# Ep. 216 | Jason Angell | ANGLICO Officer and Marine Infantryman

An episode of [Former Action Guys Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1475060182), 7 Aug 2024, 1 h 52 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/60941991/anglico_marine_jason_angell.mp3

Jason Angell was an enlisted Marine infantryman that left the service after an injury and came back as an officer. He participated in the invasion of Iraq and also served as an ANGLICO Firepower Control Team leader during a deployment to Ramadi. Check out Jason's book through the link below! Support the show https://www.jcramergraphics.com https://www.ANGLICOshop.com https://www.patreon.com/formeractionguys Jason's site https://www.jason-angell.com/

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: But let's kick this for real. Man, Jason Angel back
[0:03] Speaker 1: on the show third time. I think we were talking
[0:06] Speaker 1: about it before we started. You were on episode one
[0:08] Speaker 1: thirteen and one eighteen, I believe.
[0:10] Speaker 2: Like something like that. Yeah, that was a couple of
[0:12] Speaker 2: years ago, I think.
[0:13] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a minute man, one hundred episodes. Yeah,
[0:16] Speaker 1: how you been fast?
[0:18] Speaker 2: Good man. I've been doing really good.
[0:20] Speaker 3: Yeah. I've pushed through COVID and you know, got a
[0:23] Speaker 3: new job. My old one kind of went away.
[0:26] Speaker 2: To the COVID, But I got another great job and
[0:29] Speaker 2: you know, doing good man. Kids are growing up.
[0:30] Speaker 1: Fast, they do that. My son is, My son's going
[0:35] Speaker 1: to be eighteen in a few months. I just I
[0:38] Speaker 1: just sent him out. He's, uh, while I'm doing this interview,
[0:40] Speaker 1: he's taking the bus here in San Diego downtown to
[0:43] Speaker 1: go shoot photos and stuff. You know, he's seventeen. I'm like,
[0:46] Speaker 1: you know, you gotta go live, man. Go you got
[0:49] Speaker 1: a free bus pass because you're a minor. Take the
[0:51] Speaker 1: bus downtown and go shoot photos and walk around on
[0:53] Speaker 1: your own, you know, spend a little bit of money,
[0:56] Speaker 1: kind of understand what it is outside of your parents'
[0:59] Speaker 1: house without us.
[1:00] Speaker 2: Agree, Man, one percent that's how he learned.
[1:03] Speaker 1: Yeah, for the people that haven't caught one thirteen and
[1:07] Speaker 1: Win eighteen, you want to give them kind of a
[1:09] Speaker 1: recap of what we think about or your quick overview
[1:13] Speaker 1: of your career.
[1:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, basically, yeah, I think.
[1:17] Speaker 3: My name is Elfad to Jase Sangel and prior enlisted
[1:20] Speaker 3: and prior officer.
[1:21] Speaker 2: Ten years in the Marine Corps. Initially I came in
[1:24] Speaker 2: as a both three eleven and ninety three.
[1:27] Speaker 3: I was in for a few years, got out, had a.
[1:29] Speaker 2: Broken leg, went to college.
[1:31] Speaker 3: I went back in after college in two thousand, two
[1:34] Speaker 3: thousand and one when actually with the TBS, and in
[1:38] Speaker 3: two thousand and eight did four deployments, three of them
[1:41] Speaker 3: do Iraq, did the initial invasion with Alpha Company one
[1:44] Speaker 3: five and it.
[1:45] Speaker 2: Was a crazy ten years, to be honest with you, Yeah, dude,
[1:48] Speaker 2: but that's pretty much.
[1:48] Speaker 3: What it is. So and this this book that I wrote,
[1:51] Speaker 3: Running Towards Gunfire, Courage and Brotherhood in Ramoni is basically
[1:55] Speaker 3: about my second appointment, my second deployment. I was a
[1:57] Speaker 3: firepower control team leader the first name of Cook, and
[2:00] Speaker 3: in August of five until March of six, we were
[2:05] Speaker 3: in a Ramadi.
[2:06] Speaker 2: With a brief break in the hit.
[2:09] Speaker 3: For about a month's crazy time for everybody in I
[2:14] Speaker 3: especially in ramani Uly Alambar Province, and I.
[2:17] Speaker 2: Kind of go through that, you know, how we what
[2:18] Speaker 2: we did on a day.
[2:19] Speaker 3: To day basis, and it was it's a good story
[2:22] Speaker 3: for Anglico. It's a good story for the units for
[2:24] Speaker 3: work with like with you know, twenty Gay, as well
[2:29] Speaker 3: as the smaller units who were in hit supporting uh
[2:33] Speaker 3: you know, the sitting National Guard units and all great units.
[2:36] Speaker 2: Man, it was soldiers and the National guardsmen and other marines.
[2:39] Speaker 3: Just every day we're out there, that's who was doing,
[2:42] Speaker 3: you know, on the road doing the work. Wow.
[2:45] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, that's it's been interesting. I've been reading.
[2:50] Speaker 1: I have been reading the book. It's been good so far.
[2:52] Speaker 1: I appreciate you sending me an advanced copy to check out.
[2:56] Speaker 1: I think the cover arts really cool too. I really
[2:58] Speaker 1: enjoyed that. I like in the book you talked about
[3:00] Speaker 1: when you were in infantry. Meant, first off, it's crazy
[3:02] Speaker 1: that you broke your leg and they let you come
[3:04] Speaker 1: back in, especially as an officer. You know, I don't
[3:06] Speaker 1: know if they would do that today because of all
[3:08] Speaker 1: the medical stuff. I don't know if that's even a possibility.
[3:11] Speaker 2: That was That's a good story.
[3:12] Speaker 3: You know, he can't talked about it. I got I
[3:14] Speaker 3: was in a vehicle accident. I was dating someone up
[3:17] Speaker 3: in Orange County. You know, I'm stationed in Samwiiteo because
[3:19] Speaker 3: I was back then.
[3:20] Speaker 2: I was with three five Surber Time slip Wings, IB
[3:23] Speaker 2: and North came back.
[3:24] Speaker 3: When even buddy Mine fell asleep, he thought, the will
[3:26] Speaker 3: no seatbelts.
[3:27] Speaker 2: You know, this is nineteen ninety four, March clipped.
[3:30] Speaker 3: He got ejected out on the I five back broken ribs,
[3:33] Speaker 3: Pimpulu Bigler crack, punstured lungs and uh so it was
[3:37] Speaker 3: not devloidable. So I switched over to Alpha Company one
[3:40] Speaker 3: to five, enlisted and then slowly tried to read rehab.
[3:44] Speaker 2: I was on like duty but going through, you.
[3:46] Speaker 3: Know, making it happen, and eventually I you know, I
[3:49] Speaker 3: was a team leader, occulting leader, but a fire team leader.
[3:54] Speaker 2: And uh I was in a live fire range one day.
[3:56] Speaker 3: I was just this limpid because I just pushed them
[3:59] Speaker 3: through it make mapp and the dank managed all that.
[4:01] Speaker 3: He's like, you got to talk to metaal. You can't
[4:04] Speaker 3: have you out here on a live fire arranged limping. Yeah,
[4:07] Speaker 3: yeahd percent right, you know.
[4:09] Speaker 2: But I was trying to push through it and do
[4:10] Speaker 2: the right thing and I just couldn't do it. So
[4:12] Speaker 2: I had to take that break in between.
[4:14] Speaker 3: And they let me in. I went there was a
[4:16] Speaker 3: problem because I just got out of ten percent disability.
[4:19] Speaker 3: So the Marine Corps, like my OsO was like, we
[4:22] Speaker 3: don't know why they're saying no.
[4:24] Speaker 2: Finally I found out because you're on disability.
[4:26] Speaker 3: So one day I had to go to Long Beach
[4:29] Speaker 3: to the VA hospital there and I take.
[4:31] Speaker 2: An X ray.
[4:32] Speaker 3: They looked on my leg and I took up to
[4:33] Speaker 3: the officer that's some naval officer and he's like, so,
[4:36] Speaker 3: why are you here. I was like, well, I'm trying
[4:37] Speaker 3: to get off disability and going back to the Marine
[4:39] Speaker 3: Corps officer and he's like you want to get off
[4:42] Speaker 3: this ability? Like yeah, yes, sir, and he's like.
[4:45] Speaker 2: I've never had anybody here want to get off thisility.
[4:48] Speaker 2: I was out that day. Then the easiest.
[4:51] Speaker 3: Thing I've ever known the VA ever was that day
[4:53] Speaker 3: was trying to get off That was it. One guy
[4:57] Speaker 3: did it.
[4:58] Speaker 2: There wasn't a chain of nothing. I don't know how
[4:59] Speaker 2: to do it.
[4:59] Speaker 3: Now that was it?
[5:01] Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, that's cool man, that's awesome to even
[5:05] Speaker 1: let that. That's crazy. You only got ten percent. Did
[5:07] Speaker 1: you get medically reseparated before your eas right, Yeah, yeah,
[5:11] Speaker 1: but only but still only got ten percent? Like that,
[5:14] Speaker 1: What the hell does that?
[5:16] Speaker 3: You know?
[5:16] Speaker 2: Like fifty bucks a month.
[5:18] Speaker 3: I didn't see for a few years because I've got
[5:19] Speaker 3: to pay back to the Marine Corps or some weird I.
[5:22] Speaker 1: Was gonna ask. That was my next question, is if
[5:23] Speaker 1: you had to pay all that disability pay back.
[5:26] Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to pay it back. Wow, you had
[5:29] Speaker 2: to pay it back when going back in.
[5:31] Speaker 3: But back then when you exited, there's this thing that
[5:33] Speaker 3: the Marine Corps gives you a lump sun but then
[5:35] Speaker 3: you have to pay the VA. It pays them back,
[5:37] Speaker 3: and then you don't get a check for a few
[5:38] Speaker 3: years until you pay that back. So I got like
[5:41] Speaker 3: a thirty five hundred dollars check when I got out
[5:42] Speaker 3: from the Marine Corps as the severns pay and the
[5:46] Speaker 3: VA had to pay with that VA money I got
[5:48] Speaker 3: even went directly with the Marine Corps until I was
[5:50] Speaker 3: paid off. Yeah, So I didn't see it until I
[5:54] Speaker 3: was almost done with the college.
[5:55] Speaker 1: That was happening after the surge, after that was kind
[5:59] Speaker 1: of over and things were starting to start to wind
[6:02] Speaker 1: down a little bit in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like when
[6:04] Speaker 1: Iraq kind of wrapped up, they were allowing people to
[6:08] Speaker 1: get out and they were giving on what did they
[6:09] Speaker 1: call it, I don't remember what they called it, but
[6:11] Speaker 1: it was basically a severance package, like, hey, if you
[6:13] Speaker 1: want to get out early, fill out this form. If
[6:16] Speaker 1: you qualify, you'll get out and you'll get fifty grand,
[6:20] Speaker 1: you know. And it was like some of them were
[6:22] Speaker 1: like a lot of money. It was like thirty thousand
[6:23] Speaker 1: for you know, it was like tens of thousands of dollars,
[6:26] Speaker 1: and a lot of those guys didn't realize, like you said,
[6:30] Speaker 1: when you do that, when you sign that, when you
[6:32] Speaker 1: sign that, you're gonna get this lump sum from the
[6:34] Speaker 1: Marine Corps when you get out, and you say, you
[6:36] Speaker 1: get forty percent disability and it's I don't know how
[6:38] Speaker 1: much it is, like a thousand bucks a month or whatever.
[6:41] Speaker 1: You don't get any of that money until that forty
[6:43] Speaker 1: grand is paid back. And I'm like, well, how is
[6:46] Speaker 1: that a benefit?
[6:46] Speaker 3: Like some weird bureaucratic mask that they I didn't know,
[6:51] Speaker 3: but I just wanted to get fifty bucks money until
[6:53] Speaker 3: I was almost Filma college.
[6:54] Speaker 1: So that's so crazy though. It's I'm like, that's so stupid.
[6:57] Speaker 1: Why would I do that? Like I'm gonna I mean,
[6:59] Speaker 1: if I want to get out early, I guess that's cool.
[7:01] Speaker 1: But like if I'm planning, because some people will budget
[7:04] Speaker 1: in they're like, hey, I'm I'm at seventy percent disability.
[7:07] Speaker 1: I'm gonna get this much a month. You know, that's
[7:09] Speaker 1: going to be part of their budget while they look
[7:11] Speaker 1: for a job, get education, whatever, And to not suddenly
[7:15] Speaker 1: not get that would be a shock. You know.
[7:17] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we got to pay it back.
[7:19] Speaker 1: Yeah, as you're paying it back. Yeah, that's so crazy though.
[7:23] Speaker 1: The other thing I thought was interesting in your book
[7:25] Speaker 1: at the beginning of it, where you're talking about how
[7:28] Speaker 1: you I think you were still in s OI and
[7:30] Speaker 1: you saw an Anglico team that was out training. Can
[7:33] Speaker 1: you can you talk about that?
[7:35] Speaker 2: Yeah?
[7:35] Speaker 3: You know, so in a book when I talked about
[7:37] Speaker 3: the person I ever saw, you know, a unit like
[7:39] Speaker 3: anglic I didn't really know what those. So we're coming
[7:42] Speaker 3: back from the fire and range, you know, eight mile
[7:45] Speaker 3: high halfway and we stopped in on our pack, drink
[7:48] Speaker 3: of water, right, and it's getting closer to the late afternoon.
[7:52] Speaker 3: We're kind of by a draw there and along that
[7:55] Speaker 3: road parallels to draw the parallels the road there at
[7:57] Speaker 3: kemp Heilton and out of out of the USh, you know,
[8:00] Speaker 3: we see these four marines come out with these huge packs.
[8:03] Speaker 2: Right, So we had the alice pack back then, but
[8:05] Speaker 2: these they had the mountain run, so it was huge.
[8:07] Speaker 2: It was a pack full of stuff.
[8:08] Speaker 3: They have a candy paint on, they had the booney cover.
[8:11] Speaker 3: Each one of them had a radio with coming out right,
[8:15] Speaker 3: So I'm like, what is this and we're just kind
[8:17] Speaker 3: of watching them and they're they kind of get like
[8:19] Speaker 3: a Type three sixty and they're on a couple of them.
[8:21] Speaker 2: On the radio. And just see these two jets come
[8:23] Speaker 2: through that canyon just fream it and they went up.
[8:26] Speaker 3: And popped right back and then they did not a
[8:28] Speaker 3: pop and then they'd come down and so it was
[8:30] Speaker 3: just a training are just doing a dry run and
[8:33] Speaker 3: we were I was watching them. That was cool.
[8:36] Speaker 2: And then before you know they're gone.
[8:37] Speaker 3: Right they're back in the brush doing it late at
[8:40] Speaker 3: night after we you know, clean weapons and clean the barracks.
[8:44] Speaker 3: Time off, so down to the s O I p
[8:47] Speaker 3: X right, the little service store there. I wanted to
[8:50] Speaker 3: get some Doc pepperm some Copenhagen or something like that.
[8:54] Speaker 3: When I was going in there, we saw that get.
[8:55] Speaker 2: Those four guys.
[8:56] Speaker 3: There's four marines and one of them was going in
[8:58] Speaker 3: as well, and went up there to give my Copenhagen
[9:01] Speaker 3: or my drink.
[9:03] Speaker 2: He was right in front of me and he was
[9:04] Speaker 2: just like start talking, Hey, what's up, dude.
[9:05] Speaker 3: And he's a corporal and that time, I was that's
[9:07] Speaker 3: like a PFC right when you're an SI and kind
[9:10] Speaker 3: of go into everybody wants you to know how they
[9:12] Speaker 3: outrank because everybody does. So he was just a mature
[9:15] Speaker 3: n c O or I think he's a sergeant and
[9:17] Speaker 3: he was just or corporal.
[9:18] Speaker 2: He's like, hey, what's up, man? And I asked what
[9:20] Speaker 2: unit he was with.
[9:21] Speaker 3: He's the ANGLICO and he told me what it was,
[9:23] Speaker 3: and I was like, wow, that's pretty cool. He's like, yeah,
[9:26] Speaker 3: you have just small teams jump out of planes. You know,
[9:29] Speaker 3: we're working with Army SF we do by ourselves. I
[9:33] Speaker 3: just said wow, right, because I'm a PFC at the time.
[9:36] Speaker 3: He's just like, yeah, it's not eat normal grunts ship.
[9:39] Speaker 3: I was like, oh, and it was that cool kind
[9:43] Speaker 3: of neat and I did to hear about until years later.
[9:46] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's funny because most people don't even they have
[9:49] Speaker 1: no idea what Anglico is. Like do you get talk
[9:51] Speaker 1: to a lot of Marines and they're like, what the Anglico?
[9:53] Speaker 1: What is that? You know, unless they've ever like directly
[9:55] Speaker 1: worked with them, they have no idea who they are
[9:57] Speaker 1: or what they're doing.
[9:59] Speaker 3: You know. I remember one time we were I was
[10:01] Speaker 3: on a plane coming back from Alasade to Ramadi once
[10:05] Speaker 3: on a helicopter and the two uh ring grunts and
[10:09] Speaker 3: why they're get on just two of them, I don't
[10:10] Speaker 3: know why, and we're just talking about some other people,
[10:13] Speaker 3: like we're you with stroes up to Hank, we get
[10:15] Speaker 3: like bo like you guys like high speed fo those
[10:18] Speaker 3: like kind of you know, I guess, but that's what
[10:21] Speaker 3: we do about.
[10:21] Speaker 1: Fo J tech.
[10:22] Speaker 2: Paulish, That's that's what it is. That sounds pretty cool.
[10:25] Speaker 2: But yeah, most people don't, you know.
[10:28] Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's and man, you know, you don't realize
[10:33] Speaker 1: it until you're there or maybe even after you leave,
[10:36] Speaker 1: Like how cool it is because it sucks for guys
[10:39] Speaker 1: that get sent to Anglico straight out of MS school.
[10:41] Speaker 1: And I say that because for a lot of them,
[10:44] Speaker 1: that will be the coolest stuff that they'll get to do.
[10:47] Speaker 1: You know, if you're a radio operator and your first
[10:49] Speaker 1: unit is like first Anglico, your next unit is probably
[10:52] Speaker 1: gonna be like seventh Calm or fifth Com or whatever.
[10:55] Speaker 2: I don't even know the common you know, some battalion.
[10:58] Speaker 1: Yeah, you're gonna be like working in a comcage, updating
[11:01] Speaker 1: record jackets and shit and just being miserable, you know.
[11:05] Speaker 1: And it's like, I can see why a lot of
[11:07] Speaker 1: guys get out after they do their Anglico tour because
[11:11] Speaker 1: and a lot of people tell them that too. They're like, hey,
[11:12] Speaker 1: this is probably the best it's gonna get, unless you're
[11:15] Speaker 1: planning to try to go to like marsk or something
[11:18] Speaker 1: like that later on.
[11:19] Speaker 2: Or Recon or something.
[11:20] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[11:21] Speaker 1: The other misconception I always found with Anglico that I
[11:23] Speaker 1: thought was funny was that people were like, well, if
[11:25] Speaker 1: I go to Anglico, I can become a j tach,
[11:27] Speaker 1: you know, And I'm like, you know, Anglico is actually
[11:29] Speaker 1: harder to become a jatack. Is an enlisted fo than
[11:32] Speaker 1: in artillery unit. Because Anglico doesn't send every sergeant O
[11:37] Speaker 1: eight six to one or every O eight six to one.
[11:40] Speaker 1: They send the team leader, they send the fick leaders,
[11:42] Speaker 1: and they send like the team chief if they're not
[11:44] Speaker 1: already jtax at artillery. As soon as you're as soon
[11:48] Speaker 1: as you meet the criteria, the minimum criteria, they're screening
[11:51] Speaker 1: you because they need them. I always told guys, it's like,
[11:54] Speaker 1: if you really want to become a jaytack, like go
[11:56] Speaker 1: to like tenth Marines, and as soon as you pick
[11:58] Speaker 1: up sergeant you're gonna get looked that even probably a corporal.
[12:01] Speaker 1: Now you're gonna start getting looked at to become a
[12:03] Speaker 1: jay tack and then go over to Anglico and become
[12:06] Speaker 1: like a team chief or something.
[12:07] Speaker 3: But with some of the like my team, uh had
[12:11] Speaker 3: three Marines and two of them they came straight from
[12:14] Speaker 3: you know, a six one school into first thing with them.
[12:17] Speaker 3: And and so when they're you know, we're back in
[12:20] Speaker 3: the base and you have you know, you see you
[12:21] Speaker 3: know shenanig is going on, and I was.
[12:23] Speaker 2: Like, look this, they treat you like adults. Here you're
[12:27] Speaker 2: with those union or already battalion. You're a PFC.
[12:30] Speaker 3: You're not. You know, you're not.
[12:31] Speaker 2: You don't get this much freedom, this much this is
[12:33] Speaker 2: this is good, you know.
[12:34] Speaker 3: Plus we could also in Anglico if there was somebody
[12:37] Speaker 3: a turb man, they got rid of them quick. Couldn't
[12:39] Speaker 3: do that in the artillery battalion.
[12:41] Speaker 1: Yeah, we ended up sending a couple of people to
[12:44] Speaker 1: like the ops section or something like that, or there'd
[12:46] Speaker 1: be like a fap, you know, they'd need someone to
[12:49] Speaker 1: go work at the gym or be a gate guard.
[12:51] Speaker 1: Every unit has to give up people for those that
[12:53] Speaker 1: don't know, like gate guards and people that work at
[12:55] Speaker 1: the gym and ship. A lot of those people are
[12:57] Speaker 1: are people from other units that get pulled. They make
[13:00] Speaker 1: them go do it for like six months. And yeah,
[13:05] Speaker 1: we would try to send we we would try to
[13:07] Speaker 1: send guys to do that. Our sarda major Sard Major
[13:09] Speaker 1: Office who's been on multiple times, was that he always
[13:13] Speaker 1: wanted to send some of the best guys to go
[13:14] Speaker 1: do that as like a break. And it's like, no, dude,
[13:17] Speaker 1: the guys don't want the break, like they don't want
[13:19] Speaker 1: to work at the gym. You know, if I'm a
[13:21] Speaker 1: good JFO I want to go out to San Clemente Island.
