Jocko Podcast 261 w Steve Ward: Learning Does Not Stop. Ever. Life and Leadership

2020-12-24T10:31:43Z

Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @echocharles @steveward194 0:00:00 - Opening 0:07:45 - SEAL Master Chief, Steve Ward 3:01:14 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 3:20:33 - How to stay on THE PATH. Jocko Store https://www.jockostore.com/collections/menApparel: Jocko Fuel: https://originmaine.com/nutrition Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Origin Gis: https://originmaine.com/bjj-mma-fit/ 3:47:46 - Closing Gratitude

AI summary of episode

So it's like it's one of those things where you get man, if you want to dessert, like monk is the dessert and it's super as far as like, you know, like sometimes you're like, I need a dessert, but I, you know, I'm on the pass. And like that attitude and and I said, you know, what how did you, what was it that made he goes everything like the way he's carried himself, the way he looked, the way he had his head, he had his hair, he's like he had his head shaved and he just looked like this guy's just freaking square away from day one. You know, hey, going back into when we were forming up, you know, one of the first things we did is, you know, what grabbed in our go-lock, you know, our, our enlisted formation, he's 79. You know, didn't hit our building, the front of us there, wasn't too bad there or small, but it was a good, it was a good shake out for us, like a little confidence builder, like a couple bad guys, no one got injured. Like, you know, we went through training training was good, but it was nowhere near the level that, you know, we provided our guys once we got over to trade it. So, you know, guys going there and start clearing out Mosul, you know, at some point, you know, one of our seal units rotated out in J and his formation rotated in which is awesome. And you're like, and man, you guys might want to tighten this shit up over here, you know, but it was good, you know, damn who's there? Like he's going to be like, well, you know, Hack will made himself out to be a little bit more than he was or Hack talked to good game, but that really wasn't the guy he was air. Like, when I started, bro, when I started with the podcast, we know what all my friends started like, calling me like, dude, that podcast was sick. So I think we did that good, but just going back to land war for, I think, you know, the stress levels, they were high during a life-iron training, the field training exercises we did were just badass were building, you know, little wood huts all over the dam place on those ranges. And I remember picking up my reading like damn, this is really good because the way you guys translated into the business role was just, you know, it made sense, you know. And I think the guys, you know, I mean, shit, we had a thermal camera out there at one point and we're video tape in the guys coming in so they come back and go through their debrief, we're going, this is what you all look like. He said, hey Steve, we've got a protect emission, we've got to protect our credibility, credibility, it's built, know the people's blood, it was built, know the people's blood, we've got to protect that at all cost. And so there was, there was a lot to that, you know, the most stressful thing for me during land warfare was doing all the live fire training because there was definitely a lot of opportunity for someone to get injured or wounded, you know, you know what I mean. You know, and just going back to work on real quick, one of the things I realized when you're up there, you know, when you're down in the troops, you're just like, give me my gear. And hell even if you're getting one mission, you're like, all right, we're good to go, you know, because you think we all think we're going to be out of there with then six, seven months. And, you know, it bothers me so much when I hear people talk about, you know, these, the US military, you know, causing all these civilian casualties, man, we go through such great lengths to prevent civilian casualties and put our soldiers, sailors, airmen of a marine at such risk to prevent those casualties to civilian casualties from happen happening. I didn't know if they were playing games with me or what, but I went over the wall and I was like, shit, I don't know if I'm going to make it. And then just going back on decentralized command, you know, the other CQC or close court combat sheet, we had, you know, our guys were going up to this house. I was looking forward to, you know, and you know, the guy I really do with their BJs is a good dude smart and I think he set up a good foundation with what he had. So we were out, we went out there, you know, we're going with some other intel people out there and they're like, hey, we're going after some of this sensitive stuff here And when you see those good leaders coming through and look, the good leader could be anyone in the platoon from an E5 to the platoon or the task unit commander, anyone in between, you have one good leader or two good leaders in there and they're going to do a good job. I'm like, I thought I was good, you know, but I didn't know if they were playing. Like when you got your ass kicked, you got your ass kicked and it would sometimes, you know, that was another big difference when a leader, when the leadership in the task unit or in the platoon would say, would come back and say, hey, we screwed up. Or, you know, like, for me, I was like, I can do this, which is a really arrogant thing to think, right? But so you're going to make because because one thing I don't like and Lafayne, I have talked about this on the podcast is the someone thinking, well, you know, I'm in charge, so I'm going to be hated and that's okay. But it was just, you know, shitty day for us, you know, obviously the whole task you know, was hit, was hit hard on that. You know, there's, you know, our guys, our sniper's killed a few guys on that one, and the shoot was good. and you were like, oh, you got the firecracker right off the bat or something like that, like that was the nickname. You know, like, I don't know what we turned over with you guys. And the, you know, the entry teams going through, you know, our breaches going through laying the charge on the door. And so, you know, started, you know, I got a good six, six month of getting saturated with group level stuff. And from that point, it was like, all right, you know, we knew we were getting into, but then it's like, now it's real. I'm like, I got my first time work going, but he's dialed in and he had a great reputation, you know. Like when you got to talk about you, so to say you're going to write a book, you're going to start a podcast or you're going to put a spotlight on yourself. You know, we're still getting the occasional ID, you know, ID at him, you know, an army, silver affairs. And so as we're doing that, you know, we get a call over the radio, you know, that, you know, our other unit from Corrigator was hit. Yeah, you just took good outstanding, good leader, just good, like good dude, man. And one of the things people talk about is, hey, you know, when it's time to go and man, I was in that position and we had some high profile cases out there and they just wear on your man, you know, they just wear on you. I was I was you know sitting in in the back of the meeting with socom, you know, over and over again and here in the world being put out and seeing the handwritten notes from the secretary of defense, you know what I'm saying? So, you know, so after, you know, after those handful of ops, we had, uh, you know, we had no rubber 19. Well, that's what I always tell people, hey, man, the people who utilize the laws of combat did good cover and move kept things simple, good communications across board, prioritizing executed, stayed detached from what was going on in the guys that utilize decentralized command, whether they'll allow fire team leaders and squad leaders to make decisions at their level. What you're just asked, you know, I've seen Elliot a handful of times over the years, you know, it buds graduations and stuff like that. You know, he's like, it's because if you're thinking you're going to go there, you're going to get what you ask for. I like, and I hate to say that because right, right, that's like, that's like, what? You know, we had a, I don't know if you know, opposed you, but it could go more and more on serving. They're like, hey, you guys are going to come in behind these guys and we're going to replace them. So the seems to be like, hey, man, you, the guy that was going to come doesn't look like a company. So, you know, you're like, hey, you guys are going around race track. The headquarters element was good because it was the first time I'm outside of that that that sealed team, you know, whether it's training or just seal, you know, mission. You know, and then as I started going in college, like, man, I just, I don't want to learn. I know when you guys came in, you guys did, I don't know, four times, four, five times. But like I was like, okay, here's what we're going to, here's what we're going to do for communications during the insert. You know, I think a hack worth, I think of like you said a dude showing up right here, cut, right uniform, just everything he's communicating lines up with his actions. Oh, you know what I'll say one more thing at one point, probably you were like six months out from retiring and you said I have three courses of action for what I'm going to do You know, like, I don't know what to expect. And then I'd be like, hey, you know, like giving a single leg. And everyone, like, that's when I was super stoked, you know, because you feel horrible, uh, and you feel like you're shining a spotlight on yourself. And that's a good precursor because when you go to combat, if you end up going on deployment and you end up getting in real combat, you're going to see that, that's the only place that's going to come out even more is when you go into combat, people start acting crazy. Like there's no, there's, it's like saying, hey, I'm going to go freaking, uh, uh, uh, start a podcast. You know, in some of the books you covered early on, like the last hundred yards, and I was like damn. Like when I filled pool comp, I was like, all right, damn, I'm not going to make it through this man. So it was, it was, it was a good deployment, you know, and it probably the things that weighed the most on that deployment is I'd never really been a part of a ramp ceremony to where you're like, you're leaving this thing. You know, there's a lot of, you know, a lot of good work being done. He's like Roger that, you know, he's like, fire out. And to be able to debrief like that, it's, you know, he's like, thank you. It's lessons about hey, when this happens when you lose a guy, when you get a guy badly wounded, when you get somebody that's, you know, acting a certain way, when someone's losing combat, like all those lessons, being able to learn them is freaking so powerful. And one of the things that always comes to mind with me is in 2003, you know, we had Posi out there or Vietnam guy, good dude, man, just good family guy, Vietnam had more stores and you can imagine. And actually, you know, you got a family eight person family that are getting blown apart by Frag grenades because the woman was trying to defend her house from looters, which again, may sound like a crazy story. And I was talking to their ops officer and he was like, hey, you know what, this is a, this is a good shot, bad result, meaning that the, our soldier was following the proper rules of engagement. You know, you're going to be a prep school, you know, and then boom, you go to a ship. And therefore, if they make a mistake, which everyone's going to make mistakes, when they make a mistake, when they make a mistake, which they will, people go, oh, you know, like, guess what? Get on the wall and I was like, damn seriously, like I'm going through trying to think of what I did wrong. Let's everybody know like, hey, I don't put up, I'm not going to put up with this.

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jockelfondcast number 261 with echo Charles and me, Jockel Willink. Good evening, echo. Good evening.
[00:00:09] Being in the teams is the best job in the world. Probably heard me say that before, the best job in the world. Why do I say that?
[00:00:24] Well, first of all, the job itself, which consists of shooting machine guns, jumping out of airplanes, blowing things up, scuba diving, running around in the woods. It's just a freaking awesome job.
[00:00:45] So, so you got that. On top of that, you got this mission, the mission that you're focused on, you're on a mission to protect America, to protect democracy, to protect freedom, to protect people.
[00:01:04] And in order to do that, kill bad guys. Because you're supposed to do all that protecting, in order to do all that protecting, you got to kill bad guys, which, which has a kid and really as a man for that matter, that's what me and my friends always wanted to do. And I'm sorry if that doesn't sit right with you.
[00:01:30] Or if you think I'm some kind of a monster because of it, but that, that's the reality.
[00:01:38] So that's another reason why the job is awesome. But the last thing and certainly not the least thing, in fact, the best thing about the job, by far, is the boys.
[00:01:54] The guys you get to work with. They're, they're awesome. And contrary to popular belief, there's no cookie cutter format that represents a guy in the field teams.
[00:02:06] Your guys coming all shapes and sizes, they come from all different backgrounds.
[00:02:14] And it should be noted that not all of them are good guys. There are some knuckleheads for sure. There's some ego maniacs. There's some guys that really aren't part of the team.
[00:02:24] There's some guys that look out for themselves. There's guys that don't help out. There's some guys that don't care about the mission.
[00:02:31] There's guys that put themselves above the team.
[00:02:35] So there's, there's some of those types running around. And that's true in any organization. But as a whole,
[00:02:43] the boys are pretty legit. There are working, they're tough. They put the team first.
[00:02:51] They get the mission done.
[00:02:54] They have fun while they're doing it. And you can count them on them.
[00:02:59] Which is an underrated thing, right? You can count on them.
[00:03:08] And I was lucky enough to work with a ton of those guys during my career.
[00:03:14] I was leaving Ramadi. So at the end of my last appointment, and I was leaving Ramadi and another task unit came in to take our place.
[00:03:24] And they were coming into a complete and utter firestorm of sustained combat.
[00:03:37] And look, we had all been deploying a bunch over the years since 9 to 11. And this was 2006.
[00:03:47] Sort of the end of 2006. And so guys knew what it was like to go on combat deployments.
[00:03:54] But this particular combat deployment that we had been on in the Battle of Ramadi was significant. We had a lot of casualties.
[00:04:04] And these guys that were coming to replace us.
[00:04:10] I mean, I knew that they were coming into something that Seals hadn't deployed into in a long time.
[00:04:15] And look, I'm not saying that Seals weren't deploying into dangerous places. They were, but kind of a known scenario like that.
[00:04:23] It'd been a while.
[00:04:27] And so I felt horrible, actually. I felt horrible for the new task unit that was showing up to replace us.
[00:04:38] Because I felt like we had learned so much there. We had gotten good at our jobs.
[00:04:43] And I felt like we were leaving this other task unit in a bad spot.
[00:04:51] And I was worried about them and worried how they would survive.
[00:05:02] Well, I knew a few of their guys.
[00:05:07] A few of their guys I knew. And that gave me a level of comfort.
[00:05:11] One of the guys that I knew was the senior enlisted guy of the task unit, the guy named Steve Ward.
[00:05:18] One of the good guys. And I kind of knew him tangently over the years.
[00:05:25] Because I had turned over with him in Baghdad a couple years earlier.
[00:05:31] He'd been in a leadership position in a platoon at Team 5 and run a bunch of operations and done a great job.
[00:05:38] And I'd gotten a solid turn over from him. So that was awesome.
[00:05:43] And it just made my comfort level go up that someone was coming in.
[00:05:49] That was humble enough to listen and learn not just from me, not just from task unit bruiser, but also from the army in the Marine Corps.
[00:05:58] And who is also smart enough and knowledgeable enough to mix in that knowledge and that experience with humility and make sense of the whole crazy situation.
[00:06:10] Which is what he did. And when Steve came back from that deployment, which was a hard deployment for them, we ended up working together.
[00:06:20] Actually, actually truly working together for the first time at trade at the training command.
[00:06:26] He took over the land warfare, training cell as the senior enlisted advisor in that training block.
[00:06:33] And we ended up spending a lot of time together training and preparing seals for combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
[00:06:44] And it was a...
[00:06:48] It's hard for me to even say it was a challenging job. Yeah, it was a challenging job.
[00:06:53] But it was so critical and it was so rewarding to be able to work with the young frogmen and pass on the lessons learned to the next generation.
[00:07:05] So that they could go out there and take the fight to the enemy and keep themselves safe as safe as they possibly could.
[00:07:17] And I've actually retired out of that job and Steve carried on in his career. You went on to more senior positions of leadership and continued to deploy over and over again in support of the war on terror.
[00:07:31] Until a few months ago when he finally retired.
[00:07:36] And since then, we've been working together again. Still...
[00:07:42] ...still actually training leaders this time for leadership in the business world. But we're back at it.
[00:07:48] And it is an honor to be working with Steve again. And it is an honor to have Steve here on the podcast to tell us about his life, his experiences, and his lessons learned.
[00:08:00] Steve, thanks for coming all, man.
[00:08:03] Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it, Juggle.
[00:08:05] You were one of the guys in the beginning when this podcast kind of kicked off that was given me reports from the field that you were in the game listening to it.
[00:08:13] Yeah, me and Gardner go on back and forth. You know, in some of the books you covered early on, like the last hundred yards, and I was like damn.
[00:08:19] How could you not get on the net and listen to that for a couple hours? So that was good.
[00:08:24] Yeah, and here you are sitting in the chair. Let's go. Let's rock and roll. Let's talk about where Steve word came from.
[00:08:32] Yep. So group in Sacramento, California, small town. My mom and dad were divorced. So I'd go see my dad in the summer months and my sister and my mom and I, we all grouped the other Sacramento.
[00:08:45] I graduated high school in 91.
[00:08:47] Would you slow your roll, bro?
[00:08:49] Yeah, so we got a list of cover.
[00:08:50] Come on.
[00:08:51] So would you let your mom do? Would your mom do for 11?
[00:08:53] So she worked at a Davis college. She was like an administrator there.
[00:08:57] And then what about your dad? Where was your dad? So my dad, he was an air traffic controller. So we kind of bounced around the US.
[00:09:02] It's been a lot of time and floor to Puerto Rico up in Washington.
[00:09:05] Did you see much of your dad growing up?
[00:09:07] Yeah, in the summertime, I mean, my sister gone and see him for anywhere from two weeks to 30 days in the time.
[00:09:12] So it's good.
[00:09:14] Well, so it's good.
[00:09:15] So you just breeze through like, oh, when Ty is going to graduate, you were about to be in the Navy.
[00:09:19] Well, we did play sports.
[00:09:21] Yes.
[00:09:22] So played a baseball soccer football coming up.
[00:09:24] Any good? I'd say I was an average athlete.
[00:09:28] Nothing special.
[00:09:29] I wasn't consistent. I had good. Like for baseball, I had times and I was doing good.
[00:09:33] And then I'd get in the slump and when do so good.
[00:09:35] Slump due to bad attitude.
[00:09:39] Slump from, I'm trying to think of a good way to work this here.
[00:09:44] Slump from up. I guess being good enough.
[00:09:47] You know, like you get, so I was a pitcher. I played baseball. I played pitcher and I played outfield.
[00:09:51] And I'd have some times where I'd get up there and, you know, my friends would be cracking jokes.
[00:09:55] I mean, you're going to be in the first batter. You're going to be in the first batter.
[00:09:57] You're going to be in the first batter. First pitch. I'm being the first batter.
[00:10:00] Like damn. You know, you can't crack.
[00:10:02] Crack jokes up on the mound because you just hit somebody with a baseball.
[00:10:05] So, you know, didn't pan out too good for me. So my junior, I kind of quit baseball.
[00:10:10] And my freshman year, I started playing football. And I really enjoyed football.
[00:10:14] Contacts sport. Hard. Like a lot of hard work goes into that.
[00:10:17] So I enjoyed football. Finish that up my senior year. I played all four years.
[00:10:21] And soccer. I kind of quit playing that when I was probably like around 13, 14 years old.
[00:10:25] What kind of what were your friends doing when you weren't playing sports?
[00:10:29] Get in trouble. Get in trouble. So sports.
[00:10:34] You know, I was probably like, I wouldn't say a bad kid, but I was definitely off the path.
[00:10:40] 7th, 8th and 9th grade. Not good thanks for me.
[00:10:43] You know, I got, I was picking up trash on the side of the road. Those are on probation. Just doing stupid shit.
[00:10:48] For what? Just nothing. I cared for Peter.
[00:10:51] Just, uh, what do they call that? Delinquent. Delinquents.
[00:10:55] I was a delinquent. And it wasn't my friends. It was me.
[00:10:58] I was a guy that was like, one of the, when my friends came around, I was the guy instigating and kind of leading the charge on doing.
[00:11:04] What kind of music were you listening to?
[00:11:06] I just whatever. Like country rap rock I did, my just didn't matter.
[00:11:10] We had the old AMFM rados or anything. That's going on. There's a different time.
[00:11:14] Yeah. You were limited to what you could actually hear. Yeah. Was it a small town?
[00:11:18] Um, yeah. So I grew up actually in West Side.
[00:11:21] I was definitely a small town. Okay.
[00:11:23] So, yeah, small town, smaller high school.
[00:11:27] I went to high school called River City. Um, that was small.
[00:11:31] Did they have wrestling there?
[00:11:32] They had, they started a wrestling program. I think when I was in about 10th grade there.
[00:11:36] I didn't, I didn't wrestle. I played football. I stayed away from basketball.
[00:11:41] Um, yeah.
[00:11:43] How was your grades? I'm really a convention.
[00:11:46] Not good. Not, they were not good. I passed high school by the, you know, barely passed high school.
[00:11:51] So it wasn't good for me. I didn't pay attention. Had good teachers always given you good advice.
[00:11:56] I was just not in the learning.
[00:11:58] So you were a little bit of a trouble maker, right?
[00:12:00] Do you think when you were being a trouble maker?
[00:12:02] Do you think you were doing it for attention? Do you think you were doing it for the thrill?
[00:12:05] Do you think you were doing it for adrenaline? Like why do you think you were doing it?
[00:12:08] I think when I was a, which I was, I think of a lot of it.
[00:12:12] What I was doing to sort of prove to myself and my friends that I was like, uh, uh,
[00:12:23] tough like type things. Like I don't care. I'll do this like that kind of thing.
[00:12:27] When I think back as to why I did dumb shit, which I did plenty of,
[00:12:32] I think that's why a lot of it was like to prove that I was a quote and I'm putting in big air quotes here,
[00:12:41] tough because the stuff I was doing was by no stretch of the imagination, tough.
[00:12:46] Yep. I'd say I fallen that same category trying to prove something just doing,
[00:12:50] and I got our journal journal and rush out of doing those dumb things.
[00:12:54] And it took a long time to get out of my system.
[00:12:57] So you said that was mostly six, seven, eight, ninth grade, seven, eighth and ninth.
[00:13:02] Yeah. By tenth grade, were you kind of a little bit more square to, uh, turn in the corner?
[00:13:06] Yes. Yep. Did you feel, did you have some runs with a law that kind of straightened you back out?
[00:13:12] Provation and picking up trash on the side of the road.
[00:13:15] Hmm. Kind of scored me where we'll get away with a little more interest.
[00:13:18] You're in the van with all the rest of the delinquents.
[00:13:20] You're on the road on Saturday and Sundays. Not a good situation.
[00:13:25] So then you graduate, you barely graduate high school.
[00:13:28] At what point did you think about joining the Navy or did you think about the joining the Marine Corps or the Army?
[00:13:33] Where did you, what was the situation with and listing in the military?
[00:13:37] So I remember one of my high school teachers told me, hey, you got three choices when you get out of high school.
[00:13:42] And he's kind of mentoring us and none of us know it at the time, but he's like, hey, you can go to college,
[00:13:46] which I highly recommend, you can get a job or you can join the military.
[00:13:49] Or you can do a company that's not going to be a good job.
[00:13:52] You can get a job or you can join the military. Or you can do a combination of one and two.
[00:13:56] And that kind of always stuck with me.
[00:13:58] You know, and then as I started going in college, like, man, I just, I don't want to learn.
[00:14:01] I wasn't ready to learn.
[00:14:02] Wait a second. So you just skipped right to your in college.
[00:14:05] So when you, when you're still in high school, you didn't join the Navy or join the military while you're in high school.
[00:14:11] Correct. He gave you the three options.
[00:14:13] Job, college, military, you chose college.
[00:14:17] Yes. First.
[00:14:18] Yep.
[00:14:19] You thought, all right, did you have any freaking vision of any kind whatsoever you just like know sign up for whatever classes they signed me up for?
[00:14:27] Yeah. So I just signed up for the basic general education stuff.
[00:14:30] You know, went for a full semester and then dove into the second semester.
[00:14:34] And that's where like a one point. I don't know how to recruit or wound up at our door, but the recruit or wound up on our doorstep.
[00:14:41] And I started talking to him and we used to do a step of what your house of the house.
[00:14:46] You know, you go through and I was like, yeah, this is something I think I might be in a rescue map.
[00:14:50] Your mom called the dam recruiter in Santa Monica.
[00:14:52] Oh, she was kicking him out of there.
[00:14:54] Oh, really? She was not having any other recruiter. She told him to get that out of here.
[00:14:58] Oh, he did.
[00:14:59] Was your mom a hippie or something?
[00:15:00] No, no. She's a farm girl. She grew a farm.
[00:15:03] Yeah, she just didn't. She didn't want me join the military.
[00:15:06] Hmm.
[00:15:07] But you talked to him.
[00:15:09] I talked to him and was he a Navy recruiter?
[00:15:11] Navy guy. Yep.
[00:15:12] Navy recruiter.
[00:15:13] Did you have any inklet? Did you have any parents, grandparents? Anything about the military?
[00:15:17] Yep. You so stood?
[00:15:18] Yes.
[00:15:19] So my grandfather was in the army and he was he never went.
[00:15:23] He was around the World War Two, but he never went and served.
[00:15:26] You know, he got stationed out in Alaska somewhere.
[00:15:29] And then my dad was in the Air Force.
[00:15:31] So I had some small touch points there with some cool stories of, you know, grandfather being in the military.
[00:15:36] He was talking about throwing his grenade in the sergeant was telling that was the best throw ever type thing.
[00:15:40] And then my dad was in the Air Force.
[00:15:43] Your grandfather was getting told you're going to beam the batter with that grenade.
[00:15:47] Yeah.
[00:15:48] Yeah.
[00:15:49] So then so the guy took the recruiter talks to you.
[00:15:53] And at this point, you realize college is like the waste of your time.
[00:15:57] Yes.
[00:15:58] I'm done with school in the school.
[00:16:00] How did you enjoy high school?
[00:16:01] And I definitely wasn't enjoying college at that point.
[00:16:04] Which college was it?
[00:16:05] I was just called Saxity Community College.
[00:16:07] So you're living at home during this time?
[00:16:10] Yes.
[00:16:11] Yeah.
[00:16:11] Living at home working part time going to college.
[00:16:13] What was your part time job?
[00:16:14] I mean, I don't remember what it was.
[00:16:16] I had a couple of jobs growing up.
[00:16:17] I worked in a bunch of different little restaurants being a bus boy being a dishwasher,
[00:16:22] a booth furniture with a guy named Craig is great family guy.
[00:16:25] And so we get on the road.
[00:16:26] You work for a light furniture.
[00:16:27] We'd be trucking on down Delle with furniture on the back of his big old eating wheeler.
[00:16:31] I was actually a good job.
[00:16:32] It was hard work, but a paid good money.
[00:16:34] It was paying 10 bucks an hour back then.
[00:16:35] That was good money.
[00:16:37] You kind of the man with 10 bucks an hour.
[00:16:38] It was the man with 10 bucks an hour.
[00:16:40] Yeah.
[00:16:41] And that was a lot better paid than the Navy paid you.
[00:16:43] I'll tell you that back then.
[00:16:44] So how did the Navy recruit or convince you?
[00:16:46] He was just like, hey, come in and give this a go, man.
[00:16:49] And so I went through, did all that as a bad test.
[00:16:51] And he's like, right, we can get you in in June timeframe.
[00:16:54] And what job were you signing up for?
[00:16:56] Because you didn't list.
[00:16:57] Did you know about the seals at this point?
[00:16:58] No, I didn't.
[00:16:59] I never.
[00:17:00] I didn't know what the seal was.
[00:17:01] So I just, I was signing up to go to the regular Navy to go on a ship.
[00:17:04] Day to figure life out.
[00:17:06] Yep.
[00:17:07] Little did I know.
[00:17:08] It was about to get after some bathroom cleaning.
[00:17:12] So so what, like job that he sell you on.
[00:17:16] He didn't sell me.
[00:17:18] He was just like, I mean, so I had.
[00:17:20] I grew up with some friends and they, you know, a lot of people are getting in trouble.
[00:17:24] People are doing drugs, all that kind of dumb stuff.
[00:17:26] So I just knew I had the best option for me at that point in my life.
[00:17:29] Was to get out of Sacramento and go try something different.
[00:17:32] So the job, I, I didn't know what I wanted to do.
[00:17:35] Did you go to, did you go UD undesignated?
[00:17:37] Yes.
[00:17:38] Oh, damn.
[00:17:39] Yeah.
[00:17:40] So I was in, you know.
[00:17:41] So for people that don't know, like in the Navy, you have a job.
[00:17:44] It's called your rating.
[00:17:46] And your job is, you know, you might be a welder.
[00:17:50] You might be a technician or an engine man that's going to work on engines.
[00:17:56] Or you might run a weapon system.
[00:17:58] They have names for all these different jobs.
[00:18:00] But if you don't have a job, they call it, and I remember this from bootcamp.
[00:18:07] They was a threat.
[00:18:09] They'd say, you keep this up.
[00:18:11] You're going to go to the fleet UD undesignated.
[00:18:15] We mean you have no job, no skill.
[00:18:17] You're just going to go in there.
[00:18:19] So that threat that I got told was actually what you got signed up for.
[00:18:25] Go to the fleet UD undesignated.
[00:18:28] Sign me up already.
[00:18:29] Roll.
[00:18:30] Get me out of the sack.
[00:18:31] Yeah.
[00:18:32] Get me out of here.
[00:18:33] So you rolled into bootcamp.
[00:18:35] Yep.
[00:18:36] Roll into bootcamp.
[00:18:37] Fennish up.
[00:18:38] I want to say right around October time frame.
[00:18:40] So when did bootcamp win?
[00:18:41] When did you go to bootcamp in July 1991?
[00:18:44] Okay.
[00:18:45] And then did you go to Orlando?
[00:18:47] No, no.
[00:18:48] Here in San Diego.
[00:18:49] Oh, you went to San Diego.
[00:18:50] That's right.
[00:18:51] West Coast.
[00:18:52] So you went to bootcamp.
[00:18:53] And you just went to bootcamp eight week.
[00:18:55] It was eight weeks.
[00:18:56] I think you had weeks.
[00:18:57] You went to eight weeks of bootcamp.
[00:18:59] And then to the fleet.
[00:19:00] Oh, yeah, eight weeks of bootcamp.
[00:19:01] Then I went to Seaman training.
[00:19:03] Because I was going to work in Debt Department.
[00:19:05] That was my own designating.
[00:19:06] I'm going to be, you know, Seaman.
[00:19:07] So got trained up for three weeks there.
[00:19:10] And then showed up to a ship sometime.
[00:19:11] And I think November December timeframe.
[00:19:13] Of 91.
[00:19:14] Bro.
[00:19:15] Yeah.
[00:19:16] Yeah.
[00:19:17] Yeah.
[00:19:18] Hey.
[00:19:19] Jocco.
[00:19:20] It's not that funny.
[00:19:22] That's crazy, dude.
[00:19:24] Yeah.
[00:19:25] Well, you must have done good on your ass.
[00:19:27] Vabs.
[00:19:28] That guy didn't try and make you into like whatever.
[00:19:30] Some other rates we could get more.
[00:19:32] No.
[00:19:33] That's crazy.
[00:19:34] Dude.
[00:19:35] Well, that's in.
[00:19:35] So that was probably my first lesson learned in life.
[00:19:37] Hey, pay attention in school.
[00:19:39] So you score good on your ass.
[00:19:41] So you have option.
[00:19:42] Right.
[00:19:43] Hey, when you're in high school, you don't.
[00:19:44] I didn't.
[00:19:45] I really thought about that.
[00:19:46] I just need to make it through.
[00:19:47] Yeah.
[00:19:48] In life, you're going to be given some test.
[00:19:50] Well, you're going to go working a fire department, a police department.
[00:19:52] You're going to go in the military.
[00:19:54] And so the better edge educated you are, the more options you're going to have available to.
[00:19:59] And I didn't do so good.
[00:20:01] So my options were limited.
[00:20:03] Hey.
[00:20:04] Yeah.
[00:20:05] That's the one thing I always try and explain when like parents ask me about kids and like what the.
[00:20:09] And I think one of the biggest things you can do for a kid, the size getting them in a duty to is making them realize that their actions today have impact on the rest of their life.
[00:20:21] We get little kids and when I say little kids, I'm talking me when I was 23, right?
[00:20:26] What I'm doing right now is going to impact where I'm going to be, right?
[00:20:30] And so you how can you expect a 13 year old or a 15 year old?
[00:20:34] And you know girls, I feel a little bit smarter than boys.
[00:20:38] It's possible.
[00:20:39] It seems judging from my own children.
[00:20:42] Anyways, let me let me phrase X. I don't want to generalize in my personal family.
[00:20:46] It seems like my daughters are a little better at connecting.
[00:20:49] And what they're doing right now with the future than my son who just doesn't do it as much.
[00:20:57] So yeah, that's a good point.
[00:20:59] And when you realize it, what I'm doing right now as a kid,
[00:21:02] and it's not just kids, what I'm doing right now is a human is going to impact away my life goes.
[00:21:07] Yep.
[00:21:08] And you might end up in the fleet, you do.
[00:21:10] You do.
[00:21:11] Get after it.
[00:21:12] So so you do eight weeks of boot camp, three weeks of.
[00:21:17] You know, you're going to be a prep school, you know,
[00:21:21] and then boom, you go to a ship.
[00:21:22] Yep.
[00:21:23] What was that wake up call like?
[00:21:26] It wasn't bad.
[00:21:27] It wasn't bad.
[00:21:28] It was probably one of the best things that I've ever been to me.
[00:21:30] Well, in what way?
[00:21:31] Yeah, I just, it was, it was a lot of hard work.
[00:21:33] You know, so when you show up in Dr. Parvint and you're an E2,
[00:21:36] you're getting every, you know,
[00:21:38] you're getting all the assignments that are not fun to do.
[00:21:43] You know, you're cleaning bathrooms, you're painting the ship,
[00:21:46] you're just doing all the things on ship maintenance.
[00:21:51] And so you're eating some humble pie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
[00:21:54] Why you're doing this?
[00:21:55] Give me a chance to kind of grow up a little bit.
[00:21:57] It was good.
[00:21:58] It was hard work.
[00:21:59] I'd roll the sleeves up and get dirty.
[00:22:03] Yeah, you had time to reflect.
[00:22:05] Yeah.
[00:22:06] Time to reflect.
[00:22:07] What were you thinking about when you were reflecting?
[00:22:10] I was, so when I'm reflecting on that,
[00:22:12] I'm just like, hey man, you can make the best out of this situation.
[00:22:15] So I had one of my buddies that I went through boot camp with.
[00:22:18] We wound up on the same ship, Chris, and me and him just always had competition.
[00:22:22] We got put into the same deck department, and every assignment they gave us,
[00:22:26] we're like, we're running up and down them, sterile with ladders, just a little day.
[00:22:29] You know, completing assignments, coming back, like, hey, what else do you got from me?
[00:22:32] Like hey, you knuckleheads, that's supposed to take you to lunchtime.
[00:22:34] We're like, well, we're done. Give us more.
[00:22:36] That's awesome, man.
[00:22:37] So it was, it was fun. We made the best of it.
[00:22:40] You know, and we had some good, some good leadership on the ship,
[00:22:43] and some bad leadership. You got to, that was my first exposure to kind of what right looks like.
[00:22:47] What bad leadership looks like.
[00:22:49] So it was good, and you're taking down all these data points, and you're stormed it in your head, you know.
[00:22:54] And probably one of the biggest things I took out of that assignment is we had guys that were super knowledgeable,
[00:23:01] just very good. Like, we had a BM2, and he was super good at being a boesimate.
[00:23:05] He knew everything, how to tie all the ropes, all the maintenance, he knew everything.
[00:23:09] And he was square away, hard worker looked out for his guys.
[00:23:12] Like, that's a dude I want to be like.
[00:23:14] You know, he's talking about Esslime front, eight modeling, the correct behaviors.
[00:23:18] That dude is modeling all the right behaviors.
