# Ep. 230 | Brennan Morton | Marine Recon and Sniper

An episode of [Former Action Guys Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1475060182), 7 Apr 2025, 1 h 53 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/65384560/marine_corps_recon.mp3

Brennan Morton is a former reconnaissance Marine who served with 2nd Recon Battalion during two deployments to Iraq. Brennan is also the author of Valhalla Boys, a book about his service. Support the show https://www.patreon.com/formeractionguys https://www.jcramergraphics.com https://www.ANGLICOshop.com Brennan's Links https://www.facebook.com/Brennan.Morton.Author https://www.facebook.com/paladinpresspublishing/ https://www.instagram.com/paladinpresspublishing https://amzn.to/4jq4ixy 00:00:00 J Cramer Graphics Ad 00:00:29 Intro | Joining the Marines 00:05:07 Marine Corps Tattoos 00:08:28 Call-To-Arms 00:12:19 Recon and SEAL Contracts as Recruiting Tools 00:16:15 Are SEALs Better Swimmers than Marine Recon? 00:20:42 Prepping Your Feet for Rucking 00:25:04 Marine Snipers | Organizational Changes 00:29:50 From Marine Infantry to Recon ARS 00:38:54 Work-Up and 1st Iraq Deployment 00:59:17 Over Worked and Underutilized 01:10:49 Grooming Standards | Advisor Teams 01:20:12 Sniper School 01:29:07 2nd Deployment to Iraq with 2nd Recon 01:35:04 Occupying Compounds 01:40:59 Valhalla Boys

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: Hey, what's going on everybody? Welcome to the Former Actual
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[0:28] Speaker 1: for the support, and let's get to the show. When
[0:29] Speaker 1: were you actually in When did you join.
[0:32] Speaker 2: Two thousand and four to two thousand and eight? Okay,
[0:36] Speaker 2: I did four and a half because I had to
[0:38] Speaker 2: extend to stay in Iraq.
[0:40] Speaker 1: That's a party time, you know, that's an interesting time
[0:43] Speaker 1: to be there.
[0:44] Speaker 2: Yeah, that was that was That was just put we
[0:48] Speaker 2: got our asses kicked in where we were we were
[0:51] Speaker 2: just getting our asses kicked like we were basically we
[0:53] Speaker 2: took over from first recon. They're like, oh, it's all good,
[0:56] Speaker 2: don't worry about it. The nineteen twentieth Revolution, every brigade
[1:00] Speaker 2: came in, we had all kinds of foreign fighters suddenly
[1:04] Speaker 2: show up. So we're down in the Zidon region in Iraq.
[1:07] Speaker 1: Huh and uh.
[1:08] Speaker 2: They're like, hey, man, this is your space that you know,
[1:11] Speaker 2: that's not usually what we do. We're like all right,
[1:14] Speaker 2: So it just became it was. It was that that
[1:17] Speaker 2: first deployment was it was baptism by fire by fire. Uh.
[1:21] Speaker 2: And then the second one they realized that was like
[1:23] Speaker 2: the I hate to say the end of it, but
[1:25] Speaker 2: that was when they realized, like if they just stopped shooting,
[1:28] Speaker 2: we'll leave. So like it went from like the most
[1:31] Speaker 2: nutty wild West to like six months later when we
[1:33] Speaker 2: went back to like nothing happened. It was it was surreal,
[1:37] Speaker 2: like all the new guys, Oh, when's something gonna happen?
[1:39] Speaker 2: Like shut up, shut up.
[1:41] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird. Once you've when you've been in the
[1:44] Speaker 1: environment where things are happening, it's like, you know, it's
[1:48] Speaker 1: nice that it's a pretty chill day and we can
[1:50] Speaker 1: yeah just kind of not do anything like the I
[1:54] Speaker 1: get it, like because if you've never that's like you
[1:57] Speaker 1: know when you haven't deployed yet and you're like, I
[1:59] Speaker 1: can't an deployment, you know, I want to do a deployment.
[2:01] Speaker 1: Like you're doing everything you can to do an appoyment.
[2:03] Speaker 1: Then after you've done like five deployments, you're like, fuck,
[2:06] Speaker 1: here comes another deployment. You know what I'm saying, Like
[2:09] Speaker 1: just becomes it becomes part of the grind, and you
[2:11] Speaker 1: know the toll and the danger of it, you know,
[2:14] Speaker 1: like something always happens on his deployment. So yeah, we'll
[2:17] Speaker 1: have to get into all that. Man, Let's well, what
[2:20] Speaker 1: made you decide to join the Marines?
[2:23] Speaker 2: Uh? So I always wanted to join the military. Like
[2:26] Speaker 2: when I was a little kid. I have a three
[2:28] Speaker 2: under gi Joe's at my probably like my recruiting best
[2:31] Speaker 2: and I had Camis. We played war in the woods
[2:34] Speaker 2: all summer, me and a bunch of kids in the neighborhood.
[2:37] Speaker 2: And it was always something I wanted to do. And
[2:40] Speaker 2: my my mom and dad were just against it from
[2:42] Speaker 2: like the get go, like just like terrified, didn't want
[2:45] Speaker 2: to do it, and uh and I think they knew
[2:48] Speaker 2: I was headed that way, but then they convinced me.
[2:50] Speaker 2: They're like, hey, we'll help you with college, Like, do
[2:52] Speaker 2: you want to go to college first? And see you
[2:54] Speaker 2: about that? So I was like, all right, So I
[2:57] Speaker 2: did going to college, uh for a useless degree as
[3:00] Speaker 2: always communications. Yeah, it was fun, So we went.
[3:05] Speaker 1: I went.
[3:05] Speaker 2: I went to college and lo and behold, nine to
[3:09] Speaker 2: eleven happens while I'm in college. I remember being in
[3:11] Speaker 2: the mub you know, walking through, and all of a sudden,
[3:14] Speaker 2: all the TVs went over to nine to eleven. The
[3:16] Speaker 2: tower's coming down, and I was like, and I don't
[3:19] Speaker 2: want to say like like that was like my epiphany moment,
[3:21] Speaker 2: but I was like definitely going now. Yeah, So I H.
[3:25] Speaker 2: I decided then that I was I was going to
[3:27] Speaker 2: get out and go. So I H. I actually applied
[3:31] Speaker 2: to be an officer in the Marine Corps because I
[3:33] Speaker 2: had my four year degree, and they first maybe get
[3:37] Speaker 2: my tattoos on my forearms removed, which was fine, but
[3:40] Speaker 2: that took like a couple months of laser stuff. And
[3:42] Speaker 2: then when I finally did that, they're like, hey, it's
[3:45] Speaker 2: gonna be a year. Wait, it's like wait a year.
[3:48] Speaker 2: They're like, oh yeah, at least u OCS is so
[3:51] Speaker 2: booked out. Now that nine to eleven happened. So I
[3:54] Speaker 2: was like, well, I'm gonna go and list tomorrow. They're
[3:55] Speaker 2: like yeah, yeah, right, And I went into the enlistment
[3:57] Speaker 2: guy the next day and I was like, what do
[3:59] Speaker 2: you got? And after some back and forth, I got
[4:03] Speaker 2: I got signed up. I traveled the country in my
[4:05] Speaker 2: truck for about three months to see you know what
[4:08] Speaker 2: I was gonna be missing, and I shipped.
[4:10] Speaker 1: Out, damn you your tattoos lasered off?
[4:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, I was, So I was like, you could have
[4:16] Speaker 2: told me this first and I would just would have
[4:18] Speaker 2: kept him, like, thank thanks for that, Like you know.
[4:20] Speaker 1: How much does that hurt?
[4:22] Speaker 2: Uh? So it's funny and I don't know it's gonna
[4:24] Speaker 2: come up on camera, but I actually got a This
[4:26] Speaker 2: is right when laser laser removal was starting, So this
[4:29] Speaker 2: is like two thousand and four, two thousand and three.
[4:32] Speaker 2: The lasers were this giant. It was a machine. They
[4:34] Speaker 2: to roll in with like three people, and the guy
[4:37] Speaker 2: was all botoxed up, like it was just the start
[4:40] Speaker 2: of like the bad point, and he's like, well, if
[4:43] Speaker 2: ten sessions you know at two works, why can't we
[4:47] Speaker 2: do five sessions at ten laser? And he actually burnt
[4:50] Speaker 2: the shit out of my arms, like a full on
[4:52] Speaker 2: laser burn, so I have two scars instead of like
[4:55] Speaker 2: nice skin. But they were off. I mean, he did
[4:58] Speaker 2: the job.
[5:00] Speaker 1: There were the tattoos. Were they like offensive or there's
[5:04] Speaker 1: just no tattoos.
[5:05] Speaker 2: Allowed just Marine Corps is definitely like in the officer program,
[5:09] Speaker 2: there was no tattoos below the PTE line, so they
[5:11] Speaker 2: were just on my forearms. So they're like you could
[5:13] Speaker 2: have anywhere else you want, like under PTE line, but
[5:16] Speaker 2: like you are not coming in with them. So I
[5:18] Speaker 2: was like all right, But so I wish he had
[5:20] Speaker 2: told me that first because I probably just would have
[5:21] Speaker 2: kept them. I know so many by the time I
[5:23] Speaker 2: got out.
[5:24] Speaker 1: Oh go ahead. Sorry.
[5:26] Speaker 2: By the time I got out, everyone had sleep full
[5:28] Speaker 2: sleeves both arms, Like there's a damn it.
[5:31] Speaker 1: I know so many officers that are covered in tattoos,
[5:34] Speaker 1: but they had to keep them under their pt uniforms
[5:37] Speaker 1: like some dudes. Some dudes are completely covered. I remember
[5:40] Speaker 1: I knew this major. He took his shirt off, his
[5:41] Speaker 1: PET shirt off one time and his entire back was done.
[5:45] Speaker 1: I was like, holy shit, like that's a ton of work,
[5:48] Speaker 1: like how and he was like yeah, he was former
[5:51] Speaker 1: enlisted though, so.
[5:52] Speaker 2: It was, yeah, I didn't know if I was while
[5:54] Speaker 2: I was in and listened, I didn't know if I
[5:55] Speaker 2: was gonna flip over and do a Mustang. So I
[5:57] Speaker 2: actually got more tattoos, but I just kept him under
[5:59] Speaker 2: the PNE just made sure that nothing was showing if
[6:02] Speaker 2: I was wearing my black silky.
[6:04] Speaker 1: So when I first came in, the tattoos like I wanted.
[6:08] Speaker 1: I wanted to get sleeves done. I don't have any
[6:12] Speaker 1: now I don't have any tattoos because when I first
[6:14] Speaker 1: came in, I was looking at like different options for
[6:18] Speaker 1: doing like a sleeve tattoo, you know, get something started.
[6:21] Speaker 1: But the regulations at that time is when they were
[6:23] Speaker 1: all changing, and it was very much like they made
[6:27] Speaker 1: it sound like if you got anything, you were gonna
[6:29] Speaker 1: fucking not get be able to re enlist. And I
[6:32] Speaker 1: was planning on making a career, so I was like, man,
[6:34] Speaker 1: I don't want to like go get something and because
[6:37] Speaker 1: it's cool, and then like now I can't re enlist
[6:39] Speaker 1: in like two years or something like that. It was
[6:41] Speaker 1: very and when it came out, I was in MS
[6:44] Speaker 1: school and they were like no, you know, they were
[6:45] Speaker 1: obviously they don't want boots going out and getting tattoos.
[6:49] Speaker 1: But they they made it sound also like to us
[6:52] Speaker 1: that if you got anything, you would get kicked out
[6:54] Speaker 1: because of the new Order, And it was just because
[6:56] Speaker 1: of that. I was just like, you know, how to
[6:58] Speaker 1: fuck it that kind of So I never Uh, two.
[7:00] Speaker 2: Thousand and seven, I think it was in the Marine Corps.
[7:03] Speaker 2: We had a I think I do commandant or a
[7:05] Speaker 2: knew sergeant major came in and it was like it
[7:07] Speaker 2: went from like tattoos whenever you want to, You're gonna
[7:11] Speaker 2: start photographing every tattoo you have now, so we know
[7:14] Speaker 2: if you get another one, and then we're gonna bust
[7:16] Speaker 2: you for it. So I remember that for like three months,
[7:18] Speaker 2: the tattoo parlors were like books solid, so everyone can
[7:21] Speaker 2: get them in before pictures were taken. You're just like,
[7:23] Speaker 2: this is asinine, Like we like, we fight wars for
[7:26] Speaker 2: a living, that's what you're worried about.
[7:28] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there was General Conway. I could be
[7:30] Speaker 1: wrong about that though.
[7:32] Speaker 2: But yeah, that was a weird time.
[7:34] Speaker 1: I'm for it, man, you know, I'm like, if you
[7:36] Speaker 1: want to go get tattoos, I think that's like a
[7:39] Speaker 1: It's like a traditional part of the military, and people
[7:41] Speaker 1: will say it looks unprofessional. I think I think like
[7:45] Speaker 1: neck and face tattoos. Yeah, for sure, anything that can't
[7:48] Speaker 1: be underneath your service uniform, and that's like your service bravos.
[7:51] Speaker 1: You know, if it can be underneath the sleeves, then
[7:54] Speaker 1: there's no reason not to do it, like hands, neck
[7:58] Speaker 1: that those kind of visible ones. I I get it,
[8:00] Speaker 1: I understand, but because those are fucking trashy. Come on,
[8:05] Speaker 1: let's be honest, there's very judge.
[8:09] Speaker 2: You're like, oh, but you are getting judged. That's that's
[8:11] Speaker 2: a little much. Man.
[8:12] Speaker 1: Ninety nine percent of the time, if you have a
[8:14] Speaker 1: face tattoo, you're probably a piece of shit. There's exceptions,
[8:18] Speaker 1: there's exceptions, but I've yet, you know, I've met very
[8:21] Speaker 1: few people that have a face tattoo that aren't some
[8:24] Speaker 1: kind of shady character. But yeah, man, that's hilarious. So yeah,
[8:29] Speaker 1: nine to eleven, right, that was a catalyst for a
[8:31] Speaker 1: lot of people, me and my friends. That was the
[8:33] Speaker 1: first time I went down to the recruiter's office. Was
[8:34] Speaker 1: that week. I was a senior in high school, so
[8:36] Speaker 1: I totally understand where you're coming from there, and it's
[8:40] Speaker 1: hard for it's probably it's hard. It's so crazy to
[8:41] Speaker 1: think was so long ago. You know the guys, you know,
[8:46] Speaker 1: guys and girls that are joining today. You know, you
[8:50] Speaker 1: have this like sense of pride that you want to
[8:51] Speaker 1: join and stuff, but it's hard to which I had too.
[8:56] Speaker 1: But then nine to eleven just kind of like through
[9:00] Speaker 1: that and overdrive, you know what I'm saying. It was
[9:03] Speaker 1: like a direct attack, and everybody that had considered the
[9:07] Speaker 1: military was immediately like all right, like you said, like, well,
[9:10] Speaker 1: you know, now it's time.
[9:12] Speaker 2: So I was in two thousand and three to two
[9:15] Speaker 2: thousand and four to two thousand and eight. Most of
[9:18] Speaker 2: my enlisted unit was people would already finished their college degrees,
[9:22] Speaker 2: but they were trying to get in. So most of
[9:24] Speaker 2: the recon guys that I was hanging out with had
[9:26] Speaker 2: either we're three years in a degree and just left
[9:29] Speaker 2: college to join, or finished their degree and didn't want
[9:32] Speaker 2: to wait the year or two. Like it was crazy
[9:34] Speaker 2: how many possible officers will call them but just bypassed.
[9:38] Speaker 2: The whole thing was like I want to go right now,
[9:40] Speaker 2: like we're leaving right now.
[9:42] Speaker 1: I knew a guy I was working when I was
[9:45] Speaker 1: a boot I was put on this EFSS program, which
[9:48] Speaker 1: was like a jeep with a mortar that got towed
[9:51] Speaker 1: behind it, and part of that test team was an
[9:54] Speaker 1: infantry element because we were doing mounted convoys and we
[9:57] Speaker 1: were doing like all kinds of different testing on the vehicles.
[10:00] Speaker 1: And the platoon sergeant that I was under with those guys,
[10:03] Speaker 1: he was he was an infantry dude, and he had
[10:07] Speaker 1: a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and he was like,
[10:11] Speaker 1: I was working a job basically like in a cubicle,
[10:14] Speaker 1: and he's like, I was bored and this happened. I
[10:16] Speaker 1: was like, you know what, like, let's go get let's
[10:18] Speaker 1: go do an adventure for four years and then come back.
[10:20] Speaker 1: And that's what he did. He was like, he enlisted
[10:22] Speaker 1: for four years, joined the infantry, did like two or
[10:25] Speaker 1: three deployments, I think, all with eighth Marines, and then
[10:28] Speaker 1: fucking got out. And he was like it was hilarious.
[10:31] Speaker 1: I always remember this. He's like, Yeah, I'm gonna get
[10:34] Speaker 1: out and use my GI bill to go get my
[10:35] Speaker 1: master's degree and bank college chicks.
[10:36] Speaker 2: And I was like, Okay, can't you get You can't
[10:40] Speaker 2: fault the plan life plans.
[10:42] Speaker 1: But it's like that's you when people think that like
[10:45] Speaker 1: just morons are joining the Marines or the infantry. It's
[10:49] Speaker 1: quite the opposite. You get quite the uh, you know,
[10:53] Speaker 1: diverse group of characters.
[10:55] Speaker 2: And well funny because when I when I went into
[10:58] Speaker 2: my the enlisted recruiter, they had to take your your
[11:00] Speaker 2: your GT score like you know, the APPS AB or whatever,
[11:03] Speaker 2: and they give you a GT score. And I had
[11:05] Speaker 2: a pretty had GT score and they're like, oh, you're
[11:07] Speaker 2: gonna be an electrical guy. You're gonna be you know, waterproof.
[11:11] Speaker 2: I was like no, no, no, oh three eleven. He's like, no, no, no, no,
[11:13] Speaker 2: you don't want oh three eleven, you want blah blah blah.
[11:16] Speaker 2: I was like no, no, no, oh three eleven. Because
[11:18] Speaker 2: at that time I didn't even really like this is
[11:19] Speaker 2: how I didn't even realize there was more in the
[11:22] Speaker 2: Marine Corps than just like oh, three eleven. Like I
[11:24] Speaker 2: was like, we're going infantry. I didn't know. I didn't
[11:27] Speaker 2: know there was like thirty thousand other jobs. But then
[11:29] Speaker 2: even within the infantry, I didn't know there's I was
[11:32] Speaker 2: just like, oh, three eleven, that's what I want. He's like,
[11:34] Speaker 2: gona be such a waste. I was like, that's what
[11:35] Speaker 2: I want. Write it up now, or I walk over
[11:37] Speaker 2: to another branch and so he wrote it up. He's
[11:39] Speaker 2: like this just so you know, I can't believe you're
[11:41] Speaker 2: doing this. I was like, this is this is why
[11:43] Speaker 2: I'm here, Like I don't want to be you know,
[11:45] Speaker 2: some other mos going over. This is why I'm signing up.
[11:50] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think my recruiter, my first recruiter, was definitely
[11:53] Speaker 1: the same way like they were almost they were trying
[11:56] Speaker 1: to have they were having to talk people out of
[11:58] Speaker 1: infantry because so many people were trying to sign up
[12:00] Speaker 1: for infantry that one. It was backlogging. Like if you
[12:04] Speaker 1: wanted to do it, it was like, oh, well, you're
[12:06] Speaker 1: gonna have to wait a year because there's so many
[12:08] Speaker 1: people that just sign you know, that are actually going
[12:09] Speaker 1: through and signing up right now because of nine to eleven,
[12:13] Speaker 1: or you can do this other job, you know. And
[12:14] Speaker 1: it was always like, eh, I don't want to do
[12:16] Speaker 1: that other job, you know. I know.
[12:18] Speaker 2: I had one of my guys who when I got out,
[12:22] Speaker 2: I actually I owned a gym for fifteen years, but
[12:24] Speaker 2: he was training for recon and now he was going in.
[12:28] Speaker 2: So now recon is not necessarily like you have to
[12:31] Speaker 2: go infantry and then you jump over. Then it became
[12:33] Speaker 2: like you could go straight from boot camp to recon.
[12:36] Speaker 2: And I was like, hey, man, like you really you
[12:38] Speaker 2: gotta get your shit together, cause like if you fail
[12:41] Speaker 2: to swim or if you fail anything like it, you
[12:43] Speaker 2: don't want to be, you know, open contract. He's like,
[12:45] Speaker 2: I got this, I got this. He did not get it,
[12:48] Speaker 2: and he wrote a desk in okinaur for three years.
[12:50] Speaker 2: Oh so he went from like like trying for the
[12:53] Speaker 2: old ultimate Infantry experience to riding a desk in ok
[12:57] Speaker 2: three years.
[12:57] Speaker 1: So a recon contract you if you don't make it,
[13:01] Speaker 1: then you go open contract.