[13:24] Speaker 1: I don't want to sit at the gym and hand
[13:25] Speaker 1: out basketballs. But you know the other thing too, like
[13:30] Speaker 1: if you come there as a junior guy, you really
[13:34] Speaker 1: miss out on the artillery experience because anglic doesn't do
[13:38] Speaker 1: as much artillery. You're just not you're not in an
[13:40] Speaker 1: artillery unit. You do do an indirect fire. But when
[13:44] Speaker 1: I was at tenth Marines, we were going to the
[13:46] Speaker 1: field every month. We were doing an artillery shoot every month,
[13:49] Speaker 1: and then we had two brag shoots a year, so
[13:54] Speaker 1: two one month in like March and one month in
[13:57] Speaker 1: October rolling thunder, and you know, you do you can't
[14:02] Speaker 1: really replace that kind of experience for learning how to
[14:06] Speaker 1: do not only like adjust fire but register guns. Do
[14:10] Speaker 1: you know it's just so many Yeah, it's and it
[14:15] Speaker 1: becomes very repetitive, but it becomes that like brilliance and
[14:17] Speaker 1: the basics thing, you know, where you're doing it so much,
[14:19] Speaker 1: it just becomes like second nature. Anglico guys don't necessarily
[14:23] Speaker 1: get that because there is a lot of focus on
[14:25] Speaker 1: the air side of the house and there's not like
[14:28] Speaker 1: you're not part of an artillery unit that has organic
[14:31] Speaker 1: tubes where you can just go to the field and
[14:33] Speaker 1: shoot artillery, you always have to like hop on with
[14:36] Speaker 1: someone else or see if they can support. So I
[14:38] Speaker 1: always thought that was kind of a bummer and kind
[14:40] Speaker 1: of hurt New eight six ones by not giving them
[14:43] Speaker 1: giving them that opportunity to get some like really in
[14:48] Speaker 1: depth like artillery time. Now I say that being a
[14:51] Speaker 1: lap mover also, I was a sergeant lap mover. So
[14:54] Speaker 1: I showed up and didn't know anything either, you know,
[14:56] Speaker 1: as a sergeant. But had I gone to Anglico, I
[14:59] Speaker 1: think I would have probably done worse had I gone
[15:01] Speaker 1: rather than going to tenth Marines. When I showed up
[15:03] Speaker 1: to tenth Marines as a former mechanic, I didn't know
[15:07] Speaker 1: how to plot on a map. I didn't know how
[15:09] Speaker 1: to do anything. Like I literally my one of the
[15:11] Speaker 1: other sergeants there, Delara, he literally like one of the
[15:15] Speaker 1: first days he showed me like this is how you
[15:16] Speaker 1: plot on a map. You know, you make a point
[15:18] Speaker 1: here and then you use your protractor. Like I was like, oh, protractor,
[15:22] Speaker 1: that's cool.
[15:23] Speaker 3: You know.
[15:23] Speaker 1: I was a mechanic with MLG. We were doing nothing,
[15:26] Speaker 1: you know, we were turning wrenches all day. That was
[15:28] Speaker 1: my life.
[15:30] Speaker 3: Man, good on you man.
[15:31] Speaker 2: You need them, you need them, And.
[15:33] Speaker 1: It was you know, it was my success later on
[15:37] Speaker 1: was all because of Delara and Gunny Klein at the time,
[15:41] Speaker 1: and those guys that were there that were really real
[15:44] Speaker 1: professionals and really understood the job and and expected you
[15:49] Speaker 1: to learn it. You know what I'm saying. It's like,
[15:52] Speaker 1: you got to be here, you got to be into it,
[15:54] Speaker 1: you know. And it's indirect fire, it's dangerous. It's you know,
[15:58] Speaker 1: you're shooting artillery rounds. It's an inherently dangerous job.
[16:02] Speaker 3: You know.
[16:02] Speaker 1: My very first, my very first I was just talking
[16:05] Speaker 1: to my brother in law about this the other day.
[16:07] Speaker 1: My very first call for fire or no, it wasn't
[16:09] Speaker 1: my call for fire, my very first fire mission with
[16:12] Speaker 1: tenth Marines. I was with second Battalion, tenth Marines campla June.
[16:16] Speaker 1: This was the winter, probably December two thousand and nine,
[16:20] Speaker 1: and it was my first time in the field with them,
[16:22] Speaker 1: and I was in the FSCC tent because they had me.
[16:25] Speaker 1: I was a sergeant, so they're like, yeah, you gotta
[16:26] Speaker 1: start learning how to become a chief. And they were
[16:29] Speaker 1: shooting the check round and the check round landed fifty
[16:33] Speaker 1: meters from us. You know, that was my That was
[16:36] Speaker 1: my introduction to the artillery world.
[16:39] Speaker 2: A man, good times.
[16:41] Speaker 1: I remember sitting there. We're sitting there inside the base
[16:43] Speaker 1: X tent and you know, we got all the radios
[16:44] Speaker 1: and everything, and we hear shot target number done. Then
[16:48] Speaker 1: hear like a off in the distance from the round
[16:50] Speaker 1: and I just hear sh boom, and I'm like, this
[16:54] Speaker 1: is my first time in the field, right, this is
[16:56] Speaker 1: my first time with them. And I'm like, damn, that's
[16:58] Speaker 1: so much louder by the impact area. And somebody was
[17:00] Speaker 1: like that was too loud. And then my gunny, Gunny Klein,
[17:04] Speaker 1: was outside the tent and he goes chick fining, check fang.
[17:07] Speaker 1: He just started screaming and we're like, what the fuck.
[17:09] Speaker 1: And we came out and we're like, where did it hit?
[17:11] Speaker 1: And he's like, right there, dude. It was like fifty
[17:13] Speaker 1: meters from in a spot, the exact same spot that
[17:16] Speaker 1: Range Control tried to make us move our BASICX tent
[17:18] Speaker 1: to cause we were they were afraid of erosion. You know,
[17:22] Speaker 1: this was the you know, when you're heading on Camp
[17:25] Speaker 1: La June, if you're heading from the main side area,
[17:28] Speaker 1: out to like the beach. They have that split there
[17:30] Speaker 1: and there's that OP. What's that OP? Three? OP? Five?
[17:36] Speaker 3: Oh?
[17:36] Speaker 1: No way, yeah wow. Well anyway, there's an OP out
[17:40] Speaker 1: there with like a little hill on it, and we
[17:43] Speaker 1: were set up on the little on the hill next
[17:45] Speaker 1: to the OP and range control tried to get us
[17:48] Speaker 1: to come and move off that hillside. They're like, yeah,
[17:50] Speaker 1: it's causing erosion in this and he pointed to a
[17:52] Speaker 1: spot and was like move your stuff there and our gun.
[17:55] Speaker 1: He was like, hey man, we're fully set up. We're
[17:57] Speaker 1: getting ready to start, you know, prosecuting fire missions or
[18:00] Speaker 1: you know training. Can we just move our vehicles And
[18:04] Speaker 1: he's like yeah, just move the vehicles off the hill.
[18:06] Speaker 1: You know, next time, don't set up here. And we're
[18:07] Speaker 1: like okay. And then a couple hours later around lands
[18:10] Speaker 1: right where he told us to set up, and we
[18:11] Speaker 1: were like, holy shit, dude, so crazy.
[18:15] Speaker 2: But you nobody got from that.
[18:19] Speaker 1: What's up?
[18:20] Speaker 2: There's somebody got.
[18:21] Speaker 1: Fired for that, dude. Oh man. The so what happened
[18:26] Speaker 1: was the powder monkey, the guy that puts the powder
[18:29] Speaker 1: and the gun only put half the charge he was
[18:32] Speaker 1: supposed to. It was supposed to be like two powder
[18:35] Speaker 1: bags or whatever and supposed to check that the chief
[18:39] Speaker 1: didn't verify it and they fired it like that on
[18:41] Speaker 1: the check round too, can you imagine? And they fired
[18:44] Speaker 1: it And afterwards I heard that the the gun chief
[18:50] Speaker 1: got fired, he got a safety card pulled. For those
[18:52] Speaker 1: that don't know, to become a chief on a gun
[18:55] Speaker 1: or in like the FDC, they have to take like
[18:57] Speaker 1: what's called a safety test and you could probably you
[18:58] Speaker 1: want to explain what that is because I'm I've never
[19:00] Speaker 1: had to take it.
[19:02] Speaker 2: There's a whole test that they go through that you.
[19:05] Speaker 3: Know, the parameters of running the gun and what the
[19:08] Speaker 3: max elevation for this, and you know, they're a whole
[19:11] Speaker 3: crew that goes through. You got to get they got
[19:13] Speaker 3: to have a safety card.
[19:14] Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to take this safety test to get
[19:16] Speaker 1: your safety card so that you can become a fire chief.
[19:19] Speaker 3: We do it.
[19:19] Speaker 2: We do a different one and we do a different
[19:21] Speaker 2: one for test.
[19:22] Speaker 1: The test for they started considering doing one for six
[19:25] Speaker 1: ones before I left tenth Marines. They were talking about
[19:28] Speaker 1: possibly instituting one for eight six ones as well the
[19:31] Speaker 1: Ford observers. So anyways, the gun chief lost his safety
[19:35] Speaker 1: card for like two weeks. They had him retake the
[19:40] Speaker 1: test and then he was back to being a gun chief.
[19:42] Speaker 1: No one got fired, no one got relieved, nothing. I
[19:46] Speaker 1: was like, this is fucking bullshit, man, and it's funny.
[19:50] Speaker 1: Like a month ago, David Armstrong, who hosts the Moments
[19:53] Speaker 1: in Leadership podcast, who's an artillery former artillery officer, he
[19:57] Speaker 1: was put something on social media and was talking about how,
[20:03] Speaker 1: you know, people's careers shouldn't be ended because of like
[20:05] Speaker 1: a mistake. I think there was. I think it was.
[20:07] Speaker 1: I think he was talking about I have to look
[20:09] Speaker 1: it up it, but I think he was talking about
[20:10] Speaker 1: an incident in twenty nine Palms where an artillery around
[20:12] Speaker 1: almost hit a vehicle or maybe did hit a vehicle
[20:14] Speaker 1: like a few years ago, and the whoever was someone
[20:20] Speaker 1: didn't get fired for it, and that guy ended up
[20:22] Speaker 1: going off and doing something great. And he was like,
[20:23] Speaker 1: you know what would have happened had they fired this dude,
[20:26] Speaker 1: you know, or something like that. And I was like, man,
[20:28] Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. Being on the receiving end of
[20:30] Speaker 1: someone fucking up putting an you know, the right stuff
[20:35] Speaker 1: in the gun and almost hitting us, like that's not cool.
[20:38] Speaker 1: So I get it, Like people should get second chances
[20:41] Speaker 1: and shit like that. But once you like threaten someone's life,
[20:45] Speaker 1: you know, I it's hard for me to justify giving
[20:49] Speaker 1: somebody a second chance in that kind of situation because
[20:51] Speaker 1: you've already proved that you could fuck it off. And
[20:54] Speaker 1: maybe his his take was, now that guy will come
[20:57] Speaker 1: back and never make that mistake again, you know, because
[21:00] Speaker 1: he's gonna be so like, oh my god, like I
[21:03] Speaker 1: can't believe I did that. I'm gonna be better forever.
[21:06] Speaker 1: And which I get that take. I understand that, but
[21:10] Speaker 1: I don't know. It's hard to be on the receiving
[21:11] Speaker 1: end of a fucking round, you know, almost hitting you.
[21:14] Speaker 2: And I mean you're lucky got killed.
[21:16] Speaker 1: I mean, dude, so lucky because we were it landed
[21:19] Speaker 1: between It landed fifty meters from us, and then not
[21:23] Speaker 1: too far away was the battalion command post. It was
[21:27] Speaker 1: like a couple hundred meters away one direction, and then
[21:31] Speaker 1: we had a I think a machine gun team or
[21:34] Speaker 1: something like that, or maybe a mortar team that was
[21:36] Speaker 1: up by the berm next to the impact area. So
[21:39] Speaker 1: it landed between three groups of people. It was. It
[21:43] Speaker 1: was so crazy, you know, but that happens, you know,
[21:45] Speaker 1: these incidents occur in fire support.
[21:48] Speaker 3: I mean, but they always whenever I saw so like
[21:51] Speaker 3: somebody was shoot out. I mean, they do the investigation,
[21:54] Speaker 3: figure out who who's fall was the f O it
[21:56] Speaker 3: wasn't due on this game, and they fired after you.
[21:58] Speaker 3: They fired you know, gun cruise and they did left
[22:03] Speaker 3: and right and some accountability, you know, And again it's
[22:06] Speaker 3: toughest to support that that you you know, find out,
[22:09] Speaker 3: you know, eighty billion dollars is missing from Afghanistan.
[22:11] Speaker 2: And that one general's hired, yeah know, or you know
[22:14] Speaker 2: it's like where does that accountably accoutability stopping somewhere?
[22:18] Speaker 1: Yeah?
[22:19] Speaker 3: I think you need it on these these units.
[22:21] Speaker 1: Accountability is fucked up right now for all levels of government.
[22:25] Speaker 1: You know, we were talking about it. You know, I'm
[22:27] Speaker 1: gonna put it in the extra content on Patreon, but
[22:29] Speaker 1: we were talking about it before we jumped onto the
[22:33] Speaker 1: official like start of the podcast. People can go check
[22:36] Speaker 1: that out. But I don't know the accountability people are
[22:39] Speaker 1: afraid to tell someone that they did a bad job.
[22:41] Speaker 1: I don't know why they're afraid to put it on
[22:43] Speaker 1: paper like you suck, you know, and in our profession,
[22:47] Speaker 1: you have to tell people that because you're putting people's
[22:50] Speaker 1: lives at risk, you know, being afraid to tell this
[22:53] Speaker 1: guy he sucks ends up with him doing something stupid
[22:55] Speaker 1: that may kill this guy or that guy. You know
[22:57] Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Like it, it's just I don't know.
[23:02] Speaker 1: It's a dangerous job.
[23:03] Speaker 3: It's inherently you want to hire. You don't want to
[23:04] Speaker 3: fire everybody because then people forget risk averse, you know.
[23:07] Speaker 3: So it's a fine line you gotta have to get.
[23:09] Speaker 3: You know, you can't hammer everybody, but then again, you
[23:11] Speaker 3: got to hammer something.
[23:12] Speaker 1: Definitely. Definitely, people should be allowed to make mistakes. There
[23:15] Speaker 1: should not be a zero what do they call zero
[23:17] Speaker 1: defect mentality? You know, we call that a zero defect mentality,
[23:21] Speaker 1: And I think that's that is an issue. More so
[23:25] Speaker 1: when it comes for like discipline and stuff like that,
[23:28] Speaker 1: I'd be more lenient with someone that if it's a
[23:31] Speaker 1: disciplinary thing. Maybe a guy gets a duy or something,
[23:35] Speaker 1: or maybe a guy doesn't he gets in a fight,
[23:38] Speaker 1: you know, and you find out the circumstances it wasn't
[23:40] Speaker 1: necessarily you know, maybe I would have gotten the fight
[23:42] Speaker 1: in that situation. Should we burn that guy and ruin
[23:44] Speaker 1: his career over it? Maybe not. That's different than shooting
[23:48] Speaker 1: a fucking artillery round and almost killing people, you know
[23:51] Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like, but the job is inherently dangerous.
[23:57] Speaker 1: We also had that artillery piece explode it in twenty
[24:00] Speaker 1: eleven when they were loading it at Fort Bragg, you know,
[24:03] Speaker 1: and that was nobody's fault. That was just a bad
[24:05] Speaker 1: fuse that got sent from the factory. But yeah, man,
[24:10] Speaker 1: it's just I don't know. Did you guys ever have
[24:13] Speaker 1: any kind of incidents like that when you.
[24:14] Speaker 3: Were in Yeah, we had some people shoot out, you know,
[24:17] Speaker 3: you know, for whatever reason you do it a tag
[24:19] Speaker 3: toot or a regimental X or something like that. That
[24:21] Speaker 3: was I spent most of my time, uh, and the
[24:24] Speaker 3: fires were either training for BOYF one, so I was.
[24:28] Speaker 3: They stayed as the FO for that whole year. Then
[24:29] Speaker 3: I deployed the one you know, for that's a year
[24:32] Speaker 3: and a half now, and then uh and then at
[24:34] Speaker 3: fd O, and I was the FDO for about a year.
[24:37] Speaker 3: And when I was the fd O, I never shot out.
[24:40] Speaker 3: But you know there's some some things also, the things
[24:43] Speaker 3: almost happened. That's why you have all these checks, right,
[24:46] Speaker 3: Fire's chief of checking me, et cetera.
[24:48] Speaker 2: The whole thing it's by the fd O chief and
[24:52] Speaker 2: all that.
[24:53] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we I've said it on the show
[24:55] Speaker 1: a million Yeah, yeah, I mean they do, and I've
[24:59] Speaker 1: said it on show a million times. But you know,
[25:01] Speaker 1: these rules are written in blood. The reason that we
[25:03] Speaker 1: have a lot of these rules is because someone got
[25:05] Speaker 1: killed and or something happened and an incident occurred where
[25:09] Speaker 1: it showed this flaw in our system. So we fixed
[25:12] Speaker 1: it by instituting. You know, charts and Darts is bumping
[25:16] Speaker 1: off of for we're talking artillery terms. People have no
[25:19] Speaker 1: idea what we're talking about. So let's start shooting out.
[25:22] Speaker 1: Shooting out, I mean shooting outside the the safety box
[25:26] Speaker 1: within the impact area. So on base there's a huge
[25:30] Speaker 1: open area called an impact area where they shoot all
[25:32] Speaker 1: the indirect fire stuff, and within that area, the artillery
[25:36] Speaker 1: unit is assigned a safety box. They have to shoot
[25:39] Speaker 1: withinside that, so it's like a buffer for a buffer
[25:41] Speaker 1: kind of deal. And they may shoot outside of the
[25:45] Speaker 1: safety box but still be in the impact area, but
[25:48] Speaker 1: that's still a big deal because they shot where they
[25:50] Speaker 1: weren't supposed to. Something happened. And then, yeah, like I said,
[25:56] Speaker 1: charts and darts, that's the FDC I don't even think
[25:58] Speaker 1: they do charts and darts anymore. Someone told me they
[25:59] Speaker 1: don't do that anymore.
[26:01] Speaker 2: It's all computerized.
[26:03] Speaker 1: That's crazy, man, I can't you know.
[26:04] Speaker 2: We had to have it.
[26:05] Speaker 3: We had to have a we had we had a
[26:07] Speaker 3: BCS backup, so we did both. We had the BCS,
[26:09] Speaker 3: you know, we had a chart, so we backed up
[26:11] Speaker 3: with manual. We had to, right, so beats us to
[26:14] Speaker 3: come up with something, and then they backed it up
[26:16] Speaker 3: with the mangal just picture.
[26:17] Speaker 2: It was checks and checks.
[26:20] Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't know what they do now.
[26:22] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the charts and what we're talking about is
[26:24] Speaker 1: the FDC, the Fire Direction Control. Those are the guys
[26:27] Speaker 1: that formulate the data. So me, as the observer, I
[26:30] Speaker 1: call in and give them, like, here's the target location.
[26:33] Speaker 1: They do all the math to go, hey, this gun's
[26:35] Speaker 1: elevation needs to be here, it needs to be traversed
[26:38] Speaker 1: or whatever at this angle.
[26:39] Speaker 3: You know.
[26:40] Speaker 1: Here, here's all the elevation data and powder and everything
[26:43] Speaker 1: like that, so that we hit the target. And if
[26:45] Speaker 1: they messed that up, you have a round land fifty
[26:48] Speaker 1: meters from you, you know, And that's that's what happens.
[26:51] Speaker 1: But good times man, it's just a naturally dangerous drop.
[26:55] Speaker 1: I almost got hit by a piece of shrapnel from
[26:58] Speaker 1: naval gunfire one time, had its skin between me and
[27:00] Speaker 1: the instructor. Dude, we were sitting there talking. We were
[27:05] Speaker 1: on San Clemente Island and you've been out there. I'm
[27:08] Speaker 1: sure you know those you know those artillery pieces on
[27:11] Speaker 1: the beach, and you got what's that op that's out
[27:14] Speaker 1: on the point, like China Point or something like that.
[27:16] Speaker 2: I don't remember the names.
[27:18] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's China Point. And then you're looking
[27:20] Speaker 1: down on the beach and there's like artillery pieces like
[27:22] Speaker 1: on the beach that we would shoot at. And one
[27:25] Speaker 1: of my buddies was doing his call for fire and
[27:28] Speaker 1: the round for naval gunfire land long and short along
[27:34] Speaker 1: the gun target line, and these were right on the beach,
[27:37] Speaker 1: and what happened was the rounds were hitting the water
[27:39] Speaker 1: also well, apparently if the rounds hit the water, it
[27:42] Speaker 1: can cause a shrap and go farther than it normally would.
[27:45] Speaker 1: I don't know why, you know, someone out there can
[27:47] Speaker 1: explain it, but that's what I was told. And we
[27:50] Speaker 1: were standing there and I was sitting there talking to
[27:52] Speaker 1: one of the naval gunfire instructors, and we're just bullshit
[27:54] Speaker 1: about something and then all of a sudden, it was
[27:57] Speaker 1: just like, you know, this weird noise and like us
[28:00] Speaker 1: kicked up between our feet. You know, we're standing right
[28:02] Speaker 1: next to each other. This dust kicked up between our
[28:04] Speaker 1: feet and I looked back and this jagged piece of
[28:06] Speaker 1: metal the size of my hand kept flying and landed
[28:09] Speaker 1: in the back of a pickup truck that we had
[28:11] Speaker 1: out there, and I was like, what the fuck. He
[28:13] Speaker 1: was like, Ah, that would have hurt, but you would
[28:15] Speaker 1: have been okay if it had hit. And I'm like, dude,
[28:18] Speaker 1: what are you talking about? Like yeah, if if, I mean,
[28:22] Speaker 1: if not, take it off, at least open it up
[28:24] Speaker 1: and probably you know, you're on San Quente Island. You're
[28:26] Speaker 1: not getting to the hospital anytime quick. Yeah. It's good stuff, though, man,
[28:35] Speaker 1: Let's talk about let's talk about you going to Iraq
[28:39] Speaker 1: with Anglico. I don't think we've ever gotten into that, have.
[28:41] Speaker 2: We a little bit? I think we touched on it.
