Jocko Podcast 316: High Stakes Push-Back and Accountability. W/ Stuart Scheller

2022-01-14T18:09:50Z

Underground Premium Content: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @stuart.scheller @echocharles 0:00:00 - Opening 0:13:32 - Stuart Scheller 3:22:40 - How to stay on THE PATH JOCKO UNDERGROUND Exclusive Episodes: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Jocko Store Apparel: https://www.jockostore.com Jocko Fuel: https://jockofuel.com Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Echelon Front: https://www.echelonfront.com 3:49:47 - Closing Gratitude

AI summary of episode

because and I had these with multiple of sexes like I don't know what it is about regimental commanders but they they just felt like they could talk to me like like I was a piece of shit and I just got to a place in my life in my career I just wouldn't be talked to like that and so it created this unhealthy tension and then when I would push back on some of these conversations you would think that after like a couple days it would actually be like a steam release but it almost like it almost was like seen as a threat and it would almost increase the pressure where then they would come back and want to like reassert dominance which would then want to cause me to like reassert like fuck you so but the regimental opso job just to pan picture going into the story we're about to tell I mean it was the Marseille job was awesome fulfilling manageable hours good work the regimental opso job was like 20 hour days we spent two months at an ITX which is in the Mojave Desert where it is just expected that like I don't eat I have tobacco and I just drink energy drinks like it's almost like I'm looked down upon if that's not how I conduct myself and it just it took a lot out of me and my boss was not very appreciative most of the time and I got into some like this was kind of at the point of my career where I started really pushing back so like as a as a first lieutenant as a exo and a body with my batani commander was kind of verbally and even at times physically abusive like just kind of took it and in my head was like this is wrong like we talk about china and the fact that they banned parts of the internet and social media they you are not allowed and here it is happening here in america all the enough what is the what do you think is like the above board not even above board what what is the motive you think and banning someone driving a narrative i feel i'm sorry man i feel like someone who's it response i mean i'm sure this is a group people who are responsible for that and they're kind of running the banning but what is it like what is the conclusion that they come to the be like you know what we should really just ban this is just driving a narrative they're driving a narrative and here there's there's what sucks is the worst thing you can do to try and drive a narrative is not let people talk because if someone has a dumb idea the best thing you could do is let them talk about their dumb idea so we can say hey here's your why your idea is dumb what's scariest when we let ego get involved and instead of me saying you know what echo's got a opinion i'm not sure if he's right or but like I feel like a taller organization would have been like hey we're gonna let investigation play out we're gonna let you sit and calm down obviously this is personal but you've broken some rules and what's left the investigation play out and we'll see where the chips fall like that's the reason but they they obviously fired me within like 12 hours were you surprised when you got relieved I was surprised I didn't learn investigation take place I really was it did not I didn't expect that like when I was calculating what would happen I thought I might be benched while on investigation took place and I had even talked to my battalion exo for like 20 minutes like I was texting my friends and I was like if the Marine Corps was really trying to find me like they didn't think to text me they didn't think to call me and so like potentially potentially the public affairs office arm just wasn't talking to like whoever should have been calling me and just got out ahead of it first and so then it came back to like what do I want to do like if if none of them care about me do I want to limp towards the retirement for the next three years because that's best case and I just came to the decision like no I can't live my life like that like this was never supposed to be a career this was always supposed to be something that was fulfilling I don't care about the money as much as other people might I really don't like I'll be fine no I'm gonna poke you in the chest because what you did was broke the rules and then I'm like well no come back and listen to what I'm saying like no you're still breaking the rules I'm gonna make it worse for you and so like each one of these is just an example of like if you think cared about me they would have called one thing that I noticed and I heard you talking about it you know at the end of that second video you're getting emotional and you're like asking for accountability and then kind of ranting against everything a little bit so when I was at SOS a captain the lieutenant Colonel was my battalion commander that he did a lot for me he retired as at O6 he had gotten on my social media and said if Stuart's other was honorable he would resign he didn't state that he was my previous boss or that he was like a mentor to me he didn't email me he didn't text me and I felt like I mean that really was like a stab in the back to me because a lot of general officers that are on LinkedIn that they gave preferred LinkedIn not Facebook so that's why I had a LinkedIn too a lot of the senior officers knew who he was and so for him to call me out like that and so I'm struggling with when I'm with my kid on the boat I'm struggling with they relieved me without even an investigation like I knew my job as it risk when I posted that video but like no one reads the follow up you know what I mean you get that one shot that's right especially when it comes to like a viable type videos that are gonna get out there no one's fault no one's following up with that you get home from that video and your life is like you didn't pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-re-re-re-re-wife now your life is just like no this isn't gonna happen that's right well it depends on what kind but uh butter there's a lot of butter in it butter sugar flavoring there's like a flavoring of some sort um like chocolate frosting this is butter sugar and chocolate and like cream I think that's pretty much it that's part of like there's a lot of fake part I don't like that's why cupcakes not really my thing bro I make exact opposite but like again I'm having all these indicators so this like this escalating thing of like me feeling like what I said is right all right you should show some sympathy and they're like but the the cold shower you know how they say one of the benefits is like it exercises your mind to do something you really don't want to do so that way like mentally everything else seems like I don't know easier or whatever um I guess even though you really don't that's not the first thing you want to do going a cold shower or cold tub when you wake up usually but when you get out you do feel like dang oh your entire career we'd been at war you know I spent more than half my career we weren't at war you know we were in the 90s the dry years but I'm thinking man this guy's been in the Marine Corps for 17 years the Marine Corps and America's been at war for that entire time you as you mentioned you said you know you got a lot to lose you know what could happen you knew you were risking your baton command you know family stability the whole nine yards you bring up that letter from the commandant that he wrote and you know you mentioned did anyone throw their rank on the table and say we shouldn't give a boggerman which again you know going back to the the silent five which is what McMaster called the the Joint Chiefs of Staff that work for LBJ and you can even hear you know that I've read in the beginning of guys that reflected back and said I should have said something I should have stood up you talk about the fact that the people that died dying in vain if we don't you you say you said if we don't own up and say we did not do this well in the end but like I said some like hard stuff to hear it wasn't very like it wasn't like a uniting message it was just like a fuck you to everyone and again I even put in the post I'm ready to go to jail yeah right on Stu you got any closing thoughts before you shut it down now I'll just echo to your audience as I watched my saga unfold in the media the mainstream media is so polarized right now it was very hard to get a true assessment of like how people even felt watching the news because you know most of the people were taking my statements and trying to fit them into whatever their narrative was and shows like yours podcasts like yours YouTube channels I was actually getting much more accurate feedback from what people thought than mainstream media and I felt the way to do that was through what I wanted to be just the one video like I did not plan it to be anything other than that I thought I'll make one video I'll explain some of the things that I think they should have done and I'm going to demand accountability because that's what I think we deserve because we're missing it and so that was what led to that first video and even after I made it like I I articulate in that first video that I knew I was potentially going to lose my job my retirement my family stability like obviously I had thought through that articulated it in the video and even after I made the video I didn't post it right away right so for all those reasons again I made more sense to plead guilty and that so that was kind of it almost anti-climactic a little bit you you I'll tell you though there was some drama and so like I said the fastest court martial from exit of jail and agreement in the history of the Marine Corps also one of those charges like 88 I think I was the first officer charge since Vietnam like they were just like throwing stuff on the wall and I'm like quickly answering him while trying to do all these different things and there was just like one situation where he snapped started screaming for an everyone and I looked at him and that was a situation like here time I'm going to move around for a while I didn't say anything I just walked out this is like I'm we're gonna fight so I walked out So as a batank manager I was always the first one in the office and it just so happened that that day my wife had a medical appointment and I had agreed to drop the kids off at like at school it's called a-to-clock and so it was like an abnormal occurrence so that's like the one day I didn't show up early and so I take the kids and so now I don't get into work until like 18 and as a batank manager you don't tell people when you're coming in you just show up at a normal time but I had texted my option accidentally I came around late and like you know you gotta understand like how scary it is to do something like that because I essentially said my career's over in Panera but I wanted North Carolina and so then he called me back and said this is what he said he said I got your email I'm gonna give you exactly what you want and I went to his house for dinner to his previous with our families to hang out and like when I was in that motel we're like you know I had no other like can scattered my life's falling apart like I could probably really could have used a friend alright it's anything we can talk about like why you doing this he then screenshot it those and brought them to the investigating officer unsolicited to say look I was trying to figure out what his motives are like he this stew sheller is just a fucking a ferries character she'd never been a batile in command you're like who does that like what man does that blood in the water there's blood in the water man sharks are going to pounce so I was like it looks so cool to see that last page posted because the way it's laid out and stuff um final spin check that out leadership strategy and tactics field man or the code evaluation protocol discipline because freedom field manual way the warrior kid one two three four get your kids on the path get the neighbors on the path Mikey in the dragons about face by hack worth quoted from it today extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership that are wrote with my brother, Dave Babin also we have a leadership consultancy echelon front leadership is the solution to your problems I don't know what your problems are but in a leadership is the solution inside your organization go to echelon front dot com for details on that you can also check out some of the live events that we have we have the master two-day conference we have field training exercises which are two days you spend out and field learn how to maneuver and then lead in simulated combat missions you will feel your leadership improve battlefield where we go and walk historical battlefields and talk about the lessons learned from the good and bad calls made by leaders so check all of that stuff out at echelonfront.com we also have an online training academy for you to assist you in taking ownership of your life the various skills in life that will that will make you better that will put you in a better position there will help you overcome scenarios that we all face so if you want to take ownership of your life go to extreme ownership dot com I'm on there two three times a week live you want to ask me a question good go on there and ask me a question you want to you want to dive a little bit deeper into extreme ownership go on there we have courses that you can go through when you want to put your team through extreme ownership training go on there get your team unified behind the same principles extreme ownership dot com if you want to help service members active retire their families go to our families check out mark least but they released the command investigation with all those like it's just crazy things that those officer said to the media with my medical investigation so that selective articles could be written about like how I was a violent extremist and it was just blatantly false stuff like I'm still on the fence of whether I should sue for libel or just like move forward but so once they leaked at that investigation your point the judge the judge was like if that's true like this is criminal like those people should be brought to the court not Lieutenant Colonel Scheller and so the Marine Corps was like forced to do another command investigation on the leaked command investigation so they did another command investigation so you end up going up trial and this trial the judge you said looked at your record and was like hey well where did this come from the judge I don't think one of me to plead guilty so it wasn't you know all those charges you read off and there's like all these findings of facts the only choice there's only one choice except guilty for all of them at special court martial or plead not guilty to all of them the general like so to give in the weeds about what any of them said it was almost irrelevant and so so if you did not not not guilty what would happen how to go to general court martial and so that's when I made that fourth video in my Charlie's like general McKenzie is like I can't think in military history where someone is so obviously culpable like it's just clear like the Emperor has no clothes you have to see it I mean I've got a couple stories where like I basically tried to throw my career away a couple times because I was like this is important to me like this is important to me and you know you can think about what you want and like I talked to some of my guys after he did it in front of everyone and go my guys were like I can't believe you didn't hit him like I can't believe you had the balls to just walk away like I wouldn't have done that so there were times I think from like 30 years ago what they have now is you know world's better and don't what we used to have like they have small groups they facilitate good discussions they really challenged my thinking on the wars I mean we went back it's like Frederick the Great and Prussia all the way through Napoleon and Civil War and modern day yeah album one this album you talk about it does have tracks on it each track is literally the solution for any moment of weakness you might have the common ones apparently I need to make one for cupcakes well because you got to have much by a cupcake but it was that was like it was like too fast for me to be like oh let me pop in trick and psychological warfare I don't even think I have my phone you got and so I tell you that just to say my CEO had stopped by my office and called like three times and my upso called me and was like hey sir, CEO was really looking for aish probably calm and so when I drove in I got in I think I like eight thirty that morning, CEO was actually walking because his buildings let's say a two minute walk from my building he was actually walking between the buildings and I saw him Like up to like my senior and list of like every single one like I was bringing in chaplains. but like you said it's only been like one week since close to Christmas they've been back so who knows what about your friends in the marine core what do they say nothing I mean the the the lieutenant kernels that were closest to me in the investigation that I've made I've counted a couple interviews and just illustrated what they said they've obviously gone calm silently all these other guys that I know have come online and been like that's bullshit that they did that I'm I constantly say to clients and people and friends we don't make good decisions or an or emotional like don't try it this started as a joke when I was a young and listed guy like we would go out drinking and make decisions you know and if the joke was hey don't make decisions don't make life changes I would volunteer for cartoons and do stuff like that oh so I totally did totally did I was doing something in the kitchen and there was like a container in the leftovers you know how people when you're younger you're like gonna go out with your friends drinking and you do like all we're gonna pre-game ever heard of that and I was like all right I was like I don't know if I can do a tonight I've just been fired why don't we you know give me the night and so went to bed I was the last night actually slept with my wife that night slept with my something the same bed with my wife got up the next morning I got the three boys in the couch so like maybe you should just chill and get some sleep and that was his way of saying like maybe he went too far like trying to offer me some sleep and of course I'm just stubborn I might know I don't need sleep I'm just fine and so you just gotta understand that like that's what I came out of after a year of just being overworked to like almost like fist fighting a couple times and then going into my batank of energy so you you're you're having clashes with regimental commander

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jockel Pontcast number 316 with echo Charles and me, Jockel willing. Good evening.
[00:00:06] I can't get any. December 18th 2018, General Jim Madness resigned as a secretary defense
[00:00:19] for Donald Trump and he did that. He wrote a letter and in that letter he said quote
[00:00:25] because you have the right to a secretary of defense whose views are better aligned with yours.
[00:00:31] I believe it is right for me to step down from my position. Then clearly General Madness
[00:00:39] did not agree with what Donald Trump was doing or how Donald Trump was doing, what he was doing.
[00:00:47] And so he stepped down and you can read that letter online, the letter of resignation and it's
[00:00:53] he did it in as respectfully as he could. I think after he did that, things went a little bit worse
[00:01:01] between the two of them. But the initial statement was certainly meant to be done in a
[00:01:06] respectful way to from the secretary of defense to the commander and chief, but it was certainly a statement
[00:01:13] by him stepping down. When that happened, I was definitely disappointed to see General Madness
[00:01:23] leaving that position. And because then it's a situation where he no longer has any influence
[00:01:31] over what's happening. And General Madness, I highly respected Marine and leader in the military.
[00:01:38] But this kind of thing has happened before. A hard-reline was taken by Colonel David Hackworth
[00:01:46] when he spoke out against both military and civilian leadership in his interview
[00:01:54] toward the end of the Vietnam War. Interview with a news program called Issues and Answers
[00:01:59] Sunday June 7th, 1971. Here's some things. Here's some excerpts from that interview and the whole
[00:02:06] interview is in the book about face. But some of the excerpts from that he's been interviewed by a
[00:02:12] guy named Mr. Tuckner. Mr. Tuckner said in your view, did poor training lead to higher casualties
[00:02:17] in Vietnam? Colonel Hackworth replied, I am convinced of it. I think that our casualties were at least
[00:02:24] 30% higher because of or even higher than that. But I'd say just safely 30% because of troops that
[00:02:31] were not properly trained. I participated in a study group in the Pentagon in 67 and 68,
[00:02:37] which considered U.S. casualties caused by friendly fires. And the group was composed of highly
[00:02:42] experienced personnel that had served in Vietnam and it was our conclusion that 15 to 20% of the
[00:02:46] casualties caused in Vietnam were the result of friendly fire. One man shooting another man, artillery,
[00:02:52] friendly fire, friendly artillery fire firing on a friendly element. Friendly helicopters firing on a
[00:02:59] friendly unit. Tuck air strike on a friendly unit. And I could count you in my own case, countless
[00:03:06] personal examples. For example, during the Battle of Dactu, June of the 17th, the rocket ship came
[00:03:12] into my A company's position by mistake and released its rockets right on top of the company
[00:03:17] killing the executive officer and wounding 29 other troopers. I can recall in September of 1965
[00:03:26] as my battalion was deployed artillery was fired in the wrong place killing seven men in one of my
[00:03:31] pletounds. The interview goes on. Mr. Tuckerner says, the upper echelon of the army
[00:03:40] really ever become changed on this war. Did they learn from their mistakes? Colonel Hackworth,
[00:03:47] I don't think so. I don't think that the top level ever developed the realistic strategic plan
[00:03:53] nor did they ever have tactics to support that strategic plan. And that is why perhaps we
[00:03:59] who have not been vocal should be charged for criminal neglect because it is our obligation.
[00:04:05] It is our responsibility not only to train our soldiers well, to lead our soldiers well,
[00:04:10] but to make sure that there are no mistakes made. That they are protected as well as possible
[00:04:15] from mistakes in error. And once you make mistakes, they must be surfaced, critiqued,
[00:04:20] identified, and remedial action taken. The interview goes on and it closes out with this,
[00:04:31] Mr. Tuckerner asks, Colonel, do you feel it is possible? You have become too emotionally involved
[00:04:38] in Vietnam. Colonel Hackworth replies, I have become emotionally involved in Vietnam.
[00:04:46] One couldn't have spent the number of years I have spent Vietnam without becoming emotionally
[00:04:51] involved. One couldn't see the number of young studs die or be terribly wounded without
[00:04:56] becoming emotionally involved. I just have seen the American nation spend so much of it's wonderful
[00:05:02] great young men in this country. I've seen our national wealth being drained away. I see the
[00:05:07] nation being split apart and almost being split a sonner because of this war. And I am wondering
[00:05:12] to what end it is all going to lead to? Obviously, Hackworth was drummed out of the army shortly after
[00:05:26] that interview. Hackworth and Mattis are not the first people to resign in protest or because they
[00:05:34] didn't agree with what was happening. In fact, another guy that Hackworth refers to this general
[00:05:42] William Billy Mitchell, father of the Air Force World War I, commanded the first aircraft,
[00:05:47] our first American aircraft, World War I and after the war he started to build the Air Force.
[00:05:54] And guess what? The army and the Navy kind of objected to it because they thought that their ways were
[00:06:00] better. And he conducted field tests against Navy ships, use an aircraft and proved that we need
[00:06:09] it air power. And there was a Navy air ship like a blimp called the Shannon Della crashed in
[00:06:19] 1925, 14 crew were killed. And Mitchell, general Mitchell protested to the press openly accusing
[00:06:27] the war department of quote incompetence and criminal negligence saying quote, brave airmen are
[00:06:34] being sent to their deaths by armchair animals who don't care about their safety. Mitchell was
[00:06:40] court-martialed, convicted of an insubordination and facing a five-year suspension he resigned his
[00:06:47] commission. 1949. The Secretary of the Navy resigned as the construction of the supercarrier
[00:06:58] the USS United States was cut to pay for the Air Force B36 Long Range bomber program.
[00:07:09] If you ever read the book, Derr-Election of Duty by a German master, another highly respected
[00:07:16] general. And one of the things he refers to during the Vietnam War that the joint chiefs of staff
[00:07:23] for Lyndon B. Johnson, he calls them five silent men because they didn't push back on some of the
[00:07:31] things or a lot of the things or all of the things that LBJ and McNamara were doing.
[00:07:37] The Army Chief, Harold Johnson, General Harold Johnson, said after his retirement. After he retired.
[00:07:47] He said quote, I remember the day I was ready to go over to the overall office and give my
[00:07:51] four stars to the president and tell him quote, you have refused to tell the country they cannot
[00:07:56] fight a war without mobilization. You have required me to send men into battle with little
[00:07:59] hope of their ultimate victory and you have forced us into the military and forced the military
[00:08:04] to violate almost every one of the principles of war in Vietnam. Therefore, I resigned and I will
[00:08:09] hold a press conference after I walk out of your door. But of course he didn't do that. That's
[00:08:18] something he said later. General Wallace Green, Marine Corps, Marine Corps Chief.
[00:08:26] And this is a guy that in World War II fought the Japanese with a 45 caliber pistol and a
[00:08:35] bay in that. And he says in that same book, in that book, by McMaster, he says something along the lines
[00:08:44] of, well, if I resign in protest, okay, I'm in the headlines for 48 hours, then what?
[00:08:48] Then I'm gone and someone else carries on. I don't have an impact. And that's a decent point.
[00:08:52] It's a legitimate point made by Green. Same thing I said about matters. When you leave, again,
[00:08:59] it's a decision. But when you leave, you've got to realize that your influence has gone.
[00:09:06] 1968, Cyrus Vance, who was a World War II Navy Gunner officer, he did resign as LBJ's
[00:09:17] deputy secretary of defense in protest to what was going on in Vietnam, which he initially believed in
[00:09:24] Vietnam War. But as he saw it unfold, he said, this is not a good idea and he eventually resigned.
[00:09:31] He also later resigned as a secretary of state for Carter, for Jimmy Carter, in protest of
[00:09:37] desert one, because he thought that we should negotiate more. He did that two times.
[00:09:45] I don't think either one of them had a huge impact. 1997 Air Force Chief of Staff decorated Vietnam
[00:09:52] War pilot resigned at the perceived punishment that was to be imposed on the commanders on the
[00:09:59] ground when the co-bar towers were attacked in Saudi Arabia. 2006, a guy named Aaron Watata,
[00:10:09] Army refused to go to Iraq and believe in the war resigned.
[00:10:18] Matthew Ho, a former Marine infantry officer. In 2009, resigned in protest as a senior
[00:10:26] political civilian representative in Zabbal Province in Afghanistan, wrote a scathing letter.
[00:10:32] Can read that online. 2021 Lieutenant Colonel Paul Douglas Hague resigned in objection to quote
[00:10:44] traitorous withdrawal from Afghanistan and also talked about an ideological Marxist takeover
[00:10:52] of the military and the United States government at the repression lines resigned. So, these things happen.
[00:11:07] And I talked about this in the book, Leader of Strasgeon Tactics. I talked about
[00:11:12] when you should do this, how you make that decision, because when you resign or even when you speak
[00:11:17] out aggressively and ostracize yourself as a leader, you no longer have influence over the situation.
[00:11:27] You're gone. Maybe your statement will bring about enough
[00:11:36] highlight. We'll bring enough light on the subject that you can help, that your resignation can help.
[00:11:42] That's what you hope for. But it's not guaranteed. And you may cause excess conflict inside
[00:11:53] the organization you're trying to help. But then there are times when things have gone too far
[00:12:01] or a line has been crossed in your head and you feel you just simply cannot tolerate
[00:12:06] things the way they are. And you've tried to use internal methods to influence the situation,
[00:12:16] but it hasn't worked. So you step out and you speak out. And this is happened recently.
[00:12:25] I'm reading horror, Lieutenant Colonel, Stewart Scheller, spoke out about the disastrous
[00:12:31] withdrawal from Afghanistan. I need to do this publicly and without authorization from his
[00:12:39] chain of command. And for that and for other actions that he took he was relieved of his command.
[00:12:47] He was a prisoned court martial, punished, required to depart the Marine Corps without retirement
[00:12:54] or benefits, which is a steep price to pay to speak your mind on what you're seeing and that
[00:13:02] is a hard decision to make. And it has consequences that will reverberate for years.
[00:13:10] They have lessons. Hard lessons will be learned. And tonight we have a chance to learn some of
[00:13:19] those lessons directly from the source as Stewart Scheller, former Lieutenant Colonel, former
[00:13:26] United States Marine, is here with us tonight to discuss what happened. Stu, thanks for joining us.
[00:13:36] Jack, thanks for having me that intro gave me chills, really laid that up for y'all.
[00:13:40] I'm so excited to be here, Peco, out of the port of the conversation.
[00:13:43] Let's start at the beginning just to get some background on you as a human. So where do you grow up?
[00:13:51] I grew up across the Midwest. My dad was just an insurance salesman. I worked his way up.
[00:13:56] So we moved between Missouri, Kansas, Ohio. I ended up going to high school in college at the
[00:14:01] University of Cincinnati, high school in Cincinnati too. Then I moved out to Virginia again,
[00:14:07] accounting degree at the University of Missouri. When you were in high school, what was your mom
[00:14:10] working? Mom was a state at home. Mom, so I've got two brothers in a sister. So four siblings,
[00:14:16] she was always there for us driving us to soccer practice. I was a baseball soccer player.
[00:14:21] Any good? Yeah, I was a all-state soccer player. I got a full ride, played a couple of seasons.
[00:14:27] And yeah, I was always a captain, always a leader, enjoyed competitive sports.
[00:14:33] Did you make it to the state champion tubes? You know, in Ohio they had, I don't know if they
[00:14:38] still got it, but they had a, it was called ODP. It was like a Olympic development program.
[00:14:43] So you got to try out for these regional ODP teams and I made the team and I don't think we ever
[00:14:47] won anything significant. What position did you play? I played all over. I mean, I played club high
[00:14:52] school college. So usually I was a skinny runner. I was a lot of skinnier back in the day. I was probably
[00:14:58] you know, 140 through high school. So I was usually outside half back sprinting, but as I got a little
[00:15:03] more muscle, they put me back in the defense. And then when I got to college, I was again
[00:15:06] smaller, so they quickly back on the outside midfield. And were you into school getting good grades
[00:15:12] in all that? Yeah, schools always come pretty easy for me. So I was always on the honor roll.
[00:15:16] I put in the work. I always got 35 to 40. Yeah. I mean, I'd say if you put in the work? Yeah.
[00:15:24] That's a big, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I like to have fun. I like to play sports. And so school wasn't
[00:15:30] always my focus, but I knew getting a good education and you know, wanting to build a good
[00:15:35] base was important. So if I put in the work of homework, I'd always do well. But there were
[00:15:39] times where I just wouldn't do it. And then you know, you pay the consequences. Did you have interest
[00:15:43] in the military growing up? I didn't. So my grandfather landed at Normandy. And I looked up to him a
[00:15:49] lot, but after his army service and World War II, he got out was in the federal service. And his
[00:15:55] brother was in the FBI. So that's why I got my accounting degree. They were telling me, get your accounting
[00:15:59] degree, you can go in the FBI. So I always loved America. I always wanted to serve. But no one in my
[00:16:05] immediate family, other than my grandfather was in the military. So through high school, all I knew
[00:16:09] was I needed to go to college and get a degree. Then a good job would be on the backside. And I was
[00:16:15] getting an accounting degree. And I thought maybe I'd go in a federal service. But that was kind of
[00:16:18] my thought process all the way through school. What year did you graduate high school?
[00:16:21] 2000 high school, 2004 college. So September 11th happened when you were in college?
[00:16:26] That's right. So was it, was it, was it, was kind of impacted that have on you? Yeah, good question. So
[00:16:30] I was my sophomore season of soccer. And we had I was living in the dorms. And it was like a
[00:16:37] sweet where it was like four bedrooms in the living room. And I remember sitting there with my teammates
[00:16:41] watching it and thinking, well, this is significant. Our lives are going to change. But I don't know
[00:16:47] how this is going to impact me. And then like I said, I just went back to, I need to graduate college
[00:16:52] as well as what I'm supposed to do. So even most of my peers joined after September 11th and that
[00:16:56] was like their motivation. It was different for me. Mine came a little bit later. So I saw September 11th
[00:17:01] it impacted me like all Americans. But I continued just going through school. Still not even
[00:17:07] sure that I was going to join the military at that time. So at what point did you get serious about
[00:17:12] joining the military? So I graduated with that kind of degree. Started working as an account and did
[00:17:17] not enjoy working as an account. And it was 2004. And I was watching the TV and I saw the Marines
[00:17:24] moving through Felicia. And I thought, hey, we're going to probably be at war for another five
[00:17:29] ten years. I'd love an opportunity to go represent America, be a leader on the edge of the empire.
[00:17:35] I've always been competitive being on teams. And I just thought, you know, I could go on the FBI
[00:17:41] anytime. But this war may not always be going on and I want the opportunity to serve my country.
[00:17:46] And so I called the Marine Recreeter and started my path. So really it was 2004 for me watching
[00:17:51] the Marines on TV. There was like, I need to get me some of that. How long were you an account
[00:17:55] in a four? Not long. I did it part time as I was going through school. And then I did it for probably
[00:18:02] nine months after I graduated. Didn't pick long enough. It was a hit. Grunt and Felicia looked better.
[00:18:08] It did. Yeah. You're looking at looking at spreadsheets. 100%. That's not for everybody.
[00:18:14] So so how long did the recruiting process take in 2000? And so in 2004 you talked to the
[00:18:20] recruiter for the first time? That's right. Yeah, that was quick. I talked to him
[00:18:24] probably in September. And the hardest part was getting all the recommendations.