[13:04] Speaker 2: So this is new and don't quote me. I don't
[13:05] Speaker 2: know if they've changed it now, but at the time
[13:07] Speaker 2: that he was going in so they they kind of
[13:10] Speaker 2: made it like the Seals where it's a recruiting tool
[13:14] Speaker 2: to get guys to sign up, like oh, you want
[13:16] Speaker 2: to be a badass, like sign right here. And what
[13:19] Speaker 2: they don't see is the next lines like hey, if
[13:21] Speaker 2: you failed the end dock, your open contract. Because I
[13:25] Speaker 2: remember one day we were we were getting out of
[13:28] Speaker 2: we were at Little Creek training at at the schoolhouse
[13:32] Speaker 2: and we were on the sealed pool deck and we
[13:35] Speaker 2: had to leave early for some reason. We got out
[13:37] Speaker 2: and there was just like three hundred dudes on the
[13:38] Speaker 2: pool deck and these two seals next to us, and
[13:41] Speaker 2: we're like, what's going on. They're like, Oh, this is
[13:42] Speaker 2: the end dock. We're like, Oh, this is amazing. He's like, no,
[13:45] Speaker 2: it's not. I think that guy's gonna win, and that
[13:47] Speaker 2: guy's gonna win, and the rest of them are going
[13:49] Speaker 2: open contract. You're like, oh my god, because it's such
[13:51] Speaker 2: a big recruiting tool for them to get those people
[13:55] Speaker 2: to come in, you know, and then six years in
[13:57] Speaker 2: the Navy, open contract seems even far more worse. So
[14:01] Speaker 2: I think they switched over at some point where you
[14:05] Speaker 2: didn't have to come through inventry and go over you
[14:07] Speaker 2: could just do it as a contract.
[14:09] Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, Yeah, I was gonna say I thought they
[14:13] Speaker 1: I thought, I mean, it makes more sense to bring
[14:15] Speaker 1: them back to the infantry rather than open contract unless
[14:18] Speaker 1: there's like a crazy need for you know.
[14:21] Speaker 2: So I will say this. This kid, he was, he
[14:24] Speaker 2: was a He was an interesting one. He graduated Brown
[14:27] Speaker 2: with top honors. He was a mechanical engineer. He now
[14:30] Speaker 2: works for I believe actually NASA. He was an exceptional
[14:34] Speaker 2: kid anyway, but he was also I believe he uh
[14:37] Speaker 2: he was a national wrestling champion at Brown. Like he
[14:40] Speaker 2: was just the most interesting, like physical and mental kid.
[14:43] Speaker 2: So I think his GT score ended up screwing him
[14:45] Speaker 2: in the end, where he was just so smart. They're like, yeah,
[14:47] Speaker 2: we're not giving you back to the infantry, like, yeah,
[14:49] Speaker 2: you're going over here, like oh man, I'm going to Yeah.
[14:53] Speaker 2: It was, it was. It was awful. I felt so
[14:54] Speaker 2: bad for him.
[14:56] Speaker 1: Man, Yeah, at the should identify guys like that, you know,
[14:59] Speaker 1: and in the enlisted ranks, And I know they have
[15:02] Speaker 1: the me set program where you can go from enlisted officer,
[15:06] Speaker 1: but there's got to be a better way to identify
[15:09] Speaker 1: people that have like a little bit more experience. You know,
[15:14] Speaker 1: if this guy's you know, everything you're saying like sounds
[15:17] Speaker 1: like he's probably a good person to have, Like, oh.
[15:19] Speaker 2: He would have been, he would he would have literally
[15:21] Speaker 2: been one of those guys you just wanted on your
[15:23] Speaker 2: team like he was. He was probably one of the
[15:25] Speaker 2: funniest human beings ever met, which people don't under People
[15:27] Speaker 2: underestimate how much being funny is it important, Like, you know,
[15:31] Speaker 2: having that dark sense of humor, and I've never seen
[15:33] Speaker 2: him down before. I never seen him like, you know,
[15:35] Speaker 2: so like he was just one of those like just
[15:37] Speaker 2: indomitable guys that you just wanted on your team. And
[15:40] Speaker 2: it just he just didn't believe me that the swimming
[15:42] Speaker 2: was a bigger portion than it was. Uh yeah, dog.
[15:46] Speaker 2: I was like, you need to be real comfortable. He's
[15:48] Speaker 2: like I am. I was like, hmmm, are you though,
[15:50] Speaker 2: Like I'm talking real comfortable.
[15:52] Speaker 1: Yeah, I've I've talked to a couple of people that
[15:56] Speaker 1: have said that they were thinking about joining and that
[15:59] Speaker 1: they'd like to do like special operations like that, and
[16:03] Speaker 1: I'm always telling them I'm not a special operations guy.
[16:06] Speaker 1: But I've been around enough dudes and heard the stories
[16:08] Speaker 1: where the pool is the great equalizer, Like you have
[16:11] Speaker 1: to be ready to go, you know.
[16:14] Speaker 2: So we had one of my friends and I'll probably
[16:17] Speaker 2: not make some friends off the of podcast, but like,
[16:19] Speaker 2: so I had a friend who jumped from Recon to
[16:21] Speaker 2: the Seals and he made it, and he came back
[16:24] Speaker 2: and he was visiting and were like, hey, man, so
[16:26] Speaker 2: how was it? What was what's the difference. He's like,
[16:29] Speaker 2: I kicked ass on everything until I got to the pool,
[16:34] Speaker 2: and he was a collegiate swimmer, and he's like and
[16:37] Speaker 2: he's like, yeah, the recon pool was cute. The seal
[16:40] Speaker 2: pool was the scariest thing I've ever done in my
[16:42] Speaker 2: entire life. But he's like, physically like, any of you
[16:45] Speaker 2: guys could have made it, but if you weren't one
[16:47] Speaker 2: of the best swimmers in the like, like he's like,
[16:49] Speaker 2: you weren't gonna make it. He's like, and it wasn't
[16:52] Speaker 2: just like oh I can do the strokes. He's like,
[16:53] Speaker 2: you have to be so comfortable. He's like, I watch
[16:55] Speaker 2: guys who are better swimmers than me drop just because
[16:58] Speaker 2: they got so scared because of what they would do
[16:59] Speaker 2: to So he's like, that is the great equalizer, like
[17:02] Speaker 2: where like you could have the best, most physical specimen
[17:06] Speaker 2: and if he is not not just good at swimming,
[17:08] Speaker 2: but really comfortable with the possibility of you know what
[17:12] Speaker 2: could happen, then like it just it just scares people.
[17:15] Speaker 1: So he's saying that even the only the top like
[17:18] Speaker 1: recon swimmers would make it through that then so.
[17:22] Speaker 2: And when he went through, because this is still like
[17:24] Speaker 2: so this is still when they were they were so packed,
[17:27] Speaker 2: they had more people. But he was like you know
[17:30] Speaker 2: some of the guys who swim, because we were swimming,
[17:32] Speaker 2: was pretty pretty intense for us. But he was like
[17:34] Speaker 2: for for a lot of those guys who were just
[17:36] Speaker 2: kind of like mediocre swimmers who squeaked by, he's like,
[17:39] Speaker 2: they wouldn't have made it, Like you had to be
[17:41] Speaker 2: a very good swimmer, you had to be very comfortable
[17:43] Speaker 2: in the water and just kind of like it should
[17:46] Speaker 2: have been like second nature. He's like, you would have
[17:48] Speaker 2: been like it was still gonna suck real hard. But
[17:50] Speaker 2: he's like, that was the hardest part for me by far.
[17:53] Speaker 2: Everything else was just like almost not equal. But he's like,
[17:56] Speaker 2: just just the same, you know, just the.
[17:58] Speaker 1: I can't wait to read the reconversus Seal swimming comments
[18:02] Speaker 1: on the YouTube channel. Yeah, it'll be great. So let's
[18:05] Speaker 1: hear the debate in the comments now.
[18:08] Speaker 2: So we have also like them a quiz swimmers are
[18:11] Speaker 2: our headtop swimmer guys. Who was telling me, like what
[18:14] Speaker 2: we had one of our guys becoming a quiss for
[18:16] Speaker 2: recon You couldn't pay me enough to do that course,
[18:19] Speaker 2: like that sounded like one of the worst, like torture chambers.
[18:22] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, sure, like he was, and he's like he
[18:25] Speaker 2: I think he lost Yeah, I think he lost fifteen
[18:28] Speaker 2: pounds of meat in about three weeks just swimming all day.
[18:32] Speaker 2: I mean he was a big guy going in, like
[18:33] Speaker 2: real muscular, and he just he looked like a different person.
[18:36] Speaker 2: And he's like, I've never I've never hated water so
[18:38] Speaker 2: much in my entire life. Yeah, So I think it's
[18:40] Speaker 2: just the level of it. I can't speak to it.
[18:44] Speaker 2: But the swimming was not for me. It was not
[18:48] Speaker 2: the hardest part of the recon training. I grew up swimming.
[18:51] Speaker 2: I grew up like in the rivers and lakes in
[18:54] Speaker 2: New Hampshire and stuff like that. So that was actually
[18:56] Speaker 2: the part that I was thankful for because that was
[18:58] Speaker 2: the part I actually felt really comfortable in. Everything else
[19:01] Speaker 2: with for me was a little bit harder than the
[19:03] Speaker 2: swimming portion. Then we had guys who were flip flopped.
[19:05] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[19:06] Speaker 2: One of my teammates was from the Bronx, and I
[19:08] Speaker 2: don't know if you'd ever really swam before, and he
[19:10] Speaker 2: taught himself out of swim right beforehand, and he gutted
[19:13] Speaker 2: it out and he was he was. He ended up
[19:15] Speaker 2: being probably one of the most amazing athletes I've ever met.
[19:17] Speaker 2: But It was just one of those things that like
[19:18] Speaker 2: if you either you swam all your life and you're
[19:21] Speaker 2: very comfortable, or you just learned, you know, for the
[19:24] Speaker 2: seals or whatever. Because I was training up pre seal
[19:28] Speaker 2: at my gym and he's like, what should I be doing?
[19:30] Speaker 2: I was like, get in the water every day. Just
[19:31] Speaker 2: get in the water. Just get in the water like
[19:33] Speaker 2: you are physically Like he was amazing kid, But I
[19:36] Speaker 2: was like, if the water's gonna be the place where
[19:38] Speaker 2: I can't help you, no one can.
[19:41] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a yeah. Again, that's all I've ever heard
[19:45] Speaker 1: from anybody that's done a course that requires that PJ seals,
[19:48] Speaker 1: you know, recon it's all the pool is gonna you
[19:53] Speaker 1: gotta be ready for the pool, and a lot of
[19:55] Speaker 1: people are, you know, they say, obviously people that have
[19:59] Speaker 1: grown up in a pool do much better, you know.
[20:02] Speaker 1: And most of the time, like swimmers, people that like
[20:05] Speaker 1: swam in school, people that played what's that water polo?
[20:10] Speaker 1: That's a big one because of the treading. You know,
[20:12] Speaker 1: you get so much practice treading water and you get
[20:13] Speaker 1: the technique down. A lot of it's technique. That's the
[20:16] Speaker 1: thing is like like I think I can swim and
[20:19] Speaker 1: I'm an okay swimmer, but I don't. I never learned
[20:22] Speaker 1: like the normal technique, So I'm not like out there,
[20:26] Speaker 1: you know, doing a perfect breaststroke or whatever, you know,
[20:29] Speaker 1: or side stroke. I never really learned side stroke or
[20:32] Speaker 1: anything like that. I just grew up swimming in lakes
[20:35] Speaker 1: and stuff, like you said, you know, growing up in Tennessee.
[20:39] Speaker 1: But yeah, if you're gonna do that, definitely be ready,
[20:42] Speaker 1: you know. Other than that, the movements that you have
[20:45] Speaker 1: to do in recontraining are underload are pretty pretty hardcore
[20:50] Speaker 1: as well, you know. So that's another thing that I
[20:54] Speaker 1: think people, I mean, maybe civilians don't understand. You would
[20:59] Speaker 1: hope marine would understand. But it's like you got to
[21:01] Speaker 1: prep your feet for something like that. You know, you
[21:03] Speaker 1: gotta get out and hike, you gotta do stuff.
[21:06] Speaker 2: The the rock runs during the schoolhouse were like just
[21:10] Speaker 2: mind blowing because they tell you what's gonna happen. You're like, oh, yeah,
[21:14] Speaker 2: I can do that, you know, big deal, fifty pound
[21:16] Speaker 2: rock all that stuff, And all of a sudden you
[21:18] Speaker 2: get out there and like you're like two hours in,
[21:20] Speaker 2: You're like, oh my god, this is a totally different
[21:22] Speaker 2: thing than what I thought it was gonna be like
[21:24] Speaker 2: an endurance event, like you said, like your feet and
[21:26] Speaker 2: like everything like hydrating, like and it certain things like
[21:31] Speaker 2: become more important than you ever gave them credit for.
[21:33] Speaker 2: And it's not just you know, how physical you are.
[21:36] Speaker 2: It is some of that gumption, but it is like
[21:39] Speaker 2: do you have the right socks on. I watched a
[21:41] Speaker 2: guy like literally just wore the old, you know, issued
[21:43] Speaker 2: socks and it shoot his feet to hell on the
[21:45] Speaker 2: first day. Well, that's gonna be a you know, bad
[21:48] Speaker 2: in dock for the rest of your you know, twelve
[21:50] Speaker 2: weeks there. So now it was definitely, uh, it was
[21:53] Speaker 2: definitely for me, like the rock running. I actually it
[21:57] Speaker 2: was one of my favorite parts. But it was definitely
[21:59] Speaker 2: one of those eye opening things. We had a really
[22:01] Speaker 2: great I think I had a different experience than a
[22:05] Speaker 2: lot of recon guys. I ended up breaking my ribs
[22:07] Speaker 2: in the waiting period but before one of the schoolhouse,
[22:11] Speaker 2: so I actually had a little more time in the
[22:12] Speaker 2: training like the holding tank, and I had one of
[22:15] Speaker 2: the best instructors I could possibly imagine, and he really
[22:20] Speaker 2: did a great job preparing us and we land naved
[22:25] Speaker 2: and rock runned at least every day like five days
[22:29] Speaker 2: a week. We would do like one week of land
[22:31] Speaker 2: nav where we'd be running and he'd make the points
[22:34] Speaker 2: and he'd make sure they're miles apart in you know,
[22:36] Speaker 2: Le June. So we were running everywhere, and so by
[22:39] Speaker 2: the time we got to the schoolhouse, it it didn't
[22:42] Speaker 2: feel as jarring, Whereas we had some guys who got
[22:47] Speaker 2: to the holding tank, spent two weeks and just happened
[22:50] Speaker 2: to be like the last class before we left, got
[22:53] Speaker 2: two weeks in the holding tank and we were in
[22:55] Speaker 2: the schoolhouse and they lasted all of ten seconds because
[22:57] Speaker 2: it was so jarring from you know, they just got
[23:00] Speaker 2: at a boot camp and then went to infantry training,
[23:02] Speaker 2: which is basically sitting on a rock for the training part.
[23:06] Speaker 2: You don't really start infisture training from one, understand, until
[23:08] Speaker 2: you actually get to your unit and then you train.
[23:11] Speaker 2: You know, Ifenture Training School for the Marines was it
[23:13] Speaker 2: was hard, but it wasn't It wasn't that bad. It
[23:16] Speaker 2: was as you start to get into your unit that's
[23:18] Speaker 2: when that got bad. So these guys were getting very
[23:21] Speaker 2: little time from you know, when they got out of
[23:23] Speaker 2: that to the recon and then they're at the schoolhouse
[23:26] Speaker 2: we're finning you know one uh so am FIB week
[23:30] Speaker 2: or NFIB phase. We were fitning twice a week for
[23:32] Speaker 2: long distances, you know, and that's one of those things
[23:35] Speaker 2: you want to be practicing, you know, just using fins,
[23:38] Speaker 2: rock running, just having nice boots, having the right equipment,
[23:42] Speaker 2: stuff like that. Because the one other thing I do
[23:44] Speaker 2: I did appreciate about the training was it was a
[23:47] Speaker 2: gentleman's course when I went through. And I don't know
[23:51] Speaker 2: about that now because I think it's attached to the
[23:53] Speaker 2: Infantry schools now, but it used to be its own
[23:55] Speaker 2: separate training thing with its own instructors, and it was
[23:58] Speaker 2: a gentleman's course. They're like, go buy the nice gear,
[24:01] Speaker 2: go go get the things that'll make it good for
[24:04] Speaker 2: you in the long term that you'll use forever. And
[24:06] Speaker 2: so we were you know, we weren't in issued boots,
[24:08] Speaker 2: we weren't issued socks. We were you know, comfortable and
[24:12] Speaker 2: you know, taking care of our feet and doing that
[24:13] Speaker 2: kind of stuff. And it made a huge difference, uh
[24:16] Speaker 2: in the longevity. I think of a lot of the.
[24:17] Speaker 1: Guys, yeah, yeah, I think they had so they had
[24:20] Speaker 1: BRC out in Coronado and that's I saw them when
[24:25] Speaker 1: I went actually went through my eight six 's one
[24:28] Speaker 1: my zero eight six to one. UH fire Support Man
[24:30] Speaker 1: MS school is down. Part of it, the naval gunfire
[24:33] Speaker 1: portion was. I don't think it is anymore, but it
[24:35] Speaker 1: was down in Coronado, and I remember seeing the guys
[24:38] Speaker 1: going through BRC just getting beat out there right next
[24:41] Speaker 1: to the seals, and I was like, dude, they're doing
[24:43] Speaker 1: the exact same shit these dudes are doing, you know,
[24:45] Speaker 1: running on the beach with the boat doing everything and
[24:47] Speaker 1: then doing these crazy pet sessions where they're dropping the
[24:51] Speaker 1: boat into the bay, paddling far out the hit a
[24:53] Speaker 1: booy and come back, paddle, pick the boat up, run
[24:56] Speaker 1: with it for a while, come back, put it back in,
[24:57] Speaker 1: and it was like laps in the water and running.
[25:00] Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, that's that looks pretty rough.
[25:02] Speaker 1: But I think they moved from Cornado up to Camp Pendleton.
[25:07] Speaker 1: I think all of it is under camp up by
[25:09] Speaker 1: Camp Pendleton. Now I could be wrong on that, but
[25:11] Speaker 1: they did make some changes. I think around the same
[25:14] Speaker 1: time is when they also moved all the snipers into
[25:16] Speaker 1: the recon community. You know, that's that's what I was
[25:19] Speaker 1: gonna say.
[25:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, so because I was. I was one of the last.
[25:22] Speaker 2: So I went through sniper school and they asked me
[25:25] Speaker 2: to teach, and I ended up saying no because I
[25:28] Speaker 2: was going to get out. But one of my the
[25:30] Speaker 2: guys who I went through with was an awesome our
[25:32] Speaker 2: class commander. He ended up teaching, and he was during
[25:35] Speaker 2: the restructuring of sniper school where that went from Stone
[25:39] Speaker 2: Bay to attached to the Infantry Training School, you know,
[25:43] Speaker 2: and that kind of stuff. And he said that was
[25:45] Speaker 2: wild in itself, like that that was a totally different,
[25:48] Speaker 2: you know, compared to being off on your own, your
[25:50] Speaker 2: own camp. You know, it's all enclosed at all snipers
[25:53] Speaker 2: teaching snipers. And then he said it was a lot
[25:56] Speaker 2: more I hate say yut yut, but a lot more
[25:58] Speaker 2: people watching you officers stuff like that, so a little
[26:02] Speaker 2: less on that side.
[26:04] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's yeah, definitely moved beyond that now too,
[26:07] Speaker 1: you know, have a more hierarchy in there. It was
[26:10] Speaker 1: pretty controversial when they move snipers out from the infantry
[26:14] Speaker 1: battalions and moved it to the reconn community. I don't
[26:19] Speaker 1: know where it's at now, but I know at the
[26:21] Speaker 1: time it's pretty it was pretty controversial, Like there was
[26:23] Speaker 1: a lot of people that weren't very happy about that,
[26:25] Speaker 1: like why would we give up that asset in our battalions.
[26:29] Speaker 1: But also if the battalions are still being if the
[26:33] Speaker 1: battalions are still being supported by the same amount of snipers,
[26:39] Speaker 1: it might not be that bad of a deal, especially
[26:41] Speaker 1: if they have like a they try to maintain like
[26:44] Speaker 1: a command support relationship, like oh hey, anytime six Marines
[26:48] Speaker 1: goes out on a field op. These are our three
[26:52] Speaker 1: sniper teams that we choose from, so that you get
[26:54] Speaker 1: to know the people that you work with consistently, you know,
[26:56] Speaker 1: I think that's obviously important. If you send a random
[26:59] Speaker 1: guy out every time, a different dude, then that's not
[27:02] Speaker 1: good because then you don't get to know who to
[27:05] Speaker 1: work with, how you can do things and stuff. But
[27:07] Speaker 1: I'd be interested of knowing from somebody that's recently been
[27:11] Speaker 1: in in the sniper community to come on and kind
[27:13] Speaker 1: of go through some of the changes there. There's been
[27:15] Speaker 1: a lot of changes, man. The rifle range is different,
[27:19] Speaker 1: the physical fitness test is different, and so yeah.
