] Those were the last rounds fired during the battle.
[01:27:54] That about 0640 the talk at Joyce forbade any more artillery support, citing garbled
[01:28:00] communications in complete calls for fire procedures and a lack of situational awareness
[01:28:06] on the part of those trapped in the valley.
[01:28:12] So there's the reasons from their perspective.
[01:28:19] Garbled communications in complete calls for fire procedures and a lack of situational
[01:28:23] awareness on the part of those trapped in the valley.
[01:28:35] Meanwhile, during this time you've been moving up, grabbing bodies, coming back.
[01:28:41] And here we go again as we move forward for a third time the talk had finally ordered the
[01:28:45] army platoon, dog three to two to move forward.
[01:28:47] They pulled in behind us with a platoon leader in a home view with an anti tank tow missile
[01:28:51] on the roof.
[01:28:52] The tow made no sense to me, but the truck was equipped with a 240 machine gun.
[01:28:55] Behind them were 20 US soldiers and four hemaliate heavily armored vehicles.
[01:28:59] You rolling with me lieutenant, I was confirming what I took for granted.
[01:29:03] I'll scout the route first before I'd bring my platoon in.
[01:29:06] The terrain may be too tough.
[01:29:08] He refused to put his soldiers into the Afghan vehicles.
[01:29:11] I could understand that.
[01:29:12] OK, I go first, I said, you cover our six.
[01:29:15] The Afghans will be behind you.
[01:29:19] As we bounced forward, I heard team monti again come up on the radio.
[01:29:23] We're under fire lieutenant, Johnson said.
[01:29:26] We're surrounded.
[01:29:31] So now you're heading back in.
[01:29:35] Yeah, and I am a whole goal is just to get them.
[01:29:39] It was to get them to the road.
[01:29:42] I mean, that was their goal.
[01:29:47] If they could get to the road, they could get in the vehicles.
[01:29:50] They were good.
[01:29:51] So I was trying to push.
[01:29:53] I thought that they had took over a house.
[01:29:56] I thought they had pushed into the village and took over a strong point at our house.
[01:30:00] And that's what I thought they had done.
[01:30:02] I lost communications with them.
[01:30:05] So that thought they had done.
[01:30:07] When a can of food was trying to give that grid, I was trying to write it down.
[01:30:12] Because I knew if I could get that grid, I'd know where they were at.
[01:30:14] I could plot it.
[01:30:15] I could be there and go get them.
[01:30:20] You know, the one part I don't talk about in there is probably the hardest parts
[01:30:23] the whole deal is is that the first trip that I made in, I was probably 70, 60 to 70 meters
[01:30:36] from them.
[01:30:37] They're still alive.
[01:30:59] So you're in the valley now.
[01:31:04] You're with a group of guys going back to the book here, a bullet at the end of the West
[01:31:09] Brooks neck near the shoulder blade and ricochet downward at dangerous but not fatal wound.
[01:31:15] Swenson applied quick-cloth powder and a bandage to seal off the bleeding.
[01:31:18] The flight had been raging for over 90 minutes in the chain of command throughout Koonar
[01:31:22] province was on alert.
[01:31:23] Procedures for releasing helicopters had been unsnarled in 208, 58 kioes were in route to the
[01:31:29] valley.
[01:31:30] That's 07, 15-nate contacted Swenson.
[01:31:33] Highlander, this is pale horse.
[01:31:35] The PC pilot command radioed, what do you need?
[01:31:38] Pale horse swans replied, I am under heavy fire from the village and the hills to the east
[01:31:44] and on both sides, requesting immediate suppression while we pulled back.
[01:31:48] The Kioes squadron had been in Koonar for 10 months.
[01:31:51] The pilots knew the terrain and the enemy habits.
[01:31:53] They intended to swoop in low and crisscrossing strafing runs deliberately swarving and
[01:31:58] cutting back at odd angles.
[01:31:59] They didn't care whether they hit the douchemen, they wanted to force them to crouch down
[01:32:04] and cease firing.
[01:32:06] The aerial tactics would allow the command group to pull back westward to draw down under
[01:32:11] reduced enemy pressure.
[01:32:14] Swenson moved, he called for a metavac, shadow radioed back to that the talk wanted
[01:32:20] questions answered before calling for one.
[01:32:22] Is he army or marine shadow said?
[01:32:26] Wenson cursed, major Williams was more diplomatic.
[01:32:30] This is Fox 6 Williams radioed.
[01:32:32] It doesn't matter his service, he's US.
[01:32:35] There was a pause, then shadow reluctantly radioed, repeat, talk needs to know if he's
[01:32:40] army or marine.
[01:32:41] It's in the regulations.
[01:32:43] Yeah, that was a guy calling for metavac and you're getting a ass today as the person
[01:32:55] needs to casualty arm your marine core.
[01:32:58] Yeah, and it really did matter to him.
[01:33:02] It really did matter to them.
[01:33:04] You're saying it matter?
[01:33:05] I'm saying it to who was asking, they really, their decisions were based off of who it was.
[01:33:20] At this point, you're going back and forth, going back in the valley, getting bodies,
[01:33:32] helping wounded, coming back out, you're under fire the whole time, rod is getting after
[01:33:37] it with you.
[01:33:38] Sometimes you have some US people with you, sometimes you don't.
[01:33:41] Again, these are things you have to buy this book and to get these details out of it and
[01:33:46] read it.
[01:33:47] And the full magnitude of what we're talking about here, going back to the book, I've
[01:33:53] feds left the command group to sort itself out, helping a wounded ass car.
[01:33:58] Was headed back west to the operational release point when I had stopped them.
[01:34:02] I need you to come back in with me.
[01:34:03] I can't find them without you.
[01:34:05] I said, how feds was married recently.
[01:34:08] He was wounded and exhausted.
[01:34:11] He could now go home and have a life.
[01:34:15] If today is my time to die, then I die.
[01:34:19] So he's rolling with you.
[01:34:21] He had, he rolled with me the whole time.
[01:34:24] Again, to all those people out there that, well, I guess I should just say, for the people
[01:34:33] out there that have a hard time understanding, well, what's going on overseas.
[01:34:38] Here's an Afghan soldier that is now going to risk his life to help an American marine
[01:34:44] go and find his friends.
[01:34:45] Yeah, because we were brothers.
[01:34:58] Going back to the book shortly after we headed again down the valley, we bumped into another
[01:35:03] group of wounded ass cars.
[01:35:05] Rod recognized the first sergeant who was dripping blood down the right side of his
[01:35:09] trousers.
[01:35:10] Who's waving his arms, be begging us to stop, four ass cars hobbled over and threw
[01:35:15] themselves into the back seat, splashing blood all over the place.
[01:35:18] We drove them back to the collection point.
[01:35:20] The first sergeant was blubbering, begging us not to go back in.
[01:35:25] I was a little rough shoving amount of the truck.
[01:35:26] I was running out of time and patience.
[01:35:29] Once we dropped them off, we'd gunned it back down the track.
[01:35:38] We were getting to a place where we couldn't turn around and couldn't dodge and weave the
[01:35:42] art as the RPG smoke trails came out of us.
[01:35:45] We could get pretty stuck in here, Rod yelled the truck had very little traction and absolutely
[01:35:50] no cover.
[01:35:51] Then I guess we'll die with them.
[01:35:52] I yelled back.
[01:35:54] What else could I say?
[01:35:56] We weren't going back.
[01:35:57] Rod shifted in the low gear and we bounced forward.
[01:36:07] I noticed this throughout the book.
[01:36:10] You have a hard time.
[01:36:12] Anytime you saw a wounded guy as you were like, all right, we got to make another trip now.
[01:36:15] We got to make another trip, even with those wounded af guys.
[01:36:19] You want to go help you guys, but at the same time you see these guys here.
[01:36:21] I got to get in the truck and we'll take these guys back.
[01:36:23] Got a big heart, bro.
[01:36:24] Got a big heart.
[01:36:25] I mean, look, I didn't just lose.
[01:36:31] I didn't just lose four guys that day.
[01:36:35] I lost 10 guys because I lost six af gans.
[01:36:38] I lost 10 brothers.
[01:36:39] You know what I mean?
[01:36:40] I mean those guys were just as close to me.
[01:36:43] My af gans were just as close to me as any Marines I had reserved with.
[01:36:53] But that's why they're doing you to go back and they're in front.
[01:36:55] That's why I'm alive today.
[01:36:59] I mean that's the relationships that I had with them and the brotherhood that I had
[01:37:05] for them with them is why I'm alive today.
[01:37:08] I mean they are incredible human beings.
[01:37:18] So you're driving around in here.
[01:37:21] Back to the book, only rod skill at the wheel was preventing me from being hit again
[01:37:24] and again.
[01:37:25] Bullets make different sounds when they pass by you.
[01:37:27] The cracks of bullets breaking the sound barrier mean they're high.
[01:37:30] Maybe 5 or 10 feet over your head.
[01:37:32] The bullets that snap close by your ears are the real killers.
[01:37:36] A few losing power and slowing down made a low buzzing sound.
[01:37:40] Strange though it may seem I wasn't scared or angry.
[01:37:44] I was beyond that.
[01:37:45] I didn't think I was going to die.
[01:37:47] I knew I was dead.
[01:37:49] There wasn't anything I could do about it.
[01:37:51] I wasn't a thinking human being.
[01:37:54] I had gone elsewhere.
[01:37:55] I wasn't firing the machine gun.
[01:37:58] I was the machine gun.
[01:38:00] God wasn't driving the truck.
[01:38:02] Rod was the truck.
[01:38:04] I had melded with my weapon.
[01:38:06] I was no more human than a five foot machine gun.
[01:38:08] I was embracing.
[01:38:10] We were locked together, metal and flesh.
[01:38:12] Without that 50 cow I would have quivered like the hascars helpless in the storm.
[01:38:19] But with that weapon I felt transported.
[01:38:22] I had something to do until the blackness came.
[01:38:28] I kept the bullets were hidden inside the turret.
[01:38:32] They had elevation on us.
[01:38:35] They were hidden inside the turret.
[01:38:39] You could hear them coming by.
[01:38:42] I remember sitting there.
[01:38:45] If you get down, you are instinct is to duck down the turret.
[01:38:50] You do that they will run.
[01:38:51] They will run at the truck.
[01:38:55] You duck down their full sprint and you are never going to come back up.
[01:39:01] I just kept waiting for a bullet.
[01:39:04] I just knew it was going to hit me in the face.
[01:39:06] I just kept waiting for a bullet to hit me.
[01:39:08] Light to out.
[01:39:09] I just there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to die.
[01:39:14] Zero.
[01:39:15] Zero to help.
[01:39:17] But I was going to make this son of a bitch.
[01:39:19] They had it to do.
[01:39:22] Jack.
[01:39:31] I wasn't paying attention to the Afghan soldiers.
[01:39:34] Rod and I planned to keep driving east until we were obliterated until we were obliterated
[01:39:38] or we found my team.
[01:39:40] Suddenly with no warning, five or six Oscars who were lying in a terrace about 100 meters
[01:39:44] away, leapt up and race towards our truck.
[01:39:47] And one was shot back and pitched forward when a second man went down screaming when I'm a third
[01:39:54] than a fourth and a fifth.
[01:39:55] I'd never seen anything like it.
[01:39:56] Five men down in five seconds.
[01:39:58] There was so much screeching and shooting that I couldn't pick out the location of the
[01:40:02] weapon that had shot them.
[01:40:04] To deliver such lethal grazing fire, the machine gunner must have been hidden only a few
[01:40:07] hundred meters away with a clear line of sight and his bipod firmly anchored.
[01:40:11] Yet whoever shot those men didn't raise his gun, sights and stitch me.
[01:40:16] I knew he was looking at me but I couldn't see him.
[01:40:19] There was nothing I could do.
[01:40:21] He let me live.
[01:40:22] Not one of his rounds even struck our truck.
[01:40:24] I can't explain it.
[01:40:28] We used to call the trucks bullet magnets.
[01:40:30] I mean, it's like the ripest target and you're the turret gunner.
[01:40:35] You're like the icing on the cake.
[01:40:37] You're the cherry on the icing on the cake.
[01:40:40] Because that truck gets over.
[01:40:41] If they take the gun out that truck doesn't come out of there, it's over ran.
[01:40:44] Oh hell yeah.
[01:40:45] But, you know, even though it's a bullet magnet, I mean, just like right there, I think
[01:40:50] that kind of paints the picture.
[01:40:53] I mean, it's the only chance you have.
[01:40:56] I mean, you're out.
[01:40:58] I mean, that's how dolled in there.
[01:41:01] I mean, I was literally watching guys.
[01:41:04] People feel the turn of miracle around.
[01:41:07] All the time, the fact that you right here, there's five guys within, you know, spitting
[01:41:12] distance from you and they all go down and you're the the most prime target and you
[01:41:17] don't get job.
[01:41:18] You want to talk about helpless, the most helpless feeling you got is watching
[01:41:24] guys trying to get to you and just getting mode down.
[01:41:30] You want to talk about helpless and you don't even know where it's coming from.
[01:41:34] I mean, you want to talk about helpless is watching another human being run directly at you
[01:41:42] to get help and you just watch them just go down one after the other after the other.
[01:41:58] Can you imagine it, dude?
[01:41:59] Yeah, I just didn't, you know, I said they were good that day.
[01:42:05] You get this call from Valdez.
[01:42:07] They're coming at you.
[01:42:09] I can see them closing from both sides, they're swarming you.
[01:42:13] In front of our truck, I saw if you guys sprinting across the wash from left to right,
[01:42:17] head slow.
[01:42:18] I don't think they saw us coming up behind them or if they heard the truck engine over the
[01:42:21] dinner, the gun fire.
[01:42:22] They scurry too quickly for me to get off a burst, glancing to my right.
[01:42:26] I looked smack into the eyes of five or six men in dirty, man dresses, crouched alongside
[01:42:31] a drainage ditch, not 10 meters away.
[01:42:34] When I gaped them, they ducked down like they were playing hide and seek.
[01:42:37] It took me a few seconds to realize that they were spreading out to seal off the open end
[01:42:41] of the horseshoe valley, zip locking the frozen ass cars inside a fire sack, rod and I had
[01:42:48] blundered into their rear.
[01:42:50] So they were about to, they're about to surround everyone.
[01:42:52] So they, that's what they were doing.
[01:42:53] There was a trench and they were closing it.
[01:42:55] They were closing the gate and we, that truck, you happened to be there to be right in it.
[01:43:02] Fire sack is a, is a doctrinal term actually, which means you're surrounded and they're
[01:43:07] going to shoot into the sack and kill everyone.
[01:43:09] Yeah.
[01:43:09] We were bouncing over the rocks, no faster than a man can run when a bearded doucheman
[01:43:16] clutching an AK, left out of a ditch and sprinted after us like a man trying to catch
[01:43:20] his catch a bus.
[01:43:22] My gun almost wouldn't swivel low enough to shoot him.
[01:43:24] The barrel was tilted down as far as it could go.
[01:43:26] I fired into his chest and he went down like he'd hit a glass wall.
[01:43:30] The bullet doesn't blow a man back like in the movies.
[01:43:33] Either he stumbles or on or he falls dead.
[01:43:36] This man fell dead.
[01:43:38] Rod was yelling at me.
[01:43:39] Maybe I was hypnotized for a second by the death.
[01:43:42] There was a guy trying to open the right door.
[01:43:45] I couldn't depress the 50 calvat low.
[01:43:47] I can't get him out yelled.
[01:43:49] The gun won't go down low enough.
[01:43:51] It takes the brain 12,000 of a second to react to danger.
[01:43:55] My mind was a complete blank.
[01:43:57] I had fired so many thousands of rounds that I didn't think what I was doing.
[01:44:01] Once you've practiced emotion long enough, it becomes second nature.
[01:44:05] Some readers, researchers call it expertise induced amnesia.
[01:44:10] Half leads call it being in the zone.
[01:44:12] I call it self preservation.
[01:44:14] I grab my M4 leaned out and shot the guy four or five times in the shoulder and neck.
[01:44:19] It was like shooting a zombie.
[01:44:20] There was no shock power in the little 5.56 millimeter bullets he felt to the ground.
[01:44:26] I pivoted back to the 50 calvand grab the spade handle.
[01:44:29] The weapon my hands and my eyes were working as a trained unit independent of my brain.
[01:44:34] Man, sight, picture, shoot.
[01:44:36] Man, sight picture, shoot.
[01:44:38] You don't really look at the target.
[01:44:39] The enemy remains out of focus.
[01:44:41] You concentrate on the sight picture.
[01:44:42] Man, sight picture, shoot.
[01:44:44] I hit one or two guys next to the truck and the others duck back into the ditch.
[01:44:49] Valdez came back on the radio.
[01:44:50] Rod, watch your front.
[01:44:52] Rod was focused on keeping traction in the loose gravel.
[01:44:54] The truck got stuck even for a moment we'd be toast.
[01:44:57] He looked ahead to see a bearded, hatless man in his mid 30s dressed in a brick red man
[01:45:02] jams with a green chest rig full of ammo running toward the truck and firing an AK out
[01:45:06] us from the hip.
[01:45:08] Hold on, homie, Rod yelled.
[01:45:11] He hit the accelerator.
[01:45:12] The truck hit the man squarely in the chest.
[01:45:14] There was a bump and then another bump under the tires.
[01:45:17] Holy shit, Rod yelled.
[01:45:19] I just ran over a guy.
[01:45:21] Back up and do it again.
[01:45:26] I'd been shot in the elbow, a bleeder that did no real damage.
[01:45:30] The bone was fine.