[00:18:29] Like, you need college professors recommendations. Like university Cincinnati was like 1,
[00:18:33] me 300. None of my instructors knew me. You know, I had a like, call me back up. Like, hey,
[00:18:37] you don't know me, but can you fill this out? You know, and I didn't accomplish anything at that
[00:18:42] point of my life other than being a soccer captain. So what, what did I have other than a college
[00:18:47] degree and being on a sports team? And so you're supposed to write all these accolades and
[00:18:50] accomplishments in extracurricular. And so what honestly when I thought about the application,
[00:18:54] I was like, they're not going to select me. But I submitted it and my strength was athleticism. So
[00:19:00] I smoked the PFT and that was easy for me. And within two months, they selected me and I shipped out
[00:19:07] in January. And where's Marine Corros, yes? It's in Quonico. How was that?
[00:19:12] I think for some people. How did that compare to accounting? I think for some people,
[00:19:17] it's a lot of, there's a lot of prior listed guys to go through. And I didn't know anything about
[00:19:21] the military. I mean, I didn't know the difference between officers and enlisted. I didn't know
[00:19:24] the drill instructors were going to scream at us. I quite honestly thought I'd show up and it would be
[00:19:28] like grown man rules and, you know, here's the challenge figured out. You know, I just, I don't know why
[00:19:34] that's what I thought it would be. And it just, it was not that. And so, you know, the drill instructors
[00:19:39] all start screaming at you and they have you dump your bags and they kick your stuff all over the
[00:19:43] parade deck. And I noticed when they were doing that, all my peers had their stuff in Zipbox bags
[00:19:48] because they expected it. And I'm like the one guy who's just lost. So my pens and my stuff were going
[00:19:54] everywhere. And of course, on the last one, trying to collect it all up. And so now I've got like
[00:19:58] five drill instructors circle in me. And I'm like fighting through their shins to get the rest of
[00:20:02] my stuff. And so I tell the story just to say, it was illustrated from day one that I was lost. And
[00:20:07] then, you know, they kind of kept coming hard at me. But my strength was like I said, athleticism
[00:20:12] and then relationships. So I was able to befriended all the guys around me, learn from them. And
[00:20:18] you know, I quickly went, we do peer evaluations there too. So like in the first peer evaluation,
[00:20:23] I was at the bottom because I was lost. But by the third one, I was like in the top third, right?
[00:20:27] And so that meant a lot to me. So I was able to demonstrate to my peers over the period of
[00:20:31] instruction that like, hey, there might be more of this guy than the lost little puppy we saw on day one.
[00:20:36] And so that was kind of the story of my whole entry level training. I mean, I was like,
[00:20:40] do they get rid of guys that are consistently at the bottom of the peer evaluations?
[00:20:43] They do. So the way it works is they do a board system. And so there's three boards through
[00:20:49] OCS. And if you get essentially counseling, so if you're at the bottom, they're going to give you
[00:20:53] counseling. And once you get a collection of them that you sit in front of the kernel and have to just
[00:20:57] a fire where you're there. And he's ultimately the one that decides to cut you or not. And then also at OCS,
[00:21:03] you can quit. You can drop on request. And so it's actually pretty high attrition. So we started with
[00:21:08] 65, and I think we got down like 38. So I mean, but most of it is people that probably shouldn't be there anyway,
[00:21:16] quite honestly. There are some some very talented guys that I had one guy that made it to the last day.
[00:21:22] The day before graduation, this guy graduated from the University of Chicago with a mathematics
[00:21:26] degree. And I remember I'm very clearly because his last name was Sullivan and my name was Scheller.
[00:21:30] So I'm standing right next to him in the racks the whole time in the day before he just like,
[00:21:34] I don't want to commission. And I was like, too, we just went through like 10 weeks of the crisis.
[00:21:38] And I was like, and he said, I just wanted to see if I could do it. So that's like the type of guy that you want,
[00:21:44] you know. And so I was just blown away by that. And so then this guy made it like he had graduated
[00:21:48] for all extensive purposes and just decided now. And so there are some that go through all that.
[00:21:54] And then wave off. But the vast majority that I saw get a treat it out,
[00:21:59] probably need to be a treat it out. And then you go roll from right from there to the basics school.
[00:22:03] That's right. And how how how was that? Six months. So what they do is they just give you a baseline of
[00:22:11] infantry leadership skills. They say it's not screening. Technically they're only supposed to screen
[00:22:16] at OCS. Yeah, give you my later my career. I worked as an instructor at OCS and TBS. And so I
[00:22:21] understand like behind the scenes of these two places in Tmoly now too. But TBS is for all the open
[00:22:27] ground contracts like myself where they ultimately determine what your MOS is going to be your
[00:22:31] military occupational specialty. So it's a very critical spot in terms of if you want to do something
[00:22:36] specific you got to distinguish yourself to be able to get that thing. And you learn a lot.
[00:22:41] It's more of a college atmosphere unlike OCS, Officer Candice Corps, Infantry Officer
[00:22:46] Corps, which is like all fieldwork. TBS is like a lot of classroom work. You do some field exercises
[00:22:51] just to kind of have a baseline of tactical knowledge. But it's a lot of classroom stuff.
[00:22:56] You said open ground. What is that? Open ground contract. So when you come in you either come in
[00:23:02] as a law contract and air contract law like jag. Yes. Okay. Yep. So law, air or ground. Those are
[00:23:10] the three. And so. Yeah. Bottom line is when you're at TBS they can't manipulate the law or air
[00:23:16] contracts. Those are already prewritten. But everybody else they determine their military
[00:23:20] occupational specialty at TBS. And how did you perform in TBS overall? I was the same thing.
[00:23:27] I showed up. I was lost. Quick story on that. So there's a transition where you go from
[00:23:33] sleeves down to sleeves up in the Marine Corps. You know, lost Lieutenant Schiller didn't know that.
[00:23:38] No one explained it to me. OCS. And so we show up. And so the transition happened to be just
[00:23:42] between the 10 days we had between OCS and TBS. So I show up to check in and I'm the only one
[00:23:48] with my sleeves down. And everyone's like, what did you ever sleeves up? What am I like?
[00:23:52] Oh, yeah. So that again day one. I'm the one that doesn't know anything. And it was the same thing
[00:23:57] period of hours. You know, I had to like work my way up and I did. And I was academically probably
[00:24:03] in the bottom third just because all the tests. It was just rogue memorization. And I tried to
[00:24:09] memorize it. A lot of guys had been in the Marine Corps before. It was just a little bit easier
[00:24:13] because they knew the knowledge inherently. But what got me up was like leadership evaluations
[00:24:19] are weighted pretty heavily. And I always did really good on the leadership evaluations.
[00:24:22] How does that work? Was it like you're in a field problem? Someone who's watching you and
[00:24:25] evaluate and how you're doing? Yeah. So the grade breakdown at TBS is 40% leadership,
[00:24:29] 30% academic and 30% physical. And the leadership is built upon different exercises where
[00:24:35] you're evaluated by your instructor. So it's fed by things that you do, but still ultimately
[00:24:41] it's subjective. And even in the leadership score, what they do is so if a Platoon Commander
[00:24:45] has like 50 guys, they have to rank you one through 50. So they can't give everybody hundreds.
[00:24:50] So to make it fair, there's actually an algorithm where they have to stick it in. And so that's
[00:24:55] how you get a leadership grade. What's a is it just a typical sort of battle field problem that
[00:25:02] they're putting you on? You run an ambush? Are you running a patrol? Or is it like, what's it like?
[00:25:07] What are they grade new on? Yep. So some of them are leadership reaction courses where it's like a
[00:25:11] complex. It's not complex, but there's a problem that you have to solve. And typically they're
[00:25:17] not solvable, but they're determining how you navigate the situation that's not solvable.
[00:25:22] There's situations where you just, you're the patrol leader. Hey, take your squad and go
[00:25:26] attack this fire team on this hill and they'll evaluate you based on that, right? There's
[00:25:31] peer evaluations feed into it. So there's quite a few, probably about five or six different things
[00:25:37] that you do. Mostly, I think the probably the heaviest way is the in the tree line, you're a squad leader.
[00:25:43] So typically comes down to your squad leader, you're doing next to, you're doing next to one,
[00:25:47] which stands for field exercise. So they have all these field exercises and they just make you a leader of
[00:25:52] whatever, you're doing the defense, build the defense order and brief it and that's going to be a
[00:25:56] big part of your leadership grade. Are you guys shooting blanks at each other? Yeah, we are.
[00:26:01] Are you using miles gear or some equivalent or some? We have miles. It's now called it it's actually
[00:26:06] it has two now, same thing, but it doesn't work very well in the tree line. What it does do those,
[00:26:11] it provides graphical overlay. So if you're wanting a debriefet, like you can show, hey,
[00:26:15] there is the LPOP, there was the support by fire. So quite honestly, when we use it, it's more
[00:26:20] for after action purposes. It doesn't, it just doesn't work very well in the tree line. So blanks
[00:26:24] is we found to be better. And then what did you, what, so where did you graduate in the class?
[00:26:29] When you came time to graduate? So the way TBS works is they put it into thirds and so they do that,
[00:26:34] so that one MOS isn't overloaded with all the talent. So if you're in the top there, you get your first pick.
[00:26:41] If you're in the top of the second, the second pick. If you're in the top of the third,
[00:26:45] you get the third pick. So if you came this thing of everyone wanting to be like the top of the third
[00:26:49] third, then you're like, you're playing the numbers game. Like I said, I started in the bottom third,
[00:26:56] and I was like, but because of my leadership grades, I moved up to, I think, the top of the second third,
[00:27:01] the thing is where I ended up. And then you get their pick. So what'd you pick?
[00:27:05] I actually, I wanted to be infantry and at OCS, I said to my drill instructor, I wanted to be an infantry officer.
[00:27:13] In fact, when I was going through the recruiting pipeline, I also even told me that the guy
[00:27:17] does my recruiting is like, I got an air contract and I was like, no, I want to be on the ground with the gun.
[00:27:20] You know, watching the TV, Marines, Flushos, I got one of the underground with the gun,
[00:27:24] and the leader. So at OCS, then I told him, I was like, I want to be an infantry officer,
[00:27:27] and they just were like, and very tri-off, so shell-eyed, you know, and what kind of like,
[00:27:32] why were they freaking out about that? I think it's just all part of the show.
[00:27:36] It's a song and dance, right? They just want to kind of knock you down.
[00:27:39] I'm, in fact, some of them are still friends with me, but at the time, you just don't really fully
[00:27:44] appreciate it. And so, those were kind of still bouncing around in my head. So when I got to TVS,
[00:27:49] I actually had infantry number three. So I put combat engineer and intel officer above it,
[00:27:55] one, two, and three. And my, they call them SBC staff, we'll take commander, he's a captain,
[00:28:00] he was a infantry officer, and he just looked at me and he was like, shillard,
[00:28:02] you're going to be a fucking infantry officer. That's, but, and I thought it was joking. I was like,
[00:28:06] all right. Yeah. And then the game time resliction, I was waiting for him to be like,
[00:28:10] you know, intel officer, combat engineer and take infantry officer. And I was like,
[00:28:14] size them up like you joke in and he's like, no, I told you you're going to be never
[00:28:17] chopster. And, you know, looking back, there is no way I would have made it as long as I did,
[00:28:23] had I had any intel officer. Other than infantry officer, I just didn't know what I did know
[00:28:26] then. I mean, it's by far probably the best choice. And so, in a lot of ways, like I shaped my
[00:28:32] life and career. And I was really, really grateful to do that. So then you get infantry,
[00:28:37] doesn't it's often infantry officer school? That's right. And how long is that school? Three months.
[00:28:41] And how was that? When it was it? So I went through OCS, January to March of the five TBS,
[00:28:47] April to September of five, and IOC, September to December of five. So it was rapid fire. There
[00:28:53] a lot of times there's because based on when schools pick up, people will have two or three
[00:28:57] months breaks. But for me, you just worked out where in 11 months from showing up to OCS,
[00:29:02] I was standing in front of my potatoes. So by mid December, I was there. And you must have been
[00:29:06] getting guys that were coming fresh back from actually coming back from Feluzia that you watched
[00:29:12] on TV that were your instructors. It's better than that when I showed up to one eight, one eight
[00:29:16] was the center battalion of that attack that I watched on the TV. And the first speech I gave
[00:29:21] my potatoes like, hey, I'm your new Platoon Commander, half of them were in sweats. And so I
[00:29:25] took my Platoon Sergeant aside after the fact, I was like, hey, what? Why aren't they in the
[00:29:27] proper uniform? Because, sure, they all have doctors notes because they all have a trap and I'll
[00:29:31] still in their body from the push through Feluzia. And that was like the moment for me, or was like,
[00:29:35] oh my god, like this is real. And it's just like the way the world hits you of the
[00:29:40] responsibility. So yes, it was very real when I showed up to my units. How was infrastructure
[00:29:45] off your school? That is probably one of the best schools, Barnan. I mean, they really do a
[00:29:51] good job of preparing you. And I mean, there are just three months of intense
[00:29:57] intense infantry training. And I really felt prepared, shown up from my putin. I mean,
[00:30:02] the, the Marine Corps does a great job of putting a product in for the Platoon in terms of officers.
[00:30:07] Now, are you going to get some that slip through the cracks? Absolutely. There is no perfect
[00:30:11] system, but I'll say holistically from a guy that just wanted to learn and wanted to be a leader.
[00:30:15] They did a really good job of preparing me. Sure, they set up. Are you an upatoon in your
[00:30:19] basically taking turns as leaders going out and running operations? That's right. The whole time.
[00:30:23] The whole time. It's an an infantry officer, of course. It's a lot more current TTPs as well.
[00:30:30] Whereas the basic school is the fundamentals in green side of building the defense,
[00:30:34] very conventional type stuff. The timeless principles, whereas infantry officer, of course,
[00:30:39] is like this is the new RCO. This is the IED that's in Ramadi right now. So on and so forth. This is
[00:30:45] how we do patrol and 5 and 25s right now. And so there's still a lot of timeless stuff that
[00:30:51] goes on in IOC, but it was really nice to get a lot of current TTPs coming through that schoolhouse.
[00:30:56] And then the instructors too, at IOC, if you're a captain and you're in a instructor there,
[00:31:01] your hands selected and most of those guys go on to become generals, quite honestly.
[00:31:04] So you get the Kremlin terms of young captains that have just come off their first tour,
[00:31:09] like the Marine Corps picks the best. To go to TBS and then from TBS they pick the best at a TBS
[00:31:13] to go to IOC. And so you really just get great instructors. Like I had Brian Shantosh,
[00:31:19] who was Silverstar, I had Marcus Mines, who he got relieved recently as a tank manner,
[00:31:24] but in terms of like deep thinker, warfighter, like there was no better. I just had a group.
[00:31:31] It's quite funny when you look at my instructors. A lot of them burnt out, like the Shantoshes
[00:31:36] in the mines, but I don't think I've ever ran into a group of officers that maybe were
[00:31:41] more outside the box thinkers and warfighters than that instructor cadre that I had there.
[00:31:47] When you look back at that time, is there any lessons that stand out to you? Like, oh yeah,
[00:31:51] that operation left the huge impact on me. I think just the mental toughness that the
[00:32:01] instructors have pressed upon me every single day is what I left with. I mean, I walked away
[00:32:08] with an impression that these infantry officers are the real deal, they're warfighters,
[00:32:13] and they know they're trade. Like it was very clear to me that I had to step up my game and I
[00:32:20] couldn't fake the funk because people could see right through it. I think the TTPs always change,
[00:32:27] but the thirst for going and opening the pub and making sure that you knew more than everyone else,
[00:32:33] making sure that in those tough situations, you were the guy they were looking to to have
[00:32:38] the direction to have that mental toughness that they might need. You guys doing live fire,
[00:32:43] blanks both? Mostly live fire. I also see as mostly live fire. Obviously you're not shooting
[00:32:48] live fire each other. So in the situations where we did for some force, it was blanks, but it was
[00:32:54] a ton of live fire. Did you learn anything about like the amount of pressure that you were going
[00:32:59] to face? Did they do a good job of simulating the pressure you're going to face in combat situations?
[00:33:04] Yeah, I mean, that was the whole stick. I mean, there was even a couple of times where it may
[00:33:09] be even swung too far to the other direction because I remember one time we were getting close to
[00:33:14] graduating and we had gone from the desert of Mojave up to the mountains of Bridgeport and then
[00:33:20] we were coming off the mountains of Bridgeport and they stopped at some like Rinky Dink casino.
[00:33:26] Just let us get drunk. It was like in a middle nowhere. We're probably knowing when we'd
[00:33:29] get in trouble because it was literally in the middle nowhere. Well, the director, this guy is
[00:33:35] still in the Marine Corps, the regimental commander, or probably moved on by now. But he got,
[00:33:41] so he was the major and he just got hammered drunk and started screaming at the lieutenant so
[00:33:46] that they weren't ready for combat, right? And I was like one of the few times where like,
[00:33:51] you know, I'm still young and the curtain had been peeled back, but I remember thinking like,
[00:33:55] I get it. You got more experiences than me, but I'm about to knock you the fuck out.
[00:33:58] Like, you know, to mean Lieutenant the major, like you don't talk to me like that.
[00:34:01] And so yes, they did a very good job of preparing us, but sometimes I felt like
[00:34:07] almost to the point where it was, you got a little on professional times. You know, there's a line
[00:34:12] on how you treat a man. I'll rise to the occasion when given the opportunity, but I don't want to be
[00:34:17] denigrated. And then from there, it's bad. It's serious. That's when you went to one eight.
[00:34:24] That's right. Yep. So in fact, most of the guys, because we graduated right before Christmas,
[00:34:29] most of my fellow students took Christmas break and then showed up in January. One eight was deploying
[00:34:33] so fast that the batinax, so I actually came up, diocy took me and my six peers that were going
[00:34:38] to one eight and said, I need you now. We're going to AP Hill right after Christmas, and I want you
[00:34:43] checked in with all your gear, meet your potions, and then you can take, you know, week for Christmas,
[00:34:47] and you're going to show up and go to AP Hill with us, and so that's what we did.
[00:34:51] And you already talked about meat and your potion for the first time. Yeah.
[00:34:55] Yeah, so there was that. And I went into the, you know, I didn't have a house. So my personal life,
[00:35:00] I was dating my, my girlfriend at the time, and I had gotten engaged. I got engaged that
[00:35:06] Christmas. That week that I had off, actually. I take that back. I got engaged before I went to
[00:35:11] ACS. So when I, she was working in Richmond, when I went down to one eight, she stayed in Richmond.
[00:35:18] And so I was living in like this shitty apartment. Maybe because that new I was going to
[00:35:22] deploy in six months. My plan all along was to just do the first tour and then go up to Richmond
[00:35:27] and get out and be with my wife. We got married in between TBS and IOC. In fact,
[00:35:33] Marcus minds that guy was telling you about those such a good instructor. The IOC,
[00:35:37] they call it combat endurance test. This is like their screening event. It's like a two
[00:35:41] thirds of a marathon. It's like 16 miles. And they got like little stations like 84,
[00:35:46] do the 84 radio, do the radio. And then about 10 miles in, one of the stations is ground fighting.
[00:35:52] Marcus minds was a college wrestler. And so, you know, you were just exhausted at this point.
[00:35:57] And this guy gets to just beat up on tired little to tennis, right? Like, good job dude.
[00:36:02] So that's what he does. And I know I'm trying everything I can to fight him. And I thought I
[00:36:08] was doing pretty good. And I think because I was doing pretty good, he started getting a little bit
[00:36:10] more violent. And he elbowed me in the eye and gave me a black eye. And I got married that week.
[00:36:16] So when all my wedding pictures and I was black eyes, listening there. So yeah, one eight. Sorry. So
[00:36:22] AP Hill in January to March. And then we actually, we went on deployment in June of 06.
[00:36:27] And where was that deployment too? So at that time, everyone was going to Iraq. So that's
[00:36:32] all we trained for. That marked that January to June was like, we're going to Iraq. There was
[00:36:37] middle question about it. But we're not going to fly there. We're going to get on what we call a
[00:36:41] mu marine expeditionary unit. You get on three Navy ships and you sail over there. Back in that
[00:36:46] day in 06, it was a, it was a much bigger footprint. Back then, the naval group had a submarine.
[00:36:53] They had destroyers. I mean, it was a whole entourage back then. But over time, it just
[00:36:58] Navy's degradation. It's now just the three ships. So we got on the ships. We sailed across the Atlantic.
[00:37:05] We went through the Suez, which is like a million a ship. So that would just fiscally,
[00:37:10] you know once you cross the Suez and you're in St. Com, like, game on. But when that happened,
[00:37:15] Israel and Lebanon got into a conflict. This was in like June or July of 06. And so they actually
[00:37:21] turned us around and it's back to the Suez. And then we did a neo non-combatant evacuation operation.
[00:37:26] And we took American citizens out of Bay Route. We sent up a tune in there to secure the embassy.
[00:37:31] And then we took them to Cyprus. And then we sat there and stared at Bay Route for like six weeks.
[00:37:35] Like I just did pushups every morning like there at Bay Route. Awesome. You know, and all I wanted to
[00:37:39] do is go to Iraq. And so then after like two months of just staring at Bay Route, we went back
[00:37:45] across the Suez. Got into Kuwait. And they ended up saying, you don't have the legs for the deployment.
[00:37:51] Because when you put people on a deployment, there's like, yes, cut off. And to extend that would have
[00:37:56] caused more trouble than it was worth. They did take our sniper opportunity out of that
[00:38:00] batai and sent them up north because it was six. It was such a sniper fight. And we actually had
[00:38:05] unfortunately a couple snipers over kill. So we ended up coming back from the deployment and had
[00:38:09] a memorial for these snipers. And it was so weird because most of us hadn't even gotten into Iraq.
[00:38:14] And then we're at this memorial. But that was, that was the first deployment.
[00:38:20] And then you serve then you roll right into another workup. That's right. So I mean, we went.
[00:38:25] So we got back in December. And we deployed to Ramani Bay September. So like six, seven months later.
[00:38:32] And this is kind of, this is a longer story. So I'm going all of it. But I haven't
[00:38:37] going to go to Winter Mountain Leaders course from January to March. And then I got back. We went to
[00:38:43] Fort Pickett Hall of April. So I mean, I was only home. And then we ended up going to Mojaveviper.
[00:38:49] It was what it was called back then, which was a two month deal. I mean, I was only home probably
[00:38:54] for about six weeks. And I and I my wife quit her job to come down and live with me in between that.
[00:39:00] And so we had bought a house. And it was like, yeah, I guess I'll see you after the next deployment.
[00:39:04] Because I am just not home, right? And so I'll skip forward the reason I didn't get out after the
[00:39:09] second deployment. It's just that she quit her job and had came down. And then when I was in
[00:39:15] Iraq and all of just worn out, and she's like, what are you going to do? I said, I'm going to get out.
[00:39:19] Like, that's a punch. Like, well, what's the plan after them? I don't know. We'll figure that out.
[00:39:22] She's like, we just bought a house. Please take a non-depoiable. So we can free this out. But
[00:39:28] so yeah, personal life was, was tough at that time. So when you came home from that deployment,
[00:39:34] where you went to Lebanon, you get back from that. And you immediately go into work up. But on top of
[00:39:39] the work up, you go to mountain leader school. You're just gone the whole time. Your wife, who had
[00:39:44] cleared jobs. Now sitting in the house filled with boxes that you never unpacked because you're a bad
[00:39:49] husband. I'm promised I would paint the house. I'd have painted this. I've done this drill before.
[00:39:55] I've definitely done that drill before. I moved to Virginia Beach. And I was there for two years.
[00:40:00] And in that time, I did two deployments and to work up. So my wife, we never even took some stuff out of
[00:40:06] the boxes in the house that we bought. So yeah, I did that drill. The bathroom never got painted.
[00:40:12] Neither did anything else until until when until we're getting ready to sell the house.
[00:40:15] Then I got a bunch of stuff done. I can beat that. I've done moved to move where the stuff was
[00:40:20] still in the boxes from the last move. And the movers are like, well, we need you to take it out of the
[00:40:25] boxes because we can't use other people's boxes. I'm like, you want me to take all my stuff out of the
[00:40:28] boxes for you to put in new boxes. So yeah, I bet that. There's a mountain leaders course up at
[00:40:33] Bridgeport. It is. Yeah. And how was that? It was awesome. So I didn't want to go just because my wife
[00:40:37] had quit a job and came down and that had limited time. And it was this whole thing where I put my
[00:40:43] name in the hat because I didn't know my wife was quitting. So on the first deployment of my
[00:40:46] name in the hat, when I came back, they're like, you're not going. And then at the last second,
[00:40:50] like, after my wife quit, and I probably should have moved all our stuff out. They're like, okay,
[00:40:54] you're going. I'm like, what? You know, I was like flipping tables. How long is that course?
[00:40:57] It was three months. And so it is very challenging because it's so cold.
[00:41:03] Some mentally, it really takes a toll. But I have a good skier. I grew up skiing and ski resorts
[00:41:08] around the Midwest. And so that was fun. And back then, they probably don't do this anymore.
[00:41:12] Back then, for weekends, they gave us a 16 passenger van and let us as the students have it.
[00:41:17] So we had a gunny who didn't drink. And he just drove us to Tahoe or, you know, every week.
[00:41:22] I mean, it was some of the fun of the weekend that I've ever had. The last time I came to San Diego,
[00:41:26] was on that bridge portrait. So me and my buddy took a flight to San Diego. And I had a guy who had
[00:41:32] an apartment in the gas lamp district in, uh, maybe a good time. Yeah. And then you're, you go into
[00:41:38] employment. And now you're working up. You do you know you're going to Iraq this time? Yeah,
[00:41:41] we do. I know you're going straight to Iraq out, taking a ship. That's right.
[00:41:45] And, but this is now 2007. But your work up is in 2006.
[00:41:51] Uh, no, the work up, the work up was January to July of 2007. Okay. But still, do you know where
[00:41:58] you're going? Do you know you're going to Ramadi the whole time? Yes. And so at that time,
[00:42:02] still 2007, you started to work up. Ramadi is still pretty freaking hot at that point.
[00:42:06] Ramadi was very hot in January, 2007. And then there was a thing called the L. Ambar Awakening.
[00:42:13] And so it was almost like the sharp pivot like right as we were getting there. And so the unit that we
[00:42:18] ripped with two five, I mean, they had just, it was like gunfight, gunfight, gunfight, and then
[00:42:24] it will last two months of their deployment. And almost like somebody just hit stop. And so it
[00:42:29] created a lot of weirdness for us because it was like, we were still operating under TTPs where
[00:42:34] it was like gunfight, gunfight, gunfight, gunfight, and it just, it really wasn't that by the time
[00:42:38] we showed up. So where were you? Where in Ramadi were you? So I was a company XO now. And we,
[00:42:44] I was on the south west corner, I started a place called JSS Iron. And we had like two
[00:42:55] platoon outposts. So as a company XO, I was consolidating the patrol rosters and like the
[00:43:00] name of the game then was always have patrols in the battle space. Like, what are we doing?
[00:43:04] I just get them out there, right? So it was just like just saturate the battle space with presence.
[00:43:09] And so as XO, a lot of my role was just making sure that we had good perimeter security of our
[00:43:15] positions, that we had all our gear and that the operational plan, I was like the
[00:43:19] absolute, if you will, at the company level. And then about three months into the deployment,
[00:43:26] they moved us because we were at that time trying to move out of the city to further outpost
[00:43:31] to allow the Iraqi police to have more control. And so we basically built a fob in the ground up,
[00:43:38] it was called JSS Sua. And this was all the way in the southwest out of the city now.
[00:43:44] And it was called Sua because it was literally, I think, built by a sewer. And there was nothing
[00:43:49] there. And you know, even though we had been in Iraq since what O3, it was like we had never been
[00:43:55] in our Iraq before. So it was like baby web showers, no childhood. I mean it was awful. It was bad.
[00:44:00] And so we did that. We finished the deployment there.
[00:44:03] And what was the, I know things had settled down a lot when you had patrols out in the city,
[00:44:09] were they taking any contact? Or was it? Yeah, we had one pull to and they got in some context.
[00:44:13] Did the, the problem then, it was almost, I don't know, I don't want to say more dangerous,
[00:44:18] but it was like you'd get lald into a false sense of stability. And then there'd be a suicide
[00:44:25] best attack. And you lose guys. And so my best friend, so I did the first deployment in
[00:44:31] Bravo Company. I was a particular commander. So when we got back, I was still a particular
[00:44:35] and Bravo Company. They moved me over to Alpha Company to be the XO. So I still had a lot of good
[00:44:39] friends that were particular commanders in Bravo Company. One of them, it's guys' name was Dave
[00:44:42] Warden. He used to, we used to make dinner. He was a Pittsburgh dealer's fan. I was a Bengals fan.
[00:44:47] So we'd always have like rivalry games together with my wife. And he responded to a sniper threat.