[27:24] Speaker 2: So what I was when I was in we were
[27:26] Speaker 2: they had us for like two years. We did like
[27:29] Speaker 2: eight different physical fitness tests. We were doing a lot
[27:31] Speaker 2: of well, the Marine Corps trying to figure out what
[27:33] Speaker 2: they were going to do. We were testing all of
[27:35] Speaker 2: them in our unit, and we would be one of
[27:37] Speaker 2: the test units and you know, we would do it
[27:39] Speaker 2: and they're like, Okay, this is the score you got,
[27:41] Speaker 2: and then it would take another unit and they would
[27:43] Speaker 2: do it with them and see what the difference was.
[27:45] Speaker 2: And like it was wild because like I feel like
[27:47] Speaker 2: every three months we were doing some other wild, different,
[27:50] Speaker 2: like you know thing. And by the time I got out,
[27:52] Speaker 2: I don't think my last two years I had one
[27:55] Speaker 2: PT test that was even remotely the same. It was
[27:58] Speaker 2: just all kind of everything was all over the Yeah,
[28:01] Speaker 2: you know they were doing the right when we were leaving,
[28:03] Speaker 2: they were doing the functional finish one with the dragging
[28:06] Speaker 2: and the CFT. Yeah. Yeah, because we used we did
[28:10] Speaker 2: that like the first day we did that. We did
[28:12] Speaker 2: that back to back, so we did our normal PFT,
[28:15] Speaker 2: rested ten minutes and then did the CFT like right.
[28:17] Speaker 1: At oh fuck, it was right.
[28:20] Speaker 2: We were like, wow, okay, that's a good PET test.
[28:22] Speaker 2: And I guess they when they did Marine Corps wide
[28:25] Speaker 2: that it was not. They did not like that.
[28:27] Speaker 1: Dude, that would have been miserable. I remember the first
[28:30] Speaker 1: time I did a CFT at Lejune. It was like
[28:34] Speaker 1: a January morning and it was like thirty eight degrees outside,
[28:39] Speaker 1: and and we started with that eight hundred meter run
[28:42] Speaker 1: the boots and utes like sprint basically, and I remember
[28:47] Speaker 1: just being just dying. My lungs were just like so
[28:51] Speaker 1: on fire from that, because eight hundred meters sounds like, Okay,
[28:55] Speaker 1: that's not that much. So you tend to almost run
[28:58] Speaker 1: too fast at the beginning of something like that, and
[29:00] Speaker 1: by the end you're just I mean, that's a tough
[29:03] Speaker 1: that's a tough like run that eight hundred meters. It's
[29:06] Speaker 1: not tough like to run eight hundred meters. It's tough
[29:09] Speaker 1: to run it in the timeline.
[29:11] Speaker 2: You know, right, the one they want you to Yep.
[29:13] Speaker 1: Yeah, it was like that was always pretty killer. Yeah.
[29:18] Speaker 1: Fuck that man running the PFT and a CFT back
[29:20] Speaker 1: to back. That's crazy.
[29:21] Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, we did it once and they they had
[29:24] Speaker 2: another unit. They didn't tell us who the other unit
[29:26] Speaker 2: was that was always doing it. It wasn't a recon
[29:28] Speaker 2: unit with some other unit. I guess they did not
[29:30] Speaker 2: do very well, and so they decided to separate them after.
[29:33] Speaker 1: That, someone from like Supply Battalion. M hm, yeah, man,
[29:40] Speaker 1: So you know when you came in, So you came
[29:43] Speaker 1: in you at the time, did you say they didn't
[29:47] Speaker 1: allow you to go straight to recon or you did
[29:49] Speaker 1: go straight?
[29:49] Speaker 2: Now? So I was, yeah, I was straight infantry. I
[29:52] Speaker 2: was training to be an Oh three eleven. Uh we
[29:54] Speaker 2: were at the three eleven school. Uh so we were
[29:59] Speaker 2: probably i'd say three quarters the way through infantory school
[30:03] Speaker 2: and uh, Gunny Raybon came and it was the it
[30:08] Speaker 2: was the best. It was the best speech I've ever
[30:10] Speaker 2: heard in my entire life. He like walked over, he
[30:13] Speaker 2: has sunglasses on. Uh, he like just looked over at us.
[30:17] Speaker 2: He's like, hey, chicks, dig recon. Yeah all right, and
[30:20] Speaker 2: he's like, none of you are gonna make it. And
[30:22] Speaker 2: that was the speech. And he walked off like that
[30:25] Speaker 2: was the entirety of the speech. I found out later
[30:28] Speaker 2: he was not a fan of the speeches and didn't
[30:30] Speaker 2: like giving them and didn't believe in them. But I
[30:32] Speaker 2: was like, so right right then, like fifty percent of
[30:34] Speaker 2: the dudes were like he's right, you know, I guess
[30:36] Speaker 2: we're not gonna make it. And then there was that
[30:38] Speaker 2: like ten percent or like, who the fuck is this guy? Yeah, no, yeah,
[30:42] Speaker 2: I'll see you there, man, I'll see you there. And
[30:45] Speaker 2: uh he was. He was at our enddock. So then
[30:47] Speaker 2: we so I think, like, god, I think I have
[30:50] Speaker 2: the numbers in the book, but I want to say,
[30:51] Speaker 2: like one hundred and something sat for the speech, and
[30:57] Speaker 2: I think only fifty of us even went to the
[30:59] Speaker 2: end dock. H So he lost like a ton. So
[31:02] Speaker 2: we get to the end dop with like fifty two
[31:06] Speaker 2: and there he is. He takes his blouse off. Dude's
[31:09] Speaker 2: probably fifty something by the look of him. His face
[31:12] Speaker 2: has the body of a twenty year old, like just
[31:14] Speaker 2: jacked out of his mind. We're like, we're all in big,
[31:16] Speaker 2: big trouble now, uh because again I didn't even know.
[31:19] Speaker 2: I didn't even know about recon at the time, Like
[31:22] Speaker 2: I was just three eleven. Whatever they do, that's what
[31:24] Speaker 2: I want to do. Like, I just want to get
[31:26] Speaker 2: over there as fast as I can. So they're like, oh,
[31:28] Speaker 2: try out for this special operations thing. I was like,
[31:30] Speaker 2: that sounds great, let's try that. I've never you know,
[31:33] Speaker 2: I don't know if I can make it. Uh. So
[31:35] Speaker 2: I think fifty two of us went and I think
[31:40] Speaker 2: three of us ended up making the teams out of
[31:42] Speaker 2: that fifty two by the time we got through all
[31:44] Speaker 2: everything and chopped up and sent over and by the
[31:47] Speaker 2: time we actually got to the teams, I think three
[31:49] Speaker 2: of that fifty two ended up making it.
[31:51] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that sounds about right. You know, they give
[31:54] Speaker 1: you like they'll tell you like people will say, like
[31:56] Speaker 1: the school number, it will be like the percentage of
[31:58] Speaker 1: the graduates much higher. But it's like, yeah, but the
[32:01] Speaker 1: filtering process before that too.
[32:03] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, So we actually got to the schoolhouse,
[32:07] Speaker 2: so they I mean, they only did our school house.
[32:09] Speaker 2: So I went to u ARS. So I went to
[32:12] Speaker 2: the East Coast version. Uh so brcars And the big
[32:16] Speaker 2: difference from when I was told because I had a
[32:18] Speaker 2: lot of friends on the West Coast. Uh, They're like,
[32:20] Speaker 2: our swimming sucks because of our waves, because you guys
[32:23] Speaker 2: have waves in California that we were on, like the
[32:26] Speaker 2: Hudson Bay and there was like breakers like this big,
[32:29] Speaker 2: you know, so like getting the Zodiac out was easy
[32:32] Speaker 2: where they were getting the shit pummeled out of us.
[32:35] Speaker 2: But then our land nab was in the middle of
[32:38] Speaker 2: the woods in Virginia with top of top topography that
[32:42] Speaker 2: just you looked at the map and you're like, that
[32:43] Speaker 2: can't be right, Like there's no way, there's no way
[32:46] Speaker 2: there's that many mountains in that small of a space
[32:48] Speaker 2: and there and the BRC guys said, like they were
[32:51] Speaker 2: out in the the middle of desert and like, oh,
[32:52] Speaker 2: it's a mile that way, I can see it from
[32:54] Speaker 2: here where we were like, you know, you had to
[32:56] Speaker 2: beat a foot on top of the thing in the
[32:58] Speaker 2: middle of the mountains and get you're rubbing stuff. So
[33:01] Speaker 2: there was a lot of difference there. But they were waiting.
[33:05] Speaker 2: I think they were waiting almost like eight months between
[33:07] Speaker 2: classes and then they would gather up a bunch and
[33:11] Speaker 2: depending like we had some Cali guys with us, some
[33:14] Speaker 2: first recon guys with us on the east coast, and
[33:19] Speaker 2: so we ended up. I want to say, I had
[33:20] Speaker 2: the flags somewhere. I actually when they shut down ARS,
[33:24] Speaker 2: one of my friends was at the last class and
[33:26] Speaker 2: he stole the flag for me because they were just
[33:28] Speaker 2: gonna like put it away and like put it in storage.
[33:31] Speaker 2: So but uh, yeah, I was like what so. But uh,
[33:35] Speaker 2: I want to say we had a decent rate of
[33:38] Speaker 2: passing at the schoolhouse and most of that was just
[33:41] Speaker 2: like cause in the holding tank it was like doggy
[33:46] Speaker 2: dog world. Man, it was you're ringing the bell. Someone
[33:49] Speaker 2: was leaving every day like it was. It was it
[33:52] Speaker 2: was trying to break you. They really just wanted to
[33:54] Speaker 2: see where your breaking point was. Like we would be
[33:58] Speaker 2: we had to be the pool a lot of at
[34:00] Speaker 2: like five or six am, and then we get to
[34:04] Speaker 2: the pool, we get out of the pool at eight,
[34:05] Speaker 2: and then we had land nab at nine. We'd land
[34:07] Speaker 2: nap till like three pm, then classes till like five pm. Uh,
[34:11] Speaker 2: you had to pet somewhere in there like either on
[34:13] Speaker 2: your own and then Friday's we come like and so
[34:15] Speaker 2: it was like it was a breakoff process and a
[34:17] Speaker 2: lot of guys didn't make the breakoff process. And then
[34:20] Speaker 2: when we got to the schoolhouse, you realize it was
[34:23] Speaker 2: at such a level they didn't even have to break
[34:25] Speaker 2: you off. It was here's the here's here's the line.
[34:28] Speaker 2: You're either gonna be one side or the other ready
[34:30] Speaker 2: to go. And they were the night. They were so
[34:32] Speaker 2: nice about it, which almost made it worse because no
[34:34] Speaker 2: one was yelling, no one was screaming, like just like
[34:37] Speaker 2: it was either you're gonna pass your fail they could
[34:39] Speaker 2: care less like. So it was. It was. It was
[34:42] Speaker 2: almost harder because in the the first like someone's yelling
[34:45] Speaker 2: at you and you're like, oh, fuck you. You know,
[34:48] Speaker 2: in your head you're like yeah, And when we got
[34:50] Speaker 2: to the schoolhouse, it was just hey, man, we're gonna
[34:53] Speaker 2: run this fast. If you don't make this timeline, you're
[34:54] Speaker 2: done by wait.
[34:56] Speaker 1: What Yeah, So it was a lot.
[34:57] Speaker 2: It was a lot. It was a lot different paced
[34:59] Speaker 2: when you got to the school So, but a lot
[35:01] Speaker 2: of us had already gotten through months of attrition and
[35:05] Speaker 2: kind of already had that. Like I said, the guys
[35:08] Speaker 2: who were only there for like two weeks, who that was.
[35:11] Speaker 2: That was a huge quick turnover for them to suddenly
[35:14] Speaker 2: be in a position where like hey, if you don't,
[35:16] Speaker 2: if you're not twenty minutes behind the rabbit, like you failed, sorry,
[35:19] Speaker 2: Like that's that's it, and you're like, wait what go gone?
[35:23] Speaker 2: So it was, uh, it was it was a lot different,
[35:27] Speaker 2: uh the attrition rate, but we still lost. We lost
[35:30] Speaker 2: one guy to trench foot, which I didn't I believe
[35:33] Speaker 2: was the thing that since Vietnam, Like yeah, like we
[35:36] Speaker 2: were at our hell week out in the mountains, of
[35:38] Speaker 2: Virginia was I think it rained six of the seven days,
[35:43] Speaker 2: and it was literally the most miserable I have ever
[35:46] Speaker 2: been in my entire life, Like I have, I've never
[35:48] Speaker 2: been so cold and miserable. But like they're like, seriously,
[35:51] Speaker 2: change your stocks. You're like, all right, you know, like
[35:53] Speaker 2: who doesn't want to? But I guess he didn't. And
[35:55] Speaker 2: we watched his feet just slough off for like three
[35:58] Speaker 2: days when we got hol Yeah, and he was he
[36:01] Speaker 2: was a great guy. And they're like, hey, man, I
[36:03] Speaker 2: hope you reach read later. Bye, And they sent him
[36:05] Speaker 2: home like just trench foot. I call it crap. Man.
[36:07] Speaker 2: I didn't think that was the thing anymore.
[36:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't become a liability, right, Like I think
[36:13] Speaker 1: a lot of people I've talked to you that have
[36:14] Speaker 1: done different kind of selection courses, that's a common theme
[36:17] Speaker 1: is that it's very much there's no yelling. There's no
[36:20] Speaker 1: reason to yell, Like you're beyond that. That's that's boot
[36:23] Speaker 1: camp stuff, you know, that's like that's like entry level stuff.
[36:26] Speaker 1: At this point, they expect you to show up and
[36:28] Speaker 1: be ready to go for whatever it is that they're
[36:30] Speaker 1: asking you to do, and you either do the task
[36:33] Speaker 1: or you don't do the task like you said, and
[36:34] Speaker 1: you don't do the task Roger annotated, you know, and
[36:38] Speaker 1: if it's a failing event, then you failed or you
[36:40] Speaker 1: know whatever. I mean, that's something I've also heard that
[36:45] Speaker 1: people's other people say it plays mind games with them,
[36:47] Speaker 1: you know, when all their messages come through like a
[36:49] Speaker 1: whiteboard or something like that, rather than someone telling them,
[36:52] Speaker 1: and it's just like check the board, you know, see
[36:54] Speaker 1: where you gotta be in what time, and it's you know,
[36:57] Speaker 1: people overthink directions and or start thinking for themselves, you know.
[37:01] Speaker 2: Yeah, especially especially in the pipeline, because you come from
[37:03] Speaker 2: boot camp in Marine Corps, which is just its own
[37:06] Speaker 2: little slice of heaven where there is not a moment
[37:09] Speaker 2: of your life where someone is not either yelling at
[37:11] Speaker 2: you or just i mean in your face just making
[37:14] Speaker 2: sure you're doing exactly what they want. And then you know,
[37:18] Speaker 2: you get the infantry training, and that was just a
[37:21] Speaker 2: step down. I mean there was I met some of
[37:23] Speaker 2: my instructors of the infantry training were like the best
[37:26] Speaker 2: of the best from infantry, but they were some hard men.
[37:29] Speaker 2: I mean they're they're coming off there like like you said,
[37:31] Speaker 2: like fifth sixth deployment, They were just burnt and so
[37:35] Speaker 2: like they were, they didn't put up with shit, so
[37:37] Speaker 2: like you know, you get this like there they yelled,
[37:39] Speaker 2: but it definitely wasn't much. And then with the the
[37:41] Speaker 2: holding tank was pretty pretty vicious. And then you get
[37:44] Speaker 2: to a place where no one's yelling. You're just hey man,
[37:47] Speaker 2: you're not awake and you're not in the classroom at
[37:49] Speaker 2: this time. That's fine, we don't care, you know, like
[37:54] Speaker 2: to hang yourself yeah, right, And and some guys did.
[37:57] Speaker 2: Some guys would like with Libo, like hey man, you
[37:59] Speaker 2: gotta be home at nine.
[38:01] Speaker 1: Uh, Like I mean it was.
[38:02] Speaker 2: It was awesome being in Little Creek, uh, you know,
[38:04] Speaker 2: on weekends and stuff in Virginia Beach. Yeah, but it
[38:09] Speaker 2: was really easy to get yourself in trouble out in
[38:11] Speaker 2: town and like you know, like seriously, like this is
[38:14] Speaker 2: you guys, right, choices and we'll see you back here
[38:17] Speaker 2: and that's the guys we want. Or you're gonna hang
[38:20] Speaker 2: yourself out in town and you're not gonna make it
[38:21] Speaker 2: back in time, or you're not gonna you're just like wow,
[38:24] Speaker 2: this is it was. It was It was almost like
[38:25] Speaker 2: a total like a one eighty from where we started
[38:27] Speaker 2: in the training.
[38:28] Speaker 1: That's like something they do in OCS as well. After
[38:31] Speaker 1: like I think five or six weeks or something like that,
[38:33] Speaker 1: or maybe it's three weeks, they start letting them have
[38:36] Speaker 1: either a day off or the weekend off and they
[38:39] Speaker 1: can go out on libo from OCS. And part of
[38:41] Speaker 1: that is that like, hey, if you can't go out
[38:44] Speaker 1: and like control your drinking or you can't do you know,
[38:46] Speaker 1: like you said, follow the rules that are put down,
[38:49] Speaker 1: then we don't need you here, Like you can move
[38:50] Speaker 1: along to something else because that's not what we're looking for.
[38:54] Speaker 1: So after you finished, after you finished that initial reconnaissance training, uh,
[38:59] Speaker 1: you go back to sex recon and then do you
[39:01] Speaker 1: go straight to schools or what's the what's the pipeline there?
[39:05] Speaker 2: So we were So I got back and we were
[39:09] Speaker 2: already in a work up. We had already started our
[39:11] Speaker 2: next work up for our next deployment. We were taken
[39:13] Speaker 2: over for first recon and so I came back from
[39:17] Speaker 2: school and I was immediately put into a team and
[39:21] Speaker 2: it was we are working up for Iraq. Here we go,
[39:24] Speaker 2: Like it was like I want to say, it was
[39:25] Speaker 2: like six months by the time like we we got going.
[39:28] Speaker 2: I met my platoon sergeant who was literally one of
[39:32] Speaker 2: the most fantastic people I've ever met, but also just
[39:35] Speaker 2: just a hell of a guy and reconnaissance marine. He
[39:38] Speaker 2: ended up winning Force Team Leaders of the Year like
[39:41] Speaker 2: a couple of years back. So they were bringing the force,
[39:45] Speaker 2: the Force guys who were like Team Leaders of the Year,
[39:47] Speaker 2: the top operators down as our platoon sergeants to train
[39:52] Speaker 2: the next generation. So we got these guys who were
[39:55] Speaker 2: just on a different level, like right off the bat,
[39:58] Speaker 2: from anything we've seen yet in the marie incoorps. Because
[40:00] Speaker 2: then this is like the top dogs coming down training us,
[40:05] Speaker 2: and I got I ended up getting Bobby Rivera who
[40:07] Speaker 2: I think is still training a lot of the more
[40:09] Speaker 2: soft guys or the Raiders now I guess the Raider
[40:11] Speaker 2: guys right now who's still downs and doing the contracting job.
[40:15] Speaker 2: But he was by far and away the best platoon
[40:18] Speaker 2: sergeant of any of them that I got to see
[40:20] Speaker 2: and deal with. I ended up getting placed in I
[40:23] Speaker 2: hate say, a dream team, but I got put in
[40:26] Speaker 2: a guy one of my teammates his first his first
[40:29] Speaker 2: go around, he just retired out of the Raiders. I
[40:33] Speaker 2: want to say a couple of months ago, and he
[40:36] Speaker 2: was instrumental in directing the Raiders and setting them up.
[40:41] Speaker 2: They sent him with other units higher, higher, higher tier units. Uh,
[40:46] Speaker 2: he did, I want to say, a stint at Quantico
[40:51] Speaker 2: in one of their teams for I want to say
[40:53] Speaker 2: four years, came back, brought all that. So, like this
[40:56] Speaker 2: was a guy who was going places like he was.
[40:58] Speaker 2: He was, you know, bootle like me, but he was
[41:01] Speaker 2: just already on a different level. Like we knew from
[41:03] Speaker 2: the get go he was gonna be amazing, Like he
[41:05] Speaker 2: was just really good. My team leader and my atl
[41:10] Speaker 2: had just gotten back. One had just been in oh actually,
[41:14] Speaker 2: so I think that's actually a thing we can't talk about.