[00:23:20] Busted his ass, did good things, and he was getting promoted while he was on that ship.
[00:23:24] So you're like, on that, that a point.
[00:23:25] That's what right looks like. Same thing with the handful of chiefs around that ship.
[00:23:29] Just good solid dudes. They weren't afraid to roll their sleeves up, get in there with the guys,
[00:23:33] and get to work.
[00:23:35] You know, like, all right, check.
[00:23:36] Mental note on that.
[00:23:38] So then how long, how long was it when you were in the fleet until you heard about the deans?
[00:23:44] Yeah. So we had a couple guys that didn't make it through sil training.
[00:23:47] They showed up, came friends with those guys at some point.
[00:23:50] They told me all about, you know, basic underwater demolition sil training.
[00:23:54] And I was like, damn, that's something I'm in and rest at in.
[00:23:56] So I started training up, they told me kind of all the things you need to do to be successful.
[00:24:01] They took me over to the obstacle court, course showed me all the tricks on how to navigate that thing,
[00:24:06] a lot of technique.
[00:24:08] In the meantime, I was getting my application together and submit everything.
[00:24:10] So when I hit the two-year mark on the ship, I'd had my application back.
[00:24:14] I was approved to go to a sealed training and everything was dialed in as tight as it could be.
[00:24:18] No matter what I was going to have to do two years on that ship.
[00:24:22] So you weren't even close to your two years yet, and you already had your application in?
[00:24:26] I would say I had it in right around the probably 13, 14 months cycle.
[00:24:31] So you owed whatever, whatever the month were.
[00:24:33] The other year or something like that, 10 months left.
[00:24:36] Yep.
[00:24:37] Yep, something like that before they'd release you.
[00:24:39] Yeah, and the cool thing was, you know, we had two, my division master chief was an E9.
[00:24:45] Obviously he was a good dude and then our CMC or Command Master Chief of the ship was a good guy.
[00:24:49] And they're like, hey man, you work hard, you stay out of trouble, we'll make some phone calls.
[00:24:53] We'll make sure that you get a shot at going to Buds.
[00:24:56] And they didn't have to do that, you know, they could have been like, hey, pack sand, Jack, you want to get off the ship.
[00:25:01] Get out of the fleet and go to some other program.
[00:25:03] That's not helping us out.
[00:25:04] They didn't do that.
[00:25:05] They looked out for me, you know, working hard, staying out of trouble, being a good person, all those three things were good.
[00:25:11] You know, so again, it was kind of like reinforcing good behaviors.
[00:25:15] So always be thankful to those guys.
[00:25:18] And then the guys that showed up that had been to Buds, what kind of impression did that give you?
[00:25:25] Did you?
[00:25:26] Because there's a weird thing that somehow you have to think that you can actually do it, right?
[00:25:30] Yeah.
[00:25:31] Or, you know, like, for me, I was like, I can do this, which is a really arrogant thing to think, right?
[00:25:37] It's arrogant to think most people quit, but I'm going to be able to do it.
[00:25:41] Yeah.
[00:25:42] I wouldn't sure where I was going to shake out on the whole thing beyond with the, I didn't like run long distance and grown up.
[00:25:49] You know, we did a lot of sprints and football.
[00:25:51] And I wasn't good with Polips.
[00:25:53] That's so Polips, I was, I definitely sucked at it.
[00:25:56] And I was like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do the amount of Polips that are needed to do it.
[00:25:59] So I just started working hard on my Polips.
[00:26:01] Got on a good running program.
[00:26:02] Got on a good swimming program.
[00:26:04] Those guys taught me how to do the sidestroke.
[00:26:06] And so, you know, I just get up early morning and knock all this stuff out.
[00:26:09] Going and either do a weightlifting program and then do my cardio at lunchtime or vice versa.
[00:26:14] And every now and then those guys that come with me like a dial this and work on this.
[00:26:19] Look at that.
[00:26:20] So I was, I was mentally and physically prepared for first face on what to expect.
[00:26:26] These guys that give me so much information.
[00:26:29] Did those guys talk about what happened to them?
[00:26:32] Yeah, so one of the two of the guys, one of the guys made a past hell week.
[00:26:36] Another guy was in second phase and he got a drop for a full comp and then the other guy he was.
[00:26:40] He got up right around the third week mark for a week mark in first phase and he got injured and he got rolled out.
[00:26:46] Got a drop for pool comp and second phase up and then what did you see the other one was?
[00:26:51] The one guy made it past hell week and something happened when he was waiting a class up for second phase and they dropped them.
[00:26:59] And then the third guy he made it I think to like week three or four.
[00:27:04] And then got hurt or quit.
[00:27:06] I think he, well, he said he got, so you know, no one ever quit.
[00:27:11] Yeah.
[00:27:12] Yeah, no one ever quit.
[00:27:14] So you had a pretty good idea of what you're going into.
[00:27:17] Yeah, because I can tell you I didn't have anybody that I didn't know anyone that went to seal training at all.
[00:27:22] You know, because I was in the civilian world.
[00:27:25] So for me, I didn't know what pool comp was.
[00:27:27] I didn't understand anything.
[00:27:28] It was just a blank open nothing and do nothing.
[00:27:31] But you had a decent idea of what was going to be coming.
[00:27:34] Yep.
[00:27:35] Yep.
[00:27:36] I could, I was physically and mentally prepared for first phase.
[00:27:39] Did you get your pull-up square away?
[00:27:42] I did.
[00:27:43] I actually went in a little better with my pull-ups and you know,
[00:27:46] the deal when you show up and you start classing up.
[00:27:48] You're starting from scratch again.
[00:27:50] So now you're, from where I came in, I was coming back down with,
[00:27:54] you know, my run times and swim times and all that stuff.
[00:27:57] Meaning you were in better shape than what was required.
[00:27:59] Yes.
[00:28:00] Which is the way you freaking should try and get there.
[00:28:03] Yep.
[00:28:03] Yep.
[00:28:04] So you showed the buds.
[00:28:05] Did you get what you expected?
[00:28:07] Yes.
[00:28:08] Yeah, I was, feel as full benefit.
[00:28:10] So it was good times.
[00:28:12] Well, classroom unit.
[00:28:14] I was in 194.
[00:28:16] So we start we classed up.
[00:28:17] I want to say right around January of 1994.
[00:28:22] What do you have the, do you have problems with anything?
[00:28:26] In buds?
[00:28:27] Yeah.
[00:28:28] Oh yeah.
[00:28:29] Yeah.
[00:28:31] So first phase, first phase and third phase were,
[00:28:35] those came a lot more natural to me.
[00:28:37] I grew up hunting and fishing and shooting guns and doing all that fun stuff.
[00:28:41] So third phase wasn't bad. First phase I was mentally prepared for second phase.
[00:28:45] I'd never scuba dive and never did any diving.
[00:28:48] And for me, that was the hardest phase.
[00:28:50] You know, actually filled a couple events in there.
[00:28:53] Like I filled pool comp the first go around.
[00:28:56] You know, then when I did my retest, I passed it and then like every little thing,
[00:28:59] you know, you're doing ditch and dawn.
[00:29:01] You're doing all these little things with scuba tanks and going down and doing stuff.
[00:29:04] I was jacking it all up.
[00:29:05] And for me, my learning style, I really have to digest.
[00:29:10] You know, what it is I need to do and kind of like visualize it.
[00:29:13] And things were on a quick tempo for dive phase.
[00:29:16] So it wasn't, yeah, it wasn't good for me.
[00:29:20] Where did you feel like you're on the bubble the whole time?
[00:29:23] Like when I filled pool comp, I was like, all right, damn, I'm not going to make it through this man.
[00:29:27] You know, you're on the wall of shame.
[00:29:28] That doesn't help either you're looking at directional and jeez.
[00:29:31] I filled pool comp too.
[00:29:32] Yeah.
[00:29:33] I had our ops guy from train at our ops war and officer from train at, put me through.
[00:29:39] Yeah.
[00:29:40] Pool comp.
[00:29:41] Savage.
[00:29:42] Yeah.
[00:29:43] He just, well, you know what's crazy with pool comp?
[00:29:45] Like I'm going through and in my head, I had the procedures down.
[00:29:50] And I thought I did good.
[00:29:51] I'm like, I'm down there tying the wami knot, you know, all the shit.
[00:29:54] And I'm like, I'm cool, I'm a collect.
[00:29:56] I'm going through the procedures and the structure just yanks me up by the tank.
[00:29:59] She's like, you failed.
[00:30:00] Get on the wall and I was like, damn seriously, like I'm going through trying to think of what I did wrong.
[00:30:05] I'm like, I thought I was good, you know, but I didn't know if they were playing.
[00:30:08] I didn't know if they were playing games with me or what, but I went over the wall and I was like, shit, I don't know if I'm going to make it.
[00:30:12] That guy that failed me, who's a great guy.
[00:30:15] But when he, he's same thing.
[00:30:17] He had me down there.
[00:30:18] I was down there.
[00:30:19] Pool comp was 30 minutes when I went through and I know they showed that at some point to 20 minutes,
[00:30:23] but when I went through it was 30 minutes.
[00:30:25] And he just, what he did was he just, he ripped my mask off and then he just started doing like a bob.
[00:30:32] And he would bob down.
[00:30:33] He would come down.
[00:30:34] He would just knock the regular out of my mouth.
[00:30:36] And then he'd go back up and I would grab the regular and I put it back in.
[00:30:39] I'd clear it and then he'd knock it out again.
[00:30:41] And he did that for 19 minutes.
[00:30:43] Damn.
[00:30:44] And then I just kept replacing it and every one of those breaths was a nightmare because you're trying to,
[00:30:49] I just got, got, got, got, get the water out of there, swallowing some of the water and then get a breath and then,
[00:30:53] and then boom, he'd knock it out again.
[00:30:55] And you can't defend yourself.
[00:30:56] You can't protect yourself and you can't panic.
[00:30:59] So I just kept doing it.
[00:31:00] And then at 19 minutes he just comes down and gives me the thumbs up, come to the surface.
[00:31:05] And I come up and I'm like, I feel fine.
[00:31:07] And he goes, he goes, you don't look comfortable down there. You fail.
[00:31:10] And I was like, okay.
[00:31:12] So I guess that's that.
[00:31:13] Roger that.
[00:31:14] Yeah.
[00:31:14] What's a whammy knot?
[00:31:15] Like they just tighten this complex knot.
[00:31:18] It's like a multiple knot and we're not on that.
[00:31:20] Okay. So it's not like a specific method allegeer.
[00:31:23] Is it just like a generally speaking jam on that?
[00:31:25] So during this evolution called pool competency,
[00:31:29] also known as pool comp pool comp.
[00:31:31] They want to make sure that you are beyond fully
[00:31:34] comfortable in the water.
[00:31:36] You will not pass this if you're not comfortable in the water.
[00:31:39] Zero percent chance.
[00:31:40] So what they do is they they cause problems.
[00:31:43] You have these old school scuba gear on like jaccoo stow style stuff.
[00:31:49] No, they can be big hoses.
[00:31:51] One hose goes in and one hose comes out.
[00:31:54] And they're just like rubber hoses.
[00:31:55] And they start taking these things.
[00:31:58] And they first they start off the knock off your mask.
[00:32:00] They rip off your fins.
[00:32:01] They pull your regulator out.
[00:32:02] And then they start pulling your regulator out.
[00:32:04] And then like undoing your thing.
[00:32:06] And eventually they pull it out and put it behind you.
[00:32:09] Pull your regulator behind you and tie it.
[00:32:12] And then not you got to take your gear off.
[00:32:14] Pull the rig over your back.
[00:32:16] Untie the knot.
[00:32:17] Start breathing again.
[00:32:18] Put everything back on in order.
[00:32:20] Following the procedures.
[00:32:22] As soon as you get it back on,
[00:32:23] boom they hit you again.
[00:32:24] And so they keep doing this.
[00:32:26] And eventually they give you what's called a whammy knot.
[00:32:29] Which is a knot that you cannot get out.
[00:32:32] You won't come out.
[00:32:33] So now what you have to do is ditch your rig.
[00:32:35] Which means you have to take it off.
[00:32:37] You have to lay it on the bottom of the pool.
[00:32:39] You have to take your weight belt off and place it on top of the tank.
[00:32:42] So they don't float.
[00:32:43] Then you have to kiss your your your kiss your manifold.
[00:32:46] You kiss your manifold.
[00:32:47] Oh no.
[00:32:48] You request permission to go up.
[00:32:49] They give you permission.
[00:32:50] You know, you give them a thumbs up.
[00:32:52] They give you a like an okay thumbs up.
[00:32:54] Then you kiss your manifold.
[00:32:56] And then you blow and go to the surface.
[00:32:58] And kiss your manifold.
[00:32:59] You literally the part of the scuba tank is called the manifolds where the regulator kind of comes out of.
[00:33:05] You kiss that.
[00:33:06] Like why?
[00:33:07] I don't get it.
[00:33:09] Because those are the procedures.
[00:33:11] So that's the deal.
[00:33:12] Okay, like you got to follow these directions kind of kiss your manifold.
[00:33:16] Right.
[00:33:16] Did you have to kiss your manifolds?
[00:33:17] Yes.
[00:33:18] So you kiss your manifold.
[00:33:19] And then you blow and go.
[00:33:21] Which means you're not going to give yourself an air ambulism by the air expanding your lungs.
[00:33:27] And then you go to the surface.
[00:33:28] You blow and go to the surface.
[00:33:30] When you get to the surface, you give a thumbs up and you say, I feel fine.
[00:33:33] And they either say, you know, good job.
[00:33:36] You passed or they say, you looked uncomfortable with you failed.
[00:33:40] Which for me, they said you looked uncomfortable with you failed.
[00:33:42] And then for Steve, they said you looked uncomfortable with you failed.
[00:33:45] I would say the one thing that's different about me was I did good on everything else.
[00:33:51] So when I failed, who compiles I called God?
[00:33:54] Like this is it.
[00:33:55] I'm I'm going to fail super sketched out.
[00:33:58] Yeah, not me.
[00:33:59] That wasn't my first time failing.
[00:34:01] So you like failed like getting down on and on.
[00:34:04] Body breathe.
[00:34:05] I was good on the buddy breathe.
[00:34:07] Ditch and dawn and something else.
[00:34:09] I don't know what else I felt.
[00:34:10] It was like three things.
[00:34:11] You know what I was like?
[00:34:12] My buddy breathe partner was a freakin' rest there from Iowa.
[00:34:16] He was a beast of a guy.
[00:34:17] But he was a total freakin' panic in the water.
[00:34:21] This dude would take the freakin' buddy breathe from me.
[00:34:24] Cause you're using one set of scuba tanks.
[00:34:26] He would take it and just breathe off of it for like a long time.
[00:34:29] And then I'd be like, hey, you know, like giving a single leg.
[00:34:33] I need that right now.
[00:34:34] You know, and so he'd give it back to me.
[00:34:35] And as soon as I took one breath, he'd be like, you know,
[00:34:37] give me the signal.
[00:34:38] He needs more.
[00:34:39] Hmm.
[00:34:40] But you passed the second time.
[00:34:43] Yep, passed it.
[00:34:44] Made it out.
[00:34:45] Made it.
[00:34:46] Made it in the third phase.
[00:34:47] And then third phase was.
[00:34:48] On eventful.
[00:34:49] He's, you know, you're just doing a lot of run and swimming in shooting.
[00:34:52] So it was, that was a lot easier than second phase for me.
[00:34:57] And running you were good.
[00:35:00] Running good.
[00:35:01] I had all my run times down before I went into Buds.
[00:35:03] I wasn't so concerned about running.
[00:35:04] I was just worried about kind of getting injured.
[00:35:06] Slimming.
[00:35:07] What about the open ocean swims?
[00:35:08] Good to go.
[00:35:09] No factor.
[00:35:10] No factor.
[00:35:11] Did you, you are on her man?
[00:35:13] Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:14] So I, so when you were firing the gut?
[00:35:16] Yeah, so the way they press it dude.
[00:35:18] Yeah, the way they've worked it is I think we voted the fire
[00:35:21] and the gut before the oner man results came out.
[00:35:24] You know, the class voted that for me knows that card.
[00:35:26] That's awesome.
[00:35:27] And they're like, hey, Ward, you got oner man too.
[00:35:29] And I was like, all right, check Roger that.
[00:35:31] Well, well, well, well, the reason I say that's impressive is.
[00:35:35] The oner man is usually somebody that's like it does really well in all the events,
[00:35:39] like running swimming.
[00:35:41] Oh, of course.
[00:35:42] And the fire and the gut is usually a guy that like doesn't.
[00:35:45] Yeah.
[00:35:46] It's a guy that had to kind of grill through it and go through it to pass.
[00:35:49] Yeah.
[00:35:50] Like in my class, it was Jeff Higgs, who had hypothermia multiple times,
[00:35:55] like five or six times and he just, he showed back up to buzz,
[00:35:59] even though they kicked him out, he showed up.
[00:36:00] The class in his Dunga Rees and just kept doing it.
[00:36:03] So he got firing gut, like of course.
[00:36:05] And then oner man was Keith Cameroys, the total start athlete.
[00:36:08] But for you to get both of those, that's pretty freaking.
[00:36:11] Yeah.
[00:36:12] So how did you even get that?
[00:36:14] I don't know.
[00:36:15] I don't know man.
[00:36:16] I don't know.
[00:36:17] I didn't feel like it.
[00:36:18] Were you one of the leading guys and were you an e4 at this point?
[00:36:21] So yeah, I'd made e4 off the ship before I went to buzz.
[00:36:24] So I showed up the buzz and I was an e4 already.
[00:36:26] Were you the class leading petty officer?
[00:36:27] No, I was a second class nurse.
[00:36:29] No, we had a second class and there and I think eventually we had a,
[00:36:31] you know, he got the guy, our original LP, he got stress fractures and had real bad
[00:36:37] chance points.
[00:36:38] So we got rolled on and another guy came in and now he took over the class
[00:36:41] he'll be able to up.
[00:36:42] So was he a week like for you?
[00:36:46] I'll tell you what, how week wasn't.
[00:36:49] It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be.
[00:36:51] It sucks for everyone.
[00:36:53] I had enough gas on my tank.
[00:36:55] I think I could have went one more day.
[00:36:57] But you know, it was manageable.
[00:36:59] Yeah, it was manageable.
[00:37:00] We just had a guy on who ended up in SF,
[00:37:03] but he went to buzz and he didn't make it through buzz.
[00:37:06] But he said buzz is really, really hard.
[00:37:09] You know, he's like, it's because if you're thinking you're going to go there,
[00:37:12] you're going to get what you ask for.
[00:37:14] Yeah, yeah.
[00:37:15] For me, how week was kind of cool because I wasn't the best runner.
[00:37:18] I wasn't the best runner.
[00:37:19] I wasn't the best swimmer.
[00:37:20] And so it was like hard for me.
[00:37:22] Like I had to put out super hard to pass those evolutions and I had the fear of
[00:37:26] failing.
[00:37:27] Yeah.
[00:37:28] And and and hell, you, there's no time limit on there's no time limit on the
[00:37:32] have illusions just keep going and I'm pretty good at keeping going.
[00:37:35] That's, that's a, that's a good thing.
[00:37:37] I'm good at just keep going no matter what.
[00:37:40] The one thing I remember about how we get,
[00:37:42] you remember when we're doing steel pier.
[00:37:44] And then we're doing the one of the coldest points I had in my life.
[00:37:47] You know, they're a hose on the soft on that thing.
[00:37:49] And it felt like my damn hip flexors were going to pop off.
[00:37:52] You're doing flutter kicks.
[00:37:53] Then they'd pop us in the ocean and the ocean had to been around 60 degrees.
[00:37:56] But the ocean was way warmer than still.
[00:37:58] So you're in there and you're like, oh man, this is great.
[00:38:01] Keep us in the ocean for a little longer.
[00:38:02] You know, and they'd pop you back up there back and forth.
[00:38:04] And I could barely walk when we got off of that damn, that damn pier.
[00:38:07] So the peer evolution and how we was was horrible.
[00:38:10] And then the instructors just wrenching down on that rope.
[00:38:13] Carrying the boats to and from child that shit sucked.
[00:38:16] You mean wrenching down on the rope so that the thing is pulling down on your head on your head.
[00:38:20] Yes.
[00:38:21] Yeah, I thought my little neck was going to snap off there.
[00:38:23] Were they jumping from boat to boat when you were?
[00:38:26] We had instructors in our boat.
[00:38:27] I don't remember if jumping to another boat, but we were carrying them around.
[00:38:30] The structures were jumping from boat to boat.
[00:38:32] Damn.
[00:38:33] And like I remember here in my freaking neck bones just grinding.
[00:38:37] Yep.
[00:38:38] No, I was like, this doesn't seem like it's good for me.
[00:38:40] But, well.
[00:38:41] Yeah.
[00:38:43] So honor man and fire in the gut guy.
[00:38:47] And of course you jack into team five and known cares about any of that.
[00:38:50] No, it cares.
[00:38:51] Like, hey, new guy.
[00:38:51] Grab, go clean the shitter.
[00:38:52] He's like, damn, I thought I got away from the shitter.
[00:38:54] You're following me everywhere.
[00:38:56] I jacked into team five.
[00:38:57] Yep.
[00:38:58] Chugging into team five and August 1994.
[00:39:00] And then back then, you know, we started to go through STT.
[00:39:02] So they pop you in a pitoon and you start doing your pitoon work up.
[00:39:06] But you also got to detach from your pitoon and go through a seal tax.
[00:39:10] Oh, no kid.
[00:39:12] So you're okay.
[00:39:13] So, but your pitoon work up started.
[00:39:15] Our pitoon work up.
[00:39:17] We, it was almost, we were a couple months before starting the work up.
[00:39:21] But we were broken off and going to STT and the pitoon had just started some things when we had finished up.
[00:39:29] And you went to the group STT didn't you?
[00:39:32] No team.
[00:39:34] I think, you know, it's just the team.
[00:39:36] Just to your team.
[00:39:37] Okay.
[00:39:38] I thought they had already combined because eventually they combined.
[00:39:41] Yep.
[00:39:42] Where every guy went directly to a group.
[00:39:46] Well, not directly, but everyone went through STT together for a while.
[00:39:49] They still do now, but there was a time when they started.
[00:39:51] I thought they started around that time.
[00:39:53] So with you, is just guys from team five?
[00:39:55] Yep.
[00:39:56] Was it run by team five?
[00:39:58] It was run by team five.
[00:39:59] I'm trying to get out.
[00:40:00] That's the same thing that I did.
[00:40:01] And, and did you have any idea what your job was going to be?
[00:40:05] No.
[00:40:06] I got, you know, putting them at tune initially.
[00:40:08] I was a, a dub guy in there.
[00:40:10] I worked in there.
[00:40:12] The problem I had with a dub is I was left handed.
[00:40:15] And we did one of our guys in training.
[00:40:17] And he's like, hey, man, you're, they do to left handed.
[00:40:19] Why do you guys have a shooting in a dub?
[00:40:20] Because you know, I all that rounds are the brass and the link.
[00:40:25] Yeah, link are going out to the right, which is going right across your field of fire and then your face and stuff.
[00:40:30] So like, hey, put them on rear security.
[00:40:32] So, got on rear security for that first battoon.
[00:40:35] And then worked in there, dabble around and first attend it and ordinance.
[00:40:39] What kind of platoon was it just a spec ops?
[00:40:41] Speaks back off, spoutin.
[00:40:42] Yep.
[00:40:43] Yep.
[00:40:43] So we were deploying out to a little island out there on the Pacific.
[00:40:46] Did you, uh, how was, how was like your platoon leadership?
[00:40:50] No.
[00:40:51] The first battoon was not, was not good.
[00:40:53] So I got to see what wrong looks like.
[00:40:56] You know, and it was kind of funny.
[00:40:59] Like our, uh, was a classic case of, you know, our, our OIC was, it was a good dude.
[00:41:04] But I think it was two smart birds.
[00:41:06] I don't get it.
[00:41:07] And he, he was a little more concerned with PT and being a good shape.
[00:41:12] And he was a phenomenal athlete.
[00:41:13] Like, you know, one of them triathletes guys.
[00:41:15] Mm-hmm.
[00:41:16] But it came at the cost of showing up to dive evolutions on time.
[00:41:19] Came at the cost of being a good tactical leader down on the ground, which is what everyone's,
[00:41:24] 104.
[00:41:25] Um, so I think he kind of lost, you know, a lot of our guys respect.
[00:41:29] And he was kind of hardheaded, you know, and that classic,
[00:41:32] you know, I'm smart and everyone else type thing.
[00:41:34] So it didn't go over good.
[00:41:36] And it, it was just a, it was weird, you know, it was weird.
[00:41:40] And I didn't realize how, you know, trying to find a good way to wear this.
[00:41:46] It wasn't an ideal patoon.
[00:41:48] You don't realize that until you get into a really good patoon.
[00:41:51] Yeah, for you, you didn't know anything different.
[00:41:53] Of course, so for you, that's just the way a patoon was.
[00:41:55] Yep.
[00:41:56] And the scary thing about that is you get such a big impression made on you by your first
[00:42:00] patoon, that if you're not careful, you can think that other
[00:42:04] patoons are jacked up because they're not like your first patoon.
[00:42:08] Yeah.
[00:42:09] You know, you're so impressionable.
[00:42:11] Yeah.
[00:42:12] Yeah.
[00:42:12] So it was, it was an arresting.
[00:42:14] So there was a huge difference between my first patoon and third
[00:42:18] patoon, my third patoon I did.
[00:42:19] We were like the best patoon of the team.
[00:42:21] And it felt good.
[00:42:22] Like the leadership was dialed in.
[00:42:24] They were balanced out.
[00:42:25] Harpatoon chief was squared away.
[00:42:27] Well, respect it.
[00:42:28] He was good.
[00:42:30] Tactically he was good administrative.
[00:42:32] That's the dude I want to be like.
[00:42:34] You know, that was in your third patoon.
[00:42:36] That was my third patoon.
[00:42:38] You know, my second patoon was better than my first.
[00:42:40] Still a lot of room for improvement.
[00:42:42] You know, we, you were security.
[00:42:44] Did you move a to point manner?
[00:42:45] Yeah.
[00:42:46] Yeah.
[00:42:47] Move up to a point manner at some point.
[00:42:48] I think my second patoon, the third patoon, I was running a point.
[00:42:50] Running a point.
[00:42:51] Your tall for a point.
[00:42:52] I know.
[00:42:53] How tall are you?
[00:42:54] Yeah.
[00:42:55] Six two.
[00:42:56] Yeah.
[00:42:57] And what were you, you know, just to give people a reminder, this is the 90s.
[00:43:04] So we don't have a lot of assets.
[00:43:07] Nope.
[00:43:08] We don't have a lot of money.
[00:43:09] Nope.
[00:43:10] We don't have.
[00:43:11] We're not really doing any real missions.
[00:43:13] Barely.
[00:43:14] No.
[00:43:15] You know, some guys like Gardner went to Somalia.
[00:43:18] But that was a real rare occurrence.
[00:43:21] Yeah.
[00:43:22] So what we would do is train.
[00:43:26] Get ready.
[00:43:27] Go on to point.
[00:43:28] Kind of party.
[00:43:30] Just kind of like what the scene was.
[00:43:33] Yeah.
[00:43:34] I was kind of funny because when I showed up to the team, Gardner was already in there.
[00:43:38] He already had a couple of pothones on his bone.
[00:43:39] I'm on the damn quarter deck watch.
[00:43:41] And this dude has a long maybe he's still in.
[00:43:44] So I won't say his name.
[00:43:45] But he had a long name.
[00:43:46] And I'm like tension in the team five compound.
[00:43:48] Someone's so, you know, reports of the quarter deck.
[00:43:50] And I've put your name.
[00:43:51] What do you think's calling me on the damn before you go Gardner?
[00:43:54] He was a hard case man.
[00:43:56] Hey, you have to new guy.
[00:43:57] Say his name right.
[00:43:58] That's a shit man.
[00:43:59] That's a friend.
[00:44:00] Yeah.
[00:44:01] You're Gardner everything?
[00:44:02] Yeah.
[00:44:03] He was.
[00:44:04] I was like damn I'm not getting out of the compound tonight.
[00:44:05] We don't get taped up and thrown in a damn mil van.
[00:44:08] Yeah.
[00:44:09] So, so this was ninety.
[00:44:10] Yeah.
[00:44:11] Because at that time.
[00:44:13] Actually, yeah.
[00:44:14] At those years, you were starting to get a migration to team five from, like, for instance, from team one.
[00:44:20] If people wanted to leave team one, if they didn't like the stall log.
[00:44:24] And so there's a whole gang of guys that went down to team five.
[00:44:28] I remember that to just get to have some freedom.
[00:44:32] No fun one.
[00:44:33] Yeah.
[00:44:34] They're all right down the street up.
[00:44:35] They were coming on down the street north.
[00:44:37] Gardner was always at team five.
[00:44:39] So he was, but he was just like, why would I want more, like,
[00:44:42] Why would I want to be over there with as a bunch of rules that you have to
[00:44:45] fought with?
[00:44:46] Yeah.
[00:44:50] You can always find Gardner out when you're doing work into the desert.
[00:44:53] Because you just look for some smoke and look for fire.
[00:44:56] Look for fire.
[00:44:57] There's Gardner.
[00:44:58] He's a lights up shit on fire.
[00:45:00] Gardner got.
[00:45:02] So you do your third puttune.
[00:45:04] And then what?
[00:45:05] What are you thinking?
[00:45:06] What are you thinking about your life at that point?
[00:45:08] So what?
[00:45:09] What year is it?
[00:45:10] So this is I finished my third puttune in 99.
[00:45:13] So I was going through a divorce at a kid and I was like, hey, I got to hit the
[00:45:17] reset button.
[00:45:18] So I talked to our master.
[00:45:20] I see him saying, I was like, hey, man, I can't even get you in here.
[00:45:23] Be the training cell LPO and I was like, hey, man, I got a lot of baggage right now.
[00:45:28] I need to break contact here, go reset.
[00:45:31] So I got orders over to our special boat team and the headquarters element.
[00:45:36] And I got put in there training cell.
[00:45:38] We were basically setting up operational readiness exercises just like we used to
[00:45:42] run.
[00:45:43] Yep.
[00:45:44] And so you went just to everyone understands you went from instead of being a team training cell,
[00:45:48] which you're going to be gone all the time doing training trips.
[00:45:50] You go to a boat training and then the O.R.E.
[00:45:53] Training.
[00:45:54] So you're going to be home a lot more.
[00:45:55] Yes.
[00:45:56] Yep.
[00:45:57] And so at that point, I was ready to go back to school.
[00:45:59] So as soon as I got there, I was already enrolled back in college on a cup.
[00:46:02] A one year.
[00:46:04] I don't know what you call, but you know, they have military program.
[00:46:07] So I was going to school Saturday and Sunday.
[00:46:09] They're not out on my upper level units from my bachelor's
[00:46:11] degree and then I was working on my lower level units at the same time.
[00:46:15] So I wanted to finish up my degree in about three years.
[00:46:19] And so I'm there going through the training.
[00:46:21] We're home away trips every now and then every now and again.
[00:46:24] And it was good man.
[00:46:25] I had good leadership in there.
[00:46:27] You know, the special warfare combat and craft crewmen.
[00:46:30] Them dudes are square the way.
[00:46:31] And so I got to learn a lot about the boats.
[00:46:33] And that play off.
[00:46:34] Or it helped me out later on because you really learned in, you know,
[00:46:37] a how far can these things go load capacity.
[00:46:41] All those key tactical things that matter when it comes into a mission planning process
[00:46:46] for training or for a mission.
[00:46:48] Yeah.
[00:46:49] And what's good is you start to relate those to helicopters and aircraft and vehicles.
[00:46:54] And so it gives you a better sense because as a young team got,
[00:46:57] I was really lucky.
[00:46:58] I was a communicator.
[00:46:59] I was a company guy.
[00:47:00] So I was always involved in the planning.
[00:47:03] More than my peers.
[00:47:05] Right.
[00:47:06] And the point man might plan the the end, you know, the route.
[00:47:09] But like I was like, okay, here's what we're going to,
[00:47:11] here's what we're going to do for communications during the insert.
[00:47:14] And then once we're on target.
[00:47:15] So I was more involved in the planning, which was super lucky.
[00:47:18] And then I did Args where I was working with the Marine Corps and working with the big Navy.
[00:47:23] So once again, what's the distance that this helicopter can take us to and
[00:47:27] serve us?
[00:47:28] What's the distance that we can get with our boats?
[00:47:30] What's the distance that our ribs?
[00:47:31] Once again, the boats, how far can they take us?
[00:47:34] So I was very lucky that I got that opportunity because once you realize how to plan with assets,
[00:47:41] it's a big, you can transfers to all different assets.
[00:47:44] It makes you, makes you smarter across the board.
[00:47:46] Yep.
[00:47:47] So all that was good.
[00:47:49] So in, while was there at the boat at the boat dead, I was like,
[00:47:52] a not much going on in the 90s.
[00:47:54] I was kind of like ready to punch out of the military.
[00:47:57] And so I started putting him application for the CHP California Highway Patrol.
[00:48:02] Went through all the interview process, all the testing, got my letter of acceptance.
[00:48:06] And I was kind of just on standby.
[00:48:08] I was going to transition out.
[00:48:09] And then August of that year in 2001, I made Chief.
[00:48:12] I don't know how that one made Chief that.
[00:48:14] You know, I wasn't expecting to put it on.
[00:48:16] It was like a total shocker, you know.
[00:48:18] And then in September 2001, 9.11, I was at Garret Shed.
[00:48:21] I'm staying in.
[00:48:22] Man, we've been waiting a long time to get in the base.
[00:48:25] I've been training for whatever.
[00:48:27] I've been seven years.
[00:48:28] Yeah, I was like, yep.
[00:48:29] So, you know, from there, I worked with the CMC over team five.
[00:48:33] You get back there and he's like, I got a potato chip slot open.
[00:48:35] If you want him, I was like, hell yeah.
[00:48:36] You rolled right into a platoon chief slot.
[00:48:38] Yep.
[00:48:39] After September 11th.
[00:48:41] Yes.