[00:44:55] And Sua's side best came up to him, guy wearing Sua's side best, and detonated it and killed
[00:45:00] one of his Marines in Blue David, lost his leg. And so there's just an example of, you know,
[00:45:06] I'm sitting there for two months with like nothing happening. And then I got to listen on the
[00:45:10] radio to my buddy being evacuated out lost a Marine. And then, and so yeah, so we had one pollton
[00:45:19] that all got combat action ribbons from doing patrols and getting into fire fights, but they didn't
[00:45:24] really kill a lot of people. It was more, that deployment was more just about like census patrols
[00:45:30] stability, building shit, and trying not to get blown up. I mean, there was a, there was the adjacent
[00:45:37] batayan. I might get the units wrong. I hope I don't, I think it was 28 and one nine. And they were
[00:45:42] doing the rib towards end of our deployment. And this is still a story told in the Marine Corps
[00:45:47] while they were sitting at the ECP, a huge, so there's like two companies in there because they were
[00:45:51] doing the rib, a huge dump truck blew through the ECP with a bunch of explosives. And all of the
[00:45:57] Iraqis ran in these two young Marines, Stan of the ECP from different units, didn't know each other,
[00:46:01] stood there and killed the driver and got themselves killed. And all the Iraqis were talking
[00:46:07] about how brave the Marines were. And then we, we almost believed that they were probably
[00:46:12] exaggerating that a little bit. And then after this huge explosion, one of the cameras, even though
[00:46:17] it looked like it was broken, still had the footage. And then went back and pulled the footage.
[00:46:20] And it was exactly like they said, these two young Marines, Stan of the ECP, knowing they were
[00:46:25] going to die, not knowing each other. Like in that instant realized what was happening,
[00:46:29] saved everybody else on that base. So like that to me, that story almost describes what
[00:46:33] Romadi was when I was there. Like you can be standing on that ECP for seven months without a single
[00:46:39] thing. And then all of a sudden in a second, there's a dump truck flying at you and you know
[00:46:43] you're about to die. And so for me, the ECP, so I was always, it was like, I'm not exaggerating.
[00:46:53] I was like 20 hour work days constantly. And you know, you go back and you're asking
[00:46:58] why were you working 20 hour work days? Like, I can't put my finger on exactly what it was.
[00:47:03] It just seemed like there was always something that required like a meaty detention. And the
[00:47:07] ISO container that I lived in was with my company commander and our one-trip. So it seemed like
[00:47:12] people were waking us up. Like somebody always needed one of the three of us. That was the
[00:47:16] stupidest move in hindsight, putting us three in the same sleeping facility. Like it was so dumb.
[00:47:21] And so like when I came home from Romadi, I mean I started having chest pains, like real chest
[00:47:29] physical chest pains. And I it took me a lot of kind of figure out that it was anxiety. And then I
[00:47:33] didn't experience anxiety during the deployments. Like when you're working 20 hour days and
[00:47:37] years ago go go and hit me like once I tried to chill out. But I tell that just to say,
[00:47:44] I think I kind of was going so fast that it just kind of freed some of the wires my brain there
[00:47:48] for a little bit and took some while to work through some of that. So you get home, you get home
[00:47:55] from that deployment and then what's next? Yeah, so I had to get forward the earlier. So I had
[00:48:02] planned on getting out. I didn't get along with my batained commander on that deployment. He was very
[00:48:08] dictator-ish almost like verbally mentally abusive. I just didn't care for him. I didn't,
[00:48:14] I don't know if I even agreed with the mission of Romadi. Like I said, I joined because I wanted to
[00:48:18] be in combat. But I found myself as my company commander would write the contracts. And as the
[00:48:23] exo, I was what was known as the pageant. I go to camp Romadi and they'd filled my book bag
[00:48:28] with like $200,000 cash and then run around and just give it to like these mafia figures.
[00:48:33] And I'm just thinking like, is this what we're doing? Like this just, I don't know if this counter
[00:48:39] insurgency. Oh, this is what we're doing. I don't know if this counter insurgency, like because
[00:48:44] all the generals are talking about like how great it is. But like even as a young tenant, like I had a lot of
[00:48:47] questions. I was like, that was that was influential to me because I'm thinking like there's got to be a
[00:48:52] more effective way. Like these guys that I'm giving them money to right now. I don't know if anyone
[00:48:56] else sees this. But this guy is not going to build stability here. And I rack this guy's going to
[00:48:59] take it. And he might even make it worse for the local Iraqi. And so anyway, I left. I would thought
[00:49:06] about getting out, but my wife's very much wanted some stability. I thought like she deserved it.
[00:49:12] And so instead of getting out, I took school of infantry as a company commander. It was in North
[00:49:17] Carolina. I didn't have to move and the goal was to do three years there and find get to get a master's
[00:49:23] getting an MBA and then go on the next thing. And when I got to the school of infantry,
[00:49:28] I was very busy. I was go go go go. School of infantry is funny because right then it was Iraq
[00:49:33] and all my instructors were Iraq veterans and all their families are willing to put their
[00:49:40] problems on the shelf when you're at war. But it's like they had an expectation for their husband
[00:49:45] when he got home that they would address some of those problems. And then those point structures
[00:49:49] were working dark to dark and it was like every single one of them were going through a divorce. Like
[00:49:55] up to like my senior and list of like every single one like I was bringing in chaplains. I was
[00:49:59] bringing in workshops. And so the biggest struggle there was just the personalized of my guys. They all
[00:50:03] had drinking problems. They all had marriage problems. They were all working through their own
[00:50:07] demons and then trying to teach 300 privates how to be infantry men without losing their cool,
[00:50:13] you know, not flying off the handle. And so that was kind of a more emotionally draining than I thought
[00:50:19] it would be. And I did it for about a year and a half until I write it about then it was.
[00:50:26] So I was at SOS from O8 to 10. If you go back and look at the news around O809,
[00:50:32] the common of the Marine Corps, guy named Conway was saying he wanted to get the Marine
[00:50:35] Corps out of Iraq and into Afghanistan. So I was right when they were trying to do the pivot and I
[00:50:39] thought, hey, you know, my Ramadi deployment and it wasn't the combat that I thought it was going to be.
[00:50:44] It was very emotionally draining but it was, you know, I wasn't shooting a gun all the time. So I was like,
[00:50:50] I would love to get an Afghanistan and then maybe get out and just have that experience.
[00:50:55] And so I contacted my monitor and I found a deployment through an organization called joint
[00:51:00] IED defeat organization, Jai Doe. And they see he's like, there's a joint requirement for an
[00:51:05] infantry captain. He's like, this is perfect. It'll get you there. You'll get every all the combat
[00:51:09] experience that you want. And all you need is two years of SOS, not three. So after two, I can
[00:51:14] cut your orders if you get your commands endorsement. We can make this happen. So I went and
[00:51:18] talked to my boss and my boss didn't want me to do it. He was very reluctant. He wanted me to be the
[00:51:24] officer or the H&I company commander, which is like the senior builder. So they're like, he liked me.
[00:51:28] Were you instructing at all? Were you at the SOS? Or were you more just like, overall
[00:51:34] in management position? Yeah. So you get 300 privates. So SOS is in two camps. So there's MCT and
[00:51:43] ITB. So all marine and list of marines that are not infantry go to MCT. And they get, it's evolving
[00:51:49] now with the new force. But back then they got like two weeks of infantry training. And ITB
[00:51:55] you got one month. So it was essentially like your follow-in-school. So the guys at MCT, if you're
[00:51:59] going to go be a motor T driver, you'd MCT for two weeks and then you go to a motor T school.
[00:52:04] ITB, they just get longer training than their infantry marines and then they go onto their
[00:52:07] follow-in unit. And so again, it's changing now. I think it's up to like 10 weeks for ITB. But back then
[00:52:13] it was only four weeks. And so that's outstanding. Yeah, it is. It really is. And so they got,
[00:52:21] so we would get 300 privates. And we would divide them into four platoons. The platoon commanders were
[00:52:25] either staff sergeants or sergeants. And then each platoon commander had two or three instructors.
[00:52:30] So you never had more than three to four for, I don't know, do the math, like 75 guys. So it's a lot.
[00:52:37] The instructor student ratio was not good. And there was no other officers. I had a first
[00:52:41] sergeant in a gunning and then there was the young captain. And that was the staff.
[00:52:46] So you're not doing a lot of instruction. You're not seeing a lot of what's going on.
[00:52:51] There were most of the instruction comes from, they have a separate cadre of instructors at the
[00:52:57] instructor group. So it's almost like the staff that you have is almost like facilitating in the
[00:53:02] after hours and the watching and the day to day leadership. Now there's still a lot of classes
[00:53:07] that we give out in the field or or once they get back to the house. And sometimes there's even
[00:53:10] like scheduled platform instruction. But most of the platform instruction comes from general
[00:53:14] support instructors. So the question was how much classes did I give? There were probably two or three
[00:53:19] program company commander classes. And the rest was just in prompt to hey, you're going on
[00:53:24] liberty this weekend under a committee commander. No control. No control. I was very lucky in my career.
[00:53:30] I wasn't instructor, which is a strong word to use when back in the day, back in the day we used
[00:53:37] to that's heel team. There was just instruct. There was there was training inside each heel team.
[00:53:43] So like as an E5, I was teaching a bunch of stuff and it really put me in a great position because
[00:53:48] in you're you're having to learn it better and then you're teaching it and then you're seeing
[00:53:51] how it works and seeing the mistakes that people made. So I've always felt like I learned a
[00:53:55] ton doing that and then later in my career when I was running training, which was our training
[00:54:02] was just freaking out standing. And but I got to again watch, observe, teach and I learned so much
[00:54:10] when I was in those positions. And that's what I wanted if you were, you know, kind of actively teaching
[00:54:15] and what you got out of that. You're 100% right. The people that learn the most are the teachers.
[00:54:22] And because you can't fake the funk when you're the teacher and you have to there's, you know,
[00:54:26] five, six, seven hours of prep for anyone hour of instruction that you get at a minimum. And so I
[00:54:31] 100% of the grab work at a bunch of former school houses and we learn that abundantly. The people that
[00:54:36] teach are really the ones that learn in my opinion. Yeah, I think I learned 70% of what I ever learned
[00:54:44] in my life while I was in E5 instructor, cadre at COT 1. Yeah, because I taught, that's the
[00:54:51] other thing I was like a young single guy. So it was what trip am I going on? All of them. Going to teach
[00:54:56] diving. Going to teach in my warfare. Going to teach CQC. Mount Epigore to teach and everything.
[00:55:01] And spec recon cool. I'm going on the spec recon trip. So really just got to teach everything.
[00:55:06] And then you could watch and your de facto detach from what's happening. So you're watching.
[00:55:10] We used to teach the new guys that came to seal team one. We would put them through their
[00:55:16] initial course of training. So then I'm watching the young officers. And I was just, I was an
[00:55:20] enlisted guy, but now watching these young officers and seeing like, oh, this guy is getting totally,
[00:55:25] he's been spending all this time shooting his weapon. So no one's making any calls. I never
[00:55:28] were going to do that. I'm never going to make that mistake. And this guy over here is imposing his
[00:55:32] plan on the rest of his squad. So they're all pissed at him. I'm not going to make that mistake. So I
[00:55:36] got to learn like I said, I might even be more than 70% from just being a young,
[00:55:42] E5 teaching at CLT1. And then also you had these senior guys that were super knowledgeable and
[00:55:50] they're teaching you. That's just freaking a good way to learn. But then you get picked up for this
[00:55:57] giant O billet. Yep. Yeah, so the giant O billet was awesome. I mean, it was awesome. So I had no training.
[00:56:07] So I mean, you have heard my story about my training in terms of IEDs. So an EOD guy goes to school
[00:56:12] for 69 months depending on what branch of service and what they did was they put me in Crystal
[00:56:18] City, you know, Hilton Lobby, Comfort Truman, and then like had a fake name for the conference,
[00:56:23] shut in lock the doors and they had some like old IED maker. And he gave us like a crash course on how
[00:56:28] to make a circuit essentially. And then how the explosives work. And so we did that for three days.
[00:56:33] And then they shipped me down range. And that was that. I mean, it was crazy. When you think about it.
[00:56:39] And I ended up then you were the IED expert. Then I was the one I just heard. I don't think they ever
[00:56:44] expected me to be the IED expert. They wanted EOD as obviously the IED expert. But what the billet was
[00:56:50] supposed to do was be the infantry interface to have enough knowledge of IEDs but to think like
[00:56:57] employment of infantry stuff and connect the route clearance button and the EOD and then be able
[00:57:04] to translate that into whatever is important to the batang commander. So you get your three A.S. schools
[00:57:12] and then you deploy right to Afghanistan. That's right. Yep. How was your life on this whole scenario?
[00:57:18] My wife. I stoked was she. So did. Yeah. So we got. Because she's like oh you're home.
[00:57:27] Oh, sure. You kind of have a normal job. I get almost like a night. Then I got her pregnant.
[00:57:32] So she was three months pregnant and then I went to Afghanistan. Right. I'll tell a story
[00:57:38] because it just kind of illustrates the stress on a military family. So we were going
[00:57:41] crib shopping. She knows I'm going to Afghanistan. Again, I was we knew I was deploying when she was
[00:57:47] three months. So we're going crib shopping and we were going to like this is like the third store.
[00:57:51] Like I hate shopping. So we're going to like the third store and I see a crib. I'm like this one.
[00:57:55] I went this one. Let's get this one. She's like I want to keep looking around and I'm like well
[00:57:59] I'm just going to stand here by this crib that I like and you can keep walking around and I'll
[00:58:03] be right here and then she just broke down crying and it had nothing. Was this the first baby?
[00:58:08] Yeah. Was this the first girl's kid? This is a bad tackle.
[00:58:11] I know. Well, that's one tell a story. Like it was my mistake. People can learn from it. That's
[00:58:16] right. Better go walk around. Look at some great grips. I know. I know. And so that's what she's
[00:58:22] she's as she's crying. She's like you can look around. Come back when you're ready. I got it.
[00:58:28] I got it. Is it building relationships? She's talking about it.
[00:58:33] So bad move on my part. So then we I had to usher out. She's crying. I felt bad. We got in the car.
[00:58:41] We drove home and it was like one of those really awkward and tense situations. We had to buy
[00:58:45] the crib online because we couldn't bring ourselves a look for a crib again. And then I deployed.
[00:58:51] So I tell that story just to say, you know, I really wanted to go to Afghanistan. But it comes.
[00:58:57] These things come out of cost, right? So I got pregnant wife who's trying to be very supportive.
[00:59:01] She was a supportive of me staying. She was even supportive of me going to Afghanistan.
[00:59:05] But it doesn't mean that it doesn't come with some type of personal cost.
[00:59:10] So she's three months pregnant when you leave for Afghanistan. How long is the deployment
[00:59:14] to Afghanistan? Oh, you're. And did you come home for the birth of your kid?
[00:59:18] I, so you get when it's a year you get. It's already too long. But answer it.
[00:59:23] You get two weeks. But I missed I missed the birth. But I was able to come home like
[00:59:29] right as she like four days after the birth. So right after she got out of the hospital. So I
[00:59:32] did get two weeks with them. But I mean, I haven't two weeks with the baby after you've been in
[00:59:37] just combat every day for six months knowing you're going back to that same place for another six
[00:59:43] months. It was real hard to establish any emotional connection because like, I mean, that's just,
[00:59:50] it was, I would almost have rather not gone home and be honest with you because it, like you're,
[00:59:54] when you're with them, your mind's there, when you're there, your mind's with them. And so
[00:59:59] yeah, in some ways it was good. But other ways it was, it was very hard.
[01:00:04] So you go on deployment. Who are you, who you with? So I got two. It's like a solo operation.
[01:00:10] That's right. It was just a studio diverse solo. I got through Bogram Airbus and that's where
[01:00:17] Gita's task force was that. So they called a test force pilot in the Afghanistan.
[01:00:21] So they got the task force pilot in headquarters and they decided it's, because most Marines are
[01:00:26] familiar with Southwest, Helmond, and Candahar. But they didn't send me there. They sent me to RC East
[01:00:32] to support the 101st Army Division. And so I got out, the first unit I got to was a
[01:00:38] Italian called 3187 and they were in East Pactica Province. And the Favrega tattoo was organ.
[01:00:45] And their company, Favre's were also dispersed that any time we had to take them logistics,
[01:00:52] it was like a one day road trip throughout Clarence, Petune and EOD. And any time there was an EOD
[01:00:58] response. We had to fly out on the fly line. And I was just, I say that just to say it was very
[01:01:02] distributed. And like most people or Marines, picture of Afghanistan and it's just like desert,
[01:01:07] wasteland. It was like the Rocky Mountains where I was at. I mean it was not what I was expecting.
[01:01:13] And I got out there and I was like, this is, this is not the desert. And so you could see Pakistan
[01:01:17] from where we were at. It was just, it was a cowboy country. And then what were you doing?
[01:01:23] Well, I guess explain a little bit more detail. So you get, there's a logistics supply that needs
[01:01:28] to go to some outstation. I'll illustrate with one war story from that time frame.
[01:01:33] So one of the company Favre's hadn't been resupplied in a while. And so they planned this,
[01:01:40] because in the, to a lot of August it was raining a lot. And so when it rains, the aircraft couldn't
[01:01:45] fly, the logistical supplies. And just because they, with all these jingle trucks, it was easier
[01:01:51] to move logistics. So we took this huge patrol. So I went with EOD and wrapped Clarence Patrol
[01:01:57] and all these logistics trucks out to this company Favre and dropped it off. And then when we got there,
[01:02:01] they said, hey, we've got this platoon outpost over here on the border near Pakistan that just
[01:02:07] hasn't had whatever in so many days. Like, we really need you guys to push this stuff out here. We,
[01:02:11] we here at the company Favre don't have the assets. If you call back to the time and they're like,
[01:02:15] yeah, if you can, that would be great. So we do. So next day, then we go from this company Favre
[01:02:20] out to the platoon Favre. But we left it like A-D-M. So how many vehicles are you bringing with you?
[01:02:24] So you got the disaroff estimate. Rob Clarence Patrol soon is probably a dozen. You got the EOD truck
[01:02:30] in there. You've got, are you guys an M-Rapz? What are you in? What are you in?
[01:02:34] Yeah, it's J-Rapz. J-Rapz and J-L-T-Vs mix. But they also had a lot of logistics trucks. We're
[01:02:41] jingled trucks. You know, that is like a Afghani flatbed. And then you've got the Afghan National
[01:02:46] Security Force. So they're all in their F-150 pickup trucks. And then you got probably an infantry
[01:02:51] platoon or company for extra security that maybe in just homevies. And so it's this. So this is a big
[01:02:57] comery. Long collection of different players. And so we drive through to get to these things on
[01:03:04] the border. There's not roads. You're driving through like the creek beds of the mountain crevices.
[01:03:11] And we get to there and like, let's call it one or two o'clock in the afternoon. So there's
[01:03:16] 15 vehicles, 20 vehicles? I'd say like 40. 40 vehicles to go out and resupply up all the tune.
[01:03:23] Yes. Which, by the way, has 40 guys. Yes. So this is like already you can see what this is like crazy
[01:03:31] shit going on. Yes. Okay. So 40. So a 40 vehicle convoy with every type of vehicles, madmax
[01:03:39] is driving out to resupply 40 dudes that are out on the edge of the world. They were on the edge
[01:03:46] of the world, yes. And so it's maybe like two o'clock when we come out of the creek bed. And
[01:03:52] this is relevant to the story. When we came out of the creek bed there was like five afghanies
[01:03:55] sitting there with like their arms crossed, staring at us and we're like, let's look at these in the
[01:03:59] various characters. Like, one of these guys going to do, and nothing happened. And we were all kind of
[01:04:04] item and that's relevant later. So we go into the top. We drop all this applies off. It's like three
[01:04:09] clock. And the call is made like, what do we do? It's three clock. I mean, it took us like do the
[01:04:14] math eight to three to get here. Do we want to go back or do we get sleep here tonight? And again,
[01:04:19] 40 vehicles, like the civil pull tune outposts were like, so probably a bad call. I mean, the
[01:04:24] hindsight 2020 obviously is a bad call. But at the time it just made sense of like, let's just go,
[01:04:28] like, you know, get back late. It will be alright. So when we start driving back, now we're going
[01:04:33] back into that creek bed where those guys are now it's nighttime. No, it's like three clock.
[01:04:36] Okay. When we leave, it gets dark soon. So we're going back in this creek bed and where those guys
[01:04:43] were standing, they had piled a bunch of rocks up to the the creek bed. Well, obviously this is
[01:04:49] going to be an ambush. These guys piled a bunch of rocks as a marking mechanism or as a blocking
[01:04:55] mechanism. Great question. Okay. Check. You know what I mean? So we didn't ask that very intelligent
[01:05:01] question. We just immediately assumed ambush because that that had happened to us before. So we're
[01:05:06] like, all right, these guys are going to ambush us. So you sit there, you got your eyes up and
[01:05:09] you're looking around. Nothing happened. And then it's just like, all right, well let them trigger
[01:05:13] the ambush. I were going to go through it and we went through it and nothing happened. And then we just
[01:05:16] didn't think through anything else and we just started going. So we get now it's dark. It's probably
[01:05:25] eight o'clock. Are the Afghans? Are you on night vision? Because I know you're on night. But what
[01:05:31] the Afghans do? The Django trucks are on night vision. I can't remember. They were so far back
[01:05:38] that if their lights were on, I didn't see it. Yeah. I can't remember. It's a good question. I don't
[01:05:44] remember. So we were, it's now like eight or nine o'clock. It's dark and started raining. And I can't,
[01:05:51] it's hard to describe. It's almost as if somebody had broken a dam because it wasn't like the
[01:05:56] creek bed started slowly filling up. It was almost like a wave came down and hit the tires.
[01:06:01] This is like flash floods in area of eye desert. And so, but it's still only at the tires and
[01:06:07] the m-raps in the jail TVs go through it's still pretty easily. But then we get the call on the radio
[01:06:11] that one of the Django trucks had gotten stuck. You know, I can't even see it. It's so far back. So I'm like,
[01:06:16] all right. And your job in all this is like an observer or you're not in charge of anything.
[01:06:21] I'm not in charge of anything. But it's weird because I outrank the boat. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:06:26] You know what I mean? Yeah. So you've kind of orange, George. Right. You're in charge. In a way, yes.
[01:06:32] Right. And so we stop. We're waiting for the Django truck to un-mess itself. And then all of a sudden it was like
[01:06:40] another dam broke. And then the water hit right to our grill. It's like almost immediately. And now it's a
[01:06:45] situation where you can't just get out of the car. And so we, a little backstory, we had killed
[01:06:54] Taliban members and taken their icons. And then we keep this is on the same operation. This is on
[01:06:59] previous one. Okay. So I'm telling the story. So to the understand, we kept the icons in the patrol
[01:07:05] and we put it on scan. And when the Taliban started talking, we'd catch it on the scan. Then we'd
[01:07:10] hand it to the turp, the turp, and interpret it. And then we'd pass over the radio, whatever it was being said.
[01:07:15] So when we were in the flash flood, now we're like worrying about the water. It comes across the
[01:07:21] radio. Like, hey, the Taliban sees that we're stuck in the water and they're maneuvering to ambush on us.
[01:07:26] Okay. Yeah. So now you're now you're in a situation where it's like, all right,
[01:07:32] what's your poison? Like, because the machine guns are all hooked up to the trucks.
[01:07:36] But at a certain point, you might drown if you stay with the truck. You might drown just trying to get to the
[01:07:42] shore. So it's like, what do you do? Well, we all got up on the roofs of our trucks. And the water
[01:07:48] kept coming up. And finally, I was like, I, I, I'm going to die from drowning before I die,
[01:07:53] getting shot with the, with the Taliban. So I'm going to take my chances. So I, I slung my weapon.
[01:07:58] And I, I was the first one to jump in. I jumped in. I swam ashore. Current was ripened, but I'm a pretty
[01:08:03] good swimmer. I got over there. And then I started making rope bridges. So I tied some rope up to a tree
[01:08:08] through it to the truck. And then we started having guys shimmy in from the trucks over to the shore.
[01:08:13] And so then we passed this down. All the trucks start doing it. Well, what happened was one of the
[01:08:17] soldiers in the back got on a rope bridge. And when he put the weight of him, when he got in the water,
[01:08:24] he panicked and he let go. And he didn't like clip in or anything. And so he rips down river. So then the
[01:08:29] call comes on the radio. Hey, we lost a soldier. He's, he's done. He's gone. This is an half dance
[01:08:35] soldier on my sermon. No, it's an American. It's an American soldier. Yep. And the afghate. So he
[01:08:40] when he floats down river, one of the ANSF, the ANSF, same to the afghate national security
[01:08:45] forces. And so they all start talking about how they saw him. And he basically, from our last vehicle,
[01:08:50] they spot him, float by him. So we know he's still ripping down the river. Right? So now you're in a
[01:08:56] situation where people are starting to get in off the trucks. We know the towel bands moving
[01:08:59] and we're just lost the sky down the river. And it's like, this is getting messy real quick.
[01:09:03] This is a little beyond getting mess. Yeah. And so we try to call in air support.
[01:09:09] You know, good to go to God going down the river, all this stuff. And they deny it because it's raining.
[01:09:13] And it's red air. And so they say, no. So I grab a bunch of guys and I'm like,
[01:09:19] clon, follow me. We're going to go do a patrol. We're going to try and find this guy.
[01:09:23] And it's it's weird because I'm not really my guys. So I got to like play diplomat. You
[01:09:27] like, can I have some of your guys to go do this? But I had good relationships. So I was able to do that.
[01:09:32] And then it gets even weirder. So then the Taliban passed over their radio that they had
[01:09:39] captured the American soldier. So we got we picked up a chatter that the Taliban has the American
[01:09:45] soldier. And so then we're all like, man, we got it. The acronym was Dust One. So we got a Dust One
[01:09:50] situation. So we call that over the radio. And previously they said they wouldn't send aircraft.
[01:09:54] But this time now that because we're right there on the border Pakistan, when the Taliban
[01:09:58] confirmed that they have one of our men, they're like, we're sending an airport. So they send this
[01:10:02] section of the patchies like immediately. And it was awesome. I mean, it was a female section
[01:10:08] Lee. And I was listening to her on the radio. And she must have killed like 20 dudes. And she was just
[01:10:12] like stoic. Like killed five secondary explosion RPG. He's dead. And like we were just watching her.
[01:10:19] Just like sweet this hillside, just laying waste. And I was just fast forward to end of this story.
[01:10:26] What happened was the soldier we ended up finding him the next morning. He washed down river. He
[01:10:32] drowned. And we ended up actually having, we thought he would have been rigged with explosives. And so my
[01:10:39] year D tech put his bombs and walked up to him in the river and cut him down and many
[01:10:43] footed down river actually caught him and pulled him out. And I don't know if you're ever seen
[01:10:47] him in this drown, but like their stomach expands and they get all these veins. And what had happened
[01:10:52] was the Taliban, even though we were listening to them, they were monitoring the ANSF radios.
[01:10:59] And when the ANSF saw the soldier float by, they got on their radios. The Taliban heard that.
[01:11:07] And then they pat knowing that we were listening to them passed misinformation to get into our
[01:11:13] loop. But you know, when I when our flight back on it, them doing that triggered the
[01:11:18] apachees, which ultimately killed all of them. So it's just one of those situations that I mean.
[01:11:24] So you asked me like, what did we do? Like, there's a story of like, you know, you leave that and
[01:11:29] it was what we were doing a resupply for a普通 fob. And you just walk away from like that was
[01:11:34] just a lot to unpack right there. So did the water eventually received and the vehicles were able to
[01:11:39] drive after that? The next morning they went down and we were able to get all the vehicles out because we
[01:11:44] brought from external sources, some records to help us pull stuff out. But they made us go up and
[01:11:50] down the river looking for the soldiers rifle and MVGs, which we weren't going to find. But we spent
[01:11:56] probably until lunchtime the next day just walking through the water acting like we were going to find
[01:12:01] that. And finally somebody made the decision to stop and then we got back on our trucks and left.
[01:12:07] And what's the uptempo like for you? So that's one mission that takes two days, three days.
[01:12:13] What are you doing after that? So, you know, then you go back to the company fob. Maybe spend
[01:12:17] a day reset and then you drive back to the batayan fob. And then I involved myself in the batayan
[01:12:22] battle rhythm, the meetings. I continued offered advice, but every time we're back at the batayan fob,
[01:12:27] anywhere in the batayan battle space where an IED is found in my EOD text fly out there I would go with them.
[01:12:34] I mean, I could just keep going for stories all day. But we, here's an example and that same space.
[01:12:40] There was a helicopter that was flying a ISO container of machine guns out to one of the outposts
[01:12:46] and it pickled it, which means it, I don't know what happened, but they decided to drop the
[01:12:50] ISO container of the middle mountains. So like, hey, we need you to go up there, check it out.