[41:17] Speaker 2: He had just gotten back from a South American place
[41:19] Speaker 2: or a South Southern place that doing crazy stuff. He
[41:26] Speaker 2: had just and then that was after Iraq where he
[41:28] Speaker 2: actually got blown up in an ied so we actually
[41:31] Speaker 2: called him his nickname was Scotty Boom for hitting blown up.
[41:34] Speaker 2: So he was already pretty well acclimated to the whole thing.
[41:38] Speaker 2: So we just got this team that was just shit hot,
[41:41] Speaker 2: and it was just it was like it was a
[41:43] Speaker 2: dream come true. And then we started our workup. We
[41:48] Speaker 2: probably did I want to say, like five months six
[41:51] Speaker 2: months of like intense workup stuff, and then we went
[41:55] Speaker 2: to Iraq for the first time.
[41:57] Speaker 1: What was your I mean, what did the workup look like?
[41:59] Speaker 1: It's obviously this isn't the first employment to Iraq, so
[42:03] Speaker 1: now we've got some lessons learned. Here were you guys
[42:06] Speaker 1: go applying those?
[42:09] Speaker 2: No cause, like to be honest, like, so for our unit,
[42:13] Speaker 2: like really there wasn't a whole lot going on for
[42:16] Speaker 2: like the Battle of Fallujah, but taking the cities the infantry,
[42:20] Speaker 2: God bless them, Like I couldn't do what they did.
[42:22] Speaker 2: That was amazing shit, But that wasn't what a lot
[42:24] Speaker 2: of the like the Special Operations were doing, you know,
[42:26] Speaker 2: the sneaky Pete stuff, and so uh when we took
[42:30] Speaker 2: over from first Recon, nothing had happened really like there
[42:33] Speaker 2: wasn't a whole lot. They're like, oh it was you know, woo,
[42:36] Speaker 2: like they were excited put it that way, like they laughed, smiling,
[42:40] Speaker 2: And so our work up, especially under riv we shot
[42:47] Speaker 2: eight hours a day for probably i'd say the first
[42:49] Speaker 2: four months of that six months, like we shot until
[42:52] Speaker 2: we just we didn't want to shoot anymore. Like just
[42:54] Speaker 2: those the days where you're just like we're as fun
[42:56] Speaker 2: at first where you're super excited we're getting on every
[42:58] Speaker 2: weapon system and by like form and you're like, who
[43:01] Speaker 2: another shooting day, all right, but.
[43:03] Speaker 1: How good how good at shooting were you by that.
[43:06] Speaker 2: Point amazing compared to where we started. And that's what
[43:11] Speaker 2: he was a huge So he he was chosen. I
[43:15] Speaker 2: think he was one of the top ten rifle shooters
[43:18] Speaker 2: in the world at that point, Like he got brought
[43:21] Speaker 2: on for I think either call of duty or day
[43:23] Speaker 2: call of duty had a competition that he was invited
[43:26] Speaker 2: to to shoot at. Like I mean, he was on
[43:28] Speaker 2: that level where like when they do the beat test stuff,
[43:31] Speaker 2: he could do the one second transitions where it's like
[43:33] Speaker 2: rifle shot, pistol shot, like within one second, we're like
[43:37] Speaker 2: show it to us, you know, and he did it,
[43:39] Speaker 2: and you're like, oh my god, Like just he he
[43:41] Speaker 2: was on a different level, so he wanted all us
[43:44] Speaker 2: to be on a different level. And so even as
[43:46] Speaker 2: a platoon, because that was the other crazy thing is
[43:50] Speaker 2: I don't know about other units, but our platoon trained
[43:53] Speaker 2: only as our platoon, so what we did was not
[43:56] Speaker 2: what every other platoon did. So every platoon sergeant ran
[43:59] Speaker 2: their platoon pretty much almost independently, because there's we only
[44:03] Speaker 2: went over to Iraq with one hundred and twenty shooters
[44:05] Speaker 2: maybe you know, like I think it was like six
[44:08] Speaker 2: platoons and then maybe a QRF. So we we didn't
[44:12] Speaker 2: we run a huge unit. So we were very autonomous
[44:16] Speaker 2: as far as our training. So we had what twenty
[44:19] Speaker 2: guys in our platoon, So for twenty guys we were
[44:21] Speaker 2: pulling up with, we would pull up with five tons
[44:25] Speaker 2: or humbies with trailers for enough ammo for like a
[44:28] Speaker 2: battalion shoot and it's like, oh, it's gonna be one
[44:31] Speaker 2: of those weeks. Huh. We'd sit up, we were like,
[44:33] Speaker 2: you know, but again it was it was different as
[44:35] Speaker 2: we get we get to go home every night, you know.
[44:37] Speaker 2: We would just establish a wash and we just shot
[44:39] Speaker 2: all day every day. Did the the CQB house a
[44:44] Speaker 2: lot like that was actually one of my favorite things too,
[44:46] Speaker 2: and so we did a lot of that. And then
[44:49] Speaker 2: leshuns its own kind of hell as far as terrain,
[44:52] Speaker 2: so we did crazy amounts of land nab as like
[44:55] Speaker 2: patrolling and like we did a lot of mock missions
[45:00] Speaker 2: where we would go out for three to five days,
[45:02] Speaker 2: uh and then just hide in Lejune and like go
[45:05] Speaker 2: spy on people and they would try to find us
[45:07] Speaker 2: and stuff like that, like just full on just mission
[45:10] Speaker 2: profiles where we were doing, exactly what we might be
[45:13] Speaker 2: doing in Iraq and stuff like that. So but uh,
[45:16] Speaker 2: but we got to go home every night. It was
[45:18] Speaker 2: again it was from what I've my experience in the
[45:21] Speaker 2: Marine Corps, I think was a lot different than say
[45:23] Speaker 2: like three elevens or like another guy, like like we
[45:27] Speaker 2: were treated like gentlemen, you know, like we pet do
[45:29] Speaker 2: on our own. There was no PT. Suddenly it was
[45:32] Speaker 2: like hey, as a team, your team is responsible for
[45:35] Speaker 2: your PT. Like we're not gonna bets even a platoon
[45:39] Speaker 2: we'd come together over in once in a while, but
[45:40] Speaker 2: like so we were peteing in groups of you know,
[45:42] Speaker 2: our five guys and making sure everyone is shit hot
[45:44] Speaker 2: and making their sure everyone was good. But it was
[45:47] Speaker 2: it was a lot more small than that I think
[45:50] Speaker 2: people were expecting because again it was either on platoon
[45:53] Speaker 2: level or was it team stuff. So there was weeks
[45:56] Speaker 2: that we only saw either our team and then our
[45:58] Speaker 2: platoon sergeant as a lie and that was it. That
[46:01] Speaker 2: was our training for you know, cause we were running
[46:03] Speaker 2: around in small teams. So that's how we trained a
[46:05] Speaker 2: lot of the stuff. It was all it was. It
[46:08] Speaker 2: was it was like the healcyon days that like you
[46:11] Speaker 2: want to go back to like it, you know, like
[46:12] Speaker 2: when people talk about like the good times of their
[46:14] Speaker 2: military career. Like that was that team. I I couldn't
[46:19] Speaker 2: put together a dream team more than that, Like I
[46:21] Speaker 2: liked my my my team's after that. But that team
[46:24] Speaker 2: ended up just being the best team I could possibly
[46:27] Speaker 2: want with the best people. Like we had so much
[46:29] Speaker 2: fun together. Everyone was there. No one was ever like
[46:33] Speaker 2: sad and dour. Everyone was always upbeat. It was a
[46:36] Speaker 2: very funny group. Like it was just everyone jibed with
[46:38] Speaker 2: each other really really well and that and that really
[46:41] Speaker 2: heartfelt way where like you feel like you met with
[46:43] Speaker 2: some brothers real quick. But yeah, we spent we spent
[46:46] Speaker 2: a lot of time, uh just shooting and just doing
[46:49] Speaker 2: land ab and stuff like that, just like like you said,
[46:52] Speaker 2: like long haul rocking like good God. I was the
[46:55] Speaker 2: I was the point man, so I had to do
[46:57] Speaker 2: all the routes and stuff like that. So a lot
[46:59] Speaker 2: of you know, just patrolling and making sure you have
[47:01] Speaker 2: the skills. They took all of our all of our
[47:04] Speaker 2: technology away, you know, because if you can if you
[47:07] Speaker 2: can do it with a map and compass, you can
[47:08] Speaker 2: certainly do it with a GPS and all that stuff.
[47:11] Speaker 2: So we we did most of our training as far
[47:15] Speaker 2: basic as you possibly could get, and then he would
[47:18] Speaker 2: right before we went, he would introduce like, Okay, now
[47:21] Speaker 2: here's your GPS, here's your this, now now get it on.
[47:25] Speaker 1: Uh.
[47:26] Speaker 2: And so our training for it, I felt like we were.
[47:30] Speaker 2: I felt like we were prepared as well as any
[47:34] Speaker 2: unit could possibly be for what we thought was going
[47:37] Speaker 2: to happen or what was happening currently.
[47:39] Speaker 1: Yeah, we weren't.
[47:40] Speaker 2: You know, we weren't taking Fallujah. We weren't taking a city.
[47:44] Speaker 2: We were in theory we were supposed to do what
[47:46] Speaker 2: Ricon is. Like we just talked about with the Snipers
[47:49] Speaker 2: as we were helping other units, that is, you know,
[47:51] Speaker 2: our mission set. And we get over there and they're like, hey,
[47:54] Speaker 2: the Zidon in Iraq, which is like just like the
[47:57] Speaker 2: nutsack of Fallujah is your Like what do you mean
[48:01] Speaker 2: it's ours? Like you own, it's your ao, Like you're
[48:03] Speaker 2: gonna you're gonna hang out there and do everything there
[48:06] Speaker 2: and that place was its own different world.
[48:11] Speaker 1: Uh.
[48:12] Speaker 2: They they were so scary there that Saddam Hussein wouldn't
[48:17] Speaker 2: even send his illy troops into there because they were
[48:20] Speaker 2: so tribal. And I think the big problem with Iraq
[48:25] Speaker 2: and a lot of these things is they had no
[48:29] Speaker 2: essential problem with us, Like they didn't have anything against us.
[48:32] Speaker 2: But they're like, hey, there's a line here, and if
[48:35] Speaker 2: you cross that line, you're on our territory and we're
[48:37] Speaker 2: gonna fucking kill you. And we're like, well, we're gonna
[48:40] Speaker 2: come over, like, don't do it. And so I think
[48:42] Speaker 2: some of the fighting we did was not even over
[48:44] Speaker 2: like ideals. It was just like tribalism, like hey man,
[48:49] Speaker 2: you're in our backyard, get out, like and they were.
[48:53] Speaker 2: They knew that place. It was the most sucking mud
[48:58] Speaker 2: in between three odes that you could drive on. So
[49:01] Speaker 2: there was three ways in and that was it, you know.
[49:04] Speaker 2: So they knew every goat trail, they knew everything about it.
[49:09] Speaker 2: They ended up bringing this the nineteen twentieth Revolutionary Brigade
[49:13] Speaker 2: and we we and we had it out with them
[49:17] Speaker 2: for six months in a way that like I guess,
[49:20] Speaker 2: no one, no one was prepared for that point. We
[49:23] Speaker 2: got there and IED's were an occasional thing where it
[49:27] Speaker 2: was like hey, like every once in a while an
[49:29] Speaker 2: ID will go off, don't be ready. There was a point,
[49:33] Speaker 2: i want to say, for four months that every other
[49:35] Speaker 2: day one of our trucks got hit with an ID
[49:39] Speaker 2: every other day.
[49:40] Speaker 1: And this is still before up armor.
[49:42] Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, this is this is when they're bolting shit on,
[49:45] Speaker 2: like we're fucking orcs and it's just like a normal
[49:48] Speaker 2: humvey weighed down with you know, all this armor that's
[49:52] Speaker 2: not supposed to be on there, so when you gun it, it
[49:54] Speaker 2: just makes a noise and goes no faster. And like
[49:56] Speaker 2: it was wild, and that stuff was starting to c
[50:00] Speaker 2: come over. You know, that stuff was starting to get
[50:02] Speaker 2: there right when we were getting right when we got there,
[50:04] Speaker 2: that stuff was starting to be put in. But it
[50:06] Speaker 2: was wild. It was like this like it was like
[50:09] Speaker 2: another universe compared to what we were told and we're
[50:12] Speaker 2: kind of expecting. Yeah, like everything's really calm, Like there's
[50:16] Speaker 2: some bad people at the same time that we're fighting
[50:21] Speaker 2: the tribalists, they're fighting these foreign fighters. Like there was
[50:26] Speaker 2: heads on spikes, Like there was literally dudes who would
[50:29] Speaker 2: come in from you know, Syria and all these other
[50:32] Speaker 2: places and foreign fighters, and they told them the same thing.
[50:35] Speaker 2: You cross this line, we kill you. They didn't believe them,
[50:38] Speaker 2: and all of a sudden they be driving and there'd
[50:39] Speaker 2: be a head on a stake and you're just like, yep,
[50:41] Speaker 2: they're pretty serious here. So owning an AO versus your
[50:49] Speaker 2: whole training being about being an autonomous dark unit where
[50:53] Speaker 2: like you don't really hold land, you don't, You're just
[50:56] Speaker 2: you're going in for a mission, you're coming out for
[50:57] Speaker 2: a mission. It became something completely dif than I think
[51:00] Speaker 2: what everyone was expecting. Uh, and it was not a
[51:04] Speaker 2: warfare that really we were we were any better at
[51:08] Speaker 2: than say the infantry or anybody else, because it's basically
[51:12] Speaker 2: drive a humby to this point, take over a house,
[51:15] Speaker 2: spend a week there, come back. Yeah, And it became
[51:20] Speaker 2: a Turkey shoot for us for for a while where
[51:24] Speaker 2: we were getting hit with id's basically every other day.
[51:28] Speaker 1: Were they likely were the IEDs, Like, were they just
[51:32] Speaker 1: random attacks or were they using them to like initiate
[51:35] Speaker 1: like a complex ambush or something like that.
[51:38] Speaker 2: No, so they were just random. They were literally like
[51:41] Speaker 2: so they they would tell everybody in the village, Hey,
[51:44] Speaker 2: there's an ID don't drive on this road because we
[51:46] Speaker 2: don't want to waste it. But and so we'd be
[51:49] Speaker 2: driving and like there was never a follow on because
[51:52] Speaker 2: that was the thing that was where I was the
[51:54] Speaker 2: intel guy for my platoons, so I had to watch
[51:56] Speaker 2: all the videos of all the complex ambushes other places
[51:59] Speaker 2: like and some of the cities and stuff. But for us,
[52:02] Speaker 2: for us, it was just they just wanted us dead
[52:05] Speaker 2: and they didn't They knew that they wouldn't win. Because
[52:07] Speaker 2: the other thing, the other problem with our unit being
[52:11] Speaker 2: an AO unit is we look like no other unit
[52:14] Speaker 2: on at Fallujah, at can't Fallujah. We look like a
[52:18] Speaker 2: gypsy caravan of humbies with all these rocks like my my,
[52:23] Speaker 2: uh my humby actually had a uh a sasser instead
[52:27] Speaker 2: of a machine gun mounted on the turret, so we
[52:30] Speaker 2: had a fifty cal sasser with a red dot. So
[52:33] Speaker 2: like we looked like no other you know, like vehicles
[52:36] Speaker 2: driving around. And so they knew when we were coming
[52:39] Speaker 2: specifically because we were always in a five vehicle you know,
[52:42] Speaker 2: convoy uh bristling with everything. But we'd have to go out,
[52:46] Speaker 2: we'd have to come back. So they were just hitting
[52:49] Speaker 2: us left and right and watching from their houses like
[52:53] Speaker 2: which almost made it worse because again, like it was
[52:56] Speaker 2: a it was a battle where there was nobody to fight,
[52:59] Speaker 2: but you just kept getting punched in the face over
[53:02] Speaker 2: and over, and so it really made it so there
[53:05] Speaker 2: was not a lot of victories at first, Like there
[53:08] Speaker 2: wasn't a lot of like cause you know, no one
[53:11] Speaker 2: was giving us missions. Let's say that. No, no, No
[53:13] Speaker 2: higher up was like hey, like there's a mission here.
[53:16] Speaker 2: I want you to go over and do this and
[53:17] Speaker 2: come back. But when we first got there, it was like, oh,
[53:20] Speaker 2: we have to clean up this ao and it's like, okay,
[53:22] Speaker 2: how do we do that? Like that's not usually our
[53:24] Speaker 2: you know, modus operendi. And so we did as best
[53:29] Speaker 2: as we could, I want to say for what we did,
[53:31] Speaker 2: like we would do like knock and talks, like huge
[53:34] Speaker 2: sweeping knock and talks, but again we don't know these,
[53:37] Speaker 2: you know. And again everyone pictures Iraq and I think desert.
[53:41] Speaker 2: We're next to the river. So it was lush, jungle
[53:45] Speaker 2: like and like sucking mud and like it was. It
[53:47] Speaker 2: was a totally different like even like what we trained
[53:49] Speaker 2: in out in California when we went to twenty nine Palms,
[53:52] Speaker 2: nothing like twenty nine palms. It was this muddy, very
[53:57] Speaker 2: moist jungle environment for right next to the river, and
[54:01] Speaker 2: so that we we couldn't catch him, We couldn't do
[54:03] Speaker 2: a whole lot, and so we we we got the
[54:05] Speaker 2: shit beaten out of us for a while. But there
[54:07] Speaker 2: was like a three month stretch.
[54:09] Speaker 1: Uh.
[54:10] Speaker 2: So I wrote the book about my platoon ended up
[54:15] Speaker 2: having about twenty five percent casualty rate. We got hit
[54:19] Speaker 2: a lot with IDs, Like one ID took out five
[54:22] Speaker 2: of our guys a little bit later, and ID took
[54:27] Speaker 2: out my at L and my TL a little bit
[54:30] Speaker 2: let you know. So it was just like it was
[54:32] Speaker 2: just these crazy amounts of I'm sorry, not my my ATL.
[54:35] Speaker 2: My ATL became my TL. It took out one of
[54:37] Speaker 2: my best friends who ended up losing his leg from it,
[54:39] Speaker 2: and MYTL. Uh. And so we were fighting a war
[54:43] Speaker 2: that really wasn't like we weren't getting anywhere because we
[54:46] Speaker 2: didn't know who we were fighting. It was like that
[54:47] Speaker 2: real subterfuge where like they were hiding well enough, but
[54:51] Speaker 2: they blow us up that they were going to come
[54:53] Speaker 2: out and play. And so it was very I think
[54:55] Speaker 2: it was very tough on us. We kind of changed,
[55:00] Speaker 2: I'd say about halfway through where we started baiting them more,
[55:05] Speaker 2: which sounds weird, but like it actually started working where
[55:08] Speaker 2: we actually stripped our trucks down and pretended to be
[55:11] Speaker 2: like a green unit who just got in there, you know,
[55:13] Speaker 2: noe like two heavy guns for five trucks, none of
[55:16] Speaker 2: our like everything stripped down to just basically like you know,
[55:19] Speaker 2: basic bones. And we would go wait out in the
[55:22] Speaker 2: field like we were just like hanging out and they
[55:25] Speaker 2: they would come to us sometimes and that worked a
[55:27] Speaker 2: little better. Or we'd set up we'd leave sniper teams
[55:31] Speaker 2: out and then dry bys and then like they'd follow
[55:33] Speaker 2: us and then the sniper teams think it. So like
[55:35] Speaker 2: eventually we kind of caught on to how we were
[55:37] Speaker 2: gonna be able to do it. But it was definitely
[55:39] Speaker 2: not the training that I think we had been gearing
[55:45] Speaker 2: up for and stuff like that. Like again, like for us,
[55:48] Speaker 2: like most of our stuff with either CQB or Sneaky
[55:52] Speaker 2: Beat shit at nighttime, you never see us, you know,
[55:55] Speaker 2: in out do something and then here we are, middle
[55:58] Speaker 2: of the day, call on boys driving down one lane
[56:02] Speaker 2: roads that have one in, one out like just and
[56:05] Speaker 2: so it was it was a lot different I think
[56:06] Speaker 2: for us than what we were expecting.
[56:09] Speaker 1: Were you guys doing any kind of reconnaissance though, I
[56:12] Speaker 1: mean to try to identify you know, HVT. No like that.