[01:45:31] In a fight, adrenaline deadens the pain.
[01:45:33] I did a little wrapping and got back to shooting.
[01:45:36] The more fucked up things got, the more Rod and I started laughing.
[01:45:41] He was staring away from RPG, streaming at us and laughing and I was shooting the big gun
[01:45:45] and laughing.
[01:45:46] Definitely crazy, but your emotions have to go somewhere.
[01:45:51] The enemy fire slack and Anna says the guy was darted around.
[01:45:55] They were like a steel umbrella over us.
[01:45:57] A few minutes later, pale horse came back on my net.
[01:46:00] Three, three were Winchester.
[01:46:02] When we back in 15 mics, Winchester meant they'd expend it all their ammunition.
[01:46:06] They were too light to carry much and they'd been shooting at targets wherever they looked.
[01:46:10] The firing kicked up.
[01:46:12] We were again the pinniana.
[01:46:14] I climbed down from the turret and talked to talk to Rod and Huffes.
[01:46:18] We had started with six ammo cans.
[01:46:20] We were now down to one.
[01:46:21] I had fired more than 2,000 rounds.
[01:46:24] Guys we need a new gun.
[01:46:25] I said it was three steps forward, two steps back.
[01:46:28] As we turned, I saw an ask our free crawling feebly toward the road.
[01:46:32] We stopped and I hopped out.
[01:46:33] A PKM machine gun was telling the ground around me so I dodged back and forth until
[01:46:37] I reached him.
[01:46:38] One Kiyua out of ammo hovered above me and distracted the enemy ignoring the RPG shells
[01:46:43] exploding in the air.
[01:46:45] I turned the ask our onto his back.
[01:46:48] Hit by three rounds and his upper chest and neck.
[01:46:50] He was gurgling and drowning in his own blood.
[01:46:53] I rolled him onto his side and he died before I could pick him up.
[01:47:07] Yeah, like you can see I kind of circle things that I'm going to read.
[01:47:13] I just was like circling giant chunks to people can understand what.
[01:47:20] I know that people aren't going to understand the chronological evolution and maybe the
[01:47:25] mechanics of what was happening but I want people at least to understand until they read
[01:47:28] this book themselves to freaking situation that you were in which was beyond mayhem.
[01:47:34] You know you talk about training like to the worst case scenario.
[01:47:38] I always had done the same thing and this was worse than any worst case scenario that
[01:47:44] I could have ever, ever dreamed up of, I've ever been in.
[01:47:48] It was the worst of any situation.
[01:47:52] I could have never sit here and you said, give me the worst thing you could just come
[01:47:57] up with and I could have never done it.
[01:47:59] I could have never, I could have never done it.
[01:48:03] I mean you just, I mean it's just like, I mean I just felt like everybody was dying.
[01:48:14] I mean it was just, I mean they were literally, they were bodies everywhere.
[01:48:20] I mean you couldn't turn around and look and they're not be a body somewhere.
[01:48:28] And you just pretty much figured you were going to be joining them soon enough.
[01:48:34] No I did.
[01:48:35] I mean there was no doubt, there was no doubt in my mind I wasn't making it either.
[01:48:40] And you know I walked in that day and it's just shows you how ignorant I was.
[01:48:44] Like when you talk about your buddy who was kind of like puffed a chest up right, that
[01:48:50] was me.
[01:48:51] I literally, I'm going to tell you I'm going to just tell you how ignorant I was.
[01:48:54] I walked in that day and I, there was not a situation that I was ever going to see that
[01:49:02] I couldn't get us out of.
[01:49:05] There wasn't one.
[01:49:06] There wasn't one.
[01:49:10] And it was like, you know, it was like God showed me, just how smart it was.
[01:49:21] You know, you got to take, I mean these, these afghan soldiers, I mean they're my
[01:49:29] buddies.
[01:49:30] You know, and part of the problem was how long did deployment was this?
[01:49:35] Sposed to been nine months.
[01:49:36] And how long this went to this happened?
[01:49:38] We got there in July, August of September.
[01:49:41] Yeah.
[01:49:42] So this is like two or three months of deployment.
[01:49:45] And part of the problem was we just done the NATO transition and they were using weapon systems
[01:49:51] that they weren't used to, that you to smaller around.
[01:49:55] Yeah.
[01:49:56] Yeah, a lot.
[01:49:58] But they weren't used to these weapons.
[01:49:59] They weren't even used to them for us.
[01:50:02] I mean, and then for us are so much more fickle.
[01:50:05] M16, M16, M16 are well even more so than then for M16s are so much more fickle than
[01:50:11] an AK.
[01:50:12] They must have been cursing them down.
[01:50:14] Oh, they have M16s.
[01:50:15] Oh, they were.
[01:50:16] I mean, they were.
[01:50:17] Oh, yeah.
[01:50:18] I mean, they, you know, they would have
[01:50:20] something go wrong and they would just drop the magazine.
[01:50:23] I mean, I mean, they would just, yeah.
[01:50:28] So I got telling you, if you say everything, like we had just, so we just hit Ramadan.
[01:50:35] So none of them were drinking water.
[01:50:36] None of them were eating.
[01:50:37] We had just, I mean, you look at every factor to this.
[01:50:40] It was the perfect storm.
[01:50:41] And we had just transitioned.
[01:50:42] This is the first mission, the first or second mission that we had ever went on with
[01:50:47] all NATO weapons.
[01:50:48] I mean, you look at all these factors and it was, it was perfect.
[01:50:53] Had you ever worked with the QRF before?
[01:50:56] Oh, not not that one.
[01:50:59] I was used to the ones, you know, up near where you were at.
[01:51:01] But you had no interoperability with those guys before.
[01:51:05] No, and they got shut down.
[01:51:08] So after the talk learned that it was Marines, they got shut down.
[01:51:13] All support stopped.
[01:51:18] All support stopped.
[01:51:28] All right.
[01:51:31] Um, sometimes I got nothing to say.
[01:51:37] And that's one of them.
[01:51:38] I had to get even comprehend that.
[01:51:40] Yeah.
[01:51:41] All right.
[01:51:42] We're going back to the book.
[01:51:46] We turned left out of the wash onto the narrow track back to the casualty collection
[01:51:50] point.
[01:51:51] I looked around for Major Williams.
[01:51:52] He was sitting off to one side wounded in a shock.
[01:51:55] There were four or five vehicles in at least 20 ass cars milling around.
[01:51:59] These were our Afghans.
[01:52:00] We had come down from Monti together.
[01:52:01] I glanced hopefully from the group from group to group.
[01:52:05] Huffes was asking if they'd seen Lieutenant Johnson.
[01:52:08] They say Lieutenant is back in Gangegall.
[01:52:09] Said, how fast said?
[01:52:11] The team didn't make it out.
[01:52:14] Shit.
[01:52:15] Somewhere farther up the wash, my team was fighting to stay alive.
[01:52:22] I'd promised to get them and rod.
[01:52:24] And I had the only gun truck willing to enable to go in.
[01:52:30] I climbed down from the turret and ran over to the Ascar.
[01:52:33] He'd taken a bullet in the fire and he was slowly bleeding out.
[01:52:35] I kept a stack of turnikets in my med back and knew how to apply them.
[01:52:39] I wrapped the turniket around his thigh and my frustration.
[01:52:41] I twisted it extra tight.
[01:52:43] He screamed, how fast tell him to shut up.
[01:52:45] I said, hurting is better than dying.
[01:52:49] If you're a grunt, you'll come face to face with horrendous gore.
[01:52:52] You have to steal yourself to seeing mangled bodies and smelling blood.
[01:52:56] Doctors and nurses cope with screaming and suffering every day.
[01:52:58] I addressed out dozens of deer.
[01:53:00] You learned to disassociate from the task when you're pulling out warm guts or cutting
[01:53:04] off slabs of dripping meat with the blood sticking to your hands.
[01:53:12] You went through something like 15 turnikets?
[01:53:15] Yeah, at least.
[01:53:17] Quite a few vials and more fun.
[01:53:21] A couple of needle decompressions.
[01:53:27] MPA is quite a few MPA's nasal.
[01:53:35] The coy was at rearm and come back on station, directing us toward another wounded.
[01:53:41] Like it or not, we had been pressed into ambulance business.
[01:53:44] The coy was commanded by chief horn officer, Yassarian Salano.
[01:53:49] A good name for a guy in a crazy war had been a marine grunt before becoming an army pilot.
[01:53:56] His bird was easy to talk to and he directed me where to go, sometimes hovering so low,
[01:54:00] I could just about reach up and touch his skids.
[01:54:03] He was covering my rear area when I got out of the truck.
[01:54:07] The pilots were fearless.
[01:54:09] Following my team was lost, they were running search patterns 20 feet off the ground so they
[01:54:13] could identify each body.
[01:54:15] Damn.
[01:54:16] Yeah, I mean, and he did that like, you know, they were so his commander, he was having
[01:54:20] problems with his commander and the guy who was leading those birds, you know, because
[01:54:24] they fly in two birds.
[01:54:26] But when I told him that it was marine's missing, he dropped down and covered me the whole
[01:54:35] time.
[01:54:36] You ever meet him?
[01:54:40] Yeah, yeah.
[01:54:41] He's incredible.
[01:54:43] I just seen him like around Thanksgiving.
[01:54:45] He is an incredible human being.
[01:54:48] Just so everyone knows, just because you're in a helicopter does not make you save at all.
[01:54:52] Especially a coyote, like maybe you're a little bit safer in a patchy because you've
[01:54:55] got some armor.
[01:54:56] How much are there's an a coyote?
[01:54:57] Zero, right?
[01:54:58] They look like little.
[01:54:59] And I don't know how many his bird was shot to shit.
[01:55:04] No kidding.
[01:55:05] Yeah.
[01:55:06] Yeah, it was shot to pieces.
[01:55:13] I climbed up a terrace wall and followed the contours of the field around a corner to find
[01:55:17] a body-lying face down.
[01:55:18] On the man's hands were green gloves with a fingers cut.
[01:55:21] A new B4, I even rolled them over that it was dodgy.
[01:55:25] My closest afghan friend.
[01:55:27] He was due to take leave in a few weeks.
[01:55:29] He had left on Brad terms with his mother who was sure he would be killed.
[01:55:34] Finally, after two years, she had relented and invited him back to the farm for a visit.
[01:55:40] He'd been hit in the face.
[01:55:43] When I looked at his dull eyes, I lost my concentration and knelt there for a moment oblivious.
[01:55:48] He was a little guy too small for his body armor.
[01:55:51] He and I had rigged up two turnucuits to hold the body armor in place close to his chest.
[01:55:57] I knelt down to untie the turnucuits.
[01:56:00] I needed them for other guys and I needed to get the heavy armor off him.
[01:56:05] So I could gary him to the truck.
[01:56:09] I felt a tap as something hit my left shoulder.
[01:56:13] It didn't register at first.
[01:56:15] It was like I'd been hit with a light stone.
[01:56:16] I'd glanced up to see a tough looking afghan with a long black beard glaring down at me.
[01:56:22] He was wearing a dirty gray mandress of flack jacket and an afghan or a me helmet.
[01:56:26] He was pulling an AK at my head gesturing for me to stand up and broken English.
[01:56:32] He was telling me to drop my rifle.
[01:56:35] Come, he said waving the barrel of his AK in my face.
[01:56:40] I couldn't believe that I'd screwed up so badly.
[01:56:43] All I could think of was that my head would be sought off and held up on TV.
[01:56:50] No way.
[01:56:52] I'd die right where I was right now.
[01:56:55] I'd been dead for a few hours anyways.
[01:56:57] The borrowed time was up.
[01:56:58] That's all.
[01:57:00] My rifle was resting on my left thigh pointing in his direction.
[01:57:04] The stubby grenade launcher was attached to the underside of the barrel.
[01:57:08] I raised one arm like I was going to surrender and pulled the trigger of the launcher with my free thumb.
[01:57:12] The 40 millimeter grenade shot forward to feet to his armored vest.
[01:57:16] It didn't explode.
[01:57:18] Instead it knocked him back, stunned him with the breath, slammed out of him.
[01:57:23] He staggered back and fell on his side.
[01:57:26] For a few seconds I fought the blow and killed him.
[01:57:28] No such luck.
[01:57:30] I pushed myself erect.
[01:57:32] As I pushed myself erect, he drew in a big breath and stirred.
[01:57:35] I kicked that his face losing my balance and falling on top of him.
[01:57:38] We were both on the ground wrestling.
[01:57:40] Afghan tribesmen have legs like steel from climbing mountains all day.
[01:57:44] All their lives so I had to keep his legs off me.
[01:57:46] I pinned his elbows and blocked his reach for his AK.
[01:57:49] I was pushing my helmet head into his chest so he couldn't gouge at my eyes.
[01:57:53] Any second I figured that grenade would explode and both of us could stop worrying about any
[01:57:58] of this.
[01:58:00] I pawed the ground with my right hand and found a rock the size of a baseball.
[01:58:03] I clutched it and swung blindly at his face.
[01:58:06] The blow stunned him.
[01:58:08] Before he could recover, I pushed off of his chest lifted the rock high and my right fist
[01:58:13] and smashed it down like a hammer breaking his front teeth.
[01:58:16] He looked me in the eyes, the fight knocked out of him.
[01:58:18] His head not moving.
[01:58:20] We both knew it was over.
[01:58:22] I drew back my arm and drove the stone down crushing his left cheekbone.
[01:58:27] He went limp.
[01:58:28] I pushed up on my knees and I hit him with more force.
[01:58:32] The blow caved in the left side of his forehead.
[01:58:34] I smashed his face again and again, driven by pure animal rage.
[01:58:53] That's close combat, obviously when you're killing another human being with a rock.
[01:58:58] Yeah.
[01:58:59] Yeah, it's real.
[01:59:09] I just remember his face.
[01:59:11] I mean, look, let me just state this up front.
[01:59:17] First off, I feel no remorse at all.
[01:59:22] I think it was at that point to where humanized it.
[01:59:27] Does that make sense?
[01:59:29] It's like it humanized.
[01:59:32] The fact of taking another person's life, I would remember the looking his eyes when he knew
[01:59:38] he was going to die.
[01:59:41] At that point, I obviously didn't think of it then.
[01:59:44] But when I still see that face, I still think about, you know, he was a father.
[01:59:48] There was somebody at home that wanted him to come home.
[01:59:51] Just as bad as somebody, wanted me to come home.
[01:59:54] Whether you agree with his beliefs or not, people don't agree with their beliefs, but
[01:59:58] the other day he believed in his beliefs just as much as I did.
[02:00:02] We're both human beings.
[02:00:04] We're both fighting for a cause that neither one of us can see that we both just believe
[02:00:10] in.
[02:00:13] And it had to be one of us.
[02:00:17] And my guess is, and you can maybe I'm wrong, but my guess is the reason he didn't
[02:00:22] just straight kill you is because you had the drop on you and having you as a trophy in
[02:00:30] an orange jumpsuit would have been much more impactful for him and their cause.
[02:00:37] Yeah, I mean, he could have easily, it would have took him no time to get me across the
[02:00:41] border.
[02:00:42] We were right on the border.
[02:00:43] That's what he would have done.
[02:00:44] He would have took me across the border to sold me.
[02:00:46] He would have been a hero.
[02:00:47] He'd probably been promoted and whatever network he was in.
[02:00:50] I mean, he would have been the man and I was worth a lot more to him alive than I was
[02:00:55] there.
[02:00:56] Yeah.
[02:00:57] But then on the back side, I mean, I've questioned it so many times, was it that or
[02:01:00] was it maybe he was trying to bluff me, didn't have bullets?
[02:01:04] I don't know.
[02:01:05] I don't know.
[02:01:06] I can, there's so many times in this whole battle that I just wonder like, why not me?
[02:01:17] I mean, war and I guess you could apply it all life, but it becomes very clear to war.
[02:01:22] It's like inches, millimeters, you know, what, what, sure you could say you got missed by
[02:01:28] around by a foot, a couple inches.
[02:01:32] But when you take that back to a person's weapon, you got missed by a millimeter, a meter
[02:01:36] of aim.
[02:01:37] That's what it is.
[02:01:40] You could have got, you could have got missed by a gust of wind.
[02:01:46] Mm-hmm.
[02:01:47] Literally, you could have, you could have been missed by the wind picking up.
[02:01:55] So while all that's going on, back to the book, Highlander was the radio call sign for
[02:02:02] Captain Swenson.
[02:02:03] He was trying to gather reinforcements.
[02:02:05] He pulled aside the lieutenant in charge of the quick reaction, pulled tune, mount up,
[02:02:09] Swenson and told him, you know how back here, we need your firepower.
[02:02:13] I can't, Lieutenant said.
[02:02:15] The talk says we're to cover the vehicles.
[02:02:18] Swenson grabbed the lieutenant's 50-watt radio called the Joyce.
[02:02:22] The talk told the Pultoon to move into the valley.
[02:02:26] Swenson, Fabio, Rod, and Huffes then hopped into an undamaged humvee to drive back in.
[02:02:33] But the Pultoon did not follow.
[02:02:35] Instead the Pultoon leader again called back to Joyce and somehow received permission
[02:02:39] to remain in the rear out of the fight.
[02:02:46] Yeah, it was frustrating.
[02:02:48] It was frustrating.
[02:02:49] It was frustrating that, you know, I met that guy a few years ago.
[02:02:58] We ran into it.
[02:02:59] We were in the same meeting.
[02:03:03] It was frustrating.
[02:03:04] Every bit of it was frustrating.