[28:44] Speaker 1: Let's talk Well, when you guys were doing your work up,
[28:47] Speaker 1: you know, or what I guess kind of explained to
[28:50] Speaker 1: us who you were with. You were with first Anglico,
[28:53] Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, kind of explain you have breakdown
[28:56] Speaker 1: of your team and then how you guys got the
[28:58] Speaker 1: word of where you're deploying and how you got ready
[28:59] Speaker 1: for that.
[29:01] Speaker 3: I showed up to first thing with Coach in April
[29:05] Speaker 3: two thousand and five, and we were to deploy in
[29:07] Speaker 3: August two thousand and five.
[29:08] Speaker 2: Showed up, Uh, showed up. They already had Hey, this
[29:12] Speaker 2: is your team.
[29:13] Speaker 3: You know, I had a team chief, I had a
[29:14] Speaker 3: palm chief, and I had another fire eight six to
[29:17] Speaker 3: one with us.
[29:18] Speaker 2: On the team. Great guys who of them brand new,
[29:21] Speaker 2: but one was older. One had been with an army.
[29:27] Speaker 3: One of the Army divisions eighty second Air and then
[29:30] Speaker 3: he was actually mechanic who became away six.
[29:32] Speaker 2: To one when he was the Marine Corps.
[29:35] Speaker 3: Uh.
[29:35] Speaker 2: And then one was just a young.
[29:36] Speaker 3: Guy from John Currett and from Nevada pad Dyer, which
[29:41] Speaker 3: had been to Iraq and with first thing with Coach,
[29:45] Speaker 3: his teams and his team was wounded pushing those delusion.
[29:49] Speaker 3: So you know I had to experienced guy, two younger guys,
[29:52] Speaker 3: but still for sure all of them right and get
[29:56] Speaker 3: their training right off. Going to the Yuma training everywhere
[29:59] Speaker 3: were going and I got pulled.
[30:00] Speaker 2: To go to case speed schools.
[30:02] Speaker 3: Those are no schools had me, hey, you become a
[30:04] Speaker 3: j tag going term with technical Nowadays you have to
[30:07] Speaker 3: have this bureaucratic certification to drop bombs right safely within
[30:11] Speaker 3: postprop seeing the troops. And that was it.
[30:15] Speaker 2: Just getting prepared, going back and forth, doing a lot
[30:17] Speaker 2: of training.
[30:18] Speaker 3: And I was actually happy with a lot of We
[30:20] Speaker 3: weren't just doing sit on the hill calling air, sit
[30:23] Speaker 3: on the hill called ladys and waters. We were doing shooting,
[30:26] Speaker 3: moving patrolling, we were doing we had Royal Marines out
[30:28] Speaker 3: there with us.
[30:29] Speaker 2: We were doing hide sights. We're doing a lot of
[30:31] Speaker 2: a lot of good stuff, a lot.
[30:32] Speaker 3: Of night night work envoy ops and uh Major Grives
[30:36] Speaker 3: student commander at the time. Uh now he's a tenant, cronicalized, retired,
[30:40] Speaker 3: but he was a yeah. You know, like I said,
[30:42] Speaker 3: going to the book is you know he had young
[30:43] Speaker 3: lance corporals leading convoys, had to react to stuff and
[30:47] Speaker 3: good training, uh out of fire and movement with our
[30:50] Speaker 3: team working together.
[30:52] Speaker 2: And it was a lot of a lot of shooting.
[30:54] Speaker 2: I was happy. I got more mount we had some
[30:57] Speaker 2: ount I kind of go in the book. I kind
[30:58] Speaker 2: of go in the why there was some issu choose.
[31:00] Speaker 2: Some people ain't going.
[31:01] Speaker 3: Didn't think we needed mount training because we were going
[31:03] Speaker 3: to clear houses. But actually, when I was in Ramadi
[31:06] Speaker 3: we worked. It was we were doing that task force
[31:09] Speaker 3: and it was twelve men. You're four of twelve men.
[31:12] Speaker 3: You're you're clearing rooms. So it behooves us to have
[31:15] Speaker 3: that right train. We're got some facts at in extra
[31:18] Speaker 3: potanic manner. That's what you're out there doing real work,
[31:22] Speaker 3: and that's what we need.
[31:22] Speaker 4: At least.
[31:25] Speaker 2: That's free trained.
[31:27] Speaker 3: Overall, I was pretty weapons. So we got all mpoors,
[31:31] Speaker 3: all kinds of opticts everything. Yeah, and so I haven't
[31:34] Speaker 3: seen so much money get thrown at us.
[31:37] Speaker 2: It was crazy.
[31:38] Speaker 1: Hey, let's let's pause real quick because there's something with
[31:41] Speaker 1: your microphone. It's like coming in and out. So we
[31:44] Speaker 1: were talking about the team going to Iraq. When now,
[31:49] Speaker 1: did you guys know where you were going and who
[31:50] Speaker 1: you'd be supporting?
[31:51] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we knew. Hey, we're right off a. This
[31:55] Speaker 3: was so this is the early summer, late spring of five,
[31:59] Speaker 3: so you're really seeing this flaring up in Iraq? Right. Uh.
[32:02] Speaker 3: Flujah had been scared the previous fall but now a
[32:06] Speaker 3: lot of those fighters are headed that they had lived
[32:09] Speaker 3: or escape went to Ramani and Ramadi was blowing up
[32:12] Speaker 3: crazy and uh, a lot of attacks. Two four was
[32:15] Speaker 3: there after the fall. They had decimating casualties, you know,
[32:19] Speaker 3: they were they were in the thick of it, you know,
[32:21] Speaker 3: and they had they were fighting. They had a lot
[32:23] Speaker 3: of casualties. I mean, just you see Ramadi all the time,
[32:27] Speaker 3: suicide bombers, attacks, closing Ka Ka and and be honest
[32:32] Speaker 3: with you or like Ramadi, we almost wanted to go
[32:34] Speaker 3: to Fluja. We thought it was still crazy, but it
[32:35] Speaker 3: really wasn't compared to Ramadi at the time. And that's
[32:38] Speaker 3: how we realized. And so who are gonna be supporting
[32:40] Speaker 3: the national Guard? We're like, okay, national Guard, you know,
[32:42] Speaker 3: two twenty eight, So the gade and that's what we did.
[32:48] Speaker 3: And there was the Marines, and there were Marines in
[32:49] Speaker 3: Ramadi at the time the fighting. When we showed up,
[32:51] Speaker 3: it was one to five, was just leaving and they
[32:53] Speaker 3: were in downtown Remondy securing in the government center and
[32:56] Speaker 3: they they had taken they had taken some casualties as well,
[32:59] Speaker 3: and it was there was no joke during that time.
[33:01] Speaker 3: It was it was a dangerous city, and I think
[33:03] Speaker 3: I mentioned the book. At the time, it was considered
[33:06] Speaker 3: the most dangerous city in the world just by the
[33:09] Speaker 3: sheer a tax on coalition forces, on civilians, on each other,
[33:13] Speaker 3: and just just the death and destruction was going off,
[33:15] Speaker 3: and he bombed out buildings and it was it was crazy.
[33:19] Speaker 1: Yeah, I heard that from guys that went to Ramadi.
[33:23] Speaker 1: I know one guy he was saying, like he was
[33:25] Speaker 1: in Ramadi during the clear of Fallujah, and he's like, yeah, well,
[33:29] Speaker 1: everybody talks about Fallujah rightfully. So he's like, but when
[33:34] Speaker 1: they offered you know, they they circled Fallujah and allowed
[33:38] Speaker 1: people to leave the city. You know, they're dropping pamphlets
[33:40] Speaker 1: and telling people to leave. If you're not a fire fighter,
[33:42] Speaker 1: get out of the city. Well, a lot of fighters
[33:44] Speaker 1: left the city also, and he's like, all those fighters
[33:47] Speaker 1: left and came to Ramadi. He's like, so now we're
[33:49] Speaker 1: dealing with all this shit over here, you know. So
[33:51] Speaker 1: it just became like a huge headache there.
[33:55] Speaker 3: And they were they were never going to clear it,
[33:57] Speaker 3: right so got tote there was always talking about hey,
[34:00] Speaker 3: we're gonna clear Ramani. We're gonna start just clearing one
[34:02] Speaker 3: day from one side, just kind of like similar to fluid,
[34:04] Speaker 3: a little bit different, but they never and that we
[34:06] Speaker 3: knew that we could do it with the amount of
[34:08] Speaker 3: right amount of people right right amount of soldiers and marines.
[34:11] Speaker 3: You could do it if you gave us the tools.
[34:13] Speaker 3: But it was an election year, getting close to an
[34:15] Speaker 3: election year, you know, two thousand and six congressional election year.
[34:18] Speaker 3: They weren't doing that in Romandi, the provisional capital of
[34:21] Speaker 3: Alenbar Province, and we knew they were going to do it,
[34:23] Speaker 3: and uh, you know, and they never did.
[34:25] Speaker 1: So do you think, I mean, how effective would that
[34:29] Speaker 1: have been.
[34:30] Speaker 3: I know, how effective would it? It would just been
[34:32] Speaker 3: attrition and then they laughed and that I know, and
[34:34] Speaker 3: it would have made I think, probably a bad situation worse.
[34:37] Speaker 3: But at the time it's going through, it was it
[34:40] Speaker 3: was nothing buddytish. We were reacting. We were doing nothing reacting. Yeah, right,
[34:43] Speaker 3: you go on to patrol oh id Right, So when
[34:46] Speaker 3: we showed up in front of several of the first
[34:49] Speaker 3: fissions we got into was QRF. So a fire power
[34:52] Speaker 3: control team would go to be assigned to the QRF
[34:54] Speaker 3: and rotate every day. Right, So when you're on QOF
[34:58] Speaker 3: Usually those called came out it sounds cool, right, Well,
[35:01] Speaker 3: my head out there and they're going to interrupt the firefight.
[35:03] Speaker 3: Ninety percent of the time it was reacting to IDs.
[35:05] Speaker 3: Hey we need to escort E O D out to
[35:08] Speaker 3: this grid way out on throughout Mobile or on Michigan
[35:11] Speaker 3: somewhere and uh and wait different OD to disable it
[35:14] Speaker 3: and head home. That's huge less most of what QRF was,
[35:17] Speaker 3: and it was it became a mostly I DS in
[35:19] Speaker 3: Western Ramadi. I was that at the time, some small
[35:23] Speaker 3: arms fire, a lot of indirect fire, but I ed's
[35:26] Speaker 3: were killing them. You know, all the d's were killing everybody,
[35:28] Speaker 3: just all constantly. And there's some small arms attacks, but
[35:32] Speaker 3: most at that time it was I d's. Now Eastern
[35:34] Speaker 3: REMI is completely different and for whatever reason, I don't know,
[35:37] Speaker 3: you know, different clans or whatever the case is. And
[35:41] Speaker 3: but that was a lot more, a lot more direct
[35:42] Speaker 3: fires than trying to be trying to salt through ops,
[35:45] Speaker 3: right they I mean they took over a couple of
[35:47] Speaker 3: ops with the insurgents and where you were EASTERMODI and
[35:53] Speaker 3: and then Central Money too, right, So I mean when
[35:55] Speaker 3: the Marines, uh, I think there were two four they
[35:57] Speaker 3: got there are the op these snipers, and they got overrun.
[36:01] Speaker 3: They got to stay up. Somebody came up behind them
[36:04] Speaker 3: and those that's what you're dealing with in that part
[36:05] Speaker 3: really dangerous. Remember the bold in Servants Western Mighty started
[36:10] Speaker 3: bold IDs with the name of the game there, and
[36:13] Speaker 3: that was what.
[36:14] Speaker 1: Did the IDs look like for you guys.
[36:16] Speaker 3: All of them, most of them won five to five rounds.
[36:19] Speaker 3: So because you know, once the invasion people grabbed weapons,
[36:24] Speaker 3: all the orders was unguarded. They just grabbed and hit
[36:26] Speaker 3: it and most of it was one five five round
[36:29] Speaker 3: they double stack them or won maybe a mortar round.
[36:31] Speaker 3: They'd hide him in all kinds of things. Right in
[36:33] Speaker 3: the book, they were hiding them in dead animals and
[36:36] Speaker 3: the tires along the rail guards. So what did we do.
[36:38] Speaker 3: We took all the rail guards off these hot new
[36:40] Speaker 3: mass highways and so it was always doing something. They
[36:43] Speaker 3: bury it. And then it was mostly victim initiated or
[36:46] Speaker 3: a command debtdated, right, so somebody had to be watching
[36:48] Speaker 3: you with the wire or or an electronic base station.
[36:52] Speaker 3: They would detonated. This was before a lot of the
[36:55] Speaker 3: victim initiated, right, So vict initiate IDs or when you
[36:58] Speaker 3: run over a mine or you run over up pressure
[37:01] Speaker 3: plate and ID goes off. But you know, man detonators
[37:05] Speaker 3: when somebody's watching you and yeah, lows it. Yeah, that's
[37:08] Speaker 3: what it was. Yeah.
[37:10] Speaker 1: I remember seeing briefings about the you know, showing photos
[37:14] Speaker 1: of the one five to five round stacked and that's
[37:17] Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty five millimeters artillery round shows I
[37:19] Speaker 1: don't know.
[37:20] Speaker 3: A strapped out of.
[37:22] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[37:23] Speaker 2: Uh.
[37:23] Speaker 1: They were all like strapped to the back of h
[37:25] Speaker 1: like you said, the barriers and stuff like that, so
[37:27] Speaker 1: they were hidden. There was another thing they were doing
[37:30] Speaker 1: too that was pretty wild. They had like cars where
[37:35] Speaker 1: they cut a huge hole in the trunk where they
[37:38] Speaker 1: could see the ground, and a car would just pull
[37:41] Speaker 1: up and pull over and you would just think it's
[37:43] Speaker 1: some car pulled over, but really there's a guy in
[37:45] Speaker 1: the trunk with the giant hole in it, and he's
[37:47] Speaker 1: digging into the ground and then placing an ied without
[37:50] Speaker 1: you being able to see it because he's inside the car.
[37:52] Speaker 3: Still, I was like, dang, I go, I go that
[37:54] Speaker 3: little bit too. I was like they they started. Instead
[37:56] Speaker 3: of one guy doing everything they'd had, one guy would
[37:59] Speaker 3: dig a hole or excavate a previous blast hole. Another
[38:02] Speaker 3: guy would drop in, uh the ordnance, another guy would
[38:06] Speaker 3: connect it. Uh, you know, the different different ways, different
[38:09] Speaker 3: teams doing different things. And uh and they got paid,
[38:11] Speaker 3: you know. So these are insurgents based on they needed
[38:13] Speaker 3: for either children or they're ideological insurgents. But that's it
[38:16] Speaker 3: was ingenious they were. There's one they even put one
[38:20] Speaker 3: couple one five five's over a live donkey and kind
[38:23] Speaker 3: of get tried to get that donkey. Guests go towards
[38:25] Speaker 3: like Hurricane Point, which was a marine strong point there
[38:28] Speaker 3: in Romandi, and of course they you know, build the
[38:32] Speaker 3: animal and EOD removed the rounds. But that's just kind
[38:36] Speaker 3: of what that that city was. And SDD is right,
[38:40] Speaker 3: dump truck full of explosives hitting uh, you know, entry
[38:44] Speaker 3: control points. And then there are orange dump trucks too,
[38:47] Speaker 3: and and uh you know, so you're looking into as
[38:51] Speaker 3: a j tack. You're looking, hey, do you see any
[38:52] Speaker 3: dump trucks, you see any big vehicles coming around? Hey,
[38:54] Speaker 3: we see a couple of vehicles to the west. They
[38:56] Speaker 3: you know, so you're doing that type of stuff, But
[38:58] Speaker 3: that's what you're dealing with. These type of big dump
[38:59] Speaker 3: truck come turns down the road is this guy's gonna
[39:02] Speaker 3: blow you up.
[39:03] Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't, you.
[39:04] Speaker 3: Know, and then you you do slation of force if
[39:07] Speaker 3: you have time, or you kill the guy. So that
[39:10] Speaker 3: the city was very dangerous.
[39:12] Speaker 1: And it's a city, so there's naturally just dump trucks
[39:14] Speaker 1: doing their day to day stuff.
[39:16] Speaker 3: Yeah, you've been Iraq. It look it looks like they
[39:17] Speaker 3: just do nothing with dumb dumb dirt everywhere. There's always
[39:19] Speaker 3: piles of dirt over. I never understood what they're doing
[39:22] Speaker 3: with the doll but you're right, people who work and
[39:23] Speaker 3: doing what they got to do, made the wrong turn
[39:26] Speaker 3: or stuff like that, or during search. It was crazy.
[39:29] Speaker 1: I remember one time when I was in saying in Afghanistan,
[39:33] Speaker 1: we were going through the bizarre and the day before
[39:38] Speaker 1: there was south of us and lost Carga or something
[39:43] Speaker 1: like that, there was a British vehicle that had been
[39:46] Speaker 1: blown up and killed like five Brits by a v
[39:49] Speaker 1: bit by sv bit, so a suicide vehicle borne I
[39:52] Speaker 1: d and you know, basically a car bomb. And they
[39:56] Speaker 1: were like kind of be on the lookout for it,
[39:58] Speaker 1: like they drove right into the vehicle and blew up.
[40:00] Speaker 1: You know, there's nothing you can do about that, and
[40:04] Speaker 1: are we were going through the bizarre and saying in
[40:08] Speaker 1: our driver for my truck had gotten sent home for
[40:11] Speaker 1: emergency leave for some stuff. And so I was driving
[40:14] Speaker 1: and I remember driving and I was going through and
[40:17] Speaker 1: there's a bridge when you're heading south, there's a bridge
[40:19] Speaker 1: that you cross over, and we're getting close to that bridge,
[40:22] Speaker 1: and there was this car flying towards us. I mean,
[40:26] Speaker 1: it was just going super fast, and I'm like, what
[40:29] Speaker 1: the fuck? And he was in his lane and we
[40:33] Speaker 1: were in our lane, and he was just flying towards us,
[40:36] Speaker 1: and he kinda it looked like at the last second
[40:39] Speaker 1: he like swerved towards us, like he was gonna run
[40:41] Speaker 1: into us. And I was like, when I saw it happen,
[40:45] Speaker 1: I just I just like closed my eyes and braced
[40:47] Speaker 1: because I was just waiting for that explosion. It was
[40:48] Speaker 1: gonna hit right next to me, right next to my door,
[40:51] Speaker 1: and I just waited and then nothing happened, and he
[40:53] Speaker 1: kept going. And I looked at my captain, who was
[40:56] Speaker 1: in the vehicle commander seat, in the pasture seat, and
[40:58] Speaker 1: he looked at me, and I was like, dude, what
[41:01] Speaker 1: the fuck?
[41:01] Speaker 3: You know?
[41:02] Speaker 1: And what it was was he was going super fast
[41:06] Speaker 1: and there was a speed bump at the end of
[41:08] Speaker 1: the bridge and he didn't want to slow down. But
[41:10] Speaker 1: on the speed bump there was like a little gap
[41:12] Speaker 1: in the middle and he was trying to get his
[41:13] Speaker 1: wheel between that little gap. And I was like, man,
[41:16] Speaker 1: if that would have been a v bid, there was
[41:18] Speaker 1: nothing we could have done like we would have been
[41:20] Speaker 1: And I'll be honest, that fucked with me more than
[41:23] Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. That that sat with me for
[41:25] Speaker 1: a long time because I was like, you're so helpless
[41:28] Speaker 1: in that kind of situation, Like had that dude blown up,
[41:30] Speaker 1: you know, had that been a v bid, like I
[41:33] Speaker 1: would just had to have eaten it, you know what
[41:35] Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like.
[41:36] Speaker 3: I don't that feeling too is like you know, I
[41:40] Speaker 3: brief can go into the introduction book two, but it's
[41:42] Speaker 3: you had that feeling of just it's always somethings gonna happen.
[41:44] Speaker 3: You're just like, you know, you know, like I said,
[41:47] Speaker 3: you kind of just drive around. Maybe you like Grrison
[41:49] Speaker 3: trash because they'd like to hide him in trash, right,
[41:51] Speaker 3: they had they hide them was closer than trash, big
[41:53] Speaker 3: pile of the tree. You try to stick to the
[41:54] Speaker 3: middle of the road right instead of the size and
[41:56] Speaker 3: the left right. Just stick it to the middle of
[41:58] Speaker 3: road as much as you could, because the sides of
[42:00] Speaker 3: the roads of their platinum, and so you go just trash.
[42:03] Speaker 3: You'd lean over and that's a blast. It was.
[42:06] Speaker 1: That shit was the worst. We had them again south
[42:09] Speaker 1: south of the bazaar they put in We watched them
[42:11] Speaker 1: put in an ied under a culvert under the road,
[42:15] Speaker 1: and we were trying to run strikes on them. This
[42:18] Speaker 1: guy Stork, who was the BLTs jatack, was trying to
[42:22] Speaker 1: get a run with harriers on them, and the fucking
[42:27] Speaker 1: command was so stupid they didn't approve it. And the
[42:30] Speaker 1: one time that it was like everything lined up, the
[42:32] Speaker 1: harrier was coming in because they were doing what you
[42:34] Speaker 1: were saying. They were coming out place the jug, come out,
[42:37] Speaker 1: run the wire, you know, come out.
[42:39] Speaker 3: You know.
[42:39] Speaker 1: They were doing it piece by piece, and we're watching
[42:42] Speaker 1: the whole thing, and the whole time the jatack Stork
[42:44] Speaker 1: is Alcohola is his name, was trying to get a
[42:47] Speaker 1: harrier set up to when they come out of this
[42:50] Speaker 1: compound to strike them because they wouldn't let us strike
[42:52] Speaker 1: the compound even though because it was a compound even
[42:56] Speaker 1: though there was no roof on this compound because they
[42:59] Speaker 1: had been blown up four and we could see into
[43:01] Speaker 1: it and you could see RPG and a machine gun
[43:04] Speaker 1: leaning against the wall. You know what I'm saying, They
[43:06] Speaker 1: still wouldn't let us strike the compound.
[43:08] Speaker 3: So we're what command to say a no to that.
[43:10] Speaker 1: Third battalion, fourth Marines. Man, fuck those guys, that battalion commander.
[43:15] Speaker 1: And don't get me wrong, like the Marines are cool,
[43:17] Speaker 1: but I hated that battalion commander.
[43:19] Speaker 2: He so.