[01:12:54] We want to send you OD because there might be explosives in it. So we fly up there, we get to the
[01:12:58] thing, see if we can re-sling load it, we can't. So we're just going to blow it up, they're like,
[01:13:02] no, you can't blow it up, it's got machine gun and stuff. And like, well, it's all burnt.
[01:13:05] They're like, it doesn't matter, you got to carry it out. So I was literally carrying like 250
[01:13:09] caliber severs, like through the mountains and there was all unusable, but they didn't want to leave it there.
[01:13:15] And we were supposed to fly out that night. So I didn't bring, this is such a stupid move. I didn't
[01:13:20] bring like warming layers or things for the next day. And of course, because it took us so long
[01:13:26] carry all that stuff, then it got dark and then the aircraft didn't want to land in the mountains.
[01:13:30] So we just spend the night up there and I, I almost froze to death. I remember the only thing we had
[01:13:35] was a body bag and I slept in the body bag, spooning another man so that I wouldn't freeze it
[01:13:41] that. I mean, talk about in your head when you're like in the body bag, right?
[01:13:47] Yeah, as you're doing these operations, what do you, what do you, you mentioned that earlier
[01:13:53] when you're in your body and you're handing out hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars
[01:13:57] to various people? And you're starting to think from a strategic perspective, this doesn't seem
[01:14:03] like maybe the greatest idea in the world. When you got 40 vehicles going out to resupply, 40 soldiers
[01:14:10] out in an outstation somewhere and the risks involved, then now you lose a soldier which is
[01:14:16] freakin horrible. And now you're going to a mountain top to recover, destroy weapons because
[01:14:24] you're not allowed to blow them in place. What is your, what are your thoughts of this? Now you're
[01:14:29] how long you've been in for at this point? You're, yeah, so that was 11, so 7, 6, 7 years.
[01:14:34] So, so you've got a little bit more maturity as a, as a human and as a military officer. Are
[01:14:41] you starting to wonder what the hell's going on? Absolutely, I mean, you're just, I'm really
[01:14:45] good points right there. I think what ate me the most when I took that 40 vehicles to that 40
[01:14:50] manpatoon, I could see Pakistan. I could see their bases. I could see where they shot mortars
[01:14:56] at us from and we couldn't do anything. So, when you talk about strategic problems, like does
[01:15:02] America really want to win this war? Like, I can see the fucking home base right over there. Like,
[01:15:07] why can't I go over there and kill them? And so, I mean, when I look back at the Afghan war,
[01:15:12] my king read my brain around that, if I was going to put service members, lives at risk,
[01:15:17] I'm going to do whatever it takes to win the war. Or I'm not going to be there. But there was just
[01:15:22] a ton of things that we didn't do from a foreign policy standpoint to allow the service members to win
[01:15:27] the war. It's criminal almost. And so, yes, standing there at the border of Pakistan, I remember
[01:15:32] looking at their home bases and just taking this crazy. And then how long this deployment is a one-year
[01:15:38] deployment? Yeah. And in the middle of it, you go home. You missed the birth of your son, my first son.
[01:15:43] First son, but you show up what two three days, but after he's born. That's right. And now you're
[01:15:48] going through this transition of one day you're sitting there waiting to get blown up by an ID. And
[01:15:54] then next, now you're sitting looking at the new crib holding your son. Yeah. And I agree, I know it's
[01:16:01] horrible to say, but like the mindset of not wanting to be a part of that kind of while you're
[01:16:07] still trying to work, I never, you know, in the Navy, we go on six months, maybe seven months,
[01:16:12] maybe eight months deployments. And I never went home from one of them. You know, the army
[01:16:17] would send guys home because they'd be on deployment, God bless them for 12 months, 14 months, 16 months.
[01:16:24] They, it was mandatory that they would send guys home. And even even like battalion commanders would
[01:16:30] go home for two weeks to give guys a break and give guys rest and let them see their families.
[01:16:37] But you go home, it's, it's two weeks at home. I mean, are you able to adapt at all? Or is it just,
[01:16:43] I just, I just send me back. I think maybe if your home life was consistent, there might be
[01:16:51] some utility in it. But when my home life had changed so much, like my wife couldn't even stay
[01:16:56] in her house because she had just had a kid. She was bedridden. She was at her mom's.
[01:17:02] You know, they're, I'm not able to take care of her. She's having to have her mom take care of her.
[01:17:05] So I've got to, for my two, he's go stay at my mother-in-laws. I've got a new kid.
[01:17:10] I mean, it just, it was like I was living somebody else's life when I came home and again, all you
[01:17:16] can think about is the constant combat you're going to go back to and it was just a lot.
[01:17:23] You roll back over there and you just maintain this optempo for the year that you're there. That's right.
[01:17:28] I mean, random operations, tag along on random operations. Well, I, I moved,
[01:17:36] probably in October, November,ish. I moved out of Eastern Pectica and moved into a
[01:17:41] Providence called Gazzini. There was a district called Andar. So we built the base from the ground up,
[01:17:47] called Andar, Fawbandar. And I moved to support 187. So I went from 3187 to 187.
[01:17:55] And back then, so this is in 2010, the Polish headroom that Aia for like two or three years.
[01:18:02] The Polish don't fire unless it's in self-defense, don't do anything aggressively. So that's why they put
[01:18:07] Americans there. And so again, we've been at war for at eight years at that point and it was almost
[01:18:12] like uncharted territory in the middle of Afghanistan. I mean, Gazzini is like the economic
[01:18:17] center, you know, maybe outside of Kabul. And so for, you know, it's similar to Ramani,
[01:18:23] where like I went to Sua, we've been in Ramani for six years and also, and I'm using baby wipes
[01:18:28] and we have no infrastructure and it's like, it's like we've never been there before. I felt
[01:18:32] this at the same thing happened when we went to Fawbandar. They were building it from the ground up.
[01:18:36] And it's even the the kinetic threat. It was like no one had done anything.
[01:18:42] And that area was different than the first one I described because the first one was much more
[01:18:46] distributed and which is like these long day patrols. That one was very much like day and day out,
[01:18:51] day and day out like flip patrol from the base or route clearance to just that adjacent little
[01:18:57] block over there. And so you were out, you actually moved to that outstation to that Fawbandar.
[01:19:03] Yes. And how big was that Fawbandar? How many people were there? Was it like a company
[01:19:07] Fawbandar? Was it a battalion? It's time to head quarters, but all their companies were in
[01:19:10] company outpost. So I mean, there was only probably 200 people in it. Did they have a company there
[01:19:15] that they were utilizing for that AO? That was running out operations for them. Yeah, I understand the
[01:19:22] question. I think I think potentially one of the companies was in the Battalion Fawbandar because
[01:19:26] obviously somebody owned that battle space. I can't remember. And so then you're there and you're
[01:19:32] doing the same thing. You're going out on patrol, whoever's going out on patrol, trying to capture
[01:19:36] the ID information, sending that ID information back up the chain of command. Yeah, so
[01:19:42] a couple more stories just illustrate that kind of what I did. One time one of the companies
[01:19:46] found a house full of, it looked like propane tanks, but I was like aluminum tanks filled with powder,
[01:19:52] found like a hundred of them. Just didn't know what it was. And so they threw them all in a well.
[01:19:57] And then they took a picture of it, put it on a storyboard. Wait a second.
[01:20:01] So the platoon's out on patrol. They find a hundred aluminum tanks filled with random powder.
[01:20:06] Yep. They don't know what to do with it, so they chuck them in a well. That's exactly right.
[01:20:09] They did not misstate that. And then, you know, young Captain Schellers
[01:20:15] reviewing the storyboards, because I felt like that was the right thing to do. Again, I didn't have
[01:20:18] a boss. So it was like, you know, as in general sport as a baton, but I really could have done
[01:20:22] nothing. How did I chose to do? But every day, went through all the storyboards, went through all the
[01:20:26] cigarettes, went through all stuff like was really trying to help myself. That's story right there. Like,
[01:20:30] I could, I could just imagine looking at what am I with two graders like, okay, tell me that again.
[01:20:35] Yeah, yeah. Wait, so what you do? Wait, what was in them? And you hooked them all in the well?
[01:20:39] And they were so ignorant. They then took a picture of it and put it in your storyboard.
[01:20:43] Usually you do something that like raises an eyebrow and you're like, I don't know if I should have
[01:20:46] done that. You know, and included it on the storyboard. So they put it in the storyboard. It's one of
[01:20:50] those things where I bet, up old team commander can articulate, you know, what we didn't know what to do.
[01:20:55] We couldn't carry them out. We didn't want the enemy to use them. The well was deep.
[01:20:59] Made the call. Sir. Yeah. It's like, okay, Roger that. I'm going to have to talk
[01:21:02] on brief this up the chain of command, but I got you back.
[01:21:06] Yeah. Okay. So it turns out it was aluminum powder. So in that AO, so in the first one, I was at
[01:21:12] it was all potassium chloride. There was a match factor in Pakistan. So all the IDs were
[01:21:16] potassium chloride. But in this new AO, they used aluminum powder with ammonium nitrate. So we
[01:21:23] called that anal actually. And so what they had in those containers was aluminum powder that they
[01:21:28] would mix with the fertilizer to make the IDs. And so I identified it. I pulled up a troll together.
[01:21:33] We went out. And when we got into the house, like, I'm literally holding this PowerPoint
[01:21:39] print out of the storyboard. It's got a picture of the house and it's got a well in it.
[01:21:43] And I'm like walking around. There's no well on the Queen of the White House. It's kind of dark.
[01:21:46] What had happened is they, the Taliban had come behind the soldiers and put like plywood over the
[01:21:53] well and then covered it in dirt. They basically hide the aluminum powder that the soldiers had
[01:21:57] all thrown in there. And so it took me like 45 minutes. But finally I was like, no, no, this is
[01:22:01] the house. Like, this has to be like right here. And then you start kicking it. You're like, oh, you know,
[01:22:06] so then we re-enit a disposal of all that. So there's one example of like, what does a counter-idee
[01:22:12] team leader do? You know, just caught that. And then the other thing I usually did was I walked the
[01:22:17] rails. So as an infantry guy, I would pull probably six or seven soldiers out of the route clearance.
[01:22:23] And on noon routes where we found a lot of IDs. And at the time I got my prawn star,
[01:22:29] where we were walking down a route, I'm on one side. There are on another side. And you could see
[01:22:33] guys messing with something on the road like probably an ID, right? So, you know, we try to close
[01:22:38] a distance. This guy runs away circles around. He's getting chased by my other guys on the other
[01:22:43] side street. And so he crosses the street while I'm running up the other side. And I was like one of
[01:22:47] the things where you like, you both come around a corner and you're like, based a phase. And you both
[01:22:51] just like try to pick up your guns and somehow you both miss each other from like three feet away.
[01:22:56] And you know, got behind a corner, killed a couple guys and some machine gun fire went off. And
[01:23:02] there was one point where like I just kept chasing people. And I found myself like 200 meters away
[01:23:08] from even like the guys I was with. Maybe like, you know, a half kilometer away from the patrol
[01:23:12] and the panic started to sit in my gosh, you know, like I'm kind of separated here.
[01:23:15] Um, but I was able to, I was able to bring the infantry up and link up and they got some
[01:23:21] orders down ranch. And the takeaway from the story is we uncovered seven ID's on the route that
[01:23:26] they rendered them all safe. And we were trying to do a complex ambush, right, with all those
[01:23:30] ID's and we were able to push, push them off. But like there's an example of like,
[01:23:36] great tactical success. Like what the fuck did that do in terms of the overall picture? Like I'm not
[01:23:41] really sure. Like on the tactical level. I mean, that was an awesome play that we ran.
[01:23:47] But I mean, just got so many examples of that. And then then I start studying the operational strategic
[01:23:51] levels. And I'm like, where was the connection to what we're trying to do? Like, why are they still
[01:23:54] coming from Pakistan? You know, what is my political leaders doing? Like, are we trying to get
[01:24:00] rid of the Taliban? Or would we want to have sure OK? Yeah, so many questions.
[01:24:07] So you wrap up that deployment. Yep. You come home. How's coming home? Now that you're home home?
[01:24:14] Yeah. So when I got home from Afghanistan, again, I was going to get out.
[01:24:20] But they offered me formal schools called Expedition Warfare School. It's Captain of
[01:24:24] Major School. It's a year. And I just thought, man, this deployment has taken a lot out of me,
[01:24:30] emotionally spiritually. Like a year in school with a bunch of other warfighters of my peer group
[01:24:35] probably really good for me rather than trying to jump into the corporate world. And so I took the
[01:24:39] U.S. job instead of getting out, which was in Quantico. You owe time after that. That's right. Right.
[01:24:45] Look at you. I want to step ahead of me. Yeah. So the catch to that is there's a two year
[01:24:50] requirement on the backside. So by taking the EWS job, I then was required to go serve two more years.
[01:24:55] This is a company command. And this is going to get you out to what how many years?
[01:24:59] Really gets me out to a career for us. But yeah, it takes me about 10 or 11 years. Yeah, 10 or 11 years.
[01:25:04] At which point a lot of guys say, hey, I'm only got, you know, what is it? You look at
[01:25:10] over one. Only got eight more years and really how many tours is that? Plus, one of
[01:25:14] that last tours of Twilight Tourists are really only have six years. So people start
[01:25:18] negotiating and rationalizing staying in. Even if maybe it's not 100% what they're into at the
[01:25:22] time. That's right. Which is, which is interesting because you're almost the whole time you've been
[01:25:27] saying you're going to get out. You're going to get out. You're going to get out. Which is weird. I
[01:25:31] never, I actually never thought I was ever going to get out until I got out. The whole time I thought
[01:25:37] I was staying in forever. I'm like, oh, I'm going to do 50 years. So watch this. And then it was a
[01:25:43] very abrupt for me. You know, when I was like, oh, you know what, I'm actually going to get out.
[01:25:48] And so I always thought I was going to stay in. Which was, which was, I guess it was very easy
[01:25:55] for my decision making process because I was like, okay, what do you guys need me to do? Yeah.
[01:25:58] What do you want me to do? Let me go to that, call go to that, whatever. Let's go.
[01:26:02] But you were always kind of, I think it was like we started with the beginning of my story.
[01:26:08] This, I never had ambitions to go in the military and this was never what I thought I would end
[01:26:13] up doing. The reason I continued to stay in is because I found a lot of purpose in being a
[01:26:18] marine officer and I truly enjoyed it, truly enjoyed being around the service members. So it's one
[01:26:23] of those things where I guess my self image was never to be a career military officer. But I
[01:26:29] continued doing it because I found fulfillment in it. Yeah, and there's also something beneficial
[01:26:34] about someone that's not considering that, oh, I want to be. You know, that's, I always joke about
[01:26:40] the seal teams because in the seal teams, if you ask a seal officer, a young seal officer,
[01:26:45] why they came in the seal teams, the answer, what job you want to do? I guarantee what they're
[01:26:51] going to say is, I want to be a platoon commander. I want to be a seal platoon commander. That's the,
[01:26:56] that's, which by the way, is like three years into your career. Yeah. You ask an army officer?
[01:27:02] What they want to do? A lot of them will say, oh, I want to be a battalion commander. I want to be a
[01:27:06] brigade commander. I want to be a division commander. That's actually in their head. Seal officers
[01:27:11] do not have that in their head. Most seal officers don't have that in their head. And there's
[01:27:15] something that's kind of nice about someone that's in the army that just says, hey, you know, I want to be,
[01:27:20] hey, I want, I don't have this big aspirations of being a general or a kernel. They just want to go
[01:27:26] and do the job. There's some benefits to it. There's also some interactions to it because once
[01:27:30] guys in the seal teams get done with that platoon commander tour, a lot of them go, okay, you know,
[01:27:33] I did that. And we've, in the seal teams try to extend the operational tour a little bit longer. You know,
[01:27:38] you can, you can extend it. You can go a little bit longer and still do work. But eventually,
[01:27:44] it's going to dry up for you. And you don't get to be a battalion commander. You can
[01:27:48] seal team commander, but that's not the same as a battalion commander. It's really not the same as a brigade
[01:27:54] commander. Cool jobs, but it's not what people come in for. So the fact that you were sort of
[01:27:59] always thinking, maybe I'll get out means to me in a positive way, you weren't trying to maneuver
[01:28:05] for your career. Because there's a lot of guys that, oh, yeah, here's, oh, I need to do this billet.
[01:28:10] I'm trying to get this award. I'm trying to get this deployment so I can get promoted. There's
[01:28:15] some people that that's what's driving their careers. And it's, it's never, it's horrible to see.
[01:28:21] It's horrible to see what they do. And there's guys in the, certainly, guys in the seal
[01:28:25] teams that are like that. That's there. That did have the goal of the two commanders just a step,
[01:28:30] just a stepping stone. Because what they really want to do is they really want to make out more
[01:28:34] whatever, same thing can happen in the army as well, same thing can happen in the Marine Corps. But for
[01:28:38] you, you're kind of like playing it by ear. Which means you're not making decisions based on,
[01:28:44] hey, I'm going to look out for my career. Which is a good thing in many cases.
[01:28:49] Yeah, I see that in Marsau, too. What you're the proud me described with guys doing what they
[01:28:54] want to do is a lot of got Marsau guys want to be a team leader. Or, you know, want to be a company
[01:28:59] commander, company commander is kind of the pinnacle where they then bleed off all the talent. Because
[01:29:02] the company commander at Marsau is a major. And then they don't stick around to be the batang
[01:29:06] commanders that they need them to do. But I also see that the general infantry, a lot of the
[01:29:12] counter to what you just said, there's a lot of guys that come in that have aspirations for
[01:29:16] meat of the tank commander, have aspirations for being in general. And there, you know, you kind of
[01:29:22] alluded to it. There may be some positives to that in terms of big thinking and, you know,
[01:29:28] speaking good about the system and figuring out how to navigate the system correctly. But I honestly
[01:29:33] think the focus should always be on the service member. And what's best for them? And I understand,
[01:29:40] as a leader, I've been doing this for 17 years, the responsibility to the organization,
[01:29:44] versus the responsibility to the service member. So I'm not saying all of our specs are
[01:29:47] leader, or at least you just be looking after the service member. But I think when you get focused
[01:29:52] on how to navigate your career, it does cloud your perspective on how to strike that balance.
[01:29:59] So nonetheless, you take the deal. And you go, okay, I'm going to go expedition to war for a school.
[01:30:05] And then I'm going to owe them two more years. So that's going to put you at 11 years, 12 years.
[01:30:11] Your wife's probably like cool, at least this might, I might be gone a lot, but at least you've
[01:30:15] got a job, but it's we're getting a paycheck. Yeah, I had my, so as soon as I got back from Afghanistan,
[01:30:21] she got pregnant with the same kid. So my two older boys are 14 and a half months apart. So that's like,
[01:30:26] you know, before Afghanistan, and then like first time getting home from Afghanistan. And then it was like,
[01:30:31] I, so I very quickly, within nine months of being home from Afghanistan, went from like no kids to two kids.
[01:30:36] You know, so this was life was changing. And then we, we waited another couple of years and had my
[01:30:42] third son in between my next two deployments. So how was expeditionary war for a school?
[01:30:47] I liked it. You know, the anxiety that I had after a body came back full fledged after Afghanistan,
[01:30:52] started having different symptoms, started having like face numbness. And my vision started getting
[01:30:58] blurred. And everyone wanted to lump it into PTSD, which I knew. I wasn't struggling with PTSD.
[01:31:02] I didn't have like bad dreams. I felt bad about anything. I did. I'd said like Tony Suprenowish,
[01:31:07] like real physical symptoms. And it just, people will then the buzz phrase was PTSD. And I just
[01:31:13] don't think people understood what anxiety was. And I just had to work through that. And so I don't think
[01:31:18] I really understand what what you're talking about. So PTSD would be like, oh, I'm having trouble sleeping.
[01:31:26] I'm the hyper alert and all that. What's the anxiety piece? What's what's going on with this?
[01:31:32] And is it physiological? It's both. So it's part hereditary, it's part, you know,
[01:31:39] nurture nature. So also it's part experience. So I think the simplest way to just say it is once
[01:31:45] your fighter flight gets burnt enough, your brain starts producing different chemicals that it
[01:31:52] may not be if you're not on high stress all the time. And for me, it just took a while to recalibrate.
[01:31:58] I had to get into yoga, I had to get into meditation. The best remedies work it out. So if you
[01:32:04] work out, stay healthy and stay fit. But the problem is a lot of guys after these deployments
[01:32:09] fall into the false trap of alcohol. And alcohol is one of those things where, you know,
[01:32:14] it can suppress some of those anxiety or things for a little bit. But what they don't realize
[01:32:17] is it comes back twice as worse the next day. And so EWS is one of those like false hopes for me.
[01:32:24] Or I was like coming back, I hadn't been drinking for a year. And I was like drinking beer. And
[01:32:28] I feel good at night in the next day. But I'm like, why do I feel so horrible? I was also getting
[01:32:34] older too. I mean, my 30s now, not my 20s anymore. And so I think part of it was just
[01:32:38] learning my body, learning all the physical reactions that took place in the deployment. And
[01:32:43] not allowing myself to just be bend in a PTSD category that may not apply to me. Even though that's
[01:32:49] what I think everyone wants to label someone when they get back from something like what I
[01:32:53] had gone through. And you know, it all worked out. I figured it out. But just took me green a lot of
[01:32:58] books and talking a lot of people. Probably more than I needed to navigate it. Let me ask you this.
[01:33:04] So if you get these like anxiety type situation and it's caused from some traumatic situation that
[01:33:12] you've been through. And now this is post the traumatic situation. Isn't it like what you're talking
[01:33:17] about? Well, I don't understand the difference between PTSD and what you're talking about anxiety.
[01:33:23] I think the the where way I distinguish it is PTSD from what I've learned from the psychologist,
[01:33:34] typically manifests itself into guilt, shame, emotional struggling with some of the things that you went
[01:33:42] through that may have a psychological and physical impact on you. Anxiety to me, think of it like
[01:33:49] you're about to do public speaking and everyone has butterflies but like a severe case of
[01:33:55] anxiety is almost like debilitating, right? And that those physical manifestations may not necessarily
[01:34:02] be tied to a trauma. They may just be tied to the way like you said physiologically or builds,
[01:34:09] or it may just be because you have experienced so many things that your brain is producing chemicals
[01:34:15] in balanced manner. Now I'm not a doctor, so somebody needs to check the stats on this, but I can't
[01:34:20] tell you having talked to many psychologists, there is a in the whatever that manual is,
[01:34:26] major differences between the two. Okay. And then you as you're working out and you're doing yoga
[01:34:32] and you start to get through that the that calm after you went through the drinking phase of trying
[01:34:37] to get through it. I always worked out, sometimes I worked out and drank, so I had to just
[01:34:44] get through the drinking thing and then just focus on working out. And this is all happening while you're
[01:34:50] at EWS, yeah correct. Learn anything good at EWS, what are you learning at EWS? EWS is a little bit more like
[01:34:58] operational level. I went to two formal schools, I went to command and staff later as a major,
[01:35:04] command of staff is very varsity level, treat you like an adult, here's all the reading, go read it,
[01:35:08] and we'll talk about it. It was adult EWS is somewhere between you're still in the basic training
[01:35:13] pipeline and you're getting close to an adult, but we're not really sure yet, so it's your
[01:35:18] treated as such and there are a bunch of captains that aren't criss yet that probably need to be treated
[01:35:23] like that, but thinking it's generalized too much. So there was a time when I was like,
[01:35:26] I'm a professional and I've been doing multiple wars, like the fucking talk to me like that.
[01:35:30] What's EWS? It stands for Expeditionary Warfare School. It's like the captain to major PME,
[01:35:37] said so you don't have to go to the resident, but you have to do the school, so there's like
[01:35:41] box of books where you can get sent the books and get credit for it that way, there's seminars
[01:35:45] where you can go to like night school for it, so every captain has to go through it to become a major,
[01:35:49] but they select the top ones to go to the resident one your course. That's where you got selected
[01:35:55] for. That's right. So your career's going pretty good at this point actually. It was an indicator
[01:35:58] that I was on the right track. And what do you, this is one year school, where you going at the
[01:36:06] end of that? Where'd you go in the end of that? I went to third Battian second Marines as a company
[01:36:13] commander, so it was a headquarters company commander where we, our deployment was another
[01:36:18] mu, there's 10 months, get on ships, sail around the ocean and be ready to respond. And as a
[01:36:25] headquarters company commander on a mu, I had like a reconplotin and I had an engineer putin
[01:36:30] and then I had like all the supporting and the establishment and the Battian. This is kind of
[01:36:34] an eclectic group of individuals and then they also used me as like the future operations planter
[01:36:40] if you will. So as the episodes on the ship they'd send me to like Egypt or they'd send me to
[01:36:45] wherever to do the planning for whatever that bilateral was. And so that was my 10 months deployment there.
[01:36:50] That was a 10 month deployment. Yeah, it was long ship forward deployment. It was like right after the
[01:36:56] delibia thing and the Benghazi thing and like the, and because of that thing,
[01:37:03] the mu deployments had gotten like backed up. Something happened that messed up the deployment
[01:37:08] cycle, being close to that operation. And so to like fill the gap, my deployment was 10 months
[01:37:13] because they always want overlap. And so I don't remember fully understand why it happened,
[01:37:18] but they told us from the very beginning like this is going to be a long one boys. And that was a
[01:37:21] ship board deployment. So you're living on a ship, which is good times. Yeah, something.
[01:37:29] But that's weird. That's almost like for me, you know, because I came in before at the war.
[01:37:34] That's like a normal deployment that we did back then. I did two deployments with the Marines
[01:37:39] on the Args out here on the West Coast, but it was like, hey, sail around, go to wherever we're going.
[01:37:46] Like I went to Egypt. I went to Oman went to these various random places and did whatever exercise
[01:37:52] we're doing. People getting spun up about whatever they're getting spun up about. You probably
[01:37:57] did you create any PowerPoint briefs where you're on that? You know, I did.
[01:38:06] All right. So that's another deployment and what what comes after that.
[01:38:09] So then I get back and they actually, I was still a captain and they tried to make me the operations officer.
[01:38:17] And I did the battalion operation. Yeah. So I had actually gotten the top company commander,
[01:38:24] finished report as the headquarters company commander, which kind of rare. So I think it just speaks to my
[01:38:28] Patank commander really like me, thought highly of me. And so he tried to make me the operations officer.
[01:38:32] And I wasn't selected that year. So I was going to be in zone the next year. And regiments like
[01:38:37] brother, we got like five majors sitting on the deck up here that need to keep it. Like if you're
[01:38:41] going to make a captain, it's not even selected. Like we're going to give you a major.
[01:38:44] And so he came back to me and was like, hey, like this is what happened. So you're not going to be the
[01:38:49] ops. So what do you want to do? Do you want to stay in the battalion? You've already done your
[01:38:54] company commander to her or do you want to go somewhere else? And in my community, headquarters
[01:39:00] company commander is like one of those weird ones where you can hide somebody there.
[01:39:05] And so it's not always the best guy. And so like in terms of street cred and my community,
[01:39:11] I didn't want people to think I was just a headquarters company commander, right? And so I was like,
[01:39:15] you know, I got a, no, I'm going to stay here and I'm going to go be the weapons company commander.
[01:39:19] So they offer me weapons company, which is like the probably the best company commander usually in
[01:39:23] battions. And so that's what I did. So I was a weapons company commander for the next year and a half.
[01:39:27] Did you do an appointment? How's it look? I did. So we did a deployment. It's called a unit deployment
[01:39:32] program. So we went to Okenawa and we're the purpose of it strategically. This did be involved in the
[01:39:37] war plan. If no, it's Korea where to do something. But all we really do is try to prevent our
[01:39:42] Marines from getting drunk and getting into the fights. And then we'll take them into, you know,
[01:39:47] Japan and go into Tokyo. We went into South Korea. And that's a six month deployment? Six months.
[01:39:52] What number deployment was that for you? Five. Including one of those was a one year deployment.
[01:39:57] Yeah, one was a year, one was 10. Her body was seven. And then the first music six and the UDP was six.
[01:40:02] So it all comes out to, I mean, about four years. Yeah, that was stuff up.
[01:40:09] And then after that, what's next? Yeah, what's crazy too is with all those deployments. Like
[01:40:14] that was middle of 15. Then I got promoted the major and I never deployed it. So quite honestly,
[01:40:20] all of that one was through my captain time, which is even what made it crazy. And so I got promoted
[01:40:26] to major. And the monitor at the time was actually the company commander of my puttune commander,
[01:40:32] buddy, who got blown up a Romani guy's name was Eric Clark and I knew him real well.