[02:03:06] It was so, I mean, every single bit of it was unnecessary.
[02:03:13] I started the day with 14 or 16 turnic hits.
[02:03:24] I used them all.
[02:03:26] I put four on one guy who'd lost his left arm and his left leg below the knee.
[02:03:31] He survived.
[02:03:32] One asked our shot and the next sounded like he was slurping through a straw.
[02:03:35] There was nothing I could do except listen to him, strangled to death.
[02:03:42] At one point two F-T-F-15's roared low through the valley opening their afterburners to
[02:03:47] create a hell of a lion's roar.
[02:03:51] The pilots wouldn't drop any bombs.
[02:03:58] Yeah, I mean, you know, usually, but at this point, you know, the only show of force
[02:04:04] ever works is, I mean, they had so much momentum at this time.
[02:04:07] I mean, it was like momentum, right?
[02:04:09] So it started out as fighters, like as fighters that came across the border.
[02:04:13] And then what it turned into was when they seen that we weren't getting the support and
[02:04:16] when they, they seen that we weren't getting control of the situation and fires weren't
[02:04:19] coming.
[02:04:20] They escalated in the game momentum.
[02:04:22] Well, everybody else joined in, you take, so you had the guys that showed up to fight.
[02:04:27] And then you have the opportunist of the villagers that turned into fighters instantly
[02:04:31] because they have the upper hand.
[02:04:33] So they start gaining momentum of more people fighting you every single minute because
[02:04:37] all they got to do is pick up the gun off the dead person.
[02:04:40] You know, literally, I mean, they were literally women running through the village with
[02:04:46] like these bowls.
[02:04:49] And you know, you look at them, you know, well, you know, she's just a woman with a bowl,
[02:04:53] running.
[02:04:55] Rocket comes in, she drops a bowl and it's full of grenades and ammunition.
[02:04:59] The women were running up and re-esupplying all these guys.
[02:05:09] The Kai was, we're still supporting you back to the book.
[02:05:13] Inside the villages, the army pilots ran astonishing risks to find my team.
[02:05:18] A Kai will swoop down toward the compound, flare back at rooftop level and putter down
[02:05:24] the alleyways at 20 miles an hour, allowing the pilots to peer into every backyard and into
[02:05:29] every window.
[02:05:32] As the day grew hotter, we gradually cleared the valley of casualties over 30 wounded or dead
[02:05:37] were evacuated.
[02:05:45] We watched a salon over the lead pilot brought his Kai went down to a few feet above
[02:05:49] a trench and hovered there.
[02:05:52] My lander, we spotted five bodies.
[02:05:56] I'd heard all I needed.
[02:05:58] I jumped out the door and sprinted across the field to the right, opening some distance
[02:06:02] before swans and yelled at me.
[02:06:05] I ignored him, knowing he'd be right behind me.
[02:06:07] A PKM shifted me, shifted to me when I was halfway across the terrace.
[02:06:12] I hopped over a terrace wall and fell into a deep, well constructed trench.
[02:06:20] I landed next to Gony Johnson and my heart stopped.
[02:06:25] He was lying on his back with his arms outspread.
[02:06:28] His eyes open, but never to see anything again on this earth.
[02:06:34] A few feet further on, I came across the body of an afghan and turperger who had traveled
[02:06:39] with our team.
[02:06:41] I felt sick to my stomach.
[02:06:44] I knew what I would see next.
[02:06:49] Lieutenant Johnson lay on his back with his eyes closed.
[02:06:54] He looked peaceful, despite the entry wounds in his right shoulder.
[02:06:59] Doc Layton lay on top of him with medical supplies scattered around.
[02:07:05] I rolled him over.
[02:07:08] Doc had taken a three round burst in the right cheek.
[02:07:14] After the right, staff sergeant can't have been, was lying face down, his GPS with a
[02:07:19] busted screen clenched in his left hand.
[02:07:24] His mouth was open and full of dirt.
[02:07:27] I think he was yelling out his grid location.
[02:07:30] The numbers I heard over the radio four hours earlier when he was shot in the back of his
[02:07:34] head.
[02:07:40] The team was wiped out.
[02:07:44] Their bodies were stiff and cold.
[02:07:45] Most of their gear was gone.
[02:07:46] Weapons helmets, radios.
[02:07:49] The 240 machine gun was missing.
[02:07:51] But Lieutenant Johnson's pack was filled with link ammo.
[02:07:58] No one had fired the gun.
[02:07:59] I was supposed to be carrying.
[02:08:07] I had never believed it would end like this.
[02:08:10] My mind refused to accept what I was seeing.
[02:08:13] Our after hour, I had imagined them hold up inside a stone house shielded from RPG,
[02:08:18] blasts exchanging gunfire with a douchemen who were, who knew better than to rush them.
[02:08:24] Swenson was standing above the trench.
[02:08:26] We were taking random incoming and he was watching for movement among houses.
[02:08:31] He talked into his radio for a few seconds and bent down and picked up some of the team's
[02:08:34] gear.
[02:08:35] I say a word.
[02:08:38] He left me alone with them.
[02:08:41] I always did the staff sergeant over my rolled right shoulder.
[02:08:45] He was heavy and I fell once.
[02:08:47] He landed on top of me.
[02:08:49] I got up and carried him to an Afghan truck, carefully talking him into the open bed.
[02:08:56] I stood there for a minute, suddenly beat as I turned away from the truck.
[02:09:00] Half as put his hand on my shoulder.
[02:09:04] The askers say you carried out their dead.
[02:09:08] Now they want to help you.
[02:09:10] Five or six of us returned to the trench while the damn PKM kept shooting at us.
[02:09:16] I carried Tony Johnson back.
[02:09:18] The askers took Lieutenant Johnson and Doc Layton.
[02:09:22] Swenson loved back the rest of the equipment.
[02:09:26] After six hours, it was over.
[02:09:30] And I felt empty as a balloon without air.
[02:09:34] Half as took me aside.
[02:09:37] They've gone to a better place.
[02:09:39] He said, don't cry.
[02:09:41] The askers will take it as weakness.
[02:09:45] No way I was going to cry.
[02:09:46] But at that moment I didn't feel like killing anyone either.
[02:09:49] I wasn't angry or bitter.
[02:09:52] Just deflated and exhausted as though I had run a marathon and couldn't remember why I
[02:09:55] wanted to do it.
[02:09:57] I was too damn tired to stand.
[02:10:01] Still taking fire, we left the valley in a convoy of about four trucks.
[02:10:05] Rod stopped near the casualty collection point where we talked with Captain Kaplan and
[02:10:10] and Corporal Norman who had walked down from their observation posts.
[02:10:14] Staff sergeants Valdez and Miller radio that they were coming down from their perch
[02:10:19] too.
[02:10:20] Everyone was accounted for.
[02:10:22] We had shuddled in and out of the valley five, six or seven times that morning, depending
[02:10:26] on which one of us you asked.
[02:10:28] It was all a fog.
[02:10:31] No senior American officer or pursuit force had come forward from camp, Joyce.
[02:10:38] Captain Swenson said he would try to wrap things up.
[02:10:41] Half as an eye climbed into the back of an afghan truck carrying my dead brothers.
[02:10:48] I held staff sergeant can't afic with my left hand and Lieutenant Johnson rested on
[02:10:52] my right arm.
[02:10:55] As we bounced down the track, we passed villagers returning to Gangegall.
[02:11:01] Some started to laugh, pointing out my dead friends.
[02:11:05] I reached for my rifle.
[02:11:08] Don't half as said holding my arm.
[02:11:12] Not worth it.
[02:11:17] When we arrived back at Camp Joyce, I walked into the battalion aid station to get body
[02:11:22] bags.
[02:11:24] I made your Williams rushed up and clutched at my body armor.
[02:11:27] Tell me they're not all dead, not all of them.
[02:11:30] They're all dead.
[02:11:31] I said removing his hand.
[02:11:35] I walked outside where my friend Sergeant Charles Bokus was waiting.
[02:11:42] Bokus said, I'll give you a hand.
[02:11:46] We walked back to the bodies.
[02:11:50] Sergeant Major Jimmy Carbello, the top and listed men at Joyce, hastened up and put his
[02:11:56] hands firmly on my shoulders trying to steer me away.
[02:11:58] You don't have to do this devil dog.
[02:12:01] My guys will make sure it's done right.
[02:12:05] That wasn't how to end it.
[02:12:07] If I had died, I'd want Lieutenant Johnson and Staff Sergeant can't affect to put me in
[02:12:11] the bag.
[02:12:12] I'll finish it.
[02:12:13] I said.
[02:12:16] Bokus and I carried the bodies back to the freezers, take off their battle gear and dig through
[02:12:25] their pockets, marking items for shipment to their families.
[02:12:29] I take a Chevron from Staff Sergeant Kenneth Fick and Attach it to my dog tags.
[02:12:35] We had started out not liking each other a thousand years ago.
[02:12:49] We cleaned them up as best we can.
[02:12:52] Wiping the blood and dirt off their faces, taking off their field gear, straightening
[02:12:57] out their camouflage uniforms and placing each in a black body bag.
[02:13:05] We marked the name at the head, draping American flag over each bag, bow our heads in prayer,
[02:13:16] and drive them out to the Heelow Bat.
[02:13:27] Gone to go was one of the deadliest small arms battles of the Afghanistan war.
[02:13:35] We lost five advisors in addition to T Monti, Army Sergeant first class Westbrook had died
[02:13:42] of his wounds.
[02:13:44] Eight aspires were killed in 13 series, they wounded by rifle machine gun and RPG fire.
[02:13:51] Enemy losses to small arms were probably a similar number.
[02:13:54] There were no IDs, no bombs, and very few artillery shells.
[02:14:00] All its caused most of the casualties, Gange Gahl was a mountain fight from an earlier
[02:14:05] century.
[02:14:14] And it's a fight from an earlier century, but uh...
[02:14:42] That's something's don't change.
[02:14:45] That's a fact.
[02:14:52] Yeah it was a...
[02:14:54] God.
[02:14:58] You know I say it and I don't think people understand it, but you know I might not physically
[02:15:03] die that day, but I died.
[02:15:09] Right there next to them.
[02:15:10] I mean you talk about, you know.
[02:15:18] I mean it's one thing to lose one person, but everybody, I mean it's...
[02:15:28] I mean, that's the worst case scenario.
[02:15:34] You're living it.
[02:15:35] You know I mean you're literally...
[02:15:37] You don't even have anybody from your own team to put your dead on the bird.
[02:15:44] You know.
[02:15:45] And you know.
[02:15:49] How old are you at this point?
[02:15:51] 21.
[02:15:53] 21 years old.
[02:15:54] 21.
[02:15:57] 21.
[02:15:57] You know I don't know if it talks about it in the book, you know.
[02:16:05] I tried to get that with my teammates.
[02:16:09] I went straight from there and I went to...
[02:16:11] So the afghan side.
[02:16:15] And I did it with all their guys too.
[02:16:19] And usually what they do with their guys is they just call the families and they got
[02:16:24] so many days to come and get them.
[02:16:26] And I wasn't allowed that.
[02:16:27] I went back and I took body bags up there and we gave them the exact same respect
[02:16:31] that we gave my guys.
[02:16:33] We put them into freezers until our family's came and got them.
[02:16:37] And you know I didn't go...
[02:16:40] I didn't go start worrying about my stuff until we take care of all the guys, you know.
[02:16:47] And it's just...
[02:16:49] It's...
[02:16:50] It's a long day.
[02:16:52] It's a long day.
[02:16:57] And I mean...
[02:17:04] You're just like okay.
[02:17:09] You still have a job to do.
[02:17:11] Yeah, so I don't know if it talks about it in there but they tried to put me on the helicopter
[02:17:16] with them to go back to a bargroom and then wanted me to fly home to do the ramp ceremony
[02:17:22] and wanted me to fly home with them.
[02:17:28] And I actually put them on there and I told them I would be right back and I knew those
[02:17:34] birds had to take off the same words.
[02:17:36] The PJ's weren't going to sit on the fly line very long.
[02:17:39] And I just made sure that I knew that they took off before I got around anybody else
[02:17:43] because I mean they were dead.
[02:17:45] I mean I still had guys that still needed me.
[02:17:50] And they didn't need me anymore.
[02:17:53] And so I knew my Afghan soldiers needed me.
[02:17:59] They needed to see that they weren't alone.
[02:18:01] They needed to see that we're in this together.
[02:18:05] And that was what mattered to me.
[02:18:09] But the guys I still had lives.
[02:18:12] How did the Afghan year afghan soldiers respond to this whole situation?
[02:18:20] Sometimes in Iraq there'd be a mass casualty like this and we'd lose a whole.
[02:18:25] There was actually a nirmati.
[02:18:26] We lost a whole battalion.
[02:18:28] They all left.
[02:18:29] Yeah they quit.
[02:18:30] Yeah.
[02:18:31] Where were your guys?
[02:18:32] How did they infect them?
[02:18:34] I mean they stuck it out.
[02:18:38] They stuck it out.
[02:18:44] They did.
[02:18:45] I mean I'm telling you they are some of the most incredible human beings I've ever seen.
[02:18:48] You know we come in and deploy.
[02:18:50] Were there for a certain amount of time they lived forever.
[02:18:53] And they responded.
[02:18:55] I mean they got their shit together.
[02:19:00] And we were back in the fight three days later.
[02:19:07] And they don't get to respond.
[02:19:08] They don't get to support we do.
[02:19:11] They don't get anything we get.
[02:19:15] And it's just you know but we stuck together you know they help me they help me get through it.
[02:19:23] And I hope I helped them but I think the most incredible thing was it was at that point
[02:19:27] that they brought me into their I was accepted as one of them.
[02:19:33] And that was probably the most rewarding piece of it to me you know.
[02:19:38] Was it I I had finally proven myself to them that that I was one of them.
[02:19:43] And the point was an over yet.
[02:19:50] And you know there was more fighting to be done.
[02:19:57] Going back to the book army and army convoy had been ambushed north of Monti.
[02:20:02] Lieutenant current captain Brian the company commander were on their way to assist.
[02:20:07] I looked to Colonel you who knotted an agreement minutes later.
[02:20:11] And the boss staff sergeant Richards and some of the Colonel's guys that came with him.
[02:20:16] A dozen ass cars.
[02:20:18] And I were headed out the gate.
[02:20:24] Basically what you run into is there's a huge kind of what somebody hit an IED.
[02:20:29] Is that what it happened to us?
[02:20:31] They ambushed.
[02:20:32] And they ambushed.
[02:20:33] And they blew the Django trucks up and blocked the road.
[02:20:36] They intertwined those Django trucks in between the US convoy and it's so stupid.
[02:20:43] And so the Django truck is blown up and it's blocking the road.
[02:20:46] So guess what happens to the rest of them?
[02:20:48] They're all certain.
[02:20:49] And you can't go around it because it's about a 250 foot drop off into the Kuhnara river on the side.
[02:20:55] So they're stuck on the side of this and I've been listening to it on the radio for a long time.
[02:21:01] And I knew they were going to get slaughtered.
[02:21:03] You weren't just going to sit there and they had buttoned up.
[02:21:07] So that's what you were talking about earlier.
[02:21:08] You buttoned up and you wait.
[02:21:09] Well now they're going to maneuver on the road.
[02:21:11] Yep.
[02:21:11] And that's what they were doing.
[02:21:12] And that's what they were doing.
[02:21:13] So the guys in the Django trucks had jumped out.
[02:21:16] And I kept asking over the radio.
[02:21:19] You know, I could monitor.
[02:21:21] And I kept asking over the radio.
[02:21:22] And I could see the smoke from where I was at.
[02:21:24] And I kept asking over the radio as a clip platoon.
[02:21:27] And I kept combat logistics platoon.
[02:21:29] And I kept asking over the radio.
[02:21:31] How many rounds have you fired?
[02:21:32] Because I was afraid they're going to get low and ammo.
[02:21:34] Zero.
[02:21:36] Damn.
[02:21:38] So that's when you roll out.
[02:21:42] You get out there.
[02:21:44] And this is three days after, again, you go.
[02:21:46] Damn.
[02:21:48] PKMs and AKs were hammering down on this mess with little return fire.
[02:21:53] It'd be crazy to drive into that tangle of vehicles.
[02:21:56] Is it bocus or bocus?
[02:21:57] Socus.
[02:21:58] Bocus was on the mark 19 on our truck. He couldn't shoot because the angle's a fire.
[02:22:03] Richard stayed in the driver's seat while I advanced on foot.
[02:22:06] By bounds into the wreckage.
[02:22:08] Our ass cars run ran forward with us.
[02:22:10] But their light M16s didn't impress the Taliban machine gun crew.
[02:22:14] I was quickly pinned behind us disabled truck.
[02:22:16] Looking up.
[02:22:17] I could see the PKM was shooting from a thick stone house 200 meters up slope.
[02:22:21] I executed to have a target.
[02:22:23] I excited to have a target so close.
[02:22:25] I fired about five shells from my grenade launcher before my common sense kicked in.
[02:22:29] What am I doing?
[02:22:30] I thought I'm outmatched by a machine gun.
[02:22:32] But there's an army.
[02:22:33] Humvee sitting next to me with no one in the 50 calter it.
[02:22:37] You run over there.
[02:22:38] Man, you're 50 cala yelled.
[02:22:39] Where logistics came the muffled reply.
[02:22:41] We don't fight.
[02:22:42] Some supply guys can't wait to get into the action.
[02:22:45] But not this gang.
[02:22:46] I wasn't worried though.
[02:22:47] Wild man, crew would soon have air on station.
[02:22:51] The bodies were scattered all over the road all civilian's line face down next.