[00:48:42] So I went back to the team.
[00:48:43] I left like a few months early, TAD to go back to team five until my orders could catch up.
[00:48:48] And then got over there and like I think right around January, February timeframe.
[00:48:52] We started forming up our battalion, getting ready for a 12 month workup.
[00:48:55] So you called the CMC at team five.
[00:48:57] Yep.
[00:48:58] And today, bro.
[00:49:00] Yeah, I wouldn't say I was saying, hey, bro.
[00:49:03] But I got the other match you've had with me at the boat debt.
[00:49:06] He was my second platoon chief.
[00:49:08] And he's like, hey, I'm working with Jimmy over here.
[00:49:11] Team five.
[00:49:12] You want to, you got a spot open.
[00:49:13] You want to.
[00:49:14] I was like, hell yeah, I want it.
[00:49:15] Dude, my point is like.
[00:49:16] It man, build some good relationships with people.
[00:49:21] Yeah.
[00:49:22] Build some good relationships with people.
[00:49:24] Yeah.
[00:49:25] Because that pays off.
[00:49:26] Yeah.
[00:49:27] That means you, how do you build good relationships?
[00:49:29] Not by kissing ass by working hard by doing a good job.
[00:49:32] That's how you build good relationships.
[00:49:33] When I checked into team seven after September 11th is actually like whatever
[00:49:37] Two years after September 11th.
[00:49:39] My, the CEO there, which first of all, the detailer who I was friends with,
[00:49:46] sent me to the next deploying team.
[00:49:49] So when I left, I had to go to college for a CMC animal program.
[00:49:52] When I left college, I went to the next deploying team.
[00:49:56] Yeah.
[00:49:57] That's not luck bro.
[00:49:58] Yeah.
[00:49:58] And then when I got to the team, the command officer who I'd also work for in the past,
[00:50:03] fired a platoon commander and put me in as a platoon commander, whatever three months before
[00:50:13] deployment.
[00:50:14] That's just, you know, that's based on my past performance.
[00:50:18] Yeah.
[00:50:19] And relationships for sure, but relationships are built on the fact that I worked hard
[00:50:22] and was trustworthy to get the job done.
[00:50:26] Yeah.
[00:50:27] So you never, plus you just never know who you're going to be working with.
[00:50:31] No.
[00:50:32] You know, don't burn any bridges, man.
[00:50:33] Don't burn any bridges.
[00:50:35] Yeah.
[00:50:36] And just go back to what you're saying there that your credibility in the teams is everything.
[00:50:41] Your reputation.
[00:50:42] Yeah.
[00:50:43] And you don't want to have a reputation of being a, you know, a jackass.
[00:50:46] You're a jackass.
[00:50:47] Yeah.
[00:50:48] You're a cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.
[00:50:49] You don't want to be that.
[00:50:50] Yeah.
[00:50:51] And the reputation is, is a, I don't know what the word to describe it.
[00:50:56] It is a heavy thing that sticks with you.
[00:51:00] It's actually, it's a sticky thing.
[00:51:01] It's a sticky thing.
[00:51:02] And if you have good reputation, it'll stick with you.
[00:51:06] If you have a bad reputation, it'll stick with you.
[00:51:08] It can take people years to overturn a bad reputation.
[00:51:11] Yeah.
[00:51:12] And interestingly, it can also take people years to ruin a good reputation.
[00:51:16] Yeah.
[00:51:17] Like a person with a good reputation can make mistakes and people like all you
[00:51:20] get.
[00:51:21] I don't worry about it's friend.
[00:51:22] You know, it's good to go.
[00:51:23] Or a person with a bad reputation can make one little slip up and people like you got to be
[00:51:27] kidding me.
[00:51:28] We need to get rid of this guy.
[00:51:29] Pull us, try to get him out.
[00:51:31] Yeah.
[00:51:32] Yeah.
[00:51:32] I like, and I hate to say that because right, right, that's like, that's like, what?
[00:51:35] That's like political and all this stuff.
[00:51:38] But it's just the reality, the situation.
[00:51:40] And there's, there's a reason for that.
[00:51:42] Because a look, human beings are going to mess up.
[00:51:44] But if you, I guess the difference is you have a good, a good person with a good reputation.
[00:51:47] They earn that reputation by consistent good performance.
[00:51:51] Yeah.
[00:51:52] And eventually that reputation stands on its own.
[00:51:54] And therefore, if they make a mistake, which everyone's going to make mistakes, when they make a mistake, when they make a mistake, which they will, people go, oh, you know, like, guess what?
[00:52:05] You know what?
[00:52:06] They've done a hundred good things.
[00:52:08] That's how they built that reputation.
[00:52:10] Now here comes a bad one.
[00:52:11] All right.
[00:52:12] Well, we're carry on.
[00:52:13] Whereas, if you've done a bunch of bad things.
[00:52:16] And now you do something bad.
[00:52:18] You're good.
[00:52:19] You don't have any leg to stand on.
[00:52:20] Yep.
[00:52:21] Yep.
[00:52:22] You're screwed.
[00:52:23] So that reputation thing.
[00:52:24] And it's everywhere.
[00:52:26] It's everywhere, but man in the teams, it's a big thing.
[00:52:30] It's a big thing.
[00:52:32] It's damn near everything.
[00:52:34] It's damn near everything.
[00:52:35] It's damn near everything.
[00:52:36] You're rep.
[00:52:37] So you roll in.
[00:52:39] Now you're a political, a political chief at team five.
[00:52:42] Yep.
[00:52:43] Get ready to deploy.
[00:52:44] Yes.
[00:52:45] Yep.
[00:52:45] But at what point do you realize you guys are going to Iraq?
[00:52:48] We didn't know until probably January 2003.
[00:52:53] So we're, you know, I get there in October 2001.
[00:52:57] January February 2002.
[00:52:58] We started our 12 month long work up cycle.
[00:53:00] And then it's going through and it looks like we're going into Iraq.
[00:53:04] You know, we no one really understood the scale of that thing.
[00:53:08] How big it would wind up being.
[00:53:09] How many years it wind up being, you know?
[00:53:11] So when they told us how you're going over,
[00:53:14] we were like hell.
[00:53:15] Yeah.
[00:53:16] Yeah.
[00:53:17] This is awesome.
[00:53:18] Because you, like everybody else in the teams,
[00:53:19] was worried that there would be a three month war and you'd miss the whole thing.
[00:53:24] Exactly.
[00:53:25] Exactly.
[00:53:26] Which is so hard to explain to people, especially now that we've been a war for almost 20 years straight.
[00:53:31] Yeah.
[00:53:32] It's hard to explain to people how much it meant to go to war when there was no war going on.
[00:53:37] Yeah.
[00:53:38] It was everything.
[00:53:39] Like you were just like, man, this is going to be awesome.
[00:53:41] You know, it's getting prep.
[00:53:42] You know, like, I don't know what to expect.
[00:53:44] Everyone was thinking they had chemical weapons.
[00:53:46] You know, we were going through all kinds of mob drills with our CBR gear and just going through everything.
[00:53:52] Are you with you guys were getting everyone tuned up so we were dialed in.
[00:53:56] Then you're looking at the freaking mob uniforms.
[00:53:59] Yeah.
[00:54:00] And it's like got a elastic drawstring at the waist and like you're thinking,
[00:54:05] Wait a second.
[00:54:06] Yep.
[00:54:07] This is supposed to keep me alive and happen.
[00:54:09] Whatever.
[00:54:10] Let's rock and roll.
[00:54:11] Did you ever think that you ever take that charcoal freaking light laden suit and be like,
[00:54:16] Hey, how would it wait?
[00:54:17] You're saying this thing's going to save me?
[00:54:19] It's got some elastic drawstring around the ankles and that's supposed to keep me good to go.
[00:54:24] Yeah.
[00:54:25] That that mob suit didn't have a good reputation.
[00:54:28] Do you?
[00:54:29] Sure.
[00:54:30] It was it was lacking.
[00:54:31] I don't know what the US government paid for those mob suits.
[00:54:35] And what level of security they provided us,
[00:54:38] but I don't have a lot of confidence.
[00:54:40] The idea was a lot.
[00:54:41] And the gas masks do like one of the chances.
[00:54:44] Yep.
[00:54:45] But that's where we were getting told we were going to do.
[00:54:48] And not one single guy said, no, because we did.
[00:54:51] I did one.
[00:54:52] Up where we mopped up because we thought we were hitting a target that had allegedly.
[00:54:58] Some whatever chemical weapons.
[00:55:00] And you know what everyone did.
[00:55:01] Everyone got jocked up.
[00:55:03] Everyone put those gas masks on.
[00:55:04] Everyone put those stupid freaking uniforms on.
[00:55:07] And I'll tell you what we had quite a few missions when we got over to Iraq.
[00:55:11] What we were going around with some of those three letter agencies looking all over the place.
[00:55:15] Seeing what was around.
[00:55:16] And everything we saw was was old.
[00:55:18] It was like it been there left.
[00:55:21] You know, nothing knew at all.
[00:55:23] You know, um,
[00:55:24] As far as CBR, CBR.
[00:55:26] Yeah.
[00:55:27] She had like all the facilities and everything was like nothing's been here for a long ass time.
[00:55:31] So.
[00:55:34] So all right, well, let's, so you get them with your work up.
[00:55:37] You find out you're going to Iraq in January.
[00:55:39] And you guys are going on deployment in like April or something.
[00:55:42] Yep.
[00:55:42] Yep.
[00:55:42] April timeframe.
[00:55:43] So a team three was already over there and just going back to your relationships.
[00:55:46] Peace.
[00:55:47] We had a couple guys on the battoons that were dialed in with some team three guys.
[00:55:51] And they started sharing information.
[00:55:53] You know, back and forth.
[00:55:54] Hey, here's what's going on.
[00:55:55] Here's what to expect.
[00:55:56] So that gave us a really good idea on what we needed to prep for.
[00:56:00] And so right around April timeframe, we deploy over to Kuwait and work stage in Kuwait,
[00:56:06] Wait and go into Iraq.
[00:56:07] Team three's, I think, wrapping things up at that point.
[00:56:10] We might already turned over with them.
[00:56:12] Um, and we're actually in, um, Kuwait for a handful of weeks.
[00:56:17] I want to say right around three weeks.
[00:56:19] And we actually did our first all about a Kuwait into Iraq on 53's.
[00:56:23] Yeah.
[00:56:24] That was, that sounded like a crazy out.
[00:56:25] It was good.
[00:56:26] It was a good shake out.
[00:56:27] Nothing, nothing happened.
[00:56:28] But we planned for 96 hours.
[00:56:30] We went through all of our helicopter aerosols.
[00:56:32] You know, and it was a big, obliverted up those, uh, our D.P.V.
[00:56:37] He's Desmond Role vehicles.
[00:56:38] And we went in with a big package.
[00:56:40] And we, what was your mission?
[00:56:42] To go take down the, the dam.
[00:56:44] Get control.
[00:56:45] Control.
[00:56:45] He did.
[00:56:46] It wasn't a deed.
[00:56:47] There was somewhere up north, the Mucorium.
[00:56:49] Okay.
[00:56:50] Mucorium dam.
[00:56:51] So, uh, we went up there.
[00:56:52] And it was a long ass flight in there.
[00:56:54] And we're all jacked up on the cat.
[00:56:56] Now, you think you're going to get in the shit.
[00:56:58] You know, we're flying there.
[00:56:59] We got her.
[00:57:00] He and our plan laid out.
[00:57:01] Case of helicopter.
[00:57:02] Get shot down.
[00:57:03] We got our mob gear with us.
[00:57:04] Yeah.
[00:57:04] And we're roping down off 53's onto the dam.
[00:57:06] With our CBR gear, you look like, you know,
[00:57:08] Mitchell and snowman.
[00:57:09] Do you mask up when you, when you fast roped?
[00:57:11] We were not.
[00:57:12] The, the game plan was secure the dam.
[00:57:14] Get everything set up.
[00:57:16] Get everything cleared.
[00:57:17] And then they had some tunneling systems in there.
[00:57:19] Because it was a dam.
[00:57:20] They wanted us to go inside the tunneling system.
[00:57:22] See if there's any, you know, weapons, a mass destruction or chemical weapons in there.
[00:57:25] So the, once we secure the dam, which took a little while,
[00:57:28] because you don't only think about how big a dam is on the inside.
[00:57:30] There's a lot of shit going on in there.
[00:57:33] This is a one-platoon up.
[00:57:35] This is, so we had like a bar.
[00:57:37] We had a two plus.
[00:57:38] We had a two plus.
[00:57:39] We had our, our mobility element.
[00:57:41] And we also brought in some, as TV brothers,
[00:57:44] which was good.
[00:57:45] They'd already been there.
[00:57:46] And they'd clear the tunnel ships small, you know,
[00:57:49] little, what do you call the little boats out there?
[00:57:51] Dows.
[00:57:52] Dows.
[00:57:52] They cleared a tunnel.
[00:57:53] So these guys had already.
[00:57:54] Had some reps on the boat.
[00:57:56] So we were excited to get them on the opposite.
[00:57:59] But yeah, we went in there, on the vent,
[00:58:00] filled clear to chuck the tunnels, nothing there.
[00:58:03] Then we, you know, waited there a couple days.
[00:58:05] And then we pulled out.
[00:58:06] But that, that's a, that's like a big,
[00:58:09] that's the big mesh that we were planning for in the 90s.
[00:58:12] Like that type of fig.
[00:58:13] Yeah.
[00:58:14] Like hey, here it is.
[00:58:15] Yeah.
[00:58:15] You're going to heal a win.
[00:58:16] This is the big mesh.
[00:58:17] And plus, that was your first combat operation.
[00:58:19] Yes.
[00:58:20] Yep.
[00:58:21] It was a big deal.
[00:58:22] We felt good to get that under our belt.
[00:58:25] And we, we, it was a good shake out for planning.
[00:58:29] Because, you know, you're either going through the 96 hour planning cycle.
[00:58:32] Um, a lot of good lessons learned.
[00:58:34] First time using 53 is on an automation like that.
[00:58:37] So it was good.
[00:58:39] You know, in one of the things I jacked up is me and another guy on our medical guy's
[00:58:43] squad, the way to stay in the teams for a while.
[00:58:45] But we rope down.
[00:58:47] And we had our CBR gear strapped on our sides.
[00:58:50] And so it was we're coming down.
[00:58:52] We got that damn molly pack.
[00:58:53] You know, you got a weave it in and out of the, the nylon.
[00:58:57] I didn't weave mine in and out like I was supposed to.
[00:59:00] So I went through a couple, but I left like the bottom on done.
[00:59:03] And I don't know if I hit the wheel or the skin of the aircraft, but that thing, that damn thing
[00:59:06] came popping off.
[00:59:07] Of course, I had my MVGs in there.
[00:59:09] Ooh, the heel, you know, and the, uh, the backpack goes over the side.
[00:59:13] Same thing with the other cat that was with me.
[00:59:15] We think the world of wash, you know, put it in the river and stuff.
[00:59:19] And everybody was talking about, hey, it's not a big deal.
[00:59:21] You can, you get, you know, right it off as a combat.
[00:59:24] It's a combat loss.
[00:59:25] That's what everyone was talking about.
[00:59:27] You know, like, all right, I guess it's not the big video.
[00:59:29] Calm about last.
[00:59:30] I was like, do the skipper was not happy.
[00:59:32] The combat loss right off was not a thing.
[00:59:36] Yeah.
[00:59:37] Well, what's really not a thing is trying to do a night clearance without nods.
[00:59:41] Yeah, night vision.
[00:59:42] We white lighted everything then.
[00:59:44] Okay.
[00:59:45] So back then, we're coming up on the damn we're white lighten it.
[00:59:47] And then even the clearance on the inside.
[00:59:49] So you were lucky.
[00:59:51] In that respect.
[00:59:53] What do you mean?
[00:59:54] I'd say it if you, you said you lost your nods, right?
[00:59:57] Oh, yeah.
[00:59:57] Yeah.
[00:59:57] I'm saying you're lucky that you didn't, you didn't need them.
[01:00:02] Yeah.
[01:00:03] Yeah.
[01:00:03] Yes.
[01:00:04] That is accurate.
[01:00:05] Because that would have freaking, you'd have just been blind to walking around.
[01:00:08] Yeah.
[01:00:09] Yeah.
[01:00:10] Walk into a wall.
[01:00:11] Yeah.
[01:00:11] It was just buddy along with somebody.
[01:00:13] Yeah.
[01:00:14] It was a good lesson for me.
[01:00:15] Did you, uh, that little Molly weave?
[01:00:19] How many Molly weaves did you make?
[01:00:21] Like two?
[01:00:22] I think I had about three in there.
[01:00:24] I think there was around five.
[01:00:26] And I just left out the last two and snap that end.
[01:00:28] Snap that end.
[01:00:29] Snap that end.
[01:00:30] Yeah.
[01:00:30] Snap that end.
[01:00:31] Get her done.
[01:00:32] She's good.
[01:00:33] Not so good.
[01:00:34] Yeah.
[01:00:35] How did you get such a good one?
[01:00:36] And the skipper was pissed.
[01:00:37] Oh, he was hot.
[01:00:38] And I was on the mat with him.
[01:00:40] Like he's, you know, called me to task all that way.
[01:00:42] Yeah.
[01:00:43] Luckily, like I said, you had a good reputation.
[01:00:44] Like if you had a bad reputation at that point, that would really suck.
[01:00:48] Yeah.
[01:00:49] Yeah.
[01:00:50] Would have really sucked.
[01:00:51] Yep.
[01:00:52] So that was your first big mesh.
[01:00:54] And then what?
[01:00:55] But that was out of Kuwait.
[01:00:56] That was out of Kuwait.
[01:00:57] Yep.
[01:00:57] And then what happened?
[01:00:58] Then we moved up into Baghdad.
[01:01:00] We had a little camp set up out there.
[01:01:01] I'd call camp pose.
[01:01:02] You know, we had a, I don't know if you know,
[01:01:04] opposed you, but it could go more and more on serving.
[01:01:06] And I'm doing good.
[01:01:07] Good scores.
[01:01:08] Good scores.
[01:01:09] And the best.
[01:01:09] And we had another guy we called him Ranger.
[01:01:11] And, uh, those two dudes came in.
[01:01:13] And we were going to build out the camp.
[01:01:15] You know, we took a Ranger with us on, uh,
[01:01:17] on the fight a few missions.
[01:01:18] Good dude.
[01:01:19] And then we just started operating out of Posey into Baghdad.
[01:01:22] Yeah.
[01:01:23] We were right there at the Baghdad International Airport.
[01:01:24] And what I was impressed with looking back,
[01:01:26] or what I am impressed with at looking back is,
[01:01:29] you guys were freaking super proactive in getting missions started.
[01:01:34] Like you guys were super proactive in forming relationships.
[01:01:37] Yep.
[01:01:38] And getting me and tell that you needed from various sources.
[01:01:41] And, and starting to do a lot of operations.
[01:01:43] Yeah.
[01:01:44] We set the foundation for you guys.
[01:01:46] Yeah.
[01:01:47] Yeah.
[01:01:47] Yeah.
[01:01:48] As came in it did like four times more than what we did.
[01:01:49] But we were definitely in laying that foundation.
[01:01:51] And one of the things we had our task unit senior enlisted leader.
[01:01:54] Um, he was dialed in and he came from Damnet.
[01:01:57] Mm-hmm.
[01:01:58] And so he had a lot of good relationships.
[01:02:00] Yeah.
[01:02:01] You know, you know,
[01:02:01] Damnet was over there at that point.
[01:02:03] And so he was tied in with a lot of the three letter agencies,
[01:02:05] which opened up the door with quite a few missions,
[01:02:08] shared intelligence.
[01:02:10] So that really helped set that foundation for us.
[01:02:13] And then from there we were starting to get,
[01:02:15] you know, some good missions.
[01:02:16] And hell even if you're getting one mission, you're like,
[01:02:18] all right, we're good to go, you know,
[01:02:20] because you think we all think we're going to be out of there with then six, seven months.
[01:02:23] Like the whole thing shutting down.
[01:02:24] Yep.
[01:02:25] Um, but obviously it didn't.
[01:02:27] Yeah.
[01:02:28] So, what was your, you guys got in some gun fights, too?
[01:02:32] Yeah.
[01:02:33] What was the first one like, what do you remember?
[01:02:35] Our first shoot I was kind of funny.
[01:02:37] We were dialing in our standard operating procedures for a shootout.
[01:02:41] Um, which we had done.
[01:02:43] Like, you know, we went through training training was good,
[01:02:45] but it was nowhere near the level that, you know,
[01:02:47] we provided our guys once we got over to trade it.
[01:02:50] Wasn't anywhere near that.
[01:02:51] So we identified a few of the gaps we had.
[01:02:54] And we went, we developed, we brought on the batoon,
[01:02:56] we brought in guys with experience.
[01:02:58] And we developed our standard operating procedure for what we're going to do
[01:03:01] inside a house if we get in a shootout.
[01:03:04] And it was basically a press fire cover crash maneuver using a cover move
[01:03:08] and we're going to deploy some crashes.
[01:03:10] So, what's going to be, it's a press and fire while that's happening.
[01:03:13] So, on this particular mission, we went in and, uh,
[01:03:16] the house, the guy Mark Force was the wrong house.
[01:03:19] We didn't know that.
[01:03:20] We want imagery, everything looked down, then tight,
[01:03:22] and they market.
[01:03:23] It looks good.
[01:03:24] We go in.
[01:03:25] Breach the door.
[01:03:26] So we gone exposed.
[01:03:27] So now the neighborhood started to wake up.
[01:03:28] We clear the house.
[01:03:29] I kept everything on the clock.
[01:03:30] We clear the, you know, two story house in under two minutes.
[01:03:33] We get the call on the net a reset.
[01:03:35] The actual target house is down the street.
[01:03:38] So we reset, we consolidate, you know,
[01:03:41] ones on the left, two is on the right, gear check,
[01:03:43] you know, sensitive equipment check.
[01:03:45] Everyone's good.
[01:03:46] Come back out of the house, grab our wood ladders,
[01:03:48] patrol back down the road and the right house is marked.
[01:03:51] And we go up there.
[01:03:52] And it was the right house.
[01:03:53] It had a double security screen door.
[01:03:55] We go to close up on it.
[01:03:56] We got a, a fail breach.
[01:03:58] So now it's turned into a big construction project.
[01:04:00] The guys were up and nothing mentioned it just so everybody knows like after you
[01:04:04] hit the first house, everybody in a two mile square radius knows what's happening.
[01:04:10] And if you're in that neighborhood, you know exactly what's happening.
[01:04:13] So if you're a bad guy in that neighborhood,
[01:04:15] you are now alert and ready to be attacked and you're prepping.
[01:04:20] Yep.
[01:04:21] Exactly.
[01:04:22] So now we got to fail breach.
[01:04:24] We're on the outside of the structure.
[01:04:26] The preachers are working through getting through that heavy security screen door.
[01:04:29] We're kind of raken windows.
[01:04:32] We're deploying crashes in there to keep people away from the front door.
[01:04:35] We finally get entry clear the first floor.
[01:04:37] Everything's good.
[01:04:38] We're dialed in and back then we always pressed into our guys.
[01:04:41] Hey, you make the call.
[01:04:43] If you stack on the stairs, you're the number two guy.
[01:04:45] You got three or four more guys behind you.
[01:04:46] Make the call and go up the stairs.
[01:04:48] We don't want to just have this lag period where you're waiting for.
[01:04:51] Me or the OIC to make a decision.
[01:04:52] Tell you what to do.
[01:04:53] Decentralized command.
[01:04:54] So the guy stack on the stairs.
[01:04:56] I'm right there.
[01:04:57] I just came out of the kitchen area.
[01:04:59] They start moving up the stairs and there's young kid upstairs with an AK 47.
[01:05:03] So he's like 10 feet away and he's just full auto.
[01:05:06] Guy's, our guys are on the stairs.
[01:05:09] They're trying to return fire.
[01:05:10] But the, the volume's just all around our dudes, man.
[01:05:13] I'm young in the guys get back down here.
[01:05:15] They come back down the stairs.
[01:05:17] And then we go through our shootout procedures, which, which paid dividends.
[01:05:20] They worked.
[01:05:21] We couldn't shoot get at the guy because the guys on the second deck are now working down the loan.
[01:05:25] So there's no way to get the direct fire.
[01:05:27] So our guys are exposing themselves a little bit trying to get an angle here.
[01:05:30] Guys are deploying crashes.
[01:05:31] We deployed about five, six crashes.
[01:05:33] There's no more gunfire.
[01:05:34] We're like, all right, check.
[01:05:36] We're going up.
[01:05:38] So, you know, we go up the stairs.
[01:05:40] The kid had actually dropped his gun.
[01:05:41] We clear the second deck.
[01:05:43] There's freaking smoke everywhere.
[01:05:45] So he's just, I mean, we're gagging.
[01:05:46] There's so much smoke in the house.
[01:05:48] Go up there.
[01:05:49] The guy's not there.
[01:05:50] We're like, where the hell this guy go?
[01:05:52] And our guys go out on the deck patio.
[01:05:55] And they're clearing.
[01:05:56] And now we're looking really hard.
[01:05:58] Like, where is this guy?
[01:05:59] And the kid is a young kid hiding behind curtains.
[01:06:02] And, you know, the guy's there.
[01:06:03] And then boom, our guys, Mosul Strike the guy.
[01:06:05] Get him into the center room.
[01:06:06] We cuff him up.
[01:06:07] And that was that.
[01:06:09] So, they didn't want to get hit by him by the bad guy.
[01:06:12] And also these, you know, our, our guy had enough of the stairs.
[01:06:15] First, the first guy up, he had a graze over his NVGs.
[01:06:19] But actually, he had his, his mount.
[01:06:22] But he didn't get hit.
[01:06:23] It was like, it was a total pulp fiction pulp fiction.
[01:06:26] And then boom, boom, boom.
[01:06:27] Yeah.
[01:06:27] Like he had angels on his.
[01:06:28] Because I could have been a bad guy.
[01:06:29] And I would get a two, three guys hit in that one ball.
[01:06:31] And no one got hit.
[01:06:32] We, we were extremely lucky.
[01:06:34] How many, how many rounds do you think the guy shot one mag or two mags?
[01:06:37] Did he get a reload?
[01:06:38] No, no, no, he didn't get a reload.
[01:06:39] I think you got a full mag off somewhere in between 25 and 30 rounds.
[01:06:43] Damn dude.
[01:06:44] Yeah.
[01:06:45] From 10 feet.
[01:06:46] Yeah.
[01:06:46] Yep.
[01:06:47] Close.
[01:06:48] Yeah.
[01:06:49] I mean, I don't know how he probably missed because he was on full auto.
[01:06:51] You know, those things get, you're just bouncing all around and going full auto.
[01:06:55] And the dude, you know, the guy was just a total douche bag of shot as two.
[01:07:00] He was like, I love towards push.
[01:07:01] I love Coca-Cola.
[01:07:02] And you're like, you should shut up, man.
[01:07:05] So yeah, we cuffed him up.
[01:07:06] And that was, that was emotional when you're getting shot at that close and you're dealing with the bad dude that just tried to kill you.
[01:07:12] You know, those emotions get jacked up pretty high.
[01:07:16] Um, we had some good teammates there.
[01:07:18] I mean, I was, I wanted to kill the dude.
[01:07:20] Um, but you can't do that, you know, as much as you want to.
[01:07:23] You're gonna, it's not gonna be good.
[01:07:25] But we got him cuffed up, took him over to our attention facility and, you know, the guys did good that night.
[01:07:31] And they did good because of the training, the talk throughs that we did.
[01:07:35] Going through the checklist, going through multiple rehearsals.
[01:07:39] Every time these missions came up, all that paned out, all that worked in our favor.
[01:07:45] For that one event, for that one shoot out, that all worked for us.
[01:07:49] You know, having, uh, having contingency plans, which is that what you guys had.
[01:07:54] And it's what, you know, we have all kinds of contingency plans.
[01:07:57] I mean, every eye add, every immediate interaction truly we do is a contingency plan.
[01:08:00] Like, oh, if we could shot that from over there, we're gonna, we're gonna do.
[01:08:03] So having those contingency plans, it just makes it so that you don't really have to think.
[01:08:09] Decentralized command just works.
[01:08:10] Everyone knows what to do.
[01:08:11] They know what the objective is.
[01:08:12] They make it happen.
[01:08:13] And so you can make very little call, very very, you can give a very little direction.
[01:08:18] And things still will proceed the way they're supposed to.
[01:08:21] Yeah.
[01:08:23] What about, um, what about your next, what about your next gunfight?
[01:08:28] So our next one, I think, was our, our helicopter.
[01:08:32] So we've gone in after this guy and he, um, he shot an RPG and killed an army guy.
[01:08:37] And so we were going in after him.
[01:08:39] And so we came in, we did quite a bit of heel work that deployment.
[01:08:42] So we came in with our helicopters and our game plan was to, you know, land on the X assault the building and get grab a guy and go.
[01:08:49] And he was out in this, uh, think we actually out in Feluso, Romani.
[01:08:52] So there were some palm grows out there.
[01:08:54] So on insertion, we come in in the helicopters went to the wrong house.
[01:08:59] You know, our RPGs back then, they're kind of, they're not good.
[01:09:02] So we could see how that.
[01:09:04] So we, we, we sat down or like, this is not the right house.
[01:09:06] Get back up.
[01:09:07] They get back up, they get back up, do one orbit, come back into the right house.
[01:09:10] Land us.
[01:09:11] We dump off, clear the building, everything's on a bit of a, we get the bad guy.
[01:09:15] Now as we're going through all the, uh, sensitive side exploitation, we're trying to grab as much as we can on this guy.
[01:09:21] You know, we get a report as we're breaking out that hey, there's two or three armed guys coming your way through this palm grove.
[01:09:29] So the helicopters were, a ways out, but we had a gun chip overhead.
[01:09:34] And so we set up a quick hasty perimeter, little fushook and we're going to wait to see if these guys came into us.
[01:09:39] Well, they never came into us.
[01:09:40] They sent something was wrong and they bagged out.
[01:09:42] So we get set up in the palm grove and we're calling in the helicopters at this point to come pick us up.
[01:09:47] And as we're setting up the perimeter, you know, someone calls out over the radio.
[01:09:50] Hey, man, there's a tracer father just won by.
[01:09:52] And no one else had seen us.
[01:09:54] One dude paying attention in his field of fire.
[01:09:56] She's one round come in.
[01:09:58] And so we calls it out.
[01:09:59] So we kind of go on hyper alert here.
[01:10:01] We're waiting for watching and as the heroes are coming in this dude, they were probably like 300 yards from us.
[01:10:06] They start opening up with triple a fire over our LZ.
[01:10:09] Now the only thing protect us at that time is we had a palm grove.
[01:10:12] And the LZ's here in the house is somewhere over here.
[01:10:14] So this tracer fire is coming over the palm grove.
[01:10:17] And the issue we had is like communicating this back up the chain.
[01:10:23] We had our tashkin to command around the ground with us on this one.
[01:10:26] And some people just didn't see this shit.
[01:10:29] Some people didn't see the tracer fire coming.
[01:10:31] And I picked it up pretty damn quick once the guy called it out.
[01:10:34] And you know, I call you shit.
[01:10:35] That's a good volley of fire.
[01:10:36] We're going to get a helicopter shot down in front of our car.
[01:10:38] So anyways, the helicopter comes in, picks up the package, grabs our headquarters on the bay bounce out.
[01:10:43] And then we just go over to our secondary LZ, which was pretty easy.
[01:10:47] But it was very uncomfortable known that you got triple a fire coming over the top of you.
[01:10:51] You know, when he said he looks get shot down, this is going to be a long night,
[01:10:54] especially out here in this rural area.
[01:10:56] We didn't have to be back up.
[01:11:00] And then what was your up tempo like?
[01:11:03] It wasn't bad.
[01:11:04] It wasn't like we were going out, taking a target every night.
[01:11:06] But we would, we got a point there where we were going out at least twice a week.
[01:11:11] I'd say once or twice a week.
[01:11:12] And more like twice a week.
[01:11:14] But in between that, we were doing other stuff.
[01:11:17] Yeah, mobility stuff.
[01:11:18] We're going to do a little bit of sniper stuff here and there.
[01:11:21] Which was, which was good.
[01:11:23] And then just going back on decentralized command, you know,
[01:11:25] the other CQC or close court combat sheet,
[01:11:28] we had, you know, our guys were going up to this house.
[01:11:33] And man, there's freaking telephone wires everywhere.
[01:11:36] And you know how that is.
[01:11:37] You're like, there's no rhyme or reason why.
[01:11:39] How do you guys live with this?
[01:11:40] There's wires wires everywhere.
[01:11:42] You know, we got to hop over this damn gate, you know, to get to this house.
[01:11:45] So we literally like 30 or 40 wires like you could be just total mayhem wires.
[01:11:50] Yep.
[01:11:51] And we plan for.
[01:11:52] We actually picked it up on the energy.
[01:11:53] We're going through our rehearsals and we're like, hey, there's wires everywhere.
[01:11:56] It's your coming over.
[01:11:57] It's this spot right here.
[01:11:58] Be careful.
[01:11:59] Don't get your nods.
[01:12:00] Hit on them.
[01:12:01] Don't, you know, we got to be quiet.
[01:12:03] So we start going up and over.
[01:12:04] We get the entry team over.
[01:12:06] And actually, we had our full squad in the courtyard because the distance from the gate to the actual house was a lot.
[01:12:11] It was a big house.
[01:12:12] So we needed a soldiers up front.
[01:12:14] So we get up front.
[01:12:15] And the, you know, the entry teams going through, you know,
[01:12:18] our breaches going through laying the charge on the door.
[01:12:20] Going through all the procedures.
[01:12:21] And the next thing you know, you get this whack bang bang bang doors around your coming through the door.
[01:12:25] And so, you know, our breacher, we borrowed him from another petone.
[01:12:28] He was dialed in good dude.
[01:12:30] You and Dave know.
[01:12:31] But so he's, he's laying the charge and he's using his cover right if he's in the center of the door.
[01:12:36] The dudes getting shot.
[01:12:38] No, what the 45 calipestal.