[43:20] Speaker 1: So first off, we were trying to get the timing
[43:24] Speaker 1: right so when they come out of the building we
[43:25] Speaker 1: can get the strike done. So Stork is working the
[43:29] Speaker 1: harrier and basically having them on call to push you know,
[43:31] Speaker 1: for the strike. And finally the battalion, the battalion CEO
[43:37] Speaker 1: or COC radios and says the mission's approved. So he's,
[43:41] Speaker 1: you know, harrier's on his end call or on his
[43:43] Speaker 1: in run getting ready to drop some ordnance on this dude.
[43:46] Speaker 1: As he's making his way out to the culvert, and
[43:49] Speaker 1: the company commander goes, hey, check fire, you know, like
[43:52] Speaker 1: he's like on the phone with the COC or on
[43:54] Speaker 1: the radio or something, and he's like, hey, checkfire, you know,
[43:56] Speaker 1: don't shoot, don't It's a board or whatever. He said
[43:59] Speaker 1: a board, and were like, what, oh, border board? A
[44:01] Speaker 1: board and he's like, state reason for a board and
[44:03] Speaker 1: we're like, you know what's going on? He's like the
[44:05] Speaker 1: company commander was like, I just want to make sure
[44:07] Speaker 1: the battalion commander is okay with this, and we're like,
[44:09] Speaker 1: what are you talking about? He already gave us approval, Like, man,
[44:13] Speaker 1: it was so frustrating, dude, it was so fucking frustrating.
[44:20] Speaker 1: I hated that battalion like leadership when I was there,
[44:23] Speaker 1: just because it was always some shit like that. I
[44:26] Speaker 1: was pinned on a rooftop, I was getting shot out.
[44:28] Speaker 1: I was laying on a rooftop as flat as I
[44:30] Speaker 1: could with round flying over my face. And I had
[44:34] Speaker 1: a soldier IR, which is a little eyepiece where you
[44:38] Speaker 1: can see what the pod is looking at, the aircraft
[44:40] Speaker 1: pod is looking at. And I had a harrier on
[44:43] Speaker 1: station and we had a guy shooting at us, and
[44:45] Speaker 1: he was up against a mud wall and the command
[44:49] Speaker 1: wouldn't let us drop any ordnance on him because he
[44:51] Speaker 1: was next to a mud wall in a field. They
[44:53] Speaker 1: considered that a compound. So I'm like, dude, I'm laying
[44:56] Speaker 1: flat here trying not to get my fucking head shot off,
[44:58] Speaker 1: where you guys are in a command center going no,
[45:00] Speaker 1: not yet, that's wait.
[45:01] Speaker 3: And I'm like, here's one thing I thought about Ramadi
[45:06] Speaker 3: and those that leadership there at the time, just just
[45:10] Speaker 3: when I was there for that second deployment, was you know,
[45:12] Speaker 3: those different units, whether it was the National Guard, whether
[45:15] Speaker 3: it was the Marine Corps battalions there or the h
[45:19] Speaker 3: or eventually, like the first of five was six. So
[45:21] Speaker 3: we started working with from the Armies hundred. First they
[45:24] Speaker 3: were they were like really clear of yeah, go ahead, approved,
[45:28] Speaker 3: they approved, shifted balancely with you. They probably shouldn't approved.
[45:32] Speaker 3: Thinking back about something, I'm like, yeah, maybe you shouldn't
[45:34] Speaker 3: have proved that at the time. You're in the thicket there, right,
[45:36] Speaker 3: and yeah, yeah, I think that, you know, I'm tired
[45:38] Speaker 3: of getting shot out. Let's go ahead and do this.
[45:39] Speaker 3: And they're like approved, you know, they're like okay, yeah,
[45:42] Speaker 3: go ahead. You know that. I think they denied it
[45:44] Speaker 3: once were to bring we wanted to bring in one
[45:45] Speaker 3: of my guy my team, John wanted to bring in
[45:48] Speaker 3: some mortars and we were rather fighting around the Ramadi
[45:51] Speaker 3: Soccer stadium and they initially denied it, but then when
[45:54] Speaker 3: I had harry Is coming in for a gun run,
[45:57] Speaker 3: they approved it. I was like, well, you can't now
[45:59] Speaker 3: because you know, we got the hairs inbound already. But
[46:02] Speaker 3: so they were good about approven stuff, especially airstrikes, you know.
[46:05] Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean the battalion. The battalion leadership really
[46:10] Speaker 1: sets the tone, you know, And it was completely different
[46:12] Speaker 1: when I was with third Battalion, six Marines on deployment
[46:15] Speaker 1: to Marjia. Real quick too, Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt, that was
[46:20] Speaker 1: my battalion commander. I just found out like a couple
[46:23] Speaker 1: days ago, passed away, So that sucks. He was a
[46:26] Speaker 1: super cool guy, the Battalian commander, probably one of the
[46:28] Speaker 1: best battalion commanders I ever worked with. He very much
[46:31] Speaker 1: would have been a good enlisted guy. I remember the
[46:33] Speaker 1: first time I met him. He came over to tenth
[46:35] Speaker 1: Marines to meet me because I was coming to be
[46:38] Speaker 1: their fires chief, and he walked in and pulled a
[46:40] Speaker 1: spinner out of his cargo pocket. He had a crumpled
[46:42] Speaker 1: up water bottle. This is a lieutenant colonel, you know,
[46:46] Speaker 1: no skinny shirt. Yeah, he would he didn't wear a
[46:49] Speaker 1: skinny shirt in his rifle. I remember he had an
[46:52] Speaker 1: M four stock on his rifle, but he had a
[46:55] Speaker 1: twenty inch barrel on it, and we were like why
[46:58] Speaker 1: is that. He's like, oh, you get better range out
[46:59] Speaker 1: of the twenty and I'm like they had to pull
[47:02] Speaker 1: him back because they ran into a possible ied when
[47:06] Speaker 1: we were in Afghanistan and he got out and we
[47:09] Speaker 1: had I don't know if you've heard of this, but
[47:11] Speaker 1: we have these things called a sickle stick at the time,
[47:13] Speaker 1: and it's basically it's like a twenty foot pole maybe
[47:17] Speaker 1: twenty feet with a little hook on the end of it,
[47:20] Speaker 1: and you would lay down to investigate what you think
[47:23] Speaker 1: is like an ied, like if you think there's like
[47:25] Speaker 1: a wire or pressure plate. You'd lay it down on
[47:28] Speaker 1: the dirt beyond it and scrape towards it until it
[47:30] Speaker 1: caught something and then you would be like, okay, well
[47:33] Speaker 1: the battalion commander is trying to do this, and they're like, sir,
[47:35] Speaker 1: let us get that. He was just that guy, yeah,
[47:38] Speaker 1: but he was complete. He recently passed away, I just
[47:41] Speaker 1: found out, which is kind of a bummer to hear.
[47:44] Speaker 1: But when I was with him, we were in Marja
[47:48] Speaker 1: and we were moving from we were moving the Battalion
[47:51] Speaker 1: Maine from FOB Marja up to the other There was
[47:54] Speaker 1: another fob I can't remember the name of it now,
[47:57] Speaker 1: but we're moving there, and I remember when we got there,
[48:00] Speaker 1: he came into the the COEC and he's like, Kramer,
[48:04] Speaker 1: He's like, we're new and you know, we're we're new
[48:06] Speaker 1: in the neighborhood. And he's like, uh, find me a
[48:09] Speaker 1: target to hit with Hei Mars And I'm like, okay,
[48:12] Speaker 1: good to go, sir, you know. And I looked at
[48:14] Speaker 1: the S two guy, the Intel people target. I was like,
[48:16] Speaker 1: I looked at the Intel guy. I was like, hey, man,
[48:18] Speaker 1: start finding the target.
[48:19] Speaker 3: You know.
[48:19] Speaker 1: That was his thing. Is like he was and that
[48:22] Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that he was out blowing stuff up,
[48:24] Speaker 1: because we definitely denied a bunch of fire missions because
[48:26] Speaker 1: of compounds and stuff like that.
[48:29] Speaker 3: But he was not.
[48:30] Speaker 1: He was okay with being aggressive when the time for it,
[48:33] Speaker 1: you know, was there, right, which three four when I
[48:37] Speaker 1: was with those guys, was completely opposite.
[48:40] Speaker 3: Yeah, there's there's a lot of Yeah, I thought there's
[48:42] Speaker 3: a lot of risk aversion some uh some units so too.
[48:46] Speaker 3: So when I when we were interesting in Romani. So
[48:48] Speaker 3: in October, the end of October, we for a month.
[48:51] Speaker 3: We had we had to uh all Hit Iraq for
[48:54] Speaker 3: a month, just my team. So we got in and
[48:55] Speaker 3: got a convoy hit al Ali Sad. We went toward
[48:58] Speaker 3: Hit which is on a which north of Remadi along
[49:01] Speaker 3: the Euphrates and uh and we were with the Mississippi
[49:04] Speaker 3: National Guard unit. I'll be honest with you, and these
[49:06] Speaker 3: weren't even infantry guys. These are artillery battalion that has
[49:08] Speaker 3: been doing the provisional infuantry for the last year. So
[49:10] Speaker 3: they're part of that initial one five five BCT. And
[49:14] Speaker 3: they got pulled and they were in Hit for a
[49:16] Speaker 3: couple of months and they were doing patrols. They had squad,
[49:19] Speaker 3: they were they had tanks, I mean, they was. It
[49:22] Speaker 3: was and they were not afraid to engage and give
[49:25] Speaker 3: me clearance and stuff, and it was. I liked those
[49:28] Speaker 3: units and I liked those I liked working with those
[49:30] Speaker 3: units because they were just like you know what we
[49:32] Speaker 3: might kind of like. It looks like you went to
[49:34] Speaker 3: a family reunion and panted out. Cammis right. You had
[49:37] Speaker 3: old guys, you had very young guys. You had relatives
[49:40] Speaker 3: in the units because their National.
[49:41] Speaker 1: Guard National Guard.
[49:42] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and and they're all you know, so it
[49:46] Speaker 3: was it was that was different. But to be honest
[49:48] Speaker 3: with that, they they fought, and they they got they
[49:51] Speaker 3: had ka's and but they weren't scared. Man, they were
[49:54] Speaker 3: doing it. And but we had to deal with a
[49:56] Speaker 3: lot of the Their higher level was part of RCT
[49:58] Speaker 3: seven or RCTZ based out of Alasade, which was different
[50:01] Speaker 3: than Ramadi, so we kind of had to go a
[50:03] Speaker 3: different route there, and so we got a lot of
[50:05] Speaker 3: pushback on stuff we're doing. So I was blowing up.
[50:07] Speaker 3: We got attacked one day then sergeants hit us RPG's
[50:11] Speaker 3: I E D A K fourty something. They'd go across
[50:13] Speaker 3: the river right where it was a safey and nobody
[50:16] Speaker 3: was on that side of the river except for Iraqis
[50:18] Speaker 3: and and so we were up in an op right
[50:22] Speaker 3: th on the river. One day, one team and the
[50:23] Speaker 3: same thing happened again. Boom, they go across the river.
[50:28] Speaker 3: We started seeing them, but they're about eleven hundred meters
[50:29] Speaker 3: from us, so we couldn't engage. But we started calling
[50:32] Speaker 3: artillery on them and working up hitting them on the
[50:35] Speaker 3: ground and in the air, so a VT fuson on
[50:37] Speaker 3: the ground. Just they just had a couple of paladins, right,
[50:39] Speaker 3: we had a couple of paladins a few miles away
[50:41] Speaker 3: they were using So you only had two guns, but
[50:43] Speaker 3: that's all you needed. Really, you know, eight guys good
[50:46] Speaker 3: in canoes and so, uh, they were good about clearing
[50:49] Speaker 3: that stuff. But then eventually we had to call an aircraft.
[50:53] Speaker 3: I just told them to blow up the canoes. There's
[50:55] Speaker 3: nobody in the canoes, but they're in the canoes. And
[50:58] Speaker 3: we had a gun run and with cobras on these canoes.
[51:02] Speaker 3: But later on we heard the desk complained why we
[51:06] Speaker 3: allowed that? And then the RCT complained why we allowed that.
[51:09] Speaker 3: I was like, there are using these things to attack us,
[51:11] Speaker 3: and they escape across the river. Well why didn't they
[51:14] Speaker 3: send up patrol because we didn't know if they were
[51:16] Speaker 3: gonna get ambush or blow us up. I could just
[51:17] Speaker 3: blow I could just sink them right there. A big deal.
[51:20] Speaker 3: I mean I was like seriously, even that battle captain
[51:23] Speaker 3: who was getting chewed out from the RCT too, he's like, look,
[51:26] Speaker 3: they're using these things. We blew it up so they
[51:28] Speaker 3: couldn't do that again. Yeah, and then they wanted to
[51:30] Speaker 3: get complained. Why do you authorize release ordins from aircraft
[51:34] Speaker 3: of an unmanned boat. It's like because they were using
[51:36] Speaker 3: these boats to escape.
[51:37] Speaker 1: I called them terrain denial man.
[51:40] Speaker 3: Yeah, because it's funny. It's like like like two weeks
[51:42] Speaker 3: before that, I had to do a train denial mission
[51:44] Speaker 3: with the with the jade Am and there's nothing on
[51:47] Speaker 3: the road. Just yeah, just drop a bomb here, make
[51:48] Speaker 3: sure it's clear of nobody. And they dropped the bomb.
[51:51] Speaker 1: That's that's the stuff that makes that's the stuff.
[51:54] Speaker 3: I was like, what, I was like, I hope I'm not.
[51:56] Speaker 3: I don't see the big picture here. I don't see
[51:58] Speaker 3: the big picture. Maybe that's okay, but I'm like, I
[52:01] Speaker 3: can't blow these boats up. They're using that they used
[52:04] Speaker 3: to escape us, and they hit us with id's as
[52:06] Speaker 3: small as far and get people wounded. But I'm blowing
[52:09] Speaker 3: up on an empty, empty bank of the euphrase. I
[52:13] Speaker 3: didn't understand that. But you know in the salute it
[52:16] Speaker 3: can happen.
[52:17] Speaker 1: Do what you do. Yeah, that same thing happened in
[52:19] Speaker 1: Sanging too, man. That was the same thing. I was
[52:21] Speaker 1: getting fire missions denied. Well, it ended up happening at
[52:25] Speaker 1: this time, I was with the advisor team, so I
[52:26] Speaker 1: was an Afghan National Army advisor, which gave me some
[52:29] Speaker 1: flexibility because we were under three four's battle space. But
[52:33] Speaker 1: we weren't part of three four. We weren't we. They
[52:36] Speaker 1: showed up after us. Actually I think two seven was
[52:38] Speaker 1: there before them, and we were with two seven for
[52:40] Speaker 1: like a month before that. But when they so we
[52:45] Speaker 1: weren't under them, but they could approve or deny American
[52:48] Speaker 1: fires within their zone, well, well, our Afghans have their
[52:52] Speaker 1: own mortars and shit, so most of our fire missions
[52:54] Speaker 1: were actually just us shooting our own mortars and stuff
[52:57] Speaker 1: like that. We had a similar situation where multiple times
[53:01] Speaker 1: they were denying us from striking guys that we knew
[53:04] Speaker 1: were bad guys or you know, whatever something was occurring.
[53:07] Speaker 1: They wouldn't let us do a strike. And then one
[53:09] Speaker 1: day I'm sitting here, I'm watching this river crossing, which
[53:11] Speaker 1: is funny, same thing. I'm watching this river crossing, and
[53:14] Speaker 1: we watch these guys cross this river every day, drag
[53:17] Speaker 1: supplies across this river every day and put it in
[53:20] Speaker 1: this tree line, and they won't let us strike it.
[53:22] Speaker 1: They won't let us strike the tree line because there
[53:24] Speaker 1: could be civilians in the tree line. They won't let
[53:26] Speaker 1: us do any of these things. Even though I'm like,
[53:29] Speaker 1: it got so frustrating, I was like, all right, dude,
[53:32] Speaker 1: we're gonna sit down. We're creating. This is an observation
[53:34] Speaker 1: post up here on I think we were at PB
[53:37] Speaker 1: Shampshire Do, which was an Afghan patrol base, and I'm
[53:40] Speaker 1: gonna sit here and just watch that tree line and
[53:44] Speaker 1: I'm annotating everything. That way I can go look, there's
[53:47] Speaker 1: dudes here with weapons and there's no civilians. I've been
[53:49] Speaker 1: watching it for six hours and that's what I did.
[53:52] Speaker 1: I sat there with a green log book and I
[53:54] Speaker 1: wrote down everything. Two military age mails and brown and
[53:58] Speaker 1: blue clothing. Two da da da da da, you know.
[54:00] Speaker 1: And I identified a weapon on a guy one time
[54:05] Speaker 1: and I was like, that's it, let's go a strike.
[54:06] Speaker 1: And they just would not do it. And then the
[54:08] Speaker 1: next day and then the next day they wanted to
[54:11] Speaker 1: do a terrain denial mission up on a ridge line
[54:14] Speaker 1: that nobody's ever on. That's nothing, and they shot like
[54:17] Speaker 1: four high mars and dropped like two bombs on it.
[54:20] Speaker 1: And they're like, oh, you're in the area, you can
[54:23] Speaker 1: observe this right, and I'm like, yeah, I can observe it.
[54:25] Speaker 1: And I watched it all blow up nothing, and they
[54:27] Speaker 1: were like, can you give us a a BDA And
[54:31] Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, you guys really blew up the dirt.
[54:33] Speaker 1: They did not like that. I said, that's literally what
[54:35] Speaker 1: I said. I was like, you guys blew up a
[54:36] Speaker 1: lot of dirt and they did not like that. But
[54:38] Speaker 1: I was like, this is fucking stupid. I was like,
[54:42] Speaker 1: this is so stupid. Man, Like, multiple times we're getting
[54:45] Speaker 1: shot at, identified the shooters, but we couldn't drop ontt them.
[54:49] Speaker 1: But then you'll drop all this ordnance on nothing for
[54:53] Speaker 1: no real reason. You're calling it terrain denisle. But I'm
[54:56] Speaker 1: out here. I'm here every day looking at the terrain
[54:59] Speaker 1: and nobody's crossing it.
[55:01] Speaker 3: And you know, in Vietnam had such something similar, they
[55:03] Speaker 3: called a harassed eye, and I fight harassment in addiction fire.
[55:07] Speaker 3: They were just randling shoot at like road crossings and stuff.
[55:09] Speaker 3: But we didn't do that Iraq because there would have
[55:11] Speaker 3: been civilians there. Yeah, we were just shooting. It was
[55:14] Speaker 3: dirt where nothing is where they maybe they might have
[55:16] Speaker 3: shot more of at, you know, a year ago or something.
[55:19] Speaker 3: You know, so that's what they kind of made it
[55:21] Speaker 3: sound like, well, occasionally there's there's mortis shot out here,
[55:24] Speaker 3: so we want to make keep them on their foot,
[55:25] Speaker 3: like got it, I'll I'll watch it. Yeah. And don't
[55:29] Speaker 3: get me wrong, I mean there are and there's reasons.
[55:33] Speaker 3: I guess there are.
[55:34] Speaker 1: Yeah, there's time, there are reasons to deny a mission.
[55:36] Speaker 1: There's time and place. But for me and being on
[55:39] Speaker 1: the ground and like being pinned out and stuff like that,
[55:41] Speaker 1: I was like, I can't understand these reasons. You know,
[55:44] Speaker 1: I'm being shot at right now? Your reasons? And one
[55:46] Speaker 1: time we were we were getting shot at for a
[55:48] Speaker 1: while and they'd kept denying our my request for a
[55:53] Speaker 1: I had a I had a British uh what are
[55:56] Speaker 1: those tornado on station? And had a guy all lined
[55:59] Speaker 1: up and they and denied and denied, and the command did.
[56:03] Speaker 1: And when I got back to the patrol base, the
[56:06] Speaker 1: battalion commander was there and I was just walking through
[56:09] Speaker 1: and he saw me and he's like, hey, you're the
[56:11] Speaker 1: j tech right, And I was like, uh, yes, sir,
[56:13] Speaker 1: And he's like, yeah, you were like five minutes away
[56:15] Speaker 1: from having that mission approved. And I'm like five minutes,
[56:18] Speaker 1: Like what the fuck are you talking about? Man? Like
[56:20] Speaker 1: I was getting shot at. I was like jumping off
[56:22] Speaker 1: of a wall because they almost got me. You know
[56:24] Speaker 1: what I'm saying, like, fuck off. That's why I just
[56:28] Speaker 1: like fucked that dude, that that battalion commander in.
[56:31] Speaker 3: Some units, you know, That's why I was. You know,
[56:32] Speaker 3: one thing I said in Mamadi, we were lucky we
[56:35] Speaker 3: had those units were aggressive, like the first of five
[56:37] Speaker 3: U six man. Yeah, they were fighting Green infantry. They
[56:39] Speaker 3: were just they were tough soldiers and they were Their
[56:42] Speaker 3: leadership was aggressive, their leadership was smart. You know, uh
[56:46] Speaker 3: you know funny Green Fronnie Berets aside, right, they they were,
[56:50] Speaker 3: they were good fighters and it was it was good
[56:52] Speaker 3: to work with them and because they had your back,
[56:55] Speaker 3: part of the team, the whole thing, and it was good.
[56:57] Speaker 3: You know, some units you go to that kind of
[56:58] Speaker 3: stand offish and you know, but not these guys. You know,
[57:02] Speaker 3: it was work with him because I mean people were dying.
[57:05] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's nice.
[57:07] Speaker 3: It's nice work with them.
[57:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean I so I will say on
[57:12] Speaker 1: for the three fours Battalion commander. In his defense, part
[57:16] Speaker 1: of his justification was we were the last advisor team
[57:20] Speaker 1: there and saying it and after us, it was supposed
[57:23] Speaker 1: to be the Afghans taking care of themselves, you know,
[57:26] Speaker 1: they're supposed to be doing their own indirect fire they're
[57:28] Speaker 1: supposed to be doing. They even denied metavac request. There
[57:31] Speaker 1: was a guy inn Afghan that was shot in the
[57:33] Speaker 1: stomach and they were like, we're not flying him to
[57:35] Speaker 1: a medicical facility. You have to ground e vacuum, you know,
[57:38] Speaker 1: because that it's you have to exercise your own logistical
[57:42] Speaker 1: you know. It was kind of like if we keep
[57:44] Speaker 1: helping you, you're never gonna help yourself kind of situation.
[57:47] Speaker 1: But I'm like, oh, I, this dude's shot in the stomach,
[57:50] Speaker 1: Like what are you talking about? Like what is it
[57:53] Speaker 1: life threatening? What do you mean is it life threatening?