[02:22:56] To me alongside the army truck was a skinny teenager and a t-shirt bleeding from
[02:23:00] Shrapnel, his chest and his left arm.
[02:23:02] He was a pathetic sight sprawled on his back and his filthy brown shorts.
[02:23:06] An orange tip needle protruding from above his heart and a plastic stopper shoved above his
[02:23:11] left nostril.
[02:23:12] He didn't weigh as much as I ate in a day.
[02:23:14] His hands and feet were uglier than the dirt from his efforts to crawl out of the line of fire.
[02:23:19] He wasn't old enough to grow a beard but he had a full shock of black hair.
[02:23:23] Not a bad looking kid.
[02:23:25] Once he was cleaned up at the aid station and had some ice cream he'd be okay.
[02:23:29] I felt good.
[02:23:30] In fact, I was pumped.
[02:23:32] I'd applied dozens of turnicits but this was the first time I had to smell death hiss out.
[02:23:36] And that's because you needled him down.
[02:23:38] And I didn't cover that part.
[02:23:39] You had a sucking chest wound and you gave him a decompression.
[02:23:43] I had saved a human being.
[02:23:46] A poor, scrawny kid, eaking out a living by driving a banged-up truck past known ambush sites.
[02:23:52] What he eventually joined the Taliban and betray an American convoy?
[02:23:56] I had no idea.
[02:23:58] Sure, some of the villagers at Gangegall had been real prex but why should I hold it against this kid?
[02:24:03] I ran back down the road, hoisted up another wounded truck driver and carried him back.
[02:24:08] Then I stopped to check on the skinny kid.
[02:24:10] I wanted to pat him on the shoulder to make myself feel good for my supposedly wonderful deed.
[02:24:15] Only he was dead.
[02:24:18] He had blood to death from the wound to his left arm.
[02:24:21] The crew in the army truck had led him bleed out, not five feet away because he was an Afghan and they were afraid.
[02:24:27] Damn it.
[02:24:30] The Afghan drivers were all huddered together in a ditch by the river.
[02:24:34] The ambush had been sprung about 90 minutes earlier.
[02:24:37] By now they had pissed themselves of a dry and had nowhere to go.
[02:24:40] I banged my rifle on, I banged my rifle butt on an army truck, yelling to the soldiers to open up.
[02:24:46] At least give me some water for those poor bastards I shouted.
[02:24:50] A sheep is medic, got out of the truck with several bottles of water, and his med pack and ran over the ditch.
[02:24:56] I knelt there looking at the bloodstained stains from the kid right beside the truck door.
[02:25:01] I banged on the steel door again.
[02:25:04] It opened a crack.
[02:25:06] The guy who I said to the captain inside.
[02:25:11] As the traffic jam was sorted out, Colonel UNI walked back to our home, the dead keep kid lay on the hood,
[02:25:21] and rather than ride to base with a corpse between us, we wedge the body in the trunk.
[02:25:26] Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you want to cry.
[02:25:31] Before dropping a shell down a mortar tube,
[02:25:35] the gunner levels the bubbles on his sight.
[02:25:38] If he loses the bubbles, then the tube is pointed at a crazy ankle.
[02:25:43] After gonging a gall, I was losing the bubble.
[02:25:50] So investigations take place.
[02:25:54] There's accusations and excuses.
[02:25:58] One of the terms that was in there that was being said that there was poor battle management.
[02:26:04] And you're talking to a psychologist on site at this time.
[02:26:09] And you know, that's some of the support you were talking about that we might have that an Afghan kid in the Afghan army might not have.
[02:26:16] And it was a feat.
[02:26:17] Was it a female captain, Katie Cobb?
[02:26:21] And she was making some assessments back to the book.
[02:26:26] It's true I didn't feel connected with others.
[02:26:28] The Oscars were smoking hash, jabbering on their cell phones and wandering around in flipflops.
[02:26:33] The American soldiers were playing video games, stuffing themselves at dinner and laughing too loudly at nothing.
[02:26:38] We weren't fighting a war.
[02:26:39] We were holding a few acres of dirt while the war swirled around outside our barbed wire.
[02:26:45] There were douchemen in every valley.
[02:26:47] Drink tea with the villagers, pay $40 for a chicken.
[02:26:50] We were in Kumar to fight.
[02:26:52] Let's get it on.
[02:26:54] That was my attitude.
[02:26:55] The psychologist insisted that I go back to the states for treatment.
[02:26:59] No thanks.
[02:27:00] As a captain, she had the rank to make a recommendation stick, but she wanted my agreement.
[02:27:05] So she challenged me.
[02:27:07] We would play a game of ping pong.
[02:27:09] If I won, I could stay.
[02:27:11] I lost by one point.
[02:27:14] She was very good.
[02:27:16] And she really was worried about me and cared about me.
[02:27:19] I knew that.
[02:27:21] It was my time to go home.
[02:27:26] A ping pong game?
[02:27:28] Was she like a legit ping pong player?
[02:27:29] No, I thought I had her.
[02:27:32] You know, I was either.
[02:27:35] You know, I...
[02:27:38] It was probably best I went home.
[02:27:41] I would say if it wasn't...
[02:27:46] If I didn't go home, I would have never came home.
[02:27:50] You know, I was just getting well on tighter.
[02:27:55] I mean, I was...
[02:28:00] You couldn't tell me.
[02:28:02] You couldn't tell me.
[02:28:04] I wasn't...
[02:28:06] I wasn't command.
[02:28:07] You couldn't tell me what to do?
[02:28:09] You were out of control.
[02:28:10] I was...
[02:28:11] I was out of control.
[02:28:12] Yeah.
[02:28:13] I mean, I wasn't doing anything.
[02:28:15] Nothing, you know, it morally unethical, right?
[02:28:18] Nothing I was doing my job.
[02:28:20] As far as like, commanding me, you couldn't...
[02:28:24] You were going to do what you were going to do.
[02:28:26] Yeah, absolutely.
[02:28:27] I mean, I was at the point to where I had no...
[02:28:31] I had no...
[02:28:33] I didn't trust my command.
[02:28:35] I didn't trust anybody.
[02:28:36] I mean, it was...
[02:28:38] I was a...
[02:28:39] You know, not a one man.
[02:28:40] I was a three-man operation, right?
[02:28:42] I mean, I was a...
[02:28:43] But I was a one-man record group, right?
[02:28:45] Like I was...
[02:28:46] I mean, I was going to do...
[02:28:48] You weren't going to tell me anything.
[02:28:50] I mean, there was...
[02:28:51] It was pretty bad.
[02:28:52] I mean, I was fighting.
[02:28:53] You know, the first fight...
[02:28:55] You know...
[02:28:56] How much longer was it that you actually lost the ping pong match and got sent home?
[02:29:02] I lost it, right?
[02:29:03] A couple days before Thanksgiving.
[02:29:05] Okay.
[02:29:06] So it was like you were there for another...
[02:29:08] What's Thanksgiving now?
[02:29:09] And...
[02:29:10] Yeah, it's in the...
[02:29:11] And we fought our ass off.
[02:29:12] That whole time.
[02:29:13] The whole time.
[02:29:14] It was...
[02:29:15] It was...
[02:29:16] We fought.
[02:29:17] Her ass is off.
[02:29:18] Almost every single day.
[02:29:20] And sometimes...
[02:29:21] Three and four times a day.
[02:29:23] Well, that momentum that you talked about in the Valley...
[02:29:26] They built it.
[02:29:27] It keeps coming, right?
[02:29:28] It keeps coming because right after that, they overrun, Keating.
[02:29:31] Right after...
[02:29:32] I mean, it's all that...
[02:29:33] All of it, you know, they just built so much momentum.
[02:29:36] I mean, they were hammering us.
[02:29:37] I mean, hammering us every day.
[02:29:39] And...
[02:29:41] You know, it was...
[02:29:43] It was pretty bad.
[02:29:47] So you get sent home.
[02:29:48] Here we go back to the book.
[02:29:49] When I got home in December, I felt like I landed on the moon.
[02:29:52] Everyone around me was excited about football, Christmas, and other normal things.
[02:29:57] I was looking at the clapboard houses and the cars thinking,
[02:30:00] Man, that's so flimsy.
[02:30:02] They wouldn't give cover worth shit in a firefight.
[02:30:05] It was an exposed feeling.
[02:30:07] And where were my machine guns?
[02:30:09] I found my old pistol and kept it around like a rabbit's foot.
[02:30:12] But I missed my 240s and my 50 calves something awful.
[02:30:15] It seems weird, I'm sure.
[02:30:18] But I really just wasn't buying that there wasn't some enemy about to come over the green hills.
[02:30:24] And I felt so unprepared.
[02:30:26] I wouldn't be able any good to protect anybody.
[02:30:29] I was soon sent off to Fort Thomas, Kentucky, for PTSD therapy.
[02:30:33] Maybe that would settle me down and let me get some sleep and stop feeling so depressed and angry at every little thing.
[02:30:39] Some guys really go nuts when they come back.
[02:30:42] And I wasn't in danger of that, but I could feel the kind of crazy things that maybe got the better of them.
[02:30:47] You're over there long enough and under such constant battle stress that it resets all your settings the way way into the red.
[02:30:57] And they're very hard to set back.
[02:30:59] The main thing knowing was that I didn't get my friends out as I had promised.
[02:31:08] I'd spent a good part of my 21 years being pretty critical of other people who failed at their responsibilities.
[02:31:15] And now it was all coming back on me in a big dump truck.
[02:31:30] Every day the psychologist urged us to step back and identify why we were experiencing negative emotions.
[02:31:36] In other words, take a minute to really be conscious of the emotion instead of just letting it seep in.
[02:31:41] Don't let your mind stay in neutral watch your thoughts.
[02:31:45] And by the way, I'm hitting this stuff pretty hard because a lot of people that listen to this podcast are thinking these things right here.
[02:31:54] But I think that's an important part.
[02:31:56] Don't let your mind stay in neutral watch your thoughts.
[02:31:59] Refusing to get out of bed or go to work or smile to others are all decisions.
[02:32:04] Find the reasons those decisions and turn negative feelings into positive actions.
[02:32:09] It's not enough to identify why you're feeling bad.
[02:32:11] It's about having the character to do something positive to take up that space.
[02:32:15] Don't wallow in your misery, which is just selfish.
[02:32:18] Childish self-absorption.
[02:32:20] It was all good stuff.
[02:32:22] All I ever need is a good operating manual.
[02:32:25] So are you getting some good instructions?
[02:32:27] Yeah.
[02:32:28] No, it was.
[02:32:29] You know, I can't say that the PTSD center helped me,
[02:32:32] but what it did is it educated me.
[02:32:34] It educated me on why I was feeling the way I was.
[02:32:38] And what it was.
[02:32:40] And then therefore that helped me deal with it, right?
[02:32:44] It kind of like, you know, you know, kind of like how you know you're a diet that works for you.
[02:32:52] You know, like you can look in the mirror, how you feel after you eat it, right?
[02:32:57] It's kind of the same thing.
[02:32:58] Like it educates you on why your body's doing this or why you're having this reaction.
[02:33:04] And you know, and that it's normal and it's just, you know, and this is why it's doing it.
[02:33:08] And this is how you help counter it, right?
[02:33:10] And that was kind of, that was kind of what it did for me.
[02:33:14] It didn't, I don't think it really, it didn't, it didn't fix anything.
[02:33:18] It just educated me on what the problem was.
[02:33:20] So you could start to identify the problem.
[02:33:22] Yes, so I could identify the problem.
[02:33:24] I could identify why I was feeling this way.
[02:33:27] And then, you know, I could make decisions based of how I could,
[02:33:31] when you look at the root of that problem, was it that feeling of like, hey,
[02:33:35] the promise that you made was I'll get you guys out.
[02:33:38] I mean, no, I mean, the facts of the facts are like here's,
[02:33:41] here's, I get so frustrated with people who want to like,
[02:33:44] like, I'm a factual guy, like, you know, I mean, I,
[02:33:47] I'm, everything to me is black and white.
[02:33:49] And I'm, I'm a fact based like I, I went in that day to go get my teammates out.
[02:33:54] I failed.
[02:33:57] I failed. There's no, you can't jump around.
[02:34:00] You can't ignore the facts of what happened. I failed.
[02:34:03] I failed miserably.
[02:34:08] And so, you know, if you, if I tell myself, I didn't fail,
[02:34:14] I lie in line with myself.
[02:34:17] So for me, you know, I failed.
[02:34:22] I was tested and I failed.
[02:34:25] And now I have to figure out what to do with that.
[02:34:29] And that's part of it.
[02:34:32] You know, and that's why I get so upset about like, you know,
[02:34:36] the counselors or whatever, right?
[02:34:38] No, well, you didn't fail. No, no, no, no.
[02:34:39] Like, as soon as they say that to me, I'm done.
[02:34:43] I'm done, because no, that's, I'm not going to lie to myself.
[02:34:46] I failed and now I need to deal with it.
[02:34:49] I need to deal with it.
[02:34:52] You know, I can't lie.
[02:34:55] And that's, and I mean, look, I mean, it's, I always say the equivalent
[02:35:01] to try to make people understand like how, how I feel about it
[02:35:05] and the situation is, it would be like, you inside of a house
[02:35:11] and your family's there.
[02:35:13] And the house catches on fire.
[02:35:16] And you end up getting out, thinking that maybe they're all out.
[02:35:21] And you can't get back in there and they all burn the dust.
[02:35:26] That's kind of the equivalent of it.
[02:35:29] And, you know, so I just have to deal with it.
[02:35:32] And, you know, I deal with the best I can every day.
[02:35:36] I, I learned from it.
[02:35:38] I try to turn it into something good.
[02:35:41] But at the end of the day, I still failed.
[02:35:44] And, you know, that's, that's the way it goes.
[02:35:50] And, you know, that's the way it goes.
[02:36:00] Going back to the book, man.
[02:36:04] After my two months at the clinic, my, my enlistment term was,
[02:36:08] in fact, coming to an end.
[02:36:11] It didn't take a genius to see it.
[02:36:13] I'd be, and I'd end up behind a desk.
[02:36:16] So I chose not to re-enlist.
[02:36:18] But I was in the court, so it hurt.
[02:36:21] Before joining the court, I had three concussions,
[02:36:24] mononucleosis, and an operation on my right knee.
[02:36:27] When I musted out four years later, I'd added two operations on my right hand,
[02:36:31] a right rotator cuff operation, a fourth concussion from an RPG, a dislocated shoulder,
[02:36:36] and two herniated discs from clumsily lifting the dead and wounded.
[02:36:41] One vertebrae, given way in Gonjago, when I picked up an asc orange slipped
[02:36:45] mud under him. I have no idea when the second vertebrae went out during the battle.
[02:36:49] I had that nick in my arm from a bullet or shrapnel, but that hadn't been anything.
[02:36:54] I was in deep, at decent shape for construction work.
[02:36:57] I figured.
[02:37:03] After the PTSD clinic, I returned to Kentucky.
[02:37:07] It was the winter of 2010, and I wore myself up by slipping back into hard drinking,
[02:37:13] and I had to go to the beach night.
[02:37:16] I hadn't seen an active duty grunt in months.
[02:37:19] Fabio and Rodriguez Chavez were due to receive the Navy crosses at the Marine Corps base in
[02:37:24] Conoco, but I couldn't get enough time off to fly back east, where you work in construction at this point.
[02:37:29] And your boys are getting Navy crosses. You can't get time off from work.
[02:37:35] Swenson and I had been recommended for the Medal of Honor.
[02:37:38] We knew that the award was usually downgraded upon review.
[02:37:43] When I drank, which was too much, I'd laugh at the absurdity.
[02:37:48] I'd screwed up big time. My achievement was losing my brothers.
[02:37:58] The Marine Corps would come to its senses, and I'd never hear another word from another devil dog.
[02:38:05] I had no idea what was in front of me, and I didn't care.
[02:38:12] I couldn't take a walk.
[02:38:15] Turn on the TV or read a book to distract my mind.
[02:38:18] The emptiness of my life was the dark all around me with nothing to see in any direction.
[02:38:23] Four years ago, I'd left the farm for an adventure in a new beginning.
[02:38:27] The courage shaped me and I had arrived in Afghanistan.
[02:38:30] Confident, I do well in combat.
[02:38:32] Sure enough, up at Monti, I had emerged as the young gun.
[02:38:37] Every day brought fun, danger against the backdrop of spectacular mountains.
[02:38:42] It was fun stuff, shooting thousands of rounds, not losing many people, and seeing the damage you inflicted.
[02:38:49] There was no weapon I couldn't handle, and my team trusted me to get them out of any hotspot.
[02:38:54] My cockiness put us in.
[02:38:57] But when it counted most, I wasn't with them.
[02:39:02] They weren't trained to do my job.
[02:39:05] Gunny Johnson didn't spend every day behind a 240.
[02:39:09] Staff Sergeant can't have been comfortable with weapons or angles of fire.
[02:39:13] Doc Layton wasn't a fighter in Lieutenant Johnson didn't adjust fire missions.
[02:39:18] We aren't worried.
[02:39:19] We know you'll get us out of anything goes bad, Meyer.
[02:39:24] Well, I didn't, Lieutenant.
[02:39:27] I was a load of worthless shit, not there when you needed me.
[02:39:33] Around three in the morning, I pulled my truck into the driveway of a shop owned by my high school friend, Derek Yates, and cut the engine.
[02:39:43] I turned on the cab light and fished out by cell phone.
[02:39:48] It wasn't right to burn my dad, but I wanted to connect one last time with someone.