[01:12:39] But he's off to the side using his covers like he's supposed to.
[01:12:42] Set's the charge.
[01:12:43] Our guys are the guys holding security.
[01:12:46] They go through our standard operating procedures.
[01:12:48] They're waking the windows.
[01:12:49] They're shooting in through the window to get the person away from it.
[01:12:52] And they're dumping crashes and to keep the person away.
[01:12:54] Kick them out away from the doorway.
[01:12:56] So boom, we blow it.
[01:12:58] Of course, it's a propane tank there.
[01:12:59] So the whole damn doorway catches on fire.
[01:13:01] So now we can't, you know, we've got to fill breacher.
[01:13:03] We can't get into the doors open.
[01:13:04] But there's just this massive propane fire going on.
[01:13:07] So we got to go to our secondary door.
[01:13:09] You get over the secondary door.
[01:13:10] And these dudes got a damn drop on her on there.
[01:13:13] So we, you know, we need to took us forever to get a,
[01:13:15] it was a shit show.
[01:13:16] We get entry into the, into the doorway and there's like a family of eight people sleeping in there.
[01:13:20] And they're like, they're still sleeping.
[01:13:22] Like, how is it possible?
[01:13:23] We just blew in your door.
[01:13:24] There's gunshots going on.
[01:13:26] You, or you all are still, like physically sleeping.
[01:13:29] Like zombies, you know.
[01:13:30] So anyways, we got in there clear the building.
[01:13:32] That sounds so unbelievable if you haven't been into Iraq before.
[01:13:36] Like, you can't explain things like that.
[01:13:39] Yeah.
[01:13:40] You can't, you can't explain things like that.
[01:13:42] To get an explosive breach of failed breach.
[01:13:44] And then we got a huge shock.
[01:13:46] That's going off of fire and the team, the freaking family just racked out.
[01:13:49] Yep.
[01:13:50] They racked out.
[01:13:51] And there was zombies, man.
[01:13:52] What did you ever catch the guy that was shooting through the door?
[01:13:54] Yeah, it was, it was actually the, I think it was one of the guys wife shooting through there.
[01:13:59] She's like, hey, I thought you, thought you were looters.
[01:14:01] You're like, coming into Robert House.
[01:14:03] I don't know.
[01:14:04] Like, yeah, no, we're not looters, you know.
[01:14:06] But anyways, we got that situation all squared away.
[01:14:10] That's a rough, that, that,
[01:14:12] Well, when I say that's rough one, that's the kind of mission where things can go really sideways.
[01:14:17] Like, if you start fracking that room, which you could easily do to say,
[01:14:22] Hey, look, we just got shot at.
[01:14:24] I'm throwing some frag grenades into this room.
[01:14:26] And actually, you know, you got a family eight person family that are getting blown apart by
[01:14:29] Frag grenades because the woman was trying to defend her house from looters, which again,
[01:14:33] may sound like a crazy story.
[01:14:35] And it could also be the absolute 100% truth.
[01:14:38] I don't know. I'm not going to try and, you know, replay the situation that you lived through.
[01:14:43] But that could be legit.
[01:14:45] Yeah.
[01:14:45] And you have no idea that we're out there.
[01:14:48] And now to been, now to been horrible.
[01:14:50] Yeah, I'm in a fracking nightmare.
[01:14:52] Yep.
[01:14:52] Yep.
[01:14:52] Any other big missions that you guys did,
[01:14:56] did you guys do like some, some like, SA7 recovery hours?
[01:14:59] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:15:00] So we, I forgot about that one.
[01:15:02] So we were out, we went out there, you know, we're going with some other
[01:15:05] intel people out there and they're like, hey, we're going after some of this sensitive
[01:15:09] stuff here and we, you know, anyways.
[01:15:11] So we went and hit this farmhouse.
[01:15:13] We got good air coverage overhead of us.
[01:15:15] No one's there.
[01:15:16] The place is a ghost town.
[01:15:17] We start going through our sensitive side exploitation.
[01:15:19] And man, it was like a gold mine.
[01:15:21] You know, the, the perimeter around it was just this big huge cash.
[01:15:25] And so we found a truckload of, you know,
[01:15:28] SA7 and SA14 missiles, the ton of RPGs,
[01:15:33] uh, rock about pelgrinades and launchers.
[01:15:37] And so thanks started getting a little spicy around the areas.
[01:15:40] We're calling them a little bit of a fire support.
[01:15:43] And we actually had to turn that over to an army unit who came in the next day during
[01:15:47] daylight and they started going through the field.
[01:15:49] And then I was like, right, I mean, it was like radio.
[01:15:51] It was like enough shit to outfit a damn army.
[01:15:54] You know, um, so that was a, that was a good off, nothing happened.
[01:15:58] But we found a lot of stuff.
[01:15:59] So you know, you leave there feeling pretty good about it.
[01:16:02] And that, so that was a good, that was a freaking great deployment for you guys,
[01:16:05] especially in like, whatever, 2003, that, that deployment was pretty freaking epic.
[01:16:11] Oh, man, we left there and we're like, where are the man?
[01:16:13] More and ever coming back here again.
[01:16:15] Yeah, because no one had, no one ever thought you'd be back there again.
[01:16:18] No, no, no, it was good.
[01:16:20] And so the one thing we did that was really good with our patoon,
[01:16:24] that we learned from the team three guys when we,
[01:16:26] we relieved them as we shared information.
[01:16:28] You know, I was back with, you know,
[01:16:30] you're, you're brother there, team one, communicate everything I had back to him.
[01:16:34] Here's what we're doing, here's what worked, here's what,
[01:16:36] here's what, here's what didn't work, here's some things to think about with mobility.
[01:16:39] Mm-hmm.
[01:16:40] And you just try to share as much information as possible, you know.
[01:16:42] Yeah.
[01:16:43] That way the next guys coming in, they know what to expect.
[01:16:45] And they can adjust training coming into high level, ready to rock and roll.
[01:16:49] I know when you guys came in, you guys did, I don't know, four times, four, five times.
[01:16:53] I'm out of mission as we did for that deployment.
[01:16:55] Yeah, well, you get, you guys were pushing a lot of information back to us.
[01:16:58] I know you guys were feeding my Poutoon Chief.
[01:17:00] And my Poutoon Chief was already like a mobility kind of mobility dude.
[01:17:04] That's how he was just amped bro.
[01:17:06] We were doing freaking, uh,
[01:17:08] freaking tire change drills like NASCAR, like a pit crew.
[01:17:12] I mean, it was just like it was on.
[01:17:14] But here's the funny thing, we were on an ORE prior to that deployment.
[01:17:18] So like maybe three months before going on a deployment,
[01:17:21] we were on an ORE, we did our ORE ship board.
[01:17:25] And we went and we were doing hydrographic reconnaissance of red beach up in Camp Pendleton.
[01:17:29] We've led live in Slate, dude.
[01:17:31] Like it was the world hadn't caught up.
[01:17:34] Yep, right?
[01:17:35] The world hadn't caught up yet.
[01:17:37] And thank God, you know, like after that, we found some home v's.
[01:17:42] We borrowed home v's from like the C-B's or something.
[01:17:45] And started running up running, you know, training ops down at like the old NTC,
[01:17:52] the old Naval Training Center where they had a bunch of old buildings that were all dilapidated.
[01:17:56] But we started running little ops in there with our, you know,
[01:18:00] and our task unit commander had actually been in Iraq on the push-ups.
[01:18:03] So he had some experience, our task unit SCA had also been in Iraq on the push-ups.
[01:18:07] So he had some experience, um, which was awesome, and they're both great guys.
[01:18:12] So we were, and we were just going off of the reports of how you guys were doing stuff.
[01:18:17] And we were just like, okay, this is what they're doing.
[01:18:19] Cool, this is what we're going to do.
[01:18:20] This is what they did. This is how they rigged their vehicles. Okay.
[01:18:22] This is how we're going to rig our vehicles. So that's kind of what we did.
[01:18:25] And then I know you and I did a turnover in that.
[01:18:27] Was it, we did a like, ball rain, right?
[01:18:29] Yeah, ball rain, that's where I was at.
[01:18:31] We had a, put two left up there in a mobile, it almost left up there.
[01:18:35] Yeah. We came back a few weeks early out of ball rain just because there was enough room to bring everyone in.
[01:18:40] So, yeah. So we sat down, did it awesome turnover with you guys with you and your OIC.
[01:18:45] Yep. Who's up for a great dude. That was awesome.
[01:18:48] And that was kind of like, I knew who you were.
[01:18:50] Yeah.
[01:18:51] Just from, I guess, being around.
[01:18:53] But then that was, that was when I was like, that's when I first really remember getting a working.
[01:18:58] Like, you know, I might have seen you on the piece or something.
[01:19:01] You know, but the first time I ever actually got a working.
[01:19:04] I think that was the first time I ever did some kind of working.
[01:19:07] I think that was the first time I crossed paths with you.
[01:19:09] Yeah.
[01:19:10] Always hear the name out there. I mean, I was roommates with Taco and Taco had nightmares
[01:19:13] stores with you and Chris. Those guys, man, they need a quick beat in us up.
[01:19:18] You were, you were, you were hostile.
[01:19:22] See on the seals. Yeah.
[01:19:24] We had the gang mentality for sure.
[01:19:27] For sure.
[01:19:28] So when would you do when you got home from that deployment?
[01:19:31] So got back off that deployment.
[01:19:33] There was another Petunchev slot open.
[01:19:35] So the seems to be like, hey, man, you, the guy that was going to come doesn't look like
[01:19:39] a company. You want to do another one. I was like, hell, yeah, so then, you know,
[01:19:43] started forming up another Petunchev. Got a bunch of new guys in new I see and started
[01:19:47] another 12 month work up cycle.
[01:19:49] Dang.
[01:19:50] That's, you have freaking two Petunchev slots.
[01:19:52] Yep.
[01:19:53] Yep.
[01:19:53] It was awesome.
[01:19:54] Man, that's the best job in the world.
[01:19:55] The task unit spot is good.
[01:19:57] Yeah.
[01:19:58] Yeah.
[01:19:58] The Petunchev slots a lot.
[01:19:59] Oh, yeah.
[01:20:00] Petunchev.
[01:20:00] I mean, I always say like, E5 and Petunchev.
[01:20:02] I was just talking to some guys the other night that were E5.
[01:20:04] I'm so glad like, hey, you're good, man.
[01:20:06] E5 and Petunchev is an awesome place to be.
[01:20:08] And it is.
[01:20:09] It is. It's an awesome place to be. And hopefully you reach a point where you go,
[01:20:14] I can take care of those awesome guys.
[01:20:16] Yep.
[01:20:17] And that's when you go, okay, I'm going to be an hope you're going to be a Petunchev.
[01:20:20] Or I want to be a, you know, if you go the officer route, you can try and go that
[01:20:23] officer route.
[01:20:24] But at some point, you realize the best thing I can do as it to be a good E5
[01:20:29] is to take care of the other FEE5s means I got to get promoted.
[01:20:32] I got to take care of them.
[01:20:33] Yeah.
[01:20:34] And the best way I can do that is to increase my rank a little bit.
[01:20:36] Yeah.
[01:20:37] I have a little bit more sway.
[01:20:38] Yep.
[01:20:39] We don't have to do dumb shit.
[01:20:40] Yep.
[01:20:41] Yep.
[01:20:41] Yep.
[01:20:42] I'm complaining about my boss.
[01:20:43] You know, you can only complain so much before you got to actually do something about
[01:20:46] it.
[01:20:47] Yeah.
[01:20:47] Absolutely.
[01:20:48] And it's rare that someone gets to do Platoon Chiefs back to back like that.
[01:20:52] I mean, no, it's rare that a guy even gets to do two Petunchev slots.
[01:20:55] That's freaking rare.
[01:20:57] Yeah.
[01:20:58] You were getting better at it now.
[01:20:59] That's one of the things that I know with the headquarters level that we're looking
[01:21:03] at.
[01:21:04] Our our our rating really took control over.
[01:21:08] I hate you can only do one.
[01:21:09] You got to move out of another guy's got to move in and they started looking at that
[01:21:12] because you know, we had.
[01:21:14] We were losing quite a few tactical leaders.
[01:21:16] Like they're guys are getting fired.
[01:21:18] Why are they getting fired?
[01:21:19] Hey, they need more seasoning.
[01:21:20] Yeah.
[01:21:21] Hey, let's grab.
[01:21:22] Let's keep two three guys that are doing really good to keep that.
[01:21:25] Uh.
[01:21:26] Going with the word on looking for continuity continuity at the team.
[01:21:30] And these are dialed in people.
[01:21:31] You know, you can count on them and move it forward.
[01:21:33] So we've got better with with that over the last 10 years.
[01:21:36] So those guys it's common now for your top two or three guys to stay the team.
[01:21:41] Even if they pick up senior chief.
[01:21:42] They're going to stay in that Petunchev.
[01:21:44] Yeah, that's awesome.
[01:21:46] Yeah.
[01:21:46] That's awesome.
[01:21:47] And so then you do another work up.
[01:21:49] You must have been freaking dialed now.
[01:21:51] You're doing a second Petunchev.
[01:21:52] The second Petunchev was way easier than the first.
[01:21:55] And the first one.
[01:21:56] So I didn't do a Petunel PO.
[01:21:58] So I was sucking on a fire house.
[01:22:00] Okay.
[01:22:01] You know what I'm saying?
[01:22:02] Yeah.
[01:22:03] So you know, setting up the Petunes.
[01:22:05] There's just, if you had never worked in training either.
[01:22:07] Nope.
[01:22:08] Not a team.
[01:22:09] Yeah.
[01:22:10] See, I'll tell you, man.
[01:22:11] My whole, you know, that's probably, you know, my first three Petunes.
[01:22:17] But leaders have strategy tactics.
[01:22:18] We were talking about my first three Petunes.
[01:22:20] I learned these certain things, right?
[01:22:22] Yeah.
[01:22:23] And I wrote about it.
[01:22:23] Leadership strategy and tactics.
[01:22:25] But where that was like where all these seeds got planted.
[01:22:28] Yeah.
[01:22:29] But I'll tell you what.
[01:22:30] You want to know where the fertilizer and the water came from on those seeds.
[01:22:33] It was working in training cell.
[01:22:35] It's the old team one.
[01:22:36] Where I was a single, enlisted, he five.
[01:22:40] And you know what trip I went on?
[01:22:42] Every free trip there was.
[01:22:44] I taught everything.
[01:22:45] I would volunteer for every course.
[01:22:47] I, you know, we would go teach land warfare.
[01:22:49] Then I teach diving.
[01:22:50] Then I teach CQC.
[01:22:51] I just do it.
[01:22:52] And I was the main instructor on any of them.
[01:22:54] Yeah.
[01:22:55] I was just a guy that was out there like I got on that trip.
[01:22:57] And that's where those little seeds started to come to fruition.
[01:23:01] And the biggest thing was when you're instructing and you know this now that we worked in land warfare.
[01:23:07] When you're running, when you're watching I ads or you're teaching I ads, you are defacto detached.
[01:23:13] So you're watching and you can see and you realize how easy it is when you're detached.
[01:23:17] And when you realize how easy it is when you're detached and you go away to second.
[01:23:20] If I'm in there, I just need to take a step back and see what the hell's going on.
[01:23:23] And that can make a good call.
[01:23:25] So that is where I learned so much.
[01:23:29] So for you of to not done that definitely had to make your first platoon chief go around a little rough.
[01:23:35] It was hard. I got lucky like the our sister platoon.
[01:23:38] That platoon chief was dialed in.
[01:23:40] He'd done all those things. He was on his like seven platoon.
[01:23:42] I was doing my fourth at the time.
[01:23:45] And so I leaned on him. I'd ask him a hundred billion questions on things.
[01:23:48] And he always gave me good good guidance man.
[01:23:51] Yeah.
[01:23:52] So then you get done with that one.
[01:23:55] And now you're going through to get it now you're kind of like,
[01:23:58] I'm like, this is the day you're doing what the same issues.
[01:24:01] I got all my standard operating procedures in place.
[01:24:03] So for every block attorney we're doing a plus you're a freaking combat that.
[01:24:07] I'm a combat kind of the man.
[01:24:09] I'm ready to get after him.
[01:24:10] So it was way easier man way easier.
[01:24:13] You know, you're always going to have those same personnel issues.
[01:24:16] And now you know how to deal with him.
[01:24:17] You know what right looks like.
[01:24:19] And then what was that?
[01:24:22] Then you were going back to Iraq again.
[01:24:24] Yep.
[01:24:25] So we wound up back over, you know, you guys came in and late September 2003.
[01:24:30] We went back in September 2004.
[01:24:33] And the place was just the disaster.
[01:24:35] Roadside bombs all over the place.
[01:24:37] You know, the drill or the fighters all over the place was a shit show.
[01:24:40] Yeah, that that was the end of my first deployment.
[01:24:44] It was when we went and got your coupé, which was Saadur's guy.
[01:24:49] That's the whole freaking thing.
[01:24:50] And two of just a total mayhem.
[01:24:52] Yep.
[01:24:53] And we saw that.
[01:24:54] We saw the like it was it was a radical change.
[01:24:58] Yeah.
[01:24:59] Because before that, like in would be in March of 2004, it was kind of like,
[01:25:07] Okay, we'll go to a mission in April.
[01:25:10] We were, you could look out and you'd see smoke and fire vehicles burning.
[01:25:16] Like it was totally, it was a very different scenario in that one month period in April of 2004.
[01:25:22] Yeah.
[01:25:23] And it just got worse from there.
[01:25:25] Yeah.
[01:25:26] And then we'd probably the time you guys showed up.
[01:25:27] Yeah, it was a disaster.
[01:25:29] I remember, and we were doing the PSD mission.
[01:25:31] So we weren't doing a typical direct action.
[01:25:33] But we got in there in my Paton.
[01:25:35] We got split up.
[01:25:36] So we're in squads now supporting other Patons.
[01:25:39] Because you need X number of people to protect these guys.
[01:25:42] And one of the good things that the headquarters element did is they rotated guys out for
[01:25:47] sniper mission.
[01:25:48] So if you're sniper qualified, you come on in.
[01:25:50] And so we covered down within our PSD elements.
[01:25:53] And guys, you go out and do sniper stuff.
[01:25:55] So I was lucky.
[01:25:56] I got to get out there on high for street a couple of times.
[01:25:59] Were you a sniper?
[01:26:00] Yeah.
[01:26:01] Yeah.
[01:26:01] Yeah.
[01:26:02] Yeah.
[01:26:02] So I went through and went through sniper school in 98.
[01:26:05] And that was back when there was out at cold.
[01:26:07] And then stuck.
[01:26:08] And when I got back off of that deployment, 99, I went to work for Mark.
[01:26:11] He was running the sniper course.
[01:26:13] So I did a couple of instructor, you know, courses with him.
[01:26:17] So it was good.
[01:26:18] And that helped me out for, you know, the 2003 deployment 2004, the 2006 deployment.
[01:26:23] Yeah.
[01:26:24] But I remember getting out on high for street.
[01:26:26] It was the first time we're out.
[01:26:27] And we did sniper work in 2003.
[01:26:29] But there was nothing going on.
[01:26:30] Everything was under control.
[01:26:32] And I remember going out there.
[01:26:34] We're supporting an army unit.
[01:26:35] They're doing a clearance.
[01:26:36] So we come in, dump out of the Bradley setup in the buildings.
[01:26:40] We got all our sectors covered.
[01:26:42] And like there's this mooch and an apartment building with an RPG launching RPGs at a patchies that are in the area.
[01:26:50] And you know, the deal.
[01:26:52] Like you don't shoot a rocket from a room.
[01:26:54] That's not good.
[01:26:56] Good practice, right?
[01:26:57] You're going to jack yourself up.
[01:26:58] He's just in there getting after don't dunk.
[01:27:01] And like so the patchies come in and they're just like,
[01:27:03] oh, go, go, go, go. And they just take the dude out and you're like,
[01:27:06] Holy shit man, this place is not good.
[01:27:08] Totally different.
[01:27:09] And then you come out for extra act.
[01:27:10] The Brad's are coming in a pole sound.
[01:27:12] Like there's rounds coming in at you.
[01:27:13] We didn't deal with that 2003.
[01:27:15] 2003, we had the upper hand.
[01:27:17] You know, you're operating at nighttime.
[01:27:18] But we had the upper hand with what we were doing.
[01:27:21] So it's just, it was different.
[01:27:24] And then at that same time in 2004, you had Phantom Fury out there and
[01:27:27] Felizio going off.
[01:27:28] You know, and yet good dude supporting that.
[01:27:30] And it's just, I'm ever looking up on the, the jocks screen.
[01:27:34] And the marines are going through and doing a clearance nighttime.
[01:27:36] And there's like grenades getting chucked out.
[01:27:38] And the marines are just going in and getting after it.
[01:27:40] I mean, they're carrying like 25 mags in there.
[01:27:42] Yep.
[01:27:43] And going building by building.
[01:27:45] And like God bless the marine core man.
[01:27:47] These days are like bad asses.
[01:27:49] And we all wanted to be there.
[01:27:50] Like hey, switch with us man.
[01:27:52] Come do the PSD thing.
[01:27:53] We want to be out there doing what you're doing.
[01:27:55] But so anyway.
[01:27:57] So you know, Phantom Fury just died down.
[01:27:59] Like hey, we want to send a sniper element up to Samara.
[01:28:03] And so it was like, life got chosen to be a OIC.
[01:28:06] And I was like, hey, they selected me to come in there with life.
[01:28:09] I was like cool, put our 10 man, love man team together.
[01:28:12] Went up to Samara.
[01:28:13] We thought we were going to get after it.
[01:28:14] You know, it was go time.
[01:28:15] It was go time.
[01:28:16] We were going to get someone.
[01:28:17] It was on event pole man, nothing happened.
[01:28:19] We set up damn near.
[01:28:20] We were out in the streets every damn day, sitting up man.
[01:28:22] And it was just, you know, that the guys were going after their real cage.
[01:28:27] It was like civilians.
[01:28:29] You know what you're going to be looking like.
[01:28:31] They come in and said an ID.
[01:28:32] You know, they said it.
[01:28:33] And they'd be out of there.
[01:28:35] How many, how much did you spend?
[01:28:36] How much time did you spend on high fester?
[01:28:38] Not much.
[01:28:39] I would say I probably got out there about six or seven times total for that.
[01:28:42] And I was only in Iraq for 90 days during that time period.
[01:28:45] And then you rotate it out to the Pacific.
[01:28:47] Yep.
[01:28:48] Yep.
[01:28:48] Over to P.I.
[01:28:49] Yep.
[01:28:50] Guam and P.I.
[01:28:51] And the PSD was, look, it was a hard mission and everything.
[01:28:55] Yeah.
[01:28:56] But relatively un-eventful.
[01:28:58] Because that sort of is possible.
[01:28:59] So at that time, seals were providing security for the top seven.
[01:29:03] Something like that.
[01:29:05] Authority's in Iraq.
[01:29:07] And, you know, in charge of keeping them safe.
[01:29:10] And they did an awesome job.
[01:29:11] Yeah.
[01:29:12] But that, in doing an awesome job, men's there wasn't action.
[01:29:15] Thankfully.
[01:29:16] Yeah.
[01:29:17] Because the action probably would have been a giant 2000-pom v-bid that would have killed everybody.
[01:29:21] Or something crazy like that.
[01:29:23] Yeah.
[01:29:24] 2000-pom v-bid.
[01:29:25] I was at first time, I really started seeing the, you know, the truck bombs, the car bombs,
[01:29:31] air building.
[01:29:32] And I mean, they built them, you know, they put so much explosives in them that the dam springs
[01:29:36] and shocks would break on them.
[01:29:38] You know, if you're trying to get on base, I'm going to like jack-duff your head.
[01:29:42] Yeah.
[01:29:43] Not good.
[01:29:44] So, but that wrapped up another deployment for you.
[01:29:47] Yep.
[01:29:48] And then, so then what, then what'd you do?
[01:29:51] I stayed at Team 5, I made a senior chief in 2005 picked up a team.
[01:29:55] Did you make it up for going to the fleet UD?
[01:29:57] Yeah.
[01:29:58] I mean, you're making rank quick.
[01:30:00] Yeah.
[01:30:01] No, you're making rank quick for, on average above average, it seems like you are.
[01:30:06] Yeah.
[01:30:07] So, I would say probably above average up to chief.
[01:30:11] And then, you know, I got passed over the first time for senior chief and then made it
[01:30:15] the second time.
[01:30:16] So, you know, you don't want guys to make rank too fast. You want guys to really understand what
[01:30:22] they're doing and why they're doing it, which takes time.
[01:30:24] It takes a lot of reading, it takes for repetitions.
[01:30:27] And I think when I put on chief, I didn't, I was undergunned, you know, with my training
[01:30:31] and my experience.
[01:30:33] So, it was good that I got passed over my first time for senior chief.
[01:30:37] You know, so anyway, so I made senior chief in 2005 and then picked up a task in it.
[01:30:42] And, you know, from there, we started working up to relieve you guys.
[01:30:46] When did you guys know that you were going to relieve us?
[01:30:49] I would say right around March, April, timeframe of 2006, right?
[01:30:53] When you were going to, so we got there.
[01:30:55] Yep. Right around that same time.
[01:30:56] Yep. Yep. They're like, hey, you guys are going to come in behind these guys and we're going to
[01:30:59] replace them.
[01:31:00] At what point did you guys start tracking like, what was happening?
[01:31:03] Did you guys start getting hot and heavy and what made you in timeframe?
[01:31:07] Yeah, an April time period.
[01:31:09] Yeah. Like, as soon as we got there, it was getting crazy.
[01:31:11] It was right around then.
[01:31:13] And like, we, all of us were just kind of thinking, hey, it's going to be like a
[01:31:17] fullusious style clearance.
[01:31:19] And fullusious went pretty quick.
[01:31:21] You know, went pretty quick.
[01:31:23] You know, there's a lot of, you know, a lot of good work being done.
[01:31:27] A lot of people getting killed.
[01:31:28] You a soldiers getting injured.
[01:31:30] We thought it was going to be like that.
[01:31:34] We didn't know it was going to be what it was.
[01:31:37] You know, we didn't go on up against that type of enemy before.
[01:31:40] Yeah, well, we thought it was going to be a fullusious type thing too.
[01:31:43] Yeah.
[01:31:44] And we talked about this on the unraveling with Darryl Cooper that we,
[01:31:50] Well, that's where we got told when we got there.
[01:31:52] They're like, hey, you guys are going to, we're going to do
[01:31:54] fullusious.
[01:31:55] And we're like, thank you.
[01:31:56] Thank you.
[01:31:57] This is going to be because fullusious at that point was a real high watermark for
[01:32:01] for just awesome crushing kinetic operations by the Marine Corps.
[01:32:07] And it was seals in their support and they did a great job.
[01:32:10] So we were thinking, okay, like, it's on.
[01:32:13] And it's going to be whatever.
[01:32:15] It's going to be two weeks or three weeks.
[01:32:17] Maybe a fighting and we'll get cleared through this city.
[01:32:21] But it ended up not going that way.
[01:32:23] And then being that there's a smart move by the prime minister who is a
[01:32:29] Shea to recognize that if if the shea army, which,
[01:32:33] It basically was a she army went in there and did this type of crushing
[01:32:37] kinetic sweep through a body, which was most, which was Sunni.
[01:32:41] They would have set up Sunni versus Shea civil war.
[01:32:45] And so he said, we're not doing that.
[01:32:47] You're going to find another way to do it.
[01:32:49] And the other way to do it was a counter insurgency was going into the neighborhoods
[01:32:55] and trying to preserve the infrastructure and trying to keep the civil
[01:32:59] impopulous as safe as you can as you do it. And yet at the same time
[01:33:03] do battle with these insurgents.
[01:33:07] So that's what that's what we ended up doing.
[01:33:09] And I always wonder what it was like for you guys once we started taking
[01:33:15] a lot of casualties.
[01:33:17] Once we started losing guys, you guys must have been like,
[01:33:21] a little nervous about coming.
[01:33:25] Oh, hell yeah.
[01:33:27] Absolutely man.
[01:33:29] No one had been through that amount of combat.
[01:33:33] Like for us at that point, heavy combat.
[01:33:35] You know, we had our group,
[01:33:39] Commodore, he was out there with us doing our,
[01:33:41] you know, ORE, what do they call the final battle problem?
[01:33:45] And he's like, man, you guys are going to a body stand by.
[01:33:47] There's a lot going on there.
[01:33:49] There's like, I mean a lot going on there.
[01:33:53] And I think things really hit home for us.
[01:33:55] Like, remember, Cali, Cali come a bang when he was shot.
[01:33:59] And like you look at the essential like, okay,
[01:34:01] that's manageable. Like, he shot.
[01:34:03] He's coming in through. It looks like he's going to be okay.
[01:34:07] And then shit really hit the fan for us when Mark was killed.
[01:34:11] Really like holy shit.
[01:34:13] This is we're going into something that we like,
[01:34:17] you know, we hadn't been in before.
[01:34:19] So we had like, we dialed in our training.
[01:34:23] We had like, we're giving this information.
[01:34:25] Tell one of us everything you're doing.
[01:34:27] What's working? What's not working?
[01:34:29] We had some hard conversations with our operators.
[01:34:31] Hey, man, like someone's going to get wounded.
[01:34:33] Someone might get killed. Like,
[01:34:35] there's some of these things we can't control.
[01:34:37] What we can do is our rehearsals,
[01:34:39] train to this, make good decisions on the battlefield
[01:34:41] to reduce our casually levels.
[01:34:43] But we're going to be shot at.
[01:34:45] Someone's going to get hit. That's coming.
[01:34:47] And at the end of the day, it's going to be a stand in here.
[01:34:49] That's going to kind of get us out of this shit.
[01:34:51] We're going to be going to be a tight game.
[01:34:53] We've got to be tight with what we're doing.
[01:34:55] And the guys understood that.
[01:34:57] You know, the guys understood that.
[01:34:59] But it's different when you get on the ground.
[01:35:01] And you got a lot of rounds coming out to you.
[01:35:03] You know, yeah, you know,
[01:35:05] I'm trying to think of a way to explain the difference
[01:35:07] in my mind that you got.
[01:35:09] Like, it seems like, but prior to that point,
[01:35:13] most of the times when guys would go out.
[01:35:15] You want to guys would go out and get wounded or
[01:35:17] guys would go out and know what had been killed.
[01:35:19] And I rack yet, but even in Afghanistan,
[01:35:21] it was like, it was a mission, right?
[01:35:23] It was like a mission, an isolated mission where
[01:35:27] something had happened.
[01:35:29] And then once that isolated mission is over,
[01:35:33] it's like you reset the clock.
[01:35:35] And now, okay, we're in a different,
[01:35:37] it's a different mission.
[01:35:39] And so it's almost like you do get to reset the clock.
[01:35:43] But in a body, it was like you were in the same game.
[01:35:45] And the clock was freaking ticking the whole time.
[01:35:47] And so you guys knew that you were just going to come
[01:35:51] and get in the game and it wasn't going to be one mission.
[01:35:53] And it wasn't going to be three missions.
[01:35:55] It was going to be mission after mission after mission after mission.
[01:35:59] And it was going to be as many days as you were there.
[01:36:03] And yeah, I remember you guys showing up.
[01:36:05] And I remember actually briefing your task unit
[01:36:09] and literally saying,
[01:36:11] you guys are going to, you guys are going to take casualties.
[01:36:15] Which was the, it was the thing I was thinking of myself.
[01:36:19] Do I say that?
[01:36:21] Is that a bad attitude?
[01:36:23] Is that a negative attitude?
[01:36:25] Is that a self-fulfilling prophecy?
[01:36:27] Or is that just the fucking truth about what's going on?
[01:36:29] And I would rather have you guys thinking,
[01:36:31] okay, this is the truth.
[01:36:33] And if we can avoid it, great,
[01:36:35] but we have to be ready.
[01:36:37] And we need to do everything we can, but we got to be ready for it.
[01:36:39] Yep.
[01:36:39] I remember you guys were telling us, man,
[01:36:41] we had, we had our go bags ready.
[01:36:43] So we got some get-singer to our standard operating procedure in place.
[01:36:46] Who's going with the guy that's injured,
[01:36:48] all of our passports,
[01:36:49] ID's everything we're in the bag.
[01:36:51] Someone gets injured, boom, they're getting on the heel with the injured guy.
[01:36:53] They're pushing out, you know,
[01:36:55] at least getting them over to Germany.
[01:36:57] So we were definitely in the right mindset.
[01:36:59] You know, in our first op-out there,
[01:37:02] you guys helped set that up out there at Firecracker.
[01:37:04] Oh yeah.
[01:37:05] And that was, that was a good one with the Marine Corps.
[01:37:07] We said you guys have to firecracker for you.
[01:37:10] Yeah, first op.
[01:37:11] So, you know, you're like, hey,
[01:37:13] you guys are going around race track.
[01:37:14] And we'll just call this,
[01:37:15] we'll call this operation Firecracker.
[01:37:17] Because there's going to be some shit going down up there.
[01:37:20] Yeah.
[01:37:21] It was, it was a good first shake out,
[01:37:24] you know, in the Marine Corps's up there.
[01:37:26] You know, the Colonel that was running the Marine Corps for a good,
[01:37:28] his name.
[01:37:29] Yeah, you just took good outstanding,
[01:37:30] good leader, just good, like good dude, man.
[01:37:34] So we set that up.
[01:37:36] You know, there's, you know, our guys,
[01:37:38] our sniper's killed a few guys on that one,
[01:37:40] and the shoot was good.
[01:37:42] You know, and they, I'm just memory,
[01:37:44] I was at home be out in the street and he's pulling security down from us.
[01:37:47] And the dude starts, you know,
[01:37:49] gets a little bit of an RPG and like the Marines are dumping out of it.
[01:37:52] They're doing cover move drills, getting back.
[01:37:54] And they're taking small arms fire and work position where we can't,
[01:37:57] you know, the enemies in dead space,
[01:37:58] we can't even do anything to support them.
[01:38:01] They come back and there's a couple, like smaller mortars that came in that day.