[57:55] Speaker 1: You're asking a fucking corman who's looking at it through
[57:57] Speaker 1: a headlamp in the desert, you know, And and like, yes,
[58:00] Speaker 1: it's life threat. Now he's got a gunshot went to
[58:01] Speaker 1: the stomach.
[58:02] Speaker 3: You're gonna bleed out, that's you know.
[58:05] Speaker 1: But again I will say I don't think every fire
[58:07] Speaker 1: mission should be approved, and I don't think every you know, again,
[58:10] Speaker 1: when I was with three six, they are I think
[58:14] Speaker 1: it was India. Company was trying to drop on a
[58:16] Speaker 1: compound that we knew had Id's in it. It had
[58:20] Speaker 1: IED's in it, and we knew it was a you know,
[58:22] Speaker 1: we everyone stayed away from it, and they wanted to
[58:26] Speaker 1: just blow it up. The company did, but the battalion
[58:28] Speaker 1: commander is like, We're not just gonna randomly blow up buildings.
[58:31] Speaker 1: I get it, it's it has Id's in it, and
[58:33] Speaker 1: we know that it's booby trapped, but it looks more.
[58:37] Speaker 1: It looks worse on us because the Afghans that are
[58:40] Speaker 1: there don't know that. They just think that we're just
[58:41] Speaker 1: blowing up random compounds. So we denied the fire mission.
[58:45] Speaker 1: And then they tried to get around it by planning
[58:47] Speaker 1: a Mark nineteen like shoot like range, and then they
[58:53] Speaker 1: gave me the grid for their target and I'm like
[58:54] Speaker 1: that that grid looks familiar. And I looked it up
[58:57] Speaker 1: and it was that compound, and I'm like, no, what
[59:00] Speaker 1: are you trying to do trying to skirt around us.
[59:02] Speaker 1: It was like the battalion commander already said, We're not
[59:03] Speaker 1: blowing up that compound, but yeah, I mean, I think
[59:07] Speaker 1: something happened with it. Eventually, like a sheep herder had
[59:10] Speaker 1: brought a sheep over there and they went into the
[59:12] Speaker 1: compound and one of them stepped on an id and
[59:14] Speaker 1: blew it up. So there was not fine man, it's
[59:19] Speaker 1: Shenanigan's dude. That's the frustrating part for people on the ground,
[59:22] Speaker 1: when you're on the ground and people are trying to
[59:24] Speaker 1: hinder you, like trying to help yourself not get killed.
[59:28] Speaker 1: You know, when you were in Iraq, what what kind
[59:33] Speaker 1: of like indirect fire assets were you working with mostly,
[59:35] Speaker 1: or what kind of aircraft were you working with? Mostly?
[59:37] Speaker 3: Mostly that was Marine Corps F eighteen's and harriers. That's mostly.
[59:44] Speaker 3: Occasionally we get half sixteens show up. We had a
[59:47] Speaker 3: couple of tornadoes show up, but overwhelming it was it
[59:50] Speaker 3: was Marine Corps aviation. So obviously we're having you know,
[59:53] Speaker 3: cobras and you know Huey gunships and burnets and harriers. Yeah,
[59:59] Speaker 3: that was one thing. You know, I kind of mentioned
[1:00:01] Speaker 3: the book. It was the issue because in Romani when
[1:00:03] Speaker 3: we showed up and I switched out with a second
[1:00:05] Speaker 3: so they're like, look, you're not dropping a bomb in Ramandi.
[1:00:07] Speaker 3: This is a provisional capital. You can have to have
[1:00:10] Speaker 3: a general's approval, not the not a battalion commander, not
[1:00:13] Speaker 3: the brigade comanter, but a general approve, right that's fitting
[1:00:16] Speaker 3: across the river at at Blue Diamond. And yeah, and
[1:00:21] Speaker 3: they hate he had to have the approval and so
[1:00:24] Speaker 3: but fair enough. But what else does the aircraft have. Well,
[1:00:27] Speaker 3: they got cannons, you know, they got they got the
[1:00:30] Speaker 3: l math at the time, it was the laser guided
[1:00:31] Speaker 3: matter of missil that we used a lot because it's
[1:00:34] Speaker 3: small and more accurate, you know. And then you got
[1:00:37] Speaker 3: maybe some rockets, not as an aircraft show up with
[1:00:39] Speaker 3: rocket pods and the jets, right.
[1:00:42] Speaker 4: Uh.
[1:00:42] Speaker 3: But then on the other side, Hughes and they're showing
[1:00:44] Speaker 3: up Huing and Kobs. They're shown up obviously with twenty
[1:00:47] Speaker 3: millimeters rockets and you know, hell fires all that the
[1:00:51] Speaker 3: battalion commander or brigade commander could approve. And so we
[1:00:55] Speaker 3: just stopped. We started requesting, don't even show up with
[1:00:57] Speaker 3: it with a five hundred pounds ball, show up with
[1:00:59] Speaker 3: two because Harry is you know, they're they're limited what
[1:01:02] Speaker 3: they could carry, uh, twenty five millimeter cannon. But they
[1:01:06] Speaker 3: show up with two l maps. You know, if you
[1:01:08] Speaker 3: can't you know, as a poster bringing up a five
[1:01:10] Speaker 3: hundred pound bomb. We couldn't use smart and I didn't
[1:01:13] Speaker 3: doubt that some of the air officers were with like
[1:01:15] Speaker 3: let's try this. You know Captain Roard he uh Harry
[1:01:18] Speaker 3: powerlot back then he he was like just worked around.
[1:01:21] Speaker 3: This is a guy who when I go in the book,
[1:01:23] Speaker 3: is I if he shows up the hair pilot. He
[1:01:26] Speaker 3: kind of just he didn't do anything but to control casts.
[1:01:28] Speaker 3: He didn't want do any other training and fair enough.
[1:01:30] Speaker 3: But when we got that Iraq, he became the serious
[1:01:33] Speaker 3: guy who was like aggressive, always doing the night shift
[1:01:36] Speaker 3: in the talk, you know, because he was part of
[1:01:38] Speaker 3: the salt that's w he had to do that. He
[1:01:40] Speaker 3: was getting controlled all the time with the part of
[1:01:42] Speaker 3: the targeting pods. He was blowing up id placers. They're
[1:01:45] Speaker 3: following guys, he was. I've got to a couple of
[1:01:47] Speaker 3: stories in the book with him. Is he killed like
[1:01:49] Speaker 3: they dropped bomb of some insurgeons and in the midst
[1:01:52] Speaker 3: of like armed insurgeons the course. Later on the CNN
[1:01:55] Speaker 3: said it was a it was a you know, a
[1:01:57] Speaker 3: family wedding, but it was you obviously see the weapons
[1:01:59] Speaker 3: in the footage, right, and so that's the type of
[1:02:02] Speaker 3: stuff he was doing real aggressive and so he started
[1:02:04] Speaker 3: telling hey, don't even show up a five under pound bombs.
[1:02:06] Speaker 3: So anglic Co there was good about kind of working
[1:02:09] Speaker 3: what we had with and kind of working outside the
[1:02:11] Speaker 3: box and you know, improvised it that and it was
[1:02:13] Speaker 3: it was great to work with some of these guys
[1:02:15] Speaker 3: the whole you know, Major Major Grice, Lieutenant Colon Grice
[1:02:18] Speaker 3: as a gym commander, he was he's legendary and the
[1:02:21] Speaker 3: artillery community at least, and he was outstanding today. There
[1:02:25] Speaker 3: good group of men.
[1:02:26] Speaker 4: He was the.
[1:02:28] Speaker 1: Major. Gris was the company commander right for a while
[1:02:31] Speaker 1: for Anglico CEO.
[1:02:33] Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he was the he was the the first
[1:02:35] Speaker 3: angle Co CEO was lieutenant colonel.
[1:02:38] Speaker 1: I think yeah, yeah, I think yeah.
[1:02:39] Speaker 3: Later on it was yeah, I want to change of command.
[1:02:42] Speaker 3: So he eventually came back. He was a big gay
[1:02:43] Speaker 3: commander and eventually came back. Uh, well I was already out,
[1:02:47] Speaker 3: but I just changing command.
[1:02:49] Speaker 1: And so for people that may not understand, you know,
[1:02:52] Speaker 1: when you're talking about getting general level approval for something,
[1:02:55] Speaker 1: it's if the target, if the target meets the criteria,
[1:03:00] Speaker 1: there's that's not necessarily an issue getting the approval. It's
[1:03:03] Speaker 1: the time. It takes time. It's you're adding more and
[1:03:06] Speaker 1: more time, you know, Like when we're in Afghanistan, it
[1:03:10] Speaker 1: would take I think when I can't remember which RCT
[1:03:15] Speaker 1: was there, but I could get a I remember I
[1:03:18] Speaker 1: remember getting like, oh hey, look there's an id in placer.
[1:03:20] Speaker 1: From that moment to the impact of the first High
[1:03:23] Speaker 1: Mars round would take ten minutes. Well, then when we
[1:03:26] Speaker 1: got a new RCT that came in, a Regimental Combat
[1:03:29] Speaker 1: Team that was the higher command for those that don't know,
[1:03:31] Speaker 1: they're the ones that would approve High Mar's missions and stuff.
[1:03:34] Speaker 1: We got a new one that came in, that time
[1:03:36] Speaker 1: went from ten minutes or less to fifteen minutes or more.
[1:03:40] Speaker 1: You know, for whatever reason, it just took much longer.
[1:03:43] Speaker 1: And you know, when you're talking about id in placers
[1:03:46] Speaker 1: or guys that are trying to set up an ambush
[1:03:48] Speaker 1: or take pot shots, they're not sitting in one spot
[1:03:51] Speaker 1: for a long time. They're moving. So if I'm looking
[1:03:54] Speaker 1: at a target and I call it in and I
[1:03:57] Speaker 1: got a High Mars that I'm wanting to shoot, minutes
[1:04:00] Speaker 1: is a long time to wait because those guys could
[1:04:02] Speaker 1: get up and move one hundred feet to the right.
[1:04:04] Speaker 1: Now I got to redo everything, you know.
[1:04:08] Speaker 3: And that was that's why you need fitch and quick
[1:04:12] Speaker 3: boom boom, you know. But that's at the time, like
[1:04:14] Speaker 3: when we were there, you know, first of five was six,
[1:04:17] Speaker 3: the whole two hundred and eight brigade, the hall, and
[1:04:19] Speaker 3: they were there quick about a lot of things. You know,
[1:04:21] Speaker 3: we weren't dropping bombs, but they're quick about the other words.
[1:04:24] Speaker 3: And they approved that and we we something and you
[1:04:27] Speaker 3: know how you had to do a show a force, right,
[1:04:29] Speaker 3: So the show of force at times is I'm not
[1:04:31] Speaker 3: going to drop a bomb, but I want this big
[1:04:33] Speaker 3: scary aircraft to come. Were super low and be loud
[1:04:36] Speaker 3: and scaut the insurgents, right, and that's kind of I
[1:04:37] Speaker 3: think affect some times they don't know if somebody's coming,
[1:04:40] Speaker 3: if that's all you have, maybe kind of makes them
[1:04:43] Speaker 3: hesitate a little bit. But after a while, you know,
[1:04:46] Speaker 3: they know that you don't drop it. So you know,
[1:04:49] Speaker 3: we kind of use those if you had nothing else,
[1:04:52] Speaker 3: I mean, but a lot of those unity we were
[1:04:55] Speaker 3: dropping it. But other than that, we we did mortars
[1:04:58] Speaker 3: when we were outside of the city. So times we
[1:05:00] Speaker 3: go in the suburbs, and do patrols. We were doing
[1:05:02] Speaker 3: that Task Force Darcy. We'd be on the patrols. We're
[1:05:04] Speaker 3: able to use artillery and mortars there, but a lot
[1:05:07] Speaker 3: of times we were using it mostly just for U
[1:05:09] Speaker 3: like Illom they were shooting a loom for us, or
[1:05:12] Speaker 3: we were doing the back then they I didn't even
[1:05:14] Speaker 3: know they had it. Intil went overseas was the ir
[1:05:16] Speaker 3: Illum So it's an allum round which you only see
[1:05:18] Speaker 3: with your mvgs. So, uh, we were doing a lot
[1:05:21] Speaker 3: of that. But when it came to real quick siding,
[1:05:24] Speaker 3: the aircraft was with us, you know. Uh. But in
[1:05:27] Speaker 3: hit we used artillery a lot and mortars and Ramadi.
[1:05:30] Speaker 3: It was a lot of aircraft because they can get
[1:05:31] Speaker 3: that more precision, you know, even even the cobras we're done,
[1:05:35] Speaker 3: you know, rockets, rockets and stuff.
[1:05:36] Speaker 2: There.
[1:05:37] Speaker 3: We were doing rockets. A couple of times we were
[1:05:39] Speaker 3: ambushed and I was bringing them in I mean danger close,
[1:05:43] Speaker 3: I mean really close. And they were good about accurate,
[1:05:46] Speaker 3: these these these pilots.
[1:05:47] Speaker 1: Man and yeah, we had a good working relationship with
[1:05:53] Speaker 1: the skids. And again I go back to Afghanistan. I
[1:05:57] Speaker 1: was in Iraq, but I was there as a mechanic.
[1:05:58] Speaker 1: So my, my, you know, well read yeah, well read
[1:06:04] Speaker 1: into the combat issues in Iraq. But in Afghanistan, I
[1:06:09] Speaker 1: remember if we brought in skids, if we brought in
[1:06:11] Speaker 1: cobras or Huey's, the noise signature from those would be
[1:06:16] Speaker 1: enough to scare guys away because they knew that's what
[1:06:19] Speaker 1: was carrying the hell fires. And and in that area,
[1:06:23] Speaker 1: you know how we'll we'll joke around with like a
[1:06:25] Speaker 1: little kid like, oh, the boogeyman will get you. You know,
[1:06:27] Speaker 1: if you're bad, the boogeyman will get you. In Afghanistan,
[1:06:30] Speaker 1: the boogeyman what they were talking about was the hell fires.
[1:06:33] Speaker 1: They would joke and be they would tell their kids,
[1:06:34] Speaker 1: if you'd be bad, you know that rocket will get
[1:06:37] Speaker 1: you kind of deal. And it was I heard that.
[1:06:39] Speaker 1: I remember hearing that and being like, that's fucked up,
[1:06:41] Speaker 1: you know.
[1:06:42] Speaker 2: But.
[1:06:43] Speaker 3: That's a different childhood.
[1:06:45] Speaker 1: Yeah, so we would have to bring in if we
[1:06:47] Speaker 1: were bringing in skids, we would have to offset them
[1:06:49] Speaker 1: from the target area until they were ready to do
[1:06:53] Speaker 1: the attack or something like that, because they would burn
[1:06:55] Speaker 1: the target area with their noise signature. Was it similar
[1:06:59] Speaker 1: to that in Iraq? Were they did they have any
[1:07:01] Speaker 1: kind of different, you know, were they more afraid of
[1:07:04] Speaker 1: one platform over another, just didn't care.
[1:07:07] Speaker 3: I think technically for the for the fixed wing right
[1:07:11] Speaker 3: the fixing back in Iraq over mine, they're finding about
[1:07:13] Speaker 3: fifteen thousand feet sixteen thousand feet above until he come
[1:07:16] Speaker 3: in for their their their termal dive, their attack. So
[1:07:20] Speaker 3: they really couldn't see him. You can hear jets way
[1:07:23] Speaker 3: up there, right, You could hear jets over the city.
[1:07:25] Speaker 3: You might be able to see him occasionally, but it
[1:07:29] Speaker 3: was mostly to fix the roads. Roaders come in. They're
[1:07:32] Speaker 3: little more hesitant, but you know, we had roaders come in.
[1:07:34] Speaker 3: They're still shooting RPGs and machine guns, that is regardless,
[1:07:38] Speaker 3: and it just bends in the fighters, and but I
[1:07:40] Speaker 3: think I think they did had some you know, but.
[1:07:44] Speaker 1: It is crazy how they get accustomed to our own
[1:07:46] Speaker 1: you know, just like anybody, they adapt to our own techniques.
[1:07:49] Speaker 1: And I remember you mentioned one time that or you
[1:07:52] Speaker 1: mentioned that doing like a show of force kind of
[1:07:56] Speaker 1: starts to become ineffective. And I remember specifically one time
[1:07:59] Speaker 1: we were taking rounds, we were getting shot at, and
[1:08:04] Speaker 1: I think I think this was the day that we
[1:08:06] Speaker 1: had a couple of guys get killed. Afghans were killed,
[1:08:09] Speaker 1: like the company commander and stuff had been killed, and
[1:08:13] Speaker 1: we were gonna they weren't gonna let us drop, so
[1:08:16] Speaker 1: we were gonna do a show of force. That was
[1:08:17] Speaker 1: the only thing that they would approve. And we called
[1:08:20] Speaker 1: it in and the aircraft was coming in, and we
[1:08:23] Speaker 1: actually had our our linguist had a our Afghan interpreter
[1:08:27] Speaker 1: had a like a walkie talkie kind of like the
[1:08:30] Speaker 1: Taliban use, and he would listen to their conversations and
[1:08:33] Speaker 1: tell us that's cool. Yeah, and he would tell us
[1:08:36] Speaker 1: what they were talking about and stuff, and he was like, yeah,
[1:08:38] Speaker 1: they're telling them to stay down, that they're not actually
[1:08:40] Speaker 1: gonna drop anything, like they knew we were only going
[1:08:42] Speaker 1: to do a show of force. He was like the
[1:08:44] Speaker 1: the Taliban commanders telling the guys not to run or
[1:08:46] Speaker 1: hide or or you know, expose themselves, to just stay
[1:08:49] Speaker 1: where they're at because they're not actually gonna drop. And
[1:08:51] Speaker 1: I was just like, that's so frustrating.
[1:08:53] Speaker 3: Man. They know you, they know your are better than
[1:08:56] Speaker 3: get That's why in Romani they were the men. They've
[1:08:58] Speaker 3: walked next to women or children if they and now
[1:09:01] Speaker 3: if they're armed, they it was telling like one guy
[1:09:04] Speaker 3: walking alone. Sometimes depend on the situation he's p I
[1:09:06] Speaker 3: d's where another kid declaring enemy because of what he's
[1:09:09] Speaker 3: doing is just jump run across the road to grab
[1:09:11] Speaker 3: the ak in that house, right, But and they have
[1:09:13] Speaker 3: then we take them out. But if it's a guy walk,
[1:09:16] Speaker 3: if it's a man walking with a woman or child,
[1:09:18] Speaker 3: you know, we just let them walk across. But we know,
[1:09:20] Speaker 3: we know they know that, and so they use these
[1:09:22] Speaker 3: women and children to you know, they use it are
[1:09:24] Speaker 3: always against us. This is that's how it is.
[1:09:26] Speaker 1: So that'd be so crazy to like fight inside of
[1:09:29] Speaker 1: a city like that. I mean, I've never been around Moody.
[1:09:33] Speaker 1: When you call a city, would you is it comparable
[1:09:37] Speaker 1: to like US cities like actually urban density and stuff
[1:09:40] Speaker 1: like that.
[1:09:41] Speaker 3: I mean yeah, I mean they're there's i mean in
[1:09:43] Speaker 3: the city proper, there's alleyways, there's no green there's hardly
[1:09:46] Speaker 3: any green space. It's a sidewalks, roads, alleyways, or small
[1:09:50] Speaker 3: houses that are three to four stories high or buildings
[1:09:53] Speaker 3: for whatever reason that one time they were used you
[1:09:55] Speaker 3: know in a business setting, but or apartments, so that's
[1:09:58] Speaker 3: it was all clumped together. It wasn't lot of space
[1:10:00] Speaker 3: Now you can go the sub suburbs where it's farms
[1:10:03] Speaker 3: and you get a house maybe two hundred meters away
[1:10:05] Speaker 3: here or whatever the case is. But mighty proper, it's
[1:10:07] Speaker 3: a city now. We don't have to skyscrapers, you know.
[1:10:10] Speaker 3: I think the biggest that you know, I think the
[1:10:12] Speaker 3: we had a grain factory there that or grain elevator
[1:10:15] Speaker 3: there might have been like ten stories and that's like
[1:10:17] Speaker 3: one of the highest spots. But that was it. You know,
[1:10:19] Speaker 3: everything else is four three two stories. That was about
[1:10:22] Speaker 3: it on top but on top of each other.
[1:10:24] Speaker 1: That's still close enough where you you run into the
[1:10:26] Speaker 1: issue of the urban canyons, you know, where you like say,
[1:10:32] Speaker 1: for those I don't know, wan't to talking about an
[1:10:33] Speaker 1: urban canyon. If think about you're looking at a group
[1:10:37] Speaker 1: of road or you're you're above a city and you're
[1:10:40] Speaker 1: looking up the grid of the roads going one way
[1:10:42] Speaker 1: and the other way that long like main avenue. If
[1:10:45] Speaker 1: you're on ground level, that looks like a canyon because
[1:10:48] Speaker 1: you can't see anything on either side of it. Well
[1:10:50] Speaker 1: you have that problem with aircraft too, if they're flying
[1:10:53] Speaker 1: over a road as they're flying in their circle doing
[1:10:58] Speaker 1: you know, basically laps in the sky, but they have
[1:11:01] Speaker 1: their camera locked into an area, they'll lose visibility of
[1:11:04] Speaker 1: that area occasionally because of the angle, the slant angle
[1:11:07] Speaker 1: the camera and the building heights and stuff like that.
[1:11:09] Speaker 1: So we call that at Ruben Canyon. Was that a
[1:11:11] Speaker 1: big issue for you guys, Yeah.
[1:11:13] Speaker 2: It was.