[02:39:54] I pecked out of text message to my friends and and Toby.
[02:39:59] They had known me since I was a toddler, but they didn't know me that well did they.
[02:40:05] Here I was, back where I had started with an aluminum bracelet with two names on each wrist.
[02:40:15] That's what I had done with my life.
[02:40:18] Lost four brothers.
[02:40:21] I can't do it anymore.
[02:40:31] I typed.
[02:40:36] I reached into the glove compartment where I kept my clock.
[02:40:41] I always kept a full magazine with a round chambered in the pistol.
[02:40:46] A clock doesn't have a safety.
[02:40:50] You pull the trigger and the weapon fires.
[02:40:59] I stuck the gun to my head and squeezed the trigger.
[02:41:07] I clicked.
[02:41:11] Nothing.
[02:41:13] Not a.
[02:41:16] No round in the chamber.
[02:41:18] As you can imagine, I sat there quite sobered up and in double shock.
[02:41:27] Suicide is terminal self-revolition.
[02:41:33] I was mixed up, but I knew my team would be disappointed in me.
[02:41:40] Staff Sergeant Kenneth Beck would give me hell, which is where I would be.
[02:41:44] Bad ending.
[02:41:47] That was not going to happen.
[02:41:53] But who it unloaded my pistol?
[02:41:57] Right on the spot, I knew who had done it.
[02:42:01] Have I ever talked to that person about it?
[02:42:04] No.
[02:42:07] I put away the pistol and drove home.
[02:42:12] That night, I experienced no sudden change of direction in my life.
[02:42:17] I didn't know where I was headed in the future, but I knew I knew quitting wasn't right.
[02:42:25] Not that night.
[02:42:28] Not ever.
[02:42:35] You know, I had never told.
[02:42:44] I had never told anybody about that night until it was published in the book.
[02:42:51] I just felt like it was important to the story because I didn't want people to read the story.
[02:43:01] And then just think that it was all okay when I came home.
[02:43:04] I didn't want to give them that perspective and there are so many guys out there that write these books of the crazy shit that they do.
[02:43:11] But they never talk about what?
[02:43:14] What that crazy shit does to them.
[02:43:17] Yeah, they never talk about that.
[02:43:22] People read that and they're like, holy shit, that's crazy.
[02:43:27] I could never do that because I deal with problems.
[02:43:31] And it's like, we all do.
[02:43:35] And I had to put it in to, I wanted people to know that I'm just a human.
[02:43:41] I'm no different than them.
[02:43:42] And I, I felt like that I couldn't put in the, if you want to call it good stuff and not put in the bad stuff.
[02:43:52] It's, I'm sure there's some psychologists that could figure something out about this, but you got to the point, right?
[02:44:01] And you made the decision clearly.
[02:44:05] And you came out the other side by the grace of God, whoever knew you well enough to figure out that they needed to make sure you didn't have a loaded gun.
[02:44:18] But that's a message for anybody that feels like they're in the same situation you felt like you were in, which is that there's not not going to get any better.
[02:44:28] Is like, okay, come out the other side, man.
[02:44:32] Come out the other side. And it was like, I mean, like you said, it's not a sudden change in direction, but you, but you knew.
[02:44:42] I, uh, that you couldn't quit.
[02:44:44] I always like to say that, you know, sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere.
[02:44:50] And sometimes in the middle of nowhere you find yourself.
[02:44:54] And, uh, you know, I, uh, I, I, I had no idea what my life was going.
[02:45:00] I made a deal with myself, you know, I had set their, and, uh, I had said, if I'm going to keep living this life this way,
[02:45:10] rack, rack it back and get over with.
[02:45:15] But I said, if I ever put the car in drive, I'll never look back.
[02:45:19] And I said there, I'm not going to lie to you. I probably set there for five, ten minutes.
[02:45:23] And I had done it at my buddy's shop because I knew he'd be there eight o'clock in the morning and he could just find me.
[02:45:30] And, uh, I put it in drive and I just, I never look back, you know.
[02:45:37] I, you know, and it's, I'm lucky. I'm fortunate that the gun didn't go off, right?
[02:45:44] Um, but, um, you know, I think that, you know, you always got to hit that rock bottom, you know,
[02:45:53] I think that, and that was for me. That was it. That was the rock bottom.
[02:45:58] And, you know, it changed it.
[02:46:01] And, I mean, again, I just want to stress this as much as I can to, because I believe me, I, I hear from people,
[02:46:08] especially from veterans that are, that are walking this line, man. They're walking this line.
[02:46:14] And, if you're walking that line, hold it.
[02:46:19] Listen, it's not worth it. I mean, it's not like, you know, I had to change.
[02:46:25] Honestly, I had to change the way that I looked at life.
[02:46:29] The only problem there was is me.
[02:46:32] You know, instead of just facing it and saying, hey, look, I want to fix this problem.
[02:46:36] I was blaming everybody else for my problems.
[02:46:39] And what I had to do was I had to say, you know, okay, if, you know, if the things that I
[02:46:48] seen were so bad, I've seen what freedom cost first hand.
[02:46:54] That's what's got me there.
[02:46:57] So, if anything, I have more reason than anybody else in the face is playing it to go out and
[02:47:02] make the most of my life because I've seen it firsthand of what it cost.
[02:47:07] So, instead of walking around and feeling like, you know, I'm not feeling so far from my teammates,
[02:47:11] because they're in a better place. They don't feel anymore.
[02:47:15] I'm really just feeling so far from myself. And then by doing that, I'm sick.
[02:47:19] I'm wasting the sacrifices that they made on my behalf.
[02:47:23] And I had to change the way I looked at it.
[02:47:26] Instead of using it as my excuse, I had to use it as my fuel.
[02:47:31] And that's a choice.
[02:47:33] That is a conscious choice.
[02:47:35] You wake up every day and you decide how you look at the situation.
[02:47:39] You decide what you do with it.
[02:47:41] You decide whether you use it as your excuse to hold you back or you use it as your easy,
[02:47:45] you know, valve of heighten who you are or you use it as your fuel to go out and
[02:47:51] be the best that you can be.
[02:47:53] You decide that nobody does. Nobody else does.
[02:47:55] You do every day.
[02:47:57] And it is a conscious choice.
[02:48:00] I mean, I still deal with it, but I still make the choice.
[02:48:05] That's awesome.
[02:48:08] That's awesome.
[02:48:09] And anybody that's listening, like I said, anybody that's listening,
[02:48:13] and that's walking that line.
[02:48:15] There you go.
[02:48:16] Make the right choice.
[02:48:18] Make the right choice.
[02:48:19] Make the right choice.
[02:48:20] Make the right choice.
[02:48:21] And you know what the right choice is.
[02:48:24] Yeah, I mean, you're talking about how much and I feel this too.
[02:48:28] Like every day, how much am I letting down my friends that didn't come home?
[02:48:32] If I'm not doing everything I can to take advantage of the gift they gave me
[02:48:38] if to be sitting here right now.
[02:48:40] Right.
[02:48:41] I mean, I mean, I, any day that I don't want to go on and push on for myself,
[02:48:45] I can look down.
[02:48:47] I bet you anything.
[02:48:48] I got four reasons right here that would switch me one day.
[02:48:52] They would switch me my worst day to have one more day.
[02:48:57] You know, and, and, and, and I just, you know, I, I'm not okay with letting their sacrifice
[02:49:07] to be wasted.
[02:49:08] I'm not okay with watching anybody else waste them.
[02:49:10] So why would I be okay with letting myself waste them?
[02:49:14] Well.
[02:49:21] And the other thing I want to say is like walking that line, I want to say this and get it out there.
[02:49:31] It's normal.
[02:49:32] It's normal.
[02:49:33] It doesn't mean you're weak.
[02:49:35] It doesn't.
[02:49:36] I want to get that, that's dig my out there.
[02:49:38] You know, if I want to get that off the books is it's, it is a normal.
[02:49:42] Like, I don't understand why why it's okay in our society or in the military.
[02:49:48] A guy breaks his leg.
[02:49:52] Okay.
[02:49:53] Do you go get, make him run tomorrow?
[02:49:57] You, he, he puts a cast on it.
[02:49:59] He, he, he rehabs it.
[02:50:02] It's the same thing with the mind.
[02:50:04] It's the same thing.
[02:50:06] It's the same thing.
[02:50:07] You go in and you watch.
[02:50:09] The, the people you have to worry about are the ones that go watch their close friends
[02:50:15] and they watch human beings and they watch this evil and people die and suffer and don't have a reaction.
[02:50:23] Those are the ones you have to worry about.
[02:50:27] It is a normal reaction to a not normal situation and it's okay.
[02:50:33] It's okay.
[02:50:34] It is 100% okay.
[02:50:39] Absolutely, man.
[02:50:41] Absolutely.
[02:50:46] As you, we mentioned quickly, you know, there was some buzz possibly about about you getting metal
[02:50:53] on him.
[02:50:54] Yeah.
[02:50:55] And, but you know how it goes.
[02:50:57] Like it was all, I didn't believe it.
[02:50:59] I never, I never had any idea.
[02:51:02] You know, you hear talk about it, silver star metal bar, navy cross, whatever right.
[02:51:10] I didn't care.
[02:51:11] I didn't care.
[02:51:12] I, I, I promised the last thing that I ever thought about was an award.
[02:51:18] An award.
[02:51:20] That's the last thing.
[02:51:24] Well, you get to prove.
[02:51:28] And, going back to the book when the president hung that metal around my neck.
[02:51:34] I felt gloom.
[02:51:36] I couldn't smile and I said nothing.
[02:51:39] I gave no remarks and avoided the press as a Marine.
[02:51:44] You either bring your team home alive or you die trying.
[02:51:50] My country was recognizing me for being a failure.
[02:51:56] And for the worst day of my life.
[02:51:59] The Marine common done general genome Amos.
[02:52:03] And general joseph done for the 10th of ceremony.
[02:52:06] Throughout the years after Gangegol, the Marine Corps leadership has provided consistent support,
[02:52:11] not just to me, but to all who fought there.
[02:52:15] The top and listed man in the Marine Corps, Sergeant Major Mike Barrett twice came to our farm to meet
[02:52:21] my dad and granddad and to encourage me.
[02:52:26] There's no such thing as a former Marine.
[02:52:30] Fifty years after they've left active duty, Marine still sign emails to each other with SF,
[02:52:36] Semper Fidelis, always faithful.
[02:52:39] Of course, we have among us those who failed themselves, their family and society.
[02:52:43] The fact remains though that the Corps expects every Marine to live by a set of core values,
[02:52:49] in turn, the Corps keeps its side to the bargain.
[02:52:53] You cannot ask anything more of an organization than that.
[02:52:57] Medal of Honor, given in the name of the Congress of the United States of America,
[02:53:01] symbolizes the courage and determination of our entire country.
[02:53:09] And speaking of the country you are in New York.
[02:53:17] I was in New York City at the Twin Tower Site Ground Zero with Gone Joshua Peterson.
[02:53:26] Someone I knew from my first days in the Corps.
[02:53:29] We were greeted by hundreds of police, firemen, construction workers, Wall Street guys and suits,
[02:53:35] city officials and the families of the fallen.
[02:53:40] Major I can't believe this scene Gone Peterson said,
[02:53:44] make sure your ribbons are squared away.
[02:53:49] We stood side by side.
[02:53:52] Two grunts and sharply ironed khakis waving like we had one in election.
[02:53:58] I thought of my sad, fumbling meetings with the family of team Monti,
[02:54:02] the families of team Monti, when I couldn't think of much to say.
[02:54:09] I was alive and their loved ones were not.
[02:54:13] Now here I was standing before a monument for 3,000 dead.
[02:54:19] I saw some big iron workers and hard hats standing off to one side.
[02:54:25] When the ceremony ended they sneaked me in onto a work elevator.
[02:54:31] Up we went to the top of the ride where we then climbed wooden ladders until we couldn't go any further.
[02:54:38] Then there weren't any guardrails.
[02:54:41] I stood there looking out at the most beautiful country in the world trying to make sense of my feelings.
[02:54:49] This was where it had all started.
[02:54:51] So many good people lost.
[02:54:53] The people had been working here and the people I had known who had not gone blindly into uniform.
[02:54:58] They had reasoned why Americans do that.
[02:55:05] But they had gone ahead to do and to die.
[02:55:12] An iron worker handed me a silver marker.
[02:55:19] Then I wrote on a girder for those who gave all.
[02:55:43] And that wraps up the book and you know you're talking about the wards and what happens and all that.
[02:56:05] And I wanted to say this as well on the battlefield. On that battlefield and on every battle.
[02:56:13] There are acts of extreme valor that no one will ever know about.
[02:56:19] I'm talking about an infinite number.
[02:56:26] No one's ever going to know about them.
[02:56:31] And it's important to know that our military men and women don't do what they do for metals or ribbons.
[02:56:37] They do what they do because they love freedom because they love America because they love their comrades and harms.
[02:56:44] And that right there is why our country thrives in battle.
[02:56:53] Not because of technological advances, not because of superior weaponry, not even the size of our military.
[02:57:01] It's because of the bond that is shared between warriors that is our real strength.
[02:57:12] And to call to that something that you represent in spades.
[02:57:20] And you know, I want to thank you for coming all the podcast.
[02:57:25] And sharing this incredible story and I know it's not only a story of you, but it's a story of all the men.
[02:57:33] American and Afghan as well that wrote in the battle with you that day and showed once again what it is that makes America a place of.
[02:57:43] Of hope and of freedom. It's because of.
[02:57:52] It's because of men, it's because of individual men that in their heart and even in the face of death.
[02:58:02] Actually live actually live the ideals of this great nation.
[02:58:11] Not only in their words, but in their actions in the way that they live and in the way that they died.
[02:58:26] God bless all.
[02:58:31] Incredible.
[02:58:34] You know what I mean? You're exactly right. I mean, there's so many stories that are, I mean, people have done.
[02:58:44] So many stories that people are doing such incredible stuff.
[02:58:48] And you know, it's, it's literally out of the love of another human being.
[02:58:55] It's literally out of love of making the world a better place.
[02:58:59] That's really, that's really all we do. It's all we do. I mean, we join nobody joins it. Okay.
[02:59:09] To go just shoot people or fight.
[02:59:12] They literally joined to try to make the world around them a better place.
[02:59:18] Whether it's passing out a, whether it's rendering aid to a civilian or to a, you know, a fellow American or a woman.
[02:59:28] Or whether it's taken out the bully that's inflicting fear.
[02:59:33] And that place, everything that we do is to try to make the world just a little bit better.
[02:59:43] That's it.
[02:59:46] You know, as I was reading about when, when you got back to your team, you could see, I mean, just from the way the guys were laid out.
[02:59:55] You know, staff sergeant was trying to get comms and trying to pass grids and dock was working on the boss.
[03:00:03] I mean, everyone was trying to make things happen.
[03:00:06] And who knows what those moments were like, you know, but there's moments of, there's, there's heroism there that we're never going to know about.
[03:00:13] No, I mean, I mean, 100% I mean, dock late was rendering aid, you know, what stopped them was because Fossail was with them.
[03:00:22] What stopped them, I've get into the road was Lieutenant Johnson got hit.
[03:00:30] And, uh, gunny can't have it in gunny Johnson, we're on either side, provide security while dock late and worked on him.
[03:00:37] And that was the meta-back we heard called in from gunny can't have it was trying to call that meta-back in for Lieutenant Johnson.
[03:00:43] Right here.
[03:00:44] And, um, you know, but they weren't going to leave him behind.
[03:00:53] Even more, even more of not leaving him behind.
[03:00:57] They weren't going to just throw him over shoulder and get him out.
[03:01:01] They were going to try to fix him.
[03:01:06] I mean, what do you say?
[03:01:09] I mean, you know, that right there, I mean, that right there's everything.
[03:01:15] I mean, you take that, you take, I mean, there's so many actions.
[03:01:19] I mean, I've watched people do such incredible things, such incredible things.
[03:01:24] That just make what I do, I mean, you know, it makes me look like I've done nothing.
[03:01:32] I've seen it, you know, people are incredible.
[03:01:37] Well, again, I mean, I can't thank you enough for coming on.
[03:01:43] Oh, thank you.
[03:01:44] On the podcast and hanging out and being out there and kicking ass and talking smack to people, I like that too.
[03:01:58] Uh, got a miss anything? Anything else?
[03:02:01] No, not me here.
[03:02:03] I thank you.
[03:02:04] Thank you covered at all.
[03:02:05] Thank you, guys.
[03:02:06] I thank you.
[03:02:07] I, uh, I thank you covered it.
[03:02:10] You know, echo.
[03:02:12] You, you got any questions for the man over there?
[03:02:15] No, usually I come up with some lighthearted question, but man, I'm out of words to be honest.
[03:02:22] We took that little break.
[03:02:25] Yeah.
[03:02:26] And echo's like, man, he's like, I just keep the, he's like, I'm sitting there thinking of myself.
[03:02:31] This really happened, man.
[03:02:32] And I'm like, yeah, I told I gave, I give echo heads up sometimes.
[03:02:35] You know, I say, hey, man, it's going to be heavy one or whatever.
[03:02:39] And I was like, told him this afternoon, I'm like, hey, man, it's going to be heavy one.
[03:02:43] You know, stand by and, you know, we're downstairs when we're taking that break.
[03:02:48] He's like, man.
[03:02:50] Oh, all this really happened.
[03:02:52] I said, yeah, and you know, who happened to the guy we're sitting in a room with.
[03:02:55] And his friends, like, that's what happened.