[01:40:37] And so we had a special relationship. And he had selected me for a place called PPNL. It's like
[01:40:43] plans policies and orders. And in the Marine Corps, it's a very prestigious bullet. So it's like one
[01:40:47] of those bullets. And if you do well, you can go on and be a general officer. So if you're a guy that
[01:40:51] is playing the deep game like you described, like that's the job you want. And I, at this point,
[01:40:57] I had decided it was going to be a career. So after three, two, I was like, this is, I'm going to go to
[01:41:01] 20. And I just had no desire to sit in a basement cubicle in the Pentagon and, you know,
[01:41:08] design a new helmet or whatever, I was going to do it, I just couldn't do it. And like you said earlier,
[01:41:13] like I loved teaching. And I loved idealistic young officer. So I asked him if I could go to the
[01:41:18] basic school. And he obliged, because he had a lot of people that wanted to do PPNL. So he cut me
[01:41:24] orders to the basic school. And you, I tell that story about I knew him, because it's not usually
[01:41:27] that easy to just talk to your mother and say, no, I don't want that. I want this and have it work out.
[01:41:32] But in that situation, it did. And so he got me orders to the basic school. And I got back from the
[01:41:36] UDP in July of 15. And then I off cycle moved in October 15. And I bring that up just to say,
[01:41:44] my kids and I have three kids at this point. They're the two older ones are in school. And I didn't
[01:41:50] want to pull them out of school. So I actually geo-batched, so just again, more distance, right?
[01:41:56] So get back from that deployment. And then I went and was living in a condo and DC and driving
[01:42:02] back to North Carolina on the weekends for nine months until the following summer when I moved
[01:42:07] him up. All right. So the basic school this time, you're on the other side, watching people go through.
[01:42:13] Is that a good to me? That sounds like a good loaning experience. Seeing people how they react
[01:42:19] from a leadership perspective and from a psychological perspective. That's right. Yeah.
[01:42:24] And it's great. The basic school is all taught by officers. So unlike school
[01:42:28] of entry where the instructor is primarily enlisted at the basic school, the primary instructor is
[01:42:33] the officer. So even as a major, they sent me through a pretty good training resident and I had to
[01:42:38] get qualified to train every single thing. So it's like they have a different qualification for
[01:42:43] each subject that you attempt to teach. And so they do a really good job there. I got to be
[01:42:47] the operations officer, a company commander, and the war fighting director, operations officer,
[01:42:52] and war fighting director, typically Lieutenant Colonel Billets, but I just got the opportunity
[01:42:56] because at that time they didn't have the Lieutenant Colonel's and they chose me to fill both
[01:43:01] those Billets at different times. So my three-year tour there. So I mean, I really got a great run out of that.
[01:43:07] And not to kind of like focus on this. You haven't really brought it up a little bit
[01:43:12] but just to kind of because where this story ends up, your career is like going really well at this point.
[01:43:19] Yeah, I mean, as you mentioned, you were the number one platoon commander. I didn't mention it as the
[01:43:24] weapons company commander. I got submitted for the left-witch award, which is you know, the best company
[01:43:28] commander in the Marine Corps. I didn't win obviously, but just to have my batang commander submit
[01:43:32] me up through the regiment and division for that was an honor. And then yeah, at the basic school,
[01:43:37] like the monitor tried to send me to PPU, and gave me exactly what I wanted at the basic school.
[01:43:41] Then when I got to the basic school, they made me the opso. I said, I'd brand new major, which is a
[01:43:46] normally Lieutenant Colonel's Billet. And then I did a company commander tour and then it was a new
[01:43:51] CO and then the new CO hand chosen me to be the warfighting director. And so yeah, I mean, I think I was very
[01:43:57] competitive now. Well, your fit reps look in like this whole time. I'm all top. I mean, if we want to
[01:44:02] skip forward the the judge in my case, it was like I've never seen a record. So example, exemplary
[01:44:08] and also high marks. So there's an impartial guy that looked at my reports and it's like this is the
[01:44:12] best I've ever seen. So but you got to keep in mind, like I said earlier at the basic school,
[01:44:18] the best captains went to TBS or went to IOC. And when I was a TBS, I was a major. The best
[01:44:23] of majors, don't always go to TBS, the best captains do. And so I was a little off track. And when
[01:44:28] out the reason is coming out of Ramadi number one, I didn't have anyone that used to be in the
[01:44:33] military. There's a lot of people in the military today. I think nepotism is prevalent, like
[01:44:38] general sons or at least had a regimental father. And they they don't get a free pass, but they
[01:44:43] understand the key billets that they need to go to. And they understand the relationships that
[01:44:48] need to be harnessed and and developed. And so these small advantages in the beginning turn into
[01:44:55] bigger advantages over time. So I guess my point is when I went to school of infantry as a young
[01:45:00] captain, that didn't help me at all as a professional. And probably even going to Afghanistan
[01:45:06] on an IA billet where I didn't get a report from a Marine didn't help me at all in terms of career
[01:45:12] progression. So like that whole three years where it was very important to probably separate yourself.
[01:45:17] I just didn't do it, but going into my three two company commander time because all those experiences
[01:45:24] I had did make me a very effective leader. I was able to really shine as a company commander,
[01:45:30] and those reports are really what stood me. Got me starting to separate from the pack and then
[01:45:35] as a major at the basic school again, same thing. So in those six years it was like I think that's
[01:45:40] when people started looking at my record and saying who's this guy. But I think most of my
[01:45:45] other peers that there's a lot of peers that I have that are I will admit much better than me.
[01:45:50] I mean smarter than me, more talented. And so I look at some of my peers and I'm just always impressed
[01:45:55] and I just always you know one of us fired to be like somebody's guys, but some of those guys
[01:46:00] were put on tracks early kind of hands-lected for things early that I just don't think anyone knew about
[01:46:05] me until later in my career probably similar stories to OCS and TBS, right? I show up on day one
[01:46:10] and I'm lost and by the end people are like, look this guy. Maybe he's not as lost as we thought he was.
[01:46:16] I think my career is almost the same story. So you get done with being the
[01:46:25] basic school instructor and then it's off to then it's that when you can win two Command and
[01:46:31] Staff College. Yep. Yep. And now so now you're in it to win it.
[01:46:34] Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Once I got to the basic school I was in it to win it. So yep, I went to
[01:46:39] Command and Staff got selected for school and it was nice because I was already up in Kwanakus.
[01:46:43] Is it hard to get selected for school? It's not. There's two things. One you got to be competitive.
[01:46:49] So probably in the top 40% which really isn't that much but top 40% and then you have to be
[01:46:55] the timing to make it. So there's a couple factors in place not always the best. Sometimes
[01:47:01] it's just about timing. And how long is this? How long are you go there for?
[01:47:05] Command and Staff's a year. A solid year and again now you're going to O time but you don't care at
[01:47:11] this point because you're doing a career. Your wife's on board with doing a career. She loves
[01:47:15] this stability. She's looking at retirement. Yep. She's like we're set for a life. She never said that.
[01:47:20] I mean we're over selling it now. But yeah, she I mean kids are all in school now. So my
[01:47:25] youngest is now in preschool. Three kids in school. They're still young enough that we want some
[01:47:29] stability. And my goal actually was to go back to Lijon. So when I was there as a captain I had bought
[01:47:35] a 50 acre piece of timberland that I've got four wheelers and stuff that I keep on it and then we
[01:47:41] still own my house in Jacksonville. So I had two properties still in North Carolina when we
[01:47:45] were up in DC. And so my goal after Command and Staff was to get back to North Carolina and just
[01:47:49] remain there to retirement. And so that was kind of my play. Now some of the some of the more
[01:47:57] conflicted thoughts you had when you were in Ramadi, when you were in Afghanistan,
[01:48:04] are you are you kind of just dealing with those as in like hey that's the way it is sometimes
[01:48:09] you know I can do a good job. I can try and mitigate that stuff in the future. When you're at
[01:48:13] Command and Staff College and you're talking about now more senior level strategic level things
[01:48:19] are you having considerations around those things or you having discussions around those things.
[01:48:24] Do you feel like you've sort of accepted that that's the way the system works and there's some
[01:48:29] benefits to it and there's some negatives to it and you can as you get more senior you can focus more
[01:48:33] on the benefits. Where are you at mentally? Yeah it's a great question. So at Command and Staff you
[01:48:40] can do a masters. I think it's part of the curriculum now when I went through as a student it was
[01:48:45] like an option. You didn't have to do it because it required extra classes and a thesis to
[01:48:50] write on your own times so some people just wanted to downtime chose not to do it. But I wanted
[01:48:55] the masters I wanted to challenge myself and most instructors there implore almost like they
[01:49:03] drive you towards writing something about like the tactical level small squad unit level like
[01:49:11] insightful novel idea. I wanted to write about foreign diplomacy and how it was broken.
[01:49:17] And I had been working on the small tactical level at the basics school for three years. I was
[01:49:21] the work fighting director for the year previous like there's probably no one more qualified
[01:49:25] to write some type of thesis 20 page paper easily on how to do that but it just it didn't
[01:49:30] interest me. And so I was reaching for foreign diplomacy. My instructors, my PhDs told me like
[01:49:37] every year there's so many that comes in here and talks about how the gold water nickels that
[01:49:41] needs to be revamped and it's just the same old stuff and you know my counter to that was like
[01:49:46] well it hasn't fucking been fixed yet has it and that there's probably nothing more important
[01:49:50] when we're still losing wars. And so despite all the pushback on it I wrote you're only supposed
[01:49:56] to write 20 pages and the parameters of the paper were minimum of 20 papers no more than 80 pages.
[01:50:03] So I wrote 65 pages like I just couldn't stop writing and I gave it to my instructors and they
[01:50:08] just handed it back to me like immediately like 65 pages I'm not going to read this.
[01:50:13] It's like you guys assign 80 pages a night of reading 80 pages a night. I just spent
[01:50:21] months writing this and you can't even give me the time to say these parts of your
[01:50:26] paper don't add value that you won't even like read it they're like make it less.
[01:50:32] And so that's what I was up against. I was like I felt like as an officer I wanted to be
[01:50:36] challenged academically and I just I didn't get it from the PhDs so I did I made it 30 pages
[01:50:42] got my master's checking the box and then nobody ever read the paper again.
[01:50:46] Did you learn any good information at Command and Staff Call? Was it helpful?
[01:50:51] Oh yeah I do think the you know like if you're saying Command and Staff Call is a value and
[01:50:58] a hundred percent the real question is could it be better and yeah it absolutely could be better but
[01:51:03] there's it's always easier to find ways for it to be better. I think from like 30 years ago
[01:51:08] what they have now is you know world's better and don't what we used to have like they have
[01:51:11] small groups they facilitate good discussions they really challenged my thinking on the wars I mean we
[01:51:16] went back it's like Frederick the Great and Prussia all the way through Napoleon and Civil War
[01:51:23] and modern day and I think they did a really good job but they didn't go in it too deep onto
[01:51:28] anything and they challenged me and like Henry Kissinger's book diplomacy I had never
[01:51:34] opened it up and they really pulled a lot out of there that challenged me and I believe in realism
[01:51:39] and I don't think American foreign diplomacy has really gotten to that level and it's been like
[01:51:43] explored a little bit but again they just exposed me to a lot I think it's really incumbent upon
[01:51:49] the student that wants their exposed to something to then really get the education on their own
[01:51:54] and it takes independence to be able to do that if you just go through the motions of what the
[01:51:58] school asks you'll get very little out of it. Was there any paradigm shifts in your fault while you were
[01:52:05] there? No my problem in an education system is I always start to get a little frustrated because
[01:52:14] there's like a system to the education system and like if you haven't figured out about me I'd
[01:52:18] like to challenge things and at a certain point people don't want to hear it and you just become
[01:52:23] a pain in the ass and so there's like a line that it's different for every person every boss
[01:52:27] I've ever had says I want honesty back what does that mean you like well I guess I'll find out
[01:52:31] through trial and error of giving you honesty back and there's gonna be a certain point where
[01:52:35] I'm gonna either read through your face or through your emotion or what you're saying to me that
[01:52:39] I've gone too far and now I'm starting to annoy you and then that's when you know you got a back
[01:52:44] off and so I always find myself in the small group discussions like I can dominate any conversation
[01:52:49] with my opinions but there's a time where you've got to read the room and understand
[01:52:53] you need to be a passive listener and so that was probably my struggle with it. I just felt like some
[01:52:57] of my views went counter to what they were trying to teach and if I was to get to aggressive with
[01:53:04] it it seemed to be counterproductive, vice-discussed and so a lot of it has to do with counter
[01:53:10] certainty you know it's the same thing as it'd be us like I just the way you win the way you fight
[01:53:16] a counter or the way you fight in an insurgency is to not get involved in an insurgency and that
[01:53:22] requires deeper thought on the operational strategic levels and we've just celebrated these generals
[01:53:27] for the last 20 years that have wrote the small wars, manuals or reinvented the small wars,
[01:53:31] wars, manuals and counter-insurgency manuals and there's a time at place where we
[01:53:35] is military tacticians need to understand how to do it absolutely 100% agree,
[01:53:39] read all the books, got it but to just continue to engage them for multiple decades without
[01:53:45] like real metrics of effectiveness or exit strategies, Afghanistan withdrawals just the perfect
[01:53:51] example. I mean there couldn't be a better historical example of how that was just
[01:53:56] terribly executed and it's just a symptom of a much larger problem and so a lot of these opinions
[01:54:02] I had in command of staff solidified through my paper and you know I left there I told the story
[01:54:07] about me handing the paper to the PhDs because that's just another example of like no one really
[01:54:12] cared they were there to expose you to the things that they were exposed to but they didn't look at
[01:54:17] like where Stoo Schiller was academically and say how do we get Stoo Schiller individually
[01:54:21] to be more challenged and developed to where we need him to be and maybe they don't have the
[01:54:25] bandwidth to do it but you know you look at the great military minds of history like
[01:54:31] classwits he had a guy named Sean Horst that was a military professional that sat there and
[01:54:36] and knew where classwits was met him there and then challenged him specifically and I just
[01:54:42] I sometimes wish I had that so you wrap up at that school and then where you off to and then
[01:54:52] I so I told the story if I wanted to get back to North Carolina so I told my monitor different
[01:54:56] monitor now don't have a relationship with this guy and so I had seen them on two road shows
[01:55:02] which is like yearly the monitors go around and you get an opportunity to shape what your
[01:55:06] desires are going to be when you're a mover so I told them two years previous I went North
[01:55:09] Carolina I don't care I don't know what's going on and no one really wants to campus you
[01:55:13] and so usually when you say campus you know it's like all right you got it but you know I
[01:55:16] had spent my whole time in campus you and Quonico I'd never been out to the West Coast or anywhere else
[01:55:21] and so I knew there was a chance that the Marine Corps was going to start to say no brother you
[01:55:25] you've you've homesteaded too long so then I saw him the year before or same thing and so he said
[01:55:30] all right I'll tell you what's to if it's not North Carolina I'll call you and keep in mind I didn't
[01:55:35] do my observability based on that story I told and as a major you gotta do what's called key
[01:55:40] billet and burn infantry officer that's up so our exo so coming out of command staff they're like
[01:55:44] you have to be an exo to remain competitive and so I mean everybody got orders in like January
[01:55:52] February March I mean I got to like the end of March we're talking like you're gonna move in June
[01:55:57] and I still haven't even talked to this guy like all the school registration is in like January
[01:56:02] my wife's asking me every day and I'm like you know I don't know to tell you babe I don't
[01:56:06] so I finally because I knew this guy's real busy but finally I just broke down and I called him
[01:56:11] and I was like hey man in a march everyone in my command staff classes orders except for me you told
[01:56:17] me you would call me if it wasn't campals June so I'm assuming I'm still going in the campals
[01:56:20] June and can you confirm and he he's like no campals June's filled he's like the good news
[01:56:27] we have availability and 29 palms are San Diego and I want you back so I got to the phone with them
[01:56:34] I'm I'm in no exact where I was I was at Panera and I was still writing my masters thesis at the time so I was like
[01:56:40] I used to go to Panera just right and so I'm sitting in Panera just mad and I'm thinking about all the
[01:56:47] property I got North Carolina and how like I'd been telling my wife it would be North Carolina for two years now
[01:56:51] so I wrote them an email email a little bit easier for me to not be as emotional because I can kind of edit it
[01:56:59] and I wrote but I want to put in writing now so hey man I'm putting this in and writing for you
[01:57:04] I'm gonna forgo keybill it there's got to be a sexual assault officer or some other thing in North Carolina
[01:57:09] that you can give me it's in writing make it happen and I had sand and like you know you gotta understand like how
[01:57:16] scary it is to do something like that because I essentially said my career's over in Panera
[01:57:22] but I wanted North Carolina and so then he called me back and said this is what he said
[01:57:27] he said I got your email I'm gonna give you exactly what you want and then he hung up
[01:57:32] oh my god I was like oh man yeah I'm gonna be the sexual assault officers like in
[01:57:38] rain division like this is and I'm gonna have to go back and look at all my peers and they're all
[01:57:42] gonna talk about where they're going to be botanics those or botanian offsets or wherever and I'm
[01:57:46] gonna have to tell them what crap job I just got because I did to myself and I know what he did
[01:57:51] then because the monitor has two responsibilities he's got a responsibility to the Marine Corps
[01:57:55] he's got a responsibility to use person and the monitor's job responsibility to Marine Corps is to
[01:58:00] keep competitive officers competitive so then he went he didn't know me from Adam so after that
[01:58:05] he went through my record and as he was going through my record he probably came to the realization
[01:58:09] like shit this guy's pretty good if I bury him in a staff job in secondary division then I end his
[01:58:15] career and he had a responsibility to keep me competitive but he also knew that I had like dug my
[01:58:19] heels in and I wasn't going to California without like probably you know screaming at top of the
[01:58:23] mountain so he was in like a new one situation and so that's how I ended up at Marseille so he
[01:58:29] wasn't advertising a Marseille support paty and exo and he had that kind of hidden on the shelf and so
[01:58:35] he called me back and he was like hey I've got a Marseille support paty and exo they're actually
[01:58:40] asking for infantry officers I haven't made a public it's not really keybill but maybe it is
[01:58:44] kind because it's still baty and exo just not an infantry batty and he's like would you be interested in that
[01:58:48] I was like fuck yeah I don't care a lot of Marseille I'm fucking this all worked out thank you you know
[01:58:53] and so that's how it happened and so I took second Marine's MRSB Marine Raider support paty and
[01:59:02] so it was called and so the way it works is Marseille's got three battyans and then they have three
[01:59:07] support patyans the support patyans have their logistics common in tomorrins and they basically just
[01:59:12] do a six month workup just in the MRSB and then they aggregate them to the MRB unit and then they
[01:59:19] do six more months and then so it's like a full year of training and then they deploy as that aggregate
[01:59:23] team and I was the exo so all I did was facilitate the teams on their timeline but I was only there for a
[01:59:28] year so quite on a sandwich saw like one full cycle and then other cycles in the state of
[01:59:33] the day. Did you go on deployment or no? So while I was there because they only have three
[01:59:39] battyans commanders and so they actually the battyans commanders of the support patyans are actually
[01:59:44] baged Marseille guys and so they have in that sense they have six battyans commander so Marseille
[01:59:50] has at any time six commands selected battyans commanders and so the so-to-down range they have
[01:59:56] a cycle of when those guys go down there and control command that unit they actually while I was the
[02:00:03] exo took my battyans commander to be in charge of the so-to-f so he doesn't deploy with the battyans
[02:00:07] he only to deploy so it's like maybe five key guys and then some other people from across the
[02:00:11] regiment so I was essentially the battyans commander for majority of the time while I was back there
[02:00:16] but I never deployed so I just sat there in courthouse bed with my battyans his battyans but I was
[02:00:24] acting and it was really it was a good time I truly enjoyed it and why was that bill on me a year?
[02:00:32] Because I got selected Lieutenant Colonel yeah good question I would have stayed in Marseille until
[02:00:35] they until I retired to be quite honest with you but I got selected to Lieutenant Colonel and I
[02:00:41] actually went to the vampire meetings those acting co and the exo and in the vampire meetings so
[02:00:45] I got hurt from the horses mouth they're like we don't have we're filled up with Lieutenant
[02:00:49] Colonel's at her badge like we can't accept any non-bad Lieutenant Colonel so you got to go kid
[02:00:55] so I was your wife during that year was everything going cool there yeah if she was kind of stoked
[02:01:01] she's in North Carolina and we had a we had a sweet spot then you know once we got back
[02:01:06] to North Carolina we were in our house it was familiar territory I was happy with my job at Marseille
[02:01:12] kids are in school now it's just a little bit of like sanity yeah I mean it was good thanks for
[02:01:16] good on the home front at that point and so then what happens when you make Lieutenant Colonel where
[02:01:20] do they send you so I mean I knew I got I found out I got selected in like October so I
[02:01:24] don't even have Marseille for like three months so like within three months to take in the job I was
[02:01:28] looking for the next job and so I had some buddies that were up in division second-bring division
[02:01:35] which was still local and so I basically started putting out dealers and I was like hey I'm going to
[02:01:39] have to move um I'll take a staff job up there got my exo job being the exo at a Marseille support
[02:01:46] potenti so I don't need to keep building more I don't think so if you could if you guys could
[02:01:49] take me out appreciate it and then I finished the year at Marseille and that in that spring
[02:01:55] the chief of staff of Marseille so an o6 talked to the chief of staff of the division who is
[02:02:03] an o6 the chief of staff both of those gentlemen are generals now actually and between that
[02:02:08] conversation they decided to make me the six Marines up so I don't know how that shook out
[02:02:15] I don't know if it was because they just thought I was that talented or because I had
[02:02:18] done keep building an infantry battalion that they wanted to give me the regimental
[02:02:21] opso to make me more of a career that's right but either way I mean pretty important job
[02:02:27] there's only two regiments in the division to be the operations officer of one of them was a
[02:02:31] big deal so I then I did that for the next year before I was selected to batani command
[02:02:35] and then what happened once you got batani command so I got selected to batani command
[02:02:41] shortly after getting to the regimental opso job so but the regimental opso job just to pan
[02:02:46] picture going into the story we're about to tell I mean it was the Marseille job was awesome
[02:02:52] fulfilling manageable hours good work the regimental opso job was like 20 hour days we spent two
[02:03:01] months at an ITX which is in the Mojave Desert where it is just expected that like I don't
[02:03:06] eat I have tobacco and I just drink energy drinks like it's almost like I'm looked down upon
[02:03:10] if that's not how I conduct myself and it just it took a lot out of me and my boss was
[02:03:18] not very appreciative most of the time and I got into some like this was kind of at the point
[02:03:24] of my career where I started really pushing back so like as a as a first lieutenant as a exo
[02:03:30] and a body with my batani commander was kind of verbally and even at times physically abusive like
[02:03:35] just kind of took it and in my head was like this is wrong but as a regimental opso as a 40-year-old
[02:03:41] man if you start telling me like I'm gonna I'm gonna what do you say I'm gonna fucking fill a you
[02:03:49] I'm gonna fucking cut you in half that's when I'm like bitch fucking come bring it we're fucking
[02:03:55] gonna do you know like these are the conversations we would have and it's it's like dangerous right
[02:04:00] because and I had these with multiple of sexes like I don't know what it is about regimental commanders
[02:04:05] but they they just felt like they could talk to me like like I was a piece of shit and I just got
[02:04:11] to a place in my life in my career I just wouldn't be talked to like that and so it created this
[02:04:16] unhealthy tension and then when I would push back on some of these conversations you would think that
[02:04:23] after like a couple days it would actually be like a steam release but it almost like it almost was
[02:04:33] like seen as a threat and it would almost increase the pressure where then they would come back
[02:04:38] and want to like reassert dominance which would then want to cause me to like reassert like fuck you
[02:04:45] and it just became unhealthy and everyone could see it and so you just gotta understand that like
[02:04:50] that's what I came out of after a year of just being overworked to like almost like fist fighting
[02:04:55] a couple times and then going into my batank of energy so you you're you're having clashes with
[02:05:03] regimental commander oh yeah and as this is happening are you think yourself like all right
[02:05:10] maybe I need to maneuver a little bit here you know I spent a bunch of time at expeditionary
[02:05:15] warfresh cool learning about maneuver warfare and not to attack you know hardened positions
[02:05:20] head on and here I am engaging in verbal battles with my boss yeah do you ever think like well
[02:05:29] maybe I should have taken a different tact so when you have certain people or certain
[02:05:39] expectations so you can just not push back and try and do it in our full way but
[02:05:47] that type of person is still going to expect you to work 22 hour days and be unappreciative
[02:05:53] when you do get the bus dress to get the product to them and then they're the follow-up
[02:05:57] question once you finally get that product is where's the next product and so sometimes you get a
[02:06:04] boss that just no matter what you do whether it's soft diplomacy or whether it's verbal fighting
[02:06:10] back you're just not going to probably change that person so the point you're making is like
[02:06:15] pick your battles and be smart but the point I'm making is at a certain point in my life
[02:06:21] I just refused to be talked to a certain way and so was that good for my career was I could
[02:06:27] from my mental health I don't know but like I just I kind of solidified who I was what I was
[02:06:32] capable of and how I was going to be treated and I was the bottom on and I had certain values
[02:06:36] that I wasn't going to compromise and I didn't care what I meant for my career I mean I've got a
[02:06:40] couple stories where like I basically tried to throw my career away a couple times because I was
[02:06:44] like this is important to me like this is important to me and you know you can think about what you
[02:06:49] want but when I think something is right like I just don't back away from that. What kind of thing
[02:06:54] would you put your kind of you know draw a line in the sand on? In terms of like regimental
[02:07:00] commander were like you know what I'm done with this. There was one time there's one time at
[02:07:07] ITX and so um the culminating event and on in the service for the Marine Corps at ITX is called
[02:07:17] MWX move forward for exercise and one regiment gets two battions and then one battion given hyper-enabled
[02:07:25] capabilities it's free force on force now it's supposed to be free but there's a lot of rules that
[02:07:30] almost drive this skibba maneuver but I mean it's the closest thing we get in terms of like I
[02:07:35] as a regimental officer with two battions with LAR with artillery and with a whole exercise force
[02:07:42] that determines who got killed and who doesn't get the build a plan but it's also like high stress
[02:07:48] and so most of our COC was back in the rear where I thought the regimental commander should have been
[02:07:57] but old generals and kernels think that they need to lead from the front and in doing so actually
[02:08:03] probably put a lot more risk on the system and they're not comfortable sitting back in a COC
[02:08:09] that has probably the capabilities that we need and so what that caused was him coming out with
[02:08:15] a forward capability that I had and in signature management when you're trying to like not turn
[02:08:21] on certain things or turn them on in a systematic way that disguises your digital footprint
[02:08:27] he and I were sitting in this tiny little COC that I made out of the back of a trailer
[02:08:34] and it was just one of those situations where I got like six computers I'm typing on all of them
[02:08:37] I'm trying to control the tying up so there's different LAR platoons I'm trying to worry about
[02:08:42] my signature management and he's yelling at me to do something and I'm like quickly answering
[02:08:46] him while trying to do all these different things and there was just like one situation where
[02:08:51] he snapped started screaming for an everyone and I looked at him and that was a situation like
[02:08:58] here time I'm going to move around for a while I didn't say anything I just walked out
[02:09:02] this is like I'm we're gonna fight so I walked out I took like 20 minutes and I came back in and
[02:09:08] he like hey up so like maybe you should just chill and get some sleep and that was his way of saying
[02:09:14] like maybe he went too far like trying to offer me some sleep and of course I'm
[02:09:19] just stubborn I might know I don't need sleep I'm just fine and like I talked to some of my
[02:09:23] guys after he did it in front of everyone and go my guys were like I can't believe you didn't hit him
[02:09:26] like I can't believe you had the balls to just walk away like I wouldn't have done that
[02:09:30] so there were times but I guess I'm just giving those examples because it's like
[02:09:34] man it's just you're exhausting me so it is what it is
[02:09:41] so you're in that job as the regimental officer operations officer when the Afghanist and withdraw
[02:09:48] was down is that right yeah so another relevant piece of the story is 8th Marines we used to have
[02:09:55] three regiments in the division and 8th Marines dissolved and so 1-8 actually got aggregated into 6
[02:10:02] Marines so I was the regimental officer that took 1-8 re aggregated them and then made sure they
[02:10:07] had all the supplies that they needed to go out on deployment so like I was working with their
[02:10:11] opso and exo like on the daily so I was very familiar with that unit that got on the mute
[02:10:16] that ultimately responded to the Kabul incident and so that's part of it right one eight
[02:10:22] was my first unit if you remember remember my best friend I hit with the suicide vest and then one
[02:10:25] eight was in my regiment that eyes the opso kind of man trained in equipped as much as the higher
[02:10:30] headquarters does to send them out on that deployment and then I was selected to batank a man so
[02:10:35] in June I went over to school of infantry and took advanced infantry training batank and that was
[02:10:39] in like mid June and you know August 26th is when the the S.V.S.T attack occurred so in June
[02:10:45] you were going to school you went to school no I I commanded a batank that was at a school so it's
[02:10:50] called an advanced infantry training batank and so that's the place where if you want to go
[02:10:55] to sniper school if you want to go through advanced squad later school if you want to go through
[02:10:59] advanced mortar school all the advanced infantry schools are housed under that instructor