[01:38:05] You know, didn't hit our building,
[01:38:07] the front of us there, wasn't too bad there or small,
[01:38:10] but it was a good, it was a good shake out for us,
[01:38:12] like a little confidence builder,
[01:38:14] like a couple bad guys, no one got injured.
[01:38:16] These are all good things.
[01:38:18] And then you guys start started rolling.
[01:38:21] Then we started rolling in our first,
[01:38:23] I was on that mission.
[01:38:25] The next mission we did,
[01:38:26] I was not on.
[01:38:27] And our guys went up down the street,
[01:38:29] I think from Falcon and other set and up over watch positions.
[01:38:33] And, you know,
[01:38:34] they're, I think they're in the morning time and grenades come in.
[01:38:37] You know, I think they had one or two grenades come in.
[01:38:39] They all grenades,
[01:38:40] the guys are diving down the stairs and we had two guys get fragged from those.
[01:38:45] And from that point,
[01:38:47] it was like, all right,
[01:38:48] you know, we knew we were getting into, but then it's like,
[01:38:50] now it's real.
[01:38:51] You know, now our guys are getting injured.
[01:38:53] We knew we were going to get wounded.
[01:38:54] Now you got two guys moving with frags.
[01:38:56] And their injuries weren't bad enough.
[01:38:57] They had to get mad about it out.
[01:38:58] So they stayed with us, you know,
[01:39:00] and talking about three weeks to heal up in their,
[01:39:02] they were okay.
[01:39:03] And that was like your second op.
[01:39:05] Yep.
[01:39:06] That was like our second one.
[01:39:08] Yeah.
[01:39:09] Yeah.
[01:39:10] Yeah.
[01:39:10] And then, you know, throughout that thing there,
[01:39:13] you know, one of the things I realized,
[01:39:15] and this is further down the road,
[01:39:17] but we did this, this river often.
[01:39:19] We're going to set support setting up a combat outpost.
[01:39:22] And we're using the marine river.
[01:39:25] Yeah.
[01:39:26] You know,
[01:39:27] and they're awesome.
[01:39:28] But think out funny that is like,
[01:39:29] maybe they're supposed to deliver the marine's, the other marine's are deliver enough.
[01:39:32] And they were good dudes, man.
[01:39:34] They were down there.
[01:39:35] They were awesome.
[01:39:35] They were square away.
[01:39:36] So they take us down river.
[01:39:37] And we had all of our deep conflicts and up payers.
[01:39:39] When we get this point in the water,
[01:39:41] call it to the security army security check point up ahead.
[01:39:44] Make sure everything's dialed in.
[01:39:46] Went through all the procedures.
[01:39:47] And there was obviously a disconnect.
[01:39:49] So we get close to where we're going.
[01:39:51] And we can see the security position off to the right.
[01:39:55] And it's on a two story building.
[01:39:56] And we get that.
[01:39:57] And we get that.
[01:39:59] And we're like,
[01:40:00] that's not good.
[01:40:01] That's around coming over our head from the security position.
[01:40:04] And then we're like,
[01:40:05] like your strobes do your shit.
[01:40:06] And then the boat starts speeding up a little bit to get us to shore.
[01:40:09] And like,
[01:40:09] Now we're all pissed because we just got shot at it.
[01:40:11] And then we get the.
[01:40:12] You know,
[01:40:13] like,
[01:40:14] for a can traders are coming over.
[01:40:15] So we're like,
[01:40:16] you can get us to the shoreline, man.
[01:40:18] So we get to the shoreline.
[01:40:19] And we're dumping out at that point.
[01:40:20] It's a full on.
[01:40:21] Dude, I just got chills.
[01:40:22] Right.
[01:40:23] He's got chills.
[01:40:24] Because when you're talking about your received fire from
[01:40:26] the friendlies,
[01:40:27] it's really uncorrible.
[01:40:28] And then it's a full on.
[01:40:29] We're not shooting back.
[01:40:30] Yeah.
[01:40:31] But then it's full on.
[01:40:32] They think we're moved in boats coming down the river.
[01:40:34] And it's just.
[01:40:35] We're dumping off in the tolies.
[01:40:37] And I'm I'm freaking hot, man.
[01:40:39] So I'm dumping in the side of the tolies.
[01:40:41] And we learned from you guys.
[01:40:42] Hey,
[01:40:42] Do you conflict that with your white star cluster?
[01:40:44] So I had all trusty right here.
[01:40:46] You know,
[01:40:47] and as I'm going to the shoreline,
[01:40:48] I'm popping this thing out.
[01:40:49] My weapons flying all over the place.
[01:40:51] And I'm yelling at the A O I C.
[01:40:53] I was like, Hey,
[01:40:55] freaking call back to your get this shit.
[01:40:57] You conflicted now.
[01:40:58] And I'm pissed.
[01:40:59] I'm yelling at him.
[01:41:00] I'm yelling.
[01:41:01] I'm like, what the after you think I'm doing?
[01:41:02] What the after you think I'm doing?
[01:41:03] I'm like, fucking hurry up, man.
[01:41:05] And so we're yelling back and forth.
[01:41:06] And popping up the white star cluster.
[01:41:08] And it of course, as soon as you get the white star
[01:41:09] cluster up,
[01:41:10] the shit stops.
[01:41:11] Yeah.
[01:41:12] But I couldn't get to that damn thing fast enough.
[01:41:14] By the time I got it,
[01:41:15] I had it out.
[01:41:16] Probably like less than 30 seconds.
[01:41:17] Dude,
[01:41:18] 30 seconds of long time to be receiving fire from
[01:41:21] American machine gunners.
[01:41:23] Yeah, we were all sucking my advice.
[01:41:25] It was a good lesson learned.
[01:41:27] One of the things with the body is when you go
[01:41:29] into a high stress environment.
[01:41:31] There's multiple units in the area.
[01:41:34] The likelihood of you having a blue on blue.
[01:41:36] You just go up drastically.
[01:41:38] You know, you've done a lot of podcasts with a
[01:41:40] Vietnam shit.
[01:41:41] So when you're in those type of environments,
[01:41:44] you've got to have your deconstruction down.
[01:41:46] You can't do it enough.
[01:41:48] Really.
[01:41:49] And you know, another thing I've been thinking about
[01:41:52] is from a leadership perspective.
[01:41:54] A thing that I've been talking about all the time is like,
[01:41:57] if you work for me,
[01:41:59] and I come to talk to you,
[01:42:01] I got to understand what your perspective is.
[01:42:04] I got to understand that.
[01:42:05] So that I can like,
[01:42:06] okay, he's reacting like this because of that.
[01:42:09] And even more in depth than that,
[01:42:11] I got to kind of know what your freaking story is.
[01:42:13] So I can't just know your perspective.
[01:42:15] I got to know what your story is.
[01:42:17] Oh, this is Steve. He's he's been here for 20 years.
[01:42:21] He's he's done a good job.
[01:42:23] He also is known for having a bad temper.
[01:42:25] He also has some trouble at home right now.
[01:42:27] So I got to know this stuff.
[01:42:29] Yeah.
[01:42:30] So that I can assess like,
[01:42:31] okay, what approach am I going to take?
[01:42:33] What reaction am I going to get?
[01:42:34] Well, guess what?
[01:42:35] When you're in a combat situation,
[01:42:38] you better think about the perspective of the people
[01:42:41] that you're working with.
[01:42:43] Yeah.
[01:42:44] Because guess what?
[01:42:45] The kid that's 18 years old,
[01:42:47] he's scared shitless.
[01:42:49] He doesn't he he's freaking sick of being on this post.
[01:42:53] He's afraid he's going to get killed.
[01:42:55] He's not being briefed by his seniors.
[01:42:57] He's tired.
[01:42:59] He's pissed off.
[01:43:00] He's got an itchy trigger finger.
[01:43:02] And what do you think this guy's going to do?
[01:43:06] Yeah.
[01:43:07] He's going to shoot at you.
[01:43:08] Yeah.
[01:43:09] If you don't make it clear, what's happening?
[01:43:11] Yeah.
[01:43:12] So it's important to remember that.
[01:43:14] When you have to understand other people's perspective,
[01:43:17] and understand what their story is,
[01:43:18] and then you need to account for that somehow.
[01:43:22] Otherwise bad things happen.
[01:43:24] And like that's a nightmare, man.
[01:43:26] Like if those, those, those know protection on those surf boats.
[01:43:29] I mean, you're, if that, if one,
[01:43:31] one iteration of fire hit those surf boats,
[01:43:34] you'd have three, four guys dead wounded, whatever.
[01:43:36] Maybe more.
[01:43:37] Yep.
[01:43:38] You got 10 guys in a boat.
[01:43:40] Damn, it's a nightmare.
[01:43:41] Yeah.
[01:43:42] It wasn't good. I didn't just talk about perspective.
[01:43:44] I know the army guys.
[01:43:46] There were a couple units there that, you know,
[01:43:48] they'd been there for like eight months.
[01:43:50] I want to say like eight months.
[01:43:51] And then they get the call.
[01:43:52] Hey, you're going to stay like three more months.
[01:43:54] Oh, yeah.
[01:43:55] And then dudes are wore out, man.
[01:43:56] I mean, they're pulling security out front,
[01:43:58] they're taking round RPG rounds.
[01:43:59] They've lost two,
[01:44:00] they're friends,
[01:44:01] three other friends for their friends.
[01:44:02] They've seen VBIDs go in.
[01:44:04] Yeah.
[01:44:05] They've heard rumors about boats.
[01:44:06] I mean,
[01:44:07] yeah.
[01:44:08] And look, the army guys and the Marines that were there,
[01:44:10] the most professional badass dudes ever.
[01:44:13] Yeah.
[01:44:14] Ever.
[01:44:15] But there's a lot of them.
[01:44:16] Yeah.
[01:44:17] And if you have, look,
[01:44:19] you can have a platoon of 40 guys and 39 of them.
[01:44:22] Can be the most square to weigh guys.
[01:44:24] You've ever met and can understand everything and become cool and collected.
[01:44:28] But there's going to be one person in there.
[01:44:29] That's not.
[01:44:30] Yeah.
[01:44:31] And once one person starts shooting,
[01:44:34] bro.
[01:44:35] Yeah.
[01:44:36] It's a real problem to get.
[01:44:37] It's a real problem.
[01:44:39] I think other people aren't going to start shooting as well.
[01:44:42] That's that's what we literally get trained to do.
[01:44:45] Oh, if there's a contact start shooting,
[01:44:47] help your buddy.
[01:44:48] Yeah.
[01:44:49] Not, uh,
[01:44:51] not good.
[01:44:52] Understandable,
[01:44:53] but not, not a good situation.
[01:44:55] We definitely get a better job on that with us.
[01:44:58] Um,
[01:44:59] Yeah.
[01:45:00] Wasn't good.
[01:45:01] We're lucky.
[01:45:02] No one got in on that one.
[01:45:03] Yeah.
[01:45:04] We had one other blue on blue that I know about.
[01:45:06] There's, there's, there's, I'm a convention.
[01:45:09] It's probably quite a few blue on blues going on.
[01:45:11] You just don't, you don't know.
[01:45:14] Um, there was, because I was, I was,
[01:45:16] we're talking about this with the brigade commander all the time.
[01:45:19] There was one, there was usually one blue on blue per day per day.
[01:45:23] Yeah.
[01:45:24] But that, that wouldn't get reported.
[01:45:27] And there was a one blue on blue per week that actually got reported.
[01:45:30] Yeah.
[01:45:30] Of like, hey, we were taking fire from this unit at this time.
[01:45:33] Most of them was like, hey,
[01:45:35] I've got a few fire, she's fire.
[01:45:37] You know, that's friendly position like that happened,
[01:45:39] all the, it happened once a day.
[01:45:41] Yeah.
[01:45:41] One to day, you know, usually at night.
[01:45:43] But the, the most harrowing example of that was
[01:45:47] there was a blue on blue between humvies.
[01:45:50] Like one humvie at night saw another humvie and started shooting.
[01:45:53] Yeah.
[01:45:53] And there wasn't no mouss that had humvies.
[01:45:56] Yeah.
[01:45:57] Like at least the boat, the boats weren't super common to be in the river.
[01:46:00] Even the Marine Corps boats.
[01:46:01] They weren't super common to be in the river.
[01:46:03] roll about. Some goes, oh wait a second. I don't know what this is. This might be
[01:46:05] moust boats. Let's shoot a, but a humvee. Like that's how itchy the trigger
[01:46:10] fingers can get. And you got to understand people's perspective, man. We were so
[01:46:13] freaking paranoid about that stuff. Yeah. It was, uh, it wasn't a good feeling. That's
[01:46:18] for sure. Geez. There's nothing you can't, like, what are you going to do?
[01:46:22] Shoot back? No, like you can't do that. No. Yeah. You've grabbed that damn
[01:46:26] white star cluster and get fired off. Boy. Damn. We had one of the blue
[01:46:32] we were out there earlier down there by Grant. Com Grant. And we went to the
[01:46:37] unit, decinfilted everything. And, you know, our guys went out there and
[01:46:41] were getting set up on a rooftop and like, shoot. They come all
[01:46:46] manned. Yeah. You know what, one good. But, um, those high stress level areas
[01:46:53] people are getting wounded and shit. People are seeing different things.
[01:46:56] That's out there. It's real. You got to be careful. Yeah, when
[01:47:00] they've made a road extreme ownership, like we didn't plan to write. There's three
[01:47:03] chapters in there that are just blue on blue chapters. Yeah. Out of 12 chapters. Yeah.
[01:47:07] So, a quarter of the chapters are about blue on blue. Like, that's, we didn't
[01:47:11] think about that. But that's what the reality of the situation was.
[01:47:14] Those are some of the scariest. You know what's crazy? When we went back to
[01:47:17] trade that and we incorporated our, our laser gear. Oh, yeah. People found out how
[01:47:22] easy it is to, uh, blue on blue just to your point with perspectives. Like, we
[01:47:26] drew that out. It was awesome to draw that out and training. Um, yeah. So,
[01:47:34] you know, so after, you know, after those handful of ops, we had, uh, you
[01:47:38] know, we had no rubber 19. And so this is putting us, you know, right
[01:47:42] before Thanksgiving and we had the whole task in or out. And so we had, uh,
[01:47:46] you know, our crudged or guys are up in the papa, sectors are, are, are,
[01:47:51] are you, patoon is down. We're down past Grant. I think we're down past ground
[01:47:57] that area. We're about eight blocks from those guys. Half mile miles. Something
[01:48:00] like that. Maybe Julie, yet. Yeah, Julie at sector. Yeah. I don't remember
[01:48:06] all the sectors, but man, we're out there and things are going good. And like
[01:48:10] eight o'clock in the morning, we're set up. We got mutually sporting
[01:48:12] positions with our patoon. They got mutually sporting, uh, supporting
[01:48:15] positions with their patoon. Things are good. And I remember the first
[01:48:18] thing was like, all right, this is going to be a shit chill in here. You know,
[01:48:21] we had a car going around with the, the hazard zone, you know, so there's
[01:48:25] signally in the area. Hey, man, US troops are in there, but they didn't
[01:48:28] know where we're at. We didn't have any, you know, loopholes. We didn't
[01:48:31] pound out any, any, any brick or use explosives. So they had a hard time
[01:48:35] figuring out where we were, they're out the whole day. But as we're sitting there
[01:48:39] thanks start heating up, you know, either's maims over two streets over
[01:48:42] and they're all consolidating one area. They got weapons. And then,
[01:48:45] you know, it's coming. We're going to get, we're going to get in the mix
[01:48:47] here. And so like around 11 o'clock, we started calling in for our,
[01:48:52] our gimmlers, we're going to guided multiple launch wrong
[01:48:55] system. And we started getting not ready to
[01:48:59] generate coordinates to bring in rockets because there's different
[01:49:03] requirements. That wasn't coming from off the rails from the air.
[01:49:06] So it was easier to get it approved. And so as we're doing that, you know,
[01:49:10] we get a call over the radio, you know, that, you know, our other unit from
[01:49:14] Corrigator was hit. And we didn't know how bad they were hit, but, you know,
[01:49:17] the, the AOSC came on as I came in earlier, it's had these in bad,
[01:49:20] he's in bad shape. And so it was Joe, you know, and we're like, oh,
[01:49:23] shit, man. And, you know, they're taking them down to the cash and
[01:49:26] shit. Which wasn't good. And we're like, everyone just got a sick
[01:49:31] feeling into their stomach. You know, we didn't know what happened
[01:49:34] until after we got back. But we're like, shit, he's going to make it. He's not
[01:49:36] going to make it. But, you know, those guys were in a position. They started
[01:49:38] taking light fire. And as they're taking light fire, you know, they had rooftop
[01:49:42] jumpers in a body. They'd get as close as they could. And they dump
[01:49:45] grenades right on top of your position. So the first thing that happened is
[01:49:48] that a grenade dumped on their position. And Ellie gets sliced in the dam,
[01:49:52] wrist pretty bad. So, you know, their collapse and off down off the rooftop. And
[01:49:56] we had explosives up there. So the guys are clapping off explosives to, you
[01:50:00] know, move the rooftop jumpers away from from their guys. So as they
[01:50:04] collapsed down into, you know, on the bottom floor, everything still
[01:50:09] on the control. There's a light ball in a fire. They're calling to the other,
[01:50:12] the other sniper supporting element, A were hit. We're going to call in the next
[01:50:16] track. There's a calling the next track. You know, the, the, the, the
[01:50:19] Iraqis come out and our unit comes out to get in the Bradley's. And, you know,
[01:50:24] their hit was some type of white phosphorus explosive device. And I did a
[01:50:27] lot of analysis on it. What that was at a roadside bomb. What was it?
[01:50:30] I can never determine what it was. But, you know, killed. I think three Iraqis
[01:50:34] wounded two are two guys. Our two seals were hit critically injured. You
[01:50:38] know, so now they're pulling everyone back into the house. The Bradley's
[01:50:42] are getting out of there because it's just a total shit show. The other
[01:50:46] units fighting their way down the street to get in a position to help these
[01:50:49] guys out by this by this time. In long story short, you know, everyone's in a
[01:50:55] bad position. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,
[01:50:56] it was such a, uh, such a good dude. He's sitting there telling dudes. He's
[01:51:00] cool comic collect. He's got shit burning on him. You know, burning through his
[01:51:04] camis and he's telling guys what to do to how to patch him up and do all
[01:51:07] this shit and he's jacked up. Um, you know, Joe, he had his legs kind of
[01:51:11] blown backwards on his lower extremities. So it's a complex situation. You know,
[01:51:16] outside still heated up injured guys on the inside dead guys. Our own
[01:51:20] dead guys. Our Iraqi troops out on the street. Guys fighting their ways
[01:51:23] back down. It's like, his bad as a situation is, is you can conjure up,
[01:51:28] right? You know, they get things under control that call in another
[01:51:31] quick-goer actionary force. They load these guys up. And, you know, and that's
[01:51:35] when we get the call over the radio that those guys have been hit. Meanwhile,
[01:51:38] over on our sector things are starting to heat up. And so we're
[01:51:41] spinning up aircraft. We're trying to get our gimlers in
[01:51:44] position to start launching. And, you know, our guys are out there,
[01:51:47] you know, laying down to made up fire and launching a few
[01:51:49] Carl Gustav rockets into some positions down there by us. But it was just, you know,
[01:51:54] shitty day for us, you know, obviously the whole task you know, was hit,
[01:51:58] was hit hard on that. Wasn't good. Yeah. And, I mean, Elliot is probably
[01:52:07] one of the most severely wounded seals from the Iraq war. Yeah.
[01:52:12] Yeah. He's, I mean, he's freaking warrior. Yeah. But he, he took a heavy hit that day.
[01:52:18] Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, an Elliot story, you know, I got never quit. He never
[01:52:23] gave up on life. And, you know, he's going through physical therapy. And
[01:52:29] him and his physical therapist falling love. And, Elliot,
[01:52:33] merrier, they get married. They have kids. What you're just asked, you know, I've
[01:52:38] seen Elliot a handful of times over the years, you know, it
[01:52:41] buds graduations and stuff like that. You know, just sucks that shit. I'm
[01:52:46] doing that. Yeah. And, and, and, life was super good friends with Elliot. And, you
[01:52:50] know, obviously we had just all high five done the tarmac and said goodbye. And,
[01:52:55] and then the next thing the laves doing, he's down at the burn center. You know,
[01:52:59] trying to try and give support to Elliot. You know, it's freaking,
[01:53:03] freaking rough man. That shit took the, uh, that took the wind out of
[01:53:08] our cell for the whole task. You know, you're just wondering like what the hell is
[01:53:11] going out? And, you see, so now we got two guys wounded with frags. You got
[01:53:15] Joe and Elliot with what they got going on. And, actually, the first week we were
[01:53:19] there, you know, we had Jimmy left over from you guys and you get to get shot. He
[01:53:22] gets a grayser. Crosses nipple. So, yeah, things were starting to stack up, man.
[01:53:29] You know, and Elliot was a unknown, what he wanted. Sure, if he was going to make it or
[01:53:32] not. Yeah, and I left October 21st and that was November 19th. So, you
[01:53:37] guys, it only been on the ground without us for under a month. Yeah.
[01:53:41] Yep. And he had all this already stacked up. Yep. Yep.
[01:53:44] Yeah. We, it's not to mention in a way you are writing in already with
[01:53:51] the mental fault of all of our casualties and our lost guys. Yeah. You know, so you
[01:53:57] already know that this is just the way. Yeah. Yeah. We had, uh, you know, so we
[01:54:03] get past November 19th. We're kind of re-organ and things are starting to
[01:54:09] change at that point. I can't remember if it was November December, but you
[01:54:12] know, we had one of the tribes out there that al-Qaida come in and they
[01:54:16] killed a couple of their tribes. And they were like, F al-Qaida, we want to come over to the
[01:54:20] you know, US side. And that was a big tip and point out there, a
[01:54:25] correct order. I forget the name of the tribe out there. But the guys went out there
[01:54:29] and they're meeting up with the shake and they're local guys and it was a
[01:54:32] weird situation. Because at that point, those guys were dropping motors on
[01:54:36] correct order. So, there's this friction like I freaking help and these dudes out,
[01:54:39] they want to join us now. They're just, you know, the other day they're dropping
[01:54:42] motors on us, you know. So that was, that was, that was interesting. And then
[01:54:49] December timeframe, we'd set up, uh, I think was right before Christmas. We're up
[01:54:55] there around racetrack and the Marine Corps didn't a big huge push
[01:54:59] in through to clear out that whole area. That area was still pretty much
[01:55:02] contested when you guys were there. And that was an area we'd operate
[01:55:05] in quite a bit. And so we're out there for like, I don't know, three, four days. And this
[01:55:09] is right before Christmas time. We think we're going to be out there past
[01:55:12] Christmas. And a couple of events there like the the moves there were so good at
[01:55:17] using dead space. You know, I remember we're on a two-story building. We got
[01:55:20] Marine Corps sniper's in position. We're in position. We're spread out. And
[01:55:24] I go to use the bathroom and I'm looking out this window and there's a tank
[01:55:27] down in my corner. And a dude slips out of dead space with an RPG in like
[01:55:32] moves. Boom. He clocks that thing off in under three seconds, melts back
[01:55:36] away. And you're like, even if I was on my gun, I don't think I had enough time to
[01:55:40] shoot that guy. We had a couple clothes calls in that area. You know, they
[01:55:44] had some snipers in vehicles. And so in muffled the sound, you couldn't tell
[01:55:49] where they were coming from. You know, and when, uh, you know, I took a
[01:55:52] damn shot and through our position right at the 12 o'clock. So, you know,
[01:55:57] we got our loophole set up and around 762 by 54 big one punches all the
[01:56:01] way through the wall. Right at the 12 o'clock position. So the guy's dead
[01:56:04] center trying to get into our whole where we're at. And I just remember
[01:56:09] thinking, damn man, that's whoever shot that. That's a good shot. That's not,
[01:56:12] you know, some JB dude making that shot. Um, and as I got to tell
[01:56:19] this story, I forgot about this one, but we had our country boy,
[01:56:22] old Charlie, he's out now. So I'll say his name on it out. But Charlie,
[01:56:24] we're on the, this is all in this three, four day period. And uh,
[01:56:30] we're on the rooftop. And that's the same day that I take that round and through the 12 o'clock
[01:56:34] position. And there's moves doing a center peel down the street. And so like I'm here,
[01:56:40] Charlie's position is over here with his crew. And we got a pilot up over
[01:56:44] hand and he's like, hey, you got some, you got bad guys coming down the street
[01:56:47] towards you. And you know, Charlie's just a good old country boy. He's like
[01:56:50] Roger that, you know, he's like, fire out. He dumps a flag. And it like,
[01:56:56] hit, I don't know how he does. He throws a flag in the blind. Those are down on the street.
[01:57:00] It hits in between where these moves are right. And the pilots more excited than any
[01:57:04] police. I guess I got to direct it. And so I don't direct it. And I'm like,
[01:57:08] talking to Charlie, what do you do? So I was just popmarked right in through it.
[01:57:11] I'll throw you know, I'll just rock Roger that dude. So you guys, you guys were
[01:57:16] getting an aircraft overhead inside the city. Yeah, we, you know, on the
[01:57:21] daily, God hit, we had a, I don't know, as a 14 or 15. Okay, fast movers. Yeah,
[01:57:25] fast. You are getting heels. Where are you? No. Yeah. I don't remember having any
[01:57:30] heels. There to be too slow. Yeah, the heels wouldn't come in for us,
[01:57:36] because that reason they want to freaking black lockdown scenario on the fold,
[01:57:40] which, which would have. Yeah, the Apache's came in one time. And they left and didn't come back.
[01:57:46] Yeah, they got, they got lit up like it was crazy. It was an crazy amount of volume of fire.
[01:57:50] We were putting it in a combat outpost. And they came in. They said they want to
[01:57:54] support. They flew in and it was like, it was crazy. Yeah. They flew away and didn't come back.
[01:58:01] We, man, things were so confusing over there. I remember being out there in positions. And
[01:58:05] now we had, you know, these two young ladies and they're doing clothes, they're hanging clothes.
[01:58:10] And then this other, what looks like the lady comes out there and she's like laying clothes out.
[01:58:17] But the third person that came out late, they're just looking everywhere. They're looking
[01:58:20] for us. And it was a dude just like a woman. You know, they got the garb over their head. So
[01:58:24] you can't even tell. But he's constantly looking, look, and look, and look, and the girls are
[01:58:27] gigland because it's, you know, it's kind of funny of them. I was like, it took me a long time to put that
[01:58:34] picture together, what transpired. And I couldn't do it while I was in the field. You know,
[01:58:38] I was like, it was just weird. I'm like, all right, that had to been a dude trying to find our
[01:58:41] position and stress as a woman. And these dudes were just, they were cagey, man. We're out there
[01:58:47] in the pop of sect on another mission. And it's mean another dude and we're set up in the hole.
[01:58:52] And I remember I'm looking in a guy's looking at looking directly at us. But he's got like a
[01:58:58] three or four year old girl right next to him. But he's looking in our direction. I'm like,
[01:59:02] that shouldn't right. But he's got no gun. He's like two, three hundred yards away. I'm keeping
[01:59:06] my on him. Watching, watching, watching, watching nothing happens. Me and the other guy rotate out of
[01:59:11] the hole. He gets in there and shit five minutes after he gets in the hole. We just started,
[01:59:15] you know, get, get, get, get into the hole, man. And like I'm young. Let's do a lot of there.
[01:59:19] You know, he rolls out, but they're shit flying everywhere. You know, and we're like, damn,
[01:59:23] that was close. Look at that dude. And you get it. You know? But that guy was spotting with his daughter.
[01:59:29] Yeah. If it even was his daughter. Yeah. Oh, yes. Spotting with a child. Spotting grabbed out.
[01:59:34] So, yeah, hold my hand. Come over here. Boom. Yeah. And if the guy had a gun,
[01:59:40] I had a felt comfortable taking the shop. But he doesn't have anything. So you're just like,
[01:59:44] is this just more weird shit going on over here? There's somebody weird thing going on. Yeah.
[01:59:47] There's always been all the weird inexplicable things that are happening all the time.
[01:59:51] Yeah. And they're all looking freaking crazy suspicious. Yeah. I mean, we had a ISR asset one time
[01:59:56] over, go flying overhead. Like there's a fast mover or something. And he's like, okay, we got,
[02:00:02] we got a vehicle pulling up. Like we got a vehicle. So everyone's looking at this vehicle. I'm looking
[02:00:06] at this vehicle on the ISR screen. And like, it's this, this looks super suspect. They're stopping.
[02:00:12] They're looking around. They get out. Yeah. Open the trunk. All right. Oh, they're opening the trunk.
[02:00:16] You know, everyone's on this mode. And then the reaching the point, something out, the point,
[02:00:21] something out. The point out. The point out an object right now. And sure enough, like,
[02:00:25] everyone's all excited and thinking, this is like, we need to drop a bomb on this thing. And sure
[02:00:28] enough, they got out of jack out of the thing and jacked up their freaking car and changed the tire
[02:00:34] and put it all away and left. And like they tracked them, they're, they left. They weren't,
[02:00:39] it wasn't like a setup, you know? And, and man, it's so difficult to decipher what's
[02:00:47] really happening. And you get better at it. But it's a tough war to fight. You know, it's a tough
[02:00:54] war to fight. You know, like, I don't know what we turned over with you guys. You always talked about the
[02:00:58] hey, it was a good shoot, bad result. Hey, what they're doing is lined up with the enemy
[02:01:03] procedures. You build the story and you make the best decision you can with what you're looking at.
[02:01:10] And sometimes just your point. It's actually legitimate. But you don't know that, you know?
[02:01:14] Yeah, well, that was something I learned and stole from the first the 506 because we had,
[02:01:21] or they, when we, when we first got there and we were over with them and they had some one of
[02:01:26] their guys shot and killed somebody and they were like, the person was out.
[02:01:30] I forget what suspicious activity they were doing. But it was like they were digging a hole on the
[02:01:35] side of the road and they shot, killed the guy and then they sent a team out there to inspect and he was
[02:01:40] whatever, you know, he was planting a plant. I don't know what he was doing. But it was something that
[02:01:45] was not the activity that that the shooter thought it was. Yeah. And I was talking to their
[02:01:52] ops officer and he was like, hey, you know what, this is a, this is a good shot, bad result,
[02:01:56] meaning that the, our soldier was following the proper rules of engagement. And it turns out that
[02:02:04] the result of that shot is bad, even though the shot was good, the result was bad. And, you know,
[02:02:09] it bothers me so much when I hear people talk about, you know, these, the US military, you know,
[02:02:15] causing all these civilian casualties, man, we go through such great lengths to prevent civilian
[02:02:20] casualties and put our soldiers, sailors, airmen of a marine at such risk to prevent those
[02:02:28] casualties to civilian casualties from happen happening. But it does happen. That's the reality
[02:02:33] that it's going to happen. And that's why if you're going to go to war, you better be ready for that.
[02:02:37] Yeah. You can't go to war thinking, oh, yeah, don't worry. We won't kill any civilians. Like,
[02:02:42] no, if you go to war, you're killing civilians. Yeah. I'm trying to think I know in the other
[02:02:48] deployments I did over there. We started doing a lot of collateral damage assessments before we
[02:02:52] did anything. I don't remember doing that one. We're in Romadi. Like, because we weren't really
[02:02:56] dropping bombs. And there was mostly just ground, um, ground units, handling business, you know,
[02:03:04] but anyways, that, that became a factor later on. Sure, everything was a CD. Yeah. I mean, even
[02:03:10] even even when I relieved you and Baghdad, we started looking at collateral damage in terms of
[02:03:15] like breaching. Yeah. Like, okay, we're going to breach this building. What's the collateral damage?
[02:03:19] Could we hurt someone? Yeah. Can we, are we going to ruin this? You know, how many, how many
[02:03:24] wind shields are we going, or how many wind does in this neighborhood are we going to blow out
[02:03:28] with this explosive breaching charge? And what good does that do for our overall strategic mission here
[02:03:35] if we're the assholes that come in every night and blow up everyone's house and windows, right?
[02:03:39] Yeah. All of a sudden, we're not cool. Yeah. So sometimes it was like, oh, okay, well,
[02:03:44] maybe we shouldn't explicitly breach well, then how are you going to execute the mission?
[02:03:47] And what risk does it put the troops at? Yeah. Because the safest way to do a direct action
[02:03:51] mission is to explosively breach the shit out of them. Yeah. Yeah. Shock everyone in the building.
[02:03:55] And by, okay, cool. So there's other tactics that we had to develop to to mitigate the risk. But
[02:04:03] what I'm saying is we were taking risks for sure to try and mitigate and not just us every,
[02:04:08] I'm going to say, we, I mean, the US military at large,
[02:04:10] mitigates risk of civilian casualties by risking our own casualties. That's what we do.
[02:04:19] And even as much as we mitigate them, we can't mitigate them all. And civilians are going to die.
[02:04:25] So you need to think about that. Yeah. So how to, when you guys had that horrific incident with
[02:04:31] Elliot and Joe, then what? Then like, how did the rest of the deployment? And I know that you guys,
[02:04:37] so one thing that's really positive is, part of this transition, I don't even know if you knew this.
[02:04:42] So we were doing everything we could. We, that whole sons of Ambar and that whole thing started when
[02:04:50] we were there. And then the other thing we were trying to do is we were trying to get the Iraqi police
[02:04:56] force built up. And we just started to get it built as we left. And so you guys got the benefit
[02:05:04] of the Iraqi police force, all of a sudden, the local Iraqi police force was respected. They were
[02:05:11] manned. They had, they, they understood the neighborhoods. They were tribal, most of the guys were
[02:05:16] tribal guys. And so all of a sudden, over a very quick period of time, the, the violence went down a lot.