[03:02:57] So, uh, no, it early on when I started this podcast, I'd be reading a book from night from World War One.
[03:03:04] Yeah.
[03:03:05] Or I'd be reading a book from World War Two or feet in a number, whatever.
[03:03:08] And I'd like after, I don't know how many podcasts, but like seven or eight podcasts.
[03:03:12] I was like, hey, I just want to stop for a second.
[03:03:16] And remind everybody that the characters that I'm talking about in these books, these characters,
[03:03:22] they're not characters in a movie.
[03:03:24] They're, they're people.
[03:03:25] They're, they're humans.
[03:03:27] And this stuff that we're talking about really happened to these people.
[03:03:33] So, again, it's obviously having you sitting here and I was talking to you about when Colonel William Rieder was in here.
[03:03:41] And, you know, you're like, you're reading stuff that happened to him.
[03:03:45] He was tortured. He was mock execution. He had, he had.
[03:03:50] He was locked in a bamboo, a two-foot tall bamboo cage in the jungles in Vietnam.
[03:03:56] And he's got his legs and shackles.
[03:03:58] And he's trying to sleep and he's getting woke and up by the rats that are eating the wounds and his legs.
[03:04:04] And it's like, that's just inconceivable.
[03:04:09] I mean, it had happened.
[03:04:12] Yeah. I mean, that's, you know, I hear stories like that.
[03:04:16] And just, you know, that's real people.
[03:04:20] Yeah.
[03:04:21] These are real people.
[03:04:23] Just like us.
[03:04:25] Yeah. And honestly, man, I mean, I'm sure you saw me like sometimes, you know, I'm getting,
[03:04:32] I get emotional and I read your story.
[03:04:35] But why do I get emotional when I read your story?
[03:04:37] Because I'm thinking of everything I've been thinking of my friends.
[03:04:40] And I'm just like, it's, man, you know, it's, it's real.
[03:04:48] And for those of you people that are listening to this and I talked to, I addressed like the veterans out there.
[03:04:54] I'll bunch today.
[03:04:57] But, you know, to those of you that didn't have the opportunity to serve for whatever reason, you know,
[03:05:04] if I could relate something to you, it's like, yeah, these, these people, these lieutenants, these sergeants, these staff sergeants,
[03:05:13] and their people, man.
[03:05:16] They're people.
[03:05:17] Yeah.
[03:05:18] They're just, they're just people.
[03:05:20] Yeah.
[03:05:21] They're just people.
[03:05:23] I mean, that's, they're just people.
[03:05:26] They're just, and, you know, and I think that that's kind of what makes it hard for society of,
[03:05:32] is that they see so many of these movies.
[03:05:35] And they read these books and, you know, they read it, but what they don't understand is that somebody lived it.
[03:05:46] You know, and I think that that's a perspective that you always have to remind yourself of is that,
[03:05:51] yeah, you're reading it.
[03:05:53] And, but somebody lived it.
[03:05:55] You know, yeah.
[03:05:59] Then you kind of see, you know, on the news, like, oh, yeah, then the metal of honor ceremony and the pictures, you know, of you getting there.
[03:06:09] And, you know, you see the president putting it on.
[03:06:12] It's like, wow, that's so great at whatever.
[03:06:14] And, you know, what you don't, what we don't see, you know, people who haven't served.
[03:06:20] Oh, is like, what really happened to, to arrive at that one quote unquote glorious moment.
[03:06:28] You get the metal, oh my gosh, thank you, let's go party or so I don't know something, you know, like it's just,
[03:06:33] it's like, dang, but I did.
[03:06:35] Yeah, people think it's just so great, you know, and,
[03:06:38] I got, I despise everything that metal stands for.
[03:06:43] For me, you know, may not anybody else.
[03:06:47] But I, you know, when I put that metal around my neck,
[03:06:54] to me, it's literally, here's the stamp to show the world how bad I felt.
[03:07:02] Here's the, you know, that's why I don't wear it.
[03:07:09] I don't wear it because, you know, it's the worst day of my life.
[03:07:15] And, uh, I lost everything that day.
[03:07:18] I lost not just my team.
[03:07:20] I lost my career in the Marine Corps.
[03:07:23] I mean, everything that I wanted to be was gone within one day.
[03:07:29] And, you know, and then I get recognized for it.
[03:07:33] You know, so not only do you have to live with it,
[03:07:37] but now you have to live with it in the face of the nation.
[03:07:42] Well, from that perspective, from my perspective, looking at that,
[03:07:53] for one thing, the metal, yeah, I mean, it was put around your neck,
[03:07:59] but I believe that metal represents everyone that was with your team.
[03:08:04] Yeah.
[03:08:05] And you might have gotten the, the, the metal put around your neck,
[03:08:08] but it's, it represents that story.
[03:08:10] It's going to be told over and over again.
[03:08:13] And your name might be at the top of the list,
[03:08:15] but every name is going to be on that list.
[03:08:17] Everyone's going to know.
[03:08:18] And I mean, obviously, I can't imagine the burden that comes with that metal that you live with.
[03:08:26] But at the same time, being able to have that,
[03:08:32] have your brothers remembered.
[03:08:35] I think that it makes it worthwhile.
[03:08:38] And, and you know, and that's the piece of it, you're right.
[03:08:41] I mean, so on the selfish, you know, when I, what I just said was on the selfish side of it,
[03:08:46] right, that, that, that, that is for me.
[03:08:49] That, that is the only reason I did accept the metal was because I want my teammates to live on forever.
[03:08:56] I want people to know who they were, because the day that I stop speaking their name is the day they truly die.
[03:09:04] And I have an obligation that as long as I can still breathe that their names are still need to be told.
[03:09:12] And so that's what that metal allows me to do.
[03:09:16] And it is their metal.
[03:09:18] I mean, it's, it's for them.
[03:09:20] But, yeah, I mean, you know, you don't, it just goes against, you know,
[03:09:28] and I think the one thing, you know, that it's so hard for us to wrap around is,
[03:09:32] how many times are you training?
[03:09:36] Did, how many times did you sit like when you were training guys and this and that?
[03:09:40] How many times did you ever set them up for when they did everything that they could?
[03:09:45] They failed.
[03:09:49] It's beyond us with you.
[03:09:50] When I was running training, I did that all the time.
[03:09:53] Yeah.
[03:09:54] I'm not kidding.
[03:09:55] I mean, you can talk to anybody that went through training when I ran it.
[03:09:57] It was, it was just mayhem.
[03:09:59] And it was, you were going to, you know, you were going to carry out bodies.
[03:10:03] You had 16 guys in a hotel and you were going to be carrying it six bodies out.
[03:10:08] And you're going to be carrying them for four kilometers to a helicopter,
[03:10:11] extraque, which wasn't going to show up and you're going to have to go another six.
[03:10:14] It was brutal.
[03:10:16] Yeah.
[03:10:17] And there was times where I'd kill every single, you know, training.
[03:10:20] I'd kill every single seal because they were not doing what they were supposed to do.
[03:10:23] They were making mistakes.
[03:10:24] The leadership wasn't stepping up.
[03:10:25] I did that all the time.
[03:10:27] Yeah.
[03:10:28] I mean, I came back from Ramadi where when my guys were some really bad situations.
[03:10:37] And I wanted everyone to be ready for that, man.
[03:10:41] And like that was, it was, I mean, I was not, I mean, I came back from home and got put in charge of training.
[03:10:50] It was awesome.
[03:10:51] It was the best thing that I ever could have done for me.
[03:10:53] And I thought it was the best thing I could do for my teammates.
[03:10:56] It was to be like, okay, we're going to make this training hard really hard.
[03:11:00] And so probably not, you probably thought I was going to say never, but man, when I was running training.
[03:11:05] And that's awesome.
[03:11:07] And I had, I mean, I had many guys that came back from Iraq and Afghanistan.
[03:11:12] And would say like, yeah, amen.
[03:11:15] We got hammered hard in this situation.
[03:11:20] And we were ready.
[03:11:22] Nothing is bad as your situation, but yeah.
[03:11:26] But the mentality of it is, you know, there are some situations you're not going to win.
[03:11:31] There are some situations where you show up and you're not going to win.
[03:11:37] And that's against everything that we believe and everything that we're taught.
[03:11:42] You know, I mean that if we do our job and we do it right, and you still lose,
[03:11:50] it doesn't make sense.
[03:11:53] Well, that's something I've told many guys is, man, you, you can do everything right.
[03:11:59] You can make no mistakes, and you can still get killed.
[03:12:02] You can still, you can still, you can still, things, you know, there's decisions that you make on the battlefield.
[03:12:06] You say, if you say, okay, go left, you can go left and everyone could be great.
[03:12:10] And it's the best decision ever, you could say go left and everyone could die.
[03:12:13] And it's the worst decision ever.
[03:12:15] There's things that you can't control inside of combat.
[03:12:17] So you prepare and train as hard as you can.
[03:12:20] And the other thing you do is you get the leadership in the city of mentality that they're not going to put themselves.
[03:12:26] This is like, if my guys planned something that was stupid, I'd let him execute.
[03:12:30] This is in training.
[03:12:31] If they came up with a dumb plan, they were going to execute that plan.
[03:12:34] I wasn't going to stop them and they were going to get slaughtered.
[03:12:37] So they learned some lessons.
[03:12:39] But that's why that training is so important and it's important and everything.
[03:12:43] 100%. 100%. I appreciate you having me on.
[03:12:48] Yeah, man, thanks for coming on, brother.
[03:12:50] I think something like man is awesome.
[03:12:52] It's a human man.
[03:12:53] Yeah, right.
[03:12:54] I do not accept that from you.
[03:12:57] You are the man.
[03:12:59] All right, echo.
[03:13:00] Yes.
[03:13:01] Talk about something good.
[03:13:03] Sure, chill.
[03:13:04] It was a little bit.
[03:13:06] Okay, what do you mean?
[03:13:08] Okay, so it was shift gears kind of a rough transition.
[03:13:11] I'll let you know that we're like three hours plus right now.
[03:13:14] So you could do it quickly if you want.
[03:13:16] If I want, please.
[03:13:18] See how I kind of recommend it.
[03:13:20] Well, I feel like me and Dakota, we have some catching up to do.
[03:13:23] You guys have been talking.
[03:13:24] So, you know, I might drag this a little bit.
[03:13:26] No.
[03:13:27] Okay.
[03:13:28] So, origin mean.
[03:13:29] This is where you get jocco supplements, cruel oil.
[03:13:32] Join warfers.
[03:13:33] Free of joints.
[03:13:34] Free of joints.
[03:13:35] Yes.
[03:13:36] Important supplement.
[03:13:37] Yes.
[03:13:38] Important supplement.
[03:13:39] Yeah.
[03:13:40] Also, he has one called discipline to cognitive and physical enhancement supplement.
[03:13:47] Pre-workout.
[03:13:48] Pre-mission.
[03:13:49] So it's called.
[03:13:50] It's a good one.
[03:13:51] Also at origin.
[03:13:52] It's origin main.com main in the state.
[03:13:55] Not like the main one.
[03:13:56] Yeah.
[03:13:57] Yeah.
[03:13:58] It's good.
[03:13:59] Um, you got gues on there for jiu-jitsu.
[03:14:02] You trained jiu-jitsu right?
[03:14:03] I do.
[03:14:04] Yeah.
[03:14:05] So if you get the origin gui, those are all made in America.
[03:14:08] Everything in origin.
[03:14:09] You may get you an origin gui since our main american.
[03:14:12] You got to represent some American.
[03:14:14] Yeah.
[03:14:15] Yeah.
[03:14:16] I like it.
[03:14:17] Yeah.
[03:14:18] From the threads.
[03:14:19] From the content.
[03:14:20] By the way, the growth of the content in America.
[03:14:21] Not the kind of the import, the fact that we assemble it.
[03:14:24] Everything.
[03:14:25] From seed.
[03:14:26] What is it?
[03:14:27] From seed.
[03:14:28] From seed.
[03:14:29] From.
[03:14:30] To share.
[03:14:31] To share.
[03:14:32] I'm pretty good.
[03:14:33] Yeah.
[03:14:34] It was good.
[03:14:35] I liked it.
[03:14:36] They got some rash cards on there.
[03:14:37] Spats.
[03:14:38] Yeah.
[03:14:38] You got some of that.
[03:14:39] You got some of that.
[03:14:40] You know what?
[03:14:41] Spats are.
[03:14:42] Yeah.
[03:14:42] We didn't really either.
[03:14:43] We had to kind of.
[03:14:44] We had to research it.
[03:14:45] All right.
[03:14:46] That's bad.
[03:14:47] Here's the bottom one.
[03:14:48] There's pandex.
[03:14:49] There's pandex.
[03:14:50] They're tights.
[03:14:50] Basically.
[03:14:51] I'm a compression gui.
[03:14:52] Wait.
[03:14:53] Do you train at 10th planet?
[03:14:54] Do you train at some?
[03:14:55] Sometimes you see dudes down there.
[03:14:57] There's plainers.
[03:14:58] Yeah.
[03:14:59] Yeah.
[03:14:59] I always talk about them.
[03:15:00] Yeah.
[03:15:01] They're all about the spats.
[03:15:02] They're all about the spats.
[03:15:03] I was worried about.
[03:15:04] I was worried about using the word spats.
[03:15:06] I didn't sound like maybe with some kind of like.
[03:15:09] Yeah.
[03:15:10] Let's just say those out of kind of girlish.
[03:15:12] Like some girl that like like a girl would be like, oh, I'm going to
[03:15:15] Wait.
[03:15:16] Like I'm going to.
[03:15:17] You thought there were spanks.
[03:15:18] What are those?
[03:15:19] Because it sounds like spank.
[03:15:20] I don't know.
[03:15:21] What's that?
[03:15:22] Yeah.
[03:15:23] Spank's real tight.
[03:15:25] Like it's kind of like it's essentially compression.
[03:15:26] It is.
[03:15:27] It's compression.
[03:15:27] Yeah.
[03:15:28] It's like.
[03:15:29] Yeah.
[03:15:29] Yeah.
[03:15:30] Okay.
[03:15:31] They should be.
[03:15:32] They should be illegal.
[03:15:33] I figured out.
[03:15:34] They're illegal because it's like selling.
[03:15:37] It's falsetto.
[03:15:38] It's falsetto.
[03:15:39] Yeah.
[03:15:40] I was on.
[03:15:41] We were on like some kind of live broadcast.
[03:15:43] And someone.
[03:15:44] Spats is comes from what soldiers, cavalry soldiers in World War One.
[03:15:49] War like leggings.
[03:15:50] And they were called spats.
[03:15:51] And I was like, okay.
[03:15:52] It's cool.
[03:15:53] Well, we'll say it now.
[03:15:54] Yeah.
[03:15:55] How like it.
[03:15:55] There weren't really even laging there.
[03:15:56] Just like this lower.
[03:15:57] Even that lower part that covers the boot.
[03:15:59] Yeah.
[03:16:00] Yeah.
[03:16:01] Yeah.
[03:16:02] That's something else.
[03:16:04] What are those things called?
[03:16:05] Jibdo honor guard.
[03:16:06] You had to wear those things?
[03:16:07] No.
[03:16:08] I think they were actually called leggings.
[03:16:10] Wait.
[03:16:10] So we're unclear about what's going on.
[03:16:12] I know what spats are.
[03:16:13] I mean, I am.
[03:16:14] Yeah.
[03:16:14] Very unclear.
[03:16:15] Well, because in football, you take your shoe and your ankle.
[03:16:19] That's spats.
[03:16:20] I like it.
[03:16:21] How you know what it is.
[03:16:23] It works.
[03:16:24] It does right.
[03:16:25] Yeah.
[03:16:26] See.
[03:16:27] Nonetheless, origin has some spats.
[03:16:30] Some compression gear, rash guard.
[03:16:32] Yeah.
[03:16:33] It's all made of metal.
[03:16:34] Good stuff.
[03:16:35] Or do you mean dot com going there?
[03:16:36] Check out all their stuff.
[03:16:38] You'd like something get something.
[03:16:39] Also for the kettlebells that I have.
[03:16:42] Train it on it.
[03:16:44] On it.
[03:16:45] Yeah.
[03:16:46] On it.
[03:16:47] You know the kettlebells.
[03:16:48] Primal bells.
[03:16:49] Yeah.
[03:16:50] Yeah.
[03:16:51] He's very proud of that.
[03:16:52] Whatever.
[03:16:53] You see the smell.
[03:16:54] You know, primos welder.
[03:16:56] Oh, yeah.
[03:16:57] What's that?
[03:16:58] Primal.
[03:16:59] Soldier.
[03:17:00] Yeah.
[03:17:01] You got to check him out.
[03:17:02] Yeah.
[03:17:03] He works out down it on it.
[03:17:04] Like he's a big kettlebell guy.
[03:17:05] Okay.
[03:17:06] Boom.
[03:17:07] Yeah.
[03:17:07] Some people told you.
[03:17:08] Swolder.
[03:17:09] Okay.
[03:17:10] So he's right.
[03:17:11] Boom.
[03:17:12] So he.
[03:17:13] Yeah.
[03:17:14] So anyway, on it dot com slash chuckle.
[03:17:15] That's where you get to kettlebells.
[03:17:16] You want to get the whole set like me.
[03:17:18] Or, you know.
[03:17:20] Or other stuff.
[03:17:21] Like I said, um, if you actually said this before,
[03:17:24] you want to vary up your workout.
[03:17:26] Make it more interesting.
[03:17:28] Yeah.
[03:17:29] Yeah.
[03:17:30] Yeah.
[03:17:31] Chocolate, like, sparring workouts.