[56:15] Speaker 2: No, compared to how much we trained that way. No,
[56:20] Speaker 2: we were We were like this weird let's say hybrid
[56:23] Speaker 2: unit where we would own aos. So some platoons would
[56:27] Speaker 2: have to go and do like like infantry stuff like Hey,
[56:31] Speaker 2: you're gonna sit in this house for a week and
[56:33] Speaker 2: you're gonna do patrols around it, and then the other
[56:36] Speaker 2: guys would either be on like like a fifteen minute
[56:39] Speaker 2: leash for like SEQ, like taking down somebody, so we
[56:44] Speaker 2: would get this. So we had like these two weird
[56:46] Speaker 2: missions that were like kind of co currently moving where
[56:50] Speaker 2: one two platoon would be out just sitting in a
[56:52] Speaker 2: house knocking talking, and the other platoon would be doing
[56:55] Speaker 2: like a raid on a known guy. Hey the guy
[56:58] Speaker 2: just turned in a cell phone we got five minutes ago,
[57:01] Speaker 2: and we'd be taking off doing that. And so it
[57:03] Speaker 2: was this weird back and forth between the two. And
[57:06] Speaker 2: I think the other bigger problem is it was at
[57:10] Speaker 2: the exact same time that all the other units SF,
[57:14] Speaker 2: the Rangers, Delta, like a lot of them were also
[57:18] Speaker 2: having to kind of turn it. So I remember we
[57:20] Speaker 2: were put on what we were put on a mission
[57:25] Speaker 2: for this. We were waiting for this guy to turn
[57:26] Speaker 2: on his phone. We're gonna do a hard hit. And
[57:29] Speaker 2: we waited three days, fifteen minutes from our you know,
[57:31] Speaker 2: fifteen minute leash full battle rattle, just waiting for him
[57:34] Speaker 2: to turn on his phone. He turns on his phone,
[57:36] Speaker 2: we take off. We get out to the front gate.
[57:38] Speaker 2: They're like, hey, turn around, Delta just did the hit,
[57:42] Speaker 2: so what the fuck? So we turn around and go home.
[57:44] Speaker 2: And then it started happening yeah, yeah, And it started
[57:46] Speaker 2: happening more and more, and then there was this one
[57:49] Speaker 2: mission set where it was it was nutty. It was
[57:51] Speaker 2: literally like the like, hey, you're gonna take your company,
[57:55] Speaker 2: you know, yeah, company, We're gonna take your company. So
[57:59] Speaker 2: it took three platoons up to this place Tartar. It
[58:02] Speaker 2: was like this big, beautiful lake area where they all
[58:04] Speaker 2: had their Saddam all had his lake houses, like their
[58:08] Speaker 2: vacation houses. But we get there and we are within
[58:12] Speaker 2: two clicks of the seals, the Rangers SF and Delta
[58:17] Speaker 2: shows up and everyone's literally asking everyone, hey man, you
[58:21] Speaker 2: got you emissions? Hey man, you got emissions, Like we're
[58:24] Speaker 2: like crackheads trying to look for stuff to do. So
[58:27] Speaker 2: it was just it was the bit like we all
[58:30] Speaker 2: just sat there like are we gonna do anything here?
[58:32] Speaker 2: Like is everyone like? So everyone was just looking for
[58:34] Speaker 2: stuff to do because it wasn't the There wasn't as
[58:38] Speaker 2: much of the thing that I guess we had been
[58:40] Speaker 2: trained up for that we were everyone was expecting.
[58:43] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[58:43] Speaker 2: Uh, they were realizing that it was easier to hit
[58:46] Speaker 2: us and then walk away then have it out with us,
[58:49] Speaker 2: because I mean we for for a platoon and even
[58:52] Speaker 2: like for a five man team, our unit or especially
[58:56] Speaker 2: my platoon, we're carrying more firepower for twenty guys. Most
[59:00] Speaker 2: infant feature infantry battalions were carrying like as far as
[59:04] Speaker 2: like the machine guns and like every like we're loaded out.
[59:06] Speaker 2: We're waiting for a stand up thing and they know it.
[59:10] Speaker 2: So they were just they were just hitting and running us.
[59:12] Speaker 2: For first about seven months. We just got knocked around
[59:16] Speaker 2: like bad.
[59:17] Speaker 1: That story where you said you guys were on a
[59:21] Speaker 1: you know, you were waiting and then getting ready to
[59:23] Speaker 1: go on the mission and then you get the call
[59:25] Speaker 1: that Delta took it is the most recon story ever,
[59:29] Speaker 1: Recon it is the most overworked, underutilized unit, you know,
[59:35] Speaker 1: because because they don't fall under so Calm, a lot
[59:38] Speaker 1: of people don't even really see them, you know, they're
[59:41] Speaker 1: not visible on like the manning charge for SOCOM and
[59:44] Speaker 1: an AO and stuff like that or whatever. They're just
[59:47] Speaker 1: not like if it's like, oh, you have seals and
[59:50] Speaker 1: rangers and all these people that like so Calm is
[59:52] Speaker 1: used to working with, Well, why would they choose the
[59:54] Speaker 1: recon team to go do something when they have all
[59:55] Speaker 1: these other guys that they're they worked with all the time.
[59:59] Speaker 1: That's that's why so many any recon guys go over
[1:00:01] Speaker 1: to like SF when they get out or now it's
[1:00:04] Speaker 1: probably a little different because of MARSK. That helps, you know,
[1:00:08] Speaker 1: because you can transition to that. But man, I always
[1:00:12] Speaker 1: I remember one time on my MEW, on one of
[1:00:15] Speaker 1: my mew's the marine expras train uniforse, I don't know,
[1:00:19] Speaker 1: it's a deployment on ship. The recon guys are just
[1:00:23] Speaker 1: constantly training for what we call go Platt takedowns, you know,
[1:00:27] Speaker 1: these gas and oil platform takedowns and VBSS to visit
[1:00:31] Speaker 1: board search and seizure where they're pulling up next to
[1:00:34] Speaker 1: the boat and taking it over. And actually there was
[1:00:37] Speaker 1: a recon team that did the bagell and Star and
[1:00:41] Speaker 1: they actually got to take down actual pirates off the coast,
[1:00:44] Speaker 1: which is super sick. That's a cool story for them
[1:00:46] Speaker 1: to tell. But however, on my mew there was a
[1:00:49] Speaker 1: boat that needed to be boarded and our recon team
[1:00:51] Speaker 1: got all spun up about it to get ready to
[1:00:54] Speaker 1: do this boarding, and then the Navy commodore was like, nope,
[1:00:57] Speaker 1: We're gonna send in our Navy team, our Navy team
[1:01:00] Speaker 1: and like stood down the marine recon team. I was like, oh,
[1:01:04] Speaker 1: you guys got you guys got overridden by the Navy
[1:01:08] Speaker 1: man like not even a special operations team, not even
[1:01:10] Speaker 1: like seals are just their normal ship team. Because it
[1:01:13] Speaker 1: was like I don't think it was I don't know
[1:01:15] Speaker 1: if it was considered a hostile boarding or not. I
[1:01:17] Speaker 1: don't think it was. But you know, it was just
[1:01:19] Speaker 1: like damn dude, all that training and they never get
[1:01:22] Speaker 1: to do it.
[1:01:23] Speaker 2: You know, I mean that's I I my my friend
[1:01:27] Speaker 2: who just got out of the Raiders. He said that
[1:01:30] Speaker 2: it finally like when they finally got that. I guess
[1:01:32] Speaker 2: they are getting a lot more recognition over there finally
[1:01:36] Speaker 2: in so common stuff because I mean, like the cream
[1:01:39] Speaker 2: of our crop, Like I think that just takes one.
[1:01:43] Speaker 2: I think there's some if you go in the Marine Corps,
[1:01:45] Speaker 2: you're you're a different breed already, like there's just something
[1:01:47] Speaker 2: wrong with you. There's just you're you're a little off.
[1:01:50] Speaker 2: And then like to go up to the special operations
[1:01:53] Speaker 2: of that level, like like I met some guys who
[1:01:56] Speaker 2: just like like they're characters, like they're just so like
[1:02:00] Speaker 2: unreal and like amazing, uh, just indomitable people. And again,
[1:02:05] Speaker 2: but we are usually just stuck onto our own like
[1:02:09] Speaker 2: it's inter Marine Corps, and so it's very hard to
[1:02:12] Speaker 2: get the recognition and it's very hard to get like
[1:02:14] Speaker 2: the like oh that's cute, you know, but like this
[1:02:18] Speaker 2: guy over here, like oh we did so much, like
[1:02:20] Speaker 2: I can't. We shot so much CQB and then I
[1:02:24] Speaker 2: we It was it was sad how little we actually
[1:02:26] Speaker 2: got to use it, and you know how little we
[1:02:29] Speaker 2: actually were out on true reconnaissance stuff where we were
[1:02:33] Speaker 2: doing like we got to do we got we did
[1:02:35] Speaker 2: get to do this one bridge though, where we actually
[1:02:38] Speaker 2: got to do the death thing sounds and stuff, and uh,
[1:02:42] Speaker 2: the water was running way higher and faster than it
[1:02:45] Speaker 2: had been a day before, and it was like an
[1:02:47] Speaker 2: absolute nightmare. But we're like, well, we're in the water,
[1:02:51] Speaker 2: like we're doing what we're supposed to do. Like that
[1:02:54] Speaker 2: was I think the only mission we all felt like.
[1:02:55] Speaker 2: We came home, we're like, recon, we did it. We
[1:02:58] Speaker 2: actually did like a recon mission.
[1:03:00] Speaker 1: We're good.
[1:03:01] Speaker 2: Yeah, we touched water, we were doing it all and
[1:03:03] Speaker 2: they none knew we were there. Everything went well.
[1:03:06] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a bummer for those guys, and they definitely
[1:03:08] Speaker 1: recon should definitely not have their own AO. The whole
[1:03:11] Speaker 1: point is they come in to reinforce a unit, provide
[1:03:14] Speaker 1: this reconnaissance element to a unit, and provide some direct
[1:03:19] Speaker 1: action capabilities if necessary, so to to like take you
[1:03:23] Speaker 1: guys and put you in your own AO like you're
[1:03:25] Speaker 1: a standard infantry battalion. It's such a misuse of your skills.
[1:03:29] Speaker 1: And again, it just you know, it goes back to
[1:03:34] Speaker 1: you know, this is a time before Marsok, you know
[1:03:36] Speaker 1: when you're talking about or maybe Debt one was getting
[1:03:38] Speaker 1: stood up around that time, but recon recon wasn't part
[1:03:42] Speaker 1: of SOCOM, so you know, they weren't getting the missions
[1:03:45] Speaker 1: that they probably should have and and I'll let you finish.
[1:03:48] Speaker 1: But one of the I think I had, I think
[1:03:51] Speaker 1: it was David Walton was on and he was like,
[1:03:54] Speaker 1: what's the hardest you know for a lot of the
[1:03:56] Speaker 1: One of the sayings in the Army is like, what's
[1:03:58] Speaker 1: the hardest part about Army Special Forces selection and the
[1:04:03] Speaker 1: Marine going through your Marine enlistment beforehand? Because there's so
[1:04:06] Speaker 1: many Marines that go from the Marine Corps over to
[1:04:09] Speaker 1: like SF because they're getting a lot of the missions
[1:04:12] Speaker 1: because they've been around for a while, they're well established
[1:04:14] Speaker 1: and stuff like that.
[1:04:17] Speaker 2: It's just and I think it's also wild. So and
[1:04:21] Speaker 2: again I don't know how much this has changed. I
[1:04:24] Speaker 2: was out of two thousand and eight, so it's probably changed.
[1:04:26] Speaker 2: But like the way our officers work was also super
[1:04:30] Speaker 2: wild because you've got these operators who've been in for
[1:04:34] Speaker 2: at this point, I think RIV when he was getting out,
[1:04:36] Speaker 2: my my platoon sergeant, he's been doing this for fourteen
[1:04:40] Speaker 2: fifteen years. He was, you know, forced team leader of
[1:04:43] Speaker 2: the year, probably one of the best shoot like and
[1:04:45] Speaker 2: then he has this boot Marine Corps officer coming in
[1:04:50] Speaker 2: from the Infantry, not recon the Infantry coming over, He's like, oh,
[1:04:55] Speaker 2: I'm your new platoon. You know. Commanders like, that's weird.
[1:04:58] Speaker 1: Don't they At the time, did the officers go through
[1:05:01] Speaker 1: ARS or BRC?
[1:05:03] Speaker 2: So the platoon level did, but our sergeant majors are
[1:05:09] Speaker 2: some of our others didn't, So it depends. Really it
[1:05:12] Speaker 2: seemed like a crapshoot. So I had what end up being,
[1:05:16] Speaker 2: I think again, I just got the luck of the
[1:05:18] Speaker 2: draw some of the best officers I could imagine who
[1:05:22] Speaker 2: and this is who listened to their enlisted counterpart, and
[1:05:27] Speaker 2: you know, because there's this, you know, the super operator
[1:05:29] Speaker 2: who's been doing this for sixteen years and you've never
[1:05:32] Speaker 2: done this and are the best officer I ever had. Literally,
[1:05:37] Speaker 2: his speech was, I'm here to be an umbrella for
[1:05:39] Speaker 2: you guys to keep the the you know, the officers
[1:05:42] Speaker 2: off you guys, and you guys can do your job.
[1:05:44] Speaker 2: He's like, that's my job. I'm not here to plan.
[1:05:47] Speaker 2: You guys, run your team, do the things you're gonna
[1:05:49] Speaker 2: do with you know, your platoon sergeant. I'll just be
[1:05:53] Speaker 2: kind of doing the power points kind of thing. Uh.
[1:05:56] Speaker 2: And it worked. He was our team. That was the
[1:05:59] Speaker 2: first the first appointment, our team. Shit hot. Our platoon
[1:06:03] Speaker 2: was fucking shit hot. Everything ran really really well. We
[1:06:08] Speaker 2: all come home from first deployment, we get an entire
[1:06:11] Speaker 2: new crop. Our sergeant major changes out, so our battalion
[1:06:14] Speaker 2: sergeant major changes out and stuff, and all of a sudden,
[1:06:17] Speaker 2: like haircuts are now important. Like we had a whole
[1:06:20] Speaker 2: we had to stand for three hours because our hair
[1:06:23] Speaker 2: was out of rag and you're just like, what what
[1:06:25] Speaker 2: is going on here? And so it really was like
[1:06:28] Speaker 2: it was like the Marine Corps and Recon were like
[1:06:30] Speaker 2: fighting for like the spirit of it, like they want
[1:06:33] Speaker 2: yut yut uh oh. One of our guys came out
[1:06:36] Speaker 2: and after, you know, he's like, just so you know,
[1:06:38] Speaker 2: you're not special, Like, man, we went through all of
[1:06:42] Speaker 2: this just to be told by you some guy who's
[1:06:44] Speaker 2: ever done it, like we're not special now, Like yeah,
[1:06:47] Speaker 2: So it was it was a wild They didn't know
[1:06:50] Speaker 2: what we were and I don't think they had a
[1:06:53] Speaker 2: clue of how to use us sometimes for all our
[1:06:56] Speaker 2: mission sets.
[1:06:57] Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's I've heard that before, people say
[1:07:00] Speaker 1: that you're not special, Like yeah, I got it, whatever, man, like,
[1:07:03] Speaker 1: but I'm doing a job that you're not doing or
[1:07:05] Speaker 1: other people are incapable of like I don't know, I'm
[1:07:09] Speaker 1: and people will argue about grooming standards and everything else,
[1:07:13] Speaker 1: is you know till the end of the day. I don't.
[1:07:15] Speaker 1: I was never I was never into I had my
[1:07:19] Speaker 1: hands in my pockets constantly. I didn't get my haircut
[1:07:22] Speaker 1: once I became like a sergeant, staff sergeant. Once I
[1:07:26] Speaker 1: became like a staff sergeant, I definitely didn't get my
[1:07:28] Speaker 1: haircut every week. It was like every other week, every
[1:07:31] Speaker 1: week and a half or so, which is crazy. I know,
[1:07:33] Speaker 1: regular people are like, that's like a normal haircut cycle.
[1:07:36] Speaker 1: The Marine Corps, that's that's crazy.
[1:07:37] Speaker 2: It's like every three days you get long hair that
[1:07:40] Speaker 2: grows quitty quick, Like you better be.
[1:07:42] Speaker 1: How dare you show up with hair longer than you know,
[1:07:46] Speaker 1: a millimeter on your neck? But I didn't. All I
[1:07:51] Speaker 1: cared about was like show up and be really good
[1:07:53] Speaker 1: at your job. Like if you that's what I you know,
[1:07:57] Speaker 1: I can. Let's if you you can't. You can't like
[1:08:00] Speaker 1: a field marine, you know where you show up and
[1:08:03] Speaker 1: you you may not have a fresh haircut. You like
[1:08:05] Speaker 1: to keep your hands in your pockets. You got the
[1:08:07] Speaker 1: gunny gunny rolls on your sleeves and stuff like that,
[1:08:10] Speaker 1: and suck at your job. You know what I'm saying, Like,
[1:08:13] Speaker 1: if you if you suck at your job and you're
[1:08:15] Speaker 1: trying to be this like field marine guy, you're you
[1:08:18] Speaker 1: have everything going against you and you're just a piece
[1:08:20] Speaker 1: of shit at this point. But if you show up
[1:08:23] Speaker 1: and you're really good at your job and oh, yeah,
[1:08:25] Speaker 1: you didn't get a haircut for Monday, well I'm gonna
[1:08:27] Speaker 1: probably let's that slide a little bit, like go take
[1:08:29] Speaker 1: care of it. But because you're you're a team, you know,
[1:08:31] Speaker 1: you're good at what you're doing. I don't care about
[1:08:33] Speaker 1: that stuff as much, you know, But the opinions differ,
[1:08:37] Speaker 1: you know, And I understand. I understand that. Like in
[1:08:40] Speaker 1: larger units, like if you're talking about an infantry battalion
[1:08:43] Speaker 1: or like a maintenance regiment or something like that, a
[1:08:47] Speaker 1: logistics regiment, you're talking about a lot of people and
[1:08:52] Speaker 1: you have to set some kind of standard that everyone
[1:08:55] Speaker 1: has to follow, and it becomes a lot of like
[1:08:58] Speaker 1: you know, mass punishment and stuff. But I think as
[1:09:00] Speaker 1: these teams like you were talking about earlier, you know,
[1:09:02] Speaker 1: you guys were training in a small team, you guys
[1:09:04] Speaker 1: are really a small team element. I think when you
[1:09:07] Speaker 1: start getting down to that level and you if the
[1:09:12] Speaker 1: Marine Corps letting you spend millions of dollars or they're
[1:09:15] Speaker 1: spending so much money on your training and doing all
[1:09:17] Speaker 1: these things, like there should be some level of like professionalism,
[1:09:21] Speaker 1: like hey, just come in and do your job. You
[1:09:23] Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like, well.
[1:09:26] Speaker 2: So I got too story. No, no, I got two stories.
[1:09:28] Speaker 2: So we were in Iraq the second time. So the
[1:09:32] Speaker 2: first deployment, I will say this again, all I couldn't
[1:09:35] Speaker 2: ask for a better officers or anything. They let we
[1:09:38] Speaker 2: were getting hit all the time, we were fighting all
[1:09:40] Speaker 2: the time. They let everything go, like unless you were
[1:09:43] Speaker 2: doing something really dumb whatever. The second deployment, nothing was happening.
[1:09:47] Speaker 2: Like I said, like they were just they were smart
[1:09:49] Speaker 2: enough now that they realized they can't. If they just
[1:09:52] Speaker 2: stop fighting us, we'll leave, you know, the politicians will
[1:09:55] Speaker 2: get us out of there. So they stopped fighting us.
[1:09:57] Speaker 2: So then it became like the beer bureaucrats start like
[1:10:01] Speaker 2: taking over again and all of a sudden, so we're
[1:10:03] Speaker 2: out on a three week ofpuh basically just camping out
[1:10:07] Speaker 2: of our trucks for three weeks whatever, doing it was
[1:10:11] Speaker 2: like two sniper op's that were rotating and then like
[1:10:14] Speaker 2: another patrol thing. So we're like two and a half
[1:10:17] Speaker 2: weeks into this and all of a sudden, like, oh,
[1:10:20] Speaker 2: we're getting a visit from uh, you know, your your
[1:10:24] Speaker 2: battalion sergeant major or I forgot who it was, but
[1:10:27] Speaker 2: we're like, all right, cool. So he shows up and
[1:10:30] Speaker 2: he's just red faced, and we're like, what's going on
[1:10:34] Speaker 2: all of a sudden, like they're talking about relieving some
[1:10:36] Speaker 2: of our platoon sergeants and our officers and what is
[1:10:38] Speaker 2: going on. We hadn't shaved in two and a half weeks,
[1:10:42] Speaker 2: and it was like and this is like we are
[1:10:44] Speaker 2: caked and dust. We are like it is the most
[1:10:47] Speaker 2: unsanitary like and you're just like I get it. I
[1:10:50] Speaker 2: go back to base camp, you know, I go back
[1:10:51] Speaker 2: to Camfualoojah. I'll shave first right off the bat I'll
[1:10:54] Speaker 2: take a shower because I want to, you know. But
[1:10:56] Speaker 2: like we're literally like but that's all. That was all
[1:10:59] Speaker 2: they gave a shit about. Like at that point, there's
[1:11:01] Speaker 2: like this is this is Asen nine, like that, this
[1:11:04] Speaker 2: is where your priorities are at this point in time.
[1:11:06] Speaker 1: In the middle of a war. Yeah, yeah, I remember, yea.