[02:05:23] Joe, absolutely. Absolutely. I remember the police became a huge factor. I think it was late
[02:05:28] January, early February for us. They came in. They were setting up their own police stations and combat
[02:05:33] outpost. But man, then they were targeted by a queue. You may need to head police chief. They're trying
[02:05:39] to car bomb him and his entire family. They eventually got him. But it was, it was rough. And it
[02:05:45] definitely settled down everything. I would say, and by the, you know, mid, mid January to February,
[02:05:52] somewhere in there is where things really settled and good. Where, hey, the attacks are going
[02:05:57] way down. You know, we're still getting the occasional ID, you know, ID at him, you know, an army,
[02:06:04] silver affairs. They're going down to freaking Falcon and boom, they hit an ID killed our full
[02:06:09] people. Oh, yeah, that was, that was Travis Patrickwin. And he was a freaking epic guy. That, and that
[02:06:15] was a major McClellan, the female Marine Corps officer. Because they were there when I was there.
[02:06:22] They were both just freaking awesome. Awesome. Just awesome. Unbelievable. That was such a freaking
[02:06:28] horrific situation. Yeah, absolutely horrible. But thanks definitely die down there towards,
[02:06:33] you know, January, February, time, prime. It was in a good place. Then you read a poll. You came
[02:06:40] back to America. Came back to America in boom. I'm going to work for Jockel Willi.
[02:06:44] It's raining. Rolled in the trade that man. And that was, um, that was awesome. Yeah. That was awesome.
[02:06:52] Did you, did you volunteer to come there or what happened? How did you guys so before the
[02:06:55] plumbing, I know I was working with our group CMC and they were doing team level detailing.
[02:07:00] So he came in. He's like, hey, man, what do you want to do? I was like, well, I want to stay
[02:07:03] out. I want to stay in the area. He's like, what would you think about going to trade? I was like,
[02:07:06] keep me in the area. He was like, yeah, I was like, hell, yeah, I'll do it. So Roger that, man.
[02:07:10] I was looking forward to, you know, and you know, the guy I really do with their BJs is a good
[02:07:16] dude smart and I think he set up a good foundation with what he had. So I inherited a really
[02:07:23] a good product. Yeah. He was doing good shit. Yeah, no, it was, it was legit. And then you showed up.
[02:07:29] It was awesome. And then I mean, what was your experience of trade at like in terms of C now?
[02:07:38] This is interesting. You know, I told you that like the seeds of my experience in knowledge were
[02:07:44] watered heavily and fertilized heavily, but I was young. So now you get to experience this in a much
[02:07:52] in a much more powerful environment because the training we were conducting was so much more advanced.
[02:07:58] Then and also you were more advanced and you were a combat veteran of multiple combat
[02:08:03] tours and you were a senior and listed guy. So man, it was just, it was awesome. It was a good experience.
[02:08:08] But I'll tell you what I went in there and I'm like, holy, it's different when you're
[02:08:12] responsible for a live fire range versus you're going through a live fire range.
[02:08:19] And so there was, there was a lot to that, you know, the most stressful thing for me during
[02:08:23] land warfare was doing all the live fire training because there was definitely a lot of opportunity
[02:08:27] for someone to get injured or wounded, you know, you know what I mean. And so it was good
[02:08:32] and getting up there and teaching these things, you just learned so much more. I mean, the pipeline
[02:08:37] should be, we need guys and instructor positions, but you need them a budget. You also need them over
[02:08:42] at our trade at that. If there was a way to split that where they do 15 months, it bugs, 15 months
[02:08:49] a trade, it would be ideal. It's just, it's not practical, you know. But going to trade, it was an
[02:08:55] eye open. And I really started, you know, I'd say around 2003 I started 2003-2004,
[02:09:01] started reading quite a bit. I never heard of the last hundred yards. You know, we didn't have
[02:09:06] a portal with libraries. We didn't have guys going around if you went in a training so you might see it.
[02:09:11] But I really started building up a good reading block. And I remember talking to you when we're at
[02:09:16] trade at, and we were reading, I think I just went through the maneuver of warfare handbook. And I was like,
[02:09:21] man, I'm thinking these things. And then you read it in a reinforces what you were thinking. So
[02:09:27] not, now your confidence just goes through the roof. And I think one of the things we did good in
[02:09:34] in a stubby of continues to do this is developing our future leaders. I mean, think about when
[02:09:38] you and I came up with it. There was no portal, there was no none of this stuff. We've got stuff
[02:09:42] hanging. Hey, you want to be a good tactical leader, leader, go read your doctrine, go read these
[02:09:47] books here, and that is going to boost you up. And the guys that are hungry, they're going to
[02:09:51] go in there and read it. The guys that are, you know, a little bit lax a days ago and they don't want to
[02:09:55] do it. They're going to meet the minimum standard. But you definitely need to have something out there
[02:09:59] to wear, you know, your high performers are hungry, give it to them so that they can become,
[02:10:06] a better leader. So I think we did that good, but just going back to land war for, I think,
[02:10:10] you know, the stress levels, they were high during a life-iron training, the field training exercises
[02:10:14] we did were just badass were building, you know, little wood huts all over the dam place on those ranges.
[02:10:20] And I think the guys, you know, I mean, shit, we had a thermal camera out there at one point and we're
[02:10:26] video tape in the guys coming in so they come back and go through their debrief, we're going,
[02:10:30] this is what you all look like. Here's what we're telling you. Here's what you look like and the people
[02:10:33] see what they look like. They go damn check, Roger that, you know, they're making some adjustments.
[02:10:38] But I thought it was good. I was definitely learning a lot while was there. I wish I had
[02:10:42] a done that assignment earlier on in, in at least a team five training. So I would have boosted me up a lot,
[02:10:48] you know, what did you see? What did you notice from the, I mean, the crazy thing about it is you get
[02:10:56] to, it's the best lat, I truly think this. I think that that land warfare training is the best
[02:11:04] leadership laboratory in the world. I think that's it. I don't think there's a better leadership
[02:11:08] laboratory where you can see leadership in action. I really don't because you get the whole dynamic,
[02:11:14] someone might say, well, you know, in some business or in some bureaucratic situation or some
[02:11:22] boardroom, you get that part too because you get the mission planning that's taking place. And
[02:11:26] there's no gunfire going on during the mission planning, but you get the stress that you get the
[02:11:30] people that have to make decisions, you get the team arguing with each other, and you get the
[02:11:34] different personalities that are coming out. And so you get to watch all this and you get to learn and
[02:11:40] you get to see how people react and you get to see human nature over and over and over again.
[02:11:44] And you get to see one puttune do it. And then you see another puttune do the same thing. The same,
[02:11:51] I mean, we had all those little pet nickmames for all the different maneuvers that we knew that
[02:11:57] our moush was going to do. And we, so you'd see a puttune go through the octopus, you'd see a puttune
[02:12:04] go through the corner of death, right? You'd see the trail of tears. You'd get to see how they would
[02:12:11] react and you'd see what a good leader would do. And you'd see how that would turn the puttune and
[02:12:16] all the sudden they'd be able to get things together and survive and make it happen and do a good
[02:12:21] job. And you'd see bad leadership. And you'd go, well, these guys are just going to be a
[02:12:25] suffer fest. And so that that leadership laboratory was just unbelievably powerful. And really,
[02:12:34] it was, it was powerful for for us as instructors because we were detached and we got to watch it.
[02:12:40] Look, the troops, Abby, obviously, get a ton out of it too. But getting to see it over and over again
[02:12:46] was just ridiculous amount of learning. One of the things I, I really respected about land warfare,
[02:12:54] you got to see people's true character when they're coming through there, they're up late at night,
[02:12:59] you're under a lot of stress, whatever you're thinking in your head or whatever type of attitude
[02:13:03] you have, good or bad, that's coming out. And you really get to see what you're working with with
[02:13:07] your pertune, you know. And that's a good precursor because when you go to combat, if you end up
[02:13:14] going on deployment and you end up getting in real combat, you're going to see that, that's the only
[02:13:18] place that's going to come out even more is when you go into combat, people start acting crazy.
[02:13:22] Like, and I'm not talking about hey, and gunfight, there, and I'm talking about on a day-to-day
[02:13:27] basis, you start seeing what their character is. They do, they want to operate, do, they want to
[02:13:32] hide, do, they will, like you get to see, start to see all that stuff. And you'll see it,
[02:13:36] you'll see it out in the desert, in training, you'll see people start to crack, and you'll also see
[02:13:42] people step up and you'll see people start to lead and you see people that are tough. And when you
[02:13:46] see those good leaders coming through and look, the good leader could be anyone in the platoon from
[02:13:50] an E5 to the platoon or the task unit commander, anyone in between, you have one good leader or two
[02:13:58] good leaders in there and they're going to do a good job. They can be countered by bad leadership.
[02:14:04] So you can have a good leader that gets countered by someone that's an ego jackass and they that
[02:14:10] ego jackass can actually ruin everything. Sometimes if you just have one good leader, that's the
[02:14:14] LPL of one platoon, and he's a really good sol leader, he can carry the whole task unit.
[02:14:21] Now if you put a jackass, just seen your chief in there, a jackass chief or a jackass lieutenant,
[02:14:26] he can he can override two or three squared away leaders because he's a knucklehead and doesn't
[02:14:33] want a lesson and wants to do everything his way and wants to let his ego run the show.
[02:14:38] The freaking disaster. Yeah, we saw quite a few good leaders come through, probably the most
[02:14:45] rewarding thing, having guys come through training, they're coming through, they're just starting out
[02:14:50] as a unit. They're figuring out some things out if they haven't been through another block
[02:14:54] and they come in and the growth that you see, that you're providing as instructors and you know
[02:15:00] as a cadre, as a unit and you see him start here and by the time they finish after that
[02:15:05] three, four weeks, they're up here, 100%. The growth is tremendous and guess what, the
[02:15:10] heart of the trainer, the heart of the training, the more the guys appreciate it, the more growth
[02:15:15] you have. That's what I physically saw happening with with our formation.
[02:15:21] Yeah, because it was miserable. Yes, it was freaking miserable. It was freaking hard. When you're
[02:15:26] carrying out, I mean, if a platoon did a bad job, they'd have 12 down men. They'd be carrying out
[02:15:34] 12 down men for three or four kilometers before they could finally get a helicopter in there
[02:15:40] to pick up and take the wounded, then they still got to walk, the rest of them got to walk out.
[02:15:44] Like when you got your ass kicked, you got your ass kicked and it would sometimes,
[02:15:50] you know, that was another big difference when a leader, when the leadership in the task unit
[02:15:55] or in the platoon would say, would come back and say, hey, we screwed up. We better fix it.
[02:16:00] They would fix it. If the kick, if they came back and said, oh, trade at cheating or trade at,
[02:16:05] this is this this training is unrealistic. If they said that, they wouldn't improve. And they just
[02:16:10] follow a part. But when they say, hey, we spent too much time on target. Hey, we didn't cover
[02:16:16] move or hey, we didn't give the priorities correctly or we didn't have. When they came back and said
[02:16:22] that, recognize that they'd come out in a good task unit by the end, our trade at guys couldn't
[02:16:29] keep under wraps. Like, they would get the the trade at guys we get their ass's kicked.
[02:16:33] Because there's, because there's 40 of the back, I mean, 40 of the of the platoon guys.
[02:16:37] So they could freaking, when they would do good cover move, you can't stop them.
[02:16:42] No. They're unstoppable. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what I always tell people, hey, man,
[02:16:46] the people who utilize the laws of combat did good cover and move kept things simple, good
[02:16:51] communications across board, prioritizing executed, stayed detached from what was going on
[02:16:56] in the guys that utilize decentralized command, whether they'll allow fire team leaders and
[02:17:00] squad leaders to make decisions at their level. Because you can't be everywhere as the boss
[02:17:04] making these decisions. You got to train your, you got to train your, your leaders up, put up some
[02:17:10] guard wells, get them to where they need to be. And then you let them start making decisions, you know.
[02:17:14] And that's probably like one of the most beautiful things with land warfare.
[02:17:17] Guys are going out there, they're learning these things and they're slowly building their
[02:17:22] confidence to where when they get to the field training exercise, we can start making some of
[02:17:26] these decisions, then it's even that much more of a confidence builder, you know.
[02:17:31] It's weird because you can, you can, I mean, look, I would explain this stuff.
[02:17:39] Ad knows you, right? Ad knows you. I mean, I would explain it and explain, I'd say, look,
[02:17:43] you got to do that. You got to do this. You got to do this. But sometimes, man,
[02:17:46] it would just take like it happening to someone. And being, and me sitting there like
[02:17:54] literally running over to a fire team leader and saying, hey, what are you doing? Those guys are
[02:18:00] freaking running right now. You got to get them down. You got to put down cover five of them
[02:18:03] and then I'm going, oh, wait a second, I get it. And then you'd see this light come on,
[02:18:08] or I'd run up to a freaking task. You'd a commander and be like, where do you want everyone to
[02:18:12] go right now? What do you want everyone to do? And he'd say, we need to get out of here. Okay,
[02:18:17] what direction? I said, are you going to be able to move everyone out of here? No. Can you think
[02:18:23] your fire teams can start moving? Yes, tell them where you want them to move. Just tell them all,
[02:18:28] and they'll start making it happen. And you could see the little, like all of a sudden, the
[02:18:32] light would come on. But sometimes it would just take that, like you have to live, you almost have
[02:18:39] to live through it. In some cases, some guys would be like, yeah, got it. Cover move, check, got it.
[02:18:44] Because you learn cover move day one or the day one of the teams, you learn cover move. You better
[02:18:49] freaking cover move. Yeah, sometimes it took a guy's a little while to figure out how to utilize
[02:18:54] the train correctly. You know, because the train was a, was a factor of Rockies, small waddies,
[02:19:00] uneven terrain, which was hard to maneuver, especially when you got a downman.
[02:19:04] There was something there too. To train, to rain is the, is the next level. Right? The next
[02:19:14] level is, oh, I don't just know how to cover move. I just don't know simple. I just don't know
[02:19:20] prioritize next. Cute. I don't just know decentralized command. I know how to utilize the terrain
[02:19:26] to my advantage. That's the next level up. That's the next level up. When you realize, oh,
[02:19:32] I can get a little high ground. Oh, there's a little dead space. Oh, there's a ravine over here.
[02:19:35] I can get the guys out. That's the next level. And we tried to teach it in that method. You know,
[02:19:40] you start off doing I ads in a flat spot. And then all of a sudden you start to get used to rain.
[02:19:45] But when the leadership, when the, when the, when the whole task unit, when a fire team leader
[02:19:52] knows how to use terrain. And then all the fire team leaders know how to use terrain. All of a sudden
[02:19:56] we're in a whole different spot. Yeah. We're in a whole different spot. So yes, the terrain is so freaking
[02:20:03] critical. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. A little bit of high ground. Yeah. We had guys down on that
[02:20:10] micro tray. Doing good things. Yeah. Tough stuff on the body. And we had, I mean, we had rain,
[02:20:17] we had Rangers out there helping us. Oh, which was awesome. Do those guys, they brought a lot.
[02:20:21] And the, the Rangers, we had out there. They had all kinds of both of them came from leadership
[02:20:27] assignments within their, their Ranger unit. And they had a lot of reps, man. They brought a lot to
[02:20:32] the table. They had all kinds of good info. We were eating it. We were just like,
[02:20:35] Com, stand by keep it coming. Keep it coming. Yeah. It's always, it's one of the, the worse,
[02:20:41] one of the bad things. One of the worse things about the, the seal teams is,
[02:20:44] we don't come from an infantry background. Yeah. You know, we're not soldiers. We're not infantry.
[02:20:52] We're, we're, so we don't have that skill set. And you can get lucky and you can get a brush
[02:20:58] up against it. I got, I got at least brushed up against it. Doing orgs with the Marines and being like,
[02:21:03] okay, I at least understand what an infantry platoon is. Yeah. Because if you regular seal,
[02:21:09] new guy, you don't know what the hell an infantry platoon is. You have no idea. You think a
[02:21:13] platoon is 16 guys, you know, they're a platoon. But, but yeah, so those, so in the army,
[02:21:19] you have that infantry background. In the Marine Corps, you have that infantry background. It's
[02:21:22] so helpful. So having like, Rangers out there with us who were freaking great guys, by the way,
[02:21:28] and they bring that that infantry background. And they were stoked too. They were, they freaking
[02:21:34] luck. They loved our trading. Yeah. They were awesome. The both of those guys had a lot of reps
[02:21:38] in half canis 10. I'm trying to remember right. And I know where the, the one guy came in and he was
[02:21:43] really tightening up our helicopter procedures. Just, you know, you covered so much like damn
[02:21:50] I didn't even think about that. You know, all my deployments were to Iraq at that point.
[02:21:55] But yeah, good dudes, man. Did you read about face back then? Oh, yes. So I read it when I got to
[02:22:01] trade it. You know, you had that as your Bible. Damn, what was the guy's name? I had them in here.
[02:22:07] There was another kernel that he's got a page on four page for something in about face. But the guy
[02:22:18] was just a beast. Oh, Glover Jones. That's him. Yeah. And that guy had so many good nuggets on the
[02:22:23] page and a half. Yeah. Yeah. But I remember reading through that page 402 half worth. And he just has
[02:22:29] some nuggets. And there's got like 15 things that he covers. You know, strive to do small things. Well,
[02:22:33] be a doer in a self-starter. You know, the one that I always hit home with me because I think it's so true
[02:22:40] is what is it? The two, you know, in order to be a good, two good characteristics of the leaders.
[02:22:46] You've got to be a good communicator and you've got to be a good writer. And the writing piece
[02:22:52] comes into play as you start moving up in your upper level, leadership and management positions
[02:22:56] because you're writing e-vowels for the guys. And I remember being at trade it and you were kind of like,
[02:23:00] hey, man, if you guys bring me an e-vow in the thing requires minor or requires major surgery,
[02:23:07] I'm only going to be able to do so much to it to make it better. But you bring me an e-vow that's
[02:23:12] dialed in pretty damn tight. I'm going to get it over the line. It's going to be a beautiful piece of
[02:23:16] work. It's going to be a piece of art. And you're getting into people shit on it. You, you were not a
[02:23:21] happy camper because there was like always e-vowels coming in. Yeah. But it's so true when you think about it.
[02:23:26] Hey, how do we take care of people? A-way is in through our evaluation system. Making sure the
[02:23:31] right people are getting promoted and through awards, those all require some type of writing skill.
[02:23:36] Right. One, freaking series, one year of evaluations, probably the first year that you were there.
[02:23:43] The shit that you guys turned in. And I had no choice. I didn't get them till two late. And I just
[02:23:48] had to, I just had to do nine days in my office just rewriting every single one of them. And that's why
[02:23:54] the next year early. I said, hey, everyone, write me the e-vow for your best guy. And then I brought you guys
[02:24:03] it. You were in this group right? I brought you guys into the, into the conference room and posted
[02:24:08] them up all the screen. I made you guys read your sentences to me. And you guys were just like,
[02:24:16] like the very first sentence that each guy read. It would just be like this blah, blah,
[02:24:21] just a shit sentence. And I'd be like, all right, how does that sound? Like not good. But that
[02:24:27] worked so well. Because then everyone realized, oh, I should actually read this stuff. I should
[02:24:33] actually read it aloud to myself. I should actually see if these sentences make sense. And it just
[02:24:37] helped everybody so, so it helped me. Because now you guys were all turning in square to way stuff
[02:24:43] which then I could, what, what would you say turn into a piece of art? I know, I go quite go that far.
[02:24:49] I believe in quotations of piece of art. Joccaloo. We got an artist on the net over here.
[02:24:57] Glover Johns from Hackworth to and he wrote a book called The Clay Pigeons of St. Love,
[02:25:02] which we covered on this podcast. And it's written. It's hard to tell because he wrote it in the third
[02:25:06] person talking about himself as if he was a different person, but it's about him. Then it's a great
[02:25:12] book and it gives all kinds of leadership lessons as well. One of the things I want to
[02:25:17] camp out of real quick on, on Hackworth. One of the things is I was reading through that book and it
[02:25:21] took me six months to get through it. It's a big book. But it really reinforced. You know, when you're
[02:25:27] coming in is a leader, at any level, and you're new to that leadership assignment, you're always
[02:25:31] uncomfortable. So you're trying to figure out am I making the right decision? And when you're going
[02:25:36] through and you're reading some nonfiction that pertains to your field, your field craft,
[02:25:42] it just reinforces what you're thinking. And I remember after reading about face the maneuver
[02:25:46] worth for a handbook, I came out of those like damn, a lot of these decisions I was uncertain about,
[02:25:50] it reinforced that I was making the right decision. So how do you become better? You read that
[02:25:55] stuff before you get those leadership positions. And who's responsible for, for destroying that
[02:26:00] out, the leadership? You know, if you're in a leadership position out there, what are you doing to
[02:26:04] develop your future leaders? You have people that want to take your job. What are you doing to
[02:26:10] develop them? And you go, look across the world like we got COVID everywhere. You can get a car accident.
[02:26:15] Who's the next person in line that's going to take your job? Who is that person? And what are you
[02:26:19] doing to develop them? You know, we've gotten way better over the years in the military and in
[02:26:23] a stubby doing this. Well, but let's think about that. That's pretty powerful. You know,
[02:26:27] yeah, do J.P. sent because I gave, I gave a J.P. a copy of, at least I think I gave it to him.
[02:26:34] Anyways, he got a copy of the new addition of about face with the forwarding and everything. And so
[02:26:38] he's like sending me highlighted passages and he's not happy. And he's like, bro, I cannot believe
[02:26:47] that you didn't make me read this when I was a, you know, when I was 23 or 22. And I'm like,
[02:26:54] dude, I'm sorry, like I'm a horrible leader because there's so much information in there.
[02:26:58] And I just ripped it off wholesale, wholesale just ripped it off. And it's like, why didn't I
[02:27:06] share that? And part of me was I just didn't think team guys had any desire to read anything,
[02:27:12] you know, because most team guys didn't. Most team guys let me be here. You know what I did with my
[02:27:19] about face when I got back over to when I got over to team seven, I gave it out to one of our younger
[02:27:25] tactical. So that's like, like, that's a big book. I'm like, yes, you need to read that.
[02:27:30] Did you? And then when you're done with it, you need to pass it on to someone else. Do you think you
[02:27:33] read it? I don't know man. See, you take book. It's such a big book. I don't know. It's good. And here's the thing,
[02:27:39] always talk about making hard calls. You look at those decisions he made in there. Those were,
[02:27:45] he was going to be hated. He knew that going in. He didn't care. He knew what the right thing to do
[02:27:50] was. He made the right calls. And you know, he wind up saving a lot of lives with his guys from
[02:27:55] it. Yeah, we'll see. There's a little nuance there in what you said. He had to make hard calls.
[02:28:01] He knew that he would be hated in the short term. He knew that there would be resistance. Yeah.
[02:28:09] But he knew in the end he would be admired and he would be loved because he would be able to keep his
[02:28:14] guys alive. And he knew that that what what would shine through is the fact that he cared about his
[02:28:20] men. Yeah. That's what would shine through. And believe me, when we had General Mooka Yamon,
[02:28:26] I was so, uh, not really worried, but like going into it. Here I'm going to meet a guy that
[02:28:33] worked for Freak and Hack. And what is he going to say? Yeah. Like he's going to be like, well,
[02:28:39] you know, Hack will made himself out to be a little bit more than he was or Hack talked to good
[02:28:43] game, but that really wasn't the guy he was air. I didn't know what he was going to say. Yeah.
[02:28:46] But dude, he was just 100% 100% Hack was the man. And he was a company commander when
[02:28:54] Hack was a baton commander. I mean, that's the that's the leadership. Wow. So, you know,
[02:28:59] what what you know and I said, did you know who Hack was? He was everybody knew who Hack was.
[02:29:05] And like that attitude and and I said, you know, what how did you, what was it that made
[02:29:12] he goes everything like the way he's carried himself, the way he looked, the way he had his head,
[02:29:17] he had his hair, he's like he had his head shaved and he just looked like this guy's just freaking
[02:29:21] square away from day one. But so you're going to make because because one thing I don't like
[02:29:27] and Lafayne, I have talked about this on the podcast is the someone thinking, well, you know,
[02:29:33] I'm in charge, so I'm going to be hated and that's okay. It's like, no, that's actually not okay.
[02:29:37] If you're hated by your troops, that's a freaking problem. That means you're doing something wrong.
[02:29:43] For your troops to take over a unit or take over a team or take over a position
[02:29:49] and say, all right, we're going to start making some adjustments.
[02:29:53] Now, one thing that's different to in Hack's case when he took over the 439, this he took over a
[02:29:58] disaster, a known disaster. He had to come in there and kind of swing a hammer a little bit.
[02:30:02] Oh, he had to bring out the flame throw. Yeah, he had to do some barbecue. He had to do some barbecue.
[02:30:08] But he also eventually, you know, anyone would do anything. You know, like talking to General
[02:30:13] Mucchial, those guys would do absolutely anything for happen. Anything. And even the freaking,
[02:30:17] even the drafties would do anything for Hackworth. Like they loved them. Yeah.
[02:30:21] And it's kind of like you said earlier, when people go through hard training, they appreciate it
[02:30:24] and they love the training more. When you are disciplined with your troops, when you're hard on
[02:30:30] your troops, they respect you and they respect themselves. And you start to get this camaraderie that you need.
[02:30:38] You know, I think a hack worth, I think of like you said a dude showing up right here, cut,
[02:30:42] right uniform, just everything he's communicating lines up with his actions. And the guys just
[02:30:50] had to be like, damn, does this guy do anything wrong? You know what I mean? Is he sweet?
[02:30:54] Let's go on on with this dude. And then when you look at that, you're like, hey, my margin of air
[02:30:58] is going to be small because this dude's doing everything he's saying. Yeah, you know, that's
[02:31:03] powerful. That leadership, by example, that's how you got to roll 100%.
[02:31:08] What, anything else from trade at? No, I was all good. Christmas in the desert.
[02:31:14] Christmas in the desert. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I remember, uh, nine-lin man, we were wrapping up.
[02:31:20] And we had to, it was a good run. The troop came through good energy levels and we're getting ready to
[02:31:25] go home. And you came and you said, that wasn't bad guys. And I was like, all right, let me put that
[02:31:31] through my enlisted description device up here. What Jockel saying is, good job. Have a good
[02:31:36] Christmas. He loves you all and you're like, oh, go, go, go. You gave a little chuckle out of there.
[02:31:41] So I got you kind of being hugged here there right before Christmas. The spirits were good.
[02:31:47] So I said that wasn't bad. That's a, that's a good of a compliment as you're going to get out of
[02:31:51] me. Yeah. I had to translate it for him. But yeah, let's check.
[02:31:57] Maybe compliments weren't my strong point. They were not. I got some recordings of some of those
[02:32:05] debriefs. Somebody's, somebody's hooking me up. One of one of my buddies. He just texted me a couple
[02:32:12] weeks ago and he said, hey, somebody gave me recordings of your debriefs. He said, you're going to want
[02:32:17] to hear him like, Chad. I remember being on Target out there. And this unit was maneuvering.
[02:32:24] I forget what's happening. But one of the guys communication is so long. Hey, I need you to grab
[02:32:31] your guys and move to the mountain like in Black Hawk down to like, what the hell? What don't you,
[02:32:35] you know, what are you talking about there? It was just crazy talking. Yeah, just hit record on my voice
[02:32:41] recorded during those things and play it back for people like listen to yourself. I think
[02:32:45] you need to keep your stuff a little clearer. More simple clear and concise. I was keeping it
[02:32:49] simple. Oh, really listen to this. Here's you telling your troops. Peel right. I need everyone to
[02:32:55] blow, blow, blow, blow, blow. Freaking ridiculous. Yeah, yeah, freaking totally ridiculous. Yeah, yeah,
[02:33:00] what was crazy. So then where'd you go? Yep. So after that, head back over to our headed two teams
[02:33:08] seven and at that point it already made master chief. So I was going to there's the ops,
[02:33:12] master chief, senior listed guy and then I got pegged to do. So I went back there and what October
[02:33:18] 22,000 nine October, 20,000 nine just finished up the senior listed cadmium. They're like, hey,
[02:33:24] those big one. They're trying to pump as many people as they can over an Afghanistan. So I got hit
[02:33:29] with a joint individual augment headed out to a small outstation out in Afghanistan. I was the senior
[02:33:34] listed leader out there, which was a good experience. So the first time at that point where I
[02:33:39] really worked in a joint environment. So my boss was a full bird colonel. He was SF dude. Good guy
[02:33:46] learned a lot from him. He'd been in like 32 years. He was prior and listed and worked as we have
[02:33:50] to the right. He's just a salty old dog. And then we had the army air force, Marine Corps out there
[02:33:56] everyone. And then we had quite a few military officers from different countries. We had Afghanistan
[02:34:02] and a few other surrounding countries in there. And our primary goal was to fusion until. And then
[02:34:10] we had some reconnaissance platforms up overhead and they were doing their stuff. And
[02:34:15] some other countries. But it was good. And that was the first time I really appreciated our special
[02:34:22] forces unit. And I was working with another senior listed leader. He was in another country.
[02:34:27] And he's like, hey man, here's what we got going on. I mean, and we'd communicate back and forth,
[02:34:30] you know, like once or twice a week. And he's like, hey, I got my SF Italian. We're training up this.
[02:34:36] And he's like, here's our numbers. And I was like, hey, wait a minute. You guys have this many,
[02:34:41] you know, ODA's over there. And you've trained up. You've man trained in a quip. 2000 of these soldiers.
[02:34:48] He's like, yeah. And I was like, holy shit dude, that's a big deal, man. That's like our formation
[02:34:53] in a SW and action over there. You know, yeah. Like by that, you mean all of the West Coast seal
[02:34:59] and all support. Yeah. In action. Yeah. And so these guys were trained up these guys and they're
[02:35:04] going in and they're fighting the Taliban. And he's got his ODA's doing it. I was like, holy shit,
[02:35:08] that's pretty badass, man. So it was a good deployment, like not much going on outside the
[02:35:14] wire. The area I was in was actually like, yeah, I was like, cool. I just got out of Nailin. Then I go over
[02:35:18] there. And I'm like, they're going back in Nailin. The terrain is exactly what they say. I would
[02:35:22] know, there was some hub hub about us losing our desert training facility. Someone else was going
[02:35:27] to take it over. Oh, yeah. And I made this this slide show. Did I ever show you that? I made a slide
[02:35:33] show. And it was pictures of Afghanistan and pictures of our desert training facility side by side.
[02:35:40] And you literally couldn't tell the difference. Wow. And I was like, you've got to be kidding me.
[02:35:45] If you think that this isn't the greatest training site for us to have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So
[02:35:52] anyways, that was a short deployment at that point. I'm the ops master chief that I'm deployed.
[02:35:57] Come back six months later. I got home right before July. And then as I'm back at the team,
[02:36:02] the team's going through unit level training. And then we're prepping up for our deployment
[02:36:06] in March timeframe. And that was a weird deployment. Like we wanted up some of us wound up back
[02:36:12] over in Iraq. And so this is 2010, 2011 timeframe now. And we're breaking down Iraq. Yes.
[02:36:19] And we're also yeah, we're waiting for our four battoons. They're still in San Diego to get over to
[02:36:24] Afghanistan. And they're going over to do village stability operations. So get over to Iraq. And
[02:36:31] that, you know, that deployment, it was a long one. It was like eight and a half months long.
[02:36:37] A lot of, you know, the unit we were working with had all the bells and whistles. And it was
[02:36:41] good man. So a lot of good things happened. And our guys wrapped up quite a few bad guys.
[02:36:46] And it was, it was a good learning experience. It was, it was a first time I was in,
[02:36:51] you know, a professional jock setting where you're actually seeing everything unfold in real time.
[02:36:57] All they ask that you can imagine, you know, and our guys did some good targeting. They got a
[02:37:02] couple of bad guys have been after for four or five years. So it was good. Then came back off that
[02:37:07] deployment. Then took over as the team, you know, command master chief. So explain what a team
[02:37:11] command master chief is. Well, our primary job is to initially use the setup the battoons. You're
[02:37:19] working with the, you know, the top five of the team, the commanding officer of the XO,
[02:37:23] your operations department, you know, the senior listed in there and the, and the ops boss.
[02:37:30] In, in your primary functions are manning training and equipping the civil team. And you're the
[02:37:34] senior and listed leader and tactical advisor to the commanding officer. Your primary goal is training
[02:37:40] up all these, you're not training, educating and training, you know, your, your patoon chiefs and
[02:37:47] task unit senior listed advisors. Can't junior officers. And so you take over this position and
[02:37:54] you start building platoons. Yeah. Yeah. And I always used to say about platoons. Let's say there's a
[02:38:02] magic number. Let's say the number number is 20. Yeah. In your top four in a platoon. So your LPO,
[02:38:11] your assistant platoon commander, your platoon commander, your platoon chief. That number's got a equal
[02:38:15] 20. When you add them all together. Yeah. So that means if you have a platoon chief, that's like a
[02:38:23] 16 because he's just a badass. Cool. You can give them a platoon commander. That's like a two and of LPO
[02:38:29] that's a one. If you have a platoon chief, that's like a, you know, maybe a six, you got to give them a
[02:38:37] platoon commander. That's maybe like a seven and you got to even it out. What you don't want to do
[02:38:42] is make sure first of all, you got to make sure that the number gets to 20. Yeah. Because if it doesn't
[02:38:47] get to 20, you're going to have issues. Then then you got to compliment strengths and weaknesses.
[02:38:51] You know, if you've got a guy that's got a bunch of tactical experience, put his horrible
[02:38:54] paperwork. Well, cool. You know, put him with a person that's good at good at paperwork. So there's
[02:39:00] a lot of balancing in there that you need to do. Absolutely. And I know, uh, our 20, when we formed
[02:39:07] of the team in 2010, we went with some heavy platoon. What the idea we're going to go back and
[02:39:12] have gannistered. And in one of the things with our training and deployment schedules, that there's
[02:39:18] a lot of lag time in there. So things are always changing. And I was like, man, when we get back
[02:39:24] and I'm forming up the team, I want to make sure just to your point, all these platoons are balanced
[02:39:28] out. You know, when you go heavy and some platoons, that means you're going to be light in the others.
[02:39:33] Yeah. And that comes, that comes at a cost. And in the really, what I wanted was you got how many
[02:39:39] platoon do you have a seal team? You should be able to pick up any one of those platoons and snap them in,
[02:39:44] no matter where, you know, where you're going, what the mission is. They should all be
[02:39:49] pretty balanced out equally with experience in the platoon, leadership. Yeah, you're, yeah, check.