[03:17:32] That's cool too.
[03:17:33] But if you want to make more interesting, get the mace.
[03:17:36] Get, you know, some of these.
[03:17:37] Some more, uh, what do you call it?
[03:17:38] Like more creative.
[03:17:39] Yeah.
[03:17:40] The mace.
[03:17:41] Finish.
[03:17:42] Yeah.
[03:17:43] The equipment.
[03:17:44] Yeah.
[03:17:45] On it dot com slash chuckle.
[03:17:46] It's good spot.
[03:17:47] Also, when you buy the book into the fire.
[03:17:50] The corner mayor.
[03:17:51] Don't worry.
[03:17:52] I got it listed on our website.
[03:17:54] Talk about cast.com.
[03:17:55] Buy episode, by the way.
[03:17:56] Along with all the books that we go over on this.
[03:17:57] Podcast.
[03:17:58] Boom.
[03:17:59] Just click through there.
[03:18:00] Take it Amazon shop.
[03:18:01] Continue doing shopping if you want.
[03:18:04] Good way to support.
[03:18:06] Also.
[03:18:07] Subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already.
[03:18:11] Stitcher.
[03:18:12] iTunes, Google Play.
[03:18:15] Spotify.
[03:18:16] I just learned what Spotify was.
[03:18:19] Me too.
[03:18:20] I'm not even known.
[03:18:21] I'm not sure.
[03:18:22] I know what it is.
[03:18:23] Yeah.
[03:18:24] Some kind of music feed thing.
[03:18:25] But we're on it.
[03:18:26] Yeah.
[03:18:27] We're also on Alexa.
[03:18:28] You have Alexa.
[03:18:29] Never heard of her.
[03:18:30] Okay.
[03:18:31] Well, Amazon.
[03:18:32] She's a cool.
[03:18:33] Oh.
[03:18:34] Well, you can ask it to play jockel podcast.
[03:18:37] No way.
[03:18:38] Yeah.
[03:18:39] I'm going to buy one just for that.
[03:18:40] It's like Alexa play jockel podcast.
[03:18:42] And then it says, playing the latest episode of jockel podcast.
[03:18:46] Yeah.
[03:18:47] Can you go?
[03:18:48] Yeah.
[03:18:49] What's that?
[03:18:50] So cool.
[03:18:51] And you always say, do you have Alexa?
[03:18:53] That's like saying, hey, do you have or.
[03:18:55] You should go buy a Siri.
[03:18:57] You can't buy Siri.
[03:18:58] Siri comes with your phone.
[03:18:59] No, no, no.
[03:19:00] No.
[03:19:01] You can buy Alexa.
[03:19:02] No.
[03:19:03] Yes.
[03:19:04] Can not buy an Alexa.
[03:19:05] You buy an Amazon.
[03:19:06] No.
[03:19:07] No.
[03:19:08] No one calls it that.
[03:19:08] No one talks about that.
[03:19:09] Maybe they should because that's the correct thing.
[03:19:11] We don't want to confuse people.
[03:19:12] No.
[03:19:13] You do want to confuse you.
[03:19:14] No, no, no.
[03:19:15] You do want to confuse people.
[03:19:16] I'm talking about Alexa.
[03:19:17] I know that.
[03:19:18] I'm trying to.
[03:19:19] I'm trying to.
[03:19:20] All right.
[03:19:21] If you're going to do it on this.
[03:19:22] I'm going to.
[03:19:23] It's a tube.
[03:19:25] An intelligent tube.
[03:19:26] Why does it have to be on not you?
[03:19:27] Yeah.
[03:19:28] That's what it comes down to.
[03:19:29] It's.
[03:19:30] He's man.
[03:19:31] It's not his.
[03:19:32] He's that.
[03:19:33] That's what it is.
[03:19:34] I'm going to look.
[03:19:35] I'm going to give him a little.
[03:19:37] Give him a little.
[03:19:38] Because get that Amazon echo.
[03:19:40] Yeah.
[03:19:41] And then you ask Alexa.
[03:19:43] So essentially, Alexa's an in the phone.
[03:19:45] What if I want to ask?
[03:19:46] I won't.
[03:19:47] It won't respond.
[03:19:48] You can call me up whenever I want to respond.
[03:19:50] Amazon echo will not respond to the net.
[03:19:52] I can call me up.
[03:19:53] Alexa lives in Amazon echo.
[03:19:54] Just like Siri lives in your iPhone.
[03:19:56] There's nothing living in my iPhone.
[03:19:58] It's a machine.
[03:19:59] It's artificial.
[03:20:00] Like, Galatians.
[03:20:02] Nonetheless, subscribe.
[03:20:04] You have an already.
[03:20:05] Also, subscribe to YouTube.
[03:20:07] We'll have the video version of this podcast.
[03:20:10] And excerpts on there as well.
[03:20:13] And enhanced excerpts as well.
[03:20:16] If you're into that, subscribe YouTube.
[03:20:18] You too.
[03:20:19] Also, Jaco is a store.
[03:20:20] It's called Jaco store.
[03:20:23] It's called Jaco podcast.
[03:20:25] Jaco store.
[03:20:26] Because it's store.
[03:20:27] I like it.
[03:20:28] It's called Jaco.
[03:20:29] I like it.
[03:20:30] I'm not that creative.
[03:20:31] If I had a bad as name like Jaco.
[03:20:34] Your name is Dakota.
[03:20:35] Come on now.
[03:20:36] I know.
[03:20:37] Everybody thinks it's like a girl though.
[03:20:38] Oh, really?
[03:20:39] Is it girls named Dakota?
[03:20:40] Yeah, Dakota fanning.
[03:20:41] Oh.
[03:20:42] I like, like, I pick up the phone and are like,
[03:20:44] man, I'm like, no.
[03:20:46] I didn't even know there's a girls named Dakota.
[03:20:49] Yeah.
[03:20:50] Well, yeah.
[03:20:51] Sorry, man.
[03:20:52] That sucks.
[03:20:53] Do you like a girl named Sue?
[03:20:54] Is that why you turned out so bad at it?
[03:20:55] Yeah.
[03:20:56] Yeah.
[03:20:57] That is awesome.
[03:20:59] Like Jaco.
[03:21:00] There you go.
[03:21:01] I kind of feel like when it came done to Jaco to name his own store and stuff, he was all cool.
[03:21:05] But when Amazon names their thing echo, it's like, you know, you guys could see.
[03:21:09] You know, see a little bit.
[03:21:10] See?
[03:21:11] No, I was on your team.
[03:21:13] No, no.
[03:21:14] You kind of called it.
[03:21:15] Remember?
[03:21:16] Yeah.
[03:21:17] At that moment.
[03:21:18] You're going to get either way.
[03:21:19] Jaco store.com.
[03:21:20] This is where you can get shirts, dysmonyco's freedom.
[03:21:22] Good shirt.
[03:21:23] The good shirt.
[03:21:24] And when I say the good shirt, it's the shirt with Jaco's head on it.
[03:21:27] Says good backwards.
[03:21:28] So when you look in the mirror, he's telling you good, you know.
[03:21:31] I like that.
[03:21:32] It's pretty good.
[03:21:33] I'm going to get one.
[03:21:34] Yeah.
[03:21:35] I got you.
[03:21:36] I got you.
[03:21:37] I got you too.
[03:21:38] Alexa will take care of you.
[03:21:39] Sorry.
[03:21:40] Makes sense of the job.
[03:21:43] All right.
[03:21:44] Nonetheless, Jaco's daughter kind of is some rash cards on there,
[03:21:47] some hoodies, some hats, patches.
[03:21:49] I got to restock the patches.
[03:21:50] I restock everything on there.
[03:21:52] Got the patches.
[03:21:53] Yeah.
[03:21:54] He looks, I'm trying.
[03:21:55] I'm here.
[03:21:56] Um, women's assistant.
[03:21:58] And there's a system in place now.
[03:21:59] The restock automatically.
[03:22:00] Am I correct?
[03:22:01] I, well.
[03:22:02] Okay.
[03:22:02] I'm not correct.
[03:22:03] Okay.
[03:22:03] Forget it.
[03:22:04] Depends on what you mean, but automatically.
[03:22:06] I just mean things will be in stock from now on.
[03:22:08] That's what I mean.
[03:22:09] We'll just say more often.
[03:22:10] Bro.
[03:22:11] We'll just say better.
[03:22:12] You had one job.
[03:22:14] You had one.
[03:22:15] You had one.
[03:22:16] You had one.
[03:22:17] Okay.
[03:22:18] You know what?
[03:22:19] Forget it.
[03:22:20] Actually, he's got two jobs.
[03:22:21] Make videos and keep the store stock.
[03:22:22] Yeah.
[03:22:23] How's he doing?
[03:22:24] Well, for two.
[03:22:25] You like it?
[03:22:27] You like it?
[03:22:28] You guys don't find that?
[03:22:29] Okay.
[03:22:30] Yeah.
[03:22:31] Jaco's daughter.com.
[03:22:32] That's the website.
[03:22:33] Anyway, I'm not saying goodbye something.
[03:22:35] I'm saying look, check it out.
[03:22:36] If you want something, get something.
[03:22:39] Good way to support.
[03:22:40] Also.
[03:22:41] Good way to support.
[03:22:42] Psychological Warfare.
[03:22:43] Support yourself.
[03:22:44] I'm paying.
[03:22:45] We call it a campaign against weakness.
[03:22:47] Makes sense.
[03:22:48] Yeah, like it.
[03:22:49] Yeah.
[03:22:50] We liked it too.
[03:22:51] So it was suggested to us.
[03:22:54] You know, those days where you kind of don't feel like it.
[03:22:56] Right?
[03:22:57] And who better to ask for a little assist on those days than Jaco?
[03:23:02] Right?
[03:23:03] In theory.
[03:23:04] Good.
[03:23:05] I mean, I agree.
[03:23:06] So boom.
[03:23:07] Now we have this album with tracks.
[03:23:09] Jaco tracks.
[03:23:10] Telling you to get how to get past moments of weakness that may come up.
[03:23:15] Waking up early, skipping workouts, you know, diets, stuff on it.
[03:23:19] Works pretty good.
[03:23:20] That's bad ass.
[03:23:21] 10 for 10 results.
[03:23:22] You'll never skip a workout.
[03:23:24] Sorry, I made this.
[03:23:25] Jaco is like asked me.
[03:23:26] Asked me a question one time like, why do you not step?
[03:23:29] How do you not skip workouts?
[03:23:30] And I was like, oh, just mobile phone.
[03:23:31] Yeah, you don't feel like.
[03:23:33] Yeah.
[03:23:34] And he's like, dude, I need to record that.
[03:23:35] And then he just like asked me a bunch of random questions.
[03:23:38] And then we made it in a recording.
[03:23:40] And we put it on iTunes for sale.
[03:23:42] It was the number one spoken word on iTunes for I think.
[03:23:49] I think until you're, I think 11 months.
[03:23:52] It finally got knocked out of number one spoken word by when I released this book,
[03:23:57] this one equals freedom field manual on iTunes as a spoken word album.
[03:24:03] So I'm just saying.
[03:24:05] It's like so random.
[03:24:06] Yeah, it's not him.
[03:24:08] So I don't want to do this.
[03:24:09] No, I just talk.
[03:24:10] I'm not a healer.
[03:24:11] Yeah, you don't have to.
[03:24:13] Yeah.
[03:24:14] You don't have to.
[03:24:15] I still tell the guys, hey, I mean, obviously, you got a yell on the battlefield.
[03:24:17] And you got a yell.
[03:24:18] People, because so they can hear you.
[03:24:19] That's one thing.
[03:24:20] But yeah, I mean, I was just tell guys, if you have to yell at someone,
[03:24:23] and you really screwed some up as a leery.
[03:24:25] Yeah.
[03:24:26] If I got a yell at you.
[03:24:27] Or if I had to be like,
[03:24:28] You think.
[03:24:29] Yeah.
[03:24:30] Nonetheless, it's, yeah, very, very, like, if you,
[03:24:33] you're like, you'll be like, oh, there.
[03:24:36] This is someone called Sugarcoded Lies.
[03:24:38] Right.
[03:24:39] And it's about like, you know how like when you're at work.
[03:24:42] You were talking about the good video.
[03:24:44] Yeah.
[03:24:44] Right.
[03:24:45] So this is the same thing, but it's like a track you can get.
[03:24:47] You can get actually this.
[03:24:48] The, the, the, the, the, just when it goes free,
[03:24:49] I'm field manual album has good on there as a track.
[03:24:52] Just a track boom.
[03:24:53] There you go.
[03:24:54] So you can put it in your whatever.
[03:24:55] Yeah.
[03:24:55] You can say.
[03:24:56] So, and because I had people going, you should make an alarm clock.
[03:24:58] You should make an alarm clock.
[03:24:59] So when you did the album with tracks,
[03:25:00] and when you could use that thing as an alarm clock.
[03:25:02] So when people ask me for alarm clock,
[03:25:03] and like, go get the albums.
[03:25:04] There's three albums down.
[03:25:05] Yeah.
[03:25:06] By the way, three albums.
[03:25:07] Yeah.
[03:25:07] Psychological warfare.
[03:25:08] And this one is in two different albums.
[03:25:10] You really only need the first album of Dispanical Freedom Field Manual.
[03:25:13] For this.
[03:25:14] For the audio.
[03:25:15] Yeah.
[03:25:16] You can get it.
[03:25:17] Well, there's, well, if you want the knowledge parts.
[03:25:19] Yeah.
[03:25:20] That's the second video.
[03:25:21] The second album.
[03:25:22] Yeah.
[03:25:23] You didn't know I was over here.
[03:25:24] So this is where this is where Echo started hammer hammer.
[03:25:26] Maybe because, you know, when they list you,
[03:25:28] they list like psychological warfare.
[03:25:30] And then they have to list who made it.
[03:25:31] And it was artist,
[03:25:33] Jockel really knows.
[03:25:35] No, no, no, no.
[03:25:36] I'm not an artist.
[03:25:37] I'm just, I'm just speaking.
[03:25:39] I'm just saying words.
[03:25:40] That's not art.
[03:25:41] No.
[03:25:41] Is that no, no, no, no.
[03:25:42] You're an artist.
[03:25:43] Yeah.
[03:25:43] So you didn't know that man.
[03:25:45] I never, I never looked at you and said,
[03:25:49] Wow.
[03:25:49] I know come across with the artist.
[03:25:51] It's not artists.
[03:25:51] It's not artists.
[03:25:52] Art see guy.
[03:25:52] None of the less.
[03:25:53] Very effective.
[03:25:54] Very effective.
[03:25:55] Very effective.
[03:25:56] The way to support two by the way.
[03:25:58] Check.
[03:25:58] Also.
[03:25:59] All the Amazon.
[03:26:00] Through.
[03:26:02] Alexa.
[03:26:03] If you want, you can order Jockel White Tea.
[03:26:05] Amazon.
[03:26:06] And by the way, I don't know if.
[03:26:08] I'll give you some Jockel White Tea.
[03:26:10] And the reason I'll give it to you isn't.
[03:26:11] I don't care if you like to.
[03:26:12] You might hate tea.
[03:26:14] But what this tea does is is a guaranteed.
[03:26:17] It's guaranteed.
[03:26:19] To give you an 8,000 pound deadlift.
[03:26:23] It's scientifically proven over and over again.
[03:26:26] Double blind.
[03:26:27] Double blind.
[03:26:28] Double blind.
[03:26:29] And the C.B.
[03:26:30] Tested.
[03:26:31] Right there.
[03:26:32] Jockel White Tea.
[03:26:33] 8,000 pound deadlift.
[03:26:35] Yeah.
[03:26:36] So you got that.
[03:26:37] Also.
[03:26:38] The books.
[03:26:39] Yes.
[03:26:40] Get into the fire by the codemire.
[03:26:41] And being west.
[03:26:43] Get it through our website.
[03:26:44] It's.
[03:26:45] It's an awesome remaner.
[03:26:46] We.
[03:26:47] I covered less than 10% of the book today.
[03:26:49] You only understand 10% of what the whole situation was by listening to this podcast.
[03:26:54] Get the book.
[03:26:55] Support the podcast.
[03:26:56] Support the coda.
[03:26:57] Learn about.
[03:26:58] What these brave Americans in half-games went through.
[03:27:05] Way the warrior kid.
[03:27:08] There's a book.
[03:27:09] I wrote for kids.
[03:27:10] Why?
[03:27:11] Because who's what kind of kids?
[03:27:12] What kind of books were kids reading?
[03:27:14] I know because I got four kids.
[03:27:15] My kids were reading books about lame people that were being encouraged to be weak.
[03:27:21] Yeah.
[03:27:22] Instead of like, hey, you know what it's okay to actually get after it and try and be smarter and try and be stronger.
[03:27:27] So if you want your kid to be smarter and stronger and eat healthier and work harder, if that's what you want, you get the kid way the warrior kid.
[03:27:37] If you want to make your child weak and undisciplined, that's cool.
[03:27:43] You can buy any other book for a kid and that's what you get.
[03:27:47] And that book did good with people.
[03:27:52] And I wrote another one.
[03:27:54] It's called Way the Warrior Kid to it's called Mark's Mission.
[03:27:58] And it's got a whole new genre of issues that Mark has to face with his Uncle Jake Uncle Jake comes to help out young Mark.
[03:28:06] Would you call him more advanced issues?
[03:28:08] They are slightly more advanced.
[03:28:09] Let me tell you which one of them.
[03:28:10] One of the one of the issues that young Mark's will marks in sixth grade now in book two.