[1:11:10] Speaker 1: I remember being in Sanging on my advisor team and
[1:11:14] Speaker 1: we were the last advisor team in Singing, and uh,
[1:11:18] Speaker 1: this is in Afghanistan and we had third Battalion, fourth
[1:11:22] Speaker 1: Marines there on our base with us, our FOB with us,
[1:11:27] Speaker 1: and they because we were the last advisor team. The
[1:11:30] Speaker 1: whole point was that the Afghan Army was supposed to
[1:11:33] Speaker 1: be taking over this area and there was supposed to
[1:11:36] Speaker 1: be a limited American presence. So the three four didn't
[1:11:40] Speaker 1: really have a lot to do. They were never leaving base.
[1:11:44] Speaker 1: They were It was a lot of just sitting around, honestly,
[1:11:47] Speaker 1: and it wasn't It sucked for him because the whole
[1:11:50] Speaker 1: point was they didn't want Americans going out, you know,
[1:11:52] Speaker 1: they wanted the Afghans to take over. And but my
[1:11:56] Speaker 1: advisor team would go out all the time with the Afghans,
[1:11:59] Speaker 1: like we were at out constantly. We were still doing
[1:12:02] Speaker 1: missions and stuff like that with these guys. And I
[1:12:04] Speaker 1: remember the company Gunny or something from three to four,
[1:12:07] Speaker 1: one of the companies that was with us came over
[1:12:11] Speaker 1: and was like, you guys need to you guys need
[1:12:13] Speaker 1: to have someone start pulling weeds and blah blah blah.
[1:12:16] Speaker 1: We're doing like area beautification and we're like, oh, we're not, dude,
[1:12:20] Speaker 1: Like we have other priorities, you know, like this, you
[1:12:23] Speaker 1: guys can do area beautification and do police call and
[1:12:26] Speaker 1: all that, Like, what are you talking about? We're going
[1:12:29] Speaker 1: on an operation tomorrow with the Afghans, Like we're not.
[1:12:32] Speaker 1: That is not of our concern right now. And it's
[1:12:35] Speaker 1: it's just weird, like when you get to that kind
[1:12:38] Speaker 1: of point in a deployment or in a war or
[1:12:41] Speaker 1: whatever where that becomes like a priority, you know what
[1:12:44] Speaker 1: I'm saying, where guys are not going on guys, none
[1:12:47] Speaker 1: of these guys are going on operations. Sometimes we'd have
[1:12:50] Speaker 1: them if it was like a if we were expecting
[1:12:52] Speaker 1: like a bigger operation with the Afghans. Sometimes we'd have
[1:12:55] Speaker 1: three four stand up a QRF and have those guys
[1:12:58] Speaker 1: ready to go. But we never called them. We never
[1:13:01] Speaker 1: called on them or anything like that. So it's just
[1:13:03] Speaker 1: like what you were saying, it becomes more garrison, you
[1:13:06] Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Like it's just like, I don't
[1:13:09] Speaker 1: know what the fact that we got to that point,
[1:13:13] Speaker 1: it was just crazy. You know. That was one of
[1:13:14] Speaker 1: those wars where both Iraq and Afghanistan where it became
[1:13:19] Speaker 1: like the deployments were like, oh, this is how we
[1:13:22] Speaker 1: always do it, you know, like of course, the we're
[1:13:23] Speaker 1: deploying next year because why not. You know. There was
[1:13:26] Speaker 1: no like what are we doing to end this? You know,
[1:13:29] Speaker 1: we're just deploying.
[1:13:30] Speaker 2: In the right way or yeah what I mean like
[1:13:33] Speaker 2: we were we were helping training at one point, we
[1:13:35] Speaker 2: were helping train Iraqis.
[1:13:36] Speaker 1: Uh.
[1:13:37] Speaker 2: We went with uh. We did one mission with the
[1:13:39] Speaker 2: Iraqi Special Forces, who were amazing, Like those those are
[1:13:43] Speaker 2: some hard dudes.
[1:13:44] Speaker 1: Uh.
[1:13:45] Speaker 2: But the rest of them I remember like they wanted
[1:13:47] Speaker 2: they were talking to like they wanted nothing to do
[1:13:49] Speaker 2: with missions or doing anything. Like they were like, yeah, stay,
[1:13:53] Speaker 2: don't ever leave. You're like, oh no, this is this
[1:13:56] Speaker 2: is not where we want to be at this point.
[1:13:58] Speaker 1: Yeah. Well yeah, yeah we had that too. I mean
[1:14:01] Speaker 1: you definitely had Like the Afghans. Honestly, it became uncomfortable
[1:14:06] Speaker 1: sometimes because we'd have to explain to them why we
[1:14:08] Speaker 1: couldn't help them, because hey, this is this is your
[1:14:12] Speaker 1: fight now, No we can't bring They're telling me I'm
[1:14:15] Speaker 1: the I'm the you know conduit for this. I'm sitting
[1:14:19] Speaker 1: here talking to the Afghan sergeant or a first sergeant saying, sorry,
[1:14:23] Speaker 1: we can't bring in a METAVAC helicopter for your guys
[1:14:26] Speaker 1: because they want you guys to exercise your METAVAC capabilities.
[1:14:30] Speaker 1: You know, we had a guy shot in the stomach
[1:14:32] Speaker 1: and Afghan I think I can't remember for the soldier
[1:14:35] Speaker 1: a police officer shot in the stomach, and they were like, no,
[1:14:38] Speaker 1: we're not bringing in a bird for him, like you
[1:14:40] Speaker 1: guys got a metavac him, and that metavac meant driving
[1:14:42] Speaker 1: from I think, saying to like lost car God, which
[1:14:45] Speaker 1: was like, I believe over an hour hum V trip.
[1:14:49] Speaker 1: You know, he's gonna ride in the back of a
[1:14:50] Speaker 1: hum V on these roads for an hour. And I
[1:14:54] Speaker 1: was just like, this is so fucked up, man, Like
[1:14:56] Speaker 1: I get it. I know what we're trying to do here,
[1:14:58] Speaker 1: but imagine tell on that to these guys and then
[1:15:01] Speaker 1: having to go back to work with them. You know
[1:15:03] Speaker 1: what I'm saying. They're like they would get very upset,
[1:15:06] Speaker 1: like if we were trying to help them out or
[1:15:08] Speaker 1: or they wanted us to help, and then we wouldn't
[1:15:11] Speaker 1: do something or we couldn't do something because I told
[1:15:14] Speaker 1: a lot of people. You know, a lot of people
[1:15:16] Speaker 1: shit on them, the Afghans, and some of the Afghan
[1:15:20] Speaker 1: soldiers like oh, you know, they're they're no good or
[1:15:22] Speaker 1: they don't want to be here, and it's like, yeah, dude,
[1:15:24] Speaker 1: we do our seven month deployment or a year deployment,
[1:15:27] Speaker 1: depend on what kind of unit you're with, and then
[1:15:28] Speaker 1: we go home, you know, and then we get time off,
[1:15:30] Speaker 1: we can handle our family and go on vacation and
[1:15:33] Speaker 1: then do some more training and it maybe come back.
[1:15:35] Speaker 1: These dudes live here, like saying it is one of
[1:15:38] Speaker 1: the worst places in this country, and these guys are
[1:15:41] Speaker 1: stationed here, this is their base, and they're out here
[1:15:44] Speaker 1: every day dealing with the Taliban and foreign fighters and
[1:15:48] Speaker 1: local you know fighters, and like, of course, after a
[1:15:51] Speaker 1: while they're like fuck this, you know, like wouldn't you
[1:15:54] Speaker 1: if you were fighting every day and you're like, dude,
[1:15:57] Speaker 1: you know, every week someone's getting blown up or something
[1:15:59] Speaker 1: like that. After a while, it's like, nah, so I
[1:16:03] Speaker 1: had some sympathy for the Afghan fighters, but yeah, I
[1:16:09] Speaker 1: don't know how we went down that tangent. Oh the
[1:16:12] Speaker 1: garrison talk, but yeah, so when it gets garrison, like,
[1:16:14] Speaker 1: it's just like we should be questioning what we're doing,
[1:16:17] Speaker 1: you know, especially with.
[1:16:18] Speaker 2: Some of the units we were, you know, going there,
[1:16:20] Speaker 2: like can these not be better used elsewhere? Can we
[1:16:24] Speaker 2: not you know, have have people you know doing the
[1:16:27] Speaker 2: job or like cause again, like the Iraqis did not
[1:16:31] Speaker 2: want I think Afghanistan there was a little more, but
[1:16:34] Speaker 2: Iraq didn't seem to have almost any like we we
[1:16:38] Speaker 2: were a part of. They resigned in mass when we
[1:16:41] Speaker 2: said we were leaving. They just feel like we're done.
[1:16:43] Speaker 2: You're just like, what do you mean You're done? But
[1:16:45] Speaker 2: like yeah, we're just not gonna do this anymore, Like
[1:16:47] Speaker 2: oh god, this is like well, this is gonna be
[1:16:49] Speaker 2: tough for you guys because we're not gonna be here.
[1:16:51] Speaker 1: Like that's kind of what happened with Afghanistan too, you know,
[1:16:55] Speaker 1: after that last unit pulled out, all the all the
[1:16:58] Speaker 1: whole country basically folded than a few days because the
[1:17:01] Speaker 1: Afghan soldiers are like like what, like, we're gonna fight
[1:17:04] Speaker 1: these guys and by ourselves, you know, like I have
[1:17:07] Speaker 1: one magazine of AMMO and my pay hasn't gotten to
[1:17:09] Speaker 1: me in two weeks. You know, like what are you
[1:17:11] Speaker 1: talking about? I have no food?
[1:17:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it was I was a lose lose situation
[1:17:16] Speaker 2: kind of I hate to say for everybody, but like
[1:17:18] Speaker 2: there was no there was no good endgame where because
[1:17:21] Speaker 2: as as far as again, I could just go for Iraq.
[1:17:24] Speaker 2: Like a lot of them didn't understand. And this is
[1:17:27] Speaker 2: what I try to tell people, Like they didn't understand
[1:17:30] Speaker 2: what Iraq was. If you talk about the United States
[1:17:32] Speaker 2: in defending the United States, I feel like everyone in
[1:17:35] Speaker 2: the United States can understand that, Like fuck yeah, I'm
[1:17:37] Speaker 2: gonna go defend our country. And I remember how many
[1:17:40] Speaker 2: talks we had because I was a part of the
[1:17:42] Speaker 2: Intel thing and I got to do a lot of
[1:17:43] Speaker 2: the interviews, and you know at the end, you're just
[1:17:46] Speaker 2: kind of bullshit and you're just like, oh, so, like
[1:17:48] Speaker 2: so what is your world, Like what do you see
[1:17:51] Speaker 2: as your world? And they're like, oh, it's me, my
[1:17:54] Speaker 2: immediate family, my extended family, and that's it. There is
[1:17:58] Speaker 2: no Iraq, there is no or or they're like their
[1:18:00] Speaker 2: clan or their tribe, but that's it. That's where it ends.
[1:18:04] Speaker 2: And they're like, I don't understand what this Iraq you
[1:18:06] Speaker 2: keep talking about is compared to like what we viewed
[1:18:09] Speaker 2: in the United States. Like they didn't give a shit,
[1:18:12] Speaker 2: like if it was outside like for us, like if
[1:18:14] Speaker 2: it was outside the Zidon, they didn't care. They could
[1:18:17] Speaker 2: they could have Carrid if the rest of Iraq burned
[1:18:18] Speaker 2: to the ground, so long as they had their you know,
[1:18:21] Speaker 2: their fields, and they were good like so it's very
[1:18:24] Speaker 2: hard to get them to be like, don't you have
[1:18:25] Speaker 2: a sense of like you know, national pride. And they're like,
[1:18:28] Speaker 2: what's that? You know, like we've we've been under dictators
[1:18:30] Speaker 2: our entire lives, Like we've been murdered by our dictators.
[1:18:34] Speaker 2: Pretty much because he was some of the wild stories
[1:18:37] Speaker 2: we would get from some of these guys. One guy
[1:18:38] Speaker 2: brought out a book and he had this like picture
[1:18:40] Speaker 2: book of all the battles that have happened at his
[1:18:43] Speaker 2: house with Saddam's forces and then these other guys and
[1:18:47] Speaker 2: then like you know, foreign fighters. And he was one
[1:18:50] Speaker 2: of the nicest dudes I ever met, but like he
[1:18:52] Speaker 2: was like, you guys don't understand, Like like I'm just here,
[1:18:54] Speaker 2: this is my house. I'm just gonna fight whoever comes in,
[1:18:58] Speaker 2: and this is the only thing I'm going to defend.
[1:18:59] Speaker 2: You're just like, yeah, there's gonna be a problem here.
[1:19:01] Speaker 2: A little later on, when we were like, hey, it's
[1:19:03] Speaker 2: your country, now go for it. And they're like, yeah,
[1:19:05] Speaker 2: we don't. We don't understand that concept nearly to the
[1:19:09] Speaker 2: extent of the United States and most other countries do.
[1:19:12] Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I think that's like that same with Afghanistan.
[1:19:15] Speaker 1: Very much tribal. You know, they don't know what's going
[1:19:17] Speaker 1: on two valleys over or whatever, or they don't care,
[1:19:20] Speaker 1: you know, like they don't.
[1:19:22] Speaker 2: Care, like they're just like whatever, keep me out of it.
[1:19:24] Speaker 2: Let me just have my you know, my little plot,
[1:19:26] Speaker 2: and I'm good.
[1:19:27] Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's why, you know, some of the tactics
[1:19:31] Speaker 1: that we use to try to change a country into
[1:19:34] Speaker 1: a democracy or whatever you want to say, don't really
[1:19:37] Speaker 1: pan out because, like you said, they have no reason,
[1:19:39] Speaker 1: Like what are you talking about national unity? Like I
[1:19:42] Speaker 1: don't know. You know, like an Afghan from Helman is
[1:19:46] Speaker 1: much different than one from a whole another area and
[1:19:49] Speaker 1: you know that's a farming village, villages and stuff like that.
[1:19:52] Speaker 1: You go up in like northern Afghanistan, it's more like
[1:19:54] Speaker 1: mountains and these guys same thing, farming villages, but they're
[1:19:57] Speaker 1: like now in mountain mountainous areas and things. It's like
[1:20:01] Speaker 1: and the clans are different, the tribes are different. Some
[1:20:04] Speaker 1: of them have beef that's gone back way, you know,
[1:20:06] Speaker 1: like forever. Yeah, you're not gonna unify that. You know,
[1:20:10] Speaker 1: there's not really much you can do there. So when
[1:20:13] Speaker 1: you so, after you finished this deployment, I mean, did
[1:20:16] Speaker 1: you did you? Did you guys try to bring back
[1:20:19] Speaker 1: some lessons learned to the other Marines at Second recon
[1:20:21] Speaker 1: or the other reconnaissance units.
[1:20:23] Speaker 2: Oh yeah, So like we had a we had a
[1:20:26] Speaker 2: violent shift of of So I come back from first deployment.
[1:20:32] Speaker 2: We basically I finally got to my pipeline of I
[1:20:37] Speaker 2: went to jump school. I came back. I was SLATERD
[1:20:41] Speaker 2: for Ranger School that got kanked, and then I went
[1:20:43] Speaker 2: right to Sniper school. So in a very short amount
[1:20:46] Speaker 2: of time, I was supposed to do go all three
[1:20:47] Speaker 2: schools back to back to back. Uh, but I ended
[1:20:50] Speaker 2: up just going to Jumping Sniper. And so when we
[1:20:54] Speaker 2: got back from sniper.
[1:20:55] Speaker 1: Oh, real quick, which which sniper school?
[1:20:57] Speaker 2: Did you go to Stone Bay in Lejune?
[1:21:00] Speaker 1: How was that? Tell us about sniper school?
[1:21:02] Speaker 2: Oh, sniper school. It was. It was one of the
[1:21:06] Speaker 2: hardest but most fun things I've ever had. Like, uh,
[1:21:10] Speaker 2: It's funny because he Parker. If you look at the
[1:21:16] Speaker 2: Discovery Channel and you look at the like the becoming
[1:21:19] Speaker 2: a sniper in the Marine Corps, uh staff Sergeant Parker
[1:21:22] Speaker 2: was the one who's running the like the hour long special.
[1:21:26] Speaker 2: He was my class commander in my class, and I
[1:21:30] Speaker 2: watched that thing laugh in my ass off because he
[1:21:32] Speaker 2: was the funniest most He almost got kicked out for
[1:21:35] Speaker 2: just fooling around and being like not serious, and then
[1:21:38] Speaker 2: he's on the Discovery Channel being like this hard ass,
[1:21:40] Speaker 2: which I just I love. Like we as a class,
[1:21:43] Speaker 2: like I wish I would have prepped. They they thought
[1:21:47] Speaker 2: we were just a different breed. We were just the
[1:21:50] Speaker 2: strangest class because like uh they they hated recon at
[1:21:56] Speaker 2: the time. They did not like so for sniper school
[1:22:01] Speaker 2: at Stone Bay, they had one recon sniper instructor and
[1:22:04] Speaker 2: then like three infantry stay guys. The one guy who
[1:22:09] Speaker 2: was there was an absolute shit bird and had been
[1:22:12] Speaker 2: put there I got found out later because he was
[1:22:15] Speaker 2: a shipbird to get him out of the way, just
[1:22:17] Speaker 2: kind of like to push him out of the teams.
[1:22:19] Speaker 2: He didn't deploy after Yeah, and he didn't help us
[1:22:24] Speaker 2: fucking at all, Like so cause the way he was
[1:22:27] Speaker 2: explained to me, they're like, oh yeah, so like you'll
[1:22:29] Speaker 2: have a recon guy there in case you have questions,
[1:22:32] Speaker 2: and like he'll be able to kind of like help
[1:22:33] Speaker 2: you and like take you guys aside and stuff. He
[1:22:36] Speaker 2: did none of that. He didn't give a shit. I
[1:22:37] Speaker 2: didn't see him most of the time, which was fine
[1:22:39] Speaker 2: by me. I ended up really really loving the other instructors.
[1:22:44] Speaker 2: We got along really well. I ended up becoming an
[1:22:46] Speaker 2: honor grad, which was its own fun little contest. There
[1:22:51] Speaker 2: was me and Parker. I don't know what he got
[1:22:54] Speaker 2: up to, but we were going tit for tat like
[1:22:58] Speaker 2: for and so like. It was like they said, it
[1:23:00] Speaker 2: was the most fun they had at sniper school, which
[1:23:02] Speaker 2: I know is not supposed to be a fun thing.
[1:23:04] Speaker 2: But we worked our asses off, like but we we
[1:23:08] Speaker 2: never made it where we weren't laughing while we were
[1:23:10] Speaker 2: doing it, and so like we had a great our
[1:23:14] Speaker 2: attrition rate that said, it was usually better than most.
[1:23:16] Speaker 2: We were very helpful. We'd stay after. I actually lived
[1:23:21] Speaker 2: about five minutes from where we were training Stone Bay,
[1:23:24] Speaker 2: like outside the in the in town. So like I
[1:23:28] Speaker 2: would get up in the morning like drink my coffee
[1:23:30] Speaker 2: at seven, like driving this like you know, and so
[1:23:33] Speaker 2: most of the guys were staying there. But because we
[1:23:36] Speaker 2: I was a sergeant at the time, I got to
[1:23:40] Speaker 2: drive in and it was like like a gentleman's course.
[1:23:42] Speaker 2: It was like a you know, you got there at eight.
[1:23:44] Speaker 2: We did some some mission stuff, but for the most part,
[1:23:47] Speaker 2: it was like it was way more classroom time than
[1:23:50] Speaker 2: people imagine, Like it was so much classroom time learning physics,
[1:23:56] Speaker 2: learning every part of that gun in and out, like
[1:23:59] Speaker 2: and we'd we took tests like we took no joke
[1:24:02] Speaker 2: fucking book tests where guys were failing out left and right,
[1:24:06] Speaker 2: just on the academic side, which is I guess when
[1:24:09] Speaker 2: people like picture it, that's never the thing they think
[1:24:12] Speaker 2: it's gonna knock people out of sniper school. Shooting was
[1:24:16] Speaker 2: the easiest part. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but
[1:24:19] Speaker 2: like they taught you how to shoot. We shot so much,
[1:24:23] Speaker 2: and so by the end, like you're a very proficient shooter,
[1:24:26] Speaker 2: and that is a skill that you could always make
[1:24:28] Speaker 2: better just with practice. The soft skills, though, were it.