[02:39:54] And here's another thing to be careful of. Be to watch out for. You, you're trying to get to 20.
[02:40:00] You don't build the platoon with a leadership level 40. Yeah. Because it's probably not going to work
[02:40:10] the way you think it is. What you're going to end up with is a bunch of big personalities. Like,
[02:40:14] you take the strongest possible OIC, the strongest possible chief, the strongest possible LPO,
[02:40:20] and the strongest, what you're going to end up with is people that they all want to freaking
[02:40:24] stab each other in the back. They all want to be the guy. They all want to, they have such
[02:40:27] begos and it just turns into a nightmare. So building the stacked platoon leadership is generally
[02:40:32] not a good call. And you're going to even even if it happened, if you actually had such
[02:40:36] exceptional individuals that they actually did work well together, well, then it's bad that you
[02:40:44] have them all together. Because like you said, you're not balanced now, they'll rush to the teams.
[02:40:47] Because because you should take those exceptionally, because for a, for a level 20 individual leader,
[02:40:55] actually, for, for a level 17 individual leader to work with another high performing leader,
[02:41:04] that other leader needs to be a 20. Yeah. Because that, the person that's a 20 and 20 instead of a
[02:41:10] 17, the difference between a 17 and a 20 is that 17 can can subordinate their ego. That's the
[02:41:18] difference. Because when you take two people that are 18s, they're missing quality that they don't have
[02:41:23] is that they don't, they don't know how to work with other people and subordinate their ego.
[02:41:27] That's what gets you to a freaking level 20 yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The balanced out patoons are
[02:41:34] our key for the entire team. It's goodness. And you think about it. So if I'm bringing in a patoon,
[02:41:41] we really spread out our guys with two and three patoons. Because those guys are developing
[02:41:45] the next set of leaders below them. The patoon chief and LPO and everyone's got to develop the
[02:41:49] other guys too. But those guys have the most impact. When the leadership's gone, they're the
[02:41:53] guys that are around and their shown on what right looks like. So we crossed it quite a few guys,
[02:41:59] got everything balanced out good. And overall, our deployment was un-eventful for that one,
[02:42:05] went over to Sincam and we were on standby to standby. That was after Ben Gazi and happy. So the
[02:42:13] new normal was, hey, beyond standby, in case there's a crisis in there. If crisis comes up,
[02:42:17] we want to have special operations posture to go handle an embassy type event. And it was good.
[02:42:25] So for that deployment, we wanted to, you know, in and out of the embassy quite a bit, which was good.
[02:42:29] Because I was like, oh, I've never been in embassy before. So you're talking directly to
[02:42:33] the ambassador and whole new world. Yeah. And you got to be professional. You got to have your suit on.
[02:42:38] And you know, you can't drop any of bombs out there. Yeah. It's a whole new world. Yeah. So it was a
[02:42:43] really good learning experience, although nothing happened. I don't say this. We got poshured.
[02:42:49] You know, we had a unit over into a neighboring country. And that country was, you know,
[02:42:55] they were going through a withdrawal process. And our unit still stayed in position, but we were
[02:43:00] going to reinforce that unit. So we were staged. We had to stage. So we brought in the aircraft,
[02:43:05] which, you know, we're going through a full blown rehearsal. Like we're, we think and we're going to launch
[02:43:09] our guys. And you know, our, my biggest takeaway from that point was like, hey, these relationships,
[02:43:16] we have with the embassy, they matter. Because all we had to do was call up there because we had a
[02:43:20] tight relationship. And they tell us, hey, here's what's going on. The ambassadors working with
[02:43:24] the prints and the prints. And they're going through this whole thing. Do we want to launch out
[02:43:27] here? Do we not want to launch out here? So it was good. You know, it was boring, but it was a good
[02:43:33] learning experience. Yeah. And for for people that don't really know too much about this world,
[02:43:38] there, there can be and usually is a lot of tension between the state department, which is the
[02:43:45] ambassadors and whatnot and the military. Yeah. Because the state department wants to solve things
[02:43:52] diplomatically. Yeah. That's what their life is, right? And the military, we think we can solve
[02:43:57] things militarily. So there's tension. Yeah. There's often tension between those two sides.
[02:44:03] But if you remember that, hey, we all have the same goal, right? We all have the goal of
[02:44:09] stability and security and overall peace. So if we understand that and we're working towards the same
[02:44:14] goal, let's figure out the best way to go about it. And those tensions look hopefully we can
[02:44:19] overcome. Yeah. Because they can cause to, they can cause some really bad things to happen.
[02:44:23] You know, there can be times where the military should be used. And if the relationship was good,
[02:44:28] the military would be used. Yeah. And there's some times where the military shouldn't be used.
[02:44:33] Yeah. And if the relationship is bad, the military gets used even though it really shouldn't be used.
[02:44:37] Yeah. So once again, forming good relationships is,
[02:44:42] it's just freaking critical. No, absolutely. Especially in that environment, more so than ever.
[02:44:47] You know, hey, going back into when we were forming up, you know, one of the first things we did
[02:44:52] is, you know, what grabbed in our go-lock, you know, our, our enlisted formation, he's 79.
[02:44:59] And we went through roles and responsibilities. And the CMCI had at the time when I was my
[02:45:04] task unit, when I was a task unit, senior, the supervisor. He went through, and I don't know how
[02:45:09] much you played into the roles and responsibilities. He developed or if they crossed actual
[02:45:14] what, but he went through every position. So I'd already had something that I'd kept for
[02:45:18] G's. What is this? Four years now, four or five years later. And I've got it and I go through,
[02:45:24] and I'm, I'm tweaking the verbage in there to fit to, you know, to art to our era or time to our era.
[02:45:30] Yeah. And so go through roles and responsibilities with the go-lock and our tactical level leaders.
[02:45:35] Hey, here's my expectations as a leader. And we had your jockel brief on there. So I had a little
[02:45:40] reading folder on our drive. Here's what's in there. Read this shit. It's going to make you better
[02:45:44] leader. And I think for the most part, our guys did. Like we didn't have too many missteps for that,
[02:45:51] for that workup cycle and deployment. You know, things were relatively contained. You know, like
[02:45:57] no cookie shit. No big event. Yeah, setting expectations is definitely solid. And in the in the
[02:46:04] seal version of the jockel brief, there's a side that was roles and responsibilities. By person. Yep.
[02:46:09] Like task unit commander, here's what you're doing. And I went right on down the line. And I'm sure
[02:46:15] you guys had to adjust it to. But the point is, and the reason I don't give it really in this
[02:46:20] civil, because I don't give it. I don't give roles and responsibilities part of the brief,
[02:46:24] because I don't know what the roles and responsibilities are in this construction company. You
[02:46:28] were in this manufacturing company or in this financial company, right? It changes the shifts.
[02:46:32] But in the seal, but in the seal, but in the seal, in the seal task unit, I knew what the rules
[02:46:36] responsibilities were. And listen, and here's something I used to explain. Like, if you're
[02:46:42] the platoon chief and you're supposed to be the person that's handling the tactical situation.
[02:46:50] Okay. If the officer is supposed to be looking at the next move that we're going to take.
[02:46:56] Hey, listen, chief, if your officer is not capable of doing that, you better get your LPO trained
[02:47:01] up so he can handle the tactical situation. So you can go and and figure out what you're going to
[02:47:06] do next. So we have to be able to not just do like our specific job, our role in responsibility,
[02:47:12] but if we have to inside of our platoon, we might have to say, hey, you know what, chief, you handle this
[02:47:17] over here. You know, if I got a chief that's not super dynamic on target, and I got an LPO that's a
[02:47:22] badass. I'll go, hey, hey, LPO, you're going to be responsible for this stuff. You're going to be
[02:47:28] responsible for the assault. Chief, you're going to be responsible for the marshalling. Okay, cool.
[02:47:34] Got it. You're like, that's okay. It doesn't matter. Now, look, don't let your ego get in the way
[02:47:38] because the chief will almost be in charge of your assault. Cool. You're not good at it.
[02:47:42] Yeah. And of course, I'd be much more gentle about it. What I would say is, hey, you know,
[02:47:46] well, the thing is I want the LPO to get some experience. So we're going to let him handle some of
[02:47:50] these right now and see how he does. And in the meantime, you can just kind of handle the marshalling
[02:47:55] over here, you know, with the with the A, O, I see. But yeah, those roles responsibility. So the fact
[02:48:01] that you laid those out early, let's everyone know what the expectation is. Let's everybody know
[02:48:07] where you stand. Right. Let's everybody know like, hey, I don't put up, I'm not going to put up with
[02:48:12] this. I'm not going to put up with that. I'm not going to put up with the other thing. If you're
[02:48:16] out of line, come, you better come and tell me what's going on. If I get blindsided, you're going to be
[02:48:21] problems. So all those, all those things, absolutely. Like, that's a great point. Setting those expectations
[02:48:28] of what you, what you need, what you want, what your standards are. You set those out of the gate.
[02:48:36] It's going to line people real quick. Yeah. And then you model them. You got a model. Yeah, yeah,
[02:48:41] I do what you're saying. Oh, yeah, if you're, if you're not, you might as well just freaking
[02:48:46] just not even put out the word. If you're going to say, hey, everyone be square away. You're going to
[02:48:50] act like a jackass. Just don't even put it out. Yeah, just clean your own videos. This is good.
[02:48:55] Don't move. And then what? And then what? So finish up that deployment. Come back. And then I
[02:49:01] go and work it out. Headquarters for our forest master chief, which was an awesome guy at the
[02:49:06] time, or truckload from him, which I would have tried to be able to use from our next two positions.
[02:49:11] And so at the headquarters element, you know, what I have on here, let me just go back one
[02:49:17] real quick. The headquarters element was good because it was the first time I'm outside of that
[02:49:21] that that sealed team, you know, whether it's training or just seal, you know,
[02:49:30] mission. You're up at the headquarters element. You know, I was in the same
[02:49:33] office here, but I'm working for the forest. You're working for the admiral. So it's
[02:49:37] very similar line. Did you do how long do you work there for? Right around less than a year and a
[02:49:41] half got it. But it was enough. We're ready to get out of there after 12 months. But here's what I would
[02:49:47] say. I wish I would have done that position early or on, probably like as a chief or a senior chief.
[02:49:54] But what is right? Look like where does it fit? The training I think would have priority because
[02:49:57] that's going to set you up tactically. But going up there, you're like holy cow, your aperture
[02:50:03] just opens wide up with actually how things work. You know, with with seal battoons going over
[02:50:10] in two Afghanistan and do I rack? How all that stuff works? You want more gear? Here's the
[02:50:15] process to procure the gear and you're going through all that. One of the things the guy I
[02:50:20] worked for did is he was up there and he like he laid out initiatives. Hey, here's the initiatives.
[02:50:26] I want to get over the line and then I was the guy, you know, when he's on travel back at the
[02:50:31] black palace trying to move these tanks forward as you know, as quickly as possible without
[02:50:36] missing anything. So it was a good experience and the guy I worked for he had over 30 years and
[02:50:40] he bounced around just he was a good dude man. Yeah, learn a lot from him. Yeah, well,
[02:50:45] you're right. I did work it. We worked in the exact same front of the college, the front office.
[02:50:49] Yeah. And for sure, when you start to see, you start to see how small of a roll, right? Like
[02:51:00] you're small. There's like there's like the whole military. That's the first time you get a taste of
[02:51:05] like did you go to the Pentagon? Did you go on travel with your boss? I went back to a
[02:51:10] socom. I didn't travel that much with those guys. Yeah, so I was going to the Pentagon. Yeah.
[02:51:15] I was I was you know sitting in in the back of the meeting with socom, you know, over and over again
[02:51:24] and here in the world being put out and seeing the handwritten notes from the secretary of defense,
[02:51:31] you know what I'm saying? Like all the sudden you realize how big this machine is
[02:51:36] and that puts things in perspective for you. And yes, you learn a lot about you know how to make things
[02:51:43] happen and how well not how to make things happen, but how things happen. And then you can at least
[02:51:47] provide some level of influence on trying to hopefully make things happen yourself. Yeah.
[02:51:52] Because that's a big understanding it makes all the difference in the world. Yeah, because now you know how to
[02:51:56] navigate it. Yeah, and you also know like I'm there's no point getting frustrated about this thing over here.
[02:52:00] Because I can at least explain to the troops. Hey, this is why this is happening. I know it seems
[02:52:05] crazy, but guess what? The money that's getting spent for weapons right now was actually allocated
[02:52:11] five years ago. Yeah. Yeah. And so if you're going to be mad about it, that's fine, but it's not going
[02:52:18] to help. Yeah. Yeah. That and that was the issue. I remember we were getting gear three, four years
[02:52:24] later that was designed for the previous three years. And it was already obsolete. Like I don't
[02:52:29] do, I can't even use this stuff right now. You know, but it was good. And I remember being up there in 2015.
[02:52:35] And I think that was when you and Dave sent your first published copy of extreme ownership
[02:52:39] up there for approval. Oh, yeah. Well, then it wasn't a published copy. It was probably like a
[02:52:43] man you script. That's what it was. So I got me a copy of that. Oh, really got the early one.
[02:52:48] I got the early one. So I read through that in order to expect, you know, in the back then everyone's
[02:52:51] going, hey, man, people are on the net writing books. I'm like, let's see what Jocelyn
[02:52:55] lay for writing about here. A little courtesy copy. And I remember picking up my reading like
[02:52:59] damn, this is really good because the way you guys translated into the business role was just,
[02:53:03] you know, it made sense, you know. So in plus you recognized it all. Yeah. From from the Jockel
[02:53:10] brief, which is, you know, basically where your hall came from. Yeah. And your guys at the way you
[02:53:16] wrote it, the position on it was from a humility standpoint, which people are going to appreciate
[02:53:21] that. So it was good, man. Yeah, I know that was a that was a big obstacle to overcome mentally.
[02:53:28] You know, like, for me it was massive. You know, I can't speak for life, but like for me, I mean,
[02:53:36] we just talked, open this whole thing up about talking about reputation. Yeah. And all of a sudden,
[02:53:41] you know, you can, you can destroy your reputation by becoming that guy. Yeah. We wrote that book
[02:53:48] and, you know, and that's, so that was horrible. That was a horrible experience to go through.
[02:53:54] It was like walking into the unknown and you can't look and you can't,
[02:54:00] there's look when you write a book, it is not a humble act, right? Like there's no,
[02:54:07] there's, it's like saying, hey, I'm going to go freaking, uh, uh, uh, start a podcast.
[02:54:11] Get a designer suit. Yeah, we're starting a podcast. Hey, I'm going to go get a designer suit.
[02:54:16] But it's not, it's not for me. Yeah. Like it doesn't work. Or hey, I'm going to start a podcast and talk
[02:54:21] a bunch. Like when you got to talk about you, so to say you're going to write a book, you're going to
[02:54:26] start a podcast or you're going to put a spotlight on yourself. It's basically what you're doing.
[02:54:30] That's, that's the way I'm saying. Right. When you write a book, you're putting a spotlight on yourself,
[02:54:35] look at me. Yeah. And, and there's no, it doesn't matter what that book says,
[02:54:39] yeah. At least at the initial impression. Like you, you, you, you are putting a spotlight on yourself.
[02:54:47] And I hated that and it was really, it was hard to overcome that. Yeah. But then you think,
[02:54:52] here we are working with these civilian companies. Yeah. And they are
[02:54:57] being able to move forward and execute better. And it's like, you know what,
[02:55:04] the stuff that we learned is probably worth teaching. Yeah. Yeah. The stuff that we learned is
[02:55:09] people need to hear it. And then one of the, the, the Admiral, you know, to kind of had that kind
[02:55:18] of conversation with him. And he says, he said, he goes, you know what, Joko, we are quiet professionals.
[02:55:26] We are not silent professionals. And some of the stories need to be told and some of the lessons
[02:55:32] need to be taught. Yeah. And the way you're doing it is the way it should be done. Yeah.
[02:55:38] And, and that was a real, um, you know, obviously that was about as much reassurance as I could get.
[02:55:44] And then, and then you know, just having, uh, having friends that read the book in the, in the,
[02:55:48] in the teams and were like, bro, legit. Good. And then, and then same thing with the podcast. Like,
[02:55:54] when I started, bro, when I started with the podcast, we know what all my friends started like,
[02:55:58] calling me like, dude, that podcast was sick. And everyone, like, that's when I was super stoked, you know,
[02:56:04] because you feel horrible, uh, and you feel like you're shining a spotlight on yourself. Yeah.
[02:56:09] And what I realized was that people saw it. I was actually trying to shine a spotlight, not on me,
[02:56:15] but like, on the community, not even just our community, but the army, the, the Marine Corps,
[02:56:22] to like, every one that is out there working hard is where where the spotlight was trying to be shine.
[02:56:29] It's just that I happened to hold it. Yeah. And it's pretty sketchy to pick that thing up, bro.
[02:56:33] We, I think about this. Think about if there were podcasts going on in the 90s,
[02:56:39] run, we were coming up where we could learn and go and get information on books to read and
[02:56:43] lessons learned from people that were in Vietnam that are talking, hey, here's some things we
[02:56:48] jacked up. We had a blue on blue. I wish I'd have done this. Here's what I did as a leader. There was
[02:56:51] jacked up. I wish I would have, you know, came over and talked to echo on this day. I mean,
[02:56:55] how much better would we? We had, we had nothing. And, and that's, um, believe me, I think about
[02:57:02] that all the time. I mean, even when I, when Mike Thornton came on, yeah, and we did a full debrief.
[02:57:09] I was like, I was in the seal teams for 20 years. Yeah. And I never got that debrief. I never read
[02:57:14] that debrief. Never saw it. No, no, no, no. All those lessons that he learned. Yeah. And it's like,
[02:57:20] wait a second. That's wrong. I felt horrible. Yeah. And so, you know, what now, it's like, oh,
[02:57:27] you can bring on Roger Hayden because Roger Hayden taught me stuff. Yeah. But how is a new guy
[02:57:33] going to learn about Roger Hayden and his lessons? Yeah. Yeah. You know, and it's not even just lessons
[02:57:39] about hey, cover move or hey, keep it simple. It's lessons about hey, when this happens when you
[02:57:45] lose a guy, when you get a guy badly wounded, when you get somebody that's, you know, acting a certain
[02:57:52] way, when someone's losing combat, like all those lessons, being able to learn them is freaking
[02:58:00] so powerful. Yeah. It only helped people out in the future. You know, it's good. I mean, when I had
[02:58:05] James Webb on, who was, you know, Naval Academy Marine Corps Navy Cross, you know, Secretary of
[02:58:13] Navy. But when we got done, and I mean, he, he wrote the book, uh, fields of fire and incredible
[02:58:21] book. And it's sort of the book that all Vietnam movies are based on. Yeah. All, every movie about
[02:58:28] Vietnam is based on that book in one way or another. And it's based, and that book is is a
[02:58:34] thinly disguised autobiography. But when we got done, we walked out and he was like, I
[02:58:42] never got debrief like that. No one ever debriefed anything that I did in Vietnam like that.
[02:58:47] Wow. And he goes, you know, I wrote, there's some stuff written down in some library and the
[02:58:53] 12th floor of the Pentagon, you know, row 17, Alpha. He was no one's ever going to read that.
[02:59:00] And to be able to debrief like that, it's, you know, he's like, thank you. And he, and he has
[02:59:08] son was in freaking Ramadi. Wow. Wow. So, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm just, and we'll do believe me. I mean,
[02:59:15] I mean, I meet, I meet Marines and Army guys and team guys all the time. They're like, oh, yeah,
[02:59:20] episode this episode is freaking awesome. Because just what you just said, we didn't get that opportunity
[02:59:25] to be able to get the debriefs from people and hear these lessons. Yeah. And it's so, we're so lucky
[02:59:34] to be able to do that. It's a powerful learning tool. You know, a lot of things we do just
[02:59:39] your point, the military translate right over to the business world for everyone to learn.
[02:59:43] You know, so then what you get done, you got done with the work on what happened. So,
[02:59:48] got done with the work on and went over. And at that time, we're doing rotations with combined
[02:59:56] joint special operations task force. Task force it goes into Iraq and then, you know, the deal
[03:00:01] with the siege of sort of, you know, their charge of the maneuver elements. Yeah. So, basically,
[03:00:05] this is a group that's in charge of all the special operations in a area. In this case, Iraq. Yeah.
[03:00:11] Yep. So, one up there and I think we had, you know, you're working with all these other
[03:00:14] countries and they're reporting you. We're working together as one big team, one big unit.
[03:00:18] I think we had in between 800 and 1100 people with the siege of sort of, and guys are dispersed
[03:00:23] everyone. This is a point in Iraq where, you know, ISIS has a foothold up in Mosul. And we've got,
[03:00:29] you know, as a first time I actually worked with the Marsock. We had their insoths and their
[03:00:35] insock out there along with the 05 headquarters, they were up north. And we had our NSW unit.
[03:00:40] And they were co-located with us there in Baghdad. And so it was a good experience. You know,
[03:00:48] and we're figuring out, hey, how are we going to take down Mosul? You know, there's been several
[03:00:55] rotations before us where everyone's just waiting. One of the Iraq is going to want to do it. One of
[03:00:58] the Iraqis is going to want to do it. And that came to a head on our deployment, which was good.
[03:01:04] And so, finally, we get approval. Guys come in there and, as a whole year as this is 2016.
[03:01:09] So, you know, guys going there and start clearing out Mosul, you know, at some point, you know,
[03:01:17] one of our seal units rotated out in J and his formation rotated in which is awesome. J,
[03:01:23] J's team was awesome. Having his commanding officer did a great job building that out.
[03:01:28] You know, it was, you know, one of the best seal teams I'd seen. So it was good.
[03:01:34] Anyways, they come in and start clearing Mosul. Me and my boss, we push up to, or beel, and then
[03:01:40] out of or beel, we were running a small jok out of there. So we were co-located with,
[03:01:46] got to forget the sea jok. And the sea jok was the one who could clear airspace to drop
[03:01:52] ordinance. And we needed to be co-located with him to help de-conflict in case anything got snagged up.
[03:01:59] So anyways, there was a lot of connect fighting in there going on at that point.
[03:02:03] But a good experience, we're working with, I think, seven or eight different countries.
[03:02:07] First time I've been inside a sea jok, just sort of working like that. You're up in the upper
[03:02:10] leadership and management position, you know, taking on everything that's going on. I'm trying
[03:02:15] to provide my, my boss with the best advice I can on, you know, what I recommend, you know,
[03:02:21] in the boss I had back then, he's an admiral now, but he was just scored away just, even tempered
[03:02:27] guy, people loved him. The other countries loved him. Like, I wanted to get this guy. I'm like,
[03:02:31] I got my first time work going, but he's dialed in and he had a great reputation, you know.
[03:02:36] So it was, it was, it was a good deployment, you know, and it probably the things that
[03:02:40] weighed the most on that deployment is I'd never really been a part of a ramp ceremony to where you're
[03:02:47] like, you're leaving this thing. And we had one of our war officers, and this was our first ramp
[03:02:54] ceremony. And so we had a pilot that was shot down. I want to say it was 2006 time period and
[03:03:01] his remains were never recovered. And our war officer went off this and he's working with a shake.
[03:03:07] And the shake's going, hey, we got the remains if you want them. And they start doing negotiations.
[03:03:11] And then the shake's like, hey, we want to dismount a money and our guy's going back and forth.
[03:03:16] And in just a point up front, I want to make is when you assign the right person, you know,
[03:03:22] the right talent to that to what you're trying to accomplish, you can get a lot over the finish line.
[03:03:28] And I'm saying that up front because there was other agencies that had worked with the shake to try
[03:03:33] to get the remains back. They couldn't get it over the finish line. But here was a guy with never
[03:03:37] done this before. The right temperament, the right attitude went in there and was playing a little
[03:03:41] hardball with this guy, played a little softball over here and he got it over the finish line.
[03:03:46] You know, we wanted to, you know, negotiate with the shake. We got the remains back.
[03:03:51] We went through our ramp ceremony back here and then we got the, you know, the remains back to the
[03:03:56] US who, you know, that officer could be properly buried. And he was, he was a pilot that had been
[03:04:01] shot down. So it was powerful, felt good, you know, felt good. And then we had a few other
[03:04:09] ramp ceremonies. You know, we lost this was one of Jayceo's, these buffers. But he was hit,
[03:04:15] you know, up there in Mosul with an ID and he was killed. And so we did a ramp ceremony
[03:04:20] for him, brought him back. And we had one other guy and I want to tie this back in a
[03:04:25] Romadi, but the third guy we had, he was, you know, he's doing some stuff in another country.
[03:04:30] He was hit hard, he was killed. And we brought him back to us. And it was like the night before
[03:04:38] Thanksgiving back in the US. And in Romadi, we were operating right before Christmas. And, you know,
[03:04:45] the C.J. Soda Commander pulled us out and we were pissed off. We were like, what the hell, man?
[03:04:49] We were planning on being here and through Christmas Eve and through Christmas. And the C.J. Soda
[03:04:53] Commander back in 2006 said, hey, man, I don't want to report back to anyone's family that
[03:04:58] their son was wounded or killed, you know, before Christmas. And then here we are, you know,
[03:05:03] damn near 10 years later. And in Iraq, in this guy gets killed right before Thanksgiving. And his
[03:05:09] family's over with the other family, your wife and kids are over with their family. And they got
[03:05:14] to get notified. We're coming back here, going through all our procedures to make sure everything's
[03:05:18] tightening. He's getting his proper respect before we sent him out. But those things like,
[03:05:24] when you're putting an American on an aircraft in a casket with the flag draped over, man,
[03:05:30] it's just, it's a gut punch, man. It sucks. It sucks, man. It's something I never, you know,
[03:05:36] wish upon anyone. And it really gets home to you, you know, not good.
[03:05:51] How long was that deployment? That was a six-month-tor. And the Iraqis took massive casualties on
[03:05:59] the planet. Before we left, they were like the special, you know, we were working with and it
[03:06:04] trained up over the years. The SF actually trained in well, but they could be at a hand of the
[03:06:09] pie somewhere in there. But they were dialed in. They were the best unit that the Iraqis had. And these
[03:06:14] guys had a lot of pride, but they were like over 800 casualties when we left. And the aides,
[03:06:20] this deal was, I mean, ISIS was no joke over there, man. They were barbaric, brutal. And, you know,
[03:06:28] there's a, there's a fraction of people where you think you're going to come in. You're going to
[03:06:33] talk some sense into some people like that. You're not, you're not talking to them. And if they
[03:06:38] get a hold of you, it's not going to be good for you. You're going to get your head chopped off.
[03:06:43] And that's the type of, that's what you're dealing with over there. And those, you know,
[03:06:48] that unit that our guys were working with, they later it all out there. They're going in there
[03:06:53] for their country for Iraq to secure that city, to make it a better place. And man, they took heavy
[03:06:58] casualties. I mean, heavy casualties. You know, the, the truck bombs, they built from 2004 to 2016,
[03:07:09] they up armored them in 2016. So when they're coming at you, there's no way, there's not a good
[03:07:14] way to defeat them. You need some type of missile system or rocket system coming in on top.
[03:07:19] Or you need some type of arresting device to where you can stop the vehicle from coming at you.
[03:07:23] You know, we had some good penetration with some of our heavy caliber weapons. We'll stop
[03:07:29] them, but it was hard. It was not easy. And in date, hide them underneath, vehicle or carport
[03:07:38] entry points. And you wouldn't be able to tell what it is. And next thing you know, that big
[03:07:41] huge truck bomb is on the move. And there's a farmer at all over the place. And there's just a small
[03:07:46] window that they can look out. And guess what, if they come off the seat or anything happens with the
[03:07:52] seat and their adjustment, the things rigged to just blow. So as soon as it hits something,
[03:07:56] the whole thing is going up. And man, we just remember watching CTSU and it's a damn thing
[03:08:01] it'd become. You'd be trying to call in an air strike. But you got like a minute and 30 seconds
[03:08:05] to clear airspace overhead to get bombs down on targets. So you'd just like, it wasn't going to happen.
[03:08:10] So you had to be able to handle business as a tactical unit on the ground to take this thing out.
[03:08:16] You know, we give these guys rockets and ship, but they weren't effective. So it was a super
[03:08:21] complex and frustrating environment, you know, took a lot of casualties.
[03:08:28] Yeah, no Jason was saying that, you know, at a certain point they were thinking that the Iraqi
[03:08:34] unit that was doing the majority of the fighting was just going to run out of guys. Like they just
[03:08:39] were going to, they were just going to all be dead or all be casualties, which was freaking scary.
[03:08:45] And I was horrified when he was telling me that. And I was hearing some of that while,
[03:08:49] you guys were actually over there. But at the same time, even though it kind of horrified me,
[03:08:54] at the same time, I also was this going to sound wrong, but I was happy to hear it
[03:09:01] because what it told me was that the Iraqis were fighting. Yeah. And when we were in
[03:09:08] Ramadi, the Iraqis, they, they, some of them would fight, but it definitely wasn't. They weren't
[03:09:14] looking to take massive casualties to try and take a city back. Like they didn't care that much. And
[03:09:20] they would run away. We had a whole battalion, a whole battalion to Iraqis soldiers said, yeah,
[03:09:25] we're out. Well, we had one entire company disappear. Like there was a strike on their on one of
[03:09:32] their checkpoints. And they all just bailed. That was that. So to hear how hard the Iraqis were fighting.
[03:09:37] And they were taking it to ISIS and that they were staying in the fight. That was just freaking
[03:09:41] um, that was just, it was awesome to hear that. It was so horrible to hear that they were taking
[03:09:45] casualties, but it was great to hear that they had found the will to fight and that they were
[03:09:51] unified and, and fighting courageously to to liberate other Iraqis inside their country from
[03:10:01] these actual savages that are doing the most hate committing the most heinous atrocities
[03:10:08] imaginable. And it was all it was awesome to hear that they were fighting like that. And it was also,
[03:10:15] you know, when ISIS decided to, you know, wear a uniform and put up flags. It was like right on.
[03:10:23] Let's see how this works out for you. Yeah. Fried them legit. And then what?
[03:10:31] Then what? So finish up with that deployment, get back off of that. And then that's when I rolled
[03:10:36] over to group one. And so, you know, started, you know, I got a good six, six month of getting
[03:10:42] saturated with group level stuff. And, you know, at the group, you're responsible for all, you know,
[03:10:48] four West Coast seal teams and three other commands. So you got roughly right around 1,800 people
[03:10:52] or so. And your primary function there is manning training in equipment. So I'm working directly
[03:10:57] with the team command master chiefs on some occasions there are commanding officers. And so
[03:11:03] you're in a position of a lot of influence at that point. You know, and I'm directly working with
[03:11:07] our Commodore on on our initiatives and moving the mission forward. And you're also dealing with
[03:11:14] whatever sort of, you know, equipment, like trying to get equipment for the guys, trying to just
[03:11:20] the whole nine yards. And overall responsible for their training. Did you go out to the desert during
[03:11:27] that time? We're not there a couple times. Damn bro. And it's just so it's weird. It's different.
[03:11:31] When you're up at that level, when you come down in, it's never the same. It's never, you know,
[03:11:37] you're the guy show for you. Yeah, you're the guy. Then it's like, hey, I'm coming in there to
[03:11:41] see this. And you're like, and man, you guys might want to tighten this shit up over here, you know,
[03:11:45] but it was good, you know, damn who's there? I think Jay, yeah, Jay was it traded at the time.
[03:11:52] So it was good. So Jay was always there right hand man, I had out there and we had a good
[03:11:56] crew of a team committed master chiefs. And one of the things we started doing back in
[03:12:02] 2015 with the force I was working with, the force command master chief, as you started implementing
[03:12:07] a screening process. So we were basically going through a hiring to make sure that we were
[03:12:12] getting the right leaders in at the master chief level to take over some of these command positions.
[03:12:18] And it's not perfect, but it was a hell of a lot better than where we were.
[03:12:21] And they also, we also started implementing then, you know, Patoon Chief and TASC unit
[03:12:26] seniorless advisor screening. And that was developing. So it's, it's getting better as a move
[03:12:31] forward. Bottom line is, you know, things are getting better. Your movement thanks forward.
[03:12:35] That's what you want for a better formation. You know, and just going back to work on real quick,
[03:12:41] one of the things I realized when you're up there, you know, when you're down in the troops,
[03:12:45] you're just like, give me my gear. I want to get go to war and do all these things. And
[03:12:49] people talk a lot of shit about everyone above them. And here's the deal with the people that are
[03:12:53] above you. I'm you. I was the E5 talking that shit saying all those things. And guess what? I moved
[03:13:00] up positions, but I moved up in positions to take care of people. Right? And so there's a lot of
[03:13:05] cookie things that come out. You're the guy behind the scenes, squashing these things, you know,
[03:13:09] to make sure that there are people that are taking care of. And I always had, I had a buddy that was,
[03:13:14] you know, he was a hard case. And he's like, hey, man, won't you ever see this?
[03:13:18] Won't you, you need to stand up and say something about that? I'm like, hey, man, I'm handling
[03:13:21] that shit behind closed doors. I'm not going to come here and open form with the commander and disagree
[03:13:26] with them and front of all these people. And that's not smart. I'm getting nowhere. Yeah. But if I come
[03:13:32] around the backside, you're doing a little flank, plant some seeds. You can have a lot more influence
[03:13:36] that way. So anyways, you're always going to get that shit with the hard cases. You know what I'm talking about?
[03:13:41] Yeah. And then how long was that tour? So that was a two-year tour. Yeah. I wanted to finish up my career
[03:13:47] there and towards the end, you're like, I mean, what were you thinking? What was on the horizon
[03:13:53] and what was your decision making process to decide to punch? Punch. Yes. So I punched
[03:13:58] right at like the 28 and a half year mark. So I could have gone another year and a half, but
[03:14:02] man, I was out of juice. And one of the things people talk about is, hey, you know, when it's time
[03:14:06] to go and man, I was in that position and we had some high profile cases out there and they just
[03:14:11] wear on your man, you know, they just wear on you. And even before that happened, I knew it was time
[03:14:17] for me to go, oh my god, I don't want to do this position. It's time for me to move out of here.