[02:11:04] cadre of the batank that I commanded all right so just to get into Afghanistan a little bit
[02:11:12] just to get well not to get into a little bit but to put some context around it
[02:11:17] February 2020 Trump makes a conditional deal with the Taliban that we're going to withdraw
[02:11:25] September 2020 the Afghan government the Taliban hold talks in Doha the talks break down
[02:11:33] they they're not making any progress but America still continues this withdrawal plan
[02:11:38] February 2021 U.S. and Afghan government officials warn everyone that the Taliban is not
[02:11:48] abiding with the agreements they're they're doing offensive things they're making maneuvers
[02:11:54] April 14th Biden changes the withdrawal deadline from May 1st to September 11th
[02:12:01] which is let's face it you don't pick the dates of September 11th out of a hat there's
[02:12:08] a you know some kind of a symbolic gesture that that the Biden-ministrated administration wanted
[02:12:16] which is hey September 11th this things over April 15th the Taliban says up you guys
[02:12:24] re-nigged on what you said you were going to do you said you're going to drop by May now you're
[02:12:27] saying September we're going to take countermeasures May the Taliban start doing exactly what they said
[02:12:35] they start increasing attacks increasing in scale their attacks increasing in frequency their attacks
[02:12:43] June 6th U.S. contractors begin pulling out and when you pull out contractors now the Afghan
[02:12:51] forces and this is where you really start to see some of the problems that are going to
[02:12:55] occur when you pull out these American contractors that take care of gear and supply
[02:13:01] replacement gear all of a sudden all that's gone and this includes you know vehicles
[02:13:09] planes aircraft drones helicopter everything that they've got all of a sudden they don't have the
[02:13:15] capacity or the know how to keep it to keep it running July 1st America closes
[02:13:25] Bogram airfield like in a really kind of weird way of just leaving just kind of up and left without
[02:13:34] telling anyone didn't even tell the Afghan that that was going to happen the Afghan government that was
[02:13:38] going to happen just did it and by the way the bag room Bogram is you know is a great logistics hub
[02:13:46] it's a big massive airfield to well supplied well supported how long has it been there for 20 years
[02:13:52] you know 19 years some incredible amount of time so it's an relatively secure area fully functional
[02:13:59] and we just kind of leave it July 8th Biden says he's confidently the ability of the Afghan
[02:14:07] military to ward off the Taliban and fight the Taliban and defeat the Taliban July 23rd the
[02:14:17] Taliban starts applying pressure President Ghani is now not just asking but almost a begging for
[02:14:28] US assistance there's a conversation that that Biden had with Ghani and he says and I don't know
[02:14:37] if I'll nail the quote but he's saying that the perception is in the world that things aren't going
[02:14:41] well and Biden says hey whether it's going well or not we need to project a different picture
[02:14:49] August 6th Taliban takes full control of their first province and now this is in direct
[02:14:55] violation of what they said they would do in the deal with America August 15th Taliban takes control
[02:15:04] of Bogram no resistance they just walk in there there's a prison there they free a bunch of these
[02:15:11] high-level prisoners from various anti-Afghan government and anti-American forces
[02:15:18] they also enter Kabul that day President Ghani flees bail out apparently with a bunch of money
[02:15:27] and I will never get over the irony of the fact that President Ghani was this kind of academic
[02:15:32] individual that had written a book called Fixing Failed States a framework for rebuilding a fractured
[02:15:38] world and in that book he uses examples like Oregon the state of Oregon in America a first world
[02:15:50] country and that's how he talks about using examples of how to how to fix failed states
[02:15:59] August 16th Biden comes on and says yeah well you know the Afghan military's fallen apart because
[02:16:04] they're covered and their political leaders are weak August 17th Allied governments complaining about
[02:16:14] the lack of communication and coordination from America so they start their own rescue missions
[02:16:19] and we're hearing a lot about that August 23rd the director of the CIA
[02:16:26] William Burns meets with the Taliban leader with Bardar to discuss the evacuation
[02:16:33] so we're trying to sort of save what we can piece together some kind of an extraction plan
[02:16:43] that's on August 23rd on August 26th suicide attack
[02:16:49] 11 Marines one soldier one navy corpsman killed the Marines apparently
[02:16:58] they they there are reports that they knew that this attack was coming there's even some sources
[02:17:07] that say that the Marines were saying hey we got to put up a stronger perimeter we got to push the
[02:17:12] perimeter out and they got told no so that happens that's on August 26th and that is when you
[02:17:21] reach the point where you felt you needed to speak up about that yeah a couple other
[02:17:30] events in that timeline from a least my perspective so as the service members were watching
[02:17:35] all that playout real time in social media on the news everybody was getting very upset
[02:17:42] rightfully so so one day you didn't mention was 17 or 18 August the common out of the Marine Corps
[02:17:48] released a white letter that said hey I know a lot of you are struggling but I want you to know
[02:17:54] your sacrifices were worth it and if your struggling go see the therapist you can go go that's
[02:17:59] I just summarized the whole thing and I read that and thought this guy doesn't get it so
[02:18:06] reason people are upset is not because they think their sacrifices are worth it the reason
[02:18:12] they're upset is because the leaders have failed in this withdrawal and that is undermining
[02:18:17] all their sacrifices and he didn't address that at all in a hand wave of going to the therapist
[02:18:23] is not good enough so you can understand like I read that and it just just kind of started eating
[02:18:30] at me and then the other thing that you have to know is I've heard from the generals without naming
[02:18:39] names I've heard this story many times following Vietnam there's two common ones coming out
[02:18:47] Wilson and coming out barrow and what they did was and this is what's told today
[02:18:52] fix the service they focused on cleaning up the draft class the drug users and making sure they
[02:18:59] could fix the failures from Vietnam never does anyone talk about the operation on strategic
[02:19:05] failures that occurred at the general officer level at Vietnam that never got addressed and was
[02:19:11] happening right now in the at least the Marine Corps with the shift in the tactical focus and I
[02:19:16] understand I think there's actually a lot of utility in the new force design but what we didn't
[02:19:21] do was take a knee and address the operational and strategic failures that happened in our
[02:19:26] last two decades and I feel like the narrative is going to be told again that the generals
[02:19:31] had to fix the service because this current GWT generation isn't capable of fighting on the
[02:19:36] tactical level so I'm struggling with these two problems like senior leadership isn't addressing
[02:19:42] the failures and I have a couple examples of that and then yes that takes us to August 26 I'm
[02:19:48] sitting in my office as a batai in commander and I I'm literally I have people texting me pictures
[02:19:54] of the Marines that had gotten killed so like I'm finding out like within minutes that's the
[02:19:59] gossip on the inside the company commander for all the Marines that got killed was one of my
[02:20:05] SPCs at TBS meaning he was one of the one of the one of the potential commanders not in SPC he was
[02:20:11] a teacher at TBS I knew Jeff Ball real well and I knew some of the Marines so and I have this
[02:20:18] long history with one eight so there's just there was no one where it was more personal too than
[02:20:22] I felt like myself in that moment and so I sat there in my chair and thought I don't think senior
[02:20:31] leaders get it I don't think they understand the failures all these conversations about how well
[02:20:36] it's going I can't think in military history at least over the last 30 or 40 years where there has
[02:20:42] been such a monumental failure and not one person has acknowledged it and I just knew with certainty
[02:20:49] that following this event no one was going to be held accountable like I had enough experience
[02:20:53] and education to be able to foresee they're going to wash right past this and you can't make up
[02:21:00] for the lives that were lost but we can absolutely get ahead and prevent the next stupid decision
[02:21:08] by starting the whole people accountable and I felt the way to do that was through what I wanted
[02:21:13] to be just the one video like I did not plan it to be anything other than that I thought I'll make
[02:21:16] one video I'll explain some of the things that I think they should have done and I'm going to demand
[02:21:22] accountability because that's what I think we deserve because we're missing it and so that was
[02:21:27] what led to that first video and even after I made it like I I articulate in that first video
[02:21:32] that I knew I was potentially going to lose my job my retirement my family stability like
[02:21:37] obviously I had thought through that articulated it in the video and even after I made the video
[02:21:42] I didn't post it right away I went back to my house and was like pacing deciding whether or not
[02:21:47] to hit post because I knew as soon as I hit the button it was going to change the trajectory of my life
[02:21:51] but again I spent my whole adult life experiencing studying thinking living this and I just got to
[02:22:01] a place where I didn't think anyone else was going to say it I felt the need to say it
[02:22:09] videos about I think it's about four and a half minutes long something like that
[02:22:15] you're in your canmies so that's something so you're you're definitely not shine away from who you are
[02:22:23] you you know you stay you but you say in the video you've been in the Marine Corps for 17 years
[02:22:29] and one thing that I reflected when I saw the video for the first time is I thought to myself oh
[02:22:35] your entire career we'd been at war you know I spent more than half my career we weren't at war
[02:22:40] you know we were in the 90s the dry years but I'm thinking man this guy's been in the Marine Corps
[02:22:46] for 17 years the Marine Corps and America's been at war for that entire time you as you mentioned
[02:22:53] you said you know you got a lot to lose you know what could happen you knew you were risking
[02:22:58] your baton command you know family stability the whole nine yards you bring up that letter from the
[02:23:04] commandant that he wrote and you know you mentioned did anyone throw their rank on the table
[02:23:12] and say we shouldn't give a boggerman which again you know going back to the the silent five
[02:23:19] which is what McMaster called the the Joint Chiefs of Staff that work for LBJ and you can
[02:23:25] even hear you know that I've read in the beginning of guys that reflected back and said
[02:23:29] I should have said something I should have stood up you talk about the fact that
[02:23:40] the people that died dying in vain if we don't you you say you said if we don't own up and say
[02:23:47] we did not do this well in the end and you know I always look at that when someone gets wounded
[02:23:55] or killed in combat at a bare minimum at a bare minimum at least we go okay we can learn from
[02:24:05] what happened in the situation we can pass it on we can make sure it doesn't happen again and
[02:24:10] and that's what you're talking about and you kind of close it out by saying I've been fighting
[02:24:19] for 17 years I'm willing to throw it all away to say back to say say my two two my senior leaders
[02:24:25] I demand accountability and that's it pretty simple straightforward message you hit post
[02:24:37] I hit post you hit post how long did it take before you know you start to get in text from
[02:24:45] your friends and your senior leadership I could question no one's asked me this question yet so
[02:24:50] walked in the house didn't say anything got upstairs and I was sitting in my bedroom on the bed
[02:24:58] my wife was getting ready for bed she got a text she said did you post a video I was like yep
[02:25:05] I sure did she's like you know I won't say that girls name she's like so and so my friend
[02:25:11] it's texting me saying you're going about right now I was like oh go and what viral right now
[02:25:15] that's like you should probably watch the video tell me what I've so she watched it and she's like
[02:25:20] you need to take this down we're this is we're gonna get trouble take it down and I was like babe
[02:25:26] it's already up like you can't can't put the lid back on the bottle and even if I could I don't
[02:25:33] know if I'd want to so this is me saying this in this moment I was like I really believe in what I said
[02:25:38] in that video like I feel very strongly about it and so my wife then started feeling the gravity
[02:25:44] of what I had just done started stressing out and so then I went downstairs and was sitting on the
[02:25:49] couch and was just kind of thinking and then all my friends started texting me one of my friends
[02:25:54] from marsawc actually texting me and said still everything you said in that video is correct
[02:25:59] but it's going to come at way to have a personal cost and you're not going to change anything
[02:26:03] is it take it down and I told him I was like no this is the hell I'm willing to die and I'm not
[02:26:08] taking it down and then I had one of my instructors from aitv who texted me is gunny is sexually
[02:26:14] inter awesome dude he's like hey sir I watch your video and I agree with everything in your video
[02:26:20] but our adversaries could take this video and use it against us and I think you need to think
[02:26:25] about that and I think you should take it down and to hand my said you know there's probably
[02:26:32] even some truths to that but if we can't fix internally what we're doing right now
[02:26:37] with this conversation that I'm trying to start then it's all for nothing and so I guess those are all
[02:26:43] three true stories where I was like you know from my loved ones from my friends from people that
[02:26:47] worked for me were all I mean I and there's like ten other examples right so my phone blew up that
[02:26:51] night no one none of them in my chain of command contacted me that night so just people didn't
[02:26:57] knew me and you know I I've never my wife and I never like slept in separate rooms even when
[02:27:07] we were angry like early my marriage I was like I'm never you never making me sleep on the couch
[02:27:10] right like this is our house we sleep together we're gonna deal with stuff but I
[02:27:13] like that night I slept on the couch and I bring that up just to illustrate like that's how
[02:27:17] stressful it was it was just like was she mad just basically because you see where you were
[02:27:22] torpedoing your own career yeah like I said I mean we had stability like in those three years probably
[02:27:28] for the first time in our life and she thought she was gonna be there I had just taken the
[02:27:31] tank manor sees so she knew I was gonna be there for at least in two years and I only had a year
[02:27:35] after that total retirement so she knew she had another three years in North Carolina she had just
[02:27:39] started a new job as a teacher the kids were all in the same school for the first time she found
[02:27:43] they had all the stability that she wanted and then this took her by completes the prize and she knew
[02:27:49] that I probably wouldn't even have this job much longer so every all the stability she thought she had
[02:27:53] you know I took from her some people asked me about this when it was happening and I was
[02:28:01] like on social media or something like that and I got asked about actually I think it was getting
[02:28:05] interviewed on a news channel but you know my response was I guess I drew subconsciously from what
[02:28:16] hackworth says when they say oh do you think you become emotional and he's like yes I had become
[02:28:22] emotional because I've watched so many good men die and I am emotional and that's sort of when I said
[02:28:33] I said listen here's a guy that's been at war for 17 years who I guarantee he's lost marines
[02:28:40] and he's sitting here looking at this situation saying this is I'm not not getting I'm not taking
[02:28:45] this anymore when did you hear from your chain of command the next day?
[02:28:53] So as a batank manager I was always the first one in the office and it just so happened
[02:28:59] that that day my wife had a medical appointment and I had agreed to drop the kids off at like
[02:29:07] at school it's called a-to-clock and so it was like an abnormal occurrence so that's like the
[02:29:13] one day I didn't show up early and so I take the kids and so now I don't get into work until like
[02:29:21] 18 and as a batank manager you don't tell people when you're coming in you just show up at a normal
[02:29:26] time but I had texted my option accidentally I came around late and so I tell you that just to say
[02:29:34] my CEO had stopped by my office and called like three times and my upso called me and was like
[02:29:41] hey sir, CEO was really looking for aish probably calm and so when I drove in I got in I think I like
[02:29:47] eight thirty that morning, CEO was actually walking because his buildings let's say a two minute
[02:29:53] walk from my building he was actually walking between the buildings and I saw him and so I stuck my
[02:29:58] out the window and was like do you want to you're going to come back to your place he's like now just
[02:30:02] meeting your office so by the time I went and parked my truck and went in my office I used
[02:30:06] to be sitting in my office waiting for me. What is it? The first conversation between Colonel M.
[02:30:15] M. I came off as actually very caring and they keep in mind this is a career Colonel commands
[02:30:23] like that that doesn't know me very well. I've never met him before my batank man so he's had about
[02:30:29] six weeks of meetings maybe like seven meetings with me so I'm just imagine I mean he's another
[02:30:34] professional I'm professionally doesn't know me it's not like a guy I've been working for for a
[02:30:37] couple years or even a guy that knows a guy that I know real well like I don't know anyone that really
[02:30:42] knows anything that like we just don't know each other we haven't developed much of relationship.
[02:30:46] So he's like so he posted a video answer and he didn't really there wasn't much small talk he's
[02:30:52] like I wish you would have talked to me first if you would have talked to me first we could have
[02:30:56] worked through some of this and that's and he's right and that's a appropriate way and I said yes
[02:31:01] sir I understand and he's like I think that this video might be used to run messages that may not have
[02:31:08] been your intent I wish you would have thought of that and again he was right and then he just
[02:31:14] stated look there's gonna be an investigation that's gonna take place and then based on the
[02:31:19] investigation we're gonna determine what to do I'd like you to go home take the rest of the day
[02:31:24] and I will text you on Monday with where we stand in like all of that was very reasonable right
[02:31:30] very reasonable stuff was this already like on Fox News and I'll hit in the news outlets and all that
[02:31:35] at this point no so this was still sort of you know your Facebook friends you know and then like
[02:31:44] what was it how big was it right I mean I think it probably had received like 10,000 shares
[02:31:52] so I mean by the end of the night it was picked up by all the major news stations so in the morning like
[02:31:57] the comments obviously knew about it I mean everyone knew about it but you know it hadn't been picked up
[02:32:01] by mainstream media yet but it does buy the end of the day but like it wasn't like everybody knew
[02:32:07] hey when your friend your gunny and your wife for all like hey dude take take it down
[02:32:16] yeah what was a question I mean they everyone knew yeah and so my CEO left
[02:32:23] my exo came in and I turned over the the tying to him and then I went home and then
[02:32:32] and then when I got home my CEO called me an hour later and said hey I need you to come back and
[02:32:38] I'm starting to jerk you're out oh that was weird I mean me I'm office he's like no me me in my office
[02:32:44] okay so I mean him in his office and he just looks at me and says and hands me peace
[02:32:50] paper and says you've been relief for cause based on a lock and trust in confidence
[02:32:54] do you have any questions yes what do I do now is it I need you to come in tomorrow he's like
[02:33:02] what'll probably happen is though will be an investigation and I don't think they're going to keep you
[02:33:08] here he's like the probably move you up to quannico and general offered asked to maintain the
[02:33:17] investigation so that he can take care of you so he said I was like okay I'm trying to
[02:33:22] like reconcile that in my mind and but at the end of the day like I kind of knew I'd be
[02:33:28] relieved over it and I just said okay sir and so I signed up peace paper that said I'd been
[02:33:34] relieved I walked out and I actually made a post like immediately after it's still up on my
[02:33:40] page is my my face book and like then and just and I was very appreciative I said I think
[02:33:45] effective of 1400 today I've been relieved and then my command is doing exactly what I would have
[02:33:49] done I'd like to thank them for the opportunity of getting to service the AITB,
[02:33:53] Patanky Manor and I look forward to the next chapter right so very appreciative post
[02:34:00] obviously something changed for your regimental commander or somebody talked to him and said all right
[02:34:03] this is what we're doing yeah and but just so everyone just so civilians know what you're talking
[02:34:08] about relieved your command means you just got fired so you got fired and Patanky Manor is a huge
[02:34:13] stepping stone and it's really responsible to you so the ramifications were I would never get
[02:34:18] promoted again and you know as you were through the in your mind I had been relieved I've been
[02:34:24] fired so I knew I would never be promoted again but I knew that there was still potential for legal
[02:34:28] action right so like best case I am just like a disgraced lieutenant colon of the people
[02:34:35] somewhere at the limping towards retirement but you know worst case was I could be separated
[02:34:40] out via legal action and so I didn't know it was just unknown at that time. How many days was
[02:34:48] it until you posted your next video? So that occurred on a Friday and then I went into
[02:34:59] I haven't gotten in all this in the story so this is new stuff I went home and you know my wife
[02:35:06] now had kind of wrapped her head around life was changing and she was still down for the cause at that
[02:35:12] point so she was thinking like maybe we could go down to Florida my parents had vacation rentals
[02:35:17] and my command is the vacation rentals and I had I try to do like I'd father son days with my kids
[02:35:23] and I already had a pre-plan one of my oldest kid down on the outer banks she was like you want to
[02:35:28] cancel the thing with Paul my oldest son and I was like no I think I could probably use like a
[02:35:33] day away with just one of my kids she said we need to talk to the boys and I was like all right
[02:35:39] I was like I don't know if I can do a tonight I've just been fired why don't we you know give me
[02:35:44] the night and so went to bed I was the last night actually slept with my wife that night
[02:35:50] slept with my something the same bed with my wife got up the next morning I got the three boys in
[02:35:55] the couch and I told them hey guys your dad was fired but I was fired for doing something that I
[02:36:02] thought was right I wasn't fired for doing something you know bad or nefarious so I want you guys
[02:36:08] to hear it for me because your your friends at school are probably gonna tell you and nothing
[02:36:14] is gonna change for you you're gonna get to keep living here and I may have to go to Quantico
[02:36:18] to work for the next three years but you'll get to remain in school that's what I believe at the time
[02:36:24] so I told them then I took my oldest son and while we were outspend of the day on the boot all
[02:36:33] I was thinking about was what do I do and I kind of skipped over this to go back when I made that
[02:36:42] post that just thanked my command when I was on my social media I read a public comment from one
[02:36:48] of my previous boss so when I was at SOS a captain the lieutenant Colonel was my battalion commander
[02:36:53] that he did a lot for me he retired as at O6 he had gotten on my social media and said if
[02:36:59] Stuart's other was honorable he would resign he didn't state that he was my previous boss or that
[02:37:04] he was like a mentor to me he didn't email me he didn't text me and I felt like I mean that really
[02:37:09] was like a stab in the back to me because a lot of general officers that are on LinkedIn that
[02:37:14] they gave preferred LinkedIn not Facebook so that's why I had a LinkedIn too a lot of the senior
[02:37:19] officers knew who he was and so for him to call me out like that and so I'm struggling with
[02:37:25] when I'm with my kid on the boat I'm struggling with they relieved me without even an investigation
[02:37:30] like I knew my job as it risk when I posted that video but like I feel like a taller
[02:37:36] organization would have been like hey we're gonna let investigation play out we're gonna let you
[02:37:40] sit and calm down obviously this is personal but you've broken some rules and what's left the
[02:37:44] investigation play out and we'll see where the chips fall like that's the reason but they they obviously
[02:37:51] fired me within like 12 hours were you surprised when you got relieved I was surprised I didn't
[02:37:55] learn investigation take place I really was it did not I didn't expect that like when I was calculating
[02:38:00] what would happen I thought I might be benched while on investigation took place but I didn't think
[02:38:04] I'd be relieved immediately but even that probably wasn't enough to push me it was that next
[02:38:11] comment from my old boss where then I like while I was sitting there with my son at
[02:38:16] planet the seeds of I don't know if this organization cares about me as much as I care about it
[02:38:22] and so I just was struggling with this and so then it came back to like what do I want to do like
[02:38:26] if if none of them care about me do I want to limp towards the retirement for the next three years
[02:38:31] because that's best case and I just came to the decision like no I can't live my life like that like
[02:38:38] this was never supposed to be a career this was always supposed to be something that was fulfilling
[02:38:42] I don't care about the money as much as other people might I really don't like I'll be fine
[02:38:47] and I thought I need to get ahead of this and I'm not gonna let them just dictate the terms
[02:38:54] I'm gonna resign and I'm gonna tell them that because I still believe in what I said and they haven't
[02:38:58] addressed any of that and so after I spent the whole day with my kid on Saturday I kind of came to
[02:39:04] that conclusion Saturday night and so then on we slept in out there on the beach we had a hotel
[02:39:11] and then on Sunday morning I took him back to the house I dropped him off of my wife and I was you know
[02:39:16] I had been fired on Friday so I said hey can't go out to the farm I went out there every once in a while
[02:39:22] just kind of like me time and she was like yeah absolutely I get it and I went out there
[02:39:27] so all my 50 acres I've got two abandoned school buses that I put out there is kind of like trailers
[02:39:32] and we actually I I elisaed to a non-profit called A Hero and we do suicide prevention for like
[02:39:39] outdoor treatment for veterans and so that's why I have it I've had it I've had retreats out there
[02:39:44] for the veterans but when I went out there that Sunday I essentially on one of the school buses
[02:39:48] set up a video and the message of the second video was you fired me I don't think you care about me
[02:39:55] I'm resigning effective immediately I don't want any money I don't want any benefits
[02:39:59] and then I and I posted it and that's where you know really quickly became an escalating series
[02:40:06] of events between the Marine Corps and myself yeah and you know all this even your original
[02:40:14] message you were talking about what you wanted was accountability I mean obviously I wrote a book
[02:40:19] called Extreme Ownership and this is the the very if that's what it is right and that's what you're
[02:40:25] saying even after this video comes out there's still no one responding to anything in the video
[02:40:31] and and they also did some things where they're like they put they put some they made some PR
[02:40:40] maneuvers on you on you saying hey we're gonna make sure that he gets the help they need something
[02:40:47] along those lines so after the second video came out that was so again this was Sunday I was fired
[02:40:53] I'm Friday so I haven't been in the work yet so it's Sunday night well after I made a second video
[02:40:59] I mean it's 45 minute drive I posted from my farm there's a 45 minute drive back to my house
[02:41:05] about time I got back my wife had already seen it and was very upset and you hadn't pre-briefed your wife
[02:41:11] on any of this no that's why she was justifiably very angry and y'all won't go in all the details of that but
[02:41:19] that's where the that's where the path started the diverge between my wife and I and so I ended up
[02:41:27] going and staying in a motel so I was in a days in for the rest of the week and my yes
[02:41:34] dequestion you asked was they started making statements the Marine Corps PEO office public affairs office
[02:41:40] released a statement that was all over the media because now these videos were getting picked up
[02:41:44] that second video that I did was the banner of Fox News like if you went to FoxNews.com that day like
[02:41:50] that was the first thing was my my face on the school bus right and so the Marine Corps was trying
[02:41:57] to get out in front of it and they released a statement that said we are trying to locate Lieutenant Colonel
[02:42:01] Shellard to protect himself to protect him against himself and his family and I was like what
[02:42:07] and I had my phone on me the entire time and I had even talked to my battalion exo for like 20 minutes
[02:42:14] like I was texting my friends and I was like if the Marine Corps was really trying to find me
[02:42:20] like they didn't think to text me they didn't think to call me and so like potentially potentially
[02:42:26] the public affairs office arm just wasn't talking to like whoever should have been calling me and just
[02:42:31] got out ahead of it first but like the other part of it is maybe like they really just didn't care
[02:42:36] about me and all and they just put that out but like again I'm having all these indicators so
[02:42:40] this like this escalating thing of like me feeling like what I said is right all right you should
[02:42:45] show some sympathy and they're like no I'm gonna poke you in the chest because what you did was broke
[02:42:48] the rules and then I'm like well no come back and listen to what I'm saying like no you're still
[02:42:52] breaking the rules I'm gonna make it worse for you and so like each one of these is just an example
[02:42:56] of like if you think cared about me they would have called
[02:43:05] one thing that I noticed and I heard you talking about it you know at the end of that
[02:43:09] second video you're getting emotional and you're like asking for accountability and then
[02:43:18] kind of ranting against everything a little bit and you say you know follow me and we'll bring the
[02:43:25] whole fucking system down so you're you know going hard and I heard you I heard you later say like
[02:43:32] yeah I didn't choose the best words yeah I'm not appreciate asking that so people have asked me a lot
[02:43:40] do you regret it because my life is dramatically changed lost a lot gained a lot
[02:43:46] the one the thing I've come through this with the understanding is I wouldn't change my original position
[02:43:53] or the events at all I don't apologize but there are certain ways that I delivered the message
[02:44:00] that I would absolutely go back and tweak and the one shining example is the we're gonna bring
[02:44:05] the whole fucking system down in that second video and even in the third video I say a couple
[02:44:09] things that like could it or we're stripped out of context and so yeah you got to understand
[02:44:16] I mean in that second video like that emotion wasn't fake like I knew I was given up everything like
[02:44:22] I I was terrified and I was emotional and I didn't take multiple takes I was like one take
[02:44:28] Jay-Z get on the mic drop it post it right like there was no editing of that video and so
[02:44:37] I wish I could go back because it allowed the media to just paint me as this violent extremist
[02:44:43] and I don't think I ever came any recluse that like obviously in my my can't say obviously in my
[02:44:48] head I was trying to communicate that the system has centralized power it was corrupt and it needs to
[02:44:52] be fundamentally changed but in the emotional outpouring of the moment I said I want to bring
[02:44:59] the whole fucking system down you know I was just mad and I went back and clarified like it might
[02:45:05] like three days later in a post I put in a constitutional manner with one loud voice but like
[02:45:09] no one reads the follow up you know what I mean you get that one shot that's right
[02:45:14] especially when it comes to like a viable type videos that are gonna get out there no one's fault
[02:45:19] no one's following up with that you get home from that video and your life is like you
[02:45:29] didn't pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-re-re-re-re-wife now your life is just like no this isn't gonna happen
[02:45:34] that's right yeah I mean so you know I want I'm probably not gonna develop much more of the
[02:45:41] story with my life and I but I will say you know I still like this past Christmas after all this
[02:45:46] was done you know I got out on Christmas Eve we spent as a family all of Christmas together
[02:45:50] we went to a water park together like I still very much love her we are still going through a divorce
[02:45:56] this situation was very challenging and there's things that we both would have done differently
[02:46:01] and there's reasons the reasons I didn't say anything is because I knew what she would say and again