[03:28:14] He loses his temper sometimes.
[03:28:17] And he gets in trouble at school for hucking a paper, mishay pumpkin.
[03:28:22] And another kid's head.
[03:28:24] And it deflects off his head and hits the teacher in the face.
[03:28:27] Oh man.
[03:28:28] He gets sent home from school last day at school.
[03:28:31] Anyways, he has someone to control his temper.
[03:28:33] Just like all kids do.
[03:28:34] And I know this because I got kids.
[03:28:35] And I know this because I was a kid.
[03:28:36] And you remember when you were a little kid and you lived your temper and you did your job.
[03:28:39] I'm stuff evil.
[03:28:40] And when I say little kid, I'm talking like 23 years old.
[03:28:42] I was like, sure.
[03:28:44] I was like, say.
[03:28:45] Yeah, I do.
[03:28:47] You know what I'm talking about.
[03:28:49] That's what I got to get you a copy.
[03:28:52] His uncle in the book is a seal.
[03:28:55] It was a seal.
[03:28:56] And he comes to stay with him for the summer and helps him.
[03:28:59] Square way these little problems.
[03:29:00] He's a kid.
[03:29:01] Yeah.
[03:29:02] So that's what that was about.
[03:29:03] He also learns about working hard.
[03:29:05] He gets a job.
[03:29:06] Starts a business.
[03:29:07] He's 11 years old.
[03:29:10] Has his own business.
[03:29:11] Mowing lawns and pulling weeds.
[03:29:13] That's way the warrior kid.
[03:29:16] And way the warrior kid to marks mission.
[03:29:19] You can also get speaking of which warrior kids from Irish Oaks Ranch.
[03:29:24] There's a young warrior kid 12 years old business owner.
[03:29:28] He makes soap from goat milk right here in California on his farm.
[03:29:33] Yeah.
[03:29:34] That's cool.
[03:29:35] Yeah.
[03:29:36] Well, it seems like well, how are you to how how does he even why are you talking about this?
[03:29:41] He got in touch with me and said,
[03:29:43] I want to make good soap.
[03:29:46] Docko soap.
[03:29:47] And I was like, well, who are you?
[03:29:49] He's like, I'm a 12 year old kid named.
[03:29:51] I live on a farm.
[03:29:52] I'm starting a business.
[03:29:54] I think you're you might want in on the action.
[03:29:56] Jocco.
[03:29:57] And I was like, hey, what did I manage?
[03:29:59] Let's do this.
[03:30:00] Here's some soap.
[03:30:01] Yeah.
[03:30:02] You're like, what in on the action?
[03:30:04] I see you off from me a piece of the action.
[03:30:06] I was like, oh, I guess I'm in man.
[03:30:08] What are your kid getting after it?
[03:30:10] Yeah.
[03:30:11] You can order that soap at Irish Oak's Ranch.
[03:30:15] He's dot com.
[03:30:16] It's, you know, no big deal.
[03:30:18] Soap empire, right?
[03:30:19] What is like Johnson and Johnson probably started off making soap.
[03:30:23] I've resop.
[03:30:24] You think I resop doesn't have some good profit ability.
[03:30:27] Yeah.
[03:30:28] Yeah.
[03:30:28] No, it's different.
[03:30:29] It's only different.
[03:30:30] This kid started at 12.
[03:30:31] Yeah.
[03:30:31] Yeah.
[03:30:32] He got some Johnson and started at 12.
[03:30:33] No.
[03:30:34] This kid started at 12.
[03:30:35] Yeah.
[03:30:36] Get on there.
[03:30:37] You just work somewhere.
[03:30:38] He'll have the kings worked out before he could even drive.
[03:30:40] Yeah.
[03:30:41] Yeah.
[03:30:42] He's all over it.
[03:30:43] I mean, I'm telling you.
[03:30:44] He's manufacturing soap.
[03:30:46] You think about when you were, I mean, let's just, let's just get all of our own.
[03:30:50] I don't even know how it's going to turn out.
[03:30:52] I don't even know how it's going to turn out.
[03:30:53] Our own loser selves out of the table here.
[03:30:55] What were you doing when you were 12?
[03:30:57] Yeah.
[03:30:58] Right.
[03:30:59] I was like smearing boogers on my sisters.
[03:31:01] I was still a nerd.
[03:31:02] You know what I'm saying?
[03:31:03] I was waiting there.
[03:31:04] We're just talking loser.
[03:31:05] I mean, I was eating dirt.
[03:31:06] I didn't know it's so put.
[03:31:08] I was like, I was doing, I thought I was eating dirt.
[03:31:11] Yeah.
[03:31:12] I made up the slogan too.
[03:31:14] Simple slogan.
[03:31:16] Simple slogan.
[03:31:17] Yeah.
[03:31:18] And it's actually great slogan.
[03:31:19] You know what it is.
[03:31:20] Jocco soap.
[03:31:21] Stay clean.
[03:31:22] Oh.
[03:31:23] You got it.
[03:31:24] You got it.
[03:31:25] You got it.
[03:31:26] I mean, you got it with me.
[03:31:27] I got to tell you.
[03:31:28] You got it with me.
[03:31:29] It's good.
[03:31:30] It's good.
[03:31:31] It's good.
[03:31:32] I don't know.
[03:31:33] I don't know how you came up with that.
[03:31:35] Telling your.
[03:31:36] Jocco soap.
[03:31:37] Stay clean.
[03:31:37] Right?
[03:31:38] Man.
[03:31:39] Same way.
[03:31:39] You came up with Jocco store.
[03:31:41] Yeah.
[03:31:42] Jocco store.
[03:31:43] Real unreligative when it comes to them.
[03:31:46] Them names.
[03:31:47] Also, hey, another book.
[03:31:48] This one is for you to feel manual.
[03:31:51] If you need to get on the path, stay on the path.
[03:31:53] Be on the path.
[03:31:54] Move further down the path.
[03:31:56] If you're having trouble getting after it in life, get the book.
[03:31:59] This one equals for you to feel manual.
[03:32:01] And then don't just get the book and read it.
[03:32:03] You have to actually do something.
[03:32:05] That's in it.
[03:32:06] But it's pretty clear.
[03:32:07] It's a field manual.
[03:32:08] Echo claims to know all about field manuals.
[03:32:11] My favorite kind of manual.
[03:32:12] Yeah.
[03:32:13] You actually know about field manuals.
[03:32:15] Go into field manual that tells you how to get after it.
[03:32:18] So you can do that.
[03:32:19] The audio version of that is not on audible.
[03:32:23] You can't find it there.
[03:32:25] Why?
[03:32:26] Because you couldn't cut it up into tracks, which is what you all asked for.
[03:32:29] It is on Amazon Music, Google Play, iTunes as an MP3.
[03:32:35] Also, extreme ownership.
[03:32:38] The book that Lave Babin and I wrote.
[03:32:40] That's about combat leadership.
[03:32:43] Some of it actually every topic that we talked about today when it came to leadership
[03:32:47] and organizational issues.
[03:32:48] It's all things that are inside extreme ownership.
[03:32:51] Get that.
[03:32:52] And it's not just about war, but it's about life.
[03:32:54] It's about business.
[03:32:56] And on top of that, we have a leadership and management consulting company.
[03:32:59] It's called Ashland on Front.
[03:33:01] We solve problems through leadership.
[03:33:04] Every problem that any organization has can be solved through one thing and one thing only
[03:33:10] leadership.
[03:33:11] That's it.
[03:33:13] So if you got problems, call us Ashland Front.
[03:33:17] Me, Lave Babin, J.P.Denel, Dave Burke.
[03:33:22] Ashlandfront.com.
[03:33:24] Of course, also we have the master.
[03:33:27] It's a leadership gathering.
[03:33:30] It's a leadership gathering.
[03:33:32] Seminar, conference gathering.
[03:33:37] And that's what we do.
[03:33:39] We get together.
[03:33:40] We have all kinds of leaders come.
[03:33:42] We present.
[03:33:43] We talk about issues.
[03:33:44] We give pragmatic, actual, tactics and techniques on how to lead people.
[03:33:50] If you want to like come to a conference and get all happy and happy and make
[03:33:56] hugging promises to the guy that's sitting next to you, don't come to this conference.
[03:34:01] That's not what this conference is.
[03:34:03] We're not singing and dancing at all.
[03:34:06] We talk about how to lead.
[03:34:08] That's what it is.
[03:34:09] So if you want to learn how to lead, come to the master.
[03:34:12] There's only two of them in 2018.
[03:34:14] Only two of them.
[03:34:16] One of them, Washington, DC, May 17th and 18th.
[03:34:19] One of them, San Francisco, October 17th and 18th.
[03:34:23] That's it.
[03:34:27] We're not going to.
[03:34:29] What's the name of your hometown?
[03:34:31] We're not going to Columbia, Kentucky for the master.
[03:34:33] We couldn't, we couldn't, your barn wasn't big enough to hold it in.
[03:34:37] We can expand it.
[03:34:38] Yeah.
[03:34:39] I'll work on it for next year.
[03:34:40] Work on it.
[03:34:41] We actually did one.
[03:34:43] If I know you at the time, you would have been there.
[03:34:45] Yeah.
[03:34:46] Awesome.
[03:34:47] And let me know if you want to come to one of these.
[03:34:49] But we're not doing it in Columbia, Kentucky.
[03:34:51] Uh, we're not doing it in, what's another random place.
[03:34:55] Oh, my, cool.
[03:34:57] I'm not doing it in Hawaii.
[03:34:59] If you want to come, you've got to come to one of those two.
[03:35:01] Register, by the way, they've also, we've done for them.
[03:35:04] They've also, this one's going to sell out to register to extremownership.com.
[03:35:08] And we, okay, we raised the prices.
[03:35:13] Once we hit a certain date, why do we do that?
[03:35:16] Why do we raise the prices?
[03:35:17] Once we hit a certain date.
[03:35:18] To make my money?
[03:35:19] No.
[03:35:20] No.
[03:35:21] We actually don't want people to do that because what, the, what reason we do is we want to incentivize people to register early so that we can block enough room, order enough food.
[03:35:31] Plan plan correctly.
[03:35:33] Get the venue set up the right way.
[03:35:35] So we're, we're trying to make people come early.
[03:35:38] So we, it's actually a penalty.
[03:35:40] We're penalizing you for being slow.
[03:35:42] Prefer procrastinating.
[03:35:44] Yes.
[03:35:45] Procrastination.
[03:35:46] You're going to pay.
[03:35:47] That's right.
[03:35:48] Oh, it's a procrastination penalty.
[03:35:49] That's good.
[03:35:50] If you wait, you pay.
[03:35:51] I'll take credit for that.
[03:35:52] We like people that get out for them.
[03:35:54] Don't put that as one of Jocos.
[03:35:56] Okay.
[03:35:57] You'll get credit.
[03:35:58] You'll get credit.
[03:35:59] I think.
[03:36:00] You'll get a percentage.
[03:36:01] Because you run it off my lead and I get a little cut.
[03:36:04] I like it.
[03:36:05] All right.
[03:36:06] So that is that.
[03:36:08] And until the monster, if you have questions or feedback for us, we are, we are ready to receive on the in the webs on Twitter on Instagram and on.
[03:36:18] Dash.
[03:36:19] Facebook.
[03:36:20] I'm going to go.
[03:36:21] Echoes at Echo Charles and I am at Jockel Willink and Dakota is on the interwebs in a big way.
[03:36:28] In a big way.
[03:36:30] On Twitter, at Dakota underscore Meyer.
[03:36:34] That's how we linked up by the way via Twitter.
[03:36:36] That is.
[03:36:37] I can't believe you're responding to me.
[03:36:39] And I'm like, I can't believe you said so for the week.
[03:36:43] A couple little kids on Instagram.
[03:36:45] Dakota Meyer.
[03:36:49] Oh, three, seventeen.
[03:36:51] Just my.
[03:36:53] No, just a three, seventeen.
[03:36:55] Dakota Meyer.
[03:36:56] That's that's Instagram on Facebook.
[03:36:59] Sergeant Dakota Meyer.
[03:37:01] You can just look to go to Meyer and it pops right up.
[03:37:04] Because you're kind of the man.
[03:37:06] You have a podcast.
[03:37:07] I do.
[03:37:08] You have your own podcast.
[03:37:09] It's called owning it.
[03:37:11] Owning it.
[03:37:12] With the codemire.
[03:37:13] That's cool.
[03:37:15] You have Dakota Meyer dot com is another place.
[03:37:17] So like I said, that's why I said you're all over the interwebs.
[03:37:19] Because clearly you are all over the interwebs.
[03:37:21] You got a YouTube channel.
[03:37:22] Yeah, I got a YouTube channel.
[03:37:23] It's just Dakota Meyer.
[03:37:25] So I've got the YouTube channel just Dakota Meyer.
[03:37:27] When my podcast goes up, it's on own the dash.
[03:37:30] Own the dash.
[03:37:31] What does that mean?
[03:37:32] Uh, so you know, own the dash comes from a point.
[03:37:34] Lendelis had wrote called the dash.
[03:37:36] And, uh, you know, I felt like I felt like people in America just needed something to hold on to.
[03:37:42] And, uh, you know, so I always look at what is success.
[03:37:45] And how do I want to be remembered?
[03:37:46] And that's kind of like a big thing for me.
[03:37:48] And I, uh, so Lendelis wrote an appointment talked about how I got a funeral.
[03:37:52] You know, I'm man stood to speak and you referred to the dates.
[03:37:55] You know, on the tombstone from the beginning.
[03:37:57] You know, with the date, the person was born.
[03:38:00] The day he died.
[03:38:02] And really those are the two only two days in your life that you don't make any decisions.
[03:38:06] Or have any control of.
[03:38:08] And everything else, what matters that dash.
[03:38:11] What matters that dash in between.
[03:38:12] And so how are you going to own your dash?
[03:38:13] What is your dash going to look like?
[03:38:15] Because you can control that.
[03:38:16] You can control what that dash looks like.
[03:38:18] How, you know, how fulfilling it is, how selfish it is, how giving it is.
[03:38:22] I mean, you control it by your decisions every single day.
[03:38:25] And what do you want your dash to look like?
[03:38:27] How do you want to be remembered?
[03:38:28] Because it doesn't matter how much money you have.
[03:38:30] It doesn't matter how.
[03:38:32] Whatever you did, the empires you built.
[03:38:34] What matters is how you change people's lives.
[03:38:37] And that's how you remembered.
[03:38:38] And where your true success in my mind is.
[03:38:40] You'll be defined.
[03:38:41] What people say about you at your funeral.
[03:38:45] And so that's where it comes to me is is owned the dash.
[03:38:50] It's where the idea that came from.
[03:38:52] So owned your dash.
[03:38:54] And you do public speaking as well.
[03:38:56] I do public speaking.
[03:38:57] I go around and do.
[03:38:58] You can get in there and talk to businesses and teams.
[03:39:01] Yeah, you know, come in.
[03:39:02] Talk to businesses, teams.
[03:39:03] Give my leadership principles of, you know, what I believe to make success.
[03:39:07] You know, I'm, I'm, I'm simple though.
[03:39:09] But, you know, what, what I feel like, you know, my life, I talk about my story and kind of what happened to me and then I come around and I, what does that mean to me, right?
[03:39:16] What does that mean?
[03:39:17] Like, you know, every story without every story or experience that you go through that doesn't have a meaning afterwards is a waste of experience.
[03:39:24] And so I talk about that and I just, you know, do a lot of public speaking trying to, I just want to inspire people.
[03:39:30] I'm like, I just, you know, I just want to honestly, I just want to change the world.
[03:39:36] No big deal.
[03:39:37] Just want to change the world.
[03:39:38] Awesome.
[03:39:40] It's awesome.
[03:39:41] Anything, did I miss anything else?
[03:39:43] No, I don't think so.
[03:39:44] I think that's, I think that's everything.
[03:39:46] Yeah.
[03:39:47] Anything, any other projects, anything else?
[03:39:49] Everybody needs to know about.
[03:39:51] No, no, listen, I can't, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you having me on.
[03:39:55] Yeah, well, it's an honor to have you on echo.
[03:39:57] You got anything else?
[03:39:58] No, thank you very much for coming up.
[03:40:00] Thank you.
[03:40:01] Closing thoughts.
[03:40:02] Dakota.
[03:40:03] You know, listen, it's, uh, I, I, I got a lot of this podcast.
[03:40:07] I got a lot of, uh, you know, I'm just hearing your perspective.
[03:40:11] And, you know, uh, I just, I just want people out there to know that, you know, I'm no different than anybody else.
[03:40:18] The only difference is the opportunities that's been put in front of me.
[03:40:21] And, um, you know, I appreciate you having me on.
[03:40:26] Well, man, it's obviously an honor to have you on.
[03:40:32] Thank you for your, thank you for your service.
[03:40:36] Both in the Marine Corps and what you continue to do now to try and help people.
[03:40:43] And, and just change the world, which is what you're trying to do now, which is awesome.
[03:40:47] And it's been a true honor to have you on again, you know, to be sitting across the table from you.
[03:40:55] And knowing what you've been through and to see where you are now is, is awesome.
[03:41:01] And it's, it's my honor to be sitting here.
[03:41:04] And of course, to all the service men and women on the battlefields around the world, doing what must be done to protect us.
[03:41:21] Thanks to all of you.
[03:41:25] And finally, to those service members that made the ultimate sacrifice, who gave the last full measure for us.
[03:41:44] Thank you.
[03:41:48] You rest in peace and know without question that we will never forget.
[03:42:02] And until next time, this is to go to Meyer and echo and jockel. Out.