[03:14:21] I don't think I had anything left to add value to the mission and the organization. I was
[03:14:26] topped out with my leadership capacity. And we have plenty guys that go out there and do the T-Sawks,
[03:14:31] you know, the theater special operations command and that's a high level of influence. Those
[03:14:35] are action arms in the operational areas. And I was like, man, I just don't see myself going and
[03:14:41] working at that level. You're working with general officers with admiral's and I was like, man,
[03:14:45] I just, I was up at Warcom, kind of got a little bit of a taste of that. And I was like,
[03:14:50] that's just not me. And we need people to do those positions. So we had quite a few East Coast
[03:14:55] guys going into those T-Sawks positions and you need them because that's a huge high level of
[03:15:01] influence that we have in NSW. If you have your guy in there, he can help influence some outcomes,
[03:15:07] which is super important. But I was definitely matched out out of gas time for me to pack up and go home.
[03:15:15] And one of the things that always comes to mind with me is in 2003, you know, we had Posi out there
[03:15:23] or Vietnam guy, good dude, man, just good family guy, Vietnam had more stores and you can imagine.
[03:15:27] But he was like, man, Steve, you guys are stronger, faster, smarter than we ever were.
[03:15:35] I was like, dang what's he talking about? And then I looked back, you know, 28, you know, 15 years
[03:15:40] later, whatever it was. And I'm like these young guys that are coming in, they're hungry,
[03:15:45] they're smarter, they're stronger than I was. They're faster than I was, meaning they
[03:15:50] the communities in a good spot. We got our next generation coming up and through our ranks,
[03:15:54] doing good things. You know, one of the things, one of our head leaders for the Navy put out
[03:16:01] Macpond Stevens, he said, hey, work hard, stay out of trouble and be a good person. That's all I'm
[03:16:06] asking the formation to do. The entire Navy, that was his mantra. Work hard, stay out of trouble,
[03:16:11] be a good and be a good and decent human being, be a good person. And I never knew what the
[03:16:17] healthy meant by stay out of trouble. And then, you know, as you start moving up in these positions
[03:16:23] and you have high profile cases and things going on, they can bring your entire community down to
[03:16:28] its knees, meaning it's hard to move initiatives forward. It's hard to focus on what your actual
[03:16:34] job is because you're dealing with, you know, in JP you're dealing with court marshals, all those
[03:16:39] things weigh on you and it's never good. In my boss in 2015, our four C, he hammered it home to me
[03:16:47] and it made sense. He said, hey Steve, we've got a protect emission, we've got to protect our
[03:16:52] credibility, credibility, it's built, know the people's blood, it was built, know the people's blood,
[03:16:57] we've got to protect that at all cost. And he's like it's hard for us to protect the homeland
[03:17:01] if we've got, if our credibility's damaged and we can't get employed overseas to wrap up bad guys.
[03:17:07] And I was like, yeah, check, that ship makes sense. So, yeah, well, that's the same thing as a
[03:17:14] reputation, right? Yeah. The community has a reputation and you've got to do everything you can to
[03:17:18] protect that reputation because if you're, yeah, just, just what you have to do and you do your best.
[03:17:26] You do everything you can to protect the reputation. I mean, that's what you got to do, you know.
[03:17:32] Man, any other echo, you got anything?
[03:17:38] Said something about a firecracker earlier, like firecracker scenario or whatever and you were like,
[03:17:43] oh, you got the firecracker right off the bat or something like that, like that was the nickname. It was the
[03:17:48] nickname for an area in Ramadi that was north of Route Michigan and it was this little road that
[03:17:57] wrapped up in the round. It was called firecracker and the reason it was called firecracker was because
[03:18:01] there was a lot of bad shit going on here. There was a lot of fire like a lot of firecracking off
[03:18:06] and as you said. Interesting. Okay. And that was like your first, that was our first
[03:18:12] operation and Ramadi. Dude, that's a welcome to Ramadi situation right there. Damn.
[03:18:18] It was good. That was good. That's a lot. Freaking crazy. Anything else Steve? Any closing thoughts?
[03:18:28] No, that's it. Right all man. Well, thanks for coming on, man. Yeah.
[03:18:35] Oh, you know what I'll say one more thing at one point, probably you were like six months out from
[03:18:40] retiring and you said I have three courses of action for what I'm going to do and I get out
[03:18:46] echelon front echelon front echelon front. I was like right all man. Pretty good. Awesome.
[03:18:51] Which is a rip off from the marine that I covered the book on the podcast where when he was
[03:18:58] getting ready to graduate from the basics school and they had to fill out what they wanted to do
[03:19:06] and this was the 1967 that it fell out what they wanted to do in the Marine Corps and he put one,
[03:19:12] two, three infantry, two commander infantry, two commander infantry, two commander. It's like that's
[03:19:16] what I'm going to do. I was like, Roger that. All right. Yes, we're going to execute on this thing.
[03:19:20] So it's freaking awesome. Thanks for what you did to the teams for the teams. Obviously for America,
[03:19:27] obviously and and and for freedom and I know we had an awesome time working together in the past. I
[03:19:33] still I just when I drive at night whenever I drive at night, especially out here in California,
[03:19:39] the desert, I'm always thinking I'm driving back from from the desert from our desert training facility
[03:19:44] and just with just totally amped because I wouldn't be able to sleep because I'd be so fired up
[03:19:51] from the teams and for the boys and I'd be like just amped driving back, knowing that we made some
[03:19:58] freaking guys ready for war. So it was awesome working with you then and awesome working with you again
[03:20:04] right now, man. Yeah, I really appreciate it. I'm glad to be on with with Eshelon front. It's awesome.
[03:20:10] Can I say one thing real quick? Yeah. Yeah, I like to thank my wife, Allison. She's put up with me
[03:20:14] for all these years. She's prior military. Good southern girl from Arkansas and she runs a tight
[03:20:20] game. She keeps me and she keeps me in line. So I love with all my heart. She's an awesome person.
[03:20:26] And my kids, I love you guys. Right, oh, man. Awesome. Well, echo. Yes, sir. Speaking of
[03:20:37] getting after it. Speaking or speaking of being awesome. What do you think we can do to
[03:20:43] become more awesome to strive? Strived. Strived for awesomeness at the very least. How about that?
[03:20:49] Strived. There's some podcast we did from some ancient warrior. Shaking the world with your
[03:20:55] awesomeness. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, that's a big step. Good striving to shaking the world.
[03:21:02] Hmm. Same thing. Like that's kind of a big step for sure. So let's start with striving. Cool.
[03:21:07] Good. All right. Well, hey, in your path to strive for awesomeness more and the event that you're
[03:21:14] just straight up trying to shake the world with awesomeness. Hey, look, you might need some supplementation.
[03:21:20] Okay, let me let me start this by Steve, you know, you listen to the podcast. Yes. How often do you
[03:21:28] listen to this part of the podcast? What percentage of time? I'm probably 50%. 50% you'll let you hang on.
[03:21:36] I'm hang on. Or is it just you can't hit stop on your freaking iPhone? So you just have to go with it. It's like stuff.
[03:21:43] There's so many new products coming out. You've got to listen to it. To kind of go, all right.
[03:21:47] Is there some new line coming out here on my track? Oh, yeah. Let's do it. He makes it good. So so he's saying 50% my guess.
[03:21:54] He's kind of rounding up to be nice because you know, he doesn't want to be like harsh to act.
[03:21:58] That's cool. All of a sudden he is 1%. That's right. He's a little bit at 50. She does 49.
[03:22:03] Here's what I know. I just got a text from JP and and Dave Burke. They want to know if you're going to talk about
[03:22:08] their discipline. Go some sour apple snipals. You mean good deal. Dave. Good deal. Dave. Okay. JP just just tracking on it.
[03:22:15] Yeah. By tracking that Steve's here and then sending taking the time to send a text to say,
[03:22:20] hey, make sure you talk about sour apple sniper. Okay. Dave wants to make JP jealousy.
[03:22:25] You got to mention Dave's afterburner. Okay. No problem. We're on it fully.
[03:22:31] These two guys are just breaking in the game. That's all man. That's all.
[03:22:36] And I dig it. Either way, before we get to the discipline or discipline, go, which are, you know,
[03:22:40] they're kind of different but kind of the same. We're talking about joint supplements.
[03:22:45] It's important because you don't want to think about this kind of stuff while we're trying to
[03:22:48] watch shake the world with, you know, weapons or striver, whatever. You don't want to think about your
[03:22:53] joints. You don't want to think about your immunity getting sick all this kind of stuff. So you take
[03:22:56] these supplements. Join warfare. Join super cruel oil. Joins. Vitamin D3 immunity and general health
[03:23:04] by the way. Vitamin D3 is good for a lot of stuff. All kinds, especially at this moment in time in
[03:23:10] particular, we're talking about factual information about the glory of the vitamin D. It's true.
[03:23:18] Absolutely true. Also cold war immunity supplement. Keep those in mind. So you don't have to
[03:23:24] keep the other stuff in mind. Well, yeah, that's when you've, you've finally gotten through to me.
[03:23:29] It's only taken 260 episodes of a beat. Now I understand that you're like, oh, it's good to not have
[03:23:38] to think about your joint spottering you. Yes. That's a good thing. That is a good thing. So now I understand
[03:23:45] we don't want to wake up and be like, I hope my joints hold up today and work out or whatever.
[03:23:51] It seems to be. Yes. You just want to go into the workout or my people. We want to get it done. Let's
[03:23:55] say exactly right. Also, we have something I may call discipline to supplement for your brain,
[03:24:03] for your body, for your whole thing, really life, your life, man, your life, powder,
[03:24:10] take discipline powder instead of coffee. Try that. Good call. It could be something.
[03:24:14] This is what I'm saying as far as the routine. Also, discipline go, which are and or should I say
[03:24:19] where capsules to begin when they are capsules. This is your on the go. Yes. Did that. They're
[03:24:26] very popular at echelom front. Can I see something on the discipline go capsules? Hey, so I've been
[03:24:32] using that stuff. And so when I'm going in and I'm doing a speaking engagement, that's why they're
[03:24:36] so popular. I take two. And here's the deal. When I'm communicating, when I'm not taking that
[03:24:42] stuff, it's like I'm going down the highway and I really have to think hard about the words I'm
[03:24:47] going to communicate. It's like the words are in off the shoot off a street. When I'm on the discipline
[03:24:53] go, the words are right there. On the road, I'm going 60 miles an hour. You're like boom,
[03:24:57] boom, clearic and size communications. And I don't know what's in it, but it definitely clears up
[03:25:02] your mind. It clears up your mind. It works. You got to get, I'm telling you, if you're a boss,
[03:25:08] you got some things going on, a meeting, a high speed meeting, you're talking to people. It helps.
[03:25:13] I promise you it helps. I wouldn't say if it did. Yeah, no, that's why that's why at Eshelon
[03:25:18] front where we get up and we have to not only we have to speak, but we got to take questions and
[03:25:22] trip questions. We got to come up with answers and solutions. And so the team is always like,
[03:25:27] yeah, yeah, I'm going to, I want to bring the A game. Right? How do you ensure you bring the A game?
[03:25:33] Take a little discipline go. And then if you have like a little more time or maybe you want to
[03:25:40] enjoy that a little bit more. You can get a can of discipline go. Yes, which is what you mentioned.
[03:25:47] Right? Many flavors now. It's true. The flavor roster getting big over here. So most recently,
[03:25:54] afterburner orange, good deal. Dave Burke, boom, before that sour apple sniper. JP didn't know
[03:26:02] what are they competing with each other? Oh, good. There's some competition before that.
[03:26:07] Jocco Palmer, which by the way, which by the way, Jocco Palmer, Jocco Palmer is not. Jocco Palmer,
[03:26:15] what it is is it's 50 50, iced tea lemonade. That's what it is. Yeah. Some people were thinking
[03:26:22] it was pomegranate because we also have Jocco, pomegranate, white tea. Yeah, which which you probably
[03:26:27] remember Steve. Yeah. Tell us about that's the origin story right there. At Nyland,
[03:26:33] me rolling into those briefs with that big old plastic protein shaker with freaking with pomegranate
[03:26:41] tea, which I would get from wherever and then I'd just sit there in the front row and they'd give
[03:26:45] their brief and check to just take it notes. You give your points or actually like you know
[03:26:54] whatever. The front line instructors would give their points and then you'd give your points and then
[03:26:58] be like, be like, got anything bossed by back. Oh, there's just a little bit. Yeah,
[03:27:08] this little thing. Yeah, so speaking to caffeine and just a little bit, yes, Jocco Palmer,
[03:27:13] that was the one before that and then before that was what, who's the first signature, oh,
[03:27:19] DAX have it just the first signature was DAX average. Dakota, tasty. Is that your go-to? What's your
[03:27:24] go-to? I like the DAX average. I like the story behind DAX average. Yeah, dude, he's a monster. If you
[03:27:31] can just get a little bit of mentality of Dakota, then your whole, your whole being is better.
[03:27:39] Not enough, no offense to J.P. and Dave. I don't know how to have bad mentalities too. But let's face it.
[03:27:45] DAX average. It's freaking Dakota. What kind of end the game? Dakota's kind of take, do you,
[03:27:51] did you drink Dr. Pepper when you were a kid? I did not. Because that's kind of the, yeah,
[03:27:56] it's kind of the flavor apparently. It's tasting. Yeah, that's my, that's my wife's favorite. Yeah.
[03:28:02] Which, what do you think of that Dakota? I see you tracking on my life. You tracking,
[03:28:08] tracking on my life Dakota. Yeah, so that one's kind of a sour apple sniper is,
[03:28:14] I'm going to say if you have a little bit of a sweet tooth, probably sour apple sniper's your go-to.
[03:28:19] It's true. Dr. Pepper is, if you like, ice tea and lemonade. Yeah, that was my favorite before
[03:28:26] the orange. The orange is your favorite. Currently my favorite. Yeah, Mr. But hey, man, you know, teach their own
[03:28:32] and we're going to move forward. So what this is though, discipline go in a can, energy drink,
[03:28:37] health energy drink, healthy energy drink, no health drink in the form of energy drink. Yeah,
[03:28:44] it's been hard to figure out what to call it. Whatever you are just saying, Steve was pretty
[03:28:50] legit about just going down the road, finding words and everything. No, okay, so I'm like, yeah,
[03:28:55] I know what your feeling is. Yeah, and that's what makes like the, the can so good. Because you're
[03:29:01] not like, let's face it. You're just doing whatever during the day, whatever we do during the day.
[03:29:06] You're like, oh, you know, I'll grab a water or grab a juice, grab a soda, sometimes, some of us,
[03:29:12] no, this, this exactly right though. This is like you can grab it. No, you don't get the bad parts of
[03:29:18] soda. Yeah, you know, I mean, yeah, if you're going for a water cool man, do it. But if you're
[03:29:22] grabbing like a red bull, or I shouldn't say any particular brand, but you're grabbing a soda or
[03:29:29] a energy drink, just saying you're going to pay a price for that. Your pain of price,
[03:29:33] your pain of price with your health. Yeah, and with this discipline, go, it's pain you would think
[03:29:39] that somebody would have already made an equivalent, right? You would think you'd think that.
[03:29:44] It's real obvious. Hey, I'm going to make something that makes you a enhances your performance,
[03:29:48] but it's actually good for you. You'd think somebody would have met done that. Why didn't they do it?
[03:29:52] Number one, cost too much. Another, now they're not making, they're not maximizing profits at
[03:29:56] the freaking cash register. Yeah, that's true. And number two is hard. It was hard to do because we
[03:30:02] had to instead of just throwing a bunch of chemicals in there. So it wouldn't go bad. We had to
[03:30:06] pasteize it, which no one does. So there you go. And you're not only that, hey, well, how you
[03:30:12] going to make it taste good? Well, we'll just put a bunch of chemicals in there that are bad for you,
[03:30:17] but they'll make people taste good. And we don't care about the people that we're serving this, too.
[03:30:20] So we'll just let them drink poison. What did we do? We said, I was like, no, we're not doing that.
[03:30:28] We're going to sweeten it with something real, it's monk fruit. So that's why it doesn't even
[03:30:34] that doesn't seem like a lot of barriers to entry, right? Like, hey, we're going to pass tries.
[03:30:38] They're, we're going to put, we're going to sweeten it naturally. We're going to only put healthy
[03:30:42] ingredients in it. You'd think that those, those bars to entry aren't that high. You'd think someone
[03:30:48] would have done it, but they didn't, they didn't do it. So we did. Like I said, now everyone else can
[03:30:54] get in line. As far as getting in line goes for sure. Also speaking of tasting good, monk,
[03:31:01] some pure your protein and the form of a dessert. So you know, you know, I such a good dessert.
[03:31:09] Yeah, very much so so, I don't even know if I'm supposed to say this, but Brian sends my son and me.
[03:31:16] I'm more of a secondary thing, but it sends my son, monk bars. Oh yeah. I don't know if
[03:31:20] they're still in the experimental stage. The version that you're getting right now is pretty close to a
[03:31:25] done deal. Yeah. So it's like it's one of those things where you get man, if you want to dessert,
[03:31:31] like monk is the dessert and it's super as far as like, you know, like sometimes you're like,
[03:31:36] I need a dessert, but I, you know, I'm on the pass. So I'm going to have a dessert substitute or something
[03:31:40] like this. You know what I'm saying? You had those out. I thought those were out already.
[03:31:44] Mostly bars. Yeah, was eating something back in December last year. We were in the experimental phase.
[03:31:51] Well, they were tasty. Yeah. They've gotten better. Wow. They've gotten better. So it's been hard,
[03:31:56] man. It's been really hard. There's a, it's the same. It's the same kind of battles you're fighting
[03:32:01] with the, like, with, with making the drink and how do you actually keep it stable? There's more,
[03:32:06] there's, well, it's not more, but there's different things in play trying to make a bar. How do you
[03:32:09] keep it stable? How does it maintain its texture over time? What happens when it's sitting on the
[03:32:13] shelf for two months? There's a bunch of things to deal with. So we find in the version that you're
[03:32:17] getting right now. Echo, we find we figured out how to overcome all that and do it naturally and
[03:32:22] make it taste good and have the right flavor profile and stay stable on the shelf. So it's been a
[03:32:29] long road. It's been a road that we almost back away from. And you know me, I'm not one to,
[03:32:35] DOR. DOR is this. Sure. Yeah. But either way, yes,
[03:32:40] smoke, protein, the form of dessert, not a dessert substitute by the way. Just simply dessert. Straight up.
[03:32:48] Where do you get all this stuff? Origin main.com originally originally as many other places to get it,
[03:32:55] but before we go there, okay, let's go here. Jocco, wait, you mentioned the Pumagranto,
[03:33:00] wait, T. Jocco, wait, T. That is available. We're not just talking about Jocco, you used to drink
[03:33:05] white tea now. He doesn't. Yeah. Drink even better. I had a double white tea. Yeah, remember you
[03:33:11] still drink it in that big jar. So bring the big jar. Oh, I just bring it back in the day. Like a crazy person.
[03:33:17] Yeah. Yeah. Nonetheless, yes, that's available as well at origami.com also at the Vitamin Shop offline.
[03:33:26] What do you call it like brick and retail? Yeah, boom, Vitamin Shop, go get it. Also,
[03:33:32] the discipline go cans. All right, wow, wow. In Florida currently. Yeah. And by the way, if you live in Florida
[03:33:39] and you've been and look, I ask and said, hey, please, this is the mission. We want to we want to go
[03:33:45] into the full chain of rawa. We needed to go hard in Florida. We needed to go in there clear shelves.
[03:33:52] Well, you all that I've been clearing shelves. Thank you. Keep going. We're on the path to victory.
[03:33:58] Don't let up. Let's keep getting after it. Because you know why? Because people in Pennsylvania
[03:34:06] and New Jersey and Maryland, they're they're counting on Florida. It's all eyes on Florida. We got a rock
[03:34:12] and roll in Florida. We're on the right path. Don't let up. But it's true. And the thing is again,
[03:34:19] I said it for it's kind of a big deal though to go and get like an energy drink or whatever and it
[03:34:24] be legitimate and healthy for you. It's guys a huge deal. I like you didn't even really have to think about.
[03:34:30] But it might be just went back. I mean, we were talking about that 15 minutes ago, but we're talking
[03:34:34] about it again. That's cool. I don't think I'm a capitalite, not capitalized. I broke down the entire thing
[03:34:39] about the bars and the thing we got to do and how hard it was. Yeah, but that wasn't good enough.
[03:34:44] But not about the price you pay when you when you take drink and energy drink or a soda or something like this.
[03:34:48] That price you pay versus the price that you don't pay. That's a big deal. I then think I maximize
[03:34:54] the how should I say the communication of that big deal. Check. I think I have no. Okay. Also at originmain.com
[03:35:01] is American made stuff. Do you get some stuff? Geese, rash cards, some athletic skills.
[03:35:07] Good question. Can you wear a ghee when you go to the grocery market?
[03:35:10] Gross. Yeah, well as far as gross you're smart to go. Yeah, sure. I mean, you could technically.
[03:35:17] Ifizable? Well, you know, I'm not going to sit here and advise that, but man, if you're going to do it,
[03:35:22] go ahead do that. Okay. Was there something that we could wear that would be more acceptable? Sure.
[03:35:28] Like what? Maybe some jeans. Ah, there we go. There we go. Maybe I don't know. But maybe. Yeah.
[03:35:33] So where can you get American made jeans? You know, it's very hard. What I should I say is far as
[03:35:39] options go. There are not as many options as you know, one might hope. But thankfully, yes, I am here to tell
[03:35:45] you at originmain.com, you can get American made denim jeans. You know what? You probably are thinking
[03:35:54] if you're American, you're probably thinking about like iconic iconic, iconic, I'm going to say three words.
[03:36:02] Iconic American jeans. And we all know there's a few brands that fall into that category. They've been around
[03:36:08] for a long time. Iconic American jeans. I got news for you. Your iconic American jeans,
[03:36:14] they're not American. They're not American brutal. So if you want to get iconic American jeans,
[03:36:21] I'll tell you where you go. You go to originmain.com and you get yourself some iconic American
[03:36:27] jeans. You're bringing it back. Yes, sir. Good work. They're doing some good work over there at
[03:36:33] origin. Speaking of good work. Jocco as a store. It's called Jocco store. Obviously. So
[03:36:40] Jocco store.com. That's where you can get your discipline equals freedom shirts,
[03:36:45] hoodies, hats, but just stuff on there. Really cool stuff in my opinion. See if it's your opinion too.
[03:36:51] Jocco store. Now come on. Also, we do have a t-shirt club. Kind of creative.
[03:36:56] You come up with something else to call this besides t-shirt club. Oh, yeah. Okay. Please. I have that
[03:37:02] capability. Sure. I don't know. T-shirt, platoon. T-shirt, brigade. T-shirt. Gang. We'll just say
[03:37:13] you're saying you rolled right into this. It's something that like, you know, my 11-year-old
[03:37:19] daughter has an roller skating club. Right? You see where I'm going with this? Tighten yourself up.
[03:37:24] Well, it's a working title. And we're doing our best over here nonetheless. It's what it is.
[03:37:31] It's a subscription-based situation where you get a shirt, new shirt. Every month, creative designs.
[03:37:38] Anyway, check that one out too. If you're interested, don't do that. Good for a gift too, by the way.
[03:37:44] There you go. Jocco store.com. Also,
[03:37:47] Oh, wait, wait. We have other podcasts. You didn't even mention this podcast. We're on this podcast.
[03:37:57] Okay. We do have other podcasts. Oh, guess what? The podcast you're listening to. It's a podcast. It exists.
[03:38:02] Yeah. We already done that. We don't have to mention that. Okay. So yeah. Yeah. Subscribe to the
[03:38:06] all these different podcasts. Jocco podcast. Jocco unraveling podcasts. Grounded podcast
[03:38:12] and Warrior Kid podcast. Check those out. Leave a review. Sure. Because they're funny. If you leave
[03:38:19] a review, make it entertaining. Put some layers in it. It's appreciated. Yeah. Past reviews have been
[03:38:27] pretty impressive. I don't even done for a while. It's red reviews like online or reposted. I got to do that.
[03:38:34] Those are awesome. Let's true. I'll do some of that. Also, we have YouTube channel.
[03:38:39] Video versions podcast. You want to see what Steve Ward looks like. Handsome guy. I would say
[03:38:45] this is where his handsome guys go. But nonetheless, if you want to see what. Thank you, I go.
[03:38:51] But nonetheless, yes. Anyway, some excerpts on there. You want to watch slash listen to those.
[03:38:57] That's where you can get on the YouTube channel official. By the way, we got it. YouTube. Boom. Also,
[03:39:06] psychological warfare. If you don't know what that is, it's an album. Jocco's album with
[03:39:10] tracks. Not music album. Not yet. Not yet. We're working it. Yes. Boy. Anyway, it's an album with
[03:39:20] tracks of Jocco helping you through a moment of weakness. Like, we're going to skip the workout.
[03:39:25] This is a little track on there that help you not skip the workout. Put simply. That's what it is.
[03:39:30] Flipside Canvas dot dot com speaking into the code of myr. He's got a company where he prints
[03:39:39] cool stuff to hang on your wall. That's all you need to say. Check that out. Flipside
[03:39:43] Canvas dot com. Got a bunch of books. We talked about one of them today. We talked about a couple of
[03:39:48] them today. But about face by Colonel David Hackworth. He highly recommended. There's a new version
[03:39:55] that has a forward in it written by me. I'm now freaking stoked. I was to do that, man.
[03:40:04] Did I tell you that? How that happened? No. They were. So, it started selling again kind of like
[03:40:08] when I started talking about it all the time. And so they eventually pulled the thread and tried
[03:40:12] to figure out why it was selling. And they eventually figured out what was selling because
[03:40:17] we were talking about all the time on the podcast. And they wrote me and said, hey, do you want to
[03:40:23] write? We're going to re-release it. Do you want to write a blur for the back, which is like a little
[03:40:27] quote? Like, hey, this is a great book. And I wrote them and said, uh, I'll write, can I write a
[03:40:32] forward to it? And they'd be like, you want to write a forward? I said, hell, yeah, I'll write a forward to it.
[03:40:36] Most forwards are about 500 words. If you Google, like, how long should a book for it be?
[03:40:42] It should be about 500 words. My forward for this is $5,000. Yeah, it's like a
[03:40:48] really good. Because I just went off and explained how I found it when it meant, you know, all these
[03:40:54] lessons I learned from it. And so yeah, it's been, it's been awesome. So if you want to check out
[03:41:00] that book about face by Colonel David Hackworth, then go ahead and check that out. Also leadership
[03:41:05] strategy and tactics field manual. So good. You, what, you just had a company that told you
[03:41:12] what they just said. Yeah, well, so they'd already, they read extreme ownership in their
[03:41:18] leadership team as them. They have the decademy leadership. And I was like, hey, do you guys have
[03:41:22] leadership strategies and tactics? And they want to have them purchased it. They're like, yeah,
[03:41:27] they're inbound. You got them for the whole thing. And the beautiful thing with it is,
[03:41:31] you got an issue. You can find it in that book with a good solution. It might not be a
[03:41:36] 100% solution for your situation, but you can take that formulated and utilize it. That's the
[03:41:42] beauty of that thing. Yeah, that's so powerful. That's exactly what I had in mind when I wrote it.
[03:41:47] Was can you look up in here? Yeah. Okay. Let me go. I'm having a problem with my subordinate.
[03:41:52] What, how do I do? What do I do? You know, I'm having a problem with people getting on board
[03:41:57] with a new plan. What do I do? And just be able to look it up in there, find the solution.
[03:42:01] The, the beautiful thing about it is you don't even have to tab it because the answers are
[03:42:05] up front. Hey, you're having this issue flipped to this page. And in a, in a, in a, one to two pages,
[03:42:10] you find your answer. You read through it, digest it, boom, implement it. So easy. Check.
[03:42:18] The code, the evaluations, the protocol, few needs some guidance on where to go. Look in the
[03:42:25] military, we got told, hey, you're slacking a little here. You could do a little better here. But we
[03:42:28] go through life without an evaluation of ourselves. How you expect to know where to go? Get the code,
[03:42:34] the evaluation of protocol. Get the discipline equals freedom, field manual, new version,
[03:42:39] bigger picture of my head. Yes. Therefore, you know, obviously better. Another 35 or 40 pages
[03:42:46] of writing in there. I deal. I'm going to say it. I don't like to throw that out there. But kind of an
[03:42:55] ideal gift book, right? It's not just like, oh, I went to the book store and randomly found this book
[03:43:00] over here called whatever. Oh, it's like, I got something with a little substance. It's a little
[03:43:05] bigger, it's a little heavier. Looks cool. Looks cool. You could put it on a table and just have it be there.
[03:43:12] And if you read it, you're doing even better. Yes, sir. What up? So I got this. You, you gave me a
[03:43:18] sign copy a few years ago. Oh, I'm just trying to see what the difference is. Oh, yeah. Well,
[03:43:23] the difference is there's about 40 extra pages of what I wrote more stuff. Gotcha. More information.
[03:43:29] So there's that. And then also there's a way of the war. Your kid for field manual, which is what
[03:43:37] your kid wants for Christmas. That's what your kid wants for Christmas. Because all these lessons
[03:43:43] that we talk about, look, you can learn them when you're 40 after you read, freaking,
[03:43:47] leadership strategy and tactics, or you can learn them when you're seven. And you can go through
[03:43:52] life, understanding these things. And you can end up in a much better place. So what do you
[03:43:57] can do with your kid? You're going to put them on a path to mediocracy, mediocracy, or you're going
[03:44:03] to put your kid on a path to being average, or you're going to be put your kid on a path to blame
[03:44:08] other people and be a victim in their whole life, or you're going to put them on the path to be a
[03:44:12] warrior kid and step up. I'll tell you what I recommend. Way to work in four field manual. Go ahead
[03:44:18] and get some of that. Also, way to work in one, two, and three, Mikey in the dragons. Oh,
[03:44:24] you know what kids have to deal with being afraid. And it's not just kids, but why not learn at a
[03:44:29] young age, how to overcome fear, get Mikey in the dragons, and also extreme ownership and
[03:44:35] the dichotomy of leadership. The OG books. Do I say OG? Yes sir. Yes, I did. We also have Escalam
[03:44:43] front. It's our leadership consultancy. It's steves with us now on the team. How long you've been on
[03:44:51] team for? March officially March. How been? Yeah. Yeah. Every since I got out of the kind of shadow and
[03:44:56] Dave and some of the crews. So if you want to, if you want to work with us, if you want help
[03:45:03] aligning your leadership, if you want to learn the lessons that we learned, if you want us to come in
[03:45:07] and help your leadership get aligned, help find where the friction points are. Help figure out
[03:45:13] where you can be more efficient as a team. Go to Escalam front.com. We solve problems through
[03:45:19] leadership. We also have EF online, which is where we solve problems through leadership online.
[03:45:25] And we're on there all the time. So if you, if you want to come on there and you want to ask
[03:45:32] me a question, you want to ask me a question. You might think, how could I ever ask
[03:45:36] Jockel question? You're easy. You go to EF online. You can ask me a question. I'll be sitting
[03:45:39] right there. You want to ask Steve a question about how he handled a certain situation, how he
[03:45:43] organized platoons, how he put teams together, how he handled these leadership challenges,
[03:45:48] go on to eF online.com and you can ask Steve a question. He's literally be sitting there.
[03:45:55] So check that out. EF online.com. We have the master. We're scheduling the
[03:45:59] master for 2021. Go to extreme ownership.com for details. We have EF overwatch. If you want people
[03:46:06] that understand these principles to come and work with your company, go to eF overwatch.com.
[03:46:10] And we have people that we're transitioning from the military to the civilian sector.
[03:46:14] And they'll come to your company and work. And if you want to help service members,
[03:46:19] active and retired service members, their families, gold star families around the world,
[03:46:24] check out Mark Lee's mom, Mark Lee's mom's organization.
[03:46:30] Mom and Lee, she's got a group called America's Mighty Warriors. And if you want to donate or get
[03:46:36] involved, then go to americasmightywariers.org. And if you, let's say you just desire anguish at pain in your
[03:46:47] life, in your own life, we can give it to you if you want it. We can give it to you. If you want
[03:46:53] more of my mundane discourse or you need more of echoes on thathamable phraseology, then you can find
[03:47:05] us on the in a website. On Twitter, on Instagram, which echo only refers to as the gram. And on Facebook,
[03:47:13] echo is adequate Charles and I am at Jockawilling. Where are you at, Steve? I'm at Steve Ward,
[03:47:19] 194. Steve Ward, 94. What ever Instagram? On Instagram. Steve at instagram. Steve.org,
[03:47:28] is that all works? That answer? Do you post anything?
[03:47:33] I'll probably will. Here soon. It's hunting season. Have you posted? Have you posted anything?
[03:47:39] I know. What are you hunting for? Ducks. Right on. It's fun. And it's good living.
[03:47:49] Good living. Not as good eating. No, more near. But you're going to get what you can get.
[03:47:55] Yeah, Steve, thanks for coming back on. It's rigging awesome and appreciate everything.
[03:48:06] Everything. And thanks to all of our other military personnel right now out in the world,
[03:48:14] on watch. As Steve said, you all are smarter and stronger and faster and more well equipped and better training.
[03:48:24] And we ever were. So thanks for holding it down. Make sure you train up the people underneath you.
[03:48:33] And for our police and law enforcement firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and
[03:48:38] correctional officers and border patrol and secret service and all first responders.
[03:48:41] Well, thanks for protecting us here at home and to everyone else out there. Steve talked a lot
[03:48:49] today about setting a good example, modeling the right example. And you also notice that almost
[03:48:57] every phase of his life he talked about learning and how he learned. Well, I would say that's part
[03:49:06] of that good example is don't ever stop learning. Don't ever stop growing. Don't ever stop trying to
[03:49:13] improve. You can only do that if you stay humble. So stay humble. Listen, learn and lead and also
[03:49:24] make sure that you keep getting after it. And until next time, this is Steve and echo and
[03:49:33] jacco out.