[02:46:06] this was very important to me but I think more than anything the reason we're going through a
[02:46:10] divorce and we didn't decide to reconcile is because what this situation did was illustrate
[02:46:15] the trajectory of my life and how I'm always going to be on the move and I think in one comment she
[02:46:22] summarized it with I just in retirement one learned how to play golf and you want to fundamentally
[02:46:27] change the government right those are two very different things and the story that I just
[02:46:31] painted you for the last 17 years I mean this woman has stuck by me and suffered through a lot and
[02:46:35] like she deserves a little bit of stability she hasn't had it her her whole adult life and
[02:46:41] she justifiably deserves that and you know she's still the mother of my children so I'll never
[02:46:46] have anything bad to say about it there's talking about the verb it's that I would have changed there's
[02:46:50] absolutely things I would have changed with how I handled my situation with her you know there's
[02:46:55] you know things that I still look back on and it makes me sad but at the end of the day you can't
[02:47:01] look back you just gotta look forward I've tried to do the right thing I obviously hit some
[02:47:06] minds while moving forward but I kept moving forward and you know she still a big part of my life and
[02:47:11] so that is what it is you know I was a rebellious kid and I like was a rebellious kid I listened
[02:47:20] the hardcore music I didn't listen to my parents I didn't like school I didn't do good in school I
[02:47:26] didn't I was like a rebellious kid you can just trace that streak all the way back to my birth
[02:47:31] so when I look at your you're from you what we talked about today from your birth on up it's like
[02:47:41] I don't see that streak and then all of a sudden it's just kind of manifests itself I get you
[02:47:46] look you're talking about when you're in a naughty you're giving away money to these locals and
[02:47:51] you're thinking this doesn't seem like to me I'm thinking that too doing the same thing I'm in
[02:47:55] a naughty a 2006 where former relationship with people I'm thinking okay well I guess this will
[02:48:00] move us in one direction but I'm not sitting there as a obedient you know slave as to what I'm
[02:48:06] being told this what you're being told do do it I always pushed back on my leadership throughout
[02:48:10] my career always had that rebellious streak and this just kind of like do you when you look back
[02:48:17] at your life do you notice things along the way that are indicators that you had sort of
[02:48:23] a limit to what you take I mean what's movie at movie reference what's the movie reference
[02:48:27] where the guy is like an accountant or something and then he just kind of loses it falling down yeah
[02:48:34] am I right because I never even saw that movie but I remember it yeah Michael does that's what happens
[02:48:38] right he's a normal guy yeah something happens he's not gonna take it anymore yeah nothing really
[02:48:43] happened he just reached his point in general at the beginning like there wasn't like any any indicators
[02:48:50] that was the beginning of the movie known not early yeah everything life traffic so what do you think
[02:48:55] stew are you do you see indicators in the past where you you're thinking like man I always had this
[02:49:00] in that no Michael Douglas basically going to suicide a rampage I don't think it compares
[02:49:07] it's fair again I think yes to your point I didn't always push back I started to give some
[02:49:18] examples there with my regimental commander to kind of paint a picture you know at a certain point
[02:49:24] I started to just solidify who I was what my values were and it's funny a lot of people have asked
[02:49:30] me this which I'm sort of surprised by the question well I haven't actually been surprised
[02:49:33] about a lot of the questions people give me but one of the questions was why now you've been in
[02:49:38] you're in a body in a seven you did all this your whole life why now and they were asking that
[02:49:44] question almost implying as if there's a democrat and that's a president and like I used my platform
[02:49:49] to exploit now to become popular the truth is I think people grow develop an appreciation right
[02:49:59] as a young firstly tenant I wanted to go serve my country you know when I look back on George
[02:50:05] Bush's philosophy to export democracy that was obviously stupid but if you ask 23 year old Stewart
[02:50:10] Chiller or you know I'm watching the Marines in Fluja all I could see or the Marines run through
[02:50:14] Fluja I used to love the movie Black Hawk Down when you watch that movie it's like to
[02:50:19] glorify it if you look at the operational failures it's a mallea that led to that event but like
[02:50:24] I didn't have a deeper appreciation for that so the question you're asking me is like why did I get to
[02:50:29] that moment I had just at that point had enough education and experiences and I was in
[02:50:36] enough of a position of authority that there just wasn't many other people like me at that moment
[02:50:41] and time willing to say what needed to be said so as time goes on after this when do they actually
[02:50:50] like arrest you do you get arrested right yeah so I posted that second video like a week goes by
[02:50:57] now you did you did a September 11 video too right yep did a third video you still
[02:51:02] not arrested yet nope and I even did a fourth video in my Charlie's where I basically
[02:51:09] after my my second a third video was like just kind of an outpouring of emotion when my second video
[02:51:15] was very angry or sign my third video I was really just talking about violence and I was trying to like
[02:51:19] take the sharp edge off the second video but I still don't really go back to accountability
[02:51:22] but after my third video now all my friends are texting me and being like dude you're looking a little crazy
[02:51:28] you look a little romantic right and so and keep in mind like after my second video even though the
[02:51:34] PAO office put that message out that they were trying to find me then when I went into work they
[02:51:39] command directed a mental health evaluation so my mental health was being attacked from all these
[02:51:43] different angles and it's so hard to defend mental health because if you really are crazy anything
[02:51:49] you say is marginalized because you're crazy right so it's like you're crazy and I'm like no
[02:51:53] I'm not like that's what a crazy person we say you know that's that's catch 22 right that's
[02:51:56] their both catch 22 right first crazy you don't think you're crazy that's right so how do you
[02:52:01] defend it so anyway so did you start wondering you know what you're laughing but like when
[02:52:06] everyone tells you it you do start to question like you know if everyone in this room is crazy like
[02:52:11] what does that make me either I'm the only sane one or maybe I am the crazy one so
[02:52:17] after the third video they actually offered me a deal illegal deal I could have just taken it
[02:52:22] now I've been that but I was like man there's a lot of talk of me being crazy and that didn't
[02:52:26] help myself with these two videos I need to end and bring the message back and so that's when I
[02:52:32] made that fourth video in my Charlie's like general McKenzie is like I can't think in military
[02:52:38] history where someone is so obviously culpable like it's just clear like the Emperor has no
[02:52:45] clothes you have to see it and I could go through all the details as to why I think that but that was
[02:52:50] the fourth video I was trying to bring the message back to accountability and so after the fourth
[02:52:54] video is when they gave me a gag order and just said I mean the gag order was crazy I don't think I've
[02:52:59] actually released the verb of you but it was like if you talk to him and he talks to him and they say
[02:53:05] that you said that you're going to jail like anything like online chat rooms like any email if you
[02:53:11] communicate this was because they offered you a deal but then you made another video that's right
[02:53:17] it's so now they didn't know what to do now I'm now I'm moving faster than their legal deals
[02:53:20] are moving faster than the investigation and they haven't actually charged me with anything so
[02:53:24] they're starting to get scared I don't know if scared's right where but they they don't know how to
[02:53:29] handle they don't know how to address it there's a guy that's not taking the deals and he's still
[02:53:34] making statements and they and everything they've done at this point hasn't been effective in stopping
[02:53:38] it so they hit you with the is this when they arrest you no this is the so after the fourth video
[02:53:44] is when they gave me a gag order so I'm still not in jail you so now you're not allowed to talk to anybody
[02:53:48] that's right you're not allowed to post on social media that's right and now the
[02:53:52] it can be in any form you're just on lockdown yeah a couple points number one I'm
[02:54:03] I constantly say to clients and people and friends we don't make good decisions or an
[02:54:08] or emotional like don't try it this started as a joke when I was a young and listed guy like
[02:54:14] we would go out drinking and make decisions you know and if the joke was hey don't make decisions
[02:54:19] don't make life changes I would volunteer for cartoons and do stuff like that so this is a good
[02:54:25] example right you take a step back and say okay where am I going to be strategically and this is
[02:54:33] another thing I thought about the time is taking a step back and saying okay where does it how does this
[02:54:38] play out strategic from a strategic perspective where am I going to end up just just things to think
[02:54:43] about which you're clearly like hey here's some wording I could have changed here's a thing that
[02:54:48] would have helped out my relationship so there's always things that if you can try and take a
[02:54:53] step back they're going to be beneficial to you almost guaranteed the risk to that is time
[02:54:59] the risk to that is time also the risk to that is you can rationalize to not do anything
[02:55:05] yeah that's right you can rationalize to get to a point where you say you know what it's not worth it
[02:55:11] and and again is it smart to do that calculus it probably is because my my feeling I don't I don't
[02:55:19] know you but my feeling is if you would have run the calculus you would have still came with the
[02:55:25] same conclusion you might have executed your plan a little bit differently but it's important to
[02:55:30] if you can take a step back run the calculus so that way the course that you plot will be
[02:55:35] the most effective course in what you're trying to do and this is just general you know I've got
[02:55:40] some friends and they know who they are who call me from time to time super emotional and I
[02:55:45] got to talk them through like what the strategic perspective is what it looks like over the long term
[02:55:51] and and how to make the next step forward so good good lesson learned and and again from my
[02:56:00] from just talking to you today I think you still would have made the same you would come to the
[02:56:05] same conclusion that this is something that I don't want to use the word passionate not that
[02:56:11] she's just that you were passionate about it but you were you were convicted you had conviction
[02:56:18] about what you were saying and and you know something else from my perspective in an ownership
[02:56:25] and an accountability perspective that I think people don't understand as leaders is if you make
[02:56:33] a mistake and you take ownership of the mistake that you've made then what you can do is you can
[02:56:39] fix the mistake and you can actually change things and just because you say hey this was my fault
[02:56:46] doesn't mean you necessarily get fired or have to resign you know any of these senior leaders
[02:56:55] could say hey this is what we thought we're not perfect I'm not perfect I made a mistake I you know
[02:57:01] I did that I did that with I I made a speech coming from president Biden if I was in president Biden
[02:57:07] shoes what I would have said and it was like hey I made this mistake we under we underestimated that
[02:57:13] means I underestimated that means I thought that the Afghan forces were stronger that means I thought
[02:57:19] that the Taliban was weaker I miss misassessed and miscalculated how this unfolded here's what we're
[02:57:27] doing to fix it and and this is the thing that I think a lot of leaders don't understand when a person
[02:57:32] does that when a leader does that the the team doesn't think oh you see that's right you will
[02:57:39] messed up no they think okay yep he messed up but he's humble enough to take ownership and we're
[02:57:43] gonna get it fixed and we and we'll support him now this is my whole freaking career was taking
[02:57:48] ownership when things went wrong and and so I think just again to some of these senior leaders
[02:57:55] when you take ownership of something it's not it's a step forward it's not a step backward it is a
[02:58:04] true step forward and by the way when you blame other people or you deny or you act like it didn't
[02:58:09] happen that is a step backward that's what people don't understand that's what leaders don't
[02:58:13] understand they understand that saying well it wasn't it was the Afghan people's fault it was the
[02:58:17] Afghan military's fault that's not a step forward it feels like one but it's not it's a step backward
[02:58:23] because every single other person knows people know the truth about what's going on they can sense it
[02:58:28] and I think that's one of the reasons why your videos were widely shared because people thought
[02:58:35] this guy he he knows what he's he believes what he's saying and he
[02:58:41] he's speaking from a perspective of truth like people people saw that people want like oh
[02:58:46] he's trying to blame the leadership what's wrong with that guy no people like yeah he's trying to
[02:58:50] blame leadership because the leadership is wrong and they should admit that they should take ownership of it
[02:58:58] so you get gagged gag order comes then what do you at what point do you get arrested all right so
[02:59:06] I got gagged on what's called a Friday I went through a Saturday Sunday one to two
[02:59:11] Zones did there was to Friday so now it's going into the next weekend and that following week on the
[02:59:19] Tuesday Wednesday I knew that the Secretary of Defense the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
[02:59:25] and General McKenzie were going to be testifying to the House and the Senator and so
[02:59:32] I calculated if I violated the gag order they might have a disproportional response
[02:59:37] and that that would bring attention to the whole message that I was trying to illustrate
[02:59:42] so I made another post that was this one was probably my most insightful you know it had some
[02:59:50] like insightful language in terms of not like revolutionary insightful but I mean I personal attacks on
[02:59:56] people like I attacked all the like the last four presidents you know I attacked general officers
[03:00:00] and I didn't say anything that was untrue but like I said some like hard stuff to hear it wasn't
[03:00:05] very like it wasn't like a uniting message it was just like a fuck you to everyone and again I even put
[03:00:12] in the post I'm ready to go to jail but before I made the post I read the entire UCMJ
[03:00:19] Mania for Courts Marshall and so I knew what the requirements were to send me to jail
[03:00:23] and quite honestly I didn't think that they had the criteria to send me to jail I was kind of
[03:00:28] prepared to go to jail but I didn't think that they had the legal ability to do so
[03:00:32] providing in a gagboard that I thought was illegal and so that was the only time I
[03:00:38] violated the gagboard was that one time and then I showed up at zero eight on Monday and they had
[03:00:44] PMO wait and for me and they sent me to jail and the way they did it was they wrote on the
[03:00:49] document that I was a flight risk which was like just an outward line I showed up at zero eight
[03:00:55] on Monday right I've been with every day on time the full time answering every phone call
[03:00:59] so like it's just a lie and no one will be held accountable for that but that was what it was
[03:01:03] and got to jail that Monday morning and but my calculation was correct all the generals
[03:01:09] had to answer questions to include the secretary defense about why I was in jail because I
[03:01:12] went to jail on that Monday and they started their testimony on Tuesday and Wednesday and then I was
[03:01:17] out you know six days ago I was a total of nine days so you end up getting charged with
[03:01:23] Article 88 contempt toward officials article 89 disrespect towards superior commission officers article 90
[03:01:33] willfully disobeying superior commission officers article 92 dereliction in the performance of duties
[03:01:39] article 92 failure you obey order or regulation article 133 conduct on becoming an officer and a gentleman
[03:01:47] how long did it take for that trial process to come about usually it takes months they did mine five days
[03:01:59] after I got out of jail so you spent six days nine days in jail and what were you doing in jail
[03:02:05] to sit there yeah I was in a solitary cell yeah I honestly all I did was right so the first two days
[03:02:13] I didn't have any any writing gear books and then by like day three my lawyer was able to drop off
[03:02:20] like all these legal pads pens books and he gave me my command investigation that just had
[03:02:26] I mean we can get a death we want but I mean all these statements from these other officers it just like
[03:02:31] weren't just lies just straight up personal attacks and so I was like writing on the legal
[03:02:38] just example of like oh he showed a plate to work that kind of thing oh yeah so
[03:02:42] he was smiling as in his command photo we don't smile in command photos I knew I didn't like him
[03:02:48] when he when I saw that I know another one this one guy they use that in the court of law against you
[03:02:58] these are like I don't like people it's my we either I agree with that guy these are just like you know
[03:03:03] side of the mouth comments these are on statements that they sign right I mean these are normal
[03:03:08] states this one guy I was at the beach with this family a week previous and I went to his
[03:03:14] house for dinner to his previous with our families to hang out and like when I was in that motel
[03:03:18] we're like you know I had no other like can scattered my life's falling apart like I could probably
[03:03:21] really could have used a friend and he was texted me it's like hey still how you doing man just
[03:03:25] want to make sure you're alright it's anything we can talk about like why you doing this
[03:03:29] he then screenshot it those and brought them to the investigating officer unsolicited
[03:03:34] to say look I was trying to figure out what his motives are like he this stew sheller is just a
[03:03:37] fucking a ferries character she'd never been a batile in command you're like who does that like what
[03:03:44] man does that blood in the water there's blood in the water man sharks are going to pounce
[03:03:51] yeah but they didn't realize that I wasn't you know yeah so you end up going up trial and this
[03:03:58] trial the judge you said looked at your record and was like hey well where did this come from the judge
[03:04:03] I don't think one of me to plead guilty so it wasn't you know all those charges you read off
[03:04:09] and there's like all these findings of facts the only choice there's only one choice
[03:04:14] except guilty for all of them at special court martial or plead not guilty to all of them
[03:04:18] the general like so to give in the weeds about what any of them said it was almost irrelevant
[03:04:24] and so so if you did not not not guilty what would happen how to go to general court martial
[03:04:28] and I did remain in jail for another four or five months while they prepared on pretrial while
[03:04:32] they prepared the general court martial procedure and then I would have gone and tried to plead not
[03:04:35] guilty to all of them at general check and then you you pled guilty to all of them again there's no
[03:04:44] like I want to plead guilty to these two and out these three is it is there's no point even
[03:04:48] looking at the details of it it was do you plead guilty to all of this you maybe need to read it
[03:04:53] stew do you plead guilty to all of this at special misdemeanor you get a the lowest character
[03:04:59] characterization of discharges general and ronable which is a little term and later or you go to
[03:05:05] general plead not guilty and if you get found guilty of one of any of these it's a felony
[03:05:10] and you'll get dishonorable and you'll sit in here for another four months and I'll tell you what
[03:05:15] even with that choice I thought very strongly about doing the general because how is it going to say
[03:05:20] bro you're a dysphoria and I know god I know I've got a surprise I know I almost did that and I think
[03:05:26] and to the judges you know sentiment I really think I could have won but you got to I
[03:05:31] would I ask myself was what's the most important thing the most important thing the reason I gave
[03:05:36] all of this up was not to beat them it was to preserve the message of accountability and if I
[03:05:42] felt deep inside that I had broken some of the rules for me to beat them based on undue command
[03:05:48] influence and legal duplts I felt like what a marginalized my message of accountability
[03:05:52] and for me to plead guilty for breaking the rules and then look at them and say look I'm not
[03:05:57] apologizing but I'm accepting accountability I felt it strengthened my message and it also expedited
[03:06:02] my exit so that I could come on you know joccos podcast and talk about how general McKinsey needs to
[03:06:08] be fired right so for all those reasons again I made more sense to plead guilty
[03:06:14] and that so that was kind of it almost anti-climactic a little bit you you I'll tell you though
[03:06:19] there was some drama and so like I said the fastest court martial from exit of jail and agreement
[03:06:25] in the history of the Marine Corps also one of those charges like 88 I think I was the first officer
[03:06:29] charge since Vietnam like they were just like throwing stuff on the wall right but they released
[03:06:34] the command investigation with all those like it's just crazy things that those officer said
[03:06:39] to the media with my medical investigation so that selective articles could be written about
[03:06:44] like how I was a violent extremist and it was just blatantly false stuff like I'm still on
[03:06:48] the fence of whether I should sue for libel or just like move forward but so once they leaked
[03:06:53] at that investigation your point the judge the judge was like if that's true like this is
[03:06:58] criminal like those people should be brought to the court not Lieutenant Colonel Scheller and so
[03:07:04] the Marine Corps was like forced to do another command investigation on the leaked command
[03:07:08] investigation so they did another command investigation and so then I asked for that other command
[03:07:12] investigation because it had to do with me and they're like no you gotta go through freedom of
[03:07:16] information act and I was like let me get the straight so you had an investigation that was about
[03:07:20] me that you leaked through the improper channels you were scolded by the judge you created a new
[03:07:25] investigation still about me about your improper handling and the only way for me to get that
[03:07:29] is to go through the problem the proper freedom of information act like that's correct and I was like
[03:07:34] ah you know this is like have you done that? no I haven't ever come home you gotta relax
[03:07:40] kind of just probably already burned bigger down of me honestly but I probably will so going back I
[03:07:45] probably will sue for libel this one publication and I'll probably freedom of information act
[03:07:49] to add to that libel suit but like right now the most important thing again is the message
[03:07:55] and making sure that people understand I mean there was fundamental breakdowns that are not being
[03:07:58] addressed apolitically that's what I want to change so like do I have grievances that I can legally
[03:08:04] pursue sure but that's like I said earlier like money is really not that important to me so
[03:08:09] we'll figure it out and so you part of your rep part of the deal was you you resigned and you
[03:08:16] were done you're done on the Marine Corps that's right at 17 years maybe 18 years now 17 17 years yeah
[03:08:22] and then you got out what just before Christmas Christmas Eve Christmas Eve that was it
[03:08:28] that was it where were you when you were out what was that night like
[03:08:33] my family came down actually yeah so I looked my family just acted like it wasn't happening
[03:08:41] honestly I don't even think it's hit me because right now you know someone that's listening to
[03:08:45] the show were tape in this and early January but after Christmas with my family then I started
[03:08:50] doing all these media shows that I've been on a gag order for the last four months so I don't think
[03:08:54] the reality was actually hit me yet it's gonna come when I'm done doing on this media and I'm sitting
[03:09:00] in my place by myself with nothing to do that's probably when it's gonna go shit but I've
[03:09:07] stayed too busy for it to be really it so what's so here you are here I mean this is only freaking
[03:09:14] weeks what's next what are you doing so I just want to what's the new mission so I want to illustrate
[03:09:22] like why I'm so upset with general McKenzie and so I'm gonna just take a second talk about that
[03:09:27] and then I'll answer your question through that so the reason I in that fourth video tried to
[03:09:32] prefer charges against general McKenzie which is my legal right to do explain I didn't touch on that
[03:09:37] explain what you did you explain what you did there in the manual for court marshals rule 137
[03:09:43] clearly states that any member of the UCMJ can prefer charges against another member in the UCMJ
[03:09:49] now that when you prefer that means that charge sheet has to be routed up to the first general officer
[03:09:55] with general court martial authority it's sometimes it's at the current level and so the strategy there
[03:10:01] was I knew general Alfred was trying to hold me accountable I knew he would never have the courage
[03:10:07] to refer charges from my preferal but then he would have to publicly declare that he wasn't going
[03:10:13] to seek accountability against the general and he was seeking accountability against me so I was
[03:10:18] using that tactic to illustrate the hypocrisy of the system but they denied me the ability to
[03:10:23] even route it which is my legal right to do I mean it was just I mean illegal in my opinion but
[03:10:26] it doesn't matter so that they don't allow me to do that the reason I was trying to prefer those charges
[03:10:31] is because general McKenzie is the Cent Comcombat and Commander he works directly for the secretary
[03:10:38] defense who works directly for the president what happened was in you know the the story you gave
[03:10:43] in the withdrawal from Afghanistan general McKenzie and I know the operational planners that
[03:10:47] developed the plans for the withdrawal they submitted for the National Security Council
[03:10:51] four or five plans most of them included keeping Bockemaribus but they needed 2500 troops if you
[03:10:57] go and watch general McKenzie's testimony on the backside he says I tried to say that I we need
[03:11:02] a 2500 troops why that's relevant is because they determined that that number was what was capable
[03:11:07] maintaining Bockemaribus when president Biden and the National Security Council said no you
[03:11:12] got to go below 2500 then general McKenzie was at a critical moment right so as a as the senior
[03:11:19] military advisor you have a responsibility to convince your boss why you should execute your plan
[03:11:25] and you can't force your boss to do that but every staff officer knows how to get I mean
[03:11:28] as an operations officer there's an art to making sure that my boss does the plan that I think is
[03:11:33] best because I know better than he does in a lot of ways so it's it's artful but he failed to do that
[03:11:37] so once he failed to do that and he looked at the restraints that were imposed upon his plan
[03:11:42] if he didn't feel like he could execute the plan effectively without undo loss of life
[03:11:48] he had a moral obligation to resign he did not do that once he didn't resign at that point
[03:11:55] he is accountable he doesn't get to go back after the fact and say no I told the president
[03:12:00] National Security Council 2500 and they didn't listen to me he doesn't matter
[03:12:03] that you didn't convince him and you didn't resign it you're the senior military advisor so
[03:12:08] for all those reasons I think general McKenzie should be held accountable right now just as I've
[03:12:13] started this media tour 72 hours ago the White House released the general McKenzie was being
[03:12:17] replaced in the spring by a new sent calm combat commander and I don't think it's a coincidence
[03:12:22] to be completely honest with you because I've been hitting the media pretty hard that guy is
[03:12:26] going to undermine his whole career if he doesn't raise his hand and say he should be accountable
[03:12:29] before he exits so that's one thing I think the operational level of war which is at the combat
[03:12:35] commander level linked to the political policy strategic level of war which is a national security
[03:12:40] council executive branch is where we're failing wars where we failed the Vietnam it's where we
[03:12:45] failed the GWT generation and how you do that as you hold leaders accountable at that level
[03:12:49] and right now Congress and the executive branch aren't holding up there into the bargain I'll give
[03:12:54] an example of what I think is wrong with Congress when I went to I placed myself in jail on a lot
[03:13:00] of ways to illustrate something and I underestimated I overestimated Congress's ability to do anything
[03:13:07] because by partisan took turns with their sound bites of anger about the fail afghanistan withdrawal
[03:13:14] and then guess what nothing Congress's given by the founding fathers leverage over the DOD is the
[03:13:22] budget and what was not in the news is six days previous they unanimously approved a $740 billion
[03:13:29] or 22 fiscal year budget and not one of those vocally outraged congressional representatives said hey
[03:13:35] you're asking for $740 billion who's accountable from the afghanistan withdrawal show me metrics
[03:13:41] of effectiveness for the 21 budget because to do that would require courage to do that would get
[03:13:46] spawn as potentially anti military and that would go against self preservation so what do I want going
[03:13:52] forward I want the operational level of war combat and commanders to start being held accountable
[03:13:57] in the same manner that they were in war war two and look at how many generals Lincoln fired before
[03:14:01] we got to grant and grant wasn't a good tactician but he had operational foresight and he knew how to
[03:14:08] stick with it the second thing I think is we need leaders not politicians so I've got a website
[03:14:13] authenticamericans calm where you can see some of my political views but ultimately it's where you can
[03:14:17] support me and I've also got a second website votes for vets.org because I think we need leaders
[03:14:24] not politicians I've in the four months that I've been on a gag water gone out and organized a bunch of
[03:14:29] people running in the 22 race so I've got five senators and 20 congressional representatives
[03:14:34] that all I think embody the leadership and courage that we need in politics and some of them
[03:14:39] I think have a real good shot at winning some of them are more of a long shot but it's I have the
[03:14:44] ability right now at the platform I built to raise money bring in media to some of these races
[03:14:50] bring in different organizations to support some of these leaders that I think need to be up in
[03:14:55] NTC and is that also linked through authenticamericans.com for the for the people that are running
[03:15:02] for the vets that are running votes for vets okay number four so votes for vets.org is really where you
[03:15:08] can see most of those candidates my website authenticamericans really you can donate to the
[03:15:14] disabled veterans pack through authenticamericans and that money ultimately will go to support
[03:15:19] the coalition that I built but I they're separate authenticamericans is really my brand of my thinking
[03:15:25] and I'm not gonna run most likely in the 22 race I plan to just support these other veterans I've
[03:15:30] been through a lot like I said I think I need to stabilize a little bit and reassess the landscape
[03:15:36] before just continuing to sprint but I do think you know my whole life has been America I love
[03:15:42] America and I love foreign diplomacy and I think the federal politics game is where you really
[03:15:47] make that those changes and so I see myself running for something but probably won't be told 24
[03:15:53] so that's what you're gonna do you're planning to go into politics right now
[03:15:55] in the future in the future I mean right now I'm probably gonna write a book probably you know
[03:16:03] figure out where my house is gonna be at so you know I'm gonna spend a couple of years
[03:16:07] getting my foundation stable until I see something that I think makes sense it's a lot going on man
[03:16:18] it's a lot going on man I can't believe you I'll be got out a month ago that's kind of crazy
[03:16:24] I it seemed like longer time at past you're on social media you're on Facebook on Instagram on Twitter
[03:16:36] yeah if you go to my website all my social media is linked at the bottom so if you just go to
[03:16:39] authenticamericans.com you can find all my pages it's all at Stuart Scheller SCHALER
[03:16:47] yeah it seems like we're at a decent place to close it out to have been over three hours
[03:16:54] echo Charles yes sir any questions I don't actually I was gonna say do you do why don't you
[03:17:00] like write a book or something you are gonna so they go yeah I've been writing all these social media
[03:17:06] posts and this one guy commented me the way they say he was I think he was trying to be nice he's like
[03:17:09] hey still have you ever thought about writing the book instead of slowly writing a book over Facebook
[03:17:14] yeah that's the Facebook seems to be like your primary well the reason social media I mean
[03:17:20] Instagram and like TikTok or really the new generation but Facebook allows long written posts
[03:17:25] and so really now that if you look at it linked in has has a smaller character limit
[03:17:30] and so what I've done now is it's the same post on Facebook and linked in so really