[1:11:13] Speaker 3: It was big, especially if you're in the talk and
[1:11:15] Speaker 3: you're doing that and you're like a lot of those
[1:11:17] Speaker 3: officers from the talk and they're looking at the feed,
[1:11:20] Speaker 3: the rover feed from the aircraft, right, so you can
[1:11:22] Speaker 3: see what their aircraft sees and they're watching it, and
[1:11:25] Speaker 3: then you lose sight of it and a lot of times,
[1:11:27] Speaker 3: you know, it wasn't that bad then, but lolat of
[1:11:28] Speaker 3: time you start getting lawyers involved. Well, if you lose
[1:11:30] Speaker 3: sight of it, that's the long with PID, Like, come on,
[1:11:32] Speaker 3: it's the same dude, So weird stuff like that. But
[1:11:34] Speaker 3: at the time, I was never really behind. I didn't
[1:11:37] Speaker 3: use a road right, I was on the ground just
[1:11:39] Speaker 3: talking to the aircraft, and I didn't have the rover,
[1:11:41] Speaker 3: but a lot of our guys who worked in the
[1:11:42] Speaker 3: top they did, and that would be an issue. Yeah,
[1:11:45] Speaker 3: we came now so we do our south of Southern
[1:11:47] Speaker 3: rotation or whatever the case is. But yeah, but most
[1:11:50] Speaker 3: time for me it was like can you see it,
[1:11:51] Speaker 3: I can see in the building, or come down this
[1:11:54] Speaker 3: road for gun runs or that it so, and we
[1:11:57] Speaker 3: started doing that Passport Dark Eagle mission. It was a
[1:12:00] Speaker 3: lot of that real close, real close in fighting and
[1:12:03] Speaker 3: we were using precision ordinance right on topic with each other.
[1:12:07] Speaker 1: So yeah, good times, that's a good time. The Old
[1:12:13] Speaker 1: Urban Canyon, I haven't used that term in a while.
[1:12:16] Speaker 3: That was, you know, we just one thing with those
[1:12:18] Speaker 3: those missions was you know, it was just kind of
[1:12:21] Speaker 3: developed that I didn't when I was came back from
[1:12:24] Speaker 3: that was in Alsaald for a while. I came back
[1:12:26] Speaker 3: and I linked up with with Anglicodette in eastern Ramadi
[1:12:29] Speaker 3: and they had started talk working with some sniper teams
[1:12:33] Speaker 3: with the Fible with before that was two second time
[1:12:36] Speaker 3: six to ninth Armor right and then they left. First
[1:12:37] Speaker 3: the five of six came in. They started working with
[1:12:39] Speaker 3: those sniper teams going down the city and there's sniper
[1:12:42] Speaker 3: teams and scout teams. So for the army back then,
[1:12:46] Speaker 3: at least they had snipers and they had scouts. In
[1:12:48] Speaker 3: the scalp P team, I had sniper section of the
[1:12:50] Speaker 3: scouts and some were certified somewhere. What are the cases
[1:12:53] Speaker 3: least that's how it would look like to us, and
[1:12:55] Speaker 3: so we started going out. They started going out with
[1:12:58] Speaker 3: four anglical Marines, four sniper, some four scouts, twelve man
[1:13:02] Speaker 3: teams and have different positions overlapping fields of fire and
[1:13:05] Speaker 3: they just wait until they get compromised, and then the
[1:13:08] Speaker 3: insurgents come out and then they're reacting to you. And
[1:13:11] Speaker 3: that was one of the things that kind of changed
[1:13:13] Speaker 3: it up. So they started the inserns started reacting to
[1:13:15] Speaker 3: us going into their neighborhood. They're like, where are these
[1:13:17] Speaker 3: guys at. They didn't know how many teams would be
[1:13:19] Speaker 3: out there, so they trying to figure it out. And
[1:13:22] Speaker 3: then you get compromised and fight, and then they come
[1:13:23] Speaker 3: and bring in Bradley's and gun trucks and ex steal you.
[1:13:27] Speaker 3: Or if it was quiet, you did a dismount walk
[1:13:30] Speaker 3: out the next day or the next morning.
[1:13:33] Speaker 2: I like that.
[1:13:33] Speaker 1: You know, earlier you had mentioned someone didn't want to
[1:13:38] Speaker 1: do the mount training because they didn't think it was
[1:13:40] Speaker 1: applicable to your guys. It makes me. It reminds me
[1:13:44] Speaker 1: of when I was a team chief and I was
[1:13:46] Speaker 1: talking to my team leader, and we had been doing
[1:13:49] Speaker 1: a lot of HURST training, which is what is a
[1:13:51] Speaker 1: helicopter repelling suspension training or something like that, basically repelling
[1:13:57] Speaker 1: fast roping, that kind of deal. And we had been
[1:14:00] Speaker 1: doing a lot of fast roping training, but it was
[1:14:02] Speaker 1: all very basic. It was like, you know, you go
[1:14:04] Speaker 1: do the tower, and then after you've done the tower,
[1:14:07] Speaker 1: then you go and you do it off different platforms
[1:14:09] Speaker 1: hue EA's, fifty three's whatever. And we got to the
[1:14:13] Speaker 1: point where we were doing it, you know, a decent amount,
[1:14:17] Speaker 1: and I told my captain. I was like, hey, sir,
[1:14:19] Speaker 1: like we should schedule a fast rope training where we
[1:14:22] Speaker 1: fast rope onto some rooftops because we hadn't done that yet.
[1:14:25] Speaker 1: We'd only been doing fast rope onto basically an LZ
[1:14:28] Speaker 1: or something. And he was like no, no, like he
[1:14:31] Speaker 1: was totally against it. And I was like, look, I
[1:14:34] Speaker 1: mean the deal is is that we know, we don't
[1:14:38] Speaker 1: know who we're going to get attached to support. We
[1:14:41] Speaker 1: could get attached to support a regular infantry unit. We
[1:14:44] Speaker 1: could get attached to support a Royal Marine unit. We
[1:14:46] Speaker 1: could get attached to support you know, a ranger battalion
[1:14:50] Speaker 1: or seals or whatever. And if those guys on their
[1:14:54] Speaker 1: mission are going to fast rope into a building or
[1:14:57] Speaker 1: onto a building, that's probably not the first time. Every
[1:15:00] Speaker 1: guys should be doing it, Like we should be ready
[1:15:02] Speaker 1: to support whatever they want to do their insertion method.
[1:15:07] Speaker 1: And I feel like I'm not saying we should do
[1:15:10] Speaker 1: it every time or we should be like cowboys about it,
[1:15:13] Speaker 1: but we at least have to work up to that
[1:15:15] Speaker 1: because that's something we can expect the people we're supporting
[1:15:17] Speaker 1: to do.
[1:15:18] Speaker 3: And want the capability. You want to capability to support them. Hey,
[1:15:21] Speaker 3: that's what we can do. And you have a lot
[1:15:22] Speaker 3: of ways to insert an extraction. Why not it only
[1:15:25] Speaker 3: makes you a better.
[1:15:28] Speaker 1: Well, he was looking at like it was dangerous, you know,
[1:15:31] Speaker 1: like it's there's more risk in it, and I was like,
[1:15:33] Speaker 1: I get it, But at the same time, like, how
[1:15:36] Speaker 1: much more risky is it if the first time they've
[1:15:38] Speaker 1: ever done it is in a combat area, Like that's
[1:15:40] Speaker 1: so much worse, you know, Like I don't want to
[1:15:42] Speaker 1: be sliding down a rope onto a rooftop or onto
[1:15:45] Speaker 1: a ship. You know that's rocking, and that'd be my
[1:15:47] Speaker 1: very first time that I've ever done it, So.
[1:15:51] Speaker 3: I think there needs to be more. I think they allowed.
[1:15:55] Speaker 3: There's a lot of good training. You know, we're doing that,
[1:15:57] Speaker 3: those those small team stuff because we actually from my
[1:15:59] Speaker 3: first big missions in Ramadi was my team with two
[1:16:03] Speaker 3: snipers attached. This was because we're gonna overlot overwatch MSR
[1:16:09] Speaker 3: because they've been id in it. And so when the
[1:16:11] Speaker 3: first missions at first September, I kind of go into
[1:16:13] Speaker 3: like I talked to the air option in the brigade
[1:16:15] Speaker 3: and he's like, okay. I was like, I just told
[1:16:17] Speaker 3: me like, well, I mean ice crab, some people I
[1:16:19] Speaker 3: here watching the roads. If we don't have enough aircraft
[1:16:21] Speaker 3: to just kind of standing. He's like, next day he's like, hey,
[1:16:24] Speaker 3: write me up a con ops for that op. Your
[1:16:26] Speaker 3: team and then two snipers. I was like okay, So
[1:16:30] Speaker 3: right up there in the three day op, drove us
[1:16:32] Speaker 3: out there, inserted via gun trucks, patrolled to our op
[1:16:35] Speaker 3: or primary ope and went about it and it was
[1:16:40] Speaker 3: it was good. I mean we didn't see anybody that day.
[1:16:42] Speaker 3: There were some step way down, but just the operations, Hey,
[1:16:45] Speaker 3: you better be prepared to operate and work, not operator
[1:16:47] Speaker 3: as in an operator. Your marines do a marine stuff.
[1:16:49] Speaker 3: He prepared and that's one thing a lot of us day,
[1:16:52] Speaker 3: you know, these first thing to go back. Then, for
[1:16:53] Speaker 3: the most part, we were pretty prepared. I thought there's
[1:16:56] Speaker 3: some stuff we could have done more of, like mount,
[1:16:58] Speaker 3: but at least forgot some out. There's something we don't
[1:17:00] Speaker 3: need to do it like you're not back at some
[1:17:03] Speaker 3: of our infantry battalion. They're gonna you can do be
[1:17:07] Speaker 3: in the situation.
[1:17:08] Speaker 1: So I understand the traditionalists like look at it like, hey,
[1:17:11] Speaker 1: you're an Anglico team, you're a support by you should
[1:17:14] Speaker 1: be in the support by fire position with the headquarters
[1:17:16] Speaker 1: element right by the commanding officer da da da da da.
[1:17:19] Speaker 1: And traditionally, yes, you're correct, we would probably be with
[1:17:23] Speaker 1: the leader on the ground and directing fire support and
[1:17:27] Speaker 1: being right next to them so we can approve. And
[1:17:29] Speaker 1: that should be I mean, that's the doctrine all way, right,
[1:17:31] Speaker 1: but that's not how it always works. Like you just said, hey,
[1:17:34] Speaker 1: we need you to go out with the sniper team. Well,
[1:17:36] Speaker 1: if I've never worked with a sniper team, I've never
[1:17:38] Speaker 1: even built a hide before. Am I now an asset
[1:17:41] Speaker 1: or a liability? You know what I'm saying? Because I
[1:17:43] Speaker 1: don't know how to be quiet. I don't know how
[1:17:44] Speaker 1: to prep my gear for this kind of mission that
[1:17:46] Speaker 1: we're going on.
[1:17:47] Speaker 3: You know. So we got that training, you know with
[1:17:50] Speaker 3: those rural marines. It was good stuff. Hike and what
[1:17:52] Speaker 3: to do, what not to do, how to set it
[1:17:53] Speaker 3: up with the hide site versus you know, other side part.
[1:17:56] Speaker 3: And it's just it was good and it was it
[1:17:59] Speaker 3: was was lower. We were in the city, right, we
[1:18:03] Speaker 3: were out the rule. We had a pure f at
[1:18:05] Speaker 3: op about two miles away in gun trucks. I had
[1:18:08] Speaker 3: aircraft on station and we just kind of waited. It was.
[1:18:11] Speaker 2: It was.
[1:18:11] Speaker 3: It wasn't fun. It was. It sounds sexy, right, sounds great,
[1:18:15] Speaker 3: It's not very fun at all. It's sitting in the
[1:18:17] Speaker 3: heat all day. I mean, just made a big capt
[1:18:19] Speaker 3: move because regular cowboys coming by. You're like, I hope
[1:18:22] Speaker 3: theym start shooting at me. So you're hidden. Although you
[1:18:25] Speaker 3: know Americas will buy your technical talking to him on
[1:18:27] Speaker 3: the sheriff net and it's just, you know, it was, hey,
[1:18:32] Speaker 3: you being prepared. Yeah, that's the thing is prepared. Get
[1:18:34] Speaker 3: some good training. But we don't put us out there,
[1:18:36] Speaker 3: you know, but you could. You got to be innovative,
[1:18:38] Speaker 3: and I think that's innovative.
[1:18:40] Speaker 1: I thought that was to me. I thought that was
[1:18:42] Speaker 1: one of the main roles of the team chief is
[1:18:45] Speaker 1: to make relationships with other people and to get good
[1:18:48] Speaker 1: training for their dudes. I really tried to. We had
[1:18:51] Speaker 1: a really good working relationship with the Reconnaissance Debt that
[1:18:55] Speaker 1: was on our MEW when I was with the eleventh
[1:18:57] Speaker 1: MEW with the anglic Co team, and we would we
[1:19:02] Speaker 1: would bring in their guys and teach them fire support.
[1:19:05] Speaker 1: They had JA tax on their team. They had JA
[1:19:07] Speaker 1: tax within the Ricon element, but that was like one
[1:19:11] Speaker 1: of six jobs those guys had. Some of them hadn't
[1:19:13] Speaker 1: controlled since school. A lot of their books were whipped,
[1:19:17] Speaker 1: you know, pencil whip just to maintain their currency, like
[1:19:20] Speaker 1: they hadn't actually been doing. They weren't very good at it.
[1:19:22] Speaker 1: Not their fault, they just it's just not their job.
[1:19:25] Speaker 1: So we would bring them in and teach them and
[1:19:27] Speaker 1: bring them up to speed on fire support. And then
[1:19:30] Speaker 1: when they had training, they'd invite us along and we
[1:19:33] Speaker 1: came and we did like room clearing training with the
[1:19:35] Speaker 1: Ricon guys. We'd go out on the range with those
[1:19:38] Speaker 1: guys and shoot with them, and you know, it was
[1:19:40] Speaker 1: kind of a A that's the kind of relationship that's
[1:19:42] Speaker 1: important and that like team chiefs should be working on. Yeah,
[1:19:45] Speaker 1: you're supposed to be looking around at all these support elements,
[1:19:49] Speaker 1: all these people that are within the MEW, the MAGTAFF,
[1:19:51] Speaker 1: you know, the Marine Air Ground Task Force, and figure
[1:19:55] Speaker 1: out how you guys can help each other become better
[1:19:57] Speaker 1: at your job, you know. And it was another thing
[1:20:00] Speaker 1: like we had everybody there. You're on ship, you know,
[1:20:03] Speaker 1: you have the pilots, you have the recon guys, you
[1:20:05] Speaker 1: have the j TAX, you have artillery. So we would
[1:20:08] Speaker 1: like set up you have plenty of time, so we
[1:20:11] Speaker 1: would set up full scenarios in the sack. We'd have
[1:20:13] Speaker 1: an FDC in the back room of the sack set up,
[1:20:16] Speaker 1: and we'd have like, uh, what is that called not
[1:20:20] Speaker 1: SAVT but the DVT. It's like a laptop like a
[1:20:23] Speaker 1: trainer that you can do like call for fire and
[1:20:25] Speaker 1: stuff on. We'd have that set up in one area
[1:20:27] Speaker 1: and have the FDC and then have like the recon
[1:20:31] Speaker 1: guys and we and we'd bring in a pilot, an
[1:20:33] Speaker 1: actual pilot that would be actually flying the missions, and
[1:20:36] Speaker 1: he'd play the part of the pilot and we'd just
[1:20:38] Speaker 1: go through the comms and stuff like that. We'd run
[1:20:40] Speaker 1: scenarios and and we all kind of learned from each other,
[1:20:43] Speaker 1: and you got the guy right there normally as a
[1:20:46] Speaker 1: jay tack, I'm not sitting right next to the pilot.
[1:20:48] Speaker 1: He's gonna I'm gonna work with him for an hour
[1:20:50] Speaker 1: on the radio and then he's gonna fly back to wherever. Well,
[1:20:52] Speaker 1: in this scenario, we're all here, we can do a
[1:20:56] Speaker 1: fake mission on the computer and run through the whole scenario.
[1:21:00] Speaker 1: And then at the end actually asked the pilot, Hey,
[1:21:02] Speaker 1: what would what would you prefer to hear at this?
[1:21:05] Speaker 1: What do you think would be better in this situation?
[1:21:07] Speaker 1: And vice versa. You know, so, I don't know, guys
[1:21:11] Speaker 1: got to be innovative, you know, you you saying that
[1:21:13] Speaker 1: being innovative is very key, especially nowadays. I believe when
[1:21:16] Speaker 1: we're watching how warfare is constantly changing and shaping, and
[1:21:22] Speaker 1: if you got to be ahead of that, you got
[1:21:23] Speaker 1: to be looking at that and like what's our next
[1:21:26] Speaker 1: step to either counter this tactic or improve our own tactics.
[1:21:31] Speaker 3: And I think when we started doing those those cast
[1:21:34] Speaker 3: for Star Ego missions that that too insurgents offware Luke
[1:21:37] Speaker 3: because normally all the cold supporters go through Humbi's maybe
[1:21:40] Speaker 3: some dismount of patrols, but they weren't snay and they
[1:21:42] Speaker 3: weren't sneaking in anywhere. But we started doing that, it
[1:21:46] Speaker 3: kind of it kind of messed up their ood loop, right,
[1:21:48] Speaker 3: So they were they were the kind dysfunctional and they
[1:21:50] Speaker 3: were making bad They're making bad decisions and mistakes. And
[1:21:53] Speaker 3: we started getting a lot of snipers are just dropping
[1:21:56] Speaker 3: people left f right. We started getting a lot of
[1:21:57] Speaker 3: indirect engagement, direct engagements and then dropping precision aircraft or
[1:22:01] Speaker 3: precision bombs and ordinance on them. And we started racking
[1:22:05] Speaker 3: a pretty good list of these missions. And eventually on
[1:22:08] Speaker 3: one of those missions, we had a guy from the
[1:22:10] Speaker 3: d O D supposed to right, so obviously an S
[1:22:13] Speaker 3: S F dude, but and I was like, why is
[1:22:16] Speaker 3: he there's twelve of us in this d D CO
[1:22:18] Speaker 3: was up. He's carried that new Mark seven to six
[1:22:20] Speaker 3: two machine gun, right, so what is that the Mark
[1:22:23] Speaker 3: I forgetting? Now? Brand new? It was brand new at
[1:22:25] Speaker 3: the time, right in two thousand and six two five,
[1:22:28] Speaker 3: And we're like, well, what's he going on a mission?
[1:22:30] Speaker 3: He just wants to go along with us. We've heard
[1:22:32] Speaker 3: a lot about it, all these missions, what we're doing,
[1:22:34] Speaker 3: and they in the sense of it. I asked where
[1:22:35] Speaker 3: you from and he's like, well, I'm just with d D.
[1:22:37] Speaker 3: I'm like, all right, I know. I'm like, okay, I'm
[1:22:42] Speaker 3: gonna go tell the Russians, you know who we're with,
[1:22:44] Speaker 3: and just anyway, So he went out with us on
[1:22:47] Speaker 3: one of these offs where we had over watching, you know,
[1:22:51] Speaker 3: dropping air buck dropping ordnance, and then snipers were firing
[1:22:54] Speaker 3: and and we were lucky, but it wasn't eventually tell
[1:22:57] Speaker 3: that at the very end, and surgeons realized how to
[1:23:00] Speaker 3: counter that? Right? How did they counter it? Is? We
[1:23:02] Speaker 3: realize that they couldn't move on us because it's tough.
[1:23:05] Speaker 3: As you know, it's tough to assault defended positions such basically,
[1:23:08] Speaker 3: we went firm per date, exposed ourselves, they attacked, they
[1:23:12] Speaker 3: made mistakes, and then we ex filled later on, usually
[1:23:14] Speaker 3: under heavy gun trucks or sometimes dismounted and h so
[1:23:18] Speaker 3: what they do. Then eventually they started they wanted to
[1:23:22] Speaker 3: wait until we left to the x fill and they
[1:23:24] Speaker 3: wouldn't be there at all, they wouldn't know any of that.
[1:23:26] Speaker 3: So we're going to ex fill. So we're not going
[1:23:28] Speaker 3: to still under heavy you know armor, because we didn't.
[1:23:32] Speaker 3: Nothing happened all day, right, so we're gonna expill. We're
[1:23:34] Speaker 3: going to walk out, no big deal. I realized that
[1:23:37] Speaker 3: that that was our part of vulnerability, and maybe we
[1:23:40] Speaker 3: made mistakes countering as because after I left, basically the
[1:23:43] Speaker 3: day I got back to the US, in that deployment,
[1:23:47] Speaker 3: they were on a patrol that night. It was night
[1:23:49] Speaker 3: there and uh, they're coming out of a pass forced
[1:23:52] Speaker 3: ark eagle mission and they're ex filling and as soon
[1:23:54] Speaker 3: as they left the house, the whole team got ambushed
[1:23:57] Speaker 3: by like, uh, you know, I think they estimate like
[1:24:01] Speaker 3: a dozen, you know, don't how they come up with
[1:24:02] Speaker 3: that estimated a dozen. And first off, you know, guys
[1:24:06] Speaker 3: killed shot in the chest, like one of the guys
[1:24:08] Speaker 3: that was one of the snopper Das worked a lot with.
[1:24:11] Speaker 3: His name was Joey B. And he got shot and
[1:24:13] Speaker 3: she had the sappy plate like three or four times,
[1:24:14] Speaker 3: but would saved him as a sappy plate and then
[1:24:16] Speaker 3: his magazines, you know, getting the magazines and chests that's
[1:24:20] Speaker 3: there and saved his ass. But one guy got killed,
[1:24:23] Speaker 3: plenty of wounded, and then the QRF came out to
[1:24:26] Speaker 3: visit Blue I d killed the lead driver and so
[1:24:31] Speaker 3: they were they okay, right, that's time was. I always
[1:24:34] Speaker 3: go into a lot of books by these These guys
[1:24:36] Speaker 3: were smart in surgeons, were smart. They evolved us. We
[1:24:39] Speaker 3: I think one thing the Marine Corps didn't kind of
[1:24:42] Speaker 3: we all make mistakes on is when we go overseas,
[1:24:44] Speaker 3: like we were thinking, oh, how better we are than
[1:24:46] Speaker 3: these people. I'm not sucking like a racial thing. I
[1:24:49] Speaker 3: was taking third third world where we could fight. These
[1:24:52] Speaker 3: guys are experienced, they have they're smart, they they're cunning,
[1:24:56] Speaker 3: they know their neighborhood. They lived within the time. I
[1:24:58] Speaker 3: flup the camouflaged with the pop relation and you underestimate,
[1:25:02] Speaker 3: you're gonna get screwed up, and we did a couple
[1:25:05] Speaker 3: of times, and you know we paid the price.
[1:25:08] Speaker 1: Yeah, they're living in it every day. You know they're
[1:25:10] Speaker 1: not They're they're not doing a deployment and going home
[1:25:13] Speaker 1: and hanging out and resting. They're in the fight every day.