[1:24:32] Speaker 2: Stalking was one of the most fun hardest things I
[1:24:37] Speaker 2: think I've ever done in my entire life where a
[1:24:41] Speaker 2: lot of guys like I grew up in the woods,
[1:24:43] Speaker 2: New Hampshire, I lived in the White Mountains, like I
[1:24:45] Speaker 2: grew up as a bumpkin in the woods twenty four
[1:24:48] Speaker 2: to seven, you know, in camouflage. So like this was
[1:24:51] Speaker 2: my like playground and I really enjoyed it. And so
[1:24:55] Speaker 2: even when it was suck for me, I think I
[1:24:56] Speaker 2: really enjoyed it more than some of the guys who
[1:24:59] Speaker 2: were not used to that kind of stuff. But again,
[1:25:02] Speaker 2: it was one of those courses that like here's the
[1:25:04] Speaker 2: here's the line, just get past it. Like you know,
[1:25:07] Speaker 2: it's very it's very drawn out. They're not trying to
[1:25:10] Speaker 2: kick you out. They want you to succeed if you
[1:25:12] Speaker 2: can succeed. But guys, guys are getting drop left and
[1:25:15] Speaker 2: right for stalking, shooting. God academics crushed most of them.
[1:25:23] Speaker 2: But our class was so so tight, like our I
[1:25:26] Speaker 2: would say, our upper thirty percent of our class. There
[1:25:29] Speaker 2: was a group of us. Uh. We had we made
[1:25:32] Speaker 2: our own company. Our little guide on that was this
[1:25:35] Speaker 2: giant pink flag that we carried everywhere with rural tassels
[1:25:39] Speaker 2: of color that said uh athletes not athletes, uh. And
[1:25:44] Speaker 2: like we were just we were just a wild, fun
[1:25:46] Speaker 2: group and everyone academically, like we would actually have study
[1:25:50] Speaker 2: sessions after school was out, Like we made sure that
[1:25:53] Speaker 2: like everyone who wanted to like got what they needed.
[1:25:57] Speaker 2: And so it was. It was definitely one of the
[1:25:59] Speaker 2: most challenging school as far as academically, Like Ricon has
[1:26:04] Speaker 2: a lot of academics that guys can fail out on,
[1:26:07] Speaker 2: but Sniper School it was you you had to know
[1:26:10] Speaker 2: your shit, and it was like the Kim's games where
[1:26:13] Speaker 2: we would I remember that they we were in the
[1:26:17] Speaker 2: middle of a classroom or we're learning something about something
[1:26:21] Speaker 2: and all of a sudden they just run into like
[1:26:23] Speaker 2: everyone into the shower and everyone runs into the gang shower.
[1:26:27] Speaker 2: They have Metallica playing, and I mean like when I
[1:26:30] Speaker 2: say full blast, I mean like way too loud. They're
[1:26:33] Speaker 2: flicking the lights on and off, and there's the ten
[1:26:36] Speaker 2: items in the box and you had thirty seconds with
[1:26:39] Speaker 2: the lights flash and Metallica going, and you're you know,
[1:26:42] Speaker 2: you're trying to memorize everything, you know, color size, everything
[1:26:45] Speaker 2: about it, and they're like, all right, get back. It
[1:26:48] Speaker 2: was two days before they asked us the questions on
[1:26:51] Speaker 2: that Kim's game. It was it was wild it was.
[1:26:54] Speaker 2: It was so much. Again, it was so hard, but
[1:26:56] Speaker 2: it was so rewarding and fun on the other end,
[1:27:00] Speaker 2: Like I laughed a lot more in that course, so
[1:27:02] Speaker 2: everything I did in the schoolhouse at Recon just because
[1:27:04] Speaker 2: like there was a lot of time where they were
[1:27:08] Speaker 2: teaching you a lot more. I feel like Recon was
[1:27:10] Speaker 2: testing you. Yeah, uh, teaching a little, testing you a lot.
[1:27:13] Speaker 2: Sniper School was a lot of teaching moments and then
[1:27:16] Speaker 2: they would test. But like so it was, it was,
[1:27:19] Speaker 2: it was very rewarding. But I guess I was very
[1:27:22] Speaker 2: surprised how little shooting was the thing that was knocking
[1:27:24] Speaker 2: guys out, because again everyone thinks sniper's just about shooting,
[1:27:27] Speaker 2: but that was the thing that like once you get
[1:27:29] Speaker 2: on the range, like that wasn't the bad thing. It
[1:27:31] Speaker 2: was definitely the other stuff was killing us a lot more.
[1:27:35] Speaker 2: But we were a super tight class. I had a
[1:27:36] Speaker 2: great time. Uh I ended up uh getting on our
[1:27:40] Speaker 2: grad our final X was the funniest like thing. Like
[1:27:44] Speaker 2: if you we wrote our reports, we wrote our operations
[1:27:48] Speaker 2: reports and our everything, and if you didn't list it
[1:27:51] Speaker 2: in your operations, like you didn't get it. So if
[1:27:54] Speaker 2: you didn't put shoelaces they took your shoelaces you didn't
[1:27:57] Speaker 2: put like so we had guys who wrote down like
[1:27:59] Speaker 2: three p a chewing gum and they were like eating
[1:28:01] Speaker 2: chewing gum and like so it was just a wild,
[1:28:03] Speaker 2: fun group. Like they they hazed the ship out of us,
[1:28:07] Speaker 2: but they didn't break a lot of us. So I think,
[1:28:10] Speaker 2: like they said later on, like our group did very
[1:28:13] Speaker 2: well together and just having fun and like it was.
[1:28:17] Speaker 2: It was definitely not I listened. I will say this,
[1:28:20] Speaker 2: I've listened to some of the older snipers I would
[1:28:23] Speaker 2: say a generation before me, and they had some times
[1:28:27] Speaker 2: that just like that was that was different, Like they
[1:28:30] Speaker 2: were hazed and they were it was bad. So I
[1:28:33] Speaker 2: think I got a different flavor than some people do.
[1:28:37] Speaker 2: And for me it was it was a lot of fun.
[1:28:39] Speaker 2: I loved it. It was actually the thing. It was
[1:28:40] Speaker 2: the thing when I joined the military that I think
[1:28:44] Speaker 2: I wanted the most, because when I went three eleven,
[1:28:49] Speaker 2: I was my plan was to try out for like
[1:28:51] Speaker 2: a staple tune, go to sniper school. That was my
[1:28:54] Speaker 2: my whole thing, That's what I wanted to do. So
[1:28:56] Speaker 2: this was like kind of awesome because it was like
[1:29:00] Speaker 2: I got to do I got to do it all.
[1:29:01] Speaker 2: I got to do CQB, I got to do sniper,
[1:29:03] Speaker 2: I got to do a lot of that stuff and
[1:29:05] Speaker 2: so it it was awesome. And then uh, when I
[1:29:07] Speaker 2: actually got so then we get to Iraq. To answer
[1:29:10] Speaker 2: your question about what did we do different, So we
[1:29:13] Speaker 2: finish up sniper school, I get out and it's time
[1:29:17] Speaker 2: to pick weaponry for Iraq for our next run out.
[1:29:21] Speaker 2: So to put it in perspective, like how how our
[1:29:24] Speaker 2: platoon was running for four teams we had four h No,
[1:29:28] Speaker 2: we had six snipers for four teams, so we had
[1:29:31] Speaker 2: two teams with two snipers. My team had one sniper
[1:29:36] Speaker 2: and so but like we were running like you know,
[1:29:37] Speaker 2: five man groups with almost every group every group had
[1:29:40] Speaker 2: a sniper, every group had a heavy machine gun, every
[1:29:42] Speaker 2: group had you know, we were just bristling with stuff
[1:29:46] Speaker 2: and we did a lot more. The second time, we
[1:29:52] Speaker 2: we stopped patrolling as much. We walked everywhere. The second time,
[1:29:55] Speaker 2: I we would I have some one of the pictures
[1:29:58] Speaker 2: I sent you, Like I had a black Hawk rock
[1:30:02] Speaker 2: I bought because I had the Sasser, the fifty cal sniper,
[1:30:04] Speaker 2: the Barrett fifty cow that was what I picked as
[1:30:06] Speaker 2: my thing. So my pig had a Stoner the semi
[1:30:11] Speaker 2: automatic sniper rifle silence, So we would basically set up
[1:30:16] Speaker 2: side by side where he was in my outside of
[1:30:18] Speaker 2: my cone of blowback. But we were like anti vehicle,
[1:30:22] Speaker 2: anti personnel, and we did a whole lot more. Now
[1:30:27] Speaker 2: we had data. Now we had a lot more idea
[1:30:29] Speaker 2: of what they were gonna do. So now we're doing
[1:30:31] Speaker 2: counter ied stuff. So now we're getting back into that
[1:30:34] Speaker 2: kind of recon like idea of Okay, they're going to
[1:30:38] Speaker 2: try to blow us up, so let's get guys at these.
[1:30:41] Speaker 2: So Intel started making us these awesome masks with like Okay,
[1:30:44] Speaker 2: this is where all the IDs are happening, this is
[1:30:47] Speaker 2: where this is happening. And so there was a lot
[1:30:49] Speaker 2: more proactive rather than reactive, Like we weren't just driving
[1:30:54] Speaker 2: around looking for trouble. We were very specifically sitting in
[1:30:58] Speaker 2: places like we spent god, we spent seven days looking
[1:31:04] Speaker 2: through a hole in the wall, one brick. We'd take
[1:31:07] Speaker 2: on one brick through a sniper rifle. Me and my
[1:31:09] Speaker 2: I mean my Marston, Lance Marston going back and forth
[1:31:14] Speaker 2: just looking through that thing for a week, waiting for
[1:31:16] Speaker 2: because there was a break that they knew that they
[1:31:18] Speaker 2: were gonna come through. Uh, So it was a lot
[1:31:20] Speaker 2: more thoughtful. It was we stopped driving around everywhere. We
[1:31:25] Speaker 2: stopped like we drove everywhere the first deployment, and we
[1:31:29] Speaker 2: just got hit out all the time. So the set like,
[1:31:32] Speaker 2: I remember.
[1:31:32] Speaker 1: Were you in the same area? Were you in the
[1:31:34] Speaker 1: same area?
[1:31:34] Speaker 2: Yeah, went back to the side on. Yep, we went
[1:31:36] Speaker 2: back to the zide on. So so for it was
[1:31:39] Speaker 2: actually super helpful for the veterans WO had already been
[1:31:44] Speaker 2: over because one thing that we found, especially the first
[1:31:48] Speaker 2: and what was shocking for the first time, is we
[1:31:52] Speaker 2: had all this great aerial photography of the area that
[1:31:55] Speaker 2: was five years old. In five years, you are not
[1:31:59] Speaker 2: looking at the same thing for sure. So all of
[1:32:01] Speaker 2: a sudden like okay, we're gonna cross this bridge, we're
[1:32:03] Speaker 2: gonna set up in this house. There wasn't a bridge
[1:32:06] Speaker 2: and there wasn't a house. So we're running around at
[1:32:09] Speaker 2: two in the morning looking for someplace to hide because
[1:32:12] Speaker 2: sun's coming up and we're in the middle of like
[1:32:14] Speaker 2: you know, pretty open stuff. So there was one mission
[1:32:16] Speaker 2: where we laid literally laid in. One guy laid in
[1:32:21] Speaker 2: dry well, one guy laid like in a fetal position
[1:32:24] Speaker 2: in a box, like just waiting for darkness again, because
[1:32:27] Speaker 2: for miles you could see just flat out. So we
[1:32:30] Speaker 2: got caught out because what was on the maps was
[1:32:33] Speaker 2: not what was on the uh on the ground at all.
[1:32:38] Speaker 2: And so a lot of our first appointment was like
[1:32:40] Speaker 2: realizing that we couldn't trust our intel as far as
[1:32:43] Speaker 2: like what we were looking at, and so we had
[1:32:46] Speaker 2: to like make up a lot. So when we went
[1:32:48] Speaker 2: back the second time, a lot of the guys who
[1:32:50] Speaker 2: had been there we knew, like I could have walked
[1:32:54] Speaker 2: blind on some of the fucking curves in the road
[1:32:56] Speaker 2: and stuff, because I knew where everything finally sat, Like
[1:32:59] Speaker 2: I was pointing man the first the first time, and
[1:33:01] Speaker 2: I ended up becoming atl when everyone got blowed up.
[1:33:05] Speaker 2: So but I had taken all that stuff from being
[1:33:08] Speaker 2: point man, and I remember where everything sat on the
[1:33:11] Speaker 2: map in my head. So well, now all of a sudden,
[1:33:13] Speaker 2: like it flipped over where we got to be a
[1:33:15] Speaker 2: lot more. I'm gonna wait right here, knowing that there's
[1:33:19] Speaker 2: only a few places they're gonna put this id if
[1:33:21] Speaker 2: they're gonna try to put it down or do this
[1:33:23] Speaker 2: or do that. And so we got a lot more
[1:33:26] Speaker 2: proactive at the same time, rules of engagement changed completely.
[1:33:33] Speaker 2: So first deployment, they're about I would say, thinking about
[1:33:36] Speaker 2: nine months apart, so just in nine months of us
[1:33:38] Speaker 2: not being there. It went from if it has a
[1:33:41] Speaker 2: cell phone, put it down. If it has a gun,
[1:33:44] Speaker 2: put it down. If I mean basically like you know,
[1:33:46] Speaker 2: just if it's a Ford observer, put it down. If
[1:33:47] Speaker 2: it's you know too, unless he's shooting directly at you,
[1:33:53] Speaker 2: don't take the shot. Like wait, so they could be
[1:33:56] Speaker 2: shooting guns but not just at It's like yeah, yeah,
[1:33:58] Speaker 2: unless you know they're actively aging you personally, It's like
[1:34:02] Speaker 2: this is wild. So then the ros became super super tight,
[1:34:07] Speaker 2: like I mean so tight that like it almost made
[1:34:09] Speaker 2: everyone skittish because now we're trying to become like the
[1:34:14] Speaker 2: first time, dude, you play stupid games, get stupid prizes.
[1:34:19] Speaker 2: Second time, they're like, well, we're trying to be the
[1:34:21] Speaker 2: nice guys. We're trying to be like you know, so
[1:34:23] Speaker 2: we'd rather have something bad happen, you know, and then
[1:34:26] Speaker 2: worry about like then you guys do something bad, You're like, okay.
[1:34:30] Speaker 2: So our rois changed significantly where we've gotten a lot
[1:34:33] Speaker 2: of phone calls or with higher where we'd be on
[1:34:36] Speaker 2: the hook with them and be like, hey, this is
[1:34:38] Speaker 2: happening right now, do we are we clear to hot
[1:34:41] Speaker 2: and like no, let's just watch it a little bit longer.
[1:34:44] Speaker 2: You're like, okay, he's gone. You're like okay, okay, well yeah,
[1:34:49] Speaker 2: well they're like, okay, we'll send EO D Yep. It
[1:34:52] Speaker 2: was it was a bomb. Okay, So it was. It was.
[1:34:55] Speaker 2: We learned a lot, but also everything we learned by
[1:34:58] Speaker 2: the time we got back there there are we had
[1:35:00] Speaker 2: like it almost like it's almost change the game again completely,
[1:35:03] Speaker 2: where the second time I felt here were way better prepared.
[1:35:07] Speaker 2: Like I will say this about Gunny riv the man
[1:35:11] Speaker 2: was prepared. When we would take over a house, we
[1:35:14] Speaker 2: had a full windshields of humbies in the back that
[1:35:19] Speaker 2: we would bring out and we'd put on every corner
[1:35:22] Speaker 2: of the house, so every post on the house was
[1:35:24] Speaker 2: actually sitting behind you know, six inches of ballistic glass.
[1:35:28] Speaker 2: And then we'd sand bag. I mean, like we made
[1:35:30] Speaker 2: many fortresses. This would take six hours every place we
[1:35:34] Speaker 2: set up every night. It felt like the Roman Legion
[1:35:37] Speaker 2: at that point, where you'd get there early in the
[1:35:39] Speaker 2: you know, you get there, you know, two am, three am,
[1:35:42] Speaker 2: you know, you can make sure it's clear, and then
[1:35:44] Speaker 2: we would be building these little mini fortresses till daybreak.
[1:35:49] Speaker 1: Some of these compounds you were going into, were there
[1:35:51] Speaker 1: occupants and what did you do?
[1:35:52] Speaker 2: Yes? Sometimes so a lot of the times we would
[1:35:57] Speaker 2: put in a sniper team and we'd watch the house
[1:36:01] Speaker 2: how it's clear. We'd still have to go because there's
[1:36:03] Speaker 2: actually this sounds funny for people, it seems weird, but
[1:36:07] Speaker 2: it was more dangerous when there wasn't people in it
[1:36:09] Speaker 2: than when there was. When there wasn't people, it sometimes
[1:36:13] Speaker 2: would be rigged with low grade like pee stuff like that,
[1:36:16] Speaker 2: like they'd bring them a blow like they were they
[1:36:18] Speaker 2: were like a trap. So we had to be really
[1:36:21] Speaker 2: careful there on the flip side. If someone was there,
[1:36:26] Speaker 2: they were very used to and this is kind of sad,
[1:36:29] Speaker 2: but they were very used to being displaced. So we'd
[1:36:31] Speaker 2: roll in and we had our interpreter. We actually had
[1:36:33] Speaker 2: a platoon interpreter, which was very very handy, and he's like, hey, listen,
[1:36:37] Speaker 2: we're going to take over your house for X amount
[1:36:39] Speaker 2: of days. Do you have anyone to stay with? And
[1:36:41] Speaker 2: they're like, oh yeah, my aunt lives down the street.
[1:36:43] Speaker 2: You're like, okay, go live with them for a while.
[1:36:45] Speaker 2: You'll know when we're gone because you won't see anything
[1:36:47] Speaker 2: on the roof and they would leave most of the time.
[1:36:52] Speaker 2: So that was on like I would say, the platoon side,
[1:36:55] Speaker 2: on the teen side. And I tell a kind of
[1:36:58] Speaker 2: funny story when I dis Terry on a on an
[1:37:02] Speaker 2: Overwatch mission where we took over this people's houses and
[1:37:06] Speaker 2: we kept them in the house and we just locked them,
[1:37:09] Speaker 2: not locked them in a room, but we put them
[1:37:11] Speaker 2: in a room. We're like, hey, don't move, and we
[1:37:14] Speaker 2: put cans up against the door and they're like, seriously,
[1:37:17] Speaker 2: please don't move. We're gonna be like kind of on
[1:37:19] Speaker 2: the roof for just twelve hours because we there was
[1:37:21] Speaker 2: a very specific Ied Brother team that had been placing
[1:37:26] Speaker 2: and this was where we intel said that they were
[1:37:30] Speaker 2: gonna be. So we set up on this guy's roof
[1:37:32] Speaker 2: and they it was I would say between ten at
[1:37:35] Speaker 2: night and four a m. That we were there, and
[1:37:38] Speaker 2: they just stayed in the room. So we would go in.
[1:37:41] Speaker 2: We would search the room, you know, make sure there
[1:37:43] Speaker 2: was no weapons, no cell phones, Hey do you have anything,
[1:37:47] Speaker 2: and we'd take that put it outside the room. We'd
[1:37:49] Speaker 2: give them food, we'd give them water, we'd leave them money,
[1:37:52] Speaker 2: you know, a whole basket of good ease. So when
[1:37:53] Speaker 2: we left, like I would knock and then we would
[1:37:56] Speaker 2: just x fill and be like, hey, please stay in
[1:37:58] Speaker 2: the room for one more hour, Please don't come out.
[1:38:01] Speaker 2: We'll be gone by the time you come out. We
[1:38:03] Speaker 2: found that was safer because the one thing that started
[1:38:09] Speaker 2: happening is like I said, like, so, the Zidon was
[1:38:13] Speaker 2: very tribal. If you killed one of them, if you
[1:38:16] Speaker 2: were a foreign fighter and you killed a zidones we'll
[1:38:20] Speaker 2: call them, the whole area would turn on you and
[1:38:23] Speaker 2: they would fucking kill you. I mean they would. They
[1:38:25] Speaker 2: were lopping heads off, they were doing. So they made
[1:38:27] Speaker 2: very sure to keep them happy or try to minimize
[1:38:31] Speaker 2: damage to them. So it was like a three way battle.
[1:38:34] Speaker 2: So if we were going in the houses that were
[1:38:36] Speaker 2: either occupied or we knew someone had just left, the
[1:38:38] Speaker 2: chances of it like one just getting blown up was
[1:38:41] Speaker 2: just very low, or people firing on us just randomly
[1:38:45] Speaker 2: or like so for the most part, people didn't even
[1:38:48] Speaker 2: know we were there. You know, they might tell their neighbors
[1:38:51] Speaker 2: the next day. We're like, well, we had a stiper
[1:38:53] Speaker 2: team on our roof for you know, six hours last night,
[1:38:56] Speaker 2: you know. But like but for the most part we
[1:38:57] Speaker 2: were trying to be as little footprint as we want
[1:38:59] Speaker 2: to do that. That was like a three man team
[1:39:01] Speaker 2: we did it with. So one of us would hold
[1:39:04] Speaker 2: security down on the stairwell to the door, and the
[1:39:07] Speaker 2: other two would be up on the op and we'd
[1:39:08] Speaker 2: just rotate out and then we'd just leave. So it
[1:39:11] Speaker 2: really but platoons. We would usually send sniper teams in.