[03:17:34] the linked in character limit is like the exact character limit of all my posts because I usually write
[03:17:39] like two pages and then I try to pair them down for the character limit but it just goes to
[03:17:44] I think the attention span of our current generation they can has to be in digestible chunks
[03:17:50] you know you get one of your books and it's a lot harder to get them digest but if you hit them
[03:17:53] with like five posts separated by three days you got to I think a much higher chance to get in
[03:17:57] them to digest them of that what are you hearing from the marine core right now they've done
[03:18:02] constant right they they have a lot of articles have been written on me since I got out and started
[03:18:07] doing this media and the same statement is we're not gonna comment on a civilian that used to
[03:18:12] serve in the main core and so they've got like one comment that's that we're not gonna comment
[03:18:16] about it and so we'll see though I'm hitting them with a lot of media so that might change but
[03:18:20] like you said it's only been like one week since close to Christmas they've been back so who knows
[03:18:25] what about your friends in the marine core what do they say nothing I mean the the
[03:18:30] the lieutenant kernels that were closest to me in the investigation that I've made I've
[03:18:33] counted a couple interviews and just illustrated what they said they've obviously gone calm silently
[03:18:37] all these other guys that I know have come online and been like that's bullshit that they did that
[03:18:41] and so I think they're probably having a hard time kind of reconciling what they did at least
[03:18:46] I would if I were them I mean I can't speak for them but I can't say I've had a lot of guys
[03:18:50] speak up and so I can't believe they did that like that's so snake in the grassish yeah I mean
[03:18:56] you said you've listened as podcast a little bit I am a huge fan of the marine core
[03:19:02] in fact my my family says that whenever I talk about the marine core I have a quote
[03:19:06] and they'll joke about it I say the marine core is freaking square the way that's what I tell
[03:19:11] you know for whatever reason I'm with my family and the marine core comes up I'll be
[03:19:14] I can bring course free in square the way and it's the truth I love the marine core
[03:19:19] I worked alongside the marine core pretty much my whole career and just if I think the marine
[03:19:24] core is outstanding and this is this is rough this is rough to watch this unfold
[03:19:30] well to be clear I love the marine core I think the marine core is pretty square the way but that
[03:19:34] comes from you know the individual is such a high calmer person holistically in the marine core
[03:19:40] the problem is the centralization of power over time and it kind of puts the blinders on
[03:19:45] so there's some fundamental things that need to be addressed but everything that I'm doing is not from
[03:19:50] contempt or or hate it's from a place of love I have I whole higher guard for the marine's and I
[03:19:56] still think highly of them oh well tell you what you do you take that that 65 page draft
[03:20:03] they had they got rejected and then when you would you cut it on 30 yeah so that other 35 pages
[03:20:09] so you put in your book yeah there you go we all kind of want to hear about that you see yeah
[03:20:15] right on Stu you got any closing thoughts before you shut it down
[03:20:19] now I'll just echo to your audience as I watched my saga unfold in the media
[03:20:26] the mainstream media is so polarized right now it was very hard to get a true assessment of like how
[03:20:31] people even felt watching the news because you know most of the people were taking my statements
[03:20:36] and trying to fit them into whatever their narrative was and shows like yours podcasts like yours
[03:20:42] YouTube channels I was actually getting much more accurate feedback from what people thought
[03:20:47] than mainstream media so I really believe going forward if the mainstream media can't figure
[03:20:52] out how to reconcile kind of their own polarized views that platforms like yours are even more important
[03:20:59] so I just encourage you to continue to get more and further well I will and there's recently
[03:21:04] some information that came out about a Joe Rogan and he's just annihilating the mainstream media
[03:21:10] which is awesome it's just total destruction I mean maybe two three four times what the mainstream
[03:21:18] media has for listeners Rogan has so and and he's one of you know he's the leader he's the the
[03:21:25] head of the pack but there's a lot of other a lot of other people out there that are doing the
[03:21:31] same thing trying to get the word out and trying to talk in a nuanced way about things and you know
[03:21:37] you're a perfect example of a guy that's going to get interviewed and have they're going to
[03:21:42] interview with questions four sound bites that they can make headlines that the people will click
[03:21:47] that's their goal and so you know having you on here to actually give your perspective
[03:21:53] your full perspective say whatever you want like that's the goal so people can actually hear
[03:21:59] and understand where you're coming from and I think that's important yeah well uh thanks for
[03:22:06] coming on man appreciate it thanks for traveling all the way out here I know you uh never made it to
[03:22:11] camp Hamilton or 29 palms for a to be stationed but you finally got to visit city at least for a
[03:22:16] little bit thanks for sharing your story thanks for sharing your concerns thanks for sharing your lessons
[03:22:22] learned um then I know what you did and what you're doing is not the easiest path but you're standing
[03:22:31] by what you believe to be right and what I believe to be right which is people need to take on a
[03:22:37] ship when things happen and that is commendable and I hope uh that despite the negative impacts
[03:22:45] that this has had on you on your life I hope it eventually has a positive impact for the Marine Corps
[03:22:52] for the military at large and of course for America and on top of all that man thanks for your service
[03:22:59] absolutely yeah hey uh you're down the road bring me back on the show see where I'm at
[03:23:04] awesome man thank you all right and with that steward sheller has left the building
[03:23:13] definitely uh appreciate him coming on
[03:23:16] an interesting journey that he's been on um yeah just thinking about some of the stuff that he
[03:23:26] talked about especially from you know at the end start talking about the the political ramifications
[03:23:33] of things that happen and again these are all things that I talk about these things in leadership
[03:23:39] strategy and tactics right you give up your influence um but at the same time like David Hacquard
[03:23:46] just get to that point where you're not gonna take it anymore you know what he what he's talking
[03:23:50] about McKenzie one thing that's interesting is he he and I just thought of this as right
[03:23:59] of right as steward left but you know he mentioned that you're in that position the president says
[03:24:06] no to your plan did it your duty to turn your rank and that is one way of looking at it for sure
[03:24:13] but also you know the other way and I talk about the leadership strategy and tactics
[03:24:19] that's one thing to do or is it your duty to mitigate the risk of the plan that's being
[03:24:25] utilized that's another way to look at it as well and he but here's where
[03:24:31] either of those two options here's the the point that I think is important and this is
[03:24:40] steward agree with this the outcome you own that that's the difference this is something that
[03:24:47] you know when Napoleon said if you if you follow orders even if you know they're wrong
[03:24:52] if you follow orders you're culpable so that's the point so where I might disagree with steward
[03:25:00] that it's the duty of someone to turn in their rank if they can't convince their boss or turning
[03:25:07] their resign from their job if they can't convince their boss that that is one way of looking at
[03:25:12] it at it I would say that it's your duty to execute the plan to the best of your ability and then
[03:25:19] take ownership of the fact that you didn't weren't able to convince your boss take ownership of
[03:25:25] the fact that the plan that executed was one that you agreed to execute and you did and it failed
[03:25:30] and it's your fault so just to again I'm sure you know we'll be able to talk about this
[03:25:36] some more in the future but I wanted to as I was walking back upstairs after I've forgotten
[03:25:43] stew just thinking about that fact of look again one way to say it is your duty to turn your rank
[03:25:50] in my opinion it's your duty to either turn your rank or take ownership of the plan and take ownership
[03:25:56] of the outcome of the plan that's what you do so a little nuance on that but appreciate him coming
[03:26:07] on and again trying to try to be able to allow someone to share their entire perspective so
[03:26:16] he's trying to do the right thing we're all trying to do the right thing we're all trying to do the
[03:26:20] right thing yeah we should be trying to do the right thing I think so too yeah and I think that
[03:26:26] starts with you know improving ourselves yes trying to do the right things in our own world
[03:26:33] it's true yeah seems like something we all should be doing yes I could tell there's any recommendations
[03:26:38] on how we might do that yes I will so well okay so my recommendations are I talk about this
[03:26:46] four things there's actually eight but these four things and they're divided into two each one
[03:26:51] all right this is as far as recommendations to do the improve yourself so you have
[03:26:55] your relationships this is two kinds of relationships my opinion or that can be categorized I think
[03:27:02] uh there's your health and capability two thing um your money and what you do with your time
[03:27:11] and your world view and spirituality the four things okay essentially so you want to improve that
[03:27:20] if you feel like you're lacking in any one of those pay attention to try to improve it good news
[03:27:27] about that about this whole thing good news we have things that will help you improve all these things
[03:27:35] that's it good that's a good thing let's start with the physical actually the physical part of it
[03:27:38] I think is is a big one you know and so well you want to set early on this particular podcast
[03:27:44] sure that the physical one will possibly influence all of them yes and factually factually
[03:27:52] and what I didn't say which is equally as true the physical one will negatively impact all of them
[03:27:58] oh look at that it's slide I'm telling like I actually wrote about both those things and leadership
[03:28:03] oh no in the discipline because freedom failed man oh yeah and you know we all heard the
[03:28:08] hey if you don't have your health you don't have anything like you know like that whole thing I mean
[03:28:11] yeah think about it like if you're like okay let's say you have the best you just landed the best
[03:28:15] job and it pays a lot and you love doing it so you can't really fight as fairs can't walk
[03:28:21] though up the for or you now are gonna are at risk of XYZ terminal diseases yeah no one takes out
[03:28:31] yeah that's not a good situation regardless of how much money you make or what if you have great
[03:28:35] great relationships intimate family friends great but you neglected your health now you're on the
[03:28:42] path to demise does that help your relationships no does it hurt your relationship oh yeah everybody
[03:28:49] sad including you by the way either way you see where I'm going with this all right so let's take
[03:28:52] it care of our physical health let's improve our physical I like it never too late to start my opinion
[03:28:57] well after your dead little bit too late but we're live and we're doing it
[03:29:05] uh good news we have some supplementation to help you on this path physical and mental boom here we go okay
[03:29:13] so a big one that I actually I don't want to say I didn't pay attention to it because I do take it
[03:29:20] every day but it just sorted just you just take it as a vitamin D3 that's immunity that's all it's a
[03:29:25] lot of things that's a big one yeah I feel like when I got Miss Rowna yeah no factor really
[03:29:31] partially because of vitamin D yeah I'm thinking so I'm gonna give you um that I have the exact same story
[03:29:37] so yeah the first time we caught it that was like 20 years again I here's all tight I don't know
[03:29:44] I didn't test positive technically but here look we went end of 2020 right that's when we got it yeah
[03:29:52] no symptoms at all not even like the one actually I don't want to say no I lost my sense of smell
[03:29:59] right that's it no fever no cough no cough no temperature no factor didn't miss a workout nothing
[03:30:10] my workouts as I reviewed I was noticed that my workouts were a little bit weaker than normal
[03:30:15] but I just thought I was over training or something like this yeah you have a bad day yeah no
[03:30:19] sugar and then uh boom right well they say if you have a fever you shouldn't workout
[03:30:25] you can have a cold but if you don't have a fever you can still work out you're about to
[03:30:29] be still like respond correctly that's what I hear I don't know so so this kind of recently we'll say
[03:30:36] an undisclosed time um members of my family took a coronavirus test tested positive so took the test
[03:30:44] no quarantine there's very many good reasons to believe that I whatever they had that my family
[03:30:52] remember had I got it too good reasons will be I'm not going to go into how or why other stuff
[03:30:58] the next day after that the results come back positive right for my family oh yeah test positive
[03:31:07] same deal of course I got it I have two of got it technically I didn't go take a test in test
[03:31:11] positive so I don't know the full disclosure so again no symptoms no symptoms no fever no cough
[03:31:16] no factor no cough no factors in fact so technically I got coronavirus on paper this is what I got
[03:31:22] not in real life not in the field there was no coronavirus to be seen or heard or felt anything
[03:31:29] there's only on paper I attribute that too I think anyway they care that I took of my immunity
[03:31:38] by the midd3 cold war by the way cold war isn't every day it cold war is like you see
[03:31:43] something on the horizon boom cold war all day oh yeah preemptive strike on that
[03:31:48] sir savagery yep so we got all that jockel fuel cold war vitamin d3 we got stuff for your
[03:31:54] joints joint warfare no it's a theme everything is war against this bad stuff all right
[03:32:00] cuz that's kind of what is the emergency there is surprisingly enough our theme is war the
[03:32:05] child war against weakness organs disease or robots war against robots by the way just in case actually
[03:32:11] we like robots from time to time nonetheless okay all right also if you like energy drinks
[03:32:15] or if you would like energy drinks but you don't want to help the ramifications that some
[03:32:22] traditional energy drinks provide for a lack of a better term we got something for you to
[03:32:27] just plain go energy drink all healthy so good no preservatives all natural no sugar all natural
[03:32:35] all natural all natural vitamin vitamin B12 vitamin B6 electrolytes it's so good for you oh yeah
[03:32:44] only 95 milligrams of caffeine enough to get a little bit not enough to give you the
[03:32:49] care so if you're on this path and you're down for energy drink scenario this is
[03:32:57] 100% the one it'll keep you on the path not off you drink a bad energy drink you're kind of off
[03:33:01] the path this is not this one boom on the mock don't forget about mock and look you're going to
[03:33:08] get situations where you're like in your life where you have you're on the path you're feeling good
[03:33:13] you're doing disciplined and you just ate a freaking salad with a chicken breast
[03:33:21] super elf hey oh yeah yeah you can have dessert you know 100% good for you yeah so
[03:33:32] so we had a scenario actually I shouldn't even say it because they kind of fell off the path
[03:33:37] but we had a scenario a friend of a friend daughter birthday scenario cake was involved
[03:33:45] big chuck and he was like a cupcake but it was like way bigger yeah but it wasn't as big as like
[03:33:52] a regular sized cake I don't cakes not that tempting to me because I only like the frosting okay
[03:33:58] I don't know those good bro this one was a chocolate what is frosting do you know what it actually is
[03:34:03] what is it well it depends on what kind but uh butter there's a lot of butter in it butter sugar
[03:34:10] flavoring there's like a flavoring of some sort um like chocolate frosting this is butter sugar
[03:34:16] and chocolate and like cream I think that's pretty much it that's part of like there's a lot of
[03:34:21] fake part I don't like that's why cupcakes not really my thing bro I make exact opposite
[03:34:26] and there's six of them and they're huge so you know the kids eat something it's a birthday I get
[03:34:32] them let it slide but bro those big cupcakes there's a lot of leftovers just saying that's a lot of
[03:34:37] you and you know but here's the thing that I only eat one meal that day so technically you know
[03:34:46] but it was it was weakness what is that I do right though so we should add a mulk I should add a mulk
[03:34:53] what if we filled the whole thing here's the thing it was an opportunity it was like what he call it
[03:34:57] one like the bad guys come in at a target of opportunity yeah exactly right up on your mouth
[03:35:03] you got to be by a freaking cupcake oh so I totally did totally did I was doing something in the kitchen
[03:35:09] and there was like a container in the leftovers you know how people when you're younger you're like
[03:35:13] gonna go out with your friends drinking and you do like all we're gonna pre-game ever heard of that
[03:35:19] yes sir hey we're gonna pre-game there's a little hint but a little hint for everybody let's say you're
[03:35:24] going to watch the UFC at your friend's house or you're going to you know your wife's got a friend
[03:35:30] that has some part you know whatever you're going to some unknown realm will you're not sure what's
[03:35:36] gonna be eating pre-game with a mulk pre-game with a mulk that way they show up look they show up with
[03:35:44] you know pizza and instead of eating nine pieces of pizza you just had a mulk you're so correct
[03:35:51] you're so good maybe have apiece you know we're gonna be social either pizza pizza tastes good whatever oh yeah
[03:35:58] so I'd get before back in the day long time ago I'd get I'd order sushi and you know it's sure
[03:36:03] some people in the room don't really aren't really into sushi and I am very much so and I get it when
[03:36:09] I'm like super hungry um next to the sushi spot is a place you can get milkshakes so everyone's
[03:36:15] why I'd get a milkshake too if you drink some of the milkshake before the sushi it's like you're not even
[03:36:21] that hungry for the sushi anymore counterproductive yeah because it's not only is there calories for
[03:36:27] sure but it's like sweet you know what it is actually a great game you accidentally pre-game
[03:36:31] pre-game with the wrong thing that's a well what if it's absolutely true you pre-game with the
[03:36:38] mulk or if you're gonna go out to dinner where it's like hey we're going to this place it's not
[03:36:42] necessarily that hotel you can food yes you're gonna get the chicken parm which is kind of
[03:36:48] you know we're borderline we're brushing up again spares still gonna have some pasta with it which
[03:36:53] so no pre-game yeah pre-game that's what I'm saying both hint for the world but that's a good
[03:36:59] actually really good advice man I do that all the time the other thing you gotta watch out for
[03:37:04] you you go this is another situation hey we're gonna do dinner party you ever go to it like one of
[03:37:09] those the people are on here on top of things right so you show up at five you tell me we're
[03:37:16] going to a dinner party that means we're gonna be eating dinner we show up at five next thing I
[03:37:21] know it's seven o'clock that we have a neat stuff now I'm not happy about the scenario right
[03:37:26] so yeah because guess what it's not that you're not eating because they're putting out freaking
[03:37:31] chips and whatever yeah it's a pre-game yeah pre-game that's what I'm saying pre-game with the mulk
[03:37:38] and I don't want to get too technical though now that I just realized it does it's actually kind of the
[03:37:44] opposite it is a pre-game technically but does the opposite of a drinking pre-game I've always heard
[03:37:49] a pre-game as the drinking yeah oh yeah that's not the only way out in the drinking pre-game you drink
[03:37:55] to get more liquor don't liquor it up you don't drink the milk to get more
[03:38:02] full yes I guess kind of it's a positive pre-game that's what we're talking
[03:38:06] for pre-game nonetheless very constructive pre-game beneficial if you want to do this stuff go to
[03:38:10] jockelfield.com if you subscribe to it shipping is free if you want to pick up some of the
[03:38:15] energy drinks that's actually good for you go to walla if you want to pick up any of this stuff go
[03:38:20] to vitamin shop and you can get better it's true better life yeah better healthier
[03:38:27] jockelfield.com big deal also origin or genus a american made stuff no I'm this isn't just any kind of
[03:38:35] stuff like american made denim jeans boots leather stuff I would say if you want to clarify it
[03:38:43] a little bit more without going through a list of stuff you could say american made stuff that you
[03:38:46] actually need right this is stuff that you actually need this is the what do you what do you need well
[03:38:51] you need you need jeans you need shorts you need a sweatshirt you need a t-shirt you need a beanie
[03:38:58] you need this is stuff you need any boots you need a key you need to just your key what you're going to
[03:39:05] train no key oh wait you're saying no you that's fine too but you need a rash guard so there you go
[03:39:11] go to origin us a dot com you can get all this stuff that you actually need this is good idea
[03:39:18] and it's all made in american too by the way even the materials everything all made 100% made
[03:39:24] in american down to the thread down to the rivets on the jeans the zippers on the jeans
[03:39:30] you know the buttons even the buttons true also jockels door if you want to represent on the
[03:39:37] path discipline equals freedom the idea good if something happens it's not that great there's
[03:39:43] going to be some good anyway if you want to represent jockels door dot com that's where you can go
[03:39:48] we also have a subscription situation called the shirt locker and these are additional designs that
[03:39:53] you can only get once well i guess now if you remember you can log back in the store get other
[03:39:59] designs from before so we do have that feature it's a big deal we didn't have that before i'm
[03:40:04] just saying some of the feature oh yeah for this guy in front no bell piece for us over here all
[03:40:09] now it's a good one it's a good deal man it's a big deal you should put release of you know
[03:40:14] I'm a news article about that let's just say it's a big deal you see what i'm saying but
[03:40:21] yes jockels door dot com you want to represent you want to check it out if you like something
[03:40:25] get something also subscribe to this podcast we also have the unraveling podcast we have the
[03:40:32] ground of podcast where you're kid podcast we can also join us at the underground joc on the ground dot com
[03:40:38] there's weird things happening out there there's people being banned shadow banned
[03:40:44] there's videos being censored which is crazy yeah like we talk about china
[03:40:51] and the fact that they banned parts of the internet and social media they you are not allowed
[03:40:57] and here it is happening here in america all the enough what is the what do you think is like the
[03:41:04] above board not even above board what what is the motive you think and banning someone
[03:41:11] driving a narrative i feel i'm sorry man i feel like someone who's it response i mean i'm
[03:41:16] sure this is a group people who are responsible for that and they're kind of running the
[03:41:20] banning but what is it like what is the conclusion that they come to the be like you know what we
[03:41:25] should really just ban this is just driving a narrative they're driving a narrative and here
[03:41:29] there's there's what sucks is the worst thing you can do to try and drive a narrative is not
[03:41:33] let people talk because if someone has a dumb idea the best thing you could do is let them talk
[03:41:38] about their dumb idea so we can say hey here's your why your idea is dumb what's scariest when
[03:41:43] we let ego get involved and instead of me saying you know what echo's got a opinion
[03:41:46] i'm not sure if he's right or not but i think he's wrong so therefore i'm gonna ban him
[03:41:53] i should be like well echo's got an idea if that idea actually has merit we should bring it
[03:41:57] out in the open we should talk about it and see if it's right or wrong or maybe not necessarily
[03:42:01] right or wrong this is where it's this is what's scary not necessarily right or wrong everyone
[03:42:06] wants everything to be black or white science science isn't black and white science changes
[03:42:13] so when you say something is wrong what how many things are actually wrong not too many
[03:42:22] especially when you have evolving situations whether they're political situations medical situations
[03:42:29] these things evolve and so to just say you know what we're not gonna let you talk about your
[03:42:35] idea is really crazy and it's happening that's why we made the jocca on the ground jocca on
[03:42:42] the ground dot com it's a place that we control we don't control this platform that you're listening
[03:42:48] is too right now unless you're on the underground so if you want to help us out in the underground
[03:42:53] have a little sanctuary of freedom you can go to jocca on the ground dot com you can subscribe
[03:42:59] because eight dollars and eight cents a month we do an additional podcast to say thank you
[03:43:03] answer your questions talk about some some correlating subjects so check that out if you can't
[03:43:13] afford it we still want you in the game we still want you to be free so you can email assistance
[03:43:19] at jocca on the ground dot com if you want some of that we have a youtube channel by the way
[03:43:23] where we are making really good videos and really really really good the video that you
[03:43:35] made with the robots oh yeah yes that was an insanely impressive do you put it on the youtube channel
[03:43:43] I'll yes put it on the youtube channel because that is really good like I was very impressed
[03:43:51] look I know you're good yeah I'm not trying to say that I have low expectations I have the highest
[03:43:56] of expectations because you made some really good stuff in the past so I'm not good but this one
[03:44:02] and you know what to be honest with you I wasn't even the assistant director on this one kind of
[03:44:06] on me out maybe a little bit better there's a couple of pointers I could add it you know a couple
[03:44:11] little spot line could have been a little bit you know yeah you know but from a graphics perspective
[03:44:17] is it amazing so if you want to check out some of those videos that echo Charles makes in his
[03:44:22] head and then makes him an actuality subscribe to that origin USA has a cool channel too
[03:44:27] subscribe to that I made you know what I made I made a MP3 album yes yeah oh yeah psychological warfare
[03:44:39] of course yeah album one this album you talk about it does have tracks on it each track is
[03:44:45] literally the solution for any moment of weakness you might have the common ones apparently I need
[03:44:51] to make one for cupcakes well because you got to have much by a cupcake but it was that was like
[03:44:58] it was like too fast for me to be like oh let me pop in trick and psychological warfare
[03:45:03] I don't even think I have my phone you got ambush I got hey hey look you see it's not used to be
[03:45:08] a hundred percent as effective as now no longer well I didn't put it in if I put it in and I still
[03:45:13] chose to eat the the oversized cupcake which had a very large front end benefit by the
[03:45:21] banning would not have been a hundred percent but you know I chose not to you know to put it in
[03:45:27] but nonetheless you put it in a hundred percent effectiveness it'll get you past these moments
[03:45:31] these common moments of weakness skipping the workout nope you won't skip the workout
[03:45:36] about today I didn't I wasn't about to skip the workout at all but you know every time when you
[03:45:40] you talk about like oh yeah when you wake up and it's cold but it's warm in the bed
[03:45:46] yeah today was literally like that this morning's chilly out there didn't need it though
[03:45:50] chilly out there actually even took took a cold shower just kind of proved to yourself I got the
[03:45:55] cold tub oh yeah I didn't but the the cold shower you know how they say one of the benefits is like
[03:46:02] it exercises your mind to do something you really don't want to do so that way like mentally
[03:46:07] everything else seems like I don't know easier or whatever um I guess even though you really don't
[03:46:16] that's not the first thing you want to do going a cold shower or cold tub when you wake up usually
[03:46:22] but when you get out you do feel like dang you'd some other stuff got awakened in your body
[03:46:28] whatever it's a good way to wake up yeah true um flipsidegantvist.com to go to my or making cool stuff
[03:46:34] to hang on your wall check that out got a bunch of books final spin somebody just posted the last
[03:46:41] page of final spin which we got admit it's got it cool so I was like it looks so cool to see that
[03:46:49] last page posted because the way it's laid out and stuff um final spin check that out leadership
[03:46:56] strategy and tactics field man or the code evaluation protocol discipline because freedom field manual
[03:46:59] way the warrior kid one two three four get your kids on the path get the neighbors on the path
[03:47:07] Mikey in the dragons about face by hack worth quoted from it today extreme ownership and
[03:47:12] the dichotomy of leadership that are wrote with my brother, Dave Babin also we have a leadership
[03:47:19] consultancy echelon front leadership is the solution to your problems I don't know what your
[03:47:24] problems are but in a leadership is the solution inside your organization go to echelon front dot
[03:47:29] com for details on that you can also check out some of the live events that we have we have the
[03:47:33] master two-day conference we have field training exercises which are two days you spend out and
[03:47:40] field learn how to maneuver and then lead in simulated combat missions you will feel your leadership
[03:47:48] improve battlefield where we go and walk historical battlefields and talk about the lessons learned
[03:47:57] from the good and bad calls made by leaders so check all of that stuff out at echelonfront.com
[03:48:04] we also have an online training academy for you to assist you in taking ownership of your life
[03:48:12] the various skills in life that will that will make you better that will put you in a better
[03:48:21] position there will help you overcome scenarios that we all face so if you want to take ownership
[03:48:29] of your life go to extreme ownership dot com I'm on there two three times a week live you want
[03:48:36] to ask me a question good go on there and ask me a question you want to you want to dive a
[03:48:41] little bit deeper into extreme ownership go on there we have courses that you can go through
[03:48:46] when you want to put your team through extreme ownership training go on there get your team unified
[03:48:53] behind the same principles extreme ownership dot com if you want to help service members
[03:49:00] active retire their families go to our families check out mark least mom mama least he's got a
[03:49:04] charity organization that doesn't credible things for veterans and their families if you want to
[03:49:10] donate or you want to get involved go to america's mighty warriors dot org and if you want to
[03:49:16] hear more from me talking a little too much or you want to hear from echo who's barely talking
[03:49:29] and still talking a little bit too much you can find us on the inner web on the gram on Facebook
[03:49:36] on Twitter echoes adequate Charles i'm at jokker one i'm also on
[03:49:45] what's it called getter getter gett here i'm on there now too i'm on there so also check out
[03:49:54] Stewart sheller at Stewart sheller on all those different categories and he's also got that website
[03:49:59] authentic americans dot com and thanks once again to Stewart sheller for coming on sharing his
[03:50:06] view on things thanks to him for trying to make a difference and thanks again Stewart sheller for
[03:50:11] your service in the marine court to our country and thanks to all the military personnel
[03:50:17] out there right now trying to make a difference in the world trying to keep it safe for freedom
[03:50:23] by doing what few people will do and the same goes for our police and law enforcement fire fighters
[03:50:29] paramedics and these dispatchers correctional officers board patrol secret service all first responders
[03:50:37] thank you for keeping us safe and protecting freedom here at home
[03:50:44] and everyone else out there there are a lot of forces at work in the world
[03:50:49] a lot of strings being pulled a lot of decisions being made there are agendas and personalities
[03:50:55] and people sometimes look out for their own self interests and that's okay sometimes in most
[03:51:02] cases that's good because when we're all looking out for own self interest then collectively
[03:51:08] we're moving forward but sometimes people's self interest starts to hurt others especially
[03:51:16] from a strategic perspective when people start to look at their own self interest and it helps
[03:51:23] them but it hurts us as a whole from a strategic perspective that's when you may have to step up
[03:51:32] and try and do it tactfully and try and do it through influence and by building relationships
[03:51:37] and by guiding others in the right direction and if none of that works then thanks strategically
[03:51:46] about how to handle your next steps do the calculus don't let your emotions drive your decisions
[03:51:56] think about that indirect approach from be a slid-out heart think about the effectiveness or
[03:52:01] the ineffectiveness of being direct and then make sure you are staying true to your principles
[03:52:10] and what you believe in after all in the end you have to look yourself in the mirror
[03:52:19] and you have to be able to look yourself in the mirror and know that you did the right things
[03:52:25] for the right reasons so move with caution but also with conviction
[03:52:33] until next time Zeko and Jockel out