[1:25:16] Speaker 1: There's no training ops. It's all real for them, you know.
[1:25:19] Speaker 3: And they're watching of you men that everything you do,
[1:25:23] Speaker 3: everything you don't do there, somebody's watching it. Somebody's taking notes.
[1:25:27] Speaker 3: And they use that against you later on, like we're
[1:25:29] Speaker 3: roe's all that stuff. You know, they knew how to
[1:25:31] Speaker 3: fight us, and they're smart. They weren'ts well equipped, but
[1:25:35] Speaker 3: they were smart and they were dedicated.
[1:25:37] Speaker 1: You don't need I mean you look at I mean,
[1:25:40] Speaker 1: look how much it costs to make an i D.
[1:25:41] Speaker 1: Almost nothing, and it's taking out hundreds of thousands of
[1:25:44] Speaker 1: dollars of vehicles.
[1:25:46] Speaker 3: At a till time it soldiers boom, that's it. And
[1:25:49] Speaker 3: you can't even fight back. That was one of the
[1:25:51] Speaker 3: frustrating thing is that i D goes on. You couldn't
[1:25:53] Speaker 3: even fight back, and you fight the urge to just
[1:25:56] Speaker 3: want to shoot into the city. You know, you have
[1:25:58] Speaker 3: that urge almost you know, you know it stare just
[1:26:01] Speaker 3: like he's there, somebody, he's probably in that house if
[1:26:04] Speaker 3: you don't because you know you have honor and you're
[1:26:07] Speaker 3: doing what you need to do. But it's frustrating that
[1:26:09] Speaker 3: builds on you.
[1:26:09] Speaker 1: Did you guys ever capture a trigger man?
[1:26:12] Speaker 3: And I we never did. They lot of times I
[1:26:14] Speaker 3: think they thought they would. All that guy's over there
[1:26:17] Speaker 3: and the wire leads to there, right sometimes a lot
[1:26:19] Speaker 3: of times back then they were wired in right instead
[1:26:21] Speaker 3: of just wires bay station. But the wired wing ones
[1:26:24] Speaker 3: were defeat the countermeasures or the electronic countermeasures, so they
[1:26:28] Speaker 3: thought this guy was over there. But yeah, it's tough
[1:26:30] Speaker 3: to get somebody sitting there, you know, doing that. But
[1:26:33] Speaker 3: you cad, you catch them with with cameras and stuff
[1:26:37] Speaker 3: like that, then you can kind of see, Okay, this
[1:26:39] Speaker 3: guy's filming it.
[1:26:40] Speaker 2: He's part of it.
[1:26:41] Speaker 3: He might not be the one pulling the trigger, but
[1:26:42] Speaker 3: he's part of he's filming. It's like uploaded onto whatever
[1:26:46] Speaker 3: you know, and do the propaganda. But yeah, that's how
[1:26:48] Speaker 3: you and I get that to the I get that
[1:26:50] Speaker 3: to the grunts there every day searching these vehicles day
[1:26:53] Speaker 3: in and day out. Man, those are the guys, those
[1:26:55] Speaker 3: those National Guard soldiers and active duty soldiers and Marines
[1:27:00] Speaker 3: day in and day out, many were they're the ones
[1:27:02] Speaker 3: that went that, you know, did they could for that war?
[1:27:04] Speaker 1: Man, Dude. I always felt bad for the army guys
[1:27:06] Speaker 1: because they always had it was either like twelve or
[1:27:08] Speaker 1: eighteen month deployments, you know, like Marines had seven months
[1:27:11] Speaker 1: unless you were with like a higher command like RCT.
[1:27:14] Speaker 1: But even if you're an RCT guy, you're probably in
[1:27:16] Speaker 1: like a base, so it's not that bad. But the
[1:27:19] Speaker 1: regular Army infantry guys were there for twelve to eighteen
[1:27:23] Speaker 1: months at a time, and these some of these shitholes.
[1:27:25] Speaker 1: It's like, dude, I could see how you get to
[1:27:27] Speaker 1: a point where you feel like you're just never gonna
[1:27:29] Speaker 1: get back. You're never gonna make it back, especially if
[1:27:31] Speaker 1: it's a dangerous area and people are dying, you know,
[1:27:34] Speaker 1: at a regular rate.
[1:27:36] Speaker 3: So those National Guarden, those soldiers would just be in
[1:27:38] Speaker 3: the heat of the day to stand in post stand
[1:27:41] Speaker 3: on post on patrol and you know, we're driving his
[1:27:44] Speaker 3: truck for miles and it's just and they're the ones
[1:27:47] Speaker 3: who really did love. That was a day to day
[1:27:48] Speaker 3: fight there, and it was I know, it was tough.
[1:27:52] Speaker 3: Now seven months is one thing. The whole year is different.
[1:27:55] Speaker 3: A lot of those guys that their National Guard, they
[1:27:57] Speaker 3: did seven month deployment or work ups in like Mississippi
[1:28:00] Speaker 3: or Louisiana and then they you know, went over to Iraq.
[1:28:04] Speaker 3: You know the cases. But there was they had a
[1:28:10] Speaker 3: I was gonna happen the seven months. But you know
[1:28:11] Speaker 3: who had easy was a Air Force had like three
[1:28:13] Speaker 3: or four months. Yeah, it tack t's we were up
[1:28:16] Speaker 3: to a couple of Air Force tack thieves, and they
[1:28:19] Speaker 3: had their deployments like four months.
[1:28:21] Speaker 1: Yeah, they had the I think Rangers did the same thing.
[1:28:24] Speaker 1: But I will say the Rangers that were deploying like
[1:28:27] Speaker 1: three or four months at a time were like basically
[1:28:30] Speaker 1: hitting the ground running, yeah, and just doing straight up
[1:28:33] Speaker 1: direct action raids basically daily. That's high stress, man.
[1:28:41] Speaker 2: You know.
[1:28:43] Speaker 1: I was gonna say, there's some guys now now that
[1:28:48] Speaker 1: they can kind of the wars are over. They were
[1:28:51] Speaker 1: flecked back, and there's a lot of bitter people about
[1:28:54] Speaker 1: going to Iraq and stuff like that. Do you ever,
[1:28:57] Speaker 1: I don't know, do you ever kind of regret being
[1:29:00] Speaker 1: there or being part of it or what are you
[1:29:02] Speaker 1: what's your take on it now? Looking back, you know,
[1:29:04] Speaker 1: twenty years later, look.
[1:29:07] Speaker 3: Back twenty years later. You know, I I don't regret it,
[1:29:10] Speaker 3: you know. I'm I'm I'm I'm happy for the experience.
[1:29:14] Speaker 3: It's an odd it's odd feeling. I'm happy for the experience, right,
[1:29:18] Speaker 3: But I'm also like, look, people died, this was screwed up.
[1:29:22] Speaker 3: This was a stressful plane. It was a tough It's
[1:29:24] Speaker 3: a it's a love hate relationship, you know, it's a
[1:29:26] Speaker 3: love hate memory and just reality of what I lived.
[1:29:29] Speaker 3: I go through every day. It's a love hate for
[1:29:31] Speaker 3: that place. But I wouldn't change it. And be honestly,
[1:29:33] Speaker 3: I go back today, if I've got a chance to
[1:29:36] Speaker 3: relive that part of my life, I go back again.
[1:29:38] Speaker 3: I wouldn't. I wouldn't change the run I worked in
[1:29:40] Speaker 3: as some of those you know, some of those marines,
[1:29:42] Speaker 3: we worked with, some of the soldiers man, they're just outstanding,
[1:29:45] Speaker 3: you know, just Americana outstanding man. And that's that's who.
[1:29:48] Speaker 3: That's a big part of that that I was working
[1:29:50] Speaker 3: with them and doing some of the stuff we did.
[1:29:52] Speaker 3: You know, it's historical. I was historical personally, just the
[1:29:55] Speaker 3: whole thing. You know, the whole thing was historical.
[1:29:57] Speaker 1: And yeah, you know, well so you were part of
[1:30:00] Speaker 1: the invasion. I mean that's yeah, that.
[1:30:02] Speaker 3: Was part of the initial invasion, which was a completely
[1:30:04] Speaker 3: different fight, you know, and uh, completely different and.
[1:30:07] Speaker 1: That is history right there. That'd be like I always
[1:30:10] Speaker 1: ask people that are part of the invasion, like what
[1:30:12] Speaker 1: is it like to look back and be like, dude,
[1:30:13] Speaker 1: we like conquered a country, like we invaded and took
[1:30:16] Speaker 1: over a country like that's some history books.
[1:30:19] Speaker 3: It's funny because, uh, you know, I'm proud of that too,
[1:30:23] Speaker 3: you know. I mean I thought it would have come
[1:30:25] Speaker 3: out a lot better, a lot sooner than it did.
[1:30:27] Speaker 3: But eventually, I think the right thing happened there. But
[1:30:30] Speaker 3: you know a lot of mistakes were made there. But
[1:30:32] Speaker 3: I wouldn't change anything.
[1:30:33] Speaker 2: Is that.
[1:30:33] Speaker 3: You know, I was a young lieutenant on the ground
[1:30:34] Speaker 3: as an FO with an infantry company.
[1:30:37] Speaker 2: Man, that's what I want.
[1:30:38] Speaker 3: What I joined for, man, that's what I wanted to do.
[1:30:40] Speaker 3: And uh, great Marines. I was glad for the experience.
[1:30:43] Speaker 3: It was crazy, man, it was you know, we lost
[1:30:45] Speaker 3: a couple of Marines during that and it was a
[1:30:47] Speaker 3: lot wounded. But it was I say, historical, historical, and
[1:30:52] Speaker 3: I was. I was glad to be a part of it.
[1:30:53] Speaker 1: And I think people also, people that like want to
[1:30:56] Speaker 1: criticize basically any involvement there, I tend to forget that
[1:31:04] Speaker 1: a lot of those fighters that we fought and killed
[1:31:09] Speaker 1: they came from other places too, and they knew the game.
[1:31:12] Speaker 1: It wasn't like Bob was protecting his neighborhood, you know.
[1:31:16] Speaker 1: It was like some dude from fucking Syria is coming
[1:31:20] Speaker 1: to Iraq to get his jihat on and he knew
[1:31:22] Speaker 1: the game. We knew the game, you know a lot.
[1:31:26] Speaker 3: But you know, one thing I said about those I
[1:31:28] Speaker 3: kind of go in the book is a little bit
[1:31:29] Speaker 3: of it. Those fighters were it was it was a
[1:31:31] Speaker 3: big assortment, right, but they they knew what it was.
[1:31:33] Speaker 3: Those whole civilians, they knew what all that was, and
[1:31:35] Speaker 3: it was it was a It was a tough thing
[1:31:37] Speaker 3: for him. It was a tough thing for the civilian
[1:31:40] Speaker 3: because he's caught in between this behemoth, you know, occupation force. Uh.
[1:31:45] Speaker 3: And then he's also caught between the extremists that if
[1:31:48] Speaker 3: you helped the occupation, they're going to cut your head
[1:31:50] Speaker 3: off because you're an past eight or if you helped
[1:31:52] Speaker 3: the you know, if you help the insurgency, likely get
[1:31:54] Speaker 3: killed eventually, right, And uh, it was a tough spot
[1:31:57] Speaker 3: for him. Those who left left. There was a lot
[1:31:59] Speaker 3: of vacant houses because people went to Seria or left,
[1:32:01] Speaker 3: they just left completely. A lot of people couldn't afford.
[1:32:03] Speaker 3: To me, some people had no choice to stay. Some
[1:32:05] Speaker 3: people wanted to stay to fight. But you know a
[1:32:07] Speaker 3: little bit different is initially you feel bad to the civilians,
[1:32:10] Speaker 3: but then I'd see these get replaced right by him.
[1:32:13] Speaker 3: And then those civilians saw it, and those phillious cilians
[1:32:15] Speaker 3: see those civilians see a marine patrol coming, arm patrol
[1:32:19] Speaker 3: trying to get you know, somebody gets killed and they
[1:32:21] Speaker 3: don't say a word. You start kind of you know,
[1:32:23] Speaker 3: your your you're you know, my empathy with them kind
[1:32:26] Speaker 3: of starts getting you know, lacking. As the deployment goes on,
[1:32:31] Speaker 3: My deployment goes on, I get started very lack. Where
[1:32:33] Speaker 3: these guys they know it was there, they ain't say anything,
[1:32:35] Speaker 3: you know, if they said something might get killed. I
[1:32:37] Speaker 3: get it, but I'm sorry those guys are still killing
[1:32:39] Speaker 3: your kids too, and you know, but eventually, you know,
[1:32:43] Speaker 3: the whole Ambar awakening after we left. I think how
[1:32:47] Speaker 3: the stuff happened. The right way of course isis came
[1:32:48] Speaker 3: in and screwed it all up.
[1:32:49] Speaker 1: So yeah, you know, one of our biggest I think
[1:32:52] Speaker 1: one of our biggest issues as as a nation when
[1:32:55] Speaker 1: we get involved in shit like this. Like I think
[1:32:58] Speaker 1: we were completely justified to strike Afghanistan and stuff, but
[1:33:02] Speaker 1: I also think that we hung out there for way
[1:33:03] Speaker 1: too long. You know, we got into this rotation of
[1:33:07] Speaker 1: twenty years of wars of one year wars basically, you
[1:33:10] Speaker 1: know these guys, every year was different. No one could
[1:33:12] Speaker 1: tell you what the strategic end state was. And I
[1:33:16] Speaker 1: don't think very many senior officers wanted to end the
[1:33:20] Speaker 1: war at least until they got their deployment in so
[1:33:23] Speaker 1: that they could say they deployed and they went to
[1:33:25] Speaker 1: a combat zone. You know that that makes a lot
[1:33:27] Speaker 1: of people's careers, right, So there's some incentive there to
[1:33:31] Speaker 1: not end it, you know what I'm saying.
[1:33:34] Speaker 3: Oh, definitely, and I totally agree. But it's you know,
[1:33:38] Speaker 3: but for the soldiers were in on the ground, you
[1:33:40] Speaker 3: know you're going through that. It's not the politics of it.
[1:33:43] Speaker 3: This is your life and you got to deal with it,
[1:33:45] Speaker 3: right or wrong, good or bad. You know, you got
[1:33:47] Speaker 3: to deal with it.
[1:33:47] Speaker 1: You're in this position. Yeah, you're in this position.
[1:33:50] Speaker 3: And that's why I kind of put people who I
[1:33:51] Speaker 3: don't like that fair enough. You don't like it, I
[1:33:53] Speaker 3: don't matter. I'm going there and I have to deal
[1:33:55] Speaker 3: with what I'm giving and deal with what I'm doing,
[1:33:58] Speaker 3: and maybe I support it, maybe I don't. There's definitely
[1:34:00] Speaker 3: you know, you see that stuff going on, like what
[1:34:02] Speaker 3: are we doing here? This is all about attrition? How
[1:34:04] Speaker 3: made you kill and what are we doing that there
[1:34:06] Speaker 3: was enough people in remody. After we left, they actually
[1:34:10] Speaker 3: do that surge, right, and so they were able to
[1:34:11] Speaker 3: put more bodies in remody. They started setting up outposts
[1:34:14] Speaker 3: all over the city. Then it started to provide more security,
[1:34:18] Speaker 3: and that security helped bring up part, you know, the
[1:34:21] Speaker 3: end of the fighting that it became. But we just
[1:34:24] Speaker 3: didn't have enough bodies there. And that's just that's not
[1:34:27] Speaker 3: the soldiers. That's some general up there or some you know,
[1:34:30] Speaker 3: civilian up there and then and that says, well, we
[1:34:33] Speaker 3: don't want to go that many because it looks bad
[1:34:35] Speaker 3: on the polls or whatever the case is. Man, I
[1:34:37] Speaker 3: don't you need a more bodies there.
[1:34:39] Speaker 1: That's why I don't. I don't really put too much
[1:34:41] Speaker 1: faith into what generals or whatever senior leaders in the
[1:34:44] Speaker 1: military say right now, because it's like, Bro, you are
[1:34:48] Speaker 1: the guys that lost the war, you know, I mean,
[1:34:51] Speaker 1: that's it. It was senior leaders in the military. If
[1:34:55] Speaker 1: you're a colonel and above and during the g y,
[1:34:58] Speaker 1: you should be kind of ashamed of your yourself if
[1:35:00] Speaker 1: you never spoke up and asked, what's our in state here?
[1:35:03] Speaker 1: What are we doing? Because you're the fucking reason that happened,
[1:35:06] Speaker 1: and nobody got fired. You know, there were incidents where
[1:35:09] Speaker 1: people got fired for certain things, but I mean, you
[1:35:11] Speaker 1: got to pull out of Afghanistan. No one got fired
[1:35:13] Speaker 1: for that, No one got relieved, There was no nothing.
[1:35:17] Speaker 1: We lost thirteen people there, We killed an entire family
[1:35:20] Speaker 1: that last drone strike on the way out. The administration
[1:35:23] Speaker 1: lied about it and said it was a said it
[1:35:25] Speaker 1: was a terrorist group and then it ended up being
[1:35:27] Speaker 1: aid workers and like seven kids or something, and no
[1:35:30] Speaker 1: one got relieved or anything like that. And had been
[1:35:34] Speaker 1: done anything similar to that, in like Marja saying, in
[1:35:38] Speaker 1: or anything, everyone involved would have gotten their fucking gotten
[1:35:42] Speaker 1: their dick slap by the command.
[1:35:44] Speaker 3: You would have been on cat Pelton and shot outside
[1:35:46] Speaker 3: of your safety box. Somebody usually got fired, exactly, somebody's
[1:35:51] Speaker 3: got fired. But that's what I'm saying. There's no accountability,
[1:35:53] Speaker 3: at least looking down. You know, I'm amp fifteen one
[1:35:56] Speaker 3: year old vet, so I just know what do I know?
[1:35:59] Speaker 3: But looking up, it's sad, man, it's no accountability.
[1:36:03] Speaker 1: I think. I think if there's any senior leaders listening
[1:36:06] Speaker 1: to this, they really need to be introspective about the
[1:36:09] Speaker 1: whole fucking situation. You know, understand your role in this,
[1:36:12] Speaker 1: and I get it. You got to play politics and
[1:36:14] Speaker 1: all that crap. There shouldn't be any of that in
[1:36:16] Speaker 1: the military. But that's like wishing that it shouldn't never
[1:36:19] Speaker 1: rain or whatever. It's just it's just not reality. There's
[1:36:21] Speaker 1: gonna be politics there. But if you continue the bullshit
[1:36:26] Speaker 1: and let people guys continue to deploy and go get
[1:36:29] Speaker 1: killed for what, you know what I'm saying, like, I
[1:36:32] Speaker 1: don't know. It's just it's very frustrating, and it's it's
[1:36:35] Speaker 1: frustrating when you hear senior leaders say how we should
[1:36:40] Speaker 1: trust them, and you know, so these generals all agree
[1:36:43] Speaker 1: with this course of action and this and that, and
[1:36:46] Speaker 1: it's like, fuck those dudes, man. You know, like a
[1:36:49] Speaker 1: lot of those dudes are the reason why we lost.
[1:36:51] Speaker 1: You know, if you were involved in this stuff and
[1:36:53] Speaker 1: you don't, you don't have the nuts to say that
[1:36:56] Speaker 1: this is wrong or we shouldn't be doing this, or
[1:36:59] Speaker 1: why am I sending my guys to this area? What's
[1:37:02] Speaker 1: what's this strategic value? You know, we look at we
[1:37:06] Speaker 1: look back at like some of these Medal of honor
[1:37:08] Speaker 1: incidents that occurred with like the Army and the only
[1:37:12] Speaker 1: reason some of these incidents even occurred was because the
[1:37:15] Speaker 1: Army put their dudes in super shitty situations. They put
[1:37:18] Speaker 1: them in this fucked up situation, and a bunch of
[1:37:21] Speaker 1: their dudes got killed. And now we're gonna we're gonna
[1:37:24] Speaker 1: talk about how they're heroic and stuff like that and
[1:37:26] Speaker 1: throw an award at them. But I'm pretty sure those
[1:37:29] Speaker 1: guys would rather have been in a more defensible position
[1:37:32] Speaker 1: and have their buddies still with them rather than having
[1:37:35] Speaker 1: a fucking medal of honor, you know what I'm saying, Like, like,
[1:37:37] Speaker 1: I get it.
[1:37:38] Speaker 3: It's just this seems like the count of there's no
[1:37:40] Speaker 3: like I said, no no accountability, and those that there's
[1:37:43] Speaker 3: there's something that I think I think they could have done.
[1:37:46] Speaker 3: Is like, if you're not if you think we need
[1:37:47] Speaker 3: more bodies over here, then say that. And if they
[1:37:50] Speaker 3: don't get it, then then tell yourself you I'm gonna quit.
[1:37:52] Speaker 3: This is how we win. We win by having this
[1:37:54] Speaker 3: amount of people here, we can provide the security and
[1:37:56] Speaker 3: then we can pand it over if you nickl and
[1:38:00] Speaker 3: because you don't want to go over five hundred thousand,
[1:38:02] Speaker 3: whate of the cases. Yeah, it's just minimals and it
[1:38:06] Speaker 3: just loses.
[1:38:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, once you're in it and you see the game,
[1:38:09] Speaker 1: you're like, oh, we can only have ten thousand troops here.
[1:38:12] Speaker 1: That's why they send five thousand contractors so you can
[1:38:15] Speaker 1: say they only have ten thousand troops there.
[1:38:17] Speaker 3: You know, bringing the mute because the MU doesn't count
[1:38:19] Speaker 3: as the body that game.
[1:38:21] Speaker 1: As long as they're there less than ninety days or
[1:38:24] Speaker 1: some shit like that, they don't count towards the overall
[1:38:26] Speaker 1: troop count in the country. It's like, so the politicians says, well,
[1:38:29] Speaker 1: we don't have It's crazy, man, it's so crazy, and
[1:38:33] Speaker 1: it's just like it's I don't know, it's very I
[1:38:37] Speaker 1: never really thought about it until afterwards and when you
[1:38:40] Speaker 1: kind of see I don't know, I just it's just
[1:38:42] Speaker 1: very frustrating. It's just very frustrating to see that it's
[1:38:45] Speaker 1: like that and that. And the other thing that it
[1:38:47] Speaker 1: kind of opened my eyes to are the warmongers that
[1:38:50] Speaker 1: want to talk about we should go fight Iran, or
[1:38:53] Speaker 1: we should go and fight Siria, or we should do
[1:38:54] Speaker 1: this and that, but they have no skin in the
[1:38:57] Speaker 1: game other than advocating for other people's chill to go
[1:39:00] Speaker 1: to a war zone. You know what I'm saying, If
[1:39:02] Speaker 1: you fucking want to send my kid to a war zone,
[1:39:04] Speaker 1: there better be a good freaking reason for it, you know,
[1:39:07] Speaker 1: like to just go get involved in some some shit
[1:39:10] Speaker 1: to help your own political career or something like that.