[1:39:17] Speaker 2: That's what we learned, so second point we would send
[1:39:21] Speaker 2: in platoon or sniper team early watched the house for
[1:39:24] Speaker 2: twenty four forty eight hours, sweep it completely, and then
[1:39:28] Speaker 2: we would move in as either a platoon or sometimes
[1:39:31] Speaker 2: even a company. We had one company op that was
[1:39:33] Speaker 2: just I would say, the the world's worst company hop ever.
[1:39:37] Speaker 2: Where it was like we'd put all our eggs in
[1:39:38] Speaker 2: this one basket and that basket had two roads in
[1:39:42] Speaker 2: or out, and they rigged both roads. So when we
[1:39:45] Speaker 2: came out, they fucked They fucked us up so bad.
[1:39:48] Speaker 2: So it was like one of those things that like
[1:39:50] Speaker 2: in a normal battle, you were like, oh, man, I
[1:39:52] Speaker 2: hope we get all of our guns and I hope
[1:39:54] Speaker 2: we get all of our people in one spot because
[1:39:56] Speaker 2: then we're like this impenetrable and it was reversed. It
[1:39:59] Speaker 2: was like, and I hope it's just me and you alone,
[1:40:02] Speaker 2: you know, in the bush where at least I'm I
[1:40:05] Speaker 2: know where I am, that nothing's gonna be you know,
[1:40:07] Speaker 2: I can walk anywhere. So we were walking that second deployment. God,
[1:40:12] Speaker 2: we were walking what looked like on a map like
[1:40:17] Speaker 2: like two clicks, and all of a sudden you get
[1:40:18] Speaker 2: on the terrain and it's either soft sand or like
[1:40:21] Speaker 2: it's sucking mud and it's taking you six to eight
[1:40:24] Speaker 2: hours to get set up over two clicks. But then
[1:40:27] Speaker 2: like I would take that any day of the week overdriving.
[1:40:31] Speaker 2: By the end, I would like, let me walk. Let
[1:40:35] Speaker 2: me walk for twelve hours in dark, you know, trip
[1:40:38] Speaker 2: it over breaking shit and get to where him going
[1:40:41] Speaker 2: knowing I'm going to be safe, rather than getting in
[1:40:44] Speaker 2: that truck. Getting in that like even air support. Air
[1:40:46] Speaker 2: support sucked. We had one helo raid that we got
[1:40:51] Speaker 2: to the launch pad. We're already it would just black
[1:40:54] Speaker 2: smoke canceled, like yeah, it's real dirty right now, like
[1:40:59] Speaker 2: sandstorm go home. We had probably like four of those
[1:41:02] Speaker 2: were we're gonna do these helo raids and we're getting
[1:41:04] Speaker 2: ready to do air ops and all of a sudden
[1:41:06] Speaker 2: they're like, yeah, it's not good conditions. Man, it doesn't
[1:41:09] Speaker 2: seem like it's ever good conditions for helos.
[1:41:11] Speaker 1: Yeah, the dusty environment in the desert is definitely not
[1:41:15] Speaker 1: conducive for for helicopter. No.
[1:41:18] Speaker 2: And so that the few helo raids we did do
[1:41:21] Speaker 2: where I literally I wasn't. It was so funny because
[1:41:25] Speaker 2: me and my friend talked about it. He's like, I
[1:41:27] Speaker 2: was more worried about the helo ride to the raid
[1:41:30] Speaker 2: than when I was also lead breacher. So I had
[1:41:33] Speaker 2: all I'd see four, just my whole I looked like
[1:41:35] Speaker 2: a tummies full of CE four on my pouch and everything.
[1:41:38] Speaker 2: He's like, you're a walking bomb and you're more worried
[1:41:41] Speaker 2: about the flight over. I was like, dude, I don't
[1:41:42] Speaker 2: like helicopters. I don't have any control. I kept watching
[1:41:45] Speaker 2: these things go down like you know, like because of dust,
[1:41:49] Speaker 2: And as soon as we woul hit ground, it was like,
[1:41:50] Speaker 2: thank God, we're about to go into a firefight. That
[1:41:53] Speaker 2: helos scaring the shit out of me.
[1:41:55] Speaker 1: I remember riding in a I can't remember. I think
[1:41:59] Speaker 1: it was during my advice team the deployment. Maybe no, No,
[1:42:02] Speaker 1: it wasn't. I don't remember either way. I was riding
[1:42:05] Speaker 1: in an EOD vehicle and I was sitting on top
[1:42:08] Speaker 1: of a know, it was in the back of an
[1:42:09] Speaker 1: M wrap and under my seat was just like pounds
[1:42:12] Speaker 1: of C four that they would use to do the
[1:42:15] Speaker 1: uh to bip the i eds blow in place the
[1:42:18] Speaker 1: ied s. Yeah, it was definitely like, all right, well,
[1:42:22] Speaker 1: if something happened to our trek, I guess I'm I'm toast.
[1:42:25] Speaker 2: So uh when leaving over our first deployment, Uh, I
[1:42:29] Speaker 2: was lead breacher then too are we were lead Humbye,
[1:42:33] Speaker 2: we were suicide vehicle, which sucked already, but then I
[1:42:35] Speaker 2: had to have all my my, my, all my charges ready.
[1:42:39] Speaker 2: So it's just in the front there was like that
[1:42:41] Speaker 2: that weird front bumper they had on some of the Humby's.
[1:42:43] Speaker 2: We made sure we got one of those, and we
[1:42:44] Speaker 2: just and it was just pile full of like C
[1:42:47] Speaker 2: four and You're just like, I don't know if this
[1:42:48] Speaker 2: is gonna be far enough away from us, or if
[1:42:50] Speaker 2: it's just gonna push the engine block into us.
[1:42:52] Speaker 1: Like probably you don't get We're like, I guess.
[1:42:55] Speaker 2: We'll just take our chances. When it happens, it's pretty
[1:42:58] Speaker 2: just like I didn't want it in the cab with us.
[1:43:01] Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, I mean C four is obviously super stable,
[1:43:04] Speaker 1: but you do it's it definitely feels weird when you're
[1:43:08] Speaker 1: cruising around with a bunch of it.
[1:43:09] Speaker 2: Yeah right, And you're like, I I just remember, like
[1:43:11] Speaker 2: cause I had so the one thing again in my unit,
[1:43:14] Speaker 2: like we got to I had a bunch of different
[1:43:15] Speaker 2: vests for a bunch of different things, and one of
[1:43:17] Speaker 2: them had this big front pouch where I had all
[1:43:19] Speaker 2: my charges and my detonator and everything right here, so
[1:43:23] Speaker 2: I could just kind of pull out. And I realized
[1:43:25] Speaker 2: I just basically have this like you know, bulletproof vestful
[1:43:28] Speaker 2: of C four. And it's like, I know it's probably
[1:43:30] Speaker 2: not gonna go off because of that, but it's still
[1:43:32] Speaker 2: a weird feeling to be walking around and everyone would
[1:43:35] Speaker 2: just kind of look at you different, like could you
[1:43:37] Speaker 2: just just go a little further away from me than
[1:43:39] Speaker 2: where you're standing right now?
[1:43:40] Speaker 1: You're like, all right, yeah for sure, Well, dude, I've
[1:43:44] Speaker 1: really enjoyed this conversation. Tell us where tell us about
[1:43:47] Speaker 1: your book and where people can find that and where
[1:43:49] Speaker 1: they can find your social media and stuff.
[1:43:52] Speaker 2: Uh. So this is my book. It's called val Hollaboys. Uh,
[1:43:56] Speaker 2: it's a lot about my first employment with that that
[1:44:00] Speaker 2: that super team. We took a lot. Like I said,
[1:44:05] Speaker 2: it was like a twenty five percent casualty rate.
[1:44:07] Speaker 1: Uh.
[1:44:07] Speaker 2: It was just a different, different kind of war. But
[1:44:11] Speaker 2: it goes for for a lot of people. If you
[1:44:12] Speaker 2: guys want to know about like boot camp and I
[1:44:16] Speaker 2: so I it goes in like I would say two
[1:44:18] Speaker 2: thirds are in thirds. The first third is basically boot camp,
[1:44:21] Speaker 2: the second third is recon training if you ever want
[1:44:24] Speaker 2: to know like what recon goes through, and they're kind
[1:44:26] Speaker 2: of training and stuff like that. So it's me kind
[1:44:28] Speaker 2: of going through that stuff. And then the last third
[1:44:32] Speaker 2: is us in Iraq, or I'd say maybe the last
[1:44:34] Speaker 2: half is of us in Iraq and stories from there.
[1:44:36] Speaker 1: Uh.
[1:44:37] Speaker 2: This actually started, uh when I was at the VA
[1:44:39] Speaker 2: for PTSD. So there there's some pretty horrific shit that
[1:44:44] Speaker 2: happened to our team in our platoon. So I had
[1:44:48] Speaker 2: been going to see a therapist and he one of
[1:44:50] Speaker 2: the things they have to do is write it down
[1:44:51] Speaker 2: over and over and over and over, and so I'd
[1:44:54] Speaker 2: written down a couple of these stories over and over,
[1:44:56] Speaker 2: and it was getting help and stuff. And one of
[1:45:00] Speaker 2: my friends is like, hey, man, you got you got
[1:45:01] Speaker 2: any funny stories? Because these are fucking just awful.
[1:45:05] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[1:45:05] Speaker 2: I got some funny ones too, so like, why don't
[1:45:07] Speaker 2: you write those down and put them together? So I did,
[1:45:11] Speaker 2: and it about God. About a year ago. I was
[1:45:15] Speaker 2: running a gym. This is my gym, obviously, but I
[1:45:19] Speaker 2: was working, and then one of my clients happened to
[1:45:23] Speaker 2: be like a book reviewer professionally, like that's what she did.
[1:45:26] Speaker 2: So we're just talking books and I was like, oh, yeah,
[1:45:27] Speaker 2: I wrote this book. You know, I didn't really do
[1:45:31] Speaker 2: anything with it. She's like, well, let me read it.
[1:45:33] Speaker 2: So she read it and she's like, this can get
[1:45:35] Speaker 2: published in ten seconds. So she actually did a lot
[1:45:38] Speaker 2: of the I sayed leg work and stuff like that,
[1:45:39] Speaker 2: and she's like, this is great. So I sent it
[1:45:42] Speaker 2: to case My Publishing. They picked it up. It's been
[1:45:45] Speaker 2: selling like hotcakes, which has been phenomenal because like, again,
[1:45:48] Speaker 2: those are like a weird pain point, so it's not
[1:45:50] Speaker 2: like my my favorite book that I've written, but it's
[1:45:55] Speaker 2: doing really, really really well. I'm very excited for as
[1:45:57] Speaker 2: far as like it's written it's not your normal Uh
[1:46:02] Speaker 2: so this is the I'll say, it's not your normal
[1:46:05] Speaker 2: war book. It's written like a novel, or i'd say
[1:46:08] Speaker 2: more like not fictionalized, but like more like storytelling. Then yeah,
[1:46:13] Speaker 2: it's a lot of yeah. So yeah, so I write different.
[1:46:16] Speaker 2: I write like a storyteller, so it reads more like
[1:46:19] Speaker 2: a like a normal novel than it does. Like, uh,
[1:46:21] Speaker 2: if you've ever read some of those war books from
[1:46:23] Speaker 2: like World War Two or in Vietnam where they're just
[1:46:25] Speaker 2: really dry and like, uh, I would say, the first
[1:46:28] Speaker 2: half of this is a fucking hilarious book, which actually
[1:46:31] Speaker 2: makes the turn of it really bad. That's when said that,
[1:46:34] Speaker 2: like it's a bad roller coaster. It goes up, up, up,
[1:46:36] Speaker 2: and then it just drops. It was like, well, welcome
[1:46:38] Speaker 2: to deployment, Welcome, welcome to the Yeah, so that did
[1:46:42] Speaker 2: really well. I you can get this on Amazon, Barnes
[1:46:46] Speaker 2: and Noble, everywhere you can buy books. That's going really well.
[1:46:51] Speaker 2: I think they're picking up the audio rights soon, she
[1:46:53] Speaker 2: told me, which is super exciting.
[1:46:56] Speaker 1: Uh.
[1:46:56] Speaker 2: We've only been out about three months now and I'm
[1:46:59] Speaker 2: on like two of the Amazon lists. I'm like second
[1:47:03] Speaker 2: third for sales on two of them. Yeah, so it's
[1:47:05] Speaker 2: been it's been going great. It's definitely the other caveat
[1:47:10] Speaker 2: will put. It's definitely polarizing because I write from a
[1:47:15] Speaker 2: angry I wrote this right after because I wrote the
[1:47:18] Speaker 2: initial stories, uh right after my deployment and right or
[1:47:22] Speaker 2: right after I got out where I was having like
[1:47:24] Speaker 2: a lot of like bad bad PTSD and stuff like that.
[1:47:27] Speaker 2: So there's some uh, not say questionable, but like there's
[1:47:32] Speaker 2: there's just some moments that are really vulnerable that if
[1:47:34] Speaker 2: you were there you understand. But some of the people
[1:47:38] Speaker 2: reading and like, oh, you're a monster because you're having
[1:47:40] Speaker 2: these thoughts and you're like, okay, I need you to
[1:47:43] Speaker 2: go into a war and watch your friends be blown
[1:47:46] Speaker 2: apart to bits and knock it angry and knock it
[1:47:49] Speaker 2: like you know. Like so it's it's funny because I
[1:47:51] Speaker 2: just the reactions to people, Uh, all the reviewers love it.
[1:47:54] Speaker 2: Some of the people, you know, if you were there.
[1:47:57] Speaker 1: That's good man. No, I think that's good. I think
[1:47:59] Speaker 1: that raw. You know, reality is something that people one
[1:48:03] Speaker 1: want in a book, you know, and I want you
[1:48:05] Speaker 1: to sanitize it. I want you to tell me what
[1:48:06] Speaker 1: it was like. But two. I think people should know
[1:48:09] Speaker 1: what it was like, you know, and that's raw feeling
[1:48:12] Speaker 1: to it.
[1:48:13] Speaker 2: I had a moment of doubt when I was writing,
[1:48:15] Speaker 2: when I was doing the editing with this, and my dad,
[1:48:18] Speaker 2: I was like, should I just take out some of
[1:48:19] Speaker 2: that stuff? And he's like, absolutely not. That wouldn't be
[1:48:23] Speaker 2: That's not what happened to you. And people need to
[1:48:26] Speaker 2: know what it's like like that, don't don't don't make
[1:48:30] Speaker 2: this another like, because there's a lot of like i'd say,
[1:48:32] Speaker 2: not like uplifting war stories that are like, oh, like
[1:48:35] Speaker 2: we did badass things and that's great, and they there's
[1:48:38] Speaker 2: some badasses who had some cool stuff. This is not
[1:48:41] Speaker 2: that story. Like this is about like I would say,
[1:48:43] Speaker 2: almost like like Paradise Lost type stuff, where like, I
[1:48:47] Speaker 2: really this didn't go the way I thought it was
[1:48:49] Speaker 2: gonna go. It really brought up a lot of stuff later.
[1:48:53] Speaker 2: I lost a lot of good friends, like a lot
[1:48:55] Speaker 2: of good friends. One of my best friends lost his
[1:48:58] Speaker 2: leg stuff like that, so like and it really it
[1:49:01] Speaker 2: really fucked me up for a while.
[1:49:03] Speaker 1: Well it's good to do that. It's good to have
[1:49:05] Speaker 1: that outlet, man, and I.
[1:49:07] Speaker 2: Right, dude, And then and then I know you're trying
[1:49:09] Speaker 2: to through. But like, uh, I just went to that
[1:49:13] Speaker 2: retirement party about like six months ago, and I've been
[1:49:17] Speaker 2: holding onto a lot of these feelings for god, like
[1:49:19] Speaker 2: almost sixteen years, you know something like that. And then
[1:49:21] Speaker 2: everyone got drunk and then everyone started telling stories and
[1:49:25] Speaker 2: crying and you're just like, oh my god, it wasn't
[1:49:27] Speaker 2: just me, Like oh and it was probably it was
[1:49:29] Speaker 2: like a huge training point in my life where like
[1:49:31] Speaker 2: finally everyone got together again after you know, going through
[1:49:34] Speaker 2: stuff together that no human beings should go through. And
[1:49:37] Speaker 2: it was super cathartic, like it was very it was
[1:49:39] Speaker 2: beautiful in fact, and so like it made me. It
[1:49:42] Speaker 2: made me happier about the whole thing, because there's some
[1:49:45] Speaker 2: stuff in here that like I had a hard time,
[1:49:47] Speaker 2: Like I couldn't even look at one of my friends
[1:49:48] Speaker 2: because of what happened to him, and it would make
[1:49:50] Speaker 2: me like stick to my stomach every time I even
[1:49:52] Speaker 2: thought about him. So just having that moment with him
[1:49:54] Speaker 2: and being able to cry with him and like you know,
[1:49:56] Speaker 2: hugging it out and stuff like that, like it it
[1:49:57] Speaker 2: meant a lot to me.
[1:49:58] Speaker 1: That's good.
[1:49:59] Speaker 2: Yeah there, Yeah, So there's my uh, that's that book
[1:50:02] Speaker 2: and then I have a fantasy series. I'm gonna say
[1:50:05] Speaker 2: it's more military fantasy for if you guys are like so,
[1:50:08] Speaker 2: it's based on special operations type shit. So it's like
[1:50:11] Speaker 2: a fantasy series where they're all kind of like specialists,
[1:50:14] Speaker 2: like one's a sniper, but stuff like that. But it's
[1:50:18] Speaker 2: it's actually based on my war experience. So it's again
[1:50:20] Speaker 2: a little dark at point. It's a little like kind
[1:50:23] Speaker 2: of raw and that's been selling really well too, so
[1:50:26] Speaker 2: so yeah, that's what I've been doing right now.
[1:50:28] Speaker 1: What a cool gig man. I really again, I think
[1:50:30] Speaker 1: it's great. I think people got to find an outlet
[1:50:32] Speaker 1: when they get out. Either stay in constant contact with
[1:50:37] Speaker 1: people that you served with, write a book, you know,
[1:50:41] Speaker 1: go on a podcast, start a podcast. I think letting
[1:50:45] Speaker 1: you know, people talking stuff out is what more guys need.
[1:50:49] Speaker 1: And they don't realize it because they don't want to
[1:50:50] Speaker 1: talk about stuff and part of it, you know, and
[1:50:54] Speaker 1: I get there's a lot of people that are like, well,
[1:50:56] Speaker 1: no one will ever understand what it was like or
[1:50:59] Speaker 1: what I was at the time, And I'm like, you're right, yes,
[1:51:02] Speaker 1: but you also can't blame people outside of your circle
[1:51:06] Speaker 1: or civilians or whatever for not understanding the military when
[1:51:10] Speaker 1: you're not even willing to talk to them about it
[1:51:12] Speaker 1: and what it was really like. You know, you can't,
[1:51:14] Speaker 1: on one hand complain that they don't know what it's
[1:51:17] Speaker 1: like and that they you know, whatever, but you won't
[1:51:20] Speaker 1: tell them. And I think that's what these podcasts and
[1:51:22] Speaker 1: these books and all this stuff is good, because it's
[1:51:26] Speaker 1: it's expanding people's understanding what the military is, what it does.
[1:51:30] Speaker 1: You know, like you said, when you came in, you
[1:51:32] Speaker 1: didn't realize there were so many different jobs that are
[1:51:34] Speaker 1: in the military, so many jobs, there's so many missions.
[1:51:37] Speaker 1: There's so many things that happen every day in the
[1:51:39] Speaker 1: military that most people don't even realize. And I think
[1:51:44] Speaker 1: it's it's imperative that we not only educate the public,
[1:51:50] Speaker 1: but also save our stories for our families and our
[1:51:53] Speaker 1: you know, that's family history. You know, So maybe fifty
[1:51:56] Speaker 1: years from now, one hundred years from now, you're a
[1:51:58] Speaker 1: great grandkid or something like that, will find in this
[1:52:00] Speaker 1: interview and we'll get to hear you talk about your
[1:52:02] Speaker 1: experience firsthand. You know how invaluable is that? I mean,
[1:52:05] Speaker 1: what would you give to hear your great grandfather, great
[1:52:08] Speaker 1: great grandfather talk about their experience in like a war
[1:52:12] Speaker 1: or something like that. That's that's crazy, that's invaluable stuff.
[1:52:15] Speaker 1: So I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your story,
[1:52:18] Speaker 1: and I look forward. We talked before the show. We'll
[1:52:21] Speaker 1: have to set something up down the road. Have you
[1:52:22] Speaker 1: come back on and we'll get into some more stuff. Everyone,
[1:52:25] Speaker 1: thanks for checking out the show. My website's Jaycramergraphics dot com.
[1:52:28] Speaker 1: My instagram is Former Action Guys, Former Action News. Check
[1:52:31] Speaker 1: those out and that's it. Man. I really appreciate it.
[1:52:34] Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks so much, man,

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