[1:39:13] Speaker 1: It's it's immoral, and it's gross, you know, and it's
[1:39:16] Speaker 1: just disgusting.
[1:39:17] Speaker 3: It's it seems there seems to be some type of
[1:39:19] Speaker 3: lack of leadership somewhere, because one of the things is,
[1:39:21] Speaker 3: you know, we all go in to the military, we
[1:39:23] Speaker 3: give up certain rights and then you expect that justice.
[1:39:25] Speaker 3: Part of the you know, part of the JJ. Did
[1:39:27] Speaker 3: Tiboko right, wasn't it? The acronymies is one of the
[1:39:29] Speaker 3: things in leadership is justice. But are you really getting
[1:39:32] Speaker 3: that when you only hold some people accountable, we can't
[1:39:34] Speaker 3: hold to other people accountable. How does that look? How
[1:39:37] Speaker 3: does that look to the junior marine or the you know,
[1:39:39] Speaker 3: you know, some young staff and COO or officers like
[1:39:42] Speaker 3: I'm fired, I shot out. This guy lost five billion dollars. Yeah,
[1:39:48] Speaker 3: and he's not fired. How many how many Navy captains
[1:39:51] Speaker 3: or admirals get relieved every year for stuff, for loss
[1:39:55] Speaker 3: of confidence or whatever? They never tell us what it
[1:39:58] Speaker 3: actually happened. But it's all these lost of confidence saying,
[1:40:01] Speaker 3: how do you not lose confidence in some of these
[1:40:02] Speaker 3: assholes that fucked up these wars? You know what I'm saying,
[1:40:05] Speaker 3: And like it's just it's just, uh, it's crazy. But
[1:40:09] Speaker 3: I'll get off that's it. But yeah, so let's talk.
[1:40:14] Speaker 1: I was gonna say for the book, man, I know
[1:40:16] Speaker 1: you started writing it basically around the time you were
[1:40:18] Speaker 1: starting to get out of the marines. Tell us about
[1:40:22] Speaker 1: like the process for you finally putting it together. Maybe
[1:40:25] Speaker 1: someone out there is trying to think about writing their
[1:40:26] Speaker 1: own book. How did you get a publisher? Like, how
[1:40:28] Speaker 1: does that work?
[1:40:29] Speaker 3: Okay, So I started writing. I started writing stuff down
[1:40:33] Speaker 3: when my daughter was born. I was like, look, this
[1:40:36] Speaker 3: is stuff I need to remember. I knew it was historic.
[1:40:37] Speaker 3: I wanted to write stuff down that I could remember.
[1:40:39] Speaker 3: So I also had a lot of after action reports,
[1:40:41] Speaker 3: you know, on class after action reports, I contact with
[1:40:44] Speaker 3: people and just I was able to write a lot
[1:40:46] Speaker 3: of stuff down. And I didn't write a journal. I
[1:40:48] Speaker 3: didn't have that. Yeah, but we had also had a
[1:40:50] Speaker 3: lot of videos. I had a lot of I had
[1:40:51] Speaker 3: a lot of ability to retain the information and so
[1:40:55] Speaker 3: I started writing it all down, and gradually more and
[1:40:58] Speaker 3: more I just wrote, you know, if you're in the
[1:41:01] Speaker 3: right side, tell us to vetant all the time. Look,
[1:41:02] Speaker 3: tell your story somehow, tell it on a podcast like this.
[1:41:06] Speaker 3: Then it's here forever, so your kids can hear it,
[1:41:09] Speaker 3: grandkids can hear write it down, do what you got
[1:41:11] Speaker 3: to do. Tell your story now, this whole silent professional
[1:41:15] Speaker 3: I think it's good when you're an active duty, but
[1:41:17] Speaker 3: when you're out, these are experiences that people need to
[1:41:21] Speaker 3: be told. These everyday Americans that are heroic and courageous
[1:41:24] Speaker 3: and doing things that some of these people in the
[1:41:26] Speaker 3: world country right now would never think of doing right
[1:41:29] Speaker 3: what they sacrificed, and people, we need to tell our stories.
[1:41:32] Speaker 3: And that's what one thing I wanted to do. And
[1:41:33] Speaker 3: I thought, you know, anglic is such a crazy unit, awesome,
[1:41:37] Speaker 3: you know, I want to put it on paper. If
[1:41:39] Speaker 3: you don't hear much about it, this is what we did.
[1:41:41] Speaker 3: And whether it was anglerho or not, the experiences that
[1:41:44] Speaker 3: team and I had was memorable to me, and each
[1:41:47] Speaker 3: one of them, you know, probably agrees, and all that
[1:41:50] Speaker 3: stuff was crazy. You're you're deployment memorable too, you know,
[1:41:53] Speaker 3: we were doing some of that stuff in Ramadi and
[1:41:55] Speaker 3: what it was and how crazy it was there, and
[1:41:58] Speaker 3: I wanted to write about it. And I just thought
[1:41:59] Speaker 3: those wars of those marines and the soldier we worked
[1:42:02] Speaker 3: with at Patpors Dark Eagle is great, and I wanted
[1:42:04] Speaker 3: to write it, and I think I had and started
[1:42:06] Speaker 3: just slowly writing and putting it down on paper buying.
[1:42:09] Speaker 3: And then I'd go a couple of years without writing, right,
[1:42:12] Speaker 3: my kids were real young. I just didn't write. I
[1:42:14] Speaker 3: was just busy on you know, kids, you know how
[1:42:16] Speaker 3: it is, and my wife and kids. And then I
[1:42:19] Speaker 3: started picking back up. And then finally I was like,
[1:42:21] Speaker 3: you know what, I need to get this done. You know,
[1:42:23] Speaker 3: I turned fifty, uh you know last year and says like,
[1:42:26] Speaker 3: I need to get this done. Crazy finished it up
[1:42:29] Speaker 3: and did it and sent it out, and you know,
[1:42:31] Speaker 3: one of the second publisher that I sent it to
[1:42:33] Speaker 3: is like, I like it. Let's talk.
[1:42:35] Speaker 1: Who do you reach out to for something like that?
[1:42:37] Speaker 1: I mean, how do you even know?
[1:42:39] Speaker 3: Well, you look for publishers who might be specialized in
[1:42:42] Speaker 3: what you've got. So this is a military nonfiction, a
[1:42:44] Speaker 3: military uh you know, memoir type thing, and you go
[1:42:47] Speaker 3: who kind of specialized that. And some big publishers have
[1:42:51] Speaker 3: departments of specialize that. So there's a certain person you contact.
[1:42:54] Speaker 3: Some are small publishers and you look at the books
[1:42:56] Speaker 3: they published. Oh there's a lot of military memoirs, there's
[1:42:58] Speaker 3: a lot of military nonfit should so you kind of
[1:43:01] Speaker 3: maybe have the app And that's what I did. Here
[1:43:03] Speaker 3: is Cohler Is Publishing, and uh they're good. There's they
[1:43:06] Speaker 3: do a lot of small books. It's a it's a
[1:43:08] Speaker 3: it's a small publisher, but they do what. They sell
[1:43:10] Speaker 3: a lot of books, and they work with veterans. They're
[1:43:12] Speaker 3: out of Virginia. They got contacted me and made it happen,
[1:43:16] Speaker 3: and uh, I actually tried to send it to uh
[1:43:19] Speaker 3: uh doctor willinks he does as a publishing company. I
[1:43:23] Speaker 3: sent it to him. I heard back from whoever runs
[1:43:26] Speaker 3: that stuff over there. Hey, I like the story, send
[1:43:28] Speaker 3: me the rest of it. So I sent it and
[1:43:30] Speaker 3: this is before it was the same title and everything
[1:43:31] Speaker 3: like that, and I never heard from him. I had
[1:43:33] Speaker 3: to make a decision with coler and saw what color,
[1:43:37] Speaker 3: and then uh that other publishing companies suld send me letters.
[1:43:39] Speaker 3: You know, thank this is a good work, but we're
[1:43:41] Speaker 3: gonna go a different way. He's like, I'm good. I'm
[1:43:43] Speaker 3: already publishing it anyway.
[1:43:44] Speaker 1: So yeah, now that it's done, you should send them
[1:43:47] Speaker 1: the finished copy of it and be like, let me
[1:43:48] Speaker 1: be a guest on your podcast.
[1:43:51] Speaker 3: I want to sell books, because that's the thing too.
[1:43:52] Speaker 3: Is just like it's one thing to write a book,
[1:43:55] Speaker 3: it's a completely other thing to be to promote a book.
[1:43:58] Speaker 3: And you had Isaac Leon He's he's that guy as
[1:44:02] Speaker 3: a promoter. Man, he's he's always doing something. I can't go.
[1:44:06] Speaker 3: You know, I got some good signing stuff coming up
[1:44:08] Speaker 3: because the book actually will be available April twelve. It's
[1:44:12] Speaker 3: Veilical preorder now on Amazon, but it won't be available
[1:44:15] Speaker 3: for purchase until the twelve. And but he's on he's
[1:44:18] Speaker 3: doing signings, he's out there. He's doing what you need
[1:44:20] Speaker 3: to do. And so that's that's what it is.
[1:44:24] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's self promotion. It's it's you very you
[1:44:28] Speaker 1: very much have to be self motivated. I don't think
[1:44:32] Speaker 1: people a lot of times people don't really understand what
[1:44:35] Speaker 1: it how hard it is to run like social media
[1:44:38] Speaker 1: accounts or do this kind of self promotion. You know,
[1:44:41] Speaker 1: it takes time to come up with post, to come
[1:44:44] Speaker 1: up with different things to talk about, to go on
[1:44:46] Speaker 1: podcasts and not sound redundant, you know, like I've had
[1:44:50] Speaker 1: people on the show, like I had Dale Comstock come
[1:44:52] Speaker 1: on the show Delta Operator, And before he came on,
[1:44:56] Speaker 1: I listened to a couple of his episodes from other podcasts,
[1:44:59] Speaker 1: and and they were like almost identical, like he'd already
[1:45:03] Speaker 1: told a story so many times he had it. And
[1:45:05] Speaker 1: if you listen to that first episode I do with
[1:45:07] Speaker 1: del Comstock, I interrupted him a book. Someone actually commented like,
[1:45:10] Speaker 1: stop interrupting your guest, and I but the reason I
[1:45:13] Speaker 1: did it was because I knew what he was getting
[1:45:15] Speaker 1: ready to say, and I wanted him to be either
[1:45:18] Speaker 1: expand more on it, to get more detail out of it,
[1:45:22] Speaker 1: or you know, to not just just not sound like
[1:45:24] Speaker 1: every other Cause if I've heard you say, if I've
[1:45:26] Speaker 1: heard your story on this podcast, and I go to
[1:45:29] Speaker 1: another podcast you're telling the exact same story, why would
[1:45:31] Speaker 1: I listen to it because I've already heard it all.
[1:45:33] Speaker 1: So you know, it's like, I don't know, it's a
[1:45:36] Speaker 1: whole game self promoting. I imagine it's tough with the book.
[1:45:39] Speaker 1: I mean, you know, in I had.
[1:45:41] Speaker 3: I had some anxiety write the book about like, great,
[1:45:45] Speaker 3: you know, what's everybody gonna think?
[1:45:47] Speaker 2: Ye?
[1:45:48] Speaker 1: Who am I to write this book?
[1:45:49] Speaker 3: You know? Who am I to write this? What are
[1:45:51] Speaker 3: my buddies gonna think?
[1:45:52] Speaker 2: You know?
[1:45:52] Speaker 3: I imagine the comment that's what buddies do to each
[1:45:55] Speaker 3: other anyway. But still, but in the end, I was like,
[1:45:58] Speaker 3: you know what, when I'm an old man and at
[1:46:01] Speaker 3: least older than I am, now, I'm gonna think I
[1:46:02] Speaker 3: should have done this or should have done that, and
[1:46:04] Speaker 3: like this is the right, this is the good thing.
[1:46:06] Speaker 3: My kids can have it forever. It's why not? And
[1:46:09] Speaker 3: uh And I stayed positive. I don't really go negative
[1:46:12] Speaker 3: of anybody in the book. It was just about you know,
[1:46:14] Speaker 3: what was going on, and that's I'm glad to do now.
[1:46:18] Speaker 3: But now the kind of self promote, right, here's a
[1:46:21] Speaker 3: click on this, check this out. You know, I get it.
[1:46:23] Speaker 3: It's a different thing. But you got to do it.
[1:46:25] Speaker 3: If you want to sell the book, you got to
[1:46:26] Speaker 3: do it.
[1:46:26] Speaker 1: Do you think you'll sell more paper copies or like
[1:46:29] Speaker 1: digital copies?
[1:46:30] Speaker 3: Well, I got to I don't know, I don't know.
[1:46:33] Speaker 3: I don't have no they've been pre ordered now and
[1:46:35] Speaker 3: I don't find that number up til later on anyway.
[1:46:37] Speaker 3: But I don't know, it just depends people have asked
[1:46:40] Speaker 3: for like the cod the audio, but you got to
[1:46:43] Speaker 3: that's a different one. You got to pay someone to
[1:46:45] Speaker 3: do that, or I do it myself. And then I've
[1:46:46] Speaker 3: heard people say that's the pain they asked to do.
[1:46:48] Speaker 1: Yeah, because you got to read the book like a
[1:46:50] Speaker 1: million times to do.
[1:46:53] Speaker 3: Yeah. So and you got to have some edit it
[1:46:55] Speaker 3: and everything, and you know, I think I can.
[1:46:58] Speaker 1: It's a time. It's like I can change my oil,
[1:47:01] Speaker 1: or I could go pay someone twenty bucks to do
[1:47:02] Speaker 1: it or thirty bucks.
[1:47:03] Speaker 3: To do it.
[1:47:04] Speaker 2: Sh it, you know.
[1:47:05] Speaker 3: So once you know, then you get to once they
[1:47:08] Speaker 3: agree to the publisher, you sign a contract and they
[1:47:10] Speaker 3: give you to you know, your book number and when
[1:47:13] Speaker 3: it will be published and everything like that. And then
[1:47:15] Speaker 3: they do have a few rounds of editing, you know,
[1:47:19] Speaker 3: which was interesting and they were good. They shortened a
[1:47:21] Speaker 3: lot of stuff that needed to be kind of shortened.
[1:47:23] Speaker 3: And it's kind of tough to see your work kind
[1:47:25] Speaker 3: of get cut like that was a great story, Like no,
[1:47:28] Speaker 3: we you know, but this was a professional. They kind
[1:47:31] Speaker 3: of keep it in order and they did. I think
[1:47:32] Speaker 3: they did a great job and it's been really good.
[1:47:36] Speaker 3: I mean, they don't really do promotion for it. They
[1:47:37] Speaker 3: don't promote you really except for own small stuff, but
[1:47:42] Speaker 3: you kind of do most of the promoting, you know.
[1:47:44] Speaker 1: What would be cool? And I don't know if this
[1:47:46] Speaker 1: is a thing already, and if it's not, then everyone
[1:47:48] Speaker 1: heard it here first is for the digital copy of
[1:47:52] Speaker 1: the book. I don't think you could do this right now,
[1:47:54] Speaker 1: but for like digital copies of like military books. Would
[1:47:58] Speaker 1: it be cool to like submit a foil request and
[1:48:00] Speaker 1: get like video from your strikes and have you know
[1:48:04] Speaker 1: how there's always photos of your deployments and photos in
[1:48:07] Speaker 1: the book. Why not if it's a digital copy, why
[1:48:09] Speaker 1: not put insert a video into that instead of a photo?
[1:48:13] Speaker 2: You know?
[1:48:13] Speaker 1: I mean I wonder if someone's doing that.
[1:48:17] Speaker 3: Sure, that's I'm sure you could. You have to have
[1:48:18] Speaker 3: that to the cloud or how I'm cure how would
[1:48:21] Speaker 3: be part of the download of it the movie?
[1:48:24] Speaker 1: Yeah, you just have to embed it into the video
[1:48:26] Speaker 1: somehow or into the.
[1:48:27] Speaker 3: Books like YouTube or something. Yeah that's cool.
[1:48:30] Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe quite a.
[1:48:32] Speaker 3: Bit of video too. And but you know I didn't
[1:48:35] Speaker 3: want to. I didn't I don't even even put much
[1:48:36] Speaker 3: pictures in the I put a few pictures in.
[1:48:39] Speaker 1: But oh man, what are you doing? Marines can't read?
[1:48:42] Speaker 1: You got to throw more photos in there. What are
[1:48:44] Speaker 1: you trying to do?
[1:48:45] Speaker 3: Crayons? Man, to get some crayons.
[1:48:49] Speaker 4: And then stuff came out, and then they send you
[1:48:52] Speaker 4: some copies and then you But one thing I liked
[1:48:54] Speaker 4: is it was neat working with some of these other
[1:48:56] Speaker 4: book people who've published books, and you kind of go
[1:48:59] Speaker 4: out to them, say, hey, can you read my book?
[1:49:01] Speaker 3: There's an advanced copy and do a comment? Right, So
[1:49:04] Speaker 3: Scott Huston of Echo and Ramadi and Greg Galvin of
[1:49:07] Speaker 3: you know, a few bad men did it Isaac, and
[1:49:11] Speaker 3: there's a few more. Like I said, General Miller is
[1:49:13] Speaker 3: a thirty seven commandant. He did it. He read it.
[1:49:17] Speaker 3: You know that don't know if they read it all
[1:49:18] Speaker 3: I get it. We're all busy. Yeah, And you know
[1:49:21] Speaker 3: they gave a pretty good blurb and some other ones too,
[1:49:23] Speaker 3: And it was are.
[1:49:24] Speaker 1: You adding any of those to like the beginning of
[1:49:26] Speaker 1: the book.
[1:49:27] Speaker 3: Like the new one's coming back, it's it's coming out. Yeah,
[1:49:30] Speaker 3: so that the electronic copy you have it doesn't have
[1:49:33] Speaker 3: it because I didn't have those yet. So that was there,
[1:49:35] Speaker 3: send it out to people, and but the new one
[1:49:38] Speaker 3: coming out with you buy it has all the reviews
[1:49:41] Speaker 3: and has some quotes on the Do.
[1:49:43] Speaker 1: You have a Do you have a social media page
[1:49:45] Speaker 1: dedicated to the book?
[1:49:47] Speaker 3: I do so. On Instagram is just running to the gunfire,
[1:49:53] Speaker 3: Just running towards gunfire. Sorry, running towards gunfire. If you
[1:49:55] Speaker 3: just google it or whatever it is on Instagram, run
[1:49:58] Speaker 3: into it. It'll come up also on Twitter, Running towards Gunfire,
[1:50:02] Speaker 3: as well as on Facebook.
[1:50:04] Speaker 1: That's awesome, man. And you said the book comes out
[1:50:07] Speaker 1: in April, but people can pre order now.
[1:50:09] Speaker 3: Yeah, comes out April twelfth. You can pre order now.
[1:50:12] Speaker 3: You can also go onto my website, which is Jason
[1:50:14] Speaker 3: dashanngel dot com Angel with two l's, and I have
[1:50:18] Speaker 3: different links there for you has the intro for the
[1:50:21] Speaker 3: book if you want to read the intro now. It's
[1:50:25] Speaker 3: a good website put together, and you can also buy eventually.
[1:50:28] Speaker 3: I think I'm gonna have some signed copies because that's
[1:50:30] Speaker 3: kind of a logistical nightmare for if you have to
[1:50:32] Speaker 3: sign them and send it off. Yeah, but I'm gonna
[1:50:34] Speaker 3: have some I'll sign if people because I've had some
[1:50:36] Speaker 3: requests already for some signed copies, and I've sent them
[1:50:39] Speaker 3: out already, but we might have those available as well.
[1:50:42] Speaker 1: That's awesome, man. Well everybody needs to go check that out. Support,
[1:50:46] Speaker 1: you know, support fellow veterans and stuff, get get those
[1:50:49] Speaker 1: stories out there. I think what you said earlier was
[1:50:51] Speaker 1: completely true. So the same reason I started the podcast.
[1:50:54] Speaker 1: I know too many people that did so many cool
[1:50:56] Speaker 1: things that no one will ever know about, just because
[1:51:00] Speaker 1: it's not something that gets put in history books. History
[1:51:02] Speaker 1: books are like Wavetop, very big events and very big names,
[1:51:06] Speaker 1: and that's really it. But the average Marine sergeant, j
[1:51:09] Speaker 1: tech or staff sergeant or or Korman or whatever you
[1:51:13] Speaker 1: know that are out there every day doing their thing,
[1:51:16] Speaker 1: most people will never hear about their story unless they
[1:51:19] Speaker 1: come out and tell it. And I think it's great
[1:51:21] Speaker 1: when people like you come on the show and you know,
[1:51:23] Speaker 1: give us a detail. And not only because it preserves
[1:51:26] Speaker 1: your own story for you and your family and stuff
[1:51:29] Speaker 1: like that, but it also informs the taxpayer of where
[1:51:32] Speaker 1: their money's going, what the military is actually doing, because
[1:51:34] Speaker 1: most people don't know. Most people don't have a connection
[1:51:37] Speaker 1: to the military like they did, you know, seventy five
[1:51:40] Speaker 1: years ago. It's not the same. So this is a
[1:51:44] Speaker 1: good way to inform, you know, the American public of
[1:51:47] Speaker 1: their how their taxpayer money is being spent overseas and stuff.
[1:51:51] Speaker 1: So I really appreciate you coming on.
[1:51:52] Speaker 2: Man.
[1:51:54] Speaker 1: Everybody could like I said, I'll put your show description
[1:51:56] Speaker 1: in you, I'll put your link in the show description.
[1:51:59] Speaker 1: Everybody could such caure out my website jacremographics dot com.
[1:52:01] Speaker 1: My instagram is at formal Action Guys and at form
[1:52:04] Speaker 1: Reaction News. And that's it. Dude, I really appreciate it.
[1:52:07] Speaker 3: I mean, thanks for having me on Justin. I appreciate it.

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